“Sure. Hold on.” She turned to her brother. “Here, dude, make yourself useful. Take King to the back and lock him in the laundry room. Dude!”
Eric looked from the front door to Harley and seemed faintly surprised. “What?”
“Dog. Out. Now. Please.”
“Chick,” he complained, but managed to drag King away from the living room to the back of the house.
Harley opened the door, and Jordan stepped inside. A bandage covered part of his head over his right ear. A fiberglass cast in bright blue went from his wrist to his right elbow. And he limped. He looked around the room then back at Harley. “Sorry to bother you, but I seriously need to talk to you. Seriously.”
“Seriously?” Since her sarcasm seemed to be lost on him, she sighed and said, “Fine. We can sit out on the back porch for privacy.”
“The back porch?”
“Since almost being bungee jumped off the top of The Peabody without a rope, I’ve decided to be more cautious about being seen with you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Come this way, and I’ll tell you all about it.”
She took him through the kitchen toward the screened-in back porch. Since Eric had put King on the porch, she had to grab the energetic dog and shove him toward the screen door to the yard while Jordan waited in the kitchen. King resisted. He braced his four paws against the door frame, and when she got one leg free he immediately put three other paws against the frame. It became a game of wits. She grabbed two paws. King twisted around and threw his body to the floor. She seized his collar and dragged him a little more through the open screen door. He leaped up and licked her in her mouth just as she started to yell at him. She gagged and let him go.
Delirious with joy, King whirled and leaped into the air, smacking her in the face and splitting her bottom lip. “Ow!” she yelped, staggering backward and holding her lip. “Tha’ huht!”
Taking advantage of her momentary preoccupation with her split lip, King went straight for the open door to the kitchen. Harley heard Jordan scream. Still holding her lip to keep it from bleeding all over her shirt, she got to the kitchen just in time to see the dog straddle Jordan’s prone body. After another high-pitched scream that ended in a gagging cough as King licked Jordan’s open mouth, Harley managed to get the dog’s collar firmly in her free hand.
“Chick,” her brother said from the doorway as he surveyed the scene. “What are you doing?”
“Wha’ doth it look like I doing?” she lisped irritably. “Help me.”
“Chick,” Eric said again, but he joined in trying to pull the dog off their visitor. Jordan had stopped screaming, but he was making pitiful noises as King happily licked his face.
Just as they got King disengaged from greeting Jordan, Yogi popped in. He eyed the fracas and said, “King,” and the dog immediately bounded toward him. “Good dog,” her father said, blithely ignoring the obvious. “What’s going on? Do I know you?”
The first was directed at Harley, the last at Jordan, who still thrashed about on the kitchen floor as he tried to get up. Harley reached down to help him since he was having trouble with his arm in a cast.
“He split my lip,” said Harley, and when Yogi made a funny sound she added quickly, “King, not Jordan. This is Jordan Cleveland. Jordan, this is my father, Yogi.”
Swaying a little as he stood up, Jordan glanced down at his right hand still in the cast. Yogi resolved any impulse to shake hands by holding up two fingers and saying, “Peace, man.”
Harley smiled. Her father could make someone comfortable even when they’d been rolling around on his kitchen floor. “Jordan is here to explain to me why he thinks I should still help him,” she said, and Yogi just nodded.
“Cool.” The smile on his face got wider. Harley peered at him. Ah. He must have been sampling his illegal herbs. He had the same sleepy-eyed look as her brother. She sighed and went to the refrigerator for a piece of ice to apply to her swelling lip.
“Keep King with you, okay? Jordan’s not comfortable with dogs.”
Yogi glanced down at the dog that stared up adoringly at him. “I just let him out while Sadie’s at the doctor. She complains he deliberately tries to trip her. You believe that? Poor King.”
“Yes. Poor King. Hold him, please?”
Jordan followed Harley onto the back porch, although he looked nervously back at the dog a couple times. “He’s going to keep the dog in there, right? Right?”
“We can hope. Here. Sit down. And to get right to the point—why are you here?”
“You didn’t answer any of my calls.”
“That’s because I didn’t want to answer any of your calls. How did you know to look here for me?”
“Tootsie. He told me. He also said I needed to forget getting you to help me. He said he wasn’t going to risk you, and I needed to leave you alone. So—did someone do something to you?”
“Yes. One of your charming business acquaintances decided to see if I could fly off the roof of The Peabody. It was not a pleasant experience. He was pretty adamant that I should sever my business relationship with you. Can you tell me why?”
Jordan squirmed in the old lawn chair. It was a metal one with a shell back and U-shaped legs, and Diva had painted it a bright orange with a purple peace sign. He looked slightly silly sitting in it. She studied him while he obviously searched for an explanation that would work. His suit jacket was open and rumpled, he had stains on his pants, and his shirttails were half out of his waistband. And he’d looked like that when he showed up at the door, although King hadn’t improved his appearance.
“It must have been my former partner,” he said finally. “He gets—cranky.”
“Cranky? Cranky? I’d call it a lot more than that! How about threatening? Or murderous? Those fit the situation better, believe me. And I don’t think I care anymore if someone is out to kill you. It’s your problem. You weren’t honest with me when you asked for my help.” Harley hadn’t made up her mind whether to tell him about Johnny Pomona or not. Maybe she’d wait and see if he already knew. If he did, then that put him a lot closer to the killer than she wanted to think about.
Jordan looked desperate when he said, “I’ll tell you whatever you need to know, but these guys aren’t playing around anymore. This is serious.”
“How serious?”
He gestured to his arm. “Serious enough, as you can see. You were there. You tell me how serious.”
“Oh, so it isn’t your soon-to-be-ex-wife trying to kill you.”
He made an impatient motion with his uninjured hand. “I just said that so you’d help. But I need to know if it’s Zane or someone else . . .” He frowned, looking down at his feet as if he’d find an answer written on the porch floor.
“Who’s Zane?”
“Did I say Zane?”
“You said Zane. Is that the missing link that held me over a fourteen floor drop?”
“Missing link?”
“Prehistoric ape-man. Never mind. So who is Zane, and just how many people did you piss off? The number seems to be growing.”
Jordan looked frazzled. He fidgeted in the chair, rubbed the top of his head with the hand in a cast, and blew out a puff of air. “Okay. Here’s the deal. Remember how I told you about the land deal down in Mississippi? Well, there’s more to it than I said.”
“I’m shocked,” Harley said with an ironic lift of her brows. She tossed the almost melted piece of ice into a pot of Diva’s begonias. Her lip throbbed. “And here I thought you so honest and forthcoming.”
“You don’t have to be sarcastic.”
“Just one of the many services I offer. I like to keep up with the trends.”
“Well, you’re behind. You haven’t found out yet who’s trying to kill me.”
“Is that a complaint? Because if it is, I’d like to remind you that there’s a damn good reason I haven’t found that out yet—you lied to me. You’re probably still lying to m
e. Nothing is like you said it was, no one is who you said they were, and I’m wondering if you’re who you say you are.”
Jordan didn’t speak or look at her. Harley stood up from the bench where she’d been sitting. As far as she was concerned, this was over. Tootsie had informed her Felicia hadn’t been served with papers, but Jordan had filed for divorce—then he dropped it. A partial lie. Where there was a small lie, there was usually a bigger lie behind it, in her recent experience. And he hadn’t mentioned a missing partner. Did he know about Johnny Pomona? Maybe that’s why he was here. It could be that he was scared to death and desperate. Well, count her out of desperate.
“Sorry you have to leave so soon,” she said, and Jordan looked surprised. She shrugged. “What? You didn’t think I’d quit? Well, I quit. Goodbye. Sayonara. Adios. Au revoir. Go away.”
Jordan stood up. He looked caught between annoyance and concern. “But I need you.”
“For what? To draw attention from you? No, thanks. Done that. Didn’t like it.”
Scowling, Jordan scraped his hand over the top of his head like he was combing through his hair. His hair was too close-cropped to run fingers through. Harley watched him closely. There went his “tell” again, the signal that he was lying or about to lie.
“How about if I offer you more money?”
“Dude. Money won’t do me any good if I’m dead. And that’s what I’m liable to be if I’m dumb enough to keep letting you drag me into this. Whatever your goal is—and I’m sure you have one that you haven’t shared with me—it doesn’t take into account that I might not want to be dead.”
“Five thousand dollars. Extra.”
Harley was pretty sure her eyes bugged out. “You can’t afford that. I’ve seen your financial report.”
It was a lie, but she didn’t care. Bobby and Morgan had both pretty much said he was broke.
“I have money that’s not on my financial reports,” he said.
“Offshore in the Caymans? Swiss banks? That’s hard to believe. Right now you look like you slept in your car last night. And if you had to sleep in your car, that means you can’t afford to pay me five dollars extra, much less five thousand.”
Jordan flapped his arms in exasperation. “I’ve been in the hospital. Look, you’ve been working on this for a week, and I haven’t found out any more than I knew when you started. Someone’s still trying to kill me. You still don’t know who. I don’t know if I should crawl into a hole and hide or if it’s safe to show up at work. What’s up with that?”
“Seriously? You’re asking me why I haven’t found out who’s trying to kill you when you’ve done nothing but lie to me? Breaking news—it’s worse than you think.”
“What does that mean?”
Instead of answering that question Harley said, “Your arm seems to be a lot better now. Sure you need that cast?”
Jordan blinked at her. Then he shook his head. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been completely honest with you. I’m scared, okay? Someone’s trying to kill me, and I don’t know who it is, or where I can go to be safe. Even who I can trust.”
That was a bit disarming. Harley considered him for a moment. He did look kinda scared. As he should. Someone was pretty persistent about trying to kill him. And Johnny Pomona was pretty dead. Whoever Jordan was mixed up with, they were serious.
She leaned against the wall. “I’ll get a friend of mine in law enforcement to protect you. He can do what I can’t.”
Jordan shook his head in exasperation. “Don’t you get it? I can’t go near police, or I’m a dead man. And not just me. Filly will be dead too.”
Harley mulled that over for a moment. “So is that why you filed for divorce, and she has no idea? It doesn’t explain you dropping it unless you’re trying to protect her.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m trying to protect her. You could say that.”
“Okay, let’s say that. You’re trying to keep both of you alive. Why go about it like this? Why not stay in hiding? Why make yourself a target?”
“Well, I have to work. I have to drive, walk down the street, go to the store—I can’t stay in an apartment all the time. Even with Amy.”
“Is that where you go on the weekends when Felicia thinks you’re out of town with your job? To Amy’s?”
He had the grace to look embarrassed. “It’s the best excuse I could think of at the time.”
“Traveling accountants aren’t that common, I hear. You could have come up with something better.”
“It worked.”
She had to nod agreement. A noise behind her made her turn around as Diva came into the room, bells sewn into her long skirt tinkling a light tune. She wasn’t looking at Harley but at Jordan.
In her husky, otherworldly voice that Harley referred to as spooky, she said, “You are a man with many problems. You must make the right decisions for your soul’s long journey. There are dark forces around you. Flee. Do not let them drag you into the pit of blackness.”
Jordan stared at Diva. His eyes got huge, and he looked caught between disbelief and terror. When he finally looked at Harley, she shrugged.
“Diva’s a psychic. Sorry.”
Jordan’s voice came out in a croak. “Is she any good?”
“Uncannily good. If you can figure out what she’s said before it happens, it saves a lot of time and trouble.”
“Oh. So what did she just tell me?”
“Beats me. It’s your prediction, you figure it out.”
When he stared at her in obvious alarm, Harley rolled her eyes. “Dude, if you can’t tell that she’s warning you someone’s after you, your powers of deduction totally suck.”
“But the pit of blackness—does that mean something?”
Harley felt like rolling her eyes again. Then Diva interrupted to say, “Darkness surrounds you. I see danger. A life cut too short.” She paused, and her eyes got big as she whispered, “An empty grave awaits the unwary.”
Harley shivered despite herself. Jordan’s eyes bugged out. After a slight pause, Diva shook her head and stepped back. The tiny bells tinkled lightly. Silence was thick for a moment. Then King let out a shrill bark and dashed for the front door, breaking the silence and Harley’s right eardrum. She stuck one finger in her ear and muttered a threat in a low tone so her father wouldn’t hear her comment about his dog.
“I didn’t even hear a doorbell,” said Jordan.
Diva said, “It’s our neighbor returning from her doctor appointment.”
“I heard you,” Yogi said to Harley and gave her a look of reproach. “King takes his duty as guard dog seriously.”
“I totally get that. I just wish he’d be a little less enthusiastic about it.”
Yogi smiled. “He’s a good dog. He found three of my windmills after the tornado came through. One was up in a tree, and two were down the street. Did you see his vest? I made it so he could help find people after storms or other disasters.”
Harley smiled back. Yogi really was one of the good guys. Privately, she thought that the likelihood of King finding anyone who wasn’t holding a hamburger pretty small, but she said, “I’m sure that’s going to come in handy one day.”
Yogi beamed. King sat down to lick himself in places Harley didn’t want to think about so soon after he’d licked her in the mouth. She turned her focus back to Jordan, who had gone into the living room and was talking with her brother.
“It’s a Fender,” she heard Eric say. Her brother grinned at her as she joined them. “He likes my guitar.”
“That’s nice. Why don’t you go help Mrs. Shipley into the house? The van just dropped her off.”
When Eric sighed and got up, he slung the guitar across his back. Harley shook her head and looked at Jordan.
He said, “I’m leaving. I hope you reconsider my offer.”
“I don’t see that happening. I’m not feeling very good about my chances with your business associates.”
Jordan shook his head. “They’re not real
ly my business associates. Just my—I guess you could say lien holders.”
“And the lien being your life? Not the best security to risk.”
“You’ve got that right.”
“I know. How are you feeling today, Mrs. Shipley?”
The last was directed at Sadie Shipley as Eric helped her in the front door. She clumped over to the couch and sat down with a big sigh. She still wore a bandage on her head and a cast on one ankle. She was dressed in hot pink sweats, pink socks, and one pink athletic shoe. A pink turban perched atop her bandaged head. Her cane slipped to the floor as she tried to wedge it against a couch cushion. Harley went over and picked it up.
“Oh, I’m not well at all, Harley Jean. Not at all. I still have horrible headaches, and my ankle hurts most of the time. Of course, I try not to complain, and your parents are so good to me. I don’t know what I’d do if they hadn’t taken me in.” She looked over at Jordan when she said, “I was dreadfully injured during the tornado and my home nearly destroyed by a tree falling on it. It was a nightmare, a horrible nightmare.”
Jordan nodded politely. “Is that your house across the street?”
Mrs. Shipley sniffed and pressed a tattered tissue against her nose. “Yes. Isn’t it awful? It took out the entire living room, a bathroom, and half my kitchen. I was trapped for hours, and then Harley’s young man saved me. I would have died if he hadn’t found me! And now here I am, crippled and homeless.” She sniffled into her wadded up tissue.
“But you’re alive, and you can be thankful for that,” said Jordan as he edged toward the front door.
Harley moved to open the door. “You might try remembering that yourself,” she said softly as he stepped outside onto the porch. “And please don’t come back here. I don’t want any of your associates knowing where my parents live. It’s too dangerous.”
She watched Jordan until he got into his car and started it, then went back into the house. Mrs. Shipley had recovered quickly and was telling Yogi where to find an extra pair of socks and her slippers.
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