Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries) (36 page)

“This is beyond even your powers of idiocy. Why didn’t you go home like I told you? I thought Morgan made sure you went home.”

“He got a call from the hideout, then there was an accident on Poplar, and well, I thought I’d just come by here for a few minutes. Good thing, or Cami would have been in real trouble.”

Cami, still pale and shivering, nodded. “That’s true. That guy who tried to kidnap Harley last time told those women she has something they want. We don’t know what it is, though.”

“I do,” Bobby said. “And I got the same story from him just a short time ago. When he’s excited his English isn’t that good, so it took me a while to understand what he was saying. José lied and told them he gave you something he’d gotten from his brother in exchange for them telling him where to find Harry. He claims he didn’t mean to cause you any trouble. He never thought they’d find you. I was on my way to your house, Harley, when I got the call to come here.”

“So here we are all together again. Funny, how we keep meeting like this, isn’t it?”

Bobby didn’t answer. He just gave her a look and turned to Cami. “You all right?”

She nodded. “Just a few scratches from Sam.”

“Sam?”

“A cat.” Cami glanced at Harley and grinned. “He’s Harley’s cat.”

“Harley has a cat?”

Before Cami could reply, Harley said, “No, Harley does
not
have a cat. Harley doesn’t like cats. Cats don’t like Harley. And why am I talking about myself in the third person? I think I’m having a breakdown. That must be it. Stress can do that, I’ve heard. I need help. A vacation. A cruise to the Bahamas.”

She closed her eyes and thought about a ship alone on the ocean with water all around, riding the waves toward sand and sun . . . palm trees, piña coladas, margaritas, lots of sleep and no interruptions . . . a dark-haired man with blue eyes and a killer bod . . . sweaty sheets . . . oh yeah.

“Don’t fall asleep in the middle of a crime scene, Harley,” Bobby said, jerking her from her pleasant fantasy. “You and Cami go in the kitchen for now.”

Harley glanced over at Anna and Frieda, handcuffed now and being led out the door to the waiting patrol cars. “So what is it they think José gave me?”

“The rest of the bank account numbers. Bernie was too smart to keep everything in one place. He hid stuff at the shop, in his home office, and a few other places. Apparently Julio got hold of some account numbers and told Bernie he’d given them to his brother for safekeeping while he negotiated a bigger piece of the take. Bernie objected, and that’s when he killed Julio with your aunt’s gun. So Cheríe, or Frieda, only had part of what she needed to withdraw money from some offshore bank accounts.”

“So did you find the missing bank account numbers?”

Bobby shook his head. “We’ll find them eventually. I hope.”

“And names of clients? Did you already find those?”

“Found those first. There are going to be some mighty unhappy people when this gets out, as it will soon enough.”

Harley nodded. “Keep my name out of it, or I’ll have to leave town for a while.”

“Don’t worry. Most of the buyers are in St. Louis and Cincinnati.”

“My head’s beginning to hurt,” Harley said. “I feel a vacation coming on.”

“I thought all you did was vacation. Don’t you ever work?” Bobby asked, rather unkindly, she thought.

“It’s time I leave,” she said with as much dignity as she could manage.

Bobby looked at her innocently. “Was it something I said?”

Harley said something rude that made Cami laugh and Bobby scowl, then made her way around police still in the den digging the bullet out of the ceiling and freaking out the cats, and went home. There was a hot bath ahead of her, and if she was lucky—a hotter man.

This time, Harley’s luck was good. The hot bath with a piña colada candle burning and a nice margarita in her hand was only the prelude to sweaty sheets and the dark-haired guy with the killer bod. Some things were worth waiting for, Harley mused sleepily when she woke the next morning. Life could be just fine.

When her phone rang, she started not to answer it, then thought better of that and reached for the cordless on her bedside table before it woke Morgan. She mumbled a hello, and Diva said in a cheerful tone, “The universe has blessed you.”

“I know. Can we discuss that later? I’m a little sleepy right now.”

“Tell Bruno his aura needs cleansing.”

“Mike Morgan. Bruno was just his alias while he was working on a case, remember?”

“Of course I do, Harley, but when he’s undercover, he has to play a part. Did you catch the dead man?”

It was too early to try to follow Diva’s mercurial switches in conversation, but she did her best. “He caught me, but it turned out okay. Now he’s in police custody. Aunt Darcy is off the hook.”

“Tell the police to check out the armoire in her shop. You know the one. There’s some kind of papers or numbers taped to the bottom of a drawer.”

Harley perked up. “I had a feeling there was something I should do about that armoire. I just never got around to it.”

“You have more of a gift than you think, Harley. Perhaps you should open your mind to it and embrace it instead of resisting it.”

“It’s not a gift. It’s a curse. You never know enough to really help me, just enough to get me confused.” Silence greeted that comment, and she sighed. “All right, I know—I need to learn how to listen.”

“That would help.”

Maternal guilt was much more powerful than any psychic ability. Harley ended the conversation by promising to visit later in the day. Yogi was in training for his annual Elvis contest in August. Maybe she could arrange to be out of town that month. It was always a source of great embarrassment to her to see him stuffed into an Elvis jumpsuit and gold necklaces.

“I’m doomed,” she muttered to the ceiling, and Mike rolled over to look at her.

“Why?”

“My parents.”

He nibbled on her right ear lobe. “They aren’t that bad.”

“You’ve met them, right?”

For a moment he paused in the nibbling, then shrugged. “Well, at least they’re interesting. It could be worse.”

“Right. I could be living with them again.”

“They can’t be too bad. Look how good you turned out.”

She smiled. “You’re only saying that because it’s true.”

“Modesty is such a turn-on.” His lips began to work down her throat.

She sighed. “Thank God. I was beginning to think you’d never get down to business.”

Morgan always knew just the thing to take her mind off whatever she was thinking about. There was just something about a blue-eyed man with dark hair and great pecs and abs . . .

After a visit with her parents
—during which Yogi coerced her into going jogging with him and Diva insisted upon cleansing her aura—Harley headed for Cami’s house. She needed a bit of sanity before calling Tootsie to have him put her back on the schedule next week.

“It would have been nice,” Harley said to Cami, “if Bobby had told me that the dead man wasn’t Harry Gordon, instead of keeping that information to himself. It might have saved us both a lot of trouble.”

“You know police can’t compromise their cases by giving out that kind of information. And look at it this way—you got a big reward for your efforts. Still taking that cruise?”

“I decided to save the money. For emergencies. Taxes get a lot of it anyway, so what’s left goes into savings.”

“I’m impressed. That’s very responsible of you, Harley.”

“Right. How depressing. Pass me the bag of Reese’s.”

Halfway through the bag, Cami said, “Angel moved back in with Bobby.”

Harley looked at her. “You all right?”

“Of course. I told you, we’re just friends. Well, all right—I guess I was beginning to like him a little too much. Maybe this is best.”

“Don’t worry. Angel won’t stay long. They never do. I told you, Bobby has a history of temporary relationships. One of them will file a restraining order on the other soon, then it’ll all be over and if you really want him, you can be there to sweep up the pieces.”

“I’m not sure I want to be the janitor in his life, thank you. And I’m not unhappy, really I’m not. It hadn’t gotten to the point where I cared too much yet. At least I’ll still have him as a friend.”

“Yeah, Bobby can be a good friend. Even if he has been rather upset with me lately.”

Cami laughed. “I know. You should have heard him.”

“Oh no, what I did hear was enough for me. One of these days I’m going to learn to speak Italian so I can understand what he says when he’s really mad. Or maybe I won’t.”

“That’d probably be best,” Cami said with a grin. “What he says in English is bad enough at times.”

“Do you know if he found what Cheríe and Harry were looking for in that armoire? He basically told me to butt out when I called him this morning to tell him what Diva said, but I know he’ll check it out.”

“When he called to say he wouldn’t be making our cookout tonight because of Angel, he said they’d had another development at the design shop, so I imagine so. He sounded very happy about it.”

“The missing offshore bank account numbers, no doubt. Sometimes Diva is uncanny.”

Cami looked thoughtful. “Maybe I need to have her read my palm or cards again. She said life changes with every decision we make or don’t make.”

“That’s truer than I’d like to think about. So what’d you do with the dogs you took from Anna Merritt’s place?”

“Fostered them out. One of our rescue members has a farm in Fisherville. She took the goose and her goslings, too.”

“Lucky her. Gladys bites. And poops indiscriminately.” As Harley unpeeled the wrapper around another peanut butter cup, she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder and looked around. A pair of blue eyes looked back at her, slitted a little, and whiskers in a triangular face twitched.

“He loves you,” Cami said, and Harley had to admit it seemed to be true.

“What can I say? I’m devastating to the male gender.”

“Take him, Harley. Sam has never liked anyone else but me before. You’re his only choice.”

“I don’t want a cat. I don’t like cats.”

“He likes you.”

“Which only proves that he’s mentally unstable. Cats never like me, and I return the sentiment.”

“He saved our lives, Harley.”

Damn
. “And I appreciate it, though I’m not fully convinced he didn’t do that for reasons that had nothing to do with me.”

“Cats are different from dogs. They choose who to like. Dogs are indiscriminate. They like anyone who’ll feed them.”

“Cami—”

“Besides, maybe he’s some reincarnated soul mate from a former life. Diva says King has that kind of connection to Yogi.”

“Diva says a lot of strange things. And besides, King is most likely the reincarnation of a crime boss, not Yogi’s lost love.”

“Even John Gotti had to have love in his life. Look at Sam. He loves you, Harley.”

“I’m not taking him. I don’t want to clean litter boxes. I don’t want the responsibility of a pet. No. I’m not taking him.”

Cami just smiled. Sam rubbed against Harley’s shoulder, looked up with slitted blue eyes and made a purring sound. She shook her head.

“It’d never work. I like living alone.”

She thought about that when she got home and pulled her Toyota up under the shade of the oak tree in the back. Sarah Simon’s car was in its parking slot, but the Spragues’ was vacant. Peace and serenity settled around the brick house, welcome and comforting. She must be crazy.

When she opened the car door, she saw Sarah peek out her window. Maybe being alone too much could lead to insanity. Not the good kind, like artists, writers, and actors, but the kind where she’d sit at the window and gibber, or stay locked in her apartment, afraid to come out. Just great. She’d have to go and apologize for almost running over her, if she could get Sarah to come to the door. Later would be soon enough. Now she had things to do.

Harley opened the back door of her Toyota and reached inside for the day’s shopping. It was heavier than she’d thought, and she staggered a little under the weight of the plastic bag. A bell jingled and cans clanked. She set the sack on the pebbled ground, then leaned back into the car to grasp the handle of a soft-sided carrier. As she pulled it toward her, slitted blue eyes stared at her through the mesh holes and a loud purr rattled the sides. She smiled.