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Cooking The Books: A Sloane Templeton mystery

By Bonnie S. Calhoun

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One month later . . .

The car jerked as though possessed.

I inhaled sharply, holding onto the breath as tightly as I gripped the smooth wood railing with one hand and my garbage bag with the other. I peered down from the landing on the floor below my apartment at the car parked closest to the building.

My heart drummed a monster cadence that pounded on the blood vessels behind my eyes, causing pinpoint stars to float in front of my vision. Was I really seeing this or did I not have enough coffee yet this morning?

Yes. It was no flashback from my days of old. The car still shook.

A warm summer breeze drifted across my skin as I continued to stare down at the car. I shivered. I wasn’t cold. It was fear.

What was I, an idiot? I had to will my foot to descend to the next step. At the moment, my feet were apparently smarter than I was.. They knew danger. A smart person would turn around and go back upstairs, through the apartment and down the front stairs. But no, I apparently didn’t emanate from that smart gene pool. If it could be considered dangerous or reckless, my name was probably attached somewhere.

My dear mom, God rest her soul, always said, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Yeah, let’s not mention that angels must have practiced running for the clouds every time the name Sloane Templeton came up as an assignment. I had a knack for turning them into bruised and battered little fife-and-drum corps, complete with head bandages and crutches.

A woman’s screech echoed from the closed interior of the car.

I gasped and stumbled back against the step, raking my calf on the unyielding wood. I winced. As I tried to steady myself, my left hand lost its grip on the garbage bag I was carrying. It rolled down the rest of the stairs in slow motion and plopped beside the Dumpster.

I stared at it. That’s one way to get it down there.

An animal-like howl rolled though the air. I stiffened.

Lord, help me! She’s being attacked.

There was an innocent woman in there. Call the police! Why didn’t I think of it five minutes ago? I felt my pockets. No cell phone, just my gun in one pocket, and keys in the other. I must have left the phone downstairs on my desk in the bookstore last night. Figures, I never have it when I need it.

A muffled scream.

Electric fear zipped up my spine. My brain ticked off the options. Up the stairs and down the front. Shudder. Pass the car and around to the front.

Either way, to get to a phone was going to take time that may rob this woman of her life. I had to do something now. I was the only one here.

How? Don’t be stupid! I have a gun in my pocket. Yeah, but I’ve never confronted another person with a weapon. This is crazy and reckless. I could be overpowered. They could take my gun and shoot me.

A moan. Banging. Another scream.

No! I have to do something. Now!

With a trembling hand, I pulled the registered .38 from the pocket of my baggy linen trousers. Against my wishes, Mom had badgered me until I accepted her transferring the weapon to me right before her passing. Her excuse was that I needed protection as a store owner in our crime-ridden area. Although I didn’t have a clue about what crime she was referring to, I did have a good guess about the criminals. This was a new day, and fear was not going to create any more victims around me than I could help.

As I pulled the gun from my pants, the thumb hammer snagged on the top of my pocket, flipping the weapon out of my shaking hand. I lunged for it. Fingers clawed at empty air. Agh!

I flinched as it hit the step, expecting the gun to discharge and shoot me in my smarter-than-me foot.

The weapon tumbled down two more treads of the wooden staircase, and spun to the edge, hanging there for a split second before continuing its descent. It bounced down another step, spun a couple more times, and came to rest with the barrel facing in my direction. It mocked me as though I were playing spin the bottle. Tag . . . you’re it!

A woman’s pleading voice resonated from the shaking car.

My first instinct was to leave the gun right where it lay and run away. But my inner warrior wouldn’t let me back away.

I ran down the few steps and snatched up the snub-nosed gun. The cool metal was foreign in my clammy fingers. Why in the world did I think I could be like my fearless ma, brandishing a weapon, when I’d never held anything more deadly than nail clippers?

I pulled in a sharp breath to calm my teeth-rattling jitters. If I didn’t go now reason would take over. I charged down the stairs. Vaulting over the garbage bag, I snuck up to the passenger side of the car and yanked on the door handle, almost pulling my arm from its socket. The door didn’t yield.

Locked. Great! Now in addition to a skinned leg, I had a throbbing shoulder.

The windows dripped foggy moisture on the inside, masking the interior. I couldn’t see a thing.

The woman needed my help. I suddenly summoned an inordinate amount of bravery and slapped my hand on the glass with the same authority Officer Murphy had used on Tim Owens and me when I was eighteen. “Open the door!”

I stepped back, sucked in a breath and imagined the worst, waiting for the attacker to launch from the car, and not having the least clue of what I would do. Instead . . . silence. Nothing. No answer. Touching the side of the car, I could feel the thumping. It imitated pounding feet.

“Let her go, or I’ll break this window!”

How? By shooting it out? Bad idea. No shooting when you can’t see what you’re shooting at.

The cries ceased as the vehicle stopped trembling. A hand swiped across the glistening fog inside the window and a wide-eyed female face appeared.

“Are you okay? Open the door.” I grabbed for the handle again, then let go.
What if some big angry dude charged me?

A lock clicked.

I backed away. The door didn’t open.

I tamped down my fear, backed up another step, and raised the weapon like I knew what I was doing. Holding it with one hand cupped in the other, I rested my trembling finger along the trigger guard.

“Open the door now. Let her out.”

The door opened a hair.

I lunged and snatched the handle, jerking it open all the way. “Come out with―”
I was staring down at a middle-aged woman with sleep-encrusted eyes and chestnut brown hair haphazardly pulled up in a claw clip.

Her eyes grew wide at the sight of the gun. She wrapped her arms around her head. “Please don’t shoot me!”

A whimper escaped her throat as she pulled her feet up onto the seat and tucked her knees against her chest.

I glanced around the inside of the car as the thick moist air clung to my face like a mask. I half expected to see water dripping from the ceiling.

The woman was alone.

I lowered the gun to my side. Relief. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you. I heard you scream and thought you were being attacked. This neighborhood isn’t the safest of places.”

The woman dropped her arms. “I’m sorry.” She rubbed her hands across her eyes like a little child. “I was having a nightmare.”

“Nightmare? Were you in my parking lot all night?” With a solid feeling of averted-disaster-relief, I slipped the .38 back into my pocket. The added weight pulled on the drawstring cinched tightly at my waist. I could feel the cool metal against my leg.

The woman’s eyes darted around as though she were looking for an avenue of escape. “I was just waiting for you to open, so I could get coffee and do some writing.”

“I’m on my way to open the store.” I hesitated. It was not lost on me that she did not answer my question about sleeping in the car all night. I guess that was her business, not mine.

“Come on.” Why did I say that? I don’t even know this woman, but she looked like a lost puppy.

While the woman grabbed her laptop case from the backseat, I snuck another look inside, just to be safe.

We crossed the parking lot and walked down the narrow alleyway to the front of the building. Through the wispy leaves of the honey locust trees, I could see the two mega-high rise buildings jutting out of the low landscape five blocks up Fulton Street. One high-rise building still looked like a tinker toy with its unfinished floors and high cranes. I bit down on my lip. The chaotic intrusion of all this redevelopment made my heart hurt.

I pulled the large, jangling lump of Mom’s keys from my other pocket. Sometime soon, I needed to divide these up into more manageable quantities. Forget the gun; this could be considered a lethal weapon in most circles. Just as I found the appropriate key, a male figure darted from the store doorway.

Hopping back from the doorway, I nearly tripped over the poor woman shadowing me as my hand flew to my mouth and I stifled a scream. I lashed out with the key ring.

Rob Landry dodged my swing and stood there, grinning goofily.

I shook my head, disgusted that he would think something so juvenile was cute, but relieved that I wasn’t getting robbed and I hadn’t actually clocked him with the killer keys. I gave him the once-over.

Dressed in a starched white shirt, black tie, and sharp pressed black pants, he looked like the door-to-door recruiter for a cult. But it was that infernal briefcase. I stared at it. No doubt, it carried the paperwork that could signal my impending doom as a bookstore owner—if I chose to cooperate.

I tore my gaze from the briefcase and stabbed visual daggers through him. “Rob, one of these days you’re going to give me a stroke. Then this building will be tied up in the litigation of my estate for the next twenty years.”

I brushed past him and pushed the key into the lock.

“Mrs. Sloane Templeton, I have been authorized─”

“Dear Lord, save me!” I prayed and swung around to glare at him—his grin looking like the Joker from the Batman comics. “You’ve been authorized all right―authorized to drive me to distraction.” Granted I didn’t like being a bookseller, but I liked even less the idea of selling him the building I had grown up in.

I unlocked the front door to Beckham’s Books & Brew and ushered the brunette woman past the still grinning Landry. Swinging around to face him, I poked a finger in his direction. “And don’t ever call me Missus. I divorced that lowlife six months ago.” Let’s not go into the fact that he kept trying to divorce me by way of Shady Grove cemetery, and the cheapskate would probably have buried me in a cardboard box rather than paying for pine.

I shooed him back and closed the door in his face. Why did men behaving badly always seem to gravitate to me like insects to grease? I needed to find cologne that worked as a roach repellant.

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