More interesting was the collection of cars outside: the Jaguar, Vic’s Jeep, and a red Camaro that pulled in the drive beside the Jag while the Bomber was parked across the street. Beauregard Radford emerged after checking his reflection in the rearview mirror, which was cluttered with hanging air fresheners. He looked too slight to be driving that flashy car, but he was making a stab at a more daring look, wearing his thin dark hair in a sleek ponytail that screamed “artiste.” The puny ponytail was an improvement on his previous Prince Valiant, Lacey thought.
“Who’s that?” Nan asked.
“Beau Radford,” Lacey answered. “You don’t know him?”
“You’re kidding! That’s Shampoo Boy?” Nan took a closer look. “Jeez, I haven’t seen him in years. Not since he went away to college the first time, maybe six years ago. Ratboy used to make him shampoo clients in the summer when we couldn’t get enough help. He was as lazy as you’d expect the heir to the throne to be. But I wouldn’t have recognized him!”
Lacey wondered briefly if Beau could suspect his own father in the deaths. An eye-popping yellow Corvette roared in next to the Camaro. The D.C. license plate said LEO 1. Leo paid no attention to the women watching from across the street in the big brown car.
Lacey didn’t know what more she could glean from the scene, so Nan chauffeured her back to the hotel. Lacey handed her twenty dollars for gas money.
“Hey, thanks, Lacey. The Bomber loves to guzzle.” Nan promised to call if she found the videotape or if the elusive George came sniffing around. She zoomed off in her beloved beast.
It was after six when Lacey checked into her hotel room, crawled into bed, and fell into a sound sleep. She woke, groggy and disoriented, to the sound of pounding on the door.
“It’s Vic. Open up.”
She let him in and stood unsteadily, rubbing her eyes. The clock said it was seven-thirty.
Is it a.m. or p.m.?
Lacey wondered.
“If you can manage to open up your eyes, sleepyhead, I’ll take you to dinner.”
She yawned and stumbled into a strategically placed chair. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to town?”
“Don’t worry about me. Can you believe there was a vacancy? Booked a room. Right here; two floors up. Lucky, huh?”
“Lucky you. Still riding shotgun on me, huh?”
“No sense in driving back now. It’s been a hard day.” He moved behind her and rubbed her shoulders. It felt very nice.
“What did you find out about Tammi?” she asked, her eyes beginning to open.
He stopped rubbing her shoulders and moved toward the door. “I’m not taking you to dinner to hash this out. Not now.”
“Two identical deaths! If that isn’t murder, what is?”
“That hasn’t been determined yet. I’ve found someone you can talk to tomorrow, a Virginia Beach detective named Harding. But tonight, no more about this.” He folded his arms and leaned against the door. “You have to be able to turn it off. Something like this can eat you up.”
“What about Radford? What is he really doing here?”
“Time out, Smithsonian. I just want to go to dinner. I need some down-home cooking. You do too.”
Lacey opened her mouth to protest but then changed her mind. As long as Vic wasn’t going to cough up any information or listen to her, she wasn’t going to tell anyone about the videotape—at least until she talked with Marcia.
She looked in the mirror and saw sheet creases on her face.
How utterly glamorous.
At least her makeup hadn’t smeared.
Bedroom eyes are one thing; raccoon eyes are another.
She agreed to meet Vic in the bar in a half hour, which gave her time to wake up.
Bloody mirrors and crying stylists wound through her thoughts while she freshened up. Lacey wished she could puzzle out the day’s events while spending the evening waltzing through Aunt Mimi’s patterns. She wanted to select a new item for her Forties wardrobe, something fabulous. But she couldn’t very well ask Vic to drop her off at a mall so she could wander around looking at fabrics. Silks in wonderful colors might serve as an escape from the day’s events, but she suspected Vic wouldn’t understand. He was, after all, a man.
She changed into a close-fitting crocheted sweater in violet that had been a gift from Mimi. Though it was more than five years old, it still looked new and it flattered her complexion. She grabbed a black shawl embroidered with colorful flowers and glanced one last time in the mirror.
It made her cranky that she was having dinner with a gorgeous man who wasn’t remotely interested in her except as a source of information—or trouble. At least she was hungry. And he, no doubt, was on an expense account.
The hotel bar was full of light wood, blue leather, and sailing paraphernalia. On a Tuesday, only a few souls were worshiping in this dimly lit shrine to naughty weekends at the beach. The air-conditioning was on high and it made her shiver through the sweater. Lacey ordered a club soda and dove into a straw bowl of peanuts on the bar. She suggested a seafood restaurant down the beach. Vic insisted they needed more sustenance than a tourist-trap crab shack could offer and suggested they take the Jeep to look for a “real place, with real food,” like a caveman in search of a woolly mammoth. They drove away from the beach town as hunger gnawed and elevated her crankiness quotient.
They finally settled on the required “down-home food” in a funky storefront restaurant, aptly named The Wild Monkey, in the older, quainter Ghent neighborhood of Norfolk. A friendly waitress led them to a tiny Formica-topped table in the crowded dining room. Lacey found the hubbub surprisingly comforting. The menu and wine list were written on a huge chalkboard the length of the wall and the place seemed packed with regulars. It was a good sign. Lacey ordered a chicken caesar salad and Vic demanded the meatloaf.
“Meatloaf?” She made a gagging noise.
“Mmmm, meatloaf,” he said.
“Our specialty,” the waitress replied. “It’s real popular.”
Lacey gazed around the room. Nearly every man in The Wild Monkey was chowing down enormous quantities of meatloaf.
Yum. No doubt made with woolly mammoth. Cavemen.
The waitress returned shortly, weighed down with heaping mounds of meatloaf and potatoes, Lacey’s ladylike plate of foliage and poultry, and a delightful basketful of hot bread and butter. The waitress winked at Vic. He had a certain effect on waitresses, Lacey noticed.
So the road to Vic’s heart is through his meatloaf,
she thought.
He probably thinks stuffed peppers are gourmet.
Vic was obviously grooving on some memory of his mom in a kitchen apron. He chomped with pleasure and washed the meatloaf down with Guinness. Her memory dredged up the tasteless stuff that her mother produced, which Lacey could barely choke down with milk. Felicity at the office was always offering her a surefire recipe for “great meatloaf,” which Lacey considered a contradiction in terms. It did not exist.
Eventually, the food, the dim roar of the regulars, and several glasses of cabernet sauvignon calmed her nerves. She was content to eavesdrop on strangers. She overheard the words “great meatloaf.” The wine was warming and had the effect of loosening her tongue, something she always regretted later.
“Vic, are we friends, or what?”
He looked at her, his eyes glittering like green glass in this light, and with that insufferable smirk.
“Sure we’re friends, Lacey. Why?”
She wondered how she could ask him why he was no longer interested in her. “When we were in Sagebrush, things were different.”
“Different?” He wasn’t making this easy.
She took a deep breath and a sip of wine.
Shut up, Lacey.
“I always thought you were interested in me. Attracted to me.” He nodded. “Was it only because there were so few women there? Or you were on the rebound from your wife? Or were you just hazing me because I was the girl reporter and you were the alpha cop?”
He laughed.
Bastard,
she thought. “Oh, forget it.” She swilled down more wine.
“Lacey, Lacey. This is a different time and place. I chased after you for two years and you always said no. You said more colorful things than no. I can take a hint.”
“You were married!”
“I was in the middle of a divorce, as you know now and knew then. And you were cute.”
Cute! Ugh! You’re a dead man.
“You were wasting your time with that cowboy,” Vic asserted. “Whatever his name was.”
“Let’s just leave ‘whatever his name was’ out of it right now. And he wasn’t a cowboy. Cowboy indeed. Cattleman,” she corrected.
“Hell, as soon as Cowboy wanted to make it permanent you were out of town like a shot.”
She choked on her wine. “You knew he proposed?”
“Everybody in town knew. Felt mighty sorry for that boy. It was a nice little ring he got you.” Now she remembered another reason why she had left town: Everybody knew everything about everyone. “You’re skittish, Lacey.”
“Who told you that?”
“Personal observation.”
“You kissed me once.”
Oh God, why did I say that?
“I remember. I might like to do it again someday.” He could see she was flustered. “You never know,” he continued. “I might be waiting for an invitation. I wouldn’t turn down an outright offer; it wouldn’t be gentlemanly.”
You arrogant—ooh—what’s the word? Man!
Lacey did not like this at all. There were few enough things that men ever took responsibility for. Now he was making her completely responsible for anything that might happen between them. All she’d wanted to know was whether he was attracted to her.
“So you’re not interested anymore,” she said. “I just wanted to get it straight between us.”
“If I were interested, I wouldn’t want to hear you say no another ten thousand times.”
“It wasn’t ten thousand times.”
And I didn’t want to say no.
He offered her the chance to order a gooey dessert, but she wasn’t in the mood. She just wanted to return to her room. Alone.
Chapter 19
Lacey peered out her hotel window Wednesday morning. As Marie had predicted, it appeared to be raining Katzenjammers. A sodden sky hung like misery over the beach town, a wet gray cloak Lacey couldn’t shrug off. She had agreed to meet Vic at eight, check out of the hotel, then grab breakfast somewhere. After that, they would meet with the cop in charge of the Tammi White investigation. Donovan had promised, and Lacey wasn’t about to let him off the hook.
She finished packing, dressed warmly, and headed for a soggy morning walk on the beach. At seven o’clock the beachfront along the hotels was deserted except for a few hardy joggers.
Lacey was grateful now for Marie’s call.
Nothing like a little psychic fashion advice.
The turtleneck sweater and hooded jacket felt good. Lacey often took long walks when she didn’t know what else to do. Here she took off north, up the boardwalk toward the fishing pier, which would be closed for a few more weeks. The beach looked like every other beach Lacey had seen on the East Coast. Endless boardwalks, endless sun-glass vendors. Tall cement and stucco hotels with endless balconies like human ant farms. Swinging past the salon told her nothing. She looked for the infamous Virginia Beach video surveillance cameras, the city’s attempt to stop crime on the boardwalk. She wondered if they had one pointed at Stylettos. She didn’t see any cameras. Radford’s sign was still in the window and the empty shop was dark, waiting for a cleaning crew to strip away the death of Tammi White.
Lacey was drenched to the bone by the time she returned to the hotel, but her head finally felt clear. Vic was waiting at the front desk.
“You look like a drowned rat,” he said.
“Love those compliments, Donovan. Keep ’em coming.” She turned and walked toward the elevators. “I’ll be down in a minute.” She toweled off in the room and applied a bit of makeup. Her hair went up in a French knot with three pins. The marine blue of the dry sweater was perfect with her eyes.
Forget you, Vic Donovan. I’d be wasted on you.
At the diner off Pacific Avenue, she ordered a breakfast fit for a warrioress.
“You know what I think?” Vic asked out of the blue.
“What now?”
“You could have low blood sugar.”
She raised an eyebrow, but he ignored it. She popped a bit of muffin into her mouth and chewed it like red meat.
“You’re always cranky before you eat,” he said. She lobbed part of her muffin at him. “See. You haven’t eaten enough yet. Have some bacon.”
“You’re impossible, Vic. Just why on earth did you want to be here with me if all I do is irritate you? It’s been one lousy trip all the way around, and I’d rather not be insulted on a regular basis, okay? I am a reporter, after all. I’m reviled all the time. I swallow more than my share of it. Every once in a while, I deserve a break.”
He smiled at her. “Just trying to be helpful. Have some grapefruit.”
Detective Jason Harding had bags under his eyes that you could pack, Lacey thought. A hound dog who looked tired of the hunt. Harding’s pale blue eyes were bloodshot and his jowls sagged, but he looked friendly. All in all, he seemed as approachable as an old beagle.
Harding had agreed to meet with them as a favor to a friend of a friend of Vic’s. They huddled over coffee in a nearly empty java shop, steam rising from chocolate brown cups. Harding listened politely as Lacey explained about the phone call from Tammi and the strange man named George Something, who wanted to buy hair after a dramatic cut.
“You say he wanted the hair?”
“And a videotape, and he was willing to pay five hundred dollars for everything. Tammi said that never happens. I planned to meet him with her, but I was too late. The other stylists said they’d never heard anything about him.”
Vic looked at her questioningly. It was the first he had heard of George Something.
“You didn’t want to discuss it, remember?” she said.