The Sexiest Man Alive (21 page)

Mazie scooped it up. Using the spare key Magenta had left with her, she unlocked the front door and let herself into the shop. The flowers probably needed water, Mazie reasoned, so she was perfectly justified in ripping the wrappings off the floral arrangement.

Oh, spectacular! Pink roses, yellow dahlias, and white alstroemeria—all her favorite colors. They weren’t Magenta’s palette, though; whoever had sent the flower must not know Magenta very well. She set the arrangement atop the counter so that it would be the first thing Magenta saw when he came back. The address card had been lost, but as she wadded up the wrappings, a card fell out. She picked it up and examined it. It showed a teddy bear with one of his button eyes missing and a bandaged forehead. “Get well soon” was written in flowing script beneath. It was signed simply “B.”

Well, that was weird. Did Magenta have some disease he’d neglected to tell her about, but that this B was aware of?

The phone jangled. Magenta had it set to extra loud so he could hear it at the back of the
shop and it made Mazie jump.

“M-Magenta’s,” she managed to get out as she snatched up the receiver.

“Mazie?”

“
Johnny?”

“Hey, babe—I’ve been trying to get in touch with you, but your phone kept saying your number was disconnected.”

“I didn’t pay my bill.”

“Oh. So using my brilliant detective skills, I thought of your flamboyant buddy, Magenta. I’m glad I got hold of you. Everything okay with you?”

Mazie could picture Johnny leaning back in the duct-taped swivel chair in his office, back in Quail Hollow. She sighed. “Not really. I just got fired.”

“That sucks. What happened?”

Mazie told him, keeping it brief, trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Venting to Johnny felt good; he was an excellent listener.

There was a pause after she’d finished. Then Johnny said, “This is just my unbiased opinion, but your boss is a complete asshole.”

“Funny, that’s what I thought, too.”

“Now what do you do?”

“Job hunt,” Mazie said gloomily. What a depressing prospect: the long application forms, the phoning, the emailing, the snotty receptionists, the employers who said they’d call and never did.

“You should come home,” Johnny said.

“Back to Quail Hollow?”

“You know how a cop hears things? Well, I happen to know that the school district is looking for a middle school music teacher. You could apply.”

“Teach at the same school I attended as a kid? That would be weird.”

“Decent salary, insurance, benefits. And there’s an apartment available nearby, with a view of the lake. I saw a vacancy sign there the other day.”

For a moment the vision shimmered before her eyes. A steady job. A place within walking distance of her job. Being five minutes away from her family. She knew the exact apartment building Johnny was referring to, and it was pretty, with a tree-shaded backyard that
Muffin would love.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Mazie said cautiously. “Thanks for telling me.”

Johnny cleared his throat. “The other reason I called—besides wanting to hear your voice—isn’t so pleasant.”

Mazie’s heart gave an unpleasant thud. “Is it about Shayla?”

“About her cousin. Brandi Paulson, the barmaid. I just got a call from Milwaukee PD. They found Brandi’s body last night—she’d been murdered—shot and dumped in an alley.”

“Oh, God! Do they—”

“It was the Skulls, no questions about it.”

“But Brandi helped the Skulls, didn’t she? Told them where they could find Shayla?”

“Probably. Bad bargain on her part. If she thought they’d reward her for ratting out Shayla, she was wrong. They couldn’t let her live, not when she could testify against them.”

“What about Shayla? Have you heard anything?”

Johnny sighed. “No idea whether she’s alive or dead, but if she was dead, I think the Skulls would have let the word get around. They want to create fear; they want people to know what happens to girls who cross them.”

They talked for a few more minutes, then Mazie rang off, thinking of Shayla, out there somewhere, in danger. She tidied up the shop, sweeping spiderwebs out of the front entryway, bringing in Magenta’s mail, and adding water to the flower arrangement. Her mind leaped from flowers to Seymour Steiner.

She couldn’t afford to send flowers to him, but she could cut zinnias and cosmos from the flower bed she’d created in Magenta’s tiny backyard and send him a homemade bouquet. She phoned the hospital, got put through to the intensive care unit, lied about being a family member, and was told that Mr. Steiner was in stable condition and resting comfortably. He was not able to have visitors, but she could call again tomorrow to see whether he was up to seeing her.

Her heart feeling lighter now that she knew that Mr. Steiner was going to be all right, Mazie turned her mind to more immediate concerns. Like retrieving Muffin. With Magenta gone, Muffin was in the daytime care of Irma Schirmer, the retired woman who lived next door.

Muffin was overjoyed to see her. That was the best thing about dogs, the trait that made you forgive them for the barfed-up crickets in the middle of your carpet, the slobbered-on shoes, and the six-in-the-morning walks in freezing sleet. Even if you only left the room to go to the
bathroom, dogs greeted you like a returning god when you reappeared.

Mazie clipped on Muffin’s leash and walked him the six blocks over to Lake Park. He lost his oomph on the way back and Mazie had to pick him up and carry him.

“No more cookies for you,” she told him. “You weigh a ton.”

She was almost home when a horn beeped and a yellow MINI Coop veered over to the curb and zipped into the loading zone. Juju hopped out, grinning, holding two Lucky Liu’s cartons. Then, to Mazie’s surprise, Lester Pfister emerged from the Coop’s driver’s side, looking a bit sheepish.

“Hi, Mazie,” he said. “Juju’s been giving me driving lessons.”

“He did very well,” Juju said.

“Then we decided to go out for Chinese. We got enough for all of us. We would have picked you up, but we knew you had to work.”

“Not anymore,” Mazie said, trying to sound breezy. “I got the old heave-ho.”

They all trooped into her flat. Setting plates and forks on her kitchen table, Mazie told them the story of how she’d been fired.

“Let me get this straight,” Juju said, spooning kung pao shrimp into a bowl. “You save the life of one of your peeps and your creep of a boss fires you?”

“Basically, yeah—but not just for that.” Mazie snagged a clump of garlic broccoli with her chopsticks. “I committed a lot of other offenses, too. Driving someone to a doctor’s appointment in the company car, going on a date with the relative of a client—”

“Do you mean
me
?” Lester nearly choked on his spring roll. He was dressed more casually than he’d been the other night, in khaki pants and an open-necked green polo shirt; Juju was already working her style voodoo on him.

“Yup. Apparently that’s taboo, like wearing white shoes after Labor Day.”

Lester put his face in his hands. “You got fired because of me, Mazie? I’m s-so sorry.”

“Hey, don’t be.” Mazie patted Lester on the shoulder. “You were a fun date. I’d do it all over again. Anyway, the dating thing was just an excuse. Thorndike’s been wanting to give me the ax for ages.”

“But”—Lester looked as though he were going to cry—“you got in trouble because of me and now I feel like a louse. Because”—he glanced at Juju—“I—I kind of asked Juju to go out with me. Not that I didn’t like you, Mazie, but I just sort of—”

Mazie burst out laughing, spraying rice grains. “Lester, it’s okay. I could tell you were gaga over Juju from the moment you met her.”

“You—don’t mind?”

“No, I think you and Juju make a cute couple.”

“Thank you,” Lester said seriously. “I know
I’m
not cute, but Juju is gorgeous enough for both of us. I hope you don’t mind me jumping to conclusions, Mazie, but I thought maybe you and Ben were getting back together.”

“Do not utter that man’s name in my presence,” Mazie grated out. “I never want to see him again.”

“He still didn’t call, huh?” Juju said. “Maybe because your phone’s out.”

“If a man wants to talk to a woman, he finds a way,” Mazie said. “Bicycle messenger. Carrier pigeon. A light-up scoreboard at the ballpark. Oh, but wait—I forgot! Bonaparte Labeck lives exactly six blocks away from me. That’s how many feet, Lester?”

“Two hundred sixty-four feet in an average block. That’s uhh … about sixteen hundred.”

“Right. A man who wanted to see a woman would need to take sixteen hundred steps to actually walk up, ring her doorbell, and enter her flat. How hard would that be for a man who, according to
Milwaukee Tonite!
, is ‘one hundred eighty-seven pounds of solid muscle’?”

Juju eyed her skeptically. “I’m not buying this boycott Labeck business. One wink from the guy and you’ll cave.”

“I will not!” Mazie snatched up the flowers Lester had brought her on Saturday night, the colorful daisies now wilting, and pitched them in the wastebasket. “Ben Labeck is history!”

“Prove it,” Juju said. “Start going out with other guys.”

“You mean dating?”

“Yeah,
dating
. You know, like that old saying: ‘If you get thrown by a horse, get right back up and buy a bicycle.’ ”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” Lester said doubtfully.

“I know a guy who’d be perfect for you,” Juju said. “He’s the straight friend of my gay friend Cory.”

“A fix-up? Forget it! I hate blind dates!”

“Do you hate them because of me?” Lester asked.

Both women turned to look at Lester. “No!” they said in unison.

Juju turned back to Mazie. “Stop being such a weenie. You’ll love this guy—I promise! You have loads in common.”

“Like what?”

“For one thing, you’re a music major and he’s a musician. And he’s supposed to be really cute—Cory said he looks sort of like Bradley Cooper.”

Mazie snapped open a fortune cookie and fished out the little strip of paper.
THE FORTUNE YOU SEEK IS IN ANOTHER COOKIE
. She smiled, suddenly feeling that her luck was about to turn. Who was she to argue with Fate?

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll do it. What’s his name?”

“Brad, I think, or maybe Chad.”

Ben kept getting the same message: “This number is out of service.” Mazie had probably forgotten to pay her phone bill; it would be just like her.

He wondered if she’d gotten the flowers.

Maybe he should have gone for the dead-bolt lock instead.

He’d spotted the lock in the hardware store in Mount Prospect’s small downtown business district on Monday morning. He’d driven into town, accompanied by three of the boys from his squad, to buy groceries but had gotten sidetracked when he’d seen the hardware store. Ben loved hardware stores. He would happily have wandered around for hours, but the boys with him—Davey, Lashawn, and Manuel—weren’t as thrilled and quickly grew restless. The boys were from the Big Brothers–YMCA sports camp where he was coaching this week. Most of the kids attending were twelve- to fourteen-year-olds from Chicago’s South Side. The camp offered a week of intensive sports drills and workouts, a chance to breathe fresh country air, and the opportunity to chow down on good food.

The fancy dead-bolt assembly kit, a Baldwin double cylinder, had caught his eye in the store. “I’m going to get this for my girlfriend,” he’d announced, recalling how flimsy Mazie’s lock was. Living in such a dicey neighborhood, she definitely needed a dead bolt. He’d install it himself; it would give him a chance to try out his new drill.

“Aww, man—you’re gonna buy your girl a dead bolt?” Manuel asked.

Ben looked at him. “It’s a
Baldwin
,” he explained, “the Cadillac of locks.”

Lashawn snorted. “Girls don’t want some dumb lock. You show up and say, ‘Look honey, I brought you a dead bolt,’ then you ain’t getting any sweet loving that night.”

“You got a picture of this girl?” Davey asked.

Ben fished out his phone, flicked to the photo gallery, and held up a photo of Mazie he’d shot in April, when a spring snowstorm had dumped a foot of snow on Milwaukee. They’d gone out in the storm and he’d snapped Mazie’s photo through falling snow. She was looking directly at the camera, grinning wickedly as she packed a snowball that two seconds later would be launched at Ben’s face.

“Whoa,” Davey said. “You need to get this girl flowers. My dad always gives my mom roses when she’s mad at him.”

“Flowers,” Ben muttered, wondering why he was taking romantic advice from thirteen-year-olds. But then again, he’d struck out with gifts the last couple of times; Mazie hadn’t seemed too thrilled with that giant-size-unclogs-all-drains bathroom plunger he’d bought her last month.

Setting the lock back on the shelf, he allowed himself to be dragged to the florist’s shop across the street. He couldn’t have identified a single flower, but he knew Mazie liked pink. He pointed to a photo in a binder, and the flower shop woman explained that their sister shop in Milwaukee would do the exact same arrangement and deliver the flowers later that same day. Ben almost fainted from sticker shock when she rang up the sale. The flowers cost more than the dead bolt. And for what? They’d be dead in a couple of days, while a good dead bolt would last a lifetime. More evidence that he didn’t understand women.

“A card, sir?” asked the clerk. “Our sister shop will have identical ones.”

Ben found a card with a bandaged teddy bear on the front. It would remind Mazie of how he’d taken care of her knee after the Roller Derby—and of what had happened afterward. Totem pole down below, just thinking about it. He had to crouch over the counter so the clerk wouldn’t notice and think he had a fetish for teddy bears.

“What’re you going to write in the card?” Manuel asked.

Smirking, Davey recited, “Roses are dumb. Violets suck. When I’m with you—”

Ben gave Davey a warning look that shut him up, but Manuel and Lashawn staggered around the aisles, cackling insanely. Annoyed with the boys, discovering that he was actually blushing, Ben instructed the clerk, “Just have it signed ‘B.’ She’ll know who it’s from.”