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“Church?” He plopped onto the edge of the bed. Damnedest motel he’d ever stayed in. Being served breakfast in his room by the motel owner was nice, but being sent to church was, he thought, a little pushy. However, it was a small price to pay for this kind of food.
He unfolded the napkin, picked up the fork and began to eat.
“Analise told us all about why you’re here, looking for that Abbie Prather person.”
Nick broke open a flaky biscuit, poured gravy over it and crunched another piece of bacon. He wasn’t going to let Analise interfere with this unexpected feast. He wasn’t
“Horace and I bought this place ten years ago from the Claxtons who sold out and moved to Arizona because he had arthritis and they’d heard the climate was better there. We’re from Wisconsin, so this climate seems better to us. It’s all relative, I guess. Anyway, we don’t know Abbie Prather or June Martin, but if she lives out away from everything and keeps to herself, we might not know her since we’ve only been here ten years. I told Analise that the ministers would be the ones to ask because they know everybody.”
Like an embezzler would go to church, Nick thought, breaking open the second biscuit.
“And sure enough, when Analise called Bob Sampson, who pastors the Freewill Baptist Church on Grand Avenue, he told her to come talk to him. Analise said she was sure you wouldn’t mind her borrowing your car and going over there so we wouldn’t have to wake you.”
More gravy on that biscuit, Nick ordered himself Muffle everything this woman is saying with eggs and bacon. Drown it in coffee.
But it was no use. She had his attention.
Analise had borrowed his car? Since he had the only key, that must mean she’d practiced more of her questionable skills and hot-wired it.
“She said to tell you that she’ll be back to get you during Sunday school so you can both go to the service at eleven,” Mabel continued, then shook her head slowly, the action not disturbing her tight curls. “I don’t believe the good Lord will mind if she wears those purple shorts to church, but we’re Methodists. I’m not so sure about those Baptists. I offered to loan her one of my dresses, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
Purple shorts?
He laid down his fork, drained the cup of coffee and gave up.
Before he was even out of bed, Analise had befriended the motel owners, procured breakfast for him, found a contact who remembered their missing party, stolen his car and gone to church in purple shorts.
And he’d thought he was finished with taking care of, riding herd on and bailing out irresponsible, resourceful females.
Not that his ex-wife, Kay, had ever sent his libido spiraling out of control the way Analise did.
How the heck was he going to keep her out of trouble when he was in major trouble himself?
Analise left the Reverend Robert Sampson’s house and headed back to the motel to get Nick so they could go to church and talk to other long-standing members of the congregation who might remember Abbie Prather—a.k.a. June Martin—and Sara.
A vivid picture was emerging of the woman who’d caused Lucas’s family untold agony, and it wasn’t a pretty one. She’d been so strict on her daughter that even the Reverend Sampson, a by-the-book clergyman, thought she was cruel rather than dedicated.
The decrepit car Analise had borrowed from Nick inched along the asphalt, so slow she wanted to open the door, put her foot out and push. What a difference from her own car, a small red sporty model with five on the floor and enough power to keep her in regular speeding tickets.
But her car was parked at the Tyler airport while she chugged along in this clunker, fighting her impatience to get back to the motel, back to Nick to share her news with him. Not that she was especially anxious to see him again, or that she felt any need to tell him what she’d accomplished, to prove that she wasn’t flaky. It didn’t bother her one bit if he thought she was flaky. And after last night, she’d bet her beloved fast red car that he definitely thought she was.
Yesterday had not been one of her diamond days. More like a lump-of-coal day, actually. And Nick had been the crowning lump, a promise of escalating fiascoes to come if she couldn’t control her obsessive penchant for flirting with trouble.
Nick was the complete opposite of Lucas. Lucas was safety, security, a friend she could count on. Nick was danger, an invitation to the unknown, to taste the exhilaration of a flight into skies that terrified her even as they tempted her, to prove she could do it.
For most of the night she’d lain awake in the hot little room at the motel, trying to forget the way his accidental touch had made her feel, the way the scent of him had invaded her senses and lingered as surely as if he’d been in that bed with her.
She gripped the steering wheel tightly and ordered herself to stop thinking about that. Not only were those inappropriate feelings for an engaged woman, they were inappropriate feelings for a sane woman. Her bad habit of dancing with disaster usually resulted in a catastrophe rather than success.
She’d left her room early and, to her surprise, found a lead, something she could do to be useful, to take her mind off those hazardous-to-her-health feelings. She’d come up with information that would help them locate Abbie...and rescue Sara.
The familiar sound of a siren intruded on her thoughts.
Automatically her foot hit the brake while her eyes scanned the descending speedometer needle.
Damn! Had she been speeding again? What was the speed limit, anyway? She’d been too caught up in her thoughts to notice.
This decrepit car couldn’t possibly be speeding! Maybe the dangling taillight had fallen completely off, or the wire Nick had used to hold up the muffler broke or maybe the car with its three shades of rusty paint and primer violated some law of ugliness.
In her rearview mirror she watched the young officer swagger up to her car.
Swaggering was not a good sign.
She located her driver’s license and held it out the window as the man approached. She didn’t want him to look too closely inside, to see that she’d hot-wired the car rather than wake Nick to ask for the keys, rather than risk going inside that overheated motel room where he slept, probably in the nude, when she was already overheated.
The policeman accepted her license wordlessly then went back to his car to, she assumed, check for wants and warrants. Good grief! The police in Briar Creek never did that! She could be here all day!
Finally he swaggered back and leaned down to look in, dark sunglasses hiding his eyes. She leaned toward him so he couldn’t see the dangling wires.
“Going a little fast, weren’t you, Ms. Brewster?” And she’d have to go twice as fast to make up for lost time after this. “Only a little,” she protested. Why didn’t he give her a clue? Tell her what the speed limit was?
“Oh? How fast do you think you were going?”
How did she know what answer she should give when she had no idea what the speed limit was? “Well, I think possibly the speedometer said somewhere around about the vicinity of fifty-eight.”
He straightened and began to scribble on his clipboard. “The speed limit through this stretch is forty-five. Big sign a mile back.”
Great. An out-of-state ticket to start a brand-new blunder list for today.
“But you see,” she improvised, “this car is eleven years old, and since carbon buildup in internal combustion engines results in a gradual slowing of all exposed parts revolving counterclockwise, it’s necessary to deduct approximately one mile every year, which means I was only doing forty-seven, and what’s a couple of miles between friends?” She gave him her best smile.
The officer stopped writing, lowered his clipboard, raised his sunglasses to his forehead and looked at her. “What?”
“I said—”
“Never mind.” He shook his head and replaced his sunglasses. “It’s not right, whatever you said. You were doing fifty-nine. Slow down.”
“Okay,” she agreed. Had her gobbledygook really worked? Was she going to get off without a ticket?
He raised his clipboard again, dashing her hopes with the action. “You didn’t signal when you changed lanes, either.”
“But there was nobody else on the highway to signal to!”
“You have to obey the law all the time, not just when there’s somebody watching. Anyway, I was watching.”
She sighed. “All right. From now on I’ll signal before changing lanes if it’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m in the middle of the Sahara Desert.”
“You’re not wearing your seat belt.”
“It’s an old car. The belt’s broken.”
“I need to see your vehicle registration.”
Amazing what a quick downswing her luck had taken in the last few minutes. The way things were going, Nick’s contact probably hadn’t left them the vehicle registration.
Fumbling in the glove box, she sent up a silent prayer of thanks when she found the document. She gave it to the policeman, leaned her elbow out the window and smiled as innocently as she could.
“This vehicle’s registered to Fred Smith of Omaha, Nebraska.”
“Yes, it’s a borrowed car.”
He took a step backward and his hand dropped to his gun. “Borrowed?”
Analise froze. Was she going to be shot for taking Nick’s car that wasn’t really Nick’s car? “Yes, borrowed! You see, my friend...well, he’s not really my friend.” Oh, dear! She was getting nervous and incoherent. “My detective,” she said firmly, pleased with herself for finding the right word, “Nick Claiborne, flew into a small airport and it was late and his friend...well, I don’t know if it was his friend or just an acquaintance...anyway, he left him this car and I borrowed it this morning because I had to go to church and find out about Abbie Prather who’s now June Martin and—”
“Turn off your engine and step out of the vehicle.”
Turn off the engine? Dive under the dash and untwist the wires? Not a good idea.
Leaving the car running, she opened the door and slid out “If you’ll just call Nick at the...oh, dear, I can’t remember the name of the motel, but it’s down the highway a couple of miles, which is why I was heading that way except you can’t call him because there aren’t any phones in the rooms but Mabel has a phone...”
Nick stood on the sidewalk in front of his room in the still-cool, bright Sunday morning. From the outside, the old motel with its peeling paint and missing room numbers had a quaint charm. In other circumstances, he’d have considered the day to be perfect, a good omen. But as he waited for Analise. to show up in his borrowed car that she’d so cavalierly reborrowed, he had a bad feeling.
A large, older-model black car pulled up. His gaze flicked over the automobile and returned to searching the highway for any signs of the rust-colored—or covered—vehicle Analise had absconded with.
Mabel’s head popped out the window of the passenger side of the black car. “Analise just called. She needs you to get her out of jail.”
As Nick rode with the Finches to the Prairieview police station, he marveled that these people whom Analise hadn’t known twenty-four hours ago leaped to her defense.
“It’s Frank Marshall’s youngest boy,” Mabel explained. “He’s been watching too many cop shows on television. Nothing ever happens in Prairieview, so he goes around looking for trouble. Gave Mildred Adams a ticket for parking too close to a fire hydrant Took a tape measure and got her at four inches too close. Imagine, taking Analise in just because the car wasn’t registered in her name.”
Apparently Analise hadn’t mentioned in her phone call to Mabel Finch that she’d hot-wired his car. That undoubt edly contributed to the arresting officer’s suspicions.
Ten minutes later they were in the middle of the Sunday-silent town. Mannequins in the department store window stood motionless, gazing from painted eyes at the empty sofas and chairs on display in the furniture store across the street. The movie theater marquee had a couple of letters missing. Even the drugstore was deserted. Anyone needing an antacid or deodorant would, Nick presumed, have to wait until Monday.
Horace pulled up next to Nick’s rented car, in front of the small, weathered-rock building designated as the Prairieview Police Station by the words carved above the door.
Both Horace and Mabel started to get out, but Nick stopped them. “You all go on to church. I don’t want you to be late. I’ll take care of Analise.”
“Well, okay,” Horace agreed reluctantly. “But if you run into any trouble, you call us at the Methodist church and we’ll come talk to Frank’s boy.”
Nick thanked them, exited the car, walked up to the building and grasped the tarnished brass handle to yank open the front door. He’d take care of Analise all right. After he got her out of jail, he’d wring her slender neck.
The door proved to be heavier than he’d thought and reluctant to move, so his dramatic gesture was lost Instead, it creaked slowly open.
Analise and a young man in a blue uniform looked up as he entered. The man sat behind a desk with Analise in a chair in front. In the first instant, his mind registered that she was indeed wearing purple shorts with a scoop-necked, sleeveless blouse with bright flowers of purple, black, yellow and a green the same color as her eyes. She’d wrapped a long purple tie around the neck he was getting ready to wring, and the ends floated down her back. She sat with one long leg crossed over the other, a purple sandal adorning her slim foot. She was as bright and tempting and dangerous as the neon lights of Las Vegas.
In the second instant, he noted that she held five cards in her hand and had a pile of pennies in front of her.
Honour washed over him as he recalled the dubious skills her former boyfriend had taught her. She was playing poker with the cop who’d arrested her and dealing off the bottom of the deck, judging by the size of her pile of pennies as compared to the officer’s pile.
She gave him her dazzling smile just as he charged across the room and snatched the cards out of her fingers, sending the rest of the deck and her ill-gotten pennies flying. It also sent him tumbling into her lap.
How was it possible, in a moment of crisis, that he still noticed she smelled like honeysuckle on a warm summer evening and her skin was as soft and velvety as the petals of a magnolia blossom?
He pushed himself up, endeavouring to get his face out of her midriff and his hands off her thighs, even though his body would have loved to stay right there.
As he struggled to his feet, his gaze met her startled green eyes. Startles, but not horrified, some alien creature in the back of his brain exulted. Startled and maybe just a tittle bit...excited?
“Hold it right there, mister!”
Nick whirled around to see the officer standing with his weapon drawn.
Great. He was going to end up in jail with Analise, both of them growing old and fat together, eating fried eggs and bologna for breakfast every morning. And the way things were going, she’d be in a cell close enough for him to hear her talk all day long but not close enough to touch.
“It’s okay, Joe,” Analise reassured the officer. “This is Nick Claiborne, the man whose car I borrowed. Tell him I didn’t steal it, Nick.”
Joe reholstered his gun but didn’t relax. “Car’s not registered to Nick Claiborne.”
“I told you—” Analise began impatiently, but Joe cut her off.
“You got any proof you rented it from Fred Smith?” He sneered at Nick.
“Have you got any proof I didn’t?” Nick withdrew his wallet, opened it to his private investigator’s license and slammed it onto the desk. “I’m working on a case. Ms. Brewster is my client. I rented the car, and she took it to use this morning.”
“With your permission?”
Nick gritted his teeth but made himself lie. “Yes.”
“Then how come she had to hot-wire it?”
There was a limit to how big a lie he could tell. He avoided the question instead. “What are the charges against Ms. Brewster?”
Joe stood straighter. “Speeding, failure to signal before changing lanes, failure to wear a seat belt and possibly driving a stolen vehicle.”
“Has the car been reported stolen?”
Joe slumped back into his chair. “No,” he admitted grudgingly.
“Then write her tickets for the rest and let her go.”
Joe waved one hand negligibly. “Aw, we’ll just forget about the tickets. Analise explained why she was speeding, there wasn’t anybody around to signal to anyway and the seat belt was broken.”
“Thanks, Joe!” Analise beamed at the officer then bent and started retrieving her pennies.
Nick grabbed her arm and dragged her from the station.
“What on earth is the matter with you?” she demanded, jerking away from his grasp as soon as they were outside.
