An Appetite for Passion (19 page)

But when she got to headquarters, she was in for a double disappointment. Jeff wasn’t there. And Steve was. The volunteers were working at a frantic pace...so little time left, so many people to persuade to vote for Larrimore. The phone bank was busy, a new batch of campaign posters was ready to be nailed up, and yet more flyers needed to be delivered across town. It seemed that virtually every volunteer on the roster was working today.

Russ was updating a group of volunteers who’d be going out to hand out flyers and talk to voters. There was a change in the approach he wanted them to take, and he needed to coach them on what to say. Someone was needed, too, to drive the van across town, delivering a load of flyers to the site of a rally, and dropping off posters at the home of a volunteer who was pressed for time, had promised to put up posters, but couldn’t conveniently get over to the storefront to pick them up.

Kari had a thought. “I’ll drive the van over,” she said...loudly. “I have an errand at Market Square Shopping Center, so I’ll have to leave the van parked there between about two and two-thirty. If you can live with that, I can handle it.”

A volunteer named Maggie almost ruined things for Kari when she offered, “I’ll ride with you and help you to carry the flyers and posters when you get to where they’re going. And I can guard the van while you’re taking care of your errand.”

“I’ll lock the van while I’m on my errand, and I don’t really need help with the carrying,” Kari said. “Look...muscles.” And she playfully flexed her arms. “I guess we need everyone getting out there and working...and if you and I do the same job, that’s a needless duplication of effort. Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

Fortunately, Maggie backed down with a, “Well, if you’re sure....”

Steve kept looking over at Kari, but she narrowed her eyes into slits of hate, stared back, and kept her head held high.

She got a lucky break when she ran into Jeff outside. “How’ve you been?” he asked enthusiastically. “I’ve missed seeing you around.”

“No time to talk,” Kari said. Her brain was bubbling with the plot she’d begun hatching inside the storefront. Jeff’s fortuitous appearance was making things jell; it would work even better now. “Look, unless you were just on your way to put out a fire or rescue a damsel in distress, get out of sight, lay low, and be at the south end of Market Square by two. Keep out of sight, but keep your eyes out for the van. Watch for me, but stay in hiding.”

“What’s up?”

“In the immortal words of Sherlock, ‘the game’s afoot.’ Now, scoot, before someone sees you.”

She gave him a quick swat on the rump for emphasis, and Jeff replied with a snappy salute and a “Yes, ma’am!” Then, he obediently wheeled around and headed back to his car.

At two o’clock, Kari parked the van at Market Square. She spotted Jeff’s car, parked just a few cars south of the van, and she scoped out Jeff himself, hiding behind a newspaper on one of the shopping centre’s benches, discreetly keeping watch. Good!

Kari, with pocket camera in hand, took up a position to the north of the van, also discreetly hidden. As the minutes dragged by and nothing untoward happened, she began to worry that the fish she was after was not among the people who had been in the storefront earlier. No one was taking the bait. She looked over to Jeff, who was restlessly fidgeting, then back at the van, parked undisturbed in the quietest corner of the parking lot.

At 2:15 a car pulled out of the spot next to the van, and another car pulled in. The occupant got out, looked furtively around, then approached the van’s locked back door. In a minute, the door was open, and the man was pulling flyers and posters out of the van and loading them into his car.

Kari had no trouble recognizing Steve, and she was sure that, from his vantage point, Jeff could identify him too. Getting out her camera, she inched closer and began snapping pictures of the culprit in action. When she was sure she had a nicely incriminating set of shots, she backed away without having been seen. Steve, driving away with the materials, hadn’t a clue he’d been caught in the act.

Walking over to Jeff, Kari wore the grin of the cat who’d trapped the canary. “Got the bastard,” she sang out gleefully, giving Jeff a thumbs-up sign. “Now let me transfer the pictures to my computer for safekeeping—I’m not taking any chances—and print out copies, and I’ll meet you back at the storefront in half an hour, give or take. Keep your mouth shut about this till I show up with the evidence.”

“How did you know it was him?”

“I didn’t. I was clueless as to who it was, but it almost had to be one of the volunteers, so with virtually everyone there this morning, I seized the opportunity and set up a trap.”

“Clever Kari,” Jeff praised her. Kari glowed.

With a hurried “thank you,” Kari got back in the van and speeded toward home.

Many of the volunteers—including Steve—were still there when Kari arrived back at the storefront. “Hey, is anybody here an art lover?” Kari sang out as she walked through the front door. “I have some photos you’ve just got to see...especially you, Russ.”

Eileen said, “I noticed you were gone the last two weeks. Are these vacation pictures?”

“No,” Kari said. “I haven’t been on vacation, just busy. Someone else has been busy too. These pictures don’t have to do with
my
being gone. They have to do with some
things
being gone. I told you, these pictures are art...the art of catching a bad guy.”

By now, everyone who wasn’t on the phone—including Steve—had gathered around Kari. “Aren’t these great photos?” Kari asked, passing around the pictures showing Steve raiding the truck and putting the materials in his car.

“Hey, I didn’t know you were helping Kari,” a volunteer named Joey said to Steve. Joey hadn’t quite caught the significance of the photos.

“Oh, he wasn’t helping me, I assure you,” Kari said. The pictures hadn’t gotten around to Steve yet, but he began edging nervously toward the door.

Russ was standing between him and the door. The first three pictures had reached him already. “I wouldn’t leave just yet,” Russ said, grasping Steve’s arm. “I think you have a few questions to answer first.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Steve answered with a thin veneer of bravado.

“Maybe these will refresh your memory,” Russ said, brandishing the photos under Steve’s nose. The group of volunteers formed a circle around Russ and Steve, and Steve realized he wasn’t getting away. His shoulders suddenly slumped. The defiant glint faded from his eyes. A long sigh escaped him, and even his chin sagged.

“There’s this woman—Suzanne—at Badley’s headquarters,” Steve finally began. “I was trying to score points with her. You guys know how that one goes.” His voice was pleading now. “And then one of the managers over there...I was trying to score points with him, too, for a different reason. He’d intimated there might be a place for me in Badley’s government if he won the election. I’ve been out of work for four months now!” His eyes beseeched the other volunteers to understand that this was a matter of economics. “Hey, I’ve got a pregnant wife, no job, and very little left in savings. Lylah’s been working, but pretty soon she’ll have the baby...and then what?”

“So you were cheating on your pregnant wife with this Suzanne and trying to score points with Suzanne by stealing our materials...and trying to get a job with our illustrious opponent by proving your dishonesty,” Jeff said. “If he really would have hired you after that stunt, that’s one more reason why we need Larrimore, not Badley, in office. I’m a witness, by the way,” he added to Russ. “I saw the whole thing...and so did Kari, of course.”

“Eileen, please call the police station and have them send an officer over,” Russ said.

“Bitch!” Steve spat the word at Kari.

“I beg your pardon!” Kari replied frostily.

“Shhh. Don’t waste your breath on him,” Jeff said, putting an arm around her shoulders. Only then did he feel that she was shaking with anger. “Hey! What’s with you? Let’s get you out of here. C’mon, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.” He steered her out the door, calling to Russ, “We’ll be next door for a little while.”

Seated in a booth at the coffee shop, Kari began to relax a little. She’d been keeping a tight rein on her emotions since the weekend with Max two weeks earlier, and all this excitement on top of that was a little more than she could handle with equanimity.

As she relaxed her grip on herself, a mélange of emotions fought each other to dominate her mood—anger at Max, anger at Steve, relief that the mystery was solved, relief that Jeff’s name would be cleared now, joy at seeing Jeff again, sadness that the campaign was nearly over, and mixed in with all this was a tinge of pride at having solved the mystery.

“Not bad, Sherlock,” Jeff said. “What gave you the idea to do what you did?”

“When I saw virtually all the volunteers in one place, I figured I’d never get a better time to lay out the bait and see who grabbed it. I guess I’d had an opportunity like that once or twice before, but I never thought of it then. I guess my head was too full of that damn Max.”

“‘That damn Max’? As in Max, the man you’re so nuts about?”

“
Was
nuts about. Very past tense. If I ever really was nuts about him. I never got a chance to find out.”

“What happened?”

Kari took a deep breath. This was a subject she had never discussed with Jeff. “A weighty matter came between us,” she finally said.

“Let me guess—he’s a dope who doesn’t appreciate the graceful curve of a beautifully rounded line?”

Kari managed a smile. “You have a future in politics, if you can phrase it in words like that. Very political.”

“Ah, but I meant every word. There’s beauty in many shapes and sizes, though true beauty is always within. If Max didn’t recognize you for what you are, and value you for what you’re worth—which is a lot, my friend—then maybe he wasn’t the right lover for you.”

“Maybe nobody is,” Kari said with a hint of dejection. “Maybe I should stick to just having friends and forget about lovers.”

“Sometimes friends make the best lovers,” Jeff said softly, reaching across the table and taking Kari’s hand.

“Sometimes a person isn’t sure she can trust her friends either,” Kari said just as softly. “Don’t I remember a certain friend saying he’d been less than fully honest with me?”

“Yes, I did say that, and I
was
less than honest...admitting only to wanting to be your friend when I really wanted to be so much more. But I didn’t want to push you into something you didn’t want...and then I knew you had Max....”

“But now I don’t have Max any more,” Kari said, feeling her eyes sparkle with renewed hope and joy. “And I still could use a friend. Now, when I wanted to find out who was behind the hanky-panky, I followed up on my curiosity. You’re presenting an interesting thesis...that friends can sometimes make the best lovers. That’s got me curious, too. I’d better follow up on my curiosity and try to prove your thesis, hadn’t I?”

Jeff said, “Then we’d better finish our coffee and get out of here. I can’t exactly kiss you when there’s a table between us.”

“Hey...do you like stuffed cabbage? I just made up a batch of it. I was going to freeze eight single-serving portions for future use, but I could save aside two of them for tonight.”

“You’d better stop freezing foods in single servings. I don’t think you’re going to be eating alone very much from now on. As far as tonight’s dinner is concerned, I make a pretty good hollandaise sauce. You don’t happen to have any asparagus on hand, do you?”

“He’s good at politics, he’s a good friend, he’s funny, and he cooks too! Will you ever cease to amaze me?” She got up from her seat in the booth.

“I hope not. But we’ll see if you’re still being amazed in ten or twenty years.” They kissed, now that there was no table between them. In fact, as was Kari’s last coherent thought for a while, now nothing stood between them at all.

THE END

www.cynthiamacgregor.com