by Beverly Long
Her cheeks turned pink. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“Not insulted. It takes a great deal more than that.”
“Well, fine. Of course, they’ll see you...as something. You’re six feet of muscle and you have a gun.”
Better than comfortable.
“But they’re going to wonder why I need security. Especially if you act as if I’m the president, you’re Secret Service and you’re just waiting to take a bullet for me.”
“That could have happened the other night,” he said, feeling compelled to point out the obvious.
“I know that,” she said, her voice almost a hiss. “Listen, I can’t become the story. Because if I do, then Abigail finds out and that would be horrific. The boutique openings are the story.”
He could feel his back teeth grinding together. “She’s not a child,” he said. “I suspect she could handle the truth.”
“After the baby is born,” Megan said. “I’ll tell her everything. After that.”
He looked out his window. Settled himself. “I’ll do the very best I can not to smother you. But you need to do your best to cooperate a hundred percent and to not question or hesitate if I tell you to do something.”
“Fine.”
Oh, they were back to that. “Here’s a couple basic commands.” He held up his hand.
“I know that one,” she said. “Stop.”
“Halt,” he corrected. “Stay in place.”
He raised an index finger. “One.” Added his middle finger. “Two.” And finally, his ring finger. “Three. On three you go. No hesitation.”
“Go where?”
“Proceed. Whatever it is that I’m telling you to do, it’s your sign to move. Give it everything you’ve got.”
“Got it. On the count of three, go,” she said.
“It sounds easier than it is in real life sometimes,” he said.
“I’ll do the best I can,” she said. “Now, I’m not going to count to three, but it really is time for us to go.”
* * *
Once inside the Women’s Art Club, they met Mary Trove, the president of the group. She was early sixties, trim with short gray hair and dressed in all black. “We’re so delighted to have you here, Ms. North and Mr. Pike. Tickets have sold out for the show. All 175. In fact,” she said with a smile, “just this morning I heard that there was some ticket bartering going on. A few people got contacted about the possibility of selling their tickets for a nice profit.”
That made the hair on the back of Seth’s neck stand up. Somebody was trying to get into a fashion show at the last minute. What was the likelihood of that? Could it have anything to do with Snake Charmer? “Did they make a deal?” Seth asked.
“I don’t think so,” Mary Trove said. “Nobody wanted to give up their seat.”
He didn’t feel much better. She couldn’t possibly know about everybody who’d been contacted. Maybe one of them had indeed taken the cash.
“Lunch is in our dining room.” Mary Trove waved her hand in the direction of a large room at the end of the hallway. When they stepped through the doors, he saw a small group. He quickly counted. Fourteen, not including him and Megan. All women. He relaxed a little. Not because a woman couldn’t be every bit as dangerous as a man but he was fairly confident that the person on the video had been a man.
For fifteen minutes, they mingled. Mary Trove introduced them to every attendee. Then they were finally in seats. Salads were already on the table and soon, a young woman in a white shirt and black pants carried out plates of chicken and rice.
“No tea sandwiches,” Megan said softly from the corner of her mouth.
“There’s always tomorrow,” he answered.
The food was decent and he finished his. Megan ate about half. It was likely all she had time to do. She was busy answering questions about the store and the outfits that they’d be wearing. She was totally charming.
At one point, a woman three chairs down leaned forward. “Mr. Pike, what is your role in the fashion show?”
“I’m handy to have around. Lifting and toting are my specialties,” he said easily.
“I’ve got an extra ticket for my next trip to the Bahamas,” said a woman who had to be at least seventy. “I have very heavy suitcases. Say the word and it’s yours.”
That cracked up the table and he realized that the luncheon hadn’t been nearly as painful as he’d been expecting. They finished up with chocolate cream pie and then it was downstairs into the auditorium. They had forty-five minutes to get set up.
Megan tested the audio and the video. He found all the exits, counted the rows and the numbers of chairs in each row.
“What are you doing?” she asked, looking up.
“Orienting myself to the room. I want to be able to negotiate the space in complete darkness. If I know how many rows and how many chairs in a row, I can run my hand across the backs of the chairs and know immediately where I’m at in the room. And how many steps away I am from the exit.”
He could read her face. Overkill. “Has this habit paid off for you in the past?” she asked.
“The ability to navigate quietly and quickly in the dark saved my life in Afghanistan when an unfriendly with a big-ass gun and a bad attitude had a different idea.”
“I see. Count away,” she added, looking back at her notes.
And as the time grew close, he watched as every single person came through the door. While not forgetting Megan’s belief that a blond-haired man had followed her twice, he focused on body type, knowing that hair and clothes were easy to modify. Height and weight were much harder to change. He was looking for somebody who was roughly five-eight or -nine and about one hundred and fifty pounds. Unfortunately, by the time the doors shut and the seats were full, at least 25 percent of the 175 ticket holders fell into that category. And most of them were women. The three men who fit the description all had dark hair.
He wanted to stop Megan, to ask her to take a closer look, but she had already kicked off the show. So he watched the crowd. And felt his heart start to beat faster when one of the three men in question reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out a...
Phone. He was taking a picture. It was likely his wife on the runway.
There was a woman wearing a press lanyard around her neck taking pictures, too. He suspected Megan photographed well. The crowd was captivated as she introduced each model, explained what the woman was wearing, talking about fabric, its swing and stretch and how it might travel. Then there were the accessories: earrings, bracelets, necklaces, belts and scarves. For some of the pieces, she shared an anecdote about how the design had come together. For others, she talked about things like style and trend and classic lines. The models were all ages, with the youngest being in her teens to the oldest probably in her seventies. And they were all shapes, too.
She was brilliant, he thought. She was making sure that every woman in the crowd could see herself in an outfit from North and More Designs. The models looked as if they were having a great time, as did the crowd.
Finally, the hour show came to a close. Megan thanked the crowd for their generous donation to the charity and they funneled out. Then she spent a few minutes with the person with the press credentials.
Mary Trove hovered in the corner, stepping up immediately when the reporter stepped away. She hugged Megan. “That was wonderful,” the woman said. “I had very high expectations and you exceeded them. Thank you so much.”
“It was my pleasure,” Megan said.
And he thought she was likely telling the truth. Finally, she turned to him. “I’m going to step backstage,” she said. “I want to thank the models.”
“Okay.” He took a step that direction.
“You can’t come,” she said, smiling. “They’re going to be changing clothes.”
Him bargin
g into the dressing room was probably not the kind of news coverage she was hoping for. But his job was to provide security. At all times. Everywhere. “How long do you need?”
“Five minutes,” she said.
“Fine,” he said, using her word when she wasn’t thrilled but had decided to go along. “I’ll stand outside the door,” he said. “Yell if you need me. At five minutes and five seconds, I’m coming in.”
She was back in four and a half minutes. “Not willing to chance it?” he asked under his breath. There were still people milling around.
“Not one bit,” she said.
They walked back to the car and got inside. Megan started it and turned the air-conditioning on high. Still, it was stifling hot after sitting in the sun for a couple hours. He felt like a piece of wilted lettuce and she looked...as good as ever. “Nice job,” he said.
“Want to buy a dress?” she asked, her tone joking.
“I’m giving consideration to my color palette right now. I’ll get back to you.”
“I always have an order form available,” she said.
It was fun to tease her. But they still had serious things to think about. “Can you check your phone and see if the police have called with an update or any questions?”
“Sure.” She opened her purse. “No,” she said. “Nothing.”
In his gut, he was fairly confident that the responding officer wasn’t going to do much. They’d seen him at the registration desk, could assume he’d had a conversation with Jase Hall and hopefully watched the video, but beyond that, how much time was he really going to invest in the case?
“Now what?” he asked.
“Now we drive over to the store, where the manager will be having an all-staff meeting in—” she looked at her watch “—about twenty minutes. I imagine you know the drill. Last-minute instructions, making sure everybody has a handle on procedures and practices, and a basic pep talk. My job is to add the final rah-rah.”
“A cheerleader, then?”
“I’ve carried my share of pom-poms. All through high school for football and basketball. I had a crush on the quarterback, who was also the starting forward on the basketball team.”
He could see her in a short skirt and tight sweater. And every corny movie he’d ever seen with a sexy cheerleader was flashing through his brain at warp speed. “And did he have a crush on you?”
“He did.”
It was pretty crazy to be jealous of a teenager and something that had happened when she was in high school. “Did the romance survive graduation?”
She smiled. “It didn’t even survive spring of my senior year. Once basketball season ended, my allure evidently faded. He asked my best friend to go to prom.”
“Idiot,” he said.
She shrugged. “Best thing that could have happened. I’d have probably stayed home and gone to the junior college because that’s where he was headed. Instead, I left home and went to school in Savannah for fashion management. That’s where I met Logan.”
“I’ve spent a little time in Savannah. Nice place.”
“I loved it,” she said. “I mean, I enjoyed my program and learned a lot, but it was the city that I really missed when...I left.”
“Do you regret that?” he asked. “Not finishing?”
“I finished my degree. At night. One class a semester. Took five years, but I did it. I knew it was important for me to do that but, quite frankly, it paled in comparison to the importance of...other things.”
“Raising Abigail?”
“Nothing was more important than that.”
She pulled out of their parking space and eased the car into traffic. Fifteen minutes later, they were parked in front of North and More Designs. The sign looked brand-new. The store looked...well, not like very much. There was brown paper in the windows, just like in the Vegas property. “You’re not still under construction here?” he asked, pointing.
“Oh, no. I’ve seen photos—it’s ready to go. We didn’t do as much remodeling here since we’re renting this space. More cosmetic than anything. The paper will come out of the windows tomorrow, in time for the grand opening. Let’s go,” she said.
She was excited. He didn’t blame her.
Once they were inside, he was quickly introduced to Jasmine Pajo, the operations manager who had responsibility for the Sedona store, as well as the Albuquerque and Colorado Springs stores.
“This is Seth Pike,” Megan said. “He’s providing security services.”
“Good to meet you, Seth. I’m hoping we need crowd control services,” Jasmine said, her dark eyes dancing. She was a stunning black woman wearing something that he wasn’t sure if it was an oversize shirt and loose pants or a long dress, but it was a swirl of oranges and reds when she walked.
He sucked at fashion.
“The team is all here,” Jasmine said. “In our combination break room–slash–conference room, which might have to triple up as inventory storage because we’re about bursting at the seams with merchandise.”
He glanced around. There was a lot of merchandise but they’d done a good job of keeping space free to walk around. And while the racks were full, they weren’t so crowded that a shopper couldn’t easily see what was there. When he commented as much to Megan, she smiled.
“We made a decision early on that we’d only have front-facing racks where the clothes hang facing out, versus having racks where hangers are lined up side by side and you can’t really see the item until you pull it from the rack. We can display less but it makes for a prettier store and a nicer shopping experience for our guests.”
Megan greeted everyone as they entered the break room. He counted heads. Nine women and one man. They were gathered around a table in the middle of the room. There was an open seat at the head of the table and one in the middle.
Megan took the one in the middle. Classy. All the way. He took a spot leaning against the back wall, where he could see Megan and the door.
They spent a little time on introductions and Seth basically tuned them out until he heard something that got his interest. One of the women had worked for J.T. Daly’s, the competitor that North and More Designs had bested. He glanced at Megan but could read nothing on her face to suggest that she was remotely concerned about her new employee’s work history.
When it was his turn, he kept it simple. “Seth Pike. I’m consulting with Megan on security.”
Nobody asked any questions. He supposed that was a sign of the times. Now people just assumed that security was as necessary as lights and running water.
The meeting went for about an hour, with Megan doing the final ten minutes. She was enthusiastic, optimistic and supportive. She closed by reminding them to attend that evening’s cocktail reception as honored guests. It was a perfect rah-rah speech.
And she got a round of applause when it was done. The group filed out. Six of the ten would work tomorrow, with the other four having shifts later in the week. Chloé Dawson, the prior employee of J.T. Daly’s, would be opening the store at ten the next morning, along with Megan and Jasmine. The others assigned to opening day would arrive in staggered shifts to ensure coverage until nine tomorrow night.
Once everybody was gone except Megan and Jasmine, he cornered Megan in the conference room. “Hey, did you know that Chloé Dawson had worked for J.T. Daly’s?”
She nodded. “She has great experience. I think that’s why Jasmine is having her open with us tomorrow.”
“You’re not concerned?”
“Of course not. It was Jasmine’s decision to hire her but I applaud it. We should never turn our back on great talent.”
“You don’t think it’s an odd coincidence?”
“No. I think it was nice happenstance that she was available when we were hiring.”
“I’m going to add her to the list of people that we ru
n background checks on.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m suddenly very glad that we paid a set fee for your services. If it was by the activity, I might go broke.” She looked at her watch. “We need to get going. I have to change before dinner and then we’ll go directly from there to the cocktail party. Like I said earlier, no black tie tonight.”
“I’m still trying to get over the disappointment,” he said.
“The use of silverware, though, is required,” she said, her tone teasing.
“I’ve been practicing.”
Chapter 9
Dinner was with the executive director of the Downtown Association and his wife and the mayor’s chief of staff and her husband. Both the executive director and the mayor’s chief of staff had been very persuasive when the opportunity to buy the struggling group of stores first came along. It was amazing to think it had been over a year ago that they’d first started having conversations.
Seth did not eat his peas with a knife or tuck his napkin into his shirt collar. Just the opposite. His manners were flawless and he was charming. Once they found out that he was former military, they had a thousand questions. Seth offered up fun anecdotes about his years in the air force without making it look like anything but what it was—serious and difficult work being done by serious and committed people.
They left dinner and drove directly to the cocktail reception, which was in a private room at a hotel. Seth was noticeably quieter in the car. “I thought that went well,” she said.
“Nice people,” he agreed.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Nope. Just thinking about the next event.”
She supposed she should be happy that he was so focused on providing security for her. But it was a stark reminder that while dinner had been fun, from his perspective, it was all part of the assignment.
They did valet parking and once inside the hotel, found their way to the party. Jasmine and her husband were already there and a couple other people she didn’t recognize. Six steps in, a cocktail server approached.
