Could go either way.
He looked gorgeous, dangerous, dark.
Chaos and trouble. Heartbreak and hope.
I took a long, long pull of my beer.
“Bathin.” Jean popped the candy out of her mouth and pointed it at him. “Don’t you clean up nice?”
“I’m even better at getting dirty.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.
Jean barked out a laugh. How could she think he was charming or funny? How could she fall for that?
How could anyone not?
“I just bet you do.” She grinned.
“You already have a boyfriend, Jean,” I blurted, maybe a little too quickly and a little too loudly.
Kill me with a crowbar.
All three of them turned to look at me, surprised.
“What are you even doing here?” I asked. “Like that?” I waved my beer in his general direction then decided another drink sounded really dandy right about then. So I drank.
“Well.” He drew that word out a little too long, as if he were trying to figure out how to talk to a toddler about sex. “I’m in Ordinary because of a business deal I made with first your father, and then your sister. I’m here in this bowling alley because I am single and ready to mingle.”
And then he winked.
Winked.
There was no way my heart fluttered a little at that. There was no way I found him charming despite all the terrible things I knew he actually was.
Liar.
“So Bertie forced you into this too?” Delaney asked him.
He nodded, his eyes a little wider than before. “I have faced down many formidable opponents. But Bertie takes her battles to another level.”
“Never argue with a Valkyrie,” Jean suggested. “Not if you like breathing.”
“Quite,” he agreed. “And you, Myra? Are you offering your virgin neck upon the dating chopping block this evening?”
“Nothing about me is virgin,” I grumbled. “Not even my neck.”
Delaney choked on her beer and coughed hard enough and long enough to bring tears to her eyes. In between her coughing fit, she managed to gasp out, “Don’t even want to know what you meant by that.”
Bathin opened his mouth to say something, but Bertie showed up and rang a little bell to get everyone’s attention.
Bertie was a petite, spry woman who appeared to be in her eighties, her white hair short and styled in a blunt, businesslike style. She wore a flamingo-pink jacket, a white pencil skirt, and heels, all trimmed by a thin line of gold that should have made the whole thing look ridiculous, but instead pulled it all together.
Her gold nails glinted with tiny diamonds and rubies set upon them.
“Thank you all so much for coming to the first speed-dating event in Ordinary. We have a suggestion box near the shoe rental counter. If you have a suggestion for how we can improve or grow this event, or if you’d like to vote on what we should call this event going forward, please drop a note in the box before you leave.
“You have each been given a number when you arrived. There is a corresponding number on a table. Please find your table and take a seat. If you have a red card, you will remain seated at the table. All those with green cards will move from table to table after the three-minute bell rings. This is the three-minute bell.”
She rang the little crystal bell in her hand that appeared to have a drop of blood, or maybe a heart, in the center as the clapper.
Everyone glanced at their cards and got moving with nervous laughter and excitement—seriously, excitement?—toward the tables.
“You’re table four,” Jean said from way down a tunnel somewhere.
I lifted my beer to my mouth, but it was empty. Had Delaney swapped my full beer out for an empty one? Not funny. Not funny at all. I glared over at her, and she had this ridiculously amused look on her face.
Of course Ryder had shown up and was standing behind her, his arms wrapped around her waist, their bodies pressed close together. He watched me over her shoulder and looked pretty amused too.
What was wrong with these people?
“Myra?” Jean said, touching my shoulder. “Table four.” She pointed.
I looked away from Ryder’s stupid smiling face just long enough to notice he had a fresh, cold beer in one hand.
“Beer me,” I demanded.
Ryder tipped his head a little to the side, his lips pressed down against a laugh. He leaned into Delaney and stretched the beer out for me.
Delaney, the traitor, was laughing.
I nodded my thanks to Ryder, and he nodded back. The acknowledgment of a fellow soldier who knew just how bad things were at the front. I knocked back another deep swallow or two of beer, turned, and marched to table four.
Let’s get on with this.
Chapter Five
First guy:
“Dustin, is it?” I asked with a bored glance at his name tag. “Is that your name?”
“Ha-ha, you’ve known me since high school, Myra.”
“Just answer the question, sir. Is Dustin your name?”
“Um, yes? Why? Did you expect it to be something else?”
“I’ll be the one asking the questions today. When you speed on the highway, do you have your cell phone in your hand?”
“I don’t… I haven’t. I have a dash mount for my cell phone,” he finally managed.
“So you admit to speeding?”
He groaned. “Oh, God, this is going to be debate team all over again, isn’t it?”
Second guy:
“How long have you lived here, Stan?”
“Four years.” His hands were folded on the table in front of him, his gaze steady. He must have seen Dustin’s frantic escape and had steeled himself for the next three minutes.
“And before that?”
“Texas.”
Short, jury-ready answers. I approved.
“You work at a chiropractor’s office, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
He was the chiropractor. I was surprised he hadn’t given me that detail. Most doctors couldn’t wait to brag about their degrees and specialties.
“What did you do before you came to Ordinary?”
“I was a divorce attorney.”
Ah, well, that explained some things.
“Is there a reason you chose to move halfway across the country to a small town almost no one and certainly no news agency has heard of while also changing your career and your lifestyle?”
He grinned like he was enjoying this. “No comment, officer.”
Third guy was a gal:
“Look,” Mindy said when she dropped into the chair, “I’m gay, and I’m in a committed relationship.”
I knew that, and I knew her. She was a tax accountant. She was my tax accountant.
I was surprised she was here tonight. Tax season was underway, and her schedule had to be insane.
“This is a speed-dating event, Mindy. Do you think Tiana would approve?”
“Oh, I know she will.” Mindy pulled a binder out of her bag and slapped it down on the table between us. “We have three daughters. Three. The minimum order is five boxes. Take your pick.”
I glanced down. It was a Girl Scout cookie order form.
“You could have sent out an email. You know I’d place an order.”
“Nope. I’m taking care of all our orders now. Tonight.”
“How many do you need to sell?”
“Two hundred boxes.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“For each girl.”
“Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
She slid the pen over to me, a steely look in her eyes. “Less time I spend selling cookies, the faster I’ll get through tax work.”
“I don’t think it’s legal to blackmail clients with cookies,” I grumbled.
“Not blackmail, just letting you in on the facts. And they are delicious cookies, which you will get whole and not crushed, like all the fancy cookies at the grocery
store and gas stations.”
“The cookies at the grocery store are crushed?”
“Everyone’s been complaining about it for the last couple months. You hadn’t heard?”
“No. Are you telling me the Girl Scouts are literally crushing their competition?”
She looked startled by that. “No, not at all! That’s against everything the organization stands for. We just noticed that the bags of fancy cookies are all broken up. Could be a shipping issue.”
“Hm.”
She shook her head. “You can strap me to a lie detector. None of the girls in the troop, or anyone involved with Girl Scouts, is going around crushing cookies. Because we don’t have to. Our cookies are delicious and addictive. They sell themselves.”
She was not wrong. I picked up the pen and filled out my order. “Put me down for ten boxes, and say hello to the girls for me.”
Third-to-last guy:
“Have you ever lied to get out of jury duty?”
Tom had lasted a whole minute before breaking out in a sweat, his eyes darting around, looking for escape.
“N-no. Why would you? What do you mean?”
“Remember you’re talking to an officer of the law, Tom,” I said. My beer was long gone, but I was having a surprisingly good time speed interrogating.
“Is that a question from the little bowl?” He reached for the bowl of paper strips with suggested icebreaker questions printed on them. “Maybe I should…uh…ask you something now?”
“Have you ever broken a packaged cookie?”
“I… Maybe?”
“We’ve had cookie-crushing incidents in the grocery stores and gas stations. You buy gas, don’t you, Tom? Shop for food?”
He pawed through the paper like there was a door to salvation at the bottom. “Yes?”
“You’ve broken a cookie once or twice—I mean, who hasn’t?”
“Yes—I mean, no! Only mine. After I buy them?”
I stared at him and made a little note in the book they’d given us for just such a thing. Okay, not for this, but for whatever people who were good at dating would want to make a note of.
“Are you…um…writing down something about me?”
I just kept writing. At this point it was a doodle, a little monster throwing cookies in his huge mouth and I hate Delaney and Jean carved into an anatomically correct heart.
“I did…I saw…a guy,” Tom said into the silence I’d refused to break. “He was behind me at the grocery store? He was standing in the aisle, blocking it so I couldn’t get my cart by. And he picked up those bag cookies, the expensive ones, in both hands and snarled at them. Held them up to his face and sort of growled.”
Really? I hadn’t actually expected to get a lead on this. I was just using the cookie line of interrogation to pass time.
The only action I was going to take on the cookie petty crime was to suggest the stores get a camera on the aisle and send employees down there more often to monitor the damage.
“What did the shopper look like?”
“Uh, short? Just under five foot, I’d say? Wore a hat. I didn’t really look at him that closely.”
“Short? Not a child?”
“M-maybe? No, I don’t think so. He was wearing a suit under a coat.”
“Did he look like a tourist?”
“What does a tourist look like?”
“Like someone you’ve never seen in town before.”
“Oh. I didn’t look that closely. He wasn’t wandering around like he’d never been in the store before.”
“Age?”
“Fifties—no, sixties?”
“Race?”
“Caucasian.”
“Tom,” I said with a smile, “you have just given us our first lead on this case. Thank you.”
Everything about Tom relaxed. He looked like a man who had just walked away from the firing squad with a glass of champagne and a smoke.
“Let me get your name and number in case we need to talk to you again,” I said. “Is that all right?”
“Sure,” he said. “Yes, sure.”
Tom was a cable installer, and a nice guy. Although that whole “never lied to a jury” answer was a load of bunk. Everyone lied to get out of jury duty. We had a file full of the best excuses and pulled it out on slow days for a chuckle.
“Do you have any questions for me?” I asked.
Tom looked down at the strip he’d pulled out of the bowl. “Uh, yeah. Dogs or cats?”
I raised one eyebrow and leaned back in my chair, putting on my “good cop” face. “I prefer cats. How about you?”
“Dogs. I mean, cats are okay too? I think?”
“No, no. You don’t have to say that. It’s clear this wasn’t meant to be. I do appreciate your sharp attention at the grocery store, though. Good work there.”
I smiled. Tom smiled. We both smiled.
See how nice this was? See how well I could do this?
“Here,” I said, reaching for the stash of cool, unopened beers Jean had given me. She probably thought I’d need them to get through the event, but I’d found they worked like a charm as a peace offering.
I didn’t have to give out my card or my number, or deal with anything even slightly emotionally messy. Just interrogate a person and hand them a beer.
This was neat. This was orderly. Plus, I actually got a lead on a case without having to go knock on doors.
Not a bad way to spend the night.
I offered the beer to Tom. “To get you through the rest of the event,” I said with a smile.
“Thanks, officer.” He took the beer and uncapped it. “This was…uh…good?”
“Sure, Tom. Real good. And good luck out there. I noticed Trish has had her eye on you since you first walked in. Have you met her? She works in the pediatric wing of the hospital.”
He swallowed beer and then nodded. “Once at a block party. We talked. She seems terrific. She’s been watching me?” And yes, that was pure, happy hope in his voice.
I smiled, giving him an encouraging nod. “She has.”
“Well,” he said with relief and a bit more starch in his spine. “Well. Our three minutes is almost up, right?”
“I think so.”
Bertie rang the bell, and Tom ran a hand through his hair, and set his smile in place before strolling over to Trish.
Trish lit up like a lighthouse when she saw him coming her way.
Aw. It was cute. Nice. I liked romance. At least for other people.
I glanced at the clock. The speed-dating part of the event should be almost over. Only a couple people left.
Jonah, my neighbor, settled down in front of me. He was sweating hard, his dark hair slicked up into curls across his forehead, his stubbled jaw glinting with little drops of moisture.
He gave me a hesitant smile that he immediately tamped down. He wiped under his eyes several times. Was he crying?
It was possible he was having an even worse night than I was.
After the Tom thing, I was feeling generous.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you feeling okay, Jonah?”
He swallowed, nodded once, then clenched hands together in his lap and stared at me.
Just stared.
It was possible he was even more socially awkward than I’d assumed from watching him come and go across the street.
“Beer?” I pulled out the last one. He took it, careful to keep his fingers from brushing mine, and, after three tries, got it open.
His hand shook a little as he took a drink, then went back to staring.
All right, then. Not a man of many words.
“Your yard’s looking nice this year,” I said.
He blinked a couple times, and a small, real smile curved his mouth.
Finally.
“Thanks.” His voice was bristly and low. I’d always assumed he was human, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“How are you liking the new house?” I asked.
“It’s…” He n
odded, took another drink of beer. This time he looked over his shoulder, as if expecting people to be staring at him.
I took a gander around the room. No one was staring at him.
“Nice?” I suggested.
“Yes,” he agreed. There it was again, something in his voice that told me this was not a human in front of me.
“You haven’t been in town for very long,” I said amiably. “Where did you move in from?”
His throat worked some more and his eyes went a little wide. “Pennsylvania.”
“Ah,” I said. “Pretty place to live.”
He shook his head, then stopped and shrugged one shoulder. “I like it here. Quiet. I like the rain.”
Yep. Definitely not a human. I did a quick rummage through which kinds of creatures might come out of Pennsylvania. It could be anything from an abominable snowman to a vampire.
But this guy wasn’t something I immediately recognized. Dark hair, square face, deep voice, bristly. Wart by his left eyebrow, strong teeth. Sweating hard, even though it wasn’t all that hot in here. And crying? He wiped under his eyes again. Maybe not crying, but his eyes were watering.
What did that add up to?
I could ask him, but it was a rude thing to do. Now that he was here in Ordinary, he was just one of us, monster, human, or deity. I scanned the crowd to see if Hogan was around. Jean’s boyfriend could tell who was what, could see through the outside that gods and monsters projected. But Hogan wasn’t around.
I’d just ask him later.
“Flowers.” Jonah pointed at the vase. I waited. “Do you like them?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Your yard is full of them,” he said. “Roses.”
Well, this was going better. He seemed to have found a subject that didn’t leave him tongue-tied.
“I enjoy gardening,” I said. “Do you have a hobby?”
He shook his head, ducked it a little, and gave me a sideways glance. “That’s, that’s a lie. I, um, write. I like to write.”
“That’s a nice hobby, Jonah.”
His smile went full-wattage brilliant.
“I like it. I’m…head over heels for it.” He chanced making eye contact to see how that had gone over.
I smiled. “I’m head over heels for things too.”