Read Bond, Stephanie - Body Movers 05 Online
Authors: Jill
everything else going?”
“Fine. I’m going back to finish installing the security system
at the town house later this week.”
“Sounds good. How’s Meg?” she teased.
“I wouldn’t know,” he chirped.
Carlotta smiled. Something was afoot, otherwise the mere
mention of the girl’s name wouldn’t push Wesley’s
buttons. “Have you seen Hannah?”
“Uh…no. What makes you think I would’ve seen Hannah?”
She frowned at the strange tone in his voice. “Wesley, are
you lying? Is Hannah avoiding me?”
“Why would she be avoiding you?” he squeaked. “I gotta
go. Call you later.”
When dead air sounded, Carlotta disconnected the phone
slowly. Something was definitely up with Hannah, but her
friend’s moodiness paled in comparison to what Coop
might be facing.
At the thought of Coop being seriously il , grief engulfed
Carlotta, squeezing the air out of her lungs. The thought of
him suffering…of not being in their lives—in her life—was
unbearable. She ached to reach out to him, but she knew
he wouldn’t want her sympathy.
She wrapped her arms around her middle and tucked into
herself, rocking. The overwhelming pain was savagely
familiar, reminiscent of the helplessness she’d felt when
her parents had abandoned her.
A knock on the door sounded. She wiped at her eyes
hastily and straightened. “Come in.”
Peter stuck his head inside. “How about risotto with our
pork chops?” Then he frowned. “Are you okay?”
She touched her forehead. “A sudden migraine. I’m sorry,
Peter. Is it okay if I skip dinner?”
He nodded, but from his disappointed expression she
knew he realized that skipping dinner also meant skipping
sex. “Get some rest,” he said. “I won’t bother you.”
When the door closed, guilt swamped her. Peter didn’t
deserve her waffling. But she couldn’t ignore how the
thought of losing Coop had affected her. She needed more
time to think.
Miserable and confused, Carlotta pushed to her feet and
headed toward the shower for a good cry.
26
Hope you are feeling better. Love, Peter
Carlotta ran her finger over the note he’d left for her on
the kitchen counter. Unfortunately, she wasn’t feeling
better. After a night of tossing and turning over what
might be wrong with Coop, she had, as her mother used to
say, “worked herself into a state.” Add to that the fact that
Hannah wasn’t returning her calls, Michael Lane was stil
missing and she was stil wrestling with whether or not to
let the police know that her father might’ve had a
romantic relationship with one of the victims of The
Charmed Kil er. She’d come to the conclusion that she
might never sleep again.
Stil wearing cotton pajamas and house shoes, she
stretched, yawning.
Peter’s concern only made her feel worse because while
he’d offered her nothing but love and support, all the
things weighing on her mind were a wedge between her
heart and Peter’s.
She winced every time she thought about their sabotaged
attempt at lovemaking yesterday. The episode had
certainly fallen short of the earth-shattering reunion that
both of them had hoped for.
The Persian paraded into the room, acting as if she owned
the place.
Carlotta frowned down at the cat. “Proud of yourself,
aren’t you? You’ve been nothing but trouble since I got
here.” She sighed. “Did Angela send you to make my life
miserable?”
The cat lifted her head and meowed.
Carlotta shrank back, then she stopped and pinched the
bridge of her nose. She was officially losing her mind if she
thought the blond, green-eyed Persian was channeling
blond, green-eyed Angela.
Feeling flushed and overwhelmed she reached across the
counter to flip on the switch for the ceiling fan. Patricia
Alexander had once offered to share her antianxiety meds,
but maybe she should consider getting some of her own.
She poured a glass of orange juice and carried it to the
table, along with the notebook in which she was keeping
details about The Charmed Kil er case. She had a couple of
hours before she had to be at work, and she wanted to
record the info about the incident in the ladies’ room at
Moody’s before it faded from her memory. The more she
thought about it, the more she was sure the unidentified
person had been Michael. He’d always made it a point to
dress—and smel —as expensive as possible. Even if he
couldn’t afford to.
Jack had been skeptical, but promised to research recent
purchases of the cologne citywide.
Carlotta sipped the orange juice and considered Jack. She
hadn’t answered his phone call last night because she
hadn’t decided whether to share Wesley’s suspicions
about Coop’s recent uncharacteristic behavior. Besides,
she was half-afraid Jack would be able to tel from her
voice that she and Peter had…petered out.
If she kept this up, she was going to have to keep a list of
the secrets she was keeping.
The cat sprang up onto the table, walked over to the
cloisonné Oriental vase and rubbed against the textured
metal surface, her contented purr sounding like the coo of
a homing pigeon.
Irrational anger toward the cat seized her. “Get down!”
Carlotta said, waving her arms. Startled, the cat hissed at
her, jumping back and bumping the vase. Carlotta lunged
for the container, but it was top-heavy and it slammed
down on the table. The lid flew off and a powdery
substance spil ed all over the wood surface, then was
sucked up in the draft created by the overhead ceiling fan
and scattered all over the room…and all over her.
Carlotta pushed to her feet, blinking and sputtering, her
arms raised in futility. “Ew, what is this stuff?”
As if there was someone to hear her. The cat had high-
tailed it out of the room.
She hurried to turn off the ceiling fan, but accidentally
increased the speed, creating a sandstorm. Finally, she
managed to switch off the fan. When the dust settled, a
film of white coated everything in sight like a fine layer of
snow.
Peter was obviously more of a smoker than he let on if he
kept a container of sand on hand. She didn’t see any
cigarette butts, but what else could it be?
Then a horrific alternative slid into her mind: Angela had
been cremated. Had Peter replaced the silk flower
arrangement on the table with an urn containing his wife’s
ashes?
It made perfect, awful sense.
Carlotta swallowed hard at the revelation, then gagged at
the bitter taste of something foreign in the back of her
throat. In fact, her mouth was ful of grit. Ew.
In ful -panic mode, she scrambled for her cel phone and
called the only person she could count on to help in a
situation like this one. “Hannah,” she shouted into the
phone when her friend’s voice mail kicked in, “you have to
come help me. I think I accidental y scattered Peter’s wife
all over the house.”
Hannah called back in less than a minute. “I thought
Peter’s wife was dead.”
“She is,” Carlotta said. “And I think she was sitting on the
kitchen table—‘was’ being the operative word.”
“I’l bring my Shop-Vac.”
Carlotta disconnected the call and counted her blessings.
When a person offered to come and help you clean up
someone’s cremated remains, it had to be genuine
friendship.
She debated taking a shower in the interim to wash Angela
off of her, but reasoned it was better to wait until they got
the rest of Angela cleaned up. She stood at the counter,
alternately fighting tears and bouts of hysterical laughter
as she surveyed the damage she’d unleashed. She hadn’t
thought she could top totaling Peter’s Porsche.
Minus one hundred.
True to her word, a few minutes later, the phone rang and
Hannah was at the entrance gate, waiting for Carlotta to
buzz her in with Peter’s code. On the verge of a nervous
breakdown, Carlotta told Hannah to come around to the
right side of the house, through the pool area, to the
sliding glass door.
“I’m afraid to come to the front door,” she said into the
phone, looking down at her dusty house shoes. “I don’t
want to track Angela all over the place.”
Soon she heard Hannah’s van pul in to the driveway, then
the heavy clomping of boots on the walkway leading
around to the side of the house. Carlotta deactivated the
door and window alarms, then opened the sliding glass
door to admit her friend, who was holding a smal -canister
Shop-Vac.
“Wow,” Hannah said, looking her up and down. “This is
fucked up, even for you.”
“Thanks,” Carlotta said, brushing powdery stuff off her
shoulder. “It was an accident.”
Hannah glanced over the white-coated great room. A hazy
film stil hung in the air. “What the hel happened?”
“The cat jumped up on the table and knocked over the
urn.”
“What cat?”
“A stray Persian that just might be Angela Ashford
reincarnated.”
Hannah squinted. “Are you high?”
Carlotta sighed. “No, but I wish I was. I didn’t even know
Angela’s ashes were sitting on the table. I thought it was
just a vase.”
“Setting them on the kitchen table is just plain tacky,”
Hannah said. “And weird, even for the South.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Uh…don’t sneeze?”
“Helpful,” Carlotta said sarcastically. “Seriously, should I
call Peter and confess, or do you think we can salvage
this…er, her…before the housekeeper gets here?”
Hannah reached forward and swiped her finger across
Carlotta’s nose, then winced at the pale gritty residue.
“How much time do we have?”
“About two hours.”
“I’l start vacuuming, you get the broom and dustpan.”
Remarkably, within an hour the room started to look
familiar again. Carlotta walked to the urn to transfer the
contents of the dustpan into it for the umpteenth time.
Hannah turned off the Shop-Vac and came to empty the
machine’s dust bucket into the urn, as wel .
“We’re probably contaminating her ashes,” Carlotta
murmured.
“How do you contaminate ashes? It’s not like someone’s
going to eat them.”
“Stil , you know what I mean.” Carlotta studied her friend,
then pursed her mouth. “You didn’t say anything about
Peter’s house.”
Hannah glanced around and nodded. “Nice place.”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
“No, I haven’t,” Hannah said, but she didn’t make eye
contact.
“You’re not mad at me over getting fired?”
“It wasn’t your fault. Besides, I’l find something else.
Thank goodness the one thing Atlantans have in common
is eating.”
“Have you seen Wesley lately?”
Hannah’s back stiffened. “Wesley? What makes you think
I’ve seen Wesley?”
“Maybe because he said the same thing, in the same fake
tone, when I asked him if he’d seen you.”
Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking
about.” She flipped on the Shop-Vac and went back to
work.
Carlotta scratched her nose with her knuckle. Something
was up with those two.
After two more passes with the broom and the vacuum,
Carlotta and Hannah admitted they’d recovered all of
Angela they possibly could.
“So this is what’s left after they cremate you,” Carlotta
said, peering into the urn.
“I read somewhere they have to sift out bone chips and
teeth.”
Carlotta made a face. “It doesn’t look like much. What if
Peter notices some of the ashes are gone?”
“If you’re worried about it, we could add fil er.”
“We’re not going to add fil er!” Then Carlotta narrowed
her eyes. “What kind of fil er?”
“You said something about a cat. Do you have kitty litter?”
Carlotta gasped in horror.
Hannah scoffed. “Spare me the self-righteous outrage. You
blew the man’s wife onto the chandelier.”
She glanced up at the dusty light fixture they hadn’t been
able to reach. “Okay…maybe just a little fil er.”
She went into the mudroom and pul ed out the bag of kitty
litter they’d had to buy for the Persian. When she held a
scoop of the sandy gray mixture next to the ashes in the
urn, she frowned. “The kitty litter is coarser and darker.”
Hannah headed toward the kitchen. “There’s gotta be
cornstarch here somewhere…or flour.”
“Christ, this is turning into a science experiment.”
Hannah was opening and closing cabinets. “Where’s your
blender?”
“It’s Peter’s blender,” Carlotta murmured, then walked to
the cabinet where it was stored and pul ed it out.
“So,” Hannah said casually, emerging with a canister of
flour, “have you two had sex yet?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Carlotta sighed. “We tried.”
“Don’t tel me Richie Rich couldn’t get it up.”
“He got it up fine. But…he was nervous, and…”
“He shot the pearl jam before he put it in the ma’am?”
Carlotta frowned. “I hadn’t heard that particular medical