“Anyway, Farrah and Jake are exclusive when they’re together. They’ve had their breakup phases in the past, but not lately. Farrah doesn’t necessarily want to see other people. She just doesn’t want to be a wife right now. She likes her independence.”
“Farrah’s cool,” Wes said. “She knows what she wants, and she’s true to herself. Jake should stop pushing the issue, before he ends up pushing her away.”
Hmm. I didn’t say anything more on the subject, but Wes’s comments had rubbed me the wrong way. He had met Farrah, through me, only a few weeks prior, yet he talked like he knew her better than I did.
Or maybe he wasn’t really talking about Farrah. Maybe he was talking about himself.
The rest of the date was pleasant enough, but we were both ready to call it a night after finishing our drinks. When Wes dropped me off at my town house, he kissed me good night and said he’d call me.
A week passed—the longest we’d gone without at least speaking on the phone. So, I shot him a text, asking if he wanted to meet for happy hour when I got off work. He replied that he was tied up and would get back to me later. “Later” never arrived.
Yet, now, months later, standing on the street in the midst of the crowd around Moonstone Treasures, Wes grinned at me like he always did, as if nothing had changed. His eyes flicked over my figure, and he playfully tugged on the lapel of my jacket.
“Look at you, all conservative corporate businesswoman. You look really nice.”
I allowed a small smile in return. “Thanks. I need to get to work, but I wondered about all this commotion.”
“Just a teenager’s prank, probably.”
“How could this happen with a police station right down the street?”
Wes shrugged. “It’s pretty dead around here between last call at the bars and those predawn hours when some poor saps have to get up and make the doughnuts. It probably happened shortly after the three A.M. shift change when the on-duty cops were all at roll call.”
“That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in our police force,” I commented.
“Right,” Wes said, with a wry grin. “Especially when they still haven’t made an arrest in any of those breakins that happened a few weeks ago.”
I gazed down the street, trying to recall what I had read about those earlier burglaries.
“Anyway,” Wes continued, “this is different. From what I heard, there was no cash in the store, and nothing appears to be missing. There’s just some damaged merchandise—and, of course, the lovely graffiti.” He inclined his head toward the front of the shop, where the police officer was now shooing the spectators away. There was no sign of Mila and Catrina. They had probably gone in to start cleaning up.
I would have liked to go help, but that would seem too strange. After all, why should I have any special interest in a New Age gift shop? Why would I be friendly enough with the “psychic” shopkeeper to help clean her store?
Why indeed?
As I said good-bye to Wes and headed to my office, I couldn’t shake a feeling of uneasiness about the whole scene.
Yuletide Homicide Page 25