Jake smiled, gave her that intense look she couldn’t resist. He leaned toward her and they used their fingers to trace two long handlebar mustaches, curved at the ends, in the air between them. This was the Jake she loved, teasing, giving her adoring looks, abandoning entire meals to be with her.
Later, at the doorway, she kissed him. “Don’t go,” she whispered.
“I have to get this settled. When I come back, shall I bring my suitcase?” He gave her a sheepish look, as if to ask if he’d behaved well enough for her to take him back.
She smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s go slow, Jake.” He kissed her and she knew he could tell she didn’t mean it.
MC leaned against the open door, watching Jake skip down the stairs. All the old feelings had come back and this time she felt it could really work. No one was more a turn-on than Jake Powers at his peak of charm. Not that she had any intention of rushing back to Houston with Jake, at least not until he proved he could last more than four days without a beer.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“You did good,” Matt told me, using our traditional complimentary phrase from our first case together. “Berger says they were able to trace the tire tread to a low-end motorcycle made by Melrose Company and sold in only one shop in Revere. The owner ID’d Gallen based on the photo we took of him the night MC called in the nine-twenty-one.”
I was excited that I had at last contributed to an investigation, if only the one relating to the whereabouts of Wayne Gallen, which, now that I thought of it, wasn’t really an investigation in the eyes of the police. Matt had taken the report of my late-afternoon encounter with Wayne better than I thought he would, probably because I downplayed the fright I’d felt when he first entered my car.
“And the bike shop had an address for him?” I asked, with great hope.
He shook his head. “Not that lucky. But now we know how he’s traveling and the uniforms are checking local biker hangouts; it could be he’s trying to blend in that way.”
“If he really wanted to blend in, he’d wash up and shave off that mustache.”
I brushed out a jacket Matt would wear the next morning to his “modeling appointment,” as we were calling it. I was uneasy about their using Styrofoam in a serious medical diagnostic, and felt better reading the new paperwork we’d been given, which called it a thermoplastic mold.
“What about Alex Simpson?” I asked. I’d decided Simpson must be in Revere, too, since all the other Texans involved with MC were.
“Negative. It’s possible that Gallen is with Simpson in a motel, but if so Simpson’s using a different name.”
“I don’t think Gallen’s in a motel room. Why wouldn’t he clean himself up if he were? Gallen smells as though he’s been on the street half his life.”
“You were that close?”
“I … uh … heard MC say that.”
“Uh-huh. Because you made it sound no more intimidating than a guy just stopping to ask directions, and if he’d gotten close or threatened you, you’d have told me. Right?”
“Of course.”
Matt’s simulation was scheduled for Friday morning. This would take about an hour and would help pinpoint the tumor, according to Dr. Abeles. Matt’s pelvic area would be scanned, and a three-dimensional image would be generated. A technician would make marks on Matt’s skin to indicate the area to be radiated, a large area compared to what would be required with the new small-molecule medicine I’d been reading about.
“I’m supposed to leave the marks there, and not wash them off for the whole treatment cycle, just pat with water and then a dry towel,” Matt said. “That ought to look cute. A nice decoration, like a tattoo. Maybe I’ll get a navel ring to match.”
I laughed. “You’re doing a great job putting me at ease about this. How are you doing?”
“I’m nervous, but I’m feeling no pain,” he said. “I even have some pre-pre-premedication to help prevent nausea and diarrhea once the treatments start.”
He read through the booklet one last time, mumbling reminders to himself not to use moisturizers or powders, as if that were his habit.
Jean had been in and out the day before, visiting other friends and clients in Revere, and was now back so she could join Matt and me for the trip to the clinic. Once Jean saw that her brother was fine, she’d head south to the Cape.
That was the arrangement, until Berger showed up at our door. The rain was in full swing again, and he stomped the water off his rubbers—the kind I hadn’t seen since I was a kid, requiring untold strength to overcome the friction as you pulled them on or off your regular shoes. “I’ll keep these on if you don’t mind,” he said, and we waved our approval.