“Knew it! I’m psychic that way. I always know what a customer really wants. Come back behind the counter so we can talk. I’ll whip you up a cocoa.”
I followed Juju to the galley behind the counter and watched. She was a blur of motion, whisking a pot of coffee off the hot plate, slamming an empty carafe into its place, standing on tiptoe to add water to the coffeemaker’s reservoir, scooping cocoa powder, adjusting the heat on the milk steamer.
“Sure you don’t want a job?” Juju asked, not missing a beat as she split two bagels and popped them into a four-slice toaster. “You could make a lot of money with those oompahs of yours. Real or silicone?”
My hands flew to my chest. “These, you mean? Original equipment.”
“Holy damn—you’re lucky, girl. Mine are fake.” She thrust her chest out so I could admire her bumpers, which thrust up like igloos out of the Arctic plain. “BOGO sale. Buy one, get one free. Cost me three grand. But my tips go up a hundred sixty percent. That silicone paid for itself in a month.”
“Hey, Juju, I need a refill,” a guy in a business suit called.
“You just hold your shirt on, Mister Big Shot,” Juju yelled at him, then turned to me and winked. “Better tips when you talk smack. I tell them I’m Thai because guys think Thai girls are hot, tip bigger. But I’m really Filipino. Dumb Americans don’t know the difference, they think we all look the same.”
“Is Juju your real name?”
“Shortened from Jhun-Jhun.”
She poured cocoa into a mug, squiggled whipped cream atop it, and sprinkled chocolate confetti over the whole thing. “Try it,” she ordered, thrusting the drink into my hands.
I sipped. I took a deeper sip, coming up for air with a foamy smile and the urge to tap-dance across the tabletops. “Terrific!” I raved, and dived in for another sip.
Juju grinned. “My own recipe. Starbucks would kill to get it. Come work for me and I’ll make you all the cocoa you can drink.”
“I’ve got a job.”
“I bet you don’t make fifty bucks an hour.” Juju switched on a Krups coffeemaker that looked like the boosters on the space shuttle. “Four hundred a day, cash. What the IRS don’t know don’t hurt it, right?”
I chewed over that four hundred a day. Rhonda Cromwell was paying me ten bucks an hour. Did I say paying? I hadn’t seen an actual paycheck yet.
“Ow! Shitshitshit!” The percolator spat scalding drops of coffee onto Juju’s breasts. Small, angry red blisters bubbled up on her exposed flesh. Working in skimpy lingerie left way too much skin exposed, I thought, shivering at the thought of flashing my thonged derriere to the frigid air every time the door opened or closed.
“Do all your waitresses wear those?” I asked, pointing to Juju’s heels, which forced her feet into en pointe positions.
“Oh, yeah—heels make your ass stick out. Gets you tips like crazy. You get used to them after a while.”
That was like telling a new prison inmate that you got used to the cheeseless macaroni after a while. I watched Juju as she trip-trapped out to the tables in her stratospheric heels. She worked the room, dipping low to display her 3K boobs, cajoling refills from customers who’d been dawdling over their mokes and caps, speaking in a singsongy pidgin she must have swiped from National Lampoon Goes to Bangkok. Juju was good. Juju was a walking stimulus package.
By the time she clopped back behind the counter carrying a tray of dirty mugs, I had enough material to write up my evaluation. I insisted on paying for the cocoa, because CRS mystery shoppers are not supposed to be influenced by freebies, not even a single stick of gum or sample bite of chicken on a toothpick. As I packed up my things and headed for the door, Juju called after me, “You go buy a cute teddy, come back and work for me.”
I smiled noncommittally. For four hundred bucks a day, could I put up with a frostbitten fanny?
Chapter Three
When you meet your ex’s new girlfriend it will be just after you’ve spilled soup down your front.
—Maguire’s Maxims
Outside the café, a news crew had arrived to cover the demonstration. A reporter was interviewing Mrs. Uncle Sam, who was explaining why Hottie Latte was responsible for the decline in American morals, male-pattern baldness, and rain at picnics.
My heart skipped several beats. I missed the step down outside the café and klutz-stumbled to the sidewalk. The camera hid his face, but there was no mistaking the linebacker shoulders and admirable butt of the man filming the reporter. This could only be Ben Labeck, veteran cameraman, hero at large, and big-time heartbreaker. I didn’t need to see his face because it was permanently etched on my memory: eyes the exact brown of Ghirardelli chocolate chips, ruddy-bronze skin, twice-broken nose, and dark hair that looked as though it’d been combed with a hedge trimmer. His size worked to his advantage; he was tall enough to film over most people’s heads and big enough not to get pushed around if a riot broke out. He was wearing his usual working uniform: jeans, sweatshirt, denim baseball jacket, and clodhopper work shoes that would have looked at home on a construction site.
Cutting off the Doyenne mid-rant, the reporter began nattering about the importance of this “grassroots protest movement.” Tall and slim, she had honey-blond hair like poured silk, a nose the size of a dust mote, and pouty lips the exact shade of her raspberry jacket. She wore a pencil skirt, a camisole top cut low enough to reveal the tops of her oompahs, and shoes that Juju would have approved on the grounds of makes your ass stick out.
“This is Aspen Lindgren, reporting live from downtown Milwaukee,” she chirped, wrapping up the segment.
Managing to tear himself away from licking her cleavage with his lens, Labeck turned and started filming the crowd. Reflexively, I ducked my head, turned up my coat collar, and scurried away. He hadn’t seen me. Five foot three is not a good height if you need to screw in a lightbulb or watch a parade, but it’s the perfect height for getting lost in a crowd. Taking deep, calming breaths, I told myself that the fluttering sensations in my midsection were simply due to hunger.
Five minutes later I was sitting in a scarred wooden booth at Happy Soup on Wells Street with a steaming bowl of chicken booyah and enough oyster crackers to salinate the Great Lakes. Chicken booyah is a Wisconsin thing, like cheese curds and bubblers. It sounds like something a chicken would do on your shoes, but booyah is a thin chicken stew with chunks of onions, carrots, potatoes, and whatever leftovers the cook digs up out of the fridge. No two batches are ever the same; no two cooks make it the same way. Once I found a chicken neck in my booyah. Creepy, but not enough to permanently put me off the stuff.
While I waited for my soup to cool, I typed up my report, giving Hottie Latte high marks in every category and adding an asterisked note at the bottom: Best for the over-sixteen coffee drinker.
I finished my report and dipped into my soup. I must have been more upset about seeing Labeck than I’d realized, because my hands were shaking and I slobbered the first spoonful down the front of my turtleneck. I mopped the spilled noodles with a napkin, leaving a wet blotch at sternum level. My stain-attracting ability is why I prefer to wear black. I’d tried to buy a black winter parka, but since I couldn’t even afford Walmart prices, I’d been forced to shop at the Army Surplus Store in the mission district, where I’d found a pea coat in a shade of navy so dark it was almost black. It was a man’s size small, and I was always forgetting the buttons were on the wrong side, but it was warm as toasted marshmallows and fit fine, except for the fact that the sleeves brushed my knuckles.
I used to have nice clothes. I had money to fritter away on cosmetics, movies, books, manicures, and pizza delivery. I had a house, too, with Pottery Barn furniture, a room set aside for the nursery I hoped to fill, and a backyard rose garden, but my mother-in-law had stolen my house, my savings, and all my assets when I’d been sentenced to prison. When you’re on the board of directors of the right bank, technicalities—like legal ownership—can be thrust aside. I wouldn’t nee
d my possessions anyway, since the state of Wisconsin would be providing all my needs for the rest of my life.
When I’d escaped from prison, my mother-in-law had first tried to kill me with a do-it-yourself home electrocution kit, then had attempted to brain me with a laminated horse hock. Facing charges of attempted homicide, she’d paid a psychiatrist to have herself declared non compos mentis and get herself committed to a velvet-lined loony bin. Since she was immune from legal proceedings as long as she was locked in the Ralph Lauren Institute for the Rich and Deranged, I couldn’t sue her to get my money back. But she couldn’t stay there forever. Someday she’d be getting out. And I’d be ready with my pit bull lawyer.
Until then I was clipping coupons, mining my pockets for stray pennies, and taking home doggie bags. Glancing at the Happy Soup wall clock, I discovered that I was running late. Too bad about my leftover booyah, but a doggie bag just never works on soup. I tossed my iPad into my purse and barged out the door, failing to notice that someone else was entering while I was exiting.
“Oops—sorry,” I said.
I looked up.
Shit!
Of all the booyah joints in all the world, why did he have to walk into this one?
It was Labeck. He was holding open the door for the TV dodo behind him, but he came to a jolting halt when he saw me. We stared at each other. Well, not exactly stared, on my part. Drank in, inhaled, devoured. He was wearing the aftershave I liked, the one that smelled like cinnamon and wood smoke.
“Hi,” he said, looking as surprised as me.
“Hi,” I replied, as a hellish red tide swept from my hairline to my clavicles.
“How’s Muffin?”
“Muffin? Muffin’s good.”
“That’s good.”
“How are you?” I could feel my brain cells committing suicide, one by one.
“Me? I’m good, too.”
Who knows how long this witty repartee might have continued, but the Talent got tired of standing out in the cold and popped up beneath Labeck’s outstretched arm, which had frozen on the door. Looking as though he wished he could vanish beneath an invisibility cloak, Labeck said, “Mazie, this is Aspen Lindgren. Aspen, Mazie Ma—”
“Oh, this little gal needs no introduction.” Aspen smiled a dazzling high-definition-TV-just-out-of-the-box smile and stuck out her hand. We shook. “Maziemania, right? What a fantastic survival story! It’s terrific that you were cleared of those charges that you killed your husband.”
“Thanks.” For remembering to mention it.
To anyone watching, we were just two women making polite chitchat, but we knew better. We were taking each other’s measure. I was the ex-girlfriend and she was aiming for the new-girlfriend slot. Aspen was radiating, showing off for Labeck.
No one was going to outdo me at radiating, dammit! I wasn’t a former Miss Quail Hollow for nothing! I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin, sucked in my gut, thrust out my boobs, and turned up the wattage on my own smile. Labeck looked stunned, as though he’d been hit with exploding estrogen bombs.
“I’ll be sure to watch for your reports from now on,” I said to Aspen, still in the same overdosed-on-cotton-candy tones, resisting the urge to shorten her name to Ass.
“So where do you work, Mazie?” she asked.
“Cromwell Research Services.”
Aspen’s eyes lit up. “The website, right? They run tons of ads on our station. The owner of your company Rhoda? Rhonda?—anyway, she invited me and some people from our station to this party she’s throwing tomorrow night. I’m making Benny take me, even though he’s a great big ol’ grouchy bear about parties.”
“Yes, I bet he is.” I bit down on a laugh, noting that a nerve in Labeck’s jaw was twitching. How fascinating. I was almost enjoying this.
“I suppose we’ll see you there,” Aspen chirped.
“Probably.” My jaw muscles were getting sore from smiling.
“Super! Well, if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got to grab a bite and then we’re off to the next crisis. Just rush-rush-rush, all day long, you know how it is with us media folks.”
“Uh-huh. Nice meeting you.” I fled outdoors into the cold, clear air. Tiny black specks boogied across my vision and I suddenly staggered, overcome by dizziness. I was about to fall into the gutter and get run over by a garbage truck.
Aspen would cover the story, of course. “And so ends the tragic story of Mazie Maguire, the woman who murdered her husband in cold blood but later beat the rap.”
I didn’t “beat the rap.” I flushed out the guy who did the actual crime. Thanks mainly to Ben Labeck, who’d hidden me in his apartment. He’d also arranged the setup that nailed the scumbag, despite the fact that he could have been charged with aiding and abetting a criminal. When I’d been released from prison, Labeck had asked me to move in with him. We’d spent five blissful days together, most of them in his bed.
And then, with dizzying suddenness, before I quite comprehended what was happening, we’d broken up, Labeck spinning off to the wilds of Montana and me to the urban wilderness of Brady Street. Six weeks had passed since then. I hadn’t even known Labeck was back in town.
The dizziness passed. I pulled myself together and walked to my car. Milwaukee wasn’t that large; sooner or later Labeck and I were bound to run into each other. Now we’d both survived the encounter. We were getting on with our lives, me with my canine companion, Muffin, and Labeck with his junior Diane Sawyer.
I’m over him, I told myself. I didn’t need Ben Labeck in my life.
One of these days I might even start to believe that.
Chapter Four
A boss’s effectiveness will be in inverse proportion to the height of her heels.
—Maguire’s Maxims
The CRS office is located in Brookwood, an upscale suburb on the east side that merges indistinguishably into the city of Milwaukee. The offices occupy the ground floor of a century-old brick building on Oakland Avenue, Brookwood’s main street. The motif is art deco, the facade is sandstone, the landscaping is winter-resistant, and at four in the afternoon, parking spaces are nonexistent. Luckily, today being Friday, a couple of the building’s tenants had sneaked off for the weekend, and I snagged a primo slot in the lot.
I was just getting out of Pig when a man slammed out of the building’s rear door, strode across the lot, and halted in front of a cherry-colored Audi with vanity plates that read RHONDA. He jerked a can of spray paint out of his briefcase, shook the can, snapped off its top, and began spraying black paint on the driver’s side of the Audi.
“Hey!” The guy had scribbled a whole B before my brain caught on. “Stop that!”
I took a step in his direction.
The man spun around, holding the spray can toward me like a weapon. His face was maroon with rage, and his eyes were bulging like those plastic googly eyes kids glue onto arts and crafts projects.
I halted in my tracks.
When he saw that I wasn’t going to actually do anything to stop him, he turned back to his job. He wasn’t your typical car vandal. He must have been sixty years old, with salt-and-pepper hair and a paunch. The mere effort of raising his arms seemed to have winded him, but he doggedly continued to work. B-I-T…
The only question now was whether he’d have his heart attack before or after he finished the entire word.
I scurried into the CRS building. “Call the police,” I yelled. “A guy is vandalizing Rhonda’s car!”
“All right!” someone said. Grins flashed; fists pumped; employees surged to the window to look out. The graffiti artist had finished BITCH and was scribbling the C word on the windshield. He had to rest for a while, head down and hands on knees, panting, before continuing the job.
“Go, guy,” muttered Charlie, a fellow mystery shopper, who nursed a passionate hatred for our boss.
“There’s room near the bumper for witch,” Rhonda’s assistant, Belinda Wernke, helpfully pointed out.
“I could lend
him my box cutter to use on the tires,” another employee suggested.
“What’s going on here?” We all turned around to regard Rhonda, who had just emerged from her office. No one replied. To speak was to draw down abuse. Rhonda clacked over to the window on her high heels, looked out, and gave a gurgle of laughter.
“Oh, that’s Freddy. My ex-hubby. He was just in here, throwing a tantrum about some silly tax thing. He’s really harmless.”
“Should I phone the police?” one brave soul quavered.
“Don’t bother.” Rhonda pointed to the security camera mounted on a light pole in the lot. “It’ll all be caught on tape. The stupid shit can’t deny he did it. But he’ll be the one who pays the repair bill.”
She snapped her fingers. “All right, people, show’s over. Get back to work. Maguire, in my office.”
Rhonda was a natural brunette, with olive skin and burnt-sienna eyes, which made her hair, dyed to the color of yellow sidewalk chalk, all the more startling. It was straight and glossy, geometrically cut to emphasize her strong jaw. Her lips were plumped to platypus proportions, and her nose was planed to elegant straightness, finished off with a piquant upturn. Rhonda should have been pretty, but her hardness canceled out her perfect features. She looked like the kid who’d grabbed all the presents under the Christmas tree, but still wanted to take away the empty stocking you held in your hand.
Rhonda didn’t do subtle. If it didn’t shine, glitter, or call attention to her, it didn’t go on her body. Today she wore a skinny black skirt, a spangled gold top tight enough to show off her nipples, and a black bolero sweater. In her spike heels, she was six feet tall. I think she would have stood on stilts if she felt it made her legs look longer.
Her office smelled like the cosmetics department of a department store. Someone must have told Rhonda that white was the new black, because her office was done in Snow Queen tones: white carpeting thoroughly detested by the cleaning staff, shiny white-vinyl office chairs that stuck to your thighs and made farting noises if you squirmed, and a glossy white boomerang-shaped desk with matching credenza and bookshelves. Framed black-and-white photos filled an entire wall. Naturally, they were all of Rhonda. Rhonda at nightclubs, on the golf course, on boats. Rhonda with clients, minor politicians, and the kinds of entertainers who headline at local gambling casinos.
Crazy for You: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance) Page 2
