Drop Dead Gorgeous (21 page)

Two items down, five to go.

The "nutty" comment bothered me. I'm neither nuts nor nutty. Sometimes I'll use a convoluted means to get what I want, but that's either to lull someone into thinking I'm a mental lightweight so he'll underestimate me, or because I enjoy the means as much as I do the ends. Wyatt had never underestimated me. He saw the airhead act for what it was: a strategy. I like to win as much as he does.

So what was he calling nutty? I had no way of answering that. He'd have to supply his own answer.

The other four items were way too complicated and serious for me to attempt right then. I was too tired, too stressed, too emotional. Wyatt and I were on the verge of breaking up, and I didn't know what I could do about it.

I was just drifting off to sleep when I realized he hadn't said a word about my haircut. Coming on top of everything else, that did it: I cried.

I slept, but not well and not much. My subconscious hadn't provided any miraculous answers to my problems, either.

Common sense told me, however, that I couldn't act as if time had been suspended. The wedding was still going to take place, until Wyatt and I decided differently. That meant I had work to do. My enthusiasm level wasn't as high as it had been the day before—in fact, it was pretty close to zero—but I couldn't let my pace slack off.

My first stop that morning was Jazz's place of business,
Arledge
Heating and Air Conditioning. Jazz no longer did the installation work himself, he had employees to do that, but he did go around to new construction sites and figure how many units would be needed, how big, where they would be placed, where the vents would go for maximum effectiveness, that kind of thing. Because of some sneaking around Luke had done, though, I knew Jazz would be in the office instead of out at some site.

The office was a small brick building in an industrial section that was sadly in need of a beautification project—the whole section, not just Jazz's building. I'd never been here before, so seeing the building gave me a whole new slant on Jazz's side of his marital situation. Think plain and unadorned, not
so
much as a shrub planted by the cracked concrete walk that led from the gravel parking lot to the front door. The front windows did have blinds, but since the building faced west, if someone hadn't installed blinds the office staff would have been blinded every afternoon. Guess that's why they're called "blinds," huh?

There were two gray metal desks in the front room. At the first one sat a battleship in human form. You know the type: enormous gray beehive, glasses on a chain, enormous bosom that preceded her into every room. The woman at the second desk was younger than the first, but not by much; late forties to the other one's mid-fifties, I'd guess. As I entered I heard them gossiping away, but they stopped when they saw me.

"May I help you?" the battleship asked with a smile, her heavily be-ringed, red-tipped fingers not pausing as she flipped through a stack of papers.

"Is Jazz in?" I asked.

Both women turned to stone, the smile turned to ice, and hostility glared from their eyes. Belatedly I realized that by calling him "Jazz" instead of "Mr.
Arledge
" I'd given them the wrong impression. This was a little disconcerting, since I always thought of him as an uncle. And was Jazz making a habit of hooking up with women young enough to be his daughter?

I tried to thaw the ice. "I'm Blair."

No hint of recognition in the glaring eyes. In fact, they became even more
hos
-tile.

"Blair Mallory," I elaborated.

Nothing.

Well, hell, was this the South or not? Don't tell me these people didn't recognize their employer's wife's best friend's daughter's name! Please.

But nothing was sparking, so I hit them over the head with the information. "I'm Tina Mallory's daughter, you know, Aunt Sally's best friend?"

Realization dawned. It was the "Aunt Sally" that did it. The smiles came out, and the battleship left its berth to come hug me.

"Why, honey, I didn't recognize you!" she said as I was attacked by a pair of
gazongas
as soft as your average inflated tire, and I realized she had those suckers hemmed up and packed down, so ruthlessly restrained they probably gave her whiplash when she unleashed them at night. The thought boggled. Even more frightening was envisioning the bra capable of holding them in restraint. It could probably be used as a launcher on an aircraft carrier.

The fastest way to be free of them was to show no fear, and play dead. So I stood there and let her hug me, blinking as I tried not to gasp for air, and all the while smiling the sweetest smile I could manage. When she finally released me I took a deep breath of precious air. "How could you recognize me? I've never been here before."

"Honey, of course you have! Sally and your mama came by one day not long after Jazz opened the business. Sally had Matt and Mark with her, and your mama had both you and your sister by the hand, and you were the two cutest little dolls I've ever seen. Your sister had just started walking."

Since I'm two years older than
Siana
, the visit this lady remembered would have made me around three. And she didn't recognize me? My God, what was wrong with her? I couldn't have changed that much between the ages of three and thirty-one, could I?

A village somewhere was missing its idiot.

"I don't really remember," I hedged, wondering if I should run for the hills. "I, uh, had a concussion a few days ago and my memory's really spotty—"

"A concussion?
My word! You need to sit down, right over here—" My right arm was seized and I was steered to an orange vinyl couch, where I was all but plunked down. "What are you doing out of the hospital? Isn't someone watching you?"

Since when did "concussion" become synonymous with "irreparable brain damage?"

"I'm doing fine," I hastily assured her. "I was released from the hospital last Friday. Uh, is Uncle Jazz in?"

"Oh! Oh, of course he is. He's in the shop building."

"I'll page him," said the other woman, lifting her phone. She punched a button, then two numbers, and a loud buzzer sounded outside. After a minute she said, "Someone's here to see you." She listened, then hung up and smiled at me. "He'll be here in a minute."

It was actually less than that, because the shop building was directly behind the office building and he had to walk maybe twenty yards. He came hustling in, medium height, bald, with the muscular build of a man who has worked hard all of his life, his face more careworn than I'd ever seen it. Before this problem with Sally he'd put on a little weight, but from what I could see now he'd lost that extra weight and then some. He skidded to a stop when he saw me, frowning in confusion.

"Blair?" he finally said, the word tentative, and I stood.

"You're looking good," I said, going to him for a hug,
then
kissing him on the cheek the way I'd always done. "May I talk to you for a minute?"

"Sure," he said. "Come on in my office. Do you want some coffee?
Lurleen
, is there any coffee?"

"I can always make some," said the battleship, smiling.

"No, I'm fine, thanks anyway." I smiled back at
Lurleen
.

Jazz led me into his office, a depressing space dominated by dust and paperwork. His desk was the same gray metal type as was in the outer office. There were two battered green filing cabinets, his chair— which was patched with duct tape—and two visitors' chairs in a shade of green that almost matched the filing cabinets. There was a phone on his desk, a metal in-out box,
a coffee cup that held the usual collection of pens and one screwdriver with a broken handle—
that was the extent of his office decor.

Clueless didn't begin to describe him. Poor man, he'd have been absolute putty in Monica Stevens's hands when he'd hired her to redecorate his and Sally's bedroom.

He closed the door, the smile vanished from his face as if it had never been, and he asked suspiciously, "Did Sally send you?"

"Good Lord, no!" I said, honestly surprised. "She has no idea I'm here."

He relaxed somewhat, and rubbed his hand over his head. "Good."

"Good, how?"

"She isn't speaking, but she'll send messages by people she knows I'll talk to."

"Oh, well, sorry. No messages."

"Don't be sorry." He did the head-rubbing thing again. "I don't want any messages from her. If she wants to talk to me, she can damn well act like an adult and pick up the phone." He flashed me a guilty look, as if I were still three years old. "Sorry."

"I think I've heard 'damn' before," I said mildly, grinning at him. "Want to hear my list of bad words?" When I was little, I would recite all the words I wasn't supposed to say. Even then I had lists.

He grinned, too. "I guess I've heard them before. So what can I do for you today?"

"Two things.
One, do you still have the invoice from Monica Stevens, for the work she did on your bedroom?"

He winced. "You bet I do. That's twenty thousand dollars thrown up a wild hog's—uh, I mean, wasted."

Twenty thousand
?
I whistled, long and low.

"Yeah, tell me about it," Jazz muttered.
"A fool and his money.
I got part of it back from our old furniture that she sold in her shop, but still."

"Is it here?"

"Sure, wouldn't have the bill sent to the house where Sally would see it, now would I? It was a surprise for her. Some surprise. You'd have thought I'd slit her throat." He got up and opened one of the drawers of the filing cabinet closest to him, rifled through the folders, then pulled out a sheaf of papers that he then tossed onto the desk. "Here."

I picked up the invoices and looked through them. The
total wasn't quite twenty thousand, but close
enough. Jazz had paid through the nose for the furniture, which was avant-garde, hand-made, ugly as sin and twice as expensive. Monica had also replaced the carpeting in the bedroom, put in new artwork, which had also cost a small fortune— exactly what was "Luna," anyway? = I knew it meant "moon," but had she hung a fake moon in their bedroom?

"What's this 'Luna'?" I asked, fascinated.

"It's a white vase. It's tall and
skinny,
and she put it on this lighted pedestal. She said something about drama."

Jazz had paid over a thousand bucks for that piece of drama. All I could say was that Monica had stayed true to her "vision." She liked glass and steel, black and white, weird and expensive. It was her signature.

"Could I have this for a little while?" I asked, already stuffing the invoices in my bag.

He looked puzzled. "Sure. What do you want with it?"

"Information."
I hurried on before he could ask me what sort of information. "And could you do one other thing for me? I know this might not be a good time…"

"I'm not all that busy, this is as good a time as any," he said. "Just name it."

"Come with me to a furniture store."

Chapter Fifteen