Chapter Ten
TEN
Callahan
There are no sirens in the vicinity or smoke billowing from the windows as I park behind the building.
That’s a good sign. When Annie failed to respond to my text asking if everything was going all right in my absence, I kind of assumed the worst. But as I stop in the doorway separating the back hallway from the showroom and find her at the counter beaming at a couple in their early sixties, the jitteriness of my anxiety finally subsides.
She must have been occupied with customers.
A much more logical explanation for why she didn’t reply, I can admit now, than that she was incapacitated while the building burned down around her.
The man reaches out to shake Annie’s hand, and she holds up her bandaged palm with a small laugh that rounds and pinkens her cheeks in such a lovely way that my jitteriness returns. Smiling, the couple thanks her again and leaves.
Once the front door has closed behind them, I walk over to Annie, who is looking down at whatever she’s written on my legal pad.
“Did you sell something?” I ask, and she jolts in surprise.
“Oh, Jesus,” she says, clutching her chest. “You’ve gotta stop sneaking up on me.”
“Hello.”
Her startled expression relaxes into a smile that’s wide and serene, the way it was the first time I saw her. Before I earned her ire. “Hi.”
“So…?” I prompt.
“Hmm?”
“I asked if you sold something.”
“Oh! Yes. Yes, I did.” The satisfaction on her face is unmistakable.
A big-ticket item, maybe? Before I can ask, she holds up the legal pad.
“Several somethings, actually,” she says.
I have to redirect my focus from the excited energy radiating from her to the lined page.
But when I finally do, my lips part and my eyebrows thread together.
“I’m sorry, does that total at the bottom say forty thousand dollars? Or am I misreading the number of zeroes there?”
“You aren’t misreading anything.”
No fucking wonder she’s so happy.
“All to the couple that just left?”
She nods like the old oriole bird bobblehead that’s sat on a shelf in the back office ever since I can remember.
“They’re opening a bed-and-breakfast in Pennsylvania apple country and need to furnish it.
Guess a lot of what we have was to their taste .
And they weren’t even in town to come here, they just stopped in because the window caught their eye when they were driving past.” Annie’s grin spreads with each word as she adds, “Told. You. So.”
“You sure did.” I almost blurt out that I’m starting to think she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to this place.
Maybe the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
But that sentiment is surely just an overexaggerated response to the good news, and an intensely unprofessional one at that.
Instead, I conclude with a much safer, much more appropriate, “Great job, Annie! That’s really amazing. ”
“I also sold three hundred dollars’ worth of china to a different customer, but that feels like small potatoes in comparison, doesn’t it?” She steps out from behind the counter, coming closer to me. “Bet you feel pretty stupid right now,” she says. “Having underestimated me.”
“I have definitely been an idiot,” I say, my voice quieter than I intend it as I catch the scent of her perfume. Fig, I think, and something else dark and sensual that acts as a fascinating contrast to her natural effervescence.
“Good thing I blackmailed you, huh?” Her finger taps my chest playfully and it feels like it throws off the rhythm of my heartbeat.
I swallow hard, hoping it might somehow get things thumping correctly again. “It does seem to be, yes.”
She stands close enough that she has to tilt her face up to look at me, and her grin is so beautiful, so magnetic, that it feels like I’m being compelled by some force outside of myself to lean in, to take her radiant face in my hands, to press my mouth against hers. Should I…?
No. No, I should not. That would be highly inappropriate.
I swallow again and take a step backward, hoping the added distance might be enough to reduce the pull.
I reach over to adjust a Victorian-era gold beveled-framed mirror on the wall, though it’s already perfectly straight.
“Anything else happen while I was out other than you selling half the store?”
“Oh, um, that real estate agent you mentioned? Genevieve, I think? Her assistant, Makayla, came by to get the stuff Inés put aside for her. I was busy with my customers and she said she knew where everything was, so I told her it was fine for her to go back and load up their truck on her own. I hope that was okay?”
I forgot that Inés left a note saying she’d organized a rental lot for Genevieve this week, discarding it as just another thing on my plate that I would deal with when it happened.
“I didn’t realize she was coming today or I would have given you a heads-up, but yeah, that’s fine,” I say.
“Inés always puts their stuff in the right corner of the storeroom, so it should’ve been easy enough for Makayla to figure it out. ”
“The right corner?” Annie asks after a pause that feels strangely ominous. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. The right corner is where…” My voice trails off as I’m hit with a terrible swooping sensation, like missing a step when going downstairs.
“Cal. Isn’t that where we put the—”
“Shit,” I say, and make a mad dash for the storeroom.
Annie is right behind me as I reach the door and throw it open. Sure enough, the entire right corner is cleaned out—quilt-covered display case included.
My fingers thread into my hair as I clutch my head before it can roll right off my body.
How could I have fucked up so badly? I mean, yeah, sure, I was exhausted, and hungry, and a bit distracted by Annie blackmailing me but also being sort of lovely about it.
But I should still have been able to tell my left from my right.
I should have remembered that the right corner is always, always the one Inés uses for her arrangement with Genevieve, due to its closer proximity to the loading area.
The left is for things that need some extra attention or research before they can be put out on the floor. It’s been that way forever.
I stand stupidly in the empty space for a long time, then rest my forehead against the painted cinder block.
Annie comes to stand beside me, her back against the wall. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so sorry, Cal. It’s all my fault.”
This absurd declaration pulls me out of my spiraling and I turn to face her. “No. Don’t. It isn’t.”
“But if I’d been able to manage things better, had my customers wait or had Genevieve’s assistant come back at a better time…if I hadn’t coerced you into leaving me alone at the store, then—”
“No, Annie, this is one thousand percent on me,” I say firmly.
“Putting the goose here was a huge mistake and it was all mine. You had no way of knowing this wasn’t the right place.
I should have…I can’t believe I forgot…” I drop my hands.
And I thought having the goose on the premises was a problem.
Now it’s out there in the city, off to some mansion where it will be displayed and inevitably noticed by someone aware of its illegality.
They’ll alert the authorities, who will so easily trace it back to Virtu.
The exact circumstance that I promised Harold would not happen in his absence is now almost an inevitability.
Annie’s hand comes to my shoulder. “We all make mistakes,” she says softly.
“Especially when under a ton of stress like you’ve been.
But this is one mistake I think we can fix without too much trouble, right?
We can call Genevieve and let her know something was accidentally taken when her assistant picked the stuff up today.
And then we can just go get it back from her.
No harm, no foul.” She pauses. “I mean no foul, f-o-u-l. There will be a fowl, f-o-w-l.”
My mind goes blank for a moment, too focused on the tingling warmth the contact spreads down my arms and through my torso.
Then I finally register her words instead of just the soothing tone she’s said them in.
“Yeah, okay. I mean, there’s a chance it’s too late, and we’ve already been discovered, but it’s also quite possible—likely even—that the truck hasn’t been unloaded yet.
We can just go pick it up from her, hopefully without having to tell her what it is.
” I take a deep breath and nod to myself. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s do that.”
I hurry out of the storage room and down the hall to the front of the store, relieved to find that no customers have wandered in during our little crisis.
Beneath the counter is the old address book where Inés keeps track of contact info for other companies and organizations with which we do business, and I fumble with it until I finally find the page with Genevieve Gladhill’s number.
I put my cell phone on speaker atop the counter, and Annie and I both stare at it as it rings and rings. Pick up, pick up, pick up, I chant in my head until she finally does.
“Genevieve Gladhill.”
“Hi, Genevieve.” I replace the panic that wants to come out of my mouth with as much ease and professionalism as I can channel so as not to raise any suspicion. “It’s Callahan Leitner at Virtu Antiques. How are you today?”
“I’m well, Callahan. How about you?”
“Oh, I’m just peachy,” I say, hoping she doesn’t sense the sarcasm lurking just beneath the surface.
“Listen, Genevieve, there was an issue with your pickup this morning. We have a new employee here and she didn’t know about the system you and Inés set up so she inadvertently put something immensely important among the things Makayla came for earlier.
We think she might have grabbed it by mistake. ”
Annie narrows her eyes at me. Sorry, I mouth.
“I see,” Genevieve says. “What is it exactly? The team has probably already started staging, but we could try to keep an eye out…”
“Well, that’s the thing. It’s a bit, um, sensitive? And difficult to describe. Also, I don’t want this to be at all inconvenient to you or anyone who works for you, since it’s our own error. So could we perhaps come out to the property? That way we can find it quick and be on our way.”
“Sure, I guess that would be fine. I’ll send you the address. I’m meeting with clients for the rest of the day, but Makayla will be onsite into the evening. She can let you in whenever you get there.”
“Thank you so much, Genevieve,” I say. “And again, we’re so sorry for the inconvenience. Have a good rest of your day.”
“You too.”
I let out a sigh of relief, but only a small one, as the address for the property Genevieve’s assistant is staging arrives on my phone.
“I’ll go a bit before we close,” I say, then remember how early it’s been getting dark now.
We haven’t had any issues with crime at Virtu in the last few years, but even so, I don’t love the idea of Annie being here alone at night.
“Actually, a bit after we close,” I amend. “So you aren’t here by yourself.”
“Yeah, I guess after what happened you’re probably back to not trusting me to handle things.” Her tone is somewhere between standoffish and guilt-riddled, and I feel the need to soothe both of her warring assumptions.
“It’s not that. I just don’t want to leave you here by yourself after dark. For your safety.”
“Oh. That’s considerate of you.” She sounds slightly surprised, which is galling. I may have been a dick to her before, but it’s not like I ever implied I wished her ill. “And then I can go too,” she adds, her tone making it clear it’s not an offer, but a decision.
“You don’t need to,” I assure her.
Her eyebrows raise. “No, but I want to. Even though losing the goose might be mostly your fault, it wouldn’t have happened if I’d gone back there to oversee what they were loading.
So let me go with you. At the very least, I can help you carry the case back to the car. You know that isn’t a one-person job.”
“Your hand, though,” I try, despite knowing that it won’t convince her to let me handle this on my own.
“All good, thanks.” She holds it up, and my gauze and tape job has been subbed out for a large bandage plastered over her palm. “Better than Monday night for sure, and I helped you then, didn’t I?”
“You did. But only because you sort of forced me to let you.”
“Well, I’m forcing you again,” she says briskly, smiling wide as she brushes past me and heads toward the coat hooks beside the staircase.
“And now that you’re back from the bank, I’m going to go out and get myself a little treat.
Because I think we’ve forgotten in the midst of our goose whoopsie that I just made this store a fuckton of money.
That deserves a cookie or something, I would say.
” She grabs her peacoat and shrugs into it as she heads out the front door, her inherent personal brightness becoming one with the sunlight’s.