Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) Read Free Page A

sound either insolent or weird. He was here because it was anyplace but home, but he could just as easily have taken the bus to Jersey, or upstate New York, so there was no easy response, and he didn’t want to say anything provocative like ‘serendipity.’ So he shrugged, and sniffed, and said, ‘I guess I’m chilling out, that’s all.’
    ‘Got any money?’ the sergeant asked him.
    Feely reached into his pocket and pulled out three crumpled fives and change. The sergeant counted it with his eyes and then looked up at Feely with an expression that was part pity and part irritation.
    ‘Seeing how it’s Christmas, and I’m full of seasonal bonhommy, I’m going to let you go about your business. But if I see you hanging around here again, I’m going to haul you in on suspicion of being a waste of space.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘And quit that cogitating.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    The sergeant closed his window and the police car drove off. Feely was left on the sidewalk feeling even more isolated than ever. He wondered what Captain Lingo would have replied. ‘ A waste of space? Space, my friend, is a limitless extent and therefore cannot by definition be wasted .’ But Captain Lingo would have come out with it there and then, right to the sergeant’s ham-pink face, not when the squad car was two-and-a-half blocks away, and its brake lights were barely visible through the snow.
    All the same, the sergeant had made a decision for him. He couldn’t stay out on the sidewalk without being collared, so he would have to go inside; and if he went inside, he would have to order something to eat.

Hold the Beans
     
    F eely pushed his way in through the door of Billy Bean’s Diner. It was warm inside, paneled with light-varnished oak, and the tables were covered with red-and-white checkered cloths. He sat down at a table in the corner, by the coat-rack, the most inconspicuous seat he could find, and picked up the plastic-laminated menu. The ceiling was hung with twinkling fairy-lights and a tape was playing ‘Santa Claus is Coming To Town.’
    A middle-aged waitress came bustling up to him. She had frizzy black hair knotted in a red gingham ribbon, and a large brown mole on her upper lip, although she must have been reasonably cute in another life. ‘How are you doing, sugar?’
    ‘I’m glacified.’
    ‘You’re what?’
    Feely pointed to the menu. ‘I’ll have a cup of hot chocolate, please. And a cheeseburger.’
    ‘Well, I can do you Billy Bean’s Beanfeast Burger for seven seventy-five. That includes two quarter-pound burger patties, with cheese, bacon, tomato and beans as well as a double portion of freedom fries and unlimited relish.’
    ‘OK, that sounds like a shrewd choice. But can you hold the beans, please.’
    She blinked at him. ‘It’s Billy Bean’s Beanfeast Burger, honey. It comes with beans.’
    Feely didn’t know what to say. He had always suspected that there was a conspiracy against him—that everybody was working together to confuse him, and to make him feel that he was unhinged. But he hadn’t realized that the conspiracy had reached as far as Connecticut.
    You ask for something. They tempt you with a better deal, like Billy Bean’s Beanfeast Burger at only $7.75. But that’s how they trick you into accepting something that you seriously don’t want, and Feely seriously didn’t want beans.
    Feely seriously didn’t want beans because beans reminded him of his older brother Jesus, in the weeks before he OD’d. Jesus had lived off nothing but beans and smack, and every time he shot up he puked fountains of beans all over the apartment. Fountains . Two months after Jesus’s funeral, they were still finding dried beans down the back of the couch-cushions.
    ‘I’ll just have the cheeseburger, thanks.’
    ‘You know that comes with complimentary beans?’
    While he was eating, the waitress came up to him and asked if he wanted another cup of hot chocolate. He swallowed before he was