Kiss Me, Kelly

by Mary Kay McComas

  As if everything came together for her at once, she suddenly gasped. “I was the trap.” She paused in disbelief. “I was the trap to catch Tommy.”

  The truth made it hard for Elgin to swallow. He was silent, feeling her anger and resentment grow, like steam inside a pressure cooker.

  “Talk to me, Elgin,” she said in a deceptively quiet voice. “Tell me I’m jumping to the wrong conclusion. Tell me you didn’t use me to set Tommy up.”

  When he could finally speak, he couldn’t tell her what she wanted to hear. “I’d tried everything else. Del Rio was suspicious of me from the start. I had them split up and got myself assigned as Tommy’s partner. He was friendlier and more receptive to me, but they’re a tight group. They stay in pairs and don’t meet together on a regular basis. It could have been months before they met again, and Tommy was very careful to play everything by the book and close to his chest when we were together.” He paused. “He did talk about you, though.”

  “Me?”

  “You, The Library, your grandfather, growing up in this neighborhood, general stuff.”

  “But when he mentioned me, you figured I was in on it.”

  “No.” He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. She was mad and wary of every word that came out of his mouth. His chest was tight with the horrible feeling that what they’d had between them would never be the same, that he was losing her for real and for good.

  “I didn’t know what to think about you, until the night we met. After that, I figured you didn’t know anything about it…consciously.”

  “But I knew about it subconsciously?”

  “I thought you might have heard or observed something, but couldn’t connect it with anything. I’d already set up the Hart bust and didn’t need you, anyway.”

  “You let Hart back out on the streets if he promised to say that you stole some of his money.”

  “Sort of. The bust was going down, anyway, and Joey was going to fall hard this time. The Drug Enforcement Agency had him by the bal—book. They told me about it, then agreed to let me offer Hart a ten-year reduction on his sentence if he’d scream thief for me. The day he was released, he walked right back into D.E.A. hands.”

  “So, what did all that prove?”

  “Nothing. We figured—”

  “We?”

  “My superiors and I figured,” he said patiently, “that if Tommy and Del Rio thought I was dirty, they’d approach me and either let themselves in on my scam or let me in on theirs.”

  “And did they?”

  “No. They wouldn’t take the bait. If anything they were more suspicious. But I did notice that my spending so much time with you made them both a little nervous, especially Del Rio. That’s when things started getting complicated.”

  “You planned to romance me, buy me expensive gifts, then take me down to Atlantic City and blow a ton of money, knowing I’d eventually realize where the money came from. And knowing how I felt about crooked cops, you figured I’d come running home to tell Tommy what a sleaze-ball cop you are.” She paused, then thoughtfully added, “I can still testify to that, if you want.”

  Her poison dart hit dead center—his heart. It occurred to him that it would be futile to explain any more to her, but he had to try.

  “I didn’t feel I had a choice, Kelly. You know cops better than most cops do. I kept telling myself that once it was over and everything was explained, you’d understand. You’d be able to feel in your heart what had been real and what had been part of the setup.”

  She looked away. He sensed her moving farther from him and felt that a piece of him was dying.

  Reasonably certain the roof wouldn’t cave in under his weight and he wouldn’t slip off, he shifted closer to her. Sliding an arm around her, he turned her face toward his. “Kelly, don’t do this. Please. I love you.”

  Her gaze met his. The ocean wind had picked up and blew her hair across her face. With utter tenderness he tucked the strands behind her ear.

  “Doesn’t any of it make sense to you?” he asked. “Was I supposed to waste the man-hours, the money, the energy that had been invested? Do you see any other way I could have done it? Can you ever forgive me for involving you in this?”

  Kelly could hardly see his face, but she heard and felt his pain. It was similar to her own. And, unfortunately for the part of her that felt outraged and maltreated, she did understand. Her instincts had been right about him all along. He was an honest, decent cop. He’d done what he thought was best in the situation. She could even recall moments when she’d perceived an aura of secrecy and regret about him, and she hadn’t questioned it. Just as he’d sent her signals of his true and genuine feelings for her, and she hadn’t questioned them either.

  “You could have told me the truth,” she said at last.

  “You mean you’d have found all this easier to believe, if I’d told you yesterday or the day before.” It wasn’t a question and it didn’t require a comment.

  “I won’t help you frame Tommy,” she said softly, silently admitting her defeat as the hostility and bitterness slipped away. “I know him and I know he hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  The air Elgin had been anxiously holding whooshed out in a loud sigh. With his arms around her, he rested his head on hers and said, “Babe, you don’t know Tommy anymore. You said as much yourself. You love him. You’ll always love him, because your love is blind.”

  “It is not. I see faults in people.”

  “And if you love them, you accept their faults. That’s as it should be. And greed is simply a fault, until it’s acted on illegally. Then it becomes a crime.”

  “He didn’t steal anything,” she insisted, raising her head to face him again, to show him the strength of her conviction.

  He smiled gently. “You’re not even going to consider the possibility, are you?”

  “No.”

  “For the same reason you didn’t tell him about me.”

  She remained closemouthed, chin up, and defiant. Her pride still wouldn’t let her say it. So, he said it for her.

  “You love me.” No response. “You love me, don’t you, Kelly?”

  She couldn’t see it, but in his voice she heard that stupid smile of his, the smile that could turn her insides into a mass of quivering jitters. She looked away again.

  “My offer still stands,” he said, tempting her. “Kiss me, Kelly. Then tell me you don’t love me. Tell me to get lost and I will. No fuss, no muss.”

  With all her heart she wished that this time she could call his bluff. And with all her heart she knew she couldn’t. That same heart wanted to cry with happiness, and at the same time reach out and hurt him for letting them get so dangerously close to losing what they needed most. Each other.

  “I hate you, Elgin Baker,” she murmured before her lips touched his. She opened her mouth and surrendered herself entirely to his passion. She pulled him close, her arms holding tight, promising never to let go. “I hate you more than anyone else I’ve ever known, or ever hope to know.”

  He pressed her back against the wall that supported the awning, his hand on her breast. He brushed aside the cotton kimono and lowered the thin, frail strap of her teddy in one feverish movement. Her arms and fingers tingled as he trailed kisses down her throat to her breast.

  “I hate you so much,” she gasped as he sucked, sending the rest of her thoughts and emotions reeling into the turbulent atmosphere.

  The wind blew hard. Lightning ripped the sky, slashing and roaring until the clouds tore and spilled their rain upon the earth.

  “Ever been kissed hard enough to make rain before?” Elgin asked, laughing, as they scrambled in off the ledge.

  “No,” she said, moving right back into his arms the moment he turned to face her. “Let’s make some more.”

  Light from the next room cast a pale shadow over her face, but he could see the joy and desire in her expression.

  “We could have ended the heat wave a couple of d
ays ago,” he said, sliding the wet cotton robe from her body. He touched her shoulders and the fullness of her breasts as if they were the first female body parts he’d ever seen. He kissed her for her beauty and for the softness of her skin. He kissed her for her eagerness. “Forgiveness would have been too much to hope for, if I’d made love to you as part of a lie. I would have scrubbed the whole deal before I let that happen.”

  “I know,” she said, truly believing that he would have.

  He kissed her for her understanding, for accepting the truth about him and for the woman she was. Then he kissed her again, just because he wanted to.

  “You forgot this last night,” he said, pulling a strand of fragile gold links from his pocket, dangling it in front of her eyes. Before she had time to wonder or ask, he went on. “The car, food, casino, clothes, all the rest were part of the scam. It’s all on the expense account. But this wasn’t. I wrote a personal check.” He noted the soft, sentimental expression on her face and fastened the gold chain around her neck once more. “On my personal account for this personal gift, from me to you. Please take it, and know that it wasn’t all a lie.”

  “And you won’t lie to me again?” she asked, wrapping her arms around his neck, waiting for his answer before she kissed him.

  He shook his head slowly. “No. Never.”

  There were no secrets. No mysteries. They still had differences in opinions and surprises in personality to uncover, but they weren’t experimenting or testing the ground they wanted to explore with each other anymore. They were committed. Any further discoveries they made would come to the surface gradually and be unearthed with care and gentleness, handled as treasures.

  Their loving was like a thrill ride. Fast, furious, and rapacious, as words of devotion tumbled from their lips. Hope bloomed inside of them like wildflowers, and the sound of the rain echoed the rhythm of their heartbeats. Zephyrs wafted over them like nature’s fingers to bless their nakedness. Then slowly, sensuously, they explored the depths and heights of their passion, the strength of their emotions, the limits of their senses. Together as one at last, they left all of the world behind, catapulting themselves out among the stars, bodies, minds, and souls irrevocably linked, and ecstasy exploding between them, forging a bond they could never break.

  With her body curled across Elgin’s chest and her legs entwined with his, Kelly thought she might have passed away sometime recently and her soul found all the gladness and contentment it had been searching for. She pulled a lazy foot up along the long, sinewy contours of his legs and outlined his broad, muscular shoulder with one hand, then smiled and sighed in awe at his realness. It hadn’t been an out-of-body experience after all, she decided with a great deal of satisfaction.

  “How’s the head?” he asked, his voice groggy.

  “What head?” she asked, in much the same manner.

  “Your head, knothead,” he said lightly, though he hadn’t missed the other bruises scattered over her long, slim body. Every one he’d found had brought murder to mind and intensified his resolve to cherish and protect her.

  “I can hardly feel it,” she said, wondering if she would when the bliss wore off, or if she’d discovered a new analgesic.

  “You wanna tell me the truth now, or are you going to stick to your accident story?”

  She raised her head and looked down at his face, amazed by his omniscience.

  “I always make sure my dates get home safely,” he said, his expression serious. “I had you followed last night.”

  “Then they parked down the street and scared me half to death,” she told him, not really angry. She was beginning to suspect that if Elgin talked long enough, he could explain all the unsolved mysteries of the universe. Certainly those in her universe.

  “Shortly after you paid off the cabbie,” he said, “a man was seen running from the rear of this building. Shortly after that, an ambulance arrived to take you away. Bailey and your grandfather followed by car.” He grinned at her. “Sounds a little suspect to me, babe. You wanna change your story?”

  She told him everything she could remember, except the part where she suspected him of trying to silence her. She included the phone call and even recalled for him the disgusting smell of the man’s hands.

  “He told me to stay away from you and to keep my mouth shut or he’d come back,” she said, reliving every second of the attack but feeling safe in the telling of it, so long as his arms were around her. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut about.” She frowned. “I wonder if he knows you’re here?”

  “It doesn’t matter if he knows or not,” Elgin said, pressing her head to his chest. He hugged her tight, knowing she could have died on those steps, or just as easily have been shot to death. “He won’t be able to catch you alone again.”

  The words were meant to reassure her, but they were more of a personal vow for Elgin. The man wouldn’t be able to catch Kelly anywhere, ever, because Elgin planned to break his legs. Pure hatred oozed from his pores as a slide show of the attack, of the bruises on her body, and of life without Kelly, played in his mind and inspired all his worst urges.

  “But why me?” she asked. “I don’t know any secrets. I don’t even have any enemies, that I know of.” She stopped to ponder the possibilities, then propped herself up on her elbows, a twinkle in her eyes. “You don’t happen to have a big burly girlfriend hidden away someplace, do you?”

  “The only big burly girlfriend I have isn’t dumb enough to throw herself down the stairs.”

  The next morning, Elgin left late for work but early enough to miss Bailey and Mike Branigan. He wasn’t about to fight two old men for Kelly’s honor, when he had a few younger men to fight for her life.

  Kelly, on the other hand, was concerned about another fight altogether—the one she planned to take on to get Tommy Shaw’s name removed from Elgin’s list of suspects. Sleuthing came naturally to this cop’s daughter…once she set her mind to it.

  “Angie? Hi, I just thought I’d call and let you know, you can call off the wake. I’m going to live.”

  “Oh, Kelly honey. I was so worried about you. I was going to come over yesterday, but Tommy said you were supposed to rest. I called Mike a couple of times in the afternoon and he said you were sleeping and then I got Mrs. Shoal to agree to sit with the kids so I could come over after supper, but Del Rio called Tommy and said Detective Baker had come into the bar and told Mike he’d watch you through the night, and I figured you wouldn’t want that interrupted, even if you were sleeping.”

  Angie drew her second breath. “I want to hear all about everything. The accident, Detective Baker—isn’t he a dream?—Atlantic City, what your face looks like. Tommy says you look like hell, but what does he know? I spent four hours in the beauty shop Monday and he didn’t even notice. Hear what I’m saying? Men don’t know hell from four hours in the beauty shop. I swear, Kelly, if a man had to go through what we women have to go through…”

  During Angie’s third wind, she talked about the children and their education, several of their playmates and their unmindful mothers. By the time she got around to the house and the cars, Kelly was primed to fire.

  “Well, which is worse?” she asked. “Having to deal with a landlord, or being a home owner and having to deal with everything?”

  “Lord. You would not believe it; honey. If it’s not one thing it’s another.” Angie ran down the list of repairs that needed to be done to the house and cars. “I try to keep up with it all, I really do, but it’s almost impossible and Tommy’s working all the time and when he’s not, I don’t want him to be fixing the plumbing or painting or changing the oil in the car. I’d rather have him getting to know his kids.”

  “Tommy used to spend half his life under a car, just for fun.”

  “Not anymore. Those days are long gone. Now we pay to have the things done, if I can’t manage myself. Money’s tight, but I can’t bear to see Tommy working himself to death. He’d do it, too, if
I let him. He’d take on two or three extra jobs so we could have it all.”

  “I know. Of course, if it hadn’t been for the money your aunt left you, it probably would have taken him a lot longer to save up for the down payment on the house. But he’d have made it happen eventually.”

  There was an atypical silence on the line.

  “What money? My aunt didn’t leave me any money,” Angie said, in a curious tone of voice.

  “Angie.” Kelly laughed at her friend’s uncharacteristic lapse in memory. “You did. You told me so yourself. I—I don’t know how much. You didn’t tell me and you seemed a little uneasy talking about it, so I didn’t ask. I remember thinking that it was sweet of you to feel self-conscious because you inherited a bunch of money from your aunt. But I was really happy for you, what with the baby on the way and all…You remember, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I remember, but she didn’t leave me any money.”

  “She did. I remember the day. I watched Tony and Alicia while you and Tommy went to the lawyer’s office. You said she’d left you a little something in her will and had to be there for the reading.” Kelly’s voice was insistent. The muscles in her chest felt heavy and stiff all at once.

  She heard a derisive snort, then Angie said, “A little something is right. You know how crazy my aunt Fay was. I got an album full of pictures of relatives I’ve never seen, a Tiffany crystal salad bowl, and a few pieces of gaudy costume jewelry that I gave to Alicia. My sister got another album of strangers, a set of pewter candlesticks, and Aunt Fay’s violin. There wasn’t much money to begin with, but the rest of her stuff was sold and everything went to the S.P.C.A. Tommy was in stitches, he thought it was so funny, but I was embarrassed and I told him to keep quiet about it because Aunt Fay was the sweetest old thing—even though she was a little odd—and I didn’t want all her neighbors and friends thinking she was some nut case like you read about in National Slander.”

  Angie went on with a litany of her relatives who were as strange as Aunt Fay, but not nearly so sweet and saintly. Kelly hardly listened. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Tommy was innocent of any wrongdoing. What worried her, was how to prove it to Elgin. With the inheritance theory no longer viable, she chewed her lower lip for another explanation. Investments? Loans from his or her parents? A second job he hadn’t told her about? The list was short, but she did have possibilities and the determination to clear Tommy’s name.