Dearly Depotted (34 page)

Reilly gave the EMT a nod, letting him know it was okay for me to be there, and then the door was shut behind me. I sat beside Grace, holding her cool hand in mine, telling her she would be all right. At the county hospital she was whisked into the emergency room, leaving me to pace the waiting room alone. Marco arrived within minutes and pressed a cup of coffee in my hand, leading me to a bank of orange chairs.

I sank into the molded plastic seat and held the cup under my nose, breathing in the bittersweet coffee aroma. I took a sip and let it sear down my throat. Marco sat silently beside me, understanding that I needed time to process all that had happened.

“I feel so stupid for letting myself be duped,” I said. “I should have sensed something was wrong with Sheila right from the start. She was always so helpful, so forthcoming with information . . . I thought I was smarter than that.”

“Sunshine, it happens to the best of us.” He put his arm around my shoulders and let me lean against him. “You learn as you go along. And by the way, when you talk to Grace, let her know Richard is out of jail. The Texas case was dismissed and he was cleared of all charges. That should make her feel a whole lot better.”

I let out a heavy sigh of relief and closed my eyes. “Have you ever thought you were about to die?”

“Many times.”

“You know those words you think of in those dark, scary moments, words you know you should have said but somehow never got around to saying? Then the moment passes and you tuck them away?” I paused, trying not to let him see my chin tremble. “You know what I thought when that blade came down at me? That I should have told Grace what a wonderful friend she’d been to me.” My voice caught.

Marco turned me to face him, then brushed a wisp of hair away from my eyes. “You’ll have a chance to tell her. She’s a strong woman.” His eyes searched mine. “So are you.”

Reilly came walking up to us and crouched in front of my chair. “Are you doing all right?” At my nod, he rose to his full height and gazed down at me in that superior cop way. “Good.”

“Are you about to give me a lecture?” I asked, swiping away a tear.

“Yes.”

I settled against Marco’s warm shoulder with a contented sigh. “Fire when ready.”

He started to shake his finger at me, then stopped. “What’s the use? It wouldn’t do any good anyway.”

“It’s taken you a long time to figure that out, Reilly.”

 

Grace was diagnosed with a concussion and admitted to a room to be watched overnight. Within an hour, she was sitting up, talking, and asking for tea. Lottie had come down to the hospital as soon as she heard the news, so I asked Marco to take me home so I could de-stress.

But before I left, I asked for a moment alone with Grace to tell her the news about Richard. Plus, there was something I needed to say to her.

“What is it, dear?” she asked, gazing at me with some concern as I took her hands and held them between mine.

I gave her the wonderful news about Richard, and after she’d absorbed it, I took a deep breath and said, “I want you to know something. You mean a lot to me.”

She seemed surprised. “Thank you, Abby. You mean a lot to me, too.” She gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “It’s been quite a day, hasn’t it?”

“That’s the understatement of the year. Listen, would you do me one little favor before I leave? Would you give me a quote?” I felt silly asking, like a child needing a bedtime story.

She thought a moment. Then she cleared her throat and said, “As Oscar Wilde wrote, ‘One can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes crowding into one single hour.’ I think that’s quite fitting, don’t you?”

“Perfect.”

 

“Do you still have that bottle of wine I gave you Monday night?” Marco called from the kitchen. “Never mind. I found it.”

I had changed into a pair of fresh jeans and a T-shirt, put on a Harry Connick Jr. CD, and was stretched out on the sofa, letting the music float over me. Nikki was at work, and Simon was sitting in my bedroom window watching a gigantic spider spin a web just outside the screen, leaving the apartment to me and Marco, who at that moment came in with two glasses and the chilled bottle, sat down, and put my bare feet on his lap. He poured the wine and handed me a glass, then touched his rim to mine as we toasted life and friendship and good timing.

For a while we just sat there listening to the music and letting the wine roll over our tongues. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I was thinking how fortunate I was to have him watching my back, and how much I wished it could be like this between us all the time.

As Marco refilled our glasses I said, “Remember what I was telling you in the waiting room, about those things that never get said?”

He put his glass on the coffee table, swung my feet off his lap, and leaned over me, holding me with his enigmatic gaze. “Sometimes they don’t need to be said.”

He pressed his mouth against mine. A sense of his masculinity curled around me, and my heart thumped as though I was about to leap off a cliff into the dark unknown.

I didn’t have a chance to explore that cliff, however, because there was a rap on the door.

My first thought was that Grace had taken a turn for the worse and someone had come to give me the bad news. But surely I would have received a telephone call from the hospital.

“Expecting company?” Marco asked.

“No. I can’t imagine who it would be.” I glanced at the clock on the bookcase. “It’s eight thirty. That’s too early for Nikki, and she’d use her key anyway.”

“Maybe you should answer it and find out.”

Then I remembered I’d forgotten to call my parents to tell them why I hadn’t made it to dinner. “Oh, no. It’s the SWAT team,” I cried, jumping up.

“The SWAT team?” Marco glanced at me like I’d lost my mind.

“Or—even worse—my mother.” I smoothed down my hair, straightened my clothing, and hurried toward the door, calling back, “Don’t worry. Stay right there. I’ll handle everything.”

I squinted through the peephole and saw an eyeball peering back at me—a very familiar eyeball.

“Abby?” the muffled voice said through the heavy door.

“Who is it?” Marco asked from the living room.

“No one . . . an apparition . . . It’ll disappear any second now. Go away, apparition!”

I looked out the peephole again. The eyeball was still looking back

“Abby, open up!”

This could not be happening.

I opened the door and there stood Jillian, a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head, a black and tan silk outfit on her torso—and a Louis Vuitton suitcase in each hand.

“You are
not
supposed to be here,” I whispered viciously. “You’re supposed to be in Hawaii. With your husband!” I leaned out the door and took a look down the hallway. No husband. Dear God.

“What did you do with him, Jillian?”

Her chin trembled, then the tremble spread to her face, then she dropped the luggage and threw herself at me, sobbing onto my shoulder. It could mean only one thing: she’d jilted Claymore. At least this time she’d waited until after the wedding.

Marco came up the hallway and mouthed,
“I think I’ll go.”

I shook my head wildly and gave him a pleading look that said,
Don’t leave me with this crazy woman. Give me ten minutes and I’ll have her out of here.

He wiggled his fingers good-bye, and was gone, shutting the door softly behind him.

I peeled my cousin off my body and held her at arm’s length, studying her tear-stained face. “I hope you know you’ve ruined my romantic evening.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not. You’re never sorry. Why did you leave Claymore?”

“I didn’t.” She broke into a fresh round of weeping. “He left
me
.”

“That’s not possible. You told me he loved you to distraction.”

“He lied.” Still sniffling, she picked up her bags and headed down the hallway.

“Where are you going?”

“To your room. It’s all right if I stay here, isn’t it?”

“Wait . . . Jillian . . .”

Too late. She was already unpacking.

Simon skittered around the corner and tried to wedge himself behind the refrigerator.

“I know the feeling,” I told him with a sigh.

From the bedroom I heard vinyl clacking against vinyl; then Jillian called, “Do you have any more hangers?”

There was only one thing to do. “Move over, Simon. I’m coming in.”

I jammed both feet on the brake and brought my old yellow convertible to a screeching halt mere inches from the groin of a dragon. Okay, not a dragon in the fairy tale sense of the word. This dragon was the flesh-and-blood human variety—one Z. Archibald Puffer, a former JAG officer turned law professor who was often referred to as Puffer the Dragon. He was called that not just because of his last name, but also because of his ability to destroy the bravest law student in one fiery blast of fury.

My personal name for him was Snapdragon, because he had a habit of snapping pencils in two and hurling the eraser half at the head of the student whose answer had displeased him. He went through so many pencils that he bought them in bulk, made to his specifications—glossy black barrels with his initials monogrammed in silver to look like bolts of lightning:
Zap.
I had been struck several times and even bore a tiny scar on my forehead from his last attack, which came with his pronouncement that I was never to step foot in his lecture hall again. That was followed in short order by my expulsion from law school, which, in turn, prompted my then fiancé Pryce Osborne to break off our engagement and leave town until his humiliation over my failure had faded.
His
humiliation.

It had occurred to me back then that the old maxim of bad luck coming in threes was actually true. Now, as Puffer glared up the shiny hood of my reconditioned 1960 Corvette with his spiteful, ice blue eyes, and my heart pounded and my clammy hands clasped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles hurt, my gut feeling was that the Rule of Three had begun again. Which meant I still had two to go.

The irony was that the only reason I had come to the law school—a place I tried my best to avoid—was to deliver a lily that Professor Puffer had ordered. However, I didn’t think now would be the best time to hand it over. He might snap it off and chuck the vase at me.

“You red-headed fumigant,” he jeered, as college students gathered on both sides of the street. “You nearly killed me.”

I wasn’t sure what a fumigant was, but I knew it wasn’t good. “Sorry,” I squeaked, slumping down as far as I could. Considering that I was short, it was pretty far.

Was it my fault he hadn’t used the crosswalk? Was it my fault he was talking on his cell phone instead of paying attention to traffic? I didn’t think so. Had it been anyone else, I would have told him as much. But that steely glare brought back so many bad memories that all I could do was duck.

“Hey, there
is
someone inside,” one curious student said, coming up for a look.

I raised my head just enough to peer over the dash. Mercifully, Snapdragon had moved on, but not before stopping at the curb to deliver a parting shot. “Be expecting a call from the police,” he sneered, working his cell phone buttons. “I’m turning you in for reckless driving.”

Great. Just what I needed to make my morning complete.
Zap.

I knew what his fury was really about. Puffer was still indignant about the night he’d spent in the slammer over three years ago on a Driving Under the Influence charge. I’d had nothing to do with it, of course—I was still downstate at Indiana University at the time—but that hadn’t mattered to Puffer. What had mattered was that the dragon had been publicly disgraced by a Knight—my father, Sgt. Jeffrey Knight, then of the New Chapel PD—and once I stepped foot in his classroom and Puffer made the connection, he never let me forget it.

So it really shouldn’t have surprised me that this new trio of unpleasant events would begin with Snapdragon. In fact, my first clue should have been the order I saw when I walked into my flower shop, Bloomers, that morning: one black lily, suitable for funeral display, noon delivery, to Professor Z. Puffer, New Chapel University School of Law. I mean, who would order a single lily for a funeral? Bugs Bunny?

Knowing my history with Puffer, my assistant Lottie had tried to talk me out of making the delivery. But no, I’d decided I needed to face the dragon to conquer those irrational fears I’d held on to way too long. After all, Puffer had no power over me now. I wasn’t that frightened first year law student any more. I owned a business, or at least I owned the mortgage for a business. It took courage to run a flower shop at the age of twenty-six. It also took money, which was something I hadn’t yet managed to produce in quantity. Which reminded me. I still had to deliver the lily and collect my money.

I glanced over at the dusky purple flower (the closest I could get to black) in its slender black vase—the entire package wrapped in black-tinted cellophane, tied with a solemn black ribbon and wedged securely in a foam container in front of the passenger seat—and tried to imagine Puffer’s reaction when he saw me walk into his office with it. Maybe I should take Lottie up on her offer after all.

Horns honked behind me. I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw a line of cars waiting to turn into the law school’s parking lot. I quickly pulled into a visitor’s space, shut off the engine, and took long, slow breaths to calm my nerves. What was the big deal anyway? All I had to do was put the pot on Puffer’s desk and leave a bill. If I was lucky, he might even be in the cafeteria eating lunch, in which case I could just give everything to his secretary.