Many Blessings

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Monday afternoon, Ellis went back to the store for lunch. When he walked in, Brad was alone behind the counter and on the phone. He looked exasperated, which wasn’t usual for him. “Look, mister. I recognize your voice. Like I keep telling you the other times you’ve called, we don’t have anyone on our staff here named Mickey. We have a Makenzie… Dude, I don’t care if you saw her on TV. You’ve got the wrong name. We’ve got Mandaline, Mina, Makenzie. Those are the em names. We have a Paige, Anna, Kim and Sa—”

He looked at the phone and hung up in disgust. “Asshole.”

“What’s wrong?” Ellis asked.

“Same fricking rude old guy’s called like three times today. Keeps asking for Mickey.” He let out a snort. “He calls again, I’m telling him to try Orlando.”

“Where’s Mandaline?”

“Out shopping. I gave her an assignment and sent her down to the IKEA store in Tampa. I told her I wanted her to pick out bedroom furniture.”

“Why there?”

“Because when I started talking about more expensive furniture, it looked like she was going to pop a vein.” He smiled. “Sachi warned me she’s a thrifty shopper.”

“Oh. So when will she be back?”

“I don’t know. I told her not to come back without some ideas from their catalog, as well as some paint chips from the hardware store to think about what to paint the walls.”

He snorted. “How’d you manage that?”

“Sachi helped me, of course. I thought we were going to have to force her into her car.”

Sachi walked out of the office. “Yeah, she sooo doesn’t take well to being made to not work. I should have warned you our girl is a workaholic.”

Amused, Ellis crossed his arms over his chest. “Pot, meet kettle?”

She nodded. “Hey, takes one to know one, chief.”

Mandaline survived her IKEA expedition and made her way back to the Home Depot in Brooksville. She stared at the colorful wall of paint chips, agonizing indecision rendering her practically numb.

How the frak am I supposed to choose?

She understood what Sachi and Brad were trying to do, to get her out of the shop and force her to think of something besides that for awhile. She loved them for it, but this was almost a form of torture for her.

This was the first time in…well, in ever, that she’d actually had a solo voice in a major furniture or color decision. When Julie had decided to repaint the reading rooms, she’d given the staff ten choices to pick from that they liked the best.

Carl had never given her a true choice, instead painting the blah beige color palette his mother had insisted would be the most sensible. And the trailer was a rental with wood-paneled walls, not worth painting.

And she hadn’t had money to spend on “good” furniture before anyway.

This…this was sheer insanity.

How do people pick colors?

She finally started grabbing sample cards she liked. By the time she finished, she had at least fifty choices and it felt like her head was about to explode.

That’s it. Brad can do the rest of the house. This suuucks.

When she got back to the shop it was after six, thunderstorms were approaching, and she found Sachi’s last reading of the day had cancelled. “Good.” She grabbed her arm and started dragging her toward the back door. “Then you can come with me.”

“Whoa, slow down, boss. Come where?”

“To the house to pick a paint color.”

Sachi rolled her eyes. “Really? Isn’t this why you make the big bucks?”

“Sachi.”

“Why can’t Tarzan go with you? I thought the contractor got the mold cleaned up.”

“Because we haven’t got the final reports back yet on the air quality. I don’t want him there until we do. Hey, you took sides against me getting me out of the store this morning. You owe me. Please?”

Sachi’s snark disappeared, her expression softening. “You all right?”

She started to nod, then shook her head, finally ending with a shrug.

Sachi gave her a hug. “Okay. Hold on, let me get my purse and give Tarzan my keys. One of the guys from the skeet club reloads, but he wants to experiment with a different load and asked to borrow a couple of shot and powder bushings since my reloader takes the same ones his does. They’re in my trunk. He might come by to get them tonight.”

“You went to your house?” Mandaline wanted to smack her. “What the hell?”

“I didn’t go alone. I took Tarzan with me. We were there all of five minutes. Quit worrying.”

When they were pulling away from the store, Sachi cocked her head at Mandaline from the passenger seat. “You are really wound up about this furniture and paint thing, aren’t you?”

“I don’t want to screw it up,” she admitted.

Sachi let out a laugh that Mandaline recognized as her kind one, not her snarky one. “Sweetie, I think you could paint the room like Shrek destroyed a Barbie dollhouse and they both exploded, and they wouldn’t give a damn. You’re being way too hard on yourself.” She reached over and patted Mandaline’s arm. “They want you to pick the colors and furniture because they want you to feel like it’s your home, too. Those two men honestly don’t give a shit what you pick. They’ll love it because you’re living there with them.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. They flat-out told you that. You didn’t believe them?”

“I really suck at this relationship stuff.”

“No you don’t. You’re just too damn hard on yourself. Ease up. Go with the flow.” She grinned. “You lucky bitch. They’re wrapped around your fingers. Both of them.” She pulled out her cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“Tarzan. After we get done at the house, I’m abducting your ass for the evening. Girls’ ni—hey, it’s Sachi. Mind if I borrow your gal for the whole evening? Cool, we’ll be back by eleven. Thanks!” She ended the call and dumped the phone back in her purse. “See? You’re all mine for the night. We should call Libbie and see if she wants to go out.”

“She gets up early. She’s probably already in bed.”

“Ah. True. We have to catch her on a Saturday or Sunday. Deal?”

Mandaline glanced at her. “Okay, but if you want me to loosen up, you have to stay sober and be the designated driver.”

“No problem.” She settled back in her seat. “The other option is ordering a pizza and stopping at a convenience store on our way over to the house for a six-pack of beer. It’s been spritzing all afternoon.” She pointed at the heavy, leaden clouds making their way from the west toward town. “Bottom’s supposed to drop out here shortly.” She grinned. “We can do some nighttime skyclad rain dancing in the yard. How long’s it been since you got to do that? I mean, since the night you rescued Tarzan from the killer mold. And technically that wasn’t a happy-time dance.”

Mandaline giggled. “Okay, that’s a winning plan.”

“Cool.”

They opted to order the pizza sooner rather than later. While they waited, they went up to the master bedroom and Sachi helped Mandaline tape all the sample cards up on the walls.

“We really should be doing this in the daytime, you know,” Sachi said without snark. “Hard to see a true color even with all the work lights.” She glanced out the window where dark was falling early due to the heavy clouds. “Not the best light.”

“I know, but I want an idea of what I can live with. Most of the time I’ll be in here, it’ll be dark outside.” She immediately pulled one sample from the wall. In this light, it looked too acid-green for her tastes.

“See? That wasn’t so hard,” Sachi said. “One down, and only a bazillion more to go.”

Ellis wasn’t in a hurry to get back to the store. Brad had called him with a heads-up about the women going to the house and suspecting Mandaline needed some downtime based on Sachi’s wording. He and Brad could scrounge for leftovers.

It would do Sachi and Mandaline some good to be alone together.

Not to mention he had plenty of work he could do to keep him busy. Or…

He opened an Internet browser window on his laptop. He wasn’t surprised when he entered “Sachi murder assault Montana” into Google and came up with several pages of results about the attack and trial. He spent the better part of an hour reading about what happened. Even after having heard Sachi’s version of the events, the details chilled him to the core.

Even sadder, that Jacob’s mother killed herself after allowing doctors to withdraw life support for her son.

He leaned back in his chair and stared at the screen. He’d seen a lot of misery inside the walls of courtrooms. Other than Brad’s ordeals, he’d largely been insulated from the worst of humanity in his own personal life.

She lived for a month with her husband in jail, accused of attacking a girl to cover up their son’s crime of rape and murder. That’s hell on earth.

He also found Sachi’s mother’s obituary. Apparently it wasn’t the newspaper’s policy to comment on manner of death, since it listed only the date she died, her family information, and information on the memorial services, which apparently were held both in Montana and New Jersey.

Sachi Bloomfeld is survived by her husband Michael and daughter, Miki…

Mandaline had only eliminated six more choices by the time the pizza arrived. She’d waited to pop the cap on her first beer until then. Sachi, who apparently had an iron constitution, swore she’d limit herself to two and was already halfway through her first.

As they sat around the folding table in the kitchen, Sachi’s iPod plugged into the men’s portable stereo and blasting Shakira at wall-rattling levels in the living room, Mandaline tried to envision the house finished.

She looked at Sachi. “Isn’t your dad set to retire soon? Maybe he’d like to move to Florida. How long’s it been since you’ve seen him?”

Sachi nearly choked on the mouthful of pizza she’d been working on. “Whoa. Where the hell did that come from?”

“I don’t like the idea of you being alone. Look what happened Saturday.”

“I’m not alone. And I talk to my dad at least once a week on the phone.” She took a swallow of beer. “Look, I’m not worried about it, all right? It’s just a freaky coincidence.” Her expression darkened. “The cops said there’d been several break-ins in the neighborhood over the past few weeks. It was probably kids.”

“They didn’t steal anything.”

“Yeah, because my neighbor scared them away before they could.” She reached over and touched Mandaline’s hand. “Miki Bloomfeld isn’t traceable to Florida.”

“You said he’s out on parole.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, so? I’m what, two thousand miles away?” She smiled. “Hey, you’re not trying to talk me out of skyclad rain dancing, are you? I was all lookin’ forward to seein’ and barin’ boobies.”

Mandaline nearly spit her beer out laughing. “You can’t be serious at all, can you?”

Sachi grinned. “Of course I can. But snark is my passion, right up there next to skeet. I’m good at it. Wouldn’t want me to waste my natural talents, would you?”

Mandaline tried and succeeded in taking a swallow of her beer. “No, we wouldn’t want that at all.” As if to punctuate her comment, thunder rumbled outside. “When is the alarm getting installed?”

Sachi let out a sigh. “Hopefully tomorrow, Momma Bear.”

“Good. Panic buttons?”

Sachi didn’t suppress the eye roll. “Yes, two, one on each keypad, plus a wearable fob.”

“Why aren’t you taking this more seriously?”

“I’m taking it as seriously as I need to.” She picked up her beer and took a few swallows from the bottle. “Let’s be honest. Any goober with half a brain and an Internet connection could probably find me if he tried hard enough. Yes, the house isn’t in my name, it’s in the name of the trust I had set up, as are the utilities and my car, but seriously? They could find my dad, break into his house, and find my address, I’m sure. Or track me down somehow.”

“Then get a fricking concealed carry permit!”

Sachi’s eyebrows soared skyward. “You? Telling me to get a concealed carry permit? I think hell really has frozen over.” She set her beer down on the table. “Can we please not talk about this tonight? We’re here because you freaked out over the rainbow of choices available to paint your walls. I think I can handle this.”

She didn’t want to let it drop, but she knew Sachi had dug her feet in. “I’m just glad you’re staying with us.”

Sachi’s expression softened. “I appreciate you doing it. I feel like a fifth wheel, though.” Sadness flitted across her expression before she schooled her face back to Sachi the Snarky mode. “I know you’re worried about me, but I think I can handle myself.”

Brad felt unsettled all evening, the feeling growing stronger the later it grew. In one way, he was glad Sachi and Mandaline were going to the house together. He thought it would do both women good to get away for a while.

On the other hand, having them out of sight didn’t help his nerves.

That bothered him.

Then the storm began in earnest.

He practically jumped out of his skin when his cell phone rang in his pocket a little after eight. He dug it out to find Ellis calling.

“I’m not walking back in this slop,” he said. “Do you mind if I hang out here for a while?”

Brad glanced out the front windows. In the light cast by the streetlights, the rain blew through in horizontal sheets as the thunderstorm’s fury built. “No, I’ll be fine. I think everyone else is getting ready to head on out.”

“Sachi and Mandaline still gone?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Don’t wait on me to eat,” he said. “I’ll grab something when I get back over there.”

“Okay.”

He hung up and looked out the windows again. Nature’s fury in action.

And still, his nerves grew ever more frayed.

Mandaline stared out the open door. She’d opted for beer number three after downing the second. “Holy crap, it’s really blowing out there!”

Sachi peered over her shoulder. “Chicken?”

She laughed. “Not even.” She pulled her shirt off over her head, neatly folded it, and laid it on the table, followed by her pants. “I don’t see you getting nekkid.”

“It’s going to be cold.”

“Wuss.”

Sachi frowned. “You calling me out, witchy poo?”

“You better believe it.”

Sachi let out a put-upon sigh and began stripping. She folded her clothes and left them on the table with Mandaline’s. “Fine. Happy?” But she smiled.

“Let’s do it.” Mandaline dashed out the door, laughing, Sachi on her heels. The two women stopped in the middle of the mowed parking area, arms stretched high, eyes closed as rain pelted their faces.

“I do love me a good storm,” Sachi said over the din.

Mandaline did an impromptu dance. “Nothing better for the spirit,” she said.

They weren’t paying any attention to the house, or the fact that behind them, all the lights went out. When Mandaline finally turned and noticed, she softly swore.

“What?” Sachi asked.

“Power’s out.” She suddenly had a creepy feeling they were being watched despite knowing that couldn’t be the case. The closest neighbor was too far away, and the brush way too thick, for them to be seen.

“So?”

“How am I supposed to finish picking paint colors in the dark?” Her beer buzz was hitting hard and strong now, helping her to relax and put the being-watched feeling out of her mind.

Sachi shrugged. “We don’t need it out here. Probably just the storm. It’ll come back on in a few minutes, most likely.”

“Oh. True.” She continued her dancing.

Paige was the last one out the door a few minutes after eight. Alone in the store, Brad walked to the front, feeling more unsettled than ever. He spent nearly an hour trying to draw without success. A little before nine, he tried calling Mandaline’s phone and got her voice mail. “Hey, just checking in. Love you.”

He thought about calling Sachi, too, but decided that would just be paranoid.

Pers, released from the apartment to wander at will, followed close on his heels. He looked down at the little dog. “You feel it?”

Pers sat and let out a bark.

“Yeah, me, too, buddy.”

He walked behind the counter. Someone had raked the zen garden, but he picked up the rake anyway and created a circular pattern with it around the small stones. Satisfied, he put the rake down and turned from it.

Pers let out a loud bark, startling him, just before the power went out.

“Crap.” He knew they had a backup genny, but didn’t know anything about it. Mandaline had shown him where the instruction booklet was in back but that didn’t help him in the dark. He looked out the front windows and saw even the streetlights were out.

“Dammit.” He fumbled around in the blackness until he remembered his iPhone.

“Duh.”

He started to dig it out of his pocket when a soft scritching noise came to him, from his right.

“What the fuck?”

He felt Pers run past his ankles toward the noise as the little dog began barking hysterically. He finally freed his phone from his pocket and found the home button. When he turned, in the soft glow from the light, he found himself face-to-face with Julie.

He let out a scream and nearly dropped the phone.

“Go,” she said. “Now. Believe!”

A loud clap of thunder made him jump. The phone fell from his hands and hit the concrete floor, where the screen broke.

The lights chose that moment to come back on. He was alone in the store, but in the zen garden, someone had written, GO NOW!

His phone, the screen shattered, lay faceup on the floor.

“Fuck!”

He grabbed the shop phone to call Ellis, but silence met him. When he tried to turn the TV back on, the cable box wouldn’t respond. The phone line, part of the cable service, was out, too.

He ran his hands through his hair. “What the fuck do I do?” He grabbed the cell phone from the floor and started to put it in his pocket when he realized there was something else in there.

Sachi’s keys.

In the dark Ellis sat at his desk, his laptop on battery power, and drummed his fingers on his blotter. He was debating whether or not to plug his wireless modem into the computer when the power returned.

Unfortunately, the cable, which was also his Internet connection, didn’t.

“Crap.”

He sat back in his chair, several tabs open in his browser containing information about what happened to Sachi Bloomfeld. He wished there was something he could do for their Sachi. Hell, even if it was just trying to hook her up with a friend, to make her life better.

Then again, a good date isn’t going to exactly make up for her mom getting murdered and her getting raped and having to live under an assumed name.

He minimized his browser and pulled up a file he was working on for a client and tried to immerse himself in that. The cable—and Internet—didn’t come back on. By nine thirty he was contemplating leaving his jacket and shoes in the office and just making a run for it through the rain. He tried calling the shop but it went to voice mail. When he tried both Brad and Mandaline’s cells, theirs did as well.

“Hmm.”

He stared at his phone. The rain showed no signs of letting up anytime soon. If I don’t want to spend most of the night here I might have to suck it up and do it.

He headed for the bathroom first, then upstairs to check and see if he or Brad didn’t still have a change of clothes, like for the gym or doing maintenance at the office or something, stashed in their private closet.

No such luck. He let out a disgusted snort. “Nothing. I’m really running a Mickey Mouse outfit around…”

He froze. A familiar, and completely unpleasant, feeling engulfed him. Chilling him.

Like when he opened his front door that horrible night to find an FHP trooper standing there with Brad’s wallet in his hands.

“Fuck!”

He tore down the stairs to his office and clicked on the browser to maximize it again. As he reread the obituary for Sachi’s mom, that ice water completely froze his soul. “Fuck!”

He ripped off his jacket and threw it on his chair. He barely took the time to lock the front door behind him as he ran through the rain toward the shop.

The power still hadn’t come back on by the time they both grew too chilled to continue their skyclad rain dancing. Sachi waited in the doorway while a still-buzzed Mandaline staggered and fumbled around in the kitchen until her hand finally closed around the Maglite Ellis had brought her the night she’d discovered the mold. She clicked it on.

“There.”

Sachi shivered. “Great. Let’s get some towels.”

Mandaline giggled. “Oops, sorry. I should have thought about that before we went out.”

“Um, yeah, ya think?” Sachi smiled. “That’s okay. I think you’re a little over the limit to be remembering small details like not catching pneumonia.”

Mandaline giggled again. “I’ll go find towels.”

“Great. I’ll stand here while my tits freeze off.”

Mandaline staggered for the stairs. As she crossed the living room, she thought she saw a shadow move out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked and trained the light there, she didn’t notice anything out of place.

She made her way upstairs and tried one hall closet, which was full of linens and other stuff, but no towels. She tried another one, next to the bathroom. “Jackpot!” she called down.

“Great!” Sachi said, her voice now near the base of the stairs. “I’m freezing.”

Mandaline wrapped one around her, one around her hair, and grabbed two more for Sachi. She giggled as she had to lean against the wall when she reached the stairs. She accidentally hit Sachi in the face with the beam from the flashlight, making her squint. “Whoops, sorry.” She pointed it down the stairs.

Sachi looked down, then her expression changed. She stared back up at Mandaline, terror on her face.

Mandaline had seen her look like that before, but she wasn’t sure when.

As she took a step down, Sachi bolted up the stairs, grabbing her and the flashlight. She turned off the flashlight and clapped a hand over Mandaline’s mouth when she tried to speak. She dragged Mandaline back down the hallway and into the bathroom, where she quietly closed and locked the door behind them.

Mandaline struggled against her, confused and scared by her friend’s reaction.

Sachi pressed her lips against Mandaline’s ear. Barely louder than a breath, she whispered, “There’s another set of fresh wet footprints on the floor downstairs. Shoes. Not us. Large ones. They came in, look like they went back out and then came in again.”

Mandaline froze, fear washing through her. Unbidden, her mind flashed back to her private talk with Sami and Matt the day after Julie’s wake.

“I ran outside and hid behind the house, next to the generator. It had run out of fuel. You could barely hear anything over the rain. Then I heard him coming. George. He came outside to refill it. I ran back inside to check on Julie, but she…”

Mandaline closed her eyes and willed it away. Together they huddled close and listened.

They couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the storm outside.

Sachi once again pressed her lips to Mandaline’s ear. “My cell’s in my purse downstairs. Is yours down there, too?”

Mandaline nodded.

“Shit. Do they have a working phone line here?”

She couldn’t remember. Did they? She fumbled for and found Sachi’s ear. She hoped in her drunkenness she was being as quiet as she thought she was. “I don’t know.”