by Sandra Balzo
‘I know. But I was able to find it more than once,’ she said a little smugly.
‘Well then, Mercedes Man can afford the bracelet,’ Sarah said.
‘And whatever he’s sending for month four’ – Christy’s voice had gone up half an octave in excitement, but she lowered it now – ‘I think it might be a diamond.’
‘Just one?’ Sarah asked. ‘Have you noticed how many you have around your wrist?’
‘But this is a special one.’ Christy was glowing. ‘It—’
The double blast of a whistle interrupted her as the sounds of a train pulling in reverberated through the shop. The building where Uncommon Grounds was housed was a historic train depot and our service windows were the original ticket counters. The three clocks above the counters were labeled ‘Seattle’, ‘Brookhills’ and ‘New York City’ for the Pacific, Central and Eastern time zones the original trains had traveled through. Nowadays, the commuter line just bounced back and forth between the western suburbs and downtown Milwaukee, where it connected to the airport spur.
‘Five-fifteen train,’ I said, getting to my feet.
But Sarah was more interested in Christy’s prospects – love and financial – than the customers about to descend on us. ‘You were saying, Christy? The diamond?’
‘Oh, never mind,’ Christy said, waving her off. ‘I’m not supposed to talk about it. Besides, I don’t want to jinx it.’
‘But—’
Enough. ‘Showtime, ladies,’ I called as the platform door opened.
It was just touching seven on the Brookhills clock as Sarah and I finished closing the shop. We had sent Christy home, telling her it was because she was opening with me the next morning. In truth, if we handed the woman a vacuum cleaner, she would not put it down until midnight.
I didn’t have that problem. ‘Good enough,’ I said, hanging up the vacuum hose in the storeroom. A coffee bean fell out of one end.
I kicked the bean into the corner.
Sarah was sitting in the adjacent office, balancing the day’s books. ‘Damn.’
‘Off again?’
‘Twenty-two cents.’
‘Here.’ I gave her a quarter. ‘Balanced.’
‘We have twenty-two cents too much, not too little.’
I took back my quarter and pulled two dimes and two pennies from the stack of coins. ‘Problem solved.’
‘You’re pretty casual about our receipts, all of a sudden,’ she said, leaning back in the desk chair so hard it squealed.
‘Twenty-two cents one way or the other won’t get me a diamond tennis bracelet,’ I said, settling into the chair next to the desk.
‘Tennis bracelets always have diamonds,’ Sarah said. ‘You’re being redundant.’
‘And why is that?’ I asked. ‘Who wears diamonds to play tennis? Except for engagement rings, of course.’
‘Chris Evert,’ Sarah said. ‘The story is that the clasp of her diamond bracelet broke during a match at the US Open and she stopped to find it. From then on, people called them tennis bracelets.’
‘That’s pretty impressive for one broken clasp.’ As was the breadth of Sarah’s tennis knowledge since, so far as I knew, she had played for all of four months. As for her jewelry knowledge, I had never seen her wear any.
‘Guess so.’ Sarah was still messing with the numbers. ‘I’ve always wondered if they’d have stopped play if it had happened at Wimbledon. They take their tennis pretty seriously at the All England Club. Have to wear white, you know. But then look at the fifth set tiebreak – you have to admit the Brits were groundbreaking with that.’
‘They were,’ I said, not having the faintest idea what she was talking about.
Sarah put down her pen. ‘Sometimes don’t you wonder if this is all worth it?’
‘Owning a coffee shop?’ I asked, surprised. It was a little early in our partnership for her to burn out.
‘I mean working hard. Christy goes to an online dating site for the first time and meets a rich guy.’
‘Who gives her a tennis bracelet.’
I must have said it a little wistfully because Sarah glanced at me. ‘You don’t like diamonds.’
‘That’s just what I told Pavlik so he wouldn’t feel like he had to buy me an engagement ring.’
Jake Pavlik was Brookhills’ sheriff and my man. I loved him enough to share my house, my bed and my sheepdog, Frank. We even had a chihuahua together, which was kind of an accident.
Now I leaned forward. ‘Christy is such an enigma to me. She has no visible means of support other than teaching piano.’
‘That’s not true, Maggy. She did have that promising stint at the crematorium.’
‘But that’s what I mean. She’s just the oddest little person, but she just keeps on keeping on.’ I sat back in my chair. ‘She has a good heart though. I’m glad she’s found somebody.’
‘Who isn’t in jail.’
‘Exactly. Though they haven’t actually met.’
‘That worries you?’
‘Of course. Maybe on the phone she comes across as …’
‘Normal?’
‘Yes.’ I sighed and stood up. ‘Tomorrow I’m sure I’ll hear about Barry Margraves ad nauseum.’
‘Sure you don’t want to change shifts with me?’
I hesitated. ‘You would do that?’
‘Nope.’ She shrugged. ‘Just messing with you. See you Wednesday.’
THREE
By the time the door was unlocked and the ‘closed’ sign flipped to ‘open’ the next morning, I had been treated to an array of Barry emails, Barry texts and Barry photos. Happily, the man wasn’t into weenie-pics or, if he was, Christy wasn’t sharing.
Still, when Sarah snagged Christy’s phone and outed her relationship with Barry, she had opened the floodgates, leaving me and our baker Tien Romano to be overtaken by the buoyant detritus of Christy’s love life.
‘She’s certainly head over heels, isn’t she?’ Tien said, as she exchanged her chef’s coat for a winter one.
Tien and her father Luc had run An’s Market a few doors down from our original Uncommon Grounds location. Luc was largely retired, but Tien had turned her talents to baking and catering. Our new shop had a full commercial kitchen that Tien used for her business in exchange for providing us with our exclusive signature sticky buns and other treats she baked up for us.
Most of Tien’s baking and prep was done overnight or in the wee hours, but the companionable hour of overlap as Tien wrapped up her workday and we started ours was usually spent catching up with each other’s lives. Sometimes Tien even hung on a bit and helped with the morning rush.
Today, though, our baker could not seem to get out fast enough.
‘Oh, Maggy, Tien.’ Christy burst into the office, mobile in hand. ‘Barry is on speaker. He wants to say hi.’
She thrust the phone at me. I had to admit the guy appeared nice enough from Christy’s description. And, from his pictures, cute even. Maybe thirty-five, with sandy-colored hair and just enough stubble to give his round face character.
Didn’t mean I wanted to talk to him.
‘Umm, hi, Barry,’ I said into the phone, waving to Tien that she had better not leave me. ‘It’s good to meet you telephonically.’
A chuckle. ‘Hopefully it’ll be more than telephonic soon,’ a pleasant baritone voice said. ‘I’m in the UK at the moment, but I told Christy as soon as I wrap up this project—’
‘Pronounced prō-ject.’ Christy was literally dancing a happy dance next to the file cabinet. ‘Because Barry spends so much time abroad. He even says kilometers instead of miles sometimes.’
A little pretentious, but whatever.
‘—to visit,’ the man was wrapping up.
‘That’s wonderful,’ I said, waving Christy down. ‘I know Christy will be thrilled. Let me give the phone back to her.’
But Christy was gesturing for me to pass the cell on to Tien, who was holding up her hands and shaking her head no
.
‘Barry asked for you,’ I told Christy as Tien threw me a grateful look.
Our fill-in barista took the mobile. ‘I took care of that transfer yesterday just like you asked,’ she said into it, switching off the speaker.
I exchanged looks with Tien. Mine felt concerned, hers just seemed curious.
Christy was listening. Then: ‘Really? No, I will not open it until you’re here and we can do it together. I promise.’ A giggle. ‘I’ll just keep it safe until then. In my lingerie drawer.’
Ugh. Happily, we were not subjected to more of the one-sided intimate conversation as the little lovebird had disappeared around the corner.
‘Sweet,’ Tien said.
‘I guess.’ I was frowning. ‘Did I hear right? Christy said she’d transferred something?’
‘Took care of a transfer, I think, were her words.’ Tien picked up snow boots. ‘Maybe I’ll leave these here. I don’t know why I brought them – it was just flurrying.’
‘She wouldn’t be stupid enough to send this Barry money, would she? She hardly knows him. He could be a con artist.’
Tien stopped. ‘Didn’t he sound on the level? And thank you, by the way, for not putting me on the line with him.’
Now I wished I had, if for no other reason than to get Tien’s opinion of the man. ‘He sounded normal. Nice, even. But that’s kind of the definition of a gigolo, isn’t it?’
Tien snorted. ‘Gigolo? You’ve been watching old movies again.’
Sunset Boulevard last night, but that wasn’t the point. ‘I just don’t want Christy taken advantage of. She hardly knows the man.’
‘We hardly know the man,’ Tien said, setting the boots back down again. ‘Because she didn’t tell us about him. She probably was afraid we’d be judgy.’
Not a word. But a valid point.
‘Besides,’ Tien continued, ‘Christy teaches piano for a living and picks up the occasional odd job. She’s hardly a mark.’
‘We don’t know what she put in her profile,’ I argued. ‘For all we know, she told him she’s a concert pianist.’
‘Which doesn’t pay zillions either,’ Tien said. ‘And don’t you have it the wrong way around? He’s the one who sent her a diamond bracelet.’
‘Probably cubic zirconium.’ I was grouchy, and I wasn’t going to let it go. ‘The man sends her a hundred-dollar bracelet and she reciprocates by wiring him her life’s savings.’
Tien eyed me. ‘Binge-watching old Datelines?’
‘Am not,’ I said a little indignantly. I had plenty of true crime in my life already, thank you very much.
‘Anyway, if you’re worried about Christy, ask her.’ Tien went to the door with the sign ‘To All Trains’ over it and shoved it open. ‘Oh, my God. What happened? There’s a foot of snow on the platform.’
What happened was winter. I went to help her push the door open against the drifted snow, but she pulled back, shutting the door again.
‘I hate snow.’ Tien shook flakes out of her dark hair and pulled a cap from her coat pocket. ‘I mean like pathologically.’
Most people would laugh and say then she was living in the wrong place, but Tien and I had braved the same freak May snowstorm together. Not only had we been stranded without heat and electricity in a strip mall, but the storm had ultimately destroyed both the market named for Tien’s mother and the original Uncommon Grounds.
So I got it. ‘I feel you. Now put on your boots.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ She retrieved them and sat on a bench in the boarding corridor to pull them on. ‘I must have missed the forecast. How much snow are we supposed to get?’
‘Ten to twelve inches,’ Christy said, passing through the corridor. ‘I just heard they’re canceling a lot of flights.’
‘Ugh. Hope I make it home.’ Standing, Tien donned her cap and then added mittens before she shoved the door open again and stepped out. ‘You two ladies stay warm … Hey, Caron.’
I caught the door and stuck my head out to see my former partner, Caron Egan, passing Tien as she waded down the drifted steps from the platform toward the parking lot.
‘What are you doing out in the snow, missy?’ I asked, bracing myself and the door against the wind.
Caron stomped the snow from her boots before stepping in. ‘Just finishing the night shift at the hotel, if you can believe it.’
‘Sounds worse than getting up to open a coffeehouse.’
‘It is.’ She pulled out a tissue and blew her pert nose. ‘But nobody has died yet.’
‘Always a bonus.’ I pulled the door tightly closed behind her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re on foot?’
Hotel Morrison was just five or six blocks east of us, but the Egan house was probably twice that due south. Not a bad walk, in good weather, but …
‘Only on foot this far,’ she said. ‘Bernie left the car in your lot to take the train to the airport yesterday. I’ll drive home and then come back to pick him up when he gets in tonight.’
‘If he gets in. Christy just said they’re canceling flights.’
‘Damn.’ Caron swiped the stocking cap off her head, sending a spray of snowflakes onto the floor. ‘Oops, sorry.’
My former partner was familiar with my need for orderliness. She had once accused me of trying to assign seats in the coffeehouse.
I waved her off. ‘Not to worry. I’ve survived a year and counting of Sarah.’
‘Don’t tell me she’s wearing down your OCD-ness.’ Caron ducked into the utility closet for a tattered towel.
I took it from her to drop on the floor, pushing the thing with my foot to mop up the melting snow. ‘Let’s just say I’ve had to choose my battles.’
‘I didn’t know that was an option,’ Caron said with a smile. ‘When you’re done cleaning up after me, can I get a latte?’
‘Sure. For here or to go?’ I tossed the towel back in the closet and beckoned for her to follow me through the door marked ‘Employees Only’ which led to our office, storeroom, kitchen and the serving area behind the counters. ‘If you stay, Christy can tell you all about her new love.’
‘Christy?’ Caron asked, following me to the order window and craning her neck to see the front of house.
‘Uh-huh. Filling in for Amy.’
‘Oh.’ Caron was an ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all’ kind of person. Sarah was her bi-polar opposite.
Which was sometimes refreshing and most times not.
‘We’re getting a lot of cleaning done,’ I told my former partner.
‘Gotcha,’ she said.
‘She’s in the storeroom, I think,’ I told Caron, picking up the frothing pitcher. ‘You can speak freely.’
‘I’d rather not,’ Caron said.
Stick in the mud. I opened the fridge and pulled out the skim milk.
‘Two percent,’ she told me. ‘Frothed to just one-hundred-and-forty-five degrees Fahrenheit, please?’
I suppressed a sigh and switched out the milks. Pouring the two percent into the stainless-steel pitcher, I put it under the steam wand to start the frothing before I went to dispense espresso from the grinder into the long-handled portafilter.
‘Decaf.’
Right. I took the lid off the can of decaf French roast I had ground earlier and spooned it into the portafilter before tamping and twisting it onto the espresso machine.
Hearing no objections, I pushed the button to brew a double shot and selected a clear glass latte mug.
‘To go, please.’
I stood back. ‘Want to make it yourself?’
‘Sure,’ she said, moving forward to commandeer the frothing pitcher and check the thermometer. ‘You overheated the milk.’
‘It’s a cold day,’ I said, sullenly. ‘It’ll cool down.’
She glanced over at me with a grin, as she dumped out the milk and started over. ‘I’ve gotten picky since we bought the hotel.’
‘Not true,’ I said, folding my arms. ‘You’ve always been
a pain in the butt.’
‘Maybe,’ she said, raising and lowering the pitcher under the frothing wand to get just the right consistency of froth. ‘How’s business been? You’re a little more off the beaten track here than we were at the strip mall.’
‘It’s true there’s not as much walk-in traffic,’ I said, uncrossing my arms. ‘But the commuters are dependable. Not that you’d know that from this morning. The first train was practically empty.’
‘The snow’s coming off the lake, which means it’s worse downtown.’
Downtown Milwaukee was situated on the shores of Lake Michigan. Brookhills was fifteen miles inland, so less subject to lake-effect snow. This storm, though, was following a trough from Canada – the so-called Alberta Clipper – so eventually nobody would be spared. ‘Bet people will work from home rather than go in.’
‘If they can. Which neither you nor I is lucky enough to be able to.’
‘You could have stayed retired,’ I told her.
‘I know.’ She took a paper cup and poured the espresso in, before topping it with steamed milk and then a cap of froth. ‘I was bored.’
‘So Bernie bought you a hotel.’
‘We bought a hotel,’ Caron corrected me, putting a lid on both the conversation and her drink.
I held up my hands. ‘I know. Just messing with you.’
‘And I know that.’ She gave me a peck on the cheek. ‘Miss you.’
‘Miss you, too. See you later when you pick up Bernie.’
‘If his flight doesn’t get canceled. And the train is running tonight.’ She pulled on her stocking cap then picked up the cup. ‘Want me to pay for this?’
‘Nope. That was our agreement. You get coffee for life.’
‘But you probably thought that wouldn’t be long,’ Caron said, going to the door. ‘People were dropping like flies all around you.’
‘Still are,’ I said, pushing the door open for her. ‘You’re just not here to see them.’
‘Still miss you anyway.’ A smile and she was trudging down the steps to the parking lot.
‘Ooh!’ Christy’s voice came from the back as I was closing the door. ‘Was that Caron? I wanted to show her Barry’s picture. I caught her on the sidewalk the other day and was tempted to, but I didn’t have my phone with me.’
