Frame and Fortune

by Misty Simon

  “And nothing else was disturbed?”

  “No. And even weirder? The person who did this was really careful to remove all the pictures from the frames, then leave them exactly where they’d hung. He only took the frames. He stuck my pictures back on the wall with bright green thumbtacks.”

  “Freaky.”

  “You’re telling me.” I’d known it was a possibility after Ben had told me about the robberies. But to actually see it in action was bizarre.

  We sat in silence for a minute. As always, it was a comfortable silence. I’d lucked out the day I walked into her salon asking for something a little different.

  Bella cleared her throat. “So, not to bring down the mood, but I can’t seem to stop thinking about this whole murder thing.”

  I heard the worry and sorrow in her voice loud and clear. I vowed right then and there to help her no matter what. I’d made no headway, yet, but I’d double up my search. “Ben and I are going to work on it. Promise. I’m not sure what help I’m going to be, but the last couple of times turned out all right, didn’t they?”

  “Yeah, if you discount the fact that Kitty trussed you with a scarf and smacked you with a plastic saber, that banker guy smacked you with a mannequin leg, and Horace nearly brained you with a gun.”

  “So not my best showing, but we still got our people. Hopefully, we can do the same thing this time.”

  “Do you think it’s a woman?”

  I gave the thought some careful consideration, not that I really had any idea of what or how a woman would do it differently than a man. I watched all those crime scene shows, but I wasn’t channeling the info right now. I was more concerned about keeping my friend out of jail than making predictions.

  “Sweetie, I really don’t know, but we’ll think of something. I have a feeling life is about to get really complicated, what with clearing your name and trying to figure out what the hell the frame thief is really after. Unless you want to turn on your psychic ability? Tell me what’s going on?”

  “Leave me alone about that. It’s never been true, and it certainly isn’t true now. Plus, you’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

  “I’m aware of that. I’m thinking out loud, actually.” I sighed and picked up a particularly ugly ceramic kitten. I quickly put the pink-and-purple thing back down. “So tell me where you were and what you did over the last week. I want to get an idea of what we’re looking at.” We settled down into the couch for a long chat.

  The whole time we talked, I wished I could take everything away for her, point my accusing finger at the killer. Unfortunately that wasn’t going to happen. I only hoped and prayed what I could do would be good enough. Her life was seriously at stake. I’d never felt more inadequate, though I wasn’t going to tell her that.

  When I got home about an hour later, Ben was sitting in the recliner with the television blasting, the paper opened and held high. His head was buried in the sports section. I knew from previous experience he could probably go for hours without surfacing.

  Unfortunately, this didn’t appear to be one of those times.

  “Ivy, where have you been?” He didn’t even bother to close the paper. After a second glance at the front, I realized it was the local paper that came in my mailbox each week. Had he been in my mail?

  Hopefully I hadn’t received any risqué toy catalogs in the mail. Not that he would be offended or anything, but it might give him ideas I wouldn’t want to try yet.

  Then the ramifications of him checking the mail and feeling comfortable enough to rifle through things hit me. It was not sitting well. He started talking again, making me lose that particular angst because of what he was saying.

  “So, anyway, I was thinking you could make some of the great meatloaf and mashed potatoes you used to make for your old man when you lived with him.”

  Huh?

  “I don’t have the ingredients for meatloaf,” I mumbled, horrified, hoping he would take that as an answer. I could put together something else in a few minutes. No such luck.

  “That’s okay. I went to the grocery store. I picked up everything you need.” He smiled at me. For my part, I worked hard to stay upright.

  Ben. Went to the store. Willingly. Ben went to the store willingly? Holy crap. I think this was probably the first time in the whole history of his life. I struggled between fascination that he actually went to the store, and the clerks survived, and disbelief he wanted meatloaf so badly he would go to such extremes. Then again, how did I think he had been surviving all this time? Well, at the convenience store around the corner, as far as I knew.

  But I couldn’t resist asking, “Did you actually go to the store by yourself?”

  He twitched the paper and harrumphed. I almost thought he wouldn’t answer. “I, uh, went to the store, yes.”

  Huh? “What does that mean? Did you go to the store by yourself, or not?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “And what?” He’d buried his nose in the paper, again.

  “And what happened that you aren’t telling me?” I stuck a hip on the arm of the couch, watching in glee as he squirmed around on the chair.

  “I got lost, okay? And I had to ask directions to the new store, and then I had to ask how to make meatloaf. The butcher almost fell over. It is not funny!”

  But I’d already fallen on the floor in a fit of giggles.

  Chapter Five

  After a scrumptious (if I do say so myself, and that was a good word, too) meal of meatloaf and twice-baked potatoes, Ben settled in to watch a favorite TV program about beasties and ghosts while I cleaned up the kitchen. It all stank of domesticity, but I wasn’t as appalled as I thought I’d be. Still, a little shocked, I threw the dishtowel onto the counter before sinking down onto a kitchen chair.

  I loved my independence, but I loved Ben, too. I heard him yelling something at the TV and shook my head. I might love him, but was I ready for it to be like this every night? Was I ready to have someone intruding on my privacy at all times, here every moment of the day?

  Putting my hand on my racing heart, I begged the mini-panic attack to subside. The phone rang, saving me from having to delve any deeper into something that might never come to pass. We hadn’t even discussed moving in together, much less marriage. Besides, he still had the lease on his apartment for at least another six months. There was no need to get all worked up.

  And the phone was still ringing.

  “Do you want me to get that, Ivy?” Ben yelled from the living room.

  Hell, no! I thought, but said, “No, I got it. Thanks.” I took one more quick breath before answering the phone. “Hello?” Phone calls usually herald some kind of bad news, so I was hesitant to answer, with a murderer on the loose, again.

  “What are you doing at home?” Bella asked in a sharp voice. I could hear her huffing into the phone. Not a good sound.

  “I just finished dinner with Ben. I’m putting stuff away?” I hated that lilt something fierce.

  “Well, why aren’t you out on my case? Why aren’t you hunting down whoever did this terrible thing and tried to make it look like it was me?”

  “I have to eat.” Which wasn’t entirely true at the moment. I could probably live off my rounded thighs for at least a few weeks. But I wasn’t going to introduce this info into the conversation right now.

  “Fine, but dinner’s over. What are you going to do?”

  I had thought about going in to snuggle up with Ben, but apparently that wasn’t a good idea. Emotions swirled inside me at the thought of layering one more kind of intimacy on what was already feeling like a heavy wool blanket.

  “I already had Ben call the police station. He’s waiting to hear back.”

  “I hope he didn’t talk to that traitor Jared Henderson.” I could imagine her crossing her arms over her chest, sticking her bottom lip out in a pout.

  “He’s talking to Dennis,” was all I said, to skate over the uncomfortable topic.
I quickly moved on to other things. “Can I come over to check out the walk-in fridge in the back of the salon? I have a couple of questions, and I’d like to look things over. Do you have time?”

  I heard a little hiccup. Damn. I hoped she wasn’t sniffling, gearing up to cry again. Boy, was I wrong. “It’s not like I have anything else to do!” she wailed.

  I moved the phone away from my ear to preserve at least some of my hearing, then felt like a traitor. She’d let me soak more than a few of her shirts from the time I moved here until recently. In payment, here I was trying to pull back when she needed me most.

  “Okay,” I said in my most soothing voice. “Let’s calm down. I’ll come get you.” It would at least get me out of the suffocating house. “We’ll go over to the salon first, and then we’ll maybe stop off at Martha’s for a piece of pie. She’s got Thelma Boden running things in the evenings, but I’m hoping the woman won’t spit in my coffee if I’m a paying customer.”

  My dad and Martha were already on a second honeymoon only four months after going on their first. My dad had protested loudly about leaving now when there was a murderer running around. But from what I understood, Martha had put her foot firmly down, telling him she was not going to miss out on traveling for his sick new obsession. They had left first thing this morning. I couldn’t be happier to have him out of my hair for this investigation.

  I had to admit, though, that I had been pleasantly, if not totally surprised, after they’d come back from their initial trip with everyone, and everything, intact. My dad was infamous for never being able to go on a trip without some kind of mishap—like the time he took us to a petting zoo and ended up with an ostrich trying to eat his pants. But with Martha in charge of the three-week-long excursion, things had actually gone according to plan. Now they were back on the road again. Man, was he going to be pissed when I solved this last murder and he hadn’t been here to play Watson.

  Bella sniffed into the phone, bringing me back to the here and now. “I’ll meet you at the shop in fifteen minutes. Do you mind not bringing Ben? I have some things I want to talk to you about. I, um, don’t think he’d want to hear.”

  “Sure,” I said quickly, knowing it would be nice to get away by myself for a little while. Plus, the show Ben was watching was not something he would willingly leave unless he got an urgent call from work. He loved his Supernatural.

  I grabbed my keys and my purse off the counter, this time remembering to replace the phone in its cradle before trying to walk out of the room. No gasping this time, at least not over nearly becoming one with my kitchen chair. Although I did gasp because Ben was hanging out on my couch, drinking a beer, dressed only in his boxer shorts and a pair of socks.

  Now, normally, I would be jumping over the back of that couch, ravaging him as he’d never been ravaged before. But something about the casualness of the scene took some of the lust out of my system. Not good. I counted on lusting after Ben. I counted on getting the tingles whenever he walked into the room. And I definitely counted on being overcome by lust when I came across him sans shirt and jeans.

  But not this time, which made me worry. Not enough to abandon my quest for Bella, but enough to set it on the back burner of my mind to be brought out for consideration later.

  “Gotta go,” I called out as I whooshed through the house, bee-lining for the front door.

  “See ya,” he said, waving his beer bottle at me from the couch.

  That was all I got as I walked out the door into the balmy night to catch a murderer. I didn’t know which problem had me twitching the worst.

  Trolling up the road in my Santa Fe, I stopped in front of Bella’s Best, with its big shears and head of big Texas-style hair. When I’d looked at the front of the shop the first time I came into town, I hadn’t been so sure about stepping foot inside. But I’d taken the plunge and in return had met a woman who would become important to me. We’d been through a lot together so far. I hadn’t known how profoundly my life would change after she tipped her scissors at me and asked me what I wanted done with my hair.

  One new set of highlights later, along with a cut to die for, we were best of friends, outcasts together, soul sisters like I never had been with my own sisters.

  Bella came wandering up the sidewalk and stopped outside the front door. She must not have seen me yet, because she bowed her head, pinching the bridge of her nose before stabbing the key into the lock and going in. I didn’t even get a wave. But I figured she had other things on her mind.

  Getting out of my car was so much easier now that I didn’t have to wear four jackets anymore. It had been a very cold winter—to me, the California girl, at least. I loved spring, though, and couldn’t wait to spend my first one here. Flowers were already popping out along the sidewalk and in the tubs the city council had stationed under the old-fashioned streetlights. Many of the blooms had closed down for the night, but the new growth was promising.

  I followed Bella into the shop, calling out so she wouldn’t think I was some weird intruder coming to take her down. She still popped out from around the corner with a pair of hair clippers in one hand and an industrial-sized can of hairspray in the other.

  “Going to freeze-hold me into submission?” I asked, laughing, but still praying her trigger finger didn’t move. That crap hurt if it got in your eyes.

  She stood down from her military position; her feet had been planted firmly on the floor with her shoulders squared for action.

  “Where’d you learn that?” I admit I was baffled. I always thought of Bella as a tough cookie with attitude, but she also wouldn’t leave the house without all her makeup on and dressed to the nines. She was feminine in a non-frilly, non-girly-girl way. But she wouldn’t be caught dead without mascara. Go figure.

  Anyway, the whole combat position thing had freaked me out, along with the potential of being Aqua Netted to death. What other things didn’t I know about her?

  “My dad taught me defense moves.” She lowered the big can of spray to the counter next to her. Thankfully, she also turned off the buzzing shears. The noise was grinding on me, so I couldn’t say I wasn’t happy to hear it go.

  “Okay.” I hadn’t heard much about her parents other than that they’d retired to Florida. For all of our conversations, most of what we talked about were current things, what was happening in town. I had been surprised to meet them for the first time when they came to visit for the holidays. Bella had said her mom could be a true pain in the keister. After their visit, I believed it wholeheartedly. The one afternoon I’d spent with her showed her to be a true terror. But other than that, not much information was to be had. I sometimes had a feeling there was a whole lot of Bella I knew nothing about.

  “I have a brother, too.”

  Now that came out of left field. “What? When did you get a brother? Why haven’t I heard of him?”

  “We don’t talk much, since he was a friend of the Bastard’s, but he lives in Ohio.” She twirled a piece of hair around her finger after putting her instruments of death onto one of the two stations set up for doing hair. I think at one time she had planned on having a bigger salon, with people helping her, but it had never turned out, from what I understood.

  “Does he ever come back here?” And why hadn’t I ever heard of him? Weird.

  “He’s older than me, and no, he doesn’t come here. He was an ass of the first order when we were younger. He’s not a hell of a lot better now. Every time I talk to him I want to wash my brain out with Clorox.” She made a nasty face. Perhaps it was time for a subject change.

  Well, then, moving on. Though I was grateful I didn’t feel that way about my family, even if they did irritate me on a pretty regular basis. “So, let’s go see this monstro fridge and maybe find some clues. I’d love to get this wrapped up before Ben starts making noises about digging in my dirt.”

  “Is that what you’re calling it these days?” Bella stayed where she was, not moving a muscle, frozen in place.


  “Ha, ha, ha. I meant Ben is pressuring me to get into my flowerbeds. Apparently, growing season is coming up. I want to get this solved soon, though, so you can go on your trip with Jared, the one you had all planned for Vegas.”

  And I knew without a shadow of a doubt I had just stepped into it. The shears came back on within a blink of an eye, and her face scrunched down.

  “That boy can go on to Vegas all by himself, at this point. I can’t believe he actually put the handcuffs on me after I told him I’d go peaceably.” The hand not holding the electric trimmer curled into a claw. Officer Jared was very lucky he wasn’t there right then. He might have gotten the haircut of his life.

  “Hasn’t he cuffed you before?” I asked, trying to inject some levity into the situation (and wasn’t that a fantastic word! I was on a roll today). But Bella’s scowl cut my jubilation right off. I also went spiraling down when she came after me with the clippers.

  “You don’t want to do anything hasty.” I backed away with my hands in the air. I probably could have taken her, but I didn’t want to hurt her. Plus, I didn’t know what all her daddy had taught her. What if she could flip me over her shoulder like some wrestler? Have me pinned to the ground in two seconds flat? I might be a big girl, but that didn’t always translate into being a strong girl.

  “Now is not the time for your little jokes. Jeez,” she said, continuing to come toward me. But then, similar to the way I’d been yanked back in my kitchen, she got pulled up short by the clipper’s electric cord. Thank goodness.

  “I promise I won’t make any more jokes. Let’s go get a look at this fridge. We’ll save the jokes for a better time, when you’re actually interested. Like maybe when we have this whole thing wrapped up with a pretty bow tied around the perpetrator, and your good name cleared?”