I don’t waste time on feeling guilty. But I’m not stupid, either. When Jack slid a look from me to the portfolio and back again, I knew enough to get a little nervous. I also knew not to let it show. In fact, I knew I’d been handed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, if not on a silver platter, than at least in a leather portfolio.
Have I mentioned that I looked stunning that night in a little black dress cut up to here and down to there? It was what I’d worn to my former fiancé’s most recent engagement party, and I’d pulled it out especially for tonight’s dinner to remind myself I was nobody’s fool. Not even a teacher from a school that didn’t exist.
I leaned forward, and this time, I was the one who made the move. Jack’s left hand was on the table and I skimmed a finger lightly over it.
His eyes lit up. “I see you don’t want to talk about President Garfield anymore.”
I sparkled just enough to look cute without looking too anxious. “All that old stuff, it’s all such a silly waste of time,” I said, waving away the subject as inconsequential because, let’s face it, I now had bigger fish to fry. “But I have been thinking about something we talked about back at the memorial once. You said you hoped Marjorie didn’t spend her life scrimping and saving and never buying all the wonderful things she wanted because, in the end, the bills didn’t matter as much as how she enjoyed her life.”
I felt a thrill shiver over Jack’s skin. I skipped my finger up his hand to his wrist and back down again. The smile he sent my way was hotter than the candlelight that flickered on the table between us.
“I was hoping . . .” I didn’t do bashful well, but heck, I’d been dating for years, I could blush with the best of them, and I pulled out all the stops. “Marjorie was never one of my favorite people, but I’ve been thinking . . . and hoping . . . that someday, I could be like her.” Even though I was lying through my teeth, I felt obligated to qualify the statement. Not that anyone near us heard or cared, but I couldn’t stand the thought that someone might think I was referring to Marjorie’s fashion sense, her awful perfume, or those nasty little head scarves of hers.
“Well, when it comes to her spending habits, anyway,” I added, just to make things crystal clear. “She didn’t let anything stand in the way of getting what she wanted. Somehow, even though she was just a retired librarian living on a fixed income, she managed to build her Garfield collection. I’d like to know how she did that. And I’d like to be able to do it, too. You know, buy the things I want. The things that would make me happy.”
If I suspected it was my imagination that caused that spark to flare in Jack’s eyes again, I was proved wrong when he moved like greased lightning and snatched my hand in his. His grip was a little too intimate to be just friendly. And too crushing to be taken as anything but a warning.
His smile, though, was as sweet as the crème brûlée, which had turned to a rock inside my stomach. “You’re a great kid,” he said, his voice as honeyed as the look in his eyes. “You’re beautiful. You’re sexy. You’re smart. But a little advice here from someone a little bit older and wiser: don’t be too smart for your own good.”
The waitress showed up and Jack quickly dropped my hand. He scrawled a name across the bottom of the charge receipt and added a whopping tip. But then, he could afford to. He wasn’t the one paying the bill.
I had added to my never list—
Never go to bed with a guy you don’t trust.
Never go to bed with a guy who might be a murderer.
And never even think about having sex with a guy who uses a phony credit card to pay for dinner.
Disappointing, sure, but the evening wasn’t a total bust. I’d learned something else about Jack: he was up to no good, all right, but something told me it wasn’t the no good I thought he was up to.
I smiled when he pulled out my chair. I chatted and laughed when he walked me back to my car and we talked about how he’d come from Hammond, Indiana, some weekend soon so we could see each other again.
When we got to the Mustang, I stopped dead and the bag with my leftover filet in it slipped from my hands and splatted on the pavement.
The light of a nearby streetlamp glared against the message scrawled on my windshield in garish pink lipstick.
Pepper, it said, you have to love ME.
“You would be wise to exert an extreme amount of caution. As I have mentioned to you previously, the man who shot me—”
“Was a stalker. Yeah, yeah. I remember.” When I got to the memorial the next Monday, I made the mistake of mentioning the Saturday night incident with my car and the cheap lipstick to the president. Now, I waved away his words of warning, and it was no wonder why.
After finding that message on the windshield of my car, I covered for the terror that snaked through me by making up a story to convince Jack it was nothing but a silly joke. That was all well and good until we said our good-byes and my overactive imagination spent the rest of the weekend constructing one frightening scenario after another. Hey, a single woman spends a lot of evenings at home, and a lot of those evenings, I’d spend watching old movies. Oh yeah, I’d seen them all: Play Misty for Me, Misery, (gulp!) Fatal Attraction . . .
My stalker-induced hysteria ranged from kidnapping to murder—and everything in between. I was on edge. I was twitchy. I was so strung out from not sleeping I’d nearly forgotten to put on my mascara that morning.
Where had it all gotten me? Nowhere but Anxiety City, and I was more than ready for a break. “I’m being careful,” I told the president and reminded myself.
“I trust you are locking your doors?”
It was a silly question so I didn’t bother to answer. Besides, I was tired of being a marshmallow. With that in mind, I’d gotten to work early that morning and stopped at the administration building first thing. I was armed with a computer printout that listed the addresses and phone numbers of all the Ryan Kubiliks I could find. There were only three of them, but that was OK. That meant I had few phone calls to make.
“You know, that Guiteau fellow, the one who shot me . . .”
The president droned on, but I was so not in the mood for stalker talk. I picked up the phone on the desk in the memorial office and made my calls. As it turned out, the first Ryan I asked for was one-and-a-half and at day care. Not a likely candidate for a MasterCard account. With the second call, I hit pay dirt.
Feeling pretty smug, I thanked the lady on the other end of the line and hung up the phone. “He’s dead,” I said.
“Guiteau? Most certainly he’s dead. He was hanged as a punishment for my murder.”
“I’m not talking about Guiteau. I’m talking about the guy whose name was on Jack’s credit card.” I’d told the president about that when I got to the memorial that morning, too, and never let it be said that it’s easy to explain credit cards to a man from the nineteenth century.
His brows dropped low over his eyes. “I once led an investigation of a gold scandal during the Grant Administration,” he rumbled. “That was back in ’69, and I am well aware that to you, that must seem a very long while ago. Still . . .” His blue eyes sparkled and his shoulders shot back. “When it comes to matters financial, I am sure I am still able to provide some sound advice. Shall we investigate?”
He didn’t wait for me to answer. He was already floating up the spiral staircase. I followed in a more conventional way.
It helped that while I was in the administration building that morning, I’d scooped up Ella’s extra set of keys, the ones that included the key to the ballroom. I unlocked the door, pulled it open, and stepped inside. It didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for, but then, the people who hid it up there in the first place thought they never had to worry about someone discovering their secret.
Not until Marjorie, who had to know everything there was to know about President Garfield, his life, his family, and his memorial did some snooping in places she never should have been.
I was down on my knees, peer
ing into the box I’d found tucked behind a marble column in the farthest, darkest corner of the ballroom, when the president leaned over my shoulder. “Explain this to me again. What are these things? And how do they work? What in the world are they for?”
I reached into the box and ran my hands through the dozens of credit cards in there. The names on every one of them, I was sure, belonged to dead people whose identities had been stolen. It was no wonder why. Phony credit cards were big business, and I didn’t mean just for the people who would eventually get their hands on them and use them for shopping sprees they never had to pay for. My theory was that the people who manufactured the cards, then distributed and sold them—the people who were using the memorial as a drop-off and pickup point—were making the really big bucks.
I sat back on my heels and shook my head. “I guess Marjorie was right when she said she was on to a get-rich-quick scheme,” I told the president. “Too bad she didn’t know it was going to end up costing her life.”
16
The first thing I did was tuck those bogus credit cards back where I’d found them. The second thing?
That was a no-brainer.
Murder or no murder, investigation or not, I was out of my league and I knew it. As soon as I got back downstairs, I called law enforcement.
It says something about those magic words stolen identities and the credit cards to go with them that the good guys arrived way sooner than should have been humanly possible. But then, I had a feeling some poor schlub flying from Chicago to Cleveland was bumped off the plane that morning.
Just so FBI Special Agent Scott Baskins could have that seat.
Surprised? Come on! I would have sooner shopped for my entire fall wardrobe at the local Goodwill than call Quinn, and Scott was the only other cop type I knew.
He arrived in a dark-colored Crown Victoria and brought along a team from the local office. They were all clean-cut, grim-faced guys wearing navy blue suits, white shirts, and striped ties. I felt like I’d stepped into an alternative universe adaptation of The Stepford Wives.
“Pepper, it’s good to see you again.” Scott had a hand out to shake mine as soon as he was through the front door of the memorial. The gesture was friendly enough to make it clear that I was the one who’d contacted him and set the investigation in motion, but not so friendly that his fellow G-men would ever have suspected that after I was shot back in Chicago, Scott sent showy bouquets of flowers in all my favorite colors. Though we’d spoken on the phone a couple times since and talked about getting together, his busy schedule always prevented it and I didn’t mind so much since I had been busy in my own way with Quinn at the time. I hadn’t seen Scott since he was working undercover as a street person while he investigated the goings-on at the Windy City clinic, which snatched the homeless off the streets and used them as guinea pigs in psychic experiments. He made a better impression in his suit and tie than he ever had in his beat-up Army jacket and dirty sneakers.
He wasn’t flashy by any means, but Scott wasn’t a bad-looking guy. A little older than me, and a hair taller, he had eyes that were as brown and as warm as a teddy bear. Aside from that cordial first hello, he was as serious as a heart attack, but then, I suppose that went along with his job description. He walked around the memorial long enough to get the lay of the land and directed the other agents and a couple techie types upstairs to the ballroom so they could begin their work. That taken care of and one hand gently at the small of my back, he ushered me into the memorial office, where Ella and Jim were already waiting.
The office was small, there weren’t enough chairs, and it was cramped. Scott didn’t let little things like that distract him. He explained what he and the other agents would be doing, carefully outlined the cemetery’s role in the process (which in case I need to point it out was pretty much “stay out of the way”), and had me go over everything I’d already told him on the phone. I did, starting from the day Ella asked me to help Marjorie plan the commemoration. Except for mentioning my chats with President Garfield, I didn’t leave out a thing. I told him I was suspicious of Marjorie and all the spending she’d been doing. I admitted I was curious about her murder and that I’d talked to a few people concerning it.
In addition to using a digital recorder, Scott took notes as I spoke. He was efficient and very official, and he had an awfully big gun in a holster on his belt. I admit, I was pretty impressed by it all, not to mention just the teeniest bit intimidated; I told him about Jack, too, and about how I knew for a fact he’d turned that sign upstairs around once. I did not, however, elaborate on the circumstances.
“You think this Jack McArthur has something to do with the counterfeiting? Or the murder?” Scott asked.
Since I was being honest, I had to shrug. “I can’t say for sure. I only know he lied about a whole bunch of stuff. He said he’s from Hammond, Indiana, and that he teaches at Lafayette High School, but there’s no school like that in Hammond, Indiana. He turned the sign around that one day, and he had a credit card with a dead man’s name on it.”
Scott consulted the notes he’d taken when we talked on the phone earlier. “And you saw the credit card with Ryan Kubilik’s name on it when this Jackson McArthur took you out to dinner.”
I wondered if it was some kind of federal crime to order a twelve-ounce filet and vanilla bean crème brûlée when it’s being paid for via a stolen credit card. I gulped and nodded.
When Scott hooked his arm through mine and turned me away so Ella and Jim couldn’t hear, I thought he was going to read me my rights. Instead, the smallest of smiles brightened his expression and he leaned close to say, “Which means you go out to dinner with guys who are visiting from out of town, right? Like me?”
Even before I had a chance to answer (and just for the record, I was all set to say yes), the office door swung open and Quinn Harrison walked in.
Scott and I were facing the door, standing next to each other with our arms entwined, and Quinn’s as-green-and-as-cold-as-emeralds gaze sized up the situation.
Scott’s teddy-bear-warm eyes scrutinized right back. How they both made up their minds about each other so quickly, I don’t know. Maybe it was a cop thing, like radar or mind reading or something. All I know is that when Scott disentangled himself from me so he could shake Quinn’s hand, the gesture was cold, formal, and just the slightest bit confrontational—on both their parts.
Scott swung around to include Ella and Jim when he explained, “I asked Detective Harrison from the Cleveland Homicide Unit to join us. I thought it would be best if we cooperated with the local police. Just in case there’s any connection between their murder case and our counterfeit credit cards.”
Even though Scott wasn’t holding on to me any longer, it didn’t keep Quinn from glancing over at the place where his hand had recently been on my arm. “Connections, sure. They’re important.” He breezed past us, but the office being as tiny as it is, he could only go as far as the desk.
Jim and Ella were sitting in the only two chairs in the room, and as if they’d choreographed the move, they stood at the same time. They sidled around us and out the door, and Jim mumbled something about how if Agent Baskins needed them, they’d be outside. It was a nice cover. I think that with both a hard-charging federal agent and a big-headed cop in the room, Jim and Ella figured it was going to be tough to get their share of the oxygen.
I wasn’t worried. A redhead always gets her share. Of everything. I was also so not in the mood for ego games. Scott and Quinn circled each other like cavemen trying to get the last juiciest bits of the saber-toothed tiger, and only too eager to escape the testosterone overdrive, I strolled behind the desk. “So what are your plans?” I asked.
“We’re going to—”
“We’ve already—”
They answered at the same time, and both shot looks at me like it was somehow my fault.
“We’re going to—” Scott said.
“We’ve already—” Quinn’s words overlap
ped his.
I rolled my eyes. It was the only appropriate response. While I was at it, I sat down. If they were going to keep this up, we might be locked together in the office for who knew how long, and I might as well be comfortable.
Obviously, a dose of common sense was in order, and no one could bring that to a situation like a woman.
I looked at Scott. “Will you take away the phony credit cards?”
It wasn’t my imagination. When he realized I’d picked him to speak first, his chin came up just a fraction of an inch and he slid Quinn a quick, sidelong look. “Too soon for that. The other agents are having a quick look around up in the ballroom right now. They’re going to leave things exactly the way they found them, and we’re going to stake out the memorial and wait to see who shows up for those credit cards. We’re going to need your help, Pepper. You said that while you were looking into Ms. Klinker’s murder—”
“You were looking into the murder? Oh, great!” Disgusted, Quinn threw his hands in the air, spun around, walked to the door, then rocketed back again. “How many times have I told you—”
“Pepper’s given us some useful information.” This was from Scott, and when he said it, I sat up and gave Quinn a look that clearly said, I told you so. “If it wasn’t for her, we wouldn’t have known about the identity thefts or the credit cards. It may have nothing to do with your case—”
“Of course it doesn’t.” Quinn crossed his arms over his chest. His shirt had so much starch in it, I swear I heard it crackle. Or maybe that was just his prickly personality making itself known. “Pepper should know better. Just like she should know to keep her nose out of police business.”
“You two obviously know each other.” It was the understatement of the year, but I guess I couldn’t blame Scott. He was the kind of guy who liked all his ducks in a row. He glanced from Quinn to me and back again to Quinn. “You’ve worked with Pepper before?”
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