Page 22 of Sugar Plum Serenade

CHAPTER 9

Tuck needed a distraction, with everything that was going on in his life. Olive was a great, unexpected, pleasant distraction. Blood on The Magnolia floor and his daytime bartender in tears didn’t help matters at all. Whenever he came to work and found the Seawolf Beach Police Chief waiting for him, it was sure to be a bad day.

Ginny, who’d been called in just as he had, was doing her best to calm a hysterical Jodie, who sat on the floor a few feet beyond her usual station. Tuck glanced at the cut on her arm, made a quick judgment, and sent Ginny to his office for the first-aid kit. There was plenty of blood, but as far as he could tell the injury wasn’t terrible. He sat on the floor next to Jodie to closely inspect the cut, then asked, in a calm voice, “What happened?”

Mac stood over them, arms crossed, scowl on his face. “Apparently a couple of guys got into a fight…”

Tuck held up one silencing finger. “I want Jodie to tell me what happened.”

Mac grumbled, “No one gives me the finger, Tucker.”

Tuck shook his finger one more time, because he could. “Do me a favor and start up the jukebox. B-17.” A nice, slow, soothing song would help Jodie relax.

Mac obeyed, but he didn’t like it.

Who didn’t like “Unchained Melody”?

As soon as the music started, Jodie relaxed. “Unchained Melody” for the win, every time. Ginny returned with the huge first-aid kit Tuck kept in his office, always fully stocked.

“We can call…” Tuck began.

“No,” Jodie snapped before he finished. “No ambulance, no trip to the hospital.”

“You could use a couple of stitches,” he said, keeping his voice calm.

“Butterfly bandages will do just as well,” Jodie argued.

She wasn’t wrong. “Whatever you want.” He opened the kit and went to work. The wound, which didn’t look nearly so bad when it was cleaned, was easy enough to bandage. With the blood cleaned off her arm, Jodie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She listened to the music, got lost in it, let it ease her. After a couple of minutes she almost seemed herself again.

“It wasn’t any of the regulars. I didn’t recognize these guys at all,” she said. “When they started in on each other, I figured it was just another minor dustup. The guys usually listen to me when I tell them to cut it out, to calm down. I stepped into the middle of it just as the little one pulled a knife.”

“She was lucky,” Mac said from his recently claimed seat a couple of tables away. “It didn’t take long to find out these are bad dudes. They’re locked up, for now. I expect they’ll stay where they are for a while.”

With the cut bandaged and his daytime bartender considerably calmer, Tuck stood and helped her gently to her feet. “Ginny, why don’t you take Jodie home.”

The expression on Jodie’s face alarmed him. She was truly scared. “I can’t go home! What if they know where I live? What if they have friends hanging around? I’m a witness. It wouldn’t be hard to find me, everyone knows where I live and I live alone so…”

The offenders were locked up, and even if they weren’t it wasn’t as if Jodie had been the target. She’d simply gotten in their way. And the witness bit? Every customer who’d been here when it happened could be called a witness. The truth was, Jodie was upset and not thinking clearly. It wouldn’t be a good idea for her to be alone tonight.

Tuck looked at Ginny. Did his face fall as much as he thought it did? Didn’t matter. He didn’t have a choice. “Take the night off. Get your kid, if you want, order a meal for the three of you, on me. Keep an eye on her,” he added in a lowered voice.

“What about the bar? You said you were taking the night off?”

He felt his promising evening with Olive melting away. He’d never find a decent fill-in bartender that he trusted, not on a Saturday night. “My plans changed. I’ll handle everything.” Starting with cleaning the blood off the floor.

When things here settled down a bit he’d call Olive and make his excuses. Maybe she’d forgive him. Maybe not.

When the women were gone, Mac took a stool at the bar. Since he was in uniform he wouldn’t drink, but Tuck knew what kind of soda he liked. He grabbed a bottle from the fridge and set it in front of the police chief.

“What was with the jukebox?” Mac asked.

“Music sometimes helps when a person’s hurt or stressed. Or both.”

“Soothes the savage beast kind of thing?”

“Close enough.”

“I hope you didn’t have a hot date tonight,” Mac said. Was he a freakin’ mind reader? Tuck was almost always here on weekend nights. “Looks like you’re stuck.”