Hold Your Breath (Search and Rescue) (22 page)

Lou waved, and Ian headed in their direction. As he pulled out a chair, she noticed his expression was unusually grim.

“Thanks for meeting me—us,” she said.

In response, he gave a short lift of his chin. When the waitress headed in their direction, Ian shook his head. She retreated back to the bar.

“What’s up?” he asked.

“Uh…” His locked-down expression was throwing her off her game. Ian had never been chatty or extra-smiley, but he’d been much more approachable than this hard-edged man sitting across from them. It was making her reconsider sharing the information with this dangerous-looking stranger. Shaking off her doubts, she decided she just needed to say it and get it done. “I heard something about the dead guy found in the reservoir that I thought you should know.”

She could tell that she’d surprised him. Even though his expression blanked a split second after he let it show, Lou caught the slight widening of his eyes. He gestured for her to continue.

“There was an item—I don’t know what—found on the weight that was holding the body down in the reservoir. It had the Liverton MC logo on it. There’s a theory that it was intended to be the murderer’s signature.”

This time, his startled look was even more obvious. It also took him longer to regain his impassive expression.

“That’s all.” Lou gave a small shrug. “Sorry it’s not much.”

“You sure about this?” he asked.

“It was a pretty…reliable source,” she said, picking her words carefully. “Plus, it was confirmed by an even more reliable source.”

He nodded and stood. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Lou watched him stride toward the door. When he’d disappeared outside, she turned to Callum. “That was weird.
He
was weird.”

“He’s on MC turf now.”

“Turf?” she teased. “Are you an extra in
West Side Story
?”

He rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “Turf, territory—whatever you want to call it. He splits his time between two very different worlds. Are you glad you told him?”

After considering this for a moment, Lou nodded. “Yes. My gut feels like it was the right thing to do. Plus, I get mini-pizzas.”

Callum’s laugh was loud and free, and it made her proud she’d been the cause of that rare sound.

* * *

Not wanting a lecture on sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong, Lou called Chris instead of the sheriff on the way back to Callum’s and told him what she had learned about HDG’s identity. After she finished her long and, admittedly, convoluted story, there was an extended silence.

“Why were you looking into this?” he finally asked.

She shrugged, even though he couldn’t see her. “I kicked the poor guy’s dead body. That created some feelings of guilt and ownership.” She didn’t add:
Besides, it sounded like you guys weren’t getting anywhere.

“Okay.” Although his tone was fairly expressionless, Lou heard an undertone of “you are so weird.”

“Think it’ll help to have—well, possibly have—his first name? And his brother’s name?”

“I’ll definitely look into it.”

Lou frowned. That had been a nonanswer worthy of Rob.

“Could you text me the name and number for the Otto support group coordinator who told you about this?” he asked.

“Sure.” She shrugged off his un-Chris-like caginess. “I’ll send that to you as soon as we finish talking.”

“Thanks, and Lou?”

“Yeah?” She knew what was coming from his tone. So much for avoiding a stay-out-of-this lecture by calling Chris rather than the sheriff.

“This case is messy, and it looks like some pretty scary people are involved. Do yourself a favor and stay clear.”

“Hmm,” she hummed noncommittally, and changed the subject before he could press her for a more definite agreement to cease and desist her amateur investigation. “Any luck tracking down Brent?”

“Not yet.” Chris sounded irritated. “He’s proving surprisingly elusive for a soft city boy.”

“I’m not surprised.” When Callum looked over at her, brows raised, she shook her head, silently passing on Chris’s answer. “He’s always been proficient at self-preservation.”

“Well, he hasn’t been doing too well, lately—other than at dodging arrest,” Chris shared. “He’s run into some money trouble—the kind that has burly guys chasing him with baseball bats.”

“Really?” Callum looked at her questioningly again, but, this time, she just mouthed “later” at him and returned her focus to her conversation with Chris. “How’d that happen? Not that I know the specifics, but I assume my stepdad pays him a pretty hefty salary.”

“Brent was trying to run in some affluent circles, and he wasn’t able to do that on his income, as generous as your stepdad is. Brent disappeared two weeks ago. He mentioned something about a ‘family situation,’ but your stepfather hasn’t been able to contact him since. He’s been worried.”

Lou snorted. “Richard should be worried about what’ll happen when I get my hands on that tire-slashing, cabin-burning creeper.”

With a laugh, Chris joked, “After we bring him in, do you want five minutes in the interview room with him when the camera’s off?”

“Is that an option?” she asked with real interest.

“Ah, no,” he said, although he sounded amused. “There’ve been a couple of people who’ve tempted me, but I haven’t gone over to the dark side yet—that one, at least.”

“
That
dark side?” she teased. “Deputy Chris, how intriguing.”

As Chris coughed and mumbled something, sounding flustered, Callum shot her a dark look. “Stop flirting with him.”

Rolling her eyes, she refocused on the conversation. “Sorry, Chris. Let me know if Brent pops up somewhere, okay? It’ll be nice not to imagine him lurking in the bushes wherever I go.”

“Will do.” Chris sounded as if he’d regained his equanimity. “And don’t go looking for trouble.”

She laughed. “I’ll try, but it won’t matter. Trouble finds me.”

His sigh was heavy, and she could tell it was only half put-on. “Bye, Lou.”

“Later, Deputy.”

After ending the call, she sighed. “Everyone’s being weird and cagey today.” After finding Mary’s number on her recent-calls list, she texted it to the deputy while filling Callum in on Chris’s side of the conversation.

“What I don’t get,” she said when she was finished, “is why Brent’s fixated on me. If he has bad guys trying to squeeze the money he owes out of him, why doesn’t he just disappear? It’s not like I can give him anything more than a free coffee, especially now that he’s burned all of my earthly possessions. And why does he want to
kill
me? I would think my being dead would defeat his purpose.”

Frowning thoughtfully, he mused, “Maybe he just snapped, blaming you for the way his life has turned to shit?”

“But why?” Lou shifted to look at him. “All I did was date him, dump him, and then avoid him ever since. I haven’t had a single conversation with him since I’ve lived here.”

Callum pulled into the alley behind the coffee shop and eased to a stop. “You said he was supposed to take over your stepfather’s business once you were…married.” He muttered the last word between gritted teeth. “Maybe he blames you for not going along with that plan.”

“I suppose,” she said doubtfully. “My stepdad likes Brent a lot better than me, especially now. I can’t see him handing off control of the company to anyone else, whether I’m Brent’s wife or not. Whatever the reason, I just hope the cops find him soon. I’ll be glad when I can quit looking over my shoulder for stalkers.”

“I second that.” He leaned back against the seat and rubbed his eyes.

“Once they nab him, I can concentrate on checking over my shoulder for murderers instead.”

His head snapped to the side so he could shoot her
the look
.

Grinning, she opened her door and hopped out of the truck.

Ivy was completely over her fit of sympathy. Lou already knew this from the grudging way her boss had agreed to cover the first half hour of Lou’s shift when she’d called that morning. Lou had managed to eat a shocking amount of greasy bar food and then make it back to Simpson in just over an hour, so Ivy only had to tack ten minutes onto her shift. The way the other woman was acting, though, it could’ve been ten
hours
.

Lou was happy to see her affronted boss leave. When Smelly Jim entered immediately after Ivy had stalked out the front door, Lou began breathing through her mouth, but sent him a big smile. After all, he’d noticed Brent following her. Looking back, the description fit her stalker exactly.

“Sm—uh, Jim,” she greeted him, wondering why he was standing in the doorway, half-in and half-out of the shop. “What can I get you?”

“Nothing.” He seemed twitchier than normal, his eyes darting left and right. He must’ve decided to stay, because he took a step into the shop. When the door swung shut behind him, sleigh bells jangling, he jumped and whirled around, as if he’d heard gunshots.

“You okay, Jim?” she asked carefully.

“No.” He shook his head, hard enough that the oily strands of hair protruding from his deerstalker hat slapped against his hollow, stubbly cheeks. “I know too much. They’re after me.” He took a couple of backward steps away from the door, until his back bumped against the ornate shelf holding sweeteners and sprinkles.

“Hey,” she said gently, keeping her voice low and even. “You’re safe in here. Why don’t you sit at that corner table? You can put your back to the wall and watch through the front windows. I’ll get you something hot to drink and one of the pastries.” Although it was hard to tell under his thick layers of clothes, he looked thinner to her, his features sharpened to the point of gauntness.

“No.” He shot a look at the table she’d indicated and then back at the door. “I’d be trapped.”

“There’s no way anyone could sneak up on you,” she assured him. “You’d see them long before they made it to the door. If anyone’s headed this way, you can escape out the back before they see you.”

“They’ll be watching the back.” He shook his head again. “I just wanted to warn you.”

“No need.” Moving slowly and deliberately so she didn’t startle him, she reached into the pastry case and pulled out a cinnamon roll, wrapping it in waxed paper. It was the largest thing in the case, and she figured the nuts would provide some protein. She had a feeling that Jim wouldn’t stick around long enough for her to make him a sandwich. “The sheriff knows who my stalker is. You described him perfectly. It’s a guy I knew back in Connecticut who apparently went off the rails. Here.”

She held out the wrapped roll, and he hesitated, eyeing the pastry suspiciously.

“We bake them here,” she told him, roll still extended toward him, taking a guess at the reason behind his hesitation. “I know everything that goes into them. It’s safe.” She hadn’t actually supervised the baking of this particular roll, but she figured her small lie was for the greater good if it got him to eat something. When he finally reached for the roll, she bit back a grin of triumph.

“That’s not what I needed to tell you,” he said, closing his fingers around the roll. Then his gaze shot to the windows, and he swung around, knocking the pastry to the floor. “The back!” He stared at her, his eyes wild. “You promised I could go out the back!”

“This way.” Lifting the section of counter, she stood aside to let him pass. “Straight through the kitchen.”

He took off, and she heard a clang that she guessed was a baking sheet he’d knocked off the rack. With a sigh, she circled the counter to pick up the roll off the floor. Luckily, it had stayed wrapped, so she scooped it up and dropped it into a paper bag. With a marker, she wrote “Jim” on the bag, and then followed his path through the kitchen, although at a more sedate pace, retrieving the fallen baking sheet on her way.

When she heard the bells on the door jangle, she called, “Be right there.” Jim had left the back door open, so she stepped into the alley. No one was in sight, so she tucked the bag on a ledge outside the door, making sure his name showed, and then weighted the folded top of the bag down with a rock the size of her palm. After a final glance around the alley and parking lot didn’t reveal Smelly Jim, she pulled the door closed and headed to her waiting customer.

When she got a glimpse of who’d entered, she stifled a sigh, wishing she’d torn out of the shop on Jim’s heels. “Deputy Lawrence,” she said, trying to sound as welcoming as she could with gritted teeth. “What can I get you?”

His face was scrunched in a grimace. “What is that smell?”

“Oh, right.” Jim’s mental state had distracted her from his odor. “Sorry. Smelly Jim just visited.” She unlatched the window behind her and shoved it open as far as it would go. “He seems worse than usual—physically and mentally. Is there any way to get him some help?”

“You can call Field County Social Services,” Lawrence said, settling on the stool closest to the wall. It bugged her that his annoying ass was contaminating Callum’s usual seat. “He won’t thank you for it, though. Probably just hide from them.”

“Yeah.” Gazing past the deputy, lost in thought, she nodded. “He definitely doesn’t like any government types. Once he saw you coming, he flew out of here.”

He frowned. “I didn’t see him leave.”

“I let him go out the back.” Fingering a to-go cup hopefully, she asked, “Did you want a mocha?”

“You remembered.” He looked so smugly pleased by this that she wished she’d pretended she hadn’t. “Yes, please. And you shouldn’t play along with his delusions.”

With a shrug, she busied herself with making his drink to hide her annoyance. “No harm in letting him go out the back if that makes him feel safer.”

“You’re just encouraging his paranoia. If you agree with him that little green men are going to steal his brainwaves, it makes him believe it even more. You wannabe do-gooders…” He actually tsked.

Squeezing her eyes closed while she counted to five, Lou wondered how Lawrence managed to survive working with so many people who carried guns. His fellow deputies must be better, more patient people than she was. “So,” she said a little too loudly, “how’s the murder case going?”

When he fell uncharacteristically silent, she glanced over her shoulder at him. His pale skin hid none of the blush that reddened his face and neck. “I…uh, can’t share any information about that,” he finally said stiffly.

Rob must’ve torn him a new one. Lou got an odd satisfaction from the thought. “Okay,” she agreed easily, pressing a lid onto his cup and passing it to him. “Have you been on any other interesting calls lately?”

It was the wrong question to ask. By the time he’d finished his twenty-minute monologue, Lou had concluded that her definition of “interesting” was drastically different from Lawrence’s. She was also shaking from cold. In desperation, she closed and latched the window, hoping that the residual scent of Smelly Jim would help drive the deputy out of the shop.

Unfortunately, it took another fifteen minutes before his radio crackled to life and the dispatcher called out his unit number. When Lawrence made a face and reached for his shoulder mic to respond, Lou was so relieved that she almost did a little dance.

“Sorry,” he told her. “Got to go. Domestic dispute.”

Lou just nodded, not mentioning the fact that she had a pair of functioning ears and had been able to hear the call just fine.

“I’ve been to that address before.” Standing up, he pitched his cup toward the trash and missed. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and the tips of his ears reddened. She politely pretended not to notice. “Erma Vann is probably chucking things at her wuss of a boyfriend again.”

“You’d better get out there, then,” she said, trying to use the force of her mind to shove him out the door, “before he gets injured.”

He snorted, walking toward the exit. “Nothing he doesn’t deserve. He needs to stand up and act like a man.”

“Uh-huh,” Lou muttered, distracted by the fact that he was apparently going to leave his discarded cup on the floor with the dregs of his mocha leaking onto the tiles. As much as she wanted him to leave, it would’ve been nice if he’d taken two seconds to pick up his trash.

“I’ll see you later, Lou.” He paused by the door. “Hey, would you want to…? Damn it!” The dispatcher’s voice interrupted his question. Since Lou had a horrified idea of what he was about to ask, she made a mental note to find out which dispatcher it was and take her flowers in thanks for her excellent timing. As he snapped a response into his shoulder mic, he shoved the door open with his shoulder and gave Lou a final wave.

“Thank you, baby Jesus!” She sighed, letting her forehead rest against the counter. If he’d stayed any longer, she was pretty sure she would’ve found either a gun or a heavy, blunt object. If her jury was made up of people who knew Deputy Lawrence, she was pretty sure she would be acquitted of his murder.

After releasing a long-contained growl of frustration, she dampened a paper towel and circled the counter to pick up his abandoned cup. She cleaned up the spilled mocha and tossed everything, marveling at how she managed to hit the trash can every single time, unlike a great number of people frequenting the coffee shop.

Immediately after moving back behind the counter, she grabbed for her cell phone. “You’re becoming a dependent ninny,” she warned herself, even as she tapped his name on her screen.

“You okay?” Callum answered, and just the sound of his voice made her muscles relax. She hadn’t realized how tightly she’d been holding herself since she’d started her shift.

Ignoring the voice in her head screaming, “Helpless weakling!” she said, “Yeah. Now.”

“What happened?” She could hear a few other voices in the background on Callum’s end of the call.

“Where are you?” she asked instead of answering.

He seemed to take this subject change in stride. “Hardware store.”

“Yeah? Say hi to Deedee for me if you see her.” Just the normalcy of the conversation was calming her.

“No.”

Well, there went the normalcy. “No? Why not?”

“Because if I even mention you, she’s going to take that as permission to ask a thousand questions about…us.”

“Us?” She grinned. It was rare—and fun—hearing Callum sound so flustered.

“
I
don’t even know the answers to these questions—not that I’d answer them, anyway.”

“You could try ‘no comment,’” she suggested.

His answer was a grunt. “Why’d you call? I know it wasn’t to hear about Deedee’s interrogation.”

“Oh.” Lou sighed. The misery of a few minutes before had already faded. “I’ve just had a really sucky shift so far.”

“What happened?”

“Ivy was pissed, then Smelly Jim came in—acting super twitchy—and then, to cap it all off, our favorite deputy decided to hang out for forty-five minutes, telling me about Gordon Johnson sneaking his garbage into his neighbor’s cans. I’ve never wanted to commit homicide so very badly.”

His chuckle was low, but it still warmed her belly. “Poor Lou. You had to deal with the trifecta.”

“I did,” she whined, although there was a laugh buried underneath. “Can you stop by the shop after you get done with dodging Deedee’s questions?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you! You need to sit on your stool to kill the Lawrence cooties.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Have fun shopping. I’ll see you soon.”

“Shopping? You make it sound like I’m picking out a purse or something.”

Rolling her eyes, Lou said, “Fine. Have fun on your ultramacho and manly errand, selecting and purchasing whatever gender-appropriate item you need.”

“I will.”

“And I’ll lock the door and hide in the back until you get here.”

“On the positive side,” he said, “there isn’t anyone
worse
than Lawrence who could come into the shop.”

“Except for Brent,” she joked.

Obviously, he did not find it funny, since he went silent for a long moment, and then snapped, “I’ll be right there.”

“I was”—she realized he’d already ended the call—“kidding.”

* * *

Once Callum arrived, the rest of her shift was fun. The crowd picked up as the afternoon transitioned to evening, so the time flew. When Lou realized it was almost closing time, she was surprised by how quickly her shift had gone.

“Thanks,” she told Callum as he drove them the short distance to his house. “For staying for so long. It made it much more bearable-er.”

His lips twitched. “Bearable-er? Don’t think that’s a word. How many years did you go to school?”

With a groan, she admitted, “Too many. And none of my classes taught me the important things, like how to fix a clogged toilet. The clever people on the Internet taught me that.”

“Speaking of plumbing, you get to be my assistant tonight.”

“Your assistant?” She turned toward him as they pulled into his garage. “Do I get to have mall hair and wear a bedazzled leotard?”

“I didn’t understand most of what you just said.”

“Like a magician’s assistant? With big hair and all the sparkly stuff? Oh, never mind. It’s not funny if I have to explain.”

“Okay.” He paused as they both got out of the truck, speaking again when she’d rounded the pickup and entered the mudroom as he held the door for her. “I need to fix the kitchen sink. Since I was going to do that this afternoon, you can help me tonight.”

“Sure.” She watched as he bent over, his back to her, to loosen his bootlaces. “You know, you’d make even plumber’s crack look good.”

His hand slapped over the back of the waistband of his jeans. Finding himself fully covered, he sent her an upside-down glare.

“I’m using my imagination,” she told him, heading into the kitchen. Before she’d realized he’d caught up with her, there was a solid smack on her own butt.

“Brat,” he murmured in her ear as he passed.

“Foul!” she yelled, rubbing her rear. “That’s no way to treat your assistant.”

He just gave her a wicked grin. It sat oddly on his normally austere countenance, but it looked good on him. Although she tried to hold her glare, it melted under the heat of his smile.