Motor Mouth

FIVE

I was tangled together with Hooker when I woke up, our legs intertwined, my nose tucked under his chin. He was still asleep, his breathing deep and regular. I looked at my watch. It was almost nine.

“Hey,” I said to Hooker. “Wake up. It’s almost nine and Beans should go out to tinkle.”

Hooker half-opened an eye. “Okay. Just give me a minute.”

“Don’t you dare close your eyes,” I said. “I know you. You’re going to close your eyes and instantly fall asleep again. And Beans should have gone out an hour ago.”

“He’s not complaining,” Hooker said.

I looked around the room. “That’s because he isn’t here.”

“Maybe Felicia came to get him.”

A tiny, horrible tendril of panic curled in my stomach. “Hooker, do you remember Beans coming into the house with us?”

Hooker opened both eyes. “No.”

“Do you remember him being in the SUV with us?”

“No.”

Our eyes locked. “Did you ever take him out of the hauler?” I asked Hooker. “He was sleeping in the lounge. You locked him in when Felicia came to help us.”

“Don’t tell me I left him in the hauler,” Hooker said, hands over his eyes. “I’m still sleeping and this is a nightmare, right? Jesus, pinch me or something.”

I bit into my lower lip. “I’m going to throw up.”

“Shit,” Hooker said, on his feet, hunting down his shoes. “I don’t fucking believe this. We were so careful not to leave prints, and then we leave the dog.”

I had the SUV keys in my hand and my other hand on the doorknob. “Maybe we can get to him before Huevo’s people.”

I drove because Hooker couldn’t afford to lose his license by doing a hundred on the interstate. I took the off-ramp on two wheels and laid four feet of rubber when I jumped on the brakes in the strip-mall lot where we’d parked the Huevo hauler.

The SUV rocked to a stop, and Hooker and I sat in frozen silence. No hauler.

Hooker cut his eyes to me. “You aren’t going to cry, are you?”

I blinked tears away. “No. Are you?”

“I hope not. I’d feel like a real pussy.”

“We need to get Beans back.”

“Yeah, and Beans isn’t our only problem. We just told the Huevo team we stole their hauler and made off with their cars. And we told the guy who killed Oscar Huevo that we found Huevo wrapped up like a Christmas ham.”

“You’re in big trouble,” I said. “They’re going to come looking for you. Good thing I’m not involved.”

“I’m going to tell them it was all your idea.”

I smiled over at Hooker. He might be a jerk when it came to fidelity, but he’d protect me with his last breath. “What do we do now?”

“They might not be too far in front of us. We could cruise north and try to catch them. They might not even know Beans is in the lounge. Maybe we could sneak in and get Beans when they stop for lunch.”

I wheeled the car out of the lot and was turning toward the interstate entrance when Hooker’s cell phone rang.

“Yeah?” Hooker said. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” And he disconnected.

“Who was that?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t give me his name. He said I was a rotten bastard for abandoning my dog. That I didn’t deserve to have a great dog like Beans. And that he was going to kill me.” Hooker slouched in his seat. “I can’t believe I left Beans in the hauler.”

“We were exhausted. We just weren’t thinking.”

“That’s no excuse. This is Beans we’re talking about. Beans is…family. He’s special. And he’s kind of dumb. How’s he going to get by without me?”

“Well, at least the killer likes Beans; that’s a good thing, right?”

“Of course he likes Beans. How could anyone not like Beans? I tell you, this is war. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I’m getting my damn dog back. I’m going to find this Beans snatcher, and I’m going to get medieval on his ass. Oscar Huevo won’t be the only one with bullet holes and tooth marks in him. This piece-of-shit Beans snatcher is going down.”

“You’re sounding a little on the edge here,” I said to Hooker. “We need to get Beans back, but maybe you want to chill. You wouldn’t want to do anything rash, right?”

“When have I ever done anything rash?” Hooker yelled, cords standing out in his neck. “Do I look like I’m going to do something rash?”

“Yeah. Your face is real red, and your eyes are crazy man. How about we think this out over breakfast. And maybe I can find a diner that has a defibrillator just in case you have a heart attack.”

“I’m not hungry,” Hooker said. “I just want my goddamn dog back.”

“Sure. I know that, but we need a plan. And you could think better if your eyes weren’t so popped out of their sockets, right?”

“Are my eyes popped out of their sockets?”

“If they popped out any more, they’d be rolling around on the floor.”

I pulled into the first diner I saw, and I got Hooker settled into a booth. Hooker ordered a ham-and-cheese omelet, bacon, pancakes, home fries, juice, coffee, and a side of biscuits with white gravy. Good thing he was too upset to be hungry, otherwise he might have cleaned out the kitchen and the diner would have had to close.

Hooker’s eyes were narrowed, his mouth was tight, and he angrily tapped his fork on the table.

I firmly removed the fork from Hooker’s hand. “Did the killer guy have an accent? Did he sound Mexican?”

“No. No accent.”

“Did he say when he was going to kill you?”

“He didn’t go into detail.”

“Were there noises in the background? Could you tell where he was?”

“It sounded like he was driving. I could hear Beans panting.”

“Did he give any indication of where he was going?”

“No. Nothing.”

The food arrived, and Hooker forked in some omelet. I drank my coffee and stared into my empty cup. I looked around for the waitress but couldn’t find her.

“Have you always had this waitress problem?” Hooker asked.

“Only when I’m with you.”

Hooker swapped coffee cups with me. The waitress appeared and gave him a refill.

I ate the cereal I’d ordered and drank some more coffee. A tear slid down my cheek and plopped onto the Formica tabletop.

“Oh crap,” Hooker said, reaching over, cradling my face in his hands, using his thumb to swipe the tears from my cheek. “I hate when you cry.”

“I’m worried about Beans. I’m trying not to be crazy, but I feel terrible. I bet he misses us.”

“I’m worried about him, too,” Hooker said. “And now some guy wants to kill me.”

I snuffled the tears back. “Yes, but you deserve to die.”

“Jeez,” Hooker said. “You really know how to hold a grudge.”

“A woman scorned.”

“Darlin’, I didn’t scorn you. I just boinked a salesclerk.”

“There were pictures on the Internet!”

Hooker’s cell phone rang.

“’Lo,” Hooker said. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

He disconnected, and I gave him raised eyebrows. “Well?”

“That was Ray Huevo…the grieving younger brother of the deceased Oscar. You remember Ray, the brother not eaten by the swamp monster, the brother you saw at the track with Horse and Baldy, the brother who undoubtedly knows the spawn of Satan who has my dog. He wants his cars back.”

“That could be a problem. Does he care if they’re the size of a loaf of bread?”

“Let’s walk through this,” Hooker said. “Someone killed Oscar Huevo, shrink-wrapped him, and stuffed him into a locker in the hauler. We’re assuming it was an inside job, but the truth is, those haulers aren’t locked and anyone could get in and dump a body.”

“Not entirely true. You need a garage pass to get to the hauler area.”

“That narrows it down to a couple thousand.”

“Okay, so a lot of people had access. It’s still not that easy. They had to bring the body in somehow. And we know he was brought in, because there wasn’t any blood in the hauler. Even if they’d scrubbed it down, I think we would have seen some blood or signs of a struggle. Even if they shot him outside the hauler and dragged him in, we’d see blood. And he was naked, with a boner…okay, I guess that could happen in the hauler.”

“No way,” Hooker said. “He didn’t have socks on. Nobody bothers to take their socks off to have sex in the hauler.”

I cut my eyes at him.

“Not that I would know from personal experience,” Hooker said.

“The paper said Oscar Huevo was last seen having dinner with Ray. That was Saturday night. Both brothers were planning on attending the race, but only one showed up. No one saw Oscar at the track. A doorman remembers Oscar going out for a walk after dinner. No one remembers seeing Oscar return from the walk.”

Hooker finished his pancakes and started on the biscuit. “So how did they get the body into the hauler without being seen? There’s always activity around the hauler. Plus, they couldn’t drive him in on a golf cart. The carts are stopped at the gate.”

“Maybe they brought him in after the race. Remember, the sixty-nine hauler was last to leave because they were waiting for a part. Maybe somehow they smuggled the body in then. At a certain point, all the rules are relaxed and carts and vans can move into the garage area.

“And the back of the hauler was still open when we walked Beans. They had the tool cart out so they could work on the truck.”

“Seems like a stretch,” Hooker said, “but I guess it’s possible. Here’s question number two. Ray Huevo just called and said ‘all’s forgiven if he just gets his cars back.’ Why would he say that? If he knows I stole his hauler, why wouldn’t he go to the police? Why didn’t he go to the police in the first place?”

“Because Huevo knows Oscar was stashed in the hauler? And he knows you know that he knows?” I said.

“That’s a lot of ‘knows’.” Hooker forked in some more omelet. “And why does Ray care about the cars? It was my understanding that he wasn’t enamored of racing.”

“They’re still Huevo property.”

Hooker shook his head. “It feels too weird to promise forgiveness if I return the cars. I can understand trying to kill me. And I could understand trying to buy me off or blackmailing me into keeping quiet.”

“Be hard to blackmail you. The press hangs all your dirty laundry out to dry in public.”

“Yeah,” Hooker said. “And I have too much money for them to be able to buy me.”

“Let’s face it,” I said to Hooker. “He’s not going to forgive you. He’s just saying that to give you a false sense of security. He’s going to kill you. His goon already tipped his hand.”

“Actually, the Beans snatcher didn’t say why he wanted to kill me. He could be acting independently of Ray Huevo. Like, maybe he just goes around killing people who leave their Saint Bernard’s in hauler lounges.”

Hooker ate his last piece of bacon and pushed back from the table.

“You don’t seem too worried,” I said to him.

“If I could just get my heart rate to drop below stroke level, I’d look even less worried.”

“We should tell someone at NASCAR.”

“Can’t do that,” Hooker said. “I’d be done as a driver. And driving’s all I know.”

“It’s not all you know,” I said.

Hooker grinned. “Darlin’, you’re flirting with me.”

“Trying to cheer you up.”

He signaled for the check. “It’s working.”

I was never the nut in my family. My younger brother, Bill, had that honor. I was the kid who graduated from college with an engineering degree and then took a safe, steady job with a boring insurance company. I was the reliable kid who showed up on time for Sunday dinner and remembered birthdays. Until Hooker. Now I’m working for Stiller Racing and running neck and neck with my brother for loose cannon of the year.

Hooker was driving, and I was riding shotgun, watching the world fly by. Breakfast was a half hour behind us. Miami was in front of us.

“So,” I said. “Now what?”

Hooker swung off the turnpike onto the east-west expressway. “I want my dog back.”

“Looks to me like you’re heading for South Beach.”

“Ray Huevo said he’s on the corporate yacht. I figure that’s a good place to start looking for Beans. It’s one thing to steal a man’s car. It’s an entirely different category of stealing when you’re talking about a man’s dog. And this isn’t even a normal dog. This is Beans.”

“He didn’t say anything about the fact that the holes in his brother’s shoulder matched your dog’s fangs?”

“He didn’t mention his brother or my dog. He just wanted his cars back.”

“Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“I think it’s scary cold.”

“Has it occurred to you that there’s an outside chance Ray won’t be cordial?”

“Spanky and his girlfriend are on that boat celebrating his win. And there’s a full crew. I don’t expect to be offered lunch, but I also don’t think I’ll get shot. I’m not sure what I’ll accomplish, but I don’t know where else to start.”

Twenty minutes later the SUV was parked in the lot by Monty’s, and I was shoulder to shoulder with Hooker, standing on the cement walkway that ran the length of South Beach Harbor.

Hooker was grinning, looking down at me. “I thought you were going to wait in the car.”

“Someone has to watch out for your sorry ass.”

“I thought you didn’t care about my ass anymore.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t push it.”

Hooker pulled me to him and kissed me. It wasn’t a sexy, passionate kiss. It was a smiling kiss. I’d made him happy. Hooker wasn’t a guy who hid thoughts and emotions. You always pretty much knew what was in Hooker’s head. And, I knew from experience, if I let the kiss linger it would turn sexy. What Hooker lacked in guile he made up for in testosterone.

“Stop that,” I said, breaking from the kiss and jumping away.

“You liked it.”

“I didn’t!”

“Okay,” Hooker said. “Let me try again. I can do better.”

“No!” I turned and shaded my eyes with my hand, searching the harbor. “Which boat belongs to Huevo?”

“It’s the big one at the end of the pier, one pier past the dockmaster’s office.”

“The one with the triple deck?”

“Yep.”

“No helicopter,” I said. “Huevo cheaped out.”

“It’s probably just not on deck. Huevo has a fleet of planes and helicopters.”

“He also has security. Are you sure you don’t want to phone this in?”

Hooker took my hand and pulled me forward. “Sweetie, I never phone it in.”

I don’t know a lot about boats, so my opinion of Huevo’s yacht was that it was big and it was pretty. It was three decks of pristine white fiberglass with a single blue stripe running the length of the first deck, the windows all black glass. A ramp led from the boat to the dock and there was a uniformed crew member standing watch at the top of the ramp.

I followed Hooker up the ramp and tried to look calm when he told the crew member we were there to see Ray Huevo. At the very least, I feared this would be mortally embarrassing. And at the most, I worried it would be fatally final.

This morning, wearing the same clothes I’d slept in, I’d jumped out of bed and rushed to the car. I’d clamped a hat on my head and never given makeup a second thought. I don’t think I’m any more shallow than the next person, but I suspected I’d be feeling a lot braver right now if I was fresh out of the shower and wearing clean jeans.

Ray had an office on the second deck. He was at his desk and glanced up when we entered. Didn’t seem surprised. Annoyed, maybe. Like Ricky Ricardo when Lucy did something stupid. In fact, he looked a lot like Ricky Ricardo. Same coloring. Thick, dark hair. Stocky build. Hard to judge his height. He motioned for us to sit, but Hooker and I remained standing.

“I’m looking for my dog,” Hooker said. “Have you seen him?”

“I’m looking for something, too,” Huevo said. “Perhaps it would be best if the young lady waited outside for a moment.”

Hooker looked around at me and smiled. Pleasantly calm. No problemos. “Would you mind?”

I left the office, shutting the door behind me, and I stood close on the other side, trying to listen but not hearing much. After a couple minutes, four large crew members marched past me and into the office. A moment later the crew members escorted Hooker out, lifted him off his feet, and pitched him over the side of the boat, into the water. He hit with a splash and disappeared below the surface.

A hand clamped on to the back of my neck and squeezed. I yelped and was brought face-to-face with Horse. His eyes were narrowed, and his mouth was twisted into a scary, gap-toothed smile. He was in his late forties and he looked like he shopped in the Big and Tall store. He was thick-lipped and had close-set eyes. His dark hair was cut short. Because I’d seen him through binoculars at the track, I knew he had a tattoo on the back of his neck. It had looked like a snake, but it was hard to tell for sure at that distance.

“Well, look who we have here,” he said. “I was supposed to go out and find you, but you came onboard with your boyfriend. The pretty little fly walked right into the spider’s web.”

I tried backing away, and his hand tightened.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Thinking about leaving? Don’t you like me? Maybe you just have to get to know me. Maybe we should go belowdecks and get acquainted.”

I heard Hooker surface and flounder beside the boat. I turned my head to see him, and Horse fisted his hand in my hair and yanked my head back.

“Pay attention when I’m talking to you,” he said. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you manners?”

“Let go of me.”

“Maybe I should be the one to teach you manners. It wouldn’t be the first time I had to teach a woman to pay attention. In fact, it’s one of my specialties. That’s why I got the job of talking to you. Everyone knows I have a way with women. I can make women beg. Of course, there’s some pain in the beginning. Do you like pain?”

I opened my mouth to scream, and he yanked my head again.

“Nobody’s gonna care if you scream,” he said. “There’s only crew on the boat right now. All the guests are off in the launch taking a harbor tour. So this is how it works. I’m gonna hurt you pretty bad, and you’re going to spill your guts to me. You’re going to tell me everything I need to know. And if you’re real nice to me after that, I’ll let you go when I’m done with you.”

I broke into an instant violently-sick-stomach cold sweat, and I threw up on Horse. The only time in my life I’ve ever done projectile vomiting.

“Oh shit,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

Horse jumped back and looked down at himself. “What the fuck is this?”

“Cereal and bananas.”

“Fucking bitch. You’re gonna pay for this.”

My heart stuttered in my chest, and then terror-driven instinct took over, and without giving it a second thought, I turned, scrambled over the rail, and jumped. I went under and took in some water before I pushed myself to the surface and bobbed up next to Hooker.

I was wearing jeans and sneakers and they were weighing me down. “Help!” I gasped, spitting out seawater. “Sinking!”

Hooker grabbed me by the front of my shirt and towed me around the side of the boat. We struggled to get past the prow and latched on to the dock while we caught our breath. We went partway down the finger pier, until we came to a ladder and were able to climb out of the water.

My hair and clothes were plastered to me. My sunglasses and hat were riding on the tide. My cell phone was still clipped to my belt and was oozing water.

“I hated that,” I yelled at Hooker. “I don’t know why I went with you. I knew something like that was going to happen. I was almost tortured by the monster with the horse dick. My phone is ruined. And I lost my hat and my sunglasses. And my sneakers are soaked. And they were my favorite sneakers. It’s not like great sneakers grow on trees, you know. And I could have drowned.”

Hooker was staring at my soaked T-shirt and smiling. “Nice,” he said.

Life is simple when you’re a guy. All the world’s problems can be at least momentarily forgotten when in the presence of a wet T-shirt and cold nipples. I blew out a sigh and squished my way to the SUV. I stopped when I got to the car and stared into the empty back window, my teeth clamped into my bottom lip.

Hooker put an arm around me and cuddled me against him. “I miss him, too,” Hooker said. He gave me a brotherly kiss on the top of my head. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him back.”

“I didn’t actually like him all that much when he was around. But now I feel terrible.”

“Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it,” Hooker said.

Everyone in the Ibarra house was off working at the fruit stand, including Gobbles. Hooker and I were alone at the Ibarras’ kitchen table, eating leftovers from the night before. I was showered and dressed in my only clean outfit: khaki shorts, a white T-shirt, and white sneakers.

Hooker was in shorts, T-shirt, and borrowed flip-flops. “I didn’t count on wet shoes,” he said. “I need to stop someplace and get something to wear besides flip-flops. Hard to kick ass in flip-flops.”

“You never told me what went on in Huevo’s office.”

“He asked me why I stole his cars. I said I didn’t steal his cars. He asked me how my dog came to be in the lounge if I didn’t steal his cars. I said someone stole my dog and planted him in the lounge. He said he wanted his cars back. I said I wanted my dog back. He said if he didn’t get his cars back by the end of the day, he was going to cut off my balls and feed them to my dog. I said at least I had balls. And then he had me thrown overboard.”

“Good thinking.”

“When in doubt, deny everything.”

I paused with my fork halfway to my mouth and stared at him.

“I never denied sleeping with that salesclerk,” he said. “I just don’t remember it.”

“Do you have any plans for keeping your anatomy intact?”

“I’m not too worried. I figure he’ll beat the crap out of me, but he probably won’t cut my balls off, because then I’d most likely die and he’d never find his cars. He wants those cars back bad.”

“Here’s a thought?why don’t you offer to pay Huevo for the cars in exchange for Beans?”

“Yeah, that sounds fair. A million plus for a Saint Bernard whose only talent is drooling.”

“It’s not his only talent. He says hello by knocking people down to the ground. And he can stand on three legs and scratch his ear with his foot. And he has pretty brown eyes.”

“Like me,” Hooker said. “Except I can’t scratch my ear with my foot.”

“Yep. You and Beans are the perfect pair.”

Hooker grinned at me and reached for his cell phone. He went to punch in Huevo’s number and water leaked out. “It’s dead,” Hooker said. “Drowned.”

“Can you get Huevo’s number off it?”

“No, but I can probably get a number from Butch.”

Ten minutes later, Hooker put the Ibarra phone back in its cradle on the kitchen counter.

“Well?” I asked.

“Huevo said he doesn’t want the money. He wants the cars.”

“Maybe it’s the chip that he wants. Maybe you should call him back and offer him the chip.”

Hooker was fidgeting with the gearshift knob we’d lifted off the 69 car. He was turning it upside down and right side up, examining it. “This is a work of art,” he said. “Huevo’s machine shop has designed this knob so it’s strong and comfortable in your hand with minimum weight.”

He set it on the table with the threaded side down and there was a barely perceptible plink. He picked the knob up and a tiny metal disk was left lying on the table.

I pushed the disk around with my finger. It was silver and slightly smaller than a contact lens.

“It looks like a watch battery, but it doesn’t have any markings,” I said to Hooker. “And I don’t know what the heck it was doing inside the gearshift knob.”

“Maybe this is the traction-control thingy.”

“Impossible. It doesn’t connect to anything. I cut the shifter in half. No wires. The microprocessor has to send electricity to a mechanical part to get the engine to slow down. We only know two ways to send electricity. One is over a wire. The other is a lightning bolt.”

“Then what is it?”

I turned it over in the palm of my hand. “I don’t know. I’d like to see inside, but I’m afraid I’ll destroy it if I try to open it. It wouldn’t be a problem if we were in Concord.”

“I don’t want to go to Concord. I think Beans is in Miami, and I’m not leaving until I get him back.”

“Then let’s find a jeweler.”

A half hour later, Hooker stood over a case filled with diamond bracelets. “Most women would forgive me if I bought them one of these bracelets.”

“Don’t kid yourself. A woman might take the bracelet, but she wouldn’t forgive you.”

“That explains a lot,” Hooker said.

“Wasted your money on a bunch of diamond bracelets?”

He smiled sheepishly. “I’ve bought a few.”

I was with the jeweler who was laboring over the little metal button. He had it in a miniature vice, and he was trying a variety of things, none of which was working. Finally he took it out of the vice, put his tiny tools away, held the button between his thumb and forefinger and whacked it with a hammer. The metal shell cracked open and the inside of the button was exposed.

We all stared down at it.

“What is it?” Hooker asked.

I borrowed the jeweler’s loop and examined the button. “It looks like a circuit board. And it’s welded onto something that might be a miniaturized battery.”

“So, this could be it,” Hooker said. “Except it’s not attached to anything.”

“Yeah. But maybe it talks to the chip that was stuck on the engine.”

I pulled the plastic bag out of my pocket, put the damaged piece-of-something on the counter, and looked at it under the loop. It was for sure a chip. I could see the circuits.

“It’s a chip,” I said to Hooker. “I don’t know why you would need two, though. I’d think the chip on the engine would do it all.”

I put the two chips back into the plastic bag, slipped the bag into my pocket, and we left the jewelry store and walked out into the mall. We were at a touristy waterside section of Miami with shops and food courts opening to a marina. It was tropical and colorful and the stores featured ashtrays that were decorated with flamingos, rubber alligators made in China, beach towels, T-shirts, lamps shaped like palm trees, sunglasses, sunscreen, sun visors, and bags of shells that had probably been collected in China. We bypassed the trinket shops and bought new cell phones, running shoes for Hooker, and binoculars.

By the time we left the mall, it was late afternoon. Our plan was to park our butts on bar stools at Monty’s outdoor tiki bar and watch Huevo’s yacht. The bar was nice and public, and we thought chances were slim that Hooker’s gonads would get lopped off from the rest of his body while at Monty’s.

We ordered nachos and beer and broke out the binoculars. We’d each gotten one of those mini things. Not as much power as what I was used to but easier to carry. We had a good view of the boat without the binoculars, but the binoculars would let us see faces better.

“To Beans,” Hooker said. And we clinked our beer glasses together.

I put my binoculars to my eyes for a test, focused on the pier leading to the Huevo boat, and then a woman walked into the picture. “Hello,” I said. “Who’s this?”

The woman looked like Blond Bitch Bimbo. A platinum-haired Cruella DeVil. She was wearing four-inch heels and a designer suit that fit her like skin. She had enough diamonds on her watch and in her ears to give me cataracts from the sun reflection. Her hair was knotted at the nape of her neck and her face was frozen in a look of perpetual open-eyed awe. She had a long-legged, ass-swinging stride that carried her down the pier to the yacht gangplank. The uniformed guard onboard ship snapped to attention when he saw her and rushed forward to help her with her single bag, but she waved the help away. A small, tufted dog head popped out of the bag.

I glanced at Hooker and found him readjusting his binoculars.

“Focusing on her ass?” I asked.

“It’s a pretty decent ass. Looks to me like a StairMaster ass. Man, her ass is so tight, you could bounce a quarter off it.”

“You like that?”

Hooker had his binoculars to his eyes. “I like any ass that…” He froze in midsentence. He was having a mental head-slap moment. A deer-in-headlights moment. He lowered the binoculars and looked at me. “I like your ass.”

Okay, so he wasn’t perfect, but he was trying.

I had my binoculars back up, watching the woman go into the main salon and disappear from sight. “Do you know who she is?”

“Darlin’, that’s the newly widowed Mrs. Oscar Huevo.”

“Zowie.”

“Exactly. She’s wife numero uno, and she’s out for bear.”

Ten minutes later numero uno marched out of the salon door, crossed the deck, and swung her ass down the gangplank. She adjusted her sunglasses, tucked her dog back into the bag, and power-walked the length of the pier.

I dropped my binoculars into my new tote bag. “You stay here and watch the boat,” I said to Hooker. “I’m going to follow her, see where she goes.”

Hooker handed me the keys to the SUV. “In a small, dark corner of my brain there’s a fear that once you’re out of my sight you’re going to get on a plane and go home without me,” he said.