“This week, they’ll watch because we’re going to invite people to our tea.” Mae beamed a smile all around. It was stiff around the edges. “Of course, you’re all invited, too.”
“Don’t need your stupid tea.” Sammi tossed her head. “We’re gonna knock your socks off with our-”
I shushed her fast. So far, the art show was our secret. I didn’t need her leaking it, especially before Team One hosted its tea. As old and sweet and pink as she was, something told me Mae wouldn’t be above finding some artwork to display at the tea and scooping our idea out from under us.
“That was good.” I should have known Greer was filming, but honestly, by this time, I was so used to her and that camera, I hadn’t even been paying attention. “The way you cut Sammi off like that, Pepper, that provided a great dynamic.” She glanced at Sammi. “You want to take a swing at Pepper?”
Sammi rolled her eyes and walked away.
“Anyway…” Greer got back down to business. “We’re going to get some nice shots this afternoon. I was thinking of something to really set the mood for the announcement about the tea. Maybe a shot of Team One working and their picnic baskets stacked in the foreground?” It was obviously never meant to be a question, so she signaled to her cameraman and he got to work arranging the baskets artfully.
He’d already put a couple in place when he hefted the one he was holding. “This one’s heavy. What can little old ladies have in their picnic baskets?”
It was the first thing I’d ever heard Charlie the cameraman say, but that wasn’t why his comment interested me so.
I thought about the box we’d found at Jefferson Lamar’s gravesite and if the camera wasn’t rolling, I would have slapped myself smack on the forehead.
I’d been so busy suspecting my own teammates of walking off with the coin, I hadn’t bothered to think it might be someone else.
What could little old ladies have in their picnic baskets?
I wasn’t sure, but as soon as I had the chance, I intended to find out.
“ Whatdoyoumean,youthought one of us took ”that coin?” Absalom was the spokesman for the team, so he was the one up in my face making me regret I’d ever mentioned my theory about Team One having the coin, or my suspicions about what had happened to it in the first place. Outraged, he sputtered, “You think one of us would actually steal something?”
I saw the irony of that question, even if he didn’t. The way I rolled my eyes was designed to point that out. “What do you mean you wouldn’t steal anything? Some of you have.” I made sure I looked at everyone, just so Absalom didn’t feel singled out. “You’ve stolen plenty.”
He opened his mouth, all set to keep arguing.
Until the sense of what I said hit.
Absalom snapped his mouth shut, backed up a step, and roared with laughter.
“You got me there!” What was supposed to be a friendly slap on the shoulder was more like a thud coming from him. I staggered and started laughing, too.
Delmar had a wide smile on his face. “We wouldn’t steal from family,” he said, then blushed. “I mean, it’s hokey and all, but we’re sort of like a family, aren’t we? And none of us would ever-”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” I caught my breath and apologized, grateful I didn’t have a full-scale mutiny on my hands. Theoretically, I suppose I deserved one. “I never should have suspected you. Not any of you. I never would have. But back when we found the coin, I didn’t know you as well. I’m sorry.”
“You think one of them rich ladies did it?” Reggie’s eyes glowed at the prospect.
“I think it’s a possibility. If they caught wind of the fact that we found something unusual at Jefferson Lamar’s grave, they might want to hide it. You know, so we couldn’t reveal it on the show. They’d know that would make our section look too interesting.”
“And they wouldn’t want us to look too smart, neither.” Sammi crossed her arms over her chest and puffed out a breath of annoyance. “They got a lot of damned nerve.”
“Well, we don’t know if they’re the ones who did it,” I cautioned. “We won’t know. Not until we can get a look in those picnic baskets. They bring them every day, and it’s logical that the coin might still be in the basket. It’s not like they would have taken it anywhere or sold it or anything. They just want to keep it away from us.”
Absalom rubbed his beefy hands together. “So what are we going to do?”
“Create a diversion, I suppose.” It was as much of a plan as I had. “If we can get them out of their section, somebody can sneak over there and take a look in those baskets.”
“And I got just the diversion.” Sammi stalked over to where I stood and raised her voice. It was as shrill as a train whistle and in the quiet of the afternoon, it carried plenty far. She propped her fists on her hips. “Say what? Say what? You know what you can do with these frickin’ maps of yours…” There was a stack of cemetery maps on a nearby headstone, and she picked them up and waited for her opportunity. The moment Greer, her cameraman, and all the members of Team One came running to see what the commotion was all about, she side-handed those maps across the section.
It was perfect, and I joined right in. What did we fight about?
I don’t remember, and it doesn’t matter, anyway.
Sammi yelled, and I yelled right back. She screamed, and I screamed louder. We pointed fingers in each other’s faces. We snapped and scowled. We kept it up until Delmar slipped away and came back a couple minutes later, and when he did, there was a grin on his face. Just as I hoped, when Sammi and I stopped fighting, our audience disappeared. Delmar explained that he’d found the box exactly where we thought it would be, in one of the picnic baskets that belong to Team One. He handed it over, and I checked to be sure the coin was still inside it, then tucked it in my purse. After high fives all around, my team went home for the evening.
And it wasn’t until they were gone and I was going around picking up those maps Sammi tossed that I realized just how good all that yelling and screaming felt.
I guess I’d been pissed for a long time and I never even knew it.
Why?
Let me count the ways.
I was pissed at Sammi for being a royal pain, and specifically for ruining that new gold cotton tunic of mine and bruising my neck.
I was pissed at Quinn for not calling, and pissed at my parents for calling, especially my dad, who, as long as he was at it, left one message asking if everything was OK and another saying he really would like to see me one of these days.
I was pissed about being stuck restoring a cemetery when I should have been working on proving that an upstanding guy like Jefferson Lamar shouldn’t have had to die in prison while whoever framed him sat back to laugh about it.
While I was at it, I might as well admit that I was plenty pissed at the universe in general, too, for allowing a kid like Vera Blaine to get murdered in a dumpy motel while she was wearing jelly bracelets.
When he was young, Robert Oates was a tough-talking punk who made a name for himself on the Cleveland streets by stealing cars and overseeing a couple small-time heists. He spent the better part of his formative years in and out of a variety of boys’ homes, reform schools, and jails, and by the time he was twenty-four, he graduated to bigger and better things. He went out to Nevada, where he earned the Reno nickname, and worked as an enforcer for a variety of crime bosses. By all accounts, he had a vicious streak, and he added hard drinking, heavy gambling, and high living to his resume. It’s no surprise that he made plenty of enemies, or that he was forced to come back to the city of his birth when things got a little too hot for him out west.