Plum Girl (Romance)

  "Yeah," she demanded. Well, so far she wasn't as hostile as she'd been the last time she'd seen her—which had been at the holiday party.

  "I'm going to get going," Lonnie explained, knowing Delia didn't give a rat's ass. "So I just want to tell you again that I'm really sorry. I know you worked with Lunther for a long time—"

  " 'Kay." With that, Delia turned back around and resumed her staring out the window. It took a second or two for it to sink in that the conversation had really been so awkwardly terminated. Well, awkwardly for Lonnie. In general, Delia seemed oblivious to awkwardness. Otherwise she wouldn't act the way she did half the time. Regardless, she definitely seemed far too bitter right now to be concerned with the temp's condolences.

  Mentally shrugging, Lonnie turned and walked away. Oh well, she tried.

  Next, she made her way over to Matt and B.J., who were hovering around the hors d'oeuvres. They both looked stoic and unemotional. Lonnie knew, however, that a lot of men handled shock that way. And grief. And love. And life, in general.

  "Hey, guys," she said.

  "Hey," Matt said coolly. Schmoozer mode was on standby.

  "Hi," B.J. said with a toned-down version of his usual friendliness, and he piled a few more Southwestern egg rolls onto his plate. "Jesus, I can't even believe I'm here right now, you know? I can't even believe this happened to Lunther." He shook his head, as if disgusted with fate.

  "Yeah," Matt said. "Bell was a great guy." Since when? Matt had never expressed a positive opinion about anyone at Twit & Bell. But Lonnie figured that's what death could do. After exchanging a few more trite words, she said good-bye to them and looked for Bette.

  She found her by the fire, carefully pressing a monogrammed handkerchief to the corners of her eyes. Lonnie expressed quick condolences to Bette, who was polite and gracious—much appreciated. If Macey were there, Lonnie would've said good-bye to her, too. But Macey wasn't there, and Lonnie couldn't help feeling she was rather conspicuous in her absence. After all, Twit & Bell was not a very large firm.

  Now where was Twit-head?

  Lonnie circled the living room and foyer, but still couldn't find Beauregard. Then she heard—"Beauregard." It was Lunther's brother, Henry. Lonnie turned around and found Twit, appearing uncharacteristically sheepish. "Don't play games with me," Henry demanded fiercely. "I want to know what you were doing in Lunther's study."

  After a nervous chuckle, Beauregard darted his eyes around and said, "Henry, please, lower your voice." He heh heh hehed again. "I told you, I got lost on my way to the bathroom." Then he slapped Henry Bell lightly on the shoulder. "My deepest apologies about that, Henry. It was an honest mistake." He turned to go and saw Lonnie standing there watching.

  "Beauregard," she started, "I just wanted to say good-bye—"

  "Oh, Leah. Glad to see you. It was good of you to come." The kind words put her off guard. "So sad...," he went on, then dropped his head dramatically and covered his eyes with his palm. His shoulders heaved lightly in what Lonnie could only assume were restrained sobs. Yet when he looked up at her again, his eyes looked dry and clear to her. But what did she know? Maybe his tears were all cried out. It was time to leave.

  Lonnie grabbed her ice-blue coat from the front-hall closet and slid it on. She was hastily pulling her hair out of the collar when she spotted a familiar face. It was one of those sudden jolts of familiarity; she had no idea how she knew the man she was looking at, but she had seen him before. That much she knew.

  Why was he so familiar? She was looking at a clean-cut man standing by the foot of the stairs, talking to an older woman Lonnie didn't recognize. Damn her selective memory! How did she know him? How... how... holy shit !

  It was the mugger!

  That couldn't be, but she knew it was. Once she placed his face, there was no doubt in her mind. He was the man who tried to snatch her purse outside of Borders the week before—the one who punched Dominick and fled. But what was he doing at Lunther Bell's wake? Could it possibly be a coincidence? She had trouble believing that.

  Looking back, the mugging had been strange. The man had zeroed in on her bag, even though she was hardly an easy mark with the bag slung across her body and held closely at her side. Yet, he'd been so relentless, so determined to get the bag. And now, if he also knew Lunther... Let's just say, Lonnie didn't believe in coincidence very much. Still, she couldn't imagine how it all fit together.

  Her curiosity should've mobilized her into action, but she was too shocked to do anything but stand there, frozen, staring at the mugger. He was leaning casually against the railing while he spoke to the older woman. His thin build gave him a deceptive air of harmlessness. He must have just arrived because Lonnie'd been at the wake for an hour already, and hadn't seen him.

  She swallowed hard and felt more than a flutter of fear in her chest. She momentarily considered turning and leaving before the mugger saw her—just in case he was a psycho with a ruthless vendetta against her. But even she knew that wasn't the most reasonable scenario. There had to be a logical explanation for what happened at Borders, and the fact that the mugger knew Lunther. Now if she could just stop deliberating, with her mouth going dry from nervousness, and her heart racing from fear, and confront him.

  When Lonnie saw him go up the stairs, she finally pushed her anxiety aside and followed him. She crossed the foyer and climbed the carpeted steps. She felt comforted in the knowledge that there was a house full of guests downstairs.

  She was about fifteen feet behind him when she glimpsed him turning the corner at the end of the hall. Treading faster so she wouldn't lose him, she spotted him going into the bathroom as a woman came out.

  Lonnie decided to do whatever she was going to do before she lost her nerve. She marched over to the bathroom door and knocked hard. When he responded, "Yeah, just a minute," his voice was mild and even—emboldening her more than a surly one would have—so she knocked again. Much harder. Hurting her knuckles, but she didn't mind.

  "Yeah, okay, okay!" he called, his impatience blatant but not deterrent. To be honest, she sort of liked pounding on the door; in a totally inappropriate way, it was a stress releaser. So she kept knocking until he swung the door open, exclaiming, "Jesus Christ, what the hell—"

  He stopped as soon as he saw her face, and she said, "Hi, remember me?" She hadn't planned that corny opener, but so be it. Right now she had to get to the bottom of this. It was all too weird; she had to know if that mugging was a deliberate, calculated attack.

  He sighed and dropped his chin to his chest. "Ah, crap." He shook his head, as if he couldn't believe his rotten luck. What about her rotten luck that day at Borders? She'd been in the middle of a perfectly lovely day with Dominick when he had burst in and tried to steal her bag. And he is going to answer for it right now.

  This wasn't like her; she really wasn't the confrontational type. But, she'd never been mugged before, either.

  "Look," he said, and held his hands up to keep her calm, "I'm sorry about that, okay? It was just... It was a misunderstanding."

  She narrowed her eyes, half confused, half suspicious. "What do you mean? You assaulted me!"

  "Uh..." He looked around, as if the answers he needed could be found in the sink or on the towel rack.

  "You deliberately tried to grab my bag, right?"

  "I know. Look—"

  "No, I mean, it wasn't a random mugging, was it?" Lonnie demanded. "It was deliberate?"

  "Yeah, like I said, I'm sorry about that."

  "Well, did you have me confused with somebody else?"

  "No."

  "But," she persisted, less angry now but more confused, "If you meant to grab my bag, how could that be a misunderstanding?"

  "Uh."

  Does he think that qualifies as a complete thought?

  He looked antsy and agitated, but Lonnie didn't feel the least bit afraid. It seemed the more tenacious she was with him, the more he retracted. Peach had once told her that confrontations almost always
came down to who blinks first, and now Lonnie could see what she meant. Peach claimed that all that mattered was attitude, because ultimately everyone was profoundly insecure inside, and "hostile projections of ego" were little more than bluffs.

  "Well, maybe misunderstanding was the wrong word," he finally conceded.

  Lonnie shut her eyes in annoyance and spoke sternly. "Let's go about this a different way. I'll ask you a couple questions, and you'll answer them. Otherwise, I'll make a scene downstairs. Trust me; you don't want that." He sighed and dropped his head back, looking to the ceiling for sympathy. "And, I can be very dramatic," she lied.

  "I said I was sorry!" The mugger was definitely testy by this point. "It's not like I even got the damn bag! What's the big deal?"

  Lonnie ignored his tirade, unwilling to let him turn the tables; she didn't want to lose control of the confrontation now. "First of all, what are you doing here? How did you know Lunther?"

  Apparently he figured out it would be easier just to pacify her and answer her questions. "He's my step-uncle," he said. "His brother Henry is married to my mother." Perhaps that was the older woman he'd been talking to at the foot of the stairs.

  "Did he have anything to do with what happened at Borders?" Lonnie asked.

  "Yeah... Listen, I'm sorry if I scared you that day." His voice softened a little, but Lonnie wouldn't let herself get sucked in by kind words. "And I'm sorry I punched your boyfriend, or whoever." He put his hands in his pant pockets and went on. "It was stupid—I mean, I shouldn't have agreed to do it. But Uncle Lunth offered me two hundred bucks and—"

  "He paid you two hundred dollars to mug me?" She couldn't imagine why Lunther would have wanted to attack her; she thought he'd barely noticed her around the office.

  "I was just supposed to grab your bag," he said defensively, as if that was worlds apart from mugging. "All he wanted was the bag."

  "But why? Why me?"

  He shrugged. "All I know was that he was pretty hot to get whatever you had in that bag. He said it wouldn't be a big deal—just follow you, wait for an opportunity, and then snatch it. He told me he'd make sure you got it back somehow, and with all your money and credit cards, too." He sighed and added, "I shouldn't have agreed, but I needed that two hundred, and I figured it would be easy. How the hell did I know you'd clutch that thing to your side all the time? And then stay in Borders for hours?" The mugger's softened tone was now put out, and Lonnie mentally congratulated herself for not buying the remorse he'd offered a minute ago.

  "Believe me," he continued, "when I came back and told him I didn't get it, he was pissed. He said I'd messed up something critical to the security of his company. And then he called me a fuckup." Lonnie resisted the urge to comment. "So that's our warm little family, and that's the whole story. Its all I know. Really. " He'd given her more information than he had to; Lonnie figured she better quit while she was ahead.

  "Fine," she said, and moved aside so she was no longer blocking the door. The mugger sighed with relief, and brushed past her. He only got a few steps down the corridor, before he turned around. "Listen," he called to her, "you're not going to make that scene now, are you? This is, like, over. Right?"

  She nodded... in spite of the nagging feeling that it was far from over.

  * * *

  Sunday night, Lonnie lay in bed mentally preparing for work the following day. She'd just gotten off the phone with Dominick, who was still in Connecticut but planned to return the next morning. She could barely wait that long to see him. And talk to him face-to-face. And kiss him senseless, if possible. The idea alone sent shivers through her body.

  Her smile faded only when she started thinking about Twit & Bell. She wondered if her coworkers would act differently after Lunther's death. Would they just carry on as usual? Or, would there be a distinct somberness throughout the office?

  Over the weekend, Lonnie had thought about what Lunther's step-nephew told her. It was still hard to believe that she had been the target of some nefarious corporate plot. She'd talked it over with Peach, and they'd come to the consensus that Lunther could have been after only one thing. Only one thing made sense.

  Macey's spiral notebook.

  The day he'd been looming in Macey's doorway, he must have heard Lonnie say she would put the notebook in her bag. The rest of that week, Lonnie kept the bag locked in her desk, so Lunther wouldn't have had access to it. Of course, he also would have had no reason to think she'd keep the notebook in her bag over the weekend—or even use that bag when his step-nephew followed her on Saturday. Perhaps that proved just how desperate he'd been.

  But, why?

  She'd flipped through the notebook to see what she was missing, but all that Macey had written in it were some hypothetical case scenarios, and the citations listed next to them that she'd asked Lonnie to look up. Was Lunther after those citations, too? Or did the hypothetical case scenarios somehow tie into him? For all she knew, maybe he'd just been paranoid, and envisioned something far more damaging in Macey's little notebook.

  It probably didn't even matter anymore since Lunther was dead. But still, she couldn't help wondering about the notebook, and remembering the heated conversation she'd overheard between Lunther and Macey more than a week ago. They'd both threatened each other. Lonnie tried to remember exactly what they'd said that morning, but without knowing the source of their animosity, it didn't help her make sense of anything.

  Instead, more questions flooded her mind. Before Lunther'd had a heart attack, did Macey have any idea how desperately he wanted that notebook? Did Macey even realize that Lonnie had unwittingly become mixed up in a feud that should've had nothing to do with her? Dear God, Lonnie thought as she finally drifted off to sleep long after midnight, what has Macey gotten me into?

  Chapter 14

  "What are you doing?" Delia's raspy Boston accent broke Lonnie's concentration and granules of Sanka flew everywhere.

  "Oh..." Lonnie looked down at the lime green tile, now covered in decaffeinated brown soot, and glanced back up at Delia's disapproving scowl. What was she going to say? Technically, she'd been trying to fill the large coffeepot with hot water and a dozen Sanka packets, because there was nothing else in the kitchen, including filters. But Lonnie didn't want to tell Delia that she'd only been doing it out of utter boredom.

  Over three hours ago, she'd finished most of her daily tasks, and Twit hadn't given her any other work. In fact, he hadn't come out of his office all morning. He hadn't even left for lunch... or, at the very least, popped his head out to bark a food order at her and then slam the door without giving her money to pay for it.

  "Well, I was just going to make a pot of coffee in case anyone wanted—"

  "Haven't you ever made coffee before?" she condescended. Rolling her eyes obviously, she muttered, "Jesus," and pushed past Lonnie—who rolled her eyes in return, but with a lot more subtlety, and looked around for a broom.

  "I hope you don't expect me to clean up your mess," Delia scoffed.

  "I'm just looking for a broom, but I guess it's in the supply closet," Lonnie said, struggling to keep her voice toneless instead of asking the bitchy assistant why she was truly outdoing herself this afternoon.

  "Good, because my kitchen-duty days are over," she snapped, and grabbed a can of diet black cherry soda out of the refrigerator. Then she grumbled under her breath, "Fucking over." She slammed the refrigerator door so hard, some fliers flew away from the magnets that had been securing them in place. Then in one motion, she shook the can and yanked the soda tab up, and burgundy liquid spurted out, foaming over the top and trickling onto the floor. Delia looked down, then back up, and smirked. "Aw... looks like you'd better grab some paper towels, too, while you're in there."

  Lonnie's mouth dropped open incredulously. What the hell was this woman's problem? In fact, Lonnie was beginning to wonder why Delia had become positively unbearable over the last couple of weeks. When she'd started temping at Twit & Bell six months ago, Delia was ne
ver friendly to her, but she mostly just ignored her. Lately she'd been more and more hostile, and now it was all somehow targeted at her.

  "What's with you?" Lonnie demanded.

  Delia just scoffed. "Oh, grow up, Lonnie. I can't think of one damn reason why I need to be nice to you. If I'm in a bad mood, you can just suck it up."

  "Wha—?"

  "And, by the way, I'm forwarding Lunther's phone to you. You can deal with all the fucking dolts still calling for him." She gave her hair one more screw-you toss, and strode out of the kitchen. Lonnie stood there dumbfounded for another second or two before heading to the supply room.

  As she cleaned up, Lonnie realized that Delia had donned the same miserably hateful expression she'd had at the holiday party when Lunther'd walked away from her, and when she'd started a rumble at the buffet table. She shuddered to think what Delia's temper would be like if someone really crossed her. And Lonnie couldn't help wondering if she was volatile enough to be violent. After two seconds of deliberation, she made a mental note to steer clear of Delia and not hang around the office after hours.

  Lonnie abandoned her whole Sanka-pot idea, then killed another half hour at her desk going through new e-mail—which included two from Terry. Groaning inwardly, she closed her inbox. She felt guilty that she hadn't replied to him yet, but in her defense, the only e-mails he'd sent her so far had been forwards.

  She glanced at her PC clock in the bottom corner of her monitor: 2:25. Hmm, it seemed like over five hours ago it said 2:21. Suffice it to say, this day was dragging. She still couldn't believe Twit hadn't emerged from his office all day. The only reason she knew he was in there at all was because she'd caught a glimpse of his duckwalk when she'd first entered the office that morning... just before he'd disappeared around the corner and shut his door audibly.

  Having her boss out of her face should've been a liberating feeling, but Lonnie found it unsettling, at best. The last time she'd seen him had been at Lunther's wake, when his body had been racked by dry sobs, and she'd gotten sidetracked with the mugger, anyway. It just seemed odd that Twit's longtime partner had died, and Twit wasn't bustling around the office, working double time to make sure Bell's accounts were covered and the firm was on schedule.