1 Lost Under a Ladder

by Linda O. Johnston

  My hands were still Martha’s captives. So was my gaze, since I couldn’t quite tear it away from the pleading expression on her tired, aged face.

  I liked her little boutique. I liked her, even though I had just met her, and under especially difficult circumstances.

  And if I said no, what were her alternatives?

  All that swept through my mind in seconds. I waffled, and that wasn’t like me at all.

  “I—I’ll think about it,” I finally said. Even that was enough to turn her expression from fear to relief. “But I need a day or so. Do you have anyone who can manage the store for you tomorrow?”

  “My part-time employees don’t know how to really manage the place,” she said, “but they could keep it going for a short while. And oh, my dear, I’m sure that if you just give it a try you’ll love it. It’s such a delightful store, and we’re usually quite busy. Maybe not as busy as a MegaPets, but a lot of townsfolk have pets, and you’ve seen that quite a few tourists, like you, bring their dogs along, too.”

  “But I don’t know your systems—inventory control, accounting, anything else—”

  “My staff knows the basics, and I can keep an eye on it to make sure it’s all working. My computer system reaches upstairs—that’s where I live. They’ll surely be releasing me from here in the next day or two. If there’s anything I need help with then, I’ll be able to give you whatever information my helpers don’t have so you can take care of it for now. And I’ll pay you, of course.” She named a weekly amount which, though not lush, was certainly adequate.

  I tore my glance away. I had to, or I was liable to say yes right then and there. And that would be a mistake.

  I had to think this through.

  I looked toward Justin. Was that sympathy I saw in his gaze? It couldn’t be. He’d brought me here so I could get put into this quandary.

  I should feel furious at him. But I didn’t.

  He’d clearly thought he was doing the right thing.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “Please have some of your regular employees come in tomorrow. I’ll meet them there. What time do you usually open the store?”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  My gaze was on her once more. She looked so hopeful that I nearly accepted her challenge—er, invitation—right then.

  “Can you call at least one of them tonight, tell him or her to get there at nine-thirty? I’ll come in then and at least see that the store opens on time. I may not stay since I have other things to do tomorrow, but I’ll at least drop in now and then. That’ll give me time to get those other things out of the way—and to decide whether I can stay longer. Okay?”

  Martha rose to a slight sitting position, squeezing my hands even more. “You are so wonderful, Rory. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. And if you decide to stay, you’ll be the absolute kindest person on earth.”

  “Is there a superstition for that?” I couldn’t help asking. Doing this should at least get me some kind of pat on the head from the cosmos, or whatever’s out there if superstitions were real, for me to stay for a short while to help this ill lady, right?

  “I’ll find one,” Martha said.

  _____

  A few minutes later, Justin and I left the hospital to walk back to my B&B.

  I said nothing till we reached the end of the first block. Then, before we crossed the street, I turned to him. “You set me up,” I accused.

  “In a way,” he said, “although I only suspected that was why she wanted to see you.” He didn’t look at all abashed, which didn’t surprise me.

  “But what if I do say yes? You don’t know me. How can you—and she—trust me? What if I did something to Martha to injure her to set this all up so I could take over her shop if I want?”

  He laughed, and I wanted to kick him. “Did you?” he said, his dark, arched eyebrows raised skeptically over his blue eyes.

  “Of course not.”

  “That’s what I figured. And I also intend to keep close watch on you if you do decide to help Martha. So don’t you forget that I’m the chief of police around here.” The big, gorgeous smile on his handsome face told me he was joking—at least somewhat. But I had no doubt that if I pinched even a penny from Martha’s cash register he’d hunt me down and have me prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

  Or maybe that look was because he knew of some superstition that would ensure that bad luck would rain down upon me forever if I dared to steal from an injured woman who’d received good luck thanks to visits from strange dogs—or whatever.

  I asked him.

  “Of course there is,” he responded without even blinking. “But it would be bad luck for me to tell you about it.”

  The hospital was about six blocks from my B&B. The area we walked through beneath the adequate yet disappointingly regular-looking streetlights wasn’t part of the town’s downtown retail area. It had an atmosphere of more normality than where I’d walked before, where the stores and restaurants were located. Several of the closest modern, multi-storied buildings had signs indicating they contained doctors’ offices—not surprising. A little farther away, there were some apartment buildings with almost normal names like Destiny Residences and Welcome Home Apartments.

  What, no superstition themes?

  On the other hand, this might be where some unbelieving residents lived who were only into superstitions to the extent they could make a profit from them.

  Justin was wise enough to discuss neutral topics as we walked along the sidewalks. We talked about dogs—the ones we were currently owned by, mostly, but no hints about canine superstitions. Where he had grown up, which turned out to be near L.A., in Santa Monica. Where I had grown up, also near L.A., in Pasadena.

  And soon, there we were, past my car in the parking lot and at the doorstep of the Rainbow Bed & Breakfast.

  “I know you’ll get breakfast here,” Justin said. “The name tells me so. But how about if I meet you at the Lucky Dog at about ten tomorrow morning, after you’ve checked it out and talked to one of Martha’s employees? We can go for coffee and discuss where your thoughts are heading then about staying or not.”

  “And if the answer is ‘not’?” I aimed a wry smile toward his nice-looking face that was illuminated by the lights mounted on the building on either side of the horseshoe over the door.

  He was smiling, too. “Then I’ll have to convince you, won’t I?”

  “I guess you’ll have to try,” I riposted. “Goodnight, Chief. See you at ten tomorrow.” At his suggestion, we exchanged phone numbers. I doubted I’d ever use his, but if it made him feel better to call me tomorrow to let me know he wasn’t coming, that was fine.

  I turned to head inside but stopped abruptly as he gently took hold of my upper arms and turned me back toward him.

  Oh, no. The heated expression in his eyes suggested that he intended to give me a goodnight kiss. My thoughts immediately flashed guiltily on Warren and why I had come to Destiny. I wasn’t ready for this.

  But instead of anything hot and steamy, Justin planted a completely chaste kiss on my forehead.

  A surprising whoosh of disappointment rushed through me as he released me and said, “Goodnight, Rory. Sleep well. Oh, and keep track of your dreams here in Destiny. They’re often harbingers of things to come.”

  _____

  I used my key to open the locked front door. The lobby area was empty as I walked through and headed upstairs.

  I felt utterly exhausted, while at the same time edgy. I doubted I’d fall asleep for a while, so it was a good thing that I needed to take Pluckie for her last walk of the night.

  Unsurprisingly, she was waiting for me right inside the door to my room, wriggling her butt eagerly as she wagged her tail and gave a little leap of greeting.

  I knelt to hug her. “You know what you did, little girl? You’ve
discombobulated my whole life again, this time because you did such a good deed and saved Martha’s life. What do you think I should do?”

  Her quiet woof and dash toward the chair over which I’d hung her leash told me her immediate, if not long-term, answer. It was time to take her for that walk.

  Maybe afterward she’d do something to let me know her opinion of my staying here with her to run a local pet boutique instead of heading home within the next few days.

  “Okay, girl.” I snapped her leash on her collar and reached into a totebag to pull out a biodegradable plastic bag to deal with any cleanup during our walk.

  I didn’t see anyone else in the hallway or downstairs lobby this time, either. No one was rooting around in the pot of gold, just in case—but I wondered how often patrons did that at night, thinking no one would see them.

  Not that our hostess Serina was likely to be foolish enough to use real gold to illustrate the end-of-the-rainbow superstition theme of this B&B.

  Pluckie and I headed out the front door. I decided not to go back in the neutral and not-so-Destiny direction of the hospital but toward the much more interesting downtown area, which was only a couple of blocks away, down the street on which we were staying.

  We didn’t run into any other people—or dogs—until we reached the closest block of Destiny Boulevard. There, despite it being close to ten o’clock at night, quite a few people remained out and about. And, yes, some had dogs with them, too.

  As we reached the end of the block, I noticed that the nearest store, on the corner, was called Wish-on-a-Star Children’s Shop. Its display window wasn’t lit up, but the streetlights along the boulevard—these in the shape of old lanterns, presumably from Gold Rush times—illuminated enough for me to see there were toys and clothes laid out in ways that would undoubtedly entice shoppers to enter when the store was open.

  Above them all was a large star-shaped light that zoomed across the top of the window like a shooting star.

  I wondered whether the idea was that kids—or adults, too, for that matter—could make a wish on it and have that wish come true. Or at least believe it did.

  Logically, that wouldn’t work. First, shooting stars aren’t stars at all but meteors. They aren’t shaped like stars, as this one supposedly was—although real stars also aren’t in the five or six-pronged shapes that humans tend to depict them in.

  But I was over-thinking this. “What do you say, Pluckie?” I said softly to my dog, who was sniffing the closest wall of the shop. I assumed there’d been guy dogs who’d left some interesting smells there that distracted her, so I pulled a little on her leash. She looked up at me with her sad brown eyes as if chiding me for interrupting her. But I went on, “Should I make a wish on this star that I make the right decision?”

  She seemed to understand that, whatever I was saying, it was a meaningful question to me. She came over, stood on her hind legs, and put her front paws up on me. She gave a decisive snort before stepping back down.

  “I take it that’s a yes,” I said.

  I walked with her straight to the sidewalk abutting Destiny Boulevard, looked in the window, and waited until the mock shooting star began its descent again.

  “I wish,” I muttered to myself, “that I knew what decision to make about staying in Destiny, and that something tomorrow will make it come clear to me.”

  By then, the supposed star had reached the end of its trail and disappeared.

  Yet somehow I had a sense that I had done something positive, and that the answer I needed would, in fact, come to me … somehow. In my dreams tonight, as Justin had said?

  I needed to go to bed to find out.

  five

  I slept reasonably well, and my thoughts were on superstitions and their validity when I awoke.

  Was that because Pluckie stood up at the side of the bed and pawed at me? I knew she was a lucky dog, and she seemed to be guiding me to get out of bed on the same side I’d gotten into it. Wasn’t there a superstition to that effect? And did I care?

  Whatever I’d dreamed, it must have included something about superstitions, but I still had no harbingers of things to come as Justin had suggested. Would my wish on a falling star help me find out answers today?

  I showered and dressed quickly in a navy button-down shirt and nice jeans, then leashed Pluckie to go downstairs for our morning walk.

  Voices emanated from a room off the lobby where breakfast was being served. I didn’t see Serina at her front desk, so I assumed she was with her guests.

  I peeked into that room. It was fairly large and populated by people filling plates at a food bar or sitting at tables. The scents emanating from there suggested cinnamon rolls and good, strong coffee, maybe more.

  No one paid attention to me, which was fine. I turned and walked outside with Pluckie.

  We didn’t go far. I wanted to feed her in our room, then grab some of that human breakfast to take with me on the walk to the Lucky Dog Boutique.

  When Pluckie and I got back, Serina was at the registration desk on the phone. She waved as we went up the stairs.

  I fed Pluckie her high-end kibble as I got ready for the day, placing everything I thought I’d need—like a sweater and some of her favorite toys—in a yellow MegaPets totebag. There were plenty of toys at the boutique, of course, but none were hers … yet.

  When we returned back downstairs, Serina was off the phone. “Question for you,” I said to her. “There’s a possibility I’ll be in town longer than originally anticipated. Would you have room for me to stay here for a while?”

  “How long?” She was once again wearing a frilly, old-fashioned outfit that looked quite good on her.

  “I don’t know yet, but it could be indefinitely.”

  Her grin grew broader, adding wrinkles to the sides of her pale brown eyes. “That’s great! And, yes, though I’m fairly full for the next few months, I’m sure we can work something out at a weekly rate. Just keep me informed about your schedule.” She leaned toward me. “This town’s superstitions are getting to you, aren’t they?”

  “In a way.” I didn’t want to go into how superstitions might not only have helped to save Martha but also convince her I could help her till she got well. “I’ll have a better idea later today or tomorrow.”

  Her apparent pleasure pumped mine up, too. She helped me collect a cinnamon roll and fruit in a bag as well as a tall cup of coffee to take along. Then Pluckie and I were on our way.

  I headed up the street till we reached the Wish-on-a-Star Children’s Shop. We crossed the street, then turned right on Destiny Boulevard. The Lucky Dog Boutique was one store down.

  On our way, I spotted a heads-up penny on the sidewalk and picked it up. Would it bring me good luck? And was its being there an accident or just another quirk of Destiny?

  I had fun watching all the other people who were up and about early, many with dogs on leashes beside them. A few tour vans passed by even this early, undoubtedly pointing out some of the shops to visitors.

  I enjoyed my breakfast-to-go, mostly ignoring Pluckie’s begging expression. “You ate already,” I told her. “And there’ll be water for you once we reach the shop.”

  We were there in a minute. I maneuvered the bag and coffee cup so I had a free hand, then pushed the door. It was locked. I pulled my phone from my pocket and checked the time. Nine thirty-five.

  Though it was still earlier than the store opened, I was five minutes later than the time I’d told Martha. Had she gotten one of her usual employees to take care of the shop today? The possibility that she hadn’t tugged at my insides. I might wind up feeling I didn’t have a choice whether to stay.

  “Oh, Pluckie, what am I going to—” I didn’t finish, since I saw a movement inside. A young lady, looking barely out of her teens, appeared from around a tall display and approached the glass-paned door. She looked
worried as she unlocked the inside latch.

  “Hi.” She studied me with light blue eyes beneath dark, arched brows. “Are you Rory?”

  “That’s right. Are you one of Martha’s employees?”

  “Yes, I’m Millie Weedin. Please come in.”

  Pluckie and I obeyed, and she latched the door shut again behind us.

  “What a wonderful, cute dog,” Millie gushed, kneeling to give Pluckie a hug. “I talked to Martha on the phone, and she told me that your dog’s very lucky and saved her life.”

  I gave a slight shrug. “Maybe, but I’d imagine someone else would have found Martha in time if Pluckie hadn’t.”

  “Maybe’s the key word. Anyway, she saw this amazing, strange black and white dog and all came out well. She said she’ll be released from the hospital tomorrow and will be coming home. At first, she’ll be upstairs in her apartment and won’t be able to run the shop, but she told me about your background and said you might take over for a while.”

  “Possibly,” I said. “For now I’d appreciate your showing me around, letting me know how things are run. That’ll help in the decision about how long I’ll be here.” That waffled enough for her to assume I was staying … or not.

  “Sure. Even though Jeri, the other part-time assistant, knows a lot more than I do, I’ll show you some computer stuff now since we have a few minutes before we open. Once we’re open, I’ll show you what I know about our stock and inventory and whatever else you’d like to see—including how Martha taught me to wait on customers, assuming anyone comes in.”

  “To a place called Lucky Dog Boutique?” I said. “I’ll bet we’ll be swamped today.” I hoped so for Martha’s sake … but maybe not so much for my own.

  The computer was a laptop, locked in a drawer beneath the cash register until needed. The system looked logical, though different from what I was used to.

  When the doors opened at ten, half a dozen people and two small dogs strolled through them nearly immediately. I’d walked to the front with Millie to watch what she did, and as the customers filed in she looked at me and smiled.