by Karen Leabo
“I’ll never bank here again!” she called out over her shoulder as Michael Taggert dragged her away.
“No great threat, since you’ll be in jail,” the detective said as he stuffed her into the back seat of a bland four-door sedan.
Okay, deep breaths, Wendy told herself. Think about this for a minute. She was the victim of mistaken identity. As soon as this Neanderthal took her to the station or downtown or wherever, the cops would immediately realize the error of their ways and let her go with big fat apologies.
She would have grounds for a huge lawsuit, she mused. But instead of asking for money, she would demand that Sergeant Michael Taggert crawl on his oh-so-handsome hands and knees and beg forgiveness.
This pleasant little fantasy lasted only as long as it took to clear the bank parking lot. The cop’s car was making the most god-awful sounds.
“Does this car have a muffler?” she asked as they chugged along in the thickening traffic. Late afternoon was a bad time to be heading downtown. “It sounds terrible.”
“I’m sure it has a muffler.”
“Oh, you’re not taking the Tollway, are you? Harry Hines is faster.”
He ignored her advice and headed for the Tollway. “I got to hand it to you, you do cute real well.”
“I’m not trying—” She stopped. What was the point? She was trying to be helpful. That’s what she was programmed to do. That was what she loved to do. Some people just didn’t appreciate it.
A new thought occurred to her. “Is it my van?” she asked. Everything about the sale last week had seemed legitimate at the time, but she’d gotten a deal on her new company vehicle that had seemed almost too good to be true.
Taggert put on the brakes and, instead of entering the Tollway, turned onto a side street. He switched off the engine. He waited. If the silence was supposed to make Wendy want to spill her guts, it was working.
“I’ve got all the paperwork at the office,” she said, desperation creeping into her voice. “Don’t you want to see it?”
“Lady,” he finally said, “you are in a heap of trouble. Frankly, you look too smart for the dumb act to be convincing. So why don’t you knock it off and tell me who you’re working for?”
She sat up straighter and met his all-too-direct gaze in the rearview mirror. “I’m self-employed.”
“Then you’re a damn good thief.”
She sighed. They were talking in circles.
“Listen, miss, I can’t make you any promises or cut you any deals. Only the D.A. can do that. But I can assure you of one thing. This process will go a lot easier for you if you cooperate from the beginning. So let’s start over. Where’d you get the bankroll?”
“The bankroll … well, why didn’t you ask that in the first place?” Now they were getting somewhere! “That’s Mr. Neff’s money. Oh. Okay, I see.” Her brain clicked as everything fell into place. This had nothing to do with her van. “The jewelry. You’re telling me the jewelry Mr. Neff gave me to sell is hot?”
“Duh.”
“If you would just say what you mean instead of trying to be clever and intimidate me, we could have cleared this up a long time ago! Barnie Neff is a client of mine. He’s a shut-in, and I run errands for him. He gave me his mother’s jewelry to deliver to the guy at the Gold and Diamond Trade Mart. No way is it stolen.”
The cop whipped out a notebook and started scribbling. “Neff? N-E-F-F?” He stopped writing and extended his arm, then stretched his neck to one side and the other, as if he had a backache.
“Yes,” she answered, watching the play of muscles along his shoulders and upper arm. Her body tensed with unwelcome awareness of the fact that her adversary was male—very male.
“You run errands for him?”
“I just told you that. It’s what I do for a living.”
“And you go to his house?” Taggert asked hopefully.
“Yes. He lives at 2824 Monty Avenue. But surely you don’t think Mr. Neff is some kind of criminal.”
“Let me put it this way. That nice man in the store who bought the jewelry from you? He’s a well-known fence with a record as long as your legs.”
“Don’t you mean arm?”
“Yeah, as long as your arm. That’s what I said.”
She decided not to argue with him, but she made a mental note: Detective Michael Taggert had noticed her legs. The knowledge gave her a guilty thrill and a small sense of … power? He wasn’t as cold to her as he pretended.
He hunched his shoulders and bent his head forward again. She could almost feel his discomfort herself. “I know a good massage therapist,” she offered.
He turned around to give her a look she couldn’t quite read. Had she said something wrong? Then he shrugged, winced at the pain, and turned away from her. He grabbed a cellular phone from somewhere and dialed with a series of quick jabs.
“Michael Taggert here, Theft Division? Yeah, I need you to check out an address for me.” He repeated the address she’d given him.
“Mr. Neff is a harmless little old man,” Wendy tried again. “He’s on oxygen. He never leaves the house.”
“You better hope he’s not harmless. ’Cause he’s your ticket out of jail.”
Michael tried not to feel sorry for Wendy Thayer as he watched her go through the booking process. So she’d grown up without a father. So she didn’t have anything more alarming on her record than a couple of parking tickets. She was also a struggling business owner who’d suddenly started making money.
He’d tried to question her further about her dealings with this mysterious Mr. Neff, but she’d asked for a lawyer, so he’d had to quit. She’d made her phone call and claimed the lawyer was on his way.
To her credit, she didn’t cry or whine the way a lot of women did when they were fingerprinted and had mug shots taken. She held her chin up, and at every opportunity she stared daggers at him.
But every so often her lower lip trembled, sending shots of awareness right to his core. She was beautiful. No matter what she’d done, she caused a response in him at the cellular level.
After an eternity she was brought to an interrogation room and left to stew while they waited for her attorney. Michael watched her through the two-way mirror. She paced, she bit one fingernail down to the quick, she sighed.
How could someone with everything she had going for her turn to crime? She hadn’t grown up in the projects. She wasn’t a drug addict or a single mother with babies to feed and no job. He supposed she was drawn by the thrill.
When her lawyer showed up, Michael wasn’t surprised to see that it was Nathaniel Mondell, a high-priced defense attorney favored by white-collar criminals and tax-fraud artists all over the Metroplex. The fact that Wendy had those kinds of connections was just another indication of her guilt, as far as Michael was concerned.
Too bad. A part of him wished she was just some sucker who’d been duped into taking the risk for the real thief. But she seemed too smart for that. Besides, there were the earrings they’d found in her purse.
After giving her a few minutes alone with the lawyer, Michael entered the interrogation room. He shook hands with Mondell, whose pleasant round face and pale, blinking eyes behind thick glasses hid a sharp legal mind.
Michael set up the recorder. They covered the basics—name, address, age.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Your birthday’s today?”
“Yeah, and this isn’t how I’d planned on celebrating,” she replied tartly.
“Hmm. I’ll be damned.”
“What?”
“Uh, nothing.” The last thing he wanted was to bond with his suspect because they shared a birthday. This was a first, though. He shook his head and got right down to it. He was known for his lightning-quick, killer interrogations.
“We checked out the address you gave us on Monty. The house was completely empty, abandoned. Still want to stick with your story?”
After flashing a look of bewilderment, Wendy glanced over at Monde
ll and shrugged. “I must’ve given you the wrong house number. I was upset—”
“Try again.”
“Look, Mr. Neff was there this afternoon. He was baking banana bread.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He had a brown sofa and a rug with pink flowers and a, a telephone. Electricity. Yes, that’s it.” She turned to Mondell. “You can check the utility records, can’t you?”
Mondell smiled indulgently. “We’ll check all of this out, don’t worry.”
“Okay, suppose I take your word for it,” Michael said. “This Neff guy was there, but he moved out in a hurry. How do you explain these?” He plunked a small velvet box onto the table.
“I, um, uh-oh.”
“Wendy,” the lawyer cautioned.
“Those are some earrings Mr. Neff gave to me as payment. He said they were rhinestones or something.…”
Michael could tell by the look of dread on Wendy’s face that she knew what was coming.
“They’re real?” she squeaked.
“Worth about four grand,” Michael said casually. “Pretty good pay for running a few errands.”
He was just about to congratulate himself for scoring a point when the door opened. No knock, no apology. Michael whirled around. “What the hell …”
His voice trailed off. Standing just inside the doorway was a man whose square face he knew well. From newspapers. From TV. But never at the police station.
“Hello, Nate,” the newcomer said to Wendy’s lawyer. “Glad you could get here so quickly.” Then he turned to Michael. “Are you the man responsible for Wendy Thayer’s arrest?”
Michael stood up and faced the man. “Yes, Mr. Mayor. Sir.”
“There’s been a mistake.” Clifford Munn, Dallas’s mayor, was an imposing figure of a man with clean, chiseled features, gently graying hair, and a real expensive power suit. He also could thunder when he wanted to.
“She delivered stolen museum pieces to a fence,” Michael tried to explain. “I saw that with my own eyes.”
“It’s a mistake,” Munn said again, a bit calmer now. “I know this woman. She shops for my wife. We’re having a party in one week. A big party.”
Ah, yes. The retirement party for Captain Patterson, a forty-five-year veteran of the department.
“If Wendy’s in jail,” the mayor continued, “she can’t shop for the party, can she?”
“Well, no, sir.” Michael resisted the urge to tug at his collar, which suddenly felt tight.
“If Wendy can’t do the shopping, my wife will have a nervous breakdown. What’s your name?”
“Sergeant Michael Taggert.” Michael didn’t add the “sir” this time. He did not deserve to be dressed down as if he were a green Police Academy grad just because the mayor was having a party.
Munn narrowed his eyes. “You’ve applied to the Bureau.”
“Yes, sir.” Oh, great. How did hizzonor know that? Wait a minute. Michael remembered the campaign promises now. Clifford Munn. Tough on Crime. Former FBI special agent, retired on disability after being injured in the line of duty. Damn, damn, damn.
“I keep my hand in things,” he said, answering Michael’s unasked question. “Listen, Mr. FBI Wannabe. Wendy Thayer isn’t a criminal. You straighten this out in time for my party, or I’ll personally see to it your application keeps an appointment with a paper shredder.” He turned and slammed the door on his way out, giving Michael no chance to react, no chance to defend himself.
He looked over at Wendy. She was actually smiling. The shark attorney was trying not to laugh. And suddenly the whole tone of the interrogation changed. Michael no longer held all the cards.
“I told you I knew the mayor,” she said. “So what do you say you quit harassing me and let me help you find Mr. Neff?”
TWO
Michael’s police-issue sedan sputtered like an antique tractor as he started it up the next morning at the crack of dawn. All right, so Wendy Thayer was right about the muffler.
What an awesome creature that woman was. In all his umpteen years in law enforcement, he’d never encountered a suspect as alluring as Wendy—or as unlikely. He’d like to believe she was innocent. But there was too much smoke coming from her direction.
His car coughed and died. Gritting his teeth with determination, as if that could somehow help the ailing car, Michael started it up again. Sometime that day he’d have to turn the car over to the motor pool for repairs and get a loaner.
But not now. Now he had to drive over to the Southeast Station and track down the two patrol officers who’d checked out the house on Monty. About the only chance he had of catching them and questioning them in person was to grab them on their way out of their morning briefing, before they hit the streets.
His thoughts turned to Wendy again during the short, pre-rush-hour drive east on I-30. He’d been too eager to pin the theft on her, he decided. She was the first, the only, real break he’d had on the Art Deco Museum case, and he badly wanted to mark this one solved. Not that he believed she was a blameless pawn. No one who shopped for a living could be innocent, and she was too smart to be a mere pawn.
But she had to be working for someone. If he could catch that someone, and Wendy turned state’s evidence against him or her, it would be a win-win situation. Michael would have a feather in his cap, and Wendy would probably get off with a slap on the wrist, making the mayor happy.
Of course, Wendy’s business would be in a shambles, he thought with a twinge of guilt. Which of her customers would ever trust her again? Then he marveled at the workings of the male mind when confronted with hormones. If she was a thief or a fence or a pack mule, she deserved to lose her business. He had no reason to feel guilty for doing his job, despite the number Mayor Munn had tried to lay on him.
The Southeast Station was a hive of activity as the night shift gave way to the day. Michael found a parking place, showed his badge at the front desk, then slipped into the small auditorium where officers were briefed before starting their patrols. As soon as he identified the captain in charge, he approached and made his request.
“Gonzales is in the break room,” the captain said amiably. “I just saw him.”
“Thanks.”
Michael followed the smell of stale coffee to a small break room where a knot of blue-uniformed officers scarfed pastries and laughed at an off-color joke. He remembered with fondness the days of street patrol, the camaraderie, the black humor.
“Gonzales?” he asked the group.
“Right here,” a young, barrel-chested man said. “I’m Gonzales. You must be Detective Taggert. Is there a problem?”
“No, not really,” Michael assured him. The other officers left him and Gonzales in private. “I just wanted a little more detail on that house you checked out for me.”
“On Monty,” the officer confirmed. “Not much to tell. It was completely empty, clean as a whistle.”
“Were the utilities on?” Michael asked, taking a cue from Wendy’s question during the interrogation.
“Yeah. The lights worked. But there was no sign that the place was occupied. If any kids or homeless people had been shacking up there, we’d know it. In fact …” Gonzales paused to remember. “The place was unnaturally clean. No junk mail or newspapers stacking up, either.”
Michael jotted that down in his notebook. It wasn’t much. “Anything else? Even something that doesn’t seem important?”
Gonzales hesitated. “This is gonna sound stupid. But I swear, I smelled banana bread in the kitchen.”
Wendy’s two cats, Bill and Ted, wrapped themselves around her ankles when she got home at seven the morning after her arrest.
“I can’t walk,” she complained, trying to nudge them aside as she closed the front door behind her and set down her purse. “It’s only been one day. You have dry food available. You can’t be that hungry.”
They were, and they let her know it. Bill started gnawing on her clog, and Ted jumped up on the coat tree in her entry
hall and tried to climb onto her shoulder. They yowled in harmony.
“Blame Michael Taggert, not me,” she groused as she herded her brood into the kitchen, praying she had another couple of cans of food in the cupboard. “He’s the one who testified at my arraignment and made me sound like a conniving felon.”
Wendy was convinced it was Taggert’s fault the judge had set her bail at an unreasonable hundred grand. She’d had to come up with 10 percent in order to post bond—not an easy feat given that she’d pumped all of her assets into Born to Shop.
“Here, chicken livers and gizzards, your favorite flavor.” She dumped two cans of smelly cat food into Bill and Ted’s bowls, which silenced the yowling. Frenzied purring accompanied her as she left the kitchen and headed into the bathroom. She had just enough time to shower, dress, and drive to the office before her employees started arriving.
On the way out the front door fifteen minutes later she began mentally organizing her workday and the tasks to be delegated. Without breaking stride she grabbed her newspaper from the front walk, then chucked it into the back of the van. Maybe she could read it later. First she had to figure out how to clear her name. She didn’t believe she could trust the good detective to find the real thief, since he was so convinced she was the guilty party.
Wendy opened the window to her van and let her hair air-dry as she drove the ten minutes from her garden apartment in North Dallas to her storefront office in the Preston Royal shopping center. She’d thought long and hard before relocating from her spare bedroom to this uptown address—she paid some of the highest rent in the Metroplex. But the additional visibility, combined with her cable TV ads, was paying off. She was finally making some serious money. Her goal, once she got her small-business loans paid off, was to give herself a fat raise.
Now that goal seemed a long way off. Mounting a legal defense against these spurious theft charges—especially since her attorney was notoriously pricey—wouldn’t be cheap.
She tried hard to push her problems aside as she pulled into a parking space under Born to Shop’s green-striped awning. No matter what was going on in her life, she had to keep the business functional and efficient. Customers gave you one chance in this business. She’d discovered the hard way that if she was later than promised, if she forgot anything, she wouldn’t get a call back.
