A Long Hot Christmas. Barbara Daly

      The small, thin woman who waited in the hallway had the biggest head of bleached-blond hair Hope had ever seen. The coat she carried appeared to have been made from a number of Afghan hounds. She fluttered a Stetson from one hand like a Victorian lady fluttering her hanky.

      It was obvious why she was holding her hat. She’d never have gotten it on top of the hair. The ice-blue eyes that sparkled out at Hope from a narrow, sharp-featured, weatherbeaten face held a quick intelligence, though, that got Hope’s attention.

      A white Western-style shirt, faded blue jeans that stretched over her bony hips and high-heeled, tooled boots completed the picture.

      The hallucination.

      “Yu Wing?” Hope said. She didn’t smile. She was poised to slam the door at any moment.

      The woman breezed right past Hope into the living room. “Actually, sugah, the name’s E-w-i-n-g, Maybelle Ewing, but folks expect a feng shui expert to have a kinda Asian name.”

      Hope glommed onto the one thing the woman had said that she understood. “Feng shui?” she asked in a high, thin voice. She cleared her throat. “You are the decorator.”

      “Sure am. A licensed interior designer and feng shui goo-roo.”

      Hope was translating Maybelle Ewing’s deep Texas drawl into normal New York-speak as fast as her mind could function.

      “Oh, my land!” Maybelle shrieked suddenly.

      Of course. Ms. Ewing had noticed the view, the reason the small apartment was so expensive. All the chairs faced it. Her bed faced it. It didn’t matter how you furnished an apartment when you had a view like this one.

      Hope was so surprised she jolted backward when Maybelle’s hand pressed against her forehead. The hand was dry and as bony as the rest of the woman. “You could make yourself sick in a place like this,” Maybelle said in a hoarse whisper. She frowned. “You don’t feel feverish. You been havin’ any of them psychological problems?”

      “No,” Hope snapped. “Look, Yu Wing, I mean…”

      “Just call me Maybelle.”

      “Look, Maybelle, all I want is to make this place a little cozier, make it look a little more lived-in.”

      “It will, hon, when you start living in it.” Maybelle’s voice grew softer, lost its shrill quality. “I bet you hate coming home, am I right?”

      Hope stared at her.

      “Well, don’t you worry about it no more, because Maybelle’s going to fix everything.”

      How? Rope and tie it into submission? “Of course I would need an estimate from you before we enter into any sort of agreement,” Hope said. Recalling one’s purpose in engaging in a dialogue was a good way to keep from getting rattled. “Or perhaps you’d rather I gave you a budget.”

      “Whatever,” Maybelle said with an airy wave of her hand. “We’re not to that point yet. Let’s see what I can do for a couple hundred dollars first. Mind if I take some pictures?”

      “Yes,” Hope said. The cool, serene African head on the stand in one corner had cost as much as she earned in a month. The huge bowl, a piece of glass art, was worth almost as much. Good investments, both of them. For all she knew, this insane woman was here to case the joint.

      Maybelle wouldn’t have a problem getting the bowl out, either. All she had to do was wear it over her hair. Then she could put the Stetson on the African head and…

      “Please sit down,” she invited Maybelle. Remembering one’s manners—that was another good way to fight down rising hysteria. “May I get you a drink?”

      “Sure,” Maybelle said. “Some coffee’d be real tasty about now with bedtime coming up.”

      “Decaf?”

      “Not if you’ve got the real stuff.”

      Hope headed for the kitchen to start a small pot of Hawaiian Kona, trying not to breathe the fumes in case they were enough to keep her awake. When she got back to the living room with Maybelle’s cup of deadly insomnia in hand and a glass of sparkling water for herself, she found her new decorator circling the room.

      Hope fell into step behind her. It was interesting the way they circled a while before they chose seats. Last night Sam Sharkey had done the same thing. The few times she’d entertained, her guests had done it, too, as though they were looking for a more comfortable spot from which to enjoy the view.

      Just now, she was feeling a quite surprising need to make Sam comfortable. But not necessarily to enjoy the view. Something unfamiliar pinged inside her.

      She quickly sat down, arbitrarily choosing one of the squishy taupe chenille armchairs and perching uneasily on its edge. Back to business. “Where exactly did you get your training?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

      “A correspondence course,” said Maybelle. She deposited her cup on an end table. “Give me a hand with this, hon.” She seemed intent on dragging the other armchair across the room where it faced the door with its back to the view.

      Hope closed her eyes briefly, then hurried to help, just to save the floors. A correspondence course interior designer. Her sisters were right. Sheila was crazy, and if she ever saw her again, which she never intended to, she’d throttle her. “How did your interest in decorating come about,” she said faintly, lowering her side of the chair to the floor. Thank goodness she hadn’t signed anything yet.

      “Well,” the woman began when she’d settled into the chair, “first off, I was stuck down there in Texas on my husband’s family ranch when he up and died.”

      “Oh, I’m sorry,” Hope murmured.

      “Don’t be,” Maybelle assured her. “It was him or the bull and the bull had a hell of a lot more character. Cuter, too, in his way.” Her gaze grew thoughtful.

      Hope’s mouth formed an O. Her eyes sought out the phone on the end table beside her. How fast could she dial 9-1-1? She was already reaching for the receiver when the phone rang. She grabbed for it. Maybe the police were calling to warn her that a madwoman was on the loose.

      “Hope? Sam.”

      “Sam?” Hearing from Sam wasn’t on today’s agenda. In fact, she’d assumed Sam would hear from her, not the other way around. That way she would have been prepared for the sound of his voice. This way, she hadn’t been, and she was annoyed by the stab of heat, the sudden heaviness in the pit of her stomach. She locked her knees tightly together and sat up very straight. “We’re scheduled to talk next week, I believe. I entered it in my Palm Pilot and synchronized it with my desktop calendar. The decorator is here now, so…”

      “This’ll just take a minute. It’s an emergency.”

      He didn’t sound as if he were dying, unaided, on a lightly traveled road. Hope drew her brows together. “What kind of emergency?”

      She’d spent her hypothetical lunch hour—ten minutes eating yogurt and an apple at her desk—trying to imagine having sex with him as a purely therapeutic measure. “Have sex twice and call me in the morning if you’re not better.” And she’d decided—maybe. Or maybe not.

      Out of the corner of one eye she watched Maybelle shaking her head and tsk-tsking. Meanwhile, Sam was delivering a staccato message into her left ear.

      “The firm’s executive partner is having a dinner party tomorrow night. One of the guests met his Maker this afternoon. The partner’s wife is deeply moved, but she’s committed to the party. The problem is two empty spaces—the widow’s not in a party mood—at a table set for sixteen at two-hundred-fifty dollars a plate.” He paused. “Are you following me?”

      “Closely,” Hope said. “The caterer’s going to charge for sixteen regardless. As a junior member of the firm you have to fill those two spaces.”