Beth read the message out loud. ‘“We could have this engraved…”’ Engrave what? The coffee cup? Something niggled in her mind; she looked to Marley. ‘Does that sound familiar to you, somehow? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it somewhere before.’
Marley shrugged. ‘Nope. Never heard anything like that in my life. Could be a new Starbucks marketing thing maybe?’
Well, yes, that was a possibility. But the coffee cup was unbranded, and how to explain the other accompanying message from the delivery guy?
‘You know that bike messenger who showed up at the same time you did? He delivered this coffee to me.’
Marley’s jaw dropped. ‘He delivered acoffee? Youknowthere is a Starbucks, like a block away? I’m all for splashing cash, but having a bike messenger deliver your coffee is justtotallydiva.’ She regarded Beth with some scepticism about her apparent indulgent behaviour and Beth couldn’t help but smile. This coming from a teenager who was just about to put almost six thousand dollars’ worth of boots on her father’s credit card.
Beth shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t have it delivered. Someone sent it to me.’
‘Who?’ Marley asked, intrigued.
‘The guy said the sender asked to remain anonymous.’
The younger girl’s eyes grew wide. ‘OMG. Seriously? Imagine if that coffee had been, like,poisoned. What if I just saved your life?’
Beth couldn’t help but smile as Marley stood up straighter with the idea that she was her generation’s Florence Nightingale. Talk about a drama queen.
‘Well, of course I would thank you, if that was the case, but I am not sure if I was a target for poisoning, Marley. The coffee wasn’t the only thing delivered. There was a message too. The delivery guy was told to say, “Best enjoyed with a box of Cracker Jack”,’ Beth repeated for her now very rapt audience. ‘It must tie in with this message in the cup.’
Marley shook her head in bewilderment. ‘OK, but like, what does it allmean? I’m serious, this is way weird.’
She was right about that much.
Beth bit her lip, deep in thought. ‘Coffee, Cracker Jack and engraving…’ She shook her head, her mind spinning. ‘Of course it shouldn’t make sense but for some reason… I also think it does. There’s just something familiar about…’ She racked her brain for a very long moment as Marley continued to stare at her as if she was crazy. Then she shook her head. ‘You’re right, it is weird. It doesn’t make sense at all. And even if it did, why would someone send me this stuff?’
Marley stared at the coffee cup in Beth’s hands with a blank look on her face and then sighed heavily. ‘Oh, IDK.’ Beth quickly tried to summon up her minimum text-speak knowledge and realised that this meant ‘I don’t know’. ‘Maybe they want you to do something,’ the younger woman suggested then. ‘Whoever sent it. Like maybe it’s a clue of some sort.’ She shrugged then, already becoming bored by it all. ‘You should probably just Google it. That’s what I do if I don’t understand something, you know?’
‘You’re probably right – I’ll check it out later.’ Though, Beth knew that spending the rest of the day trying to keep her thoughts off the mysterious delivery andonher customers would be hellish.
But sometime later, as she was wrapping up a purchase, the shopper’s silver charm bracelet shining beneath the overhead lights caught her eye, and she stopped short.
‘Everything OK?’ the woman enquired, looking up at Beth’s sudden sharp intake of breath.
‘Of course, yes – thank you.’ She smiled absently but her heart was pounding. Something had just popped into her head related to that strange message with the coffee cup. She couldn’t be certain, and she wasdesperateto get home to check.
But if her suspicions were correct – and Beth was pretty sure they were – it merely made this morning’s delivery all the more mysterious…
Chapter 8
Danny was feeling claustrophobic. Adele was studying him, waiting for an answer and he just didn’t want to talk. Why couldn’t she understand that? Why did she have to press him so much? It was as if she didn’t truly get the situation he was in. She was looking at it all completely one sided.
‘Well?’ she enquired. ‘Haven’t you said anything yet? And if not,whynot? You know this isn’t going to end well, Danny. The longer you draw it out, the harder it’s going to be on her, on everyone.’
She was pushing. He hated when she did this. And lately it seemed as if she pushed all the time. He buttoned his shirt up quickly and averted his eyes from her gaze.
Even though Adele knew so much about him, and had seen him both at his best and his worst recently, Danny still felt as if they didn’t really know each other. And what scared him more was that right now she looked so determined. Almost as if she was tempted to pick up the phone and tell Beth herself.
He knew that she wouldn’t – that shecouldn’t– do that but sometimes when Adele looked this way, well, he wasn’t so sure. As if, rules and boundaries be damned, she would take matters into her own hands and maybe do what she felt was right on a woman-to-woman level, or something.
Danny swallowed hard. He couldn’t begin to imagine how that would work out.
‘This isn’t just something you casually announce over a cup of coffee, OK? It’s a bit bigger than that,’ Danny said quietly, wishing they could get off the subject. ‘I thought you understood.’
Adele nodded, her look softening. She pulled her long hair back and threw it over her shoulder. It was interesting, he noted, how she was Beth’s polar opposite. Where Beth was fair, soft and petite, Adele was angular, dark and chiselled.
It must be her Mediterranean background, Danny thought. Adele Rovere. Although like him a New Yorker born and bred, she’d told him she had Italian ancestors.
