Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Swatches

Things had changed over the years at Fortnum’s.

There was an espresso bar against the side wall where the tables and chairs with the games had been back in the day.

There were new, but still worn-in and comfortable couches and armchairs scattered around, with some tables and chairs at the front.

And there were a lot more patrons than there used to be, and although some high-school-aged kids were there, they were no longer the majority.

But the field of books stretched off to the back just like they used to, and that musty smell I remembered so well mingled with coffee filled the air, permeating me with nostalgia.

The good kind.

The happy kind.

The wondrous kind.

However, sitting in the seating area in front of the large plate-glass window was what could only be every beautiful white woman in the Denver Metro area.

And, if my eyes weren’t deceiving me, among them was Dolly Parton, traveled forward through time, or a much younger lookalike, replete with a huge head of platinum blonde hair not even close to being contained by a wide pink Alice band. She was wearing a pink lace bustier out of which was bursting so much cleavage, entire sects of fundamental Christian churches had her on their watch list. Over this was a denim blazer, its lapels adorned with diamanté rivets. On the bottom were skintight, stonewash jeans, her calves and feet covered in bubblegum pink, patent leather, platform stripper boots.

She looked like she was going to pop up and start singing “Two Doors Down.”

She was a lot.

And I wanted to be her best friend immediately.

But there was more.

The man behind the espresso counter had an ultra-long russet beard, a wild head of graying blond hair, and the aura of a serial killer. He was wearing a flannel shirt and looked like Grizzly Adams gone bad.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to be his best friend, but he looked interesting.

Duke, unfortunately, was nowhere in sight.

Indy was waddling over to us, but it was the guy behind the espresso counter who boomed, “VIP! VIP!” He turned to a blonde woman behind the counter with him and hollered, “Froth, woman! Froth! She’s here!”

“I’m frothing, Tex, I’m frothing,” the woman said, smiling a smile that was so dazzling, I was stupefied for a moment, but she was doing it while frothing.

And then Indy was there. “That’s Tex. He’s loud. He’s annoying. He’s also sweet and makes great coffee. And that was his way of saying he’s happy to meet you.”

“Do I get froth, my man?” Toni called to him.

“Who are you?” the man named Tex boomed.

She tilted her head at me. “I’m her best bitch.”

“Then fuck yeah!” Tex shouted, and I felt my eyes widen at his language shouted across a place of business where the women at the front section, clearly Indy’s crew, weren’t the only people in the place.

However, oddly, it didn’t appear like they heard it, or they were regulars and it was nothing new.

“Sit your ass down,” Tex ordered on another boom. “I got you.”

He then, no other way to put it, appeared to be attacking the espresso machine.

Indy took my hand and thus began the introductions.

I kinda recognized them from that time Liam and I spent in the hospital, but for obvious reasons, I couldn’t say I was paying a lot of attention then.

In fact, I couldn’t have been, because I hadn’t noticed Tex or the Dolly Parton lookalike, and even with the Darius situation, I would have remembered them.

First there was Roxie, who was Hank, Lee and Ally’s older brother’s wife. Then Jules, who was married to Vance, another one of Lee’s men, the woman Darius had talked to about Liam. And Ava, who was married to a guy named Luke, also one of Lee’s men. Sadie, a fairytale-princess-looking gal who was married to Eddie’s younger brother, Hector (who, too, worked for Lee). Stella was semi-kinda famous. I’d heard of her before she hit the papers with her story with her guy. She was in a popular local rock group. Her man was another of Lee’s team, his name was Mace. Then there was Jet, who came out from behind the counter. She was Eddie’s wife.

Ally was there too.

And the Dolly Parton lookalike was called Daisy. I learned she worked with Ally, and when I was introduced to her, she said, “I sure am glad to meet you, sugar. It’s high time. Welcome to the tribe,” and then she emitted a laugh that was gorgeous. It sounded like tinkling bells.

The final two were a hippie chick named Annette who greeted me with a “Yo, bitch!” and I learned, unsurprisingly, she owned the head shop down the way.

And Shirleen, who was studying me tentatively and holding herself uncomfortably.

I knew why.

Darius hadn’t given me the whole story yet, but I did know she blamed herself for her nephew getting sucked into a world where he didn’t belong.

It was just, she held no blame.

So I stood in front of her, a bevy of Rock Chick eyes focused on me, and I said softly, “Come on, Aunt Shirleen. It’s been a long time. No hug?”

She caught my eyes and relief saturated hers, right before she surged out of her chair and gave me a hug.

I remembered it right.

Her hugs were the best.

“Stop hugging. Sit your ass down. Drink.” Tex was close, his booming even closer, so I let Shirleen go, but made sure I gave her a smile before Toni and I were bumped and prodded into sitting beside each other on the couch.

Jet assumed the arm of the couch by me, Indy wedged herself in beside Toni, and Jules was perched on the other arm. Roxie and Ava lounged in the two armchairs across from us, Daisy sitting on an arm of Ava’s chair. Shirleen sat in the one at the end, Sadie in the other. Annette sat cross legged on the top of a table between Jules and Sadie with Stella straddling a turned-around chair she’d pulled over from a table, doing this between Sadie and Roxie. Ally doing the same thing between Roxie and Ava.

The gang was all there.

A mug topped with foam was shoved in my hand.

“Don’t know what you like, so I threw everything good at it,” Tex low-boomed. “Vanilla, cinnamon and a hint of almond. Tell me what you think.”

I sipped it.

My eyes rolled back into my head.

He’d shoved a mug into Toni’s hands too, and I knew she had her sip when she whispered a reverent, “Motherfucker.”

“I’ll take that as approval,” Tex declared then he clapped his hands, the sound so loud, I jumped, nearly sloshing coffee and foam over my hand. He then rubbed them together, saying, “Right. Whatwetalkin’ here? I gotta dust off my grenades? Smoke bombs? Or dig out my brass knuckles?”

Slowly, my head turned to Toni to find she’d already turned to me, and I was pretty sure we wore identical surprised/confused/terrified expressions.

“We’ve never needed brass knuckles, Uncle Tex,” Roxie put in.

“Don’t mean you shouldn’t have them,” Daisy replied in her adorable country twang, studying lethally tipped nails embedded with so many rhinestones, you could barely see the pearly pink polish underneath. “I got me some years ago. Between Jules and Ava. Or was it Roxie and Jules? Don’t matter. Pink lacquer. They’re cute.”

Cute brass knuckles?

I was under the impression this was the chilled-out, hang-with-some-coffee-and-girlfriends-before-the-onslaught-of-a-big-party-in-order-to-get-to-know-each-other portion of shifting into the life that I hadn’t shared with Darius until then.

How were we talking about brass knuckles?

The bell over the door sounded and I looked that way to see a tall slender white man with a brown crew cut and a shorter, handsome Hispanic man walking in.

The taller man had what looked like a scrapbook in his arm tucked to his chest.

“I’m out,” Tex low-boomed, and immediately lumbered away.

Even as crazy as that man seemed, I should have taken this as the warning it was.

Alas, I did not.

The crewcut guy walked right into the seating area, dropped the scrapbook on the coffee table with a loud funf, then lifted his hands, forefingers and thumbs in L-shapes, tips of thumbs touching to create a frame through which he squinted.

At me.

“Ummm…” Toni mumbled.

My thought exactly.

He dropped his hands and announced to the store at large. “I can’t. I don’t know her, but this is impossible. Every color looks good against Black skin. I’ll never be able to pick.”

I wouldn’t quite agree. The color they named “flesh” didn’t quite work.

Toni and I exchanged another glance.

“This is Tod,” Jules shared. “And his partner Stevie. Tod’s the Rock Chicks’ officially unofficial wedding planner.”

I choked and I hadn’t even sipped my coffee.

Darius and I weren’t even living together officially.

We were on day three.

Yes, I loved him, and he loved me. Yes, we were doing this. Yes, we shared a son who we were both devoted to.

But with all that had gone on before, and it being so heavy, I’d never even thought about us getting married.

Never let myself dream that far ahead.

Something around the region of my heart shifted, and it didn’t feel bad.

No.

It felt very, very good.

“I’ve got it!” Tod shouted on a snap. “Amethyst!”

“My man,” Toni butted in. “My bridesmaids wore aubergine.”

“I approve,” Tod told her, then asked. “Who are you?”

Toni hiked a thumb at me. “Toni, her best bitch. And as such, she was my maid of honor.”

“I approve of that too, since it’s clear you have good taste,” Tod replied.

“Well, thanks,” Toni said. “But see, she’s got a framed picture of us at my wedding. She’s gonna obviously have framed pictures of her wedding. And aubergine and amethyst clash. She couldn’t put those pictures close together, and everyone knows, best bitches put their wedding pictures close together in their family rooms.”

Tod hooked a finger on his cheek and rested his chin on his fist, murmuring, “This is true.”

I turned my head and stared at Toni like she’d done what she’d obviously done.

Lost her damned mind.

“What did you wear?” Tod asked Toni.

“Ivory. Off the shoulder. Kickassruching at the midriff,” she answered.

“Structured ruffle at the hip?” he pressed.

“You got it.”

“De la Renta?”

“You got that too.”

“Saks?”

“Yup.”

“Excellent choice.”

I’d lost Toni, so I turned to Jet. “What’s happening?”

She smiled her dazzling smile and urged, “Don’t fight it. Tod’s crazy, but he’s really good at it. He won’t do that first thing you don’t want. And swear to God, he works his ass off so all you have to do is show up, get your hair done, your face done, put your dress on, drink champagne, marry your guy and be happy. He’s a miracle worker.”

“But Darius and I aren’t engaged,” I pointed out.

“Excuse me,” Tod called me.

I looked to him.

“It’s been what? Three years? Not even that. Two and a half, at most,” he said then pointed at Indy. “Married and pregnant.” He pointed at Jules. “Married and has a kid.” His finger bopped between Roxie and Ava. “Married. Married.” Then to Sadie. “Engaged.” Then another bop between Stella and Ally. “Shacked up.” Then Jet. “Married, new baby.” He looked at me. “Any questions?”

“Holy crap,” I whispered.

“Yeah, strap in, sister. The Hot Bunch don’t fuck around. Comprende?” Daisy declared.

“The Hot Bunch?” I asked.

“Lee, and Eddie, and Vance, Hank, Luke, Hector, Mace, Ren and Darius,” she explained. “The Hot Bunch.”

Oh man.

But,I was seeing this.

And there was me, packing my own damned bags, doubling up on toiletries and essentially moving myself in before day three.

“Holy crap,” I repeated.

Tod waved his hands beside his head. “I can’t work like this. I need a season. What’s it gonna be? Spring? Summer? Winter? Fall? I don’t see you as a fall. Maybe a summer. So? What’s it going to be?” he demanded of me.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I admitted.

“The season you’re going to get married,” he explained.

“Again, I’m not engaged.”

“Leave it to me, my man,” Toni told him. “I’ll get you what you need. Give me a day or two.”

What?

“Are you free Tuesday?” Tod asked Toni.

“I can be,” Toni answered.

“Martinis at the Cruise Room. Stevie and my treat. Get a season. And thoughts on venue. And a theme. I’ll bring swatches.”

“You got it, brother,” she said, clicking her teeth, squinting her eye and pointing at him.

Tod snatched up the scrapbook and turned to his partner. “Come on, honey. We gotta go get some swatches.”

And with that, he swanned out, the bell ringing his exit.

“’Bye, girlies,” Stevie called, all smiles, clearly used to this crazy. “Lovely to not quite meet you Malia and Toni,” he finished as he followed.

The bell rang again, and Stevie was gone.

“Drink the coffee,” Stella advised. “It helps.”

I took a sip of coffee thinking, after all that, she’d be wrong.

After the sip, I realized she was very right.

Even so, when I dropped my mug, I asked, “Is a man I don’t know planning my wedding to a man I’m not engaged to yet?”

To this, for some bizarre reason, Annette threw her head back, whooped to the ceiling, then dropped her chin and looked at me. “This is sofa-king phat! It’s been a long time. Too long. This is gonna be awesome.”

“It’s been five months,” Ava pointed out.

“That’s too long. God, I hope there’s another car chase,” Annette said and again looked at me. “Do you think there’s gonna be a car chase?”

“Um, I hope not,” I replied.

“Snipers?” she asked.

Oh my God!

“Lord, no,” I said.

“Well, I hope Darius’s house doesn’t get bombed. I haven’t partaken, but I heard about that wine cellar, and it’d be a shame that went sky high,” she shared.

Good Lord.

Regrettably, Annette wasn’t done.

“At least I won five hundred bucks off you. Thanks for that. I didn’t know you, but I thought, things came to a head when the dude was in a hospital bed. You needed to let him heal before you started the Rock Chick Sex-a-thon. And I was right.”

I was speechless.

Annette continued not to be. “You gotta give me something to add to the tour. We need new blood.”

I turned my attention to Ally. “Can you explain what’s happening?”

Ally was fighting a smile. “First, don’t get offended, we all went through it starting with Ava. But we take bets on when the Hot Bunch wears a sister down and the Rock Chick starts getting the business.”

I heard Toni’s chuckle.

I was sure I’d find it funny.

Someday.

“Second, after the books started coming out, Annette started doing Rock Chick Tours, taking fans around to all the places everything went down,” Ally went on.

“Cheese and wine in the Reserve would be a good place to end a tour,” Annette noted.

I considered for a nanosecond how I’d feel about Rock Chick Fans in Darius’s house.

I then considered for less than a nanosecond how Darius would feel.

Then I said, “That’s not gonna happen.”

Annette looked to Daisy and said, “Worth a try.”

Daisy laughed her tinkly-bell laugh.

“Last,” Ally carried on, “I asked you here to talk about what you and Toni were doing in that office building.”

“Oh,” I mumbled. Then I glanced around and said, “I kinda can’t talk about that in company. This is a client. I’m bound by confidentiality.”

“Got a dollar? Or a quarter, a quarter would work,” Daisy put in.

“I got one,” Toni said, digging in her purse.

She fished it out and Daisy treated us to a bird’s-eye-view of her cleavage when she leaned forward and took it, and I had to admit, my eyes started burning.

She shoved the bill in her cleavage then said, “Right. You just hired Rock Chick Investigations. And we got confidentiality too. Carry on.”

“Okay, but…” I slid my gaze through the crew.

“I hear you,” Daisy said. “And Ava’s our graphic designer. Roxie is our website coordinator. The rest you can consider associates.”

“It’s okay,” Ally cut in. “No one is going to breathe a word. Honestly. Shoot.”

I looked to Toni.

She nodded in encouragement.

I returned to Ally. “Right, so I got this folder on my desk. Except, when I opened it, there was nothing in it but a Post-it that said ‘Remostros Engineering,’ and that address we were at.”

“The vacant offices?” Ally asked.

“What?” I asked back.

“I did some preliminary checks. On that floor where you were, there were four office suites. Three taken. One by an accounting firm. One a data processing organization. The last, an architect. The only other suite of offices, the one around the corner from where you two were lurking, was vacant.”

Again, Toni and I exchanged a glance before I went back to Ally. “That should be an engineering firm.”

“Well, it isn’t. I went in. There’s nothing there. Not even a desk. But there is a listing for it on a commercial rental site, and it’s been vacant for twelve months.”

“Whoa,” Toni whispered.

My skin started feeling funny.

“That’s it, child?” Shirleen spoke for the first time, watching me carefully. “An empty folder?”

I shook my head at her. “No. I didn’t know what was up, so I typed the number on the tab into our system, thinking maybe the paperwork had been misplaced. It’s the case file number. And it came up locked. The message said I had to ask the network engineer for access. I’ve never run into that before. We have three named partners, four senior partners, six junior partners, and four associates. I do work for all of them. I have all access to everything because I need it.”

“Okay, we’re getting fishier,” Ally said. “What else?”

“I asked the network administrator for access,” I told her. “And he was acting all kinds of shifty and said that only Jeffrey, one of the named partners, has access to that file.”

“And let me guess, you got curious, and it didn’t stop there,” Ally deduced.

I nodded. “Especially since it was a named partner. They don’t do any of the grunt work. They pass it off to the paralegal pool. Or an associate. So I looked up Remostros Engineering. And it exists, and I’m no forensics accountant, but from what I can tell, it’s a shell company.”

“Well, damn,” Daisy whispered.

“And that’s owned by what appears to be another shell company, that’s owned by another one, that’s owned by yet another, and that last one is owned by a tiny LLC with only one director,” I went on.

“This Jeffrey,” Ally concluded.

I nodded again.

She turned to Daisy. “Extortion?”

Daisy shrugged. “Maybe.” She gave her attention to me. “This Jeffrey married?”

Oh my God.

Why hadn’t I thought of that?

“Office gossip has him banging one of the junior partners,” I shared.

“Yup,” Daisy stated. “Hiding assets. He’s gonna scrape off the wife for the side piece.”

He totally was.

“After I talked with our network administrator, Jeffrey called me into his office,” I told them. “He asked me to bring the file, the one with nothing in it. He’s usually very professional. Friendly, but a be-a-good-team though work-is-work, get-the-job-done type of guy. Except, when I brought the file, he was being super outgoing in an oily way that felt dirty, telling me the Remostros deal was highly confidential, they were important clients, would mean a ton of billable hours, and the firm had promised them his individual attention.”

“And you didn’t buy it,” Ally said.

“That was when I started digging deeper. But my bad feeling was helped when he ordered me in no uncertain terms not to speak to anybody about it. Not anybody. Not even the other partners.”

“Well, stop digging,” Ally ordered. “I’ll get Brody on it so we can make sure this isn’t extortion, and your firm isn’t going to be vulnerable to whatever he’s doing. But if he’s preparing to fuck over his wife, you got a decision to make. That being, does she somehow learn, anonymously, he’s screwing around on her at the same time setting her up just to screw her?”

“That would be my vote,” Ava said.

“Me too,” Sadie put in.

“Totes,” Roxie added.

“Malia, you do any of that research on a work computer?” Shirleen asked me.

More shaking of my head. “No. I did it at home.”

She nodded once. “Smart girl.”

I smiled at her.

“I think we all know everyone’s vote, but it’s gotta come from you,” Ally said to me. “If it’s him ramping up to fuck over his wife, do you want her to know?”

I thought about Jeffrey.

I didn’t really know him. The underlings didn’t pal around with the partners, but he was even more removed.

Though I did know he was in his early fifties, he and his wife had three kids, all of them in college. They’d been married since college themselves. The junior partner he was possibly sleeping with was in her mid-thirties, smart, gorgeous and a shark. And Jeffrey’s wife planned all of our office parties.

She was the perfect attorney’s wife. She didn’t work, except the onerous jobs of making his life and family run smoothly so he could make his mark, and she bent over backward to make him look good to colleagues, staff and clients.

I didn’t really know her either.

I just knew she didn’t deserve to be screwed over while her husband lived the high life with the next young thing.

“Yes,” I answered. “Definitely.”

Ally pushed up from her chair, muttering, “We’re on it.”

She walked away, putting her phone to her ear, now all business.

Wow.

She was kinda badass.

“This isn’t gonna amount to anything.” Annette sounded disappointed. “This Jeffrey guy gets it in his head to kidnap you or car bomb you, and he gets one look at Darius, he’s gonna tuck his tail between his legs and move himself and his fuck buddy to Panama.”

“Good riddance, I say,” Jet muttered.

It was then, I caught movement across the way, at the entrance to the shelves.

Duke.

My heart warmed, my lips formed the words, “Excuse me,” and I put down my coffee mug and got up.

He turned around and disappeared into the shadows of the stacks.

I followed him in.

But he’d vanished.

Except, he hadn’t.

The books were in three sections, the middle one containing tables with milk cartons on top, filled with vinyl.

On the edge of the one closest to the aisle was a plastic-covered album.

Bridge over Troubled Waters.

On it was taped a note.

I picked up the album and read the note.

My Boxer,

I know Darius has a turntable.

You did good.

Proud of you.

Duke

I closed my eyes to fight the sting in them and hugged that album to my chest.

Once I got myself together, still hugging the album, I walked back to my coffee.

And my friends.

The old.

And the new.

* * * *

It was a couple of hours, and a couple of coffees, later, when I was hoping we’d have enough time to get hangers and a new outfit for Darius before we had to head home and get ready for the party, when Toni and I were walking to my car.

Before I opened my door, though, she was suddenly in my space.

Surprised, I turned to her.

Her arms closed around me.

Shirleen’s hugs were the best, truly.

But Toni’s gave them competition, partly because she put her all into them, mostly because she was choosy about doling them out, and they didn’t come often.

“Happy for you,” she whispered in my ear, and as fast as the hug started, it ended, and she headed to the passenger side.

I had to fight the sting of tears again, but I was getting good at it.

Anyway, I had hangers to buy and an outfit to pick out for my man and a party to get ready for.

There was no time for tears.