Parker And The Gypsy (11 page)

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Authors: Susan Carroll

BOOK: Parker And The Gypsy
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“I said, stop, dammit!” Mike seized her shoulder in a fierce grip. The terrifying image faded, leaving only Mike's eyes, bright and hard with anger. And some other emotion. Could it possibly be...fear?
“Look, Sara, I don't know how you can...or even if you—I mean...that is, I think—” He broke off, his jaw working. “I don't know what I think anymore. But if by some remote, snowball's chance in hell, you really are psychic, I want one thing clear. Stay out of my head, dammit!”
“I don't want to be in your head,” Sara said miserably, struggling to ease Mike's grasp, which had become painful. “It's more your fault than mine.”
“My fault?” Mike glared, but mercifully he relaxed the pressure of his fingers.
“Yes, I never get visions this clear and sharp when I'm around anyone else. But each time you kiss me that passionately, I'm able to see more and more of you. This time I got all the way down to your black silk briefs.”
“For your information, Miss Psychic, I don't wear silky drawers. I don't even own any except for a few pair my ex-wife insisted on buying me, and those are shoved to the back of the drawer. I never bother with them except on days when I'm low in the laundry department, like—” Mike paused, a look of horrified realization sifting over his features.
“Like this morning,” he concluded weakly, his gaze dropping to Sara. His hands fell from her shoulders and he ran his fingers over his brow like a man testing for fever. “This—this is insane.”
“No, it isn't,” Sara insisted. “It's the way you kiss me. It seems to have opened up some kind of channel between us.”
“So switch to another station.”
“Then stop kissing me.”
“Gladly!”
But even as Mike glowered into her eyes, Sara could still feel the currents rushing between them. The attraction that was there whether either of them wanted it or not.
She wondered if Mike felt it, too. She couldn't tell. All she knew was that he avoided her gaze and backed away, saying, “I'm outta here.”
“You're quitting the case?” Sara faltered.
“No, I just have to get out of here, that's all. Away from—”
He didn't finish, but he didn't have to. Sara knew what he meant well enough. Away from
her
. Sara Holyfield. It seemed as though Mike would have preferred her a bit more normal after all.
The thought pained her more than she cared to admit. Concealing her hurt behind a hard lump of pride, Sara watched Mike gather up Mamie's jewel chest and tuck it under his arm.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“What you hired me to do. Go find John Patrick. Using real, solid detecting methods. The kind of thing I can understand. Hard evidence.” He frowned a moment at the bedraggled stuffed dog lying on the carpet and then to Sara's surprise, he scooped that up, too. She couldn't imagine what he would want with John Patrick's most cherished toy. But Sara supposed bleakly that, to Mike Parker, it was just more of his “hard evidence.”
Brushing past her, Mike strode purposefully toward the bedroom door. “You coming?” he demanded.
Numbly, Sara shook her head. “I think I'll stay here awhile and see if I can find out anything else.”
He angled an impatient glance back at her. “And just how are you planning to get back to town?”
“I guess I can always saddle up my broomstick,” Sara said with a trace of bitterness. “Or barring that, there's a local bus line that runs not far from the inn.”
Mike looked about to argue with her, conflicting emotions warring in his dark eyes. But then he just shrugged and said, “Fine. Suit yourself. I'll report back to you if I find out anything.”
Would he? Sara wondered as Mike vanished out the door. She had a sinking feeling that he'd as soon stick his head in a bear trap as come within miles of her again. She listened to the sound of his receding footsteps pounding down the stairs until eventually she heard the front door slam.
Six
A
week passed before Mike Parker ventured back into Aurora Falls. Even then, when he cruised down Main Street, he carefully avoided Sara's shop. But that huge blinking eyeball mounted above her store seemed to follow him like a reproachful stare.
Mike caught himself actually scrunching down farther in the seat of his Mustang as though fearful Sara would pick him up on her radar as he passed by. It had taken him a long time to sort out what had happened at the Pine Top Inn that afternoon and he still wasn't sure he had it straight. He didn't need another close encounter with Sara to confuse him further.
Pressing down on the accelerator, Mike sped down the block to his destination, the Aurora Falls City Hall. He almost missed it, the government offices jammed into a large brick building along with the library and police station. A handy arrangement, Mike thought, where the cops could swoop in right away on all those felons who tried to stiff the librarian out of overdue book fines.
He eased the convertible next to the curb, the sun baking through the open roof, making him irritable. Hot July had turned into inferno August. His shirt, a wild Hawaiian print in orange and yellow, and his khaki pants were already sticking to him like a second skin. Mike Parker in his
Magnum P.l.
mode, all set to blend in with the tourists. Or make the rounds of area hotels, trying to find that witness that had skipped out on the local prosecuting attorney. Except that, much to his disgust, Mike wasn't doing those nice sane, sensible things.
Those sensible case folders lay neglected on the back seat of his car while he continued to pursue the one case that was obsessing him.
The missing John Patrick.
Shutting off the car motor, Mike stared balefully at the objects nestled on the seat opposite him, the only clues he had so far—a jewel box full of trinkets and old photos and a ratty, little stuffed dog.
He had to be out of his mind. Wasting all this time working for a gypsy lady who made his blood run both hot and cold for the rate of ten bucks a day. Money he never intended to collect anyway.
He'd had so little luck finding anything more about Mamie Patrick that he almost believed the woman really was nothing but a figment of Sara's imagination and that all he was doing was chasing down more figments. But he'd been reassured by Xavier Storm's reaction.
The casino king hadn't been idle these past few days, either. Flexing his influential muscles, he'd done everything, from having Mike's office building inspected by the Department of Health to sending the state commission round to check on Mike's P.I. license.
A subtle threat, a
Storm
warning as it were, that if Mike didn't back off the Patrick case, Storm would do his best to see Mike shut down. Rather than alarming Mike, it filled him with a certain grim satisfaction.
“It shows that I'm already starting to get to the imperturbable Mr. Storm,” Mike murmured to his only companion, the stuffed dog. He picked it up and flicked one moth-eaten ear. “Which means that there has to be something to all this Patrick business. Which means that your former owner does exist.”
Mike glanced down at the ragged dog, scowling at some elusive memory the toy kept stirring in him. Could he possibly have had something like it himself when he was a kid? A name hovered just out of reach. Spunky? Spanky? Sparky, maybe.
Yeah, that was it. A stuffed dog named Sparky after some Dalmation firehouse dog he'd read about in a book somewhere.
“Well, I'll be,” Mike said, a little astonished with himself. He could recall so little of the details of his early life. So what the hell had ever happened to good old Sparky, he wondered, turning the toy dog in his hands. Probably left behind at one of those endless hotels his old man had dragged him to.
Thoughts of his old man immediately soured the remembrance and Mike tossed the dog back on the seat. That was just one more weird thing about this case—how it kept dragging him back to his own past. Good thing he was getting such satisfaction out of bugging Storm or Mike would've cashed in his chips long ago.
This whole Patrick business was getting under his skin in ways he neither liked nor understood. Just like the woman who had hired him.
Sara.
Mike gripped the steering wheel hard, fighting to keep her image out of his mind. His head was beginning to feel like a damned battleground and most of the time, he lost.
She was always there, sunshine and sweet perfume in the dark back rivers of his mind. Alluring. Tantalizing. Tormenting. He'd lain awake nights, trying to convince himself that the things he'd thought had happened out at that inn hadn't really happened.
He hadn't almost gone out of control and made love to Sara Holyfield on an old bare mattress. No ghost had bounced books off his noggin and Sara hadn't been really able to slip inside his head, the grim wasteland of his past exposed for her to see.
Well, he could still argue himself out of believing in ghosts, but Sara was another matter. He'd almost been able to
feel
her cracking his cynical armor.
All those details she'd picked up—his scars, the car he'd stolen as a punk kid, but most of all, his shadow man. Those details had been all too painfully precise to be dismissed as a lucky guess.
Mike expelled a deep heartfelt sigh. He'd spent most of his life debunking carnival fortune tellers, phony mediums, crystal-ball readers. It was driving him nuts to have to admit, even to himself, that Sara just might be the genuine article.
“It's damned unsettling,” he growled, his gaze drifting involuntarily to his stuffed companion. “Well, hell, Sparky. You know what it feels like. She got in your head, too.”
Of course, Sara had said it was all Mike's fault, all because of the way he'd been kissing her, and maybe she was right. He had no business to be kissing her, or doing any of the other things he'd been about to do on that bed.
Never get personal with the clients. It was a good rule and he didn't know why Sara kept tempting him to break it. But one touch from her and he was off like a skyrocket. Burning, blazing, exploding with desire. Wanting her with an ache so deep, it scared the hell out of him.
“Maybe she really is some kind of witch, Sparky,” he muttered to the dog. “Maybe she cast a spell on me.”
Whatever was going on between him and Sara, there was only one solution. Keep working on the case, but stay as far away from her as possible. And under no circumstances, ever, ever touch her again.
“I knew she was trouble from the minute she walked in my office.” Mike reached out to tap the stuffed dog on its nose. “Let this be a lesson to you. Sparky. Stay away from dames with faces like angels and bodies meant for sin.”
A discreet cough sounded, and for one startled moment Mike almost thought it came from the dog. Then he realized a shadow had fallen over the interior of his car.
He glanced up, chagrined to find a meter maid leaning up against the car door, all crisp and perky in her blue-and-white uniform.
“Excuse me, sir,” the girl said. “But the meter you're parked next to is expired. Either you or Sparky is going to have to come up with a quarter or I'm afraid I'll have to give you a ticket”
Mike felt his face firebrick red, but he managed to drawl, “It'll have to be me. Sparky only carries large bills.”
The girl gave him a sassy grin and moved off down the street. Hanging his head in his hands, Mike got out of the car. Oh, man, he was in a bad way if he was starting to talk, not only to himself, but to a stuffed dog.
Better get down to the business he came for before the damned mutt started answering him back. Mike fed several dimes and a nickel into the meter before turning to the building behind him. City hall. A place where he finally hoped to have some success with his inquiries. So far his luck hadn't been so good. He hadn't been able to locate a soul who had ever heard of the late Mamie Patrick or her kid. No child welfare bureau, no adoption agency, no family, friends, not even anyone who'd worked with her.
He had found a woman who'd once waited tables out at the Pine Top Inn, but that had been after Mamie's time. She had, however, imparted to Mike the startling information that the old caretaker, Albert Kiefer was still alive. The fellow must be in his eighties by now. Unfortunately Mrs. Mcaffee didn't know exactly where Albert was living. The last she'd heard, he owned a little place somewhere just outside Aurora Falls.
Which led Mike on his quest to city hall. The old geezer might have chosen to cut himself off from the world, no longer owning a phone or a motor vehicle, but not even a hermit could escape taxes.
It didn't take long to find what he was looking for among the musty records in the building's basement. One Albert Kiefer had been faithfully paying property taxes on his small patch of ground for the past twenty-five years. If Mike was lucky, he could find this place and be grilling Kiefer about Mamie and her kid, all before lunch. He only hoped the old guy's memory was still good.
Mike quickly jotted down the address and headed back up to the building's main floor, his sneakers thudding on the concrete steps. The place had a real institutional feel about it. Mike would have wagered his last cent it was a converted school building.
The smell of chalk dust and sweaty gym socks still hung in the air. As Mike paused by one of the white basin drinking fountains to swallow a few mouthfuls of tepid water, the door to one of the former classrooms swung open. Mike half expected the recess bell to clang, but it wasn't a mob of unruly school kids who spilled out. Rather a sedate bunch of middle-aged men wearing conservative suits and an air of self-importance.
Some of the local bigwigs, Mike guessed, winding down an early-morning council meeting. A little coffee, a lot of jawing and a good time was had by all.
Except maybe for the woman who trailed after the men. While the collection of suits disappeared down the hall, she lingered near the door, a pale little thing in a pale pink suit.
Familiar somehow and yet not familiar until sunlight skating through the window outlined her delicate profile.
Sara.
Mike almost choked and spewed out his mouthful of water. His first panicked impulse was to dive for cover, anywhere to escape Sara's uncanny gaze. What the hell was she doing here? Why wasn't she in her shop selling psychic doodads?
But although Mike stood frozen just at the end of the same hall, she didn't even glance in his direction. His gypsy lady was looking most ungypsylike in a tailored suit, her rioting mob of golden curls tamed into a tight bun. She appeared miserably uncomfortable and out of place as she was corraled into conversation with a tall woman who also emerged from the classroom.
Conversation, hell! The tall broad appeared to be doing most of the talking, and for some reason he couldn't say, Mike took an instant dislike to her.
Maybe because she was the sort of female that had always turned him off—too thin and angular, no soft curves, her platinum-colored hair styled as stiff as a wad of cotton candy, her skin perfectly bronzed with a country-club tan. And maybe he just didn't like the way she was in Sara's face, wagging her diamond ring like a rattler shaking its tail.
Mike should have been glad of the diversion. He reminded himself that the one thing he wanted above all else was to avoid running into Sara again. But the more he caught of the conversation drifting down the hall, the more he felt his hackles start to rise.
 
The woman had a muddy aura. Sara could feel it oppressing her the longer Elaine Jorgensen droned on. She was the kind of person Sara had never understood or known how to deal with. The kind that felt the world had a right to its own opinion as long as it matched with Elaine Jorgensen's. No tolerance for anything unique or different, just the immediate urge to crush it. In another time and place, Sara believed that Elaine would have been the first to point a finger in Sara's direction. and cry “Witch.”
“...and you must appreciate our point of view, Miss Holyfield,” Elaine was insisting.
“I always try to understand everyone's point of view,” Sara said quietly. “But—”
“I founded the redevelopment council to give Aurora Falls a much-needed face-lift. No one wants to close your shop down exactly.” Elaine's patronizing tone sent Sara quite the opposite message. “Frankly, for your own good, you simply need to try to be a bit more...upmarket.”
Sara's grip tightened on her handbag, hanging on to both her pride and her patience. “My great-aunt successfully operated the Omniscent Eye for years, just as it is.”
“Er—yes. But frankly, my dear, your great aunt was a wee bit—shall we say—eccentric?”
Shall we just say crazy and be done with it, Sara thought bitterly.
Elaine's lips stretched in her version of a coaxing smile. “Your family loyalty is touching, Miss Holy field, but you can't be doing all that well. We're attracting a better class of tourist here, the kind that doesn't want odd books and cheap glass necklaces. And frankly, fortune-telling belongs in the carnival not Aurora Falls. No one would blame you if you wanted to sell out and find yourself a decent job. I have always been prepared to make you a very good offer—”

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