Murder on the Menu

by Miranda Bliss

  “Annie! Are you all right? Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” For a willowy woman, Eve had a grip like a limpet. She wrapped me in a hug. A moment later, she grabbed my shoulders and pushed me back to get a better look at me, so fast I wobbled like a bobble-head doll. “You didn’t get hit, did you?”

  “If I did, you wouldn’t be doing me much good.” I disentangled myself from her grasp. After I looked Eve over and made sure she hadn’t been hit either, I brushed off my coat and the knees of my pants and picked up my purse to sling it over my shoulder. Mundane motions and definitely not the proper response to just having nearly been killed.

  Or maybe it was.

  By the time Jim came running at breakneck speed from the back alley where he parked his motorcycle, and the people who lived in the apartment above the ceramics studio threw open their window and told us not to worry, they’d already called the police, I was ready for them.

  “What the hell?” Big points for Jim. He could have taken a look at the cracked front window of Bellywasher’s or the pockmark of bullets around the front door and lost his cool. Instead, he concentrated on Eve and me. It was me he clasped to his chest, though.

  “You’re all right? You’re not hurt? You didn’t get shot?” Like Eve had done, Jim held me tight one moment and pushed me far enough back to take a good look at me the next. I bobbled some more.

  Jim’s hands skimmed my head and my shoulders and my hips. The next second, he pressed me into a hug again, so tight I had to fight for breath. “You’re OK!”

  “I’m OK.” My voice was muffled and tinged with discomfort, thanks to my scraped nose pressed flat against Jim’s chest. I came up for air. “Eve and I are both OK. We just walked outside and—”

  “He tried to kill us!” Eve wailed and hurled herself at both Jim and me. Jim on one side and Eve on the other, and I was pressed between them like a burger on a bun. I ducked and squirmed and broke up the lovefest before my nose could sustain any further damage.

  “Nobody tried to kill us,” I said. This was, of course, the most logical explanation for the whole thing. “Not us specifically. It was a drive-by. Random.”

  “Who? Who tried to kill you?” So much for logic. Ignoring me, Jim glommed onto Eve’s statement. His eyes flashed, and I had the distinct feeling that if Grandpa’s walking stick had been within easy reach, he would have grabbed it and gone after the shooter himself. “Did you see who it was?”

  Eve’s eyes were wide with fear. Her face was ashen. She shook her head. “I didn’t need to see. The senator, or the Russian mob, or Dylan Monroe, or—”

  “Eve!” I warned her with a look and hoped she was paying attention. We’d attracted a crowd, of course, and the people who’d come running from the apartments across the street and from the coffee place a little farther down King Street didn’t need to hear any of Eve’s crazy theories.

  When I turned to Jim, I made sure I kept my voice down. “It was random. It had to be.”

  “Why, because you’re treating Sarah’s death as if it’s a suicide?”

  It was not exactly the warm and fuzzy response I’d been expecting. The spark in Jim’s eyes intensified. With the shooter long gone, it was aimed right at me.

  Who could blame me for getting defensive?

  I pulled myself up to my full height. All right, all right…so it’s not so high. But at least with my chin up and my shoulders back, I felt commanding, even if I didn’t look it.

  “Are you telling me this is my fault?” I asked him.

  I saw a muscle twitch at the base of his jaw. “Aye.” He didn’t look happy to be admitting it. “If you’d mind your own business—”

  “Walking out of the place I work is minding my own business,” I shot back. “And maybe if my place of business wasn’t on the seedy side of town—”

  “Seedy?” It was Jim’s turn to stand up straight and tall. He had the height advantage, but I didn’t back down.

  My fists were on my hips before I even realized it, and though I knew it was far too aggressive a stance, I was beyond caring. It wasn’t like me to react emotionally instead of rationally, but hey, I was allowed. Somebody had just tried to turn me into Swiss cheese. At a time like that, any response was the right response.

  If Jim cared about me, wouldn’t he have known that?

  My stomach tightened, more painful than it had been when I was facedown on the pavement with bullets flying all around. I felt as if I’d been kicked in the chest. Logic be damned! I went on the defensive.

  I glared at Jim. “Nobody asks to be shot at.”

  “Unless that person is sticking her cute little nose—”

  I screeched my frustration. It wasn’t Jim’s criticism that grated on my last nerve as much as it was his use of the word cute. I hate being called cute, and you’d think a man who I’d dated before I decided that dating was dangerous to my self-composure and my heart would know that. Cute is guy code for “I want to be your friend, but no way could I ever fall in love with you.” It’s patronizing and not the least bit comforting.

  I’m cute. OK, so I admit it.

  Did Jim have to rub it in?

  “It’s none of your business where I stick my nose,” I told him.

  “Really?” He stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest. In its own way, the pose was just as assertive as mine. “If that’s the way you feel—”

  “That’s the way I feel.”

  “Then maybe you should have told me—”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “Annie! Jim!” Eve’s quiet prodding interrupted us, but it wasn’t until I had a couple seconds to allow my temper to throttle back that I realized we had company—a police officer who had a notebook out and a pen poised above the page. He looked from me to Jim.

  “You ready to make statements?” the officer asked. “Or should I just back off and let you two duke it out and see who’s left standing when it’s all over?”

  “YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?”

  Eve was standing behind me. Over my shoulder, she looked at my reflection in the mirror and the fresh bandage that I’d just stuck on my nose. She didn’t have to say it, I knew what she was thinking: I looked like a freak.

  “We could always back out,” she said.

  “I want to go,” I told Eve. “We have to go. You don’t think I’m going to let something like a shooting scare me off from the investigation, do you?”

  The look Eve tossed my way brought me spinning around. “What?”

  “What?” She leaned toward the mirror and checked her lipstick. She fluffed a hand through her hair. “Last night, you swore to Jim that it was random. You said the shooting didn’t have anything to do with Sarah’s death.”

  “Yeah. Well. It was the most logical explanation, wasn’t it? Of course it’s the first thing I thought of. And it could have been random,” I added, scrambling as I had all day to find something that pointed to the fact that Eve and I had been innocent bystanders, not intended targets.

  “But I don’t know.” I thought back to the moment, the instant between when we’d stepped out onto the sidewalk and when the shooting started. “I think he was close by, waiting for us. The car didn’t speed past Bellywasher’s, it cruised. Slowly. Like he was just waiting for the right moment.” This was too disturbing for words, and rather than consider what it meant, I turned back around and checked my reflection.

  Gingerly, I touched a finger to my nose. “Aren’t bandages supposed to be flesh-colored?” I asked.

  What could Eve say? While she thought about it, I turned my head, studying the square of gauze and plastic and wondering exactly whose flesh those well-intentioned bandage manufacturers were talking about. I don’t have a peaches-and-cream complexion like Eve, and I’m not olive-toned, either. I’m some bland shade right in the middle, and even on me, the bandage stuck out like a sore thumb.

  Or in this instance, a sore nose.

  “I’m not self-conscious at all, so don’t worry about me. And I
’m not worried about looking weird, either,” I said, because I figured if I reminded myself enough times, I might start to believe it. I stared at my reflection. The bandage did look weird. “It doesn’t matter if anyone notices, and besides, if they ask, I’m used to explaining. I spent all day at the bank talking about it. First to everyone who works there, then to each of my customers.”

  “What, you told them that your nose was scraped because you were down on the sidewalk while someone was shooting at you?”

  “I told them I slipped and fell and hit the pavement. It’s not exactly a lie.” The black evening bag I’d bought for a prom Peter and I had once chaperoned was on my dresser, and I grabbed it and double-checked to make sure there were a couple more fresh bandages inside, just in case. While I was at it, I automatically checked for my cell phone and my lipstick, too. Satisfied I had everything I needed, I snapped the purse shut. “Besides, nobody’s going to notice me and ask about my nose anyway. Not once you walk in.”

  In the mirror, I checked out Eve’s shrimp-pink, thigh-high dress with its plunging neckline and compared it to the little black dress I had bought for that same, long-ago prom. At the time, I’d thought my dress with its spaghetti straps, nipped-in waist, and handkerchief hem was the ultimate in sexy. The way I remembered, Peter agreed.

  I shook off the memory and looked over Eve again. Next to her, my sexy faded straight into stodgy.

  The bandage on my nose didn’t help.

  “Oh, forget it!” I plucked it off and peered in the mirror. Aside from the fact that the skin on my nose was rosy and raw, it didn’t look half bad. At least it didn’t look as bad as it did with a bandage on.

  “I’m ready,” I said, spinning away from the mirror. “Let’s get out of here before I change my mind.”

  Eve chuckled. “You’re not going to change your mind. You never do. Not about anything. You’re more dependable than…” Her forehead creased. “Well, I don’t know what you’re more dependable than, but I know you are. If there’s one thing you’re not, Annie, it’s full of surprises.”

  “Oh yeah?” I guess the fact that it was less than twenty-four hours since someone tried to pump us full of lead accounted for my adrenaline still running high. I had been feeling feisty all day. “Then what would you say if I told you I called and told Jim I wouldn’t be coming in to work tonight?”

  Her mouth fell open.

  “Well…” I was honest to a fault. I squirmed. “I didn’t exactly tell him. I called and left a message. But I would have told him. If he picked up the phone.”

  “He picked up my call when I phoned it to tell him I’d be a little late.” Eve gave me a penetrating look. “You’re not going to quit, are you?”

  “The restaurant?” I didn’t tell Eve, but I had considered it. All of the night before as I replayed the fight with Jim. All that day at work. But just as I didn’t jump into things quickly, I didn’t jump out of them on a whim, either. “I’m still mad at him,” I said. “I know it’s childish, but that’s why I’m not going in tonight. I hate being treated like a kid. I hate it that Jim doesn’t believe we can conduct an investigation and not be so obvious about it that someone wants to kill us.”

  “But isn’t that exactly what happened?”

  “I guess so, and I hate that, too.” I grabbed my coat and stepped aside so Eve could walk out of the apartment first, and I could lock the door behind us. “I hate that we don’t have the answers. I hate that more than anything, Eve. If the shooting wasn’t random, it means that somebody sees us as a threat. And I hate it that we don’t know who or what we’ve done. Then, on top of it all, to have Jim throw it in our faces…He practically came right out and called us amateurs. You heard him.”

  “He was upset. Because he cares about you, Annie.”

  We were out in the hallway, and even though I knew it was locked, I checked the door one more time, just to be sure. “I know he does,” I told Eve. “At least I used to know that he liked me. These days…well, I haven’t exactly been kind to him. After all, I’m the one who freaked and put the kibosh on our dating. If he changed his mind and decided to find someone else, I’d understand.”

  Just as I hoped, Eve didn’t jump in and tell me she knew for a fact that Jim had finally thrown in the towel.

  The realization should have made me feel better instead of just making me feel more guilty for the way I’d treated him. “Then there are times like last night…” I sighed again. “Honestly, Eve, sometimes I just don’t know what the man is thinking.”

  Eve laughed and looped her arm through mine. “Isn’t that the whole idea! They don’t know what we’re thinking. We don’t know what they’re thinking. Come on, Annie, it’s what makes the whole thing so much fun.”

  FUN WAS NOT THE WORD I WOULD HAVE USED TO describe the fund-raiser for Senator Douglas Mercy.

  A tiny plate of appetizers I was too nervous to eat in one hand, a glass of sparkling water in the other, I stood beside a showy display of chrysanthemums in a sweep of fall colors that had been arranged under a bigger-than-life picture of the senator. When it came to mingling, I really was an amateur. While I waited for Eve to come back from the ladies’ room where she had gone for one last makeup check with the promise that she’d be back in a twinkling, I tried my best to look inconspicuous. It wasn’t hard. All around me, serious-faced men in suits and women in dresses that put mine to shame talked in hushed tones about things like the trade deficit and global warming and how Senator Mercy, should he be chosen to run for vice president, was sure to make the world a better place.

  I saw Renee and Jennifer, two of the women who had worked with Sarah and had come to the funeral luncheon, walking toward me. I tensed, but of course, I had no need to worry. They weren’t expecting to run into any of the help from Bellywasher’s mixing with the movers and the shakers. They walked by, looked at me and through me, and kept right on going.

  Which, as far as I was concerned, was all well and good.

  If one of them stopped and asked what I was doing there, what would I have said?

  Oh, I just dropped in to talk to your boss. I was wondering, see, if he might have been having an affair with Sarah and if he was going on a cruise with her and if he might have killed her, too.

  Just thinking the words caused heat to shoot through my cheeks. When a man standing close by happened to turn and look my way, I took a drink, hiding behind my glass of water.

  “Any luck yet?” Eve had sneaked up behind me. “Any sign of our perp?”

  “We don’t know he’s our perp.”

  “No, but he might be. Any sign of him?”

  “He’s over there.” I looked across the room to where Senator Mercy was talking to a TV reporter. “He’s kind of busy.”

  “He going to be busy all night. That’s how these things work. People are going to hound him until he walks out.”

  “So maybe we should leave. Maybe this was a bad idea after all.”

  “Annie!” Eve plucked the plate of food out of my hand, deposited it on a nearby table, and snatched the water glass away, too. So that Eve wouldn’t be too late getting to work, we had arrived at the fund-raiser just as it started, and there was a crush of people between us and the senator. She slipped behind me and poked her hand into the small of my back, propelling me forward. “You said this was our best opportunity,” she reminded me.

  “It is our best opportunity.” It was slow going, but with each step, we got closer to Douglas Mercy. I saw him wrap up his conversation with the reporter. No sooner was he done than a group of well-wishers surrounded him.

  I held back. “I just can’t believe I’m going to walk up to a senator and ask him if he was going on a cruise with Sarah.”

  “Then you don’t have to.” Eve gave me another poke. “I’ll do all the talking.”

  Like that was supposed to make me feel better?

  Another shove from Eve. It was perfectly timed—I ended up smack-dab in front of Senator Mercy just as the group of
people he’d been talking to wished him their best and walked away. Unfortunately, at the same moment, a group of the senator’s supporters squeezed between me and Eve.

  I was on my own.

  “Good evening.” The senator gave me his campaign smile and automatically stuck out his hand. “Good of you to come.”

  I had no choice but to shake his hand. That, and wonder how I was going to ease into the conversation. I knew there wasn’t much time. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another group forming. They’d give me a minute or two, tops, before they moved in for their audience with the senator.

  “You probably don’t remember me, Senator,” I said. “We’ve met before.”

  Douglas Mercy was, after all, a politician. Though I could see the wheels turning, he never missed a beat. “Of course,” he said, but I knew that, try as he might, there was no way he could place me.

  I sensed a movement behind me, and Eve stepped up to my side.

  “Of course!” The senator beamed a smile in Eve’s direction. He extended his hand. “Miss DeCateur. From the luncheon in Sarah’s honor. It’s lovely to see you again. And you, too,” he said, almost as an afterthought, shifting his gaze back to me. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “Well you surely shouldn’t be.” Eve’s smile was bright enough for the campaign trail. “We know a good cause when we see one.”

  The senator was still holding on to Eve’s hand. “And I know beauty when I see it,” he said.

  “And there is something we need to tell you.” I jumped in, because behind me, I could already hear the anxious shuffle of feet as the next group waited to take our place. I couldn’t take the chance of leaving things up to Eve. I had the floor, and I wasn’t going to get another chance.