A Devil in the Details (6 page)

Damn. That was going to ruin Mom’s party.

The bright sun seemed determined to make a liar out of the weatherman, and I felt compelled to whistle a jaunty tune as I walked to my truck. Then I noticed a man standing by the back bumper, obviously waiting for me, and my musical urges died between one step and the next.

He stood up straighter as I neared, but it didn’t hide that he was a good five inches shorter than I. He was clean-cut and baby faced, and his gray suit probably cost as much as my house payment. He seemed young, and when I checked his shoes, sure enough he was wearing loafers. I always assume people do that when they’re not old enough to tie their shoes yet. The thought made me smirk to myself, and the man gave me a puzzled look.

“Mr. Dawson.” He offered his hand, which I ignored, and a plastic smile, which I did not return.

“Don’t lean on my truck.”

“Sir?”

“Don’t lean on my truck.” I proceeded to do that very thing. “I don’t know you, so you don’t get to touch her.” Okay yeah, I made the first hostile move. But he looked like a lawyer. I hate lawyers.

“Ah.” He eyed the truck warily but took a step away, wiping his hand on his trousers as if she’d contaminated him somehow.
Losing points left and right, my boy.
“My name is Travis Verelli. I represent the interests of Mr. Kidd.” He offered me his business card, which I took and read carefully. Ugh, he was worse than a lawyer. He was an agent.

“And is there a reason you’re lurking out here by my truck, Mr. Verelli?” I had to squash the urge to call him something snide. Junior and Skippy were the two favorites at the moment.

“Mr. Kidd asked that I wait outside while he met with you.”

“Good puppy. What do you want now, a treat?”

The smile he was fighting to keep wavered at the edges. “I would like to ask you to leave my client alone.”

That earned him a raised brow. “And does Mr. Kidd know you’re out here asking me that?”

His smile turned into a distasteful grimace. “Mr. Kidd is well aware of my opinions of his . . . situation.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head in amusement. “And just what do you grasp as his ‘situation’?”

His eyes hardened, and I mentally tacked another five years onto his age. “My client is no longer a young man, Mr. Dawson. And at times I believe he is . . . confused about certain things. This would make it easy for someone unscrupulous to take advantage of him, and I intend to prevent that.”

I couldn’t help but snicker. “Let me get this straight. You think he’s going senile, and you are protecting him from the big bad world. Doesn’t hurt that your income is protected, too, so long as no one knows the old man’s gone batty.”

“I have my client’s best interests in mind. You, on the other hand . . .” A bit of petty triumph gleamed in his eyes. I wanted to smack him. “I have done some investigating into your background. I have connections, Mr. Dawson. You have minimal discernible employment for the last four years, and yet you consistently deposit large sums of money into several bank accounts. You have been hired repeatedly as a ‘security consultant’ by people who have had their own security forces for years, and you seldom remain on the payroll longer than a month. It leaves me to wonder just what services you are performing.”

“I give windows a sparkling, streak-free shine.” I said it with a straight face, and he glowered.

“I have been dragged all over the country in the last few months, dealing with Mr. Kidd’s . . . we’ll call it a dilemma. I do not now, nor will I ever, believe these delusions of his, and if you will not stop feeding them, I will be forced to take legal action.” He said it with the same menace I might use when threatening to run a sword through someone’s guts.

Did I mention I don’t like being threatened? “You take whatever action you like. I’m doing nothing illegal, and you’re going to make me late for work. Good day, Mr. Verelli.” I slid into the truck and slammed the door before he could answer.
Slimy little weasel.
He’d piss himself if he ever saw the things I’d seen.

I gave him a finger-fluttering wave as I pulled out of the parking lot, and I could feel his scowl all the way down the block.

I
had to walk seven blocks from the designated employee parking lot just to get to work. I’d be so much happier once they finished the new parking garage, but that project had languished in limbo since the early freeze last fall. I personally believed the contractors had made off with the money, never to be seen again. Management kept insisting that construction would resume in the summer, but in the meantime, we were left with a roofless shell of a garage, piles of rusting construction supplies, and rivers of yellow clay mud every time it rained. When it wasn’t raining, the wind blew clouds of dust into all the shops, coating everything in a fine yellow powder. I mostly watched the weather to see if I was going to be slogging through muck or eating grit on any given day. So much for Sierra Vista, the latest and trendiest in outdoor shopping meccas.

Don’t ask me why a shopping mall in Kansas City, Missouri, was named Sierra Vista when there isn’t a mountain in sight for hundreds of miles. I wasn’t consulted. I suppose the faux sandstone façades and orange clay tile roofs could be reminiscent of a quaint Hispanic village. Y’know—one with a Starbucks on the corner and a Japanese steakhouse at the end of the block. I passed a day spa, a Victoria’s Secret, two competing comedy clubs, and the garish neon sign proclaiming the newest restaurant to be named Moonlight & Roses. The hot pink moon and violently purple roses were bright enough to sear through eyelids, even in the daylight. I was never going to get the ghastly sight out of my head.

Even though it was an early Monday afternoon and school didn’t get out for summer for another four weeks, the place was crawling with teenagers. I had to wonder if their parents knew they weren’t in school. That’s the father in me talking. It’s an attitude I’m cultivating in preparation for Annabelle’s teen years.

The music from It, the place where I worked, pulsed through the soles of my feet long before I passed the chain bookstore and overpriced ice-cream shop next door. The sign propped out on the sidewalk proclaimed IT’S SPRING CLEARANCE! and I cringed inwardly. Just as I expected, the small store was packed solid. I squeezed my way through the door, nodding slight apologies to the tattooed and pierced customers in my way.

The roar of confined life-forms echoed off the ductwork in the unfinished ceiling above, tripling the noise level in an instant. People were stuffed into every conceivable space between the already cramped clothing racks. Strobe lights and black lights flickered everywhere, promising headaches to the unprepared. Behind the artfully arranged display merchandise, the black brick walls were splashed with fluorescent blobs of color, glowing happily under the strange lighting.

“Hey, old dude!” Kristyn’s voice carried over the heavy metal music somehow, and I realized she was actually standing on the counter to see over the crowd. Her hair was dyed raven black again, with streaks of hot pink fading into a deep purple. Two days ago, it had been green and blue.

“Nice hair, Kristyn!” The music thumping through the speakers changed to “Voodoo Child,” and I waved to whoever was deejaying in acknowledgment. We all have our theme songs, and that had been deemed mine because they knew I liked Hendrix. (I suspect it was also the oldest music they could think of. Most of the kids I worked with were too young to remember the eighties, let alone Jimi Hendrix.)

By hook or by crook, I skirted the ever-rotating tower of body jewelry (for the piercing of your choice) and worked my way to the back and the relative sanity of the break room. I lingered only long enough to dump my wallet into my employee locker and grab my lanyard with my name tag and assorted snarky buttons. The name tag, too, said OLD DUDE. At thirty-two, I was the oldest employee in the district. Even Kristyn, ostensibly my boss, came in a few years shy of thirty.

Between the back room and the front counter, I handled three questions on prices, and one on fashion (which is
such
a bad idea, trust me). Abe was manning the stereo at the back of the store and trying to keep the shoplifters from making off with our CDs. I stopped long enough to have him nod me toward a couple he was keeping a particular eye on, then moved on. I finally arrived at the register to find that Kristyn had made a new friend. The dark lanky teen gave me a sullen look as he leaned against the wall.

“Rook for you to train, old dude.” Kristyn gave me a wicked grin. “This is Paulo. Paulo, this is old dude.”

I stuck out my hand to shake. I’m not totally devoid of manners. Paulo took it, glaring at me from under a mop of shaggy black hair and squeezing harder than was strictly necessary. Ah, so that’s how it was going to be. I held his grip, sizing him up. There was a distinct lack of piercings and tattoos about him, unusual for employees of It. He was of a height with me, all lean whipcord muscle, but there was no tone to it. Most likely he was a runner; maybe he lifted weights in a high school gym class. But he didn’t move like a fighter. I wasn’t worried. “Nice to meet you, Paulo.”

“Encantada
.
”
It was said with a sneer of sarcasm, but the accent of a native Spanish speaker. I made a mental note to have Mira brush me up on Spanish cuss words. Never hurts to know.

“Now, don’t let his age fool you,” Kristyn advised Paulo. “Old dude is a baaaaad man. He works security consulting on the side. All kung fu and stuff.” Well, at least she
thought
that’s what I did on the side. It was as good an explanation as any for why I left town abruptly and came home in bandages on a regular basis. I even had permits and licenses to make it all official, thanks to Ivan.

If Paulo was impressed, it didn’t show.

Kristyn was rapidly getting swamped, and I slid into the register next to her. “I didn’t know we were hiring.”

“Chelsea no-called again today, and I’d had it. Then Paulo walked in. It was like destiny!” My punk-haired boss gave me a cheeky grin, and I could only chuckle.

“Does he at least have some retail experience?” I hated training rookies from scratch, and she knew it.

“Nah,” she said, and my heart sank. “But he’s hot, and that’s what the girls want.” True enough, our young, brooding Latino was getting more than his share of admiring looks from the panting throng.

“If being hot is a hiring requisite, how the hell do I still have a job?”

Kristyn gave me a wink as she handed a customer’s card back. “You’re hot in an old-hippie kinda way.”

“Gee, thanks.” I smirked, bagging up some purchases to hand across the counter. “You do realize I’m about thirty years too young to have actually been a hippie, right?”

“Bah, hippie’s in the soul.”

Well, if hippie was the worst thing in my soul, I was doing pretty darned good.

Between the two of us, we managed to clear out the mob, one rabid customer at a time. By the time the crowd thinned, the other five employees had arrived for the monthly employee meeting.

Chris—a gargantuan teen whose six-foot-oh-my-God height allowed him to see most of the store at a glance—took over the register while the rest of us gathered around Kristyn. Paulo found a clothing rack to sulk against. I was starting to wonder whether he could stand up unaided. Maybe the sullen slouch was a medical condition.

The first announcement was the hiring of Paulo, prefaced by Kristyn’s assertion that “Chelsea will not be joining us again for the rest of her life. She pissed me off for the last time.” The dark boy gave everyone the same indifferent glower by way of greeting. Good to know it wasn’t just me.

“Spring Clearance will run through Sunday, and on that day we’ll have an extra ten percent employee discount tacked on.” Kristyn shuffled through a stack of e-mails, while the kids murmured amongst themselves. I eyed some of the clothing racks myself. You could never have too many T- shirts with witty sayings such as SOULS TASTE LIKE PEEPS. That one always made me laugh, but I’m pretty sure some of my clients wouldn’t have shared my amusement.

“And Sierra Vista management has asked me to review storm procedures with you, since we’re hitting tornado season again, and they’re predicting a bad front moving in this weekend.” Everyone groaned. “C’mon, guys, I gotta do this. Cut me some slack.” Kristyn gave a long-suffering sigh, and the rabble quieted.

“The exits are hereherehereherehere anywhere!” The kids cracked up as Abe channeled Aladdin’s genie and Kristyn swatted him with her papers.

“Okay fine, smart-ass, you do it.” She shoved the e-mails into his hands.

Abe cleared his throat solemnly and proceeded to read the instructions in what was possibly the worst British accent I have ever heard.
“Please direct customers to the designated storm shelter areas, and lock the doors to your businesses. All public restrooms and storage hallways are to be considered storm shelters. Once there—”

“Put your head between your knees and kiss your ass good-bye.” Leanne tossed in her two cents that time, and Kristyn threw up her hands.

“I tried. If you all get blown to Oz, it isn’t my fault.”

The meeting was dismissed to a chorus of “I’ll get you, my pretty!” Poor Kristyn. She’s actually a good manager, but riding herd on that bunch of miscreants was nearly impossible when they were all together. Such were the hazards of a relaxed work environment.

She caught my eye and gave me a tired smile. “You’ll take care of them, old dude, right?”

“I always do.”

For the record, upon my death, I want to be nominated for sainthood. I’m not Catholic. I’m not even sure I’m Christian. But it might do the church a world of good to admit a beer-drinking, brawling, hippie samurai into their ranks. And after I spent the entire afternoon trying to train Paulo on a register, getting no more than a grunt or two from him in response, I damn well deserved some recognition. Thankfully, Kristyn shooed Paulo out the door at six, and after that, my evening was infinitely better.