been a sweater or a sport drink. And my hair resembled a wig that had caught fire.
I ran my fingers through it and cringed. Reyes had seen me like this. I couldn’t have looked worse if I’d had scales and a forked tongue.
“What do you call that?”
“Hanging,” I said, dragging out the tiny travel blow dryer I found at Goodwill. It was worth every cent of that two dollars and, sadly, not much more. It would take forever to dry my hair, so I concentrated on the roots. I yelled at Ian over the sound of the dryer. “That’s what friends do, Ian. They hang.” Not for much longer, though, if I had anything to say about it. This was getting downright creepy.
I rethought telling Ian about Mr. Vandenberg. He didn’t seem the most stable of men. Maybe Bobert would come through and I could talk to the FBI tomorrow. Until then, Mr. V and his family were in mortal danger. I needed to get to the café and check to see if he’d gone back to the shop. If those men were still with him. Maybe they got what they were after and left, but I doubted it. I tried to come up with a plan. If only I could slip a note to Mr. V somehow. I’d have to think on it.
“We going to dinner?” Ian asked over the hum of the dryer, dismissing the conversation we’d been having.
“If you want to eat at the café, we are.”
He wilted. “I wanted to take you somewhere nice.”
“I’m not dressed for nice. I look like a blue Popsicle with hair.”
A smile slid across his face. He was trying to make amends. “I like Popsicles.”
It didn’t work. Sadly, if Reyes had said that, I would have melted into a pretty blue puddle. Ian didn’t give my girly bits quite the same zing.
“Out,” I said once I got my roots fairly dry and the rest of my hair pulled up into a ponytail. I pointed to the door, ordering my unwanted company out. I had to change if I was going anywhere, and the last thing I wanted to do was give Ian another reason to think there was more between us than there was by changing in front of him. That would be equivalent to throwing gasoline onto a fire.
He backed out, his slow moves evidence of his reluctance. What did he think? I’d scramble out the window? I looked toward it. It was way too small. I’d never make it.
“I’ll warm up the car,” he said.
I gave him a thumbs-up, then shut the door and collapsed against it. The Reyes Effect was still screaming though me, pulsing along my nerve endings, whetting my appetite for more. But it didn’t matter. I had to get my hormones under control. He loved someone else, and there was nothing I could do about it. Absolutely nothing.
I changed clothes, then pulled Reyes’s jacket on, breathing him in as I did so. Before I left, I said a quick good-bye to Irma.
“Hold down the fort, Irm!”
I had no idea what her name really was. She was there when I’d rented the apartment, hovering with her nose in a corner, never moving, never speaking, her toes several inches from the floor. She wore a bright floral muumuu and love beads despite her tiny stature and advanced age. She was old enough for blue hair, so I was guessing she was at least seventy.
I almost didn’t rent the apartment when I saw her there, but I really needed out of that storeroom, and this was the only thing I could afford. Once I got used to her, I couldn’t imagine the apartment without her.
As usual, I didn’t get a reply from Irma. Ian was in his running car when I braved the cold once again. At least it had quit raining at last. I held up an index finger to tell him to give me a minute, then ran next door and knocked lightly on Mable’s window. I didn’t want to wake her if she was already asleep, but she called out for me to come in.
“Hey, hon,” I said, dragging a frozen, wet sandwich out of the paper bag.
Mable was already in her pajamas and housecoat, getting ready to settle down for the evening. “Have you seen my brush?” she asked me. “The brown one?”
I chuckled. “Not lately. I brought your favorite, but it’s kind of squished. And frozen.”