Part 2 (2/2)
Eve sighed. ”And Nick, I suppose?”
”Yep. He just went home to change.”
She gave me a bland look. ”Gee, and I thought he needed a full moon.”
”Eve one, Nick zero.”
Nick Jaconetti, my on-again, off-again since high school, ticked Eve off with his very existence.
In the seven years I'd worked and lived in New York-Eve with me for two of them-Nick had visited only once, though I often saw him at family gatherings. This time, when I went back for two weeks, he visited me twice. I smiled.
”Gross!” Eve snapped. ”You and Nick are on again, aren't you?”
”Al-mo-osst.”
She frowned. She and Nick had a snarky, grudge-rooted relations.h.i.+p, because she thought he took me for granted, and he thought she was a pain, but they put up with each other for my sake, more or less.
To my surprise, Eve handed me her cup and abandoned me to run across the parking lot. ”Vinney?” she called to the guy on the sidewalk in front of the old playhouse.
Vinney? Wearing a green toque and bleach spots on his jeans? The belligerent lamppost leaner was Eve's Vinney? If so, this was no time mention my suspicion that he might be the one trying to break into my storage room.
The playhouse, which still held theatricals on the main floor and rented its ballroom upstairs for special events, looked closed, except for lights in the back office on the main floor behind the stage. Broderick Sampson's latest sparring partner seemed to have left, since all was quiet. Also known as McScrooge, the curmudgeon was working late again, probably stacking his gold coins.
”Yo, Vinney!” Eve tried, again, her hands cupped around her mouth.
The toque wearer kept walking, head down, hands in his pockets, as if Eve couldn't possibly be talking to him.
She came back, her expression puzzled, and took out her cell phone, but whoever she called didn't answer.
”Is Vinney your hunk du jour?” I asked, getting an affirmative nod.
No surprise; Eve was a man-magnet, though I didn't have a good feeling about this particular catch. ”What happened to Ted?”
”Ted was just a fling. I'm not a keeper.”
I sucked in a breath. ”Did he say that?”
Eve looked up from her phone. ”No, I did. Ted didn't dump me. I dumped him.” She clicked her phone shut, slipped it into her jeans pocket, and took back her coffee.
”Guess that wasn't him across the street, then?”
”But it was.” She looked over there, as did I, but the loiterer had vanished. ”Never mind,” she quipped. ”I'll beat him up later.”
Suspecting that her Vinney might be my intruder didn't count for much with no proof or motive behind it. ”You're a keeper, Meyers,” I said. ”And don't you forget it.”
”Yeah, yeah. What about Dolly? Is she coming to see the secret room?”
”She's not up to it tonight. I'll bring her tomorrow.”
Eve ran a hand through her hair, leaving the short, ebony spikes in fas.h.i.+onable disarray. ”For a hundred and three years old, Dolly sure gets around. I wanna be her when I grow up.”
Eve glanced at her diver's watch, then picked up Chakra, one-handed. ”Hi, baby girl.” Chakra and Eve were pals. ”Probably past Dolly's bedtime, anyway,” Eve added.
”True.”
Dolly Sweet and the late Dante Underhill had been lovers, mid-twentieth century, a huge secret that everybody in Mystick Falls knew, even before he left her his building and his fortune.
Dolly was dying to see Dante again.
Five.
I want to do my best to take care of the planet by designing with recycled and eco-friendly materials. I think we all have to start with what we know . . . I design clothing, so I figured I'd start there.
-DEBORAH LINDQUIST ”I'll bet this place was beautiful in Dolly's day,” Eve said examining my building, known for years by the locals as ”the Shack.” As of last month: ”Maddie's Shack.”
”h.e.l.l, I'll bet Dolly was beautiful in Dolly's day,” she added, taking another sip of her coffee.
”Beauty-pageant beautiful.” I'd seen her wedding pictures. ”But, Eve, you should know that I thought this place was beautiful when we were kids.”
She spewed a mouthful of coffee my way.
I jumped back in time to save my Prada blouse, pencil skirt, and spikes, but not my rare Lucite box bag.
”Watch it,” I said. ”This is a valuable collectible.” I wiped it with my napkin.
”Sorry.” Eve chuckled as she dabbed coffee off the protesting Chakra. ”Speaking of collectibles-not. Here comes Jaconetti.”
Nick's refurbished military surplus Humvee had alerted us both to his approach before he turned the corner.
”Good thing he makes his own fuel for that guzzler,” Eve said, wincing at the sound.
”The bio-diesel? Yes,” I said over the roar as he drove into my parking lot and took up two parking s.p.a.ces. ”He makes it in his garage with used French fry oil and a couple of reagents. Imagine. Very eco-friendly.”
”That's me,” Nick said. ”You're eco-friendly, too, ladybug. You recycle clothes.” He swooped in for a h.e.l.l-lo kiss and communicated the added longing that went with a good-bye. A kiss, very well executed. Gentle but hungry. Respectable, yet French.
Nick and I shared a long-standing relations.h.i.+p built on a white-hot charge of spontaneous combustion and a mutual fear of catching fire.
I could live with that.
Eve could not. She faked a gag.
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