Admit One (10 page)

“Very helpful.”

He shrugged. “I try.”

Leaning to the side, Sarah peered around the small cluster of patrons who had gathered in front of the table, obscuring her view. Come to think of it, she hadn’t seen Allie for a while, either. And Allie had been acting very squirrelly when she’d shown up at the theater.

Late.

Sarah wanted to know exactly what that was all about, but she hadn’t had a chance to talk to Allie during the performance. And now she seemed to have disappeared.

Something was going on, and Sarah was determined to get to the bottom of it.

Panning her gaze around, Sarah finally spotted her friend near the alcove that led to the restrooms. She was talking to Wesley Norbert. The little snake was smiling down at her, leaning in close. His hand came up to gently stroke her arm.

“Oh hell no,” she said aloud.

“What?”

She turned to look at Tucker. “Allie’s talking to Wesley Norbert.”

His gray eyes showed indifference. “So?”

“So? It’s
Wesley Norbert.”
She restrained herself from socking him again. “Her ex-fiancé?”

“I repeat: so?”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “So, we hate him. Imagine a big, fat snake curled in the corner with Allie. Would you still be blasé?”

“I don’t know. Are we pretending that Allie’s a mouse?”

Giving him up as a lost cause, Sarah returned her attention to the corner. Allie definitely looked uncomfortable. As Sarah watched, Allie tried to sidestep Wesley and his wandering hands, but he blocked her path. His expression had gone from flirtatious to cajoling. Allie shook her head. Frustration twisted Wesley’s features, but he tried cajoling again.

Allie, looking mutinous, said something that Wesley obviously didn’t like. She started to move past him.

This time he grabbed her arm. And not in a lover-like fashion.

“Oh, crap.”

“What?”

“The snake is trying to constrict the mouse.”

His expression darkening, Tucker sat down his beer and started to rise. One thing he wouldn’t stand for was a woman being pushed around.

Before Tucker could move, Sarah spotted Mason shoving his way through the crowd.

“Um, Tucker. You better get over there before Mason does.”

He followed her line of vision. “Aw,
hell.”

“Too late.”

Mason, who’d moved aside any obstacle in his way with the expediency of Moses parting the Red Sea, was now in Wesley Norbert’s face, and Allie was trying to push between them.

“That’s the last person he wants to pick a fight with,” she said, following as he too waded into the noisy crowd. “I don’t know if you know this, but Wesley’s a –”

“Shit.”

“– personal injury attorney,” she finished, after bumping into Tucker’s back. The crowd went
“Oh!”
and
“Ouch!”
as Wesley went down. 

“So much for not stealing the limelight,” Tucker said grimly.

Sarah sighed, and went to help clean up the mess.

“YOU
had to do it, didn’t you?” 

Will Hawbaker shook his head at Mason. Mason looked blandly back at him from behind bars. 

“Wesley Norbert, the biggest litigation-happy lawyer in the entire state of South Carolina, and you had to punch him in the face.”

“He was bothering Allison.”

“And you escalated the situation.”

“Escalated the situation? He
grabbed
her and yanked her around. All I did was trip and fall down with her, and
you
punched
me.”

“Would you like to press charges?”

“No, I would not like to press charges.”  He let his throbbing head fall back against the cinderblock wall. “I would
like
to be released from this sodding cell.”

“Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen until you’re arraigned, which I’ll try to get pushed through first thing tomorrow.  Just FYI, assaulting a lawyer in a public place, in front of witnesses, probably wasn’t the best idea. Norbert would have liked to tag you for drunk and disorderly, too, but since you passed the sobriety test I can only gather that your lack of judgment wasn’t fueled by alcohol.”

When Mason remained silent, Hawbaker stuffed his hands into his pockets and sighed. “You know,” he said, tall and dark and weary. “I had a date tonight. The play, a late dinner, hopefully a little stress-relieving activity afterward. And just as I’m about to make my move, I get a frantic call from my baby sister, who’s been caught in a bar fight between her litigious stiff of an ex and the British playboy whose signature move is rolling around with her on family graves. It’s like I was cockblocked by Jerry Springer.”

“I am not a playboy.” Mason’s tone was stiff. “And I’m not going to apologize for messing up your plans. In case you failed to hear me previously, he
g-grabbed
her.”

Horrified by the stammer, Mason crossed his arms over his chest.

Hawbaker studied him for a long moment. “I know,” he agreed, his tone a lot less confrontational. “There are witnesses. Technically, Norbert could find himself staring at his own battery charge if Allie wanted to press one against him.”

“Does she?” Mason couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Want to press charges?”

Hawbaker hesitated. “Not at this time.”

Mason detected a note of frustration in the other man’s tone, though it failed to mollify him. He guessed he couldn’t be upset with Allison for not wanting to create more tension between herself and her ex-fiancé, but…

Actually, yes. Yes, he could. The man was an arsehole and, from what Mason had observed, a bully. And yet
he
was the one sitting in jail.

“Did it feel good?” Hawbaker interrupted his inner monologue. “Punching Norbert,” he clarified when Mason looked up.

Mason examined the swollen, scraped knuckles of his right hand. “Bloody fantastic, actually.”

Hawbaker nodded. “Just between you and me, I’ve wanted to deck the little weasel since he broke it off with Allie. I envy you.”

Setting aside the frustration over his own situation, Mason leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees. “I don’t know the content of their disagreement,” he said, “as I wasn’t close enough to overhear. But I
did
see the look on Norbert’s face.” He glanced up at Will. “The man was trying, quite obviously, to win Allison’s favor, or agreement on some matter. And when he couldn’t, he was angry. Deeply angry. I hope…” Mason looked at his knuckles again, then clenched his fist. “I hope that you will make sure he doesn’t attempt to come near her again. I don’t trust him.”

“Join the club. I’ll deal with him,” he said, and there was such certainty in his voice that Mason relaxed for the first time since he’d been taken away from the bar in the back of the police cruiser. When he’d seen the angry way the man had laid hands on her, it had roused a protectiveness that was as fierce as it was foreign.

“I’d feel better if she wasn’t alone tonight.”

Hawbaker snorted.
“Alone
is a commodity in short supply at our house. Don’t worry. Norbert may be an idiot, but he’s not a fool. He’s not going to bother her.” The man pushed away from the wall and shook his head. “You know, this was a fairly sleepy little town before you blew back into it.”

“Well, cheers then.” Mason settled back on the uncomfortable bunk and stared at the ceiling, knowing he wouldn’t sleep a wink. “I’m delighted to have livened the place up.”

WILL
rolled up the sleeves of his shirt as he headed toward his office. Aside from the pissed off British thespian in their holding cell, the station was pretty quiet tonight. He nodded toward the front desk clerk, who’d been trying, with varying degrees of success, to act indifferent to Armitage’s presence down the hall. The woman’s eyes had gone round as saucers when they’d brought the man in, and if she hadn’t feared for her job he suspected she’d be posting a stream of updates on social media. It wasn’t often that the citizens of Sweetwater saw celebrities – even minor ones – in their midst, and the temptation to be the first with information about a breaking scandal was great. Luckily, the patrons at Stage Left seemed to have been so surprised and enthralled by the spectacle of Wesley Norbert’s nose spurting blood all over the floor that he didn’t think too many photos of Mason in handcuffs had found their way to Instagram. Will wouldn’t have even considered it – or considered it a problem – if Allie hadn’t expressed concern.

It seemed to Will that the occasional arrest and barroom brawl did little to negatively impact the careers of most actors, but he’d made sure his people took Mason out through the back of the bar all the same. No need to attract more attention than they had to. 

Will flicked on his office light, closing the door behind him. Since his date had been interrupted – again – and hell, since he was here, he might as well be productive. He booted up his computer, sipped at the cup of coffee he’d poured before going back to talk to Armitage, and leaned back in his chair.

Will yawned.

“Too many late nights,” he muttered, then toggled over to check his inbox. When he saw the email from the state crime lab, he sat up a little straighter. Hopefully they had some information for him regarding the severed arm. Especially since no one had yet come forward to report a missing person. Will was never happy with John or Jane Doe situations, even when there was no possibility of foul play. When all he had was a piece of an unidentified cadaver, the cause of death undetermined, it made him itchy to say the least.

He opened the email. “Fingerprints unable to be recovered,” he read. No surprise there. There was some more information about tissue degradation, estimated time spent in the water – less than twenty-four hours.

When he came to the attachment, Will opened the photos. The partial tattoo Will’d noticed had been cleaned up, and run through a computer program that predicted the likeliest match. There were several possibilities, but when Will saw the stylized grim reaper, something clicked. He’d seen that tattoo before.

Unable to think of
where
he’d seen it, Will took another slug of coffee, pinched the bridge of his nose. And reminded himself that this was why he shouldn’t work when he was tired and drug out. His brain was too sluggish to function.

Pushing back from his chair, Will snagged his coffee cup and headed toward the door. Maybe another hit of caffeine would do it.

When he opened the door, he saw Alan Barger walking by, and on a hunch, called him into the office instead.

Barger looked slightly surprised as he stepped in.

“Have a look at this,” Will said, gesturing the other man over toward the computer. He pointed to the three photos displayed on the screen. “Have you ever seen any of these?”

Barger leaned over, squinted. After several moments, he pointed to the bony countenance of the grim reaper. “Where’d you find this picture of my ex-wife?”

The corner of his mouth tugged into a wry smile. “Other than a resemblance to the former Mrs. Barger, you don’t recognize the tattoo?”

Barger hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. I mean, I feel like I could have seen all of them somewhere at one point or another, but nothing immediately leaps out. Why?” He glanced up at Will.
“Should
I recognize it?”

“No.” Will sighed. “I was just hoping that you would, so that I don’t have to rack my brain, trying to figure out why this one strikes me as familiar. And I promise it’s not because I’ve been scoping out your ex-wife.”

“Wise decision.” Barger studied the screen again. “Like I said, be in this business long enough, and everything starts to look familiar, because we’ve pretty much seen it all.”

“There is that,” Will agreed, though something still pulled at him. He
knew
he’d seen that tattoo. “Thanks, though.”  

“No problem.”

Will straightened. “What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were supposed to be off shift.”

“Forgot something in my locker,” he said. “Although I could ask you the same question. Chief.”

Will gave him a look. Barger was several years Will’s senior, so the other man liked to rib him about his promotion.

“The fates are conspiring to make sure that my professional good fortune – if you could call it that – is balanced out by the complete destruction of anything resembling a personal life.”

“I hear ya.” The other man grimaced. “It almost makes me miss the Reaper.”

“Really?”

“Only for about thirty seconds. Then I remember that instead of a scythe, that particular reaper liked to cut grown men down with her tongue.”

Will scratched his chin. “I think I’d rather have the scythe.”

“You and me both.”

When Barger left, Will turned back to the computer, but gave up after several minutes. He knew from experience that trying to force his brain to make connections when it wasn’t ready to make them was the mental equivalent of herding cats. The mental
click
would come when it was damn good and ready. Generally at the most inconvenient time possible.