Once Upon A Killing (A Gass County Novel Book 2) (18 page)

              “Alright,” he said with a smile, and put the glass in the sink behind him. “So, since you’re gonna stay here, my name is Rick. What’s yours?” His hand combed through his thick black hair, displaying deep green eyes, and an even nicer, square jawline, she thought.

              “Melanie,” she answered between sips of beer. “Melanie Orchard. I’m here to see Officer Brody …, for some business. I’m a police officer and I’ve known Brody for a few years. Work, seminars, you name it. Just here to check some things out for a while.”

              “Brody’s friend, you say,” he mumbled and nodded a goodbye to the two ladies at the other end of the bar, before turning back to her. “Let’s make the rate thirty bucks.”

              “Because I know Brody?” she said, puzzled.

              “Sure. He’s helped me out too many times to even remember when brawls have started or people have gotten too drunk. Everyone knows not to mess with the Sheriff,” he smiled and leaned against the back wall of the bar opening a soda can. “His love of fines and ticketing is infamous. That his pure pleasure is to let someone spend a night in jail. He even had the holding cell repainted and recently bought new sheets for the bed just to hold people longer, for the fun of it.”

              She smiled back and shook her head slowly. “Yep, sounds like he hasn’t changed at all.”

              “If you’re alright here I am going to clean up a few tables and tell the last few customers at the very back booth to leave,” he nodded over to a teenaged couple only having eyes for each other, “then lock up for the night. See you tomorrow for breakfast. I’ll be in the kitchen. Good night.”

              She watched him walk away and caught herself staring at his ass. Even with an unshaven face and hair a bit too long his backside made up for it, she thought, then admired how the back of the jeans clung nicely to his cheeks, and the way his hands folded the long shirt sleeves up his arm. A man in jeans was always nice to look at, but a man in perfectly fitted jeans, a nice smile, and a dark voice was plain dangerous. She downed the last of the beer and placed the bottle on the counter before she strode quickly over to the wooden staircase gripping the back wall of the bar and hurried up the steps, trying not to get another visual of the man in jeans.

              She was only here for a short time, and she was not here for pleasure. She was here to see Brody.

              The key to door number four fell smoothly into the key hole and turned just as nicely. She was stunned. The room inside lay white as snow in the shadows of the evening, and as her hand reached up to turn the light switch on the wall the room looked even better.

              As if the man downstairs was from the Jane Austen era, the room had been decorated in a soft beige, where white linens featuring crocheted dainty yellow roses covered a bed fit for two. Along the window soft curtains hung from top to bottom, heavy skirts dusting the floor boards, reminding her more of a historical residence a hundred years in the past than a spare room on top of a bar in the middle of chilly America.

              “You’ll be alright in here, Officer?” a dark voice brushed by her shoulder, causing a shudder, which made her turn.

              “Most certainly. It’s more than I expected,” she answered and held the door open.

              “Well, goodnight then. I’ll see you in the morning for that breakfast I mentioned earlier. Sleep tight, and feel free to fill up the bath with hot water. I’ve already showered today, so whatever hot water is left is yours. Enjoy it.” Rick’s long legs brought him quickly down the corridor, and in the slight opening of her door she watched him enter his room at the end, appreciating a last glimpse of his back side before he was engulfed in the darkness.

              The bath tub filled up nicely, and she was surprised a man had even thought about stocking the room with bubble bath and robes. Not only one, but two, implying an invitation for someone during her short stay, but reluctantly she shed the intensifying thought as her phone rang in the near distance.

              “Welcome to town, Melanie,” a stern voice said on the other side.

              “Officer Brody Jensen, nice to finally talk to you again. Been a while now. Thanks for the invitation,” she said softly and relaxed her heavy head back onto the soft towel she’d rolled up behind her neck before the phone rang.

              “Can never get too much help around here. Thanks for coming. Heard from Rick you’re staying at the pub, which is great, since I’ll probably be there in the morning for breakfast as well,” his voice continued as an officer shouting commands into her ear. Inside she was laughing, knowing how much of a vacation he was in need of, or maybe a woman would do the trick. Loosen up whatever wire he had wound up so tight a slight crack in his appearance might kill him. Not that she was interested. She’d had enough of the cop type, and she knew if anything was ever going to happen, the opposite type of a man was what she would need. Someone not wired tight, not in need of being correct all the time, and who was as laid back as she wished she was. At the moment, the man just a few rooms down the darkened corridor seemed to fit the description.

              She hadn’t known him more than an hour, two tops, but she was certain he was different from the league of colleagues she was used to spending every waking minute with, every day of the year. This, in Primrose Valley, was a nice break. Brody might want to use her knowledge, but she was not on an assignment and had no one to report back to. Maybe going on sick leave wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

              “Melanie,” a voice from the other end of the line broke her dream. “Still there?”

              “Yes, sorry, just relaxing in the tub Rick had redone. The bubbles caressing my body are putting me to sleep,” she sighed and closed her eyes.

              “Too much information,” the voice gave a cough on the other side. “I’ll see you in the AM for breakfast at the pub. Seven hundred, Melanie. Good night.”

              He hung up abruptly making the phone beep endlessly, and for a while she listened to the repetitive sound before she stretched her arm across the empty space between the tub and the sink and let the phone rest a top of the porcelain sink, and she once more closed her eyes and imagined what tomorrow might hold. What did Brody want? How would breakfast taste? And how well would the clothes fit Rick?

“It will be a long night,” she smiled and sunk deeper into the bubbles.

Chapter Twenty-four

That couldn’t have been what I think it was?
Brody told himself slowing the white and shiny cruiser to a full stop before turning it around on the narrow road leading out from town toward the many farms and their wide fields filled with grass and roaming cattle. Better patrol everything, he always told himself, you never know what you might see, and sure enough, here he was, late Friday night driving along a deserted road outside of town when the pale skin of a bare foot sticking up from the ditch had caught his attention.

The head beams from the cruiser confirmed his assumption as he placed it in park, shut off the ignition, and grabbed a flashlight from the passenger seat. The gravel of the country road crushed slowly underneath the soles of his shoes as his steps moved him along the ditch until the light in his hand caught the bare foot. A slender foot, surely belonging to a woman, he thought, and a sudden fire of panic rose within his chest. This was a small town, and except for last year’s kidnapping incident, this town was so low on the crime map it didn’t exist. But here he was, not knowing if he was dealing with someone alive, someone dead, or maybe… just a limb. He gulped loudly and let his flashlight illuminate the entire length of the leg until he was met by two squinting eyes and the flash of a wide smile.

“Hey, Brody…”

His lungs gave release, and his hand tugged at his hat, nodding in response.

“How are you doin’ tonight, Christine?”

“Juuuust great. I was just going to walk home because Mary took my keys and, you know what Brody, it’s faaaaaaaaaaar,” her voice dragged the sound until the air inside her lungs had emptied, then she smiled again and shut her eyes. “I figured I’d just lie down and take a little snoozer. How are you doing, Brody? Bro-ho-de-hee,” she giggled, her body slanting head down in the ditch. She was slurring enough to make him think she’d been to visit a Scottish whiskey factory, but he doubted it. Around this neighborhood beer was the ideal drink, unless a famous mojito slipped down from Rick, at the pub.

“How much did you have to drink tonight?”

“Um,” she mumbled and tried to find some fingers on her hand before she started counting. “Maybe one, or two… Mary told me she’d drive me home, and that Wayne had told her I needed to let loose more. I thought I’d show him I’m not as boring as I might seem.”

“Aha, well first of all, you’re not boring, Christine. I’m not sure who made you think that? Secondly, you seem quite exhausted from one, maybe two, drinks, and what possessed you to walk home? You do remember you live outside of town, right?” This situation was quite peculiar for Christine. She rarely drank, worked a lot, and seldom did anything as drastic as this stunt.

“Oh my God, you talk a lot, Officer. Wanna handcuff me and have some fun?” she laughed and tried to hold up both of her arms steady, without success. “That outfit does things to my panties…”

“Alright, Christine, no touching allowed. I’m gonna stop you right there. First of all, you might regret all of this by morning, and secondly, I’m not sure Wayne would be too fond of this conversation.” He hooked the flashlight on to his belt and moved slowly down the ditch to grab ahold of her upper arms, hoping she wouldn’t slide out of his grip like a slippery octopus when he tried to get her up.

“Wayne, Wayne, Wayne, pain, schmain. We’ll invite him, Brody, “she held up a pointing finger making her point. “And we’ll have a threesome. I haven’t done that yet, and it’s on my bucket list, among other things like…” her voice went from a slur to an incoherent mumble and she closed her eyes and let go of a long breath, smelling of the mint he’d expected was smashed thick in that Mojito.

“Come on, Christine, I’m gonna help you up from the ditch before you catch a cold in these clothes,” he said, trying to pull some of the skirt fabric down to her knees to cover some lingerie playing peek-a-boo from underneath her clothes.
Pretty,
he thought, but cursed himself for even giving his mind a chance for such nonsense. This was not his girl. She belonged to his best friend. Time to back off and think of something completely opposite, like the safety laws for handguns in public places. It seemed to work, the heated feeling growing in his pants went ice-cold in a nano-second. “Come on, you’re gonna catch a cold or someone else, someone maybe wrong, picks you up instead of me tonight.”

“And you’re just Mr. Right, aren’t you Officer?” she giggled again and dragged her fingers down the tie of his uniform. “Why are you single, Brody? You’re hot,” her mouth wouldn’t give him a break tonight as he dragged her into standing position, before she sunk against his chest and held tight to that tie of his searching for some type of balance. “And you smell of that clean soap I sniff walking by aisle thirteen at Harold’s.”

He hooked one strong arm around her back and secured her to his side. “Let’s get to my cruiser, okay. We’re almost there, only a few more steps, Christine. You hear me?” Her eyes had closed again and his mind cursed Rick down at the pub for not refusing her another drink.

“Ouch!” she shouted in pain, and grabbed on to his shirt with both hands. “I forgot I hurt my leg and that’s why I had to rest and ended up landing in the ditch.”

“Hop on your one good leg, only two more steps, and I’ll have a look at it for you.” The back door of the cruiser opened and as she slid in across the plastic material of the seat, she found herself more exhausted than she had anticipated. She also found the seat to be extremely comfortable, similar to one of the beds in the suites she’d visited in New York. Maybe even those at a five-star resort. Brody’s voice robbed her of her daydream and catapulted her back into reality.

“You’ve got a swollen ankle the size of a hippo’s, Christine. Almost turning blue. How did this happen?” She enjoyed the touch of his coarse hand over her leg. The pain wasn’t as bad as when she’d leaned on it. “And now when I think of it, where are your shoes?”

She perked herself up on her elbows, and with unsteady eyes she watched the brim of his hat come up to watch her.
Man, if that face could just stop moving
, her mind made a note not to drink so much again.

“Mary lent me one of her high-heeled shoes but the heel slipped in the gravel when I tried to walk home, and I felt the pain then. That’s my tender leg, you know.”

He stopped stroking her lower leg, and placed his hand on the seat. “Yeah, I heard you took an unpleasant tumble down the ladder at the bakery not too long ago. Well, it’s not broken since you can obviously move it, but badly sprained.”

“Crutches again then, great. It seems like whenever I’m around Mary I hurt myself,” she said exasperated, and stretched out fully in the back seat, her feet hanging off the plastic fabric and out the open door.