Authors: Virginia Brown
“Aunt Darcy?” Harley blinked. Her mother’s younger sister never called her at work or anywhere else. “I can’t believe she called. She never calls.”
“Not everyone is unappreciative of your talents. Your aunt seemed very impressed.”
Harley took the pink slips of paper he held out, amazed and gratified. If even her family was impressed, then all was not lost. It usually took events of gigantic proportions to impress them. After all, her family knew all her flaws with annoying attention to detail, and they could be counted upon to regale complete strangers with youthful foibles that still had the power to make her cringe. Aunt Darcy was not only
not
an exception to that fact, she was the poster celebrity for it.
Tootsie lowered his voice to a dramatic baritone. “And Mike Morgan called. I assume that you’ll be returning
his
call first.”
A flutter in the pit of her stomach reminded her of the lazy Sunday spent lying in bed with the gorgeous man who’d ended her months of celibacy. Who could have foreseen that she’d enjoy it so much? What a delicious way to celebrate still being alive. And with a souvenir which still leaned against her bedroom mirror, a reminder of her narrow escape and life’s possibilities. It had been pretty harrowing, running for her life in a warehouse crowded with cheap wooden statues and china dogs, especially when the man chasing her had no scruples about shooting her. Fortunately, she’d been able to hide behind a wooden statue with an astounding erection that did not prove to be impervious to bullets. It did, however, make an interesting souvenir. Somewhere there was a fertility god without his goods.
“Why would you think I’d call Morgan first?” she asked out loud, and Tootsie gave her a knowing look and pursed his lips.
“You have that just laid look, baby.”
“Bitch,” she said fondly, and went down the hallway to use the phone in privacy. She’d have to remember to bring him the dress she’d promised last week when he’d used his computer hacker talents on her behalf. Tootsie really should utilize his mind and talents in a better job, but he said this one suited him very well. Harley had often wondered just how the conservative Lester Penney had been induced to hire a man who spent his spare time dressed as Cher or Julia Roberts, but that wasn’t really any of her business. If someday Tootsie wished to share his secrets with her, fine, but she cherished him as a friend too much to intrude on his privacy and ask.
Besides, since he was only a little taller than her five-six, and his extra thirty pounds were distributed quite differently on him than her one-hundred and twenty—one-fifteen on good days—were on her, sometimes they swapped clothes. She had leftover dresses from her days of wining and dining as a corporate banking employee, and Tootsie had some cute tee shirts that he rarely wore. He liked silk, she liked cotton. It made for a symbiotic friendship.
The tiny office down the hall, which was used by all the drivers, had been a storage closet in another life. It could be a tight fit, but she managed to wedge herself behind the oak teacher’s desk that had come from a Memphis School District surplus sale. Reminders of its former use were in the form of insults and obscenities carved into the sides and top. City school teachers had to be tough to survive. The old wood chair squeaked a loud reminder to feed it WD-40 as she sat down and reached for the phone.
Like Tootsie had predicted, she called Morgan first.
“You aren’t answering your cell phone,” he said, his low, raspy voice making her tingle all the way to her toes.
“I know. It’s broken.”
“Oh yeah. I’d forgotten. How many does that make in less than a week?”
“Three. I have insurance. Not that it helps much. Apparently there’s a limit on how many times they’ll pay for new phones.”
He laughed, and Harley’s toes curled inside her Nikes. Honestly, he made her tingle in places she didn’t know could tingle. And it’d be emotional suicide to let him know that.
“Maybe I should buy stock in Nokia,” he said. “At the rate you go through cell phones, it should make a nice profit.”
“Right. So what’s up?”
“Baroni’s through with the stun gun if you want it back. It’s not needed as evidence.”
“Mr. Penney will be delighted. Not that it did me any good. I didn’t even get to use it.”
“Better luck next time.”
“Oh no,” she said. “There won’t be a next time. I’m leaving police work to the police. I’m not cut out for it.”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to point that out to you. Glad you got there on your own.”
“Hey, at least I proved Yogi didn’t kill Mrs. Trumble.”
“We’d have gotten there eventually. What are you doing for dinner tonight?”
“Any suggestions?”
“Oh yeah. And one of them even involves food.”
There went that tingle again. “Taco Bell,” she said. “Burrito. Extra sour cream on everything. And no beef.”
“You’re a vegetarian?”
“That’s Diva. I just happen to prefer the bean burritos today. And yesterday. Probably tomorrow.”
“You frighten me. See you around seven.”
When she hung up, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the large mirror on the small wall. Where had that big smile come from? It stretched from ear to ear and made her look like an idiot. Not that another bad hair day didn’t have the same effect. Her short hair usually stuck up in gelled spikes that she considered attractive, but today she had more of an early Meg Ryan look. The “just laid” look Tootsie had mentioned.
Jotting down a note to replace her broken cell phone, she dialed her aunt.
Darcy Fontaine answered on the first ring. “I’m so glad you called,” she said in a rush, or what passed as a rush for her normally slow Southern drawl, which had sped up to an almost normal tempo. “I need to talk to you privately. Not now. It’s too—dangerous.”
Dangerous? How melodramatic. “Well, I’ll be at Grandmother’s for lunch Saturday. We can talk then.”
“No. I can’t wait. Harley, it’s vital I speak with you soon. And this has to be kept between us, all right?”
Harley sighed. “Okay. So, what is it?”
“Well for heaven’s sake, we can’t discuss it over the
phone
. Meet me for lunch today. At The Peabody. I’ll be wearing red.”
She made it sound like international espionage. Harley swallowed another sigh. “I’m at work, Aunt Darcy. And I can’t afford The Peabody anyway.”
“I’ll buy, and it doesn’t matter what you look like, either. Just meet me in the lobby at twelve-thirty, okay?”
Without waiting to hear if it was okay, she hung up, leaving Harley listening to a dial tone and scowling. That was so . . . Darcy. No one else’s plans ever mattered. And of course, she just assumed Harley was dressed inappropriately. She was, but it probably didn’t matter anyway because they’d never leave the lobby bar. Aunt Darcy liked to drink her lunch. Gin and tonic. Or just plain gin.
With that in mind, Harley decided she might as well get the interview with Lester Penney behind her. Monday mornings were quite often fraught with peril anyway. If she saw Mr. Penny now, the rest of the day had to be better.
It was a short walk down the corridor to Mr. Penney’s corner office. She tapped on his closed door, then went in when he responded with what sounded like an invitation, but he could have been just clearing his throat.
Lester Penney was on the phone, and he looked up with an irritated frown that wrinkled his forehead in another reminder of a puzzled basset hound. Harley took the chair he indicated with a wave of his hand and looked idly around the office while he conversed in monosyllables.
It was a large office, in stark contrast to the other tiny cubicles. Not that office space was a high priority, as most of the employees drove the vans or busloads of tourists and didn’t require desks. Tootsie, as office manager, scheduler, and receptionist, had the second largest workspace. Rhett Sandler, in the other office, did payroll and accounts receivable. Harley thought he had the personality of a doorknob, but since he was in charge of handing out the money, she’d never said that aloud. Apparently, he did a good job, and at least he didn’t embezzle funds like the last guy had.
“Yes. No. Not at all.” Penney leaned back in his chair with a loud squeaking sound and swiveled to stare out the window.
From the two-story buff brick building that housed Tour Tyme, his view consisted of tree tops and the edge of a huge Taco Bell sign. Poplar Avenue separated the building from Taco Bell, an often perilous crossing of endless traffic. But Harley’s reward was always a hot bean burrito and maybe nachos. Depending on money and appetite.
As the conversation continued, Harley began to fidget. Sunlight from the corner windows gleamed on Penney’s balding head, highlighting the fuzz that sprouted like random weeds. In contrast, his thick, busy eyebrows bore a striking resemblance to animated caterpillars, going up and down in a rhythm matching his terse responses. Overlarge ears bent slightly forward at the tops, really looking like dog ears. Elementary school must have been hell.
Finally he hung up the phone, linked his fingers together atop his desk blotter, and gazed at her with a riveting stare that only increased her discomfort.
“So,” he said finally, “quite a weekend for you.”
“You could say that.”
“Indeed. There are many things I could say.”
This didn’t sound at all like a congratulatory interview. She nodded. “I’m sure you can.”
Penney seemed determined. After an awkward pause, he said, “I trust your parents are doing well now.”
An unsubtle reference to the fact her father had recently been a murder suspect.
“They’re very resilient,” she replied.
An understatement. She didn’t think her mother had batted an eye, but then, Diva had complete faith in her own psychic abilities even when others were skeptical, and she had predicted a good outcome, so perhaps that was understandable.
“Perhaps next time, you’ll request authorization before you borrow company property,” Penney said then, and Harley felt some sort of explanation was necessary.
“I should get the stun gun back this evening. It was part of the investigation, but not a vital part, so I’ll bring it back in tomorrow, as good as new.”
“And, um, ahem—the stun guns are only for emergency use, Miss Davidson. I trust you are fully aware of that? And they’re not to be used on paying tourists unless the situation is dire.”
“I’ve only had to use it once, and the circumstances were what I considered pretty dire. He was drunk and terrorizing the other passengers, and he nearly caused me to wreck. It was the only way I could control him.”
Penney’s caterpillar brows lowered slightly. “Yes, though the insurance company was not especially impressed, it did seem necessary in that instance. And he did have a criminal record.”
He clasped and unclasped his hands, and Harley had the distinct impression he wanted to say something else but didn’t know if he should. She waited. Sunlight slanted through windows to heat the room, backlit the fuzz atop his head, and made her squint. Finally he nodded again.
“New rules are being implemented, and we are requiring all employees to take a short course in safety per our insurance company’s request. You’ll be notified of the dates and times, as will our other drivers.”
Oh, that’d make her popular with the other drivers.
All in all, it wasn’t exactly the kind of reception she’d expected. A little more excitement would have been nice. Appreciation, perhaps. Not that she was too surprised by his reaction. She had experienced something similar from Bobby Baroni, who hadn’t been quite impressed about her participation in the capture of jewelry thieves the police had been after for months. His reaction had been more along the lines of . . . irritation. But as a detective in the homicide division of the MPD, Bobby wasn’t easily impressed. He’d been that way when they were kids, too. It took a lot to impress him. Unless you were a stripper with a 36DD cup.