by C. J. Pinard
I shoved the thoughts of Keith from my mind and went downstairs. I opened the fridge and sighed, and then opened the freezer. Ben & Jerry would be keeping me company tonight. I fished a shiny silver spoon from the top drawer and plopped myself on the sofa, turning on the TV.
Did my life ever have anything exciting in it? Every day was the same thing. Work, ice cream, and TV. With an occasional gym workout thrown in there. I expected Adria to call and scold me for not going to the gym, and briefly wondered where my cell phone was. I remembered it was in my purse, which sat on the end table. I also remember it had about 8 percent battery left last time I looked, and I smiled to myself, lifting the remote and popping the TV on.
Ah! Hell’s Kitchen was on. If I couldn’t eat any real food, at least I could watch people try – and usually fail miserably – to make it. I looked down at my crossed legs and noticed my thighs looked way thinner than they usually did. I thought ice cream was supposed to make you fat? Ha, I guess not when it’s the only thing I ate.
My mind again drifted to Detective Oliver. God, that man was beautiful. He stirred things in me that I thought were as dead as my last relationship. The way he stared at me while interviewing me was kind of unnerving and exciting at the same time. He had these intense hazel eyes. I didn’t know how else to describe them. They weren’t green but they weren’t brown. It was like they couldn’t make up their mind. Just like the elusive man himself. Boring his eyes into mine with intensity, then looking away when I met his stare. He had left me his card, but hadn’t called to follow up on the break-in. I found myself wondering what kind of chest and arms he had underneath that olive colored dress shirt he had been wearing. It sure fit him nicely, and I’ll admit I had watched his backside as he and his partner had walked away.
And what was up with that partner of his? The man was hot too – yes – but way too pretty. He looked like he belonged in a magazine and he had that confident, flirty air about him that screamed “player.” He wasn’t my type anyway. Too polished. I could tell Mason Oliver was uncomfortable in the dress clothes. If I was a betting girl, I would say he probably liked jeans, or maybe workout clothes.
Oh. My. God! That’s where I’d seen him before – at the gym! He was one of those idiots who fought in that ring in the back of Lenny’s Gym. I definitely had to tell Adria this.
I dropped the spoon into the now-empty container of Chunky Monkey and fished my cell out of my purse, only to realize the damn thing was indeed dead.
I grunted and walked to the kitchen to plug it into its charger. I smiled a little to myself and thought, what am I, thirteen? Why was I so anxious to tell Adria that Detective Oliver went to Lenny’s Gym? So did half of Tampa.
Again, I told myself, Get a frickin’ grip, Harper Mathis.
The next day, I sat at my desk when the phone rang. I glanced at my desk clock, the fancy engraved one my dad had gotten me on my 25th birthday. It had a photo of him and I dancing at my wedding, along with a “Love, Dad” engraved below the picture. I frowned at the photo and realized it was almost 10 a.m.
“Harper Mathis.”
“Bitch, your ass better be at the gym tonight, or I will find you.”
I snorted. “Yes, I’ll be there, you crazy woman.”
“Good, we’re gonna do free-weights tonight,” Adria commanded.
“Sounds like a blast,” I replied dryly.
She huffed. “Don’t sass me.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“Oh, I can be a mother, all right. A mother f–”
I cut her off quick. “Yes, I know.”
Chapter 8
Mason
We entered a small, one-story, discreet building on the south side of town. The Kids in Need office was in suite 106, according to the sign hanging in the little lobby. Unlike the high rises of downtown Tampa, this building did not scream “Rob me!” like some of the other places we’d investigated.
We entered through a wooden door with no markings, only a plaque reading “106” affixed above its door. We were greeted with a small, open office with about half a dozen desks. One was larger than the rest, and an older woman with a friendly smile looked up from the tattered paperback she’d been reading and smiled.
“Hi, can I help ya?” she asked in a deep Southern accent.
I pulled out my ID and held it up. “Hi, I’m Detective Oliver,” I pointed at Hunter, “and this is Detective Jenkins with the Tampa PD. Are you Amelia Shanks?”
Her gray eyes went wide, and she nodded her head. Her hair was in a short, sassy hairstyle, dyed a deep, dark red, and she had too much pink lipstick on. It clashed with her hair.
“Great. May we have a seat?” I asked, gesturing at the two empty chairs in front of her desk.
She jammed a piece of paper into her book to hold its place and set it down. She waved at the chairs. “By all means.”
I nodded, and Hunter and I took seats. “Ms. Shanks, we need to ask you a few questions about the break-in from back in February.”
She smiled big and drawled, “Please call me Amelia.”
“Very well,” I obeyed. “Amelia, can you tell me about the man who came in asking about your company’s financials right before the break-in?”
Her eyes drifted left, a concentrated look on her wizened face. She eventually began to nod and then looked me in the eye. “Yes, he was young, probably about your age. He had black hair and very dark eyes. He was wearin’ a white shirt and a tie. When he first walked in here, I thought he was sellin’ somethin’. I was nice enough to him, but when he started askin’ about profit margins and stuff, I told him I didn’t know any of that junk.”
I jotted notes onto a notepad I’d pulled from the front pocket of my blue dress shirt. “I see. And what was his reaction when you told him you didn’t know anything?”
She put a pink fingernail up to her lip and tapped it. “Ya know, he got kinda mad. I didn’t understand why he was askin’ me that stuff, but when I was about to ask him to leave, Judd came up to the desk.”
“Okay,” I said, jotting furiously. “And who is Judd?”
She waved a hand. “Oh, he’s the Vice President.”
“May we speak to… uh, what’s Judd’s last name?”
She nodded. “Sure, and it’s Daniels.”
She got up, her short, sky blue dress swishing over her large backside as she toddled on electric blue heels that were probably a bit too young and too small for her. She returned less than a minute later with a very tall, thin man with a balding head and a friendly smile and kind eyes.
“Hello, Officers. I’m Judd Daniels. Have you found out who was responsible for the robbery?”
I ignored the fact that he’d called us officers and replied, “Mr. Daniels, I’m Detective Oliver and this is Detective Jenkins.”
He shook our hands and pulled up a chair and sat with us. Amelia did not pick her book back up, instead rested her large chin on her hands and watched the conversation as if it were the most interesting tennis match ever.
“Mr. Daniels, Amelia says you were here the day a stranger came into the office asking about your financial information. It would have been a day or two before the break-in.”
He nodded his bald head and frowned. “Yes, he was quite odd. He looked normal enough, and when I was called out here, I just assumed he was selling somethin’. I was about to tell him that we weren’t interested when he started spoutin’ off questions to me.” He also had a heavy Southern accent.
Hunter cocked his head to the side. His hair did not move as he did. “What sort of questions?”
“Well, he wanted to know what kind of profit we made, where our equipment came from, how much we got to write off on our taxes and all that. It was really weird, and after tellin’ him it was none of his business, he got kinda mad. He was kind of a little man, so I wasn’t afraid of him, but something in his eyes was a bit crazy.”
“Crazy, really? How so? And he never gave you his name?” I asked.
&n
bsp; “That’s probably the wrong word,” he drawled. “He just looked crazy, I could see it in his eyes. And no, I never got his name.”
I nodded. “Then what happened?”
“Well, I asked him to leave, and he did. Just walked right out. Never saw him again.”
“That’s odd,” Hunter interjected.
“Indeed,” Judd replied.
“He did pitch kind of a hissy fit, though,” Amelia said.
Judd sighed. “Mother, will you please?”
I bit back a smile. “What kind of hissy fit, Amelia?”
“He said he was gonna get to the bottom of all of these nonprofit places tryin’ to act like real businesses and gettin’ over on the government, not having to pay taxes and all that malarkey.”
“Malarkey, really, Mother?” Judd asked, embarrassed.
She smiled triumphantly and nodded.
I looked around the small, humble office and asked, “You don’t by chance have any security cameras, do you?”
“Oh no, those cost way too much,” Amelia said.
Judd sighed and rubbed a hand over his shorn head. “She’s right. No, we don’t have them here.”
I nodded and stood, and Hunter did the same. I reached out and shook Judd’s hand. “Thank you for the information, you’ve been very helpful.” I pulled out a card. “Please keep this in case you think of anything else. Also, we may have more questions for you.”
He tucked it into his front shirt pocket. “Sure thing.”
Hunter and I turned and left the office.
I was so glad the day was over. I parked my Mustang in my designated spot at my apartment complex.
Once inside, I set my phone and keys down on the kitchen counter and went straight to my room. I peeled off the damn blue dress shirt and slacks I hated so much and tossed them into a nearby hamper. As I flipped on the ceiling fan and lay on the bed trying to cool myself down, my hand immediately went to the dog tag around my neck. In nothing but boxers, I was sprawled out on my queen-sized bed, thinking about the past. I rubbed a thumb over the etching on the tag and my mind drifted back to five years ago, when I’d been in Iraq. Scotty’s face appeared in my mind.
Scott Edward Mulliken had been in my unit. He was a smartass, but he had a good heart. A big heart. He would give you the shirt off his back and then ask you if you needed his shoes, too. Dark brown hair, kind blue eyes, and a friendly face, he was always there for everyone. Just 22, he had just gotten married to his high school sweetheart before he’d deployed with us. He never stopped showing us photos of Mysti, his pretty blonde-haired girl. She was quite beautiful, and he always said after his four years was up, he was getting out of the Army and had plans to build a horse farm with Mysti. They planned on raising horses and having lots of babies on the farm he was going to build.
Sadly for Scotty, he and a roadside bomb had met, and the bomb had won, ending him in a mere instant. I shuddered and hoped that one day I could meet Mysti and tell her how much Scotty loved her. A tattoo of my unit’s insignia, along with Scotty’s initials, was etched on my right shoulder, forever immortalized there in his honor.
I pushed thoughts of Scotty and Mysti from my mind and let out a heavy sigh as I got up off the bed. My eyes drifted to my top dresser drawer, and because I was obviously a glutton for punishment, I opened it and pulled out an old photo of someone I used to love.
Shiny brown curls and warm caramel colored eyes, Christy’s face peered at me and I swallowed hard. I really had tried to keep her, but sadly, she had been beyond keeping at that point. I shuddered as I thought about the day I’d come home from a two week TDY and found my house empty. The note she’d left was not only a shock, but a punch to the gut that had physically hurt me. And like a dumbass, I had kept the damn note. Under Christy’s photo, there it was, taunting me to read it. So of course I did.
Mason,
This life… it’s for you, it’s not for me. I can’t do this. You are wonderful and dedicated, but I clearly am not. You have decided to be married to the service, and I cannot be the other woman. Please just go on and have a happy life. As for me, I’m going back to Pensacola with my family and am gonna try to start over. Don’t call me. I love you, but I’m just done. Good luck with the Army. ~Christy.
She hadn’t even bothered to hand-write it. It was a typed note.
Some people just weren’t cut out for military life. I thought I was. But after that note, I had put in my discharge papers and didn’t look back. Between Christy’s rejection and Scotty’s death, I was at the breaking point. I guess that made me weak, but I had to get the hell out before I did, in fact, break.
All this reminiscing was pissing me off. I shoved the note and the photo back into the top drawer and slammed it shut. I then rifled through the other drawers and found a T-shirt and some athletic shorts and shoved them onto my body. I grabbed my keys and phone and headed for the gym. I needed to expend some of this energy. But was it really energy? I knew it was anger and rage, but I didn’t care.
I threw my head back and laughed as I had done exactly what I had planned; a nice, purple bruise was beginning to blossom along Hunter’s jaw on the left side. Now he’d have matching ones.
“Son of a bitch, I’m gonna kick your ass,” he growled, shaking off the punch.
I smiled again. “Bring it, pussy.”
He lifted a foot and tried to kick me in the stomach but I moved back too quickly. I then looked around Lenny’s, hoping the “help” wasn’t going to come grab me and kick me out of the ring for fighting. It was supposed to be a boxing ring, but who the hell boxed anymore? The UFC-style fighting was what it was all about.
I didn’t see the gym’s “bouncer”, but I did see stars as Hunter caught my right cheek with his fist as I was momentarily distracted. He didn’t take me down, but it hurt like a mother.
“Sucker punch,” I said, rubbing my face. “Like I said, you’re a pussy.”
A smug grin lit up his perfect face and he said, “You were distracted, and I capitalized on it.”
“Quit with the stockbroker talk, asshole,” I growled.
He was still grinning. “That’s gonna leave a mark.” He jutted his chin at mine.
This time, I smiled, looking at his new bruise. “You’re one to talk.”
He rubbed the left side of his jaw. “We’re even now.”
I shook my head and fist-bumped him as we both left the ring, ducking under the ring’s ropes and headed toward the men’s locker room.
I was two steps away from pushing the door open when I heard a beautiful voice.
“Detective Oliver?”
I turned around. Harper Mathis and her shorter, dark-haired friend stood not five feet away. Her friend sat on a weight bench and pumped her arms against a weight bar. “Spot me, girl.” I heard her say.
I glanced at her friend then back at her. “Ms. Mathis, nice to see you.”
I sucked in a breath. She was in very tight black yoga pants and a hot pink sports bra. It showed off her nice chest and flat stomach. She was gleaning with sweat and had her blonde hair in the only style I’d ever seen – a high ponytail at the back of her head.
She smiled a little and looked at her friend. “Um, Adria, this is Detective Oliver.”
Her friend craned her head up and looked at me, then pushed up off the weight bench.
Before she could say anything, I looked back at Harper. “You can call me Mason or Mace.”
She lifted a blonde eyebrow, and her friend seemed to say what she was thinking. “You’re a cop named Mace, seriously?”
Harper elbowed her friend and gritted her teeth. “Aid, stop.”
I grinned. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Well it is certainly nice to meet you.” She put a hand out to shake, but not before she raked me head to toe with her eyes. Hunter and I always did our fighting in nothing but loose, shiny, athletic shorts, and today was no exception. I felt a bit exposed, but in my own defense, I had been on my way to the locker r
oom.
I looked back to Harper and could see her eyeing my bare chest. I knew it was drenched in sweat, and secretly hoped I looked like one of those magazine models with the rippling, wet muscles.
Yeah, right…
When her eyes finally met mine, I said, “Well, it was nice to see you again, Ms. Mathis.”
She dipped her head at me, her expression blank. She looked back at her friend and lifted the weight bar to spot her.
We went into the locker room and I cringed in expectation of the ribbing I would surely be getting from Hunter. As if on cue, his annoying-ass voice couldn’t even wait until the door was closed.
“Damn, Oliver, she’s even hotter in workout clothes. You need to tap that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Stop talking like you’re from the streets.”
He flipped me the bird. “Seriously though, go get her number.”
“No.”
He feigned hurt and shock. “You serious? She’s smokin’.”
I nodded, peeling off my shorts and grabbing a towel, wrapping it around my trim waist. “Yep, she is. But she’s obviously not interested. Plus, she’s a victim. I’m not going there.”
Hunter snorted and did the same, snatching a light blue towel from his locker. “Well, I so would.”
I started the shower and waited for it to heat up. “Of course you would.”
The following day, I didn’t want to admit that I was taking Hunter’s advice, but in reality, I couldn’t get Harper’s beautiful face and smokin’ body out of my head. I didn’t think I had anything to lose by paying her a visit – a little follow-up. I wanted to see if anyone had been asking questions about her business and its tax status.
My work day was very busy, visiting the third victim’s business, asking the same questions. We also got the same answers. The perp matched the description we got from the Kids In Need Dot Org place, and I knew we had a strong lead. I also knew we needed to visit the other two victims, and while I agreed to go to the second victim’s with Hunter, I’d decided I was definitely going to be going to Mathis Associates by myself. I didn’t need to hear any crap from his mouth. Plus, I wanted to get her alone, see if she seemed as uncomfortable around me, and I wanted to be myself without being under Hunter’s stare the whole time. That guy could really wear on a person.
