Wendy Hornsby - Midnight Baby

“Yes.” The big smile was gone. “Is Hilly okay? God, she’s such a sweet kid.”

“Where’s the boss?” Mike asked.

She pointed toward the back of the bar.

Mike put his lips close to my ear. “Wait for me. I’ll be right back.”

The waitress stayed with me.

“Where is Hilly?” she asked.

“How well do you know her?” I asked.

“Just through Lacy. Hilly used to drop in sometimes when she needed someone to talk to.”

“You’re close to Lacy?”

She raised a shoulder. “We work together, that’s all. She doesn’t party much.”

“I thought she partied with Randy Ramsdale.”

“I don’t know what was going on with those two. My guess is Lacy likes Hilly a whole lot more than her father. He can be a real dweeb. And he’s old. Forty at least.” She had to be at least twenty-one to serve beer. If I had been a cocktail waitress, I would have carded her. She asked, “Is he back, too?”

“I don’t know. No one answers the phone.”

“Well, if you see Hilly, say hi for me.” She was ready to go back to work. “Tell her to drop in.”

I put my hand on her arm. “Hillary died two days ago.”

“Died?” she gasped. I saw tears in her eyes before she lowered her head and ran off into the crowd.

The smoke and the happy din had become oppressive. I went out into the cool night to wait for Mike. I was standing beside his car, watching for red Corvettes, when he came out five minutes later.

“Did you call Lacy?” I asked.

“No one’s home.” He unlocked the car door for me. “No one seems to know where Ramsdale is, either. I called his ex-wife again and got the machine. I’ll do some checking around, come back later.” He nudged my shoulder. “When I have more socially acceptable photographs, right?”

“So what are we going to do now?” I asked.

“Too late to do anything more tonight. How about we go home?”

I didn’t argue. I sank into the car seat wearily, yawned when he yawned a few times.

Traffic headed north on the San Diego Freeway was heavy and slow, an endless river of taillights in front of us, headlights behind. Mike had a condo in Sherman Oaks, a relic from his second marriage. The decor was a little heavy on black lacquer and gray leather for my taste, but it was nice. I only wished it weren’t so far away. I was having trouble staying awake.

“You’d make a pretty good cop,” Mike said, startling me from a stupor. “Good police do more listening than talking.”

“I keep thinking about those poor people, the Metranos. It just doesn’t seem right. Here are good people, love their kids, do the right things for them, invest their hopes in them. The very worst thing that could happen to them is to have one of their children taken away. Then I think about old Sly. Would anybody even notice if he got snatched? Where’s the justice here? We’re one kid short on one hand, one kid left over on the other. But the equation will not balance.”

“Which cliche do you want, Maggie? Shit happens? Life ain’t fair? Go figure?”

I looked over at him. “So we know Pisces was Hillary Ramsdale. Do you think Hillary could have been Amy Elizabeth Metrano?”

“Anything’s possible. Not likely in this case, but possible.”

“Too bizarre, though. That equation doesn’t seem to work, either.”

“You sound tired,” he said. “You okay?”

“It’s been one hell of a day, hasn’t it?”

“What do you want for dinner?” he asked. He had dark circles under his gray eyes. “We can go out or stop at the market for something to cook. Barbecue some chicken if you like.”

“Whatever you want. I’m not very hungry. It’s too late to eat.”

“We haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

I had been fiddling with the set of handcuffs Mike always had dangling from his turn indicator. They were tarnished, a little rusty at the hinges.

“Things been slow at the office, dear?” I asked. “From the look of these cuffs, you haven’t arrested anyone for a while.”

“I don’t use that set for arresting people,” he said, playful malice shining from his narrowed eyes. “You like to play with handcuffs?”

I laughed. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You really need two sets to do it right, though. I think I have some more in the trunk.”

“Keep them there.”

“You might like it, Maggie. Cuff you to the bedpost tonight, I could have my way with you all night long. Make you scream in ecstasy fifty times in a row. If I wanted to.”

“You don’t need cuffs for that, cupcake.” I was laughing, though I wasn’t quite sure whether he was serious. All right, so I didn’t have him completely figured out yet, either.

“Think about it,” he said.

“Right.”

Mike winked lewdly at me and flicked the handcuffs to set them swinging. “So? What’ll it be?”

I took the handcuffs off the turn indicator, opened them, and snapped one over Mike’s right wrist.

“Real funny,” he said, nonplussed. The empty cuff dangled from his wrist.

“Hope you have the key,” I said, and locked the second cuff around the steering wheel. “Now you’re trapped. I can do anything I want with you.”

“Jesus, Maggie,” he laughed, but he was nervous, pulling against the chain. “Get them off me. The key is on the ring in my right pocket.”

“The key ring’s in your pocket?”

He stretched up from the seat so I could get my hand into his pocket. I put my hand into his pocket all right, but I didn’t bother with the key ring.

My hand was cold and his pocket was deliciously warm, so I just felt around inside there. Rubbed his flat tummy, reached all the way down to the pocket’s bottom seam, squeezed his thigh, worked my way down into his groin.

“Maggie,” he said, rattling the cuff against the wheel. “Knock it off. Unlock these damn things.”

“Hell, no. I’m having fun.” I stroked him through the fabric, felt him rise under my hand. “And so are you.”

“I am not. Now stop.”

“Your lips say no, no, no, but your hard-on says yes, yes, yes.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “You’re going to make me hit something.”

“Then pull over.” I took my hand out of his pocket and started to work on his belt. I opened his fly. Up to that point, I had only been teasing. The fun was all in making him wonder – okay, worry – about how far I would go. Keep him off guard. As soon as I touched his bare skin, the game changed.

“Oh, for God’s sake, baby,” he said, feigning shock when my fingertip grazed him. But he tilted his hips forward and helped clear his belt away with his free hand so that I could get to him more easily. He caught my hand for just an instant. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to make you scream with ecstasy fifty times in a row.” My hand was inside his shorts. I ran two fingers down his smooth, firm length, circled his balls, started up again. His breath was coming in deep, regular sighs.

A greaseball astride a Harley roared up beside us on Mike’s side, looked in, figured out what was going on, gave me a grin and a raised-fist salute, then roared off screaming “Yeeha,” or something close to it.

“People are watching,” Mike said.

“Let them.” I cuddled up against him, kissed the side of his neck, ran my tongue around the rim of his ear while my hand stroked him. With my lips against his five-o’clock shadow, I said, “What do you want me to do?”

He shrugged, smiled shyly. “I swear, you’ll make me run into something.”

“Just give me warning when you see it coming,” I said.

“I promise,” he said, and sighed again.

I opened his suit pants as far as I could, and went down on him. He was a very sweet man, lovely to behold. I took as much of him into my mouth as I could. I licked him, sucked on him, worried about bumps in the road, but gently bit him anyway. Never in my life had I imagined doing such a thing on the freeway, in traffic – cars zipping by on either side. Just thinking about where we were added a certain dimension to the pleasure. Weird, maybe. An antidote for fatigue, absolutely.