Page 12

CHAPTER 12

W hen Poppy and Hester Quill had left for the high school, I borrowed my best friend Lian’s car, hit the grocery in Bearton, and scored enough ricotta and noodles to make four pans of lasagna with some leftover for a possible fifth. I know that was probably overkill, but Max had texted that he was on his way back, and he liked lasagna, and I thought maybe Jackie and Quill would appreciate a home-cooked meal that night, and I wanted to leave a pan with Coral so she’d have leftovers to nosh on until she was back up to speed. Plus, one for unanticipated events. There were a lot of those in Rocky Start.

Also, Max really loved my lasagna, and I wanted him to have a lot of what he loved. Including me.

I took Maggs with me, leaving her in the car while I shopped. She was an excellent anti-theft device with the windows cracked. She was also good company, hanging her head out the passenger window while I drove.

When we got home, I dumped everything on the table and was starting to put the refrigerator stuff away when Maggs growled at the stove.

“It’s a stove, baby,” I said. “It’s where lasagna comes from.”

She began to bark.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, “ look ,” and opened the door.

A snake the size of my arm darted for me, fangs bared, but Maggs was faster, catching it behind its head and shaking it vigorously until it stopped rattling and hung limp.

I, meanwhile, had basically thrown myself back across the table, screaming.

“ What the hell? ” I yelled at Maggs, who shook the snake again. A three-foot long snake with a diamond pattern on its back. Pretty sure it was a rattlesnake.

Maggs trotted to the back door, and I opened it, and she went down the steps to the alley and dropped it.

It didn’t move.

Neither did I.

The thing about shock and terror is that it makes it hard to move. You know, once you’re across the kitchen table.

I stretched my hand out for my purse, found my phone, and called Pike.

“What now?” he said when he answered.

“Do you know anything about snakes?” I said, and my voice must have quavered because he said, “On my way.”

I was telling Maggs what a wonderful dog she was when Pike hit the alley. He walked over to the snake with his gun drawn, waited a minute, and then kicked it. “It’s dead.”

“Maggs killed it,” I said.

“Good dog.”

“It was in the oven,” I said and he jerked his head up.

“In the house?”

“In my oven.”

“Fuck,” he said and came in.

I looked around my kitchen, suddenly seeing it full of hiding places for snakes.

Pike opened the oven, looked inside, and shut the door. “It’s empty now.” He pulled the drawer under the oven out, looked in it, and shoved it shut. “Empty.” He went to the fridge, opened it, and the shut the door. “Empty.”

I looked at all the cupboards. And then there was the pantry.

And the rest of the shop, a thousand boxes and hidey holes. And that was before we got to the upstairs.

I looked at Pike. “What if there’s another one?”

He shook his head. “Keep Maggs with you. She’ll know before you do, but I really doubt there’s more. It’s such a dumb fuck way to kill somebody.”

I swallowed. “Would I have died?”

Pike shrugged. “It was a diamondback rattler. If you got help right away, you’d probably make it.”

“What the hell, Pike?” I started to sit down and then checked the chair and underneath the chair before I sank into it, my knees turned to jelly.

Pike got a treat out of the cupboard and gave it to Maggs, telling her she was a fine, good dog.

“You get treats for life,” I told Maggs, and she lay down to crunch her prize.

“Somebody wants to scare me?” I said. “I don’t get this. That was dumb. Terrifying but dumb.”

“Keep the doors locked,” he said. “Don’t open the shop. We need Max back.”

“I texted him.” I swallowed. “Pike, what’s going on?”

“I have no idea.” Pike looked worried, his brow furrowed, his jaw tight. “You stay inside here with the doors locked.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I need to take care of things.”

“Then keep Maggs with you until Max gets back,” he said and went back to Ecstasy.

I looked at Maggs. “You and me, baby,” I told her, and she barked.

But I had work to do, so I got out all my bowls and pans and unpacked the grocery bags and started grating cheese and boiling water for noodles, trying not to think about the snake— Think about lasagna, Rose —which was when it hit me.

I hated making lasagna.

I liked the way it tasted, but my God, chopping onions and garlic and tomatoes, frying the sausage, making the sauce, grating the cheese, mixing the cheese together, boiling the noodles, straining the noodles, and then, for the love of God, layering the whole mess , I mean, why couldn’t I just pile the whole thing together in a dish, why did I have to line up noodles and paint them with tomato sauce and then try to get the cheese smooth, and it was just insane.

I mean, I had five pans in front of me, I wasn’t going to stop now, but I was going to have to take a good hard look at my cooking if I’d been doing something I hated for nineteen years.

Maybe a good hard look at my life, too.

* * *

At just before noon, when the first pan of lasagna was out of the the oven and the second in—yes, I thought about snake cooties but I needed the oven—I glued the last of Coral’s mask together, adding the fish for eyebrows. It took a little longer than usual because a couple of people came into the shop who had questions, so I gave them the standard Ozzie answers and they left the shop without buying anything. I should start charging for answers. You want a solution, buy a damn teacup.

When Poppy and Quill didn’t show up for lunch, I took the finished mask and the first baked lasagna over to Coral, leaving Maggs behind to guard the kitchen on the theory that I probably wouldn’t run into another snake in the two yards between the door to Oddities and the door to Ecstasy.

Coral was still sitting at the corner table near the side counter, looking marginally better, although still pale. I looked at Anita, who rolled her eyes, and then I went over to Coral.

“You’re supposed to be in bed,” I said severely.

“What is that ?” she said, pointing to the rabbit mask looped over my arm by its elastic band.

“For you. From Ozzie.”

She took it from me and looked at it closely, so I put the fresh-out-of-the-oven lasagna on the table. I had a dish towel wrapped around it, so it wasn’t going to hurt the wood. “Lasagna, hot now. Did you have anything to eat today?”

“This is how you see me?” she said, eyes still on the mask.

“Yes,” I said. “Have. You. Eaten?”

“What?” She looked up then. “Food? No.”

I pointed to the pasta. “You should eat.” I got plates and forks from Anita and came back to find her still looking at the mask.

“A fish?” she said.

“Pike,” I said, and she laughed and then put her hand to her cheek, over the bandage. “Oh, it is wonderful.”

“It was Ozzie’s idea. It had a post-it on it that said ‘Coral.’ It’s glued to the underside.”

She turned the mask over and put her fingers on the post-it. “Oh. Oh, Oz .”

I noticed her hand was shaking and for a moment I wondered if it was the trauma, but then realized she was blinking back tears.

I could relate. The snake had made me cry. I thought about telling Coral, but that was not going to happen: Coral had had enough shocks for one day.

“Ozzie loved you a lot.” I dished up some lasagna for Coral and gave another plateful to Anita, who deserved a lot more. “What do you want to drink?”

Coral looked down at the plate as if she’d just noticed it. “Oh! Oh, this is so good of you.”

“Turn about,” I said. “How many times have you fed me?”

She smiled again and winced, and Anita brought glasses of water and some bread rolls and butter to us and asked what else we needed, and Coral told her she was doing a wonderful job. I told her Poppy planned to stop by to help when she got back from school, and she looked relieved. As she walked away, my car-lending friend, Lian, the good lawyer in town, came in the door from the street, looked around, then made a beeline to the table and grabbed a chair on the other side of Coral.

“Thanks for the car today,” I told Lian. “Now have some lasagna that you made possible,” but her focus was on Coral.

“I just heard from Luke. Are you all right?” she asked Coral.

“I am fine,” Coral said with a bit of irritation. “Really. I have suffered much worse.”

“That’s not the point,” Lian said. “Someone attacked you here, in your own place. What can I do to help?”

Coral waved that off with one hand while she carefully picked up a forkful of my lasagna with the other.

Lian shook her head, and I served her up some pasta on what was supposed to be my plate. Anita saw and came back with a new plate and fork. Anita was a treasure.

We were digging into the lasagna when Betty Baumgarten came in and sat next to me, angling her seat so she could see the door. Of course.

Anita brought another plate, coffee cups, and a pot of dark roast. I really had to do something nice for Anita.

“Pike called me,” Betty said to Coral across me while I was dishing up her pasta. She looked at me. “Snakes, too? What’s going on?”

“What snakes?” Coral said.

“Snakes?” Lian said, looking around the floor.

Yeah, try to keep a secret in this town.

I shoved the plate of lasagna Betty’s way as I ignored the snake part. “Why would somebody come for you now, Coral?”

She shook her head, her mouth full of noodles.

“This worries me,” Betty said. “First, Serena making life hell, then Geoffrey, and now this woman and snakes. Too many people with evil intent.” She looked at Coral, dead serious. “We lost a good person to Geoffrey; we’re not going to lose you, too.”

Coral shook her head. “I have not done anything. I am long retired. There is no reason for anyone to come after me. Eat your lasagna.” She looked at me. “Explain about the snakes.”

“There wasn’t any reason for Melissa to die, either,” Lian pointed out.

“That’s not true,” Betty said, forking pasta with enthusiasm. “She was active, freelancing wet work while living here. Strictly forbidden. You’re not doing anything off the books, are you?” she asked Coral.

Coral glared at her. “No.” She looked at me. “About the snake .”

I gave up. “There was a diamondback rattler in my oven this morning when I got back from Bearton.”

“ What? ” Lian said at the same time Betty said, “That’s odd.”

“ Odd? ” I said.

She nodded. “Rattlers brumate in winter.”

Seeing our confused looks, she added: “A form of hibernation.”

“This one was not brumating,” I said. “It was a non-brumater. Maggs killed it.”

Lian looked around for Maggs.

“She’s in the kitchen at home,” I told her. “In case somebody drops off another non-brumater.”

“That’s a really stupid way to kill somebody,” she said.

“Yeah. What I want to know is, why would anybody come for Coral and me?” I said. “We haven’t done anything to anybody.”

“Coral, you, and Oz,” Betty said. “How’s Pike doing?”

I frowned at her. “Why Pike?”

“Pike and Oz ran the law here,” Betty said, “but you and Coral run the town. If I wanted to throw a spanner in the works here, you four are the ones I’d go after. Max, too, but he’s not here.”

She stopped because Bea Handler came in.

Bea, the owner of the honey shop down at the end of the street, was taking the death of her boyfriend, Harvey Ware hard—even though he had been a dead loss as a boyfriend, both metaphorically and literally—and she’d obviously had a few morning drinks to help with that. Not letting the lack of chairs slow her down, she grabbed one from an adjacent table and claimed a spot, tottering a little.

“So the rumor is you got cut,” she said to Coral, slurring her words a little, and then Dottie Ferrell, our postmistress and Eye-in-the-Sky snoop, came in, grabbed another chair, and jammed it between Coral and me.

“I have the digital from this morning if you want to see it,” Dottie said to me as she sat down. “But really, not much to see. Is that your lasagna? Ozzie used to rave about it. Anyway, the bitch drove up in a car. I traced it. Stolen last night in Atlanta. She sat outside for a couple of minutes, drinking. I could see the bottle. She had her knife hidden in one hand. Went up to the door here, knocked on it, and walked in when Coral opened it.”

“I was not expecting an attack,” Coral said. “She caught me off guard, saying she was hungry.”

“You get an I.D.?” Betty asked.

Dottie shook her head. “Negative. The prints weren’t in the system. Same with facial recognition. A blank. Is that really your lasagna?”

“I don’t suppose you noticed anybody going into the alley behind Oddities?” I asked, but she shook her head.

“Somebody put a rattlesnake in Rose’s oven,” Lian said.

“Was it in there with the lasagna?” Dottie asked.

I gave up and signaled Anita, who brought two more plates, and once Dottie and Bea had pasta in front of them, Dottie went on about Coral’s attacker. “No I.D. on the body. The knife had Coral’s blood on it, but no other traces. Since we don’t have Sid to do DNA, I’m running the sample via FedEx to someone I know. But given the zero on fingerprints and facial, I’m not optimistic it will be in the system either. Oz was right, this is really good lasagna.”

“The snake is out back in the alley,” I told her, ignoring the lasagna part. “Feel free to check it for fingerprints.”

“Funny,” Dottie said and cut into her pasta again.

I looked at Coral and Betty and Lian and Bea and Dottie, all chowing down now, and I realized I had just thrown a dinner party in Ecstasy. And that I was going to have to bake one of the other pans of lasagna for Coral for later because there was only one piece left and she’d give that to Pike.

“It was a piss-poor attempt at robbing this place,” Bea was saying, slurring a little. “She sure picked the wrong town and the wrong place.” She looked at me. “I don’t know what the fuck the snake was about.”

Coral was shaking her head. “She came right at me. Did not ask for money.”

Betty also disagreed. “Who robs a place first thing in the morning when the till is empty? Did you miss the part about no I.D.? Stolen car? Not in the system? This was a pro, Bea. She came to kill Coral. Same with the snake: Rose home all alone would have died before anybody found her, and then unless the snake was still there, they wouldn’t have known what to do to save her.” She looked around. “These were attempted kills. By an idiot, evidently. Sending a drunken assassin? A snake?” She shook her head at the sloppy work ethic.

Then I heard this piping little voice behind me say, “Lasagna?”

Hermione Witch again. Voted “Most Annoying Person in Rocky Start” two weeks running, and given the population of Rocky Start, that was an achievement. And she’d only been here two weeks. She was so small, she managed to sit on the edge of Bea’s seat and reach the table between Bea and Dottie. Anita brought another plate and I gave Hermione the last of the lasagna while Bea glared at her. Hermione had started working in Bea’s honey shop not long after she decided to stay in town, and I wasn’t even sure Bea had hired her. I wouldn’t put it past Hermione to just wander in there, put on the apron, and pretend to work while she scoped the place out, figuring Bea was too blitzed to remember if she’d hired her or not.

“If someone is targeting us, it could be any of us next,” I said. “We need to find out who that is. And take steps.”

“Who died and made you boss?” Bea said, wiping tomato sauce off her mouth with a napkin.

“Shut up, Bea,” Betty said to her. “Rose is right. We need to get on top of this. We’ve lost Oz and Melissa?—”

“And my Sidsie,” Hermione said, stifling a sob and then shoveling in more pasta.

“And Harvey,” Bea said, sounding a little out of it as she looked down at her lasagna.

“—and we almost lost Coral and Rose,” Betty said. “We need to find out who’s doing this and why.” She looked at me. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Me?” I looked around the table: Coral and Lian were nodding, Betty had me fixed in her stare, Dottie was frowning, Bea was distracted and drunk, and Hermione was mostly eating lasagna and making weird noises. “Look, I’m not a honey pot, I was never a pro at this kind of stuff like the rest of you?—”

“That ship sailed,” Betty said. “We’ve seen you work. You took down Geoffrey. And Serena.”

“That was with Max. Without Max . . .” I shook my head. “This is way out of my league.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Bea said, slurring a little on the esses. “You sure got Max Reddy into bed in no time.”

“Rose,” Betty said, ignoring Bea. “You’re the only one here who everybody trusts. You’re the only one here who knows everybody in town, who knows how all the aspects of this town work. You’re our fixer.”

I started to protest, and Betty fixed me with her raptor stare.

“Fix this, Rose.”

Well, hell.