Sizzle (7 page)

If he could only get a photo of her, he wouldn’t need a girly magazine to take the pressure off. She’d do the trick all right. Yeah, he definitely needed a picture. He didn’t have a camera with him, but his cell phone had one, and it would have to do. He pulled it out of his pocket and held it up, then waited for her to turn around so he could get a clear shot. Just as he pressed, she moved, so he took several more.

None of them were probably any good. He deleted them and gave up. He guessed he would have to memorize her face and body for his evening entertainment.

Now what was she doing? She’d closed the back door but kept glancing at the yard. She went around to the backseat, opened the door, and crossed the yard again, making one last trip for books.

Milo was so busy watching the knockout he didn’t notice Babs Rooney approaching until she stopped the beautiful woman and added more books to her pile. Babs said something to the book lover, then handed her an expensive-looking camera. He couldn’t tell if it was a video camera or one of those fancy new digitals, but it looked brand new and was probably worth a lot of money. The woman wouldn’t take it, but Babs insisted and put the camera on top of the books. He looked at the SUV again and noticed the university sticker in the window. A student then. No wonder she liked books.

He couldn’t believe what he did next. He got out of his car to get closer to her, forgetting in his haste that he had placed the cell phone Mr. Merriam had given him in his lap. It clattered to the street and bounced under the car. He had to get down on his stomach to reach far enough under the car to get it. Cursing profusely, he tossed the phone onto the front seat and started out again. It took balls, but he was going to talk to her, maybe even flirt. Who knows? She might like the macho type. If she were to blow him off or laugh at him, no big deal, none of his friends would ever find out.

Opportunity struck. She dropped one of the books. Milo raced to pick it up.

“I got it. I got it,” he shouted, sounding ridiculously excited.

He put the book on top of her stack. “Here you are, Miss …” The camera slipped but Milo grabbed it and tucked it into the crook of her arm. He couldn’t remember if he said anything else after that or not. Gorgeous green eyes. He’d never seen that exact color before.

“You could be in movies,” he blurted. “Are you?”

She shook her head.

He swallowed. “You go to school around here?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered, smiling.

Nice voice. Southern tinge to it. She was walking away. “Wait,” he called, running after her. “I want to help you carry those books.”

“No, thank you. I’ve got it.”

He froze in his tracks and frantically tried to think of something else to say to keep her there.

Too late. She was leaving. His mind was still blank. He hadn’t even said thank you.

Yeah, thank you. He could say that, but why would he be thanking her? No, that wouldn’t work. He had to come up with something else.

And she was gone. He wanted to scream, but he had to think fast. Her car was pulling away. As he watched it disappear down the street, he zeroed in on her license plate and quickly memorized the number. He fumbled in his pockets and found a pen. Grabbing a stray book lying at his feet, he ripped out a page and quickly wrote down the number. A gratified smile spread across his face. He was pretty smart after all. Now all he had to do was use her license number to get her name and address, and then he could pretend to run into her again.

“If I were still married, I’d buy my husband those new Callaway clubs,” a woman behind him said and drew his attention.

Hey, wait a minute. Maybe it wasn’t all junk. “Did you say new?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

She looked confused. “It’s free.” Sweeping her arm toward the lawn, she said,

“Everything’s free. Didn’t you read the sign?” She looked toward the corner of the yard by the driveway. “Oh, I see. It fell over. Maybe I ought to take those clubs … my nephew—”

“Where are they?” he interrupted.

“In those bushes over there. I think the owner’s wife threw them there.” Milo didn’t give the woman time to get them. He dove into the shrubbery and retrieved the golf clubs. They were brand new, and he was careful with them when he put them in the trunk of his car. New clubs would get him more money on eBay than scratched ones. He noticed an older man carrying a small flat-screen television out the door. “I gotta get in on that,” he whispered.

Time got away from him as he searched for more stuff. Yes, it was secondhand stuff, but what he took wasn’t junk, and best of all, he didn’t pay a cent for it. He was going to make a fortune on eBay. Milo was suddenly feeling superior again. He wasn’t at all like those other yard-sale freaks.

He was squeezing behind the wheel, trying not to knock over the food processor that hadn’t even been taken out of its box, when Merriam’s cell phone rang. It took five rings before Milo could get to it under the silverware.

“Yes?”

“Where have you been?” The fury in Mr. Merriam’s voice came across loud and clear.

“I’ve called four times.”

“I’ve been sitting here waiting for your call. I swear this is the first time the phone rang.

The signal’s weak … maybe that’s why …”

Milo felt like such a fool. How could he have forgotten why he was at the Rooneys?

“Cheap, throwaway phones,” Mr. Merriam railed. “Listen to me. I’m calling it off.”

“You don’t want me to—”

“That’s right, I don’t. Someone lied to me, convinced me something I wanted was in Rooney’s office safe, but it wasn’t there.”

Milo was watching the street and saw Rooney’s car turning the corner. “He’s coming this way now.”

“Excellent. I’ve got Charlie Brody and Lou Stack headed over there. You stay where you are. they might need your help getting Rooney to talk.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna work, sir. See … uh … there’s this situation here.”

“What?”

“There’s this situation,” he repeated. “Rooney’s wife is having a yard sale.”

“A what?”

“A yard sale, and there’s like a hundred people here,” he exaggerated. “They’re going in and out of the house, too. The wife is getting rid of everything.”

“You sit there and wait,” Merriam ordered. “I need to talk to Charlie and Stack, then I’ll get back to you.”

Milo decided he’d better not put the phone down, fearing he’d lose it again, so he put it on the dashboard and sat back to wait.

Rooney’s BMW screeched to a stop in the driveway. He hadn’t even gotten out of the car before he started screaming.

“Put that down. What are you doing?” he roared. “Put that back. You there … get away from that.” He ripped a stack of clothes out of a woman’s arms and shoved her. “You get out of here, right this minute.”

Milo felt as though he was watching a slapstick movie. Rooney’s behavior was hilarious.

His face was bloodred, and he hurled through the crowd knocking people aside as he bellowed for his wife.

“Here we go,” Milo whispered. He spotted Babs coming around the side of the house, a complacent smile on her face. She was apparently used to her husband’s rants and raves.

“What have you done?” Rooney shouted. He tripped over a stack of books. “Oh my God.

You didn’t touch anything in my study, did you? You did, you did. Do you realize what you’ve done? Is everything gone? Everything in there gone?” Babs’s expression didn’t waver. “Every article from your precious library is out here …

what’s left of it.”

He shook his head in disbelief and ran inside. Babs stayed in the yard. Continuing to smile, she turned to the crowd warily watching her and called out, “Everything’s still free.

Go ahead and take whatever you want, but you’d better hurry. My husband has a foul temper, and it’s going to get ugly.”

She seemed utterly unfazed by the possibility.

Milo watched from his car and decided that, despite her creepy face-lifts and inflated lips, Babs was fairly classy. Classy dresser anyway. She had on a knockout, rhinestone-embellished, lime green velour jogging suit with matching high heels. He could see her red-painted toes peeking through the openings.

Milo wasn’t sure how long he should wait. Mr. Merriam had told him not to do anything until he heard from him, but people were heading to their cars now. Once they were gone, one or both of the Rooneys would surely notice he was still there.

The Rooneys made the decision for him. Milo got so caught up in their argument, he couldn’t leave.

Babs shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket and appeared to be bracing herself for the confrontation when her husband flew out the front door, shrieking like a wounded hyena.

“You stupid bitch. What were you thinking? Don’t you know what you’ve done? You’ve thrown away a gold mine. A gold mine worth millions of dollars.” His gaze darted around the yard. He locked in on a pile of miscellaneous items and raced across the yard. “Maybe it’s still here … maybe it’s not too late.” He dropped to the ground and began to search frantically. “Maybe it’s buried on the bottom.” Throwing notebooks and ashtrays and picture frames in the air, he pleaded, “Please, please, God, don’t let it be gone. Don’t let it be gone.”

“That’s rich. You praying to God. You hypocrite,” Babs said scornfully.

Ignoring his wife, he continued the search until he was convinced what he was looking for wasn’t to be found. Still on his knees, he turned to her. “Why? Why did you do this to me? He’s going to come after me. He won’t just kill me. He’ll go after you, too. That’s right. He can’t take the chance I didn’t tell you about it. Why?” he repeated on a sob. “Why did you—”

“You wouldn’t take me to New York.”

His mouth dropped open. “New York?” he shouted. “You did all this because I wouldn’t take you to New York?”

Babs held up her left hand, looked at the diamond wedding ring, sighed loudly, then took the ring off and threw it at her husband. It landed in the grass next to him.

“What are you … are you nuts?” he gasped as he pawed the grass searching for it.

She shoved her hands back in her pockets and glared at him. “You knew how much I wanted to see the shows on Broadway. You told me you couldn’t spare the time, remember? I begged and begged you. It didn’t matter, though. Yet you did find the time to take another woman to New York. How many shows did you see with her?” As though the wind had just been knocked out of him, Rooney slumped back on his haunches. “This is all because—”

“How could you think I wouldn’t find out? You cheated on me, but unlike you, I have loyal friends. Susan saw you on the plane. She told me the woman you were with was hanging all over you.”

He stumbled getting to his feet. “I’m going to kill you,” he growled through clenched teeth.

Babs pulled a gun from her pocket. “No, you’re not. I’m going to kill you.” Milo was mesmerized by what he was witnessing and was afraid to blink for fear he’d miss something. Would she really do it? What kind of a gun was it? Looked like a .38 or a

.45. Wish he could get closer to see. Maybe even steal it. He could always use another piece.

And that ring. He had to get it before anyone else did. His gaze bounced back and forth between the ring in the grass and the gun. Should he try to stop the crazy woman? Mr.

Merriam needed to find out where Rooney had hidden whatever it was he’d taken. Was it the same thing that Rooney was desperate to find now? Milo’s boss should have told him what the mystery item was so he could look for it in all the junk in the yard.

Milo glanced back at Babs when she began to laugh. It was a weird sound, somewhere between a snort and a cough. She held her smile as she took aim and fired. She hit Rooney in the chest, took a couple of steps forward, and fired again.

Milo heard a woman scream, looked in his rearview mirror, and saw a couple standing in front of their car. The man held a phone up snapping a picture of the scene. Milo ducked down to be out of camera range. When he dared to raise his head to peek over the dashboard, Babs was standing over her husband, staring down at him, probably making sure he was dead. She must have been convinced because she lowered the gun and calmly walked into her house. Milo had hoped that she would drop the gun so he could snatch it, but she held on to it. He craned his neck to watch her close the door. A second later he heard another gunshot. It came from inside the house. Had she just killed herself, or was she shooting holes in another one of his treasures?

Men and women were cautiously making their way toward the body on the grass. Milo immediately jumped to the conclusion that they were all thinking about stealing the ring.

“Oh no you don’t,” he muttered as he jumped out of the car and sprinted over to Rooney’s side. He knew exactly where the ring had landed and knelt down next to it. With his right hand he pretended to check for a pulse while he lifted the ring with his left hand and tucked it into his pocket.

“Is he dead?” a woman called out.

Milo nodded. He didn’t look at the woman because he didn’t want anyone to get a good look at him.

“I called nine-one-one,” another shouted.

As the curious moved forward, Milo hurried back to his car. He kept his head down as he started the motor. He would wait until he could leave without being noticed, and since he didn’t want anyone recording his license plate, he would have to back up and turn around at the top of the hill. If he backed into the first drive, the trees would block the view.

Though he was dying to take the ring out of his pocket and look it over, he didn’t dare.