3 Bad Guys Get Caught (27 page)

Before she came here Piper had kept her
hair long, well past her shoulders. She would highlight it with blonde streaks
that would catch any man’s eye. Now it was shorter and she kept it her natural
dark chocolate color. It was average and forgettable.

To further her attempt to go unnoticed,
her covered skin to exposed skin ratio had dramatically swung the other way.
Now even on warm days she found herself in long pants instead of the minuscule
shorts of her past.

However, even with the changes to her
hair and clothing, Piper hadn't quite perfected the technique of ambiguity yet.
There were still a few distinct features she hadn't been able to camouflage.
Her brown eyes had the depth of an old soul and frequently drew compliments
from people. When the light caught them, they had a sparkle that no amount of
work on her part could extinguish. They were framed by long lashes and,
although she had stopped covering them with mascara, they still seemed
glamorously exotic. Her skin was a glowing caramel that needed next to no
maintenance in order to remain flawless. And her smile, though it rarely made
an appearance, had frequently been called stunning. She had perfectly honed the
use of her impish innocent face to appeal to men. Now, as she tried to fade
into the walls of Edenville, she realized getting people to remember you was a
lot easier than getting them to forget you.

In spite of the added challenge of a
small town, Piper took to following the Honorable Judge Randall A. Lions. He
ate regularly in the diner, and this became the best way to learn more about
him. The wait staff was straight out of a movie, with their pale blue polyester
uniforms and frilly white aprons. One waitress in particular always captivated
Piper. Her name tag read “Betty” and Piper overheard her say that she had
worked there for over ten years. Doing a job like that for so long had given
Betty a very acute sense of people.

After two weeks of what Piper was
calling surveillance, she felt as though she had learned a lot. The judge
seemed to be well-liked by those who frequented the diner, but he only noticed
the people who came right up to greet him. If you stayed in his peripheral and
acted as though he was not there then he would ignore you. To Piper it seemed
like your run-of-the-mill above-the-law narcissism. Another nausea inducing
quality of the judge was the way he ate eggs sloppily; it never failed to turn
Piper’s stomach. On occasion she would catch Betty's eye and they would both
realize they were wearing the same expression of disgust. They’d smirk and turn
their gazes quickly in opposite directions.

The judge was regimented about his time
which, thankfully, made following him relatively easy. He frequented the diner,
the bank, the Italian restaurant, the back door of the Blue Fox Motel on
Tuesdays, and, of course, the courthouse. The rest of his time was spent at
home. His house was beautifully landscaped, and about seven blocks from
Piper’s. This was where she was most apprehensive about watching him because
she struggled to blend into the scenery of his quiet neighborhood. She had
taken to posing as a jogger, which, even though she was thin, was clearly a
stretch. Her stamina left a lot to be desired. But the exhaustion proved worth
it when she caught a glimpse of the judge’s wife one morning. She was a
stunning woman with dark black hair, exotic features, and an amazing figure.
Piper assumed she was somewhere around fifty, but could easily pass for
thirty-five. The judge, she had learned from public records, was sixty-six.
Seeing Mrs. Lions infuriated Piper. She could never understand why men cheat,
but especially why they cheat on beautiful women.

While jotting some notes about the
judge’s schedule in her tattered black notebook, Piper heard the bell over the
door of the diner jingle as a man entered. He was someone she hadn’t seen
during her weeks at the diner, and she found herself intrigued. After a couple
days perched in one seat you tended to see the same people, so a stranger was
interesting.

The man was tall and too thin for
Piper’s taste, though, to be honest, she didn’t think she had a taste in men.
Her past had made men as a whole seem rather repulsive. He looked like someone
recovering from the flu in need of rest and food. Outside of that, he was
beguiling enough in his own way to pique her curiosity, and she continued to
watch him. His hair was dark, almost black, and cut short in a military style.
He had great posture, and Piper thought perhaps he was a soldier who had
mastered standing at attention. There didn’t seem to be anything extraordinary
about this man, but for some reason Piper was captivated by him. She watched
him the way you might watch a child who’s been accidently separated from his
parents in a crowd—watching to make sure he found his way. This man seemed lost
in some way, and Piper stared, waiting to see if he’d find what he was looking
for.

Betty jumped up from the stool where she
sat counting her tips when she saw him enter. “Bobby you look like you’ve been
running all over hell’s half acre.” For a moment Betty looked like she might
throw her arms around him, but instead she slapped him across the shoulder.

“Oh come on Betty, don’t give me any
shit. I’ve been laying low for a while, waiting for this whole thing to blow
over. Can I get something to eat or what?” Bobby scanned the diner as if to
make sure whoever he was avoiding while laying low wasn’t present.

“You have nothing to feel bad about. It
could have happened to any cop on the force. Two week suspension is malarkey.
I’d’ve gone right in there and given that captain a piece of my mind if I
didn’t think those crooked bastards would be in here shutting the diner down
the very next day. You keep your chin up, and I’ll get you the usual.” Betty
was halfway in the kitchen as she finished her sentence and Bobby had no time
to retort. His face was flush with embarrassment, and he sulked over to the
corner booth where Piper was sitting.

He didn’t notice Piper until he was
almost ready to sit across from her. There were plenty of other empty booths,
so she looked annoyed as she said, “Excuse me.” The man seemed to wake from a
dream and shot back an equally irritated and confused look.

“This is my booth. You’re in my booth.”
He stood waiting for the girl to gather her things and move. When no attempt
was made, he backed away more aggravated.

“I’ve been sitting here for the last
couple weeks,” she croaked at him. Piper thought to herself, what kind of
weirdo has his own booth and expects people to get up when he comes in?

“That’s because I haven’t been here for
the last couple weeks, but for five years I’ve been sitting here every morning
for breakfast. So yeah, it’s my booth. But whatever, I don’t need this today.”
He slinked into the adjacent booth as Betty re-emerged from the kitchen and
immediately read the scene.

“Oh Bobby, get over it. It’s just a seat
and this young lady has been a loyal customer, as loyal as you or Judge Lions.
Like clockwork.” At the sound of these words Piper’s cheeks pinked. Had she
been so obvious with her attempts at surveillance that a waitress could spot
her motives?

“Fine,” Bobby mumbled. “I just want to
get my life back to normal as soon as possible. My suspension is over, and I’m
back on duty this morning. I was hoping that two weeks of being gone wouldn’t
mean my whole life would be upside down.” He peppered the eggs Betty had
brought him and moved them around his plate like a pouting child.

Betty smiled at him and squeezed his
shoulder. “Well you weren’t suspended from the diner, and in the words of a
wise man ‘move your feet, lose your seat.’” She leaned in and whispered loud
enough for Piper to hear. “It’s going to be all right Bobby, and if it means
that much to you, go sit with her.” He rolled his eyes up at Betty and put his
hand over hers that rested now on his shoulder. He let the firmness in his jaw
relax slightly but stopped short of smiling.

For no apparent reason, and without much
thought, Piper was intrigued enough to chat with this man. “So what did you do?
You know, what got you suspended?” Initiating a conversation with a stranger
was completely out of character for Piper. She hated small talk. Why, she
wondered, was she even bothering to talk to this guy?

“Who the hell are you?” he barked, and
Piper shrank back, not expecting that degree of harshness from a man with such
warm brown eyes. If this had been two years ago, if she had been back home
still living her own life, then this man would have been in for the
tongue-lashing of the century. She would have gone up one side of him and down
the other, spouting expletives he probably had never heard before. But things
were different now. Just like she had worked hard to lose her accent, she had
worked hard to control her temper. Where she was from it was a weapon that
proved necessary, but here all it would do was turn heads her way.

“Nobody,” she whispered. “You can have
your seat back.” She was painfully aware of how drawing attention would
undermine what she was doing here in the first place. She grabbed her things,
left money on the table for Betty and hustled past him. He called something
out, but Piper was already under the jingling bell of the door.

Bobby reluctantly peeled himself from
the booth and jogged out to catch her.

“Wait,” he called out to the girl as she
crossed the street. He saw her turn and look back toward him and then increase
her pace slightly. He was a high school track star and one of the fastest men
in his class at the police academy. There was no way she was going to out run
him. He hadn’t been a perfect gentleman, but he wasn’t so rude that she needed
to run away. This all seemed a little extreme to him.

As he jogged up behind her she stopped
abruptly, looking completely frazzled by his presence.

“What?” she asked, clutching her
notebook tightly to her chest. She worried that perhaps he had glimpsed her
notes or maybe Betty had tipped him off to her peculiar behavior.

Bobby ran his hands over the bristly
stubble that covered his cheek and sighed loudly, looking utterly overwhelmed.
“I’m sorry I was short with you. I’m not having a great couple of weeks.” Piper
caught a glimpse of his flexed bicep and felt herself drawn to it, staring for
a moment. He stood nearly a foot taller than she was but, unlike some men of
that size, he was warm not intimidating. He was the kind of man that made you
feel safer when he was around. It was clear the blustery rudeness he had just
exhibited was not his normal temperament. His face was tired but too gentle for
that to be true. Still, Piper wasn’t interested in his apology.

“All right,” she snapped curtly, and
began to turn away from him.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?
I’m trying to apologize here.” He may have chased after her partially out of
guilt but also because she was captivating. Not gorgeous, not exotic, but there
was something fascinating about her. His curiosity, however, was waning as her
rudeness seemed to grow. He had thought that he might be able to redeem himself
by the over-the-top gesture of running after her and apologizing. He was wrong.
Much like the rest of his life right now, things weren’t going as he had
imagined.

He watched her impatiently tuck her
silky brown hair behind her ear and he realized that maybe he had misread her.
Back in the diner he thought her murky dark-brown eyes had been calling out to
him in a haunting way. She seemed to have a depth that he had struggled to find
in anyone lately. Maybe at first she seemed like something beautiful that had
been knocked down and was waiting to be picked up and dusted off. Now standing
on the sidewalk, with no words passing between them, he felt silly.

“Well, I guess that’s it then,” he said
awkwardly, turning on his heels. It wasn’t usually hard for Piper to watch
anyone walk away from her. She normally found herself relieved to be alone.
This felt different. She had to stifle a little tug at her heart as she watched
this man leave, and all that did was annoy her. She didn’t need butterflies in
her stomach; she needed ice in her veins.

Piper didn’t like the way he looked at
her penetratingly, like he could see something that others couldn’t—the
heaviness she carried. Starting right now he would be someone she’d need to
avoid.

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