by Nancy Martin
“A lady named Clarice Crabtree was here a while ago, but she seems to have disappeared. That’s her car. She said she had some important meeting and took off in a hurry, but when I came upstairs, here’s her car, lights on, keys in the ignition, purse on the floor.”
“Who’s Clarice Crabtree?”
“The homeowner’s daughter.”
“Where’s the homeowner?”
“She mentioned a nursing home.”
Bug flicked his flashlight up to get a better look at the dilapidated house. The nursing-home story made sense to him. People in Pittsburgh took good care of their homes, unless they were poor or too old to climb ladders.
He swung the flashlight around and spotlighted the station wagon. “Anybody have a look inside the car yet?”
“I might have taken a peek while your buddies first searched the house.” I decided it wasn’t worth mentioning that I’d taken a quick look through Clarice’s handbag and found the usual junk women seem to collect. Lipstick, a scrip for Prozac, wallet with credit cards, eighty-two bucks in cash. The only interesting tidbit was that she had two valid driver’s licenses—each with a different home address. Maybe she had recently moved. Bug would find those on his own.
Bug flashed the light into my face again. “Why are you so worried about this lady? Your level of concern seems out of character.”
Explaining that I knew somebody had plans for Clarice didn’t seem like a good idea. So I said, “I owe her two hundred bucks.”
“That’s it?”
“And … Clarice went to high school with us. Don’t you remember? I think she graduated the same year you did.”
He dropped the light. “I think I’d have remembered somebody named Clarice. But I don’t.”
Bug had been in love with Marie back in high school. Even then, he hadn’t looked at other women.
A shout from behind some bushes drew everyone’s attention, and Bug pointed his light in the direction of the commotion. A moment later, one of the uniformed cops pulled a man out from behind a hedge.
He was a rangy old guy in pajamas and a blue corduroy bathrobe. I pegged him at once. Professor Crabtree. Had to be.
Maybe he’d had a dignified bearing in the past, but tonight he shuffled out of the bushes looking like a scarecrow in a pair of too-large rubber boots. A couple of days’ worth of grizzled beard bristled on his chin. Mud spattered the hem of his bathrobe.
“Hey!” Nooch called to him. “Be careful. You should have some better shoes.”
Bug kept his flashlight trained on the man’s confused face. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Professor Crabtree,” I guessed, already on my way down the porch steps. “The aforementioned homeowner.”
It took two uniformed cops to drag the old man out onto the grass, and he resisted every step.
“I’m not going back,” he was saying. “Let me go! Get away from me.”
“Take it easy,” I snapped at the cops. “He’s just a harmless old guy.”
Behind me, Bug said, “Don’t agitate him, fellas.”
The professor stopped short and glowered at me. Peevishly, he said, “I want to go home.”
“Right,” I said. “This is your home. You’re Professor Crabtree, aren’t you?”
At the mention of his title, he pulled himself together. “Yes, indeed. I belong here. I have to check on Rhonda.”
“Who’s Rhonda?” Bug asked. “Your daughter?”
“No,” he said. Then hesitated.
Bug could see he was confused. “How’d you get here, sir? Take a cab? A bus?”
“This is my home. I belong here,” the old man repeated. “Ask anyone. I’d like to go inside now. I have things to check on.”
“Your daughter was here a few minutes ago. Rhonda, right?”
“Clarice,” I said.
The old man looked pathetic to me. Not a famous scientist or whatever. Just a confused old guy who needed help.
Bug touched Crabtree’s arm. “Did you see your daughter, sir?”
Crabtree’s eyes lost their focus, and he started to get upset again. He rubbed his arms with his hands, half hugging himself. “I don’t know who you’re talking about. You’re trying to trick me. I’d like my dinner, please.”
“Me, too,” said Nooch.
The old man stopped rubbing his arms and peered at Nooch. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t know,” Nooch replied. “Do you?”
“I’d like a sandwich. A bologna sandwich.”
“Yeah, that sounds good. With pickles?”
The old man mustered some dignity. “I’m not fond of pickles.”
Once started on the subject of food, Nooch was hard to suppress. As the two of them talked about sandwiches, Bug grabbed my elbow and pulled me over to stand under the big tree in the middle of the Crabtree yard.
Bug let me go and shoved his hands into his pockets to stay warm. “What do you think? The old man busted out of the nursing home? And found his way back here?”
“He’s supposed to be in an Alzheimer’s unit somewhere. Don’t they lock patients in those places?”
“He must have given them the slip.”
“He used to be a smart guy. But now…”
“Yeah. Who’s Rhonda?”
“No clue.”
Bug was frowning at the Volvo. “Think this has anything to do with your missing station wagon owner?”
“Oh, hell,” I said. “I hope not.”
My cell phone rang in my pocket. It was probably Sage calling me to ask for help with her trig homework or something. I made a move to answer the phone, then paused, raising my brows at Bug.
Then his cell phone rang too, and he checked the screen. “The Homicide guys,” he said with a sigh. “I gotta take this.”
As he walked away to talk to his colleagues, I answered my phone.
Instead of Sage, I heard the voice of Stony Zuzak, the bass player of Rusted Roses. I sometimes sang backup for Stony and his rotating band of musician friends. His voice was unmistakable on the phone. He had ruined it screaming into microphones and smoking two packs a day since he was twelve. Now he sounded like a poor man’s Meat Loaf.
“Rox?” Stony rasped. “You busy Friday night? We might have a gig to play.”
I watched Bug limp away, his ear to his cell phone. I could have told him more about the Crabtrees, I suppose. Part of me wondered why I kept secrets, but at the moment it felt like self-preservation.
“Rox?” Stony said in my ear. “You there?”
Rusted Roses was never going to make it big, but Stony always hoped. He worked hard at getting the band into the South Side clubs where college kids paid to drink and dance. I joined the band when I felt like it. Stony’s gigs often meant being paid in beer, which wasn’t all bad.
I liked Stony, but then, I’d always had a soft spot for lost causes.
I said, “Yeah, I might be free. What’s up?”
Stony said, “An old friend of mine is playing a concert here and invited me to play with him. He could use backup. If I send you some tapes, will you listen? We could rehearse Friday, before the gig. Kate’s coming, and so is Deondra. We could use you, too.”
My mind wasn’t totally engaged by Stony’s details. I was watching Bug question Professor Crabtree again. I said, “Yeah, sure, send me a tape.”
“Wear something sexy,” he advised.
His standard order, which I ignored. I sounded the same wearing jeans as I did in a miniskirt, but I felt less stupid.
I hung up. Watching Professor Crabtree’s worried face, I doubted he was the one who had contracted to get his daughter kidnapped. But somebody had. And I wondered if the deed had been done.
8
Duffy got called back to his homicide scene, so I took Nooch home. After dropping him off and when I was alone in the truck again, I called Marvin Weiss to find out what he knew about the Crabtree job. When I turned down the kidnapping, who had he offered it to?
But it wa
s after midnight, and he didn’t answer his phone. I left a message.
I parked the truck in front of my house and took a minute to check the house next door where Jane Doe and her kids had moved in. I noticed a light in the kitchen, but I peeped in the windows and saw nobody. I guessed Jane had left the light on for comfort. Upstairs, they were all probably asleep. I checked the back door and found it locked, so I went home. I ate two apples, drank a Yuengling, and hit the sack.
The next morning, my cell phone woke me at six. I expected to hear Marvin on the line. Or Adasha. Or maybe Gino Martinelli, making more empty threats.
Instead it was Patrick Flynn, of all people. I grabbed the headboard to keep from falling out of bed. In the year or so since he’d come back to Pittsburgh, I could count on one hand how many times he’d actually dialed my number.
He said, “Rox, I need to talk to you.”
I sat up in the bed, rubbing my face to wake up fast. Maybe it was his tone, but I felt immediately guilty. Like I had done something and the school principal wanted me in his office. “This minute?”
Flynn didn’t sound like a school principal. His voice had a low, sexy timbre that still had the annoying ability to curl my toes. He said, “This morning, if possible. Come by the restaurant?”
I made a point of uncurling my toes. “You making breakfast?”
He laughed. “Still a mooch. Yeah, sure, why not? C’mon over.”
Hanging up, I leaned back against the headboard and looked at the ceiling. Last night had been hard. First Clarice had found a way to get under my skin. Then her old man had showed up looking helpless. All the tension had put me in the mood to grab a nameless guy and get my rocks off. But I’d listened to the little voice in my head instead—the one that sounded a lot like Adasha. I had come home and climbed into bed alone. Did I feel better this morning?
To be honest? No.
I rolled out of the bed, took a fast shower, and pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a couple of sweatshirts. My hair was a lost cause.
Fifteen minutes later, I went outside and discovered somebody had soaped the windows of the Monster Truck.
“You’re getting real annoying, Gino,” I muttered.
I used an ice scraper to rub most of the soap off the windows, then ran the wipers and a lot of washer fluid onto the glass. It made a streaky mess, but I figured I’d run the truck through a car wash later. Too bad the car wash couldn’t remove the paint on my tailgate.
I started the truck just as the sunlight peeked through the trees, and I flipped on the radio. Punching through the buttons, I searched for some local news that might include a report on Clarice Crabtree’s disappearance. No luck. The local news was about the teenager who’d been shot in Homewood. The drivetime DJs were yakking about an upcoming concert.
Driving across the river, I tried dialing Marvin’s cell phone again, thinking I’d catch him as he got out of bed. Still no answer. I left another message.
Ahead of me, Pittsburgh was in one of its pretty silvery phases—looking a little like Camelot with the tops of the handsome buildings poking through the fog. The fog hung low enough to hide the city’s less attractive issues. I’d lost track of what construction jobs were under way downtown.
I drove under the convention center and popped up on Smallman Street, heading upriver along with the usual morning throng of tractor-trailers making warehouse deliveries. I wasn’t sure what bee Flynn had buzzing up his butt this morning, so I decided to swing by the salvage yard and pick up Rooney in case I needed backup. Plus, after a night of patrolling my place of business, the dog would be hungry. Flynn might feed him.
Rooney jumped into the truck, dragging the gigantic bone he’d taken out of Clarice Crabtree’s basement. He made happy-to-see-me noises and tried to slurp my face.
“Hey, big guy.” I avoided his tongue and roughed up his head. “You eat any trespassers last night?”
I tried to shove the bone out of the way before it broke my windshield. Usually, Rooney could crush up a bone in a few hours, but this one must have been particularly resilient. In daylight, it seemed bigger than ever.
Rizza’s restaurant was a macho meat place that served steaks and pork belly and pig’s ears mostly to executives who thought they were Rust Belt tough guys. To keep that illusion alive, the place was located on the lower side of the Strip District—Pittsburgh’s still-thriving warehouse neighborhood. The restaurant’s owner had made his fortune in software and now liked to hang out at his own bar drinking scotch and making customers feel special. He had chosen the location because it sat near downtown, straddling the line between upscale and low rent. In the evenings, there was valet parking, and women came in wearing sparkly jewelry. In the early morning, though, you might find a homeless person sleeping on the restaurant’s pretty patio.
I parked in the alley behind the restaurant and let myself in through the back door to the kitchen. Rooney trotted after me with his bone in his teeth.
The restaurant kitchen looked bigger when it wasn’t jammed with cooks and waiters and busboys servicing the dinner crowd. This morning, the stainless-steel surfaces gleamed under dazzling overhead lights. All the dishes were stacked and ready, the pots and pans lined up in perfect order for the evening shift. Some cases of fresh produce sat on the counter near the door—evidence that someone had done his grocery shopping before dawn.
Patrick Flynn, the restaurant’s exec chef, stood before a gigantic stove. Wearing snug jeans and a black T-shirt that clung to his shoulders like powdered sugar on a doughnut, he’d wrapped a kitchen towel around his slim hips and wore a motorcyclist’s skullcap on his shaved head. He’d been a hellraiser back in our high school days, but a couple of tours in Afghanistan had given him some hard edges and wiped the merry gleam out of his blue eyes.
Part of me wanted to see that gleam again, but our history was messy enough already.
He shot one glance at Rooney and said, “Leave that animal outside. The Department of Health will give me hell.”
“If I put him outside, he’ll attack somebody. Besides, even the health department isn’t awake at this ungodly hour.”
“Where’d he get a bone that big? The zoo?”
“Good morning to you, too, sunshine,” I said. “Where’s my breakfast?”
Usually? I had a lot of self-control where Flynn was concerned. But I grabbed the front of his shirt, pulled him close enough to snuggle my breasts against his chest, and kissed him on the mouth.
He made a noise in his throat—half surprise, half protest, and a dash of gimme more.
He dropped his spatula, and it clattered on the floor.
Just as he started to slip his hands into my hair, my hands hit the handgun tucked into the small of his back. I broke the kiss, stepped back, and gave him a push.
He rocked back on his heels. “What the hell was that for?”
“You looked grouchy. Feel better now?” Already, I was regretting my impulse, but I decided to bluff it out and grinned. “I want a good breakfast now. Food, that is, not sex.”
He put the back of his hand to his mouth and blew out a soft, smiling curse. “You’re always trouble.”
“You must be expecting more trouble than me if you’re packing that weapon at this hour. And I’m not talking about a hard-on.”
“The gun? Aw, sometimes characters come in here early, looking to score enough money for their daily drugs.”
“Why don’t you just lock the door?”
“I was unloading the truck. No big deal.”
Except to me. I hated guns. To an ex-marine like Flynn, though, carrying a weapon was like wearing a wristwatch—nothing out of the ordinary.
My feelings toward Flynn were definitely mixed. Our history was long and complicated—with good chapters and bad ones, too. Sure, he was still the sexiest thing on two legs. But the fact that he was insinuating himself into Sage’s life, experimenting at being her father, was a slow process I had decided to watch from afar. If their relationship w
ent sour, I planned on being on Sage’s side.
Besides, there was the small complication of Flynn living with Marla Krantz now, a part-time hostess for the restaurant and probably one of the most beautiful women in the city.
He was still touching his mouth—maybe savoring my kiss just a little. His eyes were flickering with amusement. “I heard a rumor about you.”
“What kind of rumor?”
“That you quit seducing every man who tickles your fancy. It must be true if you’re kissing me all of a sudden.”
“Very funny.”
“What’s funny is you giving up sex, hot stuff.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Around. How’s the abstinence going?”
“Terrible. I’m ready to strip you naked right here.”
He laughed easily—an old friend who knew me well. “How about breakfast instead?”
“I hope you made a hell of a lot of food.” I kept my voice light. I boosted myself up onto the counter and sat back, bracing my hands behind me like I was sunning myself on a beach. “I need to satisfy my cravings. Eggs and bacon? Waffles? What’s on the menu?”
He shook his head, amused, and turned back to the stove. Grabbing a pepper grinder, he ground fresh pepper into the sauté pan where a perfect omelet was just crisping up at the edges. “Ready in a minute. Just don’t let Rooney get into my soup bones, okay? And keep your boots out of my clean napkins.”
I crossed one leg over the other. “I wonder if Rachael Ray gives orders like that?”
“I’m ten times the cook Rachael Ray is.”
“Prove it, big guy.”
Flynn grabbed a plate in one hand, the handle of the sauté pan in the other. He flipped the omelet effortlessly, then reached for parsley. I liked watching him work his magic. A minute later, he skimmed my breakfast onto the counter in front of me. He walked away and came back with a fork and a napkin.
I leaned over the plate and inhaled the heavenly fragrance. The omelet had hunks of asparagus and red peppers, a hint of cheese, and bits of prosciutto, too.
While Flynn was busy pouring coffee into two white mugs, I tossed a corner of the omelet to Rooney. He dropped his bone and gulped it whole.
