HAL STRATTON sat on the corner of Umberto’s desk after closing. He’d changed his apron for a leather jacket. Everyone else had left, but Umberto sat at his desk and in a chair near the desk sat Hal’s captain, David Roth of the Portland Police Department.
“How did she take it?” Hal asked Umberto.
Umberto bounced a glance off him, then frowned and focused on the calendar on his desk. He flipped pages back and forth. “Well…not too badly.”
“You told her why I’m here?”
“No.”
Hal glanced at his captain, who was busy inspecting the crown molding in the old office.
“So you just told her to take a few days off then but didn’t tell her why?”
Umberto gave him a pitying look. “Yeah. Right. You tell her to take a few days off and see where it gets you.”
Umberto and Kat’s relationship was difficult for Hal to understand. While the old man seemed to love his daughter a great deal, and relied on her managerial skills, he didn’t appear to have much appreciation for her knowledge and experience, which were considerable. He also didn’t have much to say about her bossy style, which was formidable—and annoying to an undercover cop accustomed to running operations his way.
Of course, she didn’t know he was a cop, but he doubted her attitude would have been any different if she had. She was sure she knew everything.
“Berto, it’s for her own safety.” Hal pointed out the obvious. “If she knows one of your customers is planning to use the restaurant to get into the savings and loan next door, she’ll want to help stop it. This is going down tomorrow night and she always stays late to prepare the deposit. What if he makes his move while she’s still around?”
Umberto nodded emphatically. “I know all that. That’s why I told her I’m sending her to San Francisco to pick up linens.”
Hal thought about that a minute. “Okay. That’s good. She didn’t ask any questions?”
He didn’t like the way the old man was avoiding his eyes. The way he looked at Roth, who also didn’t look at Hal.
“She did complain about the drive taking eleven hours,” Umberto said.
Roth finally cleared his throat and sat up in his chair, looking suddenly official. “That’s why he told her that you’re flying her down to San Francisco.”
A long string of profanity sat on the tip of Hal’s tongue. Only extensive training and long conditioning to remain calm under the most adverse circumstances held it back.
“What?” he asked flatly.
“You’re going to take her away so that we can do our job,” Roth said.
“Our job,” Hal repeated with emphasis. “You came to me when Umberto told you he overheard Percanto planning to rob the savings and loan next door. I’m the one who set this up. I’m the one who’s been shlepping plates for two weeks, brownnosing Percanto and planting bugs in the flowers so that we can collar him.” As he piled up the details of his own case, his ability to view this sudden change of plans with calmness evaporated. “I know Berto is your friend, but I’ll be damned if you’re going to send me off as a baby-sitter to…”
“The plans are made,” Roth said. Talk about dictatorial. Kat could take lessons from him. “I promised. Just pretend this is one of the private security jobs you do on your time off. You’re off the precinct clock and Berto will pay you personally.”
“She hates me,” Hal added, desperate. “I doubt she’ll even want to go with me.”
“She’ll go,” Umberto assured him. “She’ll do whatever’s best for the restaurant.”
“Captain,” Hal pleaded. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He’d handled this flawlessly and just when it was all about to come to fruition, they were sending him off with Evita?
Roth wasn’t moved, but he did add with sincerity, “You’re the best man for the job, Hal. And the most important element in this to Berto is Kat’s safety. He let us set this up here on the promise that we’d keep her out of the way and protected. Your job in doing that is every bit as important as collaring Percanto.”
Hal swallowed more profanity.
“There’re Mariners tickets in it for you,” Roth bargained.
Hal rolled his eyes. “It’s February. There’s no baseball in February.”
“You can use my box every weekend this summer.”
Well. Maybe that would help a little. The only thing he loved more than his work was baseball.
“I told her you’d call her tonight to make plans to pick her up.” Umberto handed him a slip of paper with a telephone number on it.
Hal took it. “You two owe me big,” he said.
“Yeah,” Berto agreed.
When Hal got back to his apartment, he called Kat. “I understand I’m flying you to San Francisco,” he said.
“You do have a pilot’s license?” she asked.
Of course she would doubt him. “I do,” he assured her.
“And you’re actually a good pilot?”
“The government thought so. They trusted me with a sinfully expensive F-14.”
She was quiet for a moment, then she sighed. “I haven’t flown very much.”
Did he detect a note of fear? Was she actually vulnerable to something? “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “I have a very reliable little two-seater that I keep in excellent condition and I just had the engine overhauled. It’s a short flight. I’ll pick you up at eight. Where do you live?”
She gave him a northwest Portland address, then she asked with genuine interest, “How did you get an airplane? I mean…are tips really that good? Aren’t they expensive to buy and maintain?”
Despite the deceit inherent in this trip, he could answer that honestly. “It was my dad’s. He had a restaurant in Juneau. He flew for supplies all the time and I got my license when I was in college. I flew for the navy for a while, then when my parents moved to Florida, Dad gave me the plane.”
“Oh.” She sounded surprised. “Funny how there are certain people you don’t think about having parents.”
He didn’t know whether to be amused or insulted. “Did you think I was conceived in a petri dish?”
It sounded as though she smothered a laugh. “No, but I’ve come to think of you as some hybrid Robo Cop-waiter machine.”
He experienced an uncomfortable moment. Did she know? “Robo Cop?”
“You do act all authoritative and armor-plated.”
“Hmm,” he replied. “I thought that was you.”
“Maybe we’ve been looking in a mirror. My place is above a coffee shop. I’ll pick up coffee and scones, and be waiting in front at 8:00 a.m.”
“All right. See you then.”
IN HAL’S EXPERIENCE with his mother and his two sisters, women were seldom on time, but Kat was standing in front of the address she’d given him, two large paper cups in her hands, a brown paper bag balanced on top of them.
This was the first time he’d seen her in anything but the black and white that was the uniform of Umberto’s Tuscan Grille. She wore jeans, a white roll-neck sweater, and a short black wool jacket. Her glossy dark hair was down and full rather than pulled back as she always wore it at work.
She was petite—something he seldom noticed on the job because of her personality. And she was very, very pretty. He felt suddenly a little off balance—as though the world had somehow changed overnight.
He got out of the car and came around to open her door. “Good morning,” he said.
“Hi,” she replied, looking at him as though he wasn’t who she’d expected either. “Thank you.” After she stepped in, he ran back around the car and climbed in behind the wheel. The interior, which usually smelled of fast food and a pine deodorizer, now had the fragrance of lilacs. Kat’s fragrance.
The world tilted a little farther.
While he drove to Herrick Field, she removed the tab from the lid on his coffee and placed the cup in the holder. “I didn’t know about cream and sugar, so I just got you a mocha. I hope that’s all right.”
That was a little sweet for his taste, but he couldn’t fault her consideration in buying it. “Great. Thank you.”
She told him about a small airfield not too far from the linen supplier. “I figure we can just pick up a cab and be there and back in an hour, if all goes well. I checked. It’s well staffed and maintained.”
Trust her to check all details. But somehow, he had to make sure that all didn’t go well. Her father didn’t want her back for two days.
“Certainly we can fit lunch in there somewhere,” he said.
“I’d like to be back for my shift tonight.” She handed him a bite of a blueberry scone.
He popped it in his mouth. “I thought your father gave you the day off for this trip,” he said after swallowing the scone.
“He did. But this shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. And if I don’t come in, he’ll be shorthanded and he’s not as young as he used to be.”
“He’s strong as a bull.”
He heard the little expelled breath that meant she was getting huffy. “I know you think you’ve learned everything about Umberto’s in the two weeks you’ve been there, but he had a heart attack last year. It was just a small one, a sort of warning, but he’s no longer strong as a bull, though he likes to think he is, and my job is to be there.”
“Pardon me, Your Highness,” he said. There was no other way to respond to that tone. “I just thought it would be nice not to rush. If he gave you the day off, I’m sure he’s brought someone in to cover for you.”
That exhalation of air again. “And in what lifetime would you want to dally with me, Mr. Stratton?”
“Dally?” Now there was a word you didn’t hear every day.
“Linger over,” she relied. “Spend time with.”
A very honest answer to that was right on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t need to complicate an already tricky little trip, but what the hell. She had it coming. And it had been an undercurrent beneath the waves of conflict between them for two long weeks. He braked at a red light and was able to turn and look right into her eyes. “In any lifetime offered me, Miss Como.”
He enjoyed her openmouthed expression of complete confusion. The light turned and he drove on.
“You don’t like me,” she reminded him.
“I don’t like your presumption of superiority,” he corrected, passing a small pickup burdened with lumber, “but that doesn’t mean I’m not sexually attracted to you.”
“Sexually att—” She said that on a gasp, then added, “You are not! You never have a kind word to say to me. And that cool courtesy isn’t courtesy at all, it’s disdain.”
“It’s disdain for your attitude,” he corrected again, “not your appeal.”
She said nothing for another five minutes, then he turned onto the airfield property. He pulled into a parking spot by the tiny terminal and coffee shop.
“Rest room’s in there,” he said, pointing to the coffee shop. “You look as though you need to splash water on your face. I’m going to check the plane.” Then he pointed again to the yellow Cessna at the edge of the field. “Right there.”
She studied him one speechless moment, then scrambled out of the car and headed for the coffee shop.