by Lori Avocato
Tina pulled into the last long driveway on the right. As she traveled its length the garage door opened. She had an opener for this house. That must mean she owned it.
Ack!
I know her husband was a doctor, but so was Vance. He came from money, but on his own I knew he couldn’t afford two houses. No, make that a house and a mansion.
Damn.
Maybe Tina had bilked the insurance company out of money before.
Hell, it had to have been a bundle. I pulled around to the other street, which had mansions under construction. I could see Tina’s house clearly through the leafless branches of the trees in her backyard. I pulled over and tried to make my Volvo invisible behind some construction equipment.
I opened my purse, dug around for my old 35 mm and hoped there were still some shots left, since I hadn’t thought to get new film yet. I figured all this investigative stuff would come to me in good time. I looked at the camera. Good. One more shot left. I’d take a picture of her house. Why? I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like a good idea and maybe pertinent to my case.
I grabbed my gloves from my pocket and tucked my hair under a black wool cap that I found on the floor. I’d used it sledding last weekend with Miles. It was his, but it would keep my ears warm.
A chill had set into my bones while I talked to Tina, and even the heater in my car hadn’t successfully warmed me inside. Once bundled up, I opened the door, stuck the camera in my pocket and locked my purse in the trunk. No sense lugging it around. There sat the old video monster.
Damn it. I should have charged the batteries, but I thought I’d be working with Goldie’s stuff today. I cursed at the camera and slammed the trunk shut. Oops. I looked around. Not a soul in sight. Good.
I pulled my hat lower and trudged across the snow-covered empty lots between two mansions under construction. I thought I saw someone in the front of the second house, but a wind must have caused the black tarp covering some construction equipment to move.
That same wind howled between the trees and right down into my bones. Damn, it was cold. On top of everything else, my eyes started to water. Oh well, a shot of Tina’s house and I’d be outta here. Home in a nice hot bath.
“Bubbles and all,” I murmured.
At the border of Tina’s yard, I froze. Not from the wind either. Her back door started to open! And me there with only naked trees for cover. I dove behind a pile of snow some kids must have shoveled to resemble an igloo.
Frozen to my inner core now, I rifled around in my pocket for the camera. Tina walked through the yard toward a woodpile, where she not so gingerly grabbed several logs.
Where was my new equipment when I needed it?
I tried to aim the camera but couldn’t move with the gloves on and covered in snow. With my teeth, I pulled one off, then the other, and told myself it wasn’t really that cold. Just as I looked through the viewfinder, Tina’s large form became shrouded in black.
What the heck?
I moved the camera up and down. Still black. Then the black moved. I readied to shoot the picture when the black became a flesh color.
A face.
A face glared at me through my camera.
I couldn’t put the damn thing down, so I pressed the shutter, heard the click in the still winter air. And realized I’d just taken a picture of Jagger.
Nine
For what seemed like hours, I stared at Jagger through the lens of my stupid camera. Maybe I was hoping he’d disappear. Maybe I was hoping he’d help me up, brush me off and let me go without a word.
Maybe I was hoping it really wasn’t Jagger.
No one had eyes that deep brown. Eyes that let you in only to lock you out at the same time. And eyes that could see into your very soul as if you were invisible.
Suddenly I felt myself being lifted up. I took the camera away from my eye—or maybe it fell away—as Jagger lifted me like a rag doll. A light one.
The guy had strength in those arms. They weren’t only for show—or my enjoyment.
“Come on.”
Without another word, he turned me around, away from Tina’s house and led me through the woods. At the end of the lot, we crossed the backyard of the house under construction, and with his hand still pulling me along, walked to a white trailer.
“You work here?” I queried, although I have no idea where I got the strength (or balls) to ask that.
He only walked faster and gave me an occasional look. At the door, he opened it and waited.
“I’m guessing you want me to go in.” I thought of his gun.
He swept his arm toward the stairs.
“How do I know you’re not going to hurt me?” Attack. Have your way with me—if there really is a God.
“You don’t. Get in.”
“You must think I’m stupid—”
A silver Jaguar pulled around the corner. In what seemed like an instantaneous decision, Jagger shoved me up the stairs and inside. Truthfully, I think he actually lifted me. The office was sparse. Not what I’d expect in a construction site.
Then again, it was three weeks before Christmas, Connecticut, and the ground was covered in about eleven inches of snow. Not exactly the height of the building season.
We were all alone.
Be still my heart.
I looked to see him sit on the only chair next to the only desk, which held one phone, pencil and Dunkin Donuts coffee cup.
I glared at the phone.
“Not connected.”
Damn. The guy didn’t miss a trick. Of course not, Pauline! He’s FBI!
Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. But he was definitely on top of everything that went on around him.
If he was FBI, I told myself, I needed to cooperate. I wasn’t up on the law, but I thought I saw a movie about a witness not cooperating and his teeth were pulled out one by one. Wait. That was the Mafia, not the FBI who did it. Still, didn’t Mary Richards on the Mary Tyler Moore show have to go to jail for not revealing her sources? Okay, she was a news reporter. I was a plain citizen.
Who’d been stalking Tina Macaluso.
Maybe Jagger was still a PI and she’d hired him to follow me. Maybe she lured me here with that “fill in for her job” routine.
I yanked Miles’s hat off, shook off the snow and looked at Jagger. “What?”
He grinned.
I turned toward the window and caught my reflection. Methuselah had nothing on my hairdo. Wildly I tamped it down. He sat staring. I contemplated telling him how rude it was that he didn’t offer me a seat but thought better of the idea. Instead, I pulled myself up to my full height, shook my parka a few times and looked right back at him. Not too hard to do.
“Am I under arrest?”
“What’d you do?”
“I … what do you mean, what did I do?”
He lifted his feet, parked them on the desk. I hadn’t noticed before, but he wore black cowboy boots. The bottoms were fairly worn. He looked the type. I wouldn’t have expected wingtips.
He smiled again.
That alone unnerved me. I forgot the question. With him looking, all I could do was stand there, wrapping my Steelers parka tightly around me—and feeling naked.
Jagger was a master at the old staring game I used to play with my siblings. It had to be hours—okay, minutes that I stood there with neither of us saying a word. Finally my stomach growled.
He grinned.
“Yes, I am hungry. And I have a dinner appointment.”
“Date?”
“Okay … date.”
“Then let’s make this quick.” He pulled his feet off the desk.
I got ready to defend my honor, for as much as he was a hottie, I wasn’t ready for that. The thought struck me that it was odd how something in my imagination seemed like such a good idea—a wonderfully orgasmic idea—yet when push came to shove in the world of reality, I wasn’t ready to make love to Jagger.
“What are you going to do to me?”
“
To you?” He looked genuinely confused.
“Why did you pull me in here? What were you doing out at Tina’s?”
“How did you know she lived there?”
“I—” I’m on a case. Could I really tell him that? I could if I knew who he was. “I don’t have to tell you that. If you don’t have an arrest warrant for me, then I’m outta here.”
I turned toward the door. That was all my feet would do. Damn them. I couldn’t get out. I felt him staring at my back, almost gluing me to the spot.
“I still do not know why you think I should arrest you—”
I swung back around. “Ah ha!”
“Ah ha, what?”
“So you can arrest me.”
“Look, Pauline. I could arrest you just as you could arrest me as a citizen or by calling 911 if you found me doing something illegal… .”
Shit. He confused me. “Isn’t shoving me into this trailer illegal?”
He raised his hands. “Am I stopping you from leaving?”
No, my feet were. “What do you really want? I have to get to my parents’—”
His grin had me nearly in Nirvana. “I thought you had a date?”
“I never said … Okay , I don’t. I have dinner plans at my parents’, and my mother will be worried if I’m late.” I pretended to look at my watch. “Oh, shoot. They’re probably saying grace right now. Without me. My father takes medication for his blood pressure and my elderly uncle lives there—”
“All interesting, but I’m confused.”
Who wouldn’t be? “My point is they will all worry.” I looked at my watch, really did, this time. Four thirty. Yikes. Who eats at four thirty? “We always eat early on meatloaf night.”
“Meatloaf night?”
“My mother makes meatloaf on Mondays. She makes a meal for every day of the week like clockwork, and makes enough to feed all of Hope Valley. I really have to go. I’m starved.”
“I could eat. Let’s go.”
I walked to the door and stopped. Let’s?
Okay. I really believed he was FBI and I had to do what he said. There was that gun thing. I mean the guy scared the stuffing out of me. He was everywhere I was. There had to be a good reason, and it had to involve Tina too. I would just bet. Maybe I could use him to further my case. That is, without him knowing it. Still, if he was FBI? Oh well, I’d still try to use him.
But to find myself sitting at my parents’ table across from Jagger—my meatloaf sat on my tongue like a dried-up piece of cork.
Mom would die if she heard that analogy.
“So, Mister Jagger,” my mother said as she served him another slice of meatloaf without asking.
He smiled. “Just Jagger.”
She spooned a heaping portion of mashed potatoes onto his dish.
“Thanks, Missus Sokol. I’m getting full, though it is all delicious.” He took a token—I was guessing—spoonful and ate it. His lips, full and moist, worked miracles when he chewed.
And not only on the food.
My mother remained silent, watching as I joined her.
I could only stare.
He had my mother mute. My mother! She set the ladle down and returned his smile, totally forgetting her question and obviously not caring. Me, I was dying to get his name thing cleared up, but felt certain it wouldn’t be tonight.
Daddy and Uncle Walt ate and stared. I know Daddy was observing Jagger for his intentions—but those were something else I felt certain wouldn’t be revealed tonight.
If ever.
As if there were any intentions!
Uncle Walt kept asking about the black Suburban. Did it get good gas mileage? Did it do well in the snow? The ice? And on and on until Jagger promised him a ride around the block after dinner.
My mother insisted not until after dessert. If she’d known we were having company, she would have made something special, she told him. As it was, she said, she’d only thrown a homemade chocolate cake in the oven and added her secret two tablespoons of cream cheese to the frosting—which she revealed to Jagger.
And here I had never known it for years, and never would have found out if I hadn’t walked in on her baking for my twenty-ninth birthday.
My mouth watered at the mention of chocolate. That had to be the salve I needed to pacify me after this pip of a day I’d had.
And Jagger sitting across from me.
I needed chocolate.
“When’s dessert?” I asked without thinking.
My father looked at me. “Give us a chance to finish our meal, pczki.” He took a huge bite of mashed potato, added a piece of meatloaf to it and topped it off with a side order of peas and carrots. Daddy always loaded his fork with a three-course meal.
Jagger looked up. He was going to ask what a pczki was, and I didn’t want my father telling him that he called me a donut. So, I had to act fast. “Where are you from, Jagger?”
He looked at me. The question threw off the steadfast whatever he was. Good job, Pauline.
“Hartford. What’s a pczki?” He aimed the question at my father.
I sunk down into my seat.
Even the fact that he admitted he was from Hartford didn’t help. My face was already hotter than my mother’s meatloaf (and she was a stickler for serving food piping hot).
Daddy went on about how he’s called me the little Polish donut name since I was born, weighing in at a whopping ten pounds, five ounces. How pink and round I had been, he added. Thank you very much, Daddy.
I looked past my mother to the brocade avocado green drapes that have hung in the dining room forever and contemplated if the drawstring was strong enough to make a noose out of.
Before I finished planning my demise, I heard a deep chuckle, and glanced up to see Jagger looking my way.
So, I straightened up in my seat, ignored my lobster complexion and said, “Hartford. Small world. So you’ve lived in Connecticut all your life?”
He took a sip of the Coors that my father insisted needed to follow the whiskey shot the Polish always offered their company. I’d be looped and on the floor if I’d had the two Jagger so graciously accepted and drank. Didn’t look as if they’d fazed him.
“No.”
I waited. Mother excused herself to clean up. Daddy sipped at his Coors and Uncle Walt kinda nodded off. Dessert would get him kicking again. And I sat there still waiting for more of an answer than a simple no.
None came.
Daddy broke the ice with, “Hartford. Did you hear that, Stella? Jagger is from Hartford. Not too far away.”
From the kitchen Mom called, “Do you still have family there, dear?”
Dear?
“None left, I’m afraid.”
Mother stuck her head out of the door. “Oh my. That means you don’t have family to spend Christmas with.”
I could hear her talking—knew what was coming. But her voice slowed in motion like that deep sound you hear in a scary movie.
“Spend Christmas with us. We celebrate twice. Christmas Eve we call Wagilia. Then you have to come back for Christmas Day. No one should be by themselves on Christmas… .”
Unless they’re Jagger! I sat frozen to my seat. Maybe he’d decline. Pauline, you nut case! Of course he’ll decline. Release your fists before your nails poke holes in your skin. He’ll decline.
“Sounds wonderful. Thanks,” Jagger said.
“Pauline, help your mother,” Daddy said.
Help my mother do what? I could think of a few things right now, but I got up like a robot and started to clear the dishes. When I reached for Jagger’s dish, his hand grasped mine.
Lord, I hoped my father didn’t notice the little hitch in my breath.
And that—please, Saint Theresa—Jagger didn’t hear either.
“I’ll get it,” he said, then pushed back his chair, stood and helped me clear the table.
One wouldn’t think an FBI agent would do dishes.
My mother bustled about the kitchen getting the good china
out of the hutch. When I’d arrived earlier, unannounced and with Jagger in tow, she had insisted we eat in the dining room.
On a Monday!
Even my parents had been affected by my new job and … Jagger .
“Get some ice cream out, Pauline,” Mom said as she lifted the metal cover off the ancient cake tin she’d had since my birth. “Chocolate.”
Hmm. Maybe Jagger had Mom needing chocolate too.
I did what I was told and got out the Hood chocolate ice cream, the scooper I knew she’d tell me to get next, and five clean forks.
“Get the icecream scooper and five clean forks too, Pauline.” She never looked back but trudged ahead, cake in hand.
I looked at Jagger. He smiled.
Maybe he’d had a Polish mother too.
Then again, he didn’t look Polish. More Mediterranean, although his name offered little clue. When I got to the doorway between the kitchen and dining room, he leaned near.
“We’re not finished.”
My knees buckled. I stumbled into his chest and poked a fork into his arm.
“Ouch!”
My mother stood behind him glaring at me. “What are you doing, Pauline?” She grabbed the silverware as if the forks were lethal weapons and ordered, “Get a clean fork. I’m so sorry, Mister Jagger.”
He smiled. “No problem.”
Dessert was fabulous as usual. Other than that bread pudding on Fridays, my mother could open her own bakery. Of course when you spend your life cooking for others, you’re bound to get pretty damn good at it.
After Jagger and I cleaned up, he looked at Uncle Walt, who was fast asleep with a smudge of chocolate on his upper lip.
Jagger looked at my father. “Please tell him I owe him a ride, sir.”
Daddy nodded. “You two kids hurry off before Mother has you playing Scrabble.”
Again I had no memory of leaving my parents’ house, yet here I sat in Jagger’s Suburban. I did, however, remember that the last word I’d heard was Scrabble. The heater blasted warm air on my legs, and we were sitting in the parking lot of the Super Stop and Buy a few blocks from my parents’ house.
At least he couldn’t have his way with me in such a public area.