A Wedding Tail

by Casey Griffin

  He seemed like such a nice guy. She didn’t like to think of him in that light—or rather, darkness. However, if he was crazy about a nut job like Juliet, maybe it took one to love one.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she said. “But I can’t come up with anyone else that wants to kill me this week.”

  “Got a lot of friends, do you?”

  She snorted but didn’t answer. Freddy answered for her by trying to lick her chin. I’m your friend. Who are you again?

  “So what are you going to do now without an office?” he asked.

  Zoe laughed, but it was more like an exhausted sigh. “I don’t know. I suppose I’ll start searching tomorrow. I can’t work out of my apartment right now. It’s a disaster. I’m in the middle of packing for the move that’s not happening now. You know, to the house I can’t afford anymore due to lack of steady business.”

  He kicked the toe of his shoe against the brick wall next to them. “Well, I know someone with a pretty big flat that might have some extra space to offer you.”

  Zoe stared at him, like she wasn’t sure if she’d understood correctly, but when he continued to act shy, she realized he was offering his apartment to her.

  “Why would you do that?” she demanded. “Why would you offer me your space after last night? After you were about to walk away just now? I don’t understand.”

  He shrugged. “No big deal. I aim to please.”

  “It is a big deal. And are you aiming to please anyone? Or please me?”

  “Lots of people. I’m not the worst guy, you know,” he said a little defensively. “But especially you.”

  She’d been clear the night before. She knew she had. And yet here he was, standing before her with that hopeful boy-next-door look on his face.

  Part of her recoiled at the romance, while part of her was intrigued. On the outside, he looked like a bona fide rock star. But beneath all the piercings, the dark look, the ripped jeans, he struck her as the sweet, innocent guy. The boy next door all grown up. The guy who, when he told you he liked you, he meant you, not your tits and ass—no matter how amazing hers were. Levi could be one of the good ones. Which was very, very bad news.

  “I’m not sure I can be any clearer,” she said. “I’m not trying to lead you on here.”

  “Who says you’re doing the leading?” he said with that boyish grin.

  But she wasn’t smiling. She wanted him to know she was serious. “You can’t change my mind. Many men have tried before you.”

  “I know I can’t. The only person that can change your mind is you.” His expression suddenly matched her own, like maybe she was getting through to him. Or maybe it was because he thought he could get through to her.

  “I can’t offer you more, Levi.” She shook her head, afraid to accept the offer. Afraid to go down a path with more temptation than she’d already allowed in. Temptation for more than just sex.

  “This isn’t extortion, Zoe. You need help. I can offer it. No strings attached.” He gave her a slight smirk, and she realized he was using her words on purpose.

  She couldn’t help but smile back. She took a deep breath, unsure if she was doing the right thing. But with Piper’s wedding coming up and so much to do with replacing, well, everything, she was backed into a corner.

  “Okay. I appreciate the offer. It won’t be for long, I promise. I’ll be out as soon as I can.”

  Freddy suddenly squirmed in her arms—more than usual, anyway. She realized he probably had to pee, since his last walk was before they arrived at the office.

  She placed him on the ground. With all the people coming and going around them, she kept his leash short as she let him lead her down the sidewalk.

  Levi strolled beside her. She found she didn’t really mind, but she continued to worry about their new business arrangement. And that’s all it was: business.

  They were quiet as Freddy searched for the perfect spot to relieve himself. Then he became distracted by a butterfly, and then a piece of grass, and then his own tail.

  Zoe stared at the path of wreckage strewn about the street. It littered the sidewalk and decorated parked cars. Her eyes followed the ruined remains of her office all the way to the intersection.

  On every street corner, there seemed to be plenty of people with nothing better to do than stand around and gawk. While some of them had their phones out, snapping photos, one person in particular caught her eye. He had a professional video camera honed in on the chaos.

  The man’s posture was tense, his attention focused as he panned across the view of the ruins. Finally, he lowered the camera to survey the scene again and Zoe got a clear look at his face.

  It was, well … Zoe didn’t actually know his name. It was Holly Hart’s minion, Hey, You, as she not-so-fondly referred to him.

  Zoe automatically scanned her surroundings for a sign of the annoying blonde. Hadn’t she gotten enough stories out of her for one day? Zoe could just imagine the headlines she’d invent for this one.

  We’ll see about that, she thought.

  “I’ll be right back,” she told Levi.

  Plucking Freddy off the ground, Zoe headed for the intersection. The light turned, giving her the crosswalk symbol and she marched across the street.

  She was half way to the other side when a car squealed around the corner for a right-hand turn. Zoe saw it flying toward her as though in slow motion, yet she wasn’t fast enough to dive out of the way.

  Her muscles clenched, freezing in indecision. Should she run or brace for impact?

  The driver slammed on the brakes, tires skidding. Zoe stumbled to the side in an awkward backpedal, clutching Freddy. When the car lurched to a stop, it rocked from the momentum, barely three inches from her leg.

  Zoe glared at the driver who threw his hands in the air sheepishly and mouthed the words “sorry.”

  Is the whole damned city out to kill me today? But there was no time to give him a piece of her mind or she’d lose the nosey cameraman.

  Looking back across the street, she caught Hey, You’s eye. He’d seen the near miss and knew she was coming for him. The advantage of surprise was lost. Clutching his camera, he made a break for it.

  Zoe took off after him. She weaved through the throng of people collected on the sidewalk, bobbing her head, hoping for a glimpse of muted, brown hair and undefined features. But he was a difficult man to pick out of a crowd even when he stood still.

  It made her realize how perfect he was for the job of media hound. He was so very extraordinarily ordinary that no one would be able to describe him if they were looking right at him. Heck, she’d never even heard him speak.

  Just when she thought she’d lost his trail, she saw him headed for an alley halfway down the block. Pausing at the entrance, he glanced around him. His eyes met Zoe’s and his one free hand reached down and covered his crotch, as though subconsciously.

  She grinned wickedly. Obviously he hadn’t forgotten the time she threatened him when he was harassing Piper.

  Pushing past a couple of guys she recognized from her office building, she picked up her pace and ran, shoes clicking like angry drumbeats. Now that she’d started to really move, she noticed new aches and pains from when the explosion sent her flying.

  Biting the inside of her cheek, she pushed aside the twinges of shooting pain. The jolts coursed through parts of her body she hadn’t even realized she’d injured. Her head throbbed as she forged on.

  Footsteps getting faster and faster, she turned the corner, ready to grab Hey, You by the sweaty shirt collar. But as she plunged into the alley, she only caught a glimpse of him at the other end, running for his life. A second later, he rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

  Zoe swore under her breath. He’d been too fast for her. She supposed you couldn’t get involved with Holly Hart for a living and not know how to run for your life—or balls, in his case.

  It wasn’t like she was going to catch up to him with her injuries, in heels, and
carrying a dog, so she slowed down. However, Freddy’s legs pawed the air, like they were still running. Let me at him. Let me at him!

  Zoe gave his head a soothing pat. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him next time. Right?”

  Freddy stared at her, his big ears rising a little. Get who?

  Sighing, Zoe turned back for the main road. The sun had yet to hit the narrow back alley. The morning chill still lingered, crawling over the dampness that had settled on her skin from the chase. Goosebumps prickled up the back of her neck.

  She held Freddy just a little bit closer, for both warmth and comfort. She’d just survived a near-miss explosion. Someone was clearly out to kill her, and here she was chasing a creep down a quiet alley.

  She glanced behind her again, but Hey, You was long gone. When she turned back, a tall figure was blocking her path.

  Zoe jumped. Startled, Freddy began barking. Once he recognized Levi, his tail began to whip back and forth, hitting Zoe on one of the many bruises she’d acquired that morning.

  “Are you okay?” Levi asked Zoe.

  “Yeah, I just saw Holly’s cameraman hanging around.”

  “Really? Is Holly around here somewhere?” He began to scan the crowd, as though hoping to corner her for an interview.

  Zoe rolled her eyes, but before she could come up with a sharp response, her phone vibrated in her purse. She pulled it out and answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, is this Zoe Plum?”

  “It is.” Zoe automatically held her breath, hoping for good news.

  “This is San Francisco General Hospital. Your mother is ready to be picked up.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be there to pick her up as soon as I can.”

  Zoe hung up and automatically turned to head for her van, but when she looked across the street, she saw that her rental van was one of the vehicles covered in little numbers to mark the evidence scattered all over it. There was no way the police were going to release it to her any time soon.

  “You have to pick your mom up?” Levi asked like he was just making conversation. “It’s a shame you don’t have a ride.”

  His stupid grin held a little self-satisfied glow. He wasn’t going to make it easy on her, but she supposed she deserved that. He’d done a lot for her in the last few days and what had she done? Assumed he was some easy lay, propositioned him for sex and then got angry when he turned her down.

  With great difficulty, she swallowed her pride. “Levi, would you mind giving my mother and me a ride home?”

  “Why, I’d love to.” He batted his eyelashes at her. “You just can’t seem to get enough of me, can you?”

  15

  Put a Dog Off the Scent

  Zoe unlocked the front door to the Victorian stick-style home in Noe Valley where she grew up. “Here we are.” She held the door open for her mother to enter, but Freddy barged in first, already scoping out the joint.

  It was another hot day, so the air felt stifling and heavy inside despite the fact that Zoe had shut all the curtains to keep the sun from beating in.

  “It’s nice to be home,” her mother said, shuffling inside. “Thank you very much for the ride, Levi.”

  “No problem,” he said. “It was nice to meet you.”

  “You too.” She gave him a little head bob, like a mini bow. It was a habit she’d never managed to fully break since leaving Japan.

  Taking off her shoes, she put on a pair of slippers before heading into the living room. Zoe knew her mother often got cold feet, but she also suspected that it was another habit that had carried over, despite the fact that they had hardwood floors, not tatami mats.

  Levi waited until she was out of earshot before whispering in Zoe’s ear. “I think your mom hates me.”

  Zoe snorted, not sure why he even cared what her mother thought of him. He certainly tried hard enough to change her mind on the drive home with the small talk and the cheesy compliments like “I can see where your daughter gets her good looks.”

  “She doesn’t hate you,” she told him. “She’s distant with everyone at first. My mom is very private and keeps to herself. She’s probably just embarrassed that a complete stranger is driving her home from the hospital.”

  Levi handed her the bag of belongings her mother brought home from the hospital. Freddy gave it a curious sniff before heading into the living room after her mother.

  “I won’t be long,” she told Levi, heading up the stairs to the second-floor bedrooms. “Or I can take a taxi home if you have somewhere else to be.”

  “Somewhere better to be than here with you? Impossible.” He smiled at her from the bottom of the stairs.

  “Then I’ll just be a minute.”

  “Take your time.” He waved her on. “I’ll just be snooping around your childhood home.”

  She threw him a look. “Then I’ll only be a second.”

  Zoe quickly ran through the house, checking to make sure her mom had everything she needed, but she’d done most of the preparations the day before. As she went from room to room, she made a list of things to bring the next day. It was routine by now since she regularly popped by a few times a week.

  While her mother usually did her own grocery shopping and cleaning, Zoe had to do a lot of the tougher things around the old house. For being the black sheep of her family and leaving Japan at the age of twenty to marry an American, her mother was still very traditional at heart. Despite an independent life away from her family, she’d relied heavily on her husband for all those years to perform the “male” roles of the household.

  When her dad died, it was Zoe who had to teach her mother how to reset the breaker, how to start the gas lawn mower, how to set mousetraps. And Zoe still ended up doing most of that herself during her regular visits to the house. She felt safer lighting the pilot light on the furnace or changing the burnt-out ceiling light bulbs than she did letting her mother do it herself.

  Heading to the kitchen, she pulled out the medications prescribed by the doctor and organized them all on the kitchen counter. Each label had different instructions on how to take them and how often. Even she was confused, so she grabbed a pen from the drawer and relabeled them all in Japanese.

  Zoe grabbed the mail from the mailbox and brought it inside. Heading into the living room, she flipped through the letters, scanning for junk. When she glanced up, Levi was standing in front of the mantle with a picture frame in his hands.

  He waved it in the air. “Your mother says you were quite the gymnast.”

  She recognized the photo in his hands. A dark-haired little girl was balancing on a beam no thicker than her with a giant self-satisfied grin on her face. She’d been eight.

  Zoe swiped it out of his hands and set it back on the mantle where the clean patch of dust was. “Stop snooping.”

  “But I’m getting to know a whole new side to you.” He reached for the next photo in line.

  She slapped his hand away. “Keep digging, and I’ll show you a side you won’t soon forget.”

  He just grinned, undeterred. “I like the leotard.”

  Zoe’s mother sat down in the recliner closest to the fireplace, lifting Freddy onto her lap. He flopped onto his back like a baby in her arms, his foot jiggling with pleasure as she rubbed his belly, like I could get used to this.

  “Zoe is very hard working,” she told Levi. “She’s always been very talented at whatever she’s done. She could have been an excellent gymnast.”

  “If not for the growth spurt that landed me a foot taller than most boys in my school,” Zoe said. “I blame Dad’s genetics for that one.”

  She sifted through the mail again. Finding no more ads, she went to set them down on her father’s old desk in the corner. That’s when she noticed the red letters on one of the white envelopes screaming up at her.

  Urgent.

  She went to pick it up again and noticed another stack of letters on the desk, unopened. Her eyes couldn’t help but catch the bolded red letters on an env
elope. She picked it up to get a closer look.

  Final Notice.

  The envelope shook in her hands. She spun around, holding it up. “Mom. What is this?”

  “Oh, just junk mail.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Mom, junk mail isn’t addressed ‘urgent.’” She tossed it on the coffee table in front of her. “Junk mail isn’t titled ‘pending foreclosure.’”

  “Zoe. Shizukani.” She switched to Japanese as easily as she might take a breath. “I didn’t raise you to speak to your mother that way,” she continued in her native language. “Nor do we discuss such matters in front of strangers.”

  “No, you’ve just decided not to speak about it at all,” she replied pointedly in English.

  “Nihon-go de!” she persisted. “What’s done is done. It can’t be helped.”

  “Well, paying your mortgage helps.” Zoe rifled through the rest of the unopened letters, all with similar messages and red-lettered threats. “Why? Why haven’t you paid your bills?”

  “Nihon-go de,” her mother demanded.

  Levi jiggled his keys in his hand, glancing from mother to daughter. “Maybe I’ll go wait in the van.”

  She sighed and gave him a grateful look. “Sorry. I’ll only be another minute.”

  “Take your time,” he told her.

  Zoe waited until she heard the front door close before asking her mother again, “Tell me why?”

  But her mother’s lips pressed together until they nearly disappeared in anger.

  Zoe rolled her eyes and asked again in Japanese. “Naze?”

  “I can’t pay them because I don’t have the money.”

  Zoe frowned. “Where is all your money going? Surely Dad had some kind of life or mortgage insurance.”

  Her mother turned away, speaking to the cold fireplace when she answered. “He had a pre-existing heart condition. A congenital defect. So when he died of a heart attack, the insurance company wouldn’t pay out because of a loophole. What little money I was left with hasn’t been enough.”

  Zoe sank into the chair across from her. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped.”