Read Online Steamed by Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Mystery Fiction, Women graduate students, Boston (Mass.), Cooks
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nonexistent bill. I wasn’t worried, either; I was annoyed and insulted. If my date could disappear, I decided, I could do exactly the same thing. It could take me a long, long time to touch up my makeup and fuss with my hair; it could take me long enough for Eric to return to the table, find me gone, and sit there all alone wondering where I was. My crème brûlée would have to wait.
Essence was not, of course, the sort of restaurant with large, garish signs pointing to the restrooms. Looking around, I couldn’t find so much as a small, tasteful arrow and had to ask Cassie for directions. “Down that little corridor at the back,” she said. “Ladies is the first door on your left. If someone’s in there, use the men’s room. Everyone does. It’s the next door.”
After making my way around a few tables, I entered the narrow corridor, which led to a door prominently marked Exit. The first door on the left showed a stylish sketch of a figure with long hair and a skirt. The door was locked. I took Cassie’s advice and pushed open the second door, the one with a matching sketch of a debonair figure in a coat and tails. Although the door was unlocked, the men’s room was occupied.
Sprawled on his stomach on the slate floor was a tall man with curly dirty-blond hair. His legs were bent awkwardly, and one arm was stretched out at a painful-looking angle. The man, however, was beyond pain. His head lay in a pool of blood. The blood led away from the blond curls and toward two objects that lay on the tile. One was a mobile phone. The other was a knife with a black handle and a long, thin, curved, and bloody blade.
I had found Eric.
FIVE
I stood under the fluorescent lights in the men’s room for a good two or three minutes while I tried to take in what I was looking at. I couldn’t look away from the repulsive wound in Eric’s neck. The skin was split open, the cut long and somehow clean despite the bright red, glistening blood. I could feel my heart pound and my whole body shiver, but I just couldn’t move. It felt impossible that Eric, who had just been critiquing food and yelling on his cell phone, was lying here on the floor, dead. I suppose I should have dropped down to the tiles to begin some sort of lifesaving attempt. As it was, I was frozen, in part, I suspect, because no one could have survived that dreadful wound. Also, the thought of stepping into the pool of blood churned my full stomach.
I had visions from the first-aid class I’d taken when I was working as a toddler teacher in a day care center. I knew we had covered CPR, but the only thing I could remember was what to do if a child had the misfortune to get a pencil stuck in an eye. I remembered that one should not to try to pull the pencil out of the eyeball, but rather should tape a Dixie cup over the protruding object. I had raised a question: since most pencils are much taller than Dixie cups, shouldn’t we stockpile some tall, latte-style cups for such occurences? There had been a memorable photograph of some poor child model forced to demonstrate what a Dixie cup taped over the eye looked like, a photo that had sent my fellow teachers and me into gales of laughter. Not helpful here.
I also remembered that should one happen upon a compound fracture in which a bone is sticking out of the body, one should not attempt to push the bone back in place. The banned maneuver had struck me as the grossest possible thing ever, and I was sure that if I were to find myself faced with a bone sticking out of a body, the last thing I would do would be to try to push it back in place. Still, if Eric had fallen victim to a sharp stick in the eye and a compound fracture, I might possibly have been of some assistance.
Eric’s cell phone started to ring, and the electronic rendition of Guns N’ Roses’ “Paradise City” jerked me out of my daze. What a lame song to set your ringer to. This disgraceful thought made me
Essence was not, of course, the sort of restaurant with large, garish signs pointing to the restrooms. Looking around, I couldn’t find so much as a small, tasteful arrow and had to ask Cassie for directions. “Down that little corridor at the back,” she said. “Ladies is the first door on your left. If someone’s in there, use the men’s room. Everyone does. It’s the next door.”
After making my way around a few tables, I entered the narrow corridor, which led to a door prominently marked Exit. The first door on the left showed a stylish sketch of a figure with long hair and a skirt. The door was locked. I took Cassie’s advice and pushed open the second door, the one with a matching sketch of a debonair figure in a coat and tails. Although the door was unlocked, the men’s room was occupied.
Sprawled on his stomach on the slate floor was a tall man with curly dirty-blond hair. His legs were bent awkwardly, and one arm was stretched out at a painful-looking angle. The man, however, was beyond pain. His head lay in a pool of blood. The blood led away from the blond curls and toward two objects that lay on the tile. One was a mobile phone. The other was a knife with a black handle and a long, thin, curved, and bloody blade.
I had found Eric.
FIVE
I stood under the fluorescent lights in the men’s room for a good two or three minutes while I tried to take in what I was looking at. I couldn’t look away from the repulsive wound in Eric’s neck. The skin was split open, the cut long and somehow clean despite the bright red, glistening blood. I could feel my heart pound and my whole body shiver, but I just couldn’t move. It felt impossible that Eric, who had just been critiquing food and yelling on his cell phone, was lying here on the floor, dead. I suppose I should have dropped down to the tiles to begin some sort of lifesaving attempt. As it was, I was frozen, in part, I suspect, because no one could have survived that dreadful wound. Also, the thought of stepping into the pool of blood churned my full stomach.
I had visions from the first-aid class I’d taken when I was working as a toddler teacher in a day care center. I knew we had covered CPR, but the only thing I could remember was what to do if a child had the misfortune to get a pencil stuck in an eye. I remembered that one should not to try to pull the pencil out of the eyeball, but rather should tape a Dixie cup over the protruding object. I had raised a question: since most pencils are much taller than Dixie cups, shouldn’t we stockpile some tall, latte-style cups for such occurences? There had been a memorable photograph of some poor child model forced to demonstrate what a Dixie cup taped over the eye looked like, a photo that had sent my fellow teachers and me into gales of laughter. Not helpful here.
I also remembered that should one happen upon a compound fracture in which a bone is sticking out of the body, one should not attempt to push the bone back in place. The banned maneuver had struck me as the grossest possible thing ever, and I was sure that if I were to find myself faced with a bone sticking out of a body, the last thing I would do would be to try to push it back in place. Still, if Eric had fallen victim to a sharp stick in the eye and a compound fracture, I might possibly have been of some assistance.
Eric’s cell phone started to ring, and the electronic rendition of Guns N’ Roses’ “Paradise City” jerked me out of my daze. What a lame song to set your ringer to. This disgraceful thought made me
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