Some people can cook, and some can’t. Bounds was usually escorted from the kitchen by force, after promising never to enter it again. He could cause a fire making a fruit salad. Once, he’d gotten food poisoning by incorrectly defrosting a frozen meal.
It was tragic. All he’d wanted to do was make a nice breakfast for his wife. She had not been especially pleased with the late night call that had pulled him from their warm bed, and woken her up in the process. At eight and a half months pregnant, it was easy to make Joan cross. Her irritation never lasted long, but was unusual for someone normally so chipper. A delicious breakfast would cheer her up.
Instead, Joan Bounds was rudely jerked from her sleep for the second time in one night, in this case by the shrill cry of the fire alarm. She didn’t panic. Being married to Danny for over two years had rendered her immune to the sound of the alarm – something that would no doubt be problematic in the case of an actual fire. Joan leisurely tied her frizzy brown hair into a ponytail, put on Danny’s worn robe, and walked all the way down the stairs before the noise ended as suddenly as it had begun.
Danny was disemboweling the smoke alarm on the center island when his bleary-eyed wife walked into the kitchen. She sat at the gleaming center island, watching him work with a sort of exasperated affection. A clock was ticking somewhere in the house, marking the seconds between them.
“Why do we even have this thing?” Danny muttered, dropping the pieces on the counter. Joan eyed the plastic entrails sympathetically.
“In case there’s a fire you didn’t cause,” she yawned. “How was work?” Danny scraped the blackened remains of the eggs off the frying pan. The smell burned his nostrils. The pan was ruined. He dropped the whole thing into the garbage.
He didn’t want to answer Joan’s question. In their sunny, serene kitchen, all clean glistening angles and bright flowers, the violence of the night before seemed safe and silly and very far away. He had no desire to invite that ugliness into his home. But Joan was watching him with her large brown eyes, waiting for an answer. Working in retail most of her life had given her near-legendary degrees of patience.
“There was a gang attack at Nick Trotts’ bar,” he said, turning away to scrape the oatmeal into the garbage. It was a solid mass. “Seven dead.” The oatmeal was defying the laws of gravity. It seemed to be absorbing the spoon he was using to pry it loose. Danny was not sure it even qualified as oatmeal anymore.
“That’s awful!” exclaimed Joan, now wide awake. “Who were the victims?”
“That information hasn’t been released yet,” Danny said automatically. He didn’t want to have to explain that they were still piecing together corpses down at the morgue.
“Are there any suspects?” asked Joan, as if she fully expected to be intimately involved in the investigation. Danny handed her a glass of orange juice that he was fairly certain would do no harm to her or their unborn child. Even he could make orange juice. Joan tried to look grateful.
“Chief thinks it was some lunatics from South Emerson,” said Danny. He got a granola bar from the cabinet and unwrapped it. Joan sipped at her orange juice, and didn’t grimace. Danny stuffed half the bar into his mouth, suddenly ravenous. “He called in Charlie Black.” Joan rolled her eyes.
“No wonder you’re trying to burn down the kitchen. How bad was she?” Danny sat on the stool beside his wife, and offered her the rest of the granola bar. She broke it in half.
“Charlie was Charlie,” said Danny, rubbing his eyes. He was exhausted, the full force of the night crashing down on him. “The Chief seems to think she’s useful with stuff like this, God knows why, but she’s a terror. She’s physically incapable of being civil. Nearly made the new guy crap himself. I should be immune to her by now.”
“Yes, you should,” said Joan, rubbing the back of Danny’s neck as she ate her piece of granola bar. “She really gets under your skin. I think she enjoys it.”
“That’s because she’s socially crippled,” said Danny.
“She’s just cranky,” said Joan.
“I don’t like her,” said Danny, putting his forehead on the center island, his mouth still full of half-chewed granola.
“You’re not alone. She makes me want to punch things.” Danny forced a laugh. Joan had known Charlie as long as he had – they’d all been in the same grade at school since kindergarten – but the two women had rarely spoken. They’d operated in different social circles their whole lives. As such, Joan’s interaction with Charlie had been mercifully brief. A handful of meetings had been the full extent of their relationship. Surprisingly, Charlie didn’t hate Joan. When confronted with her, Charlie had been borderline polite.
Unfortunately for Danny, this meant that Joan couldn’t fully comprehend what a royal pain in the ass it was to actually have to work with someone who behaved like a belligerent dictator.
Danny pushed his face into his wife’s neck and breathed in her familiar, clean scent. She wrapped her freckled arms around him, her belly bumping against his side. Danny wanted to stay that way forever, the rough bristle of her hair tickling his cheek, her pulse thumping steadily against his ear. Then Joan wriggled, and he reluctantly loosened his grip.
“I have to pee,” she explained, ruining the moment for him, “then I have to get ready for the Charter Day Planning Meeting.” Danny could hear the capitalization in her voice. Joan ran the town flower shop, and her award-winning arrangements were highly coveted for all local events. It was her salary that had bought them this cozy little house, while Danny had been explaining to teenagers why they couldn’t screw on park benches for the good of the community.
“It sounds like it’s going to be good this year,” said Danny, as he had at least once a year every year for as long as he could remember. Either to his wife, mother, grandmother, father, colleague, or friend, he had always been reassuring someone that Charter Day would be wonderful. To Danny, they were invariably the same.
Charter Day was as big a celebration as Piper Ridge could muster up. The day the town had been founded, nearly three hundred years ago, was a source of pride for the locals. Danny couldn’t understand why anyone would be proud that their town was older than their country, but civic pride was a good thing in his book, so he never asked about it.
Charter Day was the day tourists came for. Every store sold its wares with great pomp and circumstance. Local restaurants served colonial favorites, home-brewed beer and tart lemonade. Music and dancing went on through the streets, which were blocked off from traffic. The craftsmen and women of the town sold knit scarves and wood carvings and whatever other crap they had lying around that could be even loosely tied with the town. The mayor presided over everything. At night, there was a huge old-fashioned buffet, and a fireworks display that was impressive by any standards.
Because Danny worked for the police, he’d spent the last five Charter Days escorting drunk people home, wiping vomit off his shoes, and directing lost tourists back to their hotels. He saw it in terms of drunks in the tank, and sales of his wife’s displays.
Joan heaved her growing bulk up, casually dumping her mostly untouched orange juice down the sink.
“Felicity Meigs is a genius,” she said. “She’s got incredible plans, and everyone is working their butts off. Sometimes I want to scream.” She smiled quickly. “But it will all be worth it in the end.” A shadow crossed her face. “I hope that trouble at the bar doesn’t ruin it.”
Danny was quiet. It was unusual for anyone to refer to the murder of seven people as ‘trouble,’ like a pesky neighbor or a recalcitrant child. Particularly his wife, who really should have understood the severity of the crime.
“I won’t let it ruin all your hard work,” he said, instead of what he was thinking. “Just don’t stress yourself out. Delegate. I don’t want to have to tie you to the bed for the next month.
“Yeah, you’d hate that,” she laughed, and then they were OK; the moment had passed. Joan dropped a quick kiss on his cheek. “Now get some rest yourself. You look about ready to drop.” She headed for the bathroom.
Instead of following his wife’s excellent advice, Danny stared fixedly at the stove. He needed a few hours’ solid sleep before going back to the station. He needed a long, hot shower. But for the moment, he was content to focus on the innocent-looking stove. And wonder if maybe, just maybe, there was a cookbook out there that would give him a shot at using it.
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