Bending the Rules Page 4

  “That sounds reasonable. But, girl, don’t underestimate yourself, because you’ve already done so much more. You found us the Kavanaghs and negotiated a lower bid in exchange for the publicity they’ll get, and you’ve been the one handling ninety percent of the bills—when all you really want to do is work with your kids.”

  That made her flash on the three boys she wouldn’t have the opportunity to work with, which made her think about de Sanges, which, frankly, she’d been doing far too often in the past week and a half since running in to him again at the merchants’ meeting.

  Her chin lifted even as she drew herself up to her full height. Well, she was going to quit doing that, starting this instant.

  “You’re thinking about them, aren’t you?” Ava said.

  Poppy stumbled. “What?”

  “Those boys That Man robbed you of. You’re thinking about them.”

  “Uh, yeah.” But not as much as the man himself, she admitted guiltily.

  “The bastard.”

  Her sentiments exactly. She just wished she could shake him from her thoughts, that the image of him, all long and lean and imbued with a sexual energy that whispered to her own, would get the hell out of her head. And in truth, the more time that passed since their encounter, the better she was getting at not thinking about him.

  Arriving at her car, she said goodbye to Ava, tossed her tote into the backseat and headed for the CD.

  Like the rest of Seattle, the Central District was undergoing the boom of town houses or mixed retail and condominium construction that was changing the face of the city. This neighborhood was changing more than most, however, because in addition to the relentless urban-density building going up all over town, the past decade had seen the area transform from a primarily African-American neighborhood to one with a more integrated mixed-race demographic—a change not necessarily embraced with enthusiasm by the residents who’d been here the longest.

  She pulled in to the community center lot on East Cherry, parked and unloaded her easels and supplies, making several trips to haul everything into the room assigned her.

  She was a little early so she got started setting the easels up and putting out pencils, brushes, palettes and tubes of paint for her class. She thought of the very first time she’d done this and smiled. Miss Agnes had volunteered her when she’d heard the DAR was looking for someone to teach an art class for one of their charitable endeavors. Poppy had been less than thrilled at the time. She was twenty-seven, scrambling to make a living on her own terms, and she’d had to stretch her schedule to fit it in.

  Then she’d met the kids.

  Now, she sure didn’t come from a family rolling in dough, and God knew there’d been times she’d had to do some pretty creative bookkeeping to make her various incomes stretch. But there was always enough to buy her art supplies—a fact she’d simply taken for granted.

  Then she’d met the teens in her first class and realized these kids didn’t have that luxury. And watching them blossom during the short time she’d had them, a new passion had taken root in her breast.

  Little by little her current teens trickled in, the cardboard tubes she’d supplied to protect their drawings and paintings tucked beneath their arms or sticking out of the tops of backpacks.

  It was a small group, just twelve kids in all, selected by teachers at the three high schools that her eight boys and four girls attended. The teens had been chosen both for their aptitude in art and their lack of financial—and in some cases, family—resources. This was her third group of its kind and her kids were now far enough into the course that she’d mostly gotten them over the giving-her-attitude hump and was edging them into the fun stage. At least it was a kick for her, since this was where she got to watch the myriad possibilities of art start to spark excitement in them.

  She moved quietly from student to student, standing behind them to study their paintings or drawings, praising them here and offering tips or answering questions there.

  “Yo, bitch. Hand over the vermillion.”

  “What chu call me, cabrón?”

  Poppy whipped around. “Mr. Jackson. Ms. Suarez.”

  Darnell Jackson, whom she knew darn well was crushin’ on the girl he’d insulted, winced, but then straightened to his full six and a half feet to give Poppy a look loaded with that attitude she’d just patted herself on the back for having put in the past.

  “Did you hear what he called me, Ms. Calloway?” Emilia Suarez stood with one hand on her hip, her head cocked and her chin thrust up in a belligerent I’mgonna-take-you-down angle at a boy who—even standing three feet away—towered head and shoulders above her.

  “Yes, I did. And I’m guessing whatever it was you called him in return wasn’t a love ode to your BFF.” Still, Emilia’s slur had been a direct response to what Darnell started, and Poppy turned to the young man standing one easel over from the irate girl. Leveling her gaze on him, she kept her tone mild when she inquired, “What is my number-one rule of behavior in this class, Mr. Jackson?”

  She could see his pride demanding that he hang on to his badass ’tude, especially considering how the room had quieted and all the kids had turned to see what he would do. But Darnell had been the first of the twelve to give in to the seduction that was art; he was one of her most talented students and Poppy had made it clear at the beginning of the course that she had a zero tolerance policy for troublemaking. Moreover, the teen lived with a grandmother who’d drilled manners into his head regarding respecting one’s elders.

  And much as it bit her butt to think of herself as part of that demographic, it was probably how this group of teenagers viewed her.

  “To give each other respect,” he said grudgingly.

  She looked at him in silence.

  He dipped his head. “Sorry, Miz Calloway.”

  “It’s not me you owe the apology to,” she said calmly.

  Big shoulders curving in, he looked over at the girl next to him. “Sorry, Emilia.”

  “You a sorry excuse for a man,” Emilia muttered, but color flushed her cheeks. The other girls were too busy whooping their enthusiasm over seeing one of the boys who outnumbered them being disciplined to notice.

  Which was a good thing, Poppy thought, for if they had, they would have teased Emilia unmercifully about it, which would have just escalated matters. “Ladies,” she said with quiet repressiveness.

  They immediately settled down, but two of them bumped hips and exchanged low fives.

  Poppy bit back a grin. But, damn, she loved teenagers!

  She hadn’t gotten as far as Darnell and Emilia in her circuit around the room and she crossed to them now. Standing back, she studied Darnell’s painting. “Oh,” she breathed, staring at the portrait of three women with their heads together. “This is wonderful.”

  “I got the idea from this picture my grandma Barb has of her grandmother and two great-aunts,” Darnell said, forgetting both his pride and his embarrassment in his enthusiasm for the project.

  She scrutinized it further, admiring the way the women all but leaped off the canvas. “Do you have a name for it yet?”

  “After Church.”

  She laughed. “Yes, I can visualize that—sprung from those hard pews and ready to dish on who was wearing what and who showed up hungover from the excesses of the night before. You captured a sense of gossip and imbued it with a definite feel of an older, bygone era. Yet the subject matter is as fresh today as it was in your great-great-grandmother’s time. It’s fabulous, Darnell. I love the bold use of color.”

  “Grandma’s photo’s black-and-white, but she says her people’s always been lovin’ color.” He grinned. “And I don’t doubt it, if me and her’s anything to go by.”

  He’d painted two of the women in mostly primary-colored clothing—one in brilliant blue with a blue-and-yellow head wrap, the other in yellow sporting a large brimmed hat with green feathers and a matching sash that tied beneath her chin. He indicated the third figure
, which as yet was still a pencil sketch. “That’s what I wanted the vermillion for.” Then he drew himself up to his considerable height and cut his eyes to the girl next to him. “But I’m sorry ’bout what I called you, Emilia. I was being a smart-ass and Grandma would scrub my mouth out with soap if she knew.”

  “I’ll do that myself, you ever call me that again.” But Emilia handed him the tube of paint. “I’m sorry I disrespected you, too.”

  His teeth flashed. “Did you? I don’t speak Spanish, so you coulda said anything and I wouldn’t know the difference. What’d you call me?”

  Her lips curved up. “It’s prob’ly best you don’t know.” She gazed at his painting. “You’re really good, Darnell. I can’t do figures for sh—” shooting a glance at Poppy, she cut herself off “—um, nuthin’.”

  “Yeah, but you do buildings real good. I wanted to put the church steeple in the background, but I drew it and erased it so many times trying to get the proportions right I’m lucky I didn’t put a hole in the canvas.”

  “Maybe after class sometime, I can show you how to do that. But you gotta show me how to draw them whatchamacall’ems—life studies.”

  “Yeah,” he said, turning back to his easel. A smile curved his lips. “Yeah. That’d be good. Go to Starbucks, maybe, and grab a table where we can spread out our sh—Uh, stuff.”

  Poppy was feeling pretty pleased with both her kids and herself by the time she rolled back into her Fremont neighborhood late that afternoon. She’d stopped at a Home Depot on the way home to grab a fistful of paint chips for the mansion. She swung by Marketime now to pick up a few groceries—but then didn’t feel like cooking when she got back to her apartment. So she tossed her paint chips on the table, took her groceries into the kitchen and put them away, then hiked over to Mad Pizza to get herself a small pie to take home.

  Settling with it at the tiny table outside her kitchen a short while later, she listened to Zero 7 on her CD player and happily pored over paint color chips while washing down three slices with a bottle of beer.

  She was feeling so mellow that she actually filed away the stack of paperwork that was a by-product of the grant she’d received from the Parks Department Youth Community Outreach program. It had been taking up space on the top of the bookshelf for the past six weeks. She felt a lot more righteous than the chore merited when she finished up and, noticing the pristine clear spots in the dust where the paperwork had lain, even considered digging the duster out of the closet to do a little spring cleaning.

  Then she laughed and got real. “Nah.” No sense in getting carried away.

  She did swab down the table in order to have a clean surface on which to lay out her greeting-card supplies, then got down to work. She finished painting the design she’d been interrupted doing yesterday when something else needing her attention had gotten in the way. When that was done she started a new design and was soon in the zone where her mind drifted while her creativity soared.

  It was a while before she registered the primary colors she’d been automatically applying to the new card. Realizing that Darnell’s painting had inspired her color choices, it started her thinking. Maybe she should put together a proposal for a new grant—this one to teach kids how to make greeting cards with the intent to sell them. It was true she’d only sold one card to a national company, but she did okay marketing her others to trendy little boutiques around town. Her income from them was pocket change compared to the one that had gone mainstream, but it nevertheless gave her additional credentials and demonstrated that handcrafted cards were marketable.

  Someday, when the mansion renovation was complete and she and her friends had sold it, she’d have access to some real money. Aside from getting a car that was more reliable than the heap she drove now, her own needs were few. But with MissAgnes’s money, she could reach out to more kids—a lot more. The old lady would’ve loved that.

  The pure, max coolness of that prospect made her smile. Life was good.

  The telephone rang and she jumped up to answer it, ready to share her ideas and settle into a long, satisfying conversation with Jane or Ava or her mother.

  Only it turned out to be none of them and by the time Poppy hung up fifteen minutes later, her heart was hammering the wall of her chest like an enraged carpenter. She didn’t know whether to laugh like a loon or bang her head against the nearest wall.

  Because it turned out she was getting what she’d asked for. And that was good, right? Her three juvie taggers were getting a second chance, which meant so was she—to help. So, yes. It was good.

  Excellent, in fact.

  All except for the part about them being monitored for good behavior. By none other than her favorite cop: Jason de Sanges.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Did I lie through my teeth? You betcha. Do I feel bad about it? Yeah, right.

  THE FAINTEST GLIMMER of the connection between a recent spate of burglaries that Robbery had been fielding itched at the back of Jase’s mind. He couldn’t quite get a grasp on it, but it floated close to the edge of his consciousness then disappeared, floated nearer yet, then dove out of reach once more. He thumbed back through his notes, knowing that something in there must have triggered it, but the pale flicker of whatever it was retreated. So he emptied his mind and sat quietly in the noisy squad room in hopes that the association he sought would swim a little nearer to the surface of his brain. And the glimmer came closer, closer—yes, come to Papa, baby, almost there…

  “Yo, de Sanges!”

  And it was gone. Swiveling his chair around, he saw Bob Greer leaning out of the door to his closet-size office. “Something I can help you with, Lieutenant?”

  “Yeah. Come in here a minute, will ya?”

  He did as he was bid and knew he wasn’t going to like whatever was coming when Greer said, “Close the door.”

  He did so and stuffed his hands into his pockets as he studied his superior. “What’s going on?”

  “Take a seat.”

  He took a seat.

  His lieutenant perched on the edge of his desk. “I got a call from the commissioner, who got a call from the mayor.”

  Oh, shit, he thought in disbelief, she wouldn’t have. Not twice. But a bad feeling crawled the nape of his neck. “And?”

  “And apparently someone is seriously connected, because guess what you’ve just been assigned to?”

  He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “Tell me this doesn’t have anything to do with those merchants’ tagger kids.”

  “Sorry, Jase. You are now the official head honcho of the—get this—Neighbors United Through Art program.”

  He slumped back in his chair. Breathed, “Fuuuck,” stretching out the single syllable until by rights it should have snapped beneath the attenuation.

  “Look at it this way,” Greer said. “It puts you on the mayor’s radar. Do a good job and he’s gonna remember when it comes time for you to take that lieutenants’ exam. A word from him could mean the difference between a decent placement and Peoria.”

  Right. Like the man was still apt to be in office by the time the next lieutenants’ exam rolled around. But he nodded as if that were a genuine consideration and said, “Yeah, there is that. So what does a ‘head honcho’ on one of these committees do?”

  “Make damn sure those three kids toe the line. No screwups.”

  He sat upright. “You’re kidding me, right?” Looking at the older man, Jase could see that he wasn’t. “Jesus, Lieutenant, we all screw up now and then—and teenagers more often than most. Are you seriously taking me off the streets to be their frigging hall monitor?”

  Greer shrugged. “What can I say? The mayor wants to accommodate his friend by giving the kids a break. But he’s a politician first and foremost, so he’s also covering his ass by making sure they don’t do anything to get the merchants or general neighborhood up in arms. And you’re the lucky bastard who was nominated to ride herd on them.”

  “Lieutenant, we’re dealing with th
at rash of burg—”

  “Oh, you’ll get to work your burglaries, trust me. You didn’t think watching some baby taggers was going to be your only job, did you? Hell, no. But, hey, our Man in Office is all over sweetening the deal. While you might have to fit this in around your regular work, the mayor authorized up to—wait for it—twenty whole overtime hours.”

  “Oh, well, then. As long as I can die a rich man.” Maintaining a neutral expression, he discussed what few particulars his lieutenant knew for a while longer. But by the time he left Greer’s office, he was steaming. The second he reached his desk he flipped back to the November notes in his tattered notebook, located the Babe’s phone number, then headed straight for a reverse directory.

  IT WASN’T LIKE he was bending—never mind breaking—any rules here, he assured himself as he pulled up to an apartment house in the Fremont district a short while later. Miz Calloway thought she had a pet cop on a leash? Well, he was a paid public servant for the populace at large, not just her and her wealthy friends, and he was merely stopping by to let her know what she could expect from their upcoming association.

  Hey, it was in her own best interest.

  He frowned up at the old brick building as he climbed out of his car and locked up. This wasn’t exactly where he would have pictured little Miss Ritz living. He’d pegged her more as the renowned Epi Apartment type, with its views of the ship canal and artsy stainless steel curlicues wrapping the south tower. But what the hell did he know? Maybe this was one of those…what had he once heard Hohn’s wife call a piece of furniture that Jase had just thought needed a good coat of paint? Oh, yeah—shabby chic. Maybe it was one of those places.