Thrown Off: A Cozy Mystery (Brenna Battle Book 3) (6 page)

“Someone what?”

“Shut me in the freezer and parked that thing,”—I waved at the power jack Max had haphazardly parked nearby—, “right in front of the door so I couldn’t get out. They turned off the light and they threatened me.”

Roberta’s eyes widened, then her face softened with motherly concern. “You look really cold, Brenna. How long were you in there?”

Wow. Was that really the big question on everyone’s mind? “I don’t know. I didn’t look at the time.”

“I read somewhere that hypothermia can do things to the brain.”

“I wasn’t in there long enough to be hypothermic.”
Thank God
. I made an epic effort to hold back an outburst, and I’m sorry to say my words probably came out just a little bit grittier than I wanted them to, in spite of it.
 

“I’m sorry. That was really scary. I didn’t mean to sound dismissive.”

“No, it’s fine, Roberta.” As much as I hated being babied, as strongly as I felt that I hadn’t just panicked or deluded myself, I didn’t want to make Roberta feel bad. I hadn’t known Millie very well, but her death was reminding me to focus on the good in people. It was hard for a cynic like me. But I appreciated the heart behind Roberta’s words. She wanted to reassure me—and maybe, to reassure herself. Who really wants to believe there’s someone lurking around the back room, trapping people in freezers? Maybe someone who would push a ladder right out from under poor Millie?

Roberta patted my shoulder. “It was a stupid place to park the power jack. And terrible timing that it happened right after the door shut behind you.”

Someone shut the door on me, I was sure of it. And what about the light? Was that an accident, too? Why was Roberta so determined to convince me it was all accident and coincidence? Was it more than just wishful thinking on her part? More than denial? Could that have been Roberta’s voice? It had sounded younger, but…

I had to get out of there. “Roberta, do you think you could just grab that basket for me?” I pointed into the freezer.

“Sure thing, honey.” Roberta got the basket, and I took it from her.

“Is it too late to check out?” Suddenly I felt so tired. My mind was muddled, too. Had I imagined that young woman’s voice? Was I going nuts with my suspicions?

“Well, we’re technically closed, but maybe they haven’t closed out all the registers yet.”

I followed Roberta out to the front of the store. Every employee I saw, I pictured slamming that door behind me and shutting off the light, then driving the power jack into place to block me in.

“Does everyone who works here get to run the power jack?” I asked. “I always wanted to play around with one of those. When I was a kid, I used to watch the forklift in home depot for hours,” I added quickly.

“Oh, I think most of us here have used it once or twice. We need to move it out of the way for something, or they need another hand in the back. Things come up.”

“Lucky.” I tried to throw off any suspicion about my question with a smile. I’m sure it helped that I really did have an interest in the thing.

Roberta laughed. “Can’t say I ever really thought about that as one of the perks of the job.”

There was still one register that hadn’t been closed out for the night. The checker gave me a weary look and hurriedly rang me up. I waved good-bye to Roberta.

“You sure you’re okay, Brenna?”

“Oh, yeah. Just fine. Nothing a hot shower won’t fix.” That, and finding the killer and seeing him or her put behind bars.

10

I headed home, a grocery bag in each hand, still fighting shivers. The night was quiet, still. The breeze off the ocean felt colder than usual. I couldn’t shake an icy fear in my heart. I tightened my grip on the plastic bags. I was prepared to swing those bags and wallop anyone who attacked me with mint chocolate chip before I abandoned the ice cream and took them down judo-style.

It wasn’t as if no one had ever attacked me on the peaceful streets of Bonney Bay before. I tried to tell myself the freezer thing didn’t necessarily mean much. Maybe someone was just annoyed about me being there, asking questions. Maybe they just wanted everything to go back to normal. With me dead. I just couldn’t shake that thought, no matter how I tried to rationalize that it was just a stunt. Just a rude gesture meant to send a message—
I don’t like you
, not
die
.

A high sound broke the silence. I felt a pang of alertness, then realized it was just a giggle. A couple, just a pair of kids, stood against the wall behind the post office, in the shadows. The girl laughed, a tinny, fake laugh. Why did boys fall for those laugh-fakers? Were they that desperate to have a captive, adoring audience? Yes, unfortunately, they were. I’d learned that in middle school. Thankfully, a few of them grew out of that.

I wanted to grab that girl and tell her not to dumb herself down for some boy. But for all I knew, maybe she wasn’t that bright at all. A skinny teenaged boy leaned over her and blew smoke right in her face. Disgusting. What kind of little punk does that? And what kind of girl would go running around with—

“Sammi!”

When she turned her head away from the smoke, I knew it was her. The little figure jolted and whirled to face me. For a second, it looked like she was trying to decide whether to bolt. But Sammi knew I could catch up with her even with my bad knee and a grocery bag in each hand. If she had any sense at all, she knew there was no hiding from me, either. But hey, if she had any sense, she wouldn’t be hanging around with that little creep.

She shouldn’t be hanging around with any boys, not like that. She wasn’t even twelve years old, for goodness sake. I strode toward them and the boy backed away so fast, he just about tripped over his own feet. I got a good look at his face. It was nice and still for me, frozen in terror. It was not a six-grade face.

I’d developed what you’d call a “presence,” during my years competing with some of the toughest, most ruthless women in the world in a very physical, combat sport. My match face was just a tad intimidating, and it had a tendency to come out when I was in fighting mode, even when the fight wasn’t physical. Not that I would’ve minded it getting just a little physical under different circumstances. If he weren’t a kid, if we weren’t on the street. If I wouldn’t land in jail for making him wet his pants at the thought of coming near Sammi again.

There were a lot of things that I wanted to say to this little smoke-blowing,
Too-Cool-for-His-Own-Good
, brat. I restrained myself and stuck with the most important question. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen.” Now that he was under my Mama Bear Stare, the kid looked a lot less sure of himself. His voice even squeaked a little.

“Fourteen!” My hands clenched into even tighter fists around the grocery bag handles. I wanted to shake his carefully gelled little head off.

“Who are you?” the boy asked.

“Someone you don’t want to mess with. She’s eleven! Eleven!”

“She told me she was twelve!”

“Like that’s so much better? Go suck face with someone your own age!”

Sammi, who’d been glancing anxiously from her little friend to me and back, said, “He wasn’t sucking my face!”

“Not yet,” I replied. “At least, I certainly hope not yet.”

“You’re embarrassing me,” Sammi hissed.

“You’ve got a heck of a lot more to worry about than being embarrassed,” I hissed back. This was embarrassing? She had no idea how bad it could be if I weren’t restraining myself.

“You.” I jabbed my finger at the boy, grocery bag dangling from my wrist. “You stay away from Sammi, do you hear me?”

“Yeah, I hear you.” He tried to sneer a little, but he mostly just sounded scared.

“And you,” I told Sammi, “you’re coming with me.”

Sammi dragged her feet a little, but she came. She looked back, but she didn’t say good-bye to her little friend. Kind of hard to say good-bye when he’s running the other way, I guess. Good riddance!

“What are you going to do? Call my mom?” Sammi dripped with sarcasm on
mom
.

“No. We’re going to have ice cream.”

“What?”

I held up the grocery bag. “Mocha fudge and mint chocolate chip. Hurry up. Blythe is waiting.”

“Uh, okay.”

I shifted my bags to one hand, grabbed her arm, and hurried her along.

After a moment of awkward silence, Sammi said, “You’re not really going to give me ice cream, are you?” her voice trembled a little.

I couldn’t decide whether I liked that or not. I mean, it was a good thing, that she thought I meant business. But…“What do you think I’m going to do?”

“Kick my butt?”

“That’s what I should do. But instead I’m giving you a treat. There’s something wrong with me, Sammi.”

“Yeah, you’re friends with me,” she shot back.

I stopped short. I spun Sammi around and made her look at me. “You’re right. You are my friend.” It was true. She wasn’t just a kid. Just some annoying kid with no parental supervision who kept bumbling into my life. “And yeah, there’s probably something wrong with me.” Actually, there was a lot wrong with me. But let’s not go there. “But being friends with you isn’t one of them. You’re smart, you’re funny, and you care. I know you care, Sammi.”

For a moment, she just looked stunned. Trying to take it in. Fighting it. Then she hurled the statement at me, “My mom doesn’t! My mom doesn’t care!”

Wow. Where’d that come from? From wherever she’d stashed it all this time, that’s where. The real question was, what was I going to do with it? I couldn’t lie to her. I couldn’t tell her that her mom cared. Sure, she probably did care, to a point. But she didn’t care the way a mom should. She didn’t even care the way a friend would. She had her own life, and Sammi didn’t really fit into it. What made a mother do that? What made her not do what seemed to come natural to so many moms—shape a new life around her kid?

I looked Sammi in the eye. “She’s making the worst mistake of her life, not making you a bigger part of it. She’s wrong.”

“But I always screw up. And sometimes it’s not just to make her mad.”

“Don’t
I
screw up all the time?” I said back.

“Well…”

I nudged her playfully. “No. The correct answer is ‘No, Sensei Brenna. You never mess up.’”

Sammi laughed.

“You really like that boy?”

“I guess…not really. I’m starting middle school in the fall, and all the popular girls have boyfriends.”

I couldn’t help it. I rolled my eyes. It was that way when I was in middle school, too. It was a status symbol. “You don’t need to be popular. You have real friends. Like me and Blythe and Katie and all the other Battlers.”

“Yeah…that’s true.”

But it’s not enough.
That’s what she wanted to say.

How could I convince Sammi that’s what really mattered? I’d never really cared about popularity, but I’d always understood that most other kids did. When Sammi started middle school next year, and Katie was still in elementary, would she ditch Katie? What would happen if she started thinking popularity was so important? I had a feeling Katie wasn’t part of the “in” crowd, even in elementary. I’d have to keep an eye on that. But there was a more pressing issue.

I looked at Sammi out of the corner of my eye. “So, are you really into boys?”
Please say no. Please.

Sammi shrugged. “I guess not. I think some of them are cute.”

“What about kissing? Are you into that?”

I braced myself, but Sammi made a face.

Thank God. “I think that boy is pretty into kissing, not to mention stupid, nasty things like smoking.” I didn’t bother to ask Sammi if she was a smoker. I knew she didn’t smoke. I spent every day in close contact with her on the mat. The smell would be in her hair, in her skin, unmistakable.

Sammi looked away. I could tell she was embarrassed now. And not because of what that boy thought. Because of what I thought. Major victory!

But still, my legs felt like lead as I climbed the steps to our apartment. I was coming home long after Blythe had expected me, with a whole lot that I couldn’t explain and couldn’t tell Blythe about—and Sammi, a kid I didn’t know what to do about.

There was a long list of things I didn’t know what to do about. My secrets about Jerky Jake, Blythe’s ex, and the man who’d broken my heart. Will, Millie’s murder, getting shut in the freezer, Sammi…

Blythe threw open the door before I even reached the top. “What took you so long? Oh, hi, Sammi.”

“Hi,” Sammi said sheepishly.

Blythe gave me a questioning look as I nodded for Sammi to come inside. We headed for the kitchen and Blythe locked the door.

“Sammi decided to come over for some ice cream instead of skulking around in the dark with some little loser boy,” I explained.

“He’s not a loser!”

Defending him again? Really? Hadn’t we just established that the boy was nothing but an attempt at a stupid status symbol? “He blew smoke in your face! And he’s fourteen. What kind of fourteen-year-old goes after an eleven-year-old?”

I saw the understanding dawn on Sammi. Her face fell. She’d figured it was cool to have an older “boyfriend,” and it had never occurred to her that him hanging out with her would be very uncool to any other kid his age. She was so young, so naive. I guess that was good, in a way. Better naive than jaded at not-quite-twelve years old.

“Oh. I guess you’re right.”

Blythe shot me a look.
Warning! Danger!

“No offense, Sammi,” I said quickly. “But if we’re talking about stupid social status stuff…”

Sammi plunked down on one of the stools at the kitchen counter. She put her elbows on the counter, chin in her hands. “I know. Maybe he
is
a loser. I should’ve known.”

Right, because he was with her. Nice, Brenna. “Look, I’m really terrible at this. Obviously.” And maybe my brain was just a little bit frozen still. “You need to talk to Blythe.”

“And have ice cream?”

“And have ice cream.” I handed the bags to Blythe. “I need a hot shower. Don’t ask.”

“Okay. Come on, Sammi, I’ll fix you up with some ice cream, and you can tell me all about this older loser who blew smoke in your face.”