people in her path, darting between racks of clothing. The foot of a striding customer struck the phone and sent it spinning in another direction. Carlotta hurtled after it, feeling her father slip farther from her grasp with every agonizing second that passed. She was practically hyperventilating when she fell to her knees, curled her fingers around the elusive phone and jammed it to her ear. “Hello? Daddy?”
Dead air. If it had been Randolph Wren on the other end of the line, he was gone.
A sob welled up in her chest. “Daddy, can you hear me?”
She couldn’t bring herself to hang up, unwilling to sever the only connection she’d had with her father in over a decade. Then she realized that he might be trying to call her back and stabbed the disconnect button. Sitting under a rack of beaded bathing-suit sarongs, Carlotta stared at the phone, willing it to ring again, thinking how ridiculous she would seem to an onlooker—an almost thirty-year-old woman sitting on the floor waiting for a call back from her long-lost daddy.
Somewhere between her nonexistent career goals, her brother’s legal problems, their hulking debt to loan sharks and her confused love life, she’d made the transition from pitiful to pathetic.
Suddenly she remembered the callback feature and realized with a surge of excitement that she’d at least be able to see what number he’d called from. She stabbed at buttons on the phone, but was rewarded with a rather sick-sounding tone and noticed with dismay that the display was interrupted by a hairline crack. Liquid gathered in one corner, much like when Wesley had broken his Etch-a-Sketch when he was little.
“You can’t be broken,” Carlotta pleaded, blinking back tears. What would she tell Wesley? That their father had finally made contact and she’d hung up on him? Wesley still believed that their father was innocent and that he and their mother would return some day to clear his name and unite their shattered family. Carlotta felt less forgiving, especially toward her mother Valerie, who hadn’t been charged with a crime, yet had chosen a life on the lam over her own children.
“Ring,” she whispered, hoping that only the display had been compromised. She sat on her heels for five long minutes, her thumb hovering over the answer button, perspiration wetting her forehead. A shadow fell over her. When she looked up, she winced inwardly to see the general manager, Lindy Russell, standing with her eyebrows raised.
Minus ten points.
Next to Lindy stood a tall, narrow blonde, conservatively coiffed down to her upper class hair flip and wearing a haughty expression. Carlotta recognized her from sales meetings; she was new and worked in accessories next to the shoe department where Carlotta’s friend Michael Lane worked. Patricia somebody or another.
“Carlotta, is there a problem?” Lindy asked.
Carlotta pushed to her feet and straightened her clothing. During the dash for her phone she’d lost a shoe. “No.”
“Glad to hear it. You know you’re not supposed to be using your cell phone while you’re working the floor.”
“Yes,” Carlotta said, her throat closing. “But this is a—an emergency.”
“Oh?” Lindy crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Are you on an organ-donor list?”
“No.”
“The phone-a-friend for a contestant on a national trivia show?”
“No.”
“Waiting to hear back from your next employer?”
Patricia snickered and Carlotta swallowed. “N-no.”
Lindy extended her hand. “Hand it over. You can pick it up at the end of your shift.”
“But—”
“No buts, Carlotta. You’re already skating on thin ice around here.”
Carlotta bit her tongue. Lindy had been more than fair to give her a get-out-of-jail-free card for buying clothes on her employee discount, wearing them to crash upscale parties, then returning the fancy outfits for full credit. Ditto when she had been involved in a knock-down drag-out fight with a customer right here in the store—and been implicated in that customer’s subsequent murder. That particular misunderstanding had since been cleared up, but Carlotta’s once-stellar sales record had slipped badly in the interim. It hadn’t helped that the murdered woman had been a high-volume customer.
She was lucky that she hadn’t been canned weeks ago, and since she and Wesley depended on her paycheck for little things like paying the mortgage … with a shaky smile, she handed the phone to Lindy.
“Carlotta, have you met Patricia Alexander?”
“Not formally.” She extended her hand to the blonde. “Hello.”
The woman’s hand was just as cold as her smile. “Hello.”
“Patricia is number one in sales this week,” Lindy said.
“Congratulations,” Carlotta murmured, stinging with the knowledge that not too long ago, she had owned that number one spot.
“Thanks,” Patricia said, then laughed—a sound that reminded Carlotta of a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. “No hard feelings, I hope.”
“Why should there be?”
The woman angled her head. “Because I plan to break your sales record. Better watch your back.” Her frosty smile didn’t match her breezy tone.
Lindy gave Carlotta a pointed look, then dropped the phone into her jacket pocket. Carlotta watched the women walk away, along with all hopes of talking to her father today.
Had it really been him? And if so, would he think she’d hung up on him purposely, that she didn’t want to talk to him? Worrying her lower lip, she wondered—did she?
If anyone had asked what she would do if her father called out of the blue, Carlotta would’ve sworn that she would hang up on him. Over the years her anger had grown into an almost tangible mass, like a tumor. Yet at the sound of his voice, she had regressed to Daddy’s little girl—the entitled, spoiled teenager she’d been when he’d disappeared, the naive, young woman who couldn’t conceive that her parents would desert her and her nine-year-old brother. With a mere four words uttered from his mouth, she’d been ready to accept his explanation and his apology … assuming he’d had either to offer.
She covered her mouth to suppress the aching wail that lodged in her throat. Knowing that her father still had that much power over her made her feel even less in control than usual. How dare he dive-bomb back into their lives like that?
Perilously close to losing it, Carlotta backtracked to find her shoe, but was blinded by tears of frustration. She wiped at her eyes angrily and swore under her breath.
“Is this what you’re looking for?”
She winced, then turned at the unmistakable noise of Detective Jack Terry’s voice. She blinked away the moisture to find him studying her red Dior stiletto-heel slide with the same intensity that she’d seen him study evidence at crime scenes. Wesley’s job as a body mover had thrown her and the detective into close proximity at a couple of crime scenes, with abrasive results. Jack Terry was the one person she didn’t want to see right now—the brute had recently reopened her father’s case.
“Yes,” she snapped, snatching the shoe out of his big hand. “What are you doing here?”
“Irritating you, apparently.” Then he suddenly looked sheepish and she realized he was dressed too casually to be on duty. He cleared his throat. “If you must know, I need a monkey suit for a bigwig department dinner and I could use your … uh … help … picking out something.”
Her anger receded. He had no idea what had just transpired. And wouldn’t know unless she told him … or unless he’d made good on his threat to put a trace on her and Wesley’s phones. He wasn’t convinced that a handful of postcards was the only contact they’d had with their missing