Paper Bullets (7 page)

“I wasn’t thinking of joining,” I said. “I stopped off for gas and noticed someone had left their lights on in the parking lot.”

Stacy held up my note. “She thought it might be one of our guests.”

Melody gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me for a minute, but she took the note from Stacy. The note where I’d jotted the make, model, and color of the SUV along with the license plate.

“Oh, look,” Melody said to the guy in the white tank top and the well-defined muscles. “Isn’t this your car?”

Now that I had a good look at his face, I could see that Mr. Muscles was somewhere in his late thirties. He had a neat little beard the same color as his dirty-blond hair, and the edge of a tattoo peeked out from beneath the front of his tank top. He had more tribal tattoos wrapped around his upper arms.

He might have been a handsome man at one time, but his face had a hard look, and it wasn’t just because he’d burned off all except maybe one percent of his body fat. I’d seen guys like him in every gym I’d ever been in, the guys who took body sculpture to a whole new level. His muscles might not be bulging, but he was just as serious as a Mr. Universe about keeping in shape. Could he possibly still be an undercover drug cop?

Mr. Muscles looked at the note Melody still held, and then at me. His expression said he didn’t believe me either.

“Yeah,” he said. “My car. Imagine that.”

For a minute the three of us stood there not moving, then Mr. Muscles grumbled about needing his keys, and he disappeared through the door to the back.

“Well, great!” I said to no one in particular. “I’m glad that all worked out.”

Behind the desk, Stacy looked confused, like she knew something important had just happened, but she had no idea what. She shared a look with Ms. Lycra, who shrugged her shoulders.

It was time for me to leave. I’d done enough damage. I didn’t have a name for the SUV’s driver, but at least I had a pretty good physical description. I could give that to Kyle, and he should be able to tell me whether Mr. Muscles was Lewis Richards.

“Tell Ryan hello for me,” I said to Melody.

She gave me a brittle smile in response. “One of many things I’ll be telling him.”

I was sure of that.

I beat feet out of the gym. I’d taken maybe half a dozen steps when I heard the door open behind me.

“Want to tell me what that was all about?”

Any semblance of a fake smile had left Melody’s face.

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

“You’re not a very good liar.”

Not something a private investigator wants to hear. I sighed. “Look, I’m here doing a job. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Sure, it doesn’t.” She had her arms folded across her ample chest. “Does Ryan have you checking up on me? Following me?”

I could have pretended to be surprised that she’d even suspect Ryan would hire me to follow her, but genuine surprise a hard emotion to fake and she probably wouldn’t have believed me anyway. Time to go back on the offensive.

“Why?” I asked. “Is there some reason he should hire a private detective to follow you around?” I crossed my own arms in front of my less than ample chest. “Are you keeping something from him?”

Her lips pressed into a thin line. “None of your business,” she said from between clenched teeth.

I’d hit a nerve, and that made me curious. I had to remind myself that it wasn’t my job to investigate her. Standing out in front of the gym arguing wouldn’t get me anywhere, and she was right. It wasn’t any of my business.

“Look, if I upset you, I’m sorry.” I shrugged. “I’m on a job, that’s all.”

I left her on the sidewalk in front of the gym and walked back to my car. I told myself I didn’t really feel her staring daggers into my back.

Just to make the lie I’d told inside the gym look good, I got in line at the gas station.

From where I sat waiting for the car in front of me to pull forward so I could get to a pump, I had a clear view of the front door of the gym.

Melody had gone back inside, but Mr. Muscles came out carrying a gym bag in one hand. With the other, he held a cell phone up to one ear. I watched him scan the parking lot as he walked over to the white SUV.

He stopped scanning when he saw my car.

How did he know what I drove? My car was a nondescript silver sedan which I’d scrimped to finish paying for after the divorce was final. The shape and color were the second most common in Reno after the ever popular SUV.

Melody might have told him, but I didn’t think that was likely. In fact, I wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen my car outside of the few times she’d been home when I’d dropped Samantha off for a weekend visit with Ryan.

I wasn’t close enough to see the expression on Mr. Muscles’ face.

I grabbed my camera from my purse and turned it on. Hell, if he was going to pose for me while he was staring at me, I might as well take advantage of the opportunity.

I balanced the camera on my steering wheel and zoomed in so that his face filled the display on the back of the camera. I snapped off a couple of shots before I realized that he was no longer talking on his cell phone. He had it held up in front of him.

He was taking my picture with the phone, and he wasn’t being any more subtle about it that Justin Sewell had been standing in front of the cafe taking pictures of Melody as she headed for her car.

Only Mr. Muscles was doing something that Sewell hadn’t done.

He was smiling.

CHAPTER 9

I COULDN’T REACH KYLE on his cell, and the desk clerk who answered the phone in the detective division told me that he wasn’t available. Either he was still meeting with his witness or he’d gone out on a call. I’d have to give him the details about Mr. Muscles later.

I didn’t want to call Ryan until I had information from Kyle, but given my little argument with Melody in front of the gym, I didn’t want her to ambush him as soon as she could get him on the phone. Or, worse yet, pay an unannounced visit to his office and ambush him there.

I hadn’t programmed Ryan’s office number into my phone’s auto dial. I’d told myself it was just one more snip of the ties that held us together. That was bull, of course. I knew the number by heart.

I waited until I finished pumping the little bit of gas I actually didn’t need right then into my car. I drove out onto McCarran, found a McDonald’s a few blocks away, and pulled into the drive through for a large iced tea. While I waited, I called Ryan.

“I’ve got good news and bad news,” I said. “Which do you want first?”

Ryan sighed. “It’s been a bitch of a day. Give me the good news first.”

“I’ve got two possible stalkers for you.”

“Two?” Ryan asked.

“Possibly. I’ll email you pictures when I get back to my office.”

I gave him the information I had on Justin Sewell and the driver of the white SUV. I didn’t tell him yet that the driver might be an undercover cop. I wouldn’t pass that information along until I could confirm that fact with Kyle. For all I knew, Lewis Richards could have sold the SUV to someone else who hadn’t reregistered it yet.

“You couldn’t narrow it down?” he asked when I was done.

There it was, that slightly disappointed tone of voice I’d come to know so well during the last few years of our marriage.

“They were both doing stalkery things. It’s not like I caught anyone hiding in a bush with a camera while wearing a raincoat and nothing underneath.”

He was quiet for a beat. So was I.

“Sorry,” he finally said. “It’s been—”

“—a rough day.” He hadn’t apologized to me for a long time. It actually made me feel worse for what I had to tell him next. “You ready for the bad news?”

Another sigh. I could almost see him pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I ran into Melody at the gym,” I said. “To say she wasn’t happy to see me is an understatement.”

“She saw you.” He bit off each word like it left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“I didn’t plan on it.”

“Did you plan at all?”

Did I...

An angry retort popped into my head. Luckily for Ryan, the people in the car ahead of me in the drive through finally got their order, and it was my turn to pay for my iced tea.

Dealing with the cashier gave me a minute to cool off.

Ryan knew how to push my buttons. He’d learned well from my mother during our marriage. One of the favorite buttons he pushed, especially toward the end of our marriage, had to do with the one thing I’d tried to do as an investigator that I’d totally failed at: tracking down the hit-and-run driver who’d nearly killed Samantha.

When he really wanted to hurt me, he questioned my competence. That button only worked because deep down I questioned it, too.

But not this time around. It had only been bad timing that Melody had spotted me through that open door in the gym.

Wait a minute.

So what if Melody had spotted me? Reno’s still a small town. People run into other people they know all the time. Why had she assumed I was at the gym because of her?

Ryan hadn’t told her he’d hired me to find her stalker. As far as she knew, I was there investigating Mr. Muscles. Did she just assume that Ryan would ask me to follow her around, or that I would even agree to do something like that? She didn’t know me well enough to figure out exactly how big of a sap I am. Most ex-wives would have told their ex-husbands to go take a flying leap.

Unless Mr. Muscles did have something to do with Melody. Something she cared about. Something she didn’t want me to see.

Which brought me back around to the question of whether Mr. Muscles was still an undercover drug cop.

I’d apparently been quiet for too long. “Look, Abby,” Ryan said. “I didn’t mean...”

He did, but I let it drop.

“You need to know what happened,” I said. I gave him a quick, bullet-point summary of everything from the time I saw the SUV tail Melody from the cafe through the uncomfortable conversation in the gym. Everything except my phone call with Kyle, and the fact that Mr. Muscles had been snapping pictures of me.

“Okay,” he said when I was done. “Send me what you’ve got.”

I was already on the way back to my office, my iced tea safely ensconced in the cup holder and building up beads of sweat on the outside of the cardboard cup.

No wonder I was melting. Heat plus humidity, a rarity in my neck of the woods. Desert dwellers don’t do humidity well.

“Give me about a half hour,” I said. “I’ll make a quick stop at the office, and then I can get back out on the street and pick up the surveillance after Melody leaves the gym.”

“No. With any luck, what you’ve got will be enough to convince her to get a protective order against these guys. Especially—what did you call him?—Mr. Muscles? Go ahead and put together a bill for your time.”

I blinked. He’d just fired me. Nicely, but he’d still fired me.

We’d gone from sharing our lives together to me invoicing him for services rendered.

Well, wasn’t that just peachy. So much for being friends.

“Will do,” I said. I ended the call before he could say anything else.

It took me five minutes of grumbling before I cooled down enough to realize that maybe this was the final wakeup call I’d needed. Ryan had Melody in his life now, for better or worse. He didn’t need me anymore except in a professional capacity, and, as it turned out, he didn’t even want me there.

Well, fine. He didn’t have to tell me twice.

He could just go ahead and make a life with Melody and leave me out of it. If he had any more problems with Melody, he could leave me out of those as well.

I still had concerns about whether Melody’s issues with an undercover drug cop might affect Samantha, but Ryan’s next weekend with Samantha wasn’t until Labor Day. By then I should know whether the guy driving the white SUV was Lewis Richards and if he was still working undercover.

In the meantime, I’d keep an eye out for my daughter like I always did, concentrate on my own life, and tell my inner sap to take a flying leap the next time she reared her ugly head.

Abby Maxon, woman of resolve.

CHAPTER 10

THAT NIGHT I HAD a quick conversation on the phone with Kyle while I made a fancy dinner salad for Samantha and I to share while we watched the latest Robert Downey, Jr., movie on Blu-ray. To say he was relieved that I wasn’t tailing the white SUV anymore was a vast understatement.

Of course, I didn’t tell him that Ryan had fired me. I may not have much in the pride department, but I do have a little.

“Richards still owns the SUV as far as I can tell,” Kyle said. “Getting information on what he’s working on is trickier. He’s still on the force, but any information on his current assignment is strictly need to know, and I don’t have an official need to know.”

I gave Kyle the physical description of Mr. Muscles. Unfortunately, he couldn’t tell me whether the guy had been Richards.

“When I busted him, he was a skinny little prick, but that’s in line with an undercover stint as a druggie,” Kyle said. “If he’s beefed up now, he’s either moved up in the ranks of the organization he was trying to infiltrate, or he’s got a new assignment. I’d need a picture to be sure.”

I’d downloaded all the pictures I’d taken of Mr. Muscles on my work computer and wiped them off my camera to free up space. I’d have to go to the office I shared downtown with a freelance writer. I didn’t want to do that tonight.

For one thing, the writer worked nights and I worked days. The few times I’d shown up at night, I’d thought she was going to throw a box of cookies at me for interrupting her while she was writing.

Plus, I really wanted to chat with Samantha about the whole Jonathan visiting overnight thing. Which she still hadn’t brought up on her own. Granted, it had only been one day, but my mommy radar was tingling. The kids had a plan up their sleeves, and I didn’t like being the last one in the know.

“I can send you one tomorrow,” I said to Kyle.