Double Fudge & Danger

by Erin Huss

  She shook her head no.

  Ugh.

  I rubbed my throat. The situation gave me indigestion, and we were closing in on the forty-eight-hour mark. "It's the unknown that's so unnerving," I said. "Where did she go? Is she alive? Who took her? Did she…struggle?"

  Stormy looked over at Violet's empty desk. "Agreed."

  We sat in silence for a moment, reflecting, when I remembered, "Did you get the list of vacancies from Antonio?"

  "I did," she almost sang, and handed me a Post-it with three apartments written in her familiar chicken scratch.

  Three?

  "When I spoke to Violet on Monday, she said you have twelve vacancies. Maybe these are the ones that are rent ready, but…if you hire out, then you should have more than three rent ready. Unless you stagger them…which wouldn't make sense because you need to reconcile the deposit within 21 days…" I was baffled by the discrepancy in vacancies. Apartment managers don't over exaggerate their vacancies. If anything, they lied and say they had less. It didn't make any sense.

  "What should I do?" Stormy batted her heavily make-upped eyes.

  Note to self: This is not your job, Cambria. This is not your job. This is not your job. This is not your job. Get up and walk away.

  I stood before I talked myself out of it. If I wasn't careful, I'd end up managing Cedar Creek as well. "This is a good start. If someone wants to see a vacant unit, you can show them one of the three on the list."

  "What do I do after I show them the apartment?"

  It took every ounce of self-control I had not to gawk at her. "You give them an application if they're interested. I'm sure you have pamphlets with the community amenities outlined and your business card."

  She wrung her hands.

  "Do you know where the applications are?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

  "I know they're on a tablet."

  "Good. Where's the tablet?" I asked.

  She wrung her hands.

  Note to self: This is not your job, Cambria. This is not your job, Cambria. This is not your job…

  Who was I kidding?

  I couldn't not help her. I'm a fixer. It's what I do. Apparently, if I had siblings I wouldn't be so inclined.

  "I'm sure the tablet is somewhere around here," I said. "I'll print you out a few applications from the Fair Housing website if you can't find it."

  I could almost see the little light bulb in Stormy's head turn on. "I saw a tablet in the storage room." She shuffled down a hallway outside the office, and I followed. Why? I don't know.

  The hall had a beautiful distressed cream-colored runner down the middle with little blue and pale yellow flowers on it. Two dark blue cabinets adorned each side, with a gold-rimmed mirror above.

  Three doors lined the hall. Two had the all-gender restroom sign hung in the middle, one was closed, and a single door ended the hallway and was labeled Maintenance.

  Antonio had his own office? Must be nice. Mr. Nguyen had the maintenance garage only. It was dark and musty and known to harbor a brown widow or two.

  Stormy opened the unlabeled door and flipped on the light. Wire shelving and filing cabinets along with discarded office furnishing filled the space.

  I couldn't imagine why they would keep the tablets in the file room. You'd want something like that easily accessible. "Are you sure it's not in the office?"

  Stormy slid a box of file folders over. "If it is, I haven't seen it."

  "How about you look in here, and I'll check the office."

  I went back down the hall. If Violet handled all the leases, my best guess was the tablet was in her desk. I took a seat in her chair, and it slowly sunk until the edge of the desk lined up with my boobs, making a whizzing sound on my way down, like air being let out of a tire.

  Well that was fun.

  Whatever.

  Violet ate green stuff.

  I didn't.

  It felt intrusive going through Violet's personal space, and I was careful not to disturb anything as I looked around.

  Much like her apartment, Violet's desk was well organized. No stray staples or even a paper clip could be found out of place. Inspirational quotes were written in lovely script on sticky notes and stuck around the perimeter of her monitor.

  If you don't sacrifice for what you want, you'll never get it!

  Give yourself permission to live a big life.

  The ladder to success is made from the shoulders of those who are too weak to go for it.

  Don't be afraid to do whatever it takes. You only have one life.

  Well…OK. They weren't so much inspirational as they were…motivational?

  Property management is a crazy business. If stepping on people's shoulders helped Violet cope, then it wasn't my place to judge.

  On the bottom of the screen were two Post-its with tally marks. Cedar Creek had 255 units, yet there were well over a thousand tally marks. I pulled open the bottom drawer and found Violet's other coping mechanism—an opened box of Twinkies. Beneath was a copy of Daily C-Leb Magazine. It was an older issue, released the day the cast of Celebrity Tango was announced. Amy was front and center, wearing a sequined bra and shimmery pants that looked as if they were made of discarded disco ball parts.

  I flipped through the magazine. The page with Raven's bio was dog-eared and -110 was written in the same swirly handwriting in the margin.

  Interesting…

  My phone buzzed in my back pocket. I thunked the heel of my hand against my forehead when I saw it was the emergency line.

  "Hello," I said once connected.

  "Apartment Manager, it is Silvia Kravitz. There is a man snooping around the third courtyard. It's quite unnerving." I heard the rattle of the vertical blinds swinging on the hooks, and I pictured Silvia peeping out her window. "He is peeking into enclosed patios. I saw him doing this yesterday evening, too!"

  I put the magazine back and closed the drawer. "Can you take a picture of him for me?"

  "No, because I'm on my phone." Now I imagined her rolling her eyes.

  "You can still take a picture when you're on your phone… Never mind. I'll be right there." I hung up and put Violet's desk back as I found it.

  Stormy appeared with a tablet in hand. "Where are you going?" she asked in a panic.

  "I have to work."

  "But…but…but…"

  "Lilly! We need to leave right now." I held out my hand.

  Lilly dropped the crayons and hurried, holding the picture she was working on. I pushed open the whimsical doors. Stormy was at my side. "You'll be fine," I assured her.

  "But—"

  "I'm sorry. I need to go." With Lilly on my hip, I ran as fast I could.

  "I don't like Stormy," Lilly said as I ran.

  "That's not a nice thing to say." I unlocked the pedestrian gate, ran through the carports, under the archway, through the first courtyard, and past the pool.

  "She looks like Ursula," Lilly said, holding on tight to my neck.

  I laughed. Mostly because it was true. Stormy did resemble the sea witch from The Little Mermaid—minus the tentacles.

  "Please don't ever say that to her," I huffed out, still frantically searching through the community. I did four loops around the property, peeking into carports, patios, and checking the storage closet. I called Daniella again, but she didn't answer.

  The man was nowhere to be found.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  —Resourcefulness is key to survival.

  So is caffeine.

  "Why'd I bring my sketch pad?" Kevin stepped inside and closed the door. He had on tan khaki shorts with a hole in the back pocket. I could smell the Pantene and Dove on his skin as he brushed past me on the way to the kitchen.

  "I need you to draw a picture of the man I saw snooping around here. He came back today and, according to Silvia, he was here last night." I took a seat at the table and pulled out a chair for Kevin.

  "Where's the kid?" He grabbed two spoons from the top drawer and a pint of
Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream from the freezer. A fitting choice of flavor given my circus currently had too many monkeys.

  "She's in bed."

  Kevin gazed out the window. "It's still light out."

  "According to WebMD, three-year-olds need eleven hours of sleep a day and, in order to achieve this, she needs to be in bed by seven. And—"

  "Yeah, I don't need a novel." He took a seat and handed me a spoon.

  "Thanks." I took a bite of ice cream then crossed my legs and got comfortable. "Let's do this." I closed my eyes and pulled up an image of the man from the breezeway. "He's likely in his sixties, with a long forehead and a—"

  Kevin sharpened his pencil, and my eyes popped open. "Aren't you supposed to do that before you start?"

  "I didn't say I was ready—you just began jabbering away." He blew off the excess shavings from the tip and sat straight-backed with his pad in front of him. "I'm ready."

  "Finally!" I was anxious to get this done. Violet had been missing almost forty-eight hours, and if this man had anything to do with her disappearance, then he had to be found, ASAP. I closed my eyes and brought the image back up. I tried to remember the questions Calvin asked and answered them out loud. Wispy hair…sunken cheeks…vertical wrinkles down his face…

  When finished, Kevin studied the picture with a curious tilt of his head. "Do you recognize him?" I asked.

  "I do." He turned the pad around. "Looks like Clint Eastwood."

  I squinted. "You're right. Why do all my sketches look like celebrities?"

  He shrugged. "Cause we're in LA?"

  I snapped a picture of the sketch with my phone and sent it to Hampton.

  My phone rang. "What am I looking at now?" he asked.

  In the background, I could hear indecipherable talking and the clinking of silverware on plates. The thought of Hampton dining out with his pants hiked high and his toupee on crooked, enjoying himself while Violet lay in a ditch somewhere, or tied up in a barnyard, or shoved in the back of a taxi…

  I really do need to lay off the crime shows.

  Anyway. The thought of Hampton leisurely enjoying a night off brought my blood to a boil. "Shouldn't you be working?"

  "I am working, Cambria. I stepped away from an interview to call you."

  Oh.

  Oops.

  I cleared my throat. "I sent you a sketch of the man I found snooping around in my community. The one who drives a brown Buick. Does he look familiar?"

  "Looks like Clint Eastwood?"

  "He does look similar, yes," I said.

  "So I'm looking for Danny Tanner and Dirty Harry."

  "Who's Dirty Harry?" I asked.

  "You've never seen Dirty Harry?" Both Kevin and Hampton said simultaneously, Kevin gaping at me.

  "No," I said, feeling a bit defensive. Dirty Harry sounded more like a drink than a movie.

  "It's about a cop who attempts to track down a psychopathic rooftop killer before a kidnapped girl dies," Kevin explained. "Starring Clint Eastwood."

  Sounded good, but we weren't there to talk movies. We had to find Violet. I checked the time on the clock above the stove. It had officially been forty-eight hours.

  "It's a good sketch," Hampton said. "I'll have my guys look into it and see what we come up with."

  "Are you any closer to finding her?" I pushed the ice cream away. No longer hungry. You know a situation is dire when frozen slow-churned sugar and cream with bits of fudge won't help.

  "We're working on it," he said, but he didn't sound confident. He didn't sound confident at all.

  I hugged my legs to my chest. "How did her daughter take the news? Is she coming out?"

  "I…can't talk right now. I'll see if we can find a match for Dirty Harry in the system. OK."

  "Can you at least…hello?" I looked down at my phone. Hampton hung up on me. Again!

  Ugh.

  With nothing more to do, Kevin and I retreated to the couch with Ben & Jerry in tow. I switched all the fans to high speed, and Kevin turned on the rerun of If Only, the one I'd started earlier and never finished. Good thing I'd seen it before, because it was hard to concentrate. My mind churned through the details of Monday night. Dolores. The man running down the stairs. The man snooping around my property. The open window. The blood on the wall. The overflowing bathtub. Even the tally marks I'd found on Violet's computer, which could have been irrelevant to the case, but it was hard to overlook anything at this point. Stormy said Violet ate healthy. The tally marks could have been calories eaten, the number of Twinkies she'd consumed, the number of people she'd ticked off that day and wanted to kill her…

  Kevin smacked my thigh, and I jumped. "Your phone." He held it up to my face. Amy's name flashed across the screen. "Does this thing ever not ring?"

  "No." I shook my head, hoping to clear the thoughts of Violet so I wouldn't sound anxious when I answered. But my brain is not an Etch A Sketch, and Amy knew me too well.

  "What's wrong?" she immediately asked.

  "Nothing. What's wrong with you? It's really late there."

  "I was about to go to sleep when I received this concerning text message. Why are you bringing Tom to New York? What happened with Chase?"

  "What are you talking about? I'm bringing Chase."

  "According to this text from Tom, he'll be accompanying you to New York."

  "What!" I bolted upright and knocked the ice cream out of Kevin's hand. It landed on the carpet in a chocolate and banana blob. Kevin went to the kitchen to get a towel while I stood there, blubbering profanity under my breath. Tom had crossed the line.

  "I'm going to text Tom right now and say he's not going," Amy said.

  "No, don't do that."

  "Cambria Jane Clyne, I am going to text him," Amy said.

  I pictured her face puce and her jaw clenched. She only used my full name when she was mad.

  "You've spent way too many years waiting for this guy to get his act together. I've watched you cry over him, pine over him. Daydream about your family being together. Hell, I've watched you lie to your parents, let them believe he's gay just so they won't think he's a player who stomped on your heart. Which he did. This isn't one of those romance novels where the super hot, playboy baby daddy changes. He's not interested in a relationship, but he doesn't want another man in Lilly's life, so he's marking his territory. He might as well pee on you! How many times has he attempted to start something with you and ultimately pulled away?" She didn't wait for my answer. "Too many times. He doesn't want to be with you. Listen to me, Cambria. I love you. I always have. I always will. Which is why I am telling you this. You have a very nice, very attractive, very into you boyfriend. Don't screw it up by giving into the what ifs with Tom. If you let him, he'll string you along for the rest of your lives."

  …Um…

  I stood there like I was carved of flesh, with the phone at my ear and Kevin at my feet, scrubbing ice cream out of the carpet. I was going to say, "No, don't text Tom. I'll take care of it." I didn't want her wasting energy on my mess, not when she should be focusing on dancing, but geez.

  "I'll send you Chase's information," I said, my voice small.

  "Good! No more getting toyed with. You're beyond that, Cambria."

  Yeah, I know was what I thought. "Thanks for the pep talk" was what I said, to make her feel better.

  We hung up, and I ran my hands down my face, feeling exhausted and still sore from the night before. Why everyone suddenly felt the need to point out my personal flaws was beyond me.

  "What was that about?" Kevin walked the ice cream–stained towel to the kitchen and tossed it into the sink.

  I fell to the couch and dropped my head into my hands, feeling dizzy. "Baby daddy drama."

  "I don't get your relationship."

  "That makes two of us."

  Kevin sat beside me and positioned a pillow behind his head. "I've never heard the story of how you guys got together."

  "Do you really want to know? Or will I start
the story and you'll roll your eyes and say you don't care?"

  Kevin thought this over and decided, "Probably the latter. You're long-winded." He winked, and I couldn't help but smile. I'd learned to love Kevin's dry wit and cocky banter.

  "The short version is, we met. We drank. We made Lilly. I told him I wanted a relationship. He said he didn't want one, though he doesn't recall ever having this conversation. He shoved me into the friend zone. Last year, he decided to take me out of the friend zone. We kissed in my bathroom the day after my birthday, but he pulled away. I don't think he would have given me a second thought if I hadn't gotten pregnant. Sometimes I wonder if I would have given him a second thought if I hadn't gotten pregnant. It's really hard not to have feelings for someone you created something so beautiful with. But Chase is wonderful and—"

  "This is the short version?" Kevin interrupted

  Did I say I loved Kevin's dry wit and cocky banter?

  I meant tolerated.

  "Fine," I said, "Tom's a player. Always has been. Always will be. I'm happy with Chase. The end."

  "Interesting. I always thought it was him who was more into you than the other way around," said Kevin.

  "What would make you think that?" I asked.

  "Because he represented me as a favor to you, and I wasn't an easy client."

  True. He fired Tom via email.

  "He's always around even if it's not his day with Lilly," Kevin continued. "He planned a birthday surprise for you…didn't he take a bullet for you, too?"

  "Yes."

  "Have you ever taken a bullet for him?"

  "No." I would, though. I think. "He obviously cares for me deeply, but whenever we get close, he pulls away and finds solace with another woman."

  "Ouch."

  "It hurt for the first couple of years. Now I have Chase. I've never had anything like this before either. He's wonderful." A pang of loneliness stabbed at my heart. I missed him.

  The baritone ding-dong of the lobby door filled my apartment, and Kevin and I exchanged a look.

  "Are you expecting anyone?" he asked.

  "Not that I know of."

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  —I can be a little obsessive.