For Butter or Worse

by Saxon Bennett

  I will myself not to look at her gorgeous butt as she walks away but I swivel on my stool and do it just the same.

  Travis and Michael are smirking when I turn back to the bar to finish my last donut and the rest of my coffee. “What?”

  “Couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Travis teases.

  “Why don’t you two just admit you’re in love?” Michael asks.

  “It’s not like that.”

  “What’s it like then?” Travis says, raising an eyebrow. “Do share.”

  “It’s complicated,” I say. “I’m going to talk to Betty.” I wad up my donut bag and dump it into the nearest trash receptacle along with my empty coffee cup.

  “Denial is not a river in Egypt,” Michael says.

  I pat Ivan on the head. He doesn’t even open his eyes. This fair job is taking a toll on him. It’s taking a toll on all of us.

  ***

  I find Betty in her office. She’s got bags under her eyes and she’s chewed her fingernails to the quick.

  I ask the polite question, “How are you holding up?”

  She wrings her hands. “This is just awful, so awful,” she says, pulling a tissue from the sleeve of her beige cardigan sweater. “And the interview, I’ve never been more frightened. I most certainly didn’t have anything to do with Lehane’s death. I need him for the show. Oh, this whole thing is such a bother,” she says, then clamps her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my goodness, how callous of me. Here I am all worried about the competition and not about poor Lehane.”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. What would happen to the prize money if, say for the sake of argument, no one wins the competition?”

  “I don’t really know,” Betty says. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, I’m not really in the competition legally and if Caroline were to get arrested where would that leave the competition?”

  “Oh, you’re concerned with the integrity of the butter competition,” Betty says.

  “Exactly,” I say. It’s something that’s been weighing on my conscience. Travis is playing me, and if Caroline is forced to concede due to arrest, we can’t have Travis, who is pretending to be me, win the competition. We’d be cheating. I can’t do that to people like Arthur who have worked so hard. I decide I have to come clean with Betty. “I have a confession to make.”

  “You didn’t kill Lehane, did you?” Betty asks, her face a picture of horror.

  “No, no, nothing like that. You see, I can’t carve butter, but Travis is amazing at it. So, he’s going to go in disguised as me. Listen, Travis is a good, really good, butter carver. Maybe even better than Caroline, but he can’t win and accept the money because we’re not who we say we are. It wouldn’t be fair to the others. I need you and the judges to be onboard with this.”

  “Oh, I see. Well, I suppose we could split the money amongst all the semi-finalists. Or hold it over, but that just doesn’t seem fair either. Besides, there would be tax implications. This is most disturbing. I’ll ask the board and get back to you,” Betty says. “I’m sure they’ll go along with it.”

  My conscience is now clean, I thank her for her help. I walk by Caroline’s butter booth, wondering how she got away with murder because I know she did. Caroline is nowhere around. She must be either parrot-sitting or burying Lehane’s body somewhere.

  Deflated, I head back to my office. The drive across town seems longer than usual because I get stuck behind a funeral procession. I do my best not to get impatient. After all, I’m still alive and whoever’s in the hearse is not.

  That gets me back to thinking about Lehane. He won’t be having a funeral if we don’t find him. He’ll be a cold case. Caroline will win the competition and ride off into the sunset, a murderer that never gets caught.

  When I arrive at my office, the door is cracked open. I pull my banana-gun. It gives me courage. I kick the door all the way open. “Put your hands up. I’m armed,” I say in my most Dirty Harry voice.

  “Nice banana,” Veronica says, smartass that she is.

  I sigh heavily. “What are you doing here?” I look around my office. She hasn’t re-wrecked it. Instead, there’s a dozen red roses sitting in a vase on my desk and a box of Godiva chocolates tied up with a red satin bow. “And what’s all that? It’s a little late for Valentine’s day.”

  “I’ve come to apologize,” Veronica says.

  I could keel over right here and now, but I control myself. (Besides, I haven’t had a chance to vacuum up the remnants of potting soil and I don’t want my last pair of clean pants to get dirty.)

  “You’re what?” It’s possible I only imagined her saying it.

  “Apologizing,” Veronica says. “I thought if I were bearing gifts, it would enhance my apologizing.”

  “I was the one who threw potting soil at you.”

  “I was the one who destroyed your office.”

  I squint my eyes at her. Did aliens abduct my ex-girlfriend? In all the years we were together, Veronica never apologized. “Are you feeling all right? Do you have a fever?”

  “No. I shouldn’t have involved you in my sexual peccadillos,” Veronica says. She looks down at the floor. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention this to anyone.”

  Ah, now it all makes sense. She doesn’t want her reputation tarnished. As always, it’s all about her. Aliens didn’t abduct her after all. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Really?” Veronica says, relief washing across her face.

  “On one condition.”

  She frowns. “What condition?”

  “That you never do that to me again. When I do assignments for you, I want to know what’s going on, all of what’s going on.”

  “All right. That’s fair.”

  “And Veronica…”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful with people like that. Despite our rocky past, I still don’t want to see anything bad happen to you.” I can’t believe I just said that. Maybe I’m the one who was abducted by aliens.

  Veronica stares at me without blinking even once. “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  “Don’t get used to it.”

  She gives me a spontaneous hug. “I owe you one.”

  “I know.”

  ***

  “She actually apologized?” Travis says, gob-smacked. He slides a Yoo-hoo across the bar.

  “Wow, that is big,” Michael says, putting three martinis on a tray. “I’ll be right back. No juicy details until then.” He scurries off.

  Travis was right. Thursdays are slow. Only four tables are occupied. People must be resting up for the weekend.

  “I know, right? She knows I could make things awkward for her, but I’m not one to tell tales. Besides, she does send work my way. It was just nice to have the upper hand, like you all said.”

  “And we’ve got the video to prove it,” Michael says, setting his tray down.

  “No, we don’t. I deleted it,” I say.

  “You’re a much better person than I am,” Travis says. He pouts.

  “True dat,” I say. “Your vindictive streak runs deep.”

  “I’ll testify to that,” Michael says.

  “Keep it up and you won’t be spending the night,” Travis snaps.

  Michael looks chastised. “I need two Long Island iced teas.” Travis gets him the drinks and he slinks away.

  “Where would you hide a body if you’re a woman trying to haul a one hundred and eighty pound, six-foot tall man? I ask.

  “Not far, would be my guess,” Travis says. He nods at a man at the end of the bar. He makes a Jack and Coke and takes it to the man, who tips him lavishly. Gay men always seem to have a lot of disposable income.

  When he returns, he asks, “Do you think someone helped her move the body?”

  “I don’t think so. Helping someone dispose of a body is not the same as asking a friend to help you move,” I say.

  “True dat,” Travis says, echoing me
.

  Michael returns, setting his empty tray down. “Did I miss anything?”

  “No, you did not,” I say. “We’re trying to figure out where Caroline would dispose of the body.”

  “Well, let’s think of the obvious places, narrow them down, and then use the purloined letter approach,” Michael says.

  “The purloined letter approach?” Travis asks, looking genuinely confused.

  It takes me a minute to get it. “Like in the Edgar Allen Poe story?” I ask. I was forced to read it in my ninth-grade English class. Poe’s stories always gave me the heebie-jeebies. “In the case of The Purloined Letter the blackmailer was hiding the letter in plain sight.”

  “Exactly!” Michael says. He’s so happy I got it that he does an impromptu pirouette. Two men at the bar applaud.

  “You’re lucky the girls aren’t working tonight, or you’d be in deep crapola,” Travis says. He’s referring to the cabaret girls who fancy themselves as professional dancers.

  “They’re just jealous that I dance better than them,” Michael says.

  “I would never, ever, ever say that in front of them if you plan on living long enough to collect Social Security,” I say.

  Michael was a professional dancer until he hit thirty and tore his ACL. He can still dance just not at the caliber necessary. He’s sensitive about it. Michael thinks aging is a character flaw. Travis made the mistake once of saying that despite the misfortune of Michael’s accident his days were numbered anyway because he was getting old. They didn’t speak for two weeks. That was absolute hell. Travis cried himself to sleep and Michael called me every day to check up on him. Finally, I tricked them both into going for coffee with me. The reunion in the coffee shop was embarrassing with all the drama, weeping, and declarations of undying love. I left halfway through.

  “I think you’re right. Caroline had to keep the body near or in the butter barn,” I say.

  “Yeah, but what does she do with it afterwards?” Travis asks.

  “Who says she has to do anything with it?” Michael says. “Having the body doesn’t prove she did it.”

  “But we’ve got the phone call where I heard the parrot in the background,” I say. “She was pretending to be the cruise ship’s secretary. That must prove that she did something.”

  “Did you record the call?” Travis asks. Damn, I hate it when he’s smarter than me.

  “No, I did not,” I say.

  “Back to square one,” Michael says. “We’ve got to find the body first, then maybe the killer left behind some evidence.”

  I put my head in my hands. “I hate it when murderers get away.”

  “She’s not getting away with it,” Travis says harshly.

  “I hate to bring this up but what if it wasn’t Caroline?” Michael says.

  Travis and I glare at him. He takes a step back, throwing his hands up in front of him protectively. “I’m just saying.”

  We’ve got motive, we’ve got opportunity, we’ve even got some blood,” I say.

  “But what we don’t have is a body,” Travis says.

  Then it hits me. “Travis, what happens to all the butter after the competition?”

  “It goes to the rendering plant where they heat it to a very high temperature…” he stops.

  “And?” Michael and I say simultaneously.

  “They compost it,” Travis says.

  “So, it’s like a landfill?”

  “Precisely,” Travis says.

  “What if Caroline hid the body, and after the competition, she sticks the body in with all the waste butter and poof, Lehane gets melted,” I say.

  “Oh my gosh,” Michael says. “I think you just figured it out.”

  I wish I had his confidence in my abilities. “We just have to figure out where poor Lehane is being stored until he gets melted.”

  My cell phone rings. It’s London. I pick up. “What’s up?”

  “I can’t make it tonight for the brainstorming. I’ve got a Jane Doe in a dumpster,” London says.

  I fill her in on what we’ve come up with so far.

  “It’s a pretty good theory,” London says.

  I can hear the skepticism in her voice. “But not likely?” I ask.

  “I’m not saying that, but we’ve searched the butter barn top to bottom.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Look, I’ll come by tomorrow and we’ll talk.”

  “You can see Travis carve his masterpiece.”

  “Be careful with that,” London says.

  I try to sound confident. “We will.”

  “I don’t want to lose my best girl. Later.” She clicks off.

  Wow. Is that what I am? Her best girl? I like the sound of that.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Who knew butter was such a big deal?” my father says as he shoves half of a heavily buttered piece of garlic bread into his mouth.

  “Edward Bravo, do not talk with your mouth full. You’ll choke. Remember what happened to Mel DeFazio?” my mother says.

  Griffin jumps up like it’s a question on Jeopardy. “I know! He ate too many grapes at once and told the joke about the nun and the whore…”

  Juniper stops him midsentence, “Griffin!”

  He sits down. “But I was just getting to the good part,” he whines.

  “You mean the part where he almost died?” I ask. Juniper shoots me a dirty look like I shouldn’t be encouraging him. Ha! That’s for breaking my Etch-a-Sketch when I was seven. The awesome thing about not having children when your sister does is that you can indulge them in ways that irritate your sibling more than you ever could have imagined growing up.

  “Yeah,” Griffin says. “And then he choked so hard that a grape came out his nose and hit Mrs. DeFazio right smack between the eyes.” Griffin and I laugh, my father chuckles, and Juniper and my mother look on disapprovingly.

  “You shouldn’t laugh at near-death experiences. They should be taken as a lesson on what you’ve done and how you should correct it in the future,” Juniper says.

  I look over at Griffin with a super-dooper serious face. “What did we learn?”

  “That you shouldn’t make fun of whores while you’re eating grapes,” Griffin says like he’s repeating his catechism... only he’s a Buddhist. Juniper eschewed the Catholic church years ago.

  “Uh, yeah, that’s right,” I say, meeting my father’s eyes. We both try really hard not to laugh. It doesn’t work.

  Juniper narrows her eyes at me. I smile sweetly and remind her of the time when she stole my training bra and added it to the collection of other bras that her and her friends hung over the statue of Francis of Assisi statue in the courtyard of our school. Griffin thinks this story is hilarious.

  “I wish you wouldn’t tell tales about my youthful pranks in front of him,” Juniper says.

  My father is wiping the tears from his eyes. In order to put a stop to this, my mother gets up and begins clearing the table. That is the signal that dinner is over. I’m hoping we get dessert and so is Griffin. “If we stop making fun of Mom can we have dessert?” he asks.

  “You just sold your soul for dessert,” I whisper-tell him.

  “I come cheap,” he replies.

  “Me, too. What’s for dessert?” I ask.

  Juniper rolls her eyes at me. “You’re a bad influence on him.”

  “Thank you. I do my best.”

  My mother brings out panna cotta. Griffin eyes light up and I immediately begin to drool. She smiles, and nothing is quite as bright as a Bella Bravo smile. She pretends not to notice our ooohs and aaahs. “Just a little thing I whipped up this morning because everyone could be here.”

  I feel a pang of guilt. I haven’t been around much because I’ve been up to my elbows in butter. Juniper glances over at me. She’s looking guilty, too. She’s joined Hypochondriacs Anonymous and goes to a lot of meetings. The only reason I know this is because my mother told me. She was supposed to keep it a secret until Juniper reach
ed step eight or eleven or whatever. Then Juniper would reveal and seek forgiveness for the damage her hypochondria caused her loved ones. My mother is terrible at keeping secrets. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Hypochondriacs Anonymous. I looked it up and almost got her a T-shirt that said, “The meeting has been cancelled due to illness,” but I stopped myself…barely.

  “That’s so nice,” I say, passing the dessert plates around the table.

  “It looks great, Grandma,” Griffin says.

  “Sugar can cause…” Juniper says and stops. Evidently the HA is working. “People to have a lot of fun,” she amends midsentence.

  My mother smiles at her. “That’s right, dear. Everything in moderation.”

  The panna cotta is delicious. I groan with delight. Griffin scarfs his down and is looking for seconds. My mother indulges him, watching Juniper the whole time to see if she’ll object.

  Juniper bites her lip and says, “Just a small piece.”

  Griffin looks like he just won the lottery. “Really?” He’s evidently not used to the new and improved Juniper.

  “Sure, honey. It’s kind of a celebration. At celebrations you can indulge a little,” she says.

  “Damn right,” my father says.

  “Edward, language,” my mother scolds.

  “It’s in the Bible,” Griffin protests, his lips smeared with panna cotta.

  “See there,” my father says, “the boy knows what he’s talking about.”

  “Which is why he’s Buddhist,” Juniper retorts.

  I can’t help myself from taunting, “Buddhists don’t say damn?”

  My mother stares at me hard. She holds my plate in the air as a threat that if I taunt my sister it will affect my second helping of dessert. “Which is a good thing. I never did like the Old Testament,” I say. My mother hands me my plate.

  “I will admit the Old Testament can be rather harsh at times,” my mother says.

  “It was a good thing Mary Magdalene didn’t show up until the New Testament,” Griffin says.

  My father holds his tongue because his second helping of dessert is hanging in the balance. When he doesn’t say anything, Mom sets his plate down in front of him.