Slightly Irregular (12 page)

Leaving my sore feet bare, I went back into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of red wine as the second message played. It was from my mother, hence the need for the wine chaser.

“Since you haven’t bothered to make your plane reservations, I’ve had to take that on as well.” I raised my glass to her martyrdom as she continued her voice-mail lashing. “Your flight leaves at ten a.m. on Thursday; that will get you into Atlanta at—”

I groaned. “I don’t have Thursday off,” I argued over the rest of the message. I travel a lot like I shop—bargain hunting. It wasn’t like I didn’t know I had to be in Atlanta on Friday afternoon; I did. I even had a fare watcher on Travelocity.com with the trip specifics. Now, thanks to Controlling Cassidy, again I was faced with choosing between bad and worse. I could call her and tell her to change the flight, which would surely result in ugly and prolonged tension. Or I could go to Vain Dane and
grovel for an additional personal day off from work. So I could lose my mind or lose a day’s pay.

“Hands down, take the day without pay.” I drained my wineglass, then refilled it.

I had almost an hour and a half before Jane was due, so I decided to entertain myself by going through Ellen’s bags-o-muumuus.

Hiking up the hem of my dress, I knelt down and opened the shopping bag closest to me. Since I’d basically shoved the tattered garbage bag and its contents into the shopping bag to get it out of the trunk, this was my first real look at what was inside.

My suspicions were confirmed as I unrolled a wad of material. Only it turned out not to be an emerald paisley muumuu, but a vintage Von Furstenberg wrap dress. I stared at it for several seconds, trying to imagine Ellen Lieberman in a real dress. Not just any dress, but a classic.

In eight years, I’d never seen her wear anything that clung to any part of her body. Yet each item I pulled from the bag completely contradicted all I knew about her. And there was something else. All the items were vintage: late eighties, early nineties. Oh, and everything was a size two or four, and I’d bet my last dollar—no pun intended—that under her current love of tent dressing, Ellen was still a svelte single digit.

There were several pairs of barely worn Nina shoes—size six—as well as three pairs of boots and four coats. I decided I should make an inventory list for the thrift store, then I could copy it for Ellen so she could get the tax deduction.

“Ouch,” I muttered as I stood on cramped legs. My laptop was in my bedroom, so I got it, and, almost as an afterthought,
I also picked up my study guide. At some point, I had to continue studying for my exam.

I began to organize the items, creating a spreadsheet of everything by size, color, and style. As I did so, I carefully folded each item. I’d been at it long enough that I’d become numb to the smell of cedar. My guess was that Ellen had stored all this stuff in cedar trunks and/or a cedar-lined closet.
But why?

Taking a quick break before logging the shoes and coats, I sipped my wine and admired the neat stacks of clothing I’d created from four green trash bags. Going to the pantry, I took out a half-dozen shopping bags from high-end stores. Placing my wineglass next to my computer, I then placed a bag with each pile of sorted items.

When I reached down for a suede coat with what I was pretty sure was a coyote collar, I felt a hard bulge in one pocket. It took me a minute to feel my way around the chocolate-colored coat until I found the opening to the pocket. Slipping my hand inside, I let out a sharp squeal of pain.

“Dammit!” I yanked my hand back just as a small flow of blood made a bubble on my forefinger. So it wasn’t reason to call an ambulance—the pinprick still hurt.

As I stuck my finger in my mouth I asked, “Does this qualify as a worker’s comp case?”

I was much more methodical and careful in my second attempt. I turned the coat upside down and just shook it until a small wad of tissue tumbled out and wobbled around until it came to rest against the leg of the coffee table.

As I went to pick it up, I tripped over my hem and sent myself
flying, face-first, toward the tile. I hit hard. I hurt my pride and my head.

Standing, I went to the bathroom and grimaced when I saw the small gash at my hairline. Dabbing it with a Kleenex went only so far. In another blow to my self-esteem, I had to place a Band-Aid on my forehead—at least I had the clear kind—and as I did, I felt the beginnings of a goose egg.

My first thought was, what would my mother do if I showed up at the wedding looking one scintilla shy of perfect? My second thought was wondering why I’d had the first thought.

“Whoever said bringing back the maxi-dress was a good idea?” I was still irritated as I returned to the great room. I took a sip of wine—hey, it was good enough for the ancient Greeks—then gingerly bent down to retrieve the tissue-wrapped package. It’d better be worth it. The frigging thing had already cost me two personal injuries.

Gently, I peeled away the wrappings. Inside were a bracelet, a pair of drop earrings, and four brooches, including the one that had pricked my finger.

“So what the hell is Ellen doing hiding jewelry inside a coat pocket? Especially
this
jewelry.” I held one of the brooches up to the light. Just as expected, they were costume but not cheap. No, these had a maker’s marks and brilliant craftsmanship. One-of-a-kind sort of thing. And if Ellen wasn’t hiding it, why did she have it in the first place? I just couldn’t see her wearing frilly, large accessories. No more than I could picture her wearing the acid-washed jeans in stack number five.

Bad decisions make good stories.

I spread the jewelry
out on the coffee table. There was a theme to the pieces. The earrings were freshwater pearls with a tiny crown fashioned from silver and what I thought might be cubic zirconia stones attaching them to the shepherd’s hook. The bracelet had tiny crowns—also silver with possible CZ mountings—placed inside circles. All together, the bracelet had five rings of crowns.

The brooches were another story. At least I thought so. I went over to the kitchen junk drawer—yeah, I know, new house, no junk, but that’s not how I roll—and retrieved the jeweler’s loupe Becky had given me. Sounds like a strange gift, but it was actually the lead-up to the real gift, a pretty pink sapphire ring to commemorate my twenty-fifth birthday. Returning to the table, I picked up the first brooch, the smaller of the four, and peered at it through the loupe. The ten-times monocular lens confirmed my suspicions. Though expertly made, the pin was not diamond-encrusted. As on the earrings, the crown motif
was repeated. Turning it over, I had to search for a few seconds before finding
L.S. & CO.
stamped just below the clasp. I wasn’t familiar with the company, but that didn’t mean much. A lot of jewelers placed maker’s marks in their higher-end pieces.

Since I had the loupe out anyway, I checked the earrings. Again I found the same marking but no .925 stamped into the piece. Given the overall quality, my guess was that the silver had a rhodium finish, which explained the luster and replicated the look of platinum.

Turning my attention back to the stones, I examined them closely. Thanks in part to my job in trusts and estates, I’d gotten fairly good at defining CZ. Like natural diamonds, cubic zirconia was graded according to four criteria: carat weight, clarity, color, and cut. These were top-of-the-line stones and better quality than the typical quality preferred by jewelers. I’d still want a jeweler to appraise them, but I was guessing I was seeing at least five carats of brilliant cut C AAAAA.

“Weird,” I mumbled.

I repeated the process on the rest of the brooches. All but one shared the characteristics of the first. The fourth one immediately had my full attention.

It was three inches in diameter and sorta resembled the jewels at the midpoint of Elizabeth II’s official crown. Sad that I knew my crowns, since it revealed my childhood fantasy of becoming a princess. “Mom would have loved that,” I commented sarcastically. She’d value a title above all else. No more taunts about being an underachiever by choice, no more talk of law school, reinstated access to my trust fund. And just possibly a reason to like me. And vice versa. My mother and I were stuck
in that place where on some level we loved each other, but on every other level we just irritated each other.

I sighed deeply and went back to the task at hand. This brooch was diamond-encrusted platinum. At least I thought so. Mentally, I added it to my list of items to have the jeweler appraise.

The doorbell startled me, and I called out, “Just a minute!” For the sake of safety, I scooped up the jewelry—again getting pricked in the process—and my loupe and put them in the junk drawer.

The instant I opened the door, I smelled moo shu, and my stomach gurgled.

“Hey there,” Jane greeted.

There was some tension around her mouth and eyes. Or maybe it was guilt.

Or maybe I was just funneling everything through my residual annoyance. Which was childish. And silly. And above all else, wrong.

Jane placed the box of food on the counter, then asked to use the powder room. In the few minutes she was gone, I set the counter up with place mats, chopsticks, napkins, and another wineglass. I retrieved my glass from the coffee table, and my nose pinched at the scent of cedar competing with the Chinese food.

Jane reemerged a different person. Gone were the form-fitting red dress, stunning silver pumps, and assorted silver accessories. Instead, she’d put on her clinging yoga clothing. I wondered if she was ever going to get saddlebags or cellulite.

Probably not.

“What’s that smell?” she asked as she took the glass of wine I offered.

“Cedar. Give me a sec.”

“And what did you do to your head?”

“Nothing major,” I assured her as I carried the bags out to the lanai and closed the sliding glass door. “Better?”

“Much. Please tell me you didn’t go on a five-bag spending binge.” She frowned.

I made a cross over my heart while saying, “Nope. That’s all Ellen’s crap. I’m taking it to the thrift store in the morning.”

“Ellen the lesbian?”

“She’s not gay,” I said. “I think she’s just asexual.”

“Does the asexual manual state that you have to work hard on looking like a thin version of Cass Elliott? And by the way, did you know there’s an official Web site for her fans?”

“Can you have fans when you’ve been dead since 1974?” I began opening the cartons to inspect the contents. “You were obviously hungry when you went into Mi Lang’s. What’d you do, get one of everything on the menu?”

“So you’ll have a bunch of leftovers.”

“No, you should take it home; you paid for it.”

“You forget, I know every dime you have to your name. I know it barely makes a dent in what you spent on the babysitting outfit, so every penny counts.”

My guess was now wasn’t a good time to mention that I’d already shopped the Vero Beach outlets and purchased another little black dress. It wasn’t like I could wear the ultra-expensive one since both Liam and Tony had seen me in it.

We each pulled up a bar stool, leaving one between us for better-shared access to the food. I topped off our wineglasses. “Want me to open another bottle?”

“No, I’m driving.”

So why didn’t you have that epiphany when you were at the Blue Martini? Then Liam wouldn’t have ended up in your apartment. Stripping you nearly naked and God only knows what else.

I took a dumpling out of the container, dipped it in the accompanying sauce, then bit off half of it. “Yum,” I said, holding my hand over my mouth so I could compliment with my mouth full. I tried the beef with snow peas first. Another winner. On my next trip down the buffet line, I took a small portion of Hunan shrimp. “Spicy. But in a good way,” I told Jane. Passing on both the fried and sticky white rice, I went right for the moo shu pork. Taking a flour pancake, I began to build my entrée. Pork, egg, mushrooms, all in a ginger/sesame sauce. Folding it like a pro—which I am, since I moo shu at least once a week—I brought it to my mouth. As always, it was stellar.

“There’s an elephant in the room, and his name is Liam,” Jane said as she downed what was left in her wineglass.

Placing my chopsticks on my plate, I swiveled in my seat and looked at her. “There shouldn’t be. We’ve been friends for years, and the first rule of girlfriends is that men come and go, but we women stick together.”

“Nice sentiment,” she said, her eyes sad. “But I know I hurt you, and I’m truly sorry.”

I waved my hand. “Let’s just forget it. The truth is, Liam and I have no future. Meaning I have no right to care what he does and with whom.”

Jane sucked in a breath, then exhaled as if she was doing a yoga warm-up. Maybe it was the outfit. That’s why I don’t own any workout clothes.

“He didn’t do anything with me except keep me from making yet another mistake,” Jane insisted.

“Paolo was more than just a mistake,” I reminded her.

I watched as Jane shivered. “Tell me about it. I bought an entire new bedroom suite. I couldn’t sleep on furniture where I’d found a dead guy. Isn’t that why you had the closets redone here?”