Death on a Deadline

sure? I’m going right by there. Why don’t you let me take it?”
    Okay, I’m cranky before I get my coffee, but he had just crossed over the line from helpful into obnoxiously persistent. Never doubt your first instincts.
    “Thanks anyway.”
    “Have it your way. See you tomorrow night.” He sped away.
    I jogged up the driveway and slipped into the house, closing the door firmly against the dog’s nose. A girl has to draw the line somewhere. I’d already been adopted by a neurotic cat that had to go to work with me every day because she couldn’t stand to be alone.
    On the way to work, I stopped at Hank and Marge’s, but got no answer in spite of my relentless doorbell ringing. I jumped back in the car, determined to make up my lost time. Hard to do, since my boss’s long ago run-in with the zoning committee had forced him to build outside the city limits. As I negotiated the crooks and turns of the hilly road, I thought about Brendan’s easy acceptance of my wild appearance and felt a pang of guilt that I’d been less than impressed with him. Again.
    I pulled into the Lake View Athletic Club parking lot, not as early as usual, but with minutes to spare. Two women jogged in place outside the door in matching hot pink T-shirts and tight black leggings. Against the cream-colored siding of the buildings, they looked like oversized flamingoes.
    Obviously newbies, their eagerness gave them away, as well as the T-shirts, still new looking, straight from the club’s sports shop, my name in big letters on the back. With my strawberry blond hair I wouldn’t be caught dead in hot pink, but thankfully, Bob doesn’t make me wear the shirts. Just sell them.
    No matter how much my boss insists we have to capitalize on my name, I’ll never get used to seeing Get in the Swim with Jenna Stafford emblazoned across the backs of perfect strangers or, worse still, people I know. Talk about cheesy. I am Jenna Stafford, and I don’t even have a T-shirt with my name on it. But they sell like hotcakes, and I get a percentage of the profits in addition to my meager salary.
    From the pink ladies’ disgruntled looks, they’d counted on my habit of opening early. They should have been glad it was my day to open and not Gail’s. The college student was always late. But they weren’t looking for reasons to be glad.
    Nothing starts a morning off better than dealing with a couple of irritated flamingoes. Unless it’s chasing a dog through the rain in your nightgown. Surely the day could only go up from here.
    I clutched the cat carrier in one hand and unlocked the door, flipping on light switches as I went.
    As the ladies followed me down the hallway past the U-shaped receptionist station and deserted smoothie bar, I stared straight ahead, praying they wouldn’t mention the pictures that adorned the walls—a much younger me at various swim meets. Bob’s insistence, again.
    For about two months, at the tender age of sixteen, I’d been America’s Olympic darling. Even though I left Lake View for college two years later and didn’t move back for nearly a decade, the local residents still remember my summer of fame. Or shame, depending on how much stock you put into winning. Hence the booming T-shirt sales. Which proves that under Bob Pryor’s good-ole-boy exterior beats the heart of a shrewd businessman.
    I wouldn’t call him a vulture, but when I gave up teaching and moved back to Lake View three years ago, he showed up with a job offer before my suitcases were unpacked. The position didn’t pay much more than flipping burgers, but being able to swim every day in any weather was incentive enough. And his promise to retire in a couple of years and sell me the health club at a reasonable price had sealed the deal. Plus it saved me the humiliation of pounding the pavement in my old hometown. And of admitting my failures.
    Those “couple of years” were up, though, and lately I suspected my boss had been avoiding my offers to buy the business. Even his current Caribbean cruise with Wilma smacked more of a need to elude me than it did of a need to re-spark the romance in his forty-year marriage. But with him gone, at least I would have the office to myself. Which worked for my Greta Garbo mood.
    Unfortunately, the office stayed deserted as the day flew by in a blur of small problems and needy members. I didn’t even get to darken the office door until four, when I finally nabbed a bottle of water from my little fridge