Serious Moonlight(48)

“I feel like you’re keeping secrets,” I said. “That violates our sacred pact to always be honest with each other.” I raised three fingers. “It’s the second part of the Daring Dame pledge.”

“On my honor.” She held up three fingers, then took my hand, petted it, and sighed. “Sometimes when you say things a certain way, you look and sound just like your mom, and it makes me extraordinarily happy. Remember when I sold my first painting, and we were going to go out to that fancy seafood restaurant and celebrate, but you’d sneaked that entire jar of Nutella? It was all over your face.”

“You called me a brownnose for weeks. Ms. Patty, too.”

“Your mom was so calm when she was trying to get the truth out of you—‘Birdie, I get the sinking feeling you’ve already spoiled your dinner,’?” Mona said, doing a pretty good imitation of my mother.

I chuckled, remembering standing in the kitchen of our tiny apartment, knowing I was in trouble. “I truly had no idea how you guys knew. I’d buried that jar in the trash pretty well. And, you know, to this day, I can’t even hear the word ‘hazelnut’ without getting a little queasy.”

Mona’s laugh was deep and throaty as she tugged at the bodice of my dress, looking me over. “Honestly, me either. I had no idea a girl that small could vomit so much. You were a live-action parenting course. I should get some kind of medal for all the stuff I learned from living with the two of you.”

“Hey,” I said, squinting. “Don’t think you can distract me with memory-lane stories. What’s going on with you? I’m genuinely starting to worry, and when I worry, things get blown up to epic proportions. In my head, you’ve got three days to live, and you’re leaving on a plane to Jakarta tonight with Leon without even so much as a good-bye.”

She snorted a little laugh. “If I had three days to live, I definitely wouldn’t spend it on a plane with Leon. Stop worrying. It’s nothing like that what-so-evah,” she said dramatically. “Look, it’s not a three-days-to-live situation, but I don’t need gossipy island busybodies listening in on my personal stories here.” She waved her hand toward a couple of elderly shoppers who were most definitely listening to us, scattering when they realized they’d been caught. Then Mona said in a lower voice to me, “I promise we’ll do girl talk soon, okay?”

“But—”

“Stop. Worrying.”

Maybe I was being silly. I considered the possibility that I was projecting my own stress and worries onto her, blowing things out of proportion. Maybe I was just being selfish, wanting her to shine all her glorious, sparkly light onto me and me alone—and not on Leon Snodgrass.

I sighed. “Fine.”

“That’s better. Now, on to more pressing things . . . Our Daniel is meeting you at what time?”

“He’s not ours.”

“Maybe not yet, but we can dream, yes?”

No problems there. Over the last twenty-four hours, all I could think about was how his heartbeat felt under my hand. Last night at work, I thought about it so much that it distracted me from doing my job correctly. I incorrectly programmed not one but two room keys. I had Joseph fetch the wrong car from the garage for a guest. I made errors when I ran the auditing program and had to get Melinda to override it so I could run it again. Chuck witnessed that fumble and christened me with a new nickname: Dopey. As in stupid Snow White and her stupid dwarfs.

“Hey,” Aunt Mona said, frowning, “this isn’t part of your mystery case, is it? Whatever it is you’re doing with Daniel tonight?”

“I don’t think so? But that reminds me . . . We found a clue. Hold on.” I rummaged around in my purse and pulled out the spreadsheet we found in the hotel. “Raymond Darke left it in a hotel room. We’re not sure what it is. I’ve tried matching the Cyrillic characters to an alphabet online, but it’s impossible. The font on the printout makes the script look different, and some of the letters are connected, and I can’t for the life of me make it out.”

“Is this Russian?”

“Ukrainian.”

Her brows lifted. “Really? I know someone who speaks Ukrainian. David Sharkovsky—he’s that Seattle gallery owner.”

“The guy who bought your first painting?” Which in turn led to my Nutella overdosing. I’d heard about him but had never seen him. “He’s the guy who sold your Young Napoleon Bonaparte painting, right?” It was quite the conversation piece, and her biggest single sale of an original painting.

“That’s him. He’s sort of an asshole, but I’ll bet he could translate this for you. If you want, I could try to arrange a meeting. Maybe you, me, and our Daniel could have lunch?”

“Are you serious?”

“I’ll give him a call and let you know tomorrow. As payment, you can promise to have a good time tonight.”

“I can’t promise that. I don’t even know what we’re doing.”

“Birdie,” she said, throwing her arms around my shoulders to hug me, “one day you’ll realize that the not knowing is the best part of life.”

Maybe for someone brave like her. Me? I wasn’t so sure.

After parting ways with Aunt Mona, I walked home with Grandpa Hugo and spent the rest of the afternoon fluctuating between anxiety and excitement. Sure, Daniel said this was a date that wasn’t a date. I shouldn’t place too much importance on one night. Or maybe at all. It felt like we’d done everything backward. If you were baking a cake and rushed to the end of the recipe, stuck it in the oven, and then several minutes later realized you forgot the eggs, wasn’t it too late to add them?