Hot Rocks (17 page)

“Sure, I guess. Mike’s here. If you’ll just wait a minute.”

He ran the same routine with the second clerk, minus the flirtatious smile, and garnered the same results.

After stowing his bags in the trunk of his car, he made the rounds. First stop, he took the photos to Vince, waited while copies were made. Then he hit the other hotels, motels, B and B’s within a ten-mile radius.

Three hours later, the most tangible thing he had to show for his efforts was a raging headache. He popped four extra-strength ibuprofen like candy, then got a take-out sandwich at a sub shop.

Back at Laine’s he generously split the cold cut sub with a grateful Henry and hoped that would be their little secret. With the headache down to an ugly throb he decided to spend the rest of the day unpacking, setting up some sort of work space and reviewing his notes.

He spent about ten seconds debating where to put his clothes. The lady had said she wanted him in bed, so it was only fair his clothes be handy.

He opened her closet, poked through the clothes. Imagined her in some of them, imagined her out of all of them. He noted that she apparently shared his mother’s odd devotion to shoes.

After another short debate, he concluded that he was entitled to reasonable drawer space. Because rearranging her underwear made him feel like a pervert, he made a stack of his own in a drawer with a colorful army of neatly folded sweaters and shirts.

With Henry clipping after him, he surveyed Laine’s home office, then her sitting room, then the guest room. The fancy little writing desk in the guest room wouldn’t have been his first choice, but it was the best space available.

He set up. He typed up his notes, a progress report, read them both over and did some editing. He checked his e-mail, his voice mail, and answered what needed answering.

Then he sat at the pretty little desk, stared up at the ceiling and let theories ramble through his mind.

So, who was he? Her father. If Willy knew where Laine was, odds were so did Big Jack. But from what Laine had said, Jack had kept tabs on her off and on all along. So the phrase didn’t work. He knows where you are
now
. The arrow in Max’s mind pointed to Alex Crew.

There was no violence in O’Hara’s history, but there was in Crew’s. O’Hara didn’t look good for the two taps to the back of the diamond merchant’s head. And no reason, going by that history, for Willy to run scared of his old pal Jack O’Hara.

More likely, much more likely, he’d run from the third man, the man Max was convinced was Alex Crew. And following that, Crew was in the Gap.

But that didn’t tell Max where Willy had put the stones.

He’d wanted to get them to Laine. Why in the hell would Willy, or her father, want to put Laine in front of a man like Crew?

He batted it around in his head, getting nowhere. Uncomfortable in the desk chair, he moved to stretch out on the bed. He closed his eyes, told himself a nap would refresh his brain.

And dropped into sleep like a stone.

It was his turn to wake with a blanket tucked around
him. As was his habit, he came out of sleep the same way he went into it. Fast and complete.

He checked his watch and winced when he saw he’d been under for a solid two hours. But it was still shy of seven, and he’d expected to be up and around before Laine got back.

He rolled out of bed, popped a couple more pills for the lingering headache, then headed down to find her.

He was several paces from the kitchen when the scent reached out, hooked seductive fingers in his senses and drew him the rest of the way.

And wasn’t she the prettiest damn thing, he thought, standing there in her neat shirt and pants with a dishcloth hooked in the waistband while she stirred something that simmered in a pan on the stove. She was using a long-handled wooden spoon, keeping rhythm with it, and her hips, to the tune that bounced out of a mini CD player on the counter.

He recognized Marshall Tucker and figured they’d mesh well enough in the music area.

The dog was sprawled on the floor, gnawing at a hank of rope that had seen considerable action already from the look of it. There were cheerful yellow daffodils in a speckled blue vase on the table. An array of fresh vegetables were grouped beside a butcher-block cutting board on the counter.

He’d never been much on homey scenes—or so he’d believed. But this one hit him right in the center. A man, he decided, could walk into this for the next forty or fifty years and feel just fine about it.

Henry gave two thumps of his tail then rose to prance over and knock the mangled rope against Max’s thigh.

Tapping the spoon on the side of the pot, Laine turned and looked at him. “Have a nice nap?”

“I did, but waking up’s even better.” To placate Henry, he reached down to give the rope a tug, and found himself engaged in a spirited tug-of-war.

“Now you’ve done it. He can keep that up for days.”

Max wrenched the rope free, gave it a long, low toss down the hallway. Scrambling over tile then hardwood, Henry set out in mad pursuit. “You’re home earlier than I expected.”

She watched him walk to her, her eyebrows raising as he maneuvered her around until her back was against the counter. He laid a hand on either side, caging her, then leaned in and went to work on her mouth.

She started to anchor her hands on his hips, but they went limp on her. Instead she went into slow dissolve, her body shimmering under the lazy assault. Her pulse went thick; her brain sputtered. By the time she managed to open her eyes, he was leaning back and grinning at her.

“Hello, Laine.”

“Hello, Max.”

Still watching her, he reached down to give the rope Henry had cheerfully returned another tug. “Something smells really good.” He leaned down to sniff at her neck. “Besides you.”

“I thought we’d have some chicken with fettuccine in a light cream sauce.”

He glanced toward the pot, and the creamy simmering sauce. “You’re not toying with me, are you?”

“Why, yes, I am, but not about that. There’s a bottle of pinot noir chilling in the fridge. Why don’t you open it, pour us a glass.”

“I can do that.” He backed up, went another round with Henry, won the rope and tossed it again. “You’re actually cooking,” he said as he retrieved the wine.

“I like to cook now and then. Since it’s just me most of the time, I don’t bother to fuss very much. This is a nice change.”

“Glad I could help.” He took the corkscrew she offered, studied the little silver pig mounted on the top. “You do collect them.”

“Just one of those things.” She set two amber-toned wineglasses on the counter. It pleased her to see the way he switched between sommelier duties and playing with the dog. To give him a break, she squatted down to get a tin from a base cabinet.

“Henry! Want a treat!”

The dog deserted the rope instantly to go into a crazed display of leaping, trembling, barking. Max could have sworn he saw tears of desperation in the dog’s eyes as Laine held up a Milk-Bone biscuit.

“Only good dogs get treats,” she said primly, and Henry plopped his butt on the floor and shuddered with the effort of control. When she gave the biscuit a toss, Henry nipped it out of the air the way a veteran right fielder snags a pop-up. He raced away with it like a thief.

“What, you lace them with coke?”

“His name is Henry, and he’s a Milk-Bone addict. That’ll keep him busy for five minutes.” She pulled out a skillet. “I need to sauté the chicken.”

“Sauté the chicken.” He moaned it. “Oh boy.”

“You really are easy.”

“That doesn’t insult me.” He waited while she got a package of chicken breasts from the refrigerator and began slicing them into strips. “Can you talk and do that?”

“I can. I’m very skilled.”

“Cool. So, how was business?”

She picked up the wine he’d set beside her, sipped. “Do you want to know how things went today in the world of retail, or if I saw anything suspicious?”

“Both.”

“We did very well today, as it happens. I sold a very nice Sheraton sideboard, among other things. It didn’t appear that anything in the shop, or my office, or the storeroom was disturbed—except for a little blood on the floor in the back room, which I assume is yours.” She drizzled oil in the skillet, then glanced at him. “How’s your head?”

“Better.”

“Good. And I saw no suspicious characters other than Mrs. Franquist, who comes in once or twice a month to crab about my prices. So how was your day?”

“Busy, until naptime.” He filled her in while she laid the chicken strips in the heated oil, then started prepping the salad.

“I guess there are a lot of days like that, where you go around asking a lot of questions and not really getting any answers.”

“A no is still an answer.”

“I suppose it is. Why does a nice boy from Savannah go to New York to be a private detective?”

“First he decides to be a cop because he likes figuring things out and making them right. At least as right as they can be made. But it’s not a good fit. He doesn’t play well with others.”

She smiled a little as she went back to the salad. “Doesn’t he?”

“Not so much. And all those rules, they start itching. Like a collar that’s too tight. He figures out what he really likes to do is look under rocks, but he likes to pick the rocks. To do that, you’ve got to go private. To do that and live well . . . I like living well, by the way.”

“Naturally.” She poured some wine in with the chicken, lowered the heat, covered the pan.

“So to live well, you’ve got to be good at picking those rocks, and finding people who live even better than you to pay you to poke at all the nasty business going on under them.” He snitched a chunk of carrot to snack on. “Southern boy moves north, Yankees a lot of time figure he moves slow, thinks slow, acts slow.”

She glanced up from whisking salad dressing ingredients together in a small stainless steel bowl. “Their mistakes.”

“Yeah, and my advantage. Anyway, I got interested in computer security—cyber work. Nearly went in that direction, but you don’t get out enough. So I just throw that little talent in the mix. Reliance liked my work, put me on retainer. We do pretty well by each other all in all.”

“Your talents extend to table setting?”

“A skill I learned at my mama’s knee.”

“Dishes there, flatware there, napkins in that drawer.”

“Check.”

She put water on for the pasta while he went to work. After checking the chicken, adjusting the heat, she picked up her wine again. “Max, I’ve thought about this a lot today.”

“Figured you would.”

“I believe you’ll do right by my father for a couple of reasons. You care about me, and he’s not your goal. Recovering the stones is.”

“That’s a couple of them.”

“And there’s another. You’re a good man. Not shiny and bright,” she said when he paused to look at her. “Which would just be irritating to someone like me, because I’d keep seeing my own reflection bounced off someone like that, and I’d always come up short. But a good man, who might bend the truth when it suits, but keeps his word when he gives it. It settles my mind on a lot of levels knowing that.”

“I won’t make a promise to you that I can’t keep.”

“You see, that’s just the right thing to say.”

 

 

 

While Laine and Max ate pasta in the kitchen, Alex
Crew dined on rare steak accompanied by a decent cabernet in the rustic cabin he’d rented in the state park.

He didn’t care for rustic, but he did appreciate the privacy. His room at the Wayfarer in Angel’s Gap had abruptly become too warm to suit him.

Maxfield Gannon, he mused, studying Max’s investigator’s license while he ate. Either a free agent out for a bounty, or a private working for the insurance company. Either way, the man was an irritant.

Killing him would have been a mistake—though he’d spent a tempting and satisfying moment considering it as he’d stood over the unconscious detective, fuming over the interruption.

But even a yahoo police force such as those fumbling around that pitiful little town would be riled to action by murder. Better for his purposes if they continued to bumble about giving parking tickets and rousting the local youth.

Better, he mused as he sipped his wine, and easier by far to have taken the irritant’s identification, to have placed an anonymous call. It pleased him to think of this Maxfield Gannon trying to explain to the local law just what he’d been doing inside a closed store at three-thirty in the morning. It should have knotted things up nicely for a space of time. And no doubt it sent a very clear message to Jack O’Hara through his daughter.

But it was annoying just the same. He hadn’t been able to take the time to search the premises, and he’d had to change his accommodations. That was very inconvenient.

He took out a small leather-bound notebook and made a list of these additional debits. When he caught up with O’Hara—and of course he would—he wanted to be able to detail all these offenses clearly while he tortured the location of the remaining diamonds out of him.

The way the list was mounting up, he was going to have to hurt O’Hara quite a bit. It was something to look forward to.

He could add O’Hara’s daughter and the PI to his payment-due list as well. It was a bonus, in the grand scheme, for a man who equated inflicting pain with power.

He’d been quick and merciful with Myers, the greedy and idiotic gem buyer he’d employed as an inside man. But then Myers hadn’t done anything more than be stupid enough to believe he was entitled to a quarter of the take. And greedy enough to meet him alone, in a closed construction site, in the middle of the night when promised a bigger cut.