Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?. Stevi Mittman

Whose Number Is Up, Anyway?

      I usually dedicate my books to the wonderful friends

       who read my drafts, laugh in all the right places and applaud when I ask them to, but lately I’ve had so many wonderful e-mails from readers telling me how much they are enjoying this series that I think this book should be dedicated to them. It’s those e-mails that keep my bottom glued to the chair and send my fingers flying over the keyboard even when the sun is shining and there are sales at the mall. Thanks for the praise, the encouragement, the loyalty, and for taking the time to write and tell me I’m doing something right!

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER 1

      CHAPTER 2

      CHAPTER 3

      CHAPTER 4

      CHAPTER 5

      CHAPTER 6

      CHAPTER 7

      CHAPTER 8

      CHAPTER 9

      CHAPTER 10

      CHAPTER 11

      CHAPTER 12

      CHAPTER 13

      CHAPTER 14

      CHAPTER 15

      CHAPTER 16

      CHAPTER 17

      CHAPTER 18

      CHAPTER 19

      CHAPTER 20

      CHAPTER 21

      CHAPTER 22

      CHAPTER 23

      CHAPTER 1

      Before redecorating a room, I always advise my clients to empty it of everything but one chair. Then I suggest they move that chair from place to place, sitting in it, until the placement feels right. Trust your instincts when deciding on furniture placement. Your room should “feel right.”

      —TipsFromTeddi.com

      Gut feelings. You know, that gnawing in the pit of your stomach that warns you that you are about to do the absolute stupidest thing you could do. Something that will ruin life as you know it.

      I’ve got one now, standing at the butcher counter in King Kullen, the grocery store in the same strip mall as L.I. Lanes, the bowling alley cum billiard parlor I’m in the process of redecorating for its “Grand Opening.”

      I realize being in the wrong supermarket probably doesn’t sound exactly dire to you, but you aren’t the one buying your father a brisket at a store your mother will somehow know isn’t Waldbaum’s.

      But then, June Bayer isn’t your mother.

      The woman behind the counter has agreed to go into the freezer to find a brisket for me since there aren’t any in the case. There are packages of pork tenderloins, piles of spareribs and rolls of sausage, but no briskets.

      Warning number two, right? I should so be out of here.

      But no, I’m still in the same spot when she comes back out, brisketless, her face ashen. She opens her mouth like she is going to scream, but only a gurgle comes out.

      And then she pinballs out from behind the counter, knocking bottles of Peter Luger Steak Sauce to the floor on her way, hitting the tower of cans at the end of the prepared-foods aisle and sending them sprawling, making her way down the aisle, careening from side to side as she goes.

      Finally, from the distance, I hear her shout. “He’s deeeeeeaaaad! Joey’s deeeeeaaaad.”

      My first thought is, you should always trust your gut.

      My second thought is that now my mother will know I was in King Kullen. For weeks I will have to hear “What did you expect?” as though whenever you go to King Kullen someone turns up dead. And if the detective investigating the case turns out to be Detective Drew Scoones…well, I’ll never hear the end of that from her, either.

      Several people head for the butcher’s freezer and I position myself to block them. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from finding people dead—and this guy is not my first—it’s that the police get very testy when you mess with their murder scenes.

      “You can’t go in there until the police get here,” I say, stationing myself at the end of the butcher’s counter and in front of the Employees Only door, acting like I’m some sort of authority. “You’ll contaminate the evidence if it turns out to be murder.”

      Shouts and chaos. You’d think I’d know better than to throw the word murder around. Cell phones are flipping open and tongues are wagging.

      I amend my statement quickly. “Which, of course, it probably isn’t. Murder, I mean. People die all the time and it’s not always in hospitals or their own beds, or…” I babble when I’m nervous and the idea of someone dead on the other side of the freezer door makes me very nervous.

      So does the idea of seeing Drew Scoones again. Drew and I have this on-again, off-again sort of thing…that I kind of turned off.

      Who knew he’d take it so personally when he tried to get serious and I responded by saying we could talk about us tomorrow—and then caught a plane to my parents condo in Boca the next day? In July. In the middle of a job.

      For some crazy reason, he took that to mean that I was avoiding him and the subject of us.

      That was three months ago. I haven’t seen him since.

      The manager, who identifies himself and points to his name tag in case I don’t believe him, says he has to go into his cooler. “Maybe Joey’s not dead,” he says. “Maybe he can be saved, and you’re letting him die in there. Did you ever think of that?”

      In fact, I hadn’t. But I had thought that the murderer might try to go back in to make sure his tracks were covered, so I say that I will go in and check.

      Which means that the manager and I couple up and go in together while everyone pushes against the doorway to peer in, erasing any chance of finding clean prints on that Employee Only door.

      I expect to find carcasses of dead animals hanging from hooks and maybe Joey hanging from one, too. I think it’s going to be very creepy and I steel myself, only to find a rather benign series of shelves with large slabs of meat laid out carefully on them, along with boxes and boxes marked simply “chicken.”

      Nothing scary here, unless you count the body of a middle-aged man with graying hair sprawled faceup on the floor. His eyes are wide open and unblinking. His shirt is stiff. His pants are stiff. His body is stiff. And his expression, you should forgive the pun—is frozen. Bill-the-manager crosses himself and stands mute while I pronounce the guy dead in a sort of happy-now? tone.

      “We should not be in here,” I say, and he nods his head emphatically and helps me push people out of the doorway just in time to hear the police sirens and see the cop cars pull up outside the big store windows.

      Bobbie Lyons, my partner in Teddi Bayer Interior Designs (and also my neighbor, best friend and private fashion police), and Mark, our carpenter (and my dog-sitter, confidant and ego-booster), rush in from next door. They beat the cops by a half step and shout out my name. People point in my direction.

      After all the publicity that followed the unfortunate incident during which I shot my ex-husband, Rio Gallo, and then the subsequent murder of my first client—which I solved, I might add—it seems like the whole world, or at least all of Long Island, knows who I am.

      Mark asks if I’m all right. (Did I remember to mention that the man is drop-dead-gorgeous-but-a-decade-too-young-for-me-yet-too-old-for-my-daughter-thank-God?) I don’t get a chance to answer him because the police are quickly closing in on the