Matchmaking emergencies are weird, meshugana ones, dolly. Most of them fall into three categories: Before dates, During dates, After dates. Lots of anguish about dates. I’ve shaved more than one woman’s legs before a date. I’ve had to save a woman trapped on a Ferris Wheel during a date. And I’ve taken quite a few men for VD checks after their dates. Emergencies at the time seem huge, but later—like right now—they seem ridiculous and easy. So, when you’re faced with an emergency, know that it’ll be all right. Like they say, in a hundred years, who’ll care? Of course, in a hundred years, we’ll be dead.
Lesson 96, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
“Wha… huh… uh…” I stammered. I took in the scene in jagged images. Multiple knife wounds. Brad’s bloody face. His open mouth. His open eyes. Bridget’s hand, holding the knife and shaking. Her eyes, unblinking. Her skin, drained of color.
“Bridget? Are you okay?”
She didn’t answer. She was in shock. What was I supposed to do for shock? I was probably in shock, too. My stomach was protesting, and I forced myself not to faint. Bridget needed me, and that gave me strength. I kneeled down next to her.
“Bridget, drop the knife. Please. Drop the knife and get up. You shouldn’t be here. Please, Bridget. I love you, sweetie. Let me help you.”
Nothing. She didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t blink.
Then, there was a scream. At first I thought it was me or at the very least Bridget, but as hard as it was to believe, we weren’t screaming. A coupon-bearing coffee drinker, who had taken a wrong turn on her way to the toilets had stumbled onto a murdered man, who apparently drowned in his own blood. She was the one screaming.
“Murder! Murder! The bookkeeper did it! She’s got a gun!” she screamed while flailing her arms around, like she was the robot on Lost in Space.
“She doesn’t have a gun! It’s a knife!” I yelled at her.
“A gun! A gun! Run for your lives!”
“It’s a knife!” I hollered back at her, but she was already gone. She ran out into the crowd, screaming that the bookkeeper had a gun. Getting up, I peeked out the door and watched as panic hit Buckstars. To-go cups flew up in the air, and coffee spilled everywhere.
There was screaming and running. I didn’t blame them. I would have done the same thing. There was nothing I could do to calm the situation. It just had to wear itself out. Meanwhile, I went back to Bridget. She hadn’t moved a muscle.
I knelt down next to her, again. “Let go of the knife,” I told her, softly. She didn’t react. “Come on, let me help you.”
I heard footsteps in the hall, and then I smelled a familiar cologne. It was Spencer coming to the rescue. “No, Pinky. Don’t touch a thing,” he said, walking into the tiny room. “Come over here. Let me handle it.”
“It’s not what it looks like,” I told him, but I didn’t know if that was true. As far as I knew, it was totally what it looked like. But the Bridget I knew would never take a life, no matter how much of a bad guy he was. She had a total respect for life. She was the queen of empathy.
“I need you to leave the room now, Pinky.”
“I’m not leaving her. She’s my best friend, and she needs me.”
“You want me to Tase her, boss?” It was Terri. She was hovering behind Spencer, and she had a Taser in her hand.
“Get out of here. Take statements outside,” he ordered in his bossiest authoritarian voice.
“But…”
“Do it,” he growled, and she listened. When she was gone, he directed his bossy voice to me. “Pinky, if you’re not going to leave, back away from Bridget. Stand against the wall.”
“Be nice to her,” I pleaded.
“Back away from her, now.”
I started to cry. It was a quiet kind of crying with lots of tears, snot, and sniffing. But I did what he said and stood with my back to the wall. Spencer put cloth booties over his shiny, leather shoes and disposable gloves on his hands.
He squatted next to Bridget. Her curls had fallen over her face, and he tucked them behind her ear. “You’re going to be fine. I promise,” he said, softly. His bossy voice was long gone. His dreamy, I’ll-take-care-of-you voice had replaced it. I loved that voice.
My tears kept flowing. Spencer gently took Bridget’s arm and removed the knife from her hand. She looked at him, as if she was noticing him for the first time. “What are you doing here?” she asked him.
Two paramedics stepped into the doorway. They had a stretcher and a large box of medical supplies. Spencer put a finger up in the air, directing them to stop in their tracks.
“I’m here to make sure you’re okay,” Spencer told Bridget.
“Oh. I don’t feel well.”
“I know. We’re going to have you checked out at the hospital.”
“I’m going with her,” I said.
“Yes, we’re going to have you checked out, too,” Spencer said.
“I’m fine,” I said and blubbered, loudly.
“The hospital is in negotiation with the nurse’s union. I’m not sure I should go there until they work out the benefits package,” Bridget told Spencer.
Spencer helped her up, holding her close, her bloody clothes staining his expensive suit forever. He walked her to the stretcher, and they helped her on to it, all the while, taking her vitals and those of her baby.
I followed them out, but Spencer stopped me. “You all right, Pinky?” he asked, his eyes sparkling with what could have been tears, but I wasn’t sure.
“I’m worried about Bridget.”
“Okay.”
He walked me out, and Bridget, Spencer, and I got in the ambulance together. The mayor was on the sidewalk, talking to the Buckstars refugees.
“Back to your eggs, townspeople,” he bellowed. “Nothing to see here. Get back to your eggs. Remember the eggs!”
The hospital waiting room had orange tiled floor and green walls. That’s what I focused on while I waited. They had brought Bridget in immediately when we arrived, in order to check the baby. Spencer had gone with her for police business, but I was told to stay here.
“What‘re you in for?” a man sitting next to me asked.
“I think I’m in shock or just grossed out. What are you in for? Gallbladder?”
“Aliens.”
I scooted a little away from him. “Aliens?”
He pointed to his forehead. There was a drop of dried blood there, like he had popped a pimple. “They tried to cut out my brain. Normally, they suck it out through your ear, you know?”
“Uh…”
“But these aliens they got around here now are coming after us right through the noggin.”
“What do the aliens look like?” I asked. I didn’t believe in aliens, but I wanted to play on the safe side and know what I should be looking out for.
“Don’t know. I was sleeping when they attacked. My dog scared them off. I also have a ghost in my house. He’s got horns. A bastard when it rains. Bad weather makes him angry.”
I nodded. Finally, the nurse called me back to the emergency room, and I was given a clean bill of health. Then, I was allowed to visit Bridget, who was two beds down and guarded by Terri, while Spencer was on his phone, barking orders.
“Be careful what you say to her,” Terri sneered at me. “I’m watching you.”
I didn’t like that Terri was standing between me and my best friend. I didn’t like that Terri had been trying to break up my first match and forcing Fred to look up people’s butts. So, I broke. I flipped out on Terri, forgetting that I was supposed to try to make her like me.
“You listen to me, Terri,” I spat, punctuating my words by poking her chest with my index finger. “That’s my best friend in that bed over there, and she’s scared. So, I’m going to help her. And you’re not going to get in my way.”
“Your friend had a bloody knife in her hand. You should choose your friends more wisely.” She took her ticket book out and started writing me another one.
“What’s that for?” I asked, trying to look at the ticket.
She clutched the book close to her chest. “Interfering with hospital guarding and being annoying.”
“Oh, come on,” I said.
“Gladie, come here,” Bridget called. I walked inside her room, stuck my tongue out at Terri, and shut the door. Going to Bridget’s bedside, I held her hand.
“You shouldn’t antagonize her like that,” Bridget told me.
“I’ve been trying to make friends, but she’s impossible.”
“Well, the antagonizing thing isn’t working for you, either.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I have to kill her with kindness. But why are we talking about that now? We have more important things to talk about.”
“The baby’s fine,” Bridget said. She was wearing her hoot owl glasses, but her blue eye shadow had smeared down her face. The blood had been washed off, and the color had returned to her face.
“I’m so glad. What happened with Brad?”
“He called me late last night and said terrible things. He threatened me if I wouldn’t meet him this morning. I thought I could talk some reason into him.”
“And then what happened?”
“Nothing. I went into the back room, and there he was with a knife in his chest. At first, I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought maybe he was playing a terrible joke on me. I grabbed the knife and pulled. Blood spurted out when I took out the knife. Blood everywhere. That’s when everything went black.”
“You went into shock.”
“I went into shock,” she agreed.
“Who killed him? Do you have any idea?”
“It could have been anyone.”
“Anyone who had ever met him,” I agreed.
The door opened, and Spencer walked in. His suit was stained with dried blood.
“Do you have any suspects?” I asked him.
He arched an eyebrow and cocked his head to the side. “Gladie,” he said, dragging out my name, like he was chastising a small child.
An uncomfortable silence descended on the room. I looked at Spencer and then to Bridget and back again. “You don’t mean,” I began.
“Bridget, I’m going to have to read you your rights,” Spencer said, gently.
“I know my rights. Why are you going to read them to me?” Bridget asked.
I stomped my foot. “Spencer Bolton, you’re not going to do this.”
“Gladie, this is my job. This is what I do. You have to stay out of it.”
“What do you do?” Bridget asked. “What do you…Oh,” she said, finally understanding. “But I didn’t kill him, Spencer. I found him there.”
“This is standard procedure, Bridget. You were found at the scene of the crime with the murder weapon in your hand. I’m going to have to arrest you.”
I stomped my foot, again. “If you do this, Spencer Bolton, I will never let you be generous with me again!”
The door opened, and Lucy stormed in. She was holding up a thick wad of cash, and she was tugging an old man in an expensive suit behind her. “Don’t say a word, Bridget, darlin’,” she cried. “Don’t say a mother lovin’ word. I have your bail money and your lawyer. He could get Manson off, so you have nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not Manson,” Bridget said.
“Of course you’re not, darlin’. Spencer, who do I give this money to?”
Lucy wasn’t lying about her lawyer. He got Bridget out on her own recognizance. Of course, it was also a small town, and Bridget was the judge’s bookkeeper, and it was two days before taxes were due. And she was pregnant, and nobody wanted to see her behind bars.
But everyone thought she was guilty.
“Hormones,” the judge said as an aside to the clerk at the bail hearing, and the clerk nodded back to him.
I didn’t think any amount of hormones were necessary to kill Bradford Blythe. He had been a royal bastard. After Bridget was released, Lucy and I brought her home, tucked her into bed, gave her a mug of hot chocolate, and handed her her laptop after she insisted that she needed to work.
“You’ve been training for this moment your whole life,” Lucy told me as we sat on Bridget’s bed, drinking hot chocolate.
“I have?”
“You’re going to solve this mystery. You have to find the killer, and get the fuzz off of Bridget.”
“Oh, would you do that, Gladie? That would make me so happy,” Bridget said, smiling for the first time in hours.
I swallowed. “I’ll try,” I said. Normally, I would have jumped at solving a mystery. But the pressure was terrible. What if I let Bridget down and she wound up in jail?
“You can do this,” Lucy said. “And happy birthday, darlin’. I guess we’ll have to celebrate later.” She handed me a wrapped gift, which smelled strongly of an expensive perfume.
“Thank you, Lucy.”
“It’s French. Enjoy.”
It wasn’t until I was outside that I remembered that I didn’t have a car, and it was too far to walk home. I was stuck, but I was also relieved to have a moment to myself, just me and the fresh air. So much had happened in the past couple days, and it was difficult to take stock. I took a deep breath and was thankful for it. There was a lot to do, a lot to think about, and I didn’t know where to start. But it turned out that I wasn’t going to have a lot of time to myself to think on that sidewalk. A car drove up and stopped in front of me.
The window opened and Ruth stuck her head out. “Get in, girl. The cavalry’s here.”
Her short hair framed her serious face. She projected a definite sense of purpose. “How did you know I was here?”
“How do you think? Your grandmother, of course. She made me put Julie in charge of Tea Time. Not that I had any customers. The whole town is hiding from Bridget and boiling their stupid-ass eggs.”
I got into the car. “She told me I have to help you,” Ruth continued. “Normally, I wouldn’t listen to her. Third eye, my Aunt Fanny. And I don’t give two hoots about her heart event. Do you know how many heart events I’ve had?”
“Five?”
“Three. This is only her first one. After my first one, I was back at Tea Time an hour later. So, I don’t give a rat’s patootie about her event.”
“So why are you doing it?”
“Dementia, of course. It’s the first sign.”
She turned onto our street. “I don’t think I need any help,” I said, but I wasn’t so sure. This was a big mystery with no suspects, and if I didn’t solve it, my best friend would wind up in prison for the rest of her life.
“Holy moly, girl,” Ruth said. “You got that look you get. Like you’ve got a tiger by the tail.”
I didn’t have a tiger by the tail. I didn’t know who killed Bradford Blythe. I didn’t even have a clue. But… “It’s the weirdest thing, Ruth. The past couple days, I’ve gotten the feeling that everyone is lying to me. Like nothing is the way it seems.”
It would take a lot of effort to take it apart and figure out where the truth lay. But one thing I knew was that I couldn’t trust anyone.
“Being in the tea business for nearly a century, I can tell you that the minute you trust a person, you’re doomed,” Ruth said, wisely.
Ruth parked in the driveway, and we went into my grandmother’s house. Thankfully, the egg people weren’t there, but Bird had come to bring lunch for my grandmother and Meryl, and Grandma was sitting in the kitchen, out of bed for the first time since her heart event. I gave her a kiss.
“Sit down, Gladie,” Bird said. “I brought enough for everyone. You’re in for a treat. This 1950s diet is the best.”
The table was set with a ham, mashed potatoes, overcooked green beans, and a pineapple upside down cake. Bird put a Jello mold onto the table as I sat.
“What the hell is this?” Ruth asked. “Am I having a flashback? If Eisenhower walks through the door, I’m killing myself.”
“Shut up, Ruth,” Bird said. “This is the 1950s diet. Nobody was fat in the 1950s. It was the good old days.”
“Yeah, the good old days,” Ruth grumbled. “Maxi pads six inches thick, girdles that cut you in half, and no women’s rights. Perfect.”
Despite her complaining, she was eyeing the ham intently, and she licked her lips. She sat down and picked up her fork. “Hello, Zelda. How’s the heart?” she asked.
“A little tired, but fine. Aching to get back to my matches, though. You know how it is to have a calling, Ruth.”
Ruth nodded. “Tea’s my life. Meryl, why do you have a bird on your shoulder?”
“I’m hoping that through closeness with me, he’ll learn English again,” Meryl said.
“Is that some kind of Jane Goodall thing?”
The food was delicious, but my thoughts were elsewhere. It was important to figure out why I was being lied to, and what the truth was. My first stop would have to be the scene of the crime.
“Have you ever heard of a body buried under the ceramic cat store, Grandma?” I asked.
“I have,” Bird said, chewing ham. “I hear it’s Jimmy Hoffa under there.”
“I heard it was Moe McGregor, the miner that settled this town,” Meryl said. “I heard that he was killed with a pick axe, and his gold nuggets were stolen.”
“That’s a Bonanza episode,” Bird said, pointing her fork at Meryl.
My grandmother shrugged. “I know love, dolly. Not murder.”
It could have been a miner or Jimmy Hoffa, but I was wondering if it was someone more recent than that, or if it was nobody at all, and Liz Essex was lying to me. I did think she was lying, but not lying about a body. For some reason, she wanted me to know that somebody was buried there, and I didn’t trust her motivation.
Looking at Ruth out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that she was being awfully quiet.
“I think I’ll go over there after lunch,” I said. Ruth smiled slightly. She would have loved an excuse to stir up trouble at Buckstars.
“You might make a match today, too,” my grandmother said.
I sighed. Being employed was such a pain in the ass.
After lunch, I helped Bird wash the dishes, and Ruth helped Grandma go back to bed. Ruth and I met at her car afterward.
“Buckstars?” she asked me eagerly while she unlocked her car.
“Can you behave when you’re there?”
“Gladie, they filled my dumpster with their corporate to-go cups, and that bastard Ford stole my Tea Time sign. I still haven’t found it.”
“An eye for an eye, Ruth. You weren’t nice to their sign.”
“Whose side are you on, girl? Choose wisely.” She squinted at me, her face all wrinkles and droop. Her hair was severe with its short bowl cut. She was a fearsome woman.
“Yours,” I chose.
I wasn’t stupid.
We parked in front of Tea Time. Main Street was dead, probably because of the real death that happened a couple hours before. “How’re we doing this?” Ruth asked me, as we stood on the sidewalk. “Good cop, bad cop? I’ll be the bad cop. I’ve got a Yellow Pages inside. I could whack the bastard across the head with it. That’ll make him talk.”
“Good idea, but maybe we’ll save the Yellow Pages for an emergency.”
Ruth made a gun with her hand and shot me. “Gotcha.”
“You know, maybe I should go in alone,” I suggested.
“Nice try, Gladie. Your grandmother told me to stick with you.”
Ruth never let anyone tell her what to do, let alone my grandmother, which meant she was using that as an excuse to harass the Buckstars owners. “Try to behave,” I said.
“I’m eighty-six. What you see is what you get.”
But I didn’t have to worry about Ruth behaving because the door to Buckstars was locked and nobody answered when I knocked.
“Cowards,” Ruth said. “They let a little murder shut them down. If you don’t have the cajones for retail, you should get out now.”
What was I going to do? I needed to investigate the scene of the crime.
“Look, Gladie,” Ruth said, pointing. “It’s the supermodel cop, and she doesn’t look too happy to see you.”
Sure enough, Terri was jaywalking across the street, and she already had her ticket book open. And she was writing in it.
“What now?” I whined.
“Loitering while annoying,” Terri said. “Breaking and entering at a crime scene.”
“I’m standing on the sidewalk.”
“In Uggs. I’ll write a ticket for that, too.”
“What on earth did you do to her, Gladie?” Ruth asked. It was a fair question. Besides probably being responsible for her demotion, I hadn’t done a damned thing. Now that I knew she wasn’t in love with Spencer, but in love with Fred, I couldn’t figure out why she hated me so much. It was making me crazy.
“Can’t we be friends?” I asked Terri, and she grunted in response.
“What the hell?” Ruth asked, looking down the street.
It looked like a balloon was walking toward us, and it kept saying, “Ha-cha! Ha-cha!” and doing karate chops in the air.
“This town has more wackos then Bellevue,” Ruth grumbled. “It’s coming this way. You want me to get my Yellow Pages?”
Terri took a step backward. “It’s like a rabid dog, but it’s walking on two legs.”
“It’s a sumo wrestler,” I breathed, rubbing my eyes because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. What were the odds?
“No, it’s a woman dressed up like a sumo wrestler. It’s one of those weird blow-up costumes,” Ruth said.
The woman continued to shout, “Ha-cha! Ha-cha!” as she walked, karate chopping the air.
“It’s coming at me in a threatening manner,” Terri said, touching her holstered gun.
“I’ll handle this for you,” I told her, trying to be helpful and make her my friend.
I ran up to the sumo wrestler. Ruth was right. It was a woman, dressed in a large, balloon-like sumo wrestler costume.
“Hi,” I started.
“Hi. Can’t stop to chat. It’s hard to balance in this thing. Ha-cha!”
“Sure thing,” I said.
“I’m doing the sumo workout. I’ve gone down a half size already. Boy do I sweat in this thing. I do thirty minutes a day, but I have to keep walking. Otherwise, I fall over like a bowling pin.”
“It’s okay,” I yelled back at Terri. “She’s doing the sumo workout!”
“Stop in the name of the law!” Terri yelled at the sumo woman. Ruth stepped out of our path, but Terri planted her feet shoulder width apart, and her hand was still on her gun.
“So, do you cook?” I asked the sumo woman.
“That’s my problem. I don’t stop. What can I do? It’s my method of meditation. So, I have to work out. I found this one during a commercial break when I was watching sumo wrestling on TV.”
“Watching TV with your husband?” I asked.
“No, I’m single.”
Ding. Ding. Ding. Could making a match be this easy? It was almost like it fell in my lap. Like a sumo wrestling fan cook walked into my life. We were getting closer to Terri.
“You should probably get out of the way,” the sumo woman called to Terri. “I don’t brake too well in this thing.”
“Stop in the name of the law!”
I rolled my eyes. Being Terri’s friend was a monumental task. “She has balance problems!” I warned Terri.
“I’ve heard that one before. What do you have hiding in that suit?”
The sumo woman started to sweat and then she started to wobble. If she kept going, she would run into Terri or get shot. “Hop off the sidewalk,” I urged her. “There’s no traffic. You’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” she said. “This is only my third time doing the sumo workout. I’m sure I’ll be better with more practice.”
“I’m sure,” I said. “She’s going to walk on the street!” I called to Terri.
“Not on my street!”
I wanted to punch her in the face.
“It’s like I’m watching the Titanic happen,” Ruth said. “Or the Hindenburg.”
She was right. It was a disaster about to happen. Any idiot could see that. With the added pressure and a gradual downward slant to the street, the sumo woman was seriously wobbling, now. A physically unfit and wholly uncoordinated woman in a sumo wrestling costume was going to go down like a ton of bricks, and nobody could stop it.
We were almost on top of Terri, and the moron wasn’t moving. “Stop in the name of the law!” she yelled again.
“I don’t know what to do!” the sumo woman yelled.
“Hop onto the street!” I said. “I’ll help you!”
“Okay! I’m hopping!”
She hopped.
Sort of.
One foot landed, but the other foot was stuck for a split second on the sidewalk. “Hop! Hop!” I urged.
“I can’t look away!” Ruth shouted.
“I’ll help you!” I yelled at the sumo woman.
It was times like these that I wished I minded my own business. Nothing good came from being a Good Samaritan. As Ruth would say, no good dead went unpunished. I should have let the sumo woman ram into Terri and go on my way. Terri deserved it, for sure. But for the poor woman, who was desperate to lose weight and had donned an enormous sumo wrestling costume and ran down the street, I had to help. Besides, I was going to match her, and the number one rule in matchmaking was you couldn’t match a dead person.
Like a ninja samurai, I flew into the air. Just as she was about to fall, I managed to grab hold of her hand.
“No!” she yelled.
Because she might have been fine if I hadn’t helped her, and when I “helped” her, I might have knocked her off balance. Luckily, the costume was so wide around that she didn’t hit her head when she hit the street. And luckily, there was no traffic. But it wasn’t good luck that there really was a gradual downhill slant.
“Ooph!” she grunted as she toppled over onto the asphalt.
It was downhill from there.
She was just like Violet when she turned into a giant blueberry in Willy Wonka, except that she wasn’t purple. “I don’t like this!” she screamed and then she just screamed without saying anything.
“I’ll help you!” I yelled, running after her. But she had a head start on me, and she was rolling faster than I could run.
“She’s picking up speed!” Ruth yelled. “I’m having an LSD flashback! It’s 1967 all over again! Someone save Bobby Kennedy!”
I ran full out after the poor sumo woman, who was screaming her lungs out.
“Let a law enforcement professional handle this,” Terri said.
Terri Williams might have been a law enforcement professional. She might have worked out five times a week and hadn’t eaten a carbohydrate since she had reached puberty. But Terri Williams was no match for a chubby woman in a sumo wrestler costume, rolling down the street at fifteen miles an hour.
Karma. It’s a bitch.
I once had a match who proposed in a shark tank. That didn’t end well. When proposing, tell your match: Nothing with teeth.
Lesson 37, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
Miraculously, the sumo woman was unhurt, and she didn’t hate me. I got her contact information, and she was over the moon excited at the prospect of a large man who was searching for a committed relationship. She decided being in shape was overrated, and I helped her out of her costume, which she threw in the trash can on the corner.
Terri wasn’t so lucky. She had valiantly tried to stop the sumo woman, but she only managed to get knocked off her feet. She rolled the rest of the way down Main Street, wrapped around the sumo woman. She finally came to a stop, flat on her back, with her arm in the gutter.
“Get away from me,” she croaked, as I bent over her, looking for signs of life.
“Are you all right?”
“I have asphalt in my mouth.”
“At least you didn’t shoot her. I think that shows admirable qualities of restraint.”
“If I could move my arm, I would shoot you right here and now.”
“I’ll call an ambulance,” I said.
“No. In the past couple of days, I’ve flown into a pole and gotten bitten by a woman. I’ll never live down rolling through town with a sumo wrestler.”
It was charmingly naïve of her to believe that word of the sumo wrestler wouldn’t blow through town within an hour. It almost made me like her.
“You want me to help you?”
“Only if you kill yourself first.”
She was a gorgeous woman, more beautiful than any model, but boy, she was a bitch. “You saved the day, Terri,” I said. “A real law enforcement professional at work. I was in awe, watching you and your bravery.”
Could a person die from bullshit? I hoped not.
“I really think we could be good friends,” I continued. Now I wasn’t believing me, either.
“I just want to get home to my cats,” she mumbled.
“What was that? What’d you say?”
“Nothing.”
But I had heard her. The supermodel had cats. I guessed the matchmaking gods were giving me birthday presents. I could match Terri with Bruce Coyle, and then she would get off Fred’s back and off mine, too. But I would have to be smooth and clever to get the match done.
I rifled through my purse and took out Lucy’s beautifully wrapped present. The scent of the expensive perfume permeated the box and the wrapping. “I got you a friendship gift,” I lied to Terri. I was sure Lucy wouldn’t mind me re-gifting her present if it got me a match and saved me a couple thousand dollars in tickets.
Terri’s eye grew big. “You did? Perfume? I love perfume, but I don’t wear it much. It smells expensive.”
It was the nicest she had ever been to me, and in my mind, I patted myself on my back for my genius. I handed her the box. “For you,” I said, sweetly.
She took the box with her good arm and clutched it to her chest. “Go away.”
“You don’t want me to help you up?”
“Go away before I give you a ticket for trying to kill me.”
“All righty,” I sang and walked up the street to Ruth.
“For the first time, I wish I had a smartphone so I could have videoed that whole thing. I could have made a fortune on You Tube,” Ruth said.
“I don’t know why she doesn’t like me.”
“You don’t?”
“That wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t rolling down the street,” I pointed out.
“You knocked the poor woman down. You initiated the roll, Gladie. Admit it. You initiated the roll.”
She was right, but there was no way I was going to admit it.
“I’m going to match the sumo woman,” I said.
Ruth shook her head, like she pitied me. “What a way to make a living.”
Since Buckstars was closed, we moved on to question the egg people. “What do those idiots have to do with a stranger’s murder?” Ruth asked, as she drove us to Josephine’s house.
“I don’t know.”
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were involved. What had Josephine told me? She had once seen a dead person but didn’t tell anyone. Could that be the person buried under Buckstars? Could she have been confessing something to me?
Josephine lived in a small cottage, just outside of the Historic District. When we arrived, I could smell the eggs before I got out of the car. “Josephine used to work on Wall Street,” Ruth told me, as we walked up the front steps. “Her ex-husband was a hedge fund guy.”
“Bradford Blythe was a venture capitalist,” I said, noting the link.
“So, she stabbed him to death and then went home to boil eggs?” Ruth asked, suspicious. “Sounds reasonable.”
I knocked on the door, and Josephine answered, letting out a cloud of steam. Her hair was even more of a frizzball than it was earlier in the day.
She smiled wide when she saw me. “Oh, Gladie. Thank you for coming and volunteering!”
“Uh,” I said, as she pulled me into her house. Ruth followed. Every surface of Josephine’s home was covered in hard-boiled eggs. Ruth pushed aside a couple dozen and sat on the couch.
“It’s like D-Day in here, Josephine,” Ruth said. “But D-Day was to stop the spread of fascism and beat the Nazis. Why are you doing this?”
“We’re going to be in the Paramount World Record book, Ruth,” Josephine said, proudly. She had turned the corner from Debbie Downer to full-throated participant. “We’re putting Cannes on the map.”
“It’s on every map I’ve ever seen,” Ruth said.
“Ruth Fletcher, when you die, your tombstone is going to read, Party Pooper.”
“No, it’s not. It’s going to read, I Wasn’t Dumb Enough to Boil a Hundred Thousand Eggs.”
I stepped between them and gave Josephine my biggest smile. “How can I help, Josephine?” I heard myself ask. She showed me to her small kitchen where every pot was boiling at least a dozen eggs.
“You can drain,” she said, like I knew what that meant.
“Crazy about today,” I commented, picking up a pair of pot holders.
“Well, hormones combined with tax season made Bridget lose her mind. That’s what everyone’s saying.”
That sounded pretty convincing to me. I would have to find out who the real killer was quick or Bridget was a goner. I picked up a pot and poured the boiling water into a strainer in the sink.
“Gently!” Josephine shrieked. “No cracking the eggs.”
Wow, Easter was stressful. “Poor man, the man who was killed,” I said, as I got a face full of steam.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
My antennae stood up. She didn’t sound torn up about the murder. “Did you know him?”
“Me? Of course not.”
“He worked on Wall Street, too.”
Josephine put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. “A lot of people work on Wall Street, Gladie. I don’t know all of them.”
Defensive. Definitely defensive.
“Of course not.” I picked up another pot.
“But I did know someone who knew him,” she continued. I froze with the pot in my hands. “You won’t tell a soul, will you?”
“Would I tell a soul?” I said like a question so it wouldn’t be a lie.
“The owner of Buckstars. When the murdered guy walked in, the owner said, ‘What are you doing here? I don’t want any trouble.’ What do you think of that?”
I thought I wished I could have gotten into Buckstars and grilled the Essexes. “Sounds interesting,” I said.
“And then there’s Bridget, of course,” Josephine said. “I heard they were in business together. Funny business. Like maybe Bridget wasn’t so honest with her numbers.”
So, the baby daddy information hadn’t gotten out. That was good. But I didn’t like Bridget’s professional reputation tarnished. “Bridget has only ever been honest with her numbers,” I insisted. “She’s the most trustworthy person I’ve ever met. The most trustworthy person you’ve ever met.”
Josephine shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I heard.”
I had come over to ask Josephine about something she had told me, and now she was defensive. That wouldn’t make it easier to get information out of her. I needed her to be in a better mood.
“Have I mentioned how impressed I am with what you’ve done with the Easter egg hunt?” I asked her, kissing her butt. It worked. She blushed and flipped her frizzed out hair. “There are a lot of volunteers in this town, but none of them have tried to pull off something this big. I think the town should give you a volunteer award.”
Her face brightened, and she stood up straighter. “You think so?”
“Oh, yes.”
We talked for about twenty minutes about the minutiae of how to break a world record with eggs and how to mobilize an entire town toward a singular purpose. All the while, I boiled about a hundred eggs. My skin was dewy soft from the steam, and my makeup had melted off after five minutes.
“You know, Josephine,” I said nonchalantly, leaning against her counter, when she was good and relaxed. “Call me silly, but I can’t stop thinking about what you told me yesterday. You know, about finding a dead body. That’s so exciting!”
“Really? You find a dead body ever week.”
“Not every week. Maybe every month.” I giggled like we were talking about nail colors. “Anyhoo… So, spill about the dead body. I promise I won’t tell.”
I crossed my fingers behind my back so I wouldn’t go to hell.
“I don’t know if I should,” she said, her face a picture of fear.
“Oh, come on. What could it hurt?”
She smiled, as if she was pleased to dish the dirt. “Well, all right. You know, it’s sort of strange because today reminded me of that day. You know, because it was in a weird place, not a place where you’d expect to find someone murdered.”
Her phone rang, and she stuck a finger up. “This is my mother, Gladie. Can we finish this another time?”
No! Of course we can’t finish this another time! My best friend is up for murder! Now, spill the beans, or I’m going to boil you like an Easter egg.
“No problem,” I said, my mouth upturned in a frozen smile.
“Hi, Mom,” she said into the phone and walked out of the kitchen, just as Ruth walked in.
“Well?” she asked me. “Can we leave now? I feel like I’m an old Jewish man taking a shvitz in Brooklyn.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s racist, Ruth.”
“What’s racist about Brooklyn?”
“I’m ready. Let’s go.”
“What did you find out?” she asked me as we left Josephine’s house.
“Nothing. A big goose egg. Just that Ford Essex knew Brad, but I already knew that.”
Ruth perked up. “You already knew that? Why didn’t you tell me before? We need to get in that place, Gladie.”
“I know.”
We drove back to Buckstars. It was still locked, and the inside was dark. It was getting dark outside, too.
“What’re we going to do?” Ruth asked me. “I know. We could kidnap them.”
“Kidnapping is a federal charge.”
“So is stealing mail. What’s your point?”
I willed myself to be smart. Bridget was counting on me, and I was getting nowhere fast. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I began, but I was interrupted.
“Pinky, I knew I would find you here.”
It was the deep, velvety voice of Spencer Bolton. My boyfriend. The man who arrested my best friend for murder. He had changed his suit, and he was stunningly handsome. He smelled nice, too, and I instantly regretted giving away my fancy, expensive perfume.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, crossing my arms in front of me. “Did you run out of my friends to arrest?”
“We weren’t doing anything we weren’t supposed to,” Ruth told him, crossing her arms, defiantly.
He arched an eyebrow. “I’m happy to hear that, Ruth. So, you couldn’t find another sumo wrestler to throw at my cops?”
“I didn’t throw her,” I said.
“She didn’t even push her on purpose,” Ruth explained. “She was trying to help, and that stupid cop of yours got in the way.”
“Interesting graffiti on the Buckstars sign,” Spencer said. He gave Ruth the stink-eye.
“I better get going,” Ruth said, avoiding any discussion of the Fuckstars sign. “Julie probably Superglued the teacups to the saucers again. Bye, Gladie. We’ll talk about you know what tomorrow.”
“Talk about what?” Spencer asked me when Ruth walked away.
“Why? You want to arrest Ruth, too?”
Spencer stepped forward and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me against him. “Pinky, I’m so sorry about Bridget. And I’m so sorry about your birthday. I know this will work out. In the meantime, let’s celebrate another year. Let me take you to dinner.”
I tried to harden myself against his barrage of hormones, but no way could I be that hard. Until they invented a hormone-proof vest to fend off his Superman pheromones, I was helpless. “Are you really taking me out for my birthday dinner, or is this a ruse to arrest me and take me to jail?”
“How long are you going to keep this going?”
“Forty years.”
Spencer sighed. “Okay. That’s fair. I thought you were going to hold a grudge. It’s good to know you let things go.”
“Let things go like letting Bridget go?”
“It’s going to be a long forty years.”
I lowered my head so he couldn’t see that I was smiling. I was secretly tickled that he was thinking we would be together for forty years. What would we be like in forty years? Would we still like each other? Would he take me for granted? Would he expect me to wash the dishes and wash his underpants? It was overwhelming to think of being in a relationship for forty years, even if it was with Spencer.
“You okay, Pinky? You’re breathing kind of hard.”
“Fine,” I lied. “I guess I’m hungry.”
“That’s the woman I know and love.”
After we checked on my grandmother and I dressed in a pornographic red dress and heels, Spencer took me to the fanciest restaurant I had ever seen. It was high up in the mountains with a view for miles. Inside, the restaurant was decorated in white and black, and the waiters all spoke French.
“Monsieur Bolton?” the maître d’ asked Spencer and walked us to a table next to the window.
The restaurant was so fancy that it didn’t have menus. The waiter explained to us what we were about to eat in a long monologue. “I didn’t understand a word he said,” I told Spencer. “Half of it was in French and the other half was in science. I don’t know either of those languages.”
“Whatever it is, it’s delicious,” Spencer told me. “Even if we don’t like it, it’s delicious. You’d think they would give us a basket of bread, though.”
An older man appeared at our table and opened a bottle of champagne, which he described in another long monologue. He poured two glasses and left the bottle in an ice bucket. Something about it triggered anxiety in me, but I didn’t know why.
“To you,” Spencer said, lifting his glass. I clinked my glass to his and took a sip.
Our first course arrived. I couldn’t figure out what it was, but it tasted delicious. “This is even better than fish and chips,” I said.
“Are you trying to poison me?” the man at the next table asked his waiter.
“No, monsieur. Of course not.”
“Whatever I’m eating is gassy.”
“No, we don’t serve gassy.”
“I’m telling you it’s gassy.”
“How about you?” I whispered to Spencer. “Is the food making you gassy?”
“Oh, Pinky. I love when you worry about me.”
He took my hand and caressed my palm with his thumb. He drank me in with his eyes, and I was almost not angry at him anymore for arresting my best friend. “Pinky,” he started, entirely serious and full of emotion.
“Yes?” I choked.
“The next course,” the waiter began, interrupting us. I longed to be at Chik’n Lik’n, where they served the food in a bucket and forgot all about their diners. The waiter continued to talk a long time about duck, while Spencer didn’t take his eyes off of me. I was warm all over, and I took another sip of champagne to cool off, but it only made me hotter.
Oh, mama.
The waiter stepped aside, and two young men served us our second course at the same time, as if they were synchronized swimmers. Then they stepped back, and I half-expected them to sing, “ta da!” But they simply turned around and walked away, leaving Spencer and me at our candlelit table with our gourmet food.
“Have I told you how beautiful you are tonight?” Spencer asked me. His eyes flicked to my breasts and returned to my face. He smirked his little smirk.
“I don’t think you mentioned it.” I was having a hard time breathing. It was all I could do not to swipe the dishes off the table, jump on it, and pull Spencer on top of me. It felt like Spencer was using the fancy dinner as a lead up to something big, and I wasn’t sure if it was sex in the car or something more Leave it to Beaver. Whichever it was, I was getting nervous and excited.
Slightly less nervous and more excited about the sex in the car, though, than Leave it to Beaver.
I took an absentminded stab at my second course with my fork and missed my mouth on the way up. “I paid a lot of money for this stuff, and it’s gassy!” the man at the next table grumbled to his wife.
“Don’t blame the food for your gas, Marvin,” his wife said with her mouth full.
“My appetizer was fifty-five dollars, and I’ve got a gut full of gas.”
“So sue me if I’m trying to keep our romance alive. Prince Charming never told Snow White that he was gassy.”
“You’re no Snow White, Blanche.”
I re-focused on Spencer. He was eating slowly, his attention still riveted on me. “Obviously, my life hasn’t been the same since I met you,” he said. Spencer had met me when I was hanging upside down from a telephone pole with my pants pulled off. I was waiting for his punchline about how wacky his life is with me in it, but he had different ideas than teasing me. “I think I only became alive when you came into my life. I can’t imagine you not in it. Every morning that I wake up with you next to me, I wonder what good deed I’ve done to be rewarded like this. This thing we have is so good. There’s passion and more than that. There’s friendship.”
Whoa. I was really turned on. My insides were hot and melting. I felt feverish. My face must have been bright red.
But I still wanted to make a snarky comment about him arresting my friend.
I took a sip of champagne.
“Go on,” I croaked. “You’re doing good.”
Spencer leaned forward. “I think we need to go to the next level.”
“Anal? You know how I feel about that.”
He blinked. “No. Not that. I mean, the next level in our relationship.”
I gulped back the rest of my champagne and adjusted my boobs in my dress. “I don’t know about relationship levels. What level are we on now?”
Spencer smirked. “You’re sweating, Pinky. Relationship talk freaks you out.”
He was right. Relationship talk freak me out. Freaked me out more than taxes but less than spiders. “That’s not true,” I said. “I’m a mature, responsible woman. I’m not afraid of relationships. Is there more champagne?”
He poured me another glass. “I’m committed to you, Pinky,” he continued. “I’ll always be there for you.”
“You will?”
Nobody had ever been there for me always, except for my grandmother.
Spencer took my hand. “Always,” he said, his voice full of emotion.
And then it happened. The moment I had been waiting for and fearing for weeks. With his other hand, Spencer put a little box onto the table.
A ring box.
A red ring box.
The crazy thought that flashed through my head was that the box matched my dress. If a ring box matches my dress, does that mean that I have to say yes? That was my crazy thought.
“I love you, Pinky,” he said and slid the box over to my side of the table. I stared at it, like I was expecting a troop of clowns to come out of it.
“I wish I knew that I should have brought Maalox to a place like this,” the man at the next table said.
“Marvin, I’m pretending you don’t exist. I’m going to eat my elk tenderloin and ignore you completely,” his wife said.
“With the food this gassy, I doubt you’ll be able to ignore me for long, Blanche.”
I opened the ring box.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Do you like it?” Spencer asked, bouncing in his chair, like he was five years old.
“I don’t know much about fashion.”
“It’s a key. I don’t think it has any fashionable use, Pinky.”
I held it up and studied it. It wasn’t a ring. I double checked the box. Nope. No ring. “It’s a key,” I repeated.
Spencer let go of my hand and sat back in his chair. “It’s a key to the house across the street from your grandmother’s house.”
“The cursed house?”
“It’s not cursed.”
“Murders and a plane crash. That spells cursed to me.”
“Pinky, you and I both know that you’re a terrible speller.”
I put the key back in the box. “I know how to spell cursed.”
“The house has had some bad luck. That means it’s only going to have good luck from now on.”
I harrumphed and crossed my legs. The waiter returned to our table.
“For your next course, we have pheasant flown in from Madagascar,” he started.
“Good for them. You wouldn’t think a little bird could fly that far,” I said to the waiter.
“I know what this is about,” Spencer continued. “You don’t want to live with me. It’s fine if we play sleepover and it’s your room in your house. Your territory. But you don’t want to set up house with me. You don’t want to be with me. You don’t want any kind of with.”
“I have nothing against with,” I insisted.
“I just gave you a house, and you’re throwing it back at me.”
“No, you gave yourself a house and assumed that I would live there with you and do your laundry and iron your shirts.”
“Pinky, I’m not insane. I wouldn’t trust you with my shirts.”
“And I wouldn’t trust you not to arrest my best friend. My best friend!”
“The elk tenderloin is also a fine choice if you don’t like pheasant,” the waiter said.
“Don’t get the elk tenderloin,” the man at the next table warned me. “Very gassy.”
“Stay out of this,” Spencer growled.
“Or he’ll arrest you,” I told the man. “He likes to arrest people for no reason.”
“I arrest people when they’re supposed to be arrested,” Spencer yelled, throwing his napkin down on the table.
“Like Bridget would kill anyone. Like Bridget would take a knife and stab someone!”
“She was there, alone. She was holding the murder weapon, covered in blood!”
“She was trying to help him! She’s pregnant! She’s a single mother!”
“Well, now we’re to the point. That was her decision. She decided to hide her little secret from the father.”
“Father. Yeah right,” I said.
“I know you think you’re Miss Marple, but this is what I do for a living. You need to prepare yourself for the inevitable truth that your friend got angry and lashed out, and the result was a dead man.”
My eyes widened, and my nostrils flared. “You take that back.”
“See, Blanche? Even the good-looking couples fight,” the man at the next table said.
“Shut up!” I shouted at him.
“Don’t you talk to my husband like that. He has a sensitive stomach,” Blanche said.
To prove her point, her husband let it rip and farted. His fart sounded like a fog horn. “Excuse me,” he said. “I told you the food was gassy.”
“I don’t care about your gassy food!” I shouted. I stood up. “Don’t follow me,” I told Spencer. “I’ll call for a car. I don’t want to see you.”
I marched outside, and Spencer didn’t follow me. I was dizzy and disoriented. I didn’t know what had just happened, but I felt lost. No. I felt like I had lost. Lost everything.
And I would never be happy again.