Dipped, Stripped, and Dead (25 page)

“You what?” he said, in a way that made it sound so personal and particular that it made me jump.

“I called Rocky Mountain Refinishing,” I said, trying to be dignified.

“Why on Earth?” Officer Wolfe said, and glanced at Ben, frowning. If he expected Ben to explain the workings of my mind to him, he was more severely deluded than I thought.

“Because I thought, you know, I’d make sure that he had a lye vat . . .”

“Yes?” he asked, and his voice sounded like an adult about to get a child’s explanation for a particularly stupid misdeed.

It put my back up, of course, compounding the fact that I’d just realized that I’d have to tell him about the table, if I were to relate the conversation with Rocky’s employee verbatim. So I decided he didn’t need to know. Okay, fine, so he was a policeman. But last I checked, no one had died and made him God. And besides, it would be no possible good to him to know about the table. And Ben
could stop staring at me with that worried expression, too. Besides, if I told him about the table now, he’d probably suspect me. It wouldn’t help anyone.

“I called, and his employee answered, and I asked if they had a lye vat and what they used it for.” I said. I suspected that if he went to the workshop and really questioned people, he might get a different version of the conversation. But then it would be he said, she said, wouldn’t it?

“And what did they say?” he asked, with sort of a curious fascination. It was as though he were asking me,
And how high is the tower you jumped from?

“I had no idea she had done this,” Ben said. “Dyce, are you sure you didn’t dream it?”

“Quite,” I said. “You were in the shower. And talking to . . . calling Les.”

“Oh.”

Officer Wolfe gave Ben an
I’m very disappointed in you
look. Ben didn’t even notice. He looked like he was deep in thought. Knowing him, he was thinking he should call Les again and possibly wondering why Les hadn’t returned his call. Honestly, sometimes I wondered about his sanity.

“And what did Rocky’s employee answer, again? I think I missed it,” Officer Wolfe said.

“No,” I said, impatiently. “You didn’t miss it because I didn’t tell you about it. Well . . .” I said, on second thought, “. . . not that there’s anything to tell, because he just hung up the phone.”

“I see,” Officer Wolfe said, staring at me. He closed his notebook and carefully capped his pen. “Ms. Dare,” he said, putting the sort of emphasis on the name that seemed to mean that he’d never call me anything else. I’d never be
Dyce
to him, and he’d never take me out again to expensive restaurants, and kiss me by the door. Well, so much the worse. I tried to concentrate on his words and not on
the fact that he had very nice lips as he went on. “I would appreciate it if, in the future, you made it a point of not trying to do my investigation for me. I can’t say that what you did prompted this death—at least I can’t say it until I know a lot more about it. But the fact remains that you have inserted yourself in the middle of a murder investigation, and that your efforts could hurt the work of professionals like me. I know that your parents sell mystery books and that those are full of amateurs who solve terrible crimes. But, in my profession, we call such people
corpses
. I would very much prefer if I didn’t have to investigate your death next.”

CHAPTER 17

The Protection Racket

Officer Wolfe stalked away from me after that. It
was very weird because I had the very strong feeling he wanted to shake me. But there was something to the way he hunched his shoulders and to the smoldering intensity of his occasional glances at me that gave me the impression of one of Ben’s contained furies.

And the fact that I was noticing Officer Wolfe’s broad shoulders and his long legs, and the graceful way he stepped aside to allow his underlings to carry a zipped body bag through the house, meant that I really had issues. Maybe instead of the UPS man, I would become one of those older women who went after college students. There was a young man who often walked by my window without a shirt, even in winter . . .

In contemplation of my impending nymphomania, I sat there as people walked in and out. After a while Officer Wolfe approached and said, ostensibly to Ben, “The forensic teams will be in and out of the shed in the back probably till mid- to late afternoon. You may stay here or, if you have somewhere to be, I’ll leave an officer here,
and make sure that he locks everything as he leaves. I’ll put a new padlock on the door and get the keys to you.”

Ben had been looking at his watch now and then.

“You have to go to work, don’t you?” I asked him.

Ben shook his head. “I called in and took today and tomorrow off.” And I’d swear he was looking at Officer Wolfe and not me as he said that. What? He had been sworn in to the police and his job was to protect me? Gee. I’d always wanted my own personal bodyguard who followed me everywhere, but did he need to be gay and someone I viewed as a sibling?

“Why?” I said.

He shrugged. Another look was exchanged between him and Officer Wolfe, and I hoped that Ben was being paid. Or at least that he got a grope out of it or something. No, wait. I didn’t want Ben to grope the policeman—
I
wanted to grope Officer Wolfe. Nymphomania again. Poor UPS guy.

“Come on, Dyce,” Ben said. “Let’s go grab some lunch. There’s no point staying here watching the police go in and out.”

Well, he should speak for himself. It was actually lots of fun watching one policeman go in and out, particularly from the back.

I started to say that I was not hungry, and then I realized that the hot chocolate and doughnut had only been borrowed for a brief time. And besides, Ben said, “Come on. I’ll take you to Cy’s and let you have the banana cherry milkshake.”

Not only was I in no state to resist Cy’s burgers, but letting me have a banana cherry milkshake, presumably without making fun of me, was a concession indeed, because making fun of my food tastes was one of Ben’s joys in life.

I took a deep breath, grabbed my purse, and followed him out to his car. Of course, he was still carrying a reading
desk, a vase, and a bust in the back of his car, so—I wasn’t stupid—before I left, I grabbed the little table and returned it to its place in the trunk.

Ben didn’t say anything until he was driving and well away from the house. Then he said, very quietly, “What did you really talk about to the people at Rocky’s?”

“What they used the lye for.”

His eyebrows rose. “Dyce . . .”

“Oh, all right. I asked about the table.”

“The table in the back?”

“Yes.”

“Is that when he hung up?”

“No, that was when I asked about the woman with the frosted blond curls.”

“I see,” Ben said. I wondered if his having been sworn in as deputy dog would now demand that he tell Officer Wolfe the truth. But I didn’t think so. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have waited till we were away to grill me. And besides, there were things that were more important than police investigations and, hell, if one of us was going to start talking, both of us could, and despite the pact and the fact that I didn’t ask Ben questions about his private life, I knew where quite a lot of the bodies were buried. Largely metaphorically, of course.

We got to Cy’s at the end of lunch hour. Apparently having a murder in your house was a real time waster. I didn’t remember anything of substance between early morning and now, and I certainly didn’t remember anything of importance, or getting anything accomplished. But it was now almost one thirty and the various students and employees of nearby businesses who came to Cy’s for lunch had slowed down to a trickle of latecomers.

The burger joint was tiny, and it made much of the fact that it had remained largely unchanged in decades, a fact emphasized by pictures of Elvis and fifties cars on the walls. The counter itself was minuscule, and you could see everything
at the back, where they prepared the food. I ordered the double cheeseburger with bacon and mushrooms in butter, and Ben cleared his throat or coughed or something. But true to his word, he said nothing when I ordered a banana-cherry-chocolate milkshake.

He ordered a burger—just a single burger—and . . . get this . . . water. When people were known to drive from Denver for the extra thick milkshakes at Cy’s, when the local paper ran articles about Cy’s shakes, the man would have water.

As we sat down, I looked at his drink and rolled my eyes. He sighed. “I haven’t had time to get to the gym,” he said.

Ben lived in fear of his own body. He worked a lot—in fact, it could be said he often was at risk of working to excess. Unfortunately his work was hardly the sort that burned calories. And also, unfortunately, Ben had the example of his father, who was a rather larger version of himself—not fat as such, or rather, yes, fat, but massive, in an imposing and authoritative way that kept his students speechless and cowed. This would not suit Ben, and besides, it would ruin the fit of his clothes. So he starved himself, and he went to the gym for one to two hours a day. That he wasn’t planning on exercising seemed interesting enough. “Why don’t you go today?” I asked.

“Oh, you know why,” he said. And gave me a little grin, as he bit into his burger. “The gym I go to doesn’t allow women.”

I rolled my eyes at him. “I’m a big girl, Ben. I can look after myself. I don’t know what you told Officer Wolfe you’d do—”

“Just make sure you don’t get your damn fool ass killed.”

“But really, I’m big enough to take care of myself.”

“You keep saying that. I don’t think you know what those words mean.”

I would have made an appropriate response. At least, I was sure I would think of one soon enough, but my mouth was full of cheeseburger-bacon-buttery-mushroom goodness, and as I chewed, Officer Cas Wolfe parked outside and came in.

He looked like a storm gathering—like the sort of afternoon when the clouds are coming in and every radio is hissing warnings and saying that a tornado has been sighted somewhere. As he swung the door open and then shut it behind him, in a tinkle of crashing bells, I expected some background music to stop and the customers in the joint to duck, while the server behind the counter hastily stuck all bottles under the counter. Only, of course, by then Ben and I were the only ones there, sitting at one of the half-dozen tables. And there were no bottles behind the counter.

The worst thing is that as he stood there and glared at me, I could only think he looked good, really good. And hell, even if the music didn’t stop, Ben did stop chewing, and his eyes went really large.

Officer Wolfe stepped up to our table, giving the impression of stalking, which took some doing, because all he had to go was three steps. He stood there glowering down at me, and if he thought I was going to stop eating just because he was there, he had another think coming. Hell, Ben could stop because he was eating his plain burger with no mustard or anything, while I was eating good stuff.

Officer Wolfe cleared his throat. “Ms. Dare,” he said.

I swallowed the food in my mouth at a leisurely pace. Ben rolled his eyes and made a sound like a suppressed sigh.

After taking a sip of my milkshake, I looked up. “Oh, Officer Wolfe. I hadn’t seen you. How may I help you?”

Ben’s mouth was hanging open, which someone should tell him was truly unbecoming. Officer Wolfe spoke through
clenched teeth, which, frankly, was also unbecoming, but fortunately he was not my responsibility to correct. “If you’d please let me have a word with you outside, Ms. Dare.”

“I’d love to, Officer, but as you see I’m having lunch. I’d hate for my burger to get cold.” Not the least of which because all the grease in it would congeal, and the effect would be much like taking bites of Crisco.

He should have sighed. If Cas Wolfe were human he would have sighed, or perhaps raised his eyebrows, or something. Clearly, though, he was a robot, because all he did was speak again, still through clenched teeth, “It won’t take more than a minute.”

I got up. I got up because his eyes were flashing like fiery ice, and frankly, if he was about to start a tornado like a storm god of some forgotten religion, I’d much rather he did it outside, where I’d have more room to duck. Besides, it wasn’t fair to Ben to make him face a tornado the day after the fire in his loft.

Daintily, walking in the way Mom and Grandma insisted was
proper for a lady
, something I managed only in moments of stress (which was just as well; otherwise someone might claim that I’d violated truth in advertising), I left the diner. Behind me, Officer Wolfe stormed out in a clash of bells. In my mind, with no rhyme or reason, the words
Next time in fire
flashed.

I thought for a moment of walking all the way to the car, getting behind the wheel, and driving away. But it was Ben’s car and the damn man had kept the keys, presumably in his pocket. It was as if he didn’t trust me with them.