Page 114 of Fearless

“Sergeant Fielding,” Maggie greeted. “What a pleasant surprise.”

“Maggie,” he said with a stiff nod of greeting. In a flat, emotionless voice, he said, “I was sorry to hear about Andre. You’re handling the funeral, I take it?”

Maggie gave him a sweet smile. “Well unless you’d like to drag his mistresses in here and ask them to cough up the cash, yeah, looks like I’m handling it.”

“The club looks after its own,” he grumbled, echoing a sentiment often expressed, so rarely taken seriously by outsiders like him.

“That’s right.”

“Where’s Kenny?” he asked. His eyes were pinging around the room, touching everything but her face. He didn’t like her, and she didn’t guess she blamed him.

She laughed. “If he knew you were calling him ‘Kenny,’ he’d be here like that” – snap of her fingers – “to kick your ass. Ghost is out and about.” She made a vague gesture. “He’s a busy man.”

Vince finally made eye contact; she saw the dislike in his dark irises. “Yeah, I know.” His double meaning was plain. “But you know better than anyone that I need to talk to him about last night. He can either come down to the precinct and talk to me, or I can show up at the clubhouse.”

Before Maggie could answer, the door of the showroom opened and Jace stuck his head inside; his eyes were still bloodshot, his voice still scratchy. “Hey, Mags, I saw Sergeant…oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” She waved him back out in the hall. “I saw him, Jace, thanks.” When he ducked back out, she said, “A girl can’t find a good security detail these days.”

“You know, most women don’t need security details,” Vince said. “Most women marry regular Joes without histories of gang activity.”

“Most women aren’t me, Vince,” she said, giving him one last, beaming smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me…” She stepped past him and heard Jackie following, making an excuse to Esther.

The casket showcase had a view of the street through tall windows Maggie had always found ill-placed. Because of them, she and Jackie had been sitting ducks while they shopped. Flanders’ wasn’t the nicest funeral home in town, but it was one that had always served the Dogs, and for that, they were all loyal customers. Down a short, carpeted hallway, they found the owner, Byron Flanders, waiting for them amid the potted urns in the sunlit lobby. Bright rays slanted in through the front, white-swagged windows, finding the delicate hollows of the orchids and lilies.

Flanders – narrow, petite, immaculate, almost effeminate – glided toward them in a tan summer suit, his footfalls silent on the short-napped carpet. “Ladies, I trust you found something that will suit?”

“Yes.” Maggie told him which coffin they’d picked out, anxious to get all of this settled and get the hell out before Fielding and Esther caught up with them. That potential conversation sounded like the gossip circle from hell. “And we’ll just go across the street and talk to Ramona about flowers…”

But Flanders was shaking his head. “I’m afraid that…well, anyway, I can provide the flowers for the service, if you’d like. Fresh-cut or artificial, your choice.”

Maggie frowned. “Something happened to Ramona?”

Flanders glanced away, his expression verging intooh dearterritory. “Not exactly…”

For years, she’d used Ramona Baily’s florist services, at her boutique shop As A Daisy across the street from Flanders’. Maggie admitted that she’d been busy and out of touch with town life, what with Ava coming home and Ghost stepping up to president, but Flanders’ face told her she’d missed something big.

“What?”

He opened his mouth to answer, and was drowned out by the thunder of a bike engine.Severalbike engines.

Maggie went to the window, Jackie at her side.

Across the street, backing their Harleys in at outward slants against the curb in front of Daisy, were five men in MC regalia…who were decidedly not Lean Dogs. As they dismounted, Maggie spotted three-piece patches: Carpathians on the top rocker, Tennessee on the bottom, snarling wolf in the center; and most importantly, that tiny MC square.

Jackie sucked in a breath. “Jesus Christ. On Main Street. In the broad fucking daylight.”

Maggie bit down on her lip as one of the bikers plucked at her memory. “That one.” She tapped a finger at the glass. “The old president’s son. Jasper Larsen.”

“How do you know that?” Jackie asked.

Maggie sighed. “Because Mercy killed his father and uncle on Ava’s bedroom floor.”

Twenty-Nine

Irresponsible hoodlumwas Grammie Lowe’s favorite descriptive phrase for Ghost. Denise Camden Lowe, of former Little Miss East Tennessee fame, had made what she liked to call an educated decision the day her teenage daughter dragged a twenty-seven-year-old biker through the front door for the first time. Men who rode motorcycles and marked themselves in permanent ink were wastrels of the worst kind. “He’ll never amount to anything,” she’d warned Maggie. “And taking advantage of a little girl – he’s a monster!”

The monster part was debatable, depending on which angle you were looking from. Butirresponsible…clearly, Denise had never been on the receiving end of one of the man’s lectures.

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