I went into the office to work on the accounting books. I left Kay to read a magazine in one of the booths, keeping Dante company as he worked. At lunch, they walked hand in hand down the street in search of something good to eat. I stayed back to take a nap on the office sofa, and Kay said she’d bring me some carryout.
I couldn’t sleep. My mind was churning.
When Kay got back, I couldn’t eat. My stomach was churning.
I was antsy. I squirmed in my seat. Kay looked over at me. “Are you okay?”
“No.” I pouted.
“Maybe you need a walk around the block?” she asked.
I looked out the door, considering. “No. That’s not what I need. What I need is Dick.”
We both saw Dante’s brows sail up to his hairline as he misunderstood.
Kay nodded serenely. “Some Dick time always makes you feel better, more relaxed. You’ve been under a lot of stress. You deserve it.”
“Yeah, I do. Will you excuse me? I need to make a phone call.”
It was a cheap thrill to watch Dante standing there with his mouth hanging half-open and his brow wrinkled. It put me in a better mood.
Back in my office, I scrolled through my contacts and tapped on Dick’s icon. Hey, there. I have a paper bag to give you and an unbelievable story to tell you. Are you around?
Dick: Just now waking up. Got off at 3. Heard Hooch’s address over the radio. You okay?
Aww, that was nice of him to worry. Fine. But you’ll want to hear the story. Can you come over?
Dick: Grabbing a shower and some grub, then I’ll head your way. See you in a bit.
It wasn’t long before Dick showed up at the door. He looked comfy in a pair of well-washed jeans and a t-shirt. He might have changed into casual clothes, but even without his uniform or detective’s duds, he still wore “cop” like a second skin. It was in his eyes as he took the temperature of the occupants in the room. It was in the way he was constantly taking the pulse of the environment he was in. It was the way he tucked his chin as if coming to attention, with squared, muscular shoulders. It was in the current of authority that sizzled around him.
He pulled off his sunglasses and stuck the earpiece in the neckline of his T. I swallowed. Damn, those jeans did really nice things for his tight hips and strong thighs. Dick’s gaze caught on mine and some of his sizzle arced between us. Yeah, the Dick situation needed to be re-evaluated. Just not now.
Now, my sleep-deprived brain was wrestling with logic and emotion.
“You look like you were ridden hard and put up wet,” he said as he settled on my office couch.
I sent him an arched brow.
He laughed. “It was a horse analogy that didn’t come out quite the way I meant it to. Sometimes I forget that you like to flavor your words with a dash of horny.”
“That was poetic,” I said dryly.
“What I meant was, it looks like you’ve had a hard couple of days, like you’re not getting enough sleep. Should I be worried about you?”
“That’s not the kind of relationship we have.”
“It’s not the kind of relationship you want with me.” He settled back comfortably. “That doesn’t mean that I can’t be concerned about you.”
I sat on the lip of my desk and put my feet in the chair. Casual. I didn’t feel casual. I wasn’t sure how I was feeling. This was kind of new. “I have to admit, I haven’t got my sea legs yet for being in charge of the bar without Hooch here.”
“Talk to me.” Cop speak. Open-ended. Let the words fall out of your mouth, and he’d piece the picture together, snag the important points and drill down.
Maybe that was just what I needed here. “Everything was fine Thursday. It feels like everything’s been sliding downhill since then.”
He nodded.
“Thursday, I went to play in the park and found the mannequin. Hooch signed over the bar to me and took off. Nicky came in, wanting to buy me out. I promised Hooch that I would only sell to Nicky over my dead body and since I’m not especially suicidal, I turned Nicky down. He threatened me—”
“Nicky threatened you?” Dick came upright and put his forearms on his knees as he leaned forward. “How?”
“Not overtly threatened. Read-between-the-lines threatened. Something about a storm coming, and I should abandon the ship like a rat.”
He nodded and went back to his slouch.
“Then I got served with ABC papers.”
“I didn’t know about that. What did they say?”
“A complaint about serving underage guests and serving alcohol without a label.”
“Off the record, any truth in either?”
“Our clients, the few we’ve had, are geriatric. Dollars to Doughnuts has been working hard to win over the police patronage. And as for the off-label, I’ve never seen anything. I certainly didn’t serve it. Mainly, we serve beer and Badge Bunny Booze. That’s pretty much it if you don’t count the perv. He orders Juliet and Romeos.”
“The perv,” Dick said.
I pulled the paper bag from the corner of the desk and handed it over to him.
Dick opened the bag, looked inside, and rolled the top closed, then placed it on the floor beside him. “You followed my instructions?”
“To the letter. No human, other than Lyle Cummings, touched that glass.”
Dick squinted at me.
“I kid you not.”
“This isn’t a cute little pet name, like calling me Dick instead of Richard?”
I tipped my head. “Do you feel cute when I call you Dick?”
“Hardly.”
Our eyes caught, and we both grinned. “Well played,” I said. “But no, that is truly his name.” I lifted the stapler and pulled out the tab where I had written Lyle’s name and address. “But this step wasn’t necessary. Peter and another cop, Joe Mannford, got hold of him last night and took down his particulars.” I dove into the whole Lyle the canoodling crocodile and the roll he gave Daphne early this morning.
“You haven’t been to sleep,” was Dick’s response. It wasn’t what I thought he’d focus on. “I think you need to get rid of Daphne. She seems to be bad luck.”
“Can you find out if Lyle owns one of the fingerprints? And if he does, maybe drive by his place and have a heart to heart with him?”
“He’s not in jail?”
“I didn’t press charges. If he’s the one who took Daphne to the park, I want to know how he came to be in possession of the mannequin. Did he know Chloe Walsh? Does he know who the other set of fingerprints belongs to? I thought that having the alarm incident to hold over his head would give me some leverage.”
“You probably thought right, depending on what the prints say. Go back for a second. You said, ‘Did he know Chloe?’ Past tense. Do you want to tell me about that?”
I looked him dead in the eye. “She feels past tense to me. And that feels pretty darned horrifying.”
16
I walked Dick to his car. He opened the door and put the bag inside, then turned to me and took my hands in his. “I’m not at work until tomorrow. I’ll make that a priority on Monday.”
“Thank you.”
He gave me a kiss. “I’ll make it a priority if…”
I looked up at him from under my lashes. A little something fluttered over my skin. If he thought I’d trade sexual favors for police action, he was sadly mistaken. And if he even hinted at such a thing, we’d be done talking. Forever. I’d bring the case to someone else. I held my breath.
Dick must have read something in my eyes because he looked at me quizzically. “Before I ask you what that thought was, let me finish.”
I nodded.
“If you promise to take care of yourself. Like I said yesterday, there’s no evidence that anything sinister is going down. Lyle, Chloe, Daphne, and you are probably a jumble of interesting intersections.” He kissed me. “That being said, I need you to be safe. I’d rather you got rid of Daphne immediately. I’d like it even
better if you gave her a social media going-away party so everyone knew you’d removed her from your vicinity. Could you do that?”
“Give her a send-off? Sure. Well, I can after Dante’s done with her. The artist in there is painting the mural in exchange for doing some publicity shots that include Daphne. The bar is closed until Tuesday. I got a text that Terrance is coming back into town that morning. I could cook something up with him and take action on Tuesday.”
Dick’s jaw hardened.
“Not soon enough?”
“The day you found her was not soon enough. But I guess it will have to do. Now why’d you send me the stink-eye just a minute ago?”
“I had a paradigm shift. I was considering you.”
“For what?”
I didn’t answer.
“I swear to God, BJ, sometimes you’ve got me so I don’t know if I’m coming or going.”
I gave him a slow, sultry smile. “Oh, when I have you coming, you’ll know it.”
Zoom. All his blood rushed southward. He untucked his T-shirt, then put his hands on my hips, pulling me flush so I was nestled up against his high approval rating. “Will that be soon?”
“It seems things are looking up in that direction.” I gave him a wink. “I need this Daphne thing to be over, and I need to get a little sleep first.” What could I say? He was endearing, and loyal, and mm mmm mmm, he just exuded cop—how could a girl possibly resist?
I walked back into the cool quiet of the bar.
Dante was standing back and looking over the mural. “This isn’t going to take too much longer. What do you think of it, BJ?”
“It’s coming along,” I said, distracted by my thoughts about what to do Tuesday, wondering if my nervous system could hold up that long.
“You’re going to love it when I’m done,” he said as he swished his brush in a can.
He glanced around toward Daphne. “Don’t think this is weird and all, but are you playing dress-up with the mannequin or something? I could almost swear she was wearing something different the last time I was here.”
I shrugged. “Every girl needs a change of outfits.” I went to get myself a glass of water behind the bar. “Last night, the dress got something on it. She is the bar’s star, so she has to look clean, at the very least.”
“People will like that she’s showing up in different outfits.” He put the can down and stood to stretch his back. “Social media is a fickle crowd. They lose interest very quickly. I think the mural and pictures of her will squeak in in time, if I can take them today.”
“Do you think you can finish up by today?” I looked dubiously at the wall, then down to the mockup that rested on the bar.
“I’m farther along than it looks. I’d say another hour or two and I can take the pictures. I’d like the paint to dry overnight. I can come in tomorrow morning to paint the sealant. Then you’ll be good to go.”
“That works. I’m closed tomorrow.”
“So you’re off, too?” Dante asked Kay.
“Not off-off. I’m a paralegal for a law office around the corner. I’ve been helping Bobbi Jax out because she needed me. But I can bring my work down here and do it over coffee.”
A smile passed between them, and I didn’t like it. As a matter of fact, I wanted to sabotage it. That thought and my mouth worked simultaneously. “Terrance is coming home Tuesday. I need to talk to him about Daphne.”
“Terrance Pattenson, Terrance? I wondered how you got him to show up here with the whole mannequin challenge thing. He’s a friend?”
I looked over at Kay with a single raised eyebrow. Ball is in your court, chickee-doodle.
Kay looked conflicted and went for a change of subject rather than spell out her relationship. “Why do you need to talk to him about Daphne?” she asked me.
“She needs to go. She’s pulling in a crowd that will drive away the folks I want to be the main patrons. I want the young cops to make this their go-to watering hole. A safe place to relax and be comfortable. The longer I pull in university students, the harder it will be for me to make that happen. I have my eye on the long game.”
“And Terrance…?” she asked.
“Might be able to come up with some cool way to send her off. ‘Bon Voyage, Daphne.’ Maybe have leis and beach music. I don’t know. Something. Like Dante said, the Internet crowds are fickle. I can’t depend on them.”
“No, but you might be able to do something like the Daphne ploy to draw in the kind of crowd you’re looking for,” Dante said. He walked around the end of the bar and helped himself to a glass of water. He looked over at Kay and lifted it up, asking her if she’d like some too.
Kay shook her head.
Dante moved to end of the bar and examined Daphne. He tilted his head this way and that. “The mannequin is obviously a one-of-a-kind piece of art. But the way the artist rendered her isn’t that difficult. It’s a mish-mash of a couple of different art classes. I’m guessing she might have been somebody’s senior project up at the university.”
I moved to sit on the stool next to Daphne. That was what Mary had hypothesized.
“In sculpting class, we learned how to make impressions. A simple process. You put Vaseline on someone, then take fabric strips that were dipped in plaster of Paris and layered on. If you’re doing a face, you stick straws up their nose so they can breathe.”
“You’ve done that before?” Kay asked, moving over to sit on the stool beside me.
“Sure, it’s kind of Sculpting 101. After the plaster dries, you pull it off, then use that for your mold. In this case, the artist was using a porous plastic product that would allow paint to adhere. The artist then painted her using a technique called photorealism. That’s why it’s so damned creepy.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Kay lifted her lip in distaste.
Dante moved back to the sink, and with his back to us, said, “My idea was that I could make some masks for the bar.” He filled his glass with water and strolled back over. “You could pick out some of the cops that you’d like to honor, and I could do masks of them. You could do a kind homage shelf.”
I shook my head. “That sounds like big bucks. That’s a lot of work.”
Dante nodded, lifted a shoulder. “Yeah.” He took a drink. “The ’oil paintings of CEOs’ field is pretty crowded. I need to find a way to break out. I’ve been running this through my head since I saw Daphne on social media. That’s actually why I came down that first night, to see the mannequin up close and personal.” He stopped and sent a smile toward Kay. “I’m really lucky I did.”
Sap alert. Internal snicker. I looked over to catch Kay’s gaze so we could share the fun, but Kay was smiling back at Dante with little hearts in her eyes. Mrph.
Dante turned his attention to me. “I thought that if I could do photoreal busts of the CEOs, that would one-up the other movers and shakers who just had the oil paintings. Everyone would be scrambling for them. After you told me about wanting to capture the cop crowd in here, I thought, you know–that might be the perfect place to start. If I had, say the chief of police, and I could show it to the mayor, the mayor would want one. If I then showed the mayor’s replica to the governor, the governor would want one. If the governor had one, then it would be an easy sell to the CEOs, which is where the money is.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “I don’t see how you need me to have an homage shelf, though.”
“New can feel intimidating.” He cast that sentence out to Kay. “I understand that. I want to find a way to build comfort. You can’t go in guns a-blazing. Sometimes it just a matter of laying the groundwork.”
Kay was nodding as he spoke.
I cleared my throat.
Dante looked back at me. “I thought if I did a mask of you and Kay, that I could convince Connor to do it. If I could convince Connor, I could show that to the chief. Connor, having gone through the experience, could describe the process to the chief. From what Kay tells me of Connor, he isn’t going to
lay down and be incapacitated for any period of time, so I really need you,” he turned his soft brown eyes on Kay, “and Kay to try it first. To be brave enough to try.”
He reached out for Kay’s hand. The double entendre goopy romancy crap was getting thick. This was so out of character for Kay. Normally, this would have her in peals of laughter. But this time, she seemed to be sucking it down like a jug of water after a 10K race. Ugh.
I guessed I should have been happy for her. She looked happy.
“Are you game, Kay?” he asked.
“Sure,” she said.
He turned his focus to me. “And you? Will you help me, BJ? Make a mask and tell Connor and maybe a couple of your other cop friends about the experience? Maybe we could even do their masks here at the bar, and I can buy them some Badge Bunny Booze when we’re done?”
I glanced again at Kay. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to sit still while someone draped plaster on my face. It was weird. Icky. But Kay looked blissful. And she did so much for me. She went to parks in the middle of stormy nights to bring back mannequins. She got chased down the street by a drone. She worked long, long hours here at the bar, when she absolutely didn’t need the money. What was the mask in comparison to all that?
“Sure,” I said. “When do you want to do it?”
“Sooner rather than later. How about tomorrow morning, I come and seal your mural? Over Kay’s lunch break, we can go to my house, and I can make the imprints. It will take them some time to dry and for me to pour the medium, paint them, and so forth. It’s been a while since I’ve done something like this, so the end result might take a few days. Then, I can come and show the final project to you two and Connor.”
“You can’t do the masks here?” I asked, wondering how much of the day this would take, driving somewhere else. I really wanted a break–just some time to go home and lay on my couch to Netflix and chill—maybe with Dick. Maybe.
“If you don’t mind, it really will be so much simpler at my place. I’m only ten minutes away.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kay said.
And I left it there. I wasn’t sure this whole “Mask the CEOs’” thing was going to work. But hey, who was I to naysay? Look what had happened over the last two nights because of Daphne and the Internet? I had earned enough to make bills for the next four months and enough to feel confident about hiring at least one, probably two new servers. I hoped everything went well for Dante. But I also hoped Terrance would get his butt back in town and stake his claim. Things weren’t looking good for him.
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