At the Drop of a Hat

by Jenn McKinlay

  As I trudged toward the shop, I considered Andre’s words. I knew he was right. I was transferring my upset over seeing Russo broken and bloody into relationship angst. It was stupid but effective. Besides it was so much nicer to ponder the possible unspoken meaning in Harrison’s green gaze when he looked at me than it was to consider what the shape of the puddle of blood pooling under Russo’s cracked head resembled.

  The wind whipped under the umbrella and slapped me in the face with its cold wet fingers. Thankfully, I had arrived at Mim’s Whims. I snapped the umbrella shut while pulling the door open.

  Viv was standing behind the counter assisting a customer, and I could tell by her body language that the encounter was not going well. It was not a big surprise since the customer was Leann Littleton—or as I called her, Lame Leann, because she was, you know, in slang speak, lame. To be clear, I’m not talking about a bum leg here, more like a bum personality.

  I plopped Nick’s umbrella into the stand by the door and shrugged out of my jacket, which I hung on the coatrack. I trudged across the shop, but I wasn’t moving very quickly. My belly was full; I was cold and wet and completely emotionally drained.

  “But I specifically said I wanted a burgundy hat, whilst this is quite obviously oxblood,” Lame Leann complained. She did it with just the right amount of disdain, the right amount to make you want to punch her in the mouth, that is.

  She was middle-aged with fine lines around her eyes and jowls just beginning to appear on her jawline. Her mouth was screwed up in a dissatisfied moue, and I got the feeling she really enjoyed being a whiner.

  “Mrs. Littleton, here is my cousin Scarlett,” Viv said as I approached. She looked at me as if I were a life raft appearing in shark-infested waters. “I’m sure she can assist you.”

  Digging deep, I searched for my inner people-pleasing, customers-first, can-do attitude and found—nothing.

  Chapter 10

  I glanced from Viv to Leann and back. Viv’s blues eyes, so like my own, were pleading for me to take this miserable woman off her hands. I glanced back at Lame Leann and glowered.

  “If you don’t like it, don’t buy it,” I said. “The personal shopper for Lady Fownes was in the other day and wanted to buy that very hat in that particular shade of burgundy. We’ll just sell it to her and you need not be bothered purchasing it. All right?”

  Lame Leann started sputtering but I ignored her. I really did not give a flying feather if she bought the damn hat or not.

  “I’m going to make tea,” I said to Viv. “Want some?”

  “Love some,” she said. She looked bemused by my outburst.

  As I walked away, I heard Lame Leann insist that Viv sell her the hat. I smiled. Maybe my surliness was a customer service skill I needed to employ a bit more frequently.

  In the workroom, Fee was sitting on the large wooden worktable with her legs crossed and a pile of ivory chiffon in her lap. With her usual tiny, precise stitches, she was fastening a beautiful lace trim to the edge of a wedding veil.

  I went over to watch her work, finding the movement of her nimble fingers soothing. Not for the first time, I envied the other’s ability to make something magical out of plain cloth and odd bits of feathers, lace and trim.

  “It’s coming out beautifully,” I said.

  Fee glanced up. Her smile flashed bright white against her brown skin then she frowned and tipped her head to the side as she studied me.

  “All right, Scarlett?” she asked. “You’re looking a bit peaky.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. I walked over to the kitchenette and put the kettle on. “I’m better than Anthony Russo at any rate.”

  “I heard,” Fee said. “What sort of crazy accident was that, falling off the roof of a building?”

  “That was genius, cousin!” Viv said as she strode into the kitchen. “Mrs. Littleton pitched an absolute fit when she thought we might sell her hat to Lady Fownes’s personal shopper.”

  “Wait until she finds out Lady Fownes doesn’t have a personal shopper,” I said and cringed. “We may lose a customer there.”

  “Pish,” Viv said with a dismissive wave of her hands. “Good riddance.”

  Fee glanced between us while I dropped a couple of Earl Grey tea bags into the waiting pot. Contrary to what my friends thought, I could actually boil water and my tea-making skills were coming on strong, too.

  When the kettle whistled, I poured water over the tea bags in the pot and then covered it with a cozy to allow the tea to steep. I saw Fee glance at the clock and knew she’d be on top of letting us know when it was ready. Fee is a stickler for the three-minute rule when it comes to steeping a black tea, of which Earl Grey is one.

  “So did you want to talk about what happened this morning?” Viv asked. “I told Fee what you told me.”

  “I think I’m talked out, between the police and Harrison, oh, and Andre,” I said.

  “Harrison and Andre?” Fee asked.

  “Explain,” Viv ordered.

  Fee gestured at the teapot with her hand and Viv took over preparing the tea. I told them about going to the station with Ariana and how her fiancé, Stephen, had shown up with Harrison and Alistair in tow.

  I prepped a plate of Tesco’s all-butter, dark chocolate ginger cookies, which are amazing, even though I was sure I couldn’t eat another bite. I was wrong.

  Fee had pushed aside the veil and was nibbling a cookie and sipping her tea while listening to me describe the questioning by Inspectors Franks and Simms.

  “And how are the dear inspectors?” Viv asked.

  “The same,” I said. “I think of them as the big mustache and the unibrow, but very kind for all that.”

  “What do you suppose they think happened?” Viv asked.

  “I haven’t the foggiest,” I said. “But when talking to me, they did seem focused on Ariana being near the body when I got there, which as I explained, was complete happenstance since she didn’t know I was stopping by.”

  “Good thing for her,” Fee said. “You’ve become her witness, yeah?”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  “So what did Harrison have to say about all of this?” Viv asked.

  “We kicked around several ideas, but I think he’s just as stymied as anyone,” I said. “Thankfully, Stephen also brought his friend Alistair Turner. He’s a barrister who specializes in criminal defense.”

  “Will Ariana need him in that capacity?” Viv asked. She looked worried.

  “I don’t think so, but it sure was handy to have him there today,” I said. “Also, he’s very easy on the eyes.”

  “How easy?” Fee asked.

  “Like jam on toast easy,” I said.

  “Scarlett, must you always talk about me when I’m not in the room? Honestly, you’re going to start rumors about us.”

  I whipped my head around to see Nick peering at us from the doorway.

  “Hi, Nick,” I said. I put my cup on the table and hurried across the room and into his big bracing hug. “What are you doing here?”

  “Andre called me as soon as you left and told me everything, so I had to stop by on my way home and check on you.” He released me and stepped back to study my face. “You don’t look shocky or trembly. So our boy Harrison tended you well then?”

  “Andre told you about that, too?” I asked.

  “Yes, and for the record, the answer is no, it wasn’t,” he said.

  “What answer is no?” Viv asked. Her eyes were narrowed in speculation as she watched us. I so did not want to have the “Did lunch with Harrison constitute a date?” debate with her, mostly since I knew she’d say yes just because she’d made it clear that she liked Harrison and me together.

  “I wanted to know if I would be overreaching if I made beef, ale and parsnip pudding for my dinner bet with Harrison in the unlikely event that I lose,”
I said.

  “And you said no?” Viv asked Nick. “Well, there’s a note of confidence.”

  “Yeah, you might want to turn it back a bit and stick to food that only requires reheating, yeah?” Fee asked.

  I gave them both a sour look but squeezed Nick’s hand to let him know his message was received. Now you’d think I’d be happy that he was telling me that, no, it wasn’t a date with Harrison, and I was. All except for my inner girly-girl, who truly felt if she didn’t get to go on an honest-to-God “buy me dinner, take me dancing and try to make a move on me” date sometime in the very near future, she was going to shrivel up and die. Did I mention she is a bit of a drama queen?

  “Well, with any luck, Nick’s ferret-girl will lose the competition, and he’ll be doing the cooking,” Nick said.

  “Would you like some tea?” I asked.

  “That would be lovely,” he said.

  Viv poured him a mug while I offered him a cookie.

  “Dark chocolate ginger, divine,” Nick said as he took one. “So have you heard anything about Anthony Russo?”

  “Not a word,” I said. “As his only assistant, I imagine Ariana is going to have her hands full informing his clients of the situation.”

  “They will all have to retain new counsel,” Viv said.

  “I wonder if she will cancel the wedding,” Fee said.

  “Oh, no,” Viv said. “I hope not.”

  I looked at the sad little downturn of her lips and I knew Viv was thinking of Mim’s hat. If Ariana canceled the wedding, then Viv wouldn’t get a chance to restore it.

  “It’s still a few weeks away,” I said. “I doubt she’ll cancel it. Stephen was very kind to her at the police station. They seemed strong together.”

  “Still, we have no idea what she wants to do, do we?” Viv asked.

  “No, I never got the chance to talk to her about it,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Hardly your fault,” she said.

  I nodded. I knew it wasn’t and yet I felt the same way that she did about Mim’s hat and wanted it to be fixed. It was more than just a job for us; it was a way to have Mim here again in the hat shop, a way to keep her legacy alive.

  “Have they reported Russo’s death on the news?” Nick asked. “That’ll give you a good indication of how this is going to play out.”

  “Meaning?” I asked.

  “If the reporters swarm like locusts onto every girlfriend he’s ever had, then you’ll know they’re treating it as a homicide,” he said. “But if they are all very hush-hush and somber faced about it, then it would seem more likely an unfortunate accident.”

  “I know this is ghastly of me to say, but do you suppose it was suicide? Then again, of all the ways to do yourself in, why would you throw yourself off of a building?” Fee asked. “That wouldn’t be a decision made lightly.”

  “Poison,” Viv said. “That would be my method of choice.”

  I frowned at her.

  “Not that I’ve ever given it any great thought,” she said. “But you hear about other people’s choices and it’s only natural to think what you would do.”

  “Agreed,” Fee said. “Poison would be my choice as well.”

  “Not me,” Nick said. “If I’m taking myself out, it has to be done in a dramatic fashion like jumping off the London Bridge, wearing nothing but a purple feather boa.”

  “Looking to make a splash, are you?” Viv asked, and they all laughed.

  “No, he just wants to make waves.” Fee snickered.

  “Water you talking about? You can’t wear a purple boa; you’d need to have something sparkly,” I said.

  No one said anything.

  “Don’t you get it?” I asked. “‘Water’ instead of ‘what are’?”

  All three of them gave me sympathetic looks, but I saw the corner of Nick’s mouth turn up.

  “You thought that was funny,” I said and pointed at him.

  “No, I think you are funny; there’s a difference,” he said.

  “So are you laughing at me or with me?”

  “At you, most definitely,” he said.

  I gave him a dark look but he just winked at me.

  “So, Scarlett, you haven’t answered the question,” Nick said. “How would you punch your own clock should the need arise?”

  I sighed. Having recently come out of a bout of global public humiliation, I’d be a liar if I said ending it all had never occurred to me. It had. Only briefly and only in my very dark moments, but in my defense, an Internet video of me lobbing cake at the man I thought I loved had gone viral. So not only did I find out the rat bastard was married but the entire world, or so it felt at the time, got to find out with me.

  “The one time it crossed my mind very, very briefly,” I said. “I was driving down a dark stretch of road in Florida and it all felt like it was just too much, you know, the heartbreak and the humiliation, and for just a second, a nanosecond really, I thought about cutting the wheel into a bridge abutment.”

  The three of them stared at me, and I suddenly felt naked and exposed.

  “Oh, were we not sharing actual life moments?” I asked.

  “Sweetie,” Viv said. She put down her teacup and hugged me close. “I so wish I had been there so I could have slapped that man until my arm gave out.”

  “Hear, hear,” Nick said. “I don’t have much of a punch but I give a hell of a knee to the crotch.”

  “And I am a very good hair ripper outer,” Fee added.

  “And as for me, I would have happily busted his jaw.”

  I turned and glanced over my shoulder and there stood Harrison, looking at me with such fierce protectiveness I felt it all the way down to my toes. Something lifted in my chest at the sight of him, but I tried to convince myself it was just the combo of ginger and dark chocolate cookies and Earl Grey tea giving me heartburn.

  “Well, it’s a good thing you all weren’t there,” I said. “Else you’d all be in jail now.”

  I tried to make light of it, but honestly, it felt so good to know I had such wonderful friends. I was actually a bit choked up. Shaking it off, I looked at Harrison and gave him a warm smile.

  “What brings you by so early, Harry?” I asked.

  To my surprise, he didn’t correct the nickname. Instead, his countenance darkened and he said, “It’s Ariana. She’s being held as a person of interest in the murder of Anthony Russo.”

  Chapter 11

  “What?” I gasped. “When? How? Why?”

  “Speaking of locust-feeding reporters,” Nick said.

  I swatted his arm to hush him.

  “I don’t have all of the specifics,” Harrison said. “Alistair just texted me that Stephen called him when the police arrived at Ariana’s apartment with a search warrant and again when they arrested her.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “This is bad, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not ideal,” Harrison said.

  “What will happen next?” Viv asked.

  “I guess that depends upon what the police find,” Harrison said.

  “Poor Ariana,” I said. I thought about the wide-eyed girl, crouched beside her boss’s body, looking horrified and lost. “She didn’t do it.”

  I thought it spoke well of them that no one contradicted me. I’d been ready to put forth an argument, but there was no need. It wasn’t this crew that needed to be convinced of Ariana’s innocence.

  “Oh, no,” I said as I looked at Nick. “The reporters.”

  “It will have started by now,” he said.

  Together we raced for the door. He was fumbling with his phone as we hit the stairs to our apartment at a jog. I entered first and switched on our flat-screen television, flipping through channels until I found the nightly news on BBC One.

  “Andre is coming over,” Nick said. “He
wants to know if you need anything.”

  “Tell him to bring dinner,” I said. I watched as a montage of Anthony Russo in various states of drunken disorderliness with a bevy of beauties on his arm flashed across the screen. “This is going to be a long one.”

  We kept up our vigil through the eight o’clock and the ten o’clock news. The reporters had missed Ariana’s arrival but it didn’t deter them from camping outside Notting Hill Station, which is where the custody suites for criminals arrested in the Kensington Borough of the Metropolitan Police Service were located. Nick, Andre and Fee departed before the ten o’clock news, but Harrison stayed with Viv and me. When they were rehashing the story for the umpteenth time, Viv took the remote and shut it off.

  “Enough,” she said. “I can’t listen to another word.”

  “Agreed,” I said. “I kept hoping there would be a new suspect announced.”

  “Seems unlikely on the first day,” Harrison said. I appreciated that his tone was regretful.

  “Well, Harrison, always a pleasure, even under poor circumstances,” Viv said. She stepped forward and kissed his cheek. “See him out, won’t you, Scarlett? I’m dead tired.”

  She didn’t wait for an answer but disappeared into her bedroom before either of us could offer so much as a good night.

  “I have a key,” Harrison said. “You don’t need to walk downstairs. I know you’ve had a long day.”

  “No, it’s all right,” I said. “I always do the final sweep of the shop before we lock up for the night. It gives me peace of mind.”

  He led the way down the narrow staircase. The store was dark with just the emergency lights on. I glanced at the wardrobe in the corner with the large wooden raven carved in the top. I had named him Ferd the bird and we frequently conversed when I did my nightly rounds. Okay, I conversed as his beady wooden eyes followed me around; still, it was our routine.

  All was quiet and there was a certain intimacy to walking through the deserted shop with Harrison at my side. I tried to tell myself it was the one-two punch of the enormous amount of spaghetti and meatballs I’d eaten, which was Andre’s go-to meal for impromptu events because he could pick up all of the ingredients at the Tesco up the street, combined with the late hour, but it wasn’t.