Troublemaker (4 page)

They were an hour and a half into the party when their circuitous routes around the room brought them together. He tilted his glass toward her in acknowledgment but didn't interrupt his current conversation with a senator's aide even though it was deadly boring and he'd have liked to cram a pair of dirty socks down the pompous jackass's throat. Let her come to him. He wasn't approaching anyone.

Finally the senator's aide paused when he stopped a passing waiter to deposit his empty glass on the man's tray. Congresswoman Kingsley smoothly slid in and said, “Hello, Karl, Axel.”

“Congresswoman,” Axel replied in acknowledgment, and watched in amusement as the senator's aide struggled with his ego and the pecking order on Capitol Hill. The congresswoman was an important personage, but Karl looked on the House as inferior to the Senate; therefore his position as chief aide to a senator
should
be superior to hers. Then his ego butted into the unfortunate fact that Congresswoman Kingsley had been elected—several times over—while he was a hired aide who hadn't been elected to anything..

“Congresswoman Kingsley,” Karl finally muttered, using her title while she'd used his first name. Oh, the slings and arrows, Axel mused.

She gave Karl one of those smiles and said, “Would you excuse us? I'd like to discuss a few details with Axel.”

There was nothing Karl could do except say, “Of course,” and take himself away.

Axel sipped his drink—sparkling water on the rocks because when you were wading in a pool of sharks, you needed all your wits about you—and waited for her to steer the conversation in the direction she
wanted, though he did paste a faintly questioning expression on his face.

“I heard something disturbing,” she said, pitching her voice low so only he could hear her.

He gave a slight lift of his eyebrows that invited her to continue.

“I heard Morgan was killed.”

“Not so,” he promptly replied.

Relief flickered in her eyes. “Thank God. But—was he hurt? My source was very specific about the victim's name.”

He'd like to know exactly who her source was, but he didn't waste time trying to dig that info out of her. She was a seasoned veteran of the dance.

“He was shot—and I won't lie, it was serious. But I have him in a protected location while he recovers.”

“What happened?”

“Assassination attempt. The problem is he can't tell me why.”

“He doesn't
know
?”

Axel rocked his hand back and forth. “He thinks he does. He suffered a serious concussion and he's having a few memory problems, but he says he knows what's going on if he can just remember it. There isn't any permanent brain damage, and the doc says that he'll remember when all the swelling is gone.”

“For goodness' sake! When will that be?”

“No definite date, everyone heals differently. He has pneumonia now and that's a setback, but the docs say he's already getting better. I'm thinking a few months, most likely, before he's back to normal.”

“That must be difficult, being grounded until then. I don't know him as well as you do, but I suspect he isn't a good patient.”

“Understatement,” Axel said.

“I'm so glad he'll be all right. We'd all be devastated if anything happened to him. Give him our best when you see him.”

“I will,” he replied, holding back the information that he wouldn't be seeing Morgan at all until and if his trap was sprung. He'd spread these seeds of information in several venues around town; now he had to wait
and see if any of them sprouted. Morgan had been targeted for a reason; that reason
had
to be rooted in something he'd seen or done that day. Maybe the threat he was looking for was several layers deep, not Congresswoman Kingsley herself, or Brawley, or even Kodak, but someone who knew them. He wouldn't know until someone acted.

C
HIEF OF POLICE ISABEAU MARAN LOOKED UP FROM AN
annoying pile of paperwork as the door to the police station opened, letting in a brisk dose of early spring air. Her golden retriever, Tricks, was snoozing on a comfy fleece bed on the floor beside the desk, but at the disturbance the dog opened her eyes and lifted her beautifully shaped golden head. She didn't thump her tail in welcome because this was Tricks, and she didn't know who was coming through the door; therefore, she wouldn't waste the effort until she knew whether or not the new arrival was worthy of a welcome.

Bright sunshine glared on the worn tile and Bo narrowed her eyes against it as Daina Conner carefully stepped inside. The intruder's identity established, Tricks gave her tail two thumps, which signaled a moderate degree of pleasure but not enough to bring her to her feet, then lowered her head back onto her paws to resume her nap.

“What's up?” Not that Bo wasn't glad to see Daina, because there weren't
that
many unattached women roughly her own age in Hamrickville, West Virginia, but they usually did their socializing outside the police station. They looked like polar opposites: Daina was curvy and blond and blue-eyed, Bo was dark-haired and dark-eyed, and the only curves she owned were in her driveway. But they both enjoyed the same type of movies, liked the same jokes, and had each other's back.

“I had one beer too many at lunch,” Daina announced, plopping her
butt into the cracked and duct-tape-patched chair across from Bo's desk. Her stylish blond hair flopped over her eyes and she carelessly pushed it back. “I don't have another appointment until three, so I thought, what better place to sober up than here? I can have some coffee, chat with you, then you can give me a Breathalyzer after a while and tell me whether or not I'm okay to drive.” Daina owned the local beauty shop, The Chop Shop, a couple of miles out on the main road into town. It was a short enough drive that Bo thought it wasn't fear of driving while tipsy that had brought Daina by, but rather a way of killing time until her next appointment.

Which meant she could kiss good-bye the idea of making any real headway on the paperwork, Bo thought as she pushed back from her desk and went to the Mr. Coffee sitting on top of a double-drawer filing cabinet in the corner, which was located there for the sole reason that there was an electrical outlet behind the cabinet. There was about half an inch of dark sludge left in the carafe from . . . this morning, maybe. Hard to tell. It had been there when she arrived a little after noon, so for all she knew, it could have been there since yesterday afternoon.

She took the carafe into the bathroom, dumped out the sludge, rinsed, then ran fresh water. Coming back into the main office, she began the process of making coffee. “So who were you having beers with?” she asked, not bothering to point out that if she were a real stickler about things, she'd arrest Daina for public intoxication because obviously she
wasn't
a stickler. From her point of view, it wasn't as if Daina was staggering drunk, and she'd done the responsible thing by
not
driving and electing to come here instead. Bo's philosophy was don't bitch about what works.

“Kenny Michaels. I've decided to go ahead with remodeling the kitchen, and we were going over what I want, paint colors—my gawd, I think I've looked at a gajillion paint chips. Stuff like that.”

“So what colors did you decide on?” While the coffee was brewing, Bo stepped into the so-called break room—it was originally just a large closet—stocked with a refrigerator, microwave, tiny table, and two chairs squeezed into the space. She opened the top freezer compartment
of the avocado-green refrigerator, which of course refused to ever give up the ghost the way any decent-colored refrigerator would have, and took out a pint of ice cream. Well, it had originally been a whole pint, but now it was down to half that. She didn't know if Daina liked vanilla ice cream; tough cookies because it was all she had. She levered off the top, found a spoon, stuck it in the ice cream, and set the cardboard carton in front of her friend. “Eat.”

Absently Daina obeyed, her thoughts elsewhere. “A sort of pewter-ish gray, with a grayish blue,” she replied, still on the color theme. “Not very kitcheny, but that's the whole idea. I don't want anything that stimulates my appetite or makes food look good. I want something calm and soothing . . . you know, so I'll stay away from it.” She stopped, pulled the spoon from her mouth and stared at it. “The hell? This is ice cream,” she said, frowning down at the carton as if she had no idea how it had come to be in her hand.

“Five points for observation powers.” Bo resumed her seat. “Kenny Michaels, huh? He's kind of cute.” And he was, in a construction, hammer-hanging-from-a-loop-on-his-pants kind of way. Not tall, but not short, a muscular kind of stocky. Divorced, late thirties, one son who was a senior in high school. She didn't know anything bad about him, which meant there probably wasn't anything bad to know.

“Of course. Why else would I renovate my kitchen? And why am I eating ice cream?” Daina still looked perplexed, but she dug the spoon in and lifted a bite to her mouth. “Not that I'm complaining, but I just had dessert at lunch.”

“It helps sober you up.”

Daina's eyes went wide. “No shit.” Awestruck, she lifted the carton and stared at it again. “A legitimate reason for eating ice cream? There
is
a God!”

At that moment Tricks was evidently struck by the abrupt realization that someone in the room was
eating,
and it wasn't her, because she surged to her feet and planted herself directly in front of Daina, her extravagantly plumy tail gently swishing, her dark gaze locked on the carton of ice cream.

Daina froze with another bite halfway to her mouth. “Oh my God,” she breathed, as motionless as if she were being confronted by a cobra rather than a golden retriever. “What do I do?”

Bo hid her amusement. “Tell her no. She can't have ice cream.”

“No?” Daina said weakly, her tone of voice making it more of a question than a statement. Tricks sensed an advantage and moved closer, laying her head on Daina's knee and giving her the full, soulful stare that had turned rough men, much less a half-drunk friend, to putty in her paws.

Bo sighed. You couldn't give in to Tricks because she then concluded that if she just kept after you long enough, you'd eventually give in, and she was relentless in her efforts to get what she wanted. “Tricks, no,” she commanded. When Tricks didn't move, she said, “Young lady, I said
no
.” She clapped her hands twice. “Go back to your bed right now.”

Reluctantly, Tricks moved away, her expression as mutinous as that of a thwarted toddler, but she padded back to her bed and lay down with a huff . . . and with her back turned toward Bo to show her indignation.

Bo barely swallowed a snort of laughter. Dealing with a canine diva—moreover, a very intelligent diva—was never boring and definitely kept her on her toes. She was the only person Tricks would obey when it didn't suit her, which meant Bo pretty much had a constant companion. She didn't mind; she adored her dog, though during that first tumultuous year she'd often felt like tearing out her own hair in frustration. As alpha as Tricks was, Bo had had to prove over and over that she was even more alpha, and only the fact that she controlled the food had won the day.

Daina hurriedly downed more ice cream. “She scares me,” she confessed.

“Yeah, that's why you're down on the floor playing with her so often.”

“I didn't say I don't love her. I said she scares me. If she lived with me, I'd be her slave.”

“Probably.” Reluctantly, Bo turned her attention back to the stack of papers on her desk. “Do you want to take a nap, or do you want to interrupt me while I'm trying to wade through this paperwork?”

“Anything I can help you with? Read reports and give you the gist of them so you can put your initials at the bottom?”

“You're tipsy. Would your gists be reliable?”

The coffeemaker was making the sputtering and spitting noises that signaled it was near the end of its process, so she poured some into a polystyrene cup and pushed it toward Daina. Daina said, “I like sugar and cream in my coffee.”

So did Bo, but somehow the supplies of both tended to disappear and she'd learned to soldier on without if she had to. “So put some ice cream in it. Problem solved.”

“Good point.” Carefully Diana put a healthy dollop of ice cream in the hot coffee and took a cautious sip. She considered the taste, then tipped her head and said, “Not bad.” After that judgment, she added two more dollops and likely would have emptied the rest of the carton into the cup if it wouldn't have made the coffee spill over the sides. “Why are you still doing paperwork, anyway? Isn't everything computerized?”

Bo glanced at the old-fashioned monitor sitting on her desk. “Kind of. Maybe. On some days.” The antique—meaning it was over ten years old—computer system desperately needed updating, but paying the policemen ranked higher on the scale, something she agreed with. She could get by with doing real paperwork, and take some of it home to do on her own computer system, as long as the guys had a fairly decent salary, dependable vehicles, and the equipment they needed. She and Hamrickville had an unconventional but symbiotic relationship going, so she wasn't going to scream about getting a new computer.

She switched the topic back to Daina. “So, this thing with Kenny Michaels—are you seriously interested?”

“I could be.” Daina drank some of her ice cream coffee. “But not yet. I'm still in the intrigued stage.”

Still lying with her back to them, Tricks let out a long moan that hovered about halfway between a whine and a gripe. Daina froze again, her expression guilty as she stared at the dog. “Ignore her,” Bo said. “She's telling on me for not letting her pester you.”

“Who's she telling?”

“You. You're her only hope. If she can make you cave, she figures she'll get some ice cream before I step in and stop it.”

“How about if I just give her one little bite to make her happy—”

“No.”

“Just one—”

“
No.
This is Tricks. Do you know what that would do? You'd never again be able to eat in her presence, anything, period. She'd be in your lap. I'd have to lock her in another room, and then
I'd
be mad at you.”

Another long moan. The dog sounded as if her heart had been broken. Daina gave Bo a pleading look. Bo said, “Don't make me lock you up.”

“Oh, all right. But you could at least give her one of her own tr—” She started to say the word “treats,” but stopped in mid-word at the fierce glare Bo gave her. Tricks understood a lot of words, and that particular word would have her on her feet looking for what she considered the promised goodie. Even worse, after hearing the word spelled a couple of times, Tricks had figured out what was being spelled, so she couldn't be fooled that way. “Sorry,” Daina said again, wincing. “I forgot. Say, have you ever thought about having her tested? I'm pretty sure she's, like, a doggie genius, or something.”

“I know she is, and no, I'm not having her tested. Why would I? It isn't as if it would get her into a better college.”

Daina laughed, leaning back in her chair and digging into the remaining ice cream. “I think she'd do well. Look, put me to work. Until I'm sober enough to drive back to the shop, the least I can do is help you out. Nothing's confidential, is it?”

“No, everything here is a matter of public record.”

“Well, shit. There goes my motivation.”

Bo laughed and went back to reading while Daina finished both the ice cream and the coffee. Even with the interruptions of occasional conversation, she made a sizable dent in the stack of papers. The interruption she couldn't ignore—but thank goodness it came just as she finished—was when Tricks got up, fetched her tennis ball, then patted Bo's knee with one of those big paws. Actually, it was more like a swat than a pat.

“Time for a walk, princess?” She rubbed behind the silky ears, then stood. “Want to walk with us?” she asked Daina, who checked the time on her cell phone.

“Sure, why not? How far are you planning to walk?”

“About half a mile.”

“Half a mile!” Her friend skidded to a halt, looking dismayed. “How long will that take?”

Bo hid her amusement. She walked Tricks several times a day, so half a mile was nothing to her. To Daina, however, who thought walking from her car into the shop was all the effort she should expend—and who was wearing platform heels—half a mile likely seemed unreasonable.

“Fifteen, twenty minutes, depending on how much nosing around Tricks does.”

“No can do. Sorry. Get your trusty Breathalyzer and see if I'm okay to drive.”

Bo would almost have guaranteed that she was, but in the unlikely event Daina had an accident, the town would be liable, so she paused to do exactly as requested. Tricks didn't take kindly to the delay and swatted her several more times, then butted her leg.

“All right!” she said to the dog. “Hold your horses.” She checked the display and told Daina, “You're good.” Another head butt knocked her leg sideways. “Okay, okay, I'm coming. You must really need to pee.”

Daina left and Bo locked the door behind her, then took Tricks out the back way. Tricks immediately dropped her ball at Bo's feet and took off running. Taking the hint, Bo threw the ball as hard as she could—which, after two years of training, was a decent distance. Thanks to having a dog who loved chasing a ball, she had nice throwing muscles. Tricks caught the ball on the first bounce and immediately paused, posing with her head lifted in a beauty-queen tilt, waiting for the praise she expected when she made a good catch. “Perfect! That's a beautiful catch!” Bo called. With a wag of her tail, Tricks abandoned the pose and trotted back, joy in every line of her body. Despite Trick's insistence that she needed to pee, Bo had to throw the ball three more times before the dog finally squatted and did her business.