Diva's Last Curtain Call (15 page)

“And no one ever saw Blackie Randall again?”

“Nope. There were rumors that he had been spotted as far away as Canada. The three friends of his who actually robbed the bank never admitted to killing him and would never say why his blood was in the car. They served their time for the robbery and got out of prison. Two have since died and the third one killed some guy up in Cleveland and is back in prison for life this time. I don’t think Harriet ever gave up hope that Blackie would come home one day.”

I drained the spaghetti and wondered if Vivianne’s book,
The Onyx Man,
was about Blackie Randall and the bank robbery. Did Vivianne find out Blackie was alive and reveal in her book where he’d been hiding for the past twenty years? Could Harriet have killed her friend for being about to reveal her husband’s hiding place? Or could Blackie Randall have found out about the book and emerged from hiding to kill Vivianne himself?

I put Rollins to work chopping vegetables for the salad. Our fingers touched as I handed him a head of lettuce. The warmth of his fingers made me feel flustered and I quickly turned back to the stove where my sauce was bubbling away, filling the kitchen with its aroma.

He walked up behind me and looked over my shoulder into the sauce pot. I could feel his hot breath on my neck. “I don’t know which smells better—you or the sauce,” he said in a low voice that sent a delicious shiver down my spine. I wiped a trickle of sweat from my brow. I was suddenly hot and it wasn’t from the heat of the stove.

“Is Inez home? Will she be joining us for dinner?” I asked hopefully.

He gave my neck a quick feather-light kiss before answering. “Inez is so busy since her new beauty shop opened that I barely see her.” He poured us each a glass of wine. I took a big gulp.

“You can relax, Kendra. I don’t bite. We’re just two friends enjoying each other’s company. Nothing wrong in that, is there?”

Yeah, right. He sounded sincere enough, but there was definitely something in his eyes that said otherwise.

“Not everyone would agree with that assessment,” I said, and filled him in on the rumor that was currently floating around town about us, at which point Rollins threw back his head and howled with laughter. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever seen him laugh so hard. I was starting to get a little offended.

“That sure explains a lot,” he said, after he’d calmed down. “Some of the church sisters were giving me mighty strange looks when I ran into them today. I couldn’t figure out why. Guess I know now.” He chuckled, taking a sip of wine.

“I sure hope your lady friend doesn’t believe it. Maybe you should call her and explain,” I said drily.

“What lady friend?” he asked, looked genuinely confused.

“Winette Barlow. I heard the two of you are an item now.” I fixed two heaping plates of spaghetti and followed him to the kitchen table.

“You heard this from the same people who are currently spreading the rumor about us, right?” I felt foolish and didn’t answer. He started laughing again. “Kendra Clayton, what am I going to do with you?” I still didn’t answer. But I could fantasize.

Two hours later, after we’d eaten the spaghetti, salad and big slices of the chocolate cake I’d brought and had done the dinner dishes together, Rollins walked me to my car and managed to turn an innocent kiss on the forehead into an erotic experience by letting his warm mouth linger seconds longer than was necessary. It was definitely time for me to go. But I had one last question.

“What do you think happened to Blackie Randall? Do you think he’s dead?” I asked. Rollins thought for a moment before answering.

“I have no idea what happened to him. But there is one interesting fact that points to him being alive,” he said, holding my car door open for me.

“And that would be?”

“There were four men involved in that robbery. The police only recovered three-fourths of the money that got stolen. There’s still a fourth of that money that’s never been found or accounted for.”

“Calm down, Greg. It’s going to be okay,” I told my best friend’s fiancé. Greg had shown up at my front door first thing that morning babbling about Justine threatening to cancel the wedding. He hadn’t shaved and was dressed in a wrinkled tank top and sweatpants. I hadn’t slept well the night before and couldn’t fully focus on what he was saying. I was trying hard to get him to talk quietly because Allegra had gotten in late and was still sound asleep on the couch. But he was much too upset to care about waking up Sleeping Beauty. I finally led him past Allegra’s slumbering form back to my kitchen and made us a strong pot of coffee.

“Can she do that?” he said angrily. “Cancel our wedding, I mean? Lynette and I paid for most of the wedding. How can Justine cancel it?” He looked so lost and upset that I wasn’t sure who I was madder at: Justine, for making a bad situation worse, or Lynette for running away in the first place.

“She’s just blowing smoke out her ass, Greg. Don’t worry about Justine. We need to focus on finding Lynette. Have you heard from her at all since that first call?”

“No. Not a word and I’m really getting worried. You don’t think something has happened to her, do you?”

“I don’t know, Greg. I would have thought she’d have been home by now.” I took another bracing sip of coffee and tried to shake the cobwebs from my mind.

“You think we should call the police?”

“I’d say if she’s not back by the end of the day then, yes, we should call the police.” He sighed heavily and buried his face in his hands. Then something must have occurred to him because his hands fell away from his face and he looked panic-stricken.

“Kendra, if I ask you something will you tell me the truth?”

“Of course.” I had a feeling I knew what he was going to ask.

“There’s not another man is there? When you saw her at the Heritage Arms she was alone, wasn’t she?”

“Of course she was alone, Greg. There is no one but you. Lynette loves you.” Finally—a question I could answer truthfully.

After Greg left, I got dressed, and headed out to run errands and, at Greg’s request, pick up things for a wedding that might not even happen. Allegra was still asleep when I left, making me wonder where she’d been last night and if it was with Carl. Not that I had a right to be too upset since I’d spent my evening with another man. Carl and I hadn’t been spending much time together lately, and for some reason it wasn’t bothering me nearly as much as it should have.

By the time I arrived at Garrison’s Print and Copy Shop it had started to drizzle. I dodged raindrops as I headed inside to pick up Greg and Lynette’s wedding programs. I walked up to the counter and had to wait a few minutes while the skinny woman with frizzy gray hair manning the counter finished a phone conversation before coming to the counter to greet me.

“I’ve come to pick up the order for Lynette Martin-Gaines. It’s for wedding programs.”

“Yes. I was wondering if someone was going to pick up that order. It’s been ready since Monday,” she said mildly and then turned to the wall of shelving behind her. The shelves were filled with boxes of printing to be picked up. She scanned the boxes until she came upon a white one and brought it to the counter. She told me the price and I handed her the cash without asking to see the programs first. Big mistake.

“Here you go,” she said and slid the box across the counter. “Have a nice day.” The phone rang again and she hurried off to answer it.

I opened the lid of the box to look at the programs. Greg and Lynette smiled up at me from their engagement picture printed on the cover of the cream-colored program. Gold lettering beneath the picture listed the date of the wedding and underneath that larger gold lettering declared, Grog & Lynette Forever. Huh? I flipped though the stack of programs and sure enough, Grog & Lynette Forever was printed on each and every one. Oh, no.

“Excuse me,” I said loudly to the woman behind the counter, who was still on the phone. I could tell by the way she was smiling and laughing that it wasn’t business-related. She turned and looked at me as though she’d never seen me before and I waved a program at her.

“There’s a typo on these,” I said, pointing at the offending
O
in Greg’s name. This should be
Greg
not
Grog,
” I said, as she approached the counter. She pulled a pair of spectacles from her pants pocket, perched them on the end of her nose, and squinted at the programs.

“Yeah, that’s a mistake all right.” She checked the copy of the order form taped to the top of the box, which indeed confirmed that it should be
Greg
and not
Grog.
“Sorry about the mistake ma’am. I’ll redo these personally and you can pick them up next Monday.”

“Next Monday? The wedding is
this
Saturday,” I said, my voice rising to a high-pitched shriek. I gestured to the date on the front of the program. “I need these redone today.”

“Today? Nope. Not possible,” she said shaking her head vigorously. “If you’d have come in on Monday when they were ready then maybe I could have redone them this week. But I’m the only one here today and I’m swamped.”

“But it’s
your
mistake and it’s not my fault you’re swamped. Is the manager in?” I asked. looking past her.

“I’m the manager and
owner,
young lady,” she said, gesturing to the name tag that read Patsy Garrison/Owner pinned to the front of her denim smock, “and I don’t appreciate your tone.” She leaned forward menacingly against the counter and I caught a whiff of her onion-and coffee-scented breath. I took a step back before it melted my face and she smirked.

“And I don’t appreciate the fact that these programs have been paid for and there’s a typo in them. I demand they be redone today or I’ll—”

“Or you’ll what?” she said, straightening up and crossing her arms over her bony chest. “What can you possibly do?”

“Picket! I’ll stand in front of this shop all day if I have to and make sure everyone who comes in here today knows you do shoddy work.”

“Go ahead. If you want to stand outside in the rain like a fool, you go right ahead. That still don’t change the fact that I don’t have time to redo these programs today.” She turned her back on me.

I turned and looked outside to see that the light drizzle had turned into pouring rain. Standing outside in that downpour was not my idea of a good time.

“Look, ma’am, isn’t there any way you could redo these programs today? It’s really important,” I pleaded. I even tried to wring out a few tears but they wouldn’t come. Not that she’d have noticed anyway as she continued to ignored me, instead giving me a view of her flat polyester-encased ass as she bent over a box on the floor.

“I’ll pay extra,” I said finally. That got her attention and she turned to smirk at me.

“No need, young lady. I have something else in mind.”

Instead of paying extra for a rush job on the corrected programs, I ended up spending the next two hours dressed in a denim smock helping Patsy Garrison work through her backlog of printing jobs. Before she got busy redoing the programs, she showed me how to run two of the large, complicated-looking copiers and left me several boxes of résumés, flyers and brochures to copy on various types and textures of colored paper.

The résumés and flyers were easy enough and I got them copied and out of the way in no time flat. But the brochures were giving me fits. The copier that did two-sided copying was out of order, which meant I had to manually flip the copies over to the other side in the paper tray once one side had been finished. The first time I did it the print on the flipside of the brochures was upside down. I was in such a hurry to get done that I failed to test one to makes sure it came out right side up. I ended up ruining two hundred and fifty brochures for the Venus De Milo Day Spa and discreetly pitched them in the recycling bin before Patsy could see what I’d done and punish me by breathing her dragon breath in my face. By the time I finally got them to come out right, which took three tries, I was highly annoyed and almost in tears. Wedding jitters or not, Lynette had now moved to the top of my shit list.

I heard the door to the shop open and ignored it since I figured Patsy was taking care of the customers. A minute later I heard an impatient, “Excuse me, miss.” I turned around and was greeted by the sight of Winette Barlow. Great! She was dressed to perfection as usual with a tan trench coat over a coral-colored suit that flattered her still-youthful figure. Her thick glossy gray-streaked black hair was loose around her shoulders and bright red lipstick accentuated a wide unsmiling mouth. Her dripping black umbrella was making a large puddle at her feet. She didn’t seem to care. Her laserlike stare was unwavering and unnerving.

Had she heard the rumors about Rollins and me? Were the rumors about her and Rollins true? Now that I thought about it, he’d never quite denied it. And more importantly, why did I care? We stared at each other uncomfortably for a few seconds before Winette finally spoke.

“Cat got your tongue, sweetie?” she asked in her soft Southern drawl. Winette is originally from Virginia and usually polite and gracious to a fault. Today, I couldn’t gauge her mood by the tone of her voice. Instead, I smiled at her. She didn’t smile back. Ouch. I guess I had my answer about whether she’d heard the rumors.

“Hi. Winette. What brings you in here?” I asked coolly.

“I’m here to pick up the flyers for the annual Holy Cross car wash this Friday. Morris asked me at breakfast this morning if I’d pick them up for him,” she said and finally smiled. But the smile didn’t reach her eyes and was more a flashing of teeth than a symbol of friendliness.

Dinner with me and breakfast with Winette Barlow. Rollins was sure keeping his social calendar filled. I wondered who got him for lunch? Not that I gave a damn. I turned wordlessly to the shelving unit behind me and located the order for Holy Cross. I handed her the box and she snatched it from me so fast I got a paper cut on the invoice.