19 Headed for Trouble by Suzanne Brockmann Page A

with Ginny, my older sister—who had some extremely hot friends.”
    “Ginny’s pretty hot herself.” Izzy turned to Gilligan. “You ever meet Ginny?”
    “Yeah, once,” he said, and it was clear he wouldn’t have used the word
hot
to describe her. “She came to San Diego. She was kind of, well … large. I mean, short, like Jenk, but … round. No offense, Jenkins.”
    “Yeah,” Izzy said. “No offense, Jenkins, but Gilligan thinks your sister is freaking fat.”
    “She
was
pregnant,” Lopez pointed out, ever the voice of calm.
    “She was?” Gillman looked to Jenk for confirmation. “I didn’t know she was married.”
    “Yeah. Gin’s got three kids,” Jenk said. He put his cards down on the table and, stretching, stood up. Chickie was still out in the driveway. Jenk could see him through the window, pacing back and forth out there as he spoke on his phone.
    “Wow,” Gillman said.
    Jenk opened the mini-fridge and pulled out another beer.
    “Wow,” Izzy echoed. “For someone with three kids, she’s not just hot, she’s freaking hot.”
    Jenk popped the top and held the bottle out to Gillman. Who took it, alleluia, and took a long swig. “Iz?”
    “Nah, I’m good,” Izzy said.
    “Jay?”
    “Thanks.” Lopez drained his bottle, and Jenk traded him for a new one, putting the empty in the growing pile with the others.
    “So we’re in this store,” Jenk continued his story, “and these three huge woman—I mean they were really tall. They come in, and they’re dusting the snow off their coats and their hair, and they’re really disappointed at the no credit card news. One of them—Sherilee—overhears my conversation with my dad.”
    “Sherilee,” Izzy repeated.
    “Sherilee, Rhonda, and Marcia,” Jenk said, sitting back at the table. “Sherilee goes,
Last-minute Christmas shopping?
And my dad takes, like, four steps back. He’s staring, and I think it’s because, well, he’s height-challenged like me, and this woman is about six four. She’s also wearing a tiara. How many women shop at the SuperQuick in a tiara? She goes,
Not to be pushy, but I make jewelry
. And I’m looking at thattiara, thinking,
No way
. But she calls one of her friends over, pulls back the other woman’s sleeve. And there’s this bracelet that looks as if it were made for my mom. It was silver and turquoise and … It was beautiful. It was beyond perfect. And my dad, he’s clearly freaked out, but he has to ask.
How much?
She looks at me, she looks at him, says,
A hundred dollars
. She hands it to Dad to look at more closely. Dad goes,
Fifty
. She says
Cash?
And he takes out his wallet. And she says to her friends,
Go, girls
. And they start gathering armloads of chips and Yodels—there’s not a lot of real food in that store. Turns out the trains stopped running, so here they are, at the Yorktown Heights Motel, with three dollars cash between the three of them. If my dad hadn’t bought that bracelet, they wouldn’t have been able to buy anything to eat until the computers came back on line. And from the way the lights were flickering, it wasn’t going to be soon.”
    The door opened, and Chickie came back into the room. But he looked as if someone had jammed a pole up his ass. He made a beeline for the cooler, grabbing another Pepsi, before disappearing into the bathroom.
    “So I’m talking to them,” Jenk continued, “and they’re really nice. They’re actresses, and they do a cabaret show, traveling around the country. Marcia plays the piano, and they all sing. And I’m looking at those bags of popcorn they’re holding, thinking about the lousy Christmas Eve dinner they’re going to have, so I say,
Why don’t you come have dinner with us?
And my dad kind of freezes, and I don’t know why. We’ve always had a strays-and-orphans policy at our house—there’s always someone from outside of the family at our holiday meals. So I say to my dad,
You know Mom won’t mind
. And Sherilee