It was an impulse, really. A simple curiosity to know how his lips would feel under mine, how he would taste. Innocent, almost. But the moment I leaned into the solid heat of his chest, the moment his mouth opened under mine, it was no longer simple, and it sure as hell wasn’t innocent.
He tasted like sin. And, oh Christmas, he kissed just exactly the way I liked. His mouth was mobile, now hard, now soft, as he nipped and licked and swept his way into my mouth and invited me to return the favor. I did, enthusiastically, bearing him down further into the mattress. And once my hands touched his chest, I couldn’t seem to stop touching him. As my hands skimmed under his shirt, I felt his hands fist in my hair. Ahhhhh! If I hadn’t already gone from zero to sixty, that would have done it for me—gentle yet firm, curious and claiming. There’s just something about a man with his hands in my hair like that when we’re making out —
“Holy hell, Dix.” His hands gripped my arms, putting me away slightly. Not a great deal of distance, but enough so that I knew this wouldn’t be going any further. Enough so I knew he’d come to his senses. Enough to start the wave of embarrassment washing over me.
“I can’t do this.” He shook his head. “Sorry, Dix, I can’t. Not like this.”
I moved away and he rolled off the bed. With a quick hand to the nether regions and a bow-legged dip to his walk as he took his first steps, he adjusted himself in his jeans and walked into the bathroom. I closed my eyes. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid! What had I been thinking?
I jumped up, pulling the housecoat around me so tightly it could have acted as a tourniquet. I checked the door leading to the Presley apartment. Unlocked, of course. That’s how Dylan had gotten in. But a quick glance revealed my clothes hadn’t yet been returned as Mrs. Presley promised they would be. I checked the clock. A peek out the window confirmed it was just about dusk. Holy crap! I’d slept more than three hours. And it had been nearly four hours since Mrs. Presley had taken my clothes. More than enough time to wash and dry them, yet Dylan had arrived and my clothes hadn’t.
Coincidence? Not!
Thank you, Mrs. Presley. Not.
I could just picture her now sipping her tea, looking at my clean clothes in her laundry basket and chuckling over it all. But I wasn’t chuckling as I closed the door and pulled the housecoat even tighter. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“Er, Dix?”
I looked up to see Dylan standing in the bathroom doorway.
“Sorry,” I said, rubbing my forehead.
Dylan shoved his hands in his pockets, then pulled them out again. “Dix, don’t... don’t read anything into this.” With a quick wave of the hand he gestured to the bed. “I mean, don’t think I got up—”
I lifted an eyebrow. I could have sworn that he was ‘up’.
He ran a hand through his hair. “What I mean is, I stopped because—”
“Don’t worry about it, Dylan.”
“But you don’t understand. And I want to make sure you do.”
“Remember that sleep disorder I told you about? Well, you just witnessed it firsthand. I was dreaming of that goddamn Flashing Fashion Queen. When I reached for you, I was sound asleep. I thought I was grabbing her. Nothing more.”
“And is that why you kissed me? Because you were thinking about her?”
Damn.
“Damn.”
He did a poor job of trying to hide a smile.
“Of course not.” I let out an exasperated breath. “Look, let’s not ruin the good thing we have going here. I made a mistake. I was dreaming; I was caught up in the moment. You... you know the stress I’ve been under.”
“Yeah, Dix,” he answered, “I do know. And that’s why I couldn’t take—”
I raised a hand. “It’s okay.” I cut his words short again. I knew I did. Part of me knew I shouldn’t, but a stronger part of me knew I damn well had to.
We stood there awkwardly staring at everything but each other for a few minutes. Then, my stare turned to the coffee he’d brought. Coffee, muffin box and a brown paper bag (which I assumed, correctly at it turned out) held a change of clothing he’d picked up for me. Dylan had a key to my condo of course, for emergencies such as this. He followed my gaze to the motel dresser where he’d set the things down.
“Got your toothbrush and stuff. Grabbed the first things I came to,” he said. “Jeans, shirt and underwear from the bottom dresser drawer.”
After what had just happened, I was surprised to see him blush on saying the word ‘underwear’.
But if he’d gone to my apartment... “Can you be sure you weren’t followed?” I asked.
He grinned. “The cops they had tailing me are probably still parked in front of Camellia’s.”
“The peeler bar?”
His grin grew wider. “Yeah. I parked out front, then slipped out the back. Camellia said she’d send a couple of the girls out to flirt with the uniforms. Bought me all the time I needed to do some snooping around.”
“You left your bike there?”
“Hell, no. I left your mother’s car there.” He tapped his pocket to jingle the keys. “Then Camellia gave me a drive in her Hummer back to the office to pick up my bike.”
Brilliant of course. Mother had left her tiny Beemer at my place last time she was home—hanging the hot pink DO ME key tag on the cork board in my kitchen and telling me to use it any old time. Then she’s hopped on a plane and flown back to Florida with the new gentleman friend she’d hooked up with. She couldn’t wait to show him (him being ‘Frankie Dear’) off to the girls at the Retirement Residence. Gentleman friend, my eye. More like a sleeze bucket in a bad toupee. But I hadn’t been too worried about Mother; she could handle herself.
“Dickhead will kill them when he finds out you gave them the slip.”
“He won’t find out. When I leave here, I’ll double back to the club and come out the front door again.”
“With a grin on your face and a swagger in your walk, no doubt?”
“Is there any other way to exit Camillia’s?”
This thought left both of us finally smiling easily as we sat and sipped our coffees. The tension had eased a bit. I could feel the release of it in my shoulders and reached up to rub my right one. The coffee was unjangling my nerves.
“Why do you think you keep having that dream, Dix?”
Nerves jangling! Nerves jangling!
“I thought we were going to forget about that. I don’t dream of you that often.”
Dylan’s lips twitched in a grin. Lips I’d felt beneath mine, tasted... Oh, damn. He meant the sleeping dream, not the waking one.
“I meant, why do you keep dreaming of the Flashing Fashion Queen? With that intuition of yours, it always means something.”
“Oh, that.” My throat burned with the large gulp of coffee I tried to hide behind. “I’m dreaming because there’s something I’m missing. There has to be. The damn woman just keeps teasing me, flouncing around in her puff of purple dress. And I can never, ever see her—or his—face clearly.”
“That day she came into the office, she was hiding her face too. The big glasses, the make-up, the blond wig.”
“Of course she was. She didn’t want us to know she wasn’t Jennifer Weatherby.”
“Agreed. But that was the easy part, since Mrs. Weatherby stayed well out of the spotlight despite the attention her husband got from the media.”
“True,” I said.
“And it was a pretty safe bet that a PI with our address wouldn’t move in Jennifer’s circle, so there’d be very little chance you’d know her socially.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Did you just call our office a dive?”
He grinned. “Your word, not mine. But what I am saying is that our Flashing Fashion Queen was hiding her face because she didn’t want you to know who she was, not so much because she didn’t want you to see who she wasn’t.”
I frowned. “This dream woman... she told me she wanted to be Jennifer. Told me she’d make a wonderful Jennifer.
”
“Rich bitch wannabe?” he offered.
“A rejected mistress of the former philandering Ned Weatherby?” I countered.
“Transvestite lover?”
We sat there a moment in silence. My mind whirled, rearranged things, then did it again. Nothing. Dammit. With a fisted hand I punched my pillow. “Argh! This is so goddamned frustrating!”
“It’ll come to you. Just give it time.”
“Unfortunately, time is something we seem to be running out of.” I wasn’t worried about Dickhead’s 48-hour time limit. That kind of went out the window when he’d found me holding the murder weapon. Or rather what I suspected was the murder weapon. As if reading my mind, Dylan spoke.
“I did some calling around about the gun. Called in some favors.”
“You called Rochelle?” As secretary to Judge Stephanopoulos, Rochelle had her fingertips on the pulse of whatever was going on in the various law enforcement departments in Marport City.
“I tried, but she’s away this week. Her sister got re-married and she flew down to Hawaii for the wedding.”
“So who did you call?”
“My mother,” he answered sheepishly.
Marjorie Foreman, Dylan’s mother, was not only a well-loved politician in Marport City, she was also known for being tough on crime. Without a doubt, she’d have been kept abreast on what was happening on such a high profile case as the Jennifer Weatherby murder.
“You were right about the gun. Initial ballistics tests confirm that the 9mm you were holding was the same one that killed Jennifer.”
“Unregistered?” I asked, suspecting it would be.”
“Surprisingly, it is registered.”
I sat up straight. Was a bubble of hope beginning to form? “To whom?”
“That’s the problem. It’s registered to Talbert K. Washington.”
“The Talbert K. Washington?”
He nodded.
Pop goes the bubble.
The name Talbert K. Washington was a name everyone in Marport City remembered. And would remember for a long time to come. About five years ago, there had been a double homicide. The only double murder in Marport City’s history. Washington’s car had broken down on the highway just inside the town limits. An elderly couple had stopped, offered to help, and he’d murdered the two and stolen their brand new Lexus. He’d driven it clear to Toronto before the police had caught up with him. Caught him and the fifteen-year-old girl he’d picked up along the way. In other words, Washington was a real slime bag.
There was plenty of evidence against Talbert K. Washington—the stolen Lexus, traces of the victims’ blood on his clothing and under his fingernails, the testimony from the girl whom Washington had amused himself with by relating again and again the details of the murder to the terrified kid. But most damning of all had been the 9mm handgun he’d used to kill the couple. It was registered to Washington and had his prints all over it when the cops found it in the glove compartment of the Lexus. You’d think the case would be a slam-dunk.
But nothing is ever that simple.
Talbert K. Washington’s father was Harland Washington, a rich lumberman from Maine. He hired a team of lawyers with specific instructions: Clear my boy. Clear my son at all costs. And I’ll make you all rich men.
It became a legal and media circus. The Washington team of ten lawyers—five from New York and five from a local law firm—had marched into court every day to face the frazzled team of two crown attorneys. The local paper had carried pictures of Talbert K. Washington in his younger days—doing everything from selling apples to raising money for Boy Scouts to petting puppies at the local animal shelter. There were glowing testimonials about his character from everyone from his high school drama coach to his earliest Sunday school teacher—who was photographed wiping a tear from her eyes as she held a picture of Talbert K. close to her chest. Not to mention the smear campaign that Harland Washington started against one of the crown lawyers, Carrie Press. Marjorie Foreman had made it clear that in Marport City, Talbert K. Washington would get a fair trial, but no one was going to be intimidated. Actually, I’d always suspected that’s why Carrie had gotten the case. Judge Stephanopoulos had heard the matter. Too bad for Talbert K. Rochelle told me that the defense’s posturing had backfired, especially the trash that was dished out against Carrie Press. The young Crown Prosecutor had been embarrassed, sure. But worse for the Washington team, she’d been extremely pissed off.
But the media frenzy peaked when it became public that key evidence had gone missing—the 9mm that had been used to kill the old couple.
The lawyers for Talbert K. Washington had wanted the case thrown out, but Judge Stephanopoulos held firm. And fortunately, there was enough other evidence to convict. And the jury wasn’t too impressed with the defense argument that Talbert K. Washington had been too rich to steal a Lexus; he could have just bought one himself. And that the kidnapped girl was lying and perhaps the killer herself. And that the blood all over Harland Washington’s boy was just bad luck when he tried to help out the poor little hitchhiking girl. It must have flown from her and onto him.
Talbert K. Washington was now doing life with no chance of parole for 25 years.
And that was a very good thing.
But the very bad thing... how the hell did the missing gun now turn up in my possession? Was I cursed? Did I have a sign on my back that read kick me? Or perhaps, frame me? So now I was wanted for murder, escaping police custody and being in possession of stolen evidence from a murder/kidnapping trial.
I knew better than to think that it couldn’t get any worse.
“Let me guess,” I said. “The car that tried to run me down... the news you have on that sucks, too.”
He lifted his shoulders in an apologetic gesture. “Sorry Dix. The car belongs to Mrs. Levana Fyffe. Ninety years old. She tripped over her geriatric poodle and broke her ankle last month. Hasn’t driven since. Her nephew has been doing errands for her while she’s been housebound, and she swears the car hasn’t left the yard. Detective Head checked it out. The car was parked in her yard when he got there. And Mrs. Fyffe has been home all day.”
“Please tell me Dickhead hauled it downtown for forensic testing anyway.”
“Unfortunately, Mrs. Fyffe wouldn’t let him. Told him he’d have to apply for a warrant if he wanted to steal her fuckin’ car. She knew the fuckin’ law better than all ‘you young bastards’. Those were her exact words. Then she kicked the lot of them off her property.”
“Feisty old thing, eh?” I just was not catching a break on this. “Think Detective Head will get the warrant?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”
Things were bleak. No, not just bleak. They were horribly bleak. Yeah, that just about described them. But at least I wasn’t behind bars. And I knew what my next move was. What it had to be. I was going to the source of the matter.
“I’m going to the Weatherby house,” I announced.
“Are you forgetting about the restraining order?” he asked. “To say nothing of the BOLO that will have gone out by now.”
“Ah, but they’ll be on the look out for Dix Dodd. I don’t plan on looking like Dix Dodd. Nor am I planning to announce my presence, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m afraid I do know what you mean.” He shook his head, a look of concern clouding his blue eyes.
“Don’t worry. You know I never met a lock I couldn’t finesse. I won’t get caught.”
“Do you really think you’ll find evidence there?”
“Don’t know, but it’s where I have to start.”
“What are the chances you’d let me do it for you?” he asked.
“Non-existent. You have no charges against you. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Yeah, but it would be safer for me to go than you. You get caught, you’re toast.”
“Yeah, and if you get caught, then who the hell proves my innocence when I’m behind bars? Who the hell
else believes in me at this point?”
That sobered him. Hell, it sobered me.
He straightened one long leg as he reached into his pocket. “Here’s Ned’s schedule for tomorrow. Or the best I could figure it, anyway.”
Why didn’t Dylan’s having this surprise me?
“He’s picking his parents up at the airport at 6:30 in the morning,” he said. “He’ll have to leave home by six at the latest. By the time the plane lands, his folks go through customs and they drive back, you’ll have at least a couple of hours there. The place should be empty. I’ll stake it out early in the a.m. and call you.”
“Is there a security system?” I asked. Usually, these high dollar places were alarmed liked Fort Knox.
“There was,” Dylan answered. “But no alarm went off the day Jennifer was murdered.”
“Which goes to prove,” I offered, “that the killer was someone she knew.”
“You’d think,” Dylan said. “But Ned cancelled his account with the security company. Right after Jennifer’s murder. Said he had nothing left to protect.”
I reached for my cell, and checked that it was on vibrate in preparation for the morning. Just in case, turning off the ringer while I was thinking of it. Nothing like having the phone ring when you’re hiding in the bushes, in a closet or under a bed. “What’ll you pursue?” I asked.
“Tonight I’m going to go back over the pictures, notes and tapes we got.”
I blinked. “Wait a minute... I thought Detective Head would have confiscated those?”
Dylan smiled. “Yeah, there was some kind of a mix up. I accidentally gave the Detective the wrong stuff.”
“What stuff did you give him?”
He cringed. “The stuff from your mother’s seventieth birthday party. You know, the tapes of the party your sister sent you. The one with the dozen male strippers and the penis shaped piñatas.”
Dickhead would have a toothpick snapping fit. I laughed out loud. And that felt pretty damn good.
Dylan laughed, too. “Wait’ll he gets a load of the pictures where they’re doing the limbo.”
I moved to put the now-empty coffee cup on the nightstand, and sat back against the head of the bed, still chuckling.
“Er, Dix,” Dylan said. “You’re kind of... kind of coming undone there.”
I sighed. “No, I’m fine Dylan. Just thinking.”
“No, I mean, you’re... falling apart.”
He just was not listening!
“I’m fine, Dylan. Really.”
He drew a breath. “I mean that your housecoat is coming undone and I can see your breasts.”
Well, that sat me up straight. “I’d better get dressed.”
With a pinching grip on the collar of my housecoat that would have made any Mother Superior proud, I grabbed the brown paper bag of clothing Dylan had brought, and raced to the bathroom.
I’d just exposed myself to my employee. No wait, that wasn’t quite accurate—not quite the whole truth. I’d exposed myself to my employee after hauling him into bed and kissing him thoroughly and running my hands all over his chest. My life was on a roller coaster. One big freaking loop-de-loop. I opened the bag of clothing and pulled out the jeans and sweater Dylan had packed. But my hand stilled to the knock on the bathroom door.
“Dix?”
“Yeah?”
“I... I don’t want you to think that what happened... or rather what didn’t happen here between us, was because I didn’t think it could. Okay, what I mean is, it could. Really could. I mean, hey, I certainly could... if you know what I mean. Shit, I didn’t mean it like that. But I didn’t think it should happen. Not that it shouldn’t. But that if it should, it should be... you know, when it should.”
Apparently, in all the excitement, I’d missed the alien invading the body of the usually eloquent Dylan Foreman. I’d never heard the man tongue-tied before. Yes, I know I should have let him off the hook. But it was kind of fun. Kind of cute. And damn it, kind of hitting home.
From the other side of the door, I heard his exasperated sigh. “Oh, to hell with it. I’ll just say it straight out. Dix, you’re vulnerable right now. Only a jerk would take advantage of that. And I’m trying really, really hard not to be a jerk.”
I sat on the edge of the tub. Not that my knees had gone weak, but... well, I just needed to sit.
Oh, Dix, don’t do this. Don’t feel this.
Okay, this was Dylan... but still, he was a man. I was too smart for that. Too tough. Too cynical. I wasn’t going to fall for any man, especially one so young and handsome, while I...
While I what? What excuse should I make up this time?
I gave myself a mental kick in the ass. And I continued to listen. Apparently the door between us gave him as much freedom to speak as it did me to listen.
“Dix, I just don’t want to make love to you when you’ve got so much trouble on your mind. I don’t want to do anything that would fill you with regrets after. I don’t want us to share mind-blowing orgasms and then have to race away into hiding again. I want it to be like it should be for us. I want it to—”
“Wait!” Oh, Jesus, he was scaring the shit out of me. Give me a mugger in a dark alley. Give me a cheating boyfriend who’s just been busted charging my way. Hell, give me Dickhead on a wild-eyed rampage. All of those things at once couldn’t scare me the way Dylan was scaring me right now. Dix Dodd didn’t do close. Close hurt. I squeezed my hands into tight fists until my nails bit into my palms. “What happened shouldn’t have happened, Dylan. Let’s just leave it at that.”
“But Dix...”
“We’re both under pressure here. That’s it. That explains everything. It was nothing.”
Please, I prayed, as the minutes ticked by in silence, not even sure what I was praying for.
“All right, Dix. You got it. It was nothing.”
I should have felt relief. Yep, sure should have.
“Good. Great. Glad we cleared that up.”
His voice was flat in its return. “I’ve gotta get going. Need to sneak back into Camillia’s, then out again. I’ll keep working this, of course. And I’ll call you in the morning like I said.”
I sat there for a moment, my insides shredding in the silence. Then I leapt up.
“Dylan! Wait.”
I dropped the jeans and shirt I’d been holding and held the housecoat around me as I raced from the room. But Dylan was gone. The backdoor was closed. I was alone with only the muted glow from the television flooding the room.
“Just like you wanted, Dix,” I mumbled.
But no one answered back.