Charleston with a Clever Cougar: A Dance with Danger Mystery #6 (10 page)

“We’ll do it another time,” was Doc’s reply.
“We’ll have a little party after we deliver the wedding cake to the
bride and groom. But we should get going before the roads ice up.
The weather report is calling for more freezing rain.”

Daisy sat on the air mattress in the back of
the van on the way back to the Soundings. I sat up front, next to
the determined driver. The windshield wipers kicked out a steady
rhythm as they cleaned away the tiny sprinkles that hit the glass
surface. Doc hit a couple of patches of black ice. I knew because I
saw how tightly he gripped the wheel and steered into the skid.

“Am I going with you on Saturday to deliver
the cake?” the teenager asked.

“Why? Did you want to go?”

“Are you kidding? It’s the Saybrook Point
Inn. That place is gorgeous!”

“Well, I...we could use your help,” I told
her. Doc took his eyes off the road long enough to give me a wink.
“Besides, don’t forget we have to bag all those cookies and tie
them with the gold ribbon.”

“Are you going to be able to do the royal
icing, Cady? That cake is supposed to look like lace,
remember.”

“We’ll see. It depends on how my shoulder
feels.”

Doc pulled into a parking space in front of
my unit. Daisy popped out of the back, text books in hand, and slid
the van door shut. “See you guys tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Doc replied.

“Good night, Daisy,” I called after her. She
threw a hand up in the air as she practically skipped down the
sidewalk. “What did you tell her about the man you grabbed last
night?”

Doc looked at me, standing a few feet away.
And then he shrugged.

“I told her we delivered a message, that he
was to stay away from Daisy and her family or my buddies and I
would hunt him down.”

“And she didn’t want to know why you didn’t
take him to the cops?”

“Nope.” Doc pulled his raincoat closed.
Raindrops fogged up his glasses as we stood there.

“Doc, why didn’t you?”

“You want to go out for a bite?” he asked.
“It’s either that or we get inside, before one of us catches a
chill.”

I unlocked the front door, flicked on the
living room lights, and felt Doc’s hands carefully removing the
coat from my shoulders. He hung it up in the hall closet, along
with his oversized raincoat.

“You want to know why we didn’t bring that
guy down to the local police department?” I nodded. He sat me down
on the sofa and plunked down beside me. “It has to do with what the
bastard told us before we took him for that little drive up north.
We caught him peeking in the windows. He was there to do
surveillance. It seems Daisy’s stepmother hired his buddy to kill
her.”

“What?” One look at Doc told me he was
telling the truth. Mimi hired a couple of guys to kill Daisy. “But
why?”

“The bastard said they didn’t know. His buddy
got three thousand bucks upfront, and he was supposed to get ten
thousand more when they delivered the proof Daisy was dead.”

“You have got to be kidding me!” My hands
felt cold and clammy on my lap. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would
want to kill that poor girl. But Mimi? Why? She got Doug. She had
her triplets. She even had her career as an attorney. If anything,
she had it all. Why would she want to kill a teenager? And why not
Dylan and Carole, while she was at it?

“Cady?” Doc was looking at me with concern.
“You okay?”

“I just don’t understand it.”

“We’re going to get to the bottom of it,
believe me. There’s a sting in the works. You remember I told you
we took the driver of the pickup for a ride? That’s because he
flipped on his pal. We got the second guy and dragged him...er,
convinced him
to accompany us to the police station and make
a confession, because he was the one who did the actual assault and
collected the retainer for the hit. He confirmed his buddy was just
along for the ride.”

“So, what happens now?”

“We give Mimi a new hitman to hire to finish
the job. She doesn’t know the first one got caught. We’re going to
lure her to Connecticut, so the local cops have jurisdiction. We’ll
record everything.”

“We? You mean you’re going to pretend to be a
hitman?”

“I was a medic on a special forces team,
Cady. I have the chops to be a really scary guy. Besides, the local
cops are all well-known, and Mimi used to be on the Board of Ed.
She might reach out to her contacts and ask around. That would blow
the whole deal. We don’t want to let her off the hook.”

“True,” I agreed. “But what if she doesn’t
take the bait?’

“Oh, she’ll take the bait,” he insisted. “By
the time I’m done, she’ll even ask me to whack the rest of the
family.”

“What?”

“For another five grand, I’ll be happy to
take out Carole and Dylan.”

Chapter Ten --

“You wouldn’t dare!” I cried.

“Cady, for God’s sake!” Doc frowned at me.
“I’m not really going to kill anyone!”

“Oh. Right.” For a moment, I could imagine
Doc actually doing the dirty deed and the thought chilled me to the
bone.

“Seriously, you have to get a grip on
yourself.”

I knew Doc was right. The strain of the last
few days was catching up to me. All these emotional triggers were
compromising my good judgment.

“Why don’t you let me take you out for a
pasta dinner, Cady? We’ll kick back over some chianti and talk
about pleasant things. I owe you for your hospitality.”

“What if we stayed in and had something here?
I made some sauce last week. It’s in the freezer. And I have some
rustic bread we could toast. There are salad fixings in the
fridge....”

“Is that your way of saying no?”

“The weather outside is turning nasty, Doc,”
I reminded him. “And it’s been a long day.”

“And you’re not comfortable having me pick up
the tab, because then the teeter totter has tipped in my favor, is
that it?”

“Well,” I smiled, “you could go to the liquor
store and find us a nice wine that goes with a red sauce.”

“You’re a funny duck, Cady. I’ve never met a
woman as complicated as you.”

“Takes one to know one,” I replied. “I’ll
start the pasta if you can put the pot on the burner for me.”

Doc filled a kettle with water and carried it
over to the top of the range. I turned the burner knob, started up
the vent, and pulled the container of spaghetti sauce out of the
freezer. He was putting his coat and hat on when I stopped him at
the door.

“Hey, Doc, since you’re going to the liquor
store, can you make another stop?”

“Sure,” he told me, keys in hand.

“Pick up some ice cream for dessert. I don’t
know about you, but this kid needs a treat.” He threw back his head
and chuckled.

“Right. Any particular flavor?”

“Surprise me. Anything but licorice.”

“You’ve got it.”

Twenty minutes later, he was back with a
hand-packed pint of peach ice cream and a bottle of chianti
classico. I had everything ready. I used tongs to shake the water
off of strands of pasta before putting it into the sauce to simmer.
Doc worked around me, taking the big pot off the stove when I was
done and dumping the water. As he started to wash the pot, I
stopped him.

“You have to use hot water on a hot pan or
you’ll buckle the bottom and it won’t distribute the heat evenly
anymore.”

“I did not know that,” he said, turning on
the hot water.

“I ruined an expensive set of cookware
learning that lesson the hard way.”

I set the table, using cloth napkins and big
pasta bowls. I put out some Parmesan cheese in a dish and then the
tossed salad in smaller bowls. The buttered bread came out of the
oven in its foil packet and I placed it in a wicker basket that I
set upon the table. Doc and I ate in between companionable
conversation, occasionally throwing out comments on everything
ranging from politics to art.

“Have you ever been to the Florence Griswold
Museum over in Old Lyme? It has some great American Impressionist
works in the collection. Nice spot along the river, too. In the
summer, you can see the osprey nesting on the wooden platforms,” I
told Doc. “Roger Tory Peterson, who wrote all those field guides to
birding, lived in Old Lyme. His house was called ‘The Cedars’. We
used to see him occasionally at the A&P with his wife when I
was young.”

“Where did you grow up?” Doc wanted to
know.

“I spent my early years near the sub base.
Groton, Mystic, New London. Aunt Pinkie originally worked at
Shoreline Savings and Loan. When that was bought up by Livingston
Trust, she was offered a position as assistant bank manager. The
job was down in New Haven, but the love of her life was up in
Newport with his wife, so she moved to Old Saybrook. It was kind of
a halfway point for her. I went to high school here. Bought my
school clothes at Thurston’s every August. Walked to school, walked
to the shops. It was a nice life.”

“Pinkie never married?” Doc wanted to
know.

“Allen never quite got around to leaving the
queen of plumbing fixtures.”

“She should have flushed the rat down the
toilet,” Doc scowled. “No woman should waste her time on a guy who
can’t make up his mind where he should be.”

“Oh,” I sighed sadly, “I think Allen did make
up his mind. He had his cake on the side and his dinner at home. He
once told me he just couldn’t survive without his wife’s fortune.
He was telling the truth.”

“Your aunt deserved better.”

“Yes, she did. But I think she told herself
she had invested so much time and energy into Allen that to quit
the relationship meant she had made a bad decision that cost her
too many years. It would have been proof she failed as a woman. She
never could quite make that admission, to herself or anyone
else.”

“My mother was in love with a married man
after my father passed away. I was fifteen when they got together.
He strung her along for years, kept her from finding someone else.
He rented a house for her and convinced her to quit her job. He
promised to take care of her. And in the end, when he died suddenly
of a heart attack, she was left out in the cold. When his widow
found out about the arrangement, that all came to a end. You can’t
really blame her.”

“What did your mother do?” I wondered.

“Fifty four years old. What could she do? She
became a house mother at a fraternity. She cooked and cleaned for
the college boys until she retired. Her first trip to Florida, she
met a widower named Frank. He was really good to her. They spent
the next six years traveling.”

“When did she pass away?”

“Annie? Oh, she’s still alive and kicking.
Still with Frank, too. Married now. They spend half the year up in
Avon, the rest of the year in Boca Raton. You’ll like them. They’re
good people,” he told me. I wondered if I ever would actually meet
them. It would be interesting to get to know Doc’s mother and
stepfather.

“Brothers and sisters?” I tossed the question
out as I helped myself to more bread. Doc poured me some more
chianti.

“An older brother, Dennis. Chiropractor up in
Hartford. Divorced. Three kids in college.”

“Ouch. That must cost a bundle.”

“True. But I never married. I don’t have any
kids of my own. I started a trust fund for the niece and nephews
when they were kids. I put in three thousand bucks each year.
Dennis used to ride me for being such a stickler. Told me I should
use the money to take a trip, buy a house, take a wife. For years I
listened to him tell me he had college covered, that there was no
reason to keep putting money into the account. And then he got
divorced. Wound up living in a little one-bedroom after they sold
the Farmington McMansion. That money helped pay for those kids go
to school, even when their parents were duking it out over who got
the big screen television and who got the ski chalet in Vermont.
Uncle Doc turned out to be a good guy after all.”

“It doesn’t sound like you two are all that
close,” I commented.

“Dennis has a different outlook on life. He’s
all about making a name for himself, being a big shot. Me? I’m
still the baby brother.”

“Too bad,” I said, sipping my wine. “You
never wanted kids, Doc?”

“Never got around to it. Figured I’d do that
when I got out of the Army.”

“And now?”

“Well, I took that job with the insurance
company, so maybe I’ll get around to it,” he mused, “one of these
days.”

“Forgive me for saying this, Doc, but you
don’t really sound like your heart is in this insurance thing.”
Those green eyes gazed over at me. “It doesn’t really sound like a
job you would enjoy.”

“Have to pay the bills, Cady. Can’t sit
around hoping the perfect job will just drop into my lap.”

“But don’t you have a passion for something?
Anything?”

“Besides coffee?” He laughed. “I spent so
many years patching up broken bodies and bruised spirits, it’s
really all I know, but I’ve had enough. I’m ready for a change. I’m
ready to hang up my spurs and start the next chapter of my
life.”

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket. Reaching
in with my good hand, I pulled it out, reading the screen.

“Carole’s calling.” I pushed the button and
put the phone up to my ear. “Hi there. What’s up?”

“You’re not going to believe this,” she told
me. “Mimi’s coming for a visit. She wants to take Daisy out to
dinner tomorrow night.”

I hit the speaker button and put a finger to
my lips, locking eyes with Doc.

“That sounds like short notice. Why does Mimi
want to take Daisy out to dinner?” I asked, playing dumb.

“I don’t know. It’s out of the blue, Cady.
Should I be worried?”

Doc was shaking his head, providing my cues.
I went along with his direction.

“No, Carole. I’m sure she just wants to see
for herself that Daisy’s okay,” I said reassuringly.