“Of course, we all shouldn’t get too excited. This is happening fast, though not that fast, if-you-know-what-I-mean,” Kitty Sue went on.
Fast? This wasn’t fast. This was warp speed
Kitty Sue was staring dreamily ahead, not focused on a thing and we’d all melted into the atmosphere. She was picking wedding colors, she was deciding china patterns, she was mentally knitting baby booties, she was planning her visit to my mother’s grave to impart the blissful news.
Shit.
I twisted back to Lee.
“Asshole,” I mouthed.
He was unfazed at my word though he seemed somewhat fascinated with watching my mouth form it.
“I brought you a change of clothes and some of your stuff,” Ally said, reaching behind us and grabbing the coffeepot. “Looks like I should have brought more.”
I moved my glare to her.
She was just as good at ignoring it as Lee, better, she’d had more practice.
“I’ll take some of that. Indy already has a cup,” Lee murmured.
“Not surprising,” Ally said, pouring coffee into three mugs.
They were acting like it was business as usual at Lee’s condo, just like it was any other day and I decided I was most definitely in an alternate universe because this was all just plain old nuts.
“Listen people!” I cried, trying to get everyone’s attention. “This is not what it seems.”
Ally looked at me.
Kitty Sue’s happily dazed eyes focused on me.
Lee’s hard thighs tightened on my sides and his forearm wrapped around my chest and neck. His chin dipped to the curve of my shoulder, his lips at my ear.
“Don’t spoil Mom’s moment,” he murmured there.
“What is it, then?” Kitty Sue asked.
Lee’s fingers dug into my shoulder and I could feel the muscles flexing in his forearm at my neck. I took one look in Kitty Sue’s eyes.
Damn it all to hell.
“We’re taking it slow,” I said for lack of anything else to say, like, the truth.
Wouldn’t sound so good to say, Your son is trying to extort sex from me. News at eleven.
Kitty Sue breathed a sigh of relief, sent us a dazzling smile and put sugar in her coffee.
Ally wandered into the living room.
Lee brushed my hair aside with his chin and softly kissed the spot where my shoulder met my neck.
I guessed that was his way of saying thank you.
It was a good way.
“Hey, where’s Rosie?” Ally asked.
I froze.
So did Lee.
We’d completely forgotten about Rosie.
“Fuck,” Lee said, moved me forward and jumped off the counter, prowling into the living room. I caught a good look both of his muscled back and his ass in his jeans and went a little weak in the knees.
“Liam Nightingale, that mouth!” Kitty Sue admonished.
I followed Lee, but he was already moving out of the living room and through the kitchen.
I looked at the quilt and pillow on the couch.
No Rosie.
“Fuck!” Lee said from somewhere else in the condo.
I ran to him.
The second bedroom door was closed, the bathroom door was open, with the bathroom empty. I walked into Lee’s room and he stalked out of his bathroom.
“That fucking twat,” Lee muttered.
“Mouth!” Super-power-Mom-eared Kitty Sue called from the kitchen.
Lee could always swear really, really well. He’d been doing it since I could remember.
Lee walked to the dresser and slid a drawer open. He pulled on a navy, long-sleeved t-shirt that fit super-snug to his chest and arms and grabbed a pair of socks. I watched as he sat on the bed to pull on the socks and a pair of black motorcycle boots with square toes and silver hoops at the sides.
Seriously kickass boots.
I shook my head to clear thoughts of Lee’s boots and started to worry about Rosie and why he would leave, what he was doing, where he was going and what was in that pot-addled brain of his.
Then something occurred to me as Lee got off the bed.
And for the first time that morning, I smiled.
If I found Rosie first, and got the diamonds back to their owner, then I wouldn’t owe Lee a thing.
Hee hee.
I was so happy with my thought, I had to share it.
“I guess this puts a crimp in your sex extortion plans.”
I’d timed my “nanny nanny foo foo” very poorly. Lee was close enough to hook me around the back of the neck with enough force to send me slamming into him. He gave my hair an erotically rough yank, tilting my head back.
Then he kissed me.
It was a hard, deep and serious kiss with a liberal dose of tongue.
My toes curled into the thick carpet.
When he lifted his head, he said, “I have plans for you. Don’t leave this apartment.”
I nodded.
I had every intention of leaving his apartment.
He watched me.
“Indy, you leave this apartment, I’ll come lookin’ for you.”
“Jeez, we haven’t even slept together and already you don’t trust me.”
“I’ve known you all your life not to mention the fact that my idiot sister is in the next room and when you two get together it’s like Laurel and Hardy do Denver.”
“It is not!”
“What about that time you bought scalped tickets to a Garth Brooks concert from Carmine Alfonzo?”
Carmine Alfonzo, better known as Uncle Carmine. We’d known him since we were seven, he used to ride the squad car with Dad.
“He was in disguise!” I defended myself.
“He was wearing a baseball hat,” Lee returned.
“Yes, but he’s a Cubs fan, he was wearing a Sox hat. His head should have been on fire.”
The sides of Lee’s eyes crinkled in a grin that didn’t involve his mouth but was nevertheless ultra-effective and let go of my hair.
“We aren’t finished yet,” he told me.
“Yes we are,” I retorted.
Lee’s crinkles disappeared and his face got serious.
“This is happening between you and me,” he threatened.
I wasn’t entirely sure what “this” meant since he announced to his mother and sister that we were “together”. Considering what I did know was that a goodly part of it involved us being naked, in his bed, participating in activities which required my avid participation, I wasn’t going to have any part of it.
“No, it isn’t,” I snapped back.
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“No, we won’t.”
His eyes narrowed. “Do I need to kiss you again?”
I took a hasty step back and watched my toe draw a pattern in the carpet.
“No,” I muttered.
“Christ, I need to get my head examined.”
My head snapped up.
“What does that mean?” I asked angrily.
“Nothin’. Be here when I get back.”
“Sure.”
Not on his life.
* * * * *
Ally Nightingale had yet to decide on a career. Currently, she was on her one hundred and eleventh bartending job. She already had a Bachelor’s degree (majored in political science and squeaked by), was a certified radiology technician (a tough gig but she saw it through and worked the MRI machine at Swedish Medical Center for two months before quitting, Malcolm’s head nearly exploded after that one) as well as a certified nail technician.
Of all those things, Ally gave good nails but she found sitting in a chair all day filing, polishing and forming plastic glop into nail shapes was not compatible 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 t
o 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 either. Duke really needed to get into the twenty-first century and I mentally added items onto my Christmas-present-buying list.
Then the door opened to the Marianne Meyer walked in.
Marianne Meyer lived next door to the Nightingale’s in Washington Park all the while we were growing up. She was between Lee and Ally and me in age and she was a good friend. She had been fettered by a scoliosis brace in junior high and orthodontics in high school. She married a jerk, got a divorce and moved back in with her parents a year ago. Marianne was taking her divorce hard and living with her parents at age thirty-one harder. She was five foot five and used to be cute as a button, but the divorce was taking its toll and she was drowning her sorrows in Oreos. She was a nurse at Pres-St. Luke’s, took the evening shifts so she’d have her days free and had made house-hunting a full-time hobby.
She rushed up to me at the espresso counter, her cheeks flushed.
“I heard you finally hooked up with Lee Nightingale,” she said.
Shit, shit, shit.
Marianne was intimately acquainted with my lifelong crush and had been recruited for some of my Lee Maneuvers in the past. She probably thought I was in seventh heaven and needed a friend to take me wedding-dress-shopping.
“We’re taking it slow,” I said.
“Have you… you know… done it yet?” Her eyes were beginning to glaze over at the very thought of doing it with the legendary Liam Nightingale.
“Nope.”
“What are you waiting for?” she nearly shouted and if she’d reached across the counter and grabbed me by my shirt and shook me, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
I took Marianne’s mind off Lee with a mocha, heavy on the chocolate syrup and whipped cream.
After Marianne left, making me promise to phone her the minute I did it with Lee and give her all the details (not gonna happen), I called Hank.
I did this because I thought maybe Rosie might do something stupid, like hock the diamonds and go to San Salvador. According to him, he was owed fifty dollars for some of the “primo” grass I never knew that he grew in his basement and the guy gave him a gazillion dollars worth of diamonds.
That was seriously fishy and Rosie was seriously stupid for taking the damn things.
Though, what did one do when presented with a fortune of diamonds? Say no?
I didn’t actually blame Rosie for wanting to cash in his windfall and skip town.
Personally, I wouldn’t have picked San Salvador though.
If Rosie successfully skipped, and Lee was right in what he said last night, this meant that Rosie would be in San Salvador and there was a good possibility that either Lee or I or both of us would be target practice (I really shouldn’t have mouthed off to those guys and I was in whole-hearted agreement with Lee, I’m sure he’d been shot at tons of times and if he didn’t like it, I’d never like it).
This would also mean I owed Lee big time for putting his life in danger. Not to mention my life would be in danger and I’d have a hard time talking myself out of having sex with Lee (at least once) before I died.
Further, I’d never replace Rosie at the espresso machine. He had a God-given talent, no joke. He was the Picasso of Coffee.
The first thing Hank said, “I hear you’ve finally hooked up with Lee.”
Shit.
Kitty Sue, the fastest dialing fingers in the West.
Something had to be done.
“Not exactly,” I responded.
“Yeah, takin’ it slow.”
“Something like that.” Really slow. Snail-with-a-hernia slow. “Listen, can I talk to you about something?”
“Anything.”
“Can you step out of your cop shoes for five minutes?”
Silence.
Hank wasn’t very fond of me asking that question, which I did, over the years, a lot.
“Shit. You and Ally haven’t stolen candy from Walgreen’s again, have you?”
“We didn’t steal it! We were just buying a bunch and didn’t know what we could carry so we started putting it in our pockets early to see how much we could pack in.”
“They have bags at Walgreen’s, you know.”
“Thos
e plastic bags clog the landfills and choke the environment.”
Or something.
“Jesus, a politically-correct Indy. God save us.”
“Smartass,” I said on a smile.
“What did you wanna talk about?”
Big breath.
“How would I go about finding a missing person?”
Hank became all business, I couldn’t see him but I heard it, for sure.
“Who is it?”
“You don’t know him.” Well, Hank did know Rosie but only to buy coffee from when he came to Fortnum’s.
“How long have they been missing?”
I tried to calculate it. “About ten hours.”
“Sorry, Indy. Not missing yet.”
“What if they actually are?”
“Who is it?” he repeated.
“An employee of mine, he’s a steady guy.” That was a lie, Rosie was anything but steady. But Rosie never missed a chance to make coffee. He worked seven days a week and never complained. “He didn’t show up for work today, his name is Ambrose Coltrane.”
Best not use his alias, just in case Lee called in a favor.
“The same Ambrose Coltrane that Lee’s lookin’ for?”
Say what?
“Lee only knows him as Rosie!”
Hesitation.
“Lee has ways.”
Grr.
Everybody was always saying this. Lee had ways of getting into girls’ panties. Lee had ways of getting parts for his car when he didn’t have a job. Lee had ways of finding choice parking spots wherever he went. Lee had ways of getting out of being grounded on average one hour after the grounding (when Ally and I would usually have to do the whole week or month or whatever our transgression had bought).
Hank didn’t read my frustration.
“Starting with his PI databases. He can tap into a lot of things. Lee called in a couple hours ago. Asked me to let him know if Coltrane surfaces. He doin’ this favor for you?”
Pause for answer.
I kept my mouth shut.
“What’s goin’ on?” Hank was losing his good-natured, business-like voice and was lapsing into his stern-older-brother voice. “Why are you and Lee looking for the same guy?”
Rule Number One in the India Savage Life Code: When in doubt or possible trouble, lie.
“Don’t know. Listen, Hank, can you call me first if you hear anything about Rosie? And then forget about it for about an hour or two or twenty before calling Lee?”