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“About not figuring out your lunch schedule. Is a half hour all right? I thought maybe you could take your lunch from twelve to twelve-thirty, and then I could take mine from twelve-thirty to one.”
For a second, Melanie looked blank, and then she gave me a reassuring smile. “Oh, right. I hadn’t even thought about that. Working here feels so relaxing, it hardly seems like a job to me.”
Her comment made a happy little rush go through me. I supposed some people liked to micro-manage and got an unhealthy kick out of being the boss from hell, but not me. That Melanie felt so relaxed at Once in a Blue Moon told me I’d created exactly the working environment for her I’d hoped for.
We had a few customers come in that afternoon, just enough to keep us both busy. All the same, I told Melanie she could leave an hour early if she needed to, since she’d made a comment earlier that day about how she still needed to head back to Phoenix and retrieve a few odds and ends from her apartment, since she’d prorated the rent there to keep the place through today, allowing her enough time to get it cleared out.
She thanked me and hurried out back, where I knew her older-model Toyota Camry was parked near my Jeep Renegade. No sooner than I’d begun to putter around the book display, re-shelving a couple of volumes that had been put back in the wrong place, Victoria came through the back entrance to the shop, her expression distressed.
In her hand was a white envelope, and my heart sank.
“You got another one?” I asked as she approached, and she nodded.
“Was it that obvious?”
“Between the look on your face and that” — I nodded at the envelope she held — “I didn’t know what else it could be.”
She pulled in a breath. Because she was wearing one of her signature sheath dresses, this one in a mid-toned blue that went perfectly with her eyes, I guessed she must have had a meeting with the developers of the project whose model homes she was designing.
I could only hope she’d received the letter after that meeting.
“Yes, it just came in the mail…my studio mail,” she clarified, just in case there was any doubt as to where the letter had been sent. Then she opened the envelope and pulled out the single sheet of white paper it contained. “I know about your fiancé,” she read. “I’ll meet with you in your studio at ten the morning of October sixth to list my demands. Say nothing to Mr. Bradshaw…or the police.”
An oddly formal blackmailer. However, I brushed that data point aside and said, “He wants to meet you in person? That seems strange.”
“I know,” Victoria replied. “Isn’t the whole point of blackmail remaining anonymous?”
“You’d think so,” I said. “Not that I have a lot of experience in that department.”
She made a distracted little waving movement with the hand that held the letter, as if to show she had no idea what to make of it, either. “What should I do?”
I had a ready answer to that question. “You need to call Henry Lewis.”
At once, her mouth turned down. “The letter says I’m not supposed to involve the police. What if the blackmailer has an accomplice who’s going to do something terrible to Archie if I don’t go along with his demands?”
Yikes. I hadn’t even thought about that possible scenario, but it made some sense. Or at least, it seemed more likely the blackmailer felt comfortable making these demands because he had an ace in the hole in the form of an accomplice who was happy to carry out his dirty work.
“Still….” I said, then paused as an idea began to form in my mind. “What if I ask Calvin to be here tomorrow morning? He’s not local police, so there’s only so much he can do in a place that’s not his jurisdiction, but I’d feel a lot better about you meeting with this creep if Calvin was here at the shop. That way, he could be there to get a look at him, maybe follow him to see where he goes afterward. Then we can decide whether we need to go to the regular Globe P.D. or not.”
Victoria’s expression had slowly brightened as she listened to my suggestion…but then dimmed again. “Are you sure Calvin will be okay with that?”
“Absolutely,” I replied without hesitation, even as I uttered a silent prayer that he actually would be on board with my plan. “He doesn’t have to be at work until noon tomorrow, so his morning is free. He can drive over with me, and that way, there won’t be a tribal police vehicle parked anywhere nearby. It’ll be fine.”
A few seconds passed as Victoria appeared to absorb that information. “Okay,” she said after a pause. “I think that’ll work. And I have to admit, I’ll feel a lot better about meeting this person if I know Calvin is down here with you.”
“And if anything goes sideways,” I told her, “just have a text ready to go, and Calvin can be upstairs in less than a minute.”
Her chin went up, and she nodded. “Sounds like a plan.” Another hesitation, and then she went on, “And thank you for not trying to convince me I should tell Archie about all this.”
“If I didn’t have Calvin ready to come to the rescue, I might feel differently about the situation,” I said frankly. “But as it is, it just seems better to keep Archie out of it until the meeting is over. Knowing him, he’d try to interfere, and the letter seems pretty clear about not wanting him anywhere near your studio tomorrow morning.”
Victoria sent me a grateful smile. “Thank you for helping out,” she told me. “Knowing that Calvin is going to be here makes me feel a lot better about all this.”
“No problem,” I assured her…even as I hoped it really wouldn’t be.
Calvin stared at me from across the dinner table, clearly perturbed by the story I’d just related. “You know you should have had Victoria call Henry,” he said, in tones that told me he wasn’t nearly as thrilled with Victoria’s and my plan as I’d hoped he would be.
“And have him come bumbling in and make a total hash of things?” I countered as I broke off a piece of biscuit. “No way.”
