Or minute by minute, whichever you prefer. I was never alone.”
The chief’s shadow shifts his stance but never takes his gaze off me. I’m getting really sick of him . . . whoever he might be.
Chief Clark takes a step toward me.
I back away.
He comes closer again. “Then, Miss Andie, if you don’t think you’ve done anything suspicious, how do you explain spending your morning going through your co-workers’ pocketbooks?”
I hear jail bars slamming on me.
I know better than to listen to Aunt Weeby.
So I have to admit I wanted to snoop.
And it is time to pay the piper.
Hopefully, not with my freedom.
I’m stunned when Chief Clark lets me go without handcuffs on my wrists. True, it’s thanks to Aunt Weeby’s ride to my rescue.
“Donald Clark!” she says. “Tell me right now why you’re all bent on playing the idiot here.”
The look in the chief’s eyes gives me the willies. Only Aunt Weeby . . .
He takes a deep breath. “Because—”
“And you may as well know,” she adds, unaware or maybe just unafraid of potential consequences to her comments, “it was my idea for Andie to check ’em all out. And a mighty fine idea it was too. What if one of them had had the . . . whatcha call it? Oh yes! The smoking gun?”
Chief Clark looks ready to swallow his tongue. “Maybe you’re the one I need to lock up.”
Aunt Weeby tips up her nose. “Don’t you go sassing your elders, Donald.”
“Only by thirteen and a half years, Weeb. Not enough to make you an elder . . .”
To my relief, they go off to carry on their argument.
But then I still have to face the camera. With Max.
Shortly after our show starts, Max leans forward, studies the gem in my tweezers, and then scoffs. “Do you know what you’re talking about?”
“Who’s the gemologist here?”
“You, but even I know what bad jade looks like.”
“Shows how little
you
know, if you’re saying this is bad jade.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. It’s cheap jade.”
“It’s top-quality prehnite, you dunce.”
“Dunce?” He faces the camera square on. “Who ever heard of this pre . . . pre-hen stuff?”
I look my customers in the—camera—eye. “Ladies and gentlemen, for those who don’t know, prehnite is an orthorhombic mineral, which is sometimes found as distinct crystals. More frequently, though, it’s found with volcanic rocks, and forms in aggregates with botryoidal habit. Prehnite is rarely clean enough for faceting but can be cut as cabochon. Sometimes it even displays a cat’s-eye effect.”
When I hear nothing from my cohost, I slant a glance his way. His smirk makes my blood boil.
“Care to share the joke with the viewers and me?”
His smirk widens. “Are you sure you want to hear my thoughts?”
Something tells me I should have ignored him in the first place, but it’s too late to back down now. “I’m sure I don’t want to, but I’m also sure you’re going to share.”
With a wink to the camera, he says, “Isn’t she cute when she’s being smart?”
Guffaws erupt around the studio. My face burns from ear to ear. And then the memory of my encounter with Danni raises its impish head.
“Ladies?” I say. “If he thinks I’m cute when I bring you information, don’t you think he’d look cuter still if he’d help Danni sell frilly pink panties or the spandex Capris we just got in?”
Now his jaw sags. His cheeks turn ruddy. The laughter in the studio reaches the outer heights of hysteria. I settle back into my chair and wait for the hilarity to subside.
But then, from somewhere out in the back of beyond, I hear a shriek, and it’s not Rio. Uh-oh. Danni must not have left the premises. I’m gonna have to pay for that zinger. One I probably took too far.
Lord? Am I ever going to learn to keep
this mouth of mine from leaping before my common sense?
“Take note, folks,” Max says, an edge to his voice. “She thinks she’s a comic.” He pauses a moment, forces a grimace that probably is meant as a smile, and then goes on. “While I may not know as much as she does about gemstones, I’m willing to take the challenge. I’m ready to learn. I’m an athlete, and athletes are built for endurance. I can hang in there until the cows come home.”
Is that a dare or is that a dare? I know what it is, but I’m not ready to bite. I shove a loose lock of hair behind my ear. In the background, I hear Miss Mona and Danni arguing. I can also imagine what households across America are thinking, saying.
Time to take the reins of my show again and lead it back to where it should’ve been all along. “So, ladies and gentlemen, what do you think of this gorgeous, soft-green, glowing gem? It
is
prehnite, a lovely stone in its own right, and not related to jade in any way.”
At my side, Max fidgets in his chair but keeps his mouth shut. The show goes on smoothly for a while. Then . . .
I pick up a stone from the next tray of product. “I have another gorgeous green gem for you today. And while its soft green hue is similar to that of the prehnite, amazonite is a separate gem in its own right.”
“I’ll bet it comes from the Amazon,” the jock pipes in.
“You’d lose that bet. It comes from Colorado, the Minas Gerais state in Brazil, Canada, Italy, and the Ural Mountains in Russia.”
He points at me. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our resident encyclopedia.”
I choose to ignore the comment. “Some think the name comes from a reference to the Amazons, warrior women of Greek mythology. But no amazonite has been found anywhere near the river.”
Max leans back in his chair and stares at me. “Wonder if those Amazons had red hair.”
Not a word, not a word.
I owe him the freebie jab, to say the least. “Amazonite is usually cut in cabochon. And sometimes it shows a schiller effect. That’s when you see shimmery, flakelike plates within the stone.”
“Really?” No one can miss the interest in Max’s voice, his eyes—not even me. Then he leans forward, and that excellent aftershave does its thing again. I feel the warmth of his bulk at my side, hear the soft in-and-out of his breath. How can he be so attractive and infuriate me at the same time?
The show, Andie, the show!
“Um . . . really. Look at the stone.” I tweeze the amazonite in front of my white velvet drape. “You can see the layers of subtle sparkle inside.”
He draws closer, places a hand on my arm. “That’s pretty neat,” he says, his attention on the stone and not his now-discombobulated cohost.
And with that uncertain truce, in spite of my bizarre response to his nearness, his touch, we go on with the show. Lots of phone calls help me get through the nerve-wracking experience.
It helps to show the spectacular tanzanites we received that morning. We end with a call from my friend Peggy who congratulates me on the show and buys a top-notch tanzie for herself.
When the theme song wafts over our heads, I wait for Hannah’s cue that the camera’s off, and then remove my mike. I stride from the desk without a backward glance.
Focus on how little he knows, not how good he smells. Aftershave’s cheap, so to speak. A good gemologist, not so much.
Max’s stare burns a hole between my shoulder blades.
But I’m a woman on a mission so I just keep going. I have to corner Miss Mona before my oomph goes away, not to mention before Max the Magnificent gets to her. She thinks he’s great.
“Andie, Andie, Andie!” Miss Mona wraps me in a huge hug. “You are incredible. That show was the best, honey, the absolute best.”
“Huh?” She’s still the queen of the “Huh?” factor.
“The phones are ringing off the hook again! The viewers went and bought up every last little thing you showed,
and
they were all raving over you and Max. They really missed you while we were on our trip!”
“But—”
“You’re a hit, an honest-to-goodness star!”
Oh-kay.
Help me out here, will you? I thought I was leaving the gerbil-on-an-exercise-wheel life in the Big Wormy Apple, but here I am living my worst nightmare in Louisville. How did I land in the middle of a mess complete with a dead vendor, bullets, a suspicious cop, a co-worker who hates me because she thinks I stole her job, and a cohost who rattles my world and makes me look like a fool with his lack of knowledge?
And let’s not forget my nutty aunt and the “Huh?” queen. Who, as we speak, is staring at me with questions in her gaze. It’s enough to give a girl a migraine.
“Let’s go somewhere to talk.” I slip my arm through hers. “Just us girls, okay?”
“Sure, honey. We can brainstorm some great new ideas for the show. I know! Maybe we can coordinate your wardrobe with Max’s clothes. Wouldn’t that be sweet—”
“Aaack!” My response brings about the hoped-for result. Miss Mona stops rhapsodizing over Max and me.
I close her office door, then turn to face her. “
That
, Miss Mona, is just what I wanted to talk about. You’ve got to get rid of Max. Now. He’s just awful. He doesn’t know a thing about gems, and he makes me look stupid.”
“Andie!” Forget saucers; horror makes her eyes big as trays. “How can you even think such a thing? The viewers are in love with you two. We can’t break up a perfect match.”
That makes my head pound. “We’d better break up a poisonous pairing before it blows up in our faces.”
“It’s blown up in our faces in a big, good way. We can hardly handle all those calls. Our wonderful shoppers are just buying up anything you and Max argue about, and all of them can’t tell us enough how much they enjoy you.”
“But
I
don’t enjoy us!”
Miss Mona doesn’t answer right away. She stares. I get itchy and squirmy, as if I’d done something wrong. But I haven’t. Max has. Right?
Still, it’s probably best if I keep my mouth shut, let Miss Mona think about what I said. Try and catch my breath.
She goes behind her desk but doesn’t sit. Her posture whisks me back to grade school and that one visit to the principal’s office.
What for, you ask? Nuh-uh. I’m not telling.
Fists on the desk, Miss Mona leans forward. “I never thought I’d have to do this, honey, but I’m going to have to be your boss more than your friend right now. Listen up, and listen good.”
I bite my bottom lip. This doesn’t sound so good. My stomach lurches.
She goes on. “Max is the perfect cohost for you. You spar
and
sparkle together like the best of old-time movie couples. And I’ve told you this before. More important, it’s the viewers who tell us that. I’m telling you, honey, he’s your perfect foil. The customers recognize this. It’s time you do too.”
“But I left New York to get away from the stress. I can’t work under this much tension.” The kind that’s making me feel sick right about now.
She waves away my concern. “You’re just going to have to find a way to make peace with him. He’s staying right on that chair next to yours.”
“But he knows nothing about gems!”
Miss Mona raps her knuckles against the desk. “That’s why he’s so perfect for you. You’re brainy and beautiful, but the customers aren’t. Brainy, that is. And not all will be beautiful either. But they see Max as one of them—they identify with him. He asks the bumbling questions they would ask but can’t, and he looks great while he’s doing it. It’s the perfect mix.” “That can’t be. They can’t possibly want to see a dunce try to sell them gems.”
“He’s not trying to sell them anything.
You
are. It works. You can’t fight with success.”
“But—”
“There you are!” Aunt Weeby cries as she barges in. “Whoo-ee, Andie! You could probably sell them folks rotten tomatoes and make them like ’em with that routine you and Max got going on. How long does it take the two a’ you to work it out ahead a’ time?”
“Hey! You’re so wrong about that. There’s no ‘working it out’ going on.” I shoot for calm and reasonable. “Explain this to me, please. How can people who want to buy something unusual and very special think it’s great if one of the two salespeople is a total dud?”
“Max is no dud!” Aunt Weeby waggles her index finger at me. “He’s a handsome, smart boy, and he sure knows how to play to a crowd. He’s just playing to it at your side, and you might could learn from him, Andrea Autumn Adams. Don’t you be letting that pride a’ yours get ahead a’ your smarts.” When the queasy feeling hits my gut, my defenses leap to attention. “Are you saying I don’t know how to play to the audience?”
“You don’t,” the source of my irritation says, as he too walks in. “You’re too serious, and you just rattle off facts and prices at the viewers.”
I wish I could just wiggle my nose and make him disappear.
“Last I heard, that was exactly what I was hired to do.”
Miss Mona comes to my side and places an arm around my shoulders. “Yes, honey, I hired you to tell our customers all about the treasures we offer for sale, but you also have to entertain them while you’re doing it.”
“So now I’m dull.”
Max whistles a few random notes. “You know, Andie, if the glass slipper’s yours, then you’d better put it on.”
Aunt Weeby juts out her chin. “Now, Max. Andie’s not dull, it’s just that them facts and chemicals all fascinate her more’n they interest you and me and the man on the moon. You might could help here by learning a little about ’em, and helping her make them more interesting.”
“It’s called,” Miss Mona says with a grin, “cooperation, kiddies. And it works real well.”
I slant Max a glance. Satisfaction is smeared all over that gorgeous face. I groan. “Do you know what you two are doing? You’re making him even more conceited.”
“Conceited?” Aunt Weeby asks.
“Huh?” Miss Mona offers—for a change.
“Sure. He thinks he’s the best thing that’s ever happened to American television broadcasting.” But me? I’m thinking I might just be allergic to the guy, I feel so bad.
Max’s eyes give off sparks. “I do not. I just know how to present myself to an audience. Better than you. You might want to learn.”
When I don’t dignify him with a response, Miss Mona says, “Andie?”
I don’t like her thoughtful expression, but I can’t refuse to respond. I’m not that rude. “Yes?”