Oh Christ, people actually said that?
“Business at the station house, you understand.”
I glared at the back of Almond’s head as he headed toward the door. Despite my best efforts, it still didn’t blow up like a balloon and explode.
Damn!
“Can … can I get you anything, madam?” Joey asked, a little sympathetically and a little bit scared.
I thought for all of one millisecond. “Yes, Joey. Yes you can, as a matter of fact.”
He’d already taken a step toward the bar.
“I’ll take every dessert you have.” I stood. “Every damn one of them.”
Joey stopped mid stride and turned back to me. “I don’t think the Deputy wanted—”
Fuck what the Deputy wanted.
As quickly as I could, I started handing out desserts. There was a party of ten at a nearby table (wedding party rehearsal dinner — pity the fools). “Compliments of the Sheriff’s Department,” I said, setting the little plates down. “Here, have two.”
“Are you serious?” Bride-to-be asked (two foot hair — dead giveaway), through a forkful of pie.
“Well isn’t that nice,” a beautiful silver-haired woman said. “Thank him for me, will you, dear?”
Oh I would. Personally.
I was just about to start on another table and hand over the chocolate cheesecake when I realized, ‘am I nuts, this is chocolate cheesecake’ and I shoved two pieces instead into the over-sized purse I’d brought along (yes, I did think to grab a linen napkin from my table to wrap the cheesecake in thank you very much).
All in all, it took me no more than thirty seconds to unload the trolley completely at this and another couple nearby tables.
Shit! Thirty seconds! I had to get out of there now.
“Five bottles of your finest champagne, Joey, no ten!” I yelled. “Over to the wedding party.”
The group shouted a collective “Hurray!”
Okay, the desserts, it looked like I would be getting away with (well, they were already forked into — not much Joey could do about that now) but the champagne?
Joey’s face was growing redder by the moment. “Now I know the Deputy wouldn’t want—”
“And tip yourself thirty percent!”
Joey stood still for all of one heartbeat before he started for the bar. “Well, the Deputy did say anything the lady wanted.”
I hightailed it out of the restaurant and spotted Deputy No Nuts (yep, no freakin’ nuts in my dull-knife castrating fantasies!) just getting to his car. And in my mind all I could hear was Mrs. Presley’s chastising voice: “Give me a four letter word for this situation, Dix.”
Fuck!
“Hey, Nutless!” I yelled, not so much to make myself heard over the distance so much as to enlighten everyone in the parking lot. “You’re driving me to the station!”
Yes, I would have preferred a cab, but I couldn’t waste the precious time.
Smirking, Almond waited and opened the door for me. I yanked it out of his grip, slammed it closed, and opened it again for myself. I got in. Deputy Almond was still smiling as he pulled out of the parking lot.
Why were men such pricks? Why had I let Almond play me like that?
And oh, shit. What had my mother’s watch been doing at the crime scene?
Chapter 9
As long as I live, I will never forget the look on my mother’s face when I walked into the into the prisoner’s area of the Pinellas County Jail. She was sitting in a cell with a half dozen hookers, and a small assortment of other poor souls down on their luck. Katt Dodd was sitting in the middle of them, talking to a particularly young looking dark-haired lady who looked scared to death. With her big round eyes and her trembling bottom lip, the girl looked all of fifteen years old. She wasn’t of course. She had to be at least eighteen to be in here (or at least claiming to be eighteen). But right then, she also had to be mothered, and Katt Dodd was doing her damndest to fit that bill.
Why didn’t that surprise me?
But still, when Mother looked up to see me looking at her through the bars of the cell — a smug and satisfied Deputy NO FUCKING NUTS smirking beside me, I know that my mother’s tears were not that far away from falling themselves. Despite the stiff upper lip, she looked so helpless. She looked so fragile. Goddamn it, Katt Dodd looked old to me. And I didn’t like this one damn bit.
“Well, I bet this is one place you never thought you’d find your mother, huh, Dix?” her voice quavered.
“Certainly isn’t one I’ll find you in for long. Not if I have any say in the matter.”
And oh, fuck, you’d better believe I’d have my say in the matter.
Mother nodded, firmly. One blink of those dark lashes and the tears would be falling. Both hers and mine.
“Well, this is my new friend Bobbie-Sue.” Mother said quickly. She squeezed the hand of the girl on the bench beside her. “We’re going to keep each other company in here tonight.”
“What do you mean ‘tonight’?”
Deputy Almond was only too happy to answer that question for me.
There would be no bail hearing until the morning, he informed me. Mother had refused to talk to police tonight, wouldn’t until she’d spoken to me and spoken to a lawyer.
Smart woman. And I told her. I made her promise to stick to her guns on that, no matter what. She would.
Of course No Nuts had taken this as an indication of her guilt. He’d so much as told my mother so, but Dodd women don’t get intimidated. Nevertheless, it all added up to my mother having to spend the night in jail.
That sent fear up my spine, I’ll tell you. I could handle myself with the toughest of crowds. But my 71-year-old mother? I don’t know when the shift takes places, but somehow that protective mother-daughter instinct does a complete turnaround in the adult years.
I was half tempted to kick Deputy Almond right in the almonds (they had to be that small) right then and there. Surely a good foot to balls kick would earn me a night in jail and I could watch out for my mother. And it would be sooooo rewarding..
“Do it, do it!” urged a little voice.
Mine.
My foot was just itching to fly — heel coming off the floor, toes feeling that special pre-kick tingle that I loved so much….
Then two other officers walked down the darkened hallway. One of them was even clanging/rattling her baton on the bars as she came along. God, I thought they only did that in the movies. They should only do that in the movies … it’s annoying as hell.
Nevertheless, I was pleased when the two officers stopped in front of Mother’s cell.
“You wanted to see us, Deputy?” the officer tagged N. Vega said.
Her partner grunted the same question.
“You two are posted here tonight. Right here. Both of you.” He pointed at my mother. “See that one there — the old one? She’s under arrest for theft,” he said, loud enough so that everyone could hear — me, Mother’s cell mates, and especially Mother herself. “And she’s a definite person of interest in the disappearance of one Frankie Morrell.