At the Drop of a Hat (18 page)

I did have a fit, a laughing fit, which was contagious. We were all in much better spirits when we reached the hat shop. Nick and Andre bade us a good night and continued on home.

Viv waited while I fumbled with my key. She was watching the street around us and said, “It's much quieter at this time of day. You know, that lull between the shopping and everyone coming home from the pub.”

I opened the door and hurried inside to deactivate the alarm. Viv followed.

“I suppose all streets are quiet at this time of day,” she said. As subtle as a brick to the temple, she is.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. She shrugged as if that emphasized her lack of a point.

“Yes, you are,” I said. “Spill it.”

“Do you suppose if two very bright women were to go to Ariana's place of employment and just take a casual look around, they might find something of interest?”

“The two bright women being me and you,” I clarified.

“We are extraordinarily bright,” she said.

“Yeah, except for when we come up against fermented potatoes,” I said.

She nodded. “Even Superman has kryptonite.”

“We can't go tonight,” I said. I gestured for Viv to go upstairs so I could reset the alarm. She headed in that direction and I hurried after her.

“I wasn't suggesting tonight,” she said as we climbed the stairs to our flat.

“Good because, unlike someone who had a three-hour nap today, I am done in,” I said.

“Tomorrow night will do,” Viv said. I followed her through the sitting room on to the main kitchen, dining and living area of our flat.

“We have to find out from Ariana how to get in, assuming the police don't still have it cordoned off,” I said.

“True,” Viv said. “So we visit the jail tomorrow?”

“Yes, I wanted to today but I couldn't manage it,” I said.

Viv paused in front of her bedroom door, while I turned to go upstairs to my room. I considered Viv for a moment.

“What could we possibly expect to find that Inspectors Franks and Simms didn't?” I asked.

“I don't know that we'll find anything,” Viv said. “I was thinking it more likely that we'll get a feel for what happened.”

“Are we claiming to have psychic abilities now?” I asked.

We were both quiet. Viv's blue eyes, which mirrored my own, were wide as we both waited for it, the scent of lily of the valley, which came to us both at the oddest times. It was Mim's scent and I think we both felt that it signified there was some part of her that was still here.

Tonight she did not grace us with her presence, however. The apartment was scent free aside from the lavender sachets Viv used here and downstairs in the shop to keep us all calm. I thought she might need to up the pungency because I hadn't felt much calm since I'd arrived four months ago.

“No, just intuition,” Viv said.

I nodded. My intuition had been faulty, especially in the man department for the past few years, but I believed that my moratorium on men might be strengthening my bull cheese detector.

“All right, Cuz, it's a date,” I said. I jogged up the stairs, thinking how much my life had changed given that dating used to mean dinner and dancing with handsome men and now was breaking and entering with Viv.

*   *   *

We were dressed all in black, naturally. This was one of the few times that the color suited me better than Viv. She attributed it to my red hair, and she was right. Blondes can wear black but it needs to be accessorized; otherwise the black overpowers. Viv was out of luck as there were no accessories allowed on this mission.

From our black boots to our black knit caps, we were stealth all the way. Luckily, living in a city, no one batted an eye at us or called us cat burglars to our faces, which frankly, I'd been expecting.

Ariana had been pitifully grateful to see us today. She didn't talk much about the fallout from the newspaper article, but I was pleased to see that both Stephen and his mother, Trudy, were there. They seemed determined to stand by Ariana to the end. She was a lucky girl.

Alistair had been going over the next steps of the process with them. He seemed particularly delighted to see Viv, which she ignored and I found fascinating. Alistair was a fine hunk of man, and had I been on the prowl, I would have flirted with him until my flirter gave out. Not Viv. She barely even acknowledged his existence, which come to think of it, seemed to make him even more interested in her. When I did start dating again, that was definitely something I needed to add to my arsenal.

As Viv and I turned onto Russo's street, I was mulling over her resistance to Alistair's charm when a thought struck me. Maybe she wasn't interested in Alistair because he wasn't her type.

“Viv, we're close, right?”

“Don't you know?” she asked. “You're the one who's been here before.”

“No, I don't mean to the office,” I said. “It's right up there on the left. No, what I meant was, are we, as in you and me, close?”

“Like sisters,” Viv said. She did it without hesitating, which gave me the warm fuzzies.

“Well, I want you to know you can tell me anything,” I said.

“Oy, you're not going to start harping on my love life again, are you?” she asked.

“You'd have to have one for me to harp,” I said. “And no, I was merely going to say that if there is something you care to share, I am one hundred percent nonjudgmental.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. Clearly, she was not getting where I was going.

I went for being blunt. “If you prefer girls, that's okay with me.”

Viv stopped walking and turned to stare at me. She looked at me as if I had three heads.

“What?” I asked.

“Are you asking if I'm a lesbian?” she asked.

“I'm just saying it's okay if you are,” I said.

“Well, that's rude,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I'm being nice and understanding.”

“No, you're not,” she said. “You're being horribly nosy, and if I am a lesbian, it is certainly okay whether you say so or not.”

“Well, of course it is,” I said. “You're intentionally misunderstanding me.”

“No, I'm not,” Viv said. “You think you get to approve of my lifestyle, well, you don't. It is none of your business if I like boys or girls or—and here's a shock for you—maybe I just like being alone.”

“I just wanted you to know you could tell me anything and I would love and support you,” I said. It came out in a mumble as I examined the toes of my boots, feeling good and duly chastised.

“I know that,” Viv said. “And you know I feel the same way about you. But here's the thing: If you choose to keep your private life private, even from me, I'll respect that and I expect you to do the same.”

“Are you mad at me?” I asked.

“Yes. No,” she said. “A little.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I just want to see you happy.”

“I know that,” Viv said. She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “But you need to stop thinking about my personal life, which is fine, and think about something else.”

“But I can't think about men for me,” I said. “So I transfer those thoughts to you.”

“Well, stop,” she said. She began to walk down the sidewalk and then spun around to face me. “And don't start thinking about women for me either. I'm fine just as I am.”

She turned back around and followed the address numbers to Russo's house. The feeling that Viv didn't want to talk about her life for a specific reason was dogging me. I didn't think she was fine the way she was; otherwise she'd be happy, right?

I considered her back as I followed her. The stiff set of her shoulders could be due to anxiety given that we were about to enter a place we definitely shouldn't and it might be because we hadn't called Harrison like we said we would. I fully intended to text him on our way out of the building as a sort of cover-my-butt move, I'd already written the text, in fact, and it was just waiting to be sent, but I didn't think that was it. I really felt that Viv was tense because she was hiding something.

Trying to keep a secret or pretending things were a certain way just to save your pride never worked. I know because I lived it. When I look back at the years I dated the rat bastard, I remember that I always had a stomachache.

He would dazzle me with a fancy dinner, a surprise weekend in Jamaica or a sparkly bauble, and I'd think I was crazy to have pangs of unease. I would push my anxiety way down deep, where it would fester into a bellyache that I would soothe with moon pies.

Did Viv have comfort food like mine? That would be a tell, but I couldn't think of anything specific. Was she imbibing more than she used to? Other than yesterday, I hadn't noticed any significant increase, but it was definitely worth watching. How about spending splurges? Maybe she was compulsively shopping. Then again, the way she bought supplies, in bulk, for the hat shop, it would be hard to tell.

“Hurry up,” Viv hissed as she reached Russo's building.

As soon as I stepped beside her, she slipped into the shadowy alley and crept along the wall of the building toward the back. Once there, we waited. We didn't know if the police had assigned someone to watch the house or not, but since it was midnight, we knew most of the residents would be asleep while the pub crawlers wouldn't be coming home for a while yet.

From what Ariana had told us, Russo's house was accessible from the back through a security keypad; she'd given us the code. Viv and I agreed that her willingness to help us look through the office just made her seem all the more innocent in our eyes. Of course, it could all be one giant setup and she was going to sic the cops on us and Viv and I would end up in the slammer, but hey, it was worth the risk, right?

“It looks quiet,” Viv whispered.

I scanned the alley. It looked dark. Period. Lights were on at a few of the buildings surrounding us but most everyone's curtains were drawn, giving us more of a suggestion of light than any actual illumination.

Viv stretched up on her toes and grabbed the latch on the back gate. Ariana had said that Russo locked his back gate only when he was out of town. I sighed in relief when the latch clicked and Viv was able to pull it open just enough for us to slip through into the yard.

She closed it softly behind us and we stood there, our breath misting around us on the cold, damp air, while we waited to hear a shout or footsteps or something that indicated someone had caught us. There was nothing but the occasional rumble of a bus, the siren of a police car or the muted murmur of someone's television.

“How long should we wait?” Viv asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “I'm not exactly an expert at this sort of thing.”

I couldn't see her in the dark but I sensed her narrowed gaze aimed in my general vicinity.

“Oh, I'd say you've got skills of the criminal kind,” Viv said.

“How do you figure?” I asked. “I've lived an exemplary life.”

Again, thanks to the dark, I couldn't see her eyes boring holes into me but I sure could feel them.

“You were sixteen, I was eighteen, and you made me stalk James Thrushgood and his date, Tilly Simpson,” Viv said.

“I didn't make you,” I said. “You demanded to go with me when I said I was following them to the movies.”

“Well, I couldn't let you go by yourself,” Viv said. “Who knows what you might have done?”

“Exactly what I did, which is exactly what I planned to do,” I said. “I dumped my soda and popcorn over James's head, just like he dumped me for Tilly.”

“Isn't that assault?” Viv asked.

“With buttered popcorn,” I said. “Which is much less than he deserved.”

Viv chuckled. “I've long admired that about you. You always do what you think is right.”