Love Game (2 page)

Lucy raced down the street, driving erratically and nearly clipping a garbage can as she turned the corner. I snapped my seat belt into place.

“Is someone dying? Has someone been murdered?” I asked Lucy. It wasn’t a stretch. Since I arrived in Cannes, I had come across a few dead bodies. I was getting a reputation.

“No, why? Have you heard something?”

“No. Should I have heard something?”

Lucy was sweating, and she hadn’t blinked since she started to drive. It was out of character for her, to say the least. She wasn’t the erratic kind of woman. She was a very successful marketer, whatever that was. She was a Southern belle who had traveled the world and was calm in every situation.

In fact, I had seen her flustered on only one occasion.

“Lucy, does this have something to do with Uncle Harry?” I asked. Uncle Harry wasn’t really Lucy’s uncle. He was a magnetic man a few years older than
Lucy with a fortune from a questionable source. He lived in a giant house east of town with man-eating Rottweilers, a gate, and a security man named Killer. Okay, I didn’t know the security guard’s name, but he looked like a Killer.

At the mention of Uncle Harry, Lucy’s eyes glazed over and her hands slipped off the steering wheel. She let out a squeak, as if she were a Kewpie doll and someone had given her a hard squeeze.

“Coffee!” I shouted in warning, but it was too late. Despite Lucy coming to her senses and slamming her foot down on the brake pedal, the front door to the Tea Time tea shop sped toward us, or at least it seemed that way. Actually, it was Lucy’s car that sped toward Tea Time’s front door, but in the end it was the same thing. The salmon-colored Mercedes with the warming vibrator tushy seats pulverized the massive wood doors of Tea Time and took large chunks of the walls with it.

Tea Time used to be a saloon, back when Cannes was a gold-rush town in the late 1800s, but now it was all lace tablecloths, yellow painted daisies, porcelain teapots on every table, classical music piped in at a respectable level, and a rack of crocheted tea cozies for sale at ludicrous prices. It was owned by eighty-five-year-old Ruth Fletcher, a crotchety old lady who despised coffee drinkers. Despite Tea Time’s name and Ruth’s demeanor, the shop had the best coffee in town.

I stumbled out of the car, past the deflated air bags and the debris. Miraculously, no one was hurt. The shop had been experiencing a lull in the day, and there were only two people inside. Ruth and her
danger-prone grandniece, Julie, stood behind the intact bar, their mouths hanging open, the sunlight filtering past the dust through the gaping hole in the wall and onto their shocked faces.

Lucy opened her car door and hobbled out. One of her sling-back heels was broken, making her limp. Besides that and her toppled hairdo, she was unscathed.

I saw red. “My coffee!” I yelled at Lucy. “You killed my coffee!” I couldn’t live without my coffee, and Ruth made the best lattes on the planet. I needed Ruth’s lattes.

“I didn’t do it!” Julie squealed, waking Ruth out of her stupor. Ruth threw down her bar towel and stomped over to us.

“This building has been in existence since 1872,” she spat at me, her words coming out in clipped consonants as she gestured to Tea Time’s destroyed front wall. “Had! Had been in existence!”

“Strictly speaking, I wasn’t driving,” I said.

“You’re just like your grandmother,” she accused. “Wackos think they know everything. I bet she didn’t guess this little event, did she?”

She had a point. Besides saying the wind had changed, Grandma could have warned me not to get into the car with Lucy.

I pointed at Lucy. “She did it,” I said.

Lucy swiped her hair out of her eyes. She climbed over the debris and hobbled toward us, riffling through her purse as she limped closer. She pulled out her wallet.

“I’ve got five hundred dollars here. Do you think that will cover it?” she asked Ruth.

I thought I saw steam come out of Ruth’s ears. “This is a historic building in the historic district of a historic town,” she said. “It will take at least a month to fix the damage, during which I will be out of business. There is no wall here!” she shouted, pointing at the hole that used to be Tea Time’s front door.

“You have five hundred dollars in your purse?” I asked. For the first time in months, I was up-to-date on my bills, but I had only $7.50 on me. Marketing sure paid well. Whatever that was.

“I’m in a hurry,” Lucy said. “I don’t have time to stand here and chat, Ruth.”

“Well, then maybe you shouldn’t have taken a detour into my shop!” Ruth said, stating the obvious.

“Here’s my insurance card. I’ve got to get to Uncle Harry. He’s waiting. Come on, Gladie, let’s go.”

“Are you serious?” I stammered. “I’m not getting in a car with you!”

“Gladys Burger, did I not save your life not one month ago?”

And there it was, the trump card. Lucy and Bridget had come to my rescue a few weeks back, and I owed her one, to put it mildly.

“Okay,” I agreed. “But not without coffee. I need coffee.”

“Don’t look at me!” said Ruth. “I’m not about to make you coffee.”

I stared Lucy in the eye. “Not without coffee.”

IT TURNED
out we couldn’t start the car with the deployed air bags, and Lucy insisted we leave it there for the Mercedes dealership to tow away. We
had to walk back to Grandma’s to pick up my car. I remembered that my red suitcase was in the trunk, but my desire for coffee far outweighed my desire for spider-free clothes, and I didn’t think Lucy would take the time to stop at the dry cleaner’s.

Lucy said Cup O’Cake had fabulous coffee, and it was on the way to Uncle Harry’s, just on the edge of the historic district.

“Can you make this jalopy go any faster, darlin’?” she asked me as I chugged down Main Street.

“Are you kidding me, Mario Andretti?”

“Sorry, I’m in a hurry.”

“Yeah, I still don’t know why. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

Lucy dusted off a piece of my car’s upholstery, which had dropped from the ceiling onto her lap. “Uncle Harry called me and said to get over there right away and to bring you. He was very agitated, Gladie. I’ve never heard him like that. Flustered.”

“Flustered” must have been the adjective of the day. First Grandma, then Lucy, and now Uncle Harry. Three people who were never flustered had suddenly turned flustered. So much for my relaxing Apple Days.

But the flustered stopped at the historic district. Despite the car accident, the ill wind, and whatever trouble Uncle Harry had, the town was calm, quiet, and doing what it did best. An influx of sedate tourists sat eating apple pie at the outside tables of Saladz, a favorite hangout for Bridget, Lucy, and me.

Cannes was a small village in the mountains east of San Diego. It had had a couple of years of prosperity during the gold rush, more than a hundred years
before, but the gold ran out quickly, and the town settled into a relaxed state after that. Besides growing apples and pears, it welcomed tourists with its beauty, charm, and antiques shops. It was usually very quiet and everyone got along. Not much flustering here.

“Take a right,” Lucy instructed.

I turned onto Gold Digger Avenue. Cup O’Cake was on the corner in an old, small Victorian house. It took up the bottom story, and there were apartments on the floor above. The building was painted a bright cobalt blue with blood-red trim. A sign out front read
CUP O
’
CAKE
in green letters, with the letter “O” replaced by a big cupcake. That cupcake looked damned good.

“I’m supposed to be on a diet,” I said aloud, more to myself than to Lucy.

“Again? Darlin’, you are on more diets than any skinny bitch I know.”

“You think I’m skinny?” I asked, sucking in my stomach. I had put on a few pounds since moving to Cannes, regularly eating junk food with my grandma. I was actually looking for a new diet, something that worked. So far, I hadn’t had any luck losing a pound.

“How many calories do you think are in a cupcake?” I asked Lucy.

“Fourteen thousand,” she said, opening the door. A bell announced our entrance. Inside were serenity, bliss, and nirvana, all wrapped in an odiferous cloud of chocolate, vanilla, sugar, and yeast. And there was another smell, something really familiar.

“Coffee,” I breathed in relief.

Cup O’Cake was laid out more like a large living
room than a bakery. Big overstuffed chairs took up most of the floor space, all in bright colors, as if they were cupcakes themselves. Little coffee tables dotted the floor, as well, covered in pretty tablecloths and books. There were books everywhere. The walls were lined with shelves bursting with them. The mantel over the fireplace was stacked high with books, too.

Hardbacks, paperbacks, reference, literature, and pulp. Books everywhere.

A tiny thirtysomething woman with gorgeous long jet-black hair, wearing a brown sweater dress that practically swallowed her whole, picked up a book I had been eyeing.

“That’s a good one,” she said. “Funny romantic mystery. You can borrow it if you wish.”

“I’m not much of a reader,” I said. Not since a failed one-week stint as a speed-reading teacher in Austin. I hadn’t gotten past the training, and my migraine had lasted three days.

Her face dropped in obvious disappointment. “Oh.”

“But, sure, it looks great,” I said, taking the book from her. I’m really bad about disappointing people. I’d rather move to another town than disappoint someone. Perhaps I needed therapy.

Or a cupcake.

“Let me know how you like it.” Her frown had turned into a smile. “We can talk about it tomorrow, if you wish.”

Drat, now I actually had to read the thing. It was about two inches thick. I wondered if I could find CliffsNotes online.

“I’m Felicia,” she told me. “Felicia Patel. I help
Mavis run Cup O’Cake. You look like you could use a cup of coffee.”

I almost hugged her. I was so used to Ruth yelling at me every time I ordered a coffee. Since Ruth only liked tea drinkers, I had to submit to abuse every time I wanted a latte. All I had to do for coffee at Cup O’Cake was read a book.

“We’re in a hurry,” Lucy said, adjusting her hair. “Make it to go.”

“No problem!” Felicia was still smiling. “It will take just a second.”

Instead of a counter, there was a series of tables with assorted pastries and a large table with espresso machines.

“Give her the apple spiced latte, Felicia,” an old lady standing at one of the tables told her. She was around my grandmother’s age, smelled like White Shoulders and chocolate, and had an air of fatigue about her.

“How are you, Lucy?” she asked. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

Lucy looked at her out of the corner of her eye while she reapplied her lipstick in a hand mirror.

“Hi, Mavis. Running late. You know Gladie Burger?”

“Zelda Burger’s granddaughter?” Mavis asked.

Everybody knew my grandmother, but I was pretty new in town, and I didn’t know everybody. In fact, I didn’t even know about Cup O’Cake.

“The matchmaker,” Lucy said.

Mavis nodded. “Sure. Sure. You live in this town awhile, you hear about Zelda.”

Felicia handed me a red-and-blue to-go cup and a red-and-blue polka-dotted box. “A little surprise for you,” she said, with a wink toward the box. “See you tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I said, smiling. Sweat rolled down my back. I was having flashbacks to high school—I had dropped out. Suddenly the book felt like it weighed twenty pounds.

I tried to hand Felicia a five-dollar bill. Mavis waved it away. “On the house,” she said. “First-time customers get special treatment.”

Lucy pushed me out of the store. “We’re really late now,” she grumbled, trying to open the locked car door. I unlocked it for her and took a sip of the latte.

“Holy crap, this is the best thing ever,” I said. “It’s not coffee. It’s coffee candy.”

“Drive!”

Halfway there, I convinced Lucy to open the box for me. She was afraid I would slow down to eat whatever fabulous thing they had given me, but I assured her I could eat while doing just about any activity.

It
was
fabulous. Some kind of apple cupcake with a crumble-icing concoction that almost made me crash the car when I took a bite. Even better, there were three cupcakes.

“How come I never heard of this place?” I asked.

“It’s pretty new,” Lucy said. “A couple years. Mavis Jones is a doll. Felicia’s a little odd, though—with all those books, I mean. But Mavis doesn’t seem to mind. They’re there all the time. You can buy cupcakes late into the night. They live upstairs in two of
the apartments, and they’ll open up for anyone with a craving.”

It was dangerous information. What would I do with the knowledge that I could have coffee candy and cupcakes anytime I wanted? “I won’t fit through the door,” I said. “Let’s throw the rest out the window. My waistband is digging into my belly.”

“Too late, Gladie. You ate all of them.”

UNCLE HARRY
lived farther up in the mountains, in a relatively new gated community of McMansions. His house was one of the biggest, with its own gate and security guard. It wasn’t anything like Cannes. There was nothing quaint or old about it, but it was gorgeous.

We were stopped at Harry’s personal security shack in front of his house. The guard didn’t seem too happy to see us. “We’re expected,” Lucy said, leaning toward my open window.

“You one of them?” the security guard asked, gesturing to our right. A small group of elderly people stood on the sidewalk. They were talking among themselves and looking at their watches.

“We’re expected!” Lucy said again. She was clearly agitated and, I thought, not above taking on the guard.

“We should be on your list,” I pointed out.

We were. He waved us in, and that’s when we saw the two police cars and another car that I was more than familiar with.

“What the hell?” Lucy asked. “Should I call my attorney?”

Uncle Harry was standing on his front porch, surrounded by police. A very tall old lady stood over him, wagging her finger in his face. Uncle Harry appeared unconcerned as he took long drags of his cigar and blew them out at her.