Beautiful Maids All in a Row

by Jennifer Harlow

  “Do you think he’ll call again?”

  “I doubt it. He’s had his fun.”

  “You’re still moving to another hotel,” he told me. “If it is him, he knows where you are now. I don’t want to risk his coming after you.”

  “He won’t. He’s probably a thousand miles from here right now. At least here you’re across the hall,” I said. Luke glanced away from me, turning a little red in the cheeks. “I—I mean you all are across the hall,” I added quickly. “The whole team. All of you, not…um…”

  Mercifully, the telephone rang, saving me from myself. Luke pushed himself up to get it. He didn’t say anything, just shook his head and listened. After thirty seconds, he hung up with a defeated sigh. He stood by the phone, eyes moving like he was reading a report.

  “Luke?” I asked after a second

  “Prepaid cell. Totally untraceable.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  Luke ran his fingers through his hair, eyes bugging out of his head. “Okay…that settles it. You’re not to go anywhere alone, I don’t care if it’s to the fucking bathroom, do you hear me?” He must have been upset to use the “F” word.

  “He won’t come after me,” I insisted. “He wants to prove he’s smarter than me, and he can’t do that if I’m dead.”

  “You’re still getting a guard. And I’ll get you a permit to carry. Legally.”

  “Sure, fine,” I said. “A bodyguard’s a waste of manpower, though.”

  Luke glanced at me before quickly looking away. He looked like a kid who’d just got caught looking at his father’s porno. “I’ll risk it.”

  My cheeks grew hot again. “You’re the boss.” I cleared my throat to fill the silence and stood up from the bed on now sturdy legs. “I’m kind of tired, I’m gonna…” I gestured to the door.

  The corners of his mouth fell down. “Will you be okay alone?” Luke asked. “If you want, you can…” I arched my eyebrows and tilted my head to the side. “Yeah, probably a bad idea,” he chuckled nervously. “Enough gossip swirling around as it is.”

  I smiled to reassure him. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine. Old Faithful’s under my pillow. She’ll keep me safe.”

  “Okay,” he said with a half-smile. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he looked a little disappointed. Guess my hormones were catching.

  “ ’Night,” I said as I left. When I got back to my room, I sighed. Alone with my gun once again. That used to be enough.

  —

  I sat in someone’s impersonal gray cubicle as my eyes grew strained from the glow of the monitor. I’d been typing up my notes on the Woodsman for over an hour, adding information about last night’s little call. They could choose to believe me or not, but by God they were going to read about it. There were three schools of thought on the previous night’s occurrence. About half the people believed the call was from him; those were the smart ones. Most of the rest believed it was some sort of joke, a crank with a vivid imagination. Those people could kiss my ass. The third—consisting of mainly Agent Roth—thought I’d made the whole thing up for attention. That little shit weasel was really getting on my nerves.

  Agent Jones, who from his pained expression and constant sneer was part of the second half, kept glancing over at me from across the room just to make sure I was not being throttled by some phantom attacker. Luke gave him guard duty, a job that chafed both of us. When I got up for my run after a fitful sleep, I opened my door to find Agent Jones standing in the hall like a statue. I tried to convince him I didn’t need an escort, but orders were orders. I ended up waiting fifteen minutes for the man to change into his sweats, and then he trailed behind me the entire two miles. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his stony face scanning the street for potential attackers. Every time a man came along from the opposite direction, Jones would run alongside me, keeping my pace, and glaring at the passersby like Stalin reborn. So much for a relaxing run. Even when Clarkson walked out of the conference room and over to my cubicle, I could see Jones watching him. Clarkson, for God’s sake! I could take him.

  “This is the autopsy report on Audrey Burke,” Clarkson said, handing me the file.

  “Anything of interest?” I asked as I leafed through it.

  He shook his head. “No fiber or fluids; everything else is the same, too.”

  With a sigh, I handed the file back. “Any clue when we go back to Washington?”

  “This afternoon,” he answered. “All her belongings are on a train right now. They’ll be waiting for you when we get there.”

  I turned back to the screen. “Good.” Clarkson stood there, shifting from foot to foot, looking down at me. “Anything else?”

  “What did he sound like?”

  I looked up from the screen. “Like a man. He sounded like a normal guy, like someone’s father or brother.”

  “Are you scared he’ll come after you?”

  “Not with Captain America watching my back,” I said, glancing at Jones, who watched us intently. I waved and smiled, which was returned with a scowl. Great, I had Oscar the Grouch as a bodyguard. Where was Kevin Costner when you needed him?

  “I’d be shitting myself,” Clarkson said. “Especially after…you know. What happened before,” he finished delicately.

  “If I get scared or distracted, I won’t be at my best, and he wins. And I hate to lose,” I said with a mischievous smile.

  Clarkson smiled back. “I’ll see if I can find you an inventory list so you can get started.”

  “Thank you.”

  Clarkson sauntered off in pursuit of my list as I continued to type up my notes. I had a whole two minutes before someone else interrupted my work. It was hard being so popular. “Dr. Ballard?” Jones asked.

  I looked up to find the man holding a gigantic bouquet of blood-red roses in his arms. “For me? You shouldn’t have.”

  “These just arrived for you,” he said as he set them down. “They’re clean.”

  There were two dozen of the finest American Beauty roses on the eastern seaboard in the bouquet. Each rose was in full bloom, with the petals spread out like welcoming hands. Sitting in the middle of the arrangement was a white card with Iris written in a woman’s flowery hand. Normally if I were sent a bouquet worth over two hundred dollars I would have been positively giddy, but looking at those flowers I just felt nauseated. “Find Agent Hudson,” I ordered. Jones nodded and stalked off. I gazed at the flowers again, feeling his icy presence radiating from them. Red roses were forever ruined for me.

  Luke and Jones returned in a matter of seconds along with Clarkson, Liu, and Martinez. They surrounded my cubicle in a protective semicircle of masculinity, as if the Woodsman were hiding in the flowers, waiting to leap out at me. I’d always wanted a big brother; now I had five.

  “Jesus,” Liu murmured. “Those have to be worth a fortune.”

  “Two hundred and twenty-five,” Clarkson said. The men all looked at him. He shrugged. “Anniversary present.”

  Luke took out a pair of latex gloves and handed them to me. “Here.”

  After snapping them on, I took the envelope out of the flowers. “Gee, I wonder who these are from,” I said in my usual sarcastic tone. In my hand, I held a simple white card with the same flowery handwriting as on the envelope. “ ‘Dearest Iris,’ ” I read. “ ‘So enjoyed our talk last night. Hope to do it again sometime. Love, Dr. W.’ ”

  “Love?” Martinez asked.

  “Yep,” I said, holding the card up for all to read. “Cute, huh?”

  Luke snatched the card from my hand. “Liu, Martinez, you go down to the flower shop with our sketch. The deliveryman had to sign them in here, so get the name from downstairs. I doubt it, but he could have come in himself to order them. If he didn’t, then get the order form; it should have the credit card number he used. We’ll run the LUDs from the shop and see if we can trace the call.”

  Martinez and Liu nodded in unison and scampered off.

&nbs
p; Luke turned to Clarkson and Jones. “You two, follow up on anything they find. I want to know whose credit card he used. This could be his mistake; let’s make him choke on it.” They were about to leave when Luke grabbed the flowers and handed them to Jones. “Have forensics give these a quick pass-over, then burn them.”

  Jones nodded and dashed off as well.

  “First time in two years someone sent me flowers,” I said. “Why couldn’t it have been George Clooney?”

  Luke didn’t smile. “Why did he send them?”

  “Well, I am what all the mass murderers dream about at night. I’m sure they all have a poster of me hanging from their walls,” I said with a shit-eating grin.

  Luke didn’t smile back this time either. My best material wasted. “Why did he send them to you?” he asked again.

  With a sigh, I fell back into my seat. “To prove to me he can get to me anywhere, even inside a secure federal facility.”

  “You send red roses to a girlfriend or wife,” Luke pointed out. “Is that how he feels about you?”

  “Maybe. He’s intrigued by me,” I said, picking up a fallen petal. “Red roses symbolize passion.”

  “Passion?”

  “Yes. He sees us as having a passionate tête-à-tête, but it has little to do with sex. More hunter and prey than lovers. What gets the old fires going more than taking a life? Having that power?”

  “So it’s a threat?”

  “Or it could be him just showing off, proving he’s better than me. He has money to burn on expensive roses, he can reach me here and in my hotel, I’m no match for him.”

  “You still think he won’t come after you?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Despite the posturing, deep down he’s scared of me, hence using a telephone and flower service; both have little to no risk directly to him. He can menace me from a distance, but until I become a real threat, he’ll stay away.”

  “And when you become a real threat?”

  “Then I’ll have you to protect me,” I said with a sweet smile.

  Luke finally smiled back. He really should do it more often. “Well, in case I’m not around, you’ll have this.” He pulled out a piece of yellow paper and handed it to me. “Permit. You can now carry your gun.”

  As if I hadn’t been carrying it already. “Thank you.”

  “We leave for Washington at eleven.”

  Luke returned to the conference room, and I to the computer screen. The little words looked blurry and nonsensical on the screen. Okay, to be totally honest, my heart was drumming a mile a minute. That psycho went to a lot of trouble to send me those damn flowers. He was threatened, and for a man who was all about control, that was not a good thing. Men like that tended to do whatever they felt was necessary to regain that control. I would just have to be ready for him when he did.

  Chapter 15

  Why couldn’t anything ever be easy? Why was it so hard for people to just do their jobs properly so others didn’t have to suffer? Was it so hard to catalogue a few personal items of a murder victim and then put said items in the place they were supposed to be? Apparently.

  I’d been searching for Justine’s items that Chuck gave us for over an hour in the basement of HQ in D.C. They were supposed to have been catalogued and put with the rest of the evidence. Yeah. Right. There were dozens of rows of boxes, not only from this case. Everything anyone in the history of mankind had ever lost ended up in those boxes. I was sure Jimmy Hoffa was around somewhere. There were stacks and stacks of brown and white boxes one on top of the other just waiting for the second I touched them to come crashing down on my head. The rickety ladder I was on kept jerking as I examined a box filled with leather bondage items and dildos. I’d found the most interesting things in those boxes. Knitted sweaters with puppies on them in the same box as a wide variety of adult video titles like Spank Me All Night and Batlick and Ballin’. To each his own.

  When I was brained by a vibrator, I decided it was time to give up. My hay fever was acting up from all the dust coating the boxes anyway. If I hadn’t found it by now, then it was lost forever. I even had Methuselah, as I called the attendant down here, look, with no result. There had to have been ten thousand boxes, all from cold cases or pending ones. I was screwed before I started.

  I heard steps coming toward me and turned in their direction. Luke maneuvered through the narrow aisle toward me. “It’s eight o’clock,” he told me. “You’ve been down here for five hours.”

  “I can’t find the fucking box Chuck gave us. It isn’t with the others.” I started down the precarious ladder, which shook with every step, and Luke, ever the gentleman, rushed over to steady it for me.

  “It must have been consolidated with the rest,” he said.

  I took the final step down and jumped to the floor. “I looked. It isn’t there. It wasn’t catalogued, either.”

  “Look for it tomorrow,” he said. “Richmond called. The flowers were called in from the same cell that you were called from.”

  “So, another dead end. What about the credit card?”

  “It belonged to Audrey Burke.”

  I shook my head. “Her cards were accounted for. They were in her purse—I saw them.”

  “He could have copied down the number.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Dinner?”

  “I could eat,” I admitted. “As long as you pay.”

  “Of course.”

  My purse was under the table, which was surrounded by opened boxes consisting of the personal effects of the deceased women all in a row. I would deal with them the next day. I was starving. Just as I was about to sign out at the desk, Methuselah shuffled out of the rows behind us, carrying a box. “I found it!” he hollered, his voice echoing through the warehouse.

  “Just put it with the others,” I shouted. “I’ll be back early tomorrow, so leave everything out.”

  Methuselah muttered something to himself and changed his course. I finished signing out, and Luke and I walked to the waiting elevator. “What are you in the mood for?” Luke asked as the doors closed. “Thai?”

  “How about Italian?” I suggested. “Is Dante’s still open?”

  “No, it closed about a year ago.” He paused. “How about Caroline’s Diner? It’s just around the corner.” Luke looked over at me, his mouth gaping open. “I’m so sorry. I forgot that’s where you and Hayden…”

  I cleared my throat. “No, um, Caroline’s is good. I could really go for some chili.”

  “Are you sure?” Luke asked with an air of skepticism. “I don’t want—”

  “Luke, Caroline’s is fine,” I insisted.

  “Okay.”

  We walked the two blocks in silence. When we entered Caroline’s, I was sent back in time. I wasn’t even around in the fifties, but being in the diner made me nostalgic for it. The floor was black and white checkers and the waitresses wore red-and-white checkerboard shirts and white paper hats. All that was missing was a pair of roller skates and popping bubble gum. Posters for movies like The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause hung on the walls, along with old license plates and advertisements for drag racing. A turquoise jukebox sat in the back corner playing “Duke of Earl.” The place was nearly deserted, with only two couples sitting in the red vinyl booths. I took a seat at the counter, the same one I had that day. A pain gripped my heart when I looked toward the glass door. I half expected him to walk in like he did that first day, wearing a dark brown long-sleeved shirt and lime-green scrubs.

  I’d been in town to do the final paperwork with the FBI. It was my first time in D.C. and I’d just stopped at the first restaurant I came across. I sat at the counter, pulled out my favorite book, and started to chow down on chili. Little did I know that at the same time, the future love of my life had fallen asleep on the Metro and had overshot his stop. He’d been up for thirty-six hours, and all he wanted to do was climb into bed. A man coughing next to him jarred him awake. Thinking it was his stop, Hayden jumped off the train. But when
he found himself not in Georgetown but miles away, my Hayden simply shook his head and chuckled. He decided to cross the street to grab a cup of coffee. He called it fate; I called it luck.

  Back then I was used to men looking at me, but this one was staring at me like I had a monkey on my head, eyes wide in awe. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I turned to glare and he quickly looked away, turning bright red at being caught. He was cute, though a little on the skinny side, and his raven-black hair had that tousled look like he had just gotten out of bed. He had a straight nose and chin, and the most expressive chocolate eyes I’d ever had the courage to look into. I returned to my book, and he went back to staring at me. Occasionally our glances would catch, making us both blush.

  The glances couldn’t last, though. I had to catch a train back to Philadelphia, so I paid my bill and walked past my future with a smile. Hayden followed me out of the diner and onto the Metro. Normally a strange man trailing me would unnerve me, but not this time. I heard his footsteps behind me, and the biggest smile crossed my face. On the Metro he positioned himself directly across from me, and our coy glances continued all the way to Union Station. By then he was feeling foolish. His shyness kicked in, and he was going to just leave it at those glances. I was more than a little disappointed when he didn’t stand to get off the train like me, but I got off anyway. I was halfway up the escalator when I heard a man shouting behind me. He pushed past people up the escalator with my book in hand—it had fallen out of my bag on the train. I thanked him, and then we just stood there smiling at each other. The rest was history.

  Our waitress jolted me off Memory Lane. “Welcome to Caroline’s,” she said, handing me a menu. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Two coffees,” Luke said.

  The waitress walked away, scribbling in her pad.

  I glanced at the door again. “It feels so weird being here,” I said. “I can’t explain it, but…I can feel him here. I got the same feeling in Grafton, too, especially by the river. When I sit on one of those old wooden benches and watch the sun set on the water…” I shook my head. “I can still feel his hand on mine.”