Ms. Simon Says (23 page)

“Oh, damn,” she said. “They’re broken.”

Mick offered a quick, silent prayer of thanks that she wasn’t a klepto, then said, “Come with me, little blind girl.” He took her hand, led her to the revolving eyeglasses display, and happily watched her try on at least forty pairs as she consulted the dinky little mirror, consulted him, once even stopped another shopper for an onthe-spot, unbiased opinion of a pair of tortoiseshell specs. The guy liked them. Yeah. Well, who wouldn’t on that lovely face?

He never knew a drugstore could be so damn much fun, comparable to an amusement park, and he wondered all of a sudden what his life would be like without Shelby Simon right in the center of it and how it was possible that after a mere three days she seemed indispensable. It was then that Mick figured he was in really big trouble, heartwise.

Wearing her chosen glasses with the price tag draped over her nose, Shelby grabbed his hand. “On to the important stuff,” she said, pulling him along.

And there it was, on the wall next to the prescription window—the world’s largest, most stupefying display of condoms.

He just stared, his arms crossed, his eyes nearly crossed, too. The few times he’d purchased rubbers in the past two years, he’d fed a handful of coins into a machine in a rest room and taken whatever the machine spit out.

“Any suggestions?” he asked.

“Well . . .” She peered over the top rims of the glasses. “First off, let’s say nothing turquoise.”

That narrowed it down somewhat.

Then she added, “And nothing with a helmet on the package. That’s really offensive.”

“Okay.”

“No flavors,” she said, leaning a little closer in order to read better. “And no—omigod!—no glow in the dark.”

Mick continued to ponder the multicolored display, wondering vaguely about the advertised promises of extended pleasure and heightened feelings on several packages. What was that all about?

“Ribbed?” he murmured.

“Hm...”

While she was thinking that over, he asked, “How many?”

Shelby laughed and her glasses slipped down her nose. “A lot.”

On the drive back to the lake, Shelby was peeking into the DrugWorld bag, reading the various claims and cautions about latex on the box of three dozen, and wondering how quickly they might need to make another run for the rubber, when a sharp jolt of reality punctured her happy mood. It had been hours since she’d thought about her situation. She wasn’t even keeping abreast of the news. Of course, that could be remedied with one quick call to a certain Pulitzer Prize–winning guy. She fished in her handbag for her cell phone.

As soon as Derek McKay said hello, she sensed the urgency in his voice and cranked up the window on the passenger side so she could hear him better.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“I’m onto something here,” he said. “Listen. I don’t have time to talk right now, but I’m pretty sure I know who’s behind this letter bomb stuff, Shelby.”

“Who?” The word came out with a gulp. She couldn’t believe her ears. On the other hand, Derek was such a phenomenal investigator, somebody who could see patterns where often even the police were at a loss, that she probably shouldn’t have been surprised.

“I just need to put a couple more puzzle pieces together,” he said, lowering his voice even more. “Gotta go, babe. I’ll call you back in a couple hours and fill you in.”

“Okay, but...”

He was gone. Shelby snapped her phone closed and stared out through the windshield, gnawing on her lower lip.

“Bad news?” Mick asked.

“No,” she said. “Actually, I think it was good news. That was Derek McKay, one of our investigative reporters. He’s got a strong lead in the case, he says.”

“What kind of strong lead?”

There was just a hint of disbelief in his tone. A tiny little whiff of sarcasm. A tincture of professional jealousy perhaps. Shelby really wasn’t in the mood to debate the investigative merits of the police versus journalists. She didn’t want to spoil all the fun they’d been having.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “He said he’d call me back later. It’s probably nothing.”

“Probably not,” he said. “Want me to call the department and check?”

She shook her head. “No. I was enjoying not thinking about it, to tell you the truth.” She reached across and put her hand on the soft denim covering his thigh.

“Me, too,” he said as he took one hand off the steering wheel and placed it over hers. “What do you say we go home and take a nap?”

She grinned and waggled her eyebrows. “You read my mind, Lieutenant.”

Alas, it wasn’t to be. No sooner had they gotten out of the car and started up the hill, hand in hand, trying not to run, than her father’s voice boomed out from somewhere behind the carriage house.

“Mick! Hey! Glad you’re back. Come on out here and let me show you something.”

Shelby groaned, and Mick gave her a quizzical look. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Oh, Lord,” she said. “He’s cleaning fish. He wants to induct you into the mysterious brotherhood of ripping out fish guts. He always does this. It’s some sort of bonding thing.” She groaned again.

“Guess I better go,” he said without too much enthusiasm.

“You don’t have to, Mick. Tell him you have a headache, or that you faint at the sight of blood. Tell him... tell him fish is against your religion.”

“Nah. I’ll go.” He handed her the plastic sack from DrugWorld, and flashed her the sexiest grin in the universe. “Here. Guard these with your life.”

“Absolutely.”

Shelby watched him walk toward the carriage house, once again appreciating his athletic grace, the way his hair just brushed the edge of his collar, not to mention the way faded denim had a way of doing the most amazing things to the male posterior.

The Harry Simon Fish Indoctrination and Buddy Buddy School was likely to take the next hour or two, so Shelby went inside the house, tossed their purchases onto her bed, and then went up to the third floor in search of her mother, who would undoubtedly be working despite the fact that it was Sunday.

Linda was indeed upstairs in her office, but she wasn’t working. Instead, she was gazing out one of the high ballroom windows with a look on her face that was so sad, so completely bereft that her daughter nearly couldn’t breathe for a moment.

“Mom?”

The sad expression vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a warm, welcoming smile. “Hi, sweetheart. I didn’t hear you come in. How was your drive?”

“Fine,” Shelby said, lowering herself into the chair on the opposite side of her mother’s desk. “Lovely. I’ve never seen such gorgeous colors on the trees.”

Her mother nodded in agreement, and said, “They really are spectacular this fall, aren’t they? I think I read somewhere that it’s because we had such a wet summer.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize that.”

“It rained like crazy in June.”

Trees, no matter how gorgeous, and the weather, no matter how wet, were the last things Shelby wanted to discuss just then. What about you and Dad? she wanted to shout. What about this stupid separation? And why were you just looking as if the world were about to end in the next fifteen minutes?

Obviously anticipating that sort of outburst from her opinionated offspring, her mother lifted up a sweater from her desktop, spread out its long sleeves, and asked, “What do you think of this?”

Oh, God. What did she think? It looked just like all the rest of them to her. Elegant. Colorful. Unique. Expensive. Another wonderful Linda Purl design. What was she supposed to say?

And that’s when it suddenly hit her—the perfect solution to her parents’ problem. Shelby wondered why she hadn’t thought of this before. Linda Purl, captain of the chichi knitting industry, purveyor of unique designs, overworked female dynamo, ought to hire Harry Harry Quite Contrary, attorney currently sans portfolio and sans anything meaningful to do, to be her CEO.

It was positively inspired. Shelby couldn’t wait to suggest it. She lifted one of the sleeves of the sweater. “This is so beautiful, Mom. It’s really stunning. You know, if you didn’t have to spend so much time on paperwork and sales and stuff, you’d have way more time to design.”

Her mother nodded agreeably while she fussed with a loose thread on the front of the garment.

“If you had somebody you trusted to help you,” Shelby continued. “Someone really smart, with plenty of experience and a certain—oh, I don’t know—a certain savoir faire...”

Her mother glanced up at her. “Are you volunteering, honey?”

“Me? No. Jeez, I hardly have time to get my own work done. But . . .” Shelby leaned forward, her gaze zeroing in on her mother. “Here’s a thought, though. This just occurred to me. What about Dad? He’d be perfect.”

She was prepared for a minor explosion, for her mother to dismiss the idea right off the bat, and she was already lining up arguments to make her case when Linda just beamed at her and exclaimed, “What a wonderful idea, Shelby! Now why didn’t I think of that?”

“Well . . .” Shelby sat back, so stunned by her mother’s response that she barely knew what to say. For a second, she questioned her own hearing. She
had
called it a wonderful idea, hadn’t she? “Well . . .” she began again. “You probably would have thought of it, sooner or later, Mother.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, sweetie.” Linda folded the sweater in front of her and set it aside, then smiled again across her desk. “After all, you’re the one in the advice business. I think it’s absolutely inspired. You should mention it to your father.”

“Really?” She tried not to sound shocked that her mother was apparently taking her advice—and seemingly without a single grain of salt—for the first time in the history of the world.

“Absolutely,” her mother said. “You should definitely mention it to him.”

Shelby stood up. Jazzed. “Then that’s just what I’ll do. Right now, too.”

Linda listened to her daughter racing down two flights of stairs, jet-fueled by the prospect of giving advice to her father.

“Shelby, Shelby, Shelby,” she whispered, shaking her head, at the same time wondering if she’d just done something very foolish that would come back to bite her on the ass in about ten minutes.

It was the perfect solution, dammit, for Harry to become active in Linda Purl Designs in some capacity. If nothing else, it would give him a reason to travel with her, which was something he longed to do, and give her the incentive to fit a little golf, or sightseeing, or idle pleasures into her business trips. Of course, those trips wouldn’t include some of the exotic destinations Harry might have on his agenda, but New York and San Francisco and Phoenix could be exotic in their own way. At least they’d be together. And who knew? London and Paris might not be out of the question if the business continued to thrive. They could do this, dammit, if each of them could just compromise a bit.

Maybe it was wrong of her, sending Shelby like a sacrificial lamb to the altar of Harry’s dented pride. But maybe their daughter’s well-meaning interference would help him make the decision to finally come over to her side, to accept the fact that his wife was not going to give up this business she found so rewarding in so many ways.

Surely he would see that.

Or not.

My God. It was impossible to believe that they couldn’t work this out. Somehow.

Mick had never really had a father figure in his life. His own father had walked out on him not too long after he was born, and Mick had never seen the man again. None of his mother’s boyfriends took much of an interest in Carrie Callahan’s skinny kid. Even Julie’s dad, in whose house Mick had lived while attending high school, hadn’t paid much attention to him other than to watch him like a hawk so he didn’t get his teenage daughter in trouble.

So even as he was enjoying Harry Simon’s companionship this afternoon, this fish-cleaning business was making him pretty queasy. It surprised him, considering he’d seen his fair share of blood on the streets of Chicago.

Shelby’s father was demonstrating his technique on about the ninety-eighth bluegill, slipping his sharp blade beneath a red-tinged gill before he sliced upward, removing the poor fucker’s head, blank bluish eyes and all, and Mick was trying to keep from tossing his cookies.

“Think you’re getting the hang of it now?” Harry asked, flicking blood off his fingers and lobbing another fish head into a half-filled bucket.

“Oh, yeah.”

When the man offered him the knife, Mick demurred. “You’re the pro,” he said. “You go ahead. I’ll just watch.”

“Fine with me.” He made short work of another fish, but this time he dispensed with the lessons in favor of another topic. “You and my daughter are moving along pretty fast, aren’t you?”

Mick’s queasiness took a whole new turn. “I guess you could say that, sir.”

Harry flashed him a grin then, much to Mick’s relief, and said, “I’m not giving you the third degree here, Lieutenant. Shelby’s thirty-four. She’s got a mind of her own, and it’s a pretty sensible one as far as I can tell. You have my approval, unless, of course, there are some skeletons in your closet or bodies buried under your doorstep that I don’t know about.”

“Nothing like that.” He shrugged. “I’ve got a couple reprimands in my personnel folder, but that’s pretty standard for anybody who’s been on the job as long as I have.”

“So, you always wanted to be a cop?”

Mick shook his head. “No. I got married pretty young. My wife and I went to college together, then I joined the Chicago PD to support us while she went on to med school. I just stayed on in the job. Seventeen years now, give or take a couple months. That wasn’t the original plan, but it turned out okay, I guess.”

“What was the original plan?” he asked, slapping another fish on his worktable and positioning the blade.

Mick had to laugh. “Believe it or not, after she finished her residency and started bringing in some money, I was going to go to law school.”

“Interesting,” Harry said. “Well, if you’re ever inclined to do it, I could be of some help. Just let me know.”

“Actually, sir . . .” He didn’t know how to tell Harry Harry Quite Contrary that most of the lawyers he’d encountered over the years were slimeballs, sleazebags, and ambulance chasers. Granted, his was the view from the gutter, but it had disabused him of any notion of pursuing a law degree. “Well, actually, I really like being a cop.”