“Which is exactly why you’re going to let me come with you.”
“Which is exactly why I know better than to let you.” He gave me a level look and I don’t think he was sizing up my outfit. He wanted me to move.
I planted my feet. “Think about it…I was with Vinnie when he died. Your friend, that other cop, he told you that, didn’t he?”
“So?”
“So, don’t you get it? Vinnie’s murder and the attack on Alistair…they might be related.”
While Quinn thought about this, I beefed up my position.
“Something Vinnie said to me before he died might be important. Only you’ll never know unless you talk to me about it. And I’m not going to talk to you about it unless you let me go with you. That means you’ll do it, right?”
When Quinn didn’t cut me off at the knees, I knew I was finally getting somewhere. He sat back and took his hands off the steering wheel. “You didn’t kill Vinnie, did you?”
Did the police really suspect me?
My heart lurched into my throat. My blood ran cold. “Is that what your friend said?” My voice wobbled. So did my knees. One Martin in prison was one too many, and Dad already had that slot all to himself. Besides the food (less than first-rate, I imagined), the girl gangs (I was so not into following the crowd), and the shared showers (need I say more?), I couldn’t picture myself in an orange jumpsuit.
I blurted out the same explanation I gave Quinn’s friend when he questioned me back at the condo. “I told your friend the whole story. The door to Vinnie’s apartment was open when I got there, and I walked in. That’s when I found Vinnie.” The memory of the knife sticking out of Vinnie’s chest, rising and falling with every labored breath, caught me off guard. I’d been pretty good about the whole thing. Up until that moment. Suddenly my stomach went wonky, my head spun. If I didn’t grab on to the door of the unmarked police car, I would have toppled right over.
“You don’t really think I could kill someone, do you?” I asked Quinn. My voice was as breathy as Vinnie’s when he breathed his last. “Your friend, he doesn’t think—”
I was obviously upset, and I expected that a little understanding was in order. Laughter was not.
Quinn grinned up at me. “My friend knew Vinnie Pal was staying there. And he knew all about Vinnie’s lifestyle and his reputation. He took one look at you and decided right then and there that you were a high-priced call girl who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
A new kind of horror gripped me. “You set him straight, didn’t you?”
“About the wrong time, wrong place thing? Or about the call girl thing?”
I wasn’t about to dignify the question with an answer, so I stuck to the matter at hand. “None of it changes a thing. Quinn…” Still hanging on to the door of the car, I bent to look him in the eye. “I was the last one to see Vinnie alive. And now Alistair’s been attacked. Two Mind at Large band members in one day? Even I can see that it’s a little weird. And suspicious, too.”
He didn’t agree or disagree. He just leaned over and opened the passenger door.
Before he could change his mind, I hurried around to the other side of the car and climbed in. We were on our way to the Rock Hall in no time.
Good thing it wasn’t too far away.
The vinyl seats were lumpy and uncomfortable, and the police car smelled like…
I sniffed, and this time I couldn’t have controlled my reaction if I tried. I made a face.
Quinn wasn’t a detective for nothing. He slid me a sidelong look. “Cigarettes. The guy who uses this car on night shift. He says he’s going to quit, but you know how it is.”
“You should get one of those air freshener things. You know, the kind you hang off your rearview mirror.”
“A hula dancer, what do you think?” Quinn’s smile was wicked. “That would send my lieutenant into a state of feminist-induced furor.”
“At least the car would smell better.”
He drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Smells better already. But then, you don’t smell like stale cigarettes.”
I was glad he noticed. Happy Heart isn’t cheap, and I’m not rolling in dough. “You see, giving me a ride is a good thing. I’ve already made your day better. So, what’s our strategy when we get there?”
“My strategy…” He made sure he paused so I didn’t miss the emphasis, “is to check out what happened and talk to everyone involved. Your strategy is to look inconspicuous and stay out of the way. Then again…” He sighed, and, call me egotistical (or maybe it was just hopeful), but I swear he didn’t sound nearly as annoyed as he had earlier. Wistful was too poetic a word. Maybe hopeful worked for Quinn, too. “You couldn’t look inconspicuous if you tried.”
Now we were getting somewhere! More comfortable flirting than I was when we were at each other’s throats, I settled myself as best I could against the stiff vinyl. “What you’re saying is that I could be mistaken for a high-priced call girl. Is that such a bad thing?”
Quinn pursed his lips. “Not that I can see.” We were nearly to the Rock Hall, and he stopped at a red light and raised a hand in greeting to the cop who was directing traffic there before he looked my way. His eyes sparked, and maybe it was my weakened condition that made me susceptible. When he looked at me that way, I felt as if I was about to melt.
Quinn’s left hand was on the steering wheel. He moved his right hand across the seat until the tips of his fingers were just barely touching my thigh.
The melting factor rose a few degrees.
He kept his eyes on the road, and I did, too. That didn’t mean I wasn’t keenly aware of the heat of his skin and the touch that was almost not a touch. My insides quivered and my outsides…well, let’s just say it was too bad Quinn was clocked in on the payroll. I could think of better things to do with our time.
He pulled up in front of the Rock Hall, and unlike the rest of us mortals, he didn’t have to wait for an open meter. He angled his car right behind an ambulance with its lights spinning.
Once he had the car in park, he turned to me. “So…” He moved his fingers a fraction of an inch. A feeling like liquid fire spread up my thigh. “What did Vinnie say to you before he died?”
The whole touch-but-don’t-touch thing? It was a dirty trick and Quinn knew it. That’s why he grinned when I shot daggers at him. “You’re underhanded,” I said, and I didn’t wait for him to deny it. I got out of the car.
“No more underhanded than you.” Who the hell would have the nerve to steal a cop car, I didn’t know, but when Quinn got out, he locked the door. He tossed the keys in the air, caught them in one hand, and shoved them into his pocket. “You played me for a sucker. That’s how you got a ride out of me. So I figured—”
“You’d play me,” I snarled.
He didn’t notice. He was busy flashing his badge at the uniformed cop stationed outside the revolving doors that led into the lobby. I breezed in on his coattails, so to speak, and nearly ran smack into him when he stopped just a couple of feet inside the lobby.
“Keep quiet and stay out of the way,” Quinn instructed me, and before I could remind him that I was always quiet and I was never in the way, he was striding across the lobby toward the makeshift stage set up outside the gift shop and the crowd gathered there.
“He’s really into you.”
It had been a long day. And it wasn’t even three. When Damon popped up right next to me, I jumped and pressed a hand to my heart.
I didn’t lose my cool, though. Before I said a word, I made sure I turned my back on the action. With everyone focused on the stage area, nobody was going to pay attention to the lone woman over by the front doors who was clutching her chest and talking to herself.
My smile was sour. “He’s a jerk.”
“Maybe, but he’s crazy about you.”
I grunted. “He’s got a funny way of showing it.”
Damon laughed. “All guys have a funny way of showi
ng it. You should have figured that out by now.”
First Grandma Panhorst and now Damon. Did every dead person within a hundred-mile radius have an opinion about my love life?
I crossed my arms over my chest. “So now you’re an expert? From what I’ve heard, you weren’t exactly Mr. Commitment.”
“You got that right, baby!” Damon’s grin was as dazzling as the sunshine that streamed through the glass lobby. “I had a thousand chicks and a thousand good times and I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t trade a minute of it. But I’ve also had nearly forty years to do nothing but think. And thinking about it…”
Damon’s eyes lost their luster. “Back then,” he said, “it was a game, and the name of the game was having them all. Young, old. Short, tall. Fat, skinny. I didn’t care. I preferred my women young and gorgeous, like you…” He gave me a wink. “And it was always easier if there wasn’t some jealous boyfriend or husband who wasn’t getting all bent out of shape because I was screwing his old lady. But I’ll tell you what, I wasn’t particular, and stealing some other guy’s chick, well, that was all part of the fun. I wanted any woman any other guy had. When I had her, I had the time of my life. But once I had her, I didn’t want her anymore. Now…” He scraped a hand over his jaw and glanced across the lobby to where Quinn was talking to one of the dozen or so uniformed officers who had responded to the emergency call.
“That cop of yours, he’s gonna get what I can never have, and I’m not just talking about the sex. It’s you, Pepper. It’s everything you are.” Damon’s voice sizzled with emotion. His eyes glimmered, not just with reflected sunlight, but with a heat that came from within. He leaned closer, and okay, I knew better. I knew I couldn’t make contact with a ghost. Not without turning into a female frosty.
Try and tell that to my hormones.
When Damon stepped nearer to look into my eyes, I tipped my head back.
When he got even closer, my eyes fluttered shut.
When he brought his mouth down on mine—
“Ouch!”
Good thing there was such a hubbub going on in the lobby. When I yelped, nobody heard me. When I jumped back and away from the icy cold touch of Damon’s lips, nobody noticed.
My mouth stung. Like I’d smooched an icy piece of metal, my lips were raw.
“I’m sorry.” Damon raised a hand to touch a finger to my mouth, but hey, it was the old once-burned, twice-shy thing. Only burning wasn’t what I was worried about. I ducked out of the way, and then I was sorry I did; Damon looked as if I’d slapped him.
“I couldn’t help myself, Pepper,” he said. “I’ve never felt this way before! Not about any woman. Man, can you believe it? This is a first! Damon Curtis is jealous!” He looked back to where Quinn was talking to one of the paramedics, and I looked that way, too. “Jealous of a cop!”
There was a time I thought a broken heart was nothing but a metaphor. Or was it a simile? No matter, I swear I felt mine crack in two. There wasn’t anything I could do, and nothing I could say. No worries. When I turned back to Damon, he was nowhere in sight.
And wonder of wonder, when I looked around to see where he went, I saw Quinn instead, just as he raised a hand to wave me over. I moved fast. Before he could change his mind.
I’d been so busy concentrating on Damon, I’d pretty much blocked out everything going on around me, but as I crossed the spacious and wide-open lobby, the commotion got louder and the crowds got thicker.
I stepped around a group of Rock Hall employees watching the action. And a couple of paramedics standing around wondering what to do with the empty stretcher they were carrying.
The acoustics in the lobby were great for music, but they amplified the uproar of voices and the crackle of police radios until it all blended into one giant nightmare of noise. Still, through it all, one voice rose above the racket. Alistair Cromwell was sitting on the top stair of the steps that led up to the stage. He was dangling his smashed glasses in one hand, and there was a gash across the bridge of his nose. One of the paramedics was trying to dab a gauze to the wound, but Alistair would have none of it.
“Get your bloody mitts off me, you bloody little ponce.” Alistair slapped the man’s hands away. “I’m right as rain, and if you can’t see that for yourself, then you’re in the wrong business.”
Quinn turned his back on the scene. He acknowledged me with a nod, and he was just about to turn to the short, bald man who stood at his side when he stopped and squinted in my direction. “What happened to your mouth? Your lip is bleeding.”
“My lip…” Until I tried to talk, I didn’t realize that in addition to being raw, my lips were swollen. Like I’d gotten a whopping dose of Novocain, my mouth was numb. I tried to answer Quinn again, slower and more carefully this time. “I wan into…”
A dead man’s lips?
Couldn’t exactly say that, so I waved a hand in the direction of the revolving door where we’d entered the hall. If Quinn wasn’t so preoccupied, he might have noticed that there was nothing over there I could possibly have run into. The way it was, he took my story at face value.
He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief and pressed it into my hand before he turned back to the man at his side. “This is Gene Terry, Mind at Large’s business manager and agent,” Quinn said. “I was just telling him that you saw Vinnie this morning.”
“Talk about bad luck!” Gene had a Brooklyn accent as thick as a deli pastrami on rye and really good taste in clothes. His navy blue suit was Armani. His white dress shirt must have been made-to-order or it wouldn’t have fit so well over his broad shoulders. Unfortunately, the effect was lost when he paired the outfit with black-and-white sneakers. He was a head shorter than me and completely bald. Since I had the hankie in my right hand, he grabbed my left hand and pumped it. He looked at my chest before he looked me in the eye. “Officer Harrison here tells me you were with Vinnie this morning when he kicked it. Did he say anything? I mean, anything for the boys in the band? Anything for me?”
Carefully, I touched the hankie to my lip. When I lifted it away, it was stained with red. “Vinnie was weally woozy,” I said. “I twied to talk to him but as for wesponding…” I screeched my frustration and chose my words carefully. “He didn’t say much.”
Terry had a round body and heavy jowls. When he frowned, his face folded in on itself. “Did he tell you who—?”
“Bloody hell!”
Alistair’s shout split Gene’s question in two. I spun around just in time to see him grappling with two strapping paramedics. He was far older than either of them, but he was having one heck of a hissy fit, and he had rock stardom on his side. He pushed himself to his feet and stood, and the paramedics backed off to give him plenty of distance. When he walked over to where we stood, he wobbled.
“Get rid of these bleeding idiots, Gene. I can’t take it anymore. They’re fussing over me like I’m a bloody retard. Call my personal doctor.”
“We’ve done that, Al.” I could tell Gene had been through this song-and-dance before. He moved in on Alistair and took charge, lowering his voice like he was talking to a child. Or a wild animal. “Dr. Brighton is in L.A. He’s canceled his appointments for the rest of the week and he’s going to be on the first plane.”
“As if there are planes between L.A. and this bloody place!” Alistair’s face was red. A vein bulged at the side of his neck. “Who the hell ever thought of doing a concert in this hellhole? It’s a death trap, that’s what it is.”
“It was an accident.” Gene put a hand on Alistair’s arm, made eye contact, and refused to look away. I’d seen one of my uncles do the same thing with a cocker spaniel that was impossible to train. “One of the lights fell. You just happened to be under it at the time. It’s not going to happen again. This isn’t even the stage you’ll be using for the concert. That will be outside. What were you doing here anyway, Al? You told me you were going to be home this morning.”
“Shit.” As if he didn’t realize he was
holding on to them, Alistair looked at the bent and twisted glasses in his hand. He tossed them on the floor. “I thought it would be fun just to pay a visit. You know, see the place and get the lay of the land. I couldn’t resist jumping up on that stage. You know, for a look. It’s going to be hell getting the sound right in this place.”
“That’s what the sound team is for. They’ll get it right.”
“And the crowds…” Alistair looked past the soaring windows to the plaza beyond. “How the hell many people do they think they can get out there? It won’t be like Shea.”
I don’t know if Quinn had heard enough or if he had a legitimate place to go. Either way, he didn’t bother excusing himself before he moved toward where a couple of guys in blue windbreakers were looking over the wreckage of lights and wires that littered the stage.
Tombs of Endearment Page 14
