Page 99 of Rest In Pink

“We’ll leave them when we move in September,” I told her. “Faye can deal with them. Now about this last chapter . . .”

“After dessert,” Anemone said, and Peri said, “Yes, dessert!” and I said, “Finish your veggies, you still have some Marianne sauce there,” and we went back to what we were all good at: eating everything in sight.

All of that was to be expected. The first surprise came as we were leaving the dining room when somebody knocked on the front door.

I moved toward it, but Anemone beat me there to open it.

“Hello, dear,” she said, and then moved aside so that a very young, very attractive Black woman in a very svelte suit could come in.

I had the urge to cover up my t-shirt. It said,On Wednesdays, We Smash the Patriarchy.She didn’t look like the kind of person who would wear something like that; she looked like somebody who would just do it.

“Liz, this is Imani Coleman,” Anemone said. “Imani, this is Liz Danger, my other right-hand woman.”

Other?

“And this is Peri Blue,” Anemone went on, and Peri said, “Very nice to meet you, ma’am,” in the tones of somebody who’d been drilled on that one.

“Very nice to meet you, too,” Imani Coleman said to Peri, and then looked up and smiled at me, and I got the feeling she was cataloging me, summing me up, making notes for the future.

She was a little scary. And very young. Older than Crystal, but still . . . young.

The competence of the twenty-somethings in this generation was ego-shattering. I’d never been that sure of anything. I still wasn’t. And this girl, woman, looked like a greyhound who was too smart for Mensa. Elegant and serious and . . . adult.

Maybe that’s what I was missing. The adult gene.

Anemone said, “We’ll go into the library,” and opened the door across from the dining room and ushered the elegant Imani in. “We’ll work on the book later,” she told me and closed the door in my face.

I looked at Peri.

“Bears,” she said and went back to the living room.

“Book,” I said to nobody and followed her.

When I got to the couch, I took out my phone and called Vince.

“We need time together,” he said when he answered but he sounded distracted, which he usually was during the day because he was a cop.

“I know.”

“I rappelled into the ravine and got your pillow and bear—” he went on.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I began.

“—so you’re gonna owe me tonight. Wear the jeans with the buttons.”

“Yeah, you got me a Candy Apple Red car, too. I will pay up in full.” Anemone could sleep with Peri tonight. I needed Vince time. “Listen, does the name Imani Coleman mean anything to you?”

“Where did you hear that name?”

“She’s here,” I said. “She works for Anemone. She’s her other right-hand woman.”

“Interesting,” Vince said, but his tone said,Son of a bitch.

“How so?”

“Imani Coleman is the front woman for ECOmena, the shell company that’s buying up property from under Vermillion. Like the Shady Rest and the museum.”

“Son of a bitch,” I said. All those dinners Anemone kept having with ‘friends from my marriages’ suddenly came into focus. “She’s been having meetings behind my back. Wait a minute.” I grabbed my notebook and wrote ECOmena in it and then reversed it: anemOCE. “Anemoce,” I said to Vince. “It’s Anemone spelled backwards, with the C to make it look like it’s organic or something. Just what Anemone would do.”

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