Ms. Simon Says

by Mary McBride

  “Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “Hey, Shelby. Remember I told you about that chem student at Northwestern?” Derek asked.

  There was a darkness in his tone that signaled bad news. “I remember,” she said. “The police were on their way to question him. Was he the letter bomber? What did they find out?”

  “Nothing,” Derek said. “When they got there, the kid was dead.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Mick jammed his cell phone into his jacket, then walked back across the soft carpet of pine needles to the sorry blue flannel sheet where Shelby sat waiting for him.

  “Bad news travels fast, I guess,” she said as soon as she saw his face.

  “That was your source? On the phone?” he asked, and pretty politely, too, he thought, for a guy who’d once been suspended without pay for two weeks for throwing a TV reporter’s mike into Lake Michigan when the idiot got in the way of an investigation.

  She nodded. “The chemistry student at Northwestern is dead. Derek . . . er, my source didn’t know how.”

  “I do.” He waggled his eyebrows. Cops One, Reporters Zip.

  “How?”

  He sat back down on the sheet. “They think it might have been poison, but they won’t know for sure until the autopsy.”

  “Oh, my God. And that’s why he bought those suspicious chemicals last week, I guess. To commit suicide.”

  Mick shrugged. He doubted that sincerely. It was too brutal, too slow and painful a way to go when eating a gun was a relatively quick and painless way to off yourself. There was little doubt, according to his captain, that the chemistry student had been murdered. They were going over his dorm room and his former life with a fine-tooth comb right now.

  And all of that pretty much meant they were right back at square one as far as Shelby and her letter bomber were concerned. It also meant that his protective services weren’t yet obsolete, and that he better start concentrating on Shelby’s safety instead of her incredible mouth and her world-class assets. He looked around at the acres of pine trees that surrounded them, and decided this picnic hadn’t been such a good idea. They were isolated at the same time they were exposed. Perfect targets.

  “Let’s get back to the lake,” he said, levering up off the ground and offering Shelby a hand. “Come on.”

  “Oh, so soon? Let’s stay and talk some more.” “Let’s not.” He reached for her arm to haul her to her feet.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, her eyes widening as she stared up at him.

  “Nothing. I just want to get you back to civilization. That’s all.”

  She let him help her to her feet then. “You’re scaring me, Callahan,” she said. There was a distinct tremor in her voice.

  “Hey.” Mick put his hands on her shoulders and leaned forward so his forehead touched hers. “I’m not trying to scare you. I’m just trying to make sure nothing bad happens to you. That’s my job.”

  She laughed weakly. “Such as it is,” she said, echoing his words of two days before when he’d had no clue how quickly his professional and his personal lives would get scrambled.

  “Such as it is,” he whispered. “Now come on.”

  They turned into the driveway, barely missing Sam’s Jeep as he was backing out. Shelby jumped out of the Mustang and sprinted toward the rust-colored vehicle before its driver could take off.

  He didn’t seem too thrilled to see her.

  “I just stopped by to tell your folks that I’ll be gone for the next few days,” he said.

  “Gone?”

  He seemed even less thrilled now. “Yeah, Shelby. Gone. As in not here. See ya.” He reached to shift the Jeep into reverse again.

  “No! Wait!”

  The Jeep idled in neutral while Sam glared at her. “What? I’ve got a plane to catch, Shelby. Make it quick.”

  “Well, I was just wondering about your plans for next weekend. It’s Masque, you know.”

  “Yeah. Every year. Funny how that happens.”

  She maintained a friendly, even charming expression, allowing his sarcasm to drift away on a cool lake breeze. This was for Beth, after all. If Shelby had to eat a certain amount of crow in order to reunite her sister with her true love, well, then she’d do it. Dammit.

  “I was just wondering if you’d be back in time,” she said cheerfully.

  “I might. Why?”

  “Oh, no particular reason. I was just curious.”

  He was practically skewering her now with his gaze. “Shelby, you’ve never been ‘just’ anything in your life.”

  She shrugged.

  “If this has something to do with me and Beth, forget it. Neither one of us is interested in digging up the past.”

  “You don’t know that,” she protested.

  “Okay. Then I’m not interested. You got that?” “Well . . .”

  “Good-bye, Shelby.” He jammed the gearshift into reverse and nearly ran over her toes in his rush to get away.

  “See ya, Sam,” called Callahan. “Good luck.”

  Sam threw him a quick wave, and just for good measure he launched one more black look at Shelby before he sped up the road.

  “Good luck?” Shelby asked, walking back to the Mustang where Mick was stuffing the sheet back into the trunk. “What did you mean?”

  “Did I say that?” He slammed the trunk lid. “I meant good-bye.”

  No way was she buying that. “Why does Sam need good luck?”

  Instead of answering right away, he picked up the wine jug and thrust it at her. “Here. Make yourself useful.”

  “Tell me,” she insisted. “Why does Sam need good luck?”

  “Probably because a certain know-it-all seems to have an agenda that he doesn’t want any part of. At least that was the impression I got.” He gathered the rest of their picnic stuff from the backseat, then started up the hill toward the house, calling back over his shoulder. “Or not. I dunno. Maybe he likes to have opinionated women pushing him around.”

  “Opinionated?” she shrieked. “I’m not opinionated, Callahan.” The wine sloshed in the glass bottle as she struggled to catch up with him. “I’m not.”

  “Sorry. I meant to say forthright and candid.” “Well . . . yeah.” She had to agree with that.

  “Direct,” he said, not slowing down.

  “I guess so.” It wasn’t easy keeping up with his long strides uphill, but Shelby did her damnedest. “I am direct,” she said. “And proud of it.”

  “Well informed.”

  “Extremely well informed.” Where was he going with this? she wondered. She had the feeling, based mostly on an evil little slant to his grin, that the proverbial boom was about to be lowered.

  “Articulate,” he added.

  “Very.”

  “And agreeable, too.”

  Okay. Shelby figured she’d spring this little trap before he did. “Okay. So I’m opinionated. But I get paid for it. Or at least I did.”

  He cupped a hand to his ear. “You’re what?”

  “Stop it.” She slapped his leather sleeve. “You heard me.”

  That evil little grin turned into a brilliant smile as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Did I ever tell you that I’m partial to pigheaded—oh, sorry—opinionated women?”

  God, his arm around her felt so good. Still, she couldn’t resist. “Did I ever tell you to go jump in the lake, Callahan?”

  The voices floated through the broken window in the carriage house where Harry and Linda Simon sat side by side, their hands entwined, in the center of the long curved couch. She’d come out only a short time ago to tell her husband about Sam Mendenhall’s trip to the hospital in Washington.

  “I like him, Harry,” Linda whispered. “I think Mick is good for Shelby, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Well, the kid can definitely hold his own. Your daughter has a tendency to run over young men like a locomotive.”

  “Not this one.” She laughed softly a moment. “I had a nice talk with h
im over breakfast this morning. He was married before. For nearly twenty years, believe it or not. His wife was murdered two years ago during a purse snatching in the Loop. I remember reading about that in the paper.”

  Harry nodded. “One of our guys did the initial pro bono work on that case, I think. Damned shame.”

  “Mm,” she murmured, tipping her head against his shoulder. “Why don’t we take them out to dinner tonight? We could go to the Blue Inn. They always have a live band on Saturday nights.”

  “Are you asking me out on a date, Beauty?” His tone was amused while his thumb played over the back of her hand.

  “If you want to look at it that way, then, yes, I guess I am.”

  “I’d be delighted. It’s been a long time since we’ve danced.” He drew back his head to look at her. “When was the last time? I can’t even remember.”

  “It must’ve been at your retirement party at the club,” she said, immediately regretting her words.

  A frown sketched across his brow and his eyes darkened, and Linda imagined he was thinking the same thing she was—how they’d argued that night, Harry with all his grand plans for a life of leisure while she was a nervous wreck waiting to hear whether or not Nordstrom’s would carry Linda Purl Designs.

  Nordstrom’s had come through, of course, as had Neiman’s and several other stores, not to mention the Sundance Catalog. For a while, Harry seemed to be fine, jetting off with his pals to this macho place or that. But only for a while.

  “Well . . .” She sighed and stood up. “I’ll go ask Shelby and Mick about tonight. How does seven o’clock sound, Harry?”

  “Fine. I’ll be ready,” he said with considerably less enthusiasm than he’d expressed mere moments ago.

  “Fine.” Sensing the imminent appearance of storm clouds, possibly accompanied by lightning and thunder, Linda made her exit without further ado.

  Mick hadn’t sat in the backseat with a date whose father was at the wheel since junior high when Julie’s dad used to drive them to movies. Well, it wasn’t a date so much as just going out to dinner with Shelby and her parents, but still . . .

  He felt like a jerk in his jeans and leather jacket while Harry Simon wore a gray herringbone jacket and club tie over his perfectly pressed khakis, and Mrs. Simon looked equally well turned out, if not better, in a long suede skirt and a matching sweater and shawl or whatever the hell it was.

  “They always dress like that,” Shelby had whispered to him earlier, no doubt sensing his discomfort. That was probably why she’d worn jeans, too, to spare his feelings at being underdressed. “Hey,” she said, nudging his arm, “we’re just going to the Blue Inn, Callahan. Not Ambria or some other chichi place.”

  Amazingly enough, he’d been to Ambria, the upscale French restaurant on Lincoln Park West, numerous times, as well as countless other chichi places in Chicago with Julie and her doctor pals, although that all seemed a lifetime ago right now. Probably the fanciest thing he’d eaten in the past two years had been a pizza with anchovies. And he only wore a tie these days when he had to testify in court. Why he thought Ms. Shelby Simon would be even remotely interested in a guy who was such a sartorial mess was a mystery to him.

  But she was. At least he thought so. In the confines of the Mercedes’s backseat he could feel the warmth of her arm even through the leather of his jacket. She was wearing a different fragrance tonight, something musky and utterly feminine that was almost making his temperature spike. For whatever that was worth.

  He’d meant what he’d said earlier today about feeling like he was in a foreign country when it came to the finer points of romance. He didn’t know how to go slowly anymore. Between his impulse to make love to Shelby and the act itself, he had forgotten all the obligatory intermediary steps that told a woman she was special, that said this was more than just sex for its own sake, that showed her that her heart and brain and soul mattered to him as well as her body. Or maybe he’d never known those steps. His only frame of reference was Julie, and they’d pretty much grown up together, making courtship virtually unnecessary. Or so he thought for all those years.

  Dammit. There was Julie again, intruding on his thoughts about Shelby. He would’ve distracted himself by starting a conversation with Shelby, but she was talking to her mother just then about the drill sergeant at the Shelbyville Post Office. He wished he could just erase his late wife from his brain, and he was trying to do just that when Harry Simon announced, “Well, here we are,” as he slowed the car and turned into the parking lot of the Blue Inn.

  Mick got out of the backseat, then opened the passenger door to help Shelby’s mother. As they walked across the pebbled parking lot toward the front door of the restaurant, she leaned close and whispered, “If you ever want to get rid of that wonderful jacket, Mick, let me know. I’ve always wanted Harry to wear one. They’re so . . . well . . . never mind.”

  “Sexy?” he asked.

  She laughed. It was a sound similar to her daughter’s, but deeper, throaty, as if she might have been a smoker at one time. “I wasn’t going to say it for fear you’d think I was a dirty old woman. But yes, sexy. It must drive Shelby wild.”

  Not that he could tell, he thought, while he responded to Mrs. Simon with a kind of aw, shucks lift of his sexy leather shoulders. They stepped through the door of the restaurant then and somebody grabbed him by his sexy leather sleeve.

  “Aren’t you the young man who broke just about every durn speed limit in Mecklin County yesterday?”

  Instead of reaching for his gun, which was his first instinct, Mick stuck out his hand to the old geezer who’d chased him. “Yessir. Sorry about that.”

  The old guy laughed. “Oh, now that my heart’s back beating properly, sonny, I can say I didn’t mind at all. It was a lot cheaper than going to an amusement park and riding a loop-de-loop.” He shifted his gaze to Mick’s left and raised a ragged white eyebrow. “Evening, Linda. Haven’t seen you in a while. This young fella your date? I heard you and Harry were having problems.”

  Linda Simon’s mouth fell open, but no words came out. Other than punch the old guy out, Mick couldn’t think of a thing to say or do, so it was a good thing that Shelby’s father appeared right behind them and said, “Good to see you, Mr. Keeler. How’s that little legal problem I helped you with last spring? Fine, I hope. We’ll have a table for four by the window, if you please.”

  Within two minutes, they were seated at a hastily cleared table smack in the center of the big picture window where strings of amber lights were reflected in the dark waters of Blue Lake. A three-piece band—guitar, bass, and drums—was doing a pretty credible job with some oldies but goodies.

  Ms. Curious finally got a chance to lean across the table and ask, “What little legal problem, Daddy?”

  “It was nothing,” her father said. “The man just—” “Dance with me, Harry,” Linda said, already pushing back her chair.

  “Glad you finally asked, Beauty.” Harry pushed back from the table, too. “Shelby, order us a couple liters of the house red, will you?” He winked and was gone.

  Mick watched Shelby watch them as she sat with her chin resting on her clasped hands. There was an undeniable longing in her expression, one he wouldn’t have minded being directed at him. He sighed softly to himself before he spoke.

  “That doesn’t look like a marriage in trouble to me,” he said.

  “No, it doesn’t, does it?” She turned her whiskey and honey and amber gaze toward him. He could see the lake lights reflected in her gaze. “I just wish I knew what to do to get them back together once and for all. There ought to be something.”

  He was about to tell her to mind her own business in a veiled sort of way when the waitress appeared at the table.

  “Can I get you folks something to drink before you order?” she asked just as casually as she’d looked at each of them, but then her gaze narrowed on Shelby. “Don’t I know you?” she asked, pointing her ballpoint pen right between Shelby’s eyes.<
br />
  Once again Mick had a firsthand demonstration of this woman’s high visibility, and it unsettled him. It worried the hell out of him, in fact. Shelby, however, took it in stride. It must’ve been same old, same old to her.

  “I’m Shelby Simon,” she said, smiling up at the waitress, making it sound no more impressive than Jane Doe.

  Julie flashed in his brain again. Julie of the humble origins who had turned into the unapproachable Dr. Julie, even to him. His late wife would’ve cut this waitress off at the knees.

  “Shelby! I knew I knew you,” the waitress exclaimed. “I’m Kimmy Mortenson. I used to hang out with you and your sister at the lake. Remember? God, that was so long ago, you probably don’t remember.”

  “No, I do,” Shelby said. “You were the waterskiing maniac, right? You were great. I always thought you’d wind up in one of those water shows in Florida.”

  Kimmy sighed dramatically. “Yeah, well . . . Here I am, still stuck in North Overshoes. You’re doing great. I read your column all the time.”

  “Thanks,” Shelby said.

  “I saw Beth a couple times when she was here redoing the house. Too bad she wasn’t here when Sam came back. You know?”

  While Shelby nodded, Kimmy’s gaze shifted to Mick. “So . . . this must be your husband.”

  He was surprised, but he hadn’t seen such an expression of astonishment on Ms. Shelby Simon’s pretty face since the mailman’s cart blew up in front of her apartment building the other day. Even in the dim light of the restaurant he could see her cheeks flush and she actually stuttered when she responded.

  “N-no. He’s m-my friend. This is Mick Callahan.” “Oops. Sorry.” Kimmy laughed and flourished her order pad. “Well, before I step in it again, I guess I better take your order.”

  “We’ll start with a couple liters of your house red,” Mick said when it appeared that Shelby’s mind had gone blank.

  “Okay. Be right back with that.”

  After she hustled away, Shelby took a long drink from her water goblet. Mick got the distinct impression that she was stalling.

  “That bother you?” he asked.