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

“True. Where are you going with this?”

“Even if you keep Walter until two, that’s a
long shift for him, isn’t it?”

“And?” I had no idea what his point was.

“Let me be your hands,” Doc said. “You can
tell me everything you want me to do and I’ll do it.”

“Why would you want to do that?” I asked,
confused. “Don’t you have something better to do? Don’t you have a
job?”

“At the moment, no. I’m on leave.”

“Leave? You’re still in the Army?”

“No, I’m taking a break, sorting things out
for myself before I start a new job.”

For a moment, I wondered if there even was a
job. Maybe Doc was one of those soldiers, back from the war, who
have trouble re-adjusting to civilian life.

“I start on the fifteenth at an insurance
company just outside of Springfield, as a claims adjuster,” he
explained. “I decided to just spend a couple of weeks wandering
around until I have to report for work.”

“And you want to waste your time helping
me?”

“Hey, forget I asked. You don’t want my help,
you don’t want it.” That wall popped up between us yet again and a
dark cloud seemed to hover above Doc’s head. The horizon looked
like it was about to get stormy.

“That wasn’t what I meant, Doc. You’ll have
to forgive me. I’m not used to people being so nice to me, and to
be honest, I’m not really good at needing people.” That popped out
unexpectedly. I had no intention of explaining myself to this
stranger. After all, I wasn’t even sure I could trust him. What if
he was lying to me? What if he was dangerous?

“Used to being in control?” he shot back.

“Actually, I guess I am. It seems like every
time I give it up, I get screwed,” I admitted.

“I know the feeling.”

“Look, if you really want to help me, you’re
going to have to let me pay you somehow, so I don’t feel obligated
to you. And please don’t get mad at me. It’s just the way I am,” I
confessed. “I like balance in my life. You want money? Free meals?
What can I give you in exchange for your help, which I actually
need?”

There was a long silence from Doc’s side of
the van. His eyes never strayed from the road. I knew he wasn’t
ignoring me. He seemed to be thinking. At last, he cleared his
throat.

“Okay, here’s how you can repay me. Teach me
to roast coffee.”

“What?”

“That’s what I want from you. I want to learn
how to roast my own coffee and I want to play around with the
beans, mix my own blends.”

As I sat there, I was stunned, thinking that
this was almost too good to be true. Here I was, in need of a
helpful pair of hands, and the guy only wanted to learn how to
roast coffee? And I just happened to need to roast some beans
tomorrow. What was the catch? Was he planning to open his own
coffee shop? Is that why he wandered into Cady’s Cakes? Was I about
to get screwed by a devilish competitor? He seemed to read my
mind.

“I really do have a job with an insurance
company,” he assured me. “And as to why I want to learn how to
roast my own coffee, I was in a coffee house in Tanzania one time,
a long time ago, and I had the best damned cup of coffee I ever
had. I’ve been to a lot of coffee places since then, but I’ve never
had anything quite like it. I keep thinking that if I have a chance
to play around with the beans, I can make the same blend.”

“Why not just ask the owner of the coffee
house?” I wondered.

“I tried that,” Doc admitted. “The guy told
me it was a secret recipe.”

“Did you try his competitors’ coffee?”

“Totally different from his. I just know he
did something different with his beans. I even went so far as to
ask the guy if I could buy some of his beans, but he refused.” Doc
sounded disgusted. “It’s just coffee! It’s not like it’s the
formula for rocket fuel!”

“And you don’t like anyone telling you you
can’t have what you want, is that it?”

Doc glared at me, looking through those thick
lenses, before shaking his head. And then he growled.

“Are you calling me stubborn, Cady?”

“Are you?” I inquired.

“Well, I might be,” he grumbled. “But that’s
not necessarily a bad thing.”

“I didn’t say it was, Doc. As for the
coffeemaker, my best guess is he knew he had a winning formula. So,
when you finally hit on your own version of it, you’ll probably
want to keep it to yourself as well.”

“Does that mean you’ll teach me?”

“It does. I’ll even go one better for you.
You pinpoint where you were in Tanzania and I’ll try to guess what
the basic formula for the region is, using the local beans and what
the roasters generally add. And I can order whatever green beans
you think you might need from my supplier. If you’re any good at
creating blends, maybe we’ll offer it up to customers at the
shop.”

“Deal,” Doc said, satisfaction written all
over his face.

Chapter Six --

“Cady, how many more of these am I making?”
Darlene wiped her wet hands on her apron on the following
afternoon. She had rolled out another three dozen of the shortbread
wedding bells, carefully placing them on the parchment-lined baking
sheets. She had agreed to stay on until four to help us with the
wedding prep. It was already quarter to four, and I wanted to give
her enough time to clean up her area.

“That should be enough for today,” I told
her. She seemed relieved. Darlene was pushing sixty, had a husband
who got home at three-thirty from the garage, and she was used to
doing the early shift. I didn’t want to overwork her or disrupt her
normal routine.

It had been a really long day for all of us.
Carole had been a brick, coming in again to help. I noticed a
couple of times through the day that some of our male customers had
wanted to chat with her. Wouldn’t it be nice for her to be someone
other than Daisy and Dylan’s mom, just for a change? Heaven knows
Carole was an attractive woman. The short haircut she sported made
her look like a young Audrey Hepburn, especially now that she had
some color in her cheeks. I thought it was good that she had had a
chance to get out in public, rubbing elbows with the coffee crowd.
Maybe working at home was a little too isolating for her. She
really did need to meet new people, especially after that
ex-husband managed to be such a louse. She told me she could stay
if we needed her to handle the cash register, but Dylan was still
too young to be a latch key kid and he would soon get off the
bus.

Doc had also made himself useful, filling in
here and there, doing the heavy lifting, cleaning, and even managed
to reorganize the baking supplies.

At quarter to five, Daisy bagged the trash in
the shop and hauled it out the back door, heading for the waste bin
shared by the tenants in the strip mall. She was gone quite a long
time. Too long. What should have taken her two minutes seemed to
take forever. Doc noticed my eyes on the back door.

“Something wrong?” He preparing to mix
another batch of cookie dough, his ingredients spread out across
the stainless steel prep table.

“Daisy took out the trash. She hasn’t come
back yet.”

“Maybe she’s calling a friend. You know how
teenagers are, Cady.” I could tell he was trying to reassure me.
The only problem was the temperature outside was chilly, too cold
for Daisy to hang around while chatting or texting, especially
since she didn’t bother to put on a coat.

“I don’t know.” Something wasn’t right. Don’t
ask me how I knew that, but I did.

“Want me to go look?” Doc peered at me
through those glasses, saw the concern on my face, and didn’t
bother to wait for my answer. I led him to the back door, planning
to point him in the direction of the Dumpster. The building’s
spotlights cut through the growing darkness and cast a sharp beam
across the parking lot, where two figures wrestled in its glow. We
both saw the scene at the same time.

“Damn!” Doc uttered between clenched teeth. I
saw red. Something in me just seemed to explode and I was in motion
instantly.

“Get off her, you bastard!” I ran out into
the parking lot, slipping and sliding across the black ice forming
as the early spring night turned chilly. “You let her go right
now!”

The masked man turned towards me, his hands
around Daisy’s throat. I could see pale circles of his skin in the
cutouts of the mask. He was probably a head taller than me, but I
didn’t care. I was ready to launch myself through the air and yank
him off that teenage girl when Doc flew past me. It took only three
or four seconds for the masked assailant to realize his plan was
futile. He let go of Daisy, who dropped to the ground, clutching
her neck, and then took off, hotly pursued by a man who could, it
seems, run very fast. Doc probably would have caught the bastard if
it hadn’t been for the dark pickup truck that came squealing across
the parking lot, its high beams blinding him. The masked man jumped
into the bed of the truck and the driver sped off.

“Daisy!” I threw my arms around the shivering
teenager, ignoring the pain as my aching muscles protested. “Oh,
are you okay?”

“Why?” she cried. “He tried to choke me!
Cady, why did he do that?”

“I couldn’t see the plate,” Doc announced,
frustrated. “They put tape over it!”

For the second time in three days, I went to
the emergency room with Daisy, only this time she was the patient.
Doc and I sat with her while we waited for Lonnie to bring Carole
to the Shoreline Medical Center. There were dark bruises on the
teenager’s neck, and a couple of police officers wanted to take her
statement.

“Could you two please excuse us for a few
minutes? We have to photograph the bruises,” a male officer told
us. “And we’d like to ask you a few questions when we’re done, so
stick around.”

Doc and I waited out in the hallway, pacing
as the minutes passed. It wasn’t a particularly busy night, thank
heaven. We saw Carole at the admitting desk, looking worried as she
sought information on her daughter. We led her to the exam room and
then resumed our vigil in the hallway.

“I have a question, Cady,” said Doc in a low
voice. “You kind of went off half-cocked in that parking lot. What
did you think you were going to do when you caught up with Daisy’s
assailant?”

I shrugged. How could I explain what drove me
to do something that bold? It was pure adrenaline and sheer terror.
It was my own demons spurring me into action.

“You seemed very determined to stop the
attack. That was a big risk to take. You must have a reason for
reacting that way.”

I looked at the man beside me. He didn’t make
eye contact, and I got the impression all of his energy was focused
on listening to me. With a deep breath inflating my lungs, I slowly
let it all out. I hesitated, not really sure I wanted to tell Doc
what drove me to be so reckless earlier this evening. But in the
end, I felt like I owed him an explanation.

“When my mom was dying in the hospital, I
went to visit her one night with Aunt Pinkie. Just before visiting
hours were over, my mom and Pinkie wanted to talk privately.
She...she wasn’t doing well and it was becoming apparent that she
didn’t have long to live. Mom wanted to talk about her funeral.
Aunt Pinkie told me to wait in the lobby, but I was too upset. I
stepped outside, trying to compose myself.” I could still remember
the attack -- the terror that filled every cell of my body, the
feel of the knife blade against my neck, the smell of his breath.
Even now, my heart beat faster at the memory. All these years
later, I rushed through the details, trying to pretend it no longer
mattered. “It was over in less than five minutes and it changed my
life forever. As soon as he was done, someone found me. I spent
years wondering why that woman couldn’t have just walked my way
sooner. Why me? Why did it have to happen?”

“That explains a lot,” Doc said softly.

“Does it?” I wiped away a tear, thinking
about how similar Daisy’s situation was to mine. “For years, I
suffered from panic attacks. Everyone chalked it up to unresolved
grief over my mother’s death. She died the next day. The truth was
that I was terrified he would come back, that somehow he would find
me. I was already prepared to say goodbye to my mother. I wasn’t
prepared to be raped.”

“That makes sense, Cady. Rape is a traumatic
experience. Coming just before your mother’s death must have made
it all so much harder.”

“It did. Poor Aunt Pinkie felt so guilty,
like she had let me down by not being there, even though she was
trying to help my mother.”

“And at the time she was supposed to help you
the most, she couldn’t prevent someone else from causing you
grievous harm.”

“Oh,” I sighed. “I wonder if I’ll have
nightmares again. You know Carole has cancer? I sort of took Daisy
under my wing the way Aunt Pinkie took care of me.”

“There’s a way to work through the
nightmares, you know. You rehearse what you would do if the same
thing ever happened to you again. It’s a way of empowering
yourself. It’s not a do-over, but a do-better. It’s a way to cope
with the pain. The less vulnerable you feel, the better able you
are to react in similar circumstances.”

I nodded in response, thinking that’s what I
did, long after the pain dissipated, when the fear remained. I
played and replayed that attack in my head over and over again. At
first, I hated myself for my bad timing. For a while, I was almost
mad at my mother and Aunt Pinkie for sending me away when I was
feeling so much grief at the prospect of losing my mother. And then
I was really mad at the man who took away my trust in humanity.

“What made you think something was wrong,
that Daisy was in danger tonight?” Doc wanted to know. I couldn’t
really put it into words, so I shrugged.

“I just did.”

“No. You knew she should have been back. You
knew how long it should take her to put the trash into the bin and
walk back. Something made you worry.”