Fish Nets: The Second Guppy Anthology Read online

  The ICU nurse found me twenty minutes later, telling me he had died moments before. “We took out the ventilator to make him a little more comfortable. Without that tube he started talking up a storm.”

  A practiced tear ran slowly down my cheek. “I should have been in there,” I uttered, feigning just the right amount of grief.

  “Don’t feel guilty about being out of the room, sweetie. I’ve seen many of the dying wait to take their last breath until their loved ones leave. At the end some of them don’t want to burden their family.”

  “What did he say?” More tears flowed from my eyes.

  She chuckled, “You know, I think he was enjoying himself. He was talking about ballerinas on the lawn.”

  I gave her a quizzical look. “He must have been hallucinating.”

  “Oh, honey. I’ve heard it all.” She placed her hand gently on my arm. “Sorry for your loss.”

  I turned away. I took comfort in the thought that he had had twenty minutes or so to suffer with my deathbed confession.

  * * *

  My lover and I are at the cabin. We’ve made some improvements so it’s now quite livable: all new appliances in the kitchen, updated bathroom with a claw foot tub and two-person sauna in an ell that we added on. New blinds cover the windows, artwork adorns the walls, new furniture, a Persian rug. The old desk is gone, replaced by an antique secretary. Yesterday we hung my husband’s rod, creel and fishnet over the mantelpiece. We like the irony; perhaps I like it more. The photos of my husband are all there too, lined up like toy soldiers. My little shrine.

  I head to the kitchen island. I deftly open the bottle of Clos Electrique, pour two glasses and give one to my lover. I am taken aback by the beauty of the graceful hand that accepts the wine. Her nails are perfectly manicured. The glow from the wood stove highlights her auburn hair.

  We raise our glasses, clink and tip them ever so slightly toward that last photo. We silently toast the fact that it’s been two years, six months, 22 days and 14 hours—give or take—since my husband died.

  DON’T TAKE THAT CHANCE, by Kate Fellowes

  “Hi, Danny,” Robin Bauer greeted the package delivery man waiting at the back door of her gift shop, Robin’s Nest. “You’re early today.”

  She juggled her morning coffee from one hand to the other, punching her access code into the security panel with one well-manicured finger.

  Danny shook his head and looked as forlorn as a six-foot tall blond ever could, even one on the wrong side of forty. “You would not believe how many stops I’ve got scheduled for today. I won’t be finished until eight o’clock tonight.”

  “Bad luck! Eight hours work is plenty for me.”

  She pulled the door open and let him bump his over-laden dolly across the threshold into the storeroom/lunchroom/office.

  “But maybe those days are numbered,” she said with a smile, tapping the fresh morning paper sticking out of her tote bag. “I haven’t checked the lottery numbers from last night yet, and I’ve got a good feeling!”

  Danny began unloading boxes onto the stainless steel shelving along one wall. “You say that every Monday morning,” he said, laughing.

  Robin took a moment to admire the view as he bent, lifted and swung one box after another. “Hope springs eternal.”

  The back door opened, admitting the rest of the Robin’s Nest staff. Angie, a retired office clerk who now ran the cash register, lagged behind Jason, a recent college grad working his first full-time job.

  “Hey, guys,” Jason said, looking up from the cell phone he carried like a talisman.

  Crossing the small room, he stowed his lunch in the ancient refrigerator in one corner. “We have got to clean this thing out,” he complained, nose wrinkling.

  Angie added her crisp brown paper bag to the fridge then lifted out one wrinkled apple and half a sandwich, the bread blue with mold.

  “Who leaves this stuff in there?” she wondered aloud, eyeing the back of Jason’s head.

  Robin caught the look and bit her lip to keep from smiling. Angie chucked the rotten food into the big plastic garbage can underneath the bulletin board, dusting her hands and clucking her tongue.

  Danny heaved the last box onto the shelf with a grunt. “That’s it,” he said to no one in particular.

  He parked the dolly beside the door in front of the big landing net Robin used to capture birds in the summertime. Since the shop was located right across from the park and Robin insisted on keeping the front door propped open with a sandwich board all day, birds were regular visitors.

  “Why don’t you just keep the door closed?” Danny had asked her once and she’d pouted.

  “We get more business if it’s propped open. Folks can just wander right on in. And the net doesn’t hurt the birds. I can snag ’em and get them right back out.” She pantomimed her net-swishing technique. “Haven’t lost one yet!”

  Now Danny held out the electronic clipboard for a signature. “Who will do the honors?”

  The crowded back room held not only the lunch table, refrigerator, microwave and shelving, but also Robin’s desk over near the only window. She came out from behind it to sign her name with a flourish.

  “There!”

  While Danny keyed in the letters of her name, Robin spread the newspaper across the lunch table and turned to the page listing winning lottery numbers. The shriek that split the air seconds later caused everyone to freeze.

  “We won!” Robin cried. “We won! We won! We won!” She grabbed Angie by the forearms and jumped up and down. Angie, stunned, jumped, too.

  “No way!” Jason rushed over, looking down at the newspaper. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes! Yes! We play the same numbers every week, silly. And I get the ticket. 2-7-14-23-28-31,” she recited the numbers by heart as Jason followed along, dragging his finger across the newsprint.

  “We won!” he shouted when she finished. “We really did! We’re rich! We’re rich!” He and Danny high-fived and clapped each other on the shoulder.

  “Congratulations, you guys. That’s amazing!” Danny whistled. “What was the jackpot? Do you know?”

  “Eighteen million dollars,” Robin stated with certainty. “At least, that’s what the board at the gas station said.” She pulled out a chair and flopped onto it. “I can hardly believe it.”

  “My heart’s just pounding!” Angie said, collapsing onto the chair beside Robin’s. Her eyes swam with tears of surprise.

  “How long have we been buying tickets, Ang?” Robin asked. “Two years or three, since those factory workers hit it big?”

  “All I know is you’ve been docking my pay since Day One,” Jason teased.

  “Oh, we started playing the lottery way before you hired on! And aren’t you glad?” Robin asked, laughing. “Bring me the ticket. It’s right there on the board.” She pointed at the scrap of orange paper posted next to the week’s schedule, a calendar and some coupons for the sandwich shop on the corner.

  Jason plucked the ticket down and read the numbers off slowly. “3-9-11-22-30-41. Um, boss?”

  “What? That can’t be right!” Robin snatched the paper from his hand. “We always play the same numbers. It improves the odds.”

  “Actually, statistically—” Jason began in his grad school voice.

  “Always. The. Same. Numbers,” Robin interrupted.

  Danny glanced at his watch. When Robin looked over at him, eyes wide, he suggested, “Maybe the clerk at the gas station gave you the wrong ticket.”

  “It was really busy in there that day,” Robin said, thinking out loud. “And I didn’t really look at the slip.” She sighed. “We’d never prove it, though.” The corners of her mouth turned down, her brows knit together.

  “Could be she gave you two slips stuck together,” Angie said. “That happened to me once. I got two credit card slips instead of one in my bag at the Big Mart. Well, I must have spent half an hour looking up that other person’s name in the phone book to call and tell them
. You can’t be too safe with your receipts, you know!”

  Robin gasped, feeling a little surge of hope. That had happened to her at the Big Mart once, too. “Then the right slip might still be in my purse!” She was already on her feet heading over to the file cabinet where she stashed her purse.

  “Or maybe it’s somewhere in that mess,” Danny said, pointing at her desk. “I’m sure it will turn up somewhere. And when I come with the afternoon delivery, you’ll be serving all your customers champagne.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Robin said as he clattered his dolly outside. Danny did have a point. Her workspace was a bit of a mess. It would be easy to lose a little piece of paper somewhere among the invoices and sales receipts.

  Tipping her purse upside down, she dumped it out onto the lunch table. Her lipstick rolled off onto the floor as she sorted through the rest of the contents, first quickly and then with more care. Mints, wallet, comb, change purse, envelope full of bank deposit slips, coupons, pen, hankie. But no lottery ticket. Next, she tackled the pile on her desk. Picking up every single paper, smoothing it flat, she examined them all, front and back. Nothing.

  Angie was picking carefully through the contents of the garbage. “Maybe it fell off the board,” she said, even though a ticket had never fallen off the board before.

  Eventually, Robin sat down heavily and Angie shook her head. They exchanged a solemn look.

  “Easy come, easy go,” Angie said unconvincingly, patting Robin’s hand. She blinked back fresh tears. “Eighteen million dollars.”

  Taking the cash drawer from its resting place on the corner of Robin’s desk, Angie headed for the front of the store, her shoulders slumped. Jason set to work opening the boxes Danny had brought, silently checking their contents off the packing slips.

  “I can’t understand it,” Robin said aloud, fingering the losing ticket. She read the numbers on the paper again in disbelief, double-checking. Then, she blinked, looking again.

  The date printed at the top of the paper wasn’t right. She’d gotten the ticket on Saturday, for Sunday’s drawing. This paper was dated Thursday! The clerk would never have handed her a two-day old slip by accident.

  How could an old ticket have ended up where their new ticket should be?

  Robin’s breath caught in her throat.

  There was only one way.

  The papers had been switched. The winning ticket had been replaced with this old loser.

  But, how? And, who?

  Could a customer have slipped in back and swapped them? The door to this workroom was rarely closed and never locked. But, no. The lottery drawing had been Sunday night and now it was Monday morning. No customers could have come in.

  Robin stood up quickly, tossing things back into her purse at random. She heaved her wallet in with some force, not liking the new direction of her thoughts.

  Dropping back into her chair, she rubbed at her temples, trying to push the idea away. But it kept coming back.

  Jason?

  Angie?

  Both of them could use eighteen million dollars. Well, who couldn’t?

  Robin bit her lip, tapping the paper against the table, thinking. It would be time to open the shop soon. Time to act normally while wondering which of her employees had stolen the winning ticket. Picking up a pencil, she doodled more hearts and flowers next to the existing ones on the desk blotter.

  Whoever had switched the slips had to know she knew. Angie had said, “Easy come, easy go,” but there had been tears in her eyes. Of anxiety? Or of genuine loss? Jason hadn’t said a word, just turned away to work. Because he thought she’d been mistaken all along? Or because he was guilty and couldn’t look her in the eye?

  Pleating the losing ticket as she thought, Robin considered the logistics of the crime. Whoever did it would have had to come into the shop late the night before or earlier that morning. They would have used their access code to unlock the door, crept across the room in darkness and slipped back out, resetting the code. She could just call the alarm company and find out which code had been used.

  “Say, Jason, could you run down to the post office and pick up some stamps for that sale flyer going out next week?”

  Jason looked up from the packing slips. “Right now?”

  “Uh huh.”

  Robin heard him sigh and set down the paperwork.

  “How many should I get?”

  “Two hundred,” she said, handing him money from the Petty Cash box in her top desk drawer.

  He gave a little salute, finger to temple, and set off.

  Robin knew he’d dawdle all down the block, probably stopping to pick up a cup of coffee on the way. He’d be gone, out of earshot, for at least ten minutes.

  But she didn’t need anywhere near that long to get an answer from the alarm company. The polite, businesslike voice on the phone told her the back door of Robin’s Nest had been opened at 6:15 a.m. and relocked at 6:17 a.m. that morning.

  And the access code used was Robin’s.

  Stymied, Robin hung up the phone and, for the first time, felt angry. She’d always paid a fair wage to her workers, even when it meant she took home a bit less in a week. How dare one of them betray her this way?

  She drummed her fingers on the desktop, wondering what to do next. They would have to have a meeting. One of those “just put it back and there will be no questions” kind of meetings. And they’d have it right after closing time, before they even balanced the till. Then she could dust her hands, just as Angie had done when she walked away from the stinky garbage. Robin lifted her head, feeling a bit better. In just a few hours, she’d be finished with this stinky business.

  * * * *

  Late that afternoon as the shop was closing, Robin got to work. Tidying her desk, dumping the garbage, she set the stage. She’d spent several hours anticipating this showdown, thinking out every possible scenario. No matter what happened, she’d rehearsed the exchange in her head.

  Jason came through the door leading to the front of the shop, carefully balancing the cash drawers from both registers. “Busy day,” he said, smiling. “We made some money—but nowhere near eighteen million dollars.” He set the drawers down onto the table, ready to count the day’s profit.

  “Don’t get started right away with that,” she said. “We’re having a staff meeting.”

  “Cool.” Jason hooked a chair with one foot and yanked it out, then sat.

  Just as Angie entered the room the back doorbell rang.

  “Got it!” she said, pulling the door wide and stepping back to let Danny trundle over the threshold with the afternoon delivery.

  “Hello, all,” Danny greeted them. “Just a few more things for you today.” He looked up, at Robin. “Any luck finding that ticket?”

  “Not yet,” Robin said, not moving from her desk.

  He unloaded boxes onto the shelving and stepped toward her, clipboard extended.

  As Robin signed, she dropped her voice low so he had to lean close to hear her. “Could you stick around a few minutes? I may need a witness.” She shot her eyebrows up and glanced at Jason, engrossed in his telephone.

  “Sure, sure,” Danny agreed. “I’ll just take my break.”

  Danny frequently took his break in their back room, eating some fruit or a sandwich over the garbage can, gulping some old coffee from the pot on the counter. Now, he filled a chipped ceramic mug with the last of the brew and pulled an orange from his jacket pocket. Robin saw him look at Jason and then at Angie, who was rinsing out the empty pot.

  “Angie, we’re having a brief staff meeting now,” Robin said, rising.

  “All-righty,” Angie said, easing into the chair across from Jason.

  Robin took a deep breath, steeling her nerves, focusing her energy. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that lottery ticket incident from this morning,” she began.

  Jason looked up. “Incident?”

  “Yes.” Robin strode slowly around the room, doing her best Perry Mason imitati
on. “You see, someone swapped our winning ticket for some old losing ticket.”

  Angie gasped, one hand hovering over her throat. “Who would do that?”

  “Did you call the cops?” Jason set his phone down.

  “I don’t think it was a customer or a burglar,” Robin said slowly. “I think it was an inside job.” She let the sentence hang there in silence for a few seconds.

  “You don’t think I did it!” Angie said, breathless.

  Jason crossed his arms over his chest defensively. “Well, don’t look at me.” He stretched his legs out, frowning.

  “Look, I don’t care who took it. I just want it back,” Robin said. “We’re a team here. We buy our ticket as a team, we’ll split the money the same way.” She stood over near the door now, hands on her hips.

  Across the room, Danny stuffed another orange segment into his mouth as if it was popcorn and he was watching a movie.

  “I know you used my own key code to get in here,” she said, letting her gaze drift over Angie. “And I know you used it to lock up again, too,” she added, shifting her eyes past Jason. “Pretty clever.”

  She lifted her head, narrowing her focus.

  “Of course, you’ve watched me key in those numbers a million times. At least.” A brief smile flickered across her lips.

  Danny swallowed hard, spit a seed into the garbage can. “Are you talking to me, now?” he asked.

  Slowly, sadly, Robin nodded. “Sure am. I just couldn’t think any of my loyal staff would rob the other two blind by switching those tickets. You’re the only other one who might know my key code.”

  “Geez, Robin!” Danny’s cheeks flushed. “I can’t believe this. How could you possibly think I—”

  “Because you stand there every day, eating your lunch by our bulletin board. Those same numbers are posted every week. You had to have seen them. Memorized them!”

  Danny threw the rind of his orange into the garbage. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to this malarkey. I’ve got work to do.”