Return To Sender

by Merline Lovelace

  “I don’t have any rug-rats at home, but I can imag—” Sheryl stopped abruptly, her eyes widening. “Oh, no! I do!”

  “If you’re referring to the obnoxious rodent you insisted on taking home with you,” Harry drawled, “I can’t think of a more perfect description.”

  She grabbed her purse, trying not to think of the damage the shih tzu might have done to her dining-room chairs and pale-mauve carpet during his long incarceration.

  “I have to swing by the post office to get my car, then go home to let Button out,” she said worriedly.

  “Good enough. We can grab some dinner on the way.”

  The thought of sharing another meal with Harry sent a tingle of anticipation down Sheryl’s spine... followed by an instant rush of guilt. Belatedly, she realized that she hadn’t even thought of Brian since early morning. The marshal’s forceful personality and fierce determination to bring Richard Johnson-Paul Gunderson to justice had swept her right into the stream of the investigation, to the exclusion of all else.

  “I’d better pass on dinner, too,” she said. “I’ll grab a sandwich at home.”

  And call Brian.

  The task force leader conceded the point with a small shrug. “Whatever works.”

  Just as well, Harry thought as he waited beside Sheryl for the elevator to the underground parking. This manhunt had consumed him for almost a year, yet today he’d had to fight to stay focused on the information his newest team member was providing. Harry knew damn well that Sheryl didn’t have any idea of the way his muscles had clenched every time she’d leaned over to check his notes. Or the havoc she’d caused to his concentration whenever she’d stretched out those long, tanned legs. After almost eight hours of breathing her scent and registering every nuance in her voice and body language, Harry figured he’d better put some distance between them. He needed to regain his sharp-edged sense of purpose, which was proving more difficult than he would have imagined around Sheryl.

  They turned into the Monzano station well after six. To the east, the jagged Sandia Mountains were beginning to take on the watermelon-pink hue that the Spaniards had named them for. To the west, the sun blazed a fiery gold above the five volcanoes that rose from the lava fields like stubby sentinels.

  The station’s front parking lot had long since emptied, and a high, sliding gate blocked the entrance to the fenced-in rear lot. Rows of white Jeeps with the postal service’s distinctive red-and-blue markings filled the back parking area. Sheryl spied her ice-blue Camry at the far end of the lot.

  “You can let me out here,” she told Harry. “I have a key card to activate the gate. I’ll see you back at the courthouse in an hour or so.”

  “I’ll wait here until you drive out.”

  She didn’t argue. Although the station was located in a quiet, residential neighborhood, it took in large amounts of cash every day. They’d never had a robbery at the Manzano station, but postal bulletins regularly warned employees to stay alert when coming in early or leaving late. After keying the gate, Sheryl waited while the metal wheels rattled and bumped across the concrete. Her footsteps made little sucking noises as she crossed asphalt still soft from the scorching afternoon sun.

  She was almost to her car when she heard a clink behind her. It sounded as though someone or something had bumped into a parked Jeep. Sheryl glanced over her shoulder. Nothing moved except the elongated shadow that floated at an angle behind her. Frowning, she dug in her purse for her keys and wound through the last row of vehicles at a brisk pace. Relief rippled through her as she approached her trusty little Camry. When she got her first full look at the car, relief melted into instant dismay. The vehicle sat low to the ground. Too low. Keys in hand, Sheryl stood staring at its board-flat tires.

  Slowly, she moved closer and bent to examine the front tire. It hadn’t just gone flat, she saw with a sudden, hollow sensation. It had been slashed. She was still poking at the gaping wounds in the rubber with her finger when another sound cut through the stillness like a knife.

  Her heart leaping into her throat, Sheryl spun around. The slanting rays of the sun hit her full in the face...and blurred the dark silhouette of the figure looming over her.

  Chapter 5

  “What the hell...?”

  Sheryl recognized Harry’s broad-shouldered form at almost the same moment his voice penetrated her sudden, paralyzing fear.

  Without stopping to think, without taking a breath, she flowed toward him. She didn’t expect him to curl an arm around her and draw her hard against his body, but she certainly didn’t protest when he did. She closed her eyes, taking shameless comfort in his presence. It was a moment before she managed to murmur a shaky explanation.

  “Someone slashed my tires.”

  “So I see,” he rasped, his voice low and tight above her head. “I got antsy about letting you walk back here alone. Looks like I had reason to.”

  His muscles twisting like steel under her cheek, he turned to survey the parking lot and the wire fence surrounding it.

  “Not a security camera in sight,” he muttered in disgust.

  Slowly, Sheryl disengaged from his hold. She was still shaken enough to miss the security of his arms, but not so much that she didn’t realize the feel of his body pressed against hers wasn’t helping her regain her equilibrium. Swallowing, she tried to steady her nerves while he completed a scowling survey of the area.

  The vista on the other side of the fence didn’t afford him any more satisfaction than the lack of outside cameras in the parking lot. A tumbleweed-strewn field cut by a jagged arroyo separated the station from the residential area. The landscape shimmered with a silvery beauty that only someone used to New Mexico’s serene, natural emptiness could appreciate. At this moment, all Sheryl could think of was how easily someone could have crossed the emptiness and scaled the wire link fence.

  Echoing her thoughts, Harry scanned the residences in the distance and shook his head. “Those houses are too far away for anyone to spot a fence climber. The post office should have better security.”

  “That’s assuming whoever cut my tires climbed the fence. He could’ve just walked into the lot. With all the carriers coming and going, we don’t keep the gates locked during the day.”

  “I know.”

  Belatedly, she remembered that Harry had driven in and out of those open gates with her several times. She wasn’t thinking clearly, she realized.

  He went down on one knee to examine the tires. “We’re also assuming that an outsider caused this damage.”

  A new series of shocks eddied through Sheryl. “You can’t think anyone at the post office would cut my tires like that.”

  He rose, dusting his hands. “Why not?”

  “They’re my friends as well as my co-workers!”

  “All of them?”

  “Well...”

  She could name one carrier whose coarse, barroom style of humor had resulted in a couple of private and very heated discussions about what was considered acceptable language in the workplace. Then there was that temporary Christmas clerk who’d pestered her for dates long after she and Brian started seeing each other. Neither of those men had ever shown any animosity toward her, however. Certainly not the kind of animosity that would lead to something like this.

  “Yes,” she finished. “All of them.”

  Harry lifted a skeptical brow but didn’t argue. “Well, I suspect you can’t say the same about all of your customers.”

  “No.” She shuddered, thinking of the thin, hostile doper who’d confronted her across the counter this morning. “I can’t.”

  “That’s why I followed you into the parking lot. I got to thinking about the crackhead who’d threatened you.” He hesitated, then continued slowly. “I also got to thinking about the fact that right now you’re my only link to Inga Gunderson’s nephew.”

  Sheryl stared up at him in confusion. “What could that have to do with my slashed tires?”

  “Maybe nothing,”
he answered, his face tight. “Maybe everything.”

  Before she could make any sense of that, he pulled out his phone. “Let’s get the police out here to check the area before I call Ev.”

  Her mind whirling, Sheryl listened while he contacted the Albuquerque police and asked them to send a patrol car to the Monzano station right away. A moment later, he made a short, succinct call to his partner.

  “Find out if the Gunderson woman contacted anyone other than her lawyer, or if she sent out any messages, written or otherwise. I want every second of her time accounted for since we brought her in yesterday afternoon.”

  Yesterday afternoon? Sheryl shook her head in disbelief. Was it only yesterday afternoon that she’d driven to Inga Gunderson’s house, worried about the woman’s well-being? Just a little more than twenty-four hours since she’d practically fallen into Harry MacMillan’s arms? It seemed longer. A whole lot longer!

  No wonder, considering all that had happened in those hours. She’d stood Brian up not once but twice. She’d gained a thoroughly obnoxious houseguest. She’d transitioned from postal clerk to task force augmentee without so much as five minutes’ notice. And she’d just lost four tires that she’d planned to squeeze another thousand miles out of, despite the fact that the tread had pretty well disappeared. She was wondering if her insurance would cover the cost of replacements when she caught the tail end of Harry’s conversation.

  “Finish up at Miss Hancock’s apartment. I’ll call you when I get through.” He snapped the phone shut.

  “Finish up what at my apartment?”

  “I’m going to follow you home after we get done here. I want to check your locks.”

  “Check my locks? Why?”

  “Just in case the person who did this also knows where you live.”

  “Oh.”

  Harry’s eyes narrowed at the sudden catch in her voice. Sliding the phone into his pocket, he nodded toward the loading dock.

  “Let’s wait over there, out of the heat.”

  Sheryl trailed beside him, but she didn’t need the shade offered by the overhanging roof to cut the effects of the sun. The idea that the person responsible for the damage to her car might also know her home address had cooled her considerably. Harry’s carefully neutral expression only added to that chill.

  “I’m not trying to scare you,” he said evenly, “but this wasn’t a random act. The perpetrator didn’t vandalize any of the other vehicles. Only yours.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “He could have done it out of spite.” He slanted her a careful look. “Or he might have been trying to disable your car so you couldn’t drive off when you came back to the post office...although there are certainly less obvious ways of doing that.”

  “For someone who isn’t trying to scare me, you’re doing a dam good job of it!”

  “Sorry.”

  Blowing out a long breath, he tried to recover the ground he’d just lost.

  “Look, all cops are suspicious by nature, and most of us are downright paranoid. I’m reaching here, really reaching, to even imagine a connection between this incident and the fact that Inga Gunderson knows you’re providing us information about her postcards.”

  “I hope so!”

  The near panic in her voice brought his brows down in a quick frown. Cursing under his breath, he backpedaled even more.

  “I’ll wait to see if the police can lift any prints from the car before I speculate any further. In the meantime, try to think of anyone who might hold a grudge against you or want to get even over something.”

  “Other than the creep this morning, I can’t think of anyone. I lead a pretty quiet life aside from my work.”

  “That doesn’t say a lot for your fiancé,” MacMillan offered as an aside. “Correction, sort-of fiancé.”

  A tinge of heat took some of the chill from Sheryl’s cheeks. “Brian and I are very comfortable together.”

  His brow went up. “That says even less.”

  “Yes, well, not everyone wants to go chasing all over the world after bad guys, Marshal. Some of us prefer a more settled kind of life, not to mention unslashed tires.”

  “We’ll get the tires fixed and put a—”

  He broke off, his head lifting at the sound of a siren in the distance. It drew closer, the wail undulating through the evening stillness. Sheryl gave a little breath of relief.

  “They got here fast.”

  Harry pushed away from the dock. “That’s one of the benefits of having a representative from the Albuquerque Police Department on the task force. Come on, let’s go direct them to the crime scene.”

  Hearing her trusty little Camry described as a “crime scene” didn’t exactly soothe the victim’s ragged nerves. She trailed after MacMillan, sincerely wishing Mrs. Inga Gunderson had never brought her melt-in-your-mouth cookies and yappy little dog into the Monzano Street station.

  The reminder that the yappy little dog had no doubt spent the day demolishing Sheryl’s apartment didn’t particularly help matters, either.

  By the time the police finished their investigation of the scene and a twenty-four-hour roadside service had replaced the Camry’s tires, the spectacular light show that constituted a New Mexico sunset had begun. The entire western horizon blazed with color. Streaks of pink and turquoise layered into vibrant reds and velvet purples. The sun hovered like a shimmering gold fireball just above the Rio Grande. As Sheryl drove up the sloping rise toward her east-side apartment with Harry following close behind, the city lights twinkled like earthbound stars in her rearview mirror.

  The serenity and beauty of the descending night helped loosen the tight knot of tension at the back of her neck. The police hadn’t found anything that would identify the slasher. No prints, no footprints, no personal item conveniently dropped at the scene as so often occurred in movies and detective novels. The police had promised to canvas the houses that backed onto the fields around the station, but didn’t hold out any more hope than Harry had that someone might have witnessed the vandalism. Tomorrow, they would interview Sheryl’s co-workers. Rumors would speed like runaway roadrunners around the post office with this incident coming on top of her sudden detail. Elise must be wondering what in the world her friend had gotten herself into.

  She’d call her tonight, Sheryl decided. And Brian. Despite the marshal’s orders, she had to tell them something. They were her best friends.

  When she caught her train of thought, Sheryl’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. When had she started thinking of Brian as a friend, not a lover, for goodness’ sake? And why did Harry’s little editorial comments about their relationship raise her hackles?

  Frowning, she waited for the easy slide of comfort that always accompanied any reminder of Brian and their future together. It came, but it brought along with it another traitorous thought. Was comfort really what she wanted in a marriage?

  Oh, great! As if escaped fugitives, smuggled uranium and slashed tires weren’t enough, Sheryl had to pick now of all times to question a relationship that she’d happily taken for granted until this minute.

  The events of the past two days had rattled her, she decided. Both her home and her work schedule had been thrown off-kilter, as had the comfortable routine she and Brian had fallen into. As soon as she finished this detail and Harry MacMillan went chasing after his fugitive, her life would return to its normal, regular pace.

  Sheryl pulled into her assigned parking slot, wondering why in the world the prospect didn’t cheer her as much as it should have. A car door slammed in the area reserved for visitor parking, then Harry appeared beside the Camry. As he had before, he opened Sheryl’s door and reached down a hand to help her out.

  Oddly reluctant, she put her hand in his. The small electrical jolt that raced from her palm to her wrist to her elbow did not help resolve the confusion that welled in her mind. With a distinct lack of graciousness for the small courtesy, Sheryl yanked her hand free and led the way through the t
wo-story adobe buildings.

  While she fumbled through the keys for the one to her front door, Harry swept an appreciative eye around the tiled courtyard shared by the eight apartments in her cluster. Soft light from strategically placed luminaria bathed the little bubbling fountain and wooden benches carved with New Mexico’s zia symbol. Clay pots spilled a profusion of flowers that hadn’t yet folded their petals for the night. Their fragrance hung on the descending dusk like a gauzy cloud.

  “This is nice,” he commented. “Very nice. A place like this might tempt even me into coming home once in a while.”

  Once in a while.

  The phrase echoed in Sheryl’s head as she shoved the key into the lock. If she’d needed anything more to banish the doubts that had plagued her a few moments ago, that would have done it. She had no use for men who returned home every few weeks or months and stayed only long enough to get their laundry done.

  “It’s comfortable,” she replied with deliberate casualness. “And I like the view. From the back patio, you can see—Oh, no!”

  She halted in the entryway, aghast. Dirty laundry trailed in a colorful array from the foyer to the living room. Bras, panties, socks, tank tops and uniform shirts decorated the tiles, along with what looked like every shoe she owned.

  “Button?” Harry inquired from behind her.

  “No,” Sheryl said in a huff. Slamming the door, she tossed her purse and her keys on the kitchen counter and bent to scoop up an armful of underwear. “This is the latest decorating scheme for working women who have to dress on the run.”

  “It works for me.”

  At his amused comment, she shot a glance over her shoulder. Her face heated when she spied the filmy, chocolate-and-ecru lace bra dangling from his hand. She’d splurged on the bra and matching panties just last week. As any woman who’d ever had to wear a uniform to work could attest, a touch of sinfully decadent silk under the standard, company-issued outer items did wonders for one’s inner femininity.