Uncommon Grounds

by Sandra Balzo

  Uncommon Grounds

  A Maggy Thorsen Mystery

  Sandra Balzo

  Copyright © 2004 by Sandra Balzo

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  To Bob Hoag,

  who took an 18-year-old typist who couldn’t type

  and taught her how to write instead.

  Chapter One

  I was late the Monday we were scheduled to open Uncommon Grounds. Patricia would be steamed, I’d thought as I pulled open our front door. Who would have guessed?

  Patricia Harper lay in a pool of milk on the floor in front of the espresso machine—face up, blue eyes staring at everything and absolutely nothing. On the floor next to her was the stainless steel frothing pitcher from whence I assumed the spilt milk had come.

  I knew I should do something—I just wasn’t sure what.

  I touched Patricia’s arm gingerly. Still warm. So what did that mean? Barely dead? Barely alive? Could you stare like that and still be alive? My other partner, Caron Egan, made a whimpering noise behind me.

  Okay, okay, do something, Maggy I told myself, slipping my hand under Patricia’s blond hair and repositioning her head to open up the airway. Then I turned toward Caron, who had closed her mouth but hadn’t moved much of anything else. “Call 911, dammit.”

  No response. From either of them.

  Now I was getting a little ticked. After all, Caron had been there first. She should be the one on the floor, kneeling in milk and something very much worse. The least she could do was contact the EMTs.

  “Call 911, dammit,” I tried again.

  The little “dammit” seemed to do it. Slowly Caron came to, like a mime playing at waking up. First, her mouth moved. Then her head waggled from side to side. Then her hands waved. Finally, her feet began to move and walked the rest of her body back into the office to the phone.

  Now if only Patricia would get up and do the same.

  Fat chance. I leaned down and put my ear next to her mouth to listen for breath sounds.

  “Maggy?”

  I jumped. The voice calling my name came from the office, though, not from the woman in front of me. Caron’s hands were shaking as she came out into the store carrying the phone. “They want to know the address.” She put one hand to her forehead. “I can’t remember...”

  I hated to admit it, but I couldn’t remember the number myself right now. “Brookhills is a town of six thousand people,” I told her. “They should be able to find us. Tell the county dispatcher we’re on Brookhill Road.”

  But Caron just raised the phone high above her head and gave it one hard shake.

  I wasn’t sure what that meant. “Why don’t you go outside and look above the door for the number,” I suggested. Maybe the fresh air would do her some good.

  Speaking of fresh air...I pinched Patricia’s nose closed, took a deep breath and blew into her mouth three times. Then I sat back on my heels. No go. Okay, so maybe I should try chest compressions.

  I thought back to the CPR classes I’d taken fifteen years ago, the year Ted and I bought our Brookhills house. With a three-year-old son, an inground pool was the last thing I’d wanted at the time. But Ted, my about-to-be ex-husband, had assured me everything would be “just fine.” Then he patted my hand.

  I promptly added a million-dollar umbrella to our homeowners’ policy and bought the most expensive pool alarm I could find. Then I enrolled Eric in swimming classes and myself in CPR. I believe in preparing for the worst, and now—just fifteen years later—it was paying off.

  Okay, so what was it again? Five chest compressions to one breath? Three to one? Or was that for two-person CPR? Through the window I could see Caron still dancing around outside with the cell phone, trying to read the numbers above the door in the dawn light. I was on my own, I guessed.

  I settled for three to one, figuring more was always preferable to less, and got to work, stopping every once in a while to check for a pulse. The muscles in my arms were already starting to burn when I heard the bell on the door tinkle. Caron at last—I’d make her help.

  But she wasn’t alone. Although I couldn’t see who it was from my position on the floor behind the counter, I could hear a male voice rumbling. The police, I assumed, and in record time.

  “Congratulations, ladies!”

  I sat back on my heels.

  “I wanted to be your first customer, and I come bearing gifts. Where’s Patricia?” The voice was getting nearer now, just on the other side of the counter. “Do you have a vase for these? Let me put them in water for you.”

  Too late, I identified the speaker: David Harper, Patricia’s husband, and from the sound of it, he was rounding the corner and Caron wasn’t doing a thing to stop him. I dropped Patricia’s head unceremoniously and jumped to my feet to block his view. “Wait—”

  He stopped, seeming to realize something was wrong.

  “David.” I looked at his pleasant face, at the tissue-wrapped bouquet in his hands, and then, miserable coward that I am, I fell back on cop show cliché. “David, there’s been an accident. Patricia...” I let it drop there.

  David was no fool. He knew his part. “Patricia? Where is she?” He pushed past me and looked down. “Oh Lord, no. How...how?” He dropped the flowers and pulled her to him, sobbing.

  I wasn’t sure what to do, so I picked up the bouquet and took it over to the sink. I was moving carefully now, feeling like time had slowed to a crawl the moment David had arrived. The bright green of the tissue paper, and the purple and yellow of the flowers inside it, seemed intrusive, like an element of color introduced in a black-and-white film.

  It was a spring bouquet—daffodils, irises and tulips—that must have come from a florist. It was only April first, and our bulbs were still trying to push their way through the frozen ground. Spring flowers, like the first robin, were a sign of hope in Wisconsin. But not this year. Not for David, and not for Patricia’s two kids.

  The bell on the door tinkled again, and time re-asserted itself. Though I hadn’t heard the sirens, Gary Donovan, the Brookhills police chief, had arrived with one of his officers. They looked like they had been rousted out of bed.

  Right behind Gary were two EMTs loaded down with red metal boxes. They pushed past the rest of us to get to Patricia. One of them, a sturdy, dark-haired woman, knelt down next to David and asked him to let them examine his wife. Gary pulled out his notebook and turned to me.

  “What happened, Maggy?” Gary stands about six-foot-two, has a chest like a bull and a jaw like Jay Leno.

  “It’s Patricia Harper.” I kept my voice low, not wanting David to overhear for some reason. Like he didn’t know it was his wife on the floor.

  The female paramedic was shining a penlight in Patricia’s open eyes. It made my own hurt just watching.

  “Non-responsive,” I heard her say.

  Gary was waiting. No more explanation of the “who” was necessary, since everyone in Brookhills knew the Harpers. David’s father had been a town founder. I turned to the “what”: “She’s dead. I mean, I think she is. I couldn’t find a pulse. I did CPR, but...”

  Gary moved past me to look at the scene behind the counter. “David just arrived,” I explained. “He brought flowers for our...” I gestured toward the bouquet in the sink, and my voice broke, “grand opening.”

  Gary grabbed a stack of napkins from the co
ndiment cart behind him and handed them to me. I, in turn, handed some to Caron who was quietly sniffling at a small table to my left.

  The EMTs were already packing up their equipment when I turned back, and Gary left me to talk briefly with them. David was next to Patricia again, mumbling something that might have been a prayer. I watched as Gary waited for David to finish and then gently moved him away.

  Gary is about the calmest, most reassuring, man I know. He headed security for the events I coordinated when I was special events manager at First National Bank, a large financial organization in the city. Gary liked kids and dogs. He talked to plants. But even Gary couldn’t make this right.

  David’s face was stark white under the freckles. “Why? Why?” Gary just shook his head helplessly.

  I touched David on the sleeve of what once had been an impeccable Armani suit. “David, come over here and sit down.”

  I led him to another table and handed him one of my napkins. I almost offered him a cup of coffee, but that would have meant stepping over Patricia’s body to reach the pot. I glanced out the window instead.

  On the other side of the glass, our papergirl was straining to see in. When our eyes met, she stepped back, dropped the paper on the mat and ran like hell. I would have given anything to follow. I checked my watch—almost 6:30 a.m. Any minute now our first customers might come through that door, expecting a latte or a road cup and find...this.

  I moved over to the lanky young cop who had come in with Gary. “Matt, it’s almost opening time. Should we lock the door or what?”

  Matt glanced at Gary, who was still at Patricia’s side. “I’ll go out front and keep people out. Let me know if the chief needs me.”

  I nodded and approached Gary and Patricia, or what used to be Patricia. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was looking at a life-sized mannequin instead. Her color seemed to be fading, the powdered blush on her cheekbones standing out as her face paled.

  Willing myself to look away, I studied the counter where Patricia had been standing. She evidently had started to make herself a latte, hence the pitcher on the floor and the gallon of milk sitting on the stainless steel counter next to the sink. The heavy glass mug containing Patricia’s double shot of espresso stood next to the milk.

  Patricia adored her lattes. I could hear her saying it now, in that slightly Southern accent she’d retained from her childhood. “I ahhdore my lah-tays,” she’d drawl before taking her first sip.

  When Caron and I had decided that Brookhills needed its own coffee house, she had introduced me to Patricia over lattes in hopes she would be the third partner we needed to make the project viable. Patricia had agreed—also over lattes—and now here we were again. Over lattes. But this time it was an ending, not a beginning.

  I imagined Patricia coming into the store this morning and making her “lah-tay,” probably planning to drink it as she waited for us to arrive. The store would have been quiet and dimly lit by the backlights as she brewed the shots and poured them into the mug for what she called her “plain brown latte”: just skim milk and espresso—no sugar, no cinnamon, no nutmeg, no flavoring, no nothing. Not even foam on top.

  Pouring the milk into the pitcher, she would have begun to steam it and then...then what? Had she had a heart attack? A stroke? Patricia seemed way too young for either, but maybe I felt that way because she and I were the same age.

  Forty-two was young, right? Not that I wasn’t getting older by the minute. Unlike poor Patricia. When people die, we always look for reasons it happened to them and won’t happen to us. He smoked and got lung cancer. She drank and drove. But Patricia? What did she do to deserve this, besides being a royal pain in the butt sometimes?

  And God knows if that were justification enough, all three of us would be lying there on the floor.

  I looked back down at my former partner. Then I looked again. On the palm of her left hand was a bull’s-eye, but reversed. White in the center with the outer ring a fiery red. I moved in closer for a better look.

  “What’s that on her hand?” I asked quietly in Gary’s ear.

  He jumped—he’s not used to me breathing in his ear, it’s not that kind of relationship—and stood up. Then he steered me toward the sink and away from Caron and David. “I think it’s a burn.” He kept his voice low, too.

  A burn? From the milk? It was one heck of a burn to get from steamed milk, which is heated to only about 160 degrees for lattes. I told Gary so.

  “I’m no expert on burns,” I went on, reaching out for the frothing wand, “but I wouldn’t think that—”

  Gary grabbed my arm. “Don’t touch anything, Maggy. Something’s wrong.” He pointed to a dark spot on the otherwise spotless counter. “Was that here before?”

  I leaned over to look at the fine black powder. “No, what is it?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t be sure, but it looks like a scorch mark.”

  I looked sideways at him as he continued. “I have the medical examiner on the way. We’ll know more when he gets here.”

  I opened my mouth, but Gary kept right on going. “I’ll need to talk to you and Caron, but I’d like to do that without David. You go, and I’ll call you later.”

  “Should we drive David home?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “I need to get some information from him now.”

  “Gary, what do you think—”

  “I don’t know what I think yet, Maggy. When I do, I’ll let you know.”

  Right. I tossed my last napkin, which I’d twisted into a frayed rope, into the wastebasket. Only two torn sugar packets sullied the spanking new navy blue basket that Patricia had chosen because of how nicely it tucked below the counter.

  On the shelves above the basket stood five cream-colored bud vases waiting to be filled with fresh flowers and placed on five perfectly-positioned navy tables. The cream pitcher was there, too, where we wouldn’t forget to fill it and put it on the condiment cart. Which was also navy.

  Cinnamon, nutmeg and cocoa shakers were in their place on the cart, next to small baskets of napkins, stir sticks and individual packets of raw sugar and artificial sweeteners.

  We had planned carefully for this first day, so everything would be perfect. So there wouldn’t be any surprises.

  I sighed, gathered up Caron and headed out the door.

  Chapter Two

  Of course, we couldn’t just go home. A knot of people stood outside the front door of Uncommon Grounds. The crowd we had prayed for when we planned our opening had arrived. Some for coffee, but most probably drawn by the sirens and flashing lights. And all, unfortunately, standing between us and my car.

  Matt was patiently explaining that Uncommon Grounds would be closed until further notice. Rather than achieving his goal of dispersing the crowd, his words only seemed to whet people’s appetite for news. Small towns were small towns, even places like Brookhills that preferred to think of themselves as “exurbs.” Best I could tell, exurbs were where rich people fled when even the suburbs weren’t suburban enough.

  I spotted a couple of familiar faces in the crowd. Laurel Birmingham was the Brookhills town clerk. A tall redhead, Laurel would have been termed statuesque in more politically incorrect times. At five-foot ten inches, she had about six inches and thirty pounds on me, all placed pretty much where they belonged. I liked her anyway.

  I wasn’t so sure about Laurel’s boss, who stood next to her. Rudy Fischer owned the barbershop on the corner of the mall and had just squared off against Patricia in a fiercely contested battle for the part-time office of town chairman. Rudy, the incumbent, had won by a single vote, resulting in a recount that was scheduled for tomorrow. I supposed with Patricia dead it was a moot point, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  Rudy represented the old guard in Brookhills, the original inhabitants who had built sprawling ranch homes of cedar and fieldstone into the hills. Now, twenty-five years later, trendy, extremely pricey houses were springing up all around the gracefully
aging original homes.

  Property taxes were skyrocketing, forcing some of the now-retired Brookhillians to sell and move. To make matters worse, there were so few vacant lots left in Brookhills that the old homes often were purchased for the land they stood on and summarily bulldozed to make room for yet another white bread mansion.

  I had some sympathy for the old guard. My house—actually my former house, where Ted and I had raised our son, Eric—had been one of the originals. Even after twenty years, the neighbors continued to call it the Bernhard house, after the first owners. The Bernhards were long gone. We were gone too, now.

  Ted and I had always shaken our heads over friends who had jumped ship during the rocky times of their marriages. How could they break up their families? We swore we would never do that to Eric.

  A man of his word, Ted waited until the day our son went off to college to tell me about Rachel, a twenty-four-year-old dental hygienist working in his office. He was sorry, he said as he patted my arm, but he preferred to spend the rest of his life with her.

  But this was no time to speculate on how long, or short, I hoped that life might be. I was feeling desperate to get home. Laurel caught sight of us first.

  “Maggy, what is going on? Matt won’t tell us a thing. Is someone hurt?” Laurel was Brookhills’ information pipeline and she required regular feeding.

  “It’s a fine situation when the police won’t inform the town chairman,” Rudy muttered, glaring at Matt.

  I motioned them over to one side. As we moved, I swear the entire crowd leaned in our direction.

  “There’s been an accident,” I whispered. “Patricia was hurt. I really don’t know any more than that.”

  I turned to Rudy. “I’m sure Chief Donovan will be reporting to you as soon as he—” I stopped as an unmarked car pulled up, stick-on light flashing. Two men got out.

  The man in the passenger seat was Kenneth Williamson, the county medical examiner. The driver of the car was a stranger to me. Probably just under six feet, he had black curly hair and eyes the same dirty gray color as the car he drove. His attitude conveyed authority.