the kid’s fault, not hers. Sam had still been cashiered, but by then she had been ready to move on anyway. Too many of her fellow officers had blamed her for the botched takedown. Besides, her retrieval business had proved to be far more lucrative.
“What’s our boy Elvis been up to lately?” she asked Pat.
“He did some time in a pretty rough juvvie facility up there, then dropped off the radar screen. No record of him until he turned up here a few months ago.”
“Usually that kind of bad actor rides the down bound train straight to hell, but Scruggs has no other records as an adult you could locate?” she asked.
“Maybe he went out of state. Out of the country. Or, maybe wrestling gators in that detention facility scared him onto the straight and narrow. Who the hell knows? Oh, one thing—you said he was twenty-one?”
“That’s what I got from my client, who had him investigated. Not very well, it seems.”
“He could pass for it, but the sucker’s twenty-eight if the records from Tallahassee are accurate. Birth dates aren’t something they usually screw up.”
Sam hummed, doodling on the notepad, talking to herself. “Wonder what went on for those seven years?”
“Track him down and find out, I guess. That’s what they pay you the big bucks for, isn’t it?” Patowski asked sourly.
“Yeah, Patty, it sure is,” she replied cheerfully. “Thanks. I owe you.” Before he could curse at her again, she hung up. “Looks like I’m headed for St. Louis.”
Standing in the doorway, Matt listened to her musing. “I’m going with you,” he said.
“Nix on that. I have work for you here.”
“I have an editor who sort of expects me to turn in stories by deadline. The Herald pays me for that.”
“Then you obviously don’t have time to drive to St. Louis with me.”
She had that gotcha look in her eyes. “Look, Sam, are you sure this kid’s just a Space Quest fan run amok? I mean, he’s not a psycho or anything, is he?” His wife was sometimes selective with what facts she provided him.
“Just a poor geek. Look at his picture, for crying in the night.” She pulled the snapshot from the clutter on the desk and offered it to him.
“That’s a Confederation Ensign’s insignia,” he murmured.
“You know about this Space Quest junk?” she asked, amazed.
“It isn’t junk. It was a great series—still in syndication. And the films have made millions. Five spin-off shows since it premiered.”
Sam burst out with a guffaw before she could stop herself. “You were a Spacie!” she exclaimed.
His look became at once thunderous and defensive. “The term is Spacer and yes, I was a big fan. Anything wrong with that?”
Sam was hard put to find a glib answer. “I never got the chance to find out. All we ever had on television at our house was baseball and boxing. Mostly, I worked part-time jobs growing up. Not much time for television.” Now she was the one sounding defensive, so she shifted the subject. “But dressing up in those crazy regalias and going halfway across the country to conventions. Kinda weird, if you ask me.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with attending a Spacer Con. I always thought it would be fun.”
“Then why didn’t you go?” she asked, puzzled.
Matt cleared his throat, then looked her in the eye and confessed, “Aunt Claudia wouldn’t let me. She didn’t want me doing anything that’d make me more of a geek than I already was.”
“You? A geek?” That was the very last thing she could imagine her six-six sexy husband ever being. “Get outta here!”
Matt could see the humor in the situation as he looked at her amazed expression. “My height was a bigger number than my weight in junior high. I wore braces and needed correctional glasses—though at least they weren’t as ugly as these.” He looked down at the askew horn-rims on Farley Winchester. “I can identify with the kid. Sometimes other galaxies can hold a real appeal.”
“Maybe just being born with a silver spoon doesn’t make up for other stuff,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Your parents died when you were nine, right?” He nodded. “And Aunt Claudia popped in and out of your life like Auntie Mame?”
“Why do you think I went to private boarding schools all those years?”
She sighed. “I thought all Beacon Hill kids just did. Dumb, huh?” She walked over to him and laid her head against the steady beat of his heart. “I’m sorry, Matt.” Before he could reply, her head shot up and she looked him straight in the eye. “But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on Aunt Claudia’s offer. Ten K a month just to stay married isn’t anything to sneeze at. Think of it as her penance.”
His expression turned grim. “Episcopalians don’t do penance. And even if they did, she wouldn’t. Forget the money. We’ll never agree about it.”
“You’re right about that, but don’t think I’m gonna give it up,” she said stubbornly. Feeling him tense in anger, she paused. “Okay, let’s give that topic a rest for a while.” She began tracing small circles on his bicep with her fingertips. “About doing some checking for me…”
“What do you need?” he asked, resigned. With her out of town, he’d be bouncing off the walls as soon as he finished his current assignments.
“This whole thing smells kinda funny. If Farley withdrew twenty large from one of his daddy’s bank accounts, why are he and his pal Elvis using Winchester’s credit cards instead of spending the cash? Even if the kid’s spacey, er, a Spacer, a guy like Scruggs has to know how easy it’ll be to trace them. Besides, according to the doc, the kid’s crazy, not stupid.”
“Good point.” Matt rubbed his chin, considering. “You said something earlier about the shrink giving you bad vibes. Maybe I’ll check him and your ‘Roman Numeral’ guy out while you’re gone.”
“You’re the greatest—even if you were a geek before I met you,” she said with a cheeky grin. “Oh, yeah, about being a geek, I wouldn’t know a Reemulan from a rhinoceros. Fill me in a little about that stuff.”
“Reemulans have pointed ears, not horns. I can explain what you need to know about the Confederation of Planets, their allies and their enemies.” He began a lengthy discourse on the warlike Reemulans and their logical, peaceful cousins, the Vulcants. Both civilizations felt mere Earthlings were both technologically and ethically challenged. “Then there are the Klingoffs—”
“Are they anything like jackoffs?”
“Sort of, yes. Barbaric, living by a primitive warrior’s code but highly advanced in technology. Everyone in the galaxy thinks they’re animals.”
“They the ones who look like they have turtle shells glued to their foreheads?”
“I see you’ve watched
