Her warm, appreciative, darn-near-dazzled sigh lasted a lot longer.
* * *
Quint was cold, wet and dirty. He’d fallen to his knee and ripped his pants when the last car he’d pushed had suddenly found traction and made him lose his. The driver hadn’t stopped but had continued on his way with a jaunty wave out the window. Next an elderly woman he was helping up her sidewalk had remembered her ice cream was still in the car and spun around to go get it, hitting him in the stomach with a bag full of groceries and knocking him against an ice-crusted tree with the stump of a long-gone limb at the exact height of his shoulder blade. He was going to have a bruise there.
He’d been thanked and appreciated and fussed at and cussed at, and it was barely eleven o’clock. He still had the interview with Maura to look forward to.
It was going to be a long day. But at least it didn’t have to be a long wet day.
“What do you want for lunch?”
JJ was facing out the side window, using her cell to take pictures of a newly budded dogwood tree coated in ice. “A Bloody Mary on the deck of a Mississippi riverboat sounds good. Or a piña colada on a white-sand beach.”
Those both sounded better than he would have expected, considering he’d never been on a Mississippi riverboat and preferred vacations to mountains and deserts over beaches. “There’s an old navy sub down in Muskogee, an hour or so from here, but they aren’t known for their Bloody Marys. The only beach nearby is at Cedar Creek Park, and if you had a piña colada there, I’d have to arrest you.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Has anyone ever told you you’re no fun?”
“My years for being fun are long past. I’m a grown-up now.” Long past.
“Not mine. Mine won’t end until I’m at least as old as Miss Georgie.” Then she slid the phone into her coat pocket. “You pick. The only places I’ve eaten here are Ted’s Doughnuts, Judge Judie’s Diner and Whataburger.”
Quint believed she would certainly find life fun until she was old or in the grave.
Linny had.
His stomach rumbled quietly, bringing his attention back to the original conversation. “You have to go to the Creek Café. It’s kind of a rule in Cedar Creek. The lunch special today is—” He flipped through the menus in the console, found the right one and read, “‘Chicken and dumplins and a slice of pie.’ In Mrs. Little Bear’s restaurant, there is no g in dumplins.”
She beamed. There was no other way to describe her big, full-wattage smile. “Not in my kitchen, either. Grandmother Raynelle made the best dumplins. I use her recipe, and mine are pretty good, but hers were still better. And don’t say she made them with love. She was a grouchy old woman who did everything with a complaint and a scowl.”
“And you never deserved those complaints and scowls?” He turned west onto Teel Street before glancing at her.
“Of course I did. My grandmother said I was exuberant.” She distinctly pronounced all the sounds, making clear Grandma hadn’t meant it as a compliment. His grandma had been more empathetic toward him.
“Mine said I had a lot of personality.”
The statement sounded strange in his own ears. He hadn’t let himself think about Grandma Harris in years, or his Foster grandparents. He didn’t let himself remember much about being a kid who was full of ideas and not all of them good. Even now, the memories were distant, like something he’d seen happen to someone else, not him. He’d shut out everything good and nostalgic because feeling nothing was better than feeling everything.
Grandma Foster had practically snatched his hair out when she’d heard him say that. For the last two years, Grandpa Foster had been in a nursing home, his body frail and all his memories gone. His family were strangers to him, even the wife he’d loved so dearly for more than sixty years, and it was slowly, surely breaking Grandma’s heart.
She’d squeezed the stuffing out of Quint with a hug afterward.
He’d been luckier than Grandma. His heart had broken quickly and completely. One instant he’d been fine, and the next he might as well have been dead.
A soft drawl came from his side. “Unless y’all do things differently here, a four-way stop means you stop, then take your turn going. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
He blinked, realized he was holding up traffic at the intersection because nobody wanted to go when it was a cop’s turn. Slowly he depressed the accelerator, caught traction and crossed the street.
JJ didn’t ask where he’d disappeared to in his head. He appreciated that she respected his privacy. A lot of people didn’t. “I thought Creek Café was about a mile from the hotel.”
“It is. I just need to make a stop.” His house was the last piece of property within the city limits on this road. It was a corner lot, a couple of acres, fenced in and big enough to keep the goats Linny had teased about buying. Then, she’d insisted, neither of them would have to mow anymore.
But someone would have to provide food and water and care and pick up goat poop, and he’d known that would have fallen to him.
He would be happy to pick up all the goat poop in the world if she was here to watch and laugh.
Muscles knotted in his neck and stirred a small ache between his eyes. Grimly, he pulled into the driveway, shut off the engine, then immediately restarted it. Even though changing clothes wouldn’t take him long, he couldn’t leave JJ waiting outside without heat, and he wasn’t about to invite her inside. He hadn’t invited anyone into his house since the day of Linny’s funeral, and then his mother had actually issued the invitations.
“Is this your place?” JJ asked.
“Yeah. I’m going to change.”
She settled comfortably in her seat. “Okay. As long as you leave the keys, you can take your time.” She picked up the café menu from the console. “Just try to get back before I start drooling. It’s not pretty.”
Relieved that she wasn’t showing any real curiosity, Quint got out and navigated the sidewalk to the porch. He’d emptied a bag of ice melt on the steps before he left this morning, and it was doing its job.
Inside, the house was quiet and warm. The only scents that greeted him were antiseptic, from the cleaning he’d done last night, along with the faint aromas of coffee and an unlit candle on the coffee table. The candle smelled like cinnamon candy, Linny’s favorite, one of his least favorites. He kept it out but never lit it and wondered occasionally when its smell would fade.
Framed photographs lined the walls and climbed the stairs to the bedroom on the second floor. There were three posed pictures of the two of them: one taken at Sam and Mila’s wedding, another at Daniel and Natasha Harper’s, one at Linny’s brother’s. The rest were snapshots of people, places and things that had caught their attention. Most of what had caught his attention was her.
What would JJ have thought of all the pictures of Linny if he’d invited her to wait inside? He didn’t kid himself she would have stayed on the big section of tile that fronted the door. She would have wandered around, maybe not touching, but looking intently for insights into his life. It was part of the job, being observant and learning about people. Give her an hour in this house, and she would probably learn a lot about him. She would probably sympathize with him. Or pity him. Or wonder what kind of emotional cripple couldn’t take even the first step in moving on.
Grimly, he pried off his boots, then removed his gun belt before shucking his trousers, socks and jacket. Within a few minutes, he was dressed in clean clothes and dry boots, and he’d hung the damp clothes over the shower rail.
As he turned away from the shower, his gaze caught on his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His cheeks were red, his exposed skin tingling. His knitted cap fit snug over his hair, which meant it would either be pressed flat to his head when he took off the hat or it would stand on end. He didn’t really care, but since they were going from here to Mrs. Little Bear’s, he tug
ged the cap away, fluffed his hair with his fingers and combed it into some semblance of normal.
Didn’t want to look untidy in uniform.
Yeah, that was the reason. Sure. Everyone’s hair was going to look untidy today. Most of the officers, on going to lunch, would leave the hat on, maybe rolling up the brim to uncover their ears. They wouldn’t worry about fixing their hair.
They weren’t having lunch with JJ Logan.
Quint combed his hair again, stuck the cap in his pocket and trotted down the stairs, grabbing a clean jacket and gloves on the way out.
* * *
Creek Café was family-owned, family-run and pure heaven. As soon as JJ took her first breath inside, she knew this was going to be one of her favorite places in town. Naturally, growing up near the coast, she loved seafood, and ethnic food never failed to delight her, but homey Southern comfort food owned her heart.
The door had barely closed behind them when a man across the room called Quint’s name and gestured. She glanced that way in time to see Lois shush Ben Little Bear with a smack to his shoulder. On his other side, Morwenna elbowed him while Detective Harper and two pretty and pregnant women, one blonde and fair, the other dark and exotic, watched with amusement.
Lois scooted her chair around to the left. “Sorry, we really can’t make room for more. There’s some empty tables back there in the corner. Out of our sight. Out of hearing range, too.”
JJ made a slight effort at restraining her smile. “Thanks,” she answered, since Quint had flushed a deep bronze and was intently ignoring the scene. She led the way between tables and around a corner to a smaller dining room that was mostly empty and chose a booth next to the windows. Though cold found its way right through the glass, a heating vent directly overhead negated its effect.
“Lois isn’t the soul of subtlety, is she?” she asked as she slid onto the bench.
“I don’t think she ever aspired to being subtle.”
“Subtlety has its advantages. So does bluntness.” JJ smiled at the waiter who brought them menus and ordered a Diet Dr Pepper. She already knew what she was eating...this time. She might try the entire menu while she was in town. “Who are the two women?”
“The blonde, Natasha, is Daniel’s wife. Mila is Sam’s wife.”
The single women of Cedar Creek must have been sad when those two men had been taken off the market. But they still had Quint and Ben Little Bear, along with several of the younger officers, if a woman didn’t mind the age difference. And surely there were gorgeous civilian guys in town, too. Every woman in America knew a disproportionate number of sigh-worthy firefighters, and according to Lois, the fire marshal was hot, hot, hot.
But Quint hadn’t recovered from the breaking of his heart yet. She wondered who the woman had been. Why she’d ended things with him. Where had she gone, and what was she doing, and would she ever come back?
It was easy to wish him happiness, even though she knew nothing about the relationship. Maybe the mystery woman hadn’t loved him the way he’d loved her. Maybe she’d betrayed him. Maybe they’d been one of those couples who couldn’t stand to be together and couldn’t bear to be apart. Maybe neither of them had loved the other enough. Ryan had sworn he loved her, and he’d treated her as if he did, until he’d dumped her for being promoted quicker than him. He’d called her the light of his life...until her light had shone a little brighter than his.
Had Mystery Woman been the light of Quint’s life?
The waiter returned with their drinks and took their orders: chicken and dumplings for both, with corn bread and pumpkin pie for Quint, a hot dinner roll and rhubarb pie for JJ. When the waiter was gone, she started to pull her tablet from her purse to tell him what little she’d learned about Maura the night before, but he spoke first.
“Is your chief good, bad or indifferent?”
Ah. Turning yesterday’s question back on her. Damn Chief Dipstick for assigning her a simple case, then trying to muck it up for her. “I guess that depends on your perspective.”
“No, it depends on your perspective.”
She gazed out the window at the stream below. The town had taken its name from Cedar Creek, expanding along both sides of it. The water looked clear and cold, with piles of snow and fragile bits of ice built up along the edges. The park on the east side was empty, snow clumped on swings and jungle gyms, gleaming in the sun.
Finally she looked back at Quint. “He’s like any boss. Some people love him, some hate him, some tolerate him.”
“And you?”
She pursed her lips. “A smart cop keeps her personal opinions to herself. Casual comments get taken out of context, tattled to someone who tattles to someone else, and the first thing you know, you’re looking for a new job. I like my job.”
His blue eyes took on the frigid shade of the blue sky. “If you think I would tattle to your chief, then we shouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“You started it, bub.” JJ picked up the silverware, unwrapped a heavy paper napkin and spread it carefully over her lap. She’d changed its position three times before meeting Quint’s gaze again. “Are you annoyed because I think anything I tell you would go straight to Sam, who may or may not pass it on to Chadwick, or because I suggested you might ‘tattle’?”
“I don’t tattle,” he said stiffly. “That’s a kid thing.”
“You would tell Sam anything you thought he needed to know,” she retorted before adding, “You get miffed easily.”
It never failed to amaze her how rewording things could make such a difference. Implying he wasn’t trustworthy had insulted him. Acknowledging he would pass on necessary information to his boss, as a good police officer should, faded the chill and made his resultant scowl seem more habit than lingering annoyance.
“I’m not miffed. That’s a girly thing.”
“I get miffed, and I’m not girly.”
He looked at her then—seriously, intently, a man-seeing-woman look that started with her hair, slid down to linger on her mouth, dipped lower to the sweater that clung to her breasts, stopped regretfully at her midriff where the table blocked the view, then drifted back to her face. “You’re girly enough.”
His voice was raspy, hoarse, and she was truly warm for the first time in twenty-four hours. In fact, she was pretty sure steam was escaping from her pores, heating the air in her lungs and making her heart go pit-pat-pit-pat-pit. Mercy, it had been a long time since she’d felt quite like this. Far longer than her ego cared to remember.
She shifted nearer the window, cooling the heat climbing her neck and gathering in her face. Heat that also pooled lower, tickly and tingly. Some part of her fogged brain realized she should probably say something flirty or suggestive, but she didn’t want to talk. She wanted to touch. Explore. Experiment. Do all the X-related words that might apply. She wanted to see if he was as solid and hot-blooded as he appeared to be, if his muscles were as hard as she guessed they were, if any other part of him was hard...
“I’m glad you noticed,” she managed in a husky, breathless voice. “To most cops, I’m just another badge and gun.”
He snorted at that but didn’t elaborate as the waiter brought their meal. He didn’t say anything when the young man, who bore a striking resemblance to Ben Little Bear, though much smaller, left, either. He just picked up his knife, buttered the corn bread and broke off a piece. He spoke before eating it, but not about her astonishing girlyness or his rampant desire for her or the possibility of taking her back to the hotel after lunch and ravishing her.
Drat.
“To be honest, I will tell Sam the gist of whatever you say. He’s responsible for pretty much everything that goes on here, so his need to know trumps everything else. Besides, I trust him. I respect him.”
Of course he did, and Sam trusted and respected him right back. She neither trusted nor respected Chadwick, and h
e reciprocated in full. The only thing was, at least she had given him a chance. When he’d taken over as chief a year ago, she’d fully expected the same kind of fair, professional working relationship that she’d had with each of her two previous chiefs. She hadn’t judged him until he’d proved himself lacking in every way.
While he had taken one look at her, seen she was female and written her off.
She indulged in one delicious bite of dumpling, hot and steamy and tender-chewy, followed by a shiver of sheer appreciation, then tore open her dinner roll. Quint slid the butter dish across the table to her. “From the perspective of a few good ol’ boys who prefer life the way it used to be, Chief Chadwick is a good administrator. For the average officer in the department, he’s not bad. He was actually a decent cop himself, for the most part. But from the perspective of a female cop who has fifteen years on the job and who earned every promotion and “attaboy” she’s ever gotten, he’s a misogynistic bigot who’s managed to keep 1950s attitudes alive in his little kingdom.
“He didn’t call your chief because he was concerned about me, and you know it. That’s why Sam has pushed me off on you. To keep an eye on me. To see if I’m a major screwup or just a minor one.”
Quint didn’t deny the truth of that. He didn’t question her remarks about Dipstick, either. “Why do you stay?”
She tasted the roll—Grandmother Raynelle would have killed to make bread this good—then dabbed melted butter from her mouth. “It’s home. Except for college, it’s where I’ve always lived. My parents and sisters and their families live there. Most of my extended family is within an hour’s drive. I like my job, never wanted to live in a big city and...”
He studied her, his head tilted to one side, his gaze serious, then a knowing look came across his face. “Quitting would mean letting him win.”
She grinned, relieved he’d recognized her petty goal rather than her having to admit it herself. “He’s already retired from one chief’s position. If I hold on awhile longer, he’ll either retire again or die. And yeah, that means I win.” Was it the most mature attitude she’d ever displayed? No. Was it a satisfying one? Hell, yeah.
Detective on the Hunt Page 9
