Chasing Can Be Murder (33 page)

Scuzz growled deep into his ginger beard. “And whoever messed with my wheels is going to pay big time. Anyway, next thing, your man has his head under your next door neighbor’s dash, hot-wiring his SUV. And when I protested, as any normal law-abiding citizen would under the circumstances, he informed me it would take too long to wake the guy up and ask for his keys.”

“I was worried about you, babe.” Ben’s arms circled my shoulders hugging me to him. I let my head rest on the warm solidness of his chest and breathed in his outdoorsy smell as though it was nectar.

“Worrying is good,” I told him and sniffed.

“We’d have been here sooner,” Ben went on, smoothing my hair from my eyes with rough, work calloused hands. Hands that felt better than any suit-wearing lawyer, businessman, male model’s wishy-washy softness. “But by the time I’d convinced Mr. Concerned Citizen that the guy next door wouldn’t mind if we borrowed his wheels,” Ben said scowling at Scuzz, “your car had disappeared from sight. We’ve been driving all over the neighborhood searching for it.”

“During which time, Lover Boy has been growing more and more frenzied,” added Scuzz.

“And we were just getting ready to call the fuzz, when we spotted your station wagon parked outside, of all places, Manning’s Funeral Parlor.”

I reached up and kissed Ben gently on the lips before pulling away and pretending interest in my untied shoelace. If I stayed in the warmth of Ben’s arms a moment longer, I’d crack up, and maybe cry. And bang, there would go my new
Bombshell Chick
image.

A low moaning sound, eerie in the presence of so many dead bodies, echoed across the room.

“What’s that?” Scuzz shot away from the coffin he’d been leaning on, so quickly he almost left his shadow behind. “Was that the guy on the floor or did it come from...”

Peter let out another groan.

“Damn,” I said. “I mustn’t have hit him hard enough.”

Scuzz, a relieved smile playing at the corners of his mouth, tramped across the floor to check on Peter. Coffins and flowers shook in his wake. While Scuzz held both bandaged hands in the air and neatly bopped Peter on the head with his elbow, sending him instantly back to dreamland, Ben picked up the silver gun from the floor and emptied the bullets into his pocket.

“Looks like a Beretta,” observed Ben. He twirled the gun on his finger a couple of times and then turned to me. “I can see you have everything under control here Kat, but can you please tell
us
what the hell’s going on? Why’d you take off without waking us? What the blazes are you doing at Manning’s Funeral Parlor? Who owns this gun? And why is it necessary to keep Peter in a constant state of unconsciousness?”

“It’s all quite simple.” I started to explain but decided even a
Bombshell Chick
needed comfort in times of extreme stress so snuggled into Ben’s protective arms before continuing. “After you guys went to bed, Peter rang me. He said he knew who Mr. Big was and arranged to meet me at the end of the road.” I looked up into Ben’s anxious face. “He said he’d only tell me if I came alone.”

“Oh, Kat, you didn’t fall for that one? It’s the oldest trick in the book. You should have woken me up.”

“And me,” declared Scuzz. “Because I know
all
the tricks in the book—and some the book hasn’t got around to publishing yet.”

I sighed. “Yeah, I know guys. Anyway, Peter must have been waiting for me and when I came outside he knocked me over the head. According to him he stashed me under a blanket in the back of my car and drove here.”

“Always thought the guy was a pumped up slime ball,” Ben growled. Eyes threatening dire retribution, he dug Peter in the ribs with the toe of his boot. “Lucky he’s already unconscious or I’d knock him into the middle of next month.”

“So...Sleeping Beauty must have slashed the tires on my Harley,” Scuzz broke in, glaring at the prostrate figure on the floor. “I will be visiting your tire shop later today, mate. And while there, I’ll be choosing some very expensive replacements from your stockroom.”

“But why did he bring you here? To his father’s funeral parlor?” asked Ben.

“I guess he had a key. And he reckoned it was quiet in here because his father’s clients aren’t very talkative.”

“Not wrong there.” Scuzz flicked a quick glance over his shoulder at the coffins displayed along the wall, evidently expecting a dissenter to sit up and take issue at our presumptuousness.

Clearly still trying to work out the facts, Ben frowned down at the silver gun clasped in his hand. “What about this?”

“It’s Peter’s. Peter Manning
is
Mr. Big,” I blurted out. “He did away with Matt, arranged for Erin to be kidnapped, set fire to my kennel-house and was responsible for all the race fixing that’s been going on. And tonight, he brought me here to kill me.”

Scuzz’s face went white under his beard. “In that case, when Sleeping Beauty wakes up, instead of putting him back to sleep, I’ll rip his head off and use it to throw basketball hoops.”

The color drained from Ben’s face. His arm, cuddling me to him, tightened until I could barely breathe.

“Peter locked me in there.” I pointed at the open coffin lined with pale blue silk and white lace. “And what’s more, he had his heart set on cremating me.”

“Mother of God,” croaked Scuzz, crossing himself hastily.

Somehow, looking at it now, the coffin appeared smaller, narrower, more confining. And just as I was thanking God and The Universe for escaping its claustrophobic clutches, delayed shock pounced with the claws of a tiger. My breath caught in my chest, my stomach heaved, my legs turned into soggy rhubarb sticks…

And the door of the funeral parlor exploded open.

I jolted my head up. Surely I was hallucinating. I closed my eyes, counted to five before opening them again. Nope. All for real. Six sharp-shooters dressed in those bulletproof vest thingies, crouched at the door and they seemed to be aiming their state-of-the-art weapons at us.

“Police! Everybody freeze!” roared the leader, a big burly guy with a voice like a working steam shovel.

“And you—” Big and Burly went on, doing one of those jerky dance steps you see on TV cop shows and indicating Ben with a twitch of his gun hand. “—drop your weapon or we’ll take you out!”

“Huh?” Ben eyed the gun in his hand as though it had suddenly turned into a writhing viper. His fingers flipped open and the gun hit the floor and bounced.

“Now, kick it to me,” the leader ordered, his trigger finger clearly itching to contract.

This was fast turning into one of those black-and-white movie farces. If I didn’t explain the circumstances quickly, who knows—one of us good guys might end up with a bullet to a vital part of our anatomy and they’d cart our killer off to the hospital as the poor suffering victim.

“It’s not
his
gun,” I explained as Ben obliged the leader by kicking the weapon in the direction of the door. “It belongs to the creep on the floor. Peter Manning. And he threatened to kill me with that gun. He also murdered Matt Turn—”

“No talking!” Big and Burly roared before addressing two uniformed policemen positioned behind the sharp shooters. “Contact DCI Stevens and DI Adams immediately. Inform them we’ve caught our suspects and have them immobilized.”

Oh no—not Good Cop and Bad Cop again!

“Then cuff them and take them down to the station. The creep on the floor too.”

Straightening to his full seven foot of craggy man-mountain, Scuzz eyed the approaching officer with raised eyebrows before extending both wrists, tattooed fingers facing up. When he spoke, his voice was polite, but laced with menace. “If that is what you
really
want to do, officer.”

Like he’d smacked into an invisible force field, the police officer skidded to a halt. He perused the leather-clad biker, inch by inch, starting at his size 18 steel-capped boots and ending at his multipierced face. Turning a shade closely resembling sour cream, he shot Big and Burly a questioning glance.

“I
said
cuff ’em!”

Handcuffs visibly shaking, the policeman took a large fortifying breath then continued towards Scuzz. When his steps faltered and he came to another halt, Scuzz snatched the cuffs from him, shook his head and fastened them on his own wrists.

Ben reached for my hand. “Don’t worry, babe,” he said and gave my fingers a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll sort this out and be home before you can say
scrambled eggs.
”

At the mention of
scrambled eggs
, I instantly felt ravenous. “This might sound weird, but I’d murder for a plate of eggs with lashings of bacon and tomatoes right now. I’m starving.”

“You can make that two servings, babe.” Ben wriggled his nose at me. “Although, with Stevens and Adams on the way, I have a feeling we won’t be eating breakfast this morning.”

32

The bad news...Ben was right. Breakfast was a nonevent. It was 2 p.m. before we literally fell onto our plates of scrambled eggs and bacon like they were gourmet dishes of caviar and truffles with a hot chocolate sundae to follow.

The good news was Peter Manning would probably be claiming the aged pension before he saw the outside of a jail. Not only would my evidence convict him, but Barney Thompson, the starting-box steward, realizing he was safer with the killer in jail than out, turned informant. Add to that, the Spagnetti brothers, captured stowing away on a cruise ship to Tahiti, quickly joined the queue and pointed the finger at Manning. In fact, once incarcerated, the brothers spilled information like buckets with no bottoms.

Funnily enough, after all our detective work, the contents in Matt’s safe-deposit box did nothing to help put his killer away. Full of betting memorabilia, Matt had even stored his very first TAB ticket, procured at age sixteen—two dollars each way on a dog called Wun Wabbit—and the dog was evidently still
wunning
. But why he’d framed this losing ticket and stored it along with the rest of his racingdocumentation—for posterity or his grandkids or for future aliens to ponder over—I guess we’ll never know.

Anyway, “life goes on” as is the theme of many books.

However, the morning Scuzz decided it was time for
him
to move on, even the dogs slunk around the house with their tails jammed between their legs. The day was sunny, sky the color of lapis lazuli—not that I know zilch about lapis lazuli except that it’s a brilliant blue—and the air sweet. I sniffled. It should have been dark and dismal and raining buckets of cow’s excrement to match my mood. For when Scuzz gathered his “accoutrements” together and wheeled his adored hog onto the driveway, I knew I was going to cry.

“Come here, Katrina,” Scuzz crooned, holding his arms out for a hug.

Leather, soft as fine muslin, brushed against my cheek as I buried my head in his
RedDevil
jacket. Theodore Samuel Parkington the Third was one hell of a guy.

“Do you
really
have to go?”

“It is time I moved on, Katrina,” he said, gently wiping a tear off my cheek with one large leather-clad finger before leaning closer for a goodbye kiss, which included a hint of tongue. “My bodyguard duties have been terminated,” he told me as he came up for air. “Your temporary kennel-house is completed. Hey, you don’t need me anymore.” He paused, extricated himself from my arms and with a rueful twist of a smile, straddled his Harley. “It’s time to hit the road again.”

“But—”

“When I finally catch up with this mysterious half-sister of mine, I’ll ring and let you know what she’s like.” He did one of his cute eyebrow wiggles and grinned. “Might even bring Summer here to meet you.”

“That’d be great,” I told him and gave a watery smile as I noticed the corner of a pastel pink pillow poking from the bedroll fastened to the rear of Scuzz’s bike.

“Keep in touch, mate.” Ben stepped forward to shake hands. “You’re an ugly so-and-so but a good guy to have on side.”

“You too, cowboy. And make sure you look after our girl.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed. “
Our
girl?”

“That’s right. I’ll be calling in on the way back from the West to check the situation out,” Scuzz told him then turned to wink at me. “It’s okay to give the cowboy a shot, Katrina, but if he’s not up to it, I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse when I return. Okay?”

“Umm…does this amazing offer involve black satin sheets and a hot-water bottle with a fluffy panda bear cover?”

“It involves whatever fantasy your little heart desires, Katrina.”

Phew! Was that lust in all its lip-licking variations bubbling away in my stomach or a reaction to the gallon of tomato sauce I’d smothered over my eggs and bacon?

Behind me, Ben’s growl came from low in his throat. Broke through my sudden hankering to play the game of
whatever fantasy your little heart desires
with Theodore Samuel Parkington the Third. Sheesh! Since leaving
Miss Nice Girl
in a cringing heap at the funeral parlor and transforming into
Bombshell Chick
sometimes I couldn’t keep up with myself.

Like a lasso, Ben’s arm shot out, circled my waist and hauled me possessively against his hip. “
Goodbye
, Theodore.”

The rumble of the sensuous black and silver machine broke the stillness of the early morning air. “I’ll be back!” Scuzz fastened his helmet and as he pushed off the ground with one foot, waved one hand in a farewell gesture.

“I’ll be waiting!” I called out after him.

“No, she won’t!” countered Ben, his arm tightening into a death grip. “She’ll be too busy.”

“Too busy?” I glanced up at his oh-so-familiar face. The face I’d spent long nights dreaming about. The face I could now hold and kiss and lose my mind over any time it took my fancy. “Busy doing what?”

“
Talking
.” Ben’s grin sent an ache to my groin that screamed to be set alight, stoked and prodded and then soothed. Both
Miss Nice Girl
and
Bombshell Chick
were in complete agreement this time. “We seem to have become very adept at conversation.”