“Well yeah,” he said buttoning his jacket over the offending belt. But they don’t ask you to tell red from green before they’ll give you a marriage license. So?”
“If you were married, your wife might not check you over before you left each morning, but chances are she would organize your accessories so you could get dressed by yourself, and not have strange women like me commenting on your belt.”
“This is the final call for boarding Southwest Airlines flight twelve forty-four to Oakland at gate nine,”
Kiernan glanced enviously at the last three Oakland-bound passengers as they passed through gate 9. If the Phoenix flight were not so late, she would be in the air now and that much closer to getting the suitcase in the right hands. Turning back to Siebert, she said, “By the same token, I’d guess you have been married or involved with a woman about my size, A blonde.”
He sat back down in his seat, and for the first time was still
“Got your attention, huh?” Kiernan laughed. “I really shouldn’t show off like that. It unnerves some people. Others, like you, it just quiets down. Actually, this was pretty easy. You’ve got a tiny spot of lavender eyeshadow on the edge of your lapel. I had a boyfriend your height and he ended up sending a number of jackets to the cleaners. But no one but me would think to look at the edge of your lapel, and you could have that jacket for years and not notice that.”
“But why did you say a blonde?”
“Blondes tend to wear violet eyeshadow.”
He smiled, clearly relieved.
“Flight seventeen sixty-seven departing gate ten with service to Phoenix will begin boarding in just a few minutes. We thank you for your patience.”
He groaned, “We’ll see how few those minutes are.” Across from them a woman with an elephantine carry-on bag pulled it closer to her. Siebert turned to Kiernan, and giving her that intimate grin she was beginning to think of as his look, Siebert said, “You seem to be having a good time being a detective.”
The picture of Melissa Jessup popped up in her mind. Melissa Jessup had let herself be attracted to a thief. She’d ignored her suspicions about him until it was too late to sell her mother’s jewels and she could only grab what was at hand and run.
Pulling her suitcase closer, Kiernan said, “Investigating can be a lot of fun if you like strange hours and the thrill of having everything hang on one maneuver. I’ll tell you the truth-it appeals to the adolescent in me, particularly if I can pretend to be something or someone else. It’s fun to see if I can pull that off.”
“How do I know you’re not someone else?”
“I could show you ID, but, of course, that wouldn’t prove anything.” She laughed. “You’ll just have to trust me, as I am you. After all, you did choose to sit down next to me.”
“Well, that’s because you were the best-looking woman here sitting by herself.”
“Or at least the one nearest the hallway where you came in. And this is the only spot around where you have room to pace. You look to be a serious pacer.” She laughed again. “But I like your explanation better.”
Shrieking, a small girl in yellow raced in front of the seats. Whooping gleefully, a slightly larger male version sprinted by, He lunged for his sister, caught his foot on Kiernan’s crutch and sent it toppling back as he lurched forward, and crashed into a man at the end of the check-in line, His sister skidded to a stop. “Serves you right, Jason. Mom, look what Jason did!”
Siebert bent over and righted Kiernan’s crutch. “Travel can be dangerous, huh?”
“Damn crutches! It’s like they’ve got urges all their own,” she said. “Like one of them sees an attractive crutch across the room and all of a sudden it’s gone. They virtually seduce underage boys.”
He laughed, his green eyes twinkling impishly. “They’ll come home to you. There’s not a crutch in the room that holds a crutch to you.”
She hesitated a moment before saying, “My crutches and I thank you.” This was, she thought, the kind of chatter that had been wonderfully seductive when she was nineteen. And Jeff Siebert was the restless, impulsive type of man who had personified freedom then. But nearly twenty years of mistakes-her own and more deadly ones like Melissa Jessup’s-had shown her the inevitable end of such flirtations.
Siebert stood up and rested a foot against the edge of the table. “So what else is fun about investigating?”
She shifted the suitcase between her feet, “Well, trying to figure out people, like I was doing with you, A lot is common sense, like assuming that you are probably not a patient driver. Perhaps you’ve passed in a no-passing zone, or even have gotten a speeding ticket.”
He nodded, abruptly.
“On the other hand,” she went on, “sometimes I know facts beforehand, and then I can fake a Sherlock Holmes and produce anything-but-elementary deductions. The danger with that is getting cocky and blurting out conclusions before you’ve been given evidence for them.”
“Has that happened to you?”
She laughed and looked meaningfully down at her foot. “But I wouldn’t want my client to come to that conclusion. We had a long discussion about whether a woman on crutches could handle his delivery.”
“Client?” he said, shouting over the announcement of the Yuma flight at the next gate. In a normal voice, he added, “In your courier work, you mean? What’s in that bag of your client’s that so very valuable?”
She moved her feet till they were touching the sides of the suitcase. He leaned in closer. He was definitely the type of man destined to be trouble, she thought, but that little-boy grin, that conspiratorial tone, were seductive, particularly in a place like this where any diversion was a boon. She wasn’t surprised he had been attracted to her; clearly, he was a man who liked small women. She glanced around, pleased that no one else had been drawn to this spot. The nearest travelers were a young couple seated six feet away and too involved in each other to waste time listening to strangers’ conversation. “I didn’t pack the bag. I’m just delivering it.”
He bent down with his ear near the side of the suitcase. “Well, at least it’s not ticking.” Sitting up, he said, “But seriously, isn’t that a little dangerous? Women carrying bags for strangers, that’s how terrorists have gotten bombs on planes.”
“No!” she snapped. “I’m not carrying it for a lover with an M-1. I’m a bonded courier.”
The casual observer might not have noticed Siebert’s shoulders tensing, slightly, briefly, in anger at her rebuff. Silently, he looked down at her suitcase. “How much does courier work pay?”
“Not a whole lot, particularly compared to the value of what I have to carry. But then there’s not much work involved. The chances of theft are minuscule. And I do get to travel Last fall I drove a package up north. That was a good deal since I had to go up there anyway to check motel registrations in a case I’m working on. It took me a week to do the motels, and then I came up empty,” An entire week to discover that Melissa’s killer had not stopped at a motel or hotel between San Diego and Eureka. “The whole thing would have been a bust if it hadn’t been for the courier work.”
He glanced down at the suitcase. She suspected he would have been appalled to know how visible was his covetous look. Finally he said, “What was in that package, the one you delivered?”
She glanced over at the young couple. No danger from them. Still Kiernan lowered her voice. “Diamonds. Untraceable. That’s really the only reason to go to the expense of hiring a courier.”
“Untraceable, huh?” he said, grinning. “Didn’t you even consider taking off over the border with them?”