The Prince Charming List

Yeah, right.

Chapter Four

not sure I can make dinr. (Me)

whatsup (Bree)

2 wrds. mrs. kirkwood. (Me)

Recovry group at 7. Wear jeans. (Bree)

Mrs. Kirkwood walked in at four o’clock on the dot and there was no way this pleasant-looking woman could be a high-maintenance customer. She had a soft swirl of snow-white hair that reminded me of the meringue on Mom’s banana-cream pie and her cheeks were as round and smooth as a baby’s. If she hadn’t been wearing a pink cotton dress and dainty sandals, she would’ve looked like a storybook drawing of Mrs. Claus.

She hopped up in the chair and her smile was so sweet it should’ve been accompanied by a warning from the American Dental Association. Maybe Bernice had been right to schedule Natalie and Nicole in the morning, but Mrs. Kirkwood must have been a mistake….

“Aren’t you that girl Bernice gave up for adoption?”

I had turned my back for a second to organize my workspace when her sugarcoated missile struck my starboard side.

“I’m Heather Lowell.” My name was the only thing I could come up with when I spun around and found myself caught in the dead center of Mrs. Kirkwood’s lasers…oops, those were her eyes.

“I suppose that movie star is your dad? You have the same nose.” Mrs. Kirkwood patted my hand. “I’m surprised you have to work after falling into all that money.”

Suddenly I knew why Bernice had scheduled Mrs. Kirkwood as my first appointment. She must have known I’d need the entire day to recover. Lorelei Christy—my original four o’clock—was supposed to be the cheerful memory at the end of my first day. To soothe me after Florence Kirkwood—the nightmare at the beginning of it.

“Bernice and Alex aren’t supporting me…” There were several things I was suddenly tempted to do to Mrs. Kirkwood’s hair but I was pretty sure none of them would have been approved by my parents, the faculty at His Light Christian Academy or—and this is the one that saved Mrs. Kirkwood from waking up bald the next morning—God Himself.

“I saw on the news last week that just about anyone can get a degree off the Internet nowadays. But I’m sure you went to school for this. It’s never bad to have family connections, is it?” Her tinkling laugh sounded just like the bells over the door. Internal memo: Remove bells before post-traumatic stress disorder sets in.

“Shampoo chair,” I managed to gasp. Although maybe asking her to put her head into a deep sink wasn’t a very good idea at the moment.

In the six steps it took us to walk across the room, she told me it was too bad that young women today weren’t concerned with modesty and, just out of curiosity, where had I bought my skirt?

It continued downhill from there. By the time the clock on the wall assured me it was closing time, I’d gotten over my initial shock and in one of those weird out-of-body type of experiences, I was a bit awed at the way Florence Kirkwood could simultaneously smile and cut someone off at the knees. It reminded me of a handy little kitchen gadget Mom had affectionately dubbed “the chopper” because it could take a whole onion and reorganize its molecular structure in seconds. When Florence Kirkwood finally left the salon, I knew exactly what that onion felt like.

Fortunately Dex wasn’t asleep on the couch again when I slunk up the back stairs to the apartment. I could melt into a puddle without witnesses.

“Snap!” I wailed. “I need pet therapy.”

Wherever she was hiding, she wouldn’t come out. Right then I renamed her Miss Fickle. All right, if there wasn’t purring, then there could be bubbles. Or chocolate. Or both.

Except there was no longer a faucet in the tub. Someone pretending to be a handyman so he could get some extra sleep during the day had lopped it off.

I dialed Pastor Charles’s number. Dex answered the phone.

“Where is it?” I said.

There was a moment of silence. “I’m…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” I counted to ten. Actually, I skipped five, six and seven because I didn’t think it would make a difference anyway. “How can you lose something that important?”

“It just disappeared. I think it planned to escape.”

“I hate to tell you this, but it’s only in your world that inanimate objects come to life. Faucets can’t plan anything.”

“Faucets? I thought you were talking about your cat.”

I sagged against the wall. “Snap? You let Snap out?”

“No. I think it snuck out when I propped open the door to clear out the…never mind. I left you a note.”

“Where? On the refrigerator?”

“The mirror. I figured you wouldn’t miss it there.”

And did I want to analyze that? I stepped over to the mirror and read the message on the piece of paper stuck to it.

“I can’t find your cat.”

“Dex, Snap isn’t my cat.” I felt the need to clarify that. “She’s Bernice’s cat and Bernice is very attached to her. Did you try to call her?” Because that works so well for me.

“Cats don’t come when you call them.”

I closed my eyes and tried not to think about the busy Main Street just outside. So maybe it wasn’t like rush hour in the Twin Cities but there were a lot of pickup trucks with really big tires and Snap was an inside cat, used to being fed and pampered….

Something brushed against my leg. I shrieked and jumped three feet in the air. When I crash-landed back to earth, Snap was in the bathtub, checking out the gaping hole where my faucet had been.

“Never mind. I found her.” Relief poured through me. “She must have been hiding from you.”

Snap flicked her tail and meowed, reminding me that only one of my problems was solved. The other one was big enough for a raccoon to crawl through.

“I can’t use the tub, Dex.”

“I know. I’ll have it done tomorrow. Scout’s honor.”

You better or you won’t get your Plumbing badge. “Dex, are you sure you know, um, how to do this kind of stuff?”

“I’m trying to raise support for the mission field.”

Oh, sure. Play the missionary card!

“Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow. Please put the faucet first on your list….” I was talking to dead air. He’d hung up on me!

“You’d think he’d be a teensy bit more grateful, wouldn’t you, Snap?” I shed the skirt Mrs. Kirkwood had implied was too short and reached for the pair of jeans I’d slung over the hamper that morning.

One day down. Fifty-six more to go.

“My name is Heather and I’m a hairstylist.”