If Looks Could Kill (30 page)

She didn't even see Mac return to her side of the car. "You're not going to throw up on me or anything, are you?" he asked.

She shot him a glare. "Don't patronize me, MacNamara."

"Then what's wrong?"

"Besides the fact that I'm sharing a lovely spring afternoon with a corpse who came to town just to see me?"

That brought him to a halt, an eyebrow lifting. "So it's your fault?"

She knew he'd never really understand. "Why not? She sure thought the other ones were."

So that was what it was going to come down to. Not loss or grief. Guilt. It figured.

Tipett actually laughed. "Little girl, you got nothin' to do with the fact that this lady drove like a bat outta hell. Just be glad she didn't take a school bus out with her."

Chris lifted her head then and offered them both a small smile. "Well, at least I didn't write this one."

* * *

Chris had another gift waiting for her when she got home. A ham casserole this time, placed inside her screen door with no note. But Chris didn't need a note. Every potluck dinner the Methodist church had ever thrown had been graced by a ham casserole from Luella Travers. This time the gift made Chris smile.

"You sure have an interesting front step," Mac observed dryly. "You never know what's gonna show up there."

Balancing the baking dish in the curve of her arm, Chris unlocked the front door. "You should drop by when Harlan's been in the neighborhood," she retorted. "There's enough reading material to stock a library."

Once again, Mac stepped inside first. Once again, his actions were robbed of ease by hesitation. Chris waited in silence until he motioned her in.

She shuddered to a halt just inside the doorway.

The house was back in order. Everything in its place, every surface cleaned, and the bears all back with their legs in the air. Chris didn't even notice.

Disinfectant. She could smell it where it had no right to be. Not just pine cleaner, with its accompanying flashes of penitence and punishment. The harsh singe of chemicals. As distant as memories, as familiar as her last nightmare. Even as faintly as she could smell it, it upended her.

"Chris?"

Her stomach, which she'd just been thinking about filling, heaved. The blood drained from her face. Shadows shifted, whispered, threatened. Daylight dimmed and briefly, terribly, memory took hold by the frail thread of a scent.

Chris fought to hold onto reality. She clutched at the dish in her hands until the aluminum foil rattled around her fingers. She opened her mouth, seeking air and only came up with that awful chemical smell.

"Someone's been here."

Mac picked a note from the top of the jukebox. "Yeah. Sue. She cleaned up while you were gone."

But Chris shook her head. "No. Somebody else. Can't you smell it?"

"Smell what?"

"Disinfectant." Anything but that. Anything.

Mac tested the air. "I don't know. Why?"

"I never use disinfectant," she insisted, still not looking over at him, still trying to overcome the instinctive terror the old smell provoked. "I hate that smell. Somebody else has done it."

Mac lifted the note, his expression bemused. "Sue."

Chris wanted to argue. She wanted to say Sue would never do that to her, but, of course, Sue didn't know about Chris's aversion. Nobody did.

It was possible. She'd call Sue and find out. She'd hear her laugh and say, well, yes, since I was in the neighborhood I thought I'd terrorize a few dust bunnies, and feel better for it. Saner. Chris sucked in an uneven breath, trying her damnedest to feel saner right now.

"I hate that smell," she said again and threw open every window she came to on her way out to the kitchen.

She could still sense that stale aftertaste of invasion in her house. Displacement, disturbance, as if the very molecules in the air had been subtly rearranged until they carried a faint charge to them. Nothing had been taken, nothing disturbed. Even so, she felt something there, like a breath being held in a darkened room. It seemed somehow to intensify the smell of the cleaning liquid.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Mac asked after helping her check the rooms just to be sure.

Chris pulled herself up short. She'd done everything but rifle through her book boxes and toss the mattress. She was going to have to be a little more careful, regain a little control.

She found herself wanting Mac to stay. Wanting anybody to stay, just to stave off the inevitable. They could get out a deck of cards, run down to the Clarksons' and borrow the Monopoly board. Play jazz and discuss the town's problems. Anything but being left alone in that empty, echoing room with company no one but she could feel, waiting for the hallucinations to begin again.

"No," she demurred. "I'm fine. I think I'm just a little tired."

Mac took another look around from where he stood by the couch. "Well, you sure have reason to be. Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to knock off early tonight and get some sleep."

Just the thought threatened to bring up what little was in Chris's stomach. She shoved her hands into her pockets and fought to stay still. "What about the computer?"

"I'll meet you first thing in the morning."

"You sure?"

He nodded.

"In that case, I'm probably gonna head on over to the How Do and try and call my agent again. Anything you want me to tell her?"

"Ask her what she was doing Wednesday night."

Chris's answer was just a little too shrill. "She did not kill Cooter. She would have had to risk chipping a nail."

Mac's expression was carefully bland. "All the same, it'd save time if she got her alibis all in order."

Her alibis. All their alibis. Even Chris's. It didn't even bear thinking about.

Chris thought Mac would leave then. He didn't. He stood right where he was by the jukebox, rubbing at the upper lip, eyes pensive, posture careful.

"I'm going to have somebody watching the house," he told her, hitching that restless hand on his belt. "I've already asked Ray for overtime for the men. We're coordinating with Eldon and the highway patrol to start searching for suspects. I'd rather you didn't stay here alone."

"No," Chris managed. "I, uh, don't think I'd be very good company right now. Besides, you don't have to worry. The author never died in one of my books."

Mac took a step forward. "Remember what we said about this character. It's someone who either really loves C. J. Turner or really hates her. That could apply to Chris Jackson, too, if he knows who you are. Which means that all bets are off, as far as I'm concerned. I think somebody else should stay with you."

"Like who?" she demanded. "Shelly? Sue? Maybe Weird Allen? I have problems enough, Mac. Don't make it worse."

"Do you want me to stay?"

That brought her damn near to a dead halt. Chris recognized the offer for what it was. Mac was concerned. He was responsible in his own jurisdictional way. His offer included no real subtext, not so much as a sexual innuendo in sight. It was probably just a way to get into her computer. Even so, she knew just how good an idea that one was. "In this town?" she countered.

"I thought they considered you to be Virginia Woolf."

She waved him off, by turns tickled, frustrated, and dismayed by his offer. It had been a while since Chris had even considered a "dalliance" as Harmonia Mae preferred to call it. She certainly couldn't see it happening with a cop who had bigger scars than she, especially when she was battling the worst nightmares she'd had since her fifteenth birthday. The last few weeks had just proved how untenable an idea like that would be. Still, Chris couldn't help the instinctive regret. In another life, she might not have minded trying her hand for someone like A1 MacNamara.

"Not all the townsfolk believe that," she retorted. "And they sure don't see you as Oscar Wilde. Shit, Mac. You'd have Harlan on the doorstep in fifteen seconds flat. And right after him, you'd have the Reverend Mr. Rayford and L. J."

She saw it, then. Not so much in Mac's next words, or the impatience of his movements as he rubbed instinctively at the scar that couldn't easily be forgotten or overlooked. She saw it in the flash of something way back in his eyes. Conflicting emotions, a fleeting betrayal that he should have never allowed. Frustration, anger, fear. All the subtext she could want. Shut off as ruthlessly as weakness. Surprising him even more than it did her. Sparking, astonishingly enough, a like emotion in her.

Damn it. Damn
him
. She hadn't been paying attention. He hadn't either, obviously.

Chris wheeled around on her heel and headed out toward the kitchen. "I appreciate the offer," she said over her shoulder, furious that suddenly she should be the one with the shakes. "But I just can't write with somebody looking over my shoulder."

She should have been surprised to hear the clack of footsteps following. She wasn't. It just made her feel even more weary.

"I don't think you understand," Mac said, his voice all business again. "You said it yourself. This wacko has a very special message for you. And he went out of his way to deliver it right to your doorstep."

Chris reached the refrigerator and yanked it open. An automatic response after too many years of being hungry. Looking for all your answers beneath that little cold light bulb.

"Cooter's been dead for four days," she insisted.

"And his was the only murder to take place outside St. Louis County. By now, whoever it is, is probably at a nursery in Ellisville looking at shrubs."

She thought Mac would at least give her room. He didn't. He reached right over and grabbed her by the arm.

"Here," he insisted, his eyes now as hard as Judgment as he turned her back around to face him. "Right here. The murders were in order until Cooter. Suddenly we have a book being acted out that hasn't even seen the light of day yet, which means that unless either you or your shadow really are psychic, it's somebody you know. Somebody you probably know real well. Somebody who's starting to get unpredictable enough to start killing cops."

"Killing..."

"There weren't any skid marks up there, Chris. Not a mark on any of the trees along the side of the road, which should have happened if she'd been fighting that turn and missed."

She'd known. Somehow, even soaking herself in Eldon's assurances, Chris had distrusted simple bad luck and worse timing. Even so, it wasn't something she wanted to face just yet.

"Even if she'd been sideswiped or something, there'd be marks."

Mac deliberately shook his head. "I'll bet you your next royalty check that right after they identify that body they're gonna tell us that she was already dead when that car caught on fire. Come on, Chris. You're the suspense writer. Think it out."

"She still had her wedding ring on," she argued. "I thought this character collected souvenirs."

"All the other murders had to do with your books. This one has to do with self-preservation. And it's telling me that we're dealing with a whole new ball-game just at the minute we landed back on square one."

"We're not at square one," Chris insisted. "We have a better idea of who's doing it. We know that it has to be somebody who had a hell of a lot of access to St. Louis. That can't be everybody on the list."

"It's an hour and a half away," Mac retorted, leaning closer. Forcing her a step back with his frustration. "Not that much of a stretch to pull out after dark and be home well before breakfast. There are flights to New York all the goddamn time."

Still Chris fought him. "Those people were stalked. The murders were carefully planned. It would have taken a lot more time than a couple of hours after the Letterman show to do that."

Mac never gave an inch. "Victor's in St. Louis every other day to audition for something," he argued. "The judge spends two days a week up there as part of his law practice. Allen worked up there until six weeks ago. And those are just the people I'd already thought to check."

Chris couldn't come up with any other arguments. She couldn't imagine how they were possibly going to get to the truth of the matter before it was, truly, too late. "I'm helping you every way I can," she protested, hands out. "What else do you want me to do?"

"Be honest."

That froze her on the spot. She came so close to giving herself away. To betraying the purulence that she'd always thought she'd purged herself of, that had been bubbling free again in the last few days. To telling him the awful coincidence she'd discovered in Lawson's files.

She couldn't do it, though. Not if she wanted to get through this. Not if she wanted to believe in herself enough to make it as far as morning. One nightmare at a time, thank you.

She retreated to the near-empty shelves of her refrigerator. "I am honest."

"You didn't tell me that your editor is gay."

Chris swung on him. "All you had to do was ask him yourself. He'd be more than glad to tell you. And what the hell does sexual preference have to do with anything?"

"Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Some of the most notorious serial killers have been homosexual."