If Looks Could Kill (38 page)

"You live in a place with
pigs
down the block, and you complain about the City of Lights?" the little woman said haughtily.

"Not pigs," Chris corrected. "Chickens. The pigs are at least four miles away."

Dinah's huff was the soul of indignation. "No wonder you appeal to middle America. You've succumbed to it."

"Don't be a shit, Dinah," Chris warned, stretching in her chair to ease out some of the kinks from falling asleep mid-diatribe sometime near dawn. "Middle America is paying your grossly inflated rent."

"God bless 'em."

"Did you read the last manuscript I sent in?" Chris asked, just as she always did. Knowing the answer.

"Of course not," Dinah intoned self-righteously. "I
never
read Jacqueline. You know that."

"Might do you some good," Chris teased. "Help a little in those tight spots with the tennis pro."

"Don't be absurd," the agent said, lifting another square of cake by the ends of her fingernails. "The last thing I need is help."

Leave it to Dinah. For the first time in days, Chris was beginning to feel a little better. A little saner.

"What's so funny?" Dinah demanded when Chris chuckled.

"Nothing," Chris assured her, curling back into her chair. "I've missed you."

Dinah let that faint layer of distress color her expression again. "I've missed you, too. Next time, we'll do New York."

Chris played a little with her coffee cup. "Do you know that all the murders happened while we were in St. Louis together?" she asked.

Dinah went on sipping her coffee as if they were discussing the weather. "I knew there was something more to that city than bad weather and brain sandwiches."

"Dinah!"

"Well, what do you want me to say?"

"Don't you think it's awfully friggin' odd?" Chris demanded. "I insisted on those times. Made sure we were there, somehow, just as a murder was committed using one of my books as a trail guide."

"Maybe you're not as unacquainted with the psychic phenomena as you thought. Who knows? I have more important things on my mind."

"More important?"

She shot Chris a sly smile. "Tell me about the chief of police."

"I did."

"You told me he reads Balzac, wants to fish, and moved to a small town for the clear air. Sounds like the Episcopalian priest in
The Quiet Man.
Where's he from?"

"Chicago."

"And?"

"And," Chris countered testily, "he's here now. As a matter of fact," she admitted, conveniently checking her watch, "he's probably just about looking for us to show up for that little chat."

Dinah waved her off. "Not till I've done something with my hair. And my nails. And my outfit."

"It's interrogation, Dinah. Not coming out."

Just then the radio on the table sputtered to life.

"Chris?"

Chris pointed to it as if in proof. Actually, she was more surprised than Dinah. She picked up the radio and keyed the mike. "Yes, Crystal."

"Hi," the girl chirped, obviously ignoring several FCC regulations. "Chief wants to know if you'd meet him in city hall in about ten minutes. And bring the computer?"

"10-4," Chris answered, producing a waterfall of giggles from the other end. "Over and out."

"Good God," Dinah growled, downing the rest of her coffee like a vodka stinger. "I
am
in Mayberry."

* * *

"Sue, what do you want me to do?"

Sue bristled. "Protect her."

Mac set down his ATF cup and rubbed at his head that hadn't stopped hurting in the last forty-eight hours. "I've had a man outside her house for the last two days, Sue. As a matter of fact, I was the man out there last night, which means I haven't had any sleep. Which means," he assured her acerbically, "that I'm just a little tired."

"But, have you
seen
her?"

The voice that answered sounded almost as tired as Mac's. "She appreciates the concern."

Sue whipped around like a shot to find Chris standing in the doorway, portable computer in hand, Cardinals cap on her head. Today she was in scarlet and black.

"A celebration?" Mac asked, seeing just what Sue meant. There was more color in the old floor tiles than in Chris's face. Her eyes looked haunted.

"Opening day of baseball," she said brightly.

She didn't convince either of them. Mac, though, knew to give her room. Sue was standing there as if she were stuck in mud, not sure whether to go forward or backward. Agitated enough that she made Chris look calm.

"So you were the one at the window with the binoculars last night, huh?" Chris demanded, stepping on in to set the portable computer case on a chair. Mac noticed that the minute she got through that door, her steps faltered badly.

He wished he could move them someplace roomier. Unfortunately, there was company everywhere else they could work. "Bird-watching," was all he said.

She brought up a laugh. "Yeah, well, you would have had more fun over at the Taylors'. Last night it was cookies and milk at my place all the way."

"I saw. She still talking?"

"Probably."

"Isn't she going to join the party here?"

"Later. She said something about a shower."

"You coming over for dinner tonight?" Sue asked.

Chris frowned in confusion.

"It's Ellen's birthday," Sue reminded her, looking, if possible, worse.

Chris's smile was apologetic. "I'm not sure if you guys are ready for Dinah," she demurred. "We spent the morning in a clinical discussion of male anatomy."

"Well, she'd clean up her act for the kids, wouldn't she?"

Chris looked a little pained. "She doesn't recognize kids. Says they're just large, rude Schnauzers with braces."

Mac wished he were back at the squad room. They could have had a great pool going on who was going to walk away from a meeting between those two. Even after meeting the agent, Mac's money was on Sue.

"Just for a little while," Sue suggested, as if she could bestow some kind of magic protection on Chris after only a few minutes in a normal house.

Chris's smile made Mac wonder if maybe it couldn't happen that way. "I'll be there," she promised.

"One more thing," Sue said, an accusing eye in Mac's direction. "Evidently Mr. Franklin has been heard. The press has pulled into town. TV, radio, newspaper. They're all on the way. The Sleep Well rented its last unit to the people from the
Globe."

Maybe it was better coming from a friend. Mac wasn't sure. Either way, Chris slid into the chair with her computer as if somebody'd just snuck up and taken off with her knees.

"I'm sorry, honey," Sue said.

Chris just nodded.

And they were supposed to get some work done.

* * *

Amazingly enough, they did. Holed up in Mac's office with Sue playing palace guard, they fine-tuned that computer in no time at all. They didn't find out anything, not at first. The obvious stuff was negative. But Chris Jackson was nothing if not resourceful. She began to hit pay dirt after following Harlan to his fourth state.

"Who'd think it?" Mac mused, looking at Harlan's sheet.

"Me," Chris said, typing away. They were onto Dinah now, much to Chris's chagrin. "Harlan just isn't the kind of guy to wait for divine intervention. God has millennia to make a point. Harlan only has weeks."

"So he manufactures false evidence against his opponents."

"From that history from Florida, it looks like he manufactured everything about himself except his hat size."

"Including the divinity degree."

Chris actually grinned. "Means to an end, my boy. A very popular refrain among Inquisitionists throughout the centuries. What amazes me is that I didn't think of using this kind of ammunition against him before this."

"It's illegal," Mac: admonished.

Chris's grin was piratical. "I'm going to hell anyway. Might as well enjoy the ride."

He was sitting on the edge of his bookcase behind her, a sheaf of papers in his hands, his attention half on those, half on the figures that scrolled out before Chris. She'd calmed noticeably since coming to the office, even with the door closed to keep her out of sight of the invading press. She was obviously happier taking action than sitting back and letting things happen. Mac just wished he could get her close enough to whatever had been going on last night to open up again.

A stalker. He'd talked to JayCee, who'd been the one she'd flagged down that first night, and Curtis, who'd sat outside the house on damn near every one of his night shifts the last few days. They hadn't seen or heard anything. Except, of course, Victor pining and Weird Allen patrolling. But both of those activities had come to a simultaneous halt.

Mac shook his head in frustration. He'd made inroads into the police here. He had a long way to go. To that end, he'd moved Curtis back to patrol and accepted the help of one of the highway patrol guys as backup.

He wondered, though. Why Chris hadn't brought her suspicions to him earlier. Why she'd incriminated herself. Why she believed she was more capable of murder than anyone around her. But then, Mac had never spent his childhood locked in a dark closet. He couldn't imagine that he would have come out of it as well as Chris had.

The phone rang and Mac picked it up. "Chief MacNamara."

"Mac?" Sue asked anxiously. "There's a Special Agent Willis from the FBI on line one for Chris."

"For Chris?"

"That's what he said. Hurry up and take it. I have another TV crew headed this way."

Mac punched the line. "This is Chief MacNamara. Can I help you?"

* * *

She'd meant to bring the accusation right back to Dinah. Confront her with it, demand explanations, justifications, at least rationalizations.

She couldn't.

Dinah had always been her rock, implacable in the rush of the publishing business. Common sense in a sea of insanity. When Chris hadn't been able to trust anybody, she'd been able to trust Dinah. So when she got home and found Dinah sound asleep on the couch, she'd just pulled a rainbow afghan over her and headed on upstairs.

Embezzlement. It was such an ugly word. A crime committed by mousy bank tellers and shady mob figures. Not by your own agent. Not by your friend.

Chris knew Dinah had her problems. Chris had supported her, helped her, even walked her into treatment the time she'd been caught red-handed in the lingerie section of Bloomingdale's with a pocket full of bras.

"She came from an alcoholic family," Chris had explained to Mac after the call from Special Agent Willis. "Terrible uncertainty. They never knew from one meal to the next where the food was going to come from. It left terrible scars. She's been trying to get her parents' attention since she was five. Just about as long as she's tried to protect her future."

Was she trying to get Chris's attention now, or making sure she had a next meal? It broke Chris's heart.

Evidently Dinah hadn't been with a tennis pro of any kind. She'd been avoiding the federal officials who had shown up in her office the week before with questions raised by another client. Chris hoped like hell Dinah had appeared on her doorstep to admit to Chris what had been going on, rather than just to escape to a place she figured the police wouldn't know about. Chris had to give Dinah the chance to make the admission. So she'd begged Mac not to confront Dinah until she did.

And then she didn't.

Instead, as if in punishment for having to send her friend back to New York to face the FBI, Chris finally climbed her stairs and sat down with the manila envelope.

* * *

Chris Jackson had a juvenile record. Or rather, Christian Charity Evensong did. Mac was amazed. He wouldn't have been so surprised if he'd found one in California. In fact, after what she'd said, he'd almost expected it. But she'd been clean in California. Her record was from Springfield, Missouri.

Word had come after Mac had gotten off the phone with the New York police about Dinah Martin. An acquaintance of Mac's from FBI school now worked Juvey out of Jefferson City. He'd gotten in touch with a buddy down in Springfield who'd worked the area for years.

The records had been closed, of course. Slate wiped clean on the eighteenth birthday, whatever the crime was. Privacy for the sake of the child. The old cop had remembered the name, though. Mac's friend had called with the news, said he'd try to dig up something more. Mac thanked him and hung up. Then he simply sat there in his quiet office, the staff long gone, the traffic outside picking up, the highway patrol cruising his streets to supplement the staff dealing with all the extra people in town.

A Juvey file. And something worthwhile enough that a cop remembered it after more than fifteen years. Big lies and little lies.

Mac was rubbing at the side of his head again. It was time to get a beer. To get a couple of beers. Then, since he'd given in to Chris's pleas not to question Dinah until she'd had a chance, he'd take the first shift outside Chris's window. Tomorrow he'd ask the tough questions.