The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse: Books 1-3 (The Mysteries of Bell & Whitehouse Box Sets)

by Nic Saint

  “Only one way to find out. Let’s have a look.” When she gave him a dark frown, he quickly added, “Just kidding. I have no interest in reading your diary.” He grinned. “At all.”

  Her frown deepened, and he wondered if it was something he said. “Do you keep a diary Rick?”

  “No,” he admitted. “Can’t say that I do. Though I do from time to time submit my personal views on such things as the weather, the state of the world, or womanhood to my blog.” He shrugged. “I find it very liberating.”

  “And what are your views on womanhood?”

  He had the distinct impression that the atmosphere in the room was getting frostier by the second in spite of the oven emitting a steady stream of hot, delicious, air. “Ah, well, I must say I haven’t formulated a definitive opinion yet, apart from a few random thoughts on the subject.”

  “Please enlighten me. What are your random thoughts?”

  A warning bell sounded at the back of his mind. He quickly dismissed it. His reporter’s blood had been stirred. He loved discussing his favorite topics at length. “Well, first I’d like to state clearly that I have nothing whatsoever against the modern girl.”

  “Duly noted,” she said sweetly. She’d placed her chin on her hands and was gazing at him like a cat about to devour a mouse.

  “That said, I do think that things have gotten out of hand.”

  “Is that right?”

  “The pendulum of history often overbalances before settling at some form of equilibrium, and in the case of the modern girl I feel this is what has happened.”

  “For instance?”

  “Well, take karaoke.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Karaoke? What do you mean, karaoke?”

  “It’s this thing where people climb up on stage and make total fools of themselves by pretending to be Taylor Swift or Freddie Mercury or—”

  “I know what karaoke is. What I don’t understand is what it has to do with your views on the modern girl.”

  He sighed. He’d explained himself on the subject many times. Mostly in bars. To colleagues. Under the influence of alcohol. Now he would have to do it without the aid of alcohol, to an audience that was, if his sixth sense wasn’t fooling him, notably hostile.

  Still, he decided to give it his best shot.

  He picked up a fork and placed it next to a spoon. “Imagine this is a woman,” he said, pointing to the spoon, “and this—” He gestured to the fork, “a man. Now suppose that the man went into a karaoke bar and start singing Voulez-Vous.” He held up the fork and wiggled it a bit. “Now suppose a woman entered the bar and watched the man massacre that timeless ABBA classic.”

  “I can just see it before me,” Felicity said dryly.

  “Well, how do you think a woman would have reacted in the old days? She would have jumped to the man’s defense and clapped her hands, ignoring the man’s obvious lack of talent, even if the rest of the room was ruthlessly mocking him. Now take the modern girl. Not only would she hiss and boo and laugh her ass off at the sucker on stage, she would probably record his performance on her smartphone, post it on the internet, take the thing viral and turn the man into the laughing stock of the whole wide world.”

  Felicity was frowning. “So what you’re saying is that the modern girl, instead of boosting a man’s ego, takes him down a peg and teaches him some humility?”

  “No, what I’m saying is that woman, through her gentle nature, is well equipped to assuage the bruised soul but that modern age has turned her heart to stone and her soul to ice.”

  “I think you’re cuckoo. Just because she doesn’t like his singing doesn’t mean she has a heart of stone.”

  “Well, I beg to differ.”

  “Tough luck.”

  “See? That’s exactly what I mean. A fellow can’t catch a break.”

  “Really Rick, you can’t expect a girl to be a doormat. Those days are over. If a guy can’t sing, we give it to him straight. And if he can’t take it, tough luck.”

  His lips thinned. It was exactly as he had feared. “There’s entirely too much cruelty in the world, Felicity. All I ask is a little kindness. A little humanity. A little sweetness and light.”

  “If sweetness and light means women have to suffer fools who can’t sing and pretend they can, I say the old days are over and a good thing too.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said curtly and slipped off his stool. Not only did he feel very strongly about the issue, he felt he’d done all he’d come here to do and would do no more. He’d apologized for confusing this woman with a crazed crook and in return had been hit in the face with eggs and threatened with a meat cleaver. If she thought he’d stand here and take it like a man who couldn’t sing Voulez-Vous, she had another thing coming.

  “You’re not going already?”

  “I have nothing more to say.”

  “But you were going to teach me about journalism.”

  “That was before I deduced a fatal flaw in your character.”

  “Fatal flaw in my character?” she huffed, now also rising. He threw a nervous glance at the block of knives which was positioned entirely too close to her hand for comfort. “I think it’s your character that is showing fatal flaws.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to be friends after all. A woman of your character—”

  She folded her hands across her chest. “And what character is that, exactly?”

  “Not the sweet-natured one I’d expected after watching you bake.”

  “So you thought I was a wimp, huh? Just because I like to bake I can’t be a strong and independent woman?”

  “That’s not what I meant. What I meant to say was that you have a…”

  “Well? Spit it out!”

  “You have a mean streak about you and I for one don’t like it. Good day.”

  He quickly made his way to the door before she had the opportunity to take her pick from the knives. There was something sinister about this woman and he was glad to discover that his first impression of her had been the right one after all. When he’d seen her wielding that gun at Rafi’s Deli he’d taken her for one of those hard-hearted girls and he’d been exactly right.

  He pulled the door closed behind him with a sigh of relief and started down the street. He knew he’d had a narrow escape. Felicity Bell, he decided right then and there, was one woman he never hoped to meet again.

  Chapter 11

  Felicity stared at the door through which Rick Dawson had just negotiated his hasty escape and hitched up a lower jaw that had dropped at the sight of the reporter’s disappearing heels. Of all the jelly-bellied men…

  Just at that moment, Alice returned to the kitchen, the satisfied smile on her face of one who has just uploaded a new video for one hundred subscribers. She searched around the room for a moment and her smile faded. “What happened to Rick? Don’t tell me you chopped him into little pieces and fed him to Gaston?”

  As if aware they were talking about him, the red cat strode in, a plaintive meow on his pink lips. Absently, Felicity petted him and dumped some fresh kibble into his bowl. Gaston purred and hunkered down to devour the tasty morsels.

  “I don’t know what happened but he simply ran from the room as if his pants were on fire,” she said, still trying to come to terms with what had just happened.

  Alice gave her a hard stare. “You kicked him out, didn’t you?”

  “I did not! We were having a nice discussion—”

  “About what?”

  “About the modern girl.”

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Oh, God.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Oh, God?’”

  “You probably came down on the guy like a ton of bricks.”

  “As if! He just fed me some crazy story about karaoke—”

  “Karaoke?”

  “Some nonsense about how the modern girl likes to make fun of guys who can’t sing, whereas the women of yesteryear would have fawned over him and made sure his poor, pathetic excuse of
an ego didn’t get hurt.”

  “Sounds like bullshit to me.”

  “That’s what I said! Well, not in those words, exactly.”

  Alice narrowed her eyes and tapped her finger. “Mh…”

  “Don’t you ‘mh’ me! You would have said the same thing!”

  “Not really. If I were on a first date with a guy—”

  “We were not on a date.”

  “—a very hot guy, I might add—”

  “That’s…” She mused for a moment and decided that Alice was right. Rick Dawson, in spite of his many defects, was smoking hot. “…of no consequence.”

  “—I wouldn’t antagonize him by tearing into him.”

  “I didn’t tear into him!” She gestured wildly. “See, that’s exactly my point. All I did was state my opinion and he got all hot and bothered, told me I was mean and ran for the door! I mean, what is this? Middle school? I’m sorry but if a guy can’t stand a little criticism he’s not a real man in my book.”

  “He looked like a real man to me.”

  “Looks can be deceiving. He’s a mouse, not a man.”

  “Which proves my case.”

  Felicity frowned at her friend. “What case?”

  “Remember what we were talking about? How you refuse to date because it’s too much hassle?”

  “Oh, God.” She clasped her hands to her head. “You uploaded the entire thing, didn’t you?”

  “I did.” Alice tapped the countertop smartly. “And you just proved me right: you will do anything to sabotage any chance to be with a guy, even arguing pointless…points with him so you can drive him away.”

  “I didn’t drive Rick away. He drove himself away. And for the record, my argument wasn’t pointless. He was attacking womanhood.”

  “And you had to leap to its defense.”

  “Duh. Who else would?”

  Alice threw up her hands. “You’re hopeless, you know that?”

  Felicity shrugged, then pointed out the main issue. “We need to take down that video.”

  “We don’t. That video is up and it stays up.” She grinned. “In fact, I put a password on our YouTube account that even you won’t be able to crack.”

  Felicity gasped in horror. “You did not!”

  “I did. I think it’s time that your crazy ideas about men and women were put out there for the whole world to dispute.” She shrugged. “Or at least our fellow Happy Baysians.”

  At that exact moment, the oven dinged, adding emphasis to Alice’s words. Felicity closed her eyes. She’d just remembered she’d told her friend she didn’t need sex since that required getting cozy with a man. And that the first person to watch the Flour Girl videos the moment they went live was…Mom.

  Oh God, kill me now, she thought bleakly.

  Chapter 12

  A tiny spider was slowly making its way up the passenger door of the car. Jerry watched it with a baleful eye. He felt very much like that spider: stuck with no chance of escape. “I feel you buddy,” he muttered as the spider discovered the window was closed and it had no place to go. “I feel you.”

  “Who are you talking to?” his associate asked. Johnny, a mountain of a man with plump, rosy cheeks, sat sucking a lollipop, as usual. Ever since the big guy had stopped smoking, lollipops were his poison of choice. His mother, who had encouraged him to drop the habit, said it was the sucking addiction that would be hardest to give up and had advised lollipops as temporary replacement therapy. She didn’t believe in nicotine patches.

  “I’m not talking to anyone,” Jerry said moodily as he transferred his gaze from the spider to his associate, fixing him with the same unhappy stare. Contrary to his partner, he was pale and gaunt and built like a grasshopper, his weaselly face now contorted in a nasty frown.

  “Oh buddy, you look like shit,” Johnny remarked quite tactlessly.

  “Thanks. You would look like shit if you hadn’t eaten in three days.”

  “Why do you do this to yourself, Jer? Come on. Humans weren’t made to fast!” He offered his lollipop. “Here, eat this. Get a little sugar in ya.”

  He eyed the bright pink thing with distaste. Not only because Johnny had been sucking it for the past ten minutes but because he wanted real food, not candy. He wanted a burger with fries. Or onion rings smothered in butter. Or—his stomach made a hopeful leap at the thought—a pork chop with Béarnaise sauce and mashed potatoes on the side.

  God, he thought dispiritedly, why did he ever let his wife talk him into this fast? He knew he’d have a hard time seeing it through. In a manful effort to regain his composure, he poured himself a cup of tea from the thermos Marlene had prepared him. The brew tasted like sewage.

  “Tea,” scoffed Johnny. “How you can stomach the stuff is beyond me.”

  “It’s beyond me too,” he said morosely, then gulped the remainder of the bilge down and screwed up his face.

  “How much longer, Jer? How much longer?!”

  “Seventeen days, three hours and—” He checked his watch. “—five minutes.”

  “Better you than me, buddy,” Johnny said magnanimously, then shoved the lollipop back into his mouth and gave it a good suck, closing his eyes in horror at the thought of his friend’s ordeal.

  Both men were seated outside Rafi’s Deli. They’d picked up some chatter the day before that Rick Dawson, the man they were here to find, had been spotted hanging out there. Apparently the rube had allowed himself to be arrested. Pity they hadn’t heard about it until now, or else they could have picked up his trail at the police station.

  Jerry stared moodily at the deli. He hated surveillance jobs, and never more than when he wasn’t allowed to eat what he wanted. Usually when he was asked to take part in a stakeout like this, he kept a sizable section of the local pizza delivery guys in business. Now? He felt hamstrung. What worried him most was that when push came to shove, and he was forced to use violence, he would be unequal to the task. Already he felt himself weakening, his body growing thinner every day. He could almost see himself shrink before his very eyes.

  “I think I’m dying buddy,” he lamented as he watched some young punk saunter by, sinking his teeth into a blueberry muffin.

  “You’re not dying. You’re just hungry is all. My advice? Get some food into you. Marlene will never know.”

  “She will. She knows everything. First thing she does when I come home is smell my breath and look at my tongue. I swear, she can read my tongue like a map. Last night she said my liver is practically dead. Said I had white spots on my tongue where they should be pink.” He shook his head. “If I eat something, she’ll smell it on my breath.”

  “Then brush your teeth before you go home. Suck a mint.”

  “I’m telling you she knows. She knows, Jer!” He threw up his hands in a frantic gesture of despair.

  “Oh look, there’s that girl. The one who took down that Ramsey fellow.”

  He looked out the side window and saw a stout young woman in a floral print dress stride past. Her hair was an abundance of curls, and the sheer curviness of her figure gave him another pang of regret that he’d ever agreed to go on this fast. “She’s pretty.”

  “Yeah, she is. Real pretty. And she’s very handy with a gun too. Almost shot Ramsey in the gizzard.”

  “She connected?”

  “Must be. Girl like that? Probably works for some local outfit.”

  The woman had apparently taken down Anton Ramsey, some lowlife crook, and managed to get Rick Dawson arrested in the process. Though why exactly Dawson had gotten mixed up in this mess was unclear.

  “Who is she?”

  Johnny frowned. “Name of Felicity Bell. Daughter of Peter Bell.” He checked the little notebook he always carried. “Owner and proprietor of Bell’s Bakery & Tea Room. Famous for its…” He squinted at his notes. “…gaufres.”

  “Gophers? Who the hell eats gophers?”

  “Not gophers, gaufres.”

  “Same difference.” He closed his eyes. He c
ould eat a gopher now, deep-fried and marinated.

  “No, they’re some type of waffle, apparently. They’re from a place called Belgium.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Me neither. Must be down south someplace.”

  Jerry heaved a deep sigh. This was just his luck, he thought. Now he was knee-deep in a business that required him to hobnob with Belgian waffle bakers. Just the thought made his mouth water. “A waffle house,” he muttered, rolling the words around his tongue.

  “Yeah, looks like. Says here the Bell family has operated this waffle house since 1938 when grandfather Peter Bell established it.”

  “Who cares when they started this frickin’ waffle house?” he snapped. “The woman’s bad news, that’s what she is.”

  They both stared at Felicity Bell as she walked into Rafi’s Deli, their eyes following her every move. Yeah, she was definitely pretty, Jerry reflected, very pretty indeed. And of no interest to them.

  “Let’s get out of here. Dawson’s a no-show.” And the sight of people walking out of this deli with their arms full of food was seriously depressing him. As Johnny put the car in gear, he made up his mind that if he survived this fast, he would stuff his face like it had never been stuffed before. White spots be damned.

  Chapter 13

  Felicity swallowed a lump in her throat as she neared Bell’s. She knew chances were slim that her mother had already taken a look at the latest Flour Girl video, but it was still good to be prepared.

  After Rick’s sudden departure, she’d sat down at her desk and pounded out five hundred words for Stephen Fossick. It was definitely harder than writing menu cards for her mother, or her daily diary entries but after going over the text about a dozen times, she felt pretty good about it. It had a beginning, a middle and an end, and that was all that mattered.

  She’d wanted to call the piece ‘Death at the Deli’ since it had a nice ring to it, but remembering she was a reporter dealing with facts, not a novelist peddling fiction, she changed it to ’Ruckus at Rafi’s’. She’d always been a sucker for alliteration.