A lady who was walking along the sidewalk rushed to my side.
“Oh, honey, are you alright.”
“I’m fine,” I grumbled, studying my bloody right palm, which had been scraped on the way down.
“That looks like it hurt,” the woman chided, trying to help me to my feet.
“It’s fine,” I said, putting on a brave face. My hand really hurt. I could also feel the color rushing to my cheeks. I would not look into the pawnshop to see if Eliot had seen me fall. That would only give him a bigger head than he already had.
“Oh, you’re bleeding. I’ll go in this store and ask if they have a towel to get you cleaned up.”
“No!” I started to grab at her coat arm with my bloody hand to stop her. I wouldn’t survive the indignity of her going and asking Eliot for help.
The woman huffily pulled herself away from me, looking down at her coat, which had an obvious streak of blood going down the arm now. Whoops.
“Young lady,” she looked at me seriously. “Are you drunk?”
“No!”
“Well, are you on drugs? Are you smoking the marijuana?”
“Of course not,” actually, I wished I was high as a kite right now so I could escape this embarrassment.
“Well, just a hint young lady, when someone offers you help you don’t repay them by ruining their coat,” she huffed.
“I’m sorry,” I offered up lamely. I really wasn’t, I just wanted her to stop drawing attention to the two of us. Since her coat was one of those ugly flowered trench coats you can buy at Burlington Coat Factory, I didn’t see it as any big loss. She obviously did, though.
The woman was now pulling wet naps out of her purse. I noticed she tried to clean her coat up first. She then handed me one.
“You should put yourself together,” she admonished. She started to walk away, getting only a few feet before she turned back around. “You might want to consider getting into some sort of program, too. No one is going to want to marry someone on drugs.”
I couldn’t even muster the energy to argue with her. I was just relieved she was gone. I turned on my heel to start back towards the restaurant but I couldn’t resist quickly looking up into Eliot’s store to see if he was still there.
He was, and he was doubled over laughing.
Asshole.
By the time I’d walked the rest of the way down to the Coney I had worked myself into a true state. Eliot thought he’d gotten to me, he had another thing coming. He hadn’t gotten to me in the least.
When I entered the Coney, I noticed that Carly was already there and seated. She was drumming her fingers on top of the table in irritation. I was only two minutes late, so she couldn’t be pissed at me. Well, at least not for this.
“What’s going on?”
Carly looked up when I came in. “You’re late.”
I guess it was me.
She took in my disheveled appearance and the drying blood on my palm and raised her eyebrow questioningly.
“I tripped on the sidewalk.” She didn’t even need to ask the question. I wasn’t particularly known for my grace.
“On purpose?”
“No.”
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
That was enough for Carly. She’d seen me banged up plenty of times before, so she really couldn’t muster up a lot of sympathy for me at times.
“Well you’re never going to guess what that woman is doing now?”
And here’s where I didn’t need to ask. Carly was in an ongoing war with her future mother-in-law. “That woman” had been making her life miserable for the past few months. From deciding on an off-white dress for the wedding to insisting that she get a mother and son dance, “that woman” was a real piece of work.
Personally, I think Carly brought on a lot of it herself by trying to be the woman’s friend to her face and then plotting her demise behind her back. I would have just told her to shut her mouth right from the beginning. That’s me, though.
“What did she do now?”
I signaled the restaurant owner Milo behind the counter for a Coney and fries and then turned my full attention to Carly.
“She wants to add bridesmaids,” Carly sputtered.
The wedding was only three weeks away. “Isn’t it a little late for that?” I mean, I had to go through four dress fittings and it took six weeks to tailor the ugly lilac thing I would never wear again.
“Yes, it is.”
“Why does she want more bridesmaids?”
“She wants Kyle to have two of his cousins as groomsmen and we can’t have more groomsmen than bridesmaids. She told me that she knew I didn’t have anymore friends, so she had already asked Kyle’s two female cousins to stand up.”
My mouth twitched as I pictured Kyle’s beast of a mother telling Carly this. It wasn’t a pretty picture.
“Just tell her you can’t get the dresses in time.” I’m practical. And, if I’m being honest, I’m really sick of this wedding.
“I already told her that and do you know what she said?”
I didn’t.
“She said that she had dresses made up for Kyle’s two cousins weeks ago because she was worried this was going to happen.”
I actually found that a little funny. Carly obviously did not. “She’s a stupid bitch.” I’m nothing if not loyal.
I silently thanked Milo when he brought my Coney and fries and Carly’s salad, with fat free Italian dressing on the side, to the table. I raised my eyebrow at her salad.
“I have to fit in my dress in three weeks.”
I rolled my eyes and took a big bite of hot dog, onion and mustard. Carly is one of those people that never gains weight. She’s almost too thin. Of course, she works out five times a week – and when I say work out I don’t mean counting mowing the lawn or an especially strenuous lightsaber battle on the Kinect as a workout.
Carly continued to prattle on about her devil mother-in-law-to-be and I found my mind wandering. I nodded when I thought the conversation warranted it and even clucked sympathetically once – but I was really disengaged from the conversation.
That’s when I noticed someone was staring at me.
Ah, shit. I realized too late who it was.
Gertrude Milner, pretty much the most obnoxious person in the universe.
Gertrude was the editorial secretary at the Monitor who had had been laid off in favor of Darby. In a scene that could only be described as ugly, Gertrude had pitched an absolute fit when she found out she was being laid off. I’d actually been entertained by the scene – mostly because I wasn’t the one causing it for a change.
Gertrude had long dark hair, which she curled in Nellie Oleson like curls. I’m not joking. She put pink bows in them, too. It was disturbing. She dressed in a variety of polyester suit bottoms – all of the high-waisted variety – but she seemed to have lost the matching blazers. Thankfully. Of course, what she replaced them with was equally troublesome. She seemed to have a never-ending supply of puppy, kitten and horse tops that were always adorned with the help of a Bedazzler and glitter puffy paint.
In addition to her constant wardrobe malfunctions, she always wore three pairs of orthopedic shoes (one white, one brown, one black) that she seemed to rotate through the outfits. I’m not exactly a snob – all right I am – but shoes like that should never even be made, let alone worn out in public.
And, despite all I’ve told you about Gertrude (never Gertie), that’s not even the most “distinct” thing about her looks. That honor would go to the full mustache she not only sported, but also used to brush at her desk with an eyebrow comb. That, of course, was when she wasn’t flossing her teeth while staring at my co-worker Duncan, who had the misfortune of sitting across from her. If he wasn’t the office tool, I would have almost felt sorry for him. Since he was a complete and total asshole, though, I figured it was karma coming to bite him in the ass.
What’s really horrific is that her
looks aren’t the most annoying, or rather, distracting thing about her. You see, when she opened her mouth there could be no denying that the sound that came out was pure hell. Or, to be more exact, it was like the screams of 10 dying mice. Ugh, I shudder to even think about
Did I mention she had Tourette Syndrome? Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Making fun of the differently-abled is not a nice trait. Well, I’m not a nice person and neither is Gertrude.
You know how most people that have a disability go out of their way to be treated just like everyone else? Well, not Gertrude, she goes out of her way to get special treatment. She can’t answer the phone because she’s got Tourette’s and she might scare potential tipsters. She can’t argue with funeral home people because she might say the wrong thing and we’d lose their business. It was always some excuse to get out of doing her job. If I could tolerate Gertrude, I might admire her.
Now everything I’ve learned about Tourette’s has come from the television. I expected her to break out in short bursts of vulgarity at the drop of a hat. So, imagine my surprise, when her Tourette’s took the form of annoying mom sayings. No kidding, instead of “go fuck yourself” she spouts off things like “Good golly Miss Molly” and “Jeepers creepers.”
Let’s just say that the day she was laid off the entire newsroom let out a collective sigh of relief.
So, of course, catching her staring at me like I was the last donut on the plate was not what I hoped for when I proposed this lunch to Carly.
I swallowed hard. I had two choices. I could purposely ignore her and hurt her feelings or I could acknowledge her and hurt my eardrums. It was a hard decision. Gertrude made it for me.
“Hello Avery,” she cackled.
“Gertrude.”
Carly raised her eyes when she heard me say the name. She’d heard about Gertrude a lot – usually when I was drunk and doing impressions. She turned stiffly to smile at Gertrude. She wasn’t about to miss the chance to finally see her in person.
“So, is the Monitor still in operation?” Gertrude asked.
“Umm, yeah.” I was genuinely confused as to where she was going here.
“Well, I mean, no one can keep up with my workload so you guys must be drowning in work.”
If by workload she meant three briefs and three obits, yeah, we were swimming in that extra 15 minutes of work. Well, now that I thought about it, that extra work had been passed on to Darby.
“I think we’re managing. It’s not really that much work.” I wasn’t trying to be rude. No, honestly I wasn’t. Carly kicked me under the table, though, which told me I was being rude. Oh, well.
“My mom and I were joking the other day,” Gertrude said, gesturing towards the woman sitting next to her. I saw where Gertrude got her fine sense of style. “If Darby were to leave the paper then I could have my job back full-time.”
I narrowed my eyes suspiciously for a second. Was this a trap?
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if she were to find another job . . . or have an accident or something.” Gertrude trailed off with an almost whimsical look to her pug little face. Sometimes she reminds me of Miss Piggy.
“What kind of an accident?”
“Oh, nothing serious,” Gertrude laughed. “You know, like getting hit by a car or something and never being able to work again. Nothing that would kill her or anything.”
I looked around for the hidden cameras. I just knew I was being ‘Punked.’
Carly opened her mouth to say something. I knew what she was going to say – but I didn’t want her to show our hand. Carly is a crappy card player. It was my turn to kick her under the table. She frowned at me but shut her mouth almost immediately.
“Well, that’s kind of a weird thing to talk about with your mom,” I offered. My conversations with my mom usually consisted of her disapproval of the fact that I wasn’t married and my insistence on wearing ‘Star Wars’ Adidas high tops. Actually, I had just gotten those and I couldn’t wait to wear them to the next family dinner. I was picturing her head spinning around like the kid in ‘The Exorcist.’ I could only hope there wouldn’t be any pea soup involved.
Wait, what were we talking about?
“Well we really don’t want anything bad to happen to her,” Gertrude offered with a fake conciliatory smile. “I mean, only a monster . . . beat you like a red-headed stepchild . . . would want anything like that.”
That weird diversion there was the Tourette’s, just in case you were wondering. I decided to play along.
“Yeah, only a flaming asshole – or someone really pathetic – would hope for bodily harm to come to someone over a job.”
Gertrude may act slow, but she’s actually quite smart. She narrowed her eyes at my response.
“Well, like I said, that’s not what we want. We were just joking.”
“Good.”
I got to my feet and tossed a few dollars on the table. Carly followed suit.
“Well, I’ve got to get back to work.” I emphasized the word “work” just to see what Gertrude would say. She merely pursed her lips unhappily.
“Nice seeing you, Gertrude,” I continued. “I hope you find a job. I hear there are a lot of jobs out of state. I mean . . . out of Michigan.”
Carly gave me a sidelong disapproving look, but she wisely kept her mouth shut.
I smiled brightly, waved a short goodbye, and then walked out of the building with Carly close on my heels. I burst out laughing when the door shut behind us.
Carly was nonplussed. “I think that was a little rude.”
“You’re telling me her wishing Darby was hurt but not killed wasn’t rude?”
“Yeah, that was a little nuts. Why didn’t you tell her about Darby?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted.
“Do you think she could be a suspect?”
“Maybe.” I’m not sure I really did, though. Gertrude is unpleasant, but imagining her hiding in the bushes with a gun was kind of far-fetched.
Carly hugged me goodbye and, as she turned, she ran headlong into the wall of muscle that was Eliot’s chest. She gasped as he grabbed a hold of her to make sure she wouldn’t fall backwards. “Be careful.”
“Thanks,” she gasped, taking in Eliot’s tall frame, tattooed arms and shoulder length brown hair. “You must be Eliot,” she announced.
I glared at her.
Eliot looked at me bemused for a second.
“I see Avery here has been talking about me.” He winked at me when he said it. He actually winked.
“I most certainly have not!” I glared at Carly, who at least had the good sense to look slightly abashed.
“I have to go,” she muttered, flashing her most winning smile at Eliot as she headed down the street. She mimed a telephone as she walked away. That was her signal to call her later in the night to tell her about my conversation with Eliot.
Like that was going to happen.
Eliot turned his attention back to me, I saw it linger on my now scabbed over palm before traveling up to my blue-green eyes.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.” I was having trouble meeting his gaze. I think that irritated me more than the fact that I fell in front of his store. I had nothing to be embarrassed about. He was the asshole in this situation, not me. What a welcome change that was.
Eliot made to reach for my hand and then stopped himself when he saw my quick intake of breath.
“I guess I better be going,” he said. “I just came here to pick up a quick lunch.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t want to take up too much of your precious time.” The words were out of my mouth before I even realized it. They sounded bitter – even to my ears.
Eliot narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Why would it mean anything?” I swear my voice had jumped an octave. An unpleasant octave, at that.
“Why are you mad at me?” He looked incredulous.
“Why w
ould I be mad at you? I mean, just because we had been spending time together I didn’t expect you to hang around while I recuperated from a madman trying to kill me!” Yep, I was bordering on shrill now.
“Is that what you think happened?” Eliot was outraged.
“No, what I think happened was that you had your fun and you’ve moved on. That’s what I think happened.”
I turned in a huff to walk away. It would have been a great moment if I hadn’t smacked into the newspaper box on the curb and been knocked sideways.
I turned to see Eliot hiding a smirk – and he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.
“Oh, you know what, go to hell!”
I stalked back towards my car. This time I managed to make the trek without turning around to see if he was still looking. I didn’t have to, though; I could feel his dark eyes burning a hole into the back of my head as I got into my car.
This was just not my day.
Four
After lunch, I decided I had better focus on the story. Even though I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter and I wasn’t going to half-ass it. If I was going to do it, I was going to do it right.
The first thing I did when I got back to the office was stop in the accounting department to get her address from her file. I noticed when I walked in that the women in the department were all grouped together in a huddle and crying.
“What’s going on?”
In unison, five different heads swiveled in my direction and gave me an incredulous look.
“Darby Pitts died,” one of the women barked out, and then proceeded to dissolve into body-wracking sobs. “She was shot in the parking lot this morning.”
“I know. Wait, Pitts?”
“Yes. Darby Pitts.”
“I didn’t realize that was her last name,” I admitted. “She should have changed that. It’s the pits.” I smiled at my own pun. No one else did. I tapped my imaginary microphone in my head, wondering if it was on. I didn’t think they’d find that joke appealing either, so I didn’t say it out loud.
2 If It Bleeds, It Leads Page 3
