Julie called and she put the papers down.
“Sorry I was busy before. Do you have any good news for me?”
“I might. I think a page fell out of that notebook we gave to the police. Quincy must have shoved it under my desk. It was there with my gloves.”
“Your good gloves? You found them? Great.”
“Yes, I’m happy to finally have them back. But this page is the real find. The paper is old, maybe from an older notebook. He lists someone he calls HULK.”
“Do we know any large, green people?”
Chase laughed. “Tanner was here and he performed another miracle. He hacked into Ron North’s e-mail account again and found an angry exchange between him and someone beginning with H, hunkyb.”
“Someone named B?”
“I thought it meant ‘hunky bod’ and this guy thinks a lot of himself.”
“Could be. Or hunky boy, I guess.”
“Julie, I’m afraid this might be Eddie Heath.”
“Really? Eddie? Wow. If he’s the killer that would be bad. Do the e-mails give a motive for murder?”
“They’re angry and threatening. The hunk person mentions smashing in Ron’s ugly face.”
“Ouch. And you think this is Eddie? Are you going to stop dating him?”
“I’m not dating him!”
“Right. Are you going to stop seeing him? How long has it been since you’ve seen Mike?”
Too long. Much too long.
“Chase, we could use you out front,” Anna called from the kitchen.
“I’d better get to work,” Chase said to Julie.
“Me, too. Call me later.”
The salesroom was humming with activity. It seemed that, all of a sudden, everyone in Dinkytown and beyond had decided that goodies from the Bar None would make excellent Christmas and Hanukkah gifts.
Chase looked up from counting change when she heard a familiar voice.
“Patrice,” she said, “I haven’t seen you in a while.”
Patrice was next in line for Mallory. “I’ve been helping Mike out at the clinic. His assistant has the flu.”
“That’s terrible. So far all I’ve had is a cold.” She rapped her knuckles on the wooden top of the display case for luck.
“I haven’t seen you either. I asked Mike about that the other day.”
Chase handed the change to her customer. “Thank you and have a nice day.”
“What I mean is, are you and Mike seeing each other anymore?” Patrice went on.
Chase wasn’t sure how to answer that. “We’re not not seeing each other. It’s, well . . . things are busy right now.”
“He isn’t that busy.” She looked around the crowded shop. “I guess you are though, huh?”
“Yah, it’ll let up after Christmas.”
Patrice handed her box of Hula Bars to Mallory, who had taken about fifteen minutes telling Tanner good-bye in the kitchen, and who was now back at work. “Shall I tell him anything from you?”
“Sure. Say hi.”
“You want him to call?”
“Sure.” Yes, she did want him to call. “Tell him I’m thinking of him and would like to get together soon. I’ve been sick or I would have called before.”
Patrice didn’t seem convinced that Chase was sincere, but she left, promising to relay the message.
After the shop closed at 6 PM, and Mallory and Inger had both left, Chase helped Anna with the last of the cleanup.
“Anna, I need some advice.”
Anna looked eager to give it. Chase knew that she liked to keep track of Chase’s life, and recently Chase hadn’t been quite honest with her about Eddie Heath. Anna hitched herself onto one of the stools and patted the other one. “Come on. Sit here and tell me. This sounds serious.”
“It’s about Eddie Heath.”
Anna nodded her wise-grandmother nod. “I thought it might be.”
How did she know everything like that? Patrice should employ Anna when she did her fortune-telling act. “I don’t really want to keep seeing him. My mind tells me that, it really does. But I end up with him whenever he calls. There’s such a . . . pull. It’s like magnetism.”
Anna nodded again. She patted the back of Chase’s hand. “Yes, it is. It’s chemistry. And sometimes it happens with the wrong people.”
“What should I do about it?”
“You know the answer. Stop seeing Eddie.” She squeezed Chase’s hand.
Chase slapped her other palm flat on the counter. “I will. I’ll do that. As soon as . . . I do have to touch base with him once more. I need to know why he was being blackmailed by Ron North.”
“He was? Do you think he killed Ron?”
“Probably. I don’t know. I would like him to be guilty and for Julie to be in the clear.”
“Then you don’t see him again, you ninny. You give your information to the detective.”
“But I don’t think there’s enough to go on.”
“Let the police decide. Don’t you dare get close to that man again. Charity? You hear me?”
“I hear you,” she said, but she didn’t look at Anna when she said it and she knew Anna must have known she didn’t mean it. She wouldn’t see him alone, though. She would see him with Julie by her side.
“Meanwhile,” Anna said, “you should take some dessert bars to Dr. Michael Ramos. He’s gone without them for too long. Lemon, right? The same kind you like?”
“Right. I’ll do that.” This time she looked at Anna. “That’s such a good idea. Maybe I’ll take some over tonight.”
“Wait a minute. Let me tell you about when this chemistry thing happened to me. Maybe you can learn something from it. When I was engaged to my husband, about a year before we got married, I met a guy at the roller rink. I first noticed him because of his fancy skating—crossovers and spins and even some hops—then I noticed how tall he was. And blond as he could be. Like a beacon in the dim roller rink.
“Well, he saw me watching him and gave me the sexiest wink you can imagine. I was a decent skater and I was skating along just fine, but took a tumble when he did that. He was right there to help me up and, I’ll tell you, our hands touched and fireworks exploded right there inside the roller rink.”
Chase could picture the young, graceful Anna on skates. She couldn’t quite picture her going end over end, but she was getting a vision of the tall stranger.
“I didn’t know a thing about him, but we went to the ice cream store for sundaes as soon as we could get our skates off. We met for lunch two, maybe three times, then he asked me out on a car date. Dinner and a movie, he said. Meanwhile, I was keeping all this from my fiancé and it was giving me stomachaches. I hadn’t told my parents or anyone about him. But I fell asleep dreaming about him and woke up hoping I’d see him that day.
“We finally went out on a real date and I found out what a mistake I had made. Instead of dinner, he drove to a secluded parking lot out near Lake Minnetonka. I asked him what we were doing there and he said he wanted to talk and get to know me a little better. We had talked and talked at our lunches, but mostly about him. About how he was going to go to Harvard and probably would go into politics, or maybe law. He had, he said, graduated at the top of his class and the Ivy Leagues were fighting over him. To be sure, we hadn’t talked about me much, so I agreed. But, deep down, I knew this wasn’t right. I got that slight prickle you get when things are off.
“We only talked about me for a minute before he grabbed me and started kissing me. Even then, I didn’t resist. He was a great kisser. But then, it seemed like there were four guys in the car, or one guy with eight arms. He was all over me, trying to get my clothes off.”
“Anna! What did you do?”
“I pushed him away, but he kept coming. I started to panic, then I got out of the car and ran to the nearest house, which wasn’t very close. Thank goodness he didn’t follow me. I called my dad and he came to get me.”