He blinked. “Sure.”
“And the name of your plastic surgeon. He’s done a marvelous job.”
He inhaled. “Will you take the money and go away?”
“No.”
He was furious. Tafford was used to having his way. His sons were agitated, shifting from foot to foot. They were used to their father having his way.
“Taff, did you have one of your boys ambush me in the desert a week ago?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t need any more dead bodies in my town, and I certainly don’t need any more bad publicity.”
Strangely, I believed him. Didn’t seem his style to set me up in the desert, or to ambush me. He was more of the in-your-face, you’ve-been-warned type.
“Of course, getting arrested for breaking and entering wouldn’t help my public image much.”
“No,” I said.
“Pretty stupid, in fact,” he said.
“Yep,” I said.
“Christ, what was I thinking?”
“You weren’t.”
“We just wanted to scare you.”
“I’m terrified.”
He shifted where he stood and looked at his open palms. He looked like a man waking from a bad nightmare. His two sons hadn’t stopped staring at me. Perhaps they were soaking in what a real man should look like.
I said, “Taff, this mess isn’t going to go away by paying me off. Someone killed Willie Clarke, and someone tried to kill me. You have a killer loose in your town.”
Now he looked just plain sick. I almost shoved my trashcan over to him in case he was going to lose his lunch.
“Tell you what,” he said. “You find the killer and I’ll give you the money.”
“Sounds like a job,” I said.
“Consider it one.”
“When it’s over, I’ll send you a bill.”
Tafford nodded. “Can we go now?”
“Yes,” I said.
And they did, although I kept their money. Consider it a retainer.
Chapter Thirty-one
Across the hallway from Cindy’s lecture hall was a classroom that was rarely, if ever, used. Best of all it was rarely, if ever, locked. It was furnished with a dozen or so of those wraparound desks with attached plastic chairs. Wraparound desks and I don’t get along. Mostly because they were made for people half my size.
So I positioned two of them near the classroom door, where I used one to sit and the other to prop my ankles up on. From that position, sitting in near darkness, I could see down the hallway in either direction, and had a clear shot of the elevator that opened onto Cindy’s floor.
It was late, almost 10 PM. My feet were up on the desk in front of me, ankles crossed, hands folded across my stomach. In the hallway next to my door, the drinking fountain gurgled. The gurgling kept me company, like an old friend. An old mentally challenged friend. I had spent the last ten minutes trying to discern the different chewing gum scents wafting up from under the desk, when the elevator chimed open.
A heavy-set, middle-aged woman stepped out, blinking rapidly and peering around. Unremarkable, if not for the fact she was wearing a heavy coat, as this wasn’t exactly heavy coat weather. Hell, this wasn’t exactly heavy coat country. Sensing a clue, I watched her closely.
She came hesitantly toward me. Or, at least, towards my part of the hallway. She had short black hair, perfectly trimmed bangs, and thick eyebrows that needed to be plucked or weed-whacked. She stopped in front of me, her back to me, and gazed up at Cindy’s lecture hall doors as if they were the gates to Heaven.
There was a slight hump in her upper spine, and I wondered if the Humanities building here at UCI had a bell tower. Then again, maybe she was carrying something heavy inside her coat.
The hallway was silent. The fountain gurgled. I could hear her breathing through her nose, saw her shoulders rise and fall with each breath.
And then, amazingly, she turned. I have no idea why. Maybe she heard me breathe. Maybe she sensed my overwhelming manliness. Maybe she had eyes in the back of her head.
Either way, she turned and looked right at me. We stared at each other. Her nose was a little wide, complete with a mini hump. Chin absent. Certainly not beautiful, but neither was she unattractive. I judged her age to be about forty. Didn’t look much like a student, but she certainly could have been. In the least, she looked like she was up to something.
“Hello,” I said.
Her mouth dropped open. Her tongue spilled out over her lower teeth like a pink tide. And then she was moving. Quickly. Back to the elevator. There, she punched the button hard enough to have hurt her hand. The elevator, which hadn’t gone anywhere, opened right up. She turned her face away from me as the door closed around her.
I would remember that face. Especially those eyebrows.
When she was gone, I eased my feet off the desktop and onto the floor. I stood and moved over to the bank of classroom windows. From there, I had a clear shot of the main entrance to the building below.
I waited.
My breath fogged on the window before me. I resisted the urge to write: I Heart Cindy.
The door opened below, yellow light spilling out. A male student exited, followed immediately by Bushy Brows.
A tall man met her outside. He came out of the shadows of the building and the two argued for a bit, and then left together. They headed down a side trail that led to the Staff parking lot, where Cindy kept her Jetta. I watched them go until they blurred into oblivion.
I think I just met her two stalkers.
Chapter Thirty-two
Cindy was attending to a throng of admiring students. I waited in the back of the lecture hall and watched her. She spotted me and beamed me a full wattage smile that sent my heart racing.
When the last of the student groupies had dispersed, I made my way down to her desk and set a polished red apple on the corner of her desk. Cindy, who had been hastily shoving books and scraps of paper into her oversized handbag, paused and looked at the red delicious.
“Is that for me?”
“Call it a school boy crush.”
Tonight Cindy’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She knew I liked her in a ponytail. She crammed the last of her junk into her bag and walked around the desk, looked around her room, saw that we were alone, and kissed me full on the lips.
“Mrs. Franks never did that,” I said.
“Who’s Mrs. Franks?”
“My fifth grade teacher.”
“You had a crush on her, too.”
“Yes,” I said. “May I carry your oversized handbag?”
