by Norah Wilson
~*~
Suzannah hadn’t held out much hope that she’d be productive, but as it turned out, work was just the antidote against anxiety that she needed. And just as well she had lots of it, for nothing happened all day.
She finally put the files aside to make a solitary supper of crusty French bread, some excellent Brie and a glass of equally excellent Cabernet-Shiraz. Because they’d told her it was necessary to show herself outside, she’d taken her meal on the patio. Then she’d gone out to her backyard beds and cut flowers. After filling three crystal vases with dramatic arrangements of Asiatic and Oriental lilies, she’d sat out for another half hour pretending to read the latest Grisham novel.
She’d felt terribly exposed, but not because she feared her stalker would take her out with a rifle. That would be too impersonal and anonymous. He’d want her to know who he was and why he was extracting this revenge. No, she felt exposed because she knew there were countless eyes on her the whole while from behind slitted blinds.
It was a relief to go back inside. Amazingly, she lost herself in work again until John’s call at ten o’clock.
He’d had a productive day, too, he said. They were inches from nailing a guy he’d been dogging for a year and a half on money laundering charges. They had documentation, bank records, the modus operandi, the whole nine yards, but they’d have to move fast on this guy. The file was in the Crown Prosecutor’s hands right now, but if word leaked, he’d take his millions and flit.
She’d used her free hand to shut down the computer as he’d talked, then walked through the house shutting off the downstairs lights.
“Where are you now?” she asked as she climbed the stairs. “Home?”
“No, I’m in my car, monitoring my radio.”
“Where?”
“Far enough away not to be noticed. Close enough to get there in minutes.”
“Good.” She flipped the light switch in her bedroom and the bedside lamps came on.
“You’re perfectly safe, you know. Just because it’s dark doesn’t mean –”
“I know. Infrared technology. Ray explained. If someone approaches the house, they’ll see him as clearly as if it were high noon.”
“Pretty much. You know, I should hang up, let you go about your nightly routine. If he’s watching –”
“Already did it as we talked. I’m in my bedroom now and all the lights are off.” Silence on the line, but she felt the surge of awareness, thick and sexual and breath-stealing. She blushed, not wanting to even think about sex while all those infra-red eyes were trained on her house. Quick, something else. “Is Bandy with you?”
A pause, then he followed her change of subject. “Yeah, he’s in the back seat. Snoring like a wino sleeping one off—whoops.”
“John?” No answer. “John!”
“Stay put, Suzannah. Something’s happening.”
No sooner were the words out when she heard shouts outside. It was over in what seemed like seconds, the real thing much faster than the staged event.
“They got him, Suz!”
“Thank God!” She heard his car’s engine roar to life in the background.
“Ray’s coming in to get you, so don’t whack him with a candlestick. I’m on my way.”
The cell phone went dead just as Ray’s voice called from downstairs. She raced down the steps and would have plowed right by Ray in her need to see the man who’d been making her life so miserable for so long. But Ray grabbed her arm.
“Careful. Broken glass and wet tiles.”
She looked down to see a shattered green vase on the floor of her sun porch, water everywhere. Perfect long-stemmed red roses—a dozen of them, she knew—lay strewn across the Italian tile, their delicate fragrance making her stomach clutch. “I want to see the bastard.”
Seconds later, with Ray by her side, she stepped onto her floodlit front lawn to confront her tormentor. Cuffed with one officer holding each arm, he hung his head, the picture of misery. Not so cocky, now, you sonofabitch.
“Turn him toward the light,” she requested, moving closer. The officers obliged, but they needn’t have. At her voice, the man’s head whipped around.
Shock collided with her cold anger, ripping a layer cleanly away. “Geoffrey?”
He hung his head. “I’m sorry, Suzannah. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Didn’t mean to scare me?” she repeated weakly. Then stronger: “How do you think I felt every time I got one of your rotten floral tokens?”
“I’m sorry.” Geoffrey hung his head again, and this time he was crying like a child.
John materialized beside her. Suzannah realized she hadn’t even heard his car arrive. He squeezed her elbow and she looked at him blankly, still in the throes of shock.
“You know him?”
She blinked at Ray’s question, then pulled herself together. “Geoffrey Mann. He’s an abstractor. He does title searches at the Record Office. Vince and I both use him. But you’d never meet a more mild-mannered, shy man.”
Ray nodded at the officers, who removed Geoffrey to one of the cruisers that had pulled up at her curb. Suzannah blinked to try to dispel the unreality of the situation.
Was it really over?
Geoffrey Mann? Shy, tongue-tied Geoffrey? She turned to John. “He’ll get a psychiatric evaluation?”
“No question.”
John wrapped an arm around her and she went into his embrace.
An officer came up the walk, conferred with Ray, then strode off again. Ray’s radio crackled and he turned the volume down. “We’ll leave Mann’s car for the evidence unit, but there’s a tidy stack of florists’ bills on the passenger seat,” he said. “I’m betting they’ll match up nicely with the dates in your diary, Suzannah. If we can get him to roll to this, we probably won’t even need to execute a costly DNA warrant.”
She released her breath. “So it’s over.”
“It’s over,” Ray confirmed.
“Good,” John said, “’cuz I want to take the lady home.”
She glanced up at John, whose eyes glittered beneath the lights, then back to Ray. “Can we?”
“It’s gonna be lit up like Christmas around here for a few hours and you sure won’t get any sleep.” Ray looked around, came to a decision. “Sure. Why not? As long as you’re prepared to come in tomorrow morning with your box of monthly diaries.”
“Of course.” Suzannah glanced back at the house. “Do you need access to the house, or can I lock up?”
“Just the sun porch. You can lock the main door.”
“Do I need to worry about mucking up prints?”
“Nope. Our guy was wearing white gloves.”
“White gloves?”
“Yeah, soft white ones. You know, like the butler might wear to polish the silver if you lived at Tara.”
Soft white gloves, not thin surgical latex. Suzannah shivered again. Had he meant to use those gloved hands on her? Would Dr. Jekyll have become Mr. Hyde? Would he have whispered her supposed transgressions into her ear as he choked off her air supply with velvet-sheathed hands?
John tightened his arm around her as though he’d felt her shudder. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.”
Suzannah declined his help, needing to assure herself that her legs still worked and that she could manage on her own. Quickly, she threw some things in an overnight bag, collected her purse and locked the house, not bothering to arm the alarm. It had done its job.
They’d strung crime scene tape already, she noted, as she joined John and Ray in her driveway. The second time in so many days her lawn had been cordoned off. But this time, thank God, without the crowd of onlookers. Her immediate neighbors had been persuaded to pack their campers and take impromptu holidays with their families. That’s how they’d slipped the surveillance team and equipment in, under cover of packing coolers and fishing tackle and a hundred other things, a hundred trips in and out of the respective houses. In all the hubbub, who would notice is s
ome of the guys who went in failed to emerge again?
“Wait’ll the media gets wind of this,” said Ray, obviously on the same wavelength. “Two stakeouts netting two stalkers in two days.”
“Yes, we better get that sorted out.” She slid under John’s arm and he pulled her close. “As far as I’m concerned, the sooner we explain the first arrest was a ruse to draw out the real stalker, the better. I’d prefer not to be viewed as an irresistible stalker magnet.”
“I’m not in charge of communications, but I can’t see them waiting long. I expect the Department’s just as keen as you are to correct the record.” Ray pulled a stick of gum from his pocket and folded it into his mouth. “Now, are you guys gonna get out of here, or do I have to run you off?”
“Try and stop us.” John started steering her down the driveway, but she pulled back.
“Ray?” she called.
He’d turned away to speak to a uniformed patrolman, but turned back toward her.
“Thank you,” she said. He started to shrug it off as just doing his job, but she waved him off. “Look, I know I didn’t make it especially easy. As John alluded a couple of days ago, I wasn’t crazy about accepting the Department’s help.” As she spoke, she was conscious of John’s gaze on her face, his hand on her back. Both made her feel warmed to the core. “I really didn’t think this guy was much of a threat. Worse, I didn’t think you guys would think he was, either, although John tried to tell me.” She grimaced. “I guess I was too worried about how it would look to the rank and file, my filing a complaint every time someone sent me flowers. I was worried my ability to do my job in a court room would be adversely affected. In the beginning, I even suspected the low-level stuff, the slashed tires, the dead flowers, might be the handiwork of cops stung by the treatment they got in the witness box.”
Ray emitted a low whistle. “Jesus, Suzannah. I’m glad Quigg talked some sense into you.”
“Me, too. Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks.”
“Just doing our jobs.”
“I know. But I appreciate the professionalism with which you did it.” Aware that every cop on the scene was following the exchange, she stepped back and gestured with a sweep of her hand to include all of them. “That goes for all of you. Thanks.”
Before anyone could react to what they clearly perceived as an astonishing development, she marched to John’s car and climbed into the passenger side. Immediately, she got a blast of dog breath down the back of her neck. Bandy.
“Hi, boy.” He licked the fingers she proffered, then curled up on the back seat again. A moment later, John slid behind the wheel. Bandy didn’t stir, and neither did she. She sat ramrod straight, eyes forward, waiting for him to start the car. Nothing. She felt John’s warm gaze on her profile, felt his amusement, but still she refused to turn.
When the silence became intolerable, she said, “I think you have to put the square key in the ignition and turn clockwise.”
He laughed. “Suzannah Phelps, you’re an amazing woman."
That brought her head around. “What?”
“There’s nothing a cop appreciates hearing more than, ‘Sorry, I had my head up my ass.’ It goes a long way in this business where all we hear are excuses, denials and defenses.”
“Excuse me, I did not have my head up my ass!”
His teeth were a flash of white in the near darkness. “Sure you did. Briefly, anyway. And you were big enough to admit it. You earned a lot of respect out there just now.”
“I didn’t say it to earn anyone’s respect. I just wanted them to know…. Oh, to hell with it. Yes, I had my head up my posterior. Satisfied?”
He answer was to lean over and kiss her.
It was just a meeting of lips. No wild mating of tongues, no hands grasping heads or angling chins. Just lips caressing lips in the sweetest, most innocent kiss Suzannah could remember ever sharing. Still, it was enough to light a fire in her belly. No, not her belly. Her heart? Her soul?
“You make me so proud,” he said when he lifted his head.
The strange fire kicked higher, making her chest hurt and her throat ache. Suddenly, she wanted it to be easy again. Physical. Sexual. Body yearning toward body, flesh to flesh.
“That’s nice, Detective, but what else do I make you feel?” She laid a hand on his thigh, felt the muscles there contract.
He groaned. “Happy?”
“What else?”
“Incredibly lucky?”
“That, too.” She raked her nails gently over taut flesh. “But what else?”
He placed his hand over hers and drew it considerably north of his knee. “Horny. Hot. Needy.”
She laughed. “Me, too. Let’s go.”
He fumbled with the keys. “Damn, how’d that go again?” he muttered. “Oh, yeah. Square one in the ignition, turn clockwise...”