“I’ve got my stuff in the car and I’m going to get it and change. I’m going to play tourist, and so are some of the other guys from the local office. You are going to be our official tour guide, Pepper, and you’re going to let us know if anyone comes in who looks familiar. Like that Jack guy.”
“Jack?” Quinn had missed that part of the conversation. Now, his eyebrows rose and his eyes narrowed. “Who’s Jack?”
“Just some history teacher she went to dinner with.” Scott threw off the comment so casually, I had no doubt it was designed to drive Quinn crazy. “We’ll start hanging around today, and we’re going to stay around until somebody comes to pick up those credit cards.” A smile lit his expression. “I’m afraid it’s going to be pretty hard to get rid of me, Pepper.”
“Well, that’s not such a bad thing, is it?” Oh yes, I said this in the perkiest of perky voices. The better to send Quinn up a wall. I knew it worked, too, when a muscle at the side of his jaw twitched. “And what are you going to do while the feds are doing all the real work, Detective Harrison?” I asked him.
There was that twitch again. But never let it be said that Quinn isn’t cool under fire. “The first thing I’m going to do,” he said, “is talk to you about your investigation.” He twisted the last word so that it was as much of a mockery as he thought my detecting skills were. “Maybe you and your dead people can tell me—”
“Oh, I doubt that.” I laughed. “It’s just like you always say, I waste my time when I investigate. There’s no way I’ve learned anything that could be the least bit useful to you. Now . . .” I went to the door, opened it, and put my hand on Scott’s sleeve to escort him out. “I’ll show you where you can get changed,” I said.
“And this building, it closes at four, right?” He grinned. “Which means you’re free for dinner tonight?”
We were already on our way out of the office, but I’m pretty sure Quinn heard me say, “I’d like that very much.” I didn’t bother to turn around to see what he thought of my response.
By Thursday of that week, we were still waiting for something to happen, but I wasn’t complaining. That meant Scott was still in town, and on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings, I went out with him. OK, so he wasn’t a ball of fire, at least not when he wasn’t on the job. But he was polite and interesting, and occasionally, even funny. He took me to one really nice restaurant in my own Little Italy neighborhood one night, to an Indians game the next, and on Wednesday, to a dive bar I never would have had the nerve to walk into on my own that turned out to be a whole lot of fun, even if the country music on the jukebox was so loud we could barely hear each other talk. Every place we went, Scott paid for everything—and with a credit card that actually had his name on it.
I should know, because one time when he left to use the men’s room, I checked.
Other than the fact that I was having a good time, I felt safe with Scott around. I mean, come on, the guy had been trained by the government. I had three glorious days of not worrying about my stalker, at least not until I got home each night, double-checked my windows and my door locks, pulled the miniblinds shut, and closed my curtains.
There were no more messages scrawled on my windshield or anywhere else, no more gifts of flowers or cheap chocolates, and I breathed a sigh of relief and convinced myself that Mr. Doughboy had seen me and Scott together and that he’d gotten a glimpse of that really big gun Scott carried at all times. It had scared him away. Yeah, that’s what happened. And I would never see hide nor hair of my stalker again.
Denial is a wonderful thing.
I actually might have enjoyed the euphoria that went along with it, if not for the fact that the longer we waited for something to happen at the memorial, the more on edge everyone got. There were only so many times the dozen or so federal agents who were hanging around the place could go upstairs to the balcony and downstairs to the crypt, only so many questions they could ask, and only so long I could treat them like they were tourists I’d never seen before and I was telling them all about the president and his memorial for the first time.
This undercover stakeout stuff is not for sissies.
Every time I was upstairs, I checked to make sure that sign was turned over, just like it had been the last time Jack was in the memorial. Still, nothing happened.
I guess the feds were used to this sort of waiting game. They took turns, sometimes waiting in the cars parked in various and sundry places around the cemetery where they could see but not be seen, and sometimes playing the role of memorial visitors. A couple days into it, and I already knew how each one took his coffee, what they mostly ordered for lunch (tuna salad on white toast, go figure), and that Scott had somehow made it clear to them that while he was fully prepared to cooperate with the local authorities, Quinn and his detectives—who had also made the memorial their home-away-from-home in the hopes that the two cases were going to tie in and wrap up together—were to be treated pretty much like enemy combatants. If this was what cooperation looked like, I was glad a private investigator worked alone.
Needless to say, with all this going on, the president was grumpier than ever.
I was down in the crypt with no one undercover (or otherwise) around, and he cornered me. “I told you I cannot abide commotion, and this is the way you honor my request? There are more people here than ever disturbing my peace. I have a cabinet meeting this afternoon and—”
I heard the front door open, and since all the agents and the various detectives were in place, I knew it was an actual visitor. I was all set to excuse myself so I could play tour guide for real when Jeremiah Stone popped up out of nowhere.
As always, he tapped the pile of papers he was carrying. “Mr. President . . .”
“Will you sign those things already?” I wailed, and before the president could remind me that I was out of line talking to him like that, I hightailed it out of there.
I got upstairs just in time to see a familiar man head up the winding staircase toward the second floor. I signaled Scott, who was in the rotunda with a sketchbook and a pencil, pretending to be an artist drawing the statue of the president.
“Him.” I mouthed the word, pointing up the stairs.
Scott nodded his understanding and ducked into the office, the better to send out a message to all those agents wearing earbuds that made them look like they were listening to their iPods. They were to wait for the signal, then close in.
I guess it was that whole criminal justice mumbojumbo thing at work again, because though I didn’t think Quinn was anywhere nearby, he caught on that something was up. He’d been in the rotunda, too, looking at a display of historic photographs and he oh so casually positioned himself at the bottom of the staircase, his gun out and behind his back.
“You’re not going to get in the way, are you?” he asked me.
I batted my eyelashes in a way that was completely unworthy of me, but necessary in a situation like this. “Scott doesn’t think I get in the way.”
“Scott . . .” Quinn tossed a look toward the office, where Scott was on the phone, quietly giving instructions to the units outside. “Scott is a jackass.”
“He happens to be very nice.”
“And you know this how?” Quinn tipped his head, listening for any sounds from upstairs, and when there weren’t any, he gave me that probing look of his, the one that had brought many a bad guy to his knees.
I was impervious. “We’ve been out.”
“Are you sleeping with him?”
“Is it any of your business?”
“We got the go!” Scott said, racing out of the office and taking the steps two at a time.
Quinn hurried up after him.
And me?
I stayed right there on the first floor. Not that I was worried about getting in the way. That would be the day. And not that I wasn’t dying to find out what was going on up there, either. But I wasn’t about to get between Quinn and Scott in the middle of a bust—not when they both had guns in their hands. In fact, I ducked into the office, which meant I had a ringside seat when they came back down, escorting a man whose hands were handcuffed behind his back. It was the pudgy Eastern European guy with the beard, the one who’d been in the memorial the last time Jack was there.
I didn’t see Scott that evening. But then, I think he was busy grilling the pudgy guy. The
