Chasing a Blond Moon(150)

Service explained what he wanted, said, “We tight?”

“Semper Fi, bro.”

Service needed help and his friend was talking up his man, but Tree wasn’t past a little scamming to get what he wanted for his people.

The plane came in from the northeast, nose into a light wind, touched down without a smoke puff on the five-thousand-foot runway, and taxied in. Lorelei Timms got off the twin-engine aircraft looking tired, a wrinkled trench coat slung over her shoulder. She was followed by a burly silver-haired man with a beaming smile. Timms walked toward Service and nodded. The silver-haired man followed with two bulging suitcases and a battered leather garment bag. The senator said, “Grady Service, this is my husband, Whit.”

Whit Timms set the bags down and shook Service’s hand. “Mostly I’m her pack animal,” he said.

The couple walked toward a waiting tan minivan and driver. A State Police SUV was behind the van. Two young women and a young man got off the plane carrying cardboard boxes and headed toward a second van.

Nantz stepped into the hatch opening, looked down at Service and smiled. “Permission to come aboard,” she said. “I’ll show you around my office.” She wore black trousers, a white short-sleeved shirt with epaulets, a thin black tie, a black wheel cap with wings.

There was not enough headroom for him and he had to stoop.

“There’s no security here,” he said.

Nantz stopped and pointed out a window at the threesome loading boxes in a second van. “The guy is Troop Sergeant Toby Robinette and there are three more in the detail in civvies. It’s covered, Service.”

“Sergeant? He looks fourteen,” Service said.

“Everybody looks fourteen to you,” she said with a laugh. “He works older than he looks.”

She squeezed past him, pumped the hatch closed with a hydraulic arm, and latched the door.

They went back through the bird to a bench seat on the starboard side.

“What happened to my tour?” he said.

“It’s about to begin,” she said, tossing her tie over her left shoulder, unsnapping her trousers, letting them fall and stepping out of them. She pushed him onto the bench, put her hands on his shoulders, squatted over him.

Someone began banging on the hatch.

“Somebody wants in,” Service told her.

“Only one person’s getting in right now,” Nantz whispered.

The outside noise continued.

The sound on the door blended with her movement and faded. When she came she collapsed on him, her arms tightly around his neck. “God,” she said, her hips and thighs spasming with diminishing aftershocks.

There was no one near the plane when she opened the hatch.

He carried her bags to his Yukon. She sat beside him with her hand on his hip. “That just blunted my edge,” she said. “Why am I so horny?”

“Why is air invisible?” he said.

She shrugged. “You’re supposed to say something earthy and carnal,” she said.

“My brain’s not working.”

She smiled. “Well, at least one part of you is. I need a nap this afternoon.”

They drove twelve miles south to the Indian Road B&B on Devil’s Lake. It had a gray brick facade, with neatly mown lawns and fingers of peony beds down to the lake.

Nantz hung up her evening gown, got out her shoes for the dinner, took off her clothes, and collapsed on the bed.

Service took a tux out of a plastic bag and hung it up. He had not worn a tux since his wedding. He tried to imagine himself in it and groaned, remembering he had forgotten to get black shoes.

He went down to the Yukon and dug out his Danner boots. At least they had once been black.

A woman named Hazel Slack owned the B&B. She was dressed in tight slacks and a red cowl-necked sweater.

“Got a shoeshine box I can use?” Service asked her.

“Sure,” she said, scampering away.

The voice of Lorelei Timms said, “Out here, Detective.” Service stepped onto a glassed-in porch holding his boots. She had a cup of coffee, a cigarette in an ashtray.

“You have your woman all to yourself in a beautiful room and you’re going to shine your work boots?”

Service didn’t respond.

“She’s missed you,” the senator said. “Have you been following the campaign?”

“Not really.”

“You don’t care who wins?”

“I care, but I’m just one vote.”

“Do you think I have a chance?”

“I usually don’t follow politics,” he said.

She smiled. “You’re priceless. Did Maridly give you her special tour of the plane?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

Hazel Slack intervened with a shoeshine kit in a wooden box. “This is all we have.”