To Trust a Stranger (5 page)

“Somebody put in an order?” Her tone was disbelieving, but she dropped the cell phone back to her lap. He turned onto Bay Street and sped up to pass one of the horse drawn carriages that took tourists on sight-seeing rides at all hours of the day and night and were a menace to traffic all over the city. In the distance, the bay looked black as oil except for an occasional string of lights that signified a boat. A foghorn gave its lonely call. “Happens all the time, especially with a high-end car like yours.” Her thighs were pressed tightly together, he noticed, her long, slim, and shapely thighs that were bare beneath the crotch-high hem of the pink satin shorts she wore. Glancing down at them-he couldn't help himself-he found himself wondering if her skin tasted as much like honey as it looked. Annoyed at the direction his thoughts were taking, he shifted his gaze back out to the street where it belonged and picked up his phone. “License-plate number?” he asked crisply, confining his gaze to her face now as he punched in some numbers. She told him, and he nodded.

“Yeah?” The grumpy-sounding voice on the other end of the phone belonged to Mother Jones. Mother was the go-to man for all the local car thieves; as a gung-ho rookie police officer Mac had arrested him twice in his first two months on the job, been first infuriated and then chagrined to discover that Mother was back on the streets within twenty-four hours each time, and then got clued in to the program before any real harm was done to Mother's operation or his own career. Fortunately, Mother was not one to bear grudges, and what with one thing and another, they'd ended up developing a mutual respect that had turned into almost a friendship over the years. If anybody could get information on a just-pinched Jaguar in south Charleston, Mother was the man.

“What you interested in it for?” Mother asked cautiously, when Mac gave him the particulars. At times like this, Mother tended to remember that Mac had once been on the other side. “Lady who owns it is a friend of mine. Her husband's gonna go ape-shit when he finds out she let it get stolen, and she's sitting here beside me right now crying her eyes out, afraid she's gonna get beat up when she goes home.” Julie Carlson stiffened and looked at him indignantly. Mac shook his head at her, warning her to silence.

“
Shee
-it.” Mother
tut-tutted
under his breath, and Mac knew he had punched the right buttons. Mother was a devoted family man with six daughters. “
Ain't
no call for that kind of shit, you know? Man who'd rough up his woman, he ought to have his ass kicked.”

“Yeah,” Mac said, agreeing. “Can you help us out here?” There was a pause. “If I can, you know it gonna cost you.”

“No problem.” He figured Julie Carlson was good for it. Hell, Sid was rich enough. A grunt. “I'll make some calls, see what I can do. I'll let you know.

What's the number?” Mac gave him his cell-phone number, disconnected, and glanced at his frowning passenger. “It's going to cost you to get your car back. Probably about a couple of thousand. If it can be done.”

“I heard.” She sounded disgusted. “I can't believe I have to pay to get my own car back.”

“You don't want to, I'll call Mother back and tell him to forget it.”

“No.” There was a sudden note of panic in her voice, and her hands tightened on her phone. “No, I want it.” Mac's lips compressed. She was definitely afraid of Sid. Under the circumstances, feeling sorry for her was a mistake, but feel sorry for her he did.

“Mother's going to want the money on delivery. If we're lucky, and he can find your car.”

She looked worried. “I can write him a check. That is, if he brings back my purse, too. It was in the car.”

A check. Mac sighed. “Darlin', he's going to want cash.” Now she was looking really worried.

“I only have about fifty dollars in my purse. I can go to an ATM machine when I get it back, but I think the limit for withdrawals is two hundred dollars.” Mac thought of the cash advance Elizabeth Edwards had given him only hours earlier. It was stashed in the safe at his house, ready to be deposited in the bank bright and early in the morning. He pictured Hinkle's reaction if he knew what Mac was about to do, made up his mind, and mentally flipped Hinkle the bird. “I got it covered. As long as you're good for it. You are good for it, right?” Sid's wife was definitely not a credit risk, and obviously she had an urgent reason to keep Sid from finding out what she had been up to tonight. The satin thingy she was wearing told its own story. She wouldn't stiff him. “Yes. Oh, yes. Thank you.”

“You're welcome.” His voice was dry. The idea of Julie Carlson cavorting with a boyfriend was cheering, considering who she was married to, but unfortunately it got his thoughts going where they shouldn't again. She was hot stuff, no doubt about it-but, he reminded himself sternly, she wasn't bed material. Not for him. What she was, if the gods continued in their current good mood, might just be the inside source he needed to finally get the goods on Sid. He would help her our of her present difficulty, and in the process pump her for all the information he could get. Mac smiled as he turned down his street, a quiet row of small, single-story, tile-roofed homes that were reasonably well maintained but had seen better days, and parked at the curb. A motley collection of other cars had done likewise all up and down the street. “Where are we?” She was sounding nervous again.”

“My house. I happen to have some cash on hand. Besides, Mother finds your car, we're going to have to meet with him to get it back. It'd be better for my reputation if he doesn't see me like this.” He made a gesture encompassing his finery.

“Oh.” She looked him up and down, and her expression turned faintly sympathetic as her gaze met his. “He doesn't-know?”

“No,” Mac said, refusing to acknowledge how sweet she sounded.

He shut off the ignition. “He doesn't know. You coming in? You can wait in the car if it makes you feel safer.”

She took another look around at the dark street, which was deserted except for old Mr. Leiferman down at the corner waiting under the streetlight for his Boston terrier to do his business, and shook her head. “I'll come in with you, if you don't mind,” she said, just as he'd been pretty sure she would.

She opened the door and slid out. He pulled the wig off, tossed it into the backseat, and scratched his head vigorously. Then he got out himself, locked the car, and headed for his front door. He could hear the delicate swish of her satin shorts as she walked beside him, and tried to shut his ears to the sound.

Reaching the porch, he unlocked the door and stood back to let her precede him inside.

As she stepped over the threshold into the pitch-dark house, a wry smile curved his lips.

Something Daniel used to delight in saying to him on the few occasions when little brother was invited into his room popped into Mac's head. It was so appropriate it was downright eerie.

Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.

4

THE TINY WHITE POODLE that greeted their arrival with a series of ecstatic yaps and jumps reassured Julie almost completely. The dog was adorable, right down to her pink, rhinestone-studded collar and the small pink bow tied over each ear.

No straight man, much less a homicidal sex fiend, had ever possessed a dog like that.

“Hi, sweetheart.” Julie crouched down, offering her fingers for the excited poodle's approval while Debbie flipped on a lamp. A quick sniff, and then the dog had both front paws on Julie's bare knee, begging for attention and wagging her tail so hard her whole body shook as she tried to lick Julie's face. It was a puffball of doggy lovableness that immediately sent Julie's opinion of Debbie skyrocketing. The clothes might be over the top, the wig might be too kitschy for words, but the poodle was perfect.

“Is she yours?” Just so there was no mistake.

“Yep. Meet Josephine.” There was a dryness to Debbie's voice that caused Julie to glance up at him. He'd lost the wig, she registered with surprise, and his hair stood up all over his head in sweaty-looking dark blond spikes. Which, given his heavy makeup, made him look just as bizarre as before, only in a different way: Debbie as Boy George. The narrow-eyed look he gave his pet distracted her from his appearance. From it, Julie surmised that Josephine must be in the doghouse, figuratively speaking. Well, as Sid was always pointing out to her, that was the trouble with dogs: they barked, they had fleas, and they messed the floor. But, Debbie's tone notwithstanding, it was clear that he loved the animal: Josephine was exquisitely groomed, right down to her gyrating pom-pom of a tail and little pink-painted toenails, and displayed the kind of innocent exuberance that was only ever seen in a cherished pet.

“She's a doll,” Julie said sincerely.

“Yeah, well. This morning she ate one of my shoes.” Debbie gave the poodle a dark look, and gestured at the living room in which they stood. “Make yourself at home. I'll be right back.”

He clumped off toward the back of the house in his enormous high heels, turning lights on as he went. Julie was left to stand up and look around her.

It was a narrow, one-story, shotgun-style house, like many of the older dwellings in the eclectic mix of single-family homes, apartments, condo complexes, and cheap hotels that had been shoehorned into the area known as North of Broad.

The room she was in, the living room, had white plaster walls, bare wooden floors, gold drapes pulled tight across the large single window that looked out onto the street, an enormous gold tweed couch with a rectangular oak coffee table in front of it, and a brown velour recliner. The TV took pride of place against one wall. Magazines and newspapers lay in a haphazard pile beside the recliner. Various nondescript prints of landscapes adorned the walls.

Debbie was clearly not an inspired decorator. It was kind of disappointing, given his flamboyant taste in clothes.

Julie sat down on the couch. Josephine jumped up beside her, her small head edging beneath Julie's arm. Patting the wiry tuft on top of Josephine's head, Julie realized that the dog smelled faintly of some floral perfume. How cute, she thought, charmed, and with relief dismissed the last vestiges of a lurking suspicion that she might have fallen into the hands of a rapist-murderer. Well, almost the last
vesstiges
. He could still be a really kinky rapist-murderer, but the poodle made her far more inclined than before to give him the benefit of the doubt.

With her mind all but relieved of that particular worry, Julie immediately focused on another and looked around for a clock. As the saying went, time was of the essence.

Sid was usually home no later than three-fifteen. She had stayed awake enough nights listening for him to know. Which meant, if her spy project was to go undetected, she had to be home by three, complete with Jaguar.

What were the chances?

There was no clock anywhere that she could see. Too nervous to sit any longer, Julie stood and moved toward the kitchen, which was next to the living room. Josephine followed, trotting daintily at her heels, her nails clicking on the floor. The narrow, L-shaped kitchen was as aesthetically uninspired as the living room. The end of the L, obviously intended as an eating area, had been converted into a small home office. There was a metal desk with a computer on it, a chair, a pair of file cabinets-and a clock on the wall.

1:58. She had just over an hour to retrieve her car and get home before her absence was discovered.

Nibbling anxiously at a fingernail, she stepped back into· the hall and glanced toward the back room, the bedroom, where her host had disappeared. At that moment Debbie himself stepped into view, emerging into the bedroom from an adjoining room, a bathroom presumably, because he was holding a towel to his head with both hands, rubbing briskly.

He was wearing jeans, but his chest was bare.

It was a very masculine-looking chest: wide beneath broad shoulders, tanned, muscular, adorned with a thick wedge of dark brown hair. His biceps were tanned too, and thick with muscle, and his forearms were sinewy and appropriately hairy. The jeans were old, hanging low on his hipbones to reveal a washboard stomach and part of an innie naval before hugging long, powerful-looking legs.

Anyone who looked less like a Debbie would have been difficult to imagine. Julie blinked at him in surprise.

He must have felt her gaze on him, because at that moment he lowered the towel and their eyes met. The makeup was gone. His hair no longer stood up from his scalp in sweaty spikes. Looking as if it had been just washed and towel-dried, it was sandy blond now and slightly tousled. His face was lean, hard-jawed, handsome. Without the distorting effect of the eye shadow, his eyes, which were a light, almost translucent blue beneath thick brown brows, were to die for. His nose was straight, his mouth long and firm and well cut, his chin square.

In short, in his masculine incarnation, Debbie was gorgeous.

Julie stared at him for a moment while all kinds of inappropriate thoughts chased themselves around her brain.

“You are gay, right?” The question just popped out, and she could have bitten off her tongue the moment it did. His gaze held hers for a long, uncomfortable moment as his jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed.

“Does it matter?” The look he gave her was cool, shuttered, a little wary. Had she committed some unforgivable faux pas by asking? Probably. Her knowledge of drag-queen etiquette was admittedly a bit rusty.