by Donna Ball
“It turns out her parents would,” Bridget went on.
“Meredith Haven and Lynwood Haven,” put in Cici.
“Of the HavenHome Hotel empire,” Bridget finished.
“Harmony Haven is the heiress to one of the biggest hotel corporations in the world,” said Derrick, his expression stunned. “And we were worried about her credit card.”
“She told us she worked for Nissan,” Paul said, almost accusingly.
“She did.” Bridget gestured him to read on. “She struck out on her own right after college. During the time she was with Nissan they showed a forty percent growth. She was written up in Forbes.”
This time Paul did not even bother to stifle the groan. “Please, I can’t read on.” He thrust the iPad back toward Bridget. “Someone bring me a kitchen knife and let me do the honorable thing.”
“Before you do …” Derrick, swiping forward one page, turned the tablet toward Paul. The screen was filled with a picture of Harmony, dining with Paris Hilton.
Paul sank back against the wall, eyes closed, waiting to be put out of his misery.
Derrick shook his head in disbelief, staring at the photo. “No wonder she was able to put everything together so quickly. She is the hospitality industry. Those vendors must have dropped their teeth when she called.”
“But that’s good news, isn’t it?” Bridget said. “At least you know she did what she said she did.”
“And canceled everything the minute she left,” Paul said morosely. “Why wouldn’t she? We were awful.”
“Actually, “Derrick corrected politely, “you were awful. I just agreed with you.”
Paul glared at him. “You called her a ‘poor old soul.’”
Derrick winced. “I did.”
Paul turned back to Bridget. “We could try to call and re-hire everything but we don’t know who to call. And good luck trying to replace them two days before the event. It’s a disaster. An utter disaster.”
Lindsay, completely oblivious to the drama that was taking place behind her, stepped back from the painting and pronounced, “I like it. It’s a shame about the signature, though.”
Derrick came forward, glad for the distraction. “It might not matter,” he told her. “There’s an inscription on back, written in the same lead pencil as the signature, and even though the writing has faded on the signature, the inscription is perfectly readable.” He smiled. “The good news is, of course, that pencil leaves an impression in soft wood, so I’m confident I’ll be able to recover the rest of the signature in time.”
“How much do you think it’s worth?”
“It depends on the artist, of course,” Derrick said, “but I would guess a couple of thousand, at least.”
Cici’s eyes widened at that. “For something you found in the trash?” She came over to give the painting a more thorough examination, taking out her glasses. At length she took off the glasses and turned her skeptical gaze on Derrick. “No offense, Derrick, but if you can get two thousand dollars for that, you need to win salesman of the year. Your paintings are so much better,” she added to Lindsay.
Purline appeared abruptly through the arched doorway to the back hall, wearing denim shorts and a tight “Kiss Me” tee shirt, clutching a dishtowel in her hand. Her ponytail was swinging and her eyes were wide with alarm. “I thought you all told me you fixed your troubles with the law!” she accused in a stage whisper.
Paul pushed himself away from the wall, and Derrick turned to look at her.
“Why?” Paul said cautiously.
“We did,” Derrick insisted. “What’s happened?”
“Well, you’d better get that fancy lawyer of yours on the phone, then,” Purline said, “because there are two government men in the kitchen, with badges and guns. And they’re looking for you.”
~*~
The McDonald’s where Artie decided to have lunch—the man was wild about McDonald’s hamburgers—turned out to be only a couple of blocks from the Bluebird Apartments on the outskirts of Kansas City. That might have been a coincidence, but Josh didn’t think so.
He didn’t have much hope in Artie’s plan—start with where she was—but he didn’t have a better one. Besides, the little guy had brought him this far; the least Josh could do was try. So he left Artie in the McDonald’s parking lot with a paper sack full of hamburgers, chortling over some 1960’s sitcom on the Winnie’s grainy 13-inch television screen, and he started off down the kind of street where beer bottles and condoms littered the cracked sidewalks and guys hanging out around their battered Chevys gave him dark suspicious looks.
The Bluebird was no better than he had expected; a single squat cement block building with a dumpster out front and the last names of residents written on adhesive tape in front of a row of mailbox slots on the outside wall. Leda’s name was nowhere to be found, but that did not surprise him. He went down the row until he found the name and apartment number of the Super, then knocked on that door.
An Asian man in a soiled tee shirt answered, and when Josh told him he was looking for Leda, he replied, “Yeah, when you find her tell her she owes me three hundred dollars.” And slammed the door in his face.
Start with where she was. So he did: 212 was locked up tight and dead silent: 213 and 214 didn’t answer his knock; 216 looked at him with narrowed eyes through the slit between door and frame that was permitted by the chain, and muttered, “Never heard of her,” before he’d even finished speaking; 218 was a woman with carrot-colored spiked hair wearing a tank top and bike shorts. He could hear the baseball game on loudly in the background, and saw over her shoulder a man stretched out on the sofa beside a stack of empty beer cans. When Josh told her who he was looking for, she said, “Nah, can’t help you.” And she started to close the door.
Josh, by this time, hadn’t expected anything more, but for some reason he tried anyway. He said, “Well, if you do hear from her, tell her Josh was here, can you do that?”
The woman hesitated, then said abruptly, “Hold on.” She closed the door.
Josh stood there in the dank, smelly hallway with its stained industrial carpet and its smudged walls, uncertain whether to stay or go, until he started to feel like an idiot. “Crap,” he muttered, and just as he was about to turn away, the door opened a crack again and the woman appeared with an envelope in her hand.
“I thought you was her ex,” she said, and thrust the envelope at him through the opening. “Sorry about that. She left this, in case you was to come around. She said to tell you sorry about your car, but they had to sell it for parts when Eva—well, I guess you know about that. That’s all that’s left.”
Josh opened the envelope and flipped through the bills inside. A hundred eighty-two dollars. He felt a mixture of despair and urgency rise up inside him, threatening to choke off his voice. So close. So close …
“Where is she?” he managed. “I need to know where she went.”
The woman nodded curtly toward the envelope in his hand. “She wrote the address on the back,” she said. “Said she couldn’t wait for you any longer.”
Josh read the block printing on the back of the envelope, and felt hope turn, once again, to despair. “Virginia?”
The woman said, “That’s where her mama is.” And she closed the door before he could say anything else.
He stood there staring at the handwriting on the back of the envelope for a long time, feeling hopeful and hopeless and sick and exhausted all at the same time. No phone number, not even her mother’s name. Just an address in some little berg he’d never heard of in Virginia. Virginia. It might as well have been Mars.
Unless …
With sudden determination, he thrust the envelope into his pocket and left the building. He started walking fast, and then broke into a jog. A young man didn’t run in this neighborhood without getting some piercing looks, but he didn’t care. He waited impatiently for traffic to clear across the street from McDonald’s, then dodged between a lumbering delivery
truck and a windowless step van—no doubt a rolling meth lab—to race across the street to the parking lot. He was ready to shout, “Artie!” when he came up short, breathing hard, and looked around.
The Winnebago was gone.
There was a guy and a girl eating french fries in a faded red Camaro, an empty pickup truck, and a jeep. A black woman came out of the restaurant, noisily scolding two fussy kids. Josh went inside. He checked the men’s room. He walked quickly around the parking lot. Two cars were in the drive-through line. Neither of them was a Winnebago.
Artie had left him behind.
The disappointment that rose in his throat tasted bitter; it ached in his sinuses and burned behind his eyes. What had he expected? After all, their deal had been for Kansas City. But, damn, he was going to miss the crazy little dude. Not just the wheels, not just the sound of another voice on those long empty highways, not just the outrageous stories and funny snippets of altered history … but him. And he hadn’t even gotten a chance to say good-bye.
“Damn it,” he whispered, and he actually had to blink a couple of times to clear his vision. What was he supposed to do now?
That was when he looked up, and saw the bus station.
~*~
Lester Carson dropped his briefcase on the floor, shrugged out of his jacket, and was about to go to the bar to pour himself a drink when he stopped, staring at the giant fruit arrangement on his black marble foyer table. He started to ignore it and walk on, but found himself unable to. He turned back, picked up an oversized, glistening red globe by the stem, and called, “Mrs. Goddard!”
She came bustling around the corner, drying her hands on a paper towel. “I’m sorry, Mr. Carson, I didn’t expect you back so soon. I was just having a bite of lunch.”
“With this?” he held up the mysterious fruit, looking puzzled. “What is it, some kind of pomegranate?”
She smiled. “Amazing, isn’t it? Actually, it’s a cherry, and it’s delicious. The basket is from Paul Slater—all organic fruit from his garden in Virginia.”
Lester regarded the fruit skeptically. “Mrs. Goddard, I have traveled all over the world, and would you like to know what I’ve discovered to be the only difference between organic fruit and that which is commercially grown?” He dropped the cherry delicately back into the basket. “Worms.”
She looked amused. “How fortunate that he sent the basket to me, then, and not to you—as a thank you for the effort I’ve put into trying to persuade you to respond to the invitation to his grand opening.”
He groaned out loud. “All right, then it’s official. I’m a cad. For God’s sake, will you just write something up? I’ll sign it. I’ll send flowers. I might even …” he cast another rather pained look at the fruit basket on his way to the bar, “eat the fruit.”
She picked up the fruit basket. “You’ll have to fight me for it.”
Lester’s phone rang. He took it from his pocket, checked the ID, and answered quickly, his heart pounding.
“Good news,” said the man on the other end without preamble. “I’ve arranged a meeting.”
The private detective was a former Army intelligence officer, and a man of few words. Over the months of dealing with him, Lester had learned to emulate his example, although a hundred words, a thousand, were bubbling up inside him, closing his throat, choking his chest. Who? Why? Where? When? How? And perhaps most importantly, Are you sure? Please, please God be sure …
But the other thing Lester had learned in his brief sojourn into this aspect of covert operations was that men like this one did not respond well to questions, and they were always sure. He turned away so that Mrs. Goddard could not see the war of emotions on his face, and he said into the phone simply, “Where?”
“Virginia.”
“I can be there in three hours.” If he had to move heaven and earth.
“No good. Tomorrow, four o’clock. We pick the place, neutral, public. There’s a Holiday Inn about an hour away …”
Lester thrust his hand through his hair, frowning, trying to focus. “An hour from what? Where are you?”
“A little place in the middle of nowhere off 81, between Charlottesville and Staunton. It’s called Blue Valley.”
And suddenly, miraculously, it all fell into place. Lester Carson turned to look at the fruit basket Mrs. Goddard was re-wrapping in its protective cellophane covering and he thought, as though from a great and objective distance, There is a God. What do you know about that?
He said, “I think I know a place we can meet. I’ll call you back.”
“Make it quick. And Mr. Carson—if you’re serious about this, bring your lawyer.”
Lester Carson pressed the disconnect button and turned to his secretary. “Mrs. Goddard,” he said, very calmly, “will you please get Paul Slater on the phone? It turns out I’m available for his event after all.”
~*~
“Mr. Slater, Mr. Anderson.” The man with the bald head and the grim expression held out a badge for them to examine. His counterpart, a younger man with a pair of sunglasses tucked into the pocket of his suit coat, moved with quiet purpose around the room, looking out the windows, peering through doorways. “I’m Agent Keller and this is Agent Morrison. We’re with the United States Secret Service.”
Purline, Bridget, Cici, and Lindsay crowded in close behind Paul and Derrick, all of them knotted so tightly together that when the other man, the one who had been introduced as Agent Morrison, tried to edge past them to get to the doorway through which they had just entered, the entire group shifted, as one entity, to the right.
Paul swallowed hard, staring at the badge the agent presented. Derrick clutched Lindsay’s arm. It was Cici who spoke, carefully. “Secret Service? As in White House?”
The agent spared her a brief glance. “That’s right. We’ve already cleared the guest list, and we’re here to do a security sweep of the premises. It’s routine in the case of a possible visit by the former First Lady.”
Lindsay smothered a yelp as Derrick’s fingers dug into her arm. He said, “Do you mean … she is coming? Here? She’s coming here? To our party?”
“That’s not for me to confirm or deny,” replied Agent Keller, flat-faced. “As I said, this is standard procedure. Now if you’ll excuse me, we should be out of here in a matter of minutes.”
“Yes, yes, please, of course, be my guest.” Paul waved him through the door and the others, after a moment of shocked immobility, scattered apart. “Whatever you need, anything at all, just make yourself at home.”
He ushered the agent toward the front of the stairs and hurried to follow, pausing only to look back over his shoulder and mouth, Oh. My. God.
Less than half an hour later they all stood on the front porch and watched the black SUV disappear down the drive. Even Purline looked impressed. “The real White House,” she said with a shake of her head as she turned to go back inside. “Wait till I tell my kids about this.”
And Derrick agreed, still looking somewhat stunned, “Unbelievable.”
Bridget cautioned, “It’s not a sure thing. Just because they cleared this place doesn’t mean she’s coming. She’s pretty old, you know. “
“No, but it means she considered it,” Lindsay said. “That’s impressive enough, in my book.”
Derrick repeated, “Unbelievable.”
Paul said, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
They all looked at him.
“We really can’t call it off now,” he supplied bleakly. “I don’t have Nancy Reagan’s phone number.”
As though on cue, his cell phone rang. He glanced at the ID and, with a pained expression that suggested it could only be more bad news, excused himself to answer it.
Cici grinned, shaking her head. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
Derrick’s expression was a little offended. “I’m sorry, Cici, but I don’t see anything funny about this at all. Paul is right. We can’t call it off now. We have one of the most reve
red first ladies in modern history coming to our grand opening and we don’t have a caterer, a florist, a wine list …”
“And there is no one in the world better equipped to pull this off than you and Paul,” Bridget said.
Cici gave an emphatic nod. “Your dream house falls into a sink hole and you end up owning the only B&B in the county—and then proceed to turn it into a restaurant that people drive an hour and a half to come to. You lose your liquor license and end up starting a charity. You find a two-thousand-dollar painting in your trash pile. You take in a stray and she turns out to be an heiress. You lose the heiress and gain a First Lady. So what if none of those fancy Hollywood types bothered to RSVP? If she hadn’t invited them, you wouldn’t have started working your own network, and now you’ve got the entire east coast A-list on its way here. ”
“And they are going to have a fabulous time,” Lindsay said. “Do you know why?”
“Because you’ve never given a bad party in your life, for heaven’s sake,” said Bridget.
“Your only problem,” Lindsay added, “is that you make everything so complicated. You try too hard. Keep it simple. That’s why you moved here, isn’t it? For a simpler life? Just relax, things will work out. They always do.”
“Because,” said Cici, “some people have the magic touch. You guys are two of them.”
Derrick looked less than convinced. “Well, at least we have a caterer.”
“And wildflowers are very trendy,” Lindsay added.
Bridget kept a straight face, but her eyes twinkled as she offered, “And don’t forget Purline’s cousin is ready to sing. “
Derrick was about to respond to that when Paul came back onto the porch, an odd and thoughtful look on his face, as though he couldn’t decide whether to be delighted or horrified. “That was Lester Carson,” he said. “It turns out he can make it to the grand opening after all.” He met Derrick’s gaze with a look of cautious disbelief in his own. “We’re going to be written up in the New York Times.”