She Walks the Line (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Fox, Roz Denny

  “Your children are lucky you’re so easygoing,” Mei Lu remarked in the ensuing silence.

  “Yes. Well, kids lose enough stability when parents part ways.”

  “From the little I saw of them, they seem remarkably happy and well-adjusted.”

  Cullen shifted in his chair, acting almost flustered by the compliment. Mei wondered if fatherhood was an area the coolly competent Mr. Archer had reservations about. If so, she’d find that hard to believe.

  Cullen rearranged his features quickly. “Two of the homicide detectives last night were also present when the first courier was found. To date they’ve turned up no leads. Both men said trying to get information out of witnesses near the nightclub parking lot was like hitting a brick wall. Witnesses either don’t speak English or pretend they don’t. I hate to say this in front of another of Houston’s finest, but I felt solving these murders isn’t a high priority.”

  Mei returned her teacup to its saucer. “Do you consider the officers derelict in duty, or have they truly exhausted every lead?”

  “I wasn’t at the first site initially. I joined the case several days later. I can’t fault how the team swept the dock for clues last night. They were thorough. I saw one officer walk along the row of parked cars and take down the license numbers of two that still had warm engines. He planned to pay the owners visits this morning to see if they saw or heard anything significant.”

  “It sounds to me as if they plan to work the case.”

  Cullen let out a breath. “You’re right. I’m just a man who likes speedy results. It’s difficult to accept that if people saw a man killed before their eyes, they’d stonewall the cops.”

  “Sometimes cops are the last ones witnesses want to speak with.”

  “I know. But I’m sure you know that in the past our police department—or I should qualify and say some cops in the city have been as underhanded as the crooks.”

  Mei stiffened automatically. It was an accusation of long standing, one she’d heard Catherine gripe about often enough. “On a force our size, there are bound to be a few bad apples.” Mei found herself quoting the chief. “Chief Tanner cleaned house after she came on board. She outright fired officers proven to be on the take. She reprimanded and demoted others.”

  “Hey, I’m not accusing your chief. I occasionally run into the city manager at community events, and he says she’s tough. Yet murder is on the rise.”

  “And Homicide is a division that’s spread thin. I have a good friend who works in the Chicano section. That’s another area of the city where witnesses clam up and suddenly become deaf and blind. I’ll be glad to ask Crista for some tips on how she interrogates. She has a high degree of success.”

  Cullen opened his folder and turned to a new page in his notebook. “All right. That would be good. I’d like us to go around to the nightclub and talk to people who might’ve seen our first courier before he was killed. How many dialects are you conversant in?”

  “I’m fluent in Mandarin and passable in Cantonese.”

  “That’s great. I told you I spent some time trying to work a case in Guangdong province. I took a crash course in Cantonese. The taped kind, of course. I learned little and retained less. Luckily, I found that the Asians I came in contact with were very tolerant of my frequent goofs.”

  Mei laughed. “Our language is one of the more difficult. So few foreigners make an effort, and they were probably pleased you did.” The knot in her stomach loosened a bit as they talked. She’d been so sure the first thing out of Cullen’s mouth would have to do with her father.

  “They understood my pathetic attempts far more easily than I was able to decipher what they said. Maybe I have a bad ear, but many of the words sound alike to me.”

  “It’s not you at all. Chinese is a tonal language. Words have different pitch patterns, but none of the emotional rise and fall you get in English or other European languages.” Changing the subject, she said, “I’ll be happy to go poke around the nightclub after it opens today. Just give me a list of people the homicide crew interviewed. If nothing else, the bartender may be able to provide some other leads. Is the bar open all day, or only nights? Where is it located?”

  Cullen absently read off the address. “Doug Whitsell said they open at noon.” He glanced up and narrowed his eyes as he watched Mei jotting it down in her notebook. “Listen, I don’t want you going into that part of town alone. Not even in daylight. It’s too dangerous.”

  At first Mei thought he was teasing. But the minute she stopped writing and looked up, she realized he was dead serious. “Cullen.” His name rolled easily off her tongue. Too easily. “The address you gave me is two blocks north of the market where I do my grocery shopping.”

  “Impossible. I’ve been there, remember. This area is run down. According to the lead investigator, it’s a high-crime neighborhood.”

  Mei pursed her lips. “Honestly! Now you sound exactly like my parents.”

  He seemed taken aback by her vehemence. “Let’s forget the nightclub for a moment and discuss your parents. Your father, anyway.”

  Mei tried to control her nerves. It was clear that Cullen intended to say more. But his office door banged open and two excited children came thundering in, shouting and trying to see who could gain their father’s attention first.

  “Daddy, Daddy.” The twins ran past Mei’s chair. Instead of grappling a white rabbit as they had on her previous visit, they were now in a tug-of-war over a portable phone.

  “It’s Mom!” Belinda screeched loudest, but her brother succeeded in wresting the instrument out of his sister’s hands.

  “She’s calling from way far away,” Bobby declared importantly. “Freda said Bangkok.”

  “Yes, and Freda said Mom wants to talk to you before Bobby and me get to say a word.” Cullen’s daughter slipped anxiously between the desk and her father’s chair and somehow managed to drape herself over his arm. “Hi, police lady!”

  Bobby, too, said hello, and Mei smiled at them both.

  When she looked at Cullen again, he had the phone pasted to one ear.

  “Jana?”

  Mei shut her notebook and stood, fully prepared to give the family privacy.

  “What’s so important that you have to speak with me before you talk to the twins? You missed calling from your last stopover.” Cullen combed his fingers through Belinda’s over-long bangs and gazed at his son, who raptly awaited news.

  Teetering on the balls of her feet, Mei wasn’t sure if she should leave or stay. Ultimately she decided to return her teapot and cup to the Archer kitchen. She’d almost reached the door when she heard Cullen say explosively, “You want me to wire how much? I know what a pearl and jade necklace is likely to cost. Why not pay with one of your credit cards?”

  Mei let the door close on his next comment, but she thought it sounded as if he was questioning how she could max out three cards. There was no mistaking his fury when he virtually bellowed, “All of them? Dammit, Jana, what kind of junk did you buy?” As quickly as he’d flared up, he appeared to calm down, and he promised to phone his banker on his cell while she spoke with the twins.

  Mei actually might have lingered at the door to eavesdrop longer had Freda not bustled out of a room at the end of the hall.

  “Ms. Ling. Er…Lieutenant. Have you come looking for more tea?”

  “No. I figured while Mr. Archer’s on the phone with his wife, I’d return my dishes to the kitchen and perhaps find the bathroom.”

  “Ex-wife.” The housekeeper stared over Mei’s shoulder at the door behind which they could hear the children’s excited chatter. “It’s a crying shame that woman can reach out from across the world and turn this household upside down.” Freda relieved Mei of the dishes and pointed her toward a bathroom.

  “Will he be long?” Mei asked before the woman rushed off.

  Freda shrugged. “Hard to say. Ms. Jana was clearly in a state about something. I’m sorry the kids broke up your meeting. I
answered down here, and they happened to pick up on the upstairs extension. They’ve been waiting for their mother’s call for days. They expected to hear this weekend, and they’ve moped since Friday.”

  “Um, well, their father may need some extra time with them. I’ll just run back to headquarters and check my morning messages. Could you tell Cullen, uh, Mr. Archer that I need to talk to Chief Tanner so I’m clear on how much time she wants me to devote to this case?” Truthfully, Mei needed to ask how Catherine thought she should handle the situation with her father. She couldn’t barge into his gallery, introduce Cullen Archer as an insurance investigator helping Interpol, and watch Cullen start throwing out questions about smuggled Chinese artifacts. Good Chinese daughters didn’t act that way. Not even if the daughter was a cop. Such discourse moved slowly in her culture and rarely involved women. Westerners didn’t understand that there was an order to things, a process to work through to answer even the simplest questions.

  Mei felt comfortable explaining that to Catherine. Not to Cullen Archer.

  Normally Mei Lu didn’t hesitate when it came to dealing with influential men. Actually, she’d dealt well with many of them when she ran the Hong Kong gallery.

  So, admit it’s this particular man. He only had to look at her with those gray eyes and her stomach turned cartwheels.

  Mei knew if she was going to continue to work with Cullen, it was a reaction she needed to quash. Besides, it was a reaction that made no sense. Ask anybody who knew her well. Mei Lu Ling didn’t lose her composure over men.

  “Suit yourself, dear,” Freda was saying. She still held Mei’s teapot and cup. “I’ll give Mr. Cullen your message. Can’t say as I blame you for hitting the road. Ordinarily you can’t find a more affable man. But after weeks of phone calls from ‘her nibs,’ he’s a bear. Ah, there I go, running off at the mouth again. Sorry. I should keep my thoughts on that subject to myself. It’s not as if Mr. Cullen doesn’t frequently remind me—and himself—that Ms. Jana is the mother of his children.”

  By now Mei was getting used to Freda’s slips of the tongue. And to the way she darted in and out like a hummingbird. As she left the house, Mei began to wonder if there was another reason Cullen might want to steer the investigation toward Ling Limited. If he had a high-maintenance ex-wife and a lifestyle to keep up among Memorial’s upper crust, might smuggling be a lucrative way to increase his cash flow? After all, he wouldn’t be the first of his stature to succumb to the lure of easy money. She’d exposed more preposterous crimes in Houston’s white-collar community. And Archer had an ex running around Thailand. How simple would it be for a man with his connections to arrange contacts in the Asian underworld? As simple as it’d be for him to shift the blame—for instance, to an unsuspecting Houston art dealer.

  If nothing else, her stomach stopped fluttering over Archer’s looks. She had a whole lot more to keep herself occupied on the drive downtown. Such as…which of these musings was she duty bound to share with Catherine?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MEI LU FOUND A PARKING PLACE in the precinct’s always-busy garage. One thing she loved about the main police station was the amount of activity going on day and night. Men and women rushed in and out of the historic building, some in uniform, others in street clothes, a few in disguise. If their disguises were good, no one except close friends recognized them. The ones easily seen through provided fun for weeks.

  Police work, the nitty-gritty part of keeping a city the size of Houston safe from crazies, derelicts and all-around bad folks, took an emotional toll on the psyches of everyone on the force. Laughter was the best cure. Everything, from the smallest oddity to the most bizarre occurrence became fair game to pass around from department to department. After the weeks at the academy, during which Mei Lu took such a drubbing over her deficiency in martial arts, she was careful to avoid being the butt of their jokes.

  As a result, no matter how harried or hurried, she sauntered through the building, occasionally stopping to chat, but leaving in her wake an aura of calm efficiency. At least that was her objective.

  Cops on all the floors used to stare at her anyway. Partly because at the time she went through the academy, Mei was one of only three Asian Americans with the Houston PD, and the only Asian female. Gradually, no doubt due to the recent influx of Asian immigrants, department numbers had begun to reflect the recent diversity.

  Chief Tanner, always big on women walking their own path, used to give Mei Lu pep talks about how she had a golden opportunity to be a model cop. So what if she happened to be Chinese? Except that her minority status had made her the go-to authority anytime there was a disturbance in the Asian quarter. And she didn’t always feel like an authority. At times she felt quite removed.

  It was Crista who helped her see and come to accept that there would always be cops to whom race mattered a lot. Everyone could name them. Crista confronted them, while Mei did her best to steer clear. It was increasingly evident, however, that as the Asian community expanded, unrest rose among those cops who’d rather everyone of color simply went away.

  As she sat outside Catherine’s office waiting for the chief to wind up a mid-morning meeting, she considered the various things that could trigger an upsurge of racial violence in the city. Reports of a suspected rapist at large, or a serial killer, or gang activity. She worried that if news of this smuggling operation broke or, worse, became widely known, patrols would triple along Bellaire. Families in Mei’s neighborhood, law-abiding for the most part, would be subtly harassed.

  Suddenly, Catherine’s door burst open and two men in suits and ties stormed past, causing Mei to glance up and forget the concerns running through her head. The shorter of the chief’s visitors had a red face and bulbous nose. He was chunky around the middle. The other, taller and leaner, had a pasty complexion. He sported a bushy mustache that made his angry eyes overpower a weak chin.

  Mei wondered who they were and what Catherine had said to annoy them. Because they clearly were annoyed, as evidenced by their grim expressions and choppy strides. Their body language said they couldn’t wait to put this experience behind them.

  “Lieutenant,” Catherine’s assistant, Annette, said after hanging up her phone. “The chief asks if you can give her five minutes to make a couple of callbacks. Then she has ten minutes to spare. I forgot, she’s due to address a Kiwanis luncheon today, and we’ve already rescheduled it once.”

  “I don’t want to rush her. I can come back this afternoon.” In fact, she’d like an excuse to not have to see Archer again today.

  “Not good, either.” Annette frowned. “She goes from the luncheon straight to a groundbreaking ceremony for the new detention center they’re going to build near the intersection of the Brazoria and Galveston County lines. The folks in charge have planned a whole host of events. I doubt she’ll make it back here today.”

  Rising slowly, Mei crossed to stand in front of the administrative assistant’s desk, which beat shouting across a noisy room. “I didn’t realize the chief had so many duties outside of police stuff.”

  “No one tells you these things before you take the job, either,” Catherine remarked from her doorway. Screwing up her face, she flung the back of her hand to her forehead in a “woe is me” gesture.

  Mei and two of the office clerks shared a chuckle.

  “Come in.” Catherine gestured to Mei Lu. “I assume Annette told you I’m pressed for time. Now that I think of it, what are you doing here? As of last night, I thought you were on special assignment with…what’s his name?”

  “Cullen Archer,” Mei said with a sigh as she slipped past Catherine.

  “Is the man a problem?” Catherine turned away from her visitor and began sorting papers and loading them into a worn briefcase. “Yes? No?” Pausing, Catherine turned and fixed Mei Lu with searing blue eyes.

  “He’s a little overbearing—” Mei stopped abruptly, feeling a flush creep along her neck. “That’s unfair of me.” Mei clasped her hands
tight around her ever-present notebook. “He was thoughtful enough to buy me Lapsang tea. Oh, he said I shouldn’t go alone to the nightclub where the first courier was killed, but he probably spoke out of concern for my welfare rather than any real chauvinism.”

  “So then, what’s wrong? Why aren’t you two nosing around the club?”

  Mei shook her head. “I don’t know.” Swallowing hard, she felt the beginnings of another flush. “No…I do know,” she said decisively.

  “Then spit it out. This isn’t like you, Mei Lu. I’ve rarely seen you act wishy-washy.”

  “It has to do with my family. Cullen, uh—he said to call him that—is bent on starting our investigation at Ling Limited.”

  “Goodness, Mei Lu.” Catherine frowned. “Surely Interpol doesn’t think…I mean, you don’t suspect your father in any way…?”

  “No,” Mei shot back quickly. “But…you know my relationship with my folks. I…can’t march into my father’s office acting like the cop they never wanted me to be.”

  “A cop is what you are, Mei Lu,” Catherine said with no softness in her tone. “It’s the career you chose. You took an oath to uphold the law, which transcends all other loyalties, even filial. You know the rules about recusing yourself if evidence should ever point to anyone in your family.”

  “It won’t. But of course I understand.” Mei edged toward the door. “My greater concern revolves around how Archer and I could differ over investigating anyone in the Asian community. Not specifically my family. I’m unsure how to enlighten Cullen, since it’s essentially his case. I know if we barge in throwing our weight around, expecting normal interrogative techniques to work, people will close ranks and give us nothing.”

  Catherine pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m fully aware yours is a culture that demands treading carefully.”

  Mei released the breath she’d been holding. “And lightly. And slowly.” She’d known all along that Catherine would understand what she was trying to say.