Love Game (17 page)

“You’re a wily one,” Lucy said to Luanda.

“Don’t start, Pinkie,” Spencer warned.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“Come quick,” Luanda said. “My spirit guide has instructed me.”

“Do you know where he is or not?” Spencer demanded. “I’m not much for listening to spirit guides.”

Luanda leaned forward and got in Spencer’s face.

“Follow me, handsome, and I’ll take you right to him.”

I WAS
pissed off. I’m not normally an angry person. Panic, fear, and hunger are my go-to emotions. But Spencer was pissing me off. I limped after him as he escorted Luanda to his car.

“Are you serious?” I demanded. “But she’s a fraud!”

“Hands off Uncle Harry!” Lucy yelled from behind me. I glanced back and caught her riffling through her purse.

Ruth had walked out, too. “Girl, you only have about a minute before Dixie Tesla electrocutes the witch and sends us all to jail.”

I turned Spencer around with all the force I could muster. “Didn’t I just finish telling you that I had to prove Luanda’s a fraud?” I asked him. “Why are you placating her?”

I shivered, and Spencer took off his jacket and draped it around my shoulders.

“As the chief of police, I am required to run down any reasonable leads concerning the whereabouts of
an escaped kidnapper, especially a kidnapper who kidnapped the chief of police.”

I sucked air. “But if
I
were to tell you about the whereabouts of anybody, you would order me to stop meddling.”

Spencer wagged his finger at me. “That’s right, Pinkie. Stay out of it. Let the professionals do their job. Believe it or not, the cops know what they’re doing.”

“Boogidee, boogidee, bezow bee bop,” Luanda singsonged. “I hear you!” she yelled into the air.

Spencer smirked his annoying little smirk. “Looking good tonight, Pinkie,” he told me, his voice low and smooth like an after-sex cigarette. He traced his finger along the top of my dress. “What could one night hurt? One night to rock your world.”

“That’s the problem with you, Spencer,” I said. “You’re not good with math. You’ve never been able to count higher than one.”

I let them go without saying another word. Spencer helped Luanda into the backseat. Remington took shotgun, and Spencer started up the car. Lucy tapped me on the shoulder.

“Give me the screwdriver,” she urged. “Hand it over.”

“I don’t have it. Besides, my car is back at Luanda’s old factory.”

“Oh, hell,” Lucy said. She pulled at the front of Ruth’s dress. “Hand over your keys, old woman. I need your car.”

“I’m not giving you my car!” Ruth clutched her purse to her chest. “Let me go or I’ll head-butt you.”

Some people think small towns are boring.

Lucy made an inhuman noise, like something out of a horror movie. Like
The Wolfman
or
Glitter
. Ruth dropped her purse in Lucy’s hands.

“Fine,” she said. “But if you so much as scratch the paint, I’ll tear the drawl out of you.”

Ruth drove an Oldsmobile that was older than mine, but hers was in pristine condition. I snuck a peek at the odometer from my place in the backseat. Thirty thousand miles. I wondered if Ruth had ever left Cannes in the last fifty years.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“We’re following the coppers. I’m going to give Luanda a talking-to, once and for all,” Lucy said.

She started the car and followed Spencer at a safe distance. I remembered Grandma’s warning about not letting Lucy drive, but the car was moving too fast for me to jump out, and there was no chance she would stop and risk losing Luanda.

“This is not so bad,” Ruth said, stretching her legs out in front of her. “A beautiful ride up into the mountains.”

We were south of town, climbing up toward the apple and pear orchards. It was a clear night, full of stars, and I took a lesson from Ruth and let myself relax. I hadn’t had much chance to take a breath during the past few days.

I had been thrown over a balcony, impaled, kidnapped, locked up, and almost plastered to death. In addition, I had witnessed a man chew off a finger. But I had survived the past few days virtually unscathed, considering, and could still enjoy a starlit evening.

Meanwhile, I had two relatively simple tasks to
complete—unmatch Uncle Harry and prove that Luanda was a fraud. I also realized I had another task to handle, something closer to home and more important, but I would have to figure out how to deal with that and when was the best moment.

“Yeah, this is kind of nice,” Ruth said. “Wish I had a cup of my tea, though.” It was sort of unthinkable for Ruth to be without her shop. Tea Time and Ruth were synonymous. She had owned and run it for my entire life and far longer than that. It was more than a job for her. It was a calling. She was like a nun but with uglier clothes.

“Did you have a good time at the Swingathon?” I asked her.

“Nah, Hank had to leave early. His bunions were acting up.” Hank Frazier was Ruth’s escort for most social events; he ran the fruit stand on Main Street.

“That’s a shame,” I said.

“And Meryl was doing her
Girls Gone Wild
impression,” Ruth continued about the town’s blue-haired librarian. “I never want to see her do tequila shooters again. I want to rip that image from my brain. To her credit, it wasn’t her idea. Frank Richmond was the one getting blitzed. She just tagged along ’cause she’s sweet on him.”

“Frank Richmond,” I repeated. “That name sounds familiar.”

“Keep up, Gladie,” Ruth snarled. “He was the one in the other panic room, the one who was beaten up. I guess I can’t blame him for getting blotto, but he kept going on about his successful business in Irvine and how he gave it all up to live in our idyllic town. I wanted to slap him.”

We climbed up higher into the mountains, and the road turned from asphalt to dirt. Spencer’s car was far in the distance, and Lucy turned the bright lights on.

“Where is that crazy woman dragging those coppers to?” Ruth asked.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. How about we circle back to Luanda tomorrow?” I asked.

“We can’t turn back now,” Ruth said. “Besides, I found my Slugger in the bushes across the street, and I put it in the trunk.”

“And I have my Taser,” Lucy reminded me.

The car skidded, but Lucy righted it quickly. “Mud,” she explained. “The roads are slick up here.”

I checked my seat belt and closed my eyes.

“They’re stopping,” Lucy said. I opened my eyes and, sure enough, Spencer was pulling over to the side. We drove up behind him, and Lucy parked the car, careful to keep the lights on. “Let’s go.”

“I’ll get my Slugger,” Ruth said, hopping out of the car. Lucy grabbed her purse and got out. I opened my door, but Spencer blocked my exit.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked. He held a flashlight and shined it on my face.

“It wasn’t my idea,” I said. “They made me.” I tried to push my way past him, but he stood firm. “I swear, Spencer. I have no desire to see Michael Rellik. I mean it. I have no wish to meet my kidnapper ever again. Girl Scouts’ honor, I’m not meddling.” I stuck three fingers up in the air.

“Were you ever a Girl Scout?” Spencer asked me.

“No, but I’ve eaten their cookies. Honestly, I don’t care about Rellik. I’m leaving it up to you to catch him.”

Surprisingly, it was the truth. Sure, I was curious to know why Rellik had terrorized us, but the answer was most likely that he was crazy. So there really wasn’t any mystery, and I would have preferred to be at home, watching a
Big Bang Theory
marathon.

“Stay out of trouble,” Spencer warned me, and stood aside.

“Don’t worry.” Ruth was brandishing her bat. “I’ll protect her. I wouldn’t mind getting a whack at the bastard.”

“Nobody is doing any whacking,” Spencer said, but I noticed he didn’t take her bat away.

“I’ll watch over her, boss,” Remington offered, and stood behind me. He was putting out a lot of heat, like one of those portable Amish fireplaces, but with an animal magnetism that drew me toward him until my back leaned against his front.

Remington Cumberbatch was solid as a rock, hard everywhere. My breath hitched. He represented possibilities—not the possibilities I thought I wanted and demanded from Holden and Spencer, but possibilities nonetheless.

“I don’t need you to watch over her, probie,” Spencer said. “I need you to stick to the witch. If Rellik was out here, we’ve probably already scared him off.”

“He’s still out here,” Luanda announced, her voice rising into the night, sending shivers down my spine. “We will find him, and then all of Cannes will know of my powers. And I’m not a witch,” she added. “Although some of my best friends are witches. All dead, of course.”

I sighed. It was exactly the opposite of what Grandma had assigned me to do. If we really did find
Rellik, it would mean the end of Grandma’s matchmaking business, which was unthinkable. Like Ruth’s Tea Time, Grandma’s Matchmaking Services was an institution in town, and her whole life. I didn’t think she could be happy without her vocation.

Spencer ran his fingers through his hair and walked over to Luanda. With Spencer’s back turned, Remington let his hand travel up the side of my body from my hip to under my arm, his fingertips grazing my breast. My core melted like a chocolate lava cake. I moaned.

“You okay, Gladie?” Ruth asked.

“Yes,” I croaked. “Just tired.”

I was happy for the darkness. I took a step back and allowed him to press his body against me. His hand slipped around to my belly and then lower. It occurred to me that Luanda might not be the only crazy person out here. Letting myself get fondled by a hot Trekkie not ten yards away from Spencer was pretty wackadoodle.

“Probie!” Spencer called, as he walked into the grove of trees with Luanda.

Remington leaned over and surreptitiously kissed the side of my neck. His face was rough with an end-of-the-day beard, but his lips were baby soft. I looked down to make sure my body hadn’t burst into flames. Good news: I was still intact.

But one thing was certain. I was playing with fire.

Remington did as he was commanded and jogged over to Spencer and Luanda. She was back to speaking in tongues, and I heard her gibberish recede into the trees.

“You know, this is a weird town,” Ruth said, resting her bat on her shoulder. “Are we ready, ladies?”

Lucy was a few steps in front of us. Spencer and Remington had flashlights, and we walked toward their light.

It wasn’t easy to walk that way at night over rocks and twigs on an uneven, muddy ground in the dress shoe and my nylon boot, even with the stars lighting up the sky. We made slow progress, stumbling here and there.

“Why are we doing this?” I asked.

Ruth shushed me. She was as into our field trip as Lucy was. They both had revenge on their minds, and it was spurring them on, giving them courage and a certain don’t-care attitude about ruining their shoes in the mud.

I squinted against the darkness as we walked into the grove. The starlight created shadows in the trees, making them look alive, like a scene out of
The Wizard of Oz
. Ruth and Lucy pulled ahead of me, hellbent on catching up to the other group. The lights came and went as Spencer and Remington walked between the trees.

I was forced to walk slower than my friends, not because of my injured foot, which made me hobble, but because of Lucy’s high-heeled sling-back, which got stuck in the mud with each step.

I pulled Spencer’s coat tight around me against the cold. Tomorrow, Dave would be done with my dry cleaning, and then I could finally wear my own clothes. Not that I had anything spectacular to wear, but at least I would be warm, and I wouldn’t have to keep borrowing from others.

“He’s close! He’s close!” Luanda shouted from up ahead.

“Holy crap!” Spencer exclaimed.

Lucy and Ruth ran up to the other group, and I limped behind them, catching up finally to see them all surrounding a freshly dug mound with an indistinguishable body part sticking out of the dirt. Remington and Spencer shined their flashlights on it.

“Who did the bastard kill now?” Ruth asked.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“The witch actually found something.” Lucy sounded like she had discovered that Bigfoot exists.

“Yep, I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“Don’t contaminate the crime scene,” Spencer told me.

“Okay,” I said, taking a step backward.

“And don’t hurl on my new jacket,” he added. “Shit, I paid full price for that.”

“Okay,” I repeated, taking another step back and to the side. I slipped behind a tree, but I could still see Spencer and Remington, now on their knees, digging up the mound with their bare hands. So I moved farther to the side, deeper in the trees, until the mound and whatever was under it were far out of my sight.

“Boss, take a look at this,” I heard Remington say.

“What are you playing at, Miss Laughing-Eagle?” Spencer demanded after a moment.

“Rellik is here!” Luanda insisted. “He’s hiding among these trees. Do you hear that?”

I heard a jingling. “It’s a dog collar, Miss,” Remington said.

“Somebody buried their pet Rover out here.” I knew that voice. It was the sound of Spencer ready to
tear someone’s head off. I took another couple of steps away and leaned up against a tree.

“No,” I heard Luanda say. “It’s the sound of the spirits calling me. Woo, woo, woo!” A creepy feeling of dread crawled up and down my body. The more Luanda continued to woo-woo and talk to her invisible people, the more I began to believe that Rellik really was out here, hiding. Maybe he was lying in wait for me. Maybe he was close by. Maybe I was too far away from the others.

I took a step away from the tree and went down hard, tripping over a root. I stayed on my hands and knees and took stock of my damage. I seemed to be okay, but, once again, I had done a number on borrowed clothes.

Lucy’s dress was torn up the back, and I had ground Spencer’s coat into the mud when I took my tumble. But that wasn’t the worst of it. As I went down, tangled in branches and roots, the chain of Lucy’s diamond necklace was ripped from my neck and flew into the thousands of acres of Cannes’s fruit-tree groves.