“Maybe now would be a good time to have a look around the apartment?” Jennings suggested. “See if anything is missing.”
One sip of coffee relaxed the tension between my shoulder blades. “Sure.” Since my kitchen is roughly the same size as a boat galley, it was easy enough to confirm that whoever had left the fake skeleton hadn’t carted off the collection of vintage Troll dolls I kept on the kitchen windowsill. It’s an accidental collection started back in my college days. I’d buy one every time I had a lousy date or a relationship implosion. In four years I’d managed to amass an army of more than fifty of the naked dolls with their straight, neon shock of hair. I’d just added a new one—The Patrick Troll.
I didn’t bother to explain the odd grouping; instead, I walked into the adjoining living room and checked the most likely targets. TV, DVD, iHome—all present and accounted for. Based on the accumulated layer of dust, no one had so much as breathed on them.
Cupping my coffee mug in prayer hands, I walked into my bedroom, trailing my contingent of officers. I swallowed a groan as I saw the black fingerprint powder smeared all over the wall with the open window. I knew from experience it was a bugger to get that stuff off. Another potential deduction from my security deposit.
I went to my nightstand and found my blank checks neatly stacked in one corner. As discreetly as possible, I ran my fingertip beneath the stack. The medallion I’d taken from the real skeleton was still tucked beneath the papers.
Moving to my dresser, I opened the top drawer and found my Rolex parts in their respective baggies. Next, I checked my jewelry box and found everything undisturbed. Sadly, that did it for my valuables.
“What about the other drawers?” Jennings asked.
“Just clothes,” I answered, not thrilled with the idea of three police officers having a private viewing of my panty drawer. “Nothing of value.”
“Got a hit,” one of the CSIs called excitedly.
He was on his haunches, looking at a really cool split computer screen comparing fingerprints.
“How can you know already?” I asked.
The young man looked up at me, then pointed to a small rectangular piece of equipment connected to his laptop. “Lift them, then scan the lifts into the computer mainframe. Then the computer takes over, comparing the prints against those in our database.”
His gloved fingers hit a few keys. “And the winner is…”
We were all scrunched together to get a view of the name.
“Tanner, Finley Anderson.” He glanced back up at me. “Your prints are in the system?”
“Unfortunately.” I shivered at the memory of being incarcerated, albeit briefly. Knowing my fingerprints were in the system didn’t exactly make me feel all warm and fuzzy. I took a long swallow of coffee to calm my nerves.
“Well,” the CSI said, “saves me the trouble of taking exclusionary prints from you.”
“Always glad to help,” I muttered.
His laptop beeped. “Got another one.”
Again, I watched and waited for the computer to spit out a name. “Lachey, Patrick Michael. Printed for a pilot’s license.”
My eyes grew wide. “He’s my ex-boyfriend.”
“Amicable breakup?” Jennings asked.
“If you don’t count the cactus incident, I guess.”
“Cactus incident?” Jennings repeated as he scribbled furiously in his small notepad.
Sighing, I waved my hand. “A parting gift.” Well, it was kinda true.
“If he’s your ex, why would his fingerprints be inside your apartment?”
“Because I don’t do windows. Patrick was definitely a weenie of a boyfriend and a schmuck of a human being, but he wouldn’t hang a fake skeleton by a noose in my closet.”
“How can you be sure?” Jennings challenged. “The story in the Post provided enough detail that anyone could have hung that skeleton in your closet.”
The CSI came out of my closet with the resin skeleton and its noose in separate paper bags.
“Got another hit. Doe96-5, John.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I pulled a print from the sill, and it matches a partial print found at a crime scene in…1996. Print was never matched to a perpetrator.”
“But what does that mean?”
“We can only match prints already in the system. Unless the person has been arrested, served in the military, or had to have prints taken for work or something like that, they get filed as John Does.”
“When was the last time you washed the windows?” Jennings asked.
“More coffee?” I replied.
“Naw, we’re close to done here. Just a few more questions.”
“Let’s go back to the living room,” I suggested, then led the way.
I refilled my mug, then sat on the sofa. Jennings scooted the ottoman over, licked the pad of his thumb, and flipped to a new page in his notepad.
“Any enemies I should know about?”
“My mother.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bad joke,” I corrected. “The office manager where I work hates me, but I can’t see Maudlin Margaret or her file room flunkies pulling something like this. She’s more the passive-aggressive kind of enemy.”
“No other, er, men who might have issues with you?”
“Sam thinks my taste in decorating is criminal.”
His smile reached all the way to his rather bland brown eyes. “You’re not taking this very seriously. It’ll help the investigation if you give us something to go on.”
“I would if I had anything, but I honestly don’t. I’ve been involved in a couple of murder investigations, but they both led to arrests. And you have to admit, it is a little coincidental that fingerprints from a robbery thirteen years ago match prints on my window.”
“Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. What do you do for a living?”
As little as possible to earn my paycheck. “I’m an estates and trusts paralegal at Dane, Lieberman. All of my clients are dead.”
He laughed. “Very amusing. But I’m assuming the dead clients have families, other people not always happy with the division of property?”
“Sure,” I said on an exhale of breath. “But that’s really rare. Most of the beneficiaries are getting something for nothing. They normally leave my office with a check and a big hairy grin.”
“Any unhappy widows or children lately?”
“The real widows are always unhappy,” I explained. “They’re grieving. The Botoxed trophy wives, well, let’s just say their grief is proportional to the dollar amount of their inheritance. The last time I had a contested will was over a year ago. The baby widow—as memory serves, the deceased was four years younger than her grandfather—contested a bequest to the first wife. They fought for a while, and then agreed on a settlement. Baby Widow was forced to accept a piddly twenty-six million.”
Jennings whistled. “Do all your cases deal with that kind of money?”
I shook my head. “Maybe sixty percent. The other forty percent is normal people’s estates, setting up college funds, doing family trusts.”
Jennings flipped his notepad closed and stood.
I stood as well. “So what happens now?”
“I’ll run upstairs and have a chat with Mrs. Hemshaw. But I’ll be honest, Ms. Tanner.”
“Finley.”
“Finley,” he said as he shoved the pad into the breast pocket of his shirt. “This has all the earmarks of a cruel but harmless prank. Still, I’ll have the watch commander order a cruiser to keep a closer eye on this place. You should consider getting better locks on your windows.”
“Thanks,” I said, extending my hand.
He gave me his business card. “Give me a call if you have any more trouble. If anything breaks, I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you,” I repeated as I stood by the door and the group filed outside.
Once I was alone, I checked every lock on every door an
d window. Still a little spooked, I hunted for things to jam in the window tracks. I spent the better part of an hour duct-taping pens together to make sticks to prevent the windows from being opened. Well, they probably wouldn’t hold, but at least I’d hear them snap if my skeleton freak decided to come back.
I reheated my dinner, then multitasked by channel surfing and powering up my laptop. Just for good measure, my cell phone was on the sofa next to me. Every so often, I was distracted by movement outside my sliding glass doors. Palm fronds swaying on the breeze, gecko skittering across the patio—everything inspired a stab of fear.
“Get a grip,” I muttered. I had every light burning, including the floodlight mounted over the back door. So much for cutting corners on my Florida Power and Light bill. Every shadow had me itching to call Liam and ask him to…what? Nope, there was no way I’d call him to play protector.
When I went into the kitchen, I peered through the dusty blinds, hoping to see Sam’s car in the parking lot. No such luck. Not that it mattered. Sam, bless him, is a bigger girl than I am. At best, he’d probably try to subdue an intruder by wrapping him in tulle.
Going back to the sofa, I logged into eBay. If anything could get my mind off the skeletons—a word that should never be plural, by the way—it was a cruise through the online auctions for new Rolex parts. I found a couple of links, but the end dates for the auctions were days away. Only eBay novices place bets days out from the end of an auction. No, the smart way to do it is to wait until the last minute of bidding, then swoop in and grab the item away from the high bidder. I clicked them into my watched items files and switched to searching for new clothes.
The rational side of me knew I should be conserving every penny, but the put-upon side of me knew I was going back to school on Tuesday night. Like a six-year-old, I decided a new dress might be just the thing to make the first day of school tolerable. Tolerable was going to cost me, though, because I’d have to use expedited shipping to get anything before Tuesday.
The eBay gods were smiling upon me. In under a minute I found an adorable, worn once, Juicy couture silk dress in my size. I winced at the two-hundred-dollar minimum bid, but the painterly circles and scalloped hemline called to me. With just a hair of hesitation, I typed in my bid but didn’t hit the Submit button. There were still four minutes until the end of the auction and no bids listed. I couldn’t risk alerting other professional eBayers to my interest.
Opening a new internet window, I logged into the Palm Beach Post archives. I searched for robberies on Palm Beach covering the Melinda foster care years up to six months ago, when she lost the house. There were literally hundreds. Narrowing the search, I entered the zip code for the 33480 area. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that as the population of Palm Beach County swelled, so did zip code boundaries. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought.
I spent three and a half minutes constructing a time line of zip codes for the area, then flipped back to eBay and submitted my bid. As I’d feared, my two-hundred-dollar bid was rejected as too low. Quickly, I raised it to two fifty, but that was rejected as well. Disappointed, I muttered, “You win,” to ClothesHorse2 and decided a Sunday trip to the Gardens Mall was my best alternative.
Opening a Word document in the background, I began cutting and pasting three dozen robbery articles into a single location.
The sound of my cell ringing made me jump. Glancing at the iPhone screen, I read Liam’s number and chewed my lip as I debated answering. Screw it—I let it go to voice mail, which I ignored as well. A minute later I received a text message from him: I’m standing outside your front door.
I texted back: Go away.
Instead, he started pounding, and, fearful that Mrs. Hemshaw might take up arms again, I reluctantly went and opened the door. A crack. With the safety chain attached.
He smelled male and comforting, but I knew from experience that didn’t mean safe. “What?”
“Heard you had another skeleton in your closet.”
“It wasn’t real.”
“Heard that too,” he said as he raked his fingers through his hair. “Still, I figured you might be freaked out.”
“You figured wrong,” I said with more conviction than I felt.
“Let me in,” he said, clearly irritated.
Okay, so I was totally trapped between a rock and a Liam place. If I didn’t let him in, I’d practically be admitting that I didn’t trust myself around him. If I did let him in, there was a possibility I’d prove that to be true.
Closing the door, I slapped the chain off and yanked the handle. Pivoting on the balls of my feet, I walked back to the living room pretending that I didn’t care if he thought I looked good in my Betsey Johnson dress. Or that he noticed my freshly pedicured bare toes before I tucked my legs beneath me on the sofa.
If he did, it didn’t show as he casually sank down next to me. “What are you doing?”
Trying not to think about the fact that your thigh is brushing against my knees. “Since you alienated Melinda, I’m looking into robberies. My mother said the medallion was stolen, and it happened while Melinda was living in the cottage. I really want to know who that girl is…was.”
He lifted his arm and rested it on the back of the sofa. My heart skipped a beat when he absently wrapped a lock of my hair around his forefinger. The temperature in the room felt as if it had vaulted twenty degrees. Perspiration trickled between my breasts as my stomach knotted in a tight ball of desire.
Correction. A tight ball of stupid. I swatted his hand away, which, judging by the curve of his smile, amused the hell out of him.
“You’re over the rebound period,” he said, his voice an octave deeper as he began leaning toward me. “New rules.”
Placing my palms flat against his chest, I stopped his forward motion. “Don’t.”
Those blue eyes locked on me and drew me in like a tractor beam. “Don’t do this?” he asked, pressing his lips to my collarbone.
“Yeah.”
“Or this?” he asked as his hot mouth trailed upward until I felt his tongue against my lobe and his warm breath tickled my ear.
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he said easily. “Wanna let go of my shirt?”
Only then did I realize that I’d grabbed the front of his shirt and was practically clinging as every nerve ending in my body quivered with desire. “Yeah.”
“Got any beer?”
“In the fridge,” I said, biting the inside of my cheek so my body would focus on pain rather than pleasure. I watched him stroll into the kitchen. More accurately, I zoomed in on how his faded jeans molded his particularly fabulous butt and muscular thighs. “Bring me one too, please,” I said, hoping more alcohol would addle my brain.
“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a beer drinker.”
“I’m not, but I didn’t think you’d mix me a Cosmo.”
“Happy to.”
“Okay, then I’ll take the Cosmo.” Screw beer—a 100 percent alcohol drink was far more expedient than a beer. Besides, as far as I was concerned, the only difference between beer and urine was temperature. Oh, and I knew beer was the not-so-ex-Mrs. McGarrity’s beverage of choice.
Thinking about Ashley doused me like a cold shower. I might be past the rebound stage, but Liam’s life was still tangled with his ex-wife’s. The last thing I needed was a man with baggage.
He delivered the Cosmo and I took a sip. It burned sweetly down my throat, bringing with it some liquid sanity. I motioned to his beer with my glass. “Feel free to take that with you when you leave.”
He smiled. “Tossing me out?”
“Yes. I’m working.”
He tipped the bottle and took a drink. “You’d rather work than fool around?”
Um, no! “With you? Yes.” The lie rolled off my citrus-liquored tongue with ease.
He drained the bottle. “Your call. Lock up after me.”
I should have been thrilled that he made a speedy departure. Instead, I lean
ed against the cold faux-wood door and guzzled my Cosmo to drown my loneliness and the residual desire that still had my insides all twisted.
The man made me crazy, and the last thing I needed was more crazy in my life. What I needed was mindless entertainment.
After placing my glass in the sink, I went into my bedroom and stripped off my clothes, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and washed my face. Going to my dresser, I opened my lingerie drawer and rummaged around, looking for the new stuff I’d bought last week. “Son of a bitch!” I muttered.
My intruder had left the skeleton but taken my brand-new-tags-still-on LaPerla thongs. “Great, just what I need!” The image of some frat boy wearing my expensive panties on his head really frosted my cookies.
Nowadays anyone who isn’t in debt isn’t trying hard enough.
nine
AT LEAST YOUR INTRUDER had good taste in lingerie,” Becky said as we strolled past the fountain in front of the Gardens Mall.
I’d valet parked by the entrance next to the Brios, knowing without even discussing it that the two of us would have dinner after I replaced my pilfered panty.
“Where to first?” she asked.
I was itching to take the immediate right into Crate & Barrel, but I didn’t dare. Whatever money I’d decided to blow would be on new school clothes and replacement undies. “Victoria’s Secret.”
As it turns out, it would have been cheaper to buy the Juicy Couture dress at full price at Nordy’s than it was to do my back-to-school shopping. I came within seventeen dollars of the five-hundred-dollar limit on my Victoria’s Secret credit card.
“Sephora?” Becky asked, her green eyes glinting.
“Absolutely. A new shade of lip gloss will cheer me up.”
“Doing Liam would have cheered you up more,” Becky said quietly as we waited by the glass elevator.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you about that.”
“Sure you should have.” Becky and I stepped into the elevator. “It’s the closest I’ve come to foreplay since the Clinton administration.”
3 Fat Chance Page 12
