You Dropped a Blonde on Me (13 page)
A mental shift accompanied that notation, prompting her fair-weather pride to rush through her veins in wavy gushes of celebratory return. Confidence securely back in place, Maxine called the first number.
“Bingooooo, bitch!” a coarse voice screeched just seconds behind someone else’s declaration of bingo, lifting Maxine’s eyes to the spot where Deloris Griswald sat.
A petite woman in tailored slacks and a floral shirt rose from her seat one table in front of Deloris’s. Her knobby finger waved in fierce admonishment. “Oh, the hell you say, Deloris! I called it first, and you know it!”
Deloris, an imposing, big-boned girl, clutched one of her beloved troll dolls to her chest, the loud green hair seeping between her fingers. She leaned forward over the flimsy table, her mint green and white housecoat gaping at her breasts. “You did not, Glenda! I beat you fair and square.” She slammed a thick-fingered, liver-spotted hand down on the table to emphasize “square,” making all her poor troll dolls tremble—probably in inanimate-object fear. A plastic Virgin Mary statue toppled over and fell to the ground.
Maxine dropped the microphone to the table in surprise. It let out a piercing screech of protest, making her wince. She jumped up from her chair and pushed her way through the crowd of folks who had also risen from their folding chairs to get a front-row seat to bingo brawl.
Glenda stood on tippy-toe, jamming her face into Deloris’s. “Put your hearing aids in, Deloris. I called it first, you cheater!”
Deloris’s tree-trunk-sized chest expanded before she opened her mouth so wide, Maxine saw her tonsils from all the way across the room. “I don’t need those damn hearing aids to know I called it first—
liar
!”
liar
!”
Hoo boy. Harsh. She’d used the “L” word. Good gravy. It was just bingo. The top prize was only a hundred bucks. Wait. A hundred bucks . . . In the midst of the beginnings of chaos, an odd thought struck her. A hundred dollars was at one time maybe—
maybe
—a pair of silk panties. Now it would buy enough food to feed at least two people for a week.
maybe
—a pair of silk panties. Now it would buy enough food to feed at least two people for a week.
Huh, maybe instead of calling the numbers she should be playing the game.
Heated words flew back and forth between Deloris and Glenda, their wagging fingers and flailing arms becoming a blur as Maxine made her way to the middle of the ruckus.
She slipped into the fray with the idea she’d bring order. Surely Midge didn’t allow this kind of gangsta-esque behavior on her watch. What was the world coming to when a bunch of over-sixty seniors couldn’t play a peaceable game of bingo?
With as gentle a hand as she could, so as not to create the need for some poor soul’s hip replacement or worse, activate brittle bone disease, Maxine parted the gathering crowd, placing herself almost directly between the geriatric reenactment of the Sharks and Jets.
Just as Deloris made the windup that was aimed at Glenda, but missed her by a country mile.
Hitting Maxine instead.
Square in the nose.
How many people could own the fact that they’d been clunked in the face at a game of seemingly harmless bingo with a plastic doll that had bushy green hair?
She’d been trolled.
Atonement was due.
CHAPTER SIX
Note from Maxine Cambridge to all ex-trophy wives: When a knight in shining armor offers you a cold pack and a hot dog, do us each a favor; don’t play like you don’t dig it. You’d only be lying to yourself and the people around you who still have the gift of sight. Better still; keep your new independent, overempowered nuttiness to a minimum. Sometimes, when your nose is gushing blood, help in the name of pity is okay—it’s definitely okay from a hot guy. Just don’t book a chapel in Vegas for the Silver Elvis wedding package, especially if you were considering the fancy fog machine.
Len slid from her car onto the pavement of the parking lot in Leisure Village with silent feet, her fingers clutching the illegal can of mace she carried with her no matter where she went.
Whoever this joker was, popping up everywhere she’d been for the last week, behaving as though he was some cheesy rip-off of James Bond, he was in for a ration of her special brand of shit. She rolled her eyes at the idea that he was delusional enough to think she hadn’t noticed him each time he ducked under a store awning while she grocery shopped or made some half-assed attempt to hide behind a bush when she left her office.
Ridiculous.
She’d spent a week wondering why a man as divine, as tall, as delish in a suit as this one happened to be was dogging her every step. Another question she might ask herself was why, in all of hell, she had the wherewithal to think he was attractive when he could well be a murderer? Hard up was one thing—lonely and in need of male companionship were, too—but to entertain a potential menace’s lickability factor was just plain disturbing.
She’d considered calling the police, but to what point? What would she say? A man who looked remarkably like an advertisement, albeit a decadent one, for the
Wall Street Journal
was trailing her. And no, officer, he’s never once made a single threat, physical or verbal. They’d label her batshit and order 911 to ignore all calls from her.
Wall Street Journal
was trailing her. And no, officer, he’s never once made a single threat, physical or verbal. They’d label her batshit and order 911 to ignore all calls from her.
Lenore snuck up behind him without a hint of awareness on his part, in heels, no less. He was easy prey, seeing as he really sucked at the covert. She held up the can of mace, finger on the pump, ready to fire, her eyes narrowed, and yelled, “Who the hell are you, and why are you following me?”
When he swung around, the scent of his cologne, by no stretch of the imagination cheap, swished in her nose on the air of the humid evening. He looked as surprised as she was, though her surprise was very different. The distance she’d seen him from since he’d begun stalking her had done him no justice.
His lickability factor, at least in the lanterns’ glow from the rec center, was boatloads bigger than she’d first estimated. Her breath caught in her throat. But then she reminded herself—those who engaged in the act of manslaughter weren’t necessarily heinous to lay one’s eyes upon.
It wasn’t a mandatory prereq that killers have warts and bad teeth. Some were probably equally into hygiene. Just because he wore chichifroufrou cologne didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of band-sawing her legs off and stuffing them in a tub full of muriatic acid.
Just because his hair, the color of the night that surrounded them, was shiny and well-groomed didn’t make him less capable of dumping her somewhere in the woods. The slate gray suit he wore, an expensive label she knew well, didn’t mean he hadn’t spent the better part of his pimply pubescence pulling wings off innocent flies.
“Lenore Erickson?” His delicious lips said her name, warm silk threaded in the asking, totally interrupting her completely out-of-line assessment of him. He took a step closer, making Len take a quick one back.
“Who’s asking? And”—she waved her hand in the space between them—“you back up or I’ll take your eyes out. So unless braille was something you planned on taking up, back off!” She flashed the can of mace at him in a threatening arc.
Hands wide like a football player’s, but lean and tan, went up, mimicking a pair of white flags. He grinned, his long legs moving him away from her. “Backing up.”
Len’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you, and why are you following me all over town like some bad spy movie?”
His grin grew wider. “Adam Baylor.” Sticking his hand out, he nodded his dark head. “Pleasure. You are Lenore Erickson, aren’t you? Lenore the wedding planner for Belle’s Will Be Ringing?”
Suspicion flared in her eyes. “Maybe, maybe not. What do you want?”
His tongue rolled in his lean cheek, giving her the impression he was a wee bit short on patience. His eyes, gorgeous and chocolaty, were veiled, screaming he had a secret. “A bit of your time.”
Len’s head cocked to the left. Her time? “For?”
“Us to get to know one another.” His answer was seductively evasive, his thickly fringed eyes equally so.
“How the hell do you know my name?”
“It was a rather easy cross-reference to achieve when I looked up the name of your business. You know, that place you go every day called your office with the sign that says ‘Belle’s Will Be Ringing’?”
He was mocking her . . . And then it hit her. This was one of Fin’s lackeys. Probably some two-bit P.I. who’d taken that pig’s money under the table to make a quick buck. He’d sent this Adam to try and get something on Maxine so he’d be able to prove she was Attila the Mother or something.
When Maxine had called last week, more upset than she’d been since this whole mess had started, to tell her that Fin planned to speak to his attorneys about the “conditions” Maxine allowed Connor to live in, her mouth had fallen open in disgust.
It shouldn’t come as a big surprise Finley had decided the gloves were off, and at all costs he was going to get Connor to come back to the mini-mansion, even if it meant trashing Maxine in the process.
That rat bastard.
Like she’d ever give her friend up, even if there were something to actually give up. “Finley sent you, didn’t he? That scum-sucking piece of shit,” she spat, swinging the can of mace around in an arc. “You have some set of balls, skulking around his wife’s best friend, trying to dredge up dirt on her. Finley Cambridge has some nerve, trying to make like my best friend’s a bad parent when he’s the dirtiest of them all!” she shouted, shrill and brittle. “How dare that lowlife infidel have the nerve to try and take Connor when he wasn’t even divorced before he was engaged! How much did he pay you to make Maxine look bad, you—you—
jerk
?”
Oh, such harsh name-calling. Show ’em you know how to make ’em bleed with your fierce tongue, Len.
jerk
?”
Oh, such harsh name-calling. Show ’em you know how to make ’em bleed with your fierce tongue, Len.
The typically quiet village heightened the echo of her snarling threat.
Instead of sneering back at her, instead of becoming defensive, he shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers and smiled again, flashing his gorgeous white teeth. “I’m not exactly sure what that diatribe meant, but maybe you can share its meaning with me when I drop by your office later this week? I’m late for a dinner meeting, so explanations will have to wait.” He stepped around her, the scent of his cologne assaulting her nostrils once more as he simply walked away.
Or at least he made the attempt to leave until she grabbed hold of his arm. Which happened to be very well-muscled. But that was beside the point. Those few words he’d spoken, all cool and cordial, infuriated her, erasing all fear he might slaughter her right here in Geezer Village.
“Hold on there, scumbag!” Len yelped. “Where do you think you’re going? You’ve been following me around for a solid week! What the hell kind of game are you playing?” Her teeth clenched together in seething fury. The humidity of the evening, coupled with her anger, made beads of sweat pop out along her forehead.
His response was as calm as the last one had been. “No game, but again, as I said, plan on seeing me in the very near future,” he drawled, using a gentle force to peel her clinging fingers from his arm. “Good night, Ms. Erickson.”
And he was gone, detaching her fingers from his arm with ease and slipping into the night as though he’d never been there.
Len looked down at her shoes. Goddamned heels. She’d chase him down if she had her tennies on and her glasses so she could actually see where he’d slunk off to. She squinted into the velvety darkness, cocking her ear to listen for his footsteps.
Damn. Nothing. All week long he’d had a target as big as a bull’s-eye on him and now suddenly he’d mastered the art of skulking.
Stuffing the mace back into her purse, Len stomped off toward the rec center to help out in the kitchen while trying to make sense out of Adam Baylor’s cryptic words.
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