Both women, reading the letter over my shoulder, gasped. I wasn’t exactly delighted myself, but because of my brave speech, I made a show of marching over to the waste can and letting it fall inside.
“Um, sweetie, you might want to let the cops see that one,” Lottie said. “You know, in case someone tries to burn down the building.”
“I agree with Lottie, dear,” Grace said. “Not to alarm you unduly, but the tone of this communiqué is rather dire, isn’t it? It sounds as though they’re growing exasperated with you. I wouldn’t casually dismiss it.”
“With no identifying marks of any kind, how would it help the cops?”
“Fingerprints. DNA. Matching the printer ink and font,” Lottie listed. She watched way too much CSI. Our police force didn’t even have a unified computer system, let alone the technology to match printer ink. And DNA? Forget it. The state lab was usually backed up two months or more on serious criminal investigations. An anonymous letter would rank somewhere around zero on their to-do list.
They gazed at me, waiting expectantly.
Fine. If it made them happy. I retrieved the letter and put it in my purse. “I’ll give it to Sergeant Reilly next time I see him.”
A knock on the front door made us all jump. It was the FedEx driver, signaling he had a delivery. I waved at him, mouthing, Meet you at the back door.
“I’ll go let him in,” Lottie said, and headed for the curtain that separated the display area from the workshop. “I know you have trouble with that door.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “I’ve got to find out why my door request is being ignored.”
“Which reminds me,” Grace said. “I’ve got to get a new key made. Mine is bent.”
Not to be outdone, Lottie paused to say, “And that reminds me. I forgot to tell you about the UPS guy that showed up this morning.”
I picked up the phone at my desk in the workroom and dialed the city attorney’s office. I’d punched in those numbers so often I had them memorized. “Peter Chinn, please,” I said to the woman who answered.
“He’s not in right now. May I take a message?”
This was the game we played every time I phoned. “When will he be in?”
“Your name, please?”
“Abby Knight, and don’t pretend you don’t recognize my voice. You’ve got a stack of messages with my name on them and I have yet to receive a return call from your boss.”
“All I can do is leave a message for Mr. Chinn.”
“Will it do any good? Does he ever read them? Does he actually work there?”
“Will there be anything else?”
“Don’t you feel bad taking messages, knowing Mr. Chinn will ignore them?”
“He doesn’t ignore every message.”
“Oh, I see. Just mine. Wonderful. You know, all I want to do is replace a back door and put down a ramp. Is that such an unreasonable request?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Why would she? She only worked there. “Would you give Mr. Chinn one more message from me, then? Tell him I’m tired of being ignored, so I’m going to talk to a reporter with the New Chapel News.”
“I believe he’s in now. Hold, please.” All of a sudden I was listening to a Billy Joel song. Amazing what a hint of bad publicity would do.
When she came back on the line she said, “You’ll need to resubmit your request.”
“Wait. What? Resubmit it? Why?”
“We have no such request on file.”
“Yes, you do.”
“We don’t.”
“You have to have it. I delivered it myself.”
“We don’t.”
“You just now discovered that? You didn’t notice all my letters, e-mails, and voice messages asking about the status of my request and wonder what they were all about? How is that possible?”
“I don’t know.”
She didn’t know much, did she? “Fine. I’ll resubmit it, and I’m still going to call my friend at the News.”
I slammed down the phone, then took a deep breath to cool my temper. When the phone rang a minute later, I thought, Aha! My ploy worked!But it was just a pushy salesman trying to get me to carry his company’s line of candles. I told him no thanks, then plucked a slip from the spindle and studied it, forcing myself to focus on the words in front of me. Arranging flowers always calmed me down.
Okay. This order was for an anniversary bouquet, and the client wanted red and pink roses in it. Hmm. How about a few stems of red spiral ginger and blush pink callas to liven it up, along with gorgeous hanging amaranthus to give it softness? Perfecto.
“Damn dumb door,” Lottie muttered as she came back to the workroom carrying two long boxes of flowers. “I’m sorely tempted to get my boys to take it off.”
“Can we do that?” I asked as she laid one of the boxes on the table.
“It’d be just our luck someone would rat us out.” She grabbed a towel from under the worktable. “We’d better wait for a permit.”
“We’ve been waiting, Lottie. Since September. Now I’m told I have to resubmit my request because somehow the first one is missing.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“I wish.”
As Lottie prepped the roses so she could place them in buckets with floral solution, I worked on the anniversary arrangement, still mulling over the door situation. Was my request really missing or was I being ignored? Maybe that kind of screwup happened routinely, and I just wasn’t aware of it because I’d never submitted a request before. Maybe I should give the planning commission the benefit of the doubt and try once more before talking to a reporter.
Bang!
I jumped off the stool as the noise was followed by shattering glass. I dropped my floral knife and dashed through the curtain one step ahead of Lottie, just as Grace hurried out of the parlor. On the floor inside the shop, a few feet from my yellow frame door, was what appeared to be a brick wrapped in burning newspaper. It was lying in the midst of shards of beveled glass, the newspaper edges curling as they turned to black ash.
“Good heavens!” Grace cried. “I’ll get water.” She hurried back to the parlor as Lottie grabbed the towel she’d slung over her shoulder and dropped it over the brick.
I jumped over the glass, opened the door, and ran outside, but other than two women coming out of the realty agency next door, and a few others across the street who were heading my way to see what had happened, I didn’t spot any likely culprits.
As I stepped back inside and saw Lottie’s expression, I knew she was thinking about that anonymous letter. I certainly was. “Maybe you should call Sergeant Reilly now,” she said.
By the time the squad car pulled up, a crowd had gathered in front of Bloomers, its numbers growing larger by the minute. I was betting that by suppertime, the whole town would know about the burning brick, including my parents.
“Nothing to see here, folks,” Reilly said as he strode toward the shop. “Move it along.”
He was pretty much ignored.
Sergeant Sean Reilly was a good-looking forty-year-old, a fourteen-year veteran of the New Chapel Police Department. As a rookie, he’d worked with my dad, then later with Marco during his short stint as a cop. As a result, Reilly and
I had become friends, which had come in handy considering how many times I’d gotten myself in a bind.
Now he stood inside the shop taking notes while Lottie told him about the brick and the previous letters, Grace taped cardboard over the broken door to keep out the cold wind, and I phoned the glass company to have the beveled pane replaced ASAP. That would cost me a bundle. When I hung up, Reilly was gazing at me in that know-it-all way of his. Considering the morning I’d had, I really wasn’t in the mood for one of his upbraidings, so I grabbed a broom to finish sweeping the floor.
“Don’t you think you should have called us after you received the first letter?” he said.
“The other letters said that I should stop harassing the poor farmer so he could open his dairy farm. Why would I call the police for that? And if I had, what would you have done about it? Order DNA tests and put your best men on the case, or file it away under crank mail?”
He knew I had a point but wouldn’t admit it. “So who have you ticked off this time?”
“You say that like I regularly tick people off.”
He gave me a level gaze, his pencil ready to write.
“Uniworld,” I muttered, sweeping harder.
“Uniworld Food Corporation? You ticked off the whole company?”
“Abby’s trying to keep their new dairy farm operation from opening here,” Lottie answered, trying to be helpful. “They do very bad things to their cows.”
Reilly wrote it down, shaking his head. “I should have guessed who was behind those campus protest rallies.”
“Abby got a nice write-up in the News,” Grace said proudly.
Reilly crouched for a look at the brick, using his pen to lift away burned twine and peel off layers of charred newspaper at one end. He rose to his feet. “I’ll take it with me. I doubt we’ll find anything, but you never know. I think I’ll also pay a visit to the Uniworld Distribution Center and see what they can tell me about the incident.”
I scoffed. “Like they’d admit to anything.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but at least they’ll know the cops are watching.”
The bell over the door jingled, and Marco stepped inside, inspecting the brown paper covering the gaping center as he shut the door. He acknowledged Reilly with a nod, then immediately spotted the brick. “What the hell? Someone tossed that through the door?”
“After setting it on fire,” Lottie added, in case he’d missed the charred newspaper.
“What kind of idiot would pull a stunt like that?” Marco asked.
Reilly whispered, “He doesn’t know about the you-know-whats?”
Oh, very professional, Reilly.
Marco glanced at me. “What you-know-whats?”
“Someone shoved a letter under the door today,” I explained as Reilly pulled it out of the back of his notebook and let Marco read it. “I didn’t think anything of it until the brick hit.”
“Wasn’t her first letter, either,” Reilly the instigator added.
Marco glanced at me in concern.
“It’s Uniworld,” I assured him. “They’re using scare tactics to get me to back off. I didn’t mention the letters before because I didn’t think they were anything to worry about.”
“What do you think now?” Marco asked.
That I didn’t care for his pompous tone, but then I reminded myself that he was just showing his protective side, and since that was a plus, I held my tongue.
“I’m going to take a ride out to Uniworld,” Reilly told him, “have a talk with people there, see if I can rattle some cages.”
Marco put an arm around my shoulders and said to him, “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”
“Me, too, Reilly,” I said. “And make sure you ask for Nils Raand, the guy in charge.”
“Just so you know,” Marco added, “Abby’s going to tone down her protests. Maybe that’ll put an end to the threats.”
I was? Irked, I pulled away from him. “If I tone down my protests, how will I keep Uniworld from opening their milk factory? By writing them poems?”
At Marco’s raised eyebrows, I said contritely, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you, but I can’t let Nils Raand, or anyone else at Uniworld, believe I can be frightened off.”
“You can’t let them burn down your flower shop, either,” he countered.
“They won’t burn it down,” I said. “This is about intimidation. Bullying. If they’d wanted to burn down Bloomers, they’d do it when no one was here.”
“Maybe there’s something you can do besides holding those protest rallies,” Lottie said. “Something a little quieter and less risky.”
“That’s why I’m collecting signatures for a petition, so I can ask for an injunction,” I explained to Reilly, “but I’ve got only forty-three. I need five hundred to be effective.”
“How about meeting with a Uniworld rep to discuss your concerns?” Reilly asked.
“That’s a lovely idea,” Grace said hopefully.
“No risk there,” Lottie chimed in.
“It’s something to consider, Abby,” Marco said.
I was on the verge of explaining how Uniworld had operated in other cities, pretending to be sympathetic to concerns about the milk production, then proceeding as planned, and how the only things that had stopped them were citizen rallies and marches. But I knew I’d be wasting my breath on this gang. All they wanted was for me to be safe.
“Fine.”
Everyone smiled.
“How about if I see what I can set up with Raand for Monday?” Reilly offered.
What the heck. It was Saturday. If he set up a meeting, maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about any more bricks being heaved through my door. Maybe a day to let recent events settle in would be a good thing. I could regroup, decide what my next move would be. “Okay.”
At that, Reilly left; Lottie went back to unloading flowers; Grace returned to the parlor to make tea; and Marco gazed at me thoughtfully. “So, no more protests, right?”
“I didn’t agree to that.”
“You agreed to a meeting.”
“I agreed to try a meeting. That doesn’t mean I’ve given up the idea of protests if the meeting doesn’t get results.”
He lifted my chin and gazed into my eyes. “Repeat after me: no more protests. You can’t afford to have your business go up in flames.”
“Marco-”
“No. More. Protests.”
Bossiness. Definitely had to have a minus column.
He gave me a kiss on the cheek, then headed for the door. “Six o’clock in your green silk dress?”
I gave him a sharp salute. “Yes, sir. Will that be all, sir?” He rolled his eyes, then opened the door and found an even larger crowd standing outside. “You’d better stay out of sight,” he warned, then disappeared into their midst.
When the onlookers saw me in the doorway, a ripple of excitement went through them like a wave, and suddenly a reporter with a mic hurried toward me, followed by a cameraman and two reporters carrying mini-tape recorders.
“Miss Knight!” they called over each other. “Can you tell us what happened?”
“Has your life been threatened?”
“Will you give a statement?”
I stood on tiptoes to see over the crowd. No sign of Marco. “Okay if I get my coat first?”
Yanking my wool peacoat and beret from the hook by the back door, and yelling for Lottie to bring my clipboard and a pen, I donned the garments during the seconds it took me to get back to the sidewalk, arriving breathlessly just in time for a photographer to shoot his first photo of me. Then, with the camera rolling, and the photographers clicking away, I answered the reporters’ questions and told my story. And during it all, Lottie was handing out business cards and collecting the signatures of outraged citizens-finally-who were actually booing Uniworld by the time I finished.
“Do you think that was wise?” Grace asked, when Lottie and I came back inside. “Painting Uniworld as-what were your words-pigheaded money-grubbers? Should you have waited until after your meeting with Mr. Raand to talk to the press?”
“Too late now,” Lottie said, counting the names. She showed me the petition.
“One hundred seven! We’re one-fifth of the way there.” I high-fived her, then glanced at Grace. “Don’t frown. This is way better than meeting with Raand. He’d just blow me off.”
Grace sighed. “I only hope you haven’t made a worse enemy of Uniworld.”
“I’m not afraid of them, Grace.”
“I’m reminded of a quote by Sir Isaac Newton,” Grace said.
Of course she was. Everything reminded Grace of a quote.
“ ‘Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.’ ”
Huh. She had me there.
When I arrived home at my apartment at five fifteen that evening, my best friend and roommate, Nikki Hiduke, was in the bathroom preparing for a dinner date with her new beau, Deputy Prosecutor Gregory Morgan, or, as I thought of him, Deputy Damn-I’m-Handsome!
“Hey, what’s up?” I called as I shuffled through the mail left on the table.
“Abby,” Nikki cried, hurrying out with a tube of lipstick in her hand, her blond hair starched into stiff spikes like a very tall, slender Lisa Simpson’s. She gave me a hug. “I saw the news. I’m so glad you’re okay. I can’t believe those bastards tried to burn down your store.”
“They weren’t trying to burn it down, Nik, just to frighten me. Remember the woman from PAR telling us about Uniworld’s scare tactics?”
“Sure, stuff like hate mail and smear campaigns. She didn’t say anything about burning bricks.” Nikki glanced at the clock. “Quick! Turn on the TV. They should be doing a recap of the local news now, and you’re the lead story!”
Sweet. I dropped the envelopes and dove for the remote on the coffee table, startling Simon, Nikki’s white cat, who had curled on the sofa for his predinner nap. He arched his back and hissed, then realized it was me and came to climb on my knees and rub his cold nose against my chin as the television flickered.
“Yes, Simon. I see you. Love you, too, Simon. Have you gained weight? Get off, Simon. My knee is numb!” I placed him beside me so I could watch the reporter’s interview. “Do I look pale?” I asked Nikki.
“You look fine. By the way, I didn’t know you were going to be at the Home and Garden Show collecting signatures this morning or I would have volunteered to help.”
“You did know. I told you yesterday.”
“Seriously?”
Lately, Nikki was so wrapped up in Morgan that she couldn’t even remember what she had for breakfast. To think Morgan once annoyed her as much as he did me. But those good times were over.
“Wow. You sure let Uniworld have it,” Nikki said.
“Look at that crowd, Nik. They were totally with me.”
Nikki got up close to the screen. “Is that a flower pin on your beret?”
“It’s a brooch I found in a shipment of flowers, and please don’t say it’s nasty.”
“Are you kidding? It’s retro. Look how fashionable you are. Jillian will be so jealous.”
That would be a first. My über-fashionista cousin strove to possess whatever the latest trend dictated. If I were to best her, well, things could get ugly.
The report ended, so I clicked off the TV and headed for my bedroom to dress for dinner. “Maybe all this bad press will do the trick, and I won’t have to go to court to ask for an injunction.”
“Let’s hope that’s all the bad press does,” Nikki called from the bathroom. “After that flaming brick incident, I’d be a little nervous.”
“Do you sincerely think anyone from Uniworld would do anything to me now? I mean, who’d be the first on the suspect list? Anyway, Reilly was going to talk to Nils Raand, the head honcho at the distribution center, about meeting with me to discuss the situation, so hopefully we can come to a peaceable agreement.”
I paused, catching sight of a magazine lying on my bed. “Today’s Bride? Did you buy this for me?”
“It came in the mail. No note with it. Hey, are you going out tonight?”
I pulled my green dress on over my head, fuming. I’d bet anything Marco’s mom sent that magazine. “Marco is taking me to Adagio’s. Why?”
“Greg just got a dining membership at the country club, and his Lexus is in the shop, and I hate to take my old beater, so… can I borrow your car?”
Borrow my Vette? My pride and joy? Okay, yes, I was a tad particular about whom I let use my carefully repaired and repainted 1960 Corvette but, truthfully, Nikki wasn’t the most mindful driver in the world. “I guess so. But be really, really careful, okay?”
“It’s just a car, Abby. Besides, nothing bad happened last time I used it.”
Unless you counted those two scratches on the bumper and the odor of greasy onion rings that clung to the interior for weeks. But hey, she was my best friend. How could I refuse her?
Seriously, I wanted to know. How could I refuse her?
Marco lifted his wineglass and waited until I did the same. We were in the elegant Adagio’s, New Chapel’s one and only cosmopolitan restaurant, at a cozy corner table for two, set with real china, white linen tablecloth and napkins, and a votive candle in a crystal goblet. Marco had worn a black and gray tweed jacket over a black shirt, with gray pants, and looked so sexy it was hard for me to stay in my chair.
Gazing at me over the flickering candlelight at our table, he said, “You in that green dress?” He dropped his voice to a throaty growl. “Dangerous.”
“Thank you. And you in, well, in anything? Totally dangerous.”
He touched the rim of his glass to mine, suddenly serious. “To us.”
“Yes, to us.” He wasn’t going to choose now to have our discussion, was he? I mean, we’d barely sat down.
His dark eyes held my own. “To our future.”
My cell phone rang. Marco waited, glass in the air.
“Sorry. I’ll just turn that off.” I set down my wine and pulled my phone out of my purse. “Um, maybe I should take this. It’s Nikki. I told you she’s using my car, right?”
“Twice. That’s okay. I know you’re worried. Go ahead.”
I smiled at him. What an understanding guy. “Nikki? What’s up?”
“Abby, I think someone’s following me,” she whispered tensely. “What should I do?”
“Where are you? Isn’t Morgan with you?” I glanced over at Marco, and he raised his eyebrows questioningly.
“I dropped Greg off and went to find a parking space, but the lot was jammed, so I was looking for off-street parking when this white van-Omigod, Abby, he’s right on my bumper!”
Make that my bumper. “Step on the gas, Nikki! Get out of there.”
“What’s happening?” Marco asked, leaning toward me.
“A van is following Nikki,” I whispered. “She dropped Morgan off, then-”
“I floored it, Abby. The van’s still right behind me,” Nikki cried, in a panic.
“Honk the horn and keep driving, Nik. Try to attract attention.”
“There’s no one on the road,” she cried, “and where’s the damn horn button?”
“It’s not a button! It’s-”
“Let me talk to her.” Marco took my mobile and handed me his. “Call 911.”
While I called the police, he pressed my phone to his ear. “Nikki, where are you? Heading toward Concord Avenue? Good. Keep going. Forget the horn. No, do not let the van pass. Drive down the middle of the road if you have to. He might be trying to run you off. When you get to Concord, cross the intersection and pull into the gas station on the corner.”
I gave the dispatch operator Nikki’s location and ended the call, my stomach in fist-sized knots. What if the van ran Nikki off the road? What if she ended up in a ditch? My mom’s worst nightmare had just become my own.
“Okay, Nikki,” Marco said, “as soon as you pull up in front of the door, put the car in park, kill the engine, grab the keys… Hello?” He looked at the screen, then, with a muttered curse, started punching buttons.
“What happened?”
“Dropped call.” He held my phone to his ear, listened, then cursed again. “Nothing.”
“I’ll try your phone. We’ve got different phone companies.” Quickly, I entered Nikki’s number in Marco’s phone, tapping my fingers on the tabletop as I counted the rings. “Four, five, six-either she should have answered or the call should have gone to voice mail-eight, nine, ten.” I clapped his phone shut. “She’s not answering.”
Marco tossed down a twenty-dollar bill for the wine and ushered me toward the coat-check closet. I thrust my arms into the sleeves as he held open my navy coat, then clung to his arm so I wouldn’t slip in my heels as we hurried to his car.
He drove as fast as he could, but it still took more than ten minutes to reach the north side of town. When he screeched into the gas station, two cop cars were there, lights flashing, and my yellow Corvette was parked in front of the gas station/convenience store’s door. As we hurried toward the entrance, I took a hasty glance at my car, and everything looked fine, luckily.
When we stepped inside, Reilly and another cop were with Nikki, who was seated on a folding chair with a bottle of water in her hand. When she saw me, she started to cry.
Marco, Reilly, and the other cop formed a huddle to discuss the situation, while I went straight to Nikki to hug her. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?”
She took a deep breath and blew it out, wiping tears off her cheeks. “I’m okay, other than wanting to vomit.”
“Did you see the guy who was following you?”
“There were two people, Abby. I didn’t see their faces, but I noticed their van when I circled through the parking lot. I thought they were looking for a space, not for a car to steal.”
And then my bright yellow Vette went sailing past their thieving little eyeballs.
Nikki took a sip of water. “Remind me to never borrow your car again.”
No problemo.
Within minutes, an APB went out for a white van with no markings and two people inside. Unfortunately, since Nikki hadn’t seen their faces, the search was going to be difficult. Reilly took her back to the country club to meet up with Morgan, who’d been frantically phoning her, not realizing Nikki had hit a dead zone. Since she’d lost her appetite for a heavy meal, she and Morgan planned to hail a cab back to our apartment for a light supper of toast and eggs.
“Take my car,” Marco told me, as we left the gas station. “I’ll follow you in the Vette, just in case anyone tries anything.”
Still my hero. “Thanks, Marco.” I gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. “Are we going back to Adagio’s or do you want to call it a night?”
“Your choice.”
Hmm. If we went to the restaurant, I’d have to leave my car parked on a main street, and after what had just happened, that wasn’t something I was ready to do. But Marco lived on a quiet block with little traffic. “How about we pick up a pizza and go back to your place?”
“Okay, but Rafe will be there. We’ll have to get two pizzas.”
Darn. I’d forgotten about Marco’s younger brother, a supposedly temporary houseguest who’d now been there a month. After Rafe had dropped out of college one semester shy of graduation, Marco’s mom had asked him to take Rafe under his wing to get him back on track. I was still waiting for that to happen.
“How about your place?” Marco asked.
“Two words. Nikki. Morgan.”
“Right. Let’s just grab a sandwich at Down the Hatch.”
In my green silk dress? At least we’d be fed quickly, and since my stomach was starting to eat itself, it worked for me. “Let’s go.”
But once back at Marco’s bar on a crowded Saturday night, we found nowhere to sit but in his office, so we pulled chairs up to his desk and gobbled our sandwiches as though we hadn’t eaten in weeks. Quite romantic.
“I almost forgot,” Marco said, swallowing a mouthful of barbecued beef. “Reilly said to tell you Nils Raand agreed to meet Monday afternoon at two o’clock. If that time doesn’t work, you should call the distribution center and leave a message.”
“I wonder why Reilly didn’t tell me.”
“You were busy. I told Reilly no problem. Grace and Lottie will cover.” He gave me his sexy little grin. “Right?”
“Yes.” Still, he could have asked. Making assumptions was not a positive attribute.
“It’ll be quiet here at the bar, so I’ll be able to make it, too.”
Wow. With no invitation or anything-not that I minded his company. “So you’re going with me, then.”
“Damn straight. Raand’s not going to intimidate you while I’m around.”
I put down my sandwich and wiped my fingers on a napkin. At least that was how it looked to Marco. Actually I was counting to ten. “That’s sweet, Marco, and I appreciate your support, but Raand’s not going to intimidate me.”
“You got that right.”
“But not because you’ll be there, Marco. Because I won’t let him. It’s all about mental attitude.”
“Trust me, Sunshine. It won’t come to that.”
Arrogance. Straight into the minus column.
PLUSES : MINUSES
Protective: Bossy
Confident: Arrogant
Open-minded: Stubborn
Sexy:
Hardworking:
Brave:
Trusting:
Family oriented:
Generous:
Kind:
Understanding:
Supportive:
Great with children:
Strong:
Soulful:
Considerate:
Devoted:
Calm:
Levelheaded:
Sensitive:
Helpful:
Earns a good living: