by Sandra Balzo
However he did it, though, I wouldn’t bet on his duplicating the feat with his big furry feet.
‘Stay,’ I tried, knowing it was useless. Worse than useless. His tail-stump was wagging furiously and he was jumping forward and back, pawing at the ground like he was about to charge.
I held up both hands and stepped carefully over the badges, managing to displace one Aurora and a pair of Jacques. As I approached Frank his excitement grew.
‘Good dog. What a good, good doggie you are.’ I said. I didn’t want to ask a leading question like: ‘Do you have to go out?’ since that would send him into a frenzied stampede toward the closest door.
‘Gotta go out, Frank?’
Eric’s voice came from the front of Goddard’s.
‘Shhh,’ I tried, but it was too late.
Frank put down his head and charged, fur flopping, legs churning. I could only flatten myself against the cabinet and watch helplessly as he skidded toward my chart.
I blinked.
Frank was gone. I could hear Eric talking to him at the door. And my chart was still intact.
Now how had he done that? Just the breeze off his flopping ears alone should have sent everything flying.
Not one to look a gift-dog in the mouth, I settled down on the floor. Happily, the ‘Whereabouts when Aurora died’ column of my chart could remain as it was. Just Way’s section would be affected by the new fact that he had died earlier than I'd guessed.
As I said, the only person I could be absolutely certain of, besides myself and Eric, was Caron. My partner had been in the store with me and, though I didn’t give much credence to ‘crisscross’ alibis that two other suspects - like Oliver and Mrs G - provided each other, I had plenty of respect for my own.
As for Sarah...I looked at my chart. Now where had I put our real-estate broker?
Nowhere. Great. I couldn’t even remember all the suspects. Not that I really considered Sarah a suspect. Still, she’d been there and fair was fair.
I pulled out three more badges. On one, I wrote Sarah’s name. Then I leaned back on the card cabinet as I thought about her alibi for Way’s murder.
She’d initially been with Caron and me in Uncommon Grounds, but left to walk to her office just before I went home for Frank. I was certain, though, that Sarah had returned before Way started the generator and remained there until Oliver had found his father’s body.
As for the time frame of Aurora’s death, I’d seen Sarah in Goddard’s and couldn’t remember her leaving the pharmacy. But then I hadn’t noticed Oliver’s exit either, so how dependable was my memory?
Still, it was all I had at this point. I wrote down Sarah's presumed movements and moved on.
Let's see: Naomi Verdeaux had arrived at UG just after the snow-blower stopped. That meant she had no alibi for the period before that. I inked in ‘NO ALIBI’.
On the other hand, the change in timeline helped exonerate Jacque. He’d left the coffee shop just before Oliver found the body, but was otherwise with us the rest of the morning. Except, of course, when he was running his car into the ditch that first time or mowing Frank and me down, the second.
Rudy’s badge was pretty much the same. He’d arrived at UG looking for more gasoline for the generator, just after Way started it, and had stayed throughout.
I stood up and held my paper lantern at arm’s length so it would illuminate all of the names. So where did all this get me? Get us?
Caron Egan, Aurora Benson, Bernie Egan, Naomi Verdeaux, Luc and Tien Romano, Oliver . . .
A drop of dirty slush fell on Oliver’s name.
I looked up, trying to see where the water had come from, and got hit in the face with another plop. Wiping it off, I peered up, but the dangling paper lantern in my hand wasn’t providing any upward illumination.
‘Does anybody have a flashlight?’ I called. ‘I’m afraid we might have a problem with the roof.’
‘A what?’ Mrs G was awake, out of her chair and wringing her hands before anyone else could reply. ‘But the roof has been fine. Always.’
Because Benson Plaza had a flat roof, snow couldn’t easily slide off as it does from a pitched roof. Over the length of a winter, Way might send a crew up to the roof once or twice to shovel it off. I’d never, though, seen this much snow - and heavy, heavy snow - fall so quickly. To add to the problem, the first snow that fell was insulated by the subsequent snow on top, as well as the warm roof below. This meant that bottom snow melts, meaning...
‘A leak?’ Mrs G sounded like she wanted to command it away. ‘My ceiling doesn’t leak.’
It did now.
Luc and Rudy started to approach the mouth of my aisle from opposite ends with their flashlights. Seeing each other, both stopped. Jacque, followed by Sarah, pressed by Luc and directed his flashlight beam up.
‘Uh-oh,’ said Sarah.
Uh-oh was a reasonable, though not very specific, assessment. Even I could see that the ceiling tiles were sagging.
Luc came up behind Sarah. ‘This isn’t good.’
‘Will these buckets help?’ Mrs G asked. She had two sand pails from aisle three. They had pink shovels attached, and looked appropriately pint-sized. Oliver and Eric were standing behind her. Each had an inflatable kid’s swimming pool, still in its box.
Luc shook his head. ‘They’ll catch some dripping, but the water itself isn’t the problem.’ He surveyed the place in a hurry. ‘This part of the ‘L’ is the original mall. The other side was added later. If the tiles we can see are sagging, the old roof above them is already going.’
‘Going where?’ Mrs G asked.
‘Down,’ Rudy said, having joined the party. ‘Luc is right. We should get out of here.’
‘It doesn’t look a whole lot safer out there,’ Sarah said, pointing out the window. As if she had summoned the gods a rumble of thunder sounded.
‘Pfft.’ Naomi Verdeaux had arrived. ‘Some of us don’t even have coats.’
‘I didn’t mean leave the mall,’ Rudy said. ‘We just need to get to the newer part of the building.’
Luc nodded. ‘Your barbershop would be best,’ he said to Rudy, feud apparently forgotten during an emergency.
‘You’re right,’ Rudy said. ‘The corner should have the most support.’
I didn’t get where all this sweetness and light between the two of them was coming from, but if warring factions could agree, I stood ready to get in line behind them.
‘But we just can’t leave my shop like this,’ Mrs G said, carefully setting one of the pails under one of the drips. ‘I’ll have a flood.’
‘We can blow these up,’ Oliver said, stepping forward. He’d removed one of the pools from its box and was shaking it out, looking for the inflation valve. ‘Then...’
The ceiling panel behind him caught my attention. I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward me, sweeping Mrs G along with him.
‘Hey,’ he protested. ‘What―’
He was interrupted by the giant ceiling tile, which I’d seen bowing badly, crashing to the floor, followed by a gush of water and slush. The tiles around it were leaning, too, as if being sucked in.
Eric and I looked at each other across the breach.
‘We have to get out of here now,’ Rudy commanded. Whatever his past might have been, he knew how to take charge. And, right then, I was grateful for that quality in him.
Everyone obeyed. Those of us who were under the falling sections quicker than those who weren’t. Eric reached out and took my hand, steadying me as I crossed the debris in the aisle. Oliver and Mrs G followed.
Verdeaux, Jacque and Sarah made a beeline for the door with Rudy leading the way. Luc awakened Tien, who was at the far end of the store and followed. Mrs G was going in the other direction, Oliver trying to chase her down.
‘There’s a fire in the wood stove,’ she said. ‘We can’t leave it unattended.’
Though I had no intention of staying to watch a fire that soon would be engulfed in snow, I un
derstood the desire to protect what you have left.
‘I’ll knock down the fire,’ I told Oliver and Eric. ‘You get Frank and take him and Mrs G to Rudy’s.’
I was appealing to the two’s protective instincts. A boy and his dog, and a boy and his surrogate grandmother.
Oliver nodded and turned away, his arm trying to guide Mrs G. She deflected him long enough to grab her handbag and check the cash register. ‘All right, now I’ll go.’
As they left, Oliver turned back to me. ‘Thank you,’ he said. He was looking worn, but not quite defeated. Yet. The events of the last few hours would take their toll later, I knew from personal experience. I selfishly was glad the reaction was delayed, since it kept Oliver a functioning human being. We needed all of those we could get.
My ploy wasn’t quite as successful with Eric.
‘I’m not going anywhere without you,’ he said. Frank sat firm behind him.
It’s nice to be loved. Most of the time.
The stove was throwing out minimal heat as we got there. The newspapers Eric and I brought over had long ago been reduced to ash and all that remained of a nest of wooden school rulers was a teepee of the thin metal strips that had edged them.
Eric opened the fire screen and used the poker to separate the elements of the fire even farther. A whimper sounded behind me.
I turned, expecting to see Frank impatient to be out of there.
Instead, there were Caron and Bernie crammed on to one of the chaise lounges sound asleep. As I looked, Caron moaned in her sleep and ran her hand up and down Bernie’s back. Bernie roused and pulled her closer.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ I muttered to Eric. ‘We’re in the midst of a blizzard with the roof caving in and these two are making nanookie of the north?’
Eric laughed and Frank, ever happy to lend a paw, began to bark.
Bernie rolled off the side of the lounge, landing hard on the linoleum floor.
‘Whaa?’ he said.
‘The sky is falling, Chicken Little.’ I put my hand down to help him up. ‘Roust your honey and get yourselves down to Rudy’s.’
To his credit, Bernie quickly realized what was happening and began shaking Caron’s shoulder.
I told Eric to lead everybody out and this time he obeyed. Frank padded after them, and I promised to be on their heels, after I checked the aisles.
All clear of people, at least. I stopped in the card aisle, ruefully surveying my forlorn alibi chart half-covered by the fallen ceiling. My Sponge Bob tablecloth was on the floor next to it.
I hesitated, thinking that Rudy’s shop wouldn’t be any warmer. Decision made, I leaned down to snatch the tablecloth. As I did, there was a loud groan. I looked heavenward and managed to jump back just before the ceiling crashed down, raining wood, acoustic tiles and shingles.
Poor Sponge Bob, I hardly knew ye.
Turning, I ran for the exit, the pharmacy’s roof - and Gloria Goddard’s dream - collapsing behind me.
Chapter 22
Even the emergency lights were out when I entered the service hallway. Luckily someone, maybe Eric, had the forethought to leave a paper lantern to light my way. Either that, or someone had dropped it in his or her haste.
The long part of the ‘L’ of Benson Plaza was, as Luc said, the original building. The side Uncommon Grounds was on - the bottom of the ‘L’ - had been added about twenty years later.
Accordingly, Rudy’s Barbershop was a little of each. As the section that connected the two wings of the mall, the corner juncture was doubly reinforced. Like a broken bone, once mended, is supposed to be stronger than that part of your skeleton before the trauma.
I’d never quite understood the broken bone thing, but I was willing to take a chance on the barbershop. Especially since the rest of the mall was falling down around us. I grabbed the lantern to light my progress and dashed down the hall. I could still hear a muffled crashing behind me in Goddard’s, no doubt the heavy blanket of snow acting as both demolition charge and silencer.
Passing An’s, I saw that the door was ajar. God, I hoped Tien or Luc hadn’t taken shelter there, since I figured it was next to go. As I went to pull the door open to check, it swung wide in front of me.
‘Luc,’ I said, ‘we have to get out of here.’
He was grasping an album. ‘Photographs,’ he said. ‘They’re all I have left of An.’
A crash behind him sheared off anything further by way of words. The images in the album might be the only tangible reminders Luc had left of his wife, but I feared that, in seconds, they’d also be all he had left of the store named after her.
Even worse, if we didn’t evacuate immediately, pictures and memories might be all Tien had of Luc.
And Eric, of me.
Luc grabbed my hand and we bolted down the hall. Arriving gasping at Rudy’s service door, I pulled down on the handle.
Locked.
I tried again. Ka-chink, ka-chink, but no pay-off.
‘Open up!’ I pounded my fist on the metal above the lock.
Since the only light in the hallway was the one we carried with us, I couldn’t see what was happening back down the hallway behind us. But I sure could hear it. Rolling thunder of the crumbling construction variety and it was marching closer.
I felt like I was a kid again and the bogey man was bearing down on me. ‘Unlock the door, damn it!’
Luc reached past me, pushed down harder on the handle and yanked on the door, which now finally opened.
‘Ladies, first,’ he said as he ushered me in and closed the door behind us.
I could almost hear Ted, my ex, saying, ‘Maggy, sometimes it just takes a man’s touch.’ This time he might be right, but so what? As that Austrian novelist Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach said way back when: even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
‘Is everyone here?’ I called. My hand was on the bolt of the door.
The moment everyone answered with their names, I locked us in. I wasn’t sure why. Neither bogey men nor collapsing roofs likely would respect a deadbolt.
‘Over here, Mom,’ Eric called, ‘by the sinks.’
I followed Eric’s voice to the far wall, which the barbershop shared with The Bible Store. Until a few months ago, the store’s space had been a dental office, the two hair-washing sinks in Rudy’s paralleling the two spit-sinks on the other side.
The original tenant, Dr Anthony Bruno, had become my dentist after my dentist husband had run off with Little Miss Root Canal (his root, her canal). Then Tony retired and abandoned me, too.
‘Can you stand back a little from that window?’ I asked Eric. Even as I said it, I joined him and glanced out.
I don’t know what I expected to see besides more snow, which we’d endured for what seemed like weeks instead of hours. I had to admit I was more than a little unnerved by the cave-in develop―
BOOM!
‘Geez.’ I grabbed my son’s arm. ‘That sounded like a lightning strike nearby.’
Eric gave me a bemused look. ‘I thought you liked thundersnow. Remember my report in the fifth grade?’
‘Your “report” didn’t forecast a ninety percent chance of falling ceilings and rising body counts.’
Eric just laughed, but now Sarah was peering out the window, too. ‘It sounded like it hit down the road. Sure hope it was Schultz’s instead of my place.’
Jacque, owner of Schultz’s, shouldered her out of the way. ‘What is it that you see?’
Naomi Verdeaux, who was sitting dejectedly in the chair in front of one of the sinks, clenched her teeth. ‘I’m sure your precious store is fine. And if not -’ she sat upright in the chair, as if a sudden thought had struck - ‘you’ll have the insurance money to replace it.’
‘That is true,’ from her ex-husband.
‘Or maybe...’ Verdeaux unfolded herself from the chair to sashay - and I don’t use that term lightly - over to Jacque. ‘…build something...bigger.’
She patted his shoulder.
Jacque turned his attention away from the window and regarded her hand suspiciously. ‘You are suggesting perhaps a Gross National Produce?’
The patting had turned into kneading. ‘You. Me. In business again, Jacque. Just like the old days. It would be great fun, no?’
The conniving woman had shed her Midwest accent and slipped into Jacque’s way of speaking like a hermit crab worms its way into a new shell.
Rudy groaned. Had Way been alive, he’d probably have done likewise. There was a whole lot of groaning going on in Brookhills these days.
For his part, Jacque looked momentarily skyward and then shifted his eyes toward the display of antique straight razors on the back wall of the shop. Walking toward the carefully crafted artifacts, he said, ‘Perhaps it is best that you slit my throat now.’
Jacque looked around for help. ‘Would someone be so kind as to volunteer?’
Rudy shook his head. ‘Not with my razors, Oui. My insurance premiums are too high already. You’ll have to put yourself out of her misery.’
I started to giggle and then slapped my hand over my mouth. This was the time to listen, not make light of more violent deaths after the two murders our own little band had experienced. And, assuming the killer wasn’t our ‘mystery man’, one of our group was certain to have committed.
It sure was fascinating, though. Jacque had been dead-on about Naomi Verdeaux. She used her body as a weapon. Or maybe ‘currency’ would have been more accurate.
Not being stupid or hard of hearing, Verdeaux gave up and stalked away in a definitely sashay-less manner.
Rudy and Jacque lowered their voices, so I sidled closer to hear, signaling Eric to stay put.
Rudy was shrugging. ‘I really thought she was the one, old fool that I am.’
Truth be told, I doubted that Rudy considered himself either old or a fool, though the last several months probably had been tough on his usually well-inflated ego.
Just last year he’d battled my former business partner, Patricia, over the job of Brookhills Town Chairman. When Patricia died, Rudy, as the incumbent, had kept the job until a special election could be held. When Way beat him in the subsequent special election, it must have been a real blow to Rudy’s self-image.
