Sleeping with Anemone (32 page)

“No. Does your mom know you’re here? Because she’d probably rather not have you hanging out with me right now.”

Tara pulled a magazine from the stack and began to turn the pages with her greasy fingers. “Nope. But it’s okay. I saw Unky Hunky in the back. Where did you get these magazines?”

I ignored her Marco reference. “Your aunt Portia left them.”

“Cool. Now we can find you a dress.”

“Don’t bother. I’ve decided to wear jeans.”

“Yeah, right.” Snickering, she turned the page. “No way.” She turned another page. “Ug-o!” As she flipped through the magazine, I heard, “They can’t be serious.” “Oh. My. God.” “Is this a joke?” And finally, “Awesome! This is more like it.”

Tara turned the magazine so I could see it. “This gown is totally you, Aunt Abby.”

I glanced at it as I took a big bite of pizza. “Sure it is, if I were a foot taller and weighed less than you.”

Tara stuck her tongue out at me, then turned more pages until she found another that met her standards. “Okay, you can’t say this one isn’t you.”

“That one isn’t me.”

By the time Marco returned, I’d downed one and a half slices and Tara had gone through two magazines. “Have some pizza,” I said. “Lottie ordered it for us.”

“That was nice of her,” Marco said, taking a seat across from me. “Hey, Tara, what’s up?”

“What do you think of this gown?” she asked, swiveling the magazine in his direction.

“Don’t answer,” I said. “It’s a trick question.”

“No, it’s not,” Tara said. “Don’t you think Aunt Abby would look awesome in this?”

Marco helped himself to the pizza. “If I say yes, will I get into trouble?”

“Who was on the phone?” I asked.

“I got two calls,” he said. “The first was from Rafe. He’s got the afternoon shift today, so, besides needing a ride to work, he wanted me to know he won’t be there to meet Mama at the apartment. I’ll have to meet her.”

“Wait. Your mother’s coming in
this
afternoon? You told me she was coming tomorrow.”

“That’s because Rafe told
me
she was coming tomorrow. He said his brain froze the moment he heard her voice and everything she said after that was garbled. She’s coming in around three thirty, so I told him to take my car to work. With everything else going on, I don’t have time to drive him out to Maraville. I’ll just use the Vette.”

Nice of him to ask. At least that meant Rafe couldn’t borrow it.

“Can I go with you?” Tara asked, batting her pale eyelashes at him.

“Sorry, Short Stuff. I’ve got too much to do. Some other time, okay?”

“Here’s what you can do for me,” I said to Tara. “Take the magazines to the workroom and tear out pictures of gowns that would look good on me. That’s
me
, Tara, not your aunt Portia, or Jillian, or Miley Cyrus, or Hannah Montana.”

“Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana are the same person, Aunt Abby.”

“I knew that.”

Rolling her eyes, Tara stood up and started to reach for the magazines, then paused. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Yes.” I picked up the stack and held them out. “Here you go.”

“Fine. I’ll do it. What do I get in return?”

I reached under the table and squeezed Marco’s knee so he’d play along. “Should we tell Tara now or wait until she finishes?”

“Tell her now,” Marco said. “No, make her wait.”

Tara narrowed her eyes at me, but she clearly was afraid to call my bluff. She took the magazines and left the room.

Marco reached for another slice of pizza. “What are you going to give her?”

“I’ll have to think of something. Who was the second caller?”

“Mr. Oke, the Hawaiian antiques dealer. He asked me to take a photograph of the brooch and e-mail it to him. He wanted to know how I happened to contact him, so I explained how you found it in your flower shipment. I knew he wasn’t quite buying my story, so I told him to get in touch with Reilly if he wanted to check out my credentials.

“That apparently did the trick because then Mr. Oke explained that a brooch matching that description had been stolen from a museum’s display of antique Hawaiian royal jewelry on January twenty-fourth. He said if your brooch is the one in question, he’ll have to notify the FBI.”

“Holy cow, Marco. We’ve been treating that brooch as a piece of costume jewelry.”

“It might be costume jewelry. We don’t know yet if your brooch is the same one that was stolen, but I’ll admit the timing is interesting.”

“On the other hand,” I said, “isn’t it kind of far-fetched to think a thief would ship a valuable Hawaiian brooch to New Chapel?”

“Not all that far-fetched. Mr. Oke said there are collectors all over the world who pay exorbitant amounts of money for rare pieces, stolen or not. The collectors go through a middleman who connects them with the art or jewelry they’d like to add to their collections. Some of these middlemen are the actual thieves. They can be notoriously wealthy and are often extremely dangerous. The FBI is working on a case like that in Chicago right now, looking for a man known as the Flame.”

“Art collectors actually buy stolen merchandise?”

“Are you kidding?
Museums
buy stolen merchandise. There’s a big black market for art and antiquities. But do you understand what this means? If the brooch you found is actually this priceless Hawaiian jewelry, and it came in a shipment that was supposed to go to Tom’s Green Thumb, then someone at Tom’s is in on the theft.”

“How realistic is it to imagine Harding could engineer the theft of a Hawaiian brooch?”

“He might have met someone in prison who told him about the scheme. A lot of that goes on behind bars. If Harding knew he was going to be released for treatment, he could have arranged to be the middleman, or he could have volunteered Honey for that job.”

“Let’s imagine that the brooch came to Bloomers instead of going to Tom’s Green Thumb. Then someone on the other end had to slip it in the box and send it to him, right?”

“You got it. Which tells me the thief would be employed by your supplier, or be the supplier himself.”

“I can’t imagine Mr. Mikala being the thief. Lottie has been ordering from him for a long time and has never had a problem. And yes, I know you can’t judge a person’s moral character by that. So what do we do now?”

“The first step is to take detailed photos of the brooch and e-mail them to Mr. Oke so he can verify its authenticity. I wouldn’t be surprised if the FBI showed up asking to see it, either.”

“My mom still has the brooch. We’ll have to stop by there after work.”

Marco wiped his hands. “Okay, let’s do this. I need to go down to the bar and finish some bookkeeping and cut checks for the crew. After that, I’ll run out to Tom’s Green Thumb and see what else Robin can tell me—like how Charlotte might have gotten anemone petals stuck in her shoe. Then I’ll head over to my apartment to wait for my mom. In the meantime, you call your mom and let her know we’ll be by after five o’clock.”

“That’s my part? Make a phone call?”

“Your part is to stay here where it’s safe.” Marco glanced around to see if the other customers were watching, then leaned down to give me a lingering kiss. “Tonight we’ll go out for a nice meal at Adagio’s and finally have that discussion. How does that sound?”

Better than dining at the country club with the wedding hunters. “It sounds perfect, except for one thing. Your mother will be here. Are you going to leave her at your apartment alone on her first night in town?”

“Oh. Right. Well, we’ll just have to find time to be alone together after dinner.”

“What about your PI case?”

Marco thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “We’ll make it work somehow.”

Unless Marco was a magician, I didn’t see how.

 

My frustration level rose another notch as I watched Marco head out of the parlor. There had to be something I could do besides make one phone call. Musing, I packed up the leftover pizza and stowed it in the refrigerator, then stopped to check on Tara’s progress.

“How’s it going?”

She sighed and tossed the magazine onto her discard pile. “It’d be going a lot better if you weren’t so picky. Can I take the rest home with me and look later? I’m bored.”

“No.” I picked up the stack and stuck them in my desk drawer. “That’s how rumors get started.”

“Fine. So when do I get my reward?”

“Tomorrow.” I’d have to come up with something quick.

Tara gave me an obligatory hug, took a fresh daisy from the cooler for her hair, and left.

I saw a few orders on the spindle, but knew I could whip them out in no time, so I sat down at the desk to call my mom while she was on her lunch break at school. To reach her, I had to go through the school’s secretary, Midge, and have her paged.

Although I told Midge it wasn’t an emergency, Mom still answered with a breathless, “Abigail, did something happen? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Mom. I just need to let you know I’ll be stopping by the house later. I have to pick up the anthurium brooch.”

“Today? But I haven’t finished with it yet.”

“I know, and I’m sorry, but it’s possible the brooch might be a valuable piece of jewelry stolen from a Hawaiian museum.”

“And I’m making copies of it?” she whispered into the phone. “Am I going to get into trouble?”

Her copies weren’t
that
good. “No, Mom. You won’t get into trouble. But I do need to find out if it
is
the stolen brooch. So will you have it out for me, say, shortly after five o’clock?”

“I might not be home, so I’ll tell your dad where it is so he can have it waiting. I’m meeting with my dissension team after school.”

“Your what?”

“Dissension team. You know, dissenters. Protesters. I told the other teachers about Uniworld’s plans to open a dairy farm and use bovine hormones on the cows, and all of them volunteered to help. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Help you do what exactly?”

“You’ll see. I’ve got to phone your father before the bell rings. Keep me posted on the brooch, honey. And try to make it to dinner tonight. Bye.”

Mom had a dissension team? At least there was safety in numbers.

Lottie came through the curtain and headed toward the kitchen. “Joe’s here for a UPS delivery. I’ll let him in.”

“Wait. I’ll do that, Lottie. I want to talk him.”

I hurried through the kitchen to the back door and threw my shoulder against it to push it open. Joe, a lanky guy with bushy brown hair, came striding up to the door carrying a huge box.

“Got some flowers for you.” He put the box on the landing, then handed me a pen and a clipboard. “Sign here, if you would.”

“I’ve got a question,” I said, scribbling my name on the paper. “Is it possible you delivered a package to Tom’s Green Thumb on January twenty-eighth that should have come here?”

Joe’s cheeks reddened. “Someone had to sign for it, right? Wouldn’t they have noticed if someone else’s name was on the packing slip?”

“You’d think so.” Except that I’d just signed for an order of flowers without checking first. Obviously we needed to pay attention when we accepted deliveries. “Have there been any reports in the last month of anyone posing as a UPS driver?”

“No,” he said with a wary glance. “Why?”

I wasn’t about to go into the whole long story. “I thought I’d heard something about it.”

Joe hesitated, then said, “Look, you didn’t hear this from me, but someone at Tom’s Green Thumb did complain about a missing order round about that same date. That’s not my route, but guys talk, you know? So the driver tells them he doesn’t know anything about a missing order and maybe they should check to see if another flower shop got it. That didn’t make them very happy. So the driver got canned. You see why I like to keep my mouth shut?”