Melody Unchained (5 page)

“And I need time to get the old man stink out of that place. Who knows what I’m going to find up there. Very least, I’m going to have to paint and clean the carpets. They were living in that apartment when I bought the building fifteen years ago.”

Jerry blinked.
They
were living in the apartment?
They
? “You mean Melody grew up there.”

“No, she’s always looked about the same.”

Maybe the super was a little on the cuckoo side too. Melody could not have appeared to be twenty years old for fifteen years. “Regardless, you can’t kick her out before the end of the month. The rent is paid and she needs time to deal with her grandfather’s things.”

“He wasn’t her grandfather, either. Unless they come from some really screwed up family. She kept that old goat greased up until about ten years ago. Neighbors used to complain about the screaming, if you know what I mean.” Zubrowski winked.

Sweat trickled down the back of Jerry’s neck. The images crowding his mind now came with a soundtrack. Just great. “I just need your word that you’ll let her stay until the end of the month.”

“I’ll let her stay for the rest of her life if she’ll–”

“Just to the end of the month.” What with the images and the soundtrack, Jerry’s gut seized into a cold, greasy ball at the thought of what Zubrowski had been about to suggest. Not Melody. He couldn’t let that happen to her.

“If you insist.” The super shut his apartment door.

As Jerry mounted the stairs, he decided Stella was right about one thing. Melody needed someone to watch out for her. Not everybody knew about Fair Housing, but most people didn’t start asking housing questions with him. If she couldn’t find her way around simple life questions, the world would eat her alive. No way was she a stripper from Vegas, with that much naivete. He’d met more jaded ten-year-olds. He knocked and Melody yanked open the door like she’d been waiting behind it for him.

“Jerry!”

“Hello, Melody.” Jerry took a step backward so he was more firmly in the hall. The sliver of apartment he could see looked pretty normal. Nothing magical in his line of sight. Brown upholstered furniture that had grown shabby in the two decades since it had arrived here. A round coffee table predating the other furniture by at least three decades. Clean. Very clean, but not magical in any way. Then again, she’d left her brass thing at his house. “I talked to the super. He’ll leave you alone.”

“Thank you.” Melody lunged at him and threw her arms around his neck before he could dodge. He stumbled backward into the wall, carrying her with him. Melody’s hot lips covered his, and she was so soft. His eyes slid closed as she wove her fingers through his hair. Bliss, being touched, even plundered this way. It had been a long time.

And she was still a victim. Jerry pushed her back. “Melody, please. A simple thank you will do.”

“You want me.”

Like that was a mystery. “I just wanted to stop and tell you everything was okay.”

Melody poked her fingers inside his shirt between the buttons, grazing his skin with the backs of her fingers.

He caught her wrist and pulled her hand away from his body. “We’re in the hall, Melody.”

Someone coughed.

Jerry looked and so did Melody. A woman stood in an open door way down the hall with a pinched face and dish gloves on her hands. Melody scowled. “I should have known it would be you.”

“Straight off the tortilla truck,” the woman said. Then she went back in her apartment.

“Come inside.” Melody wrapped both her hands around his wrist and pulled.

“Not on your life.”

“Please?”

“Melody, I’m on duty.”

“Will you come back when you’re not on duty?”

“Melody.”

She tugged his hand, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Please, just for a minute. I’ll do whatever you say.”

That’s what scared him. The warmth of her fingers on his skin was driving him crazy. He wanted to take her into that apartment and find out what those fingers would feel like on other parts of his body.

“I’m so lonely. I’ve never been alone before.”

Jeez, she was going to cry. “I can’t stay long. I’m on duty.”

She smiled, dragging him into her lair.

Inside, it still didn’t look like anything other than an old man’s apartment. Decorated about twenty years ago and trapped in amber. The coffee table had heaps of change on it and piles of rolled coins. The whole room smelled like copper. So much for the ‘old man stink’ the super complained about having to get out. “What are you doing?”

“I wanted to ride the bus to get a sweatshirt to wear Saturday like you asked me to, but I didn’t have money for the fare. Then I realized I didn’t have the money for the sweatshirt either. So I went to the bank to get some of this change turned into bills. Billy was always terrible about using his change. It would just pile up and pile up on the dresser until I put it in milk jugs. The bank told me I needed to roll it first. Now I’m rolling it.” Melody grinned and fluttered around the room like it needed straightening. Nothing looked out of place to him.

Jerry nodded. He scanned the wall. “Lots of pictures.” Most of them were black and white. A couple, sepia-toned. Only a few were in color and even they looked old, judging by the hair and clothes.

Melody fluttered to a stop next to him and twisted her arms together behind her back, thrusting her breasts forward. Heaven help him. “We used to do a lot of traveling. Billy was a jazz musician.”

“Is that Billie Holiday?”

“Yes.”

Jerry squinted at the picture. Billie Holiday sitting at a table with three other people. Two men and a woman. A woman who looked a lot like–exactly like Melody. “Is this your grandmother?”

“No, it’s me. Billy used to take me out with him when he could. It was easy when he had a long engagement because we just lived in a hotel, but sometimes he had to travel so I just went into my lamp until he came home.”

“Your lamp?”

“Yes. The lamp I brought to your house this morning when I came to you.” She looked up at him with her big, brown, utterly honest, eyes.

Jerry studied the other pictures. Melody and a man who must be Billy Welsh with Louis Armstrong, Chick Corea, Stewart Copeland, Glenn Miller. Sitting in nightclubs. Posed in front of bandstands. Standing under marquees. Some of the people in the pictures he knew were dead. Billy kept getting older and older. Melody’s clothes changed, but her face didn’t. According to the file, Billy Welsh had been a musician. Apparently, he had been a good one. “That’s impossible.”

“What’s impossible?”

“Melody, there is no way that’s you in all these pictures.”

She shrugged. “It’s me.”

Great. Now, she was still nuts and she was taking him along with her. But her being nuts wouldn’t put her in these pictures. Could she have Photoshopped them? Maybe, but why? So she could snare the great catch that was Detective Jerry Howland? She couldn’t possibly be– “Okay, I have to go.” Jerry started for the door.

“I’ll see you Saturday for coffee though.”

“Uh, yeah. Coffee Saturday.” Jerry wanted to run for the door, but it might give her the wrong impression. Wait, that was the right impression. He did not need to be dealing with women who were at least sixty and looked twenty anymore than he needed to be dealing with crazy women.

Crazy women who looked very Arabic, spoke with a faint accent and owned a huge brass lamp. There were nut jobs and then there were people who had really out-there stories.

But there were out-there stories, and there were flat out fantasies. Genies fell into the same fantasy category as UFOs, Santa Claus and the Loch Ness Monster. Didn’t they?

He needed to take some vacation days so he could lose his goddamn mind in private.

“You’re lying. You’re going to stand me up.”

Jerry turned at the door. “I’m not going to stand you up.”

“Yes, you are. It’s all over your face.” Melody folded her arms. Her lower lip pooched out and her eyes went watery. “I told you what I was right away. I was honest with you and you’re lying to me.”

Oh jeez. Even if he did feel like a jerk, he’d gotten good at handling crying women, but Melody was like kryptonite. Every time he got near her, he lost his head. It was as bad as seeing Amanda cry, but this he could fix. “Melody, I promise, I will meet you Saturday for coffee just like I said.”

“You will? You promise?”

“I got work to do.”

“Can I help you?” She crossed the room. “Let me help you.”

“It’s police business. You can’t just ride along. Not without a good reason and prior approval.” Thank heaven for prior approval. If it weren’t for that he’d have said okay. He cupped her cheek. “I promise you I will see you Saturday at one o’clock at the coffee shop.”

Melody turned her face and kissed his thumb.

Jerry pulled his hand away before she could do any more or he would be in dereliction of his duty shortly thereafter. “But I have to go now.”

“Okay.” Melody stepped back. She pursed her lips. “I’ll see you Saturday at one o’clock.”

“Thanks.” He was in the parking lot before he realized that she hadn’t called him master once, not even on the phone. At least one of them could keep their head when they were together.

Chapter 3

Melody ran her finger around the rim of her coffee cup. She’d spent yesterday morning toting rolled change to the bank. Four trips to take it all, and it totaled over six hundred dollars. She’d spent a little on a cab to the mall and on a sweatshirt to wear for Jerry. Then she’d bought some chicken chow mein in the food court, which she’d hated and thrown it out. The rest of the evening she’d spent in the mall just to be around people. Watching how they acted and wishing she was like them. They all seemed to be able to talk to one another without trouble, but when she bought a cup of coffee at the Starbucks in the middle of the mall and tried to talk to the barista, he’d just stared at her like she was bothering him.

The only person who never looked at her like that was Jerry. His gaze held warmth and patience, and even when he desired her, it wasn’t the same as her other masters. To them, she’d been an object there to fulfill their fantasies. Jerry’s eyes held kindness. Human kindness. The last man to look at her that way had been her husband. She’d been an object even to Billy. In the early years, she had been a treasure. A jewel on his arm. The charming, lovely girl who’d attracted the attention of bandleaders as much as his playing did. A girl he got to take home each night and have sex with. In later years, she had been less of a mistress and more of a maid or nurse. Not so much a person as a means to an end.

“Hello, Melody.” Jerry sat down across the table from her. “I’m here just like I promised.”

“I knew you would come.”

“You wanted to have coffee.”

“
You
wanted to have coffee. I wanted to have sex.” The memory of meeting him in his house made her smile. He had a very nice house. She looked forward to keeping it for him. “You wanted to have sex too. Did I misunderstand when you said coffee? Is it a code word for sex all day now instead of just after a date?”

“What?”

“On
Seinfeld
a woman asked George up to her apartment for coffee and he didn’t realize she meant sex. He was very upset the whole rest of the episode.”

Jerry shook his head. “Did you learn everything you know from TV?”

“Billy didn’t like to go out much in the last few years. We watched a lot of television. It really is a wonderful invention.”

“Shh!” Jerry glanced around. “You have to stop saying stuff like that.”

“Like what?”

“Weird stuff like TV is a wonderful invention.”

“Is that why people keep looking at me like I’m loony?”

Jerry tapped his nose. “Bingo.”

“I’m going to learn so much from you.”

“About that.”

Melody knew what that meant. He was going to explain why they were bad for each other or why they couldn’t see each other, but he was wrong. He would never be bad for her and she could learn to be very good for him. “I bet I can teach you a few things too,” she said, her voice lowered to the purr that had always worked before. She picked up his hand and started massaging it. Using her thumbs, she worked across the palm. He had wonderful, capable hands. Long fingers and wide palms. They would feel lovely on her skin. She ached to be touched by these hands. “Jerry, I want to make love to you.”