Tough Customer (18 page)

"I believe you, Berry," her mother said. "In fact, no one here has disputed you. So please sit down and let's talk this out."

"Thank you, I prefer to stand. But I do want to talk this out." She shot a hard look at Ski, wishing that just once she could cause a disturbance in his steady gray gaze. "Well, what else?"

"Did you attend the office Christmas party with Starks?"

She dropped her head forward until her chin was resting on her chest. She sensed her mother's disbelief, Dodge's unspoken reproof, the deputy's condemnation. Then she brought her head up and shook back her hair in a small show of defiance.

"Yes, I agreed to be Oren's date to the Christmas party. I thought that if I went out with him once, he would stop pestering me. The party seemed a safer alternative than being alone with him for an entire evening. We would be surrounded by people we knew.

"I accepted his invitation on the condition that we meet there rather than his picking me up at home. I drove myself there and drove myself home. Alone. I told you the truth about being in Oren's car, Deputy Nyland. I never rode with him anywhere."

"What about the party?"

"Oren made certain that everyone knew we were paired for the evening. He didn't leave my side the entire night. He hovered. He treated me with familiarity, touching me constantly. The memory of it revolts me.

"I endured his manhandling, hoping that, once he could boast of having had a date with me, he would be satisfied and go away. But it didn't turn out that way."

She paused, stared into near space for a moment before focusing on the deputy again and continuing. "The last workday before the Christmas holiday, Oren received his dismissal notice. He turned to me for consolation, as though I was his lover, friend, champion." She paused again and gave them each in turn a look. "That's when the stalking began."

Wanting to lance all the boils at once, she looked at Dodge. "During your tete-a-tete with Amanda Lofland this afternoon, she spilled the beans about Ben and me."

Dodge nodded unhappily.

Facing the deputy, she said, "There was a time when Ben and I had more than a working relationship." Noting his lack of reaction, she added, "But you don't seem surprised to learn that."

He tipped his head slightly. "Ms. Lofland called me late this afternoon, said maybe I ought to know that you'd attended the company Christmas party with Oren Starks and that you and her husband had been lovers."

"He wasn't her husband then," Berry said with asperity. "And until today, I didn't know that Amanda was even aware of it. In any case, it's ancient history and has no bearing on anything, especially what happened here last night." She pried her tight grip from the back of the chair and began to pace.

"Ben and I were working late one night, went for drinks afterward, felt like blowing off some steam, and one thing led to another. Being co-workers, seeing each other every day in the office, added a bit of spice to what would otherwise have been a rather bland attraction.

"Soon even that naughty element wasn't enough to make it worthwhile. We didn't want a pretend romance to damage our solid working relationship, and we realized how silly it was to continue when neither of us was emotionally invested in the affair. So we agreed to return to what we'd been before, platonic friends and co-workers.

"It was a fling that lasted less than a month. He hadn't even met Amanda yet. When he did, I was one of the first people he told about this 'amazing woman.' I was pleased for him. And when they got engaged, I threw them a party. Mother, you remember."

"You rented out the party room at the country club."

Berry nodded and looked at Ski. "That's it. That's the big, bad secret. Until that ugly encounter in the hospital, Amanda has always been cordial toward me. Maybe today's meltdown happened because she's upset and worried about Ben's medical condition. Maybe her outburst was a delayed reaction to the trauma of hearing that he'd been shot."

She raised her hands helplessly at her sides. "I don't know when Ben told her about us, whether it was before or after they married, or this morning when he woke up in the recovery room and realized that he'd been shot while wearing only his undershorts in my house.

"What I
do
know is that my time with Ben was short-lived and forgettable. Nothing romantic has happened between us since it ended. Certainly nothing adulterous happened here yesterday."

Ski got up and rounded the table, coming to stand directly in front of her. "In the guest room, last night when I looked, the bed was still made."

"I can't account for that. Maybe Ben was sitting in the chair reading, maybe he was on the toilet, maybe he was ... I don't know what he was doing because I didn't see him after we went upstairs, said goodnight, and retired to our separate rooms."

"On your bed, the covers had been pulled back."

"Nyland, what are you getting at?" Dodge asked.

Neither she nor Ski responded. She didn't know why this was such a sticking point, but she wanted to eliminate it as an issue between her and the deputy. "I turned down the bed before I went into the bathroom to shower."

Dodge said, "What's the deal with the beds? In fact, what difference does it make if she and Lofland were screwing their brains out? The important thing is that this jerk-off Starks--"

"I know what the important thing is." Ski angrily cut him off but without shifting his gaze away from Berry's.

Dodge fired back. "Then why are you harping on the sleeping arrangements?"

"Her relationship with Lofland might relate to Starks's motive."

"She's told you what their relationship is," Dodge argued. "Now can we move on?"

But Ski didn't look like he was prepared to move on, or to go anywhere, until he was completely satisfied on this point.

"Ben and I had a meaningless affair years ago," she said. "

Nothing happened
here yesterday or last night except what I've told you."

"Okay. Fine. Great. I'm glad that's cleared up," Dodge said. "Nyland, you happy now?"

Ski didn't flinch.

Berry took a deep breath. "In answer to your question of earlier today--"

"Berry."

"Dodge, sit down," Caroline said.

"She has rights. She doesn't have to say anything else."

"Maybe she wants to."

Berry heard them, but only with half an ear. Ski's focus was riveted on her, and she couldn't escape it. "In answer to your earlier question, I was fully clothed during dinner. I undressed only to get into the shower. It was that female EMT who suggested I might want to put something on. Before she called my attention to it, I hadn't realized that I was still naked."

THIS WAS DAVIS COLDARE'S LUCKY NIGHT.

"But not here where somebody might walk past and see us." Lisa Arnold removed his hand from between her thighs, pushed him off her, and sat up, pulling her tank top back into place. "In fact, not in the backseat at all. That is
so
retro."

Davis, his erection throbbing, his brain foggy with lust, couldn't immediately think of a suitable place other than his car in which to have carnal knowledge of Lisa Arnold. "Uh ... I don't--"

"A motel." Primly she readjusted her denim skirt to cover the area Davis had been exploring. It wasn't virgin territory.

"Motel?" he echoed stupidly. The concept didn't click because of the sensory clutter inside his head.

Lisa opened the car door and got out. "Just drive. I'll tell you where to go."

She had already switched to the passenger seat by the time Davis's cerebral synapses fired. Grimacing, he tucked himself back into his underwear, then, holding up his jeans with his left hand, got out of the backseat and into the front behind the wheel. He started the car and navigated it through the lanes of the drive-in theater, which was open only during the summer months, and where tonight a double feature of slasher movies was playing. Like Lisa and him, most people in the parked cars hadn't come to watch the films.

When the theater exit spilled them onto the highway, Lisa instructed that he turn left and reminded him to switch on his headlights. She reached across the console and slid her hand inside his jeans, squeezing him through his underwear. "Don't lose this before we get there."

"Not a chance," he panted. She began stroking him, and his eyes crossed, making it difficult to keep the center yellow stripe of the two-lane highway in focus.

"Do you have condoms?" she asked.

"Uh..."

"If you don't, I do. But from now on, it's your responsibility to bring them, okay?"

"Okay." He agreed--he would have agreed to anything--when actually all he heard was
from now on,
which implied a future of sexual encounters.

"Just up there on the right," she said. "I don't know the name of it, but it's got a raccoon on the sign."

He knew the place. The run-down motor court had been there for as long as he could remember, probably much longer than he'd been alive. He'd driven past it countless times without giving it a thought. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined he would be coming here with Lisa Arnold, the girl with the most promising put-out reputation in Merritt High School.

He pulled up to the lighted office, where a red neon Vacancy sign blinked off and on. Getting a room might cost him every penny he'd earned mowing lawns this week, but he shot one look across at Lisa and figured if it cost two weeks' income, it would be worth it to get on her. Guys who'd been with her said a blow job was practically guaranteed. But since she had insisted on someplace other than the backseat, maybe she was planning on doing more than her standard b.j. Thinking of the possibilities made his mind reel.

"Can you walk with this?" She tugged on him playfully, and he moaned. If she made him come too soon, he'd die of mortification and then he'd kill her for spoiling it. Giggling at his obvious discomfort, she said, "Guess not. Give me forty bucks."

She released him. He raised his hips off the seat and braced his feet against the floorboard so he could wedge his hand into the pocket of his jeans to get his wallet. He pulled out two twenties, which she plucked from his hand. Shooting him a cheeky grin over her shoulder, she got out. As she walked toward the office, he watched her ass, barely covered by her skirt, covered not at all by her thong, as he'd recently discovered. He groaned with desire.

Working the check-in desk was a fat lady with stringy gray hair and a blue tattoo that covered the entirety of her flabby arm. Looking miffed for being drawn away from the magazine she'd been thumbing through, she grabbed Lisa's twenties and slapped a key onto the counter. The transaction took less than fifteen seconds.

Davis was glad Lisa hadn't been required to sign a register or anything. He was gonna go through with this no matter what, but he'd just as soon his parents never found out about it. Lisa was the kind of girl his dad--his mom, too, during one especially embarrassing conversation--had warned him to beware of.

As Lisa got back into the car, her short skirt rode up her thighs, flashing him a glimpse of the heaven that awaited and obliterating from his mind parental lectures about common sense and morality. Banished by her wink were warnings about fatal diseases and unwanted pregnancies, either of which could destroy plans for a college baseball scholarship and, by extension, his life.

"All set," she said. "Number eight. Straight ahead, on the end."

He got the impression she'd been here before.

He parked in front of room number eight. Lisa got out. As Davis alighted, he wondered if maybe he should pull his car around to the back of the building, where it couldn't be seen from the road. But his parents had gone to a card party at some friends' house tonight, and they lived on the opposite side of town. His parents wouldn't be driving past here on their way home.

Still holding up his jeans with one hand, he stumbled toward the door, where Lisa was waiting. She handed him the room key. "Be a gentleman."

"Yes, ma'am." He took the key from her and made several stabs at the doorknob, missing the keyhole each time.

Lisa moved close and sandwiched his biceps between her fantasy-inducing breasts. She licked the rim of his ear and whispered, "I hope your aim improves once we get inside."

He rammed the key into the slot and twisted it, unlocking the door. "Don't worry about my aim. I'll hit the target."

"Oooh. Are we talking G-spot?"

He pushed the door open and stepped into the room. He felt along the wall for the light switch. When he flipped it up and the light came on, the last thing Davis Coldare expected to see was the startled, disheveled man standing at the side of the bed.

Berry was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling of the guest bedroom, when Caroline tapped once on the door and asked permission to come in. As soon as she cleared the threshold, Berry asked, "Is he gone?"

Caroline gave her daughter a wry smile. "He passed on dessert and coffee. But he couldn't have stayed even if he'd wanted to. He got a call on his cell phone and tore out of here. Dodge went with him."

"They're a team now?"

"Not exactly." Caroline folded a chenille throw and laid it across the arm of a chair, avoiding direct eye contact with Berry. "Dodge wanted to know the nature of the call, and when Ski told him it was official, Dodge said, 'Fine. Don't tell me. It can be a surprise when I get there.'

"Ski pointed out that Dodge didn't know where he was going, and Dodge said he would after he followed him. I suppose Ski saw the futility of arguing. Dodge climbed into his SUV along with him, and away they went."

Berry sat up. "Maybe the call was to tell him that Oren has been apprehended."

"Let's hope." Caroline sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for her daughter's hand. She placed it palm to palm with hers and linked their fingers. "You're not yourself, Berry."