Dipped, Stripped, and Dead (31 page)

Grandma had always told me to beware of the big bad wolf. She never told me he’d be wearing a policeman’s uniform. “Mr. Colm called me and said that you had disappeared,” he said. “He drove all over for two hours trying to find you.”

Gee, if they were accomplices, you’d think that he would try to call him Ben, not Mr. Colm. Perhaps the clothes intimidated him. I opened my mouth to say something along those lines, but then I noticed that Ben was turned away from us, and that his right hand was climbing up to rub the middle of his forehead. Right. I was many kinds of bitch, as the person who had spray-painted the outside of my house had so kindly pointed out, but it was no part of my mission to hurt Ben. Besides, I realized with a pang, it probably was truly low—by any description—to have left him and disappeared while he was trying to check on Les’s issues.

I opened my hands full on and looked at Officer Wolfe with my best innocent look, coupled with genuine embarrassment and guilt. “Look, I didn’t mean to disappear. Ben went back in to ask his friend something and I . . .” And I realized I couldn’t possibly tell the truth, not without seriously upsetting Ben and making him feel like a fool. “I walked outside to get some air. And then Michael Manson stopped by, and he asked if I wanted a ride home.”

Ben turned around, and from the way his eyes looked, he had the mother of all headaches forming. “And you thought you would go for a joyride with him for three hours?” he asked.

“No!” I said. The fact that I’d never intended to joyride with him or anyone else was probably a good thing. “No, you see . . . I got in the car and he told me he had to stop for a few minutes, and then he—”

“And you couldn’t have gotten out of the car?” Ben said skeptically.

“Not the way he was driving. Or rather, she. When his voice goes up, his driving . . . I think he ran fifteen red lights between the symphony and Rocky’s, I swear.”

“Oh, yeah, Michael Manson has a list of traffic citations too big to transcribe,” Officer Wolfe said. “In fact,
his license might be suspended right now, not that that ever stops him.”

“Rocky’s?”
Ben asked, displaying his uncanny ability to zero in on the part I didn’t really want him to hear.

I sighed. “That’s where he went. But . . . you know . . . it’s okay. I mean, what could he do, what with Rocky right there, and his employees, too? Besides, I’m not married to Rocky.”

Ben opened his mouth, then closed it. Both his hands went up and this time massaged at his temples.

Officer Wolfe looked me over appreciatively. “So you went to Rocky’s . . . Anything interesting?”

“No! I wasn’t investigating,” I said. Which of course was true and also a lie. The thing is that I’d been so determined to get out and investigate because they’d told me I couldn’t. But now I realized that the whole thing wasn’t just about me. Oh, it was about me, too, undoubtedly, or at least there had to be some reason poor Inobart’s remains had been left in my workshop, but the fact of the matter was that my actions affected the innocent, too. Like Ben. The last thing he needed, on top of whatever crap Les was giving him, was to have me go nuts on him, too. Poor man. Perhaps his bad taste extended to friends as well as to lovers. “Look, Ben,” I said. “I’m several kinds of idiot, but I honestly didn’t mean to worry you.” I reached out and touched his arm, which when he was in this mood was at best risky, as it might make him withdraw more. But it might also make him come down to Earth and realize I was still Dyce. Stupid, yeah, and okay, maybe he was right and I attracted trouble like muck attracted pigs, but honestly, I hadn’t meant to hurt him.

No, the truth of it is that I hadn’t thought of him at all. “I thought you’d be busy,” I said. “You know . . . with . . . the other issue.” I wasn’t sure that Officer Wolfe knew of Ben’s current domestic troubles, and at any rate, it wasn’t any of his business.

Ben looked at me and sighed. “I know. Sometimes I just want to shake you.”

I nodded. Hell, sometimes I wanted to shake myself. Only if I did, trouble would just shed off me, like water off a recently washed dog, and land on everyone else.

“I called you. Must have been a dozen times,” he said.

“I tried calling you, too. But my phone wasn’t working.”

There were many things he could have said, including that I was an idiot, and that my habit of not charging my phone drove him bananas. All true, of course. Just as it was true that he had the right to be absolutely furious, and to leave and not to talk to me for a month or perhaps for life. As far as I knew he was involved in this murder investigation only because he was my friend.

But then, this was Ben, known far and wide for giving everyone a second chance, including idiot Les and me. He just looked after broken-winged birds, was all. Probably because he’d first had to look after his many siblings. I didn’t like to think that I was in the same category as Les, but I undoubtedly was. Ben took a deep breath. “Oh, damn it, Dyce. I finally came back and I thought I’d find you dead, and what the hell would I tell your parents?”

“That I died by murder?” I said, then regretted it and explained. “I’m more worried about upsetting you than them.”

This got me a pale smile. “I know that, too. Damn it, Dyce.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. Then I looked at Officer Wolfe. “I’m sorry we troubled you. As you see, I was being an idiot. I never thought that Ben would be so concerned when he noticed I was gone, which probably means that . . . well, I’m an idiot.”

Cas Wolfe had an expression much like that of Tiff back at Rocky’s place. He looked concerned and amused and soft all at once. I hoped the soft was for me, and then
I hoped it wasn’t, because, really, did I have the time for emotional involvement right now? Look how I treated my friends. Gee, no wonder All-ex had gone nuts while married to me.

“It’s all right,” he said at length. “It’s my day off, and I wasn’t doing much of anything.” He looked at Ben, then back at me. “Tell you what . . . I think Mr. Colm could use some time by himself for a while.” And then, looking at Ben, not at me, “Do you mind if I take her out for dinner?”

My, what big teeth you have!
I thought. I remembered him kissing me, and my knees went wobbly. Only the fact that I was being passed—as a charge—between the two of them made me buck up again. Right. They viewed me as a load of trouble, which admittedly I was. But that didn’t make me feel better about it.

On the other hand, considering how stupid I’d just been, I suspected I owed it to Ben to give him some Dyce free time. I touched his arm again. “There’s aspirin in the medicine cabinet.”

This managed to elicit an almost normal smile. “Thanks,” he said. “We’ll talk when you get back.”

CHAPTER 22

The Better to Eat You With

“Different car,” I said, remembering vaguely that
he’d been driving a massive red SUV. This was a small white SUV. Yes, that was my level of interest in cars. Kind of like my interest in clothes. They were things that served a purpose. I noted, however, that the inside of the car was clean and neat, with immaculate gray leather seats.

“My car,” he said, getting behind the wheel. “When I’m on duty I usually just grab whichever of the force’s cars is available.”

“Oh.” To be honest, my grandmother couldn’t have warned me that this very good-looking wolf would be wearing a police uniform, because he wasn’t. Unless the uniform was mental. Because what he was wearing was an open-at-the-neck polo in a gray that exactly matched his eyes, and a pair of snug jeans. Mind you, for the area we lived in, this counted almost as overdressed for a casual evening.

He smiled at me. “How do you feel about diners?”

“Uh.”

“That good, uh? So what do you like, Chinese? Hungarian? German?”

“Hungarian,
really
?”

“The European Kitchen around the corner. Oh, oops. It’s pretty much a diner.”

I got the feeling he was toying with me and shook my head. “I don’t have anything against diners,” I said. “I have just never been asked what I think about them. Though as far as I can tell, the European Kitchen . . . uh . . .” I’d walked by the place two or three times. If it was a diner, it didn’t impress me as such. Actually it didn’t impress me as much of anything except maybe a restaurant run by people who had no idea what made for an appealing eating place. It was small and square and, most of the time, empty. It had all of a half-a-dozen tables, and they were covered in red-and-white tablecloths.

He smiled at me. “It’s not that great. But I wanted to throw my exotic card down, to mitigate the fact that I mentioned diners . . .”

“But I don’t have anything against diners,” I said. “As long as I don’t have to eat pancakes. I make those better than they do.”

He gave me a look as if asking what was with the pancakes. He could go on wanting to know. “I have lots of practice,” I said.

“I see.”

“But you don’t have to buy me dinner,” I said.

“I know,” he said, meekly. “But if I try to steal it, people get upset and I’d be likely to lose my job. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“Uh, of course not,” I said, rallying. “If that happened, you wouldn’t be able to take me out dancing.”

He looked at me, and his eyes sparkled almost blue. “We can’t have that,” he said. “So, have you eaten at the George?”

“Weirdly, no,” I said. “I don’t eat out much. See, the money . . .”

“Ah, but if you don’t mind diners—or even if you do—
you must go to the George at least once. We get people coming from all over the country to eat there.”

I was fairly sure he was joking, but he winked at me and started the car. “It’s really very good. Truly. And not pricey for what it is. And since you live just blocks away, you have to go there.”

“Uh,” I said.

He gave me a quick look. “Well, if you want to go somewhere else . . .”

“No. I just . . .” I shrugged. “To my knowledge it’s the only diner that Ben will frequent. From his comments, I always assumed he had a crush on the owner.”

Wolfe smiled. “Probably. I really have no idea, but I suspect he’s good-looking. At least his girlfriend is a five-alarm fire waiting to happen. She’s the other owner.”

“Oh.” Typical of Ben, he’d never mentioned there was also a female owner.

“My friend Rafiel goes there all the time, too. But I don’t think it’s because he’s interested in Tom, the guy who owns it. Now, Kyrie, his girlfriend, I wouldn’t say anything.” He shrugged. “Mind you, they’d both be equally out of luck. Tom and Kyrie are a nice couple. I think you’ll like them.”

I didn’t think I’d have any choice, though looking at a cute couple cooing and billing didn’t count as fun, but I didn’t want to tell Cas Wolfe that, because he might decide I was jealous of people who had relationships. Which, damn it, I was. But there would be time for that when E got married or ran away from home, whichever came first.

We drove a short distance and parked at the back, in the spacious parking lot between the bed-and-breakfast next door and the George.

Then we walked around the building to the front entrance.

The George was a dumpy building—one floor, and a
short floor at that. I had no idea what it was actually built of, but it was covered in stucco and indifferently painted white. The front door was aluminum and it tinkled as you opened it—because of the bells tied behind it.

When I’d grown up, the George—then called the Athens—was not a place where anyone ate willingly. There were reports of cockroaches the size of tables, and food poisoning was a given if you even looked into the place.

But since the name and ownership change, it, like the area it was in, had become gentrified. It retained enough of its . . . essential dinerness to make it interesting or perhaps curious to the suburbanites who came here to eat. They wanted authentic and working class, and the George hadn’t prettified to the point where it lost that. Someone always wrote all the specials on the window with colored markers every morning, and inside there was a cozy atmosphere of booths and then larger tables in the little glassed-in porch next to the main diner. Then there was the long, polished aluminum counter, with single stools—also of polished aluminum—for single diners.

“They put all new vinyl in the booths,” Wolfe said. “And replaced the tables in the extension.” He waved toward the porch. “And Tom is a fantastic cook. Also, they hired this baker, recently, Laura . . . Her bread and cakes are to die for.”

In front of us was a sign saying,
It will be our pleasure to seat you
.

Within moments, a young woman came up. Her name tag said
Kyrie
, and I realized what my escort meant by a five-alarm fire waiting to happen. As far as her looks went, she could be Native American, Italian, Greek, or any mingling of any dozen things. However, the things had mixed very nicely, and I’m sure that she was a great part of the reason for the success of the diner.