by Misty Simon
He laughed, the bastard. “All right, I’ll play along this time. The guy in the parking lot was the trumpet player from the band. No clear cause of death yet since he was shot in the shoulder. Horace is beside himself because they’re booked through February and have to have a trumpet player. Hey, he wanted me to ask if you thought Ben would be available to fill in for a little while.”
“Ha. You’ll have to ask Ben.” I paused. “And, oh, there’s my doorbell, gotta go, have Bella call me.” I hung up on Jared sputtering and went to go dress. No one was at my door, of course, but now I had some of my information verified. And I didn’t have to tell Jared I had nothing else to contribute. Sometimes I amaze even myself.
****
The amazement didn’t last long, of course. When does it? I ran over to Martha’s house and tried to corner Horace again to see if he had told Jared anything I didn’t already know. The man was snoring away on the couch, and Martha had taken to sitting in her kitchen. Was that the faint smell of smoke in the air?
I knocked on the back door and Martha hustled me into the kitchen, shushing me the whole way along the mudroom. “Please, don’t wake him up,” she whispered, and I got the distinct smell of smoke again. Was Martha smoking? Huh. I don’t think I had ever seen her taking a drag of a cigarette. Maybe this was a new habit, maybe it was Horace-induced. I had been about ready to hit the bottle last time I’d had to talk to him. If he lived in my house, I’d probably take up smoking, too.
“Are you smoking?” Nothing like throwing it all out onto the table and not worrying about niceties. Well, at least I hadn’t shouted it and woken Sleeping Beastie.
“Yes.” Her faded eyes dared me to say a single nasty thing, or give her grief.
“Oh, um, okay.” I held my hands up to ward off her foul temper. “I was just asking. Wanted to make sure your house wasn’t burning down and we didn’t know.”
She threw herself onto a bar stool at the breakfast counter in the middle of the kitchen. “Damn it, I hate this.” She thunked her head down onto the smooth surface. “I haven’t smoked since my bastard of an ex-husband left, but I am truly about to lose it.”
I sat down on a stool and took Martha’s hand in mine. I wasn’t normally the one people came to with their personal problems, but I could definitely try to put myself into a different place. “I’m really sorry. I wish there was more I could do.”
She waved it away with the other hand. “I know you’re doing everything you can. It wouldn’t be so bad if the bitch hadn’t moved in.” Her voice rose higher with each word, but she shushed herself this time. Then she took a deep breath and said, “His wife came last night, and if there is anyone I can’t stand even more than Horace, it’s Doris.”
“What’s she up to?”
“What isn’t she up to? She’s been skulking around the house and checking out all my stuff. I had to hide the silver from her when I found her trying to pocket a spoon this morning. And if I have to hear one more time about poor Horace and how I’m not doing enough for him, I might punch her in the face.”
“I can understand. Geez, that’s a pain in the ass.” What else could I say? I wasn’t completely sure what my lines were supposed to be.
“I’d like to give her a pain in the ass. She was going through my linen closet about an hour ago and telling me I didn’t have a high enough thread count for her delicate skin. Christ, thread count!” She shook her head. “And I doubt half her skin is even in the place God intended, so how can she feel anything?”
This was new and exciting gossip—I mean, information. “What do you mean, her skin’s not in the right place?” Intriguing but actually disgusting if you thought about it too long. But let’s not think about it; let’s get back to what it means, shall we?
“Just that. Doris has had enough tucks to be an army bed. I’m pretty sure she’s blowing her nose out of her belly button at this point.”
I gave a horrified laugh, one of those ones where it really isn’t funny but you get caught off guard and can’t help it. It turned into a snort when Martha joined me.
“Oh, Ivy,” she said as she leaned against me for support. “You’re good for me, girl.”
And wouldn’t you know I glowed with pride? “Thanks for saying that, Martha.”
She looked into my eyes, and I had no idea what she saw there, but she smiled at me. “You’re welcome, sweets. You are good for me; your whole family is. If only I could get rid of my own.” She sighed.
I sighed with her. I’d had some of those very same thoughts a month or so ago, but now my dad and I had a better understanding of each other and respected each other. At least that’s what I thought until he came bustling into the kitchen.
“You’re not working fast enough.” He halted at the counter and pressed his fingers so hard against the wood I thought he might actually leave fingertip impressions. “Why is that man still on my couch and you’re in here leaning against my woman?”
His hair, what little there was left, was standing up on end. He looked like he’d tangled with a live wire and lost. And so much for that respect thing. He glared at me, then took away the plate of chocolate chip cookies Martha had pulled over from the center of the island. “You will not have any of these until that man is off my couch. You shouldn’t be sitting at all. You should be out looking for the culprit.”
“Stow it, Dad. I am working. And I don’t need you to take the cookies away.” I snatched one from under his hand.
He tried to snatch it back, and Martha smacked him on the arm. “Leave it, Stan, she is working. We were just talking about the other new guest we seem to have gotten.”
“Ms. Plastique? She’s a handful, even though there’s not much of her.”
“Not much of her that’s real,” Martha said, snickering.
Dad snickered, too, then reached over to give her a quick kiss that turned into something more, right before my horrified eyes.
“Quit it, quit it.” Ick!
Dad broke first. “Oh, all right. Back to the Hounds of Hell. And you need to get your tail busy out there, young lady, so I can get some quiet in the house. Why were we talking about Doris?”
“I was telling Ivy about the thread count thing.”
Dad got this speculative look in his eye. Before I could ask what he was thinking about, he started pacing and rubbing his chin. All he needed was a long curving pipe. “Didn’t Horace say they didn’t have any money and that’s why he was staying with us? Why he wanted us to take care of him while he recovered?”
“Yes,” Martha said, drawing the word out.
“Then how does Doris know so much about expensive things, and how is she wearing that expensive ruby on her finger?”
I thought I might know some of the answer to that, and it had to do with the smiling Horace walking out the door of the bank with his fan of money when there wasn’t supposed to be any at all.
I needed to get some answers. If I wanted any peace of my own, I needed them soon. This mess wasn’t going to sort itself out. Regardless if the rest of my life was falling apart, I was not going to make Dad and Martha suffer more than they needed to. Plus, if I worked hard on this, then maybe Martha would be able to concentrate long enough to get me some answers about what was going on with the town’s women.
****
After very little introspection and much chagrin, I screwed up my courage and called Ben. Maybe I was blowing this all out of proportion. It could be he really hadn’t noticed the squealing women at the window. I didn’t know anymore, but I wanted us to talk in a neutral place where I couldn’t be distracted by his sexy body. Hopefully, we could settle this once and for all.
So I asked him to meet me at the diner to have lunch. Once there, our table quickly became the most popular one in the entire place. I got scooted (read: shoved) across the seat three separate times so girls could sit down next to me. They completely ignored me as they drooled in my cherry pie while basking in Ben.
Not that he responded.
Not really, anyway. But how could one man be so completely clueless that women were very near to ripping his clothes off? I was having a hard time believing he was that naïve, not when he used to be such a playboy. And didn’t he realize they weren’t going away and wouldn’t even look at me other than to tell me to move over?
“Hey!” I finally yelled after trying to elbow one particularly thin and pushy broad. She’d knocked my fork to the floor and now I couldn’t even eat my pie, since no waitress had come over in about ten minutes. The two waitresses on shift today were married, after all.
“Move your asses!” Okay, I didn’t actually say that part, but I kept sending Ben “the eye” to say it for me.
And then he finally—finally—stepped up to the plate. Kind of. “All right, everyone, let’s move along.” He gave a little laugh. “I’m trying to have lunch with Ivy, and you’re making it very hard for me to nibble her as my entrée when you’re hanging around.”
Finally!
“Thank you,” I said three minutes later when the last floozy left, simpering at him while shooting visual daggers at me.
“Hey, you’re welcome.” He straightened an arm over the back of the booth. “No skin off my nose. Plus, they were getting pushy.”
So was this where I told him they wouldn’t have been so pushy if he didn’t egg them on? Was this where I told him if he made himself less accessible and less friendly they would probably stop bugging him? Didn’t he notice everyone seemed to flock around him when they used to leave him alone?
But I remembered his words to me about not trusting him and tempered my first response. Biting my tongue, I waded in. “Um, Ben, haven’t you noticed more women than normal are hanging around you—kind of like flies on sticky paper?”
“Nah, it’s just that we’re out and about more since we’re looking into the murder.”
Hello? I was the one looking into the murder, and every time had not been a public place, witness the peeping Terrys in my window.
You know what, though? I had a feeling this conversation was going to make me want to throw up, on top of doing absolutely nothing to help the situation. Deciding to marshal my forces and work on it later, I moved on.
Wolfing down the last of my pie—with the new fork that I’d finally managed to flag a waitress down for—I made my excuses and tried to give Ben a quick kiss on the head before I headed over to the shop.
But, as I tried to give my nonchalant and non-sexy kiss, Ben had other ideas. He grabbed my cheeks (the ones on my face, dirty birdy!) and pulled me in for a full frontal tongue assault. He swept me away, taking me on a journey that made my knees weak and my arms tremble.
When he finally let me up for air, he winked at me. “I’ll see you later on tonight, if you have time.”
“Oh, I’ll make time,” I said, going in for one more quick kiss and hoping this one would also turn into a mini love fest. I wasn’t disappointed. And this time when I came up for air, I also came up to loud clapping and hooting from the male patrons.
I bowed my way out the door even though a huge blush probably covered me from head to toe. I ran down the street as fast as my chunky legs could carry me, but I felt like I was floating. Ben still wanted me, no matter who hung around and drooled over him. Life was good. Life was great. Life, of course, would bite me in the ass as soon as I turned around.
****
“Ladies, ladies!” The crowd from the diner had found its way to The Masked Shoppe. Without Ben there, they obviously felt they could drop the manners and be their normal, completely unlovely selves. “Please, watch what you’re...dammit! I told you not to… Oh!”
Now, this scene could have been everyone clamoring to get to the cash register at the same time and dropping their money straight into my coffers. But this is me, after all, so it was actually the scene of four women fighting over the same midnight blue crotchless teddy. The straps were the spaghetti variety, and the rest of the thing was pretty much see-through lace.
I wasn’t against selling it to any one of them, but I only had one. Seriously, it wasn’t bothering me as much. He wanted me, and me alone. We at least had talked about that before I left the diner. He wasn’t going to sleep with anyone else. I rocked his world, and he loved me. I’d convinced myself to take a chill pill and not worry about it. In fact, I could sit back and secretly laugh at all these women who thought they had a chance with Ben. The competition over my man was actually very good for business.
Except for when Missy Jones went for Amy Brennen’s hair with a vengeance and ripped the midnight-blue scrap in the process.
“Hey! Someone is going to pay for that.” The negligee floated to the floor in pieces, and the back room emptied out in record time. Well, I’d be sending a bill. It wasn’t like I didn’t know where these “ladies” lived.
I spent a few moments trying to tidy up after the hurricane of hussies, and then I heard the bell out front tinkle. Maybe it would be another Ben fan looking for something sexy, but what I faced was a middle-aged woman covered with jewels and dripping disdain as she minced her way across my sales floor. Great. Who was this, and what did she want? Hopefully, she wasn’t a Ben groupie. Ew!
I put on my proprietress face and smiled until my cheeks hurt. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”
“I’m not a ma’am.” The voice completely did not match the image she projected. The image was high society, the voice burly trucker.
“Okay.” I didn’t draw the word out because I didn’t want to offend this person, whoever he or she was.
“I’m here to talk to Ivy Morris. I’m Doris, and Martha told me I could find you here or at the pie counter.” She gave me a once-over that made me feel like I was seriously lacking. “If I’d known what you look like, I would have started at the pie counter.”
I stared at her, completely speechless. What do you say to that? But I didn’t get a chance to try to find the answer, because she barreled on.
“I have information you need to solve who did this horrible thing to my beloved Horace. He’s such a lovable man and takes good care of me, I want his assailant found and punished so we can go home.” She fluttered a hand at me, and I was nearly blinded by the light refracting through the chunk of ruby on her finger. “Can you believe Martha doesn’t even have Egyptian cotton sheets? This body cannot sleep on anything less, I’ll have you know.”
And then she sneezed. I thought about her blowing her nose through what used to be her belly button, and worked hard to keep a straight face. This could be the first useful information I had received, and I would not ruin it because this lady was so hoity-toity. How could she stand Horace?
Then again, fifteen minutes later I wondered how Horace could stand her. She was worse than he was, and I hadn’t thought it possible.
“So, what you’re saying is the trumpet player was being unfaithful to his wife and you think she shot him to get revenge. I got that, but then why did she try to poison Horace? What would be the purpose?” Unless the scorned wife had been sleeping with Horace. Hmmm.
But I was not going to give voice to that theory, since I did not want to die today. I felt sure, no matter how much I weighed, this woman would take me down if I spoke one bad word against her pooky-schnookums (disgusting). She might be rough around the edges, but she was extremely loyal to Horace. I wondered if she was the one who’d encouraged him to get that bleached blond rug.
She was still talking, so I tuned back in. “Yes, I think she wanted to take revenge on anyone connected with Nathaniel.” So that was the trumpeter’s name! “And she was a rude, embittered woman who would absolutely lose it and go after all of them. I bet she would have taken out the drummer next, but Horace stopped her.” She folded her hands at her flat chest. Could her boobs actually be on her forehead? I looked for tell-tale nipple bumps but found nothing.
“My sweet Horace,” she continued, “who is so incredibly weak right now and needs to get back on his feet. But Martha insists we must stay until the murderer is f
ound.” She heaved a longsuffering sigh.
Oh-ho-ho! Wouldn’t Martha love to hear how she was keeping these poor, troubled people against their will? “Well, thank you, Doris, for taking the time to come down to talk with me. I will definitely look into it as soon as possible. That way we can get you and Horace on your way.” I smiled sweetly, and she let the dig pass. If she even got it.
“I’ll expect progress reports.” She gathered up her jacket from the rack next to her and turned on her well-shod heel.
Progress reports? Progress reports! This was not going to be pretty, and neither was I, if I had to report to everyone and their cousin-in-law. Jeez, maybe I should take out an ad and ask the killer to contact me.
Actually, after a little thought, I realized that might not be such a bad idea. Not at all. Now, if only I could figure out what exactly one should say to catch a bad guy.
Yeah, I didn’t have any bright ideas. I think I had tapped myself out. But, hopefully, something would come to me.
Chapter Fourteen
Arriving at the Martha’s Herald office in downtown Martha’s Point, I realized I had never actually been in this building. Ben worked there approximately thirty hours a week, when he wasn’t out critiquing restaurants on the paper’s dime. He spent the rest of his time trying to find a missing pet or two. Unfortunately, that was the extent of the referrals he’d gotten so far.
I felt terrible for him, since he had high hopes when he’d first finished his course on the Internet for his private investigator’s license. But now that he was out in the real world with said piece of paper, there wasn’t much going on for him to investigate. In a way, I hoped business would pick up for him, and yet that would mean more nefarious stuff happening in town.
I knew whatever happened would be thought of as my fault. Wife cheating on you? Blame the new girl. Employee trying to embezzle? Ivy’s the reason. Jeez.
