“Tell you what, if they are, I have enough anger in me that’ll I’ll open a can of whoop-ass they won’t soon forget. And if they’re men, even better. They’ll be the Cockless Heads by the time I get done with them.”
“Oh, just, ew.”
Ro laughed. “Do you want to leave? Say it now, and we’re gone. But we schlepped all the way down here, we should at least check it out.”
Another good point. This whole damned situation was just . . . unsettling. As a matter of general safety, someone should know where they were. Just in case.
She should text Tim.
That’s what she’d do. Just send him a casual text saying hi and that she and Ro were at the Java Pit sharing a coffee. He didn’t need to know they were chasing Cock Heads.
She shoved her coffee at Ro and dug through her purse for her phone. “I’m texting Tim. If we come up missing, he’ll know where to look first.”
“If we come up missing he’ll trace your phone. But suit yourself and text him.”
Lucie blew raspberries at her, and Ro laughed. After sending the text, Lucie grabbed her coffee and took a breath. “You ready?”
“Waiting on you, sweet cheeks. “
At the top of the steps an open door led to a large rectangular room decorated in the same style as the first floor. Near the windows sat a group of about two dozen folks who’d gathered a series of four-top tables into a weird semicircle so they could all see each other. Other patrons filled in the surrounding tables. Not a bad turnout.
A tall, heavyset woman pushed out of her chair and headed for them.
“Give me strength,” Ro whispered.
No fooling there. The woman wore a replica of the Maxmillian dress and a headband with peacock feathers poking at least twelve inches into the air.
“I gotta get a picture,” Ro said.
“Ssshhh. Be serious. We have to act like Cock Heads.”
“Hello,” the woman said, a big smile spreading across her face. “Are you here for the meeting?”
“Um, yes,” Lucie said. “We’re thinking about joining.”
“Ooh.” The woman clapped. “Everyone! Potential new members. Let’s all be nice.”
The crowd raised a cheer, then went back to their individual conversations while the woman focused on Lucie and Ro.
“We always love having new members. I’m Annabelle. Please, come in.”
“Thank you.”
Lucia fell into step behind Annabelle, who led them toward the group at the far end of the room. As they walked, she pointed to a table with various items, pins, T-shirts, headbands, all sporting peacock feathers.
“We have some spiritwear available for purchase if you’d like one. The headbands are my favorite. They’re all a little different. Some are ten dollars. The more elaborate range from thirty to fifty.”
Yowzer.
Ro stopped in front of the table and perused the items, her gaze landing on an elaborate headband similar to Annabelle’s. She picked it up, studied the placement of the feathers. After a few seconds, she flipped the band over, ran her finger along the edge, probably checking for errant glue that held the feathers in place.
She gave Lucie the same stern-librarian look she’d given her earlier in the day, only without the glasses. “The craftsmanship on these is quite good.”
“Thank you,” Annabelle said. “One of our members makes them. Of course, the feathers aren’t the double-eyed, but we do what we can.”
Ro held up the headband. “I’ll take this one.”
“Wonderful. We love enthusiastic new members. That’ll be fifty dollars.”
A gag broke from Lucie’s throat. She slapped her chest, swallowed back the sudden hairball. “Sorry. The acid reflux is a killer.”
Ro sighed, but in terms of recoveries, Lucie didn’t think she’d done half bad.
“Luce, you should get a headband.”
Not a chance. “I’m good. Thanks. Maybe a T-shirt on the way out.”
Ro forked over her fifty dollars, while Lucie contemplated the madness of paying so much for something Ro could have whipped out herself in three minutes. Maybe less. Ro was all about getting into character when the two of them did these mini-missions, so Lucie chalked it up to dedication.
When it came to parting with her own hard-earned money, Lucie wasn’t nearly as committed to the cause.
Transaction complete, Ro plopped the hideous headband on, gave the feathers a fluff and winked at Lucie. “Let’s do this, girlfriend.”
“Helloooo, all.” Ro did one of her flirty finger waves to the group. “I’m Roseanne and this is my friend Lucie.”
All at once the group responded with various greetings. “Goedeavond. Bonsoir. Shalom.”
An absolute United Nations of Cock Heads. Friendly bunch, though. One of the men, an older gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair and funky, horn-rimmed glasses, grabbed two chairs from an empty table, while the others made room for Lucie and Ro to squeeze in.
Before setting her purse on the floor, Ro checked her phone. “Joey just called me. And texted. He wants to know where we are. Let me text him. That’ll keep him at bay for an hour.”
Ro fired off her text just as Lucie’s phone buzzed from her back pocket. “Whoopsie. Someone is looking for me, too.”
She swiped the screen, saw two texts. She must have missed the first one. Tim. Just responding to her incognito if-we-get-kidnapped text and telling her to have fun and call him when she got home. Easy enough. The second message was Joey. Asking where the eff she and Roseanne were.
“Joey texted me, too. Don’t tell him where we are.”
Ro waved that off. “I told him to keep his pants on, and I’d call him later.”
With that, she turned her phone off, shoved it back into her purse and gave the table at large her attention. Already Lucie could see the clusters. The three people huddled together directly across from them, a young couple holding hands, three twenty-something women with green hair. Then there were the two men and two women sitting bolt upright, hands to themselves, staring straight ahead. Obviously, they’d each come to the meeting on their own. Not wanting to stare, Lucie chose not to scan the rest of the group and brought her gaze back to her latte. Might as well have a gulp while Ro did her thing. Within seconds, her BFF worked the table, and chatter erupted all around.
They’d gotten pretty good at these investigations over the last few months. The general system required Ro to chat up the group, asking semileading questions while Lucie quietly observed and committed everything to memory.
They were, in short, a great team.
Annabelle stood and tapped her long nails against one of the water glasses. “Attention, everyone.” The group immediately piped down. Even Ro. Lucie might have to put Annabelle on the payroll. “Such a great crowd tonight. And we have guests—this is Roseanne and Lucie. Welcome to the Cock Heads, ladies. We won’t introduce everyone, but we have several board members and volunteers here tonight, so we’ll let them say hello.”
Ten minutes later, they’d gone around the table, and Lucie and Ro had the breakdown of the group. Two fashion students, one movie buff, one bored housewife and, to Lucie’s delight, an investment banker. She’d never met him, but still considered him a comrade from her old life in corporate America.
Thank God she’d been downsized out of that mess.
“Annabelle,” Ro said, “I just love your dress.”
Annabelle beamed. “Thank you, Roseanne. I had it made. I brought the seamstress photos of the original, and, I have to say, she did an excellent job. Even the feathers are pointing in the right direction.”
“I noticed that. It really does look like the original.”
Okay, Columbo. Stop forcing the dress into the conversation.
Lucie kicked Ro under the table, connected with bone—probably her ankle—and she let out a yelp.
Annabelle’s eyebrows shot up. “Problem?”
“No. Sorry. I banged my foot on the chair.”
“Speaking of the Max,” one of the fashion students said, “have we heard anything new? Any leads?”
Annabelle rotated her head left then right, moving so slow that Lucie found herself mimicking it.
“Nothing yet,” she said. “I knew we’d have a big crowd tonight with all the activity surrounding the Max, so I checked with the police before I got here.”
As if the police would give some lunatic Cock Head an update? Tim would love that one.
The bored housewife slapped her hand over her head. “I’m miserable over this. That auction has been on my calendar for months. I was so excited. Even if I couldn’t bid on the dress, I would have been able to see it. Up close.”
Ro leaned forward, swung left and made direct eye contact with the woman. “Honey, I feel your pain. We—Lucie and I—planned on going to the auction as well. We’d even hoped to bid.”
Bid? Totally off-leash now.
From the corner of her eye, Lucie spotted the sidelong glance from Ro. Right along with the slight quirk at the corner of her mouth.
Game. On.
“I’m in the middle of a hellacious divorce, and making my husband pay when I won the bid on that dress was going to be my farewell gift to that rat-bastard. Now I have nothing. I’m so angry.”
Lucie patted her arm. “I know. But don’t fret. The dress will be found and we will bid on it.”
A round of murmurs came from the table at large, some nodded their agreement while others said “hell yeah” and “that’s awesome.” The bored housewife gave a hearty “Amen!”
Blinking back tears—darn, she was good—Ro sniffed and gently ran the tips of her fingers underneath her eyes. “You all are so wonderful. This has been such a trying time. But I know the dress will be recovered. It just upsets me. I wanted to teach that cheating bastard to have a little respect.”
The housewife gasped. “A cheater. Men!”
“Hey.” The younger guy at the end of the table held up a hand. “We’re not all bad.”
“Sorry,” the housewife said. “But I get it, Roseanne. One of the moms in my son’s playgroup just went through the same thing. We stay at home, cook, clean, pop out babies; but gain a little weight and as soon as some twenty-year-old shows a little interest in our man, it’s over.”
Lucie hadn’t anticipated that speech and wasn’t sure it was helping, but—too late now—she’d roll with it.
“Ro has always loved that dress. The auction would have come at a perfect time.” Really laying it on, she once again patted Ro’s arm. “Don’t be sad. Sooner or later, the dress will surface.”
“I hope so. I’d do just about anything to have it.”
Bam. Mission complete. Ro had just put it out there, sent that sucker straight out into the universe, that she had the means—and the desperation—to do whatever it took to find the dress.
Now all they had to do was wait for the universe to respond.
After the meeting ended and Ro and Lucie filled out the membership application, they tromped down the stairs and out the front door. A blast of cold wind smacked at Lucie’s cheeks, and she zipped her jacket to her neck. October in Chicago, like every other month, could be tricky. Being a lifelong resident Lucie had learned the fine art of layering.
“Roseanne!”
Whoopsie. The two of them spun back, and found Joey storming straight at them. He sidestepped around a group of people, nearly plowed into a lamppost and bumped a car along the way.
For a big guy, Joey could move.
“Uh-oh,” Ro said. “Did you tell him where we were?”
“Heck no.”
Before either of them could comment, Joey halted in front of them, his face full of hard angles. The mad face.
“What the hell are you two up to?”
Ro flung a hand toward the coffee shop. “Having coffee. What’s your problem?”
The old ricochet move of putting it back on him. Excellent.
“Bzzzzttt. Nice try,” he said. “We got a Starbucks ten minutes from your house. There’s no way you two wack-jobs are coming all the way here for coffee. And what the hell are you wearing on your head?”
Instead of whipping her headband off, Ro gave the feathers a fluff. “My new headwear.”
Oh. Brother.
Lucie stepped forward half an inch and threw her shoulders back. Not that it did any good since she was the petite one in the family. But she had experience when it came to her brother. “How did you know where we were?”
“I called Tim.”
Of all the things he could have said, that one set her back. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Neither one of you answered. I got worried. We’re in the middle of this dress fiasco, and you two go off the grid. I called, and he told me you were here.”
Ro looked at Lucie. “We didn’t anticipate that. Good to know for next time.”
Joey’s mouth flew open. “Screw next time.”
One of the Cock Heads’ board members, a short, middle-aged man from the meeting, appeared next to Lucie and inserted himself between her and Joey. “Is there a problem here?”
“Hi, Wendel. No. No problem. This is my brother.”
Wendel inched closer to Joey and tilted his head up. His own version of getting in his face. “He’s getting a little loud.”
Under the glow of the street lamp, Joey’s face went crimson, and Lucie swore it inflated an inch. That kind of pressure should have blown it clear off his body.
But kudos to her brother for keeping his hands at his sides.
“Who the hell is this now?”
Ro grabbed Joey’s arm. “Relax. Why do you have to be such an animal?”
She led him away—phew—and Lucie blew out a breath. “Sorry, Wendel. He’s very protective. Believe me, he means well. I’m so sorry if he made you nervous.”
“No. Not at all. I can handle myself. I was concerned he’d get violent with you.”
How sweet was this? Wendel, all five feet two and a hundred and thirty pounds of him, wanted to protect them. Who said chivalry was dead? Joey would have flattened him with one shot, but Wendel’s willingness to help renewed Lucie’s faith in humanity.
“Oh, he’s just being my ape of a brother. He’s harmless.”
At least to his loved ones.
“All right. As long as you’re safe. I guess I’ll move along now.” Wendel held out his hand. “It was great meeting you, Lucie. I’m on the membership committee and will be loading all of your contact information into the database tonight. Let me know if you have any questions.”
“Great. I’ll do that. Thanks.”
Wendel shuffled off, and a burst of heavy, drowning guilt fell on her. Here this guy thought she and Ro were devoted Cock Heads, and the whole thing had been a scam. A ruse to try and find information about the dress. The Max, as the group called it.
Not only had the meeting been a bust, Ro spent fifty bucks on a ridiculous headband, and they’d lied to these people.
“Luce!”
Feathers bouncing, towering heels barely slowing her down, Ro strutted toward Lucie. Alone.
“Where’s Joey?”
“He just left.”
“He’s mad?”
“Of course. He’s so sensitive lately. I love this protective streak in him, but he’ll need medication if he keeps up with this constant worrying.”
Lucie shrugged. “He loves us.”
That made Ro smile. “Yeah, I guess he does. Come on. Let’s go home. You can drop me by Joey’s. By the time we get there, he’ll have cooled off and I’ll get naked. He’ll forget all about this.”
“Honestly, I don’t need to hear this stuff. It gives me a visual I don’t care for.”
“What did Wendel say?”
“He’ll add us to the database. I think our mission failed.”
Ro linked her arm through Lucie’s. “You never know. Something might come up.”
Some mornings—like this one— were made for Lucie to be out
doors.
The bright sun shone in a cloudless sky, and the crisp morning air tickled her cheeks. Perfection.
Buddy, the Wheaten Terrier aka the Wheaten Terrorist, stopped at the corner two blocks from his house and sniffed his favorite tree. He’d peed on that tree so many times, he should have a reserved sign on it.
By this time, already twenty-seven minutes into her first walk of the day, many of the residents on the block had gone to work or school, leaving their precious parking spaces open. Unlike Franklin, people in this neighborhood didn’t put lawn chairs or garbage cans in their spot to save it. By five o’clock folks would be rushing home simply to snag parking.
While Buddy busied himself sniffing a rock at the base of his tree, Lucie tilted her head back and inhaled. In Chicago, a morning like this could never be considered cold, but it was enough for her to layer on some long-sleeved shirts and break out her favorite Notre Dame sweatshirt.
Today would be a good day.
Buddy finished sniffing and gave the tree his customary squirt. How that dog had an ounce of urine left in him was just short of a miracle. So far, he’d stopped at every tree, every plant, every leaf.
“Dude,” Lucie said, “we need to get to the good stuff here. Give me a nice poop, and we’re done.”
But Buddy was no dummy. Believing he’d get a longer walk if he held off on a bowel movement, he would wait.
And wait.
And wait.
He knew what she wanted. And he knew that she knew that he knew. This was their own screwy little mind trick that occurred on a daily basis. In the early days, before Lucie had caught on to his scheming ways, she’d walk him until he did his business.
Then she wised up.
Now, the halfway point was exactly at the thirty-minute mark. If they went two miles or two feet, at thirty minutes she turned back.
Mind trick declassified.
Still, some days the little pain in the rear—no pun intended—waited until the last possible second. What he didn’t know, and she refused to clue him in on by walking him longer, was if he didn’t do his business she’d have to walk him until he did. That was the Coco Barknell customer guarantee.
Dog Collar Couture Page 9
