Games of the Heart (Crimson Romance) (29 page)

My inability to speak probably saved them from dialing 911 to have me arrested for aggravated pestering. I watched as the two walked just a half block and got into a full-size Ford truck, so new it still had temporary plates, painted eggplant and with sunburst yellow and chartreuse racing stripes on the sides. Monica got behind the wheel. A few days ago, if you would have told me her perfectly padded posterior would ever grace the seat of a pickup, I would have laughed myself silly. Eddie provided a jaunty as she got in. They were laughing. At me.

Gramps would have said, “I’ll be a monkey’s uncle,” making his voice sound like a character on the
Andy Griffith Show
. Monica shifted the monster-mobile into first and peeled out of the parking spot. I stood there mute, truly I did, with my mouth gaping wide enough to have a 747 zoom in and out.

What business could they have together? There were never two less-seemingly compatible people on the planet. Monica was rich, a high-fashion diva who owned purebred dogs. Eddie’s neck was as big as Monica’s waist, and I could see her cuddling a rattlesnake before I could see her snuggling a canine.

Lots of people never make snap decisions. I am not one of those. While my track record with quick and sensible decisions is less than stellar, this didn’t enter into any thought process at all as I dashed to my car, jumped behind the wheel, did yet another illegal U-y in the middle of the intersection and took off after them. From watching police dramas on television, I stayed a cool quarter mile behind.

“What are those two doing?” I asked myself. No response came except an icky, sickly feeling as my curiosity shifted into overdrive. Okay it wasn’t my business, but the whole affair was odd, and yes, that was my excuse.

When common sense asked, “What are
you
doing?” I had to override that. Every cell in my body had to know why they were together, and fortune for my snooping was with me as every single light was green. I had no trouble at all following the purplish truck with the extended cab straight onto I-15. As they increased speed, so did I. I even let a semi between us, yet stayed watchful that they didn’t exit. Monica, and probably ninety-nine percent of Americans, would never consider that a pastor would be tailing them, and my SUV was invisible since there are so many gold ones. “Do they know I’m here and not care that I’m, well, stalking?” I said out loud, which was weirdness by itself. I chalked it up to the aforementioned nutty rationale and maybe that they had important things to talk about. Like what? I had no clue, nor did one appear as we drove in and out of evening traffic.

If Monica had hired Eddie for some work like lifting cement blocks and moving tractor-trailers at her home, she’d have turned off at the upscale parts of Las Vegas. But they continued north, out toward the desert. If we all kept going in this direction, we’d be in St. George, Utah, in a few hours. I kept a distance, but I could see them, and about an hour out of Las Vegas, they pulled off.

I slowed because the exit was deserted, except for us. I clicked off the headlights. Driving in the dark wasn’t that bad because the night was clear.

Monica’s brake lights flashed as they pulled into the graveled driveway of a small, stucco home with a few junk cars in the front yard. A single, industrial-strength security light illuminated the scruffy bungalow. The closest neighbors were blocks apart, and if Eddie had been driving, rather than Monica, I would have sworn the socialite was being kidnapped. But who would kidnap she of major muscles? Who could?

I inched along the rutted road, hoping no little critters were lounging on the dirt. Now it was past twilight, yet I could clearly see the house. The door opened and a troll-sized, very round silhouette stood aside as they walked in. Who were they meeting in the middle of the desert, after sunset, and down a deserted road?

Are you wondering whether I was planning to get out of the car, sneak up to the house, and peek through the windows, like a lunatic would attempt? Yes, I was. But I looked at my tea-stained shirt and saggy Capris and realized I didn’t know what a girl wore for situations like this. I’m not experienced at this sort of thing, even if some people on the District Council might tell you otherwise.

My fingers gripped the door handle, and I was just sliding my butt across the seat when I it. Not possible. I hadn’t heard a thing. But it was all too true. Red and blue lights flashed. The cops had arrived.

The cruiser silently inched to a stop behind my SUV, the car coming within inches of my back bumper.

I thought of it, I did. I could easily rev the engine and skid out of this pickle. It would take the officer about one minute to jump back in the patrol car, and by that time? The truth was, I would be driving down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere with the police in hot pursuit. I nixed the notion after about a half second of serious thought.

Like the law-abiding minister that I always am, I froze, bone still, breath held until there was a tap, tap, tap on my window. I rolled it down.

“Good evening, ma’am.”

“Ah, hello, officer.” Praise the Lord, it wasn’t Tom.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” He shined a flashlight in my face, probably trying to smell my breath to see if this was a typical DUI.

“I’m not lost. I’m just out for a drive this lovely evening. Look at those stars. Isn’t it breathtaking out here, this time of the night, when things are quiet and, of course, once the sun goes down and those stars come up, and it’s still except for those crickets? Do they ever stop clicking?”

I blathered another few idiotic lines of that stuff-that-blubbers-from-the mouth sentence.

Then the cop said, “Would you be kind enough to step out of your car, please, ma’am?” He didn’t look a day older than Harmony, but the badge on his breast pocket told me he was the real deal.

“Really, really, I wasn’t speeding,” I said. Heck, I wasn’t even crawling down the lane.

“No, ma’am. Just keep your hands where I can see them. Please step out and leave the keys. You don’t need them right now. They’ll be safe right there.”

I’d been sweating buckets when I got caught snooping on the sidewalk by the shelter, but that was nothing to this. “Are you arresting me?” I’d opened the SUV’s door, but didn’t leave the car. How did the police know I was tailing Monica?

“Ma’am, I don’t want to ask you again, but I will because the captain tells us we should be nicer to our citizenry. And you look like a nice lady.” His voice lowered a notch, and he added, “Now, will you please step out of the car.”

I did and stood ramrod stiff. “Should I stick ’em up, or put my hands on the hood and spread ’em or something? You’ll have to walk me through the procedures. What of my Miranda rights?”

“No, ma’am, it’s not necessary to do any of those things. You just need to stand there. Someone wants to talk to you,” he ordered as a second patrol car pulled up to my own personal crime scene.

I would have known Tom Morales’ swagger a block away, even in the dusky evening.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” I chuckled, but it was flat as the last soufflé that came from my oven. “Isn’t it against the law to follow me, Tom? To stalk me like this?” Yes, it was a dimwitted remark since I’d just followed Monica and Eddie through most of the city of Las Vegas and out into the desert.

“We need to talk.” He reached out to touch me, and I stepped back as he said, “Come on, Jane, get into my car for a minute.” When I didn’t move toward him, he ground out, “Please.” We locked eyes. He won. I walked back to an unmarked sedan, opened the passenger door in back, and climbed in. Tom touched the top of my head, just like in those police movies, and crawled in next to me.

Tom seemed to get bigger inside that car, or maybe because I could feel the heat from his body, which was suddenly too intimate and yes, intoxicating. But that all was nixed when he growled, “You don’t belong out here, Jane. You shouldn’t be doing whatever you’re doing.” Again out of his tan uniform, he looked like a guy in the big and tall section of Eddie Bauer. His badge, stuck on the waist of his slacks, reflected the moonlight.

“You’re right. I’ll just skedaddle home, but since you’re the law around these parts, what little one did I break that caused me to be stopped during an evening drive into the countryside? The city must have more criminals to take care of than a pastor going for a drive to get some air,” I said, trying to make my voice light, but I knew it came out as a challenge. That was about as goofy an excuse as possible, but then it hit me. I slapped my forehead. “You’re mixed up with what’s going on here, aren’t you?”

He turned away, checked his watch, and said, “I can’t answer that, Jane.”

“It’s true. I knew it.” I slapped my forehead one more time. Why I was so happy to be right when I was sitting in a police car in the boonies and being told to MYOB by a police captain who was about to arrest me for stalking was beyond even my own somewhat questionable rational thinking.

“Please get into your car and drive back home,” Tom said — well, actually barked. “Notice, this is a request, not an order, and I said please, Jane.”

“I will not.” My back shot up and I puffed out my chest. Tom’s big, and I’m no delicate violet, so the backseat was crammed to the gills with stubborn streaks. “I’m not budging until you tell me what’s happening in that house over there. And what do Monica and Eddie have to do with official police business? You may as well cuff me right now if you’re not going to tell me, because I’m not going anywhere.”

Tom’s jaw clenched. Then ice formed, he withdrew his hulk-like body from the car, and he turned to the young cop who’d tracked me down. “Officer, take her downtown. I’ll meet you there. You don’t have to frisk her; I doubt she’s carrying a weapon.” As he said this, his voice trailed off and he bent down to look inside the car. “Tell me you don’t have a gun, Jane?”

“Would you expect me to carry one?” And in that second I sorely wished I could have had one, just to make him flinch again.

“Jane, for heaven’s sake, stop being pigheaded. Answer me or I’ll get a female officer out here to strip search you. Do you have a weapon?”

“No strip search will be necessary, Captain Morales. Other than a lethal mouth, I’m unarmed. I do not have a gun.” I sank down in the seat. Whatever was happening in the house down that dark road, two more dark-colored cars had pulled up and driven past the police units and their newest prisoner without even stopping, apparently unperturbed that the law was apprehending a felon, which was me.

• • •

I didn’t end up in the slammer for the night because there was no official arrest. I wasn’t fingerprinted or grilled in a room with a single bare light bulb glaring in my face. Instead, when we reached headquarters, Tom was already there to greet me. He opened the patrol car’s door and led me to the lounge where we’d talked about Mikel.

Tom slid two dollars into the vending machine and handed me a Pepsi, getting water for himself. He sat at a table, heavy with fatigue or so I imagined. His shoulders rounded, and he sighed. I figured I could stand there all day being a stubborn pastor without a cause, or sit down to find out what was going on. I chose comfort.

He finished the water in a single gulp. “I asked you not to get involved, Jane.”

“I had a prickly thought, like poison oak.” I tried to explain about woman’s intuition. “It went on red alert when Monica and Eddie walked out of the shelter together. They’re the most peculiar twosome I’ve ever met.”

“So you spent an hour driving through traffic, and another out of the city in order to satisfy your intuition?” The question sputtered out of his mouth; even to my ears it sounded ludicrous.

“I guess my intuition went bonkers when I saw Monica near the shelter and then palling around with Eddie.”

He sighed. “If you were anyone else but a minister, I’d think there was an ulterior motive. So you have no idea why they were there, at that house, on the deserted road?”

“Yes, I have no idea, but I honestly wanted to find out. I’d bet the farm you know why, Tom, so what were they doing?”

He got up, bought another bottle of water, drank that in two gulps, and popped the empties in the recycling container. “Your car is outside. We had it driven back. You’re free to go.”

“Without telling me the why or what or the how and the where?” I sipped the Pepsi. No information, just dragged into jail and released after being forced to drink a sugary soda. Okay, I wasn’t forced.

“That’s it, ma’am. Please leave so I can get some work done. There are crooks and thugs and rowdies all over the city just waiting to meet me, and you’re taking valuable time.” He huffed the words and left.

When I finished the soda, I walked to the front desk, retrieved my keys, and found my car, with my purse just where I left it. I’d been lucky, I decided. What if Monica and Eddie were into something dangerous, and I’d sneaked down the lane, stuck my head in the window, and seen something terrible? I won’t elaborate, but you have a good imagination and can probably come up with the same things I was thinking. Yes, I got off easy, because at least Gramps didn’t have to bail me out of this one.

It was near midnight when I pulled into my driveway, and I knew as soon as it was dawn I’d do the right thing. I’d go back and snoop in broad daylight. If there were no cars in the driveway, I’d take a few long, hard looks inside. Door open? I’d go in. But then my cell rang, and plans were changed.

“Jane, it’s Gerry, and you’d better start some of that yogic breathing that calms you down and that you are always spoutin’ on about.”

“I’m not going to like this?”

Gramps’ gal pal and California State Senator sounded more upset than when she lost in a battle for shoes at a Nordstrom’s sale. “Damn straight you won’t. Listen, kid, something big is coming down in Vegas. Just keep your nose at church, your butt out of stuff, preach a pretty sermon, and don’t do anything suspicious.”

“Then you don’t want to know what just happened?”

“Spare me. I’d rather not, if I know you,” she said. “This is serious. Could rock the country.”

“Aliens have landed in Las Vegas and the Feds are covering it up, like what happened near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947?”