Covert Cootchie-Cootchie-Coo

by Ann Voss Peterson

  “Nice?” He glanced around at shabby furniture, outdated carpet and interior walls that needed paint almost as much as the outbuildings. “I don’t know about nice.”

  “It is nice. Unpretentious. Functional. Feels like home.”

  A laugh broke from his lips. No, more like a guffaw.

  She turned to look at him, one side of her mouth tilting upward in a half smile. “Are you laughing at me?”

  “No, no. I’m in awe that anyone could call this place nice.”

  “It is nice.”

  He shook his head. “It’s outdated and run-down. At least that’s the reason my Realtor gave for not being able to sell it.”

  “I noticed the sign when we drove up. How long have you had it on the market?”

  “I just put it on last month.”

  “You moved to California a year ago, right? Why did you wait so long to try to sell it?”

  “A number of reasons.”

  “I can relate to that.” She gave him an understanding smile.

  A smile he’d like to snap a photo of and keep forever. But somehow he doubted she could really relate to anything about his reasons for selling or not selling this place. “What can you relate to?”

  “This is where you grew up, right? When my parents sold the house I grew up in, I grieved for weeks. I still miss that place. A lot of good memories there.”

  He shook his head. If there was one thing he didn’t share with the Double Kay, it was good memories. Even his mother hadn’t had many good words to say about it, and it had been in better shape back then. Still, she’d told him many times how embarrassed she was to live in such a dump when he was growing up. “Nothing like that. I’d be glad to be done with this place. Trust me.”

  “Then why are you only starting to try to sell it now?”

  “That would be because of me.”

  Josie whirled around.

  Reed smiled as Esme slipped out of the kitchen. Now, she carried good memories for him. Just about the only ones he had of his childhood. “Oh, Esme, you know you earned it. You raised me, after all.”

  She flicked her hands in the air as if brushing away his words. “Your mother was a good woman. She had hard times. She tried to do the right thing. She just didn’t always make good decisions.”

  The last person Reed wanted to talk about was his mother. He gestured to Josie. “Esme, this is Josie. She’s the one helping me find Honey.” He’d called Esme before they’d left for Dallas and filled her in on some of the reasons he was coming back.

  Esme reached out a weathered hand. “You’re the private investigator from San Francisco?”

  Josie took the offered hand and shook. “It’s nice to meet you. Do you live here?”

  “I did. For a time. That is the real reason Reed didn’t sell the ranch right away. He was being kind to me. Letting me live here while I looked for work.” She smiled up at Reed. “I have found a good job now and a place to live, all because of Reed’s generosity.”

  “Generosity is what you showed me.” And his mother.

  “Your mother gave me a good wage for the work I did. You gave out of the goodness of your heart.”

  Reed shook his head and shrugged. Truth was, he was embarrassed by Esme’s gratitude and more than a little aware of Josie’s gaze on him, trying to size him up.

  “So who does the niño belong to?” Esme bent down and smiled at Troy.

  “He’s Honey’s. She asked me to take care of him for a little while.”

  Esme ran her fingertips over the baby’s fine hair. “He looks much like you when you were little, Reed.”

  Josie glanced at Reed, and he knew she was sizing up his reaction.

  He nodded, his eyes glued to Esme. “I was that cute, huh?” Truth was, he was starting to get used to thinking of Troy…not as his child exactly, but as a nephew or something. As a part of his life.

  And he wasn’t quite sure if that was good or bad.

  JOSIE SPREAD A BLANKET over the football field printed on the bottom of the Dallas Cowboys playpen and laid Troy down on his back for a morning nap. Reed had done a good job of picking up the list of baby supplies and groceries she’d given him, and with Esme’s help she had turned Reed’s vacant ranch house into their temporary home. After calling her parents’ house to make sure Missy was doing okay her first day out of the hospital, both she and Reed had collapsed into bed early last night. But even though she’d gotten little sleep the past few nights, she hadn’t been able to quiet her mind. Her head hummed with questions. Not just about Honey and the man who’d attacked Missy, but other things, as well. And last night as well as this morning, those other things were all about Reed.

  The more Josie learned about this man, the more her picture of him changed. For a man who had pretty much called himself a failure in connecting with people, he sure believed in coming through for the women who had touched his life. Honey, Missy and now Esme.

  And all she’d observed since they’d reached the ranch last night made her even more curious about his mother.

  She stood and slipped from the room, ignoring Troy’s fussy complaints. At the door, she hesitated. She could hear Esme busy in the kitchen and Reed reciting his cellphone number in case of emergency. The normalcy of leaving the baby with a sitter—as if the two of them were a real couple and Troy was their child—ached through her chest.

  She took a grip on her thoughts before they spiraled out of control. She could want Reed to change until the end of time, but that didn’t mean it would happen. And she knew herself. Knew that if she wanted it badly enough, she might just start seeing what she wanted to see, regardless of what reality showed her.

  She pulled in a breath and forced her feet to carry her down the short hall. She had to tread carefully around Reed Tanner. And one way she could do that was by keeping her thoughts off Reed and focused on the questions she wanted to ask Honey’s friend Jimmy.

  JIMMY WAS NOTHING IF NOT reliable. Reed had said he and Honey had met for lunch at Bertha’s Bar-B-Que every Tuesday, and even though it was a year later and Honey was nowhere to be found, there was Jimmy sitting in a booth along the wall chewing on a pulled-pork sandwich. He was dressed all in black, even down to his tie and shirt, but his slightly mussed, sandy hair made him look like the boy next door despite the clothes.

  Josie kept her focus on Jimmy, though she directed her words to Reed. “Let me talk to him.”

  She could feel him nod. “You won’t get an argument from me. I doubt he’d say more than two words to any question I asked him, and both of those words would be profane.”

  They told the woman at the hostess desk someone was waiting for them and started across the dining room, winding around tables covered in checkered cloths and set with big napkins and plastic, adult-size bibs.

  Jimmy looked up from his sandwich. His sharp eyes narrowed. He scootched out of the booth and grabbed the check from the tabletop.

  Josie dodged in front of him, trying to head him off. “Please, Mr. Bartow. Wait. We need to talk to you.”

  “I don’t know who you are, but I’m not talking to Tanner.” He zigged to the side, trying to avoid her. She countered, stopping him face-to-face.

  Reed stepped up behind her. “Honey left San Francisco without ever seeing me, Jimmy. I think she’s in trouble. We need your help. Honey needs your help.”

  Jimmy stared at Reed, and if Josie wasn’t mistaken, his lip curled upward slightly, like a dog baring his teeth. “What makes you think you know anything about what Honey needs?”

  “A man was after her,” Josie said, bringing his attention back to her.

  “A man? Who?”

  “We don’t know. But he had short blond hair, broad shoulders and a gun.”

  “A…You’re lying.”

  “No lies.” Reed held his hands up, palms out. “Honey had twins a few months ago, a boy and a girl.”

  “In June. How is that any…” Jimmy’s eyes flared open. “You think those babies are yours, d
on’t you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, they’re not. No way.”

  “The timing is right, Mr. Bartow,” Josie added.

  Jimmy didn’t even spare her a glance. This was all about Reed and the rivalry he obviously felt. Jimmy was staking out his territory. “She wasn’t sleeping with just you.”

  “Who else was she sleeping with?” prompted Reed. “You?”

  The flush to Jimmy’s cheeks spoke louder than a shout.

  Josie glanced up at Reed, trying to judge his reaction.

  Although his cheeks seemed to pale ever so slightly, nothing else in his expression changed. “You didn’t send Mr. Hired Gun to collect her, did you, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy splayed a hand on his chest. “Me? Of course not.”

  Reed cocked an eyebrow, as if he didn’t buy it for a second. “You’re not trying to use those babies to get to Honey? Force her to be with you? Maybe get married?”

  “I would never force Honey to do anything. I love Honey.”

  Even without knowing much about Jimmy and Honey, Josie could sense the direction Reed was going with this. And she played along. “To a lot of people, love justifies control.”

  “It’s not like that. She’s my friend. The only person in this miserable world I really care about. And who cares about me.”

  Josie shook her head slowly. “But maybe she doesn’t care enough. Maybe she’s not as committed to you as you are to her. Maybe she needs some help to see what’s really important.”

  Jimmy glanced from Josie to Reed and back again. “I know what you’re trying to do. It won’t work. Honey is my friend.”

  “Whom you sleep with.” Josie pressed on.

  “One time. That was all.” He focused a pointed glare on Reed. “She’d just had her heart shredded and needed to know someone cared.”

  “So this happened after Reed moved?”

  “No.” Jimmy’s glare turned smug.

  A muscle flexed along Reed’s jaw, but he said nothing.

  “When did this night together happen?” Josie asked.

  “That’s none of your damn business.”

  “Listen, our hired gun said he was working for the twins’ father.” Josie let her comment hang in the air for a moment. Often if someone felt guilty of something, they rushed to fill any silence, imagining the quiet meant the speaker was thinking condemning thoughts. But when Jimmy didn’t bite, Josie continued. “Are you the twins’ father, Jimmy?”

  He shifted his feet on the tile floor. “He told you that? That the father hired him to hurt Honey?”

  “Yes.” She saw no point in getting caught in details. Not when using this information as a club might actually beat the truth out of Jimmy Bartow.

  One side of Jimmy’s mouth turned up in a smug smile. “You implied this guy was bad news. Did it ever occur to you that he might also be a liar?”

  It had. But what he’d said to Missy was all they had to go on at the moment. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, as the saying went. “So you’re saying that you’re the father of Honey’s babies, but you didn’t hire this guy to track her down? Even when you found out she was taking your children to see Reed?”

  “I’m saying nothing. I don’t know who the father is.” His voice cracked. He stumbled back to his booth and lowered himself onto the vinyl seat.

  Reed slid in opposite him, and Josie took the spot by his side, boxing him in.

  He stared into his coffee cup, as if he’d forgotten they were there. Finally he brought his gaze back to Josie’s. “I don’t know why Honey went to see him. I have no idea what she saw in him in the first place.”

  Josie wanted to believe him. He seemed to care about Honey. No, he seemed in love with her, as he’d admitted. She’d bet the thought that those babies probably weren’t his hurt him deeply. But she’d seen men show that kind of devotion only to turn it into something obsessive and ugly. A justification for possessing and controlling the women they swore they loved. When she’d been a cop, she’d dealt with plenty of men like that. And in the short time that had passed since she’d hung out her shingle, she’d had two potential clients who’d wanted her to keep a twenty-four-hour surveillance over their wives. She’d turned the jobs down.

  Was Jimmy Bartow one of those men?

  Maybe if she could needle him a little more, he would show his true colors. “Were there other men who could have fathered those babies, Jimmy? Men besides Reed?”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “I know Honey had a hard childhood. She was abandoned, raised in foster care. A lot of women who go through experiences like that—”

  “Honey wasn’t like a lot of women.”

  “But she was hungry for love. For security,” Josie said. Reed had told her that much.

  He didn’t answer, but judging from the way he shifted on the seat, she was right on target.

  “You had to notice the jewelry she started wearing just before I left town,” Reed said.

  From Josie’s angle, she could see Jimmy open and close his fists under the table.

  Reed pressed on. “And the expensive clothes? You noticed, didn’t you?”

  “So? She likes clothes. She likes jewelry.”

  “I didn’t give her those things,” Reed said, “and I have a feeling you didn’t, either.”

  “How can you be so sure about that? Honey deserves nice things.”

  “I’m sure because those things cost more money than a bailiff could shell out.”

  His hands balled into fists and stayed there. The tendons in his neck drew taut.

  “Jimmy,” Josie said.

  He didn’t take his eyes from Reed. He seemed on the edge of trying to shut Reed up with his fists. A fantasy Jimmy had likely nurtured for a long time.

  “Someone gave her those things, Jimmy,” she said. “Someone with cash. Enough cash to hire a man to fly to San Francisco. Enough cash to pay him to take her babies away. Enough cash to hurt her.”

  Jimmy’s focus snapped to Josie.

  It had been a hunch on her part, but judging from Jimmy’s reaction to her theory, he believed it to be true. And he knew more about Honey’s sugar daddy than he wanted to let on. “Who is he, Jimmy? Who else did Honey sleep with during that time?”

  He looked down at the table. Raising a hand from his lap, he began tracing the edge of his butter knife.

  “I’m not going to let it go until I find out,” she warned.

  “That’s Honey’s business. Honey’s privacy.”

  “It’s not going to be very private if I start asking all the people who knew her. Her neighbors. Her hairstylist. The girls she knew on the cheerleading squad.”

  “I promised her I wouldn’t tell.”

  Reed leaned across the table toward him. “So she confided in you? About her sex life?”

  Jimmy jutted out his chin. “She confided in me about everything.”

  “Then who is it?” Josie asked again. “Who’s the father of her babies?”

  “He gave her gifts, but he’s not the father.”

  “How do you know?”

  He looked away.

  “You don’t know at all, do you? It’s just wishful thinking.” Something Josie knew far too much about.

  Jimmy stared down at the table. Raising a hand, he rubbed his forehead hard enough to remove skin. “He can’t be the father. Poor Honey. If he’s the father…”

  Josie leaned toward him. “If he’s the father, what?”

  “It will be a mess, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s already married. Because he could make her life hell.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “Who is it, Jimmy? Who gave her the gifts?”

  “The judge.”

  Reed sat back in his booth with a thud.

  She pulled her focus from Jimmy and searched Reed’s face. “The judge? Judge who?”

  He stared past her, as if lost in his own thoughts.

  “R
eed, tell me. Who is the judge?”

  “Judge Teddy Wexler,” Reed muttered. “The man who pretty much owns Springton and everyone in it.”

  Chapter Nine

  Reed was grateful to get out of Bertha’s and into the blazing sun, even though it had to be a hundred degrees in the shade. He’d known the meeting with Jimmy wasn’t going to be pleasant. But he’d had no idea they’d actually learn something from the little bandy rooster. Of course, what they’d learned had only served to make clear the force they were up against.

  “So are you going to tell me why this judge has both you and Jimmy freaking out?” Josie parked herself on the sidewalk in front of him and plopped her fists on her cute little hips.

  “I’m not freaking out.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  He let out a heavy breath. “You didn’t grow up in Springton. You have no idea what a force the judge is in this town. Hell, in all of Dallas/Ft. Worth.”

  “He’s that big a cheese, huh?”

  He smiled. “Yeah. I guess.”

  “So he’s wealthy.”

  “And powerful.”

  “So if those babies are his, and he wants them, Honey doesn’t stand a chance? That kind of rich and powerful?”

  “That’s the kind.”

  “But he’s married. Wouldn’t it be scandalous for him to suddenly father twins with a young thing like Honey?”

  “Scandal didn’t stop him before.”

  “He had another baby with a mistress?”

  “Not a baby in the end. She had a miscarriage. But a big blowup of an affair.”

  “What happened?”

  Springton gossip happened. The juiciest kind. “He dumped his wife and married the younger model.”

  “Before or after the miscarriage?”

  “Before.”

  “So he wants kids, I take it.”

  “I don’t know what he wants. He has one kid.”

  “Why don’t we find him and ask him what he wants?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not.” She tilted her head to the side, as if trying to read his mind. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the judge.”

  The comment made him smile. He’d been afraid of Judge Wexler when he was in high school, and later, when he had the ranch and his mother’s well-being to worry about. But those days were gone. After his mother’s death, he was released from the burdens that had haunted her. And now that Esme had found employment, he couldn’t care less what happened to the ranch. He stuck his thumbs in his belt and leaned back on his heels. “Darlin’, I ain’t been afraid of no one since I was a boy.”