Closer Encounters. Merline Lovelace

      “Great! I’ll get dressed and meet you downstairs. Ten minutes?”

      Drew let himself out, wondering if Ms. Brandt had popped a few pills or snorted something before getting into the tub. She was wired. Most definitely wired.

      Her eagerness to get out and have some fun stirred more than a few unpleasant memories. Drew’s young wife used to meet him at the door when he dragged in after twelve or fourteen hours performing deck drills. Joyce had spent the day cooped up in what the navy euphemistically referred to as junior enlisted housing and swore she had to get out or she’d go stir-crazy. So Drew had traded his uniform for civvies and duly escorted her to a mall or a movie or to the on-base club. Most often to the club.

      Consequently Drew had to work to dredge up a smile when Tracy floated down the stairs. She appeared to have no problem with her smile. It was wide and sparkling and hit him with the same wallop it had earlier. Alive with eagerness, she hooked her arm through his.

      “Let’s go. I can’t wait to dive into that chocolate sundae.”

      Assuming that was the dusty miller, Drew escorted her out of the inn and down the winding walkway to town. He couldn’t quite get a handle on what was so different about her. Maybe it was the hair, tucked into a roll at the base of her neck and accented with a headscarf tied in a jaunty bow. Or the high color in her cheeks. Or her darting gaze that seemed to want to take everything in at once.

      “The town sure is dead tonight,” she commented, clutching Drew’s arm. “Where are all the cars?”

      “The streets are too narrow for vehicles. Most everyone gets around in golf carts.”

      Which she should have known after two days on the island. Puzzling over the inconsistency, Drew let her tug him toward a shop with an old-fashioned Drugstore sign illuminated in green and pink neon.

      “Here it is, right where I remember it.” Eagerly, she reached for the door latch. Excitement bubbled in her voice. “Come on, let’s…”

      One step into the shop she stopped dead. Confusion blanked her face.

      “Tracy? Something wrong?”

      “It’s all changed,” she said in dismay. “Where’s the soda fountain?”

      Drew skimmed a glance around the small shop. The stressed wood flooring and framed sepia pictures of Catalina in earlier decades suggested the place had been there a while, but the glass shelves crammed with the usual mix of medications, beauty aids and household items were sleek and strictly utilitarian.

      “If there was a soda fountain here, it probably went out with the Edsel.”

      “Edsel Who?” she asked distractedly.

      “The Edsel was a car.” Drew wondered how many times he’d had to give the same explanation to folks outside the tight circle of classic car buffs. “A real bomb when it came out in the late ’50s, but a collector’s dream right now.”

      “Mmm.”

      Obviously disinterested in Ford’s most famous flop, she meandered down the center aisle. Her gaze roamed the shelves, lingering on different objects. Searching, Drew assumed, for the illusive bobby pins. Halfway down the aisle she stopped in front of a carousel of lipsticks.

      “Look at all these colors!”

      She plucked out a tube for a closer look just as a teenaged clerk rounded the end of the aisle.

      “That’s the new Caribbean Calypso line,” the clerk announced. “Just came in yesterday. Here, try the Juicy Jamaica Red,” she suggested. “It’s totally awesome. Tastes good, too. Like papaya or melon or something.”

      Drew stood to one side while the teen painted a slash of crimson on the back of Tracy’s hand.

      “Ooh, I love it. I’ll take it. And a package of bobby pins.”

      “They’re right here. We’ve had a real run on them since that episode of Sex and the City, when Carrie Bradshaw stuck dozens of black pins in her blond hair.”

      Drew must have missed that episode—along with every other. Feeling totally out it, he waited while Tracy rummaged through a dizzying array of brushes, combs and hairclips. He got through the tough business of choosing between crinkle style and straight-backed pins okay, but was forced to retreat to the magazine rack while she debated the tough choices of face powder, mascara, eye shadow and lip liner.

      After that, she hit the perfume counter. Forehead scrunched in concentration, she sniffed one tester after another while Drew studied her from behind the pages of Motor Trends magazine.

      Funny, he wouldn’t have pegged her as a woman who took perfume and war paint so seriously. Granted, their initial meeting had been dramatic and brief. He still had a lot to learn about Ms. Tracy Brandt…including her interest in the USS Kallister, he reminded himself grimly.

      Forcing himself to be patient, he waited until she’d spritzed on a sample of something called Midnight Gardenia and added a small vial to her other purchases. With the delight of a chocoholic who’d been turned loose in a candy store, she carted her selections to the register. Her delight turned to shock after the clerk rang them up.

      “That’ll be twenty-nine eighteen.”

      Her jaw dropping, Tracy gaped at the girl. “Twenty-nine dollars?”

      “And eighteen cents,” the teen confirmed, twisting the register’s digital screen around to display the total.

      “That can’t be right.”

      “Maybe I scanned something twice.”

      While the clerk peered at the summary on the computerized screen, Tracy dug into the plastic bag and extracted several items. She turned them over and over, searching for the price.

      “No wonder you got it wrong. These don’t have price tags on them.”

      “The prices are all bar-coded. Look, this Juicy Jamaica Red scans up at six ninety-nine.”

      “Seven dollars for lipstick?”

      The teen shrugged. “We have some products left over from the winter line on sale. Want to see those?”

      The prospect of another protracted round of searching and sniffing had Drew reaching for his wallet. “That’s okay. We’ll take what we have here.”

      “Not at those prices,” Tracy protested.

      Suspecting her out-of-work status had a lot to do with the indignant protest, he tossed a ten and a twenty on the counter.

      “Price is no object when it comes to making a pretty woman prettier.”

      The gallantry was clumsy and heavy-handed but got them out of the drugstore. His companion was still muttering over the cost of the lipstick when they walked out into the night.

      The streets had been empty of all but a few tourists before. They were deserted now. As Drew steered Tracy toward the corner, the shop windows behind them went dark. A few seconds later, the souvenir shop across the street dimmed its lights.

      “Are we under a blackout?” Tracy asked, clutching her purchases as she glanced around.

      “Looks like it, doesn’t it? Guess they’re just rolling up the streets for the night.”

      “It’s only a little after nine!”

      “We’re a few weeks ahead of the main tourist season. Avalon probably gets livelier then.”

      “How strange,” she murmured. “And sad. Lights used to blaze here all night long.”

      “Yeah, that’s what the tour guide said.”

      According to the guide who’d escorted them through the casino this afternoon, Avalon had once rocked. When chewing gum magnate William Wrigley bought Catalina Island in 1919, he made it a training camp for