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Adam stared at Zelda Lehmann. If he’d known she was in the deli, he would have walked on the other side of the street to get to the bank. Waking up with a stiff neck should have been a tip on how his day was going to go. The stiff-neck omen. He’d have to remember that for next time. Maybe take the day off.
Zelda’s hair was redder than the last time but had hints of the black and gray roots. He’d liked it when her hair first showed wisps of gray, but she didn’t believe anyone would take her seriously if she looked too “old.” Did he look old to her now? Then again, her husband, the mayor, had shaved the last traces of hair off his nearly bald head, hadn’t he?
Zelda grabbed his arm, but when she saw him staring at her hand and at the diamond boulder on her ring finger, she released his arm to reach inside a bag from the deli. Pulling out a bottle of Russian River Valley Pinot Noir she said, “Your favorite.”
Funny, he hadn’t had a glass of that since the divorce. Guess he knew why now. “As I recall, you weren’t all that fond of Pinot Noir. Unless you’re buying that for the mayor?”
She stuffed the bottle back into the bag and set it on the ground. “He’s more of a champagne man. The wine is for me. I’ve developed a taste for it.”
“Goody for you.”
“Adam . . .” She gazed up at him with those soft, brown doe eyes of hers, in the way she did when they first started dating. He’d half-believed her when she once said she’d cast a spell on him because those eyes bewitched him whenever she looked at him that way.
“Adam, I’ve missed you. That sounds trite, I suppose. It’s just . . . I know we had something special back then. And I wanted to tell you that.”
What was he supposed to say? Thanks oh-so-much for reminding me that we had something great until you decided being first lady with your cop husband wasn’t enough? That richer was better than poorer? And “until death we part” was only a suggestion?
Adam glanced at the bottle of Pinot Noir in the bag. He used to like the wine’s taste—dry, smoky, dark, complex. A lot like his marriage.
He squinted at holes in the cloud layer that allowed peeks of blue sky and sunlight to show through. “I’ve got to get going. Your husband laid down the law yesterday in the chief’s office. A case he’s got a personal interest in. For some odd reason, he’s taken a dislike to me. Wonder why?”
Zelda pushed her bangs out of her eyes. “Your famous sarcasm is alive and well, I see. Titus has a mountain of pressure on him right now. It’s nothing personal.”
Dutton laughed. “And your talent for denial is still razor-sharp. Like hell, it’s personal.”
“Is that the Forsythe case, the one with the high-stakes thief? I heard Titus talking. It sounded like there was a woman involved. Or an organized ring, and the woman is the distraction.”
“Could be. I don’t like to discuss cases I’m working.”
“How well I remember.” She tilted her head, and the morning sun on her hair matched the light glittering on the red maple leaves. “What is this femme fatale like, Adam? She must be gorgeous to be such an effective distraction.”
“The description is vague. But I’d guess she’s attractive.”
“You’d better look out then, lest she get her claws into you,” she replied, touching his arm lightly this time. “Adam, I do admire you, you know that.” When he started to reply, she put a finger on his lips and added, “No, not just admire. A part of me will always love you.”
Picking up her bag, she hurried to her car and was out of sight in less than a minute. Adam stood staring after her for a good two minutes longer, not knowing whether to curse her or run after her. He continued his interrupted walk to the bank, when a familiar nasal voice said, “Are you trying to win back your wife, Dutton? If you are, there’s no chance in hell it will work.”
Adam whirled around to face the mayor, whose pretense of calm was shattered by the red blotches on his cheeks and nose. He was a bald strawberry. “Why would I want to do that, Lehmann? You won, I lost. End of story.”
“Oh, I doubt it’s love you have in mind. Perhaps you hope to make me look bad in front of the voters. Keep me from winning the governorship. Get back at me for marrying Zelda and for putting pressure on your beloved police force.”
“If that’s what you believe, feel free to file a formal complaint with the chief. I couldn’t care less.”
“We’ll see about that. And don’t believe for a minute I’m going to go easy on you about the Forsythe case. I know what you think. You think he is lying about the whole affair and had a hand in it. And other antiquities thefts, to boot. But you’re wrong. You need to chase after that mystery red-headed woman. That’s your thief.”
“I never said anything about Reggie Forsythe lying. And this mystery woman is probably in Canada or Mexico right now.”
“Or under our very noses. I expect results, Dutton. Chief Quinn is pushing the council for money to fund new cruisers and other gear.” The man sneered as he added, “Maybe some new radios?”
Adam counted to ten to avoid smashing Lehmann in his bright red nose to give him some bright red blood to go with it. That was a cheap shot, and Lehmann knew it. If Jinks were here, she’d have kicked the guy in his nuts for that. Turn his whiny tenor into a bleating soprano.
Adam felt a trickle of sweat down the back of his neck and took some deep breaths like his therapist instructed. One, two, three, four . . . The same doc who said, “It can take a while for PTSD to resolve, Adam. Give it time.” Time, Adam had in abundance. Patience, not so much.
Adam looked Lehmann in the eye. “I will never betray my badge, my integrity, my character, or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for our actions.”
Lehmann blinked slowly, and Adam added, “That is part of the oath I took for my job. Perhaps you should revisit the oath you took when you were sworn in, sir.”
With that, Adam finally made it to the bank, grateful for the escape it afforded from an old-but-new problem. And trying not to worry about a possible worse one. Why, oh, why did Zelda take that moment to accost him in the street? He had a bad feeling it was going to come back to haunt him and not in a Halloween sort of way.
What was that Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times?” He could use several degrees less “interesting” in his life right now. Maybe Harlan was right, and Adam just needed a vacation. But never in the middle of a case, especially this one. That stopped him for a moment—why this case? It was an ordinary one, a stupid stolen bowl. With a beautiful suspect in the center of it all.
Adam thrust his hands into his pocket and fingered the miniature police badge on the keychain his father had given him when he was sworn in. It was there to remind him that whenever he felt down or distracted about a case, he had a calling to see it through.
He was a cop first, and everything else came in second place. That’s what Zelda hadn’t understood—he was married to his job, and she was more like a mistress. The divorce rate was pretty high among cops, go figure.
Adam checked his watch. He was running late for work, thanks to his encounters with the troublesome Lehmann duo. As if he needed another reason for the chief not to trust him. Laborde, Forsythe—he’d get to the bottom of it sooner or later if they’d just let him do his job.
§ § §
Let it never be said Adam Dutton wasn’t thorough in his job. If he knew exactly what the job was, that is. A theft case that may, or may not, have anything to do with his jurisdiction. And his main suspect was a woman who may, or may not, have anything to do with said theft. There were far more critical cases, but power and politics did have their privileges.
Fine, then. He’d do what was expected to get the mayor off the chief’s ass, and the chief off of Adam’s. Which meant it was oh-so-fun database time. Searching computer records was part of the job, but it wasn’t his favorite part. Bits and bytes didn’t have the same tangible thrill of pounding the pavement and talking with people.
He guzzled some lukewarm coffee he’d picked up from the break room on the way to his office and grimaced. Bitter brew to go with his bitter mood. After Beverly beat him to the punch yesterday at Harlan’s shop, Adam had returned to the Apple Valley Resort to see if he could get any additional info on Beverly and was rewarded when he saw her getting out of a car. He jotted down the tag. Not that it mattered that much since it turned out to be a rental SUV when he ran the plates.
He didn’t have probable cause for hauling her in for further questioning without any evidence. It would also make it hard or impossible to get subpoenas from the courts for accessing various personal records. He didn’t have any hits on a Beverly Laborde in either the National Driver Registry or the federal NCIC database, but he did have a hit on one and only one Beverly Laborde in NLETS records that indicated a Massachusetts driver’s license.
After checking the address from the license on the internet, it looked to be a house subdivided into units. When he called the owner, she told him that a woman matching Beverly’s name and description did rent a space, hardly more than a “big closet with a small bathroom.” But the woman rarely saw Beverly, who’d paid up her rent in cash for the entire year.
Pretty smart on Beverly’s part—you couldn’t get a driver’s license with only a P.O. box. It was likewise good for passports, but Beverly hadn’t been charged with a crime, so he was out of luck getting those records.
It brought up an interesting insight into Beverly Laborde, who feigned innocence but essentially used a dummy address to obtain her license. If she had a more “normal” address, she’d surely have used that. She appeared to want to be as invisible as possible, so what game was she playing? He had a feeling it was far more complicated than her Fox and Geese and that she was quite good at it.
It made the claims by Reggie Forsythe and Mayor Lehmann more credible. But there was a long stretch of investigative road between a woman who wanted to keep a low profile and a serial crook. People with legitimate reasons might benefit from being hard to track—a victim of domestic violence, for instance.
He thought of the waitress at the resort. Her husband had put her in the hospital several times with broken bones, a punctured lung, and burns before he landed in prison for forty years. Adam wouldn’t have blamed her for wanting to disappear and start a new life somewhere else. Beverly Laborde was also haunted by something—he knew that look in her eyes, one he’d seen too often in his career.
Why couldn’t a filthy rich SOB like Reggie Forsythe just write off one damn bowl and be satisfied with his other expensive toys? Because it wasn’t about money, that’s why. Adam had come across too many men like him. Cold hard cash wasn’t really what drove them on, it was cold hard revenge even for slights others would deem meaningless. And thanks to Mayor Lehmann, Adam was now a tool for that revenge. Hip hip hooray.
