Chasing Suspect Three (27 page)

Sandy hurriedly parked in front of his place,
pulled her skirt up to her hips, and jumped over the unopened door
of her small convertible—something she did only under abnormal
circumstances or when upset. This was a case of both.

She knocked on the door and entered all in
the same motion.

“She bring over another poetry book?” she
said immediately.

He was standing in the kitchen doorway. “Come
in and calm down. I was just about to open a bottle of
Chardonnay.”

She didn’t want to demand to know what the
woman was doing there. As normal as that reaction might be, all
that screaming jealously stuff just wasn’t in her. Her purpose
wasn’t to display her distress. Her purpose was to know the
truth.

She was ready, right then, to decide whether
to go on with him in her life. She knew that all of this controlled
reasoning was very noble; she hoped she could do it. She took a
deep breath. “Sure, wine is just what I need.”

“Coming right up.” He disappeared into the
kitchen.

Geez, was he playing it cool or was he the
world’s greatest actor. His position all along was that he didn’t
know what she was upset about. Well, he certainly knew now, with
Claudia just leaving his house.

She walked to the kitchen doorway so he could
hear, “Sorry, I dropped in unexpectedly. I didn’t know you were
entertaining a guest.”

“No, she didn’t bring another poetry book.”
He continued fussing with the corkscrew.

What does she say, it’s okay Chip? I trust
you? That wasn’t true.

“I didn’t want her inside this house and that
upset her. Since I want her out of my life, why would I want her in
my house? She wasn’t happy when I told her that. She turned around
and left. I was afraid she’d make a scene on the porch. I guess she
got the message.”

As he recalled, Claudia wasn’t much for
accepting rejection. He had met her three summers ago. He had just
taken the exam for detective. His studying was behind him. The
summer was his to waste. Definitely a summer to remember. Claudia
was not one of his summer delights. She had crossed his path
later.

His patrol zone that summer was the beach
area and the City Marina. As luck would have it, he met several
wonderful women around the beach that summer who were there on
vacation. They possessed varying degrees of beauty and charm, and
each was enjoyable, enthusiastic, and determined to make the most
of their two-week vacation. They had only two things on their mind
when they hit town. Getting a tan at the beach came in second. They
were concerned with something more important. Such as getting next
to that charming bachelor cop who was showing all the women
around.

Summer was almost over when he received the
good news of his promotion to Detective. Until it became effective,
he was pulled him off the road and reassigned. Away from the beach,
the summer became quite ordinary, followed by one of the coldest
winters on record in Florida. That’s when Claudia blew in.

As it would take some time for his promotion
paperwork to be processed, he was reassigned as the instructor for
the court-ordered Defensive Driving class. Offenders with moving
violations could attend the class and avoid a ticket, insurance
points, or even a stay in jail.

At the first class meeting, Chip noticed the
somewhat overdressed woman sitting in the back row. When the class
came back after a short break, she had repositioned herself
conspicuously at the front. She wore a red scoop-neck sleeveless
tank top and her long legs were encased in impossibly tight jeans.
One crossed leg was continually swinging with a red sandal dangling
from pedicured, painted toenails. After class, some participants
came to the front with questions for him. He noticed her standing
at the side hanging around, so she’d be the last and alone with
him.

“Officer Goddard is it legal for me to enter
an intersection on the yellow light?”

He smiled to himself thinking that in his
grandfather’s day it would have been illegal for her to walk around
in jeans that tight. “It’s
Detective
Goddard, and we
answered that question twice in class.”

“We’ve met before. Thought maybe you’d
remember me.” She struck a cliché celebrity-pose as though that
would help.

He found her name on the class roster.
“Claudia Mertens. Sorry, I don’t remember just now.”

“A couple of years back. You would patrol the
marina and I was down there quite a lot. My friend kept his yacht
there.”

He remembered her now. She was the ‘other
woman’ in the life of a state representative who had his large
sport-fisherman tied up there at the City Marina. The politician
and Claudia would tryst there. “I remember the girl at the dive
shop. She’d always wave and chat. Made good coffee, as I
recall.”

“That was Margo. She married my brother.” She
brushed her hair back with her hand. “We should get reacquainted.
Let’s have a drink.” Her unblinking eyes were steady on him, and
when his face didn’t light up as she expected, she cocked her head
to one side and raised her eyebrows waiting for him to get with it.
“Like maybe now?”

At that point, he was on top of the world.
He’d passed the detective exam and just been promoted. His randy
summer had ended and although it had been marvelous, he hadn’t felt
the need to date much in the three months since. But that was then;
this was now. Now he was feeling frisky again. Now this stylish
woman was throwing herself at him. “Okay, let’s go,” he said, not
at all certain if he wanted to end up where she wanted to end
up.

He didn’t want an intimate setting for a
drink, so he mentioned the nearby Touchdown Sports Bar. She
followed him there but refused to get out of her car once she saw
the place.

“I don’t frequent places such as this,” she
said through her open car window. “I certainly don’t care for
rowdy, noisy places. Can’t we go to some quiet lounge?”

They ended up in the lounge at the Marriott.
As the booths were full, they sat at a table in the middle of the
room. She was quite at ease in the formal surroundings and seemed
to enjoy the greater exposure. Although there were more attractive
women in the room, she got her share of glances. Two rounds of
drinks and a couple of laughs were enough for him. Instead of
becoming more interesting, she was becoming tiring. He wasn’t
interested in starting a relationship, and she looked a far cry
from uninvolved sex. She’d be a lot of sex, but not worth the
nonsense that would go with it. He could sit there and imagine her
attractive naked body, but he couldn’t imagine her in
his
bed. He was familiar with morning-after remorse. After observing
and talking with her, he knew he wanted nothing to happen. And
that’s what all this was about, wasn’t it?

“I enjoyed having the drinks with you,
Claudia, but it wasn’t meant to be.” He explained that he had to
beg off.

She seemed surprised, but was quick to
recover. “You sound quite presumptuous, Chip. Did you think there
was some casual sex in this for you? It’s just a drink together.
I’m sorry if you had something more in mind.”

“Of course not, I just didn’t want there to
be any misunderstanding.”

In spite of her feigned disinterest, she
didn’t look as though she understood why he’d turn her down. He
didn’t intend to explain further.

She phoned him two days later. She had two
tickets to some concert in a local park. “How did you get this
restricted number, Claudia?”

“My tricky brother has some way of doing it.
I hope you don’t mind.”

“I do mind.” Chip was familiar with all the
unlisted number-searching procedures. “It required knowing my
address as well as my name. How did you find out my address?” He
knew how. She had followed him home after class sometime. “Get off
my case, Claudia. You’re messing with the wrong guy. Don’t contact
me again.”

Claudia had the looks. She had put it all
together into a streamlined and sophisticated façade, but it didn’t
attract him. Who can say what turns a particular person on or off?
He thought all women should carry a touch of mystery about them. It
made them more interesting. No mystery to Claudia. She came off as
being superficial and predictable, and that made her boring.

Sandy’s upbeat personality was more his type.
She was unpredictable, exasperating, audacious, and smart with a
cleverness she could turn on or off to suit her purpose. And she
was much sexier than she realized. In his thinking, she was so
alive she absolutely sparkled.

And she made him feel alive. It wasn’t a
feeling of confidence that she gave him; he had never lacked that.
It was a feeling of uplifting reinforcement, which enabled him go
out and do things and feel good about himself. He knew it was her
love that did all that.

It wasn’t difficult for his mind to return
from three years passed to his troubled lover who now waited for
him in the living room. She was special, yet frequently maddening,
such as now. They had never been at odds with each other as they
were now. Something hidden was getting to her that she was
reluctant to discuss. He hadn’t handled the situation very well but
didn’t know what else to do. He was pleased she had come over. They
needed to face each other and talk.

He came out of the kitchen holding the
glasses of wine. She was waiting by the couch, wearing a serious
expression on her face.

She had to admit that all the evidence
against Chip was circumstantial. He says he had a date or two. Was
that enough for him to realize he didn’t want to sleep with
Claudia? Why can’t she just accept that? “Obviously Claudia knows
where you live. Apparently she was here before.” Damn, why did she
say that? She realized other women had bounced on that king-sized
bed in there with him; she just didn’t want one of them to have
been Claudia.

He set the glasses on the coffee table in
front of the couch and looked at her seriously. “I must apologize,
Sandy. I’ve done this all wrong.”

As his words struck her, her eyes widened in
surprise. She was able to take a step to the couch and sit not a
moment too soon. She wanted to cover her ears with her hands. She
had wondered how she’d react, if he admitted to even the slightest
little part of it after denying all of it.

“Yes, I can imagine,” she said. “You got
carried away, you had been drinking, you didn’t intend for it to go
that far, it was just sex, you don’t love her at all.” Damn, she
was being catty and saying all the things she wasn’t going to
say.

“This is no time for jokes.” He stood sipping
the wine. “I hope you like this. I can’t resist buying the cheapest
white wine in the store. I look at the choices and think, is that
wine really better than this wine for two dollars more? I’ve read
about cultivating one’s taste. I don’t know what that means. I like
my taste the way it is.”

“Get back to the subject. You said you
screwed up.” Why was he denying the affair anyway? Why didn’t he
just say Claudia was in his life three years ago and yes, it was an
adult relationship? End of story.

He looked down at her with a look of
seriousness. “Yes, I screwed up by not sitting down with you sooner
and having all this out, clearing the air for better or for worse.
I’ve been busy. You’ve been busy. It’s gone on too long—I should
have insisted we sit down and discuss all this.”

“One of us is a major screwup. I still don’t
know which one. You want a discussion? Let’s start with the
diary.”

“I don’t have a diary. I hope to live a life
I’m going to remember fondly without writing anything down. My
diary is the memory I carry around with me. What are you talking
about?”

She shook her head slowly meaning never
mind.

“I failed to discuss it with you, and now
you’re seeing someone else.”

She noticeably cringed.
Oh, my God. Did he
just say that?

“It’s a small town, Sandy.”

“No! I mean yes.” She needed time to
think.

“Let me get clear on how this works.” He sat
on the couch facing her. “Last year you had that affair, a couple
of meetings for drinks with the guy and looking across the table
into each other’s eyes, followed by a night of sex. I know it
wasn’t meaningless because I know you, and all sex is meaningful to
you. It really hurt. Right in the middle of our budding
romance.”

He had to look away for a moment. “I excused
you, and you excused yourself, because our relationship was young.
We’d never discussed limits. When you asked for my forgiveness, you
said you wanted exclusivity as long as we were together.” He
watched her, waiting for a reply.

Here goes, “I went out to dinner with someone
concerned with the case.” That wasn’t good enough, now she was
lying. “The FBI guy. He took me home.” Still not good enough.
“...and we kissed goodnight when I got out. It seemed the proper
thing to do.” That was a stretch as well, but she had to stop
there. He didn’t want to hear anymore anyway—certainly not the
details. She avoided his eyes. “A kiss and that was it.” In truth,
it wasn’t just a kiss; it was a delicious kiss. Of course, now she
regretted ever going out with the jerk at all.

“I’m not going to ask if you left anything
out of that statement. If you did, then you broke our exclusivity
agreement.”

“I was upset. You and I were fighting.”

“So, if things get rocky with us, that
excuses you. And you can immediately see other men?” he asked.
“I’ve had no sexual affair with Claudia, I barely remember her, but
you think I have. And that’s enough go ahead for you to make it
with some other guy?” Now he was getting upset. “Only a kiss you
say? When did you speak with him last?”

“I can explain it.”

“When?”

“I spoke to him today.”

“Where?”

“Chip, I just got back from Miami, but I can
explain it.”