Agnes caught herself from gasping, pressing her hand to her mouth as he passed by, hearing Aldo’s easy laugh. At the FBI! He was certainly…fearless.
“I have plenty of time to shop,” he said. “Look, I have someone special, and I want to impress the hell out of this woman…” He got too far away for them to hear the rest, but Finnie turned to her, her eyes bright with emotion.
“It’s all true!” she exclaimed. “The FBI! The corpse!”
“The woman he wants to impress the hell out of.” Agnes let out a sigh, an age-old regret crawling up her chest, taking her back many, many years to another really bad decision she made because a man was handsome. “I sure can pick ’em, can’t I?”
“We have to help the FBI find him,” Finnie said. “We can’t let him sail out of here and get away with murder! It’s our civic duty!”
“Finnie, we can’t—”
“We must! Look! He’s headed back to the escalator. Let’s follow.” She yanked Agnes’s arm, her little legs hustling down the shiny tile floor. But Agnes just didn’t have it in her to go running off on this adventure.
For a person who’d made passing judgment on others into an Olympic sport, how could she have misjudged him so completely? He’d seemed so genuine and real.
On a sigh, she followed, but stayed ten feet behind Finnie, who marched on her rubber-soled shoes like a woman on a mission.
At the bottom of the escalator, he paused, looked left, then right, and then powered toward the accessories like a man who didn’t have a care in the world or a cop on his tail.
Finnie followed, stopping next to him at a display of silk scarves.
As Finnie sidled up to him, Agnes stayed back, hovering behind a rack of handbags so he wouldn’t see her, but she could hear.
“What do you think?” He turned to Finnie and held up two scarves. “Which would you prefer?”
She sputtered a little, obviously not expecting the question. She adjusted the crooked glasses, then shrugged. “I imagine it depends on the woman.”
He sighed. Actually let out a true, wistful sigh. “Then whichever one is prettier, I guess. She is.”
“Oh, then…” Finnie reached for the one in his right hand. “I prefer this one a wee bit more, then, for a pretty lass.”
“Yeah, but it’s kind of long, isn’t it? I mean, what could you do with all this? Tie someone up?” He laughed, but Agnes gulped.
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” Finnie said, suddenly preoccupied with other scarves.
“Irish or Scottish? I hear some lilting brogue in your voice.”
“Irish,” she said tightly.
“I’m Italian,” he replied. “Well, my ancestors are. It sounds like you’re the real deal.”
“I am,” she answered.
“What about this one?” He held up a fuchsia infinity scarf. “Too pink?”
“Too…” Finnie stepped back and looked up at him. “For your wife?” she asked, an edge in her voice.
“Oh God, I wish she was my wife. Maybe she will be someday.”
“If you make her an offer she can’t refuse.”
Agnes nearly choked.
But Aldo laughed heartily. “I see what you did there, since I’m Italian. Very funny, ma’am. The only thing I don’t want her to refuse is my gift.” He hung the scarf in its place. “Maybe perfume? Earrings? Too much? I really want to impress her.”
Who was this woman he wanted to impress? That child with a child of her own? He just didn’t strike her as a playboy. Irritation skittered up her spine as she remembered the young mother he’d been flirting with. And his voice on the phone when he’d said he found the one and got her number.
“Well, how well do you know her?” Finnie asked, engaging him in conversation for reasons Agnes would never understand.
“Not that well,” he admitted on a laugh. “I’m not even sure if a present is appropriate, but with the holidays, it seemed right.”
“Maybe just some simple flowers,” Finnie said.
Why was she giving him advice?
He laughed again. A rich, from-the-chest laugh that Agnes wished she didn’t like so much. “That might be a little, oh, I don’t know, unimaginative.”
“All women like flowers,” she said.
“But flowers are my business. I get them for free.”
“Well, then ye should know that women love flowers. Pick one that reminds you of her—a red rose or a white orchid—and tell her why that flower reminds you of her, and that will impress her more than a scarf.”
“Clever. What’s your name?”
Oh, now he was hitting on Finnie? Agnes inched her head to the side to see the exchange rather than just hear it.
“Finola.” She extended her hand.
“That’s a fine Irish name,” he said, smiling down at her as he shook her hand. “I’m Aldo. And it was nice chatting with you.”
“Aren’t you going to get the scarf for your lady friend?” she asked.
“I think I’ll take your advice and get her a flower. I want it to be special, because she is.” He gave a nod. “Merry Christmas, Finola.”
He walked away, leaving both of them behind. Agnes stepped out from her hiding place behind the handbags.
“What happened to turning him in?” she asked.
“I was just trying to get a read on the man,” Finnie said.
“And what did you read?”
Finnie looked in the direction he’d gone. “He does seem…I don’t know. Not like a mobster.”
“Oh, now he’s not a mobster. Now that he’s got some hussy on the line and the FBI down his throat. Now you like him?”
Finnie sighed. “I wouldn’t say I like him, but if I hadn’t heard him talking about the FBI and a corpse with my own ears…” She shook her head. “Come on, Agnes. We can’t lose sight of him.”
“So we can turn him in for the good of our community,” Agnes said glumly.
Finnie slipped her arm around Agnes’s. “So what did you think of him, seeing him up close and not dressed as Santa for the first time?”
“That he posted a real picture, because he is handsome. Tall. Warm.” She made a face. “Also buying a scarf for ‘the one’ who is young, beautiful, and has a kid, but he doesn’t care because he can’t be picky.”
Silently, they walked out of the store, pausing at the big entrance to the mall, not far from the massive tree and the hordes of people around Santa’s Workshop.
“Did we lose him?” Finnie asked, looking left and right. “Did he go up those stairs?”
“Let’s look.” They walked to the large, curved stairs and climbed them to the top, heading to the railing for a direct view down to the holiday heart of the mall. Silent for a moment, they scanned the people, trying to spot Aldo.
Then a loud shriek echoed over the sound of carolers, followed by a bark. A familiar bark.
“Is that Gala?” Agnes pushed farther over the railing to see down, her heart leaping as more shrieks floated up, searching the crowds.
“Oh dear.” Finnie grabbed her arm and pointed. “’Tis Tor!”
“I don’t see…” She sucked in a breath at the sight of the toppled pile of wrapped boxes and Tor running down the mall through the crowds with a giant gold ribbon in his mouth. Behind him, Lucas tried to catch up, calling his name.
Next to the presents, Pru stood with the doxies on leashes, both of them barking, all of them watching helplessly.
“We best go down there,” Finnie said.
“Yes, but, Finnie, look!” She pointed to the entrance to the food court, where the two FBI men from earlier came marching out, side by side. The big one had his hand in his bulging pocket, like he would draw out a gun at any minute.
“And there’s Aldo,” Finnie said, gesturing to the wide, curved stairs they’d just climbed. He was walking slowly, but then he froze and stared across the crowded mall, and instantly his whole body changed.
“He sees them,” Agnes said.
; “But they don’t see him.”
Aldo pivoted, darting up the stairs with surprising speed and agility for a man of his age. But then, fear of the law could probably do that to someone.
He made it to the top, then blew right by them, the phone at his ear.
“FBI Mayday,” they heard him say. “Would you please get these knuckleheads off my back before I kill someone?”
Agnes squeezed the railing, taking a steadying breath.
“Come on, lass,” Finnie said gently. “You know what we have to do.”
Chapter Nine
If Pru hadn’t noticed that both the grannies looked flushed and upset as they approached, she would still have known something was wrong by the way Gala reacted. Pyggie was unfazed, as always, sniffing around the mall floor for a random morsel of food.
But sensitive little Galatea began to whine even before Gramma Finnie and Yiayia reached them, tapping her paws on the tile, anxious and stressed at the sight of them.
“You’re not going to believe what happened,” Pru said as she bent over to lift the doxie and give her a kiss before handing her over to Yiayia.
“We saw, lass,” Gramma Finnie said, looking around as if she was more interested in the crowd than anything else. “Where did they go?”
“Tor took off, and Lucas followed.” Pru pointed down the wide mall corridor, packed now with last-minute shoppers. “We were trying to come up with some kind of Random Act of Christmas Kindness so we didn’t completely waste the day. We got closer to the workshop, and Tor started sniffing around the boxes, then he dug into the pile, knocked it over, and almost took half the tree with him. Then he grabbed a ribbon off a box and took off like, well, a racing dog.”
“No!” Yiayia said, still looking around.
“Yes,” Pru replied.
“I don’t mean what happened to him.” Yiayia finally focused on Pru, her dark eyes as desperate as Tor’s when he’d launched at that pile of presents. “I mean the FBI men. They were headed to the stairs. Did they go up?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were supposed to watch. Did you forget?”
Gala lifted her little snout and gave Yiayia’s chin a comforting lick, recognizing that raised voice of panic and reminding Pru not to snap back.
“I’m sorry,” Pru said softly.
“’Tis fine, lassie.” Gramma Finnie came around Pru’s other side to give her a great-grandmotherly hug. “You were distracted. Agnes is just upset.”
Yiayia’s shoulders dropped as she heaved a sigh. “Nothing about today is going as planned,” she admitted.
“Well, what did you think was going to happen, Agnes?” Finnie asked. “You’d lock eyes with the man, and he’d go down on one knee? I told you his reputation precedes him, and now we have a new mission. To get him behind bars where he belongs.”
Pru threw a look at Gramma Finnie. “You’re not entirely sure of that,” she said, slipping into her automatic role as peacemaker on the rare occasion things got tense between these two.
“Not to mention that you insisted poor Pru get a boyfriend out of what should have been a day at the mall.” Gramma Finnie’s cheeks grew bright with two patches of red. “And the boy is nothing but trouble, along with his dog.”
“Gramma!” Pru drew back. “What is wrong with you?”
Gala felt it, too, squiggling to get out of Yiayia’s grip to turn her sympathetic kisses to her other owner.
“I’m telling you, she’s jealous,” Yiayia said.
“And I’m telling you…” But Gramma Finnie couldn’t finish the sentence, looking from one to the other, finally letting out a sigh as her blue eyes filled with tears and what Pru recognized as a rare display of shame. “I’m just hungry. Can we get some food and take a break from all this…arguin’?”
“Amen to that,” Pru said, putting her hands on both the grannies’ backs and leading them toward the food court. “Let’s regroup, remind each other that it’s Christmas, and figure out how I can possibly salvage this afternoon with some RACK points.”
They reluctantly followed as she leaned in to whisper to both of them, “A boyfriend, Yiayia? Seriously?”
“I see sparks between you,” she said on a bittersweet laugh. “Don’t I?”
Sparks? Was that what was flying between Pru and Lucas? “Well, he’s not awful like I thought,” Pru said. “But that’s all I’ll commit to.”
The two older ladies shared a look, conspiratorial enough that Pru relaxed a little. She didn’t want to be one of the victims of their matchmaking, but she sure didn’t want them at odds, so she just let it go.
A few minutes later, they were settled at another table with a view of another Santa—this one was much younger—with some food and drinks and still no sign of Lucas and Tor.
Pru pushed down the tendril of disappointment that came with that thought. “Maybe he and Tor took an Uber and bailed,” she said a little glumly. “Can’t say I’d blame him.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Yiayia said, her gaze scanning the area. “I can tell by the way he looks at you.”
“At me?” Pru let out a nervous laugh.
“Can’t argue with her, lass,” Gramma Finnie said.
“Good, because I can take anything but you two fighting. Now tell me everything that happened while you were in Penney’s.”
She listened while they took turns filling her in on the man you’d think was at the top of the FBI’s most-wanted list to hear them describe it.
“Are you guys sure it’s really the FBI, and this is a sting?” Pru sipped her soda, fighting a smile. “Because it’s a little…far-fetched.”
“I wish we were wrong,” Yiayia said. “I wish I hadn’t heard him say there are ‘FBI all over the place.’”
“And then he said,” Gramma leaned in to whisper, “‘Ever since they saw the corpse, there’s no getting rid of those guys.’ And that he was going to kill someone!” Her eyes widened. “Does that sound like we’re imagining things?”
“No, but you are both in your eighties,” she reminded them gently. “And maybe you didn’t hear exactly what was said.”
“Then why did he run from them?” Yiayia asked, gesturing toward the stairs. “And why…oh, here’s your boyfriend. I knew he’d come back, Pru.”
“He’s not my…” She turned to see Lucas and Tor coming toward them, his long hair brushed back from how quickly he was walking, his jacket in one hand, the leash in the other. Tor looked particularly repentant, and Lucas looked particularly…hot.
He spotted her and jutted his chin in a distant greeting, the hint of a smile lifting his lips and a spark—just like the ones Yiayia claimed to see—in his brown eyes.
Boyfriend.
Wow. If she ever got one, he’d look like that in a black T-shirt.
“Ladies.” He reached the table, flipped a plastic chair around, and straddled it to face them. “We have a problem.”
“Not another one,” all three answered in unison, making him laugh softly, and suddenly it was like all was right in Pru’s world. The one that felt a little tilted and dizzy when she looked at him.
“But I actually think Tor is going to fix this one instead of cause it,” he told them, inching in closer. “The missing puppy?”
“What missing puppy?” Gramma Finnie demanded.
Pru reached over to the next table and grabbed a flyer. “This one. Buttercup.”
“A sweet basset,” Finnie crooned, sharing it with Yiayia. “Look, Agnes. This little angel somehow escaped from the pet store.”
“Somehow,” Pru and Lucas both said on a groan, sharing a secret look.
“How can Tor fix this problem?” Yiayia asked. “Assuming that’s the problem you mean.”
“Tor’s on this puppy’s trail,” he said. “That’s why he jumped into the boxes. Someone saw him there. And then when he ran? Well, the puppy got away and was spotted in the play area.”
“Why doesn’t someone just get him and take him back to
the pet store?” Pru asked.
“He’s a wily little thing, and most people must think he belongs to someone else. By the time they figure out he’s loose and lost, he’s gone. But he’s out there, and Tor’s gonna find him. He has to.”
“Why?” Pru asked, sensing an undercurrent of desperation in his voice.
He looked from one side to the other before leaning in to say, “Because some people from the local paper are here, and a manager from the pet store pointed me out as the culprit, and if we don’t get that puppy back…” He sighed. “Then the FBI in this place will be coming after me and not your Santa friend.”
“What?” Pru practically choked on her soda. “You mean the guy who was such a jerk and who accused you when he was here?”
“That’s the one, the assistant manager of The Animal House, heady with power. He’s putting the blame on me. Claims I was ‘distracting’ him with the RACK things while Tor pushed over the fence. He hasn’t said it was on purpose, but that’s the impression he’s happy to give.”
The injustice of it practically rocked Pru. “I was holding Tor!” She tapped the table in frustration. “I should be the one in trouble.”
“Gee, Pru, look at you. Look at me. Who do you think they’re going to blame?”
She pushed up from her seat, nearly sputtering. “Well, I am going to—”
He reached across the table and put his hand on hers, the heat of his palm nearly taking her breath away. “We are going to walk every inch of this mall and let Tor help us find the puppy. And then we’ll return him to The Animal House pet store.”
“And if we don’t find him?”
He blew out a breath. “I promised I’d pay for him.”
“We will pay for him,” Pru said. “You can’t be on the hook for this, Lucas. It wasn’t your fault. How much is the dog?”
He gulped. “Five hundred dollars.”
Pru blinked at him, the amount making her fall right back into her chair. “Seriously?”
He stood, still holding her hand. “I wish I was kidding. Come on, Kilcannon Bancroft. We got work to do.”
She stood with him, looking down at one granny and then the other. “Do you mind if we…”
Feliz Naughty Dog (The Dogmothers Book 7) Page 8
