Mitchell rolled his eyes toward heaven. “I could let you have it for … eighty dollars.”
“What about his wedding band?” Miranda asked, holding the ring up to the light and admiring the stones.
“Well, his ring should at least be matching yellow gold. Silver would look very … tinny.”
“I agree,” Miranda said. “So Custis needs a simple gold wedding band.”
“I can let you have one for another ten dollars. It’s very plain and nothing to-“
“That will be fine,” Longarm said. “Fit me and let’s get this business done with and get out of here before I decide to just forget the whole thing.”
Ten minutes and ninety dollars later, forty-five of which were Longarm’s, they marched out of the jewelry store wearing their wedding rings. Half a block down the street, Longarm stopped and said, “I sure hope he’ll buy ‘em back when this is over.”
“He will,” Miranda said before she caught herself.
Longarm looked down at his girlfriend, wondering. But he wisely chose not to say anything, and since they had spent almost all of their cash on rings, they had an inexpensive Mexican dinner with a couple of good bottles of beer. Afterward, they headed back to Miranda’s place.
“Don’t forget that you promised to carry me over the threshold.”
“Aw, come on!”
“We have to get into the spirit of this or it isn’t going to work and we won’t fool anyone in Mesa Verde! And we might as well start right here and now.”
“No,” he said, “let’s start after we get inside, lock your door, and leap into your bed.”
“Carry me, please?”
Longarm picked her up, and immediately revised his estimate of how much Miranda weighed, adding another ten or twenty pounds. Staggering through the door, he caught his toe on a throw rug, and they both crashed to the floor, laughing.
Three or maybe four seconds later, they were tearing off their clothes and racing for the bedroom wearing nothing but their new wedding rings. Longarm pounced on Miranda the way a mountain lion might jump on a deer, and Miranda squealed with delight and wrestled fiercely, pretending to fight him off. They struggled like that for a few minutes, and then he pried her legs apart and entered her with a hard thrust.
“Oh!” Miranda cried. “Please stop!”
She didn’t mean it. The woman loved it, and when she locked her legs around his waist, Longarm began to plunge in and out of her like a stallion. He covered her right breast with his mouth and licked her nipple as his body worked. Soon, Miranda was bucking and squealing with pleasure, and then she rolled Longarm over and rode him a while. It wasn’t anything like what a couple of newlyweds would probably do in real life, but Longarm didn’t give a damn. He and Miranda were great together in bed, and when something worked this well, you didn’t screw around and try to change things.
Miranda moved up and down his big rod, her red hair cascading forward over his chest and her breath coming faster and faster. Longarm’s fingers were buried into the firm flesh of her buttocks, and he was moving her around and around and groaning with animal pleasure.
“Honey,” he grunted, “I’ll bet that newlyweds were never this good together!”
“We will be.”
Longarm didn’t want to know what she meant by that, so he kept quiet and kept her moving over him until her bottom began to twitch and bump. At that moment, Longarm rolled her over and plowed her field good, planting his seed.
In the morning they made love again, only without the pretense and the games. Miranda was feeling very happy. “I am so glad that you decided to let me come with you,” she told him.
“You didn’t give me any choice.”
“That’s true,” she agreed. “But at least you’re not acting grumpy or trying to punish me for my insistence. I like a man who can lose gracefully.”
Longarm didn’t like her use of the word “lose,” but he managed not to make an issue of it. He left Miranda and went over to the Federal Building, where he found that his travel money and his letter from Billy guaranteeing him a month’s paid vacation were waiting. “There are also tickets in that manila envelope,” Billy told him.
“Coach, no doubt.”
“Of course! What did you expect, first class?”
“Yeah, that would have been nice.”
“Not on the taxpayers’ money,” Billy said. “Anyway, here is the letter from Miss Mason. Please give her my best regards and try not to seduce her. She’s an old family friend.”
“Sure, sure,” Longarm said, having already decided that it was not in his own best interests to mention that Miranda was coming along to keep him company. “Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of,” Billy said. “Oh, yeah, I do have a few newspaper articles on murders that I suspect might be related to this Anasazi artifact gang-“
Billy went to his desk and rummaged around among its clutter until he found an envelope. “Read these accounts. In every one it mentions that the victim was in some way, shape, or form connected to Anasazi artifacts.”
Longarm noticed the envelope’s thickness.
“There’s that many people involved?”
