by Norah Wilson
~*~
“Can I give you a hand with that?”
She seemed to just about come out of her skin at his words, whirling to face him. Wide blue eyes locked onto him, and for an instant, Quigg saw fear. Not surprise. Not your garden variety momentary fright when someone startled you. This was real, raw fear. Then it was gone, and she wore her smooth Princess face again.
“Thank you, no. I can manage.”
Her voice was cool, polite, completely assured. Had he imagined the blaze of fear?
Bending, she righted the briefcase, deposited it on the car’s seat and closed the door. She must have expected him to move on, or at least to step back, because when she turned, she wound up standing considerably closer than before. Closer than was comfortable for her. He could see it in the quick lift of her brows, the slight widening of her eyes. But she didn’t step back.
Neither did he.
Damn, she was beautiful. And tall. In those three inch heels that probably cost more than he made in a week, her gaze was level with his. Throw in all that long blond hair that would slide like silk through a man’s hands, and a body that would...
“You’re that cop.”
He blinked. “That cop?”
“Regina vs. Rosneau.”
“Good memory.” They’d secured a conviction on that one, but her client had taken a walk on appeal. Though in truth, Quigg hadn’t minded over much. The dirtball had done it, all right, but strictly speaking, the evidence had been a bit thin. One of those fifty/fifty propositions.
“Regina vs. Haynes. That was you, too, right?”
Okay, dammit, that one still stung, although the insult was almost two years old now. Two defendants, separate trials, separate representation, each accused managing to convince a jury the other guy’d done it. Of course, Quigg could take consolation from knowing the noose was closing yet again around Ricky Haynes’ good-for-nothing drug-dealing neck. Haynes had since moved outside the city limits, beyond municipal jurisdiction, but Quigg had it on good authority that the Mounties were building a rock-solid case against him.
Yes, he could take some consolation in that. Some small consolation. Not enough, however, to blunt the slow burn in his gut right now.
“Keep a scrapbook, do you, Ms. Phelps? Or maybe you cut a notch in your little Gucci belt, one for every cop you skewer?”
Something that looked astonishingly like hurt flashed in her eyes, but like before, it was gone before he could be certain he’d really seen it. Then she stepped even closer and smiled, a slow, knowing smile that made him think about skin sliding against skin and sweat-slicked bodies fusing in the dark, and he knew he’d been mistaken. When she extended a slender, ringless finger to trace a circle around a button on his shirt, his heart stumbled, then began to pound.
“Definitely not the belt thing,” she said, her voice as husky and honeyed as his most sex-drenched fantasy. “At the rate you guys self-destruct under cross, there’d be nothing left to hold my trousers up, would there, now, John?”
Then she climbed in her gleaming little Beemer and drove off before his hormone-addled brain divorced her words from her manner and realized he’d been dissed.
Against all reason, he laughed. Lord knew it wasn’t funny. Certainly, young Langan wouldn’t share his mirth.
Of course, the whole thing defied reason, the way it twisted his guts just to look at her. She was rich. She was beautiful. She was sophisticated. She was the daughter of a judge, from a long line of judges. She was ... what? He searched his admittedly limited lexicon for an appropriate term. Kennedy-esque.
Meanwhile, his own father had worked in a saw mill; his mother had cleaned other people’s houses. Suzannah Phelps was so far out of his league, there wasn’t even a real word for it.
She was also the woman not-so-affectionately known around the station house as She-Rex. And worse.
Much worse.
Except she hadn’t looked much like a She-Rex when she’d spun around to face him, her face all pale and frightened.
Quigg turned and headed for Queen Street, where he’d parked his car. What had spooked her? Not his sudden appearance. He was sure of that. She might not have much use for cops, but she wasn’t scared of him.
Maybe it was something inside her car.
He’d reached his own car, which sprouted a yellow parking ticket from beneath the windshield wiper. Great. He glanced up, searching traffic. There she was, at the lights a block away.
What could be in her car to make her look like that? Or was he completely off base? Was it a guilty start, not a frightened start? Hard to say. She’d masked it so quickly.
Damn, he was going to have to follow her.
Climbing into his not-so-shiny Taurus, he fired it up, signaled and pulled into traffic.
Even at this hour with the first of the home-bound traffic leaving the downtown core, tailing her was child’s play. As he expected, she headed back to her office. No knocking off early for Suzannah Phelps. She probably put in longer days than he did. Two blocks from her uptown offices, she pulled into another office building’s parking lot. Quigg guided his vehicle into the gas bar next door and watched Suzannah drive to the back of the lot where she parked next to a blue dumpster.
Pretending to consult a map he’d pulled from his glove compartment, Quigg watched her get out of the car and scan the lot. Then she circled the BMW, opened the passenger door and pulled something out. The car itself blocked Quigg’s view, but he saw a flash of mauvey/pinky floral patterned paper. Then she lifted the dumpster’s lid and tossed the object in. Quickly, she rounded the car, climbed in and accelerated out of the lot.
Quigg watched her vehicle travel east along Prospect. When she signaled and turned into her office’s parking lot, he slipped his own car into gear. Thirty seconds later, he lifted the lid to the dumpster.
Flowers? She’d been scared witless by flowers?
More likely by who sent the flowers, he reasoned. Maybe they still had a card attached. Out of habit, he patted his pockets for latex gloves before remembering he didn’t have any on him. He wasn’t on duty. He had some in a first aid kit in his car, but he wasn’t about to dig them out. This wasn’t an investigation.
Well, not a sanctioned one.
Grimacing, he retrieved the prettily wrapped bouquet with his bare hands. The florist’s paper appeared pristine, undisturbed, as though Suzannah hadn’t even looked at the contents. Carefully, he peeled the paper back. Then he dropped the bouquet back into the dumpster.
Holy hell! Long-stemmed red roses. Or rather, what he suspected used to be red roses. Now they were more brown than red. Rusty, like old blood. Dead. Probably a dozen of them.
His mind whirled. How had she known? She hadn’t even opened the wrapper.
Because it wasn’t the first time, obviously.
Because they’d been deposited in her car, right there in the barristers’ parking lot, while she was inside defending Leo Warren. While a commissionaire kept an eye on the lot. While her car doors had no doubt been locked.
No wonder she’d been spooked.
He picked up the bouquet again and examined it closer. No card. There’s a surprise, Sherlock.
Why hadn’t she told him? She knew he was a cop.
Domestic. The answer came instantly. Had to be. She knew the source, but wasn’t prepared to make a complaint because she didn’t want to make trouble for the jerk who’d done this, thereby increasing his rage. How many times had he seen that age-old dynamic in operation?
Except he hadn’t expected it from Suzannah. She was too much of a fighter. What could be going on in her head?
Quigg tossed the bouquet back in the dumpster and closed the lid. Climbing back into the Taurus, he sat for long moments.
He should leave this alone. He knew it.
He also knew he wasn’t going to.
“This, you dumb-ass, is how careers are ruined.”
But she’d called him John. Back there, outside the courthouse, sh
e’d called him by his Christian name. Nobody called him John, except his mother. It was Quigg, or Detective Quigley, or Officer, or even Hey, pig! But back there, while her index finger had traced delicate circles on his chest, she’d called him John.
Stifling a sigh, he keyed the ignition and slipped the Ford into gear.
