by Ginny Aiken
Aunt Weeby clumps up, a radiant grin on her face. “Sugarplum! You and Max are a hit! I was in the call room with the customer service girls, and I heard all them phone calls. You’re a hit! The viewers love you and Max. They think you’re a perfect couple—you know: Hepburn and Tracy, Moonlighting’s Maddy and David, Miss Piggy and Kermit.”
Oh great. Her plan really is for me to join the ranks of pink-obsessed pig puppets. “But—”
“It’s everything I wanted and more,” Miss Mona adds. “Sparks! Fireworks! Chemistry! I knew it would work.”
Chemistry? Did these two ever think to check my past? I’m the one who got kicked out of chem lab once for setting the place on fire. I hardly think their plan included spontaneous combustion of the redhead-with-a-temper kind.
“You two are nuts. Keep Mr. Chemistry. I’m outta here. You can teach Max the Magnificent a thing or two about the gem trade. Oh, oh! And how ’bout this? I’m sure Miss Piggy would love to stage a comeback and be his sidekick. I hear she’s between projects these days.”
With no dignity left, I don’t care that every employee stares at me as I stomp out of the studio. I can’t believe I set myself up for this. And to think I gave up that fab career of mine in New York for a pair of lunatic seniors, the chance to humiliate myself before millions, and a know-nothing pretty boy. I thought that was a good idea because . . . ?
“But you were great . . .” Miss Mona’s wail follows me all the way to the door.
We were great, all right. A great, big, fat flop.
I should’ve known better than to let Aunt Weeby and Miss Mona take over my life.
Now what, Lord?
In the parking lot, I realize something’s cutting into my palm. I glance down and groan.
You got it. I walked out with the diamond Max dropped. And while I can return it in the morning, once I’m not so mad, I don’t feel right taking a three-carat treasure home with me.
But would you want to go back to the scene of that crime? I don’t either.
And that’s when my conscience kicks in, right on schedule. I’m convinced that mental tyrant of mine is hitched at the hip to heaven. So I try to reason. Why? I don’t know. I’ve yet to win a single argument. But I give it a go anyway.
“Okay, Lord. I know I have to take it back. But it was such a perfect exit!”
I take three steps toward Aunt Weeby’s old, clunky VW Jetta—she loaned it to me until I find myself a decent set of wheels to buy. Mine bit the dust when I pulled into town.
Where was I? Oh yeah, praying. God?
Since he doesn’t answer me, my discomfort grows.
“Aw, c’mon. You know I’m honest. I’m not going to run away with Miss Mona’s property. I’ll bring it back. Besides, I’m too embarrassed.”
Then it hits me. No matter how much I want to flee, there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s a very good reason the Bible calls anger a no-no. I let mine get the better of me, and I stormed out without my purse. Uh-huh. You know it.
No purse, no keys. No keys, no Jetta getaway.
Bummer.
“Oh, okay. I get the message. I gotta go back in there and eat humble pie. And when I see anyone, today or tomorrow, I’ll have to confess and ask forgiveness. As always, you’re right. Just don’t leave me now, Lord. Help me through it all.”
Not feeling a whole lot better, I retrace my steps, push open one of the massive glass doors, and reenter the building. In the lobby, a tall brunette in a gorgeous black suit stops me.
“Are you Mona Latimer?”
I laugh at the stranger’s question. “You’ve got to be kidding. She’s my great-aunt’s best friend. I’m Andie Adams, one of the hosts here. Who’re you?”
She waves. “No one, really. I mean, I’m supposed to meet Miss Mona for an interview. I’m a couple of hours late because of my flight.”
“Aha! So you’re the one. She’ll be happy to see you.” Especially since it’ll take her mind off the debacle Max and I just staged. “Why don’t you go down that hall on the left, and keep going to the end. Her assistant should be there. She’ll get you to Miss Mona.”
I turn to get back to my business, but then say over my shoulder, “Good luck!”
She doesn’t smile back but only nods.
Back to righting my latest wrong—I told you trouble follows me, right? Oh, well. First I have to deal with the purse and then return the diamond to the vault. While I don’t have the car keys, I do have the vault combination memorized. At least I don’t have to go back to the scene of the debacle just yet. I can take care of the diamond first, and then face the music.
I find my dressing room door about an inch ajar. Strange.
I’m pretty sure I closed it all the way before I headed for makeup and hair. But that’s no big deal, I guess. I don’t have anything anyone would want.
I walk in and my ears are assaulted.
“Squawk! Shriek, shriek!”
My ears ring and my heart does a hundred-yard dash. “What…?”
Then I see it. And what a sight it is. I now know for sure, without a shadow of a doubt, that I’ve walked into one of those parallel universes Trekkies talk about.
Who’s ever heard of a birdcage in a corporate building? Especially a birdcage that comes complete with what looks like a beautiful miniature parrot swinging on a perch.
“Squawk! Shriek, shriek!”
How can something so beautiful make such a nasty noise? And the little loudmouth is gorgeous. Bright orange-red head feathers blend into yellow ones on its neck. Those shade toward red again down the body, but then melt into the yellow on the wings. The most extreme wing feathers are blue-green and match the long tail feathers—I’m talking long as in as long as the body itself. The bird’s chest is that same orange-red as its neck. Beautiful.
The critter tilts its head and with its round black eyes peers at me, as if wondering who I might be and why I’m suddenly here. If it weren’t for the diamond, I’d be wondering the same thing myself. I do notice the pointy beak and sharp claws, also black—in sharp contrast with all the brilliant color. They don’t exactly reassure me.
“Squawk! Shriek, shriek!”
“All righty then. I get the message. I’ll keep my distance.”
But I do have to move the cage to get to my Coach bag, which I left on my small armchair. Whoever brought the feathered invader in here stuck the cage on top of the purse. The little pile of feathers objects to my efforts to retrieve my handbag—at ear-splitting decibel level.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.” I drop the cage out of my way right next to the chair. “Don’t get your feathers all ruffled now. You’re fine.”
Sadly, my Stella McCartneys aren’t. The cage, small though it is, has a tiny water bowl, which sloshes its contents all over. Some drops—enough—hit the lovely dark green velvet. All that extreme shopping down the drain.
My earlier frustration returns. What a rotten day. “I can’t wait until it’s over,” I tell the showy bird. “And don’t complain again. I’m no happier than you are. And by the time I come back tomorrow, you better be gone.”
Purse in hand, I hurry to the ladies’ room—yepper, that’s right, the bathroom. In their never-ending, way-out-there wisdom, Aunt Weeby and Miss Mona figure no sane robber would think to check out the restroom for a vault. So right between the last of six sinks and the hot-air hand dryer, behind the walnut wall panel, one finds the Shop-Til-U-Drop Network’s vault.
That’s right. I’m with ya. Crazy.
When I walk into the bathroom and don’t see Julie at her post, I get that hinky feeling of something not quite right. But ready to go hide out in my room at the house, I press the exact spot that activates the spring-loaded panel. It swings out and the massive steel door gleams at me. The lock, with its coded numbers, is the last hurdle before I can ditch the diamond and go home.
Once I plug in the right sequence, the tumblers click into place, and I give the huge wheel-shaped lock a spin. Good.
But when the door swings toward me, I stumble. My eyes pop. My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
My hands shake.
My stomach heaves.
I grow cold, then hot as I lean over to get a better look at the man sprawled facedown on the floor of the vault, a puddle of blood under his head. Horror gets the best of me, and I let out a wrenching, heartfelt scream.
“HELP!” Then quieter, “Oh, Lord Jesus . . . please, please help.”
I don’t know if I blacked out or if my brain just blocked out the awfulness, because I remember nothing more until the door bursts open and Julie runs in. Behind her are Miss Mona, Aunt Weeby, Carla, Sally, and Max.
“Andie! Are you okay—” Julie cuts off her own question with a gasp. She goes for her pistol, holds out her free hand to keep the others from crowding after her, and then steps into the vault. “Call 9-1-1.”
The irregular thump-thump of Aunt Weeby’s walking cast comes up behind me. She wraps her arm around my waist. “What happened, sugarplum?”
That’s when I realize my teeth are chattering so hard I can’t even form an answer. The trembling spreads down through my body. I feel chilled, colder than I have ever felt before. My head spins. My knees go watery and my stomach turns into a vast pit.
A rumble of furniture pierces the fog in my brain. Then, “Here,” Max says.
Next thing I know, I’m in the armchair that usually sits in the left corner, just inside the ladies’ room door. Miss Mona is kneeling in front of me, her hands rubbing mine. Aunt Weeby stands behind me, her hands on my shoulders.
“Is he . . . dead?” Sally whispers.
I try to draw in enough breath to answer, but my body still refuses to cooperate, not that I know what to say. The best I come up with is a weak shrug.
“Hush!” Miss Mona admonishes. “Andie’s in no kind of shape to chitchat right now. Besides, Julie’s checking out the . . . the person. Did anyone call the police?”
“I’m on it, Miss Mona,” Max says. Despite my earlier anger toward him, all I feel right now is a swell of gratitude.
The room, eerily still and silent, then resonates with Max’s beautiful voice. What he says isn’t so beautiful.
“. . . We have a person in the vault. Security is with him, so I can’t tell you much about his condition. What I did see is blood under his head, and he’s not moving. Please send us help—and fast.”
Somewhere in the gray desert that my mind has become, I register his calm demeanor. How can he pull that off? I’ve been aware of . . . it, the man on the floor, longer than he has, I’m sitting, and I still feel as though I’m going to shatter into a million pieces.
I don’t want to hear about gender differences, okay?
A very green-around-the-gills Julie steps out of the vault and pushes the steel door back a bit. I’m glad to not have to see that broken body on the floor anymore.
“He’s dead,” she says, her voice strained. “But I don’t know who he is. Of course, he doesn’t work here, and shouldn’t have been in the building at all. But I do know something about how he got in here.”
I draw on all my determination and push myself to the edge of the chair. Everyone stares at me.
“Does it . . .” My voice fails me, and while they all make comforting noises, I’m not willing to play the wilting lily any longer. I suck in a rough breath and square my shoulders. “Is that why you weren’t here when I walked in?”
Julie nods. “Davina called to tell me she saw a stranger walking around the building. She asked me to check it out, since I’m better equipped”—she pats the pistol she’s sheathed again— “to handle an intruder than she is. Now we know he came inside and slipped in here while I was looking out there.”
Miss Mona stands. “Too bad you didn’t find him.”
The bathroom door bangs open. “What is going on here?” Danni asks, her voice shrill.
My feathered friend makes his . . . her . . . its arrival known. “Squawk! Shriek, shriek!”
Everyone jumps. I gulp and a nervous giggle pops out. “Uh-oh.”
Miss Mona, white as a sheet, draws herself up to her full, statuesque height. “What is that?”
I point to the cage in Danni’s hand. “That’s what I found when I went to my dressing room for my purse. I grabbed my bag and came here to return the diamond Max dropped during the show. I never gave the bird another thought. Anybody ever seen it before? Danni?”
She shakes her head. “I just went to my dressing room— minding my business—the noise was just awful, so I went to see what you were up to. I’ve never seen the bird before. And you know I’d never forget something like”—she lifts the cage for all to see—“this.”
This time, I’m not the only one with a nervous laugh; everyone seems to welcome the chance to diffuse some of the tension in the room.
I recover first. “Anybody else think our flashy little visitor has something to do with the guy in the vault?”
From somewhere far away, the sound of a siren approaches. “Thank you, Lord,” I whisper. I lace my hands together and hold on tight. Even though I’m glad the police are nearly here, something tells me I’m in for a wild and wooly ride.
Julie heads for the door. “I’ll go get the officer . . . officers. I’m sure they’ll have sent more than one patrol car.”
Again, everyone falls silent. The only sound in the room comes from the bird’s claws skittering across a bar in the cage. When the bathroom door opens again and Julie leads in a middle-aged uniformed man, the bird lets out its now-familiar “Squawk! Shriek, shriek!”
The startled cop shakes his head and narrows his eyes, but doesn’t get a chance to say a word.
“Oh, Donald, dear!” Aunt Weeby hurries to his side as fast as her klutzy cast will let her. “I’m so glad you’re the one who’s come. Something so very, very nasty has happened here. I . . . I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
The officer—Donald—takes Aunt Weeby’s hand, tucks it into his elbow, and with his other hand, gives it a pat. “It’s going to be okay, Miz Weeby. We’ll just get to the bottom of this . . . whatever it is, right quick here.”
He gestures to the two officers in the doorway, and the man and woman enter the bathroom. It’s getting mighty crowded in here all of a sudden. And to think that before today no male had breached the doors of the Shop-Til-U-Drop Network’s headquarters. Now we have three of ’em in the building—four, if you count the dead one—and they’re all in the ladies’ room, no less!
I have to admit, I don’t mind. The more the . . . well, not merrier, considering the circumstances, but it’s much better to have company at a time like this.
Officer Donald—since I don’t know his full name—goes into the vault, followed by the other two cops and Julie. The rest of us wait, the silence again thick and heavy. Until the bird does its thing again.
I shoot it a glare, and realize he—she?—is growing more restless, or maybe frantic’s more like it, by the moment. It crabs along the rough white perch attached to the right side of the cage, then bites one of the slim steel wire bars and, fireman-like, slides down to the floor. There it waddles from wire bar to wire bar until it reaches the back of the enclosure, where with beak and claws it climbs back up high enough to reach the almost empty water bowl. It dips its beak into the water, throws back its colorful head, and swallows. Then it looks to either side, flaps its wings furiously, and lets out another series of screams.
As the little critter does all this, I notice what looks like a piece of paper stuck to the back of the cage. How I didn’t spot it when I first found it in my dressing room, I don’t know.
Well, I do know. I was too busy worrying about how embarrassed I felt, and how little I wanted to accept responsibility for my hot temper. But enough about that for the moment. I’ll deal with that—me—later.
The piece of paper turns out to be a small envelope with a card inside. My midlength
nail comes in handy to open it, and from my right side Miss Mona says, “What do you have there?”
“It’s a card—oh! It’s addressed to me. But how could that be?”
“If you read it,” Max says, a hint of humor in his voice, “we might all find out.”
What I read breaks my heart. “I can’t believe this.” A tear rolls down my cheek. “I know who the man in the vault is— was. And he’s nice, the nicest vendor I worked with in New York. I’m so, so sorry . . .”
“A vendor?” Aunt Weeby looks confused.
Can’t say I blame her. I’m pretty confused too. “Mr. Pak deals in the most fabulous rubies, Burmese material, the finest in the world. Roger and I met with him at least four times a year to buy stock.”
Miss Mona steps closer. “Did he come here to see you? Did you know he was coming?”
“I had no idea he’d be here, even though he says in his card that he came to wish me luck in my new job.”
“Squawk! Shriek, shriek!”
“What about the bird?” Sally asks, her eyes big dark pools of questions.
“That’s what’s so crazy.” I shove a bunch of hair that’s come loose from my chic on-screen updo off my forehead. “The bird’s supposed to be a gift for me. What would make Mr. Pak think I’d want a noisy bird?”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk!”
Did I tell you Aunt Weeby tsk-tsks better than anyone else? Do I need this? Now?
“Andrea Autumn Adams! You know better than that, young lady. Why, it’s not one bit polite to question a present. I don’t know what’s come over you since you left for that Sodom and Gomorrah city a’ yours.”
Stunned by my aunt’s outburst, I notice the crease between her brows, the white line around her lips, and the tight grip of one hand on the other. A swell of sympathy rises in me. And then I realize she’s still talking to me.
“. . . I’m so thankful the Lord saw fit to let you get yourself all rusted up while you were out there. I reckon you wouldn’t’ve come home otherwise. And you do need yourself a good dose a’ Great-Grandma Willetta’s wisdom—and maybe some a’ her fish oil too.”
Heaven help me—and my stressed-out aunt. “I’m not questioning a present, and I’m not being ungrateful, Aunt Weeby. But I never said anything to Mr. Pak to make him think I’d want a parrot—”
