Courted by Karma (The Adventures of Anabel Axelrod) (32 page)

With a
push, I quietly slid the loveseat over two feet and pulled back the protective floor pad. Dialing the combination, I opened the floor safe. My grandmother and I were the only two people alive that knew about the existence of this safe. After installing the safe between the floor joists forty years ago, the carpenter did a face-first plop into his breakfast oatmeal the next day and croaked. NanaBel swore to me she had nothing to do with his demise.

I
removed the fireproof strongbox first and counted out some money into orderly piles on the floor. I counted forty from the banded stack of one hundred dollar bills, and fourteen from the stack of crisp fifties.

This
was not the store’s money, but my own private stash. Well, technically it started out as the store’s money, but then the route got a little circuitous. NanaBel taught me some helpful traditions for a small business owner to observe. She informed me it was very traditional for MacKenzie’s to thumb our noses at the government. It was rather like our Scottish Highland ancestors did repeatedly to those annoying bastards in England. I felt very close to my roots knowing I was practicing ancestor worship when I cooked the books, much like when I was baking shortbread cookies. Scots were infamous for being impossibly stubborn and unforgiving, but hopefully we’ve wised up a bit over the intervening centuries. Not wanting to reenact an IRS Culloden at Bel’s Books, I carefully followed the tried and true traditions I was taught.

I
had my own tradition of keeping eight to ten thousand in cash on hand in the hidden safe for my private use. A girl never knew when or why she’d need some ready cash. I found a plain envelope in the desk and slid the forty-five hundred into my purse. The extra two hundred went into my wallet. Placing everything back in the safe, I locked it up and made sure everything was tidy. Then I called upstairs to Crookie.

Sounding distracted when he
answered, Crooks perked right up when I asked him to shadow Larissa and work with her in my absence. Stella was coming with me and Billy could get busy with other customers. The two part-timers scheduled to start at three until closing would be busy doing their own thing. Larissa’s first day back on the job had gone smoothly and I wanted to make sure it stayed that way. I laughed to myself when I thought of her taking on Mike with her Bible quotes. Her day might not have been typically smooth so far, but it hadn’t been harmful.

I made another successful call
to a good friend from high school to get the ball rolling on a significantly key part of the Blanca rescue plan. I could do no more on that score until we all got together back here at five, so I grabbed my jacket and purse to go find the girls.

Fifteen minutes later, we
were all in Mac’s large family room dressed in our costumes for the current Let’s Embarrass Layla plan. We were also all noisily slurping on malts Jazy and Tre had brought for our surprise treats. Mine was peanut butter--my all-time favorite.

Anna
was giggling her head off between long, sucking draws on her straw. “I am so happy I didn’t choose Pilgrims and Indians!”

Smirking, I
gazed around at us girls. Tre J, Jazy, and Stella have on identical black Pilgrim hats and were all wearing identical glum faces, ice cream notwithstanding. Anna, Mac, and I were wearing beaded Indian headbands with gaudy, hot pink feathers sticking up straight off the back. More like plumes, actually.

“Have you no faith then, Anna, in your sisters-in-arms?”
I murmured, trying not to laugh.

“Not at the expense of my neck, I
sure don’t!” Anna gasped, and then snorted while pointing her malt at Jazy. “Ah, Jaz, you look so cute. Kinda like a sad Quaker man!”

Jazy
sniggered at Anna. “Is there any other kind of Quaker man?”

We all laughed and
Mac interjected, “Hey, I think these costumes are great considering the point is to make Layla cringe with shame at being related to us! Now remember, we all should wear black pants and black shirts, okay?”

“Can I wear black fringe, too?” I asked,
sucking on my malt and thinking dreamily about the top half of a flapper costume left over from some Halloween. I know it was somewhere in my closet. Fringe was another guilty pleasure. I absolutely loved how silky it felt and how it moved all over when I danced.

Mac rolled her eyes
and replied, “I forgot you were a go-go dancer in a previous life, Bel, but sure, why not?”

Tre J threw me a wide smile. “I don’t think it was a previous life, Mac. Don’t you remember seeing her dance on the bar at that Halloween party two years ago?”

Thinking of everything going on lately, I sighed in fond nostalgia remembering that wild, carefree party. “That sure feels like a previous life.”

Jazy
was smiling more now. “I’ve got a western shirt with black fringe, too! So do you, Tre!”

Mac shook her head
while grinning. “I have tried very hard to forget that Halloween party. Now that was shameful embarrassment at its finest.”

Tre emphatically
shook her white-blonde head in disagreement, defending my dancing abilities stoutly. “It wasn’t embarrassing, Mac. Your sister got offered big money to dance privately by three different men; I heard it with my own ears.”

This set Anna off
laughing again while Mac replied dryly, “I was speaking of my own embarrassment, Tre. I live in this town, and once she gets going with the damn fringe, Bel doesn’t have a shameless bone in her body.”

Jazy high-fived me and we shared shameless grins
. Stella giggled quietly at us all and drank her malt.

Mac turned to
Jazy next and burst her balloon, as only the eldest sister can do so efficiently. “Sorry, Jaz, but you and Tre are Pilgrims. You can’t wear fringe.”

Jazy’s lower lip turned mulish, as only the youngest sister can do so effortlessly
. “You be a friggin’ Pilgrim then, Mac, and I’ll be an Indian.”

I
always try to be helpful, as only the middle sister can do so egregiously. “Mac, what if Jazy cuts the fringe on her shirt to a respectable, Pilgrim-ish length that would be as historically accurate as our hot pink Indian plumes?”

Mac
eventually gave up trying to reach me past the blocking presence of Tre. It didn’t help I was sticking out my tongue from behind my protector’s back as I dodged her slaps. I reminded Mac this kind of childish behavior went against the Hippocratic Oath. She reminded me she isn’t a doctor. I reminded her that fact is nothing to be ashamed of. She reminded me her only shame is sharing my blood, and I reminded her that she isn’t my type. On we went having fun, as only sisters can do amid the slurping cheers and catcalls of the others. Tiring, we collapsed on the sectional.

I turned to Mac on the sofa next to me and asked, “Do you think you’ll still be trying to beat me up when we’re in our fifties?”

She squeezed me affectionately. “I guarantee I’ll want to beat you up until the day I die.”

Anna and
Stella got everyone’s attention by describing in dramatic detail what had just occurred with Mike McClain in my office.

Jazy hadn’t been there to meet Mike again
last night at the party at Bel’s, so she was disgusted, but not surprised. Tre J and Mac were disgusted, too, but more bummed that the friendly, handsome Mike had evolved into Mad Mike overnight.

Everyone agreed it had to be my fault
. They teased me unmercifully that I drive men off the deep end with the raging desire to either kill me or fuck me to death. I took their foul-mouthed teasing in stride, and tried not to shudder at the scary truth of what they considered a joke. We had fun discussing that whole fiasco for a few minutes, until Stella got carried away and told them I had publically declared Luke was my boyfriend. She didn’t stop there, but tattled how I jumped into his arms, kissed him passionately, and snuggled with him for fifteen minutes in front of everybody.

Three sets of eyes
, all different shades of beautiful blue, swiveled to stare at me in shocked incredulity.

Before anyone could recover enough to start in with the questions, I waved Stella’s
storytelling off with a bland, “It was a ruse mainly to throw Mike off my scent.” I saw Tre and Jazy nod in dawning understanding, but Mac continued regarding me with measuring speculation.

Meeting her eyes, I grinned at that
mothering look, but swiftly diverted by saying, “You should hear what Anna had to deal with before Mike went mad. Anna, don’t we need to tell them about the pedophile enforcer intent on kidnapping Maria’s poor niece?”

Anna nodded, and enthusiastically
recounted Maria’s story to now four sets of wide eyes swiveled in her direction. Stella didn’t know anything about Blanca and this story riveted the little badger’s attention away from my personal life. When Anna was done diverting, I asked for some help. If all went well, my rescue plan was happening late tonight. I could use two Indians to assist with the surprise rescue and some Pilgrims to man the home fort. Everyone was excited and eager. After a few minutes of talk, we nailed it down the best we could without more explicit details from Maria, or Luke and John. Our rescue plan meeting adjourned.

It
was now time for the Embarrass Layla plan. Mac passed out our assigned letters she’d gone ahead and painted in black on sturdy poster board. Since the name Layla has five letters and there were six of us, I got to be a bold exclamation point. Idly, I wondered why Mac had been so twitchy earlier today at whether Kenna would show up or not. Obviously, we didn’t need her. I shrugged it off. My oldest sibling sometimes goes a little anal and could spook easily. It was best to appreciate Mac could normally be depended upon in most things, and not ask questions on the rare occasions when the whites of her eyes could be seen around her entire eyeballs.

Mac
copied an abbreviated soundtrack of Eric Clapton’s “Layla”. It was only the chorus part. Along with our dance, this was perfect to make our cousin Layla cry for mercy upon her arrival at the baggage claim area at the airport tonight. Her friends, Celeste and Misty, were in on our plan. They’ll flank Layla so she cannot escape and run from the shame of being an Axelrod woman.

We followed Mac’s choreography
and energetically practiced her cross between a crazy cheer and a dirty dance. We all belted out the words and flipped our signs with extravagant gestures and gyrations. Mac clapped and complimented us warmly. She loved my improvised ending with the exclamation point, and I gave credit to my yoga class. Once Director Mac was satisfied we were wild enough to embarrass our cousin Layla quite sufficiently, she released us.

The weather posed no issues, so w
e all agreed to meet at Bel’s by seven sharp to meet the Florida inbound plane arriving at 8:15 PM. Jazy was in charge of transportation for the weekend and she assured us all, with a sly grin, that she had it under control.

F
ollowing Jazy out the back door ahead of the others a few minutes later, I teasingly asked, “Did you rent a party bus for the weekend, Sister?”

Her dark blue eyes dancing merrily, she
replied cryptically, “You’ll see later. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

At those magic words
, and at her happiness at having a surprise to lord over us, I laughed and said, “Cool!” Pointing the key fob and unlocking my jeep, Lady Liberty, I remembered to inquire, “What was up with the call to talk this morning?”

She started to speak, but s
eeing Anna, Tre, and Stella coming out the back door and heading our way, she answered, “It’s about something I’ve been meaning to see if you’re interested in, but we’ll talk later.” She smiled at my slight frown. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing urgent or earth shattering, just a brilliant idea I’ve been kicking around.”

“Okay,
in that case, I definitely won’t worry,” I agreed cheerfully.

Jazy
made a rude, Italian gesture and we laughed. She opened the passenger door to Tre’s monster truck before calling out to add, “Oh yeah, I invited James Byrd for dinner tomorrow.”

“Now you have
me worried,” I muttered in disgruntlement.

Jazy
must share my bat-like hearing abilities because she stood on the running board and grinned over at me through the gathering dusk of the late afternoon. “Why do you have such a hard-on against James? He’s an amazingly talented man, Bel.”

Anna arrived at the jeep in time to hear this last and asked, “Whose hard-on are we talking about?”

Laughing, Jazy told her to ask me and waved a final goodbye, hopping into the truck after Tre J.

At Anna and Stella’s questioning looks, I shrugged. “Apparently,
Jazy thinks James Byrd’s totem pole is all that.”

“Gross
and politically incorrect!” Stella stated on a laugh, while at the same time Anna asked curiously, “Interesting…I wonder what makes his TP all that?”

“
My thoughts exactly!” I agreed fervently with them both, starting up the jeep and heading back to Bel’s.

Chapter X
IV

“
Karma Police” by Radiohead