“I’m pulling you off the streets until this is settled.” Jefferina put her vehicle in gear and pulled out of the police station’s parking lot. “Call it vacation time.”
Macayla thought she had never seen anything as beautiful as the late morning sun after a night in jail and an early morning bail hearing.
She tried to take a deep breath but her throat was still fear-locked. Shallow breaths was all she was good for at the moment. “I can’t afford a vacation. I’ve haven’t earned this month’s rent. And now I owe you bail money.”
“Only if you don’t show up for your court date. And we both know you will.”
“Thanks again for doing that. I wouldn’t have asked but I didn’t have anyone else to call.”
Jefferina glanced at her. “Why not, Mac? You could have friends. You just hold us at bay.”
Us. Macayla didn’t think in terms of having friends in the plural. She had acquaintances and colleagues, in a matter of speaking. But friends? Friends were people who took your side, even when you were in trouble. They tried to understand and help. Did her boss really consider herself Mac’s friend? How could she be so dense as to not understand that?
Macayla felt instantly ashamed for not considering Jefferina a friend before now. Jefferina had given her a job when no one else had, even though she knew Mac had avoided the whole truth about her past. And when push came to shove, Jefferina had been her one call because there was no one else. A small mercy that she was very much grateful for.
The only other person she wanted to call was thousands of miles away, and besides, she didn’t want to drag him further into her problems. According to Mullins, Oliver was already on his radar. Knowing her was something Oliver might come to regret now that she’d been arrested. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She hoped he never learned about last night.
She glanced at Jefferina. “Why did you bail me out? I mean, you have more reason now than before to think I’m mixed up in some sort of criminal activity.”
Jefferina drummed her fingers on her dashboard. “I never said I thought you were guilty of anything. I just needed to verify a few things. I’ve done some checking around.”
“And?”
“I discovered in going over your receipts that you routinely undercharge your billable hours. I know for a fact that you trailed that Dalmatian for more hours than you claimed last week. That’s not the action of a devious person.” She sent Macayla a sideways glance. “I haven’t billed the owners yet. You’re low on cash. Could be you need to revise your hours upward by two.”
Mac shook her head. “That’s not my style.”
“Sucker.” Jefferina smiled triumphantly and shook her head. “So then, I trust you. End of debate. Okay?”
Macayla didn’t have a smile left in her.
“We’re going to have a serious talk, later, about who could be trying to set you up to take the fall for these crimes. But right now, you need food and then rest. Okay? So drink up.”
Macayla gratefully sipped the coffee Jefferina had so thoughtfully brought her. Her car—Jefferina’s cousin’s car, that is—had been impounded for evidence collection. To be released later in the day.
Don’t leave town. Those were Mullins’s final words to her. As if she had more than bus money home.
She took a longer sip of coffee. The heat seemed to be opening up her windpipe.
They’d offered her something they called “dinner” in the cell last night, and “breakfast” before the morning’s hearing, but she hadn’t eaten anything. She was ravenous now but too queasy to think of eating. Every bone in her body ached from sitting for hours in the most uncomfortable chairs in America, and the unforgiving bunk of her cell. Maybe they were police-issue chairs, designed to numb the butt and eventually work that numbness up into the brain. But now her brain was coming back online, and one thought superseded everything else. It was one Jefferina had homed in on, too.
Someone is setting me up. Massey? And not just for misdemeanor petnapping. The Boxer, a show dog, would have been a felony. And who knows what others were too?
The hints had been there for a few days, she realized now. Sam’s remarks. Then Massey’s accusations. Then Gerald’s rumor-spreading when he came to help out with her raccoon situation. She’d never taken any of it seriously.
But the police saw it differently. To hear Mullins talk, she was the mastermind of a criminal gang. Why would she risk her freedom to steal dogs?
Oh yeah, for fame and glory. The very things she’d run from.
Her mind wandered through the myriad questions Mullins had phrased and rephrased over the hours of their interview. But there was nothing left but a jumble of fear, fatigue, and outrage. She knew she wouldn’t be able to think of anything else until she found a thread of a clue she could hold on to.
The missing greyhounds seemed to be at the beginning of her problems.
Mullins hadn’t even mentioned the shooting that occurred the night they were found! Did he not know about it? Had the St. Petersburg police not shared that little tidbit in their serious intercity cooperation notes?
Mac’s pulse accelerated on that thought, but it was only to move from a slow thump-thump stroll to a whoppidy-whop lope. Adrenaline overload made for a bad morning after. Where was she? Oh yeah.
Was it a good thing her interrogator didn’t know about the infrared video she’d shot? Or was the non-mention just more holding back by Mullins? Wouldn’t it prove that she had nothing to do with the greyhounds or their death? All the proof the police had, other than the anonymous phone call, that shots had been fired had come from her. Who would invite the police to a dognapping gone wrong?
Of course, she’d hadn’t called them. She’d been too busy trying not to die when they arrived. But someone had.
Point one in her favor. Find that someone.
She was too tired to look in her purse for a pen and a scrap of paper. She would have to remember that. What else about that night?
She hadn’t known about the racing dogs being stolen for ransom until two weeks after they were found. But the police knew. They had been called in at the beginning. Then, when they failed, Jefferina’s private detective agency had gotten a call from the owners to try to locate them. And that’s where her part in the discovery came into play.
She glanced at Jefferina, who was mouthing obscenities at the slowpoke driver in front of her. She’d said no talk until later. But one question couldn’t wait.
“Why didn’t you tell me the missing greyhounds belonged to Jarvis Henley?”
“How did you—?” Her boss’s full mouth flattened out. “Detective Mullins.”
“How well do you know Jarvis Henley?”
Jefferina shrugged. “He’s a local wealthy businessman with fingers in a lot of pies. He’s driven business my way since I opened. Before you ask, our interactions are something I cannot discuss with you. But I consider him a good client. He pays promptly. Or is that what you’re asking me?”
Macayla debated her next question. Jefferina hadn’t said Henley himself was a regular client. Yet private detectives kept confidential their clients and their sources. A cheated-upon spouse often didn’t want that information to become public knowledge any more than the cheater. A businessman would have multiple uses for a PI. Not her business, perhaps. That’s why she hadn’t asked about the owner of the greyhounds at the time. Her job was to find the animals.
Would it have made a difference if she’d known wealthy, powerful people were involved? Maybe. She’d have been even more careful than usual, that’s for certain.
Mac glanced sideways at her boss. She needed to know how much her boss knew. And that meant trusting Jefferina in return.
“You haven’t asked me much about this.”
“I was waiting for you to settle. You’re still shaking. Finish that coffee while it’s hot.”
Macayla sipped her coffee before saying, “Detective Mullins says he’s got a good case.”
That brought Jefferina’s head turning her way. “What, exactly, are the charges? What did they ask you?”
Macayla told her boss about how she had been picked up. It had been a sting meant to capture the real thieves. She told her about how strangely Ms. Siler had behaved when Mac brought the Boxer back. And how she’d insisted on handing her money, which turned out to be marked bills that the police had given her to pass on to the person who brought her dog back. They’d used Mac’s possession of the money to arrest her. Who had set her up? That was the question uppermost in her mind.
A day ago Mac might have been less direct, but her reputation, to say nothing of her possible freedom, was now on the line. “You sent me to locate the Silers’ Boxer. Did Ms. Siler call you?”
“No.” Jefferina turned off the street and into the drive-in lane of a fast-food restaurant. “Marcia took the call.” Marcia was the office secretary.
“Ms. Siler seemed to think she’d spoken to me.”
Jefferina glanced at Mac, dark eyes flashing in the console’s reflected light. “You sure she said that?”
“Absolutely. Ms. Siler told the police the person she spoke with when her dog was snatched had demanded half the money upfront. The bills she gave me were a ‘second payment.’”
“That’s how she phrased it? ‘Second payment’?”
Mac frowned. “Yes. I’m certain of the wording because it struck me as odd. Does Marcia accept clients’ payments?”
“Hell to the no. I handle all the money. Hold that thought.”
Mac breathed in the greasy aroma of fried food as Jefferina leaned out her window to order two breakfast sandwiches, one with extra Tabasco sauce, and more coffee.
Macayla tried to look casual as she checked her purse for cash. The thought of breakfast was quickly gaining ground over her former queasiness. She found just enough to pay for a sandwich. She’d have to owe her boss for the coffee.
When she tried to offer the cash, Jefferina gave her a look that made her jerk her hand, and the cash, back. “Thanks.”
Jefferina paid and handed Mac a bag of sandwiches. The smell emanating from it made Mac’s stomach crimp and her mouth water. Maybe food would go down after all.
Jefferina’s simple kindnesses were piling up fast, none because of anything Macayla had done to earn them. In fact, she’d deliberately kept herself apart.
It struck Mac that she’d been sailing through her life for the last year, only skimming the surface, never looking deeply into anything. It was the opposite of the life she’d lived before, where she’d become deeply invested in the lives of each of the children she advocated for. When she’d bottomed out, it was all the way to the deep end of the pool. Only in the past week had she begun to surface with a sense of clarity and sensation.
Since Oliver.
She’d felt a lot of different things in his company. Not all of them toe-curling orgasmic. Her reawakening to feeling was like a foot gone to sleep now stinging to life. He’d made her ache like crazy to touch him. And touch him and hold and kiss and—
Macayla jumped when she was elbowed by Jefferina. “Take a sandwich and pass the bag back to me. I’m starving.”
Macayla dived into the bag, offering the first sandwich to her boss then unwrapping the second for herself. The first bite of scrambled eggs, bacon, and cheese made her sigh out loud. Coming alive even made food taste better. She had Oliver to thank for that, too.
That night on the beach after making love, they’d eaten two huge platters of stone crabs.
The remembrance of him sucking the butter off her fingertips made her face heat up. And other parts as well. He’d been so good for her. More than he would ever know.
Setting the sandwich aside, she checked her phone. Oliver hadn’t called.
She sighed and tucked it away. She shouldn’t count on him calling. She knew that. It was nice while it lasted. Better than nice. His interest in her had made her aware for the first time in a long time that maybe there were feelings worth taking a risk on. Her former trauma counselor would have been proud of her.
She took another healthy bite of her breakfast. OMG. When had she last tasted bacon? Definitely one of civilization’s greater achievements. Ramen noodle budget diet be damned. She was going to have to get out more. Eat more. Make more money.
When she’d slept and showered and eaten again, she was going to have to do some investigating of her own. That didn’t mean she didn’t have to make a living first.
When Jefferina pulled up outside her bungalow, Macayla turned to her. “I will understand if you say no, seeing that you just bailed me out, but I could use something to do besides wash pups at the vet’s until this is straightened out. Is there any kind of work I can do for you over the next few days? I can file, make phone calls, follow up with creditors.”
“I’d have to fire Marcia. Those are her jobs. But what are friends for. Bye-bye, Marcia.”
“Oh no, don’t—” Mac saw her boss’s slow smile a bit late. “Right. You wouldn’t fire Marcia.”
“But I do have some boring PI tasks you could do—using the computer to run down details on a few cases. I have a workers’ compensation fraud case that needs a medical history check. Another where I need the time clock run on some employees’ hours. And yet another case where we routinely check for criminal records and driving records for potential employees. These are things I fit in between more important cases.”
“I can do that.”
“Then I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning and you can get right to work.”
That surprised Macayla. “Honestly, I’d rather be working than trying to sleep during the day.”
Jefferina gave her the look. “You’re exhausted. Once you get in bed, you won’t be arguing with me. Get your mind straight and your drama under control. I’ll be by first thing in the morning. Six a.m. at the latest.”
Macayla didn’t argue. She was itching to shower off the flop sweat of having spent a night as a guest of the local police.
Jefferina was right about the drama part, too. Someone was out to get her. She doubted it would stop now. She needed to figure out who and why before it was too late.
She gulped. Too late would be after she was convicted.
Back in her home, Mac took a shower—then glanced at her phone, just to make certain she hadn’t missed a call. And then, to prove to herself that she wasn’t one of those pitiful people who sat by their phone praying for it to chime, she shut off the ringer so that she could sleep undisturbed. Twice before actually falling asleep, she checked to make sure she wasn’t missing a call from Jefferina, or the police, she told herself.
Or maybe she was just feeling a tiny bit sorry for herself.