Double Jeopardy (Entangled Select) (7 page)

Lauren laughed as she accepted the other woman’s hug. “Probably because there’s no such thing as a Marlboro Woman.” She looked over her shoulder at Josh. “Dana, this is Josh Brandon. Josh, Dana Sinclair.”

“Dr. Sinclair.” He held out his hand.

Dana’s smile was movie-star white. “Forget about the doctor part. If I was hung up on titles, I’d be in therapy instead of giving it. Come on in.” She stepped back to allow them to enter.

Josh was still in shock at meeting Dana, who was tall, with blond hair in loose waves to her shoulders, drop-dead bright blue eyes, a figure meant to be admired by all men, and a voice that fairly smoked. Her soft gray knit dress was businesslike, but her figure gave the word “professional” a whole new meaning.

“Have a seat.” Dana waved a languid hand toward a couch against the wall. She bent over at the waist, rummaging through the varied colored file folders on her desk, until a soft “ah” of triumph escaped her lips. She held up a dark blue folder. “Here we are.” She dropped into a chair next to the couch and opened the folder as she crossed her legs. “I’d offer you coffee, but Lauren would only warn you that no one can make horrible coffee like I can, and besides, I’m too eager to go over this case with you.” She opened the folder and looked up. “Have there been any more instances since I received this?”

Josh shook his head. “Surprisingly, it’s been real quiet. You’d almost think she’s gone on vacation or she’s found someone new to focus on.”

“Oh, no, I sincerely doubt she’s disappeared from your life.” She spoke with a confidence that was almost jarring. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a pair of reading glasses, which she slipped on. “I studied the police reports and your personal notes about the incidents with great care. Working up a suspect profile takes in the incidents, the kind of person the victim is, and a lot of little things people might not even think about.”

“That doesn’t say much about how we can find her,” he groused.

“Science doesn’t always have all the answers,” she countered. “What I did find interesting was the mention of the flowers she left you each time.” She pulled out a sheet of paper. “Since they all differed, I have a hunch they carry a great deal of significance in all this.”

“How?”

“Flowers are known to have a language all their own.” Dana passed him the sheet of paper. “What I’ve done here is list the flowers in the order you received them, along with their meaning. I noticed the first flowers sent to you were daffodils wrapped in ferns. Daffodils mean regard, and ferns mean fascination. She was letting you know right away she was entranced with you. Then, the first time she left flowers in your house, she chose jonquils.”

He nodded, still stunned by the idea the flowers were a message how his stalker felt about him. “Someone familiar with plants said they were out of season, so she must have gone to a great deal of trouble to get them. I didn’t see any significance in them.”

Dana nodded. “She did go to a lot of trouble. She wanted them because of their meaning. Jonquils mean ‘please return my affection’.”

“She hoped he’d understand the meaning and therefore, automatically know she’d sent them, even though she never gave her name,” Lauren murmured. “She felt he should just know.”

“That’s right. She’s probably convinced he’s known her identity from the beginning and isn’t revealing it for one reason or another. She might even assume he’s doing it to protect her.”

Josh scanned the list. “So what you’re saying is that she’s sending a message with the flowers along with everything else she’s done?”

Dana nodded. “You have to admit that people who break into your house normally don’t also clean it as she did. Which also says she’s familiar enough with your schedule that she doesn’t worry about you walking in and catching her cleaning your bathroom. What bothers me is that the messages are now starting to turn very negative. It might be she’s upset because you haven’t publicly acknowledged her. Or she’s even hoped you would have privately approached her by now to tell her you return her affection. Which is why, whenever she learns you’re seeing someone, she sees it as a betrayal of her love and she feels the need to thrust that person out of your life. In the beginning, she was happy enough pulling juvenile pranks, such as destroying rose bushes, vandalizing cars, or throwing paint on people’s houses. I have an idea it’s going to start escalating.”

“When I left the District Attorney’s retirement party, I discovered someone had keyed my car.,” Lauren suddenly spoke up. “I didn’t think anything of it then. And I also had a feeling that someone who hated me a great deal was watching me that night.”

Josh had a grim look on his face. “So did I.”

Dana looked from one to the other. “Obviously the lady sensed something between the two of you. Did you go there together?”

He shook his head. “We met there for the first time.”

The doctor scribbled a note in the margin of the paper on her lap. “Hmm, very interesting. She probably observed the two of you meeting and put her own interpretation on it.”

“Stop making those
hmm
sounds and using those idiotic psychiatric terms!” Lauren snapped, sitting forward. “Why can’t you spell it out like a normal person?”

“This coming from the woman who just loves to throw out medical terms that no one without an advanced degree in Latin could understand.”

“Time out!” Josh held up his hands in a
T
formation. “Can we just put this battle of the doctors on hold and get back to discussing the deadly lady in my life?”

Both women turned to him, but it was Dana who answered. “It’s very easy, Josh. To make it short and sweet, she’s growing more unstable with each confrontation.” She pulled several typewritten pages out of the folder. “This will explain the profile I worked up on her. I’d say she’s white, mid to late twenties, single, and has a higher than normal intelligence, which can account for her ability to slip in and out of your house without being noticed, bypass alarms, and such. I’d also hazard a guess that the only relationship she’s ever had is in her mind. Ten-to-one she’s never been married and pretty much keeps to herself. She’s very cunning in concealing her true nature because she couldn’t handle anyone knowing what she’s really like. She has a great deal of patience, which, unfortunately, could be running out, because now when she invades your territory she destroys something instead of bestowing her idea of a labor of love. She feels you’ve hurt her, so she wants to hurt you back, even though, in her mind, she’s doing nothing more dangerous than seeking your love.”

“Dana, this is crazy. You’re saying she’s dangerous, yet she’s not really dangerous,” Lauren questioned. “Which is it?”

“Both, and it isn’t crazy. She sees Josh as an estranged lover she wants to seduce back to her. And we’re talking about someone who knows Josh pretty well,” Dana explained, pulling another sheet of paper out of the folder. “I looked over the list of women you know and/or work with that I asked you to compile.” She arched an eyebrow. “Impressive, if I do say so.”

Lauren shifted in her chair as she listened to Dana’s subtle teasing as she ran down the names of women Josh wrote down. What she heard sounded too much like her ex-husband’s favorite hobby, second to his guns, during their marriage. If there was a willing woman around, Ron wanted her.

She would be the first to admit she didn’t know a lot about Josh. It wasn’t as if they worked together or saw each other on a daily basis, so she knew she shouldn’t prejudge him. She reminded herself she was here purely as a colleague ready to help someone in trouble. Not to mention she’d somehow been pulled into this situation whether she’d wanted to be or not. She wondered why she’d allowed him to do it to her when she was doing so well in rebuilding her life from the ashes it’d once been.

“Did she break into any of the other women’s houses, or just Lauren’s?” Hearing her name spoken out loud brought her attention back.

Josh shook his head. “As far as we know, she’s only been in Lauren’s. Kevin talked to some of the others and asked about any strange incidents that occurred during the time we saw each other. They all said the same thing—that at the time, they didn’t view anything that happened as anything more than teen vandalism. It was usually paint thrown against front doors or on their cars. One had her prize rose bushes destroyed. Most of them never thought to connect it to me until Kevin spoke to them.”

“Most?”

“One mentioned that she noticed the little pranks stopped right after we broke up.” His face reddened. “She said she even thought I might have had something to do with it.”

Dana tapped her pen against her lips. “And now she’s decided to invade her rival’s territory. That means she sees you in a very threatening light, Lauren.”

“She has no reason to,” she argued.

“In her frame of mind she doesn’t have to have a reason.” Dana waved her hands to punctuate her words. “This is a woman who lives by her own version of the truth. She broke into your house because she wanted to prove she could get in there any time she wanted to. She wanted to walk in your territory, touch your things. I wouldn’t be surprised if she tried on some of your clothes,” she clucked, when Lauren grimaced at the idea, “maybe even fooled around with your makeup. I’d even say she walked out of there wearing your perfume. She didn’t leave the top off the bottle accidentally. It was cold and deliberate. She wanted you to know she’d been there. And I’m afraid to say she’ll probably be back.” She gazed at her friend with sympathy.

“Not without tripping up the security system I had installed,” Lauren said grimly.

Dana shook her head. “How many times has she gotten into Josh’s house, no matter how many times he’s changed the locks and after he had a new security system installed? This is one smart lady. She has the kind of knowledge many don’t have, and she uses it to her advantage.”

“Are you saying this woman could be in law enforcement, or perhaps work in the courthouse?” Josh asked. “That it might be someone I work with, perhaps on a daily basis? I know I’ve started feeling a little paranoid about some of the women I see at work, but I don’t want to think any of them would go to these lengths.”

“It’s a proven fact that just because someone carries a badge doesn’t mean they’re trustworthy. And she knows too much about your schedule to be a perfect stranger. Not unless she doesn’t need to work and can follow you practically twenty-four hours a day. Just remember that things seem to be picking up. I don’t want you to be surprised if she suddenly declares her love for you and insists you don’t see any other women. It could get to the point where she might get even more upset if she so much as sees you talking to another woman, no matter how innocent it really is. She wants to think of you as her own private property, and woe to anyone who trespasses.” She dropped the sheets back into the folder and closed it. “I wrote up a more concise and official report that I’ll email to Detective Peterson, and I have a hard copy of it here for your use along with a copy I emailed you before you arrived. I hope you’ll keep me apprised of any new episodes. And I suggest you be very careful,” she advised her friend. “Some flowers are deadly.”

Josh grimaced. “I guess I better brush up on my botany.”

Dana handed Josh a manila envelope. “New stalker cases crop up daily all over the country. And I’m hearing about more cases where even children are being stalked. We don’t always know what causes stalkers to fixate on certain people, what they hope to gain from it, or what causes the behavior in the beginning. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes violence to bring them to light. At least you have the law on your side. It was much scarier when nothing could be done.”

“It’s a small comfort when you can’t even find her,” Josh grumbled.

“But you know enough to be careful, and that’s what counts.” She shook her head. “Many cases have ended in tragedy. A young woman of twenty dated a young man only once. He saw more into it than she did. He kept calling and she kept telling him she was seeing someone else. That she was now in a serious relationship. He didn’t believe her and kept calling and sending her gifts,
which she always returned without opening them. She even got a restraining order. Six months later, he walked into the church during her wedding ceremony and shot the groom and then himself. Just before he shot himself, he told her he wanted her to live with the knowledge it wouldn’t have happened if she had loved him.”

Lauren closed her eyes. “Death may be my business, but it still doesn’t make it any easier,” she whispered.

“I believe in stating worst-case scenarios so you’ll stay alert,” Dana said. “Good luck, Josh. And if you ever have any questions, call me.” She reached out and pulled Lauren into a friendly hug, then leaned back to study her. “You look good. No dark shadows. Sleeping all right? No more nasties?” she murmured, then smiled at Lauren’s answering nod. “I’m glad you’re doing so well. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll decide to travel out to the toolies and see what the back of the beyond looks like.” Her eyes danced with amusement.

Lauren hugged her back. “You do that.”

“I can’t thank you enough for your help.” Josh held out his hand.

“Lauren will tell you I like nothing more than a good challenge.” Dana smiled, taking his hand. “And I can already see this one could prove interesting. If it’s possible, I’d like to meet and talk with the lady when she’s caught.” She held up a hand. “Notice I said ‘when,’ not ‘if,’ because I’m basically a positive person. I also think she chose the wrong guy for her erotic fixation, and it will ultimately cause her downfall. But I would still like to talk to her.”

“I’ll see what I can do when the time comes.”

As they walked out of the building and crossed the parking lot, Josh noticed it had grown dark. He automatically moved closer to Lauren as they approached his car. He had her remain a few steps back while he quickly checked it over. He paused before unlocking the passenger door for her.