Shannon Waverly - Three For The Road

“Now...get against the wall there,” she ordered as she searched her memory for anything else she could borrow from the police movies she’d seen.

The three men moved, amazing her once again. A hush had fallen over the place. Even the jukebox had obediently shut down.

“Good.” She straightened, feeling a heady sense of power. “Now, you...” She waved the gun at the bartender. “I want you to call the police, and this time don’t tell me there’s a pay phone.”

In the dead silence, Mary Elizabeth became aware of sirens wailing in the distance. Confused, she glanced at the young woman behind the bar who made a face that said, What do you think I am, an idiot?

In no time flat, blue-and-red lights were throbbing against the windows, dueling with the neon. The doors banged open and six uniformed officers hurried in, straight to the heart of the fray.

“Thank God you got here so fast,” Mary Elizabeth said, but the officers coming toward her didn’t return her smile. In fact, every one of them had drawn his weapon.

“Drop the gun,” one of them ordered.

She looked at each of the six faces, at each of the six guns pointed her way. “What...?” All at once, she realized what was happening. “Oh. You think...”

But before she could explain the gun was only a toy, three of the policemen had cocked their pistols. She dropped the gun.

A policewoman immediately lunged forward, grasped Mary Elizabeth’s right wrist and twisted her arm up behind her back. Another officer, a serious young man with a dedicated, boyish face, carefully picked up the fallen gun.

After that, events swam together in a dreamlike sequence: across the room, the bartender talking excitedly, pointing this way and that; the odious Sonny saying, “But...but he...but...”; and the tall dark stranger scowling at her, Mary Elizabeth, where a moment ago he’d been duking it out on her behalf.

“Sonny, Sonny,” a craggy-faced sergeant scolded, shaking his head. “It isn’t even Saturday night.”

Sonny returned a sheepish grin.

“Okay, let’s go,” the sergeant said. It was then that Mary Elizabeth noticed the handcuffs glinting on the three men’s wrists. No, that’s a mistake, she wanted to cry out. The tall one is a good guy. But just then she heard the officer who’d picked up her gun reading her her rights. At the same time something cold and metallic encircled her own wrists.

Mary Elizabeth’s face drained of color. “You’re handcuffing me? ”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But there’s obviously been a misunderstanding.”

“We’ll straighten it out at the station. Do you have a purse?”

“Uh, yes.” Mary Elizabeth indicated a nearby table.

The officer picked up her bag and said, “Come with me, please.”

Mary Elizabeth was led through the gawking crowd, close on the heels of her tall, dark stranger. “I don’t believe this,” she muttered, her eyes hot with humiliation.

“Why the hell not?” he snarled over his shoulder. “Acting as stupid as you just did, you must land in messes like this all the time.” His hard lips curled as he muttered something that sounded to her like “Liverpool.” She frowned in confusion until she reasoned he’d said “Little fool.”

“Sorry,” she said.

“You should be.”

Outside, she was led to a cruiser, while the three men were taken to a rescue van where medics waited to patch up their injuries.

She was just slipping into the back seat of the cruiser when it occurred to her that she hadn’t gotten her hero’s name. She peered up at the serious young officer, and with a giggle that rose from hysteria, asked, “Who was that masked man?”

He frowned, staring at her oddly, then shut the door.

She sat back and surveyed her surroundings with combined interest and dread. “Oh, Lord, I’m riding in a cage!” she moaned. The next moment, the full significance of what was happening to her hit home, and two hot tears trickled down her cheeks.

After that, events really blurred. She was taken to the station and booked, only vaguely aware that the three men involved in the fight had been brought in, as well. Her possessions got handed over; she was escorted down a corridor to a cell; handcuffs came off, toilet facilities were pointed out, and then, with a sound that cut right through her, the iron-barred door clanged shut.

And so ended Mary Elizabeth Drummond’s first day of independence.

THE FIRST THING on Pete’s mind when he opened his eyes the next morning was his bike. Where the hell was it, and if it had even one scratch, how did the fool who’d scratched it want to die?

The second thing he thought about was Mary Elizabeth Drummond, that preppy little pain in the butt who was trying to wreck his vacation—and doing a pretty good job of it, too. He’d never met anyone so fly-brained in his life, and why he’d stuck his neck out for her was still a mystery.

Pete eased onto his back and scowled at the water-stained ceiling of his cell, recalling the previous night. If she just hadn’t walked into that bar, none of this would’ve happened. He was familiar with places like that, knew the type of guy who frequented them. For the most part, just your ordinary, law-abiding Joe. But add a woman to the equation—an unattached woman, he amended, thinking of the few who’d been there with their husbands or boyfriends—and your ordinary Joe suddenly transmuted into King Kong. She should have known that, too—although, to be fair, he doubted she’d spent much time in bars.

Pete’s mouth tightened in a rueful grimace. Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world...

Last night after being brought in, they’d sat at adjacent desks while being booked. That’s when he’d first heard her name. Mary Elizabeth Drummond. Even in his thoughts he put a spin of mockery on it. He wasn’t sure why, except that the name struck him as sort of stuffy and tedious. It had no...give.

Sitting where he was, he’d been able to hear the reluctance in her voice when the officer asked her name, a reluctance that had deepened when she was asked her address, birth date and social security number. Pete got the feeling she didn’t want the police to know who she was. For a while, in fact, she’d actually refused to give her address. Said she was in transit, moving from one state to another, and at present didn’t really have an address. Pete had noted her amazement and dismay when all her vital statistics came up on the computer screen, anyway, just on the cue of her social security number.

What really roused Pete’s curiosity, though, was the anxiety he’d detected when she’d been asked if there was anyone she wanted to call. No, there was no one, she’d said, an answer that had compelled him to turn and take a new, harder look at her. A princess like that, you’d think she’d be on the phone right away, a dozen people she wanted to complain to.

Another thing about her that didn’t jibe was her voice. It was husky and deep-throated, a Scotch-and-soda voice that belonged more to a torch singer in a smoky piano bar than to someone wearing Bass Weeguns loafers.

Pete winced reflexively when he remembered the turnaround in her attitude after she was asked to explain what had happened at the Starlight Lounge. Suddenly she was a fountain of information. A damn Niagara Falls of information. And she was angry.

Well, maybe indignant was a more appropriate word. She didn’t seem capable of really ripping loose. He’d noticed that about her last night, first with Sonny and then at the station. Terminally polite, that was her problem.

But Pete knew she’d been angry inside. Her cheeks had been a feverish pink, her sentences rushed and tumbled, and her slender frame never really stopped shaking. She reminded him of a bottle of carbonated soda, shaken to a froth, but all sealed up.

She was convinced her arrest was a mistake, even after the officer patiently explained the charge against her for the third time. She seemed to think that if she kept yapping, eventually he’d see the error in his logic.

She kept repeating that the gun was only a toy. Couldn’t quite grasp the concept that wielding even a toy in a public place was a serious, arrestable offense if that toy was perceived as real and dangerous by those it was pointed at.

Pete and the other two men were booked and on their way to their cells, and she was still sitting there yapping.

Pete swung his feet off the lumpy cot. Get the broad out of your head, he told himself. You’ve got problems enough of your own. He rubbed his eyes. “Augh,” he said aloud, grimacing under a sudden pain. “Mean left hook you’ve got there, man,” he grumbled to one of two snoring hulks in the cell across the aisle.

Pete watched with deepening disgust. He didn’t like bullies. Never had. And if Sonny was anything, it was a bully. That was why he’d stuck his neck out for Mary Elizabeth Drummond.

Relieved that he’d finally found an acceptable rationale for his behavior, Pete got up stiffly and studied his face in the mirror over the small white sink. “Great,” he said flatly. The area around his right eye had turned brownish purple overnight and his upper lip was puffed.

Ordinarily he wouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t the first fight he’d been in, or the worst, but he had his brother’s wedding coming up in a week. He’d hoped to look at least halfway decent.

Peeling away the tape that held a gauze pad in place, Pete examined the two-inch gash that Sonny had carved into the side of his forehead. It could’ve been worse, he thought. He’d seen the swing coming in enough time to pull back and just be grazed.

That was seconds before Sonny’s buddy had jumped into the fight. Could’ve been a lot worse, Pete thought, the lines of his face falling into a study of pensive concentration as he remembered—Mary Elizabeth Drummond pulling that gun from her purse. Fly-brained she might be, but she also had courage. He’d seen the gun shaking in her hands from twelve feet away, yet she’d stood her ground and gone out on a limb...for him?

Pete shook his head to knock away the nonsense and reached for the faucet. He splashed cold water on his face and, straightening, let it trickle down his neck. He couldn’t start developing a soft spot for Ms. Drummond now. Because of her he’d been arrested. Because of her he’d spent the night on a cot that felt like a cobblestone road. Because of her he would be wasting a whole morning in court, when what he’d planned was to be riding his new bike.

He heard footsteps in the hall. Pete dried his face on a thin, scratchy towel. A young officer, new with the morning shift, banged on the bars of Sonny’s cell, then unlocked Pete’s cell and brought in breakfast.

“‘Morning. Sleep okay?”

Pete nodded. He might be mad as hell, but the local constabulary would be the last to know it.

The young man set the tray down on the end of the cot. “Half an hour till we go over to the courthouse.”

“I’ll be ready.” Pete reached for his coffee.

The officer paused. “We brought your bike in.”

“What?”

“Your motorcycle. Last night you asked if we could remove it from the parking lot of the Starlight Lounge. I thought you’d like to know that we did and it’s safe over at Bernie’s Garage. That’s on Third Street. You can pick it up after your court appearance.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it. How much for moving it?”

“Thirty dollars.”

Pete nodded agreeably. “I don’t suppose you could tell me what the going rate is for a bar fight in this town?” He smiled—amiably he hoped.