Exposure (26 page)

"Elvis?" The walkie-talkie crackled faintly, and Elvis snatched it up to his ear.

"Someone just went in through the back door of the boarding house," Ben's voice said. "Damn, Ruby could sure use a light back here—it's too dark to see who the hell it was." Then he seemed to recall himself. "The mannerisms didn't suggest a boarder going about his own business though, not unless one of your old neighbors is carrying on a clandestine affair up there."

It could always be Darren Maycomber, Elvis supposed, coming to see Pete Grey son, who was Elvis' ex-next-door neighbor. They were a gay couple who preferred life in the closet to the hassles of coming out in a conservative little town like Port Flannery. Living one door down from Pete, Elvis had figured out that relationship a long time ago, but he didn't mention it to Ben now. As far as he knew it wasn't yet public knowledge, and he didn't feel it was up to him to make it so. "I'll check it out," he said into the hand-held transmitter. "Remain in place and maintain radio silence."

"Copy that."

Elvis left the gazebo on the square and went in through the front door of the boarding house. He climbed the stairs quietly but not stealthily, since that would be more likely to attract attention. Ostensibly, he still lived here, and no one running across him would expect him to be walking on tiptoe. Pausing at the top of the stairs, he looked down the hallway.

And saw a man with his ear pressed to Emma's door.

At first the intruder appeared only to be listening, perhaps trying to ascertain if Emma was within. Then his hand went to the doorknob. When it turned under his palm, he eased the door open and, flashing a look up and down the hallway that had Elvis pulling back into the stairwell, he stepped inside. A second later a string of low-voiced obscenities polluted the air.

Elvis moved into the hall and through the door and eased it closed behind him. Reaching out, he snapped on the overhead light. "Nobody home, is there, Bill?" he inquired with deceptive calm, looking into the horrified eyes of the garage mechanic who had whirled around to face him. "Now, ain't that just a pisser, though?"

Pushing down on the transmit button to alert Ben via the walkie-talkie, Elvis added in his most authoritarian voice, "Bill Gertz, you are under arrest for property damage and for the reckless endangerment of Grace Melina Sands. Or," he qualified, shutting off the walkie-talkie and pushing away from the door, "we can skip the legalities and just move straight to the part where I beat the shit out of you. Right here, right now." Blue eyes narrowed and deadly, he gazed at the man responsible for Gracie's injury, eyeing him up and down in consideration before abruptly nodding his head. "Yes. I much prefer that idea."

"Are you crazy, Donnelly?" Bill Gertz demanded in horror. "You're a cop, man—you can't do that!" Jesus, he'd never dreamed of this sort of trouble when he'd first conceived the idea of harassing Emma Sands. He'd just wanted to make her go away.

"Who's going to stop me, Gertz?" Elvis wanted to know, and the mechanic found his calm, matter-of-fact manner even more terrifying than the temper he'd glimpsed a moment ago. "It's just you 'n' me here, bud. And, hey, look on the bright side," Elvis added in an almost friendly tone as he moved in on the other man. "You've got a real sporting chance this way—you can fight back without any of that resisting arrest BS to inhibit you. Hell, how hard can it be to beat me, anyway? I've only got one good hand."

"Big fuckin' deal, one good hand; you've got a gun." Bill backed up for every step forward Elvis took. Even without the gun, and with only one hand, the other man was big, very big, and solid muscle. Besides, Bill hadn't forgotten Elvis when he was a kid and willing to brawl at the drop of a hat.

Not to mention the look in those blazing blue eyes that belied the peacefulness of his voice.

"I'll take it off," Elvis offered obligingly. "In fact, maybe we should slide it across the room and see who can get to it first—whataya think? Winner gets to put a bullet through the brain pan of the loser. You should like that, Bill. Y'never did like me much."

Bill started to sweat profusely. "Jesus," he whispered. "I think you're insane."

"Yeah? I think you shouldn't have hurt the baby, Gertz."

"It was an accident!" Bill stumbled over the overstuffed chair and hastily backed around it, putting it between himself and the sheriff. "I just wanted to make her old lady stop stealing my business. I didn't mean for nobody to get hurt!"

"What the hell did you think was gonna happen when you lobbed a rock into a room where a child lived?"

"I just wanted to make her mother go away!"

The door opened and Ben stepped into the room. Bill Gertz dodged around the chair and sidled over to stand next to him. Ben looked at Elvis. "Hey," he said laconically. "What's the story?"

"I was just getting ready to read Mr. Gertz here his rights," Elvis replied.

"The hell you say!" Gertz turned to Ben. "He was gonna kill me, Ben."

Ben made a rude noise. "Yeah, right."

"I'm tellin' ya! He was gonna beat the shit outta me or put a bullet through my brain pan or—"

"Uh-huh. Sure he was," Ben said soothingly. Then, "Get a grip, Bill," he advised flatly. "Elvis Donnelly is known for his professionalism. If you think you're going to use some cockamamie bullshit story like that to build yourself a defense, I'd think twice if I were you."

"He's gonna have time to think, aren't you, Bill?" Elvis came up behind the mechanic and wrenched Gertz's arms behind his back. "You have the right to remain silent," he said, hooking the handcuffs over the prisoner's wrists and clicking them closed. "If you give up this right, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law—"

"I didn't mean to hurt the kid," Bill Gertz muttered, as they led him down the stairs. "Hell, I didn't mean to hurt nobody. I just wanted to make that Frog bitch know-it-all stop stealin' my business."

"But that's crazy, cher," Emma said in dazed amazement when Elvis arrived home after midnight and woke her up to tell her what was going on. She blinked at him in sleepy confusion. "Mon Dieu, Elvis, the few cars I've tuned up couldn't have comprised a fraction of his business."

"Hey, you know it's crazy and I know it's crazy," Elvis agreed, removing his badge and name tag from his shirt and throwing them on the dresser top. "Bill, on the other hand, seems to have it set in his fuzzy little mind that you were cutting into his profit margin and had to be stopped before you put him out of business." He shrugged out of his shirt, looked it over to determine if it was clean enough to handle one more day's wear and then promptly forgot about it, gripping it in his good hand while he stared across the small amount of space that separated him from Emma. "I wanted to hurt him, Em," he told her. It scared him to realize how much. "Man, I had him in my sights; there was no one around to witness whatever I decided to do, and I wanted to hurt him so bad I could taste it."

Emma threw back the covers and rolled to her knees, holding out her arms to him. "But you didn't,” she assured him.

Noticing the shirt in his hand, he tossed it on the floor. Then he was across the room in a flash, reaching out to haul her to him, his arms wrapping tightly around her, his head bowed to bring his face close to hers. "I might have, if Ben hadn't shown up when he did. A few more minutes and I might have."

"No," she disagreed without a second's hesitation. "You wouldn't, Elvis. You love Gracie, but being a cop, a good cop, that's probably the most important thing in your life."

"You and Beans are the most important things in my life," he said fiercely, raising his head to glare down at her.

"We are now," she said in a placating tone and stroked his cheek. Then she sighed, speared a hand through her wavy hair, and rattled something off in French. "Damn," she said plaintively, "I'm not stating this very well." Drawing and releasing a deep breath, she tried again. "I'm not tryin' to say we're not important to you, cher, but your feelin's for us are relatively new ones. Your feelin's for the law go way back. You've told me things, Elvis, things about that old sheriff—"

"Bragston."

"Oui," she agreed. "About your Sheriff Bragston and how he turned your life away from the direction it was headin' in, and about how bein' a policeman makes you feel." The smile she gave him was a mixture of wryness and puzzlement. "Considering my background, I still haven't figured out how I came to fall in love with a cop."

Then she made a purely Gallic hand movement that said, But that's neither here nor there; and in fierce defense of him, declared, "The important thing to remember here is that you opened up the mike to summon Ben on that walkie-talkie thingamajig. If you'd seriously meant to harm Mr. Bill-Stinkin'-Child-Abusin'-Gertz, you never would have done that, cher."

"Hey, yeah, that's true. How'd you get to be so smart?"

"Phfft." She made another of those French mannerisms. "I had Big Eddy Robescheaux, proprietor of the biggest and best chop shop in all of N'Awlins, for a teacher."

He opened his mouth, then shut it again, hesitating. Maybe he shouldn't tell her; she seemed to believe his character was so sterling. But then he admitted, "I gotta tell ya something, Em. Maybe I wasn't really going to beat the shit out of the man—I suppose you're probably right about that. But it sure felt good to terrorize him a little."

"I'd like to terrorize him a lot," Emma said fiercely. "And perhaps I could borrow some of your tactics and use them on your maman, eh?"

Elvis shifted uncomfortably. "Now, Em . . ."

Emma knew that sooner or later she was going to have to break down and forgive Nadine Donnelly for her part in Gracie's Fourth of July disappearance. She was marrying the woman's son, after all. But she wasn't in a forgiving frame of mind tonight. One miscreant at a time; that was about all she could handle.

"You'll never believe the lame defense Bill's attorney tried to introduce tonight," Elvis said in an obvious bid to change the subject. He knew Em had no reason to like Nadine, but, hell, she was his mom and he needed her to have some role in their lives, however small. "The jerk actually thought that attacking you for working without all the legal permits would get his client off the hook."

Emma pulled back. "That man injured my bebe and wrecked my car, and I could get in trouble for workin' on a few women's automobiles?" she demanded.

"Well, I suppose you should have some sort of business license, doll. We can look into that on Monday. But, hey, big deal," he said with a negligent shrug in the face of her indignation. "We're talking about maybe a forty-dollar annual fee. I suggested to Bill's mouthpiece that he give that defense his very best shot and told him we'd see him in court with photographs of Gracie's little banged-up forehead. I also gave him a blow-by-blow description of her taking the stand to tell the jury how it felt to have the window explode on top of her. Then I topped it off with a little verbal imagery of your slashed tires and the truly inspiring vocabulary on the side of your Chevy." He grinned at her, pleased with himself.

"I don't think he's going to be pursuing that particular line of defense, Em."

"Well, I should say not." But then Emma relinquished her indignation, hugged him, and pulled back to reach for the waistband of his jeans. "Come to bed, cher," she urged, unbuttoning and unzipping and then divesting him of denims and underwear. "It sounds like you've put in an extremely full evening.

You must be plumb worn out."

"Hi, Miss Wuby!" Gracie yelled, running ahead of Emma into the cafe. "Guess what, guess what? We— Oh, look, Maman! Here's Miss-us Mackey, too!" She swerved from the beeline she'd been making to Ruby and dashed toward Clare's table. "Guess what!" she screeched, clambering up to stand on the chair across from her friend. Bracing her hands on the tabletop, her little body twisting in an ecstasy of animation, she stared at Clare through eyes made dark as Hershey kisses by excitement. "Guess what, Miss-us Mackey, guess what? Me 'n' Mommy, we's gettin' maw-wied!"

Conversation ceased, crockery stopped clattering, and every head in the cafe swiveled in Emma's direction.

"Bonjour," she said to the room at large. She estimated it had been ten years or better since she'd last blushed in public, but there was no mistaking the source of the heat that crawled up her throat and onto her cheeks. Hastily, she took a seat next to her daughter and met Clare's knowing grin with as much composure as she could muster. Ruby arrived at the table, coffee pot in hand.

"Coffee or cola?" she inquired blandly, then gave Emma a big old I'm-in-the-cat-bird-seat-and-don't-even-think-you're-getting-off-easy grin.

"Cola, cola, cola," Gracie demanded, and her rising voice and frantic little bob in place alerted Emma that she was seconds away from losing control.

"Make that milk," she contradicted smoothly and scooped her daughter off the chair to stand on her lap. Gracie's arms wrapped around her neck. "And iced tea for me, please. What do you want to eat, angel pie?" she inquired. "Would you like a tuna sandwich?"

"Uh-huh. And 'tato chips, Maman. The winkled kind."

"I'll have the chicken salad," Emma contributed, and congratulated herself on having smoothly gotten the two of them out of the limelight.

Much too prematurely, as it turned out. " So who are you and your momma marrying, sweetie?" Clare demanded as if she didn't know darn good and well. Even without her broad smile, and Ruby's, to clue her in, Emma would have been conscious of the suspended forks, cups of coffee, and glasses of Coke as every patron in the place awaited Gracie's answer before continuing his or her lunch.

"Shewiff Elbis Don'lee." Ecstatic, Gracie squeezed her mother's neck with her strong little arms.

"Him's gonna be my daddy!"

Setting aside the coffee pot, Ruby sat down at the table, crossed her arms over her chest, and grinned at Emma in pure admiration. "Girl, life around you is better than the soaps," she said, "and I didn't think it got any better than that. I swear every jaw in town has been flapping all morning long over Bill Gertz's arrest—and now you give us this, too. Elvis Donnelly, my, my, my." She shook her head.

"You're gonna mainstream that boy right into this town yet, aren't you?"

"Oh, oui, mon amie. If it's the last thing I do," Emma agreed, and her posture regained its customary erectness. Since when had she allowed achieving her heart's desire to embarrass her? Looking around, she began meeting people's stares head on. One by one, they either dropped their gazes or gave her brief nods of congratulation.

"What's mainstweam mean, Miss Wuby?"

Ruby blinked, mouth rounding in dismay as she drew an obvious blank in her search for the right words. Emma looked from her to Gracie. "There are people around here who don't like Elvis the way you and I do, sugar," she explained, reaching out to ease her daughter's floppy curls away from her forehead. "I suppose you could say mainstreaming would be you 'n' me gettin' him accepted in this town."

Gracie puffed up. "Who doesn't yike my Elbis?" she demanded indignantly, staring around at the cafe patrons. There were many who couldn't meet her eyes.

"Well, Bill Gertz, for one," Emma replied slyly, seeing several people, whom she knew to disdain Elvis, squirm at being linked with the man responsible for the ugly black stitches sticking out of her bebe's head.

Gracie looked back at her, her forehead furrowing in confusion. "Who him, Maman?"

"The man who owns the garage across the street. Remember, angel pie? We met him the first day we were in town?"

Gracie's nose wrinkled. "Well, him's a bad man if him doesn't yike my Elbis. And we don't yike him, either, do we, Maman?"

"No, I think you can safely say he's not our favorite person," Emma agreed. "But talkin' about Mr. Gertz is not the reason we came in here, is it, Grace Melina? Remember why we wanted to have lunch at Ruby's cafe today? And why we were goin' to look up Mrs. Clare later?"

"Uh-huh, uh-huh; I do, Mommy!" Gracie bobbed with excitement. She looked first at Ruby to her right and then across the table at Clare. "We want you to be our—" She hesitated a moment, shooting Emma a look of agony as she realized she'd forgotten the word. Her mother whispered in her ear. "Oui, our 'tendants!" She nearly strangled Emma in her enthusiasm. "And guess what?" she demanded at the top of her voice. "I'm gonna get a bwand new dwess and so is my maman! We's gonna be pwetty as pitchoos—Elbis said so."

"Well, if Elvis said so, it must be the God's gospel truth," some wit at the counter said dryly but without any real malice. He looked at the excited little girl and the radiant blond woman as he threw money on the counter to cover his bill and climbed off the stool. Then, shaking his head, he smiled wryly to himself and walked out of the cafe.

Clearly there was more to Donnelly than had previously met the eye.