“Did you have any luck on the case today?” I asked, tucking a paper-covered platter into a box.
“None,” he said irritably. “I called the management on Taylor’s apartment and the reason the complex is under new management is because the old manager kept no records. At all. On anything. The new manager is still trying to get organized, and he’s got no idea if Taylor and Amber’s apartment was visited by the maintenance crew in the days before the bomb. I managed to track down one of the maintenance guys at the complex, and he tells me he’s so overworked he can’t remember the apartments he visited yesterday, let alone last month.”
“But you ran a background check on him all the same, right?” I asked.
Dutch nodded. “He checks out. No priors, no history of violence, or substance abuse. He’s worked for the complex for six years without any record of complaint to the local authorities.”
“What about this Peeping Tom Amber was telling us about?”
“Sherman Knocks. He’s got a solid alibi,” Dutch told me. “He’s currently serving time for a parole violation, and he’s been locked up for the past three months.”
“How about Taylor’s sister? Did you get anything on her?”
Dutch rubbed his face tiredly and poured another two fingers into his scotch glass. “Mary Greene. She went by the nickname Mimi. That’s about all I have on her,” he said. “Candice has been digging into her personal life, but I managed to find out that she worked at a Jamba Juice in the few months before she died. Her manager remembers her as sweet but shy. A little sad, she said. That was about all she could tell me. She wished she could’ve gotten to know her better, but Jamba Juice is a pretty busy place, or so she says. Not a lot of time for chitchat between the employees.”
I frowned. “That’s it?”
“That’s it,” he said.
“Did the manager remember the name of the guy that Mimi was going out with before she died?”
Dutch blinked. “I didn’t ask her,” he said. “Was I supposed to ask about him?”
I smiled. I didn’t think I’d given Dutch any specifics beyond digging into the girl’s past. “No, don’t worry about it, cowboy. I’ll call the manager when I get back on the case. Which Jamba Juice is it?”
“The one in south Austin, near Mimi’s last known address at an apartment off Seventy-one and Bee Cave.”
I scoured my internal map of Austin to locate the intersection. “Hey, that’s not far from Rita’s beauty shop, right?”
Dutch shrugged. “It’s about a mile give or take,” he said. “You thinking there’s a connection between Mimi and the salon?”
My skin felt tingly, like I’d hit on something, but I couldn’t quite figure out what. And the truth was that my radar was running on empty after a long day of clients and obligations. I sighed tiredly. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I’m feeling like we should learn more about Mimi. I can’t shake the feeling that she’s connected to all this.” Then I thought of something else. “Did you get ahold of the girls’ father?”
Dutch sighed. “No. Homeland has officially taken over the case, and they’ve got him locked up.”
“They put him in jail?”
Dutch smiled at me. “No, doll, they’ve instructed him not to talk to anyone but them while they root around in his past to see if there’s any connection between him and this terrorist group in Yemen. I can’t make contact with Greene without raising all kinds of red flags.”
“Well, that sucks,” I grumbled.
“We’ll just have to work around it,” Dutch replied as he lifted up a container of Bubble Wrap. “Meanwhile I better help you pack.”
I sighed again. “I’ve been working on this kitchen for the past two hours and I feel like I’ve hardly made a dent.”
Dutch chuckled and reached out to wrap me in his arms. His shirt was still damp from wearing the Kevlar all day. “Thanks for keeping your vest on,” I told him.
“I’m getting used to it,” he said, rocking with me in a slow dance around the kitchen. Just then his foot clunked against my cane, which had been propped against a chair. Looking down at it, he asked, “How’re the hips?”
I smiled up at him. “I barely used it today. I swear I’m more balanced than I’ve been in months.”
“You think you can make it down the aisle without Fast Freddy?” Fast Freddy was Dutch’s pet name for my cane.
“Maybe,” I told him. “But tell Milo to do some extra workouts with that left arm. I’ll probably be leaning hard on him.”
“Speaking of which, you think we can get this house packed, moved into the new digs, and get hitched in one week?”
“Do we have a choice?”
“We could always postpone it,” he said. My heart lifted. He was willing to postpone the wedding? “I mean, we don’t have to move into the new digs right away.”
My hopes sank back down. He’d meant postpone the move.
“Yeah, but honey, Bruce said we had to be out by the thirtieth,” I reminded him.
Dutch sighed. “You’ll have to do a lot of this on your own,” he told me. “I’m gonna be stuck at the office all weekend.”
I squeezed my arms around him tightly. What he didn’t know yet was that as of Monday he’d officially be on vacation and under orders to butt out. “Please don’t go anywhere other than the office. If I have to be here, I’ll go crazy if I know you’re out in the field.”
He kissed me on the top of the head and said, “I promise to stick close to home, babe. Maybe Gaston will give me a break. It’s not like we’re making progress on this. Maybe I can work some of the leads from home this weekend and help you out too.”
I looked up at him again. “Have I told you lately that I lurve you?”
He grinned. “You better, Mrs. Rivers.”
I felt my eyes bug and the breath catch in my throat. “Wha…what?”
“Oh, sorry, maybe I should save the Mrs. Rivers until after the ceremony. Speaking of which, you should do some research on filing for a legal name change.”
Was he serious? Since when had I agreed to change my name to his? Had we talked about this? And if we hadn’t, why hadn’t we? “Uh…Dutch?”
“Hmm?” he said, still dancing with me and holding me close to nuzzle against my neck.
“About the Mrs. Rivers thing…”
“Which reminds me, I need to put in the paperwork to get you a new badge. Don’t let me forget to do it on Monday, okay?”
I felt my heartbeat quicken. Oh, God…he was serious. I stopped dancing and stepped back. For a moment I couldn’t figure out how to tell him, and he eyed me curiously. “You okay?”
I wrung my hands and stammered some words, still trying to begin. “I…uh…see, the thing is…it’s not like I don’t…”
Dutch reached out and put a hand on my upper arm. “Edgar, what is it?”
I squared my shoulders and looked him directly in the eye. “I don’t want to be Mrs. Rivers.”
To say that Dutch looked stunned would be an understatement. In truth, he looked like I’d just slapped him in the face. Hard. “Ah,” he said, letting that hand fall to his own side.
I took a deep breath, about to explain that while I couldn’t wait to marry him, I’d been Abby Cooper for so long that I hardly knew how to be anything different. Plus, professionally it wasn’t a great idea for me to change my name, not with so many clients now scattered in two separate states. But before I could say any of that, Dutch had backed away from me, and without another word he turned, picked up his keys, and left the house.
I was so shocked by his abrupt departure that I just stood there, slack-jawed, for several seconds. I then moved to the front door, half expecting him to be on the front steps waiting for me to come after him, but all I saw was his empty space in the driveway and taillights already winding their way down the street.
With tears in my eyes I went to my phone and called him immediately, only to hear the sound of ringing coming from the kitchen. Walking there, I
found his phone on the counter next to the barely touched glass of scotch. And then I saw his Kevlar draped across the back of one of the chairs in the living room and my heart skipped a beat. “Dammit!” I swore. And I was so angry with myself I didn’t even vow to pay the swear jar later.
Instead I grabbed his vest and his phone and my own keys and headed out the door as fast as my hobbly legs would carry me. I drove in the direction Dutch had gone, but once I hit the top of the sub, I had no idea which way he’d gone. I flipped on my radar and turned right. I followed my intuition all the way to downtown, but where he’d gone within the confines of the city I couldn’t figure out. He could’ve checked his car into any one of the parking garages and gone into any one of the bars on Sixth Street or Congress Avenue. There had to be at least fifty to choose from.
By this time I was crying like a little girl. I’d hurt Dutch’s feelings and I had no idea how to make that up to him. He almost never registered such emotion. He almost always met my angry or thoughtless words with stoic calm. In the nearly four years I’d been with him, I’d never seen him react that way. And I’d had no idea that taking his name meant so much to him. But when I thought about it, should it? I mean, wasn’t that a bit old-fashioned and also wasn’t that a bit presumptuous?
Still, that look he’d given me. That hurt, wounded, rejected look haunted me, and I kept driving the streets searching and searching for him.
Finally I made it back home, hoping against hope that he’d come back too, but the driveway was empty and all the lights were still on from when I’d dashed out of the house.
Carefully I climbed up the steps—I’d left Fast Freddy at home—and as I turned the key, I heard a phone ringing. Quickly I pushed my way inside, nearly tripping over Tuttle, who rushed to greet me, and I scooped her up as I grabbed for my phone, which I’d also stupidly left behind. “Hello? Hello?” I gasped. I hadn’t even looked at the ID on the screen—I was so anxious to hear from Dutch.
“Abs?”
Dammit. Screw-the-swear-jar take two. “Hey, Candice,” I said, choking back a sob.
“Wanna talk about it?”
I wiped my eyes and slumped down on the couch. “Not really.”
“Okay,” she said. “No worries. Just wanted you to know that I took Dutch’s car keys away from him the moment he and Brice broke open the scotch.”
I sat forward. “He’s there?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, and not in a way that suggested she was particularly happy about it. Belatedly I remembered that Candice had told me she had planned a special date night out with her fiancé to help him relax after so many weeks of working so hard.
“What’d Dutch say?” I asked meekly.
“He says that you just told him you didn’t want to marry him.”
“What?!”
“His words, Abs, not mine.”
“Where the hell did he get that idea?!” (Okay, so at some point maybe I really would owe the swear jar a quarter or two.)
“According to him…from you.”
“I never said that!”
“Then what did you say?” she asked, all patience and solicitude.
“I merely told him that I didn’t want to be Mrs. Rivers!” The moment it was out of my mouth, I knew what I’d done.
There was a pause, then, “Ah. I see how he could be confused.”
“Oh, shit, Candice!”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she said, in that way that suggested it might not be.
Getting up, I hobbled into the kitchen and dug for my wallet.
“Abs?” she asked. “You still there?”
I tugged open the zipper on my change purse, then thought better of it and pulled out all the money I had there, from all six clients that day. “Yeah,” I told her, moving over to shove the bills into the swear jar. “But I need to go. I’ve got some credit to work off.”
The next morning Dutch crept through the door at just before six. He looked haggard and hungover. I probably wasn’t looking much better. I’d stayed up the entire night packing and trying to think of a way to make it up to him. Around four a.m., after I’d run out of things to shove into a moving box, I thought I knew. Since then I’d been waiting with foot-tapping impatience for him to come home.
Dutch paused in the doorway and his eye lit on me as I sat on the ottoman I’d pushed a few feet in front of the door. With a nervous smile I held up a velvet blue box wrapped in a silver bow that I’d had tucked away in my sock drawer for the past few weeks. I’d been saving the gift for our wedding night, but right now I needed a Hail Mary, and the gift was a good one.
As Dutch continued to stand there half in the door, half out, I leaned forward and said, “Dutch Rivers, will you please marry me?”
For several seconds his eyes flickered between me and the box, his face expressionless. My heart started to pound. What if he said no?
Into the horrible silence I tried to insert some levity. “I’d get all the way down on bended knee, but I don’t know that I could do it without falling over.”
Dutch just stared at me.
“You know, ’cause of my hips,” I said, clearing my throat as heat began to rise up from my neck and spread across my face.
Stare.
My arm was starting to tire and my back hurt from leaning forward and holding the box aloft, and the awkwardness of the situation was getting to me. “How about those Longhorns?”
Stare.
I opened my mouth to start singing the theme to Jeopardy! when Dutch at last spoke. “Why the change of heart?”
I let the hand holding the box drop back to my lap. “Cowboy, I swear to God, it’s not what you think.”
He eyed me skeptically.
“Seriously!” I insisted, unable now to even tell him that it’d merely been a poor choice of words to let him know that I didn’t want to change my last name.
“So now you do want to get married?”
I stood. Keeping it simple might be best. “Yes, Dutch. I do. With all my heart I do.”
“You’re sure?”
I stepped forward to him. “More than ever,” I whispered, offering him the box again, praying with everything I had that he’d accept it.
He hesitated only another second or two before he reached up and took my wrist, pulling me close to wrap me in his arms. “Thank Christ,” he said softly. “For a minute there I thought we were gonna have to tell your sister the wedding was off.”
I laughed and cried at the same time. “I love you, cowboy. Don’t ever forget it, and don’t ever doubt it, okay?”
“What’s in the box?” he asked after a moment.
I leaned back and took up his hand to place it in his palm. “I was saving it for our wedding night, but now that I think about it, it’d probably go better with your tuxedo.”
Dutch kissed me and moved us to the couch, where he undid the bow and opened the lid. Whistling, he gently lifted out the two-tone Submariner Rolex with deep blue outer rim, and gold face inset with sapphires and diamonds. And, although it looked new, the truth was that it was preowned—no way could I have afforded it otherwise. Even so, the gorgeous timepiece had cost more than my first car. And my second. Combined. It’d taken me months to save up for it, and it’d still put a sizable dent in my savings.
“Edgar…,” he whispered. “This is gorgeous.” I smiled slyly. Dutch was a great admirer of timepieces. He had several antique watches in a small leather box upstairs, and the Tag Heuer I’d given him on Valentine’s Day many moons ago was one he wore daily. “But, doll,” he added, “this must’ve cost a fortune.”
My smile widened. “Now you know why I’ve been skimping on the swear jar.”
Dutch chuckled, looping one arm around my neck to bring me close for a kiss. “How about we forget that damn thing and just let you be you?”
I turned my head to look over to the dining room table. The large pickle jar was the only packable object in the house that I hadn’t thrown into a box, and it was now c
rammed with bills. Squirming slightly out of his hold, I sat back and said, “Can we please put that into our wedding vows?”
“Done,” he said, slipping on his new watch and marveling at its splendor. “Thanks, sweethot,” he added in his best Humphrey Bogart lisp. “And yes, by the way.”
“Hmm?”
“Yes. I’ll marry you.” And he sealed that promise with a kiss.
* * *
By eight o’clock we’d finished reconsummating our reengagement, and as the house was pretty much completely packed, Dutch made us both breakfast while I waited on the movers to come and stack our things into the two storage pods they were bringing along. “What needs to stay here?” Dutch called from the kitchen while he whisked a bowl of eggs. I’d left him precious little to cook with, but he seemed to be managing.
“I think just our bed from upstairs and maybe two of the kitchen chairs and those TV trays,” I told him. “I mean, we’re only here until Tuesday morning, and we can get by with just that.”
Dutch paused his whisking. “No couch?”
“Honey, everything needs to go in the pod. We can have the movers bring down our bed and set it up in here along with the TV from up there, which I think will fit just fine in your car.”
“What about the bed?”
“I thought I’d rope Dave into helping us move it to the new house after the closing on Tuesday, seeing as he’s feeling guilty at the moment for the damage done to the landscaping.”
Dutch came out into the living room, wiping his hands on a towel. He surveyed the space and said, “Yeah, okay. Have ’em bring down the bed. But I’m not sure about moving it to the new house.”
“Why not?”
“The mattress is lumpy. And frankly I never did like that bed frame.”
Dutch’s bedroom furniture was a bit dated, but we lived with it because I’d only brought a queen-sized bed along when we’d moved in together and merged furniture. He had the king. “Well, we can worry about that later,” I said, moving to the door because I heard a large truck coming to a halt outside our house. “For now let’s just worry about moving and getting hitched.”
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