To be honest, considering what I’d experienced earlier I was surprised to find his tone so jovial. I had been expecting that I would hear from him but figured it would be something I didn’t want to hear. That was what always seemed to happen whenever I had one of my episodes.
“So what’re you doin’?” he asked.
“Working,” I replied. “And for some reason, feeling very old.”
“Yeah, funny how it creeps up on ya’,” he said. “I remember goin’ to bed one night feelin’ like a twenty year old. When I got up I had all kinds of old man pains, and I had no freakin’ idea where they came from.”
“Same here.”
“Come on, though,” he jibed. “I thought you Witches were immortal.”
“Have you been watching sixties sitcom re-runs again?”
“It’s the only thing on TV worth lookin’ at anymore. Besides, the Montgomery gal is pretty hot.”
“Ever wonder why they changed Dicks mid series?” I made an obscure reference to the change of actors from the old show.
“Not really,” he replied. “But I have been wondering when you’re gonna wiggle your nose and make shit show up outta thin air.”
“Not going to happen, Ben.”
“Crap. I hate when you tell me that.”
As entertaining as the conversation had been, I was still wondering if another shoe was about to drop. “So, what about you? Shouldn’t you be out catching bad guys or protecting us from evil doers?”
“Day off,” he told me.
“Lucky you,” I said, still slightly suspicious. “So what are YOU doing?”
“Talking to you.”
“You’re in rare form today.”
“So sue me. So you wanna do lunch? I’m buyin’.”
“You’re buying? What’s up, you win big at the riverboat?” I chuckled.
“Hell no,” he answered. “Lost fifty bucks last time I did that.”
“It’s a little early for lunch yet isn’t it?” I asked.
He came back with a question of his own. “Depends. When’d you get up this morning?”
“Point taken,” I replied. “Yeah. Lunch sounds good. I could use a break anyway. What did you have in mind?”
“There’s a great little Indian place on Olive, downtown.”
“Yeah, been there. I can go for that,” I told him. “So you want me to meet you?”
“Nah,” he returned. “I’ll pick ya’ up.”
“Okay, so I need to change into something Felicity wouldn’t be ashamed of me to be seen wearing in public.”
“Well light a fire under it, Kemosabe. It’s hot out here.”
I wondered for a moment at the comment then said, “Where are you, Ben?”
“Right now? Standin’ at your freakin’ front door waitin’ for you ta’ get your happy ass down here and let me in.”
His comment was followed by a click as he hung up, and then the doorbell began ringing in a vicious staccato brought about by him leaning on the button. Our two dogs joined in with a chorus of barks and howls as they squared off with the door downstairs in order to protect the house from invaders.
Yeah, I definitely needed a break. I dropped the phone back in the cradle and pushed back, gathering up the used coffee cups before tugging open the office door. As I started down the stairs, I wondered if I should fill my friend in on what had happened to me earlier this morning.
Before I reached the bottom, I had decided it could wait. There was already a niggling feeling in the back of my head that told me Ben and I would be spending a lot of time together in the very near future. Whether he knew it yet or not.
We might as well start off on a happy note; because I already knew what was looming before us would be far from pleasant.
CHAPTER 3:
I wasn’t someone you could describe as a big fan of heights. Standing here at this particular moment, looking down through the railing from the top level of the old Peerless-Cross department store parking garage, smack in the middle of downtown Saint Louis, I was reminded of that fact in no uncertain terms.
The honest truth is that for the majority of my life heights had never been much of an issue. I hadn’t spared as much as a moment’s consideration to the idea of fearing them; at least not any that I remembered. But, of course, that was all before the night when a deranged serial killer had tossed me over the side of the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge somewhere near the middle of its span across the Mississippi river. Now to that, I had given more than just a passing thought. I had dwelled on it. And, to say the least, it was definitely something I wasn’t going to forget. Not in this lifetime and probably not even the next.
Fortunately for me, the rope he had been trying to hang me with had held fast. The other bonus was that it had been wrapped around my arm instead of my neck. It was only due to this stroke of blind luck that I had the luxury of being able to recall that night in all of its Technicolor detail.
But that’s another story, sort of.
Now, to clarify, I have to point out that I’m not one to panic or go into an immobile stupor due to a fear of heights- not at all. Whenever confronted by the vertical demon, I simply feel an involuntary catch in my throat and then experience that sinking flutter in the pit of my stomach that always precedes the ‘fight or flight’ adrenalin dump of fear. Of course, it is just about then that said adrenalin does exactly that- dump.
With a sudden flood into my circulatory system, the hormone embarks on an emotionally driven attempt to rescue me from the perceived danger. A few seconds later I, mutter some form of exclamation, the cleanliness of which is directly proportional to the height multiplied by the amount of adrenalin then divided by my heart rate. That accomplished, I remove myself from the situation.
For the most part, all it ever really does is make me tense muscles I don’t even remember having and then battle a lingering headache for an hour or two.
“Sudden stop.” My friend’s deep voice uttered the two simple words from behind and above my left shoulder.
I glanced back without fully turning and questioned him. “Do what?”
“The sudden stop at the bottom,” Detective Benjamin Storm returned with an almost jovial undertone. “Ya’know… It ain’t the fall that kills ya’, it’s the sudden stop at the bottom.”
It was comments like this one that had long ago convinced me that my best friend, a homicide detective with the Saint Louis City Police, would make the perfect wisecracking cop for a weekly television crime drama. He was loyal, honest, and good at his job. And, as evidenced by his most recent verbal observation, he was inextricably tied to cliches. There were even times when they would season his speech the same way some people salt their French fries- too much. Still, while not always an especially endearing quality, it was a part of his makeup, and I accepted it for the personality trait it was. Of course, accepting it didn’t keep me from retaliating against it at times.
Like right now for instance.
“Not actually,” I said as I turned, unsure as to whether or not he would take the bait I was about to toss before him.
I put my hand up to shield my eyes against the late morning sun. The sky was clear and the yellow-white globe had already driven the air temperature past ninety, with the relative humidity making it feel as if we were in a Jacuzzi. Worse yet, the hottest part of the day was still to come. Of course, that was just ‘Mother Nature’s Tourism Bureau’s’ way of saying welcome to June in Saint Louis, Missouri.
The only thing that made it bearable standing up here on the open concrete deck of the parking structure was the slight breeze rising and falling around us, and more importantly, the fact that a table in an air-conditioned restaurant was waiting for us down at street level.
I tilted my head up to look at my friend’s face. While I wasn’t the tallest person around, I was still of average height. Ben, on the other hand, took average and built upon it with reckless abandon. He stood a full six-foot-six and carried himself on an enviable broad-shouldered, muscular frame.