Reap What You Sew (9 page)

“There you are, Victoria, I was hopin’ I’d get a chance to chat with you. How’s it goin’ over there?”

Wandering over to a nearby bench, she sat down, the warmth of the afternoon sun and the sound of her friend’s always-cheerful voice making her smile. “It’s going. This movie stuff is a whole lot of waiting with little bursts of nuttiness tossed in.”

The woman’s hearty laugh started in Tori’s ear and traveled to her various tension-filled spots, relaxing her in seconds. “Were you hidin’ behind the cupboard in my kitchen this mornin’, Victoria?”

“Nooo, why?”

“’Cause you took that phrase right outta my mouth, that’s why.”

“Phrase? What phrase?”

“That part about little bursts of nutti—”

Tori looked up as Todd and Glenda walked around the far side of the gazebo, the anger in Glenda’s voice pulling her away from her own conversation. “Can you believe that witch’s nerve? It’s not bad enough that she sees me as her personal gofer-girl—demanding coffee, insisting on the day’s paper, sending me out for a better shade of eyeliner, making sure I’ve briefed everyone on exactly where she keeps her EpiPen in the event of a nut invasion,
and
expecting me to stand by ready to fan her in the event the South Carolina sun gets too strong for her—but now I’m supposed to be a
magician
, too? Capable of making a person disappear into thin air never to be seen or heard from ever again?” Glenda whacked her head against the clipboard in her hands. “I don’t know about you, but I missed the vanishing bunny class when I went to film school.”

“Victoria? Are you still there?”

She swatted at the air, Margaret Louise’s words barely registering as she strained to hear the identity of the person responsible for Glenda’s ire.

Todd stopped, swooped to the ground, and retrieved a napkin from the grass. Crumbling it in his left hand, he looked around for a trash can. “You think you’re the only one who’s had enough of Anita the Great? Hell, I was barely through the gate this morning and she was yanking me by the arm, threatening to have my job if I didn’t find out who let Pooky in yesterday.”

“Did you tell her?”

He tossed the napkin into a trash can beside a tree some ten yards from where Tori sat, eavesdropping. “Of course I told her. It was Kelly or me. Though, cluing her in didn’t make her disappear. Rather, she started running through a list of everything I’ve done wrong since we got here—not the least of which was leaving the extras in Margot’s complete control.” Todd looked to his left and then his right before reengaging Glenda. “My God, what did Margot do to Anita? She’s virtually out for that girl’s blood.”

“What hasn’t she done? What haven’t
any
of us done to make that woman hate us?”

“I haven’t done anything,” Todd protested. “I do my job just like I’m supposed to.”

“And so does everyone else.” Glenda tucked her clipboard under her arm and headed toward the food tent, Todd at her heels. “The problem is this: Anita Belise hates anyone who isn’t
her
.”

“Or Warren. You definitely can’t forget Warren.”

“True. Though that’s a sentiment that’s beginning to look mighty one-sided, don’t you think? I mean, did you see the way he looked at her this morning when she berated him in front of the whole crew for not returning her calls last night? I thought he was going to reach across the conference table and”—Glenda stopped mid-step and released a sneeze. “Ooh. Excuse me. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah. Trouble in paradise…”

If Glenda elaborated any further on the trouble, Tori couldn’t make it out, the twosome’s footsteps taking them out of her hearing range once and for all. But really, what did it matter? The only trouble in paradise Glenda could have been referring to where Anita and Warren were concerned bore the signature of one person and one person only.

Leona Elkin.

“Oh, Mamma, I think Victoria and I got disconnected.”

The sound of her name in her ear brought her back to the present. “Margaret Louise, I’m so sorry. I—I was distracted for a moment.”

“A moment?” Margaret Louise chided playfully. “Why, Victoria, a moment like that could see a rocket ship take off
and
land on the moon.”

Her guilt at an all-time high, she searched for a way to make amends. Margaret Louise deserved better. “How’s Annabelle doing?”

A hesitation made her sit up tall on the bench. “Margaret Louise? Is everything okay with your mom?”

“She was better yesterday.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“I didn’t get picked as an extra.” Margaret Louise lowered her voice. “I don’t know what it was, Victoria, but there was somethin’ about being around all that hullabaloo yesterday that made Mamma come alive. Well, after that little incident with the people on line, anyway. Milo was such a dear helpin’ to smooth everyone’s feelings.”

Tori lifted her face to the sun, its warmth and brightness lifting her spirits and chasing away the vestiges of fatigue that seemed born of the whole moviemaking experience. “I’ll ask Margot if I can give your mother a little tour tomorrow. If she says yes, do you think Annabelle would like that?”

“Like it? Like it? Why, Victoria, I think that would be just the breath of fresh air she needs.” A momentary muffling of Margaret Louise’s voice lasted little more than a minute. “I just asked her if she’d like to come see you on the set and she’s all tickled now.”

“Well let me make sure we can do it before you say too much more,” she cautioned. “Then again, I suspect Leona’s current connection might serve us better than any I’ve made.”

Something resembling a snort of disgust permeated the phone line, a sound that was both foreign and disconcerting coming from someone as sunny and positive as Margaret Louise. “If Leona don’t like the bagger at Leeson’s to know who her mamma is, she most certainly don’t want some hotshot movie director knowin’, either.”

She glanced down at her watch as the security guard from the day before came into view, his footsteps heavy on the sidewalk. Sure enough, the thirty-minute lunch break Margot had given them was drawing to a quick close. “Would you like me to talk to Leona? See if something I say might make a difference?”

Again, Margaret Louise snorted. Only this time, it sounded more amused than angry. “It’s no use, Victoria. I tried when we were kids, I tried when we were teenagers, I try all the time. Why, I just tried a dab ago when she showed up on my doorstep wantin’ a crash course in bakin’ brownies.”

Tori nearly dropped the phone. “Leona wants to learn to
bake
?”

“I s’pose you can say that, though, it was more a case of me bakin’ and my twin sittin’ all prissy like at the table demandin’ more, more, more.”

It was Tori’s turn to laugh. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Leona eat one brownie, let alone more. Has she forgotten her near-daily diatribe about the evils of junk food? And its propensity for breeding cellulite?”

“She didn’t eat them, Victoria.”

Pushing off the bench, Tori made her way in the general direction of the tent, Margaret Louise’s one-eighty beginning to make her head hurt. “Wait. Didn’t you just say she demanded more and more the whole time you were baking?”

“More and more
nuts
, not brownies.”

She nodded at the security guard as they passed one another, the scrutiny in the man’s eyes softening as she held up the temporary name tag justifying her presence. To her friend, she said, “You lost me.”

“She wanted me to put more and more nuts in the brownies,” Margaret Louise explained. “Why, by the time I was done, I darn near put an entire bag of walnuts in that bowl. I sure hope this Warren fella likes nuts as much as she thinks he does.”

The meaning behind Margaret Louise’s words filtered through her thoughts, rooting her feet to the sidewalk. “Leona is making Warren brownies?”

“She’s
bringing
Warren brownies,” Margaret Louise corrected. “
I
made—”

“With nuts?”

“Lots and lots of nuts.
Too many
, if you ask me. But try tellin’ that pigheaded sister of mine that and, well, it’ll be like talkin’ to a wall. Leona wants to bring that man brownies with nuts tonight, Leona’s gonna bring that man brownies with nuts tonight. It’s that simple.”

“Tonight, huh?” A knowing smile tugged the corners of her mouth upward as the reason behind Leona’s request dawned hard and fast. “You know something, Margaret Louise? Your sister may be utterly helpless at sewing, and completely inept in the kitchen, but when it comes to plotting her way in front of a man and eliminating all competition from his eyes, she is second to none.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that one, Victoria. No argument at all.”

Chapter 7

There were times Tori couldn’t help but wish life came with a remote control. If it did, she could fast-forward through the tedious parts—like board meetings and shelving—and pause the heart-stopping highlights—like being asked to marry the most amazing man she’d ever met—and rewind whenever do-overs were a really good idea.

In fact, if she had the means to make it happen, she’d shell out a million dollars at that very moment to rewind her way back to the previous day.

Then again, hindsight had always had that nasty little habit of being twenty-twenty.

“Mr. Kelly, are the handcuffs really necessary?” Tori asked, gesturing toward Annabelle’s immobile hands locked in place behind the elderly woman’s stooped back. “Ms. Elkin is ninety-two. She’s not going to be making a break for it anytime soon.”

“I was hired to do a job, Miss Sinclair. It’s an important job that has me here into the night and back again before dawn. I take my responsibilities very seriously despite what some might have you believe to the contrary.” Stan Kelly peeled off his black Windbreaker and draped it over the back of Annabelle’s folding chair. “Handcuffs are used in response to criminal activity, and theft is most definitely criminal activity. The way I look at it, if a ninety-two-year-old can swipe things, a ninety-two-year-old can be handcuffed.”

Seated beside her mother on the opposite side, Margaret Louise dropped her head onto the hastily erected card table with a thud, her normally booming voice dulled by exhaustion. “Mr. Kelly, my mother is not a thief. She—”

“Oh no?” Stan strode around the room, his face set in hard lines. “Then how is it that your mother was in possession of a wallet, a lighter, a wig, and a watch that didn’t belong to her? Are you going to tell me that Zack Quandran simply gave those items to a woman he met for all of about twenty seconds?”

“Well, no, but—”

He bent down, slamming the top of the table with the palm of his hand. “Then how else do you explain those items being in your mother’s possession if Mr. Quandran didn’t give them to her?”

Silence blanketed the room as the guard looked from Margaret Louise to Annabelle and back again. “Well? I’m waiting….”

Margaret Louise pulled her head up off the table and fixed a weary gaze on the man. “She took them.”

“Finally!” Stan took two steps to the right then dropped into the empty chair beside Tori. Slowly, methodically, he reached into his pants pocket and extracted a package of gum. “
Now
we’re getting somewhere.”

“But it’s not what you think,” Margaret Louise quickly added. “My mother didn’t take those things to be malicious or deceitful.”

The guard unwrapped a stick of gum, folded it into his mouth, then tossed the rest of the packet onto the table in front of him. “She stole a man’s personal possessions but wasn’t trying to be malicious or deceitful?” He leaned back in his chair, a smirk of amusement lighting his dark eyes. “Oh, this oughta be good.”

Margaret Louise blinked against the tears Tori saw building. But when she opened her mouth to speak, Tori cut her off at the pass. “Mr. Kelly, may I speak with you for a moment?” Pushing back in her chair, Tori rose to her feet. “In private?”

With a shrug, Stan clamored out of his chair and followed Tori into the foyer area of the security trailer. “Yes?”

A lump sprang into Tori’s throat as she peered around the guard’s shoulder in time to catch Margaret Louise placing a protective arm around her mother. While she couldn’t make out the whispered words the younger woman said, she suspected it was some sort of loving reassurance. Margaret Louise knew no other way to be.

She pulled her focus back to Stan Kelly. “Mr. Kelly, do you have elderly parents?”

The man nodded. “But they’re not thieves, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Neither is Ms. Elkin. She has an illness.”

“Is that what they call stealing these days?” He worked his piece of gum around his mouth, parting his lips just enough to nibble the off-white material between his front teeth.

Fisting her hands at her sides, she stared at the man. “Have you heard the term
kleptomaniac
, Mr. Kelly?”

“Sure have.” Stan crossed his arms and widened his stance. “It’s someone who steals.”

“No. A kleptomaniac has an illness. There’s a difference.” Again, she peered over the guard’s shoulder, the lump quickly joined by a misting of her eyes at the heartache and worry on Margaret Louise’s face. “Annabelle Elkin is a kleptomaniac hoarder, which means she helps herself to a number of things. She doesn’t do anything with what she takes—she doesn’t try to sell it, doesn’t try to claim it as her own. In fact, she rarely remembers taking it seconds after the fact.”