Charleston with a Clever Cougar: A Dance with Danger Mystery #6 (4 page)

“I’m going, I’m going. See you.” She closed
the door behind her, making sure it was locked.

Stephen. I hadn’t thought about him in weeks.
Or was it days? I was finally at the point where I couldn’t
remember. I must be healing. I must be almost over him.

As a man, he was attractive. Tall, with a mop
of well-coiffed, slightly graying hair, he had the good looks of a
classically rugged Hollywood heartthrob. His usual attire was a
plaid shirt, jeans, and boat shoes. In the summer, the shirt was
cotton madras. In the winter, it was cotton flannel. It made him
look like he stepped out of a Ralph Lauren ad. To complete the
image last summer, Stephen replaced his ancient Mercedes with a
2010 Lincoln MKX.

As a human being, he was lacking in
significant ways, something I learned over the six years we were
together. Too many women found him charming. He used to hold court
at Pages and Puzzles, his bookstore over on Main Street. As an
independent bookseller, he was constantly competing with the big
chains, so he expanded the shop in 2008 to include puzzles and
collectible board games for sale. There was always a jade chess set
sitting by the cashier’s desk, and several regulars stopped by to
challenge him weekdays. Saturdays, he hosted a chess competition
that brought players from as far away as New York.

He was also rather a savvy marketer, knowing
his buyers and their preferences. That’s how he drew the ladies in,
by offering cooking demonstrations with nationally known chefs and
holding book talks with the divas of romance.

Just six months ago, he had invited Rachel
Honeycutt to a Sunday gathering. The red-haired author of
Flaming Passions, Burning Desires
talked about how she set
about to get what she wanted by never taking no for an answer. She
followed that up by hitting on Stephen. He quickly succumbed,
following her to New Mexico, leaving his assistant in charge of the
bookstore. I guess that’s the benefit of inheriting a boatload of
money from your uncle -- you can pursue your passions and indulge
your whims without having to worry about your wallet or what you’re
leaving behind. Once his uncle’s will passed through probate court,
Stephen went from being a respected bookstore owner to being a
dabbler in life. He threw together a charity, set himself as the
administrator, formed a board of advisors, and then began to fund a
variety of arts programs, which got a lot of free publicity for
Paper and Puzzles. That only seemed to increase the number of women
buzzing around him like flies on honey.

I’d come to the conclusion that Stephen
really never was all that interested in me as a person. He liked
the idea that I owned my own business, that I was a respectable
member of the community, and that I didn’t demand that he give up
his freedom. Looking back, it wasn’t that I didn’t want him all to
myself. I just really wanted him to want me that way. And when
Rachel came along, with her sexy book talk and her demands for
physical pleasure, I realized that all Stephen was looking for was
a comfortable bed and someone in it who wouldn’t tax his spirit by
asking for anything other than sex.

Ironically, Stephen didn’t own a place of his
own in Old Saybrook. He lived aboard his 42’ Meridian yacht at the
marina in the warmer months, and when the chill of winter rolled
around, he sailed his boat down to the Florida Keys for some deep
sea fishing and a little scuba diving. He would periodically come
back to town to attend to his shop, moving in with me on those
visits. Lucky me. Every spring, as soon as the weather cleared and
the last of the snow was gone, he brought the
Wretched Wench
back to Long Island Sound.

But things changed when Rachel Honeycutt came
to Old Saybrook. She wasn’t looking for commitment. She was looking
for pleasure, pure and simple. After he left for Taos in late
autumn, in pursuit of the apparently irresistible redhead, I waited
for him to come to his senses. His boat remained tied up at the
dock until he hired a crew to move it down to Florida, where no
doubt he and Rachel used it for their sex-capades. I, meanwhile,
crawled back into my little hidey hole, dragging my wounded heart
with me. I may have gotten back to my everyday life, but no longer
saw romance in the cards for me. Six years of my life had been
wasted on a man incapable of having any kind of deep commitment.
The irony of Stephen’s soulful journey to discover his true self
wasn’t lost on me. You can’t squeeze blood from a stone. You can’t
squeeze much of anything from a stone. It is what it is, and in the
end, Stephen was what he was, a man who could embrace big popular
concepts and intellectualize just about everything on the planet,
but was incapable of committing to a real relationship. He was
surprisingly vacuous. When it came to self-reflection or
appreciating what was good in his fellow humans, he was unable to
see the details, living life in a fog of easy generalizations and
vague ennui.

Stephen’s unceremonious dumping of me after
six years for the racy novelist managed to turn me off romance,
probably for good. That door was shut and locked tight. I wasn’t
about to let some guy, even one with a passion for coffee, get me
to open it again. Besides, the medic didn’t strike me as a man who
trusted, let alone liked, women. Too gruff, too intense,
too...tough. Impenetrable, with a heart that sat behind a set of
heavy iron doors that barred the entry of a fortress. That way he
had of speaking plainly hardly encouraged romantic thought. I
certainly wasn’t in any danger of being swept off my feet. The only
time he seemed to show a human side was when people were injured
and in pain. Once the emergency was over, he seemed to transform
back into his gnarly self. Gnomes are like hermits, aren’t they?
They live by themselves, sometimes under a troll bridge, and they
shut the world out of the forest, sauntering out only for the
occasional cup of coffee and blueberry muffin. Those were my
thoughts as I sat there, cradling the notion that I had locked onto
the truth about the man with the oversized raincoat and tattered
jeans. Who knew I could be so wrong, or that before long, old
wounds would reopen, wounds I thought had long ago healed. And it
was all because Daisy was on someone’s hit list.

Chapter Four --

By ten, I was almost feeling human again. My
shoulder hurt like hell and it was hard to raise it up to my chest,
but I had the Henslacker wedding on Saturday. That cake wasn’t
going to bake itself. I tried to figure out how I was going to
manage the decorations on that cake. We were supposed to have one
hundred tiny honeybees on that cake, along with an assortment of
fondant flowers. I had made the little bees last week and stored
them. I hadn’t started the edible blossoms. Maybe I could
substitute gumpaste flowers from a supplier. That meant I only had
to bake the cake and cover it with the fondant. If we adjusted the
pattern of the icing, Walter and I could still provide the
Henslackers with a cake that wouldn’t disappoint. I turned on my
laptop, and with my left index finger, tapped in an order for what
I would need from Sugar Art. I doubled the number of flower sprays,
thinking that if any broke, I still would have enough to be able to
finish the cake without any gaping holes in the design. The
leftover sprays could be used on someone else’s cake, so it
wouldn’t be a loss for me. I paid extra for the expedited shipping,
but it was worth it to know they would arrive within two days.

Tara and her mother had also ordered my
celebration cookie bags as guest favors. We would need to bake and
decorate ten dozen white chocolate-covered, wedding bell-shaped
almond shortbread cookies. I was fairly confident that Walter and
Darlene could prepare the dough and do the cutouts for that. Daisy
was actually pretty adept with icing, despite her youth, so I would
give her the opportunity as calligrapher on the project, as
promised. With my injured arms, I might be able to manage the white
chocolate bath for each cookie, but I didn’t think I was up to much
more. At least we had a reasonable plan that I thought we could
use, so I wrote down my notes, ingredients, and recipes, to share
with the baking team.

Once that was done, I picked up the phone to
call Mary Sue Therkauf, my insurance agent. She promised to get me
fixed up with a rental, have the damaged van examined and
appraised, and to arrange for the repairs to be made. About twenty
minutes after I hung up, she phoned me back.

“The police will be in touch with you later
today to get your statement. There were plenty of witnesses, who
all said Daisy was not at fault. They still haven’t identified the
driver. I heard you two really got hit hard.”

“You did?” I was surprised that news traveled
that fast. Then again, this was Old Saybrook.

“You were lucky. According to what folks told
the cops, that guy came out of nowhere, Cady. Several people said
it almost looked like he was aiming at your van. Any disgruntled
boyfriends lurking in the shadows? Customers who didn’t like the
cake you baked?”

“Not to my knowledge,” I laughed
nervously.

“Must have been a freak thing, then.”

“Must have been.”

Officer Renquist stopped by at eleven-thirty
to ask me some questions and take down my statement. She wrote it
out for me, since I was in no shape to do it myself, but insisted I
sign the statement. Groaning at the effort, I complied.

“You were lucky,” she told me. “There were a
lot of witnesses. We got a couple of descriptions of the driver and
a partial license plate. We might get lucky and catch the guy.”

“Might?”

“The chances are decent. The funny thing is
all the witnesses insist the driver seemed to hit the van
deliberately. Do you have an ex with a grudge?”

“My ex is in Taos, with the new love
interest. And before you ask, he dumped me.”

“Oh.” For a moment, I saw doubt in her
serious brown eyes.

“No, it’s not like that. The torch was
extinguished the moment the guy decided the grass was greener on
the other side of the pasture. He’s just not worth it. I don’t want
him back. She can have him.”

“I hear you,” said Officer Renquist, with a
knowing nod and a wink. “Men. Can’t live with ‘em and can’t chain
‘em to the dog house when they’re bad. You just have to move
on.”

“Who needs that kind of heartache at my age?”
I asked her. “It’s just too much work for too little reward.”

“You got that right, sister,” she laughed. I
escorted her to the front door and saw her out.

The phone rang at quarter to twelve. It was
Carole, reporting in.

“We’re fine here, Cady. It’s been a decent
morning. I’m calling to see if you plan to come in and if so,
arrange for someone to pick you up.”

“I would like to come in,” I agreed. “I’m
feeling a little better and I have to get ready for that wedding on
Saturday.”

“Okay,” said Carole. “I’m sending someone
over to pick you up.”

“Oh, but I don’t want to take anyone away
from the shop,” I told her. “We’re usually really busy at
noontime.”

“Not to worry. Daisy’s here, making coffee,
Darlene’s handling the baked goods, and I’m on the cash
register.”

“You can’t afford to lose Walter in the
kitchen,” I insisted.

“I’m not sending Walter. One of the customers
is going to pick you up. He’s been pitching in all morning.”

I couldn’t imagine which one of Cady’s Cakes
regulars that might be. I was about to ask when Carole cut me
off.

“Oops! Customers. Got to go. See you when you
get here!” she called out cheerfully as she hung up on me.

I decided to get dressed, not wanting to be
caught unaware by my volunteer driver. I slipped on a pair of my
black exercise leggings, knowing they were easy to pull on and off.
Even if they were cropped just below the knee, they were functional
and I needed that more than I needed to look like a million bucks.
I threw on an oversized black-and-red striped top over the
leggings, cinched it at the waist with a black belt, and then added
a pair of red ankle socks rolled down at the top and a pair of my
chef clogs. All that I needed was my hair in braids and I could
pass for Pippi Longstocking. Either that or some deranged “Glee”
wannabe.

Once I was presentable, I grabbed up my
pocketbook, my tablet, and my house keys and put them on the coffee
table in the living room, ready to go. As I waited, I dug my makeup
bag out of my purse and took a seat at the kitchen counter. I
pulled out my compact mirror and propped it against the side of my
antique cookie jar, so I wouldn’t have to hold it. Reaching into
the bag, I found my eye shadow and flipped it open. I picked up the
little stick with the foam pad and leaned in towards my makeshift
makeup table. Carefully swiping my eyelids with color as I followed
my progress in the tiny mirror, I then sat up and looked for my
eyeliner. I started to follow the shape of my lower lid. That’s
when the doorbell rang. With the speed of Mrs. Wiggins in an old
Carol Burnett skit, I crossed the room to greet my driver.

“Morning.” It was the gnome with the green
eyes. He had traded in his oversized raincoat for a down vest,
which he wore over a black turtleneck, a fisherman’s sweater, and a
pair of faded jeans. On his feet, he wore a pair of black hiking
boots. Looking at him, I couldn’t help thinking that he was the
real-life version of the outdoor man in Ralph Lauren ads.

“You! What are you doing here?” Even I heard
the accusatory note in my voice and flinched.

“Does that mean you’re happy to see me?” he
wanted to know, one eyebrow lifted in curiosity.

“I’m sorry. I was expecting someone else.”
Anyone else. Even Mrs. Pritchard, Old Saybrook’s most notorious
driver. She never went faster than twenty-five miles an hour, even
on Route 9. The cops gave up pulling her over with warnings about
traveling too slowly.