“Alpharetta.”
“In what world is Alpharetta anywhere near Atlantic Station?”
She stood at the door and smiled at him. “In my world, Jack. In my drug-fueled, happy little world. It is right on the way.”
They drove to the barn—thirty-two miles due north—stopping for deli sandwiches along the way. Mia insisted on a pasture-picnic, which Burton indulged. He wasn’t surprised to see her pick at her food. People high on Ecstasy didn’t eat—or sleep. He figured it would be sometime tomorrow before she finally came down. Amazingly, that was fine with him.
One of the benefits of not having any pets, he thought, as he watched her climb the pasture fence and call one of the horses over to her, you’re free to be as flexible as you like. He dragged his eyes away from her perfect ass in those tight jeans to focus on the horizon.
The pasture was ringed with Georgia pine just on the other side of the Chattahoochee. Mia said she used to ride the banks of the river every Saturday morning until her doctor and better judgment made her give up riding. When she turned to him, her face laughing at having fed her pickle to one of the horses crowding the fence, he thought for one mad moment that he might be in love with her.
Jesus! Had he ever felt this way before? Is this what they’re talking about when they say love at first sight or was he really losing every last one of his marbles? When he looked at her, when he listened to her, it was as if he’d never been with another woman before her. She was the one and she was the last person on earth he could ever be with.
She jumped down from the fence, the little dog trotting by her side, and walked back to where he sat on the car hood.
“Is one of those yours?” he asked.
She shook her head and, picking up the dog, climbed onto the hood. “Nah. They belong to his gang though.”
“Why did you quit riding? Because of your fall last month?”
She settled the dog in her lap and touched her ankle as if to massage it.
“How is it, by the way?”
“Totally healed,” she said. “No, it’s because with this so-called gift of mine, the one you don’t think exists, I feel things too much. I didn’t used to but as I got older…I don’t know… I just began overthinking everything.”
“Maybe it was spending too much time touching murder weapons and imagining crime scenes.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
He gestured to the pasture. “So you feel the horse’s vibes or something?”
“Do you ride?”
Burton shook his head.
“Well, when you ride, you and the horse are in constant communion. But it’s subtle. A leg twitch here, an ear flinch there. It’s not all whoa-nelly, it’s really quiet. And if you’re too sensitive you end up miscommunicating. I knew I was losing a handle on it and when I came off during the competition last month, well, let’s just say I had been heading in that direction for a while.”
“Any chance you’ll ride again?”
She looked at him. “Once I learn to control it. Which I fully intend to do.”
“Must make life difficult for you, being so sensitive to inanimate objects, animals, people.”
“You have no idea. It’s why I’m still a virgin, frankly.”
Burton choked on his sandwich and Mia got to her knees to pound him on the back.
“Was it something I said?” she grinned at him, her breasts pressing in way too close for his comfort. She handed him a water bottle which he accepted gratefully.
His cellphone vibrated against the Jeep hood and she reached for it. He saw her glance at the screen before she handed it to him.
“Sorry,” she said. “I thought it might be Dr. Sanders.”
He saw it was Diane. For the fourth time today. He pressed Decline and tucked the phone away in his jeans pocket. Hopefully she wouldn’t try to retrieve it from there.
“She calls you a lot.”
“So you’re, what, twenty-five?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“And you’ve never had sex. That’s pretty unbelievable in this day and age.”
“I’m not a prude or cold or anything,” she said, sliding off the hood. “Just the opposite in fact, and should we be talking about this while I’m still tripping on a sex drug?”
“I think you’re safe with me.”
Holy crap, did I really just say that? All I want to do is peel those jeans off her!
“I know I am.” She faced him on the ground. “Come on, I want to check on my horse at the barn. Then we can go back. I appreciate you driving. Once this thing has worn off, I want to pick up Dave’s car. They’ve got it in the police impound lot.”
“It probably won’t be out of your system until sometime tomorrow.”
“That is extremely inconvenient.” She scowled at him as if it were his fault. “Meanwhile, I don’t need a babysitter. Clearly, I won’t be jumping off buildings or anything.”
“I’ll stick around.”
“Noble but unnecessary,” she said, grabbing up the papers from their lunch and stuffing them into the sandwich bag, after throwing a crust to the dog.
“Nonetheless.”
“What? You’re going to spend the night with me?”
“That’s the plan,” he said. “Unless I can talk you into going back to your mother’s tonight.”
She made a face. “She’ll know the second I walk through the door what I’ve done.”
“So it’s decided.”
“I don’t even have a bed at Dave’s place,” she said, beginning to take on a shade of a little girl’s voice.
Of course she wouldn’t want to sleep in Dave’s bed. Should he take her back to his place?
“I’ve got some blow-up mattresses,” he said. “We’ll swing by my place and get them on the way back.” He watched the fretfulness fade from her face with his words. And when it did, he realized he wanted to take care of her, to always be the one to erase her fears and concerns.
Jesus, I’m in deep, he thought. And with Kazmaroff’s sister, no less.
As they got into the car, Burton’s phone rang again. He raised an eyebrow at her and she grinned as he pulled it from his pants and looked at the screen.
“It’s Karen,” he said.
Mia turned toward him, her face wreathed in hopeful expectation.
“Hey,” he said. “What did you find?”
“I can’t believe I did this,” she said on the other end. “You know we have a backup of six weeks for basic tox screens?”
“I know. I owe you.” He glanced at Mia and she grinned and nodded.
“He tested positive for Ecstasy,” she said. “Rohypnol, to be exact. In overdose amounts. How did you know?”
Burton couldn’t take his eyes off Mia who was hungrily waiting for the news. “I didn’t,” he said. “But a friend of mine had a hunch. Thanks, Karen.”
“I’ll collect on that debt, Jack,” her voice purred over the line.
“Sure. Anytime. Bye.” He disconnected and sat holding the phone as if stunned.
“It’s true, isn’t it?”
“He overdosed on Ecstasy.”
“I read on the Internet that that’s not easy to do. It would have to be deliberate to take so much you died from it.”
“I know.”
“So we’re looking at either suicide or murder.”
He turned to look at her, her bright blue eyes, so intelligent and piercing. “I guess we are.”
“May I ask what you think about the possibility that my brother killed himself?”
Jack put the car into gear and began to back out of the dirt parking lot. “Put your seat belt on, Mia.”
“Did my brother commit suicide, Jack?” Her voice was strong, nearly goading.
It wasn’t a question.
He focused on the road while the nauseating feel of the punch to the gut that Karen’s news had delivered began to work on the sandwich he’d just eaten. “No,” he said, finally. “There’s no way Dave Kazmaroff k
illed himself.”
8
That night, they ate take-out Indian food in Dave’s condo. Burton brought a change of clothes with him when they stopped at his place for the mattresses, and Mia pulled a dress shirt out of her brother’s closet to sleep in. They watched television on Dave’s couch and spoke very little.
Burton knew she was processing the news which confirmed how Dave died. As certain as she was that Dave had been murdered, the confirmation was still a shock. He forced himself to stop asking her how she was doing.
How would anyone be doing under the circumstances?
The effects of the drug were obviously wearing off. Her manic energy was gone and so was the ebullience she’d exhibited all day long. Toward the end of the last TV show that they watched, she gave a little sigh and moved to sit close to him. When she put her head on his shoulder, without thinking, he put his arm around her.
What was she feeling? What was that hyper-sensitive touch thing telling her now? At one point, he thought he felt her trembling under his arm. Unable to push her away, he stared at the flat screen and tried to focus on the storyline.
That wasn’t going to happen.
She turned to him, her face inches from his mouth. She had showered after dinner and wore a light fragrance of lilac and citrus about her. Dave’s shirt hung well below her knees and Burton tried not to think if she was wearing anything under it.
“You promised,” she whispered.
He looked down at her, his eyes going to her pink, full mouth. “What?”
“You said if I could prove it wasn’t accidental, you were in.”
He nodded, tearing his eyes from her lips to her slowly closing blue eyes. “I did,” he said.
“So we’re partners,” she said as her head dropped to his shoulder. “Because you promised.”
He gave her shoulders a squeeze, grateful that the moment had passed and he hadn’t kissed her. Dear God, he had been so close to doing exactly that.
He heard the sounds of the dog lapping water from its bowl in the kitchen. He cleared his throat.
“I did and we are,” he said huskily, turning back to the television screen. He waited until he heard her faint snores and then turned off the set and eased her down onto the couch. When he did, her shirt rode up to her hips revealing toned long legs and a glimpse of lacy cream-colored panties.
As if seeing them was any better than imagining the alternative.
He pulled a cotton blanket over her and clicked off the light before stripping down to his boxers and lying down on the inflated mattress next to the couch. If she awakened, he’d know it. If she went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he’d know it. If she so much as coughed, he’d know it.
He watched her sleeping face for a moment, resisting the urge to kiss those half-open lips, and then lay down on his makeshift bed. And for all the discomfort of a bulging erection that would not be satisfied tonight, he couldn’t remember a time when he had been so completely happy.
* * *
The next morning, while he was making breakfast in Dave’s kitchen and mulling over the absurdity of the fact that he was making breakfast in Dave’s kitchen, Mia showered again and dressed in her clothes from the day before. As he worked, he heard her in the living room moving around.
“Breakfast,” he called as he placed heaping plates on the pass-through bar to the eat-in kitchen.
She came immediately and looked at the plates with frank delight.
Is there anything makes a cook feel better than being appreciated? he thought, as he drank in her pleasure.
“Oh my God, that looks amazing!” She grabbed a plate loaded with eggs, toast and grits and settled down at the kitchen table. He brought in two mugs of coffee.
“Your brother has an espresso machine,” he said. “Are you sensitive to caffeine?”
“I’m sensitive to everything, but I hope you gave me a shot.”
He grinned. “Not that you need it after the last twenty-four hours, but yeah, I did. What were you doing in the living room?”
She attacked her plate like a starving woman, which Burton figured wasn’t too far from the truth. Around a mouthful of bacon and scrambled eggs she said, “I’m making a murder board. I figure we can hang it downstairs. But if we want to keep it secret, maybe we shouldn’t.”
“A murder board?”
She frowned. “Like they had on Law and Order last night? A board listing all the suspects? And photos? Isn’t that something cops do?”
“Oh, sure. I just wasn’t sure I’d heard you correctly.” Burton sipped his latté and made a mental note to pick up an espresso machine on his way back to his place. Just the thought of leaving her put a dent in his good mood. “So who do you have on it?”
“Well, all the women he knew, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“Jack, seriously. My senses tell me a woman handled that glass.” She frowned at him. “And poison is a woman’s weapon.”
“You’ve been reading Agatha Christie.”
“Murder She Wrote.”
“Same thing. So what women are on your list?”
She shrugged. “You’ll see,” she said. “My God, this is so good. So you cook?”
“I like to cook. I don’t do it much. Just for myself.”
“You and the dog, you mean.”
A flash of light glimmered briefly in the kitchen from the living room as if the sun reflected off a moving car outside. Burton stood up and went to the living room window and looked down into the parking lot. A dark blue Ford with blackened windows was parking four spaces down from the storefront.
“Is our tail still there?”
He let the curtain fall back and returned to the table. “You know them?”
“Well, not personally, but I’m pretty sure my Mom hired them to look out for me.”
“Is that the sort of thing she would do?”
“She’s done it before. It’s a control thing. Once they report back to her that I’m with you, I expect she’ll let them go.”
“Is she expecting you to do something crazy?”
“Gee, I dunno, Jack. You mean like go off on the entire Atlanta detective squad at a funeral and then maybe later pop a date-rape drug?”
“Okay, she might have a point.”
“I had to put Diane on the list,” Mia blurted. “I’ll interview her if you don’t want to.”
“Diane? My ex-wife, Diane?”
“I’m not singling her out. I also have Carol and Heather on the list.”
He shrugged. “Fair enough. Why not Trish?”
“Okay, sure. Why not my Mom?”
“You don’t think Trish is a suspect because you like her? Or because you think she’s all church-lady and wouldn’t hurt another human being in a million years?”
“Fine. She’s on the list.”
“Now the men.”
“You’re really on board, aren’t you?” She grinned at him over her breakfast, her eyes dancing. “We’re really going to do this. We’re going to find out who did it.”
“We’re going to try.”
“Don’t kid me, Jack. You and Dave had an unprecedented record of case closings. You’re the best there is.”
“Do you even know how to interview a suspect?” he asked, pushing away from the table. “I mean in a way that won’t get you arrested?”
“My interview methods will involve my touching each of the suspects.”
“And you think you can tell just from that?”
“Maybe not. But I can get enough clues to lead me in the right direction. I believe that. Which men?”
Burton sighed. “Well, Keith, I guess.”
“Keith was Dave’s best friend.”
“So he had opportunity and we won’t know about motive until we start digging.”
“Fair enough. Is that it?”
“For now. You didn’t know everyone Dave was connected with. What if it’s a random stranger he met that night?”
&n
bsp; “I don’t think so. Remember he was to have dinner with me that night.”
Burton nodded. “And he was to have met me afterwards.”
She looked into the middle distance as if imagining the evening all over again. “There was just no way he would deliberately stand both of us up.”
“Yeah,” Burton said wryly, “because he and I were so close.”
She snapped her head back to him. “So why were you two going out?”
Burton stood up with the plates and headed to the kitchen. “We were trying to find a common meeting ground before we went our separate ways. Dave’s idea.”
“Sounds like him,” Mia said, tapping a finger against her bottom lip in thought. “Isn’t it weird that in the end that’s exactly what happened?” She looked at him, her eyes bright with the tears she was holding back.
“Yeah,” he said gruffly, turning from the sight of her looking at him with those big blue eyes. “Totally weird.”
“I told you not to call me.” Keith sat in his unmarked police car, his eyes on the crack house on the corner in front of him. He’d spent the night jammed into the front seat drinking Yoo-Hoo and eating beef jerky. He hated these kinds of stake-outs. He wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to be looking for. Just sit and wait and watch.
“Well, I know that’s not because you care what your wife thinks.”
“You’re right, it’s not. But if your husband found out, I’d be off the force. And that I care about.”
“Sounds like a ready-made reason for you to be lots nicer to me than you have.”
Was the bitch crazy? Was she threatening him? Because surely she’d have to be crazy to do that.
Carol’s voice rose higher, beginning to hinge on shrill. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you decided to become a movie star.”
Yep, she was definitely threatening him.
“I’m not the only one who’ll have problems if that video gets out,” he said.
“Yes, but my problems involve a pre-nuptial,” Carol said. “Yours involve the unemployment line. I need to see you, Keith.”
“Not possible.”
“Dave’s death was ruled suspicious as I’m sure you know and it’s only a matter of time before—”
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