by Diane Bator
She opened the front door of her house and froze. "What happened to you?"
Mick sat on the top step wearing the same clothes he had on the day before. His hair rumpled, he handed her a coffee and averted his eyes. "You."
"I see." She took the cup, comforted by the notion he needed her too much to bother adding any of Xavier's poison, and sat next to him. "You still think it's a bad idea for me to look for Walter and Erik's killer."
"I think it's a bad idea for you to team up with Thayer, for one."
Gilda hesitated. "And for two?"
"I was serious," Mick said. "I think I love you."
"You think you do?" Her heart seemed to hover in her chest, waiting breathlessly for a punch line. "Have you been drinking again?"
"No. I sobered up and poured the rest of the scotch down the toilet."
When the lid on Gilda's cup popped off and coffee splashed her hand, she relaxed her grip and refastened the lid. "This can't happen. You're with Chloe."
"We broke up," he said. "Chloe placed a large bet with Gary on my behalf, lost a ridiculous amount of money, then locked me out of my condo. She also posed as my wife and changed my phone number."
"How could she do that?" Gilda resealed the cup lid. "Isn't that theft or something?"
Mick smirked. "Only until I cancel the phone and sell the condo."
She raised her eyebrows. "Ooh, devious. I'm impressed."
"Forget about her." His face softened as he took her hand. "Can we get back to the problem at hand? I told you I love you, remember?"
Her heart fluttered. How could she forget? She remembered from head to toe. "You're on the rebound. It was just hormones and the scotch talking."
"Maybe, except it was morning, and I was sober." He entwined his fingers with hers and inched closer. "You're the one person who's always there to watch my back when I make a mistake then have to pick up the pieces and start over. Maybe it's time to move on."
"What is it you want?"
"To be with you."
Gilda blew out a breath. "What if it doesn't work out? What if we figure out we really can't stand each other, except on a professional level? You know I wouldn't be able to work for you, then."
"I know." He picked a rose Thayer hadn't destroyed off the bush.
"Then you'd be off to your next mistake before I reached for a tissue and the help wanted ads." She wiggled away from him.
Mick raised his eyebrows. "You don't think I'd be upset too?"
"Maybe for a minute."
"Show's what you know." He nudged her right to the edge of the step. "I'd give up women completely and become a monk."
"That I can't picture."
"To be honest, me neither." Mick tucked the rose into her hair then dropped his head onto her shoulder. "You really are the only person in my life I can count on lately, Sherlock."
"Even if you're at the top of my suspect list?"
"Especially if I am," he said. "That means you have no illusions about me, which is a pretty good place to start, considering everything."
She sipped her coffee—no bitter almond taste—with no idea what to say.
"I know. It's a lot to think about." He sat up and gave her hand a squeeze. "I just wanted to make sure you knew I was serious. I'm going to take a shower and do some paperwork. If you want to talk, you know where to find me."
Gilda frowned. "You don't have a place to live. Where are you going to shower?"
"At the school. My clothes are in my car. At least, it's still my car until Chloe can get her hands on the keys again." He stood and rocked his head from side to side like he had a stiff neck. "Do you get nervous when you go to the school now? If I were you, I'd be a basket case."
"That's why I haven't been there since Erik died. And I quit. I'll come in later to pick up my personal things."
"Your quitting isn't because of me, is it?" he asked.
"Not until now."
"Fair enough." Mick bowed his head. "Rather than quitting, why don't you take a couple days off? I'll deal with things at the school. You deserve at least that much."
She muttered beneath her breath. "I deserve a lot more than that."
"Yes, you do," he said. "Don't worry, babe. I'll make sure you get exactly what you deserve."
Babe? Her stomach turned a somersault with a double twist. What did he mean, she'd get what she deserved? While she worked in the yard later, elbow deep in a blue hydrangea, a thought occurred to her. She needed to talk to Mick. One sentence continued to coil around her brain while she washed her hands, changed her shoes, then ran to the karate school. The front door was unlocked this time, and voices echoed through the front lobby.
"I do not think you understand how serious this situation is." Yoshida was in Mick's office with the door open. "Someone stole over a thousand dollars of merchandise. That could ruin my school."
Gilda's scalp tingled. Missing merchandise? Why had no one said anything to her? She hid behind her desk to listen.
"Yeah, I know. I get it. It's my business too." Mick's anger was palpable. "Two men are dead, and we're missing merchandise. You were the one who said not to go to the police about the thefts, so I've been looking into it. What else do you expect me to do?"
"Get rid of that woman," Yoshida said. "She had to help steal everything. There is no way one man did this alone."
"I have no proof anyone stole anything. Besides, why would she help rob the place into bankruptcy? What would she have to gain?" Mick asked.
Yoshida snorted and his voice raised a full octave. "A job at his school. She is the only one here all the time who had access, and I want her gone."
"She's not the only one who had access to the missing merchandise. Walter had a key. You and I have keys. Hell, all the black belts have keys." Mick closed his office door like he knew she was there.
Gilda slid into her chair, hands shaking. If only she'd stopped to grab a coffee, she would have missed hearing how much Yoshida doubted her. Hated her. No wonder he gave her those odd looks every time he saw her. No wonder he attacked her. Mick stood by her. There was no way he would let her go without a fight. Not unless he was dead. Of course, the odds of that had risen significantly in the past week. There were still two kanji left.
From Mick's office came the reverberation of muffled, raised voices. She leaned forward and strained to at least get the gist of what they were saying. No such luck.
Once the office door opened, Yoshida stomped around the corner and stopped short. His dark eyes widened. "Miss Wright." Curt, but he remembered her name. Did he have access to a hit man?
She bowed slightly, not taking her eyes off him. Her arms tensed, ready to block if he threw a punch like he had in class. Instead, he left the building, and she stared after him, not quite sure what to do.
"For the record…" Mick leaned on the desk to block her view of the door. "You didn't hear anything we said."
"Actually, I didn't hear much," she said. "I just got here."
He grimaced. "I thought you quit, and I told you to take a couple days off. Do I have to start telling you the opposite of what I want you to do?"
"You also told me where you'd be if I wanted to talk to you." Gilda studied the faint lines etched into his face. "You never told me merchandise was missing."
Mick seemed to have aged five years over the past week. "It didn't seem like something you needed to know until now. You've had enough on your shoulders lately."
"Is that why Yoshida is here?" she asked.
"He thinks you and Erik stole all the missing items to pawn so Erik could start a new school. Now that Erik is dead, he wants me to fire you and close down the school. I stopped listening after he started to sound like a teenage girl at a concert."
Gilda struggled to catch her breath. Yoshida despised her more than she thought. "If it matters, I never stole anything, and I would never do anything to jeopardize you or this school."
"I know that."
"What's missing?" she asked.
<
br /> "I have a copy of the list."
"A copy?" The hairs on her neck stood. "You've already done an inventory and have a list?"
Concern flickered across Mick's face. "Yoshida was the one who noticed we didn't have as many sparring gloves and gis as usual. He said he first thought it was because our stock was low for the summer."
"It is," she said. "I always keep minimal stock until the end of August, and then I do inventory and refill the shelves. As a matter of fact, Yoshida was the one who drilled the idea into my head for the past year."
"Really?" He flinched. "That's interesting. He also got you to keep a running inventory list on the computer, right? Can you print me a copy?"
"Of course." She paused. "Do you think Yoshida fudged the list?"
Mick shook his head. "I don't think anything. So far, I've gone on his word. Now that you're on my side, I want proof."
"I'll print two copies and do a physical recount," she said.
"Just print off a copy for me, and I'll worry about it while you grab coffee." He met her gaze. "Please. Make it a large. This could take a while."
She was reluctant to leave, since she wanted to know what was going on just as badly as he did. After printing off the list, she ran up the street for two coffees and pie, hoping to sweeten the deal and bribe him to let her stay.
When she returned, he set his coffee and pie on the counter then steered her toward the door. "Go home. You're already nosy enough, and I don't want you getting hurt or…"
"Killed" hung unspoken in the air between them.
She sat on the floor, blocking the doorway. "If you want me out, you'll have to pick me up and throw me out."
"You're a stubborn little thing, aren't you?" Mick looked at her, then at the coffee and container of pie. "Fine. You do a recount while I dig out Yoshida's copies."
Considering she'd done inventory in June and no stock had come in since, a recount would be easy. She already had a mental list of what was in stock. Armed with her coffee and a copy of the list, she walked into the back room. There were twenty belts where there should have been forty. Six gis sat in the drawer, all in different sizes. She'd counted twelve last month and had only sold two. All the T-shirts were accounted for, but five pairs of sparring gloves and ten mouth guards were gone. She hadn't sold any of them.
"Yoshida's right." She leaned in Mick's doorway and handed him her revised list. "We have a problem."
He swore and crumpled up a page on his desk. "What the hell's going on, Gilda? You've yelled at us enough times not to touch any stock without letting you know."
Organization was her biggest strength, or weakness, depending on how you looked at it. Mick and Erik knew she kept meticulous records. Yoshida might not have been as aware. She slumped onto the thin plastic chair, which was flimsy to ensure his private meetings were short and sweet. "Why would anyone steal from the school?"
"Erik wasn't the brightest bulb in the socket. Maybe somebody set him up."
"Someone like Yoshida?"
"You keep saying that. Do you really think he would steal from his own school? It would have to be someone who has no idea how good you are at tracking inventory."
Until lately. "All he has to do is walk in and take things. No one would think twice about stopping him."
"Do you know how long it took Yoshida to arrange my candles?" He waved to the wall behind her where a pyramid of five yellow meditation candles stood on a narrow shelf by her head. "Ten minutes. He used that ruler to space them exactly an inch and a half apart like it was its own meditation. When we opened, everything in this school had to be placed just so. Pictures had to be hung certain distances apart. Things needed to be clustered in fives. He'd lose his cool if they weren't. If they're moved when someone cleans, he notices."
"Maybe he's obsessive-compulsive." Gilda returned to her computer to figure out the significance of the number five to a Japanese martial artist. The Four Possessions she understood. The number five was a mystery.
"What did I say this time?" Mick followed her to her desk. "Was it about the stacks of five? Maybe he's OCD, like you said."
"That would explain a lot, wouldn't it? I thought it was just because of all his training," she said. "Is there something about the significance of fives in karate?"
Mick moved around her desk. "No idea. Are you looking it up?"
Before he crouched beside her, she'd pulled up a website and summarized. "OCD. A personality disorder. Control. Perfectionism at the expense of relationships. Preoccupied with details and rules. Stubborn, self-righteous, uncooperative. Unable to complete tasks due to their desire for perfection."
"That's Yoshida in a nutshell." Mick grimaced. "Do you think he's capable of setting someone up to go to jail just to take a few things that already belong to him?"
"Capable? Yes," she said. "But why bother? He could just walk in and take the things he wanted. He has a key, and he owns the place."
Mick moved around to the chair beside her. "As long as he told you first."
"Like I'd yell at him. He's scary."
"Yeah, you have your scary days when you yell at me." He coiled a strand of her hair around his finger. "Aren't I scary?"
Gilda bit her lower lip. Mick scared her on so many levels she didn't know where to start. "You know what I mean."
"Yeah. You like me."
"You're my boss. It helps." Her face grew so hot she probably could have pressed linen with her cheeks. "What are you going to do about Yoshida?"
"Ignore him." Mick leaned so close his cheek brushed hers. "I think that's my best option. He's too damn stubborn to compromise. I'll wait until he brings it up again."
"What if he doesn't?" Gilda asked.
"Then I'll assume he also has a split personality and run for the hills." He pulled up the calendar icon in the corner of the screen.
That sounded reasonable enough. For now. "Great, then you surf the net. I'm going home."
"I have a thought," he said. "There might be something to this whole five thing. Isn't Friday the fifth day of the week?"
A chill ran down Gilda's back. "It is if you consider Monday the beginning of the week, then yes. That means the murders happening on Fridays is no coincidence. But then why the Four Possessions?"
"No clue. If he is following the list of the Four Possessions, at least we have an idea when someone else might die."
"Told you I hated Fridays." She blew out a long, slow breath and stared at the next Friday on the calendar. "Does this mean we have new evidence for Fabio? Maybe we should call him and let him know about the missing merchandise."
"Not yet," Mick said. "Let's talk to Razi and Xavier first. Maybe one of them knows more than he's been saying until now. I'll call Fabio later."
"When do we do that?"
"We don't." He turned off the computer. "I'll call them and arrange a meeting. You're taking time off."
Gilda wanted to give him a hug and make all the scary thoughts disappear, but she had a feeling the fear wouldn't end anytime soon. Not until the killer was caught. "What do you want me to do in the meantime?"
"Keep your eyes and ears open, just in case," he said, with no smile, when he turned to face her. "And if you see Yoshida, run and hide."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Some instructor meetings Gilda never even found out about until later. This one, Mick not only invited her to but personally walked her down the street at eight that night. They wandered past the karate school and Ponderer's Point toward the far end of town where magnificent brick homes overlooked the lake.
"So, what exactly is going on?" She padded beside him in her rattan flip-flops, a beach towel draped around her neck.
"Black belt meeting." Brusque and vague, just as when he called after he'd sent her home from the school. He'd talked to Fabio and Thayer about the missing merchandise but hadn't said what they planned to do yet.
"Wearing bathing suits? Besides, I'm not even a black belt."
"So call it a staff meet
ing."
She stopped, sweaty and tired of matching his brisk pace. "Hey, you called me, pal, so stop being snippy. Are we late, or can we slow down before I lose my flip-flops?"
"Sorry," he said. "I'm a bit distracted."
"I'll bet you are. Meetings with Thayer always disorient me too, but that doesn't make me walk any faster." She caught up to him, and they resumed their walk up Main Street. "Do you mind telling me where we're going for this so-called staff meeting?"
"Razi's. We need to sort out a few things." He lowered his voice. "Like who I can trust, and what we should do next."
"You still don't trust me, do you?"
"Honey, you're the only one I know I can trust. That's why you're coming with me."
"So I'm kind of like your sidekick?" She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.
Mick shrugged. "If that makes you happy."
"I can live with it."
Razi's plain white bungalow with dark-green shutters stood at the edge of the cliff along the shoreline. Rather than approach the front door, Mick led her to a side gate through a jungle of lush rhododendrons and ferns. They emerged in a backyard lined with flagstones that surrounded a stone barbecue and hot tub. Flat stones dotted a line to the far end of the yard.
"Whoa. This place is amazing." Gilda took a step back. Colored solar lights came on around the yard and twinkled like delicate fairies. She never knew Razi was such a devoted gardener or entertainer. The guys probably had meetings or parties here she'd never heard about. How had she missed out on that?
Razi bowed before them. "Welcome to my humble abode. I am glad you could join us."
Xavier stood next to a lounge chair, holding a beer bottle. A towel hung around his neck. "What's she doing here? I thought this was a black belt meeting."
Gilda's jaw dropped. "What are you doing here? You were supposed to turn yourself in to the police?"
"I took him to the hospital for his evaluation," Mick said, "Under the circumstances, it seemed a good idea you both be here, and Fabio gave me the okay."
"Why's she here? No one's hunting nosy receptionists." Xavier scoffed.
"No one but you." Gilda stood her ground. Was there something she'd missed since his last visit to her house?