Careful What You Wish For

by Leighann Dobbs

  Gertie was already inside, barking orders at everyone. Logan chuckled because even the cops and the arson investigator were deferring to her.

  He approached the arson investigator, someone else he knew from his past.

  “Any idea how this started?” he asked, looking around at all the burned clothing and trying to make some sense of it.

  “The only thing we found out of place was the remnant of a cigarette butt. Camel, non-filter. We think that’s how the fire started, someone used it to light some cloth then tossed it aside.”

  Logan nodded his head slowly. He knew Ben and Noah smoked. Who else did? And what brand did they smoke? He needed to find that out, now.

  Big T walked slowly down the hospital corridor, the overhead fluorescent lights humming softly. The grey and white industrial tile floor pattern seemed to go on forever, the colors blending into the drab off-white walls. He hesitated before he opened the door to his mother’s room, dreading what he was about to tell her.

  The machines inside her hospital room whirred and beeped as usual, the constant noise having no effect on Big T’s mother’s sleep as she lay quietly in the bed. Her eyes opened as Big T sat in the chair next to her bed.

  “Bad news, Mom. The DNA wasn’t a match.” He struggled to get the words out, knowing he'd failed her. He'd been positive they would have been a match. That this would have fixed everything and given his mom the kidney donor she needed.

  His mother nodded her head a little, the tubes that carried oxygen into her nose moving slightly. “It’s okay,” she said softly.

  “No! It’s not okay, Mom. Our lives would be so much different if this hadn’t happened to begin with.”

  “Don’t think that way. She did what she had to, I don’t hold any grudge against her. You should know that, I raised you better than to blame others for things going wrong in your life. It is what it is, dear, everything will be fine.”

  She closed her eyes after talking, as if it had taken so much energy to say the words that she needed to rest. It killed Big T to see her like this.

  “I’m going to make things right, to make her pay for what she did. If it’s the last thing I do, I will make things right!” he said, his face getting red from anger and his hand tightening into fists.

  His mother opened her eyes and sat up a little, pointing her frail finger at him.

  “I don’t like the way you are talking! I know you have a lot of anger, but you need to let it go. Forgive. It is not good for you to carry around all this anger.”

  Big T knew he was upsetting her and settled back into his chair, reaching out for her hand.

  “Sorry, Mom. I just wish things could be even.”

  “Be careful what you wish for.” She squeezed his hand lightly then closed her eyes, drifting off to sleep again. Big T stood slowly and left the room as quietly as he could, wondering if, maybe, he should follow her advice and let things be. Nah. Maybe his mom could forgive and forget, but he couldn’t. He needed revenge, and he would get it. Besides, he was too smart for those dimwits at O’Rourke’s. He knew Logan was a PI and he’d been putting cameras all over to monitor what’s going on, but the joke was on him, everything was arranged to throw him way off track.

  And tomorrow night, well, tomorrow night would be the perfect opportunity for him to finally get his revenge.

  16

  The next morning Logan’s stomach was in knots. He hadn’t been able to eat breakfast; his mind was too preoccupied, and he'd just wanted to get to the office, so he could nail the perp once and for all.

  He knew whoever it was would likely choose to strike again tonight. They'd caused some damage with the fire, ruined some food with the fridge sabotage, tried to get the invitations sent to the wrong places, and sabotaged the runway. Yet, with all that, they still hadn’t been successful in stopping the event. Whoever, was most likely pissed off at that fact and would be looking to cause some major problem to stop the show, they would be almost desperate at this point, and Logan needed to ensure that didn’t happen.

  He entered the bustling lobby and was greeted by people rushing around, getting ready for the show that was to be held later that night. Myrtle was standing in the middle of it all, directing the various employees around as well as telling the delivery people where to go. She was dressed to the nines, wearing a cobalt-blue dress that made her cranberry-colored hair pop. Her familiar quirky glasses were perched on the end of her nose, this time the frames were turquoise and black, and the eyeglass chain consisted of matching colored beads on them. She caught Logan’s eye and winked at him as he rushed past her.

  “Looking more gorgeous than ever!” he threw out at her as he whisked by, catching the smile on her face as she heard him say it, then chastised a delivery boy who had flowers in his arms, reminding him not to crush the arrangement by holding it so close to his chest.

  He rushed up the stairs, catching a glimpse of Harper and Veronica as they hurried past him with some clothing, neither one of them looking like they'd slept much. He knew Marly must have had her employees stay up all night to make new sets of clothing to replace what had been lost in the fire. As far as he knew it had been a total loss with the clothing, nothing could be saved.

  He tried to catch Harper’s eye as she quickly passed by him, but he may as well have been invisible to her. She was mad at him and it sucked. He wished she realized he was just trying to keep her safe. Once this was all over maybe she would be more forgiving. He would make it up to her then, if she let him.

  Walking by Gertie’s office he overheard her bickering with Edward, who was trying to change some of the show even though it was starting in just a few hours. She was suggesting to him that maybe he go jump in the river to cool his jets, and that she had everything under control and needed to leave for some interview. Logan chuckled at her sense of humor and sassiness.

  He went to his office and sat at the desk, eager to review the footage from the various cams he'd placed throughout the mill. He impatiently tapped his pen on his desk as he watched the footage then stopped, leaning forward to be closer to the monitor. Was that George? He was walking around the runway slowly, he seemed to be looking at it for some specific reason. But George didn’t smoke, and Logan was pretty sure whoever was doing all this smoked. Then again, George had been the only one suspiciously missing when the building had been evacuated for the fire. Maybe George was trying to make it look like Ben was the perp when it had really been him all along.

  Logan stood and headed downstairs. He needed to have a talk with them and check the final build of the runway to make sure it was safe and in no danger of collapsing tonight.

  Harper ran around the building like she was on fire, checking all the various last-minute things before the show that evening. After taking the rest of the clothing downstairs with Veronica, she had double-checked every dressing room was set up correctly, then had gone back to her office to make some calls. She hung up the phone, happy she'd finished her calls to all the PR people. That was one more thing she could cross off her to-do list.

  She hurried down to the kitchen to check on the food. She knew Sarah was an amazing chef, she'd heard nothing but positive reviews about her when she'd worked for Raffe at the restaurant. All the local food critics had given the restaurant the thumbs-up, and all had pointed out the unique menu items Sarah had created. It was just a formality for her to check the food, she had no doubt Sarah had it all handled.

  Entering the kitchen through the heavy swinging doors she followed the sound of laughter to see Veronica and Sarah standing by a tray of desserts. TJ was on the opposite side of the stainless steel table talking to them while moving his arms wildly in mid-story.

  “Wow, those desserts look amazing!” She glanced down at the pastries. Miniature éclairs, brownie bites, and teeny cupcakes. “I just came down to make sure everything is all set for tonight. Can I do anything, do you need any help?”

  TJ stepped in between Veronica and Sarah and put his arms around
them, squeezing them both close towards him.

  “I think my two girls have it all covered, Harper,” he joked.

  Harper noticed Veronica seemed thrilled with him calling them his two girls, but Sarah looked a bit annoyed. Veronica was giggling, and Sarah was just standing there, her smile looking forced.

  “Actually, there is something you can do for me. Can you hunt Gertie down?” Veronica looked down at her watch. “She left almost three hours ago to do some interviews and I haven’t seen her since. She should have come back by now.”

  “She’s probably in her office, lost amongst all those flowers,” Sarah chimed in, making everyone laugh.

  “Sure, no problem, I’ll go find her and I’ll call you when I hunt her down,” Harper said, and left the trio in the kitchen to go back upstairs.

  Her smile faded as soon as she was in the hallway. It wasn’t like Gertie to run late, and especially not before an event. She remembered Gertie had not been too thrilled about this interview being on the same day as the show to begin with.

  She pulled out her phone and called Gertie, hoping there was some reasonable answer why Veronica hadn’t been able to get hold of her. Maybe Gertie had been too busy and found the phone calls annoying and shut her phone off. Harper knew she was grasping at straws, Gertie would never shut her phone off. The line rang several times and voicemail picked up. She called two more times. Still no answer. She had a strange feeling about this, and it wasn’t a good one.

  Harper knew whoever the saboteur was would definitely try to mess things up today, and that picture they'd left in her office proved they were creepy and wanted to scare people. She still had a strong suspicion it was Ben.

  She turned towards the other end of the mill where the setup crew was. If Ben was there, which he should be, she wanted to see how he was acting. And if he wasn’t there, well she would go tell Logan her suspicions and they would need to find Ben. She didn’t really want to talk to Logan, but this was too important, she would swallow her pride if she had to.

  She could see Noah as she approached the area, stacking chairs to be brought outside for the guests.

  “Hi, Noah. Have you seen Ben around?” she asked him nonchalantly, not wanting him to sense any urgency.

  “Yeah, he left a while ago.” Noah eyed her up and down. “He’s probably outside somewhere, I’ve been down here doing something for Gertie so don’t really know what he’s up to right now.”

  “Gertie? You know where she is?” Harper felt some relief Gertie was back and had been down here ordering people around. She remembered in certain areas of the basement cell phone reception was spotty so that would explain why she and Veronica hadn’t been able to reach her when they'd tried. Now it all made sense!

  “Sure, she’s right over there.”

  Noah pointed towards one of the storage rooms that had been turned into a dressing room, and Harper hurried over to it.

  “Gertie?” she called out as she knocked on the door, unsure why Gertie would be in the room with the door shut. She didn’t need to be dressed for the show for a few hours still.

  She knocked again, trying the door handle as she did and opening the door slowly. She stepped inside the dark room and yelled out Gertie’s name again as she took a few steps inside, asking herself what the heck Gertie would be doing in a dark dressing room. The ceiling fan whirred high above her, making a whooshing sound in the otherwise quiet room. Gertie wasn’t in here. Noah must have been wrong about which room she'd gone into. Harper turned around to leave the room.

  “Hey, Noah, she’s not—” Before she could finish her sentence, her head exploded in pain and everything faded to black.

  17

  Logan crawled out from underneath the runway and stood, brushing off his pants. He'd spent almost three hours checking to ensure it was safe and was now sure it was. He hadn’t planned on it taking that long to check, but it was so big and had so many areas that could be messed with he'd had no choice but to go over every inch of it.

  The place was abuzz around him with everyone getting the area ready for the show. The wait staff were placing the crisp linens over the various tables scattered around to hold the food and swag bags. There were some people placing flowers all over the place, and another person was carving an ice sculpture for the middle of where the buffet was to be set up.

  The maintenance crew was hard at work setting up and wiping down all the chairs as well as setting up the outdoor bars for the after-party. Logan scanned the whole area intently, looking for any signs of something, or someone, that looked out of sorts. He didn’t see anything unusual, which made him even more suspicious and on high alert.

  He decided to go find Ben, to see if he could figure out what kind of cigarettes he smoked. He also wanted to speak to George and find out where he'd been when the fire started. He figured the two of them would be working together today. Hmm, could they both be in on this together? He hadn’t thought about the possibility of two people working together to do these things, but anything was possible.

  Veronica interrupted his train of thought as she yelled his name from down the hallway and hurried over to him, a worried look on her face.

  “Have you figured out who it is yet? Have you seen anything?” she asked him in a low tone, looking around as she did so.

  “Nothing yet. I did check out the runway, and it’s safe. So, no worries there at least.”

  “That’s good.” Veronica didn’t sound as happy as Logan assumed she would be.

  “It took almost three hours to do it.”

  “I’m sorry, I mean that is great. Really. I’m nervous about this person doing something really crazy today, and to make things even worse, I can’t find Gertie. She left for an interview hours ago and I haven’t been able to get hold of her since. It’s totally not like her to just disappear on me.”

  Logan ran his hands through his thick dark hair. Veronica was right, Gertie going MIA was completely out of character. He knew Gertie liked to be on top of things here, and that usually meant she was always hovering around.

  “Where have you checked for her?” He took his phone out and called Gertie.

  “Well, I called and texted her a bunch of times, looked in her office, asked Myrtle if she'd seen her and told her to keep an eye out for her. Oh, and I asked Harper to go look for her. Wait. That was over an hour ago and I haven’t heard back from her, either.”

  Logan put his phone back in his pocket, his call to Gertie going to her voicemail. Learning both women were missing told him something was really wrong. He didn’t want Veronica to know he now considered both Gertie and Harper might be in danger, that would only cause her to panic.

  “I’m sure they are both fine, maybe Harper found Gertie and they are just in the middle of something for the show. You know how Gertie gets when she is busy, so focused she doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Yeah, I guess. But—”

  “I know you have a ton to do right now. I will take care of finding them, okay? I’ll check back with you as soon as I do,” Logan said to Veronica reassuringly, relieved when she agreed with him and went on her way.

  He immediately rushed to the back of the building where the runway was, hoping to catch the setup crew. He knew Noah, Ben, and George were all involved with setting things up, and he also knew one of them had to be in on whatever was going down. This guessing game would end right now, he was determined to find out who was causing all the problems. And Ben was first on his list.

  “You okay? Looks like something’s wrong, with the way you just rushed in here. There’s not another fire is there?”

  Logan turned to see Noah looking at him, holding one of the dozens of chairs he was setting out for the guests. He didn’t want to blow his cover, so he took a deep breath and tried to think fast.

  “Nah, nothing’s wrong. I’m just trying to get through checking all the computers, to make sure they are all set for the show.”

  “Yeah, sorry, I can’t help you with
that. I don’t know jack about computers.”

  “It’s good, I’m almost done anyway. I was craving a cigarette and came out here because I thought Ben might be here. He smokes Camels, right? Non-filters? I left mine in my car I guess.”

  Noah looked at him, his eyes narrowing as if he were trying to remember.

  “Yeah, I think he does smoke those. Actually, he’s over there smoking right now I think.” He jerked his head towards the smoking area.

  Logan thanked him and left, picking his pace up to get to the smoking area. He could see Ben and George standing and talking, each of them smoking. He paused for a moment just to watch them, neither one seemed to be in a rush or in fear of being watched. They weren’t standing close to each other and whispering or looking around cautiously. They looked like two employees taking a smoke break.

  As he approached the two of them they turned quickly towards him, both with guilty looks on their faces and exchanging glances quickly. Logan could tell they'd been talking about something they didn’t want him to overhear.

  “How’s everything going?” he asked them.

  “Good. We’re just taking a quick break and will be back to setting up again in five minutes,” George replied quickly, taking a long drag on his cigarette afterwards.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not here to babysit you two. But I do have a question I need answered.” Logan looked directly at Ben as he spoke, his eyes staring intently and not blinking once. He'd learned to do this when he was a cop, it always seemed to help get the importance of what he was about to say across.

  Ben shifted uncomfortably, and Logan leaned in closer towards him, still not breaking eye contact.

  “Why did you lie?”

  “Huh? What are you talking about, what did I lie about?” Ben looked at George and shrugged his shoulders.

  “The other day, when I saw you walking away from the alley you told me you had been smoking over there, but that’s on the other side of the building. The smoking area is here, obviously.” Logan took in the body language of Ben and George as he said this, noting they both exchanged nervous glances and shifted on their feet.