Crazy for You Read online

  “Right there in the office,” Nick said, trying to be encouraging.

  Barbara took a deep breath. “He’s really good with cars, isn’t he?”

  “The best,” Nick said. “The office is right there, through that door.”

  “Because my car is running much better. He even fixed the heater.”

  “It was just a loose switch,” Nick said, not mentioning he was the one who’d fixed it. “Max is good at catching things like that.”

  “Well, that’s what I thought.” Barbara came a step closer, and Nick realized there was something different about her. She didn’t look as flashy for some reason. Like her hair was darker or something. “I think paying attention to details is important, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Nick gave up on remembering what color her hair had been before because he didn’t care. “Well, you can just put those cookies in the office.”

  “Is he good around the house, too?” Barbara asked, and Nick decided she was weird.

  “He does okay,” Nick said. “Darla never complains.” He debated saying more and decided against it. No point in getting involved.

  “I know. She does wonderful hair.” Barbara seemed guileless. “She’s lucky to have Max.”

  “Right there in the office,” Nick said. “That would be the place to put those cookies.”

  “You’re busy.” Barbara backed up a step. “It must be wonderful to work with Max.”

  “Makes my day,” Nick said.

  “I’m sure you’re good, too,” Barbara said politely.

  “Not very,” Nick said.

  “I’ll just put these in the office.”

  “That would be the place.” Nick stuck his head back under the hood of the Honda and thought, Max, you’re going to have to handle this.

  And then he concentrated on the Honda because Max and Barbara were none of his business.

  Quinn got home a little after three, faster than usual because she was so excited to see Katie. Katie would need to go out right away, so she’d take her out in back of the apartment the way she had that morning, watch her jump and skip across the frozen ground and then come running back, and she’d feel the exhilaration she’d felt then, the lift of having something that loved her without expecting anything from her. She’d pick Katie up as she pawed at her coat, shivering all over from anxiety and excitement, cuddle her warm, and feel Katie’s little head rest on her shoulder again. It was so amazing to have a dog of her own that she smiled as she opened the door to the apartment and called “Katie!”, waiting to hear the newly wonderful clatter of dog toenails on the kitchen tile.

  The apartment stayed silent.

  “Katie?”

  Still no toenails. Quinn shut the door behind her and began to look, her heart pounding, checking to make sure Katie wasn’t locked in the bathroom or asleep on the pine poster bed. The apartment was small enough that she had the entire place searched in two minutes. No Katie.

  She tortured herself with the thought that the dog might have gotten out somehow, but when she went to see how much dog food was left, evidence of how long Katie might have been in the apartment, both bowls were gone. Quinn found them in the dishwasher.

  Bill was always tidy.

  The blood rose in her face and all the irritation and frustration she’d been feeling coalesced into rage.

  He’d taken her dog.

  He’d stolen her dog.

  It took her no time at all to cover the mile back to school.

  Three

  Across town at the Upper Cut, Darla backcombed Susan Bridges and tried to talk herself out of being angry. There was no reason to be angry. Max had been right the night before. Having sex while all of Tibbett watched would probably have been bad for business. And anyway, she’d had all the payback she needed when she’d turned Max down at eleven. He’d put his arms around her in the empty kitchen after Mark and Mitch had finally gone off to bed, and she’d said, “Out of the mood.” Max had dropped his arms and said, “Ooooh-kay,” and wandered off to bed himself without another word to her. Not another word.

  “Ouch,” Susan said, and Darla apologized and put her mind back on Susan’s hair.

  “Did you ever think of changing your style?” she asked Susan, looking over her shoulder into the gray and scarlet-framed mirror. “You’ve been doing it this way for…a while now.” Thirty years about, was Darla’s guess. “You’d look good in one of those wedge cuts. Bring out your cheekbones.”

  Susan sucked in her cheeks and studied herself in the mirror. “Darryl wouldn’t even know me.”

  “Well, that could be good,” Darla said. “Give him something different. Make him look at you again. Make him think he was sleeping with a brand-new woman.”

  “I don’t notice you changing your hair,” Susan said.

  Darla checked her light brown French twist in the mirror. “Max likes it long and this is the only way I can stand it during the day.”

  “Well, cut it off,” Susan said. “Make him think he’s cheating on you.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Darla said. Actually, cutting her hair short was tempting. Except Max liked it long. It would be a crummy way to pay Max back for something he didn’t even know he’d done, that she couldn’t even explain to him. I want something different, she wanted to say to him. I want us to be new again. And there poor old Max would be, clueless as to how to give her what she wanted. Not his fault. “I couldn’t do that to Max.”

  “Well, see,” Susan said.

  As Susan left, Darla’s sister Debbie came back from the break room and plopped herself down on the scarlet seat at the next station.

  “Mama said you haven’t called her.” Debbie checked her impossibly blonde hair in the mirror. “She said she raised you better than that and what are you thinking. Do you think I look like Princess Di with my hair this way? I thought it might be too long, but Ronnie says no. Was that Susan Bridges who just left? That woman hasn’t changed her do since the Doobie Brothers broke up.”

  “Hi, Deb.” Darla swept the last of Susan’s trimmings from the scarlet and gray—tiled floor around her station and fought back the impulse to point out that since Princess Diana was no longer setting fashion, there was something slightly icky about trying to look like her.

  Debbie straightened her Upper Cut smock in the mirror as she babbled on. “Do you know what I heard?” She craned her head to see if anybody at the other stations could overhear, but the only three people at work besides them were across the room. “Barbara Niedemeyer broke up with Matthew Ferguson. Dumped his butt good.” Debbie nodded her head, a good-riddance nod.

  Old news, Deb, Darla thought, but kept her mouth shut as she tidied her station. Let Debbie enjoy herself. She’d probably never wanted anything different in her life, just Ronnie, the Upper Cut, and the chance to be the first with good gossip.

  “And do you know what that means? She’s gonna be in here to get a new hairdo one of these days. And when she does, we’ll know who the next one is.”

  Darla stopped tidying. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well.” Debbie leaned forward, waiting for Darla to join her.

  Darla checked her watch. It was four o’clock. “I’ve got Marty Jacobsen now.”

  Debbie waved her hand. “Marty’s always late. Probably out collecting gossip again. Some people.”

  “Right,” Darla said and sat down. “Okay, I’m listening.”

  “Well, remember right before Barbara went after Matthew? She came in here and she had me do a henna rinse and put it all up on top of her head, only she said, ‘Make it tasteful, Debbie, and soft, like Ivana’s.’ And I thought that was funny at the time, but then when Ronnie told me she’d dumped Matthew, I thought, ‘I wonder if she’d come in for a new hairdo again,’ and that’s when it hit me.”

  “Hit me, too,” Darla said. “I’m lost.”

  Debbie leaned closer, letting the arm of the chair dig into her soft middle. “She was trying to look like Lois.”