AN: I know nothing at all about the US/Californian law enforcement system. I've ad libbed the things I didn't know in the most logical manner I could that still suited the story. I mostly don't own Jim. I'm just taking him out to play for awhile. I'll return him in (mostly) the same shape as I found him when I'm done. I guess that about covers it. Ya'll know what to do.

The Funeral of a Good Girl

By – TempestRaces

Chapter Fifty Seven – Of Hell and Handbags

When he heard the door open seconds after it had just closed, Vince glanced over that way. The back which retreated out the door had been screened from view by a large amount of curly hair which had looked black in the dim light. Son of a bitch! He wasn't even doing anything wrong. The girl was actually an old friend of his, and there was nothing between them. Which, had Tempest not over reacted out of hand and ran off, he would have explained to her before he introduced her to Bryce's sister, Amanda. But if he didn't want to explain himself to Amanda, in regards to why he now had to run off on her and chase down a Nissan Skyline at utterly ridiculous speeds, there was nothing he could do.

He knew he hadn't given Tempest many reasons to trust him in the past. And he knew that originally he had gotten off on her possessiveness. But jealousy wasn't an emotion born of trust or a healthy relationship and he saw that quite clearly now. Though why things not being healthy in their psuedorelationship surprised him in any way he had no idea. She was so sure he was out to get with every girl who moved other than her that she wouldn't even give him a chance to explain himself when she saw him so much as talking to another girl.

"Vince, you haven't heard I word I've said since that other girl walked in and then walked out again!" Amanda teased gently. "You into her or something?"

"Or something," he muttered.

"Oh! That was her then? This girl of Jesse's who beat Dom down last night?" She didn't wait on his answer, but assumed she was correct, turning to look at the now closed door. "She was pretty. Not at all what I was expecting when I heard some strange relative of Jesse's up and beat Dom down in the street out of nowhere. She looked really girly, but not in that normal race girl, girly way. Why didn't she stick around?"

Vince sighed. "Because she thought you were flirting with me and that I was doin' it back."

"Oh." Her head cocked to the side in confusion. "Oh! You're dating Jesse's cousin?" A wide smile showed that the thought of this event pleased her.

"Or something," he answered, frowning.

"Oh V. You're playing around with Jesse's baby cousin?"

"No!" He shook his head. "Sorta. Maybe. I don't know. She's goin' home in a few days anyway."

"Go after her and explain the situation. You can't let her think you were trying to pick me up. You weren't."

"I know that, and you know that. But her? She won't buy that for a second. She'll just think that I saw her seein' us and brushed you off to go after her. Because right now I'll guarantee you she thinks you're just some racer chaser. Besides that, I'd never catch her. You haven't seen crazy drivin' until you've seen her behind the wheel of that car of hers. Her'n Jesse'n Leon built the thing from the ground up. I'd never catch her." It pained him to admit it, but he figured it was true. Well, at least until she got lost. Then he'd catch her. If she didn't manage to lose him in the mean time.

"Well call her. You must have her number."

"I'll explain things to her tonight Amanda. Don't sweat it. She'll be at the house for supper. It'll give her a chance to calm down." He watched as Amanda frowned. "Don't start. I get it. I'll explain it to her before dinner, ok?"

Driving down the highway, listening to the phone ring on the other end of the connection was making her nervous. She'd never done anything like this before in her life. She decided she should hang up just as the call was answered.

"Hello," a sleepy male voice came across the line.

"Shit, I'm sorry. Did I wake you? We never really discussed when I should call, just that I should if I found myself free, and I do, so I did. And I'm rambling, so just tell me to shut up already."

"Never," this reply was delivered with a chuckle. "When pretty girls who tend to walk about falling out of their pants phone me while I'm in bed naked I never tell them to shut up."

"I see." She really didn't know how to respond to that. His answering laugh informed her he was aware of her discomfort.

"So, you found yourself with some free time then?"

"My calendar seems to be wide open."

"Well, I was thinking dinner, but if you're not doing anything right now, I have to go to an awards banquet and I have no one to escort. Why don't you come with me? I could pick you up in an hour. We could do the dinner thing afterward."

She had no desire to date the hot cop, hot as he was. But she wanted to show Vince he wasn't the only one who could find hot members of the opposite sex to date. "Ok, but I'll meet you someplace."

"Oh come on now darlin'. I'm a cop. You can tell me where to pick you up."

Oh no I can't. "I'd rather just meet you someplace."

"Ok, fine. There's a coffee shop down the street from my place. Meet me there. The thing is going to be fairly formal."

"Fairly?"

"Ok, very. Is that a problem? You don't have to come."

Little black dress, here I come, again. "It's not a problem. So I'll meet you there for two?"

"Yeah, that's perfect." He gave her the address and name of the coffee place before she let him go. An hour wasn't much time to get ready and get a cab. All while hoping against hope Vince wasn't busily leaving the garage to find her to make up some story about how it wasn't anything and she was just a girl and he was just trying to talk her into more things for her car than she was strictly looking to buy.

She raced through getting her hair done, and minimal make up on before she slid into her dress. And that was about when she realized that she had no where to put her money, cards, keys, phone, or lip gloss. There was no convenient person she knew with pockets going on this date with her. She normally would have made one of the guys carry her stuff. With a flash of inspiration she darted upstairs to the phone in the hall. The number to Mia's little lunch counter was programmed into the phone. She picked it up and dialled, glad she was again mostly talking to Mia.

Mia answered on the first ring. "Hello."

"Mia, its Tempest."

"Is everything ok?" Mia went straight into 'what's wrong' mode. She clearly couldn't think of any other reason why Tempest would be calling her in the middle of the day. Either that, or she was use to getting calls about emergencies from the house in the middle of the day. Tempest figured that either was just as likely as the next.

"Well, yes and no. I decided to go out with that guy, and he wants me to go to some sort of award banquet with him this afternoon, so I said I would. But I have nothing to carry my phone and the rest of my shit in when I wear this dress."

"You're wearing the little black dress you wore out with Vince out with some other guy? What did he do?"

"Nothing. I only met him on the side of the road for five minutes. What could he have done?"

"I meant Vince. I got the feeling you weren't even going to call the cop back, and now you're not only going out with him, you're going out with him in the very minimal black dress."

"I just think, given the state of affairs of everything here, that I should keep my options open," Tempest answered tightly. "Do you know what I can do with my shit or not?"

"There's a hanger of handbags in my closet. Help yourself. But I expect all the details. You can come to the café for lunch tomorrow and fill me in. Deal?"

"A handbag. That's why women own them!"

It was clear the idea of a purse simply hadn't occurred to Tempest, and it made Mia laugh. "Yes, that's why we own them. If I don't see you before then, lunch, tomorrow."

"Ok, ok. Lunch tomorrow. Later." She hung up before Mia could say anything else. She picked a bag, shoved her stuff in it, wrote a note for Jesse and called a cab. She just made it to the address she'd been given on time, rushing across the sidewalk as fast as she could in her heeled boots. She's opted out of the sandals for this event, feeling her knee high boots still on loan from Mia presented a more adult image. Her act on the side of the highway the night before was still fresh in her mind. Whether he'd known it was an act or not, Officer Street had seen a great deal of her body, and underthings, for someone she'd just met.

She saw him right away. He was seated at a table, sipping a coffee of some description. He was hard to miss, given he was dressed up in his dress blue uniform. He stood when he noticed her, and took away her chance to leave before hand and come to her senses, calling Jesse from the sidewalk. He crossed to her side, letting a grin a mile wide come over his face.

"Darlin' the whole fallin' out of your clothes thing didn't suit you half as well as this."

She fought a blush. "Yeah, about that." She peeked up at him from under her lashes. "I was sort of hoping that all of me falling out of my clothes like that would cause all of your desire to give me a ticket to fall out of your head."

"I had guessed." He took her elbow and started to walk her out onto the street. "So, tell me. The car. Is it legal or not?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. It is where it comes from. Down here, I really have no idea. The desire to take it across country and show it off to my cousin won out over finding out if it was legal or not. If I knew for sure it wasn't, I wouldn't have taken it."

"So, you just shoved your head into the sand and drove it here anyway." He chuckled.

"Something like that, yeah. I doubt it would pass California emissions. I doubt it ever would have. But it really wouldn't now."

"And why's that?"

"You can't turn around and bust me for this after the fact, can you?" She asked, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"No. And I don't want to. I'm just curious. Cars are something I know nothing about." He looked down at her, laughter dancing in his eyes. "Oh, but wait! I forgot. Neither do you."

"That's right." She smirked

"I'm still curious. Why wouldn't the car pass smog?"

"Well, it's got no catalytic converter. It's chipped to run really rich to help prevent detonation when it's in boost, and it has a really aggressive exhaust profile on the cam shafts to make sure it has as little turbo lag as possible and to make the nitrous injection system as efficient as possible. All of that means quite a bit of unburned fuel hits the exhaust and leaves the tailpipe under normal street driving conditions."

He opened the door of a black Blazer and helped her in. He crossed to the driver's side and got in, starting the truck. "So you do have NOS."

"So I do have a nitrous system, yes."

"Why couldn't I find it?"

"Well, I'll tell you that you couldn't find the under hood components because they're hidden under the intake manifold. I can't give you all my secrets." She smirked in his direction. Are you flirting with the hot cop? Are you well?

He smiled slightly at her, showing he got the inflection of her words. "How do you know so much about cars?"

"Um," she hesitated. She was about to contradict everything she'd told him the evening previous. "I'm a mechanic."

"Yeah," he answered, glancing over at her before turning his eyes back to the road. "I had figured."

"How'd you figure?"

"The grease under the nails. The 'I know more about this than you do and the fact amuses me greatly' attitude. The fake way you made out like you couldn't find the release for the hood."

"Ok, I really couldn't find the release for the hood. I've only owned the car about two months and it was in the body shop for a month of it."

"How did it get so customized in such a short about of time?"

"My cousin works for a friend of his at a performance shop and Jesse, Leon and I built the engine when I got here."

"What about the inside? It didn't come that way, did it?"

"No," Tempest heard her voice tighten. "It didn't. It was done as a favour to me by another one of Jesse's friends."

"And you'd rather not talk about it, or the friend who did it." He offered with a smile. He caught the incredulous look she was sending him. "I'm a cop darlin'. Reading people is part of the job."

It forced a laugh out of her. "And the interior of the car and how it got that way is a subject I would rather not talk about."

"Fair enough. So, in all honesty, you were street racing last night, weren't you?"

"You get right to the point, don't you Officer Street?" she asked on a light laugh.

"Please, if you're going with me to my boring annual banquet, you get to call me Jim. And in all honesty, I'm fascinated by the whole idea of street racing. So many kids spending every cent they make on their car, just for a few minutes of glory. Glory they only get around the people who are also part of their scene. I don't get it."

"You don't have a hobby that costs money?"

"Yes, but nothing like making a Honda into a race car."

She laughed. "You can't make a Honda into a race car. It doesn't matter how much money you have. But I know what you mean. Yes, I was racing last night. I won last night, as a matter of fact. I won a race I wasn't even in." She filled him in on what she'd done. She left off the part which had come after, simply because she didn't want Vince and what he'd said to intrude on the rest of her day.

"Even I've heard of Dominic Toretto. You were fast enough to beat him?"

"It was luck and my car, mostly. That and surprise. He never really figured me for able to catch him, let alone sneak out front."

"All that and modest too. You're gonna spoil me, darlin'."

"Don't count on it."

He laughed in answer. She was something else. A girl that looked like her in L.A. likely would have turned into some kind of stuck up snob ages ago. Lord knew he'd dated enough of them. But not Miss Tempest James from nowhere. She was so direct. She didn't try to impress by exaggerating what she said, or try to play herself up. She was a mechanic, plain and simple. She was wearing a dress fit to make most guys sit up and take note, but he was willing to bet she'd pay good money for a tank top and jeans right about now. "So, what happened to your hand?"

His question made her remember the cut on her palm, still bandaged despite the fact it was really much better already. "I cut myself on glass last night. Stupid, drunken error."

"Is that part of the whole car racing 'thing'? Getting drunk afterward?"

"Depends on who you are I guess. It's part of Jesse's idea what should happen. His team always has a party after the fact."

They arrived at the downtown hotel where his banquet was and he parked the truck in the off street parking. He had to rush around the nose to help her down out of the four by four before she could clamber down on her own.