by Tess Rothery
Taylor agreed, but didn’t dare say so. “If only we could set someone up with Jack too. I’d give anything to get him alone and force him to answer some questions.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to do anything like that on the first date.” Asha looked apologetic. “I think I need to get connected with him first. Chemistry. You know?”
“But the more dates you go on, the more risk you take.” The kettle Taylor had set on the stove began to whistle. She took two mugs from the cupboard and a tub of Swiss Miss Cocoa. It seemed…fitting. She stirred quietly as she tried to come up with a way to keep Asha safe as an undercover sugar baby. She’d wanted this, but she’d wanted to plan for it first. Asha setting it up herself took away Taylor’s sence of control.
She passed the second mug to Asha and led them both back to the front room where the little heater was doing its best to help.
“Let’s brainstorm. We can figure out how to make this work.”
“Thanks.” Asha sat in the armchair with her fingers wrapped around the warm mug.
Taylor collected the topsy turvy windmill quilt from the back of Grandpa Ernie’s recliner and passed it to Asha. “It’s freezing in here. No use freezing to death before you even get to the first date.”
Chapter Eleven
The Rio was one of those resurrected vintage show-houses that scraped a living with viewings of classics, art films, local work, and things that would impress the intellectual elite. Taylor had never been there before, but a quick call to her friend John Hancock proved fruitful. John’s little brother was co-owner and more than happy to let Graham and Taylor slip in early and tuck themselves away where they could spy on the couple.
The hundred-year-old theater could seat 250 people, but only some thirty had arrived for the evenings viewing of Les Diabolique. The miniature opera box where Taylor and Graham huddled hadn’t been used for audience seating since The Rio’s conversion to a movie theater. The low, curved wall had bell shaped openings from which they could view Asha and her date Charles without being seen.
Taylor crouched on her knees with her face nearly pressed against the cold plaster.
Graham tapped her thigh near her hip.
She turned to where he had touched her, and he gestured to the floor, but didn’t speak.
The cello line of the movie theme thrummed through the room like a scared heartbeat.
She adjusted, sitting on her bottom with her feet tucked to the side, as her sister and the other girls in ballet had always done. Her knees hadn’t liked the hard wooden floor and wouldn’t have lasted the two hours kneeling.
There was just enough light from the silver screen that she could see Graham’s small smile, pleased she’d sat.
In the theater seats below, Asha and Charles sat. His hand rested on the chair arm between them. He leaned forward an inch or two as the pitch of the song rose.
It was the longest theme song Taylor could remember, each discordant instrument adding a layer of tension to her already pulled nerves. When the horns were joined by the cries of a children’s choir, she let out a gasp.
Graham tapped her lightly again, this time on the knee.
She nodded and controlled her breathing.
The film began. A car rattling in the distance. French voices. A bell. More children.
Charles tilted his head toward Asha.
Asha leaned as though she couldn’t hear.
Taylor bit her lip.
“He’s translating.” She could feel Graham’s whisper more than she could hear it. His lips so near her ear, his breath warm.
Were there no captions? She turned to see the screen, but Graham was still there, and his lips brushed her cheek.
Her eyes closed, then opened again.
Graham looked down, the tip of his nose brushing her now.
His fingertips pressed her knee, as though for balance.
It was too hot, too hard to breathe. Too close.
Too far away.
She needed to tell him something. Tell him that they might not be able to save Asha if something went wrong.
Tell him that she was scared.
Tell him that her shoulder hurt every time she thought of him, but when her shoulder didn’t hurt, she felt like something was missing from her life.
He looked up again, his eyes so close she could have fallen in. They stared, their breathing labored, beating like the bass line of the theme song. Potent with danger.
His forehead leaned against hers. Dishes rattled in the film, and a man cleared his throat anxiously before speaking, his French low and discouraged.
Then arguing.
Children’s voices.
Yelling.
Her eyes went wide.
Graham moved his hand to her hip and held her.
So many voices.
The man yelling.
Then silence.
In the theater, the silence was thick.
Then voices, and fists banging. Children demanding in unison.
Taylor needed to see what Charles was doing. Needed to see that Asha was safe in her seat in the mostly empty theater.
But she couldn’t pull her eyes from Graham’s face, gently silvered by the film.
Graham turned first.
She exhaled.
In the theater seats, Charles had draped his arm over the back of Asha’s chair, and she leaned into him.
Then the voice of a young French woman crying, “No, no!”
Les Diabolique had been intense, even though she hadn’t understood the French. The theater steamed with heat from the old radiators. The closeness—she could still hear the thrumming of Graham’s heartbeat in her ears. The fresh minty scent she always associated with him, which had become the sexiest smell she could imagine, lingered, but of course it would as he was standing so near.
The cold night air had been a relief, and she stamped her feet for warmth while they watched Asha’s car.
“They wouldn’t have driven together.” Taylor was mostly trying to reassure herself. She hated the idea of the young, empty seeming girl alone in a car with the strange man.
“She’s probably just in the bathroom.” Graham sheltered her from the cold wind behind them. His breath felt warm on her neck as though he was crouching a little to be nearer her size.
They waited another five minutes in silence, but no one came for Asha’s car.
“I don’t like this.” Taylor blew onto her fingers. The weather turned frigid. Gone was the bright, warm, early spring. This was a rare ice-cold March. “Should I text?”
“Why not?” Graham asked. “And we can head to the diner. They probably just hit it off. It was a date, after all.”
Taylor sent a quick text, “Is all okay?”
She immediately wished she’d written something else as that sounded fishy, even to her. And if Asha was in some kind of trouble, that wasn’t going to help.
“Let’s get there fast.” She grabbed Graham by the sleeve and led them to his car. They knew where they were going—Truie’s—Robert Jessup’s diner of first dates.
But the night was dark and the roads were slippery. Rain pounded the roof of Graham’s twenty-year-old Mustang and streamed against the windshield in a blur as they drove the dark country road. Graham was fast with that confidence that comes from city driving. Taylor had developed some of that during her years in Portland, but it was fading, and Graham’s handling of the car was terrifying. He almost missed the turn into the diner’s driveway, but yanked his wheel and slid in.
Taylor flinched and gripped the door handle.
“Sorry about that. I really am trying to avoid near-death experiences. I think we've had enough of those, don't you?”
They parked on the side of the restaurant in front of a window. If the rain would let up, they’d have a good view of what was going on inside without being seen, but the deluge smothered their windshield.
Taylor craned her neck to see if either Asha or Charles’ car was there yet.
“Where are they?”
“They'll be here,” he said. “I was fast.”
“But there weren't any cars behind us. Even in the distance. Surely we would have seen them.”
He didn’t have an answer for that, and his jaw flexed.
“How did they get out so much faster than we did? We didn’t even see them. We were watching. I was watching, anyway.” She kept her voice low as her inclination was to blame him. But for what, exactly?
“Maybe they decided not to have dinner.”
“You mean just go back to his place? I hope not…” Taylor wrapped her fingers around the knob of the stick shift.
“I was thinking maybe they had parted ways.”
“Then why would she be in his car?”
“We didn’t wait that long for her. She might have been in the bathroom or gone for a quick bite near The Rio. It wasn’t very late. She might have wanted to walk it off.” Graham’s voice was dismissive, but he looked through each window, taking his time, as though their quarry might have snuck in behind them, still.
“She’d have called or responded to my text. Anyway, why wouldn’t he have wanted to take her out? Did you see her? She’s a stunning girl. Exactly the kind men pay for.”
“Maybe she had seemed a little young to this guy.” Graham brushed the top of her thigh with his hand, possibly in comfort, but it sent shivers up her leg.
“He didn't call A Friend of Coco's to meet a mature woman.” She pressed her lips together, trying to keep her cool. Graham had been clear about the status of their relationship, and what good would it do to let herself … she didn’t put it into words and just felt it. What good was feeling like that when he touched her if there was no hope for a future?
“You've got to admit, she really does seem young.” Graham’s voice was cool, but he squinted into the distance, like Clint Eastwood, and watched the road.
“She's in her twenties. Older than Coco, actually.”
“You don’t see it? That bright blonde hair with those big eyes and the way she can't seem to think in a straight line? Some men might fall all over themselves for that, but not all of them.”
“She speaks three languages.” Taylor defended the girl who she had grown fond of, even though she had some of the same qualms herself.
“Didn’t realize. Some polyglots do get a little tangled up, with so many options bouncing around in their skulls.” He reclined his seat a few clicks and put one arm across the back of Taylor’s. “They’ll show up. We just got here. Besides, it’s nasty out. He might have gotten lost.”
“He wouldn't have. He’s done this before.”
The words lingered in the air, and Graham dropped his arm to squeeze Taylor’s shoulder. Though she’d only meant he’d taken a potential Sugar Baby on a first date before, they both thought of the murdered Molly Kay.
“Let’s just calm down a little. They’ll get here.”
The pounding of her heart was tearing apart her chest, like it was trying to escape. It hurt so badly she was sure he could hear it. “This man might be a murderer, and we don't know where they are. How am I supposed to calm down?” Her shoulder burned, the old break, and the damaged muscle in her leg twitched.
Her brain was screaming, “This is a panic attack, breathe slowly.”
But the rest of her didn't agree.
This was a realistic fear. Her new friend was about to die.
Taylor picked up Graham’s hand and set it on her ribcage, right where it hurt the most. His fingers slid under the loose edge of her silky blouse, his skin on hers. She needed him to feel the panic. “It's not helping,” she said.
His hand was warm against her cold chest, and his mouth opened slightly. “Taylor…” he leaned in and kissed her with the passion of a man who had been dying for this kiss for a year.
Her heart did not calm down. In fact, everything was on fire. Her brain was spinning, her fingers shaking, every muscle responding with longing. He pulled her to him, but the center console was in the way. He laughed and let her go. “Damn this car. Damn it to hell and back.”
Taylor dropped her forehead onto his and shook with silent laughter until tears fell. “I've been dying to do that since the day you accosted me in the parking lot behind Flour Sax.”
“You say the sweetest things.” He kissed the top of her head. “I want to bring you home with me and keep you forever, and I have wanted it since probably the exact same moment.”
She tipped her face up and kissed him again. Within seconds, the soft tender moment turned to fiery passion, and they found themselves wrestling with the injustice of bucket seats as the rain beat on the roof of the car. She didn't know how much time had passed when she finally came up for air—not relaxed but thrilled. Not calm at all.
There were no new cars in the parking lot, and no new shadowy figures in the well-lighted windows of the diner. “Graham, she's not here,” Taylor said. “Where did they go?”
He let his fingers fall through her hair. “You’d better call.”
She fumbled for her phone with shaking hands and hit the number of the newest contact. She prayed as it rang, though half of the words spilling from her mind were of gratitude and thanks and not entirely focused on the girl she was also terrified for.
There was no answer.
The next morning Graham made breakfast in the kitchen of the almost abandoned house on Love Street.
Taylor called the sheriff to file a missing person’s report. She asked for Sheriff Rousseau directly, knowing he would be both the most likely to holler at her for interfering, and the most likely to take her request seriously.
She wasn’t thrilled to settle for Serge, a deputy she didn't know very well at all. He listened quietly. “Asha Szkolaski? Good God, what's happened to Zsa Zsa?”
“Zsa Zsa?” Taylor repeated.
“Just a nickname. I went to school with her. How long has she been missing?”
Taylor explained that she hadn't shown up for dinner, making it sound as though she and Graham had been planning a double date.
“I'd do anything for Zsa Zsa. She’s a great girl, seriously. But we can't do anything about someone who's just been gone one night. Especially not a grown woman.
“There's more to the story,” Taylor said. “It has to do with the murder of Molly Kay.”
Serge’s voice dropped, both grim and frosty, “Continue.”
“See, um… Asha was using the same dating service. A Friend of Coco, and she asked specifically to go out with one of the men Molly had been seeing. Something about wanting to do a kind of a consolation date.”
“Taylor Quinn.” He made her name sound like a curse word. “Did you put her up to that?”
“I did talk to her, as I knew they were friends, but she called me. You know Graham Dawson, the journalist? He and I were supposed to be there to watch her. To make sure it was safe. But right after the movie ended and before the dinner, we lost track of them. I don't know where they are. I don't know how to contact them…” She stopped midsentence. Her first instinct had been to call the sheriff to protect her friend. But Serge was right. There was no way they were going to look for her yet. “Never mind. I'm calling Coco.” Taylor let out a sharp breath.
“If anything happened to Zsa Zsa,” Serge growled. “Never mind.” He cleared his throat. “We've been trying to come up with a reason to get Coco down here for several days now. If nothing else, this is a reason. You and Graham come down too. I want all of you here. And trust me, the sheriff will know.”
Taylor hung up before Serge could issue any more directions and stared at Graham.
He set a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her. “That doesn't sound like it went well.”
“We've been invited down for a chat.”
“At least I can use it for research. Eat up. You know how they are about lunch down there.”
The last thing her stomach wanted to do this morning was eat, as it was clenched in fear. But she did know how they were about lunc
h and forced her way through the scrambled eggs, orange juice, and toast. She hadn't done anything illegal, but that was no reason for Sheriff Rousseau to go easy on her.
The background information Ingrid Quinn had gathered was starting to pile up. She thought a chat with Sheriff Rousseau might be in order, but she wanted to talk to Taylor first. Though the girl was young and a bit sloppy, she had a way of getting to the bottom of things. She might have a piece of the puzzle that could make it all come together. Ingrid gave her granddaughter a call, but it went straight to voicemail. It was early, well not Ingrid Quinn early, but it was early enough, so she went down to the sunroom and performed the standard twenty-four Tai Chi forms to center herself.
It almost worked, but the weight of her actions weighed on her. She had almost doped a man. She’d forced information from him knowing he was as good as doped because of the interaction with the medicines he was taking. She was on the side of the moral right, but what she had done felt awfully close to wrong.
When the doorbell rang, she was not surprised.
Sheriff Rousseau, himself, a shoestring cousin of Ernie Baker who was still sleeping soundly in the ground floor guest bedroom, glared at her with one hand on his hip holster. A slim young lad of a deputy stood to the side, eyeing the long driveway. She looked at the image from her doorbell camera and considered her options. It was deliciously tempting to not answer the door.
“Is Coco in?” Sheriff Rousseau spoke into the camera.
Relieved that the visit had nothing to do with her interrogation of Robert Jessup, she answered the door.
“Morning Ingrid.” Sheriff Rousseau nodded a greeting. “We’d like to have a chat with your great niece.”
“Anything in particular?” Ingrid kept her grip on the doorknob and made sure she fully filled the gap where the door opened. She didn’t want the officers of the law to imagine an invitation inside.
“Sure. Plenty. Is she in?”
“Do you have a warrant?”
The sheriff laughed. “It’s not come to that quite yet, I’d hope. We just want to have a little conversation.”