“I thought you did that on a boat in rough seas,” I said.
“Same difference.” Mom shrugged.
I stood on the uneven pavement outside Holy Water, standing in the far more sensible strappy sandals I’d opted for instead of Mom’s death stilettos. She’d been disappointed but then agreed that falling on my face and showing up with a black eye was worse than going without accentuated calves. I stopped at the steps of the old Baptist church with the chalkboard sign out front.
YOU’RE MAKING TOO MANY SOBER DECISIONS. WE’VE GOT THE CURE FOR THAT.
Fair point.
I headed delicately up the front steps, glad I’d ditched the murder heels, because there’s no way I’d be able to navigate the uneven stone in them. I opened the front door, butterflies fluttering in my stomach. I almost wished I was dealing with that Jeep Wagoneer rather than the prospect of a date. Where was a murderous stalker when you needed one?
I stepped inside the atrium and saw the giant stained glasswindow, a beautiful mosaic of red, blue, and gold flowers. The pews had long been removed, though some had been cut in half and used as benches around square tables. I swept the room looking for signs of Russo, and finding none, felt myself relax.
I’d beat him here.
Good.
I glanced at the antique clock above the bar and saw I was a full fifteen minutes early.
Mel Marino, the forty-something owner of the place, stood behind the bar managing the handful of orders, her pixie cut turned mostly white. She wore her trademark flannel button-up shirt, rolled to her elbows, her tattoo of a sprig of thorny red roses visible just above the collar. I made my way with easy confidence to the bar, where Mel’s dog, a poodle-schnauzer-golden mix, trotted out from behind the bar and sniffed my painted toes.
“Hey there, Benji,” I said, dropping down to scratch the little guy behind the ears. He wore a little barrel hanging from his collar as if he were the world’s smallest Saint Bernard. He was probably no more than thirty pounds soaking wet. He instantly rolled onto his back, looking for a belly scratch. I obliged him.
“Don’t spoil that guy,” Mel called, crossing her tattooed forearms across her chest. “He gets too many belly rubs already. How ya doing, Ella?”
“Alright,” I answered. She grinned at me as her two regulars at the bar turned to greet me: Bill, a retired commercial pilot who spent his summers flying tourists around in puddle jumpers, and Gary, a semiretired paramedic.
“So back in town, huh, Thin Ice?” Bill said, wearing his Bears hoodie and a matching Bears ski cap with the orange-and-blue pom-pom on the crown.
“There she is!” Gary said, wearing his Green Bay Packers trucker hat bleached almost white from the sun. “Heard you were home!”
“I see you two have never left your original stools,” I said. They’d been sitting on opposite sides of the bar the summer after my high school graduation, and it seemed they had never left.
“Ah, whelp, can’t beat the lagers here,” Gary said.
“The IPAs are better, ya cheesehead,” Bill argued.
“Listen, FIB, don’t even get me started.” FIB—Wisconsin’s not-so-nice way of referring to its neighbors to the south—f’ing Illinois bastards. Yet, when Gary said it, there was no malice. Still, the men could never agree on anything. One rooted for the Packers, the other for the Bears. One was Republican, the other Democrat. One a Wisconsin son, the other a Land of Lincoln transplant.
“Oh, we wanna start there, do we?” Gary asked. “Well, why don’t we just talk about the mess your governor’s making at the capital?”
“Gentlemen!” cried Mel, holding up both hands. “Remember the bar’s golden rule.” She pointed to the sign above the bar that readPROFANITY ENCOURAGED. POLITICS FORBIDDEN,with a backslash over a donkey and an elephant.
I had to laugh. I kind of missed Gary and Bill. They were good old ’Scansin, real-life Statler and Waldorf Muppets with their balding gray heads and crusty worldview, poking fun at each other and everyone else from their balcony seats at the bar.
“You still into that true murder and whatnot?” Gary asked.
“We tried to listen to that podcast o’ yours, but…” Bill held up his ancient iPhone with the spiderweb cracks across the front. Not sure how he even used it to call people, much less access a podcast. “I don’t really care for all the murders.”
“Yeah, man faints dead away at the sight of blood.”
“Ido not,” Bill protested.
“Please. Remember when you passed out at the blood drive last year? You took out an entire table of orange slices and Lorna Doones,” Gary said and cackled.
“I was trying to do a damn good deed!” Bill groused.
I glanced over my shoulder at the door, just to keep an eye out for Russo.
