Tough Customer: A Novel

by Sandra Brown

  "I can't account for that. Maybe Ben was sitting in the chair reading, maybe he was on the toilet, maybe he was ... I don't know what he was doing because I didn't see him after we went upstairs, said goodnight, and retired to our separate rooms."

  "On your bed, the covers had been pulled back."

  "Nyland, what are you getting at?" Dodge asked.

  Neither she nor Ski responded. She didn't know why this was such a sticking point, but she wanted to eliminate it as an issue between her and the deputy. "I turned down the bed before I went into the bathroom to shower."

  Dodge said, "What's the deal with the beds? In fact, what difference does it make if she and Lofland were screwing their brains out? The important thing is that this jerk-off Starks--"

  "I know what the important thing is." Ski angrily cut him off but without shifting his gaze away from Berry's.

  Dodge fired back. "Then why are you harping on the sleeping arrangements?"

  "Her relationship with Lofland might relate to Starks's motive."

  "She's told you what their relationship is," Dodge argued. "Now can we move on?"

  But Ski didn't look like he was prepared to move on, or to go anywhere, until he was completely satisfied on this point.

  "Ben and I had a meaningless affair years ago," she said. "Nothing happened here yesterday or last night except what I've told you."

  "Okay. Fine. Great. I'm glad that's cleared up," Dodge said. "Nyland, you happy now?"

  Ski didn't flinch.

  Berry took a deep breath. "In answer to your question of earlier today--"

  "Berry."

  "Dodge, sit down," Caroline said.

  "She has rights. She doesn't have to say anything else."

  "Maybe she wants to."

  Berry heard them, but only with half an ear. Ski's focus was riveted on her, and she couldn't escape it. "In answer to your earlier question, I was fully clothed during dinner. I undressed only to get into the shower. It was that female EMT who suggested I might want to put something on. Before she called my attention to it, I hadn't realized that I was still naked."

  CHAPTER

  11

  THIS WAS DAVIS COLDARE'S LUCKY NIGHT.

  "But not here where somebody might walk past and see us." Lisa Arnold removed his hand from between her thighs, pushed him off her, and sat up, pulling her tank top back into place. "In fact, not in the backseat at all. That is so retro."

  Davis, his erection throbbing, his brain foggy with lust, couldn't immediately think of a suitable place other than his car in which to have carnal knowledge of Lisa Arnold. "Uh ... I don't--"

  "A motel." Primly she readjusted her denim skirt to cover the area Davis had been exploring. It wasn't virgin territory.

  "Motel?" he echoed stupidly. The concept didn't click because of the sensory clutter inside his head.

  Lisa opened the car door and got out. "Just drive. I'll tell you where to go."

  She had already switched to the passenger seat by the time Davis's cerebral synapses fired. Grimacing, he tucked himself back into his underwear, then, holding up his jeans with his left hand, got out of the backseat and into the front behind the wheel. He started the car and navigated it through the lanes of the drive-in theater, which was open only during the summer months, and where tonight a double feature of slasher movies was playing. Like Lisa and him, most people in the parked cars hadn't come to watch the films.

  When the theater exit spilled them onto the highway, Lisa instructed that he turn left and reminded him to switch on his headlights. She reached across the console and slid her hand inside his jeans, squeezing him through his underwear. "Don't lose this before we get there."

  "Not a chance," he panted. She began stroking him, and his eyes crossed, making it difficult to keep the center yellow stripe of the two-lane highway in focus.

  "Do you have condoms?" she asked.

  "Uh..."

  "If you don't, I do. But from now on, it's your responsibility to bring them, okay?"

  "Okay." He agreed--he would have agreed to anything--when actually all he heard was from now on, which implied a future of sexual encounters.

  "Just up there on the right," she said. "I don't know the name of it, but it's got a raccoon on the sign."

  He knew the place. The run-down motor court had been there for as long as he could remember, probably much longer than he'd been alive. He'd driven past it countless times without giving it a thought. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined he would be coming here with Lisa Arnold, the girl with the most promising put-out reputation in Merritt High School.

  He pulled up to the lighted office, where a red neon Vacancy sign blinked off and on. Getting a room might cost him every penny he'd earned mowing lawns this week, but he shot one look across at Lisa and figured if it cost two weeks' income, it would be worth it to get on her. Guys who'd been with her said a blow job was practically guaranteed. But since she had insisted on someplace other than the backseat, maybe she was planning on doing more than her standard b.j. Thinking of the possibilities made his mind reel.

  "Can you walk with this?" She tugged on him playfully, and he moaned. If she made him come too soon, he'd die of mortification and then he'd kill her for spoiling it. Giggling at his obvious discomfort, she said, "Guess not. Give me forty bucks."

  She released him. He raised his hips off the seat and braced his feet against the floorboard so he could wedge his hand into the pocket of his jeans to get his wallet. He pulled out two twenties, which she plucked from his hand. Shooting him a cheeky grin over her shoulder, she got out. As she walked toward the office, he watched her ass, barely covered by her skirt, covered not at all by her thong, as he'd recently discovered. He groaned with desire.

  Working the check-in desk was a fat lady with stringy gray hair and a blue tattoo that covered the entirety of her flabby arm. Looking miffed for being drawn away from the magazine she'd been thumbing through, she grabbed Lisa's twenties and slapped a key onto the counter. The transaction took less than fifteen seconds.

  Davis was glad Lisa hadn't been required to sign a register or anything. He was gonna go through with this no matter what, but he'd just as soon his parents never found out about it. Lisa was the kind of girl his dad--his mom, too, during one especially embarrassing conversation--had warned him to beware of.

  As Lisa got back into the car, her short skirt rode up her thighs, flashing him a glimpse of the heaven that awaited and obliterating from his mind parental lectures about common sense and morality. Banished by her wink were warnings about fatal diseases and unwanted pregnancies, either of which could destroy plans for a college baseball scholarship and, by extension, his life.

  "All set," she said. "Number eight. Straight ahead, on the end."

  He got the impression she'd been here before.

  He parked in front of room number eight. Lisa got out. As Davis alighted, he wondered if maybe he should pull his car around to the back of the building, where it couldn't be seen from the road. But his parents had gone to a card party at some friends' house tonight, and they lived on the opposite side of town. His parents wouldn't be driving past here on their way home.

  Still holding up his jeans with one hand, he stumbled toward the door, where Lisa was waiting. She handed him the room key. "Be a gentleman."

  "Yes, ma'am." He took the key from her and made several stabs at the doorknob, missing the keyhole each time.

  Lisa moved close and sandwiched his biceps between her fantasy-inducing breasts. She licked the rim of his ear and whispered, "I hope your aim improves once we get inside."

  He rammed the key into the slot and twisted it, unlocking the door. "Don't worry about my aim. I'll hit the target."

  "Oooh. Are we talking G-spot?"

  He pushed the door open and stepped into the room. He felt along the wall for the light switch. When he flipped it up and the light came on, the last thing Davis Coldare expected to see was the startled, disheveled man standing at the
side of the bed.

  Berry was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling of the guest bedroom, when Caroline tapped once on the door and asked permission to come in. As soon as she cleared the threshold, Berry asked, "Is he gone?"

  Caroline gave her daughter a wry smile. "He passed on dessert and coffee. But he couldn't have stayed even if he'd wanted to. He got a call on his cell phone and tore out of here. Dodge went with him."

  "They're a team now?"

  "Not exactly." Caroline folded a chenille throw and laid it across the arm of a chair, avoiding direct eye contact with Berry. "Dodge wanted to know the nature of the call, and when Ski told him it was official, Dodge said, 'Fine. Don't tell me. It can be a surprise when I get there.'

  "Ski pointed out that Dodge didn't know where he was going, and Dodge said he would after he followed him. I suppose Ski saw the futility of arguing. Dodge climbed into his SUV along with him, and away they went."

  Berry sat up. "Maybe the call was to tell him that Oren has been apprehended."

  "Let's hope." Caroline sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for her daughter's hand. She placed it palm to palm with hers and linked their fingers. "You're not yourself, Berry."

  "Me?" she exclaimed. "I've been thinking the same about you."

  "Good try, but that tactic didn't work when you were in middle school, and it doesn't work now. You can't redirect this conversation."

  "You've been onto my manipulation?"

  "Since you were old enough to exercise it. But I'm not sure manipulation is the correct word. It denotes some mean purpose. You were never mean, just extremely clever."

  "Not that clever. You caught on. And here I thought I was being so smart."

  "Smart you are." Caroline's tone changed, became softer, more serious. "Also unshakable and in command of your emotions. It's unlike you to fly off the handle the way you did with Ski."

  "'Ski'? 'Dodge'? I've never known you to get so chummy with men you've only just met. Although..."

  "You're doing it again. This isn't about me. It's about you."

  "Although," Berry continued stubbornly, "I believe you knew Dodge Hanley before today. And I'm not trying to divert the conversation away from me and my problems. We'll get to them, I promise.

  "But first, I insist on being brought into the loop, because, up to this point, I've been left out." She lay back down and stacked her hands behind her head. "I'm listening. Who is this guy? You met him before today. I know you did. Otherwise you'd be put off by his manner and vocabulary."

  Caroline sighed. "All right, I confess. I met Dodge in Houston a few years ago."

  "How?"

  "Through my friend, when she retained him to do some private investigating for her. She was uncomfortable with the whole idea. It seemed sordid, sleazy, a B-movie-type action to take. Dodge, being Dodge, made her even more apprehensive. So she wanted me to meet him and give her my honest opinion. Did he seem reputable? Worth his fee? That sort of thing. I had no experience in those matters, either, but she valued my judgment of people in general."

  "Which friend? Do I know her?"

  "Yes, but I can't tell you who it is."

  "How come?"

  "Because that would betray her confidence."

  "Did Daddy ever meet him? Dodge, I mean."

  Caroline laughed. "Goodness, no. Can you imagine the two of them even being in the same room?"

  Berry smiled. Her dad had been a slender man, not very tall, but so dignified that his modest stature went unnoticed. He was tidy and compact, soft-spoken, cultured, and genteel. The polar opposite of Dodge Hanley.

  Caroline was saying, "I didn't tell anyone, even Jim, about the straits my friend was in. It was a messy, humiliating situation."

  "Cheating husband?"

  "All I'll say is that she was desperate, or she would never have sought the services of a private investigator."

  Berry mulled over her mother's wording, then asked softly, "Is that why you sought his services? Do you regard my current situation as desperate?"

  "Not yet. He'll help keep it from becoming so."

  "He's a street fighter."

  "I'm sure."

  "Irreverent, disrespectful of authority, and beyond the pale."

  "I doubt he lets rules get in his way."

  "He's unrefined."

  "You should have seen him in Mabel's Tearoom."

  Berry laughed. "You took him to a tearoom?"

  "I had to meet him somewhere." She thought for a moment, then added, "Actually, he handled it with more aplomb than one would expect."

  "He's kinda cute," Berry said. "If you're into scruffy."

  "I hadn't thought of him in that way."

  Berry gave her mother a playful nudge. "Come on. He's cute. Admit it."

  "Some women might find him attractive."

  Berry grinned at the evasion, mainly because her mother was working so hard at being evasive.

  Following an acceptable period of grieving for her dad, Berry had encouraged her mother to start dating, especially when Caroline moved to Merritt, where no one had known her and her dad as a couple. The town had a large retirement-age population. There were a lot of unattached men of suitable age and means available.

  Caroline would hear none of it.

  "I'm done with that," she had said when Berry suggested she get back in circulation. "I had a good marriage. I had the love of my life. I will never have another."

  But Berry continued to hold out the hope that her mother would meet a man who would change her mind. She was beautiful and smart, lovely and fun. She had much to offer, and Berry hated the thought of her living the rest of her life as a single.

  "I like Dodge," Berry said now, almost expecting her mother to challenge the definitive statement.

  But she didn't. In fact, Caroline was quite earnest when she asked, "Do you?"

  "Yeah, I do. Warts and all. What I like best is that he makes no excuses for his warts."

  "Then I'm glad I made the decision to retain him."

  Worriedly, Berry pulled her lower lip through her teeth. "His purpose is damage control. Is that it?"

  "Partially. His investigative skills could also be useful to Ski."

  "If he'll use them."

  Caroline nodded pensively. "Men are territorial. But Ski strikes me as someone too intelligent to decline help when and if he needs it."

  Berry took one hand from behind her head and laid her forearm across her eyes. After a moment, she said, "The affair with Ben."

  "You're a grown woman, Berry. Well past having to account to me about your relationships."

  "Oh no?" Berry peered up at her from beneath her arm. "Isn't it you who's been giving me none too subtle hints that you'd like to have grandchildren before you're too old and decrepit to play with them?"

  Caroline smiled. "I still wish for grandchildren. But," she added with emphasis, "I also understand how important your career is to you, because mine was to me. Simultaneously building a career and raising a family can cause conflicts."

  "I haven't ruled out having a husband and children, Mother. My biological clock gongs whenever I see women my age with a toddler or two, husband smiling on with adoration. I'd like that very much.

  "But let me assure you, Ben Lofland wasn't a prospective life partner. He and I spent a few harmless nights together. Our affair was hardly worth the federal case that Deputy Nyland made of it."

  "He didn't make a federal case of it."

  "Close."

  "There must be a reason for his preoccupation with it."

  "He told you the reason. Oren's motive."

  Caroline settled an intuitive look on her, the kind that mothers specialize in.

  "What?" Berry demanded.

  "Nothing. Never mind."

  "What?"

  Caroline shook her head. "A wild thought. Groundless probably. Pardon the interruption. What were you saying?"

  Exasperated, knowing there was more than her mother was willing to say at the mom
ent, Berry tried to remember where she'd left off. "I refuse to wear a hair shirt because of those sleepovers."

  "The affair would have taken on less significance if you'd been up front about it."

  "I know," Berry admitted. "I should have come clean about it."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "Amanda. I didn't know if Ben had told her about us, but I was guessing that he hadn't. In which case, I didn't want to spring a past affair on her when she was having to cope with his getting shot, undergoing surgery, all that. I was afraid that, if I told Ski, it would open a can of worms, unnecessarily. I kept quiet to spare Amanda's feelings and to spare Ben trouble with the wife whom he loves and adores. So much for my good intentions. They blew up in my face."

  Caroline spoke quietly. "From here on, I advise you not to withhold anything from Ski."

  Berry lowered her arm and looked straight into her mother's eyes. "For instance, you think I should tell him about the phone call I placed to Oren the day before yesterday?"

  Caroline looked at her aghast. "Phone call?"

  "Thursday afternoon. Oren and I talked for several minutes."

  "I don't understand. You came here to escape him. Why on earth did you call him?"

  "To make amends."

  "For what, for heaven's sake?"

  Berry worked her way to the other side of the bed and swung her feet to the floor. Moving to the window, she looked out toward the lake, although all she could really see was her own reflection in the windowpane.

  "In order to explain, I have to back up," she said. "Do you remember-- Of course you remember," she said ruefully. "The day of my big blowup?"

  Caroline said nothing. Berry turned her head. Her mother was looking down at her hands. "You were upset, Berry. Justifiably upset. You didn't mean what you said."

  "Don't excuse the inexcusable, Mother. At the time I meant it."

  A co-worker had received a commendation from an account manager on the day the same manager had criticized some of Berry's work and had gone on to shoot down all her suggestions for correcting it.

  Stung and angry, she'd sought out her mother at her real estate office and, for half an hour, had vented her outrage. She'd cited how unfair the criticism of her work had been, how lackluster the praised campaign was. "Which only goes to show how lousy this manager's taste is!" she had exclaimed. "And I have to answer to him. My position in the company is dependent upon this bozo's crummy opinion."