Éclair and Present Danger (4 page)

W
innie was just reaching for her third cup of coffee when she heard a vibration somewhere in her general vicinity. It was faint at first, but thanks to her caller's persistence, she finally located its source beneath six hours' worth of discarded ideas strewn across her kitchen table and most of the living room floor.

“Hello?”

“Let me in. I have coffee.”

She looked from the digital oven clock (6:45
A.M.
) to her relatively full mug and back again before giving voice to the confusion now clouding her caffeinated thoughts. “Renee, the bakery is closed, remember?”

“I'm not at the bakery. I'm downstairs. On your front stoop.” Renee's voice petered off momentarily only to return with a rare sense of hesitancy. “Um, Winnie? Do you know that . . . um . . . there's yellow cop tape around that peach pie guy's house?”

“It's called crime scene tape and, yes, I'm aware. I'm the one who found Bart's body.”

She ended the call in the middle of Renee's gasp, took one last look at the effects of her all-night brainstorming session, and made her way over to the door and down the steps.

“Who's there?” Mr. Nelson called from inside his apartment. “If you're preaching, I've already got religion. And if you're selling, I ain't buying—unless you've got binoculars. I could use some new binoculars . . .”

Even in her sleep-deprived state, Winnie managed to stifle her laugh in favor of the reassurance she knew was needed. “It's just me, Mr. Nelson. I'm letting Renee in.”

The second she mentioned her friend and former employee's name, she wished she hadn't. After all, nothing had Mr. Nelson off his couch and clipping on a bow tie faster than a chance to flirt with Renee.

Sure enough, by the time she unlocked the series of bolts Mr. Nelson had installed on the front door during a bout of extreme boredom six months earlier, the seventy-five-year-old was standing behind her, straightening his bow tie and puffing out a chest that was decades past the point of puffing.

“Fine morning we're having, isn't it, Miss Ballentine?”

She started to remind him of Renee's age in comparison to his but let it go when it became apparent Renee was all too happy to do a little flirting, too. Eyelashes were batted, cheeks turned crimson, and throats were cleared before Renee put a stop to it by shoving a finger into Winnie's shoulder. “And you! You had to drop that little bomb just as you were hanging up, didn't you?”

“Bomb?” Mr. Nelson's shoulders rose up alongside his ears. “What bomb?”

Instinctively, Winnie rested a calming hand on the man's back while simultaneously stepping aside to afford Renee entrance into the vestibule. “Not that kind of bomb, Mr. Nelson.”

His shoulders returned to position in time to look Renee
up and down, a sly smile claiming his weathered face. “Aren't you a sight for sore eyes . . .”

Renee pointed at Mr. Nelson. “Can I keep you?” Then, sliding her gaze left, she looked at Winnie. “Can I keep him? He's really good for my ego.”

“You can keep me whenever and however you want, Miss Ballentine,” Mr. Nelson said, winking. “I'm not picky.”

“Okay, you two. Enough is enough. It's only—” Winnie stopped, looked down at her watch, and then back up at Renee. “Wait just a minute. Why is it that today—when there's no bakery to open—you can be standing at my door, coffees in hand, at seven o'clock, when you were routinely thirty to forty minutes late for a
nine
o'clock start?”

“It's a school day.”

“It's a school day five out of seven days,” Winnie reminded before putting two and two together and coming up with Renee's ex-husband, Bob, and his mid-week visitation with their son.

Renee leaned toward Mr. Nelson, giving him a bird's-eye view of her ample cleavage in the process. “Did someone give our Winnie cranky pills this morning?”

Mr. Nelson brought a hand to his heart. “I—I—”

“No one gave me cranky pills, Renee,” Winnie said as every hue of red known to mankind took a turn on the palette that was Mr. Nelson's face. When he became aware of her scrutiny, he took one last (and lengthy) glance at Renee's chest and then busied himself with a nonexistent speck of dust on the handle of his cane. “I've just been up all night, that's all.”

Mr. Nelson's chin shot upward. “You should've heard Winnie scream when she found Bart the way she did. Why, I heard it over that ditty they play during Final Jeopardy! You know—do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, DO, do do do do do.”

“So you really
did
find a real live dead body?”

“I think that's a contradictory sentence, Renee, but in the
spirit of moving things along—yes.” Winnie leaned back against the closest stretch of wall she could find and rubbed at the headache she felt building behind her temples. “It appears he was murdered. Which explains the crime scene tape you referenced on the phone.”

“It's a dangerous world out there, Miss Ballentine,” Mr. Nelson mused. Then, cocking his head toward his open doorway, he offered a ready-made solution to Winnie's internal how-to-get-upstairs-alone-without-hurting-his-feelings dilemma. “I'm sorry, but I have to leave you two gals to your own devices for a little while. That cute little weather anchor on Channel Five is about to smile out at me from my TV, and I don't want to miss that.”

In a flash, Mr. Nelson was gone, a stunned and somewhat dejected-looking Renee staring at the spot where he'd once stood. “I can't believe it. I've been cast aside for a female who studies
clouds
all day?”

“There could be far worse fates, I'm sure.” Winnie removed her fingertips from her temple and motioned Renee to follow her up the steps and into her apartment. “Besides, you already have a man—one that's six plus decades younger, worships the ground you walk on, and doesn't need batteries in order to hear you.”

“Semantics.” Renee stopped halfway into the living room and stared. “Whoa. What happened here?”

Plucking one of the semi-warm to-go cups from Renee's hand, Winnie took a sip. “I told you. I've been up all night.”

“Most people, in the throes of depression, merely sit on their bed and cry . . . or take up residency in front of the television watching infomercials until the wee hours of the morning. But you? You
trash
the joint.”

Slowly, Winnie looked around, her gaze falling on the crumpled balls of paper that fell shy of the wastebasket, as well as the intact sheets covered with lists and doodles that covered just about every available surface in sight. “I was thinking.”

“
Thinking
?” Renee parroted. “Why couldn't you think like this at the bakery when my shift was over and your incessant neatness made it so I couldn't use cleaning as an excuse to stay?”

“Sorry.”

She watched her friend veer into the kitchen, lift a piece of loose leaf off the table, and turn it so Winnie could see the series of rectangular shapes she'd drawn at some point during the night. “What are these?”

“Pillows.”

Renee looked back at the paper. “Pillows? Why? Are you thinking about getting into the bedding business now?”

Snapping off the lid of her drink, Winnie stared inside at the liquid that was no longer steaming. If it was, she would have added a touch more milk. And maybe a little sugar . . .

“Winnie?”

She shook herself back into the conversation and the question she was expected to answer. “Bart was suffocated to death with a pillow. I guess it went through my mind at some point during the night.”

Renee shot her right index finger into the air in a request for silence. “Wait. Where's the cat?”

“Cat?”

“Yes.
Lovey
. The one you inherited from Gertie yesterday, remember?” Renee's hand drifted back to her side. “Oh God. Please tell me you haven't gone all saltshaker on the poor thing already . . .”

“Of course not! She's next door with my neighbor! I left her there last night after Bridget said . . .” Her sentence fell away as, once again, Winnie found herself transported back to the exact moment inspiration hit.

Now, six sleepless hours later, that same inspiration was mixing it up with equal parts self-doubt.

She, of all people, knew just how hard it was to get a new business off the ground. Did she really want to try and do it again? Especially now that—

“‘
It's
Okay, Don't Scream Puffs'
?”

The sound of Renee's voice, coupled with its background accompaniment of shifting papers, broke through her pity party and brought her back into the present.

“‘
Down in the Dumps Cake'
? What is this, Winnie?”

Setting her coffee cup down on the closest surface she could find, Winnie rescued the paper from Renee's hand and studied the half dozen or so cockamamie thoughts that had come to her at various points throughout the night. “It's . . . it's just an idea I'm working on, that's all.”

“Oh?”

To tell or not to tell, that was the question . . .

Fortunately for Winnie and her dilemma, Renee had the attention span of a flea and was already on to a slightly smaller sheet of lined paper and another, far different question. “So? Are you going to call him or what?”

“
Him
?”

“Master Sergeant Hottie,” Renee said, waving the hastily scrawled phone number in the air. “I mean, c'mon, Winnie. The guy is gorgeous. Though, if you
do
call, you have to let me do something with your hair . . . and your makeup . . . and—wait! Isn't that the same shirt you were wearing yesterday?”

She took in the powder blue top she'd donned the previous morning in the hope it would bring good luck at the attorney's office and shrugged. “I told you. I was up all night.”

“Okay, get some sleep first and
then
call. I'll take care of the rest.”

Again, she returned her focus to the list still clutched in her hand and lowered herself down to the same chair she'd inhabited up until Renee's call. So much of her night had been spent jotting down ideas, yet now that she had some, she couldn't help but wonder if she was grasping at straws.

“Winnie?”

She lowered the paper to her lap and peered up at her friend. “I don't think I'm going to call him. I mean, if I
give this”—she gestured toward the various notes—“more thought and it isn't feasible, I can always sell, but if it
is
feasible, it could put me back in the driver's seat. Literally and figuratively.”

“You lost me,” Renee said. “I mean, don't get me wrong. Being in the driver's seat with a guy is a good idea. Provided, of course, he doesn't
realize
you're steering. Ignorance is bliss, if you get my drift.”

Her mouth gaped, closed, and then gaped again as Renee continued to go off on a tangent far different than the one firing away in Winnie's head. “But, either way, I don't get why you're saying you won't call him. It's not like you travel in the same circles and can just assume you'll bump into him. Then again, if one of your neighbors happens to fall and you have to call 911 for ambulatory assistance, maybe you could see him then . . .”

The headache was back, and this time, instead of trying to knead the pain away, she vacated her chair in favor of the cabinet above the sink where she housed her over-the-counter pain medicine. Two pills and a glass of water later, she was ready to set Renee straight.

“I'm not going to call Master Sergeant Hottie—I mean,
Greg
—because I'm not going to sell the ambulance. I'm going to keep it.”

“Keep it?” Renee echoed. “What? Why? Are you nuts?”

“No . . . Maybe . . . Okay, yeah. But I think this is worth a shot—for me, and for you.
If
we can make it work, that is.”

“Sleep deprivation really messes you up, you know that?”

She laughed. “It does. But if it keeps
me
baking, and
you
from climbing the walls while Ty is otherwise occupied at school, then I think it's worth a shot, don't you?”

“Keeps you baking? And me . . .” Renee fairly ran around the kitchen table to meet Winnie next to the sink. “Did you figure something out about the bakery?”

“Sort of.”

“
Sort of
? What does that mean?”

She took a deep breath and slowly released it along with the idea that had made it impossible to sleep. “We're taking the bakery on the road, Renee. With Gertie's ambulance.”

If a mirror were nearby, she might have actually checked to see if she had grown the second head Renee's expression indicated, but since there wasn't, she jumped into the deep end of the pool and hoped for the best.