CLOUDS IN MY COFFEE Page 5

  She stared at him for a moment, her mouth hanging open. Daddy cajoled or charmed or sweet-talked, he didn’t give orders. Especially orders not softened by please.

  “Now.” It was a voice from our childhood. One reserved for missed curfews and boys he didn’t like. “Wash your face and put on something decent.”

  Marjorie’s chin trembled. She turned on her heel, stumbled, clutched at the smoke blackened wall, and disappeared inside.

  Daddy shifted his gaze to Grace and Donna who wore short nighties. “Girls, go get your robes. Grace, while you’re upstairs, make sure your aunt finds the bathroom. Go on, the firemen will be here any minute now.”

  Mother looked positively horrified, someone-just-presented-her-with-a-dead-rat horrified. “She’s tipsy.”

  “Frances, she’s three sheets.”

  Mother’s lips thinned to nothing. She looked at me and said, “How could you let this happen?”

  “How could Marjorie getting sauced possibly be Ellison’s fault?” asked Aunt Sis. Three firemen stood behind her. They wore hats. They carried axes. And they looked almost disappointed that they didn’t have a chance to use them.

  “It’s not her fault,” insisted my intrepid aunt.

  “Stay out of this, Sis.” Mother’s voice matched her expression with a slight adjustment. Not just one rat. A whole platter of rats.

  Daddy held up his hands in a peace-making gesture. Mother ignored him. “What have you done?”

  She meant me.

  “First someone pushes a statue over the bannister and spoils my party and now they’ve tried to burn you alive. What have you done?”

  “Nothing.”

  She snorted, her disbelief apparent in the air she breathed.

  Fortunately, another fireman chose to drag a heavy hose around the corner of the house. For a moment, we all stared at him.

  Unfortunately, the staring soon ended, and Daddy strode toward the back door and the phone.

  “Where are you going?” Mother asked. “We’re not done here.” She had to be truly and utterly furious if she was willing to have this discussion in front of four curious firemen.

  “I’m going to call Detective Jones.”

  “My date?” asked Sis.

  “Your date?” The tone of Mother’s voice should have been a warning.

  Aunt Sis ignored the warning. “He’s escorting me to your gala. Ellison introduced us.”

  Max chose that moment to return from his adventures in the backyard. He was muddy. He was wet.

  And he shoved his muddy, wet nose deep into Mother’s most private parts.

  Not just rats. Not even a platter full of rats. A heaping platter of rotting rats, garnished with snakes and spiders. That was the look Mother gave me.

  Five

  It turns out that not even my father, who plays golf with the police commissioner at least twice a month, can get a homicide detective out of bed when said homicide detective is not on call. He can, however, get a marked police car with two policemen inside parked in my driveway.

  I didn’t complain about either result.

  I was glad the policemen were there. I was glad Anarchy wasn’t. He complicated things.

  Grace, Donna, Sis and I trudged back up the stairs to the sound of Marjorie’s snores and headed for our rooms. My bed called to me like the sirens called to sailors. Like Odysseus, I overcame temptation and went instead to the bathroom and stripped off my nightgown and robe. They stank of smoke, and tiny holes marked the spots where cinders had landed. Trash. Expensive, Italian, La Perla trash.

  I climbed into the shower and washed the smoke from my hair and body. The adrenaline that had sustained me through the fire washed down the drain with the shampoo bubbles. I patted myself dry, crawled into bed and slept.

  Five minutes later—it felt like five minutes, in truth, four hours later—someone knocked on my bedroom door.

  “Come in,” I croaked.

  Aggie appeared, coffee mug in hand. “Detective Jones is here to see you.”

  I groaned and reached for the mug.

  “What happened last night?” Aggie is an observant type, she studies things, notices details. Right now she was observing me, and if the furrow in her brow was any indication, she was worried about what she saw.

  “Someone threw a firebomb at the house. When I went outside and grabbed the hose, he shot at me.” That was undeniably what happened, but it felt off, wrong.

  “He?”

  “Or she,” I conceded. “Is everyone else still asleep?”

  Aggie nodded and her earrings, dangling and purple, bobbed. The furrow remained firmly in place.

  “Would you please tell Detective Jones I’ll be down in a few minutes?”

  “Of course.” She wrinkled her nose. “It smells like smoke in here.”

  “I left the clothes I was wearing in the bathroom.”

  She crossed the room, opened the bathroom door and a wave of odor broke upon us. My eyes watered.

  “I don’t think I can save these.”

  Her voice sounded choked.

  “No,” I agreed. “Throw them away.”

  She scooped up my ruined clothes and left.

  I swung my legs out of bed and headed toward the bathroom. What had I been thinking leaving my smoke saturated clothing in there? Everything from the towels to the shower curtain would have to be washed. I grabbed my toothbrush and glanced in the mirror.

  A crazy woman stared back at me. A crazy woman who’d stolen Phyllis Diller’s hair (Phyllis Diller’s hair on an epically bad hair day). Granted, my hair was longer than hers, but the strands stood out from my head at odd angles, tangling and twisting and turning like pipe cleaners. It was a back-comb experiment gone bad, an electrocuted bouffant, a—I shook my head—a demented cross between Ronald McDonald and Hamburglar.

  I reached up and touched it. This was not a brush out. This was a scarf-covered trip to the salon. With Anarchy Jones waiting for me downstairs, this was a disaster.

  I shouldn’t care. I shouldn’t. But Anarchy Jones always seemed to catch me at my worst.

  I brushed my gritted teeth, tied a scarf around Medusa’s locks, donned a caftan and descended the front stairs.

  Anarchy waited for me in the foyer, his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee.

  His gaze flew to my hair—maybe my face, but probably my hair. “Good morning.”

  Not hardly. “Shall we sit in the living room?” I chose the corner of the couch, crossed my ankles and folded my hands in my lap.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?” He sat down next to me.

  No. But I did it anyway. I told him about the statue, about the fire, even about the prickling on the back of my neck at the grocery store.

  A scowl created little commas at the edge of his mouth and a wrinkle appeared between his coffee brown eyes, but he didn’t say a word, not until I’d finished talking.

  “Any idea who might want you dead?”

  I shook my head. “None.”

  He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand. “We’ll need to arrange protection.”

  “Protection?” I squeaked.

  He nodded.

  “In the meantime, let’s go out back and you can show me what happened.”

  I didn’t argue. A trip through the kitchen meant more coffee in my cup.

  We stood on the patio and stared at the wall of my house. Smoke and soot had turned the carnelian hued bricks to ebony.

  Anarchy’s scowl deepened. “So someone threw—” he bent and picked up a piece of broken glass with his fingertips “—a Molotov cocktail at your house and you ran outside.” There it was, the judgmental tone I’d been expecting.

  “I did. I grabbed the hose.”

  “Grace was inside?”

  “I sent Marjorie t
o wake her.” A teensy-weensy bit of acid might have made its way into my tone.

  The corner of his lips twisted slightly. “Where were you standing?”

  Since the firemen had shoved my patio furniture onto the lawn, telling Anarchy I’d stood near the settee would be useless. I closed my eyes and recreated the patio as it had been before the fire. The settee had sat in front of the kitchen windows.

  I walked to the spot. “Here. I was here.”

  “And then someone shot at you?”

  I nodded.

  “You say the bullet hit the house?”

  “It did.”

  Anarchy didn’t respond. Instead, he approached the blackened bricks near the window and studied them. After a moment, he turned. “You’re sure this is where you were standing?”

  “Positive.”

  “Humph.” He took a step toward the door and studied those bricks instead. He took another five or six steps before he found what he was looking for. “Here.”

  “What?”

  “This is where the bullet hit.” Anarchy tapped the wall.

  “Thank heavens they were a bad shot. They’d missed me by several feet.

  He rubbed his chin and his eyes searched the yard as if the mysterious gunman still lurked among the blue spruce. “I think we should go to the museum.”

  “I can’t.”

  He tilted his head as if he couldn’t quite believe I’d told him “no.”

  He should believe it. There was no way I was going anywhere but Salon Kunz. After that, my presence was required at the ballroom. Mother wanted me on hand to triple check the seating chart with the table assignments—a task that promised hours of untold misery.

  “It’s important.”

  So was Mother’s gala. I patted the scarf that hid my hair. My trip to the salon was even more important.

  Anarchy strode across the patio, planted his feet immediately in front of me, and stared at me. “Someone is trying to kill you.”

  Good thing the would-be killer was inept. I raised my shoulders then let them fall.

  The commas bracketing his mouth deepened. “Aren’t you concerned?”

  Of course I was, but if I acknowledged the icy fear that had taken up residence in my heart, it would spread. I took a sip of deliciously hot coffee and shook my head. “There has to be some other explanation.”

  Anarchy closed his hand around my arm then turned and pointed at the bullet hole in my house. “Someone set a fire to get you outside then shot at you.”

  I knew that. I’d been there. I just couldn’t believe it. “Maybe they were shooting at Marjorie.”

  “Why would someone shoot at Marjorie?”

  “No idea. But I have no idea why someone would shoot at me either.”

  With his free hand, Anarchy rubbed the furrow between his brows then shifted his gaze back to me. Emotions flitted across his face. Annoyance. Irritation. Exasperation. And then something softer. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  A smart reply raced to my lips then stalled there.

  Every so often—rarely—when Anarchy looks at me, his eyes warm. They were warm now—delicious, first-cup-of-coffee-in-the-morning warm.

  He brushed an escaped strand of hair away from my face and my cheek tingled where his fingers touched my skin.

  The world around us faded like a watercolor painting left out in the rain. The soot, the brilliant leaves—burnt umber, orange-red, gamboge, and the Tyrian purple of the now-trampled pansies planted in my hosta beds dimmed.

  Something sparked between us, more electric than lightning, more seductive than Marjorie’s plunging dress ever dreamed of being.

  My mouth went dry. My heart went wild. My feet stayed firmly planted. They should have run.

  Anarchy’s hand closed around the nape of my neck and brought me closer to him. Close enough to smell the mint on his breath. 1 thanked God I’d taken the time to brush my teeth.

  His lips barely touched the corner of my mouth—a butterfly kiss that was ticklish and chilling and exciting enough to make my stomach plunge and soar and swoop.

  My head failed me. It turned and met Anarchy’s lips full on. Firm lips. Warm lips. Lips I had no business kissing. I sighed and my free hand—the one not clutching the coffee mug like a life-preserver—reached up and touched his hair. Soft. Thick.

  His arm reached around me and brought me flush with his chest—all hard-muscled plains covered by an ugly plaid shirt. At that moment, I was willing to overlook the unfortunate plaid. After all, my blood fizzed like Champagne and, after nearly two years of celibacy, I ached for a man’s touch. I closed my eyes, parted my lips and melted into him.

  His hand at my neck pulled at the scarf in my hair.

  He shouldn’t do that. He should just kiss me. I tilted my head farther.

  The scarf slipped away.

  Every muscle in Anarchy’s body tightened (I know. I was pressed against them).

  His hold on me loosened.

  I opened my eyes.

  Anarchy’s gaze was fixed on my head. He stepped away. “Ellison—” his voice sounded choked, as if he’d had a shock or was trying very hard not to laugh, “—what happened to your hair?”

  All that swooping and soaring in my stomach ended. Instead, my other organs plunged. The fizz in my blood went flat as tap water.

  I grabbed my scarf from his slack fingers, somehow overcame the need to kick him in the shins, and tied the length of cloth back around my head where it belonged.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  If seduction tingled, rejection stung.

  I took a giant step backward—away from intimacy, away from trust, away from Anarchy. “I’m not offended.” My voice was tight and bitchy. “Not at all.” I patted my scarf. “If you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment.” I turned on my heel.

  “Should I ask Aggie where to put my things?”

  I whirled around and faced him. “Your things?” My heart perched unsteadily at the edge of an abyss.

  “I’m your protection.”

  Just a few words—but the right words to send my heart, stomach and even my spleen careening. Those organs had designated spots within my body. They needed to stay in those spots.

  Anarchy Jones over morning coffee? Anarchy Jones before I went to bed at night?

  “You can’t stay here.”

  “You’d rather move into my apartment?” That eyebrow again. Arched. Amused. Assured.

  “I’d rather have a police car parked in my driveway.”

  “Then your father shouldn’t have called the police commissioner and demanded that I protect you.”

  I could fix that. I marched into the kitchen, picked up the phone and dialed. My parents’ number rang, and I stretched the phone cord until I reached Mr. Coffee.

  Anarchy leaned in the doorway, his arms and ankles crossed. For a half-second, my teenage self saw James Dean—cool, arrogant and crush-worthy. I blinked and returned to reality—being a mother on the cusp of forty with a police officer in her kitchen.

  I poured more coffee into my cup.

  Flora, Mother’s long-suffering housekeeper, answered the phone. “Hello.”

  “Good morning, Flora, this is Ellison calling. May I please speak to my father?”

  A moment later my father picked up the phone. “Ellie, how are you?”

  “Fine, Daddy. Did you ask for Detective Jones—” I glanced at Anarchy. He didn’t look James Dean cool, he looked Steve McQueen cool. “—to protect me?”

  “I did.”

  “To stay—” My voice was too squeaky. I took a deep breath. “To stay at my house?”

  “I did.”

  “I think having a police car in the neighborhood might be a better idea.”

  Anarchy, the new King of Cool, rolled hi
s eyes.

  My father simply said, “No.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Ellie. He’ll keep you safe until they catch whoever wants to hurt you.”

  “Daddy.” I set my tone to wheedle on the charm-your-father dial “I’ll be fine. I already have Sis and Marjorie staying with me. Please call the police commissioner and tell him that Detective Jones’ talents would be better used catching the perpetrator.”

  “No, Ellie. I want him protecting you. I trust I’ll see you both this evening. Your mother has a list of errands for me a mile long; I’ll talk to you later. Goodbye, sugar.”

  I hung up the phone and took a restorative sip of coffee. “You can’t stay here.”

  “Your father wants me here.”

  “My father doesn’t make the mortgage payments on this house. I do. You cannot stay.”

  Anarchy pushed away from the doorframe. “You are in danger.”

  “So find the person who wants to hurt me.”

  He stepped toward me. “Half the police force is working on that.”

  “I’m sure they’d appreciate your assistance.”

  “Why don’t you want me here, Ellison?”

  There was a question to keep me up at night. One interrupted kiss on the patio and I’d melted like peppermint ice cream covered in hot fudge sauce. One interrupted kiss and I’d forgotten everything I knew about how very undependable men were. Thank baby Moses in the bulrushes that my hair had stunned Anarchy, giving me time to come to my senses. I put the empty coffee mug on the counter and crossed my arms. “I just don’t.”

  “That’s not good enough.”

  “It is for me.” I left him standing in the kitchen.

  Twenty minutes later, I drove to Salon Kunz all too aware of the detective following me.

  Kunz put me in his chair, slipped the scarf off my hair and stared. “Oh mein Gott!”

  Heads turned. As if the ladies in the styling chairs had any room to judge. Half of the women staring at me (the older half) had their hair wrapped around tiny pink rollers and were surrounded by noxious clouds of ammonia chemicals strong enough to induce tears.

  “What have you done?” Kunz demanded. He covered his eyes with his hand.