“I did both those things.” Fiji sat down opposite Olivia. She didn’t exactly feel defensive, but she definitely felt wary. “So?”
“Hey, I’m not critical! Because it turns out that the Reeds seem to have come here to spy on me.”
This was unexpected news. “Sure you’re not being paranoid?” Fiji asked gently. “Because he searched my house.”
Olivia gaped at her. “Really? But I have to tell you, I’m pretty sure he’s here because of my family.”
“You have a—an unpleasant family background?”
“Yeah. I’ve got family issues. No big surprise there, huh?” Olivia’s smile was bitter.
“Don’t we all? You met my sister.” Fiji waited for further revelations. This was sure a day for them.
“She was a piece of work, sure enough. But my father . . . well, he’s rich and he’s powerful. So it’s most probable the Reeds are working for my dad.”
“It might not be your dad?” Fiji was dazzled. The mysterious Olivia was finally unburdening herself.
“My father has a right-hand man, Ellery McGuire. My father would never believe it, but Ellery has been trying for years to position himself to take over the company. My dad is old, and he never has been great at inspiring love and loyalty; I’ll just put it that way. My brother is dead, killed a few years ago in a ski accident.”
“I never knew you had a brother,” Fiji said, spellbound by the sudden spate of revelation. “Your family’s really rich?” She thought that explained a lot about Olivia’s confidence level. And maybe her ruthlessness.
“Yeah. Really, really rich.” Olivia nodded.
“And you don’t hang with them because?”
“Because when I was really young, my stepmother and her boyfriends molested me. And she made me call her ‘Mother’ while she did it.”
“That sucks more than I can imagine. What happened to your real mother?”
“She and Dad got divorced and she remarried. She had some issues with alcohol—surprise, surprise. That’s why my dad got custody of me. My real mom survived a few years, but then alcohol killed her.”
“Did your dad know? What your stepmother had done?”
“He said he didn’t when I confronted him,” Olivia said, letting her shoulders rise and fall. “Some days, I believe him. Mostly I just hope not.”
Compared to Olivia’s family, Kiki was a walk in the park, Fiji realized. “Is your stepmother still alive?” she asked.
“No.” And Olivia smiled.
Message received, Fiji thought. “So you figure not only your father is looking for you but also this right-hand-of-darkness guy? Ellery McGuire?”
“Yeah. I figure so.”
“How do you hide from someone that rich?”
“It isn’t easy. And, as you can tell, someone has found out where I am because—to get back to the original conversation—that’s why the Reeds are here.”
“To watch you.”
“To watch me.”
“And why are you here in my house, again? Specifically today? Just because I’m mad at Teacher, too?”
“Here’s the deal. I’m sure Manfred told you Teacher hitched a ride with him to Killeen?”
Fiji nodded.
“And he told you that Teacher pumped him for information on the way?”
“I don’t think he mentioned that, no.”
“Well, he did. Asked him a lot of questions. Anyway, Teacher wanted to be let off at this hardware store, because he said he knew the owner really well and the owner was able to get Teacher some really great tools that Teacher needed. That sounds totally made up to me. Why couldn’t the guy mail them to Teacher? Why couldn’t Teacher order them online?”
“So?”
“So, you and I should go to Killeen and find out what we can about this man and about his business.”
“And that will help us how?”
“That will help us know more. And knowing more is always good.”
Hard to argue with that, Fiji thought. “Okay, do we have the name of the store?”
“It’s on San Jacinto Street,” Olivia said. “And the name of the store is Handyman Hardware. It’s been under the management of this man for three years, about the same length of time that the Reeds have been at Home Cookin.”
“Seems like they could have placed someone closer if this store guy’s goal is to support the Reeds,” Fiji said.
“Yeah, well. This is what we’ve got to work with,” Olivia said. “When can we go?”
Fiji looked at her calendar. “I don’t want to work tomorrow, anyway,” she said recklessly. “Let’s go then. What are you planning on doing to this man?”
“We’ll wing it,” Olivia said, smiling a very unpleasant smile.
They left early on Saturday morning in Olivia’s anonymous gray car. Fiji figured Olivia would experience a backlash after telling her so much about her life, so she was prepared for Olivia to be extra snarly during the ride. To her surprise and pleasure, Olivia seemed more relaxed than she’d ever been in Fiji’s company.
Fiji thought, It’s almost like being with a real friend. The idea startled her; she’d considered Olivia more a companion in a shared experience, as though they’d gone through sorority hazing or a store robbery side by side.
“Have you heard from your sister since she left so abruptly?” Olivia asked.
“My mother called to ask me what I’d done to her,” Fiji said. “She was crying. My mom, that is.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. One of the things Kiki told me was that my dad has Alzheimer’s, and my mom is taking care of him full-time. Kiki wanted to find some excuse not to help her, I think; she separated from her husband before she knew what going back home would mean. Or maybe he threw her out. He’s humping her boss, who fired her for stealing. And he’s gambling. A complicated situation.”
“Some people would be glad to have the chance to take care of their father,” Olivia said, neutrally.
“That wouldn’t be Kiki, and she’s right there and was the favorite daughter,” Fiji said. “If my mom asks me directly, I’ll give her a break for a week.” She felt anything but pleased at the prospect. “My dad isn’t a bad man, but he’s proud, and that’s always made him hard to deal with. Maybe he’s not anymore. I’ve heard the disease makes you the opposite of what you were. It would be really pleasant if Dad was the opposite of the way he was when I was growing up.”
“You could ask this young woman Manfred’s so hot for,” Olivia said. “Estella. She’s a part-time caregiver at the place where our old people are staying.”
“I looked for her when I was there to see Mamie,” Fiji said. “But I didn’t cast eyes on her.”
“If you were there in the afternoon, you wouldn’t. She works at night and goes to classes during the day,” Olivia told her. “She’s a nursing student, I think. I checked up on her.” Olivia said this very casually, as if that were normal procedure.
“I’m glad he’s found someone. Since Creek left the picture.”
“Me, too. Now we need to work on you,” Olivia said.
“Oh, no! No, I’m . . .”
“Crazy about Bobo, I know. And he’s been so broody lately I think he’s screwing himself up to saying something. Did you two have a fight or something? That maybe opened his eyes?”
“We had a falling-out,” Fiji admitted.
“But you’re overlooking another possibility,” Olivia said. She was smiling, too, but she was definitely serious in intent. “The tigers are nuts about you. If you can say tigers are nuts!”
“The Rev?” Fiji was incredulous.
Olivia laughed out loud, which was a sound Fiji had never heard before.
“No, not him. The Quinns, father and son.”
Fiji gaped at Olivia.
“I’m ser
ious,” Olivia said, half-smiling. “You haven’t noticed that John Quinn stays longer and longer when he stops in to visit Diederik?”
“Well, Diederik needs him,” Fiji protested. “That’s why he comes.” But now that she was seeing things through a different lens, she was wondering.
“Riiiiight,” Olivia said, and then wisely held her tongue.
Fiji stared straight forward for a good five minutes, thinking things over, reinterpreting encounters. She shook her head silently a couple of times.
“Of course, Diederik’s too young,” she said.
“Wait around a couple of weeks, he won’t be,” Olivia said, and Fiji laughed involuntarily.
“But I don’t think that’s true, actually,” Fiji said. “Now that he looks in his late teens, it should slow down, Quinn said.”
“Good, because he was going to wrinkle and lose his teeth in a year at that rate of aging.”
“My sister teased me about Diederik, too,” Fiji said. “And she was serious. That is, she was really considering him. But I remember buying him Superman underpants just a few months ago. He’s definitely out of the eligible park. It’s almost like thinking of Grady as a potential future partner.”
“You sure? That Marina at the hotel seems mighty happy. I’m sure she and Diederik are doing the deed, especially after going in there the other night while he was doing janitor work and she was working the desk. I don’t think either of them were exactly working.”
“Why’d you go in?”
“I was being a good neighbor,” Olivia said virtuously. “I noticed one of her tires was low.”
“Did you tell her?”
“Oh, yeah. But I’m not sure if she registered what I was saying or not. They both looked pretty self-conscious.”
“Half of me is saying, ‘Oh gosh no, he’s just a baby,’ and the other half is going, ‘Wowsers.’” Fiji shook her head. “I knew they were, ah, seeing each other, but I guess getting a specific instance makes it more real.”
“Well, Quinn should be conflict-free, because he’s definitely mature.”
“No kidding,” Fiji said, looking self-conscious herself.
“Yeah, I thought so,” Olivia said with some satisfaction. “You can’t be immune to his charm. Forget Bobo!”
“Does everyone in town know I’ve always had a crush on Bobo?”
Olivia nodded. “Maybe the Rev hasn’t picked up on it, but he’s not one to care about the feelings of the heart.”
This had been a remarkable talk for both of them, and just as Fiji was thinking, Wow, have I spilled my guts, Olivia seemed to become aware of the same thing. They both fell silent. Fiji had no regrets. It had been fun to talk woman-to-woman. She felt empowered, though the word made her wince a little.
“I’m just gonna tell him,” she said out loud.
“Sure. Long past due,” Olivia said. “You know, I’m the only regular human in Midnight, aside from the people at the hotel. Oh, and Bobo.”
Where did that come from? Fiji wondered. She fumbled with what to say.
“I’m just human,” Olivia said before Fiji could come up with something. “I’m a drastically bad one. But human.”
“So?”
“No, look. You’re a witch, and I don’t think we know the half of what you can do. The Rev, Diederik, Quinn—weretigers. Chuy and Joe—angels. Lemuel—vampire. Manfred is a psychic. The new guy at the gas station, he seems pretty . . . something, I don’t know.”
Fiji couldn’t figure out why Olivia was making such a point of her own ordinariness. Fiji didn’t think Olivia was ordinary at all. She thought Olivia was a sociopath, but one she could get along with. And she felt a little sorry for Olivia sometimes, while in the same moment she understood that Olivia had lethal skills and no qualms about using them.
“Olivia, you’re complex,” Fiji said. “It’s what you are.”
Olivia laughed again. It was already a red-letter day.
When they reached Killeen, they stopped briefly at a gas station to top off the tank and hit the ladies’ room. With the aid of Olivia’s phone, it wasn’t hard to find San Jacinto Street, which was in the older part of downtown, the part with sidewalks and storefronts and angled parking. Olivia found a space a few doors down from Handyman Hardware. The front door of the store had a cartoon of a very muscular man with his arms crossed over his chest, a hammer in one hand and a drill in the other.
“Cute,” Olivia said. But she wasn’t laughing now.
Fiji pushed open the door. The store was old, too, and the tile floor rose and fell a bit. It was dim in the store’s interior past the plate-glass windows, and no one was in sight, even though the bell over the door had issued an electronic bing-bong.
“Be right there!” called a male voice.
Olivia walked over to a display of mailboxes and open and shut several in an experimental way. Fiji was distracted by an array of planters; she wanted to put one on the cement balustrade on her porch. Geraniums or petunias, she thought, and wished she’d brought a tape measure to determine if the longest planter would fit the space. She was actually surprised when the man appeared.
“Hi, can I help you ladies?” he said. He directed his attention to Fiji, who was closest, but naturally, he glanced at Olivia.
Olivia turned around, and Fiji saw him literally twitch, though his face stayed pleasantly expectant. There was no doubt in Fiji’s mind that this man had recognized Olivia. However, Olivia ignored the twitch and followed the cue of the bland expression. Fiji followed her lead.
“My friend brought me over,” Fiji said, designating herself the main shopper.
“So what are you shopping for today?” he asked. The fingers of his right hand flexed and clenched in a fist.
Fiji glanced around, hoping she was making the scan casual. “Two things,” Fiji said. “I need a hammer that’s not too heavy for me to swing. Also, I’m interested in measuring this sort of window box to see if it’ll fit on my porch.” Behind the man, she could see Olivia nodding vehemently. Yes, she knew him, too. She was just better at hiding it.
“Let’s take care of the hammer first,” he said.
Good. She wanted to get Olivia close to some usable weapons. “By the way, I’m Fiji Cavanaugh,” she said, as she followed him down the aisle to the left.
“Oh. Lucas Evans,” he said.
“Have you lived here long, Lucas?” She strove to sound just interested, not flirtatious. In her own opinion, she hit the sweet spot.
“A few years,” he said casually. “You ladies from around here?”
“Oh, no, we live in Midnight. Little bitty town, you’ve probably never heard of it.”
“And this is the closest hardware store to Midnight?”
“No, there’s one in Davy, and there are two or three in Marthasville,” she said, managing to sound surprised. “But we’re in town to visit a friend, and rather than get there too early, we thought we’d explore greater downtown Killeen before we went to her house.”
“Who are you visiting?”
“Agnes Orta,” Olivia said, not missing a beat. “We know her daughter.”
They stopped in front of a display of hammers that would have delighted Thor himself. Fiji genuinely needed a hammer, and she took her time hefting a few. One of them pleased her, and Lucas Evans assured her it was top-of-the-line. After a glance at the price, Fiji believed him.
When they returned to the front of the store to measure the window box, she handed the hammer to Olivia very naturally before she lifted a trough to feel its weight. Now Olivia was armed; Fiji relaxed.
The hardware store owner was about forty-five, and he had a little gut and a soft brown mustache. He blended in perfectly; he was wearing a western shirt, plaid with snap buttons, and a rodeo belt and Levi’s. Even cowboy boots. He was relaxing, too. Fiji could tell he was sure that Oli
via was ignorant of his true identity.
Evans handed Fiji a metal tape measure that he had worn clipped to his belt. She had to admit to herself that he was good. If it hadn’t been for that initial flinch, she would never have guessed that he was agitated inside. Now that she was tuned to it, she could feel it under his skin.
“I own a small business, too,” she said chattily. “This is a great location. How many customers do you think you get a day?”
“Oh, depends on the season,” Evans said. “Lots in the spring, fewer in the summer. Then in the fall it starts back up, and there’s a boom around Christmas with people putting up lights and decorations and so on, repainting for the holidays. Course, most of them nowadays go to Walmart or Lowe’s or Home Depot.”
“Good to see a small business owner prospering,” Fiji murmured. She double-checked the planter’s measurements and turned to Olivia. “What do you think?” she asked. “Will it fit?”
“On your porch, I think it will,” Olivia said. “But I’m wondering if it’ll fit in my car.”
“I’ll buy it,” Fiji said with decision. “If it doesn’t fit in the car, I’ll ask a friend if I can borrow his pickup.” She paid for her purchases, trying not to wince as she handed over her debit card. She’d need to sell quite a few decks of tarot cards to make up for this shopping excursion.
Fiji and Olivia were about to each take one end of the planter when Lucas volunteered to carry it out to the car. Olivia said brightly, “That would be so great!” She ran ahead to fold the backseat down to accommodate the length of the window box, and Lucas, with a little help from Fiji, managed to slide it in at an angle. It just fit.
“See, it was meant to be,” Olivia said.
“I think you’re right, miss,” Lucas said.
“Oh, I’m a Mrs.!” Olivia told him, with what Fiji could only describe to herself as a coy smile.
Lucas was clearly stunned—and so was Fiji, but she hid it better—for a long moment. Recovering, he said, “Sorry, but I didn’t see a ring.”
Observant, Fiji thought.
“Nope,” Olivia agreed. “I don’t wear one. Neither does he.”