Loud pounding jerked me from my sleep. I squinted at the morning light streaming through the window, then at my digital clock blinking a time that didn’t make sense. The electricity must’ve been off.
The pounding started again, accompanied by the peal of my cell phone.
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” I called, dragging on my robe, then snatching up my phone. “Hey, Zoe, hold on a second. I got a crazy person pounding down my door.” Reaching for the dead bolt, I glanced out the peephole. Terri, Zoe’s bridesmaid. Uh-oh. “What time is it?” I said into the phone as I yanked open the door.
Zoe jockeyed around Terri and burst into the apartment, her chestnut-brown hair almost as wild as her eyes. “Ten minutes to our appointment at the bridal shop!”
Oops. I clicked off my phone. “I overslept.”
“Yeah, and last Saturday you got called out of town. And the week before that was something else. Trust me, you haven’t begun to see what this crazy person will do if you’re not dressed in five minutes.”
I laughed, thinking she was teasing, until her eyes flared. “Hey, I’m the one who introduced you to Jax, remember? That should compensate for being a delinquent maid of honor, don’t you think?”
“There’s a statute of limitations on how many times you can play that card.” Zoe blew a hank of hair from her face and handed over a steaming cup of coffee. “Here, this’ll wake you up. Now go get ready.”
“Feed Harold for me, will you?” I dashed to my bedroom and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, moved to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, spritzed and scrunched my hair, then dashed back to the living room. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Terri glanced up from her phone. “How do you do that? It takes me an hour to look that good.” She swiped her thumb across her phone screen. “No way! You’ll never believe what Phil does for a living.”
“Who’s Phil?” I asked.
Zoe herded us out the door. “He’s her latest prospect on that Catch Me a Fish dating site she’s always on.”
“Hey, you’d be on it too if Serena hadn’t set you up with Jax.”
“No, it drove me crazy. None of the guys could write a complete sentence, let alone spell.” Zoe clicked her remote to unlock the doors of her new car—a treat to herself after the art museum recognized her skill as head of security with a raise following our recovery of their stolen Monet.
I glanced around, looking for any sign last night’s note-writing visitor was keeping tabs on me.
“You’ve got to find her a man, Serena.”
“Nah, I think Phil might be the one,” Terri said from the backseat. “He can write and spell. Even reads. He’s a prison librarian.”
“O-kay,” Zoe said, sounding a little weirded out. “That’s different.”
“Yeah,” I joked. “Never saw that job on those aptitude tests they made us do in high school.”
Zoe injected optimism into her voice. “At least you wouldn’t have to worry about a pretty girl at his work catching his eye.” She handed me a piece of paper and then sped out of the parking lot.
“What’s this?”
“The list of bridal shops we’re going to visit.”
“We’re going to more than one?”
She gave me a longsuffering look. “I want you guys to have the most perfect bridesmaids dresses.”
“I’m sure all the shops carry pretty much the same dresses.” Shiny pink taffeta with poufy sleeves and an even poufier balloon-like skirt that crunched when you moved. I’d been to enough weddings to know.
“Oh no, we have to check out all the possibilities before we choose,” Terri said.
“You’ll have to be patient with Serena,” Zoe explained. “She doesn’t like to shop.”
Terri gasped. “Get out! You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Don’t mind her,” Zoe said to me. “She secretly worries about anyone who doesn’t like to shop.”
“Why do you keep looking at the side mirror?” Terri asked.
Zoe glanced across the seat at me, her fingers tightening around the steering wheel. “Please tell me a psycho guy isn’t following us.”
I slanted another quick glance at the side mirror. The silver Escalade that had picked up our tail the second we’d pulled out of the driveway turned onto a side street. “A psycho guy isn’t following us.”
She looked at me as if she wanted to believe me but didn’t.
“Relax. This wedding planning has you way too tense.” My phone rang before she could grill me further.
“Have you seen your super yet? What did his brother have to say?” Tanner asked the instant I hit Connect.
“Haven’t seen Nate yet. I gave up waiting at midnight, and I had to hurry out this morning before I could catch up to him.”
“Okay, keep your eyes open for trouble.”
“Always.”
A couple of bridal shops later, I was almost wishing for trouble. Catching bad guys, I could cope with. Catching Zoe’s eclectic vision for our dresses, not so much. “What kind of dress are you looking for?” I asked Zoe as we walked out of the second shop without trying on a single dress.
“I’ll know it when I see it.” She dragged us across the street to the Bridezmaidz Boutique that offered dresses that were to traditional gowns what avant-garde art is to classical.
“If you give us a hint, we could help you be on the lookout for it,” I said.
Zoe stopped in front of the store’s massive window and gasped at the Mondrian-style dress on the mannequin. “This is it!”
Terri paled. “Squares aren’t terribly slimming,” she whispered.
Hmm, that went double for giant colored squares outlined in black on a white background, but . . . “All the art buffs will think it’s pretty cool,” I offered. “It could be worse. Think Picasso!”
Zoe scrutinized Terri’s figure. Where I was tallish, slim, and fair haired, Terri was dark, petite, and plump—and yeah, Mondrian’s squares were not going to work for her.
I pulled open the shop door and lifted my voice encouragingly. “Maybe we can find something else artsy inside that will suit both of us.”
Zoe had always been uber chic when it came to fashion, and since her wedding reception would be held at the art gallery where she worked, it made total sense to go with an artsy kind of dress. I pulled a teal number off the rack. It had an asymmetrical hemline reminiscent of cubism.
“Ooh, I like,” Zoe gushed.
Terri looked up from her smartphone, on which she’d been thumbing another message on the Kettle of Fish dating site or whatever she’d called it. “Do they have it in a pastel color? I look better in pastels.”
“Hey, maybe we can go with different colors,” I suggested. “That would look artistic. The guys could wear bow ties and cummerbunds to match.”
“That’s a great idea.” Zoe handed me a skin-skimming yellow gown and Terri a soft pink, A-skirt style. “Here, try these.”
There was no mirror in the actual changing room. So I quickly slipped into the gown and stepped out in front of the three-way mirrors.
“Oh, it’s gorgeous,” Zoe gushed.
I let out a strangled squawk and looked at her as if she had banana antennas coming out of her head. “Yeah, if you want me to look like a piece of fruit in one of Cézanne’s still lifes.” What was it about getting engaged that suddenly made a woman’s taste in dresses so . . . so . . . so . . . ?
“Too many Cinderella movies,” a guy behind me said.
Wait, did I ask that question out loud? My gaze shifted to the reflection in the mirror of a guy reclining on one of the upholstered chairs behind me. Billy? I spun around to face him. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been helping my buddy do deliveries for his dad’s furniture store across the street. And when I spotted you coming in here as we got back, I decided to see what you were up to. Figured I could use a laugh.”
Zoe swatted him.
Billy was Zoe’s cousin and my first crush—and first kiss, if you count a New Millennium’s Eve kiss at twelve years old when my worst fear was that the world would end with my never having been kissed. By the time I was old enough to date four years later, I was also old enough to clue in that Billy was a Casanova that any girl would have had to be an idiot to go out with. And apparently, every girl in his grade at school, three years ahead of me, was certifiable.
Terri emerged from her dressing room in her pink number, looking like a grapefruit. It was unbelievable how poorly the dresses’ artistic promises translated on the canvas of our real-world figures.
“Going for a tropical theme,” Billy deadpanned.
I muffled a laugh since Zoe did not look amused.
Terri’s gaze flitted to Billy, and she audibly gasped. “Why can’t guys on the dating site look like him?” she whispered.
Billy was ex-military and looked as if he’d just walked off the cover of GI Quarterly. Add in his magnetic smile, and every shopper in the place was looking his way.
“Go,” Zoe ordered.
He stood and backed away from the viewing area, hands raised in surrender. “I was just trying to help.”
Zoe shooed us back to the dressing rooms and delivered a parade of artsy-type dresses. The ones that suited Terri hung on me, although the clerk reassured Zoe a nip here and a tuck there would do the trick.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said feebly. To be honest, I was ready to wave the white flag and give the nod to Terri’s adored mauve chiffon number, reminiscent of the French Impressionists. It did absolutely nothing for me, but one day in an unflattering dress—and in a bazillion photographs forever—seemed less torturous than shopping a second longer.
“No, the style doesn’t suit,” Zoe concluded. “Let’s try the next shop.”
“How about we take a break and look at flowers?” I suggested. “My assistant’s parents own the flower shop up the block.”
“Since when do you have an assistant?”
“At the drop-in center, for my art class.” I slipped back into the dressing room to escape the cubist number.
A few minutes later, we meandered out of the shop, and Terri, as ready as I was for a dress-shopping reprieve, said, “We might as well check out the flower shop Serena suggested while we’re so close.”
Two doors down from the flower shop was a pawnshop with a vintage ’70s dress in the window, complete with the daisy trim around the neckline. “That would be kind of cool,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind looking in here for a minute.”
“It’s your day off,” Zoe said.
“What’s that got to do with her wanting to go to a pawnshop?” Terri asked.
“Because half the stuff in there was probably stolen and fenced.”
I chuckled. “I wasn’t thinking of scouting for any cases, honest.”
“Well, Jax and I have already picked out our wedding bands, so I’m good.” Zoe tugged me toward the flower shop. A bell above the door jingled as Terri pulled it open, but a familiar voice snagged my attention. I glanced back in time to see Tasha blowing a kiss to the man climbing out of her car in front of the pawnshop. A man who wasn’t her husband.
He turned, and my breath hitched. Ted the exterminator. I tapped Zoe’s arm. “You go ahead. I want to check out one thing.”
“You’re going to abandon us?”
“Of course not. I’ll just be a few minutes.” By the time I turned back to the pawnshop, Tasha was speeding away, and Ted had disappeared. I don’t like this. Ted’s appearance at the drop-in center during Nana’s visit was looking more suspicious by the second. Tasha was a married woman. She shouldn’t be blowing kisses at another man. Nana was not going to be happy if Gladys’s thief turned out to be her own daughter and her . . . her . . . whatever Ted was to her.
I peered through the pawnshop window but saw no sign of Ted. I scanned the street, the nearby shops, and the windows of the apartments above the shops. I’d turned away for mere seconds. For him to disappear so quickly, he had to have gone into the pawnshop.
I slipped inside and smiled at the clerk, who looked like an extra out of a low-budget mafia movie. “Can you tell Ted I need to talk to him?” I said.
“Who?”
Right, Ted wouldn’t have given me his real name if he was spying on my conversation with Nana. “The guy who just came in here.”
The clerk hesitated half a beat and then looked around. “You see anyone else in here?”
I motioned to the door behind the cash desk. “In the back.”
“There’s no one back there.”
“Look, I saw him come in less than a minute ago. Blond, shaggy hair, has kind of a nasally southern drawl.”
The clerk frowned and shook his head.
I rounded the desk. “Mind if I look?”
He stepped back, blocking the door. “Yeah, I’m not allowed to let anyone in there.” The twitch in his eye confirmed he was hiding something, although, this being a pawnshop, it wasn’t necessarily Ted.
Maybe he had taken off somewhere else when I’d turned to speak to Zoe and Terri. I debated flashing my badge, but I suspected he was too savvy to give consent. Not to mention, I’d kept Zoe waiting long enough. “Thanks anyway.” I headed out.
Zoe waved me over the second I opened the flower shop door. “What do you think of this arrangement for the church?” She showed me a picture.
“Very nice.”
Lisa, my assistant from the drop-in center, hurried over to me. “Did you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“Tyrone pulled his painting from the gala’s fundraising auction.”
My heart sank. Tyrone was our most talented artist. “Why?”
“He came by the drop-in center after school yesterday and spouted nonsense about not wanting to be a charity case and took it home with him. Didn’t even want to leave it hanging at the center for the open house.”
“Maybe I should pay him a visit. See if I can change his mind.”
“You can try. He sure didn’t want to listen to me.”
“Please tell me talking to Tyrone can wait,” Zoe said. “We still haven’t picked out a dress.”
“Of course, I’m all yours until five o’clock.” Then I had to hightail it over to Mom and Dad’s for dinner before Aunt Martha’s dislike of Nana overpowered her curiosity about the theft, and things got out of hand.
Terri groaned.
“What’s wrong?” Zoe and I said in unison.
Terri swiped her fingers across her cell-phone screen, then slapped the phone against her leg. “My date just canceled. We seemed to be getting along so well too. I don’t know what I said.”
Zoe gave her a sideways hug. “Maybe Serena can find you a guy. She’s good at it.”
Terri’s eyes brightened. “The guy from the bridal shop?” she asked hopefully.
“You don’t want him,” Zoe said. “Trust me. He’s my cousin. A nice enough guy. But a player.”
A little of the light in Terri’s eyes dimmed.
“Come on.” Zoe beckoned her back outside. “More dress shopping will make you feel better.”
I slipped ahead of them to take another peek in the pawnshop window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ted.
The window exploded with a burst of gunfire.