Tangled Thing Called Love: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance)

by Juliet Rosetti

  It started with a date that would have fallen during Fawn’s senior year of high school.

  Thursday, September 14

  I don’t know where Uncle Ted got hold of the laptop—he said it fell off a truck, which means he probably stole it from OfficeMax—but I’m too happy to worry about whether it’s hot or not. Don’t ask, don’t tell—the Fanchon family motto. I need a laptop to type up papers and stuff. Every kid in my class has got one and I can’t keep up if I don’t have a computer. Soon as I can buy one, I’ll download my diary to a flash drive, because the monkeys—that’s what I call my little brothers—snoop into everything and this stuff is PRIVATE. No one EVER gets to read this. My thoughts are the only thing I have because when you live in a trailer with four other people and one bathroom you never have any privacy.

  Holly looked at Mazie. “Do you feel as guilty about reading this as I do?”

  “Yeah. But not guilty enough to stop.”

  They skimmed through the diary rapidly, deciding to go back later to read more carefully. Sometimes Fawn wrote several pages at a time; sometimes a week would go by before she wrote. The earliest entries were about Fawn’s best friends, boys she had crushes on, school, gossip, worries over her hair and complexion, singers she liked, favorite teachers. She wrote about feeling resentful because she was always expected to babysit her siblings but didn’t get paid for it.

  Monday, October 2

  All our family is on free lunch. My homeroom teacher reads off the free lunchers’ names so all the other kids know who you are and it’s so-o embarrassing! We get food stamps too, but sometimes Pop trades them off for booze or cigarettes. If you get caught doing that, the government cuts you off from the food stamp program, but I don’t think Pop cares—it’s like he’s playing Russian roulette with our stomachs. Pop hardly eats anything himself—his smoking dulls his appetite—so I guess he’s forgotten what it’s like to feel hungry. When I tell him there’s no food in the house he looks at me like “Why are you bothering me with this stuff?” Sometimes I think we’d all be better off if we were orphans. People would feel sorry for us. Probably we’d get put in a group home but at least they’d feed us regularly.

  “Did you know any of this?” Holly asked, frowning.

  Mazie shook her head. “You were fifteen; I was sixteen—we were so wrapped up in our own lives we didn’t pay attention. The grown-ups were supposed to take care of neglected kids.”

  “Only they didn’t.”

  “Apparently not.”

  They returned to the diary.

  Funny, but our outlaw relatives are more help than all our respectable, churchgoing neighbors. Aunt Lilian is always running over to our place with a couple dozen ears of corn on the cob or a big pot of chili or twenty boxes of that cheap mac and cheese with the orange powder that goes over the noodles. And Uncle Buster, who gets high school kids hooked on bath salts, sometimes slips me a hundred bucks to use toward groceries.

  There was a sharp knock at the front door.

  Holly raced to the window and peered out through a gap in the curtain. “There’s a police car out there,” she hissed, going pale.

  “Oh, jeez—Gil must have reported us for breaking in!”

  “If I go to jail, will you bail me out?”

  “Bail? Hell, Holly—I’ll be in the next cell.”

  “Stay calm,” Holly instructed. “Deny, deny, deny. Oh. God, if I go to jail Richie will divorce me and get the kids and marry his slut secretary.”

  “Quick—hide the diary!”

  Holly yanked the flash drive out of the computer. “I’ll put it down the back of Mallory’s diaper—that’s what they always do in the movies.”

  But then she seemed to forget what she’d been about to do. Clutching the pendant in her hand, Ms. Stay Calm lurched toward the door and whipped it open.

  Johnny Hoolihan stood there. They stared at him for about five full heartbeats. He stared back.

  “You guys been smoking dope?” Johnny finally asked. “You look kind of stoned.”

  “Are you here to arrest us?” Holly asked in a faint voice.

  “Why? Do you want me to?”

  He put his hands on his hips and gave them a slow, sexy smile. Mazie had a sudden vivid image of being frisked by those hands, and the thought made her head spin. What if Johnny had to handcuff her, and she was completely in his power? What if the only way he was allowed to interrogate women prisoners was by French kissing and when she refused to talk he had to—

  Get a grip, woman! Mazie thought, giving herself a mental ice water hosedown.

  “I just stopped by to let you know I talked to the foreman at the high school construction site,” Johnny said. “He claimed that no building supplies were supposed to be stored on that scaffold, that the only way that bucket could have gotten there was if someone hauled it there. The foreman isn’t too happy with me right now. I sicced the county on him and his whole operation is now swarming with safety inspectors.”

  Sam Maguire ran around the side of the house, shrieking, clutching a water pistol in his hands. He stopped abruptly when he saw the police officer and eyed him thoughtfully. Johnny folded his arms and shot him a don’t-even-think-about-it look. Sam hesitated, then ran off.

  “Okay, so then I grilled every guy on that crew,” Johnny said, using his sleeve to wipe sweat off his forehead. Sweat looked good on him, Mazie thought. “None of ’em admitted anything, but there are a couple of punks there I’m going to be looking at more closely.”

  “What kind of punks?” Holly asked. “Like the kind of punks who spray-paint buildings, or the kind of punks with a grudge against Mazie?”

  “Every shade of punk,” Johnny said. “And I ought to know punks, right?”

  “Didn’t someone on the crew spot the tar bucket guy?” Mazie asked.

  “If anyone did, he’s not admitting it,” Johnny said. “The crew was all over the place, some of them laying shingle, some doing carpentry, so they weren’t in sight of each other the whole time. You could have planted a bomb without being spotted.”

  “It was nice of you to take the time to fill us in on this,” Holly said. “Would you like to come in for coffee?” Behind her back, Holly was crossing her fingers, hoping he’d say no.

  “Sorry,” Johnny said. “Maybe some other time. Got to get back to work—I mean my vacation.”

  Holly and Mazie waved as Johnny went down the steps, their eyes locked on his broad shoulders and manly ass. Mazie still wasn’t 100 percent sure Johnny was actually the police chief. Maybe Johnny and Holly were playing an elaborate prank and when she was out of the room they high-fived and snorted, “I can’t believe she fell for it! Next time let’s pretend you’re a lion tamer!”

  Johnny stopped at the bottom of the steps, turned, and looked at Mazie. “Oh, I almost forgot.”

  It was the Columbo gambit, Mazie thought: the false exit, then the seemingly casual “Oh, uh, one more thing.” She’d seen it in every Columbo rerun—the ploy that catches the suspect off guard and confuses her into confessing a vital secret. Johnny was even scratching his head like Columbo. They’d let down their guard too soon!

  “I had an interesting conversation with Bodelle Blumquist this afternoon,” Johnny said. “I happened to mention to her that it’s illegal to discriminate against people on the basis of their prison records.” He paused, looked Mazie directly in the eye, and said, “Here’s the magic word: lawsuit. Bodelle right away backed down. Said you’d misunderstood her meaning and that of course you’re welcome in the pageant.”

  He sketched a salute and left. For good this time.

  Mazie and Holly stood staring at each other for a dumbstruck second, then Holly shrieked, “Mazie—you’re back in! And we’re not going to jail! We should celebrate!”

  “I don’t know …” Mazie didn’t share Holly’s sense of jubilation at being back in the pageant, although, now that she thought about it, she liked the idea of annoying Bodelle Blumquist. “Okay,” she finally
said. “I’m in.”

  She and Holly knuckle-bumped to seal the deal, but when Holly started rattling off everything she would need, Mazie nearly decided to back out again. “A swimsuit, of course,” Holly said, ticking items off on her fingers, “and some kind of costume for the talent competition, and two evening gowns—one for the convertible parade on Saturday afternoon and one for the final competition—”

  “Swimsuit? Evening gown?” Mazie squawked. “The dressiest thing I own is a clean T-shirt! Where am I supposed to come up with this stuff?”

  Holly shrugged. “The fashion fairy?”

  The fashion fairy? Of course!

  Mazie took out her phone and punched in Magenta’s number.

  He answered on the first ring. “Hey, sweetie. I miss you like crazy. Do they have you wearing bib overalls and pitching manure?”

  Magenta was Mazie’s best male friend, a combination of fashion guru, yenta, and big brother. His real name was Wally Pfluge, but he’d decided he didn’t want to go through life with a name that sounded like window grout and had renamed himself for a Rocky Horror Picture Show character. He ran a boutique for drag queens on Milwaukee’s Brady Street, rented Mazie the flat behind his shop, looked after Muffin when she needed a dogsitter, and had been Mazie’s most reliable shoulder to cry on when Ben had left her.

  “No bibs,” Mazie said. “Just lust-crazed swampies who crave spanking—”

  “Oh, honey, had I but known!”

  “And a lost girl and a hot police chief and I’m going to be in the Miss Quail Hollow Pageant.”

  “I’m so torn here. What do I need to hear about first—Officer Hottie or the beauty pageant? Oh, go with the pageant—you know what a sucker I am for these things. The gowns! The gloves to the armpits. The ventriloquist acts!”

  “I need an evening gown.”

  “Clutching my hand to my palpitating bosom here, sweetikins. Do you know how long I’ve waited for you to utter that sentence? It’s like waiting for your kids to produce a grandchild. Serendipity at work here, Mazie: I’ve got the perfect thing—it’s a Jovani. I just bought it from Sarah Jessica Parker!”

  “The Sarah Jessica Parker?”

  “Well, from the boutique that sold it to SJP. She took it home but then changed her mind, so technically it’s used clothing—but she’s exactly your size, unless you’ve gained weight, what with all the deep-fried cheese balls you’ve probably been scarfing.”

  “I lost a half pound. I call it the hellion-twins diet.”

  “When do you need the dress?”

  “By Saturday. But is there any chance you could come on Thursday instead, to whip me into shape for the swimsuit competition?”

  There was a pause while Magenta mulled it over, then he said, “Tell you what. I’ll close at two on Thursday—it’s a slow time of year, anyway. I’ll drive out, bring the SJP and my little basket of goodies. Do they have electricity out in the boonies or should I bring batteries?”

  “Just bring yourself.”

  “Kisses to the Muffster.”

  “Who were you talking to?” Holly asked when Mazie hung up. “She sounded kind of weird.”

  “He,” Mazie corrected. “Magenta is a guy. My secret weapon.” Mazie did a bump and grind that made little Mallory break into giggles. “Tritt and Wuntz are not going to know what hit ’em.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  As a teenager, Mazie had spent half her summers in the back porch hammock, a crescent of saggy canvas strung between two sturdy porch pillars. It had started off its life with spiffy blue and yellow stripes, but after decades of wind and sun, it had faded to a washed-out beige. One year, home from college, she’d sewn half a dozen throw pillows in bright ginghams and florals and arranged them in a Better Homes and Gardens–style layout on the hammock. Cats and female family members adored those pillows. Males hated them. You could always tell who’d been using the hammock last because if it was a guy, the pillows would be dumped on the floor.

  Mazie had never been able to comprehend this male animosity toward throw pillows, but it seemed to be a gender-specific trait, like selective hearing or never unloading the dishwasher. At the moment the pillows were on the porch deck and Bonaparte Labeck’s long frame was sprawled in the hammock, squinting at his iPad.

  “Mazie—Holly sent the diary,” he said, looking up as she came out onto the porch. She’d changed out of her grungy shorts and T-shirt into a yellow sundress with skinny straps and espadrilles in fiesta colors.

  Ben set down the iPad and scanned Mazie top to bottom. He rarely paid much attention to what she wore because he was more interested in what lay beneath, but he had the sense to say, “You look delicious.”

  “Thanks,” she said, a little stiffly.

  Still pissed-off at him, Ben thought. About time he did something about that. “You want to read the rest of the diary, don’t you?” he said, raising an eyebrow, holding out the iPad coaxingly.

  She bit her lip. Skittish, but taking the bait…

  “You can’t see from over there. Come here.” He moved over an inch on the hammock—a hammock he had big plans for—and patted the space next to him.

  Apparently her curiosity outweighed her grudge, and she lowered herself onto the hammock, trying to keep a space between them—but gravity made that impossible, the hammock’s slant tilting her toward his body.

  He arranged her so that her head was snuggled against his chest, their hips and thighs touching. Her legs were bare and he was wearing shorts, and skin brushed skin, and it was so erotic he nearly groaned. She must have just taken a bath; she smelled so good he wanted to lick her—up, down, and all around. Her skirt hiked up and he wondered whether she was wearing panties underneath. He was becoming aroused. Very aroused, very hard, and very damn frustrated because it had been a long time since he’d made love to this woman.

  Holly had kept Fawn’s flash drive but had downloaded the diary and sent it to Ben’s email. Having spent a frustrating day going through the police investigation records and coming up with more questions than answers, Ben had been delighted to hear about the existence of Fawn’s diary.

  They read it together. Mazie had already read the first few entries at Holly’s house, but Ben was a fast reader and they were soon at the part she hadn’t seen yet. In late fall, Fawn had started writing about her hopes of getting into college, how she was working hard to keep her grade point average up and cramming for the SATs. Several boys had asked her out, but she’d turned them down because she was too busy with homework and babysitting her brothers.

  “Awfully mature for her age,” Ben said.

  “True,” Mazie said, “But still a kid in some ways.” The day Fawn had passed her driver’s test she’d filled an entire page with smiley-face emoticons, which made both Ben and Mazie smile.

  In December of her senior year Fawn had started working at the BZ Garage.

  Tuesday, December 12

  Buzzy Zuff is the owner of the garage, but Bodelle Blumquist, his sister, is the one who hired me since Buzzy isn’t very good at book work and the other details of running a business—in fact, he can barely read. He doesn’t talk much either and has a speech impediment that makes it hard to understand him. He’s autistic, but he can take an engine apart and put it back together in about five minutes flat.

  Ms. Peterson, my psychology teacher, said a lot of autistic people are like that—they’re geniuses at some special thing, and Buzzy’s genius is fixing engines. He does bodywork too, oil changes, tires—anything to do with cars and trucks.

  Buzzy has a big head, a stocky body, and powerful arms—I guess from all the lifting and stuff he does all day. His face never shows much expression but he seems happy as long as he has engines to work on.

  It’s hard to believe Buzzy and Bodelle belong to the same family. They’re complete opposites. Bodelle is tall, pretty, and clever. She was some Miss Beer Thing years ago and manages to drop that into the conversation about ten times a day: “Back when I was Miss B
eer Thing …” She moved to Hollywood and did some piddly stuff that made her think she was an actress, but apparently that fizzled out because she moved back here to Zilchville. She still acts like she’s hot shit and thinks she ought to be able to run this town. I think she’s ashamed of Buzzy’s being her brother and is always complaining about what a nuisance it is having him live with her.

  Friday, January 12

  Last month Bodelle bought this old Winnebago RV and had it hauled into the garage. It’s supposed to be Buzzy’s new living quarters. The trailer is kind of cute—it’s real small but it’s got a bed, kitchen, toilet and stuff. Buzzy took one step inside, then rushed out, making this squealing noise. He hates tiny enclosed spaces—is that claustrophobia? I’ll have to look it up because I’m taking the ACTs next week and you get tested on your vocab.

  Sunday, January 14

  Bodelle was in a snit about Buzzy refusing to live in the RV and told Buzzy he couldn’t live with her anymore. He rented a room at the Starlite Motel out on the highway. The RV is locked up and is supposed to be sold, but Channing—that’s Bodelle’s daughter—we’re both seniors—has a key and invites her friends into the RV for beer parties after the garage closes down for the night.

  A dull fwump came from the vicinity of the orchard, followed by excited barking and the sounds of the boys’ voices.

  “That damn potato gun again!” Mazie grumped.

  “Awesome!” Joey’s voice.

  “Put the Barbie doll in next.” Sam.

  “Head first or feet first?”

  “Feet.” Sam.

  “Did the dog poop yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Give him some more butter.” Joey.