Hunter's Moon Read online

  They turned right on Limestone, and as they drove past the Civic Center Molly saw the reason for the unusual amount of traffic. The marquee advertised Indigo Girls Tonight at 8:00.

  Of course. She’d read about the show weeks ago, only she’d forgotten it was tonight. There’d been no reason to remember. Though she and Ashley were both huge fans of the Indigo Girls, there was no way they could have afforded to attend. Not that she minded, not really. Such luxuries had never been a part of her life, and she didn’t expect them to be.

  “You like the Indigo Girls?” he asked. Molly supposed she had been gazing hungrily at the crowd streaming under the marquee, and immediately got herself in hand.

  “They’re okay.” Her shrug was indifferent.

  “I like them,” he said, surprising her. Molly didn’t reply.

  A few minutes later they pulled into the parking lot of Joe Balogna’s, a popular Italian restaurant. She had expected him to stop at something like a McDonald’s or a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not at a place like this, which was one of the nicer eateries around. As he parked the car, Molly looked down at herself with renewed dismay.

  “You don’t really expect me to go in there like this, do you?” she asked.

  “Why not?” Turning off the engine, he removed the keys from the ignition and pocketed them.

  “Because it’s a fancy place, and I’m not dressed for it,” Molly said through her teeth. Not that it did any good. He was out of the car before she had stopped talking.

  When the passenger door opened, Molly, arms crossed over her chest, face averted, stayed stubbornly seated. He looked down at her for a moment without speaking.

  “I cannot go in there dressed like this,” Molly said at last, unnerved by his silence. She cast him a quick upward glance. “When we left the house, you said I wouldn’t have to get out of the car.”

  “Look,” he said, “I missed lunch. I’m starving. I’m going to eat here because it’s the closest I can get to real Italian food in this backwater, and I feel like Italian. And you’re going in with me because I want to talk to you. I don’t care what you look like. Anyway, this close to campus, half the people inside will be wearing jeans, so you’ll fit right in.”

  “It’s not just the jeans, it’s my hair, and I’m not wearing any makeup, and this shirt belongs to Mike and—I won’t do it.”

  “Get out of the car, Molly.”

  Implicit in the words was the fact that she had no choice but to obey. Clamping her lips together, Molly hesitated—and then got out of the car. She went past him without acknowledging his presence by so much as a glance, and heard rather than saw him close the car door behind her. As she walked she tugged the rubber band from her ponytail, wincing at the sting of a random wisp caught by the tenacious circle. Quickly she fluffed the thick, dark strands with her fingers, hoping to restore the naturally wavy mass to some semblance of a style. How successful she was she couldn’t tell without a mirror, but without a brush or comb her makeshift effort was the best she could do.

  “You’ve been here before, I take it.” He followed her up the steps to the restaurant’s front entrance.

  “Yes.” Precisely once, on a date. She’d been wearing a sundress of Ashley’s and her one pair of good heels, with her hair and makeup carefully done. Not like tonight. Confronting polished oak doors and stained-glass sidelights, Molly took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and reached for the ornate brass knob. If she had to go into a place as nice as this looking as she did, at least she wasn’t going to let anyone else know that she wanted to sink into the floor with every step.

  His hand beat hers to the knob. Pulling the door open, he allowed her to precede him.

  “What a gentleman,” she cooed over her shoulder with a glittering faux smile.

  “I try,” he said imperturbably, following her inside.

  Head high, Molly walked into the dimly lit vestibule and up a pair of stairs to where a chicly clad hostess of about her own age stood behind an oak podium. As Molly approached, the hostess looked up. A superior smile appeared as her eyes slid over Molly. Despite her best intentions, Molly felt the scalding heat of humiliation steal up her neck.

  “May I help you?” the hostess asked.

  “Two for dinner, please.” The FBI man spoke from behind Molly.

  “Did you have reservations?” A lightning glance at him, and the hostess’s attitude was suddenly much more respectful.

  “Not tonight.” He smiled at her.

  “You’re lucky the concert crowd has gone, or we wouldn’t have room. As it is …” She looked down at her chart and then reached for a pair of menus. “I think we can fit you in. Follow me, please.”

  With a smile for the FBI man and a quick, curious glance for Molly, the hostess led them into the restaurant, which was a place of golden candlelight and stained-glass partitions and burgundy-leather booths. As she slid into the indicated booth, Molly was reminded of nothing so much as the inner sanctum of a church.

  “Can I get you anything to drink? Whiskey sours are on special tonight.” The hostess handed them menus.

  “No,” said the FBI man before Molly could reply. His refusal was clearly meant for both of them. Molly wasn’t much of a drinker anyway, and certainly didn’t feel like anything alcoholic under the circumstances, but his assumption of authority rankled.

  “I’ll have a whiskey sour,” Molly said. Her glance at her companion was a challenge. She almost expected him to countermand her order. But he did not. Instead he opened his menu.

  “Gene will be right out with your drink,” the hostess promised. With a last smile at the FBI man, she left them alone. Molly watched her miniskirted form twitch down the aisle, and almost wished her back again. She was nervous about being left alone with her companion.

  “You like Italian?” He looked up from the menu he was scanning to pin her with those piercing blue eyes.

  “I’ve never eaten anything Italian.” Antagonism frosted her voice as she picked up her own menu. He could command her presence, but that was all. She would eat, drink, and say what she pleased. Casting surreptitious glances at the diners around them, Molly confirmed that everybody, even the people wearing jeans, was well groomed. She looked like a bag lady in comparison, she decided. Mortification made her toes curl in Mike’s old shoes, but she only held her head a notch higher.

  “You said you’d been here before. If you didn’t eat Italian, what did you eat?”

  “Steak.”

  “Not too adventurous, are you?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve never eaten pizza?”

  “Oh, pizza,” Molly said dismissively.

  “You like pizza?”

  “Of course I like pizza. Who doesn’t like pizza?”

  “Then you like Italian. Try lasagna. I never met anyone who didn’t like lasagna.”

  “I told you, I’ve already eaten.”

  He shrugged, his attention already back on the menu. “Suit yourself.”

  “Hi, I’m Gene, and I’ll be your waiter.” Two glasses of water and Molly’s whiskey sour were plunked down on the table. Gene, a college student from the look of him, beamed at them over the round tray he held. “Do you need a little time?”

  “We’re ready,” the FBI man said. Gene looked at Molly expectantly.

  “Nothing, thanks,” she said, feeling a twinge of regret that she wouldn’t at least get a meal out of this encounter. Restaurant visits were few and far between in her life, and the steak she had enjoyed before at Jimmy Miller’s expense had been mouthwateringly good. But having declared herself not hungry, she was not going to give him the satisfaction of suddenly changing her mind.

  The FBI man ordered lasagna, with soup to start and salad, and milk to drink with the meal.

  When the waiter left, the FBI man leaned back in his seat. His fingertips drummed lightly on the tabletop as he looked at Molly. His expression made her nervous all over again.

  “Now,” he said softly. “Let�
�s talk about what I want from you.”

  8

  “You want me to check the mouth tattoos of every horse that runs at Keeneland, before and after each race?” Molly asked, disbelieving.

  “Just the ones that you don’t personally know by sight. Just the ones that are long shots, running in a field of claimers. I’ll let you know which horses I’m interested in.” The FBI man looked at her intently. The conversation was interrupted as the waiter arrived with a bowl of steaming minestrone, which he set down along with a basket of garlic bread. After asking if there was anything else they needed and receiving a negative reply, the waiter left them alone again.

  “I can’t do that.” Molly watched as he tucked into his soup. To make sure there would be enough to go around, the portion of Hamburger Helper she had served herself at supper had been small, and she’d consumed only about half of that. Still, it had filled her up, or so she had thought. But watching him eat with such gusto awakened a pang in the region of her stomach. Molly took another sip of her drink to compensate.

  “Why not?” He reached for a piece of bread. With a shake of her head Molly declined the basket he proffered. Hunger pangs or no, her pride would not allow her to accept what she had previously refused.

  “First of all, I no longer work for Wyland Farm, remember? I quit. I don’t have free access to the back-stretch anymore.”

  “So get your job back.” He took a gigantic bite of bread, then returned to his soup.

  Molly shook her head, and took another sip of her drink. The whiskey sour was really pretty good, she decided. “It’s not that easy. Don Simpson doesn’t give people second chances. And in the heat of the moment I think I may have told him to go screw himself.”

  “So apologize. Tell him it will never happen again. Tell him you need the money.”

  “What happens if he tells me to get lost?”

  His gaze ran over her. “You’re a good-looking girl. Use it.”

  Molly stiffened. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Bat your eyelashes at him. Wiggle your fanny. Cry. Do whatever it is women do to soften men up. But get your job back.”

  The waiter arrived to whisk away the FBI man’s now empty soup bowl, replacing it with a salad. Molly looked at the small mountain of greens, at the heaped-on croutons and bacon bits, at the bits of cheese and glistening crown of vinaigrette dressing, and took another envious sip of her drink.

  “Suppose,” she said, watching him enthusiastically down a chunk of tomato, “just for a minute, that I do manage to get my job back. I’ll have my own horses to take care of. I can’t go running around the backstretch looking into umpteen horses’ mouths. First of all, I won’t have time. Second, it’ll look pretty suspicious.”

  “There won’t be umpteen horses. Maybe four, five, six a week. You can manage that.”

  “What happens if I get caught? Is this dangerous?”

  He looked steadily at her over a forkful of salad. “I won’t kid you. It could be.”

  “Great.” She took another sip of whiskey sour, discovered that the glass was down to the last dregs, and regretfully drained it. “In that case, Mr. FBI man, I think you should do it yourself.”

  “I can’t. You can.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and get put in the federal pen right here in Lexington. It’s a pretty cushy place as far as jails go. I hear Leona Helmsley loved it.” The FBI man speared an errant piece of lettuce with his fork and consumed it. “Your brothers and sisters could visit.”

  “That’s blackmail.”

  “You got yourself into this by stealing that five thousand, remember? You’re lucky I’m willing to cut you a deal.” He finished his salad.

  “Would you like another drink, miss?” The waiter reappeared, replacing the empty salad plate with a bubbling, cheese-encrusted casserole smelling strongly of pizza. Hunger pangs assaulted Molly anew.

  “Yes,” she said, at the exact second her dining companion answered no.

  The waiter looked from one to the other of them.

  “Yes,” Molly said again, silently challenging the FBI man to countermand her order. He met her gaze for an instant, then gave a slight shrug, declining to debate the issue. The waiter disappeared, presumably to fetch Molly’s drink.

  “Think of it this way: You’ll be working for the federal government for a few weeks. We pay good.” He started in on his lasagna.

  “You pay? Me?” Molly perked up. The waiter returned, set her second whiskey sour on the table, and departed.

  “You said you’d pay me?” she prompted when they were alone again.

  “How does five thousand dollars sound?”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Let me get this straight: You’ll pay me five thousand dollars just to check horse mouth tattoos?”

  “Beats going to jail, doesn’t it?”

  “When do I get the money?”

  The sound he made was midway between a snort and a laugh. His eyes glinted with sudden, genuine amusement at her over a suspended forkful of lasagna. “When the job’s done.”

  “And then I’ll never see you again, or hear another thing about the money I—took?”

  “You help me with this, and the slate’s wiped clean. I’ll burn the tape—or give it to you. You can burn it yourself.”

  Molly thought for a minute, sipping reflectively at her drink, while he applied himself to his meal. “No one will ever know that I was involved?”

  “No one but you. And me.”

  “I have to live here. If anyone finds out that I did this, I won’t ever be able to work in the horse industry again. We’d probably have to move clean out of Kentucky.”

  “If that were to happen, which it won’t if you’re careful, the Bureau would take care of things. You wouldn’t be left high and dry, you have my word on it.”

  Molly looked at him measuringly. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Mr. FBI man, but your word doesn’t mean a whole heck of a lot to me. I don’t even know you.”

  “You’ll just have to trust me.”

  Molly grimaced. “Great.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  “I don’t really have a choice, do I? If I do what you want, I get paid and you go away. If I don’t, I could go to jail.”

  “I’d say that pretty much sums it up.” He finished his lasagna, touched his mouth with a napkin, and placed the napkin on the table. The waiter materialized as if from nowhere. Molly, who’d been nursing her drink throughout the conversation, was surprised to find that her glass was empty. She set it down.

  “Dessert?” the waiter asked with a smile, looking from one to the other of them. “Or an after-dinner drink?”

  The FBI man shook his head to both, and declined coffee, too, as did Molly, who no longer felt like being defiant just to annoy him. They sat in silence while the waiter cleared the table and left the check.

  “Next time we come here you really ought to try the lasagna,” the FBI man said, removing a couple of bills from his wallet, and laying them atop the check on the small plastic tray. He stood up. “Live dangerously.”

  “What do you mean, the next time we come here?” Molly asked, sliding out of the booth. With a gesture indicating that she should precede him, he followed her toward the door. Molly was very conscious of him at her back. He made her feel claustrophobic, as though she were literally, as well as figuratively, his prisoner.

  “Good night, come back,” the hostess called as they passed her. Molly smiled automatically. The FBI man lifted a hand in reply.

  Outside in the parking lot, Molly repeated her question.

  “Just what I said. I’ve been in the area eight days, and I’ve eaten here almost every day, so I imagine I’ll be back. Lexington doesn’t offer a wide variety of Italian. I’m partial to Italian.” He opened her car door for her, and Molly automatically sat. Closing the door, he walked around the car
to slide in himself.

  “But what do you mean, we?” she asked as he started the car.

  “You’re going to be seeing a lot of me until this is over, and that will probably include me taking you out to meals.” The car pulled out into the street. “Trying to meet an informant secretly is a mistake, I’ve learned to my cost. Someone always sees the two of you together and the deal gets blown. It’s better to meet openly. You know, the old hide-in-plain-sight strategy.”

  “Oh, right. The old hide-in-plain-sight strategy. I must have been absent the day they taught that in Spying 101.” Molly sank lower in her seat.

  He shot her a glance, then continued: “It would also make things easier for me if I could stop by the barns at Keeneland when I need to without people starting to wonder who I am and why I’m there. You’re going to be my reason. For the duration of this investigation, I’m your new boyfriend.”

  Molly was speechless for a moment. She stared at him, taking in his close-cropped sandy hair, his hard-boned, taut-skinned face, his broad-shouldered, leanly muscular body in the elegant conservative suit.

  “Nobody will ever believe it,” she said with conviction.

  He glanced at her then, his eyes gleaming at her through the darkness.

  “We’ll just have to make them believe it,” he said.

  9

  “You’re too old for me,” Molly pointed out. “And too …”

  Her voice trailed off, not because she was too polite to say what she meant but because she couldn’t quite find the words she sought.

  “Too what?” he inquired.

  “Too stuffy,” was what she settled for with a scowl.

  “Maybe people will think you’ve found yourself a sugar daddy.”

  “That’s horrible!” Molly sat up straight, indignant at the idea.