S he looked great, in a pair of red shorts and white halter top, her blond hair looking just a little wind-blown. Styles couldn’t stop staring as she stepped from the car.
“Jesus. She looks better now than she did in school, and in school she was -”
“She was what?” I glared at him.
“Smokin’.”
She saw the three of us watching her and smiled. Maybe for effect, maybe for our afternoon delight, maybe because she’d really missed me for three months, Em walked over and planted a really juicy kiss on my lips.
“Em.” James nodded.
“James.” Frosty. I think if I left the two of them alone for a couple of hours, the freeze would thaw, would turn hot. I didn’t plan on letting it happen.
“So,” she smiled at me, her eyes shining, “what are the plans?”
The fading daylight caught her silhouette and I knew what plans I’d like to make. But there was James, and I had to help my partner. “You and I need to talk.”
I took her hand and we walked up by the tent. She gazed at the yellow monster. “So this is where the magic takes place?”
“Isn’t that usually a line from a rapper on TV when they take a tour of his house and they enter the bedroom? The rapper will say, ‘and this is where the magic happens.’ ”
“I know. I’ve seen the shows.” She looked into my eyes and I thought I might have a heart attack. “Well?” She squeezed my hand. “From what I hear, you get screwed in this tent too.”
“Cute.” The response and the girl. “There’s some truth to the magic.” I told her about the Meet And Greet boys, and I could see she was impressed. “And you should have seen James when Cashdollar dropped by and suggested that we could be the next billionaires.”
“He really said that?”
“He did. However, he also asked us to leave and not come back.”
“He told you to vacate the premise? I can’t believe that. Come on, Skip. He really asked you to leave?”
“No.” I was overly negative. And, I thought, for good reason. “He said ‘obviously this business isn’t for everybody.’ ”
She gave me a hard look. “Well, it’s not.”
She was right. It wasn’t.
“It’s just been a rough couple of days.”
“And James wants to settle some scores?” Now a quizzical expression. She had a face that could change in a split second. And she could see right through me.
“Well, I think he wants to know who’s threatening us.”
“Skip, you’re twenty-five-year-old guys. You’ve never been in a fight in your life to my knowledge.” She paused. “Well, you got your asses kicked in that Cuban thing, but other than that -” She trailed off.
Asses kicked? We’d about got our lives snuffed out. The first of James’s truck episodes. But that’s another story.
Looking down the path that led to the nightly poker game she said, “You’re new to the real world, and here you are playing with con men, felons, billionaires. A little scary isn’t it? Don’t you think you might be out of your league?”
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe about it. I’m just guessing here, but it seems to me these guys wouldn’t even think twice about chewing you up and spitting you out if they thought you were in their way.”
“Apparently they do.”
“They do what?”
“Think we’re in their way.”
“Then leave. Right now. Pack up the truck, save yourself the five hundred dollars for tomorrow and go home. Or, better yet, stay tonight with me.”
Now that was an offer worth considering. “I can still stay with you.” God in heaven, she just made the offer. It’s amazing how sex overpowers any other emotion. “But hold that thought. I sort of promised James that I’d hang around and see if I could find anything out.”
Now she had the wild-eyed expression, that ‘Skip, you dumb-ass’ expression. I’d seen it before.
“What the hell do you expect to find out?”
And I realized, I didn’t really have an answer.
“Come on. What do you think you’re going to find.”
“Well, if James has any balls, he’s going to ask questions during the poker game. He’s going to ask them if they know anything about the truck tires, about the money being stolen, and about the threatening letter.”
“He won’t. He doesn’t have the balls, does he?”
“No.”
“Then leave, Skip. We can go right now.”
“I can’t, Em.”
“I should be pissed. I come back after three months, and it’s the same old crap. You refuse to grow up.”
“But?”
“But in a very strange way, I find it somewhat charming. Trust me, that won’t last for long.”
“Can it last just for tonight?”
“You really think these guys are crooked?”
“I think that Cashdollar and his crew may be responsible for three murders and another attempted murder this afternoon.”
“Okay. So go to the cops.”
“With what?”
She kicked at a loose stone, and walked away. Maybe ten feet. Then she spun around and looked at me. “Somebody has been following me ever since I dropped you off this afternoon.”
“Following you?”
“I wasn’t going to mention it.”
“You weren’t going to tell me? Why not?”
“Because maybe it doesn’t concern you.”
“And maybe it does.”
“There’s always that.”
“What? Who?”
“A late model Cadillac.”
“Now you sound like James.”
“Please.”
“Same car? Or did they switch? Are you sure you’re being followed? I mean, maybe someone was just going the same way you were.”
“Skip, I know what it’s like to be followed. I’ve had several stalkers in my life.”
I thought about that for a moment.
“You know, you almost get used to it. Some guys think it’s their right to stalk a blond with a good figure. It happened in high school, it happened in college, and it happens now. It gets old, but I know when I’m being followed. I’ve been stared at, gawked at, ogled, and stalked. I know what it feels like, and I’m telling you with a great degree of certainty that I was being followed. No question about it, okay?”
I was working with the idea that other guys stalked her. How could I relate? “Because of us?”
“Two guys in their thirties, one black, one white.”
“What does it mean? You think they’re after you? Predators? They want to kidnap you?” I couldn’t bring myself to say the rest of what I wondered.
“Could be. But I think it has something to do with you and James.”
“So what do we do?”
“I don’t know. I really wasn’t going to tell you about it. But I do have the license number.”
“Damn. You come back, and the first thing that happens is I involve you in -”
“In what? You don’t even know what you’re involved in.”
I glanced over at the truck and James was watching us. The light from the sky had faded and he and Styles were standing by the truck, smoking cigarettes and apparently waiting for me to join them.
“So what are you, what are we going to do tonight?”
“Help Daron.” I didn’t want to tell her the rest.
“Help Daron what?” She knew something bad was coming. I could tell by the tone of her voice.
“You’re not going to like it.”
“I never do. However, it seems we’ve piqued someone’s curiosity.”
“Piqued?”
“I’d like to know why someone is following me. And I’d like to know why someone is threatening you.”
“Well, we’ve got a plan.”
She was getting impatient. “Skip, what is it?”
“Break into Cashdollar’s office, go through Thomas LeRoy’s computer, his files, and see if we can find any evidence.”
“Jesus, Skip. You have lost your mind.”