Page 29 of Open Season

NINE

It wasn’t everyone who could go out for a night of honky-tonking, dance until she was ready to drop, start a brawl, and be home by nine o’clock, Daisy told herself the next morning. So the night hadn’t been an unqualified success; the first part of it had been very successful. What’s more, she’d had fun and she was going to do it again. Not the brawl part—at least, she hoped not—but definitely the dancing and attracting men part.

After church, where she endured the blatant curiosity of all her fellow churchgoers—people who should have known better than to stare at someone—she ate a quick lunch and changed into one of her new pairs of jeans, intending to drive over to Lassiter Avenue to see how Buck Latham had progressed on painting her house. Now that she was well and truly launched on her new path, she was eager to move out on her own. As she walked out on the porch with her purse and car keys in hand, however, a white Crown Victoria pulled to the curb in front of the house.

Her heart sank as she watched Chief Russo unfold his big frame from the driver’s seat. She had glossed over the previous night’s episode to her mother, thinking it best not to let on that she’d smashed a man’s testicles. She suspected Chief Russo was here to spill the beans and read her the riot act, as if he had any room to talk, because he certainly hadn’t been at the Buffalo Club in any official capacity. He’d been out trolling, the same as she, but at least her intentions were honorable.

He was dressed in jeans, too, and a black T-shirt that clung to his broad, sloping shoulders. He looked more like a weight lifter than ever, she thought with a sniff. Remembering how easily, with one arm, he had carried her out of the Buffalo Club last night, she knew she had accurately pegged him.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, standing on their short, flower-lined sidewalk and looking up at her as she stood on the shady porch.

“Yes,” she said baldly. Good manners dictated she should say something like, Oh, I was just going to run to the supermarket for a minute, but that can wait. Why don’t you come in and have coffee? She limited her reply to that one word. There was just something about him that made her forget her raising.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” he asked, eyes glinting in a way that said he was more amused than put out.

“No.”

He jerked his head toward the car. “Then come for a ride with me. I don’t think you want to have this discussion outside where all your neighbors can listen in.”

Her heart lurched. “Oh, my God, are you taking me downtown?” She hurried down the steps as a horrible thought occurred to her. “That man last night—he didn’t die, did he? It was an accident! And even if he did, wouldn’t that be justifiable homicide?”

He scrubbed a hand down his face, and she stared suspiciously at him. It looked as if he’d been hiding a grin. For goodness’ sake, this was nothing to laugh about!

“As far as I know, your boyfriend is all right; probably sore and walking a little funny, but alive.”

She blew out a big breath. “Well, that’s a relief. Then why are you taking me downtown?”

He did that face-rubbing thing again. No doubt about it, this time: he was laughing at her. Well!

He reached out and took her arm, his grip warm and too firm, as if he were accustomed to handling miscreants who didn’t want to go with him. “Don’t poker up on me, Miss Daisy,” he said, stifling an audible snicker. “It’s just. . . Downtown doesn’t have quite the same ring to it in Hillsboro as it does in New York.”

Well, that was true, considering they were already practically downtown, only a few blocks from the police station and the business section. He still could have been nicer about it.

As he opened the front passenger door of his car and put her inside, the front door opened again and Evelyn came out. “Chief Russo! Where are you taking Daisy?”

“Just for a ride, ma’am. We’ll be back within an hour, I promise.”

Evelyn hesitated, then smiled. “Y’all have a good time.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the chief said gravely.

“Oh, great,” Daisy muttered as he got in the car. “Now she thinks we’re seeing each other.”

“We can go back and set her straight, tell her what’s really going on,” he offered as he pulled away from the curb, not even waiting for her answer. That was so annoying; of course she didn’t want to do that, but he knew it before he even made the offer. He was just being a smart aleck.

“I had just as much right to be at that club as you did,” she said, crossing her arms and sticking her nose in the air.

“Agreed.”

She lowered her nose down to give him a startled look. “Then why are you interrogating me? I didn’t do anything wrong. The brawl wasn’t my fault, and I truly didn’t mean to smash that man’s testicles.”

“I know.” He was grinning again, darn him. Just what was so funny?

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. And I’m not ‘interrogating’ you. I asked you to come for a ride; that’s a helluva lot different from taking you to an interview room and grilling you for hours.”

Relieved, she let out a whoosh of air and relaxed in the seat, then immediately sat upright again. “You didn’t ask me, you told me, so what else was I to think? ‘Let’s take a ride.’ Cops say that all the time on television, and it always means they’re taking you downtown to be booked.”

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