4 Arch Enemy of Murder (4 page)

“I don’t know; I’ve never been stung before.” He retrieved a napkin from the glove box and used it to wipe off his card. “Your brother’s birthday is coming up soon.”

His head shot up. “How did you know?”

“You mentioned it once.” He hadn’t said as much, but she knew it was a hard day for him.

He nodded and tucked the credit card back into his wallet.

“Why were you also limping like a cartoon character that just had its foot run over and flattened?” he asked before glancing in his mirror and pulling back onto the road. “Don’t tell me the bee stung your foot, too.”

“You’re too observant,” she mumbled.

“That’s sort of a good thing when you’re a detective, but I think anyone would have noticed you dragging your foot like that.”

“Sports injury,” she said.

He glanced at her. “What? It almost sounded like you said sports, but that can’t be right.”

“Running is a sport,” she argued.

“Not how you do it,” he said.

“You’ve never seen me.”

“I’ve heard the stories around town,” he said.

She didn’t have a comeback for that because it was probably true. They rode in silence a minute. Lacy stole a glance at him from the corner of her eye and saw him doing the same to her. Or, more appropriately, to her legs where they peeked out from beneath her skirt. She turned to the window and let her smile bloom. She had missed him with a pervasive sort of ache lately, one that suddenly quit throbbing when she was near him again.

Behind her head hung a shotgun, locked into place by a cage-looking contraption. Beneath the radio, a scanner crackled faintly with codes and signals that meant nothing to her. She could barely hear them, but she knew Jason was attuned. “Nice wheels.”

He smiled and her heart did the little flip it reserved only for him. “Detectives get four-wheel drive,” he explained.

And it was unmarked. Lacy no longer felt like a conspicuous criminal every time she rode with him. The car looked like any other except for the gun and scanner.

“Are you working on any big cases?” she asked.

“Yes, the biggest.”

“Murder?”

“Gnome vandalism.”

She blinked at him, trying to figure out if it was some sort of police code. “What?”

“There’s a serial gnome vandal targeting the town.”

“Like yard gnomes?” she said.

He nodded.

“Why are you assigned to gnomes?”

“I’m not assigned to them, per se, but the guys on the force keep dumping their yard gnome cases on me.”

Now she was beginning to understand. “They’re not happy you made detective.”

“You could say that,” he said. “Oh, but I also get all the lion sighting cases, so it evens out.”

“There are lions here?”

“Of course not, but a few times a year, people are convinced they see them. And since my fellow officers are so concerned about the citizens of this town, they decided a detective needs to investigate each sighting. Did I mention it was the middle of the night? Turned out to be a chow with a bad haircut. Arroyo has deferred all sightings to him to pick up some of the slack, thankfully, or I would never get any sleep.”

“Poor Jason,” she said. She hated the thought of him being hazed by his coworkers.

“It’s not that big of a deal; they’ll adjust and get over it,” he said.

Absently, she pulled her foot up and began to rub it.

He pulled off the road and parked. “Give me your foot,” he demanded.

“What?” she asked.

“Your foot.”

“Why?”

“Maybe I can fix it,” he said.

“With voodoo? Because last time I looked you weren’t a podiatrist.”

“I paid attention when the trainers used to work on me in high school. Gimme.” He held out his hand.

“I’m supposed to hand over my foot to someone who got his medical know-how from a high schooler whose knowledge is limited to the proper way to wind an Ace bandage?”

He nodded and pointed to his palm as if to show her where to place her foot.

“No,” she said. “You can’t have my foot.”
You can’t drop out of my life for three whole weeks, drop in, demand my foot, and expect me to give it to you.

“That’s the problem. You don’t trust me.”

“I trust you,” she said.

“Then prove it, and start with your foot.”

“You’re in a very fixing mood today.” Reluctantly, she removed her shoe and raised her foot so it was level with his hand. He took it and pressed his thumb in the middle of her sole. A little bit of the tension eased out of her, along with some of the pain. “This is the first time I’ve ever had a foot massage in a cop car,” she said.

“Really? If I had a nickel,” he began, and then changed his mind when she started to pull her foot away. “Geez, kidding. You’re wound tighter than I’ve ever seen you.”

“Riley,” she said, and he nodded. He worked on her foot in silence for a few minutes while Lacy tried not to melt into a puddle on his seat. He had magic fingers, but there was no way to say that to someone and not have it sound weird. “So the job’s been rough lately?” she asked at last.

“It has its ups and downs,” he said. He finished with her foot and moved on to her ankle. She felt there was a lot he wasn’t saying, but there was distance between them that she didn’t know how to cross. Not a physical distance—he was rubbing her ankle and working toward her calf, after all—but the emotional distance was intense. After coming so close, they were back to square one. Now they were touching on Lacy’s greatest fear that they soon wouldn’t be anything at all. It was her fault, and they both knew it, and that made everything worse because it added guilt into the mix.

“You’re a mess, Red,” he said.

Lacy gave her bedraggled hair a self-conscious pat. “Thanks for that.”

“I’m serious. You need a keeper, someone to run interference with your sister, to make sure you don’t hurt yourself when you walk, to keep the bugs away, to stop you from using a straw to suck the filling of any more Ding Dongs.”

She grimaced and pressed her hand to her stomach. “We promised to never mention that, and I haven’t done it again since you took my straw away.”

“I’m just saying that it doesn’t seem like I’ve left you in capable hands,” Jason said.

“No, you just left,” she said.

“That was your choice, not mine.”

“Jason,” she began when suddenly he dropped her foot and picked up the radio.

“Go ahead,” he said. For a second, she thought he was talking to her, and then the dispatcher on the other end of his scanner spoke more gibberish. Jason’s eyes narrowed on her a second before he answered. “You’re clear. I’m on that side of town, and I’ll check it out.” He slid the receiver to its handle and started the car. “There’s a report of a possible car off the road in the woods. Do you want me to take you home, or do you want to go with me?”

She thought of Riley waiting at home to ambush her and push for the party some more. “Am I allowed to go with you?”

“I’m off duty,” he said. “Technically, it’s my day off, but I had paperwork to catch up on. I was on my way home when I saw you. I’m just taking this call because it’s weedy and the SUV will work better than the cruisers.”

“Then I want to go with you,” Lacy said. Maybe after he finished the call, they could grab dinner and talk. After all, it was just a car in the woods. What could go wrong?

They drove out of town and slowed when they got to the area the caller had described.

“I don’t see anything,” Lacy said because the suspected vehicle was supposed to be on her side.

“Neither do I,” Jason said. “Let’s go another mile and I’ll turn around.” He turned around and slowly scanned the area again. Lacy was ready to call it a wash and get supper, but Jason decided to do one more pass.

“There,” she said as the sun came out from behind a cloud and glinted on something metal.

“Is it a car?”

“I don’t know. I can only see a scrap of a reflection. For all I know, it could be a tin can.”

Jason parked the car. “I’m going to get out and look. Want to stay in the car?”

“No, I want to come,” she said.

He scanned her up and down. “What about your foot.”

“It feels better,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?” He scooted closer and rested his hand on her knee. “Why do you suppose?”

“It’s a miracle,” she said. “There’s no explanation for those. But the other one still hurts.”

“Maybe I could work another miracle on that one later,” he said.

They needed to talk, but Lacy wasn’t about to look a gift massage in the mouth. “Maybe.”

He leaned over her and opened her door. She shimmied out and yanked at her skirt when it got caught on the running board. Jason sprang lithely behind her like a gazelle, landing in perfect balance on the balls of his feet. He took her hand as they started to walk.

“The ground is uneven here,” he said as if he needed an explanation or reason to touch her.

“I just like holding your hand,” she blurted. “I’ve missed you like crazy, and I hate that you’ve been avoiding me the last few weeks.”

He tightened his grip on her hand and took a breath. “Lacy,” he started, but then they saw it. An old Chevy Caprice loomed in front of them, windowless. As they drew closer and got a better angle, they realized there was someone inside.

“Geez,” Jason said. He dropped her hand, pulled out his phone, and called his dispatch for an ambulance. They took a couple of more steps, and Lacy slapped her hand over her mouth and nose. Nothing alive could smell like that, and yet as she looked in the car she saw movement. At last her mind, sluggish from shock, began to comprehend the fact that the swarming black mass was flies.

Jason had the same realization and grabbed Lacy by the shoulders, turning her away. “Go to the car and stay there, and try not to touch anything on the way back that we didn’t touch on the way in.”

She nodded and walked away, being careful to stay in the path of trodden grass until she reached the SUV. Then she bent over and sucked clean air, trying hard to force the cloying smell of decaying flesh off the back of her tongue. She was thankful she hadn’t had to stay and see what was under those flies. Poor whoever it was, and poor Jason for having to be the one to look.

The line of cruisers began to arrive. Lacy hopped in the car and tried to look inconspicuous, not wanting Jason to catch any flack for taking a civilian to a live scene. They were too far from town for her to walk, so after the line of arriving vehicles came to an end, she pulled out her phone and called her grandfather to pick her up.

“You look a little green around the gills, Granddaughter,” were her grandfather’s opening words.

“I feel it. That was…” she shuddered, unable to find an adjective dire enough for what she was thinking.

“The good news is that it’s your grandmother’s turn to host the meeting of the Constant Complainer’s Club at the house tonight, so there’s that to look forward to.”

Lacy groaned. Her grandmother and her group met once a month as their own sort of town beautification committee. They fancied themselves on par with the Kiwanis or Rotary Club, but her grandpa’s description wasn’t far off. Most meetings deteriorated to a gripe session as all the ladies except her grandmother picked apart everything and everyone. As always, Lucinda remained the sole voice of kindness, trying valiantly to steer the topic back to pleasantry whenever it strayed. At the start of the meetings, she was able to keep everyone on target, but by the end the women turned snarky and Lucinda retreated to the safety of the kitchen to serve refreshments. Lacy had no idea what her grandmother saw in her friends. Either beauty was in the eye of the beholder, or she felt like she was too old to make new ones. Ever since Tom Middleton came into her life, though, her contact with the group had become fewer and farther between. Lacy couldn’t decide if it was the natural course of events or because the other women were jealous.