Charleston with a Clever Cougar: A Dance with Danger Mystery #6 (9 page)

“Doc, can I get some help with this?” I
asked, my hand on the roaster.

“No problem. What’s the plan?”

I went over all the details of how the
machine worked and what to watch for, and then I gave him a formula
for the two-pound batches we would roast over the next several
hours. He would add the green coffee beans in the proportions I
gave him and each batch would go through an eighteen-minute
process. If we did it continually for the next four hours, we’d end
up with about twelve pounds of beans, enough to last about two days
at Cady’s Cakes.

“You know, you could sell your coffee in
little bags, probably make some decent money,” he told me after he
complete three rounds with the roasting machine.

“Enjoying the process, Doc?” I had to laugh.
I could see he was getting into it. No doubt he was still in search
of that perfect cup of coffee. By the time we had the Henslacker
wedding cake in the oven, baking, Doc was even more
enthusiastic.

“You could sell the beans, Cady, in little
bags with your store logo. You could probably turn a good profit on
it.”

“The coffee is really just a sideline for
me,” I explained. “I’m really a baker, Doc.”

“But still....”

We had our back-up cakes ready to go into the
freezer by two-thirty. Normally, I didn’t ever freeze my cakes, but
I needed to hedge my bets for the wedding, just in case we faced
another disaster. If I didn’t need them, I would frost them and
sell them as individual cakes or slices in the shop after the
wedding. Tomorrow, we would bake the actual wedding cake I would
use, frost it, and come Saturday morning, it would be decorated and
delivered to the Saybrook Point Inn.

“Daisy, how are you?” I heard Mrs. Ruttinger
call out from the front of the shop. “I heard what happened. I’m so
sorry you had that terrible experience, dear.”

The elderly lady’s kind voice floated through
the air like a warm hug and soon several other voices were raised
in agreement. It seemed to bring comfort to the teenage girl that
so many town folk commiserated with her plight. I poked my head out
in time to see the group conversing at the little table where
Dorothy Ruttiger sat with her afternoon cup of English tea, a
weekday ritual at Cady’s Cakes. I went back to the kitchen, knowing
that Daisy would find me soon enough.

I was showing Doc how to run the commercial
dishwasher when I felt a hand on my good shoulder.

“Guess what. Rowan McGowen asked me if I
wanted to be in his study group for biology.” Daisy had a satisfied
smile on her face. The handsome boy was constantly being chased by
the majority of girls at the high school.

“That’s good,” I told her, returning the
smile.

“It gets better. Jacinda Olav got really mad
at him for inviting me.”

“And that’s good because....” I wasn’t sure
where she was going with that.

“He told her to stop being such a bitch and
that’s when she tried to slap him!”

By now Doc was leaning back against the
counter, fascinated by the teenage tales of high school angst.
Walter had to work around him. Doc didn’t seem to care. He was
focused on the girl.

“Please tell me he wasn’t dumb enough to hit
her back,” Doc wanted to know.

“Oh, she didn’t even get to hit him. Rowan
grabbed her hand, but Mrs. Pazzo saw the whole thing and now
Jacinda has detention for two whole weeks!” It was hard to ignore
the glee in Daisy’s voice. She had finally been vindicated. The
teen queen who ruled the halls with an iron fist had gotten her
comeuppance. “And she’s out of the study group!”

Leave it to the young to bounce back. I
realized how different my experience was as a teenager compared
with what Daisy had gone through. All around her were adults who
looked out for her and protected her. We were not going to let her
suffer, no matter what the purpose of the attack, be it an
assailant at night in the parking lot behind the shop or a teenage
bully who wanted to get rid of her competition for the teenage
heartthrob in biology class. A little part of me suddenly felt a
pang of jealousy. Why not me? Why couldn’t I have been the lucky
one, instead of being the girl brutalized by the man with the bad
breath and cruel hands? Why did I have to carry this shame with me
everywhere I went? Because I earned it. Because I didn’t fight hard
enough. I didn’t run fast enough. Because I failed to get away. As
soon as I felt those feelings, I pushed back, trying desperately to
keep them at bay. There was a world of difference between what
happened last night and what happened all those years ago. Daisy
didn’t deserve what happened to her last night. She was just a kid
taking out the trash. But then, neither did I all those years ago.
I was just a kid saying goodbye to my dying mother. I was just
waiting for Aunt Pinkie to take me home with her. Not my own home.
Her home. A place I never really ever felt I belonged. I should
have been with my mother, but she got sick and died. I should have
been with my father, but he was killed in the war. So many reasons
for heartache -- that assault was just the rotten cherry on a
horrible sundae. All I had ever wanted as a kid was to have a real
family, my real family, even before I was touched that night by a
man who left his indelible mark on my soul. It was one moment in
time, but it had forever wrenched me out of line and cut me loose
from the pack. I was destined to drift through life, unable to
anchor my heart to any other. I didn’t even want to have kids, for
fear of somehow causing them the same kind of pain I had
experienced. Would I always be alone?

Looking back on the events of that night, I
could see it wasn’t a lack of trying on the part of Aunt Pinkie, my
mother or even Roger. Aunt Pinkie was trying to comfort my mother
as she lay dying that night. Roger was thousands of miles away, on
his submarine, unable to come home and be with us. And I was aching
for what I knew was to come, my mother’s final breath. My assailant
took pleasure in adding to my burden of pain, using the cover of
darkness for his evil act, but it was because he saw me in the
light that I became his target. Coming out of the hospital, a girl
alone and crying. What kind of monster attacks such a wretched
soul?

“You okay?” It was Doc, speaking softly into
my ear. “A little flashback?”

Chapter Nine --

“Mmm....” I didn’t trust myself to speak.
Instead, I surreptitiously wiped away a stray tear. Time to pick
myself up with my bootstraps, before I completely crumbled under
the weight of the past. I headed back into the office cubicle to
compose myself. It must have been the trip to the emergency room
last night that triggered all these memories. I still could
remember Aunt Pinkie and the hospital security guards escorting me
into the brightly lit room, the doctor gently checking me over for
injuries, giving me a shot, probably penicillin. He was kind,
apologetic. All the adults were. They kept telling me it wasn’t my
fault. But if it wasn’t my fault, whose was it? Someone had to be
responsible. Someone let that man do horrible things to me.

“Only child?” Doc was watching me from the
doorway and his voice startled me.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” I
wanted to know.

“Not much in the way of family after your
mother died. Not much in the way of support.”

“I did okay. Aunt Pinkie was a great comfort.
She took very good care of me,” I said defensively.

“Of course she did. But she was only one
person, Cady.”

“What’s your point, Doc?” I snapped, feeling
like I was under the microscope.

“You’re not used to people helping you.
You’re not used to having anyone really do for you. I saw that look
on your face. I just want you to know that what happened back when
you were a kid was terrible. It shouldn’t have happened, but it
did. It won’t ever completely disappear. But what you learned was
real. That’s what drove you to the door last night, to check on
Daisy. You prevented her from having her childhood snatched away
from her. You did a good thing.”

“Sure.” I put a hand up to my brow, trying to
keep Doc from looking into my eyes.

“The pain of a traumatic event never really
goes away, Cady, until you confront what happened to you, you mourn
it, and you make your peace.”

“Like you?” I snapped. Did Doc really know so
much about the subject? He was acting like he was an expert. I just
wasn’t sure I wanted a lecture from someone who had never walked
the walk. It’s hard to explain how hard it is to get the stink of
an assault off of you, no matter how much soap you use or how long
you stay under the water. Long after the sweat of my assailant was
washed down the drain, I could still smell him on me every once in
awhile, like when I showed up at the hospital emergency room twice
in a week. I felt like I was reliving the horror of those days, and
most of all, that hole in my heart because my mother was gone and I
was alone.

“It’s the only way you can go on living.
Otherwise, you’re just going through the motions. My last tour of
duty, I lost twenty guys. I just couldn’t save them from their
catastrophic wounds. I couldn’t patch up their broken bodies. Two
of them bled out on me as I stitched them up. I took me awhile to
understand that their injuries were bigger than my skills. Even a
team of surgeons wouldn’t have been able to save those boys.
Doesn’t mean I’m okay with it.”

“But don’t you ever get mad that it
happened?” I searched those green eyes for answers.

“I learned a long time ago that life isn’t
fair, Cady. You do the best you can with what you’ve got. In a
perfect world, every kid would have a shiny bike and ice cream
coming out the ying yang and two parents who adore her. But that’s
not always what life turns out to be, is it? When you look back,
you have to look not only at the bad, Cady, but at the good. Those
experiences make you the person you are, even as horrible as they
are. The answers aren’t always pretty, but if we can’t find
ourselves in what we do as people, we’re just disconnected from
what makes us human. That guy took something precious from you when
he attacked you, but he probably wasn’t even thinking about that.
He was in search of someone to hurt because he felt justified in
hurting another human being. It doesn’t necessarily matter why he
did what he did. It’s enough that he did it. But when you look
back, see what really made you vulnerable. And when you do, maybe,
just maybe, you’ll stop being angry with yourself for not
preventing it. Maybe, just maybe, you didn’t have the skills to
save yourself.”

“What?” Stunned, I sat back in my chair.

“You’ve spent decades beating the young Cady
up for not being smart enough or fast enough to get away. Now no
one ever gets close enough to you to actually hurt you because you
think that’s what will keep you safe. You have a sweet candy shell
around a soft middle, but that shell is pretty hard and pretty
thick. That middle is the one place no one ever really goes, isn’t
it? You’re kind, you’re good, but you’re alone, and you like it
that way.”

“How...how dare you!” I sputtered, wanting to
push Doc into the street, maybe even under a bus. Here was a man
who just showed up one day, and before I knew it, he was baking my
cakes and roasting my coffee beans and saving Daisy from a man who
wanted to do her harm.

“How dare I? I dare because I’m the pot
calling the kettle black. Takes one to know one. And I’m still
working it out.” And with that, Doc turned around and went back to
the kitchen, leaving me dumbstruck in my office chair.

By six, the kitchen was all cleaned up and
ready for Walter when he arrived in the wee hours of Friday
morning. The coffee beans were in their airtight containers, ready
to be ground up. Daisy had decorated the wedding bell cookies and
they were in their own boxes, waiting to be bagged for Saturday.
And Doc was nowhere to be seen.

“How are we going to get home?” I wondered
aloud to the only other person in the shop.

“He said we should chill out, he’d be
back.”

“Oh.”

“Did he say where he was going, Daze?”

“Nope.” She was busy texting her friend.
“Vicki says hi.”

“Tell Vicki I said hi back,” I told her,
peering out the front window. There were a few people on foot.
There was a light rain coming down, leaving the night shrouded in
mist. The day had been warm and now the temperature was dropping.
Across the way, the lights went out in Ben Johnson’s accounting
office. I watched him lock up before he strode down the street to
his car, his tweed fedora keeping his head dry.

At ten after six, I considered calling a
local cab, but decided to give Doc a few more minutes. It was just
as well. At six-fifteen, he was banging at the front door, a large
package in his arms.

“Sorry,” he told me, squeezing past me as he
came in. “I had some trouble picking it up at the UPS office.”

“What is that?” I wondered.

“The flowers for the wedding cake. The UPS
guy was late last night, so he left the slip on the front
door.”

I had completely forgotten about the package
with the gumpaste decorations. How had that happened? Daisy had
been attacked.

“Thank you, Doc,” I told him.

“Don’t thank me, Cady. It was Walter who
pointed it out to me. He found the slip when he got here this
morning.” I made a mental note to thank my baker tomorrow. “Where
do you want these?”

We took them into the kitchen to inspect
them, on the off chance I would have to order more if we had a box
of broken decorations. I was pleasantly surprised. All of the
delicate flower sprays looked fabulous. The Henslacker cake was
sure to be a hit.

“Shall we pick up pizzas on the way home?”
Doc asked.

“My mom made dinner already,” Daisy sighed.
“Fish. Ugh. Boy, pizza would be really good tonight.”