by Duffy Brown
“You’re trying to get rid of me, Chicago?” Sutter circled the table to the right. If he went for the ten ball he’d see Hello Kitty clear as day. If I suspected the note was from Fiona, so would he, and who knew what was in it. Something like I’m guilty and running off to Brazil would not be good.
“Six ball, corner pocket,” I blurted. “I’ll bet you a beer at the Stang you can’t make it.” A beer and a dare . . . no man could pass that up, right?
“What do you know about Idle Summers?” Sutter asked while leaning over the table, stretching the soft worn denim of his jeans nicely over his backside. Oh boy. I hadn’t counted on this being part of making the six-ball shot. Feeling a little dizzy, I tried to swallow, failed, then plopped down in Rudy’s old wicker chair and swiped the drool from the corner of my mouth. Well, dang. The guy might be over forty but he had the best butt on the island, no doubt about it. The regular female contingent at the Stang had voted on his and other local butts of the male species one cold February night when we needed something to warm our bones. Nate Sutter won best ass by a landslide.
I took another peek just to make sure. Yep, Sutter’s backside was definitely not something to be ignored at this angle, or any other for that matter.
“So what’s your opinion?”
I jumped up. “Opinion?”
“You got an opinion on everything, so let’s hear it.”
“Well . . . there’s a certain appeal, sort of, least some think so, not everyone, of course. And then there’s Cal Sandman, he was in the running too. He’s young and . . .”
Sutter peered at me over his shot. “What does Cal have to do with this?”
“He works out and he’s cute and we all agreed he has first-class abs and pecs so you had some competition, but you did win by a landslide, and do we really have to talk about this, it was just girls having fun.”
Sutter slowly put down the cue stick and straightened. He gave me a curious look with a smile tripping across his face. “First-class abs? Thought we were talking about Idle Summers?”
Holy freaking mother of pearl! “Right! Sure! Of course! Idle Summers!” I could feel a red-hot blush inching up my neck. Oh dear earth, part now and swallow me up whole. The only good thing out of all this was that Sutter was so enjoying the conversation he didn’t see the blasted note.
“Idle and Fiona knew each other back in L.A.,” I rushed on. “And Fiona thinks Peep had something on Idle to blackmail her, and Fiona thinks Idle would never do in Peep and frame her for it ’cause they’re friends, but I’m not so sure, and I think Idle has a past and not of the goody-two-shoes variety, and that’s all I know, I swear.” I made a cross over my heart and held up two fingers Girl Scout Promise style.
“How did you vote?”
“Vote?”
“At the Stang.” He knew! How did he know about the vote? This was an eight-mile island; of course he knew and I’d just confirmed the whole thing.
“I . . . I abstained.”
The grin broadened. “Abstinence is no way to go through life, Chicago.” Sutter reclaimed his cue, made the shot and put the cue back in the rack. “You owe me a beer.”
Sutter headed for the door and I sank down on the stool by the workbench again, my twenty-four-hour deodorant all used up in less than five minutes. After discussing Sutter’s butt right there in front of him, I’d never be able to face the guy again. And now I owed him a beer. He’d never let me forget the beer. If the gods of humiliation and embarrassment took pity, maybe he’d forget the vote at the Stang? Yeah, right.
Cleveland let out an irritated pay attention to me now meow, snapping me back to the thing that had started all this, the blasted note I was trying to keep from Sutter. Bambino waited a beat for a treat, yawned, then headed for the side pocket for a nap. Her tail was the only thing fitting in there these days, but cats were creatures of habit. I scooped up Cleveland in one arm, ignored the hissing and snarling and untied Hello Kitty.
Courthouse at midnight. 911 Nutty Buddy alert. It was from Fiona, all right. My guess was she’d helped herself to the last Nutty Buddy and while scarfing it down overheard me talking to Angelo about getting into Sutter’s office. As much as the note nearly gave me a heart attack, it was good to have Fiona along. She knew more what to look for in the way of important clues connected to Peep, and I needed someone to hold the flashlight when I picked the deadbolt on Sutter’s office door.
I rented out two more bikes for the weekend and took an order for a brand-new bike to be painted with a conductor motif for a dear husband’s birthday. Good thing wifey added the music conductor part to the order or she’d be getting a bike painted with railroad tracks, steam engines, and a big red caboose.
“Blessed be Saint Patrick that you still be alive and kickin’ like you are,” Irish Donna said to me as she came inside the shop during a sudden lull in the bike rental action. She dropped a pink Blarney Scone bag on the workbench. “I figure you be in need of some nourishment considering the circumstance.” Donna claimed the other stool, her curly red hair framing her soft face and sparkling green eyes. She opened the bag, plucked out two scones and handed me one.
I was never one to question a free scone, until now. “Need as in I look hungry?”
“Need as in the orange pekoe has spoken to me loud and clear, it did, and more trouble’s a-brewing. I had a cup of me favorite tea this morning, and there it was plain as day swilling around in the bottom. Seems that black cloud of yours is bigger than ever. Gave me the shivers, it did.”
“How do you know the leaves are talking about my cloud?” I tore paper towels from the roll on the workbench, kept one and handed the other to Donna. I took a bite of scone, totally amazed at what butter, sugar and a handful of blueberries can do to flour. “I bet those leaves didn’t spell out Evie Bloomfield beware, the world’s coming to an end for you. The cloud could be anyone’s and I refuse to take ownership, and in fact”—I tipped my chin in defiance—“I’m thinking your soothsaying gift is broken or just plain gone. Look what happened to Fiona. You told her holy oil and garlic kept evil away, and Peep not only got off the boat but things went right to hell for Fiona in less than a day.”
“Ah, but the man up and died, he did, and that’s about as away as it gets in my book.” Donna bit into the scone. “The way I see it, I’m sharp as a tack and there’s no arguing with the tea leaves. Whatever you got planned, me dear girl, you best be forgetting it. You need to be hiding out and barricading the door. Bad times they are a-coming.”
“If I don’t help Fiona, that’s exactly what will happen. What kind of friend would I be if I left her to fend for herself?”
“An alive friend. The whole town is a-watching out for Fiona, so you can take a break and hide under your bed for a few days, is what I’m saying. Even Walt and Mamma Geraldine are filling in up there at the Crier to keep it going. I’m thinking the two of them are feeling a mite responsible for Fiona staying in California, with Walt’s bragging and Geraldine all snooty over their high-flying daughter. Fiona had to be feeling poorly about that and not want to be proving them wrong by hightailing it home. She stayed there in California all miserable for who knows how long until . . . Now that’s the tricky part, it is. I can’t quite figure why she came back here when she did.”
I stopped midchew and stared at Donna. “I thought her parents gave her the newspaper?”
“That they did, love. They tried for months and then all of a sudden and out of the blue Fiona shows up on the ferry dock with one measly bag and fire in her eyes. None of us could even mention California without getting our heads chewed off. We all figured something pushed her over the edge out there, and now that we got a glimpse of this Peep person, that something must have been a whopper.”
“And maybe Walt and Mamma Geraldine decided to make Peep pay for the way he treated their daughter?” I said, thinking out loud. “Neither one of them wa
nted my help in finding who did in Peep and told me to back off.” I swallowed my last bite of scone; the delish morsel now tasted like wallpaper paste. “It could be that they were worried I’d find them out as the killers?”
“Or you’d be finding out that whopper thing Peep did.” Donna leaned closer and whispered, “And they be worried you would be a-finding Fiona as the killer? Something happened in California to get the girl riled, and then Peep shows up here on her doorstep upsetting her something fierce.”
Donna tossed her paper towel into the trash can by the workbench and started for the door. “I need to be getting back to the shop before Shamus scares off the paying customers with his endless flirting. Shameful he is, the old coot. One of these days someone’s going to bop him one right in the snoot. Lord knows the man’s got it coming.”
“Someone like you?” I added with a laugh, glad for the distraction.
“Worse things have been known to happen around these parts, but it’s not gonna be his snoot I’d be aiming for but six inches below his belt. Bless the saints above, men got themselves a one-track mind no matter how old they be.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll take your word for that.”
Donna gave me a pathetic look. “Been a dry spell, has it? ’Tis all ’bout the cloud, me dear, and you need to be doing something about it before you go and shrivel up like a giant prune.”
Donna tramped across the back deck and I stared off into the blue abyss of sea and sky feeling very wrinkly. Under normal circumstances I would refuse to believe that sludge swirling around in the bottom of a cup heralded bad news. But nothing was normal these days, and I had Walt and Geraldine to add to the Peepster who-done-it list of suspects. On the surface, adding to the list should be good news, but Walt and Geraldine were Fiona’s parents. If I found evidence against them, Fiona would be off the hook but her parents would be on the hook, and I’d lose her friendship forever.
Walt and Geraldine were up to their eyeballs in motive, and the fact that they delivered the Crier to the Grand gave them opportunity. If Fiona left her yellow bag in the Grand Hotel lobby and either of them had found it and the olive oil bottle and got seriously pissed at Peep, hitting him over the head was a natural reaction. Heck, I wanted to hit him and I’d only known him ten minutes.
Idle Summers was still tops on the suspect list, I reassured myself. With a little luck—which seemed to be in really short supply lately—I’d find information in Sutter’s office tonight to implicate someone else. Even if Sutter did drive me nuts in more ways than one, and deep down inside I personally held him responsible for my onset of pruneness, he was a good cop and knew stuff. This was one time I hoped to heck the guy knew a lot more than I did.
10
“You’re late,” Fiona grumbled to me as she stuck her head out between two pink lilac bushes behind the courthouse.
“It’s dark back here,” I said, rubbing my leg. “I can’t see a blasted thing and I was afraid to use my flashlight just yet, and I hit my shins on the scaffold and we haven’t even started to climb yet. I bet you’re feeling like bushes are your second home.”
“Beats wearing a plastic wig and cleaning food off the floor. Zo and Madonna are drama on steroids; it’s a miracle they haven’t killed each other.”
Fiona crawled into the open, flipped on her flashlight now that we were behind the courthouse and together we gazed at the tangle of pipes crisscrossing their way upward. “You know,” Fiona said to me as I zipped my fleece and settled into the cozy warmth. “We could be at the Stang right now catching up on gossip. Do you ever wonder how we get into these messes?”
“Tonight we are the gossip, and we got here ’cause you worked for a Mr. Jerkass and I have a pox upon me. We’re both screwed, so start climbing, monkey girl.”
The lake breeze caught in the pines behind us, swishing branches across a crescent moon. All was quiet except for an owl hooting in the distance and horses clip-clopping on Market Street. Fiona flipped off the flashlight and stuffed it in her jacket so she could use both hands, grabbed the first railing and swung her leg over. She pulled herself up, then grabbed the next bar and then the next with me right behind her.
“The rungs are really far apart on this thing,” Fiona panted. “How tall were these workers anyway?”
Huffing, I hooked my foot onto the next pole. “My guess is there was a ladder here that they took down when they finished the paint job.”
“Not very considerate,” Fiona groaned. “I’m writing a letter.” She grabbed the next bar and flung herself across it. If she had an apple in her mouth her silhouette would be a skinny pig on a spit.
“What was that?” I stopped dead.
“My heart exploding,” Fiona wheezed. “I think I’m going to die up here and . . . and . . . Evie!” Fiona gazed down at me, her eyes huge against the dark. “This whole thing is moving. Why is it moving?”
“Because it’s not bolted together anymore! They’re taking it apart because the town council is fining them for every day it’s up here, and I didn’t think about that till now. Can you reach the window?”
Fiona stood as the scaffold swayed more and shoved at the window. “It won’t budge. It’s painted shut. What kind of cheap painters did the town council get?”
“The usual kind. Push!”
Fiona angled her hands against the glass and shoved hard, opening the window and propelling the scaffold away from the building. “Oh crap! This thing is going to make a lot of noise when it falls.”
“So am I! Do something!”
Fiona hooked one leg over the windowsill and grabbed one of the metal bars. “It’s too heavy, I can’t hold it!”
I snagged Fiona around the waist as the scaffold slid away under my feet, leaving me dangling in midair. The pipes teetered backward for a second, then toppled the rest of the way into the pines. Fiona grabbed the waistband of my jeans and yanked hard, giving me the wedgie of all wedgies. The momentum sent us through the window and we landed together with a solid whoop on something hard.
“We made it,” Fiona panted, as faint moonlight cast shadows across the room. “Though I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here. I think the judge’s desk broke our fall. That pox of yours isn’t as bad as you think.”
I rolled to the side into nothingness and landed on the floor, my head banging against the wood with a solid whumph. I sat up, with little stars—yeah, they really were stars—dancing in front of my eyes, Fiona staring down at me, her eyes huge in the dark. “Then again, maybe the pox is that bad. Are you okay?”
“Peachy.” Stumbling, I stood, wobbled and grabbed my butt. “Fiona! It’s gone!”
Fiona looked back at me. “Eat ice cream, girlfriend, it’s instant fanny food. You’ll grow another one in no time. We gotta get going.”
“Sheldon’s gone. I was going to use the flashlight app and he’s not there. He must have slid out of my jeans pocket when you wedged me, and now Sutter’s going to know for sure we were here and he’s going to blow his top . . . again.”
“Trust me, Sutter doesn’t need your lost iPhone to tell him what’s going on.” Fiona flipped on her flashlight and we maneuvered around the court benches, heading for the green exit sign glowing in the corner. “Around here a scaffold in the trees is an Evie/Fiona calling card, and tell me this contraption in front of us isn’t an elevator.”
“Circa Cary Grant and Doris Day. I recognize the brass grating from watching the oldies with my grandpa Frank at Sleepy Meadows Retirement Center. Not that there’s much sleeping there, but the movies are a great cover for sipping afternoon tea with good friends Jack Daniel and Jim Beam.”
“I could do with a visit from Jack and Jim right now. This thing is a coffin with bars.”
“Think vintage. Think charm. Think of it as our way down to valuable information that will set you free.” I slid the brass grating shut behind us with a clan
g. A dim light blinked a few times, and then, miracle of miracles, it stayed on. I turned the ancient handle to the number 1 and our coffin chugged, lurched a few times, then inched downward. Fiona grabbed my hand. “How old do you think this thing really is? And . . . and we just went past the doors marked one. That was our stop. Why isn’t this thing stopping?” Fiona buried her head in her hands. “We’re all going to die and I can’t die tonight, I have on really crappy underwear.”
The coffin shuddered, then jerked to a halt. I pulled back the grating that could really do with a spray of WD-40 to loosen it up and gazed to the ceiling. “Okay, the first-floor doors are right there.” I pointed. “I’ll pry them open, you boost me out and then I’ll pull you up. How hard can it be?”
Standing on tiptoes, I wedged my fingers between the doors and forced them apart; little shafts of light from exit signs and probably the front desk area shone down into the elevator. Fiona braided her fingers together to make a boost; I stepped in and gave a hop and she propelled me up. I banged my head on the ceiling, hooked my fingers over the edge, then kicked and belly-scooted the rest of the way and resisted the urge to kiss the solid floor. “I’m in.”
“And so are we,” came a woman’s voice over me. “Hey, Evie, is that really you?” I blinked into a blinding flashlight beam. “It’s me, Gabi, and the Corpse Crusaders, and what in the world are you doing in that elevator this time of night?”
Gabi gasped and lowered the flashlight, her eyes big as softballs in the dim light. “I know what this is, it’s the Clue in the Old Elevator like one of those Nancy Drew books. It’s to go along with the mystery weekend. Whoever thought this all up is so darn clever, but why is the elevator between floors?”
