11

The humid air was slow to bring the soft sound of a blues-laden love song from the frat house across the street as Luci came out and perched on the porch railing, pondering her few options. If her aunts wouldn’t help her, it wasn’t going to be easy unraveling the mystery of her paternity. That Lila had called him her pooh bear was not something she wanted to admit to anyone.

She pushed her paternal thoughts to the back burner and let her mind home in on the distant hum of traffic as the city geared up for the night. The air was heavy with the scent of too many green growing things to sort out the alien foods that enticed and teased one to venture forth from comfort zones. This place, with its lazy decadence, was the polar opposite of her sturdy, duty-minded Wyoming, and had her feeling very unlike her Seymour self.

She’d come here in search of her father and found murder, mayhem and a strange stirring she hadn’t known she was capable of. Was it the city that was making her wish for things a Seymour didn’t? Or was it someone?

With some reluctance, she let herself think about “someone.” Men had passed as tiny blips across her horizon. Better looking, far less uptight men. Why did this one disturb her thoughts? Stir yearnings to which she was supposed to be immune? All the nerve endings in her body seemed to have awakened to the fact that they were nerve endings and could feel. Could feel so much so that she now felt the soft stroke of air across her skin. Was aware of each thud of her heart and the in-and-out of her own breath. Inhaled a thousand heady scents and heard the most insignificant bug’s mating cry.

That she even knew it was a mating cry was pretty amazing.

Was this how her mother had felt before breaking who knows how many years of family tradition? Had her flaky, infuriating mother felt this languid and this filled with want?

It was a terrifying thought. She’d come to find her father, to discover the roots of her strange duality, but he wouldn’t just be her father. He was her mother’s lover. She was the by-product of something that had been meant just for them. Did she really want to open that Pandora’s box? Her fright and flight instinct clamored for equal time with the “jump his fine bones” instinct. It might even be ahead of the game, but how could she leave with her aunts mired in the mess of murder?

She was caught between the rock of murder and the Seymour hard place.

Murder was a messy, untidy business, even without her aunts factored into the equation. The family would expect her to factor them out, but the object of her lust wasn’t going to let that happen until he was sure they weren’t in it.

As if her thoughts had conjured him, the door behind her opened and Mickey and Delaney emerged.

“Don’t feel bad,” Delaney said. “You do the best bad cop on the force. There just wasn’t anything to get a hold of there.”

With night-accustomed eyes, she noted the discouraged slump to their shoulders and their glum faces.

“I just don’t get it,” Mickey said. “What does Eddie see in her?”

“He’s got enough personality to animate ten people,” Delaney pointed out.

“I have to meet Eddie,” Luci said.

They both started with surprise. Mickey peered into the shadows until he found her, framed against the round moon riding just above the tree line in the night sky.

For a moment he contemplated a meeting between Luci and Eddie. What would Eddie think of Luci? She was in a picture perfect pose on the porch railing. The moon had maliciously chosen to bathe its light across her mouth, to stroke light and shadow in just the right amount to highlight the curve of breasts and thighs, and left her heart-stopping legs lost in shadow. About halfway through his examination of her, he quit thinking about what Eddie would think of her and started thinking about what he’d like to do with her.

Delaney gave him a forceful nudge that cleared his head, but not the heat that had built in his mid-section.

“Huh?”

Luci’s smile was slow and sultry. “Gracie tells me you had a little chat with Velma.”

“Gracie?” Delaney said.

Mickey bit back a sigh as Delaney went into “moon” mode again, turning his bulky body to send a hopeful look at the house.

“Is she—”

“Turned in for the night? I’m afraid so,” Luci said. “How was Hugo?”

“He was jealous,” Mickey admitted reluctantly.

“Oh? He just tried to cop a feel off me.”

Mickey realized his hands had fisted and deliberately straightened his fingers. “Velma didn’t mention you’d been there.”

She stretched languidly. “Miss Weena assigned her to me when you declined to be her Watson. If you feed me, I’ll tell you what I know.” Her hopeful look had a generous helping of humor and sympathy.

Mickey started to sigh again, then realized he’d been doing it almost continually since he’d met her and stopped himself. Hadn’t he vowed to take the tough line with her? “You’ll tell us what you know or we’ll charge you with obstruction.”

Luci looked at Delaney, her sunny good humor belying her words. “You’re right. His bad cop is good.”

“Don’t—” Mickey fought his way to control. “Just tell me about Reggie’s police record.”

Luci folded her hands demurely in her lap. “He tries to cheat people.”

Mickey looked at Delaney. “A bunco artist?”

“You give him far too much credit,” Luci said.

Mickey grinned. “Velma says it’s the family’s fault, that you all marred him.”

Luci smiled. “He marred himself without any help from anybody. Unless you count the body piercing.

Mickey looked at Delaney. “Body piercing?”

“Intimate body piercing. Lila calls it his small vanity, but I think that puncturing your—private areas—with cheap jewelry, no matter how specially designed, is not a small vanity.”

Mickey looked uneasy. “Specially designed jewelry?”

“Yeah, according to the family grapevine, it’s a variation on the family crest. Poison oak and a weasel head. It was designed by a great aunt of mine. She had a rather wicked sense of humor. I don’t think Reggie got the joke, else why would he be flaunting it? If you can call it flaunting to wear it—there.”

Both men flinched and Luci bit back a smile.

Mickey shuddered. “Does Velma know?”

“If she’s a psychic, she should.” Luci looked toward Velma’s house just in time to catch her closing the drapes. Luci frowned as the feeling that she knew her from somewhere else swept over her again. But how could that be? Velma had moved in after Luci and her mother left the area.

“Something wrong?” Delaney asked her.

Luci stood up and shook off all the feelings and impressions like a dog shedding water. “Do you hear it?”

Mickey and Delaney looked at each other, then at her. Their mutual blankness made her smile.

“A pizza,” she explained, “calling my name. I swear I can smell the sauce.”

On Mickey’s face, blank gave way for annoyed, with just a hint of resignation. Delaney tilted his head and listened. “Yeah, I think I do.”

“Not a chain pizza. Something more upscale, I think?”

“There’s a place on Magazine that does gourmet pizzas,” Delaney said, giving Mickey a hopeful look and rubbing his stomach. It obliged him by growling.

Mickey shoved his hair back. “Fine. Whatever.” Luci’s delighted smile made his head spin so fast, he didn’t notice the sling on her arm until they got to the car.

“Did I do that when I tackled you last night?”

Luci patted his arm reassuringly. “I took a header off an escalator.”

Delaney looked worried. “You okay?”

Luci nodded. “Just a slight sprain and a touch of snow burn.”

Mickey shook his head. “Snow burn?”

“From showing the kiddies how to make a snow angel.” She slid into the car and smiled up at him. “Bad idea in a dress.”

In a daze, Mickey closed the door and looked at Delaney. “When did I stop knowing what was going on?”

But he already knew the answer to that. The moment Luci Seymour walked into his life. He started the car and pulled away, his stomach rumbling happily at the thought of upcoming pizza.

Artie waited until they were out of sight before he emerged from the ivy. Pizza sauce liberally splattered his pants and the stolen pizza shirt, but his shoes had suffered more vilely. Even his Instant-Polish kit couldn’t fix them. It had been a bad week for shoes. Something else to add to Luci Seymour’s account.

It was dark in Fern’s hospital room when Donald pushed the door open and peered in. Fern was huddled in the regulation bed in the regulation gown, a cast adorning her arm. He started to back out, but she stopped him with, “I’m awake.”

He slipped through and closed the door behind him.

“You forget who’s the bopper in this family, Fernie?”

Fern looked up, her face so downcast, Donald felt sorry about ribbing her. Ponderously he trod over to her and patted her broken arm.

“Never mind.” His voice was gruff. “Weren’t such a bad idea, you know. If it had worked, our troubles’d be over. Weren’t your fault it didn’t, neither.”

“She sent me flowers, Donald.” She nodded toward the tasteful arrangement brightening the darkest corner of the room.

“Damn! Anybody else take a dive off an escalator, they’d be pushing up daisies ‘stead of sending them.”

“What are we going to do now?”

Donald pulled the chair close to the bed. Seated, he was on a level with her. “I been thinking on that very thing. Took a run past the house. It’s all nice and quiet. Even the bulls are gone.”

He kept his voice low, but Fern heard his underlying excitement.

“What?” She sat up, leaned toward him as a lust for revenge coursed through her veins. “Uzi time?”

“I wish. Give me a lot of pleasure to blast that bitch to hell and back. But,” he said with a regretful look. “We’ll have to settle for blowing her into little bits instead.”

“Blow—Donald, are you thinking of a bomb?”

“I am.”

“But—how?”

“I told you, I’ve been by. Somebody had backed a car out of the garage. I saw her look under the hood.” He didn’t mention that Luci’s long,bare legs had made him want to look under her hood. You didn’t cross a woman like Fern. Not if you wanted to keep all your parts. “Like she was trying to get it running.” He waited a beat, then added, “A Nash.”

Fern sat straight up in bed, oblivious to the pain the movement caused. “A Nash?”

He grinned. “Nash has always been lucky for us.”

Fern looked almost girlish and almost blushed. “Back seat of one, anyway.”

“This time the whole car’s gonna bring us luck. Gonna take us all the way to the Bahamas. Who’s gonna be surprised when a little gal blows herself and a car up? Ain’t natural for her to be working on a car. Though I hate to do it to a Nash.”

“Yeah,” Fern agreed, hesitated, then said with decision, “I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Just what I was thinking myself.” He held up a sack of clothes he’d packed for her. “I’ll help you.”