On Pins and Needles

by Victoria Pade

  “Is the eternal optimist hitting a bump in the road?” he cajoled with a kindness that was new. And very sweet.

  “Who said I’m an eternal optimist?”

  Josh shrugged one of those broad shoulders. “I’m just guessing. But don’t you have to be to believe you can take on the wrong doers of the world and make them do right?”

  “Maybe. I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

  “It’ll all work out,” he assured her.

  “It’ll all work out?” she repeated with a wry laugh. “But only if you discover what really happened eighteen years ago and that my family had nothing to do with it.”

  “Which is what you’re watch-doggin’ me to make sure of.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  It must have been the return of a certain amount of bravado in her tone that made him chuckle. But it was a nice sound in the quiet of the office.

  Then he said, “Maybe tomorrow we can get out and do what we were supposed to do today—talk to your neighbors. You can keep your fingers crossed that something more conclusive will turn up and lead us in a different direction.”

  “And what about your acupuncture? Shall we try to do that tomorrow, too?”

  He made the face she was coming to think of as his acupuncture face.

  “Not tomorrow. If I even come into town we’re liable to be stuck here again. I’ll just pick you up at your place.”

  “So still no acupuncture.”

  “I’ll get around to it,” he said without much conviction.

  “We could do it right now,” she suggested just to see him squirm.

  He didn’t squirm, though. He just bathed her in the warm brilliance of a thousand-watt grin. “Can’t do it now. I need to get home, get to bed. Good police work takes a rested cop.”

  “Um-hmm,” she said to let him know she saw through him.

  Josh finished his hot chocolate then and tossed the paper cup into the trash basket beside her desk.

  It seemed like a signal that he was wrapping things up and Megan couldn’t think of any reason to delay that—despite the fact that she tried—so she dropped her own empty cup in the trash, too.

  That left the matter of his coat, which she was still wearing.

  She knew she needed to give it back to him but she wasn’t eager to do that, either. She was enjoying having it around her. Too much, she knew.

  So, with one last deep, indulging breath of the after shave scent that infused it, Megan shrugged out of the jacket and handed it to him. “Thanks for that, anyway.”

  “Sure.” Josh put it on and smiled. “Thanks for warming it up.”

  There was nothing about that that should have titillated her, but somehow it did. The titillation, though, was just one more thing she fought.

  “Do you want me to drive you back to the courthouse?” she asked then, hating the breathy under tone her voice had taken without warning. Or good reason.

  “It’s tempting but I think I need a little more air. Is your car out back?”

  “In the alley.”

  Josh nodded.

  It was a simple, courteous, meaningless exchange. But some thing between them seemed to change suddenly. It seemed to slow down. To turn intimate.

  “What time tomorrow?” Megan asked, trying to combat that sense of intimacy along with everything else she was working against.

  “Better make it ten. We don’t want folks answering their doors in their pajamas.”

  “And you won’t do anything without me before that?”

  “Not anything that has to do with this case. I don’t want to be pegged as one of the wrong doers you need to avenge.”

  Megan smiled at his teasing, wishing that she didn’t like him so much. Knowing only too well that she shouldn’t like him so much.

  But it didn’t make any difference because she couldn’t stop it.

  Any more than she could stop those thoughts about a good-night kiss from creeping into her mind. Again.

  On guard, she reminded herself once more. Be on guard against it.

  But the warning didn’t help any more than wishing she didn’t like him so much had.

  Because there they were, standing just a few feet inside the door, face to face, and Megan was looking up into midnight-blue eyes that seemed to emit enough heat to melt steel. Certainly enough to melt her and all her resolves.

  Then, without warning, Josh leaned in and actually did kiss her. Barely. A simple peck on the lips. An impulse cut short when he realized what he’d done.

  The expression on his face—still so close above hers—mirrored her surprise even as he grinned again. A lopsided grin. “Whoops,” he said as if the kiss had been an accident.

  “Slipped and fell, did you?”

  “I think I did. Internally, anyhow. Guess I’ll have to watch my step in the future.”

  “Guess so,” Megan confirmed to hide that she was really wishing he’d kiss her again. Longer this time…

  But he didn’t. Instead he took two steps backward and opened the office door.

  “See you in the morning,” he said in a husky voice, his gaze staying on her as if it were glued there.

  “In the morning,” Megan repeated, watching him go outside.

  As he did he shook his head and said, “Oh, man,” to himself.

  Megan wasn’t sure what that meant but it was the last thing he said before closing the door and heading back up the street the way they’d come.

  It wasn’t his reaction to that kiss that disturbed her, though. It was the fact that she had been so out of bounds.

  What am I doing? she wondered even as she followed his same path to the door and watched him through the glass.

  The guy had, just moments before, talked about changing her. About fitting into molds. Wasn’t that enough of an indication of how much he was like Noel to turn her off? she demanded of herself.

  Apparently not since she was now craning to keep sight of him.

  And that sight of him—tall and lean and muscular, with only the hint of a swagger to his gait—was a big part of her downfall and she knew it. He was just too good-looking. Too charming. Too sexy.

  And she was too susceptible to it all.

  Which was why she was supposed to have kept up her guard.

  Disgusted with herself, Megan left the window, turning off the lights as she did. Then she went out the back door, into the alley and got into her cold car.

  But that chill was just what she needed, she thought. It was like a cold shower to chase away desire.

  And maybe the reason Josh had wanted to walk back to the court house….

  But she didn’t even want to entertain the idea that he might be experiencing what she was experiencing. Some thing about that made the whole situation seem all the more dangerous.

  She started the engine and put the car into gear, driving slowly out of the alley and turning onto Center Street to go home.

  Unfortunately Josh couldn’t walk as fast as she could drive and within moments she was gaining on him.

  Speed up! she ordered herself. Get past him as quick as you can!

  But, on its own, her foot went to the brake instead, slowing her down.

  She barely managed to refrain from stopping completely and asking him again if he wanted a ride. But despite that, despite the fact that she succeeded in resisting the urge to have just a few more minutes with him, it didn’t change the fact that she wanted those few more minutes with him.

  A few more minutes with him that might give her the chance for just one more kiss….

  Chapter 5

  MEGAN’S TEN O’CLOCK DATE with Josh to inter view her neighbors didn’t come about. First he called to say he couldn’t make it at ten because he’d had a call from the head of the Sheriff’s department and had to meet with him to update him on the case, that they would have to postpone their plans until the afternoon. Then he called at two to say the forensics report was in and he had to go over it with the medical examiner, that he stil
l intended to talk to her neighbors today but that it wouldn’t be until later. Megan had assured him she was avail able whenever he was ready.

  The delays were good, she decided along the way. They gave her extra time to shore up her defenses against Josh’s appeal.

  The delays also gave her time to wash her hair and twirl it up into a spiky topknot that she held in place with tiny clips. They gave her time to give herself a manicure. To press her ankle-length, flowing flowered skirt and the two T-shirts she wore with it. The delays even gave her time to try on beaded neck laces until she found just the right combination in three that picked up the burnished red, cocoa brown, and autumn gold of her skirt.

  But at four-thirty when Josh pulled up in front of her house and got out of his patrol car as she watched for him through the living room window, her whole day’s worth of shoring up her defenses weakened.

  Somehow, when he wasn’t right there in front of her, she forgot just how great-looking he was—all tall and muscular and broad-shouldered. She forgot just how powerfully handsome were those features carved in perfect sharp angles and planes. How striking were his deep, dark-blue eyes. How intriguing those lips that had kissed her the night before…

  Josh’s knock on the front door helped break her reverie and Megan took a deep breath as she went to answer it, trying to re-shore her crumbling defenses.

  She didn’t exhale until she had the door open and then she forced a nervous smile, hoping she could—for once—rise above the things he churned up in her with just a single glimpse of him.

  “Hi,” she greeted as she pushed on the screen door to invite him inside.

  “I’m sorry for this,” he answered as he stepped across the thresh old, sounding harried. “I didn’t mean to keep you hanging all day.”

  “It’s okay. I under stand. And since I didn’t have any acupuncture scheduled anyway, it was no big deal. I got some things taken care of around here.”

  Ha! That was a joke. All she’d done was get herself ready to see him again.

  But she didn’t want to think about that.

  Josh went into the center of the room but he didn’t sit down. He seemed too agitated, too preoccupied, to relax. Instead he just turned to Megan, his brow slightly furrowed.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from your parents yet, have you?” he asked then, still skipping any amenities.

  “No, I haven’t,” Megan answered, indulging in the scent of after shave that had come in with him. But she realized even as she did that it wasn’t helping her defenses any and wished he was wearing some thing that made him smell like swamp gas so it would turn her off rather than on.

  “I’m taking some heat for not having at least spoken to my prime suspects,” he admitted, confirming that he had a lot on his mind.

  “There’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.”

  “That doesn’t seem to matter.”

  Megan moved away from the front door and hung onto the back of a rocking chair her father had hand-crafted, hoping to ground herself from the potency of Josh’s effects on her.

  “What about the forensics report?” she asked, going with the flow of the conversation Josh seemed intent on pursuing. “Did that tell you some thing that’s making it more urgent that you talk to my folks?”

  “If you mean did forensics turn up some thing that made it look worse for them, no. The bones were studied and X-rayed but there weren’t any telltale signs. No breaks, no knife-nicks, nothing that looked as if it had been grazed by a bullet, all the neck bones were intact and so was the skull. And there wasn’t a bullet recovered from the site or any bullet holes or knife gashes in the clothes,” he said as if reciting a speech. “The bottom line is that they’re reasonably sure he wasn’t stabbed or shot, and that the cause of death wasn’t a blow to the head, so there’s still no telling how he died.”

  “And for sure it’s the skeleton of a man?”

  “No doubt about it. Plus forensics went through the pockets of the clothes and the knapsack. The man’s name was Pete Chaney—it was on a bottle of nitroglycerin tablets and on a Nebraska driver’s license that expired five years before he did. Does the name ring any bells?”

  Megan thought about it, then shook her head. “Not with me. But did you say he had nitroglycerin tablets? Doesn’t that mean he had a heart problem? Maybe that’s how he died—from a heart attack. And if that’s true then there’s no crime here at all.”

  “There’s still the issue of not reporting a death to the authorities and the unlawful disposal of human remains,” Josh pointed out.

  “Maybe it was his last wish.”

  Josh didn’t look convinced. “You think his last wish was to be buried on the sly in a shallow grave in someone’s backyard?”

  Okay, when he put it that way it didn’t sound too likely.

  “Besides, just because there isn’t any evidence of a knife or a gun or a baseball bat doesn’t mean he died of natural causes. He could still have been poisoned, strangled or suffocated—none of those would show up in what we were left with.”

  “But what’s not there can’t count against my folks.”

  “And speaking of what’s not there,” Josh said as if she’d just played right into his hand. “If Pete Chaney was the drifter old Buzz was talking about yesterday, and he had valuable coins of some kind, where are they? They weren’t with his remains.”

  “Which is making you think what?” Megan probed since that seemed to be important to him.

  “I’m just wondering where your folks got the money to move without selling their property. And where they got the money to go on following their causes from one place to another.”

  “Oh, so now my parents are not only murderers, they’re thieves, too?”

  “Just asking.”

  Megan stared at Josh for a long moment, trying to use the annoyance about his suspicions to counter act the other effects he was having on her. Like the fact that she was ultra-aware of the line of his jaw where today’s uniform shirt brushed it. Like the way a slight smattering of hair curled up tantalizingly beneath his open collar. Like the way the shirt barely contained his pectorals and then billowed more loosely at the waist where it was tucked into jeans that fit him so well they could have been hand-tailored for him. Like the bulge of thick thighs…and other things…within the confines of those jeans…

  Megan realized suddenly that she’d lost track of what they’d been talking about. Certainly it hadn’t had anything to do with what a terrific body he had.

  She fought for recollection. There was a question in the air, she remembered that much. What was it? Ah, how her parents had financed them selves when they’d left Elk Creek…

  “My folks never had much cash to speak of. They worked odd jobs along the way, devoting them selves to their causes once the bills were paid. I don’t know why they didn’t sell the farm but I’m sure it wasn’t because the new owner might have dug up the body they’d buried in the backyard,” she said facetiously. “It’s a much better bet that they hung onto the place because it’s all they actually owned and it’s been in the family for so long they didn’t want to part with it. But when I talk to them I’ll ask.”

  “When you talk to them you’d better just tell them to get hold of me and I’ll ask.”

  Megan reared back at the force of his command. “Wow, you must have had a tough day,” she said.

  Josh screwed up his face. “Sorry. Yes, I did have a bad day. Every body wants this thing solved but they tie me up with one hare brained story after another. And now I have a superior who doesn’t stop to think that every hour I spend explaining to him why I haven’t gotten further in this investigation is causing me not to get further in this investigation.”

  Frustration echoed in his voice but he shook his head, as if he were trying to shake it off.

  “Don’t mind me. I’m just in the eye of the storm,” he said then. “How about if I disappear into your kitchen, wash my hands, have a drink of water, a
nd get rid of this lousy mood I’m in before I come out again?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Megan agreed.

  “Great. Give me five minutes and I promise I’ll be a new man.”

  Megan nodded, thinking that even if he was in a foul mood she didn’t want a new man.

  Not that she wanted Josh, she was quick to amend in her own mind as she watched him head for the other room.

  The five minutes he was out of her sight seemed like forever. But then Josh returned with a sheepish grin on his face, looking surprisingly refreshed.

  “Well, hi, Ms. Bailey,” he said, pretending to start over. “You’re a sight for sore eyes if ever there was one. How’re you doin’ today?”

  Megan laughed. “Better than you are.”

  “Me? Why, I’m doin’ just fine now that I’m with you.”

  She thought he was teasing her, especially with those g’s he didn’t usually drop from the end of his words unless he was trying to be charming. But she couldn’t help a flicker of hope that he might mean what he was saying. Just a little.

  “Neighbors,” she said to remind him why he was really there before that flicker was fanned into a flame.

  “Neighbor,” he countered, not seeming to have any problem getting back to the business at hand. “Thinking about it last night in bed I realized we talked to all but two of the folks closest to you yesterday. And of those two, the Jagsons, didn’t buy their land until ten years ago, so they weren’t around when this guy disappeared. That only leaves Mabel Murphy to the south for us to talk to.”

  It was disheartening to hear that last night, when Megan had been lying in bed reliving that kiss he’d planted on her just before leaving, he’d been lying in his bed thinking about this case. But she tried not to get too stuck on that and concentrated on the rest of what he’d said.

  “I remember the Murphys,” she informed him. “They seemed like grand parents when I lived here before. They must be as old as dirt by now.”

  “Horace died a while back, but Mabel still gets around. And her mind is sharp. I called to let her know we’d be coming. Unfortunately I’ve kept her waiting all day, too.”