Calamity Jayne Heads West (14 page)

“You stuck your tongue in my ear,” he declared.

“I did no such thing!” I declared, jumping out of my chair.

“Gotcha!” he said with a grin. “I’ll give you this much, Blondie,” he continued. “If I do decide to tell my grandson what transpired here, I’ll do you the courtesy of letting you know beforehand, just in case you decide you want to tell him first. Fair enough?” He offered his bony hand to me and I took it.

“I don’t suppose I have a choice,” I said. “But be warned, Mr. Geezer, if you spill the beans without warning me ahead of time, I’ll make sure your dirty laundry, cold-water washables and all, is hung out to dry from the water tower back home!”

He grunted as we shook on it.

“ ’Til then, old man, we speak of this to no one,” I said.

“Ten-four, Gypsy Rose,” he said with a grin. “Sweet, sweet Gypsy Rose.”

From a lady outlaw to a stripper who was no lady. Some days it didn’t pay to get out of bed. Unless you found yourself in that bed very nearly naked with a seventy-year-old man in silk, that is. My stomach roiled again.

“So, where is your grandson?” I finally thought to ask, taking a look at the time and thinking it strange Ranger Rick was still out and about.

“How should I know? I thought he was out with you,” Joe commented.

“He was,” I responded, “and wasn’t.”

Joe crossed his scrawny bird legs and tapped his knee. “What’s that mean?”

“It means we didn’t go together, but we ended up leaving together,” I said.

Joe raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a pick-up story if I ever heard one,” he said.

I shook my head. “It wasn’t like that,” I told him. Well, it hadn’t started out that way. “My cousin Sophie met up with a friend who was going to see her home, so I caught a ride with Rick to give them a little time to themselves.”

“I see. Pick-ups run in the family, huh? So, if you left with Rick, where is he?”

“I have no idea. He dropped me off at Aunt Kay’s house and left. That was hours ago.” I rubbed my gut. I was starting to get a bad case of nervous stomach. Where the devil was that man?

“You’re sure he didn’t come back to the room?” I asked. Joe shrugged.

“I’m a heavy sleeper,” he said. “I expect that’s why I didn’t wake up when you crawled into bed with me.” He must’ve seen the look on my face, because he self-corrected before I could object. “I mean, when you came into the room. How’d you get in here, anyway?” he asked, and I frowned, wondering why it hadn’t reg-istered before.

“Why, that conniving, treacherous, two-faced little toad!” I said, jumping to my feet again. “He tricked me into climbing into that bed with you, the demented lit-tle troll!”

“Who? Rick?” Joe asked.

“No!” I said, running to the door of the hotel room and yanking it open. “Him!” I pointed to the eaves-dropping urchin crouched in the hallway outside the door with a drinking glass against one ear and an
I’m-busted
look on his face.

“Nick? Nick’s the demented little troll?” Joe asked. I nodded. Nick started to crawl away but I took hold of one ear.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said, pulling him into the ho-tel room. “We need to talk, buster.”

“But it’s late. It’s past my bedtime!”

“You should’ve thought about that before you pulleda stunt that resulted in an encounter I’ll probably re-quire extensive therapy to treat before I ever commit to an intimate relationship,” I told him.

“Huh?”

“I heard that and I resent it!” Joe yelled from across the room.

I ignored him and focused on the kid at my feet. “You knew your Uncle Rick wasn’t in here when you got me that key and brought me here. How?”

The kid hesitated, no doubt trying to make up an-other doozy.

“And don’t even try to lie to me this time, mister,” I said, crouching at his level to make eye contact. “Your Uncle Rick could be in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” Joe asked.

I waited.

“Girl trouble,” Nick finally said, and I sat. It was not what I expected to hear.

“What do you mean, ‘girl trouble’?” I asked.

Nick paused again.

“Nick?” I prodded.

“He was with
her,
” he said, lowering his gaze and looking away from me.

I frowned. “Her? Who, her?”

“The lady from Oak Creek Canyon. Whitebread,” he said, and I almost smiled.

“Whitehead? He was with Officer Whitehead?”

“Who the devil is Whitebread?” Joe asked. “You two are keeping me out of the loop.”

Nick nodded. “I saw them together. They were out-side talking.”

“What time was this?” I asked.

The kid bit his lip. “I dunno. An hour before you got here. Maybe more. He said he was gonna take a walk to clear his head. I thought it was awful cold, butUncle Rick said the colder the better—whatever that meant.”

I winced. “So, you talked to your uncle after he got home?” I asked.

He got a crafty look in his eyes I didn’t care for. “Yeah. He brought something to our room for safe-keeping,” Nick said. “Something very special.”

“What’s he talking about? What’s special? What did he bring for safekeeping?” Joe had stood and moved over to us. Standing with his arms akimbo and feet spread apart and in his silk robe, he looked like a geri-atric King of Siam.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “The kid’s right. It’s past his bedtime. And yours, too, Joe.” I took Nick’s hand and pulled him to his feet. “You don’t want to get so worn out that you’re unable to, uh, consummate the mar-riage,” I pointed out to Joe. “Although from your ear-lier remarks, I take it that particular pony has left the starting gate,” I added. He gave me an annoyed look.

“Come on, pardner,” I said, leading the adolescent to the door. “Time for little cowpokes to bed down for the night,” I told him. “See you tomorrow, Casanova,” I said to Joe.

“Oh, and before I forget, little Miss Easy Rider. The black bra? It’s, like, totally workin’ for you, girl,” Joe said with a wink. “Think you can talk your grandma into getting one, too?”

I yanked little T out into the hall and shut the door on Joe’s dry cackles.

“You Townsend men should take your act on the road,” I told Nick.

“You mean like Vegas or Branson?” the runt asked.

I shook my head. “I mean like Ringling Brothers,” I replied.

“Can I go to bed now?” Nick asked. “I’m really tired.”

I nodded. “Certainly. Just as soon as you hand over my property,” I told him, marching him down the hall in the direction of his room.

He stopped. “I don’t have it,” he said, and I looked at him.

“What do you mean, you don’t have it? You just said your uncle brought it up to your room for safekeep-ing,” I pointed out.

“He did.”

“So? Where it is? Where’s Kookamunga?”

He looked at his feet again, and I knew I wasn’t go-ing to like the response.

“I got rid of it,” he said, and I felt this almost uncon-trollable urge to wrap my hands around his scrawny neck and lift him off the ground and shake him. In-stead, I backed him up against the wall.

“You—got—rid—of—it?” I enunciated. “You got rid of it! Why? You knew that was a wedding gift for your great-grandpa and my grandma. Why would you do that?”

“Because it was a sucky gift, that’s why!” he said. “Who gives an ugly statue with a hoo-hah bigger than the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile as a gift for a wed-ding?” he asked. “It’s dumb! And you’re dumb for buy-ing it. So I got rid of it.”

I put my hands on the wall on either side of his head.

“Where did you put it?” I asked.

“I’m not gonna tell. It’s ugly and stupid and gross.”

I bent down to eye level. “Listen very carefully, Nick. There is a chance—a slim chance, but a chance all the same—your uncle could be in trouble because I bought that statue. I need that statue. Do you understand?”

He stared at me. “Is this for real?” he asked, and I nodded.

“I wouldn’t fib about something like this, Nick,” I said.

“Uncle Rick could be in trouble?”

“I don’t know. But it’s possible.”

He studied me for several seconds. “It’s in the drink,” he said, and I stared at him.

“What?”

“I dropped him in the swimming pool,” he said. “The deep end. It was so cool. He sank to the bottom like an anchor.”

I shook my head. When I’d contemplated taking the plunge tonight, this was
so
not what I had in mind.

Then again, on the bright side, maybe I’d luck out and find Nemo.

Most likely, I’d find heap big trouble.

Cowabunga.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Since I needed someone to stand guard while I retrieved Kookamunga from the pool’s depths and Ranger Rick was nowhere to be found—I’d stew over that once my rescue dive was completed—I had to enlist the dubi-ous assistance of Nick the nephew. The pool area was dark but the doors were unlocked. I posted Nick just outside the door.

“You stay here and keep watch,” I told him. “If some-one comes by, stall them. It shouldn’t take me long to locate Kooky and bring him up.”

“I’m tired. I want to go to bed,” Nick whined.

“You should’ve thought of that before you decided how fun it would be to play your pervy little joke on me,” I told him. “Not so funny now, is it?” I taunted.

“What do I say if someone comes along? What if they ask what I’m doing here?”

“Do what you do best, boy. Jerk ’em around like you do me. That’ll give me more than enough time to fin-ish up. I need three minutes, tops. You’ve annoyed people much longer than that with your endless ques-tions. You know. Like, ‘Why don’t they have the pool open at night? What if someone wants to swim? Do you have heated towels? Does swimming after you eat re-ally cause cramps—’ ”

“Can guests skinny dip in the pool and take their clothes off in the hot tub?” the pipsqueak piped in.

I made a face. “You get the general idea,” I said. “Let’s go. Once I’ve collected Kooky, you can take your cunning little kiester off to bed where you can wreak all the havoc you like in your dreams,” I told him.

He crossed his arms and gave me the silent treat-ment, which suited me fine. I slipped into the pool area and, for the second time that evening, stripped down to my underwear. This was getting to be a bad habit. I peered down at the dark water. I was a decent swimmer but the idea of diving to the pool’s depths with only a kid who was about as trustworthy as my Ply-mouth Reliant in cold weather looking out for my wel-fare gave me more than a little cause for concern.

I moved to the deep end of the glistening pool, sucked in a heavy-duty breath and dove in. I swam to the bottom of the pool and groped around the bot-tom, searching for the ugly but defenseless fertility fig-urine who’d been no match for an adolescent with an attitude. Losing breath and finding nothing I sur-faced, gasped for more air and did a return dive, all the time wishing I’d made the little twerp rescue Kooky himself. As Dr. Phil likes to say,
You choose the be-havior,
you choose the consequences.
Dr. Phil so rocks.

I did some more groping—non-lewd variety—and still no luck. I was just about to resurface for one more dive when I felt a tug on the waistband of my panties from behind. I turned, making out only a large shadow in the water. Instinctively, I reached out to shove the object away—and made contact with hot, wet, naked skin.

Air bubbles shot out my mouth as I pushed off from the bottom of the pool and headed for the surface. What the devil had that little turd sniffer done now?

Just as I was about to break the surface, I was hauled back under by a tug on my ankle. More bubbles es-caped. Something grabbed me around the waist—my imagination immediately identified it as a villain: an octopus, maybe, or the bad guy here to collect Kooka-munga even if it meant drowning me—and I began to struggle. I flailed about, swinging my arms as I pro-pelled myself upward. I hit pay dirt when my fist col-lided with what felt like a nose.

I broke free and thrust my body up and away, break-ing the surface of the pool with a cough and a sputter before long strokes took me to the end of the pool and the ladder. I’d climbed two rungs and was about to pull myself out when I was hauled back into the water with a loud splash, getting a mouthful of chlorine in the process.

A long, dark shadow loomed out of the shimmering depths again and I was just about to start punching when I was grabbed by my upper arms and pulled in the shadow’s direction. The next thing I knew lips were locked on mine in a hard, breathtaking—and breath-sharing—kiss.

I’d know that kisser anywhere.

The seconds ticked by. With each measure of breath I gave and received back, it felt like I was willing myself to give more and more of myself away. Strong arms hugged me, cradled me. As one we broke the water’s surface, lips still sealed in a kiss.

We kissed, treading water for a long moment, end-ing the kiss when we were both good and breathless.

“Who’d have guessed I’d find a mermaid in north-ern Arizona?” Townsend said, pushing my hair back out of my face. I was so gonna pay for this when Icombed my hair the next day. I’d probably go through at least two wide-toothed combs.

Who’d have guessed I’d go from jumping in bed with one Townsend to jumping in the pool with his nearly naked grandson in the same night, I thought, giving thanks for nondisclosure clauses.

“Are you naked?” I asked instead.

“Do you want me to be?” he asked.

Did I?

“Your nephew is just outside the door,” I pointed out.

“Not anymore. I sent the kid to bed,” he said. “After I chewed his ass, that is.”

I shoved Townsend away, remembering what had brought me to the pool in the first place: Townsend trickery.

“Oooh. You talked to him. Wow. I bet he was scared,” I said. “What that kid needs is a kick in the seat of the pants by someone who isn’t afraid to do it,” I told Rick. “Do you know what he did?”

“He told me,” Townsend said.

I hesitated. “What exactly did he tell you?” I asked.

“About Kookamunga. What else? If it makes you feel any better, I think he’s sorry.”

“Sorry he got caught is more like it,” I scoffed, re-lieved the practical jokester hadn’t informed Ranger Rick of my troubling tryst with his grandpappy. “I al-most drowned diving for a gift I personally hand-selected and spent my—er, your hard-earned money for and the damned thing was never there. Was it?”

Townsend shook his head.

“It was hidden behind a floral display in the lobby,” he said.

“Of all the asinine things—”

“Why are you here, Tressa?” Townsend asked.

I shook my head and water flew from the tangled mass. “What do you mean? I came in here to retrievemy property from a demented little toadstool,” I said, squeezing more water out of my hair.

“But what brought you to the hotel in the middle of the night?” Townsend asked, and I knew what he wanted to hear. And the sexually frustrated part of me wanted to tell him what he wanted to hear.

“You did,” I found myself saying. It was, after all, the truth.

“I did?”

I nodded. “I was . . . concerned,” I said, picking my words carefully.

“How so?”

“I know this may sound really Area 51, but I actually thought you might be in danger,” I told him.

I could see him shake his head. “I’m not reading you,” he said. “Why would I be in danger?”

What had seemed like a certainty when I was lying in bed miles away fretting now seemed fanciful at best. I took a deep breath. “I think someone is after Kooka-munga,” I said.

A long poignant pause filled the distance between us.

“Run that by me again,” Townsend said.

“I think someone is trying to steal Kookamunga,” I repeated. “I’m serious.”

Townsend covered his face with a hand, wiping away the moisture. “That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said. He swam to the side of the pool and pulled himself out. I followed.

“What does that mean?”

He crossed the pool area to where a pile of clothes sat, and grabbed something, turned and walked back to me and slapped Kookamunga into my hands.

“You think someone is after that?” he asked, put-ting a hand through his hair. From the light stream-ing in from the patio area outdoors, his silhouettereminded me of a muscled, ripped romance cover model. Townsend’s silhouette, not Kooky’s, that is.

“Huh?” I said, my concentration centered on the ripped ranger across from me.

“Why would anyone in their right mind be after that thing?” he asked again, and I looked down at Kooka-munga. Okay, so on a scale of one to ten he’d get about a .5 for attractiveness. But he’d be off the scale as a conversation piece.

I hurried over to Townsend as he grabbed his pants and pulled them on. I watched, way too fascinated for my own good.

“Don’t you see? At the roadside stand someone told them to hold Kooky for him and not sell him, but they sold him to us anyway.”

“Kooky?” Townsend paused, leaving his jeans open at the waist—and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

“His nickname,” I said. “Then, at Oak Creek Canyon, we have the little run-in with Raphael.”

“The poet,” Townsend said. “How does he fit in? He took cake.”

I’d thought about this on the drive up.

“Ah, but did he know it was cake?” I said. “It could easily have been Kookamunga in the bag. I’d switched the bags after we left the roadside stand. To avoid frosting fallout,” I clarified. “And you can’t forget what happened at Numbers.”

Townsend picked up his shirt. “I’d like to give it a try,” he muttered. “And . . . he took Sophie’s bag. Not yours.”

“Ah-ha. But did he know it was Sophie’s bag? Sophie had left the table. I was the only one there. My back-pack was on the back of my chair. He could easily have missed it. And being a Dolce & Gabbana bag, well,class shows, and he’d naturally assume the bag be-longed to me.”

Townsend pulled the shirt over his head. “Natu-rally,” he said. “And I suppose these same bad guys used Sophie’s identification to break into your aunt’s house shortly thereafter,” he said. “All that effort to get their hands on a fifty-dollar fake fertility idol with, as Nick pointed out, a pecker the size of a teepee pole. And pointing the same direction, I might add. I’m having a hard time with this one, T,” he said.

He moved in my direction and stopped in front of me. I shivered, feeling uncomfortably vulnerable clad in only my wet black bra and panties with Townsend now fully dressed.

“I’d rather you tell me you came back to the hotel because you were tossing and turning in your bed thinking of me, instead of Mr. Erectus Enormous here,” he said, moving closer and closer until Kooka-munga threatened to jab him. He put a hand out to deflect the protruding protuberance. “Easy there, fella,” he said. “Take it down a notch.”

I smiled.

“Black looks good on you,” Townsend said, shifting his attention away from Kooky to me. My smile fal-tered when I recalled Joe Townsend’s earlier similarly approving assessment of my undergarments. “But I’m thinking it would look even better off,” he said, loop-ing a finger underneath a bra strap, pulling it down. His palm swept over the top of my breast and I felt my nipple grow and harden under his touch.

“I don’t think this is exactly the time or the place,” my lips protested while my body beckoned. “And you’ve got a roommate who assures me he’ll be up vis-iting the privy the remainder of the night,” I added.

“You spoke to Pops?” Townsend asked, his lips nuz-zling my neck.

I nodded, bending my neck so he had easier access. “Just before your nephew, Nosy Nick, fell into the room with his ear to the keyhole.”

“Hotel doors have keyholes?” He nuzzled an ear-lobe and I shivered.

“That kid doesn’t need a keyhole. You better be careful, Townsend, he even spies on you.” I stopped, replayed that in my head, and realized I’d totally spaced on the little twerp’s earlier claim that Townsend had been with Officer Whitehead.

“Kids will be kids,” Townsend said, drawing my other bra strap down. “And men . . . will be men,” he added, shifting his lips to the other side of my neck.

“The kid’s got an imagination, that’s for sure,” I said, trying to keep my voice at a conversational level. “He even said he saw you and Whitehead outside the hotel together tonight. About the same time I was frac-turing more than a few traffic laws and waking senior citizens trying to locate you.”

The nuzzling at my neck was placed on pause. Townsend’s hot breath heated my skin. I waited for his response—well, for all of ten seconds, that is—and reached out and grabbed a hunk of his hair at the back of and pulled up so I could see his face. “That was all just a figment of the kid’s imagination, right, Townsend?” I asked, trying to read the sparks of light in his dark eyes.

He straightened.

“Carena was here,” he said. “She was still troubled about the incident at Oak Creek Canyon. When the guy showed up at Numbers and Sophie’s purse was snatched, she was concerned. She wanted to see if I had any more information on the guy.”

I stepped back. “Why didn’t she contact me, then?” I asked. “Or Sophie? Why you?”

Townsend shook his head. “I don’t know. I guesssince I’m in a similar profession she thought I might be more—I don’t know—helpful.”

“And were you?” I asked.

“Was I what?”

“Helpful.”

He shrugged. “She seemed satisfied when she left,” he said with a grin, and I felt my lip curl.

“I’m sure she was,” I snapped, and stomped over to my pile of clothes. I put Kookamunga down and slammed my legs into my jeans, stuffing my arms into my T-shirt. I threw the hoodie over my head, leaving the hood on my wet mane.

“I’m leaving. See if I protect your arrogant ass again, Mr. Ranger, sir,” I said.

“It was a joke, Tressa,” Townsend said. “Just a joke.”

I nodded, “Sometimes I wonder if everything is a joke to you where I’m concerned,” I said, fatigue and disappointment adding a resigned tone to my words. “Calamity Jayne, sideshow attraction and comic cow-girl extraordinaire. Hurry, hurry. Step right up and get your ticket, folks! We promise one heckuva good time! Yeehaw!”

Townsend took a step in my direction. “You know, Miz Calamity, that kind of promotion usually ends with your basic guarantee of satisfaction,” he told me, a suggestive huskiness to his voice.

I cocked a brow. With a head of hair that now re-sembled a tumbling tumbleweed, a body scent that made you think of industrial-strength cleaners, and an ass so waterlogged my butt cheeks probably resembled two rather large, wrinkly prunes, no way was I going to make good on any guarantees of satisfaction tonight.

“Sorry, bucko, but after the day I’ve had, any perfor-mance this little cow gal gave would be on a strictly ‘As is—No warranty provided’ basis,” I said, quoting the paperwork on the used cars at the car dealership my brother worked at. “Besides, there’s another thing that keeps popping up between us that kind of gets in the way,” I told him.