Serving Up Trouble Read online

  “Please.”

  College started. Angie had decided on several general education classes after talking to a college advisor who’d suggested a teaching career.

  Teaching art…it appealed in a way she hadn’t imagined. She could use her passion and still make a living. On her first night of class, she nearly burst with pride as she picked a seat among the students and soaked up the next hour.

  She loved it. Loved everything about it: the smell of the room, the desk that made her bottom numb, the thirst for knowledge all around her.

  Okay, it was only her thirst. All the other students were younger, more hip…and bored.

  Which made no sense to her at all. Nothing about it bored her, not when she was finally there. Which probably explained why she’d grinned like an idiot all the way through the English lecture that put just about every other student in the room to sleep.

  The self-pride sustained her all the way home, in her 1974 VW Bug that had seen better days. It wasn’t the lack of money in her check book that kept her loyal to the ancient clunker, though that was why she hadn’t gotten the pale blue Bug the paint job it long ago deserved.

  She simply loved the car. It’d been her first, bought with hard-earned money she’d saved from her various assortment of jobs over the years, and she saw no reason to change it.

  Her entire life was changing. In light of that, keeping the old Bug was a sort of security blanket. Her one allowed weakness from the past.

  She could live with that.

  Her phone was ringing when she pulled into the carport next to her apartment. The place had been built in the early 1920s, and was a bit run-down since its last renovation in the early 70s, but she loved it, too. The wrap around porch, the myriad little windows and turrets…the place had charm and personality and never failed to warm her heart when she came home.

  Though it sat on prime land in South Pasadena, and by rights should have been far out of her rent bracket, she got the place for practically nothing. Mostly because she kept up the yard, and also because she always had time to chat with Mrs. Penrow, who’d owned the place for more than fifty years.

  As Angie hustled through the small, cozy and comfortably over grown yard, with the grass she needed to cut this weekend, and the daisies just beginning to take over the ground at the rosebushes’ roots, her phone continued to ring.

  The hour was late, which meant, darn it, it wouldn’t be Ed McMahon saying she’d won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweep stakes.

  “What are you doing up this late?” her mother demanded when Angie finally answered just as her machine picked up.

  Given the heavy breathing accompanying her mother’s voice, her father was on the extension as well. “How do you know I’m still up?” Angie asked, her good mood holding. For the moment. “Maybe you woke me.”

  “Oh!” Her mother sounded horrified and apologetic. “Did I?”

  “No.” Angie smiled because she was still so thrilled with how her night had gone. She should have done this long ago, so very long ago. Why hadn’t she? Why had it taken a near tragedy? Didn’t matter, she decided. And though she knew her parents would misunderstand, she had to tell them. “Mom. Dad.” She took a deep breath. “I took my first college course tonight.”

  “Oh my God!” Her mother squealed with shock and delight. “You’re going to be a doctor after all! My daughter, the doctor.”

  “No, Mom—”

  “This is wonderful! Why didn’t you tell us you’d enrolled in medical school?”

  Some of Angie’s glow started to recede. “Mom, you have to get a bachelor’s degree before you can go to medical school.”

  “So you’ll get a bachelor’s degree. How long will it take?”

  “But I never wanted to be a doctor. I want—”

  “Sure you did. When you were a little girl, you used to love to carry that little toy medical kit around and fix up all your stuffed animals.”

  A headache started between Angie’s eyes as her newfound determination warred with her age-old need to please them.

  “And then all through high school we talked about you getting scholarships—”

  “I never had the grades for that, Mom. And we both know, being a doctor was never for me. It was for you.”

  Utter silence. Even her father didn’t have a comment. At first.

  “I’m sorry to speak so bluntly,” she said. “You’ve never wanted to hear this. You probably don’t want to hear it now, but…well, things have changed for me.”

  “Because of the holdup.” Her mother’s voice softened. “You’re still in shock, you—”

  “I’m not in shock. But I did get a wake-up call. I mean I could have d—”

  “Don’t say it,” her mother interrupted fiercely.

  “But it’s the truth. I could have died, without ever really having lived my life. I don’t want that to happen, Mom. Can’t you try to understand that? I want to go after some thing from my own heart.”

  “I thought Tony was your heart. What a wonderful man. And a lawyer! You could try to get him back.”

  They knew nothing of what had split the two of them up, and yet they assumed Tony had left her. Not a surprise, Angie supposed, but just once she would have liked the benefit of the doubt.

  Tony had been a prime example of bad judgment. A serious lapse. He was everything her parents had ever wanted in a son-in-law. Educated, smart, independently wealthy.

  And he’d never ever really known Angie, or even tried to. The pressure had been similar to what her parents had put on her to be someone she wasn’t, and she’d nearly suffocated. To combat it, she’d done nothing with herself. She’d stagnated. “Tony wasn’t the one for me.”

  “You say that because he left. But how could a perfect man not be the one?”

  “Tony and I wouldn’t have made a happy couple. Being a doctor wouldn’t have made me happy either. But,” she said quickly before she could get interrupted again, “college does.”

  “Oh.” Her mother sighed. “Well, it’s a nice start. Frank, maybe you can talk to her about a medical degree—”

  “No. Look, I’m nearly twenty-six years old.” Angie talked as she flipped through her mail. “I’m going to do this my way, okay?” She realized that the “okay” part of the sentence left room for debate. “I’ll let you know how it goes,” she said more firmly.

  Then she saw the package that had come for her, and she smiled again. “I have to go. Got the early shift in the morning.”

  “After college, you’ll be able to get a real job.”

  Her mother never gave up. “I gotta go. Love you, bye.” Then she hung up quickly so she couldn’t hear any more disappointment or doubt. She didn’t need that right now, the extra tug on her emotions that might cause her to give up.

  No more giving up. Ever.

  With that in mind, she tore into the package she’d been waiting for. She’d ordered it after the holdup, when she’d realized her life had nearly been extinguished before she’d ever even lived it, when she’d realized there was more out there for her than waking up and going to sleep.

  When she’d realized Sam made her heart quiver.

  Of course that was also before she’d realized he was not so different from the others in her world. Condescending. Unaccepting.

  But she was human. And as a very human female, she did know, no matter what he thought, that she could help him with his case. She had seen his witness and she knew she’d see him again.

  Pulling the fingerprinting kit free of its wrapping, she reached for the directions and began to read.

  It was three days before Angie saw the suspect again. Three days in which she was aware of every hour, every moment. She absorbed another class. She took a long walk every morning and concentrated on the beauty around her. She read voraciously.

  She lived. And as a result, she felt unbelievably…alive.

  Yet she still avoided the bank. Strong as she told herself she was, she wasn’t quite that st