Sundays Are for Murder

by Marie Ferrarella

  Charley shook her head. “I don’t know. It would have taken an awfully strong woman to strangle them like that.”

  “There are strong women.” He leaned his head in so that no one else could hear what he had to say. “You, for instance.”

  She knew he was referring to the way she’d wrapped her legs around him while they were making love. She’d always prided herself on her strength. “I suppose it’s worth considering,” she allowed.

  “So is this a step back?” he asked. “If I’m right.”

  “Big if,” she emphasized. “Don’t forget, we do have that sketch.”

  “Based on the recollections of a wino,” he reminded her. “Not exactly the most reliable source.”

  “Even winos are right once in a while,” she commented, chewing again on her lower lip. The thought nagged at her that they were no further along than they’d been before.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “YOU WERE RIGHT,” Nick told her as he hung up the telephone. He turned from his desk to look at Charley. “That was a Detective Alberts with the Costa Mesa police department. Froman gave it up as soon as the local police began leaning on him. Got his story all confused and then just broke down.”

  It had been two days since they’d discovered their so-called latest victim. Two days since he’d made love with Charley and he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Or out of his blood. At this point, he wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing or a good one.

  Nick smiled, nodding. “Nice call.”

  Looking up from her desk, Charley began to answer, then stopped to sneeze. “You saw it, too.”

  But she’d been the first to call attention to it, Nick thought. And he’d always believed in giving credit where it was due. Obviously she wasn’t the kind who liked to hog the glory. Nice to know, he mused. There were a lot of things he liked about his partner.

  He inclined his head. “Generous.”

  She didn’t feel very generous. More like this side of miserable. She sneezed twice more before she could comment.

  “Thanks. I do what I can,” she quipped. “Which right now isn’t very much.” She stared at the screen she’d been looking at now for the past few minutes. Her eyes felt dry. Too bad the rest of her didn’t. “I have this awful feeling he’s going to strike again. I don’t know if it’s because he’s thumbing his nose at us, or because his need to bring sinners back to the fold has gotten too much for him.”

  “So we’ve pretty much thrown out my theory about it being a woman,” Nick guessed.

  Charley nodded, stifling another sneeze. “Pretty much.” She grinned. “Maybe some other time.”

  Nick picked up a box of tissues from another desk and brought it over to hers. “Cold or allergies?”

  Charley pulled out a tissue just in time. “I don’t have allergies.”

  Facing her, Nick rested his hip against the next desk. “Then by process of elimination, it’s a cold.” That same smile entered his eyes, the one that had been her undoing the other night. He leaned forward, lowering his voice so that only she could hear. “Floor too cold for you the other night?” he asked. And then he smiled. “I didn’t notice any lack of heat.”

  She felt something sting her cheeks and had to concentrate to keep the color from rising. She answered each of his questions. “Yes, maybe and I don’t remember—except that there was a rug in the room.”

  “I stand corrected. But I remember everything else vividly.” The humor was only marginally present as he looked at her.

  A giant of a butterfly came out of nowhere, insisting on fluttering in the pit of her stomach. Or maybe that was just her reacting to her cold, Charley thought. The next minute, her eyes were squeezing shut as another sneeze all but exploded. Her chest began to ache. Charley grabbed a tissue and put it to use.

  “Maybe I do, too,” she finally admitted, saying the words so softly he had to stare at her lips even though he was right next to her. Charley took in a deep breath, telling herself she wasn’t going to sneeze anymore. Or react to this man beside her.

  Taking a breath, she nodded toward the adjacent room, which was barely more than a cubbyhole with phones. “Isn’t it your turn to go through the calls and see if there’s anything worth looking at twice?”

  They all took their turn at that. Per the assistant director’s orders, each call that came in with supposed information about the serial killer had to be followed up, no matter how off-the-wall the claim seemed to be. No one wanted to take a chance of having a vital clue fall through the cracks.

  Because he’d groaned instead of voicing a denial, she knew she’d guessed right.

  “The Bureau better come through with a good vision-care plan,” Nick muttered as he withdrew. “My eyes, not to mention my mind, are about to go numb.”

  As he left, he passed Alice on her way in. The woman barely looked at him as she acknowledged his presence. He wondered how long the secretary was going to bear a grudge. He’d yelled at her when she’d called several weeks ago, thinking that she was Dixon, calling to rattle him again. He’d apologized once he realized his mistake, but the woman looked nervous whenever she was around him now.

  She was an odd one, he thought. He knew that Charley had taken it upon herself to try to find someone to go out with Alice. So far, there were no takers. He didn’t wonder.

  Placing the papers she was holding on Charley’s desk, Alice pushed back a strand of her hair. The tall, angular blonde looked visibly distressed. She offered a spasmodic smile and pushed her glasses back up her nose. Neither her hair nor her glasses obeyed. Both slipped forward again.

  “Assistant Director Kelly would like you to sign these papers.” A clear-nail-polished finger pointed to the top paper.

  Looking away from her monitor, her sneezing temporarily on hold, Charley glanced at the heading on the top sheet. She frowned. She thought she’d already signed that one. Her brain was getting muddled. With a sigh, she picked up a pen from her desk and signed in the appropriate places, initialing where Alice instructed.

  Finished, she glanced up. Something akin to fear was on the other woman’s face. Charley braced herself. She knew she didn’t have to say anything. Alice was too timid to begin a conversation on her own. In a minute, the woman would be gone.

  But she just couldn’t ignore the secretary’s expression.

  “What’s the matter, Alice?”

  The woman always looked as if she felt she was intruding, as if she wasn’t comfortable in her own skin. Charley felt sorry for her.

  “How close are you to catching this monster?” Alice finally managed to ask.

  “Not as close as I’d like.” And then, because it was Alice, because she could see that the woman was struggling with her fears since she lived alone, Charley added, “But probably closer than he’d like. If you’re worried, Alice, you don’t have to be.” She felt another sneeze coming on. Grabbing a tissue, she waited. “Unless you have a secret lover we don’t know about.”

  Alice’s brown eyes widened. “No, I—what do you mean?”

  Charley wondered if Alice read the reports she was given to input into the database. This wasn’t anything new anymore. Charley specifically remembered entering it into a report she subsequently gave to the A.D. Maybe the woman’s fears had blocked out everything else.

  In any case, Charley knew she wasn’t telling any tales out of school. Cases couldn’t be discussed with outsiders, not people who were part of the task force.

  “The affairs,” she repeated. The sneeze she was waiting for seemed to subside. Charley took a breath, then continued. “Rule one for our killer is that he only kills women who are having affairs with married men. Unless you’re doing that, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. And even then, he only seems to go after women who were wearing crosses.” She looked at the woman’s high-necked blouse. She’d never seen Alice wearing any jewelry at all. “And you don’t.”

  Alice surprised her by announcing, “Oh, but I do.” Digging i
nto the high collar, she fished out a long chain. On the end of it was a rather large, plain gold cross. “It belonged to my father. It’s not delicate like yours, but it’s all I have to remember him by.”

  Charley fingered the small cross, a duplicate of her sister’s, at her throat. “You have your memories,” Charley pointed out just as an unexpected sneeze got the better of her.

  A sad expression washed over Alice’s face, lasting only a moment as she attempted to rally. “Memories are hard to hold in your hand.” Alice looked at her pointedly. “Are you taking anything for that?”

  Her eyes felt watery, Charley thought as she shook her head. “It’ll pass.”

  Aside from taking an all-day cold tablet before she left the apartment, she didn’t have time to baby a cold. There was a serial killer to track down before he killed again. And it was a he. Despite what Nick had suggested, she was willing to bet her life that the killer was a man. Granted there seemed to be some feminine overtones in the case, such as the gentle way the victims were all laid out, as if remorse was involved at the last moment. But if the killer was a woman, there was no doubt in Charley’s mind that the victims would have been stabbed. Knives were instruments of passion and women were passionate when they killed.

  “STAY BACK,” Charley warned Dakota as she walked into the apartment that evening. She dropped her purse on the floor by the door, tossing her keys into the opening. The keys drooped and fell on the floor beside the purse. “You might catch this cold and believe me, you really don’t want it.”

  Dakota ignored the command and pranced from foot to foot in front of her mistress, eager for companionship and to be petted. With a sigh, Charley sank down on a nearby chair.

  “You want to go out for a run, don’t you? I’m sorry girl, maybe tomorrow.” She thought about taking the dog for a short walk, then decided to wait. The cold had definitely gotten the better of her for the moment. “How are you at boiling tea?” The German shepherd cocked her head, looking at her. “I didn’t think so. I should have picked up one on the way home.” But all she could think about on her way home was getting home before her eyes closed. The way they were doing now. “Maybe I’ll take just a short nap,” she said to the dog. “With any luck, I should be good as new, or some reasonable facsimile of it, after a short nap.”

  Getting up, she paused only long enough to make sure the dog still had water in her bowl, then pointed herself in the direction of the bedroom. Dakota trotted after her. The animal lost no time in making herself comfortable on the worn comforter that was kept on the floor beside the double bed.

  “It was that run in the rain that did it,” Charley muttered as she sank down on top of the bed. She closed her eyes. “Remind me never to run in the rain again. And remind me to send a nasty letter to the weather bureau. It’s not supposed to rain this time of year.” She sighed, willing herself to relax. “I’ve got it someplace in writing.”

  The moment she drew the comforter on the bed around her body, chimes echoed in the bedroom.

  “I must be worse than I thought,” she murmured to the dog. “I’m hearing bells.”

  Opening her eyes, she saw that Dakota was no longer sprawled out on the floor. Her body was rigid, at attention and her ears were pointed in the direction of the front door.

  “Guess I’m not hearing bells after all. Not unless they’re loud enough for you to hear, too.” She closed her eyes again, deciding to ignore her visitor.

  But whoever it was rang the doorbell again. And again.

  “Only one way to handle this, I guess.” Charley was not in the best of moods as she threw off the comforter and sat up. What she needed, aside from peace and quiet, was another dose of cold tablets. The ones she’d taken at lunch had worn off an hour ago. They usually kept her going for a while.

  With a sigh of resignation, Charley dragged herself into an upright position and then got off the bed. Dakota followed suit like a four-legged, furry shadow.

  Charley looked through the peephole. If it was someone selling subscriptions or cookies, she was just going to silently move away from the door and return to the bedroom.

  But it wasn’t someone selling subscriptions or cookies, or anything else for that matter. It was Alice. There was a smile on her face and a large, white Styrofoam container in her hands.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  PUZZLED, CHARLEY UNLOCKED and opened the door.

  “What are you doing here?” Realizing that her question probably sounded rude to Alice, she cleared her throat and started again. “I mean, hi.” She offered the woman a smile. “But what are you doing here?”

  Alice looked over Charley’s shoulder into the apartment. She regarded the dog uneasily. “May I come in?”

  “Sure. Sure.”

  Charley stepped back. Beside her, Dakota remained where she was, guarding her territory. The moment Alice began to enter, a low, guttural sound came from the canine. Sucking in her breath, Alice looked at the animal in alarm. Charley grabbed the dog’s collar and pulled her to the side before Dakota could do anything beyond growl.

  “Don’t mind Dakota. She’s not always the friendliest dog.”

  But even as Charley said the words, she remembered that her pet had reacted differently to Nick right from the start. The animal had sniffed, checked him out and then behaved as if the man had always been coming by the apartment. Maybe it was the pizza. But now that she thought about it, Dakota’s reaction to Nick, pizza or no pizza, was unusual. The dog’s response to Alice was more in keeping with her general behavior. Maybe the German shepherd had given her seal of approval to Brannigan.

  Why not? Charley mused. After all, Dakota was a female.

  She gave Alice an encouraging smile as she drew Dakota back a little further. “It takes her time to warm up to strangers.”

  Alice’s eyes never left the canine at Charley’s side, even as she moved stiffly into the kitchen, placing the container she’d brought with her on the table.

  The woman looked as if she was going to hyperventilate, Charley thought.

  Alice ran her tongue along her lips. “Would you mind very much putting her into another room? I was bitten by a dog once and they scare me.”

  The idea of being afraid of a dog was completely foreign to Charley. But there was a line of perspiration forming along the other woman’s brow, sticking her bangs to her forehead. Alice was obviously terrified.

  “No problem.” Holding on to Dakota’s collar, Charley maneuvered the dog back into the bedroom. Unlike Sunday when she’d trotted into the bedroom on command, this time Dakota clearly was not happy about being shut out. “This won’t take long, girl,” she promised. Closing the door, she crossed back into the living room where Alice stood waiting.

  “I brought you some chicken soup,” Alice told her, nodding toward the container. “Homemade,” she added. “You sounded pretty bad in the office.”

  “Nothing a few hours’ sleep and some cold tablets won’t cure,” Charley assured her. “I bounce back pretty fast.” She noted that Alice seemed crestfallen. Not wanting to hurt the woman’s feelings, Charley did what she could to soothe them. “But the chicken soup is certainly welcome.” The kitchen was only two steps from where she was standing. Charley reached for the container. “I didn’t realize you knew where I lived.”

  The small smile that graced Alice’s thin lips was almost philosophical in nature. “People forget that all the information in the department gets filtered through me in one way or another. I tend to just fade into the walls.”

  Although agreeing with her, Charley took the diplomatic approach. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Prying off the lid, she took a deep whiff of the aroma that came swirling from depths of the container. It did smell good, she thought. She felt Alice watching her every move.

  Obligingly, she took a small sip. The soup was still warm, bordering on hot. She had to admit that it did feel good going down.

  “But you could dress a little more, um, vividly,�
�� Charley suggested, settling on a word she hoped wouldn’t offend Alice. Her self-esteem reminded Charley of delicate china, china that would easily crack at the slightest bit of jostling. “Beiges, browns and the color taupe don’t exactly stick in anyone’s mind. Maybe you could try something brash,” Charley suggested, then added with a smile, “like light blue.”

  She earned a shy smile in return. “Maybe I’ll go shopping,” Alice told her softly.

  The woman needed help. Otherwise, her wardrobe wouldn’t have been so dated. These days, almost every fashion had a following. Styles from decades ago had made a comeback. But even with all this going on, Alice still managed to look as if she couldn’t fit in anywhere. As if there was no place for her in any decade.

  “I’ll go with you if you like,” Charley offered, making what she felt was the ultimate sacrifice for another woman. Then, in case Alice took that to mean tomorrow, she said, “When I’m feeling better.”

  Alice stared at her for a long moment. So long that Charley was tempted to ask if anything was wrong. And then the secretary asked, “Would you?”

  Charley smiled. She’d never seen Alice socialize with anyone. Even at the company functions she had attended, she always hung back in the shadows. Having someone volunteer for something as simple as accompanying her on a shopping trip was probably a big deal for her.

  Charley smiled. “Sure.”

  “You’re not too busy?”

  Charley shrugged, taking another sip of the soup. “This case has to break sometime. And even if it doesn’t, I still have some time coming to me.”

  But Alice shook her head. “I meant in your personal life,” she explained. When Charley eyed her quizzically, Alice stammered, “You and Special Agent Brannigan…” Unable to finish her statement, her voice trailed off.

  Maybe it was the fog in her brain, or maybe Bill and Sam were right when they’d kidded her that Alice had some kind of a female crush on her, but Charley could have sworn she detected a note of accusation in the other woman’s voice.