Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (4 page)

She gestured toward the chairs, so we sat; then she leaned forward, placing a perfectly manicured finger on my arm.

“He is so, so sorry,” she said, “but he suddenly had a huge change of plans. I just put him on a plane to New Orleans.”

“New Orleans?” I asked. “I thought he was headed to Singapore. For a couple of
months.”

“No, he had to postpone that whole trip. Something came up.”

“Is everything okay?”

She sat up straight, smoothing her hair absently with one hand.

“Oh, I’m sure,” she said. “That’s just how it goes with Tom sometimes. All of a sudden, he’ll drop everything and spin off in another direction, just like that.” She snapped her manicured fingers for emphasis. “It drives me nuts,” she added, “but that’s my Tom!”

I sat back, my mind reeling. Tom had canceled our meeting, canceled his trip to Singapore, and now he was flying south? Unbelievable!

“I hope there’s nothing wrong,” I said.

“Well, I keep telling him he needs to buy himself a corporate jet. Then he wouldn’t have problems like this when he wants to make last minute changes. We had a hard time finding him an available seat. He’s flying coach—in a
center
seat, no less!”

I knew there was a stupid look on my face as she continued to babble on. It was taking a moment for everything to compute, for my expectations to align with reality.
My Tom?
Had she really called him “my Tom”? I simply looked at this woman, who was now talking about leg room and bulkheads and exit rows.

“Excuse me,” I interrupted finally, “but you are…”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “Janine. Janine McDowell.”

Learning her name was fine, but I meant who was she in relation to Tom. His fiancée? His sister? His travel agent?

“How do you know Tom?” I asked.

“Oh, honey, don’t get me started,” she said, grinning. “We’ll be here all night! Suffice it to say, we have an interesting history together.”

The way she drew out the word
inter-es-ting
left an odd, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Anyway,” she said, “he asked me to apologize for him and to tell you that he’ll try to call you at home tonight.”

I looked at my watch, thinking about the rest of my day. I had the appointment with Shayna at 3:30, and then I would be home after that.

“Okay,” I said softly.

We stood, and I thanked her before walking away. In a sort of daze, I collected my bags from the front desk and walked toward the door. As an afterthought, I turned back to the woman, who was now in the telephone area, dialing a number.

“Excuse me,” I said, going back toward her. She disconnected the call before she had finished dialing it.

“Yes?”

“Did Tom leave some paperwork for me, by any chance? There would’ve been a couple of files, or maybe some manila envelopes?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing like that.”

I started to turn away.

“Oh, hang on,” she said. “There was one thing.”

I turned back and waited expectantly as she opened her purse. From it she pulled a giant silk flower, a mum, resplendent in a vivid red. I took it from her, smiling in spite of myself when I saw a big safety pin clipped to the back.

“He said to give you this,” she reported, a puzzled look on her face. “And to tell you that, next time, he dares
you
to wear it.”

Four

As soon as I reached my car in the parking lot, I slipped my bag into the back, pulled out my cell phone, and called my friend and coworker Harriet.

She worked in the foundation’s main office in Washington, DC, in a small but pleasant-looking building tucked in the heart of the embassy district. I tried to get in there as often as I could, but since I lived almost two hours away, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, I
actually spent most of my time working from home or out on assignment.

“Hey, Harriet,” I said as soon as she came on the line. “It’s Callie.”

“Callie?” she twanged in her Texas accent. “You poor thing! I heard what happened at the airport.”

“Yeah, so much for finally meeting face-to-face.”

“If it helps, hon, Tom felt just awful about it.”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Do you know?”

“Not really,” she said. “He just called me on his way to the airport to tell me he had a change of plans. He said for me to make sure you knew how sorry he was for standing you up.”

I pressed a button on my keychain to disarm the alarm and unlock the doors of my car, a sturdy new SUV. Unfortunately, I had totaled my previous car during a recent investigation, when I was run off the road by a man hired to intimidate me. I never wanted to feel that vulnerable again, so this time I went with the safest, strongest vehicle I could afford.

“He’s been planning this trip to Singapore for weeks,” I said, swinging the door open and placing my briefcase on the passenger seat. “What could possibly have come up to change his plans?”

“I have a feeling it was some kind of family matter. He said he would fill me in later.”

I closed the door, walked to the driver’s side, and got in.

“Why didn’t he call me himself?”

“You were still on the plane, hon. He tried, but your cell phone was off, and we couldn’t figure out any other way to reach you.”

“Oh, he reached me all right,” I said. “He has some blonde babe meet me at the airport. Who is she?”

“A blonde babe?”

I explained my encounter in the Executive Club.

“You got me,” Harriet said when I was done. “You know him better than I do, Callie. I may manage the foundation, but you’re the one who spends hours on the phone with him every night.”

“It’s not hours, and it’s not every night.”

“You know what I mean. He’s never mentioned a fiancée, has he?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. He’s never mentioned a lot of things about himself.”

To say that Tom was a private person was an understatement. I had learned a long time ago not to pry for details, but this whole thing had really thrown me for a loop.

“Did he at least leave any files for me? On the phone he mentioned a couple of different assignments.”

“No. He said he didn’t have time to finish things up. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till he gets back to you. I have the feeling you might be cooling your heels for a few days.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

I began weaving my car through the labyrinth of parked vehicles to the exit, thinking this whole fiasco was becoming more frustrating by the minute. On the one hand, I always enjoyed getting a little time off to spend around my home. On the other hand, prior to the trip to Tennessee, I had just spent a wonderful two weeks doing nothing more strenuous than walking my dog and paddling my canoe. Now it was to be more of the same? A little freedom was a good thing, but too much just might make me stir-crazy.

Harriet and I concluded our call with the promise we would let each other know if Tom made any contact. As I put away the phone and pulled into the traffic heading over the Potomac, I felt a heavy weight settle against my heart. Would I ever meet Tom in person? Did he really care if he ever met me?

I drove on toward the Eastern Shore, trying not to think about it, blinking away the tears that had suddenly, inexplicably filled my eyes.

Five

Traffic was moving, but it was fairly dense for early afternoon on a Monday. I usually preferred flying into Baltimore, since the drive to my house from there was much simpler than from downtown Washington. Still, I eventually managed to make my way onto Route 50 toward Annapolis and the bridge that would carry me over the Chesapeake Bay. After a while the traffic thinned out, and once I reached the bridge it was a brief but breathtaking hop to the Eastern Shore.

I began to wind my way south from there to the rural area I called home, feeling myself relax more with every mile. There was something about going from the busyness of the mainland to the country quiet of this area that always soothed my heart and made me feel at peace. That was one reason I had moved here after my husband Bryan died—that and the fact that this had been our favorite getaway spot when we were married, the place where we went when we just wanted to be alone with nature and with each other.

My house was located on a 20-mile-long peninsula—a flat, rambling expanse of land that stretched into the Chesapeake Bay and was flanked by two rivers. At the head of the peninsula was the waterfront borough of Osprey Cove, a quaint little town filled with upscale shops, a few tiny museums, and a number of expensive little bed-and-breakfasts. I usually took the bypass that let me circumnavigate the main drag, which was often clogged with tourists. Today, however, I drove straight into the heart of things, slowing for the traffic that filled the narrow streets.

Except for the congestion problems, Osprey Cove was a charming place—so charming, in fact, that it almost felt fake, like a Disney version of small-town America. There were tiny Cape Code houses and cobblestone streets and lots of window boxes overflowing with the colorful blossoms of spring and summer. In the fall they had crab, oyster, and waterfowl festivals in the large open-air park beside the public docks, and in the winter the streets of the village were graced with white twinkle lights and roving carolers.

The people who lived there were a friendly sort, though I kept my dealings with them to a minimum. I preferred the solitude of my home farther out on the peninsula, and I usually came to Osprey Cove only for groceries or other supplies, as well as the occasional visit to my favorite charity, the place where I helped mentor local young women like Shayna Greer.

The place was called Advancing Attire, and though my church was one of its sponsors, it was basically an independent nonprofit organization. My initial involvement had been simply as a donor, but I was eventually persuaded by the director to put in some volunteer time there as well. Of course, as someone who made a living investigating nonprofits, I did my homework first, evaluating it with the same list of criteria I used with my job. In the end, I had found the organization to be caring and compassionate, with a terrific mission and an efficient, cost-effective operation.

Advancing Attire was located in downtown Osprey Cove, and from the outside it looked like a regular ladies’ clothing store. But our “customers” weren’t off-the-street shoppers at all—they were indigent women sent to us by the county, and they came by appointment only. Mostly, these were women who possessed the training and intelligence to get better jobs than they’d previously held but lacked the proper “look” to get them through the door. Our mission was to collect used, professional-type clothing from the working women in our area and give that clothing to our clients, who then sought out better job opportunities.

Beyond that, some of us also took it upon ourselves to follow up with the young women we had helped to outfit by guiding them through the job-seeking process and giving them tips for the workplace. Apparently, Shayna thought my help also extended to helping find lost boyfriends, a notion I would need to dispel fairly quickly. From what I had gathered through recent conversations, this fellow she was involved with was a real piece of work. I had no desire to serve as the local missing persons bureau.

I made it to the main strip and found a parking space about a block away. Glancing at my watch as I climbed out of the car, I was pleased to see that I had arrived with a good 20 minutes to spare. I walked up the street to the side door of the building and let myself in with my key.

“Well, if it isn’t Callie Webber!”

The program’s director, Verlene Linford, came out from behind her desk and headed toward me across the cluttered room, weaving her way around massive piles of clothing. Verlene was one of those perpetually cheerful people, always smiling, always able to make you feel as if, for the moment at least, you were the most important person in the world. That’s why she was such a perfect choice to head up Advancing Attire. Her job was to make our impoverished clients, no matter what their circumstances, feel as though they were worthy of a little loving care and attention. Right now, she had her kind brown eyes trained firmly on me.