Pink Neon Dreams (3 page)

As
Cecily surveyed her new domain, a grin erupted across her face and she laughed
aloud.
 
Pink Neon managed to bring her
long standing dreams to life and she loved it.
 
On impulse, she pulled out her phone to call Nia.
 
“Hey, girl, everything’s ready to roll,” she
said. “You ought to come down.”

“Shit,
I would if I didn’t have to work,” Nia said. “You know how it goes.”

“I
used to,” Cecily tittered. “And I’m about to find out all over again.”

“You
sound happy,” her cousin said.

“I
am.”

“Then
maybe I shouldn’t tell you.”

Some
of the sparkle faded from her bright mood. “Tell me what?”

“Your
ex is dead.”

“Willard’s
gone? What happened? Did he have a heart attack in the arms of one of his
lovers or a stroke from snorting cocaine?” Cecily didn’t feel a bit of grief or
remorse.
 
His vices, the drugs and
infidelity, were old news.
 
His delight
in dressing like a 1940’s pin up girl and picking up other transvestites at
private clubs wasn’t, though, not to her and had been the final straw in her
decision to leave.

“Hell,
no, sugar, someone whacked him.”

“Say
what?”

“Somebody
shot the son-of-a-bitch dead on the front steps of that fancy house on Canal
Street and broke in before or after to steal a bunch of the jewelry.”

“When?”

“Week
or so ago, I think.
 
I almost called, but
I didn’t want to distract you.”

“Aw,
I don’t care,” Cecily said. “I’m just glad I got out of there before it
happened.
 
It’s none of my business now.”

After
the call, she retreated into the combined office and store room space to ponder
Willard’s death.
 
Cecily considered her
emotions and decided she didn’t care.
 
And she didn’t suffer from denial, either.
 
With no love lost between them on her part,
there wasn’t anything she could dredge up except relief.

Willard
Bradford approached her when she’d been a teenage girl. It was after she
competed in a teen pageant at a Chicago mall.
 
He coveted Cecily and all but bought her.
 
She’d never understand why the white man,
twice her age, desired her but he did and forced her into marriage with his
money.
 
First, he bought the dry cleaners
where her mother worked as a presser and threatened to either close the shop or
fire Mama.
 
Then he purchased the duplex
where the Browns lived and sent an eviction notice.
 
Bradford’s next move involved buying the
residential care facility where her grandma Ella Brown lived and threatening to
remove most of the patients.
 

Cecily
caved and let him take her out to dinner.
 
He arrived in a vintage Triumph spitfire, snazzy and sleek.
 
Willard brought her two dozen roses, not
crimson but peach, another dozen, yellow this time for her mother, and a basket
of gourmet goodies.
 
They dined at a
bistro along the Mag Mile.
 
He took her
to bed two nights later and proposed within the month.
 
By then, he’d showered her family with
presents, fixed the crisis situations he engineered, endeared most of her blood
kin to him, and Cecily accepted.
 
His not
so veiled threats what he’d do if she turned him down inspired her demure
‘yes’.

After
a storybook wedding attended by wealthy people both local and global, they
settled into the spacious new mansion he’d built on Canal Street.
 
Cecily bobbed along like a cork on an
outgoing tide and the sole voice of reason came from her Aunt Terri who
whispered in her ear at the lavish country club reception. “
What’s
a rich white dude want
with a skinny ass poor black girl? Tell me that.”
Cecily couldn’t explain and even now, divorced and with her one-time spouse
dead, still couldn’t.

All of it’s over now and my
future’s beginning.
 
She resolved to forget the past
and thrust all thoughts of Willard Bradford out of her mind.
 
Pink Neon opened in the morning, and her task
was to make everything as perfect as possible.
 
And to do so, Cecily decided she’d pick up something delicious for
supper, a bottle of wine, and unwind.
 
She would face the morning rested and calm, capable, and ready.

****

Beneath his mirrored sunglasses,
his eyes burned and below his brimmed cap, Daniel Padilla endured a headache of
epic proportion.
 
Although he preferred
to blame it on the drive down from Kansas City, he suspected the multiple
Tequila shots he tossed down after checking into a cheap ass motel sometime
after midnight might be the cause.
 
He’d
intended for the alcohol to help him sleep, and it did, but since the price
turned out to include serious pain, he wished he’d stayed sober.
 
Uneasy waves stirred in his belly, but he
spooned a little vanilla ice cream into his mouth anyway.
 
It might ease the nausea and at least it’d
make his cover look genuine.
 
So far I don’t like Branson. I sure as hell
never thought I’d come here again, but I’m here. So far it sucks worse than I
thought it might.

He watched as a woman came
outside from the shop next door, a tricked up boutique with a pink neon sign
above the door.
 
Daniel studied her face
and after squinting, he decided despite the cornrow braids, the casual clothes,
it was Cecily Brown, recent ex-wife of jewelry magnate and millionaire Willard
Bradford.
 
She’s a lot prettier this way.
 

His fingers fumbled open the
manila file lying on the picnic table where he sat.
 
Daniel studied the photos through his bleary
eyes and removed the shades for a better view.
 
The woman in the pictures wore her hair down, sleek as satin and
styled.
 
Her conservative garments
whispered of both wealth and professional privilege.
 
The muted colors, soft pastels, dowsed her
beauty instead of enhancing it.

He snorted as he counted the
rings on her well-shaped hands and noted with derision the dangling diamond
earrings she wore.
 
Rich bitch.
 
Yet he found her
attractive in person, graceful and almost beautiful.
 
Nothing about the jeans and simple t-shirt
she wore looked pretentious.
 
He wondered
if she’d really killed her former spouse and made off with the jewels.
 
She
sure as hell doesn’t look the type, but you never know.
 
If he’d learned any lesson in his ten years
with the FBI, Daniel had discovered anyone could do anything.

If he hadn’t been sure, he
would’ve doubted this woman could be the same one in the pictures.
 
That woman looked elegant but empty, stilted,
and confined.
 
The gal he watched sashay
across the parking lot radiated heat. Pink highlighted her coloring and
enhanced her looks.
 
She paused at a
vintage GTO he’d love to own and opened the door.
 
Cecily Brown slid into the passenger seat and Daniel
watched her lips tilt into a smile as she turned the key in the ignition.
 
As the motor caught, he heard a burst of
music from the CD player, the unmistakable retro sound of The Pointer
Sisters.
 
Daniel listened as Cecily sang
along, her voice a rich alto, true to the tune as it blended into ‘Fire’, the
classic hit.

For a moment, he forgot his
headache and the spoon in his hand dropped into the paper container of ice
cream as he stared.
 
Cecily Brown, he
thought,
was
fire.
 
His battle scarred heart lost its rhythm as Daniel
watched her pull out onto the strip, her voice ringing out over the traffic
sounds enough he caught snatches of the song.
 
Provocative, evocative the lyrics touched a chord within, one he thought
broken and unresponsive.
 
Shit, the song’s older than both of us.
 
But it retained power and heat.
 
The music evoked feelings he thought he
buried long ago. With pure instinct, Daniel tossed his half-eaten ice cream and
jumped in his black sedan to follow her.

He
trailed her down the Strip and when she turned into a huge discount store, he
did too.
 
Daniel hung back enough to
escape her notice, but he parked less than five spaces away from her bright red
sports car.
 
When she sidled into the
store, he followed at a discreet distance.

Trained
to spot detail, well-schooled in the art of building a profile about a person
from their habits, Daniel found her tastes eclectic but pleasing.
 
Cecily moved with confidence through the
crowded aisles.
 
She selected a loaf of
crusty French bread in the bakery, a bag of salad in the produce department,
and a bag of frozen salmon fillets from the freezers.
 
Then she doubled back to choose a lemon.
 
He noticed she didn’t grab the first one,
either.
 
Cecily picked up several,
squeezed them and rejected them.
 
He counted
six before she put one in her cart, without a bag.
 
He pursued her to the spice and seasoning
aisles where she bought lemon pepper, Cajun blend, and a lower sodium salt
product.
 
In the dairy aisle, she bought
real butter, a half-gallon of low fat milk, and a package of cheesecake dessert
topped with strawberries.
 

On
the way to the front, she moved with slow deliberation.
 
More than once she paused to check a display
of something and in the liquor area she chose a bottle of a good, sweet red
wine.
 
Daniel expected her to head for
the checkouts, but she crossed the width of the store to pick out shampoo and
Moon Petal Musk bath salts.
 
As she bent
over to place the items in her cart, her ass lifted up and Daniel’s dick
noticed.
 
Focus, man, she’s under investigation and you’re the man on the
case.
 
Don’t get involved.
 
But he knew he had, right or wrong.
 
The woman intrigued him in a way she
shouldn’t.
 
Every professional bone in
his body screamed a warning, told him to pull back, but the man within couldn’t
look away, a classic moth drawn to her flame.

I bet she’s got some city dude
holed up wherever she lives, probably someone who helped her with the
crime.
 
And damn me, I gotta know the
truth, one way or another. If she’s guilty, I’ll see she’s convicted and if
she’s innocent, God help me, I don’t know what I’ll do.
 
But I’d like to find out.

Daniel
Padilla, the one the other agents called ‘the Glacier’, sensed a thaw in his
protective shield, a crack in the layers he’d covered his emotions and heart in.
 
And without remorse, he followed Cecily home.

Chapter Three

Saturday
morning dawned bright and clear.
 
Cecily
rose early to prepare for her grand opening.
 
To boost her confidence and calm her agitated nerves, she power dressed
in black designer jeans with a sleeveless pink Issey Miyake blouse.
 
The pleated deep rose top suited her dusky
coloring well and Cecily applied a lipstick she’d found in the same shade.
 
She spritzed a heavy dose of Calvin Klein’s
Eternity, enough to envelope her in a cloud of fragrance. She grabbed her keys
and headed out to the car, drove through the first fast food place she saw for
coffee and a sausage biscuit, and then drove on to Pink Neon.

Although
she’d bought some radio ads, paid for a few television ads with the Springfield
stations, and placed a notice in both the local newspaper and the weekly
shopper, Cecily worried no one would come.
 
After careful consideration she’d decided not to have a ribbon cutting
or serve refreshments.
 
Both seemed too
overdone.
 
Instead, she planned to give
each of the first one hundred customers a small piggy bank, pink with gray
splotches, as a gift.
 
She also had ordered
business cards to hand out and would offer a drawing for a $100 gift
certificate. Otherwise, it would be a standard business day—if any buyers
showed up.

She
nibbled the biscuit and sipped coffee.
 
Then she walked around the shop, making sure everything was in
place.
 
Cecily stowed her purse under the
counter and put a scented candle on the candle warmer.
  
As the sweet rose fragrance wafted through
the space, she turned the open sign to face outward and made sure the door
remained unlocked.
 
At seven forty-five,
Pink Neon was open.
 
All she needed now
were a few customers.