Rock Chick 01 by Kristen Ashley

with her energetic
personality.
    Luckily, bartending left most of her days
free and whenever she needed a bit of cash (which was often), she
worked part-time for me at Fortnum’s.
    Before coming over with Kitty Sue, Ally had
gone to my house and chosen an Ally-outfit for me. If I was to
choose a search-for-Rosie outfit or a night-after-Liam outfit it
would have included Levi’s. But then most of my outfits included
Levi’s unless I had a backstage pass.
    Ally had chosen a denim skirt that was mini
in the sense that it hit five inches above my knees (not mini in
the way Ally wore them, which was five centimeters below her ass),
my vintage Rolling Stones t-shirt (I wasn’t a Stones fan but the
shirt was way cool), a wide, red belt with a big silver buckle with
a delicate filigree-and-braided design and my red cowboy boots.
    After Lee and Kitty Sue left, I filled Ally
in on the whole Rosie Debacle and my plan to find him. She (not
surprisingly) immediately volunteered her assistance and I (equally
not surprisingly) took her up on it.
    I showered and dressed while Ally tried (and
failed) to call Duke.
    Then we went to the bookstore to help Jane.
With Duke and Rosie out, Jane was alone at the store and was in a
tizzy because she was handling the espresso machine by herself and
thus, actually had to speak to people. Jane was not good at
speaking to people, she could shelve a mean book and was really
good at tidying, vacuuming, updating our computer book inventory
but customer relations was not her strong suit.
    Ally and I worked alongside Jane until the
morning crush was over. The regulars weren’t happy that Rosie
wasn’t there but we’d all been working alongside Rosie enough to be
able to do a fair imitation. Still, it wasn’t the same.
    Then Ally swung by Rosie’s house on the off
chance he was there. This was off-limits for me because Lee might
have found out Rosie’s address using one of his mysterious “ways”
and might be there and I didn’t want to bump into Lee just yet.
Especially not searching for Rosie or the diamonds, he didn’t know
my plan and I wasn’t about to let on.
    And anyway, business on a weekday didn’t
really die down until after the lunch hour and I couldn’t leave
Jane on her own.
    While Ally was doing the stop off at Rosie’s
place, my cell rang.
    It was Dad.
    “Hey Daddy-o,” I said.
    “What’s this about you hookin’ up with
Lee?”
    Shit.
    Kitty Sue.
    “We’re taking it slow.”
    “Take it real slow,” Dad said. “That
boy’s a tomcat. Jesus, why couldn’t you choose Hank? Hank’s a good
guy, a solid cop, has a job where both of his feet are planted on
the right side of the law.”
    Yikes.
    Dad went on. “Don’t get me wrong, Lee’s his
own man, doesn’t take shit from anyone, gotta respect that but,
hell. My daughter?”
    I was silent and Dad was on a roll. You
couldn’t really get much in when Dad was on a roll.
    “Kitty Sue is beside herself. Your mother and
her had some sort of blood pact where they stuck their thumbs with
pins and put them together, silly girl crap, and they promised
their kids would get married, have babies and that way, they’d be
related.”
    That sounded familiar.
    Dad’s voice changed from frustrated to
coaxing. “Hank’ll have a good pension.”
    “Dad, I’d make Hank’s head explode, we’d
last, like, a day.”
    “Shee-it.”
    Dad knew this was true.
    He didn’t say much more before he rang
off.
    Guess Lee didn’t have the Dad Vote.
    I shook off the call and mentally assigned
Lee the duty of letting his mother down easy. He’d gotten us into
this, he’d have to get us out.
    I decided to call a couple of Rosie’s friends
that he’d put down in his file as emergency contacts to see if
Rosie was with them or if they’d seen him. I got no response from
one, the other was home, sleeping it off, unhappy to be disturbed
and had not heard from Rosie in a few days.
    I called Duke again. Twice. No answer. No
answering machine