by Joan Hohl
“Was he abusive?”
Tina exhaled an audible sigh as she turned to face him. “If you’re asking if he ever hit me, the answer is no,” she said, meeting his crystal blue stare levelly.
Eric’s smile told her he had heard what she hadn’t said. “Verbal abuse, then,” he said flatly.
Tina managed to maintain his stare, and her silence, for a few seconds. Then she turned away, moving to the fridge to get out the milk. From the fridge, she went to the food cabinet to remove a package of oatmeal cookies.
“Tina?” Eric’s voice was soft on the surface, but held an inner thread steely with purpose.
“All right,” she snapped, whirling to face him. “Glen was often less than pleasant.”
“As in—” he arched that one tawny brow “—very recently, when he was here?”
The short hairs at Tina’s nape quivered at the iciness underlying his too-soft voice. She wasn’t deceived for an instant by his bland expression, either. Without knowing how she knew, Tina was certain that Eric Wolfe could prove to be very dangerous when he was riled.
“It’s unimportant, really,” she said, prudently deciding to do her best not to rile him. “He doesn’t stop by often, only when he comes to visit his friends.”
“They’re not your friends, too?”
“Not really.” Tina didn’t try to hide the impatience she was feeling; the subject, and his persistence, was starting to get to her. “They were Glen’s friends before we were married, not mine. Although we still exchange pleasantries when we see one another, I don’t socialize with them.” She managed a tight smile. “Any other questions?”
Eric’s return smile was easy, teasing. “Yeah. Where’s my coffee?”
“Coming up,” she said, the tightness smoothing from her lips. She flicked a hand at the table as she walked back to the coffeemaker. “Have a seat.”
“You baking a pie?” he asked, inclining his head to indicate the pan and ingredients cluttering the countertop.
“Yes.” Reaching into a cabinet, Tina withdrew two gold-rimmed cups and matching saucers.
“What kind?” Eric asked in an eager, hopeful voice.
“Lemon meringue.” Tina tossed a grin at him over her shoulder. “And I’ve got to finish putting it together,” she went on, filling the cups and carrying them to the table. “So, as soon as you’ve had your coffee, I’m throwing you out.”
“Can’t I help?”
Tina laughed at the coaxing sound in his voice; it was so patently false.
“I’m serious,” Eric insisted. “I’m a bachelor, and I know my way around a kitchen. Let me help.”
“Doing what?” she asked skeptically.
“I can whip the egg whites while you prepare the filling,” he answered immediately.
Tina gave him a considering look. “Well, maybe you do know your way around the kitchen. Okay,” she agreed. “But I’m warning you right now, you mess up my meringue and you are in big trouble, mister.”
“Deal.” Eric grinned at her and reached for a cookie. “Am I going to get to taste this culinary delight later?” he asked, dunking the cookie in his coffee before popping it in his mouth.
“Well, of course,” Tina said, sliding onto the chair opposite him. “That’s what this exercise is all about.”
Eric blinked and paused in the process of submerging another cookie. “What’s what this exercise is all about?”
“You tasting the pie,” she replied in exasperation. “How will I know if my lemon meringue is as good as your mother’s unless you taste it?”
He burst out laughing. “What have you got going here, some sort of personal bake-off?”
“You might call it that.”
“I already did.” Eric chuckled.
“I felt challenged when you declared that your mother’s was the best,” she said airily, lifting her cup to take a tentative sip of the hot liquid. “Even though I suppose it won’t be a true test of my skill if you help.”
“Hmm...” he murmured, munching away on yet another soggy cookie. “I see your point.” He washed down the sweet with the last of his coffee, then held out the cup. “Tell you what, give me a refill and then I’ll get out of here, let you get on with your thing.”
“Deal,” Tina said, echoing his earlier remark. Taking the cup, she rose and turned to go to the counter.
“On one condition.”
Tina came to an abrupt halt and spun to eye him suspiciously. “What condition?”
Eric’s smile was innocent to the point of angelic. “You let me come back later to taste the finished product.”
Tina offered him a heavenly smile of her own. “I’ll do even better than that.”
“Oh?” He raised one eyebrow.
“Hmm...” She mirrored his action. “How would you like to come for dinner?” she asked, then rushed on. “That is, if you like roasted chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy and cranberry-orange relish?”
“Oh, be still my heart,” Eric groaned, dramatically clutching his flat stomach. “What time?”
Tina glanced at the wall clock. “Well, it’s almost two now, and I still have to bake the pie...say, six-thirty?”
“Six-thirty’s fine.” He pushed his chair back and stood. “Forget the refill,” he said, starting toward the archway into the dining room. “I’ll get out of here now and let you get to work.”
“All right.” Tina laughed at his show of eagerness. “Don’t forget your cup.”
“I’ll get it later. Don’t bother to come to the door with me,” he said as she moved to follow. He was midway through the dining room when he stopped to call back, “Can I bring anything to add to the meal?”
“Just an appetite.”
“Count on it,” Eric drawled in response. A moment later, the door shut with a gentle click.
Tina stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, staring in bemusement through the archway into the empty dining room. Nervous excitement shimmered inside her.
Eric was coming to dinner.
The thought jolted her from her trancelike state. She had to get moving. She had a million things to do. She had to prepare the pie and bake it. She had to tidy the house, pick up the Sunday papers, which were scattered on the sofa and the living room carpet. She had to set the dining room table. By then she’d need another shower, fresh makeup and clean clothes—something comfortable but feminine and attractive.
Tina whipped around to get to work on the pie. A sudden realization had her spinning around again and heading for the living room.
The very first thing she had to do was lock the door, because the very last thing she wanted was a repeat visit from her former pain in the neck.
* * *
The Lincoln was still there, looking half a block long next to the curb in front of Tina’s house.
Eric ran an admiring glance over the gleaming black car as he loped along the walkway to the sidewalk.
The rewards of dishonesty, he thought disdainfully. Rewards not worth the high price tag they carried.
Dismissing the vehicle, he sprinted through the rain to his apartment. Both the rain and the wind driving it had turned cold. A chill shivered to the surface of Eric’s body as he let himself into the flat.
A quick hot shower and a change of jeans and sweatshirt and he was back at work, ensconced in the chair at the window. Not a damn thing appeared to be happening in or around the house across the street.
The hours of the afternoon dragged by; Eric staved off boredom with thoughts of Tina, and the excruciatingly slow approach of the evening ahead.
Dinner à deux. Anticipation rippled through Eric, causing a shiver more intense than that brought on by his run through the cold rain. Unlike Friday or last night, there would be no cadre of friends, no other patrons chattering around them, no waiters or waitresses to intrude. There would only be Eric and Tina...and a roasted chicken.
And the man sitting down to dinner with Tina would be Eric the man, not Eric the cop, he decided
, surrendering to a sudden, unprecedented desire for normalcy.
What the hell? Eric mused, shrugging. He was officially on vacation. On his own. He was making the rules, setting the parameters for this self-appointed assignment.
And, for the upcoming night, Eric fully intended to ignore the rules and parameters. Gut instinct told him that Tina was innocent of whatever deals were going down in that house across the way.
If, at a later date, his gut instinct proved false, deceived by his libido, and the course of events revealed Tina’s involvement with illegal substances, Eric knew he would revert to form, handle the situation in a professional, intellectual manner. But for now, for tonight, he was driven by a powerful emotional fuel, and he knew it.
That knowledge made all the difference. If push came to shove in Tina’s case, Eric would step around emotions and do his job. He knew himself to be incapable of anything else.
But until push came to shove, if it did, Eric was determined to follow his gut instincts...simply because that was what he wanted to do.
But Lord, he prayed his instincts were on target, because Tina was...
Eric’s thoughts were interrupted by the sudden ringing of the phone. He knew who was calling; only one person had the newly allotted number. He picked up the receiver on the second ring.
“Yeah, bro?”
His brother’s quiet laughter skimmed along the long distance line. “Hello to you, too,” Cameron drawled. “And how are you on this fine autumn Sunday?”
“Fine, hell,” Eric retorted, grinning. “It’s raining and windy and cold as a witch’s—”
“I get the picture,” Cameron said, interrupting him. “I also have some information for you.”
“On that list of names I gave you yesterday?”
“The very same,” Cameron replied.
“Fast work.”
“I’m nothing if not industrious.” Cameron’s lazy-sounding drawl appeared to belie his claim, but then, Eric knew that quite often appearances were deceiving.
“I’m impressed,” he said, and in truth he was. “So, what did you come up with?”
“Zilch. Nada. Nothing,” Cameron reported. “Every name on that list, male and female, came out squeaky-clean. There wasn’t as much as one misdemeanor charge in the bunch.” He gave a low chuckle. “Believe it or not, we couldn’t even come up with a single instance of high school detention.”
Eric laughed. “That is about as squeaky-clean as you can get. I’m glad to hear it, though. I liked all of them.” Ted came to mind, and Eric quickly amended his statement. “Well, maybe not all, but most of them, anyway.”
“You have trouble with one of them?” Cameron rapped out, instantly alert.
“Nah,” Eric said dismissively. “At least not in any legal, or illegal, way.”
“Ah, I see. A woman.”
“My word, you are the perceptive one,” Eric said in a fabricated tone of awe.
“You’re too overgrown and dumb to be cute, Eric,” Cameron rejoined in apparent amusement. “So, you’ve taken a fall, have you, just like Jake?”
“Jake?” Eric frowned. “What about Jake?”
“You don’t know?”
“Dammit, Cameron!” Eric snapped, immediately concerned for the welfare of the youngest member of the brood. “Would I ask if I knew? What about Jake?”
“Seems he’s in love.” Cameron’s drawling voice betrayed his delight at being one up on his younger brother. “The woman’s an associate professor at Sprucewood College.”
“Well, damn,” Eric muttered. “So baby bro Jake’s the first of the big bad Wolfes to bite the dust, eh?”
“It would appear so,” Cameron said, too wryly. “Jake says he’s going to marry the woman.”
Though both alerted to and puzzled by an underlying nuance in his brother’s initial remark, and his tone of voice, Eric had no time to ponder it for his full attention was snagged by Cameron’s follow-up statement.
“Marry her?” he repeated in stunned disbelief. “Did Jake tell you this?”
“No, Mother told me.” Cameron’s voice sharpened. “Haven’t you talked to Mother lately?”
“No, not since I took up residence here,” he said. “I was planning to call her this afternoon, but I kinda got caught up in something.”
“Does the something have a name?” Cameron inquired in an amused, taunting voice.
Eric grinned at the phone. “Mind your own business, big bro,” he taunted back. Then, not only to change the subject, he said anxiously, “Mother’s all right, isn’t she?”
“She’s fine,” Cameron assured him. “Practically ready to run out and buy tiny things for her first grandchild.”
Eric laughed. “Have they set a date, Jake and—?” He broke off, then tossed a version of Cameron’s question back at him. “Does the woman have a name?”
“Sarah Cummings,” Cameron said. “Does yours?”
“Goodbye, bro,” Eric retorted good-naturedly. “And thanks for the info. I appreciate it.”
“Any time,” Cameron drawled. “Keep your eyes open, your mouth shut and your guard up, brother,” he said, concluding with his usual advice.
“Will do,” Eric replied, smiling as he cradled the receiver. There were times, many in number, when Cameron’s over-protective, eldest-son attitude was a large pain in the rump, but Eric couldn’t deny the feelings of love and caring he always felt when talking to his brother.
Throughout the lengthy conversation, Eric had maintained his surveillance of the house across the street. As had been the scenario for a week now, not a blessed thing was going on over there.
Doubt assailed Eric. Was he on the granddaddy of all wild-goose chases here? Had he bought a pile of bilge from his informant, like some wide-eyed innocent? Was he sitting here, getting numb in the rear, wasting his vacation on erroneous or misinterpreted information?
Eric was not as a rule subject to doubts about how to proceed in any given situation. Nor was he given to questioning his decisions and subsequent actions, which were always based on intellectual consideration, spiced with a dash of instinct. The very fact that he was now indulging in those troubling doubts and questions caused a hollow sensation in his stomach. He didn’t enjoy the feeling. Determined to do something about it, he reached for the phone and punched in a number.
At the other end of the connection, the phone rang once, twice, three times. Eric drummed his long fingers against the arm of his chair. The receiver at the other end was lifted on the seventh ring.
“Hello?”
Eric felt a stab of satisfaction at the sound of his informant’s voice.
“Could you use a few extra this week?” Eric asked without preamble, knowing the man had a weakness for the ponies and could always use a few extra bucks.
“Yes,” the man replied, then went silent, waiting for instructions.
“The intersection nearest to your office building, tomorrow morning,” Eric said, then immediately hung up.
Due to the weather conditions, darkness had fallen early. Eric didn’t turn on a light, but continued to sit in the darkened room, ruminating while he watched.
His informant hadn’t hesitated in agreeing to a meeting, indicating to Eric that either the man was convinced of the validity of his information or his informant was playing games, entertaining himself at Eric’s expense. For the informant’s sake, and continued good health, Eric sincerely hoped it was the former, not the latter.
Deep in speculation, Eric took only casual note of a truck’s headlights illuminating the rain-slicked macadam as the vehicle moved slowly down the street. But his attention became riveted when the medium-size truck turned into the driveway of the house he was watching.
“More company?” he muttered, leaning forward in the chair to peer through the darkness.
The decorative wall light next to the front door flicked on, but the functional trouble lights strategically placed at the four corners of the structure remained dark.
&nbs
p; The door on the driver’s side of the truck opened, and a short, burly man stepped out of the cab, just as two men came out of the house. Even in the dark, Eric could identify the men as Bob Freeman and Glen Reber.
The three men came together in the driveway, and the short man turned at once to open the back of the truck and disappear inside the dark interior.
“Hmm...” Eric murmured.
Freeman and Reber positioned themselves at the back of the vehicle. A few moments later, the other man appeared, maneuvering a wingback chair toward the opening.
Curious, Eric thought, frowning. A company that delivers furniture in the evening—Sunday evening?
While Freeman and Reber carried the chair into the house, the short man disappeared into the interior again, to reappear once more, shoving another chair into the opening. Moments later, Freeman and Reber returned to collect the second chair. The minute they had it off the truck, the driver jumped out, shut the door and hurried back to the cab of the truck. Before the other two men reached the house, the engine fired and the truck was backed out of the driveway. The truck took off down the street as the men lugged the chair through the doorway.
Altogether, from the time the truck pulled into the driveway until it backed out again, the entire process required less than fifteen minutes to complete. Of course, the rain was coming down pretty hard, so it was perfectly understandable that the men would hustle through the job.
Understandable, yet also curious, Eric mused. Curious because the job would have been made both faster and a little easier with illumination from the four trouble lights. He knew the lights would have made it possible for him to read the lettering he’d glimpsed on the side of the truck as the driver swung it around, out of the driveway.
Dark as it was, all Eric had been able to catch was one word—Acme. Acme. Hell, he thought in disgust, was he on a stakeout or in the middle of a Roadrunner cartoon?
Oh, well, it wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing, Eric thought. He reached for the phone directory to begin searching for furniture stores or companies with the name Acme. He had barely started when his stomach growled in complaint against emptiness. Glancing at his watch, he was stunned to see that it was going on seven, and Tina had told him dinner would be ready at six-thirty.