Uncommon Grounds

by Sandra Balzo

  “For God’s sake, I’m ten years older than he is,” I said as I got up to leave. “And I’m—”

  “More like fifteen years, by my calculations,” she corrected, following me to the door. “But unlike Caron and Patricia, you have every right to play around. Heck, you don’t even have to worry about getting pregnant anymore.”

  I stopped. Geez, could nothing involving age, marital status, or reproductive organs remain private in Brookhills these days? Leave it to Sarah to call a spayed, a spayed.

  I turned on her. “Here’s a pregnant thought for you, Sarah. Starbucks has like six thousand stores right this second. I say ‘right this second’ because they’ve probably added a couple since we started talking.”

  I held up a finger. “I have one store. And that one hasn’t opened yet. You want to give me advice?” Sarah just stared at me and I moved closer, happy to have her or anyone else on the defensive for once. “Tell me how I’m going to get the store open and profitable before I lose everything I’ve worked for over the last twenty years.”

  “I’m sorry, Maggy, but...”She stopped and backed off. I waited for the apology.

  But Sarah just sniffed and backed off some more. “Whoa. Better Butter Burger? Extra onions?”

  Arggh. I left. And I didn’t regret the onions—not one iota.

  As I pulled away from the curb in front of Kingston Realty, I saw Kate McNamara come tearing out of Town Hall. I thought perhaps Langdon was giving chase, but no such luck. Kate merely crossed the parking lot and slammed her way into the police station. What had set her off?

  Then again, Kate was the type of person who always acted like she had something important to do. Even if that something was covering a Tiny Tots’ dance recital in the high school gym. Of course, TT dance recitals were big events in Brookhills, where doting parents presented their four-year-olds with roses after the performances.

  Maybe I was just jealous. It had been a long time since anybody had given me roses.

  I drove the short distance down Civic Drive to the side parking lot of Uncommon Grounds. The store was situated in Benson Plaza on the corner of Civic and Brookhill Road, the main east/west drag in Brookhills.

  We had chosen that location because there was easy access from both Civic and Brookhill. In the coffee business, those morning commuters picking up their road cups were your bread and butter. You had to get them in and out fast.

  I turned into the Civic Drive entrance and pulled up next to the building, intending to use the service entrance by the trash dumpsters. It was the door Way had seen Caron using on Saturday.

  As I got out of my van, I saw Tony Bruno, the dentist who leased the space next to us. He was talking to someone standing just inside the door. Much as I liked Tony, I veered to the front, not wanting to talk to anyone just now. I had enough to think about.

  Both Caron and Patricia had been fooling around with Roger Karsten. I knew my reaction to the news probably had more to do with Ted and me, than with Caron and Roger or Patricia and Roger, but geez...

  As I rounded the corner to the front entrance of the store, I was relieved to see the police cars gone. The only remnant of Monday’s awful events was the torn end of the yellow police tape still tied to the light pole. I pulled at it, but the plastic only stretched, fixing the knot even tighter. I’d have to come out with a scissors later.

  Inside the scene wasn’t quite as normal. There was black powder everywhere. Fingerprint powder, I assumed, and the mess had been made worse by someone wiping at it with a wet paper towel. The towel, now black, still lay on the counter.

  I picked it up by one corner and gingerly dropped it into the basket under the counter. I wondered whether the fingerprint stuff was toxic. Not wanting to take any chances, I donned rubber gloves and got out the hand vacuum to get up the loose stuff.

  The floor had been cleaned up fairly well, despite Pavlik’s talk of body fluids. I looked at the now-vacant spot where the espresso machine had stood, and then at the counter still scorched black. The picture Pavlik had painted for me popped into my head, and the room threatened to start spinning. I grabbed at the counter to let things settle down a bit, to try to think of anything besides the way Patricia had died.

  Like Sarah and her crack about not having to worry about getting pregnant. And Little Ms. Tooth DeLay, who Ted said wanted to have “lots” of kids. He seemed delighted. Ted, the guy who didn’t want more kids. Who had talked me into getting my tubes tied last year, instead of getting a vasectomy himself.

  Yup, that did it. I was back to my usual self: angry and bitter. Which for me also meant efficient.

  I vacuumed first, then got out the buckets and disinfectant and cleaned the counter and floor. When I was done, I threw the rags into the wastebasket and followed them with the filter bag from the vacuum and, finally, my rubber gloves. Wanting it all hermetically sealed, I pulled the plastic liner out of the basket and tied it up tight.

  I checked the clock. It was just past 2:30. I still had a little time before the L’Cafe man arrived. Grabbing the trash bag, I headed to the back door.

  I pulled it open and let out a scream.

  Chapter Eight

  As my eyes adjusted to the dimness of the service hall, I realized the dark figure at the door was Pavlik.

  I wanted to scream again.

  Instead, I stepped back.

  “Ms. Thorsen,” he said, smiling as he came through the door. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Like hell he didn’t. But I could take the high road, too. “That’s all right. I was just cleaning up.”

  He looked around. “Good job, you would never know that a woman had died here.”

  So much for the high road. “Sheriff, if you have something to say to me, just say it. I’m not independently wealthy. I need this place. Everything I have is invested in it. If you think that’s hardheaded or heartless or whatever, that’s just too damn bad.”

  Pavlik’s jaw dropped. I shook my garbage bag at him. “Does this look like fun? Believe me, I’m not some socialite, playing at this. I’m separated. I have a son in college, a mortgage and a loan for this place that I used what little equity I have in my house to secure. If I lose this business, I lose everything.” Including what little self-respect I had left, apparently.

  Pavlik started to speak, but I was on a roll. “And as far as your little performance earlier, thanks for leaving me with an image of Patricia’s death that I’ll never forget. But I didn’t have anything to do with it. If you think otherwise, then arrest me. Otherwise stay the hell away from me.”

  For a second, Pavlik looked like he was thinking about that arrest part, then he shrugged. “I probably owe you an apology.”

  Talk about taking the wind out of one’s sails. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I was looking to stir things up.” He met my eyes. “At least from you I get some honest emotion, even if you’re a little...”He seemed to be searching for the right word. “...manic.”

  It appeared he’d found it.

  He held up his hand like he was going to ward off my protest, but there wasn’t much I could say to the charge. I was a little nuts these days.

  “Everyone here seems to be hiding behind these walls of propriety,” he went on. “Even Harper. His wife is dead and he’s inviting me in for cookies. Your friend Mrs. Egan is acting like I’m a gentleman caller, for God’s sake. It’s just plain spooky. What is this? Stepford?”

  “They can’t help it,” I said, thinking maybe this guy was human after all. He watched movies. Read books. Saw plays. “People here care about appearances. They’re interested in their children, their homes, their schools and their churches. Sometimes, I have to admit, I think that’s all they’re interested in.”

  That must have reminded Pavlik of something, because he flipped open his notebook and waved me over to a table. “Speaking of churches, Mr. and Mrs. Harper belong to Christ Christian, right? The priest over there—”

  “Langdon Sheph
erd,” I supplied. “He’s called a minister or a pastor. I think priests are mainly Catholic, and maybe Episcopalian, too. I’m not sure.” I was bubbling over with information, possibly because the subject wasn’t me, for once.

  “Sorry. I was brought up Jewish, so I don’t know the lingo.” His smile backlit his eyes, making them blue again. I had a sudden unholy thought and suppressed it. Go figure. Only a few minutes ago, I’d thought he was the devil incarnate.

  But Pavlik was getting down to business. “Anyway, Pastor Shepherd told me he’d seen Mr. and Mrs. Harper on Sunday and everything seemed fine. He also said Mr. and Mrs. Egan belong to his church.”

  I nodded.

  “Now when I spoke with Mrs. Egan, she said your building inspector left something behind on Friday.” His eyes darkened again. “Do you know anything about that?”

  The talk about church had been a diversion, but his eyes had tipped me off that the real question was coming. I shrugged. “I don’t know. I told you, I wasn’t here when he left. I suppose he could have. What did he forget?” It seemed a logical off-hand kind of question.

  Maybe not. The eyes got even muddier. “Didn’t you see it?”

  “No, I didn’t.” I left it at that. Embroidering the story without knowing what Caron herself had said could only get me in deeper.

  He studied me and then wrote something down. “I understand all of you were at the Harper house on Friday night.”

  I nodded, glad to get back into safer territory. “I told you—that’s why I had to get my dress from the dry cleaner. Patricia and David invited Bernie, Caron and me over to celebrate our opening.”

  Pavlik raised his eyebrows. “Just the five of you? You didn’t bring anyone?”

  Weird question coming from him, and one that was none of his business. So why did it make me feel like I was back in high school with no date for the junior prom? Then, I had burst into tears and hidden in the Girls’ Room. That seemed inadvisable now. Instead I just shook my head and said, “No.”

  Pavlik started to smile, but apparently thought better of it. “Tell me about the party.”

  I thought back to Friday night. Patricia had done it up right, of course. Canapés, grilled swordfish steaks with lemon and capers, three kinds of wine—all with corks—and a wonderful fresh fruit and cream—or was it crème?—thing for dessert.

  As perfect as the meal was, somewhere between the canapés and the swordfish, tension had crept in. Patricia seemed irritated with David; and David, for his part, was hustling all evening to try to smooth things over.

  Conversation had revolved around the opening of Uncommon Grounds. Bernie and David, bless their hearts, had even tried to appear interested as we talked coffee endlessly. We also discussed the election and the scheduled recount. Patricia had been shocked to discover from Caron, who always had bits of miscellany at her fingertips, that a tie vote would be resolved by a flip of the coin.

  At the time, I didn’t know why it had upset her so much. I’d assumed that the thought of something so important being determined by mere chance upset her nicely ordered view of the world. Now I realized that if the disputed ballot were a vote for Patricia, it could throw the election into a tie. A tie that would be resolved by a flip of the coin. It really did seem awfully...well, flippant.

  We also talked about April fifteenth coming up fast. I’d admitted that I hadn’t done my taxes and Patricia had taken the opportunity to needle David, who apparently hadn’t filed yet either.

  I filled Pavlik in on the evening, but left out any suggestion of an argument between Patricia and David. I didn’t think my vague impressions amounted to much. Maybe I’d ask Caron what she thought.

  I did pitch the election angle to Pavlik, though, outlining the invalidated ballot and the tie-breaking procedure. It was my turn to divert him from what I saw as his main targets: Caron and me.

  He was decidedly skeptical, though. “So you think this Rudy Fischer killed her to ensure a win in an election that he had already won?”

  “Well, it may not be that simple. Maybe he knows somehow that the invalidated ballot was a vote for Patricia.”

  “But from what you’ve told me that would only mean a tie vote. He still has a fifty-fifty chance of winning. Wouldn’t he wait until he knew the results of the coin toss before committing murder over it?”

  Ah, but it was all becoming clear to me now. “If he waited until after the recount and the coin toss and then killed Patricia, there would be a new election. He wouldn’t just be given the office by default.”

  “Uh-huh, and this Rudy is what, seventy-five years old?”

  “Seventy-two,” I mumbled. Patricia had made an issue of Rudy’s age in her campaign literature.

  “Do you suppose he even knows what an espresso machine looks like, much less how to re-wire one?”

  “Well—” I started.

  His point made, Pavlik moved on. “Now about Friday night. How did Mrs. Harper and Mrs. Egan seem to be getting along?”

  I’d been thinking instead of listening, a bad habit of mine, so at first I thought he was asking about Patricia and David, not Patricia and Caron. I opened my mouth, closed it, and then started all over again. “Fine. We were all excited about opening the store.”

  “Interesting.” That thud was the sound of the other shoe dropping. “Because from what I hear, they had plenty of reason to dislike each other.” He was watching me carefully.

  “Really?” I croaked.

  “You need to practice that. You’re not a very good liar. I find it hard to believe that you didn’t know that both of your partners were seeing the same man—unbeknownst to their husbands, of course.”

  Unbeknownst—good word. “Nobody told me, not until today.” I met his eyes. I might be bad at lying, but I was really good at telling the truth. “And to be honest, I don’t believe that either of them was aware of the other one. If they were, they were awfully good actors.”

  “Maybe one of them had reason to be.”

  “Right. Caron killed Patricia because Roger had broken up with Patricia and moved on to Caron. That makes a lot of sense,” I said sarcastically.

  But Pavlik was following the same train of thought Sarah had earlier. He got off at a different station. “Unless Mrs. Harper threatened to expose them. You said people here care about appearances. Maybe Mrs. Harper wanted Karsten back and threatened to go to Mrs. Egan’s husband.”

  Me and my big mouth. “So Caron killed her because it would be much better if Bernie found out she was a murderer, rather than an adulteress?”

  “It’s happened before, more times than you would want to know.”

  “Not here. Not Caron. I would stake my life on it.”

  “Maybe you are.” He seemed to be sizing me up. “If the saboteur wasn’t you, Mrs. Egan, or Mr. Karsten, then that leaves us with a random crime. That means you or Mrs. Egan could have gotten it just as easily.”

  There was a knock on the door. Through the window I could see a red truck backed up to the curb. Outside the door was a stocky man in his early fifties with a dark beard and a loaner espresso machine on a hand truck. It was Ed, the same technician who had installed the first machine, so I let him in.

  He went right to work and I went back to Pavlik. Not that I wanted to. I figured Ed was listening avidly from below the counter where he was unpacking the machine, so I kept my voice down. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” I asked Pavlik.

  “Why not?” he whispered back. “And there’s another point you might consider. Electrocution is an inexact art. If Mrs. Harper hadn’t been touching the countertop, or if the countertop and pitcher hadn’t been metal, it’s possible she only would have been injured.”

  “So you’re saying that it wasn’t necessarily a murder attempt? Then what was it?”

  Pavlik shrugged. “I don’t know. A warning maybe? It just seems an inefficient way to kill someone, if that’s what you’re trying to do.”

  “So...”

  “S
o, I’m still investigating.” He put away his notebook and stood up. “And in the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt for you and Mrs. Egan to be careful.”

  He pulled out his card and handed it to me. “Just in case.” He was out the front door before I could say anything.

  I was looking down at the card in my hand, when he stuck his head back in. “Hey!” Both Ed and I jumped. He was talking to Ed, though. “You’d better get new plates for this truck or you’re going to be pulled over.” Once a Chicago cop, always a Chicago cop.

  As Pavlik slid into his car, I saw Caron’s Volvo pull into the lot. Pavlik did, too, and he got back out to talk to her. The conversation didn’t take long and Caron was white-faced when she came in. I led her to a table away from Ed’s ears.

  “He told you, I assume?”

  Caron knew what I was asking. “Roger, that little creep,” she hissed back. “First Patricia, then me. I bet the whole town knows. You probably would have been next.”

  Ugh. Not in this lifetime. “Did Pavlik tell you how he found out?”

  She ran a hand through her short brown hair. “From two or three different sources, he said.”

  “Listen, Pavlik thinks this gives you a motive. I’ve been trying to come up with someone else who wanted Patricia dead.” Caron shot daggers at me. “Okay, okay, let me rephrase that: I’m trying to think of anyone who may have wanted her dead.”

  Caron looked miserable. “Like who?”

  “I don’t know. Rudy, or Roger, or even Way? He seemed awfully eager to tell the police he saw you there on Saturday.”

  Caron was considering. “You know, the sheriff asked me about Patricia’s party on Friday night.”

  “I know, he asked me, too. I told him about Rudy and the election and the coin flip, but he didn’t seem to think that Rudy was capable of this.”

  Caron sighed, and I went on hurriedly. “I didn’t tell him about the argument Patricia and David seemed to be having. Or was I imagining the tension in the air?”

  “No, it was there all right. We got to their house before you did, and Patricia was all put out about the television being on. You know how guys are, you invite people over and they think it’s perfectly acceptable for everybody to sit down and watch TV.”