Guilty Pleasures

by Stella Cameron

  Roman clicked his tongue. “You’d better watch your back.”

  “I’m watching all sides.” Dusty had Bobby at the shop. Nasty had promised to go and pick the boy up before stopping by for Polly. “You’ll like her, Roman. So will Phoenix.”

  “If you like her, we’ll like her. You think they’re using her to get at you?”

  “She doesn’t understand that.”

  “I didn’t say she did.”

  Nasty thought about it. “Yeah. I think that’s what they’re doing. I probably ought to get her out of the way.”

  “Will she go for it?”

  Would she agree to leave the show? “Probably not. She’s afraid for Bobby, though. That might change her mind.”

  “You could be wrong, Nast.” The Pollyanna role had never been Roman’s finest. “Yeah, well—if it’s the Bogota group, we’ve got major trouble.”

  “And this time we don’t have official sanction on our side,” Nasty said before he noticed the collective pronouns. “I don’t have official sanction on my side. You’re real welcome as a sounding board, old pal. This is my problem, not yours.”

  “I don’t remember you keeping your nose out of my business when you knew I needed help.”

  Nasty shifted a green glass dolphin on the desk. A gift from Phoenix, it made him think of her and smile. “Need is the important word. I’m not sure I need any help yet. If I do, I’ll yell.”

  “Dusty thinks this is a big one.”

  Dusty definitely talked too much. “His judgment could be skewed. He’s taken a fall for a belly-dancing teacher.”

  Silence followed.

  Nasty grinned. He could almost see Roman’s piercingly blue eyes narrow.

  “A belly-dancing teacher,” Roman said at last. “Is that what you just said?”

  “You got it. Venus. Earth mother. She’s pronounced Dusty a sunshine man living in a sunshine house, and he gobbles up every word.”

  Roman snuffled and broke into laughter.

  Nasty chuckled with him. “Venus Crow is my Polly’s mother. Interesting woman if you like that sort of thing.”

  “Your Polly,” Roman said as if not a hint of mirth had just issued from his lips. “Your Polly? As in, possessive?”

  “Cut it out. I’m fond of her.”

  “That’s not what Dusty said.”

  “All right.” They’d never been coy with each other. “I may love this woman. Could probably love her—if I can figure out exactly what that means. But I don’t think I’m good for her health. I’m almost sure I’ve brought her a lot of trouble. Now I’ve got to figure out how to keep her out of harm’s way without interrupting her career. And I’d kind of like to stay alive myself.”

  “I’ll be there in a few hours.”

  Damn his careless mouth. “No, you won’t. There’s no immediate threat.” Liar. “I overstated myself.”

  “You’ve never overstated a thing in your life, Mr. Ferrito. You’re the tightest-mouthed bastard I know.”

  “I didn’t think we were discussing my paternity.”

  “Don’t change the subject. You could take them up to Rose’s for a few days. She’d love the company.”

  He hadn’t considered introducing Polly and Bobby to the folk at Past Peak. “It’s a thought.”

  “If you’re careful. Make sure no one gets any idea where they are, and they’ll be as good as lost. Who did you ever meet who knows about that place?”

  “No one who comes from Colombia,” Nasty said distracted. “Thanks for the inspiration. I’ve never had any flashbacks before.” He hadn’t planned to mention his eerie episode.

  “When?” Roman asked. “You mean you’ve had some of that posttraumatic stuff?”

  “Kind of. I saw it all over again. What happened—what I couldn’t exactly remember before. I can’t figure out why it came back except I was looking at some pictures of South America. Forget it.”

  “If I was there I could—”

  “Shit”—Nasty looked at his watch although he knew what time it was—“I’ve got to get down to the shop. Dusty’s expecting me. So’s Bobby.”

  “Nasty—”

  “I’ll call if I need you. That’s a promise. Do not come unless I ask you, okay?” He hung up before Roman had time to answer.

  The phone rang while he was getting out of his chair. Let it ring. He shoved his keys in a pocket and retrieved his shoes from under the desk.

  The phone kept on ringing.

  Bobby had left his big gray mutt, Spike, with Nasty. He was a cat man, but this was an okay dog. He whistled and the animal barreled from the kitchen, his big feet sliding on the quarry tile in the foyer.

  Still the phone rang.

  “Okay, boy,” Nasty said screwing up his eyes at the grating sound. Roman wasn’t a man who gave up easily. “Let’s go find your boss.”

  He went into the hall with the dog at his heels.

  The phone rang again.

  “Damn you, Roman Wilde.” He turned back and snatched the receiver off the wall just inside the kitchen. “Yeah? I told you I’d call if I needed you.”

  “You stupid sonova… This is Dusty.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Come to Park Place. The movie theater. Bobby’s missing.”

  Light rain fell. The tables and chairs around the fountain were empty. People filing into the movie theater watched Dusty and Fab talking with two policemen.

  Nasty parked next to Dusty’s camper—the very well equipped camper that had once been Nasty’s—and got out of the Porsche. He dodged puddles and reached the foot of an escalator that rose to the second-story shops. Fabiola Crow hovered there, looking as if she’d like to leap onto the moving steps and escape.

  Nasty interrupted the policeman who was speaking. “What was he doing here, Dust?”

  “Going to the movies. What do you think?”

  “I thought he was at the shop with you. If you’d told me that was likely to become a problem, the paperwork could have waited. I’d have looked after him myself.”

  Dusty’s lips rolled in, and his eyes narrowed. He jerked his head several times until Nasty frowned, and said, “What? What’s the matter with you?”

  “Are you a friend sir?” one of the policemen asked.

  “Yeah, he is,” Dusty said, bristling. “Bobby went to the movies. You can’t keep a kid cooped up forever. He wanted to see a film—”

  “I’ve got the message,” Nasty said cutting Dusty off. “I now know Bobby went to the movies. Thanks. Then what?”

  “Are you here in some official capacity, sir?” the second police officer said. He had a paunch and leather creaked with every shift of his considerable weight.

  Nasty schooled himself to cool down. “Sorry,” he said almost choking on the word. “Bit of a shock is all. The boy’s the son of a good friend.”

  “What’s your name, sir?”

  He gritted his teeth, mentally marked the time they were wasting, and answered the expected questions.

  “Very good,” Dusty said under his breath when the two officers had walked away. “Oughta get some sort of badge to go on your sash for that performance.”

  Nasty turned to Fabiola. In jeans and a blue T-shirt, with her hair pulled into a ponytail, and no makeup, she looked about fourteen. Fourteen and very frightened.

  “I’m glad Dusty called you,” Nasty said. She might be frightened, but not nearly as frightened as she had a right to be. “Polly’s been through too much already. She’s going to need your help with this.”

  “I called Dusty,” Fabiola said shakily. “Bobby was with me. I asked if he’d like to go to the movies. It seemed safe enough. How could anything bad happen in a busy movie house in broad daylight?”

  Oh, hell, it was tough dealing with people who probably still believed in Santa Claus. “You took Bobby to the movies? And you didn’t think that was a problem, Dust?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Dusty said, leveling a meaningful stare at Nasty. “Given what we
think we know, it seemed like a pretty fair idea. That boy’s getting scared out of his wits. My thinking was that there wasn’t any need for that.”

  “Still think that way?”

  Dusty looked away. “Seems to me we oughta be rethinking a lot of things. Seems to me your little theory’s full of holes, buddy.”

  Fab’s eyes stretched wider and wider. “What are you saying? You’re talking about something I don’t know, aren’t you?”

  Lies had their place. “No.” Polly had agreed not to discuss the attempted drowning with anyone but the police. Venus believed she’d fallen in the water, then been pulled out by Nasty and Dusty. “I thought we probably wouldn’t hear anything else from the guy who roughed Polly up. He’d gotten his kicks—or that’s what I decided. This kind of shoots that theory.”

  “But you were having Bobby watched. If you didn’t think there was any danger, why did you do that?”

  “Because I don’t like taking risks,” Nasty said tersely. “But since you’re admitting you knew we were trying to be careful, why did you decide to interfere?”

  “Nasty—”

  He waved Dusty to silence. “Okay, okay. We’re getting carried away here. We’re all worried about Bobby, so let’s quit bickering and find him.”

  “I shouldn’t have taken him,” Fab said her eyes filling with tears. She was white and trembling. “It was stupid. I just can’t seem to take all this seriously. I mean, Polly never did anything to anyone. She was pushed around a lot by other people, but she never stopped being… Polly. And Bobby is just a kid.”

  “Yeah.” He put a hand on her back and walked her to the shelter of an awning. “Quit blaming yourself for being human. Help us reconstruct how this happened.”

  “The police will find him, won’t they?” The dread in her eyes pleaded for hope. “He can’t have gone very far.”

  “Did you actually go into the movies?”

  “Yes. He wanted to go. As soon as I called him he got excited and he was waiting for me when I got to the shop. We bought the tickets and some candy and went in.”

  Dusty kicked a cigarette butt aside. “Bobby went to the men’s room,” he said. “He never came back.”

  “I didn’t notice he’d been gone a long time until someone wanted to sit in his seat. Then I was scared to go outside to look for him in case I missed him coming back in. He’d have wondered where I was.”

  “She finally went out and the manager had the theater searched. No Bobby.” Dusty recited the events flatly. “He’s been gone about an hour. The police are going to sweep the area and put out a bulletin.”

  “Back inside the theater,” Nasty said. “I want to take a look at the men’s room.”

  “He might not have gone to the rest room at all,” Fab pointed out.

  “Dusty,” Nasty said. “Talk to the kids in the ticket booth.”

  “Already did.”

  “Talk to them again. I want Bobby found before it’s time for me to pick up Polly.”

  “She’ll die,” Fab said visibly breathing through her mouth. “And it’ll be all my fault.”

  He patted her shoulder awkwardly, but couldn’t argue with most of her logic.

  “It’s hopeless.” Her voice rose. “Where do you even start looking? He’s been taken, hasn’t he? That man’s taken him. This is some twisted plan to make Polly come to heel.”

  Nasty only vaguely registered what she was saying. “Could be.” He walked into the theater, ignoring the ticket taker’s outstretched hand. He felt Fab at his heels, but strode ahead into the men’s room.

  With the aid of his fist, every stall door banged open hollowly against the walls, including one that brought a growl from a man inside. Two other men at urinals glanced at Nasty and zipped up fast.

  “Nothing?” Fab asked as he returned to the lobby.

  “Uh-uh.” The ticket taker was a teenaged boy in a too-small white shirt with a too-big collar. “When did you come on duty?” Nasty asked him.

  The kid’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “One.”

  “He was here when we came in,” Fab said nervously. “You remember, don’t you?”

  “Sure I remember.” The boy’s reddened cheeks and awkward smile suggested he remembered Fabiola but was unlikely to have noticed a seven-year-old boy. “You’re the microbreweries girl.”

  Fab turned a circle. “This is no good. The police will have covered everything here.”

  “This your other bodyguard?” the boy asked.

  Nasty looked at him with sharpened interest “What if I am?”

  “Nothing. Just wondered. I thought maybe you were taking over from the other guy.”

  A glance was all it took to keep Fab quiet. “Why would you think that?” Nasty asked.

  “Hey, I don’t want to get into trouble. Not with guys like you.”

  “You won’t get into trouble.”

  “I’m only supposed to take tickets.” Truculence oozed. “They don’t pay me to have opinions.”

  “Sure,” Nasty said with a light punch to the kid’s arm. “Maybe it’d be better if the manager asked you the questions. What’s your name?”

  “Brad.” A deeper shade of red stained Brad’s cheeks. “There’s no need to tell the manager. The guy was late. He said he was supposed to be with her.” He indicated Fab.

  “Slow down,” Nasty told him. “A man came here and said he was supposed to be with this lady?”

  Brad studied his scuffed black tennis shoes. “I shouldn’t have taken it. But it seemed okay. All he wanted was to sit and wait inside.”

  The small sound Fab made warned Nasty he could have another problem on his hands shortly. “You sit down over there,” he told her, indicating a bench by the wall. “I can handle this.”

  When she’d gone, quickly and without argument, Brad produced two bills from his pocket. “He gave me this. He said he was a bodyguard and he was late catching up with the woman he’s supposed to guard. He said it would be all right as long as he was there when she came out.”

  “He could have bought a ticket,” Nasty pointed out.

  “There was a line. He said he didn’t want to risk being in the line and missing her.”

  Nasty ran a hand through his hair. “Now let me see if I’ve got this straight”—he stepped aside while the boy took several tickets and tore them in half before handing back the stubs—“a man gave you money to let him sit in the lobby and wait.”

  “He didn’t have to give me money,” the boy said defensively. “I didn’t ask him for it.”

  “Forget the money. He said he was that lady’s bodyguard?” Nasty angled his head toward Fab.

  “He never said whose bodyguard he was, but when the kid came out the guy talked to him. The kid who went in with her?”

  Nasty chewed steadily while he thought “Didn’t the police talk to you yet?”

  “Nah. I heard they were here. I been on break.”

  “What happened then?”

  Brad shrugged. “The guy said he and the kid needed to go out and get something. Said they’d be right back.”

  Polly felt edgy. Mom had said Fab took Bobby to the movies, but where were Dusty and Xavier? “It’s nice of you to drive me,” she told Jennie Loder, who edged her conservative navy blue BMW through nose-to-tail traffic on Lakeview Drive. “But I could have walked.”

  “I needed an excuse to talk to you. With all you’ve been going through, I haven’t felt I could take up any time.”

  “You can always talk to me,” Polly said. Jennie was reserved but she’d shown herself a willing ally on the show, and Polly liked her.

  “How d’you feel about Mary Reese?”

  The topic surprised Polly. “Okay, I guess.”

  “I think she’s a bitch.”

  Polly laughed. “Don’t like her much, huh?”

  “You could say that.” Jennie chuckled. “Seriously though, Art and I think she’s a problem. This job means a lot to us. We’ve kicked around the world a lot hoping for a bre
ak like this. Mary could scupper the works.”

  Bobby was the focus of Polly’s concentration. She wanted to be at the movie theater when the show let out. “You don’t have a thing to worry about. The show’s a huge success. It’s so big I have to pinch myself sometimes.”

  “It’s big because of what it is. The way it is. Mess with it, and it’ll fall apart.”

  “No one’s going to mess with it, Jennie. Relax.” Walking would have been faster. Downtown Kirkland had become the place for kids to cruise—despite an anticruising ordinance. Fine rain wasn’t deterring laughing crowds who spilled from the sidewalks and slowed progress even further.

  “There’s something with you and the diver, right, Pol?”

  The Australian’s accent inevitably made Polly smile with pleasure. “I’m not talking, Jen,” she said, trying for a facsimile.

  Jennie laughed “Alrighty. Clam up on me. I’ll take that as a yes. Mary doesn’t like you, y’know,”

  “What?” Polly swiveled in her seat. “Mary doesn’t like me? Where did that come from?”

  “She’s not married to Jacko, y’know.”

  “I do know that, yes.”

  “Can I trust you to keep mum on something?” Jennie glanced at her.

  “Sure. You know you can.”

  The Australian screwed up her eyes. “I kind of like Jack. I could probably like him a lot.”

  Now Polly’s interest was completely captured. “You’ve always said you hated the sight of him.”

  “Defense. I tried to hate him, so I wouldn’t give in to what I really felt.”

  “Okay,” Polly said slowly. “You’ve fallen for Jack Spinnel. What about him?”

  Jenny shrugged. “Believe it or not, I think he’s fallen for me, too.”

  “Geesh.” The promise of fireworks lay ahead. “That’ll mix things up. No wonder you aren’t too fond of Mary.”

  “She and Jack haven’t been getting along for ages. She demands everything of him—won’t give him any space. And she’s a maniac about sex.”

  Polly turned hot with embarrassment. “Yes, well, I suppose people sometimes fall out of love.”

  “Love!” Jennie guffawed loudly. “There’s no love about it. Love’s just a word, kiddo. She wants what’s in his pants, and he’s been giving it to her.”