4

When he’d caught sight of the careening car and the gun sticking out its passenger window, Mickey’s instincts had kicked in. A step, a leap, and he’d caught Luci mid-body, knocking her flat as bullets filled the air above them. His fumble for his gun netted him a handful of skirt—and thigh. He’d had to settle for uttering his choicest swear words as the Yugo swept past, giving him a tantalizing glimpse of a large-nosed-profile and a Groucho Marx behind the wheel before the car disappeared around the curving roadway.

The underpass filled with smoke from a burning something. Mickey’s eyes watered as he did a quick visual survey, noting that the downed figures were, like him, beginning to look around.

No obvious casualties. That was good. He remembered Luci and looked down. “You all right?”

Her voice, slightly compressed, came from somewhere under his chin. “I think so.” A pause, then she added, “Thank you for knocking me down and jumping on me.”

Mickey shifted enough to get them eye-to-eye, just shy of lip-to-lip. He opened his mouth to say something, but what was there to say? You feel good? I want to kiss you?

“A lot,” she said, the red mouth’s opening and closing acting like a jump for his heart. “Uh, do you think you could get off me now?”

“Oh. Sorry.”

The wail of approaching sirens played accompaniment as he made to roll off her. The sound of tearing fabric stopped him in mid-roll.

“I think I’m caught—or you are.”

“I think you’re right.” Her hands moved down the sides of his thighs. “My skirt seems to be caught on your gun.”

She looked far too calm for the situation. Only the speeded-up pace of her heart indicated agitation, that and a tiny frown creasing her forehead as she tried to unhook his gun from her clothes.

“If you could just shift a little—that’s good—very good—yes—almost got it—”

Was that a smile tugging the edges of her straight mouth as she uttered breathy, suggestive things? He tried to focus on higher things, cooler things, but it wasn’t easy in the heated underpass with her hands moving lower, and lower again, straying far too close to the area he was trying not to think of—

He jerked.

“Sorry.” This time there was no question her lips twitched. He heard a short sharp tearing sound, and she said, “I think that’s it. Try it now.”

Slowly at first, then faster, Mickey rolled off her and got up. He paused only to brush his grimed hands down the sides of his pants before holding them out to Luci.

She gripped them, came up, then staggered slightly, as if her knees weren’t as steady as her voice. Whatever the reason, she ended up in his arms and he found he wasn’t averse to offering support for as long as she might need it. She tipped her head back, her smile a grateful one. Adrenaline screamed through his veins. He’d been a cop long enough to know the effects it could have on the sex drive, and he wasn’t as relieved as he should be when she eased away from him and looked around. Discretion was the better part of lust, so he looked away.

There was a lot to see. It needed only a gun-toting Stallone to complete the mess as official-looking figures began to filter through the debris. A fire engine roared up, disgorging slicker-coated figures and adding to the noise. It was followed by every Jefferson Parish patrol car in the area, their police lights sending flickering blue flashes bouncing off the billowing smoke.

They had, he decided, been damn lucky…

The thought died when he saw the remains of his car, glassless, pocked with bullet holes, and sagging into the remains of what had been new tires. He bit back the expletives that crowded in his throat, heard Luci gasp and turned to find her studying a trail of tiny white puffs of cotton floating across the pavement.

Cotton?

Mickey followed the trail to the source. Her pig.

Or what was left of it. He grinned, feeling somewhat better about his own loss.

The pig wasn’t the only casualty. Shots had ripped through Luci’s luggage with ruthless disregard. One suitcase sagged half off, half on the cart. Mortally wounded, the rips in one long side bled frothy bits of white underwear and other feminine items. Jagged tears that dripped pieces of brightly colored clothing onto the pavement below scored the other. With the slow beat of his heart counting the seconds, Mickey waited and watched for her to finally react, to erupt, and to vent.

She drew a long shaky breath, then turned towards him, her eyes incredibly wide in her pale, smoke-smudged face.

“Someone must be really pissed at you.”

“Me? What makes you think this was meant for me?”

Luci arched her brows. “The evil half of the universe wants cops dead, but who’d want to kill a waitress from Butt Had, Wyoming?”

“Waitress? But you said—”

“There’s not,” Luci pointed out, “a lot of money in do-wahing so I have to moonlight.”

The familiar mechanism of law enforcement soothed Mickey’s frustrations. At least there was hope that the wheels of justice would, in time, crush the aging jerks that trashed his car. With martyred mourning in his heart, he watched a uniform speak into a radio, then turn to say, “They found the Yugo abandoned outside Lakeside Mall. Same place it was stolen from. It’s possible they picked up their own car—or stole another one.”

“They dust it?” asked another officer.

“Yeah, but it looks wiped.”

“Can’t shoot straight enough to hit the side of a barn but know enough to wipe away their prints,” snorted a deputy from the Sheriff’s Department. “What’s crime coming to, anyways?”

“Oh, I dunno,” drawled another deputy. “Did a fair enough job of shooting up this here underpass.”

They all examined the erratic line of scoring in the cement over their heads.

“Can’t believe no one was killed!” exclaimed a young officer, his Adam’s apple rebounding with each word.

Mickey faced Luci and got the full force of her reproachful look over the shoulder of the EMT applying first aid to her scratches. In her lap was a fragment of pig snout. That’s when he knew for sure that twinge behind his eyes was a headache in the making.

“The press boys are asking if it’s a terrorist attack,” the young deputy added.

“It would be a mistake for any of us to jump to conclusions,” Mickey said, speaking with pain-induced passion. He rubbed his temples and scowled at the media hounds hovering avidly on the fringes of their much-too-public crime scene.

Somewhere just out of his reach, he knew something was bothering him about the attack. He groped towards it, but his subconscious refused to cough it up.

“Well, whatever the motive was, you were all damn lucky,” the cop said.

“So were they,” Mickey pointed out, looking down this time—at the jagged line of bullets scores in the roadway, marks that traced a path perilously close to the Yugo’s tire skid marks.

An airline official provided Luci with several plastic sacks that urged her to “fly with us” and a couple of large gray bins used to contain luggage that couldn’t maintain structural integrity through the loading and unloading process. She felt Mickey watching her as she examined each item of clothing for damage, then assigned it a bin or bag. He was frowning again. She sighed. It was possible she’d never see his smile again, which was a pity but not a surprise. Being a Seymour did have its serious downside.

Which brought her mother to mind. One of the family peculiarities—among a host of them—was that Seymour women didn’t marry. Luci’s mother hadn’t married, but she did get knocked up. It was a curious fact that when spineless, uninteresting Seymour men married their sturdy, plain, no nonsense—except in their choice of husband—wives, the coupling failed to dilute the family peculiarities by even a jot. There was no family history on female couplings, since Lila was the first to try it out, so Luci pretty much had to wing it in the theory department of her own peculiarities. She did know she was the only Seymour who seemed to be aware that the world couldn’t see through Seymour eyes. It was as if her mother’s genes had been unable to wholly combine with her father’s, leaving Luci forever fractured inside.

Until this week, Luci hadn’t given much thought to the man who had fathered her. Why should she when he was never mentioned? In some dim recess of her mind, she’d just assumed she was the result of a semi-immaculate conception and got on with her life. It was hard for non-Seymours to imagine their parents having sex, so she didn’t feel she’d been unreasonable to avoid pondering the question for most of her twenty-seven years. Yes, other people had two parents, but Seymours weren’t other people. There were times when she wasn’t sure they even were people.

She’d probably have gone on not thinking about her sperm donor if Lila hadn’t brought it up. When Lila made her twice-yearly call, Luci had mentioned the wedding invitation. With an uncharacteristic intensity, Lila had urged her not to attend, sounding almost motherly in her concern. Luci had probed this strange behavior further, causing Lila to make a fatal slip of the tongue and admit, “Your father is there and he doesn’t know about you.”

Since she refused to slip further details, including a name, for fear of what said father would do if he found out Lila had kept something as important as a daughter from him, Luci was forced to proceed to New Orleans without passing “Go” or collecting any more information.

Her aunts had to know who the sperm donor was and if approached right might spill what they knew. Getting useful information out of Seymour women was not like squeezing blood out of rock—it was harder. Useless information spilled forth in an endless fountain that couldn’t be turned off. Luci hadn’t counted on the non-Seymour Mickey being sent to collect her, though she wasn’t surprised her aunts had lost track of a few years of her life and assigned her the role of flower girl. Attention to detail was not a Seymour trait.

Now, Mickey paced towards her, his expression as wary as if he approached a bomb. He learned fast. She watched through her lashes as she thrust her fingers through several bullet holes in a pair of jeans and waggled her fingers at him.

“How do you suppose the airline knew this was the perfect moment not to lose my luggage?”

Mickey grinned. “It’s a gift, like knowing when to park in the garage instead of a no parking zone.”

Luci basked in the unexpected approval of the grin. “Too bad about your car.”

“Too bad about your luggage.”

She sighed. “Yeah, I’m afraid Blossom’s a goner.”

“Blossom?” Mickey reached for his tie, but it was gone. “You name your luggage?”

Luci nodded. “Though he—”

“Blossom’s a he?”

“Yes—though he didn’t start out as a he or I wouldn’t have called him Blossom. A few years ago I took him, or rather her, to visit my cousin George. He used to be a she, too. And when I got home, well, I could tell he wasn’t a she anymore.” She gave an elegant shrug. “This is the nineties. Her sexual orientation is his business, not mine.”

Mickey opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and asked, “And—your other piece of luggage?”

Luci arched her brows. “Samsonite.”

“Oh.” It seemed inadequate, but a woman in a short, sexy dress passed by, providing a well-needed distraction.

Luci followed his appreciative gaze, noting the quick smile he exchanged with the woman. It passed a lot of voltage in a very short time, its warmth touching her as it brushed past. Mickey turned back to Luci, the voltage fading as fast as it had arrived. It was a good thing. The world was unstable enough without another Seymour joining the battle of the sexes.

He pulled a notebook from one pocket, a pencil from another. “I have to get a statement from you about the attack.”

“Okay.” She gave him her attention. It seemed to disconcert him. “What do you want to know...officer?”

“I’m a detective. But—” He struggled, but good manners beat out personal desire. “You can call me Mick. If you want.”

“Mick?” Luci said it doubtfully.

“What?”

“Well.” She shrugged. “It sounds like a name for a gerbil.”

He stared at her, producing then discarding several replies to this. Perhaps if he just ignored the things that didn’t make sense he could get through this, deliver her to her aunts and then run for his sanity. It seemed like a good plan, so he went with it.

“Ross, then. Or Mickey—if it doesn’t remind you too much of a mouse?”

She smiled. His toes curled in his shoes in time with the slow curling of the edges of her mouth and sent his plan drifting up into the smoke that still hugged the cement rafters overhead.

“I always thought Mickey was kind of cute.”

He felt himself grin. Could tell it was the stupid one, but he didn’t seem to care. It was enough to look into her eyes while she looked into his. It was enough to wonder how a mouth so straight could curve like that and would it taste as good as it looked?

A clang of machinery made them both jump.

“Yes, well.” He shook himself, then said, “I just have a few questions for you, Miss Seymour—”

She twitched. If he hadn’t been watching her closely he would have missed it. “What?”

Her mouth pursed in distaste. “It’s just, being called that makes me feel like my mother.”

“Miss Seymour reminds you of your mother?”

“I’m afraid so.” Her sigh was just shy of dramatic.

He opened his mouth, remembered his plan and jumped right over this little bit of quicksand. He asked his questions, resisting her efforts to digress, until he got to his last question.

“Can you think of anyone who might want to kill you?”

She looked startled, then thoughtful, as if the question interested her in some distant, academic way. “I suppose anyone can have enemies and I am a Seymour, which means I bring out the homicidal in people.”

Mickey opened his mouth to ask, then realized what he was about to do and stopped himself.

“I also know a lot of excitable gun-toting types, you understand, but none of them drive a Yugo. They drive off-road vehicles with gun racks, wear orange hunting vests and never wear joke glasses.” She folded a blouse and tossed it in after the jeans, then picked up a silky scrap of white and lace. “Did you say you were in homicide?”

“Yes.” Mickey felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise in warning.

“Oh.”

“Despite the many TV plots,” he said, “most perps try to avoid shooting a cop. It just gets them more trouble than it’s worth.”

“So someone wasn’t trying to personally kill you?” The quantity of bullets fired at them seemed awfully personal to her, but she wasn’t a homicide cop.

“I can’t know for sure, of course, but I don’t think so.” He looked at her with a lot of wary in his eyes. “Why?”

“I was sort of hoping this—” she held up the white scrap to show him a bra with two blown cups, “would be covered under your insurance?”

No one came to the tiny French Quarter club for the drinks, though buying them at an exorbitant rate was required for sitting at ringside. Its claim to fame was its female mud wrestlers. Patrons had another good reason for buying liberally. They needed to get really drunk to get past their natural fear of getting down and dirty with said wrestlers, especially the one kicking patron ass at the moment. Even the dullest wit had to know she hadn’t lost her front teeth just because of poor dental hygiene.

Fern watched the woman toss the over-confident college student clear across the ring. It wasn’t possible for her to get drunk enough to crawl in there and get her ass tossed, but it was cathartic to watch someone else get tossed after their very public defeat. It didn’t help to have an prosperous looking Artie sitting across from them laughing his ass off about their failure at the airport.

Donald let Artie pay for their drinks, which wiped the grin off his face. He’d always been a tight bastard. When the waitress was about two steps out of earshot, Fern said, “A guy who keeps all his dollars in one place—”

Artie pulled his feet in to keep a passing patron from stepping on his new shoes. “Hey, it’s not easy to launder dollars. No one wants to bother with small bills anymore.”

“No kidding,” Fern said. “Let’s see, I wonder why that could be?”

“Gets me.” Artie leaned closer to confide, “Think about it. People freak if they lose five bucks in a scam. Have the postal inspector all over you. But for a buck? Not a peep. Just not worth their time to complain.”

It made enough sense to be scary. Fern wasn’t used to Artie making sense. She put down her drink. Maybe the cheap beer was affecting her more than she realized.

“Tell you what,” Donald said. “I won’t tell you how to scam if you won’t tell me how to kill.”

“Okay, okay.” Artie threw his hands up. “The AK-47 was a bad idea. You do your thing and when you’re done, let me know so I can do mine. Agreed?”

He pulled out a handkerchief and bent to wipe a speck of mud off his shoes.

Fern looked at Donald. He grinned. “What say we get ourselves an Uzi?”

A rare smile lit Fern’s face. She should have been looking at the ring instead of at him. She just had time to register his look of horror before the wall of mud hit all three of them.