Once Bitten

by Reinke, Sara

  “Thanks for coming, Bevi,” he said and meant it.

  She leaned over and kissed the corner of his mouth. When he’d fist started dating her, she’d worked in the ladies’ lingerie department at the Bealls department store in Boca Raton. He’d visited her there once on a day off from the police department in Miami. Tangled together, half-sprawled on a bench, half-tumbled to the floor, they’d made love in a dressing room stall like a pair of randy kids. Which is pretty much what they’d been—and the complete antithesis of how they were now. Bevi kissed him like you’d kiss an old friend, soft and sweet, adoring not passionate. And considering only a week earlier, she’d probably have been more inclined to punch him in the face, John considered this an upgrade.

  Sandy sidestepped, offering another clumsy wave and an awkward smile from the doorway as Bevi left. “I’m sorry,” she said again to John, looking sheepish.

  “It’s alright.”

  “I should have knocked.” She seemed to be going to a lot of trouble not to look at him directly in the face.

  “Sandy, it’s okay,” he said again.

  “It’s just…” He’d never seen her at a loss for words before. Or flustered. Or fidgety. And now she was all three, dancing from foot to foot in the doorway like a kindergartener in need of the bathroom.

  “You alright?” he asked, because it was cute but admittedly unnerving to see the ordinarily unflappable Sandy suddenly so…flapped.

  “I brought muffins,” Gracie Dodd declared, breezing across the threshold with a grin on her face, a plastic covered Tupperware tray in her hands. “Maureen, honey, here you are. I stopped by your room, but they told me you’d been discharged already.”

  “Discharged?” John blinked at Sandy.

  “Hi, sweetheart.” Gracie deposited the tray on his bedside table, then leaned over, kissing his cheek. “You’re looking so much better than the last time I saw you.”

  “Thanks, Gracie.”

  “You looked like warmed over shit then.”

  “Thanks, Gracie,” he said again, returning his gaze to Sandy, worried. “Discharged?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “They just wanted to keep me overnight for observation.”

  “She has some fractured ribs,” Gracie supplied. “The doctors were concerned after noting some bony crepitation in her initial exam.”

  “Some bony what?”

  “Crepitation,” Gracie said again. “Sandy said that’s a palpable or audible grinding typically resulting from a fracture, but can also occur…when did you say?” She glanced back at Sandy, who sighed.

  “When the bones’ protective articular cartilage is stripped, causing them to rub together,” she said, adding directly to John: “I’m fine.”

  When she’d ducked out in the hallway to escape the conversation, John glanced at Gracie. “They’re sure she’s okay? She’s not acting okay.”

  “She’s just been on edge ever since Harlowe arrived.” In a hushed tone, nearly a stage whisper, Gracie added solemnly, “I think they’re quarreling.”

  “He’s here?” John asked. “I thought he was in San Francisco.”

  “He was,” Gracie said. “I called to let him know what had happened. Then Sandy asked him to come. Said she needed to talk to him about something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” Gracie popped the lid off her Tupperware tray. “She didn’t say. And my intuition is off today.” She tapped her fingertip against her brow. “Sometimes it does that, you know, if there’s enough environmental interference—solar flares, electromagnetic fluctuations, radio transmitters nearby, that sort of thing.”

  John nodded as if he understood exactly what she was talking about, even though he didn’t have a clue.

  She turned, presenting him with a muffin. “Here you go. They’re still warm.”

  “You didn’t have to do this.” He accepted both the proffered pink paper napkin and oversized muffin. He should have remembered that Gracie couldn’t cook before he bit into it, but this realization escaped him until the moment the mouthful hit his tongue.

  “It’s made with Spam,” Gracie said brightly.

  He chewed very slowly.

  “And barbecue sauce.”

  John managed to swallow. “Wow,” he croaked, forcing a smile.

  “Do you need something to drink?” Gracie reached for his bedside pitcher.

  He tried not to nod too enthusiastically. “Yes, please.”

  After rinsing his mouth out with copious amounts of water, he politely employed his favorite childhood habit to avoid eating something he found repulsive, toying idly with the remains of his muffin, pinching it into small pieces. “Thanks for letting Sandy use your boat,” he said. “She saved my life out on Duvall Island. So I guess in a way, you did, too.” Even if you did just try to kill me with a Spam muffin.

  Gracie laughed. “Oh, it’s not my boat.”

  John blinked, bewildered. “Huh?”

  “It’s hers,” Gracie said. “She bought it four years ago, or was it five? Whenever she won the lottery, anyway.”

  All at once, John’s throat felt even drier than it had when he’d choked down the bite of muffin. “What?”

  He thought of the photograph he’d seen at Little Pink, of Gracie holding the oversized Price Is Right check. $81,000,000, that check had said. He’d counted the zeroes at least ten times to be certain.

  Four years, she’d said. He struggled with the math. How long ago had he hired her? He’d opened the agency right after moving to Big Sister, which had been three years ago.

  She won the lottery, then a year later, turned around and took a job pushing papers as some private dick’s secretary?

  Not his secretary, he told himself, in that moment realizing what a complete and oblivious idiot he really was. “His Girl Friday,” he whispered.

  “The boat was named the Fortune’s Folly when she first got it,” Gracie said. “I guess she had it for about a year or so, then decided to change it.”

  “But I thought…” John blinked owlishly at Gracie. “At Little Pink, I saw a picture of you with the lottery check.”

  “That?” Gracie laughed. “She let me pose with it. She didn’t get to keep it, you know. And when else would I have the chance to hold a check that size?”

  “But you own the Pink Palace. I just…I mean I thought…”

  “Oh, no, darling. That’s Maureen’s house. I was supposed to live at Little Pink, but she traded me.”

  “I found out I have megalophobia,” Sandy said from the doorway again. “The irrational fear of large things. That and hylephobia, the fear of materialism.”

  “I’m batraphobic,” Gracie told John happily. “I’m afraid of frogs.” To her daughter, she asked, “Would you like a muffin?”

  “No, thanks, Mom.”

  John had never heard Sandy refer to Gracie by anything other than her given name, and it clearly imparted some hidden message between the two women. Although Gracie’s bright expression didn’t falter, she didn’t push the matter of the muffin. Or any other. Still smiling, she turned to John and leaned over to kiss his cheek again.

  “When you’re out of here and feeling up to it, let me know. I’ll have you over for dinner,” she said.

  “Thanks, Gracie,” he said, even though after eating that bite of muffin, he knew he’d never be “up” to eating anything prepared by her hands again.

  When Gracie left, for the first time since he’d met Sandy, John felt uneasy to be alone with her. All of those zeroes kept rolling around in his head. Eighty-one million dollars.

  “You never told me you’d won the lottery,” he said finally.

  To which she replied, “Yes, I did.”

  “I think I would have remembered that.”

  Sandy closed the door and turned to him, hands on her hips. “Did you even read my resume when I applied for the job with you?”

  “Who puts that they won the lottery on their resume?”

  “I tho
ught it was something pertinent that potential employers should be aware of.” She crossed the room and sat in the chair Bevi had only recently vacated. “I never cashed any of the checks you gave me. Even the ones you thought would bounce.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  The Duh! look. “I didn’t need the money.”

  “I mean, why work for me?”

  “I like working for you,” she replied, looking somewhat hurt.

  “No, why would you want to work, period? It’s not like you have to. I mean, you’re worth…” God, it strained his mouth and boggled his mind to even say it. “Eighty-one million dollars.”

  “Actually, around one hundred and seven million,” Sandy replied. And because he gawked at her, mouth flapping ajar, she said, “I paid a big chunk in taxes right off the bat, but then made some good investments. Played the commodities market, traded up some stocks, bought some real estate. Anyway.” She shook her head. “That’s not the point.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No. The point is, I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve talked to Harlowe and I want to buy into your business.”

  John blinked. “What?”

  “We could be partners,” Sandy said. “I’d make sure you have the capital you need to run things the way you want to, the way you need to. We’d split the profits fifty-fifty, the work, too, and the bills. It wouldn’t be McMillan and Wife, but it would be a partnership still the same. Dodd and Harker Private Investigations.”

  “You talked to Harlowe about this?” he asked and when she nodded, he said, “That’s why you told him to come here all of the way from California? That was the big, important secret Gracie was talking about?”

  “What did you think? That I’d called him here to say I didn’t want to marry him anymore because I’ve fallen in love with you?”

  “What?” He blinked at her. “Of course not. What?” He managed a laugh. “That would be stupid.”

  “Yeah. Stupid.”

  They both stood there for a long moment, then she said, “The wedding’s still on. Harlowe’s going to keep his apartment in Miami, that’s all. He’ll be there in between his flights, and here on the island with me when he has longer stay-overs.” She stood, reaching into the back pocket of her shorts. “That is, if you accept my offer.”

  She pulled out a check that had been folded over in half and presented it to him. “What do you say?”

  He slipped the check from her hand, unfolded it and counted the zeroes. Then counted them again.

  “It’s a very reasonable offer,” she said, folding her arms. Which pushed her tits up nicely beneath the scooped neckline of her tank top, giving him a provocative eyeful of her cleavage.

  “Yeah, it is,” he said. “It’s more than reasonable.” Hating himself, having to force himself, he held the check back out to her. “I can’t accept this.”

  “I saved your life,” Sandy said. “You owe me.”

  He laughed. “I saved your life back.”

  “Yes, but then I saved yours again. So you still owe me.”

  “What the hell kind of logic is that?” he asked and she frowned at him. After a long moment, he lowered his hand—and the check—back to his lap. “Harker and Dodd Private Investigations,” he said.

  “Dodd and Harker,” she said. “We’ll be listed higher in the phone book.”

  “Harker and Dodd,” he said again. “It’s more euphonic that way.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, then paused, thought about it, and shut it again. “You’re right.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s quite dulcet,” she said. “Contrapuntal and symbiotically congruous.”

  “Mellifluous, if you will,” he said.

  She studied him for a long moment. “So do we have a deal?”

  “What happens when you and Harlowe get married?”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “What would the agency’s name be?” he asked. “Can’t be Harker and Dodd after that.”

  “Oh.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “Then we’d have to change it again to Harker and Harlowe.”

  John blinked at her. “That’s his last name?”

  The Duh! look. “Yes.”

  “What’s his first name?”

  “J,” she replied.

  “Jay,” he repeated.

  “No.” Sandy shook her head. “Not Jay, like blue jay. J. As in the letter J.”

  “Just the letter J?”

  “Just the letter J.”

  “What’s it short for?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Sandy shrugged. “Jay, I guess.”

  Defeated, he slumped back against his pillows and sighed. “Why do I even ask?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea.” Sandy folded her arms, regarded him impatiently. “So do we have a deal?”

  “Will you stop talking if I say yes?”

  Sandy nodded, smiling in satisfaction. “I’ll see you at the office once they’ve discharged you.”

  “Sandy?”

  She’d turned to go, but paused now, glancing at him.

  “Did you kiss me earlier? When you were in here before, when I first woke up?”

  A ghost of a smile hooked the corner of her mouth. “That,” she said, “would be taking our relationship to a whole new and entirely inappropriate level.”

  He studied her for a moment. Most specifically, he looked at her mouth, the soft, full curves of her lips.

  “Yeah,” he murmured as she left. “I guess it would.”

  EPILOGUE

  Lucy Weston’s ashes were scattered into the Gulf of Mexico. A somber gathering joined Ruth Weston on the flybridge of His Girl Friday for the service, which was short, secular and to the point.

  Less than a week had passed since John had left the hospital. Things in life were slowly but surely returning to normal. Ethel Merriwether’s new dog Twinkles continued to carry the animosity torch in its predecessor, Nutsy’s absence, barking at John at every given opportunity. Wilma continued to guilt-trip and nag him. Even Davis Monroe had groused at him in his usual, surly fashion when John had tried to follow up with him on a minor criminal investigation he’d been contracted to do.

  His relationship with Sandy also seemed back on its customary track. Having her as his business partner really hadn’t proven much different than as an employee, he’d come to discover. She still answered the phones, used an untwisted coat hanger to fix the copier when it jammed, brought him coffee each morning and fussed at him for waiting around for Dick Halloway to call.

  Which had actually occurred a bit more frequently. John had been more than happy to hand off the brunt of the credit for Boyd Wilder’s discovery to the Sister Islands Police Department, however undeserved, if only to avoid the ensuing limelight. But to Monroe’s credit, he had mentioned John’s involvement a time or two, apparently just enough for Dick Halloway to notice.

  John hadn’t mentioned the kiss again to Sandy and had pretty much convinced himself that it had, in fact, been just a dream. He felt certain there was something Freudian to it like that somewhere.

  For her part, along with the ubiquitous pair of Starbucks Venti bolds with no room every morning, now Sandy’s desk was cluttered with bridal magazines and catalogs. She spent hours on end chattering happily into her cell phone with wedding planners, florists, caterers and travel agents.

  “What do you think?” Two days earlier, she’d presented him with a pair of tri-fold brochures, one advertising a vacation in Yellowstone National Park, the other one in Albuquerque.

  “Uh,” he’d replied, bewildered.

  “Which one for our honeymoon?” Sandy had asked. “Mine and Harlowe’s.”

  “I thought you’d want to go someplace exotic, like Greece or Rome. Or, knowing you, Siberia.”

  “Oo!” Her face lit up at this last, but the excitement was short-lived. “Harlowe doesn’t want to go anywhere overseas. He has this thing about flying over large bodies of water.”
r />   “Thing?”

  “He won’t do it. It scares him.”

  Hating himself for going there—knowing better—John went anyway. “But he’s going to live on an island with you.”

  The Duh! look. “And I own a boat so I can take him back and forth from the mainland.”

  “That doesn’t bother him?”

  “It’s not the water that scares him. It’s the flying over it.”

  “But he’s a pilot. How can he be afraid of flying?”

  To which she’d replied, “Over major land masses, he’s not.”

  Michael Gough had flown in from Los Angeles to join them for Lucy Weston’s burial at sea. After Ruth had opened the small ceramic vase that had contained Lucy’s remains, turning them loose to the wayward wind, Sandy stayed topside with her, offering quiet comfort, while John and Gough, the only other two in attendance, ducked below.

  Together, the men stood at the stern taffrail, watching the sunset against the rippled plane of the sea.

  “This is a nice boat,” Gough remarked at length, taking a swig from a bottle of beer John had passed to him moments earlier.

  “Yeah.” John tipped his head back, downing a generous swallow. “She’s got a seventeen-foot, two-inch beam and draws about a five-inch draft. Her average cruising speed’s about twenty knots, but with her twin six-ten engines, you could top her out at twenty-three-plus.”

  Gough glanced at him, impressed. “Wow. You must spend a lot of time onboard.”

  John took another drink of beer. “Never been on it before in my life.”

  “Thank you for finding my daughter,” a tearful Ruth Weston had told him earlier, clutching at his hands while struggling proudly not to break down into the ragged sobs that trembled in her shoulders and threatened to escape her at any moment. “For bringing her back to me.”

  He’d given back her money. Not because he’d been able to afford to now, thanks to Sandy, but because it had been the right thing to do. Boyd Wilder had already taken too much away from Ruth, cost her too much, too dearly. John hadn’t wanted to add her life’s savings to the debit. As he’d pointed out to Bevi once during their divorce proceedings, he might have been a son of a bitch, but he wasn’t a heartless one.