wrong, Dale?” she asked, moving from behind the counter down the hall before Dale made it halfway into the shop. “Is it Susan?” she asked after the man’s wife of more than sixty years.
“Yep,” Dale said, heading into the shop, still frowning. The man didn’t move as quickly as he once did, but he kept a pretty good clip. “It’s Susan, all right,” he said, standing in front of the nearly empty bakery case.
“Did she fall? Did you call 911?” Marie wasn’t sure the man, who was normally sharp as could be, was all there—perhaps demented with panic? She grabbed her cell phone out of her apron pocket. “Can she talk?”
“What’s that? Call who?” Dale’s false teeth, a little too big for his mouth, hissed a bit as he talked. But she had his full attention.
“Is Susan hurt?”
“What? No! But you can bet your dinner that I’m going to be if I don’t find something pretty quick that can pass as a cake and a present and not look like I just come down here and got it last minute,” he said, staring at the case again. “I darn forgot her birthday,” he said, looking perplexed as he glanced at Marie again. “Sixty years of knowing when my wife was born, and I forgot today was the day. Eighty-one she is today. And a fine-looking woman still.”
With a little adrenaline remaining, Marie went into high gear. She pulled a chocolate cake out of the walk-in, making a mental note to replace it before morning so Grace wouldn’t have to, sent Eva down the block to the drugstore for candles and one of the puzzle books that Susan and Dale liked to work on together and then, with a brain flash, hurried back to her office, opened the safe and pulled out the two theater tickets for next month’s Broadway performance. Grabbing an envelope and a piece of paper, she hurried back in to Dale, who was pulling money out of his pocket so it was ready to give to Eva when she returned.
“Here,” she said, pulling a chair out from one of the small round tables toward the back as she set down paper, pen, envelope and tickets. “Write something. And wrap the tickets in this,” she said. Dropping the envelope beside the pile.
“Tickets?” His teeth clacked as he spoke.
“To the theater. Susan would love to go to the theater, wouldn’t she?”
Dale’s grin made her day. Her week. “That she would,” he said, smiling at her. “You have theater tickets to sell me?”
She’d been planning to give them to him. But one look at his face and she changed her mind.
“What do I owe you?” he asked, pulling a roll of bills out of his pocket. Mostly ones.
“Twenty dollars,” Marie said, trying to remember if the seventy-five-dollar ticket price was on the actual tickets.
“Twenty dollars.” He began counting bills, handed them to her and pulled the chair out to sit down. “I’ll hire a car,” he said. “She can wear that pretty rose-colored dress and her sparkly earrings and I’ll even get a shave and a haircut...”
He bent to his writing.
The door rattled again. Eva returning, Marie hoped.
She looked up, a smile on her face. And blinked.
It wasn’t Eva.
It was him.
ELLIOTT HADN’T PLANNED to see Marie on Sunday. Or anytime he could avoid seeing her in the near future. After a long night watching Sailor and Terrence Metcalf, the yacht designer, seemingly fall in love at first sight, finding himself relating, he’d been forced to admit to himself that the things he was feeling for Marie Bustamante weren’t just passing infatuation.
He’d found it so easy to identify with the poor guy, who’d looked at Ms. Harcourt as though she was the sun, moon and stars all rolled into one.
And so, with a few hours’ sleep in his own one-bedroom apartment after seeing Miss Harcourt to the airport that morning for her flight back to New York, he’d called Barbara Bustamante. His plan was twofold. To fire himself. And to acquire her permission to tell her daughter who he was.
Asking Marie out, which was his ultimate goal, would follow the meeting of those goals.
He’d failed on both counts. Mrs. Bustamante categorically refused to allow him to tell Marie—ever—that she’d hired him to watch her. Her paranoia had already rubbed off far too much on her daughter. She didn’t want Marie to know that her own mother didn’t trust her to make wise decisions where men were concerned. Specifically where her new business partner, but longtime friend, Liam Connelly, was concerned.
And second, she warned him not to quit. Not while things were still so raw with Connelly Investments. Not while he was still watching Liam. He had the perfect in. She’d financed the plan he’d put in place. It would be highly unprofessional for him to just walk out. She could file a complaint against him.
He’d been tempted to tell her that it would be highly unprofessional for him to have a thing for his client’s daughter, but refrained.
Because she was right. He’d signed on to do a job that was not yet complete. No one else was going to be able to step into his shoes and have Liam believe that his father’s bodyguard had sent him. Elliott’s ability to do that had been a fluke of timing. A godsend. And had worked so well in part because Liam hadn’t been speaking with his father at the time. And also because everyone had assumed he’d been hired in secret and hadn’t asked too many questions.
Later, when Walter Connelly had denied having any part in Elliott’s presence in their lives, Liam had taken the words with a grain of salt. His father might not be an embezzler, but he’d been found out to be an inveterate liar.
If not for the plea agreement he’d been offered in exchange for full cooperation in the ongoing investigation of the Ponzi scheme being run through his company, Walter would be facing his own trial on lesser charges. And Liam was now in position to know everything that went on in his father’s company, and in much of his personal business, as well.
If anyone else stepped in to watch over the Arapahoe and her owners and occupants now, a big question would be raised as to why. As to who’d sent the new bodyguard. Liam would ask questions Elliott couldn’t afford to have him ask. Barbara’s role in all of this could very well end up being exposed.
The Professional Private Investigators Association of Colorado would have cause to take action against him for a code of ethics violation. He could lose everything.
Falling for Marie could be a code of ethics violation, too. If he acted on his feelings. So the only solution here was to stay away from her.
Or come clean with Barbara and risk Marie’s safety.
He’d decided to give things another month. If no other threats had come forth, if Liam Connelly’s life had no longer appeared to be in danger, he’d pull the plug. Get the heck out of their lives.
Barbara wasn’t ever going to let him tell Marie the truth about their association and he couldn’t enter into a relationship with Marie without doing so.
