answers to any of the questions that were stacking up like books in my to-be-read pile. She hadn’t given me a straight answer. Did she know if Kate Gustafson was alive? She’d never given me a straight answer. I willed the phone to ring.
And it did.
“Holy- I made the phone ring!”
“Uh, you did not,” Lucy said, circling her ankles and listening to the bones pop. “The person who’s calling you made the phone ring. Are you going to answer it or shall I?”
I ran to the kitchen. I didn’t recognize the number on caller ID.
“Hello?
“Is this Paula Holliday? I’m Kevin Brookfield. I think we may have some business to discuss.” I turned on speakerphone so that Lucy could listen in.
Brookfield wanted to meet. He suggested Chiaramonte’s nursery. Lucy shook her head furiously, but no problem, I’d already done that once and wasn’t interested in a return engagement. From now on any meetings with strange men, remarkable or otherwise, would occur in crowded, brightly lit locations.
“How about the Springfield Town Center?” I said. It was an enclosed mall that I’d been to once about three years back. “Seven thirty?” Click.
“You think it’ll be safe?” Lucy said.
“The man hasn’t done anything here except drink coffee. Maybe we’ve been too quick to think he’s involved in all this. Besides, we’re meeting in an enclosed mall, after dinner, in the fourth quarter. It’ll probably be packed with type-A shoppers who want to get all their gift-buying done before Thanksgiving. You’ll be there to protect me. What can happen?”
She brightened. “Can I wear the wig again?”
The Springfield Town Center was about five minutes from the train station. Brookfield and I planned to meet in front of the Crate & Barrel store on the lower level. Lucy would be on the lookout from the upper level. She’d be outfitted in her Caroline-in-disguise disguise and carrying bags to look like a real shopper. I rummaged under my sink looking for bags.
“I’m not carrying a Walmart bag. Don’t you have anything else?” I remembered the clothing she’d given me and resurrected the Victoria’s Secret and J. Crew bags filled with her own unworn purchases; she was much happier with her look, which she insisted was more believable.
“You didn’t even take the tags off.”
“I’ve only had them for a few weeks. How long did you have them?”
“Good point.”
At the shopping center, I grabbed a bench and waited in front of the furniture store. Lucy hovered upstairs pacing back and forth like a nervous talent show contestant.
I scoured the crowd. Everyone looked normal; then in the distance I saw a man smiling and walking directly toward me. Brookfield was more attractive than I remembered, but then I’d been busy and hadn’t paid much attention. It was his walk more than anything else. He stopped in front of me, the tiniest bit closer than I was comfortable with.
“I’m Kevin.” I stood up and we shook hands. From somewhere I heard a noise and out of the corner of my eye saw Lucy bending over to retrieve the phone she’d dropped. Ten bucks said she was trying to take his picture and couldn’t figure out how to do it. I pretended not to know her.
I understood his appeal and instantly felt a kinship with Roxy Rhodes and the Main Street Moms. One thing was certain: he wasn’t the man who had jumped me. With those arms he could have inflicted a lot more damage than just a bruised wrist. And he wasn’t limping. As hard as I’d kicked my assailant, I had to think he’d still have a little bit of a limp. Things were looking up.
“Want to go someplace?” he said, hands on his hips.
“Let’s just stay here, okay?”
He seemed amused by my security precautions, but after my first few ill-advised meetings, I thought it best to stay out in the open.
“Suit yourself.”
He sat down and we danced around the subject of Caroline and the nursery. If he wanted something, he was taking his sweet time getting around to it, so I decided to strike first.
“What exactly do you want from Caroline?”
“Well, that’s straightforward. Straightforward is good. I’d like her to end this.”
“End what?”
We stopped smiling at about the same time. Lucy stopped pacing upstairs; she must have sensed the tone of our conversation had changed.
“Let’s not play games. She’s been stringing us along for long enough. I want what she’s been holding on to. It’s what I need to make a new start. Then I’ll never darken her door again. I promise.”
Omigod. It was him. “Like you did twenty-five years ago,” I said, I slid farther away from him on the bench, and he pretended not to know what I was talking about.
From the upper level of the mall a cell phone came crashing down to my feet. Lucy had either dropped it again or thrown it to get my attention. I looked up and saw her struggling with two men.
“Help!” she screamed.
“Leave her alone, you assholes!” I sprinted to the escalator and took the moving steps three at a time, pushing shoppers aside. When I reached the top Lucy was being strong-armed by two men and I slogged through the crowd that had gathered to follow them.
Forty-one
Ordinarily, Mike O’Malley didn’t concern himself with shoplifting busts-that was left to mall cops and the junior men in the Springfield police department. In Lucy’s case he made an exception. I’d called him as soon as I realized she wasn’t being kidnapped-she was being arrested by undercover security.
True, Lucy did look suspicious with a crooked wig and dark glasses and two bags full of clothing with tags and no receipts, but mall security took O’Malley’s word for it that she was probably not a thief, simply another New Yorker with hard-to-fathom habits. That seemed to satisfy them and they let her go.
“Doing a little shopping, are we?” he said outside the security office. Lucy hugged him, and, if I wasn’t mistaken, he returned the favor.
“Martinets,” she said. “I could sue them. I haven’t been arrested for shoplifting since I was fifteen.”
“You mean you haven’t shoplifted since you were fifteen,” Mike said.
“Right. That’s what I meant.” Lucy caught her reflection in a Williams-Sonoma window and straightened her wig.
“Anyone who didn’t know better might think you two were up to something.”
“Not us,” I said. “Just doing a little comparison shopping. In fact, Lucy…”-I paused to organize my thoughts-“is doing a feature on secret shoppers, people hired by stores to check up on their employees. That’s why she was wearing the wig.” My explanation drew puzzled glances from both of them and I couldn’t tell who looked more skeptical at my stream-of-consciousness tale spinning.
When we parted, Lucy was effusive in thanking Mike for coming to her rescue. “Thanks for helping me beat the rap.” He left us in the mall’s garage. Then it was my turn to look askance. “Beat the rap? Is that wig too tight? Are you back in fugitive mode?”
We spoke little driving back to my place. The meeting with Brookfield was a bust, literally; but, as Lucy pointed out, at least she hadn’t been hauled off to jail. But I hadn’t learned anything either. Could I have misinterpreted what he said? What had he said that was so awful? For all I knew, Kevin Brookfield really was a handsome single guy who wanted to buy a nursery. Not that I had a chance to find out because he was long gone by the time mall security released us.
The red light changed to green and then back to red but my foot stayed on the brake as a very depressing thought came to me. “I may have totally alienated the perfect man for me.”
