McQueen's Heat

by Harper Allen

  Over Petra’s shoulder, Tamara saw Stone approach and pause. She tightened her hold on Petra. “You won’t see her, sweetie, but she’ll be there. She loved you more than anything in the world, so how could she ever really leave you? She’ll be there when I read you her letters, she’ll be there when I tell you stories about when she was a little girl like you and she’ll be there on the sofa with you and me and Stone, when we watch movies and have popcorn and laugh together. And she’ll be watching to make sure you pick out the very best pup in the shelter. She’s here right now, sweetie. Moms never really go away.”

  She was tough and a scrapper, Tamara thought now. But she had the loving heart of her mother, and that heart had finally opened to let her mother’s best friend in.

  Her face had lit up with joy when she’d seen the gangling black and white pup she’d promptly chosen for her own. She’d christened him Strawberry, for his strawberry-pink tongue, and only the promise that they would pick him up the next day after the veterinarian had checked him over had persuaded her to leave him for the night.

  “This looks like trouble. Slide down in your seat, honey.”

  Startled from her thoughts, Tamara glanced up and saw they were approaching her house. There was a police car in the driveway. Behind that was the nondescript sedan she’d seen Trainor and Knopf getting into outside the Red Spot.

  Which wasn’t surprising, she thought, seeing as how the pair were right now pounding on her front door. She ducked quickly out of sight, and saw Stone avert his head as they cruised by.

  “You can get up now. I don’t think they spotted me, but we’ve got to call Jack.” Stone’s voice was grim. “I want to know what the hell’s going on, and I want to know now.”

  “You know what’s going on. They were there to have you arrested,” Tamara said tightly. “For the rooming house fire and whatever other trumped-up charges they think they can hang on you, McQueen. But you’re right, we’ll call Uncle Jack and see if he knows what they think they’ve got on you.”

  “They can’t have anything on me because I didn’t do it. But somehow I don’t think those clowns are really concerned about annoying details like proof,” he growled. “And while I’m cooling my heels in a holding cell and all this is being sorted out, Pascoe could be planning another damned fire.”

  “Turn left here.” One minute she’d been daydreaming about the best day of her life, she thought angrily, and only seconds later it seemed to have turned into a nightmare, thanks to a pair of incompetent and vengeful fools. “There’s a phone outside that convenience store. If Uncle Jack’s not at home, let’s pray he’s still got his cell on him.”

  “Give me both his numbers, and while I’m phoning lock the doors,” Stone said as they pulled into the parking lot. “This isn’t exactly the safest-looking place for a woman now that it’s getting on for evening.”

  She shot him an exasperated look. “For crying out loud, McQueen, where do you think I go at night when I’ve run out of milk?”

  “Humor me, honey,” he said firmly. “And next time you run out of milk in the middle of the night, I’ll get it, okay?”

  She was in love with the man, Tamara thought in resignation, watching him stride across the parking lot. The door latch locked with a solid-sounding thunk, and out of the corner of her eye she saw a couple of scrawny loungers look toward the car at the sound.

  She was in love with the man, and that meant the whole package—his occasional overbearingness, his protective manner toward her, his insistence on being the man for his woman in a world that had tended to blur those distinctions. And he was right, she admitted with reluctant honesty. She’d never felt entirely comfortable coming here after dusk.

  He didn’t compromise. He didn’t pretend. That was the key to his whole character. She loved that about him, but it was what had turned Knopf and Trainor so against him they could believe him capable of the crimes they wanted him booked for.

  “They want to take me in for the rooming house fire, all right.” As soon as she opened the door for him Stone was in the car and sliding behind the wheel. He reversed out of the lot, his face hard. “Jack says they’ve been going over my old reports. Already there’s scuttlebutt going around about the Mitchell Towers blaze.”

  “What kind of scuttlebutt?” She was almost afraid to ask.

  “That I not only set the fire myself but I rigged the explosion that resulted in the deaths,” he said, his mouth tightening. “The theory is that it was on a timer and it went off sooner than I’d calculated. Damn those two bastards anyway,” he muttered. “As if the families of those firefighters need the trauma starting up all over again.”

  “What does Uncle Jack suggest we do?”

  “Lay low while he tries to pull some strings,” McQueen said dryly. “I said that sounded good to me, since my only other option was to turn myself in. When I told him Knopf and Trainor had practically staked out your house, he nearly blew a gasket. I think the first thing he intends is to get them the hell off your property unless they can show him a warrant, so I should be able to drop you at home in an hour or so.”

  “Oh, good. Because I’d like to do my nails and have a bubble bath before I go to bed,” Tamara drawled. She leveled an impatient look at him. “Get real. We’re in this together, McQueen, like I’ve told you about a dozen times. Even if you end up handing yourself over to the authorities tonight I’m going to be right there beside you, dammit.”

  “You kiss your boyfriend with that mouth, lady?”

  The thread of amusement in his tone contrasted with the edginess it had held moments ago. She smiled, glad she’d taken his mind off his problems, if only briefly.

  “Yup,” she said promptly. “He likes bad girls.”

  “He likes one bad girl,” Stone corrected, reaching over and slipping a hand between her jeans-clad thighs. “He can’t wait to teach her a couple more bad things to do with that mouth.”

  Slow heat spread through her, and with it a spark of frustration at the knowledge that no matter how much both of them wanted it, at the end of the evening it was unlikely they’d be in each other’s arms as they had been last night. On impulse, she brought his hand to her mouth and pressed a kiss to his palm. Folding his fingers closed, she gave him a shaky smile.

  “That’s for later,” she said unevenly. “Just in case.”

  Just in case it all goes bad tonight, she thought, staring unseeingly out at the lights and the traffic. Just in case they try to tear your world apart again.

  She leaned back against the headrest, her thoughts unsettled. He’d need a lawyer. She’d have to come up with some kind of explanation for Petra if he wasn’t with her tomorrow. She and Uncle Jack would have to—

  “I don’t freakin’ believe it.”

  Even as Stone’s exclamation broke the silence he was pulling over to the curb. Opening her eyes, Tamara saw they were in an area of small commercial buildings, the flickering neon of an eatery far down the block the only sign that the business district had any life at all after office hours. But someone had faith in the possibilities here, she realized. Across the street was the skeleton of a five-storey building set in an otherwise empty lot. In front was a large sign with what appeared to be an architect’s ambitious rendering of how the as-yet barely started structure would look.

  It wasn’t the picture that Stone was staring at in disbelief, she knew a second later as she read the banner-like notice at the bottom of the board.

  “The new Mitchell Towers now accepting rentals!!! Desirable office suites still available, construction to be completed September this year!!”

  “They didn’t even have the decency to change the name,” he said tightly. “I’d hoped they’d never find a developer willing to construct here again.”

  He was out of the car and heading across the street before she’d unclipped her seat belt. Scrambling out herself, Tamara caught up with him as he halted in front of the edifice. Only its bottom two storeys were covered in some kind
of weatherproof sheathing, she saw. The top three were still little more than supports and framing, although temporary floors had been installed to make it easier for the construction crew to get around.

  “A couple years from now no one’s gonna remember that five firefighters gave their lives here,” Stone rasped. “I know you can’t stop progress, Tam, but it just doesn’t seem right.”

  “I heard tell there was talk of putting up some kind of memorial plaque. That you, McQueen? Long time no see.”

  The shabbily dressed old man coming from the alleyway beside the half-completed building was carrying a white cane and wearing dark glasses. He stopped a few feet from them.

  “In my case, a real long time. But I’m pretty good with voices and footsteps. It is you, isn’t it?”

  “Katz? Harry Katz?” The street lighting in the area was sparse, but the security floodlight affixed to the building illuminated the surprise on Stone’s features. “For crying out loud. Don’t tell me you still live here.”

  “New cardboard box, same location, McQueen,” the other man said. “I’m too old a dog to change, although I’ll admit I hit the shelters a little more often than I used to. The booze acted like antifreeze, I guess. I’ve been off the sauce for five years come this summer.”

  “That’s great, Katz. Just great.” Stone took the old man’s heavily-veined hand, wringing it with real affection. He hesitated. “You probably saw me a little the worse for wear when I used to drop by here after the fire. I’ve cleaned up my act, too.”

  “I could tell. If you’d touched the stuff anytime recently I would have smelled it on you. Eyes like a mole, nose like a bloodhound, hearing like a fox, that’s me.” The old man grinned. “Which means I know she’s pretty, whether I can see her or not. You scared I’ll steal her away from you if you introduce us, McQueen?”

  “Sure I’m scared, you silver-tongued old devil.” Stone laughed softly. “Tamara, this is Harry Katz. He was a friend when I didn’t think I wanted one. Harry, this is Tamara King. She’s a firefighter. She’s also the heart of my heart, so back off.”

  He had to warn her when he was going to do that, Tamara thought shakily, taking the hand the old man extended to her. He couldn’t go roaring along in his normal McQueen style and then drop an extravagance like that into the conversation.

  Heart of his heart. She felt herself blushing with pure pleasure before turning her attention to what he was saying.

  “Did I ever ask you about it, Harry? Or was I even coherent when I used to come around here during that period?”

  His question was tentative. The old man took his time before replying.

  “You were hurting bad, that was obvious. For those six or seven months after the fire, you couldn’t seem to stay away, but you didn’t want to talk about it. None of the other investigators that tramped around the site while it was still fresh ever asked me any questions, either. They figured since I was blind, I wouldn’t have anything to tell them.”

  He rubbed his white-stubbled chin with a suddenly trembling hand. “And since they didn’t ask, I didn’t volunteer. I was a homeless drunk. If they hadn’t believed you, why would they believe me? He’s back, isn’t he? I was sure it was him.”

  Stone stared at him in stupefaction. “Who’s back, Harry? And what do you mean, you were sure?”

  “Not here.” The old man dipped his head in the direction of the shadowy alleyway. “I told you, I’m a mole. I feel safer in the dark.”

  Tamara felt Stone’s hand on her arm as they picked their way along the cracked pavement of the alley, but she wondered if it was her or himself he was attempting to steady.

  “Down here.” Unerringly the blind man grasped a rusted metal handrail flanking the short downward flight of concrete steps in front of them. At the bottom was a basement entrance to the building beside them, she realized, with just room enough for the three of them.

  By craning her neck she could see past the steps they’d just descended and down the alleyway to the street. From this angle, only the back of the billboard was visible.

  “You’ve seen him, haven’t you?” McQueen’s voice was unsteady. “Robert Pascoe. He’s been here, hasn’t he, Harry?”

  “I haven’t seen him.” Katz seemed to take no offence at the slip. “I’ve heard him. He comes by every couple of nights to look at the site. The only other person who ever did that on a regular basis was you,” he added. “And I don’t know what his name is, I just know he’s the son of a bitch I always suspected of torching the place. He started coming round a few weeks ago, but I recognized the sound of his footsteps right away. When I heard his voice, that clinched it.”

  “Back up there, Harry,” Stone said tersely. “You’re saying you had a pretty good idea of who started the Mitchell Towers fire and you never told me? You never told anyone?”

  “I’m saying that the night before the fire I was sleeping off a drunk in this stairwell here, and I woke up to hear two men talking,” Katz retorted. “Arguing, more like, even though they kept their voices down. In the state I was in, what they were arguing about didn’t make much sense to me, so I rolled over and went back to sleep. It was only when the whole place went up in flames the next night that I put the pieces together, and when I did I was scared spitless.”

  He paused. “So I was real glad when no one asked me if I knew anything, McQueen,” he went on in a lower tone. “And when you started haunting the place I’d already overheard what everyone thought of the nut-case who’d cracked up and resigned before they could fire him. Even after I got to know you, I decided to keep my mouth shut. I knew no one would care about any witness you said you’d found.”

  Stone let his breath out in a sigh. “You’re right, Harry, they would have told me to get lost. But maybe they won’t now. What exactly did you hear the night before the fire?”

  “What woke me up was the sound of something metal being set down on concrete.” It was hard to see Katz’s expression, but from his voice Tamara knew he was frowning. “The old Mitchell Towers had the same kind of stairwell as this one, and that was where the voices were coming from. I heard a man say something about all it would take was a spark, so not to make him nervous. He’s the one who shows up here now.”

  “Pascoe,” Stone said. “Go on.”

  “The second man was angry. He seemed to be threatening this Pascoe, telling him he was going to turn him in, but Pascoe, if that’s who he was, seemed to find the whole thing funny. He said Jake had a lot more to lose than he did and that both of them knew he’d keep quiet, just like he’d always kept—”

  “Jake? The other man’s name was Jake?” Stone interrupted.

  “That’s what I seem to remember Pascoe calling him,” Katz replied. “I was drunk, though, so I might have gotten it wrong. Anyway, that’s when the conversation got weird. Pascoe laughed again, and—”

  Tamara stiffened. “Harry, could Pascoe have been calling him jakey?” she asked numbly. “Is it possible that’s what you heard him say?”

  “Jakey. Yeah, that’s right.” The old man snapped his fingers softly in the dark. “I remember it sounded like a kid’s name, not a grown man’s.”

  “He was a firefighter.” McQueen’s tone was flat. “Goddammit, he was one of us. A firefighter knew what was going to happen, and he stood by and let five of his comrades die.”

  “You know this Jakey guy?” Katz sounded confused.

  “I hope not,” McQueen said grimly. “What do you mean, the conversation got weird after that?”

  “It coulda been the booze.” The old man sighed. “But the one you figure as a firefighter said something I didn’t catch, and Pascoe’s voice got real cold. He said the Chinese man was wrong and this Jakey guy wasn’t responsible forever, because if that was true and Davidson was still alive, the poor fool would still be watching Jakey’s back. The firefighter—Jakey, I guess—said Davidson might not have been the brightest guy, but he’d taken what he’d known to the grave even though he could have
saved himself by implicating Jakey. Jakey said that if Davidson had, he wouldn’t have hesitated to take Pascoe down with him.”

  Katz made a small movement that could have been a shrug. “It was two guys having an argument, McQueen, and an argument that didn’t make sense to me. I musta dozed off again then, because that’s all I remember. It wasn’t until the fire the next night that I realized—”

  His head jerked up. As McQueen started to say something Katz waved him urgently into silence.

  He took a cautious step backward, deeper into the stairwell. His whisper was almost inaudible.

  “Those footsteps—can you hear them? Someone’s coming.”

  Again he fell silent, and this time Tamara heard it too—the faint sound of shoe leather on concrete, unhurriedly getting nearer. It was a man’s step, she thought, but it was beyond her ability to discern whether he was old or young, fat or thin, tall or short. To know any of those details she would need to see him.

  But to the blind man beside her, individual footsteps were as readily identifiable as faces were to her. She felt him tense.

  “It’s him, McQueen,” Katz said under his breath. “It’s the man you call Robert Pascoe.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  It never worked this way in movies, Tamara thought, keeping her gaze fixed on the figure half a block ahead. Even driving at the speed of a funeral cortege Stone had to keep pulling in behind parked cars to avoid closing the distance between them and the man on the sidewalk, but they hadn’t been able to risk the chance that Pascoe had a car waiting nearby.

  If he was Pascoe.

  Katz had said it himself—he’d been in a drunken stupor when he’d overheard the argument. How could he say with certainty that the voice and footsteps he’d heard that night belonged to the man who’d recently taken to visiting the site? It wasn’t as if the rest of his impressions had been rock-solid. He himself admitted that the argument as he remembered it obviously owed some of its outlandishness to his condition at the time.