The Pickle Queen: A Crossroads Café Novella

  So I knew how hard it was to work the street. To get strangers to pay attention. How it feels being punched in the knees by children while their parents snap photos, being laughed at by teenagers, spit on by drunks, stared at, insulted, asked for blow jobs, pitied, pushed and, maybe worst of all, ignored.

  I whipped the car into the only empty parking space in front of the old piano factory, now covered in a new granite façade with an elegantly-lit sign above the restaurant that filled the bottom floor. Wakefield’s. A uniformed doorman kept the riffraff away. I looked up at the dark, tall windows of the loft above.

  The Foxgloves Pub was still two blocks away, but I’d never find another open spot. It’s fate. Cruel fate.

  My phone beeped. An email from Tal.

  Where r u? I keep getting your vinegar aroma, worse than before. TROUBLE. Please call or text. Keep saying to yourself, CATCH WAKEFIELDS WITH HONEY, NOT VINEGAR. Please?

  Love you,

  Tal

  I rolled down my window and sucked cold air into my lungs. The sidewalks were crowded. Chatter and Christmas carols filled my ears.

  A sound like a strangled goose made me jump. A few paces up the sidewalk, a silver elf blew hard into a badly tuned clarinet. As I got out of the car, another ear-shivering squawk filled the air, driving a wedge in the pedestrians.

  ‘Hurrah hurrah, huzzah hooray!” he shouted. “Welcome to a performance by Lady Overjoy and Donny Malaprop!”

  Tips Kindly Appreciated was posted on a plastic bucket spray-painted with glitter. Donny began playing Jingle Bells on the clarinet. Horribly. The Wakefield doorman spotted them and instantly reached for a phone.

  Lady Overjoy, a silver fairy with lovely wire wings and a silver gown, perched delicately on a wooden pallet draped in matching gauze. She posed without blinking, without flinching in the clammy cold. I watched as a woman dropped a dollar in the bucket. Lady Overjoy pivoted gracefully toward the giver and curtsied. But other people streamed past her and the elf without a glance. Who had time to toss a dollar at a bad clarinetist and a thin silver fairy looking cold?

  I pulled a twenty out of my purse, slapped invisible wrinkles out of my black pants and long gray coat, locked the car, then kicked a fake-croc pump against the steel post of a parking meter. In the old days a good kick might jar a nickel loose or bounce the needle up an hour. But now a high-tech robo-meter just stared back at me, waiting. I slashed a credit card through its evil slit, set the time for two hours, then kicked the post again.

  Lady Overjoy screamed.

  The Wakefield doorman had pounced, but he wasn’t alone. A security guard pinned the elf against the Wakefield building’s sleek black granite. Lady Overjoy ripped off her wire wings and began flogging the guard and the doorman, who tried to wave her off while dodging a serious whisking. “Got you, Donny,” he said loudly.

  “Please let him go,” she begged, hugging her ruined wings to her gown. “We don’t want to go back to boarding school. We hate it.”

  “Then why did you pick Mr. Wakefield’s building? You’re just asking to get caught.”

  “I want to see Jay. We’re just waiting for Jay.”

  “Well, McStabby the Mime has already seen him.”

  “What? When?”

  “Halp. Hep. Heh,” the clarinet elf squeaked.

  “You’re hurting him. He can’t breathe!”

  “Tell him to calm down. Mr. Wakefield gave orders to get him and you off the streets. Period.”

  Was this what Jay had sunk to? Throwing teenage street performers off the sidewalks in front of his building?

  I pushed my way through the gawkers. “Let the elf go.”

  “Ma’am, mind your own business.”

  The clarinet elf was turning purple.

  “You’re strangling him.”

  “Please,” Lady Overjoy begged the men. “I told him not to go see Jay alone. I begged Donny. We won’t come back. I swear.”

  “He assaulted Mr. Wakefield.”

  I snorted. “With a clarinet?”

  “Lady, this is family business. Please!”

  The elf’s eyes rolled to the whites. He kicked weakly, his cheap, silver-hued jogging shoes drumming the security guard’s tailored legs.

  Lady Overjoy lunged at the security guard. “You’re killing him!”

  He shoved her. She fell back, sprawling on the cold pavement, her cheap, gauzy gown flying up to reveal gray leggings and soggy slippers with torn toes.

  I reached into my purse. Are you crazy? Don’t get involved, you’ve just been cleared of assault with a deadly fork in California. Jay’s lawyers got you off. You owe him.

  I pulled out a slick little device I’d bought back when I was catering So Cal parties where the patrons thought helping themselves to “the help” was a perk of the event.

  Putting my thumb on the button, I pointed it at the security guard, while the sidewalk crowd shrieked and ran. “Let the elf go.”

  When he ignored me, I Tasered him.

  Heading for the yellow lights

  DONNY AND LADY Overjoy huddled in the back seat, texting on their phones and talking in coded nerd language. I couldn’t decipher it. However, the Lady’s tragic sighs and Donny’s outraged grunts couldn’t hide their emotional hunger from me.

  She’s the dependable brine. He is the over-saturated spices. Plain tomato relish versus jalapeño chow chow.

  “What did you do to Jay Wakefield?” I asked, steering the rental car up an off-ramp they pointed out.

  “Nothing much. He’ll live,” Donny said. “Too bad.”

  I jerked the car to a halt on an emergency lane then twisted to face them. Lady Overjoy looked exhausted and worried. Donny looked like a cornered miniature rooster. A silver one with a striped elf shirt. “Don’t make me come back there,” I said. “Talk.”

  “I accidentally nicked him on the hand.”

  “Define ‘nicked.’”

  “With my knife.” He pulled out a pocket combo so old that the Swiss Army emblem had faded to a swish. “He’s okay.”

  My chest expanded in relief. Jay wasn’t badly hurt.

  “Donny didn’t mean to hurt him,” the Lady said wistfully.

  He snorted. “Yes, I did.”

  She winced. “Please, just drop us off in front of the primitive yoga studio up there in that shopping center. The one with the yellow security lights. Someone’s coming to meet us.”

  “Where will you go?”

  She put a silver hand on the sleeve of my coat, begging. I saw myself at her age. “Please don’t ask questions. We take care of ourselves.”

  “I can help you. Trust me. I’ve been where you are.”

  “You’re surrounded by spirits,” Donny said suddenly. His silver brow wrinkling, he leaned forward, scanning me with an awed expression. “Old ones. From all around here. They’re glad you’re back. You’re the second one they’ve been waiting for. But you’re not the last.”

  A chill went up my spine.

  “Please,” Lady Overjoy whispered. “My . . . Donny . . . he thinks he knows things. He reads strange sites on the Internet. He has an imagination. I take care of him. I get him his . . . medications. I promise.”

  “I do know things.” Donny said. “I know you won’t hurt us; that’s why we got into your car. I know you can feel what makes people hungry. But you’re hungry, too.” He paused. “Cousin Jay wants you to forgive him. But he has to die for you to do that.”

  “Cousin Jay?”

  The blood drained out of my head. I made my lungs expand, willing my veins and arteries to put up road blocks. “Shusssh,” the fairy hissed. “Ma’am, he’s just kidding.”

  “No, I’m not.” Donny sounded adamant. “He has to die. It’s his destiny. Because he loves you.”

>   I turned back to the steering wheel and drove to the shopping center. The surroundings were stark, utilitarian, rimmed with treeless highway and exposed to the mountain-etched bowl of sky. Harsh yellow security lamps glared down. In front of the yoga studio in a strip of nondescript spaces set a muddy Land Rover. As soon as I pulled in beside it, the driver’s door opened and a tall young man stepped out.

  Lady and Donny bounded from my car and went to him.

  I frowned, trying to analyze what was familiar about the stranger. His dark, nearly black hair was swept sideways in a jaunty flash; he was in his mid-teens, but with a presence of self that seemed older. Cased in a quilted high-tech work jacket, jeans and lace-up lumberjack boots, he circled a long arm around Lady’s waist, and she looked up at him with appreciation. He looks like Jay. Another cousin or, dear God, not a secret son?

  I got out. He tried to blind me with a smile, but it suddenly stalled. “You’re her. The one Grandfather blames for messing with Jay’s mind. Grandfather knows you’re here.”

  “Whose side are you on?” the girl asked. “Our mother trusts Cousin Jay, but she’s . . .”

  “Like me,” Donny said. “Not really living on this planet.”

  The tall one, the driver who resembled Jay, turned to them and said, “Let’s go.” To me he said, “Jay is glad you’re here. Grandfather isn’t. Which side are you on?”

  A police siren cut through the lightly falling rain. Donny, Lady Overjoy, and their rescuer jumped in the SUV and left.

  An Asheville PD cruiser blocked my Honda, followed by a second patrol car that zoomed up beside me, as if I might bolt for the steep slope at the edge of the parking lot, heading into the wilds of a drainage ditch.

  The officers came toward me slowly, their hands on their holstered guns. “Hands up, and place them on top of your head,” one ordered.

  Was Jay having me arrested?

  Welcome home.

  Jay

  Forces are at work

  WHY DID GABS have to stand me up in the back room of an Irish pub full of blinking Christmas lights and motion-sensitive Santa Leprechauns that wiggled their asses and chirped, “Merry Christmas and Luck o’ the Irish to ya!”

  Every few minutes the customers up front at the bar came to the doorway to gaze longingly at the forbidden billiard tables. It didn’t help that I looked like the kind of privileged man who takes toys away from the workers and gives them to his pets.

  I lowered my phone long enough to say to George, “Buy everyone a round of drinks on my tab. And whatever they want to eat. Extra buffalo wings. Steaks. Lobster. Tater tots. And unplug the Santas. Or shoot them. Either option is fine by me.” George nodded as he continued listening to his earpiece.

  I walked to the back of the room, speaking in a low, calm voice into my cell. “Did she check out of her hotel?”

  “No, sir.” One of George’s team was stationed at the Renaissance lobby.

  “Stay there and keep watching.”

  I clicked to another call. “Did she return the rental?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Ask your brother in airport security to get you inside the gate area for the next connecting flight to Los Angeles. Watch everyone who departs. If you’re arrested as a terrorist threat, I’ll pay for your defense.”

  “Yes, sir.” He sighed, well-paid but unhappy.

  I clicked to a third call, about to tell the leader of Team Sidewalk Search to sweep Lexington Avenue next. She might have headed for the P, B and S building. God, I hoped not. Revisiting her mother’s eviction by Uncle E.W. wouldn’t make a good start to the evening.

  George tapped me on the shoulder. George isn’t a tapper. I whirled around. He looked up at me grimly. “E.W. had her arrested.”

  Gabby

  Gabby cooks up trouble

  “SO IF YOU MINCE the turkey meat, like this—” I diced the chilled breast meat with a police-approved plastic knife, while four of Daddy’s other old cop buddies sat around a table in the police station’s break room—“so that it’s finely chopped enough to absorb the acidic flavor of the balsamic reduction, and then”—I mixed several handfuls of diced olives and celery into the meat, stirring with plastic spoons—“the oregano and the cumin will be pulled into the meat quicker, and the result will be the most flavorful turkey salad ever, not just spicy and well-seasoned, but with the edge that only a touch of culinary acid can give to food.”

  I set the large bowl among them, and they dug in with plastic sporks. One had loaned me a piece of his Tupperware from the potluck buffet set out along a wall under rows of mug shots.

  I stood back, watching them “Uhmmm” and “Ah” with tears burning the backs of my eyes. I wiped my hands on paper towels. An over-sized Asheville P.D. t-shirt covered my gray pullover sweater and slacks. A gift from Daddy’s pals, all of them burly and aging, gone gray and nearing retirement.

  I saw Daddy as he would have become, in their ruddy faces, their weathered hands and spreading bellies. I had a deep affection for these men, who remembered young Stewart MacBride and his incredible wife, Jane, the best cook in Asheville.

  A knock on the break room door made me flinch. Time to go back to my cell? I shivered. A childhood fear of windowless rooms made bile rise in my throat.

  A grizzled sergeant poked his head inside.

  “Sergeant Charlie!” I headed toward him with arms out, despite his scowl.

  “Sssh, keep it down, sweetie pie.” He gave me a quick bear hug while motioning for the others. In a low voice he said, “Got to move her out of here fast.”

  They leapt to their feet as if they were young men again. Charlie handed me my purse and coat, grabbed me by one elbow, and the other four formed a guard around me.

  I gaped at them. “What the . . . where? Why?”

  “Don’t say nothing, just walk and look innocent,” Charlie whispered.

  They whisked me down several halls, then to an exit that led downstairs. Once we were clattering down the steps of a fire exit, Charlie told me, “You’ve got to trust Jay on this. Let him handle things. It’s tricky with his cousin Will Bonavendier up in the Little Finn. If Will’s hiding those kids . . .”

  “Tricky?”

  “Well, yeah. I’m not sure if Will and Jay are working together against E.W. or always about to kill each other. Just watch Jay’s back.”

  “Jay wouldn’t . . .” My stomach twisted. I couldn’t be sure. Did I really know Jay?

  We reached the bottom landing, and Charlie quickly unlocked a security door. I spun around, searching his face. “Would this Will Bonavendier really start a fight?”

  “I don’t know, hon, but if you still care about Jay, just give him a chance to do whatever it is he’s up to, all right?”

  Charlie pivoted me toward the now-open door, which let in a blast of cold, damp, air. A starkly-lit world of parked police cars showed me nothing but a side street across from the historic brick edifice of Pack Tavern. Charlie pushed me gently out of the nest. “Maybe he’s just trapped in the world he was born in, like the rest of us.”

  The door shut. The click of a high-tech bolt raised goose bumps on my arms.

  I turned slowly toward the vaguely sinister side street with its shadowy corners and rows of patrol cars. Empty of human life. An engine came to life somewhere. Tires rolled on concrete, heading toward me. I backed up to the door, my mind racing. I needed a plan.

  I just wanted to go back to the hotel, eat everything in sight, vomit, then head into the mountains above the city. I’d go to the Cove. Stay with Tal and her new love, Doug Firth. Hug my niece, Eve.

  Helluva of way to surprise my baby sister and her future husband, but together we’d come up with some kind of plan. If Jay wanted to track me down, he’d have to send his mercenaries to the Cove to do it.

  A h
ulking, camo-painted pickup truck roared toward me. I was blinded by its headlights plus the search lights riding the roof like extra eyes on a large bug. Squinting, I noted a front winch, a thick roll bar over the cab, and enough mud on the sides to start a pottery.

  The Armageddon Truck purred to a stop. Heavy diesel fumes oozed from the rumbling muffler. The window slid down with an electric whir.

  Jay hung an elbow out, cased in a wolf-gray jacket with a Frankenstein line of crude stitches patching a tear in the padded forearm. I had warned myself in a thousand memories that he was a force of nature, six-foot-six-feet of extraordinary presence, and that the sexual energy that flowed between us would happen no matter what got in its way. But I was not prepared for this. I hurried down the steps, looking right and left, as if his entourage might leap from behind the foggy street lamps.

  His darkly browed gaze, the silver stare of an unrepentant predator, scanned me as if I were bar-coded for inventory. A faded patch on the shoulder of his jacket said he’d climbed Mt. Everest. Probably to scope it out for a mining project.

  There was no obvious emotion in his face, but a flash of urgency arced from him and hit me where I lived. Smoke curled from a fat cigar clenched in his teeth, drifting above the jacket’s fleece collar. He blew it away with an air kiss that pursed his wide mouth; he even sniffed the air as if making sure the effect was headed in my direction. As a boy, he’d been aristocratic looking, but years of reckless adventure sports, combined with shoving his face into other people’s business, had crumpled the bridge of his long nose and skewed the tip.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “What’s your scheme, this time?”

  The edge of his breath touched my face.

  Jay reached for the cigar with long, blunt fingers that had thrown touchdowns for Duke yet could slip inside my body as gently as feathers stroking air. My eyes went to the wide strip of gauze and tape around his hand. On his palm, a pink stain seeped through.