Macdeath (An Ivy Meadows Mystery Book 1) (6 page)

CHAPTER 11

The Milk of Human Kindness

Being late to work meant fewer tables and less money. I tried to make up for it by being especially perky, an attribute that often resulted in bigger tips. “Here you are, milady.” I gave a little curtsey to my Olive Garden customers before moving the gigantic bowl of salad to make room for their gigantic plates of food.

“Mi-who?” my customer said, blinking up at me. Her eyes were heavily lined in navy blue. Her mascara matched.

“Hey, you callin’ my girlfriend names?”

That from the guy across from her whose T-shirt and gut spoke of his affection for Pabst Blue Ribbon.

“Honey, it ended with lady. I think it was a compliment,” she said.

Her companion poked me with an enormous breadstick. “You complimentin’ my girlfriend? You like girls or somethin’?”

“No. Sorry. I’m in a play,
Macbeth
, and...”

“Mac-who? MacGyver? They bringin’ him back on TV?”

“She said, ‘Macbeth,’ honey. It’s Shakespeare, I think.” His date smiled at me, her eyes crinkling up like navy blue spiders.

I nodded at her as I backed away from the table.

“Oh, Shakespeare,” Mr. PBR said. “Awfully fancy for a waitress, aren’t ya?”

“Olive.” Sue, my manager, had come up behind me.

Everyone here still used my old name. It amused them to tell people I was the original Olive. Sometimes they made jokes about playing in my garden, too, but usually not in front of the customers.

“I need to speak to you,” Sue said. “Now.”

“Enjoy your Garlic-Herb Mediterranean Chicken and Five-Cheese Lasagna.” I smiled at my customers and followed Sue into the kitchen, my sneakers squeaking on the linoleum.

Once through the swinging doors, Sue turned to me. Uh oh. She had a frownie crease between her eyes. “You were late.”

I stayed in Simon’s dressing room too long. “I know, but—”

She held up a hand. “I wasn’t finished. You were late
again
. And this theater schedule of yours.” Sue shook her head. I had needed to take off most evenings and weekends during the rehearsal period, and still needed dinners off most nights through the end of the run.

“I won’t be late again.” I crossed my heart. “And I could really help out once the show’s over. I could cover every vacation, every single one, and...” I stopped. Sue was staring hard at my face, her frownie crease deepened to a trench. “Olive,” she said, “What’s that white powder on your nose?”

Damn Altoid dust.

So. It won’t be Olive’s Garden any longer. I unlocked my car in the parking lot, careful not to touch any sun-heated metal. I needed to figure out my next step, but I didn’t want to think while driving, and I didn’t want to go home. I couldn’t think in my apartment, too many dishes and phone calls and half-read books calling to me. And it was hot. My last electric bill was a hundred and fifty bucks—a hundred and fifty bucks—for my dollhouse-sized apartment. I kept the thermostat at ninety now and hoped for a monsoon or a miracle to cool things down.

I ended up at Toyko Express. It was cool, pretty quiet, and they piped in classical music, which helps you to think clearly, or so I read in a doctor’s office magazine. I ordered a fish sushi tray and a cup of green tea, took it to an empty booth, and thought about my predicament. I would get paid for the play, but how far does $500 get you? That’s right, five hundred bucks for four weeks of rehearsal and a four-week run. And that’s not atypical for a non-union actor. Except for the big stars, we actors are a pretty poor lot.

I looked into my cup and swirled around the tea dust, hoping for a tealeaf reading or something. I wondered if I should have talked Sue into letting me stay on, if I’d made a mistake, choosing theater over a paying job with good tips. I wondered for all of five seconds. I loved the theater, had ever since I saw my first show, a children’s theater production of Dracula. I didn’t care that the bats were rubber and the accents fake, because it was happening, right then, right in front of me. I could touch Dracula if I wanted to. In fact I did; my mother should never have let me sit in the first row. No, I had definitely made the right choice to feed my soul. Now if I could just feed the rest of me.

“Olive? Got your message.”

Uncle Bob stood next to my table, balancing a tray with two steaming rice bowls and a super-sized soft drink crowded onto it. I’d texted him before I left the Garden. With everything going on, I wanted to be with someone who loved me.

“You doin’ okay?”

“Better now.” I was. My uncle always made me feel better. Even his Hawaiian shirts made me smile.

“You wanna talk about it? About Simon?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to go there. I wanted to sit and eat with family.

My uncle sat down heavily opposite me and immediately started tucking into his dinner. He took a bite from one rice bowl, then took a bite from the other. I didn’t have to ask why. He had a teriyaki beef bowl, and a teriyaki salmon bowl. Bob’s a big guy with a family history of bad tickers. His doctor told him to eat less beef and more fish. Bob couldn’t give up the cow, so he decided that eating this way counterbalanced things. Only once did I try to talk to him about it. He just pointed at my Diet Coke and three slices of Meat-Lover’s pizza.

“Hey,” I said. “Did you know pandas do an average of eight handstands a day?”

“Ha!” Uncle Bob’s eyes lit up. He loved trivia. “I just heard about a dog who can read.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Print and cursive.” He chuckled. “Panda handstands. Ha!”

He smiled at me. He was grizzled and gray and not a little overweight, but he had a killer smile. When he didn’t have food stuck in his teeth.

“Thought you had a shift at the Garden,” he said between bites, dropping a bit of rice from his chopsticks. That was another weight-loss strategy of his. He read somewhere that people who use chopsticks eat less. Judging from the amount of rice on the table, I’d say that was correct.

“Olive’s Garden is no longer.”

“Somebody finally torch the damn place?”

Bob was no fan of Americanized Italian food. Americanized Japanese food seemed to be okay.

“I got fired.”

“Want me to torch the place?”

I loved this man. “It’s tempting, but they’d probably just rebuild it bigger.”

Both our faces fell at the idea of an even larger Olive Garden.

“So, your job at the theater?”

I recognized this as one of my uncle’s PI tricks. Ask an open-ended question and see what you get. My uncle watched me, a question in his eyes and teriyaki sauce on his chin.

I wasn’t giving in. “It’s a great theater company.”

“So it pays pretty good?”

Hoping to distract him, I pointed to the sauce on his chin. He wiped it and continued.

“Olive...”

No distracting Bob when he was on the scent. He was a private detective, after all. “You know your folks would help you out.”

“No.”

My parents lived in Prescott, a mountain town about two hours away. I wasn’t really on speaking terms with them. Oh, I let them know I was alive and well, but that was about it.

“Olive, I know how you feel. Your mom sometimes just says things.”

Things that cut me to the quick. Neither Mom nor Dad could talk to me without bringing up Cody, even though it’d been more than ten years since the accident. No. I wouldn’t ask them for help. Ever.

“Not going there, Uncle Bob. Discussion closed.” I started stacking empty containers on my tray.

“Hey, hey, hey, no need to rush off.” He threw his hands in the air, as if to say, “I surrender.” “Sit,” he said. “I’ll buy you some more raw fish.”

I sat.

“I’ll sit, but I’m full.” I folded my napkin. I folded it again. And again. It was beginning to look like origami. I wondered if there was any money in origami.

“You know, I thought you were pretty good in that last show I saw. What was it called? The one where you got married and died?”

“Steel Magnolias.”

“Yeah. You were good.”

I shrugged a modest thanks.

“You know, I could use someone with your acting skills.”

I didn’t follow.

“You know, sometimes it’s easier to get people to talk to you if you can fit in, seem like their kind of people.”

Still not following.

“And sometimes I need to get information outta someone. It’d be great to have a cute blonde...”

I loved Uncle Bob.

“To get them talking. All aboveboard, though. You see what I mean?”

“Not really.”

“What I’m sayin’ is I could use some help with the business, my PI business. I’d pay.”

Now I did see. I saw through the loud shirt and teriyaki-ed chin to see a big beautiful guy who cared about me. I stood up. Uncle Bob looked a little worried he’d somehow offended me. I walked around the booth to stand beside him. I put my arm around his neck and kissed him on his stubbly gray cheek.

“When do you want me to start work?”

CHAPTER 12

A Peerless Kinsman

I was really happy to have the new job, for several reasons:

1. I needed money.
   
2. Uncle Bob said he could work around my schedule.
   
3. I loved my uncle. Not only would it be great to work with him, but I really wanted to help him out however I could.
   
4. Something about Simon’s death was bothering me. By working with a PI, maybe I could figure out how to investigate what really happened.
   

This last reason I kept to myself.

The next day, Uncle Bob and I met at his house to talk about my new responsibilities over a late breakfast of chili dog nachos. The thought of Simon, which had been lodged somewhere between my gut and my throat, had moved up to my head, rattling around like a small pea where my brain used to be.

I decided to see if I could talk away the clattering in my head. “Could someone commit suicide by drinking himself to death?”

“It could happen.” Uncle Bob expertly segmented a grapefruit with a small knife—the diet portion of his meal. “Though most people who kill themselves with alcohol combine it with drugs.” He slid me a look. “What’s more likely is the drinking led to impulsive behavior, like taking a few more drinks and then a few more, until it was too many.”

I shook my head. “I just don’t think Simon would do that.”

“Your boyfriend told me Simon was drunk at rehearsal one night.”

“He was not drun—” Wait. Boyfriend? Boyfriend!

Trying to act casual, I wiped my chin and belched. That seemed casual enough. “Drunk. So, you and Jason talk much that night I was here?”

“Yeah, some.” Bob licked the chili juice off his fingers and pushed himself away from the kitchen table.

I reached for a toothpick from the shot glass in the middle of the table, even though nothing was stuck in my teeth. “What about?”

“You know, stuff. The D-backs, the Suns, you.”

“Really?” The toothpick actually flew from my mouth.

“Gotcha.” Uncle Bob smiled a gentle smile. “No, hon. Not really. Guys don’t talk about that stuff. You ever heard me talk about a woman?”

“No.”

“You think I don’t like women?”

I didn’t even have to think about it. Uncle Bob’s favorite place to eat was Hooters.

“You think I never had a girlfriend?”

Now here was something interesting. I considered my uncle, dressed in a green Hawaiian shirt with palm trees scattered across it. “I don’t know,” I said finally.

“Well, maybe someday you’ll find out.” He rose and took his plate to the sink. “But it won’t be from me talking about it.”

He patted me on the head as he passed, something he’d been doing since I was a kid. I had never been able to get him to stop. I knew he meant well. “How long can you work today?”

“Pretty much the whole day. Call for the show isn’t until 6:30.”

The theater had changed today’s scheduled matinee to an evening performance to give Edward time to work with Bill. I hoped it would help. It was an enormous amount of work for the box office.

“I’ll take you down to the office and get you set up. I got some photos I need downloaded and filed,” said Uncle Bob. “Plus a bunch of reports I need written up.”

Uncle Bob washed the breakfast dishes. He really was a catch, in spite of his outward appearance. A lot of women would probably overlook his stubbly face and fifty extra pounds as long as he cooked breakfast and cleaned up after himself. Maybe he did have a girlfriend somewhere.

“Hey,” I said, standing up suddenly. “You distracted me.”

“Yeah?” said Uncle Bob, not turning around from the sink full of soapy water.

“Yeah. You got me thinking about work instead of the women in your life, and...”

I wracked my brain. What had we been talking about before that?

“And...Jason.” Score one for my pea-sized brain.

“That,” said Bob, “is a PI trick. Distraction. You’ll be using that someday.”

“What for?”

“Sometimes it’s to have a chance to look around—you know, to see if somebody has anything in their office or on their person that tells us something. Sometimes, it’s to get them talking, so we can find out what they know without them realizing it.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” The pea snapped to attention. “Hey, you just did it again.”

“And sometimes,” said Uncle Bob, “it’s useful when you want your niece to stop thinking and start working.” He walked over and patted me on the head again, depositing a few soap bubbles on my hair. “Time to get going.”

Hmm. I got up, poured myself a cup of coffee for the road, and reached inside the fridge for the milk carton. “Hey,” I said. “Did you hear that cows with names give more milk than cows without?”

“Really?” said my uncle, drying his hands.

Score.

“Yeah,” I said, sitting back down at the table. “They found that—”

“Good try,” said my uncle. “But you can’t distract me. Let’s get to work.” He grabbed his keys off a hook near the door.

“Just wanted to give it a try.” I followed my uncle into the hundred-degree October day, wondering how I could use this PI trick to investigate Simon’s death, sort out my unnamed fears, and calm my little pea brain.