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  TRIPLE SHOT

  A Maggy Thorsen Mystery

  by

  Sandra Balzo

  Copyright © 2011 by Sandra Balzo

  Chapter One

  ‘Great hinds may stink alike,’ Sarah Kingston said, wrinkling her nose, ‘but this one is particularly pungent.’

  ‘Hey, don’t look at me.’ Art Jenada raised his hands, either in innocence or to ward off the foul odor that was permeating the Brookhills Wisconsin coffeehouse that Sarah and yours truly, Maggy Thorsen, operate.

  ‘Just ignore her, Art,’ I said from behind the counter. ‘And, Sarah, before you insult the rest of our customers, I noticed the smell when I opened up this morning. Only now it’s getting worse.’

  Art was a neighbor, his catering business diagonally across the street from Uncommon Grounds. Our shop – now in its second incarnation – had opened just the month before in a historic train depot at the west end of a commuter-rail line to Milwaukee. In fact, the service counter I now stood behind had been the station’s original ticket windows. The building was in Sarah’s family for decades, the property eventually passing down to her.

  Which was one of the reasons I put up with my always downright outspoken – and often outright rude – business partner.

  That, and I’ve truly become fond of Sarah. Being her friend is like having your own, evil alter-ego without the guilt.

  My alter-ego's eyes were wide with innocence now. ‘But I didn't accuse anybody, Maggy. Besides, a baby hippo feeding on rotted seaweed couldn't cut a fart of this magnitude.’ Sarah fanned her face with an open palm. ‘I just don't think Art's got it in him.’

  Art looked like he wasn’t sure whether to agree or disagree. But then, he wasn’t given the chance to choose either.

  ‘Ohmigod!’

  We all turned to see Tien Romano coming out of the kitchen. She used a thumb and forefinger to pinch closed the nostrils of her pretty nose. ‘The smell's become worse since I started baking.’ Tien sounded like she was bearing up under a heavy head cold. ‘I bet we have mice and some of them died in the wall.’

  Great. Many of us connected to Uncommon Grounds had worn more than one hat in life, but none, to my knowledge, bore an exterminator logo on it. I had been in public relations and Sarah ran – though these days, kind of remotely – Kingston Realty.

  Tien, along with her father, Luc, had owned a market and butcher shop. Now he was retired and she was our chef, responsible for the homemade pastries and soups, sandwiches and packaged meals we sold to commuters office-bound in the morning and home-bound in the evening.

  Tien pointed toward our streetside front entrance. ‘Maybe we should open the door.’

  As she said that, the sleigh bells attached to its top jingled. While the door was swinging fully open, the four women sitting in tennis togs at a nearby café table simultaneously hunched their shoulders and grabbed for their napkins.

  A racquet-and-ball drill team? No, just seasoned Wisconsinites bracing for the winds of impending winter, following the cruel joke we refer to as ‘Indian Summer’.

  The prior five days, our October weather had been unseasonably mild, the thermometer hitting a high of seventy-nine degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. By Wednesday morning, though, the temp had plummeted to near-freezing and the tennis -- along with any potted plants -- had been moved indoors.

  An unwelcome development for most of the population, but for a coffeehouse it was nirvana come to earth. Hot drinks were selling like . . . well, hot cakes. Especially the ‘Triple Shot, fully-loaded’ latte I had just made for Art. The autumn specialty drink had enough caffeine and sugar to warm the cockles of the coldest heart. And maybe even send it into fibrillation.

  ‘Close the door,’ the tennis quartet sang out.

  The man who obeyed was fortyish and dapper. You’d never guess his arms were usually covered to the elbows in the blood of sea-creatures.

  ‘Zee wind, she is a bitch out there,’ Jacque Oui said. ‘Oh, how I long for zee south of Fronce.’

  Tien’s face lit up at the sight of Brookhills’ fishmonger to the stars and owner of Schultz’s Market. ‘Jacque, you are the only person I know who can make “bitch” sound sophisticated.’

  I was a little surprised by the adoration in Tien’s voice, though maybe I shouldn’t have been. Tien looked at Jacque as intriguingly foreign though she, herself, was the true exotic flower. Italian-American on her father's side and Vietnamese on her mother's, Tien represented the best of all her worlds.

  ‘The hell with “zee south of Fronce”,’ Sarah said, caricaturing Jacque’s accent and sentiment. ‘I’d take zee south of Chicago right now.’

  Where the mercury was probably hovering in the balmy forties.

  I sniffed. ‘South of Chicago is Gary. Which, come to think of it, smells pretty close to –’ I gestured widely and vaguely – ‘our establishment right now.’

  The industrial city in northernmost Indiana had a reputation for its flame-belching, Mordor-like smokestacks and malodorous haze. A well-earned one, I thought, at least judging by the last time I’d driven through, my windows up and air vents set on ‘RECIRCULATE’.

  ‘Gary has its steel mills to blame,’ Art said, sniffing, too. ‘What’s Uncommon Grounds’ excuse?’

  A little brutal, especially given my earlier defense of him. But like our county’s sheriff Jake Pavlik, the love of my life – or at least of the second half of that span – Art was a native of greater Chicagoland. The caterer was just standing up for a sister-city, albeit one with an atmospheric ambience beyond dragon’s breath.

  ‘You’re right, Art,’ I said. ‘We have no excuse here. Like Tien suggested, maybe opening the streetside door – and, I guess, the platform one – would cross-ventilate the place.’

  Sarah snorted, then winced from the air she drew in. ‘If our customers have to choose between asphyxiation and hypothermia, they’ll vote with their feet and brave the outside world.’

  ‘Sarah?’ I said quietly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You have a better plan?’

  Her features twisted into an expression that reminded me of the old Cabbage Patch dolls. Which was answer enough for me. Not for the first time, I surveyed our layout.

  The coffeehouse was square, with the service area, office and kitchen forming a smaller square snugged into the back right corner, thereby creating an ‘L’ of public space. The shorter base of that ‘L’ paralleled the street out front and was filled with café tables. The long leg was lined with a high bar-top and stools where customers could sit facing the windows that overlooked the train tracks. The bar-top ended at the doorway to the train’s boarding platform. Across a corridor from that platform door were our restrooms.

  As I pushed out the swinging gate that connected the serving area with the public part of the shop, our mail carrier, Ann, came through our streetside entrance. Ignoring the chorus of ‘brrr’s’ in her wake, she nodded to me without breaking stride and dropped a rubber-banded stack of envelopes at a service window. Then Ann wheeled about-face on her heel and quick-marched back outside.

  ‘Wow, Ann’s in a hurry today,’ I said, continuing toward the platform door.

  ‘She was – wisely – holding her breath,’ Sarah said, picking up the mail packet and fanning the air with it as she followed me. ‘The only reason those Brookhills Barbies are still here is that their own perfume is out-reeking the aforementioned baby hippo that died beneath our floorboards.’

  ‘Shhhh.’ I looked over my shoulder at the foursome in tennis skirts, a subset of the larger population of Brookhills Barbies.

  As unnaturally proportioned and coiffed as the dolls of the same name, most of the women were also Barbie-plastic in their personalities. Plastic, though, being just one of the ele
ments from the Brookhills Periodic Table that often included silicone and saline, collagen and Botox.

  ‘Oh, come on, Sarah,’ I said, pushing the platform door wide open and sucking in a lungful of chilly air, ‘it’s certainly not that . . . oh, dear Lord!’ I put my hand to my mouth. Cross-ventilation would be less the stink-solution and more the vehicle for spreading the problem.

  As I closed the door, Sarah was staring down at a fat envelope. ‘What the hell?’ She ripped the thing open.

  I knew to keep my mouth shut. Not that hard now, since, despite being indoors, I still was trying not to breathe at all. Sarah seemed to absorb the gist of the document she’d unfolded.

  Finally, my ever-circumspect partner looked up. ‘That bitch is dead.’

  Chapter Two

  The way Sarah Kingston pronounced bitch didn’t rhyme with ‘beach’ and, also unlike Jacque Oui’s version, was about as far from ‘sophisticated’ as you could get.

  ‘Who’s dead?’ I asked, though it probably should have been ‘which’, as in ‘which bitch’. We certainly had enough of them to go around, and somebody usually felt justified in wanting to kill one of us.

  Sarah shook the sheaf of papers like a tantrumming toddler would a rattle. ‘Brigid Ferndale, who else?’

  Brigid was new to Kingston Realty and, although I’d met the pretty young woman only once, she’d impressed me as smart and ambitious. In fact, I’d warned Sarah to watch out or Brigid would be out-selling her in a year.

  Maybe the rookie already had.

  My partner was now flipping through pages, apparently skim-reading the dense paragraphs. ‘I could kill the—’

  ‘Shh,’ I said, noticing that one of the tennis Barbies had nervously stuck her head around the corner. Slim to the point of emaciation, with hair so blonde and fine it was nearly colorless, she looked surprised to see us. Or maybe she'd had a recent browlift.

  ‘Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.’ Her voice, with just a trace of Southern lilt to it, was barely audible. Raising her hand in evident apology, she retreated.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ I said, wondering how much the woman had heard. ‘Isn’t she a broker, too?’

  ‘Holly Hobby,’ Sarah snapped, without looking up at me.

  ‘Pardon? I thought her name was Elaine Riordan.’ In fact, I was almost certain. In addition to selling real estate, the woman headed the Brookhills County Historical Society and had tried to get me to do one of those fundraisers where the police ‘arrest’ and lock you away until you call enough friends to raise ‘bail’, as in a contribution to the charity involved.

  I'd finally convinced Riordan my friends didn't like me that much.

  ‘Maggy, don’t be an idiot,’ Sarah said, making my point. ‘I know what her name is. And I assure you she’s just another rich chick who thinks it’s “fun” to show and sell houses. Only Elaine Riordan’s an embarrassment even to her own breed.’

  ‘Her “breed”?’

  ‘Women like Gabriella Atherton and her new agency. Holly Hobbies, Broker Barbies. Call them what you will, but each one comes with stilettos, a designer briefcase, and a penchant for stealing money from real brokers like me.’

  As a little girl, I’d never cared much for any of the ‘career’ Barbie Dolls. No Flight Attendant, Ballerina or even Surgeon Barbie on my childhood Christmas list. No, I wanted Malibu Barbie, with the sun-kissed skin and smoky, bedroom eyes. Hell, I wanted to be Malibu Barbie.

  But alas, my bra-burning earth mother deemed the tanned lady a tramp. Not only was there no Malibu Barbie under the tree, but my stocking was filled with homemade granola, carob-covered raisins, packs of almonds and an apple.

  Christmas-morning disappointments aside, though, I was pretty sure that Barbies -- real or toy -- weren't the cause of Sarah's temper tantrum. ‘OK, I get it. You don’t like dilettantes nibbling chunks of your profession’s cheese. But what does any of this have to do with Brigid Ferndale and that?’

  I pointed at the sheaf. As Sarah turned her wrist, I could see a State of Wisconsin insignia on its envelope.

  She finally reached the last page, but then just turned back to the first. ‘The little rat-bastard’s reported me to the realty board.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘My “apprentice” claims I’ve “failed to provide her the oversight and training required by regulations.”’

  ‘Have you?’ To my knowledge, Sarah had barely set foot in Kingston Realty for at least the last few weeks. ‘Failed, I mean?’

  A shrug. ‘Kind of, but that was Theodore’s job as our “supervising” broker.’

  ‘I thought you fired him. Like unto a month ago.’

  ‘I had to. He was hitting on Brigid.’

  Not a surprise. Theo knew houses, but was otherwise a sleaze-ball extraordinaire. ‘Well then, how about . . . ach, what’s her name? The one with the tats who looks like a professional wrestler?’

  ‘Polly?’

  Of course. I should have remembered because it rhymes with Holly, as in Sarah’s derisive ‘Holly Hobby’. But this woman was no doll.

  ‘She quit,’ Sarah continued. ‘Said the job was too dangerous.’

  ‘What?’ Polly sure looked like she could take care of herself. ‘Selling real estate?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear about the agent who was shot through the head and left to die in a penthouse condo just last week? And another one yesterday, first a head-shot and then a tumble down a split-level colonial’s flight of basement stairs.’

  I had heard. In fact, my boy-toy Pavlik and his sheriff’s department were working both cases. One of the reasons I hadn’t seen him much of him recently. ‘I assumed they were independent incidents. Or, at worst, a local crazy.’

  ‘I wish,’ Sarah said. ‘Across this great country of ours more than twenty agents were killed on the job last year. The National Association of Realtors has survey results on its website. A quarter of the respondents said they’re now carrying guns to protect themselves while working.’

  OK, upon reflection, meeting strangers at vacant homes or driving them around in my car weren’t tasks I’d feel particularly comfortable performing. Though, for me, toting a gun would be atop that list. I'd probably shoot myself, saving my attacker the trouble.

  No, I’d much prefer taking my chances with some of the self-defense moves Pavlik had taught me one particularly memorable evening.

  I’d nearly had my purse stolen the day before, so Pavlik was giving me his ‘be aware of your surroundings’ lecture for the nth time, as I made us dinner at my place.

  ‘What good does it do me to “be aware” of danger,’ I’d said, turning toward him with a carving knife in my hand, ‘if I can’t protect myself from it?’

  After he disarmed me, we decided that in lieu of dessert we’d retire to the bedroom for a game of strip ‘don’t-let-’em-poke-her’.

  Pavlik would show me a self-defense tactic, and each time I executed it correctly, he’d take off a piece of his clothing.

  I proved a fast learner.

  ‘The sole of a flat shoe on your major foot, cocked at a forty-five degree angle to the attacker’s knee cap, then driven downward, dislocating the joint.’

  Not exactly romantically put, but . . . gotcha. Off with the shirt, mister.

  ‘Elbow, or pinky edge of your hand, smashing the attacker’s nose, followed by the heel of your palm thrust up into said broken beak.’

  Okey-dokey. Down go those jeans.

  ‘Maggy?’

  ‘When choked from the front or behind, lifting your major leg – high heels now actually preferable – and stomping down with all your might on his instep, depressing and even fracturing the tiny, sub-surface bones in—’

  ‘Maggy!’

  I hadn’t realized my eyes were closed. Sarah was giving me the Cabbage Patch expression again. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Sure. Just day-dreaming.’ And rudely awakened, I might add, before I got to the nitty-gritty. Or tighty-whities, more accurately.

  ‘Go
d. Could you please stay in the context of a real world conversation?’

  Probably not, but I’d give it a try.

  The subject, I thought, had been armed real estate agents. ‘You still have your pistol?’ I asked Sarah, who had saved my life with one in the not-so-distant past.

  ‘First of all, Maggy, I prefer revolvers. Pistols, also known as semi-automatics, have too many safeties. There's a risk the bullet won't fire when I pull the trigger.’

  Risky safeties. Who was the oxy-moron now? ‘All right, then. Do you still have your revolver?’

  ‘Yes and no. The one you remember was a Charter Arms Bulldog, but the hammer kept getting snagged on the key rings of the houses I was showing. Though I’m not sure why, that seemed to queer a couple of deals for me, so I switched to a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard because it has a shrouded hammer.’

  ‘Shrouded?’

  ‘Yeah, so it doesn’t stick out from the frame. Then – wouldn’t you know it? – I found I liked wearing a holster better anyway.’ She smacked herself upside the head.

  Wasn’t that always the way? You buy carpeting to match the drapes and somebody burns down the house.

  Sarah glanced first toward the front of the shop and then back toward the restrooms. ‘Since we’re alone, hold these.’

  I took the sheaf of papers and watched her right hand slip under the long, baggy jacket she always wore over belted trousers. When the hand came back out it was holding a mean-looking pistol – sorry, revolver.

  Lovely. The perfect accessory for any woman’s wardrobe.

  Sarah pointed the muzzle toward the floor and thumbed something on the side of her ‘Bodyguard’. The cylinder part rolled out and to the left of the weapon’s frame but still attached to it.

  ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘Making sure it’s loaded.’

  Better and better. ‘So, that little scored button on the top is the only part of the “hammer” that sticks out?’

  ‘Right.’ Sarah, again with the thumb, gently rolled the cylinder back into the frame and then wiggled it until I heard another click. ‘Now a chamber is centered for the firing pin.’