Kristen Ashley - Rock Chick

You see, my grandmother was a hellion, she’d raised a hellion in my Mom, Katherine, and she and Dad carefully oversaw raising the third-generation hellion that was me.

My bookstore is on the southeast corner of Broadway and Bayaud. Not the greatest neighborhood, not the worst. In the times of my grandmother, the ‘hood had been in decline, now it’s on an upswing.

My inheritance came with half a duplex one block down on Bayaud in the Baker Historical District. I live in the east side of the duplex, a gay couple live in a west side, another gay couple live east of me and another behind me. This is why Baker is safe, it’s populated mainly by gay couples, DINKS, hippies and Mexicans. When I, a single white female who looks like (and is) a rock ‘n’ roll groupie of the highest order, moved in, they all called each other and said “there goes the neighborhood”.

My bookstore is named Fortnum’s. There was no reason for this except Gram had gone to Fortnum and Mason’s in London the year before she opened it and she thought it sounded high brow.

There’s nothing high brow about Fortnum’s.

In the day (that was Gram’s day), it was a hippie hang out and still, in a way, is. Harley boys often came there too, don’t ask me why. Now, it’s also filled with preppies, yuppies and DINKS trying to be trendy and boarders and goths because it is trendy.

It has a bunch of mismatched shelves, stuffed full of all sorts of used books and tables piled high with vinyl records. It’s a rabbits warren of organized disorganization, every once in awhile punctuated by a fluffy, overstuffed chair. Most people come in, find a book, read in a chair and leave without buying the book, maybe coming back the next day to pick it up again and read some more.

With the shop, I also inherited Gram’s two employees which, shall we say, diplomatically, are just as eccentric as she was.

Jane’s my romance (our biggest seller) expert, she’s six foot and weighs in at about one-twenty, painfully thin, painfully shy. She keeps her nose in a novel nearly every minute of the day when she isn’t buying them off people hawking their books for our shelves or selling them to people with mumbled recommendations. She’s told me she’d written over forty novels herself but never had the gumption to try to get them published. She didn’t even have the courage to allow me to read them and I ask all the time.

There’s also Duke. Duke’s a Harley man, all leather and denim and a big ole gray beard and loads of long, steel-gray hair with a bandana tied around his forehead. He talks rough, lives rough and is tough as nails but can be soft as a marshmallow if he likes you (luckily, he likes me). He used to be an English Lit professor at Stanford before he dropped out and moved to the mountains. He’s married to Dolores who works part-time at The Little Bear up in Evergreen where Duke and Dolores own a tiny cabin.

Gram loved Fortnum’s, looked at it kinda like her own personal community center. She was not an especially good business woman but she was happy to make do and play hostess to her eclectic group of pals. Gramps brought in an okay salary and, when he died, left her with a decent pension, so she didn’t have much to worry about.

Fortnum’s smells musty and old and, just like Gram, I love every inch of it.

When I wasn’t at the police station, with the Nightingales or out with Ally, I was at Fortnum’s with Gram and Duke, and then came Jane. It was always one of my homes away from home and those come with being a motherless child, believe you me.

But the way I’d inherited it, it sure as hell wasn’t going to keep me in my cowboy boots, Levi’s and huge, silver belt buckles attached to tooled-leather belts (my signature outerwear, my signature underwear was strictly sexy-girlie lace and silk, Gram said that looking like a cowboy-inspired groupie on the outside was one thing but every girl had to have a secret and Gram said sexy underwear was the best secret a girl could have).

Now the front of the store is where I do my business. There are a bunch of comfortable couches and arm chairs and a few tables. I invested in an espresso machine and I coaxed my favorite barista, Ambrose “Rosie” Coltrane, from the chain coffee store down the road.

Rosie’s a coffee god. Rosie could make a skinny vanilla latte that could give you an orgasm if you just sniffed it. Rosie’s a bit of a pain in the ass, a kind of semi-coffee recluse (he comes in, he makes coffee, he goes home), but his talent is undeniable.

My addition of coffee was a hit. When the espresso started flowing, the books also started going and now I have new furniture in my living room and a fast-growing collection of kickass belts and cowboy boots.

* * *

I see all this flashing before my eyes

I learned quickly that lots of stuff flashes before your eyes when you get shot at.

* * *

As I stared at my cell, trying not to have a heart attack, I tried to figure out who to call.

I could, and probably should, call Dad, Malcolm or Hank.

Considering those choices and this situation, in the cop stakes, Hank would be my best bet. He’d go ballistic when he heard I’d been shot at and would probably arrest Rosie on the spot, but he was least likely to kill Rosie for putting me in danger.

Hank had control. That was why Hank was such a good athlete, why he was a good student and why he’s a good cop.

Dad was my father and Malcolm considered himself like a father so they’d just lose it and make a scene which would freak Rosie out.

Rosie was a coffee artiste.

As an artiste, Rosie had a delicate disposition. He freaks out easily. You could only give him two coffee orders at a time or he’d have a mini-mental-breakdown. That chain coffee shop hadn’t been right for him, Fortnum’s was his nirvana. He could create his drinks and even when it got busy and the pressure got heavy, someone else, Jane, Duke or me, took the burden and just let Rosie perform.

But right now, Rosie said no cops.

And I understand why.

So even though I really, really wanted to call Hank, I didn’t.

* * *

I could call Lee, Lee isn’t a cop. I had his numbers in my cell, Ally put them there.

Lee would be a good bet. Lee had gone into the Army after high school. Lee had gone on to be Special Operations Force. Lee had done some serious shit while in the armed services that took the good ole boy look right out of his dark brown eyes and put something else, something colder, more serious and far scarier in those eyes. Lee had come out and gotten himself a private investigator’s license and opened an office in LoDo (or Lower Downtown Denver). Lee was supposed to be a PI but no one really knows what Lee does, I’m not even certain anyone has even been to Lee’s offices.

I could call Lee and tell him someone shot at me. That would take care of things pretty quickly. I mean, I hadn’t really had much of a relationship with Lee for ten years but it would be a kind of family responsibility, considering he thought of me as his little sister (huh).

Lee might track them down (whoever they were) and shoot them, though. Torture them first and shoot them. Lee had skills I could not comprehend (at least that’s what I heard Malcolm and Dad muttering about, more than once).

It wasn’t like when I was sixteen and Brian Archer was telling everyone he’d gotten to third base with me (when he’d barely slid into second) and Lee had found Brian and broken his nose.

This would be serious.

Maybe Lee wasn’t a good idea.

* * *

This left me with Ally.

Allyson Nightingale is always up for an adventure.

Allyson Nightingale can keep her mouth shut.

And Ally is not a cop.

Twenty minutes later, I found myself standing in the living room of Lee’s condo.

I’d been there before, only a few times, but my visits had been brief. Mainly dropping something off or picking something up and always I was with Kitty Sue or Ally.

And always, Lee was there.

Now, Lee was not.

“This is not a good idea,” I said to Ally.

Ally and I were the same height, both at five foot nine. Ally weighed twenty pounds less than me, was a jeans size smaller because she had much less ass and one cup-size smaller because she had much less boobage. She had whisky-brown eyes like Hank and thick, dark brown hair like all the Nightingales, hair that she kept rock ‘n’ roll crazy long, just like me.

Right now she was wearing a denim mini-skirt with a ragged, cut-off hem, a bright yellow tank top with “Sugar” written across the chest in glitter and flip flops.

We’re both thirty years old, with Ally two weeks younger than me. We’d be eighty and wearing denim mini-skirts and I’m-with-the-band t-shirts, I foresaw this for our future and even though I thought it was cool, it also kinda scared me.

Ally was talking. “Lee’s out of town. He’s not due back for ages. Definitely not tonight. And anyway, no one’s crazy enough to break into Lee’s condo.”

I considered her words as I looked at Rosie.

Rosie was having a “talented-artist-in-a-crisis” moment. His eyes were wild and he looked about to bolt.

Rosie wasn’t my favorite person at that particular time. Rosie nearly got me shot but it wasn’t entirely his fault, he didn’t shoot at me and he didn’t mouth off to the bad guys.

I’d always had trouble with my mouth.

Anyway, he was my friend and I had to keep him safe. That’s what friends do. They don’t drink so they can drive you home when you’re drunk. They like your boyfriends when you’re with them and then trash them after you’ve broken up. And they find you a safe house when people are shooting at you.

And Ally was right, only someone with a death wish would break into Lee’s condo. Even I was having heart palpitations at daring to enter Lee’s lair, worried he’d go all commando if he found us there.

Not only that, it was a secure building and Lee lived on the fourteenth floor (with an unobstructed view of the Front Range, by the way).

Ally looked between Rosie and me. “What’s this about?”

“Don’t tell her!” Rosie shouted.

“I’m not gonna tell her!” I shouted back, beginning to lose patience with Rosie. I forgave myself for losing patience. I figured that happened when you got shot at. I’d never been shot at but I was always a quick learner.

Ally lifted her brows at me and I gave her my “later” look.

“I need caffeine,” Rosie whined and walked to Lee’s couch. It was soft, rich leather and faced an enormous LCD TV. Rosie threw himself on it and rubbed his temples with his fingers trying to find his Zen nirvana without a stainless steel pitcher filled with frothing milk in his hand

“You don’t need caffeine, you need Valium,” I said.

“I’ve got Valium,” Ally put in.

Ally could generally find all different kinds of pharmaceuticals either in her personal medicine cabinet or through her network of contacts.

“I don’t want Valium. I want to get the bag back from Duke as soon as possible and go to San Salvador,” Rosie said, grabbing the remote and being a bit dramatic.

“He’s an artist with an artistic temperament,” I explained as I walked Ally to the door.

“He makes coffee,” Ally replied.

I ignored that. Ally didn’t understand the beauty of coffee. She preferred tequila.

“You sure Lee isn’t gonna come back?”

I didn’t want to be caught in Lee’s condo when Lee didn’t know I was here. I hadn’t been somewhat successfully avoiding him for ten years to be found in his condo in the middle of the night harboring a possible felon who had bad people after him. There was a good possibility Lee would frown on that.

“He’s in DC,” Ally replied. “I think you should take his bed.” Her eyes got big and happy when she said this and I sighed and rested my shoulder against the wall.

“Maybe you should call him,” I suggested.

“He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s out-of-town on business. Only in emergencies.”

“This might be considered an emergency,” I explained unnecessarily as I’d called her only twenty minutes ago, hyperventilating, and telling her someone had shot at me and Rosie and we needed a safe house. Such things didn’t happen every day, in fact, they never happened, at least not to me.