Chapter 2

“Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who's out; And take upon’s the mystery of things, as if we were God's spies.”

 

 

Juliet moved toward the swinging door to the front room with Delia hot on her heels. She’d never asked the young woman about her relationship with the detective —actually, she hadn’t even known they’d had one until Montague himself opened up about it.

Well, I say opened up…

He’d said something in an unguarded moment that Delia jumped on. Apparently, Nicolo lost Juliet because he didn’t think Paris was a threat.

How could anyone think that? Paris Nobleman was gorgeous, genuine, gentlemanly, and had a host of other ‘G’ qualities that made him a nuclear threat to any man’s love life.

But perhaps Nicolo was so attractive he wasn’t used to threats of any sort.

Delia remained behind Juliet all the way into the front area.

Nicolo opened the door. He lifted his pale blue eyes and saw Juliet first. He blinked a couple of times, and then his eyes darted toward Paris and Bogart, but mostly Paris.

It was one of those moments where everyone seemed to freeze —like Anna in the Frozen movie —well, everyone but Bogart, who seemed oblivious to anything other than the frog cupcake he devoured in two bites. 

Delia stepped forward to break the ice, as it were. She came from behind Juliet and the counter edge. “Hello, Detective. I’m so glad you could make it to the grand opening.” Honestly, Delia couldn’t remember if she invited him or not, but she needed to say something.

Nicolo blinked and then focused his attention on Delia.

Wow, she’d almost forgotten how attractive the man was with his dark blonde hair, which was a bit longer than the last time she’d seen him. The waves curled up away from his forehead and around his ears. Thick dark brows and lashes made his blue eyes stand out, and he had a sharp nose and full lips.

Delia almost turned and silently questioned Juliet. Are you sure you’re not in love with this guy?

Nicolo was tall, too, and sturdily built with square shoulders and slender hips. He wore blue jeans and a loose-fitting long sleeve shirt of moss green. He leaned toward Delia. “I need to speak to you.”

His words gave her a little start. Maybe whatever he’d called about yesterday had been urgent after all. Was it something to do with Matthew? Delia couldn’t imagine suddenly that Nicolo would come for any other reason. It certainly wasn’t the grand opening that had pulled him here.

Juliet said, “We’ve got to get back to the house anyway.” She turned toward Paris. “Are you ready?

“Yeah,” he said absently, pulling the apron from his waist. 

“We’ll wash and return the uniforms right away,” Juliet told her with a hesitant smile, and then she gazed at Detective Montague. “I’m sorry about your mom, Nicolo.”

His brow twitched, and he nodded, then he moved toward one of the café tables and took a seat in a tall chair.

Juliet and Paris headed through the swinging doors and disappeared. 

Bogart stepped around the counter and closed the Dutch door. Delia had hired him to mostly clean up in the afternoon, put dishes in the dishwasher, and wipe down all the counters. He was good with customers, too, but he’d only work ten-thirty to four-thirty from tomorrow forward. Bogart worked at the Stove and Keg some evenings to supplement his income and buy motorcycle gas. He raised his hand at Delia. “I’ll be in the back if you need me.”

“Thanks,” she called to him and then took a chair opposite Nicolo. “It’s nice to see you, Detective.” She placed her hands flat on the table. Then, glancing at them, she pulled them back into her lap. Her fingernails were full of wet flour. “Would you like a donut and hot chocolate?” Delia swiveled, ready to stand. 

“No, thank you,” he said, placing his clean hands on the table and clasping them in front of him. “I thought you’d come to the station with Edmund yesterday.”

“Eddie? No, I don’t go anywhere with Eddie.”

He jerked his square chin back a bit as though surprised by her answer. “He’s the guy you were watching a couple of months ago, right? I thought maybe you’d changed your mind about him once he defended you the evening that Matthew tried to kill you.”

Delia nodded. “No, I have not changed my mind about him.” His constant blue stare gave her a run-on mouth. “He is dating my best friend, though. Eddie didn’t save her life… Never mind.” She pressed her lips together and widened her eyes. “Sorry, what did you want to talk to me about?”

“Someone bailed Matthew Oswald out of jail two days ago.”

Delia’s heart stopped for a moment, and she squeezed her fingers together hard. “How is that possible? I thought the judge denied bail.”

“He did, but a mistake was made while gathering evidence. The case fell apart.”

Delia leaned forward. “What do you mean, fell apart? He tried to kill Isaac and me. I’ll testify in court. I’m sure Isaac will too.”

“Which he’ll face a trial for, but that’s attempted murder, and the judge allowed bail.”

She pressed her shoulders into the iron chair back. “Mate’s too dangerous to be out on bail.”

Nicolo nodded his head. “That’s why I put a tail on him. Although…” He sat back, too, but keeping his hands on the tabletop. “We don’t know where Matthew is now.” He turned sideways an inch and kept his eyes on Delia. 

Delia wrinkled the bridge of her nose. “The police lost him?”

“I was too late … I was out of town.” His eyes went beyond Delia and to the front window. “My mom passed away.”

Delia caught her breath and reached for his hand. “I’m so sorry, Nicolo.”

For a moment, he let Delia hold his hand, but then he gently pulled away.

Her cheeks burned. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He shook his head. “She had cancer for a couple of years.” Then, clearing his throat again, he said, “Anyway, do you have somewhere to stay until I track him down?”

Delia blinked a couple of times. The detective thought she might be in danger. “Um, no. Not really. Thomi’s dad just moved in with her, and my father is in an assisted living home.”

“No other family?”

“Well, I have two sisters, but there’s no way… I can’t move in with them.” She waved her hand toward the counter. “And I just opened King Lears. I can’t close it now.”

He nodded. “I understand. But, I want you to understand, too, that you might be in danger and think about ways to protect yourself. There’s an upstairs here, right?” he asked, turning in his chair and glancing at the stairway at the back of the room.

“Yes, but it’s not a living space.”

He turned back around and then got to his feet. “Okay, well, think about your options, Delia.” He stopped in front of her chair. “My intention is not to scare you but to make you think about your safety. Oswald might’ve skipped town, or he’s laying low until his court date.”

She got to her feet, too. “Thank you, Detective.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, taking a step backward. “You still have my number?”

“Yes,” she said, following him to the door. “Thank you for coming.”

He nodded, unlocked the door, and slipped outside. “Lock up,” he reminded her.

Delia closed the door behind him and then watched the detective through the window as he moved around the corner and beyond the Stove and Keg. Her heart hadn’t quite returned to its typical pattern. 

Mate’s out of jail. He’s on the loose. He could be anywhere, at the Stove and Keg even, watching me right now with a beer in his hand.

Delia leaned closer to the window and searched the people standing outside the pub. The narrow three-story building was painted blue and had a steep A-frame roof with red tiles. 

None of the patrons glanced toward King Lears. Still, Mate might be inside, behind one of the many-paned windows, staring out at her right now.

She ducked away from the window fast.

“What do you want me to do with the dough you …?” 

Delia jumped a foot.

“Sorry,” Bogart said, holding up his hands as though he was in a bank robbery scene. 

“Don’t ever do that again,” she pleaded, grabbing her heart.

His brown eyes were wide. “Uh… I just wanted to know what you want me to do with the dough you left on the table back here.” He hitched his thumb over his shoulder.

“Sorry, Bogart,” she told him, walking away from the door and around the counter. “I got a bit jumpy there. I’ll take care of the dough.” She followed him through the swinging door and then glanced around the two rooms separated by a brick archway. Everything was tidy again —except for her worktable.

“I put all the dishes in the washer and I’m going to head out.” He watched her, maybe to see if she disapproved.

“Of course,” she told him, waving him away. “Thank you.”

He nodded and went out the back door.

“Lock it, please.”

He turned and stared at her again.

“Sorry, big day, lots of emotions coming out of me now.” She leaned one hand on the worktable to balance herself and placed her other hand on her hip, just to look casual. Never mind that a killer was stalking her. “You did great today, Bogart. Have a nice evening.”

He nodded, twisted the lock, and shut the door.

Delia heard it, and then she slumped onto the stool in front of the worktable. 

This was supposed to be her day. Remembering her positive self-talk, she thought, I am calm and confident.

Yes, she was and she was going to put food away and go home.

She pulled out a long sheet of plastic from beneath the table and then proceeded to wrap the dough in it. 

But, what am I going to do?

What can I do?

Go to church. Get myself right with God.

She put the dough in the refrigerator, shut the kitchen down, and walked into the front area of the bakery. There she closed down the register and took inventory of what she needed to bake in the morning. 

Delia went out the front way.

I’m not going to watch the shadows…

Oh no, I’m watching the shadows!

She needed to get a grip. Nicolo said that Mate had been out of jail for two days. If he meant to find her and kill her, he would’ve done it two days ago —or yesterday. Why wait until today when the bakery opened?

Because he wants me to die on my best day ever.

Delia shook her head and concentrated on her surroundings. She always enjoyed the walk.

She walked past the brick storefronts, noticing the hanging flower baskets. She loved the stone bridges with the gas lamps at each end. It was easy to forget the foreboding feeling when the three o’clock sun warmed to seventy-three, and the trees surrounding the area were full of yellows and oranges and reds. A soft breeze sifted through the corridors of the Hatch, and then Delia was at the fountain that the management always had running with different colored water. Today it was purple. Lavender bubbles formed as the water plopped into the pool.

She took the tiny path through the holly trees and opened Sweaty Freddy’s door —but first, she checked the backseat.

All clear.

Behind the wheel, she started the engine —and the fuel light came on. Delia swore the tank ran dry every ten minutes. But then she had driven into Buffalo two days ago to see her father.

On the highway, she went farther than her exit and wound up on the street that led to the Cheery Cherry Ice Cream Parlor.

I’m not going to stop. I don’t need ice cream; I need gas at the station across the street.

But it has been a stressful half-hour.

 

 

The Cheery Cherry smelled of cream and sugar and chocolate and bananas. Black and white tiles covered the floor like a chessboard. The ceiling was sculpted, and if a person stared at it long enough, the sculpting looked like scoops of vanilla ice cream. Pink awnings jutted from the white and pink-striped walls.

“I haven’t seen you for a while,” the teenaged girl behind the counter said to Delia. She had stringy blond hair and a bad complexion. “Did you finally get tired of ice cream?”

Blasphemy!

“No,” Delia told her, stepping up to the sneeze glass and gazing at the rainbow of ice creams in buckets beneath her nose. “I’ve just been trying to cut back.”

The girl was kitty-corner to her, and she swept her brown eyes over Delia’s hips. “Are you eating something else instead?” She chewed her gum a second longer and then blew a decent-sized bubble.

What the…? Too far, girly!

That is not what she said. Instead, she explained, “Look, I’m in phase two of my emotional eating routine. I’m not eating it every day, but only when I need extra emotional support.”

The girl nodded without a lot of interest. “The usual then?” she asked, grabbing an ice cream scoop from one of the water bins.

“Yes,” Delia answered, packing a lot of emotion behind the word. 

Since she’d already pumped gas, Delia opened the chocolate swirl and took two bites while driving the interstate. She flipped the lid back on and pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Boroughbridge House. The apartment building was a three-and-a-half-story structure painted clay red with green window trim. The fire escapes were bright blue.

Grabbing her ice cream and purse, Delia got out of the SUV and started across the parking lot —just as her downstairs neighbor, Olivia Earl, whipped her gunmetal gray Jeep next to Freddy. For the last two days, Olivia had carried around a giant agave cactus in the cargo area of the vehicle.

Nobody in the building said anything about it, but Delia thought there was a shared thought of, what the hell?

Olivia’s Jeep had no door panels or roof on it, ever. So when it rained or snowed, the woman used the vehicle as-is. Delia’s most significant question was how does she drive and smoke at the same time? And how does the cactus feel about getting ash all over its thorns?

Voices from the right side of the building caught her attention. She recognized Thomi’s first. She was on the fire escape, on the second-floor landing, and she laughed at whatever Eddie had just said. They came down the steps together then, holding hands.

For a brief moment while driving home, Delia had wondered if Mate Oswald had gotten to Thomi and killed her. That’s why her bestie hadn’t come to the grand opening. But the young woman certainly seemed healthy now. Actually, she glowed with her love-light turned on high. Thomi had swept back her hair into a thick yellow headband that matched her blouse. 

I should just ask her why she didn’t come to the bakery … no, she obviously forgot. 

Still, this was important to Delia, and if she didn’t say something, she’d grow bitter over it and carry a hurt feeling around forever.

Changing directions, she met the girl and Eddie at the bottom of the fire escape.

“Oh, Delia, there you are,” Thomi said, her pale brown eyes twinkling bright with love-dew. Yes, love-dew. It was a thing.

“I missed you today,” Delia told her. 

There, that wasn’t so hard. I can confront when necessary.

“What?”

“The bakery opened today,” Delia reminded her.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “How’d it go?”

“Good, really good…” Ask her why she didn’t come! “We had quite a crowd.”

“Wonderful.” Thomi stepped onto the gravel and patted Delia’s forearm. “Listen, Eddie and I are off to Rocco’s. Will you tell me all about it later?”

“Sure, of course,” she said, stepping aside to let Eddie off the fire escape. “Have fun.”

And off they skipped toward Eddie’s Mustang. 

They didn’t actually skip, but they might as well have for all the teetering they did between them.

She’s in love. Eventually, Thomi will snap out of it and remember other people love her too. And no feeling sorry for yourself, Delia Grace! Off you go to eat ice cream.

Feeling a ball of dullness in the pit of her stomach, she walked to the front of the building and through the double door entry. She’d go out of her way to climb the stairway inside the building. The fire escape would’ve been a quicker commute, but Delia never took it. That was because she always liked to give herself the best statistical chance of survival. Go up solid concrete stairs or go up rickety metal steps that might come loose of their bearings? Did she want the fastest route or the one she might die on?

Her apartment was on the half-fourth floor of the building in the four hundred square foot attic space. She’d lived at Boroughbridge house for nearly five years now and loved her spot high in the trees. Behind the building was Spotted Duck Woods. 

Someone came up the steps behind Delia. 

Mate?

She turned around on the second-floor landing, heart leaping into her throat, and about to lose her ice cream.

But it was only Christopher Cornwall coming up the steps. He was probably in his forties and had pale brown hair that curled around his ears like tidal waves. Right in front of him were two Corgi dogs. Chris called to them, “Excuse us, Delia. We’ve talked about this. Stella, Winston, stop running.”

Delia nodded at them, back to the wall, death grip on her ice cream purchase, and allowed them to run past her up the next set of steps.

She was on the third floor when she heard someone crying. As she came around the corner, she saw Sanya Ashbury trying to stick her key into the lock on her door.

Oh, geez.

It was odd to see her cry, though. She was more of an I’ll-give-you-a-reason-to-cry type. She was Jeanette Loring’s sister. 

Would it be rude if Delia slipped behind Sanya the same way she’d stayed out of the dog’s path, by keeping her back to the wall and scooching along? After all, her apartment door was only four steps away.

Suddenly, Sanya lifted her face to the ceiling, cursed a stream of blue words, and knocked her head against the door.

Delia’s mouth dropped, and before she could stop herself, she asked, “Is everything alright, Sanya?”

The woman nearly jumped out of her green yoga pants. Sanya was somewhere in her forties, looked to be in her early thirties. She had her ombre-colored hair up in a ponytail and had very dark brown eyes. Every inch of her was muscle because Sanya was into cross-fit training. She lifted truck tires.

I can’t lift bicycle tires.

“Nothing is wrong with me,” Sanya said, staring at the door straight ahead of her.

Delia shrugged. It was a relief to move on. “Okay.”

Sanya laid her head on the door again —actually right on the peephole. It’d leave an indention if she didn’t move her head soon. “I didn’t think I’d miss him.”

Her husband, Reg Ashbury, had been murdered a couple of months ago. Actually, someone tossed him out of one of Delia’s windows. At the time, Delia thought Sanya could’ve been the murderer because she never seemed to like her husband much. It was pretty hard to imagine her missing him.

“Do you mean Reg?”

“Of course, Reg,” Sanya said. “He was definitely a dork, but…”

“You loved him.”

She nodded and finally pulled away from the door. Turning, she leaned against the wood and caught Delia’s eyes. 

Delia’s eyes caught something, too: Sanya’s earrings. They were silver and beautiful and shaped like daggers. And that pretty much summed up who Sanya was as a person. 

It’s almost too on-the-nose.

She said, “Every time I see a news story on the television, I think of him and how he’d come up with a theory on what really happened.”

Delia let out a breathy laugh. “Yes, Reg and his theories.”

Sanya rubbed her eyes with her finger pressed in hard. “I can’t get my door opened. I never needed the key when Reg was here. He was always home before me and usually waiting right here.”

Delia nodded and felt a rush of sympathy for the widow. Reaching forward, she took the key ring. “Here, let me try.” She stepped forward and inserted the key into the lock. The door opened quickly. “There you go,” she said and handed Sanya the key set.

“That was very kind of you, Delia. Thank you.” She started forward but then paused. She blinked her dark eyes several times and then cleared her throat. “I’ve not always been nice to you. I’m sorry.”

Delia frowned. “Thank you for saying that.”

Sanya waved her hand toward the living room. “Do you want to come in for a glass of wine?”

“Oh no,” Delia said, a tight feeling searing through her chest. They might be having a moment —at the moment —but Sanya Ashbury was not someone with whom to make friends. 

I do need some new ones, however. But, Sanya? Should I ask her to the movies?

Delia held up her package. “I’ve got to put my groceries away and feed Clawdius. But, thank you.”

“Right,” Sanya said, as though she knew it was only an excuse. “Maybe next time.”

“Yes, next time,” Delia told her and moved toward the last steps to her apartment. She felt sweaty and guilty —and greatly relieved. 

I wish you all the best, Sanya. But you are bossy and deceitful.

Opening her own door, Delia set her bags down and then closed and locked the door. Glancing toward the fire escape exit, she saw the lock was set —as was the kitchen window.

From the spot by the door, she could see into her tiny bedroom. If Mate were hiding there, Delia would be able to see him. The room barely had space for the twin bed and bookshelf. But the bathroom…

She’d left the door cracked that morning with just enough space for Clawdius to get into his litter box.

But what if Mate hid behind the door now, waiting for Delia to settle in with her ice cream before springing out at her?

Something rubbed against her leg.

Her brain knew it was Clawdius, but Delia’s body reacted as though a shark swam through the apartment and grazed its teeth against her shin. Goosebumps ran the length of her shoulders and then spread across her scalp. A shock of electricity bolted along with the entire network of her nervous system, and she froze, except her lips. She whispered, “Behold, Clawdius.”

It was how she always greeted the orange tabby cat whether she was terrified or not.

He greeted her back with a low-throated growl.

Delia’s eyes grew wide, and she glanced at Clawdius.

His big green eyes glanced at the ice cream bag.

“You have to help me open the bathroom door if you want some of this,” she whispered, shaking the bag a little.

Wait! 

 She needed a weapon.

There was nothing much to use. Chenille pillows decorated the loveseat near the window. There was a lamp on the table, but it was more of a plastic stick with a shade. There were knives in the kitchen, but Delia had always heard whatever weapon a person used to defend themselves could be turned against them. 

She spied a BIC lighter-wand on the kitchen island, right next to a Bahama Breezes candle. Grabbing the lighter, she faced the bathroom door again. She pressed the button and was ready to pull the trigger of it.

WHY are these things so hard to light?

With her free hand, she put her fingers on the door…

Tried to light the wand again…

She pushed open the door.