He knew he was in deep trouble when the thought of getting married didn’t send him running. He glanced down at her sleeping face and gently stroked her bare back. So maybe he’d leave off a condom and see what happened. Naw, he couldn’t do that to her—unless she showed signs of getting serious about someone else, in which case he would fight as dirty as necessary to win.
SIXTEEN
The English setter bounded happily through the knee-high weeds, ignoring her owner’s shouted commands. She was a young dog, and this was only her second time in the field. He’d been training her in his yard to retrieve, using a variety of lures, and her hunting instincts usually held sway there. In the field, though, her youthful exuberance sometimes got the best of her. There were so many interesting smells to be investigated, the heady scents of birds, mice, insects, snakes, things she didn’t know and wanted to follow.
A particularly intriguing odor lingered on the morning air, leading her out of the field and into the woods that lined the field. Behind her, her owner cursed. “Goddammit, Lulu, heel!”
Lulu didn’t heel, merely wagged her tail and plunged into some underbrush where the scent was stronger. Her sensitive nose quivered as she nosed the earth. Her owner yelled, “Lulu! C’mere, girl! Where are you?” and she wagged her tail as she began digging.
He saw the waving plume and fought his way through the tangle of vines, briars, and bushes that grew under the trees, cursing with every breath.
Lulu grew more excited as the scent got stronger. She backed up and barked to signal her agitation, then plunged into the brush again. Her owner picked up his pace, suddenly alarmed, because she seldom barked. “What is it, girl? Is it a snake? Heel, Lulu, heel.”
Lulu grabbed something with her teeth and began tugging. The thing was heavy and didn’t want to move. She dug some more, dirt flying behind her.
“Lulu!” Her owner reached her and grabbed her collar, pulling her back, a broken limb in his hand in case he had to fend off a rattler. He stared down at what she had unearthed and staggered back a step, hauling her with him. “Jesus!”
He looked wildly around, afraid whoever had done this had waited. But the woods were quiet except for the breeze rustling the leaves; he and Lulu had disturbed the birds, and they had either flown off or fallen silent, but he could hear calls and singing in the distance. No shots disturbed the quiet, and no maniac with a big knife plunged out of the trees at him.
“Come on, girl. Come on,” he said, snapping a leash to the dog’s collar and patting her flank. “You did good. Let’s go find a telephone.”
Temple Nolan stared down at the piece of paper in his hand, at the tag number written there. He could feel the icy finger of panic tracing down his spine. Someone, a woman, had witnessed Mitchell’s death, though Sykes seemed to think she had either not been paying attention at all or, in the dark, not understood what she was seeing, because she had continued calmly into the Buffalo Club.
He tried to believe that Sykes was right, but his gut kept twisting. All it took was one loose thread and someone tugging on it to unravel the whole setup. Sykes should have handled Mitchell himself, instead of taking along those two yahoos for help. They should have waited until he wasn’t in a public place before grabbing him. They should have—fuck!—they should have done a lot of things, but now it was too late and all they could do was contain the damage and hope it stopped there.
He picked up his office phone and dialed Chief Russo’s extension. Eva Fay answered on the first ring. “Eva Fay, this is Temple. Is the chief in?” He always used his first name; for one thing, it made people feel more cooperative. For another, this was a small town and word would get around that he thought he was better than everyone else if he insisted on using his title. He lived in a big house, belonged to the country club in Huntsville and to Hillsboro’s pitiful little excuse for one, he moved in a very exclusive circle, but as long as he still acted like a good old boy, they kept reelecting him.
“Sure thing, Mayor,” said Eva Fay.
The chief picked up the line, his deep voice almost like a bark. “Russo.”
“Jack, this is Temple.” The first name business again. “Listen, on the way in this morning I spotted a car parked in the fire lane over at Dr. Bennett’s office. I wrote down the tag number, but I didn’t want to cause any trouble for any sick folks by calling a deputy to give them a ticket. If you’ll run the tag number for me and give me a name, I thought I’d just give them a call and ask them not to park there again.” No one could play the good old boy the way he could.
“Sure. Let me grab a pen.” The chief didn’t even sound surprised. He was becoming used to their little town. “Okay, shoot.”
Temple read off the tag number.
Chief Russo said, “It won’t take a minute. Do you want to hold on?”
“Sure.”
When the information popped up on the computer screen, Jack stared at it in disbelief. He sat for a minute, his face set in a hard mask; then he printed out the screen and took the sheet of paper back to his office.
He didn’t pick up the phone receiver, though. Let the mayor wait.
The car was registered to Dacinda Ann Minor, and the address was the one from which Daisy had just moved. The car was an eight-year-old Ford, so it was definitely her car. He hadn’t known her given name was Dacinda instead of Daisy, but, hell, if anyone had named him Dacinda he’d go by Daisy, too.
He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew one thing: the bastard was lying. His Daisy would no more park in a fire lane than she would run naked across the square. The woman didn’t speed, didn’t jay-walk, didn’t even cuss.