“We went to Roller Derby.”
“Roller Derby! Razz my berries, Mazie, but that’s no place to take a date. Lester ought to know better.”
“Oh, not at all! It was my idea. Every woman on the Milwaukee team kissed Lester, and autographed her—umm—equipment for him. Then we went out for pizza with friends.”
Some friend. A friend who’d been all over her Saturday night—and yes, she’d been all over him, too, Mazie admitted to herself, when he’d turned on the Sexiest Man Alive charm and had his way with her. And since then? Not a call, not a text, not a smoke signal.
Oh, it made her cringe now, remembering how eagerly she’d responded to Ben Labeck. All the work she’d put in, making herself unavailable, demonstrating exactly how well she could get along without him—wasted. Labeck now knew that he had only to look at her in a certain way and she’d go crawling back to him.
Mrs. Pfister nervously played with a strand of her turquoise bead necklace. “Are you and Lester going out again?”
“He didn’t ask me.”
“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Pfister looked disappointed.
“But maybe I’ll ask him out,” Mazie said. “Women do these days, you know. You’d better eat your lunch now, Mrs. Pfister, before it gets cold. Meat loaf today—and spice cake, your favorite.”
She found Mrs. Pfister’s TV tray, set the lunch box on it, and opened the lid. The Elder Hearts meal planners chose combinations that were eye-pleasing as well as nutritious, and today the red meat loaf sauce contrasted nicely with bright green beans, buttery potatoes, blueberries, and the spice cake.
“Lester told you about his … his occupation?” questioned Mrs. Pfister.
“The porta potties?” Mazie smiled. “Yes.”
Mrs. Pfister sniffed. “So many women turn up their nose when they find out about Lester’s business.”
“Well, they shouldn’t.”
“Lester’s a nice boy. He’ll make someone a wonderful husband. He’s no great shakes in the looks department, not like your movie star boyfriend—what was he, Mr. Sexiest Fellow in the Universe or something?”
“Lester is worth a hundred of him,” Mazie said, swatting a housefly with a rolled-up newspaper, using a lot more force than strictly necessary.
Energized by anger, Mazie fairly flew through her rounds that day, delivering meals on schedule but still finding time to install a hanging planter for Loretta Zagelmayer, show Harlan Wertz how to charge his new cell phone, and advise Seymour Steiner which color shirt he ought to wear to his great-grandson’s wedding. She found Mrs. Singh’s straying tomcat—for about the hundredth time—climbed up on a rickety stepladder to install new batteries in Otis Kukliajohn’s smoke alarm, and helped Sylvia Fox when the severely arthritic woman got her arms stuck halfin and half-out of her too-small sweater. After her shift was finished on Wednesday evening, she drove Mrs. Doxstadder to her eye doctor appointment and purchased a rubber-bottomed rug to replace the rag rug beneath Millie Frenzel’s kitchen sink—an accident waiting to happen.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first put off their guard. Previous experience ought to have taught Mazie that, but she was still caught unawares when her life blew up.
Thursday started out well. Mazie was running only slightly behind schedule by the time she got to Mr. Steiner’s, her second-last stop of the day. She grabbed his meal out of the back of the van and hurried up his walk. The old man’s bad-tempered Chihuahua Pepe was outside in the yard, which struck Mazie as odd—Mr. Steiner let him out in the morning to do his business and then brought him back in, not trusting the neighborhood cats, who bullied Pepe mercilessly. The dog spotted Mazie and darted toward her, yapping in a dental drill tone and baring his teeth.
“Oh, simmer down,” Mazie told him. She knocked on Mr. Steiner’s door, but there was no answer. Usually the old man opened the door right away. He loved to talk, and once he got going, it was hard for Mazie to break away.
“Mr. Steiner?” Mazie knocked again, now certain there was something wrong. She let herself into the house. She found him sprawled on the floor between the kitchen and the hallway in a pool of spilled coffee, the mug still clutched in his rigid hand. Pepe ran over to him, licked his face, and whined, then, with that instinct to help in an emergency that all dogs possess, Pepe settled down to licking his private parts.
Mazie’s heart set up a crazed thudding. She hurried over and knelt next to Mr. Steiner. His eyes were closed, his face was gray and slack, and his chest was unmoving. He didn’t seem to be breathing. She couldn’t feel a pulse, but that might only be because her fingers were trembling so badly. She tilted his head and checked to make sure his airway was clear. Please don’t die, Mazie prayed, putting her mouth down over Mr. Steiner’s. She clamped his nostrils shut and breathed gently into his mouth, then recalled that nowadays chest compressions were thought to be much more effective than mouth to mouth. How did you do it? She’d taken a CPR course in prison. Trying to stifle her rising panic, she set the heel of her left hand on the man’s chest, her right hand atop her left, and began pressing down. One hundred times a minute, the same beat as “Stayin’ Alive.” Nothing. She did it over and over and over again. Still nothing. Should she call for an ambulance? No—not yet; it seemed more important just now to keep up the compressions.
A faint stir beneath her hands. A shiver ran up and down her entire body as the stirring grew stronger. A tiny tremor at first, and then a definite heartbeat. It was miraculous; it was like creating life; it must be what it felt like being God. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Hang on, tough guy,” Mazie whispered. “Don’t let go now, okay?” Seymour Steiner had been an infantryman in the U.S. Army during the Battle of the Bulge. Captured by the Germans, he’d been sent to a POW camp. When his captors had discovered he was Jewish, they’d transferred him to a munitions factory in Austria and forced him to dig underground bunkers. Beaten, starved, and deprived of daylight for eight months, he’d somehow managed to survive.
Mazie kept pumping for another minute. Her arms were getting tired—the compressions were surprisingly strenuous—then fished her phone out of her jeans pocket and dialed 911.
Nothing! She’d forgotten her phone had been out of service all week—stupid, useless piece of junk!
She ran into the kitchen and used the landline to dial the emergency number. The dispatcher, calm and coolheaded, instructed Mazie to keep up the chest compressions and assured her that an ambulance would be sent immediately.
She rushed back to Mr. Steiner and resumed the compressions. His heart was beating more strongly now. Color was seeping back into his face. His eyes flickered open, focused on Mazie.
“This what it takes to get a pretty girl’s attention?” he rasped.
Mazie smiled, stopped the compressions, and swiped at the tears in her eyes. She knew that the ambulance was coming because Pepe’s ears pricked up even before she could hear the siren. Barking, Pepe rushed to the door.
Seconds later, three paramedics rushed in, but Mr. Steiner refused to let go of Mazie’s hand. She held on to it, trying to stay out of the way, as the paramedics worked on him, set an oxygen mask over his face, then put him on a rolling stretcher and wheeled him out to the ambulance.
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” she whispered to the paramedic in charge, a freckled young woman wearing glasses.
“Hard to tell in these cardiac arrest cases, but you did the right thing starting the compressions.” The paramedic smiled. “In fact, you probably saved this man’s life.”
Mazie made sure to get the name of the hospital Mr. Steiner was being taken to, then went back into the house, found his son’s number, and dialed it. Someone who identified herself as Mr. Steiner’s daughter-in-law answered, a crisp, take-charge woman who listened carefully to all the information, said she and her husband would go straight to the hospital, asked Mazie to lock up the house, and told her that someone would stop by to take care of Pepe.
Mazie delivered her last Vittles Van meal
an hour and fifteen minutes behind schedule, to Horrible Henrietta, who was blotchy-faced with outrage. “You waltz in with this cold slop two hours late and expect me to eat it?” she spat.
“It’s still hot,” Mazie pointed out. “The insulated box keeps it—”
Henrietta ripped open the Vittles box and flung its contents in Mazie’s face. “I phoned your boss,” she snarled. “I hope you get fired!”
Mazie drove back to the office with a knotted stomach, stained clothes, and a feeling of apprehension. Mr. Thorndike would understand, wouldn’t he? She’d saved a man’s life today—he would take that into consideration. Wouldn’t he?
“See me ASAP. RT,” read the note pinned to her locker. It didn’t require a Magic 8 Ball to know what this was about.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Roger Thorndike was so tight-lipped when Mazie came in that his mouth had almost completely disappeared. “One of our clients just phoned me,” he said without even waiting for Mazie to sit down. “She said her meal was two hours late—”
“Mr. Steiner had a heart attack,” Mazie cut in. “I called an ambulance and stayed with him until the paramedics arrived.”
Thorndike stared at her, stony-faced, disbelieving. Did he think she was making this up? “Well, quite the heroine,” he said at last. “I suppose you think that excuses you.”
“I’m sorry. What was I thinking? I should have just let him die.”
“I see what you’re doing here, Ms. Maguire—trying to make this about me being heartless. Of course I have a heart. But I expect our organization to be run on a business model.” He made chopping motions on his desktop. “Promptness.” Chop. “Reliability.” Chop. “Efficiency.”
“Maybe you ought to just air-drop the meals from a helicopter.”
“Your cheap sarcasm is not appreciated. This incident today is simply the last straw. You have been consistently tardy in your rounds, Ms. Maguire. Furthermore, your appearance is unprofessional.” His nostrils flared. “Is that a blueberry in your hair?”
“This? No, it’s a new kind of conditioner.” Mazie picked the blueberry—collateral damage from Horrible Henrietta’s food-flinging tantrum—out of her hair and dropped it on the spotless surface of Thorndike’s desk.
Thorndike took a white handkerchief out of his breast pocket, and with an expression of extreme distaste, picked up the blueberry and dropped hanky and all into a wastebasket. He consulted another form on his desk, the goldenrod slip reserved for really serious offenses. “Something else has come to my attention. Is it true that you accepted a social engagement with a client’s relative?”
“Why? Now it’s against the law to go on a date?”
Thorndike steepled his hands beneath his set of chins. “Personal contacts between staff members and clients’ family members are strictly forbidden. You would know this if you had bothered to read your handbook.”
“But—”
“Then there are your other infractions.” Thorndike retrieved a stapled form from a file drawer. Moistening the tip of his index finger, he flipped to the second page. “You used company transportation to convey a Mrs. Ethel Doxstadder to her optician on Tuesday evening, did you not?”
“So what? She had no other way to get there. Her glasses broke—she couldn’t see.”
“Had something happened, had the woman broken her hip getting out of the van, the Elder Hearts organization could have been sued.” He stared icily at Mazie. “I’m going to have to ask you to hand over the keys to the van.”
Mazie dug the keys out of her purse. She hated that van; she was embarrassed to be seen in that van, but it was her Vittles Van, dammit! She knew its moods and quirks, knew it had to be gassed up before the needle reached one-eighth of a tank; that you had to pound on the dashboard to get the radio to play; that the heating and air-conditioning were reversed. She almost loved the stupid thing.
Thorndike laced his fingers over his basketball-bump midsection. “I deeply regret to say, Ms. Maguire, that your employment here is terminated.”
“Listen, you smug little prune—”
Thorndike held up a warning finger. “You’d best watch that fresh mouth of yours, young lady. Need I remind you that it is within my power to withhold your final paycheck? Which you will not receive until I determine whether you have committed any further infractions that affect my business.”
“Charity.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Elder Hearts is a charity. You know—one of the three virtues.”
He bristled. “Shall I have a police officer escort you off the premises?”
Mazie’s fingers itched. She wanted so badly to lunge across the desk and wrap her fingers around Roger Thorndike’s neck. But she kept her temper in check. Miserly as her paycheck was, she needed it and had no doubt that Thorndike would use any excuse to cheat her out of it. Fists clenched, Mazie stalked out of his office.
Cleaning out her locker only took a few minutes. She would have liked to say good-bye to her coworkers, some of whom had become friends, but she was afraid that if she did, she would break down. So she simply walked out of the building. Outside, she automatically headed for the van before remembering that it wasn’t hers anymore. She’d have to walk home. Even the three bucks for the bus was a budget-buster right now.
She was jobless, she had blueberry juice dripping down her neck, and she’d lost her wheels. She needed a shoulder to cry on. She needed Juju. Whipping out her phone, she dialed Juju’s number, only to have the “No Service Available” message pop up on the screen. She heaved a sigh. It had been two months since she’d sent in a payment to her cell phone provider. It had been a choice between paying for the phone or paying for groceries, and Mazie had chosen to eat. Her carrier obviously disagreed with her choice.
Stupid, greedy, rip-off phone company! Stupid, crappy phone! Her whole life was crap! She’d been canned, she probably wouldn’t get the back pay she was owed, and her ex-boyfriend treated her like a blow-up sex doll: use as needed, then deflate and stick in a closet.
By the time she’d walked the seventeen blocks back to her flat, Mazie was hot, sweaty, and thoroughly out of sorts. Maybe she could use Magenta’s phone, she thought. He was in Las Vegas this week, competing in a gay beauty pageant, and had asked her to keep an eye on the shop while he was gone. She trudged up the shop steps and opened the lobby door, which was never locked. A florist’s package was sitting there, looking a little worse for wear.
Mazie scooped it up. Using the spare key Magenta had left with her, she unlocked the front door and let herself into the shop. The flowers probably needed water, Mazie reasoned, so she was perfectly justified in ripping the wrappings off the floral arrangement.
Oh, spectacular! Pink roses, yellow dahlias, and white alstroemeria—all her favorite colors. They weren’t Magenta’s palette, though; whoever had sent the flower must not know Magenta very well. She set the arrangement atop the counter so that it would be the first thing Magenta saw when he came back. The address card had been lost, but as she wadded up the wrappings, a card fell out. She picked it up and examined it. It showed a teddy bear with one of his button eyes missing and a bandaged forehead. “Get well soon” was written in flowing script beneath. It was signed simply “B.”
Well, that was weird. Did Magenta have some disease he’d neglected to tell her about, but that this B was aware of?
The phone jangled. Magenta had it set to extra loud so he could hear it at the back of the shop and it made Mazie jump.
“M-Magenta’s,” she managed to get out as she snatched up the receiver.
“Mazie?”
“Johnny?”
“Hey, babe—I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, but your phone kept saying your number was disconnected.”
“I didn’t pay my bill.”
“Oh. So using my brilliant detective skills, I thought of your flamboyant buddy, Magenta. I’m glad I got hold of you. Everything okay with you?”
Mazie could pi
cture Johnny leaning back in the duct-taped swivel chair in his office, back in Quail Hollow. She sighed. “Not really. I just got fired.”
“That sucks. What happened?”
Mazie told him, keeping it brief, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Venting to Johnny felt good; he was an excellent listener.
There was a pause after she’d finished. Then Johnny said, “This is just my unbiased opinion, but your boss is a complete asshole.”
“Funny, that’s what I thought, too.”
“Now what do you do?”
“Job hunt,” Mazie said gloomily. What a depressing prospect: the long application forms, the phoning, the emailing, the snotty receptionists, the employers who said they’d call and never did.
“You should come home,” Johnny said.
“Back to Quail Hollow?”
“You know how a cop hears things? Well, I happen to know that the school district is looking for a middle school music teacher. You could apply.”
“Teach at the same school I attended as a kid? That would be weird.”
“Decent salary, insurance, benefits. And there’s an apartment available nearby, with a view of the lake. I saw a vacancy sign there the other day.”
For a moment the vision shimmered before her eyes. A steady job. A place within walking distance of her job. Being five minutes away from her family. She knew the exact apartment building Johnny was referring to, and it was pretty, with a tree-shaded backyard that Muffin would love.
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Mazie said cautiously. “Thanks for telling me.”
Johnny cleared his throat. “The other reason I called—besides wanting to hear your voice—isn’t so pleasant.”
Mazie’s heart gave an unpleasant thud. “Is it about Shayla?”
“About her cousin. Brandi Paulson, the barmaid. I just got a call from Milwaukee PD. They found Brandi’s body last night—she’d been murdered—shot and dumped in an alley.”
“Oh, God! Do they—”
“It was the Skulls, no questions about it.”
“But Brandi helped the Skulls, didn’t she? Told them where they could find Shayla?”
The Sexiest Man Alive: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance) Page 16
