The Fiance Thief (8 page)

“I don’t care one way or another,” Mick told him. “If I didn’t have this story breathing down my neck, I’d be out on my boat. You ought to head out early, too. When Alec’s away, there’s no better time to play.”

With that, Mick disappeared into his office, and Hank, despite all his past confidence in Mick, couldn’t help worrying a little about the mental sharpness of the man who seemed to forget that Alec worked for him, not the other way around. Hank was still brooding about how to stretch Lissa’s scrawl into a story when the door to the publisher’s office creaked open and Mick stuck his head out, paler than Hank had ever seen him before.

“Hypothetical question for you, buddy.” Mick’s voice rang out in false cheer. “Would it be possible for someone to throw the entire editorial content of the paper into the computer’s trash?”

Hank’s voice, when he could speak, was a whisper. “Did you empty it, too?”

Mick nodded.

A
LL RIGHT
, here was the new theory Alec was working on, one fueled, no doubt, by the greasy fast-food sausage and biscuit he’d just downed, followed by a twenty-ounce coffee to go. Claire had also graciously forked over some of her giant cinnamon roll, and the sugar high he was getting from that was probably contributing to his current line of illogical thought. Because he was on the verge of an idea so preposterous that he knew he wasn’t thinking rationally. He was beginning to think Claire made him nervous.

He knew that all the evidence indicated that exactly the opposite was true. But what if her own nervousness was simply a reaction to his? What if he was the one who was jittery whenever he was around her, and she was so put off by his herky-jerky demeanor that it made her a wreck just to be near him? He thought back to the first time he’d met her, on the elevator headed upstairs. He had a clear vision of what she looked like that day. Her hair swung to the left side, and she had on an oversize white dress with pink flowers. He remembered feeling this odd jolt of recognition when he saw her, only it was the kind of feeling you get when you run into a college professor at the gym after you’ve faked a case of mono, or when you run into your landlord at an expensive restaurant when you haven’t paid your rent in two months. He had this strange notion he’d disappointed her somehow.

Then she’d tripped him, and all that déjà-vu stuff was gone. Once he’d extracted his tie from between the elevator doors, he’d studiously avoided her, bounding out of the close space before the doors were barely open in his haste to get away from her. She’d followed him, and the rest was their history.

Revisionist history, he told himself. That’s what he was engaging in, trying to talk himself into this crazy idea. Couldn’t he point to plenty of times when he’d tormented Claire with his wicked coolness, while she’d quaked before him? Smiling to himself, he remembered some of them. There, he felt better. At least until he looked at Claire in the seat next to him, happily reading the daily paper without an apparent care in the world. She didn’t even seem to mind that her dress had hiked up to an even more risqué level than its original one.

Alec tapped on the paper. “Trying to make friends with the truck drivers, Claire?”

She put the paper aside. “What?” She glanced down. “Oh, I understand.” She yanked the fabric back down and primly crossed her legs at the ankles. Her mad blushing cheered him, and when he spoke again, he put a note of concern in his voice.

“Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

“This whole trip is probably wrong-headed, and I think in my heart that I know that. But this at least gives me an excuse to do something I couldn’t make myself do any other way,” she said.

He had his own doubts about Claire’s plan. To get a ring on her finger with minimal expense, she’d proposed using the engagement token she’d gotten from the notorious Scott. They were going to swing back by Claire’s house to pick it up, then take it to a nearby pawnshop to trade for another one. He’d wondered why she couldn’t just wear that one to the retreat, but the squawking and near-hysteria that ensued reminded him that Miranda had seen the ring. His next question was whether or not Claire was really fine with this. He stopped himself every time he started to ask, and they completed the trip back to her house in silence.

He left the engine running as she jumped out of the car and went back into the house. She returned less than a
minute later, clutching the piece of jewelry in her palm. She buckled her seat belt, and they were off again.

“I’m surprised you didn’t take the opportunity to pace the property off while you had the chance,” Claire said.

Ignoring her wisecracks, he said, “Can I see it?”

She opened her hand, and he gazed at the glittery object sheltered there, not knowing what he was looking for. She closed her fist around it again. “I am, really,” Claire said, “fine with this.”

Startled, he glanced up at her. She went on. “Is that what you’ve been wondering?” When he nodded, she continued, “I think this is the perfect way to let go of this. I couldn’t sell it, because I couldn’t see being happy blowing the money on something frivolous. I’d think, this money I just spent once symbolized my whole future for me.” Her voice dropped ominously. “What kind of future is that?”

He shivered involuntarily, then forced himself to get a grip. “So why didn’t you throw it in the river? Women are always doing that in movies.”

“No. That didn’t seem satisfying, either. I’d have a moment of triumph. Then what? No, this way I actually get something tangible out of the deal.” Although he’d seen Claire smile before, once or twice, those had been quiet smiles, half smiles. He had never seen this expression of warm optimism that she now wore, and he found that he liked it. “This can be a symbol of my new life as someone married to her job.”

He had to lighten the mood a little. “As the paper’s best and hardest-working life-style reporter.”

He was braced for the whack on the chest he took from her rolled-up daily paper. “News, Alec,” Claire said. “I’d hate to have to spill the truth to Miranda as soon as we get there. You know how sometimes I can’t resist blurting out the first thing that comes to my mind.”

“I’ve only recently noticed that particular trait.” He cruised into the parking lot of Charlie’s Pawnshop. “I once bought a watch here, and Charlie, the guy who runs it, is an okay guy. Unless there’s someplace you’d rather go.”

“No, this is fine,” she said. “And to think that I believed the paper paid you enough to afford that elegant timepiece.” Claire got out of the car and handed Alec the ring. “You do the talking.”

Alec hadn’t considered how suspicious it might sound to Charlie that they wanted to trade the ring for one of the same value, especially since they didn’t have one already picked out. Charlie kept examining the diamond, checking it for flaws. Finding none, he asked Alec, “Why not just keep this one?”

It was a good question, and one that couldn’t be answered truthfully. “Well,” Alec said, “you see…”

Charlie interrupted him. “You got that watch here, didn’t you?” Alec nodded. “How much did you pay for it?” When Alec reminded him of the figure, his expression lost some of its wariness. “That was a good deal from my side of the fence,” he said.

“To use an apt expression,” Claire said in a low voice. Alec kicked her in the ankle, and looked at the pawnbroker. Apparently a real sufferer of the same hearing ailment Alec had faked, he was oblivious to the bickering going on around him, once more checking the stone.

“You were going to tell me why you weren’t keeping the ring?”

“Yes,” Alec said, but before he could continue, Claire had pressed in front of him, leaning on the counter. Thinking she had forgotten exactly how low-cut her dress was, Alec took her shoulders in his hands, pulling her back next to him and putting his arm around her cozily. She pushed her hair behind her ear, a sure sign that he was
making her nervous. He gave her shoulders a squeeze and waited to hear what she said next.

“My fiancé doesn’t want to tell you why we’re trading in this ring, because he’s embarrassed.” Before Alec could object, he felt her sharp elbow digging ever so slightly into his ribs. “See, this ring belonged to his great-aunt, whom he adored, and she wanted him to have it. Since he thought his aunt and uncle had a happy marriage, he took it from her. Well, once both of them had passed away, the true story came out. Her husband…”

“His great-uncle?”

“Yes. Her husband had been his own grandmother’s first sweetheart, and he had bought this ring for his grandmother, until his great-aunt…”

“Her sister?”

“Yes, very good. Until her sister had spread terrible lies about her and taken her boyfriend away. Now, all the principals in this story have passed on, and so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t feel all right about using this ring, but it just seems kind of cursed, somehow. You know?”

Alec stared at Claire admiringly. Why had he ever thought she wouldn’t make a good liar? She looked pretty pleased with herself, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. Then the man said, “And you think a ring that somebody traded in here is a better omen for your marriage?”

Claire’s mouth tightened, and she stood up straight, shaking Alec’s arm off of her. “Just give us a ring.”

“All right, all right.” He pointed to a glass case. “Anything on that second row, we’ll call it an even trade.”

Having expected Claire to grab a ring and go, Alec was annoyed to see her lingering over the various choices. “I’m not crazy about any of these,” she said.

“You don’t have to be crazy about any of them,” he said. “It’s not going to matter in the long run.”

“That’s not a very optimistic way to look at a new marriage,” the owner said.

“What I meant was, we’re in a bit of a hurry today. Pick one, Claire.”

She had been bent near the glass case, examining the rings. Now she stood up with a dreamy look in her eyes. “You know what? I don’t want a diamond. I agree with Anne of Green Gables, who waited all her life to see one, only to find it cold and ugly.”

He’d already figured out that when Claire drifted into her childhood literary references, it spelled trouble for him. He tried to reason with her. “Engaged women wear diamonds, not something else.”

She drifted to the next case and pointed to a ring there. “Look at this beautiful sapphire.” Pressed, he would have admitted that it was indeed beautiful. A blue stone, marquise-cut, placed in a simple gold band. “I’m disillusioned by diamonds. I want this,” Claire said.

“This is ridiculous. People will think I was too cheap to spring for the real thing.”

“A little while ago, you didn’t mind people thinking you were too cheap to spring for a ring at all.” She pointed to it. “We’ll take that one,” she told Charlie.

“I might owe you five bucks or so,” Charlie said, handing Claire the sapphire. When she slipped it on, it fit perfectly.

Alec started to say they’d call it an even trade, but Claire pointed to a manual Underwood typewriter on a nearby shelf. “Throw in that and it’s a deal.”

Charlie shrugged his approval, and Alec retrieved the machine. Used to the weight of his laptop, he buckled a little under the unexpected load, then glared at Claire as she giggled.

“What are you going to do with this?” he asked.

“Finish my Ridgeville story,” she said. “I’ll be in the car.” She walked out of the building, leaving him trying to
navigate the door while holding her behemoth of a typewriter. Charlie came out from behind the counter, and held the door open for him. As he started out, Charlie whispered, “A girl who’s disillusioned with diamonds might be hard to handle.”

He looked outside to see Claire leaning against the car, admiring her ring. “Don’t worry,” Alec told Charlie as he lumbered out the door. “I already figured that out.”

“I
DON’T KNOW HOW
you did it, but it’s gone.” Patting Alec’s computer, Sid from the software store turned to Mick and said, “When you throw something away, it stays thrown.”

“Thanks,” Mick said weakly, avoiding Hank’s stern frown.

Hank couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Just an hour earlier, Sid had told him this happened all the time, that bumbling editors, writers and other folks who shouldn’t be let at computers without licenses were always throwing away important stuff: annual reports, client data bases, even whole hard drives. It was nothing, Sid said, that a halfway competent systems manager couldn’t solve in fifteen minutes. Unfortunately, the paper didn’t have a systems manager, competent or otherwise.

Having taken pity on Hank and Mick, Sid had scuttled over with his briefcase and his special retrieval software. As he’d poked around in the computer’s gray matter, he’d said to Hank, “This is how those government guys get busted. They think they’ve destroyed the electronic paper trail, when really it’s just lying there waiting.”

Now, as he watched his new buddy Sid throw in the virtual towel, Hank grew anxious. “What about all those government secrets you told me about? Never really gone? Wasn’t that what you said?”

“It was,” he said. He gestured at Mick. “But they didn’t have this guy working for them.” Sid started packing up.

“I see,” Hank said. “Thank you for your help.” After he said goodbye to Sid, he sat down at Alec’s desk and propped his feet up on it, thinking.

Mick spoke at last. “Good thing the paper’s only been around a few years, isn’t it? Otherwise, it would be something serious like first time in fifty years the Trib doesn’t publish.’ When you hear first time in four years, it doesn’t sound so bad.”

“We’re putting out a paper.” Hank surprised himself with his authoritative manner.

“We can’t. We were cutting it close anyway, with all the editing Alec was going to have to do on Monday. But he and Claire have both filed lots of stories for this edition. They can’t recreate them in an hour or two.”

“I’ve got my stories. Maybe he kept copies of his somewhere.” He doubted it, though. Alec never kept backups of anything he did, saying it was a waste of space in the computer’s memory.

“If you’re going to suggest getting him back here, don’t bother,” Mick said. “I told him not to leave the number where they could be reached.” The red of embarrassment finally gave Mick back his color. “I was afraid if we had the number we’d call him about every little thing. He tried to give it to me, but I told him if something so bad he should know about it happened, I was sure he’d hear it on the TV news.”