Steele Investments
Part 3
by Melinda
 
 
BZZZZZZZZ …
 
"Hold on, I'm coming." Toweling beads of water from his chest and shoulders, he hurried to the door of his apartment. The top button of his pants remained unfastened, and he had not yet donned a shirt. His black hair was wet.
 
About a minute before, the bell had gone off, interrupting his shower, and had buzzed persistently, no doubt announcing Laura's arrival. She had caught him off-guard. He had expected her to be longer with the police.
 
He grabbed and twisted the knob at the same moment that the door swung suddenly inward. Startled, he came face-to-face with Laura who had her key to his apartment inserted in the lock. The shocked expression on her face, and the guilty glance that followed, told him exactly what she had been expecting to find.
 
"Thought I was in the wind, eh?" He arched a challenging brow, stepping aside to bow her in with sarcastic gallantry.
 
Truth be told, he had opened the closet door and contemplated his suitcase exactly three times since returning home. He did not volunteer the information. Laura had enough doubts about his integrity without reinforcing them.
 
"You must admit, it fits your MO," Laura retorted. She edged past him, and they circled, facing one another. He shut the door.
 
"Really, Laura, I'm hurt," he parried. He feared his face might crack but forced a smile anyway, even though his heart was not in it.
 
Apparently, Laura did not feel up to the game either. "I suspect you'll recover," she stated flatly. "I need an explanation. Now," she demanded.
 
"How long will it take them to process the gun?" he asked, wondering how long they had to unravel this epic mess before the police came to arrest him.
 
Laura looked him straight in the eye and stared, searching for--what? He had no clue. He returned her look with honest puzzlement, wondering if this was another test that he was doomed to fail.
 
After a time she looked away, and he was none the wiser for what had just transpired. "I wiped down the gun," she announced with the same matter-of-factness that accompanied comments about laundry and dirty dishes.
 
Stunned, he felt his jaw drop. Laura of the straight-and-narrow, Laura the champion of justice, Laura his infuriatingly ethical partner-- "You destroyed evidence?" he repeated, to be sure he had heard right.
 
Unfortunately, Laura was no longer looking at him, but rather gazing off into the middle distance. She missed the evidence she had been searching for just moments before.
 
"I needed to buy time, and I know that you're not a killer. Of course, we're going to have to investigate," Laura declared, striding away from him while making a wide sweeping motion with both arms. "There may be other evidence that we're not aware of that links you to the man that you--"
 
She swept about on her heel and came up short.
 
"Shot?" he supplied, hiding his reaction behind a casual façade. He had years of practice at pretense and easily donned a mask that she could not penetrate. It was just as well until he got his own seething cauldron of emotions under control.
 
"Yes," Laura agreed. Her gaze had grown cold and distant, and he wondered belatedly if he had misjudged her motives yet again. In fact, in retrospect, it seemed far more likely that she had acted to protect the agency as him.
 
"Around six this evening I received a call at the office," he began. "It was right after you'd left."
 
"You stayed late. Why? That's unlike you."
 
He parsed his words. "I was waiting for a call from my bookie," he lied, providing her with an easily accepted explanation. If he admitted to having stayed with the thought of going through some files--of trying to be useful now that Bernice and Murphy were gone--then she would accuse him of lying.
 
Laura nodded, accepting the truth as she saw it without question. The lie did not cause even a mental blip to her racing mind. "Who was the caller?"
 
"It was a woman, a Mrs. Dorcas Bellenworth. She accused me of being a thief and a conman and made all sorts of other unsavory characterizations," he continued. "She said that I'd swindled her husband out of a great deal of money."
 
"Did you?"
 
"Laura!"
 
"Did you?" Her expression accused, making it clear that this she would not have put past him.
 
"No! But I thought that it would be prudent to speak with her in person anyway. Just to be on the safe side. She gave me an address. 1230 Thrush Street, Suite 110."
 
Laura nodded. "What were you doing in that alley?"
 
"Mrs. Bellenworth told me to come in through the rear. I thought nothing of it at the time."
 
"Not like you have much experience entering through the front anyway."
 
"Laura." He shot her a deliberately wounded look.
 
She ignored him. "What about the gun?"
 
"Found it sitting on the back stairs in a paper sack with my name on it," he answered, embarrassed to admit that he had fallen for such an obvious ploy. "The second that I opened the bag--BANG--" He clapped his palms together for effect. "The shooting started."
 
"The shooter must have been waiting for me--a veritable barrage of bullets raining down. It was like the ambush of Bonnie and Clyde, Laura! Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway--"
 
"--Warner Brothers, 1967," Laura finished, nodding her head, yes yes. They had watched the movie together at a downtown dollar theater just two months before.
 
It was funny how they had begun to share their love of certain things: old movies, the thrill of an elicit break-in or a clever heist, helping people, unraveling a complicated mystery, and an exhilarating car chase.
 
It had never been more important that she believe him, and more importantly, believe in him.
 
"I only fired two shots, Laura." He held up his index and middle fingers for emphasis. "I didn't aim, and the second shot went straight up. I was only trying to create a distraction in order to escape!"
 
He fell silent, watching pensively as Laura paced. She did some of her best thinking on her feet, and he was loath to interrupt her process, especially when his freedom hung in the balance.
 
"Is there anyone," she began, and he had already begun to shake his head no, "from your mysterious past?"
 
"No, Laura, you have to believe me." In the past, he stole and swindled but never, not ever, from someone who could not afford to miss what he took.
 
"Look," he said, running an agitated hand up the side of his face and through his hair. "I called you as soon as she hung up. That's got to count for something. It's not my fault it went to messages."
 
Laura had the grace to look abashed. "True, you did call me."
 
The concession, and the resulting awkwardness, evaporated swiftly. In a blink, Laura was all about business again.
 
"Come on," she declared. "We're going back. As soon as the cops are gone, we're going to check out this address."
 
She marched past him, and he caught her elbow with nimble fingers. He kept his grip light.
 
"Laura," he said, his voice gruff, throaty. She glanced up, startled, staring at him with wide brown eyes.
 
"Thank you. I can't begin to say it enough." There were no words sufficient, so he allowed his mask to drop, letting her see his immense gratitude and his awful fear and his commitment to becoming her Remington Steele.
 
Her hand covered his and clung. Finally, she smiled and it was genuine. "You're welcome, Mr. Steele."
 
To Part 4
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