by Gina LaManna
“You plant thief!” Meg screeched. “Get your behind down from that fence. You are ruining the world, mister! You tree killer.”
I rolled my window down to hear better. I wasn’t sure where Meg had gotten the tree killer line from, but the whole show was entertaining. Especially when she grabbed onto a pant leg of the intruder and began to tug.
I dialed Anthony’s number, since I wasn’t sure this was technically a police matter. I was doubly sure that Detective Rankle, the only detective’s number I had currently plugged into my phone, wouldn’t want to hear from me about the theft of a plant before most coffee shops opened for business.
“Oh, you little turd! Come back here!”
“Hello?” Anthony’s sleepy voice rang over the phone. “Lacey? Where are you? When did you leave?”
“Long story. The short story is that Meg’s in the middle of a chase right now, and—”
“Are you okay?”
“Oh, absolutely. I’m eating ketchup in the car. I’m just not convinced the thief is going to be okay after Meg gets through with him. Do you feel like sending one of your guys down here?”
Anthony waited a long beat. “Ketchup?”
“Don’t judge me,” I said. “This is a serious situation.”
“No, I would not like to send one of my men down there.” Anthony heaved out a depressed-sounding sigh. “I’ll be down there in a few minutes.”
“No, it’s not a big deal. Just send one of the new guys.”
“Lacey.” Anthony’s voice sounded distracted, as if he were dressing while talking. “I refuse to make that phone call, and I refuse to put one of my men through this painful ordeal. I’ll be there myself.”
“Thanks, honey.” I couldn’t help a small smirk once he hung up.
Apparently, I’d found the only thing in the world that embarrassed Anthony Luzzi.
“Yo, Lacey!” This voice came from outside. “A little help?”
My eyes swiveled back to the chase. I’d missed exactly one second of it while on the phone with Anthony, and in that time the situation had deteriorated rapidly. The thief was long gone. Also gone, was Meg.
Setting down my beloved packet of ketchup, I pressed the door open and stepped gingerly outside. I really did need to find another bathroom. “Meg? Where are you?”
“Over here!”
I heard a spitting noise and sensed a movement in the blackness. “What happened to the other guy?”
Another spitting noise. “Yeah, you should see him. He’s a disaster.”
“Where is he?” I glanced around, listening. All was silent save for the trickle of water splashing from the fountain in the middle of the nursery gardens. “I called Anthony—he’s on his way.”
“Yeah, he probably doesn’t need to see this,” Meg said. “I’m over here. Beyond the fence.”
“Well, I can’t climb any fences,” I said, inching closer toward it. “Oh wait, here’s a door.”
“Are you kidding?” Meg said. “There was a door?!”
That’s when I caught sight of her. Standing knee deep in the fountain with a lily pad hanging off her shoulder. “Oh, Anthony is going to love this,” I said. “Any chance you can wait just where you are?”
“No need,” Anthony said, out of breath, which surprised both Meg and I. “Do I want to know how she ended up in the fountain?”
“It’s a funny story,” Meg began. “I started yanking on the guy’s pants, and they started to slide down. Well, he went over the top, and I climbed up, too, and then he pulled his pants up, and I lost my grip and fell.”
“Can I assume this unidentified man ran away?” Anthony asked. “Did you catch what he looked like?”
“I saw the top of his booty-crack when his pants slid down, but that wasn’t enough to identify him.”
“Huh,” I said, mystified. “Yeah. Who would’ve thought?”
Meg brushed the lily pad off her shoulder. “What do you say we head back to my place, Lacey? Anthony, you can hop on back home. You probably didn’t get the chance to shower this morning, and you could probably use one.”
Anthony stared at Meg, dripping scum and who knows what other pond bacteria, and nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I probably do need a shower after this. Lacey? Could I talk to you a moment?”
“I didn’t do anything dangerous. I was wide awake and bored,” I said, as Anthony’s hand slipped around my arm and dragged me off to the side. “Please don’t argue with my spending the day with Meg.”
“You’re not going to chase after anyone?”
“Nope.”
“Do anything stupid?”
“Now, you know I can’t promise that,” I said. “That’s just a hazard of being me.”
Anthony grinned, gave a shake of his head. “I love you. Call me if you need anything.”
Then he disappeared, leaving me wondering if I should be offended.
“Do I do that many stupid things?” I asked as Meg rejoined me, locating a towel from the back of the spaceship van before setting it down on the driver’s seat. “You know, just normally.”
“Yeah,” Meg said. “But that’s why you hang out with me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I do stupid stuff, too. I guess it helps us feel better about ourselves.”
I settled into the passenger’s seat as we headed toward my old apartment, aka Meg’s new one. “Never thought of our friendship like that before.”
“That’s why I’m the smart one,” Meg said with a wink. “Don’t fight it. Here. I saved you a packet of ketchup.”
Chapter 11
WITH MEG FRESHLY SHOWERED and changed, we headed back to the mall. We’d swapped out Clay’s van for my own car, so as not to anger my cousin should he have noticed it missing.
“Do you think Clay noticed I took the van?” Meg asked. “It smells like a swamp, but I don’t know if he actually saw me drive it off.”
I shrugged. “Not my problem. Where do you want to start once we get to the mall?”
“Todd says to always trust your hunch. I think my hunch is telling me to start at the beginning.”
“And where’s that?”
“Macy’s dressing room,” Meg said. “We’ll circle our way out from there. Keep an eye on buildings where we see people needing to get in and out with an ID badge. Most places around the area are little local stores, so it shouldn’t be that hard to narrow things down to a few buildings.”
“That’s...” I hesitated. “Really smart.”
“I’m telling you, take a PI class with Todd. He knows his stuff. Did you see the badge he made me?”
Meg flipped open her wallet and showed me. I’d seen her flash it before, though I’d never taken the time to really look at it. Up close, it was plenty professional to fool me. Then again, I was probably ranked pretty high on the world’s list of most gullible people.
“Neat, huh,” she said. “Oh, dang. Pregnant parking is full. Can you believe that? What a joke.”
I parked one spot further and we made our way back into Macy’s. We spent only a few minutes around the cookie displays, debating which one would be a midmorning snack.
“Can you believe all we’ve done already this morning?” I asked, twirling the cookie bag before me. “And I haven’t even had lunch. Speaking of lunch...”
“I know it. We took a dive in a pond, annoyed Anthony about four times, stopped at a diner, showered, drove around, totally screwed up the search for the plant-napper because now he knows we’re onto him, and...” She hesitated. “And I got to see Anthony without his shirt on when he least expected it.”
“When?”
“Never you mind,” Meg said. “We’re here. Hey, isn’t that Henrietta?”
I squinted, and sure enough, it was the same dressing room attendant from yesterday. “We don’t know her name, remember. You made that up.”
“Henrietta!” Meg called, and before I knew it, the dressing room attendant looked up and found us.
It took a long minute for her to place us; I could see her brain working double time as she did, and I could sense the exact moment it clicked. “Girls, hi!”
We made our way toward her as she set down the pair of pants she’d been folding and offered us a confused smile. “What are you doing here?”
“We, uh—” I hadn’t thoroughly prepared for our story, and my brain scrambled until she cut us off.
“You’re just the ladies I wanted to see.”
“Really?” Meg preened. “Yeah, I’m pretty memorable.”
“You did jog my memory,” she explained. “It got me thinking about the day the ladies you’re looking for were here. I don’t know why they were on my mind; they seemed like such an unlikely group of friends, so different, but things just worked for them—you know what I mean?”
I glanced at Meg and smiled. “Yeah, I think I know what you mean.”
“Well, they were still on my mind all day yesterday, which is probably why I noticed this man’s badge. See, he almost walked into the ladies dressing room. I stopped him and offered to help get him a room on the men’s side, and that’s when I noticed it.”
“Noticed what?” Meg asked. “The same badge?”
She nodded vigorously. “It was for Bank of the Lakes. That must be the reason I thought they were accountants or something corporate. Most shops around here are—”
“Are small and local, mom and pop type shops that don’t require employees to carry a badge,” I said, parroting Meg. “Which is why their IDs stood out.”
The dressing room attendant nodded, then frowned. “I obviously didn’t get your names and numbers yesterday, otherwise I would have let you know. But then, I realized the truth.”
My heart thumped at her sudden change of subject. “The truth?”
“The truth,” the lady said, leaning forward, her eyes glazing over with excitement. “You’re FBI agents.”
“What?”
“You’re on the hunt for the Femme Fatale!” She grinned and fanned herself proudly. “Are you really even pregnant? I mean, what an excellent cover. Who doesn’t trust a pregnant lady?”
“Exactly,” Meg said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell my fellow agent, here.”
“We’re not agents,” I said. “Impersonating agents is a federal offense.”
“But you must be working on the bank heist case?” She frowned. “That’s why you were here asking around, wasn’t it? You weren’t really trying to deliver a package to someone. And the ladies—I saw the footage played over and over again, and it clicked. You think they’re behind the heists.”
“You’re right, there is no package,” Meg said, heaving out a sigh. With it, she pulled her wallet from her pocket. “Like I told you yesterday, I’m a professional PI—”
“In training,” I grumbled.
“And this here is my partner.” Meg gestured to me. “We are working sort of with the police on the matter, but if you called and asked about us, they would deny knowing anything about it. We’re their best kept secret, you know.”
“Ahh.” The woman nodded in understanding. “That explains why they didn’t put me through to you when I called this morning.”
“You called the police?” I balanced my weight against the wall of the dressing room. Why?”
“I’d been thinking about this all day yesterday and all morning. I finally decided I had to do something about it. It all makes sense, see. It’s been different branches of Bank of the Lakes that have been robbed, and I’m almost certain that’s what their IDs said. The robbers wore the same pants, their heights and weights are about right, and...hang on, aren’t you the super pregnant lady who was at the bank during the heist?”
“Ding, ding, ding,” Meg said. “And I’m her best friend, hence my involvement in the case. We’re trying to get back the wedding ring they stole from her. It’s an heirloom.”
“Oh, you poor thing.” The woman nicknamed Henrietta sat me down on a bench and curled a blanket—one with the tag still on—around my shoulders. “Rest. You poor baby.”
I didn’t mind the coddling, but I wanted her to continue the story. “What did the police say?”
“That’s the thing.” She shook her head, mystified. “They wrote me off like I was a crank caller. I explained everything, my theories, etc., but nobody wanted to listen.”
“Here.” I pulled Detective Rankle’s card from my purse and punched the number into the phone. “I have someone you can talk to that’ll know what to do—he’s the primary on the case.”
“Oh, okay,” she said. “Sure. I just feel like I need to pass this information along to someone.”
“It’s him,” I assured her with a smile, passing her the phone as it dialed. “You can tell him we sent you. We’ve already notified him that the women shopped here, and any additional information you have about the badge should really help.”
All three of us heard the moment he picked up with a short, deep-voiced greeting. “Hello?” he repeated, when Henrietta didn’t say anything. “Who is this?”
“Go on,” I whispered, waving at Henrietta to speak. “That’s him.”
Weakly, the dressing room attendant lowered her hand, dropping the phone into my outstretched palm.
“Sorry, butt dial,” I muttered, then hung up. “It’s okay, Henri—uh, ma’am. There’s nothing wrong with being nervous, but I can assure you we’ve talked to this detective ourselves, and though he’s intimidating, he seems like he wants to help.”
“No,” she whispered. “No, he doesn’t. That’s the man I talked to earlier. He told me that I was a nut, and if I didn’t stop calling him, he’d take action against me.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think that can be right.”
“Detective Rankle,” she said, rattling off the rest of his title. “I hadn’t recognized the name, but the voice—it was definitely him.”
“What did he say, exactly?” I asked. “And by the way, call me Lacey, and this is Meg.”
“I’m Harriet,” she said, then swallowed while Meg beamed with pride. “He told me that there’s no way it could be the three girls I’d seen in my store, and that I should stop watching cop shows in my spare time and get a real job.”
“Yikes, wow. I am really sorry,” I said. “That’s a horrible thing to say to anyone.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not your fault,” she said. “I just...I thought I had something to contribute, you know?”
“Oh, you did have something to contribute, and you contributed it to the right person.” I took a long moment to heave myself to my feet. Resting a hand on her shoulder, I gave her a squeeze and met Harriet’s gaze. “Meg really is the best PI in training this side of the Mississippi river and before the Wisconsin border,” I said, giving Meg at least a twenty-mile range. “We’ll be using your information. Thank you.”
Meg nodded solemnly, as if I’d just knighted her Queen of England. “I am the best,” she said. “Thank you, Henrietta, for your services.”
“Harriet,” she corrected. “And, ah, thank you.”
Meg produced a business card that preemptively labeled her as the Best Licensed PI in the Twin Cities area and handed it over. “That’s my card. Give us a call if you can think of anything else, or if you see the girls again. Call me anytime, day or night. Ask for Meg. If you get an assistant that sounds just like me, well, her name is Alicia. She’s real, I swear.”
We left Harriet to continue folding pants. I grabbed the cookies and paid for them.
“You have an assistant, huh?” I asked, turning to Meg. “That sounds exactly like you?”
“Uh-huh,” she said. “And if you want to hang out with me from here on out, you’ll have to schedule time with her.”
“Great,” I said, and turned to Meg. “Say, Alicia, how about we bother your boss’s boyfriend and see if he can fetch us some information on Rankle?”
“My boss’s boyfriend?” she snapped. “Oh, Clay. Right. But what about checking out the res
t of the mall?”
“The most urgent thing on our plate is figuring out what’s up with Rankle. I’ve got a weird feeling about him, and I think we should do some digging before we trust him with anything else.”
“Yeah, sure, let’s go,” she said, looking longingly at the food court above us. “Maybe on the way we should pick up a car deodorizer. My boss’s boyfriend hates when his van smells like swamp.”
Chapter 12
WE REACHED MY OLD APARTMENT complex loaded down with gas station deodorizers. After Meg decorated Clay’s van like a Christmas tree, we made our way up the path to the front door. En route, Meg’s phone began to buzz.
“Hi, this is Alicia,” she quipped. “May I ask who’s calling?” She waited a beat. “Sure, I’ll get her. Please hold.”
I rolled my eyes and swiped her keys to unlock the door.
“Hey, this is Meg,” she said, lowering her voice to a manly octave. “Can I help you? Oh, oh, you could tell? Alicia is my, ah, never mind. Is my car ready?”
I tried to listen as we climbed the stairs, but I couldn’t make sense of Meg’s mmms and ahhs. When I reached out to unlock door number seven of my old, saggy apartment complex, Meg put her hand on my arm and hung up. “They found it.”
“What?”
“The van!” Her eyes flashed with excitement. “You were so right. The girls are in deep doo-doo. They brought the vehicle to a friend of Chance’s.”
“Let’s go over there! We can be there when the girls pick it up. We could call Detective...” I trailed off. “We could call Anthony.”
Meg shook her head. “No can do, unfortunately. The ladies picked up their van this morning. They needed a rush job on it, which is top dollar.” Meg rubbed her fingers together to send a spendy signal my way. “Chance’s friend was bragging about it.”
“Did he get any information on the women’s identities?”
“Ironically, the vehicle was rented by a corporation.”
I studied Meg, noting the satisfied gleam in her eye. “Let me guess. Bank of the Lakes.”
“It’s an inside job!” Meg swiped her hands back and forth. “We’re onto something, Lacey! Can’t you feel it clicking into place? Click, click, click.”