Matt was so glad Vince was facedown for the moment that he barely noticed Miss Foxx’s barely legal custody.
The bouncer smirked, glancing from one to another, all three.
Apparently everyone was too controlled for his taste.
He flicked Janice a glance. “We don’t encourage dykes in here.”
For an instant even Rick stopped nervously wiping down the bar. These were his private customers, and he didn’t want the bouncer to find that out.
Matt was stunned, not knowing what was required in the way of defining his lady friend’s honor.
After a few seconds’ silence, Janice laughed easily. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m here on police business. You want to call someone a dyke, I suggest you call up the lieutenant who sent me here. I’m sure she’d be interested in the customer policies here at Secrets. Me, if I took your comment personally, I’d just call the ACLU.”
His expression tightened, and he glanced suspiciously at Matt.
“What is this? Some gay door-busting setup?”
“Rafi.” The voice of reason came most surprisingly from the entwining Miss Foxx. “Don’t be a big bad bigot. It’s bad for business.”
His shoulders shifted uneasily, as if he knew he was in the wrong, but didn’t know how to back down from it.
“We’re leaving anyway,” Matt said, standing up and automatically dislodging Miss Reddy Foxx.
Janice grabbed her sketch pad, uable to keep Raf from gawking at the image, and brushed past both the stripper and the bouncer.
“When I said I felt like a gunslinger here to ‘draw,’” she muttered to Matt as they headed for the blackness that harbored the door out of there, “I didn’t think I was speaking literally. Does everybody get harassed like that at these places?”
Matt glanced back at the unlikely couple—or maybe the perfect couple—their exit had marooned at the bar.
“Only if you’re obviously out of place, I bet.”
“And we are.”
“Were,” Matt said as they pushed through the big metal door and he took a deep breath of welcome smoke-free, sound-free night air.
He wished he could as easily leave behind the strange image of Max Kinsella that Janet had sketched tonight.
“Want to come in?” Janice asked on her threshold.
Matt hesitated, and watched her instantly regrouping for some face-saving comment.
He looked back to the pink Probe at the curb. Once. What serious whacko would tail a pink Probe, really?
“Since we’re both gay, I’m sure it wouldn’t do any harm.”
Janice laughed in relief. “What a creep. Okay. Come on in.” Now she was scrambling to appear unsurprised.
This dating dance was a version of the twist crossed with doing the hokeypokey.
She rattled the keys, while Matt savored his power at doing the unexpected. Janice was the soul of serenity, but now she wasn’t sure of anything.
Matt was. Now was the time to face facts.
She walked in ahead of him, turning on lamps. Lamps, not overhead lighting. It gave her airy, ingratiating rooms by day a mysterious, shrouded look by night, suitable for seduction.
Except he didn’t think either she or he was up to that.
“Coffee? Or wine?”
“Something in between?”
“Beer?”
He nodded, relieved when she left the living room. The clocks ticked down the hall and around the corner. Ticking clocks seemed old-fashioned for a woman with a modern style like Janice, but he liked their companionable predictability. If a grandfather clock could be heard around the corner, maybe a grandfather was lurking somewhere.
A stab of curiosity about his paternal grandfather crossed his mind. Forget it. Lost in space and time.
He sighed, relaxed. Janice’s figure coming from the kitchen bearing two tall glasses could have been Betty Crocker’s. Not Martha Stewart’s. That was domesticity as de rigueur empire.
“It’s odd,” Janice commented as she sat beside him on the long, cushy sofa after setting the pilsner glass on the tile-inlaid coffee table. “But I got the impression both of our pickups recognized my sketch, but weren’t saying anything.”
Matt nodded, sipping the smoky, stinging beer.
“I got the impression that you did too. And you weren’t talking either.”
Matt swallowed more beer faster than he would have liked. “Me? Know this Vince guy?”
“Yeah. It’s incredible that someone like you would know an obvious sleaze like him. Do they always do that?”
“Do what? And who?”
“Women. That stripper babe was wallpapering you. She could have come off one of those TV nighttime soaps. Bloody Mary! For gawd’s sake. Reddy Foxx.”
“It’s the Mr. Midnight persona, not me.”
“Did that broad know you were Mr. Midnight?”
“Broad?”
“Broad.”
Matt realized that on some primal level, Janice—levelheaded, single-mom-to-the-core, earthy Janice—resented the heck out of some semi-naked woman messing with her escort.
“That was an excursion into a Mike Hammer novel,” he said. “Too unreal. Vince. Rick. Reddy Foxx. And what was the muscle guy’s name?”
“Raf. Gave me the creeps. The kind where you wish you were packing an Uzi.”
“Janice!”
“Well, I did. Going there was a big mistake. No amount of money is worth getting slimed.”
“I have to agree.”
“So? Does it happen often?”
This was a perfect lead-in. “That’s what I need to talk to you about.”
She waited, never having sipped her beer. He felt like he was on trial.
“The reason I canceled coming over tonight for dinner in the first place is that I have a stalker.”
“Stalker?”
“A stalker. Must have picked her up from the radio show. The downside of fame, such as it is. It became clear this weekend that she was obsessively jealous of any women I associated with. Which means it’s dangerous for women to associate with me.”
Janice sat forward. “So that’s why you were so…distracted all night. Looking over your shoulder all the time. Made me think you were sorry you agreed to go along.”
“No. I’m glad you weren’t there alone. I was just…looking for a stalker.”
“In the car too. Always checking your rearview and side mirrors?”
He nodded.
“You’re not kidding. You’re being stalked.”
“What’s worse is that people who have anything to do with me are being stalked by default.”
“Isn’t there anything you can do? The police?”
“First, it’s considered funny when a woman stalks a man. The weaker sex, remember? Second, how many of those innumerable women who are stalked have to end up shot dead in a parking lot before the law can lift a finger against the stalker? Think it works any better for male victims?”
“Matt. That’s terrible.”
“I’m just beginning to guess how terrible it is.”
“That’s why you’re driving the funky old car tonight?”
“Borrowed it from my landlady. Figured no self-respecting stalker would suspect a pink Probe.”
“Matt. Is it that she-devil I sketched way back when?”
“Yeah. How—?”
“I just realized that was a face capable of extremes. How do you know her?”
“I don’t. She used to know someone I hardly know years and years ago. I don’t know what makes her tick. She just has it in for me, personally and generically.”
“Generically?”
“She hates priests. Ex-priests. But I think she’s mainly trying to get to someone else who’s unreachable. So I’m the prime substitute. Plus, she knows I don’t know how to handle this sort of thing.”
“You seem to be doing all right. Going undercover in a pink Probe.”
“That only works for a while. Believe me, I’ve seen anyone female around me, even a child, attacked by this woman.”