by N.L. Wilson
Well, okay, not in so many words. (She didn’t say please.)
“Go see Dylan tonight, Dix,” she said. “You two have to solve this thing before whoever is committing the crimes and planting this evidence plants more on your mother. I packed you a bag: toothbrush and stuff, cozy pajamas and a housecoat.”
My initial reaction? I couldn’t picture me ‘sleeping over’. But the possibly that Dylan and I would be working into the wee hours of the morning was not a remote one. Best to be prepared.
I took the bag from her. “You be all right here alone, Mrs. P?”
In response, she steered me to the kitchen and loaded my free arm down with the basket of food.
“Always.”
I followed her into the living room. “You could always come with me to the Goosebump to see Dylan.”
She gave me a ‘what-are-you-nuts?’ look.
Why do I get those so often?
“Don’t worry about me, Dix. I’m cozy as can be. You and Dylan just get to the bottom of this.” She started flipping through the channels — numbers getting higher and higher. What was that science fiction channel you were watching the other night? Maybe they’ll play that big monkey-man movie again. King Dong wasn’t it, Dix? Wasn’t that what you hollered out?”
I locked the doors, checked them, twice and made a hasty exit.
And now here I was at the Goosebump.
As I stood there waiting for Dylan to answer the door, the smell of spaghetti sauce wafting around me, hungry dogs were starting to show up. They were looking at my basket with … well, puppy-dog eyes. One particularly pushy Labradoodle was sniffing around my purse. Apparently the Goosebump Inn was pet friendly.
“No way, doggie.”
Lifting my cheesecake-containing purse up out of reach, I knocked on Dylan’s door again, this time a little more desperately. Damn it, he should be around. It was after 9:00 p.m. Surely he wasn’t working at the Wildoh at this hour.
Just as I saw a pair of particularly menacing toy poodles tripping their way along the stone walk heading in my direction, Dylan swung the door open to let me in.
He was barefoot. Wearing jeans. No shirt. Just a towel draped around his neck. His hair was tousled and wet, and he racked a hand through it as he stepped back.
“Sorry Dix, just got out of the shower.”
“No … no problem.”
His room was a hundred and forty degrees. Okay, maybe not quite that hot, but I was fanning myself nevertheless.
He reached for my goodies. I mean the basket of goodies.
But rather than digging in to see what Mrs. P had packed, he set it on the dresser.
I tossed my overnight bag besides it. I doffed my little jacket and flopped myself on the bed. I kicked off my heels one at a time and the thump thump of them hitting the floor was somehow satisfying. But it did serve to remind me of my attire. I was still dressed in Mother’s finest. Which meant I probably looked as good as I was ever going to. Which seemed appropriate, seeing as Dylan was looking positively edible.
I shook the thought away. “Thanks for organizing the lawyer, Dylan.”
“Welcome. From what I hear, he’s the best.”
He bent his head and gave it a quick once over, then tossed the damp towel onto a chair. And, dayum, he made a nice picture. Shirtless, jeans riding low enough to give me a clear glimpse of the iliac furrows that stand out so well on a lean man. Dylan was lean but lightly muscled. And God help me, I badly wanted to trace each of those furrows from hipbone to groin.
With my tongue.
Jesus.
I raised my gaze to the ceiling. Cotton. We’d been talking about Cotton Caron.
“How did you manage to get him?” I asked. “I mean, anyone could have gotten his name, but for him to accept my mother’s case and rearrange his schedule? To be personally available for the bail hearing in the morning? That must have taken some doing.”
“Pulled some strings.”
I lifted my head and gave him an arched eyebrow.
Dylan shrugged. “What’s the point of having a mother in public office if I don’t use that pull once in awhile?”
Well, he had me on that one. Dylan’s mother, Marjorie Foreman, a prominent lawyer herself back in Ontario, was very politically active in Marport City. It was strongly rumored that she’d be a candidate for Member of Parliament in the next federal election. She was hellishly tough on crime. Pro-women and pro-equality. She was also very pro-environment. She had those who loved her for it, and those who hated her just as passionately for it. Hell, she’d probably made as many enemies in the course of her career as I had. But apparently, Dylan’s mother had made a few friends along the way too. Powerful and influential ones.
I sat up on the bed. “And your mom knows Cotton Carson?”
“No, she knows Cotton’s political affiliations.” He opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a t-shirt. With eyes I knew were way too hungry, I watched him tug it on. “They have mutual friends who have, well….”
“More mutual friends?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
I rubbed my eyes. From somewhere outside a dog howled. “Oh, Mrs. Presley sent spaghetti for you. I think she fears you’re fading away here without a good home cooked meal.”
“Well, she just might be right.”
I somehow doubted Dylan was starving to death. The pizza box in the corner attested to it. He had that young-man metabolism. The guy could eat enough for a lumberjack and still wouldn’t gain an ounce. Damn him.
Well, kind of damn him. Just a little. I watched him walk across the room.
“You having any, Dix?” Dylan asked, digging out the spaghetti and silverware Mrs. P had packed.
I reached for my purse. “No, it’s a cheesecake night.”
“Hey, any night where the sun goes down is a cheesecake night.”
I saluted him with my own fork (a fork lifted from the restaurant/charge it to the Deputy/thank you very much).
Leave it to Dylan. Five minutes in his presence and I was already feeling better. Why did this guy have that effect on me?
I bit into cheesecake and gave an I’ll-have-what-she’s-having moan. Oh God, that was good.
“Now where have I heard that before?”
Oh boy. I set the cheesecake down on the nightstand. He was, of course, referring to our little rendezvous at mother’s condo last night. When he’d kissed me. When I’d kissed him back. When he’d lifted my shirt and touched me with a thousand promises of more.
“Sorry,” Dylan said. “I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”
“You didn’t. It’s just that … just that….”
“Just that it’s complicated right now. Right?”
He was right of course. About it being complicated. About the timing. But more. I’d checked my heart at the door. Every door. Yes, I felt for Dylan. In every way — physically, emotionally. Holy crap, how could I not care about him? But there was a fine line in life between loving with abandon and being abandoned in love. Between wrapping your arms around someone and having them squeeze the life out of you. Between a tug on the heart and a sharp-bladed knife slowly twisting right through it.
So how could I argue with Dylan’s ‘complicated’ remark?
I couldn’t, didn’t want to. So, I changed the subject.
“So how is security at the Wildoh these days?”
Dylan answered by stabbing his spaghetti with his fork with a little more punch than normal. “Oh great. Just great. I’m thinking of changing careers.”
I shot up a skeptical eyebrow.
“Where else could I spend all day getting smacked on the butt by feisty little old ladies?”
“Beth Mary MacKenzie?”
“She called me Nibs.” Dylan shook his head. “Is that some kind of kinky sexual reference I don’t know about”
Why was he asking me?
“No, she called dibs. Which means technically you’re off limits to the other residents of the Wil
doh. She has her eye on you.” I feigned sympathy. “Sorry, Dylan.”
“All in the line of duty.” Forking, twirling, and scarfing down the last of the spaghetti. Dylan set his plate down, walked over to the bed and opened the small night table drawer. Tucked in under the hotel bible, he pulled out a folded square of tissue.
“But this, I did find at the Wildoh,” he said. “It pays to vacuum.”
So they say.
It looked like the worlds smallest golf club. Or maybe the world’s smallest hockey stick (yes, I do know the difference! One’s for clubbing the bad guys and the other’s for smacking them). This looked like something from another dimension. Too small for a child’s toy. It might have been a dental pick, but was definitely on the dull side.
“Know what it is?” Dylan asked.
It was the way he asked it. I huffed. “So you don’t either.”
Dylan sat down on the bed beside me. “But it feels like something, doesn’t it. You know?” He looked right into my eyes. He wasn’t being funny. He wasn’t being condescending. Dylan was being dead serious. He trusted my intuition more than anyone. Maybe more than me sometimes. And apparently, he was trusting his own a bit.
And he was right. This did feel like something. It was connected with the case. Somehow it had to be.
Enough to call Deputy Nutless and tell him I’d solved the crimes? Or Cotton Carson and tell him not to bother showing up for the bail hearing? Hell no. But enough to trickle some hope.
“Where did you find it?”
“Complex C. In the small lobby off the front doors.”
That was mostly the staff complex. And also where Frankie Morrell was renting his bachelor apartment. There were extra storage rooms, utility rooms, and a few bachelor apartments. One of which was Roger Cassidy’s.
The police had placed Frankie Morrell’s place ‘off limits’. Yellow tagged the door. But I had every confidence Dylan was around other places. Short of break and enter, he would have done some snooping. And he would have done some discreet questioning. Finding physical clues/potential clues was one thing — but finding out about people — whole ‘nother ball game. And Dylan was becoming damn good at it.
“Roger Cassidy is hands-down the cleanest guy I’d ever met,” he reported. “I just happened to be in the hall when a courier stopped by to pick up a parcel. Roger was cleaning the peephole in the door. Windex and everything! Later on, he was cleaning the door knob. From what Big Eddie tells me, the police had a hell of a time finding fingerprints there. Like, any fingerprints!”
And so certainly not my mothers!
“But they didn’t find incriminating fingerprints at any of the break-ins,” I said. “The only incriminating evidence that there even had been a break it were the scratches around the locks.”
“Right,” Dylan said. “According to Big Eddie, Deputy Almond got lock experts in. Those locks were most definitely picked.”
I chewed on all this for a moment.
“Think Roger is OCD?”
“I think maybe. But it’s not a ‘germ’ thing. I mean, he shook your hand. Shook my hand. Plays cards all the time with Mona. Maybe he’s just a clean freak.”
I’d heard of those — clean freaks. But I’d thought they were just a myth — like Big Foot and the Abominable Snowman and Size Doesn’t Matter. My mind drifted back to my own abode back in Marport City for a minute — socks under the bed, dust on the ceiling fan….
“Eddie, on the other hand,” Dylan continued, “is a slob. The biggest slob ever.”
That kind of surprised me. Big Eddie was an ex-military man. You’d think he’d be all about order. Precision. “You were in Eddie’s apartment?”
“No, I was in his storage room.”
“Did you snoop around?”
“Dix! What do you take me for?”
“Oh, good.” I was tired. My back was sore. I lay down on the bed while Dylan talked, punching the pillow for emphasis as I did. “What’d you find?”
“Big Eddie keeps a lot of crap in there. Nothing spectacular, though. Few dozen girlie magazines tucked in with the golf mags. Golf balls, of course. And all kinds of paint, including that butt-ugly color they used for the hallway Big Eddie has me painting tomorrow. Brushes, lawn feed, garden hoses, crack fill, sealant, plaster. You know, standard repair stuff.”
“Seems Edward Baskin is a regular jack of all trades,” I said.
“Yeah, but nothing gets done.” Dylan snorted. “He’s a slack Jack.”
“Find out anything else of interest today?” I said this through a yawn. A powerful one. It had been a late night, I’d been woken up early. And, well, just the running around and tension and mental alertness the day had required.
“Nothing concrete. Nothing absolute….” He pulled a hand over his stubbled chin. He looked down at his hands then back to me again. Whatever it was, Dylan didn’t want to tell me. Which meant, of course, it had to be bad news.
“Come on. Out with it.”
“You’re mother’s been selling off the rights to your father’s songs. She sold the rights to six in the last four months.”
My eyes shot wide. My jaw dropped. It was one thing for mother to get royalties for songs, but to out-and-out sell the rights? This didn’t sound like Mother.
I had heard a remake of one of Dad’s old songs on an FM station about a month ago. I hadn’t liked it. And I hadn’t mentioned it to Mother for it was always my understanding that she approved or disapproved who performed his work.
And why hadn’t she told me about it? At least it explained the big deposits to her bank account Dylan had discovered.
“Another thing. Everyone thinks your mother is guilty.”
“Everyone?”
He shrugged. “Nearly. Not Mona Roberts. But nobody else has a kind thing to say about your mother. No one. Harriet Appleton is especially nasty toward her.”
“Fuck.” I shook my pillowed head. “What is it with people? Why are they so quick to jump on a bandwagon? To gang up and kick someone when she’s down? Well, I’m just going to have to do a little kicking myself. You just—”
“Sshhh! Quiet, Dix.” With a roll off the bed and a thump of his feet on the floor, he was standing between the motel room bed and the window. He gave a quick nod to the bedside lamp and I quickly snapped it off, then joined him at the window.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear….
But Lance-a-Lot with net in hand, skimming the pool for debris. Only, not the Lance-a-Lot I was expecting. Gone were the happy Speedos. Instead, Lance was wearing loose fitting cargo pants, a sweatshirt two sizes too big hanging low. He even donned bug-eyed glasses. Oh my God, and Velcro shoes!
Two young women walked by him. I recognized the first — Rosie Sinatra — the gal who’d been at the desk when Dylan checked in the other night. Her friend I didn’t recognize, but she wore the same beige shorts and pink short-sleeve blouse as Rosie, so I assumed she too was on staff at the Goosebump Inn. The girls walked by Lance. But they didn’t just walk by. They gave him a hella wide berth. Lance didn’t so much as glance up at either of them.
“What’s going on?” I whispered to Dylan.
“Ah, you recognize him too! I thought you might not, considering the change in his….”
“Attire?” I offered.
“Yeah, we’ll go with that.”
“So, Lance-a-Lot, aka Lance Devinney, has himself another job, huh? Cleaning pools on the side.”
“Yeah, Rosie says he does a shitload of pools around. Freelances. She says he’s kind of creepy. Never says a word. Never looks at anyone. Just comes in, does his job, and drives away.”
The fact that Lance cleaned pools in addition to his diving work didn’t strike me as strange, but the rest of it did. “Why would he compose himself so differently?” I asked. “Why act so differently in the two places? Why dress it up for the ladies at the Wildoh and dress down so for the younger crowd?”
Dylan shrugged. He dropped the curtain back
into place. I sat down on the bed. “Maybe he’s just into older women.”
Oh, fuck me!
“Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that,” Dylan sputtered. “I mean, a younger man and an older woman. Not that you’re older as in ‘older’ older. Just thinking maybe Lance liked the really old ones. Not the … older ones. Not that you’re, like, older….” He cleared his throat.
Cleared it again (and oh I bit down on the you’re-off-the-hook grin that threatened to break).
“So,” he said, changing the subject by the best means on earth. “Let’s get to work on this.” He withdrew the white board from the pile of supplies in the corner. Of all the handy dandy gadgets we’d brought, this — a tool for our minds — was still the one we turned to most.
And so we did again.
Hours later, we had six dozen stick people, lines crossed in and crossed out, diagrams that got down right rude by times (well, Dylan was the one who handed me the marker). We’d drawn up a dozen scenarios. Tens of possibilities. A few possible theories.
It was a start. A damn good start.
“Sleep over, Dix.”
Normally, this would have gotten a jolt out of me. But when Dylan muttered the words at around two in the morning, the look on his bleary eyes told me sex was the farthest thing from his mind. And mine, by this point. Plus, I knew I’d wake Mrs. P up if I went back to Mother’s. She’d told me to sleep over here. And she did pack my PJs….
He nodded to a clunky looking chair in the corner. “I’ll sleep there if you’d feel more comfortable.”
I glanced over to the world’s most uncomfortable looking contraption. Dylan wouldn’t get a wink of sleep on that, and I sure as hell wouldn’t sleep there.
“We can share the bed.”
“You sure?”
My heart sped. My mind shifted in a hundred different directions at once. Then braked in safety. “But like you said, Dylan … it’s complicated.”
“I said it’s complicated right now.”
Yeah, he had.
I grabbed the PJ bag and headed to the bathroom. You know, Mrs. P is tough as nails. Make no mistake about it. But sometimes she can be kind of, well, nice. Like taking the spaghetti over to Mona. Packing a goodie basket for Dylan. Packing my toothbrush and toothpaste and….
