Éclair and Present Danger (18 page)

“But Batkas was charging a crazy amount for that space,” Winnie protested.

Renee's robust shoulders lifted and fell with a sigh-accompanied shrug. “I guess Mark can handle it.”

“But how?”

“I don't know. Maybe he's gotten an offer on the house. Maybe he's banking on the fact he will. I don't know. I just know about the pool hall and that he's really excited to get the place up and running.” Renee pulled her hand up off the table and inspected her nails. “Me? I think it's amusing that everyone seems to think Silver Lake is going to become some sort of hangout destination. I mean, this is
Silver Lake
we're talking about. The whole reason we get the influx of city folks during the summer and on spring and fall weekends is
because
it's quiet, yes?”

Renee had a point—one that had been argued by many a shopkeeper up and down Main Street over the months leading up to the rent hike. But it was a point that had been discarded by a man hell-bent on proving everyone wrong.

She supposed she nodded, maybe even mumbled some form of agreement, but in reality she was still mentally digesting the news about Mark and drafting the best way to break it to Mr. Nelson.

O
n one hand she felt silly driving three houses down when she could just as easily push the stretcher that same distance. On the other hand, though, Renee was right. The ambulance was as much a part of the Emergency Dessert Squad experience as the dessert itself.

The only thing she'd yet to rationalize (with or without Renee's help) was Lovey's presence in the passenger seat. She supposed she should have been forewarned of this outcome when the brown and white tabby first followed her down the stairs and out to the driveway. But, honestly, she'd chalked it up to Cat Lesson Number One.

Or was it Cat Lesson Number Two?

Either way, she'd all but ignored the ungrateful little beast as she loaded the brightly colored cupcakes into the back of the vehicle, secured the door, and walked around to the cab via the driver's side.

If she'd been thinking with her head instead of her heart, she'd have returned to the driveway the second she realized Lovey was riding shotgun. And she almost did.
But something about the notion of moral support in light of her latest rescue recipient had won out in the end.

Still, she couldn't help but issue a stern warning to the cross-looking animal as she pulled alongside the curb at 21 Serenity Lane. “Now hear this, Lovey. I have a job to do. Without this job, I can't feed you. And while I'm sure you think any number of traitors would take you in, Gertie left you to
me
. So you're not going anywhere, got it?”

Hiss . . .

“Great. Just great . . .” She met Lovey's glare and raised it with one of her own. “I think we need to have some Cat Owner Lessons. Cat Owner Lesson Number One—You can't pour cat food on your own.”

Lovey yawned and looked out the passenger side window.

Shaking her head, she opened her door and pointed at the cat. “You stay right here and don't move!”

In a flash Lovey was across her seat and out the door.

“Cat
Owner
Lesson Number One, Lovey.
Cat Lesson Number One
!” She slammed the door shut and walked around to the back of the rig. With hands that were becoming a bit more adept with everything, Winnie lowered the stretcher onto the road, topped it with the cupcakes (which looked adorable, by the way), and closed the back of the ambulance. Then, squaring her shoulders with the help of a rather large inhale, she pushed the stretcher up the walkway and over to the Donovans' front door with Lovey leading the way.

“Please, Lovey,” she whispered when they stopped at their destination. “Go back to the car. Please.”

Lovey blinked and looked away.

She was contemplating the sanity in continuing to argue with a cat when the door swung open and a puffy-faced Sissy appeared. At first glance, she thought the young mother had been crying, but a second look yielded the real truth . . .

Sissy was mad—fist-clenching, voice-seething, vein-popping mad.

Winnie swallowed. “I—I'm here with your I-Scream Cone Cupcakes.”

Sissy stepped back, waved Winnie and the stretcher inside, and didn't balk in the slightest when Lovey invited herself in, too.

“Lovey, no!” Winnie yelled. “You can't go—”

The vein along Sissy's right temple eased as the woman crouched down to the floor and unfisted her hand long enough to pet Lovey's back. “Aren't you a cutie pie . . .”

Lovey?

After what seemed like an eternity, Sissy rose to her feet, took a deep breath, and led the way into the kitchen. Lovey, of course, looked up (triumphantly, mind you) as Winnie went by, yet remained behind for a quick power lick.

“You take direction well. This delivery time is perfect.”

She brought the stretcher to a stop and then looked around the kitchen. “Where would you like me to put your cupcakes?”

“Over there, on the center island.” Sissy leaned against the wall closest to the family's table and fisted her hands all over again. “I figured these cupcakes would be a nice pick-me-up for Ava this evening after voice lessons.”

“Ava is mad about something?” Winnie carried the tray to the counter and then returned to the stretcher and her bag for the bottle of sprinkles she packed specifically for the purpose of freshening up the dessert's appearance.

“Ava is sad,” Sissy corrected. “
I'm
mad.”

“Oh?” She shook a few extra sprinkles on four of the twelve cupcakes and then, when she was sure Sissy wasn't paying attention, she quickly swapped the sprinkle jar with the Donovans' saltshaker and held it up for Lovey to see.

Lovey opened her mouth in a silent hiss and then wound her way around Sissy's legs.

Like a balloon voided of its air by the prick of a needle, the anger all but drained from Sissy's body as she slid to the ground and reached for Lovey. “I kept hoping the
judges would unanimously decide to delay the pageant until Ava was able to participate, but they didn't. Brianna Rawlins is, in fact, the new Little Miss Northwest Ohio!”

“Little Miss Northwest Ohio?” she echoed only to have her brain fill in the answer all on its own. “Wait. That was the pageant Ava was in over the weekend, isn't it?”

“The pageant Ava was
supposed
to be in—and would have won—if it weren't for that horrible old man.”

Bart . . .

“Because of him and that damn flowerbed of his,” Sissy continued, “Ava missed out on the crown and the Tasty Toothpaste commercial!”

Mindful of her presence in a customer's home, Winnie capped the sprinkle jar, put it back in her bag, and readied the stretcher for its return to the ambulance. After all, staying in Sissy's house any longer than absolutely necessary wasn't advisable, especially if the woman was going to continue trashing Bart.

Unfortunately, Sissy kept talking (and holding Lovey). “I've never understood why Brianna has scored so well in previous pageants. Her hair is poker straight and rodent brown! And her eyes are blue—
sapphire
blue! I swear her insufferable mother has that child wearing colored contacts. How else could you explain that color with that hair?”

Lovey looked up at Winnie, and Winnie, in turn, studied her reflection in the black lacquer framed mirror just outside the entrance to the kitchen.

Hair—brown (though mousey sounds so much better than rodent).

Eyes—blue (sapphire might be a bit strong, but definitely ocean-y).

“And her face! It's—it's heart shaped!” Sissy argued. “Anyone who knows anything about true beauty knows that the best shape is oval. It tapers much more gracefully toward the chin and has prominent cheekbones.
Runway
models
have prominent cheekbones! Brianna has a heart-shaped face. It's all wrong!”

She leaned forward ever so slightly and examined her facial shape—something she'd never really given much thought to until that moment.

Her chin—it didn't really taper . . .

And her cheekbones weren't necessarily prominent . . .

“Your shape is easy, Winnie. It's round—like a bowling ball.” Sissy jerked her hand back as Lovey turned and hissed at her. “Well, aren't you just a nasty little thing?”

Lurching forward, Winnie tried to grab hold of Lovey, but she was too late; the cat was off Sissy's lap and out of the kitchen like a shot. “I'm sorry, Sissy. I—I don't know what came over her. She's not normally a hisser.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire . . .

“Not to anyone other than me, of course,” she finished under her breath.

Wait. Had Lovey just defended her?

No.

No way.

Shaking the ludicrous scenario from her thoughts, she began the walk back to the front door, the stretcher gliding across the floor effortlessly. “Lovey? Where are you? It's time to go.”

She came around the back of the stretcher to open the door and then jumped back as Lovey dashed past her and across the front walkway to the ambulance. “Okay, cool . . .” Then, returning her focus to the stretcher and the woman standing on the other side of it, Winnie called her best professional smile into action. “I hope the I-Scream Cone Cupcakes are a hit with Ava when she gets home.”

“I can hope. But really, once she hears who won the title and
her commercial
, I'm not sure anything will work.” Sissy pressed her fingertips to her lips so hard, they lost their color. After a moment, she pulled them back and let loose an angry moan. “When I think of the stepping-stone
Tasty Toothpaste was supposed to be, I just want to kill that man all over again!”

“Again?” Winnie grabbed hold of the closest porch column to steady herself. “What do you mean, a—”

“Only instead of a pillow this go-round, I'd use something different. Like maybe the shovel he used to plant those damn daisies he's now pushing up from six feet under.”

*   *   *

A
gain and again she replayed Sissy's words as she drove past the house she shared with Mr. Nelson and turned left at the end of Serenity Lane. Where she was going, she wasn't entirely sure, but she just knew she needed to drive.

And think.

On the way back to the ambulance with the stretcher in tow, she'd been convinced Sissy had murdered Bart, the woman's own words akin to a confession in Winnie's book. Yet by the time she slid into position behind the steering wheel, she wasn't so sure anymore.

Maybe the words had been spoken in more of a generic nature—a here's-how-I'd-have-done-it kind of thing . . .

Movement out of the corner of her eye reminded her she wasn't alone, and she pulled her eyes off the road long enough to acknowledge her feline companion. “I don't know if that reaction to Sissy back there was simply you being ornery or you sticking up for me, but either way, thanks.”

Lovey stared back at her but said nothing. Not a meow, not a hiss, nothing.

She brought her focus back to the stretch of road in front of her and concentrated on her breathing.

Inhale . . .

Exhale . . .

Inhale . . .

Ex—

“I swear, Lovey, if that hateful woman had something to
do with Bart's death, I will find out and I will make sure she spends the rest of her life behind bars where she belongs.”

She stopped at the four-way intersection and then continued straight, her mind vaguely registering the parts of Silver Lake that remained before she left the city limits entirely.

There was Buckeye Convenience Store (a twenty-four-hour drive-thru) . . .

The turnoff to the public lake access . . .

Silver Lake Convenience Store (a twenty-four-hour drive-thru) . . .

The connector road leading to the weekend homes inhabited by Cincinnati's most wealthy . . .

Lakeside Convenience Store (you guessed it, another twenty-four-hour drive-thru) . . .

Silver Lake Park . . .

With a quick check of her rearview and driver's side mirror, Winnie made a wide U-turn and doubled back toward the park. Turning into the gravel parking lot, she slid into a quiet spot near a large tree, rolled down the window, and cut the engine.

“
Only instead of a pillow this go-round, I'd use something different
,” she whispered. “I don't know, Lovey, what do you think? Do you think Sissy was confessing or do you think—”

A blur of brown and white fur leapt across her thighs and out the window before she could finish her sentence or shift her body fast enough to block the escape.

“Lovey!” she shouted, poking her head out the window. “Get back here right now!”

Lovey turned, made eye contact, and then sauntered off toward the one lone person on the playground—a female, sitting on a swing, her feet still planted on the ground, the side of her head resting against the chain tethered to the metal upright above.

Clamping her lips closed around the string of not-so-nice descriptive terms for an animal that had once meant so much to one of Winnie's most beloved friends, Winnie shoved open the door, stepped out onto the gravel lot, and slammed the door shut. “Lovey, this is the last time I take you anywhere!”

If Lovey heard (which she did), she didn't care (surprise!) and, instead, kept walking, the object of the animal's focus now regarding them (okay, just Winnie) with tangible wariness.

The female (a teenager, Winnie could now tell) bent over at the waist, held her index finger out for Lovey to smell, and then looked up at Winnie. “Is this your cat?”

“Legally, yes,” Winnie mumbled before transitioning her thoughts and her attitude to the smile the innocent party deserved. “I guess I wasn't thinking when I rolled down my window just now. Fish don't do that.”

They just die when you put salt in their tank . . .

“You're right. They don't.” The girl took a moment to scratch the area behind Lovey's left ear . . . and then her right . . . and then back to her left as the cat flopped onto her side. “Ohhh, yeah, you like that, don't you, sweetie?”