by J. R. Ripley
I stepped out of the cramped bathroom that had never been intended for three people and turned my attention to Aubrey. ‘So how come Kelly looks like a Native American princess and you look like that girl from The Little Mermaid? Why aren’t the two of you dressed like ghouls? I look like something some grave digger just dug up.’
‘That’s the whole point,’ Aubrey said with a smile that I wasn’t feeling myself. Sure, she looked sexy in her flowing, form-fitting green skirt that looked like real fish scales with a spaghetti-strap sparkly purple top. ‘Contrast.’ She probably thought I hadn’t seen her wink at Kelly, but I had. Aubrey’s luxuriant orange-red wig was a wistful reminder of my own once-long red hair.
‘That’s right.’ Kelly’s chin bobbed up and down. ‘Contrast, Maggie.’
For Kelly, Aubrey had crafted a beautiful brown ultra-suede dress with short sleeves and a pointed hem with a darker brown fringe. The dress was trimmed in a three-inch-wide detailed tribal print of orange, yellow, purple and pale blue. Aubrey had even included matching arm and head bands with dangling feathers.
All that was missing was the bow and arrow with which Kelly could shoot me and put me out of my misery.
‘Whatever.’ I sighed. It was too late to change costumes now. Aubrey had offered to design and sew our costumes and this was Halloween night. I was stuck with it. ‘We’d better get out front and unlock the door.’ I put my hand on the swinging door.
‘Don’t forget your basket, Maggie!’ Kelly giggled as she thrust a woven basket that she had spray-painted black into my hands. A nest of spider web lay at the bottom.
‘Thanks,’ I said with a frown. I stopped in the passageway and looked down at my feet. Two brown, fuzzy spiders stared up at me where my shoes should have been. Aubrey had really pulled out all the stops.
It was going to be a long night.
I wondered how Detective Mark Highsmith was getting along. He had left the café in a huff – and with a significant limp. While I had offered to take him to get his foot looked at, he had insisted on driving himself to the Mesa Verde Medical Center, and that was the last I had seen of him.
Hopefully, the small matter of a smashed right big toe wouldn’t put a crimp in his beer drinking.
Kelly unlocked the door just as my mother pulled up at the curb. Mom’s metallic-green VW Beetle sported long black eyelashes over the headlights, a pink lips decal on the front bumper and an Aliens Onboard bumper sticker on the rear. And the Bug wasn’t dressed up in honor of it being Halloween. That was just Mom being Mom.
A two-inch-long milky crystal dangled from a silver chain lassoed around the rearview mirror. Mom said it was a good-luck charm. Funny how she’d added that right after getting the car back from the body shop after I had accidently driven it into a small boulder – well, not much more than a pebble really.
‘Hi, Mom!’ I wrapped my arms around her then stepped back. ‘You look adorable. Meow.’ I held up my right hand and clawed at a nonexistent scratch post. My mother had opted for one of her yoga outfits, a long-sleeved black leotard, to which she had added a pleated black skirt and black cat ears. A pair of black ballet flats protected her feet.
‘Thank you, dear.’ Mom tilted her head as she said, ‘And you look …’
‘Hideous?’ I suggested. ‘Gruesome?’
Mom chuckled. ‘Let’s say spooktacular.’
I groaned, although Kelly and Aubrey seemed to think my mother was a hoot because they laughed uproariously.
Mom handed me a grocery bag which was itself filled with several bulging sacks of assorted popular candies. ‘Thanks, Mom. We’ll be a hit.’
I turned the candy over to Kelly, who had come in from the back, but not before helping myself to a cherry Tootsie Pop and a KitKat. Aubrey turned on all the lights and I began cranking out the pumpkin spice beignets.
‘Will Connor and Hunter be stopping by?’ Mom asked. She adored her grandkids.
Mom also liked to comment that the boys were growing up too fast and how she only wished somebody else would provide her with fresh young replacements. Donna and Andy had insisted they were finished having children. That left little old me. Emphasis on the old.
According to my mom, if I didn’t have kids soon, I could be my own grandmother.
‘I mentioned we’d be having pumpkin-flavored beignets and treats and she said Andy would try to bring Hunter. I’m not sure about Connor. He’s attending a school dance.’
Though both of my nephews were homeschooled – Donna had been a school teacher in her previous life – they occasionally attended public school events as a way of making friends and maintaining those relationships.
The night flew by. Aubrey helped fill orders, Mom worked the register and Kelly kept everything stocked and cleared tables.
When I wasn’t busy frying beignets, I was busy scaring young children. It wasn’t my intention – it was the costume. At least my gruesome appearance didn’t appear to have put a dampener on anyone’s appetite for sweets.
In fact, I was thrilled with the crowds we were getting. It looked like it would be a big night for the town and a big night for me. Of course, I was giving the beignets and the candies away for free. I hoped it would lead to some new customers, not to mention some good word of mouth.
I was charging for drinks, and we did pretty well in that department.
Too bad I hadn’t had the espresso maker up and running. At least it hadn’t been harmed in the fall. Highsmith’s foot had softened the impact. Despite Aubrey’s absurd claim about the machine, I expected it would turn us a sweet little profit as soon as it was operational.
My brother-in-law, Andy Singer, came in at around seven-thirty with my nephew, Hunter. The boy was twelve years old, two years younger than his brother, Connor.
Andy is six foot four and skinny with long, dirty blond hair, frequently tied up in a ponytail. For as long as I’ve known him, a hemp bracelet has been tied around his right wrist.
Andy was a UCLA graduate and, as he liked to say, a reformed corporate attorney. Now he eked out a living, along with my sister, as an organic farmer and grocer. They both seemed happy to have given up high-powered careers, the flashy cars and the house in one of the best neighborhoods in Scottsdale for the slower pace of life in Table Rock.
‘Hi, Andy.’ I waved and looked at Hunter with a grin on my face. ‘What have we here?’
‘Hi, Aunt Maggie.’
‘Hunter, are you in there?’ I was gazing at a five foot green and leafy … something. Fake green fronds covered my nephew from head to toe. A fuzzy purple pompom sprouted from his head and fuzzy purple mittens covered his hands. Those hands clutched an old-fashioned burlap sack that bulged with treats.
‘What are you supposed to be?’ I asked. I was afraid to guess. I might hurt his feelings.
Hunter tugged at his costume. ‘I’m an artichoke.’
‘I think you look wonderful, baby,’ cooed my mother. She grabbed a generous helping of candies and chocolates and dumped them in his bag.
‘Thanks, Grandma!’
‘You’re welcome, baby.’ Mom turned to me. ‘Doesn’t he look darling, dear?’
‘Just darling,’ I replied, dutifully. ‘Can I get you men some beignets?’
‘We wouldn’t say no, would we, Hunter?’ Andy answered.
The artichoke shook noisily.
‘I’ll take that for a yes,’ I said. I got busy on their orders. Mom took a break and joined Andy and Hunter at a table for a few minutes while they ate.
‘Say hi to Connor for me!’ I called later as they left to resume their trick-or-treating. ‘And tell him to stop by! I’ll save some treats for him!’
The artichoke waved.
I took that for a yes, too.
At one point in the action, I looked up to see a large group of adult revelers in costume strolling loudly past the café. Aubrey had mentioned that Hopping Mad, a local brew pub up the street from us, was one of the designated stops for the Haunted Halloween Hop. I exp
ected that was where they were all headed.
Among the merrymakers, I spotted Mark Highsmith and Veronica Vargas strolling shoulder to shoulder. The detective, in his tall, silver-tipped black hat with the big, shiny silver badge on the front, stood out above the crowd like a beacon in a storm.
Jakob came in just before nine p.m. and waved to me from the back of the line of customers leading to the sales counter.
‘Come for the pumpkin spice beignets?’ I hollered above the din of the trick-or-treaters and grownups.
‘No. I came for my check. But since I’m here …’ He smiled. Jakob wasn’t handsome in a traditional sense. His teeth were slightly off but he had a pleasant oval face, a frizzy mop of brown hair with long, tapered sideburns and sharp yet welcoming green eyes.
‘Go for it,’ I said, ladle in hand. Heat from the fryer blasted my face. ‘Mom, can you hand Jakob his check when he gets up there? It’s under the till.’
‘Will do,’ she promised.
Several minutes later, Jakob wormed his way through the line and I handed him a paper plate with three pumpkin spice beignets atop it.
‘Thanks, Maggie.’ Halloween seemed to have made no impression on him. Like every other time I had seen him, he wore loose-fitting jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt. The only thing different about his attire this time was that there were less paint stains in evidence than usual.
‘My pleasure.’ I ran the back of my arm across my forehead.
‘Nice costume.’
I couldn’t help frowning every time somebody said that, and I couldn’t help it this time either.
‘What? You don’t like it?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Let’s just say that next year I’m in charge of making the costumes.’ I shot a meaningful look at Aubrey, who was filling a glass with lemonade, into which she plopped one blue and one red gummy eyeball. She pretended not to hear.
Jakob leaned over the glass divider. Despite the cloud of pumpkin spice in the air, I caught a hint of something musky. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen Nancy?’
I shook powdered sugar over what I hoped was my last order for the day. My feet were screaming, my knees buckling and my arms felt like my bones had been replaced with lead rods. ‘Nancy Alverson?’
He nodded.
‘No. I haven’t seen her.’ I set down the aluminum powdered sugar shaker and moved the plate to the waiting customers, a thirtysomething pair in normal attire accompanied by a sallow-skinned zombie with big yellow teeth and a bug-eyed green alien with black nostrils the size of vacuum hoses and a solitary antenna poking up from the center of his skull; their boys, or so I hoped.
‘Should I have?’
‘No. I knocked on her door and rang the buzzer. There was no answer. I was just wondering …’ He turned his head and looked out the window toward the building across the street. ‘Nancy mentioned that she comes in here sometimes.’
‘Come to think of it, when I told her we were having Halloween treats tonight, she said she’d come by.’ I wiped my hands against my apron, mixing sugar with faux blood stains. ‘Then again, we’ve been so busy, I might never have noticed if she’d come and gone.’
I turned to my mother. ‘Mom, do you remember seeing Nancy tonight?’
Mom slammed the register shut with her hip. ‘Who, dear?’
‘Never mind.’ Clearly, she didn’t know the young woman. I turned back to Jakob. ‘Sorry.’
‘No problem.’ He held up his plate. ‘Thanks for these.’ He patted his shirt pocket. ‘And for the check.’
‘Happy to be able to do both. Don’t forget to bring something new to fill that hole in the wall.’ I pointed to the space that the two-by-three-foot painting had occupied.
‘Soon,’ Jakob promised. He exited the café, balancing the plate of beignets in the palm of his left hand.
‘Time to lock up!’
Kelly was dancing between the tables with a damp cloth and a gray plastic bus tub, clearing and wiping. ‘Hallelujah.’ The Native American princess for the night set the tub on the table nearest the door and thumbed the lock. She turned the sign to Closed.
I thanked Mom for her help and sent her on her way. ‘Thanks for pitching in, Mom. We’ll get this.’ Mom worked in the café part-time, too. Her idea, not mine. Since she was a startup investor and had helped me out in more ways than I could ever count or hope to pay her back for over the course of my life, letting her work in the business was small payback.
‘Are you sure? I don’t mind staying and help you clean up.’
I grabbed my mother’s coat and helped her into it. I pushed her toward the door. ‘You’ve done more than your share already, Mom.’ I handed her a half-filled bowl of candy. ‘Here. Why don’t you take the rest of this home?’
Mom eyed the candy – millions of calories and billions of grams of sugar in each scrummy bite. ‘I don’t think I’d better.’ She pulled back her hands. ‘I won’t be able to help myself.’
‘Me either. Do you think Connor and Hunter would want the rest of this?’
‘Are you joking? I think they’d love it!’ Mom shook the bowl. ‘But can you imagine what Donna and Andy would say?’
My sister would say I was poisoning my poor, defenseless nephews. She would probably then dump the whole bowl of candy in the trash – the stuff probably wasn’t even good enough for her composter.
I couldn’t let all this lovely candy go to waste. ‘I’ll set a few pieces aside for Connor like I promised.’ I fished out several candy bars and a box of Cracker Jack.
How could Donna or Andy object to that? Corn and peanuts. Two vegetables. It was like a nutritious meal in a box.
I lifted the bowl in the air. ‘Anybody else want this?’
Kelly and Aubrey declined.
Mom took the bowl from my hands. ‘I’ll leave it in the community room.’ Mom poured the candy into a bag and dropped it in her purse. She lived in a sprawling condo complex. No doubt it wouldn’t take long for the candy to disappear.
We cleaned up as best we could. Kelly and Aubrey left together. Kelly had been dropped off by her brother and Aubrey was her ride home, although they mentioned they would be going to a friend’s party first.
As for me, Little Dead Riding Hood, I was dead tired. I had my Schwinn and would be pedaling home. However, there were a dozen beignets left, keeping hot under the infrared lights of the freestanding stainless-steel warmer next to the deep fryer.
During busy times like that night, we tried to stay ahead of the orders by having some beignets fried up in advance of the demand in an effort to cut down on the customer wait time, although beignets are delicate and it’s a fine line between precooked and rubber.
I’d had my fill and hated to throw the remaining beignets in the trash. There was a dim glow of light coming from Nancy Alverson’s apartment, visible from my window. I bagged up the remaining beignets, sprinkled them with sugar and sealed the bag. I’d deliver them to Nancy – my last treat of the day before going home to treat myself to a nice hot bath and a nice cold drink.
Margaritas and bubble baths. Two of life’s little pleasures, especially when enjoyed together.
Speaking of pleasures, I realized – as I wrapped my hideous black cloak around myself after double-checking that all the equipment had been properly shut down and the cash was in the floor safe – that this had been the best Halloween I had had in years. When my cheating, dead ex-husband Brian left me, I thought for a while there that my life was over. Little had I known that it was only beginning.
I crossed the street quickly. Traffic was lighter now. There were a few trick-or-treaters wandering around, high-schoolers by the looks of them, and they had barely bothered with costumes, opting for such simple gestures as high-school football jerseys and sexy cheerleader outfits, all bearing the Table Rock H.S. mascot, the roadrunner, with a football tucked under its wing.
A couple of lights were still on at Karma Koffee but the lavender neon sign above the storefront was dark and the sign
on the door had been turned to Closed as well. I didn’t see anybody inside the shop.
Squeezing between two tightly packed parallel parked cars at the curb, I crossed the sidewalk to the small door in the side of the speckled brown brick-fronted building.
A narrow, unmarked red door tucked in a small alcove in the brick wall protected the entrance from the elements.
I yawned, rolled up my sleeve and glanced at my watch. It was nearly ten p.m. Most days I was in bed by now. Hawking beignets and coffee for a living meant early rising – something I wasn’t cut out for. In my old life, I was rarely up before seven.
There was no chance of getting away with that now, what with employees and customers waiting. Not to mention a certain cat that lived with me and who would probably gnaw my toes off one by one if I didn’t drop some kibble in her dish at five a.m.
As I pressed the brass buzzer, I heard a rumble and felt a slight tremor. The door was windowless and there were no sidelights. I pressed my ear to the wood. ‘Nancy? It’s me, Mag—’
The door flew open without warning and a dark blue blur shot past me as if being chased by the Devil.
FOUR
Speak of the Devil.
I quickly recognized that blue blur. It was Veronica Vargas herself.
I jumped out of her way, bouncing off the rough brick alcove. ‘Veronica? What’s going on? What are you doing here?’
VV spun on her Victorian black, lace-up boots, her billowy blue satin skirt rustling as she lifted it with both hands. ‘You!’ she cried. ‘Get out of here before you ruin everything, Ms Miller!’
‘What do you mean?’ I hoisted the sack of beignets. ‘I’m only delivering these.’ I was taken aback. I didn’t know which was more frightening, VV standing there on the sidewalk screaming at me or the fact that she recognized me despite the dark shadows engulfing us and the Little Dead Riding Hood outfit I was wearing.
I narrowed my eyes at her. VV was costumed in a long-sleeved blue velvet top with a plunging princess neckline with a bustled peplum. The matching royal-blue skirt drifted to her ankles. A matching blue velvet hat was fixed on her head. Her elegant auburn locks hung in perfect curls. The hat was accented with a small bouquet of pink and white carnations.
