“You. Are. The. Devil!” I yelled as she flounced out the door.
Chapter Twelve
• • •
Around nine thirty I decided that Candice was on a mission to kill me. She put me through a series of box jumps, squats, kettlebell swings, wall balls, push-ups, leg pistols, and pull-ups that would’ve made Arnold Schwarzenegger cry uncle.
Mostly, I just cried.
Finally, when my legs gave out and I crumpled to the floor, she gave me a reprieve and let me crawl to the locker room to throw up. (True story.) When I emerged on quaking legs, she handed me a bottled water and said, “You’re starting to look good, Sundance.”
“Shut it, Huckleberry,” I groused, snatching the water bottle from her hands. After taking a big gulp, I wiped my mouth with the back of my arm and added, “I hate you.”
For some reason this delighted Candice, and she chuckled. “Come on,” she said. “Let me buy you breakfast.”
I wanted to grumble and complain some more, but honestly I was barely able to move. Everything hurt. Then we had breakfast—healthy of course—and the oddest thing happened. I felt great. Like, great.
Granted, I was seeeeriously sore, but there was something going on in my brain that was telling me life was wonderful! People were awesome! Exercise was fun!
Clearly, Candice had ruined me.
And I totes would’ve told her so, except I felt too happy, bubbly, and full of energy to waste time on any of that.
I did manage to say, however, “I don’t know what’s happening to me, Candice. I feel like I could hug you, and I’m actually looking forward to what we might do in the gym tomorrow.”
She grinned and lifted her teacup. “Welcome to the endorphins, Sundance. Enjoy the high.”
Later, after I’d showered and changed, I left Candice hovered over her computer and went out to get a much-needed pedicure.
If there is anything I believe in, it’s that pedicures are one of the best things ever invented. For me it’s less about the well-manicured toes and soft, smooth feet, and more about the fact that for an hour I’m being pampered in one of the best little ways possible. I mean, that foot massage alone . . . right?
Lucky me, after consulting Yelp, I found a place that came highly recommended just a few exits up the highway.
Unlucky me, L.A. drivers are a totally unforgiving lot, and no one would let me over to take the exit, so I ended up getting seriously lost and finally managed to barrel myself over to an exit and pulled into a large parking lot for an open-air mall. When my heart stopped pounding from the ordeal on the highway, I looked around. The place was really charming, and I wondered if there was a nail salon nearby. After consulting my phone again, I did a little whoop-whoop when I discovered one located directly in the mall.
After navigating the pedestrian traffic to the center of the shopping plaza, I looked up the salon’s location and found it just ten steps away. “Score!” I said as I moseyed on over to the salon.
After entering, I stood near the door and waited for a mother and daughter to be shown to a pair of twin chairs with footbaths before stepping up to the counter. “Hi,” I said to the woman behind the counter. “I’d like a pedicure, please?”
“You have an appointment?” she asked.
“Um, no,” I admitted. “Do I need one?”
She smiled tightly. “We prefer it, but I think we can squeeze you in. Sign in here.” Pushing a clipboard toward me with a sign-in sheet attached, she added, “Pick out a color and take a seat over there. We’ll call you as soon as we have a nail tech available.”
I surveyed the rows of nail polish and finally selected a gorgeous deep blue gel polish, then took a seat to wait.
The place wasn’t crowded, but all the nail techs seemed to be busy. It appeared I was going to have to wait a little while, so I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.
For some reason, the dream I’d had the night before came back into my mind. It’d been a very odd dream as they go, but my intuitive brain so often speaks in pictures that it was probably worth spending a little time trying to figure it out.
I thought about the bathtub setting first. Being in warm soothing waters in dreams is often a symbol for the womb and being surrounded by a protective motherly energy. My own mother is a narcissistic sociopath (yes, I said it; don’t judge—she fits the psychological definition to a T), so I doubted that the tub represented her, and yet, I wondered about it because it felt like I should be getting the symbolism.
“Creation, maybe?” I muttered to myself.
That didn’t feel right either, so I moved on to some of the other elements. The vine growing out of the faucet was interesting, and that it had money for leaves was quite mysterious. Money on trees would be more obvious, but this was definitely a vine. My mind drew a blank as to the meaning, especially when the vine was severed at the base and it began to bleed into the water.
After several minutes of trying to puzzle it out, I frowned and opened my eyes again. I couldn’t seem to tweeze out anything meaningful that made sense to me about the literal meaning of the dream.
And the urge to solve its riddle was intense. I couldn’t seem to let it go.
Frustrated, I got up and paced a little in the small waiting area. Right around the time I was going to sit down again, the woman at the counter called my name and showed me to a footbath next to the mother and daughter who’d come in just ahead of me.
Grateful for the distraction, I shook off my sandals and took up my seat, placing my bare feet in the tub and relishing the warm bubbly water that began to fill the basin.
The woman who’d shown me to the chair turned on the chair’s back massager and I leaned into it and moaned, “Yeah, that’s the stuff.”
The woman next to me chuckled. “These massage chairs are the best, right?”
“They’re heaven,” I said, looking over to smile at her. She was a lovely-looking woman: tan and blond with bright blue eyes that sparkled when she smiled. Trying to make conversation, I took note of her toes, which were colored a deep burgundy. “Oh, wow, that’s a gorgeous shade.”
She wiggled them and said, “Thank you. My daughter”—she paused to motion with her head toward the teenager next to her—“thinks it’s a shade that old ladies wear, but I like it.”
“I think it’s perfect,” I told her. “I’m going for blue today.”
“Blue is the new black,” she said. “Next year I hear it’ll be all about the browns.”
I made a face. “Brown nail polish?”
“That’s what I read in Cosmo. It’ll be lots of bronzes and coppers and chocolates mixed in for variety.”
“A nice bronze would be cool,” I said, rethinking my position on brown nail polish.
“With your skin tone, it’d look great on you.” The friendly stranger then took note of the time on her phone and said, “Oh, gosh, I’ve got to go. I have to get to the bank and then the grocery store, and I’m a little nervous about going to the bank. It was robbed a couple of weeks ago in broad daylight!”
“No way!” I said, shocked that she’d mentioned the very robbery I was investigating. In the back of my mind I felt my radar give a tiny ping.
“It was,” she said, nodding for emphasis. “Criminals are so bold these days. Well, have a great time wearing your cool new shade.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You too!”
She began to get up, pausing only long enough to glance over at her daughter, who was too distracted by her phone to notice what was going on around her. “Come on, Ivy. We have to go.”
My radar went, PING! PING!
And just as I was trying to put the pieces together, the woman knocked the little pedicure table with her heel, and her burgundy nail polish tipped over, hit the floor, and broke into pieces, sending droplets of burgundy flying.
“Oh, my God!” s
he cried. “Oh! I’m so sorry!”
Three nail techs rushed over and literally within seconds they had helped the woman away from the broken glass and had most of the nail polish swept up.
Meanwhile I was processing everything in seeming slow motion, and just when the woman and her daughter were leaving, I happened to glance down at the water and noticed several burgundy droplets of nail polish in my footbath.
“Holy . . . ,” I whispered.
“Hello,” said one of the nail techs, sitting down in front of me, pulling on a set of latex gloves. “Is that the color you’d like to wear today?”
“I . . . ,” I said, looking from the door where the mother and daughter had just left, back to the nail tech, then down at my shoes and purse. “I . . . I have to go!”
“You do?” she asked.
I picked my feet up out of the water and tried to fumble for my shoes, but they were too far away. Glancing back toward the glass door, I could no longer see the mom and the girl. “Shit!” I said, hopping fully out of the bath and grabbing my sandals and purse. Not even pausing to put them on, I sort of hopped my way to the door. “Miss!” someone behind me called, but I didn’t slow down. As I got my hand on the door, however, I thought of something. “Damn,” I whispered, and turned quickly around to grab the clipboard on the counter, yank out the top sheet with all the names, and bolt out the door.
There was a squawk behind me as the woman behind the counter realized what I’d just done, but I certainly wasn’t going to slow down and explain myself now. Hopping along, I tried to put on my shoes and find the woman and daughter duo at the same time. This didn’t work well, so I took two seconds to shove my feet into the sandals, then take off in the direction the pair had gone in.
Luck was with me and I spotted them just entering a department store. I hustled myself closer, then hung back slightly to make sure they didn’t spot me tailing them.
Luck was with me again when they emerged from the department store into the very same parking lot that I’d parked in. Their car was one row over from mine, and as soon as I saw which vehicle they were headed toward, I bolted over to the rental SUV, started the engine, and hauled ass out of the slot.
I caught sight of the mother and daughter again near the top of the lot, and hung back again to see which way they’d go.
They turned left onto a busy street, which presented a few tense moments for me because I had to wait for an opening in traffic to follow them, but at last I was able to zip into a lane and weave my way forward to tail the pair all the way to the bank.
Just as I’d suspected, it ended up being one of the branches on the list that’d been hit by the burglars. What these two could possibly have to do with the bank robberies I didn’t know, but there was no way my dream could mean anything else. The water bath, the girl named “Ivy,” the burgundy droplets that resembled blood in the water. My dream was about them, and I had to follow them to figure out why my intuition was pushing me in their direction.
I waited in my car while the mom pulled around the back of the bank to use the drive-through teller. There was only one exit out of the bank, so I wasn’t worried I’d lose her, and I took that time to glance at the sign-in sheet.
It appeared that the mom’s name was Cindy, and she and her daughter, Ivy, shared the last name of Clawson. At the very least I had their last names and if nothing came of following them around for a bit, then I could have Candice look them up and see what was what.
And that’s sort of what happened. They came out of the bank, took a right, and drove north until they landed in the lot of a grocery store. I continued to keep my discreet distance from them, and waited a little impatiently for the pair to come out of the store, trying not to give in to the urge to leave the car in search of a restroom.
At last I spotted the Clawsons coming out of the entrance with a grocery cart full of bags and I breathed a sigh of relief. They’d go straight home, especially if they had anything perishable in their bags, which of course they would have.
As they neared their car, however, another woman approached and they stopped to chat with her. I was a little annoyed (I had to pee), but then I realized that the woman they were speaking to looked very familiar. I sat forward and stared out the windshield at the trio. “Holy freakballs,” I said softly. “That’s Mrs. Edwards!”
Sure enough, the woman Candice and I had seen yelling at her husband the night before was busy chatting it up with Mrs. Clawson and her daughter. As I looked on, however, I could see nothing sinister in their meeting. There wasn’t anything covert or obviously suspicious—no furious glances to the side to see who might be around or listening—just two suburban moms chatting happily away.
For her part Ivy looked bored to tears—so . . . normal for a girl her age—and while her mom and Mrs. Edwards gabbed on, she pulled out her phone and did that double-thumb texting thing that teenagers are so good at. (I’m a one-finger tapper when it comes to texting, but I still manage to get the job done.)
At last the women parted and for a moment I was caught wondering which one to follow. Should I stick with the Clawsons, or wait to see where Mrs. Edwards might take me?
In the end, I chose the Clawsons. I mean, I’d followed them this far.
After loading their groceries, they made their way to the main road, then took a turn into a subdivision, and I followed, all the while trying to hang back a little in case Mrs. Clawson caught on that she had a tail.
She never gave any indication that she did, though, and soon she pulled into the driveway of a modest two-story house with a tile roof and camel-colored stucco. A large palm tree graced the front yard, and as discreetly as I could, I took a photo of the place while driving by; then I stopped at the end of the street to pull up the map app on my phone. Pinning the Clawsons’ address, I made my way around the block and tried to figure out how to get out of the sub. I hadn’t really paid a lot of attention to the way in, as I was too focused on staying back a ways and avoiding Mrs. Clawson’s suspicions.
I should’ve consulted the map, because within two more turns I realized I was pretty lost, and muttered an expletive while I tried to find an inconspicuous place to pull over and look at the map function again. I made one more turn and that’s when I hit the brakes. There, in front of me, was the clearing above the La Cañada Flintridge Sun Coast Bank branch.
“No way!” I said.
Unsure what to make of it all, I wound my way down from the hilltop and back onto a road I recognized. I wasted no more time after that getting the hell back to the hotel room.
I found Candice on the phone, curled up on her bed and twirling a strand of hair. No doubt the person on the other end was Brice. She only gets soft and gushy over him.
She held up a finger to let me know she’d be off in a minute, and I waved to her to take her time, ducking into the bathroom while she finished up her call.
After taking care of business, I came out and saw that she was still on the phone, and while I was anxious to tell her everything that’d happened since leaving the room, I also recognize how important it is to stay connected with your hubby. So I grabbed the hotel’s complimentary notepad, and left her to some privacy and her call.
I would’ve sat down right outside in the hallway, but housekeeping was coming through with their big carts and I didn’t want to get in their way. Skipping the stairwell (my quads were on fire), I used the elevator to get to the lobby, and sat there for ten minutes jotting notes to myself about what I’d discovered. Then I drew a sketch of my dream with the vine and the bathtub. After I was finished, I had to admire my handiwork; the sketch had come out better than expected.
“Hey,” Candice said, and my head jerked up.
“Hi! I didn’t expect you to come down here. I would’ve come back up.”
“Don’t sweat it,” she said. “Housekeeping is cleaning the room and I needed a break.??
?
“Did you leave a tip?” I asked. I always tip the hotel maids. I mean, I can’t even imagine some of the disgusting things they clean up after on a daily basis.
“Yes,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Only assholes don’t tip housekeeping.”
I smiled and patted the chair next to me. “Come. Sit. I have much to tell.”
Candice sat down and cocked a curious eyebrow. “You have much to tell from a pedicure?” Then she glanced down at my toes. “I’m guessing you got sidetracked, because those toes do not look pampered.”
“They’re not,” I said, and quickly explained what’d happened from the time I’d missed my exit, got lost, and found another nail salon, which had fortuitously put me smack-dab next to the Clawsons.
Candice shook her head at the end of my tale like she couldn’t believe it. “How bizarre is it that you ended up next to the people represented in your dream? That’s seriously freaky. Even for you that’s seriously freaky.”
“I know, right? I swear, someone from my crew really wants me to solve this case and they put me in the right spot at the right time.” My “crew” is the word I use to describe the various spirit guides and deceased relatives who every so often give me a little intuitive guidance.
“Your crew?” Candice repeated. “Hell, why don’t you just ask them who robbed the bank, since they’re being so helpful?”
I smirked. “It doesn’t work like that.”
Candice crossed her arms. “How come every time we could really use some specific and direct help from them, you say, ‘It doesn’t work like that’?”
I shrugged. “Because it just doesn’t. I mean, I’d love to have all the answers, but life is meant to be a challenge. We’re meant to work at things and try to figure them out. If the answers all came easy, no way would we learn nearly as much as we need to.”
Candice didn’t look appeased by my answer. “Even when it comes to innocent lives being taken? Even then they’re not going to help us?”