Wickedly Dangerous

by Deborah Blake

  Butch glanced around at all the jars of herbs and muttered, “No way, José,” visibly suppressing a shudder.

  Liam laughed, turning it into a cough behind one hand. He accepted the purple mug he was handed, although he sniffed at it cautiously before taking a sip.

  “No, dear, my name’s not José,” the crone said. “You can call me Babushka, everyone does.”

  Stu and Butch ignored her, stomping through the Airstream, peering into the back bedroom, and opening closets. Liam winced when they rattled the wonky handle of the wardrobe that led to the Otherworld, but Babushka tottered over helpfully to open it, revealing only clothes and a wealth of black leather boots with various heel heights.

  “Well, it looks like she’s not here after all,” Liam said with ill-concealed relief. “We’re sorry to have bothered you, ma’am.”

  “No bother at all,” Babushka said graciously. “Can I tell her why you came by?”

  Stu, still smarting from his overreaction to the dog, said stiffly, “We have a warrant for her arrest. She brutally attacked an innocent woman earlier this evening.”

  Babushka opened her rheumy eyes wide and put one hand dramatically over her heart. “Oh my. I can’t imagine Barbara would do such a thing. She’s a prominent professor and a sweet, sweet soul. There must be some mistake.” She sat down and covered her face as if overcome with emotion at the news.

  Liam choked on his tea, casting a searching glance at the old lady, whose shoulders were shaking. He placed the mug down carefully on the counter and cleared his throat.

  “We appreciate your cooperation, ma’am. We’ll be leaving now.” He stared at the deputies until they started heading for the door, then turned back to meet the remarkably tear-free eyes across from him. One white-lashed orb winked at him so quickly he almost missed it.

  “I’d appreciate it if you could give Dr. Yager a message for me,” he said. “Tell her it would be best if she turns herself in.” He glanced at Stu and Bernie, waiting impatiently at the entrance, and added pointedly, “And it would really be helpful if she happened to have an alibi for six p.m., the time the attack occurred.”

  Once outside, Butch said, “I can’t believe anyone would be out picking herbs in the middle of the damned night. Do you think she’s making a run for it?”

  “Not at all,” Liam answered. He gestured at the Airstream. “She’s living in a portable house. If she was going to leave, I’d think she’d take it with her. Besides, all her vehicles are here.” He took a couple of steps toward his car. “I’m guessing we’ll find that this whole thing is just a big mix-up. In the meanwhile, there’s no point in waiting around; she could be gone all night. I’m sure she’ll come into the station when she gets the message from er . . . Babushka.”

  Stu looked over his shoulder at the trailer. “She seems like a nice old lady, but jeez, that’s a big dog.”

  “Yes,” said Liam. “But a small dragon.”

  Stu stared at him. “Sheriff, you get weirder all the time.”

  Liam smiled. “You have no idea, Stu. You have no damned idea.”

  NINETEEN

  BABA STROLLED INTO the Sheriff’s Department at nine the next morning, clad in a tailored black skirt and white sleeveless top, her head held high against the stares and mutters that greeted her. Coming in right behind her, Belinda nodded at her fellow officers, and the Ivanovs lifted their hands in halfhearted hellos to people they knew. Mouths gaped open as they all processed in to the front desk, accompanied by the irregular hum of the overburdened air conditioners.

  “Hi there,” Baba chirped in a perky voice that would have made the Riders choke on their breakfast beer. “I got a message that Sheriff McClellan was looking for me. Is he in?”

  The sergeant at the desk fumbled for the phone and called Liam’s secretary. A moment later, the sheriff popped out of his office, a middle-aged woman trailing in his wake and gazing at Baba with ill-concealed curiosity.

  “Ah, Dr. Yager,” Liam said, his voice cool and professional, “I take it you got my message?” He opened a gate that led to the central office area. “Please come on back.”

  He guided the group to a large table in the middle of the room. It was probably used for meetings, and from the variety of mustard and ketchup stains marring its wood surface, any meal that wasn’t eaten at someone’s desk. Baba raised an eyebrow when she realized he was going to question her there instead of in one of the formal detention areas. Clearly, he wanted the largest audience possible. Nice.

  “If you’ll take a seat, my secretary, Molly, can take notes here. We wouldn’t want to drag the Ivanovs into the back of the station.” He pulled out a chair for Belinda’s mother, then took one for himself next to her, across the table from Baba. Molly clutched her pad and pen as if they were an all-expense paid ticket to the best show in town and sat down next to him.

  Baba plastered a serious look on her face. “So, Sheriff, I gather you have some questions for me? Something about a crime I’m supposed to have committed?”

  He nodded, then pushed his hair back out of his face. “Can you tell me where you were at approximately five fifty last night?”

  Molly’s pen hovered over her paper like a bird about ready to take flight.

  “Of course,” Baba said. “I was at the Ivanovs’ house. They very kindly invited me to dinner last night, along with their daughter. I got there around five, and didn’t leave until, oh, sometime after nine, I think.”

  The pen scribbled down the pertinent facts as mouths dropped open around the room.

  “Ah,” Liam said, a dimple she’d never noticed flitting in and out of view at the corner of his mouth. “So at five fifty, you were with Deputy Shields and her parents?”

  “We had a lovely roast chicken with potatoes and beets,” Mariska said, beaming. “And then we talked about the Old Country for hours. The professor spent her childhood there you know, before moving to the United States with her adoptive mother.” She patted Baba’s hand. “It was so nice to be able to chat with someone who had been to Russia, no matter how long ago.”

  Baba smiled back at her. “It was my pleasure. And that chicken was sublime.”

  Liam nodded at Belinda. “And you can back this up?”

  “Absolutely,” she said without missing a beat. “The chicken was definitely sublime.”

  The front door of the station slammed open with a bang that had half the officers reaching for their weapons before they realized where the noise had come from. One of the air conditioning units wheezed to a stop, belching a puff of gray smoke into the already dense air.

  Clive Matthews stormed up to the front desk and gestured for the officer on duty to open the gate, his plump face glistening with sweat. On his heels, Peter Callahan lent a gallant arm to a pale but upright Maya, limping across the floor with her Technicolor bruises standing out in stark contrast to her lacy blouse and upswept hair.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Matthews demanded. One pudgy hand pointed at Baba. “Why isn’t that woman in cuffs?”

  Baba could see Liam’s glance dart to the clock on the wall and saw him come to the inevitable conclusion that the only way that Matthews could have gotten there so fast was if someone at the department had called him. A clenched jaw was the only sign of his distress at this act of betrayal, and when he rose to greet the board president, his expression was a picture of artless confusion.

  “Did we have a meeting scheduled that I forgot about?” He turned to Maya. “Goodness, Ms. Freeman, should you be out of the hospital? You look terrible.” Liam bounded around the table and pulled out a chair for the blond woman, thankfully one that placed the Ivanovs between her and Baba. Baba wasn’t sure she could sit next to the little monster without strangling the bitch with her bare hands. As it was, she had to settle for watching Maya wince as Liam politely insulted her.

  Maya’s face was a study i
n purple and green and barely concealed displeasure. “Thankfully, there were no internal injuries,” she said, wafting gracefully into the seat. “And they tell me that the pain will subside in a few days. Or maybe a week.” She batted her eyelashes at Peter Callahan, clearly not realizing that having one eye swollen half shut rendered the gesture more grotesque than appealing.

  “See here,” Callahan said, recognizing a cue when he saw one. “Why isn’t this woman under arrest? Miss Freeman told you that she was attacked by this so-called professor. Shouldn’t she be locked up in a cell?”

  Liam settled one hip on the edge of the table and crossed his arms. “That’s right; Miss Freeman did say that Dr. Yager was the one who injured her, didn’t she?” He gazed at Maya thoughtfully. “That is very interesting, considering that we have three witnesses who will swear to the fact that she was with them at the time of the beating.”

  Clive Matthews sputtered a protest. “That’s impossible! The witnesses must be lying. She paid them off. Or put them under a spell. Or something.”

  Molly made a tiny choking noise and scribbled faster. Around the room, you could have heard a pin drop, even over the laboring sound of the ancient cooling system.

  “The witnesses in question include one of my deputies and her elderly parents, who are longtime respected members of this community.” Liam raised one eyebrow and gestured around the table before turning back to Matthews. “And personally, I don’t believe in spells or any of that mumbo-jumbo. I do, however, believe that Miss Freeman lied to me, which I assure you, will have much worse side effects than any spell.”

  He swiveled to give Maya the full force of his stern glare. “Now, Miss Freeman, since Dr. Yager is clearly not the culprit in this case, perhaps you’d like to tell us who is. I’m guessing that since you didn’t want to name the person who actually attacked you, this was some kind of lover’s quarrel—maybe with a married man?” He gazed pointedly at Clive Matthews and Peter Callahan.

  Callahan sputtered wordlessly, and Matthews’s face got so red, Molly ran to get him a glass of water.

  “My goodness, Mr. Matthews,” she said. “You should see a doctor about that high blood pressure of yours. I had an uncle who looked like that right before he keeled over and died.”

  Baba bit her lip so hard, she thought it would bleed.

  Liam went on, ignoring the indignant protestations from the two men and focusing his attention on the little blonde, who seemed slightly flustered for the first time since Baba had seen her.

  “I . . . I’m afraid I jumped to a conclusion,” Maya said, trying the eye-batting at Liam with no noticeable effect. “My attacker wore motorcycle gear and a helmet. I couldn’t see the person’s face, but since Barbara Yager had already been harassing and threatening me, I assumed it was her.” A woeful expression highlighted her battered face. “I am so very sorry for any trouble I might have caused.”

  From under lowered eyelashes, she shot a virulent glare at Baba. Baba showed her teeth in a not-very-convincing smile and shot one right back.

  “No problem at all,” Baba said. “I barely noticed the inconvenience.”

  A sound like a distant wolf growling greeted this blithe statement, and Clive Matthews stopped sputtering long enough to look around for the source of the noise, shivering a little as if the room had suddenly gotten cold.

  “Well, that is very kind of you, Dr. Yager,” Liam said in his most official tone. “Miss Freeman, I suggest you consider yourself lucky that Dr. Yager doesn’t want to press charges against you for making a false accusation. I hope next time you will think twice about making assumptions without any facts to back them up.”

  He stood up. “Feel free to let me know if you remember anything else about your attacker, Miss Freeman. I wouldn’t want Mr. Matthews here to accuse me of not doing my job.”

  “Oh no,” Mariska said sweetly. “I’m sure he would never do that. Would you, Mr. Matthews?”

  Matthews and Callahan ushered Maya out, stalking stiff-necked through the crowd of gawking sheriff’s department employees. Nina waved at them gaily from her perch at the dispatcher’s station. Maya’s limp had mysteriously disappeared, and she seemed remarkably healthy as she slammed the door on her way out.

  “Goodness,” Molly said, tucking her pen into her pad and heading back to her desk. “Wasn’t that exciting?”

  “Yes,” Baba said, one corner of her mouth twitching up. “Wasn’t it?”

  Liam’s face was all stern lines and cool composure; his jaw looked like it had been carved from granite. “A little more excitement than I prefer in my day, I’m afraid. It’s a good thing you had an iron-clad alibi, Dr. Yager, or things might have gone quite differently.”

  Baba stood up and offered a hand to Mariska Ivanov as she struggled out of the hard metal chair. “A very good thing indeed, Sheriff. Lucky for me the Ivanovs invited me to dinner last night.”

  Belinda helped her father up and said to Liam, “I’m just going to drive my parents and Barbara home, and then I’ll be back in to work, if that’s okay with you, Sheriff.”

  Liam nodded at her, and only Baba saw Belinda’s tiny wink, like a glittering star in the dark night sky.

  * * *

  BABA STRETCHED HER long legs out in front of her and watched the sun set in vivid colors of red and orange behind the nearby hills like a fireball announcing the coming apocalypse. Crickets chorused gleefully along with the more doleful sounds of a mourning dove’s coo, and the evening’s first firefly blinked into view and then vanished again.

  She and Liam sat on lawn chairs in front of the Airstream with Chudo-Yudo lying between them, roasting hot dogs over a portable copper fire pit and washing them down with, in Liam’s case, a beer from the local microbrewery, and in Baba’s, a crystal chalice filled with a crisp and fruity Riesling. Chudo-Yudo lapped at a large bowl of Guinness stout; his dragon physiology didn’t even notice the alcohol, he just liked the rich bitter taste.

  The outside light by the Airstream’s door cast its warm glow over the encroaching darkness, making their impromptu cookout seem even cozier than it was. Baba felt as close to relaxed as she ever got; a sensation that, ironically, simply caused her stomach muscles to tense and her shoulders to hunch defensively.

  Cozy made her uncomfortable. Cozy with Liam made her even more uncomfortable. Maybe because it felt so good. So right. Like something she could do every night, for the rest of her life. Absurd.

  “Thanks for the help with the Maya mess,” she said finally, stirring the fire with a cast iron poker and tossing on another branch that Chudo-Yudo had fetched earlier in a fit of playful doggieness. Sparks flew up into the night sky like demented fairies.

  She and Liam had barely spoken since he’d shown up about twenty minutes ago. She’d fetched him a chair and put his first hot dog on a stick, and he’d pulled a six-pack out of his car, along with a file folder, which he’d plopped on the ground next to him. Other than that, they’d mostly just sat there in companionable silence, chewing and sipping and occasionally reaching down to pet Chudo-Yudo on the top of his massive, shaggy white head.

  Like an old married couple, she thought, shoulders edging up a little closer to her ears. She shook it off, purposely stretching her legs out even further, and snuck a glance at Liam out of the corner of her eye.

  He was clearly off duty, since he wore jeans and a dark blue tee shirt that clung to his broad shoulders and chest in a way that made her think thoughts she’d be better off ignoring, but otherwise, he hadn’t said much about his day.

  Liam gave her a bad imitation of an innocent look when she thanked him. “Me? I just got my secretary to take notes. You’re the one who conveniently showed up with three impeccable witnesses to prove you couldn’t have committed the crime.” He stuffed the second half of his third hot dog into his mouth with all the enthusiasm of a man who hadn’t eaten all day, and cracked open another b
eer. The shadows from the flames emphasized the dark circles under his eyes and the deepening lines around his mouth, highlighting the few tiny silver hairs just starting to show in his beard stubble.

  Baba thought he looked tired and frazzled and a little bit chewed on, like a favorite old boot that Chudo-Yudo had gotten at when she wasn’t looking. Without conscious intent, she reached out and gently moved a strand of dark-blond hair off his face, making him smile.

  They both froze for a moment, taken off guard by the power of the connection between them. Liam shook it off first, but she caught a glimpse of something that looked a lot like the attraction she was trying so hard to fight.

  “I know,” he said, “one of these days I have to take the time to get it cut.”

  “It’s growing on me,” Baba said, pulling her hand back awkwardly and stuffing it into her lap, where it would hopefully stay out of trouble. She steered the conversation back to business. Safer that way. “And I meant it when I said thanks. Without your hint to find an alibi, I could be sitting in a jail cell right now, eating bad food, and fighting off some junkie streetwalker who wanted to make me her bitch.”

  Liam startled, and dropped his hot dog in the fire, suppressing a curse as he watched his meal burn to a cinder. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. How do you even know about this stuff if you don’t watch TV?” He pulled the last dog out of the package and politely offered it to her before putting it on his now-vacant stick and leaning forward to place it gingerly over the fire.

  “The Riders hang out in a lot of bars,” she explained, giving him a rare grin. “They tell me things.”

  Chudo-Yudo snorted with laughter, a little Guinness foam clinging to his black lips and giving him a frothy mustache.

  “For your information,” Liam said acidly, “Dunville is too small to have streetwalkers. We may have a few women who sleep with men for money, but if they do, they’re subtle enough about it that the sheriff’s department doesn’t have to get involved. And frankly, the food in the jail would have been better than hot dogs.” He blew ashes off his slightly charred wiener before plopping it into a bun and squirting copious amounts of ketchup on it. For a moment, Baba saw a stream of blood flowing through the air and shuddered.