The best she could manage was a fast walk back toward Miss Mellisande's Emporium.
Cole hustled along beside her. "Did you forget something?" he asked.
She nodded. "Something important."
A few moments later, they reached the shop. Annabel didn't wait for Cole to open the door for her. She grabbed the knob herself and tried to turn it. The knob wouldn't budge; the door was locked.
Annabel let out a groan of dismay. In the short time since they had left, Mellisande had closed for the evening.
"I have to get in there," she said.-
"Maybe Miss Mellisande is in the back." Cole rapped sharply on the glass pane in the door. He raised his voice and called, "Miss Mellisande!" then cupped his hands around his eyes and leaned closer to the window.
Annabel tried to fight down the feeling of panic that was welling up inside her. After everything that had happened in the past eighteen hours, she didn't think she could stand it if she lost her most tangible link to her own time.
"Wait a minute," Cole said. "I see someone. . .. Yes, there she is, coming out of the back room."
Annabel felt a surge of relief, but it was tempered by worry. Just because Mellisande Dupree was still here didn't mean that Annabel would recover the thing that was so precious to her.
Mellisande appeared on the other side of the glass and thrust a long key into the lock. She twisted it and opened the door. "My, I didn't expect to see you two back so soon," she said. "Did you forget something?"
"My clothes—," Annabel began rather breathlessly.
"Oh, don't worry, dear, I told you I'd see to it that they were delivered safely."
"Not the new clothes," Annabel said. 'The old ones."
Mellisande's nose wrinkled slightly. "Those. . . things . . . you were wearing when you arrived? Why ever would you want them? To be honest. Miss Lowell, they're not fashionable at all, and they have a distinct odor of smoke about them."
Annabel suppressed the impulse to grab the older woman by the shoulders and shake her. "What have you done with them?" she demanded.
"Nothing. They're in a box in the back room. I was going to have Ling put them out for the rubbish collector."
Annabel stepped into the shop so determinedly that Mellisande had no choice except to retreat. Mellisande sent a look of alarm at Cole, but he just spread his hands and shrugged. He had no more idea what was going on here than she did.
Striding into the back room, Annabel looked around quickly and spotted one of the sleeves of her yellow fire suit draped over the edge of a cardboard box. She practically sprang on it and pawed the fire suit aside. Underneath it were the T-shirt, jeans, bra, panties, and socks she had been wearing under the fire suit when she left her apartment the night before to head for Mount Diablo State Park. She plucked the T-shirt out of the box and clenched her hand around the small gold pin that was attached to it. Her eyes closed in relief. She couldn't believe that she had almost lost the pin.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" Cole asked from the doorway dividing the two rooms.
Annabel jerked a little. She opened her eyes and looked down at the shirt in her hands. Her fingers worked swiftly and deftly, unfastening the pin. She slipped it into a pocket of her dress as she turned.
"Yes, I just didn't want to lose these clothes," she lied. The fire suit was important to her, the other things less so. But it was the pin she had really come back for. She didn't know why she was instinctively keeping that from Cole, unless it was because the pin's meaning had always been intensely personal to her.
He stepped into the room, and Mellisande followed him. "If you want those old things, I suppose I can have them delivered, too," Mellisande said. "But would it be all right if I had them laundered first?"
"Of course," Annabel said. "Thank you."
Clearly, they both thought she was crazy. But she was getting used to that. In fact, she had spent a large part of the day trying to convince herself that she wasn't insane.
"Well, I guess we should be going," Cole said. He offered Annabel his arm again. She took it and let him lead her out of the shop. At the front door, he tipped his hat to Mellisande and said, "Sorry for the disturbance."
"No need to apologize, dear boy," she assured him. "Perhaps we should become accustomed to the idea that there will always be the potential for excitement as long as Miss Lowell is around."
Annabel wasn't sure if she meant that as a compliment or an insult. Her only reaction was a weak smile as she started walking down the street next to Cole.
****
The closest place to eat was the Richelieu Cafe, with its usual pile of beer barrels on the sidewalk beside the front window. Cole was worried that it might be too crude an establishment for Annabel, but when he suggested it, she asked only, "Is the food good?"
"Excellent, but not fancy."