My Bluegrass Baby (8 page)

“Did she apologize when she realized she was wrong?”

Vaughn made an indignant snorting noise. “Oh, hell no. As you can see, she still seems
to think she has the right to be angry with me over this. She told me I shouldn’t
have gone behind her back in the first place, that if I’d just come up with a proposal
on my own instead of asking Shanna for help, there wouldn’t have been a problem. I
thought at first that I was okay, you know? I’d dodged a bullet, not marrying into
all that crazy. But then I started thinking about our relationship and the life I
thought we were going to have and how wrong I’d been about her.” He groaned, tipping
his head back against the wall. “It’s not that bad. I’m okay.”

“I hate to be the one to point this out, Vaughn, but she’s reduced you to hiding behind
potted greenery.”

“Good point,” he grumbled. “And, considering you’re watching me hyperventilate, do
you think you could call me by my first name?”

I nodded. Vaughn—Josh—took a few more deep breaths and I led him out from behind the
plant. I stole a glance at Lydia, who was watching us as she sipped a glass of champagne
and chatted with the state attorney general. I gave Josh a clearly adoring smile and
leaned close to him to say, “Look, you’ve got a few minutes before the main race starts.
Why don’t you go outside and get some air? I’ll keep an eye on things in here.”

He nodded, breathing deeply and giving me a shaky smile. And, looking over my shoulder
at Lydia one last time, he pressed the barest of kisses against my skin. I felt the
strange prickle of flushed cheeks as his lips brushed over my skin.

“Thanks,” he said softly, and he stepped out into the hall.

I stared after him for a long time. While it was a little dramatic, I was impressed
with Josh for spilling his guts like that. I wasn’t silly enough to think it meant
we were now girlfriends. But at least I got to scrape past the polished exterior and
see that he was human after all. I wouldn’t shove him out of a lifeboat, which, considering
our brief history, was saying something.

“Are you playing
Fashion Police
in your head? Because I know I am,” Kelsey murmured behind me. I turned to find that
she was taking a break from the welcome table. Kelsey was too busty to get away with
the traditional suit. She always ended up looking like a teenager who’d borrowed her
mother’s church clothes. Today, she had opted for a dramatic cobalt blue dress instead,
the sort of thing a nice girl might have worn to church in the 1940s. Short puffed
sleeves, a knee-length paneled skirt, and a cute little bow tied under the gathered
bustline. Of course, being Kelsey, she didn’t fasten the top two tiny pearl buttons
meant to keep it modest.

“Some of the women in here should learn not to trust salesclerks,” she marveled.

I brushed her thick dark hair over her shoulder. “Meanwhile, I love you dearly, but
if you keep bending over to find the participants’ name badges, a certain state senator
is going to fall face-first into your cleavage.”

“Well, we work with what we have. Everything okay with Josh?” she asked.

“Yeah, I actually think I’m making some progress with him. He ran into an ex just
now and I managed to talk him off the proverbial ledge,” I said, casting a look toward
the doors where Josh had just exited. “I don’t think we’re ever going to be super
close, but we may be on our way to understanding each other a little better— What
the hell?”

Through the double-wide doors, I saw Josh talking to Gina, who wore a robin’s-egg-blue
dress that brought out the sun-kissed glow of her skin and her freakishly huge blue
eyes. He was laughing, with his head thrown back like he was in a damn pirate movie.
His fingers were wrapped around her hand while she stared up at him through her lashes.
He looked considerably more relaxed than when he’d stood before me, all pale and panicked
and sad. And he seemed to have recovered remarkably quickly.

My jaw dropped and Kelsey quickly turned me so my back was to the rest of the room.
Nobody needed to see that expression.

“You took him off your internal ‘people you’d shove out of the lifeboat’ list, didn’t
you?” she asked sadly, gently patting my arm.

It took some effort to keep the irritated frown from marring my “party face.” Had
he faked that whole thing? His shock and hurt had seemed a bit over the top, but it
felt so
genuine
. For just a moment, I felt like we’d connected like two ordinary people rather than
gladiatorial opponents. But he’d miraculously recovered from his mini-breakdown just
in time to flirt with Gina? Was this some sort of trick to make me feel sorry for
him so I’d lay off the pressure at work and give him a better shot at the promotion?
Had he arranged for Rowley to show up too, so I’d be knocked off-balance at one of
the biggest events of our year?

Well, this certainly proved that Josh Vaughn was everything I suspected and more.
Besides being a great big jackass, he was a very convincing actor. For a minute I’d
been fooled into thinking he was a flawed, approachable human being. I vaguely registered
bells ringing and an excited hum fluttering through the crowd around me. The guests
surged forward, toward the observation deck overlooking the track. The race was starting.
And I couldn’t bring myself to even turn toward the track.

I’d felt
sorry
for him. The . . . jackass.

Behind us, the finish bell rang and screams and hollers echoed triumphantly from the
track. Two of the most important minutes of the Kentucky calendar had just gone by
and I’d missed them. I didn’t see my horse run. I felt like such an idiot. I was in
a neck-and-neck race with my rival for the same job and I thought he would let me
see him hyperventilating like a heartbroken sixth-grade girl at her first dance? Really?
And honestly, what were the odds that his girlfriend would show up at his very first
Derby Day? She was probably a cousin or something.

Josh Vaughn was not to be trusted. I would not fall for his baby blues, the puppy-dog
eyes, or any other ophthalmological ploys on his part to make me feel anything but
professional contempt. Or at least, I would stop lying to former girlfriends for him.

Kelsey jostled my arm gently. “Sadie, you got that look in your eye.”

“He is back on the list,” I muttered.

Instant Karma, indeed.

In Which I Am Stranded with Ho Hos

5

While my horse barely made it around the track in one piece, Kelsey’s more scientifically
chosen entry squeaked out the win by a nose, netting her four hundred dollars. She
rewarded her loyal subjects with a twenty-four-pack of Red Bull and a bulk barrel
of Skittles.

Ray was pleased with our good behavior at the Derby and even more so when the Columbus-Belmont
staff gave us the thumbs-up for our recruitment campaign. Meanwhile, the printer’s
deadline for my state fair project was looming. I’d decided on the “Bizarrely Bluegrass”
theme: uniquely, charmingly Bluegrass events. But Josh’s constant hammering about
my cheerleader tendencies had me doubting the overall look as well as the idea behind
my promotional campaign. Which was just freaking irritating. And I was procrastinating,
which was completely unlike me.

Josh—Vaughn—whoever he was—was confused when I returned to my cold-shoulder methods
after the Derby. He seemed hurt that I would respond to his intimate revelation with
more distance. So he reverted to his previous delightful tactics of implying that
I was incompetent and ridiculing my ideas in front of the rest of the staff at meetings.
But it seemed halfhearted, as if he were doing it out of habit rather than actual
disdain.

For my part, I was still in get-even mode over Josh’s mind games at the Derby. But
I’d already eliminated several of my best ideas because they could be traced back
to me too easily. These included an elaborate scenario in which I had Kelsey intercepting
his dry cleaning so I could pull all of the tiny threads out of his perfect pants
with a stitch picker.

While the thought of Josh’s pants disintegrating in the middle of an important meeting
was beyond entertaining, I decided on more of a psychological torture route. Josh
would expect me to attack him with petty girl tricks. He would not expect what was
coming.

•   •   •

“How exactly did you convince him to do this?” Kelsey whispered. We sat waiting in
a state-issued car while Josh took a restroom break at a McDonald’s a few blocks from
our destination in Fort Mitchell.

“I told him there would be several celebrities present,” I told her, slicking a coat
of cranberry gloss across my lips and flipping the visor mirror up. “And there will
be. Charlie McCarthy is prominently displayed right up front.”

Kelsey clapped her hand over her face. It had taken quite a bit of acting to convince
Josh that he should attend the special presentation at the Vent Haven Museum in Fort
Mitchell instead of me. I had to pull a reverse Br’er Rabbit on him. As in, “Oh, please,
let me go to this super important museum event because it would go a long way in ensuring
I meet the right people.” But I had really wanted him to swoop in and take over and
arrange to take Kelsey with us as support staff to record the presentation for the
commission’s site.

Vent Haven is the world’s only museum dedicated to the history and preservation of
the art of ventriloquism. Housed in a private home in Kenton County, the facility
boasts a collection of hundreds of dummies, from Edward Bergen’s iconic Charlie McCarthy
to more historical specimens, such as the cigarette-smoking “Granny” dummy constructed
in the 1850s. Aside from the collection being unique and pretty darn cool, traveling
to see it was one of the first long-distance road trips I’d experienced with my grandfather,
so it held a special place in my heart.

The museum director had contacted me the month before to say that Jimmy Burkhardt,
a comedian who had made quite a name for himself using a mix of stand-up and puppetry,
was making a sizable monetary donation to the museum for its upkeep. He was also adding
several of his earlier dummies to the museum’s collection, including Jojo the Caveman
and Bob the Judgmental Banana. It was a boon for the museum, and presented a wonderful
media opportunity to remind visitors about the museum and promote the ConVENTion,
the museum’s annual summer gathering of voice-throwing ventriloquists and their pint-size
friends. Two birds, one stone, lots of quirk. And since Josh seemed to have trouble
with puppets, it was just the right opportunity to introduce him to the other side
of Kentucky tourism.

“And how did you describe this to Josh?” Kelsey asked, casually checking her camera
settings as Josh made his way across the parking lot, straightening his tie.

“I said it was a museum featuring oral history and hands-on art exhibits,” I said,
my lips twitching. “Also, I may have changed the name in his press packet to ‘The
Fort Mitchell Vocal Craft Museum’ so he wouldn’t realize where we’re going. I made
it sound super complicated and dithered that I just wasn’t sure if I was going to
be able to get everything set up. I changed the time on the video team request sheet
a few times. I didn’t know if I could handle working with a celebrity, et cetera,
et cetera. He finally got so frustrated with me that he said he’d take over. I think,
in his head, this is something a
director
of marketing would do.”

“You’re pure evil,” Kelsey told me. “And I would like to formally file my objections
to this plan. It seems a little mean. Usually I like a little mean, but if someone
found out about my spider issues and exploited them at work, I wouldn’t rest until
I’d pawned everything they ever loved and used the money to pay for my therapy.”

I shrugged, just before Josh opened his car door. “I’m more like ninety percent evil.
And I’m noting your objections, while ignoring them.”

Josh stretched his seat belt across his waist as I started the car. All morning he’d
been pissy about my driving, making noises about city driving in Atlanta training
him for almost any traffic situation. And then I reminded him that the area just across
the river from Cincinnati had changed quite a bit since he’d lived in Kentucky and
I’d spent more time there. Reluctant to actually say that he didn’t trust my skills
behind the wheel (or my willingness to sacrifice his side of the vehicle in an unavoidable
collision), he’d grumbled his way into the passenger side.

We pulled out of the parking lot and made our way into the residential area surrounding
Maple Avenue. Josh frowned as we passed the respectable one-family homes. “Are you
sure about these directions, Kelsey?”

“Yep.” Kelsey’s lips popped on the
p
sound just as she cracked her gum.

Josh looked vaguely annoyed, though I don’t know whether it was due to Kelsey’s oral
pyrotechnics or because he seemed to think we were in the wrong place. I turned in
to the museum’s parking lot and the color drained out of Josh’s face.

“Hey, why does that sign say ‘Vent Haven Museum’?” Josh asked, an edge of panic creeping
into his voice. He tugged at his tie, which I was starting to recognize as his tell
that he was uncomfortable and upset. A tiny bit of guilt tugged at my conscience,
but then I remembered how he’d manipulated me at the Derby party. He’d managed to
make me feel sorry for him. He’d given me hope that we might be able to put the hostilities
behind us and build some sort of friendship. He had this coming. If he wanted to fight
dirty, I would fight downright filthy. It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t have any exploitable
phobias.

“I’m not sure,” I said blithely. “But we’re in the right spot. We should probably
get inside, the presentation is starting in about thirty minutes.”

Josh was distinctly uneasy as we hustled up to the entrance of the main building.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” he stammered. “What—what is this place? Mother of—”
He yelped as a display came into view, showing examples of early jointed dummies,
or “vents,” that looked like a collection of dismembered limbs. Even I found that
to be a little off-putting, and I had no problem with dummies. A leering clay-brown
head with manically wide eyes and a super-wide grin stretching its top lip demonstrated
the exaggerated features found on most vents, allowing the dummies to emote to the
back row of the audience if necessary.

“I read somewhere that the overdone faces communicate the appropriate emotions to
the audience, but up close, they make people uneasy,” I said casually, picking through
the brochures by the front desk and tucking one into my bag for future reference.
I smiled at Josh, even though the cross-sectioned plaster dummy head that showed the
inner works and how a ventriloquist moved the dummy’s eyes was a bit unnerving. “Then
again, it’s almost impossible to create an effective dummy without them.”

Kelsey was so fascinated by the exhibits that she broke out the camera and started
filming B-roll shots of the interior.

“Did you know the last stop on the tour is a big room with dozens of vents all lined
up in rows of chairs, arranged in order of who made them? They call it ‘the schoolroom,’
” she said.

Josh shuddered and turned an even pastier shade of eggshell.

“It’s kind of crazy how much entertainment history is represented in this building.
Vaudeville, early TV, cartoons.” She paused, grinning excitedly. “They have this one
dummy, Woody DeForest—which is pretty damn funny if you ask me—that belonged to Don
Messick. Messick was a voice actor who did the voices for Scooby Doo and Papa Smurf
and a bunch of other Hanna-Barbera staples. So if we go by six degrees of separation,
we are that much closer to knowing my all-time hero!”

“Okay, I don’t think you can call a cartoon character your hero,” I told her. “Also,
I don’t understand why you would pick Daphne as your hero when Velma is clearly the
superior choice.”

“Oh, it’s easy to like Velma.” Kelsey sniffed. “Daphne’s genius was covert and misunderstood.”

Josh wheezed, pulling at his collar. “Could you two stop talking for just a minute?”

“Oh, wow, look at this!” I held up a disembodied baby-doll-style head on a stick that
demonstrated how pulling the lever hidden inside a dummy’s body made the jaw move
up and down and moved the eyelids. Josh recoiled, stumbling back into the wall as
he glared at the pair of us with a combination of wrath and pleading. That tiny tug
of conscience came niggling back at the corner of my brain, but I ignored it.

“I thought this was a vocal arts museum,” Josh hissed, tugging at his blue paisley
tie to the point that it was slipping free of his collar.

“Ventriloquism is a vocal art,” I insisted brightly. It was disturbing how innocent
and guileless I could make my voice sound when I wanted to. It really was.

“Turn that damn camera off, Kelsey, I mean it,” he said, yanking at his tie full-force
now.

“Okay, okay,” she said, hitting the power button with a decisive snap. She shot me
a significant look, which I blithely ignored.

“Are you all right, Josh?” I asked sweetly.

“Fine, fine,” he muttered as sweat popped up on his brow. “Let’s just get on with
this.”

We wandered deeper into the museum in search of the director. Having toured the museum
before, I intentionally wandered a little until I found the main collection room:
rows upon rows of dummies, each more sinister-looking than the last to the dummy-phobic
eye, sitting on their pristine white display cubes as if waiting patiently for their
cue to enter stage left. There were vents of every size and age—fluffy animals; cheerful
boys; cranky grandpas; and sweet-cheeked, nonsmoking grannies.

Josh froze in his tracks. “I’m going to need to leave now.”

Okay, maybe Kelsey was right. Josh was so pale now that his face was the color of
skim milk and his pupils were so wide there was hardly any color in his eyes at all.
I chuckled uncomfortably and patted his arm. “Oh, come on, what’s scary about a sweet
little puppet? Even kids love puppets.”

“Not all kids,” he wheezed. Just behind him, I saw someone from the museum staff carrying
the Jojo the Caveman dummy, a bulgy, hunched male character with bushy red eyebrows
and a scraggly beard. I started to call out a warning, but Josh had already turned
toward Jojo. He let out a hoarse shriek, like the bark of a sea lion, and collapsed.
The back of his head hit the floor with a dull, sickening
thud
.

The museum staffer let out a shriek of her own and called for the director. Kelsey
shot me a scathing look, different now because she actually meant it. I frowned, biting
my lip as I considered how much trouble I could be in if Josh had actually injured
himself when he fell—beyond the obvious damage to his well-crafted hair. “Okay, maybe
I was a little overzealous this time,” I admitted.

•   •   •

Though his head had bounced off the floor pretty good when he landed, Josh refused
an ambulance. He did accept the director’s offer to rest in her office while we conducted
the check ceremony. Kelsey got great footage for the Web site. Joe Burkhardt was charming
and funny, using several voices and throwing them around the room to make his remarks
about the museum’s importance in preserving ventriloquism’s legacy. The museum staff
expressed their gratitude by making a special cave diorama for displaying Jojo the
Caveman. It was marketing gold. But I couldn’t concentrate on any of it because I
was worried about Josh and his bruised noggin.

The good news was that he refused to admit he had passed out due to fear of dummies.
He said he had a “blood sugar drop,” which was fine with me. I couldn’t be blamed
for a blood sugar drop. We loaded him into the car and drove home in silent deference
to his headache. We took him to his apartment in Capital Towers, one of the newer
McApartment buildings in the center of town, low on both personality and square footage.

I was a bit shocked that a status-conscious guy like Josh would live in a haven for
newly divorced men and recent evictees from their mothers’ basements. I wondered if
his story about Lydia and her supposed credit card rampage could be true after all,
and if this was all he could afford. What if I’d been wrong at the Derby and he really
was a flawed, approachable human being?