TWENTY-NINE

A flood of emotions swirled together, like the base color and tint in a paint can before they’re mixed. Exhaustion and hunger. Guilt. Grief. I was a ticking time bomb ready to blow and had no outlets for my stress. It was late afternoon. If I went to Mad for Mod, I’d end up telling Connie what had happened, and until I knew how I felt about the kiss, I wasn’t ready to analyze it with anyone else. As long as it remained between me and Tex (and Rachel), it was a moment frozen in time. Maybe I could blame it on early menopause.

I called Connie to let her know she was on her own for the rest of the day.

“You okay, Mads?” Connie asked. “You sound funny.”

“I’m okay. I’m just—there’s a lot on my mind. The Mummy event and the pajama factory and a whole bunch of other things I don’t want to talk about. I’ll power through it like I always do. I’m just happy to have you there to help me.”

“Yeah, um, about that. Well—we can talk later. No worries on closing up tonight, but you should probably call Richard. He’s freaking out a little about some letter you left on his desk.”

“Of course, he is. I’ll handle it.”

I hung up and drove home on autopilot. Would I be able to throw myself into work and forget about the kiss with Tex in the hallway of Hernando’s Hide-It-Away? Did I want to? I didn’t know what I was feeling about that. I didn’t know how I felt about a lot of things these days, and for someone who liked to have everything just so, the sense of not knowing was one more thing that left me off-kilter.

I parked in front of the hedge and went inside. Rocky met me by the door, and I let him out. I set the now cold shrimp fried rice on the table, grabbed my cell phone, and followed Rocky into the yard.

Richard answered on the third ring. “Mummy Theater.”

“Richard,” I said. “It’s Madison. I got a message to call you.”

“When were you going to tell me you rearranged everything?” he asked.

“I didn’t rearrange anything. It’s exactly like it was when I was there earlier today.”

“This agenda on my desk. It says ‘Call Madison.’”

I watched Rocky dig a hole and then drop a pink rubber ball into it. “Did you read the agenda?”

“No. It says ‘Call Madison’ so I’m calling Madison. Where did this new agenda come from?”

“Richard, you and Dax were getting high in your office. Remember? I came in and told you the event was under control. I had you write down the agenda so you would recognize your handwriting and know we had that conversation. Look at the sheet of paper. Whose handwriting is that?”

“Dax’s.”

“No, it’s not. It’s yours. I watched you write it.”

“Hold on,” he said. I heard the phone clunk down onto the desk on his end and then a series of sounds that made me pull my own phone away from my head. Rocky ran to the garage and back, fur flying behind him. He slowed to a jog and then a walk by the time Richard returned. “Yeah, um, Dax spilled a cup of coffee on my desk. There’s a crumpled and soggy version in the trash. He must have recopied the notes before they were completely ruined.”

“Okay, then you’re looking at an agenda for your meeting, written in Dax’s handwriting. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is we always do things the same way: picnic, cocktail party, movie.”

“And that’s how you’re doing it this time.”

“Not according to this. It says right here the shuttle service is taking the managers from the picnic to your pajama factory for a fashion show before the movie showing at midnight.”

Now I was annoyed. “That’s not what I wrote down. I specifically made you write down that there was a picnic at the lake and then a showing of The Pajama Game at The Mummy.”

“It’s too late for that. I sent the agenda to the printers this morning. It’s already a rush job. When are you coming by with the pajamas?”

“What pajamas?”

“Come on, Madison. You promised me a pajama fashion show. You have access to a whole building filled with PJs, right? Bring whatever looks like it came from the movie. Colorful, striped, His and Hers. Don’t tell me they didn’t make them. I saw the ad. I know that was their thing.”

“That inventory is no longer available.”

“Why not? Dax said the police released the crime scene.”

“Where did he hear that?”

“On the news. So? What are we going to do about this?”

“We? We are going to call the printer, tell them there’s a mistake on the program, cancel the job, and send a new file with the correct information.”

“No.”

“Richard, there is absolutely no way I’m giving permission to allow a conclave of theater managers into my factory for a pajama fashion show. Zero. The longer you stick on that point, the less time you’ll have to come up with a new plan.”

“I think you forget that you work for me.”

“I think you forget that you don’t pay me.” I countered. “Tick tock, Richard.”

“Fine. Get the inventory from your factory and have the fashion show here.”

I hung up the phone and said a couple of words that probably weren’t in Doris Day’s vocabulary. Richard’s managerial manner was a lot easier to take when he was stoned, though that too required a certain level of compromise. Everything else in my life was changing. Maybe, after this event, it was time to stop volunteering at The Mummy.

It was four thirty. I heated my shrimp fried rice in the microwave and ate it quickly. If I were going to get the pajama inventory from Sweet Dreams for Richard, it would be better to do it while the sun was up than to wait for night. The police had already dealt with one event there today, and I knew Sid and his picketers had been warned away. Tex knew everything I knew at this point. And Sid’s lawsuit had started a different ticking clock that meant if I didn’t get the PJs right now, I probably wasn’t going to get them at all.

Despite Richard’s annoying direction, I looked forward to selecting samples to showcase on models at the event. On my first trip to the factory, I’d only briefly looked at the nightshirt with the colorful conversation heart print, but the cubby holes in the inventory cage were filled floor to ceiling with assorted styles: night gowns and two-piece sets, styles for summer and winter. I begrudgingly accepted that Richard’s demands let me shift my attention away from the murders and onto something far more frivolous and fun.

I clipped on Rocky’s leash, and we headed downtown. By the time we reached Sweet Dreams, it was after five. I parked in the lot across the street and carried Rocky to the front doors. He wriggled out of my arms when we reached the front of the building and immediately attacked the dirt in the corner of the flower beds out front while I flipped through the second set of keys I’d picked up from Stanley & Abbott until locating the one that unlocked the building.

“Come on, Rock, let’s make this quick,” I said.

He looked up at me with his big brown soulful eyes and whimpered. I squatted down so we were face to nose.

“I haven’t paid you enough attention lately, have I? I’m sorry. You’re my little man, right? And you miss Hudson’s cat even if he does hiss at you and swat you in the nose.” I ruffled Rocky’s fur and hugged him. He stood still for a few seconds, and then wriggled free and returned to the corner of the flower bed to resume his digging. “Silly dog,” I said to myself.

I stood up, flexed my knee a couple of times, and unlocked the doors to the pajama factory. I dropped the key ring into the pocket of my blazer and turned toward Rocky. He had something in his mouth. I let go of the door and stooped back down. “Whatcha got there? What did you find in the dirt?”

Whatever Rocky had dug up was still stuck in the ground. He growled and shook his head like when we played tug-of-war with his rope bone until the item that had been buried came loose and swung over his head. It landed on the sidewalk by my feet in a dull jingle.

I picked it up and shook off the dirt. It was a length of tarnished brass chain. Dangling from the chain was a small round disc stamped with the number 42 and a copper key like the one I’d just used to unlock the front door of Sweet Dreams.