by Linda Howard
I took a shuddering breath, or tried to; my chest felt constricted, as if my heart had got in the way of my lungs and wouldn’t let them work. “I’m not giving back your ring,” I said in that same thin, flat tone. “The wedding is still on—” Unless you want it canceled. “I just need some time to think. Please.”
For a long, agonizing minute, I didn’t think he’d do it. But then he wheeled and left, grabbing his suit jacket on the way out. He didn’t even slam the door.
I didn’t collapse to the floor. I didn’t run upstairs to throw myself on the bed. I just stood there in the kitchen for a long, long time, gripping the edge of the countertop so hard my fingernails were white.
Chapter
Fourteen
Eventually, moving slowly, I checked the doors to make certain they were locked. They were. Though I hadn’t been aware of the extra beeps, Wyatt had also set the alarm system on his way out. As angry as he was with me, he was still careful with my physical safety. The realization hurt; this would be easier if he showed some lack of concern, but he didn’t.
I turned out all the lights on the first floor, then laboriously climbed the stairs. Every move was an effort, as if there was a disconnect between my mind and body. I went to bed but didn’t turn out the lights, just sat in bed staring at nothing as I tried to order my thoughts.
My favorite coping method is to concentrate on something else until I feel ready to deal with the important stuff. That didn’t work this time, because my whole world felt filled with the things Wyatt had said. I was battered by them, suffocated by them, crushed under their weight, and there were simply too many of them for me to handle. I couldn’t isolate any one thought, nail down any one issue—not yet, anyway.
The phone rang. Wyatt! was my first thought, but I didn’t grab for the receiver and answer the call. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to him just yet. In fact, I was certain I didn’t. I didn’t want him to muddy the water with an apology that would just gloss over the bigger problem I sensed, and that was assuming he thought he owed me an apology anyway, which was a big assumption.
I picked up the cordless phone on the third ring, just to see if it was him calling or someone else, and the Caller ID showed that weird number from Denver again. I set the phone down without answering it. The ringing cut off after the fourth ring anyway, as the answering machine downstairs picked up. I listened, but didn’t hear a message being left.
Almost immediately the phone rang again. Denver again. Again, I let the machine get it. Again, no message.
When the third call followed closely on the heels of the second call, I got pissed. Obviously no survey-taker would be calling after eleven p.m., because that’s a guaranteed way to not get your questions answered. I didn’t personally know anyone living in Denver, but, hey, if someone I knew was calling, why not leave a message?
Wyatt had said the number and Denver location could be because someone was using one of those prepaid phone cards, in which case I guess someone I knew could be calling, trying to wake me up. I’d even seen a short item on the local news about phone cards, that the rates were so cheap some people were using them for all their long-distance calls. I might not know anyone in Denver, but I did know people who lived in other places, so the next time the phone rang, I answered it.
Click.
A minute later, it rang again. The Denver number showed on the phone.
These were obviously crank calls. Some piece of punk slime had learned these phone cards weren’t traceable and was having fun. How was I supposed to concentrate on Wyatt with this almost constant ringing?
Easy. I got up and turned off the ringer on both my bedroom phone and the phones downstairs. This way the punk slime would still be burning money and minutes, and I wouldn’t know a thing about it.
The calls were so irritating that they had succeeded in breaking through my numb misery. I could think now, at least well enough to know this problem was too big for me to make any sort of decision tonight. I needed to think things through, one issue at a time.
Because writing things down helps me get things ordered in my mind, I got a notebook and pen and settled in bed with the notebook braced against my upraised knees. Wyatt had made a lot of accusations, both direct and indirect, and I wanted to think about them all.
I wrote down the numbers one through ten, and beside each number I wrote a bullet point, as I remembered them.
1. Nutty
2. Did I expect him to jump through hoops, and get pissy when he didn’t?
3. Paranoid
4. Imaginary
5. High maintenance
6. Dumb-ass tricks
7. Did I call him for every little thing that popped into my head and expect him to check it out?
Try as I might, I couldn’t think of anything for numbers eight, nine, and ten, so I crossed them out. Those seven were enough.
One item I knew was wrong. I hadn’t been imagining anything. Someone driving a white Chevrolet had definitely been tailgating me today, had definitely tried to follow me, and had definitely been parked across the street from Great Bods. The ball cap, the sunglasses, the facial structure—I’d seen enough to know the person who had been parked waiting for me was the same person who had tried to follow me. Yesterday, a woman driving a white Chevrolet had definitely followed me to Great Bods. Whether or not the two drivers were one and the same was up in the air, but how else to explain how today’s driver had known where I work?
Where my imagination bogged down was that I couldn’t think of any reason why someone would be following me. I didn’t carry large sums of money around. I hadn’t robbed a bank and buried the money somewhere. I wasn’t the contact for some spy, and, really, why would a spy be in western North Carolina anyway? Neither did I have a former lover or friend or relative who was a spy or a bank robber, and had escaped from prison, and the federal marshals had me staked out thinking that this former lover, friend, whatever, would try to contact me and…okay, this was stretching the limits even for Hollywood.
This was where my thinking parted company with Wyatt’s, I realized. To him, there was no reason for anyone to follow me, ergo, I wasn’t being followed. Where we differed was that I knew the driver behind me in the turn lane was also the driver who had been parked across the street, and had arrived ahead of me. I didn’t have any proof, but proof and knowledge aren’t the same thing.
It stood to reason that if I wasn’t imagining things, then I also wasn’t paranoid. I’d had my own doubts, because I couldn’t see why anyone would be following me. But once I realized that I definitely had been followed then the reason didn’t matter, at least as far as paranoia went—unless I was also delusional, in which case none of this mattered because it wasn’t happening.
Two items down, five to go.
The “nutty” comment bothered me. I’m neither nuts nor nutty. Sometimes I’ll use a convoluted means to get what I want, but that’s either to lull someone into thinking I’m a mental lightweight so he’ll under-estimate me, or because I enjoy the means as much as I do the ends. Wyatt had never under-estimated me. He saw the airhead act for what it was: a strategy. I like to win as much as he does.
So what was he calling nutty? I had no way of answering that. He’d have to supply his own answer.
The other four items were way too complicated and serious for me to attempt right then. I was too tired, too stressed, too emotional. Wyatt and I were on the verge of breaking up, and I didn’t know what I could do about it.
I was just drifting off to sleep when I realized he hadn’t said a word about my haircut. Coming on top of everything else, that did it: I cried.
I slept, but not well and not much. My subconscious hadn’t provided any miraculous answers to my problems, either.
Common sense told me, however, that I couldn’t act as if time had been suspended. The wedding was still going to take place, until Wyatt and I decided differently. That meant I had work to do. My enthusiasm level wasn’t as high as it h
ad been the day before—in fact, it was pretty close to zero—but I couldn’t let my pace slack off.
My first stop that morning was Jazz’s place of business, Arledge Heating and Air Conditioning. Jazz no longer did the installation work himself, he had employees to do that, but he did go around to new construction sites and figure how many units would be needed, how big, where they would be placed, where the vents would go for maximum effectiveness, that kind of thing. Because of some sneaking around Luke had done, though, I knew Jazz would be in the office instead of out at some site.
The office was a small brick building in an industrial section that was sadly in need of a beautification project—the whole section, not just Jazz’s building. I’d never been here before, so seeing the building gave me a whole new slant on Jazz’s side of his marital situation. Think plain and unadorned, not so much as a shrub planted by the cracked concrete walk that led from the gravel parking lot to the front door. The front windows did have blinds, but since the building faced west, if someone hadn’t installed blinds the office staff would have been blinded every afternoon. Guess that’s why they’re called “blinds,” huh?
There were two gray metal desks in the front room. At the first one sat a battleship in human form. You know the type: enormous gray beehive, glasses on a chain, enormous bosom that preceded her into every room. The woman at the second desk was younger than the first, but not by much; late forties to the other one’s mid-fifties, I’d guess. As I entered I heard them gossiping away, but they stopped when they saw me.
“May I help you?” the battleship asked with a smile, her heavily be-ringed, red-tipped fingers not pausing as she flipped through a stack of papers.
“Is Jazz in?” I asked.
Both women turned to stone, the smile turned to ice, and hostility glared from their eyes. Belatedly I realized that by calling him “Jazz” instead of “Mr. Arledge” I’d given them the wrong impression. This was a little disconcerting, since I always thought of him as an uncle. And was Jazz making a habit of hooking up with women young enough to be his daughter?
I tried to thaw the ice. “I’m Blair.”
No hint of recognition in the glaring eyes. In fact, they became even more hostile.
“Blair Mallory,” I elaborated.
Nothing.
Well, hell, was this the South or not? Don’t tell me these people didn’t recognize their employer’s wife’s best friend’s daughter’s name! Please.
But nothing was sparking, so I hit them over the head with the information. “I’m Tina Mallory’s daughter, you know, Aunt Sally’s best friend?”
Realization dawned. It was the “Aunt Sally” that did it. The smiles came out, and the battleship left its berth to come hug me.
“Why, honey, I didn’t recognize you!” she said as I was attacked by a pair of gazongas as soft as your average inflated tire, and I realized she had those suckers hemmed up and packed down, so ruthlessly restrained they probably gave her whiplash when she unleashed them at night. The thought boggled. Even more frightening was envisioning the bra capable of holding them in restraint. It could probably be used as a launcher on an aircraft carrier.
The fastest way to be free of them was to show no fear, and play dead. So I stood there and let her hug me, blinking as I tried not to gasp for air, and all the while smiling the sweetest smile I could manage. When she finally released me I took a deep breath of precious air. “How could you recognize me? I’ve never been here before.”
“Honey, of course you have! Sally and your mama came by one day not long after Jazz opened the business. Sally had Matt and Mark with her, and your mama had both you and your sister by the hand, and you were the two cutest little dolls I’ve ever seen. Your sister had just started walking.”
Since I’m two years older than Siana, the visit this lady remembered would have made me around three. And she didn’t recognize me? My God, what was wrong with her? I couldn’t have changed that much between the ages of three and thirty-one, could I?
A village somewhere was missing its idiot.
“I don’t really remember,” I hedged, wondering if I should run for the hills. “I, uh, had a concussion a few days ago and my memory’s really spotty—”
“A concussion? My word! You need to sit down, right over here—” My right arm was seized and I was steered to an orange vinyl couch, where I was all but plunked down. “What are you doing out of the hospital? Isn’t someone watching you?”
Since when did “concussion” become synonymous with “irreparable brain damage”?
“I’m doing fine,” I hastily assured her. “I was released from the hospital last Friday. Uh, is Uncle Jazz in?”
“Oh! Oh, of course he is. He’s in the shop building.”
“I’ll page him,” said the other woman, lifting her phone. She punched a button, then two numbers, and a loud buzzer sounded outside. After a minute she said, “Someone’s here to see you.” She listened, then hung up and smiled at me. “He’ll be here in a minute.”
It was actually less than that, because the shop building was directly behind the office building and he had to walk maybe twenty yards. He came hustling in, medium height, bald, with the muscular build of a man who has worked hard all of his life, his face more careworn than I’d ever seen it. Before this problem with Sally he’d put on a little weight, but from what I could see now he’d lost that extra weight and then some. He skidded to a stop when he saw me, frowning in confusion.
“Blair?” he finally said, the word tentative, and I stood.
“You’re looking good,” I said, going to him for a hug, then kissing him on the cheek the way I’d always done. “May I talk to you for a minute?”
“Sure,” he said. “Come on in my office. Do you want some coffee? Lurleen, is there any coffee?”
“I can always make some,” said the battleship, smiling.
“No, I’m fine, thanks anyway.” I smiled back at Lurleen.
Jazz led me into his office, a depressing space dominated by dust and paperwork. His desk was the same gray metal type as was in the outer office. There were two battered green filing cabinets, his chair—which was patched with duct tape—and two visitors’ chairs in a shade of green that almost matched the filing cabinets. There was a phone on his desk, a metal in-out box, a coffee cup that held the usual collection of pens and one screwdriver with a broken handle—that was the extent of his office decor.
Clueless didn’t begin to describe him. Poor man, he’d have been absolute putty in Monica Stevens’s hands when he’d hired her to redecorate his and Sally’s bedroom.
He closed the door, the smile vanished from his face as if it had never been, and he asked suspiciously, “Did Sally send you?”
“Good Lord, no!” I said, honestly surprised. “She has no idea I’m here.”
He relaxed somewhat, and rubbed his hand over his head. “Good.”
“Good, how?”
“She isn’t speaking, but she’ll send messages by people she knows I’ll talk to.”
“Oh, well, sorry. No messages.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He did the head-rubbing thing again. “I don’t want any messages from her. If she wants to talk to me, she can damn well act like an adult and pick up the phone.” He flashed me a guilty look, as if I were still three years old. “Sorry.”
“I think I’ve heard ‘damn’ before,” I said mildly, grinning at him. “Want to hear my list of bad words?” When I was little, I would recite all the words I wasn’t supposed to say. Even then I had lists.
He grinned, too. “I guess I’ve heard them before. So what can I do for you today?”
“Two things. One, do you still have the invoice from Monica Stevens, for the work she did on your bedroom?”
He winced. “You bet I do. That’s twenty thousand dollars thrown up a wild hog’s—uh, I mean, wasted.”
Twenty thousand? I whistled, long and low.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Jazz muttered. “A fool an
d his money. I got part of it back from our old furniture that she sold in her shop, but still.”
“Is it here?”
“Sure. I wouldn’t have the bill sent to the house where Sally would see it, now would I? It was a surprise for her. Some surprise. You’d have thought I’d slit her throat.” He got up and opened one of the drawers of the filing cabinet closest to him, rifled through the folders, then pulled out a sheaf of papers that he then tossed onto the desk. “Here.”
I picked up the invoices and looked through them. The total wasn’t quite twenty thousand, but close enough. Jazz had paid through the nose for the furniture, which was avant-garde, handmade, ugly as sin and twice as expensive. Monica had also replaced the carpeting in the bedroom, put in new artwork, which had also cost a small fortune—exactly what was “Luna,” anyway? I knew it meant “moon,” but had she hung a fake moon in their bedroom?
“What’s this ‘Luna’?” I asked, fascinated.
“It’s a white vase. It’s tall and skinny, and she put it on this lighted pedestal. She said something about drama.”
Jazz had paid over a thousand bucks for that piece of drama. All I could say was that Monica had stayed true to her “vision.” She liked glass and steel, black and white, weird and expensive. It was her signature.
“Could I have this for a little while?” I asked, already stuffing the invoices in my bag.
He looked puzzled. “Sure. What do you want with it?”
“Information.” I hurried on before he could ask me what sort of information. “And could you do one other thing for me? I know this might not be a good time…”
“I’m not all that busy, this is as good a time as any,” he said. “Just name it.”
“Come with me to a furniture store.”
Chapter
Fifteen
Jazz was puzzled, but agreeable. He thought I needed his help with something, so he went with me, without even asking why I hadn’t asked Dad or Wyatt for help—not that he knew Wyatt’s name, but he knew I was getting married because our engagement announcement had been in the newspaper, not to mention Tammy would have told him. He asked when the big date was, and I said in twenty-three days.
