The Lawman

by Martha Shields

  She studied his square-jawed, stubbled face. “That’s all you are? A cop?”

  He lifted his chin. “You bet your bamboo flutes.”

  She slowly shook her head. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  It was his turn for narrowed eyes. “I doubt that.”

  “There’s so much more to life than work.”

  “This from a woman with no hobbies, who’s here at the hospital seven days a week?”

  “No, I’m not. I take tai chi classes. I raise bonsai.”

  He stood and walked to the low files against the window and touched the pink azalea she had there. “You grew this?”

  She swiveled in her chair. “Yes. I rooted it from a bush a friend of mine has in Dallas.”

  He squatted and studied it on eye level. “I’ve always loved bonsai.”

  Pleasure sent a calming elixir through her, which both surprised and irritated her. Why should she be happy that they had a common interest? A lot of people liked bonsai. She donated several plants every year to the hospital bazaar and they sold very quickly, even though Crystal Bennett, her hospital fund-raiser, priced them far higher than they were worth.

  Was she irritated by the fact they both admired bonsai? Or by the difficulty she was having keeping her gaze averted from Jake’s thickly muscled legs clearly outlined by the pants stretched across them?

  “My tae kwon do instructor grew bonsai.” He looked at her, one eyebrow raised. “It takes a lot of patience.”

  She relaxed into a smile, not even caring that it probably appeared catty, especially when she said, “You hate it, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “When you prove my point.”

  He stood abruptly. “I’m hungry. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  “Don’t we have to stay here?”

  “Why?”

  “In case Branson Hines calls.”

  He shook his head. “He won’t.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I just am.”

  “But—”

  “Even if he does, we’re covered. Officer Hammel managed to get hold of a cell phone that can be recorded. He’ll route the calls to it or to your house, which is also wired. I told you that, didn’t I?’

  “No. Marie told me.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Must’ve slipped my mind.”

  “I can’t imagine why.” She bent to open the drawer where she kept her purse. Her heart leaped, because Caitlyn’s purse sat right beside hers. For a few minutes, she’d almost forgotten…

  Damn Jake. He’d succeeded in distracting her. She’d proved his point again, but she wasn’t going to let him know.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  She picked up both purses and placed them on her desk. “Nothing.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. So where would you like to eat?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t think I can.”

  “Oh, yes, you will. You only ate two bites of your sandwich at lunch.”

  She stood in order to hide her frown. How had he noticed that? She almost pointed out that he’d had two sandwiches, not two bites, which was enough for both of them. But she realized in time how much that would reveal about her own overly astute observation. As a general rule, people noticed things like that about people they cared for.

  So much for general rules.

  “I’m too nervous to eat,” she said. “But you go ahead. I’ve got something I need to do.”

  “What?”

  “Caitlyn Matthews has a cat. I’m going by her apartment to see that it’s been fed.”

  He seemed surprised. “Do you have a key?”

  “I think so.” She opened Caitlyn’s purse and found a set of keys in the first place she looked, the inside pocket. “After Caitlyn was…after the incident, someone brought her purse to me for safekeeping.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  “You’re going with me?”

  He nodded. “Along with several squad cars.”

  “But I have my own car.”

  “Then I’ll ride with you.”

  Five

  Jake insisted on driving, even though it was Tabitha’s car. He didn’t think they’d have to resort to evasive maneuvers, but if they did he needed to be in control. He didn’t tell her about the danger, of course, because the possibility was so remote.

  To approach her in person with so many police around, Hines would have to be much more aggressive than his profile indicated. He seemed to be the kind of criminal who preferred slinking through the shadows.

  Jake was surprised when Tabitha didn’t put up a fight, just handed him the keys with a sigh.

  Caitlyn Matthews lived in a small garage apartment in an older neighborhood of Mission Creek, just a few blocks from downtown. Her landlady was a Mrs. Brody, who’d lived in the house in front of the garage since she married nearly fifty years ago. The two-story white frame house had been built around the time of World War I. The ground floor had a deep shady porch that wrapped all the way around.

  Euclid was a quiet street, with many older residents like Mrs. Brody who knew who belonged there and who didn’t.

  Jake approved of that. Neighbors who watched out for each other kept crime down, and older people had little else to do but watch what went on around them.

  Even so, he paused to glance around before pulling into the driveway. The sun had almost disappeared below the horizon, leaving the gray light of dusk. Streetlights had already come on, throwing shadows across the yards.

  A squad car waited on either end of the street and officers would watch for anyone heading toward the house. Jake had his cell phone attached to his belt so he could be warned if anyone remotely matching Hines’s description turned down Euclid Street.

  “What’s wrong?” Tabitha asked from the passenger seat.

  “Nothing.” He finally pulled into the driveway. “Just looking around.”

  Mrs. Brody’s back light was on as they came along the driveway. She waved from her back porch when they pulled up to the stairs leading to Caitlyn’s apartment.

  “Hello, Mrs. Brody,” Tabitha called as she got out of the car. “You doing okay?”

  “Oh, I’m tolerable well, but what happened to poor Cait is just awful.” The older woman took the steps down from the porch very slowly. “I’ve never heard of such goings-on. Not in Mission Creek. And I’ve lived here all my life.”

  “Mrs. Brody, this is Jake White, the Assistant Police Chief. He’s in charge of the rescue effort.”

  “You the one responsible for all this, young man?” Mrs. Brody asked.

  “Well, ma’am, I’m not the one responsible for it happening, but I’m the one responsible for cleaning up the mess.”

  “Well, I reckon you’ve got the experience to handle it.” She turned to Tabitha. “And I reckon you need me to let you in.”

  “Actually, Mrs. Brody, I have Caitlyn’s keys. She was on the floor when it happened, so her purse was at the nurses’ stand. One of the other nurses on the shift brought it to me for safekeeping.” Tabitha drew Caitlyn’s keys from her own purse. “But I don’t know which key it is. Can you show me?”

  Mrs. Brody’s age-spotted, gnarly hands picked out a gold-toned key with a crisscross top. “There it is. Glad you got it. It’s not easy for these old bones to climb those steep stairs. I’ll just get on back to my supper. I always eat at six, you know. Have y’all had something to eat?”

  “We’re fine, Mrs. Brody. Please go back to your supper,” Tabitha said. “We’re just going to make sure Billy’s okay.”

  “All right, then. Let me know if y’all need anything.” The old woman turned to climb the four steps leading up to her porch.

  Jake and Tabitha headed toward the garage. The light on the landing into Caitlyn’s apartment had come on while they were talking to Mrs. Brody. Light- or motion-activated, no doubt.

  “Why did you say we’re fine?�
� Jake asked. “I’m starving, and I’ll bet she’s a great cook.”

  “You’re right, she is.” Tabitha paused on the first step. “The devil’s food cake she brings to the hospital bake sale would make you drool on sight. But if we ate her food, she wouldn’t be able to feed herself anything but crackers for a week. She’s a widow on a fixed income. She has it very hard.”

  Jake peered through the dim light at the house. He’d been too busy earlier checking for possible threats to notice the subtle signs of neglect—peeling paint, patched roof, missing shutters.

  “You coming?”

  He turned to see Tabitha halfway up the stairs. She’d twisted to look back over her shoulder, and the angle made her silk suit swath around every curve of her lithe, luscious body.

  Suddenly Jake’s hunger changed to a different kind altogether.

  What he wouldn’t give to see Tabitha in a white silk dress like Marilyn wore in The Seven Year Itch. The desire was so strong, he actually wondered where he could buy one.

  Realizing how far he was letting his fantasies go, he shook his head. He was not going to get in deep enough to buy Tabitha anything beyond dinner—and that he could charge to the department. The more time he spent with her, the more he knew she was not a casual fling kind of woman. And he certainly wasn’t a permanent relationship kind of man.

  “Yeah, I’m coming. Don’t go in without me.”

  She continued up the stairs. “Going to protect me from the big, bad cat?”

  “If I—” Jake’s retort was choked off as his gaze lifted and landed on her bottom.

  With each step Tabitha took, silk stretched across first one round, firm cheek, then the other.

  He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. All he could do was watch as each step she gained sent torturous waves of heat firing through him.

  Finally she reached the top and turned. “Well?”

  Jake swallowed hard. And he’d thought she was sexy just standing there. Climbing the stairs, she was the most arousing sight he’d ever seen.

  He had to get a grip on himself, though the grip he wanted was her sweet little—

  “Are you coming or not?”

  Damn, it was going to be a long night.

  “Almost,” he said wryly, then took the stairs two at a time, thanking God and every angel watching over him that she didn’t understand the double meaning.

  She gave him an odd look—making him wonder if she had—then she seemed to dismiss him as she turned and held the screen door open with her hip so she could fit the key into the lock. “I don’t want to hold the door open too long. We might let the cat out.”

  Jake drew his gun from the holster at his back.

  Tabitha frowned at the gun. “Is that necessary? Billy is big, as cats go, but I think you can take him.”

  He grinned. Damn, she was fun, and in the way he liked best—smart and sassy. “You can never be too careful. Okay. Push the door open, but stay out here until I give you the all clear.”

  She shoved the door open, then let the screen close behind him.

  Jake stepped into the living room, giving the room a quick sweep, then performed the same search on the bedroom after flipping on the lights in the bathroom and closet that separated them. Since the kitchen was part of the living room, divided from it by a counter, there were no more rooms left to search.

  “All clear,” he called, holstering his gun as he walked through the short hallway between the main rooms. “But I don’t see any sign of a cat.”

  The screen door squeaked. “You probably scared the poor thing to death. He was expecting his mama to come through the door, and you jump in pointing a gun at him.”

  Jake stood in the doorway between the bedroom and living room, hands on his hips. “If I’d pointed my gun at any cat, I’d have seen him. What does he look like, anyway?”

  Tabitha closed the wooden door behind her. “Kind of like Morris the cat. Remember on those commercials? He’s big and orange and his name is Billy the Kid.”

  “Billy the Kid, huh? Maybe I need to keep my gun out.”

  “Whatever pulls your trigger.” She bent to look under the coffee table. The pose wasn’t blatantly sexy, but the way her skirt stretched across her bottom again reminded him of the stairs. “Here, Billy boy. Come here, sweet little kitty.”

  Jake groaned.

  She peeked above the table. “Beg your pardon?”

  “Nothing.” He dragged his eyes away and forced them back to work.

  Glancing around the room for a likely cat hole, he noticed the decor for the first time. The tiny apartment was actually quite inviting, in a homey way, especially for a garage apartment. The living room could have been in Ben Cartwright’s house, if one of the Ponderosa sons had been a decorator.

  Adam, maybe?

  The rooms were filled with what looked like Western furniture and stuff, for want of a better word. Antiques, from the look of it.

  “How well do you know Caitlyn Matthews?” Jake asked.

  Tabitha pulled her head from the living room closet. “Not all that well, to tell you the truth, but probably as well as anyone. When she first moved to Mission Creek, I tried to make her feel welcome. She reminds me a lot of me at her age. She’s just…not an easy person to get to know.”

  “Is all this stuff antique?” He picked up a pair of silver-mounted, hand-forged cowboy spurs with engraved iron rowels. “It looks like it could be, but if it is, she must’ve been dealing drugs out of the hospital pharmacy. Stuff like this doesn’t come cheap.”

  “Here, kitty, kitty.” Tabitha opened a kitchen cabinet. “I know there’s a cat here somewhere. His bowl still has food in it.” She opened the next cabinet. “I asked her about all these wonderful accent pieces when I came over the first time. She goes to a lot of garage and estate sales, all the ones she hears about within driving distance. Gets some amazing deals.”

  “Accent pieces. So that’s what the term is for stuff.” Jake headed for the closet. “What do you mean, you know her as well as anyone? Not a friendly woman?”

  “No, not really,” Tabitha said on her way into the bathroom, “though she’s a wonderful nurse, and cute as a button. I’m sure you’ve seen her picture since all this happened.”

  He could hear the shower curtain holders scrape along the rod as she talked in a distracted way.

  “But I don’t think she dates at all. And she doesn’t go out with friends to shop or eat or for a night at the Saddlebag. In fact, from what I can tell, she doesn’t really have any friends.”

  “Well, I can tell you one thing about her,” Jake said from the closet.

  “What?”

  “She’s more than a tad anal retentive. All her clothes are lined up by color. They’re even arranged dark to light from left to right.”

  He heard the linen closet open. “Hmm. I knew she always kept her station neat. I thought maybe it was a fluke the way she has all her spices lined up in alphabetical order and her drinking glasses arranged according to height. And this… I can understand grouping your towels by color and size, but her bath oils and salts are arranged in alphabetical order according to scent. She has dental supplies all lined up, and makeup all in a row.” The linen closet closed. “Jeez. I thought I was bad.”

  “You’re just bad in another way,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” He grinned as he pushed back Caitlyn’s white clothes—mostly uniforms—to peer behind them. “You’d probably have a place like this, too, if you didn’t have a life.” He straightened and thought about what he’d just said. “You don’t, do you?”

  “What?”

  “Have a place like this.”

  “Well, I’m organized, but—” Tabitha’s thought broke off as they met in the short hallway, having finished searching their respective areas at the same time.

  Her bluebonnet eyes were wide as they met Jake’s, and he couldn’t tear his away.

  Time seemed suspend
ed as their gazes held. God, she was sexy. He wanted to feel the little nub of that mole against his lips, and his tongue, and his—

  She tore her gaze from his and turned toward the bedroom, but stopped dead in the doorway and sent a furtive glance over her shoulder.

  Heat flashed through him, because her tiny gesture told him that she’d realized immediately what room she was in and all that it implied, which told him that her libido had taken the same path his had.

  His first step toward her, which he was barely aware of taking, sent her scurrying to the far side of the room.

  “Where is that cat?” She knelt beside the bed to look under it. “Billy? Where are you, kitty?”

  “I found a cat carrier in the closet.”

  Her head popped above the mattress. “Do you think I should take him to my house?”

  Jake lifted a shoulder. “Your call, but he’d probably be safer there.”

  She frowned. “You think Branson Hines is going to come here?”

  “No, not Hines, but other lowlifes might. It’s been known to happen. They know a place is empty, so they take advantage of it.”

  “That’s despicable. To steal from someone who’s been kidnapped. Can you imagine going through such an ordeal, and then coming home to find all your stuff is gone?”

  “Breaking and entering’s no fun for anyone, but I see your point.” Jake took the near side of the room, peering under the pine chest of drawers. “Maybe she lets Billy outside during the day?”

  “No. Cait never lets Billy outside.”

  “No claws?”

  “Oh, he has claws. She’s just afraid he’ll run away.”

  Jake nodded, then looked under the bed, even though Tabitha already had. “He’s got to be here somewhere.”

  “I’m sure he is. He’s very good at hiding, though.” She looked around, hands planted on her hips. “The first time I came here, it was half an hour before I saw him. Cait said that the first time people visit, he runs and hides, but he eventually comes out. I think he’s okay after that. The second time I came over, he jumped on my lap as soon as I sat down. With Caitlyn, though, he comes running to greet her when she comes home.”