Another Day, Another Dali

by Sandra Orchard

  “I took another look at the coffee shop’s surveillance video. Your mugger talked to someone just before he left. I’m emailing you the picture now.”

  I snatched up my phone and shut off the speaker. “Hold on a sec.” I thumbed in my email and opened the image. “Randy.”

  “You know him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I snapped that from the screen with my phone, but I’ll download the clip and send it to you. This guy and your mugger talked for over a minute and both left around the same time.”

  “Thanks, Matt. I appreciate you going the extra mile on this for me.”

  “Hey, you can show your appreciation by babysitting the little terror.”

  “Uh . . .” My mind whirled with questions about Randy. Did he know the guy who mugged me? Did he see him do it? Did he tell him to do it? Was that why he came into the MAC? Looking for another opportunity?

  Matt laughed. “Little Terror is a pet name. The munchkin’s not that bad. But”—his voice sobered—“Tracey’s last pregnancy got really dicey toward the end, so I’m trying to give her all the breaks I can, and I’ve kind of maxed out all the family members.”

  “Um . . .” I dragged my mind back to the conversation and strained to focus on what Matt was saying. “Sure. I can babysit. Just let me know when,” I said and clicked off. How hard could it be to take care of one pint-sized kid for an evening? If I ran into trouble, I could always call Mom. Witnessing my ineptitude might cool her jets on the whole get-Serena-married crusade. Then again, if he was a little cherub, it would only fuel her enthusiasm.

  Ack. I had more important things to worry about at the moment. I turned the corner and came face to face with one of them—Nate. Was his brother in cahoots with the drug dealers?

  “I think I should drive tonight.” I opened my clutch to grab my wallet and keys, and my pantyhose tumbled out.

  Nate’s eyeballs popped and a tiny frown tugged at the corners of his lips.

  I snatched up the pantyhose and tossed them into the hall closet. “I didn’t want them to run,” I explained.

  “Right.”

  Okay, that didn’t sound as if he believed me, and I didn’t want to contemplate what he might be imagining pantyhose in my purse meant. I was pretty sure he didn’t know I’d been out with Tanner. Not that it was really a date, anyway. Not that Nate would care if it had been. Or maybe he would. My heart tumbled around my chest. Maybe I wanted him to care. Oh man, I didn’t want to analyze that right now.

  Nate pulled his keys from his pocket. “I’d better drive. Don’t want Randy looking too closely at your car.”

  “Right.” But as much as I trusted Nate, I wasn’t sure we could trust his brother. And if push came to shove, I had no idea which way Nate’s loyalties would fall.

  We let ourselves out my kitchen door, and the clang of a heavy footfall on the bottom step made me jump. “Tanner, what are you doing back here?”

  His head cocked, and I remembered that I didn’t look like Serena with my floppy hat, hippy poncho, leather boots to the knees, and dark hair extensions. His gaze raked over my outfit and then settled on my face. A twitch at the corner of his lips was the closest he came to acknowledging whatever he thought of my performance. At least he didn’t seem mad over my not coming clean when he happened upon us last night. “I guess this answers my question about whether you knew your super was seeing another woman.”

  “What brought you back?”

  He held up my wrap. “You forgot this in my truck.” He motioned to my outfit. “Another undercover op?”

  “Benton knows about it,” I blurted, suddenly feeling like a rookie who needed to call down the authority of her boss to prove she hadn’t gone rogue.

  That telltale muscle in Tanner’s cheek flicked, as if that didn’t make him feel any better. Probably made him more annoyed I’d left him out of the loop. He threw a squinty glance Nate’s way. “You got backup?”

  Clearly, he didn’t think Nate fit the bill. And with what I’d just learned about his brother, he might be right. “You volunteering?” I asked.

  “What do I need to know?”

  Tanner tailed us across town and pulled to the curb half a block shy of Randy’s apartment.

  I adjusted the earpiece we’d stopped at headquarters to retrieve. “You hear me okay?” I asked as we headed up the sidewalk to the building’s front door.

  “Loud and clear.”

  “What on earth?” Nate veered toward the alley. “Hey!” he shouted and disappeared behind the building.

  “What’s going on?” Tanner asked.

  I raced to the corner of the building. “Someone’s getting beat up.”

  The attacker shoved the victim at Nate and bolted straight into me. I caught him by the arm, but before I could crank it behind his back and shove him up against the side of the building, he yanked my blasted poncho over my face and drove me into the brick wall.

  “Ser-e—” Tanner choked off my name. Hopefully before Randy caught it.

  The next thing I knew, Tanner and Nate were jostling each other out of the way to help me up from the ground.

  “Go! I’m fine. Get the bad guy!”

  Tanner sprinted down the alley after him.

  Nate hesitated half a second. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, go help Tanner. I’ll see to Randy.”

  Randy pushed to his feet and swayed.

  I dashed to his side and caught his arm to steady him. “Who was that? Why’d he jump you?”

  “Just a punk.” Randy peeled my hand off his arm and momentarily stared at it before releasing it.

  I stuffed it under my poncho. Had he felt the abrasion on my hand? In the exact same spot as he’d noticed Serena’s this afternoon?

  He pressed the back of his shirt cuff to his cut lip. “Sorry. I don’t think I’m up to introducing you to anyone tonight.”

  No kidding. In addition to the cut lip, he had a swollen eye, and judging from the way he cradled his middle, bruised ribs, maybe worse. But considering he’d been chatting with my mugger mere hours ago, I doubted the attack was as random as he seemed to want me to believe.

  “Let me help you up to your apartment.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Didn’t you have a British accent before?”

  I forced a chuckle, hoping he couldn’t see the heat climbing to my cheeks in the deepening darkness. “I play up the accent for Nate because he’s fond of it.”

  Nate and Tanner thankfully chose that moment to round the corner. Except . . .

  “He got away?” I asked.

  “Sorry,” Nate said.

  Tanner’s snort suggested he doubted the sentiment.

  “Who’s he?” Randy hitched his chin toward Tanner.

  Nate and I exchanged a panicked glance. A good FBI agent would have a plausible answer on the spot. Crud!

  “Calhoun.” Tanner extended his hand to Randy.

  What was he doing?

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  I choked down my gasp and, conjuring up an accusing glare, played along. “Did my husband hire you?”

  Nate’s hand fisted at his side. “I’m sorry, Sara. I don’t know how he found us.”

  Not as sorry as Tanner was going to be if his admission changed Randy’s mind about introducing us to his forger friend. “Whatever my husband’s paying you,” I said to Tanner in my most desperate-sounding voice, “I’ll double it for your silence.”

  “And how are you going to get your hands on that kind of money?”

  I glanced back at Randy, the link to my potential meal ticket. “Do you think your friend can help me?”

  Randy headed to the front of his building. “With a PI breathing down your neck? Not a chance.”

  “Take her home,” Nate whispered to Tanner. “I’ll talk to him.” He disappeared into the building behind his brother.

  “I don’t trust him,” Tanner said, steering me toward his SUV. “We had his brother’s attacker corner
ed, and Nate let him slip past him.”

  “He’s not an agent, Tanner.” I slid into the passenger seat. “He hasn’t been trained to take down suspects.”

  Tanner shut the door with a tad more force than necessary. “Why do you trust him?”

  “What makes you think I do?”

  He snorted and started his car.

  I filled him in on Randy’s chat with my mugger and his coincidental visit to the MAC at lunchtime. “I have my suspicions of Randy, and I’m not at all sure who Nate would side with if he had to make a choice.”

  “Maybe he’s ratted you out from the beginning. You thought of that?”

  I muffled a gulp. I’d discussed the forgery case with Nate last night. It’d been his idea to go to the bar where we ran into his brother. But I couldn’t imagine him ratting me out.

  Protecting his brother if he learned Randy was up to no good? Yes.

  Helping Randy do something bad? No.

  Although his brother clearly had no qualms. My Sara alter ego had told him how I planned to dupe my soon-to-be-ex-husband with the forgery, and he hadn’t so much as batted an eye.

  “You do know his brother is no saint?” Tanner said. “He got his first DUI at seventeen and half a dozen speeding tickets before he was twenty.”

  “You know this how?”

  “I asked the office to run a background check during the drive to his place. The system has extensive information on him, even interviews with friends.”

  That sounded as if they had an employment check on file. Like the one they did on me when I applied to the FBI.

  “People can change.”

  “But has he?”

  “He must have, or Nate would’ve steered me away from him as quick as he could. If my brother was buttering his bread from the wrong side, I sure wouldn’t introduce him to an FBI agent. Would you?”

  “Depends on my motives.”

  Okay, I did not want to hash this out a second longer because I suspected Tanner’s motives at the moment didn’t have a thing to do with wanting to help me make contact with local forgers.

  Tanner parked at the foot of my exterior stairs. The sky was moonless, and aside from a patch of light here and there from the odd window, the area was cloaked in dark shadows.

  “That’s weird. I’m sure I turned on the outside light before I left.”

  “Maybe the bulb burned out.”

  “Nate changed it last week.”

  Tanner jumped out of the truck right behind me. “I’ll walk you up.”

  I climbed the steps without arguing and then rummaged through my purse for my house key.

  Tanner, at six foot four, easily examined the negligent bulb. A moment later, light splashed over the landing.

  “Loose connection?” I asked, fitting my key into the lock. The lock that seemed a lot more hacked up than I ever remembered it being.

  “No, someone unscrewed your bulb.”

  I whirled around to scan the driveway, treetops, and rooftops. “I think someone tried to pick the lock too.”

  Tanner whipped out the gun he’d had tucked in a waistband holster as I grabbed mine from my purse. I lived in a good neighborhood. Not the kind where bad guys hung out in bushes, waiting for an opportunity. Trouble was, that fact made it more likely my visitor had chosen me for a reason.

  Tanner examined the nearby window. “Looks like someone tried to pry open the window too. Let me go in first. Make sure they didn’t get in.”

  I sucked in a sudden breath. “Oh no! Harold.” What if the intruder hurt him? Or kicked him out? He could be huddled under a bush somewhere, scared and lost. Oh, please, God, let Harold be okay.

  “Hey, relax, Serena. I’m sure he’s fine.”

  I blinked rapidly, nodding. This was crazy. I hadn’t even thought I was much of a cat person, but the little guy had really gotten to me.

  Tanner took my key and unlocked the door.

  He was SWAT and used to going first in situations like this, so who was I to mess up routine? I mentally ran through suspects in my current cases. None of them seemed the type to come looking for more trouble.

  Tanner crept through the kitchen, checked the broom closet and every corner, then disappeared around the corner. I padded across the kitchen and positioned myself at the opening to the entranceway—a wide hall that stretched to my right into the living room and ahead of me to the two bedrooms and bathroom.

  “All clear there,” Tanner whispered, emerging from the living room. Next he cleared the bathroom and my bedroom, then chucked his chin toward the spare room. “Do you usually keep the door closed?”

  I crept closer. “No.”

  Tanner slowly pushed it open, scanned the room by the scant illumination of the streetlight outside the window, then inched inside. “Owwwww!”

  Gun first, I whipped around the corner of the door.

  Tanner’s gaze swung to my gun. “It’s the cat! The cat!” He dove for cover as Harold’s yowl arced the room, followed by a soft thud on the other side of the bed.

  I lowered my gun a cat’s whisker. “Take it easy. I wouldn’t have shot you,” I said, fighting to control the jitter in my voice.

  Tanner sprang up and slapped on the light. “You could’ve fooled me.”

  My hands were shaking, giving away how totally freaked I’d been, but I went for cool as a cucumber. “Hey, you would’ve been thanking me if that had been a bad guy.”

  Tanner shook his head. “A bad guy would’ve been easier to deal with. Your crazy cat thinks he’s a kamikaze.”

  I shoved my gun into my waistband and consoled Harold. “It’s okay, boy. You did good.”

  “Did good? He almost took my eyes out!”

  “Sure, but if you’d been a bad guy, we’d be cracking open a tin of tuna and singing his praises.”

  Harold mewed a “yeah.”

  “Okay, okay, Serene-uh.” Tanner squinted up at the ceiling—probably praying for patience.

  The man was maddening. Tell me he wouldn’t have been freaking out if I’d gone into the room first and he’d heard me scream.

  “Well, the good news is,” he said, “it doesn’t look like your prowler got inside. Any ideas who it could be?”

  “Not really.”

  He holstered his gun and headed toward the living room. “A suspect from the art theft profiled in this afternoon’s email blast? The timing would fit.”

  “I haven’t narrowed in on anyone yet.”

  “Could be taking preemptive measures.”

  Hmm, I didn’t like the sound of that.

  A knock sounded at the hall door. I hurried to answer it, grateful for the distraction. I flipped on the rest of the lights as I went and peered out the peephole. “It’s my neighbor, Mr. Sutton.” I yanked it open.

  “Serena, what’s wrong? I thought I heard a scream.”

  “Yes, sorry about that. Everything’s fine.”

  He shook his head, deep furrows creasing his brow. “I don’t think so.” He held out a napkin. “This note was tacked to your door.”

  “Note?” The only thing I could see on it was the Boathouse restaurant logo.

  “May I?” Tanner opened the napkin and groaned.

  “Written by a real slangwhanger,” Mr. Sutton said. “That’s an obnoxious writer. Maybe that can be tomorrow’s word of the day.”

  “Thank you for bringing it to my attention,” I said, easing the door closed before I turned to Tanner and the note. “Do I want to know what it says?”

  Tanner sighed. “I shouldn’t have brought you in on this case. I don’t know who he thinks we are. Probably doesn’t realize we’re agents.”

  “What does it say?”

  “‘Watch where you step or next time you might lose more than a shoe.’”

  I crossed my arms over my midriff to fight the sudden wave of wooziness. “Clever play on words.”

  “These men don’t play.”

  9

  Loud pounding jerked me from my sleep. I squinted a
t the morning light streaming through the window, then at my digital clock blinking a time that didn’t make sense. The electricity must’ve been off.

  The pounding started again, accompanied by the peal of my cell phone.

  “I’m coming. I’m coming,” I called, dragging on my robe, then snatching up my phone. “Hey, Zoe, hold on a second. I got a crazy person pounding down my door.” Reaching for the dead bolt, I glanced out the peephole. Terri, Zoe’s bridesmaid. Uh-oh. “What time is it?” I said into the phone as I yanked open the door.

  Zoe jockeyed around Terri and burst into the apartment, her chestnut-brown hair almost as wild as her eyes. “Ten minutes to our appointment at the bridal shop!”

  Oops. I clicked off my phone. “I overslept.”

  “Yeah, and last Saturday you got called out of town. And the week before that was something else. Trust me, you haven’t begun to see what this crazy person will do if you’re not dressed in five minutes.”

  I laughed, thinking she was teasing, until her eyes flared. “Hey, I’m the one who introduced you to Jax, remember? That should compensate for being a delinquent maid of honor, don’t you think?”

  “There’s a statute of limitations on how many times you can play that card.” Zoe blew a hank of hair from her face and handed over a steaming cup of coffee. “Here, this’ll wake you up. Now go get ready.”

  “Feed Harold for me, will you?” I dashed to my bedroom and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, moved to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, spritzed and scrunched my hair, then dashed back to the living room. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Terri glanced up from her phone. “How do you do that? It takes me an hour to look that good.” She swiped her thumb across her phone screen. “No way! You’ll never believe what Phil does for a living.”

  “Who’s Phil?” I asked.

  Zoe herded us out the door. “He’s her latest prospect on that Catch Me a Fish dating site she’s always on.”

  “Hey, you’d be on it too if Serena hadn’t set you up with Jax.”

  “No, it drove me crazy. None of the guys could write a complete sentence, let alone spell.” Zoe clicked her remote to unlock the doors of her new car—a treat to herself after the art museum recognized her skill as head of security with a raise following our recovery of their stolen Monet.