The Queen of Cool (26 page)

“
No,” Amanda said. “But I
could use some help unpacking when it’s all here.”

“
Done,” Lo said.

Amanda leaned down to hug her. Lo kissed her
cheek.

“
You’re a sweet girl,
Amanda,” Lo said.

“
Sweet and
spicy.”

Laughing, Amanda did a spicy dance down the
hallway. Lo waited until her door closed to open the book again. It
was only a matter of time before someone realized the form was
here. That must be why Don had made her leave their wonderful
dream.

Lo gasped. Someone had already realized the
invoice might be there. The morning Alisha called after she went
for a run, Jaden was here waiting for her. Yazmin made a joke about
him liking her food, but he must have come to look for the
invoice.

Careful not to smudge any fingerprints, Lo
took the form by the edge and jogged down the stairs to the garage.
Amanda and Rick had left the horse trailer at the stables. Mutt had
stacked some of Lisa’s heaviest storage boxes on top of the safe
opening. Even after not lifting for weeks, Lo easily moved the
boxes and the concrete cover to the safe. She tucked the form into
the safe and closed the door. She was just moving the block back
when she heard: “Mom?” coming from upstairs. Lo moved the boxes and
jogged up the stairs.

“
What are you doing?”
Alisha asked when Lo came up.

“
Did you come for
breakfast?” Lo asked. Alisha nodded.

“
What were you doing down
there?” Alisha asked.

“
I thought I had a tampon
in the car,” Lo said.

“
Did you?” Alisha
asked.

“
No,” Lo said.

“
I have one in my room,”
Alisha said. “I’ll get it.”

“
Thanks,” Lo watched her go
into her room. When she was inside, Lo grabbed the wedding book and
tucked it behind the couch again. Somehow, in all her haste, the
Post-it with Don’s notes on it got stuck to the armchair. Lo picked
it up. She was almost to her room when Alisha came out.

“
Here,” Alisha gave her a
tampon.

“
Thanks,” Lo
said.

She gave a little wave and went into her
bedroom. She stashed Don’s Post-it into her day planner and went
into the bathroom. She opened the tampon, put the wrapper in the
trash and flushed the inside. Unsure of what to do, she hopped in
the shower. She’d just finished her shower when the door
opened.

“
Lorraina?” Yazmin
asked.

“
In here,” Lo
said.

Yazmin held a towel for her.

“
Alisha said you were
looking for a tampon,” Yazmin said. “Did you…?”

“
No,” Lo said. “I needed an
excuse to be in the garage. I had to put something in the
safe.”

“
So you’re
still…”

“
We’re still on track,” Lo
said.

“
I was so worried.” Yazmin
hugged her. “Breakfast?”

“
Whatever the girls want,”
Lo said.

“
Okay, hot dogs and catsup
it is,” Yazmin said.

Lo laughed. Unsure of what to do about the
form, Lo put it out of her mind. She needed to be the Queen of Cool
today. She needed to pay for Don’s gravestone. Maybe an answer
would come to her.

She hoped it would come soon. Humming the
tune she and Don had danced to in her dream, she got ready for
work.

Q

Saturday afternoon—3:25 p.m.
Near Sansom Park, Fort Worth

Days: 56

Before everything had happened, Lo had
ordered a gray marble statue of an angel for Don’s grave. She’d
ordered the statue just days after he’d died. Of course, when she’d
ordered the statue, she hadn’t given a thought to how much it cost.
He was laid to rest in the Downs family plot at Oakwood Cemetery.
She ordered the angel to watch over Don while he rested so near to
his evil father. Certain she’d join him soon, she had her name
etched beside Don’s for the spot that waited to hold her body.

She’d paid for half of the statue when she
ordered the angel. Since all of her finances were frozen, and the
house destroyed, she hadn’t been able to pay the rest. The idea
that Don lay in the ground without anything protecting him ate at
her. How could Don find heaven without an angel to guide him? Was
Henry torturing his son in death like he had in life? When she’d
seen the stacks of bills in the gun safe, her first thought was
that she could get Don his angel.

But she’d been running from place to place,
worry to worry, child to child, and now job to job since removing
the money from the safe.

Today, Don’s once-blue-and-now-silver truck
was loaded with air conditioning units to be delivered less than a
mile from where she’d purchased the monument. Lo dropped off the
air conditioning units and headed over to the monument office.

After today, Don would have his angel
watching over him. Lo felt excited and relieved that this windfall
would make Don’s angel possible. She checked to make sure the money
was still in her purse and went inside.

“
I’m here to finish paying
an invoice,” Lo took the money out of her purse. “I think there’s
enough here to cover the bill.”

“
Sure,” the man at the door
said. “What’s the name?”

“
The angel is for Donald
Downs,” Lo said. “I’m Lorraine Downs.”

“
I thought so,” the man
smiled. “The Queen of Cool herself.”

Lo smiled.

“
Give me a second,” the man
said. “I’ll go check.”

He went to the back of the store. Lo took a
seat to wait for him. After five minutes, she began to wonder if he
had disappeared. She felt a wave of relief when he finally
appeared. She stood to greet him.

“
Sorry for the wait,” the
man said. “Your angel isn’t here.”

“
What?” Lo’s heart dropped.
She’d waited too long. Don would spend eternity without his angel.
“What do you mean it’s not here?”

“
It’s not here,” the man
said. “That’s why I was gone so long. I couldn’t find it anywhere
in our system.”

“
I paid for half,” Lo said.
“Surely, you wouldn’t have destroyed it!”

“
We tried to phone you,
Mrs. Downs,” the man said. “We never were able to get a hold of
you.”

“
You didn’t call the Queen
of Cool!” Lo said.

“
No, ma’am, you’re right,”
the man said. “I’m embarrassed to say we did not.”

“
Where is it? Where is
Don’s angel?” Lo asked.

“
I asked the same question,
ma’am,” the man said. “I made a few calls to find out what happened
to the angel.”

“
And?”

“
I’m sorry ma’am,” the man
said. “It seems that the angel was placed.”

“
Placed?” Lo asked. “You
mean Don’s angel watches over someone else?”

“
I can’t be certain until
one of our men calls me back. He’s on vacation in Mexico. It might
be a while,” the man said.

“
Oh,” Lo bit her lip to
keep from crying.

“
The invoice was paid for
by a Sy Monquist? Do you know him?”

Lo nodded.

“
From what I can tell, he
came in and paid for two invoices,” the man said. “His wife’s
monument and the angel you ordered. I haven’t been able to
determine what happened to the angel.”

As if it made sense to her, Lo nodded.

“
Why don’t I take your
number and I’ll see if I can track this down?”

Lo rattled off the number to her cell phone
and wandered out of the store. Dazed, she sat in the truck for a
few minutes before deciding two things. First, she was going to go
to the cemetery and apologize to Don. And second, Sy Monquist was
going to see the end of her wagging finger.

On the drive to Oakwood cemetery, Lo
practiced what she would say to Mr. Special Voodoo Prince Sy
Monquist and just how she would say it. She was almost to the Downs
plot before she realized she was going to see Don’s grave.

This was the one place in the entire world
she did not want to go. She didn’t want to see actual proof that
Don was gone. She didn’t want to see where Don had disappeared into
the earth. She didn’t want to have concrete proof that the very
best thing in her life was gone.

Yet here she was.

Looking across the dry grass and ancient
monuments, she saw something new in the Downs plot. She closed her
eyes and rested her head against the steering wheel. She hadn’t
spent enough time here to know for sure if there was something new
there. She’d have to check.

Lo willed herself out of the truck. She
forced herself to walk through the empty cemetery to the Downs
plot. Smoke from the wild fires burning nearby gave her journey a
sage and smoke flavor. She lowered her head and walked to the
cement curb that marked the boundary of the Downs plot.

Don’s angel sat over his grave.

Don was not alone.

Henry couldn’t torture him now.

“
Oh Don,” Lo
whispered.

Lo fell to the grass and wept. She had been
strong for so long that the pain came pouring out. For the first
time in weeks, she was overcome by her tidal flood of grief. Her
well of sorrow had no bottom. She lay in the grass and time passed.
She felt the day age and the evening come.

Lying in the grass, she felt a small hand on
her shoulder. When she didn’t move to look, the hand grabbed her
shoulder. She still couldn’t move. The hand shook her.

“
You must come back
Lorraina,” a women’s voice with a thick North Texas accent
said.

Lo turned to look. Blinking against the late
day’s sun, she couldn’t quite make out the woman’s face. The woman
shifted to cover the sun to reveal the lined face of Mutt’s mother.
Unlike the traditional gypsy image, Mutt’s mother looked every bit
the wealthy Texan.

“
There has been a break
in,” Mutt’s mother said. “Someone has turned your home upside down.
Yazmin was helping Miss Lisa in the front house when she went to
start your dinner. She walked in on them.”

Q

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Gasping, Lo jerked to get up from Don’s
grave.

“
No, no,” the elderly woman
said. “Don’t move so fast. You’re not all the way back.”

“
But Yazmin!” Lo tried to
get up again. The elderly woman held her in place. “I have to get
to her. She…”

“
Yazmin is with my Matthew.
You have to let him comfort her,” Mutt’s mother said. “Besides, he
asked me to help you, care for you; I am here.”

“
But you don’t understand,
she…”

“
She is fine. The men? They
are in the hospital.” The woman tipped her head back and gave a
practiced Gypsy laugh. Lo smiled at her pretense. Mutt’s mother
winked. “She told me to tell you, ‘No man hurts Yazmin.’ She said
you would know what that means.”

Lo smiled. She had insisted that Yazmin
learn self defense. She’d made her practice with Don, Mutt and even
a few of her clients. She wanted Yazmin to feel strong and capable.
If the men were in the hospital, clearly Yazmin was more than
capable.

“
No buts,” Mutt’s mother
said. “She is fine. I would not lie about the mother of my
grandchildren.”

The woman helped Lo to her feet.

“
Yazmin says your wedding
album is missing,” Mutt’s mother said.

“
I have it. It’s in the
car,” Lo said. “I was going to get a couple of the photos enlarged
for the girls.”

“
Good girl,” Mutt’s mother
said. “Now, will you join me in a Gypsy tradition?”

She held up a Dr. Pepper and a pizza box. Lo
looked the woman up and down. Regardless of Gypsy tradition, her
designer jeans, diamonds, silk blouse and scarf hardly looked
picnic ready.

“
While the police sort out
your home, we can commune with our Donny,” she said.

“
Commune?” Lo
asked.

“
I will show you,” The
woman smiled. “It works only for the Romani born.”

“
But Don…”

“
His mother was my sister.
He’s a didikai, a half-Romani,” Mutt’s mother said. “We never told
him. I don’t remember why. Something someone decided. I always
thought Matthew would tell him.”

“
Mutt never said a word,”
Lo said. “I wondered. We had so many Romani in our life. I’ve lived
here in Fort Worth my entire life. Before I met Don, I never knew a
single Gypsy.”

“
Yes, we tend to keep to
our own,” Mutt’s mother smiled. “Your father was a friend to us.
One of my cousins knew your mother. We would never have encouraged
Don to marry you if you were a complete stranger.”

Unsure of what she meant, Lo smiled.

“
Join me,” Mutt’s mother
said. “We’ve been to visit with him every week. Matthew has kept it
clean so you won’t know. I guess it doesn’t matter now.”

Lo looked at the woman.

“
Yes, Lorraina, it’s a
boy,” Mutt’s mother said. “Yazmin wants my sister to come to see
you to make sure.”

“
Your sister?” Lo
asked.

Mutt’s mother smiled.

“
Vera’s grandmother is your
sister?” Lo felt as if a question she’d never quite been able to
form was being resolved. “You’re Mutt’s mother. Vera’s grandmother
is your sister. Don’s mother…”

“
Was our youngest sister. A
baby really, although she was older than I was when I got married,”
Mutt’s mother said. “She was desperate for a normal, non-Gypsy
life. She wanted to live in a big house next to a golf course. She
wanted to marry a rich boy with a trust fund. Our mother doted on
her. When Henry Downs wanted children to complete his image, she
arranged their marriage.”