Love Game (19 page)

It wasn’t the way I wanted to die. I wanted to die of old age while on tour with the Rolling Stones, staying at the Crillon hotel in Paris and eating boeuf bourguignon.

“I’m not in Paris,” I whined, but Harold didn’t appear to hear me.

Before Harold Chow could eat my brain, however, another car drove into the lot, blaring a siren and shining a light on him. Detective Remington Cumberbatch had come back for me.

Harold took off, running toward town. Remington parked next to my car, stepped out, and knocked on my window.

“You all right?”

I opened the door. “Harold turned into a zombie,” I informed him. “He was going to eat my brain. My grandmother warned me this would happen. It’s the phony witch’s fault. She’s an enemy to love, and she’s jamming Grandma’s signals.”

“I’m going to take you home,” Remington said, helping me out of my car.

“Do you think Harold is going to eat anyone’s brains?”

Remington guided me toward his car and opened the passenger door for me. “It’s doubtful.”

“He looked hungry. And naked.” I shuddered. I didn’t want to see Harold Chow naked.

Remington clicked my seat belt into place and closed my door. He sat in the driver’s seat and started up his car. I put my hand on his arm.

“I’m a little tired,” I said.

“I’m going to drive you home.”

“Grandma warned me about Harold Chow. She said horrible things would happen. I let her down.”

We drove the couple of minutes home, and Remington walked me up the driveway. Grandma opened the front door before we got to it.

“Grandma, Harold Chow is a zombie,” I said. “He almost sucked out my brain.”

“Oh, she’s got it bad,” Grandma said, and stepped aside for us to enter the house. “Take her upstairs to her room. She needs rest.”

“Thanks for calling me,” Remington told Grandma. “He was on her car when I got there.”

“I knew this would happen,” Grandma said.

Remington walked me up the stairs with his hand around my waist.

“This is my room.”

He closed the door behind us. Without a word, he slipped Spencer’s coat off my shoulders and tossed it on the chair next to my bed.

“Aren’t you supposed to be doing an autopsy?” I asked.

“The doc had an emergency. The autopsy’s been moved to tomorrow morning.” He slipped his fingers under the hem of my dress, lifted it slowly over my head, and dropped it on top of the coat.

“Oh,” I breathed.

Remington gave off a lot of heat and took up a lot of space in my room. He never said much, but his presence could not be ignored. He didn’t make eye contact; his attention was elsewhere on my body.

“How did you get to me so fast?” I asked.

“Your grandmother called me on our way to the station. The chief dropped me off at my car. Don’t worry, he doesn’t know about Harold. Or this.”

He unhooked my bra with one hand and let it drop to the floor. We stood like that for a moment, as if it was the most normal thing in the world for me to be standing half naked in front of him.

“I don’t know what I’m prepared to give you,” I said.

“I’m not asking anything from you.”

He tugged at my panties until they fell to my ankles, and I stepped out of them. Remington threw back my covers and pulled me toward the bed.

“In,” he said.

I lay down, and he tucked me in. It was his turn, and I watched as he stripped naked, folded his clothes, and laid them out on the chair. He was breathtaking. Perfect. Every muscle defined.

Remington lifted the covers off the other side of the bed and lay down. Unbelievably, I fell asleep before his head hit his pillow.

* * *

WHEN I
woke late the next morning, Remington was long gone. I lay in bed for a while, staring up at the ceiling. The house was quiet. No visitors and no zombies. There was a knock at the door, and Grandma came in with two cups of coffee.

“Sexsomnia,” Grandma said.

“What?”

“Harold Chow’s syndrome. It’s call sexsomnia. He walks in his sleep and goes for it.”

“Oh.”

“You crapped out with Luanda, huh?”

“Yeah.”

She handed me a cup of coffee and sat down on the bed. Grandma rarely asked anything of me, and when she finally had, I’d let her down. Not only had I failed to prove Luanda was a fraud, but I helped seal her reputation as a psychic.

“I’m not giving up,” I declared. It was an odd thing for me to say, considering that giving up was my specialty. I was a gold medalist giver-upper. I had given up on everything from high school to clarinet lessons to 356 jobs since I was sixteen.

Grandma patted my leg. “Of course you’re not giving up.”

“I’m still convinced she killed Rellik,” I said. “I just don’t know how to prove it.”

Grandma sighed. It was unusual for her to sit around without anything to do. “The house is stuck in probate while they search for his next of kin,” she told me. “Supposedly he has a sister in Oklahoma, but they’re wrong.”

“What about a partner?”

“A lone wolf. My signals are still jammed. But I see him working on a lot of houses. And I see him lit up, surrounded by fire.”

“That makes sense,” I said. “Kidnappers probably go to hell.”

Grandma nodded. “That could be it.”

“What about a buyer for the house?”

“I’ve been trying to convince Frances Farian to buy it. She has a litter of cousins that come in every year, and she could use the extra space.”

“But he didn’t have any buyers before that?” I asked. “Because he said something that day. He said his company aims to please. That’s why he built the basement and the panic rooms. Who was he trying to please?”

Grandma shrugged. “That woman’s got my radar all wonky.”

“I can’t figure out a way to get into the morgue, but after I get my clothes from Dave, I’m going to go back up the mountain with Lucy. I have a feeling there’s more to find up there.”

“Good idea, dolly, but Lucy won’t get out until this evening.”

“Get out?”

“The hospital. Ruth’s there, too. In for observation in case of internal bleeding, but they’re fine.”

I drank the last of my coffee and put the cup down on the nightstand. “Help me out here, Grandma. I lost a step. Why are Lucy and Ruth in the hospital?”

“The car accident. Swerved in order not to hit Harold Chow when he was running down Main Street in his birthday suit. Luckily, the Apple Days hay-bale
display blocked most of the impact, and when they hit Tea Time, there was already a hole in the wall. So it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Press the rewind button, Grandma. Lucy drove a car into Tea Time? Again?”

“Like a puzzle piece fitting in a puzzle. Like a key through a keyhole. They went right through the gap in the wall. Ruth’s car would have been just fine if they hadn’t hit the bar.”

“No way.”

Grandma nodded. “Pure oak, built just after the Civil War. Wyatt Earp stood at that bar and drank a whiskey over a hundred years ago. And, wouldn’t you know it, not even a dent. Can’t say the same for Ruth’s car.”

“Yikes.”

Grandma got up and took the coffee cups. “By the way, you don’t need the boot anymore,” she said. “Your foot is fine now. You can stop the antibiotics, too.”

I hugged her. “Now, that’s how it’s supposed to be done. No ‘woo woo woo,’ no talking to invisible people.”

MY CAR
was waiting for me in the driveway, with Lucy’s pink screwdriver on the driver’s seat. There was a fifty-fifty chance that either Spencer, Remington, or Fred had brought it over, but I was hoping for one in particular.

It was a beautiful day but definitely cold. True to his word, Dave had all my clothes ready for me—cleaned, pressed, and hung on wire hangers, wrapped
in plastic. He advised me to forget about the red suitcase.

“I can’t guarantee there aren’t eggs,” he said, which was enough to convince me to leave the suitcase.

I changed in his back room. Finally, I was warm and in my own clothes: wool slacks, a turtleneck, a sweater, and my shearling coat.

“Thanks for the job, Gladie,” Dave said. “I got some great specimens. I put them in a jar, if you want to see.”

I didn’t want to see. He helped me put the rest of my clothes in my car.

“Cup O’Cake is running a special on apple–fig mini-tarts,” Dave told me. “They make my worms grow great, but they’re also really good with coffee.”

“Good idea.” Taking a few apple–fig tarts with me when I visited Lucy and Ruth in the hospital might smooth over the fact that I had abandoned them right before their accident, I thought.

THE DOOR
to Cup O’Cake opened with a tinkling of the bell, and inside there was a roaring fire and the usual heavenly smells. A small group of familiar faces congregated by the cappuccino maker.

Mavis, Felicia, Mrs. Arbuthnot, Frank Richmond, and Kirk Shields stopped talking when I entered. I waved to cut the awkward moment.

I sauntered over to the table of apple–fig mini-tarts and studied them. I could feel eyes on me. It was a common reaction after I’d had a run-in with a dead person, which wasn’t uncommon since I’d moved to Cannes. I was getting a reputation as a murder magnet.
They were probably studying me to make sure I didn’t have corpse cooties, before they got too close.

Kirk Shields came up behind me. He was dressed in his security uniform, with a heavy utility belt. “Good choice,” he said. “I ate five of them. They go great with coffee.”

“How about a latte?” Mavis asked me.

“Sure, Mavis, thanks.” I ordered two tarts with my coffee and a box to take to the hospital.

“You off to Uncle Harry’s?” I asked Kirk.

“Yeah, I have the second shift. No rest for the weary!” He guffawed and slapped my back. I guess he wasn’t worried about corpse cooties. “I heard you found our kidnapper. How on earth did you do that in the middle of thousands of acres of trees?”

“Luck.”

Mavis handed me a plate of tarts and a latte in a large china cup. Kirk passed her his credit card to pay his bill, and she rang it up at the cash register. He followed me to my usual chair next to the fire.

“So, nobody tipped you off about Rellik?” Kirk asked me.

“Excuse me?”

“I heard about you. You’ve solved some murders,” he continued, leaning down. Kirk smelled of soap on a rope, the cheap kind you get at a drugstore. “Maybe you have a source. Somebody called you, told you where to look for Rellik.”

“No,” I said. A creepy feeling traveled up my back, like that moment right before Alien shoves its bizarre, battering-ram second mouth into your head.

“Let the poor girl enjoy her coffee and tarts,” Mavis told him as she approached the table. “Here—I brought
you a box of doughnuts on the house, to remind you of old times.”

He took the box in his left hand and signed his credit-card statement.

“I’ll tell Mr. Lupino that I saw you,” he said, and left with his doughnuts.

I sat back and took a bite of one of the tarts. It was phenomenal. I was becoming addicted to Cup O’Cake, and it would be a hard transition back to Tea Time when Ruth finally reopened.

The only other customers, Frank Richmond and Mrs. Arbuthnot, also exited the shop, leaving me alone. The quiet was heavenly. Felicia busied herself dusting off books.

“Hey, Felicia,” I said. “I’m going to get right on that book you loaned me, I promise.”

“Don’t bother,” she said, her voice cold and distant. “Just return it when you can.”

“I really want to read it, Felicia. Honestly,” I lied.

“Don’t lie to me, Gladie. I was a teacher for years. I’ve been fed a load of bull by more than my share of students.”

“No, I mean it—” I started.

She put her hand out, palm forward. “Save it.” She threw down her rag and went into the back room. It wasn’t the first time I had been yelled at for not completing a homework assignment, but I hated letting down Felicia. She was so earnest in her love of literature, and I had spit in the face of that love.

The tide had turned against me at Cup O’Cake. I wasn’t feeling the same warm wave of welcome I had felt before. I put money down on the table, took my box of tarts and screwdriver, and left.

* * *

SOME GREAT
genius at the hospital had decided to room Lucy and Ruth together. As I walked down the hall toward their room, I heard them before I saw them. Ruth was in the middle of throwing a fit.

Luckily for Lucy, most of Ruth’s ire was directed at the hospital staff, but she had just enough left in reserve to throw a bunch of abuse Lucy’s way.

“For the love of God, they cut my gallbladder out while I laid on my kitchen table, and I was working the next day,” I heard her complain. “Why on earth do I have to stick around in this death trap? This is where Ebola and flesh-eating bacteria were created. We didn’t have all those kinds of diseases before hospitals were invented.”

I turned the corner into their room, plastered a smile on my face, and held the box of tarts up high. “Hello, hello,” I said. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”

“All right? All right?” Ruth paced the floor and counted on her fingers. “My car? Destroyed. My shop and livelihood? Ruined. And now my freedom has been forcibly removed. What is this, a hospital or a gulag?” She clanged her bedpan against the wall.

Lucy crooked her finger at me. “They took away my Taser, darlin’, and I could really use it right about now,” she whispered.

Even in her hospital gown, Lucy was done up to perfection. A Georgia peach, even though she was from Alabama.

“What are you whispering about?” Ruth demanded. “You want another car to drive through my shop?”

“I think I’ll be going now,” I said.

Lucy grabbed my arm. “Wait. Any word on Luanda? She ran out of Tea Time before the paramedics arrived.”

“I haven’t heard a peep out of her,” I said.

“I couldn’t get her to budge on Harry,” Lucy said. “I tried everything. I hope she burns in hell.”

“You just rest, and I’ll see what I can do,” I told her. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I didn’t tell Lucy, but I was reasonably certain I knew how to handle Luanda and Uncle Harry. First things first, however: I needed to get back up on the mountain and inspect where Rellik’s body had been dumped.