The Big Heat

“I wouldn’t exactly call it normal, but it’s not what it has been for the past few weeks.”

TJ dropped off a plate of Melvina’s corn bread, which was actually fried like a big corn bread pancake, and two pale-aqua melamine plates piled high with collards, candied yams and fried okra. “Enjoy, ladies,” he said. “This is on the house.”

“But—” Sunny protested.

TJ cut her off. “Hey, I’m the finance whiz with the college degree, remember?” He winked at her. “I say Melvina’s can afford to comp a couple of friends now and then.”

The last month had severely frazzled her nerves and pushed her to the edge, but TJ’s offer made her teary-eyed. She sucked it up. If she hadn’t cried then, she darn sure wasn’t going to lose it now. “Thanks, TJ.”

He smiled, “Just enjoy it, okay?” He moved on to the next table with his laden tray.

“That was nice,” Sheila said.

“Very.” Her mouth watering in anticipation, Sunny broke off a crispy edge of the corn bread and popped it into her mouth. Heavenly.

“I wanted to wait until the dust settled but have you given any thought to what you’re going to do next? You aren’t going to just go to ground, are you?”

“No. I’ll continue my committee work.” She’d thought about it a lot. It’d be easy to just toss in the towel but the easy thing to do wasn’t necessarily the right thing to do. Even though it meant working with Cecil, she wasn’t giving up her committee work. “If I quit altogether then Cecil’s really won.”

“Atta girl,” Sheila said with an encouraging smile.

And honestly she was sick and tired of Cecil Meeks and his fiasco consuming her life. The worst of it was that Cecil hadn’t won because he was the better candidate. If she believed he’d do his job properly, all of this wouldn’t really matter. Well, that was a lie. It’d matter but she’d feel better about him being in office.

She took a deep breath. She wanted to talk about something else, think about something else. She’d much rather talk about Sheila and Dan’s twentieth-anniversary trip to Key West. They were flying out as soon as Dan finished work today. Monday struck her as an odd time to leave but apparently the hotel offered a discounted Monday to Monday package. “You all packed for Florida?”

“I’ve been packed. I can’t wait. One glorious week of sun, snorkeling and boinking my husband senseless. And not necessarily in that order.”

As far as Sunny could tell, Sheila and Dan, both in their mid-forties, had their moments like any other couple, but unlike many others, they still seemed to genuinely enjoy one another’s company in and out of the bedroom. It was the kind of relationship she’d like to have one day, if she ever stumbled across Mr. Right.

Sunny laughed. “I’d opt for nearly senseless. He’ll be useless if he’s senseless.”

“Nah. He’s a man. The two brains operate independently.” Sheila smiled like the cat with the canary. “At least I hope so because he’s guaranteed to lose his mind.” She leaned across the table and dropped her voice, even though none of the other customers were paying them any attention. “Did I tell you about the package I shipped ahead?”

“Honestly, if you did, I don’t remember with everything that’s been going on. Do tell.”

“I wasn’t sure about getting it through security at the airport, so I shipped a toy box to the hotel.”

“A toy box?” Sunny was pretty sure she knew where Sheila was going.

Sheila leaned farther across the table, barely avoiding sticking her boob into her yams, and lowered her voice. “I ordered a selection of sex toys online. A couple of outfits for me. A couple for him. Some gels, some lotions, a collection of body jewelry and a couple of other inventive things.” She sat back with a wicked smile.

Sunny laughed, her imagination running with that scenario, casting herself and her billboard man in the starring roles. At this point, the only way to get over her thing for Cade Stone required either professional help or to seriously get laid. Sure he had that I-can-rock-your-world-baby look, but he also had that I’m-in-charge look and after growing up with her overbearing parents, Sunny didn’t need anyone else in charge of her. Ever.

“I want him to know that twenty years doesn’t mean things have to be boring.”

“Have things gotten boring?” she asked as Sheila munched corn bread. Sheila gave her the wait-a-minute-while-I-chew-and-swallow-my-food sign, so Sunny sampled the yams.

She’d been there, done that, got the T-shirt for boring sex. Maybe it’s because you always pick men you can push around, an annoying little voice whispered inside her.

Sheila took a sip of tea. “Not exactly boring. Maybe a little routine. Proactive is better than reactive.”

“I’m sure Dan will enjoy your proactive stance. You don’t need for me to look after your plants while you’re gone or check the mail or anything?” Sheila had done so much for her, giving advice and time freely, Sunny wanted to do something in return.

“Dan’s cousin’s got it covered.” Dan’s cousin would spend the next week refinishing the hardwood floors in their house and remodeling the bathroom while they were gone. “The only thing you need to look after is yourself. Are you sure you’re okay? I’ve been worried about you.” Sheila shot her an admonishing look. “And you know I would’ve dragged you to the Kincaids’ with us last week if I’d known you were staying home alone on Thanksgiving.”

Sunny grinned. “Which is precisely why I didn’t mention it. I was infinitely happier at home working on my wolf than enduring another round of disapproval and I-told-you-so’s at the Templeton family table.”

Actually, working on her stained-glass wolf had kept her sane and grounded in the last month. It had given her a creative outlet to focus on and lose herself in. She smiled to herself. Her wolf had stood guard for her, against the rest of the world. Her, her semiconstructed stained-glass wolf, and a take-out dinner from her grocer’s deli had suited her Thanksgiving just fine. Traipsing along to Shelia’s in-laws’ during a family holiday or intruding on any of her other friends hadn’t felt right.

“I just don’t get your family. They drive me crazy.” Poor Sheila. They did drive her crazy. It frustrated Sheila that Sunny’s parents and her sister, Nadine, weren’t more supportive. It didn’t particularly bother Sunny anymore. She’d moved beyond needing their approval years ago, which was a damn good thing, all things considered.

They disapproved of her job as a Web designer—no stability in computer-related self-employment, according to her dad. They disdained the row house she’d bought as an investment in a rundown section of the city on the edge of revitalization. According to them, a new cookie-cutter house in a cookie-cutter subdivision was what she should’ve bought as a surer return on her money. Actually, in their book, marrying an accountant the way her sister, Nadine, had was the real bankable investment. They considered Sunny’s volunteer work a waste of time. And they’d never understood her running for city council since they’d been sure she’d lose to Cecil Meeks.

“Please tell me they’ve risen to the occasion during all of this,” Sheila said.

Sunny shrugged. “They’ve been embarrassed.”

“I can read between those lines.”

Growing up, she’d been the odd man out, determined even as a child to walk her own path. Her overbearing parents, however, had never embraced her independence, spontaneity or free thinking. “Remember the Pearls of Wisdom. It is what it is.”

“Okay, okay. I’m letting it go based on the Pearls of Wisdom.”

The summer she’d been ten, they’d moved and her life had changed. Despite their disparate ages, she’d found a kindred spirit in an elderly widow next door. Mrs. Pearl had spent a lifetime studying Native Americans and particularly the Chickasaw of western Tennessee.

Sunny had spent hours in Mrs. Pearl’s backyard and at her kitchen table absorbing Native American culture and developing a deep and abiding love for nature and community.

Sunny had been particularly fascinated by and seemed to have a gift for understanding and identifying animal totems, her own and others. On Sunny’s twelfth birthday, Mrs. Pearl had given her a hummingbird ring—the hummingbird being Sunny’s animal totem. Sunny treasured the simple sterling-silver design of a hummingbird drinking from a flower. Her long-standing favorite piece of jewelry, she’d resized it twice as she’d grown and always wore it on her right hand.

Mrs. Pearl had exerted the most influence in shaping Sunny’s life. She’d helped her move beyond her need for her parents’ approval, teaching her to embrace who and what she was, and likewise accepting her parents in the same vein. It was a gift Sunny had carried with her into adulthood even though the dear woman had died during Sunny’s junior year in college. She’d dubbed Mrs. Pearl’s life lessons Pearls of Wisdom, and she’d shared them with Sheila on several occasions.

She sure didn’t want Shelia worrying about her on her anniversary trip. “Go. Have a good time. I’m fine.” She was done wallowing in this disaster. From here on she was employing positive thinking. “The worst is behind me, now it’s smooth sailing.”

“ANY NEWS YET?” Cade propped the phone against his shoulder as he leaned back in his near-ancient office chair.

“I’ve had a couple of leads that wound up to be dead ends. Meeks is a slippery guy,” said Danny Jones, the private eye Cade had contacted the day Sunny Templeton’s flyer had hit. Every once in a while he and Linc needed a little private eye help, and Danny was their go-to man—one of the best in the business. If there was dirt, Danny’d dig it up. “It’s been a month. Want me to give it a rest?”

“Nope. Stay on it. Sooner or later he’ll slip or something will turn up.”

“You’re the boss. I’ll touch base with you next week.”

“Good deal.”

He hung up and found Linc leaning against his door frame. “Did you sic Jones on Meeks?”

“He’s just doing a little digging.”

Linc grinned. “You couldn’t stand it, could you?”

Cade shrugged. “Just nosing around.” His brother knew him as well as anyone. And no, it was genetically impossible for him to sit around and do nothing to help Sunny Templeton when he felt responsible for aiding and abetting Meeks in defeating her. His guilt and sense of responsibility had escalated with every incident reported in the paper, on the Internet, and each damned late-night show.

And honest to God, she was driving him crazy. She’d looked like trouble the first time he’d seen that damn flyer. How he felt about her was…complicated…which was stupid considering he’d never met her, didn’t want to meet her. He’d found it impossible to toss that sheet of paper. Instead he’d stuck it in his desk. Every time he opened his drawer and saw it, something inside him shifted. He didn’t like things shifting inside him. He ought to just toss it but he couldn’t quite make himself do it. Sunny Templeton had become a phantom PITA—a real Pain In The Ass.

The sooner Jones found something on Meeks, and his gut told him there was something to be found, the sooner he could turn it over to Sunny Templeton to use and then wash his hands of her. Then he’d toss the flyer.

“By the way, Georgia wanted me to remind you that you need to stop by the formal wear shop to be fitted for the tux. My best man’s got to be jam up on the big day and she says we big boys are gonna require special orders.”

Okay, once upon a time he and Linc had known one another well but his brother in love was something of a stranger at times. Linc was yet another cautionary tale in Cade’s life. This was what love reduced men to. He was tempted to ask Linc if he still actually had a dick but that would only piss him off. Instead Cade stood and stretched. “Yeah, I’ll get by there sometime this week.”

“I’ll let Georgia know,” Linc said, wandering back to his office, doubtless to call Georgia.

Cade supposed if Linc had to be an idiot in love at least he’d chosen well. Cade liked Georgia. He also liked Gracie’s fiancé well enough. He grabbed the paperwork on his latest FTA apprehension off his desk and walked it out to Marlene.

“Thanks,” she said, without looking up from the computer monitor. “You know, I’m thinking about signing up for one of those online dating things.”

Cade shook his head. That was random. Had he just heard her correctly? “Did you say online dating?”

“Yeah. You know, one of those Internet matchmaking things.”

He had heard right.

“The hell you say!” Martin bellowed from his office. Apparently his father had heard, as well. Great. Martin stomped out to join them, a bottled Coke in his hand. At six foot six he stood two inches taller than Cade and still didn’t carry an ounce of spare flesh. “What’s wrong with you, woman?”

Marlene merely quirked an eyebrow at Martin’s outburst. “I’m ready for some excitement. All my friends want to introduce me to boring men.”

Linc strolled out of his office. He didn’t like to miss out on anything.

Marlene eyed all of them. “What? We’re not exactly overrun with eligible men walking through the door here. Online dating seems a reasonable vetting process. I want excitement, romance.” Martin started to smirk. “I want to get remarried,” she tacked on the final installment. Cade’s cringe echoed Martin’s.

Had everyone lost their minds? Between Linc and Georgia and Gracie and Mark and all the wedding mumbo jumbo floating around the office, Marlene had got caught up in it.

Linc shook his head. “You got rid of one rat-bastard husband. What are you thinking, Marlene?”

Maybe Linc wasn’t as far gone as Cade had thought. He did still have an ounce of sense left.

“I’m not cut out for one-night stands. I’m not a love ’em and leave ’em kind of woman. But I have to tell you boys, I miss sex.”

Martin snorted his swallow of Coke through his nose, choking and coughing. “Now I know you’re one can shy of a six-pack if you want to get remarried so you can have sex.”

Cade disagreed with Martin more often than not. In fact, they’d coexisted in an uneasy truce the past twenty years since Cade’s mother died, but he had to throw his towel in with the old man on this one.

Marlene shot Martin a withering look. “It’s the way I’m made. Some of us aren’t emotionally or mentally built to indulge in casual sex.”

An uncomfortable silence filled the room except for the ticking of the big wall clock. It had worked well enough for three of the four of them present.

Cade spoke up. “If you’re going to do this online dating thing, promise me you won’t go out with anyone until we approve them.” He crossed his arms over his chest. She hadn’t done such a good job with the first husband and there were some real pieces of crap out there. Someone had to make sure she didn’t strike out if she was determined to go round two. And Marlene might not be family, but she worked for him and no one screwed with anyone under his domain unless they wanted a serious ass-kicking.

Linc nodded. “Good plan. We can make sure you don’t hook up with any creeps.”

Marlene looked from him to Linc and back. “Fine. You boys can approve them.”

“And I’ll help you put together your Web page,” Martin announced.

“I don’t need any help putting it together.”

“Sure you do. You want to make sure you don’t put out any casual sex signals and I know all of those.” Martin crossed his arms over his chest in a perfect imitation of Cade. “I know what men your age are looking for.”

“But I don’t want a man like you,” Marlene shot back with a sweet smile.

Linc raised an eyebrow at Cade and Cade answered with a faint shrug. Martin’s scowl deepened. Was Martin’s scowl more territorial than protective? Cade hoped the hell not.

Martin and Marlene would be a disaster. Once Martin had pulled himself up by his bootstraps after Lucy’s death, he’d taken up serial dating. Martin liked women and he treated them with respect, but he made sure they never got too close.

Marlene wasn’t the kind of woman who’d go for the four-week wooing she’d get from Martin. Plus she was damn good at what she did and they didn’t need to lose her when things went south at week five.

Martin gritted his teeth. “Then I’ll put down the opposite of everything I’d look for in a woman.”

“That might work then,” Marlene shot back. She looked at the three of them, ringing her desk. “If I pass out from the overdose of testosterone in here, someone just drag me out to the sidewalk.”

Marlene promptly ignored them, returning to the computer screen, humming that old seventies tune “Love is in the Air.”

Cade headed for the door. He was getting the hell out before he caught whatever was going around. He’d rather face down hardened criminals than get caught up in this love business.

3

SUNNY SANG ALONG with Lena Horne’s “Stormy Weather,” her radio set to classic jazz, on her way to the grocery store after lunch. The remainder of her meal was packed in a to-go box next to her but her kitchen at home was dismally empty. Taking advantage of being alone in the car, she sang louder. Sunny couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but she loved to sing. Sometimes when she sang at home, the cat next door yowled.

She felt better than she had in days. No, make that weeks. She’d run a gamut of emotions—depressed, pissed, violated, humiliated. Yep, that about summed it up. But now she felt good. No, make that great.

Despite the rain clouds gathering overhead, she was setting her personal course for nothing but sunny skies from here on out.

She pulled up to the four-way stop at Jackson and Hull Streets. A man in a Santa suit stood on the corner, ringing a bell, holding a donation can for a local food bank. Blue car went. The car to her left should go next.

Her head whipped around in a double-take. No. Was she hallucinating? It couldn’t be. It was.

Cecil Meeks sat at the stop sign on her left in his shiny, black, chrome-trimmed, late-model Cadillac DeVille. All the emotions she thought she’d processed and worked through in the past four weeks swamped her.

She sucked in a deep breath aimed at calming. Problem was she didn’t feel calm. Hold on to your temper, hold on to your temper, hold on to your temper, she silently chanted.

Meeks spotted her and the son of a bitch actually smirked. Full, in-your-face smirking, despite the fact that he was in one car and she in another. She sucked another lungful of air in on the one before, determined to be the bigger person but it didn’t seem to help.

His turn to drive.

Meeks accelerated and waved. And laughed.

He’d made an international laughingstock of her and now he was laughing in her face. One second she was sitting there, the next she just…floored it.

Bam. Her Mustang plowed into the rear door of his Caddie, the impact jerking her against the seat belt. She didn’t have an airbag to go off, but her horn did.

She sat there. She’d just rammed Meeks’s car…with hers.

He jumped out of his car, screaming and waving a cell phone but she couldn’t hear him over the blaring of her horn. Stunned by her own behavior, she sat and stared at him. Unfortunately, his penis didn’t fall off in the street and no rabid squirrels came running. She did, however, hear the approaching wail of a police siren.

Santa wrenched her door open, his beard askew, his bell still in his hand. “Are you okay? Are you trapped in your car?”

She unbuckled her seat belt, her hand amazingly steady even though she felt as if she were shaking all over. “I’m fine.”

She climbed out, her legs barely holding her upright.

“Hey, aren’t you the lady—” he looked over at Cecil jumping up and down like a maggot on a stick “—isn’t he—”

“I am. He is.”

Suddenly the clouds opened up and it started to pour. Not the soft gentle rain of a summer shower but a cold, driving, early-December deluge that stung.

Sunny tilted her face upward. Maybe she’d just drown before things got any worse. If she was lucky.

Luck, however, didn’t seem to be running her way.

“WHAT IN THE HELL was Sunny Templeton thinking?” Cade muttered to himself as he watched the five o’clock news’s lead story over Marlene’s shoulder on her computer monitor.

Meeks had a bandage wrapped around his head and a sling supported his right arm as he played to the camera. “It was terrifying. I didn’t recognize her until I drove past. It was the rage and hate filling her eyes that caught my attention and then the next thing I knew she attacked me with her vehicle. She clearly tried to kill me. I’m lucky I walked away with only the injuries I sustained.”

“Is this your first interaction with Ms. Templeton since the election?” the reporter asked.

“Mercifully, yes. And I hope my last. The woman’s definitely deranged.”

The female reporter quirked her eyebrow. “Some people believe you crossed the line when your campaign put out that flyer.”

Cecil adopted a sanctimonious demeanor. “Absolutely not. I considered that a public service. When you put yourself up for public office, there can be no distinction between public and private life. The public had a right to know what they were getting with Ms. Templeton.”

The reporter faced the camera. “Ms. Templeton is currently being held at the Memphis Police Department pending bail. We’ll bring you updates as available. Back to you now, Gretchen.”

The camera cut back to the in-studio news anchor and Cade filtered out the rest, his attention still focused on Sunny Templeton and Cecil Meeks.

“That man ought to be ashamed,” Marlene said, switching to another screen with one click of her mouse in evident disgust. “I’m sorry we had anything to do with him.”

Cade straightened. “That makes two of us. Meeks is a worm. It’d be kind of funny that she wrecked his new Cadillac, if it hadn’t landed her in jail.”

Marlene sighed. “I’d go over there and help her if I could.” Marlene had turned Sunny into a regular Joan of Arc in the last month. He’d be hard-pressed to believe Sunny Templeton had a more staunch supporter anywhere in Memphis than Marlene. “I’m sure True Blue will handle the bond.” She shot him a look that made the tiny hairs on the back of his neck quiver. “It’s a shame. I think she’s a nice girl. Pretty. Smart. Nice figure in a bikini.”

“Don’t look at me that way.” Marlene might’ve decided to look for love in all the wrong places herself but she could leave him out of her matchmaking schemes. She’d considered herself the matchmaker extraordinaire when Linc and Georgia had wound up together. She was barking up the wrong tree, however, with him and Sunny Templeton.

“I’m not looking at you any way.”

“Yes, you are.” His single-man-in-danger-of-being-fixed-up alarm was going off.

“You’re paranoid.”

“Go figure,” he said. Marlene obviously had decided in her single-minded brain that Sunny was the woman for him. Not by a long shot. God help him if Marlene ever got wind that he’d put Jones onto Meeks to dig up dirt for the woman sitting across the street in a jail cell.

Unfortunately, Marlene could ride this for hours. Fortunately it was time for him to head home. He wanted a nice dinner and a glass of wine or a cold beer.

“I’m outta here. If you’re through, I’ll walk you to your car,” he said. The upside to their location was they were right across from the jail. The downside to their location…they were right across from the jail. Yeah, that meant a bunch of cops were around, but it also meant a lot of slime was around. Throughout the years, they’d made it a habit for one of them to always accompany the office manager to her car.

Marlene unplugged the miniature Christmas tree she’d insisted on buying for her desk corner but left the chili-pepper lights outlining the front window turned on. She’d turned AA Atco into the most festive bail bond office on Poplar Street—hell, probably the entire city of Memphis.

“Let me get my coat,” she said.

“You can go ahead, Cade,” Martin called out from his office. “I’ve got a couple of things to go over with Marlene. I’ll walk her to her car.”