by B. T. Alive
“Oh, dear,” Grandma said. “Elaine is exceedingly punctual.”
Grandma was right.
“I was beginning to worry,” Elaine said, as she fussed with a display of essential oils. “I’m just glad you’re all right. I still need to get your phone number.”
I was panting from my sprint down here to Elaine’s Essentials, so I tried just breathing hard and hoping she’d keep talking.
“What is your phone number?” Elaine said.
“I really work best face-to-face,” I said. “How about a sales lesson? You ready to go? Are you excited? I’m excited!” I got halfway into an ill-advised fist pump, but Elaine’s stare was so blank that I pretended I meant to fluff my hair.
I wondered if I should just zap her and start over.
Then the front door opened, tinkling a tiny sleigh bell that was handmade by some Swiss artisan and cost at least six hundred dollars. “A customer!” I cried, with perhaps unseemly enthusiasm, and I gratefully turned to greet…
Paris Stirling.
Like her niece Jamie, Paris had shed her mourning garb, but her new outfit was at least muted. Her eyes were glittering, though, as she clacked out a hand basket from the top of the stack and lunged for a display of artisanal hoop earrings.
Elaine leaned toward me and stage-whispered, “Should we sell her something?” in a sotto voce that resounded through the store.
I tried to shush her, but Paris had startled and snapped us a look. She squinted at me, then widened her eyes in recognition.
“Hi! I’m Summer,” I said. “I saw you at the will reading, but I don’t think we’ve actually met. I’m so sorry for your… loss.” Against my better judgment, I flicked a glance at her basket, which was already packed six inches deep with a bedding of gold and silver hoops. I did a quick mental calculation of the cost, and my legs felt a bit weak.
Elaine leaned closer, so close her breathy whisper tickled my ear. “Can you upsell her a couch? I’ve got one in the back made of imitation zebra.”
“This is a very hard time for me,” Paris said, shielding the basket a bit behind her leg. “I’m really still in shock.”
“Oh, Summer did the same thing,” Elaine piped up. “It took me an hour to put everything back.”
“Absolutely,” I said, resisting the urge to poke my sole student in the ribs. “Totally understandable. How are you holding up?”
“Oh, as well as can be expected,” she said, with a flutter of her free hand. “So many decisions to make! I don’t know where to begin.”
I hesitated, then decided to take the plunge. “Do you think you’ll move into the house?”
Paris gaped. “That would be a nightmare,” she said.
“Of course,” I said hastily. “What was I thinking? I can’t imagine the mental associations…”
“I don’t know how Una ever lived there to begin with,” Paris said. “Aunt Sandra died there too.”
“She did?” I said, making a mental note to ask Tina about this new Graves relative. “I’m so sorry! I hope it was… natural causes?”
Paris closed her eyes and heaved a theatrical sigh.
Elaine’s whisper rasped in my ear. “What about that zebra couch?” she hissed.
“I’m building rapport!” I muttered back.
“The truth is, the body was never found,” Paris said, with gloomy relish. “She was known as a ‘missing person’ for years, and then was finally declared dead.”
“That’s horrible!”
“I like to think she might still be alive somewhere,” Paris said. “My personal theory is that she ran off and started a new life. She was a single woman and she’d never wanted a child, much less Una as a teenager.”
“Una was raised by her aunt?” I said.
“Well, not for long,” Paris said. “Una’s parents died in a car accident, and Sandra was the next of kin. I remember my own parents fighting with her over who would take Una; they felt they had their hands full with me. Poor Una.” She shook her head, and a hint of real sadness crept into her face, the first sign of human feeling I’d seen in this woman. “She lost both her parents, then she came here and lost her aunt within a year. My parents did make a token offer to take her in, but Una was eighteen when Sandra vanished, and she stayed right here, alone. She must have felt cursed.”
“I thought she went off to the city,” I said.
“Oh, yes, she had a very successful career,” Paris said. She seemed to savor this chance to praise the woman who’d made her a millionaire (if she hadn’t been one already). “The old Graves fortune must have been running low, but Una worked her tail off and retired early. My parents always needled me for marrying young… Una was like the over-achieving older sister I never had.”
Her voice had soured on that last sentiment, but she papered it over with a bright smile. She had plenty to smile about, as far as I could see; she was ending up now with both the husband and the fortune.
“It sounds like you two must have been close,” I lied. “I can totally understand why you’d want to sell the house.”
“Oh, I’d sell it in a second,” Paris said. “But Jamie’s got her heart set on living there.”
“What?” I blurted. Cade working for Una had been bad enough… but working for Jamie? Living with her?
Elaine whispered, “I also have a teak walk-in wardrobe. Then she’d have a place to put those earrings.”
“Just wait,” I hissed.
Paris frowned, and arched a sculpted eyebrow. “Everything all right?”
“Totally, yes, absolutely,” I said. “She was just… we were just thinking, you must be so glad you had that last conversation with Una, when she asked you to come out here and said you were back inheriting again.” I winced. “I mean, back to being reconciled—”
The frown on Paris’ face deepened. “She said nothing of the kind,” she said. Paris cocked her head, eyeing me through narrowing slits. “Una’s invitation was sudden and demanding, utterly true to style. For all I knew, she just wanted an ear for a drunken rant. I was and am shocked by her passing, but I was almost as shocked by the reading of that will. She was a very, very difficult woman.”
“I can’t imagine,” I said. “And then, this morning, you’re flying in, bracing yourself to see her… what time did you even get in?”
Oops.
Detective Summer clearly should have quit while she was ahead. Like, before this woman walked in.
Because Paris Stirling clamped her lips tight. She glared at me with fierce indignation.
“I don’t know what you think you’re fishing around for,” she said, “or why you even thought it was appropriate for you to be skulking around Ambrose’s office. But in case you have the slightest doubt that I was a thousand miles away when my poor cousin passed…” She tossed down her basket, rooted around in her shiny purse, and whipped out a massive phone with a case that looked ivory. She tapped and swiped with angry stabs. “It just so happens that I met a very sweet attendant, we had a lovely conversation, and he was kind enough to post this.”
She strode up to me and shoved her screen in my face. It was a Tribesy feed—some dude’s feed, not hers—and the photo showed Paris with her arm around a youngish airline attendant, both of them smiling in an airport lobby. The time stamp was 8:17 this morning. Nine hours or more after we’d found Una dead.
Crud.
“Any other questions?” Paris snapped. “Or can I perhaps be left to shop in peace?”
Beside me, Elaine blurted, “ROOT SELL HER!”
“Pardon me?” Paris demanded. She seemed to see Elaine for the first time, and her nose crinkled with disdain.
“Sorry!” Elaine said to me, back to her booming stage whisper. “When I get excited, I get a little dyslexic. I just realized the perfect upsell.”
“Oh,” I said, bewildered. Then I understood. “Oh. Oh, um, hold on—”
“Your roots!” Elaine said to Paris, with a broad smile. “Can we sell you something to touch up those roots?
Or did you want to stay gray for the funeral?”
Paris boggled. Her mouth froze open in a gape of disbelief, and for a moment, she had a startling resemblance to a hungry pelican.
Then she clapped her jaw shut, and she rushed to a gilt mirror and leaned her forehead close. She glared close at her scalp, then made a strangled gasp and rushed out from the store.
“That’s interesting,” Elaine said. “I thought we wanted her to buy more?”
I had no words.
“That’s all right! We’ll try again,” Elaine said, with a cheerful shrug. “I’ve got you here all afternoon.”
Chapter 25
I didn’t escape for hours.
By the time I lunged out through the back door, the sun was low in the sky, and I was ready to disappear into the sunset as a missing person myself, if it meant that Elaine could never find me.
I now had no idea how that woman managed to sell enough to make rent, let alone keep stocking top-rank inventory with nosebleed prices. Maybe she felt that having a “teacher” around gave her permission to try out all the sales “techniques” that she’d always been nervous to try but had learned from… I don’t know, late ’90s sitcoms?
All I knew was, I could still hear her nauseating whisper slithering down my ear canal. I needed a distraction. Right now.
Ten feet ahead, in a parking lot behind Main Street, an engine revved.
It was a cherry red convertible, with the roof down and the engine roar up, and lines like a Monte Carlo racetrack.
My heart throbbed with pure passion. This might just be true love.
Belatedly, I checked to see what presumptuous driver dared to helm this godly chariot.
At the wheel, fiddling with his phone, sat David Sky. Of course.
Suddenly, I had a glimpse of what Tina might have seen in the man.
Actually, no, that’s not even true a little. But I did get slammed with a desperate ache to get away from Wonder Springs in that ride. Even if it was just for ten minutes.
It wasn’t only the tortured evening with Elaine, or the murder, or my epic fails with every suspect so far, or even my quasi-boyfriend rotting in jail as, let’s face it, still the only viable suspect. True, none of this helped.
But it was also Wonder Springs itself, some cloying, saccharine, stifling quality that a sports car could instantly vaporize. Back when I’d been making six figures, I’d never quite treated myself to such a sweet ride, but I hadn’t needed to. Plenty of older executive dudes had been more than happy to give me a full tour.
Ever since I’d arrived here in Wonder Springs, though, I literally had not set foot outside the town. Not once. I had my own car, but Grandma and the others had insisted that it wasn’t “safe” for me to leave. For months now, I’d let them have their way; it’s not like I’d really had anywhere I needed to be.
But now… I could smell those leather seats from here. It was like seeing your high school crush, five years later, if he’d been working out and eating right and was ostentatiously single. How had you ever thought you could live without him?
I sauntered up to the driver’s side door, tingles shooting up my skin. I did feel a small twinge about Cade, but as I studied this older dude’s preoccupied profile, I could certainly affirm that my interest here was purely mercenary.
Besides, how had Cade put it? We were “seeing” each other. Fine then, orchard boy, you could see this.
“Hey,” I said quietly, and Sky jerked up to see me resting a hand on the car door. Even the paint job felt rich. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”
Sky regarded me quizzically, then glanced down at my fingers, which may have been stroking the metal. He cocked a flirty half-smile, and said, “I think you just like my car.”
“Pretty much,” I said.
He scowled. “I see,” he huffed. “Well, if you don’t mind, Ms. Sassafras—”
I sighed and zapped his hairy wrist.
On the plus side, the jolt I got was barely worse than touching a doorknob in winter. If there was any correlation between the intensity of the shock and a person’s psychic potential, David Sky had less going for him than a pair of loaded dice.
He sat there dazed, clutching the driver’s wheel, and gradually he looked around with a whiff of petulance. When he saw me, he startled.
“Hey!” I said, with my best smile. “I just wanted to apologize for how I treated you at lunch. I’ve been under a lot of stress, and I think I just totally read you wrong.”
“Oh,” he said. “Really?”
“Yeah!” I cocked my head, and ran my hair behind my ear. “Honestly, I think it’s really neat that you’re into hospitals.”
He smiled.
Five minutes later, we were roaring across the bridge out of Wonder Springs.
At first, the rush and the wind in my face were exhilarating. I let my long hair flap wild, even though it stung my cheeks, because it felt so good to be free. The river tore beneath us like a fading dream, and the darkening mountains ahead promised endless adventure.
But then David kept insisting on talking.
I’d forgotten this part. It really is special when a dude can intuit that the less he tries to shout his inanities over the wind, the more you can fantasize that he might be as interesting as his car.
“I’d never go back to driving automatic,” he blared. “With a manual, you’re always in complete control.”
“Nice,” I said, with as much fake enthusiasm as I could muster.
“You know how to drive a stick-shift?” David blared.
“I think my Dad tried to teach me maybe once,” I said. “There was something about a ‘clutch’.”
David laughed, a long, horsey, patronizing laugh that ended in a hiccup. “You’ve got a lot to learn,” he said. He arched his eyebrow, then said, in a tone that he probably thought was husky, “I’d love to teach you to drive stick.”
If he was straining for an innuendo, he was going to pull a muscle. Then it occurred to me that it was getting dark, and I had no idea where he was taking me, and I still didn’t have a cell phone.
Relax, I thought. He’s a twig, and you’re a big girl. By which I meant, if he tried anything on me, I could zap him senseless.
Of course, that would be a method of last resort. It can be exceedingly painful. For me.
But not as painful as getting any closer to this twerp.
David looked disappointed by my lack of response to his wit. “Can you hear me okay?” he said. “I can put up the roof.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine—” I said, but the roof was already cranking up over us, shutting me in. The small space felt claustrophobic and intimate; if the roof had been up in the first place, I might not even have climbed in.
“Driving a manual is stupid easy,” David said, as we pulled up the long hill outside Wonder Springs. “All you have to do is engage the clutch as you change gears. You give it a little gas, and vroom vroom, she’s purring and satisfied.”
“She?” I said.
“Oh, yeah. It’s all by feel,” he said. He looked over and waggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.
I was glad I hadn’t eaten in awhile. The interior upholstery would be a shame to spoil.
He glanced back at, you know, the road, and then he hit the brakes and grunted, “What the hell?”
Ahead, a long classic car had skidded sideways, blocking both lanes of the two-lane country highway. The flashers were blinking, and a tall man was standing in the street, waving David to stop.
The man was wearing a suit, but his face was shadowed with a baseball cap, pulled low. The fashion clash was so ludicrous that I almost laughed, but something in his wide gestures felt eerily familiar.
“On a hill? Seriously?” David griped, as he braked to a full stop. “Going to first gear on a slope is no picnic,” he added, in Teacher Mode.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I really don’t need to learn manual.”
David frowned, but before he could prove me
disastrously mistaken, the man in the suit called to us, with both hands to his mouth.
“PUT YOUR BRAKE ON,” he said. “EMERGENCY BRAKE.”
He walked toward us.
David tensed up, his hands tight on the wheel. But then he reached down, fiddled with the gearshift, and yanked up the brake.
“Do you know this guy?” I said.
“Of course not,” David said. He eyed me. “You?”
“I don’t… think so,” I said.
But with every step he took toward us, I was certain I’d seen him somewhere. Of course, with so many tourists coming through Wonder Springs, I was bound to start seeing resemblances. Still…
The man crossed to the driver side, and I could only see his suitcoat, with a silver tie catching a last gleam of sun.
“David Sky?” the man said. His voice was curiously high and reedy for such a large bulk. “I’m going to have to ask you to hand over those keys.”
Under his breath, David cursed. Then he cleared his throat and said, “There must be some mistake—”
“Skip it,” the man said. “You’re three months behind.”
“Not on this car!” David said. “I know I’ve had some payment issues with one or two others—”
“You’re bankrupt, David,” the man said. “You’ll be losing them all. Quite a collection. For a man of your income, I would have suggested baseball cards.”
“Listen, I don’t know who you work for,” David said. He was talking faster, angry and scared. “But I will have the money. I have a huge deal in the works.”
“Oh, do you?” the man piped. “Did you tell this lovely young lady that you’re not really a big-shot developer calling the shots on a new hospital? Just a grubby little has-been, hoping to pick up a piddly finder’s fee?”
David winced. He flicked me a glance of shame… as if I cared either way, but whatever.
“Not that you don’t need the money,” the man said. “People have killed for less. When they’re desperate.”
“What are you talking about?” David screeched. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’d have thought your devoted lady friend could have told you by now,” the man said. “I hope you’re not ignoring me… Summer.”