Bad Girls Don't (33 page)

“I haven’t spoken to Tyler about this yet.”

“Yeah, that’s a problem,” Skye said, her tone making it clear that this wasn’t the only thing Angel needed to run past Tyler.

“If we can please get back to my good news?” Violet was getting impatient. “Ethel . . . uh . . . Angel, do you remember Ellie Mather who I play bridge with? Anyway, her daughter is best friends with someone who works for Nicole Kidman. I sent one of your scarves, the fuzzy aqua and purple one, to Ellie’s daughter. Her friend saw it and loved it, so Ellie lent it to her. That’s when Nicole saw it. And, well, to make a long story short, Nicole loved it. She wants you to make one for her.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I am. Well, actually, Nicole borrowed it and was photographed wearing it. Apparently it’s caused a big to-do in the fashion world, with people scrambling to figure out who the designer is. Ellie phoned me, asking what your line of scarves is called. I said Angel Designs. And that’s what we’ve got up on the website.”

“Website?” Angel said faintly, clearly stunned by this turn of events.

“Yes, well, I didn’t have the foggiest how those things work, but Lulu designed the site and has taught me a lot. We got a thousand hits the first hour it went live, and then the server crashed because of the heavy traffic. But Lulu’s got everything up and running again.”

Angel stared at her mother as if the old woman had been invaded by aliens.

“And Sue Ellen is almost a realtor, so she pulled a few strings and looked up some properties you might be interested in.” Violet handed Angel several sheets of paper. “You’ll be starting a cottage industry, so you’ll need room for the offices of Angel Designs in that farmhouse of yours. By the way, your scarves are now going for five hundred dollars. Each.”

Angel choked and had a coughing fit.

“One actually went for a lot more than that on eBay,” Violet continued. “I figure that you should be the creative force behind Angel Designs, and I’ll be the financial brains. I’m no Adam Kemp—not yet. But I think I’ve got a good head on my shoulders.”

“But, five hundred dollars?” Dazed, Angel shook her head. “That seems like price gouging. I’ve been charging much less than that. More like twenty-five dollars.”

“It’s valuing yourself and your creative work, not price gouging.”

“I’m not into money—”

“I know that,” Violet interrupted her. “And you can still do your other work, your wall hangings, and set your own prices. But Angel Designs are exclusive.”

“I’m not into exclusive,” Angel protested. “I’m into
in
clusive. You shouldn’t have done all this without asking me first.”

“A badass move on my part,” Violet stated, to everyone’s surprise.

Violet surprised them all again the very next day, when she cornered Milton outside Angelo’s Pizza and threatened him with a squirming frog.

Chapter Seventeen

“Milton
here is terrified of frogs. Aren’t you, Milton?” Violet waved the fidgeting frog closer to his face.

Milton whimpered and shrank back against the storefront.

Violet showed no mercy. “This nonsense has been going on long enough. You’ve been terrorizing my granddaughter with your vandalism of her theater. Don’t you know that the Tivoli has a quote from the man who designed the Radio City Music Hall, where the Rockettes still perform today? But do you care about things like that? Noooo.” Violet wiggled the frog menacingly. “And what about Owen, huh? How do you think your behavior reflects on him? Badly, that’s how.”

Skye stood beside Violet, unable to believe what she was hearing or seeing. She’d had no idea this was what her grandmother was planning when she’d insisted that Skye come with her for a little stroll around town.

She had expected Violet to ask for her help in convincing Angel of the merits of Angel Designs as an exclusive business venture. Skye still had a hard time imagining Nicole Kidman wearing one of Angel’s scarves, but she had Googled it last night and found the photos.
And
found the website that Lulu had designed. It was wicked awesome.

But this . . . frog-dangling incident. This came out of nowhere. And it, too, was wicked awesome to watch.

Violet looked somewhat incongruous bullying Milton while wearing her pearl necklace and gold button earrings, trim navy blue pants, and kelly green sweater set. Skye wondered if her grandmother had chosen green to match her accessory, the frog.

Her
grandmother
. Suddenly Skye was thinking of her that way and not as Violet, some stranger from Bakersfield. She had noticed that her grandmother had used Angel’s chosen name yesterday instead of Ethel. Definite progress there.

And now this.

Violet continued her rant. “Stop your silly whimpering and just be a man, Milton! Confess you were stupid and that you were petty and mean and vicious and cruel and spiteful, and that you were behind all the sabotaging incidents at my granddaughter’s theater. Come on, Milton.” She moved the frog closer. “I’m losing patience here. I’m seventy. Time becomes a precious commodity at my age.”

A crowd started to gather.

“What’s going on?” Sister Mary asked.

“Skye’s badass grandmother is kicking Milton’s butt,” Lulu said.

“It looks like she’s holding a frog,” Sister Mary said.

“She is,” Fanny noted as she joined them. “That was my idea. I heard from Owen that Milton is terrified of frogs.”

“You rock!” Lulu high-fived Fanny.

“Yeah, but I don’t like holding frogs,” Fanny admitted. “Violet said she didn’t mind, though.”

“She’s handling him like a pro. Where did you get a frog?”

“I can’t reveal the secrets of our operation,” Fanny said.

“I got it for her,” latecomer Sue Ellen claimed, jiggling into position to get a better view.

“Get out.” Lulu wasn’t convinced. “You hate slimy stuff.”

“Yeah, but frogs aren’t slimy. Not to me. I’ve handled them since I was a kid. There are lots of them in the creek behind the trailer park. I named this one Fred.”

“Then why aren’t
you
the one dangling Fred the Frog in front of Milton?” Lulu asked.

“Violet insisted on doing it herself. Something about defending her family’s honor and better late than never, whatever that means.”

Skye overheard all these conversations while still staring at Violet, blown away by her grandmother’s
High Noon
showdown with the bad guy.

“This is your last chance, Milton.” Violet’s voice had turned steely. “In another minute, Fred here is going to be doing a tap dance on your chest hair, if you have any.”

“That’s enough,” Nathan said as he moved through the crowd to stand beside Violet. “You can stop torturing him with that frog now. Milton’s wife Robin came to see me.”

“To turn him in?” Violet asked hopefully.

“To confess,” Nathan replied.

“To confess to what?” Violet said. “That she’d been an idiot to marry him?”

“That she was behind the sabotage.”

“Why would she do that?” Skye demanded.

“The juvenile delinquent she hired to start the fire decided to blackmail her,” Nathan explained. “Rather than give in to his exorbitant demands, she decided to confess.”

“No, not that. I meant why would she want to sabotage the theater in the first place?”

“So you would leave and Milton would shut up and stop obsessing about you.”

“She could have gotten Milton to shut up by smothering him in his sleep,” Skye declared angrily. “She didn’t have to involve me.”

“She loves her husband.”

Skye shook her head. “See, this is why I never want to get married.”

“So, you don’t have to threaten him with Fred the Frog any longer.” Nathan gently lowered Violet’s frog-bearing arm.

Milton sank onto the pavement, then pointed a shaking finger at Violet. “Arrest her! And her sleazy-slut granddaughter, too.”

Violet raised the frog again. “You watch your mouth or I’ll wash it out with Fred here!”

“You heard her!” Milton shrieked. “She’s threatening me.”

“It’s a frog, Milton, not a nine-millimeter Glock. Besides, you’re not in the clear here yourself. You’ve known about your wife’s activities for several days now and said nothing. That makes you an accessory to the crime.” Nathan hauled him to his feet. “Come along. You have the right to remain silent . . .”

As Nathan led an incoherent Milton away, Violet returned Fred to Sue Ellen, who cuddled the frog close and rubbed his head until his eyes closed in ecstasy.

While not as wildly happy as Fred the Frog, Skye definitely liked the idea of a badass grandmother. “I didn’t know you had it in you,” she told Violet.

“I guess you’ve rubbed off on me.”

“I’m glad.” Skye hugged her.

“Yeah.” Her grandmother hugged her back. “Me, too.”

 

 

“I can’t believe this,” Celeste said of the mayhem in the sheriff ’s office. Milton sat wailing in a chair, while his wife yelled at him to shut up and their attorney advised both of them to keep quiet and behave.

“Robin signed a written confession with her attorney present,” Nathan said.

Celeste just kept shaking her head. “I can’t believe she was involved in the first place. Being married to Milton must have driven her over the edge, that’s all I can say.”

“That doesn’t excuse her actions.”

“I didn’t say it did. Good thing she made the right choice and confessed.”

Nathan nodded, but the truth was that he’d already had contact earlier that morning with the sixteen-year-old who’d done the dirty work. The boy had turned on Robin, giving her up. So she would have been caught even if she hadn’t come in on her own.

The turning point in the case had come when Jay overheard the teen bragging about the money he was going to come into. Jay had done the right thing: He’d told Nathan. Nathan was very proud of him, and had told him so. Here was a kid at risk who’d taken the right road when he’d come to that fork that always presents itself. Now that Algee was working with him, getting him involved in the comic-book project, Jay was making great progress.

Someone else striving to make progress was Deputy Sheriff Timmy Johnson, who had been deliberately trying to stay below Nathan’s radar for weeks now, ever since Nathan had reprimanded him for not giving Skye a ticket any of the times he’d stopped her for speeding.

Mayberry had Barney and Rock Creek had Timmy. Which made Nathan what—Andy Griffith? Nathan simply couldn’t relate to that idea.

The next few hours were filled with processing the paperwork on the two suspects and overseeing their transfer to the county jail. Things had barely settled down for a moment when Cole strolled into Nathan’s office, turning the chair around in order to rest his arms on the back. “I hear you thwarted an assault by frog earlier today. I thought I’d stop by to see if Fred the Frog needed any medical attention after all the excitement.”

“How did you know his name was Fred?”

“I hear things.”

“The aforementioned amphibian is in protective custody.”

“Yours?”

“No, Sue Ellen’s.”

Cole frowned. “She’s not seeing any mystical visions in the frog’s skin, is she?”

“Not the last time I checked, no.”

“Glad to hear it. I think we’ve had enough hysteria around here to last us a while.”

“What’s with this
we
business?” Nathan wanted to know. “What excitement have you had?”

“A ferret got loose in the examining room and took a chunk out of my arm. Apparently, it has an aversion to men in white coats holding needles.”

“I don’t blame it.”

“I should have known you’d take the ferret’s side over my own.”

“You probably nudged it into the dark side.”

“It sure sounds like Milton nudged his wife into the dark side.” Cole leaned forward. “Getting back to you, do you plan on keeping your sleeping bag parked in Skye’s apartment?”

“I haven’t had time to think about it.”

“You don’t have to stay at her place to protect her anymore, right?”

“Right.”

“So now you can seduce her instead. Or let her seduce you.”

“Maybe if you got a life of your own, you wouldn’t be so fascinated with mine,” Nathan retorted.

“Nah, I’d still be interested. Have you told Celeste she was a suspect?”

“What?” Celeste demanded from the partially open doorway before barging into the room. “You actually thought I was a suspect?”

“It wasn’t personal,” Nathan assured her. “You’ve been around long enough to know that I needed to consider every possibility in this case. And you’d made your negative opinion about Skye known to me.”

“Because I was trying to protect you from her. Well, forget that!” Celeste’s eyes spat fire behind her big glasses. “You two deserve each other! Now eat your lunch.” She tossed a plastic-wrapped sandwich onto his desk and marched out.

 

 

“You should have seen Violet. She was wicked awesome,” Skye was telling Angel, Julia, and Luke as they joined the crowd still gathered in front of Angelo’s Pizza. “Where’s Toni?” she asked Angel.

“Algee has her at the store. I wasn’t sure what was going on down here, so I didn’t want to bring her with us until I knew it was safe.”

“You know what this means, right? That Toni can come back home now that the danger is over.” Skye did a happy hip jiggle before something else occurred to her. Turning to her grandmother, she said, “How did you know that Milton would be here at Angelo’s so you could confront him?”

“Owen told me Milton always eats pizza for lunch on Fridays.”

“Good thing you caught him before he went in and ate, or he probably would have projectile-vomited when he saw that frog,” Lulu said.

Violet nodded. “I thought of that, which is why I did confront him before he ate.”