The Marrying Kind

by Beverly Bird

  She wasn’t going to mention it, he realized. He wondered if it was class or fear that kept her reticent now. Impersonal, he thought. Yeah, right.

  They reached her brownstone. “See you in the morning,” he said shortly. “Thanks for helping me out.”

  He sounded so stiff, so formal. Everything had changed. Tessa felt like crying.

  She held herself together until she got inside. She wandered vacantly into the living room, then the bones went out of her legs and she collapsed on the sofa, trembling.

  She wondered what they were supposed to do now, and she wasn’t thinking about the case at all.

  Chapter 9

  Gunner didn’t wake her with a phone call the next morning.

  Of course he wouldn’t call, Tessa thought, waking groggily to the thin, strident sound of the bedside alarm. She wasn’t willing to consider that it was the first semiconscious thought she had—measuring the silent telephone against the fact that it was Monday. It was a regular workday, and she’d see him at the office in less than an hour. So why should he call?

  She sat up, and that was when she had her second semiconscious thought. She realized that she hadn’t dreamed last night.

  She’d expected to. Last night of all nights. And not entirely because of what had happened with Gunner. Today was December 31.

  For the first time in a long time, she didn’t particularly want to get out of bed. The thrill of having her job back didn’t help today. It had been a year ago tonight that Matt had gone down, and she knew it was going to be a long day, a bad day—and that wasn’t even considering how she would feel tonight.

  She finally forced herself to get up. She showered frenetically, as though trying to wash the sin of their crime off her skin and the memories of the bathtub out of her mind. The image made her grimace, then laugh a little: She was in a better mood until she found herself taking inordinate care with her appearance, looking long and hard to find just the right thing to wear.

  Something that would look professional, she thought. Something neat, impersonal, not provocative. As though it had been something about her personally that had brought on his reaction in the tub last night.

  It could have been any woman in there with him, she reminded herself harshly. Still, she didn’t want to do anything that might, just might, turn Gunner’s reputedly hungry sights directly on her. Of course, she didn’t.

  She chose navy tights and flats, plaid, wool walking shorts, and a cable-knit sweater over a neat, white blouse. Gold studs in her ears instead of diamonds. Just a little blush, and even less perfume. Perfect.

  She walked to work, her steps growing slower the closer she got to the Administration building.

  Gunner was already at their shared desk. This time he was actually sitting behind it rather than on it. She wasn’t prepared for the way the sight of him hit her. He looked the same as he did every other day, a little bit rough, straight out of the shower, the ends of his hair still wet. He smelled the way he always did, that woodsy scent—only this time it hit her from all the way across the room. He’d run a hand through his hair once too often so that it was a little more disheveled than usual. He wore a blue chambray shirt, and jeans again. The sleeves of the shirt were rolled half up his forearms and the neck was unbuttoned.

  It could have been any woman, she told herself again.

  She cleared her throat and crossed to their desk. He looked up fast, briefly, his smoke-gray eyes unreadable, his face set in a mild frown.

  “’Morning,” he said politely.

  “Same to you.” She inched around him carefully to the coffee machine. “Want a cup?” She noticed that he didn’t have one on the desk yet.

  “Please.”

  The next voice she heard was Kennery’s, bellowing good morning.

  She looked quickly over her shoulder and saw their captain directly approaching their desk. Her heart thumped. She kept her back to them deliberately.

  “Christian Benami just called,” Kennery said. “Better yet, make that his attorney. I just had the honor of speaking with The Great Basil himself. Again. For the second time in two days. How about that?”

  “Yeah?” Gunner asked idly. “What’s he screaming about this time?”

  “He says somebody broke into Benami’s place last night.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Damnedest thing,” Kennery added. “He said nothing was stolen.”

  “Maybe he’s wrong then. Maybe nobody broke in after all.”

  “Well, that’s what Benami decided at the time. He had a fund-raiser to go to last night, that thing for the mayor. But he forgot to take some prescription medication. So he came home to get it, and he found that his alarm system was disengaged.”

  Tessa’s heart thundered. Of course, Benami would have noticed that.

  “He probably forgot to turn it on,” Gunner said helpfully.

  “Well, he thought that, too, at first. That in his profound grief, he’d just overlooked it.”

  Gunner grunted. “Must be some grief. I guess it got better after he went to the party.”

  “Hmm. Anyway, he had a look-see around during the brief time he was home. Nothing was disturbed. He checked some cash he had in the house. It was there. None of the heirloom silver was missing. So he went back to the party, figuring he’d just screwed up the alarm. Then he got to thinking about it overnight, and it seems he distinctly remembers setting it.”

  “Hell of a memory,” Gunner murmured. “What with his grief and all.”

  Kennery was noncommittal. Tessa didn’t dare look at them again.

  “Well, The Renowned Basil says to make damn sure it wasn’t any of my people who went in there. Basil says that goes above and beyond harassment.”

  “I’d say so,” Gunner agreed. “He’s sure nothing was taken?”

  “Mr. Benami will look again, but at this juncture, he says not. So what do you think, Detective?”

  Tessa jumped as she realized that Kennery was talking to her. She couldn’t lie worth a damn.

  She made herself extra busy with the coffee, stirring easily a ton of sugar into her own. “It’s unfortunate,” she replied. And, she thought, Christian either had not used that particular knife on Daphne, or he didn’t want to call attention to it. Either it was so incidental that he hadn’t noticed it missing, or he was laying low.

  “Well,” Kennery said, “I just thought you two ought to know about this development. It being your case and all. Of course, nobody left any prints. The officers from Benami’s district were over there this morning. Just in case something turns out to be missing, Benami wanted to file a report. But they didn’t find a single print, nothing.”

  “Smart crook,” Gunner said. “No prints, and he got past the alarm, too.”

  Tessa fought the urge to send him an incredulous look. He was really overdoing it.

  He finally changed the subject. “Listen, Cap, can we bring in a little extra manpower on this? How’s the budget this month?”

  “Bad. Broke. When isn’t it?”

  “When we’ve got a hundred and fifty people from that Heart Association Ball still left to interview,” Gunner answered. “It’ll take Tessa and I clear to Easter to wade through all of them on our own.”

  “I take it you’ve got something else to follow up on?”

  “You take it right.”

  They did? This time Tessa did look at him. It was the first she’d heard of it.

  “Give me the list,” Kennery said. “One fifty, you said? Keep twenty-five for yourselves.”

  The captain left. “Ask for the moon,” Gunner muttered when he was gone, “and at least you might end up with a few stars.”

  “All those smarts,” Tessa murmured, “and such eloquence, too. I’m impressed, Gunner.”

  She finally came back to their desk, putting their coffee down, sitting neatly on the edge. She was trying hard for the rapport they had begun to develop. Then Gunner finally looked at her, really looked at her, meeting her
eyes.

  Something chilly washed through her. His gaze was finally impersonal. So why wasn’t she relieved?

  For the first time she realized that they were alone. The unit office was abandoned. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock yet, and it was New Year’s Eve to boot.

  “About last night,” they said together.

  Tessa flushed and looked down into her cup. “Go ahead,” she whispered. “You first.”

  He didn’t answer.

  She finally looked up at him again. He was leaning back in the chair now, looking up at the light fixtures, his hands hooked behind his head.

  What the hell was he supposed to say? Gunner wondered angrily. That he was sorry? As if he’d had any sort of control over the matter at all! She had wriggled, damn it, and she had breathed, and if he’d gotten turned on then it had been as much her doing as his own.

  Say something, Tessa pleaded silently. Tell me it was me, something about me personally, that made you feel that way. She suddenly knew that if he said that, then she could deal with it. It would scare her, certainly, but she knew, too, that it would at least make her feel flattered, not just as if she were any port in a storm. For the first time it occurred to her to wonder why he hadn’t gone to the other end of the tub last night. Because moving there would have been too noisy? Because there hadn’t been time?

  Gunner said nothing. Tess shot off the desk. “Never mind,” she muttered. “We’ll forget it. Put it behind us, on the other side of those lines.”

  “Right,” he said tersely.

  She scrambled to change the subject. She didn’t want to consider how hurt she was. “What did you do with the...the stuff?”

  “What stuff?” He looked at her sharply.

  “From last night.”

  “Oh. It’s all with Angela. We’re covered.”

  “We are?”

  “Yeah.” He seemed retrieved to have business to talk about. “Turns out the first guys on the scene took all of it and gave it to her. She’s still filtering things over to Forensics as her people get through with it, so she’ll send the knife and the carpet shavings along. She’s had it from the get-go, but Ed Thackery had to make sure the knife didn’t match any wounds on Daphne’s body. As for the carpet shavings, they just got inadvertently placed with her as well.”

  “She must like you a lot, Gunner, to go out on a limb for you like that.” Did you ever get aroused in a bathtub with her?

  “I told you, we go back a long way.”

  “So what now? These people?” She picked up the remainder of the guest list. Her hands were tense, fumbling.

  “Eventually. After I dropped you off last night, I got to thinking that I’d like to talk to Gale on this.”

  That was what he had been thinking about? Tessa very nearly flinched. Then she finally, really heard what he’d said.

  “Gale?” Her heart lurched. “Gale Storm?” She’d pretty much avoided the department shrink for nine months now.

  “Yeah.” A bit of genuine emotion finally touched Gunner’s face. It was surprise. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “I... nothing.”

  “I’d just like to get a read on what we can expect from a psychopath like Benami. I need to get a handle on this dude. I’ve got carpet dirt and a knife, a guest list and that’s it. And the clock’s ticking.”

  I, she thought dismally. Everything was “I” this morning. The word “we” seemed to have dropped from his vocabulary. She was amazed at how much it bothered her. And it wasn’t purely a professional reaction. She felt...abandoned, bereft.

  “Fine,” she said shortly. “Let’s go find Gale.”

  She got off the desk, took two steps and stopped. For a moment, her head overruled the dubious goings-on in her heart.

  “Psychopath?” she repeated. “When did we decide that Benami was a psychopath?” That put a slightly different spin on things than assuming he’d just offed his wife for the money.

  Gunner stood as well. “Same reason I gave you on Friday. They apparently had a decent marriage. She was a looker. He had access to her money whether she was dead or alive. So why not just keep her alive?” That really had been nagging him from the start.

  “Maybe there’s someone else,” Tessa said suddenly. “Maybe he’s involved with someone else and he married Daphne for her money, planning to knock her off after a reasonable period of time. Maybe the whole time he’s been waiting to collect his inheritance and go back to his true love.”

  Gunner looked at her again for a moment, but his expression was still unreadable. “There’s a thought. We’ll have to check into that, too.” He started for the door.

  “One other thing,” he said when he reached it. He held it open for her and gave her a wide berth. “Only a psychopath would have left us alone in the bathtub last night.”

  Tessa almost stumbled. “What are you saying?”

  “He knew we were in there.”

  He was halfway down the hall already. She chased after him. “You can’t know that.”

  “I thought it last night. Now I know it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he noticed the alarm was disengaged. And he didn’t do diddly about it. He didn’t even reactive it. He just took some pills, messed with his cash and took off again.”

  Tessa thought about it, feeling a little squeamish. “Why?” she asked again. “Why would he do that?”

  Gunner stopped at the elevator and punched the button. “Because he’s a psychopath. Which brings us back to why I want to see Gale.” The elevator arrived and they stepped inside. They each went to an opposite side of the car. Carefully. Deliberately.

  “I had a case a few years back,” he explained. “That guy who was knocking off homosexual sailors down at the naval shipyard. Remember that?”

  She did. She’d heard through the grapevine that Gunner had had nothing but circumstantial evidence. So he’d taken to tailing him on his own time, finally catching him in the act.

  “You got that guy.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Sure did. He’s in a mental hospital. If he ever gets out, he goes straight to prison for life, no chance of parole. Anyway, what I remember most about him was that he was a raving lunatic. Really. It wasn’t just a trumped-up defense thing. He pulled some crazy stunts while I was investigating him. Benami reminds me of him in a way. Arrogant. Real egocentric. A sense of superiority, like he can do no wrong, can’t possibly be caught. He really believes that this garbage about harassment is going to hold sway long enough for him to wriggle off the hook. And because he’s so sure of himself, he’s taking chances on playing with us. He’s making a game of it. That’s all he was doing with us last night, Tess. I’d wager a hundred to one that he didn’t need any medication. He came home for something else, then he realized that we were in the tub. Hell, maybe he even heard us, I don’t know. You were bleating like a calf there for a few seconds.”

  Bleating? “I did not bleat!”

  “Whatever, my point is, we weren’t anywhere else, so we were probably in the bathtub, so he thought he’d hang out in the bathroom for a little while. And play with us.” They got out on the third floor.

  Tessa nodded. “Which is why he didn’t mention the knife being missing.”

  He shot her an appraising look. “Bingo. We know we’ve got it, he knows we’ve got it. By not mentioning it to Basil English and Kennery, it’s our little secret. A gauntlet thrown.”

  Tessa shuddered. They had reached Gale’s office. She was a little startled to realize that she’d gotten this far without being tripped up, ripped up, by memories.

  She actively disliked Dr. Storm and hadn’t set foot in this particular hallway in nine months. She knew it was irrational. She’d poured her heart out to the psychologist during those first few weeks after Matt had been killed, before she’d learned to be cautious about what she said. And Gale had used all that against her.

  Just as the thought was completed, the doctor opened the door to her inner office
.

  Gale smiled at Gunner first. The reflex was genuine and warm. The psychologist was a tall, raw-boned, horse-faced woman to Tessa’s uncharitable way of thinking, and she positively glowed when Gunner took her outstretched hand.

  Tessa wondered irritably how Gunner would have reacted in a bathtub with her.

  “Tessa,” Gale said, finally looking over at her. “Good to see you again. I’d heard you were back.”

  “Finally,” Tessa agreed tightly.

  “Well, come on in. Sit down. Coffee?”

  They both accepted, and Gale poured from the machine behind her desk. Gunner didn’t waste any more time on niceties. Tessa noticed, almost in spite of herself, that he really wasn’t his usual charming self this morning.

  “Did you have a chance to look over that file I sent ahead while I was waiting for Tessa?” he asked.

  “I made it a point,” Gale answered.

  Oh, God, was she gushing? Please don’t let her gush, Tessa thought.

  “Ask away,” Gale said. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  She was gushing.

  “Motive,” Gunner said shortly, either unaware or immune.

  “Mmm. Well, the money has something to do with it, obviously. But I’m not sure that it’s central to what’s going on here. Possibly it’s just an added fringe benefit.”

  “How so?” Tessa asked.

  “The lack of a paper trail keeps jumping back at me. It’s entirely possible that this is a man who’s done this sort of thing before. And if it’s repetitive behavior, then I’m. going to take the chance and say he’s doing it for the thrill.”

  Tessa bit her lip hard. She wasn’t sure if her resentment for the woman was coloring her opinion, but she thought that this was hardly an earth-shattering revelation. She had been operating on pretty much the same hunch when she’d consulted Igor.

  “If this is the case,” Gale said, “then I want to say that he’ll probably exhibit some other obsessive tendencies. Such a personality might be inclined to have kept something that either belonged to Daphne, or more likely an object that was involved in her murder.”