Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (19 page)

“No eye contact. Leaves the room when I come in. Something about me makes her uncomfortable.”

When I thought about it, he was right, and yet it was hard for me to believe any female would find Chief anything but—

I pulled my arms across my chest. “I’ll try to set that up and let y’all know when I need you. Meanwhile, just pray, will you? I don’t know how long I can do this without really getting into legal trouble.”

“Oh, you’re already there,” Chief said.

“Good thing you’ve got an awesome lawyer.” Kade tried a grin, unsuccessfully, on me and turned back to Chief. “Listen, I need to go. Boss, I have to drop some paperwork off, and I’ll be back in the office in about thirty minutes.”

Hank got up too, and suddenly I didn’t want to be left alone with Chief. I couldn’t help feeling like anything I said to him was only going to make things worse. He would finish that sentence when he was ready, and not before. That I knew.

Or did I? Did I really know any of the things I thought I knew about him?

That thought alone launched me from the chair and inside to pay my part of the tab with Patrice. I barely had my hand in my pocket before Kade’s came over it.

“This is on me, sweetheart,” he said to her.

“Sweetheart!” she said. “What do you want now?”

He feigned innocence, dropped a wad of cash on the counter, and steered me toward the door that led to the inside stairs.

“What the Sam Hill?” I said when we were on the other side.

“We’re just friends.”

“I’m not talking about Patrice. I’m talking about you going all cloak and dagger on me.”

Kade ignored that. “So, that was awkward, huh?”

“What was?”

“You and Chief. I swear to you, he hasn’t said a word about it to me. I just overheard you and Hank talking at the beach, and I hate it, you know? You guys are good together.”

I didn’t know how to answer.

“What you said about ‘going another mile’—”

“You
didn’t
miss much of that conversation, did you?”

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

I felt my eyes widen.

“If you’re supposed to go another mile with Troy Irwin, couldn’t it possibly mean making that extra effort to seek justice?” Kade put his hand up. “Not revenge. I get that you can’t go there. But if you got behind seeing that he pays for what he’s done, wouldn’t that resolve this whole thing with Chief?”

I searched his face. Even in the dim light of the narrow hallway, I could see it was earnest. I looked for manipulation in those eyes so like Troy’s, but I didn’t see any. It wasn’t son-love that looked back at me, yet something in there cared. The pull to nod with him was strong.

The Nudge, however, was stronger. It backed me a step away so I could look at Kade dead-on and shake my head.

“I’m not going to say it isn’t tempting,” I said. “In fact, don’t even tell me what you have in mind.”

“It’s not anything illegal.” His tone was offended. “I won’t stoop to his methods.”

“I know that.”

Kade let his hands drop to his sides. “Right when I think I get who you are, I find out I’m completely clueless. This just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Then here it is: God won’t let me do it. I feel it and I know it and even though I don’t understand it any more than you do, I have to go with it.”

“Even if it means giving up a chance to get past this whole thing with Chief.”

“Taking Troy down isn’t going to solve what’s going on with Chief and me. That much I know.”

And I did know it. It was the first thing about it that made any sense to
me.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you, Kade,” I said.

He nodded and disappeared back into the coffee shop. I stayed until the pain stopped pounding before I made my way up to Second Chances.

Even at that it took me a moment after I was inside the boutique to register that Flannery was talking to a customer.

“I wouldn’t go with a scarf,” she was saying to a gangly girl not much older than she was. “Ophelia can fix you up with a kick-butt necklace, though.”

While I continued to gape from the doorway, Ophelia appeared with a selection of neckwear I only partially recognized. I needed another few seconds to realize they’d been put together from several pieces of jewelry that had been sitting there unsold since the day we opened. As for the ensemble the teenager had on, it was one of the skirts and tops Flannery and India had assembled Friday night. I watched as Flannery pulled a belt around the girl’s barely existent hips. Even I could tell that Desmond’s unmistakable caricatured lips painted at a diagonal across the top made the outfit.

“Can I get it, Mom?” the girl said, revealing an entire mouth full of braces.

A very round woman ducked from behind a rack of elastic-waisted pants and nodded. “I wish you had stuff like that in my size.”

“We will,” Flannery assured her. “We’ve only just started our new line.”

Ophelia put her hand on the woman’s arm. “You tell us what you’re looking for and we can maybe work something up for you.”

The woman’s eyes grew in her plump face. “Really? You do custom clothing?”

Ophelia looked shyly at me.

“Um—we’re certainly experimenting with it,” I said.

The woman gave a juicy laugh. “I have no problem being a guinea pig.”

Ophelia swept her over to the skirts, and Flannery pointed the girl toward the tiny dressing room.

“I’ll bring you more stuff,” Flannery said to her.

“Can I see that green dress you have hanging out front? Or is that, like, just for display?”

“Oh, you can totally try that on.”

Flannery headed for the French doors that led to the narrow balcony, and I followed her. Between the time I’d dropped her off and now, an array of clothes that would have pulled even me into the shop had been arranged on the railings and hung from the awning.

“Wow,” I said, “who did this?”

“Me and Ophelia. We need to make more like these because we’re going to sell out, like, today.”

I couldn’t disagree. At that very moment a trio of women was looking up from the street below with that we’re-so-goin’-in expression on their faces.

“This’ll be cute on her,” Flannery said as she pulled a slippery green dress from the railing. “It was, like, mid-calf length and I cut it off. Her mom’s gonna say it’s too short, but whatever.”

“Moms have to do that,” I said.

“My mom totally did until …”

Flannery stopped, as if something inside her had startled her.

“Don’t start,” she said. “I’m working.”

She brushed past me into the shop, already telling Ophelia they had three more customers on their way up.

It dawned on me that I hadn’t seen Mercedes and Jasmine.

I found them both at the cash register, arms folded against the activity going on beyond them. Jasmine was close to chin-quivering. Mercedes just looked like she wanted to take one of the newly bejeweled flip-flops off the rack and smack somebody with it. Probably Flannery.

“Problem, ladies?” I said.

“Oh no,” Ophelia said behind me. “You know what I think is so sweet?”

“I got no idea,” Mercedes said.

“Nobody Flannery has waited on has said anything about her bruises.”

“Oh, yes, they did.” Mercedes’s usually deep voice went falsetto. “When that woman that bought that belt with the eyes painted on it? She wanted to know what happened and that child told her she got hurt
bowlin’
.”
Her scowl deepened. “You can’t believe nothin’ comes out of her mouth.”

By then Ophelia had gone on to greet the three women. I could hear Flannery’s teenager pleading, “Please, Mom. I feel so good in it.”

“She has to feel good about herself,” Flannery said.

“She’s bringing in customers,” I said to Mercedes.

“Mm-mmm.”

“But we should discuss it, yes?”

“Mmmm-hmmm.”

I started to nod her toward the door with a couple of lattes in mind, but my cell phone rang. It was Nicholas Kent.

“I have to take this,” I said.

Mercedes nodded and I stepped into the hallway. “Nick. Everything okay?”

“We need to talk,” he said. “Can you meet me at Georgie’s Diner?”

“Georgie’s … oh, over by the college.”

“Yeah. It’s on Malaga.”

“When?”

“Does now work for you?”

Anxiety went up my backbone. “I’ll make it work,” I said.

I went back into the shop where Teenager and Mama were checking out with Jasmine. Everything, including the slippery green minidress, was going into the bag.

“I have to go meet somebody,” I whispered to Mercedes. “But we’ll definitely talk about this later.”

“That’s fine, Miss Angel,” she whispered back. “Just take that child with you.”

I agreed, but my mind raced. Nick obviously wanted to talk to me
about
the Flannery situation, so I couldn’t exactly have her sitting at the table with us at the diner. But considering the mood Mercedes was in I couldn’t leave her here either, and there wasn’t time to drop her at Ms. Willa’s. It was worse than having a toddler.

I didn’t decide what to do until after I’d pried Flannery out of there and was prodding her toward the Harley.

“I don’t see why I can’t just stay there,” she said as I handed her the helmet. “They totally need me.”

“I need you too.”

“To do what?”

“To sit at a table at Georgie’s and have a milkshake while I talk to Officer Kent.”

“I told you I hate cops.”

She actually looked more suddenly scared than hateful, but I let it pass. “You’ll be at a different table,” I said.

“Why
can’t
I just stay here?”

“Because evidently you ticked somebody off and until I get it sorted out, you’re hanging with me.”

“I bet it was Mercedes. She doesn’t like me.”

Neither did I about 90 percent of the time, but I just motioned for her to get on the bike and we took off for Malaga Street.

The diner wasn’t a place I frequented. The owners had, in fact, reconfigured the parking lot since the last time I’d been there, before I got the Harley, so it took me a few minutes to find my way into the place. That did not set well with Flannery, who clung to me like a koala cub suffering from separation anxiety until we stopped, and then hurled herself across the lot and in the door before I could set the kickstand. She didn’t even take her helmet off until I joined her inside. By then I was such a stew of annoyance and anxiety and just plain somebody-take-this-kid-off-my-hands that I would have missed Kade if he hadn’t walked right up to us.

“What are you doing here?” I said. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to sound—it’s none of my business …”

“I had a meeting here,” he said. “Just to hand off some paperwork. What’s up with you two girls?”

I looked around for Nick and found him craning his neck over a back booth.

“She’s meeting that cop,” Flannery said. “I’m supposed to sit there with a milkshake and die of boredom.”

“Do I bore you?” Kade said.

Flannery’s good eye sprang open. “No. You’re, like, the coolest person around here.”

“So hang with me while Miss Angel does her thing.”

I asked every question but “What is the meaning of life?” with my face, but Kade still shooed me toward the back booth.

“Who needs ya, Miss Angel?” he said. “Go. Do.”

I mouthed a thank-you.

“So what’s this place supposed to be, like the fifties or something?” I heard Flannery say as I hurried to Nick.

That was the idea of the decor, though I didn’t pick up many details on my way. I did hear jukebox music, the kind that sounds like having the right steady will render life perfect. As if.

I slid into the booth across from Nick, who pointed to the thick coffee mug he was holding. I shook my head. Between the two-shot latte and my own anxiety, I was already jittery enough to launch right in.

“Okay, look, before you say anything, I want you to know that we’re working toward making this whole thing legal with Flannery. I don’t even want to know how much trouble I’m going to be in if anybody but you and Liz finds out, so don’t tell me. Hopefully we’ll get through this before then …”

Nick was shaking his head. For the first time I noticed that his face was so red I could hardly see the freckles.

“You didn’t ask me here to talk about Flannery,” I said.

“No. But just so you know, I’m so over the way things are being done in that police department you don’t have to worry about
me
turning you in for breaking the rules. I’m sick of their ‘rules.’”

The fingers that formed quotations marks were shaking.

“Yikes, Nick,” I said. “What’s going on?”

He gripped the sides of the mug and leaned into the table.

“I found out this morning that Detective Kylie has probably been sitting on information about … you know.”

“Sultan?” I whispered.

“Yeah. He hasn’t talked to you, has he?”

I shook my head. My anxiety ratcheted up ten notches.

“Okay—I picked up a guy for drunk driving last night and took him into the station. You remember Marcus Rydell.”

My mouth was already turning to sawdust as I nodded. I wouldn’t soon forget the heinous hulk who had tried to kidnap Desmond for Sultan.