“Fairhope?” I guessed.
“Fairchild?” Sam shook her head. “No that isn’t it, sorry.”
“Fairfield?” I tried again.
“That’s it!” BeeBee bounced up. “Fairfield.”
“What about any other details?”
BeeBee closed her eyes, brows bunching together in concentration. “The sign on the way out of town.” She opened her eyes. “The population sign on the way out said 10,998. I remember seeing it in the bright headlights and thinking it would be much less than that with us gone. I also remember thinking the only good thing would be not smelling all the smoke from the factories around there anymore.”
Sam clapped her hands. “See? Now we have a name and a place to start.”
BeeBee sank back deeper into the couch. “I don’t know. It’s a long shot.”
“Yes, it is,” I admitted. “Still, it is a shot and Sam’s right; I think we should take it, don’t you?”
“Let’s do it. Let’s find my sister.” BeeBee’s smile could have lit the room if the storm knocked out the power.
Which, at this point, was still possible. According to my weather app, things weren’t likely to lessen until the wee hours of the morning.
Sam’s thoughts must have been running along the same line as mine. “How does the storm look?” she asked, peering at my phone.
“Bad. The rain isn’t expected to let up for hours still.” I pulled up my contact list. “I’m going to call Griff. I thought that he would be here by now. And what about Landon?”
Sam shook her head. “He said he would be fine in the hotel; he’s in a lower level room and they expect rain to be worse here than wind anyway.”
I nodded to Sam as I heard Griff answer the phone. Holding it closer to my ear, I smiled into the mouthpiece. “Hey! Where are you?”
“On my way. Should be there in ten minutes.”
His response was short and voice tight. I glanced over at the rivers of water flowing down my window pane and imagined he was probably trying to concentrate on the road. “Great. Drive safe and we’ll see you in a minute.” We disconnected and I said a silent prayer that he would arrive here safely, glad that he hadn’t been stubborn and remained at the beach house.
“Griff is on his way. Why don’t we make a quick game plan for tomorrow while we wait?”
“By game plan, she means list.” Sam joked to BeeBee.
“Three lists.” I stuck my tongue out at my best friend. “One for each of us. Sam, is there anything you still need to get for Millie’s surprise going away party?”
“Nope. All of the decorations are bought and in the back of my car. We still need to do the baking tomorrow though.”
I started writing. “I’ll put that on my list and share with Victoria. I’ll also need to check the Ooey Gooey for leaks, storm damage, or flooding.”
“What can I do?” BeeBee nibbled on another cookie.
I stretched my legs out, resting the heels of my feet on the vintage aqua-painted coffee table. “I don’t know if flowers are like cookies but if Flo has some old flowers that aren’t going to get used before they die, you could put together a few small table arrangements to bring.”
“Sure, I can do that.”
“Sam, you start researching Clark’s in Fairfield. Let’s see if we can track down anything about Eva. BeeBee, maybe you can describe your sister to Millie. She’s a fantastic artist. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could make us a decent sketch to work with and if she can’t, she’ll know someone in her art class that can.”
“Okay. For the flowers, is the party Thursday or Friday night? I can’t remember.”
“Friday night,” I answered.
“Piper!” Sam batted me on the arm with the back of her hand. “We never did go do your fitting. That’s tonight.”
“Oh no! I completely forgot, with the storm and everything.”
Sam looked at her watch. “We’ve still got time.” She raised an eyebrow at me.
BeeBee’s eyes grew to be the size of golf balls. “You two are seriously considering going back out in this mess?”
Knocking sounded on the door. I whisked my feet to the floor and jogged to the entry. Checking the peephole first, I opened the door and let Griff inside. He greeted me with a soft kiss. I laughed as water ran down his hair onto my face and we pulled apart.
“Quit making out and get in here,” Sam hollered from the other room.
Griff scowled and I rolled my eyes. With a last peck on the cheek, I turned and led Griff to the living room.
“Cookies for supper?” He took two cookies and the chair caddy-cornered to the couch as I wiggled back into my spot by Sam.
I raised my eyebrows. “Nothing better.”
“Maybe some hot chocolate.” Sam ducked as I attempted to hit her with a throw pillow. “I’m just saying,” she pointed out the window. “On a night like this, hot chocolate would have been appropriate.”
“You know where the kitchen is.”
“Too late; we have to go.”
I groaned.
“Go? Go where? It’s a disaster out there.”
“To see Vinny.” Sam pulled a face. “We forgot that Piper’s fitting for the country club dinner is tonight.”
“No way; neither of you needs to go anywhere.” Griff crossed his arms.
I crossed my arms right back. “Hello. My house, my fitting, my decision. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I know I agree.” Sam narrowed her eyes at her brother. “Last time I checked, we invited you to this party to for your safety, not the other way around.”
“Fine. That may have come out wrong, but it doesn’t make me wrong. Driving conditions are only worsening.” Griff splayed his palms on his knees, leaning forward. “Be smart and make the right decision.”
“Plus,” BeeBee chimed in, holding up the nearly empty platter of cookies. “If you two leave who is going to bake more of this deliciousness?”
I looked at Sam, sharing a silent conversation like we often do, and knew the decision was done. “We will stay as long as Vinny agrees to reschedule.”
Griff breathed a sigh of relief as I spoke. He looked to Sam. “You are easily as gifted in the powers of persuasion as Mother; use them. Call and get him to change the appointment, please.”
Sam leaned over and fished in her purse on the floor until she came out with her bedazzled gold phone. I looked at my plain gray phone case; some days, I’m surprised we’re friends. We all stayed quiet as she dialed and spoke to Vincent Von Vaughn.
“He’s coming over.”
“He’s what?” I yelped.
“He’s coming over,” Sam repeated. “Vinny is coming here to do your fitting. Says he is too booked to reschedule and too killable to not get an order done for Deidra.”
BeeBee coughed and spluttered, choking on a cookie. “Too killable?”
“He must have been reading all of the social media outrage over Deidra poisoning the gophers.” Seeing she had no idea what I was talking about, I pulled up a recent post and passed my phone over to bring BeeBee up to speed.
“Unexpected, but fine. At least you don’t have to drive in this mess.” Griff stood and wandered into the kitchen.
I heard the clank of ice cubes in a glass. “So,” I turned back to Sam. “When will Vinny be here?”
“He says between six and seven.”
A look at my watch told me it was nearing five p.m. “Good. Plenty of time to finish watching the Cookie Cake-Off.” A brand-new series on the Foodie Network, Cookie Cake-Off pitted five contestants against each other this week to build a three-layer cookie-cake with a beach theme. It was like this episode had been filmed just for us.
CHAPTER 14
At half past six, Sam’s phone rang. “Hello?” she answered. “Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yep, that’s the one. Be right there.”
I gave her a questioning look.
“Vinny is here.” She sighed as she stood to her feet and extended an arm to help me up from t
he couch. “And he needs help bringing in his bags.”
“Bags? Please tell me he didn’t invite himself to our impromptu slumber party?”
Sam laughed at the appalled look on my face. “No. His bags of fabric and pins and tools for measuring.”
Griff rose from his chair. “If you three want to find a place for him to set up, I’ll help Vinny bring in his stuff.”
“Thanks, Griff.” I led Sam and BeeBee to my bedroom where we scooted furniture and tidied up. Thankfully, I was a fairly neat person, so the room didn’t need to be cleaned seriously or anything.
Hearing shuffling in the hall, I poked my head out of the bedroom door. I stifled the urge to laugh as I watched Griff plodding down the hall with garment bags and hat boxes and who knows what else towering above his head.
“Come on, come on. What, do you think I have all night?” A perturbed voice floated toward me from behind Griff.
Like a rabbit popping out of a hat, a head appeared to go with the voice. I jerked my head back inside the bedroom and leaned against the wall, widening my eyes at Sam as I tried to compose myself after my first sighting of Vincent Von Vaughn. “You,” I hissed, stabbing a finger at Sam as she hid her Cheshire grin behind one elegantly manicured hand.
“Me?” She squeaked.
“You didn’t tell me that Vinny was a dwarf!”
A masculine throat cleared behind me but the warning came too late. Griff took a step back as Vinny elbowed past his knees and entered my bedroom.
“My name, in case you care, is Vincent Von Vaughn, and I happen to have dwarfism but am not a dwarf; I do not spend my days picking through rubble singing terribly ridiculous tunes in hopes that I might find a diamond behind a clump of dirt.”
My lips parted but words eluded me. The crimson in my cheeks burned brightly. Talk about not judging a book by its cover – don’t judge a person by their name either. I had fully expected some English-Lord fancy-pants aristocrat to trot in with a hoity-toity attitude.
“Now, Vinny,” Sam smiled. “Don’t be hard on Piper. She didn’t realize the preferred term is people of short stature.”
“The preferred term would be my name, rather than that atrocious shortened nonsense you insist upon using, Miss Samantha.”
BeeBee snickered from a chair in the corner.
“Though,” Vincent looked me over, “perhaps pulling diamonds from dirt is my specialty after all. I think I can work with this.” He gestured to me with a flick of his wrist as he spoke.
Miffed at being referred to as this, I held my tongue anyway; after all, I’d basically just called Vinny a midget. “Where do we start?”
Vinny unzipped a long garment bag. Waiting was torture as he rooted around in it, removing layers of fluff and plastic before finally pulling out the garment itself. “Here we are, here we are.”
I gaped that Vinny could look so pleased with himself as he held the atrocity up for view. And an atrocity was a kind name for it. “Are you serious right now?” I looked from him to Sam. It had to be a prank. Please, let it be a prank.
Sam smiled.
Vinny glared.
I turned to Griff, my last hope. “Griff, this isn’t what I have to wear to the dinner is it?”
Sympathy softened his grim nod. “Don’t be too disappointed. Just remember, we’ll match.”
“Look,” Vinny snapped, giving the outfit a good shake. “I don’t have time for this. Let’s get started so that I can get home before the parking lot floods and my car floats away.”
That got me moving. I snatched the suit from Vinny’s hand and fled to the bathroom to try it on. Maybe I could accidentally flush it down the toilet. Too soon, I had to face the music. Feeling like a giant squash, I marched back into the bedroom. One shoulder-pad studded sleeve kept slipping down; the suit jacket was too big. The skirt fit in the waste but the bottom hem reached to an odd length between my knees and shins. And the sheer yellow blouse beneath the wide jacket, well I’m certain the entire outfit should have been illegal.
BeeBee choked on her glass of tea.
I narrowed my eyes at Sam, watching as she struggled to keep a straight face. Griff, thank goodness, had vanished from the room and wasn’t here to witness my humiliation. No doubt he escaped to the safety of baseball game or horror show on television; he had, after all, already endured his fitting another day.
“Please explain to me why we are wearing suits that look like they came from the ‘80s?”
Sam threw her hands up. “How should I know? Evidently Mother still thinks this style is power-dressing to the fullest. We have to look ‘smart and chic’ to help Dad remain popular with the voters.”
“That makes no sense; isn’t his second term almost up anyway?”
“Yes,” she nodded before plopping down on my bed. “But evidently my mother has him convinced that the rules don’t apply. She thinks that with a little extra schmoozing, the people will keep him in office.”
“Enough chit-chat.” Vinny clapped his hands together like a teacher with an unruly class. “Now we make this into something presentable.”
I gasped in shock and jerked away as Vinny flipped the bottom of my skirt up so that it came three inches above my knees instead of four below. “What the?”
“Don’t worry.” Sam put up a hand to calm me. “I asked Vinny to bring our suits into this century a little. By the time he’s done, you won’t recognize it.”
“O-kay,” I drug out the word the same way I wanted to drag my feet about this fitting, feeling unconvinced. My concerns were not alleviated when Vinny whipped out a pair of shears longer than his forearm and began chopping off the skirt material above my knees. “Won’t that be pretty uneven?” There went all those mental pictures I had of tailor’s meticulously measuring with a long floppy measuring tape, exacting every stitch and thread.
“You got jokes, do ya?” Vinny sneered and continued snipping away.
Disregarded skirt material pooled at my feet. I looked up at Sam but she was talking to BeeBee. Oh well. It isn’t like this outfit could get any worse, even if it ends up with an uneven hem.
As the last of the fabric hit the floor, Vinny turned away and opened one of the smaller boxes that Griff had carried in. As if to confirm I had been too quick to judge yet again, from the box he pulled a sewing tape measure and box of pins. Awfully long pins. I cringed at the thought of those sharp objects near my poor legs.
For the next hour, Vinny worked swiftly. His small hands made for nimble fingers. Not a single poke or scratch from a pin hit me the entire time. By the time we finished, I was beginning to have hope. The shoulder pads were gone from the jacket, Vinny had even allowed me the honor of yanking them out by hand, and the whole suit would of course be taken in at the seams to allow for a more form-fitting style.
“The color is still hideous but I guess it is what it is.” I handed each of the carefully pinned pieces of clothing back to Vinny to stow in the garment bag, grateful to be in sweats and a t-shirt again.
“Don’t worry,” Sam winked. “With a few accessories, we can tone down the yellow or at least accent it enough to appear tastefully cheery.”
“Really?” I crossed my arms. “I highly doubt you can do anything with a necklace to make me look less like a squash.”
“I may be the Tailor-Extraordinaire,” Vinny turned to me with both hands fisted at his hips. “But Samantha is the Accessory Angel. If she says she can make you an attractive squash, she can do it.” With that he began stacking all of his bags and boxes again, the tower extending over his head.
“I’ll go get Griff.” I rolled my neck, stiff from trying to stand up straight and tall, trying to get the kinks out as I walked down the hallway to the living room. “Hey.” I leaned against the door frame. “Tell me truly: do you have to wear a yellow suit?”
Griff grinned. “Not a full yellow suit. A bright yellow shirt with dark blue slacks.”
“She couldn’t even go for tan or black slacks?” I grimaced. “Anyw
ay, if you don’t mind, I think Vinny is ready for some help carrying things back to his car.”
Griff clicked the TV off and stretched. “That’s fine. The Bay Bears were losing anyway.”
My eyebrows scrunched down as I tried to figure that one out. “The who?”
Griff laughed, tugging me into step by his side as we walked down the hall. “Minor League Baseball; so close they are practically local. You really don’t know a thing about sports, do you?”
“Not a bit.”
“Don’t worry, there’s time.”
“Nope. I’m hopeless.” I shook my head.
Griff just laughed. He and Vinny made quick work of the boxes and garment bags. Soon we were ducking rain and waving goodbye from my tiny front porch. I had to wrench hard on the door to slam it shut, the wind trying to suck it from my hands the whole time.
“Wow!” I slid the lock into place. “It’s getting worse out there.”
“I think we should go check the weather report.” Sam turned into the living room with the rest of us following. Sam turned the TV on and found a news report as we all settled back into our places. The hurricane in Florida had dropped to a Category 4 storm before making landfall. Still, it destroyed countless homes and businesses and reports showed that it hadn’t died out yet. After three or four minutes, the weather report switched over to local coverage. Both tropical storm warnings and hurricane watches were in place for counties all around us. It appeared Seashell Bay was still in the area most likely to receive winds of 96 to 110 mph.
“How long can this possibly last?” BeeBee hugged one of my throw pillows to her chest.
Griff answered first. “Typical hurricanes last only 12 to 24 hours. As for the fallout wind and rain Alabama will see, well I’m not sure on that one.”
“I hope that Vinny makes it home okay.” Sam chewed on her lower lip.
“You and Vinny are chummier than you let on, aren’t you?” I watched my friend as she worried.
“He’s been making special occasion outfits for Griff and me since I was a little girl.” She smiled fondly. He scared me at first because he was different. Then, he offered to put whatever kind of buttons I wanted on my Easter dress one year.”
Ooey Gooey Bakery Mystery Box Set Page 54
