Pushing aside a mound of paperwork awaiting my signature, I located my desk calendar and a pen. “Absolutely. I’ll speak with Sam about that later today and then get back to you on a time and date ASAP. I’m thinking too that a few catchy words to appeal to moms and dads will round it out perfectly.”

  “And that’s why we love working with you, Tobi.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” I returned the phone to its cradle, made a note to myself to reach out to Sam, and then turned my attention to the papers now scattered across my desk. One by one, I added my signature to the bottom of several invoices and a handful of checks. When I was sure I had them all, I stacked them into a neat pile, carried them out to JoAnna’s desk, and deposited them in her otherwise empty inbox.

  Feeling accomplished, I headed back toward my office, carefully avoiding the spare office lest I get sucked into a conversation. Still, as I passed by, I sneaked a look inside.

  Grandpa Stu was at the computer, pointing at something on the screen, while JoAnna wrote something down in his favorite marble notebook. I gave in to the smile the sight of them birthed and returned to my office. A glance at the clock showed I had just over an hour to draw up a mock brochure for Pizza Adventure utilizing my slogans and Sam’s photographs.

  I spent that hour hunched over the draft table in the corner of my office, moving pictures, changing angles, and experimenting with fonts, grateful for the distraction the design work provided.

  This was when I was at peace—when I was working with words and pictures, trying to find the best way to reach a reader or a viewer or a listener. It was as if I was putting together a puzzle of sorts. With just the right pieces in just the right places, I could motivate a person to attend an event, make a call, purchase an item, et cetera, et cetera.

  Pizza Adventure was the first multi-destination restaurant of its kind in the St. Louis area, if not the entire country. It was up to Gina and Dom to make the experience one their customers wouldn’t forget. It was up to me to make sure Gina and Dom had that chance.

  When the mock-up was exactly what I wanted, I tossed my pencil onto the table and stretched my arms above my head, the stiffness in my back and shoulders my punishment for sitting in one place for too long. I slipped off the stool and wandered into the hallway, the familiar tapping of JoAnna’s keyboard (and the image of the candy jar to its right) calling me for a visit.

  “Well, I think the Palettis are going to be very, very happy.” I stopped in front of JoAnna’s desk and stretched again. “Oh. Wow. I was at it a long time.”

  “If you’re happy, then it was worth it, yes?” JoAnna paused her fingers long enough to give me a once-over. “You might want to run a brush through your hair before your meeting. You’re looking a wee bit disheveled.”

  “Lack of sugar.”

  JoAnna made a face. “That’s a new one.”

  “Gotta keep things fresh around here.” I pointed at the candy jar. “May I?”

  I think she nodded, though I’m not entirely sure. The second I spied the bag of red jellybeans through the side of the glass jar, I was a goner. But as I pulled off the lid and reached inside, it hit me that the spare room had been empty as I’d walked by.

  “Where’s my grandfather?”

  JoAnna began typing again. “He went out.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “No.” JoAnna stopped, hit the RETURN button a few times, and then looked up. “I just know he rushed out of the office and made a beeline for the front door. When I asked him if everything was okay, he said he’d be in touch.”

  “He’d be in touch?”

  “That’s what he said.” JoAnna started to type but stopped before she’d tapped out more than a handful of words. “Oh, and he has his magnifying glass with him.”

  “His magnifying glass?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Hmmm . . .” I fished out the bag of jelly beans, ripped open the top, and popped three or four (okay, more like six) into my mouth. “E ound omething, idn’t e?”

  JoAnna’s fingers continued to fly across the keyboard even as she looked up at me with a semi-amused eye roll. “Swallow and then try again.”

  I did. “He found something, didn’t he?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He found something when he was snooping around on the computer, didn’t he?”

  She stopped typing, replaced the candy jar lid I’d left on her desk, and shrugged. “I was out here, he was in there, so I can’t say for sure. But he had his notebook with him.”

  Yup. Grandpa Stu was on the hunt.

  I reached a finger between my neck and the collar of my blouse and tugged. “Is it getting hot in here?”

  “I’m sure he’s fine, Tobi.”

  I waited for JoAnna’s calm to become mine, but it wasn’t happening. “Maybe I should give him a call and make sure he isn’t doing something that’ll get him—”

  “Hello, hello, sorry we’re late.” Gina Paletti breezed into JoAnna’s office, her fingers making short work of the buttons on her coat. “Dom forgot to fill the quarter slot in the car, so I had to dump out my purse to find enough to feed the meter out front.”

  Dom ambled up behind her, shaking his head with each step. “And if you’ve ever looked inside my wife’s purse, you can imagine the undertaking it was to put everything back inside when she was done.”

  “Oh, quit your belly achin’, would you?” Gina slipped out of her coat, hung it on the coatrack across from JoAnna’s desk, and then clapped her hands together. “Oooh, I am so excited to see what you’ve come up with, Tobi!”

  I saw the smile on JoAnna’s face and knew it was mirrored on my own. Dom and Gina were the quintessential dream clients. The fact that they had deep pockets was simply the icing on the proverbial cake.

  JoAnna rose to her feet, came around her desk, and held her hands out for Dom’s coat. “I’ll hang that up so you can get started. In the meantime, can I get you both something to drink? Some coffee? Tea? Water?”

  The quintessential dream clients being fawned over by the quintessential dream secretary . . .

  Really, could I get any luckier?

  Wait. Yes, yes I could. I could know specifics of my grandfather’s whereabouts.

  The sudden silence in the room startled me back into the present just in time to find Gina eying me curiously.

  Uh-oh.

  “Shall we get to it?” I asked. At Gina’s emphatic nod and Dom’s shrug, I gestured them down the hall toward my office. When they were safely past, I glanced back at JoAnna. “Can you see if you can reach him? Maybe try to get him to tell you where he is and what he’s doing?”

  “As soon as I get their coffee taken care of, tracking down Stu is top on my list.”

  “Thank you, JoAnna.”

  * * *

  “I take it that went well?”

  I swiveled back around to my desk and motioned JoAnna over to the chair most recently inhabited by Gina Paletti. “They loved it—and by loved it, I mean loved it.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.” My chair squeaked as I leaned forward against my desk. “So? Did you track him down?”

  “I did.”

  Something inside my stomach flipped and then flopped. “And?”

  “He is—or was—at Starwood Studios.”

  I forced my lower jaw back into place. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “He didn’t say.” JoAnna, being JoAnna, matched my lean. Only her lean had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the fact my desk was a complete mess. In a flurry of movement, papers were piled, my calendar/blotter was spun around to face me, and the plate of cookies she’d brought in with the coffee at the start of my meeting were unearthed from beneath Gina’s scarf.

  Oops.

  “Can you give Gina a call and let her know I’ll get her scarf back to her just as soon as possible?” At JoAnna’s nod, I moved on. “So what, exactly, did he say?”

  “He said he’s on the case . . . knocking on doors . . . looking under rocks . . . poking sticks in cages.”

  I dropped my head into my hand. “Ay yi yi.”

  “Who knows, maybe he’ll turn up something that will actually help.”

  “Or maybe I’ll get a call from the St. Louis PD asking me if I know the bald man tippy-toeing around Starwood Studios with a magnifying glass in one hand and a pilfered donut from the Green Room in the other.”

  JoAnna held the last remaining cookie out for me to take, and once I took it, she rose to her feet and turned toward the hallway. “I’ll be sure to patch the police department through to you if they call.”

  “You mean when they call.” I shoved the cookie in my mouth and hurled myself back against my chair with a sigh. I needed a plan. Something that could keep my grandfather occupied during the day while I was at work . . .

  What that something was, I had no idea. But even a plan to have a plan was better than no plan at all.

  That’s what I was trying to convince myself of when a soft tapping at my door broke through my woolgathering and shifted my focus back to my open doorway.

  “Gina—hi!” I pushed back my chair and stood. “I guess you’re here to get your scarf ?”

  “That’s what I told Dom, yes. But it was all just a ruse to be able to have a little time alone with you.” Gina stepped all the way into my office, pointed at the open door, and, at my nod, pushed it closed. “Now we can talk.”

  I felt my stomach flip again. “Is-is everything okay? Did you decide you don’t like the ad?”

  “The ad is perfect, dear. Absolutely perfect.” Finger by finger, Gina pulled off her right glove and her left glove and then slid them into the pocket of her coat. Once they were safely tucked inside, she removed her coat as well. “But work isn’t everything, is it?”

  Unsure of what to say, I simply sat there and waited.

  Gina lowered herself to the chair, her eyes fixed on mine. “I realize I give Dom a hard time as a matter of routine, but that’s just the way we are with each other. But there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. You believe that, right?”

  “Gina, all anyone has to do is look at you to know you love your husband. It’s written all over your face.”

  Gina beamed. “That’s the way it is when you’re with the right person. You’re happy, you’re at peace, you feel . . . safe to be yourself.”

  I grabbed a pen out of my upper desk drawer and turned it between my fingers. “It sounds lovely.”

  “You say that like you’ve never experienced it.”

  “You mean being with the right person?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re right, I haven’t.”

  Gina looked left, right, and then over her shoulder at the closed door before looking back at me. “I couldn’t say this when Dom was here. If I had, he’d have told me to mind my own business. And maybe I should. But I’m not wired to stay silent when I see a mistake unfolding right in front of my eyes. I just can’t do it.”

  To say I was confused would be an understatement. To say I wasn’t wishing for a brand-new plate of cookies to appear on my desk to help with that confusion would be a fabrication.

  I pressed the intercom button on the side of my phone, and when JoAnna responded in her usual cheery way, I requested a refill—stat. When I was confident she understood the gravity of the situation, I left her to the task and turned my attention back to Gina.

  “You were saying?” I prompted, despite the warning bells sounding in my skull to simply stay quiet.

  “You’ve done so much to help Dom and me with the restaurant these past few weeks that I want to return the favor and help you.”

  “Gina, you and Dom have a really great thing in this restaurant. It’s an honor to be part of it.”

  “Well, I think you and your young man have a really great thing too. And that’s why I want to help make things right for the two of you.”

  I tried to make sense of what I was hearing through the roar in my ears. JoAnna’s knock and subsequent cookie delivery did little to help.

  “Now, before you remind me that I’ve never met him—you’re right. I haven’t. But I saw your smile before, and I’ve seen your”— Gina used her fingers to simulate air quotes—“smile since whatever went wrong between the two of you, and it’s clear you’re hurting.”

  I shifted my focus to JoAnna and tried my best to send her the universal Get me out of this signal, but the rat fink deliberately avoided eye contact with me right up until the moment she started to pull the door shut in her wake. Then and only then did she nod at me and mouth the words, Gina is right.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I checked Starwood Studios—nothing.

  I checked Fletcher’s Newsstand—nothing.

  I checked Central West End Perks—nothing.

  I checked all of the other places I thought my grandfather might be (including, I’m horrified to say, Ms. Rapple’s place)—nothing.

  I knew I shouldn’t be worried. My grandfather, after all, was a grown man. But he didn’t always make good choices (hello . . . Ms. Rapple). Add in the fact he fancied himself the lead character in the new detective show Spyglass Escapades, and, well, I couldn’t help but worry at least a little.

  Slipping my key into the front lock, I twisted my hand to the right and listened closely for anything resembling a sound—the pop of the toaster, the jingle of a television commercial, the chortle that came from the ever-shrinking comics section in the daily paper. But, once again, there was nothing.

  I stepped all the way through the door, tossed my key onto the tiny table that served as my catchall for important things, and then froze. For there, sitting at my surprisingly clean draft table was Grandpa Stu.

  “Grandpa, where on earth have you been? I’ve been looking all over for you!”

  His bald head swiveled on his neck as he turned to look at me. I met his eyes and then dropped my own to his hand and the pen clutched tightly between his fingers. “I’ve been doing my job.”

  I flung my backpack onto the couch and quickly peeled off my coat. “And what job is that? Making me hunt all over the Central West End for you?”

  “Investigating that woman’s murder.”

  “Ahhh, I see. And? Get anything good?” I crossed into the kitchen only to retrace my last few steps in the interest of manners. “Would you like something to eat? Maybe some crackers and cheese?”

  I did a mental inventory of my pantry. “Actually, scratch that. I don’t have crackers and cheese. Or really much of anything. I’ll get to the store sometime this evening, I promise. In the interim though, I do have Cocoa Puffs . . .”

  “You ever just get a feeling?” Grandpa Stu returned his attention to whatever held it when I first entered. “Something that don’t sit right the second you see a person?”

  It was on the tip of my tongue to mention Ms. Rapple, but I refrained. Instead, I ventured all the way into the kitchen and flung open the food cabinet. Sure enough, the cupboard was bare—except, of course, for my old trusty standby. Grabbing the open box, I carried it back into the living room and offered some to my grandfather.

  “I got one of them today.”

  I felt my heart swell with pride. “You got another box of Cocoa Puffs?”

  “No. A feeling. I got a feeling about someone today.”

  My heart sank as my grandfather took three large helpings of puffs and then handed me back the almost-empty box. It was hard to focus on anything besides what was quickly becoming an emergency grocery run, but I tried. It was that or risk hyperventilating.

  “Let me guess: Ms. Rapple?”

  I must have said it more quietly than I realized because Grandpa Stu turned back to the table, pulled his magnifying glass out of his shirt’s front pocket, and slowly moved it down the open page of his notebook. “How well do you know the people at that studio?”

  I crunched a few puffs and shrugged. “I guess as well as you’d know anyone you’ve met a few times in a professional environment . . .” The words fell away as my brain narrowed in on the specifics of his question. “Wait. You’re talking about Starwood, aren’t you? Please, please, please tell me you weren’t snooping around.”

  “I wasn’t snooping around.”

  “Thank God.” The chorus of hallelujahs in my head accompanied my buttocks onto the armrest of the couch. “You almost gave me a—”

  “Now, do you want me to keep telling you something that isn’t true, or would you rather I shoot it straight so we can get to the part that matters most?”

  The hallelujahs transitioned to something far less hallelujah-like, and I felt my palms start to sweat. “What made you go there? Alone?”

  “It’s where she was killed, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “And you knew I was doing a little behind-the-scenes investigating today. It’s why I went to the agency with you, remember?”

  I started to share the real reason I’d taken him to work with me, but the mere image of my grandfather and Ms. Rapple potentially canoodling in my apartment was bad enough. Putting it out to the universe via the spoken word was downright nauseating (and considering my current food situation, I couldn’t afford to lose even so much as a morsel to the porcelain god).

  “I know,” I finally said. “But I thought you were going to do your snooping over the Internet—you know, looking up background on Fiona, seeing if you could find anything on Rachel, that sort of thing. I had no idea it was going to involve showing up on the doorstep of people I work with.”

  Grandpa wiggled his bushy eyebrows at me. “If you’re worried, Sugar Lump, I kept my clothes on the whole time I was there.”

  “Your clothes? Why on earth would I think otherwise?”

  “I thought maybe you’d heard . . . things. From one of my fellow Sexy Seniors, maybe?”

  I held up my hands, crossing guard style. “I don’t want to know, Grandpa. I really don’t.”

  “You don’t want to know I’m kidding?” he teased.

  “Are you?”

 

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