Death of a Double Dipper

by Angela Pepper

  I crossed my arms and looked at the wall dividing my side of the duplex from Logan's. He meant well, but he wasn't so great at selecting gifts. For my birthday, he'd taken me to dinner and then given me a computer mouse pad with his law firm's logo on it. “Everyone likes useful things,” he'd said. “And your other mouse pad is all worn out and tattered.” His gift had been entirely office supplies, including a matching Tyger & Behr mug and a set of pens.

  I picked up the card and read the neatly printed interior text again. Sorry I haven't been much fun lately. I'll make it up to you soon. I hope you enjoy the gift in the box. Love, Logan.

  Was the card meant for Jeffrey? It didn't have my name on it. If this was Logan's idea of a funny prank, it was way too subtle for me.

  I sniffed the flowers, which had no scent at all, and then headed off to prepare for bed.

  I found Jeffrey in the bathroom, where he was making the excited SNARF SNARF sound he usually reserved for dirty wool socks. He had successfully eviscerated the recycled-fur mouse and was conducting an autopsy on its white cotton innards. I reached down to take away the stuffing before he choked on it. He made a sound that was part growl and part SNARF, grabbed the inside-out mouse hide, and ran off.

  At least he was enjoying the gift, albeit not as intended.

  When I was done brushing my teeth, I went to the living room to check on Jessica. She was already sitting up, yawning. She asked, “Done in the bathroom?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I think I'm done with Logan.”

  “I told him it was a bad idea,” she said.

  “You think?” I sputtered. “A cat toy? Made out of germy old fur that's been god-knows-where? What was he thinking?”

  “You didn't find the robe, did you?” She got up and folded the sofa blanket. “I told him he was being an idiot. He doesn't know you like I do, does he? Go look on your bed before you say something you'll regret.”

  I went down the hall. There on my bed was another box, larger than the first one I'd found on the counter. Inside was a beautiful silk robe, dark red. It didn't look as warm and cozy as the multicolored robe I'd snagged from my father's former girlfriend, Pam Bochenek, but it was beautiful. It looked expensive.

  “Your secret is safe with me,” Jessica said from the doorway. “I won't tell Logan his surprise was so bad you were on the brink of ending things with him.”

  “I hadn't meant it,” I said. “You know me. I say dumb things when I get mad.”

  “What's that expression your father has, about Freudian slips?”

  “Where the tongue slips, it speaks the truth.”

  She made a mouth-smacking sound and a sour face. “I need to brush these teeth or throw them away.” She shuffled off to the washroom.

  Jeffrey jumped up on my bed and hunkered down in the middle of my pillow with his flattened mouse hide, which had a disturbingly accurate shape; it truly did resemble the carefully skinned and tanned pelt of a mouse. He began licking the fur side lovingly. I could hear the raspiness of his tongue on the long-dead material. To each their own, I thought.

  I pulled off my clothes and slipped on the dark-red silk robe. The fabric was cool and made me shiver. I slipped it off, put it on a hanger in my closet, and pulled on a favorite threadbare sleeping shirt. I rubbed the goose bumps on my arms and stared at Logan's gift. While I was admiring the robe, it slithered off the hanger and pooled on the floor.

  I wondered, why red? Why not a color that looked less like a puddle of blood?

  I dug through my closet, found one of my padded fabric hangers, and hung it up again.

  As I switched off the lights and crawled into bed, I hoped Jessica wouldn't remember our conversation in the morning.

  The week passed quickly and without any major disasters, unless you count all the times I found Jeffrey's chewed and mangled mouse pelt in various places a person doesn't want to find a mangled mouse pelt, such as inside my shoe and tucked in my bed. Once, I looked down to find it on my lap, and I had no recollection of Jeffrey even being in the room with me. Had the revolting thing gained consciousness and started moving freely about the house? Surely it had, for self-ambulation was the only logical explanation.

  Jessica didn't bring up our Sunday night conversation, and for that I was grateful. We all say dumb things when we're tired or agitated.

  I had some investigation cases that became my focus on Monday and kept me busy straight through to Friday. Logan was busy as well, with work at Tyger & Behr, and also with his sister, who'd decided to stick around Misty Falls a bit longer. Jinx had gotten a few meetings about getting on the hair and makeup team for the upcoming Hallows filming that would be taking place in our corner of Oregon soon. I hadn't considered the local economic impact of a large HBO production until Jinx and Jessica had a discussion about rising rent prices in the apartments around town. There was even talk of our town plus two nearby towns working together to create a new “Hollywood Northwest.”

  Rumor had it people were getting excited about speculating on local real estate. Jessica told me that the tiny house Samantha had been trying to sell, which now had the dubious distinction of being a violent crime scene, had received several competing offers.

  “That's good news for Samantha,” I said to Jessica on Friday. “She could use the sales commission.”

  “Until the insurance money comes in,” Jessica said.

  We were eating a quick dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches and canned soup before we headed off to Quinn's family's farm for the evening's hootenanny.

  Jessica tapped the crumbs off her grilled sandwich and casually asked, “Do you have life insurance on yourself?”

  “I don't have any dependents,” I said.

  “Poor Jeffrey,” she said. “Left to fend for himself without his mommy.”

  “Stop,” I said, laughing through the sudden heartbreak. “You're going to make me cry. I know you're joking, but it's a horrible thought.” I looked over at the cat, who was curled up with his mouse pelt on the sofa.

  “What about the bank? Don't they have insurance to cover the mortgage?”

  “Sure, but it's only for their benefit.” I looked down at my red tomato soup. “But you make a good point. I should make sure my will is up to date, and that you'll be looked after.”

  She snorted and ate her sandwich without further comment.

  After dinner, Jessica sprung a whole new surprise on me.

  “Come on, it'll be fun,” Jessica said.

  I shook my head. “Nothing fun has ever started with the phrase Come on, it'll be fun.”

  Jessica stuck out her lower lip, pouting. “Last Sunday, I had to dig around in my mother's storage unit for hours.”

  I picked up the cheerleader uniform delicately, as though it might turn to dust, like a mummy in an old horror movie.

  “It looks smaller than I remember. Are you sure this one is mine?”

  “Your name's on the label,” she said. “I'm sure it still fits. Maybe it'll look even better, now that you have more curves to fill it out.”

  “I'm worried my curves are in all the wrong places.”

  “Maybe you should lay off on the gas station hot dogs.”

  I gasped in mock horror. “Is this about how my jeans keep shrinking in the laundry?”

  She gave me a motherly look. “Funny how we used the same detergent and washing machine, yet my jeans haven't been afflicted.”

  I dropped the uniform back on the bed and clutched my chest as though fatally wounded. I fell onto the bed next to Jeffrey, who opened one sleepy green eye.

  “What do you think?” I poked his tummy. “Should we go on a diet together?”

  He closed his eyes, yawned, and stretched into a croissant shape.

  “You don't need to diet,” Jessica said. “Just stop eating carbs after dark and your jeans will fit again.”

  “Everyone knows carbs taste twice as nice after the sun goes down.”

  She sat on the bed on the other side of Jeffrey. “Or
don't worry about it. You're beautiful, and you have a perfect figure.”

  “You're a bad liar.”

  “But I'm not lying. You do look great, and I love how you're not neurotic about your appearance. I'm trying to be more like you. I'm trying not to project my issues onto you. Please forget everything I said about the gas station hot dogs.”

  “No, you do have a point.” I patted my waistline self-consciously. According to the scale, I had gained a number of pounds in a short amount of time. At first, I'd assumed something had happened to the scale while I was using it to weigh garbage, but the fit of my clothes certainly corroborated the theory that some of my parts were getting fluffier. I'd had a single day of panic in which I thought I might be pregnant, but that theory was quickly ruled out.

  “You're perfect how you are,” Jessica said.

  “I could try to cut back. But if I don't eat the gas station hot dogs, that leaves the nachos with the melted cheese.”

  “Can they even legally call it”—she made air quotes with her fingers—“cheese?”

  “You're making me hungry, and we just ate.”

  She held up both hands. “Not my intention at all.”

  I leaned over and grabbed Jeffrey's rear paw, caressing his dark-rose-hued toe pads. “What's this? It looks delicious. I could eat these little jelly beans.”

  His ears twitched but he didn't react, not even when I pretended to put his paw in my mouth.

  Jessica and I played with Jeffrey for a few minutes, until he suddenly jumped up and ran off as though he'd just remembered he had an important business meeting.

  “No more stalling,” Jessica said. “Put on the cheerleader uniform or don't. Your choice. Either way, we should get going so Quinn doesn't make us do laps for being late.”

  I checked the time. “Dimples should be here any minute.” The doorbell rang.

  “Timely,” I said.

  Jessica arched one eyebrow. “I love it when that happens.”

  Chapter 38

  The three of us piled into Kyle Dempsey's car. He'd volunteered to be our designated driver so that Jessica and I could partake in adult beverages. Jessica sat in the passenger seat, and I took the back. Kyle kept glancing in the rearview mirror and then looking away.

  I told him, “Take a picture, it'll last longer.”

  “You just look so different,” he said. “You've got legs.”

  I tugged at the hem of my pleated cheerleader skirt. “So does Jessica,” I said. “Why don't you look at her legs for a while?”

  “She wears dresses all the time,” he said. “I've seen her legs plenty.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Jessica said, laughing. “You and Mitch must have gone to the same charm school.”

  Kyle brought the car to a complete stop at the first major intersection. I usually treated that corner as a yield, not a stop, but the young man was a cop, through and through. A cop in a deep V-neck T-shirt. Tonight's selection was an azure blue that brought out his dreamy eyes. Not that I had noticed.

  Kyle glanced over at Jessica before turning right. “What's going on there, anyway? Mitch has been walking around with a long face for the last week. He thinks he screwed things up with you. What exactly did he do?”

  “It's more like what he didn't do,” Jessica said.

  My ears perked up. I'd been trying to get Jessica to open up about her stalled romance with the firefighter, but Kyle had gotten further in two minute than I had in two weeks.

  Kyle gave her a dazzling grin. “What didn't he do?”

  She twirled one of her red pigtails. “The whole thing seems so stupid now. We went out for pizza and drinks, and I paid for the meal, and then he didn't thank me.”

  “That's all?”

  “I don't know how to explain it, but he sort of acted like he'd paid for it. When he dropped me off at home, he said I could treat him next time.”

  “Did you pay for the pizza right in front of him?”

  “No.” She twirled her pigtail again. “I went up to the waitress station while he was in the washroom. It was supposed to be a surprise.”

  “Mm hmm.” Kyle checked over his shoulder, turned on the signal blinker, and carefully changed lanes. “Did you happen to notice Mitch dropping a pile of cash on the table as you were leaving?”

  Jessica was quiet for a full minute.

  Kyle explained, “It's just that Mitch usually pays cash. At least he does at the Loose Moose, when he's picking up a round. And he never has to wait for the bill because he's really good at adding up drinks, food, and tip in his head. I've never met a guy who's so good with numbers.”

  “Oh,” she said quietly.

  “There's a surprising amount of math firefighters do in the field. There's calculating friction loss based on the hose length and diameter to adjust pump pressure, and then all the geometry. Do you know what a chain is?”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “It's a metal rope made of links.”

  “A chain is the basic unit for measuring distances in fire-control work. It's equal to sixty-six feet. There are eighty chains to a mile.”

  Jessica was quiet.

  I piped up from the backseat. “Now you're just showing off,” I said.

  Kyle flashed me a grin in the rearview mirror.

  “Mitch thought he paid for dinner,” Jessica said. “Because he did. We both did. That lucky waitress got a huge tip.”

  “You probably made her night,” Kyle said.

  “I'm so stupid,” Jessica said.

  In unison, Kyle and I both said, “No, you're not!”

  I reached forward between the seats and squeezed her shoulder. “Tell Mitch what happened. He'll probably laugh.”

  “He probably will,” she said grimly, as though having him laugh at their misunderstanding would be unbearable, because it would feel like him laughing at her.

  “Tell him anyway,” I said.

  “I'll think about it,” Jessica said.

  Her answer seemed to satisfy Kyle, because for the rest of the drive he didn't bug her about it. But I knew that Jessica's I'll think about it meant that she had no intention of doing so. The thing about her insecurities was she would paint herself into a corner, and rather than admitting her mistake and walking out, she'd stand there until the paint dried and everyone else's attention moved on to something else. She'd stand there forever if she had to.

  The other thing was, I couldn't say for sure that she was wrong to do so. Her older brothers loved her, but they'd been merciless in their teasing. Any weakness she admitted to—any vulnerability—would be exploited by them. Many of her boyfriends had been the same way, mocking her inability to handle money and joking about taking her paychecks and putting her on an allowance, for her own good.

  Jessica often played dumb because then people weren't so quick to jump on her when she did make a mistake. She was careful about who she let into her heart, who she trusted enough to be herself around. She took rejection so personally, more so than other people. Sometimes I wished I could go on the internet and order her an extra-thick suit of skin to wear as protection. But I couldn't. So I tried to be a positive person in her life by doing other things, such as wearing my old high school cheerleader uniform despite feeling utterly ridiculous in it.

  The sweater was awfully tight, and worst of all, it was made of a polyester blend that didn't breathe. I reached for my purse to get some tissues to use for mopping up some of the sweat, but my purse wasn't next to me. I'd left it at home, along with my phone and everything else I regularly carried. Suddenly, I felt naked and exposed. Jessica had locked up the house, and then since Kyle was driving, I hadn't needed my keys so I forgot the whole kit and caboodle. And now we were halfway to the Baudelaire farm.

  I settled back on the seat and fanned air through the sweater as best I could.

  We weren't late, but the hootenanny was already in full swing by the time we arrived at the Baudelaires' old farm. The family hadn't lived on the premises for a long time. For the last d
ecade, the family had been renting out the surrounding farm fields to an adjacent farmer, a Russian man who'd been trying to get them to sell the land to him for years.

  Kyle filled us in on the gossip while he drove along the bumpy road, following the chain of lit tiki torches and signs directing us where to park. The Russian, whom everyone simply called “the Russian” rather than using his actual name, had been either the object of or the source of several nuisance calls to the local police department. It sounded rather juicy. Kyle promised he would fill us in on more details some other time, when we had an entire evening to kill.

  Jessica asked him, “Is it safe to be here on this land like this?”

  “The old farmhouse and the barn are not part of what the Russian is renting. After some recent disputes between the Baudelaires and the Russian, it has been clarified.” Kyle chuckled. “Without a single shot fired.”

  “You're not filling me with confidence,” Jessica said.

  “Don't you worry, ma'am,” he said with an authoritative tone. “I'm here to preserve the peace, to enforce law and order over this fine land.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at me. “And dance.”

  We climbed out of the car and headed into the party.

  Kyle Dempsey wasn't joking about the dancing. As soon as we walked into the barn, he hit the dance floor with Jessica on his arm. They kicked up bits of hay as they twirled around to the folk music.

  The music was of the folk variety, and it was as loud as it was live, played by a band of at least seven members, including one person with an enormous stand-up bass.

  The folk band's fiddle player stepped forward to play a solo piece. It took me a minute to recognize the star fiddle player as Chip McCabe.

  Once again, I was completely surprised to witness another facet of the man I knew mainly as my father's mail carrier.

  Chip was wearing, as usual, a pair of shorts, but instead of walking shoes he wore pointed-toed western boots. With his chubby knees, the outfit gave him the look of a little boy. His shirt was also a western style in a dark burgundy, studded with rhinestones. The other six band mates wore matching shirts.