Mary McBride – Baby, Baby, Baby (страница 7)

She didn’t have to worry about their names, though. As they passed on the sidewalk in front of her yard, both sisters waved and called in chirpy unison, “Hi, Melody,” getting her name wrong as they always did. Then, without slowing, they continued on to 1224 where they quite suddenly put on the brakes.

“Hi, there,” Susan or Sandy purred.

“Hi, there,” Sandy or Susan echoed.

“Morning, ladies.”

That voice! That sandpapery baritone with its top notes of booze and tobacco nearly brought Melanie to her knees. One quick glance revealed her ex-husband, a vision in a faded denim shirt and jeans, lolling on the little front porch next door as if he actually belonged there.

While he was chatting up the Wrenns, Melanie stalked down the walk for her paper. It wasn’t on the walk, or under her little boxwood hedge, or anywhere to be seen. It was when she turned back toward her house and cast another furtive glance in Sonny’s direction that she realized he was sitting there with the sports section draped over his knee. The son of a bitch stole her newspaper!

The minute Susan and Sandy cooed “Nice meeting you” and got under way again, Melanie yelled, “Is that my paper?”

“I borrowed it to look at the Classifieds,” he called back.

She chewed on a few prime curses before she shouted, “Well, are you done?”

“Almost.” He picked up the paper and disappeared behind it, apparently without the slightest intention of returning it to her in the near future.

God! Nobody on the planet could set her hair on fire the way Sonny did. She knew she should’ve shrugged with monumental indifference and sauntered back inside her house, but instead she clenched her fists and went charging across her yard toward his.

“Give me my damn paper,” she shrieked as she pounded up the little flight of stairs to his porch. But just as she reached to grab it from his hands, Sonny stood and held the paper high over his head.

“Just a minute, Mel. I want to see if my ad is in here.”

She glared at him. Not that she cared one bit or was even mildly curious, but she still heard herself asking, “What ad?”

Sonny was looking up now, squinting in order to read the paper high over his head and well out of her reach. “This ad,” he said. “Good. They got it in.”

Melanie was gearing up for a leap worthy of a W.N.B.A. superstar when he suddenly snapped the paper closed and handed it to her. “What ad?” she asked again.

“I’m selling my car.”

He lowered himself onto the thick sandstone blocks that formed the sidewall of the small porch while Melanie continued to stand. She wasn’t at all sure that she’d heard him right. He’d had that gas-swilling, evil, black vehicle forever. It wasn’t just transportation. It was his alter ego, as much a part of him as his sea-colored eyes and his devastating smile.

“You’re selling the Corvette?”

“Yep.” He leaned back against the house and slung a jean’s-clad leg up onto the porch wall. “You were right. It’s not a family car.”

She blinked. “You don’t have a family, Sonny.”

“Not yet.” He cocked his head, squinting against the morning sun at Melanie’s back, but nevertheless pinning her with eyes that had turned a deep and warm Bahamian blue. “But I’m working on it.”

“Well, I wish you’d work on it someplace else.” She let go of an exasperated sigh as she plopped down on the top step. Her anger seemed to suddenly fizzle out, frustration taking its place. “This is crazy, Sonny. Buying this house. Pretending to be a docile Cop on the Block when you’re nothing of the sort, not to mention pretending to be Joe Homeowner.”

“I’m not pretending.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”

“I’ve changed, Mel. Honest to God. Just give me a chance to—”

“Stop. I don’t want to hear this.” As she spoke, without even being aware of it, she was rolling the classified pages into a tight little log. When Sonny reached out for her hand, she batted his away with her newly discovered weapon. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, then grinned. “You’re going to have to iron that paper before you read it, Felix. I know how much you hate wrinkled news.”

That did it. She was mad again, and only partly because he was right. She despised it when anybody read the paper before she did and got the pages all misaligned and unwieldy and…well…just messy.

“I’ll just take my wrinkled news and go home,” she said, snatching up the rest of the paper he’d littered all over the porch. “And since you’re the Cop on the Block, I don’t think I should have to remind you that it’s illegal to take someone else’s property, Lieutenant Randle.”

“It won’t happen again,” he said solemnly despite the twinkle in his eyes. She was halfway across the driveway when he called, “Hey, Mel.”

Now what? “What?” she snapped.

“Got any plans for this afternoon?”

Did she have any plans? That was a little like asking the state of Idaho if it had any potatoes, wasn’t it? “Yes, I do. Why?”

“I need to drop the ’Vette off at Stover’s Garage. There’s a kid up there who’s going to detail it for me before I sell it. I wondered if you could give me a ride back.”

She sighed. “Okay. But the only reason I’m doing it is because I don’t think you’re capable of letting that car out of your sight for more than two seconds. I’ll believe it when I see it.” She looked at her watch. “I’ll pick you up at Stover’s at eleven, Sonny. That doesn’t mean eleven-ten or eleven-fifteen.”

“Mel, darlin’, eleven to you means ten forty-five. I’ll be there.”

“I doubt it,” she muttered under her breath.

At ten forty-five, true to his word, Sonny was out in front of Stover’s Garage, watching the Saturday traffic on Grant Parkway for Melanie’s little Miata. He chuckled to himself, thinking how he’d raised her hackles with the newspaper this morning. It hadn’t been intentional. He’d planned to read the ads, then press every seam and fold before slipping the whole thing back into its plastic sleeve and tossing it onto her front walk.

Still, he had to admit he kind of enjoyed her snit. It had been a while since he’d seen one. Not that he found all of her quibbles and quirks endearing, particularly the virgin newspaper one, but they all stemmed from the part of her he loved and needed so desperately in his life. She was as beautiful and predictable as the sunrise, and he’d spent way too many years alone in the dark.

And as much as he needed her stability, she needed him to loosen her up, to raise those hackles of hers and ruffle her pretty feathers once in a while so they didn’t harden in concrete. Damned if she’d acknowledge it, though.

He looked over his shoulder at his car—low slung, black as Darth Vader and twice as dangerous—parked on the garage’s back lot between a wimpy turquoise Neon and a hulking Chevy Suburban. For a second he was tempted to snatch his key off the pegboard in the back room, start the throaty engine, and peel out onto the parkway after laying down ten feet of rubber in a desperate attempt to recapture his youth. But why he wanted to do that was a mystery. His youth had sucked. So had his entire life until Melanie had come into it.

He reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette and was lighting it just as familiar voice nearby said, “Hey, Lieutenant, babe. Long time no see. What you up to these days?”

Sonny had a network of snitches all over the city that was the envy of every cop in every precinct. Hookers and pushers and thugs. Dime-bag men with dollar grudges. Disenchanted gang bangers. Snoopy grandmas who spent their days glued to their front windows. Some of them knew him as a vice cop. To others he was just a guy out hustling on the streets like everybody else.

Walking toward him now in a halter top and short shorts and on high platform shoes was a young woman he knew only as Lovey. She wasn’t much over twenty and had huge, sleepy amber eyes and skin the color of café au lait with enough needle tracks to make her a leading contender for Miss Pincushion. What a waste of a beautiful young woman.

“Hey, Lovey. How’s it going?” He plucked another cigarette from his pocket, lit it, and handed it to her.

“Thanks, man.” She reached out a long-nailed, slightly trembling hand for the proffered smoke, no doubt in need of a much more potent fix. “Hey. I heard you got shot.”

“Nah. That was just a nasty rumor somebody started,” Sonny said. “Or maybe wishful thinking.”

“You got enemies, Lieutenant?”

“One or two,” he said. “You know, that offer I made you a while back about the rehab program still stands. You interested?”

Lovey shrugged and inhaled so deeply there was hardly anything to exhale. “Maybe one of these days. You still in the market for information about Slink Kinnison?”

Was he! He’d been trying for more than five years to pin something that would stick to that scumbag and send him away so he couldn’t get any more sixth and seventh graders hooked on his locally made and often lethal meth. Last week’s raid hadn’t put a dent in the guy’s operation. If anything, it probably gratified him to have blown Sonny through a window.

Already reaching for his wallet and a couple of twenties for Lovey’s information, Sonny had to remind himself that he wasn’t on the job right now, which meant he wouldn’t be reimbursed for the money he laid out, no matter how important her information was.