Out of Mind

“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “I’m coming with you.”

How she wished she could say, “Great.” Instead she ducked down to see him and said, “Let me call you if they’re here to see me. They may not be, but anyway, we don’t want to look as if we’re on the defensive and you’re my bodyguard.”

“Why not?”

“You are so predictable,” she hissed. “Now please do what I want for once. Thanks for being with me….” The cop got out of the cruiser and stood in front of the tattoo parlor. “See,” Willow continued rapidly, “nothing to worry about anyway. He’s here for the tattoo parlor. Happens all the time.”

“You mean you work where there’s a lot of criminal activity?” Ben said, focusing on the neon sign in the window.

Willow kept her face perfectly straight. “No. Cops get a lot of tattoos.”

She shut the passenger door, tucked Mario under her arm, and stood there waving. This was Ben’s first visit to the office site she’d moved into less than four months earlier. She intended to stay put until he left so he wouldn’t figure out she also had to enter the building via the tattoo parlor.

He looked at her for so long she feared he would insist on waiting her out. She smiled at him and raised one of Mario’s front paws.

Ben rolled his eyes, backed up and drove away.

Once he was out of sight, she ran into the building without glancing at the police officer, who remained in front of the building speaking into his collar mike.

“There she is, the woman of the hour,” Rock U. hollered when he saw her. He was working over a large black-and-green tattoo on the back of a big kid with matted white dreadlocks.

Unlikely music, the ping of tiny cymbals and rush of water in decidedly Zen mode, floated from large speakers. Pictures flickered on a muted TV high on a wall.

Rock U. subscribed to the open-salon principle. A good thing, since his business was in one room, about eight feet by nine.

“How come you got your name up in lights?” he said, letting each word rise and fall as if he were warming up to sing. “Saw the van right there on the TV. And that uppity Zinnia, she won’t even give me a hint of inside info- mation. That girl has an attitude, I tell you. You would think she was manager of a swank hotel, not a cleaning outfit.”

As broad as he was long and all muscle, the man was a human billboard displaying many of his specialty tattoos. Like every other day, he wore a black muscle shirt and tight, black leather pants decorated with a heavy key and small tool-loaded chain hanging from a belt loop. He wouldn’t tell anyone what the U after his first name stood for and the employees at Mean ’n Green had been known to waste time speculating about it. Unlikely, Unwashed, Unspeakable; the possibilities went on.

“You got a dog?” Rock U. wrinkled his hooked nose.

“Can’t talk,” Willow said, breaking into a jog. “But I love you, Rock U. And it would be so amazing if you thought of a way to delay that cop out there until I’ve had a chance to talk to Zinnia. I only need a couple of minutes.”

Rock U. chuckled. “Just long enough to tell that bitch to keep her mouth shut with the policeman, too? Not just me?”

“Could be,” Willow said, her hand already on the battered door leading to Mean ’n Green’s salubrious digs. “I’ll tell you all about it as soon as I can.” Which will most likely be never.

She hadn’t quite closed the door to Mean ’n Green behind her when she heard the front door open again. Willow figured the cop was on his way and she didn’t look back.

The phone buzzed continuously, but Zinnia behaved as if she didn’t hear it.

“Listen up.” Willow raised her voice to be heard over the racket. “If a cop comes in here, you don’t know anything about anything.”

“I don’t,” Zinnia said and blew a gum bubble.

Fabio sniggered. “I don’t,” he mimicked. The best shopper in town, he sat in one of several chairs behind a long, Formica-topped table Willow’s staff shared whenever they were in the office. Fabio worked at a computer— probably doing price comparisons and mapping his day’s routes. One of the things the company prided itself on was keeping prices as low as possible.

Willow waited for comments about Mario, but Zinnia and Fabio behaved as if they hadn’t noticed him.

“This isn’t funny,” Willow said when she got no more reactions. “You know we’re all over the news.”

Zinnia sucked in her gum. “Are we? Can’t imagine why.” An exotic black woman with a killer figure, Zinnia prided herself on never wasting words.

“Did you hear anything from Chris?” Willow’s heart gave an extra thud while she hoped for the right answer.

“No, ma’am,” Zinnia said. She answered the phone and spoke into her headset in a voice she managed to make sound recorded. “This is the answering service. The party you’re trying to reach will call you back. Please leave a message.”

Willow listened to her say the identical words twice more before she said, “Press?” and Zinnia gave a bored nod, yes. This would only get worse.

“Okay,” Willow said. “What’s your next job, Fabio? Shouldn’t you be out shopping for Mrs. Leopold?”

“I surely should. But she canceled.”

“She isn’t sick, is she?” Willow asked. Agoraphobic Mrs. Leopold never left her house. Mean ’n Green had been buying and delivering everything she needed for a long time, and Willow liked her.

Fabio crossed his darkly tanned arms over his chest and didn’t meet Willow’s eyes. “As in she’s canceled us for good, boss. Says she doesn’t need our services anymore.”

Willow frowned. “I thought we’d have her forever. She must have found someone else.” She thought about it. “You don’t think it’s money troubles, do you? I wouldn’t want to think of her going short of things.”

“You go sit in your office, and I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea,” Zinnia said, silencing the next buzz without answering.

Amazed, Willow whirled to look at the other woman. “Tea isn’t—” She barely stopped herself from saying that making tea wasn’t on Zinnia’s Agreed-to List, signed only by Zinnia and posted on a corkboard behind her desk.

Willow figured she could use what kindness she could get this morning. “That’s so nice of you,” she said. “Thank you, Zinnia. You are checking to make sure we’re not hanging up on customers?”

Zinnia gave a “what do you think?” look.

Willow went into the second room, her own very small office, which didn’t have a door because each time it had opened or closed, the old one scraped her desk. Chris had removed it. When she got around to it, a pocket door would be installed.

“You’ve got a dog there,” Zinnia sang out. “Does he shed?”

So much for kindness. “No, he doesn’t. He’s Mario. I need a little quiet while I make a phone call.”

Squeezing past one side of the desk, she plunked into her beloved wooden captain’s chair—this one swiveled and rocked—and brought up the master list of clients on her computer. She clicked on Mrs. Leopold’s file, found her number and picked up the phone.

The woman answered in her whispery voice, and Willow asked what had happened to make her cancel their agreement. “If there’s something we need to improve or change, I’d really appreciate you being honest with me about it,” she added.

The line didn’t go dead, but Mrs. Leopold didn’t answer the question, either.

“Mrs. Leopold?” Willow prodded. “Would it be okay if I came over and we had a chat?”

“No!” the woman said, sounding frantic. “The locks are being changed right now, so your key won’t work. I’ve already called the police. They know I’ve been a client of yours, and if anything happens to me, they’ll know where to look.” This time she did hang up.

“Don’t you let that silly thing upset you,” Zinnia said. She stood on the other side of Willow’s desk, the promised tea steaming in the Spode willow pattern cup and saucer reserved for Zinnia alone. “Put down that phone. And put down that dog, too, while you’re at it. You’ll get his hairs on your uniform.”