by Julie Miller
Two miles down the road, she saw a yellow house on the hill. “Think that’s it?”
“I’m sure it is. I’ll do a pass-by first,” Cal said.
“Good idea,” she said. Cal didn’t speed up or slow down as he drove by the two-story farmhouse. There were no cars in the driveway. That didn’t mean much. There was a separate two-car garage. Pietro could be parked there. Visitors, too, she supposed.
What was clear was that there had been some activity at the house recently. The driveway was partially cleared of snow, the work of a shovel probably, versus a snowblower. Someone had made a path wide enough for one car that led up to the garage.
She couldn’t tell if there were footsteps in the snow leading from the garage to the house but she assumed so. When she got close, she’d be able to tell if it was one set or multiple.
Once they crested the hill and were out of sight of the house, Cal slowed down quickly and stopped the vehicle. “I’ll walk from here, through that field, and circle around behind the house. Ten minutes should be plenty.”
He was going to be walking in knee-high snow, with waist-high drifts in places. He was going to get soaked. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Absolutely.” He pulled on his gloves. “If something goes wrong,” he said, “your job is to get the hell out of here. Don’t worry about me.”
“Nothing is going to go wrong.”
He turned toward her and before she realized his intent, he’d pulled her toward him. He kissed her hard. It was fast, intense and made her want more. “You got that right,” he said and opened his door.
If she’d thought it was difficult to wait three minutes before going into the diner, ten minutes was an eternity. In the entire time, no cars came from either direction. That was good in that there was no one to see Cal sprinting across the field.
She couldn’t believe the man was running through the snow. He was clearly in amazing shape. It would have been quicksand to her but he was acting like it was warm surf.
At seven minutes he was too far away to distinguish from the trees that ran the perimeter of Pietro’s property. At exactly ten minutes, she put the car into Drive and took off.
The driveway leading up to the house worried her and something told her that she didn’t drive in snow very often. As she made the turn, the back tires lost traction and the rear end swerved. She got the vehicle under control, stayed in the path and drove up to the house.
She did not see Cal but she knew he was there.
She got out, listening carefully. She didn’t hear anything unusual. She studied the footprints in the snow. It was hard to tell whether it had been one person making multiple trips between the house and garage or multiple people making one trip. She stepped up onto the porch, looked for a doorbell, didn’t see one and started knocking.
About a minute later, the inside door opened. A middle-aged man with dark hair cut short and heavy, black-framed glasses stood beyond the screen door. He was wearing gray sweats and a white T-shirt. That almost made her smile because that was what she’d been wearing when she’d borrowed Cal’s clothes. If she hadn’t changed, they’d have been twins.
The man was holding a yellow pepper in his hand. That boosted her courage. Men with yellow peppers were harmless. This had to be Pietro, the chef.
He looked around her, as if he was trying to figure out how she’d ended up on his porch. He didn’t show any signs of recognizing her but if the Mercedes Men had showed Lena her picture, it was a good hunch that they’d also shown the chef.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
She smiled. “I’m sorry to bother you but you recently catered my wedding and I just wanted to tell you what a wonderful job you did.”
There was no change of expression. She started to get very nervous.
“I...uh...got your name from Lena at the diner,” she added.
“How was the pork?” he asked.
“Delicious,” she said.
“The rosemary potatoes?”
Uh. “Fragrant. Wonderful.”
“Good.” His tone was flat.
She remembered that Lena had said that he needed his ego stroked. Maybe delicious and wonderful weren’t enough. Fragrant probably didn’t even count. She should have gone for something more. Awesome. Best ever. Cooking-show worthy. “I was wondering if you had a card or something that I could give to my girlfriends. A couple of them are getting married soon.”
He scratched his head. “No. Listen, I don’t mean to be rude but I’m in the middle of something.”
She understood why he’d become a chef and stayed in the kitchen. He didn’t have the personality to interact with customers. “But—”
He slammed the door in her face.
She wanted to kick it open and demand more information. But that didn’t necessarily seem like the thing to do.
She walked to the SUV and got in. He hadn’t cleared enough of the driveway to pull around, so she had to back down the lane. It allowed her to keep an eye on the house. She still did not see Cal.
She turned, drove over the hill, slowed and stopped. It was almost twelve minutes before she saw Cal coming across the field. Once he got close, she got out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger seat. He entered the vehicle in a burst of cold air and pure male.
“Did you hear?” she asked.
“Every word,” he said.
“Where the heck were you?” she asked.
“Behind the garbage cans next to the garage. I wanted to see what vehicle was in the garage and then I wanted a position where I had a clear shot at the front door.”
He said it without emotion and she knew that had Pietro presented any danger to her, Cal would have stepped in quickly and taken care of things.
“I didn’t get anything,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“You got something. I don’t think Pietro and your groom—”
“He’s not my groom,” she interrupted.
He smiled. “Okay. How about we just call him G for short. I don’t think Pietro and G were friends. He pretended not to recognize you but when you mentioned the food, you didn’t surprise him. That was plain. And it was smart to try to reel him in with the mention of friends who might need catering. But he was so clearly done with you. That has to mean something. And I think it speaks to his relationship with...ah, you know who.”
It struck her that he was being deliberately a little provocative and silly to make her feel better. He had realized that she’d be bitterly disappointed and had wanted to head that off at the pass.
Cal Hollister was a very nice guy.
“Maybe G and his friends have given up looking for me,” she said.
“Maybe,” he said. They reached the highway. Cal made the required stop. “I stuck around for a few minutes to see if he was going to make any phone calls. He didn’t. Just picked up a big knife and attacked the pepper with a vengeance. You coming to his house bothered him. I don’t know why. But I think it might be important.”
“Should we go back? Should we get the truth out of him?”
“Are you willing to hurt him to do that?”
“I... No. No, I’m not.”
“Then I don’t think so. It would take some persuasion. Our best bet is to go to Moldaire College. It’s just a little east of Kansas City. That’s a ninety-minute drive from here. We could check it out. There are also four bridal stores in the area.”
“Let’s go,” she said.
They got back on the Interstate and it was smooth sailing. They didn’t talk. Yet the silence was comfortable. She closed her eyes. The next thing she knew he was gently shaking her shoulder. The vehicle was stopped.
“We’re here.”
She blinked. “I don’t know why I can’t stay awake.”
“Well, there’s probably a good reason. Earlier you said that you woke up in the trunk feeling sick. You do realize that you were probably drugged. That takes a toll on the body if it happened repeatedly.”
She swallowed hard. “I thought of that,” she said. “That first night in the hotel, in the shower, I... I looked for...signs to see if I’d been raped.”
The car started to roll and he slammed his foot on the brake and shoved it into Park. “I should have taken you to the damn hospital,” he said, clearly angry with himself.
She reached out and touched his arm. “I wasn’t. I know I can’t be sure but I really don’t think anything like that happened.”
“I want to kill them all for making you even have any doubt.”
If she hadn’t already started to love Cal Hollister, that would have been the push that sent her tumbling down the slide. “Thank you,” she said.
He still looked so troubled. “Where to now?” she asked, hoping to get him refocused.
He looked around. They were in a parking lot, surrounded by stone buildings of varying heights but none over four stories. The buildings were solid structures with heavy, arched windows and big doorways. These were buildings that had been here for a long time, probably a hundred years.
“I don’t know much about Moldaire,” he said. “It’s private and very expensive. It was way out of my price range when I was looking at colleges. It’s not Ivy League but probably somewhere in the second tier of that group.”
“How big?”
“Maybe six to eight thousand students. Liberal arts focus if I remember correctly.”
She looked around. There were huge trees, bare of leaves, beautiful with fresh snow clinging to their branches. There were heavily bundled-up students walking fast, their heads down to avoid the cold.
“See anything that rings a bell?” he asked.
There was something but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “You said that Pietro was a chef here at the student union. Let’s go have lunch there.”
“You didn’t answer me when I asked if anything rang a bell. Talk to me.”
“I have been here before,” she said slowly. “I’m not sure when or why but this place is familiar to me. And I think I was here recently.”
“Okay. That’s exactly why we’re not going to the student union. Too big, too many potential casualties if something goes wrong.”
“But—”
He shook his head. “We’ll drive around the campus. Give you a couple more vantage points. That’s the best I’m willing to do today. Maybe this will be enough to trip that little wire in your brain and everything will be clear as mud tomorrow.”
“I hope so,” she said.
He stopped at four more places around the picturesque campus. Once near the dorms, once by the science building, once down the street from the administration building and once near the student union, which was one of the larger buildings. There was a sign advertising the restaurant inside and a telephone number to contact if someone was interested in renting a room in the Union Hotel, which by the looks of the building were probably the upper floors. Nothing felt more or less familiar. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“No problem.”
He didn’t even sound disappointed and she wanted to cry. After the encounter with Pietro, she’d had her hopes pinned on this. “We’re running out of clues.”
“That’s the glass half-empty. You might say we’re narrowing the possibilities. Half-full.”
“Does my glass have alcohol in it?”
“A truly excellent scotch.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think I drink scotch.”
“Ah, but I do.” He picked up his cell phone. Pushed a few buttons. “Let’s go dress shopping.”
“Four words I never expected to hear Cal Hollister say,” she muttered. “Maybe you’ve already been drinking.”
He smiled. “Maybe I love shopping.”
“And maybe I love cleaning fish.” She paused for effect. “I think we’re both lying.”
It was a crazy little conversation to be having on a cold day in the middle of the nowhere but it had accomplished exactly what she suspected Cal had intended. There was no time for a pity party. She needed to keep moving forward. The answers were somewhere. She just needed to turn over the right rock.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jo-Jo’s Bridal Boutique was in a strip mall, in between a dry cleaner’s and a nail salon. They parked in front and watched for a few minutes. Two women, probably a daughter with her mother, came out of the shop carrying a garment bag. No one went in.
“We should be prepared for the possibility that your picture was flashed around here. If G showed your picture to Lena and Pietro, there’s a possibility of that. Sort of a see my beautiful bride, now give me the perfect dress for her kind of moment.”
“How do we play this?”
“As close to the truth as possible. Our goal is to get information on G and the rest of the Mercedes Men. How about we tell them that you recently got married after your fiancé surprised you with a wedding dress but now you’re attempting to resell the dress and you have a buyer who won’t pay the price you’re asking unless she sees an original invoice?”
“They might not be inclined to want to be helpful. After all, every resold dress is one less new dress they might sell.”
“You’ll pull it off,” he said confidently. He opened his door. “Let’s do this.”
The store was small and stuffed with mostly white and ivory bridal gowns. On the far wall was an assortment of colored dresses suitable for bridesmaids.
There was one store clerk, a middle-aged woman with her glasses on the far end of her nose. When she greeted them, she looked over the top of her glasses. “Good afternoon. My name is Ann. What can I help you with?”
“Hi. My name is Mary and this is my stepbrother, Tom. I recently got married. My fiancé surprised me with this gorgeous dress.” She held out Cal’s phone so that the woman could see the picture of the dress and the close-up of the label. “I think he bought it here. It was so sweet. And now I feel terrible but I don’t want him to know about some of my credit card bills. I need to get them paid off before the next statement comes. I’m hoping to resell my dress and I’ve got a buyer but she won’t pay the price I’m asking unless she sees the original receipt. I can’t ask my husband,” she finished.
Ann pushed her glasses up and took another long look at the picture. Then she walked over to one of the racks and flipped through the long dresses. Finally, she turned. “I wish I could help. We sell that designer but not that particular dress. I don’t think he bought it here.”
She bit back her disappointment. “Oh, I’m so sorry to have bothered you, then. You don’t happen to have any idea where he might have gotten it?”
“You might try the Dream a Little Dream on Cleveland Avenue. They’re our biggest competitor.”
She recognized the store name from the list she and Cal had created. “Thank you so much,” she said.
She and Cal walked back to the SUV. He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “Nicely done. You took my story and made it better.”
It had been effortless and it made her think that she was accustomed to doing things like this. “I think I must be an accountant. Lying doesn’t seem to bother me.”
He laughed. “Figures lie and liars figure.”
She looked at his phone. “How far away is Cleveland Avenue?”
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
They had to wait for a train so it took them seventeen minutes. The two-story store was on the corner of a busy intersection. The area was more commercial and more upscale. There was an art studio next door and a big bank across the street.
They parked and went insi
de. There were several salesclerks, all helping customers. She and Cal pretended to look around until another salesclerk walked out of the back room.
“Can I help you?” the girl asked. She was young, maybe not even twenty, and she wore a very short skirt.
“I’m Mary and this is my stepbrother, Tom,” she said, launching into her story. When she got to the part about the credit card debt, the salesclerk nodded, as if she understood that particular predicament.
“I was here that day,” the salesclerk said. “I wasn’t waiting on your fiancé but I did see your picture. He was showing it to everyone.”
Just like Cal had thought. “It’s embarrassing,” she said, rolling her eyes.
The girl laughed. “We all thought it was cute but we weren’t sure when he said he was going to surprise you with the dress. Most of our brides like to pick out their own dresses. I know I’d want to.”
“It was a lovely gown.” She gritted her teeth.
“One of my favorites. And that’s saying something since we have over 200 different styles. You must have had a real spur-of-the-moment wedding.”
“Because....” She let her voice trail off.
“Because hardly anyone wants to buy a gown right off the floor,” the salesclerk said. “They want to order a new gown, one that hasn’t been tried on by other customers. But when we told your fiancé that was how it generally worked, he said that he had to have the one off the rack.”
“It was really sweet of him to take care of it. That’s why I feel awful now. But do you think you’d have the original invoice? Maybe if I could just take a quick cell phone picture of it so that I could send it to the buyer.”
The girl scratched her head. “We might have it back in the office.” She glanced around the store. “I guess everyone else has been waited on.”
“I know that I’m taking you off the sales floor and you probably work on commission. I’ll make it worth your while.” It was just one more thing to add to the list of items that she needed to repay.