Her movements skirt to a stop, one cookie halfway to her mouth as she looks around in the kitchen like she’s just now realizing where she is. “I wasn’t thinking straight, okay? Plus, they’re really good cookies.”
I shrug in agreement. She makes a good point. They’re mass produced. You can buy them everywhere, yet they’re delicious. Sold from some bakery based in Michigan, I swear they have to use magic or fairy dust or some other crazy ingredient to make them stay fresh and soft so long.
“You’re forgiven,” I say taking a cookie from the box.
“You didn’t listen. Pierce came over last night. He accused me of trying to sabotage his businesses.” She bites off half the cookie, a few crumbs falling on her pink long sleeve shirt and my table.
“His businesses?” Tabitha asks.
“Yeah,” Katy says around her bite of cookie. “He’s part owner in the bar! Can you believe it? I’m so sick of men.”
“Me too.” I take another bite of cookie, shaking my head.
“Me too.” Tabitha takes a third cookie from the box and leans up against the table with her hip. “I’m so tired of the pissing contest. Who has the most cameras? Who makes the most money? Who cares, right?”
To keep myself busy so I don’t eat the entire container of cookies, I dump all the dough I’ve been letting rise for the last hour and start kneading it. “And how they act like we can’t do anything on our own.” I slam my fist into the dough and flip it over.
“You move to Maine and they’re all a bunch of grunting lumberjacks. It’s like there’s testosterone flowing through the water.” Tabitha grabs a meat tenderizer — that is definitely not meant for use on dough, but I don’t have the heart to stop her. She pounds a small section of my ball leaving divots.
“You think you have it bad. I’ve lived here my whole life. It’s been going on since kindergarten,” Katy adds, taking another bite of cookie.
“We need to show them we are perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves,” I say, flipping the dough again. A little cloud of flour fluffs up around the edges.
The room grows silent as we ponder the suggestion.
Katy is the first to talk. “I have a plan.” Excitement bubbles up around her words.
“Shhhhh.” Tabitha waves her hands in front of her. “We need to make sure they can’t hear us. Turn the radio on.”
“The cameras are all at the exits. They can’t hear us,” I promise her.
She lifts an eyebrow in my direction. “After last night you’re sure about that?”
Maybe not.
I keep a small boom box in the kitchen for those early mornings and late nights when I’m here alone. I like to listen and bake. Twisting the volume button to the far right, I crank up the today’s top hits channel I prefer.
We stand around, looking at one another, waiting for someone to make the first move.
“Don’t look suspicious. If Ridge does have a camera we have to act super busy.”
I rip off two oversized chunks of dough and toss one to each of them.
“Okay, it’s simple.” Katy leans over the table looking mighty conspiratorial. “This Frankie guy never got his money, right?”
“Damn it, the money.” I’d forgotten all about it.
Again.
How is that even possible? There’s something wrong with me.
After this is over I need therapy or something because at no point in time should a person’s life be so busy they routinely forget about the twenty thousand dollars they have stashed in their kitchen.
My prep table is made from three deep cupboards all around the bottom. Large stainless steel doors slide open and closed to hide the mess of crap I’ve stuck down there. It’s a great area to store stuff. Like pots and pans… not thousands of dollars.
The cupboards are deep and dark. My arms are barely long enough to reach, so I stick my upper body into the opening and feel around the roughly stacked items. At the very back of the cupboard, hidden behind all my Wilton holiday baking pans, I locate the two stacks of money that have caused all this trouble.
They’re two tightly wrapped bundles of cash, not heavy enough to make you think they were twenty thousand dollars. But when I pull them out into the light, they’re clearly wrapped with $10,000 bank papers around their middles.
