Page 17 of Crazy In Love
Why did everyone in my life want to make small talk about every little thing I asked?
Yes. As I said above, send a fucking cleaning company over there to clean up the egg on her building.
Brenner
Got it, sunshine.
Let’s lead with that next time. And I’d like you to personally oversee the job and make sure it gets done.
Brenner
Happy to oblige. I enjoy flower shops.
I rolled my eyes and set my phone down. Brenner was damn good at his job, but he was chattier than I preferred. He’d known me for many years, so he was used to me ending the conversation abruptly.
This was a good peace offering.
I’d accused her of writing the fucked-up column, and it appeared I was wrong, assuming we were putting all of our eggs in a basket lined with polygraph paper. But there was an 80 to 90 percent chance she was telling the truth, and the fact that she’d gone to all that effort seemed to mean she had something to prove.
So, I’d get her building cleaned.
Even if a pregnant woman was the actual culprit of the egging—I’d do this as a peace offering.
I’d much rather get her building cleaned than apologize.
And most people preferred a gift over words, right?
Easy fix.
Those were my favorite.
six
. . .
Emilia
I addedsome fresh mums in the terra-cotta pot in the window scene at the flower shop. I always went all out on my window displays, and after a Town Hall meeting determined that we keep all decorating Fall themed this year until the first of December, I had a few more days until I would need to change it.
The window design was kind of my little moment of using my interior design degree at my day job. But now that I’d gotten the business license for Vintage Interiors, I was so inspired to get things going.
“Hey, Emilia,” Beatrice said as she walked in and set her purse behind the counter. She normally worked part-time for me, but with the busy holiday season approaching, she was coming in daily now. “I just walked the entire downtown, and our window is still by far the cutest.”
I chuckled. She was always pumping me up. She was in her mid-thirties, so a few years older than me. She used to date my brother back in high school, so I’d known her for a long time.
“Thank you! I’ll take it. But I’ve got to get that egg off the windows, so I’m going to try this spray that I ordered. I’m hopingit comes off. It’s really caked on there.” I held up the bottle of window cleaner that had arrived in the mail yesterday.
“I still can’t believe that Cara Carmichael did it. Are you sure Bridger Chadwick is a reliable source?” she asked.
“I mean, he’s a complete jackass, but he does seem like he’d do his due diligence, right? And apparently, he had the town’s security cameras’ video pulled and saw it go down.”
“Where does one just find random camera footage? How do we do that?”
“We don’t. Apparently when you’ve got more money than any one man needs, people let you do things the rest of us can’t do.”
“Must be nice. Shouldn’t we take the footage to the police and report her?” she said, the shake of her head making no attempt to hide her irritation.
“I’m not going to press charges against a pregnant woman for egging my building.” I chuckled. “Plus, she’s a loyal customer, and I’m hoping this all blows over.”
