Bond, Stephanie - Body Movers 06.5 (8 page)

“I’m Hannah Kizer.” Hannah grabbed his hand for an enthusiastic pump. “I’m the unmarried one.”

Coop gave her a little smile, but Carlotta noticed his eyes were bloodshot. She wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, that he was pulling a double shift and operating on little sleep, but she detected the scent of strong mouth wash. Was Coop drinking on the job? It was the reason he’d lost his position in the world she knew. Was he on the same path here?

“Detective Terry said the dead man tripped?” Coop asked.

“
We
tripped him,” Hannah said, beaming. “With a broom.”

He turned to Carlotta. “He fell on his weapon?”

“That’s right. And it went off.” She wet her lips. “I thought the revolver was empty, but obviously there was one round in the chamber.”

He stared at her mouth. “Luckily the shot didn’t fly wild. Did he move after he hit the floor?”

“No. He lay completely still.”

“Did you notice anything else about him that might be important?”

“No,” Hannah said.

“There was one thing,” Carlotta offered. “I thought he seemed anxious or maybe high on something.”

He nodded. “Okay, thanks.”

“You know, death has always fascinated me,” Hannah said, leaning in and twirling her hair.

Coop’s eyebrows rose. “You don’t say?”

“Maybe I could get a tour of the morgue sometime?”

“Um, we do occasionally have educational tours.”

Hannah grinned. “Sign me up.”

“If we’re done here,” Jack cut in, “Dr. Craft needs to get back to the body.”

“Right,” Coop said. “Thank you, ladies.” He nodded at Hannah, but his gaze lingered on Carlotta until Jack cleared his throat. The men walked away, with Hannah staring dreamily.

“I think I’m in lust.”

Carlotta smiled. “I thought you were into married men.”

“I am, but—” Hannah squinted. “Hey, how did you know that?”

Uh-oh. “I… guessed?”

Hannah frowned. “How about you don’t make judgments based on my appearance, and I won’t make judgments based on

yours?”

“Does that mean we can be friends?”

Hannah’s frown deepened. “That remains to be seen.”

Tracey re-emerged from the restaurant, clearly perturbed. “They’re closing for the day.”

“That’s to be expected,” Carlotta said.

“But I’m starving,” Tracey snapped.

“The two martinis didn’t fill you up?” Hannah asked dryly.

Tracey glared, then turned to Carlotta. “I thought we’d go to Spinnaker’s. They have a nice lettuce wedge. And we can discuss your
list
.”

Carlotta went cold. The last thing she wanted to do was discuss her alleged murder-plot list with Tracey. “You go ahead.

The detective wants me to stick around.”

Tracey looked slighted, then flounced away. Other diners departed. Carlotta and Hannah waited and watched while the body was bagged and removed by a couple of guys wearing morgue jackets who, from the way they were handling the rather large body, were either new on the job or just didn’t give a hoot.

Carlotta stepped forward. “You might want to use the gurney straps to secure the body.”

The men looked at her and scoffed. “We got this, sweetheart,” one of them said. But just as they reached the entrance, they hit a bump and the body rolled off, hitting the floor with a thud.

Coop charged toward them, and although she couldn’t hear what he said, it was clear from his body language he was

beyond upset with the men.

Hannah looked at her askew. “What do you know about moving bodies?”

“Nothing,” Carlotta said in her most innocent voice.

Jack reappeared to confirm details about their earlier statements. “I’ll need your home addresses and phone numbers for the report.”

Carlotta balked. Where did she live? Her address would be on her driver’s license, but she didn’t have her wallet. When Hannah finished reciting her info, Jack turned to her.

“Phone number?”

She pulled out her cell phone and read off the number.

He wrote it down. “Address?”

“Um… I need to get it from my wallet.”

Jack frowned. “You don’t know your own address?”

“Uh… we had a recent zip code change,” she ad-libbed.

Jack waved over the officer who was emptying the pillow case and allowed Carlotta to retrieve her wallet. She flipped to her license that featured a photo of her sporting a shorter hairstyle, and read off the address—it was the same house Peter lived in now… er, in the other place.

“And were any other items taken from you during the robbery?”

“Three sterling skull rings and two sterling snake bracelets,” Hannah said. “I’m lucky he didn’t take my nose ring.”

Jack made a dubious note of it, then looked at Carlotta. “And you? I seem to recall you were wearing a wedding ring at the meeting this morning.”

She swallowed hard. “Yes. A three-diamond Cartier engagement ring, and a matching gold wedding band.”

He whistled low. “I take it your husband doesn’t work for the city.”

She didn’t respond, but their gazes locked and she saw the same confusion in his gold-colored eyes as before… he felt their connection, but didn’t understand why.

He directed them to a table where the jewelry had been sorted. A uniformed cop checked off the items they claimed.

Carlotta silently slipped on her rings and studied them—was it her imagination, or did they feel even heavier?

“You act as if you’ve never seen those things before,” Jack remarked.

She turned to find him scrutinizing her. “It’s… hard to explain.”

“Life’s complicated, isn’t it?”

There it was again, the tug between them that had erupted the second they’d first met in the police precinct when Wesley had been arrested… and still endured.

“Are you through with me?” Hannah asked Jack, ending the moment.

“Yes.”

Hannah looked at Carlotta. “I’d offer you a ride home, but I have another work gig to get to.”

“I’ll make sure Ms. Wren gets home,” Jack said.

“Ashford,” Hannah corrected.

“Right,” he and Carlotta said in unison.

Hannah squinted back and forth between them, then lifted her hand in a wave to Carlotta. “Nice fighting crime with you.

See you around the club.”

She watched her friend give Coop an adoring glance as she passed him, then exit the club. Carlotta wondered if she and Hannah would ever be as good friends here as they were in the other place. It was, she supposed, a start.

Coop gave them a flat smile as he walked up. “I’m finished here unless you need something else, Jack.”

“We’re done. You driving straight home?” Jack gave him a pointed look that said he, too, had noticed Coop had been drinking.

Anger flashed in Coop’s eyes, then he returned a curt nod. “Sure.” He turned to Carlotta. “It was nice to meet you, Ms.

Wren.”

“Ashford,” Jack corrected.

“Right,” Coop said. His gaze lingered on her for a few seconds, then he turned and strode away, his long legs eating up the ground.

“Ready to go?” Jack asked her.

She nodded, suddenly nervous about being alone with him. When they exited, a TV reporter jogged up the sidewalk. He shoved a microphone in Jack’s face. “Detective, is it true the notorious fugitive Duke Thornhouse was taken down in a gunfight during an attempted armed robbery?”

A muscle worked in Jack’s jaw. “No comment.”

Carlotta smothered a smile—they both knew it was only a matter of time before the fifty or so women dining in the club restaurant circulated the story about her and Hannah foiling the robber’s escape.

He hustled Carlotta into a familiar dark sedan—how many times had she been in Jack’s car? She settled into the seat, noticing it seemed much the same. From the empty coffee cup in the console, it appeared he was riding solo.

Jack slid into the driver’s seat and clicked his seat belt into place.

“You don’t have a partner?” she asked.

His jaw hardened. “My partner, Detective Marquez, is in the hospital recuperating from a gunshot received in the line of duty.”

Her pulse bumped. Detective Maria Marquez had perished in the other place, at the hands of a killer. “Is Maria going to be okay?”

That garnered her a sharp look. “How do you know my partner’s first name?”

She caught herself. “I must’ve heard it on the news.”

“She’s going to be okay… but she has a long road back. What was your address again?”

She told him.

“Nice part of town,” he offered.

“I suppose.”

She studied his profile and allowed the electricity bouncing between them to charge the interior of the car. After a stretch of loaded silence, he looked over at her.

“Are you sure we haven’t met before?”

Her lungs squeezed. “Why do you ask?”

He shook his head. “I can’t explain it. You just seem… familiar.”

She couldn’t resist toying with him. “How so?”

His gaze swept over her with the leisurely pace of a lover. “Maybe we should change the subject.”

He looked back to the road and her mind clicked with the possibilities and fallout of telling Jack the truth about their

“past.” Would it send her hurtling back?

“Jack,” she said carefully, “what would you think if I told you that we do know each other… in another life.”

He laughed. “No offense, I don’t believe in all that reincarnation jazz.”

“I’m not talking about reincarnation, I’m talking about a parallel life. And you and I do know each other in that life—

intimately.”

He snorted. “Sorry, I don’t buy it.”

Carlotta turned sideways in her seat. “What if I could prove it?”

“How?”

“I know things about you.”

“Like?”

“Like that you’re from Alabama.”

He scoffed. “You can tell that from my accent.”

“And when you’re not on the job, you prefer jeans, black T-shirts, and western boots.”

“Also not a stretch.”

She wet her lips. “I knew your partner, Maria, in the place where I came from. She’s beautiful, tall and willowy, with a mane of light brown hair.” She had been jealous of the woman’s interaction with Jack.

He blinked, then scoffed. “You could’ve seen her picture on the news.”

“I didn’t—I only arrived here today. In fact, I’m relieved to hear she’s alive. She was killed in the place where I’m from, by her ex-husband.”

He looked angry. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

“It
was
terrible… he drowned her in her bathtub. His last name was Garza.”

Jack looked alarmed. “This isn’t funny anymore. I don’t know where you got personal details of Maria’s life, but—”

“Is he stalking her here, too? He’s a dangerous man, Jack. You have to stop him from hurting her—”

“That’s enough,” he cut in. “I’m starting to think you’re the dangerous one.”

“I’m not dangerous,” she said calmly. “I’m from another place where our lives are taking different paths than the way things are here. In the other place, Tracey and I aren’t best friends—Hannah and I are.”

“The tattooed waitress?”

“Yes. She and I work for Coop, moving bodies.”

“In this ‘other place,’ you and that Goth chick work for the morgue?” His disbelief was clear.

“Actually, Coop isn’t the M.E.—he lost his job because of his drinking. He contracts to move bodies for the morgue, and he hired us to help him.”

“Oh, really?”

“And the fugitive you’re after isn’t the bank robber we stopped today, it’s my father.”

His eyebrow shot up. “Your father, huh?”

“Yeah… in the other place, he skipped bail on a white collar charge and was a fugitive for over ten years.”

“Was?”

“Right. You caught him, um… yesterday.”

Now he looked amused, as if she were a small child. “Good for me.”

She swallowed hard. “Look, I know this is a lot to take in, but it’s true. You and I and everyone else are living another life in the place where I came from.”

He pursed his mouth. “And how did you get here?”

“In my car.”

“You drove across the space-time continuum?”

A flush worked its way up her neck. “Not exactly. My car hasn’t run in years. This morning I climbed into it and fell asleep, and when I climbed out… I was here.”

He nodded solemnly. “I hate when that happens.”

She turned back around in her seat. “Forget it. I wouldn’t believe me either.”

They drove in silence for a few moments. Carlotta stared out the window, looking for differences in this place, but the sky was the same color of blue, the grass just as green, the cars just as noisy. They entered the upscale community of Martinique Estates where Peter—and she—lived. The guard at the security gate called her Mrs. Ashford and waved them through.

“So where do
I
live?” Jack asked.

She looked over. “I’m sorry?”

“If you know so much about me, then where do I live?”

She pressed her lips together. “Actually, you’ve never told me. You’re pretty closed-mouthed about your personal life.”

“That’s the first thing you’ve said I can believe.”

She angled her head. “But I know what you look like naked.”

He squirmed in his seat. “That’s impossible.”

“You have a hairy chest.”

“Okay, that’s not a leap.”

She leaned closer. “And your um,
pride
hangs left.”

He looked up as if he had to think about it to confirm. “You had a fifty/fifty chance of getting that one.”

“And you have a cute little mole on your right—”

“Whoa,” he said, tapping the brake as if he could stop her from talking. “Lots of guys have moles under their shorts.” He gave her a skeptical look. “If you know what my body looks like, where’s my tattoo?”

“You don’t have one.” Unless he’d gotten one in this world?

But from his grunt she could tell she’d answered correctly. “Lucky guess,” he said as he pulled the car into the driveway above the palatial home that sat below street level. Construction vehicles filled up the driveway.

“You’re remodeling?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” she answered honestly. “Where I’m from, I live in a small townhouse around Lindbergh.”

Jack looked over at her. “Even if I could wrap my mind around what you’re saying, there’s a flaw in your story.”