Rebelonging (Unbelonging, Book 2) (21 page)

"No," I said, "I actually meant to be
mean."

"Jeez, what'd I ever do to you?"

"Well for one thing," I said, "you're lying
about being my boyfriend."

"You're one to talk," he said. "You gave me a
fake name." His gaze narrowed. "Betty."

"Look," I said, "I'm really busy. Just tell
me what you want, so then you can leave."

"When I tell you," he said, "you're gonna
feel really bad."

"Oh yeah? Why?"

"Because the only reason I'm here is to do
you
a favor."

My gaze narrowed. "What kind of favor?"

"Here's the thing." He glanced around. "I saw
you with Lawton Rastor."

"So?"

"So, he seems to really like you."

I made a forward motion with my hands.
"And?"

"And I do some video work on the side,
weddings and stuff."

I shook my head. "So?"

He lowered his voice. "You know that sex tape
of his? If you wanted, I could set up a sequel."

My mouth fell open. "Are you saying
you
did the first one?"

He glanced around. "I don't like to
brag."

"Oh trust me," I said, feeling a cold rage
sweep over me. "It's nothing to brag about."

"But I'm guessing you want to be famous too,
right?"

I gave him look. "Does Lawton know about
this?" Of course, I knew the truth, but his answer would tell me a
lot.

Shaggy reached up to scratch his ear. "Not
yet. But I mean, he'd find out eventually, right?"

I crooked my finger, inviting him to come
closer. When he did, I moved my head close and whispered in his
ear. "Listen, if you
ever
ask me something like that again,
you're gonna be real sorry. And you wanna know why?'

He leaned back and gave a nervous look around
the restaurant. "What are you gonna do? Tell Lawton?"

"No." I smiled. "I'm gonna tell Jen."

His eyes widened. "Jen, my girlfriend?"

I nodded.

"You wouldn't."

I crossed my arms. "I would."

Again, he looked around. "She's not here now,
is she?"

I shrugged.

"I gotta go," he said. A split-second later,
he was heading for the exit.

I gave him a cheery wave. "Don't come back
soon!"

That next day was Sunday. I had the next day
off and was determined to make the most of it, especially with
Lawton still out of town. When he returned Monday, I wanted to be
all caught up on chores and ready to make up for lost time.

I spent most of that Sunday catching up on
things I should've been doing all along – doing loads of laundry,
creating a new flyer for Grandma's non-existent job, and spending
some quality time with Chucky.

But no matter what my hands were doing, my
brain seemed to be doing something else entirely. I still hadn't
heard back from the Parkers, and I was trying not to panic.

As the hours dragged on with no answer and no
return phone call, I couldn't help but consider the worst-case
scenarios.

This was a slow-motion train wreck waiting to
happen. Mrs. Parker had written
me
checks, and I'd written
my own checks against those checks. It had never occurred to me
that her checks wouldn’t be good. The first few had cleared just
fine.

Eventually my own checks would bounce, but
not right away, only because my account had overdraft protection.
Still, it wouldn't be cheap. It was tied to a scarily small line of
credit with a scarily big interest rate. If I needed to tap into
that line, I'd have virtually no way to pay it back – unless, of
course, I wanted to take Shaggy up on his sex tape offer.

And no way was that going to happen.

Still, I couldn't get it out of my head, and
not only because of the ick factor. Lawton had seen Shaggy that
night in the parking lot. He'd even yelled at Shaggy to stay away
from me.

Assuming Shaggy's implication was true,
shouldn't Lawton have warned me that Shaggy was the guy behind that
original sex tape? When Lawton returned tomorrow, I'd definitely be
asking about it.

Late that afternoon, I returned from walking
Chucky to find a white van in the driveway and a strange man on the
porch. The man wore some kind of brown uniform and carried a
clipboard gripped loosely in his right hand.

When I approached the front entrance, with
Chucky on his leash, the man turned to face me. He was a lean man
about thirty years old and a serious demeanor. "Mrs. Parker?" he
said.

I hesitated. "No. But I can give her a
message if you'd like."

"I'm from the cable company," he said. "I'm
here to disconnect the service."

"Excuse me?"

He cleared his throat. "For non-payment.
Final notice should've come last week."

"We didn't receive any notice," I said.

He consulted his clipboard. "It must've went
to your post office box. Third notice."

I didn't have access to the Parkers' post
office box. In truth, I didn't realize they had one. But as someone
who used a post office box myself, I didn't see anything all that
unusual about it.

Of course, it did seem unusual that they
wouldn't be asking me to retrieve their mail.

About the cable, I really didn't care. I
didn't have time to watch anything, anyway. But the Parkers might
care if they returned to find it out of service.

"This seems awful odd for a Sunday," I
said.

"You're telling me," he said, not looking too
happy about it.

"Can't it wait a few days?" I said. "See if I
can't clear it up?"

"Sorry," he said. "I'm just the messenger. Of
course, if you wanna give me a check, I'll take it back to the
office, cancel the cancellation."

The dog food was one thing. The cable, now
that was something else. No way was I paying for that. So a half
hour later, I was officially without cable TV.

I wouldn't have cared, except for what it
said about the Parkers. Were they having money trouble? Or was it
just some weird fluke with their bank account?

Sitting in their house – some might call it a
mansion – I couldn't help but notice all the luxury surrounding me.
I'd been living in their home so many weeks now that I barely
noticed. But when I looked at it with fresh eyes, it was pretty
obvious that some serious money had gone into whatever look they
were going for.

Even all those exotic plants of Mr. Parker's,
they couldn't have been cheap. Their plant food wasn't, that's for
sure. It arrived once a week by mail from some horticulture shop in
San Francisco. In my old neighborhood, I knew kids who weren't
treated half as well.

What if the Parkers
were
deadbeats?
Would I be out all that money? To them, it might be a pittance, but
to me, it was a fortune.

And then something worse hit me. What if they
were dead, period? They were in a foreign country. Would I even
hear about it if they were?"

As the day progressed to evening, I was
having a hard time thinking about anything else.

When my cell phone rang just before midnight,
I dove straight for it and answered without looking at the display.
"Hello?"

"Hey," Lawton said.

"Oh," I said. "It's you."

There was a long pause. Then, he said, "Is
this a bad time?"

"No. Not at all. Just waiting for a phone
call."

Longer pause. "You need to go?"

"Nah, I have call-waiting."

"So…" Lawton's tone was carefully casual.
"Who'd be calling you so late?"

"No one. It's just a business thing."

"You mean from the restaurant?"

"No. Something else."

"Anything you wanna talk about?"

Actually, it was the last thing I wanted to
talk about. I'd been obsessing about it all day, and I was
desperate to think about anything but that. Besides, Lawton didn't
need to hear about my problems.

"Nah, it's nothing," I said, trying to push
the worry out of my voice. "Are you still coming home
tomorrow?"

"Yup. Tomorrow morning. You still have the
day off?"

"Oh yeah."

We made plans to meet around noon. At my
suggestion, we agreed that I'd swing by his house with Chucky, and
then go for a walk. "For old time's sake," I said, thinking of how
we'd first gotten to know each other in the first place.

"Don't forget new time's sake," he said. "And
Chloe?"

"Yeah?"

"I've gotta tell you, I'm missing you like
crazy. The other night–"

My phone beeped.

I pulled it from my ear and looked at the
display. Mrs. Parker. Finally.

Lawton was still talking, but I didn't catch
a single word of it. Desperate to get the incoming call, I cut him
off. "I'm really sorry, Lawton, I've gotta go. See ya tomorrow,
alright?"

Without waiting for a response, I
disconnected him to switch over to the new call.

My voice was breathless as I said, "Hello?
Mrs. Parker?"

And to my infinite relief, I heard her voice
loud and clear. "Hey Chloe, I just got your messages."

Well, at least she wasn't dead.

I'd already left most of the details in a
long voicemail. But for some reason, I felt compelled to repeat
them, trying hard to keep my tone neutral and use inoffensive words
like "bank snafu" and "technical glitch" as opposed to more
interesting words like "deadbeat," and "where's my damn money?"

I even told her about the cable guy and
yesterday's disconnection.

When I finished, Mrs. Parker made a noise of
sympathy and said, "Chloe, I am
so
sorry. I can only imagine
what you must think of us."

Me? She should've heard what Grandma thought
of them.

"Well," I said in a carefully neutral tone,
"I didn't know what was going on, so I figured I should call and
see if you knew anything."

"Oh yeah," she said with a little laugh. "Do
I ever."

I waited.

"Okay, she said, "the good news is this. I
just got off the phone with our financial manager, and he knows
exactly what happened."

"What?" I asked.

"Long story, but if you think
I'm
embarrassed, you should talk to him. He's got this new assistant,
wife's brother, if you can believe it. Anyway, this brother-in-law
of his missed a whole series of bank transfers, including
ours."

"What do you mean missed them?"

"He didn't make them. He went out to lunch or
something, who knows?"

"Oh wow."

"Wow is right. But don't worry," she said.
"The money should be there the day after tomorrow, or the day after
that at the latest. I'm glad you called. Otherwise, it might've
been days before we figured it out."

"Oh. That's good."

"And listen," she said. "I know this must've
been a major inconvenience for you. And I feel just terrible. So
does my husband. Tell you what. I'm going to send you a little
bonus, not just for the bank fees, but to buy yourself something
nice – like a day at the spa. And don't you dare say 'no.' "

I wasn't planning on it.

But I did thank her, trying hard to banish
the lingering worry. In a couple days, this would all be over,
right? And the way it sounded, I might actually come out ahead in
the long run.

But somehow, until the money was actually
there, it felt like a burden more than anything.

It wasn't until later that night that
something struck me as kind of odd. During our whole conversation,
she hadn't asked me one thing about Chucky.

At eight o'clock the next morning, the
doorbell rang, sending Chucky into his usual spaz attack, barking
and running up and down the stairs.

Since I worked nights, I almost never woke up
before ten, mostly because it tended to majorly screw up my sleep
schedule the next time I worked. But when I peeked out the guest
room window and saw a sleek red sports car idling in the driveway,
I felt myself smile.

I didn't recognize the vehicle, but
considering Lawton's travel schedule, I had a pretty good guess who
it belonged to. I dashed to the bathroom and gargled some mouthwash
while I ran a quick brush through my hair.

Eager to catch him before he drove off, I
snapped on Chucky's leash and answered the door in what I'd slept
in – a thin yellow tank top and black silky shorts.

Except it wasn't Lawton.

It was some slick-looking guy in his
mid-forties. He wore dark sunglasses, expensive looking slacks, and
a designer sports coat.

His eyebrows furrowed. "Mrs. Parker?" he
said.

My smile faded. I was getting a little tired
of people calling me that.

Plus, I felt like a major dumb-ass. Whenever
I thought it was Lawton at the door, it turned out to be someone
else. And whenever I expected it to be someone else, it turned out
to be Lawton.

If this kept up, I was going to develop a
serious door-opening phobia.

Near my feet, Chucky had his tongue hanging
out and his head cocked to the side. It was almost like he was also
trying to figure out what some stranger was doing on our doorstep,
particularly a stranger without doggie treats or bacon.

The man's gaze dipped to my attire, making me
feel all the more stupid for answering without looking. But in my
defense, my brain was still asleep, even if my body wasn't. The guy
was lucky I hadn't answered the door in a ratty bathrobe.

"Did I come at a bad time?" he said.

Hell yes, it was a bad time. What kind of
person showed up on someone's doorstep unannounced at eight o'clock
in the morning?

I pulled out my best upper-crust voice. "May
I ask what this is about?"

"Well, quite honestly," he said, "I'm a
little surprised you're still here."

I raised my eyebrows. "Pardon?"

"I was under the impression," he said, "that
the house would be vacant."

"I'm sorry," I said in a distinctly
unapologetic tone. "But why on Earth would you think that?"