Loose Lips (2 page)

“They aren’t.” She folded her hands in her
lap.

I didn’t know how she could be so sure, but
I’d known Betty long enough not to doubt her.

She stared me down in obvious challenge.
Put your shop window where your mouth is...

“Then, of course, we’ll have to do it,” I
replied with a
don’t–be–silly
titter.

“Great!” she announced, standing. “I know
just where to get us costumes.”

Wait... costumes?
I should have
known.

o0o

The next morning, as Kiska and I passed the
shopping center where Joe’s competition was located, I couldn’t
help but notice that cars were once again lined up, waiting for
their turn at the kiosk.

Time, I decided, to do a bit of market
research for Joe.

I pulled into the lot and carefully
maneuvered my Jeep Cherokee around the winding line. Car, truck,
bigger truck... New, old, barely running. The kiosk’s clientele
seemed to be pretty varied.

Except...

I circled around and drove by again, this
time against the flow, so I was facing the customers. Y, Y, Y... I
was eight vehicles down before I saw someone not bearing a Y
chromosome, and she wasn’t in line for coffee.

In fact, she seemed to be in direct
opposition of one Y chromosome in particular
getting
his
coffee.

Four vehicles from the front of the line, a
red truck with a toolbox in the back sat idling. Standing beside
the truck, pounding on the driver’s side window with her fist was a
middle–aged woman wearing nylon shorts and a T–shirt that
proclaimed her love of cheese.

I liked cheese too, but felt the size of my
thighs advertised that fact enough.

“Don’t tell me you need coffee! You had
coffee at home! I know why you’re in this line, you dirty old
man!”

The dirty old man in question did not roll
down his window or, for that matter, even glance in her direction.
He wrenched his steering wheel to the right and sped out of the
line and out of the lot.

The cheese lover crossed her arms over her
chest and eyed the next man in the queue. Already rolling his sedan
forward to fill the vacancy, he thought better of it and exited
too.

She stood there for another few minutes,
eyeing those more determined in their search for coffee and
mumbling to herself before tromping to a non–descript hatchback,
starting it up and leaving the lot.

My curiosity peaked, I took one more turn
around the parking lot, slowing down as I passed the kiosk in an
attempt to see inside. Unfortunately, a gray 4x4 completely blocked
my view.

I considered getting in line myself, but I
was worried that Joe would find out and think I too had deserted
him. Better to take my intriguing information to experts in the
field of gossip and Helena goings on.

o0o

Like any good ex–reporter, I met with my
sources in private. Meaning, I talked my best friend Rhonda into
putting off opening her used book store, Pegasus Books, while she,
Betty and my other employee, somewhat partner, Phyllis, ate stale
donuts that some well–meaning customer of Rhonda’s had dropped off
the day before.

A customer who obviously didn’t know my
health–conscious friend all that well.

I bit into a chocolate–covered Long John and
described the scene. “It was crazy,” I added at the end of my
tale.

Betty selected a huckleberry–jelly–filled
donut from the box. “Prudes. Those girls have every right to dress
however they like.” To emphasize the point, she fussed with today’s
outfit, another kimono robe worn over what appeared to be not a
whole lot more.

I really hoped the knot in the silk belt
held.

Phyllis, in her very proper, very
skin–covering slacks and cardigan, crossed her legs. “You wouldn’t
say that if Everett was sitting in that line every day.”

Betty narrowed her eyes at Phyllis and bit
into her pastry with a tad more gusto than seemed necessary.

I, obviously, was missing something here
though. “What do you mean they can dress how they like? How are
they dressing?”

“Trampy,” Phyllis announced. “And not a one
of them is under a C cup.”

I glanced at Betty, who just rolled her
eyes.

“What exactly does
trampy
mean?” I
asked. Native Texan and regular wearer of pearls and cashmere,
Phyllis and I didn’t exactly share the same worldview. Her trampy
might be my... well, I couldn’t think of anything I wore she would
term trampy – ugly, inappropriate, embarrassing, sure...

“Bikini tops,” Rhonda announced, popping
something healthy and not of the pastry family into her mouth.

I frowned. “Bikini tops, but...” It was warm
this week. Not bikini warm, but by Montana standards pretty nice.
But last week, we’d still been in full parka–wearing winter. And
the kiosk had appeared at least two weeks before that.

Betty finished her donut and gave her
nemesis, Phyllis, a glare. “It’s marketing, and it’s working. If I
could pull it off, I’d put my brass on display too.”

“You’d have to polish it up a bit first.
Maybe pound out a few dents,” Phyllis retorted.

Betty growled, and I quickly threw my body
between them. A few jaw snaps and waving of fingers later, they’d
settled down enough I thought it was safe to go back to our
conversation.

“So, the woman I saw was mad because her
husband was coming to the kiosk for—”

“Something other than coffee,” Phyllis
declared.

“Oh.”

Joe had said he’d seen Peter there too. I
glanced down at my chest.

Betty rolled her eyes.

Still not sure I had the whole story, I
looked around the group. “So, the men are going there because the
girls working there wear bikini tops.”

Betty nodded, Rhonda considered, and Phyllis
pursed her lips.

“More or
less
,” Phyllis added.

“Less?”

Phyllis raised a judging brow. “Two words...
Mardi Gras.”

“Mardi Gras?”

Seeing how slow I was on the uptake, Betty
jumped in to translate.

“She’s saying they flash their
headlights.”

“Their...?”

Betty pointed at her chest.

I dropped my donut. “No!” As soon as I did
it, I was embarrassed. I was a progressive woman, and I wasn’t a
prude.

“Guess they really are BAREistas,” Rhonda
offered with a grin.

While she and Betty laughed, Phyllis stewed.
“Someone needs to shut them down.”

It did seem to be at the very least a
completely unfair competitive advantage. How was Joe supposed to
compete with that?

His brass was even more tarnished than
Betty’s.

Sympathetic as I was to Joe’s situation, I
had competitive issues of my own to deal with. After leaving
Rhonda’s, I picked up Kiska from my shop, and we wandered down the
Gulch. As he sniffed and peed, I made small talk with passersby and
other business owners about the sesquicentennial, coyly ferreting
out information on my competition for the big window display
contest.

The children’s bookstore down the block, I
discovered, was appropriately doing something on frontier toys and
games. The owner, who met us at her door with a smile and body
language that said she’d prefer we kept our shopping to the window
variety, had already gathered a dozen images of children dressed in
their best, posing with dolls, spinning tops, and horses carved out
of wood.

Obviously proud of herself, she laughed and
bragged about her big plans for adding more toys and even live
children dressed in period costumes for when the judges walked
by.

Antique toys and images of children from the
time period were, if not easy to come by, easier than something
that could be definitively tied to brothels and madams.

A quick inventory of my merchandise had come
up with only a couple of books on prostitutes in the old West.
Nothing truly old and original.

Afraid my jealousy was showing, I cooed at
her idea and offered the loan of a china–head doll and an image of
a boy with a goat. Then, cursing my own stupidity, I turned to
leave.

I was so going to lose, and I was adding to
my defeat by loaning the competition things for their own
displays.

The bookstore owner raised her hand to stop
us. “You know... I bet the Deeres might have something you could
use. You know their great–grandmother was a prostitute.”

I stopped, frozen by my own stupidity. I
should have thought of the Deeres myself. I’d even, for a very
short period of time, had possession of a ruby that had belonged to
Ruby Deere. Of course, I hadn’t known I had the ruby, but still...
and the family did kind of owe me for uncovering what one heir had
planned for the gem. Namely, selling it off without anyone else in
the family learning of its existence.

I thanked the woman, and after a brief,
losing tussle for whatever Kiska had just snarfed up from the
sidewalk, set off to call in old chips.

o0o

It didn’t take much research to track down
my prey. Frosted, Cindy Deere’s bakery, was located in a kind of
unattractive part of Helena, not that far from the railroad
tracks.

As Kiska and I pulled in, I heard the train
sounding its whistle and saw cars lining up to wait for the
crossing gate to lift so they could pass.

I got out of my Jeep and glanced around.
There was one other car in the parking lot, if you could call the
four spaces in front of the bakery a lot.

It was a Tuesday. Not exactly a booming day
for retail. But still, located where Frosted was, I had to wonder
how Cindy stayed in business.

I, however, knew nothing about the bakery
business. Maybe most of her income came from weddings and other
such events that didn’t require a walk–in clientele. Or maybe she
hired a high school student to stand by the railroad crossing and
sell cupcakes to those stuck there.

I knew I’d longed for cake more than once
when stuck at a light or railroad crossing. I actually hadn’t
realized Frosted was so close...

Cocking my brow at what was obviously a
genius idea, I lowered the window of my Jeep to give Kiska some
ventilation and walked toward the shop.

Inside, Frosted was dark and smelled of
sugar.

The poor lighting was a bit disturbing for a
place that sold food, but the smell of sugar pretty much wiped out
my concerns.

Cindy was working alone, waiting on a
customer who, from the back, didn’t look as if she’d tasted so much
as a sprinkle, much less a cupcake.

Cindy glanced at me. I couldn’t tell if she
recognized me or not. We’d only met once before, during a painful
mountain bike excursion that I’d stupidly done to impress a
male.

Luckily, my love life was currently wrapped
up, and any thoughts of submitting myself to silly self–improvement
efforts were safely behind me.

Based on Cindy’s chosen profession, and the
fact that she looked as if she’d put on a few pounds since our last
meeting, I assumed that they were behind her too.

After a quick nod my direction, she returned
her attention to the skinny minnie.

“So, a double batch tomorrow? I can do that,
but I’ll have to let you know about Thursday. Our...”

She glanced at me. Realizing I’d had my
hands and nose pressed against the display case’s glass in an
attempt to see whether the cupcakes inside were red velvet or just
plain chocolate, I stepped back and studied a sign posted with
pricing instead.

“...flour supplier hasn’t returned my call.
We should be okay, but there’s always a possibility of a
shortage.”

There was a pause in the conversation,
making me feel like one or both of them was looking at me again. I
took another step away. Encroaching on Cindy’s space would do
little to help my case when I asked to borrow whatever she might
have access to from her family’s past.

“I understand,” the female customer replied.
“But if this is going to become an ongoing issue—”

“It won’t.”

Cindy was a bit abrupt with her customer,
but then the customer threatening to take her business elsewhere
seemed less than polite too.

I shrugged off the exchange and went back to
planning my cupcake order... and what I was going to say to Cindy
to plead my case, of course.

Cindy disappeared for a moment and then
reappeared with a disposable aluminum pan that was covered with
another sheet of aluminum, making it hard for me to say for sure
what was inside.

Well, not that hard. I smelled brownies.
Chocolate ones.

I hadn’t seen them on the menu. Wondering
what other delights had been left off, I looked back at the
sign.

“Tomorrow we’ll be okay, but Thursday we’ll
need more. I can stop before five. If it’s later than that, you
will have to deliver. By six a.m. we’ll be swamped with
customers.”

Swamped with customers and by six
a.m.?

I turned to see who this business phenomenon
was.

The woman holding the pan of brownies was
young, maybe twenty two, although her braids made her look even
younger. She was also attractive, with assets that said she wasn’t
afraid of surgical enhancement, and a smile that said she knew that
I had noticed.

It wasn’t, however, her assets or her smile
that caused me pause. It was her t–shirt, emblazoned with the title
Caffeine Cartel Cutie
. The string tie of a bikini top
poked out the neck.

Joe’s newest competition, the coffee kiosk,
was called The Caffeine Cartel. I hadn’t realized the girls working
in it were known as
Cuties
.

Not that I could argue with the title. She
was
cute. Way cuter than Joe, darn her.

She left with a bounce in her step that I
was fairly certain was for my benefit. I watched her go, feeling
old and decidedly un–bouncey.