Éclair and Present Danger (14 page)

“The guy looking at the house.”

“She knew him?”

Renee looked down at the idea pad and then back up at Winnie. “She said you all did.”

“Who was it?”

“Some guy from the ambulance district,” Renee said, shrugging.

“Greg?”

“
Who
?”

She rolled her eyes. “Master Sergeant Hottie . . .”

“Wouldn't
that
be convenient?” Renee laughed, pushed the idea pad back into the center of the table, and then crossed to the refrigerator and the sandwich she'd stuck inside earlier that morning. “No. This guy was a redhead—average height, kinda lanky.”

“You mean Chuck Rogers?”

Tucking the sandwich under her arm, Renee grabbed a can of soda and returned to the table. “Chuck. Chuck . . . You know, I think that's it.” Then, grinning at Winnie across the top of her soda can, Renee added, “He's not Master Sergeant Hottie, but he didn't look too shabby from up here.”

This time when she rolled her eyes, she kept them fixed on the ceiling out of disgust and amusement. “Renee, please . . .”

“What? What did I say?”

S
he backed down the long, winding driveway on the western side of Silver Lake and then stopped, her demeanor bouncing between accomplished and aggravated like a perfectly played game of Ping-Pong.

Narrowing her eyes on the passenger seat, Winnie decided on aggravation only to stifle it back down as her phone began to ring.

“Yes, Renee, what is it?”

“I take it Miss Conklin didn't like the dessert?” Renee asked. “Was it the low-calorie part? Or the name?”

“Neither. She loved it.” And she had. In fact, Diane Conklin was so tickled by the delivery of her Can't Lose a Pound Cake, she placed an order for the same thing for a fellow dieter. Winnie passed that part on to Renee, her glare steady.

“Al-right-y then . . . So what's with the 'tude? Two calls on our first day is pretty darn good in my—”

Hissss . . .

“Uh, Winnie? What was that?”

“What was what?” She leaned closer and ratcheted up her glare a few notches.

Hissss . . .

“That!”

Winnie gave up, thumped her head against the seat back, and released her pent-up frustration via a semi-controlled groan.

“What's going on over there? Do I need to call the cops?”

“Does the Silver Lake PD have an animal control officer?” She lifted her gaze to the ceiling of the ambulance as her thoughts drifted to her kitchen pantry and its various contents. “You still at my place?”

“Yes, but I was getting ready to head out if that's okay. Ty's after-school baseball practice should be wrapping up, and I thought maybe I could watch for a few minutes before it's time to actually drive him home.”

She knew she should probably be paying attention to whatever her friend had just said, but she couldn't. Her mind was busy inventorying the pantry's second shelf. “Do I have salt?”

“Let me check.” She heard Renee set down the phone and head across the linoleum floor in her stilettos. Seconds later, the woman was back. “Yes. Why? Are you planning on knocking off a few more goldfish?”

She considered a variety of responses worthy of such a barb, but opted to stay mum. Instead, she turned her gaze back to the passenger seat. “I was thinking more along the lines of a very specific cat.”

Renee's laughter started out strong, but disappeared against a backdrop that included Winnie moaning.

“Renee?”

“No, I'm here. I just can't seem to find Lovey. I thought she was in the window, sleeping.”

It was her turn to laugh, only
her
laugh was laced with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “Nope. She's not in the window . . .”

This time she got the sense Renee was hanging on to the phone as she moved around Winnie's apartment. “She's not in your living room chair, either.”

“Nope. She's not in my chair . . .”

“Let me check your bedroom.”

“Okay.” She checked the rearview mirror to make sure no one was trying to turn into the Conklins' driveway and then rested her head against the seat back once again.

“She's not in the bedroom, either, Winnie.”

“Nope. Not in my bedroom . . .” Then, turning her head toward the passenger seat, she held out the phone. “Say hi to Renee, Lovey.”

Meow . . .

Renee's initial inhale was so loud, so hard, Winnie half expected to get sucked through the phone. “Nooo!”

“Oh yes.”

“But—but how?”

It was the same question she'd asked Lovey again and again from the Conklins' front door all the way back to the ambulance. Unfortunately, in light of the fact Gertie failed to leave a decoder for Lovey's various hisses, she had no answer beyond the obvious. “She stowed herself away in the back of the rig somehow. A major health code violation if I ever saw one . . .”

“Where is she now?”

“Sitting right here next to me. At least now, if we happen to pass a health inspector on the way back to the house, the partition Gertie's husband installed between the cab and the rig will keep us from losing our job.”

Silence ensued during which Winnie could almost see Renee sucking on her lower lip in thought. “The customer didn't see her, did she?”

Stretching her front paws over the side of the seat, Lovey circled once, twice, three times and then flopped onto her side, blinking up at Winnie. Without thinking, Winnie leaned over just enough to scratch the cat's left ear. Lovey,
equally confused by the moment, purred for a brief second before putting two and two together and coming up with Winnie.

Hissss . . .

Sighing, she placed her hand back on the steering wheel and glanced down the driveway at the modest ranch-style home. “No, she saw her. In fact, Lovey turned on the charm and wound herself around Miss Conklin's legs. And, wouldn't you know, the woman's cat passed about six months ago and that's when she fell off her diet. Seeing Lovey, she said, has convinced her to get back on her plan, get herself in shape, and rescue another cat from the shelter.”

“Sounds like a successful run to me,” Renee said around a yawn. “Maybe you should add Lovey to the payroll.”

“Fat chance of that.” She made a mental note of the time via the dashboard clock and then peeked into the rearview mirror to gage the traffic flow on the street. “I better head back. Enjoy whatever is left of Ty's practice, and I'll see you first thing in the morning, okay? We need to get the new dessert names up onto the website and—”

“Done.”

“Seriously?”

“Just call me Dispatcher Extraordinaire.”

“Come up with some sort of customer-themed rain dance that will flood the phone line with business tomorrow and we'll talk.”

“We're already off to a good start,” Renee said.

“We are?”

“Uh-huh. Some kid at Silver Lake College saw you and the ambulance on the way to one of her classes today. She said her roommate is going out with a real loser and needs a little shove to make the break. So, she wants something delivered to their dorm room tomorrow at noon.”

It was really happening. Her idea was starting to take off . . .

“I even came up with the perfect dessert!”

Winnie smiled and pulled the phone a bit more tightly against her face. “Oh? What's that?”

“Dump (Him) Cake. For print purposes, we'll put a parenthesis around the ‘Him' part, which can, of course, be substituted with ‘Her' depending on the recipient's gender—”

“Renee?”

“The dump cake base makes it so people can choose the one that appeals to them most—cherry, pineapple, peach, chocolate, whatever.”

“Renee . . .”

“Your dump cakes were always such a big hit at the bakery, and I figured—”

“Renee,” she shouted, successfully (and finally) quieting the ongoing sales job playing out in her ear. “You don't have to keep selling it. I love it! It's . . . perfect!”

“You do?”

“I do. Now get going. Put a forward on the phone directly to my cell for now, and I'll see you first thing in the morning.” She dropped her phone into her purse and shifted the car back into reverse. Once she was on the cross street, she headed toward home, her eyes on the road but her thoughts churning over various ways to make the Emergency Dessert Squad's dump cake better than any she'd ever made at Delectable Delights.

Maybe some sort of butterscotch . . .

Or toffee bits and caramel . . .

Street by street she made her way through downtown Silver Lake and out the other side, the excitement of the day starting to eat away at her energy level. For months leading up to the demise of Delectable Delights, she hadn't slept, her mind sifting through various pie-in-the-sky options that simply couldn't or didn't pan out when it mattered most. Then, once she faced the inevitable and its closing became a matter of when, rather than if, she'd lain awake at night trying to imagine a different path for her life, a different career. Word of Gertie's will had given her hope that had
faded as quickly as it appeared. Toss in finding a dead body and opening a new business in warp speed time, and, well, nothing sounded better at that moment than sitting in front of her television in the comfiest pair of pajamas she owned.

Yet as she pulled into the driveway at 15 Serenity Lane, she knew the pajamas would have to wait. Mr. Nelson was struggling with Bart's death. He needed her to be a friend, to listen and talk him through the sadness just as he'd done for her when Ethel died. Losing a friend was always hard. Just because that friend was old and had lived a lot of years didn't make the pain go away. If anything, it made it harder. More time to get attached and all that . . .

She hiked the shoulder strap of her purse up her arm, tucked the keys inside the bag's large center compartment, and threw open the driver's side door, glancing at the passenger seat even as she swiveled her feet out and onto the pavement. “C'mon, Lovey. We're home. Time to go inside.”

Lovey lifted her head, blinked sleepily back at Winnie, and then followed her out of the car. Running ahead to the door, the cat waited while Winnie retrieved the warming bag from the back of the ambulance and then closed and locked everything for the night.

Once inside the vestibule, Lovey remained in Winnie's vicinity as she knocked on Mr. Nelson's door. When there was no answer, she knocked again. “Mr. Nelson? It's me—Winnie.”

Again, there was no answer, no footsteps, no television sounds seeping out from the gap beneath the door. She felt a knot of tension forming at the base of her neck and dug around in her bag for her phone.

Less than a minute later, she was back on the line with a breathless Renee. “Hey, Winnie. What'd I forget?”

“Nothing.” She felt Lovey's curious eyes studying her and met them with an anxious shrug. “I was just wondering if you saw Mr. Nelson at all during my last run? He didn't
come outside earlier, and now he's not answering my knock. I'm starting to get a little worried.”

“He's fine, Winnie.” Renee's voice muffled for a moment as if she was talking to someone in the background, but returned to full power in a matter of seconds. “Well, maybe not completely
fine
, but he's not hurt or anything if that's what you're worried about.”

“And you know this how?”

“I ran into Bridget in the front hall as I was leaving a little while ago.”

“Okay . . .”

“She told me she was having Mr. Nelson over for dinner tonight and that she was making her famous pot roast just to help cheer him up.”

“And he went?”

“I'm not sure he had a choice,” Renee said between laughs. “You know how Bridget can be when she makes up her mind about something.”

“Yes—she gets just like you.” It was true. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that Renee was tall (even without her stilettos), thirty-five, and voluptuous (as Mr. Nelson liked to mention to anyone who would listen), to Bridget's short, eighty, and boxy, Winnie might actually think they were twins. They were drawn to the same things (Master Sergeant Hottie, anyone?), pontificated on like-minded themes (Winnie needs a man!), and had similar steamroller tendencies when it came to something they wanted.

“I don't make pot roast,” Renee argued.

“You obviously haven't tasted Bridget's.”

“Bad?”

“That's one word for it.” She felt her throat constricting at the memory and forced her thoughts in a different direction. “Well, at least he's with someone—someone who gets what he's feeling about Bart at the moment. That's good.”

“I'll see you tomorrow, Winnie.”

“See you tomorrow, Renee.” She broke the connection and gestured toward the stairs. “Okay, Lovey, let's go. It's an everyone-fend-for-themselves kind of night.”

Once inside the apartment, Lovey led her straight to the empty food bowl next to the shoe closet and then looked up, wide-eyed.

“What? You can't feed yourself?” Reaching into the closet, Winnie plucked the two-pound bag of cat food from the top shelf and poured some into the bowl. She was just placing the bag back on the shelf when her cell phone rang.

For a split second she considered letting the unfamiliar number go to voice mail, but then she remembered her instructions to a departing Renee about forwarding customer calls and held the phone to her ear.

“Emergency Dessert Squad, please state your emergency . . .”

“Uhhhh, I need some . . . companionship?” said a decidedly male voice. “And . . . some coffee?”

“I'm sorry. I think you have the wrong number.”

“This is Winnie, right?”

She swallowed and looked to Lovey for support. Lovey, of course, continued eating. “It is . . . Who is this?”

She heard the faintest hint of a sigh before the voice (which was actually kind of sexy) returned. “It's Jay. Jay Morgan. From the college. You delivered a cookie to my office this—”