She really wanted to get back to her murder board, but it was kind of early for that.
Wasn’t it?
She checked her phone. Well, it was almost four o’clock. The doors at Castaways opened at four, in case of a happy-hour crowd. By the time she could get there, it’d be closer to four thirty. It wouldn’t be super weird if she showed up so early.
Would it?
While she stood against a wall and waited for a barista to hurry up with that pour-over already, she texted Niki. Where you at?
A minute later, she got a response. With Matt, getting early dinner. You lost?
Not lost. Just wondering when you’d be at Castaways.
Another hour or two? Tiff’s there. So’s Ben. They’re opening tonight.
Okay, Leda typed. I’ll see you there later.
Her coffee finally arrived, approximately a hundred years after she’d ordered it. It was good and hot, though, and it smelled like it’d been roasted sometime in the last week, which was nice. She took the to-go cup and went back outside, where it had begun to drizzle.
“Screw it,” she declared to the world at large. “I’m going to the bar.”
She’d parked Jason around the corner from her office, on a side street where the free parking was only for parkers who needed two hours at a time, not that it ever stopped anyone. Almost nobody ever got a ticket, and Leda had been lucky this time, too. She climbed inside, stuffed the coffee into the cup holder, and headed north into the city, then up Cap Hill—where parking was considerably trickier, even when someone knew all the tricks.
By 4:42, she’d finally found a place to leave the car and sauntered inside.
She shoved the door open and whipped off her sunglasses. “I’ve arrived,” she announced. “Let the games begin!” The door shut behind her. She blinked until her eyes adjusted to the lower light. “Anyone? Are there any games to be had? Anywhere?”
“Hark! Who goes there?” called someone from behind the stage.
“It’s me!” she called back.
Benjamin Kane popped his head out from between the black stage curtains and beamed like an angel. “Be thou Leda? That’s a fair name. I’ll have no psychic, if you be not she!”
“What’s that, Shakespeare or something?”
“Or something!”
Ben was a sharp, gay Asian man in his fifties. In another ten years, he’d be a silver fox. For now, his thick dark hair had only two streaks of silver—streaks that contrasted nicely with whatever black velvet outfit he was wearing at the time, unless it was summer. Then it was black linen all the way.
It was Leda’s opinion that he always looked a little like a friendly vampire, but she never said so out loud. She didn’t know him well enough to know if the comparison would offend or delight him. Sometimes he could be a tad fussy, and although Matt managed most of the day-to-day operations, Castaways belonged to Ben. She didn’t want to piss him off.
“You’re here early,” he noted.
“I try not to make a habit of it, but what can I say? I found myself at loose ends.”
He climbed out onto the stage and then hopped down off it. He wended his way between the tables and clutched her in a big, crisp hug. “We’re always happy to have you, of course. Will you do a set tonight?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Yes, you have, you just haven’t committed,” he argued. “But that’s fine for now. You do know that Matt and Niki aren’t here yet, right?”
She nodded and stepped back out of the hug. “Yeah, I know.”
“Leda!” Tiffany shrieked. She bounced out from the employee entrance beside the edge of the bar, smelling like cigarette smoke and cheap pizza from down the street. She delivered Leda’s second hug of the last ninety seconds, and immediately asked, “Do you want a drink?”
“No. I don’t know yet. Okay, yes, but I don’t want to impose.”
Ben waved his hand like he was swatting an errant wasp. “Oh, honey, we had our highest-ticket night ever last time you did your little song-and-dance routine. For God’s sake, Tiffany. Make the woman whatever she asks for.”
Leda scratched at the back of her neck and laughed awkwardly. “It’s more like a sit-and-sing routine, really. But thanks, Ben. You’re the best.”
“Nonsense! Another night or two like the last one, and I’ll start booking you outright. I can’t pay you much, but I can pay you enough to show up and show off.”
Tiffany whacked him on the arm as she walked to the bar. “You’re the show-off, Ben.”
He made a coy face and shrugged. “Anyway. I’ll haul out the karaoke getup, and you have a little gin fizzy or whatever floats your boat. Once the evening crowd rolls in, you can do your thing. But from here on out,” he said more sternly, “you need to give me a heads-up. Or give Matt a heads-up, whoever’s around. I want to start advertising your psychic songstress nights.”
“We’ve been calling it klairvoyant karaoke.”
He frowned, his perfect eyebrows dipping toward the bridge of his nose. “I don’t get it.”
“Like… clairvoyant but with a k you know?”
“Ah.” He nodded. “Like a Kardashian thing.”
“What? No, it’s just—”
“Yes, it is,” he protested. “I get it now. It might be hard to fit on a flyer…” he said, mostly to himself as he walked away. “Psychic songstress works better, if you ask me, and it has such a pleasant assonance to it. We’ll see. I’ll play it by ear, when I get back to my computer.”
“But…” Leda began to protest, but he was already behind the stage again. Tiffany was calling up something that required some martini-shaker stylings, so she said her thoughts out loud to the bartender instead: “If you spell psychic without the p it looks weird.”
Tiffany worked the stainless-steel shaker like a pro, bobbing her head to the rattling mixture of ice, booze, and whatever else she was whipping up. “Oh, I’m with you. Klairvoyant karaoke is the hands-down winner in my book, but he’s the boss. And I think he doesn’t want to… he’s not going to take off the p. He wants to add one. To songstress.”
“He’s not my boss. And that looks ridiculous in my head. I’m sure it looks ridiculous on paper, too.”
Tiffany stopped agitating the beverage and strained it into a martini glass. “Until you find someplace else to do your thing, I mean, it is his bar.”
“Yeah, I know. And he seems like good people.” Leda pulled up a barstool and parked on it. “I’m not mad. I just really like the KK thing. Oh, wait. One more K and we’ve got a problem, don’t we?”
“So, don’t add any racist jokes to the mix, and you won’t have anything to worry about.”
“Very funny. Very funny indeed.”
“Racist jokes are never funny!” Tiffany slapped down a cocktail napkin and put the glass on top of it. “Now try this. See if it doesn’t perk up your day.”
“What’s in it?”
“Try it first.”
Leda squinted at the glass. Its contents were yellowish, with light bubbles and an orange peel curlicue garnish. It did not look especially dangerous, but that didn’t mean anything where Tiffany was concerned. That girl could pack twelve ounces of fire into a shot glass and call it lemonade, right to your face without cracking a grin.