Confessions of a Red Herring
Page 32
“It’s official, she’s definitely a Vlodnachek,” Nick said, ruffling the fur on her back, as she buried her face in her dish.
“Yeah, but I think she inherited your table manners,” I said.
“She knows a good thing when she sees it,” Nick said.
Baba beamed.
After breakfast, she wiped down the stove from top to bottom, went into the bedroom, and reappeared in her traveling clothes.
“Are you sure?” I asked, hoping she’d reconsider.
“Da. Is time. Must pay bills. Clean house.”
Nick, Lucy, and I drove her back to Baltimore. When we got back, the house was quiet and empty. Hollow.
Nick leashed up Lucy for a long walk, and I settled in to put the finishing touches on my bridal story.
With the editor’s blessing, I was writing it as a humorous look at the “bridal industrial complex” from a non-bride’s point of view. It turned out great, and I was really psyched.
Shortly after Nick left, I saw the message light blinking on my landline. Two missed calls.
Trip can knock my old-school phone all he likes. It doesn’t need juice, and works no matter what the weather. Thanks to a couple of batteries, I even have caller ID.
Which came in handy when every bill collector in town was calling.
I hit “speaker” and pressed “1.” My mother’s voice filled the room.
“A murder suspect? And fired? And you didn’t think to tell me? Your own mother? I had to find out from some week-old newspaper on the plane. A newspaper! I’ll be at baggage claim at Dulles in two hours. You can tell me all about it then. Starting with why you felt the need to keep this from me, when clearly the rest of the world knows all about it. Was your sister in on this too? Did she know the whole time? Anastasia Vlodnachek, I have a bone to pick with you . . .” Then—mercifully—a dial tone.
I checked my watch. I still had ninety minutes to get to the airport. Or maybe Florida.
The second message clicked on. Annie’s voice. “Alex, it’s me. I’m calling you from the airplane bathroom. We just landed in New York. Just a heads-up: She knows. Repeat: The feline has exited the sack. I kept her in the dark as long as I could. And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. That woman has the attention span of a mosquito. Whenever we had a couple of minutes’ downtime, she wanted to check email or read online news sites. So I had to keep her entertained. Constantly. I feel like I haven’t stopped moving for three weeks straight. There isn’t a gallery, museum, cathedral, or coffee shop in London, Paris, Venice, or Rome that I haven’t been in at least once this trip. That’s probably why I fell asleep on the flight home. Big mistake. Somehow she got her hands on a local paper. And she is royally pissed. Anyway, the good news is you don’t have to face her alone. I’ve juggled my schedule so I can spend a couple of days in D.C. I booked into this darling little B&B. It’s right in your neighborhood. Fun! We’ll be at baggage claim in two hours. See you then!”
My stomach clenched. It felt like I’d swallowed a fistful of pebbles.
Not only was Mom going to read me the riot act, but once Ian saw Annie, he’d forget I even existed. No more lighthearted flirting. No more pop-in visits. Or gifts of flowers and food.
On the bright side, no more scones. Which made me wonder: How big an engagement rock would he buy her?
Just as the message finished, my cell rang. I held my breath and checked caller ID. Trip.
“Quick, turn on Channel 2,” he said.
“Hello to you, too.”
“Channel 2, Channel 2,” Trip chanted.
I hit the remote and was treated to a vibrating, bird’s-eye view of an upmarket shopping center. Cookie-cutter familiar, it could have been anywhere in the continental U.S.
“What am I looking at?”
“High-end home store in Arlington—someplace called Inside & Out,” Trip said. “From Chopper 2. The SWAT team’s on its way.”
“The SWAT team?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Apparently, some bride went bat-shit. Walked into the china section and started pulling plates off the shelves and smashing them, screaming something about shattered dreams. By the time they realized she was just getting warmed up, she’d taken out a couple racks of stemware, too. When the store manager tried to grab her, she waved a broken brandy decanter and told him to—and I quote—‘back the hell off.’ That’s when he evacuated the store and called the cops.
“Billy Bob’s on his way over there, and the photog’s already in place. If he gets the shot, that’s tomorrow’s metro front. Maybe even the front page.”
“The front page?”
“Slow news day,” he said. “P.S. Your story is getting some good play. The wire services picked it up.”
“Woo-hoo! Makes me double-glad I held out for a living wage.”
We both went quiet as the video switched to a stand-up shot in the parking lot. A local reporter announced that the police department’s crisis negotiator and S.W.A.T. team had both arrived on the scene, and that the negotiator was going in.
“Hate to be that guy,” Trip said.
“Or the ex.”
“Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,” he said. “If the groom is smart, he’ll blow town for a while.”
For five long minutes, the news crew rehashed what they knew and mused on what they didn’t. Short version: The groom dumped the bride and hopped a flight to Europe.
“See, I told you,” Trip said. “A smart man leaves town.”
“Shshsh!”
“Kimberly, did police say why the belligerent bride selected this particular store?” a puffy, middle-aged anchor asked the sleek, twentysomething blonde at the scene.
“Well, Mark, apparently this was one of several stores where she and her intended were supposed to register for wedding gifts. But then her groom had other ideas.”
“Sounds like the makings of a bad break-up, Kimberly,” the anchor said, chuckling.
“That it does, Mark,” Kimberly responded with a blinding smile. “They say breaking up is hard to do. But this bride is taking it to a whole new level.”
“And what about the price tag?” the anchor inquired. “Any estimates on the damage, so far?”
“Well, clearly they won’t have an exact figure until . . .”
“Behind you, Kimberly! It looks like something’s happening!”
Suddenly, the camera zoomed in on the store’s front door. A cop marched out with a petite brunette in gray sweats, hands cuffed behind her back. Her hair was disheveled, and she kept her chin down. When she finally looked up, she fixed the TV cameraman with a look of such raw fury that I’m surprised the camera didn’t burst into flames. Even the news photographers took a collective step back. And I’d have recognized those bangs anywhere.
“Mira Myles!” Trip and I said in unison.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer girl,” Trip said. “I guess Denny Stafford finally came to his senses.”
Denny. Dennis?
Mira Myles. Mimi?
Hopped a flight to Europe. To study art in Florence?
Well, what do you know?
“Hey Trip,” I said, bouncing on the sofa. “Have I got a story for you.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A very grateful shout-out to several people without whom this book would not be in your hands (or on your reader) right now: Erin Niumata, of Folio Literary Management, is a champion—one agent in a million. Her guidance and advice on shaping the story was pivotal. Alicia Condon, at Kensington Publishing, is the best editor (and audience) a writer could want. And artist Michelle Grant created a wonderful cover that invites readers to pick up the book.
A very big thank-you to all!
Read on for a sneak preview of
Seeing Red
the next Alex Vlodnachek adventure.
Alex and her crazy family are in more
hot water, as they tangle with spies
art thieves, nasty business rivals—and a baby.
shuttered Nick’s bakery turns up dead
in the B&B’s basement and a “reproduction”
of a missing Renoir appears in its library,
Alex and Nick begin to suspect that Ian Sterling
is much more than a simple hotel owner . . .
It all started when I walked into the kitchen and found the baby.
Just after sunrise and still bleary-eyed, I made straight for the stainless-steel coffeepot that lives on the counter near the sink. I’d been up ’til two finishing a freelance story that was due this morning. And in a few hours, I was off to meet another editor about a temporary gig that would (hopefully) pay the bills for the next six weeks. I was drained but happy.
That’s when I saw it. Resting on the kitchen table. Ensconced in one of those plastic car-seat things, like a mollusk in its shell. I flipped on the kitchen light, blinked hard, and looked again.
Still there.
“Holy crap!”
The butcher-block counter was solid. I touched the coffeepot, which was cold. I smelled chocolate and butter—the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. And I was surrounded by stainless-steel cooling racks holding dozens of the cookies my younger brother, Nick, had spent most of the night baking for a client. So this wasn’t another weird stress-dream.
I grabbed a cookie, then cautiously took a step closer. The downy blue blanket tucked around it—him?—moved rhythmically, rapidly, up and down. Between the blanket and his white knit cap, only the circle of a little pink face was exposed, along with two small, balled-up fists resting near his chin. Like a miniature pugilist. His eyes were closed tight.
I scanned the table. No note. No clues. Nada.
I looked under the table: nothing but Lucy’s water dish.
Nearby, the kitchen door was locked and double-bolted.
I walked into the living room eating the cookie as I went. The front door was also locked and double-bolted.
I padded to Nick’s door and knocked.
Silence.
I knocked harder.
“Go away!”
“You left something on the kitchen table.”
“Yeah, cookies. Go away!”
I could hear the click of Lucy’s nails on the hardwood floors. Then rustling near the door. “Rowr? Rowwwrrr! Rowr!”
“I meant the other thing,” I called through the door. “The baby.”
“Gotta sleep! Go away!”
“Rowr! Rowr!” Lucy chimed in, scratching at the door.
“Nick, this is an emergency!” I yelled, pounding on the door. “Get up! Now!”
“Is the house on fire?”
“Yes!”
Two minutes later, the three of us—Nick, Lucy, and I—stood in the kitchen eyeing our little intruder.
“So you really didn’t put him there?” I asked quietly.
“Un-uh,” he said, smoothing down a bad case of blond bed-head with his left hand. “I mean, the cookies are mine, but that’s it.”
Reflexively, I brushed the telltale crumbs off my pink bathrobe. “The doors are all locked and bolted from the inside. I checked.”
“Anybody else have a key?” he asked.
Nick was living with me temporarily. After a sudden career change and relocation from Arizona by way of Vegas. Followed by an even more sudden engagement that had recently crashed and burned.
That was about the same time I’d launched my new freelance career. Which sounded a lot better on LinkedIn than saying I’d been accused of murder and fired.
We Vlodnacheks had kinda had a rough couple of months. But, hey, we land on our feet. I was already getting steady assignments and making enough to keep the bills paid. Provided I didn’t develop any expensive habits, like cable TV or eating out.
And Nick’s new venture, a bakery he ran from our kitchen, was growing like kudzu. His hours were as bad as mine, but his clients were a lot quicker with the paychecks.
“Two keys: yours and mine,” I answered. “You didn’t happen to hand any out, did you? Mom? Annie? Brandon the Burnout? That cute girl at the Yogurt Hut?”
“No way. This is my sanctum sanctorum. My Fortress of Solitude. My . . .”
“Got it, no extra keys,” I said. With any luck, his ex–business partner, Brandon, was at least 2,000 miles away. And after what happened with Gabby, his ex-fiancée, Nick was still nursing a broken heart. Despite the best efforts of a large chunk of suburban D.C.’s female population.
“What about Trip?” he asked, meaning my best friend and former news editor, Chase Wentworth Cabot III. “Trip” to his friends.
“Uh, no. And besides, Trip doesn’t go around playing stork and dropping off babies in the middle of the night.”
“Are you sure? ’Cause what I’m seeing would indicate otherwise.”
“Trust me, you couldn’t get him to deliver a newspaper at this hour, much less a baby.”
“So where’d it come from?” Nick asked.
“Didn’t Mom and Dad have that talk with you?”
“OK, we know where it came from. But how did it end up here?”
“He,” I corrected. “He’s wearing blue. That means he’s a boy.”
“You want to test that hypothesis?” Nick challenged.
“Not really,” I admitted. “I’d rather figure out why he’s here. And how he got in.”
We’d had a break-in four weeks ago. My ex-boss. Head of the PR firm that wooed me away from a twelve-year stint at the newspaper, then fired me after three months. And tried to frame me for murder. Long story. But after the dust settled, I’d beefed up security and had the old doors, door frames, and deadbolts professionally replaced with top-of-the-line gear. It was exorbitantly expensive. And the insurance company only paid part of the bill. But I slept great.
When I had the time.
“Man, you are the only person I know so tapped out that crooks are now breaking in to leave stuff,” Nick said.
“Should we call the cops?” I asked.
“I don’t think he’s got a record. Plus, I’m pretty sure they don’t make handcuffs that small.”
“Yeah, but he’d have the world’s cutest mug shot,” I said, studying the tiny sleeping stranger, who suddenly puckered his mouth and made suckling motions. “Seriously, somebody’s got to be missing him.”
“Somebody actually thought he’d be better off here,” Nick countered.
That stopped us both cold.
“So we should find out who he is and what’s going on, before we return him,” I said, thinking out loud.
“And in the meantime, we—and whoever left him here—will know he’s safe,” Nick said.
“If we don’t get arrested for kidnapping. Why do I think that’s the same thing you said when you guys found Lucy?”
Hearing her name, Lucy looked up expectantly. Nick grabbed a bone-shaped treat out of the big mason jar on the counter and offered it to her. She dropped to the floor and held it delicately between her two front paws, crunching contentedly.
“She’d been abandoned, “ he said softly, wiping his hand on his pajama bottoms. “She was foraging out of trash cans in an alley. This little guy was left warm and dry in a safe place.”
“A locked kitchen that smells like cookies?”
“Works for me,” he said, grabbing two Toll House cookies from a nearby rack and tossing one at me.
“He must be loved,” I said between bites. “Not only did they beat out those deadbolts to get him in here, but that car seat looks expensive. And he’s got that rosy, healthy, chubby-baby thing going.”
“So if his family left him here, we’re not kidnapping him,” Nick reasoned. “We’re just babysitting.”
“Some babysitter I am. I’m eating cookies for breakfast.”
ks on Archive.