Too much of
a good thing
... is magic.
CHAPTER 33
Clay Dawes sauntered into the office.
She blinked. “I thought you were in jail.”
“Shut the door, Dawes.”
“Aren’t you glad to see me?” Clay murmured. He had on an actual suit, nothing designer-schmantzy, just cheap enough to match the anti-style of her polyester and convey the unbribable probity of a public servant. He still looked hot. And his hair still wanted cutting.
Her stupid face wouldn’t stop grinning. “You were busted.”
Ed ignored that. “You’re a good investigator, Heiss, one of my best, but you suck at undercover. The way this job is, you need some coaching. Little psychological counseling—”
“He’s not a psychologist. And he was busted.”
“Far from it. I have a job now,” Clay said.
“I mean, psychological advantage,” Ed said hurriedly. “We talked at length after that other business. I was impressed with his insights. You could use some street savvy on your team.”
She tried to wrap her head around this new Ed goofiness, but she was so happy to see Clay, it took her edge off. “Wait a minute, he’s my what?”
“We aren’t having this conversation, did I tell you that?” Ed said, skating serenely over her interruption.
“Naturally not,” Clay murmured.
“Here’s a little deli file. You two can work the kinks out on this case, do some normal stuff for a while until the you-know-what hits the fan again.”
Flinching at “kinks” and “do some normal stuff,” she looked from Ed to Clay.
Clay smiled. “Nice shoes.”
She looked down at her stolen red pumps and flushed. Then she glared at Ed. “I can’t believe you did this to me. After I fixed your marriage.”
“I’m sure we coulda got along fine without. By the way, you’re both coming to Sunday dinner.” He opened the door. “Now giddodda my office.”
His door shut behind them.
Everybody in the outer office stood up and applauded. It seemed as if the whole department was here. Caught in the spotlight, Jewel protested, “Guys.”
“Woo hoo! Heiss got a partner!” Merntice sang out.
“Everybody can relax!” Tookhah yelled.
“Three cheers for Heiss!”
Sayers produced squeakers and handed them around.
Jewel felt herself blushing crimson. Her coworkers were actually high-fiving each other.
“Hey, what’s your name?” Britney said to Clay.
Clay told her, looking aw-shucks and totally comfortable, holding Jewel’s elbow like a fucking bridegroom or something.
“Three cheers for Clay Dawes!” Britney shrieked. Clay bowed for his three cheers.
“To Clay Dawes!” Digby toasted with his styro coffee cup. “He nailed Heiss and got her promoted!”
“Excuse me?” Jewel demanded. Her ears felt so hot, they felt like they might fall off. “He did not!”
“Aw, give it a rest,” Ed murmured in her right ear, and Jewel jumped. “You blush an’ look guilty when you tell the truth, and when he lies, nobody can tell. You’re a perfect team.”
Jewel rounded on him, but Ed only grinned. He raised his voice. “Here’s a fifty!” He held the bill up in the air and Lolly snagged it. “Go get yourselves a beer! Be back here by noon!” He withdrew again, chortling, into his office.
Lolly flourished the money. “Dick’s!”
“To Dick’s!” everybody yelled.
“Are we bonding?” Clay murmured in her ear as he hustled her down the stairs with the rollicking investigators. “Cool.”
“You put him up to this,” she said through her teeth.
“Didn’t have to. And aren’t I getting some insights on my new partner!”
“Grrrr.”
“Hold my hand, officer, and we’ll face the music together.”
In Dick’s, they crowded up against the bar, and Jewel heard Lolly say behind her, “I give him two weeks. Ten bucks.”
“God, I hope so,” Britney said. “You’re on.”
What did I ever do to deserve such pals? Jewel squeezed Clay’s hand, and Clay squeezed back. She felt better.
oOo
In the men’s room at Dick’s, Clay bonded with the guys. Sayers, the guy with the whisky nose, threw an arm over Clay’s shoulders. “You should know something about Heiss,” he wheezed. “ ’Fore you get in too deep. Haw.”
“Haw,” Clay said obediently. “This should be good.”
Sayers held up a finger. “She don’t stay innersted. N’am sayin’? Only, only you got to stand by her annahaw.”
“Haw?”
“Because that hinky shit is dangerous.”
Clay eased out from under Sayers’s arm and propped him against the men’s room wall.
“I believe you.”
“The rumdum’s right,” the guy named Digby said. “We worry about Heiss.”
“ ’Sright,” Sayers said. “Little girl lost, our Jewel.”
Clay blinked. “Six-foot Jewel? Eyes-like-razors Jewel?”
“The same,” Digby said.
“Hi, I’m Jason,” said a male model type. “Okay, she’s a tart, but we—” Digby clouted the side of his head. “Ow!” “
We take care of her. So will you,” Digby finished for him.
“Otherwise,” said a so-far-silent man named Finbow.
Clay waited. He raised his eyebrows. “Haw?”
Finbow leaned forward and drove a fist into Clay’s solar plexus. Clay folded up, gasping.
He backed away, but Finbow seemed to be done.
“Gotcha,” Clay wheezed.
Finbow looked thoughtful. “No. I gotcha.”
Clay considered nodding and didn’t. Finbow went out.
Digby and Jason got Clay standing and Sayers offered him a nip out of a flask, which Clay accepted. That wasn’t so bad.
“Come on,” Sayers said gloomily. “We gotta let the women at you sometime.” They led him back into the bar. Clay spent thirty minutes watching Jewel and fending off come-ons from her female coworkers. Holy scary harem, he thought. Apparently he’d underestimated the job: Getting her into bed was the easy part.
But however crowded the bar, however many wellwishers Jewel seemed to have here, there was no sign whatever of Lord Randy the Underdressed.
Excellent.
“What you want with our Jewel, hm?” one of the women said.
Wish I knew. “I hope she’ll teach me everything she knows.”
“Better hope not,” she said. “I’m Merntice. I put your paycheck through.” Another gotcha.
In fact, it didn’t go so badly at all.
oOo
“So, Virgil, I see you cashed my check. Do I win the bet?”
Saturday afternoon, Clay sat on a bench on Oak Street Beach, watching half-naked yuppies play volleyball in the sun. He felt odd. Solid and safe and in control. Not like himself at all.
Virgil grumbled, which his son took to be a yes.
“That’s the good news, then.”
“Okay, let’s have the rest.”
“Know that brass bed I borrowed from you? Uh-huh, well, I have some bad news, it’s been crushed into a club sandwich.”
“My antique?” Virgil’s calm broke. “I rented that bed to you. I didn’t give it to you so you could crush it! That thing was a piece of history!”
“Virgil, it wasn’t the Celestial Bed and you know it. You only told that guy he had Hamilton’s bed so he would think he was gypping you in a swap for that phony Ming bowl.”
Virgil sniffed. “It could have been the Celestial Bed.”
“But it wasn’t.” Clay hurried on. “And you know that fraud cop I told you about? I have some weird news. I have a job.”
“Not another lame con. What now?”
“No, it’s a regular job, like, a paycheck and benefits and taxes taken out and everything. So I’m her partner now—”
“What?”
“It was a plea bargain, Virgil.”
“She busted you! I knew it.”
“Nope. Nopers. In fact, the plea was on the other foot.”
“What?!”
“Are we square over the bed?”
Virgil sighed. “At least you got some work out of it. You’ll be able to live on the profits for a while.”
Never tell the truth. “Oh, yeah, the money. Okay, remember the club sandwich?”
Copyright @ 2008 by Jennifer Stevenson
First published by Ballantine Books, April 2008
www.jenniferstevenson.com
http://smokingpigeon.livejournal.com
|
