I’m giving a dinner party next week.”
“Oh honey, no wonder you’re tense. We all know how stressful entertaining can be.”
Chantal didn’t reply. Entertaining was nothing. Stress was watching a Neanderthal saunter away with the criminal she’d collared. It was as if she were a gold miner and had spent hours, days digging for gold. She’d finally uncovered a nugget and some other prospector had reached over her shoulder and stolen it away.
She didn’t care about the fee that she’d have earned for delivering Wesley Baker. Money wasn’t the reason she’d gone into this business in the first place. What bothered her more than anything was Luke’s assessment that she was in over her head.
By the time Mary had worked her magic, Chantal had managed to put Luke Coleman out of her mind. She left Mimi’s feeling rejuvenated. After a fast lunch at a nearby restaurant, she headed for Big Joey’s to see whose mug shot had made it to his wall of shame.
Big Joey’s Bail Bonds was located in downtown Kansas City, three blocks from the city square that held the court house, the police station and various other government buildings.
On top of the flat, one-story business, a neon sign—as gaudy as that on any Vegas casino—flashed, despite the brightness of the afternoon.
At this time of the day the heat radiated up in fierce waves from the blacktop parking lot, intensifying the scent of motor oil and rotting garbage that permeated the area.
Chaos ruled the front office. Chantal had never been in the place when the desk wasn’t littered with mounds of papers and fast-food wrappers, the phones weren’t ringing off the hook and the scent of burnt coffee, sweat and fear didn’t saturate the place.
A large bulletin board sporting mug shots of the people who had jumped bail and not made their court appearances covered one wall. Skips, as they were referred to in the business, were the people Chantal and her fellow bail-enforcement agents hunted.
Monica Hyatt sat behind the only desk in the room and she waggled two fingers in greeting at Chantal as she continued talking into the phone. As usual, she wasn’t the only one in the room.
Two other bounty hunters played cards at a table in the corner and a pizza-delivery boy stood impatiently waiting for somebody to pay him for the pizzas that teetered precariously on the edge of Monica’s desk.
“Hey, Carol,” James Walker, one of the card players, greeted her. “Heard Coleman trumped you Saturday night.” He and Brian Cooke, the other card player, laughed.
“I’m glad you two are so amused,” she replied and walked over to the wall to see if any new photos had been put up since Friday when she’d last been in the office. There were two and she pulled a notepad from her purse and wrote down their names and all the pertinent information about their crimes.
“Honey, I’d never have done anything like that to you,” James said.
Chantal raised one of her blond eyebrows to gaze at the older man. “James, you’d cuff your own mother and bring her in if you thought a fee was involved.”
She turned back to Monica and motioned toward the inner-office door. “Is he in?” she mouthed. Monica nodded and indicated she should go on in. Chantal knocked on the door, then pushed it open.
Big Joey Barlow stood less than five feet tall and weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, but he had the attitude, the aggression and the guts of a man four times his size. The biggest mistake people made with Joey was to underestimate him because of his stature.
“Just turn yourself in, Pete,” Joey said into the phone as he gestured Chantal into a chair in front of his desk. “If I have to send one of my people after you I can’t guarantee things won’t get ugly.”
As Joey alternately cajoled and threatened whoever was on the receiving end of the call, Chantal sank into the chair opposite the desk and waited.
In the eight months that Chantal had been working for Joey she’d found him to be a generous, kind man unless you crossed him, then all bets were off.
“Just get your ass in here,” Joey yelled into the receiver, then slammed it down and grabbed a bottle of antacid tablets from the desktop. He popped two of the chalky tablets into his mouth and chewed feverishly.
“Some days I think I should get out of this business, sell it and spend the rest of my days living on a beach somewhere and sipping drinks with those pretty little umbrellas stuck in them.”
Chantal smiled at her boss. “You’d go crazy with boredom within a month and use one of those umbrella toothpicks to put yourself out of your misery.”
He laughed. “You’re probably right. This business is in my blood.” He reared back in his chair and gazed at her with his intelligent brown eyes. “So, you in here to bitch?”
She frowned. “Why would I bitch?”
“Two words. Luke Coleman.”
Chantal sighed in exasperation. “What did the man do? Take an ad out in the paper?”
“He came in here Saturday night and explained to me what had happened so I’d have a heads-up if you had a beef.”
Chantal bristled with irritation. “I’m not a crybaby or a tattletale. I’d had no intention of even mentioning it to you,” she replied.
“If I thought you were either, I wouldn’t have hired you,” Joey replied.
“I just wanted to check in. I see we’ve got a couple of new glamour shots on the wall.”
“Yeah, mostly penny-ante stuff.” Joey pulled a big cigar from his top desk drawer. He stuck it into his mouth, but didn’t light it. “I’m much more interested in a phone call I got a little while ago from my source close to the DA’s office.”
Chantal leaned forward. “About what?”
Joey frowned and his eyes narrowed, giving him a dangerous look that only a fool would fail to see. “According to my source, Marcus Willowby failed to make his noon check-in with the authorities.”
Chantal checked her watch. “But that was over an hour ago.”
“Nothing official has come down. His lawyer is supposedly on top of it. He’s sure it’s nothing more than a monitor glitch of some kind.”
“You’ll let me know what you find out?”
“Honey, if that pervert tries to skip out on me, I’ll call in every bounty hunter I know, every marker I’m owed, to see that bastard’s balls tied to the highest tree.” There was a soft menace in his tone, a menace that made her believe all the rumors she’d heard about him.
Joey leaned back in his chair and his frown deepened. “I didn’t feel good about this from the very beginning. I should have told them to go to another bail bondsman.”
“Why did they have to use a bail bondsman at all?” she asked. “I thought the Willowbys had more money than Trump.”
“Just because you got a lot of money on paper doesn’t mean you have a lot of ready cash. Willowby
