Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset

by Dee Bridgnorth

  “How did you know this place was here?” Mindy wanted to know during one of her breaks. She kept taking breaks in her eating because she wanted to be able to eat more. She didn’t care if she ate until she popped. “Do you live near here or something?”

  “No. I live in Branson West,” he was quick to tell her. “But my coworker, Younger, grew up in Ozark and he’s got a whole list in his head of little tiny local dives that have great food or good beer. And this one has both. I don’t know how long ago—maybe a few years—he dragged me out here to the tavern. I thought he was crazy.”

  “It does look like you’ve stepped onto a movie set or something. Some story set in a roadside bar with motorcycles and fights and stuff.” Mindy looked around the interior of the low slung wood shack and could not help but wonder how long it had been here. The place looked positively ancient, but it was welcoming all the same. “Sometimes I think I would like to own a place like this. Own it. Run it. Something.”

  “You want out of the mirror maze business, huh?”

  He was looking at her with a bit of humor in his expression, but it was hard for Mindy to feel humorous about the possibility of losing her job. Kevin’s threats were very real. She’d learned a long time ago not to underestimate him.

  Mindy swallowed. She wanted to think about something else. Something far away from her own life. “I don’t want to talk about the mirror maze. Let’s talk about you for once. Like where you grew up and how you ended up here. Your friend Younger is from Ozark, where are you from?”

  “Vinita, Oklahoma,” he told her with a lopsided smile touching his lips. He reached for his beer and sucked down a long drink. “It is a very small town with a population that is decreasing instead of increasing.”

  Mindy had never been to Oklahoma. The furthest she’d ever been was Springfield and that was only an hour or so away from Branson. The thought of going to another state was exciting. She made an eager motion for him to continue talking.

  “The town is right on the Will Rogers Turnpike so Interstate 44 keeps it at least alive. There are some gas stations and a McDonald’s and a few diners like this one.” He looked as though he was slipping away into a memory. “There’s a feed store, of course, and some hotels. I used to work at the feed store when I was growing up.”

  “Did you raise animals?” Sometimes Mindy thought about how nice it would be to have a dog. Then she thought about the fact it was another mouth to feed. “I’ve never had a pet, but I’ve always wanted a dog. I just keep thinking that having a dog would be nice.”

  He blinked and seemed to stare at her as though he was seeing her for the first time. “You’ve never had a dog? What about a cat?”

  “No. No cats.” Mindy pursed her lips and thought about it for a moment while she stirred her gravy-slathered mashed potatoes. “I’m not sure I would get along with a cat. I want something that’s going to love me back. You know? Cats seem so—snobby.”

  Ash laughed. His eyes crinkled at the corners and he looked very much as though he was really enjoying himself. “You’re right about that. Definitely dogs above cats. But you’ve really never had a pet? I suppose that’s not unusual. There are lots of people who have never had a pet. Can you have a pet in your apartment?”

  “I don’t know.” Mindy frowned and thought about it. “I don’t think I’d want to. I work crazy hours. The poor thing would be shut up all alone in that dump most of the day by itself.”

  “Yeah. That would be rough.”

  “Besides,” she continued absently. “I really need to spend my pennies on a car. I think if I had a car I could get a better job. It wouldn’t matter where the job was because I could drive to it.”

  He was staring at her. She wasn’t sure why. It made her a little uncomfortable. Then he sighed. “You’re a very practical girl. Aren’t you?”

  “Not by choice.” Why had she said that? Of course it was by choice. What else would it be? She decided to turn the conversation back toward Ash. He was more fun to talk about. “What about you? Why did you leave Oklahoma? Why not get a job there?”

  “I joined the U.S. Marshals after college.” He suddenly seemed to be done talking. “It was an okay job, but I decided I wanted to work in the private sector and this pays better. So, I answered a job ad in the Joplin paper and here I am.”

  “Wow.” Mindy was absolutely thunderstruck by the idea of answering a job ad in another state and just picking up and moving. “I can’t even imagine how I would do something like that. It would be amazing to start over!”

  He gazed at her for a long moment. “Starting over can be handy, but honestly, putting down roots feels better. You have friends and people you know and a familiar town that you don’t need to feel lost in when you try to go to a grocery store.”

  Mindy waved her hand. “You take the bus to Walmart. That’s all you got to do.”

  “What if there is no Walmart?” He was teasing her, she could tell.

  She began to laugh as she took just one more bite of glorious potatoes and gravy. The thick white gravy was everything it should be. “There’s no such thing as a town without a Walmart.”

  “Sure, there is.”

  He winked at her and Mindy felt her tummy do a series of cartwheels that made her feel breathless and silly. She had the sudden thought that this man would have made some lucky girl a really great husband. Why had he never married? Men from small towns always got married. Ash was handsome and smart and well-employed. He should have married a former prom queen there in Vinita, Oklahoma. What on earth had gone wrong in his fairytale?

  “What?” he prodded after a moment or two. “You’re staring at me funny.”

  Mindy took a breath. What did she have to lose anyway? “I was just wondering why you’d never gotten married. A nice, good-looking boy from a small town in Eastern Oklahoma. Why didn’t you find a nice local girl and settle down?”

  “You sound like my mother,” he said sarcastically. Then he waved his fork at her. “And that is not a compliment.”

  He didn’t say any more. Instead, he raised his hand for the waitress. She bustled over with a huge smile on her face. There were no booths in this restaurant, only tables. It was a pleasant enough place to hang out whether you were eating or drinking.

  “What can I getcha, sug?” the waitress drawled in an accent that suggested she came from the Arkansas side of the state line.

  “Pie, I think.” Ash looked to Mindy but she wasn’t going to turn down pie. Ever. “Banana cream would be good.”

  “Ah yes, sug!” the waitress gushed. “Our banana cream iz crazy good today. I’ll bring ya sum right out. Two slices or one?” The waitress was now giving them the look. “Are we sharing a piece folks?”

  “Oh heck no,” Mindy told her with a laugh. “I don’t like to share my pie.”

  For some reason this struck everyone as funny. Both the waitress and Ash chuckled and then the waitress bustled off to get their slices of pie.

  “No sharing, hmm?” Ash shrugged. “Fine by me. I’m not so sure I’d get any of that pie.”

  “It’s that good, huh?” Mindy wondered why he was dodging her question. “Is that what you want in a wife? A woman who has good pie?”

  It took Mindy a minute to realize the double entendre in her words. Then she blanched and flung her hands over her face. Ash had to pry her hands down from across the table. He took them both in his, gave them a light squeeze, and then let go. The touch seared her straight to her soul. The man was so gentle. When you looked at him, you could tell he could easily be mean. He could be rough or down and dirty if he needed to be. There was no doubt in her mind about that. But he wasn’t. He chose not to be that way and she could not help but respect him all the more for it.

  “Mindy, I know you weren’t talking about the somewhat colloquial version of pie,” Ash told her softly. He reached out and he touched her hand again. “Honestly, the fact that you’re not making some kind of sexual innuendo every five minutes is refreshing.�
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  “I’m hopelessly backward in that department,” she told him. Wait. Why did she tell him that? It wasn’t exactly flattering information but she swallowed and kept going anyway. “I was a total nerd in high school. You have no idea. Math club, Spanish club, basically, I was in every academic club there was. I kept thinking it was the only way to get out of here. You know? And the boys didn’t exactly understand my situation. They just saw the nerdy girl with the stringy hair and no makeup and they sort of ignored me.”

  “You’re probably better off for it,” Ash reminded her gently.

  Mindy snorted and shook her head. “Yeah right, except I got tangled up with Kevin anyway. Maybe if I had learned in high school, then I wouldn’t have made the same mistake as an adult.”

  “I was engaged,” he said abruptly. “To a young woman who was the life of the party in Vinita. Her parents were in charge of the social season. She’d been the most popular girl in our school. She was pretty. A former cheerleader. The whole nine yards. And let me tell you,” he paused and for just a moment Mindy could have sworn she could see the pain in his eyes, “that girl let every boy she knew have a taste of her pie.”

  Mindy sucked back a gasp. How could anyone be that foolish?

  But Ash wasn’t done. “She was a year behind me in school. We were engaged after my senior year. It happens in a lot in small towns. You know? And I went off to college in Tulsa and within six months she’d made a fool of me with half the guys in town. After the first year was over, I went home and I found myself the subject of every stare in town. They were all looking at me and talking about me.”

  “About you?” Mindy was outraged on his behalf. “Why you? You weren’t the one sleeping around!”

  “Yeah, but in a small town like that, both people get the shaft,” he said bitterly. “They look at her and call her a loose girl. But they looked at me and wondered why I couldn’t keep my woman happy.”

  “That’s so unfair!” Mindy growled.

  If the waitress hadn’t brought their pie about then, Mindy might have said something else. Something about how she never would have risked betraying a man like Ash Forbes. That she would have done anything to have a man like him, someone who was so gentle and so kind. Mindy might have told him he had pretty much everything on her checklist. If she had one, of course, which she didn’t because that would be just silly.

  “Here ya go!” The waitress swung their plates onto the table along with two fresh forks, and then she winked. “Enjoy!”

  “Holy moly!” Mindy had never seen a slice of pie quite like this one.

  “Oh, come on,” Ash chided. “There are places in Branson that have pie like this. In a wedge so thick that it looks like it’s about to fall off the plate.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve never been there,” Mindy whispered in awe. “Look at it! The meringue is so thick, it’s longer than the fork!”

  He nodded. “And the filling is so creamy and rich it’s probably going to make me wish I’d just ordered pie first to see if I had any room for chicken.”

  Mindy laughed and dug into her yummy confection. He was right, the cream pie filling was divine. The bananas were perfectly ripe, not mushy, and were balanced by the cream and the meringue until it was like eating a banana-flavored cloud. Not that her belly felt that way about it. About halfway through her plate full of pie, Mindy was starting to feel full. Really full. The sort of full she had not experienced in years. Probably since she was little and attempted to eat three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

  “And how was it?” The waitress swung back by their table with a big grin on her face. “Ya both look more than a little full. Can I get you a box?”

  “One box,” Ash said quickly. “I’m going to let her take it all home.”

  The waitress clucked and sighed at him. “What a gentleman! I’ll get that right up for ya.”

  “You’re going to let me take your leftover pie home?” Mindy wasn’t sure why. But for some reason, this made her feel incredibly cherished and cared for. It was such a foreign feeling. She didn’t know what to do with it. “That’s really decent of you, Ash.”

  He shook his head and smiled at her in a way that made her stomach do yet another cartwheel. “You’re far too easy to please, Mindy Hall. I could just bring you a pie every day and maybe a bucket of chicken and never have to worry that you didn’t realize you were important.”

  Mindy burst out laughing. She felt her eyes beginning to water and her face was starting to hurt from all of this smiling. But his word sort of stuck with her. Important. He seemed to be saying he wanted her to realize she was important. When had anyone ever suggested that?

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Where in the hell have you been?”

  It was the first time that Ash had seen Detective Lowell anything but perfectly composed. It was nearly ten o’clock at night and the detective had exchanged his normally impeccable dress slacks and dress shirt for athletic shorts and a tank top. His feet were bare and he was wearing a disgruntled expression on his face.

  Ash stepped through the doorway into Lowell’s apartment carrying the backpack that Mindy had brought to the parking lot of Tablerock Dam. Lowell’s place was nice, but generic. In fact, it was really generic. As in just a little too staged. Taupe walls, cream carpet, landscapes hanging on the walls, furniture that was so neutral it hardly had color. And the kitchen was prohibitively clean. Nobody had a kitchen that clean.

  “This condo is nice,” Ash murmured as he looked around. “A rental?”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be here.” For some reason, Lowell’s tone struck Ash as trying just a little too hard to be nonchalant. Weird. Why was he so convinced there was something going on here?

  “I’m sorry I am late,” Ash said abruptly. He tossed the backpack full of drugs on the kitchen island. “Mindy Hall doesn’t have a car. The poor girl had to walk most of the way to the meeting point and I didn’t want to just leave her there with a bag full of money. So I drove out to Blue Eye and got her some food and then took her back to her apartment the back way in case anyone was watching her.”

  Lowell paused for just a moment and then nodded. “Good idea.”

  “What?” Because there was most definitely a what.

  The detective gave a careful shrug. “I was just thinking this is the second time you’ve taken her for some food. That seems a bit telling. Don’t you think?”

  “What? That I care if she dies of starvation during this operation?” Ash retorted. “You’ve seen the woman. She’s like a stray puppy you can’t help but take home and feed a little.”

  “Puppies become junkyard dogs who steal from you,” Lowell shot back with a frown.

  It was Ash’s turn to frown. “You mean they grow up to be loyal junkyard dogs who guard your junkyard.”

  “Look,” Lowell said, running his fingers restlessly through his hair. “I know you’re not an idiot. All right? I just want to make sure this operation goes off without a hitch. And that does not include you deciding to adopt our little waif. She needs to be waif-like in order to be convincing to the dealer we’re tracking.”

  “Or,” Ash suggested snidely, “they’ll just think she’s using the cut to buy herself a decent meal. You’re being ridiculous, Lowell.”

  Lowell headed for the counter and unzipped the bag. Pulling out the bags of drugs, he began to sort through them with an ease that gave Ash more than a moment’s pause. How did a regular small town police detective get so familiar with prescription drugs that he could just eyeball them through several layers of plastic and know what they were?

  “You’re staring at me funny,” Lowell said without looking up. “This is all she gave you, right?”

  “Yes. I didn’t think to ask her if they’d told her what price we had to give her.” Suddenly, Ash felt a shot of worry that they had somehow shorted Mindy part of the payment money. She would have to explain the missing money and the whole operation. Mindy would be in trou
ble and it would be Ash’s fault. “Maybe we need to give her more money before she goes to pay Caprico. I don’t want him yelling at her. There’s no telling how violent this whole thing could get.”

  Lowell left off looking at the pill collection and turned to stare at Ash. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.” Ash cleared his throat. “I just don’t like getting civilians mixed up in this stuff. Especially when they really had no business being involved in the first place.”

  “No business being involved?” Lowell’s expression hardened. He turned to stared directly at Ash with his hands on his hips and a look that reminded Ash of his high school football coach. “Let’s get something straight here, Forbes. That woman was already involved.”

  Ash could not let that stand. “Just because her brother was involved doesn’t make her involved.”

  “You were the one who was so worried that she wasn’t even going to be able to resist doing this for the money anyway. You thought she would pull a double agent thing on us and take our money and the drugs and do what with them, I don’t know. But still! That was your concern. Remember?”

  Ash felt bad for even believing that of Mindy. “I didn’t know her then.”

  “Oh. And now you do?” Lowell gave a savage shake of his head. “That’s not how it works, Forbes. You know that. You don’t get to know someone in the middle of an operation like this! You are playing a part and so is she. This is not real. Whatever it is you think you’re experiencing is all part of the façade!”

  Ash was silent for a moment or two. He didn’t appreciate the insinuation that his judgment was somehow impaired because he was part of this bullshit operation. An operation—by the way—which had taken on a distinctly non police flavor. There was something else going on here.