26. Oboe
Nadia
By the time we hit a very crowded Double D, I could sense Riggs’s mood had taken a huge hit, mainly because he wasn’t hiding it.
This was because we had to park five blocks away, off the main drag, in the residential section of MP that fed back from it.
It was also because we had to wade through a plethora of Charles-Haden Savages, Olivers, Mabels, Cindas, Howards, Bunnys, Tim Konos and tie-dye hoodies to get to the Double D.
I’d never seen so much fake orange fur in my life, and the weather was back in the low seventies.
I felt bad Riggs was in a shitty mood, but I thought it was hysterical.
It didn’t get better when we had to fight our way through the residents of the Arconia even to get in the door of the Double D, and within seconds, a passing waitress shared, “Wait’s at least half an hour. Probably longer. We got a list going. Write your name on it, and we’ll shout it out when we got a table ready. You don’t come at first call, we give it to the next name.”
She then swung her fully loaded arms to a clipboard sitting on the counter at the curve of the horseshoe bar and scurried away.
“Whose idea was this?” Riggs grumbled.
I wasn’t about to remind him it was his.
“Yo, Doc!” we heard shouted.
I looked right just as Ledger yelled, “Jace! Jess!” and raced through the crowded space to the huge, circular corner booth that…oh my God…had Delphine Larue sitting in it.
I noted she had a very good-looking man of the Riggs variety at her side, except he was older, and had a more Outdoors Guy feel than a Good-Time Guy.
With them were two other men who were clearly of his loins.
And they were identical twins.
Riggs put his hand to the small of my back and began to lead us that way, as I said under my breath, “Is that Delphine Larue?”
“Yup.”
“Star of the seminal sitcom Those Years?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Author of one of the greatest books of our time, We Pluck the Cord?”
There was now humor in his, “Yeah.”
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
“Hey, Doc,” the man beside Delphine greeted when we got to their table. “Sit with us. We got room.”
And I’ll repeat.
Oh my God!
I was going to have breakfast with Delphine Larue!
One of the twins got out so Ledger could sit between them, and all the others scooched in so I was sitting next to Delphine Larue’s man, and Riggs slid in beside me.
It was a tight fit, but it worked, and it was a lot better than waiting more than thirty minutes to eat.
I was famished.
“Nadia, this is Cade Bohannan. You know of Delphine. And these are Cade’s sons, Jess and Jace,” Riggs introduced.
“Pleased to meet you all.”
“And you’re Nadia,” Delphine said with a smile.
“Sorry,” I said to her. “I’m gonna warn you, I’m going to be giving off a hefty fangirl vibe. But it’ll wear off, I promise. Just love your show, but your book is in my top five favorites.” I thought about it. “No, top three.”
“Who do I share company with?” she asked.
“Rebecca and A Confederacy of Dunces,” I answered.
“That’s lofty company,” she replied.
A place her work deserved.
Waters were dropped in front of us, and the waitress, whose nametag said her name was Betty, though I suspected it actually wasn’t, looked at Cade and said, “Take it you’re gonna wait to order until the newcomers figure it out?”
“Yeah,” Cade answered.
“Ugh,” she replied then scampered off.
“We didn’t just get here,” Jess explained. “But shit is going slow.”
“Here’s a menu,” Cade offered me as Riggs leaned forward and pulled out his phone.
I didn’t peek as he checked his screen, then turned the phone face down on the table.
I did notice, as we perused menus, sipped water then the coffee that was brought, finally ordering, chatting, getting served and eating, that all four of them were great with Ledger. They liked and respected Riggs a good deal and showed it. All the men were of the hunky, cool, confident variety, and they were all devoted in their own ways to Delphine, and they showed that too. All in all, they were interesting, funny, kind people, and I was glad we happened on them to have breakfast, and not just so I could share a meal with Delphine Larue.
Oh.
And I also noticed that Riggs’s phone screen lit up against the table a lot.
This had me considering two things.
The first, my time in Misted Pines might have started solitary and slow, but since Riggs’s peace offering, it had been very full of activity and meeting and getting to know good people (Angelica not included).
This was something I needed to journal about because it was definitely something to consider in view of the fact my beloved mother had been beaten to death not five months ago, and I had to admit, even if that gloom never went away and often hit me like an invisible blow at unexpected times, for the most part, I was happy.
No.
For the most part, I was the happiest I’d been since Trevor shared his diagnosis with me.
The second thing I was considering was that someone really wanted to get hold of Riggs, and I was both curious who it was, and really hoping it wasn’t Angelica in order to give him more grief.
We were finished, and Riggs, Cade, Jace and Jess were having a four-way Man Discussion about the bill, which I was tuning out at the same chatting with Delphine about how great the spa was at the Pinetop Lodge.
This was when Kimmy, who was not wearing Christmas duds, but instead a normal outfit, if you didn’t count her carrying an oboe, showed at our table.
And her attention was directed to me.
Riggs let out a huge sigh, and if I was correct in hearing others over his, so did Cade. Though, Jess and Jace were smiling.
“Hey, Kimmy,” Delphine greeted.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kimmy replied waving a dismissive hand at her, but her attention was on me. “I don’t have a lot of time. I gotta get back. My shop is wall to wall people. I just broke up a Detective Williams who was in a fight with an Uma over my last Elf on a Shelf. But I heard you were here. Any sightings?”
“No,” I answered.
She threw up both hands, the oboe spiking in the air.
“What’s taking so long?” she demanded. “You’ve been out there at least three weeks.”
“The fact that there’s no such thing as ghosts?” Riggs suggested.
“Argh!” she cried, then she dashed off, knocking the backs of two chairs with her oboe as she went.
The people in those chairs didn’t even blink.
“I see you’ve met Kimmy,” Delphine noted to me.
“Indeed,” I replied.
Her eyes sparkled.
“Do I wanna know about the oboe?” Riggs asked.
I looked to him. “We haven’t gotten that far in the show, but this year, she’s a Jan.”
I knew he lost interest when he muttered, “Whatever.”
We waded through the volatile quagmire of four Men! sitting at the same table and paying the bill. We were then out on the sidewalk, and I was gabbing with Delphine, watching how adept she was at ignoring the people who stared blatantly at her or took pictures of her on their phone. Jace and Jess were hanging with Ledger. And Cade and Riggs were in a huddle.
They broke, Riggs came and claimed me, but I didn’t say my farewells since Riggs called, “We’ll be right behind you. See you at your place,” to Cade.
After he said that, he turned me down the sidewalk with Ledger jogging off the other way between Jace and Jess.
“Is something up?” I asked.
“We’re not gonna have the chill day I wanted us to have,” he answered.
“What’s going on?”
“Cade has something to share with me. We’re going to theirs.”
“Something?”
“He’s an FBI profiler, or he was. He’s retired. Word is, he’s one of the best ones they ever had.”
“Whoa,” I said. Then asked, with a little shock, because if he was the best, this was not much to merit his attention. “Is this about the wine burglars?”
“Nope. It’s about the Whitakers.”
Interesting!
I suddenly had a pep in my step as we kept walking.
“That’s not all,” Riggs said.
“What?”
“Storm asked if he can come over, or if I can hit his. He’s made a decision, and considering it will affect Ledger, he wants me to know what it is.”
“Oh boy.”
“Yeah.”
“Is that what all the activity was about on your phone?”
“Some of it. Others were buds wanting to know if we can have a get-together at my place tonight. I’ll text them later that’s not going to be a thing.” We kept walking, me under his arm, mine along his waist, thumb hooked in the loop of his belt at his other side, as he looked down at me. “You up for that next Saturday? Mom can take Ledge, and we can blow it out.”
On the one hand, I wanted to meet his buds.
On the other hand, I wasn’t a partier.
“Maribeth will be here. She’s coming on Wednesday and staying the weekend,” as a hedge, I reminded him of something I’d already told him.
“All the better,” he replied.
In the Maribeth department, it was, seeing as she was a partier, even if she was now a married lady with two kids.
“Murphy’s also coming out,” he shared. “That’s another of the texts I got. Looks like Mom also got to him, and he’s not gonna waste time checking you out.”
I didn’t know if this elated or terrified me.
Riggs pulled me tighter to his side. “He’ll like you.”
If he was like Riggs, and I huddled in a chair, sipping a gin martini, while other women were throwing their bras into the pines, I wasn’t sure about that.
“I don’t want to change a hair on your head, honey,” Riggs remarked. “But I do wanna have a go at teaching you how to let it down. Your girl and my boy in town, that says party.”
He was right.
It did.
“Okay. I’m in.”
He shot me a big, happy smile.
It was only then I was truly in.
“Well, not a chill day, but an interesting one,” I noted.
“I wanted to hang with you and my kid before dropping my boy off at Dustin’s at four, then spend the rest of the day in your bed at the cabin. Now, due to the Cade and Stormy parts of this shit, Jace and Jess are gonna take him to do something, so I lost the Ledger part of that.”
“We deal, then we get on with it,” I reminded him.
He looked down at me. “Yeah, honey. And another reminder, on other important fronts, you’re not doing much of that.”
Hmm.
It was occurring to me that Riggs thought he was sitting on the emotional ticking time bomb of me.
Truth.
He was.
So he was right.
I had to deal with that.
But first I needed to learn how to party.