Dipped, Stripped, and Dead (26 page)

So instead I walked far enough away from Cy’s that the tornado wouldn’t take out all the windows in the place, and I looked up at Cas Wolfe with my best good-little-girl expression, which I’d had lots of practice with on various occasions in various principals’ offices. Being a woman
does have its advantages. If you look innocent and well behaved, there is something—some predisposition—in the brain of males that makes them believe it. They tend to believe it even if you’re covered in the blood of your enemies and the knuckles of both your hands are torn from punching out those who richly deserve it. It can’t be that men are truly that stupid, or that they don’t realize that women can be just as aggressive as men and that women—as a rule—are far less law abiding. Oh, sure, I know, and you know, we’ve all heard the line sold by various women’s organizations, that women are nurturing and naturally peaceful and that without men there would be no war. This is fine and dandy, unless you open a history book. A real history book, not the type that spells
women
with a
Y
. Go ahead, I dare you. Give any woman a position of power and she’ll outdo most men in aggressiveness and bloodthirst. Not that this is bad, mind you. I heartily admired quite a few bloody-minded women.

And yet men will go to their graves believing us innocent, soft little creatures who may stray by error but never on purpose. Because men are not—with exceptions—total dolts, one had to assume that it was something in the way the species was designed. It must be evolutionarily good for men to believe that women are sweet, inoffensive, and occasionally, through no fault of their own, capable of going astray.

“What can I do for you, Officer?” I asked, in my best, highest voice—which is not particularly high, because I have a low voice for a woman. What my mom calls a lovely contralto, but causes people on the phone to call me
sir
.

Well, it was a great theory, but Officer Wolfe must have been an evolutionary throwback, stuck in some pathway before men started thinking that all women were sweet and fragile flowers. He glared at me. Actually glared. And
then he said, still speaking through his teeth, “To begin with, you can drop the innocent act, Dyce.”

If it weren’t for the fact that he’d shocked me by calling me
Dyce
, I would probably have pointed out that if he’d accidentally superglued his teeth together, turpentine would dissolve it. But instead, I was so taken aback that I just stammered, “What?”

I wondered if he’d found out about the table, and pretty much decided I would punch him out to keep it. Or perhaps offer to go to dinner with him again. He did have very nice lips, and he danced divinely.

All of which kept me from killing him as he said, “Of all the stupid, idiotic, unthinking . . . females!”

He’d unclenched his teeth. That was the good news. The bad news was that he pronounced
females
as if we were part of some foreign species that he could not have any interest in. Which made me wonder again exactly why Ben was being deputy dog, and it made me fling back, with more heat than I intended, “I thought you liked females.”

“Wrong, Dyce. I like
women
. That presupposes there is some sort of brain behind the pretty little face, and the pretty little body and the beautiful curly hair.”

Beautiful curly hair? Pretty face? Really?
I crossed my arms on my chest. Or rather, just under my chest, pushing it up. Where is it written that I have to fight fair? Never seen it, never read it, don’t have to follow it. “And what exactly leads you to believe there isn’t a brain?”

“Because if there were a brain, you would realize you are not playing a game with schoolkids. You’re a grown-up now. I don’t care how much trouble you were as a kid—I’ve heard stories in this investigation, yeah—but you are a grown-up and responsible woman, for heaven’s sake. You are a . . . a mother!”

“Yes, people often call me that.”

His gaze smoldered in my general direction. “I just bet they do,” he said. “Stay out of this investigation, do you understand? Stay out of it. You don’t know how dangerous this murderer is. You don’t know how bad it could get.” He stopped in the middle of the words, and he did something like hiccup. “It could be you out there in that shed, Dyce, damn it. It could be you looking like Jell-O and . . .”

“And I fail to see where it would be any of your business. I told Ben I’m a grown woman. It makes some sense for him to forget that because he knew me when I was very young. It makes no sense at all for you. So please stop treating me as though I were very young or very stupid. You have no right.”

“Oh, I have every right,” he said. If his eyes could actually shoot rays, the look he gave me could have cut diamonds. “And as for your not being that young, good. Because I keep thinking I would love to take you over my knee.”

I chose to ignore that. I’d left a man because he had slapped me, but the thought of Officer Wolfe taking me over his—admittedly shapely—knee didn’t evoke feelings of anger and fighting. It evoked quite different feelings, which I pushed to the back of my mind as I asked, “What right? Who has given you the right to look after me?”

He didn’t answer. He glared at me, and I thought either he was going to grab me and turn me over his knee right there, in front of the entire diner—which admittedly at that moment was the two employees and Ben, but still way too many people—or he was going to turn and stalk away.

He did neither.

Suddenly there were hands around my waist. Two hands. One on either side. Large hands, strong. They lifted me effortlessly and so abruptly that I didn’t even think of kicking him in the crotch—and normally that was
sort of my reflex thought. Instead, I allowed him to take the three steps that separated him from the door of a red SUV.

It wouldn’t, at that point, have surprised me if he’d opened the door, flung me inside, and driven off with me to the equivalent of a caveman’s abode, where he would keep me tending the fire and having the babies while he hunted mammoth. By then I was so confused, I might have let him.

But he just put me down with my back to the SUV. With his hands on my waist, I was thoroughly trapped, and then he bent down and . . . kissed me. Said like that, it seems like all too simple a thing. It was anything but simple. His mouth captured mine. His tongue broached my lips like a victorious army breaking through a city’s wall. His teeth scraped against mine as he pressed closer, demanded more, as though he could by the simple act of kissing me blend with me, become one with me.

I fought back. Me, I’m never one to stay passive in the face of naked aggression. Or even clothed aggression. I kissed back as hard as I was being kissed, my tongue fighting its way into his mouth, my hands clenching as hard on his shoulders as his were clenching on my waist.

I don’t know how long it lasted. I know my head grew dizzy and my knees became lax, but it was probably due to the impossibility of breathing freely like this. At last the choice of ending the kiss or dying presented itself, and I considered dying, because it was much easier, but he must have had more self-preservation instinct than I—mammoth hunters had to, after all—because he broke off.

I stared up at him, slowly closed my mouth, and swallowed to regain composure. The word came to my mouth and I said it, sounding much like my mother when she saw something impressive. “Well!” I said. Of course, I meant
Wow
, but I’d be damned if I was going to let him know that.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, as if his lips were wet, or as if he had to wipe away the kiss, as if I had forced it on him, which I bloody well hadn’t. He swallowed, too, and it was the same sort of swallowing you do to reassure yourself that your body is still yours and that there is nothing strange about you, not a single solitary thing.

“You,” he said, as if he’d thought deeply on this subject, “are the world’s most infuriating woman.”

“Unlikely,” I said. “And besides, how would you know? It’s not like you know every other woman in the world. There might be some girl in the next block who is considerably more infuriating than I am, and you just never met her.”

He looked like he was going to either argue the point or kiss me again, but he shook his head. “You’re going to drive me insane. I bet this is what all these crimes are about. You drove some poor sap insane, and he’s out there dipping people into lye and not waiting till they melt down, oh, no, just throwing them somewhere you’ll run into them. It’s probably a cry for help.”

There was no way to dignify that with an answer, and I didn’t try. He stepped back. “Look, I don’t want you to get killed. It’s very important to me that you don’t get killed. I have the hardest time finding a girl who is presentable and can swing dance with me. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. Of course I had no intention of getting killed, but if he didn’t realize that by ordering me to stay out of the investigation, he had just ensured that I would in fact investigate as much as I could, then the man had about Ben’s level of knowledge of women. No, lower. Ben would know exactly what I planned. Which, of course, was going to be an issue, as he might very well have some idea what had happened out here.

As if to reinforce this concern, Cas said (after that kiss, I felt like I could think of him as Cas), “Don’t give Colm
too much trouble, okay? I’ve asked him to keep you from getting killed, and he’s trying to.”

“Oh, he’s trying all right,” I said. Of course, I would have to find a way to get rid of Ben for a few minutes or hours. But I had no intention of letting Cas—or Ben—know that. Instead I nodded. “Look, I will not get killed, and I think you’re blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Maybe, yeah, maybe—perhaps—they put the body in the shed because I called. Or perhaps, it was something else completely different. Remember that Janet said that Nell Gwen had put in a restraining order against Inobart? But you said you couldn’t find it? Well, perhaps it was someone else stalking her. Perhaps this person is obsessed with women in the refinishing business. Perhaps that’s why he put Inobart in my shed.”

He looked worried. “You realize you’re not setting my mind at rest about your safety?”

“Well . . . perhaps not,” I said. Setting people’s minds at rest didn’t seem to be one of my specialties. Just look what I’d done to Mom. “But chances are my phone call didn’t ruin anything.”

“It also didn’t solve anything,” Cas said. “I’ll go talk to people at that workshop today, and we’re looking through the victim’s house.” He must have guessed how badly I wanted to ask him to come along, because he sighed and said, “If I tell you anything I find, will you promise me not to try to investigate on your own? Can I trust you if I tell you stuff?”

I nodded.

“Well, good, then. I’ll take you out . . . tomorrow?”

“I have E tomorrow,” I said.

A sane man would have grimaced, but we’d already established that Cas Wolfe was not a sane man. He smiled. “Okay, then. We can’t dance, or at least not swing dance, but we can go somewhere they’ll be okay with him. The High Times, maybe.”

The High Times was not—as it sounded—a head shop, but a steakhouse specializing in western fare. It was also a place of choice for families. Although it did have a dancing area—and a country band that played boot-stomping, partner-swinging favorites—it was as likely to be occupied by toddlers as by adults. And the other attractions of the place—a gigantic swing mounted from the roof beams, able to hold ten or twelve people at once; a mechanical bull set on very low indeed, so that it was almost just a rocking bull; and a two-story-tall slide—made it a favorite of kids of all ages.

I would have said no. I swear I would have. I was strong enough to. Yes, I was. But the thing is that E wouldn’t have to have pancakes for dinner. And besides, he’d never been to the High Times, and it seemed like just the sort of place he would love. It would be unfair to deny him the fun.

So I said, “All right,” and I meant it, at least as far as he could trust me with anything he told me, and I went back inside in a subdued mood. Ben was standing by the counter. He came back to the table and set my half-eaten burger in front of me. “I got them to nuke it warmer,” he said. “Otherwise, just looking at it would clog your arteries.”

I thanked him, hoping he wouldn’t say anything about Cas Wolfe, which was sort of like praying that this time the sea wouldn’t be salty or the water wouldn’t be wet.

He cleared his throat. “Of course, you know, the heat coming from that kiss should have warmed it enough, but . . .”

I didn’t say anything, just took a bite of my burger and chewed. He looked terribly amused. But as I finished the burger and drank my considerably melted milkshake, he grew serious. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to swing by the symphony and see if I can talk to Les.”

Oh, there were things I would mind less. Like, say, putting my head in a lit oven. “What?”

“I know, I know,” Ben said, proving that he clearly didn’t. “But I do need to talk to him. We’ve had this huge misunderstanding. Just completely blown out of proportion. I need to talk to him.”

“Oh, fine,” I said. “But what would he be doing at the symphony on a Monday afternoon?”

“There’s a classics for schoolchildren program,” he said. “It runs till just about three, so if we go now, we can talk to him as he gets out. Come on. I promise not to embarrass you.”

There was a promise he couldn’t keep. He was already embarrassing me. But because I needed time to think how to give him the slip, this might do as well as anything else.

CHAPTER 18

Broken Links