Diane Davidson - Killer Pancake

He was there. He had been. What had Dusty said? We saw you . Maybe Claire had seen him too. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to.

I tucked the coupon into the loaned sweatpants. I had to talk to Tom, the sooner the better. I scanned Marla’s face, and saw that fatigue was finally triumphing over her desire—her need —to be with family. Julian and I made noises about leaving.

Eyes half-closed, she protested weakly. “Tony told me a friend of his played golf three days after he had a heart attack.”

“Golf sucks,” Julian observed.

The weak smile widened. Marla shifted her bulky body around under the sheets, trying to get comfortable. “Tony thinks I should go to this dinner party with him tomorrow in the club. Since I’m pressuring Gordon to bust me out tomorrow, it’s a possibility. I can’t imagine anything more depressing than being at home alone when all the fireworks go off, anyway.”

“A party?” I said, confused. “A golf party?”

“Golf parties suck,” Julian contributed.

Now Marla seemed to be having trouble breathing. But she inhaled and struggled onward anyway. The nurse in the corner looked up from her notes. The EKG machine did not seem to be registering any distress, however, so she stayed put. Marla went on. “No, no, at the Braithwaites’ big estate, do you know them? She’s quite the socialite and he’s a—”

“Scientist,” I said. “I know. Please don’t talk about it Marla, do you need the nurse to come over here?”

She pressed her dry lips together and shook her head. “Do you know the people having the party?”

“Yes, of course I know them. But I thought you knew them. I’m catering the dinner, for goodness’ sake. And Babs Braithwaite said you recommended me.” I thought back to Babs’s chatter about Marla. I said, almost to myself, “So how did she hear about me if you didn’t—”

“Oh, Goldy, for heaven’s sake!” interjected Julian in a harsh whisper. “You’ve got ads. You’re in the Yellow Pages! You’re doing the food fair. Why does it matter how she heard about you?”

Marla had fallen asleep. Her chest rose and fell regularly. Julian and I tiptoed out of the hospital room and stopped in the hall.

I faced Julian suddenly. “I’ll tell you why it matters. Babs Braithwaite lied.”

He gave me a patronizing look. “This is the Braithwaites we’re talking about? The scientist who’s married to the woman who slammed into the Rover”—he demonstrated by whacking his hands together—“when she said I didn’t put on my turn signal? Which I did.”

“The very same.”

“Goldy, she’s a cow . She’d lie about anything.”

“That rich cow called me before she hit you, and said she’d heard so much about me from Marla. Why lie about that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, resigned. “Look, here’s a pay phone. If you’re going to call Tom, you’d better do it.”

I got Tom’s voice mail at the sheriff’s department. Where was he? I asked the tape. I added he might want to keep checking into Hotchkiss Skin & Hair, that they seemed to be involved in some very obvious industrial espionage with Mignon, courtesy of Reggie Hotchkiss. Dusty Routt, I said, claimed there was no relationship between Claire and Shaman Krill. I also told Tom there was an observation area behind the mirrors in the ladies’ dressing room on the Prince & Grogan second floor, and that he might want to check out the Braithwaites. And Charles Braithwaite, I said finally, was deeply involved with roses. Blue ones, maybe? Suddenly, I decided not to tell Tom about the bleach water or the threatening note. I knew he would get extremely upset. Julian gave me a curious glance, so I hung up and we took off for the mall garage to get the Range Rover.

But retrieving the Rover was not that easy. Neither of us could remember where he’d left his car. As we drove up and down and back again, Julian became increasingly agitated. It had been stolen, he insisted. We’ll find it, I assured him. The garage was just very confusing. I began another circle of the levels of the packed parking structure. No Rover. Finally we decided to hunt on foot. I parked in the first available free spot. The parking space was by the shoe store’s entrance where, unfortunately, the Spare the Hares! people were back in force.

The war-painted crowd was larger and louder. They surged forward each time, someone started toward the doors. They were chanting another slogan that buzzed in my ears.

“Just walk quickly by them,” I said under my breath to Julian, who had drawn in his chin and was staring at the chanting demonstrators. I absolutely hated walking by them. Every time I did, it seemed, something bad happened.

“What are they saying?” he asked.

“Hey, hey, Mignon Cosmetics! Get your hands off helpless rabbits!”

Julian said, “Far out, man,” and kept on walking. Kept on walking, that is, until Shaman Krill popped out from between two parked cars. The demonstrator was holding something long, furry, and stiff in one hand. I didn’t want to look at it. When I tried to move away, Shaman Krill shadowed me. When I tried to duck around him, he followed.

“Oh, no,” I moaned. I wanted to look around for the police, but was afraid to take my eyes off Krill.

“What’s going on here?” Julian demanded. Krill did not heed him. He fastened his wild-eyed, Charles Manson gaze on me and leered. His small, pointed teeth gleamed eerily. Something shifted in the dark eyes of the angry, taut man in front of me. He was gleeful. He knew he was in control. I, of course, had seen that look many times before, in the eyes of the Jerk.

“Hey!” shouted Krill in an exaggerated mockery of recognizing an old friend. “Food-fight lady! Look what I got! And this time your pig won’t save you!” He yanked the rabbit carcass upward; I recoiled. “You’re history!” he screeched as he tossed the carcass at me. I ducked for the second time that day. The carcass bounced off my back. “That oughta even things up a little!” Shaman laughed hysterically. “No luck from that rabbit’s foot!”

“You’re sick!” I shouted. I stood up, my fists clenched. “You’re crazy!”

“You’re arrested,” said Tom Schulz happily as he grabbed Shaman’s arms. “For assault.”

Another policeman, a fellow named Boyd whom I knew well, snapped on the handcuffs. The dead rabbit, I noticed, lay by the front left Cadillac tire. I wondered if they would have to take it as evidence.

“Wow,” said Julian, brightening. “That was cool. Talk about just in the nick of time, man, I’m impressed.”

“So this is where you’ve been.” I walked quickly over to Tom. “Why didn’t you tell me you were staking out the garage to look for Krill?”

“Because we haven’t been here that long—”

“Tom, I really need to talk to you. You wouldn’t believe the things that have happened today—”

“Life-endangering things?” he queried, holding tight to a struggling Shaman Krill.

“You pig!” shouted Krill. “You idiot!”

“Well, not exactly—” I said.

“Look, Miss G., we just got a tip”—he aimed his remark at Krill—“from a real member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that this guy was here. They call you the volunteer cheerleader,” he told Krill. He turned back to me. “Goldy, where’d you get those clothes?”

“Oh, it’s a long story.”

“It always is with you.” He eyed Julian. “Is he okay?”

“Who can tell? Check your voice mail when you’re finished with this guy.”