B00BSH8JUC EBOK (2 page)

I shrugged. Randie was beating me up pretty good, which was not unusual. It was time to keep my mouth shut. I was one of the few cops who personally appreciated the right to remain silent.

“I thought you had your eye on the new clerk at the Rising Moon,” Randie said. The Rising Moon was women’s bookstore near the college campus.

“I do. This is different.”

The telephone rang, and I waited through a short conversation. Randie hung up and said, “It doesn’t look like you’re going to have time for that car wash.”

“Why not?”

“Alie de Ville is waiting for you at the airport.”

“What!”

“You heard me.”

“But the flight isn’t due in—”

“It seems Papa de Ville sprang for a private jet.”

I went pale. “Nobody told me. The tournament officials said—”

“Then they were wrong, weren’t they?”

“Fuck it. I’m outta here.”

Such is the life of being a cop. You’re never summoned until after the damage is done.

I lit out of Randie’s office and made for the cruiser. I flipped on the lights and the siren, going like a banshee for the airport. The other cars headed for the shoulders, bailing right and left out of the way. Usually this was one of the joys of the profession, but I was too put out to care.

As I made the turn onto Airport Road, I cut off a van painted in the red and gold colors of Hillsboro College. It carried the women’s tennis team, drafted by tournament officials to be part of the welcoming crew later in the afternoon. I caught a lucky break to get ahead of them. Every single one of those tennis players had lust in her heart for Alie de Ville. If I didn’t get there first, they’d mob her.

I screamed into the airport and killed the siren and the lights. As I pulled up to the curb at the sign for arriving flights, I saw Alie and a considerable pile of luggage. She was waiting there with Sam Van Doren, the sergeant in charge of the security detail.

They did not look like a happy pair. Sam was standing as rigidly as if the departmental brass were working him over, and Alie looked icy beside him. Her arms were folded, her left hip jutted one direction and her right foot the other.

Still, I could not help but admire how her white shorts, so dazzling in the sunlight, clung to her hips and thighs, hugging her like a jealous lover. Nor could I ignore the way her cropped white T-shirt rose with each vexatious breath, offering a teasing peep show of tanned midriff. It was also impossible to miss the sparkle in her hair, so light and so fine.

Holy bombshell. I breathed deeply, as though Alie could turn the air into perfume, but all I got was the staleness inside the police car.

I parked and jumped out. Sam said, “Ms. de Ville, this is—”

“I don’t care who she is. She’s late,” Alie hissed.

In the microsecond before I got mad, I was to note that Alie’s voice was as coarse as her body was classic. The gods in their cosmic irony had left at least something to be improved upon.

I never got to decide what I wanted to say to her. Sam warned me to silence with a ferocious glare, so I watched as Alie blew by on her long, muscled legs, yanked open the cruiser’s back door and swiveled herself in, her white shorts pulling taut over all the right places. She slammed the door and stared straight ahead.

Sam grimaced. “Kotter, don’t you dare say a word to her. The mayor will have our badges if any of these tennis players don’t like their treatment—and that goes double for Alie de Ville.”

“She’s got one hell of a nerve.”

“Well, she can. She’s Alie de Ville, and we’re not.”

“I’m just supposed to put up with it?”

“Damn it, Kotter, I mean it!”

“Okay, Sam, okay.”

There was no sense letting this get to me. Otherwise, it was going to be a very long week. I was stuck with Princess Charming.

Anyway, there were worse things than having a pretty woman order me around.

I shifted the police car into gear and started rolling just as the college van pulled up with the women’s tennis team. They were going to be vastly disappointed. I was content to leave them as Sam’s problem, not mine.

“Is there a place in this town to get a good massage?” Alie asked, her unmanageable voice catching me by surprise all over again. It came from too far down in her throat. I figured I could get used to it, though—sort of like  developing a fondness for cheap wine once you get drunk enough. It starts to suit your mood.

“Sure is,” I said. Cops normally know everything about the city where they work, but in this case I was speaking from personal experience.

The most soothing hands around belonged to Julie Nemo, who just happened to be Randie Wilkes’ woman. They were already together when I met them as a kid. I got massages for birthdays, Christmases and other special occasions.

Julie Nemo was gorgeous. She was tall and bronze and catlike, and her moods and expressions were so animated that she rarely had to speak to be understood. It was a nice contrast to Randie, who could batter you with words.

Julie was a physical therapist, personal trainer and masseuse, working out of the Buena Vista Country Club, where Papa de Ville was staying. It was on the other side of town, maybe fifteen minutes away, less if you’re in a cop car and feeling frisky.

“Then take me there,” Alie said. “I could use one.”

I’d had about enough of this attitude. “Hey, I’m a cop, not a cabbie.”

“You can still drive, can’t you?”

“All right, but I’m going to wait outside and keep the meter running.”

I glanced at the rear view mirror for her reaction, expecting to see storm clouds in her eyes. Instead, she was looking rather sunny—amused even. Maybe Alie de Ville liked a little sass.

I called the police desk on the car radio and asked to be patched through to Captain Wilkes. “The subject would like an immediate appointment with Nemo,” I said. “Can you arrange?”

There was a pause, and I knew Randie wasn’t any happier about this prima donna demand than I was. I also knew she would come through, and she did.

“Ten-four,” she said tersely.

I headed for the country club. “You’ll be on the massage table in half an hour,” I said.

“Good.”

I took another look in the rear view mirror. Alie was stretching, her arms reaching for the roof and pulling that short T-shirt up to display her taut midsection. Her back arched, and her nipples became silhouetted against the light fabric. It was sexy as hell.

Then I saw her eyes watching me in the mirror. She had found me out, for sure. Her features melted into a self-satisfied smile that had nothing to do with me.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Kotter.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Officer Kotter.”

“All right, be like that. You can call me Ms. de Ville.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way, ma’am.”

Alie sighed in disgust. “
Officer
Kotter. How old are you?”

“Twenty-four. I’ve been on the force three years.”

“Well, I’m twenty. I’ve been on the pro tour four years.”

“I’d have to be a hermit in a cave not to know that.”

“Usually when I get to a new town, the police escort is a male musclehead.”

“Maybe we do better detective work here.”

She giggled. “It’s hard to believe people don’t know, but they never seem to.”

“Maybe they got the wrong impression from that cover on
Sports Illustrated.”

She giggled again. “That was supposed to be a candid picture, but they made me stand in front of a fan for about a million shots.”

“How come you’re traveling alone? I thought tennis pros had a whole army supporting them.”

“We do. I do. Coach, trainer, father, friends, security guard, sometimes even a cook, you name it. But after six weeks in Europe, I was sick of everything. I just wanted to be by myself for a little while and chill out.”

We were driving through what passed for Hillsboro’s downtown district—typical for a college town. There were a couple of coffee shops and ice cream parlors, bars with live music, pizza places and T-shirt stores, as well as the usual mix of drug stores, hardware store, clothing shops, movie house, real estate and doctors’ offices and one dentist’s place with a faulty alarm system that drove the police force crazy. It all looked fairly quaint, actually, because most of the storefronts hadn’t been changed in decades. You could live here, all right, but if you wanted some variety, you’d have to drive to a bigger city for a mall.

Alie yawned. “What do people do for fun in this place? It looks pretty dead.”

“Well, we don’t have Broadway or the Eiffel Tower here, but there’s enough to do if you know where to look.”

“And you do?”

“I’m a cop. Of course, I do.”

“So you’ll take me there?”

“Negative. The drinking age is twenty-one in this state.”

“So?”

“So you’re not going.”

“We’ll see about that,” Alie said darkly. The nasty screech in her voice sounded like a witch’s curse, and I found myself shrugging, as if to ward it off. This babe was not to be trifled with.

I wheeled into the grand entrance of the Buena Vista Country Club, marked by two pretentious white pillars with lion statues roaring on the top of them. A canopy of broad, leafy tree limbs overhung the roadway, which rolled through manicured grounds. Alie perked up as we entered. Obviously she was at home in a place like this.

I eased the cruiser into a no-parking zone near the doorway of the clubhouse and killed the engine. Being a cop meant never having to worry about parking.

I got out of the car and waited a moment, giving Alie the time to figure out she was in a back seat with no door handles—a little gimmick for foiling escapes. She couldn’t leave unless I let her.

Eventually she looked at me through the back door window and gave a little smile of surrender. I had seen it before—on television after she lost a dogged, take-no-prisoners tennis match to Steffi Graf. I wished I could see it in bed.

I let her out. “Cute,” she said.

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

Alie laughed. “You know, you’re pretty funny for a cop.”

“Ah, you’re just used to the muscleheads.”

She waited for me to open the clubhouse door for her. Naturally I did. She breezed by me without a word of thanks. The queen was in her element.

I waved to the receptionist and guided Alie through the lobby, which offered half-paneling to appeal to the men, multiple floral arrangements for the women and the sort of furniture found in the best hotels. We were on moneyed ground here.

Julie Nemo’s quarters were toward the end of a long hallway, near the fitness center and racquetball courts. We entered her anteroom, where she was seated at her desk, waiting for us.

She stood up and gave me an affectionate hug. “Kotter! How’s it going?”

“Good, Julie. Thanks for seeing us.” I turned toward Alie to do the introductions, but she was looking stunned. Obviously she wasn’t used to anybody else being greeted before she was gushed over.

I gave her the cop’s grin. She gave me hooded eyes.

“Julie, this is Ms. de Ville,” I said, knowing perfectly well that protocol required me to present Julie to Alie, not Alie to Julie. I didn’t care. I was playing for keeps.

“A pleasure,” Julie murmured, her voice as decorous as a lady in waiting. I loved the contrast to Alie’s.

Julie sent Alie into the back to get ready for her massage. “She’s a looker, isn’t she?”

“You bet. Sorry to bust in on you with such short notice. Was it a problem?”

“A little. I had to reschedule Mrs. Bentley, the wife of the country club’s treasurer. I’ll probably be giving her free massages till Christmas to make sure she’s pacified. Fortunately she’s a tennis fan.” Julie Smiled. “She acted a little put out, but she’ll be bragging to all her friends she was bumped from the massage table by Alie de Ville.”

“Thanks, Julie.”

“Don’t mention it. What are friends for? Well, I better get ready for her. Make yourself comfortable, Kotter. I’ve got coffee, juice, sodas and muffins if you want any. The muffins are low-fat, by the way.”

I picked up one of the women’s beauty and fitness magazines that Julie kept around and paged trough it for the pictures of women doing athletic activities in skimpy clothing. This was my idea of cheesecake.

I was memorizing the curve of the hip of a rollerblader when I heard the door to the back open. I looked up. There stood Alie, wearing nothing but a thick green and gold towel. She had it wrapped around herself in such a low, immodest way that it exposed her breasts above her nipples. I took as long a look as I dared, which was not nearly long enough. I stood up awkwardly, assuming she had come out because she wanted me to do something.

“Oh! Wrong door,” she said sweetly. She stood there another moment, wearing a brazen smile to go with the towel, and then she was gone.

Wrong door, hell. Alie knew just what she was doing. If she thought she could get to me that way, she was damn right.

The massage took the edge off Alie. In fact, it took so much off that she folded herself into some sort of personal cocoon and didn’t say another word to me. If I felt like a servant before, I felt like furniture now.

This babe had two speeds: stop and go. I wasn’t sure which one was more infuriating.

Alie oozed into the back seat of the patrol car and looked vacantly out the window. I drove her to the College Inn and let her out. She slinked inside without looking back, her hips pumping against those white shorts, and left the doorman and me to deal with her luggage. So what else was new?

I resisted the temptation to peel out of the inn’s sedate grounds as I returned to the police station. From one look at the Beer Belly Polka sitting smugly at the desk, I knew that word of Alie’s antics was already spreading.

“Hey, Kotter, can you fix me up for a massage?” Cranshaw tweaked me.

“Negative, Sarge. But if you’ve got a hose, I can probably arrange for a mud bath.”

“Kotter, you’ve got a bad attitude! You know that?”