A Wish Before Dying - Part 1
Vangie's hands are full getting The Mystery Book Nook ready for the final shopping event of the season. The last thing she needs is to find out her best customer was involved in a hit-and-run...
One
“What about now?” I asked from my perch on top of the store ladder. As I held in place the end of the greenery, I was leaning precariously forward.
Below me I could see Erin McCarthy, my one and only employee, standing with her hands on her hips, glaring up with eyes narrowed. She tipped her head right, then left, then right again and nodded her head. “Yep, I think you’ve got it this time, boss.”
“Finally,” I sighed as I pressed the pin into place to hold it, then settled back into a more upright position, “Now hand me another bow so I can finish this and get down from here.”
I hated heights. It was at moments like this that I actually missed my ex-husband. He was at least good for getting up onto ladders to replace a lightbulb, repair a broken fan, clean the gutters and—provided I caught him on a good day—help hang Christmas decorations.
But alas, I no longer had a husband, which was good because at least I could sleep at night.
“My neighbor just started selling those wax warmers. You know, with the little pods of scented wax? We need some of those. The evergreen scented would really be the icing on the cake for the store.”
I considered that while I carefully tied the wire hanger for the bow onto the strand of faux greenery. Opening my mouth, I started to answer her, but then a long gasp escaped my lips followed by, “Oh, no…”
Erin had started towards the back and instantly returned to my side, with a concerned expression pinching her brow, “What happened? You okay?”
“Quick, quick,” I pointed to the front door, “It’s Georgianne. Lock the door and put up the closed sign. If she gets in here we’ll be stuck till midnight at least.”
Georgianne Peterman was a regular customer at The Mystery Book Nook. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate her business. Frankly, I needed all the business I could get for my little bookstore, but there was too much to do to prepare for the town’s Main Street Christmas event tomorrow and I was desperate to get finished so I could go home and jump into bed.
“Oh, hello, Mrs. Peterman,” I heard Erin say in an ultra-cheery voice as I carefully made my way down off the ladder, “We’re just about to close up. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“Why, Erin, don’t you look cute in those holiday jeans?”
I could only shake my head as I watched my employee do a quick 360, showing off her tight denim with little embroidered holly sprigs on the back pockets. Hey, I couldn’t blame the girl for showing off her curves. If I looked like her I might do a little pirouette myself.
Instead, I tugged down the hem of my LuLaRoe Irma top to cover my stomach. Virtually my entire wardrobe comprised of LuLaRoe clothing. It had started with a love of the super soft leggings and developed into an affection for the different styles of shirts that made the expanding parts of my body not so obvious.
My doctor insisted I could thank my disappointing midriff on menopause, but I was convinced I could blame my ex-husband for that. In the last two or so years of marriage, he’d driven me to the habit of eating ice cream before bed at night. Clearly, that was to blame.
That and the fact that husband or no husband, I still hadn’t broken that habit.
“Oh, Vangie, the store looks darling. Just darling. People are just going to flock in here tomorrow.”
I certainly hoped so. The bottom line at the store was looking shabbier and shabbier. Three years ago I’d realized my dream of owning a bookstore when an inheritance from my grandfather made it possible to purchase a small brick building on Main Street in downtown Port La Pena, Texas. But dreams were hard to keep going, I’d learned.
It had taken me six months and a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get the old building cleaned up and ready, but thankfully an empty nest and an absent husband meant I’d had the time. Within another three, we were stocked and ready for the official ribbon cutting.
But it was a challenge to keep customers in the store when online giants could deliver books cheaply and in just a few days. Still, I’d kept us out of the red and managed to hold on to my part-timer Erin.
“Evening, Georgianne,” I said as I approached her, putting my hands on my hips and forcing the corners of my lips to turn up into a welcoming smile. “You’ll be by tomorrow for the fun, right?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it. Not for the whole wide world,” she said, and I wondered what annoyed me so much about the way she held her arm up and bent at the elbow so that her bright pink handbag could hang down towards her thigh.
“Well, then, what can we do for you tonight? As Erin said we’re just about to close up.”
My tone wasn’t nearly as saccharin as my employee’s had been, but then I’d hired her for a reason. While I loved my bookstore, I didn’t always love people.
If I’d hoped Georgianne would get the message, I was sadly mistaken. Her mouth opened into a wide “o” and she lunged forward to grab my arm and lean in close. “I wondered if you’d heard the news. About Saxe?”
I flicked a gaze over to Erin whose brown eyes had widened, glistening with curiosity. She shrugged and took a step closer so she could be sure to hear.
“No, I haven’t heard anything, Georgie. You’re the first, as always. So go right ahead and spill the tea.”
Yes, there was just a teeny touch of snark in my words, but Georgianne Peterman was a gossip from the word go. She might as well have been called Mrs. Kravitz because she had a nose for neighborhood news and the legs to stroll right along main street and beyond to spread said news.
“Oh, I just thought you would have heard first,” she said softly, “I mean you’re so close and all.”
We weren’t “close” in the way she said it. Richard Saxe is a seventy-one-year-old former film star who moved to Port La Pena a few years ago. He sauntered into The Mystery Book nook on opening day and quickly became one of my best customers. He had kind eyes and would sit off in a corner to read for hours on end. And he never read a book that he didn’t buy, which was more than I could say for some of my visitors.
Saxe had also given me the idea for the most lucrative gimmick we’d found to keep the Nook afloat. The Mystery Book Nook Forum was a club of sorts for “wannabe” sleuths. People paid a small monthly fee to be a part of the forum, but we’d amassed a following that had gone well beyond Port La Pena. Some of our members were even in the United Kingdom and beyond.
“What’s going on with Saxe?” Erin asked from behind us, apparently impatient to get to the heart of things.
“So, you haven’t been by the hospital yet to see him?”
Leave it to Georgianne to draw out the suspense by giving just enough information to pique the curiosity without outright telling us what had happened.
And I thought I probably didn’t need the details. In all honestly, I wasn’t surprised Saxe was in the hospital. Physically, he wasn’t in great shape, with entirely too much weight, even for his tall frame. Besides that, he smoked like a chimney. Never in my store, of course, but one had only to get a few feet from him to get the awful odor of cigarettes. In truth, Saxe was a heart attack waiting to happen.
“Well,” I said with a heavy sigh, “I certainly hope he’ll get Dr. Jambor as his cardiologist. He’s the best in town.”
“Oh!” Georgianne’s eyes lit up with excitement, even as her lips turned down in what on any other person might have been a sorrowful frown. She wasn’t sad at all. No, she was more than a little pleased to be the bearer of these tidings. “He didn’t have a heart attack. He was hit. By a car. Right out on First Street. He isn’t expected to live.”
Two
“Are you a relative?” a young woman asked from behind the information desk at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
“Well,” I shrugged, wrinkling up my face, “I’m not sure Saxe has any relatives. But I am a good friend.”
Her mouth pulled into a tight line and she glanced over her shoulder before whispering, “Well, they aren’t letting anyone but the family see him. I’m not even supposed to give information.”
“So, his family is here?”
She squirmed in discomfort. “I don’t think so. Or at least, I haven’t had anyone through here.”
I bit my lip and considered that. If Georgianne was right about how Saxe had come to be hospitalized, then I imagined this would be a police investigation of some kind. That could explain the help desk girl’s refusal to help.
My stomach knotted up, and I took a deep breath with a teeny, exasperated roll of my eyes. “Would there happen to be a detective Guillory here?”
She frowned, and her eyes turned up to look at the ceiling for an answer. After a second she moved her head slowly side-to-side. “I don’t think that’s the name. I think there’s a detective Lipton, though.”
I let loose a sigh of relief, then offered the girl a big smile, “Oh, Eva is here? Terrific. Where can I find her?”
My flats made a tap-tap-tap sound as I hurried down the hallways, following the direction the desk clerk had given. Officer Eva Lipton was new to the force the year my ex and I had divorced.
One of the last functions Robbie and I attended as a married couple had been a law enforcement appreciation luncheon. I thought maybe I’d connected with Eva Lipton because we were both out of place. My husband and I were already talking about the split then but were keeping up appearances. She was a green rookie who’d transferred in from East Texas.
I saw her at the end of a long corridor talking to another cop and I was struck by how different she looked now. I heard she’d made detective, so she no longer dressed in a uniform like she had that day. And it made all the difference in how I perceived her now.
She was wearing jeans that Erin would have been jealous of, boot cut but fitted in all the right places. Her dark hair was twisted at the back in a fancy sort of do, but with waves hanging down long to about mid-waist. Those brunette locks looked luxuriously striking against the pressed white button-down she wore tucked into those jeans.
I couldn’t help wondering how often she and Robbie worked together now that they were both detectives. Frankly, except for the badge affixed to her belt and the pistol holstered to her hip, she didn’t look like any detective I’d seen before.
She caught my eye as I approached and I put back on a smile as I raised a hand to wave, “Hey, Eva. How are you?”
She smiled and it seemed genuine, but honestly, how could one tell for certain with a cop? At least with the ex I never could. Her boots thumped loudly on the tiled floors and my foolish mind thought, even her footsteps are more impressive than yours. Glancing briefly at my worn-out ballerina flats, I forced my gaze back up to meet hers when she got to me.
“Vangie? Vangie Guillory, right?”
I gave her a nod and a half-hearted chuckle. “Yeah. We met that time at the LEO luncheon. Talked about the Tyler area.”
“We did, we did. I remember. Your parents had just moved back there. Are they doing well?”
“They are, yes. Thanks for asking.”
“Well,” she glanced over her shoulder to the uniformed officer who was obviously standing sentry outside a patient room, “What are you doing here at St. Vincent’s?”
“I came to see Saxe. That is Richard Saxe. I heard what happened and he’s a friend so I wanted to come by to check on him.”
“Ah,” she reached into her back pocket and pulled out a little notepad, “When’s the last time you saw Mr. Saxe?”
Her questioning wasn’t unexpected. I was from a family of investigators and the ex-wife of a police detective. I knew how these things worked. Licking my lips I folded my arms across my chest and leaned against the wall, “Yesterday. He’s at my store several times a week. A regular customer.”
“A bookstore, right?”
“Right, The Mystery Book Nook. We’re almost exclusively mysteries, thrillers, and suspense. Some horror.”
“There’s some research to-do there too, right?”
I bristled a little at the way she said that with a tone of condescension. Robbie had used it too the one time I’d talked to him about starting the research forum. Like my members were little kids playing a video game or something. Still, I wanted to see Saxe so I kept my irritation to myself.
“We have a members-only forum, yes. What happened to Saxe exactly? Do you think someone did this intentionally?”
She was scribbling something and I couldn’t help wondering what about my simple responses could be considered so important. Finally, she raised her eyes to mine again. “Was he a member of that forum?”
“He was. But I’m pretty sure I can’t provide any of that information. There’s a privacy clause in the contract.”
She smiled and slipped the notepad back into her pocket. “It may not be necessary. For now, this is an accident. A hit and run. One person who saw it thought the car intentionally hit Mr. Saxe, but there are five other witnesses who swear it just looked like a drunk driver or something. I’m just doing some prelims.”
“Is he going to be okay? I heard… well, I heard it was pretty serious.”
She studied me a minute, her left eye twitching just a bit. I had a bad feeling when I saw that, but she said, “I can’t give any details about his medical condition. But he did just wake up after surgery about half an hour ago. If he wants to see you and the medical personnel say it’s okay, I’ll get you in there.”
“Thanks,” I smiled. It took about five minutes, but she visited with a nurse, then went into Saxe’s room, presumably to speak to him. Finally, she came out, spoke to the medical staff again, and pointed down the hall at me.
A short nurse with a warm smile approached me. “Hello, Mrs. Guillory. My name is Lainey. Detective Lipton said you’re a friend of Mr. Saxe’s. He’d like to see you, so I’ll just take you in there.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” she continued as we walked together, “It’s always sad when a person comes in with no family or friends. Now, I should warn you, he can’t really speak because of the tube in his throat. And he’s still somewhat sedated, but he is awake and can nod his head and give responses. You can only stay a few minutes, then he needs more rest.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
“He’s stable right now, but his condition is very serious.”
Nodding, I gave her another murmured thanks when she opened the door for me and I stepped inside.
There were so many tubes and wires connected to Saxe that I wasn’t sure I could even get close to him, but I followed Nurse Lainey’s lead and shuffled to the right-hand side of his bed. She checked a few cords, then patted his hand. “Mr. Saxe? Your friend, Mrs. Guillory, is here to see you.”
His face was black and blue and one of his eyes was so swollen he couldn’t quite open it all the way. But when he got his eyelids to lift, he fixed his gaze on me and stared intently.
I thought those glassy eyes may have filled with a bit more moisture, but I put on what I hoped was a bright smile and reached out to touch his hand. “Hey there, Saxe. See, this is why you should never walk and read at the same time. Look at what you’ve done to yourself.”
He made a sound that I thought was a sort of laugh, or as best as he could do under the circumstances. I chuckled too. The nurse made her way to the door and called out, “Just a few minutes, you two, then Mr. Saxe needs a nap.”
When we were alone, I made a motion towards the seat beside the bed, but Saxe grabbed my hand with more strength than I would have thought he had. He pointed to a table across the little hospital room and I turned to look in that direction. I didn’t see anything of interest. Just a pitcher for water and a cup and I didn’t see how he could drink with that thing in his throat.
“Are you thirsty? I can call back Nurse Lainey…”
He began moving his head side-to-side, shaking my hand urgently. His left arm was in a sling, but I saw him raise it with a groan and pinch his fingers into his thumb.
“You want to write something?”
This time when he moved his head, it was up and down. I quickly slipped away from him and approached the table, finding a pen and a small napkin. Bringing them back, I held the pen out to him and he tried to take it with his left hand, but a soft moan of pain was evidence enough that wouldn’t work. I remembered he was left-handed, but he would just have to make-do with the right, so I placed the utensil in that palm and brought the rolling tray close to him.
I had to hold the napkin down on either side as he did his best to scribble something that resembled letters.
S-A-X-E-P-H-O-N-E-1
“What is that?” I queried with a confused squint, “You don’t play the saxophone…” another vigorous shake of his head told me that was a hard no, “Okay, okay. Saxophone one. Oh, saxophone1! Is that like a code name or something?”
He gestured that was correct, and I smiled, anticipation rippling up my spine.
“Okay, but for what? Your email? No, okay. Not that. Uh, oh, is that your name on the forum?”
Bingo! We were both excited now.
He started writing again, but the letters were getting harder and harder to read this time. I had a feeling whatever meds they had on drip from the bag hanging beside him were putting him to sleep. Still, he pressed on.
I peeked over his fingers, slowly mouthing the letters to myself. M-a-d-M-o-v-i-e-S-t-a…
The door to his room opened and Sax quickly crumpled the napkin and stuffed it into my palm just as Nurse Lainey approached the bed, “He should really get some rest now, Mrs. Guillory.”
Saxe and I stared at each other for a long moment as I used the hand holding the napkin to slowly lift the hem of my long top so that I could stuff the note into my pocket. His eyes fluttered, then closed, and I took a deep breath as I slipped quietly from the room.
My mind was racing with what Eva Lipton has said earlier about it appearing that the driver of that car had intentionally tried to hit Saxe. What sort of matter was my friend investigating in the forum and was it somehow why he was lying in a hospital bed?
Three
Technology was not my friend. To be clear, it had never been my friend. The only reason I’d ever been able to make The Mystery Book Nook Forum work was that I had Erin.
Beautiful, miracle-worker, Erin McCarthy. When I heard her answer the phone, I put on my cheeriest voice, “Hey, whatcha up to?”
“Vangie? Are you okay?”
It was a fair question. I never called her after hours unless it was an emergency. “Oh, I’m fine, but I was wondering. Can you come over?” I asked, flinching when I noticed the clock on the wall said eight fifty-two.
“Oh, yeah, sure. I’ve got nothing better to do at nine o’clock at night.”
“I saw Saxe.”
She was silent a moment, then I heard her take a deep breath, “You play dirty, you know. Now I have to call the man and explain to him I’m going to get dressed and drive halfway across town…”
“Not halfway. I’m at the shop. It’s closer to you.”
“I’ll be there in five.”
I made a cup of strong coffee for myself and a Chai tea for her, timing things just right so that the tea was ready the moment she walked in the door. With a big smile, I handed it over to her as she glided into the main lobby. I was just closing the door when a loud snort stopped me.
“Isn’t it past their bedtime?” I wrinkled up my face in a frown as the dark potbellied pig waddled his way into my bookstore. His name was Elroy, and I had to admit he looked a lot like how I imagined an Elroy would look. His face was all scrunched up and too small for his fat head and he was so ugly that on some strange level he was cute.
Perched on his back was his best friend, an equally ugly-cute and partially blind tabby cat named Clem. Together, they sauntered right inside and over to the place where Erin usually worked behind the counter. With a grunt, Elroy plopped down and Clem snuggled up next to him.
“The man is over at a friend’s house playing some stupid games and I didn’t want to leave the kids alone. They’ve been cooped up alone all day,” she said by way of explanation, and I wondered how I’d hired someone who considered a barnyard animal and a blind cat to be her children.
“So, what’s the news on Saxe? Is he really going to kick the bucket?”
I rolled my eyes with a sigh. “Geez, Erin. He’s probably our best customer. Not to mention a friend.”
She took a sip of her tea, then put her hands up in defense. “Hey, it was said from a place of love. I’d be devastated if the old guy died, okay? Now spill it.”
I rolled a hand for her to follow me, then made my way to the back of the store where I had my office. On the computer, I had tried to log into Saxe’s forum account, but it kept giving me errors until it timed out. I was hoping enough time had passed for it to reset so that we could attempt a login again.
“So, Saxe got hit by a car all right. He’s all hooked up to a ton of machines and they have a tube down his throat so he can’t talk. The police think it was an accident, just a drunk hit and run, but…”
“Whoa!” I heard Erin’s cowboy boots stomp to a halt. “Police? As in, did you have to talk to the ex?”
I wagged my palm in the air. “No, not him. Thank the good Lord, not him. No, it was a lady named Eva Lipton. I’d met her before, which probably helped get me through his door. They weren’t going to let anyone who wasn’t family get in to see him.”
“Does he even have any family?”
I plopped into my chair. “Apparently not. No one was there, but he wanted to see me so they let me in. He must want me to get into his forum account for some reason because he wrote his credentials down for me, but I can’t get the darned login to work.”
Erin tossed her hobo bag behind her onto my couch, then set her cup down on my desk. There was a loud squeal as she dragged a chair over to sit beside me. “Okay, let’s try it again.”
I typed in his code name, mouthing the letters as I hunted and pecked them, “S-A-X-O-P-H-O-N-E-1.”
“Okay, now the password should be case sensitive,” she advised me and snatched the napkin up from the desk, “Capitol M. Lower case a-d. Capital M. Lowercase o-v-i-e. Capital S. Lower case t-a-r-1-2-2-8-9-8.”
I pushed the view button to take a peek to be sure I’d put the password in correctly. We both studied it, then I nodded and hit enter, but the same big red error message I’d seen earlier popped up.
“Hmm. You’ll only have two more tries before it times out for good.”
“That’s what happened before I called you.”
“Yeah, but if it happens again, it will be a permanent time out. It will send him an email and a text that he’ll have to use to create a new password.
“Darn,” I hadn’t known my forum was so secure, “Can we hack into it?”
I glanced over my shoulder at her and found she’d pulled one-half of her lower lip into her mouth as she considered things. Finally, she shrugged. “No, I mean I can’t. I’m not that good. There must be something wrong.” then she stared at the napkin again and her eyes opened wide, “Oh! How clever of him. We spelled it wrong.”
“We did?” and I studied the password once more, sure that I hadn’t spelled M-a-d-M-o-v-i-e-S-t-a-r wrong.
“It’s a play on his name. It’s not saxophone. It’s his name Saxe plus phone. With an ‘E’ instead of an ‘O’.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” I muttered as I pounded in the corrected member’s name and then the password. When I hit enter, the screen changed, and I found myself on Saxe’s personal forum page. “You’re a genius, Erin!”
“Well, I am,” she giggled with a blush, as she scooted in closer, obviously just as eager as I was to get a good look at his research.
“I don’t get on the forum enough,” I muttered, feeling totally out of my element as I studied the screen.
“Man, he’s got a ton of tabs. See those,” she pointed to what looked like little file folders, “Each of those holds notes or information he’s stored. He’s been taking part in some of the mystery games. You know that podcast by that Inspector Morrisey character? They give them clues and people listen to work the case.”
“Yeah, I remember when we did that workshop on it.”
She snorted, “You didn’t attend though.”
“That’s what I have you for. You’re the research expert.”
“Over there, those things that look like little resource books are where the sources are kept. Like what books he’s relied on.”
“Oh, I see,” I said, leaning closer. I let my mouse roam over the tabs, then I gasped when I saw one called “Private.”
“Ooo, there you go. That’s where the goods are. Definitely.”
I was just about to click it when a buzzing sound came from somewhere in the neighborhood of Erin’s backside. She lifted her hips and pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket. “Dang, that’s the man. I promised I’d head home the same time he did,” she tapped out a text to him, then stood up and picked her bag, “The kids and I have to go. So, you’re going to wait to look at that when I come in tomorrow morning, right?”
“Not a chance,” I laughed. “But I’ll give you the tea, don’t worry.”
“Gee, thanks.” She turned to leave, then made a quick one-eighty. “I almost forgot. Here are your furniture sliders. Do you know, thanks to them, I totally rearranged the spare bedroom all by myself? I bet you could drag a dead body with those things and not even break a sweat.”
When she was gone, I began clicking folders and reading. There were lots of pictures of a young man of about twenty or twenty-five. He had dark penetrating eyes but hair so light blond I decided it must be bleached. But who was he?
I clicked again and found a name card under the images that read Al Monroe. Born in December 1998 so my guess about his age was correct. He was almost twenty-four. Born in Huntington Beach, California. Current residence: Port La Pena, Texas. Occupation: Diver.
Diver? Its true Port La Pena was near the coast, but what sort of work was there for a diver? Did he search for pearls or something? Shipwrecks?
More clicks and more snippets about Al Monroe. Mother: Sandreen Monroe of Hollywood, California, though another notation said she was originally from Port La Pena, Texas. Occupation: Booking Agent. Died mysteriously in 2001. Eventually, determined to be a drug overdose. I would have expected someone who died of a drug overdose to look rough around the edges, but every image in Saxe’s file showed an exquisite woman with the same blonde hair as her son, except with hazel eyes instead.
Al apparently had traveled the world because there were notations about him being in Costa Rica, Perth in Australia, and the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland. So many exotic locations I was almost jealous.
But all of it begged the question: Who were Sandreen and Al Monroe to Richard Saxe?
Chapter 4
I wasn’t sure how I’d gotten into the middle of a forest. And why was it so dark? I found it almost impossible to see a darned thing, but the scent of fir trees was strong enough to be nauseating. And cinnamon. Did cinnamon grow in Southeast Texas?
I must have been wearing my earbuds because I could hear Wham singing “Last Christmas.” It was one of my favorite holiday songs, but I couldn’t find the button on my phone to turn the volume up. And I desperately needed to since someone nearby was singing so loud I could barely hear George Michael’s gorgeous voice.
“You never even called me by my name…”
Suddenly the world exploded with light and I put a hand to my eyes to protect them, “What happened?” I murmured in a froggy voice.
“Hey, what’s this? Did you sleep here, woman?” it was Erin’s voice, her heavy booted feet approaching my desk.
I gradually opened my eyes, peering up at her. When she got to me, she looked down and chuckled as she reached a single finger out to flick something from my face. We both looked down as a jumbo plastic paperclip clattered to the floor. When I felt my cheek, I detected the indentations left in my skin from said paperclip.
“I must have fallen asleep,” I muttered. “What in the world were you singing?”
“David Allen Coe. I don’t know why it was in my brain, but you know me. Always some country twang bouncing around in there. Good morning, by the way.”
“Oh, my word! What time is it?” I stood up in a panic.
“Calm down,” she said, putting her palms up to me. “You’ve got time to go home and get changed. The crowds won’t start arriving for an hour and a half. And as you can tell, I’ve already got the Christmas tunes playing and I brought those wax warmers. Doesn’t the place smell cheery?”
“Yeah, cheery,” I took a deep breath and nodded, slamming my laptop closed and grabbing my purse, “I won’t be long. Promise.”
“You’d better not. You still have to spill the tea. Especially since that tea kept you here all night,” her words followed me towards the front of the shop.
I paused when I reached the counter, slowly looking over at the child gate erected beside Erin’s stool. Pointing at it, “What is that for?”
But I needn’t have asked because the words had barely left my mouth when Elroy came trotting happily towards me from our back storage room, Clem calmly sitting astride him. I opened my mouth to object, but Erin put her hand on my elbow and pushed me along to the door, “Go on, go on and get going. I’ll check everything and have the place ready for our big day by the time you get back.”
I was too tired to argue. About thirty-five minutes later I had showered, my face was made up, and I was wearing a blue Lularoe Carly dress with snowflake leggings underneath.
Purse tucked under my armpit, an open breakfast bar between my teeth and key jammed in my front door, I was tugging with all my might to get the lock to slip into the frame when my cell phone rang. As I fumbled, the bar fell to the ground, exploding into little fragments that I was quite certain the ants would begin enjoying in less than five minutes flat.
I was annoyed and breathless when I hit the button to answer the call.
“Mrs. Evangeline Guillory, this is Rose at St. Vincent’s hospital.”
“Oh,” I frowned in puzzlement, “Okay?”
“We just wanted to let you know that Mr. Saxe is resting comfortably this morning. We removed the endotracheal tube last night and his breathing has remained strong. This afternoon, the oncologist has ordered an MRI…”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said as I got into my car, tossed my purse to the passenger seat and started the engine. “Why are you telling me this? An oncologist? He was hit by a car, right?”
“Well…” Rose hesitated and I heard what sounded like her flipping through papers, “He’s listed you as his emergency contact, so I wanted to give you an update. You are Mrs. Guillery, aren’t you?”
“Saxe put me down as emergency contact?” I was at once honored and saddened. The poor old fellow really didn’t have anyone. Or did he? I’d spent the night reading the notes he’d taken on his “Private” case and been able to conclude that the Monroes were connected to him somehow. After digging around in his files into the early morning hours I only had more questions than answers. “He has cancer, then?”
“Yes, stage four lung cancer. His medical records show he previously elected not to receive treatment.”
“Oh,” I murmured, biting my lip a few moments, “Does he need anything right now?”
“As I said, he’s resting comfortably right now. Do you have any questions?”
I stared at my steering wheel, my head feeling fuzzy. “I should probably have a million, but can’t think of them now. Can I see him later? I have to work, but I can be by late this evening.”
“Of course. We’ll let you know if his status changes.”
It took me forever to get to the shop because by the time I neared downtown, the crowds were already arriving. With just a week until Christmas, this was the event for last-minute shopping and holiday fun. While we had our own parking spaces behind my building, it wasn’t easy to squeeze into the alley with all the parents and children milling about. When I finally got into the store, Erin already had a line of people ready to check out purchases of books and bookish novelties.
She looked up when I said hello, nodded with her typical bright smile, then went back to helping the next customer. Her pets were apparently doing their part for our success because while she had Elroy and Clem secured behind that little gate, a gaggle of kids was standing there petting the ugly little potbellied pig while the tabby stood back and only watched from his one eye.
It continued nonstop throughout the day and as five o’clock rolled around and the store finally emptied, I motioned to Erin, “Hurry and put the sign up. If I have to be on my feet one minute more, I swear I’ll probably give up the ghost.”
She snorted a laugh, then I heard a duplicate snort from behind me and saw Elroy’s wet nose twitching as he pushed it through one of the holes in the child gate. While my assistant locked the door, I opened the gate and set the pig free. Clem immediately rushed towards his friend and leaped onto his back.
I plopped onto one of the cushy couches in the back reading area and put my feet up on the table. I had a sign warning people not to do this very thing, but it was my store and I was tired and I could make or break the rules at whim.
A phone was ringing somewhere in the shop but my eyes were closed and I was thinking seriously of going to sleep, so I ignored it completely. The hurried stomp of boots approached me and I opened my eyes to see Erin shaking my cell phone in her outstretched hand, “It’s yours!”
I took it and hit the answer button as I let my eyelids drop again, “Hello?”
“Vangie? Vangie, I need to talk to you now.”
