Deadly Forecast: A Psychic Eye Mystery (28 page)

“What’d Dutch say?” I asked meekly.

“He says that you just told him you didn’t want to marry him.”

“What?!”

“His words, Abs, not mine.”

“Where the hell did he get
that
idea?!” (Okay, so at some point maybe I really would owe the swear jar a quarter
or two.)

“According to him…from you.”

“I never said that!”

“Then what did you say?” she asked, all patience and solicitude.

“I merely told him that I didn’t want to be Mrs. Rivers!” The moment it was out of
my mouth, I
knew
what I’d done.

There was a pause, then, “Ah. I see how he could be confused.”

“Oh,
shit
, Candice!”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” she said, in that way that suggested it might not be.

Getting up, I hobbled into the kitchen and dug for my wallet.

“Abs?” she asked. “You still there?”

I tugged open the zipper on my change purse, then thought better of it and pulled
out all the money I had there, from all six clients that day. “Yeah,” I told her,
moving over to shove the bills into the swear jar. “But I need to go. I’ve got some
credit to work off.”

The next morning Dutch crept through the door at just before six. He looked haggard
and hungover. I probably wasn’t looking much better. I’d stayed up the entire night
packing and trying to think of a way to make it up to him. Around four a.m.,
after I’d run out of things to shove into a moving box, I thought I knew. Since then
I’d been waiting with foot-tapping impatience for him to come home.

Dutch paused in the doorway and his eye lit on me as I sat on the ottoman I’d pushed
a few feet in front of the door. With a nervous smile I held up a velvet blue box
wrapped in a silver bow that I’d had tucked away in my sock drawer for the past few
weeks. I’d been saving the gift for our wedding night, but right now I needed a Hail
Mary, and the gift was a good one.

As Dutch continued to stand there half in the door, half out, I leaned forward and
said, “Dutch Rivers, will you please marry me?”

For several seconds his eyes flickered between me and the box, his face expressionless.
My heart started to pound. What if he said no?

Into the horrible silence I tried to insert some levity. “I’d get all the way down
on bended knee, but I don’t know that I could do it without falling over.”

Dutch just stared at me.

“You know, ’cause of my hips,” I said, clearing my throat as heat began to rise up
from my neck and spread across my face.

Stare.

My arm was starting to tire and my back hurt from leaning forward and holding the
box aloft, and the awkwardness of the situation was getting to me. “How about those
Longhorns?”

Stare.

I opened my mouth to start singing the theme to
Jeopardy!
when Dutch at last spoke. “Why the change of heart?”

I let the hand holding the box drop back to my lap. “Cowboy, I swear to God, it’s
not what you think.”

He eyed me skeptically.

“Seriously!” I insisted, unable now to even tell him that it’d merely
been a poor choice of words to let him know that I didn’t want to change my last name.

“So now you
do
want to get married?”

I stood. Keeping it simple might be best. “Yes, Dutch. I do. With all my heart I do.”

“You’re sure?”

I stepped forward to him. “More than ever,” I whispered, offering him the box again,
praying with everything I had that he’d accept it.

He hesitated only another second or two before he reached up and took my wrist, pulling
me close to wrap me in his arms. “Thank Christ,” he said softly. “For a minute there
I thought we were gonna have to tell your sister the wedding was off.”

I laughed and cried at the same time. “I love you, cowboy. Don’t ever forget it, and
don’t ever doubt it, okay?”

“What’s in the box?” he asked after a moment.

I leaned back and took up his hand to place it in his palm. “I was saving it for our
wedding night, but now that I think about it, it’d probably go better with your tuxedo.”

Dutch kissed me and moved us to the couch, where he undid the bow and opened the lid.
Whistling, he gently lifted out the two-tone Submariner Rolex with deep blue outer
rim, and gold face inset with sapphires and diamonds. And, although it looked new,
the truth was that it was preowned—no way could I have afforded it otherwise. Even
so, the gorgeous timepiece had cost more than my first car. And my second. Combined.
It’d taken me months to save up for it, and it’d still put a sizable dent in my savings.

“Edgar…,” he whispered. “This is gorgeous.” I smiled slyly. Dutch was a great admirer
of timepieces. He had several antique watches in a small leather box upstairs, and
the Tag Heuer I’d given him on Valentine’s Day many moons ago was one he wore daily.
“But, doll,” he added, “this must’ve cost a fortune.”

My smile widened. “Now you know why I’ve been skimping on the swear jar.”

Dutch chuckled, looping one arm around my neck to bring me close for a kiss. “How
about we forget that damn thing and just let you be you?”

I turned my head to look over to the dining room table. The large pickle jar was the
only packable object in the house that I hadn’t thrown into a box, and it was now
crammed with bills. Squirming slightly out of his hold, I sat back and said, “Can
we please put that into our wedding vows?”

“Done,” he said, slipping on his new watch and marveling at its splendor. “Thanks,
sweethot,” he added in his best Humphrey Bogart lisp. “And yes, by the way.”

“Hmm?”

“Yes. I’ll marry you.” And he sealed that promise with a kiss.

*   *   *

B
y eight o’clock we’d finished reconsummating our reengagement, and as the house was
pretty much completely packed, Dutch made us both breakfast while I waited on the
movers to come and stack our things into the two storage pods they were bringing along.
“What needs to stay here?” Dutch called from the kitchen while he whisked a bowl of
eggs. I’d left him precious little to cook with, but he seemed to be managing.

“I think just our bed from upstairs and maybe two of the kitchen chairs and those
TV trays,” I told him. “I mean, we’re only here until Tuesday morning, and we can
get by with just that.”

Dutch paused his whisking. “No couch?”

“Honey, everything needs to go in the pod. We can have the movers bring down our bed
and set it up in here along with the TV from up there, which I think will fit just
fine in your car.”

“What about the bed?”

“I thought I’d rope Dave into helping us move it to the new house after the closing
on Tuesday, seeing as he’s feeling guilty at the moment for the damage done to the
landscaping.”

Dutch came out into the living room, wiping his hands on a towel. He surveyed the
space and said, “Yeah, okay. Have ’em bring down the bed. But I’m not sure about moving
it to the new house.”

“Why not?”

“The mattress is lumpy. And frankly I never did like that bed frame.”

Dutch’s bedroom furniture was a bit dated, but we lived with it because I’d only brought
a queen-sized bed along when we’d moved in together and merged furniture. He had the
king. “Well, we can worry about that later,” I said, moving to the door because I
heard a large truck coming to a halt outside our house. “For now let’s just worry
about moving and getting hitched.”

Dutch turned to go back into the kitchen. “And solving a case,” he added.

I sighed. I’d forgotten about that. “Yeah. That too.”

Much of the rest of my exhaustive day was spent overseeing the movers as they carefully
loaded almost all of our belongings into the two pods, which were then loaded onto
a truck and carted off somewhere to be stored until Tuesday. Dutch took the pups to
the pet spa/boarding kennel, where they wouldn’t get underfoot, and he and I agreed
to keep them there until after we’d moved in. They’d of course have to go back to
the spa only three days later right before the wedding (I’d put my foot down about
not including them in the ceremony—no way was I going to risk having them attacked
by swans), and I hoped that Eggy and Tuttle weren’t going to be sad about spending
so much time away from us.

Dutch worked from home for only part of the morning, and
then he got called into the office. Gaston was back from Washington and wanted a briefing.
I jotted a few notes of my impressions for Dutch to give to Gaston and figured he’d
be back soon, as we hadn’t really gathered much in the way of leads.

While the movers took a lunch break, I called Candice. “Just thinking of you,” she
sang by way of hello. “Wondering if I should buy those expensive Christian Louboutin
pumps we saw at Neiman Marcus for the wedding.”

I rolled my eyes. “The wedding was never off,” I told her. “It was just a big misunderstanding.”

“Mmmhmmm,” she said in that way that made me think she didn’t believe me one hundred
percent.

“It was,” I insisted. “I just don’t want to be Mrs. Dutch Rivers, you know?”

There was a pause, then, “Maybe I should wait until Friday morning to head to the
mall.”

I sighed. Why was it so hard for everyone to understand me lately? “The
name
, Candice. I’m not sure I want to use the name. I’ve been Ms. Abby Cooper for so long
that Mrs. Rivers sounds like I’d be playing an impostor. Plus, Dutch’s mom is Mrs.
Rivers, and I can’t compete with that.”

“Oh, I get it,” Candice assured me. “And if you had explained it to him like that,
I wouldn’t be cleaning up after the two drunkards who made a mess of my living room
last night.”

“Dutch bolted before I had the chance to explain.”

“But you’ve talked to him about it and he understands now, right?”

I hesitated. “Sort of.”

“You didn’t tell him what you meant, did you?”

“I can save that argument for later.”

“So…I probably shouldn’t put away the spare pillow and blanket, huh?”

“You’re not helping.” I’m not so charming when I haven’t slept.

Candice laughed lightly. “Okay, okay, Abs. I’ll lay off. What’s going on besides all
that?”

“Dutch is headed to the office to brief Gaston on our progress. I’m surprised you
didn’t get a call to go in.”

“I gave my notes to Brice. He left a half hour ago.”

“Yeah, I gave Dutch my notes too. They were pretty short. Dutch told me you were working
on Mimi Greene’s background. Did you get anywhere?”

Candice sighed. “The girl was a ghost,” she said. “Just like her sister. I couldn’t
find any social media accounts in her name and the best I could do was pull up some
news articles about the fire she was killed in.”

“Was it bad?”

“It was. She was killed in a gas explosion.”

My brow shot up. “An
explosion
?”

Candice chuckled. “I thought you’d hit on that. Yeah, according to the article there
was a suspected gas leak in her apartment that went off around eleven in the morning.
Eleven eleven on the eleventh, to be exact.”

“That’s weird,” I said, and felt the smallest ping to my radar.

“Right? Freaky coincidence.”

I don’t believe in coincidences, but I kept that to myself. “Was anyone else killed?”
I asked.

“No, thank God. The apartments around her were mostly empty at the time with all the
tenants having left for work. Mimi was the only fatality. Still, I want to talk to
the arson investigator, because it’s a bit too close for comfort, don’t you think?
Both daughters dying in explosions.”

“Totally. Keep me posted on that, would you?”

“Of course.” And with a hint of humor in her voice she added, “And you keep me posted
about buying those Louboutins.”

I rolled my eyes. I was surrounded by comedians. “Go ahead and get them, Cassidy.”

“Yeah?”

It was my turn to chuckle. “Yeah. If I turn into a runaway bride, you can always return
them, you know.”

We both laughed, but deep down something about what I’d just said greatly troubled
me—as if I’d hit on something that contained a grain of truth.

“Girl, if I break down and buy a six-hundred-dollar pair of shoes, I’m keeping ’em,
so you’d better get married, or I’ll come find you and drag you back to the altar,
you hear?”

I laughed again, but that sinking foreboding remained.

“W
e can find her, Dutch,” Candice said for probably the tenth time since they’d decided
to head to Margo’s. M.J. thought she was trying to reassure herself as much as she
was trying to reassure Abby’s fiancé. “We’ll get to her in time. We will.”

M.J. couldn’t help but check the clock on the dash of Dutch’s car every ten seconds
or so. As fast as they were darting in and out of traffic, they weren’t going nearly
fast enough, she thought. At last Brody shouted, “There!” and M.J. saw that he was
pointing to a storefront for a beauty supply store. Dutch stomped on the brake and
everyone in the car jolted forward. Gilley thunked his head on the back of Dutch’s
seat and he let out a small wail. “Owww!”