“I’m not sure. A few days, I guess.”
Leo sipped his coffee. “Maybe I could take you to dinner?”
Before I could answer, Gus knocked on the window and pointed to the door.
“Think about it. I’ll even let you turn on the siren.”
He walked out to meet Gus and I sat there feeling the corners of my mouth lift into a smile. Dinner sounded fantastic. I wonder if I had something to wear? Sure I had to spend some time with Gramps, but I also had to eat. And sitting across from those George Clooney lips for ninety or so minutes sounded like a vacation in paradise. Yep. This day was definitely closing on a high note. Yay me.
I tried to catch Birdie’s eye, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was writing on the notepad Gus left in the room.
I finished my coffee and decided to wait in the room for Leo to come back so I could take Birdie home and we could make plans for dinner.
After twenty minutes, I was wondering what was keeping him. I stood and stretched my legs just as Gus re-entered the room where Birdie was. He handed her a piece of paper. She glanced at it, nodded, then picked up the pen and signed it. Finally.
I stepped out just as the door to the interrogation room opened and Gus exited, Birdie close behind him.
Gus was talking and walking, glancing sideways at Birdie as he spoke. "So, in hand to hand combat, Spiderman would whoop Batman any day. I mean first he's a scientist, right? So he has the smarts and maybe Batman does too, but he's really just a rich boy with lots of toys. Spidey works alone, has spider sense, the strength, the agility, plus the web shooters."
"Gus," Leo said. "Take Mrs. Geraghty downstairs. Make sure she's comfortable."
"Wait, what?" I pivoted to Birdie. "What's going on?"
"We'll talk later, dear," she said and pinched me on the cheek.
"Birdie!" I started after her.
She waved over her head and followed Gus down the stairwell.
I swung back to Leo. "Where is he taking her?"
"To the booking room."
"Why?"
He had that same look I’d given to family members when I was writing the obituary column. "Because she confessed to the attempted murder of your grandfather."
That was the last thing I heard before the darkness.
Chapter 6
"Stacy, Stacy, can you hear me?" A voice was calling my name. It sounded far away. Where was I? I remembered…Birdie…and…and now I was lying down. Thank God. It was a stupid dream.
"Give me that." The voice again. A man.
I was trying to pry my eyes open.
Another voice, female. "Should I call somebody?"
A soothing hand on my forehead.
"Hang on. I think she's coming around."
I opened my eyes.
Definitely not a dream.
Gus stood next to Leo, as he hunched over me, his face lined with worry. "You had us all scared there." He was holding a cool cloth to my forehead.
"I'm fine. Did I pass out?" My head was fuzzy. Unfortunately, my memory was intact. Aside from the fact that I wanted to kill my grandmother, everything else seemed fine.
"You fainted after, um..." I was glad he didn’t repeat it.
"How long was I out?" I slowly sat up and planted my feet on the floor.
"Not long," Leo handed me a cup of water.
I sat there for a minute, not sure what to do next.
Leo sat next to me. "Do you want me to call someone to pick you up? Or Gus can drive you home."
"No, I'm good. I just want to see my grandmother. Where is she?"
Leo looked at Gus. "Actually, she asked not to be disturbed," Leo said.
The blood was flowing to my brain again and I could feel a slight twitch in my eye. I hoped I wasn’t having a stroke. Did women in their twenties have strokes? I wasn’t sure.
I balked at Leo. “Are you freaking kidding me? What do you mean she asked not to be disturbed? Is this the goddamn Holiday Inn?”
Leo shrugged. "Hey, she's your grandmother."
“There’s no proof of that.” She didn’t even have her own birth certificate, let alone mine. Some kind of mishap at the courthouse in the late seventies. A fire? I couldn’t recall, but the fact remained that no one knew the true age of any Geraghty woman. Geez, what if I was older? What if I was losing all my child-bearing eggs just sitting here and I didn’t even know it?
“Stacy?”
“What?”
‘Um, your phone. It’s ringing,” Leo said.
I sighed, stood up, and answered my cell phone.
"Yes, hello? May I speak with Stacy, please?" Aunt Lolly.
"Hi, Lolly, it's me."
"Hello? Hello? Fiona come here," she screamed in my ear. I held the phone away. "I don't know how to talk on a cell phone!"
"Aunt Lolly, you aren't on a cell phone, I am."
Leo bit his lower lip and walked away. Bet he wouldn't be laughing after a few hours with Birdie. He'll be banging his head against the wall, begging me to take her home.
"I can't hear her. No. Yes. Yes, I think so. No. You talk."
"Lolly? Lolly!" I yelled.
In the background, Fiona called to her sister. "Turn the phone around, honey."
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
"Hello? Stacy? Is Stacy there?"
Oh, for the love of...
"Yes, Lolly, I'm here. What do you need?"
"Oh, hello, dear. When will Birdie be home?"
"Why? Is something wrong?"
"Well, see, I do the cooking and the cleaning, Fiona does the laundry and the decorating and Birdie does the customer service. But Birdie isn't home and we have reservations tomorrow and guests are coming and we don't know what to do. This credit card thingamajiggy is a pistol, I tell you..." Her voice trailed off. Then absently she said, "Hello? Who is this?"
"Lolly, is Fiona around? May I please speak with Fiona?"
"Do you have a reservation?"
"Aunt Lolly," I said carefully, "please let me speak with your sister."
"Birdie isn't here. You'll have to call back." Click.
"Dammit." I shoved the phone in my pocket, threw the empty water cup on the ground, and jumped up and down on it like a two-year-old. It was cardboard so it didn’t have the satisfaction of a crunching sound. Like when you hang up on someone with a cellphone instead of a landline. Ruined the climax.
Leo sauntered over, sipping a soda. "Trouble in paradise?"
If he wasn’t carrying a weapon I might have decked him. "Paradise? Paradise is an island I've never been to, Leo. My home is the Twilight Zone and Rod Serling is the mayor."
"Anything I can do?"
Release my grandmother? Make my grandfather all better? Give me a police escort back to Chicago so I could return to my job and the simple life where all I had to worry about was a corrupt government and drive-by shootings?
But I didn't say any of that. "You can tell my grandmother that I will be back later and that she will talk to me if I have to borrow a bullhorn."
Leo smiled and nodded.
I picked up the smashed cup and tossed it in the trash, near where Gus was standing.
"And you! All Batman would have to do is throw a bucket of water on Spiderman. He has a better costume, a cape, and a kick-ass car. And who do you think gets more action with the ladies? A billionaire? Or a scientist with a bug infestation?"
I stormed out the door just as Leo called, “What about dinner?”
There was only one place to go to help me sort through this mess.
"Take these," I said to Cinnamon, handing her my car keys, "and give me one of those." I pointed to a bottle of Pinot Grigio.
Cinnamon grabbed a glass and I said, “No. The whole damn bottle.”
She laughed and reached for the wine.
The Black Opal was a Main Street staple. It wasn’t too chic, too loud, too dirty, too clubby, too anything. It was one of those places you’d feel comfortable bringing a client or your best friend. You could
order a Martini, a shot, or a beer, but nothing pink. Cin hated the color pink.
Classic rock-and-roll hummed from the jukebox, but it was slow for a Thursday and I was thankful for that. The only customer was Scully, perched on a center stool. I think Scully was listed as a fixture in the contract Cinnamon signed when she bought the bar. He was as old as the building itself and I had never seen him anywhere else around town. I waved to him and said hello.
Cinnamon leaned across from me, brown hair curling around her bare shoulders. She was wearing a black tank top that showed off her tattoo of a phoenix rising from the ashes and her curves.
"That bad?" she asked as she handed me the glass.
"Worse," I said.
Cinnamon popped open a beer for herself. "Bay," she called towards the storage room, "you're on."
Bay was a local kid who played in a classic rock band. He had a round baby face that made him look twelve instead of twenty-one. He emerged from the storeroom wearing a tee shirt with a picture of Tweety Bird flicking off Sylvester. "I keep tips," he said.
"Fine," Cinnamon walked around to the front of the bar, holding her beer.
"Let's get a table in the back and you can tell me what's going on," said Cinnamon.
I followed her into the back room and WHAM! I was knocked down by a mountain lion. He straddled me and licked the wine off my face as I tried not to piss myself.
"Dammit, Thor!" Cinnamon yelled. "Get off." She dragged the beast off my chest and scolded him. I sat very still on the worn wood floor, afraid to look.
"Stacy, are you okay? I'm so sorry. I don't know why he did that," Cinnamon said to me. Then she shouted over her shoulder, "Bay bring Stacy another glass of Pinot."
"What the hell was that?" I asked.
"That's Thor. Don't you remember? The dog Tony got me for our anniversary right before I kicked his ass out."
Tony Panzano was Cinnamon's ex-husband who accidentally did the boogaloo with the town tramp. They had had a huge fight and Cinnamon walked out for three days. Tony was in a drunken depression and Monique Fontaine tried to pull him out of it. Unfortunately, she pulled a few things she shouldn't have.
"What are you feeding it? Miracle Grow?" I attempted to wipe off my sweatshirt. I had never seen such a giant dog. The thing was almost as tall as me and his head looked like the front end of a Chevy.
"He's a Great Dane. You know, like Marmaduke. He isn't usually so rambunctious.” She smiled at Thor who bowed his head bashfully. “He’s actually kind of handy around the bar. I don't need a bouncer," she said, helping me to my feet.
"No, but I bet you need a Bobcat to pooper scoop."
Thor sat down, remorse on his face. He grumbled what could have been an apology.
"God of Thunder, right?" I asked.
"He's afraid of spiders, too." Cinnamon said.
We both stared at Thor. Thor whined and offered a paw. I pet him to let him know there were no hard feelings.
Cin ushered me to a table and I was silent for a few moments, wondering how to unload the latest development.
I began with the news that the doctors found our grandfather’s illness suspect.
“Does that mean he was poisoned? Or could it have been an accident like mistaking a bottle of Drano for Maalox or something? He is getting up there, you know.”
If my grandfather was rounding the corner to senility street, that might be a plausible scenario, but our phone conversations were always lucid. Naturally, I didn’t see him as often as my cousin did.
“You would know better than I would. How has he been lately?” I asked.
“Fine. He’s been fine. Nothing unusual except--” Cin smacked her forehead. “Crap, I almost forgot. Guess who came into town this week?”
“Who?”
“Wildcat.”
“Really?”
Cinnamon nodded. “He and Gramps swapped war stories all night. Birdie hated it, but Fiona ate it up.”
That didn’t surprise me. Birdie was not Bill ‘Wildcat’ Panther’s biggest fan. He was Gramps’ oldest friend and I wasn’t sure what she had against the man, save for the fact that he had a generous helping of the obnoxious gene. He liked his booze hard and his women soft, which didn’t appeal to Birdie in the least.
Before Cinnamon launched into the latest gossip, I decided I better let her know what had happened with Birdie. I took a healthy sip of my wine for some courage just as Thor moseyed up next to me, leaned his massive body against my hip and blew chunks all over my shoe.
Cinnamon jumped up, knocking her beer over. "Dammit, Thor. I'm so sorry, Stacy, I'll buy you new shoes.” She ran to get a towel. I eyed Thor, wondering if he thought his first name was Dammit.
Thor heaved himself on the ground and rolled over, inviting me to rub his belly.
"You're kidding, right?"
"Here." Cinnamon returned with a towel. "I don't know what the hell is wrong with this dog. He eats everything. One time he lapped up some antifreeze Tony spilled at the shop." Tony was a mechanic. "He was hobbling around like the town drunk, completely out of it. The vet had to pump his stomach."
I spotted the penny just as she said that. From the looks of it, it had been swimming in the dog’s stomach. I used the towel to wipe my shoes, then picked up the coin with it and cleaned it off. Cin went to get a mop from the closet behind me.
"Jeez, couldn't that kill him?" I scanned the date on the penny.
"Yeah. It's poison," she called.
I stopped wiping and looked at Cin. She caught my eye and I was sure we were thinking the same thing.
"Acting like he was drunk," she said.
"They pumped his stomach," I said.
Gramps.
Chapter 7
Cinnamon told Bay to close up and we left out the back door with a bottle of wine and headed to the cottage with Thor in tow.
“So do we call the hospital, tell them maybe he ingested antifreeze?” Cinnamon asked.
“I would think they would recognize the symptoms. Besides, we aren’t certain. I mean that’s a stab in the dark.” I decided to wait until we got there to tell her that our grandmother was in the slammer.
The streets were quiet as we meandered through the town up the steps to the inn. There was no traffic, no one else walking in the night and I couldn’t help but notice everything looked the same as when I had left it. Old-fashioned lampposts dotted the crossroads, wrought iron fences framed the yards, and painted ladies were still painted. Of course, in a town this small, the people didn't change much either. Everyone knew everyone and each other's business. Even if something exciting were to happen, people heard about it on their home scanners long before it was printed in the newspaper. Not much fun for a reporter.
Cinnamon broke the silence. "So now what?"
"Still think it was an accident?"
Cinnamon pulled Thor closer to her and blew out a sigh. "I don't know. If he did swallow antifreeze, at least we can rule out Birdie. I’m sure she would choose something much more dramatic to poison someone with. Like oleander.”
“You’re probably right,” I said.
Cin gave me a funny look as I swung through the gate.
“What was that?” she asked.
“What?” I twisted the knob and let us into the cottage. No one ever locked doors in this town. Well, except for the Geraghty Girls, but that was mostly to keep Lolly inside the house.
Thor plopped on the couch and I kicked my shoes off.
“That pitch. Whenever you’re hiding something from me your voice pitches up an octave like Mickey Mouse.” Cin eyed me closely.
While I disagreed with that analogy, I couldn’t ignore the fact that Cinnamon knew me better than anyone. We may look completely opposite but we had a lot in common. She also lost her father too young and that bonded us together for life. Uncle Deck was my mother’s brother and the former chief of police. Which prompted the question, “What’s the story with Leo?”
“You met him?” she asked with more enthu
siasm than I thought necessary. “Wait. Let me open the wine first.”
“I’m going to wash up,” I said.
“You’re not off the hook, by the way. You still owe me an explanation.”
Boy did I.
I scrubbed my face and hands, tossed my clothes into the hamper, and climbed into a pair of pajamas. When I returned, Cin had two glasses of wine poured and she was sitting at the breakfast bar.
“So how did you meet Leo?” she asked.
“That’s not important.” I sipped the vino.
“Oh lord, you didn’t crash into him with your car or anything did you?” Cin knew I was not the most graceful person on the planet.
“No.” I sighed. “Actually, he thought I was breaking into the Geraghty house because I didn’t have a key and I was looking around the porch for one.”
Cin burst out laughing. “No freaking way.”
“I’m glad my embarrassment amuses you,” I said.
She waved her hand. “Okay, forget about that. What did you think?” She leaned in closer, her eyes wide.
It was clear she thought I was a good match for this guy, and since he was obviously not her type she seemed eager for me to jump in. I should explain that anyone with a badge was not her type. Between her anger management issues and her father’s profession, I suppose it was inevitable that Cinnamon would have trouble with the law, which she did as a teenager. Except for taking a blowtorch to Tony’s fully restored ‘68 Mustang a year ago, she’s been straight ever since.
I shrugged. “He’s cute.”
Cin sat back on her stool. “Cute? Your cat is cute.” Moonlight yawned from the top of the stiletto chair.
“You’re right. He’s gorgeous,” I said.
“You want me to set you up?”
Oh boy. How to tell her that I already had an invitation to dinner but breaking bread with the guy who tossed your granny in the big house might not be good karma?
“Stacy, what’s the deal? Don’t be embarrassed. I’m sure he’ll want to see you again.”
I poured another glass of wine and said. “I have seen him again, actually. He asked me to dinner.”
“Really? That’s great. When are you going out?”
Witch Way To Amethyst: The Prequel (A Stacy Justice Mystery Book 0) Page 4
