by Dana Marton
She’d just never thought it was real, that she could ever feel a wave of desire as intense as this.
Bing slowly put his arms around her, drawing her closer, and suddenly her breasts were snuggled against his hard chest. Tingles ran across her skin. Then he nibbled on her lower lip gently, and her knees went weak. She lifted her hands to his waist, for support first, then they somehow slipped around him and moved up the rippling muscles of his back. His body felt like a work of art under her fingertips.
A long minute of bliss passed before he eased back to look at her.
She stared at him, dazed, then gathered herself.
“I’m not like this normally.” They barely knew each other, even if she’d felt an instant connection, almost from the moment she’d met him.
He raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Brazen.” If that was the right word.
He shook his head, that half smile coming out again. “Think again. You just locked lips with the police captain on your front stoop for everyone to see.”
She felt her face flush as he watched her, conflicting emotions crossing his face. The half smile disappeared as he stepped back.
“Don’t say it,” she blurted. “Don’t say it was a mistake, or apologize or—” She wanted to keep that one perfect moment as it was, even if they never had another.
His gaze darkened. “Apologizing couldn’t be further from what I’m thinking.”
Did the air thin suddenly? She felt like it did. He watched her with an intensity that made it impossible to look away from him. As if he was wrestling with an important decision.
Then he turned from her, strode to his pickup, and drove away.
Chapter Eight
That kiss had rattled him so much, Bing went into work on his day off, just to get his mind off Sophie. He stopped by the cemetery on the way.
He laid the flowers on the stone, stood back with his hands folded behind him, his throat tightening. “I’m not giving up on the case. I never will. I swear.”
They’d had problems, but he and Stacy had loved each other once. Whatever else was going on, they’d always been friends, at least. They’d been partners. And he missed her. Missed her, specifically, but also, in more general terms, he missed companionship at home. His house was too quiet in the evenings.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.” He hung his head. “I met someone and she’s…unexpected. She has this dog.” He paused. “You’d like the dog.” And then he had no idea what else to say.
“I’m sorry.” He always said that.
But no absolution came from the grave.
No blame either.
He carried that around himself. It’d be nice to lay it down, he thought, but he couldn’t.
So he said a silent prayer, then walked back to his car.
On his way back to the station, he stopped for some coffee at the country store. The drive-through would have been faster at one of the chains, but the country store had Mildred behind the counter. She was eighty-two, still worked most every day, and got a kick out of being the Captain’s favorite.
Bing ordered the daily special, which turned out to be hazelnut mocha with almond milk. He liked his coffee black, but Mildred was proud of her specials. Her friends came in and made a big deal about them, and it kept her happy.
“Best one yet,” he told her with a smile. “Given some more thought about running away with me?”
“Drive by the house Sunday morning.” She flashed her own come-hither grin. “Pull up to the back. One whistle and I’ll shimmy down the drainpipe.”
From anyone else her age, that would have been an impossibility, but if anyone could do it, Mildred would. She had that kind of spirit.
“Don’t you believe her.” Eddie Gannon, the town handyman, came up behind Bing. He was in his fifties, and lived alone above the diner, a man of many skills. He drove the big plow in the winter for the town and went around fixing whatever needed to be fixed for the rest of the year. He winked at Mildred. “She’s been leading me on like that for years.”
Mildred giggled.
“We can duke it out in the back,” Bing offered to Eddie. “I have to warn you. I’m not going to give her up easily.”
They joked on for another minute or two while he paid.
Mildred reminded him of Sophie, Bing thought as he drove away.
Then thinking of Sophie reminded him of the kiss.
He shouldn’t have kissed her, but damn if he would apologize for it. He didn’t want to give her false expectations, however. He wasn’t looking for a relationship. He needed to give Stacy closure, to catch her killer first. He’d tell Sophie that if she came around to design his front yard on Saturday.
If she got mad at him, so be it. He hoped she wouldn’t. Even if they couldn’t have more right now, he wanted her friendship. He liked hanging out at her house, with her and Peaches. She was easy company. A tough cookie, for sure. And she wasn’t hard to look at either. He bit back a grin. He suddenly liked curly red hair. And green eyes. And her curves….
Joe waved him over as soon as he walked into the station. “Hey, Captain. The full lab work on the Haynes case just came in.”
He strode up to Joe’s desk and scanned the screen. “Anything?”
“No tissue under her fingernails other than her own blood. No other hair or DNA on her clothes but her own. If the killer was her lover, it doesn’t look like they touched much before he attacked her.”
Bing rubbed the back of his neck as he considered. “She went there to meet the killer instead of going to the vet as she told her kids. She got out of the car. She let him get close enough so he could cut her neck with a single slice of his knife. She didn’t even try to defend herself.”
“Which all comes back to her most likely going to meet a love interest.”
“But who the hell is he?” Bing watched the screen as Joe scrolled down the report. Nothing popped. “How about the tire molds?” They’d taken casts from tire prints at the clearing.
“I’ve been comparing them with the samples we have in the database. Generic tires you can buy anywhere.”
Right. Because catching a break would have been too easy.
Bing walked into his office and pulled the files up on his own screen, checked them over more carefully, then paged through the crime scene photos again. Separate shots showed the contents of her purse, nothing unusual, wallet, some notepaper and pens, hand sanitizer, lipstick, a granola bar, checkbook, some bills she hadn’t yet mailed, her phone.
They’d secured a warrant for her phone records and had already received the log from the phone company. They had every call, incoming and outgoing, and every text. Nothing that looked like a clue, unfortunately.
Her calls were to friends and family and to work. Unfortunately, at work, all calls went through a central switchboard, so individuals couldn’t be identified from the logs they had.
Bing leaned back in his chair.
Most murders he’d seen, the motive was either love or money.
Kristine Haynes might have had a lover. She was also anxious to get enough money for a pricey private school for her girls. Maybe the two were entwined in some way. Maybe she was trying to get money from the boyfriend. Then he found out he was being used, and in a moment of rage, he killed her.
The theory had some logic to it, except the moment-of-rage thing. The victim had been lured to a remote location. That indicated premeditation and cold-blooded murder.
Joe stopped by, sticking his head in the door. “Mark Villon’s alibi doesn’t check out. He wasn’t in the meeting he said he was in, the morning of the murder. I mean, he was, for a few minutes, but then he had to leave. There are two hours when nobody in the office saw him.”
Bing brought up the man’s interview notes on his computer. The smooth guy who thought himself hot stuff, the one who showed the least emotion over a coworker being murdered. The man had denied an affair with Kristine. But if he’d lied about his alibi… �
��Bring him in.”
Joe turned with a nod, just as Leila buzzed Bing from the front desk. “There’s been a burglary at the Haynes house. While they were all at the funeral, somebody pushed in a window and went through the place.”
He was on his feet and running through his office. “We’re going out,” he called over to Joe as he headed for the front door. “Grab the fingerprint kit.”
* * *
The B&E crime scene inside the Haynes residence was a disaster. At least fifty people were milling through the sprawling suburban home, friends and family who’d shown up for the funeral then came back to the house afterward with the husband and the kids.
One of the twins led the other up to Bing and pushed her forward. They looked identical, blond pigtails, big blue eyes, and matching black dresses.
The one in the front held out a sheet of paper. “Thank you for saving Lucky. Daddy said we could give this to you if you came.”
The crayon drawing depicted a blue-uniformed officer who was holding what looked like a hairy seal, but in reality was probably supposed to be a hamster—if slightly out of proportion.
“You’re welcome.” Bing’s throat tightened a little as the girls ran back to their father.
He folded the picture carefully, slipped it into his pocket, then got to work. A lot of dark looks were shot his way when he ordered everyone out to the driveway and told them they would have to be fingerprinted so the police could exclude their prints from the mix when they tried to identify the intruder’s.
While Joe worked on that, Bing walked through the house. Most of the damage had been done upstairs, in the bedroom and the home office. Here drawers had been pulled and overturned. The more he saw, the more his instincts prickled. This was definitely not a robbery cut short. Whoever had come in had spent plenty of time here. They’d have to canvass the neighborhood, see if anyone saw anything, although, chances were, most of the neighbors had been at the funeral.
When he was finished, he sat down to interview Brian Haynes in the kitchen: what time they left, what time they came home, who noticed the busted window, and the rest.
“We were gone about four hours. Dakota, my younger daughter, went to the bathroom when we came home and came out to tell me that the window was broken.”
Bing tapped his pen on his notebook. “Anything missing?”
“The gun I was using for target practice in the woods.” He closed his eyes for a second. “I’m sorry. I kept it locked away in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom.”
But the average medicine cabinet could be opened with a butter knife.
Since Haynes appeared to be plenty miserable about it, Bing decided to spare the lecture for the moment. They’d get back to it later. He took down the specifics instead. “What else?”
“I haven’t had a chance…” Haynes looked around as they were sitting at the table. “Everything’s messier. I didn’t notice that when we came in. I was—” He shook his head.
Too grief-stricken to pay attention to a few pillows turned over on the couch, Bing thought as the man continued.
“If they took something, it’s nothing obvious. TV and the video games are still here. My laptop.” He nodded toward the sleek black unit on the counter.
“Maybe the burglar was disturbed. He could have just come in, found the gun, then heard cars pulling up outside and he ran.” Yet the upstairs had been tossed pretty thoroughly, so the perp had spent time up there. “Odd that he wouldn’t grab anything else but the gun, no other valuables that he could easily fence.”
Haynes’s vacant gaze didn’t change. And it occurred to Bing that the man might have taken a mild sedative for the funeral.
“Do you think,” the grieving husband asked, “that the break-in could be connected to…”
He didn’t finish, but Bing knew what he meant. His wife’s murder.
“This is not as uncommon as you think.” He drew up a shoulder, then let it drop back. “The obituary in the paper contains your name plus time and date for the service. Some criminals target that kind of thing. They can find the address from the name, and they know the exact time when nobody will be there.”
“Wouldn’t that be too much of a coincidence? I mean she was killed last week, and today someone comes into the house.” Haynes kept fisting his hands, then catching himself and relaxing them over his knees.
Bing wasn’t a big believer in coincidences either. “Suppose someone was looking for something specific. Do you have any idea what it could be?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Has your wife ever brought home work?”
“Not really. When she was at work, she worked like crazy. But when she was at home, she spent her time with the girls. The home office is mine because I work from home. She didn’t even have a desk.”
“All right.” Bing closed his notebook. “Why don’t you go outside and join the others? We’ll finish dusting for prints, take some photos, and then we’ll let everyone back in.”
The man’s phone rang in his pocket. He hesitated.
“You can take that.”
Haynes picked up the call, listened with his eyes closed, then thanked the caller. Someone was probably calling to express condolences.
Since Joe was still working with the fingerprint kit, Bing sent Haynes outside, grabbed the camera, and began taking pictures. The missing gun bothered him, but if the break-in was connected to the murder, then the intruder had been looking for something else, something that would tie the killer to the crime.
But what was it?
* * *
The three days since Bing had kissed her passed in a blur, work taking up every minute. Every time Sophie went by Bing’s house on her evening walks, the house drew her, that eerie sense of déjà vu grabbing hold of her.
“I hate it,” she told Peaches, an excellent listener. She was finally comfortable enough with him to take him along for her walks.
“Some people think memories are stored in other places and not just our brains. They think body parts can remember. Like whoever had the heart before me could have lived in a house like this and now I remember it.”
Peaches didn’t look convinced.
“Stupid, right?”
She thought about attending a support group meeting but talked herself out of it. New heart. New house. New life. She wanted to leave her problems behind, not delve into them.
What she did want to delve into was that kiss with Bing.
But he hadn’t called, hadn’t stopped by to check on her, and hadn’t been home when she’d walked by his house, the windows dark in the evenings. He was probably working.
No sign of anyone today either, she thought as she walked Peaches in the cool of the evening.
“That kiss totally rocked my world,” she admitted. “The sad thing is, it doesn’t look like it meant all that much to him.” She sighed. “I’m now officially that girl who’s waiting for the guy to call. It bites.”
They walked to the intersection and turned down her street. “I refuse to be pitiful about it,” she told Peaches. “There are plenty of other fish in the sea.”
All true, but the sad thing was she wanted Bing.
She walked home with Peaches, gave him fresh water, washed her hands then went back to work. Best was to keep busy. She brought up the web site she was building for Mark Villon. He was a manager at some big corporation, but started flipping houses as a side job to make money. Not his only side business. He also ran a cigar club that sent a box of exotic cigars to its members each month, each box from a different country.
He was good at making money, but not nice about it. He had everything redesigned ten times, always pushing for more than her initial quote covered, and never wanting to pay extra for it. On top of that, he was always trying to flirt with her on the phone, pushing her lately to have coffee with him.
Sophie brought up the right screen. She had maybe four hours of work left on the project. She was going to send the finished product to
him then, as a present to herself, never take another job from the man.
* * *
Neither the Haynes murder investigation nor the Haynes B&E investigation moved forward. Bing’s week ended up being utterly unproductive. By the time he had his next day off on Saturday, he was swimming in frustration.
Mark Villon had given another alibi, an outside client who couldn’t be reached at the moment. He’d simply mixed up his days the first time around, he claimed. Joe was checking out the new information. Maybe that, too, would prove to be a lie. Maybe Villon was playing for time.
His HR file had an interesting note in it, a complaint filed by a female coworker eighteen months ago. He’d wanted to take her out and had pushed too hard. He claimed he just wanted a date and anything else was a misunderstanding. He’d been moved to a different team, but didn’t receive a reprimand. The HR manager investigating the complaint, a single woman in her early thirties, had taken his side.
Any way Bing looked at it, Villon had potential as a suspect. But they had no actual proof that would tie him to the murder. So far.
Yet there was something in the air, that tension cops could feel just before a case broke. A storm neared. It couldn’t come soon enough, as far as he was concerned. Bing stood ready to face it.
He sat on his front stoop with his morning cup of coffee, waiting for Sophie to show up to help him with the landscaping, unsure how he should act when she arrived.
They’d kissed. That kind of thing always muddied the waters.
As hard as he’d been working his cases, she kept popping into his head over and over throughout the week. It’d been a very long time since a woman had occupied his thoughts like this. Part of him felt guilty about it, as if he was somehow unfaithful to Stacy’s memory. Yet even the guilt couldn’t keep him from looking forward to spending time with Sophie today.
Then she appeared at the end of the street, bright green folder in one hand, leash in the other, leading Peaches, and suddenly everything inside him relaxed.