Catherine Nelson - Zoe Grey 02 - The Trouble with Theft (7 page)

He glanced down at me
then laughed.

“I want you to meet
them,” he said after a minute.

We walked to the door
of the ice cream shop, and he pulled it open.

Ellmann’s intimately
familiar with my family after a couple encounters shortly after we met. It
hadn’t gone well, but at least my dirty little secret was out on the table. I’d
never met any of his family. I suppose I hadn’t thought it would never happen,
but I had thought it would be a while longer.

“When are they
coming?” I asked as we got in line.

“Tomorrow.”

I knew my eyes were
bigger than usual when I looked up at him.

“Tomorrow? What kind
of notice is that?”

“He only called me
today. That’s just how he is. My sister will fly in about an hour later. I was
thinking we could all have dinner.”

“Have you told them
about me?”

“Yes, a little.
Please, don’t worry. They’ll love you.”

Naturally. What’s not
to love?

“And on the off chance
they don’t?”

“Doesn’t matter.
There’s a reason I moved to a state where none of my family lives.”

__________

We ate our ice cream at a table on
the sidewalk outside the shop. We chatted about important things and about
nothing. One of my favorite things about Ellmann is how easy it is to be with
him. We don’t always have to be doing something or talking; we could do nothing
and not say a word. We could also do anything or talk about anything. And I
rarely get bored with him. He makes me think; he challenges me, pushes me.
Ellmann’s very intelligent, and I found we are more equally matched than most
people I know.

But brains run in
Ellmann’s family. Ellmann has degrees in science and psychology. His brother is
an engineer. His sister was a chemistry major before she switched to art. Their
father was a scientist for the Army Corps of Engineers until he retired. And their
mother is some sort of biological research scientist for the Center for Disease
Control.

My family didn’t
necessarily get shorted in the brain department, but mental illness runs
rampant on my mother’s side, and there is a long history of abuse on my
father’s. All of this significantly affected the ability of my relatives to
pursue college degrees and honest, meaningful careers. My mother somehow
managed to get an MBA and become a partner in her investment firm, but she was
the exception to the rule, and I can’t even begin to guess how she managed to
do it. It probably had something to do with the fact that the schizophrenia
that runs in the family had skipped over her. She got bipolar disorder instead.
By some miracle, both my brother and I seemed to be unaffected, but this is a
constant fear in the back of my mind.

I sat opposite Ellmann
facing north. I watched the heavy foot traffic in and out of Starbucks over his
shoulder. This Starbucks store is located in the old, historic Northern Hotel.
Yesterday’s Ice Cream Shoppe and a couple other places share the space. The
hotel is located on the north side of Old Town and just west of Old Town
Square. There are always lots of people in this area, and today the place was
hopping, with an almost constant string of people in and out. I could see
customers milling around through the windows, but the number of people and my
angle made it hard to differentiate anyone in particular.

“Got your capture
papers?” Ellmann asked as he took his last bite.

I nodded. “Yep.”

“All right, then.
Let’s go get him.”

We stood.

“You can’t help me.”

“I’m just going for a
cup of coffee.”

We dumped our trash
and walked to the corner. The place was crazy. Every table I could see was
occupied. The line to place orders reached to the door. The line to pick up
orders was just as long. I attempted to politely make my way through the crowd,
but people pretended not to see me and didn’t move, afraid I was really trying
to cut in line. People tended to move out of Ellmann’s way just because of his
size—some instinctive fear of being flattened by a mountain. But I’d never
given Ellmann much room to play rescuer to me, and I didn’t think now was the
time to start. If I could save myself from kidnappers, I could get through a
little crowd, right? Instead, I used my elbows to shove people out of the way,
like I was making my way to the bar for a drink.

There were a couple
gasps, a few curses, a couple return shoves, but I paid no attention. When I
was near the front, I could better see the baristas behind the counter. There
was one kid taking orders and two others making drinks. None of them were Cory
Dix. I worked my way around the store as best I could, searching for Dix, who
was now here if what I’d been told about his schedule was true. I pushed
through the crowd waiting for their coffee to search the small seating area
toward the bathrooms. And then I heard it.

“Zoe Grey.”

The voice like nails
on a chalkboard.

I stopped. I didn’t
want to turn around, but I could see no other choice. It was too late to
pretend I hadn’t heard her, and I’d have to pass her in order to get out.

Taking a breath,
standing up a little bit taller, and pushing my shoulders back slightly, I
turned.

“Priscilla.”

Priscilla Casimir had
started at the private K-12 school I went to in third grade. She’d declared us
mortal enemies on her first day because she believed our ancient Native
American ancestors to have been enemies. I’d declared her my archnemesis
because, in the third grade, I’d believed I was a superhero, and every
superhero has an archnemesis. Priscilla is mean, self-centered, ugly, and a
little bit crazy. Growing up, she’d looked a lot like Christina Ricci in the
movie
Casper
, with pale white skin and long, black hair. Except Priscilla
had weird (crazy) eyes, a huge forehead, which was always obvious because she
wore no bangs, and a pointy nose and chin. She’d always been tall and thin,
aside from having hips twelve sizes too big for her body, which I’d always
secretly hoped she’d never grow into.

Now, I could see some
things had changed. Braces had straightened out her ugly teeth and, I
suspected, her jaw, because her chin wasn’t nearly so pointy. Her nose was
still pointy and slightly upturned at the end, but it had been softened by age
and the effect of her thick bangs sweeping across her forehead. The bangs also
hid her enormous forehead, which unfortunately helped her appearance
dramatically. She was obviously paying someone a lot of money to style her hair
because it was almost attractive (though I’d die before I admitted that out
loud to anyone). It was still long, but she’d added highlights and layers.

She may have been one
of the tallest in school, but she’d done her growing early; she was only about
five-five barefoot. She was still thin, but the healthy kind, not the bean-pole
kind. I was devastated to see she had grown into her hips and that her body was
well proportioned. Sometimes life just isn’t fair. She was wearing an expensive
brown pinstripe pantsuit with a pink blouse and heels. Her jewelry, makeup, and
perfume were also expensive. She was carrying a brown leather briefcase with a
designer label. It was all the sort of stuff I used to buy when I was making
six figures a year. I had never thought it was possible, but I actually hated
her
more
just then.

“What are you doing
here?” she asked. Her voice had gotten a little more nasally with age, I
noticed happily. “And what happened to your face?”

“I’m actually in the
middle of something. Excuse me. Come on, Ellmann.”

I grabbed his arm and
turned, starting back through the crowd.

“Now, is that any way
to treat an old friend?”

“We were never
friends,” I said, turning back to her. “Don’t tell people that.”

She grinned; it was
that disgusting I-know-something-you-don’t grin. It always made me want to hit
her. That’s something that
hadn’t
changed.

“Aren’t you going to
introduce me to your friend?” she asked, eyeballing Ellmann like she was
starving and he was a steak on a dinner plate.

“No,” I said. “Excuse
us.”

I took Ellmann’s hand
as she offered him hers.

“I’m Priscilla. Zoe
and I went to school together.”

“I’m Alex Ellmann. I’m
her boyfriend.”

I was annoyed he’d
responded. It was like letting her win. The whole point of an archnemesis was
to
not
let her win. Duh.

“Geez, Zoe, why do you
call your boyfriend by his last name?” she whined.

I couldn’t keep my
eyes from rolling. I’d lost track of how many times people asked me that, and
how many times I’d heard it today alone. In my opinion, which I held above most
others, it was no one’s freaking business what I called my boyfriend.

I was about to respond
when I saw an employee pushing a mop and yellow bucket around the corner from
the bathrooms. It was Dix. I knew he’d bolt if he spotted me. I wanted to get
to him before he could get too far. I shifted slightly so Ellmann blocked me
from his view, which bought me some time.

“Listen,” Priscilla
went on. “I just moved to town. You may remember, I graduated high school a
year early and got a full scholarship to Stanford. After that, I went to law
school at Harvard. I just started with a large, prestigious Denver-based firm
that has an office here in Fort Collins. I’ve been working for about a month
now, and I caught my first really big case today. It’s the kind of case that
will get me noticed. I plan to work here for a couple years then transfer to
the larger Denver office, where I’ll take on big, public cases and become a
partner by the time I’m thirty.”

The barista called a
drink that was apparently hers. She went to get it, giving me the perfect
opportunity to get away from her. But I found I was rooted to the spot. I
suppose I was in shock. I’d always known Priscilla was intelligent, which made
me hate her even more, because being intelligent just made being mean easier
for her, but I was still surprised to hear how accomplished she was. What kind
of world is it that mean people can succeed like she had?

Coffee in hand, she
returned.

“So, what are you
doing now?” she asked.

I had nothing to say.
I wasn’t married; I didn’t have kids; I didn’t even live in any of the houses I
owned. I didn’t have a college degree, never having gone back to finish after
quitting for a doomed relationship. I didn’t have a career, having quit the
only career I’d ever had twice—once five years ago in order to move back to
Fort Collins and put my brother back on the straight and narrow, and again four
weeks ago when I’d started the bond enforcement thing. Technically, I still
worked for White Real Estate and Property Management one day a week (too many
clients threatened to walk away if I quit entirely), but I might have accepted
one of Mark White’s promotions had I known a few weeks later I’d run into my
archnemesis.

“Zoe is in law
enforcement,” Ellmann said, putting his arm around my shoulders.

Ellmann had clearly
picked up on what I wasn’t saying. The “law enforcement” thing was a bit of a
stretch.

“Really?” Priscilla
said, obviously skeptical.

“Yes, and she’s good
at it. She puts bad guys behind bars. And she helps people.”

Now he was really
playing me up. Not that he wasn’t always supportive, but this seemed over the
top.

“So, you’re, what, a
cop?” she asked me.

I opened my mouth to
answer, but no sound came out.

“Not exactly,” Ellmann
said. “But she’s on the same side.”

I had watched Dix stop
to mop the floor near the bathrooms. Now he was wheeling the bucket toward us.

“What’s on the same
side but isn’t a cop?” Priscilla asked.

I stepped away from
Ellmann as the crowd parted to allow Dix and the mop bucket to pass. The next
part happened really fast.

I moved in front of
the bucket and said, “Hi, Cory.”

Dix looked up, and an
instant later, recognition hit. He gripped the mop with both hands and jerked
it up out of the dirty water, shoving it forward. It hit my chest, knocking me
back and slopping down my front. Then Dix dropped the mop, spun around, and ran
back toward the bathrooms.

I righted myself and
started after him, knowing how much he liked bathrooms. I lost my footing on
the mop as I hurried forward, stumbling, trying to go around the bucket. I
ended up catching it with my knee as I was falling, pulling it over with me. I
hit the floor, and the dirty water dumped out, soaking my shoes and my lower
pant legs. I pushed myself up, aware of a screaming pain in my left shoulder as
I did so, and charged forward as Dix disappeared through the door and around
the corner out of sight. My shoes squished and squeaked as I ran after him.

I took the corner too
fast in wet shoes and slid into the wall. Back here, the restrooms are to the
right along the interior of the hotel. To the left is an exterior door, which
was still easing closed—I assumed Dix had torn through it. I ran after him,
huffing and puffing, sweating and soaking wet with dirty mop water. I knew it
was a lost cause (because I’m not a runner), but I refused to give up quite
yet. I caught a glimpse of a pair of shoes disappearing around the corner to
the left. I hurried after them.