“I would think you’d put more focus on the whole secret room full of terrors in his head tidbit, but you always were starry-eyed for the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.”
“What can I say? I like guys with straw for brains.”
In spite of being blessed with a high IQ, porn star lips, and a killer body, Natalie had the bad luck of attracting the wrong sort of guys, as in those who were looking for a quick roll in the hay with a hot babe. These losers would hang around until the next opportunity to stop-drop-and-roll with another sexy flame who came along, and then burn Natalie on their way out the door. This bad track record had inspired her to take a sabbatical from men last summer, and she’d held strong until Cooper had started lighting fires under her skin.
I pshawed. “You picked up a rotten case of lie-arrhea down in Arizona.”
“What? My last several boyfriends could certainly sing ‘If I Only Had a Brain’ and mean it.”
She had a good point there. “Okay, so in the past that might have been true, but Cooper is no idiot.” He was a pain in the ass, certainly, but no fool.
“Cooper is not my boyfriend. You need to put some ice on that cheek.”
“I know, but I’m all out of frozen water at the moment.” I watched out the windshield as a Lawrence County sheriff’s pickup cruised by and parked in a spot down the way. “I thought you said we were going to spy on Detective Hawke.”
“We are.”
“Then why are we parked here? Is he hanging out at the VFW these days?”
“Because he’s about to leave work and that’s his ride.” She pointed at a big, white Ford truck several spots down from us on the county parking side.
“Is he allowed to park there?” I asked. “Are we allowed to park here?”
“What is your preoccupation with illegal parking? It’s not like the parking police are monitoring these spots 24/7. Besides, we’re not officially parking here. We’re just pausing for a moment to collect our thoughts.” She grabbed my sleeve and yanked on it. “Now get down before someone catches us sitting in here.”
We both wiggled lower into our seats. The bright lights overhead lit up the inside of the cab decently for any passersby, so we took turns peeking out over the dash.
Natalie checked her phone. “Hawke should be out any minute now.”
“How do you know what time he’ll be leaving today? What if he has another innocent bystander to interrogate, make fun of her hair, and then threaten with jail time?”
She rolled her eyes. “You need to seek counseling about that hair hangup of yours.”
“Said the beautiful, wavy-haired brunette. You’d be defensive too if you looked like a deranged circus clown in the mirror each morning and everyone poked fun at you because of it.”
“Doc doesn’t poke fun.”
I grinned. “That’s true. He gets his pokes in other ways.” I wiggled my eyebrows at her. “If you know what I mean.”
She wrinkled her nose and reached out to give me the two-finger, Three Stooges eye poke, but I blocked it with ease.
“I know what time he’ll be leaving because I was eavesdropping on him last night and heard him mention your name and then set up a meeting for twenty minutes from now.”
“That’s why you called me to set up this date?”
“It’s not a date.”
“Fine, this stakeout.”
“Yes.”
I wasn’t surprised to learn Hawke was talking about me behind my back. The detective was determined to land me in the hoosegow one way or another. But I was curious as to why Natalie had been eavesdropping on the idiot. Something must have spurred her to don her Sherlock Holmes hat, pipe, and magnifying glass.
Detective Hawke had been bunking in the late Ms. Wolff’s place on the floor below Natalie in the century-old Galena House apartment building for about a month now. He claimed to be guarding the apartment to make sure no intruders snuck in and stole any other key pieces of evidence in her unsolved murder case. But I had a suspicion it was more about trying to keep me away, since he blamed me for the evidence that had gone missing.
Ever since Hawke had taken over Ms. Wolff’s unsolved murder case from Cooper, the detective had been dead set on somehow tying me to her death. What he didn’t know, though, was that I wasn’t the one taking things out of her apartment. That was somebody else. I was, however, responsible for her demise in the end, but that had been far from a cold-blooded murder, and the only way he could prove I had anything to do with her death was to build a time machine. Lucky for me, Hawke had trouble just clicking his pen most days.
I shifted in my seat so I could look her in the eye easier. “So, is spying on Hawke a new obsession for you, or is there a reason behind your madness?”
“It all started when I overheard him talking on the phone Wednesday morning before he headed into the station.”
“Were you standing outside of Ms. Wolff’s apartment with a stethoscope pressed to the door?”
“No, I was not standing outside of her door with a stethoscope, silly.” She peeked over the dash and then slid back down. “I was on my hands and knees listening through the old floor vent.”
I smiled at the image she painted. “And what did you hear?”
“He’s after you.”
I huffed. “He’s been after me since I stomped on his pen and threatened to do the same to his testicles.”
“I know that, but I mean the butthead is really digging deep now.” Her eyes narrowed. “He knows about your past.”
“You mean Rex being the father of my kids?”
It wouldn’t surprise me if that were the case. While I hadn’t included Rex’s name on their birth certificates, there was other paperwork on file that he’d signed saying he agreed to give up
