Hot

by Julia Harper

  She’d refused. Rusty had eaten the turnip himself with a sad, concerned look in his eyes, like he wasn’t too sure what to make of her. And he’d never had another turnip, big or otherwise, after that day. She wished now that she had shared it with him. Such a little thing, but it would’ve meant a lot to Rusty. She watched a muskrat swim by and wondered: how could such an old man have lived so much better, so much bigger, than she? Sometimes it felt like since his passing she’d been locked up in a glass box, doomed to watch others enjoy their lives. Unable to continue with hers. When she’d refused Rusty’s lavender turnip, had she been refusing life itself?

  Turner stared out at the still, dark blue water. It gave no answers.

  Chapter Thirteen

  A t least the old guy didn’t come out with a shotgun, John thought that morning. Seven-thirty a.m. would be a bitch of a time to be killed. He hadn’t even had his full quota of coffee yet. Torelli had insulted the waitress early on in their breakfast at the café, and they’d been damn lucky she’d come back with the check. Coffee refills had been out of the question. Instead, after his morning phone call to Turner, he’d had to swing by the Kwik Trip. He’d filled his travel mug with the black water they called coffee but hadn’t had time to drink it yet.

  “What do you want?” the old geezer demanded, glaring from behind his cracked door.

  “Mr. Zucker?” John asked patiently. Zucker’s phone number had been the last one listed on Turner’s phone.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m Zucker.” The old man waved a hand like he was swatting a fly in front of his face. “Like to be called Tommy, though.”

  “Fair enough. I’m Special Agent John MacKinnon of the FBI. I wonder if we could take a look around your place?”

  “What for?”

  “We’re looking for Turner Hastings.”

  “Ha! She ain’t here, so you can just go on back to arresting real criminals.”

  And he shut the door in John’s face. Behind him, Larson cleared his throat like he was trying to smother a laugh. John sighed and knocked again. A cardinal called from a nearby tree. It was another beautiful sunny day, and the weathermen were all excited because it might hit a hundred degrees by noon. And of course he was wearing a jacket.

  “What?” the old man yelled.

  “Open the door, Tommy, or I’ll kick it in.”

  “Hey! You’ll be needing a warrant for that, Mr. G-man.”

  “I’ve got a warrant.”

  There was a short silence, then the sound of the door being unlocked. Tommy’s face appeared again. “Fine. But anything gets broke and I’m suing the government.”

  “Good. You do that.” John stepped into the dim interior and looked around.

  Tommy had either been a bachelor for a very long time or he had no use for cleaning house. Or both. The walls were stacked floor to ceiling with magazines, newspapers, and folded paper bags. Drop a match and the place would go up in flames in five minutes flat. At least it was air-conditioned. Larson poked a pile of paper and the top half slowly slid off, raising a cloud of dust. The deputy sneezed violently.

  “When was the last time you saw Ms. Hastings?” John asked Tommy.

  The old man mimed zipping his mouth shut and throwing away the key.

  John arched his eyebrows. “Come on. It can’t hurt to tell me that.”

  “So you say now, Mr. G-man, but I’m keeping my chopper zipped shut. You’ll have to drag me into the interrogation room, put bamboo slivers under my fingernails, beat me senseless—”

  “Yeah. Yeah. I get the idea.” John scanned the room. Unless Turner was hiding under the stained furniture, she wasn’t here. He wove his way through the stacks to check the kitchen. There was a musty smell about the place. Ancient grease, dust, and old man. He couldn’t see the average woman staying here without at least spraying the air with that stuff that came in aerosol cans. Turner’s house had been pretty neat; she’d have picked up Tommy’s place if she were living here. In the kitchen, the only clean-looking thing was a small white casserole dish. It sat by itself on the counter. John went over to look at it without touching. He heard the old man enter the room behind him.

  He questioned Zucker without turning around. “She make you stuff to eat?”

  Tommy didn’t reply, so John opened the fridge door. Sitting among the beer bottles and junk food was another white casserole dish, a twin to the one on the counter. It looked like it contained a fancy tuna casserole.

  “What’re you after Turner for, anyway?” the old man burst out, apparently unable to hold his silence any longer. “She’s about the only one in this town I can stand. And she makes me real nice food, puts in vegetables and everything, so’s I get my fiber.”

  “She robbed the bank,” John said.

  The old man made a rude noise. “Shows how much you government men know.”

  John ignored that and took a look in the bathroom and two other rooms just to cover all the bases, then went out the back door, trailed by Larson. There was a triangle of dirt drive back here with dust-covered grass in the middle. A big, leaning barn and a couple of outbuildings surrounded the drive. The outbuildings didn’t look to be in use anymore.

  Tommy had followed him outside. “Done yet?”

  John shook his head and headed toward the yard. “I’m going to search the barn.”

  “Hey, hey!” The old man was right behind him. “You’ll need a different warrant for that.”

  “Larson, show Mr. Zucker the warrant.” John didn’t break his stride.

  Inside the barn, he found a row of cars. Tommy was obviously using it as a garage. A workbench with a nice collection of tools took up one wall. John peered in the cars. Two of them—a station wagon and a Taurus—were dusty. They looked like they hadn’t been moved in years. The third, a tan Ford Escort, had dust on the outside but was relatively spotless inside. And Turner drove a tan Escort. John stood back to consult his notebook. Yep, same plates. Now the question was, what had she taken from Tommy’s fleet in place of the Escort?

  His cell went off, and for a moment he felt a wash of excitement. Then he looked at the number and realized it was Torelli. He punched the answer button. “MacKinnon.”

  “They’re inbred.”

  “Who?” John hunkered to take a look at the car’s undercarriage.

  “Fish’s relatives. If I have my notes right, his mother married her uncle.”

  “Check your notes again.”

  Torelli muttered something, then came back with, “I can check my notes all you want, but the result’s going to stay the same. This is an inbred, illiterate, backwater—”

  “Torelli,” John growled.

  “What?”

  “You do realize this phone line is unsecure, don’t you?”

  Silence on the other end. John wondered for a moment if Torelli would hang up on him. The guy was too full of himself. He still couldn’t believe that the younger agent had gone over his head on the last—

  “We found the car they used to flee the bank. Sir.”

  “Well, good.”

  “They ditched it in a field and apparently left on foot from there.”

  “On foot?” John opened the door on the driver’s side of the Escort, reached in, and popped Turner’s trunk.

  “On foot.”

  “What do you think their plan is?” The trunk was almost pristine. Jumper cables, a first-aid kit, and one of those dinky spare tires. He slammed it shut. “They must have another car stashed somewhere.”

  “I’m not so sure. You haven’t seen these guys’ homes and relatives.”

  “So you’re saying they have no plan at all?” He pushed the driver’s seat back as far as it would go and got in. Then froze. Pine. He could smell the faint aroma of pine.

  Torelli’s voice brought him back. “I’m saying I think it’s a good possibility.”

  “Huh.”

  “Look. I don’t think these guys could find their own ass with both hands, let alone plan and execute a bank ro
bbery.”

  “We both know it doesn’t take a whole lot of brains—”

  “No one knows where they got the shotguns.”

  John paused in the act of opening the glove compartment. “Neither man owned one?”

  “Nope. And Fish’s uncle has shotguns, but they’re all accounted for. None of them look like they’ve been fired recently. I checked.”

  John rummaged in the glove compartment. He pulled out the Escort’s manual, two tampons, some pens, and a couple of road maps. Nothing else, not even those little ketchup packets that usually multiplied in glove compartments.

  “What’s your point?”

  “Someone else supplied them with the shotguns and planned the robbery. And the librarian is missing.”

  “And that’s why I’m searching her car at this moment,” John shot back irritably. “Get over there and find out where Fish and Nald went. They couldn’t have gone far on foot. Call me when you have something.”

  He hung up without waiting for Torelli’s answer, knowing that he was being unreasonable. It was one thing for him to be chasing Turner, and quite another for Torelli to be after her. Torelli was a smartass gunning for a fast-track promotion. John didn’t trust the younger man as far as he could throw him, and he didn’t want him anywhere near Turner when she was brought in. Turner might be behind the bank robbery—maybe—but she definitely wasn’t a hardened criminal. Which meant he’d just have to make sure that he caught her before Torelli did.

  Chapter Fourteen

  W e have to work on this howling business,” Turner muttered to the big black-and-white dog.

  It wagged its tail in reply and kept following her, her very own huge, hard-to-miss shadow. She’d made a brief attempt to leave it in the Chevy while she went to talk to Tommy, but the moaning howl it had sent up soon put a stop to that. So now she was sneaking through the north woods with a Great Dane in tow.

  “And I need to get you a name.”

  Turner stepped out into the road leading to Tommy’s house and then stepped right back into the woods. The dog—George?—went out and trotted back, too, loping good-naturedly. It probably thought she always did a do-si-do whenever she came to roads. In fact, she’d seen the sheriff’s car in Tommy’s drive.

  Shoot. Good thing she’d decided to park the Chevy and walk through the woods to Tommy’s place instead of driving up. She crouched next to the dog—Arnold?—and tried to think what to do next. The binoculars dangling from her neck swung against the dog, and it licked her face. Ew, dog breath. It was hot, even under the canopy of the trees, and her back itched like something, a twig or leaf, had fallen down her T-shirt. She needed to talk to Tommy, get directions to Calvin’s cabin, and find out what he knew about it—like if there were close neighbors watching it. She couldn’t see much from here, only the front of Tommy’s house and the squad car. She could retreat, go back to the pickup, and either leave altogether or wait the intruders out. But then she’d have no way of knowing when—or if—they left.

  That decided it. Turner got up and crept farther into the woods with the Great Dane. They began circling around to the back of Tommy’s house through the woods. There was a small rise there, and she’d be able to see what was going on better.

  Fifteen minutes later, she settled against a maple tree, careful not to sit in poison ivy. The dog—Howard?—flopped down next to her, laid his mailbox head in her lap, and sighed gustily as if he’d had a hard day. Below, a tall man walked out of Tommy’s barn and stood looking around in the sunshine. Turner brought her binoculars to her eyes and focused on him just as he turned in her direction. She sucked in her breath. He looked as if he was staring straight at her, and she froze like a rabbit before a wolf.

  He had a long face, made longer by the deep lines bracketing his wide mouth. His eyes were heavy-lidded, almost sleepy, but she knew that was deceptive. The man was smart and could be quick when he wanted to. He was hatless, his salt-and-pepper hair cropped to within an inch of his scalp. From this distance there was no way to tell, but Turner imagined that the man’s eyes were blue and intense. And she knew somehow, on a gut level, that she was watching Special Agent John MacKinnon down there.

  His face turned as he spoke to someone else. Turner blew out a breath and lowered her binoculars a fraction, looking over them. Tommy had come out into the yard. Her lips twitched. The old man was probably haranguing John.

  She peered through the binoculars again and watched the FBI agent’s mouth compress impatiently at something the old man was saying. He pivoted, ambled to the squad car, and reached inside. Tommy trotted after him, his mouth still working. John came back up with a cup in his hand. He took a long drink from it while Tommy gave him what-for. No one could lecture like Tommy when he got into the swing of things.

  John’s plastic travel mug was the kind that came apart so a child could draw on a piece of paper that would be inserted between the mug and the clear outside. This mug had looping purple flowers and a great big pink heart on one side. Turner felt her stomach clench. Did he have children? A little girl must have made that cup for him. No boy would draw purple flowers. For all she knew, Special Agent MacKinnon might be married with five children.

  She wrinkled her nose and lowered the binoculars. And what did she care if the FBI agent trying to find and arrest her was married? Her hand came within range of the huge dog head on her lap. The Great Dane swiped her with its tongue and then panted. For goodness’ sake, she needed to give the thing a name. Turner dug her cell phone out of her pocket and pressed in the numbers. With her other hand she held the binoculars up again. Down below, John, still talking to Tommy, unclipped his cell from his belt, and held it to his ear.

  “MacKinnon,” he said into her own ear. He sounded as if he were right beside her.

  She drew in a shaky breath. “What did Calvin call the dog?”

  Abruptly, he turned his back on Tommy and walked several paces away. His legs were long and lean, and she noticed he had on cowboy boots. He probably looked really sexy in jeans, darn him.

  “Turner?” His voice was low and sharp, like he wasn’t happy to hear from her.

  Too bad. She ignored his question. “I need to give him a name. I think he’s beginning to get a complex.”

  “Where are you?”

  She was silent. She was afraid if she opened her mouth, she just might tell him. Or worse, stand and wave her arms. Here I am. Come and get me.

  He sighed. “Hyman called him Duke.”

  “Duke?” Turner looked at the dog. He opened one eye, but she couldn’t tell if he was responding to her voice or the name. “Like Marmaduke the cartoon? That’s an awful cliché. Calvin doesn’t have an imaginative bone in his body. No wonder the dog has no self-esteem. Have you seen him?”

  “Turner, why don’t you come in?”

  He was a male siren. She could see him through the binoculars, rubbing his forehead wearily with one hand. She wanted to touch him, feel his warmth under her palm, lay her head against his chest and inhale. The urge to find out what he smelled like was almost a physical ache. Why, oh, why, after all the years alone, did it have to be this man who finally saw past her facade?

  She shook her head. “He’s definitely not a Duke.”

  “You can shower, get a change of clothes—”

  “Maybe a Zeus.”

  “I can hook you up with a defense lawyer I know—”

  “Or a Captain.”

  “You’d be safe—”

  “Or Rafe.”

  “Turner—”

  “I can’t.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t come in.” She bit her lip and was surprised at how close to tears she was. She had to swallow before she could go on. “I have to finish it. I can’t come in.”

  She could see his frown through the binoculars, creasing between his brows, making the lines around his mouth deeper. Then his voice reached her, low and intimate. “I can’t stop searching for you, either. You know that, don’t you?
”

  Oh, Lord. “I know.”

  “It’s my job. I’m going to find you, and I’m going to arrest you.”

  “You can try,” she said with a bit of bravado.

  “Turner.” His voice was nearly a growl now, a clear male warning.

  The female in her flaunted it. “I have something I have to do, and you’re not going to stop me, Special Agent MacKinnon.”

  There was a silence on the other end. Then he blew out a breath. “I told you to call me John.”

  “John.” Somehow his name came out almost a caress.

  “See the Tribune crossword this morning?”

  She felt the corner of her mouth curl. “You know I haven’t.”

  “There was one that really stumped me. Something about Regan’s father.”

  “Lear.”

  “What?”

  “It’s King Lear.”

  “Huh. See, now that’s where a librarian has an advantage over us FBI agents.”

  “Only the FBI agents who don’t read Shakespeare.”

  “Which would be all of them.” Was he smiling? She could see a tilt to his mouth through the binoculars.

  “I’m sure that some of our government employees are Shakespeare fans.”

  “Maybe Torelli, but he’s odd.”

  “Who’s Torelli?”

  “My partner.”

  “You don’t sound too fond of him.”

  “I’m not. Doesn’t mean I can’t work with him to find you, though.”

  His voice was terse. This was business for him. He probably had a reason of his own to keep her on the phone. Maybe he’d sent someone into the woods to track her. She looked around in sudden panic. The dog raised his head at her movement. But no. John had no way of knowing where she was. Even so, calling him had been foolish.