Chapter 31
Standing in the back room of the cookie shop, I stared at Cassie. "But he told me it wasn't a real fight."
We were decorating sugar cookies for a bridal show that was being held at the stately brick hotel across the street.
Cassie shook her head. "Oh, it was definitely real."
So far, I'd learned nothing, except that Cassie was still insisting that the fight was a physical one, and not just some verbal altercation.
I gave her a pleading look. "Just tell me the whole story, okay? You said you saw it. But what happened?"
"Alright, let me start from the beginning. You know how the ice machine's been on the fritz lately?"
I nodded. As her only part-time employee, I did know. At the cookie shop, we sold not only baked goods, but smoothies when the weather was warm enough to justify it.
Smoothies needed ice, sometimes, lots of ice. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, Cassie's ice machine had died a long, noisy death, and she hadn't yet replaced it.
"Right," I said. "And?"
"So, you also know that I've been buying all of my ice from that dispenser near the beach, right?"
Again, I nodded. Occasionally, it was me getting the ice. This involved lugging a blue, plastic cooler – luckily, a cooler with wheels – four blocks to the beach and back again.
I didn't mind. It was actually sort of fun. But what this had to do with the fight, I had no idea. "So…?" I prompted.
"So," Cassie continued, "I'm there, filling the cooler, and I see Derek at the hot dog stand. And there's this huge line behind him." She paused. "You know which stand I mean, right?"
"Yeah." I made a forwarding motion with my hand. "Duffy's Dogs, I know."
She gave me a look. "Hey, don't get all impatient. It's relevant to the story."
I gave her an apologetic smile. "Sorry."
She reached for a tube of icing and began drawing pink flowers on the cookies that I'd just frosted. "So you know the guy who owns the stand, right?"
"Yeah. Duffy." I wasn't a huge hot dog fan, but I'd chatted with him a few times. He seemed like a nice guy.
"Right," Cassie said, "but that day, it's not Duffy manning the stand. It's his son, Spencer."
I tried to think. "Skinny kid? Maybe in junior high?"
Cassie nodded. "Right. That's him. He works the stand sometimes, you know, on weekends and stuff."
I did know. But I still didn't know why this mattered. "And?"
"And, like I said, there's this huge line." She frowned. "And guess who's at the front."
"Who?" I asked.
"Derek." Cassie looked up. "And he's with Angelina the Skank. You know her, right?"
Angelina DeLotta? Did I ever. I'd gone to high school with Angelina. She was loud, obnoxious, and very popular, in that easy good-time sort of way. "Yeah, I know her."
"Doesn't everyone," Cassie said. "Anyway, Derek's totally giving Spencer a hard time."
"How?" I asked.
"Oh, you know. The usual stuff." She gave it some thought. "Like, from what I heard, he'd already rejected like five hot dogs before I'd even got there."
I felt my brow wrinkle. "Rejected? What do you mean?"
"Well, from the bits people told me after, he was like, 'This one's overdone. This one's not done enough. This one's got a mashed-up bun…"
"You can reject hot dogs?" I said.
She gave me a look. "You ever been to a restaurant with him?"
I had, in fact. And so had Cassie. By unspoken agreement, we almost never went with him anymore. It was just too painful to watch, him running the servers ragged, just because he could.
"Point taken," I said.
"So," Cassie went on, "even from the next stand over, I can see that Derek's being a total jerk. Like, he grabs the kid's tip jar and says–" She imitated Derek. "'–If you want it back, you're gonna have to earn it.'"
I felt my jaw clench. "God, what an ass."
"No kidding," Cassie said. "And all this time, Angelina's there, laughing like she always does."
I rolled my eyes. "Like a coked-up hyena?"
"Oh yeah." Cassie's mouth tightened. "And then the innuendos start."
"You mean from Angelina?"
"I wish," she said. "I mean from Derek."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, he starts making all these cracks about hot dogs, and wieners, and asking the kid if he sees a lot of wieners at home." She made a sound of disgust. "Stuff like that."
I stared at her. I almost didn't know what to say. Even for Derek, this was a new low. I asked, "Were you tempted to say something?"
"Oh, I was more than tempted," she said. "I left my cooler, marched over there, and told him, flat-out, to give it a rest."
"What did he do?"
"Nothing," she said. "You know how he is. He ignored me and kept on going. And all the while, Angelina's still laughing, the people behind him are grumbling, and the kid, Spencer, he's looking like he wants to run, or jeez, even cry." She winced. "It was that bad."
Listening, it occurred to me that this was exactly why I'd been reluctant to hear this story the first time around. Cripes, I almost wanted to cover my ears now. It was vintage Derek, but worse.
Still, a huge part of the story seemed to be missing. I gave Cassie a perplexed look. "But what does this have to do with Joel? You still haven't said."
"Right. Because I was saving that part for last."
"Why?"
She smiled. "Because it's the only good part of the whole story."
I gave her a dubious look. "There's a good part?"
"Oh yeah," she said. "And you're gonna love it."