Blue Dahlia gt-1

by Nora Roberts

  him up, they'd do it some other time.

  But there she was, kneeling on the ground, with that damn hair curling all over the place and the sun hitting it. Those blue eyes, that cool Yankee voice.

  "Sure, Thursday's good. You want me to pick you up here or at the house?"

  "Here, if that's okay. What time works best for you?"

  "Maybe around one. That way I can put the morning in."

  "That'll be perfect." She rose, brushed off her gloves and set them neatly on the cart. "Just let me put together a price for these planters, make you up an order form. If she decides against them, just bring them back."

  "She won't. Go ahead and do the paperwork." He dug a many folded note out of his pocket. "On these and the materials I've got down here. I'll load up."

  "Good. Fine." She started inside. The itch had moved from her shoulder blades to just under her belly button.

  It wasn't a date, it wasn't a date, she reminded herself. It wasn't even an outing, really. It was a gesture.

  A goodwill gesture on both sides.

  And now, she thought as she walked into her office, they were both stuck with it.

  NINE

  "I don't know how it got to be Thursday."

  "It has something to do with Thor, the Norse god." Hayley hunched her shoulders sheepishly. "I know

  a lot of stupid things. I don't know why."

  "I wasn't looking for the origin of the word, more how it got here so fast. Thor?" Stella repeated, turning from the mirror in the employee bathroom.

  "Pretty sure."

  "I'll just take your word on that one. Okay." She spread out her arms. "How do I look?"

  "You look really nice."

  "Too nice? You know, too formal or prepared?"

  "No, just right nice." The fact was, she envied the way Stella looked in simple gray pants and black sweater. Sort of tailored, and curvy under it. When she wasn't pregnant, she herself tended to be on

  the bony side and flat-chested.

  "The sweater makes you look really built," she added.

  "Oh, God!" Horrified, Stella crossed her arms, pressing them against her breasts. "Too built? Like,

  hey, look at my boobs?"

  "No." Laughing, Hayley tugged Stella's arms down. "Cut it out. You've got really excellent boobs."

  "I'm nervous. It's ridiculous, but I'm nervous. I hate being nervous, which is why I hardly ever am."

  She tugged at the sleeve of her sweater, brushed at it. "Why do something you hate?"

  "It's just a casual afternoon outing." Hayley avoided the D word. They'd been over that. "Just go and have fun."

  "Right. Of course. Stupid." She shook herself off before walking out of the room. "You've got my cell number."

  "Everybody has your cell number, Stella." She cast a look at Ruby, who answered it with chuckle.

  "I think the mayor probably has it on speed dial."

  "If there are any problems at all, don't hesitate to use it. And if you're not sure about anything, and

  can't find Roz or Harper, just call me."

  "Yes, Mama. And don't worry, the keg's not coming until three." She slapped a hand over her mouth. "Did I say keg? Peg's what I meant. Yeah, I meant Peg."

  "Ha ha."

  "And the male strippers aren't a definite." She got a hoot of laughter out of Ruby at that and grinned madly. "So you can chill."

  "I don't think chilling's on today's schedule."

  "Can I ask how long it's been since you've been on a date—I mean, an outing?"

  "Not that long. A few months." When Hayley rolled her eyes, Stella rolled hers right back. "I was busy. There was a lot to do with selling the house, packing up, arranging for storage, researching schools and pediatricians down here. I didn't have time."

  "And didn't have anyone who made you want to make time. You're making it today."

  "It's not like that. Why is he late?" she demanded, glancing at her watch. "I knew he'd be late. He has

  'I'm chronically late for mostly everything' written all over him."

  When a customer came in, Hayley patted Stella's shoulder. "That's my cue. Have a good time. May I help you?" she asked, strolling over to the customer.

  Stella waited another couple of minutes, assuring herself that Hayley had the new customer in hand.

  Ruby rang up two more. Work was being done where work needed to be done, and she had nothing

  to do but wait.

  Deciding to do her waiting outside, she grabbed her jacket.

  Her planters looked good, and she figured her display of them was directly responsible for the flats of pansies they'd moved in the past few days. That being the case, they could add a few more planters,

  do a couple of half whiskey barrels, add some hanging pots.

  Scribbling, she wandered around, picking out the best spots to place displays, to add other touches that would inspire customers to buy.

  * * *

  When Logan pulled up at quarter after one, she was sitting on the steps, listing the proposed displays

  and arrangements and dividing up the labor of creating them.

  She got up even as he climbed out of the truck. "I got hung up."

  "No problem. I kept busy."

  "You okay riding in the truck?"

  "Wouldn't be the first time." She got in, and as she buckled her seat belt, studied the forest of notes

  and reminders, sketches and math calculations stuck to his dashboard.

  "Your filing system?"

  "Most of it." He turned on the CD player, and Elvis rocked out with "Heartbreak Hotel." "Seems only right."

  "Are you a big fan?"

  "You've got to respect the King."

  "How many times have you been to Graceland?"

  "Couldn't say. People come in from out of town, they want to see it. You visit Memphis, you want Graceland, Beale Street, ribs, the Peabody's duck walk."

  Maybe she could chill, Stella decided. They were just talking, after all. Like normal people. "Then this

  is the first tic on my list."

  He looked over at her. Though his eyes were shielded by the black lenses, she knew, from the angle of his head, that they were narrowed with speculation. "You've been here, what, around a month, and you haven't gone for ribs?"

  "No. Will I be arrested?"

  "You a vegetarian?"

  "No, and I like ribs."

  "Honey, you haven't had ribs yet if you haven't had Memphis ribs. Don't your parents live down here?

  I thought I'd met them once."

  "My father and his wife, yeah. Will and Jolene Dooley."

  "And no ribs?"

  "I guess not. Will they be arrested?"

  "They might, if it gets out. But I'll give you, and them, a break and keep quiet about it for the time being."

  "Guess we'll owe you."

  "Heartbreak Hotel" moved into "Shake, Rattle, and Roll." This was her father's music, she thought. It

  was odd, and kind of sweet, to be driving along, tapping her foot, on the way to Memphis listening to

  the music her father had listened to as a teenager.

  "What you do is you take the kids to the Reunion for ribs," Logan told her. "You can walk over to Beale from there, take in the show. But before you eat, you go by the Peabody so they can see the ducks.

  Kids gotta see the ducks."

  "My father's taken them."

  "That might keep him out of the slammer."

  "Whew." It was easier than she'd thought it would be, and she felt foolish knowing she'd prepared several avenues for small talk. "Except for the time you moved north, you've always lived in the Memphis area?"

  "That's right."

  "It's strange for me, knowing I was born here, but having no real memory of it. I like it here, and I like to think— overlooking the lack of ribs to date—that there's a connection for me here. Of course, I haven't been through a summer yet—that I can remember—but I like it. I love working for Roz."

 
; "She's a jewel."

  Because she heard the affection in his tone, she shifted toward him a bit. "She thinks the same of you.

  In fact, initially, I thought the two of you were ..."

  His grin spread. "No kidding?"

  "She's beautiful and clever, and you've got a lot in common. You've got a history."

  "All true. Probably the history makes anything like that weird. But thanks."

  "I admire her so much. I like her, too, but I have such admiration for everything she's accomplished. Single-handedly. Raising her family, maintaining her home, building a business from the ground up.

  And all the while doing it her own way, calling her own shots."

  "Is that what you want?"

  "I don't want my own business. I thought about it a couple of years ago. But that sort of leap with no parachute and two kids?" She shook her head. "Roz is gutsier than I am. Besides, I realized it wasn't

  what I really wanted. I like working for someone else, sort of troubleshooting and coming in with a creative and efficient plan for improvement or expansion. Managing is what I do best."

  She waited a beat. "No sarcastic comments to that?"

  "Only on the inside. That way I can save them up until you tick me off again."

  "I can hardly wait. In any case, it's like, I enjoy planting a garden from scratch—that blank slate. But more, I like taking one that's not planned very well, or needs some shaping up, and turning it around."

  She paused, frowned. "Funny, I just remembered. I had a dream about a garden a few nights ago. A really strange dream with ... I don't know, something spooky about it. I can't quite get it back, but there was something ... this huge, gorgeous blue dahlia. Dahlias are a particular favorite of mine, and blue's

  my favorite color. Still, it shouldn't have been there, didn't belong there. I hadn't planted it. But there it was. Strange."

  "What did you do with it? The dahlia?"

  "Can't remember. Luke woke me up, so my garden and the exotic dahlia went poof." And the room,

  she thought, the room had been so cold. "He wasn't feeling well, a little tummy distress."

  "He okay now?"

  "Yeah." Another point for his side, Stella thought. "He's fine, thanks."

  "How about the tooth?"

  Uh-oh, second point. The man remembered her baby'd had a loose tooth. "Sold to the Tooth Fairy for

  a crisp dollar bill. Second one's about to wiggle out. He's got the cutest little lisp going on right now."

  "His big brother teach him how to spit through the hole yet?"

  She grimaced. "Not to my knowledge."

  "What you don't know... I bet it's still there—the magic dahlia—blooming in dreamland."

  "That's a nice thought." Kill it. God, where did that come from? she wondered, fighting off a shudder.

  "It was pretty spectacular, as I recall."

  She glanced around as he pulled into a parking lot. "Is this it?"

  "It's across the road. This is like the visitors' center, the staging area. We get our tickets inside, and they take groups over in shuttles."

  He turned off the engine, shifted to look at her. "Five bucks says you're a convert when we come back out."

  "An Elvis convert? I don't have anything against him now."

  "Five bucks. You'll be buying an Elvis CD, minimum, after the tour."

  "That's a bet."

  * * *

  It was so much smaller than she'd imagined. She'd pictured something big and sprawling, something mansionlike, close to the level of Harper House. Instead, it was a relatively modest-sized home, and

  the rooms—at least the ones the tour encompassed—rather small.

  She shuffled along with the rest of the tourists, listening to Lisa Marie Presley's recorded memories

  and observations through the provided headset.

  She puzzled over the pleated fabric in shades of curry, blue, and maroon swagged from the ceiling and covering every inch of wall in the cramped, pool-table-dominated game room. Then wondered at the waterfall, the wild-animal prints and tiki-hut accessories all crowned by a ceiling of green shag carpet in the jungle room.

  Someone had lived with this, she thought. Not just someone, but an icon—a man of miraculous talent

  and fame. And it was sweet to listen to the woman who'd been a child when she'd lost her famous

  father, talk about the man she remembered, and loved.

  The trophy room was astonishing to her, and immediately replaced her style quibbles with awe. It seemed like miles of walls in the meandering hallways were covered, cheek by jowl, with Elvis's gold and platinum records. All that accomplished, all that earned in fewer years, really, than she'd been alive.

  And with Elvis singing through her headset, she admired his accomplishments, marveled over his elaborate, splashy, and myriad stage costumes. Then was charmed by his photographs, his movie

  posters, and the snippets of interviews.

  * * *

  You learned a lot about someone walking through Graceland with her, Logan discovered. Some

  snickered over the dated and debatably tacky decor. Some stood glassy-eyed with adoration for the

  dead King. Others bopped along, rubbernecking or chatting, moving on through so they could get it

  all in and push on to the souvenir shops. Then they could go home and say, been there, done that.

  But Stella looked at everything. And listened. He could tell she was listening carefully to the recording,

  the way her head would cock just an inch to the right. Listening soberly, he thought, and he'd bet a lot more than five bucks that she followed the instructions on the tape, pressing the correct number for the next segment at exactly the proper time.

  It was kind of cute actually.

  When they stepped outside to make the short pilgrimage to Elvis's poolside grave, she took off her headphones for the first time.

  "I didn't know all that," she began. "Nothing more than the bare basics, really. Over a billion records

  sold? It's beyond comprehension, really. I certainly can't imagine what it would be like to do all that

  and ... what are you grinning at?"

  "I bet if you had to take an Elvis test right now, you'd ace it."

  "Shut up." But she laughed, then sobered again when she walked through the sunlight with him to the Meditation Garden, and the King's grave.

  There were flowers, live ones wilting in the sun, plastic ones fading in it. And the little gravesite beside

  the swimming pool seemed both eccentric and right. Cameras snapped around them now, and she heard someone quietly sobbing.

  "People claim to have seen his ghost, you know, back there." Logan gestured. "That is, if he's really dead."

  "You don't believe that."

  "Oh, yeah, Elvis left the building a long time ago."

  "I mean about the ghost."

  "Well, if he was going to haunt any place, this would be it."

  They wound around toward the shuttle pickup. "People are awfully casual about ghosts around here."

  It took him a minute. "Oh, the Harper Bride. Seen her yet?"

  "No, I haven't. But that may only be because, you know, she doesn't exist. You're not going to tell me you've seen her."

  "Can't say I have. Lot of people claim to, but then some claim to have seen Elvis eating peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches at some diner ten years after he died."

  "Exactly!" She was so pleased with his good sense, she gave him a light punch on the arm. "People see what they want to see, or have been schooled to see, or expect to. Imaginations run wild, especially under the right conditions or atmosphere. They ought to do more with the gardens here, don't you think?"

  "Don't get me started."

  "You're right. No shop talk. Instead, I'll just thank you for bringing me. I don't know when I'd've gotten around to it on my own."

  "What'd you think?"

  "Sad and sweet and fascinating." She passed her headphones
back to the attendant and stepped on the shuttle. "Some of the rooms were, let's say, unique in decor."

  Their arms bumped, brushed, stayed pressed to each other in the narrow confines of the shuttle's seats. Her-hair skimmed along his shoulder until she shoved it back. He was sorry when she did.

  "I knew this guy, big Elvis fan. He set about duplicating Graceland in his house. Got fabric like you saw

  in the game room, did his walls and ceilings."

  She turned to face him, stared. "You're kidding."

  He simply swiped a finger over his heart. "Even put a scar on his pool table to match the one on Elvis's. When he talked about getting those yellow appliances—"

  "Harvest gold."

  "Whatever. When he starting making noises about putting those in, his wife gave him notice. Her or Elvis."

  Her face was alive with humor, and he stopped hearing the chatter of other passengers. There was something about her when she smiled, full out, that blew straight through him.

  "And which did he choose?"

  "Huh?"

  "Which did he choose? His wife or Elvis?"

  "Well." He stretched out his legs, but couldn't really shift his body away from hers. The sun was blasting through the window beside her, striking all that curling red hair. "He settled on re-creating it in his basement, and was trying to talk her into letting him put a scale model of the Meditation Garden in their backyard."

  She laughed, a delightful roll of sound. When she dropped her head back on the seat, her hair tickled his shoulder again. "If he ever does, I hope we get the job."

  "Count on it. He's my uncle."

  She laughed again, until she was breathless. "Boy, I can't wait to meet your family." She angled around

  so she could face him. "I'm going to confess the only reason I came today was because I didn't want to spoil a nice gesture by saying no. I didn't expect to have fun."

  "It wasn't a nice gesture so much as a spur of the moment thing. Your hair smelled good, and that clouded my better judgment."

  Humor danced over her face as she pushed her hair back. "And? You're supposed to say you had fun, too."

  "Actually, I did."

  When the shuttle stopped, he got up, stepped back so she could slide out and walk in front of him.

  "But then, your hair still smells good, so that could be it."