Most Wanted Woman. Maggie Price
the kitchen door swing open.
“Need some help?”
Keeping a grip on O’Toole’s thumb, she glanced across her shoulder. Howie Lyons stood with the door propped open, a metal mop bucket behind him. After six months of working together, Truelove’s night cook knew Regan could hold her own with an obnoxious drunk.
“I’ve got this covered.” She looked down at O’Toole. His face was beet-red, his forehead beaded with sweat. “I said no. Got it?”
“Yeah. Sweet Jesus, I hear ya.”
She let go of his thumb and stepped back two paces.
With his knees creaking in protest, he lurched to his feet. “Ya’ crazy broad! You tried ta’ break my thumb.”
“If I intended to break it, you’d need a cast right now.” She didn’t add that due to her paramedic training, she could also apply that cast. “Did you drive or walk tonight, Mr. O’Toole?”
“Can’t ’member,” he mumbled while massaging his bruised thumb.
Regan shoved the door open. A gleaming silver Beemer sporting a dealer’s tag sat in the parking lot beneath one of the mercury vapor lamps.
“You drove, but you’re walking home.” She held out a hand. “Give me your keys. I’ll put them behind the bar. You can pick the car up when you’re sober, like you did last week.”
When he continued glaring at her, she wiggled her fingers. “Keys. You try to drive, you could wind up in a cell.”
“Maybe.” Wobbling, he dug into a pocket of his khakis. Keys jangled as he slapped them into her palm. “Somebody oughta do something ’bout man-hatin’ women,” he sneered as he lurched out the door.
“Idiot,” Regan said under her breath. After setting the lock, she wove her way around the tables, then stepped behind the bar. She dropped O’Toole’s keys inside a drawer, then hesitated.
Still wearing his grease-smeared apron over his black T-shirt and jeans, Howie gave her a considering look while overturning chairs onto the tables on the far side of the dance floor. “Something wrong?”
“What if that moron staggers in front of a car and gets mowed down?”
“You nearly ripped off O’Toole’s thumb. Now you’re worried about him stepping in front of a car?”
“I’m thinking about Etta. If O’Toole gets hurt, Truelove’s could get sued because he got drunk here.”
“Right,” Howie said. “When I leave I’ll drive the route to his house. Make sure he hasn’t stumbled and hit his head.”
“Thanks.”
Since she had already washed the pitchers and glasses, re-stocked the cooler, wiped down the bar and locked the night’s receipts in the safe, Regan was free to head upstairs. Instead, she began overturning chairs onto the tables.
“You don’t have to do that,” Howie reminded her. “My job.”
“I’ve got time,” she said, hefting another chair.
Snagging an oversize broom, he began sweeping up peanut shells. “I guess neither of us have someone waitin’ at home,” he commented, his voice now harsh and bitter. “Regan, you ever know anyone who claimed to have found religion? Someone who went off the deep end, preaching fire and brimstone?”
“No.” Etta had told her she suspected the night cook’s motive for taking on the tavern’s janitorial duties after his wife left him was to delay going home to an empty apartment.
“It’s hard defending yourself when someone gets certain ideas into their head.” Howie shook his head. “There’s battles a person just can’t win.”
Regan pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. She wasn’t trying to win a battle. She was trying to stay hidden.
After a few minutes of their working in silence, Howie raised a shoulder as he wielded the broom. “I expect havin’ Josh McCall in town’ll make Etta happy, being they’re close.”
Regan felt another stab of unease as she pictured McCall sitting at the bar, watching her just a bit too closely with those dark eyes. Eyes that had made her shiver as she fought their hypnotic pull. She had become so accustomed to the numb bleakness inside her that feeling even a slight attraction to any man unnerved her.
With all the chairs overturned, she walked to the jukebox, its light painting her arm gold as she reached to flip off the power. “Do you know McCall?”
“Sure. His family’s been coming to Sundown long as I can remember. Josh and Etta’s oldest boy were forever getting into mischief.” Howie nudged the mop bucket toward a corner. “Those two caught hell one summer when they raided the Camp Fire Girls overnight jamboree.” He chuckled as he put his back into mopping. “Now Etta’s oldest is a minister and Josh is a cop. Who’d have thought?”
“I figured out the cop part on my own,” Regan muttered.
“What’d you say?”
“Nothing.” She slid the key to her apartment out of her jeans pocket. “I’m going upstairs. Lock up when you leave.”
“Will do.”
Giving the area a last check, she headed toward a door on the opposite side of the barroom. After dealing with the lock, she reached in and flipped on the light. The narrow staircase was as straight as a ruler, with no shadowy nooks or crannies in which someone could hide.
At the top of the stairs she paused, making sure the dead bolt she’d installed on the door was still latched. A study of the door-jamb revealed no notches or pry marks. Everything appeared undisturbed.
Even so, she felt a twinge of apprehension as the lock snicked open. She would continue to feel uneasy until she checked the French doors leading to the balcony that spanned the rear of the building.
As she stepped inside what had been her safe haven for six months, the familiar sense of grief and loneliness hit her. Memories flashed toward dangerous places as her mind formed a picture of Steven’s house in New Orleans, filled with antiques and furniture covered in rich fabrics. It had been a home where gleaming tables were crammed with framed photographs. Where rare old books filled floor-to-ceiling shelves and expertly lit paintings hung on silk-covered walls.
She had planned to live the rest of her life in that house with the man she loved. Raise their children and grow old.
Her dream had ended over a year ago when she found Steven dead from what everyone believed was suicide. Weeks later, after another man died on her account, she’d learned the truth.
Since the moment I met you, you’ve disappointed me, cher. I shared that disappointment with your fiancé. And your partner. How many more times are you going to disappoint me?
Because Detective Payne Creath’s voice played all too clearly in her ears, because the words filled her with guilt and remorse she would never be free of, she wrenched her thoughts from the past. She had to think about now. Make sure she was safe for another night.
Her gaze swept the small living area, skimming across the orange-and-brown plaid sofa, matching chair and watermarked coffee table Etta had scored at a garage sale. The latest copy of the Sundown Sentinel lay on the table at the same angle she’d left it beside the vase of daisies that had just started to fade. She stepped into the kitchenette tucked in an alcove. Her coffee mug still sat on the cork coaster placed exactly two inches from the edge of the chipped sink.
She headed across the living room, noting the lamp she’d left on in the bedroom still beamed light through the doorway. The pair of mullioned French doors were locked, with no discernible notches or pry marks on the jamb. The glass panes covered by sheer white curtains presented a possible safety hazard. Still, she considered the doors a necessity since they afforded an alternate escape route. And the balcony faced the lake, providing