Superstition

by Karen Robards

  And she didn’t remember a thing.

  Oh, wait, she did remember something. She had told her mother that she would be back at the hospital by nine.

  She groaned.

  She was still wearing her bra and panties, she discovered as she scooted a little higher against the pillows while still keeping the covers she’d been burrowed under more or less in place across her chest. Which meant that Joe must have undressed her—but not all the way.

  So he was a gentleman, was he? A slight smile curved her mouth. He could cop an attitude all he wanted; she was going to get to the truth about her big, bad cop anyway.

  “I’ve got to go to work.” Joe was strapping on his shoulder holster, which he had retrieved from the night table. “Dave’s in the kitchen. He’s going to drive you to the hospital and stay with you until three. Then Andy Cohen is going to take over until eleven, by which time I’ll be back here and, presumably, you will be, too. I want you to promise me that no matter what, you won’t go anywhere without one of them with you.”

  “Don’t worry,” Nicky said fervently, watching with interest as he checked his gun before tucking it securely in the holster.

  “I do worry. And I want you to keep in mind that this Lazarus guy still doesn’t have his number three.” Joe picked up his jacket from the armchair in the corner and shrugged into it. There was something extremely intimate about lying in his bed and watching him dress, Nicky realized as her body tightened and a little tingle ran down the insides of her thighs. Then she remembered him saying “I don’t do relationships” and clamped down on her way-too-forgetful body. “I’m going to give you a key so you can come and go as you please.”

  Joe picked up his keys from the night table and extracted a key from the ring. He held it up so that she could see it, then put it back down beside the lamp.

  “Try to be careful, would you, please?” There was a wryness to his tone and an almost regretful gleam in his eyes as they ran over her. Then he was gone.

  Nicky lay there for a moment longer, savoring the feeling of being rested, of being relatively free of worry about Livvy, of being warm and comfortable in Joe’s bed. She could see the indentation from his head in the pillow beside hers and could tell from its position and her own that they had slept snuggled together. Her body had probably been attracted to his during the night like metal to a magnet.

  Just the thought of it was turning her on, so she quit thinking about it and got out of bed. Her suitcase was leaning against the wall near the door, and Nicky felt another little glimmer of warmth for him as she registered that he had very thoughtfully put it where it was most convenient for her, especially considering that Dave was somewhere in the house. Chalking up one more sliver of evidence that the Joe she had come to know was not the Joe that Sarah Greenberg had described, she extracted some clothes and toiletries from the suitcase and headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later, following the smell of coffee, she walked into the kitchen.

  The back door was open, and Dave, in full uniform, was crouched just outside on the deck, apparently in earnest conversation with the pig. They were just about eye level, almost nose to snout, and Dave seemed to be chatting away.

  Curiosity trumped even the lure of coffee. Nicky stepped out on the deck. It was a beautiful late-spring morning, she saw, sunny and just hot enough to be pleasant. The backyard was small, fenced, and dominated by a large black gum tree and a gorgeous stand of sunflowers. The deck was smaller still, maybe eight by twelve feet, with an octagon-shaped wooden table and benches and a pair of deck chairs—and Dave and a pig.

  “Good morning.” Dave glanced up at her with a quick smile and got to his feet. He, too, looked much more rested than the last time she had seen him. Last night must have provided a lull in which they had all gotten some much-needed sleep.

  “H-hi.” The stutter was because of the pig, which came snuffling around her legs. As she was wearing a short tangerine sundress and sandals, she could feel the animal’s warm, moist breath against her skin. The sensation was disconcerting.

  Her experience of pets had been pretty much limited to dogs and cats. She knew nothing about pigs.

  “Have you met Cleo?” Dave regarded the animal fondly as it checked out the brightly colored beads that decorated Nicky’s shoes. Since she wasn’t quite sure what its intentions were toward the beads, and it clearly seemed to like shiny colored things, she curled her manicured toes as close to the soles of her shoes as they would go and gave it a clumsy pat on the head. Its black hair felt wiry and smooth. Its ears twitched in acknowledgment, and its little corkscrew tail gave a wag.

  Think dog, Nicky told herself, with hooves and the snuffles.

  “Not formally. I’ve seen her through the window. And on TV.” Even with the pig still eyeing her beaded feet, Nicky had to smile at the memory.

  Dave grinned, too. “Joe took some heat for that, didn’t he? I felt bad.”

  “You felt bad?”

  “Yeah. He was kind of doing me a favor to let her stay here.”

  Understanding dawned in a flash. “You mean it’s your pig?”

  “Yeah, she’s mine. But my girlfriend doesn’t really like her and, well, what with one thing and another, Joe said she could stay here.”

  “How . . . nice of him.” Nicky thought of all the grief Joe had endured at the hands of the media because of the whole police-chief-with-pet-pig thing and shook her head. He had never once, not even to her, said that the animal wasn’t his. That, she was coming to realize, was typical Joe: never complain, never explain.

  “He’s a good guy.” Dave reached for something on the table. “Here, give her some bologna. She’ll be your friend for life.”

  He thrust a slice of bologna at her, and Nicky, a little slow on the uptake that morning, took it. She had just begun to register the cold, slimy feel of the meat in her hand when the sensation was replaced by the insistent thrust of a warm, velvety muzzle. Nicky glanced down at the pig, who was going for the lunch meat with gusto, and realized it was eating out of her hand.

  She dropped the bologna like it was on fire.

  “See, she likes you,” Dave said, as Cleo, having swallowed the last morsel, snuffled at Nicky’s fingers for more.

  “Good pig,” Nicky said, curling her hands into fists. Cleo, disappointed, turned her attention back to the beads. Nicky patted the animal on the head again and escaped indoors.

  INSIDE THE POLICE STATION, Joe felt as though he was in the center of a wagon train being circled by marauding Indians. Like mushrooms after a rain, the number of media on the scene had exploded after word of the attack on a third victim—Livvy—got out. Through the squad room’s pair of grimy windows, he could see white tents being pitched on the lawn of the courthouse across the street. Blue beach umbrellas sheltered other teams of reporters from the sun. Trucks with satellite dishes roamed the streets. He’d already fielded one call from a local citizen that morning, who’d asked if accepting the payment the tabloids were offering for stories about the victims was legal. Just a few minutes before, a reporter from The National Enquirer had walked into the police station and started asking questions. The cop on duty at the desk, Laura Cramer, a rookie, had even given him some answers in sheer surprise before recovering her wits and escorting him outside.

  “I don’t believe this,” Vince moaned. He was on the other end of the phone call that Joe was trying to end. “I got reporters on my front steps. They want a statement. What am I supposed to say, we got no fucking clue?”

  “Try ‘no comment,’ ” Joe advised. “It works for me.”

  When his cell phone had rung, he’d been seated at his desk, going over the lab results that had just come back. Now as he talked he was prowling through the station, looking out the windows, trying to decide the best route to take to escape to his car without being ambushed by a mob of reporters the moment he stepped out the door. The good news was that they had DNA from both the Karen Wise and Marsha Browning crime scenes, and it matched.
The bad news was that it didn’t match anything else in the system. If they got the guy, they were in business: The DNA profile could nail his ass to the wall. But until they got him, it was useless.

  And the further bad news was that there was no DNA from the Tara Mitchell case to compare it with. If there had ever been any evidence that they might have extracted DNA from, it had long since been lost.

  Vince was still bitching in his ear. “You’re not an elected official. The town council hired you. And just remember, the thing about being hired is you can be fired again pretty damn quick.”

  “You trying to tell me my job’s in jeopardy here, Vince?”

  Vince snorted. “It would be, except then I’d have to get another police chief in here to handle this thing. By the time he got up to speed, the tourist season would be damn well over.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Joe’s voice was dry.

  “Yeah, well—”

  The blip that signaled that he had another call trying to get through interrupted. A glance at the number told Joe that this was a call he needed to take.

  “I gotta go, Vince. I’ve got another call coming in. It’s important.” Joe hung up on Vince and connected with the new caller. It was Detective Charlie Bugliosi with the Charleston PD.

  “You’re in luck: There’s a bank across the street from the library, and they’ve got surveillance cameras on the ATMs twenty-four-seven.And guess what else it catches?”

  “You tell me.” Joe felt his pulse quicken with anticipation.

  “The library’s front entrance. There’s a back entrance, but not a whole lot of people use it. And the bank recycles the tapes once a week, but . . .”

  The meaning was clear: Livvy’s attacker might very well have been caught on tape as he had entered the library to send the e-mail.

  Once again, this proved that being lucky was sometimes much better than being good.

  “I’ll be there in an hour,” Joe said, and disconnected.

  ONCE AT THE HOSPITAL, where she found Livvy was much improved, Nicky realized to her shock that it was Saturday, May 28. The last Twenty-four Hours Investigates before the May sweeps ended was on Sunday night at eight. The rest of her team—Tina, Cassandra, Mario, and Bob—should already be en route, having learned from the previous traveling-to-Pawleys-Island fiasco not to press their luck as far as the airlines were concerned. So far, Nicky was about as unready to go on the air as she had ever been for any broadcast in her life. The taped segment for the regular show—which was really no more than a promo for the live program to follow—as yet included no mention of the attack on her sister. Her live show in which she was supposed to wrap up the investigation—which she had pretty much forgotten all about since the attack on Livvy—was scheduled to air at nine p.m., complete with, at Sid Levin’s special request, her mother the blocked psychic contacting the newest victims—okay, any she could get.

  In Livvy’s hospital room, Uncle Ham held the new baby while Uncle John clicked his digital camera at them from a few feet away. Livvy smiled beatifically at her infant. And Nicky had a mental newsflash: She had approximately thirty-six hours to pull together a live program that was supposed to be the climax of her show’s season.

  Could anybody say “nervous breakdown”?

  Livvy, thank God, was now awake and aware enough to talk to the police, to talk to Nicky and her mother, and to coo over her baby. She remembered nothing whatsoever of the attack. Her last memory of that evening was getting out of her car in the parking area. The one good thing about Livvy’s memory gap was that Nicky didn’t have to agonize over whether or not to use an interview with her sister in Sunday night’s program. There was, simply, nothing of value that Livvy could add.

  That was one ethical dilemma resolved.

  Her other ethical dilemma revolved around exactly how much of what she was uncovering to reveal on the air. What had happened to Livvy had changed her focus from reporting the case to solving it. She wanted to catch the bastard who had done his best to murder her sister, in the worst way. From her sources within the police department—not Joe, who remained maddeningly close-mouthed, but Dave and her round-robin of police escorts were regular chatterboxes—she knew that they had lots of leads and so far no breakthroughs. But she herself had received information on Tara Mitchell that she found very interesting. It was interesting enough, in fact, to prompt her to visit the hospital ladies’ room—which she was pretty much using as an impromptu office—to call Joe and pass it on.

  He was once again maddeningly close-mouthed about where he was and what he was doing. But she told him her news anyway.

  “Tara Mitchell’s father was murdered the year after she was. Shot twice at close range in his car, which was parked outside a nightclub in Myrtle Beach. His murder was never solved, either.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Joe sounded slightly distracted.

  “Don’t you see?” Nicky was in no mood for distracted. “It means that maybe we’re not looking for a deranged serial killer after all. Maybe there was a reason for Tara Mitchell’s murder; maybe it was the same reason that her father was murdered.”

  “Mmm,” Joe said.

  “Are you listening to me?” Nicky asked, outraged. “This is important.”

  “I heard you. You’re right, it is important. We’ll follow up on it as soon as we get the chance.”

  “I suppose you’ve got better leads?”

  Joe laughed. “Oh, no, you don’t. I’m not talking to you about this case. Keep up the good work, Nancy Drew. See you tonight.”

  “Nancy Drew?”

  Too late. He disconnected. Nicky shot the phone a blistering look and left the stall.

  When Leonora arrived to take over Livvy-sitting, Nicky reminded her about her upcoming appearance on the next day’s edition of Twenty-four Hours Investigates, which Leonora had, after a personal phone call from Sid Levin and the receipt of a sizable check, agreed to participate in. After listening to her mother moan about being blocked and not being able to connect and the stress of it all, especially under the circumstances, for fifteen minutes, Nicky got fed up and pointed out to her that if she didn’t want to do it, she shouldn’t have cashed the check.

  Which earned her a sharp reply from Leonora.

  “Guys, I almost died here,” Livvy snapped, opening her eyes and glaring at the two of them impartially. “Could you two please quit bickering over my hospital bed?”

  That sounded so much like Livvy-as-usual that Nicky and Leonora both stopped and looked at each other. Then they laughed and hugged Livvy, who protested that she was trying to sleep even as she hugged them back. By the time the family harmony-fest was over, Nicky had thought of a compromise. If Leonora would do a live walk-through of the Old Taylor Place in an effort to contact anyone who might choose to appear (Nicky planned to use her new information about Tara’s father in this bit), then earlier that day, they could film a segment in which Leonora would use Karen’s blazer, Marsha Browning’s watch, Lauren Schultz’s blouse, and Becky Iverson’s newly arrived sweater to channel the dearly departed. They would feature it as live, although it would really be live-on-tape, which meant that it had been filmed live earlier and edited for boo-boos, which was a common practice in the TV newsmagazine industry.

  After leaving the hospital, Nicky met Gordon at his hotel and spent the rest of the day in a mad rush. The short taped piece for the regular program had to be finalized, and mention of the attack on Livvy had to be added. Nicky chose to leave her sister’s fate hanging in the promo piece, meaning to conclude the live broadcast on the hopeful note of Livvy’s survival and the baby’s safe arrival. She and Gordon went over how Leonora’s live-on-tape channeling bit was supposed to work, and then filmed a live-on-tape tour of the various locations that would be mentioned in the broadcast.

  By the time all that was finished, it was getting on toward nine o’clock. A call from the rest of the team confirmed that they had arrived at their hotel, and instead of getting toget
her then, they agreed to meet at Twybee Cottage at two p.m. the following day for Leonora’s live-on-tape filming. Then they would go over what they hoped would happen at the live filming at the Old Taylor Place Sunday night. Nicky had the beginning segment—a shot of the place under the pines where Karen had died—and the ending bit—she would say “He’s still out there” in close-up—planned. After the opening, they would air the tour, then Leonora’s channeling session. The rest of the hour was left up to the vagaries of Leonora’s gift, the spirit world, and live TV.

  One of these days, Nicky told herself wearily as she waved good-bye to Gordon and drove back to Joe’s house, she might want to think about getting a less stressful job.

  Since the house was dark and empty when they got there, Officer Andy Cohen walked her inside, did a quick search of the premises, checked the lock on the back door, and planted himself in front of the TV. He had instructions, he said, not to leave the house until the Chief got there. He was nice but taciturn, a middle-aged guy with the narrow shoulders and big butt that came from long days spent sitting in a patrol car, and it was clear that he was tired. After a little desultory conversation, Nicky retreated down the hall to the bedrooms. It had been a long day, and she wanted to take a bath and get into something more comfortable (at the moment, she was torn between sweats and sexy lingerie) before Joe got home.

  She was just heading for the bathroom when her cell phone rang. A glance at the ID window told her that it was Lisa Moriarty, an old friend who was now a private detective in New Jersey.

  “I’ve got some information for you,” she said after Nicky said hello. “About that Franconi guy.”