Page 55 of To Catch a Latte Thick as Thieves

Downstairs she dumped three of yesterday’s muffins on a plate and filled a glass with milk. Henry’s singing was loud enough to drown out a flock of birds. She opened the door and shoved the plate into Henry’s hands without so much as a good morning.

She slammed the back door and hurried to the front of the shop. They’d be opening in just an hour and she had a million things to do. She raced around the shop firing up the coffee machine and then went back to the kitchen to preheat the oven. She dumped ingredients into a bowl, turned on the mixer and then rushed to get the morning’s newspapers for her old school customers from the front stoop. Then she raced back to the kitchen to get the muffins in the oven. She spooned the dough into the muffin pan with a scoop, listening to the splat as the dough landed in each cup.

“I am not in love with him,” she muttered to herself. “I can’t be. I haven’t known him that long. And we’re total opposites. We could never live together. I’d drive him crazy in a week. What was I thinking? I knew I shouldn’t get involved with my tenant. I knew it, and what did I do? I went right ahead and did it anyway. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.”

“Do you always insult your baked goods before you put them in the oven?”

Annie yelped and dropped her scoop. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt, Fisher stood in the doorway watching her.

“How long have you been there?”

“Long enough,” he said. “Isn’t it bad karma to insult your food? I mean I know muffins aren’t the smartest of food groups, but should you really call them stupid to their faces?”

“They have faces?” she asked. This conversation was absurd, but it beat the alternative. She watched as he walked toward her. He picked the scoop up out of the bowl and plopped some dough into an empty muffin cup.

“I thought you could use some help,” he said and turned to face her. When she didn’t say anything, he pulled her close with one arm and lightly kissed the end of her nose. “It’s going to be all right.”

She let herself lean against him. Oh boy, in the love department, she wasn’t a muffin – she was toast. Burnt toast.

She tried to be professional and maintain her distance. Really, she did. But every time she turned around there he was, working the counter, clearing tables, chatting it up with her customers. She couldn’t get away from him.

Three times she caught herself staring at him and the third time he turned and winked at her, letting her know that he knew she was watching him. Annie was mortified.

She knew she was being paranoid, but she felt as if everyone knew that she had spent the night with him last night. When she saw the waitresses talking, she was sure they were gossiping about her. If a customer studied her too closely, she feared they were speculating about her and Fisher. She was giddy and embarrassed and couldn’t concentrate worth a damn. It was completely irrational.

She dumped a glass of ice water on a businessman’s lap, put salt in someone’s coffee and managed to ring up a three dollar tab as three hundred dollars. By mid-morning she was ready to call it quits for the day. She opted to go hide in her office instead.

The fact that Denise hadn’t shown up for work again was not helping her nerves. Annie didn’t know what to do. There was no answer at her house and Annie didn’t know her husband’s work number. She was going to have to go over there before Fisher became too suspicious.

She sat in her high-backed desk chair and put her feet up on the corner of her desk. This was her contemplative position. It was how she usually sat when pondering a new recipe. Today she pondered her love life. The fact that it involved Fisher left her stunned.

“Annie?” There was a knock on the door just before it opened. Fisher poked his head around. “I need to talk to you.”

“Right now?” she asked, feeling unprepared to discuss last night.

“I’m afraid so,” he said and strode into the room. A shorter man with round glasses and a receding hairline followed him. “Annie, this is my partner Brian Phillips. Brian, this is Annie.”

Annie dropped her feet to the floor and rose. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You, too.” Brian shook her hand and grinned at her.

What? Did he know, too?Annie gave herself a mental shake. She really was being paranoid.

“Annie, Brian’s been monitoring the bogus account,” Fisher said. “There’s been an awful lot of activity lately.”

“What kind of activity?” she asked.

“The kind we see just before they flee the country,” Brian said. “Here’s the problem, we need you to sell your business.”

“But— “ Annie protested.

Brian interrupted her, “Now, it wouldn’t be for real. We just need you to sign over ownership to someone else – an agent – so that they could go to the Arizona Savings and Loan and put their name on the bogus account, thus forcing our bad guy to make a move to reclaim it. Then we nail him.”

“I can’t do that,” she said.

“Now, Ms. Talbot, you don’t understand,” Brian said. “We need to make the perp think you’re undergoing a power change that might reveal him. It will force him out of hiding.”

“No, you don’t understand,” she said. “Anyone who has been watching the business closely has seen me fight with Martin Delgado over this very issue. Everyone knows I would never, ever sell.”

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