Matchmaking is just like making coffee. Ask anyone how they like their coffee, and they’ll say: Strong! Dark! Robust! But if you look through their kitchen window and spy on them at home, you’ll see the truth. Their favorite coffee is pishachs. Weak as pee-pee. Full of milk and sugar. They say they want it strong and bitter, but they want it weak and sweet. So, trust your instinct, dolly. Don’t trust your match.
Lesson 122, Matchmaking advice from your
Grandma Zelda
The goat had been stabbed. Urijah told Spencer that the aliens were after its brain. Why aliens would come millions of miles to our planet just for a goat’s brain, I had no clue. That’s all the information I got out of Spencer before he went to work. I had a million questions and no answers. But first things first. I had matches to match.
I had already eaten breakfast with my grandmother, a long breakfast where we looked at my ring and didn’t speak about the consequences and meanings of a precious gem and sliver of gold borne by a finger for what was supposed to be forever.
Afterwards, I had gotten dressed. “Gladie,” Grandma called from her room. I picked up my purse to see what she needed before I left for the day. “First things first,” she told me when I walked into her room.
“Matchmaking. I’ve got it covered,” I said.
“You’ll have to hold her hand for this one.”
“Terri might not like that. So, I called Bruce, and I set up the meet so she won’t know it’s me.”
“Smart! Matchmaking for the reluctant match. I told you that you have the gift.” She patted the place on the bed next to her, and I sat down. She took my hand, the other hand where there was no ring. “Spencer is a good man. He’s a mensch,” she said.
I felt my face get hot.
“This is a good match,” Grandma continued. “This is a true love match. A forever match.”
“Forever’s a long time, Grandma.”
“I wish.”
Bruce Coyle, pesticide truck driver and searcher for love, was thrilled that I had found him a match so quickly. “She looks like a model, and she loves cats,” I told him. I decided to leave out the part about her being a bitch and in love with another man. I gave him a copy of her work picture off the internet. He approved heartily. Why wouldn’t he? She was gorgeous.
Luckily, Tuesday was Terri’s day off. It was the perfect time to send Bruce to her house under false pretenses. Sometimes love was a dirty business and a little underhanded. I met Bruce around the corner from Terri’s house. “Here you go,” I said, handing him a kitten that I had gotten from the shelter. “You know what to do.”
The cat was orange and tiny. It was the kind of kitten Twitter followers watched in videos to reduce stress. I wasn’t a huge cat lover, but even I was tempted to take the kitten home. Terri would be a goner.
“Oh, what a cute guy,” Bruce said. “Hello, Mr. Orange, I’m Bruce. Wanna come home with me?”
“You know the plan, Bruce?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Okay. This should go without a hitch. I have to leave on other business. You’ll be okay, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Bruce was calm under pressure, not like the sumo wrestler who had freaked out on the phone when I gave him his match’s contact information, like a man who was one step away from happiness but was afraid of stepping. But I had done it. I had made two matches in record time. If they didn’t screw it up, I was free to find the killer and save Bridget. I patted myself on the back for filling in for my grandmother with amazing success. Maybe she was right and I really did have the gift.
I drove to Tea Time and parked in front. Buckstars had reopened, and there was a new sign that Ruth hadn’t gotten to, yet. I walked into Tea Time, which had more people than the day before, but business was still lighter than normal.
“There you are,” Ruth said, rushing me as I entered. “Time’s a wasting. We have investigating to do.”
“May I have a latte, please?”
“Here,” she said, handing me a to-go cup. “I’ve got Julie filling in for me, but we don’t have a lot of time. She’s been worried about Fred, and she’s distracted. She almost poisoned one customer already.”
Ruth had a twinkle in her eye, the kind of twinkle that Charles Manson had probably been more than a little familiar with. There was no doubt in my mind that she was using this investigation as a means of torturing her new competition.
“Maybe I should go in alone,” I suggested, taking a step back, out of her reach. “Maybe they’ll be more talkative that way.” And less of a chance that Ruth and I would get arrested.
“Don’t worry about me. I got this covered. I know just what to do.”
“You’re not going to kill them with your baseball bat, are you?”
“Not in the next five minutes.”
“I can’t go in there with your coffee,” I said, taking a sip of my latte.
“Drink fast. Is that what I think it is?” she asked, eyeing my ring.
I blushed. “Yes.” I braced myself for the onslaught of teasing.
“Good,” she said, surprising me. “The cop’s a good choice. A little too pretty for my taste, but he’s got a steady job, and he looks at you like you’re the melting Velveeta cheese in a Philly cheesesteak.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s better than a kick in the pants.”
She had a point. It was better than a kick in the pants. And that’s what a successful marriage was. It wasn’t the state of euphoria that I was in, that moment when all the possibilities were presented but none of the struggles. But something told me that with all the struggles included, a marriage to Spencer would be better than a kick in the pants. Much better.
So, I agreed to let Ruth go with me to Buckstars, and I braced myself for the worst. I gulped half of my latte and handed her back the to go cup to throw away.
As Ruth and I walked into Buckstars, she whispered to me, “If this goes south, I’ll flood the place, and you run for your life.”
“We’re just going to ask them some questions and look around. This isn’t Da Nang in the sixties.”
She harrumphed. “It’s always Da Nang, Gladie. Always.”
To my big surprise, Ruth plastered a big, unnatural smile on her face. “Look at this lovely establishment,” she gushed loudly. There was more than one stunned face in Buckstars as Ruth entered. There was also a tangible rise in anxiety. “So clean! Very clean! Who would have ever thought to turn a coffee house into a surgical theater. Ingenious! Is that you, Ford? My, you look nice today.”
Ruth was terrible at being phony, probably because she had had such little practice doing it. I snuck past her and made a beeline for the room in the back where the murder had taken place. The door was closed, and I opened it, walking inside.
It had been cleaned. There was no sign that anything nefarious had happened there. I searched for any clue, any sign of who had killed Bradford Blythe and why. Nothing.
“Hi, Gladie,” I heard behind me, and I turned. It was Ford Essex, the owner of Buckstars. “Did you get lost on your way to the restroom?”
Normally under these circumstances, I had experienced that honesty was the worst policy. But for some reason, this time around, I decided to tell the truth.
“No. I was looking at the scene of the crime. You know, for clues.”
I searched his face for signs of guilt. After all, the crime happened in his shop, and the way he had looked at Brad made it obvious that he knew him. But there were no signs of guilt on Ford Essex’s face. In fact, he looked like he had never felt guilty in his life. But he probably should have. Because he was looking at me like a predator looks at his prey, or how I looked at a bologna sandwich. I took a step backward.
“You like true crime, huh?” he asked, giving me a come-hither look, which made me throw up a little in my mouth.
“Yes.” It was sort of the truth. I wasn’t a fan of true crime TV or books, but I had developed an obsession with real life real crime on more than one occasion. “Any ideas about what happened here?”
“That pregnant woman with the big glasses knifed the jerk a lot of times. Why? Have you heard something different?”
He took a couple steps forward, invading my personal space. I was getting a strong man-in-the-park-in-a-raincoat vibe off of him, and I took note of how many steps it was to escape from the small room. I also noted that the noise level wasn’t that bad in the coffee shop, and if I screamed, I would probably be heard. Add to that the fact that Ruth would have loved any excuse to pound Ford’s head in like she was tenderizing steak, I wasn’t scared, no matter how grossed out I was by Ford’s intense study of my breasts.
“I think the jury’s out about the pregnant woman being the killer,” I said. “I’m pretty sure the police are looking elsewhere,” I lied. “There might have been a witness.”
Oh, geez. I was such a good liar. The lies flowed out of me without me even thinking about them first. It was kind of like a muscle spasm of the mouth.
It was a good lie, and it did the trick. Ford took a step back, and his expression changed from leering to slight fear.
“Are you saying I did it?”
Yes, that’s what I was saying. If he did it, I could save Bridget.
“Because I didn’t do it,” he continued, dashing my hopes for a confession. “I hated the bastard, but only an idiot would stab a man to death in his back room at his grand opening. You know what I mean?”
I knew what he meant, but I was hoping he was idiot enough to do just that.
“You hated the bastard?” I asked.
“Did I say that?”
“You mentioned it.”
“Well, between you and me, I might have been in a small business venture with him last year, and it didn’t go so well.”
I remembered the look on Ford’s face when he realized that Brad was in his shop. “And he had come back to be a bastard to you? Something about your small business venture?”
“I don’t know why he was here. I didn’t have a chance to ask him.”
That could have been true or a lie. While I had been stuck in the crowd, I didn’t see where Ford was. He could have snuck to the back room or not.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you killed him,” I said, trying to get him to confess.
“You would like that? Does that turn you on?”
Ew. I didn’t know how to answer. If I said, yes, I was afraid where the conversation would lead, but if I said, no, I wouldn’t get any further in getting him to spill the beans.
“You know, Liz and I are having our weekly key party tonight at seven. We would love to have you join us. You can bring your significant other, if you have one.”
My thumb touched the ring on my finger, and I remembered that I did have a significant other. “Sure,” I said. If Spencer went with me, I wouldn’t have to worry about being murdered or raped. Ford gave me his address. “I’m so happy you’ll be joining us,” he said, and leered at me.
Blech.
I hadn’t gotten him to confess, but maybe at a party after a few drinks, he would spill his guts.
“What the hell is going on in here? Did you kidnap her?” Ruth demanded, storming into the room like a geriatric bulldog. She looked me over, as if she was searching for damage.
“We were just getting to know each other,” Ford told her. “You don’t mind staying out front where we can see you, do you? We don’t want a replay of what you did to our back door.”
“I was just going for a whiz. My bladder’s older than Mount Rushmore, you know.”
“I’ll make sure she behaves,” I told Ford.
“Just make sure you don’t,” he whispered to me and touched my chin. Ruth and I watched him leave the room.
“That man is walking herpes,” Ruth said. “He’s toe fungus. He’s a booger that just won’t go away.”
“I think he might have killed Brad, but I can’t prove it,” I said. “He invited me to his key party tonight, and I’m going to grill him there.”
“His key party? You’re going to a key party?”
“Why is that so crazy? I have keys, you know, Ruth. I have a key to my grandmother’s house and one to my car and one on my key ring that I have no idea what it goes to but I’m afraid to throw away.”
Ruth crossed her arms in front of her. “Do you know what a key party is, girl?”
“A party with keys?” It did sound strange. I had no idea why keys made a party.
“The sixties, Gladie. The sixties. Each woman drops their key into a bowl, and later each man fishes one out, blindly, and goes home with the owner of the key. This explains so much. The Essexes are swingers.”
“Swingers?”
“Swingers. His Donkey Kong is climbing every woman’s Empire State, and her Happy as a Clam is saying how do you do to every man’s Eiffel Tower.”
“I’m so confused, Ruth. I was never good at geography.”
She ignored me and snapped her fingers, as if she was Benjamin Franklin and had discovered electricity. “No wonder I was getting a stink off of them. Their whosits and whatsits are doing the cha-cha all over town. No wonder their coffee tastes like ass.”
“The Essexes are swingers?” I asked, again.
“And they want to swing with you and Spencer, Gladie,” Ruth continued. “Key party. Your key. He wants your key in his keyhole or vice versa. You want that? A little Ford Essex action in your keyhole?”
I shuddered. “Gross,” I said. “I don’t want to swing. I just got the ring. I’m very definitely not a swinger. My Happy as a Clam is happily monogamous. I’m only climbing Spencer’s Eiffel Tower. Are you sure about them? They don’t look like swingers. They look like insurance salesmen from the seventies.”
“Pay attention. This makes complete sense. People coming and going at all hours at this place. The dead body under the floor. Those two are up to no good. I wouldn’t be surprised if they killed Bradford Blythe and someone else besides. I mean, have you heard from Ethel since she sold this place to them?”
“No,” I breathed, even though I had never spoken to Ethel in my life. If I could prove they killed Ethel, it would shine a light on them and away from Bridget.
“We have to dig up that body, Gladie.”
“We have to dig up that body,” I agreed. “Wait a minute. You drank coffee here?”
Ruth pursed her lips and nodded, curtly. “I’m lulling them into a false sense of security.”
“That’s taking one for the team.”
“You’re telling me.”
Then, I saw it. Cradled in the grout between the floor tiles, there was a fingernail. I squatted down and looked more closely. It was an acrylic nail that was painted white, but there was a splash of red on it. Blood.
I picked it up and showed it to Ruth. “It’s Liz Essex’s fingernail,” I said. “I would bet money on it.” But it wasn’t proof of anything. Even if it was Brad’s blood on the nail and Liz was the murderer, she could have explained it away saying she had cleaned the room.
“Meet me at Tea Time at seven,” Ruth instructed me. “I have a way in here. We’ll dig up the body, and those corporate devils will get their due.”
“Seven tonight?”
“Either that, or you can go to your wife swapping party.”
“I’ll see you at seven, Ruth.”
Luckily, Spencer was working late, and Grandma had a friend staying with her. The egg people were in their homes, boiling, and my two matches were on dates. I was free to break and enter and break, again. But I didn’t want to be alone with Ruth, especially since she had a personal vendetta against Buckstars and its owners and probably had access to noxious chemicals. So, I called Lucy and asked her to meet me at Tea Time at seven.
“Should I wear my black outfit, again, darlin’? Is it one of those kinds of meetings?”
“Yes,” I said. “And bring all the night vision goggles you can find.”
When six-thirty came around, I left the house and walked to Tea Time. I was dressed all in black, and I made it to the tea shop without anyone seeing me. Tea Time was dark, and the door was locked. I knocked, and Ruth opened it, immediately, letting me in. She was dressed in black, too.
“I can’t wait until that Buckstars is dead and gone,” she said, smiling wide.
“I hope we can clear Bridget’s name.”
“Yeah, that too,” she said, vaguely.
The door opened, again, and Lucy walked in with her husband, Uncle Harry. Lucy was back in her black, designer outfit, and Harry was in a pinstripe suit. “Hey there, Legs,” he said to me. “I hear we’re robbing a bank.”
“We’re digging up a body,” Ruth said. “But you weren’t invited.”
“I invited him, Ruth,” Lucy said. “So, jump back.”
“Fine. I guess we could use some more muscle.”
“Oh, I brought muscle. Don’t worry about that.” Uncle Harry said.
“And I brought enough night vision goggles,” Lucy said and handed them out.
Ruth slipped hers on over her head. “Good thinking. Someone help me with the jackhammer.”
“You have a jackhammer?” I asked.
“Never robbed a bank with a jackhammer before,” Harry said.
“We’re digging up a body,” I said.
“Never done that, either.”
Ruth signaled to Harry to help her with her jackhammer, which was leaning against a table.
“Ruth, we can’t use a jackhammer,” Lucy explained in her patient Southern belle voice. “We’ll wake the dead with that thing. We need to get this done on the sly. You don’t want the police showing up, do you?”
“She has a point,” I said and looked at my ring. Spencer wouldn’t take kindly to me breaking and entering and searching for dead bodies in a coffee shop. “We should try to be quiet.”
“You mean I stole this jackhammer from their contractor for nothing?” Ruth said. “No way. Do you know what it takes to steal a jackhammer without getting caught? It weighs more than me. I had to sneak it away from Urijah while his back was turned. I pulled three discs in my back, and I’m pretty sure my belly button is no longer in the same place, if you know what I mean.”
I had no idea what she meant. “Urijah is the contractor for Buckstars?” I asked. The whole thing was becoming incestuous. The Essexes were swinging with God knew who, Ford had done business with Brad, who had met with Urijah, who was Ford and Liz’s contractor. And by the way, also Spencer’s contractor, which meant that he was my contractor. What the hell was going on?
“We need to get under that floor,” I said. It was my only lead to solve the murder and save Bridget from having her baby in jail.
“That’s what I want to hear. Grab the jackhammer,” Ruth ordered Lucy.
“Hold the phone. What’s that?” she asked, pointing. I froze.
“What? Have we been found out?” I asked, looking around with my night vision goggles.
“No,” Lucy said, sounding annoyed. “What’s that on your hand?”
“Oh, this.”
“It’s an engagement ring, of course,” Ruth said. “What do you think it is? Spencer and Gladie are getting married.”
“Wait a second. Wait a second,” Lucy said, putting her arms out, as if she was walking the high wire without a net. “You told Ruth that you got engaged, but you didn’t tell me?”
“She sort of guessed. I was going to tell you, but then all of this happened, and Bridget’s in trouble.”
Lucy looked ashen, even through the lens of the night vision goggles. I had broken the best friend code. I should have called her the first moment that Spencer showed me the ring.
“It just happened,” I said. “Last night.”
“Twenty-four hours?”
“Twenty-five, tops,” I said. “Can you forgive me?”
A smile grew on her face, slowly. “You’re getting married to Spencer! True love has conquered the day! I knew it would happen!”
“The cop is finally settling down,” Uncle Harry said, lighting up a cigar. “It’s like you tagged Bigfoot. Congratulations, Legs. When’s the wedding?”
“The wedding?” I asked. I hadn’t actually thought of the wedding. I didn’t want to be the center of attention and walk down the aisle with Wagner playing.
“Can we focus, people?” Ruth asked. “We have a dead body to dig up. You can figure out bridesmaids’ dresses at another time.”
“Bridesmaids’ dresses, Gladie. You hear that?” Lucy asked.
Oh, God. Bridesmaids’ dresses. What had I done?
“We’re standing around like morons in night vision goggles. We have to be serious. There’s a dead body to dig up before the swingers come back from their orgy party.”
“Who’s a swinger at an orgy party?” Lucy asked.
“The Buckstars owners,” I explained. “They’re swingers.”
Lucy slammed her hand down on a table. “There are swingers in this little town? Nobody ever tells me anything!”
“Tick, tock,” Ruth said. “Are we doing this or what?”
We were doing it. Ruth agreed to leave her stolen jackhammer behind because it would be too noisy. Uncle Harry had brought two of his “assistants” with him, plus a couple shovels. Along with the jackhammer, Ruth had stolen the alarm key, and she pushed the code into the keypad. Our criminal group walked inside. It was already a miracle that we hadn’t been spotted by someone, but thankfully, the town was either boiling eggs or bonking strangers.
“This is going to be hard without a jackhammer,” Ruth grumbled.
“I told you that I brought muscle,” Harry insisted, and he signaled to his two men, who put their shovels aside and pulled out guns from their jackets.
“What the hell?” I said.
They shot a flurry of bullets into the floor. The tile went flying. When they were done, I slapped my hands on my ears, which were ringing. “That’s not quieter than a jackhammer!” Ruth yelled. The guns were loud enough to wake the dead. We froze and waited for the police to come.
But nobody came. It was a miracle.
“All right. Start digging,” Harry ordered his men.
“I can’t believe they shot up the floor,” Ruth grumbled. “And you guys acted like I was stupid for stealing a jackhammer.”
The two men made quick work of the floor. They ripped up every inch of the store, trying to find a dead person. Buckstars looked like it had been bombed. There was tile and dirt everywhere. The tables and chairs were piled high in the corner. We had to stand at the doorway in order not to fall into the deep holes. The men dug down six feet before we found something.
“What is it?” Ruth asked.
“It’s a body part,” Lucy said. “Maybe an arm?’
“That ain’t no arm,” Harry said.
“It’s not a body,” I said. “I don’t even think that’s human.”
One of Uncle Harry’s men picked it up and raised it over his head. “It’s a dildo. They killed a dildo!”
“They buried a dildo?” Ruth said. “What kind of sick people are they?”
Since we were standing in what looked a battlefield in World War One, I didn’t feel right talking about the sickness of other people.
“Holy crap,” Lucy breathed. “They really are swingers.”
“Where’s the body? There was supposed to be a body,” I said.
“We could bust through the walls,” one of Uncle Harry’s men suggested. “Walls are good for hiding bodies.”
“What have we done?” I asked, taking stock of the rubble that once was Buckstars.
“Right?” Ruth said. “This is better than flooding the bathrooms. What should we do with the dildo? I have some Superglue. We could stick it to the front door.”
“I’m a bad person,” I breathed. “I’ve destroyed a business.” I had turned into a criminal, all because I didn’t want Bridget to be accused of being a criminal. I had gone over to the dark side. “I can’t even afford to make it right. I’m not an expert, but I bet that a new floor costs more than twenty-seven bucks and a five-dollar gift card to Barnes & Noble.”
“Who gave you a gift card to Barnes & Noble?” Lucy asked me.
“Okay, fine. Just twenty-seven bucks.”
“I don’t know what’s eating you, Gladie,” Ruth said. “I’ve never felt happier. I’ve got cocaine-level endorphins running through me. These Buckstars people are bad.”
I had been hoping that they were murderers. Burying a dildo was not on the same level as murder. “I’m a criminal. I’m a vandal.”
Uncle Harry put his arm around my shoulders. “You’re just in a slump. Normally, you peg the killer right off. This time you were off a little. Everyone hits a rough patch. Would it make you feel better if I leave some cash for the dildo people? Enough so that they can rebuild or buy more dildos, whichever they prefer?”
“Would you?”
“Sure.”
I was relieved that the Essexes would be reimbursed for our vandalism, but I was worried that Harry was right about my slump. I wasn’t any closer to solving the mystery of Brad’s murder, and now I wasn’t sure I would ever prove Bridget’s innocence.