Another Day, Another Dali

by Sandra Orchard

  I glanced around, looking for any sign last night’s note-writing visitor was keeping tabs on me.

  “You’ve got to find her a man, Serena.”

  “Nah, I think Phil might be the one,” Terri said from the backseat. “He can write and spell. Even reads. He’s a prison librarian.”

  “O-kay,” Zoe said, sounding a little weirded out. “That’s different.”

  “Yeah,” I joked. “Never saw that job on those aptitude tests they made us do in high school.”

  Zoe injected optimism into her voice. “At least you wouldn’t have to worry about a pretty girl at his work catching his eye.” She handed me a piece of paper and then sped out of the parking lot.

  “What’s this?”

  “The list of bridal shops we’re going to visit.”

  “We’re going to more than one?”

  She gave me a longsuffering look. “I want you guys to have the most perfect bridesmaids dresses.”

  “I’m sure all the shops carry pretty much the same dresses.” Shiny pink taffeta with poufy sleeves and an even poufier balloon-like skirt that crunched when you moved. I’d been to enough weddings to know.

  “Oh no, we have to check out all the possibilities before we choose,” Terri said.

  “You’ll have to be patient with Serena,” Zoe explained. “She doesn’t like to shop.”

  Terri gasped. “Get out! You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Don’t mind her,” Zoe said to me. “She secretly worries about anyone who doesn’t like to shop.”

  “Why do you keep looking at the side mirror?” Terri asked.

  Zoe glanced across the seat at me, her fingers tightening around the steering wheel. “Please tell me a psycho guy isn’t following us.”

  I slanted another quick glance at the side mirror. The silver Escalade that had picked up our tail the second we’d pulled out of the driveway turned onto a side street. “A psycho guy isn’t following us.”

  She looked at me as if she wanted to believe me but didn’t.

  “Relax. This wedding planning has you way too tense.” My phone rang before she could grill me further.

  “Have you seen your super yet? What did his brother have to say?” Tanner asked the instant I hit Connect.

  “Haven’t seen Nate yet. I gave up waiting at midnight, and I had to hurry out this morning before I could catch up to him.”

  “Okay, keep your eyes open for trouble.”

  “Always.”

  A couple of bridal shops later, I was almost wishing for trouble. Catching bad guys, I could cope with. Catching Zoe’s eclectic vision for our dresses, not so much. “What kind of dress are you looking for?” I asked Zoe as we walked out of the second shop without trying on a single dress.

  “I’ll know it when I see it.” She dragged us across the street to the Bridezmaidz Boutique that offered dresses that were to traditional gowns what avant-garde art is to classical.

  “If you give us a hint, we could help you be on the lookout for it,” I said.

  Zoe stopped in front of the store’s massive window and gasped at the Mondrian-style dress on the mannequin. “This is it!”

  Terri paled. “Squares aren’t terribly slimming,” she whispered.

  Hmm, that went double for giant colored squares outlined in black on a white background, but . . . “All the art buffs will think it’s pretty cool,” I offered. “It could be worse. Think Picasso!”

  Zoe scrutinized Terri’s figure. Where I was tallish, slim, and fair haired, Terri was dark, petite, and plump—and yeah, Mondrian’s squares were not going to work for her.

  I pulled open the shop door and lifted my voice encouragingly. “Maybe we can find something else artsy inside that will suit both of us.”

  Zoe had always been uber chic when it came to fashion, and since her wedding reception would be held at the art gallery where she worked, it made total sense to go with an artsy kind of dress. I pulled a teal number off the rack. It had an asymmetrical hemline reminiscent of cubism.

  “Ooh, I like,” Zoe gushed.

  Terri looked up from her smartphone, on which she’d been thumbing another message on the Kettle of Fish dating site or whatever she’d called it. “Do they have it in a pastel color? I look better in pastels.”

  “Hey, maybe we can go with different colors,” I suggested. “That would look artistic. The guys could wear bow ties and cummerbunds to match.”

  “That’s a great idea.” Zoe handed me a skin-skimming yellow gown and Terri a soft pink, A-skirt style. “Here, try these.”

  There was no mirror in the actual changing room. So I quickly slipped into the gown and stepped out in front of the three-way mirrors.

  “Oh, it’s gorgeous,” Zoe gushed.

  I let out a strangled squawk and looked at her as if she had banana antennas coming out of her head. “Yeah, if you want me to look like a piece of fruit in one of Cézanne’s still lifes.” What was it about getting engaged that suddenly made a woman’s taste in dresses so . . . so . . . so . . . ?

  “Too many Cinderella movies,” a guy behind me said.

  Wait, did I ask that question out loud? My gaze shifted to the reflection in the mirror of a guy reclining on one of the upholstered chairs behind me. Billy? I spun around to face him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve been helping my buddy do deliveries for his dad’s furniture store across the street. And when I spotted you coming in here as we got back, I decided to see what you were up to. Figured I could use a laugh.”

  Zoe swatted him.

  Billy was Zoe’s cousin and my first crush—and first kiss, if you count a New Millennium’s Eve kiss at twelve years old when my worst fear was that the world would end with my never having been kissed. By the time I was old enough to date four years later, I was also old enough to clue in that Billy was a Casanova that any girl would have had to be an idiot to go out with. And apparently, every girl in his grade at school, three years ahead of me, was certifiable.

  Terri emerged from her dressing room in her pink number, looking like a grapefruit. It was unbelievable how poorly the dresses’ artistic promises translated on the canvas of our real-world figures.

  “Going for a tropical theme,” Billy deadpanned.

  I muffled a laugh since Zoe did not look amused.

  Terri’s gaze flitted to Billy, and she audibly gasped. “Why can’t guys on the dating site look like him?” she whispered.

  Billy was ex-military and looked as if he’d just walked off the cover of GI Quarterly. Add in his magnetic smile, and every shopper in the place was looking his way.

  “Go,” Zoe ordered.

  He stood and backed away from the viewing area, hands raised in surrender. “I was just trying to help.”

  Zoe shooed us back to the dressing rooms and delivered a parade of artsy-type dresses. The ones that suited Terri hung on me, although the clerk reassured Zoe a nip here and a tuck there would do the trick.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said feebly. To be honest, I was ready to wave the white flag and give the nod to Terri’s adored mauve chiffon number, reminiscent of the French Impressionists. It did absolutely nothing for me, but one day in an unflattering dress—and in a bazillion photographs forever—seemed less torturous than shopping a second longer.

  “No, the style doesn’t suit,” Zoe concluded. “Let’s try the next shop.”

  “How about we take a break and look at flowers?” I suggested. “My assistant’s parents own the flower shop up the block.”

  “Since when do you have an assistant?”

  “At the drop-in center, for my art class.” I slipped back into the dressing room to escape the cubist number.

  A few minutes later, we meandered out of the shop, and Terri, as ready as I was for a dress-shopping reprieve, said, “We might as well check out the flower shop Serena suggested while we’re so close.”

  Two doors down from the flower shop was a pawnshop with a vintage ’70s dress in the
window, complete with the daisy trim around the neckline. “That would be kind of cool,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind looking in here for a minute.”

  “It’s your day off,” Zoe said.

  “What’s that got to do with her wanting to go to a pawnshop?” Terri asked.

  “Because half the stuff in there was probably stolen and fenced.”

  I chuckled. “I wasn’t thinking of scouting for any cases, honest.”

  “Well, Jax and I have already picked out our wedding bands, so I’m good.” Zoe tugged me toward the flower shop. A bell above the door jingled as Terri pulled it open, but a familiar voice snagged my attention. I glanced back in time to see Tasha blowing a kiss to the man climbing out of her car in front of the pawnshop. A man who wasn’t her husband.

  He turned, and my breath hitched. Ted the exterminator. I tapped Zoe’s arm. “You go ahead. I want to check out one thing.”

  “You’re going to abandon us?”

  “Of course not. I’ll just be a few minutes.” By the time I turned back to the pawnshop, Tasha was speeding away, and Ted had disappeared. I don’t like this. Ted’s appearance at the drop-in center during Nana’s visit was looking more suspicious by the second. Tasha was a married woman. She shouldn’t be blowing kisses at another man. Nana was not going to be happy if Gladys’s thief turned out to be her own daughter and her . . . her . . . whatever Ted was to her.

  I peered through the pawnshop window but saw no sign of Ted. I scanned the street, the nearby shops, and the windows of the apartments above the shops. I’d turned away for mere seconds. For him to disappear so quickly, he had to have gone into the pawnshop.

  I slipped inside and smiled at the clerk, who looked like an extra out of a low-budget mafia movie. “Can you tell Ted I need to talk to him?” I said.

  “Who?”

  Right, Ted wouldn’t have given me his real name if he was spying on my conversation with Nana. “The guy who just came in here.”

  The clerk hesitated half a beat and then looked around. “You see anyone else in here?”

  I motioned to the door behind the cash desk. “In the back.”

  “There’s no one back there.”

  “Look, I saw him come in less than a minute ago. Blond, shaggy hair, has kind of a nasally southern drawl.”

  The clerk frowned and shook his head.

  I rounded the desk. “Mind if I look?”

  He stepped back, blocking the door. “Yeah, I’m not allowed to let anyone in there.” The twitch in his eye confirmed he was hiding something, although, this being a pawnshop, it wasn’t necessarily Ted.

  Maybe he had taken off somewhere else when I’d turned to speak to Zoe and Terri. I debated flashing my badge, but I suspected he was too savvy to give consent. Not to mention, I’d kept Zoe waiting long enough. “Thanks anyway.” I headed out.

  Zoe waved me over the second I opened the flower shop door. “What do you think of this arrangement for the church?” She showed me a picture.

  “Very nice.”

  Lisa, my assistant from the drop-in center, hurried over to me. “Did you hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Tyrone pulled his painting from the gala’s fundraising auction.”

  My heart sank. Tyrone was our most talented artist. “Why?”

  “He came by the drop-in center after school yesterday and spouted nonsense about not wanting to be a charity case and took it home with him. Didn’t even want to leave it hanging at the center for the open house.”

  “Maybe I should pay him a visit. See if I can change his mind.”

  “You can try. He sure didn’t want to listen to me.”

  “Please tell me talking to Tyrone can wait,” Zoe said. “We still haven’t picked out a dress.”

  “Of course, I’m all yours until five o’clock.” Then I had to hightail it over to Mom and Dad’s for dinner before Aunt Martha’s dislike of Nana overpowered her curiosity about the theft, and things got out of hand.

  Terri groaned.

  “What’s wrong?” Zoe and I said in unison.

  Terri swiped her fingers across her cell-phone screen, then slapped the phone against her leg. “My date just canceled. We seemed to be getting along so well too. I don’t know what I said.”

  Zoe gave her a sideways hug. “Maybe Serena can find you a guy. She’s good at it.”

  Terri’s eyes brightened. “The guy from the bridal shop?” she asked hopefully.

  “You don’t want him,” Zoe said. “Trust me. He’s my cousin. A nice enough guy. But a player.”

  A little of the light in Terri’s eyes dimmed.

  “Come on.” Zoe beckoned her back outside. “More dress shopping will make you feel better.”

  I slipped ahead of them to take another peek in the pawnshop window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ted.

  The window exploded with a burst of gunfire.

  10

  I spun away from the pawnshop window and made a dive for Zoe and Terri, taking them to the ground with me.

  Bullets ripped through the car beside us and whizzed over our heads, as if we’d landed in the middle of a Barnaby Furnas painting. Screams filled the air.

  The gunfire ended with a squeal of tires.

  I surged to my feet, gun drawn, and hunched behind a car for what little cover it gave, but the gunman’s car disappeared around the first corner before I could so much as make out the model. The hair on the back of my neck prickled. I scanned the sidewalks, the street. Deserted.

  This had all the marks of a gang hit, but—I glanced at the pawnshop’s shattered window, at my friends still splayed on the sidewalk—who was the target?

  Ignoring my stampeding heart, I holstered my weapon and turned back to Terri and Zoe. “You two okay?”

  Zoe sat up, visibly shaken, and swiped glass fragments out of her hair. “Of course we’re not okay! We just got shot at.”

  She must’ve sensed from my rigid stance that I’d gone into FBI mode, because her expression morphed from panicked anger to something akin to horror. “Please tell me those guys weren’t aiming at you.”

  Terri gasped. “They could’ve been gunning for you?” She army-crawled toward the aerated car at the curb and huddled next to the tire, hugging her legs with shaky arms.

  “No, of course not,” I said, not knowing if it was a lie. My hands fisted, my nails biting into my palms. What if she’d been killed because of me?

  “Are you sure?” Zoe pressed.

  Sirens filled the air.

  Movement inside the pawnshop caught my attention, and at the sight of the clerk nervously emerging from behind the counter, I expelled a breath. “Ninety-nine percent sure.”

  “Why on earth would you work a job that makes you enemies like that?” Terri asked.

  My mind flashed to the note Mr. Sutton had found taped to my door last night, but for Terri’s sake, I shrugged nonchalantly. “Adrenaline junkie, I guess.”

  I’d become so used to faking courage since starting the job that somewhere along the line, I actually began to embody the trait, if not quite feel it.

  Zoe must’ve sensed what I was trying to do because she forced out a chuckle. “More like she adores the hot agent who trained her.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Terri’s lips trembled into a semblance of a smile. “Does he have a friend?”

  I stared at her, at a loss for words. We’d just been shot at and she was still fishing for a date. Seriously? My phone rang.

  “See,” Zoe said. “That’s probably him now. He has this sixth sense about when she’s in trouble.”

  I glanced at Tanner’s name on my screen and got a shiver. Okay, this was too weird. I clicked on the phone as police cruisers surrounded the scene.

  “Please tell me you’re okay,” Tanner said, sounding worried.

  Zoe smiled smugly and mouthed, What did I tell you?

  Ignoring her, I turned and lowered my voice, last night’s warning ricocheting around my brain. “Why wou
ldn’t I be okay?”

  “I hear sirens.”

  “Oh, that. I was kind of in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Tanner let out a strangled sound.

  “What’s wrong? Why did you call?”

  Police cars swerved to block both ends of the street.

  “I got a note like yours.”

  I didn’t think my heart could pound any harder, but I was wrong. I scanned the street again as the police waved back the curiosity-seekers who’d emerged from hiding. But there was no sign of the lowlifes Tanner photographed at the Boathouse. “What did the note say?”

  “Back off or the girlfriend dies.”

  “But you don’t have a girlfriend.”

  Silence.

  Okay, maybe I just couldn’t hear him over the sudden roar in my ears. “They think I’m your—”

  “Girlfriend. Yeah.”

  “But were you working on your case today?”

  “No.”

  “Then it’s probably just a coincidence.”

  “Or proof they’re serious.”

  A police officer came out of the pawnshop and waved in a couple of waiting paramedics. The officer taking down Zoe’s and Terri’s statements glanced my way. A third officer cordoned off the scene with police tape.

  “Okay, what do you want me to tell the police?”

  “Nothing about the notes. The last thing I need is a bunch of detectives interfering.”

  The paramedics wheeled a victim out of the pawnshop on a gurney.

  Lucas? When did he go in there? “Uh,” I said to Tanner, “a suspect in my Dali case was hit. This might not be what you think.”

  “The note was pretty clear. And I’m not working your case.”

  “You did last night. When you followed us to Randy’s.”

  The paramedics loaded Gladys’s son-in-law into the ambulance. Awfully coincidental that he happened to be in the very pawnshop his wife had dropped her apparent lover off at less than—I glanced at my watch—forty minutes ago. Was he following Tasha?