Taken In (10 page)

Tori looked from Charles to Leona and back again, before following their collective gaze to the camera once again. “Found one of my own?”

“Your own unsuspecting woman,” Charles replied.

“You know that woman?”

“Know her? No. But I’ve seen her before. With a certain special someone . . .”

And then she knew.

The steely-eyed woman who’d been so irritated by their presence in the Waldorf that first morning had been there doing the exact same thing they had been doing. Only she hadn’t been spying on Dixie the way Tori, Rose, Margaret Louise, Leona, Debbie, and Beatrice had been doing.

No, Ms. Steely Eye had been spying on Dixie’s breakfast companion, John Dreyer.

“And now, thanks to this brilliant picture, she’s also been placed, for our viewing pleasure, at the scene of the crime,” Charles summed up with a clap of his hands for emphasis. “Oooh, this is going to be so much fun I can hardly
stand
it.”

The disappointment was tangible across the board as the Sewing Circle Six Until They’re Seven Again, aptly renamed by Charles himself, trailed their new friend and the gaudy scarf back onto West Seventy-second.

“We can try again later. Perhaps Caroline is out searching for something with a bit more
pop.
Of course, if she’d waited until
after
we met, I could have found her something in”—Charles snapped his finger in a triangular movement—“a red-hot flash.” Then, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk just outside the Mayfair apartments, he beckoned for Tori and the rest of the ladies to gather around him. “This is
sooo
not a setback, friends. We can and we will track this woman down. So turn those frowns around and let’s get a treat, shall we?”

Tori felt her ears perk at the mere notion of a much-needed sugar infusion, but shook it off as the image of Dixie in handcuffs resumed its spot in the forefront of her mind. “Charles, we can’t. Every moment we’re out here, without answers, is another moment Dixie is sitting in that jail for a crime she didn’t commit. We can’t be stopping for a treat when we also need to track down Ms. Steely Eye.”

“We can’t?” Margaret Louise shouted over the roar of a garbage truck that was making its way slowly toward Central Park. “You sure ’bout that?”

Charles held up his hand like the perfect school crossing guard. Only, instead of stopping traffic, he stopped Tori from speaking. “Victoria. Surely you know that a well-timed treat—and a sinful one at that—is akin to putting super-charge gasoline in your car, yes?” He silenced himself long enough to exchange appreciative looks with Leona as a handsome man, dressed to the nines in his bellman attire, stepped out of a building across the street to help an arriving tenant. “Hmmm.” Charles glanced down at the neon green Swatch on his wrist then back at Leona with a wink. “Same time, same place tomorrow, gorgeous?”

At Leona’s nod, he continued, his focus straying back to Tori. “Anyway . . . where was I? Oh! Yes! Just because Caroline isn’t available at this exact moment doesn’t mean we can’t move ahead with our sleuthing. Which means, it is time to hatch a plan. At CupKatery.” Charles pivoted on the soles of his white faux leather booties and threw his hands in the air. “Margaret Louise, love, CupKatery is a
total
must. Their cupcakes are to die for. Truly. Positively. Without. A. Doubt.”

“Did you say cupcakes?” Margaret Louise asked in an elevated voice that no longer had anything to do with traffic noises. Then turning to Tori, she engaged her best sales tactic. “Now, Victoria. Charles is right. We need a little supercharge if we’re goin’ to keep wanderin’ these streets on foot. Why, my dogs are barkin’ already.”

“Your dogs?”

“My feet, Victoria.” Margaret Louise nudged her chin toward a beleaguered Rose while simultaneously pointing at Beatrice and Debbie with an elbow. “Everyone’s feet. We need to make a plan for our investigatin’. You know that better than anyone else here, ’cept me, of course.” Margaret Louise paused long enough to get Charles up to speed. “I’m the Ned to Victoria’s Nancy back home when it comes to solvin’ crime in Sweet Briar.”

“Crime, I might add, we did not have before Victoria arrived from
Chicago
,” Leona clarified.

Charles’s eyes widened dramatically, prompting an exchange of wiggling fingers with Leona while Margaret Louise continued, “So why not do our plannin’ over baked goods? Especially when I’ve been hearin’ ’bout these New York City cupcake shops for years.”

She wanted to protest, to argue a case for heading over to John’s street and asking random people where they might find Ms. Steely Eye, but she couldn’t. Not without squashing Margaret Louise’s excitement and pushing an obviously exhausted Rose into more walking than she could truly handle at that moment. Maybe a ten-minute break really would be best . . .

“Okay. Okay. But let’s keep it short, okay? We’ve got work to do.” She tucked Rose’s hand safely inside her upper arm as they brought up the rear of the cupcake-quest. “You doing okay, Rose? Because if this is too much, I’m sure Debbie would be happy to ride back to the hotel with you.”

Rose’s slow gait ceased completely. “Victoria, do you realize how long I’ve known Dixie?”

Tori covered the elderly woman’s bony hand with hers and patted it gently. “A long time.”

“You’re darn right, a long time. In fact, I’ve known Dixie more than twice as long as you’ve even been alive. Seeing her like that in the courtroom this morning was awful. She no more belongs behind bars for killing that fool than that young man up there”—she pointed a trembling finger toward Charles, who was relishing his role as tour guide to Beatrice, Debbie, Leona, and Margaret Louise—“could kill a bug in my garden without screaming his head off. Yet there she is, alone in a cell, questioning everything about herself.”

“I don’t know how,” Tori said, “but somehow, someway, we’re going to get to the bottom of what happened to John, I promise.” The second the last two words left her lips, she knew she’d probably made a mistake, but she didn’t care. There was no way she was going to let Dixie waste away in that jail cell awaiting a trial that wasn’t hers to have.

Rose blinked her misty eyes and resumed walking, her hand clutching Tori’s upper arm firmly. “More than anything, I wanted to enjoy this trip with all of you. It may have taken eighty years to find the kind of friend group we have, but it was worth the wait.”

Something about the way Rose was talking sent an actual shot of pain through Tori’s body, and she rushed to head it off with her preferred scenario. “And we’ll be together for a long time to come. For sewing meetings, barbecues,
my wedding
, and many, many more trips just like this one . . . minus the part about Dixie being arrested and tossed in jail, of course.”

“This will be my last trip of this magnitude, Victoria.”

This time it was Tori who stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “No it won’t.”

“Victoria, I’m slowing down more and more with each passing day. I don’t have the kind of years left that can accommodate many, many more trips, as you say.”

The pain squeezed at her heart and brought tears to her eyes. “Please. I—I don’t want to think like that. Not now. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next year. Please—”

“Woo-hoo . . . ladies,” Charles called out to them. “CupKatery is closing in half an hour. Chop! Chop!”

Rose untucked her hand long enough to guide a strand of hair behind Tori’s ear with a soothing
tsk
. “Don’t you fret, Victoria. I’m here now. Let’s catch up with everyone and get one of these fancy-schmancy cupcakes Margaret Louise is hankering to try so badly. And while everyone else is supercharging with sugar, I’m going to bask in the sunshine of that young man up there . . .”

There was so much she wanted to say. So many things about Rose’s influence in her life that she wanted to acknowledge. But not now. Not when the chance to make a new memory with the woman was right there at their fingertips.

Instead, she found the smile she needed and whispered a kiss across Rose’s forehead. “Well? Shall we?”

“Indeed, we shall.”

Ten minutes later, with Charles playing cheerleader at their side, Tori managed to get Rose through the door of CupKatery and into the first available seat they could find.

“Don’t bother sittin’,” Margaret Louise mumbled in a rare display of disappointment. “In fact, you don’t need to even pause in your steps in order to digest one of these—these cupcake imposters.”

Charles looked up from the spot he’d helped secure for Rose and rested a hand over his heart. “Imposters? What on earth are you talking about, girlfriend?”

Margaret Louise looked from the glass cupcake case Debbie and Beatrice were fawning over to a perplexed Charles and back again, the sheer horror and disbelief on her face impossible to miss. “I’ve eaten
crumbs
that are bigger than those cupcakes!”

“But that way you can experiment with flavors without getting too full too fast,” Charles protested.

“You can do that by stickin’ your finger in a bowl and lickin’ batter in my house. And I don’t charge plumb near three dollars for a lick, neither!”

Charles reached out, patted Margaret Louise’s vast shoulder, then winked back at Rose and Tori as he propelled her closer to the display case. “Let me make a few suggestions of cupcakes you need to try, sugarplum. Then, if you taste them and still think I’m crazy, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll step right out that door and start singing a selection of your choice from either
The Sound of Music
or
The
Phantom of the Opera
at the top of my lungs. Will that do?”

Margaret Louise tapped the tip of her index finger to her chin, leaned forward to study the many flavors available in bite-sized cupcake form, then met Charles’s eye with a mischievous one of her own. “Make it a Kenny Rogers song for Beatrice and you’re on.”

Beatrice’s head snapped and swiveled in one quick motion. “Oooh, Margaret Louise, thank you. I almost forgot. We just have to get a picture for Georgina and Melissa right here by the display case. We’ll make it a group shot. Charles?”

Beatrice secured Bobblehead Kenny from her purse with one hand and handed the camera to Charles with the other. “Could you—”

“Of course I can find someone to take our picture,” Charles gushed. Rising on his tiptoes, he turned to the customer seated at a nearby table. “Excuse me, ma’am? Would you mind taking a picture of my friends and me by the counter? We’re putting together an album for our friends who couldn’t be here today.”

Rose dipped her head long enough to hide its amused shake then stood and shuffled her way over to the counter with Tori in her wake. “Looks like we’ll have to give some thought to changing our name from the Sweet Briar Ladies Society Sewing Circle to something more inclusive when we get back home,” Rose whispered.

“I was actually thinking that same thing,” Charles replied. “Though, since I live so far away, maybe we could just add ‘and Charles’ at the end.”

Ten minutes and several poses later, Bobblehead Kenny and the camera were back in Beatrice’s purse and the six of them plus Charles were seated around a table, eating their way through CupKatery’s vast assortment of pint-sized cupcakes. As they munched and recharged, Margaret Louise kept a running commentary going on each and every flavor while Charles pointed everyone else’s attention around the tiny shop by way of a series of photographs highlighting many of the sights and sounds of New York City.

“That, of course, is the Empire State Building.” He swung his gaze back to the women seated around him. “Have you been to the top yet?”

At Leona’s no, he rolled his eyes. “I am so going to correct that.”

He pointed to the next photograph. “That’s the famous Gapstow Bridge in Central Park. It’s been the sight of countless marriage proposals over the years by men who prefer”—Charles paused and sighed—“true romance over staging something so outlandish it might go viral before the woman even says yes.”

He popped a s’more flavored cupcake into his mouth and chewed far more than the size demanded. When he was done, he made a face. “Last week, some barbarian in Wisconsin spelled out the words
Will you marry me?
in hot dogs. Can you imagine? If I had been that woman, I’d have reached across that table and used those very same hot dogs to write my response:
Oh,
hell no
. Then I’d have slapped him.”

“Try the pancake batter one next,” Margaret Louise said, pointing Charles’s focus back to the cupcake box. “It’s my favorite so far.”

“See? I told you.” Charles wiggled his fingers at Leona’s sister, then went back to describing the photographs around the shop, stopping as he reached the one on the back wall behind the register. “Will you look at that? My mother always said things happened in threes. Three great shoe purchases. Three pimples to cover. Three attractive men in the bookstore at the same time. You get the idea. And sure enough, she’s right. There’s our number three for today . . .”

Tori looked up from the cupcake flavor Margaret Louise was critiquing and followed the path of Charles’s finger all the way to the framed photograph of a family standing beside a lake. “Do you know someone in that picture?”

“No. But John sure did.”