Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required

by Jennifer Apodaca

  I looked down at my watch. It was about twenty minutes to eight. “Come on, Ali.” We went inside. I headed down to my bedroom, where I got my purse and double-checked to make sure the sex-toy kit was inside.

  The doorbell rang.

  “Finally, Angel’s here,” I told Ali.

  Ali barked and ran to the door.

  I reached in and took the sex-toy kit out of my purse to show Angel the necklace. Hooking the strap over my shoulder, I hurried down the hall to the door.

  Ali stood impatiently at the door, and looked back over her shoulder at me.

  “I’m getting there, Ali.” Shifting the sex-toy kit to my left hand, I opened the door. “What took so long? I was just about—Zoë!” What was Zoë doing here? Where was Angel?

  Zoë clomped past me into the living room. This morning she wore a bright yellow sleeveless T-shirt with green cargo pants and combat boots. She had the length of her thick black hair pulled through a black baseball cap of some kind.

  “Zoë, what are you doing here?” How did she know where I lived? Why was she here?

  The tightly toned muscles in her upper arms rippled as she thrust two framed pictures at me. “Your sons like skateboarding, right?”

  Shifting the velvet box under my right arm, I took the pictures. “My sons?” I stared at Zoë. “What do you mean, my sons?” How would Zoë know about TJ and Joel? I glanced down at the top picture in my hand. It was a signed eight-by-ten shot of the skateboarding pro who had been scheduled to do an exhibit the night before. The top one had, “To Joel,” written across the picture, and a signature. The second framed picture was the same thing, only with TJ’s name.

  Apprehension rolled my gut over and tightened up my sore neck muscles. Zoë knew I had two boys, and she knew their names and their interests.

  Ali whined low in her throat and nudged my leg.

  I looked down at my dog. She cocked her head and stared at me. She didn’t know what to make of my confusion. Neither did I. “Zoë, what’s going on here?” I held up the pictures.

  Her gaze was on the sex-toy kit under my arm. “It’s business, Samantha. I do something for you, you do something for me.” She looked up at me. “I met TJ and Joel at your office, remember? They told me they liked skateboarding. Since that pro couldn’t be at the skate park last night, I thought your sons would like signed pictures. Now give me R. V. Logan’s real name and address.”

  Ali made a low rumble in her chest at the boys’ names. Not a growl exactly, more like a warning that she was paying attention.

  I put my hand on her head and struggled to keep calm. “How do you know the boys were at the skate park last night?”

  “I saw them there.”

  My brain screamed stalker! Psycho romance stalker-fan. Or was she some kind of pervert who liked teenage boys? Struggling to keep calm, I took a couple of steps to the coffee table and set down the signed and framed pictures and my purse. Then I moved the sex-toy kit from under my arm and tucked it inside my purse. Ali sniffed around the items I set on the table, while I fixed my sight on the pepper spray on the kitchen table and moved past Zoë in that direction. With my gaze on the can of spray, I asked over my shoulder, “You went looking for my sons?”

  “You make it sound sinister. I saw that there was going to be a skateboarding exhibition in the paper. I am into extreme sports and went to watch. Obviously, since I like the sport, R. V. Logan likes the sport, so I took a chance that I might run into him there. Instead, I saw your sons.”

  OK, maybe I shouldn’t turn my back on a lunatic. I pivoted around with the pepper spray in easy reach of my right hand. Ali headed toward me, her toenails clicking dully on the linoleum. Zoë stood a step closer to the coffee table. “Zoë, how did you get those signed pictures?” I didn’t even want to know how she thought she’d recognize her beloved R. V. Logan since she claimed she’d never seen him.

  She glared at me across the room with her deep-set brown eyes. “You’re not very grateful. I overheard that the pro skate guy had an accident and went to the hospital, where he was getting stitched up. The hospital people were as ungrateful and suspicious as you are. But I managed.”

  I’ll bet. She had probably read Stephen King’s book Misery to get some ideas on how to manage. I had to get her out of my house and keep her away from TJ and Joel. I tried to phrase my words carefully. “Zoë, I appreciate your thoughtfulness in getting the boys these autographed pictures, but I’d rather you stayed away from them. Now, I’m on my way out to work. You need to leave.”

  She barely blinked. “I will leave just as soon as you give me R. V. Logan’s real name and address.”

  I closed my hand around the pepper spray. The knotted muscles in my neck and shoulders had developed into a full-blown headache. Turning for a second, I watched Ali stretch out on her blanket by the window while I debated in my head. If it came to a choice between my sons and Vance, otherwise known as romance writer R. V. Logan, Vance would lose in a heartbeat. But I didn’t think it was coming to that yet. And I needed Vance to cooperate when I took the diamond necklace to him. I looked back at Zoë in her multipocketed cargo pants and yellow sleeveless shirt. “Zoë, I don’t know who R. V. Logan is. I just don’t know how else to convince you.” Except with this pepper spray, I thought as I tightened my grip on it.

  Her face hardened. “You’re a liar, Samantha Shaw.” She turned and stormed out the open front door.

  I hurried across the room, slammed the door, and leaned back against it. Ali got up and came over to me. She sniffed the can of pepper spray still clutched in my right hand, then sat down to let me pet her.

  Finally I sighed. “Come on, Ali. Let’s go call Angel. If she hasn’t been snatched by aliens, then she can meet me at the police station once she gets her tire changed.” I headed toward the phone on the wall.

  Ali barked and raced to the kitchen. I picked up the phone, punched in Angel’s cell phone number then leaned around the corner to see Ali with her nose in the seam of the fridge. Apparently she thought we needed a beer break. “No beer, Ali.”

  She kept her nose in the seam and wagged her tail.

  Angel’s cell phone started to ring in my ear.

  Someone knocked on the front door.

  “Finally,” I hung up the phone. Ali followed me to the door, wagging her tail. She apparently liked this game. Probably she thought the winner got a beer.

  I pulled open the door and groaned. Detective Vance blocked out the morning sun. He was dressed to arrest in his dark pants, serious white shirt, and snazzy tie. His coat covered his shoulder holster and emphasized his wide shoulders which narrowed to a trim ass. If he’d been five minutes earlier, he could have arrested his lunatic fan.

  What a morning.

  “Vance, I was just on my way to the police station.” Or I would have been if I had talked to Angel. I opened the door to let him in.

  “I’m not taking any chances, Shaw.” He came into the living room and bent over to pet Ali.

  “Whatever.” I ignored the implication that I’d somehow lose the necklace. “Did you find Zack? It had to be the necklace that Zack was looking for last night.”

  He stood up from petting Ali. “We went to his apartment but he wasn’t there. He didn’t show up there overnight. Oddly enough, I found out that a diamond necklace was stolen from Daystar last Friday night and the suspect is Zack Quinn. He hasn’t shown up for work since his shift ended on Friday.”

  I stood there, thinking. “So Zack’s still out there.”

  “Looks like it. I got your message on my voice mail this morning that you just happened to find a diamond necklace. A necklace that was stolen the same night you and Angel were at the casino. Quite a coincidence.”

  My scalp tightened, contributing to my headache. That’s why Vance had shown up at my front door—cops don’t believe in coincidences. Why the hell wasn’t Angel here to help me explain this? “I just found the necklace this morning. That must be what Zack was looking for at Ange
l’s house, but we didn’t know we had it!”

  Vance stood in the living room between the pressed wood coffee table and the TV set against the wall. “That happens to a lot of folks, Shaw. They can never quite figure out how they came to possess stolen property.” Smug arrogance laced every word he said.

  The best way to end this would be to get it over with. Give him the necklace in the vibrator. . . .

  Oh crap. “Uh, there’s a reason we didn’t know about the necklace. See, this man at Daystar came to the table Angel and I sat at. He had a proposal for Angel’s lingerie line.” I took a breath.

  Vance unfurled a small smile that had his flat cheeks flirting with dimples. “Selling diamond jewelry that fell off the back of a truck?”

  “No!” Outraged, I put my hands on my hips. “Cut it out, Vance. You know Angel and I aren’t criminals.” I suspected he was letting me twist in the wind to get a little revenge. Angel and I had made him the butt of his cop buddies’ jokes. Plus Vance and I had a little sexual chemistry, and I kept choosing Gabe over him.

  “I have no such knowledge, Shaw. Why are you stalling?”

  Hell. “I’m not stalling. Anyway, Mitch—”

  “Wait.” Vance’s face shifted into cop mode. He reached up into his shirt pocket and pulled out a notebook and a pen. Opening the notebook, he said, “What’s the name?”

  “Mitch St. Claire. But I don’t know if he knew what he had. I mean—”

  Vance cut me off. “Where in Daystar were you?”

  Getting annoyed because I wanted to get this over with, I said, “The Nova Lounge.”

  He wrote and then looked up. “Friday night?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, what did Mitch give you?”

  “He gave it to Angel, as a sample to see if she wanted to sell his products through her lingerie parties for Tempt-an-Angel.”

  Vance made a note, then fixed his eyes on me. “What products?”

  I met his gaze. There was no going back now. “Sex toys.”

  The only sound was Vance clicking his pen on and off. His expression remained cop-blank. No dimples surfaced. After a few seconds, he blinked and said, “Sex toys.” Click. Click.

  I had finally pushed Vance off balance. “Actually, it’s a box of sex toys. I found the necklace in one of the vibrators.”

  The clicking stopped. “This morning? How did you discover the necklace in a vibrator?” He moved in. “I’ll need details.”

  If he touched me, I thought I’d see blue sparks. Then it dawned on me. He thought I’d found the necklace while experimenting with the vibrator. “Jeez, Vance, I hate to burst your bubble, but I found the necklace when I threw the sex-toy kit against the wall.”

  “Hmm.”

  Did I hear a sizzle? “Hmm what?” Outrage rolled up my throat. “It’s the truth! I tripped over the stupid kit, got mad, and threw it against the wall. Stuff spilled out of the sex-toy kit and I saw the necklace. That’s what happened.”

  “So you woke up this morning, got out of bed, and tripped over a sex-toy kit that just happened to be there?”

  Second time this morning I’d been called a liar. Vance was less blunt than Zoë, but still. “That’s what happened.” I folded my arms over my chest.

  “Sure. We’ll write that down. It’ll look better in my report.”

  “You have a dirty mind, Vance.” I reached for my purse on the coffee table to give him the sex-toy kit and get this over with. The doorbell rang.

  Angel. Finally. Letting go of my purse, I went to the door and yanked it open.

  Angel strode in wearing a pair of black leather pants and a tan tank top. “Auto Club ran late this morning. Fireman Bob happened by, though, and he changed my tire. Then the Auto Club guy showed up while Fireman Bob was changing my tire and they got into an argument about the right way to change a tire. I had cancelled my Auto Club call, but the guy didn’t get the notice. Typical screw-up.”

  I shut the door. Two men fighting over changing Angel’s flat tire wasn’t that big of a shock. But Fireman Bob was a Heart Mates hottie. I wondered if Angel was interested in him.

  Angel glanced at Vance, then back to me. “I thought you said we were going to take the necklace to the police station.”

  Vance said, “I thought it prudent to come here and get the necklace myself.”

  “Prudent. What a tight-ass word.” Annoyed, I said to Angel. “Vance is suspicious of us. Like we’d call and confess we had a diamond necklace if we had stolen it.”

  Vance shut his notebook. “Get the necklace, Shaw.”

  Angel took in the tension between us, then looked at me. “I want to see it, too.”

  I just wanted it gone. Out of my house. Out of my life. As soon as I dumped this on Vance, he could go out and find Zack. Angel and I could get back to our lives. I moved to the coffee table, opened my purse, and peered inside.

  Wallet, calendar, lipstick, breath spray, keys-with-Gabe’s-house-key, receipt for new shoes, hairbrush. My heart kicked up and slammed throbs of pain into my head. Reaching in, I dug around. Pulled out my hairbrush, a diet bar, case of pressed powder.

  Gone. The sex-toy kit was gone.

  Vance said, “Shaw, what are you doing?”

  Where was it? I had had it when I answered the door for Zoë. I glanced at the two framed, signed pictures. No sex-toy kit sitting out on the table. I’d set the framed pictures down by my purse.

  I distinctly remembered putting the sex-toy kit in my purse.

  Omigod. When I moved to the dining room to get the pepper spray, Zoë must have seen the blue velvet box in my purse and stolen it!

  “Shaw, stop stalling. Where’s this sex-toy kit and diamond necklace?”

  Furious, I let go of my purse and stood up. “Gone. Your greatest fan, who believes you are her heart mate, stole it.”

  11

  Detective Logan Vance didn’t look like a too-handsome sun god. Right at the moment, he looked like an extremely pissed-off cop in a suit. Before he could explode, I said, “It has to be Zoë who took the sex-toy kit and the necklace. I had it in my hand when I opened the door for her, then I stuck it in my purse and set my purse on the coffee table.” Babbling now, I picked up the two framed pictures and held them up between us. “She brought over these autographs and demanded I give her R. V. Logan’s real name and address in exchange!” The woman was crazy.

  Angel said, “That yoga freak was here? And she stole the sex-toy kit?” She turned to Vance. “What are you waiting for? Go find her!”

  Vance had developed a throbbing twitch at the outside edge of his left eye, and his hands clenched into white knuckled fists at his sides. He ignored Angel and fixed his stare on me. “Did she see the diamond necklace?”

  Setting the pictures down, I shook my head. “No. It was inside the vibrator, and that was inside the box.”

  Vance reached down to pull a folded piece of paper from his suit pocket. He opened it and stuck it in my face. “Is this the necklace you found, and lost?”

  I looked at the paper. It was a faxed picture of the exact necklace. Was I going to jail? “Yes. At least that’s what the necklace looked like.”

  Angel grabbed the paper from Vance’s hand. “Are those real? How many carats?”

  Vance took the paper back from her. “A quarter of a million dollars’ worth.” To me, Vance said, “The two of you had better start explaining. So far, you’ve led me on a wild goose chase. Now I want answers. Start with who was in the two cars that were pulling out onto the street from your house just as I pulled in.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on!” My thoughts spun frantically. “Two cars? You probably passed Zoë, but no one else was here. Grandpa already left to take the boys to school.” I felt like I was sinking in confusion. Nothing made sense. How had Zack gotten that necklace into the sex-toy kit that Mitch gave us? Why? Obviously, it was stolen, but why hide it in there? Was Mitch involved? What about Zoë? Could Zack have sent her to find the sex-toy kit and
steal it back?

  Vance kept his gaze locked onto me. “Two cars, Shaw. A black Lincoln Navigator SUV and a green Ford Focus. A female in the Ford and a male in the SUV.”

  Damn, he was good. I’d never have gotten all those details as I passed two cars. “Zoë must be in the Ford Focus. We just have to find her.” My heart pounded viciously. I swallowed, unable to believe how bad this looked, and how furious Vance was. “I never saw a man. Chances are the SUV that you saw was just someone turning around in the dirt lot in front of our house.”

  Angel tilted back her head. “I’ve met Zoë, Detective. The woman is nuts.”

  Vance pulled air deep into his lungs, raising his swimmer’s shoulders up to his ears, and then he let it go. He walked to the love seat, sat down, and said, “Start from the beginning with how you met Mitch St. Claire to how the necklace disappeared this morning.”

  I went to the couch adjacent to the love seat and sat down. Ali put her head in my lap, while Angel sat on the other side of me. I studied Vance as he arranged his pocket-size notebook on his knee. I didn’t know a whole lot about police procedure and territory, but I suspected that Vance had called either the Temecula police or Daystar security and told them he had a lead on recovering the necklace.

  And once again, I had made Vance look bad. I would be lucky if I didn’t end up in handcuffs. Taking a breath, I recounted the whole mess of Mitch’s giving Angel the sex-toy kit, then how I took it home and only just this morning found the necklace in it. I described every detail I could remember.

  Vance looked at Angel. “Do you have contact information for Mitch?”

  Angel shook her head. “His information was supposed to be in a catalogue inside the sample kit.” She looked at me.

  I shook my head. “There wasn’t any kind of catalogue.”

  Angel shifted back to Vance, “Mitch has left a couple of messages on my answering machine, but he didn’t leave a phone number.”

  “Do you have caller ID?” Vance asked.

  “It was blocked.”

  “How did he know about your lingerie business?”