Closer Encounters

Tugging off the turban, she raked her hand through the strands of dark mink.

“Look at it! As straight as a board. Not the slightest hint of a wave or a roll. I have to get my hands on some bobby pins.”

Bobby pins? Drew had a hazy memory of his grandmother with her head hard-wired into tight curls, but had no idea women still stabbed those sharp little implements into their scalps.

He found Brandt’s sudden determination to acquire some reassuring, though. If she was so worried about her appearance, odds were she hadn’t been planning to slash her wrists. Judging by the angry mutters he’d heard just before she’d climbed into the tub, she evidently hadn’t intended to jump off the ballroom balcony, either.

Okay, maybe she wasn’t suicidal. Just strange. And mercurial as hell. For a few moments there on the pier, her shoulders had drooped with weariness and sadness shadowed her eyes. Now she seemed gripped by a sort of quivering energy.

“Do you want to go with me?” she asked eagerly.

“Go where?”

“To a drugstore, to buy some bobby pins.”

“Now?”

She flipped the ends of her wet hair. “I have to do something with this floor mop. Besides, the night’s young. How about I tie on a kerchief and we see what’s playing at the Roxy? Or grab a stool at the soda fountain and split a dusty miller? It’s been ages since I dug a spoon into one of those!”

Drew didn’t have a clue what a dusty miller was, but he’d dig a spoon into one just to keep his target talking.

“Sure, I’ll go with you.”

“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?”