Part 22 (1/2)
Chapter 29.
”Three veggie lo meins, please. With three egg rolls and one order of steamed dumplings.” It had taken me exactly seventeen minutes to reach the Golden Palace, a small restaurant in a strip mall near Stuart.
I hoped the girl behind the counter was in a chatty mood. ”Nice place,” I said idly, staring at the scratched Formica counter as though I'd never seen one before. She nodded and didn't comment. A full a.s.sortment of sus.h.i.+ was staring at me from a refrigerated display case.
”I'll have to come back and try the sus.h.i.+ the next time,” I told her.
She gave a shy smile. ”It's very good.” She slipped on some gloves and reached into the case. ”I just made these. Here, try a piece.”
”Thanks,” I muttered. I loathe sus.h.i.+ but managed to gulp it down in one bite, like an oyster. ”Do you deliver to Cypress Grove?”
”Cypress Grove?” She shrugged and looked down, scooping up lo mein for my order. ”I'm not sure. That's a little far away for us.”
”Is there anyone here who would know? I'm giving a party,” I said, improvising madly. ”I'd love to have the whole thing catered. Maybe thirty people.”
”I could ask the manager, but he's not here.” I knew from her closed expression that I wasn't going to get any information out of her. She'd already rung up the sale, but I tried one more time. ”I don't suppose you remember if you delivered any sus.h.i.+ to the Seabreeze Inn last week, do you? That's in Cypress Grove, very close to where I live.”
”No, I have no idea. I wasn't at work last week.” She quickly completed the transaction and handed me my change.
”Well, thanks,” I said, forcing a smile and heading for the exit. I jumped back in the car and headed home with a bag full of take-out containers on the seat next to me. The containers had a small red dragon emblazoned on the lid.
Mission accomplished.
”That could be it, but I'm not sure,” Lark said half an hour later. She stared at the red dragon on the lid of the take out box for a full five seconds, chewing on her lower lip. ”I do remember seeing something like this on the box in Sanjay's room. It was some sort of a red logo, but I just can't bring it to mind. I'm not sure it was a dragon, but it could have been. This looks about the right size.” She shook her head as if to clear it. ”The maddening thing is, I can see the white container sitting right there on Sanjay's bed, and then the image on the lid just disappears. I wonder why that is.”
”Don't force the memory. It will come eventually,” Mom a.s.sured her. I wondered how Mom could be so optimistic after Lark's colorful description of her meeting with Brad Pitt at Cafe Rodeo. Hope springs eternal with Mom. Sometimes I think her level of optimism is almost pathological, but maybe it works in her profession. Mom always says she's optimistic because there is no other option. The vast majority of SAG members are unemployed at any given time. If an actor didn't have a certain degree of optimism, it would be tempting to jump off a bridge.
Lark turned in early that night, and by ten p.m., Mom was sleeping soundly on the sofa, with Hollywood Boulevard playing on the TNT channel. I was sitting at the kitchen table going over my notes on the case when the phone rang. I grabbed it by the second ring so it wouldn't wake up Mom. Pugsley gave a soft yip of surprise, emerging from some doggie dream, and jumped into my lap.
”Back off,” a gravelly voice said.
”What?” The voice was low and indistinct, and there was some static in the background. It sounded like someone was dragging a plastic comb over the receiver, maybe to disguise the voice?
”You heard me. Back off. You know what I'm talking about.” This time the threat in the voice was unmistakable, and a chill pa.s.sed through me. ”Unless you want to lose your mother, your roommate, and oh, yeah, your stupid little dog.”
I froze, every brain cell on red alert. ”Who is this?” Pugsley must have sensed the urgency in my voice, because he nestled closer, looking up at me in alarm.
”You don't need to know that. And I'm not dumb enough to stay on the line long enough for you to trace the call, if that's what you're thinking.” I nearly laughed out loud. I am the most low-tech person I know, and the idea of me tracing a call is about as likely as me piloting a s.p.a.ce shuttle. ”Stop b.u.t.ting into things that don't concern you, or you're a dead woman.”
Click.
A dead woman? A line of goose b.u.mps sprouted on my forearm, and the skin on the back of my neck p.r.i.c.kled.
”Who was that?” Mom murmured from the sofa, her voice thick with sleep.
”Nothing,” I said, muting the television. ”Go back to sleep.”
”Okay,” she said agreeably, nestling back into the sofa pillows.
I grabbed my purse and my cell phone and went out onto the balcony. Rafe had given me his cell phone number for emergencies. I thought it was silly at the time, but now I wanted to hear his warm, rea.s.suring voice. I punched in the number, and he answered on the first ring.
”Maggie,” he said. ”What's up?”
For a second I was taken aback, but then I recovered. Caller ID. What did I expect? He was a cop.
I quickly filled him in on the phone call, wondering whether I'd been silly to call him.
”Look at the readout,” he instructed. ”What does it say?”
”Private number.”
”Probably a phone card, but we can try to trace it tomorrow.” A pause. ”Was it a man or a woman?”
”I'm not sure. It was sort of m.u.f.fled, and there was a scratchy noise in the background.”
”Is everything locked up tight? You need to check all the doors and windows and double-check that the security system's turned on.”
”I don't have a security system.”
A m.u.f.fled curse. ”Why doesn't that surprise me?”
”I thought this was some little backwater town, you know, like Mayberry. I figured the biggest crime you had to deal with was someone stealing newspapers off the front porch. Or maybe a kid s.n.a.t.c.hing one of Aunt Bee's apple pies off the windowsill.”
”Do we seem like hicks to you? Is that what you're saying?”
Oops. ”No, that's not what I meant at all. Sorry. I just meant Cypress Grove is a quaint little place, totally different from Manhattan. I didn't think people locked their doors here.” Rafe didn't say anything, so I babbled on. ”I guess I'm just a little shaken up, that's all.”
”Do you want me to send someone over?” His tone had softened. I was forgiven.
I knew I had to be careful. I didn't want to come across like a ditzy heroine in some silly woman-in-jep movie. That wasn't the image I wanted to project. I wanted to be more of an Angelina Jolie, kick-a.s.s heroine type. But the wobble in my voice probably gave me away.
”No, I'm fine,” I said, trying to sound confident. ”Let's just chalk it up to a prank call and leave it at that. It's not like I'm in any real danger.”
”That's not true. You could be in very real danger,” Rafe said evenly. ”But I'm not going to let anything happen to you; you can count on that. Lock everything up, Maggie. Do it now. I'll catch up with you first thing in the morning, and I'll let you know if we manage to trace that call. And Maggie . . .”
”Yes?”
”Stop playing Nancy Drew. This isn't a game.”
His voice was low and intense, as if he cared what happened to me. Or was he just doing his job? PROTECT AND SERVE was the motto emblazoned on every Cypress Grove patrol car.
Was he as attracted to me as I was to him?
It was impossible to tell.
I clicked the phone shut and stayed out on the balcony for a few minutes. The air was soft and balmy; a full golden moon hung in the black sky. The lyrics to ”Moon over Miami” came rus.h.i.+ng into my head, and I smiled at the incongruity of it all.