Drop Dead Gorgeous

by Linda Howard

  He had a real knack for turning the tables, I’ll give him that. He could make a point and turn a phrase so only someone small and petty could disagree with him. That’s okay; I don’t mind being small and petty. I reached out and pulled the notebook to me again.

  I’m not your problem anymore. As soon as someone gets here with some clothes for me, I’m so out of here.

  “That’s what you think,” he said calmly, after reading the note. “Your little ass is staying right here so I can keep an eye on you. You can’t stay with any of your family, you’d be endangering them if you did. Someone’s trying to kill you, and she doesn’t care if other people get hurt so long as she gets to you.”

  Damn, damn, damn! He was right about that.

  I wrote: So I’ll stay in a hotel.

  “No, you damn well will not. You’re staying here.”

  There was an obvious point to be made here, so I made it. And if she somehow follows me here? You’d be in just as much danger as anyone else I stayed with. And you’re called out a lot at night.

  “I’ll handle that aspect,” he said, after pausing only enough to read what I’d written, certainly not long enough to have given it any thought. “You have to trust me on this. An arsonist leaves clues behind, plus it’s standard procedure to videotape the bystanders at any murder or arson scene, and I clued everyone in while I was on the way that this was likely arson. A patrolman had the crowd on tape way before you spotted her. All you have to do is point her out to us, and we’ll take it from there.”

  That was a relief. He had no idea how big a relief, because he hadn’t been in that condo with me. I would have been much more relieved if she were already in custody, though, which she would have been if he hadn’t had me locked in that stinky squad car.

  I wrote, I know her face, I’ve seen her somewhere, but I can’t place her. She’s out of context.

  “Then someone else in your family, or even one of your employees, might recognize her. Of course, you saw her when she was following you, so that may be what you’re thinking about.”

  That was logical, but…wrong. I shook my head. I hadn’t been able to tell that much about her when she’d been following me, only that the driver was a woman.

  The sound of a car in the driveway caught our attention and Wyatt got to his feet. The sound continued around to the back, which meant it was either family or a friend; everyone else went to the front door. He opened the door into the garage and said, “It’s Jenni.”

  Wyatt had called Mom less than an hour ago, so I was surprised anyone had gotten here with clothes so soon. Jenni bounced into the kitchen with two Wal-Mart bags in her hands. “You have the most interesting life,” she commented, shaking her head a little as she placed the bags on the table.

  “Never a dull moment,” Wyatt agreed drily. “She also has complete laryngitis, from smoke inhalation, so she’s writing notes.”

  “So I see,” said Jenni, picking up the one that said ASSHOLE MEN. She studied it for a moment. “And very upset, too. It isn’t like her to be redundant.” Her back was to Wyatt, so he couldn’t see the mischievous wink she gave me.

  His only response was a snort.

  “Moving right along,” Jenni said breezily, opening the bags. “I was already awake and dressed, so when Mom told me I went straight to Wal-Mart. This is basics only, but that’s all you need today, right? Jeans, two cute tops, two sets of underwear, blow dryer and round hairbrush, mascara, gloss, and a toothbrush and toothpaste. And moisturizer. Oh, and a pair of loafers. I can’t vouch for their comfort, but they’re cute.”

  I dug out the sales receipt, nodding my liking for each item, and got out my checkbook to reimburse her. Because she was standing, she caught a glimpse of my wedding shoes in the tote, and gasped.

  “Oh. My. God.” Reverently she took one shoe out and balanced it on her hand. “Where did you get these?”

  I paused in writing the check, and on the notebook, I obediently scribbled the name of the department store. She didn’t ask how much they’d cost, and I didn’t volunteer the information. Some things are irrelevant. Those were my wedding shoes; cost wasn’t a factor in the decision to get them.

  “You are so lucky they were in your tote,” she breathed.

  I finished the check and tore it out, then shook my head and scribbled, They weren’t. I had to go back and get them.

  Of course, Wyatt saw me shake my head, and he strode over to see what I’d written. He stared at me in disbelief for a moment, then his brows snapped together. “You risked your life for a pair of shoes?” he thundered.

  I gave him an exasperated look and wrote, Those were my WEDDING SHOES. At the time, I still thought I’d marry you. Now I know better.

  “Ooookay,” Jenni said, grabbing the check and turning on her heel. “I’m outta here.”

  Neither of us paid any attention as she went out the door. Wyatt said furiously, “You went back into a fucking burning building to get a pair of shoes? I don’t care if they’re gold plated—”

  I grabbed the notebook and wrote, Technically, no. I was still IN my bedroom when I remembered the shoes, and I went to the closet to get them. Then I slammed the pen down, gathered up my new clothing and paraphernalia, and took everything upstairs. And not to the master bedroom, either.

  Safely locked in the bathroom I’d used before, I mentally blessed Jenni for remembering the smaller items. I brushed my teeth, moisturized—my skin badly needed it, after being exposed to all that heat and soot, then being scrubbed with dish detergent—and dried my hair. By the time I was dressed, I felt human again. Very tired, but human.

  Wyatt was still waiting for me when I returned downstairs, not that I had truly expected him to leave without me. His expression lingered on the grim side, but he gave me a searching look and abruptly said, “You need to eat something.”

  My stomach agreed. My throat said no way. I shook my head, pointing to my throat.

  “Milk, then. You can drink some milk.” He always had milk on hand, for cereal. “Or oatmeal. Sit down and I’ll nuke us some oatmeal.”

  He was determined, and he was probably right; we both needed to eat, after the night we’d put in. It seemed days ago that he’d taken my answering machine to the police department for analyzing, when it was really fewer than twelve hours. Time flies when you’re jumping from the second story of a burning building, climbing fences, looking for psycho bitches to gut, and getting locked in a stinky squad car for hours while she makes faces at you.

  He took off his suit jacket and efficiently nuked two bowls of instant oatmeal, adding enough sugar and milk to mine to make it a little soupy. Cautiously I took a bite; it was nice and hot, and soft enough that I managed to swallow it even though it made me cough. Coughing wasn’t fun. I kept at it until I’d managed to eat half of the oatmeal, but the coughing that followed each bite was too rough on my throat, which already felt sand-blasted, so I gave it up after that. Maybe I should live on milk shakes, yogurt, and Jell-O for a few days.

  We cleared the table together, not that there was a lot of work to it: two bowls, two spoons, two coffee cups. When everything was stowed in the dishwasher, I got my tote—yes, he’d removed my knife—then looked at him and pantomimed turning a key in the ignition.

  “They’re still in the car,” he said, meaning my Mercedes. He’d be driving his city-issued cop car, the Crown Vic. I hated what had happened to his Avalanche. I’d seen one of the front tires flame up, so even though the fire department had immediately sprayed it with water I knew the damage was beyond repair. That close, the heat scorched the paint off, melted the headlights and top of the engine, did all sorts of nasty things. He was calm about losing the truck, but I guess he’d known from the beginning, having been to a lot of fire scenes, that it couldn’t be salvaged.

  Forget about the truck, he’d said. Are you sure you’re all right?

  Damn it. It wasn’t easy, staying angry at a man who loved you as much as you loved him.

 
; And then the sneak further undermined me by pulling me close for a long, hungry kiss. When he lifted his head he looked at my face, sort of half smiled, and kissed me again. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “The wedding’s still on.”

  Chapter

  Twenty-two

  Wyatt stayed behind me all the way to the police department, not that there was much chance I’d be followed anywhere from his house. No one had followed us there after we’d left the fire scene and he wasn’t listed in the telephone directory, so locating him wouldn’t be as easy as locating me had been. I’ve never had an unlisted number, never tried to hide from anyone. Of course, if someone knows where you work, he or she always knows where and when to find you.

  Which made me wonder if all of this was somehow connected to Great Bods. The woman I’d seen in the crowd was someone I’d seen before. She wasn’t a total stranger; she had a connection to me. I just couldn’t place her face, couldn’t put a name to her. I don’t personally know all the members of Great Bods but I do recognize their faces, which, when I thought about it, eliminated Great Bods as the connection. When you see someone who looks familiar but you don’t know where you know them from, it’s because they aren’t in their accustomed place. When I put that face at Great Bods, there still wasn’t any ah-ha moment of recognition, which meant that wherever I’d seen her, it wasn’t at work.

  Which meant she likely worked at one of my other regular points of contact: the grocery store, the mall, the post office, the bank, maybe even UPS or FedEx. Try as I might, though, I couldn’t place her.

  When we exited the elevators into the busy, noisy squad room, heads turned our way and wide grins bloomed on most of the faces. Well, the people who were handcuffed to the chairs didn’t grin, and neither did the people who were there filing complaints and whatnot, but the cops grinned.

  I was a little hurt. What was so funny about my condo being toast?

  I glanced up at Wyatt, to see if he’d noticed all the grins. His gaze was focused on his office door, which bore a sign. He didn’t pause until we got close enough to read it: WYATT IS A JACKASS AND THE WEDDING IS OFF! It wasn’t one of my notes, but it definitely incorporated elements from two of them.

  Wheeling, I glared at the room at large. Some of the cops were almost choking as they tried to stifle their laughter. They were making fun of my notes. “Not one of you,” I announced loudly, “let me out of that car, either.” Or rather, I tried to announce it, because I’d forgotten I couldn’t talk. Not a single sound came out of my mouth. Standing there with my mouth open was humiliating.

  But I intended to make up a shit list, and put all of them on it.

  Wyatt reached out and calmly removed the sign. “The wedding is back on,” he said, and there was a smattering of applause because, being mostly men, they assumed he’d sexed me out of my temper. I glared up at him, but he just smiled as he opened the door and ushered me through it.

  “I need that scene tape,” he said over his shoulder before closing the door.

  His office wasn’t very big, and was cluttered with filing cabinets and paperwork. The sight of that paperwork perked me up a little. If he’d just leave me alone in here, I could catch up on my clandestine reading.

  Sulkily I took one of his visitor’s chairs while he settled in the big leather chair behind his desk. “Amazing,” he said, a quirk to his lips as if he wanted to grin.

  I raised both hands in an impatient “what is?” gesture.

  “I’ll tell you later,” he said, tossing the sign on his desk. “We have a lot of work to do right now.”

  He wasn’t kidding about that. First I had to give a statement about what had happened last night, or rather, early this morning. Wyatt didn’t take the statement, Detective Forester did, and to be accurate I didn’t give the statement, of course, I wrote it out.

  The detective had been busy, but the fire marshal had immediately ruled the fire an arson; evidently there hadn’t been any attempt to disguise it. The fire dog had alerted him to gasoline all around the front and right side of my condo. When the fire had been ignited, the flames had immediately blocked my exit from both of those doors. There were still the double French doors in the dining alcove, but by throwing the gasoline bomb through the living room window and spreading the fire all over the living room, my route from upstairs had been blocked. As further insurance, the fence gate had been blocked. If by chance I’d made it out to the backyard, the arsonist had intended for me to be trapped there. As rapidly as the fire had spread to the Bradford pear trees in the tiny yard, if I hadn’t been able to climb the fence I’d have died there.

  Very likely, though, she hadn’t thought I’d be able to escape from upstairs. Smoke rises, and you really have very little time to get out of a burning building before the smoke gets you. I know because I watched a documentary about house fires and how fast they spread. By covering my mouth and nose with the wet towel, I’d bought myself a couple of precious minutes. The other wet towel over my head and shoulders had likely kept me from being burned by the sparks and hot ashes. The rest of it, getting out the second-story bedroom window and climbing the fence, had a lot to do with being angry and desperate, plus having good upper-body strength.

  You never know when being a former cheerleader will come in handy.

  To get a timeline, they coordinated my statement with my call to 911, of which they had a copy—thus every cop in the building got to listen to me tell the 911 operator that the fire department could tell which condo was mine because it was the one with flames coming out the windows. For some reason they all had to hear it more than once, too.

  Then I had to watch the video of the crowd at the scene.

  I sat in Wyatt’s office with him and Detectives Forester and MacInnes watching the video on a small monitor. Wyatt had made the call to videotape even before talking to me, so I got to see myself, looking as horrible as I remembered, weaving in and out of the picture as the camera had slowly panned from left to right and back again. What I didn’t see was the blonde wearing the hoodie.

  I was so disappointed. I wrote, I don’t see her. She isn’t there.

  “Keep watching,” said Wyatt. “The crowd was filmed more than once.”

  So we did, frame by frame. Finally the camera caught part of her, because her face was turned away—the hood pulled up, a curl of very blond hair escaping from beneath the jacket to lie across her clavicle, maybe half of her right jawline. She was mostly behind some guy in a red shirt, so there was no way to enhance the film and get a better picture of her.

  Mentally reviewing my memories, I analyzed the moment when I’d realized she was my stalker, when she’d stared at me with such open malice. Yes, this same guy had been standing beside her; I remembered his red shirt. This film must have been made just seconds either before or after, probably after, because her face was turned away as if she was leaving. MacInnes said it was likely she’d spotted the camera.

  “That guy in the red shirt is a start,” Wyatt said. “He might remember something about her, might even know her.”

  “We’re still canvassing the neighborhood,” said Forester. “I’ll get this photo out to the guys. Someone will recognize him.”

  I had been sipping on something hot all morning long, to ease my throat. Wyatt had even scrounged a tea bag from someone and made a cup of hot tea for me; I don’t know what the difference is, but tea seems to work better on a sore throat than coffee does. A couple of aspirin also helped the pain, but I still couldn’t make a sound. Wyatt mentioned taking me to the ER to get checked out, an idea I vetoed with a NO! that took up an entire sheet of paper.

  Things seemed to drag on for a while. During a lull, Wyatt talked to both my insurance adjustor and his. He also called Mom, which definitely earned him points in her book, and gave her a report. He talked to his mother, reassured her that I was fine and he was fine.

  By lunch, I was very tired of the whole scene. I was tired, period. I needed to go shopping and replenish my wardrobe, b
ut for the first time in my life I couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for shopping. I had liked my old clothes; I wanted them back. I wanted my books, my music, my dishes. I wanted my stuff. It was just now beginning to sink in that my stuff was truly, irrevocably gone.

  Jenni, bless her, had bought me two sets of underwear and two tops; I didn’t absolutely have to go shopping today; it could wait until tomorrow. Maybe by tomorrow I’d be able to talk again. Today, I just wanted to do normal stuff. I wanted to go to work.

  I’d given the police my written statement; I’d watched the video and pointed out the psycho bitch, for all the good it had done. I didn’t see any reason why I should hang around any longer.

  I wrote Wyatt a note, telling him that I was going to work.

  He leaned back in his chair, looking grim and lieutenant-ish. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  I wrote another note. I think it’s a great idea. She knows she can find me there.

  “Which is why I’d much rather one of my female officers drives your car around.”

  Then set it up for tomorrow. I’m tired of this. I want my life back. The only normal thing I can do now is go to work, so I’m going to work.

  “Blair.” He leaned forward, green eyes intent. “She tried to kill you just a few hours ago. What makes you think she won’t do the same thing to Great Bods?”

  Oh, God, I hadn’t thought of that. Great Bods was at risk, anyway, though it’s possible she thought I just worked there, not that I was the owner. I mean, I don’t answer the phone with “Hi, I’m Blair, and I own Great Bods.” It’s likely most of the members didn’t know I owned the place, because it just isn’t info that’s advertised all over the place. I could as easily be the manager, which of course was the job I did.

  The only thing that set me apart from the other employees was that I drove a Mercedes, but even that wasn’t a complete oddity because Keir, one of my fitness instructors, drove a Porsche.