Drew’s eyes widened but to his credit, he stayed on point. “Regardless, you should think about what Bitsy said and take your display down.”
“No.” Lola was angry. At Drew. At Randy. At the world.
“Whatever you do with those dolls should be a private thing.” His authoritative gaze added a silent Or else.
Danger slid its cold fingers down Lola’s spine. This was a man who wouldn’t make idle threats. But Lola wasn’t breaking any laws. “Careful, Sheriff. The more you try to convince me to let it all go, the more I think you know who this woman is.” And that he wanted to protect her.
That earned her a dark look from the lawman.
“Drew.” Wendy called him back to pay. She smiled at Lola without a hint of jealousy or annoyance. Nothing unsettled that woman.
After Drew paid, he picked up the bucket of popcorn and took Becky’s hand. “I’ll let you have your fun for a day or two, Lola, but then they need to come down.”
Becky dragged him toward the theater.
“Hey, um…” Wendy lingered, smiling self-consciously, as if she were posing for a mug shot. “I’m producing the lower grades’ school play this year, and I need a hair and makeup artist.”
“Are you…” Lola blinked, trying to downshift from battle mode. “Are you asking me to help?”
No one ever asked Lola to help with anything. And now in the space of a few hours, she’d been asked to join in a bake sale and a school play.
“Yes, I’m asking.” Wendy’s head bobbed. She had a round face that would have benefited from a layered, fuller hairstyle. “Are you free during the evenings over the next two weeks?”
Holding Becky back with one hand, Drew paused at the theater door, waiting for his date.
“She’s free,” Avery blurted before Lola could make up her mind. “And she has free time.”
“I’ll get you a schedule.” Wendy beamed and went to join Drew.
After the kiddie rush was over, Lola leaned her hip on the snack-bar counter and got right to the heart-stopping point. “I think Randy gave his lover my grandmother’s pearl ring.” She could let go of many things but not that ring.
“I’m sorry but you’ll never see that again.” Avery refilled the popcorn machine with kernels. “What’s up with you and Drew?”
“Nothing.” The words didn’t ring true, mostly because she found his steady glance and sly humor appealing. But she hadn’t come to the theater to talk about men. “I want to show you the box of jewelry. You grew up here. You see everyone in town. You might recognize something.”
“Did you not see how chaotic that rush was?” Not one to waste time, Avery bent to restock candy in the display case. “I could tell you who came by, but I couldn’t tell you what they were wearing, much less what kind of jewelry they had on.”
“But…” Lola floundered.
Avery covered her ears. “Describe my earrings.”
Lola couldn’t remember what kind of earrings Avery was wearing, and said so.
Her friend’s hands came down, revealing a dangly silver pair. “My point exactly. Don’t waste another year on Randy.”
“But…Sunshine isn’t that big.” Lola was as reluctant to let go of her quest as she was to shelve blow-up Randy and Candy.
“What if Randy’s mistress is from Greeley?”
Lola’s mouth went dry. Randy’s spin class…His basketball games…All in Greeley.
Avery shooed Lola from behind the snack bar. “I’ve got to clean the other movie theater in the next thirty minutes. Go home. Get some sleep. Forget about this woman. Think about the future, not the past.”
Lola couldn’t, not without Nana’s ring on her finger. “But…”
“Thanks for your help. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Avery tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. It fell neatly in place. That was the thing about Avery. She bounced back from adversity smoothly.
Lola wished she could say the same.
* * *
“Daddy, unlock the car.” Becky skipped to the police cruiser after the movie, as energetic as the green leaves rustling in the trees lining Main Street.
Drew did as asked, using the remote, and then slowed his steps for some time alone with Wendy. He didn’t think this counted as a date, and he needed to set one up. He’d been so consumed with the problem of convincing Wendy to marry him quickly that he’d hardly followed the movie at all. “Did you enjoy the show?”
“It was good.” Wendy seemed lost in thought. The breeze blew a lock of her hair from behind her ear. She tucked it back in place before he thought about doing so. She was nice to look at, quiet and good-natured. She’d offered to guide Lola through the bake sale fund-raiser and asked her to volunteer for the school play. And she’d encouraged his daughter to dress conservatively and to try out for the lead in the elementary school production. She’d be an asset in his battle against Jane.
“Dad, Daddy, Papa, Padre.” Becky climbed into the back seat. “Let’s go!”
Drew planned on dropping Becky off at his mother’s house while he joined Norma Eastlake at her private viewing. He needed to get going but he also needed a wife. So he put on the smile his mother said was handsome, stood up straight, and tried to forget what was at stake. “Who was your favorite character in the movie?”
“The heroine, of course.” Wendy smiled. It was a gentle smile, a smile that said she had the patience to deal with a precocious little girl. And why not? As school secretary, she dealt with about a hundred kids every day.
“Dad, Daddy, Papa, Padre.” Becky put more urgency in her request.
Despite Wendy being as sweet as sweet tea, it was becoming increasingly obvious that she was painfully shy. Was she wondering whether he liked her? He could put her mind at ease by asking her out. “Would you like to go to dinner on Wednesday? We could go into Greeley.”
Her gaze moved down the sidewalk, away from him. “No.”
She was rejecting him? He experienced an unusual sensation—the cold-skin prickle of panic.
“Have you forgotten?” Wendy’s gaze returned to him, still a degree or two off-center. “There’s a PTA meeting that night.”
He hadn’t forgotten. He just didn’t normally attend. It was great that Wendy was so dedicated to her job. And fantastic that she wasn’t turning him down flat.
Heartened, Drew pressed on. “How about Thursday?”
“No.” Her attention drifted down the sidewalk again, and her brows lowered as if she was having a serious inner discussion.
Perhaps about the unwanted advances of the town sheriff?
Drew considered patience one of his virtues. So he waited for Wendy to say more, silently listing her attributes. She was committed to Sunshine, kind, and responsible. Becky seemed to like her, and it wasn’t a hardship to look at her. Wendy’s silences and deep inner thoughts could be a plus. They’d probably never argue, not like he did with Lola or had done with Jane.
Now Lola…Lola was a looker, and conversation with her kept Drew on his toes. She may have been going through a difficult time, but she was a reliable employee. After all, she’d insisted upon locking up the cemetery after he’d found her the other night, and she’d gone into work at the mortuary on a Sunday.
Drew frowned. He shouldn’t be thinking of Lola when his future wife was standing in front of him. Wendy needed a softer approach than most women in his life. “I’d like to get to know you better. No pressure.”
Just a whirlwind romance, a short engagement, and a small wedding.
“Thursday is our first evening rehearsal.” Emotion rang in Wendy’s normally stoic voice. She was proud of her special project. “Remember, Becky will be trying out for a role on Tuesday.”
And knowing what a ham his daughter was, Drew had no doubt she’d be selected for a part. “How about Sunday?” He was working Friday and Saturday night.
“Okay.” Wendy stared down the sidewalk with the intensity of Einstein caught in the middle of noodling the theory of relativity.
Now what? If Mims were here, she’d probably tell Drew to kiss her.
Great idea. Drew dutifully leaned in and pressed a kiss to Wendy’s cheek. “I’ll pick you up at six.”
Wendy nodded and drifted in the direction of the thrift store.
“Did you just ask Wendy Adams out?” Pris stood just outside the pharmacy door, wearing a funky black print skirt that was hemmed too high and a plain black tank top that was cut too low. Fake black eyelashes. Fake black nails. She was a billboard advertising for the wrong man.
Drew beelined toward the cruiser. “Don’t start.” His sisters always thought they knew exactly what Drew needed.
“I don’t know where to start.” Pris jogged to his side with ragged steps. She wore impractical high-heeled sandals like the ones Lola had worn at the auction, but she hadn’t mastered them. “I mean, Mom told me about Jane wanting custody and about the advice to get married, but you don’t date. Ever. So I thought marriage wasn’t an option. And then you bought Lola at the auction. And now…” She turned, walking backward, presumably staring at Wendy. “Wendy Adams? She’s nice, but she’s like the milk toast Mom used to make us eat when we had a fever. Zero personality.”
Pris tripped on an uneven seam in the sidewalk. Drew caught her as her shoe fell off. Forget his legal needs. Now was the time to broach the topic of Randy. Slim though the chances of Pris having dated him might be, Drew had to close the loop. “Hey, do you remember when Ben gave you a bottle of perfume at Christmas one year?”
“Yeah.” Pris held on to his shoulder while she slipped back into her high heel. “It was his apology for gambling away our vacation money.”
“Do you still have that bottle?”
Pris straightened, flapping her false eyelashes. “Why? Did you want to regift it to Wendy?”
“No.”
“Then why do you want to know?”
“Just answer the question.” Why couldn’t his sister be like a nervous criminal and come clean?
Pris gave him her you-are-an-impossible-brother look. “I don’t know. It’s probably in a box in Mom’s garage.”
Drew washed a hand over his face. There was no alternative but to ask a direct question. “Did you date Randy Williams after he got married?”
“What? No.” Pris scowled and pushed Drew’s shoulder. “What’s wrong with you?”
Honestly, Drew didn’t know, but he was relieved by her answer.
“Dad, Daddy, Papa, Padre!” Becky called from the cruiser.
“In a minute, Sunshine.” Drew faced Pris and decided the partial truth was his best defense. “Jane. It’s Jane.” And Lola. God help him, it was Lola and her legs. But mostly, it was Jane. “Jane wants joint custody of Becky, and she’s coming home to stay.” The words burst from him in a panicked rush, as if they’d been waiting for hours to be shared, which they had. Drew hadn’t told his mother the latest. “Jane sent me a text this morning.”
“What?” Pris clutched his arm, digging in her false nails. “When is she moving back?”
“I don’t know.” Oxygen was a problem. Drew forced himself to fill his lungs with air.
“Let’s not get all maudlin.” Pris released his arm. “This is Jane we’re talking about. She never does anything without an agenda that benefits Jane. How will gaining custody of Becky help her?” One set of Priscilla’s fake eyelashes stuck together. She squinted and carefully pried her eyelids apart. “Wendy isn’t the answer. Oh, I know, no one ever has a bad word to say about her. She lives at home with her parents and helps care for her mother. She donates her time to the community.” Pris blinked the sticky-lash eye. “But she’s boring. She came to Shaw’s one Sunday, and I swear she never said a word.”
“She’s not like you or Eileen or the twins or Jane.” Or Lola. Wendy was low maintenance, even-keeled, safe. “Maybe shy is what I need.”
“Not hardly,” Pris allowed, peeling off one black eyelash and looking at it in disgust. “What do you like about Wendy other than she doesn’t talk back to you?”
Drew couldn’t think of a single thing.
“Do you know anything about her other than what you could fill in on a rap sheet—age, residence, employment history?”
“Um.”
“Drew.” Pris loaded his name with sisterly disgust. “We live in Sunshine. I can tell you what kind of ice cream Pearl buys every week. I can tell you where Bitsy shops on Saturday. I can tell you who Iggy kissed on Saturday night.” Her cheeks colored slightly. “But I can’t, for the life of me, tell you one personal thing about Wendy, and you can’t either.”
Drew opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn’t. He’d stood in line with Wendy for movie tickets and then for popcorn. Wendy had smiled and occasionally nodded in agreement to whatever he and Becky were talking about. He didn’t know whether Wendy liked her job or enjoyed working with children or loved baking something other than Bundt cake.
“Don’t jump in a well without a flashlight, Drew.” Pris scrunched her nose, trying to find the right words, when she should have been peeling the other caterpillar off from her eye. “For all you know, Wendy could be a serial killer.”
Drew had had enough. He turned away. “Someday, that imagination of yours is going to get you in trouble.”
“In the meantime, go see Rupert Harper,” Pris called after him. “Get a good lawyer, not a good wife.”
Chapter Twelve
Good morning.” Beatrice, the receptionist at the Sunshine Retirement Home, greeted Lola on Tuesday.
It’d been two days since Lola had featured Randy and Candy in her window. Two days since she’d breathed the same air as Drew and thought about kissing him.
That was a lie. She’d thought about kissing Drew every time she’d looked at Randy’s mementos. So far, she’d learned nothing new by asking the grocer and the pharmacist if anyone had asked about a lost bracelet, necklace, or earring. But today would be different. Today would be spent with the most talkative and sometimes longest-memoried residents in Sunshine.
“You have a full schedule until three.” Beatrice handed Lola a sheet of paper with her appointments on it. She was a slender woman in her fifties with gray-brown hair that could use a strong relaxer or, at the very least, stronger mousse.
Lola pretended to scan the sheet while she reached into her vest-jacket pocket for the clip-on ruby earring from Randy’s box. Despite Drew and Avery’s advice to the contrary, she couldn’t let her search for the truth go. The best place to find the owner of a clip-on earring was the retirement home. And who saw everyone coming and going? Beatrice.
“Good morning, Ms. Stephens.” Beatrice straightened in her chair before Lola got the earring out of her pocket.
Marcia Stephens entered. She was a well-preserved woman approaching fifty with precisely applied makeup and a thick white-blond bob she tucked behind her ears. A few kinked stragglers floated above her crown, like alert antennae. Marcia volunteered at the retirement home where her mother resided, reading romances to those who could no longer read for themselves. Like her daughter Barbara Hadley, she was always well turned out. Today she wore platform sandals, formfitting white capris, and a turquoise blouse that Lola wouldn’t have minded wearing.
Marcia carried a brown jacket over her hands and greeted Beatrice warmly, acknowledging Lola with barely a nod because…Well, Lola never quite knew why Marcia gave her the cold shoulder, except that she was Barbara’s mother.
“Don’t mind her,” Beatrice whispered as Marcia headed down the hall. “She’s been low since Barbara refused to put blue streaks in her hair anymore. Barbara told her she had to grow up. No more fast cars. No more pool parties. No more anything.”
Barbara may have been the mayor’s wife, but she tried to rule everything in town, from the acceptance of outsiders, like Lola, to her own mother’s hair. Barbara owned Prestige Salon and had refused to rent a station to Lola when she’d arrived in town. She had residents cowed when it came to hair. No one wanted to risk Ba
rbara’s wrath by going to Lola, not even Avery.
“Marcia hasn’t had blue streaks for a long time,” Lola said. Not since last year. It was Lola’s business to notice hair, even if someone didn’t notice her. She checked the time and realized she had none to spare to ask Beatrice about the earring.
Lola hurried down the hall toward the small room that housed the one-person beauty parlor, wheeling her supply kit behind her as if it were carry-on luggage. She worked Monday through Friday from midmorning to whenever she couldn’t drum up any more work, revising her schedule to accommodate mortuary clients as needed.
When Lola had arrived in Sunshine, she’d been disappointed that doing hair at the retirement home and the mortuary was the only work she could get. After all, she’d been on an award-winning makeup team on Broadway. But she’d come to appreciate the spunk and gossip of the elderly and the emotionally satisfying mortuary work. However, the more she thought about it, the more she was looking forward to the faster work being involved with a play entailed, even if it was only a play for kids.
“My appointment is in two minutes.” Harriet Bloom was waiting for Lola outside the salon door. She was perched on the seat of her walker, wearing a flowered blouse over a long jean skirt. Her tennis shoes were blue, her orthopedic hose bright white, and her hair a frizzy gray storm cloud around her head.
“I’ll be ready,” Lola sing-songed, because that was how she dealt with Harriet—with forced cheer.
Lola unlocked the door and began turning things on for the day—lights, fan, radio. Somewhere along the line, someone had painted the wall opposite the hair station a dull dusty rose. The color didn’t flatter the pale complexions of the residents. Lola had tacked up a large black feathered headdress Nana had bought in the seventies from a Vegas showgirl. It was the only lively thing in the room.
“I should reschedule.” Harriet bumped her walker against the doorframe a few times before getting through. She needed glasses and claimed she couldn’t afford them. “You’ve got big hair today. You always have big hair when you’re upset.”
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