Tempting Danger (6 page)

She glanced at the Caller ID, grimaced, and answered anyway. “Hello, Mother. I’m a bit pressed for time. I’m due in the captain’s office at nine.”

“The captain’s office? Are you in trouble?”

Why did her mother assume that? It’s not as if Lily had been in trouble all the time as a kid. Just the opposite. “It’s a briefing. Kind of like a meeting, you know? Like people with real jobs have.”

Dead silence on the other end. Lily’s breath huffed out. Her mother could cram more reproach into silence than most people managed by screaming curses. “Sorry. I’m short on sleep.”

“This will just take a moment. You left last night before I got a firm date from you for the fitting.”

“I’m being digested by the parking garage at the moment. I don’t have my planner handy.”

“Then you will call me once you do. Really, Lily, my cousin’s friend is a very busy woman, and she’s given us a handsome discount. You must show some courtesy. You’ve already missed one appointment, and your bridsesmaid gown simply has to be altered. The bodice looked terrible on you.”

Lily wanted to say that no amount of alteration would make her look good in puke green, but she was already in trouble. “I’ll check my schedule and E-mail you, okay? That will be quicker for me than calling.”

Her mother wasn’t fond of E-mail but grudgingly accepted the compromise and launched into a detailed description of the newest wedding crisis. Lily’s older sister was going to be married in grand style if it killed their mother.

Lily pulled into her parking place deep in the belly of the garage, most of her attention on the report she’d pulled together before leaving her apartment. “Mm-hmm,” she said as she grabbed her backpack, shut and locked her car door. Then what her mother had just said sank in.

It seemed the menu for the rehearsal dinner had to be changed. The groom’s sister was allergic to ginger.

“Lily? What is it?”

She realized she’d made some small noise. “You mentioned ginger, and it reminded me. I saw Ginger Harris last night.”

Her mother made one of those very Chinese exclamations, sort of a short
eh!
It was a sure sign of distress. Normally Julia Yu sounded as Californian as The Beach Boys. “Ginger Harris? Why would you want to see her? What’s going on?”

“I didn’t want to see her, I just did. It was in connection with a case. Do you know what happened to the Harrises, where they moved?”

“This is not healthy. I thought you’d put all that behind.”

“I have.” Except for the nightmares, but they were rare. “This is for the job, Mother.”

“I don’t know where they went. I don’t remember. I suppose I could ask Doris Beaton.” The offer was obviously dragged out. “I believe she kept in touch.”

“I’d appreciate it if you would.” Lily punched the button for the elevator.

“I don’t understand why you need to know about the Harrises.”

“I’m not sure yet. Police work would be a lot easier if we knew ahead of time which leads were important.” Was it intuition or the past crawling across Lily’s shoulders? She rolled them, trying to dislodge the sensation. “Thanks, though, for offering to check with Mrs. Beaton. I know the subject distresses you.”

“This isn’t about my feelings. I worry about you.”

“I know. I’m fine.” But it had always seemed to Lily that it
was
about her mother as much as herself. So many threads spinning out from that one event . . . no matter how she tugged, clipped, or tried to untangle them, the knots remained. “The elevator’s here. I’d better go.”

Julia reminded her to check her planner and said good-bye. Lily slid her phone in her backpack and stepped into the little metal box.

It was a relief to return her mind to the case, the facts and the possibilities. Threads. That’s what she had—a confusing tangle of threads, and not much in the way of hard facts to tell her where to tug. She’d taken a lot of statements, but there would be lies twisted in with the truth, and all sorts of evasions, omissions, and simple mistakes.

Time of death was likely to be critical with this one. Maybe the lab would have a preliminary report soon. Not that they’d be able to tell much, but they should at least be able to confirm that the killer was one of the Blood.

Science depended on things happening a certain way without fail. Water boiled at 100 degrees C at sea level no matter who did the boiling. Mix potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal together in the right proportions, and you ended up with gunpowder every time, no random batches of gold dust or baking soda to confuse matters.

But magic was capricious. Individual. The cells and body fluids of those of the Blood—inherently magical beings—didn’t perform the same way every time they were tested. Which could make it possible to identify the traces magic left in its wake, but played hell with lab results.

The elevator creaked to a halt on the first floor, where two people got on. Lily glanced at her watch. Maybe she should have taken the stairs.

If the parking garage was the beast’s guts, the elevators were its circulatory system. Which meant the building was often in shock due to circulatory failure, because the elevators were notoriously slow and cranky. This one did eventually deposit Lily on the third floor. She checked her watch again as she shoved open the door to Homicide. If she hurried, she could grab a cup of coffee.

“Hey, Lauren,” she said to the chunky blonde woman at the first desk. Three of the five desks in the bullpen were occupied. Mech’s wasn’t. “Is Mech here?”

“Do I look like a receptionist?” Lauren squinted at her computer screen and kept typing. “Why does everyone mistake me for the goddamned receptionist?”

“It’s your charming manner. Makes us feel all warm and welcome.” Mech was probably around. He would know she’d want to talk to him before reporting to Randall. She headed for the coffeepot.

Sean Brady looked up from the folder he’d been studying, grinned, and howled like a wolf.

“For crying out loud,” the woman at the desk next to his muttered, “turn it down, will you? No one, but no one, is going to mistake you for a lupus.”

T.J. poked his head out of his office. “Hey, has anyone seen my—oh, hi, Lily.” He grinned and exchanged a glance with Brady.

T.J. had been a cop since God was young, and a detective almost as long. He had Santa Claus hair, gold-rimmed glasses, a face with more droops and folds than a basset hound’s, and an appalling sense of humor. Lily wondered if she should check her desk for booby traps.

“Anyone seen Mech?” she asked. The pot was nearly empty. It was always nearly empty. The rule was that whoever emptied it had to make the next pot, so everyone tried to leave a little liquid in the bottom. Lily poured a few swallows of black sludge into a mug that read, UFOs Are Real. The Air Force Doesn’t Exist.

“You talking to us peons?” Brady asked. “Should we tug our forelocks when we answer?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Heaven help us. Brady’s been reading his vocabulary list again.”

“I just wondered. You’re consorting with royalty now. The prince.” He made another howling sound.

“Someone put a muzzle on him, will you?” Lily headed for what she liked to call her office. It was really just a small ell off one end of the main room, lacking the dignity of a door or windows. But it was a private nook and had room for her desk, some filing cabinets, an extra chair, a struggling philodendron, and a pot of ivy out to conquer the world.

“You know, Brady,” Lauren said, “I bet you have no idea what a forelock is.”

“I’m sure I could find one. Hey, maybe this—”

“You go tugging on
that
in here, I’m arresting you for indecent exposure.”

“Mech’s guarding your domain,” T.J. said as she passed him.

She paused. “Your eyes are twinkling, T.J. I don’t like it when your eyes twinkle.”

He shook his head. “So young and so cynical.” Then he smiled. “Hope you enjoy our little present.”

Oh, crap. Lily was on guard as she approached her office, though she couldn’t imagine what they’d cooked up. If Mech was there, she ought to be safe from practical jokes. Mech was the polar opposite of Brady and T.J., serious to a fault. He’d tell her if they’d rigged her chair to collapse.

So what kind of “present” had they left for her?

She rounded the corner and found out.

“Detective Yu,” Rule Turner said, rising politely from the battered wooden chair to the left of her desk. “Your colleagues assured me it was all right to wait for you here.” His smile was crooked and charming. “I think I’ve been used.”

“Um,” she said cleverly. He was wearing black again—an open-necked black shirt with a black jacket and slacks. Very Hollywood. The jacket looked as if it had cost as much as her car was worth. “I’m afraid so. The joke is strictly on me, however.” It was a backhanded jibe at her lack of a social life. She sighed. “Cop humor has a lot in common with kindergarten humor, only more R-rated.”

“The chief sent him to see you,” Mech said. He was sitting on Lily’s desk, trying to look relaxed.

Mech was ten years older than Lily, five inches taller, and eighty pounds heavier, with every ounce muscle. He was a quiet, methodical man with Job’s patience, skin the color of her favorite caramel latte, and a strong streak of the puritan.

Mech didn’t do relaxed well. “He—uh, His Highness wants to assist in the investigation.”

Turner shook his head. “I’m not a highness. The press likes to call me prince, but the press likes to sell magazines and newspapers.”

“I’ve noticed that about them.” Lily slung her backpack onto her desk. “Thanks, Mech. You can tell T.J. he’s on my list. Brady, too.”

Mech hesitated, as if he weren’t sure he should leave her alone with Turner. She flicked him a glance as she unzipped her backpack. He nodded reluctantly and left.

She pulled out her laptop. “While we always appreciate civic-minded citizens, there’s something of a problem with one of the suspects in an investigation assisting in that investigation.”

Turner’s straight slashes of eyebrows lifted. “You’re blunt.”

“But I did use my polite face. Chief Delgado sent you to me?”

“He did. I called him this morning, offering my help. If you want to catch a lupus, you need to know something about us, and I doubt you do. That’s not a criticism. There’s very little real information available.”

“You mean Hollywood didn’t get it right with
Witches Sabbat?
” She shook her head. “Next you’ll be telling me Charlie Chan wasn’t really Chinese.”

He chuckled. “Point taken. He was played by an Occidental actor, wasn’t he?”

“Sydney Toler, among others.” Lily would never admit she had a sneaking fondness for the old Charlie Chan movies, chock-full as they were of cliché and stereotyping. But they were so much more fun than James Bond or Bruce Lee. Chan had relied on brains, not technology or kung fu, to defeat the bad guys. “Your information might be difficult for me to verify.”

“And you have no intention of trusting me. Understood. But I’ve a strong interest in seeing this case solved quickly. I want to see only one lupus blamed for the killing, not all of us. And I don’t want that one to be me. I didn’t do it, but you’ll need proof to believe that.”

Taking a sip of the cooling sludge in her mug, she studied him. It wasn’t unheard of for a lupus leader to cooperate with the police. If a werewolf went on a rampage and wasn’t caught, the repercussions for all lupi could be severe. People tended to panic about that sort of thing. And there was a bill coming up in Congress—the Species Citizenship Bill—that could be affected by adverse public reaction to the case.

But the lupi version of cooperating with the police didn’t necessarily involve niceties like testimony or evidence. They’d been known to deposit a body at a police station with a note saying that the problem had been taken care of.

She set her mug down. “Last night you said you didn’t have any idea who killed Carlos Fuentes.”

“I don’t.”

“I won’t tolerate any form of vigilantism. Murder is murder in my book.”

“An admirable attitude. Of course, the law only considers it murder if we are killed while two-footed.” He waved that aside. His hands were graceful and long-fingered, like a pianist’s. It was hard to imagine them turning into paws. “But you misunderstand. I’m not offering to find your killer for you. I’m offering to brief you on lupus culture and habits.”

If he was dealing straight, this was a first. On the candid and forthcoming scale, the lupi ranked about even with the Mob or the CIA. “I do want to talk with you,” she said, reaching for the printer cable and plugging it into her laptop. “But I’m due in the captain’s office in . . . damn,” she muttered when she glanced at her watch. “Two minutes. If you wouldn’t mind waiting in the other room, Sergeant Meckle could get you a cup of coffee.”

He winced. “Are you referring to whatever is in your mug?”

She smiled. “Too strong for you?”

“You give it to suspects to soften them up, right?”

“Only works on the wimps.”

He shook his head. “I’m in trouble. Already you’ve discovered my weakness. I’m a coffee snob.”

It wasn’t what he said so much as the way he said it. She burst out laughing. “Don’t let anyone tell you you do humble well. You don’t.”

“We can’t expect to master every skill.” He smiled, and his gaze flickered over her—too briefly to be insulting, but his appreciation was obvious. “I have the feeling you don’t do humble well, either, Detective.”

“My grandmother claims that humility is the public face of envy.” And why was she talking about Grandmother to this man?

The little ping that had landed with a tug in her belly might be a clue. He’d probably picked up on her response, too, dammit. He’d been winning at boy-girl games for a long time. She shook her head. “You’re good, I’ll give you that. But I’m not playing.”