Body of Evidence

by Joan Elliott Pickart

  He forced himself to his feet—for the last time that day, he hoped.

  Maggie slept like the dead that night. Her alarm clock jarred her awake at 6:00 a.m., and she shoved aside the covers and walked to the shower with her eyes only half-open. The shower finished what the buzzing of the clock’s alarm had started—got her brain and body functioning on normal. She turned on the TV in her bedroom to catch the weather report and made a face when she heard it. “High today of thirty-five degrees and snow flurries by late afternoon. Current temperature is twenty-six degrees.”

  “Great,” Maggie muttered, wishing her life away by wishing for spring and some decent weather. Almost every winter was the same. By March she was so ready for sunshine and warmth that she fantasized herself living in a southern state, where the sun shone brightly nearly every day of the year. She could always find a job in law enforcement, couldn’t she? With her education and training? Of course she could.

  The television program went from the weather report to local news stories. Maggie only partially listened until she heard, “Franklin Gardner, international businessman and lifelong resident of Chicago, was found dead in his penthouse apartment early yesterday morning. Police are investigating his death as a possible homicide.”

  The “possible homicide” comment surprised Maggie, because had Franklin Gardner’s entire family been notified already? Occasionally the cart got out before the horse in breaking newscasts, but surely Benton was controlling all information passed to the media.

  Maggie told herself to stay out of that part of the investigation. Josh hadn’t gotten where he was in the department by talking out of turn. He knew the rules, probably better than she did.

  This morning Maggie put on a little makeup and didn’t even try to kid herself that it wasn’t because of Josh Benton. Dressed in charcoal, almost-black wool slacks and turtleneck sweater, she bundled herself into her heavy outside jacket, scarf and gloves and left her apartment.

  Entering the garage was like bucking a wave of Arctic air. Her breath fogged in front of her face and she thought about how great it would be if the garage were heated. Of course, when she found this apartment, she’d been thrilled it had a parking garage and she could still afford the rent!

  Mumbling to herself that living through scorching Arizona summers was probably just as bad as freezing Illinois temperatures in March, Maggie hurried to her car, unlocked it and got in.

  She inserted the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened. Startled, she did it again and again. Nothing happened. Her car was dead. Groaning, she put her head on the steering wheel.

  But it was too cold to sit there and feel sorry for herself for long. Raising her head, she got out her cell phone and the card Josh had given her yesterday. She dialed his cell number. He answered on the second ring with a gruff-sounding “Detective Benton.”

  “This is Maggie. My car is dead. I’m going to call a mechanic, and there’s no telling how long that will take. Obviously I’m going to be coming in late. Thought you should know.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Give me your address. Maybe it’s just your battery. If it is, I’ll give you a jump.”

  “You’re going to fix my car?”

  “Don’t sound so doubtful. I know a few things about cars, and I’ve got a set of jumper cables. Unless you’d rather call that expensive mechanic than let me take a look at it.”

  “Um, no…no, of course not.” Maggie reluctantly recited her address. “But I hate imposing on your time.”

  “If I felt it was an imposition, I wouldn’t have offered to help out.”

  “Well…all right. It’s freezing in this garage so I’ll be waiting in my apartment. Just ring my bell.”

  Josh cleared his throat and squelched an impulse to tell her that he’d love to ring her bell. In fact, she just might love having her bell rung by him.

  “I should be there in twenty minutes,” he stated, without innuendo.

  “Um…thank you.” Maggie hit the button to break the call and stuffed the phone back into her bag. She tried the ignition again, got no response at all from the wayward engine, then shook her head disgustedly and got out. She locked the car and headed for the elevator, cursing under her breath.

  Damn it, why hadn’t he just let her call for a mechanic and be done with it? Or better still, when he’d made his intrusive offer of assistance, why hadn’t she thought fast, refused with thanks, and told him she had already called for a mechanic?

  Inside her apartment she yanked off her gloves and jacket and then ran around like a wild woman, frantically picking up things, such as the slippers she’d left by the sofa several nights back, and the Sunday newspapers that were still strewn across her little kitchen table three days later. She grabbed a stack of junk mail that she’d been intending to toss for days and dropped it in the trash can, and put the dirty dishes stacked in the sink into the apartment-size dishwasher she’d been almost as glad to see as the garage when she’d rented the place.

  She suddenly needed coffee, and she put on a pot to brew. Hurrying to her bedroom, she made the bed and then ran into the bathroom to straighten things up in there, just in case Josh should ask to use it. She was horribly nervous and couldn’t seem to calm her racing pulse, however many times she reminded herself that she had outgrown Josh Benton years and years ago.

  Of course, if that was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, would she be nervous at all?

  Maggie was on her second cup of coffee when the building’s front door buzzer went off. She set her cup on the counter, went to her apartment’s front door and pushed a button. “Yes?”

  “It’s me. Buzz me in.”

  Maggie complied and then opened the door to watch for Josh to step out of the elevator down the hall. As usual, it seemed an eternity for the hydraulic lift to make its snail-like way from the first floor to the fourth, but finally Maggie heard it grind to a shuddering stop. The doors slowly opened and Josh began walking toward her.

  “I should have taken the stairs. It would’ve been faster.”

  “Which is what I usually do. The only time I use the elevator is when I’m loaded down with groceries, or something else. Come on in.”

  Josh followed her in. “This building has a garage in the basement?”

  “Yes. I’ll get my jacket.”

  “Not so fast. Do I smell fresh coffee?”

  “Uh…yes. Would you like some?”

  “Sure would. I was going to stop at a coffeehouse, but then you called and I figured I’d better get over here right away.”

  Maggie led him to the kitchen and proceeded to fill a mug for him. “That’s what I do on most mornings, stop somewhere for a large coffee to go.” She handed the mug to Josh who took it and then set it on the table.

  “I’m going to take my jacket off, sit down and enjoy this, if you don’t mind. The first cup of the day always tastes best to me. Come and join me at the table.”

  “In a minute. You go ahead and sit down. And I don’t mind if you enjoy your first cup of the day,” she murmured, a lie if she’d ever told one. She minded everything that was happening, minded him being there at all, minded that he’d had the nerve to ask for coffee and that he’d been nice enough to offer to jump her car—if that was all it needed. But mostly she minded his astonishing good looks, which seemed a hundred times more striking this morning than they had yesterday. Her stupid stomach was doing somersaults just from looking at him.

  And he seemed so at home! Not at all uncomfortable or bashful or anything else that she could detect and read as a negative reaction to being alone in her apartment with her.

  Maggie’s thoughts turned cynical. Josh Benton was probably so used to drinking morning coffee in women’s apartments, undoubtedly after spending the night, that why on earth would this perfectly innocent situation with her make him feel uneasy?

  Well, he might be just fine with this…this togetherness, bu
t she was not. “I have my car keys right here,” Maggie said, holding them up so he could see.

  Josh grinned. “Trying to get rid of me already?”

  “Of course not! Take your time. I’ll finish my own coffee.” To prove that her second lie was the unmitigated truth, Maggie took her cup to the table and sat across from him. “Were you at the Bureau when I called your cell?” she asked in an effort to keep any conversation between them on business.

  “On my way.” Josh got up, refilled his mug and resumed his seat. He took a sip and looked as satisfied as a frog in a rainfall. “I’m coming alive,” he said. “I do love my coffee. I hope I never have to give it up. You probably don’t even remember when almost everyone smoked, but I sure do. Went through hell quitting that habit, mostly because I enjoyed it so much. But it was getting so you couldn’t find a building that permitted smoking, and standing outside in this kind of weather to light up got very old, very fast.”

  “I never did smoke, so I know very little about the trauma of quitting. I’ve heard horror stories about it, though.”

  “Believe every one of them.” Josh locked his gaze with Maggie’s. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone else with eyes the color of yours.”

  Maggie felt her face get warm. He had switched gears so fast he’d caught her off guard. “I…I’m sure the color is not unique,” she stammered.

  “It’s very unique, and you’re very beautiful.” Josh hadn’t intended to say any of those things, and he was even more startled by them than Maggie was. But she was beautiful this morning, and maybe she’d been beautiful yesterday, as well, and he’d been too wrapped up in the Gardner case to see her clearly.

  Maggie felt as stiff as a board—a board with red cheeks. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” she said, her voice sounding thin and shaky. “We have to work together, and…and…”

  Josh got to his feet and walked around the table to her. Tipping her chin with his forefinger he said softly, “And what, Maggie?”

  She didn’t move away from him, she couldn’t. And when she saw his face coming closer to hers, she knew he was going to kiss her.

  She parted her lips and sucked in a soft breath.

  Breathless seconds passed in slow motion for Maggie. Fragmented thoughts drifted through her mind. I know this man…it’s not as though he’s a stranger. I want to feel his kiss…his lips on mine. Have I waited all this time for Josh Benton to reenter my life?

  His scent seemed more familiar than her own. His body emanated exciting warmth. She felt things deep inside of her that were brand-new but instinctively recognizable.

  But…why was he hesitating?

  The answer to that question seemed written in neon in Josh’s brain, and finally he muttered a curse and finished his remark of self-disgusted recrimination with, “What the hell am I doing?” He stepped away from Maggie and plucked the keys from her hand so quickly that she reeled. “Come on,” he growled. “Take me to your car.”

  His abrupt change of heart was like a physical blow for Maggie. She had to battle both fury and tears, for she believed that showing either side of the pain he’d just caused her would make her look immature and foolish. And she would die before knowingly appearing as anything but strong and uncaring in front of Josh.

  Chapter 3

  Putting on her most indifferent expression, Maggie said a cold “Excuse me” and went around him to leave the kitchen ahead of him. Pulling on her warm clothing again, she led him from the apartment. In the hall she took a second to make sure the door was locked, then again took the lead. “We’ll use the stairs,” she said without inflection.

  And with every step down to the basement garage, she asked herself why Josh had been so eager to kiss her one second and then so angry with himself…or with her…in practically the next. Only one possibility made complete and utter sense: he was involved with someone else.

  Maggie nearly lost the control she’d been using on her emotions over that conclusion, and anger began eating holes in her hard-eyed composure. Another woman—he was in love and committed—and he’d dared to lead her on! To make her think that something was beginning to coalesce, to happen for them. In that instant she hated the man he was now—the great Detective Benton—and even the handsome, outgoing, hopeful young cop he’d been when she’d known him before.

  Once in the frigid basement, she handed him the keys. “My car’s over there, the dark green sedan.”

  The tone of her voice said it all for Josh. He’d started something he shouldn’t have, and she resented him now as only a woman perceiving herself scorned could resent a man. God help him, he thought, he hadn’t meant to make Maggie feel scorned, or anything else, for that matter.

  “Uh, maybe we should talk about it,” he said without quite meeting her eyes. Damn it, he should have insisted on talking about it upstairs the minute he’d backed off.

  Maggie’s eyes flashed pure fire at him. “There’s nothing to talk about. Are you going to try starting my car, or have you changed your mind about that, too?”

  Josh knew when to quit. Forcing an issue with a furious woman not only wasn’t smart; it might reasonably be classified as temporary insanity.

  He walked away from her without another word, heading for her car.

  Maggie worked at the lab all day, going as far with the ice picks as she could without specific instructions to cover the investigative spectrum with them, which would have included DNA analysis. DNA testing would have been imperative if any genetic material had shown up at the murder scene from a second person, ostensibly the killer. Since there was nothing except Franklin Gardner’s own blood, there was no reason to analyze his DNA. Not yet, at any rate.

  Maggie’s stack of written reports grew as the morning passed. Around two, she made copies of everything to take with her for the case file, delivered the originals to the clerical department for permanent recording, then gathered her belongings and drove to the Detective Bureau.

  The second she walked in someone drawled, “Heard you had car trouble this morning.”

  “My, how news does travel around here,” Maggie said wryly. “It was no big deal, just a dead battery. Everything’s fine now.”

  “Well, I heard that Benton raced to your rescue.”

  Maggie caught the teasing twinkle in the other officer’s eyes. Personal relationships weren’t encouraged between cops, but they happened, and when they did the gossip, the innuendo and the comical remarks—not all of them clean—went on until either the relationship fizzled out or it became old news and everyone got bored with it.

  Maggie raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes. “D’ya think he’s on the verge of popping the question? A guy fixing a girl’s car is pretty serious stuff.”

  The detective walked off laughing, relieving most of Maggie’s concern about a perfectly innocent incident feeding the gossip mill. True, the morning might not have turned out so innocently if Benton had followed through with that kiss, but he hadn’t and that was the end of it.

  At least that was what she’d been telling herself all day. It began and ended all in a matter of thirty seconds, so for God’s sake stop making a big deal out of it. Romance is a lost art, and if you’re naive enough to think that an incomplete pass pertains to anything but a football play, you are living in the dark ages, my girl!

  It was sound advice but impossible to accept as the final word on this morning’s episode. Just thinking of it again stirred Maggie’s ire, and she slapped her copies of the lab reports down on her desk, shed her heavy coat and hung it on a nearby hook, all with a sour expression on her face. After shoving her gloves and scarf into her backpack, then leaving everything behind that she’d brought in with her, she went to the New Case file cabinet to get the Gardner file.

  It wasn’t there. Obviously one of the other detectives on the case was using it. If it was Josh…?

  Frowning, Maggie returned to her desk and sat down. Avoiding Josh for any length of time was impossibl
e, but she wished it weren’t. In fact, she wished she never had to look into those gray eyes of his ever again. He’d humiliated her, not by making his desire to kiss her so obvious, but because he’d changed his mind while looking directly into her ridiculously love-struck eyes. Well, maybe not love, but certainly he must have sensed her weak-kneed acquiescence and anticipation of the big event. Damn him, would she ever live it down?

  Sighing because she would rather be laughing than crying—if only to herself—she began thumbing through the reports in front of her. She knew them by heart, but it was something to do until she figured out a way to get hold of the Gardner case file without running into Benton.

  Maggie narrowed her eyes in thought. Maybe Colin Waters had it. Actually anyone in the building with an investigative interest in the homicide could be looking through it.

  If Maggie had lifted her gaze just a little, and then looked to the left, she would have seen Detective Benton watching her. Josh had called the crime lab, learned that Maggie had left for the day and then taken the case file and headed for the squad room and her assigned desk.

  But upon entering the room and seeing her so intently studying the papers in front of her, obviously concentrating so deeply that she heard none of the noise around her, he had stopped dead in his tracks. He should not have made that move this morning, but he couldn’t help wishing that he’d taken it to its logical conclusion. All day he had paid the ultimate price for behaving like a gentleman instead of the horny toad Maggie had turned him into. She drew him irresistibly, and he ached now just from looking at her. It was a shock of huge proportions; never could he have imagined himself getting all hot and bothered over Tim’s kid sister.

  Muttering under his breath, he began moving again, walking over to Maggie’s desk. “You might want to see this,” he said gruffly, and laid the case file near her right hand.