Cool Demise
Grind and Bookmarks Mystery Book 1
Stan Sauerwein
Copyright © 2020 by Stan Sauerwein
All rights reserved.
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A Note from Stan
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading the Grind and Bookmarks series. I am so grateful for all the enthusiasm this series has received in early release. I have plenty more stories planned. I hope you’ll consider leaving a review and please tell your friends who like cozy mysteries. Review on Amazon, Goodreads or BookBub.
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Happy Reading,
Stan
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Widow’s Walk
Also by Stan Sauerwein
1
I stuffed the last box of books from the apartment into the overflowing seating area of my 1986 Volkswagen van. I had ‘Beauty’, a dirty yellow Vanagon with pop-up roof and square snout, jammed from the driver’s seat to the pullout bed at the back with clothes, kitchen gadgets, bathroom cleaners, and other flotsam of my life with Jim. As I backed out of the mess, I blew hair—brunette with auburn highlights—from my face with a sigh of disgust and slammed the van’s sliding door shut. I used more effort than I should have. You wouldn’t call me fulsome but I’m a little chunky and also athletic, so the door closed with a clang like the drop of a guillotine on my life. I stretched and pressed my hands into the small of my back. My muscles ached from hours spent lifting all those boxes into the van without Jim’s help. The Portland neighborhood was bright with new leaves, and flowering shrubs. The parking lot was empty; I was grateful no-one was around to view my humiliating exit.
I was in the midst of a move I didn’t want to make. Seething with anger. On a high frustration boil. Feeling unprotected and vulnerable. Again! Here I was, standing at the curb alone, all sweaty and sore. Again! I struggled to fight back my tears. You’re twenty-eight, for heaven’s sake! You should have known better but no! I had let myself be betrayed by a man I loved for the second time in my life. I wanted to scream. At Jim. At myself. And then that damned memory of mine took over and what Veronica Roth wrote in Insurgent suddenly blared at me from the back of my mind. “I could never hurt him enough to make his betrayal stop hurting. And it hurts, in every part of my body.” You were so right, Veronica. So right! I fell for it again and it was all my fault.
I leaned my back against the van, trying to calm myself down, and slowly collapsed to my haunches by the rear tire. I stared at the ground between my knees. What now? But the pause didn’t help my mental imbalance. I only clenched my teeth and bit back a sob. How could I have let Jim leave me high and dry this way? What the heck was wrong with me? I’d shared four years of university with him. I should have known him better! I should have expected it. Jim saying he didn’t want me around anymore mystified and confused me. How could I have been fooled so easily? We’d planned our lives over quiet dinners and countless nights of cuddles, hadn’t we?
I rubbed my eyes and stared at my old apartment building with its white stucco lower walls and cedar shakes. I couldn’t believe he’d call an end to us so heartlessly. His cool callousness was the worst thing. The most confusing thing. Like he didn’t love me. Like he’d never loved me. How could he do it without the slightest evidence of dismay or anguish? We were going to have children! Jim was going to continue his doctoral studies and I’d be an at-home mom who wrote mystery novels between diaper changes, supporting him. It would have been so perfect. Then Jim changed it all in an instant. And the worst part was I never saw it coming.
I rose with a groan and checked that the back door was secure. Wandering to the driver’s side door, I took the high step into the van and slumped into the worn seat. I death-gripped the steering wheel in both hands and finally allowed myself to scream, remembering.
“I've been accepted at NYC," Jim had told me the day before. “It's that special post-grad program I've been trying to get into. I've been accepted. Isn’t that wonderful?"
My heart literally jumped at the exciting news then. But now, as I started my old van and coaxed it to life with a gentle pump on the gas pedal, I also remembered how my reaction changed. “That's terrific," I’d shouted, leaping into his arms like a child. “There’s plenty of time to find an apartment before the semester starts. It’s perfect timing!”
“There’s a problem.” Jim released his hold and let me slide down his body to the ground. He held my shoulders like I’d jump away and stared into my light blue eyes. “I want to go alone. I want to focus and I can’t have distractions if I’m going to do that."
“What do you mean?”
“I want to go alone. If I'm going to succeed, I need to avoid distractions. I have to be able to study hard all the time."
I backed away from him like he’d lashed out and hit me. I could feel the flush of my face turning red hot. My hands clenched. "I'm a distraction? What about everything we planned?”
Jim’s reply was almost inaudible. "You know what I mean.” He stepped towards me but I backed further away. “This will merely postpone our plans a little. It's about a new future. New plans. This is a tough, tough program. I need to have total and complete freedom to study without worrying about you and your feelings. Can you understand that? We can still stay in touch. I'll call you every day."
"You'll call me every day?” I was livid. “You'll put me on a schedule like taking out the garbage? You'll call me?" I flopped onto our lumpy couch and pulled my knees to my chest. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. We had plans! I rocked, staring into the distance as if what was happening was unreal, listening to Jim’s arguments but not hearing.
“'I’ve given this a lot of thought, Mel."
"Why couldn't you have brought it up? Talked to me about it? We could have worked something out. Now you're leaving me? Just like that? Like what we had for the last four years doesn’t matter? I thought you loved me."
"I do love you, Mel. But you know how important these doctorate studies are to me. I have to do this if I'm going to get my PhD. You know that."
"When do you leave?"
"In a couple of days. I need to have some time to find a place in New York."
"So, I don't even get two weeks’ notice? Is that it?"
“You can stay until the end of the month. You don't have to move right now."
I laughed at that. It was all too ludicrous to be real. "That’s thoughtful," I spat. My anger built like a tsunami about to hit shore. “I trusted you. I really thought we had a life ahead of us. How can you dump me like this? If you loved me, you wouldn't do that."
“I do love you and I’ll continue to love you, but I have to live alone for
a while. I know it's hard to understand and I’m sorry. I'm very sorry. But I have to go alone, Melanie. I have to be able to devote myself to my studies."
What Jim said, how he said it, had been so reasonable, so definite, so rehearsed. He’s been planning this.
I leaned on the steering wheel to crane a peek at the apartment door. Maybe I’d see him standing there, sadly looking on, trying to stop me. But the doorway was empty. How could I have trusted him? He's no different. No different from Dad. You should have known. You should have. I put the van in gear and popped the clutch, lurching as I went. Promise yourself! Never again. Never, never again.
Later that day, on the other side of Portland, my mother helped me unload boxes from the van. When we were inside the house, standing in the middle of the mess piled in the hallway, she gently took my hands and pulled them to her chest. “Are you okay, honey?”
I nodded and tried to smile.
“It’ll get easier. You just need some time.”
I tried to pull away but she held my hands tight. “Look at this like a slick new beginning, Mel. It’s a chance to start fresh. Be kind to yourself. Maybe you could take some time away from it all."
I roughly pulled my hands back. I felt unhinged, like I was in a dream. I didn’t want her touching me. In fact, I didn’t want anything touching me. I was wearing an oversized sweatshirt and even it felt unbearably tight. “Away? Away where?”
She nodded towards the living room where we slumped side by side on the couch. Touching my arm gently, she said, “I was thinking about that. How about Glacier? You went there every summer. You haven’t been back in ages. Maybe with a little time in Glacier you’ll be able to put the pieces back together. Uncle Barney would be happy to have you stay with him. You can work in his bookstore or his coffee shop. You can wander around in the woods. You can sit by that little creek behind the coffee shop. You could think."
“That feels like running away, like I wouldn’t be facing up to things."
“Nonsense. Give yourself time to heal. What Jim did was despicable. He rejected you. That has to hurt. I know it hurts. What you need to do is take some time to recover." I picked at my fingernails like I always did when I was stressed, and stared at the scattered boxes in the hall. “I trusted him, Mom. I still love him.
“You have to be careful when you share a part of yourself, sweetheart. I've told you that before. Listen to me. This is an opportunity to change your life. I’m speaking from experience.”
Her words were like shards of glass plunged into my heart. I suddenly thought of my father and how he’d left us both one summer night without a word.
“Go to Glacier and relax for a few weeks. Spend some time with your uncle Barney. He always made you happy. And when you've had time to think it through, you'll come up with answers. I promise you will. You'll know what the next steps should be."
I knew instinctively that my mother was making sense. When Dad left, I was only ten. I wasn’t old enough to understand reasons and I wasn’t sure my mother ever did either. I remembered how my mother acted in those lonely uncertain days afterwards. She’d floated from one thing to the other, as if the act of doing something, anything, was all that could keep her from collapsing in grief. She’d been so strong. So hopeful. At first, we thought he might have been hurt or in some sort of accident. We checked the hospitals and talked to the police. But he hadn’t been hurt. There was no accident. He was just gone. My mother was grieving because it was like he’d died. Now Jim was doing what Dad did. It was like another death. She’d had the same feelings I was having. My mother draped one arm over my shoulder, cuddled me. “I know how tough it was for you when your dad left, hon. Maybe I should've gotten remarried. Maybe I should've had another baby, a brother or sister for you, but I couldn't. It was because I didn’t take time to think things through. If I had, maybe things would have turned out differently.” She stared at me with loving eyes. “Take some time. That’s advice from one disappointed woman to another.”
All I could do was comply. After all, I had no place else to go but to her home. I’d graduated with an English degree, but my job (shelving books at the local library) had ended when the budget was cut. So now I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have things to do like my mother had done. There was nowhere I could turn, nowhere to hide from my sudden grief. I patted my mother’s hand. “You didn’t make any mistakes, Mom.” I leaned in to kiss her cheek.
“When Dad left you must have felt totally abandoned. Like how I feel now.”
My mother heaved a deep sigh and sat back with her eyes closed. Long moments passed before she spoke again. “Of course I felt abandoned. I felt as if my world had evaporated. But you saved me. I had to take care of you and that saved me and we survived it together, didn’t we? We managed."
“I don’t want for this thing with Jim to make you unhappy too."
“It's okay.” My mother stood up and brushed invisible dust from her pants. “You had to grow up without a father. It wasn't easy for either of us."
I stood and hugged her. “Maybe some time with Uncle Barney will be good for me," I said. “Do you think his dog is still alive? I really liked that rascal, Su-Jitsu.”
“I don’t know. It’s been years. But I do know Barney is still running that seedy little coffee shop of his. You can help him with the bookstore. I think it’s still there too. You know, he's been a mess. His alcoholism and things in the past. A little time with you will be good for him too.” I remembered my uncle Barney always had a bottle nearby. My mother said he’d quit drinking, but I wasn’t sure if that was true. He always seemed like a man caught somewhere between insanity and genius. That's why spending my summers there was always such a treat. I never knew from day to day what he’d be up to. Would this still be good for me? Or do I need stability?
"You're right,” I said hesitantly. “Maybe I need some time to sort things out. I can take Beauty and go to Glacier for a week or two. Maybe it will be good for me. We’ll put this stuff away and then I'll pack a small bag."
“Take as much time as you need, sweetheart. And try to forget Jim if you can. Think about your future. When things are settled down in your mind, you can make some decisions."
“Well, even if that doesn't work, I can spend some time drafting a mystery outline or two."
“Perfect! You’ll be able to write without Jim around to distract you.” We both laughed at the irony.
2
The drive to Glacier from Portland took me six long hours, all of it in the land of remembering. On the way, I thought back to all the summers my mother had sent me to stay with my uncle Barney. I’d started going there on my own, by Greyhound bus, when I was nine. The annual summer pilgrimage continued until I was sixteen and each of my summer visits was different.
For some reason I thought about Carol Immerman, the girl I’d met on the day of my first solo journey. She had also been on the bus. She helped heft my knapsack to my back as we stood in the exhaust of the departing bus. She walked with me to The Grind, my uncle’s café, chattering about all the wonderful things to do in Glacier during the summer. I didn’t say much but it didn’t matter. We were fast friends from that moment.
Carol walked to collect me at The Grind every morning for weeks after that. She took me to all the spots in Glacier where children congregated to play and introduced me to them. Overnight I became part of her pack. It made the time I spent in Glacier that summer comfortable and happy. When we weren’t swimming at the Mole River water hole, or playing tag in the park, we’d be in the woods nearby my uncle’s. All the memories of our times together flooded my mind. Carol was so sweet and innocent compared to my seasoned ‘big city’ experience back then. Those differences made me feel special. I could tell her my secrets. Some real and most imagined. Like when I’d sneak away to the fence by the docks in Portland and swoon over the muscular sea men working there. Fantasy. How I went on unchaperoned dates at the cinema. Another fantasy, though I did go to the movies with groups
of friends. The sinful pleasure of sharing a strawberry milkshake with a cute boy in the Dairy Queen. It happened but my mother and his were sitting at the same table. How the wildest boys ALL smoked. True based on my limited observation.
Carol wanted to be a movie star and we swooned over her movie magazines on every sleepover we shared. To her face, I never questioned her hopes for the future, but did question them to myself. Carol was so sheltered! Her mother demanded to know exactly where Carol was going and with whom. It was so different from my relationship with Uncle Barney. He’d only say “Be careful and smart, Mel” and leave his instructions at that. Carol believed whatever I told her. I could slide from truth to imagination without any fear of discovery or guilt. I could change from being a rebel to a gypsy whenever I liked and no one was around to say otherwise. In more ways than one, what I became was formed by those days with Carol Immerman and my fantasy escapes. That summer was when I started dipping my toe into awesome literary worlds through the books I read in Uncle Barney’s store. The joy I got from the written word was a love I never lost and it pushed me towards my English studies at university and a dream to be a writer myself. I adopted the story line of whatever I was reading at the time that summer. I went from being a beautiful Martian princess looking for my handsome John Carter among the scruffy boys we played with in the woods by the Mole River, to being the eternal tomboy, Jo March, willing to clip my long thick hair for a dollar. And I started memorizing. Poems. Bits of memorable dialogue. Descriptions that made my heart flutter. It was an intellectual affectation I never lost.
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