by Kelly, Diane
The girl on the horse circled by, her arms hanging limp by her sides, her cheek smushed up against the pole. She looked bored out of her skull. “Can I get off now?”
Randy glanced up at the wall clock. “But it’s only been twenty minutes!” He cut me a smile with those perfect teeth of his before pushing the button to stop the ride.
The carousel glided to a smooth stop. The girl climbed down from her horse, hopped off the ride, and promptly emptied her stomach on the floor with a resounding urp. Her mother left the mess and tossed an irritated look in Randy’s direction, as if the girl getting sick was his fault.
“I was only trying to treat the kid to some extra time on the ride!” he called. “Give you your money’s worth!”
I gave Randy a pat on the shoulder. “No good deed goes unpunished.” Pulling my walkie-talkie from my belt, I summoned a custodian.
An elderly grandmother with three grandkids milling about her stepped up to his podium.
“Welcome to Jism Trail Mall,” Randy said. “I’m the Randy wrangler. How many tickets would you like?”
The woman’s wrinkled face puckered. “Who did you say you were?”
“Randy the wrangler,” he replied, giving me a surreptitious wink.
I shook my head. The guy was a hoot, but if he didn’t watch it he just might find himself getting fired.
The woman looked over at me and Brigit. “Wait a minute. Aren’t you that policewoman from TV? The one who got tuna salad in her hair?”
I sighed loudly. “Yes. That was me.”
Though I half-expected Randy to snicker, he actually came to my defense instead. “Officer Luz saved a lot of lives. We owe her.”
What a nice thing to say. I gave him a smile. “Thanks, Randy.”
“You know it.” He pointed both index fingers at me in a playful gesture. “That whole ‘Tunabomber’ thing,” he added, leaning toward me. “What a stupid moniker, huh?”
I rolled my eyes. “Agreed.”
I wondered how long it would take for me to live the tuna salad thing down. If anything, that stupid viral video only reinforced my determination.
Come hell, high water, or tuna salad, I’d catch that bomber.
FORTY-SEVEN
FIRST DATE
Brigit
As Megan pulled her cruiser into Forest Park, Brigit stuck her nose out the window and scented the air. Sniff-sniff.
Her tail began to wag of its own accord. He was here. The dog from the courtyard she’d shared the barbecue with. With any luck, maybe their partners would take them out for a nice lunch. Brigit wouldn’t mind some more of that cheese-covered steak.
FORTY-EIGHT
DAMAGE UNDONE
The Rattler
He made his way across the courtyard, surprised at how normal everything looked. Amazing how quickly damage could be repaired when dollars were at stake. But when it was lives? Forget it. After all, look how long it had taken the government to react to Hurricane Katrina.
Though he had attended private schools growing up, he remembered hearing about the influx of students at Fort Worth’s public schools after the devastating hurricane hit New Orleans. He’d gone with his mother and her church-lady friends to deliver bedding, groceries, and toys to the displaced families living in area shelters.
It struck him as infinitely unfair that the wealthy had been able to easily flee the deadly storm while the poor, the most vulnerable, had been left behind to face the storm head-on, to deal with the subsequent flooding. To die. It also struck him as infinitely insensitive and hypocritical the way his mother and her friends quoted Bible verses, offering linguistic comfort to the refugees, then turned around the instant they were out of earshot and began gossiping about and judging the very people they’d allegedly come to help. He realized then that helping others was only a by-product of, and not the purpose of, their acts of purported generosity. More than anything, the self-absorbed, image-conscious women wanted to impress one another with how much they could spare.
They did the right things, but for the wrong reasons.
Their shallowness sickened him.
It was time for people to stop worrying so much about their precious possessions, their precious images, and to start truly looking out for one another.
FORTY-NINE
LUNCH … DATE?
Megan
Had Seth kissed me after our dinner Saturday night, I would not have tracked him down at the Forest Park Pool today. I had never been one to throw myself at a guy, and I sure as hell wouldn’t start now, no matter how many times Seth had crossed my mind in the last forty-eight hours. If you want a count, it was 83 gajillion times, give or take.
But evidently Seth and I had only a work-related relationship, and both of us had a vested interest in seeing the bomber caught. Seth would be interested to know the status of the investigation. I’d expect him to extend me the same professional courtesy.
At the end of the parking lot sat Seth’s ridiculous flame-covered car. Had he kissed me Saturday, I would have instead described the car as kick-ass. Attitude affects perception, after all. But whether the Nova was ridiculous or kick-ass, I pulled up next to it, parked, and climbed out, opening the back door so Brigit could hop out, too. After giving her a chance to lap up some cool water from the pop-up bowl I carried on my belt, I led her over to the tall chain-link fence that separated the pool area from the rest of the park.
My eyes scanned the water. Kids buoyed about in the open space, splashing one another and kicking and doing handstands. An elderly woman in a bright-blue swim cap performed water aerobics with some type of hand weights. Beyond them, in the designated lap lanes, arched a strong, muscular back covered by an eagle. The eagle disappeared under the water, then reappeared as Seth swam a butterfly stroke across the pool. His rear end also popped up and disappeared repeatedly, his green buttocks teasing and tempting as they moved up in down in rhythmic thrusts.
Wow. I really needed to get some, huh?
“C’mon, girl.” I tugged on Brigit’s leash, leading her to the pool entrance.
The nice thing about being a uniformed cop is that you are allowed in anywhere at any time for no charge. It’s like having the key to the city. The woman working the pay booth glanced up as I approached and greeted me with a cheerful “good morning” but clearly had no intention of stopping me to ask whether my business there was professional or personal or to attempt to assess the entry fee.
I walked to the end of Seth’s swim lane and waited for him to wear himself out. It took longer than I expected. A full six laps. Finally, he glided to a graceful stop, put out a hand to grab the edge of the pool, and surfaced at my feet, Brigit’s paws.
His eyes took in my steel-toed shoes and Brigit’s fluffy feet and snapped upward. “Megan! Hey!”
For a guy who’d made no move to kiss me Saturday, the broad, surprised smile and the gleam in his eye told me his interest in me could be more than professional, after all. As my sister, Gabby, would say, he had me all confuzzled. Yeah, she says shit like that sometimes. Kinda makes me want to slap her.
I looked down at Seth’s green eyes, his broad shoulders, his sexy chin dimple. On a totally unrelated note, a hot flush rushed through me. Perhaps the sun was giving me heatstroke.
“You look warm,” he said. “Come in for a swim?”
“I don’t have a suit.”
“I’ve got a spare in my bag,” he said. “You’re welcome to it.”
“Wouldn’t that just be bottoms?”
“Well … yeah.” He treated me to a naughty grin. “But you could pretend you’re on a beach in France.”
That would be difficult given there was nothing around that at all resembled the Eiffel Tower. The closest thing Fort Worth had was the tower at the Will Rogers Memorial Center.
“I’m here on police business,” I said, as much to remind myself as to inform him. “Got an update on the bombing investigation.”
Seth put his palms on the cement next to m
e and lifted himself up out of the pool, his pecs flexing as his muscles engaged. Even though Seth wore a regular suit rather than a Speedo, he was showing plenty of tan, sun-kissed skin. The suit dipped below his belly button, giving me a glimpse of the top of his hip bones. I felt a nearly uncontrollable urge to gnaw on one of them. Perhaps Brigit’s canine ways were rubbing off on me.
As he stood up straight next to me, my temperature went up another ten degrees. Yeah, the sun was definitely causing me to suffer heatstroke.
He jerked his head in the direction of a shady area. “My towel’s over there.”
He led the way and Brigit and I followed. Blast stood up from his spot under the tree he was tied to, pulled his leash out as far as it would go, and woofed as Brigit approached. She barked back at him, her tail wagging so energetically her entire body wriggled as if she were working an invisible Hula-hoop. Aloha oe.
Seth snatched a striped beach towel off the ground and shook his head like a dog, droplets flinging from his hair.
“Hey!” I cried, putting up a hand to shield my face.
He grinned. “Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
I supposed I had no right to complain given that I’d flicked the condensation from my margarita glass at him on Saturday. Besides, knowing that the drops of water now gracing my face had once been in contact with Seth’s skin kinda got me going.
As he dried himself off with the towel, the dogs began to play. Blast bent down on his front paws, jerking left and right, while Brigit did the same.
Dry now, Seth slung the towel back over his shoulder. “I think our dogs are flirting.”
I glanced at the two of them before looking back at Seth. “If they’re going to get involved, I need to know a few things first. Is Blast a player? Has he had all his shots? And what exactly are his intentions where Brigit is concerned?”
Seth replied to my questions, “No. Yes. And…” He offered a soft smile. “… let’s see where it goes.”
All righty, then.
He put a hand up on the tree next to him and leaned against it. “So? What’s the news?”
“The Turkish guy who runs the shish-kebab stand has been arrested. Purportedly it’s for an immigration violation—”
“But we all know that’s bullshit,” Seth supplied for me.
Hmm. He wasn’t going to be like Vance Ulster’s wife, finishing my sentences for me, was he?
“They’ve also got people searching a house that belongs to two of the protestors that were at the mall Saturday. The couple have rap sheets a mile long. None of her offenses were violent, but he’s got an assault charge. They seem to have disappeared and they’re not answering their cell phones or returning voice mails. A neighbor says they left for a camping trip Saturday evening, but she’s not sure where they’ve gone.”
“Camping trip?” Seth gave a soft snort. “Sounds awfully coincidental.”
“True.” Still, coincidences happen. Just like it was a coincidence my girly parts suddenly felt rusty from lack of use. “The skateboarders have been ruled out. We talked to them this morning. The barbecue stand is a dead end, too.”
Seth rolled up his towel and stuffed it into his duffel bag. “Let’s talk about this more over lunch.”
“Okay,” I said, though, really, what more was there to say? I’d already given him all the information I had. But, you know, with this case of sudden heatstroke I was suffering it couldn’t hurt to sit down inside somewhere cool.
“You got a favorite place around here?” Seth asked.
“Spiral Diner.”
“Never been there.”
“You’ll love it.”
Seth excused himself to change in the men’s locker room, returning in flip-flops, wrinkled plaid shorts, and a T-shirt declaring that he’d donated blood at the fifteenth annual fire department blood drive. We rounded up our partners and headed out to the parking lot.
“Can I drive your cruiser?” Seth asked.
“No.”
“Please-please-please?”
“‘No’ means ‘no.’”
“Can I at least turn on the lights and siren? I never get to do that on the fire trucks. They always make me hang off the back.”
I wished he hadn’t said that. My mind conjured up a really sexy visual of him hanging off the fire truck wearing nothing but black boots and a hard hat and swinging his big hose. “Okay, fine.”
We loaded Brigit and Blast into the backseat of my patrol car. After Seth tried out the siren and lights, drawing the attention of not only everyone at the pool but also a couple of joggers, we headed a few blocks west to Spiral Diner, which sat on the corner of 6th and Magnolia.
The restaurant was a vegan place, an anomaly for a city with the nickname Cowtown. The servers were evidently hired based on their ability to tolerate body piercings and their refusal to follow fashion trends. Gotta admire that kind of courage. Normally, you’d have to drive down to Austin to find this kind of antiestablishment establishment. The décor was classic diner, with vinyl booths and chairs and Formica tables. Starburst-shaped light fixtures hung from the ceiling.
We slid into opposite sides of a booth along the back wall, our dogs taking places next to us. Seth picked up his menu and began to look it over. “What’s good here?”
“Everything,” I said. “But my favorite is the Cowboy Burger.” Of course I’d follow it up with the Deathstar Sundae, as always. I wasn’t sure whether the Force was with me, but I was pretty sure the previous sundaes had stuck around on my thighs. Maybe I should take up swimming, too.
The waitress came over to take our order. She was a wisp of a girl wearing a red bandana tied over her head and cat-eyed glasses. Her eyes went from me to Brigit. She looked back at me, squinting through her lenses. “You’re the cop from YouTube, right? The one with the tuna salad in her hair?”
No sense denying it. “Yes. That’s me.”
“Wow! Is the fish oil why your hair is so shiny?”
“No.” I didn’t elaborate.
The waitress turned and called out to the other staff, “Look who’s over here! The tuna cop from the Internet!”
Before I knew what was happening, Brigit and I were surrounded by a half-dozen waitstaff. Another stood in front of me, taking a photo on his smartphone. Seth watched the encounter with an amused look on his face.
They say everyone gets their fifteen minutes of fame. I hoped mine was over now, even if I’d been shortchanged by twelve minutes.
Seth and I placed our orders and sat back.
“So,” Seth said, looking around the place before eyeing me across the table, “you’re into organic food and stuff like that?”
I shrugged. “I try to be healthy. Reduce my carbon footprint when I can. Buy fair-trade p-products.”
His upper lip quirked. “Sounds like a lot of work.”
“It c-can be.” Honestly, there were times I wished I could live in blissful ignorance and not worry about the consequences of my actions. It would make life so much easier. Unfortunately, I knew too much to go back. That’s what I got for being curious and reading so much.
“You stutter a little,” he said.
Once again I was blindsided by his bluntness. But once again I realized that such directness could be refreshing. “Sometimes,” I admitted before turning the tables on him. “What are your faults?”
“You mean like a foot fetish? Porn addiction? Undescended testicle?”
“Yeah.”
“I used to have trouble with the th sound. I called myself Seff until I was seven.”
“Hmph. An undescended testicle would have been more interesting.” Really. Where does it go? Does it play hide-and-seek behind the pancreas or what?
“Sorry to disappoint you.” Seth offered me a sly smile and took a sip of his water. “Are things back to normal at the mall?”
“For the most part,” I said. “Most of the repairs are done and the shoppers are back, but some of them are avoiding the courtyard.”
&n
bsp; “Give them another day or two,” Seth said. “They’ll forget all about it.” His eyes took on a faraway look, as if he was remembering bombs others had long since forgotten.
After a few more minutes of small talk, the waiter brought our food and we dug in.
“You were right,” Seth said around his first bite. “This is delicious.”
Brigit and Blast seemed less impressed with the vegan patties, sniffing their meals thoroughly and casting disgusted looks in my direction before resigning themselves to the fact that no dead animal was forthcoming.
When we were done eating, I drove Seth back to the pool so he could collect his car.
He sat in my front passenger seat, simply eyeing me for a moment. “Can I touch your hair?”
An odd question. But Seth was kind of an odd guy. I think I actually liked that about him.
“Okay, I guess.” I offered a nonchalant shrug, though my heart was spinning like a baton in my chest. Swish-swish-swish. “As long as I can touch your chin dimple.”
“Deal.” Smiling softly, he reached out and fingered a tendril of my hair that had pulled loose from my bun and hung by my ear. “That waitress was right. Your hair is very shiny.”
If he only knew …
After a moment, he released my hair. “Your turn.”
I reached out a finger and placed the tip gently against the cleft in his chin. His skin felt warm and slightly scratchy, since he’d evidently skipped his shave this morning.
When I pulled my finger back, he asked, “You think it’s sexy, don’t you?”
Wasn’t it obvious? Still, I wasn’t about to be as honest with him as he’d been with me. “It’s … unique.”
“Unique, huh?” He seemed to mull that over for a moment before pulling his cell phone from the pocket of his shorts. “What if Blast wants to take Brigit out on another date? How would he get in touch with her?”
Swish-swish-swish! “He could call her on my cell.”
Seth added my number to his cell phone contact list, though he input it under the name “Brigit,” casting me a cocky grin when he realized I’d noticed. “He’ll be in touch.”
