CHAPTER THREE
Mackenzie parked in the driveway of her mother’s house and started a text to Taft. No reason to let grass grow beneath her feet. Strike while the iron’s hot and all that. But then she hesitated over the phraseology. She wanted him to open up to her, but she didn’t know him well enough nor possess the key that would unlock his reticence. He was brash and forthright, but she sensed his lips were tightly sealed. She’d heard a lot of adjectives used about him, but blabbermouth was not one of them.
Finally, she just texted: Tonight. 7:00. Deno’s or Pizza Joe’s. Your choice.
She waited for five minutes, her teeth on edge. If he didn’t get back to her, she was going to have to push. She needed him a whole lot more than he needed her.
The front door opened and Dan the Man squinted out at her car. She’d been sitting inside it for too long and he was wondering what she was up to. He was very fussy about her loose hours, and to be fair, her mother was equally concerned. Mackenzie sometimes felt like she was back in high school and that was a no-go. Since Mom was loads better, maybe it was time to leave. But where to go? She had some savings but she wasn’t exactly rolling in the dough right now, either.
When her cell remained silent, she finally got out of the car, thinking about what her next text should be. She didn’t know where Taft lived, or where he worked, if he even had an office. She knew only the gossip about him, and what she’d seen, which was very little. She’d run into him a time or two during the course of police work. Her ex-partner, Bryan “Ricky” Richards, had had a beef with him over Taft’s “interference” of the arrest of a wealthy “captain of industry,” Mitchell Mangella. Mangella, who’d grown up in River Glen, moved to New York and became a hedge fund guy, apparently made scads of money and bought homes and businesses around the world, had then sold most of his assets and moved back to River Glen. He’d been accused of stealing his own wife’s jewelry, by his wife, and the wife had lodged a complaint with the River Glen PD, which hadn’t taken the accusation too seriously since Mangella had bought the jewelry, a necklace and bracelet, for the woman in the first place and the two of them were still living together. Still, an investigation had been opened. Mackenzie had reserved judgment on the whole debacle, but Ricky had landed firmly on the beautiful Prudence Mangella’s side. Taft had beat River Glen’s finest to the punch when he uncovered said stolen pieces at a pawn shop in Northeast Portland, which, naturally, had cameras, and showed that a woman had dropped the jewelry there. The woman turned out to be a friend of Prudence’s, not Mitchell’s, and the two women had been working together to get either Mitchell, or an insurance company, to pay for the stolen pieces. Prudence had zeroed in on Ricky’s allegiance to her during the course of the investigation and had stoked his adulation, promising . . . what . . . Mackenzie still didn’t know. But then it had all come crashing down and accusations were hurled right and left. Mangella roared at Prudence, and Prudence roared right back, and the River Glen PD gently tiptoed backward out of the whole affair. As far as Mac knew, Mangella and Prudence were still battling it out, though still living together. Marriages . . . there was no telling what made them work.
But Ricky had fallen for the lady hook, line, and sinker, even though her partner had been merely a pawn in the Mangellas’ ongoing war. Mac had told him to get over it, which had only served to piss him off at her. And the department had been made to look bad at being beaten to the punch by Taft, so nobody was happy, especially after Taft, having been called into the department by Chief Bennihof, had essentially breezed through and made it clear the department shouldn’t blame him for doing their job. He’d cruised out about the same time Mac was leaving for the day and they’d struck up an acquaintanceship, one that consisted until today of a few witty remarks and some unspoken mutual awareness but not much more. Of course the department considered him a turncoat to law enforcement, and Ricky seemed to somehow blame him for ending Prudence’s interest in him. Ricky still had trouble seeing that Prudence had used him for her own ends and that when those ends failed to materialize, she had no further use for him.
The male ego . . .
Mac ignored Dan the Man and hit the remote for the garage door. She locked up her car, walked through the garage, and let herself into the house through the kitchen door as much to avoid her stepfather as to see if her mother might be at the table doing a jigsaw puzzle, her favorite pastime throughout her chemotherapy, surgery, and recovery, one she hadn’t as yet given up.
“Hey, Mom,” Mac said, finding her just where she’d expected her to be.
“Hi there.” She barely glanced up from the thousand-piece puzzle of various African animals.
“A lot of grass,” Mac observed.
“A lot of grass,” her mother agreed. “A lot of stripes, too.”
Mac looked at the picture of what the puzzle should look like when finished on the front of the box. Zebras and okapis. Yep. A lot of stripes.
Dan the Man entered the room from the living room. He smiled at Mac and said, “You sure spend a lot of time in your car.”
“I sure do.”
“What takes so long?”
“My RAV is kind of my office these days, Dan.”
Her mother looked up. “You can stay here as long as you like,” she said, jumping ahead to the unspoken question hanging between them. “It’s really helped having you around after the surgery and I like having you here.”
Mac pulled her attention back to her mother. Beverly Gerber’s pallor, though still pale, was showing a faint pinkness underneath, a slow return to health that filled Mac with relief. Mom’s illness the last year and a half had taken over all their lives and scared Mac to her core. Mac and her mother had never been what you could call close, and there had definitely been a rift when Mom had married Dan, but recognizing she could lose her had chilled Mackenzie to the bone. She’d moved in to help care for her and in the process they’d found each other again. If Dan weren’t around, Mac felt she and Mom might even find their way to a kind of friendship they’d never had before. But Dan the Man was entrenched.
As if to prove that point, Dan said, “I was just talking to your mother about ordering from the River Glen Grill. She loves that chicken salad. Think you could pick up for us?”
Mac immediately felt herself resist. He always volunteered her without asking. Not that she minded helping out her mother. That’s why she’d moved in in the first place. But Dan was that guy who always seemed to be asking for something. “Sure,” she clipped out.
“You’re part of dinner, too,” said Mom.
“Well, there is our budget—” Dan started.
“Thanks, I’ve got other plans,” Mac said at the same time.
Mom looked like she was going to argue, but Dan clapped his hands together and said, “What else would you like, honey? Feeling up for a glass of white? I’m sure Mackenzie would pick up a bottle of chardonnay?” He turned and smiled at Mac.
Mackenzie slid a glance at her mother, whose brows had knit into mild consternation. Mac said to her, “I could get you a rosé,” knowing her mother’s favorite.
“Oh . . . no, thanks.” She met Mac’s gaze and they shared a moment of silent understanding. Mackenzie had a memory of her mom smiling at her that same way from a seat in the audience, silently encouraging her as she emoted her way through whatever small part she’d been assigned, drama being Mac’s favorite subject in school. She recalled the animation in Mom’s face. The fun they’d had. Before the disappointment when, following her father’s death, Mac had given up any dreams she might have had in the arts and had determined to go into law enforcement, just like her father. Though she’d never outwardly voiced it, Mac knew her mother had been sorely disappointed, even though she’d agreed with Mac’s declaration that she needed a paying job.
“Still not feeling like a drink?” Dan asked Mom, his voice oozing with empathy.
She smiled faintly and nodded, turning back to her puzzle.
Mackenzie pivoted and walked back out the kitchen door. Dan was never going to listen hard enough to recall that Mom didn’t really like chardonnay. He had it in his mind that chardonnay was the white wine all women drank and no matter how many times he was told differently, he reverted to his own rock bottom notions.
She glanced at her phone as she placed it back in its car holder. Still silent. Her other plans might not be materializing but she wasn’t giving up yet. In the meantime, she would head to the River Glen Grill. A couple hundred rungs higher up on the sophistication scale than the Waystation, it was probably the nicest place in River Glen and nearby Laurelton combined. An expensive meal for Dan to be ordering; he was notoriously cheap. But then she hadn’t gotten Dan to cough up the money for whatever he’d ordered for Mom and himself, so maybe he hoped Mackenzie would also foot the bill, even though he had to know her current financial situation wasn’t the best. She would need to demand payment from him. One thing Mac had learned over her months of living with him: You needed to nag him until he caved. Though as a rule nagging didn’t come naturally to Mac, she almost lived for it with Dan.
* * *
After watching Mackenzie Laughlin drive off from Seth Keppler’s, Taft drove past the town house once more, just to be sure the lowlife was staying home. His F-150 was still in the drive and the house lights were blazing against the damp March evening. A sporadic wind had kicked up and was currently sending an escapee plastic bag jigging and jagging across the property to cross the road and land in the laurel hedge he’d been standing behind while he’d been surveilling Seth and Patti’s home earlier.
Patti came into view in the living room window as Taft slowly cruised by. She was carrying two drinks and looking down at someone seated on the couch below his line of sight. Behind her the wall-mounted television was set to some speed-racing event that probably was prerecorded. In his research Taft had determined Keppler loved anything that had to do with vehicles in general, racing in particular. The fact that his truck was over a decade old was either because Seth didn’t have the funds to buy a new one, something Taft was pretty sure was untrue based on the man’s illegal side ventures, or it was indicative of his desire to stay deep, deep under the radar with a vehicle that wouldn’t deserve a second look in an area rife with trucks. If River Glen’s finest was onto Seth’s side deals, they sure weren’t acting like it. Maybe it was some overall quiet, clandestine investigation by them that would result in a sting, but Taft would bet his last George Washington that just wasn’t so. He knew enough about River Glen PD’s operation to have little respect for some of them. The detectives on the force were the only ones worth their salt, and one of them had quit. That left only Haynes and Verbena to uphold “protect and serve” along with a group of other street cops and departmental police who were varying degrees of incompetent, too gung-ho or just putting in their time . . . in Taft’s biased opinion.
He’d never been part of the River Glen PD, as he had several other police departments, mistakes he’d made in his youth, mistakes he wasn’t going to make again. His questioning of authority had rubbed the old guard the wrong way, which he’d ignored, and he’d naturally bucked the bad aspects of the cop culture he’d experienced, naively expecting it would change. The expectation was that he should be the one to change, not them, which had forced him to say adios twice before he’d really understood that being a cop just wasn’t going to work for him.
His sister had often told him he had a thick skull. He smiled faintly now and sketched the sign of the cross even though he wasn’t Catholic or even particularly religious. It was just what he did when he thought of Helene. She’d been a decade older than he was, and she’d been gone about a decade as well. She’d warned him about being too cocky, too sure, too rash. He’d ignored those warnings throughout his years with the police. He was a little more seasoned now, but his reputation had been formed. The result: The cops didn’t like him much.
He mentally shrugged. He worked for law and order in his own way. Too bad if it sometimes stepped on others’ toes.
With Seth and Patti apparently in for the evening, he turned the Rubicon west toward Laurelton and his own condo. Helene had told him to save up and buy real estate, and he’d listened to her advice. She’d left him a small amount, which he’d saved and then had added to that amount, exercising the lease option to buy his condo at the end of the contract. Now, seven years later, he lived in the two-bedroom end unit of a onetime motel that had been renovated and converted, and he sometimes took care of neighborly duties for some of the others in the rambling, one-story, sixteen-unit complex. It wasn’t a whole lot of space but it worked for him. He’d resisted the requests to “move in together” from his list of sometime girlfriends, which had resulted in more than one screaming breakup when he hadn’t even realized he and said girlfriend were supposedly exclusive. He’d had a dog once, Helene’s golden retriever, but John-Boy had been aged even then, and he hadn’t lasted a year and a half after his mistress’s death. Nowadays he took care of Tommy Carnoff’s two pugs whenever the older gent in the unit next door decided on a trip somewhere with his latest lady friend. Taft might have had a few women in his life, but Casanova Carnoff beat him hands down at playing the field.
Today, Taft parked his car beneath the carport in his allotted slot, remote locked the Rubicon, and entered the condo, tossing his keys on the small console table near the front door. He walked through the living room and past the small galley kitchen to the bathroom that sat between the two bedrooms. One bedroom had his bed and dresser; the other was filled with boxes of stuff. Junk, Helene would say, if she could see it. The same junk he’d transferred from his apartment when he’d moved in. An acoustic guitar gathered dust next to his desk. The desk, chair, and lamp were the only pieces in the junk room that were used, unless you counted his laptop and portable printer, both of which he often kept in his vehicle. This was the extent of his office. Oh, and the safe he’d installed in the wall, which housed his Glock and some cold hard cash. Welcome to Taft Investigations.
He stripped down and took a quick shower. There was work to be done tonight and he wanted to both clean up and wake up before he met with Mangella. The man was wealthy and eccentric and his wife was even worse. Nothing about Prudence Mangella was prudent. She was excessive, loud, and indiscreet. A perfect complement to her husband, who was exactly the same. Strangely, they both liked and trusted him, even when they were viciously fighting with each other, which was most of the time. He thought over her last dido, expecting that Prudence would resent him finding her “stolen” jewels, but no. All was well again in Mangella-land. Taft worked for Mitch and Mitch’s business and therefore he was part of the team. Prudence had her eye on the money, always, and if she tried to sneak a little extra off the top from time to time, well, apparently that was—after much Sturm und Drang—a forgivable offense. The Mangellas lived a strange partnership that somehow seemed to work for them both.
Taft dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black jacket. As he was heading out he saw the text from Mackenzie on his phone: Tonight. 7:00. Deno’s or Pizza Joe’s. Your choice.
Mackenzie Laughlin.
He thought about it, caught sight of himself in the mirror by the front door, recognized the faint, interested smile on his lips, and purposely wiped it off. Not a woman to mess with. A cop, ex-cop, he reminded himself. Maybe not seasoned, not hardened . . . maybe not even any good. Hard to know, at this juncture. Ex-cop or no, she had recently been a police officer, and Taft had learned long ago to keep those kind of women at arm’s length romantically.
Those kind of women? his mind taunted him as he headed outside, locked up, and strode into the carport.
Was it sexist that he found policewomen too . . . rigid?
You want every woman to be like me, Helene’s ghost reminded him, like she always did. He could almost see her standing by the Rubicon, her eyebrows lifted and gazing at him in that way that let him know that Yes, you are a full-of-shit male and I only love you because you’re my brother.
The image darkened and faded and he climbed in the vehicle, his mood sobering. His sister haunted him less and less, but she was still there. One of these days he might even forgive her for leaving him.
* * *
Mackenzie waited by the maitre d’s station at the River Glen Grill, an ivy-covered brick building that had once been a hotel and now was the restaurant on the first floor with very nice apartments above that, each spanning the entire floor of the twelve-story building. At one time Dan the Man had said that he and Mac’s mother might move there, but that, like so many other of Dan’s plans, never materialized. Stephanie had said of her father, “Yeah, you can’t believe him. My mother finally figured that out and left him. He’s never forgiven her and she’s never looked back.” According to Stephanie, her own mother had married a man from Scottsdale and moved there while the ink was still drying on the divorce papers. Left high and dry by his ex, Dan had then entered Mom’s circle of friends, introduced by one of them who’d apparently had designs on Dan herself. Unfortunately, Dan had zeroed in on Mom, recently widowed, who owned her own home and had only one child, who was about to graduate high school.
Mac made a face. The only good thing about Dan was that he’d brought Stephanie, also an only child, into Mackenzie’s life, and the two stepsisters had become close friends. That almost made up for the man’s other transgressions. Almost.
“Order for Dan Gerber,” Mackenzie said to the girl behind the maitre d’s podium when she finally looked up.
“Okay.”
The girl checked with another member of the waitstaff, who turned on his heel and headed out to collect Mac’s order. Mackenzie looked past the podium and into the dining area. The room was full of semicircular blood-red leather booths. There were no white tablecloths, but the amount of glassware glistening under the muted lights and the deferential attitude of the waiters suggested a place out of the fifties where Frank Sinatra or his like would order a black telephone brought to the table and lean back, puffing on cigars. There was something wasteful about the whole shebang that bugged Mac in a way she couldn’t quite define. The food was good at the Grill; there was no denying that. But the dollar signs on the restaurant Internet’s ratings denoting price were many.
The maitre d’, a forty-something man with a straight back and prematurely gray hair, came up to the podium as the girl rang up the order. The younger man returned at that moment with the order and he set the white plastic bag on the counter as the girl handed Mac the bill. The total wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but it did make her grimace. She talked with Art, the maitre d’, whom she knew from other trips to the River Glen Grill, to make certain she wasn’t on the hook for the bill. He assured her it was taken care of and hefted up the order for her to grasp. Mac slipped her fingers into the handholds in the white plastic bag. “Thanks, Art,” she said before carrying the bag of food to her car.
She drove the meal home and dropped it off, sketching a goodbye to her mother when Dan’s back was turned as he busied himself with digging into the bags. “You didn’t pay for this, did you?” Mom asked, as Mackenzie turned to leave.
“Heck, no. Gave them Dan’s credit card.”
“What?” Dan asked, looking up in surprise.
“Just kidding,” Mackenzie said. “They have your number on file. Remember?”
“Oh, do they . . . ?” He looked discomfited, even though he knew full well they did. Art had called Dan and gotten the information from him the last time Mackenzie had been tasked to bring home the takeout and had asked Dan if he could keep the number on file. Dan had agreed but either had forgotten, or more likely, hoped Mac had. Like that was gonna happen. You had to stay one step ahead of a guy like Dan or you found yourself left holding the bag.
From her time on the force, Mackenzie had gotten to know a number of people around River Glen who were stationed in various jobs and who willingly helped her if she asked. It was one of the best things that had come from the job.
“See ya later.” Mackenzie walked out into a brisk night. The air felt thick with moisture, but for the moment the clouds were holding on tight. It was full dark now. Taft hadn’t gotten back to her, so she was in a quandary. “Screw it,” she muttered, yanking out her phone and typing in: Heading to Pizza Joe’s. Hope to see you there.
She drove to the pizza parlor and parked in the back lot. Pizza Joe’s was in the middle of a center with a Safeway, a nail salon, a small deli, a Great Clips, and one of the Good Livin’ fitness centers. Mac strode through the front door, which had an annoyingly cheery little bell. Immediately she wished she’d chosen Deno’s. She’d forgotten how chipper Pizza Joe’s was with Pizza Joe’s smiling, mustachioed face painted on one wall, a near-perfect replica of Nintendo’s Mario or Luigi, surrounded by a kabillion miniature red, white, and green Italian flags, which were spread just as cheerily all over the place. As Mackenzie sat herself at a two-person table with a good view of the front door, she eyed the little bouquet of flags sprouting from the top of her napkin dispenser. Pizza Joe seemed to have forgotten the warning: too much of a good thing.
She was debating whether to order a personal pepperoni pizza or to attempt something more exotic, like Canadian bacon and pineapple. That’s about as far as she liked to venture when it came to the pizza menu, and even then she was generally sorry she’d left her comfort zone, which was pretty much pepperoni.
The bell above the door jangled and she looked up and there was Taft. He spied her at the same moment and she felt a small jolt of awareness. She clocked it as a normal reaction to a good-looking male.
“Hey,” he said, swinging the other chair at her table around and half sitting, half slouching in it, his arms over the back of it.
“Are you preparing to jump up and leave, or are you staying for a while?” she asked.
“I’m staying.”
“Are you?”
He looked amused, but he turned the chair back around, sat down on it, and scooted up to the table, folding his hands on the tabletop and regarding her expectantly.
“What?” she asked.
“You wanted to share information. I had an appointment that I rearranged to come here, so give me what you’ve got and I’ll see where we are.”
“I get a choice in this, you know. This is a two-way street.”
His answer was a faint twitch of his lips.
“You’re going to give me information, too,” she said, in case he had some other idea bubbling around in his brain.
“You’re making up the rules here?”
“Let’s just talk like adults, okay? I want to know why you were surveilling”—he shot her a look of warning and she lowered her voice—“our mutual friend. You want to know what I was doing, and I want to know what you’re looking at. Let’s get to it.”
“You gonna order?” He inclined his head toward the menu, still in her hand.
Mackenzie bit back a sharp remark. “I was thinking about pepperoni.”
“With mushrooms?”
“No.”
“Pepperoncinis and some onions, maybe tomatoes.”
“Taft . . .”
He lifted his palms. “You like it plain. I get it. Just pepperoni.” He nodded, as if that made sense, and it pissed Mackenzie off anew for reasons she couldn’t immediately place.
“No, I don’t care. You order.”
“You buying?”
She was about to object but saw he was baiting her. “Yeah, I’m buying.”
He laughed. “I’ve got it.”
“Jesus, Taft. Don’t make everything so difficult.”
“Okay, I’ll place the order.”
He got up and walked to the line at the counter, his gaze scouring the menu posted on the wall behind. Mackenzie watched the pretty gal taking his order smile and flirt a little and almost sighed. Taft was a wild card, his aims hewing closer to his client’s rather than the letter of the law. It was why he’d washed out as a cop. Too much leeway. Though he’d never been on the River Glen force, everyone in the department was well aware of him and there were those who felt he’d gone over to the dark side. Mac didn’t necessarily believe that, but she certainly knew she needed to be on her toes around him.
But then the River Glen PD had no reason to be on their high and mighty, either. They were in the midst of challenges in the department. A rogue cop, one of their own, had accidentally shot and killed another officer during a robbery at a convenience store. It was an ugly and sad affair and the cop, Keith Silva, had left on bad terms. Though Mac had her problems with Bennihof, she had to admit the chief had stuck to his guns, fought with the union, and fired Silva, who’d been universally disliked in the department anyway. She just hadn’t figured she’d be the next to go, for totally different reasons.
Taft headed back to their table, bringing them each a beer on his return.
“I don’t drink beer,” Mac said.
“A lie. You occasionally drink light beer.” He pointed at the mug he’d set in front of her. “That’s a Coors Light.”
“Very occasionally.”
He shrugged. “Your choice.” Picking up his beer, he took a long swallow.
She wasn’t sure what she thought about how much he knew about her, but then hadn’t she just been thinking about what she knew about him? Dragging her eyes from the sight of his strong throat as he swallowed, she asked, “What did you order?”
“Pepperoni straight up.”
“You could’ve added some other stuff.”
“It’ll be good anyway.”
Was this flirting? It felt like flirting. There was a spark of humor lurking in his eyes that put her a little on edge. “So, why’re you following Seth?”
“He’s a low-level drug dealer.”
She blinked at this admission. “What’s your interest? You trying to go up the chain?”
“Something like that. What’s your interest?”
“Why do I feel I just got fobbed off?”
“I can’t go into it further right now. Maybe later. We’re doing a little tit for tat here. I got something, you got something. . . Tell me the name of your client?”
“‘Client’ might be too strong a word. A friend . . . more like an acquaintance who thought I was still with the department. Bibi Engstrom. She wants me to find a friend of hers who just disappeared. Rayne Sealy. Rayne’s apparently a bit of a flake. I talked to her boss at the Coffee Club and he just acted like she’d done this before, and said he wasn’t interested in hiring her back this time, if and when she returns.”
“What do you think?”
“I think . . . the boss probably knows her character, but I said I’d look into it and I’m not real busy at the moment, so fine. I’ll see what I can come up with.”
“What are your future employment plans?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. Who’re you working for on this?”
“I really can’t say.”
“Bullshit.”
Another smile crossed his lips, one that she suspected had worked its magic throughout his life. She kept her expression neutral, a trick she’d learned on the job. Don’t give anything away.
Into the silence that followed, Taft admitted, “Mostly I’m working for myself.”
“More bullshit.”
“No, it’s true. There are . . . reasons to keep Seth under tight scrutiny. Call it more of a hunch than anything else. Yeah, he’s low level, but he’s on the way to something more.”
“Like what?”
“You’re a cop. Ever just known when you were onto something?”
“Was a cop,” she corrected.
“Something that doesn’t feel right. Maybe on the surface it looks one way, but underneath you just know that there’s more. And I don’t mean bigger and badder drug czars up the ladder to the kingpin. Leave that to the DEA. It’s personalities that make up these crime . . .”
“Syndicates?” Mac finished for him when he trailed off.
“Smaller than that. More like crime groups. Small-time, but deadly. It’s amazing what you can get killed for if you try to carve out your own niche within the family hierarchy. You half expect it in the big families, but it can be as vicious at a lower level. And sometimes it gets quirky.”
“Quirky,” Mac repeated.
“I knew this guy over in Laurelton who raised llamas. Look sweet, but terrible beasts. They spit at you.”
“Maybe they spit at you,” said Mac dryly.
He inclined his head to her on making a good point. “There was one llama in particular who was the spitter. Apparently, he’s the angry one. He got me twice before I knew to stay out of range. The rest of the herd was apparently benign, but if you’re ever around ’em, I advise to stay back. Just a warning.”
“Got it.”
“So, there was this member of the family that owned the herd. A younger brother, who was . . .”
“Quirky?”
“And then some. Stole some of the prize stud’s semen to start his own herd. Got caught, asked forgiveness, then did it again about six months later.”
“Llama semen?”
He nodded.
“How did he get this semen?” she asked tentatively.
Taft spread his hands. “There are ways, apparently. This particular sample was in a vial in a refrigerator. Used for artificial insemination from the prize llama stud.”
“Ah. So, the brother got caught a second time?”
“Started a melee. A huge fight, which resulted in the vial breaking and the prize stud’s semen leaking onto the floor, which then further resulted in the younger brother being pummeled hard enough by the ‘family’ to send him to the hospital. He survived, but it was touch and go. Like I said, small-time but vicious.”
“But Seth and Patti aren’t into llama breeding.”
“No.”
“You think they’re a small-time drug . . . family?”
“Along those lines . . .” His voice trailed off thoughtfully. She sensed he was thinking something over and waited for him to come to a conclusion. About her? About Seth and Patti? She wasn’t sure, so she just waited.
His name was called and he got up and retrieved the pepperoni pizza and some paper plates. He brought everything to the table and they spent a few minutes sliding hot and gooey pieces onto their plates and doctoring them with Parmesan (Mac) and hot chili flakes (Taft).
After a few bites, Taft gave Mac a speculative look. She noticed the dark lashes that framed the icy blue depths of his eyes. In her limited experience good-looking men were wrapped up in layers of ego. The jury was still out on Taft, but she couldn’t think of one good reason he would be any different from Pete Fetzler, the last guy she’d been with, who was all front and no rear. Pete could sure put out the advertisement, but there was never any follow-through. The worst part was, she’d suspected it from the start and had dated him anyway. She liked to think of herself as above being swayed by good looks, but she’d really fallen off her high horse on that one.
“Want to work together?” Taft asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin. The movement brought attention to his mouth. The shape of his lips seemed embedded on her retina.
“On this case?”
“I could use someone.”
“What do I get out of it?”
He barked out a laugh. “My expertise?”
She sensed she was being led down the primrose path. Still . . . “What would I have to do?”
“Sometimes I have to be two places at the same time. Since you’re already watching Seth, it could free me up to do something else. I have other . . . jobs.”
“Clients?”
“I work for different people at different times.”
“I have a feeling your expertise isn’t going to be enough for me.”
“I’ll pay you,” he said.
“How much?”
“What do you think you’re worth?”
Mackenzie said slowly, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
They stared each other down. After several long moments, Mac said, “You make me feel like I’m about to dance with the devil.”
“That sounds vaguely like a yes. Is it a yes?”
“Yes.”
He reached for another piece of pizza and pushed the rest her way, even though she’d barely touched her first slice. “Want another beer while we get down to it?”
“Yes,” she said again. What the hell. She was already on the path.