This Time Around, page 19
“I’m happy for you,” Allie said. “Really, I am.”
Wade grinned. “Thank you.”
“Now let’s go scare some damn woodpeckers.”
“Right.”
She pushed the door open, half expecting him to retreat back into the house, but he followed her outside instead. The air was crisp and a little muggy, and the smell of damp leaves was thick in the air. Birds were chattering all around them, but the cheerful twittering had ceased to sound cheerful to Allie. Several birds were scattered through a nearby oak tree, and Allie glared at them, wondering which of the little assholes was responsible for the latest round of destruction to her grandma’s house.
She set the boom box on the picnic table and switched it on.
“So explain to me what you’re doing,” Wade said. “How is a vintage ghetto-blaster going to get rid of woodpeckers?”
“I’m hoping to scare them away with loud music.”
“This is really your best idea?”
“No,” she muttered as she began to turn the dial. “My best idea was the fake owls, but the little assholes just pecked holes in their faces.”
“Ouch.”
“Then I tried pinwheels. And streamers.”
“I thought it was looking rather festively tacky around here.”
Allie glared. “It’s time to step things up a little.”
She cranked up the volume on the boom box. There was a clatter of static, followed by the high-decibel blare of a DJ’s voice.
“You’re listening to Portland Sex Radio, and today we’re going to be talking about polyamory, the Portland orgy scene, and the six kinds of orgasms you should be having right now.”
Allie smacked her hand on the volume lever and glanced at the neighboring houses. No sign of anyone stirring at the sound of high-decibel porn, but it wasn’t worth taking chances. She spun the dial to change the station.
“Hey,” Wade protested. “I wanted to hear that.”
“Get the podcast,” she muttered, still flipping for a new station.
“So, speaking of orgasms,” Wade said, “I hear you and Jack brought the party home last night.”
Allie ignored him and glanced back up into the oak tree. The birds that had dotted the branches were beginning to collect on the deck railing, their chirping more ferocious now. A few new feathery bastards swooped in and landed on the fence. Sparrows, maybe, or some sort of jay. Maybe not woodpeckers, but what the hell did Allie know? She should probably get a bird identification book.
She settled on a station broadcasting something pop-y with a tinny beat. Was that a Justin Bieber song? She wasn’t sure, but she cranked it up anyway, then turned to Wade. He was apparently still waiting for her response to his question about Jack and orgasms, which she had no intention of answering directly.
“I take it Skye told you about our conversation this morning?” she said.
“What? No, she didn’t utter a peep. She told me last night that you and Jack had the cats handled, which I took to mean he was here with you. I filled in the blanks as soon as I saw your just-got-laid grin.”
“Great,” Allie muttered, glancing at the porch rail. A dozen more birds had gathered, little speckled brown and tan ones. They cheeped and chattered in time with the music, one of them pausing long enough to raise its tail and poop on her grandma’s prized rosebush.
Allie sighed and spun the radio dial again. She found some classical music—Beethoven? That should do it—and turned up the volume a little.
“So what did Skye say about me?” he asked.
Pleased he’d moved on from wanting to discuss Jack, Allie dropped her hand from the boom box and regarded him with a stern look. “I’m not sharing private girl talk with you, Wade. If she didn’t spill the dirt on my date, I’m certainly not telling you anything she might’ve told me in confidence.”
“Fair enough,” he answered. “At least tell me if she’s even a tiny fraction as into me as I’m into her. Which is actually saying a lot, because I’m really fucking into this girl.”
Wade’s normal cocky cool was gone, replaced by something much more vulnerable. The chatter of birds around him gave the whole scene a hopeful, Disney tone. Allie sighed, always a sucker for fairy tales.
“Yeah,” she said. “She’s into you. Really into you. And that’s all I’m going to tell you, so stop pestering me.”
“Yes!” Wade gave an awkward fist pump and an out-of-character foot shuffle. A handful of birds startled behind him, fluttering up in a burst of feathers and squawking.
“Do that again,” Allie said. “You’re scaring the birds.”
“I’ll pass. But maybe you should try some different music. I think they’re kind of enjoying this stuff.”
Allie glanced around. True enough, the feathered rats seemed to have multiplied. Fat little blue ones and a couple redheaded ones she thought might be cardinals. She spun the dial again, settling on something that sounded like Frank Sinatra.
“So,” Wade said. “Did you have a chance to look through any of the materials I brought you yesterday? The legal stuff about found goods?”
Allie nodded and shot a quick glance at the house. No sign of Skye. Still, she wasn’t sure she wanted to have this conversation. She would have almost preferred talking about Jack.
“Yeah, I skimmed through it this morning,” she said. “Thanks for digging that up.”
“You’re welcome. You sure you’re not willing to tell me what you found?”
Allie hesitated. She thought about some of the passages she’d read this morning in the packet of information he’d given her. Her single year of law school had done nothing to prepare her for the sea of legal jargon she’d read in the text of ORS 98.352 and ORS 98.376 and a gazillion other Oregon Revised Statutes pertaining to lost, unclaimed, and abandoned property.
A person commits theft by receiving if the person receives, retains, conceals or disposes of property of another knowing or having good reason to know that the property was the subject of theft . . .
Which wasn’t to say Allie really thought the money was connected to her parents’ crimes, but still. She had no way of knowing for sure.
“Earth to Allie?”
“What?” she glanced back at Wade in time to see him watching her with an odd expression. Behind him, another cluster of birds had gathered in the cherry tree, their chirping nearly drowning out the sound of “Old Blue Eyes.” Frankly, Allie was relieved. She’d always hated Sinatra. She turned the dial again, this time settling on a country western station.
Wade stepped closer, possibly to speak in confidence, or maybe to avoid the crow hovering on the roofline just over his shoulder. “Look,” he said. “I know you said you don’t want to tell me too much about what you found, and I can respect that.”
“Thank you.”
“But can you at least give me a hint?”
The blare of twangy music and the lyrics about exes in Texas made an awkward backdrop to this conversation. He was still looking at her, expecting a response, so Allie sighed.
“I’m not sure I should say much,” she said. “I read all that stuff you gave me about ORS 98. There’s that stuff about witnesses or other people being legally bound by the notice or report requirements, and I was worried about—”
“Right, right . . . theft by deception, probable cause, yada yada yada. I know the law. Still—” Wade cleared his throat. “Can you at least tell me by any chance if whatever you found needs to be . . . laundered?”
Allie felt the hair prickle on the back of her neck. She licked her lips. “Laundered?”
Wade glanced toward the house, then quickly back to Allie. She thought she heard Skye’s hair dryer going upstairs, but Wade took a step closer and lowered his voice anyway.
“Yes, laundered,” he said. “You know.”
“I—um. I guess it’s possible. I guess I’m not sure how I’d know.”
He frowned. “You didn’t look closely at it?”
“You can tell by looking?” Allie felt her brow furrow. “How?”
He gave an awkward little laugh. “For starters, I guess I was thinking maybe you saw the stains.”
Allie’s mind was reeling. She tried to remember something she’d seen on Dateline about the dye packs used by banks in robberies. The teller would stick something in the bag of money that would stain the cash when the robber tried to remove it. Or was it about staining the robber’s hands? Maybe that’s where the phrase, caught red-handed came from? God, why hadn’t she paid more attention to that TV special?
Wade was looking at her intently, and she tried to imagine him robbing a bank. She couldn’t picture it. Then again, she couldn’t picture her parents stealing money from a bunch of innocent investors.
She answered carefully. “I—uh—I guess I didn’t think to look for stains.”
“Right, of course not,” he said. “And I suppose you didn’t smell it?”
“Smell it? What on earth would that tell me?”
Wade frowned. “Well, mostly that my client spent entirely too much time in a cigar bar.”
“What?”
“Though the cum stains were really the bigger issue. That, and the threat of a DNA test.”
Allie stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about, Wade?”
“The dress. A custom Versace, one of a kind. Extremely expensive. I assumed you of all people would recognize it.”
Allie stared at him. “Versace,” she repeated, trying to buy herself time to figure out what the hell he was talking about.
“My client said it was worth six or seven grand. I hid it in your grandma’s attic a few years ago when I came over for dinner in the middle of that divorce case from hell. Your grandma asked me to help her move some boxes up there, so it was a convenient spot.” Something in her face must have registered utter disbelief, because Wade stopped talking and frowned at her. “Wait, what were you talking about?”
“The dress, of course.” Allie took a deep breath and turned the radio dial again. She kept spinning it until she found something that sounded like acid rock, with a lead singer that screeched like someone had his testicles in a vise. Allie kept her gaze down until she was sure she could safely look Wade in the eye. He was still frowning when she glanced up.
“Look, I just couldn’t believe you’d think I’d go around sniffing other people’s smelly clothes,” she said. “Your secret’s safe with me. Want to tell me about it?”
He eyed her for a few beats, probably trying to assess if she was full of crap. Allie kept her expression flat.
“It’s no big deal,” Wade said at last. “Not anymore. I meant to come back and grab it, but then the client and her husband worked things out and decided to terminate divorce proceedings. She asked me to burn it, but by then you and I weren’t dating anymore, and it seemed unnecessary to go digging it up again. To be honest, I’d kind of forgotten about it.”
“Right.” Allie nodded and glanced toward the fence. More birds had gathered there, and this time she was pretty sure she saw a woodpecker. At least she assumed it was a woodpecker. It had a long, pointy beak and little beady eyes. It was looking at her like it knew she was up to no good, or maybe she was just projecting.
She turned to Wade again. “Anyway, the dress is safe. I left it right where I found it. You can go get it if you want.”
“I suppose I should. It’s apparently worth a lot of money.” He was still watching her, and Allie resisted the urge to squirm. He’d never been that perceptive, but maybe he’d figured out—
“I found some money, okay?”
She’d blurted the words before she’d had a chance to think them through. The second they were out of her mouth, she felt relieved. Wade was a lawyer. He could fix this, couldn’t he?
He frowned at her. “What do you mean you found some money?”
“Here. At the house. In the attic. That’s why I was asking you all those questions.”
“How much money?”
Allie swallowed, feeling guarded now. “A lot.”
“Like—more than two hundred and fifty dollars?”
Allie nodded and watched Wade’s frown deepen. “How much are we talking, Albatross?”
She opened her mouth to answer, not entirely sure what she was about to say. Lucky for her, Skye chose that moment to step out onto the deck looking radiant and lovely in a red-and-gold sari skirt with a white T-shirt knotted at the hip. She wore big hoop earrings and gold sandals with laces up the ankles, and she was beaming at Wade like he’d just offered her the keys to his Jag.
Wade snapped his attention to Skye, and Allie had never felt more relieved to have another woman steal the limelight.
“Good God in heaven.” Wade pantomimed stabbing himself through the heart, his distress at Allie’s confession all but forgotten. “You’re stunning.”
It would have sounded like a line if Allie hadn’t been watching his face to see the absolute adoration there. It almost took her breath away.
Skye laughed and took his arm. “Thanks.” She glanced at the radio and frowned. “I didn’t realize you guys were fans of the Bloody Buttholes.”
“We’re not,” Allie muttered, glancing up at the eaves where a woodpecker had begun hammering at the cedar siding. “But apparently the woodpeckers are.”
“You ready to go?” Wade planted a kiss on Skye’s forehead, his conversation with Allie seemingly forgotten.
“Anytime you are.” Skye looked back at Allie. “Sorry about the woodpeckers. If it helps, I could maybe talk to a friend of mine who works with birds at the zoo.”
“Really?” Allie felt her hopes rising. “You think she might know something about woodpeckers?”
“I don’t know. She works with penguins, so I guess that’s not the same thing.”
“I’m getting desperate,” Allie said. “At this point, I’ll try anything.”
“Even the Bloody Buttholes,” Wade said. “Come on, let’s get going.”
The two of them walked off together arm in arm, and Allie watched them go. Skye’s hand was tucked in Wade’s back pocket, and she leaned toward him as though drawn by magnets. As they rounded the corner, Wade reached out to brush a curl from her face, his hand lingering longer than necessary on her cheek. The whole tableau made Allie’s heart feel like a warm, gooey puddle in the center of her chest.
Okay, so Wade and Skye had known each other less than twenty-four hours, and yeah, it seemed like an odd match. But maybe this would be it for Wade. When he and Allie had split, he’d never seemed sad about it. She hadn’t been, either, so she didn’t take it personally. Though it hadn’t worked between them, Allie had always held out hope he’d find someone. Maybe Skye was it.
Maybe they’d ask her to be a bridesmaid or to read a poem at the wedding. Maybe she could bring Jack, and he’d turn to her after the ceremony and whisper—
Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her hoodie. She fumbled it out, snagging her wristwatch on the fleece. Freeing it at last, she held it up and glanced at the screen. She felt her heart skip a beat when she saw Jack Carpenter on the readout.
Then it stopped altogether when she read the words.
Made a mistake.
Plz don’t text me, K?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jack walked into the living room to find two of the three most cherished females in his life sprawled on opposite ends of the sofa, each with an iPhone in her hand.
His mother looked up at him and smiled. “I really like this new Kegel reminder app your team developed,” she said. “It’s good for ladies my age who need to strengthen their pelvic floors, so we don’t tinkle.”
“What’s a pelvic floor?” Paige asked as she glanced up from her own phone.
Er, make that Jack’s phone.
“Paige,” he said in his most stern voice. “What are you doing with my phone?”
“Well mine’s not working right now, so—”
“I know yours isn’t working right now,” he said through gritted teeth. “And do you think that might have something to do with the fact that you deliberately ignored me the two thousand times I told you not to take your phone into the bathroom?”
His daughter’s bottom lip quivered a little, and Jack resisted the urge to back down. Some lessons she had to learn the hard way.
“Well, yeah, but—”
“No buts,” he said. “Your phone is a privilege, and you lost that privilege when you splashed water on it.”
“But I didn’t think a few drops of water would ruin it like that.”
“We’ll know in a few hours if it’s ruined. You did the right thing putting it in rice like I showed you. But you did the wrong thing by taking it in there in the first place, and you’re also doing the wrong thing by using my phone right now without asking.”
Her eyes had gone a little watery, but she stuck out her jaw anyway. “But I had to text Allie,” she said. “We were making plans to go bra shopping and I had to tell her that I messed up and I couldn’t text her like I said I would.”
An uneasy feeling tickled the center of Jack’s gut. He held out his hand. “Give me the phone, please.”
Paige got up and walked over, setting it in his palm. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”
“We all make mistakes,” he said, scrolling back through his daughter’s texts to see that very word jumping out at him.
Made a mistake.
Plz don’t text me, K?
Oh, shit. He scrolled down, his gut hitting rock bottom as he read Allie’s reply:
Total mistake, for sure! Was thinking the same. Won’t text you again.
Jack felt nauseated. He stared at the words, trying to make sense of them.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?”
He looked down at his daughter to see her staring up at him with a concerned look on her face.
“Honey,” he said slowly. “When you use someone else’s phone to send a text message, you need to tell them it’s you and not the person whose phone you’re borrowing.”
