Death by Diamonds, page 20
I fell back against the bench, realizing I was even worse at reading people than I'd thought. I'd dismissed Grunt as a flake, thinking that what he'd shown was all that he was. I should've known better. I'd been too busy being jealous of Amber to discover the Grunt that Maizy had apparently discovered.
Curt put his arm around me. "It's okay. I did the same thing."
"Why didn't you tell us?" I asked Grunt.
He shrugged. "I'm an enigma. Hey, look, here she comes."
We looked to the street just as a sleek black Tesla roared into the parking lot and careened into a parking space. Maizy popped out of the driver's side. The examiner slid limply from the other and moved off shakily toward the DMV building.
We stood up.
"Looks good," Grunt said.
Not sure if he meant Maizy or the car, but I was pretty sure he didn't mean the examiner. The examiner looked like an ice cream cone in a steam bath. Maizy held up a Wait a minute finger and rushed after him into the office.
"Is that your car?" I asked Grunt.
"It's hers now," he said. "I don't need it. I can't drive."
My mouth fell open. "You bought a Tesla, and you can't even drive?"
"Was that weird?" he asked.
"Wait a minute," Curt said. "Her father and I already bought her a car. The Civic in my driveway."
"Yeah, about that," Grunt said. "I'm going to buy it. It's a cool car. Take twenty grand for it?"
"Twenty grand?" Curt repeated. "But the car is eight years old."
"You're right." Grunt stuffed his hands in his pockets, thinking. After a second, he brightened. "Would thirty grand do it?"
Curt and I exchanged incredulous glances.
"Maybe you'd better keep the Tesla," Curt said, a little reluctantly. "I'm not sure her father would want her to have a car like that."
Speaking of a car like that… I stuck my hands on my hips. "Whatever happened to I've got feet, Grunt?"
He pointed. "I've still got them. But I decided to work less, play more."
Pretty sure he'd already accomplished that.
"Here she comes," Curt said suddenly.
We turned to watch Maizy rush across the parking lot toward us. "I got it!" She waved her brand-new driver license. She'd had plenty of phony licenses in the past, but this one was real. I could tell by the authentically awful photograph. "I'm finally on the road legally!" she declared. She glanced at Curt. "I mean, now I can drive without proper adult supervision."
"Cool," Grunt said.
"Congratulations," Curt told her. "I'm proud of you, Maize."
I pointed to the examiner, who'd reemerged from the office and was being assisted to his car by a colleague. "What's up with him?"
Maizy glanced over her shoulder. "He mentioned something about quitting when we got back. Guess he meant it."
I bit my lip to keep from smiling. Maizy was single-handedly responsible for the early retirement of two DMV examiners and probably half a dozen war stories at the company Christmas party.
"We should go celebrate," Grunt said. "We'll use the Tesla. You drive."
"Grilled cheese?" Maizy asked him.
"Sure," he said. "Only make mine French fries."
Curt and I watched them drive off together. I didn't know about Curt, but I felt a little like a proud parent watching my firstborn leave the nest.
"They do make kind of a cute couple," I said as we headed for his Jeep.
"You know what?" he asked. "So do we. Let's go have our own celebration."
I smiled. "Grilled cheese?"
"Nuh-uh." His gaze made my panties start to melt. "I've got something hotter in mind."
I sure hoped it wasn't French fries.
* * * * *
FREE BOOK OFFER
Want to get an email alert when the next Jamie Winters Mystery is available?
Sign up for our newsletter today
and as a bonus receive a FREE ebook!
* * * * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
From her first discovery of Nancy Drew, USA Today bestselling author Kelly Rey has had a lifelong love for mystery and tales of things that go bump in the night, especially those with a twist of humor. Through many years of working in the court reporting and closed captioning fields, writing has remained a constant. If she's not in front of a keyboard, she can be found reading, working out or avoiding housework. She's a member of Sisters in Crime and lives in the Northeast with her husband and a menagerie of very spoiled pets.
To learn more about Kelly Rey, visit her online at: http://www.kellyreyauthor.com
* * * * *
BOOKS BY KELLY REY
Jamie Winters Mysteries:
Motion for Murder
"Mistletoe & Misdemeanors" (short story in the Cozy Christmas Shorts collection)
Death of a Diva
"Motion for Misfits" (short story in the Killer Beach Reads collection)
The Sassy Suspect
Verdicts & Vixens
A Playboy in Peril
Death by Diamonds
Marty Hudson Mysteries:
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Brash Blonde
Sherlock Homes and the Case of the Disappearing Diva
* * * * *
SNEAK PEEK
If you enjoyed this Jamie Winters Mystery, check out this sneak peek of
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CASE OF THE BRASH BLONDE
by
GEMMA HALLIDAY
&
KELLY REY
CHAPTER ONE
"'How long has the subject been dead?' This is the question most commonly asked in the field of forensic pathology." The speaker paused to survey the lecture hall before moving to his next slide. A collective gasp rose at the sight of a human skull partially obscured by profuse vegetation.
Lightweights.
I sat forward, my attention rapt. The girl beside me muttered "Gross!" and went back to Candy Crush on her phone.
I tried not to roll my eyes at her. Well, I sorta tried. The guest speaker was only Dr. Bennett Osterman, one of the best in the field. His curriculum vitae was probably longer than any book Miss Candy Crush had ever read. I silently wondered how she'd even gotten into Stanford. Probably the offspring of alumni with deep pockets.
"It's sometimes difficult to say," Dr. Osterman went on. "As you can see in this example, postmortem vegetative growth has continued, precipitating the broken orbital bone fragments you see on this slide, which could easily mislead investigators into incorrect assumptions regarding cause of death. The appearance may mimic the results of battery, for example."
"Oh yuck," the girl said.
This time I didn't even try to hide my irritation, giving her a pointed look.
"This is where the inspection of root systems can be valuable," he added.
"I knew I should've dropped this class," the girl muttered.
"Shh," I whispered. "I want to—" My phone buzzed with an incoming text message. I glanced at the screen.
Guess who's late for work?
I checked the time readout and pulled in a sharp breath. I didn't have to guess. I'd lost track of time again. Moving fast, I gathered up my things, slipped past the girl who was paying no attention—to Dr. Osterman or anyone else—and left the room, disappointed that I had to go just when it was getting interesting. It wasn't every day that I had access to one of the most brilliant minds in the forensic sciences.
Unlike Candy Crush, I unfortunately was neither the child of an alumni nor anyone with deep pockets. Or even shallow ones. The words "college fund" hadn't exactly been in my mom's vocabulary as I was growing up, her concerns usually ranging more toward "food on table" and "roof over head." Not that I was complaining. My hard-working single mom had done the best she could. But it just meant that instead of four years of sorority rushing and mid-term cramming, I had to resort to "non-credited" class auditing—translation: crashing them—and working at the campus bookstore coffee bar. I glanced once more at my phone. A job I should have been at ten minutes ago.
I pedaled my bike furiously across the campus, my blonde hair whipping at my cheeks as I wished I'd had the chance to ask Dr. Osterman some of the questions I'd jotted down. I'd been looking forward to his presentation for weeks, and it annoyed me to have to cut it short for something as mundane as coffee. Not that it mattered all that much in the bigger picture. I had no papers to write or tests to take, because I wasn't technically a student. While that meant I could sit in on my choice of classes and avoid the evil specter of GPAs and final exams, it also meant I'd never have the holy grail of a degree either, which did put a slight crimp in my job prospects. Working as a barista wasn't my first career choice, but it paid the bills for now. Barely.
I locked up my bike and hurried into the bookstore and up the stairs to the second-floor loft coffee bar, which was bustling as usual. I took a moment to look over the sprawling bookstore below, the shelves sprouting from a garden of gleaming hardwood, the students busily picking through Stanford hats and shirts and other logo'd gear.
Then I stashed my bag and quickly tied an apron over my average five-five-on-my-tiptoes and 120-to-125-pounds-give-or-take-a-holiday-meal frame.
I was wiping down one of the tables when Pamela Lockwood tapped me on the shoulder. Pam was round and soft with pink cheeks and fine brown hair, and she'd worked at the coffee bar for the past two semesters.
"Hey, Marty."
While my given name was Martha Hudson, everyone had called me Marty for as long as I could remember.
"Hey," I answered back.
"I hope my text didn't interrupt something important."
I shook my head. "Thanks for sending it. I'd lost track of time."
Pam grinned. "What was it this time? Astrophysics? Linear algebra?"
"Forensic anthropology."
"Oh yuck."
Yeah, I'd heard that a lot lately.
"Dr. Bennett Osterman was speaking," I said. "He was showing this slide of a skull with—"
"Again," Pam interrupted, "yuck."
I sighed. No one appreciated the finer things in life anymore.
"Why don't you just break down and register already?" Pam asked. "If you're going to listen to this stuff, you might as well earn something for it."
"What, and give up all this?" I asked, my hands sweeping to include the sandwich wrapper and discarded paper cups at the next table.
Pam grinned. "You know, you could work here and attend classes. Some of us do."
I shook my head. Attending would mean (a) somehow getting accepted and (b) somehow paying tuition. High school was a good handful of years behind me, and I hadn't had the most stellar grades then. While I'd aced classes like biology and physics, things like PE and dissecting Shakespeare's early works to the point even he'd have no idea what we were talking about had bored me to tears. As a result, my grades had been all over the place, resulting in a GPA that was less than impressive. And then there was the whole tuition thing. Which, if I had it, I wouldn't be picking up dirty cups for a living.
No, slipping (hopefully) unnoticed into the lectures of my choice worked much better all the way around.
"I don't know how you can listen to that forensics stuff anyway," Pam said. "It'd give me nightmares for sure."
I shrugged. "It's interesting."
"I'll tell you what's interesting." Pam pointed. "See the blond guy down there with the Cardinal T-shirt on? He's interesting."
I looked and thought, Not so much. He was the typical California dude, with curly blond hair, surfer tan, and unnaturally white teeth. You couldn't walk across campus without running into a dozen just like him. He wasn't half as interesting as Dr. Bennett Osterman.
"Maybe he'll come up for coffee or something." Pam wiggled her shoulders around and patted her hair. "How do I look? Am I frizzy?"
I smiled at her. "You look fine."
"I'm going to go floss," Pam said. "You never know if he'll come up, and I don't want cinnamon bun in my teeth if he does. By the way, we need more cinnamon buns." She rushed off, scrubbing at her front teeth with a finger.
I went back behind the counter. The line of customers had momentarily thinned to just a few people, but the lull wouldn't last. Book buying and tchotchke shopping seemed to be thirsty work. In just a few minutes, the coffee bar could be swarming with co-eds in need of a caffeine or sugar fix. Pamela's Mr. Interesting might even show up. Hopefully she wouldn't be off tending to dental hygiene when he did.
Still thinking about Dr. Osterman's presentation, I filled orders and handed them over, wiped down the counter, and restocked the napkin dispensers and the bakery case. The scent of cinnamon and chocolate tantalized me, and my fingers had just closed on a coffee cake muffin when someone asked, "Got any crullers left?"
I dropped the muffin and raised my head too fast, cracking the back of my skull on the lip of the display case. Grimacing, I looked up to see my best friend, Irene Adler, frowning at me.
"Were you just going to take that muffin?" she asked.
I rubbed my head. "No. I was rearranging it."
"Sure," Irene said. "From the case into your face. I thought you were on a diet."
"I thought you were at a meeting with some Silicon Valley babies." I pulled a cruller from the case, plunked it onto a plate, and shoved it across the counter. I could have shoved a half dozen crullers across the counter, and Irene could have scarfed all of them and had no repercussions except powdered sugar on her fingers. Her size two frame never dared gain an inch. I loved her anyway.
Irene made a face. "Got canceled. One of them woke up with a runny nose." She shook her head, her diamond earrings sparkling in the light. "Kids."
I refrained from pointing out that Irene herself was only twenty-seven. A gorgeous and very accomplished twenty-seven. Irene was something of a computer prodigy and had parlayed that genius into a degree from MIT at the age of fourteen and then into millions of dollars when she'd sold her own start-up on the day she'd turned twenty-one. Of course like any good computer prodigy, she also had a checkered past, which included hacking into a government mainframe at the ripe old age of twelve, but as she'd pointed out, kids would be kids. And now "kids" were coming to her looking for venture capital to fund their own start-ups.
I'd first met Irene a few years ago when she'd come to give a lecture about social media's impact in political and economic culture. I'd peppered her with questions afterward, and between my enthusiasm for hilarious political Twitter fails and her enthusiasm for pastries, we'd bonded right away and been fast friends ever since.
"Know what would go with this cruller?" Irene asked, shifting her designer handbag higher on her shoulder. "A decaf mocha latte."
Pam and her ultra-clean teeth came back while I was blending the latte. "Has he come up here yet?"
I looked up. "Who?"
"Mr. Right," Pam said. "You know, the guy downstairs? The blond?"
"You're not talking about a muscle-y guy in a Stanford Cardinal T-shirt, are you?" Irene asked her.
Pam's eyes got wide. "You saw him too?" Her face fell, and I could practically read her mind. If Irene had seen him, and he'd seen Irene, it was all over for Pam. Irene had green eyes and auburn hair, and I was pretty sure the Mattel people had modeled Barbie's body after hers.
Irene nodded. "He left with a redhead. I think they're a couple. Your Mr. Right was even carrying her backpack."
Pam fell against the counter, her shoulders slumping. "Just my luck."
"There'll be another Mr. Right," I assured her. It wasn't an empty promise. There'd been about eighty Mr. Rights since Pam had started working there. And that was the first week.
"I hope so," Pam said. "I'm not getting any younger."
I snorted. "You're twenty."
Pam nodded. "That's what I said." She went off to take a refill to a customer.
Irene grinned at me. "Is that how we sounded at twenty?"
"I sincerely hope not," I said. I handed over the decaf mocha latte. "But it wouldn't surprise me one bit."
* * *
The rest of the afternoon managed to slip past with no more Mr. Rights for Pam and no more head injuries for me. At eight o'clock, I left the bookstore, reclaimed my bike from the rack, and headed home. Which wasn't exactly the high point of my day, since home at the moment was not much more than a rathole of an apartment with antique plumbing and a few antique neighbors who seemed to sit with one cataract pressed to their peepholes to catalog my comings and goings. The space was small, and the rent was high. Welcome to California. But that wasn't completely problematic since I hadn't paid it in a couple of months anyway. What could I say? Tips had been sparse lately. I blamed the cost of education rising almost as fast as tax rates. But consequently, rent payments had become a line item on my long-term to-do list, like dusting the ceiling fan. Sooner or later, the dust would build up and fall off the fan blades under its own weight. That was my working hypothesis anyway.
I hopped off the bike and wheeled it up the front walk into the tiny, gloomy lobby with its chipped vinyl tile floor, dirty white walls, and inadequate forty-watt lighting. A quick check of my mailbox revealed nothing but some sales circulars and a credit card bill. I tucked both into my bag and kept moving up the stairs to my second-floor apartment. The smell of cabbage, faint in the lobby, grew stronger and more noxious with each step. Wrinkling my nose, I stabbed my key at the lock, when I felt the presence of someone behind me.
I spun around to find 2B leering at me from his doorway. 2B's real name was Ed Something-or-Other. His last name was 20 letters long with no vowels. I'd never been able to pronounce it, and he'd lived across the hall for nearly a year. In that whole time, I'd never seen him wear anything but torn jeans and T-shirts featuring wash-worn photos of different classic rock bands or album covers, from back when there were classic rock bands and album covers. His face was long and thin with a scrubby patch of whiskers on the point of his chin and a Jack Nicholson arch to his eyebrows that only added to the devilish leer.
Curt put his arm around me. "It's okay. I did the same thing."
"Why didn't you tell us?" I asked Grunt.
He shrugged. "I'm an enigma. Hey, look, here she comes."
We looked to the street just as a sleek black Tesla roared into the parking lot and careened into a parking space. Maizy popped out of the driver's side. The examiner slid limply from the other and moved off shakily toward the DMV building.
We stood up.
"Looks good," Grunt said.
Not sure if he meant Maizy or the car, but I was pretty sure he didn't mean the examiner. The examiner looked like an ice cream cone in a steam bath. Maizy held up a Wait a minute finger and rushed after him into the office.
"Is that your car?" I asked Grunt.
"It's hers now," he said. "I don't need it. I can't drive."
My mouth fell open. "You bought a Tesla, and you can't even drive?"
"Was that weird?" he asked.
"Wait a minute," Curt said. "Her father and I already bought her a car. The Civic in my driveway."
"Yeah, about that," Grunt said. "I'm going to buy it. It's a cool car. Take twenty grand for it?"
"Twenty grand?" Curt repeated. "But the car is eight years old."
"You're right." Grunt stuffed his hands in his pockets, thinking. After a second, he brightened. "Would thirty grand do it?"
Curt and I exchanged incredulous glances.
"Maybe you'd better keep the Tesla," Curt said, a little reluctantly. "I'm not sure her father would want her to have a car like that."
Speaking of a car like that… I stuck my hands on my hips. "Whatever happened to I've got feet, Grunt?"
He pointed. "I've still got them. But I decided to work less, play more."
Pretty sure he'd already accomplished that.
"Here she comes," Curt said suddenly.
We turned to watch Maizy rush across the parking lot toward us. "I got it!" She waved her brand-new driver license. She'd had plenty of phony licenses in the past, but this one was real. I could tell by the authentically awful photograph. "I'm finally on the road legally!" she declared. She glanced at Curt. "I mean, now I can drive without proper adult supervision."
"Cool," Grunt said.
"Congratulations," Curt told her. "I'm proud of you, Maize."
I pointed to the examiner, who'd reemerged from the office and was being assisted to his car by a colleague. "What's up with him?"
Maizy glanced over her shoulder. "He mentioned something about quitting when we got back. Guess he meant it."
I bit my lip to keep from smiling. Maizy was single-handedly responsible for the early retirement of two DMV examiners and probably half a dozen war stories at the company Christmas party.
"We should go celebrate," Grunt said. "We'll use the Tesla. You drive."
"Grilled cheese?" Maizy asked him.
"Sure," he said. "Only make mine French fries."
Curt and I watched them drive off together. I didn't know about Curt, but I felt a little like a proud parent watching my firstborn leave the nest.
"They do make kind of a cute couple," I said as we headed for his Jeep.
"You know what?" he asked. "So do we. Let's go have our own celebration."
I smiled. "Grilled cheese?"
"Nuh-uh." His gaze made my panties start to melt. "I've got something hotter in mind."
I sure hoped it wasn't French fries.
* * * * *
FREE BOOK OFFER
Want to get an email alert when the next Jamie Winters Mystery is available?
Sign up for our newsletter today
and as a bonus receive a FREE ebook!
* * * * *
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
From her first discovery of Nancy Drew, USA Today bestselling author Kelly Rey has had a lifelong love for mystery and tales of things that go bump in the night, especially those with a twist of humor. Through many years of working in the court reporting and closed captioning fields, writing has remained a constant. If she's not in front of a keyboard, she can be found reading, working out or avoiding housework. She's a member of Sisters in Crime and lives in the Northeast with her husband and a menagerie of very spoiled pets.
To learn more about Kelly Rey, visit her online at: http://www.kellyreyauthor.com
* * * * *
BOOKS BY KELLY REY
Jamie Winters Mysteries:
Motion for Murder
"Mistletoe & Misdemeanors" (short story in the Cozy Christmas Shorts collection)
Death of a Diva
"Motion for Misfits" (short story in the Killer Beach Reads collection)
The Sassy Suspect
Verdicts & Vixens
A Playboy in Peril
Death by Diamonds
Marty Hudson Mysteries:
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Brash Blonde
Sherlock Homes and the Case of the Disappearing Diva
* * * * *
SNEAK PEEK
If you enjoyed this Jamie Winters Mystery, check out this sneak peek of
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CASE OF THE BRASH BLONDE
by
GEMMA HALLIDAY
&
KELLY REY
CHAPTER ONE
"'How long has the subject been dead?' This is the question most commonly asked in the field of forensic pathology." The speaker paused to survey the lecture hall before moving to his next slide. A collective gasp rose at the sight of a human skull partially obscured by profuse vegetation.
Lightweights.
I sat forward, my attention rapt. The girl beside me muttered "Gross!" and went back to Candy Crush on her phone.
I tried not to roll my eyes at her. Well, I sorta tried. The guest speaker was only Dr. Bennett Osterman, one of the best in the field. His curriculum vitae was probably longer than any book Miss Candy Crush had ever read. I silently wondered how she'd even gotten into Stanford. Probably the offspring of alumni with deep pockets.
"It's sometimes difficult to say," Dr. Osterman went on. "As you can see in this example, postmortem vegetative growth has continued, precipitating the broken orbital bone fragments you see on this slide, which could easily mislead investigators into incorrect assumptions regarding cause of death. The appearance may mimic the results of battery, for example."
"Oh yuck," the girl said.
This time I didn't even try to hide my irritation, giving her a pointed look.
"This is where the inspection of root systems can be valuable," he added.
"I knew I should've dropped this class," the girl muttered.
"Shh," I whispered. "I want to—" My phone buzzed with an incoming text message. I glanced at the screen.
Guess who's late for work?
I checked the time readout and pulled in a sharp breath. I didn't have to guess. I'd lost track of time again. Moving fast, I gathered up my things, slipped past the girl who was paying no attention—to Dr. Osterman or anyone else—and left the room, disappointed that I had to go just when it was getting interesting. It wasn't every day that I had access to one of the most brilliant minds in the forensic sciences.
Unlike Candy Crush, I unfortunately was neither the child of an alumni nor anyone with deep pockets. Or even shallow ones. The words "college fund" hadn't exactly been in my mom's vocabulary as I was growing up, her concerns usually ranging more toward "food on table" and "roof over head." Not that I was complaining. My hard-working single mom had done the best she could. But it just meant that instead of four years of sorority rushing and mid-term cramming, I had to resort to "non-credited" class auditing—translation: crashing them—and working at the campus bookstore coffee bar. I glanced once more at my phone. A job I should have been at ten minutes ago.
I pedaled my bike furiously across the campus, my blonde hair whipping at my cheeks as I wished I'd had the chance to ask Dr. Osterman some of the questions I'd jotted down. I'd been looking forward to his presentation for weeks, and it annoyed me to have to cut it short for something as mundane as coffee. Not that it mattered all that much in the bigger picture. I had no papers to write or tests to take, because I wasn't technically a student. While that meant I could sit in on my choice of classes and avoid the evil specter of GPAs and final exams, it also meant I'd never have the holy grail of a degree either, which did put a slight crimp in my job prospects. Working as a barista wasn't my first career choice, but it paid the bills for now. Barely.
I locked up my bike and hurried into the bookstore and up the stairs to the second-floor loft coffee bar, which was bustling as usual. I took a moment to look over the sprawling bookstore below, the shelves sprouting from a garden of gleaming hardwood, the students busily picking through Stanford hats and shirts and other logo'd gear.
Then I stashed my bag and quickly tied an apron over my average five-five-on-my-tiptoes and 120-to-125-pounds-give-or-take-a-holiday-meal frame.
I was wiping down one of the tables when Pamela Lockwood tapped me on the shoulder. Pam was round and soft with pink cheeks and fine brown hair, and she'd worked at the coffee bar for the past two semesters.
"Hey, Marty."
While my given name was Martha Hudson, everyone had called me Marty for as long as I could remember.
"Hey," I answered back.
"I hope my text didn't interrupt something important."
I shook my head. "Thanks for sending it. I'd lost track of time."
Pam grinned. "What was it this time? Astrophysics? Linear algebra?"
"Forensic anthropology."
"Oh yuck."
Yeah, I'd heard that a lot lately.
"Dr. Bennett Osterman was speaking," I said. "He was showing this slide of a skull with—"
"Again," Pam interrupted, "yuck."
I sighed. No one appreciated the finer things in life anymore.
"Why don't you just break down and register already?" Pam asked. "If you're going to listen to this stuff, you might as well earn something for it."
"What, and give up all this?" I asked, my hands sweeping to include the sandwich wrapper and discarded paper cups at the next table.
Pam grinned. "You know, you could work here and attend classes. Some of us do."
I shook my head. Attending would mean (a) somehow getting accepted and (b) somehow paying tuition. High school was a good handful of years behind me, and I hadn't had the most stellar grades then. While I'd aced classes like biology and physics, things like PE and dissecting Shakespeare's early works to the point even he'd have no idea what we were talking about had bored me to tears. As a result, my grades had been all over the place, resulting in a GPA that was less than impressive. And then there was the whole tuition thing. Which, if I had it, I wouldn't be picking up dirty cups for a living.
No, slipping (hopefully) unnoticed into the lectures of my choice worked much better all the way around.
"I don't know how you can listen to that forensics stuff anyway," Pam said. "It'd give me nightmares for sure."
I shrugged. "It's interesting."
"I'll tell you what's interesting." Pam pointed. "See the blond guy down there with the Cardinal T-shirt on? He's interesting."
I looked and thought, Not so much. He was the typical California dude, with curly blond hair, surfer tan, and unnaturally white teeth. You couldn't walk across campus without running into a dozen just like him. He wasn't half as interesting as Dr. Bennett Osterman.
"Maybe he'll come up for coffee or something." Pam wiggled her shoulders around and patted her hair. "How do I look? Am I frizzy?"
I smiled at her. "You look fine."
"I'm going to go floss," Pam said. "You never know if he'll come up, and I don't want cinnamon bun in my teeth if he does. By the way, we need more cinnamon buns." She rushed off, scrubbing at her front teeth with a finger.
I went back behind the counter. The line of customers had momentarily thinned to just a few people, but the lull wouldn't last. Book buying and tchotchke shopping seemed to be thirsty work. In just a few minutes, the coffee bar could be swarming with co-eds in need of a caffeine or sugar fix. Pamela's Mr. Interesting might even show up. Hopefully she wouldn't be off tending to dental hygiene when he did.
Still thinking about Dr. Osterman's presentation, I filled orders and handed them over, wiped down the counter, and restocked the napkin dispensers and the bakery case. The scent of cinnamon and chocolate tantalized me, and my fingers had just closed on a coffee cake muffin when someone asked, "Got any crullers left?"
I dropped the muffin and raised my head too fast, cracking the back of my skull on the lip of the display case. Grimacing, I looked up to see my best friend, Irene Adler, frowning at me.
"Were you just going to take that muffin?" she asked.
I rubbed my head. "No. I was rearranging it."
"Sure," Irene said. "From the case into your face. I thought you were on a diet."
"I thought you were at a meeting with some Silicon Valley babies." I pulled a cruller from the case, plunked it onto a plate, and shoved it across the counter. I could have shoved a half dozen crullers across the counter, and Irene could have scarfed all of them and had no repercussions except powdered sugar on her fingers. Her size two frame never dared gain an inch. I loved her anyway.
Irene made a face. "Got canceled. One of them woke up with a runny nose." She shook her head, her diamond earrings sparkling in the light. "Kids."
I refrained from pointing out that Irene herself was only twenty-seven. A gorgeous and very accomplished twenty-seven. Irene was something of a computer prodigy and had parlayed that genius into a degree from MIT at the age of fourteen and then into millions of dollars when she'd sold her own start-up on the day she'd turned twenty-one. Of course like any good computer prodigy, she also had a checkered past, which included hacking into a government mainframe at the ripe old age of twelve, but as she'd pointed out, kids would be kids. And now "kids" were coming to her looking for venture capital to fund their own start-ups.
I'd first met Irene a few years ago when she'd come to give a lecture about social media's impact in political and economic culture. I'd peppered her with questions afterward, and between my enthusiasm for hilarious political Twitter fails and her enthusiasm for pastries, we'd bonded right away and been fast friends ever since.
"Know what would go with this cruller?" Irene asked, shifting her designer handbag higher on her shoulder. "A decaf mocha latte."
Pam and her ultra-clean teeth came back while I was blending the latte. "Has he come up here yet?"
I looked up. "Who?"
"Mr. Right," Pam said. "You know, the guy downstairs? The blond?"
"You're not talking about a muscle-y guy in a Stanford Cardinal T-shirt, are you?" Irene asked her.
Pam's eyes got wide. "You saw him too?" Her face fell, and I could practically read her mind. If Irene had seen him, and he'd seen Irene, it was all over for Pam. Irene had green eyes and auburn hair, and I was pretty sure the Mattel people had modeled Barbie's body after hers.
Irene nodded. "He left with a redhead. I think they're a couple. Your Mr. Right was even carrying her backpack."
Pam fell against the counter, her shoulders slumping. "Just my luck."
"There'll be another Mr. Right," I assured her. It wasn't an empty promise. There'd been about eighty Mr. Rights since Pam had started working there. And that was the first week.
"I hope so," Pam said. "I'm not getting any younger."
I snorted. "You're twenty."
Pam nodded. "That's what I said." She went off to take a refill to a customer.
Irene grinned at me. "Is that how we sounded at twenty?"
"I sincerely hope not," I said. I handed over the decaf mocha latte. "But it wouldn't surprise me one bit."
* * *
The rest of the afternoon managed to slip past with no more Mr. Rights for Pam and no more head injuries for me. At eight o'clock, I left the bookstore, reclaimed my bike from the rack, and headed home. Which wasn't exactly the high point of my day, since home at the moment was not much more than a rathole of an apartment with antique plumbing and a few antique neighbors who seemed to sit with one cataract pressed to their peepholes to catalog my comings and goings. The space was small, and the rent was high. Welcome to California. But that wasn't completely problematic since I hadn't paid it in a couple of months anyway. What could I say? Tips had been sparse lately. I blamed the cost of education rising almost as fast as tax rates. But consequently, rent payments had become a line item on my long-term to-do list, like dusting the ceiling fan. Sooner or later, the dust would build up and fall off the fan blades under its own weight. That was my working hypothesis anyway.
I hopped off the bike and wheeled it up the front walk into the tiny, gloomy lobby with its chipped vinyl tile floor, dirty white walls, and inadequate forty-watt lighting. A quick check of my mailbox revealed nothing but some sales circulars and a credit card bill. I tucked both into my bag and kept moving up the stairs to my second-floor apartment. The smell of cabbage, faint in the lobby, grew stronger and more noxious with each step. Wrinkling my nose, I stabbed my key at the lock, when I felt the presence of someone behind me.
I spun around to find 2B leering at me from his doorway. 2B's real name was Ed Something-or-Other. His last name was 20 letters long with no vowels. I'd never been able to pronounce it, and he'd lived across the hall for nearly a year. In that whole time, I'd never seen him wear anything but torn jeans and T-shirts featuring wash-worn photos of different classic rock bands or album covers, from back when there were classic rock bands and album covers. His face was long and thin with a scrubby patch of whiskers on the point of his chin and a Jack Nicholson arch to his eyebrows that only added to the devilish leer.
