Midnight Oil Read online

  KAREN KENDALL

  Midnight Oil

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  To my editor, Wanda Ottewell,

  who is always a lot of fun to brainstorm with.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  TROY BARRINGTON FELT like a pervert, sitting here in his car in a dark parking lot at 10:00 p.m. Either a pervert or a cop on a stakeout, except he didn’t have any doughnuts or one of those cool police radios.

  “What are you doing, Uncle Troy?” asked his eleven-year-old nephew, Derek, via cell phone.

  He visualized the kid, tousled blond hair sticking out every which way and a chocolate stain on the Marlins T-shirt he liked to sleep in. His skateboard was probably at the end of his bed. “Just sitting out on the porch, smoking a cigar,” Troy lied. He couldn’t tell an eleven-year-old what he was really up to: spying on a bunch of people he didn’t know but suspected were up to no good. He also couldn’t tell Derek that one luscious redhead in particular made the stakeout a lot less boring than it could have been.

  “Why are you still awake?” Troy asked, tearing his eyes away from her very interesting curves. “Huh? You should be in bed.”

  “Mom says cigars are bad for you,” Derek told him, ignoring the question.

  “They are. Terrible. But someone gave me this as a gift, and I didn’t want to throw it away.” It was true that he had a cigar in his glove box, from his friend Amos, whose wife had just had a baby girl. His old teammates were dropping like flies to wives and kids. He scrubbed a hand over his face. Hadn’t it been just yesterday that they were all a bunch of rowdy, testosterone-crazed twentysomethings? He had no idea how he’d suddenly fallen into his midthirties, and still had no desire to settle down with a woman.

  “Well,” Derek said judiciously, “I guess that’s okay, then. So did you fix the holes in your porch?”

  “Nope. That’s my weekend project, big guy. You wanna help?”

  “Yeah! Can I really?”

  “Uh-huh. If you promise to hang up the phone and go to bed now. I’ll bet your mom doesn’t know you’re still up.”

  Guilty silence.

  “Does she?”

  “No. Are you gonna tell?”

  “Not if you get to bed this minute. I’ll talk to her tomorrow and see if I can pick you up Sunday morning, okay? After church.”

  “How ’bout before church?”

  “After church. But good try.”

  His nephew sighed. “Can I use a power saw?”

  “Absolutely not. But you can measure and mark for me, and help in other ways.”

  “Cool.”

  “Where are Danni and Laura?” Troy’s twin nieces were twelve and played powder-puff football in his honor, which tugged at his heartstrings.

  “They’re spending the night with Lana Banana. That dumb girl.”

  “It’s not nice to call her that.”

  “I know. Bye, Uncle Troy. Don’t smoke any more cigars. Okay?”

  “Yup.” Troy hung up with a smile and refocused on the cute redhead.

  His half sister’s kids were one of the biggest reasons he’d moved to Miami—her creep husband had taken off and she was now a single mom. Frankly, Troy thought she was better off that way. Unfortunately, Derek and the girls weren’t. They needed a decent male role model, and though Troy was certainly no angel, at least he could fake it for the kids.

  From behind the windshield of his vintage Lotus, he squinted at Uncle Newt’s strip mall. Correction: his strip mall. A month ago, at the reading of old Newt’s will, Troy had suddenly become a slum lord.

  Nine storefronts, most of them dark, stared back at him from his spot in a parking lot that had seen better days. The macadam was a faded gray and there were cracks everywhere. The lines demarking the car slots were barely visible during the day, and Troy wondered just how much money it cost to repave an entire lot. Damn. That would put another dent in his savings. And there’d been a few too many dents lately, one big one made by the kids’ college funds. But Samantha would never be able to save enough, and the father was a deadbeat.

  Troy tilted his head against the leather seat and leaned back to crack his neck, still training his gaze on the best storefront, the brightly lit one, dead center, with the largest expanse of plate glass. The one with all the laughing pretty girls inside, that redhead in particular, and a thousand bottles and jars of goop in the window. The one he wanted for his own business, a new sporting goods store—if he could break the tenants’ lease.

  After Hours, said the funky, squiggly script. A Salon and Day Spa. And in smaller letters, Open Till Midnight!

  Inside, the place was self-consciously artsy, with an S-shaped reception desk, movable walls in pastel ice-cream colors and exotic glass lamps of different sizes and hues dangling over it all. There were filmy white curtains bracketing the windows, but the tenants never seemed to close them.

  Yesterday, as he’d oh, so casually sauntered by, he’d spied a zebra floor cloth and a unicorn floor cloth, both of which appeared to be floating in an expanse of seawater from out here. When you got up close, you could see that the concrete floor had been textured and painted to resemble the ocean.

  Fishy, thought Troy. What kind of spa stays open until midnight? A spa that gives dirty massages to dateless, desperate men, that’s what kind. He smiled in the darkness. Because that sure violated the lease agreement.

  His smile faded. At least, he’d been convinced of the spa’s underhanded activities a couple of hours ago, when he first started watching the place. But to his disappointment, most of the clientele were women. And the two men who’d gone in had stayed up front, clearly visible in the well-lit windows while they got haircuts and laughed with the pretty girls over glasses of wine and beer.

  Alcohol. What kind of spa serves drinks and blasts hip dance music? Troy could hear the music clearly from outside in his car, inspiring his unwilling fingers and toes to tap to it.

  If he couldn’t prove they were running a dirty massage parlor, then maybe he could get them on the liquor license. If they served alcohol, didn’t they have to have one by law? Troy rubbed his jaw. Or was that only if they sold the drinks? No money was changing hands in there as far as he could see.

  He continued to watch as the cute little redhead in the white lab coat bumped hips with a dark-haired girl in artsy clothes and rubber flip-flops. Red had serious curves, tempting and visible through the open coat. She also had sweet, kissable pale skin and a load of hair for a man to lose his hands in….

  Okay, now he really was being a pervert. He was here on a business mission, not for a cheap thrill.

  Red threw back her head and laughed, then spun 360 degrees on one foot. She wobbled as she stopped, though, and would have lost her balance if a tall, broad-shouldered Latino guy hadn’t caught her by the elbow.

  Aha! Where did he come from? Maybe, Troy thought hopefully, he’d been getting happy in the back. But no—he swung himself behind one of the manicure stations and…

  Troy gaped. Surely that bruis
er wasn’t actually removing a woman’s nail polish and then filing her nails? But he was. Where had the guy’s balls gone hiding? Were they soaking in warm paraffin wax in the back?

  He continued to feel like a Peeping Tom—and, oh, shit! The redhead squinted out the window again, looking directly at him. He ducked, sliding as low in the seat as he could go.

  Troy stayed that way for two or three long minutes, barely breathing, his heart pumping fast. He was just about to ease upward again when a female voice spoke to him with deadly calm.

  “There are laws against stalking in this state, you pathetic creep.”

  Troy looked up to find the redhead standing there, all five feet of her, aiming a container of Mace at his head.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said, the words sounding lame to his own ears.

  “Really. So what’s up, then, big guy? You shopping for a dry cleaner at this hour of the night? Or did you figure you’d sleep in your car so you’d be first in line for hot doughnuts at 5:00 a.m.?”

  “I’m not a stalker,” he told her, straightening in his seat. “Or a rapist. But it’s a really stupid move for you to come out here alone to confront one. What were you thinking?”

  “Mace. It does a body good.”

  “Sweetheart, go back inside and don’t ever try this again. I could have that out of your hand and you pinned to the ground in about two seconds.”

  Her gaze drilled into his. In the dark he couldn’t tell what color her eyes were, but he thought probably brown. Whatever color they were, they were gorgeous: almond-shaped, long-lashed and steely with determination.

  “Yeah? I don’t advise you to do that. Because I’ve called the cops, pervert, and they should be here within a minute or two. So if I were you I’d get the hell off of this property right now.”

  He really didn’t need to be questioned by the police about his behavior. “Look, I’m telling you, this is not what you think. I’m not some kind of sicko.” But Troy did as she suggested. He put the Lotus into gear and slowly drove away from her.

  “And don’t come back!” she shouted.

  Great. Just great. Now is probably not the time to tell her she’s hot—or ask her what she’s doing next Saturday.

  THE NEXT MORNING Troy awoke in his bed with a numb arm, a migraine and a persistent hard-on. Visions of the pissed-off redhead had flitted through his head all night, and in a lot of them she wore nothing but that lab coat, unbuttoned.

  He’d been wasting his time the night before. He wished he’d gone to bed around the same time he’d forced Derek to do so. Besides the drinks and the weird late-night schedule, After Hours wasn’t conducting any out-of-the-ordinary business, and he’d come close to being arrested for stalking. Damn it.

  He focused on the extremely ugly brown-paneled wall of the furnished hovel he’d just purchased. The place dated from the early sixties and hadn’t been remodeled since then. The scent of its elderly former resident, now dead, still hung in the air: a peculiar essence of Listerine, moth balls, old grease and musty carpet.

  Troy swung his legs over the side of his bed and eyed the malfunctioning window-unit air conditioner sourly. Until he got this wreck of a place gutted and fixed up, he might be better off sleeping in his car.

  The house had been the only halfway decent buy left in Miami’s Coral Gables, and it was going to take a year of his time, a hundred contractors and a miracle of God to make it livable.

  Troy shook his dead arm—it used to take a woman sleeping on it to make that happen—and made coffee one-handed as what felt like an army of ants ran from his wrist to his bicep. He yawned while something tickled at his barely functional brain.

  Oh, right. Alcohol permit. He needed to check on that. If the tenants at the spa could be kicked out for something that simple, he’d be a happy guy.

  He felt a little guilty as he drank coffee—black with one sugar—and did some research on the Internet to look into the laws. They’d all seemed so happy and energetic last night as he’d sat in the dark like a vulture, plotting to yank their storefront out from under them. A really nice guy, he was.

  Hey, it’s nothing personal. Just business.

  Unfortunately, the Internet informed him that yes, indeed, After Hours could legally serve beer and wine as long as they weren’t selling it. Liquor required a license, but he’d seen no signs of them serving hard liquor.

  Great. Since when had salons and spas turned into lightweight bars? He was obviously getting old.

  Troy logged off gloomily and fried two eggs and three strips of bacon. He made toast. He regained use of his arm. And after a shower he drove back over to the strip mall to think about the problem in the light of day.

  He parked the Lotus on the other side of the lot and walked by casually, peering in the door. Nobody was visible yet, but the salon would open in a few minutes. It looked spotless inside, and unfortunately there were no degenerates passed out on the floor after a night of partying. He frowned at the smaller gold letters on the door.

  We’re All About You!

  Not, thought Troy. If you were all about me, you and your male manicurist and your pampered princess clients would be outta here. My new sporting goods store would occupy that prime retail space. And you wouldn’t be getting away with murder on the rent.

  What had Newt been thinking, when he’d signed all the tenants to bargain-basement rents and ten-year leases? Ten years! For chrissakes.

  But Troy couldn’t evict any of these people without cause, and he didn’t particularly want to evict the ones in the smaller storefronts. Well, except maybe the nut bags in the Arrowroot Café, where they served chai or green tea instead of a decent cup of coffee and wouldn’t make anything using dairy products, meat or wheat. Soy milk—ugh!

  Wasn’t it time to take back the planet from tree huggers and vegetarians? Was it too much to ask for a real cup of joe in the morning, a BLT for lunch and a steak after a long, hard day?

  His gaze rested with more approval on the other restaurant in the strip mall. Benito’s Bistro, an Italian place, seemed to be popular, judging by the constant stream of customers. So what if the owner shared his name with Mussolini—at least he wasn’t a granola head.

  Other businesses in the place included a mail and copy center, a dry cleaner, a gift shop and a small pharmacy. They were fine as far as Troy was concerned. He’d thought briefly about knocking out a wall between a couple of them and using the larger space for his new store, but he really wanted the large central one. And why lose two rents instead of one? Curiously, Newt hadn’t charged After Hours higher rent, even though they had the biggest and best space. Why not?

  His best guess was that Newt, a product of the Great Depression, had locked in the first paying customer to come along.

  Troy had fond memories of fishing in the Everglades with Uncle Newt, but they had eaten everything they caught, and that meant everything. He’d almost gagged on the grilled salamander and he’d wondered if Newt ate the leftover bait when Troy went home to his parents….

  His cell phone rang, interrupting his thoughts, and Troy flipped it open. “Hey, Jerry.”

  His attorney said, “Hey, yourself.”

  “Any luck finding a clause to break the lease?”

  “I hate to disappoint you, but old Newt made sure the damn things were watertight. He didn’t want anyone sliming out of their rent money.”

  Troy cursed.

  “But if you can catch them on some violation, then you’re good to proceed with eviction.”

  “What kind of violation?”

  “Well, salons are notoriously regulated, and there are all kinds of little rules they might not be in compliance with. And remember, they have to have permits from the city for every single thing, from electrical outlets to drainage to cleanliness. See if you can get them on something. Maybe they snuck in an extra footbath somewhere, or a manicure table. Maybe they’re not disinfecting the sink to standards. Or the pH in their shampoo ain’t right. Hell, I don
’t know. You’ll have to get in there and see.”

  “How am I supposed to recognize what’s code and what’s not? Can you fax me the regulations for Miami?”

  “Fax them? The regs will be the size of the phone book. You asked me to keep your bill down.”

  Yes, Troy had. Jerry wasn’t cheap. “Well, yeah, but I’m flying blind here! Can you overnight me a copy?”

  “I’ll get an intern on it. You’ll have ’em by tomorrow morning.”

  “Thanks.”

  “How’s the new house?”

  “Peachy,” Troy growled. Real estate had gone sky high in South Florida, and Coral Gables was a primo location, so his three-bedroom shack was a great investment in spite of its appalling interior. Troy actually looked forward to the do-it-yourself challenge—it would distract him for the next year or so while he accustomed himself to not being part of a football organization. Until he got his sporting goods store going, he had way too much time on his hands.

  Troy was also going to have to accustom himself to being on a budget. As a former strong safety for the Jacksonville Jaguars, he wasn’t used to that. But the stock market had been performing poorly, he had his nieces and nephew to think about and he’d lost his coaching job in Gainesville after the team went on a losing streak. Just business, nothing personal.

  In a heartbeat he’d gone from being a big cheese in Jacksonville to a…cheese doodle. He was unaccustomed to being a nobody and, frankly, it abraded his ego. Hell, nobody in South Florida even recognized him, much less asked for an autograph.

  But beyond that, Troy wanted to control his own financial future: he was sick of being jerked around like a puppet by various football organizations, just as he was sick of women who used him for his connection to them. It was time to change all of that.

  He considered hiring Jerry’s intern to snoop around After Hours, but decided to suck it up and do it himself. He’d park in the back, and hopefully the curvy redhead wouldn’t recognize him in daylight. All she’d really seen was a head in a car.