“I’m going out,” Belle announced.
“Whoa, wait a minute.” Jon stood up and tried to tower over her. Given the addition of the spiked heels to Belle’s six feet, it was a hopeless effort. “You’re here because it’s safe. And I don’t want you doing anything I have to explain to my boss tomorrow morning. There’s a curfew in this house.”
“Isn’t he just the cutest thing in the world? Darlin’, nobody tells Belle when to come home. Even Horace didn’t try that.” Belle touched Jon on the cheek with one iridescent lavender fingernail and kept walking toward the door. Jon might have admired Belle’s swinging rear end, but he seemed more focused on who was in charge. I admired her fingernails. And her toenails. And her shoes. And her ability to stay upright in them.
“Where the hell are you going?” Jon glanced at the handcuffs lying on the counter. Of course, Belle was carrying her big bag and it might have a gun stuffed in somewhere with ammo for added weight. But it was mostly verbal sparring over who might be in charge.
Belle grinned wickedly. “Oh, don’t get your thong in a crack. There’s a late concert uptown. A friend of mine is singing. I promised her a month ago that I would be her date. She’s picking me up and dropping me off.” We heard a horn honk outside.
Belle had her hand on the door handle. “And tomorrow morning I’ll be leaving early for choir practice.” She hummed an Amen as she closed the door behind her. Belle knew how to make an exit. Jon stood with his mouth shut tight, fingers drumming on his nicely muscled thighs. If I could get past the general control issue, I really, really wanted to deal with those thighs.
“Choir? Do they know what they’re in for? Jesus. How do I get involved with these people?” He flopped down next to me.
“You’re a cop. Same as a taxi driver, strange people go with the territory,” I mumbled, yawning, and leaned my head against him. I don’t remember falling asleep. I don’t remember Belle coming home. I don’t remember Jon moving me from the couch to one of the spare bedrooms. But I opened my eyes in a strange bed. One with super high thread-count cotton sheets and huge pillows.
Chapter Nine
I smelled coffee and bacon. Takeout pastry with chocolate or butter or both is my usual breakfast. When I wandered into the kitchen, Jon was standing at the counter drinking coffee and shaking aspirin out of a plastic bottle.
Belle emerged from the bathroom and sauntered into the kitchen. Her makeup was toned down, she was wearing a plain white shirt and black slacks, and her shoes only added an inch to her height. They had some glitter on them, so she still made a little bit of a statement. Jon narrowed his eyes. His fingers toyed with the pair of handcuffs that still lay on the counter.
“Sweetie, how would it look if you tried to stop a woman from her God-given right to worship?” She slid the sugar bowl toward him and moved the cuffs down the counter, out of Jon’s reach. “Add some of this to that coffee. It’ll sweeten you right on up.”
“Black, and you might make me doubt there is a God.” he said but didn’t pull the handcuffs closer.
Belle swung her butt toward the door. “Siiing, sing out loud.” She sang and slammed the door behind her. Jon held his head. He downed the aspirin and took a careful sip of coffee.
“Headache?”
“I didn’t sleep well.” Maybe because he’d slept alone, I thought to myself, surprised I would even consider it.
“I did, sleep well. Thanks for the bed. Temporarily. I wasn’t sure about the sleeping arrangements.”
“I have three bedrooms. That’s the sleeping arrangement…for the moment. If you want to change that, let me know. I’m a very accommodating guy.”
“No ‘honey, I have a headache’?” I slid onto the seat across the counter from him.
“Honey, where you’re concerned, a bullet in the brain wouldn’t slow me down.” He focused his blue eyes on mine.
I blinked first.
“So, you want to talk about it?” he asked.
“About your headache? Or slowing you down?”
“Yesterday. The thugs. Remember? You got mugged by two big guys who are paying dearly for underestimating your blind luck.” He swallowed the black coffee and winced. Belle had added chicory.
“Oh, those guys. It’s a hazard of the job. Willie put me on local car service and known airport for a while. I think I can handle that.”
“I want a description.”
“Well, local service runs are mostly old people without driver’s licenses…” My voice trailed off when I noticed Jon was eyeing the handcuffs again. He looked back at me. I knew I was being snarky but that’s how I cope with pressure, and I was feeling the heat of too many weird events in too short a time.
“Just dreaming about you in handcuffs, where at least I could keep some small amount of control over you.”
“Are we back to discussing sleeping arrangements?” An image of Jon cuffed to the bed, spread eagle, flitted through my brain.
If looks could kill, his made a gun unnecessary.
“Okay, maybe not.” I was having a lot of trouble keeping my snark voice under control. “The pickup looked like a stockbroker. The other guy was an oversize hockey player in a suit…with a gun… pointed at my head. It was hard to concentrate on detail. When I left, he was kind of flat. The stockbroker guy was rolling around on the ground holding his shoulder…or his knee or both. You might want to check the emergency rooms.”
Jon stared at me. Then he burst out laughing—his way of coping.
“You are truly a wonder. Let’s talk about the house. Where was it?”
“In Holyoke off Route 5. He wouldn’t give me an address. I’m driving along and suddenly he said, ‘Turn here.’”
“Could you find it again?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“We have to go there.”
“Right now? I have an airport run in a couple hours.”
“Right after your run.” His cell phone rang, and he snatched it off the counter where he’d laid it next to the handcuffs.
“Stevens.” He listened for ten seconds. “What?” he yelled into the phone. “Yeah, give me the location. I can be there in ten.”
I inched closer, hoping to overhear the other end of the conversation. Jon’s hand came up and covered my face completely. He straight-armed me, keeping me from getting close enough to hear what was being said on the other end of the line. He snapped the phone closed and moved his hand over to my cheek and down my neck. He pulled me over and kissed me lightly on the lips. Then he kissed me harder and deeper and our tongues got involved.
When we came up for air his eyes were dark and thoughtful. He kissed my nose and said, “You’re on your own. I need to get to the station.” He went to a small closet just inside the front door and extracted his holster and gun. After checking the gun, he clipped it to his belt and shrugged into a jacket that had been hanging in the closet. He headed toward the door.
“Wait, what’s going on? This is Northampton. Are we having a crime wave?” I figured he would pull that need-to-know stuff and stonewall me. I was right. I was still struggling past the kiss when he opened the door and eased out.
“Gotta go. Be sure the door is locked when you leave. I’ll call you later about checking out that house.” He looked at me. “When I leave, flip the dead bolt. And be careful going out to your car. Don’t hang around outside. Okay?” He handed me a key. “This is for the front door.”
He was giving me a key to his house! I stared at the key. “What do you need to tell me? On a need-to-know basis, sometimes I need to know.”
“No,” he replied. His cell phone rang again. He snapped it open and listened.
“Oh, shit. Yeah, okay, I’ll tell her. Send someone over to keep an eye out. Thanks.” He closed it slowly and looked at me.
“That was Rodriguez at the station. The press has the story. You’ll see it in the media anyway.” He turned away from me and looked out the window.
“What, what? Did something happen at
Cool Rides? Is everyone okay? Where is Belle? What’s going on?” I was yelling by this point, and Jon grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Calm down. It’s no one you know. I got another body. That crazy lady lawyer lost her husband.”
“Oh, no. She didn’t shoot him somewhere besides in the butt, did she?”
“She was in court with about 30 other people, including a judge and jury, when he was killed. We have a witness who heard the shots. Didn’t see anybody, but at least we have a real time of death. Shit! I don’t know what to do with you.” He scowled, which seemed to be a common expression for him these days. “I want you to stay in very public places until we figure out what the hell is going on. I know the Scarpellis and their drug transportation business are connected to all this. I need to figure it out before we find any more bodies.”
“I have that airport run anyway.” There isn’t any place with more security these days than an airport. For a taxi driver, airport security can be an inconvenient pain in the backside. Right now, it was fine with me. I just had to pick up the fare and get him there first. And I would have Belle with me since she was still learning about airport runs.
“Then I’ll see you tonight. Don’t go anywhere there aren’t lots of people. Safe rides only, okay?” He pulled me in close and just held me for a long second or two. I could have made it a lot longer, but his duty called. He sighed and was out the door.
“Humph,” I answered.
And he left me sitting there, alone, in his house. I had some time before I picked up the airport run. I started with the master bedroom.
His bed was king size. A huge painting of a peach hung on the wall opposite the bed. The peach managed to be erotically, sexually feminine and still look like a peach. His bedroom closet had...my God, the man owned a tuxedo. It was in a clear cleaner’s bag so it might have been used recently. Not in Northampton. Now I had to wonder where Jon might have worn a tux.
Nothing weird in the bedside table. Nothing dangerous in the medicine cabinet. Master bath was amazing. The shower was a walk-in with a built-in seat and shelves. Jon in the shower flicked through my mind. Then Jon with me in the shower flicked through.
There was a sound system in the living room with lots of CDs. The TV was a large flat-screen. The couch could accommodate two horizontal or six vertical. The food in the fridge was fresh, indicating Belle had just bought it. The kitchen was beautiful with lots of pots and pans, mostly unused.
A basement could represent a major philosophical statement or it could be a dumping ground. Jon’s was a statement. It had more carpentry tools than the kitchen had cooking tools. These, however, looked well used. I headed back upstairs. He didn’t have any sex toys, women’s underwear or even condoms in his house, so I figured he wasn’t involved with anyone. I tried to ignore the relief centered somewhere south of my stomach.
I decided to see if Jon’s renter in the other half of the house was a hot babe who kept all the sex toys on her side. Or maybe a hot guy and I could forget all about Jon. I was pretty sure Jon wasn’t gay, but I was always up for meeting a hot person of any gender or sexual persuasion. They tended to be entertaining.
I looked out the front door to check for bad guys. The street was empty. Mailboxes were side by side on the porch. Stevens was painted in white on a plain black box. The other box was a cute birdhouse with Emmy Lucille Streeter painted on it. I rang the doorbell. I hadn’t decided what I was going to say if a blond bombshell opened the door.
It was my ash-lady airport run. No surprise in this small town, but she must have scattered Granddad’s ashes in record time. It didn’t seem very long since I’d dropped her off. I pictured her dumping the cardboard box under a rock at a highway rest stop outside an airport in Anywhere, USA. The overwhelming smell of baking cookies wafted out the door.
“May I help you?” She smiled beatifically at me.
“Uh, I’m staying next door temporarily, and I, uh, thought it might be nice to meet the neighbors.” And find out what she looked like and how much she knew about Jon. “My name is Honey.”
“Oh, how nice. I’m Lucille. And, no, you can’t call me Lucy. Are you providing sexual favors for Jon while you’re staying there? He’s such a nice young man.”
I almost choked on my tongue.
“Those cookies smell wonderful. Are you baking them yourself?”
“Oh, yes. I use them to attract the cute men at the senior center. Would you care to try one? You could give me an opinion about how lucky I might get.”
“Thanks. I can’t stay long, though. I drive for Cool Rides Taxi and I have a pickup pretty soon.” I glanced behind me as I stepped through the door, just to see if Jon’s request for someone to keep an eye out had been taken seriously. The only car on the block was a black Lincoln that had just pulled up, and the suits inside were not police officers. I moved to a window and peered out to get a better look at the passenger who was leaning his arm out the car window. It had a cast on it. I couldn’t see his face.
“Why, who would that be? What an impressive car.” Lucille had moved up behind me.
“I think maybe they tried to mug me yesterday.” The one leaning out the window moved his oversize arm. His head came into view. By this time, I’d nicknamed my attackers Bozo and Bongo. I recognized Bozo’s black-and-blue face.
“Really? Well, don’t you worry, dear. We women take care of ourselves. I have just the solution.” She disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a huge gun in her hand.
“Um, I’m not sure that’s the right solution.”
“Oh, sweetie. Jon keeps telling me to call any time I have any problems, but, you know, I’ve always been independent. I really do like to take care of myself. And I do believe I’m a better shot than Jon anyway. Shall we find out? I think I can nail that tire from here.” She opened the curtain and took aim. POP! I jumped back from the window.
“I’m so glad I got a silencer for this gun,” said Lucille.
The arm jumped inside the car, the window rolled up and the car skidded down the street. They didn’t return fire. In half a block, their tire started to deflate with a kerthump, kerthump. They made it around the corner and disappeared. Guess they didn’t have run-flats. Run-flat tires only handle marginally better than a tire with a bullet hole in it, in my opinion. I didn’t have much experience with the bullet hole side of that equation. I had tested out a few run-flats.
“I think it’s cookie time,” Lucille said and headed off toward the kitchen. I continued to watch for the car or any of the occupants for a second, shrugged, and followed her. “I was the best shot on the firing range, you know.” She tucked the gun into the back of the kitchen junk drawer.
Firing range? Where did Jon get his tenants? Then I noticed the framed photos and certificates on the wall. One of the pictures was of a younger Lucille with a well-known politician. She was wearing a badge and a jacket with FBI in large, very clear, white letters. The certificate next to it was one for achievement on the firing range. Nice neighbor. Handy to have around if someone is trying to knock you off.
I was on my second cookie when the doorbell rang. We both jumped a little, but Lucille got up and peeked out the window.
“Oh my, aren’t we having the best visitors today? It’s Officer Rodriguez. We have cookies, dear,” she said as she opened the door.
“Lieutenant sent me over to make sure you got to work okay. Looks like breakfast is over.” He glanced at the cookies.
“Why, dear, Honey and I have just been enjoying these freshly made chocolate chip cookies.” Lucille pushed the cookie plate closer.
“Oh gosh, look at the time. I have an airport pick up in ten minutes.” I headed for the door. Rodriguez was right behind me. I knew if I tried to explain the flat tire and the idiots changing it to Rodriguez I would be delayed for hours, miss my airport run and any other business I might do for the rest of the morning. I wasn’t positive beyond a reasonable doubt it was the guys who tried to mug me anyway.
I glanced down the street, zipped in, got my bag, locked up and was backing the cab out of the driveway when Rodriguez and the patrol car pulled up behind me.
I drove slowly to the end of the block, taking care to do a cute finger wave at the guy changing the tire. He looked up as I drove by. His face was a mask of bruises with a bandage across the nose. He held up a finger as I drove by and dropped it quickly as the patrol car followed.
Chapter Ten
When I pulled into Cool Rides, the patrol car continued by, leaving me in the very public hands of a busy transportation service. Belle was waiting for me.
“How was choir practice?”
“I might have to start believing in God.” She had added some makeup to her face and changed into sparkle and spandex. Black leather heels now added 3 inches to her formidable height. “Mona says I’m riding with you to the airport and then to meet Iggi Paluska.”
The airport is an hour and a half round trip so we were calling it a little close, but with two people, one could lug bags and open doors while the other did car control and collected money.
I drove to the North Prince Motel on the outskirts of town. We usually pick up airport runs from in-town hotels. North Prince catered to a lower-income clientele who didn’t usually travel far enough to need an airplane.
I saw the flashing lights from a long way away. As we got closer to the motel, I realized the cop cars were in the motel parking lot. And there were lots of them. Including Jon’s nondescript police-issued clunker, a clunker that a friend of mine had told me could do zero to sixty in an obscenely short time and corner, stop, and provide cover for any officer who might drive it.
Belle looked at me. “Honey, I think we could turn around here. I’m pretty sure I just got an allergic reaction to this taxi-driving stuff.”
“You’re not allergic to taxi driving. It’s the cop cars. We’ll just pick up our fare and leave.”
Small Town Taxi (Honey Walker Adventures Book 1) Page 9
