Four
—Crime Hive podcast
“You’ve got a date with the hot detective?
” Olivia asked me, skeptical, when I returned to Koi later that afternoon.
She’d finished up her classes and now she was sitting in the kitchen folding towels to stock in each guest bathroom.
I haplessly tried folding a towel longwise, and Olivia gently removed it from my hands, saving me from making a lopsided rectangle.
“I don’t think it’s actually a date,” I said. I’d only ever had a professional relationship with Russo, but considering I didn’t have a profession anymore, there’d be no HR representative to stop me if I wanted to get to know him in the biblical sense.
“A date?” Mom called from upstairs because she had supersonic hearing and was also incredibly nosy.
She hurried down the stairs from their third-floor mother-in-law suite in the attic, complete with dinette, bath, and bedroom, where she and Dad lived most of the time, when guests filled the second and first floors.
“Not from Spark, I hope.” She was wearing a trendy red jumpsuit and matching red lipstick. Her face seemed pinched with worry.
“No, not Spark,” I said, and Mom’s shoulders sagged in relief. “He’s law enforcement, Mom. Homicide detective. Happy? Or did you want to run a background check anyway?”
Mom considered this. “I’d feel better if it was Jude, since I know his parents, but I guess I’ll allow it,” she said, as if she had any influence on my adult decisions.
Also, her overprotectiveness always irked me.
I should drag her to Irene’s dojo and make Trevon convince her that I was fully capable of taking care of myself.
Or Eric. He would probably be able to tell her, too.
“Oh! I almost forgot to tell you. Gordon’s Frozen Custard is closed. Listeria outbreak,” I told Mom.
“Tammy told me,” Mom said. “She said five people are in the hospital!”
“I guess that means no mudpacks this week,” Olivia said, sounding despondent.
“Tammy said there might be a lawsuit.”
“Why do you even hang out with Tammy, Mom?” I glanced at Olivia. “She’s… pretty terrible.”
“She’s our neighbor, so we have to be nice, and she just has different ideas, that’s all,” Mom said and shrugged.
“Ideas from the 1700s? Yes. I agree. Next, she’ll be wanting to burn witches at the stake.”
“She would not,” Mom scoffed.
“Really?” I countered. “Because she reposted an article on her social media account the other day that said women shouldn’t have the right to vote.”
Mom sighed. “People are entitled to their opinions.”
“Really? Even very bad ones?” I challenged.
“I like the other women in the knitting club,” Mom went on. “They’re sweet. I didn’t invite Tammy in, but she’s there and…” Mom shrugged. “So, we just have to deal with it.”
This “just deal with them” attitude is the very reason bad people got away with bad things.
She eyed my sweaty sports bra and leggings. “I hope you’re not going to wear that on your date.”
“I actually thought I’d change into a teddy bear onesie just in case he’s into furries.”
“Be serious!” Mom exclaimed.
“I was thinking I’d just wear jeans and—”
“No. Absolutely not,” Mom declared.
“I have something you could borrow,” Olivia said and clapped her hands with glee.
“I’d rather avoid pink,” I said dubiously, since Olivia almost exclusively wore pink, specifically the shade that matched her hair.
“You don’t mean that,” Mom said.
An hour later, Mom and Olivia had stuffed me into a low-cut magenta wrap dress that fit the Mom-approved winter color wheel of my adolescent color reading, which I had to admit made my skin glow and my tits look amazing but also exposed half of them to the world.
Also, I hated dresses. I’d always hated dresses.
They got in the way of my ability to throw a proper roundhouse.
Oliva added the finishing flourishes with heavy makeup somewhere on the scale between Elvira and Chappell Roan.
“You sure I should wear this?” I asked. As I straightened my back, my boobs nearly fell out of the skimpy fabric. If I had to punch a man in the face tonight, he’d get the added bonus of seeing one of the girls, eye-to-eye.
“If you’ve got ’em, flaunt ’em,” Olivia said.
“The milkshake brings the boys to the yard,” Mom said as she wiggled her butt in her red jumpsuit.
“Never, ever say those words to me again,” I warned Mom. “Also, I don’t think I can walk in these heels.” I glanced down at the black spike stilettos. On the one hand, I was walking on dagger-like weapons, and on the other hand, I’d never be able to set up properly for a front kick.
I took a step and wobbled like a baby giraffe dropped fresh from the womb.
“Spread your toes, engage your core,” Mom scolded as I tried to balance on two thin chopsticks.
“Heel first, roll through your toes.” She clapped her hands like a disappointed drill sergeant.
“I once had to walk down a runway in five-inch heels on a block of frozen ice. You know, I was the first Asian model to walk for Prada.”
“We know, Mom,” Olivia said. Mom’s impressive magazine covers from most every women’s magazine in the 1990s hung in frames along the staircase.
I wobbled a little as I tried to make it to the front door, and then Mom sighed, exasperated, and tromped upstairs to her third-floor bedroom.
She came down the stairs, emerging on the second-floor landing wearing heels higher than mine, and then, despite being sixty, sashayed, like a model during Fashion Week, swinging her arms and walking erect along the second-floor banister, eyes staring a hole into the wall in front of her.
Mom stopped, pivoted with ease and then leaned on the railing, peering down at me.
“Did you know what the head designer at Gucci told me? Take up space, darling. Fight for your place on the runway,” Mom said dramatically as she lifted both arms. “It’s just like our namesake says. We’re warriors.”
Takeda meant “warrior,” or something like that.
“Take up space on that battlefield,” Mom said, as she had a million times before.
“I’m afraid I’m going to take up all the space on the ground,” I said doubtfully.
“Pick a spot on the horizon and stare at it,” Mom offered.
“I thought you did that on a boat in rough seas,” I said.
“Same difference.” Mom shrugged.
I stood on the uneven pavement outside Holy Water, standing in the far more sensible strappy sandals I’d opted for instead of Mom’s death stilettos.
She’d been disappointed but then agreed that falling on my face and showing up with a black eye was worse than going without accentuated calves.
I stopped at the steps of the old Baptist church with the chalkboard sign out front.
YOU’RE MAKING TOO MANY SOBER DECISIONS. WE’VE GOT THE CURE FOR THAT.
Fair point.
I headed delicately up the front steps, glad I’d ditched the murder heels, because there’s no way I’d be able to navigate the uneven stone in them.
I opened the front door, butterflies fluttering in my stomach.
I almost wished I was dealing with that Jeep Wagoneer rather than the prospect of a date.
Where was a murderous stalker when you needed one?
I stepped inside the atrium and saw the giant stained glass window, a beautiful mosaic of red, blue, and gold flowers.
The pews had long been removed, though some had been cut in half and used as benches around square tables.
I swept the room looking for signs of Russo, and finding none, felt myself relax.
I’d beat him here.
Good.
I glanced at the antique clock above the bar and saw I was a full fifteen minutes early.
Mel Marino, the forty-something owner of the place, stood behind the bar managing the handful of orders, her pixie cut turned mostly white.
She wore her trademark flannel button-up shirt, rolled to her elbows, her tattoo of a sprig of thorny red roses visible just above the collar.
I made my way with easy confidence to the bar, where Mel’s dog, a poodle-schnauzer-golden mix, trotted out from behind the bar and sniffed my painted toes.
“Hey there, Benji,” I said, dropping down to scratch the little guy behind the ears.
He wore a little barrel hanging from his collar as if he were the world’s smallest Saint Bernard.
He was probably no more than thirty pounds soaking wet.
He instantly rolled onto his back, looking for a belly scratch. I obliged him.
“Don’t spoil that guy,” Mel called, crossing her tattooed forearms across her chest. “He gets too many belly rubs already. How ya doing, Ella?”
“Alright,” I answered. She grinned at me as her two regulars at the bar turned to greet me: Bill, a retired commercial pilot who spent his summers flying tourists around in puddle jumpers, and Gary, a semiretired paramedic.
“So back in town, huh, Thin Ice?” Bill said, wearing his Bears hoodie and a matching Bears ski cap with the orange-and-blue pom-pom on the crown.
“There she is!” Gary said, wearing his Green Bay Packers trucker hat bleached almost white from the sun. “Heard you were home!”
“I see you two have never left your original stools,” I said. They’d been sitting on opposite sides of the bar the summer after my high school graduation, and it seemed they had never left.
“Ah, whelp, can’t beat the lagers here,” Gary said.
“The IPAs are better, ya cheesehead,” Bill argued.
“Listen, FIB, don’t even get me started.
” FIB—Wisconsin’s not-so-nice way of referring to its neighbors to the south—f’ing Illinois bastards.
Yet, when Gary said it, there was no malice.
Still, the men could never agree on anything.
One rooted for the Packers, the other for the Bears.
One was Republican, the other Democrat. One a Wisconsin son, the other a Land of Lincoln transplant.
“Oh, we wanna start there, do we?” Gary asked. “Well, why don’t we just talk about the mess your governor’s making at the capital?”
“Gentlemen!” cried Mel, holding up both hands. “Remember the bar’s golden rule.” She pointed to the sign above the bar that read PROFANITY ENCOURAGED. POLITICS FORBIDDEN, with a backslash over a donkey and an elephant.
I had to laugh. I kind of missed Gary and Bill. They were good old ’Scansin, real-life Statler and Waldorf Muppets with their balding gray heads and crusty worldview, poking fun at each other and everyone else from their balcony seats at the bar.
“You still into that true murder and whatnot?” Gary asked.
“We tried to listen to that podcast o’ yours, but…” Bill held up his ancient iPhone with the spiderweb cracks across the front. Not sure how he even used it to call people, much less access a podcast. “I don’t really care for all the murders.”
“Yeah, man faints dead away at the sight of blood.”
“I do not,” Bill protested.
“Please. Remember when you passed out at the blood drive last year? You took out an entire table of orange slices and Lorna Doones,” Gary said and cackled.
“I was trying to do a damn good deed!” Bill groused.
I glanced over my shoulder at the door, just to keep an eye out for Russo.
“You really did track that killer… Canceled Killer?” Gary ignored Bill and turned to me. “I heard that guy’s on the FBI’s most wanted.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to talk about it, and yet, I kind of did.
“Who is he, anyway?” Bill asked. “Does he go around canceling your streaming services? ’Cause then I could really use him, let me tell you. Streamberry charged me two subscriptions for three months!”
“No. He kills people who do bad things,” Gary said.
“Oh? Like you? You destroyed the Holy Water bathroom last week…”
“Ha. Ha. Very funny. No really. He killed… how many people now?”
Both men turned and blinked at me. “Eleven,” I answered.
“And if you really want to know about the victims…” All I needed was an open door.
This was my favorite subject, a case I’d obsessed so much over that Russo had warned me I was getting fixated, myopic.
You’d better go sit on a beach somewhere, kid. Get your head outta this for a while.
I hadn’t taken his advice. Instead, I’d nearly gotten him fired. I should’ve learned my lesson, yet now I was babbling on about the lemonade stand.
“So, you see, all his victims are killed ironically, usually strangled or drowned but sometimes poisoned…”
I was so deep into the details of this particular string of murders that I ignored Bill’s uncomfortable clearing of his throat before he took a long drag of his beer and glanced around the room as if looking for a quick escape.
Gary seemed to be the only one hanging in, but he wasn’t at all squeamish—being a retired paramedic.
Still, probably even he was wondering when I’d stop talking about corpses.
Spoiler alert: never. I just couldn’t help myself.
Hello, rabbit hole. Meet me. I was so distracted, I didn’t notice the bar door swing open until it banged against the wall.
We all swiveled to take a look at the new arrival.
And it was the last man in Lake Sanguis I wanted to see. The Cheese Doctor himself.
Jude.