at the gravesite?”
Ida pushed back wayward bangs from her eyes and grinned from ear to ear. “Have at it. I’ll even look it up on our map and save you the trouble of finding it.”
“Excellent.”
“As long as I can watch what you’re doing.”
Angie sighed. This was just not her day. Not her week. If her sister’s life wasn’t hanging by a thread, she would cash in her metal detector and go home. “It’s police business,” she said, trying to dissuade the clerk and hoping the woman didn’t decide to call the precinct. “Could be dangerous.”
“Honey, I used to work in a biker bar. I can handle danger.”
“I might need Ida’s help,” Boone said. Angie shot him with her eyes, but he chose not to shut up. “She probably has self-defense tricks up her sleeve I never thought of.”
“You betcha,” Ida said, winking at him. “Honey, if you don’t want this eye magnet, I’d like a crack at him.”
“Have at it,” Angie said, rolling her eyes at Boone’s grin. Ida didn’t notice—she was too busy gazing at Boone.
“You sure you’re a lawyer?” she asked him. “’Cause I think you look like one of those handsome mobsters in the movies.”
Lawyer or mobster? Too good to resist, even considering she had taken a vow of silence where Boone was concerned. Turning, Angie opened her mouth, but Boone’s fingers suddenly covered her lips to shush her.
“Don’t even start,” he warned, his dark eyebrows slanting.
She couldn’t speak anyway. The last thing she’d expected was his touching her—or the joy flooding her from the contact.
She stared up at him, confused, and to her amazement, he looked just as startled as she did. But she wasn’t the reason. Turning, she followed his gaze.
Ida stood there, holding a gun in her hand.
Splitting apart to opposite sides of the room like they had been working together for years, Angie and Boone simultaneously drew their own weapons, ready for a stand-off.
THREE
“Relax. I was just holding it up to show you two I had it. I wasn’t going to shoot the thing.” Ida’s wrinkles grew even deeper as she gingerly put the gun down on the counter. “If you two don’t beat all. Saying how dangerous what you’re here to do is, and then spending time making goo-goo eyes at each other so you don’t even notice someone has a gun until they could have shot you.”
“She has a point, Angie,” Boone said, moving his jacket to holster his Glock. “Better stop making goo-goo eyes at me. You’re too distracting.”
Like she needed this? Angie scowled at the other woman. “I did not make goo-goo eyes at Boone.”
Ida just smiled at Boone, who gave her that boyish grin Angie thought he kept reserved for her. So much for thinking she was special. With a fast sigh, Angie reholstered her own weapon at her ankle and checked Ida’s. “It’s loaded.”
“Of course it is. What good would an empty gun be?”
She liked the logic. The woman reminded her a lot of herself, and Angie wasn’t sure if she liked that or not. She returned the weapon to Ida. “Better put it back wherever you keep it.”
“Sure,” Ida said. A few seconds later, the firearm was safely locked inside a steel counter drawer. “I only got it out because you said digging up what you’re after could be dangerous. But I should have figured you’d both be carrying already. I’ll be safe enough, I guess.”
Angie bit her tongue to keep from asking Ida if she had a permit for the weapon, because if the caretaker didn’t, then she would have to do something about it, and she didn’t need further delays. She could also have asked Ida what could go on at a cemetery that would require protection, but truly, she didn’t want to know.
Striding over to the door, she moved her arm in a windmill motion, gesturing for them to follow her. Outside, she took in the surrounding area, suddenly edgy again. What she was looking for, she wasn’t certain. She still didn’t believe Detry was coming after her right now, but Ida’s suddenly brandishing a firearm had made her anxious.
As had Boone’s touching her. She was still vulnerable to him, no matter how much she thought otherwise. But Boone was as much a threat to her sister’s life as Detry was in a way, because Boone refused to believe her. If she fell for him all over again, she might get goo-goo-eyed for real, and let him convince her he was right, and then she would give up her mission. Chloe could end up dead.
She had to remain strong and get this done.
First things first. She needed her metal detector and shovel, but she didn’t want to ask Boone for any favors. So she merely pointed to his trunk.
“Aren’t you being just a bit childish with this ‘no talk’ thing?” Boone asked, getting his keys out.
Probably, but she didn’t care. The less contact she had with him, the less she would think about him. But she wasn’t telling him that. Retrieving her tools, she saw Ida smile from ear to ear, and she lifted her eyebrows at her in question. “Something amusing you?”
“You two. You’re more fun than a soap opera.” Ida waved her hand in a northerly direction and set the pace, telling them Laurie Detry’s grave was a thousand feet or so from the office building.
“So, Ida, what was it like working in a biker bar?” Boone asked.
That was all the encouragement the older woman needed. In the next five minutes, Angie learned more about Ida Zlotsky than she’d ever imagined possible. Years ago, her husband had walked out on her, she’d had two babies to support, and no car, and waitressing at the biker bar was the only work within walking distance.
“I thought I was going to die when he left,” Ida said. “But I got my act together, and I made it.”
“I understand that,” Boone said. “My mom was in about the same situation when I was a kid. When she got married, she thought she would be able to stay home and raise me, but it didn’t happen that way, and she wound up working two jobs. It was rough.”
He asked Ida another question, but Angie stopped listening. Boone had gone through a really bad childhood, just like her? He’d never told her. And this caring side of him where Ida was concerned—she’d never seen it with anyone other than herself. He seemed genuinely interested in the caretaker as a person and not just in passing time till they got to the grave.
Her eyes sweeping the area, Angie listened to Ida talking about how she’d learned to make a mean tequila sunrise at the bar, and also how to swing a baseball bat effectively—at two bikers who just wouldn’t stop fighting. She’d also never gotten held up.
“The bikers watched over me.”
God had watched over her, Angie immediately thought. She knew she ought to tell Ida that, and would have before Cliff’s death. But now, doubt held her tongue captive. If God was watching over believers, He had to have been watching over Cliff. So what had happened? Cliff had told her many times he had great faith in God’s seeing him through his problems. So how did he get to the point of suicide?
No, she couldn’t say a thing to Ida. She still believed in God, but she was no longer so certain of the answers that she wanted to jump into leading people like Ida to Him—if Ida indeed was an unbeliever. What if the cemetery caretaker had questions that she just couldn’t answer—like she herself had about Cliff? Anything she might say, including doubts, might turn the woman away from God. So Angie kept quiet, feeling guilty for doing so.
“When he was young, my son didn’t like his mother working in a bar. He was gonna be somebody, and he didn’t want people thinking he came from the wrong side of the tracks.”
“Boy,