Maybe she needed to rethink this No Stress thing. It wasn’t working out as well as she’d hoped anyway. Leaving the corporate world had seemed like a good idea at the time; yet walking away from a good paying job to ferry drunken tourists to the Jungle Room at Graceland held less appeal than it had six months ago. An overload of job-related stress, and a breakup with a man entirely unsuitable for anything but target practice, had contributed to her rash decision to leave her job in corporate banking. Another good idea gone bad. She should be on Oprah. Or Dr. Phil. One of those, What Not To Do When This Happens To You shows.
As she walked toward her bike in the driveway, she saw a thin slice of light coming from Yogi’s workshop door. Her heartbeat escalated. It had to be Yogi. Relieved, she navigated a path around a metal sunflower, two plastic rabbits, a ceramic frog, and Yogi’s version of the leaning tower of Pisa to reach the workshop door.
Shoving it open, she said, “Damn, I’m glad you’re back,” and the man bent over a rubbish barrel against the workbench straightened. She caught a quick glimpse of a startled face beneath dark, slicked-back hair, a thin build in a jump suit with some kind of lettering, and then he leaped forward to smack her on the head with something in his hand.
She screamed. Lights like a dozen sparklers exploded in front of her eyes. Then she slumped to the floor and everything went black.
Six
Harley moaned, one hand flopping in a pile of rags. Someone took her hand and held it, fingers pressing her pulse. Aware, but as if through a thick fog, she fought her way out of black, clinging shrouds. Blinding light shone down, intense and obliterating everything else. Daylight already? Then the sun eclipsed and a face swam into view, a blur at first, then sharpening until she recognized Morgan staring down at her. He looked worried. How sweet.
“Hey,” he said when she tilted her head and looked at him, “looks like you took a fall.”
“Nunh unh.” She tried to push to a sitting position, but his hand kept her down. The sun swayed, and when she blinked again, turned into a hundred watt light bulb. Her head hurt. Her tongue felt thick. There was a strange pounding behind her eyes. “Ouch. Didn’t fall. Got hit.”
“Got hit?” He peered into her eyes. “Who?”
“Greasy guy. A mechanic maybe. Hey, watch the hand.”
“Which one?” He’d parted her hair to find the lump on her head, but his other hand rested on her ribs just below her breast.
“Both. Oooh, my head hurts.”
“I imagine it does. That’s a nasty bump. What’d he hit you with?”
“I don’t know.” She paused, then said, “It looked like a piece of pipe. Felt like a tree.”
“Why would a mechanic be here?” He looked around the workshop. “Did you know the guy?”
“Never saw him before. Not sure I’d know him if I saw him again. Hey, how’d you find me out here?”
“Saw the lights on. Why’d you come back?”
“Not to turn off the lights. Can you fix traffic tickets, by any chance?”
“No. So why’d you come back?”
“To get my new motorcycle tag. Which brings me back to the ticket—”
“Sit up.”
When she did, he slid an arm behind her and lifted her. She thought about resistance then decided she didn’t have the energy. Besides, he seemed to have a plan.
“Where are we going?”
“To my house,” he said, swinging her up into his arms and walking toward the door.
She grabbed the doorframe and clung to it. “No. Not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“You’re going to report this, aren’t you?” He nodded, and she said, “Yeah, so I wanna be here, not next door with a cold cloth on my head.” There was no way she’d let the cops have free rein in her parents’ house without supervision.
“Just how hard did that guy hit you? What do you think you’re going to miss?”
He sounded irritated, but she didn’t really care. It was a small victory but a solid one, and she sat on the back porch steps while he called it in. Within minutes, a patrol car was in front and Mrs. Shipley stood on the curb taking in every detail. Not even a Benadryl and vodka cocktail would make Sadie Shipley miss this much excitement.
Harley gave her statement while uniformed officers searched the workshop, the yard, and the house. Whoever hit her had already ransacked the house. She went inside and gazed sadly at the mess. Everything was turned upside down.
“It looks like the inside of a goat’s stomach,” she said. “Crime is really getting out of hand.”
“So what were they looking for, Harley?” Bobby Baroni walked through the front door, frowning as he looked around at the mess.
“I should know? Stuff to sell, I guess.”
“Then why didn’t they take the TV or VCR?”
He had a point. She frowned, but that made her head hurt so she stopped. “How should I know? Maybe they got interrupted.”
“If that was true, then why hang around to smack you in the head. There’s something odd going on here, Harley.”
“Tell me about it.”
Sweeping a pile of broken crystals onto the floor from the overstuffed chair she flopped into it, groaning a little. Even her teeth hurt. And Bobby sounded pissed off.
“No, you tell me about it.”
She’d closed her eyes. Now she opened one to stare at him. “Tell you what? What are you doing here, anyway? You’re Homicide, not Burglary.”
“This may be related.”
Her eyes narrowed. “To what, pray tell?”
Ignoring that, he said, “So where are your parents?”
“Jeez, why do you persist in thinking I’m holding out on you? In case you haven’t already noticed, I just got hit in the head.”
“So? I’m tempted to hit you in the head at times. Especially now. It’s late and I’ve been on duty sixteen hours. Let’s make this short and sweet.”
“Get stuffed, Bobby.”
Silence fell, heavy and sizzling.
“Uh, Lieutenant?” came a voice from the direction of the kitchen, and Harley recognized the officer who’d taken her statement at Mrs. Trumble’s earlier in the day. He stood in the doorway with an apologetic expression. “There’s something out here you might want to see.”
Thinking of the illegal pot plants growing next to Diva’s tomatoes, Harley struggled to her feet to follow. That’d be all she needed, to be busted for drugs right in the middle of this mess.
Morgan stood in Yogi’s workshop, a bemused expression on his face when he looked up. The naked light bulb swayed back and forth overhead. Yogi’s old workbench looked even more cluttered in the fitful light. Morgan’s eyes went to Harley. Then he held up something glittery he’d pulled from the three pound coffee can in his hand. She stared at it without moving.
“Crystals. Diva makes dream catchers and sometimes pieces of jewelry with them,” she said, watching as Bobby moved to look at the stones. Snapping on a rubber glove, he held them up to catch the light, prisms of rich color from a necklace flashing in the gloom.
Then it hit her, and even before she heard Bobby say, “This must be worth a couple of hundred thousand,” she knew it wasn’t made of cheap crystals.
Oh hell.
It was nearly two before she left, giving in to Morgan’s suggestion that she stay the night at his house. It was close, her head hurt, and he promised to sleep on the couch and keep all his clothes on. Besides, it was likely the police would be next door most of the night doing their thing with the investigation. She could always scream for help again. Mrs. Shipley must be in her element by now anyway, hovering outside watching. She’d love to get involved.
“Harley Jean,” she called across the street, one hand gripping the closed edges of a bright red satin housecoat that made her look like a flaming torch, “are you all right? Where’s your mama?”
Flapping a hand at her, she only said she was just fine, thank you, and kept going. Let her think
what she wanted. Speculation would keep her going for weeks.
Morgan came in after she’d gotten out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her head and one of his tee shirts reaching almost to her knees. “Hope you don’t mind,” she said in reference to the tee shirt.
He shrugged. “No problem.”
“So much for keeping a low profile. Your cover’s really blown by now, I imagine.”
“Probably.”
“You shouldn’t have called in the cops.”
“No?” He looked at her with a raised brow. “Do you really want to go into a list of what shouldn’t have been done?”
“Not really.”
“Good thing. Go to bed. You look beat.”
She felt it. It didn’t help, though, that he noticed.
It was nearly seven when she woke the next morning. Jeez, only four hours sleep and she had to ferry around a group of inquisitive tourists. Groaning, she dragged herself from the bed, a queen-size pillowtop that threatened to suck her back in, then struggled into the bikini panties she’d washed out in the shower and were still damp. They’d dry quickly in the heat, she was sure.
Morgan was already up and making coffee when she went into the kitchen. He gave her a brief glance and shoved a mug toward her.
“This stuff is toxic,” she said after her third sip.
He nodded. “It’s supposed to be. You okay?”
“Much better. Why? Don’t I look okay?” She ran a hand through her limp hair, lamenting the lack of gel that gave it body.
“You look fine.”
Another flowery compliment. She could almost get giddy from the praise.
“Thanks, sport.”
“Any time.” He watched her a minute, then said, “Keep it quiet about the necklace for a while. Maybe the thief will come back for it.”
Jesus. “That sounds unlikely. There were too many cops hanging around last night.”
“Unless he hung around too, he won’t know that. Besides, hysterical females are prone to calling the cops when attacked.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I was not hysterical.”
“Right. It’d be to your advantage to cooperate about the necklace.”
That was true. She gave him an appraising look. He didn’t seem perturbed or even sleep-deprived. It was unsettling that he looked so fresh when she felt so wilted. It was even more unsettling that he wore only a pair of sweatpants, no shirt. All that bare skin and testosterone . . . .
“I’ll think about it,” she said, and had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes narrow as she left, firing up her bike in a defiantly loud snarl and taking off with him watching her go.
It was one of those pristine mornings with lots of sunshine and no clouds. Cool and quiet and lovely. She considered what she knew about Mike Morgan/Bruno Jett on her way to the office to pick up the van keys for her first gig. He wasn’t as bad as she’d thought, but he wasn’t exactly Mr. Personality, either. While it was a relief finding out that he wasn’t a murderer or an ex-con, she still wasn’t sure he was one of the good guys.
“Stay away from that guy,” Tootsie advised when she told him about her night, leaving out the parts about Jett being Morgan and finding a necklace. “He could be dangerous. And even if he came to your rescue, he still sounds like big trouble.”
Oh, he had no idea just how big, and she couldn’t tell him. Promises were so inconvenient at times.
“For all you know,” Tootsie continued, “he could have been the one to hit you in the head and just called in the cops to cover it up.”
“No. I saw the guy who hit me. It wasn’t Bruno.”
“And that’s another thing. The name. Why is he using the name of a guy already in jail? It doesn’t make much sense, baby. Has that occurred to you?”
“I take it you didn’t find out anything else, then.” It’d be so much easier if he had. Then she wouldn’t have to keep Jett’s real identity a secret.
Tootsie hesitated, then leaned forward, lowering his voice. “There’s something suspicious about all this, baby. Have you considered that there are only two good reasons for a man to use a name belonging to some guy in prison? One reason is legal. One is not.”
Any reply she made would be a violation of her promise, she reasoned, but if Tootsie was smart enough to guess—well, she certainly wasn’t responsible for that.
“So what else did you find out about him?” she asked after a moment. “Anything?”
“Not much. But it set me to thinking that it’d be too big a coincidence for Bruno Jett to be in Federal custody for jewelry theft among other various crimes, and the Bruno Jett here to have a pile of jewelry on his coffee table. Two Bruno Jetts is stretching it. But one man pretending to be Bruno Jett makes fairly good sense. Especially—” he paused for dramatic effect, “if the man is an undercover cop.”
Harley smiled. Tootsie sat back in his chair with a sound of disgust.
“You already knew,” he accused, and she nodded.
“Remember, I didn’t tell you. I figured it out last night. Or I think it was last night. It feels like yesterday was forty-eight hours instead of only twenty-four. But I couldn’t have figured it out without you, Tootsie. You found out about the real Jett being in Federal custody in Virginia. This one’s a cop. I’m sure of it.”
“What is it with you and men in uniform, baby,” Tootsie said, sounding more resigned than irritated.
“He doesn’t wear a uniform. Sometimes he doesn’t even wear a shirt.” She rubbed at her head while reading over the schedule of planned activities for the day. “I’ll do Graceland first, then Beale Street, and save Brooks Art Gallery for last. With any luck, there won’t be time to do it all.”
“Hey, if you don’t feel up to it, I can call in a relief driver.”
“No, I need the money. And this group doesn’t sound too rowdy. It’s the corporate guys away from home that give me trouble. I’m taking a clean tee shirt from the back, by the way.”
Fortunately, the group was fairly sedate, and as she’d hoped, the wives lingered in the gift shops of Graceland so long they ended up eating lunch at one of the rock and roll themed cafés instead of down on Beale Street as planned. That was the beauty of this job. She could let the Graceland tour guides take over for most of the time and only had to round up everyone when they got off the van that took them across the street to the mansion. Usually, she spent the free time reading or listening to music, sitting in the sun when it was nice, in one of the shops or the company van when it wasn’t. While it wasn’t exactly a career, it would do for now.
By the time they reached Beale Street, it was after one and the group was due back at their hotel at five. They had three and a half hours to explore the clubs and make the required visit to B.B. King’s and the Hard Rock Café. Pat O’Brien’s lured some of the group, while the blues drifted out open doors of other clubs. Harley bought a morning paper and went to sit in the small park with its concrete benches. Sunlight gleamed brightly. She wore sunglasses, the clean Memphis Tour Tyme tee shirt, and sneakers with no socks. Her eyelids itched from lack of sleep. It could be worse. Tonight, she planned a long hot bath in her own tub, then eight hours in bed.
The Commercial Appeal had a small two-paragraph article on page three of the A section about Mrs. Trumble, citing her death as the result of a home invasion gone bad. The investigation was ongoing, and nothing was said about possible suspects. Well, really. So was Yogi cleared?
Dixie trilled on her cell phone and she dug it out of her backpack, hoping it would be Diva or Yogi. It wasn’t.
“What time do you get off?” Bobby asked abruptly, and she replied automatically, “Every time.”
“Funny, Harley. Stop by the West precinct. I’ll be here for a little while.”
“If I have time. Why?” Despite the heat of the sun, a cold chill shot through her. “Yogi and Diva, are they—”
“Still hiding somewhere. Can you be here around five-thirty?”
“Yeah, depending on
traffic. Is this serious?”
“That depends on what you call serious.”
“Dammit, Bobby, tell me now before I bust something internal. I’m on my last nerve.”
“Fine. Charges are gonna be pending against your parents.”
“What kind of charges?”
“For starters, possession of stolen property. The necklace found in Yogi’s workshop was reported stolen last month.”
Damn. “I thought you wanted to keep it quiet for now. I mean, I just know there has to be some kind of plausible explanation for this, so why not? You know Yogi’s not a thief.”
“Once charges are filed, it’s out of my hands, Harley. I’ll do what I can.”
“Yeah.” She swallowed hard. “I know that. All right. I’ll keep quiet about the necklace. I recognize blackmail when I hear it.”
“Just so we understand each other.”
“You’re a dung beetle, Bobby.”
“Love you, too, babe.” He hung up.
Bummer. Things were going from bad to worse, but at least murder charges hadn’t been filed. Yet.
By the time she dropped off her load of tourists at their hotel and returned to the office to leave the keys and van, Tootsie was the only one still there. She slumped into a chair in the dingy waiting room and closed her eyes. Tootsie made a sympathetic sound.
“Long day, baby?”
She opened one eye. “Has it been only one day?”
“Yeah, ’fraid so. Have you heard from your parents?”
“Not a word. You’d think they’d call me, leave a message or something. They have to know I’m worried, dammit.” She drummed her fingers against the beige wood of the armchair. “I can understand Yogi not calling. He’s usually pretty oblivious. But Diva should at least call.”
Hound Dog Blues Page 10