Or just the calm before the storm?
“Nikki? I can’t hear you. You’re cutting out.” Dashing out of her apartment, trying to put up her umbrella while hauling her athletic bag and cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear, Simone was having a helluva time hearing her friend. Nikki’s voice was breaking up and garbled, impossible to understand over the whistle of the wind and splatter of thick raindrops.
“Simone…meet at…”
“Meet where? You’re coming to the class tonight, aren’t you?” Simone stepped around a puddle and caught the edge of her umbrella on the hedge that surrounded the parking lot. Raindrops slid icily through her hair. “Damn it.” The trouble with her best friend was that Nikki was a flake. Pure and simple. But Simone loved her and not just because Nikki was Andrew’s sister and the only member of the Gillette family who would speak to her, though that, in and of itself, was something. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to weasel out of exercise.”
“No!” Nikki’s voice sounded weird. Stressed. She seemed to be whispering. “Meet me…Galleria…parking lot, third floor…Important…about…Andrew.”
“What? What about Andrew?” Simone asked and the wind and rain was instantly forgotten. “Nikki.” Oh, geez, she’d lost her. Then she heard a spurt over the rush of the wind. “Let’s…a drink…Cassan…”
“A drink before class at Cassandra’s?” Simone said, feeling the rain run down her neck. “I’ll be there. Around seven. In the restaurant. Not in the damned parking lot. Are you nuts? There’s a killer on the loose, remember?” She managed to unlock her door. “If you get to Cassandra’s before I do, order me a martini. Vodka. Two olives.”
Her umbrella turned inside out.
“Shit. Nikki? Are you still there?”
But the connection had faded. She tossed the phone into her car, did a miserable job of folding the umbrella and left it to drip on the backseat near her sodden athletic bag.
Leave it to Nikki to be overly dramatic, Simone thought as she slid behind the wheel. Checking her reflection in the rearview mirror she decided the damage was minimal. She reapplied lip gloss so that the sheen was perfect, then pulled at a strand of her damp, now windblown hair to make it look even less “done” and more carefree, which was probably better. She had the impression that Jake liked athletic, strong women who weren’t “high maintenance.” Self-confident women attracted him, she was certain. “Gay, my ass,” she said, starting the BMW and pulling out of her parking spot.
Rain pelted the car as the storm swept through the city streets, and from the corner of her eye she saw motion.
Goose bumps raised on her skin.
For a second she had the sensation that someone was watching her. Hiding just out of her line of vision. Instantly, she remembered the creep in the restaurant the last time she and Nikki had gotten together. But that had been days before. Biting her lip, she stared hard at the corner where she’d seen the movement. A bedraggled dog, head and tail down, loped across the street and fled between two tall buildings. Simone’s heart rate slowed and she berated herself for being such a silly goose. Nonetheless, she glanced around the alleys and buildings. She saw no one through the BMW’s rain-spattered windows, nor in any of her mirrors—no unholy monster, no dark figure, no hulking boogey man ready to pounce on her. In fact, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Just a few cars, and a couple of skateboarders hurrying along the sidewalk trying to outrun the storm. All was as it should be.
Her case of nerves was just because of Nikki’s incessant talk about a serial killer, the Grave Robber, for God’s sake. It was nothing. Still, Simone’s hands felt clammy around the steering wheel as she drove first to the bank before it closed and then to the dry cleaners. She even managed to stop and pick up a prescription and a few groceries before it was time to meet Nikki and placed a call to Nikki’s cell phone. Of course, Nikki didn’t answer, so Simone called her friend’s apartment and left a message on her recorder.
Fortunately the storm passed quickly, leaving in its wake a thickening mist. Wet streets glimmered under the street lamps, and leaves and debris clogged the sewer drains in the roads. Rush hour was over, traffic was thankfully thin, and only a few people had ventured onto the sidewalks. Here and there, Christmas lights winked merrily through the fog, a reminder of the season. She passed a church with a nativity scene posed beneath the spreading branches of a live oak. Instantly, she experienced that same old pang of longing for Andrew, the pain that didn’t lessen with each passing Christmas season.
“Get over it,” she muttered and decided she really did have to move. There was a possibility of a job in Charlotte and she should just take the plunge and move. Cut all ties to this place with its bad memories.
Simone pulled into the parking lot of the Galleria and had no trouble finding a space on the first floor. Forget the third. Why walk any farther than she had to?
The lot was fairly deserted, only a few vehicles parked in the spaces. Though this was normal and she and Nikki parked here on a regular basis, she was still a little edgy. Making certain no one was lurking near the stairwell or elevator shaft, Simone grabbed her purse and locked the car behind her, then jogged to the restaurant. No murderer leapt from the shadows. No one was hiding near the exit. Simone walked the half a block to the restaurant without anyone accosting her.
Inside, Nikki wasn’t waiting for her. No surprise. Nikki’s M.O. was to always run late. Or bag out completely.
Surely, not tonight.
Simone slid into a booth near the front door and ordered two drinks—a martini for herself and a lemon drop for Nikki—from a sunny waitress with a thick drawl and braces. The girl looked barely seventeen, surely not old enough to serve liquor, though she cheerily reappeared with the chilled, stemmed glasses within minutes.
Cassandra’s wasn’t doing a banner business tonight. Only a few other patrons sat at the tables and booths that filled the small space with its black and white floor tiles and matching tabletops.
Simone studied the bar menu while sipping her drink and listening to Christmas carols from the jukebox. Elvis’s rendition of “Blue Christmas” seemed to be the favorite as the minutes passed and a breathless Nikki Gillette didn’t sweep into the restaurant. Simone plucked the olives from her martini with her teeth and looked at her watch. Fifteen minutes had passed. She finished her drink. Twenty minutes. Wonderful. Late again. “Come on, Nikki,” Simone muttered under her breath.
The ebullient waitress stopped by and flashed her perennial schoolgirl grin. “Can I get you anything else?”
“A new best friend.”
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“What? Oh.” The plastered-on smile chipped away. “So…do you want another drink or…something from the bar menu?”
Simone hesitated, but decided she had nothing to lose. “Sure. Why not? Another drink, I think.” She tapped a fingernail on the rim of her empty martini glass. “Another one.”
“And…?” The girl glanced at Nikki’s untouched glass. The rim of sugar was unbroken, the clear liquid unmoving around a curl of lemon rind.