“She didn’t steal it for the money. She stole it for pure spite. She knows I never liked her. She’s hurting me through you.” Sean bangs his fist on the Formica countertop, making the old wooden cabinets below pop open. Ethel scrambles to investigate. “I’ll go over there right now and make her hand it over.”
I lunge to restrain him, stumbling over the dog in the process. “No! You can’t accuse her with no evidence. Brendan will never forgive you.” This is a nightmare. I was worried about creating a rift with Terry. Instead, I’m creating a rift with Brendan.
Brendan, the oldest, the favorite. Sean’s biggest rival. And his dearest friend.
“I’ll find the evidence. Adrienne’s not half as smart as she thinks she is.”
But not half as dumb as Sean thinks she is. Sean has planted a niggling seed of doubt in my mind. Could Adrienne really have stolen the dress out of spite? It’s true that she always had trouble accepting direction from me, but I gave her a job when she was dying to get back into the workforce after being home with her kids. And I kept my lips zipped when I caught her in a liplock with one of our clients. And I wrote her a letter of recommendation when she needed to quit working for me and get a job that paid serious money in case she got divorced. So what rational reason would she have to be so spiteful to me?
And when has Adrienne ever been rational?
“I’ll get to the bottom of this.” Sean kicks the cabinet door shut, which causes the one next to it to pop open.
We really need to renovate this kitchen. How I wished I’d sold the damn dress myself. Well, that money will soon be in Terry’s eBay account, not mine.
“I’ll get Holzer to help me,” Sean continues. “If Adrienne tried to sell that dress in person or online, Holzer will track it back to her.”
Sean’s partner—hmmm, I never thought of calling him, but he might be a good ally in this mess. He’s calm, rational, detail-oriented. Holzer might actually be able to track down the dress. He has resources I don’t have. Certainly there’s less risk involved for him than for Sean or Ty or me.
“I could tell Holzer the most likely places any thief might try to sell a designer dress.” I consciously avoid using a name or even a pronoun in referring to my nemesis. “But I wonder...if the thief knows me, maybe they would wait until after the wedding to try to sell the dress.”
“Because once the wedding is past and you had to wear something else, you’d stop looking for the dress.” Sean nods and fires off another question. “Who knows that it’s been stolen? Have you told Maura and Jill?”
“Oh, God no—they’d cry even more than I have, and then they’d make me go shopping again. Only Ty knows—he was there when I discovered the theft.”
“And you already checked all these designer dress resale sites?”
Sean knows me well enough to realize I wouldn’t be sitting here crying if I hadn’t already done all I could to find the dress. “Yes, and my dress wasn’t listed anywhere. I guess the dress could have been snapped up already, but if you want to get the best price, you’d let the bidding continue for a week.”
Sean runs his palm over his close-cropped hair. “Hmm. But what if Adrienne doesn’t really care about making money? What if she sold the dress to one of her country club friends? You know, ‘I have special connections to get you this designer dress for a song.’ Adrienne would enjoy looking like a player.”
Sean is right about that aspect of Adrienne’s personality, but he doesn’t understand the nature of wedding dress shopping. One of Adrienne’s friends might appreciate the opportunity to snag some random designer purse at a cheap price just for the sake of having it, but how likely is it that Adrienne has a friend who’s getting married and would be willing to get her wedding dress in this way? Most women aren’t like me—they enjoy the process of searching for the perfect dress.
I take my empty tea mug to the kitchen sink and wash it so I can speak with my back to Sean. “I know Adrienne is high-maintenance and self-absorbed, but I just don’t see her doing this, Sean. Especially now that she and Brendan are patching up their marriage. Adrienne has been trying to worm her way back into the good graces of your family. She offered to babysit Deirdre’s kids and she bought your mother a dogwood tree for Mother’s Day and hired a guy to come and plant it in the yard so your dad wouldn’t have to do it.”
“Yeah, she scored a lotta points with that tree. She knows how to turn on the charm when it suits her.” Sean does a stretching exercise that causes his spine to crackle. “What if Adrienne is just waiting for you to tell everyone the dress is gone, and then when the whole family is in a twist, she’ll ride to the rescue and find it? I worked a case like that once. Guy stole some stuff from his boss, then recovered it so he could look like a hero.”
“You’re grasping at straws.” I take Sean’s hands in my own. “I don’t want all this turmoil over a silly dress. I don’t care what I wear. I don’t care what Maura or Jill or Deirdre or any other woman at the wedding thinks. I was excited about that dress only because I wanted to look nice for you.”
Sean pulls me close and whispers in my ear. “You would be beautiful to me if you walked down the aisle in jeans and a t-shirt.”
We stand silently holding each other, swaying slightly. I know he’s thinking what I’m thinking: we should definitely elope. This wedding should just be about him and me and our love for each other. Instead we’ve made it about his mother and my father and his grandfather and my friends.
Sean rests his chin on the top of my head. “You know, eloping just solves the short-term problem. We’d run away, but—”
“We’d have to come back.” Come back to anger and resentment and more emotional manipulation.
And at that moment the most horrible idea enters my mind. An idea so terrible that I’m afraid Sean will hear my thoughts and immediately break off our engagement.
What if Sean’s mother is behind this?
What if she got Terry to take the dress? He’d certainly do her bidding. Maybe he was the one who drove her to our house.
I pissed Mary off when she came here and I wouldn’t agree to persuade Sean to get the annulment. I thought I won the round by being firm and pleasant but refusing to cave in to her.
What if she’s getting her revenge?
I’ve always said that funerals bring out the greed and selfishness in people.
Now I realize weddings are even worse.
Chapter 12
The days roll on. I have other sales to prepare for, bills to pay, customers to meet. There are hours and hours when the theft of the dress leaves my consciousness entirely. But at night, a cloud of anxiety returns. I toss and turn, worrying not about what I will wear to my wedding, but about the fact that Sean has his partner investigating his own sister-in-law while I’m plagued with suspicion about my future family members.
I wake up on Friday morning feeling hungover even though I didn’t have a single drink the night before. I tossed and turned from three a.m. to five thinking about that damn dress and about the family I’m marrying into. Revenge...jealousy...envy—is this all part of the job description when you’re part of a big family? Do I have thirty or forty more years of this to look forward to?
And how will the Catholic Church fit into our lives? We’ve never discussed this. Sean goes to church with his family on Christmas and Easter, and since we’ve been together, I’ve gone with him. Other than that, church doesn’t seem very important to him.
He believes in God, I’m sure of that.
I believe in God. I think.
I realize we’ve never talked about our beliefs. Or how we’ll raise our kids.
O-h-h-h—my mind is churning again.
I glance over at the rumpled sheets on Sean’s side of the bed. Maybe he was tossing and turning too. He must’ve gone to work early after I fell back into a fitful sleep. Good.
Seven a.m. on a workday is no time for a theological debate.
I eat my breakfast, take Ethel for a wal
k, and still I feel like I’m wearing that lead apron the dentist puts on me when he’s taking x-rays. I need to unload my problem on a friend, but I can’t bear the thought of telling Maura or Jill about the dress. They’re both so heavily invested in it; I’ll end up comforting them instead of the other way around.
I need less emotion. Less hysteria. Less spirituality.
I need my dad.
An hour later, I’m sitting on a park bench with my father. I’ve told him the whole sorry tale, only leaving out my contemplated elopement. He lets me talk for twenty minutes without interruption or commentary.
When I’m finished, he takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. He extends his legs and studies his sturdy walking shoes. He polishes his glasses with a handkerchief and puts them back on.
He speaks.
“I’m surprised you’re so certain that someone in Sean’s family took the dress. It seems to me you’re overlooking the other possibilities.”
“What other possibilities?”
“Ty and Jill also have keys to the office.”
“Dad! You know they’re both totally honest. I’d trust them with my life.”
My father raises a hand to stop my tirade. “Not they, themselves. But someone who knows them and has access to their keys.”
Now I’m getting impatient. “Who does Ty know that would have any interest in a designer wedding dress, or any knowledge of its value?”
“Ty is less likely. I was thinking of Jill. The last time I saw her, she told me she was doing an internship as part of her Masters in social work program.”
As a math professor, Dad always asks everyone about their educational goals, so it doesn’t surprise me that he would know this. “Yeah, she’s working at some sober living house, a place where recovering addicts live until they’re ready to be on their own.”
Dad makes a voila gesture as if he’s presenting me with flaming cherries jubilee.
“So you think it’s possible a drug addict from this halfway house took Jill’s office key and stole my dress?”
Dad begins to tick points off on his fingers. “Some of the residents will lapse and return to using drugs—that’s a statistical fact. Addicts are desperate for cash. Jill told me this place charges clients an exorbitant amount, most of which isn’t covered by insurance.”
Now the pieces are starting to fit together. “So the people she works with could be from wealthy families who....”
“....are familiar with the worth of designer clothing.”
I twist to face my father. “Okay, maybe. But why would Jill be talking to her clients about my designer wedding dress?”
Dad arches his eyebrows. “Jill is quite chatty, dear. Look at how much I know about her. All I asked her was ‘How’s graduate school going?’”
I lean back on the park bench. “Well, if a drug addict stole my dress, it’s gone for good.”
“Yes, but you’re relieved of the pain that someone in Sean’s family would want to hurt you. You can just buy another dress and move forward.”
“Not quite. We still have Sean’s mother and grandfather threatening to boycott the wedding if Sean doesn’t agree to an annulment. How would you solve that?”
“Audrey, you know I don’t like to offer opinions on matters in which I lack expertise. In matters of faith, one should consult a clergyman. Perhaps Sean should talk to a priest. A priest who is more flexible in his beliefs than this Father Frank.”
WHEN I FINALLY MAKE it to the office, I find it empty.
I check my phone. Odd. No message from Ty.
Then I remember. He told me yesterday that he was stopping by the Edgemere development. Nancy and Les moved two days ago, and Nancy wants him to see the new place. He promised her he’d visit and help them get settled in.
I hope for Ty’s sake she’s unpacked her mixing bowl and muffin tins. But he can’t afford to spend too much time visiting. Today is the day we must blast through the Carnahan house applying price-tags and setting up for the sale.
I settle down at my desk and open up my accounting program. Nothing like a little number crunching to lift my spirits. My conversation with Dad has put my problems in perspective. The loss of the dress is not an earth-shattering calamity. If a desperate junkie stole it to buy drugs, that’s pathetic. But whoever bought it probably doesn’t know its history and will enjoy it.
And Sean and I can relinquish our separate suspicions about the involvement of Coughlin family members.
I glance at the phone. Maybe I should call Sean right now and tell him what Dad and I figured out.
No, better to wait. I also want to advise Sean to talk to a different priest about the annulment issue, and that might take some persuasion. He admits his mom isn’t that fond of her cousin Francis Xavier personally. She’s just impressed that he’s a priest. I need to convince him a different priest might be able to reassure her and Granda.
Now, back to my accounting.
An hour passes. An hour in which I’m blissfully tuned out to weddings, dresses, and religion. An hour in which columns of numbers add up neatly, both vertically and horizontally.
Perfect balance.
And then the door opens.
Ty breezes in, spins a chair around and sits in it backwards. “I got a report to make.”
“Me too! My father helped me figure out who stole the dress.”
Ty’s eyes widen. “He did?”
I quickly tell him our theory. Ty scratches his head. “I dunno, Audge. It’s true that junkies’ll steal anything for a fix, and it’s true that place Jill works in is full ‘a college kids and messed up Wall Street types, but Jill wouldn’t tell them about the dress or this office.”
“I know she didn’t mean to, but you know how Jill talks. She probably got excited and it spilled out of her.”
Ty shakes his head. “Nobody knows better’n me how much that girl can talk, but she takes this social work stuff real serious. I’ve been out with her a few times since she got this internship. She calls the people who live there her clients and she says she has to establish boundaries so she doesn’t get too tangled up in their problems. And she told me the most important thing she had to learn was not to tell them stuff about herself. She says in order to help them, she has to maintain her authority. It’s not a two-way relationship with these people.”
I was so certain Dad had the right idea. But now I’m full of doubt. Despite her flakiness, Jill is an excellent student. She takes her responsibilities seriously. She always does a good job.
Would she be careless around her clients?
I can’t think about it right now. I nod to Ty. “You came in here with something to tell me.”
“I’ve been workin’ on finding your dress. Since we knew it hadn’t been listed on any of the obvious designer resale sites, I figured Terry must be waitin’ til after the wedding to make his move. And I wanted to find out where he had it stowed. I didn’t think he’d want his wife and kid to know what he was up to.”
We’re back to my brother-in-law as prime suspect. “You have evidence that Terry stole the dress?”
Ty holds up his hand for silence. This story will not be rushed.
“I needed a way to talk to Terry real casual, like I just ran into him. So I had to figure out his daily routine since he’s not working.”
“You followed him?”
“Think about it Audge. A young black guy sittin’ in a car watching a white dude’s house. How long you think before the neighbors call the cops? I got my friend from school to do it. He’s a criminal justice major. He was all over it.”
“So what did he learn?”
“Terry spends every day at the Athena Diner sitting in the back booth with his laptop and one cuppa coffee. So I went over there and ordered a carryout lunch. Picked the thing I figured would take the longest to cook. Then I went to the restroom, which is right past the back booth, and when I came out, I said, “Hey, aren’t you Sean Coughlin’s brother? We met at Sean a
nd Audrey’s housewarming party.”
“And did he seem nervous and jumpy?”
“Nope. Not one bit. He kept talkin’ ‘bout how happy he was you were joinin’ their family. How you were good for Sean and chilled him out. How he liked you way better than Sean’s first wife.”
“So it wasn’t Terry? It was Adrienne?”
Ty just raises his eyebrows. “So the whole time I’m talkin’ to him, I’m standing and he’s sitting and I’m tryin’ to see what’s on his computer screen. So I ask him where he’s workin’ these days and he tells me all about how he freelances and finds jobs to bid on on the internet. And he tapped a few keys and switched up his browser windows to show me something he’s doing. But not before I noticed he had been on ThredUp right before.”
“The designer resale site! He knows about it!”
“So we keep talkin’ about this and that—it’s not like he’s shy—and I bring it around to how I’m into designer sneakers but how ya gotta be careful not to get ripped off buying counterfeits online.”
“And he didn’t catch on that you must suspect he had the dress?”
“Nope. He stayed totally cool. Told me ‘bout a friend who paid two hundred bucks for fake Jordans. That made me wonder what was up. Was he really so cocky that he didn’t think I could ever suspect him? Or was him being on ThredUp just a coincidence?”
“Sean doesn’t believe in coincidences.”
“Neither do I. But I left the diner feelin’ like maybe Terry wasn’t our man. But I still kept my friend on his tail for another day.”
Ty pauses and takes a deep breath. That makes me nervous. Is he about to tell me something terrible?
“What?” I hunch my shoulders and squint my eyes the way I used to do when a softball was heading straight for me in the third-grade outfield.
“The next day Terry and Adrienne both showed up at Sean’s mother’s house in the middle of the day. Adrienne was alone—no Brendan, no kids. They stayed for over an hour.”
Treasure Borrowed and Blue (Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery Series Book 4) Page 6