The waiter arrived with their salads. Alice politely turned down his offer for extra cheese, then changed her mind when Charley accepted.
“My life’s challenged enough just getting through the day.” Alice addressed the words to the salad the moment the waiter left.
The woman brought new meaning to the term painfully shy, Charley thought. “Do you have any family living close by?” She saw Alice’s thin shoulders grow rigid beneath the pink satin material.
“I don’t have any family living at all,” she said quietly.
Charley felt as if she’d just trespassed on sacred ground with combat boots. “My father died when I was twenty, my mother shortly thereafter.” Alice stabbed at the lettuce that was eluding her. “I’m an only child.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Because she looked like someone who might find solace in spiritual comfort, Charley made another suggestions. “Maybe a pastor, then—”
Alice looked up sharply from her half-eaten salad. “I don’t believe in pastors.”
It was the first conviction Charley had ever heard in the woman’s voice.
“They’re just a bunch of false prophets, leading people astray for their own gratification.”
Charley wondered if Alice was referring to the recent scandal that had been in the newspapers. It had involved charges of abuse that were lodged against a former, once very respected, clergyman. The fall from grace was admittedly a long one. The splash into the mire sometimes sent mud flying on those who didn’t deserve it.
“They’re not all like that,” Charley told her. “There was this priest when I was younger—” She noted that Alice was looking at her with interest, as if the woman’s opinion was tied to whatever she would hear next. “He helped me through a very rocky time.”
“How?” Alice pressed.
He saved me from going off the deep end, Charley thought. But that was something she wasn’t willing to share with a woman who was a relative stranger to her. So she gave her a general overview.
“Talked to me, mostly. Told me I couldn’t control everything.” Father Scanlon had negated what her own father had said to her—that she was to blame for what had happened to Cris.
“Could he?”
The question had come out of nowhere. Focusing, Charley didn’t understand what Alice was asking her. “Excuse me?”
“Could he control everything? The priest. Did he think he could control everything himself?”
What an odd question, Charley thought. “No, he didn’t pretend to. Why would he?”
Alice’s fingers fluttered in the air, as if physically clearing away the question. The pink splotches on her cheeks testified that she’d suddenly realized that she was being intrusive and was embarrassed at her own behavior.
Her eyes seemed to be everywhere, like tiny brown marbles, uncertain where to land. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry—”
The word “pry” struck a chord. Alice was undoubtedly thinking that she and the priest had more than a meeting of the minds. The idea made her smile.
“There’s nothing to pry about, trust me. Father Scanlon was about sixty-five or so at the time and very kind, very patient.” She paused. Alice continued to look flustered. Charley decided to tell her a little more. “He was there for me when my sister was killed.”
It was a moment before understanding came into Alice’s eyes. “By the serial killer.” It wasn’t really a question.
“Right.”
She supposed it was common knowledge on the floor. Perhaps even further than that, although so far, the news media hadn’t gotten a whiff of it. Charley prayed that they never would. The last thing she wanted was people shoving microphones in her face, asking her nonsensical questions about her feelings. Questions she had trouble answering for herself, much less a stranger whose umbilical cord was tied to a news camera. The media would have a field day with the fact that the sister of the serial killer’s first victim was heading up the task force attempting to apprehend him.
“Are you any closer to catching him? The serial killer, I mean,” Alice asked suddenly.
Charley looked at her. As if she realized she’d asked something she shouldn’t, Alice’s hand fluttered to the collar of her blouse. The fabric rose up to practically her chin. The only skin Alice ever exposed, beyond her face, were her hands. Her skirts, long and shapeless, came down to her calves, meeting dark stockings. To the observant eye, Alice Sullivan was cocooning herself from the world at large. She made Charley think of someone’s maiden aunt, the kind who used to check under her bed each night to make sure no one was hiding there.
“I’m sorry,” Alice stammered. “It’s an ongoing investigation, I know. You can’t talk about it. It’s just that sometimes I get so nervous at night when I walk into my house.”
“Nervous?” Charley asked.
As if on cue, the waiter arrived with their main course. Alice pressed her lips together, waiting until they were alone again.
She leaned over the table. “About the serial killer. Nervous that he might be lurking somewhere about, waiting to pounce on me.” She cleared her throat. “I’m not pretty, like the others, I know, but I am a blonde and most of his victims were blondes….”
“Carry some Mace,” Charley suggested. She knew she should make some denial about Alice’s remark that she wasn’t pretty, but she addressed the more important issue first. “And if you’re really afraid, I could teach you some self-defense moves.”
Alice offered her another grateful smile. “Thank you, but I’m just not the athletic type.”
“No athletics,” Charley promised. “Just a simple matter of using the attacker’s own weight against him. It’s really pretty simple.”
“Thank you, but no.” And then something like a giggle escaped her lips as she leaned forward and confided, “Although I might be tempted to try if that new man offered to show me.” More color rose to her cheeks.
“New man?” Charley repeated. Her fork stopped in midair. “You mean Special Agent Brannigan?”
The woman needed to wet her feet, not dive into the deep end of the pool without her water wings on, Charley thought. If she had a guess, she’d say that Brannigan’s type was sleek and sexy, neither of which described the woman sitting opposite her.
Alice nodded, then quickly said, “Oh, I know I’m not his type.” She looked back down at her plate. “I’m not any man’s type.”
Part of the problem, Charley theorized, was the way Alice presented herself. She dressed as if she had stepped out of a movie filmed in the late fifties.
“If you feel that way,” she said casually, trying hard to find the right words so Alice’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt, “you might want to look into getting a makeover. New clothes, a new hairstyle, they’d do a lot to change how you see yourself.” She saw a strange look entering the woman’s eyes. Hurt? Quickly Charley continued, “And if you feel better about yourself, it’ll show and catch someone’s eye. Maybe not Brannigan’s,” she qualified. “He’s a little thick,” she added to spare Alice’s feelings, “but someone of quality.”
Alice put down her fork and looked at her for a long moment. “You’re a very nice person, Charlotte.”
No one called her Charlotte except her father. Not even her mother had called her that when she was well. “Charlotte” referred to someone she wasn’t. It was hard for Charley not to shift uncomfortably, but she managed.
“I try,” Charley answered.
Just then, the restaurant owner approached to make his usual inquiry about the food and quality of the service. Charley welcomed the respite.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“WHERE’S BRANNIGAN?”
The special agent hadn’t been at his desk when she’d returned from lunch with Alice. That had been over fifteen minutes ago, more than enough time for the man to have gone to the men’s room and come back. Unless he wasn’t coming back.
Charley looked from Sam to Bill to Jack, waiting for an answer she had a feeling she was
n’t going to like.
“Probably still at the campus,” Bill volunteered.
News to her, Charley thought. “What campus?”
“Brannigan said he was going to UCI to nose around, see what he could find out,” Bill said.
That didn’t make any sense. “UCI?” she repeated, wondering if the man had gotten the name wrong. But when he made no attempt to correct himself, she asked, “Why? Stacy Pembroke wasn’t a student.”
Jack all but faded into the background. Bill exchanged uneasy looks with Sam. Being the older one of the team, Sam took the bullet for him. “No, but your sister was.”
Her sister? What did Cris have to do with it? He wasn’t supposed to be reviewing Cris’s investigation. That was her domain.
Charley opened her mouth, then shut it. Losing her temper in front of the people she worked with was never a good idea. Besides, Sam, Bill and Jack weren’t responsible for the sudden flare of anger she felt. That honor belonged exclusively to Special Agent Pain-in-the-butt Brannigan.
Not wasting a single word on any of the three men, Charley marched off to the ladies’ room, the only place in the immediate vicinity that could offer any kind of privacy. She stormed in, generating enough of a warning for anyone who might be inside to run for cover. But there appeared to be no one in the bathroom. Still, she looked under each stall to double-check.
Satisfied that she was alone, Charley whipped out her cell phone and pressed the single number on the keypad that would connect her to her partner.
Nick’s deep voice came on after four rings. Her impatience was close to going over the edge, but she gave him the benefit of the doubt. Kind of.
“Brannigan.”
Her patience snapped like a sun-baked twig that had been tossed into a roaring forest fire. “What the hell are you doing?”
“My job,” he answered simply. Then, on the outside chance that he might have gotten her voice confused with someone else’s, he asked, “Charley?”
For a second, it stopped her in her tracks. He hadn’t addressed her by her first name before. Why that seemed to make this whole thing more personal, she didn’t know, but it did.
She distanced herself from the feeling. Distanced herself from everything except the idea of strangling her new partner and then mounting his head on the wall. Envisioning the end result gave her a momentary surge of pleasure.
“No, it’s the tooth fairy. What are you doing?” she repeated heatedly.
There was momentary static. She thought she was going to lose the connection, but then she heard him say, “Talking to people who might have known your sister. Did you know that one of the people she went to school with currently works as an adjunct professor in the drama department?”
After Cris’s murder, she had moved out of the room they’d shared and divorced herself from everyone at the school.
“No,” she told him coldly, “I lost touch with those people.”
“Apparently.” She had no idea what he meant by that. But before she could ask, he told her, “I’m standing in front of the Bren Center. I think maybe you should meet me here.”
She’d assumed that he would be returning to the office, not suggesting she join him. The man had nerve. “And why is that?”
“Because the report that was made on the investigation into your sister’s death never mentioned anyone questioning Lorenzo DeLuca. He’s still on the faculty.”
The name was vaguely familiar. And then she remembered. Lorenzo DeLuca was one of the professors in the drama department while they were attending the university. Cris had pointed him out to her once outside of the student center, saying she thought he was a hunk. The man had been poetically handsome in a brooding, Lord Byron kind of way. Cris had a weakness for that type.
“Why would they question DeLuca?” Charley asked.
“Because he was your sister’s married lover at the time of her death.”
What a difference a moment can make. One moment ago, she was trying to bank down annoyance. Now she felt as if she’d somehow managed to walk directly in front of a wrecking ball and had received a direct hit.
It took her a moment to find her tongue. “I’ll be right there.”
She hardly remembered shutting the phone and hurrying out of the ladies’ room.
IT HAD TO BE a mistake.
The phrase kept repeating in her brain like the refrain of an old song, the rest of whose lyrics had long since been forgotten.
It had to be a mistake.
Yes, Cris had been the flamboyant one. Yes, she’d dated a number of guys. God knows how many, because she’d long since lost count of her sister’s boyfriends. But each of them had been students. And more importantly, they’d all been single.
There was only one conclusion—the so-called witness Brannigan had dug up was either lying or repeating something that he’d heard thirdhand.
In either case, there was a mistake. Cris would have never gone out with a married man, much less had an affair with one. No matter how cute she thought he was. Cris just wasn’t like that. Neither of them were.
It took her several minutes to find a parking space in the three-tiered structure adjacent to the large entertainment center where Brannigan had told her to meet him. When she and Cris had attended the university, this structure had been the only lot that afforded students ample parking. All the other lots on the sprawling campus were usually full by the time the first class rolled around. Obviously, that was no longer the case. The lot was as crammed as the others.
Walking down from the third floor contributed to her already testy mood.
Nick was waiting for her by the parking attendant’s booth.
“It’s a mistake,” she told him tersely as she strode toward him.
“What is?”
“My sister never dated DeLuca. She wouldn’t have gone out with a married man,” she insisted.
Nick thought he saw a glimmer of hurt in his partner’s eyes. Or maybe that was just the sun.
“Apparently she did,” he told her simply. Nick beckoned for her to follow him into the building where he’d left the adjunct professor. “And it gives your sister something in common with our latest victim.”
“What? Sleeping with a man who’s committing adultery?” Charley snapped. Her voice echoed back to her. “Allegedly sleeping with a man who’s committing adultery,” she qualified. “My sister wouldn’t do that.”
Just inside the hall, Nick stopped and looked at her. “Hey, nobody’s judging anyone here. Things happen, even to good people with high morals.” Her expression told him that she wasn’t budging from her stand. “Most people don’t wake up one morning and say, ‘Wouldn’t having an affair with a married man be fun?’”
“Thank you, Dr. Phil, but you’re wrong. And whoever you talked to is wrong. Cris told me everything.” They had that kind of special bond that only sisters, only twins could have. She knew Cris inside and out and vice versa. “My sister wouldn’t have kept something like that from me.”
Nick looked at her for a long moment. Listening to the facts earlier, he’d come to a different conclusion. “I think she would have.”
Charley curled her fingers into her palms, feeling a very urgent desire to make a connection with the edge of his handsome cleft chin. “Oh you do, do you? Why?”
The answer was self-evident. “Just look at your reaction. Maybe she didn’t want to experience that firsthand. You admired her, didn’t you?”
Several students entered through the front, then circumvented them as they walked into the inner hallway. She hardly noticed them. Charley stared at Brannigan. “How did you—?”
“I read the report. The police detectives on the scene interviewed you,” he reminded her.
That was like another lifetime ago. She remembered the two detectives on the case. The one who’d talked to her had kind eyes. He’d been especially gentle with her mother. And put up with her father’s sharp tongue without losing his temper. His name had been Gilroy. Detect
ive John Gilroy. She’d been so disappointed in him when he failed to solve the case.
Charley sighed. “Yes, I admired her.”
“Maybe your sister didn’t want to risk losing that until she knew where this extramarital fling with the good professor was heading.”
What he said made sense, but Charley just couldn’t wrap her mind around the concept of her sister knowingly engaged in something that had the potential of breaking up someone’s home.
“She just wouldn’t…”
But even as she uttered the protest, Charley’s conviction slipped a little. In frustration, she told him why she was being so adamant.
“When we were kids, my father had one of those extramarital flings that you just bandied about so lightly. We saw what it did to our mother. It damn near killed her,” she told him before he could ask. “Cris wouldn’t knowingly be a party to something like that.”
She saw compassion enter Nick’s eyes.
“Theory and practice are two very different things. She might not have wanted to hurt anyone, but she couldn’t help what was happening. Sometimes people get involved without meaning to.”
The way he said it, Charley couldn’t help wondering if Brannigan was speaking from experience.
Nick held the inner door open for her. “Why don’t you talk to her friend and then make up your mind?”
Charley made no further protest, because she was no longer sure.
And because, right now, she hated Nick Brannigan for shaking up the foundations of her carefully reconstructed world.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I HATE HIM, Ben. I really hate the guy.”
Charley paced around her former partner’s small second-floor apartment, feeling restless and not a little caged. The size of the room had nothing to do with it. The feelings ricocheting through her were responsible for constructing her prison.
It angered her and added to her frustration that she was helpless to do anything about the circumstances.
Damn Brannigan anyway.
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