“Oh, boy, old Mrs. Sparrow ain’t gonna like this one bit,” Bob said, running his hands over his head.
“She’s strict?” I asked.
“She’s very religious,” Bob replied. “Strict don’t cut it.”
Chapter 7
Mariella
We spent the rest of the day investigating our second victim. As Bob had predicted, her grandmother, who was Becca’s legal guardian, was very upset.
“Every year I send her to Bible camp,” Mrs. Sparrow said for the fourth time. “She turned her back on the Word of the Lord.”
Bob tried to reassure her, but the woman had little useful information. We left her in the hospital waiting room and went to talk to Doc Brown in his office.
“Becca’s clearly been leading a double life for quite a while,” I told Bob.
“Agreed. Her grandma didn’t even know she was at a party last night, never mind where or with whom.”
“She got picked up by ambulance at a frat house in Phoenix,” Doc Brown supplied.
“What do these two have in common?” Bob wondered aloud.
“They’re both from Snake Eye, and they both go to Gila Bend High School,” I said.
“Becca’s grandmother gave us an account of where Becca supposedly went yesterday. It says she went to the gas station in Snake Eye to fill up her grandma’s truck.”
“You’re thinking that’s the one thing on the list she had to genuinely do?” I guessed.
“Yeah. If she didn’t, her grandma would know because her gas tank would be empty.”
It was a good lead. I should have thought of that. Truth be told, I felt redundant on this investigation. I hadn’t contributed much, and the identity of our drug baron was still eluding me.
“I think we need to go get some gas,” I said, trying to sound breezy. Bob chuckled, and I smiled, pleased I’d made him laugh, even if I wasn’t doing so good with the detecting.
* * *
Mariella
“Yeah, she came by. Filled up. You want the camera footage?” Raoul, who ran the gas station, looked uncomfortable.
“Please,” Bob replied.
Raoul went into the back room for a minute, then returned with two videotapes.
“It’s on one of these,” he said. “I don’t know which.”
“You’re using videotapes?” Bob asked in disbelief. I was glad he’d said it, because I was thinking it.
“We don’t have the money for a big upgrade,” Raoul explained. “These work just fine.”
“We ain’t got a VCR at the Sheriff’s office,” Bob said. “Think I might have one at home somewhere. Thanks, Raoul, I’ll bring them back when I’m done.”
We got back into the car.
“Guess we’re going to mine a day early,” Bob remarked. “Hope you’ll excuse the mess.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” I told him, but inwardly I was imagining teetering towers of junk in every direction.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting, but when we pulled up outside Bob’s place, I was surprised by how ordinary it looked. For some reason, I expected the Sheriff to have something fancy. Or at least more than one floor. Instead, it looked like every other house on the street. Small lawn, two windows and a door at the front, a garage to one side, all neatly perched behind a normal-looking sidewalk on a very regular-seeming road.
Bob parked in the driveway, not bothering to put his car in the garage. I guessed his neighbors all knew he was the Sheriff, so leaving his car outside wasn’t an issue. I grabbed the videotapes and got out.
He unlocked the front door and held it open for me.
“Come on in,” he said.
I stepped over the threshold and saw a couple of pairs of shoes. Immediately, I remembered to take mine off. Phew. Didn’t want to be rude.
“You don’t have to,” he remarked, as I walked into the hallway in my hose. All the same, he took his boots off straight after closing the door.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood awkwardly in the hallway, holding onto the videotapes and waiting for an instruction.
“C’mon, I’ll fix you a drink before I go searchin’ for that VCR,” Bob said. He passed me and led the way to his kitchen. It was a big, open affair with a country-style design, all wooden cabinets and copper pans. It was a little untidy, and he’d left an electric drill on one worktop; this was clearly a man’s kitchen. There were also screwdrivers on the big wooden kitchen table.
“Decorating?” I asked.
“Ongoing maintenance,” he replied with a shrug. I was impressed that he knew how to fix things himself. All the men I’d met would hire someone to hang a picture, never mind anything more complicated. “You like sweet tea or iced?”
“Iced, please.” Actually, coffee was my preferred drink, but since I’d arrived in Arizona, I’d found myself drinking cold drinks more often than not. It helped with the dry air.
“Good choice.” He pulled out a pitcher of tea from the refrigerator and poured two glasses. I took one. His was gone in two quick gulps, then he disappeared to find the VCR, leaving me alone in the kitchen.
It was weird, being here. When I’d walked through the door, it had felt like coming home. A sense of familiarity. Security. Something I didn’t remember having since my parents had split up, all those years ago. I perched on one of the chairs surrounding the kitchen table and sipped at my drink, gazing out of the window at the desert. There was something clean and honest about the landscape, like it wasn’t trying to conceal any secrets. I liked that.
* * *
Bob
I found the VCR under a heap of junk in the basement. Getting it set up in the living room with a modern TV was another problem. Eventually, I found the right cables and had the thing ready for us to watch the CCTV tapes from the gas station.
I brought the pitcher of iced tea and some snacks into the living room, and Agent Frost followed.
“You want the best seat in the house?” I waved at my leather recliner. She shook her head and perched on one end of the couch. I wanted to laugh. I often invited the guys around to watch the game and I never shared my seat. This was the only time I’d ever been moved to do so, and the girl didn’t want to take it.
“What’s wrong with my recliner?” I had to ask. I took a look at the seat. It was clean. Made no sense.
“Nothing. I just don’t like to sit on those.”
“Why not?” I loved my recliner. It was like having a puppy which I could sit on.
“Don’t laugh. I just find they’re too comfortable.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed out loud. Mostly it was the disbelief.
“Okay, I’ll bite, what’s wrong with being comfortable?”
She frowned. “We’re working. I don’t want to get distracted.”
I nodded. She was back to being the cold professional again. I hit play and we watched through the tapes.
“Any idea what time she was in the gas station?” she asked.
“Around five.”
“The tapes have a time signature in the top corner. We could skip ahead.”
Good idea. Why hadn’t I thought of that? This girl was a distraction. I hit the fast-forward button.
“There!” she cried suddenly.
As we watched, Becca Sparrow got out of her grandma’s truck and went into the store. Another vehicle pulled up on the other side of the forecourt, and a man got out. He said something to Becca as she left the store, and they appeared to touch hands for a moment. When she walked away, she was tucking something into her pocket.
“That’s our man,” I said. “Question is, who is he?”
“Gray hair, or blond?” she mused. “All we have is the back of his head.”
“I’ll check if there’s anything when he leaves the store.” We let the video keep playing, but when he left, he came out with a big newspaper, apparently ambling slowly and reading the front page. His face was totally covered.
“It’s like he knew the cameras
were there,” Mariella said.
I nodded. “He planned this whole thing. Even the place for the exchange.”
“But why do it at the gas station? There’s plenty of places outside the town where there’s no cameras,” Mariella pointed out.
“Ah, but if anyone did see two people parking up some place outta the way, they’d have questions,” I countered.
“This guy’s a professional. I’ve been searching for him for a long time.” The fervor in Mariella’s voice proved how invested she was in this case.
“So we come back to the same question: Gray hair, or blond?”
She reached for her drink and sipped thoughtfully. I opened the potato chips and ate some. It wasn’t exactly like going to the movies but I’d take it, since it meant I got to spend some one-on-one time with a beautiful girl.
And she was beautiful. A distraction. Twenty years of solving crimes and protecting the people of Snake Eye hadn’t left much room for distractions. I tried to keep my mind on the task at hand.
“If he’s blonde, he’s younger,” I knew I was stating the obvious.
“And that’s more likely. Drug dealers don’t tend to live into their old age,” Mariella agreed.
“Is that a fact or a supposition, Agent Frost?”
“Fact. Most men serving a sentence for selling illicit substances are in their twenties.”
“So we’re looking for a blond man, probably recently arrived in town, likely in his twenties or thereabouts. Think we need another trip to the van encampment.”
“Shouldn’t we leave right away?”
“Let’s think this through. There’s over thirty vans in that area. We need to narrow it down before we go hurling accusations around.”
“We don’t want to scare off whoever’s responsible,” Mariella agreed.
“Anyways, there’s no sense in going out with an empty stomach. It’s almost dinner time,” I pointed out. I started thinking through what I was going to cook. As a single man, I wondered what I had that would serve two. I wasn’t much of a chef.
“You want me to fix something?” Mariella asked.
The question surprised me. “Why, Agent Frost, are you sayin’ you know your way around a kitchen?”
She nodded with a small smile. “That depends on the kitchen. And the way around it.”
I chuckled. “Not sure what ingredients I have.”
I showed Mariella my almost-bare kitchen cupboards, and the refrigerator with its sad-looking contents of beer and leftover takeout.
“We need to go to the store,” she pronounced. “We’ll get some food for tomorrow, too.”
* * *
Bob
Shopping with Mariella was an education. I drove to the nearest Walmart and we walked around slowly.
“Wait,” she said as I got ready to pass the fresh vegetable aisles. “We need some of this.”
“I don’t buy fresh produce,” I said.
“Why not? It’s good for you.”
“Now you sound like my mother. May she rest in peace.”
“Seriously, though, why don’t you buy vegetables? They’re important.”
“They’re a hassle to prepare.” It sounded weak now I said it aloud. “Anyhow, there’s plenty of people in town who give me things to reheat.”
Mariella sighed. “I can see I have my work cut out. Okay, we’ll get some of these yellow zucchinis, a broccoli and some carrots for tomorrow, and some tomatoes and salad for tonight.” She wandered around the produce aisles like a pro, examining vegetables and putting them into the cart. This whole section of the supermarket was a mystery to me.
“Next we need some things to go with all this.”
She got some things I couldn’t guess the use of, like stock cubes, and some things I hadn’t bought in a while, like fresh pasta. I had no idea what she planned to make, but whatever it was, she seemed to know what she was doing with it all. I just pushed the cart and tried not to add up the total in my mind.
When we passed the clothing area, I paused, looking at something silky and black.
“I don’t think that comes in your size, Sheriff,” Mariella quipped.
I guffawed so loudly a nearby family all looked in our direction. They quickly turned back to their shopping, but Mariella’s cheeks turned red with embarrassment.
“I was thinking you’d look stunning in it,” I remarked quietly. Her mouth fell open and she inhaled sharply. I cheered inwardly, but kept my pleasure to myself. There was a red-blooded woman under all that ice.
“I... uh... already have a nightgown,” she stuttered.
“Sweetheart, didn’t no one tell you? Folks don’t buy lacy night things for sleepin’ in.”
“Then what are they for?”
“Lookin’ sexy as all hell in the bedroom.” My voice was a growl. She visibly shivered. She made no move to put it in the cart, so I kept going to the cashier. I wasn’t going to force her to accept a gift she didn’t want, no matter how good I thought she’d look in it.
Actually, now I looked at her in the line for the cashier, I realized she was doing one hell of a job at hiding her body. Her shirt was two sizes bigger than it ought to be, so it disguised her shape without being too obvious about it, and her jacket wasn’t shaped to flatter her, either. It covered her ass and her pants did the rest, imprisoning her legs in black polyester.
She was so prim and straight-laced. So out of place in the easygoing town of Snake Eye. For some reason, she’d hidden herself behind that FBI badge and the suit she wore, and I was going to unwrap her from it.
“That’s forty-five twenty,” the cashier said. I pulled out my wallet at the same time Mariella reached for hers.
“I’ve got this,” I told her.
“I always pay my own way, Sheriff,” she replied, meeting my gaze. Oh, this girl could be stubborn.
“But you’re doing the cookin’. Makes no sense that you buy the food and cook it.”
“I do it all the time at home,” she retorted.
“For one. But this time you gotta cook for a grumpy old man, too.”
I was about to put my card in the reader but Mariella covered it with her hands. I glanced at the cashier who didn’t seem to know what to make of the situation.
“I’m paying and that’s final, Agent Frost,” I told her. I took her wrists in one hand and gently but firmly pulled them away from the card reader. With my other hand, I slipped my card in. I winked at the cashier.
“All good,” I told her.
Once I’d put my PIN in, I released Mariella’s wrists and let her put our groceries in bags.
The look she gave me was fiery, but she said nothing more.
Chapter 8
Mariella
The whole time I washed salad and cooked pasta, I ruminated on the fact he’d insisted on paying for the groceries.
Who did he think he was, insisting on paying for things like I was his date or something? No one had paid a penny toward my upkeep since I’d left home at eighteen, and this felt weird. I didn’t want to be kept. Didn’t want to be dependent on a man. That’s how my mom’s troubles had started and I wouldn’t let history repeat itself.
And, yet, here I was, cooking for him. How had he lived on Earth for this many years without learning how to make his own food? Maybe he ate out a lot.
And his attitude toward vegetables was crazy, too. I didn’t know why his opinions mattered to me, but they did, and because they did, I wanted his opinions to be closer to mine than they were.
Why was I even letting this bother me? We were just two people working together for the time being, who were going to spend Christmas day together because he had a kitchen and I didn’t, and neither of us could avoid the holiday by working on our case.
I drained the pasta, drizzled it with home-made dressing, and laid it onto the bed of salad leaves, garnishing with chopped up squares of bacon and some sliced tomatoes. I put a bowl of it down in front of Bob, who had been watching me work this whole time.
“Smells heavenly,” he remarked.
“Bacon pasta salad,” I explained. “My own invention.”
He stuck a fork in and tasted it, making an ‘mmm’ of appreciation. I took a seat opposite him and picked up my own fork.
“You should write a cookbook,” he said.
I laughed politely and shook my head. “No. There’s so many recipes online and so many cookbooks these days, they’re like monkeys and typewriters.”
“What’s that mean?” Bob asked.
“They say that if you give a room full of monkeys some typewriters, pressing buttons randomly, give them enough time and at some point they’ll write the entire works of Shakespeare. It’s like that with recipes. Someone else, somewhere, will have come up with this, and any other recipe I could ever think of.”
“Well, I still think you’re a great cook.”
I shrugged and wished I wore make up, so I could hide the blush that stole across my cheeks.
“So you can take a spanking,” Bob said, and I nearly choked on my pasta. I looked up at him with wide eyes, hardly believing he’d just said that over dinner.
“Uh...” I mumbled.
“And you can’t show up to work on time,” he added. “Seems to me like you need to be held accountable to someone for your behavior. You got anyone like that in your life?”
“No,” I whispered, my face becoming an even deeper red than before.
“Explains a lot. Why were you late this morning?”
“I missed my alarm and slept in.”
He nodded, like he’d heard this excuse before. “You responded well when I gave you a beltin’, so with your agreement, I think you need some rules and consequences in your life.”
I stared at him. My heart pounded in my ears. I wanted this too much. How could I accept? There was no way I could live up to Bob’s expectations.
“Uhh...” I said again.
Very articulate.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I’m not going to be in Arizona for more than a couple more days, let’s start with that.”
Cuff Me, Sheriff Page 5
