Sex, Lies, and Online Dating (16 page)

Sergeant Mitchell and the other detectives had discussed ways of using Lucy to draw out Breathless. They’d talked about a videotaped public appearance. Quinn hadn’t liked the idea, but he’d mentioned it to Lucy yesterday when he’d driven by to give her the latest junk mail. Her flat refusal had been a relief.

The only real thing he could do for Lucy now was to catch a killer. It was a little after nine on a Saturday, and he’d come into the office to do just that.

He and Kurt had interviewed half the presidents of The Peacock Society, and he’d just received the last five membership rosters from each chapter president. Unfortunately, not all of them had included membership profiles, and he’d had to phone them and make a second request. While he waited, he cross-checked the names against the Women of Mystery roster. None of the Peacock ladies belonged to the mystery writers group, but some of the chapters of the Peacocks conducted their meetings at bookstores throughout the valley. He had a feeling Breathless was on one of the lists. Quinn leaned forward in his chair and placed the Women of Mystery roster on top of a pile of paperwork sitting on his desk. He read over each of the thirty-five names. She was there; he could feel it.

He reached for the latest crime lab reports and reread them. There wasn’t a lot of good news. Except for the one set of usable prints they’d lifted off the leather passenger seat in Robert Patterson’s truck there wasn’t any hard evidence. They’d lifted a palm and four fingers from the left edge of the seat, where a person’s hand would naturally grasp. The prints didn’t belong to anyone in Robert’s circle of family and friends, and they didn’t belong to the victim. They didn’t match any of the prints lifted from the hotel room, but Quinn wasn’t surprised. Just as he’d suspected, that room had been lousy with prints and DNA, and he doubted any of it would prove useful.

He held up a copy of the lift card and studied the nice ridges of the hypothenar zone and the tented arch and whorls of all four fingers. INDENT had fed the prints into AFIS but unfortunately hadn’t received a hit. Just like it was with the list of names on the writers list, Quinn knew in his gut that he was staring at the hand of a serial killer.

The cell phone hooked to his belt rang, and he answered without reading the caller ID. “Detective McIntyre.”

“Quinn. It’s here.”

He straightened in his chair and set the copy of prints on his desk. “Lucy?”

“Yes.” There was a pause, as if she were trying to swallow. “It’s here.”

“What?”

“The letter. It came to my house. She knows where I live.”

Shit. “Did you open it?” He gathered the papers on his desk and put them into his notebook.

“No.” A sob broke in her throat.

“You’re not there alone, are you?”

“Yes. Adele spent the night, but she had to leave. I thought I’d be okay here by myself. It’s broad daylight and I thought—”

“Are your windows and doors locked?” He grabbed his notebook and laptop and headed for the door.

“Yes.”

“I’m on my way.” He walked out the front doors and headed toward his unmarked car. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“It’s a twenty-minute drive.”

He unlocked the car door and set the laptop and notebook on the seat next to a dozen pink roses. “Not for me.” Probably not for her either.

Quinn hung up and called Sergeant Mitchell’s and Kurt’s cell phones. Neither picked up, and rather than leaving a message, he decided to call back once he had more information. Breathless had sent the letter to Lucy’s house, and that changed everything.

The drive took him fifteen minutes. He parked his car by the curb and grabbed his evidence collection duffle out of the trunk. With the duffle in one hand and the laptop and his files in the other, he jogged up the sidewalk. The door to the house opened as he took the steps two at a time. He stopped on the porch and looked at her standing within her dark house, the curtains and blinds drawn against the sunlight. Her white pajamas had red lips printed all over them and were a stark contrast within the gray shadows. A sob broke between the fingers she pressed against her lips, and then she was in his arms. He wasn’t quite sure how it happened. One second he was standing on her porch waiting for her to invite him inside, the next he was inside with the door closed behind him and the duffle at his feet.

She buried her face in his neck. “I thought I could handle this,” she cried as her hands grasped the front of his black polo shirt.

“Shh. It’s okay now.” He slid his free hand up and down her back, bunching the flannel shirt. “I’m here. I’ll take care of it.” He pressed a kiss to the side of her head as his palm slid up her spine to her shoulders. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything.” Beneath the soft flannel of her pajamas, he didn’t feel bra straps. He tried not to think about what that meant.

“I always thought I could handle anything.” She shook her head, and her grasp on his shirt tightened. She seemed to want to burrow under his skin. “I always thought I was one of those fearless people who could survive a tsunami and outrun a bear. One of the smart ones who jumps in the life raft and doesn’t go down with the ship. But I’m so scared I can hardly think straight.”

He smiled into her hair. “Honey, no one can outrun a bear.”

“I know, but I always thought that if I had to, I could do it. I thought I was the smart one, the strong one, but this whole thing has just knocked me on my ass. I’m not brave or strong or in control.”

His gaze fell on the stark white envelope sitting on the coffee table. There would be plenty of time to deal with that later. “I’ll help you.”

“How?”

Yeah, how? He pulled back far enough to see her face. Dark circles smudged the skin beneath her eyes, and she was very pale. “When was the last time you ate?”

“Last night. Adele stayed here, and we had takeout.”

He brushed a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “A real meal.”

Her forehead wrinkled in thought, and he fought the urge to press a kiss there. “Like in cook?”

“Yeah.”

“Wednesday Maddie made lasagna, but I haven’t been really hungry.”

“You’re going to make yourself sick.” He set his laptop and files on the table, then he grabbed her hand and pulled her with him into her kitchen. He flipped the light switch on his way toward the refrigerator. He let go of her hand, then opened the door to discover several boxes of old takeout and half a bag of chick salad, the kind that looked like weeds and flowers. He also saw a half gallon of milk, three beef weenies, and a brick of cheddar. “There’s not much here.”

“Except for last night, I haven’t been here all that much. Just a few hours during the day to try and get some writing done and to meet you with my mail.”

He shut the refrigerator and moved to open a few cupboards. “Your friend shouldn’t have left you alone today.”

“Adele’s a writer and is busy. All my friends are busy with deadlines. They can’t stay with me twenty-four/seven.”

His gaze skimmed over cans of soup and vegetables, jars of olives, and two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. “You should have called me.” He pulled out the macaroni and cheese and turned to look at her.

She shrugged but didn’t answer. He supposed she didn’t need to. They both knew why she hadn’t called him. “You’re going to cook?”

“Sure. I’ll make you something my mom used to make me when I stayed home from school sick. Where are your pots and pans?”

The bottoms of her slippers made a soft skidding sound as she moved across the tile floor. She walked to a cupboard next to the stove and bent over at the waist, drawing Quinn’s gaze to all those red lips on her butt. He wondered what she’d do if he grabbed her up and placed kisses everywhere those lips were printed.

“This ought to work,” she said as she straightened with a pot in one hand. She walked toward him, and his gaze lowered to the lips printed on the pockets covering her breasts. He thanked God she wasn’t a mind reader, or she probably would have tried to slap his head off like she’d done the morning he’d told her he wasn’t a plumber.

She handed him the pot, and he filled it with water. “Weenie mac and cheese is exactly what you need.” He tore the top off the blue box and dumped the noodles in the water. “Good old-fashioned comfort food.”

While the noodles boiled, he shredded cheddar cheese and cut the weenies. She stood with her hip shoved into the counter next to him with her arms folded beneath her breasts. To fill the time and take Lucy’s mind off the letter in the living room, Quinn talked about the Raymond Deluca case. Yesterday, Mr. Deluca had been convicted of killing his wife and her three children, and Quinn talked about the case and the evidence that had hung him.

“I remember when that happened,” Lucy said, watching as he drained the macaroni. “And the faces of those little kids in the newspaper.”

While Quinn mixed the cheese sauce and tossed the cheddar and weenies into the pot and turned the burner on low, Lucy set the table. She poured two glasses of milk. “This usually gets baked for a while with extra cheese and little croutons on top,” Quinn said as he filled two plates, “but you look too hungry to wait.”

“Maybe I am a little more hungry than I thought,” Lucy confessed as he held her chair. He sat across from her, and they ate for a few moments in silence.

Lucy reached for her glass of milk. “This is better than I thought it would be.”

Quinn stabbed a few noodles and a slice of weenie with his fork. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had weenie mac? It was a lunch staple at the McIntyre house.”

A little white mustache rested on Lucy’s top lip when she lowered the glass. She shook her head and licked it off with the pink tip of her tongue. “I did most of the cooking in my house. My mother had to work late a lot, so I made dinner for me and my brother. I got to be a really good cook.”

Quinn recalled the chocolate torte she’d made him and how she’d said chocolate was better than sex. Granted, the torte had been good, but not that good.

She yawned behind her hand until her eyes watered.

“Am I boring you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I’m tired.”

“Are you having trouble sleeping?”

“It’s more like I’m staying up late trying to work. I have a book due in four weeks and I haven’t written a word since I found those letters. My deadline stress is adding to my insomnia. I’m a mess.”

Yeah, she was. Her hair could use a brush, but that didn’t keep him from wanting her. Spiffed or messy, he didn’t care. “Why don’t you take a nap? I can do some work here while you sleep.” They both knew what work he was talking about, but neither wanted to talk about it just yet.

“I doubt I could sleep, but I would appreciate it if you’d stay while I took a shower.”

Quinn pictured her naked and wet and all soaped up. “That’s fine,” he uttered as he picked up his plate and walked to the sink. He didn’t have to try and imagine her naked. He knew what she looked like. He’d seen her from the waist up, and what he’d seen had rocked his world. Turned it on its head until he’d lost his friggin’ mind.

Quinn rinsed while Lucy loaded the dishwasher. The late morning sun streamed golden light through the window and into Lucy’s hair. It got caught in her lashes and poured across her cheek and into her parted lips. He’d lived with Amanda, had thought he’d spend the rest of his life with her, but he couldn’t recall if they’d ever washed dishes together.

He handed Lucy a wet plate, and a drop of water slid from the edge to slip across her palm and wrist and disappear beneath the long sleeve of her pajamas. It wasn’t until the machine was loaded that he brought up the subject they’d both been avoiding.

“Do you want to know what’s in the letter?” he asked as he dried his hands with a dish towel.

“I’m not sure.” She took one end and dried her hands too. “A part of me does. The curious part that killed the cat, but I know I’ll regret it. So, no.” Her fingers brushed his, and a wrinkle appeared between her brows, as if she was confused about something. “Thanks for lunch.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And ah…if Snookie meows at you, don’t feed him. He’s on a diet.” She moved across the kitchen to the doorway leading to the bedrooms. “And if you have to leave—”

“I’m not leaving.”

She looked at him one last time and disappeared.

Quinn tossed the towel on the counter and moved into the living room. Instead of turning on lamps, he opened the drapes and let the sun in. He grabbed his duffle from the floor and tossed it on the couch, then took out a pair of rubber gloves and snapped them on his hands. He picked up the letter sitting on the table and sliced open one end with the small utility knife he kept in the front pocket of his jeans. As he sat on the couch, he pulled a letter from the envelope. This time there was no newspaper clipping.