“Right.” He craned his neck awkwardly. “Well, I guess I’ll just go by and ask her myself.”
Ben frowned. “Excuse me, but didn’t you have lunch with her today?”
Allen shrugged sheepishly. “I guess I did at that. But you know what my mama used to say. When you see something you want …”
Ben waved his hands. “I really don’t want to hear this.”
Allen opened the heavy metal door that led to the outer office. “You don’t mind me seeing Christina, do you?”
“Of course not,” Ben said sharply. “For that matter, I’ve got a two-hundred-pound investigator on my staff. Do you want to date him, too?”
Chapter 24
After they left the sheriff’s office, Rick and Tess and Ben and Maureen headed toward the hospital. Nothing had changed; Al still wasn’t conscious. After a brief visit, Ben left for his office. Maureen walked with him. Ben wasn’t sure if she appreciated his company or just didn’t feel safe walking alone. Probably a bit of both.
As he and Maureen rounded a corner, Ben suddenly heard great peals of laughter emanating from the other end of the street. And he discerned two approaching figures, Christina and Sheriff Allen. Their arms were linked, and they were both sopping wet. Head to toe.
The four of them stood facing one another on the sidewalk. Christina opened her mouth as if she was about to speak, but another gale of laughter erupted before any words were spoken. She bent forward, convulsed with merriment.
Ben arched an eyebrow. “Sudden rain flurry?”
Christina looked up, her arms wrapped around her midsection for support. She tilted her head toward Allen. “He-he-” It was all she could manage. More hysterical laughter convulsed her.
Sheriff Allen stepped gamely into the breach. “We’ve been taking a walk,” he said.
“Ah,” Ben replied. “That explains it.”
Christina leaned against the nearest brick wall for support, water dripping from her arms. “You wouldn’t-” She stopped again, convulsed and overcome. “You wouldn’t believe what this guy-” She could go no further. She glanced at Allen, then abruptly burst out laughing again.
Ben tried not to seem peeved. “How’s the work on the prosecution exhibits coming?”
Christina bit her lower lip. “Oh, fine, fine. I’ll be back in the office”-she drew in her breath, trying to regain control-“as soon as I put on some dry clothes!” More giggling ensued. Christina pounded on the brick wall, giddy and breathless.
“I’ll see you there,” Ben answered. He lightly tugged Maureen’s arm, and the two of them moved on down the sidewalk. He knew he shouldn’t be annoyed, but he was, just the same. Christina and the sheriff appeared to really be hitting it off. He supposed he was used to feeling as if he and Christina were a team, working together. In all the time he had known Christina, this was the first time he had felt like an outsider.
He and Maureen chatted most of the way back to his office, and Ben was relieved that the conversation didn’t relate in any way to murder, eco-terrorism, or politics. Instead, she mostly talked about herself, which Ben greatly preferred. She had grown up in North Dakota, she told him, and had been twelve when her daddy, now deceased, took her to Benali State Park and taught her the rudiments of trekking and mountaineering. She’d been hooked on the great outdoors ever since. Before he died, they’d traversed several peaks of varying difficulty, including Mount Rainier, her favorite.
“Do you do much hiking?” Maureen asked as they ambled down Main Street.
Ben squirmed a bit. He wanted to make a good impression, but he knew he was a pathetically unconvincing liar. “To tell the truth, the great outdoors and I have never really meshed.”
She laughed. “How can you not like-outdoors?”
“Outdoors is always full of … things. Bugs and bees and bad weather. None of that ever happens in my apartment.”
She laughed again. “Weren’t you ever a Boy Scout? Haven’t you been camping?”
“I have been camping,” Ben admitted. “Once. In Arkansas. But someone else did all the work.”
She glanced at him out the corner of her eye. “Would that be-your redheaded friend? Christina?”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“Just a hunch. I saw from the start that the two of you were very close.”
“We’ve worked together on many cases. We’ve become good friends.”
“I had the idea that … maybe there was something more between the two of you.”
“Between Christina and me? Nah.”
“Are you sure she feels the same way?”
Ben slowed his step. “What? Of course … I mean, what do you-?”
“How long have the two of you worked together?”
Ben thought about it. It had been a good long while.
“And in that time, has she dated? Other than Sheriff Allen, that is.”
Ben screwed his head around. “I don’t really know.”
Maureen nodded. “I just wondered if she’s been waiting around for you all this time. Waiting for you to make a move.”
“Christina? Nah.”
“And I wonder how long it’s fair to expect her to wait. Maybe she got tired of waiting, and that’s why-”
“This is silly. I think you don’t understand Christina and me.”
“Maybe not.” She glanced at him, and her eyes lingered. “But it’s a subject that interested me.”
Ben blinked. Interested her? What was she saying?
Maureen took a step closer to him. Her lips parted, and she stared at him with unblinking eyes. “I thought perhaps when the trial is over, you and I could spend some time together. Get to know each other better.”
“I’d like that.”
Ben approached the county building housing his office from the rear, the back alley. He’d learned a couple of days before that the other door just outside his office led to the fire escape, which had an old-style metal ladder that descended to the ground. He’d also learned that the ladder could be easily hooked and climbed from the back alley, which allowed him to get in directly without passing through the gauntlet of secretaries waving phone messages and asking questions.
It was twilight; the sun was setting and the street lamps were just beginning to flicker on. Magic Valley still had the old-style lamps-tall, wrought-iron posts on every street corner, like the ones in the small Oklahoma town where his maternal grandmother had lived. They had probably been gas lamps originally, in a previous generation. And someday they might be replaced with the high-powered fluorescent lighting one saw all over Tulsa-but he hoped not.
Ben had almost reached the bottom rung of the ladder when he heard a soft but insistent hissing from somewhere in the muddled darkness surrounding him. “Psst.”
He whirled around in all directions. He didn’t want to seem paranoid, but after the violence that had been visited on Green Rage earlier this day, almost anything seemed possible.
“Who is it?” he said, trying to pierce the darkness. “Where are you?”
He heard a scratching, a sound of movement, but no response.
“I know you’re there,” Ben said loudly. He was trying to make a show of being brave, but a show was all it was. Inside, he was petrified. If he ran up against a pack of rowdies from Bunyan’s, he knew he wouldn’t stand a chance.
“I’m dialing the sheriff on my cell phone,” Ben shouted, hoping someone would believe it. “They can be here in seconds.”
He heard the scratching noise again, and a second later, in the dim light he saw a petite young woman crawl out from behind the Dumpster at the end of the alley. “Don’t call the police,” she whispered, brushing off the sleeves of her tweed coat. “I just want to talk.”
Ben didn’t know what to do. She didn’t appear very threatening. “Who are you?” he asked. “What’s this all about?”
“My name is Peggy Carter,” the woman answered. She stepped closer, till they were perhaps ten feet away from one another. “I work for Granny.”
“In the D.A.’s office? What on earth do you want?”