Bayou born, p.7
Bayou Born, page 7
Pressing my cheek against the cool glass, I let it numb my chaotic thoughts.
We hit the golden arches, which cost me serious friendship cred. Maggie was forced to drown her sorrows with a vanilla sundae she dumped over two apple pies. And no. She didn’t offer to share.
We crashed at my house, watched sappy movies and decided on having an honest-to-God sleepover since Justin Sheridan, her live-in love muffin and husband-to-be, was out of town on business. I had just started digging for the pump that went along with the air mattress we used for guests when a light flipped on upstairs.
No junk food in the house was my bright idea, but I’d broken that rule into chicken nugget-shaped pieces tonight.
Maggie and I scattered like cockroaches back to the dark living room where we hosed the air with a vanilla lavender aerosol. We bundled up our trash, ran it out to the can at the end of the road, then rushed back inside to brush our teeth and gargle. We had just collapsed on the couch when Dad walked past. Hair smashed flat on one side, he wore boxers, one sock and a T-shirt. We froze, clinging to each other, waiting to see if he sniffed contraband in the house, but he only grunted what might have been a greeting on his way to the downstairs bathroom. Once the water turned on, we exchanged loaded glances, then burst into giggles like we’d been tossing back vodka shots instead of mouthwash.
Even with it being just us chickens, as Maggie would say, it was still the best unbirthday I’d had in years.
CHAPTER SIX
The next morning I woke with the rotary phone tucked in the bend of one elbow, its plastic body warmed from contact with mine. Heat stung my cheeks, and I braced for Maggie’s teasing, but the deflated air mattress pancaked on the floor told me she had already left for work.
Strumming my fingers over the rotary dial, I lifted the handset and pressed it against my ear. Perfect silence greeted me. “Jane is like me.” I expected no answers. Not from the phone, not today, not when Ezra was never where or when I needed him most. “What does that make you?”
I startled when my cellphone rang and dropped the handset, almost clocking myself in the face. Mouth gone dry, my brain attempted to warp the modern ringtone to fit the briiiiiiing I was so desperate to hear. A second of disappointment was all I allowed myself before rolling over and palming my cell where it rested on my dresser.
“Rixton.” I returned the old phone to its usual spot. “Let me guess. You’re standing me up. Again.”
“We need to talk.” He pitched his voice low. “Not over the phone.”
A chill walked down my spine. “Where do you want to meet?”
“Let’s do it in public, somewhere close to my place.”
“What? No joke about doing it in public?” I sat upright, heart pounding. “This must be serious.” I scooted to the edge of the bed. “Where is good for you?”
“Sherry’s craving peanut butter froyo. I figured we could meet up at Hannigan’s, the three of us.”
“That works.” I shucked my pajamas and started rooting through drawers for clean underwear. “Are you sure Sherry ought to come?”
“Try and stop her. I dare you. And Luce? I spotted a news van on Main Street. Pretty sure he got lost on his way to the hospital since cell service is crap in town. His wouldn’t be the first GPS to lose its signal and guide a driver off the beaten path, but he might be trolling and hoping to get lucky.”
“What time?” Frozen yogurt wasn’t, as far as I knew, a breakfast food, but then again, I wasn’t pregnant. I just hoped Sherry wouldn’t bring pickles from home to use as garnish. “Hannigan’s doesn’t open until noon.”
“Let me check with the boss.” Rixton muted the call while they hashed out their schedule then came back on the line. “Sherry has an acupuncture session in Madison at one she refuses to cancel. Her migraines are getting worse, and weirdly enough jabbing her with needles is the only treatment that’s alleviating the pain.”
“Try being married to you,” she yelled from a distance. “Then we’ll see how many migraines you get.”
“Travel wipes her out.” Rixton spoke over her. “She’ll need a nap before we meet you.”
“I might be carrying a baby, but I’m not a child. I don’t require scheduled naptime.”
“Baby,” he soothed, “you woke up an hour ago, and your lids are already heavy.”
“Who’s heavy?”
“Holy mother of— Shit.” Footsteps pounded. A door slammed. Click. Rixton must have locked it behind him. “Damn that was a close one. Okay. You still there?”
Fists pounded on the door.
“Be out in a minute, hon,” he called to his wife. “Potty time is private time. You taught me that, remember?”
Her muffled roar made me grateful I was neither pregnant nor married to Rixton.
“How about five?” Rixton tapped the receiver. “Hey, Bou-Bou, I’m talking to you.”
“That works.” Assuming either of them survived the fallout from the bathroom door opening. “See you guys then.”
“Luce.” His warning tone snapped me to attention. “Watch your back.”
“Will do.” I ended the call, then dialed Maggie. I owed my partner-in-crime thanks for going above and beyond yesterday. But instead of rolling straight into voicemail as usual when I called during school hours, I heard the smoky jazz lullaby of her ringtone below me. She must have left it downstairs. “Well crap.”
I made a mental note to swing by the school and drop it off after I met with the Rixtons, then dressed in jeans, boots and a flowy peasant blouse with billowing sleeves in a floral pattern. I scrounged a frayed elastic and raked my fingers through my snarled bedhead, or I tried to, but detangling the frizzy mass proved impossible. Ponytail it is. Wincing at the tug against my scalp, I bent my stubborn hair to my will.
I pocketed my phone, and then hit the stairs. A quick search of the downstairs revealed Maggie’s cell on the bathroom vanity. Dressed and ready, I settled in at the kitchen table with my laptop and started digging through updates on the Claremont case. When the words started blending on the screen, I flipped over to the local news and monitored it for snippets about Jane.
Late afternoon found me bleary-eyed, with a stiff back and a hankering for a cool treat to offset the summer heat baking the grass in our backyard into crunchy, brittle nubs that stabbed your soles when you dared go barefoot.
After shutting down the laptop, I drifted into the living room and lifted my keys from a cup hook by the front door. I locked up behind me, pausing until the steady blip of the alarm’s green dot winked at me.
The drive into town blurred, the mental haze clearing in time for me to snag a coveted parking spot in front of Hannigan’s. I was punching the lock button on my key fob when I spotted Rixton and Sherry walking my way. Based on their matching goo-goo eyes, and the way their linked hands swung like a pendulum between them, they must have kissed and made up since we talked.
Acupuncture must be some good stuff.
“I planned on returning the DVDs you lent me, but John has forbidden me from carrying anything heavier than a paperclip.” Sherry tugged on his arm. “Unless he’s already sitting down and wants a glass of tea.”
“Liar, liar, maternity pants on fire.” He swatted her butt, and she took the hit with a gleam in her eyes. “That’s not true, Luce. Don’t believe a word this woman tells you, unless they’re compliments about me. Those you can take to the bank.”
Guess that meant naptime was code for . . . Yeah. That. So much for my acupuncture theory.
“You married this?” I hooked a thumb at him. “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t.” She rubbed her stomach. “I was drinking.”
“I took her to Vegas and got her sloshed on fruity drinks, popped the question, then dragged her before an ordained Elvis before she changed her mind.”
“That is exactly how I don’t remember it.” Sherry arched an eyebrow. “Like not at all. I woke up the next morning in bed married to him.” She elbowed him in the ribs. “What did you put in those drinks anyway?”
“Nothing illegal.” Rixton dropped a lingering kiss on her lips. “In most countries.”
“Get a room.” I didn’t have to fake my gagging. “Aren’t married people supposed to stop having sex?”
“That’s not how it works, no.” He slipped his wife tongue that had her squealing and fighting him off in a fit of giggles. “The more I have of her, the more I want. And being the brilliant man I am, I put a ring on it, so she’s mine. Plus, she’s pregnant, and she puts out a lot. Like a lot. And she gets kind of violent. About everything.” He waggled his eyebrows at me. “Have you ever tried angry sex with a pregnant lady? It will change your life, I guarantee.”
Even when my mind dipped into the gutter, I was still soaring in a penthouse suite compared to their permanent address on TMI Lane.
“Johnathan,” she squeaked. “What’s between you, me and my hormones is our business.”
“Luce doesn’t mind,” he assured her.
“Luce does mind,” I contradicted him.
“Let’s get that froyo.” Sherry ditched him to hook her arm through mine. “The sooner we find something to stuff in his pie hole, the sooner quiet and reason will be restored.”
“Sadly, I came here to talk to him.” Hannigan’s was a family-owned frozen yogurt bar, and its décor was best described as “unicorn vomits rainbow on white canvas”. I followed Sherry’s lead as she selected the biggest cup on offer, then swirled in peanut butter frogurt. She topped that with crushed peanut butter cups, peanut butter drops, halved peanuts and a pump of warmed peanut butter. Who was I to deviate from a theme? I even paid the bill out of respect for her creative genius, and okay, so Rixton had to buy his own. “We’ll have a moment of silence while he slurps down his swirl, then it’s down to business.”
“I brought knitting to entertain myself.” She patted a bag slung over her shoulder. “Playing beard for your covert meeting beats sitting around the house under a magnifying glass.”
A swirl of warm air caressed my cheek, and a twitch started between my shoulders. I glanced across the shop, closing my lips over the spoon as another patron joined us for a cool treat. I choked on a peanut butter drop, and Sherry leapt to her feet, as much as any woman nine months pregnant can be said to have leapt, and Heimliched me.
“I got it down,” I wheezed. “Sherry, stop. No. I’ll hurl if you keep socking me in the gut.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” She took a bottled drink from the wall cooler and made sure the cashier added it to Rixton’s tab. “Drink this.” Her gaze slid past my shoulder. “What got you so . . .? Oh. Wow.”
Once I could breathe again, I shoved off the table with my palms and moseyed up to the new customer. “Got a sudden craving?”
Cole stared down his crooked nose at me. “Something like that.”
“You’re following me again.” I locked down the urge to squirm under his gaze. “Why?”
He selected two of the largest cups and started filling them.
“You can’t ignore me when you’re literally the size of an elephant in the room. I see you. We all see you.” I cut in line ahead of him and blocked his path. “Why. Are. You. Tailing. Me?”
“You’re paranoid.”
His cool dismissal sent heat blasting into my cheeks. Was I paranoid? Yes. Was I paranoid about him following me? No. Yesterday had proven he had an agenda. But what? I wasted precious seconds vacillating and lost the hottest edge of my temper. Or I thought so until he scooped peanut butter drops into both his cups.
“You can’t even come up with your own flavor combination,” I spluttered. “You are stalking me.” I gripped his forearm, and I might as well have been groping a boulder. “Is that why your men just happened to be in the right place at the right time?”
Note to self: It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you.
“My men received a tip and went to investigate.” He kept studying me from under dark lashes. “I can’t help they found you instead. We are working the same case, after all.”
“Is there a problem here?” Rixton sidled up next to me. “Luce?”
“This is Cole Heaton, the owner of White Horse Security.” I noticed I was still holding onto him and jerked my hand back to my side. “Cole, this is my partner, Detective John Rixton.”
“How do you two know each other?” Rixton asked in a lazy Southern drawl. “You weren’t on that boat, Mr. Heaton.”
“No, but he was at my house the next morning.” I had zero qualms about throwing Cole under the bus. He was so freaking huge the crash would probably wreck it instead of plowing him down anyway. “He wanted to ask me about Jane.”
“Pay for your food and join us at our table,” Rixton ordered him. “We’ll talk there.”
Since I hadn’t taken my eyes off Cole, I hadn’t noticed the two teen cashiers gawking at the altercation. One had a phone in his hand held at chest-height like he might be filming. Not good.
I smiled at the boys, and then rejoined Sherry at the table. “That man is—”
“Built.” She fanned herself with a napkin. “Is all that muscle for real? Maybe you should bounce quarters off his abs to be sure.”
“Stop drooling.” I snatched the napkin and pressed it to her lips where it stuck on a daub of peanut butter and hung there. “You’re a married woman.”
“My ovaries are otherwise occupied,” she said, spitting off the paper, “but there’s nothing to stop yours from exploding.”
“Except that he might be one of those newspaper-clipping nutso stalkers obsessed with me,” I huffed.
“On a scale of one to ten,” she mused, “how big of a deal-breaker would it be if you found a scrapbook with a lock of your hair glued to a page in the front seat of his ride?”
“That would be a one hundred.” Though I might be tempted to compare scrapbooks, if such ones existed, before reducing his to ashes. “Are your hormones that out of whack?”
“Hmm?” She mimed squeezing his buns and snapped her teeth in their direction. “He’s so bitable.”
“You’d chip a tooth.”
“Dentures aren’t only for the over-sixty crowd anymore.” She spooned up her frogurt. “Hmm. I wonder what Rixton would think if I could pop out my teeth when I—”
“Sherry,” I squeaked. “He’s my partner. I won’t be able to look him in the eye after hearing you fantasize about gumming his sausage. Can you take that mental picture back please?”
“Who’s gumming sausage?” Rixton dropped into the seat next to hers. “Whose sausage is getting gummed? And can I volunteer?”
“Y’all are insane.” I dropped my face into my hands. “And you’re breeding.”
“That makes it sound so dirty.” Rixton nudged my foot with his. “Say it again.”
“Please stop.” I laughed through my embarrassment. “I can’t even with you two.”
The grating of metal chair legs against tile floor brought my head up in time to watch Cole join us. He sat beside me, naturally, and crowded me with his bulging muscles. I considered elbowing him to give myself room but worried I might shatter my funny bone in the process, which would not be humerus. He looked ridiculous with the hot pink spoon fisted in his hand, and I couldn’t tear myself away from watching him scoop up that first bite.
“It’s good,” he announced upon noticing my rapt attention. Humming in the back of his throat, he took a second bite and then a third. “Very good.”
“You’ve never had frogurt?” I cocked my head at him. “Yet more evidence you’re a stalker.”
“You flatter yourself.” He cut his eyes my way. “Do you have many such admirers?”
An unladylike snort escaped me. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
His tongue darted out to lick his lips. “I asked, didn’t I?”
A frown gathered between my brows when he did it again. He had asked me something?
Sherry pinched my thigh, and I jumped. The mountain demolished his dessert, but his eyes twinkled. Oh, how they twinkled. Fine. So the fact his upper lip was fuller than the lower one had intrigued me. Next time I gawked I would be subtler about it.
No. Bad Luce. There would be no next time. What would be the point when he’d leave after this assignment ended? Not that I was thinking that far ahead. Argh. I had totally been thinking that far ahead.
“Rixton?” I diverted my attention to my partner. “You invited him to join us for a reason?”
“White Horse took over security for Jane Doe this morning.” Rixton wiped away his jokester persona with a napkin across his lips. “That’s what I wanted to tell you, Luce. The PD won’t assign her an official security detail unless her life is endangered, and we know they set the bar too high on that. We can rotate out volunteers, but that won’t ensure continuous coverage, and it’s a stopgap measure.”
“Funny how you neglected to mention you were visiting a potential client when we bumped into one another in the elevator,” I grated in Cole’s direction. “What business is Jane of yours?”
“I follow the money.” He stacked his cups—both emptied—when I had yet to take a second bite. “I’m mercenary that way. I got an offer to protect her, and I took the contract. End of story.”
Call me crazy, but I didn’t believe a word out of his incredibly distracting mouth. “Who’s paying you?”
“Divulge a client’s personal information?” He clicked his tongue. “People don’t stay in business long if they let beautiful women talk them out of their secrets.”
The compliment set my cheeks tingling. Oh, he was good.
“Could her family have put up the money?” Sherry reached for her husband’s hand. “They must be worried sick about her.”
“Her prints aren’t in the system, babe.” Rixton brushed a knuckle across her cheek. “She’s unidentified, a Jane Doe, and that means no one—not even her family—knows to look for her here.”
I stirred my froyo until the ribbon of peanut butter dissolved, leaving me with a goopy mess too mushy to eat. Or maybe the topic had cost me my appetite. Did Jane have family? Would they come for her? No one had ever claimed me, but I had been a child. She was an adult. She might have a husband or kids of her own out there searching for her. They would want to put this nightmare behind them once they found her. Maybe put me behind them too. I couldn’t let that happen. I had to learn what she knew.
