"Um ... I told him no, of course."
"You silly man!" she barked. "Don't you know men are supposed to lie about things like that?"
"Um ... no," he said, feeling helpless.
"Don't men brag about their conquests and lie about how far they got with a woman and stuff?"
"Not after high school," said Kris. "At least I don't
think
so." He looked confused. "Are you saying I should have lied?"
"Of
course
you should have lied!" she yipped. "He was being nosey. You should have filled his head with all kinds of bullshit, so he'd go off on a tangent."
"I should?" His voice sounded strained. "Wouldn't you have gotten mad if you found out?"
"I would have acted mad for a while, but I would have been flattered," she said, as if it was the most reasonable response in the world.
"You want me to kiss you?" His voice sounded whiney.
"I'm not sure about that yet," she said. "I want you to
want
to kiss me." Again she acted as if it was a completely reasonable response.
"None of this seems familiar at all," moaned Kris. "Are you a normal woman?" He felt his face flush. "I mean do all women want that kind of thing?"
"I don't know about other women," she said simply. "I feel normal."
"Well I
did
tell him I slapped your ass," Kris offered. He knew immediately that he'd made a terrible mistake, when she turned on him, anger plainly on her face. "Wait a minute!" he yelped. "I thought I was
supposed
to say things like that!"
"That part was true, you simpleton!" she snapped. "You're not supposed to share
real
intimate details."
"Oh," he said. "I guess I didn't realize it was that intimate."
"Well it was," said the unfathomable woman standing in front of him. "Now, sit down and write. I have to think about how I'm going to do damage control. Why nature inflicted men on women, I'll never know."
She didn't speak to him again, or come read over his shoulder, until she appeared in her waitress uniform ready to go. She had Ambrose bundled up and ready to go as well.
"You have to leave now," she said, her voice neutral.
"Okay," he said. "Let me finish this last paragraph while it's fresh in my mind. It won't take but twenty seconds."
"Lock the door on your way out," she said.
Her car was running when he went outside, but she was standing beside it. He could see Ambrose in his car seat in the back, through the window. She was obviously waiting on him, but he thought it was just to make sure he left the house. He was wrong about that.
"Kris," she said.
He went to stand in front of her. He had no idea what she was going to say.
"I want to try something," she said.
"Okay," he agreed, instinctively.
The kiss surprised him. Her hands came up to grasp his face on each side and she leaned up as she pulled his face down. Her actions, unannounced like they were, were the surprise. What staggered him was the
kind
of kiss she gave him. Her lips were warm and soft, and there was a hungry quality to the kiss, as she opened her lips and used them to nip at his. His automatic response was to open his own lips, even as he was overwhelmed by the passion she was communicating to him. Her tongue flicked out once, very briefly, to touch his inside his lips. Then it was over as quickly as it had begun.
"See what that makes you remember," she said softly.
He was still standing there, feeling weak in the knees, as she drove away down the street.
Chapter Eighteen
Kris wrote three more chapters at work that night. He took Lulu's idea about Lady Tinsley and had her offer to do anything Sir Quigley liked, if he would leave her daughter alone and ensure that no one else molested her either.
"She's of marriageable age," snorted Sir Quigley.
"And it is of great importance to me that she
be
marriageable, upon our return," pled the matron.
"You would debase yourself on her account?" asked the gentleman pirate.
"I would do ... anything ... if only she remains pure."
"An admirable quality in a mother, I must admit," said Sir Quigley. He bowed. "I accede to your request, Madame Tinsley. If you please me, I will attempt to make your trials bearable."
Then he filled page after page describing how Judith Tinsley used imagination she wasn't aware she'd had up to that point, and found great, if secret, joy in attempting to please the pirate, as she insisted upon being ravished over and over again.
What she didn't know was that her daughter was in the locker nearby, bound and gagged, but able to see what was going on through the slats in the door. From Quigley's perspective, it was only fair that she be able to see what her mother was willing to suffer for her sake.
When he went off shift, he wasn't sure whether it was wise to go to The Early Girl again for breakfast or not. The kiss had done wonders for the steaminess of his writing ... but he hadn't remembered anything. That kiss convinced him, however, that she wasn't really angry with him, so he went.
"So," she greeted him, looking at him through lowered lashes. "Did you remember anything?"
"Um ... not exactly," he said.
"Not exactly," she said as she showed him to "his" booth.
"I wrote some things ... and they kind of came out of the blue, so I sort of figure I must have done some of them sometime in my past."
"I see," she said. "I'll be back," she said, looking through the window into the parking lot.
He watched as she went to the door and met Jessica. They put their heads together for what seemed like a long discussion. Then Jessica came straight to his booth and sat down across from him.
"You can tell Mitch about what you saw at the party," she said, without prelude.
"I can?"
"Yes, but you can't tell him I gave you permission," she said. "That part has to stay a secret."
"Okay," he said, uncertainly. "I don't understand."
"You don't need to understand," she said. "You can tell him, but he has to think you're breaking your promise to me. Can you do that?"
"I don't
want
to break my promise to you," he said.
"You won't be," she smiled. "I gave you permission."
"But Mitch will think I'm breaking my promise," Kris pointed out.
"That's fine," said Jessica, as if that made sense. "And don't tell him what you told Lulu."
"What's that?" asked Kris.
"That you thought it would look better on her."
"Oh," he said, flushing.
"It's okay," said Jessica. "You're not supposed to lust after me."
"I wish I understood what was going on," moaned Kris.
"You will someday. Just remember what I said. You can do it. I have faith in you."
Then she got up and left.
Harper got out of the car and went into the apartment building. It was a strange time of day for a burglary in progress to have been reported, but the responding patrol said it was obviously a break-in and they had a perp in custody. He decided to talk to the witness first. She'd been identified by the 911 operator, but hadn't been interviewed yet.
Half an hour later, Harper once more thanked the powers that be for nosy neighbors. Janet Grimsley, a seventy-two year old woman, had a son, who had worried about her being alone back home in Oklahoma, where there were tornados and thunderstorms and all manner of dangerous natural situations. So he'd brought her to New York City, where there were muggers and rapists and all manner of dangerous human situations. He was an investment banker, so Harper figured he wasn't expected to have a lot of common sense.
She'd brought
her
sensibilities with her, though, and with nothing else to do all day, she sat and watched people through the window. It was while she was doing that that she saw the cat burglar, as she called him, climb up a fire escape, break a window, and enter one of the apartments across the alley from her son's building. She called 911 and the rest was history. Or would be once he interrogated the subject, collected the evidence, filed a report and the courts decided what, if anything, to do. Mrs. Grimsley had even served him tea and cookies, which, even after twenty years on the force, was a first for Jim Harper.
He went across the wide alley and up to the crime scene. The responding patrol had already put up yellow crime scene tape and he had to duck to get into the room. His eyes went to the broken window in one wall and the shards of glass on the floor. He surveyed the room, ignoring the cop standing behind a huddled captive, who was sitting on the floor. They must have gotten there quickly indeed, because he could see no evidence that things had been rifled through.
There wasn't much visible that was of obvious value, though there was a collection of art and art objects that might be worth something. It was hard to tell, these days. People would pay thousands of dollars for art that was created by a monkey or even an elephant. They looked like kid's drawings to Jim, but were sometimes worth more than a month of his pay.
"I'm
not
a thief!" exclaimed the burglar loudly.
Jim looked down and was surprised to see it was a woman. She was blonde and good looking in a slightly trashy kind of way. She was dressed all in black and there was a black stocking mask on the floor, where the patrolman had dropped it, probably after he wrestled the subject into cuffs and removed it. Harper couldn't keep a smile off his face. He already knew this was going to be an interesting case, if he was dealing with a burglar who wore that kind of outfit in daylight hours and then proclaimed loudly she wasn't a burglar.
"No," he said calmly. "You're not a thief. You're an
attempted
thief."
"No!"
shouted the woman. "This is all a mistake!"
"So you mistakenly broke the window and climbed into an apartment you don't rent," he said, still smiling. "I can't wait to see the judge's face when you tell him that."
"No, you don't understand!" wailed the burglar. "I tried to tell this stupid flat foot, but he wouldn't listen. This is my boyfriend's apartment. I have every right to be here!"
"Is that a fact?" said Harper drolly. "Well, now, I suppose your boyfriend will have to be the one to verify your claim. Where might I find him Miss ... ?"
"Henderson," she said. "Lola Henderson. And I don't know where you can find him. That's the problem. That's why I came here."
Harper looked at the beat cop, who was standing placidly, not really interested in anything but making sure his captive didn't get away.
"Did you clear the apartment?"
The cop looked pained and nodded. "Of course. There's nobody else here."
Harper looked back at the woman. "I'd like to hear what you have to say, but I need to get the scene processed first. We'll talk later, Lola. Okay?" He looked back at the patrolman. "Take her downtown and book her in for B&E. Advise her of her rights on the way."
"Noooooooooooo," wailed Lola. "You can't arrest meeeeee. I can't go to jail! I'll be raped!"
Jim looked down at her. Tears were rolling down her face. Her makeup wasn't waterproof and she was starting to look like a zombie already.
"We'll put you in with only women, Lola."
"That w-w-won't mat-t-t-er," sobbed the woman. "Women g-g-go for me, t-t-too," she moaned.
"We'll tell them all to behave themselves," said Harper, trying not to laugh. "Just keep your legs closed. You'll be fine."
She cried and moaned all the way out of the apartment, but didn't give the patrolman any real trouble. It was pretty obvious she'd never been involved in anything like this before. Her appearance and her reaction to being arrested suggested that everything she knew about crime and justice had been learned from TV.
Processing the scene took almost no time. Whoever lived in this apartment kept things tidy. The only thing that appeared to have been disturbed was the desk. The computer had been turned on and all the drawers were open. Papers were scattered all over the desktop.
He took a few minutes to play with the computer, but it was securely passworded and the few tricks he knew didn't get him in. All the mail he found was addressed to Kristoff Farmingham. The postmarks on all of it were at least a month old, which seemed odd. He looked around for a phone, but didn't find one. It was getting rare to find an actual landline these days. Maybe Lola, if she actually knew Farmingham, would know his phone number, too. Jim would tell her that could be mitigating evidence, showing that she really did know the man. He wouldn't tell her that it would also establish probable cause that she knew whose apartment she was breaking into, which meant she knew it wasn't her own, which was one of the elements of proof for the offense of breaking and entering.