It Must Be Love

Chapter Two

For some reason, whenever Gabrielle had thought of a police interrogation, she'd always envisioned Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man. She'd always pictured a dark room, spotlight, and a crazed Nazi war criminal with a dentist drill.

The room she found herself in wasn't like that. The walls were stark white, without windows to let in the June sunshine. Metal chairs surrounded a table with a fake wooden top. A telephone sat on it at one end. A single poster, warning against the dangers of drugs, hung on the closed door.

A video camera stood in one corner, its red light glowing, indicating it was in use. She'd given her consent to let them record her debriefing. What did she care? She was innocent. She figured if she cooperated, they'd hurry and finish and she could go home. She was tired and hungry. Besides, Sundays and Mondays were her only days off, and she still had a lot to get done before the Coeur Festival that weekend.

Gabrielle took several deep breaths, controlling the amount of oxygen she took in for fear she might pass out or hyperventilate. Breathe away the tension, she told herself. You are calm. She raised her hand and raked her fingers through her hair. She didn't feel calm and knew she wouldn't until she was released to go home. Only then could she find her quiet center and tune out the static in her head.

Traces of black ink stained the pads of her fingers, and she could still feel the pressure of the handcuffs she no longer wore around her wrists. Detective Shanahan had made her walk all through the park in the rain cuffed like a criminal, and her only consolation was that he hadn't enjoyed the walk any more than she had.

Neither of them had said a word, but she had noticed that he'd massaged his right thigh several times. She assumed she was responsible for his injury, and she supposed she should feel sorry-but she didn't. She was scared and confused and her clothes were still damp. And it was all his fault. The least he could do was suffer along with her.

After being booked for aggravated assault on a police officer and carrying a concealed weapon, she'd been led into the small interrogation room. Now across the table from Gabrielle sat Shanahan and Captain Luchetti. Both men wanted to know about stolen antiques. Their dark heads were bent over a black note-book, and they were in deep discussion. She didn't know what stolen antiques had to do with aggravated assault. They seemed to think the two were related, yet neither of them seemed in a hurry to explain anything to her.

Worse than her confusion was the knowledge that she couldn't just get up and leave. She was at the mercy of Detective Shanahan. She'd known him a little over an hour, but she knew him well enough to know he had no mercy.

The first time she'd seen him a week ago, he'd been standing beneath a tree in Ann Morrison Park. She'd jogged past him and might not have noticed him at all if it hadn't been for the cloud of cigarette smoke surrounding his head. She probably wouldn't have given him another thought if she hadn't seen him the next day at Albertson's buying a frozen pot pie. That time she'd noticed the way his muscular thighs filled out his hacked-off sweatpants, and the way his hair curled up like small c’s around the edge of his baseball cap. His eyes were dark, and the intense way he'd watched her had sent an alarming shiver of pleasure up her spine.

She'd sworn off gorgeous men years ago- they caused heartbreak and chaos in the continuum of body, mind, and spirit. They were like Snickers bars-they looked and tasted good, but they could never pass for a well-balanced meal. Once in a while she still got cravings, but these days she was much more interested in a man's soul than in his gluteus. An enlightened mind turned her on.

A few days later, she'd spotted him sitting in a car outside the post office, then again parked down the street from Anomaly, her curio shop. At first she'd told herself she was imagining things. Why would a dark, handsome man follow her? But as the week wore on, she spotted him several more times, never close enough to approach, but never far away either.

Still, she tried to dismiss it as her creative imagination working overtime-until yesterday when she'd seen him at Barnes and Noble. She'd been in the store buying more books on essential oils when she'd looked up and noticed him lurking in the women's health section. With his dark, brooding looks and T-shirt-straining muscles, he just hadn't seemed like the kind of guy sympathetic to the anguish of PMS. That's when she finally accepted that he'd been stalking her like a serial psycho. She'd called the police and had been told that she could come in and fill out a complaint against the "unknown smoking jogger," but since he hadn't done anything, there wasn't a lot she could do. The police had been no help, and she hadn't even bothered to leave her name.

She'd slept very little the night before. Mostly she'd lain awake carefully devising her plan. At the time her strategy had seemed good. She'd lure him into a very public place. The chunk of the park next to the playground, in front of the zoo, and a few hundred yards from the Tootin' Tater train station. She'd take the stalker down and scream like crazy for help. She still thought it was a good plan, but unfortunately she hadn't foreseen two very important details. The weather had closed everything down, and, of course, her stalker wasn't a stalker. He was a cop.

When she'd first seen him standing beneath that tree, it had been like staring at her friend Francie's Hunk Of Burnin' Love calendar. Now as she looked across the table at him, she wondered how she'd ever confused him for a hunk of the month. In the sloppy sweatshirt he still wore and with that red bandanna tied around his head, he looked more like some hell-bound biker.

"I don't know what you want from me," Gabrielle stated, switching her gaze from Shanahan to the other man. "I thought I was brought here because of what happened in the park earlier."

"Have you ever seen this before today?" Shanahan asked as he slid a new photograph toward her.

Gabrielle had seen the same photo in the local newspaper. She'd read about the theft of the Hillard Monet and heard about it on the local and national news.

"You recognize it?"

"I recognize a Monet when I see it." She smiled ruefully and pushed the pictures back across the table. "I've also read about it in the Statesman. That's the painting that was stolen from Mr. Hillard."

"What can you tell me about it?" Shanahan stared at her through his cop's eyes as if he could see the answer to his question written on her brain.

Gabrielle tried not to feel intimidated, but she couldn't help it. She was intimidated. He was such a big man, and she was stuck in such a small room with him. "Only what everyone else has read or heard about the theft." Which was quite a bit, since it was such a hot story. The mayor had publicly stated his outrage. The owner of the painting was beside himself, and the Boise police department had been portrayed as a bunch of backward hicks on the national network news. Which she supposed was an improvement over how Idaho was usually portrayed to the rest of the country, as a state filled with potato-loving, white supremacist gun nuts. The real facts were that not everyone loved potatoes, and ninety-nine percent of the population wasn't associated with the Aryan Nation or affiliated groups. And of those people who were members, most weren't natives of the state anyway.

The gun nut part was probably true, though.

"Do you have an interest in art?" he asked, his deep voice seeming to fill every corner of the room.

"Of course, I'm an artist myself." Well, she was more a person who painted than an actual artist. While she could paint a reasonable likeness, she'd never mastered the intricacies of hands and feet. But she loved it, and that was all that really counted.

"Then you can understand Mr. Hillard is quite anxious to get it back," he said and set the photo to one side.

"I would imagine so." She still didn't understand what any of this had to do with her. At one time Norris Hillard had been a friend of her family, but that had been a long time ago.

"Have you ever seen or met this man?" Shanahan asked as he slid another photograph toward her. "His name is Sal Katzinger."

Gabrielle looked at the photo and shook her head. Not only did this man have the thickest pair of glasses she'd ever seen but his face also appeared sallow and rather sickly. Of course, she might have met the man before and just not recognized him from his photo. It hadn't been taken under the best of circumstances. Her own mug shots were probably just as atrocious.

"No. I don't think I've ever met him," she answered and pushed the mug shot back across the table.

"Have you ever heard his name mentioned by your business partner, Kevin Carter?" the other man in the room asked her.

Gabrielle turned her gaze to the older man with graying black hair. The name on his plastic ID card read Captain Luchetti. She'd seen enough movies and watched enough television to know he was playing the "good cop" to Shanahan's "bad cop"-not that it was that much of a stretch for Shanahan. But of the two, Captain Luchetti seemed genuinely nicer. He kind of reminded her of her uncle Judd, and his aura was less hostile than the detective's. "Kevin? What does Kevin have to do with the man in the picture?"

"Mr. Katzinger is a professional thief. He's very good and steals only the best. A little over a week ago he was arrested for the theft of over twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of stolen antiques. While in custody, he indicated that he might know who has Mr. Hillard's painting," Captain Luchetti informed her as he waved a hand at a pile of photographs. "He told us that he'd been offered the job of stealing the Monet, but he turned it down."

Gabrielle crossed her arms beneath her breasts and sat back. "Why are you talking to me about this? It sounds like you should talk to him." She pointed to the mug shot across the table.

"We have, and during his confession he turned over on his fence." Luchetti paused, looking at her as if he expected some sort of reaction.

She supposed he meant a fence as in a person who received and sold stolen property, as opposed to someone rolling around on chain-link. But she didn't know what that had to do with her. "Perhaps you should tell me exactly what you mean." She nodded in Shanahan's direction. "And why have I been followed by the archangel of doom for the past few days?"

Shanahan's scowl remained embedded in his forehead, while the captain's face remained impassive. "According to Mr. Katzinger, your partner knowingly buys and sells stolen antiques." Captain Luchetti paused before he added, "He is also suspected of being the middleman in the Hillard theft. That makes him guilty of a lot of things, including grand theft."

She gasped. "Kevin? No way. That Mr. Katzinger person is lying!"

"Now, why would he do that?" Luchetti asked. "He's been promised leniency in exchange for his cooperation."

"Kevin would never do anything like that," she assured them. Her heart pounded, and no amount of deep breathing calmed her spirit or cleared her mind.

"How do you know?"

"I just do. I know he would never become involved in anything illegal."

"Yeah?" The expression in Shanahan's eyes told her he was as exasperated as he sounded. "Why's that?"

Gabrielle glanced briefly at Shanahan. Several rich brown curls fell from beneath the bandanna and touched his forehead. He reached for a small notebook and began to scribble inside. Negative energy surrounded him like a black cloud and permeated the air. He obviously had anger-control issues. "Well," she began and switched her gaze between both men, "for one thing, I've known him for several years. I would certainly know if he were selling stolen antiques. We work together almost every day, and I could tell if he were hiding a secret like that."

"How?" Captain Luchetti asked.

He didn't look like the sort of man who believed in auras, so she didn't mention that she hadn't felt any black spots surrounding Kevin lately. "I just would."

"Any other reasons?" Shanahan asked.

"Yes, he's an Aquarius."

The pen flew straight up into the air, somersaulted several times, then landed somewhere behind the detective. "Sweet baby Jesus," he groaned as if in pain.

Gabrielle glared at him. "Well, he is. Aquarians despise lying and cheating. They hate hypocrisy and double-dealing. Abraham Lincoln was an Aquarian, you know."

"No. I didn't know that," Captain Luchetti answered and reached for the notebook. He placed it in front of him and took a silver pen from his breast pocket. "But I really don't think you realize the seriousness of this situation. The charge of aggravated assault on a police officer carries a maximum of fifteen years."

"Fifteen years! I never would have assaulted him if he hadn't been stalking me. And it wasn't a real assault anyway. I'm a pacifist."

"Pacifists don't carry guns," Shanahan reminded her.

Gabrielle purposely ignored the surly detective.

"Ms. Breedlove," the captain continued, "on top of the assault charge, you've got an added charge of felony grand theft. You're looking at thirty years in the state pen. That's a whole heap of trouble, Ms. Breedlove."

"Grand theft-ME?" She raised a hand to her heart. "For what?"

"The Hillard Monet."

"You think I had something to do with Mr. Hillard's stolen painting?"

"You're implicated."

"Wait," she ordered and placed her palms flat on the table before her. "You think I stole Mr. Hillard's Monet?" She would have laughed if the situation weren't so singularly unfunny. "I've never ever stolen anything in my life." Her cosmic conscience chose that moment to disagree with her. "Well, unless you count the Chiko Stix when I was seven years old, but I felt so bad I didn't really enjoy it all that much."

"Ms. Breedlove," Shanahan interrupted, "I don't give a rat's ass about some damn candy bar you stole when you were seven."

Gabrielle's gaze darted between the two men. Captain Luchetti looked dazed, while deep grooves dented Shanahan's forehead and the sides of his mouth.

Any semblance of peace and serenity had deserted her long ago, and her nerves were raw. She couldn't stop the tears filling her eyes, and she placed her elbows on the table and covered her face with her hands. Maybe she shouldn't have refused her right to an attorney, but until now she hadn't really believed she'd needed one. In the small town where she'd been born and raised, she knew everyone, including the police officers. They were always bringing her aunt Yolanda home after she'd accidentally walked off with someone else's property.

Of course, there were only three police officers in her hometown, but they were more than just three men who drove around in gas-guzzling automobiles. They were nice guys who helped people.

Her hands dropped to her lap, and she looked back up through her tears. Captain Luchetti still stared at her, looking as tired as she felt. Shanahan had disappeared. He'd probably gone to get the thumbscrews.

Gabrielle sighed and brushed the moisture from her eyes. She was in big trouble. An hour ago, she'd felt certain, they'd let her go when they realized she hadn't done anything wrong- not really. She never would have carried the derringer if she hadn't felt threatened by Detective Shanahan. And besides, no one got into real trouble in Idaho for carrying concealed. But now she realized they thought she was somehow involved in something she wasn't, and neither was Kevin. She knew him too well to believe otherwise. Yes, Kevin had several businesses besides Anomaly; he was a successful entrepreneur. He made a lot of money, and yes he was perhaps a little greedy, and self-absorbed, and far more concerned with money than his soul, but that certainly wasn't a crime.

"Why don't you take a look at these," Captain Luchetti suggested, then slid two written appraisals and a stack of Polaroids across the table toward her.

She felt shaky all over and more frightened now than she'd been earlier.

The antique pieces in the pictures were mostly Oriental in origin; a few were Staffordshire. If they were true antiques, and not reproductions, they were also very expensive. She turned her attention to the insurance appraisals. They weren't reproductions.

"What can you tell me about those?"

"I would say this Ming bowl is closer to seven thousand than eight. But the appraisal is fair."

"Do you sell this sort of thing in your store?"

"I could, but I don't," she answered as she read the descriptions of several more items. "These things generally sell better at auctions or stores dealing strictly in antiques. People don't come into Anomaly looking for Staffordshire. If one of my customers picked up this little cow creamer here, they'd go into sticker shock and put it right back on the shelf where it would probably stay for several years."

"Have you ever seen these items before today?"

She pushed the papers to the side and looked at the captain across the table. "Are you accusing me of stealing them?"

"We know they were stolen from a home on Warm Springs Avenue three months ago."

"I didn't do it!"

"I know." Luchetti smiled, then reached across the table to pat her hand. "Sal Katzinger already confessed. Listen, if you're not involved in any illegal activity, then you have nothing to worry about. But we know for a fact that your boyfriend is up to his bal-er, eyeballs in selling stolen goods."

Gabrielle frowned. "Boyfriend? Kevin isn't my boyfriend. I don't think it's a good idea to date your business partner."

The captain tilted his head to the side and looked at her as if he were trying to sort pieces of a puzzle that didn't quite fit. "So, you never dated him?"

"Oh, we dated a few times," Gabrielle continued with a dismissive wave of her hand, "that's how I know it's not a good idea, but that was a few years ago. We found we just weren't compatible. He's Republican. I vote Independent." It was the truth, but it wasn't the real reason. The real reason was far too personal to explain to the man across the table. How could she tell Captain Luchetti that Kevin had very thin lips, and as a result, she found him physically unappealing? The first time Kevin kissed her had ended any amorous feelings she might have felt for him. But just because Kevin didn't have lips didn't mean he was guilty of any crimes or he was a bad person. Shanahan had wonderful lips, which proved that appearances were deceiving, because he was a real jerk.

"Will you agree to take a lie detector test, Ms. Breedlove?" Luchetti asked, interrupting Gabrielle's silent contemplation of men and their lips.

Gabrielle's nose wrinkled with distaste. "Are you serious?" Even the thought of taking a test to detect a lie was abhorrent. Why should she have to prove she was telling the truth? She never lied. Well, not on purpose anyway. Sometimes she evaded or skirted the truth, which wasn't the same at all. Lying created bad karma, and she believed in karma. She'd been raised to believe it.

"If you're telling us the truth, then you have nothing to fear from taking the test. Look at it as proving your innocence. Don't you want to prove you're innocent?"

The door swung open before she could answer, and a man Gabrielle had never seen before entered the room. He was tall and thin and had a white comb-over covering his shiny pink head. He had a manila folder under one arm. "Hello, Ms. Breedlove," he said as he shook her hand. "I'm Jerome Walker, chief of police. I've just spoken with Prosecuting Attorney Blackburn, and he is willing to offer you complete immunity."

"Immunity from what?"

"Right now the charges against you are carrying a concealed weapon and aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer."

That law enforcement officer part of the aggravated assault charge had her worried. They obviously didn't think she'd been justified in carrying the derringer, no matter what she'd believed. Fifteen years was the maximum sentence. She wondered what the minimum was, but she guessed she really didn't want to know.

She had two choices. She could hire a lawyer, go to court and fight the charges, or she could cooperate with the police. Neither option held an ounce of appeal, but she supposed she could listen to their offer. "What would I have to do?"

"You would sign a confidential informant agreement, and then we'd place an undercover detective in your store."

"As a customer?"

"No, we thought he could pose as a relative who needs work."

"Kevin won't let my relatives work in the store any more." Not since she'd had to fire her third cousin, Babe Fairchild, for scaring customers with her stories of levitation and thought transference. "And besides, I don't think I'll be much help to you. I won't be in the store this Friday and Saturday. I'll be at the Coeur Festival in Julia Davis Park."

Chief Walker pulled out the chair across the table from her and sat. He placed the folder on the table in front of him. "Coors Festival?"

"Coeur. Heart. I have a booth to sell my essential oils and aromatherapies."

"Will Carter be in your shop while you're at this heart thing?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now, how about if you hire a handyman to work for you?"

"I don't know." Actually, she and Kevin had discussed hiring someone to move a shelving system to a bigger wall and building more storage shelves in the back room. And she needed new countertops in the back, too, but the store hadn't done as well during the past holiday season as they'd hoped, and he'd rejected the idea as an unnecessary expense.

"Kevin's tight with money right now," she told them.

Chief Walker took out two papers from the folder. "What if you offered to pay the cost yourself? The department would reimburse you, of course."

Perhaps she was looking at this whole informant thing from the wrong angle. Kevin wasn't guilty, but maybe if she agreed to help the police, she really would be helping him. She was certain the police would find nothing incriminating in her shop, so why not let them search?

If she played it smart, she'd get the government to pay for the renovations she wanted. "Kevin really doesn't like to hire employees out of the newspaper or off the street. I'd have to pretend to know this handyman."

The door opened and Detective Shanahan entered. He'd changed out of his shorts and taken the bandanna off his head. His hair was wet and slicked back except for one lock that escaped and curled over his forehead and touched his brow.

He wore a shoulder holster over a white dress shirt that fit him snug across his wide chest and tapered to his waist, where it was tucked into a pair of khaki pants. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up his forearms, and he'd strapped a silver watch to his wrist. On his breast pocket, next to his blue-and-beige tie, he'd clamped his ID. His brown eyes stared into hers as he handed Chief Walker a third piece of paper.

The captain glanced at the paper, then slid it across the table and handed her a Bic pen.

"What's this?" She turned her attention to the document and tried to ignore Detective Shanahan.

"The confidential informant agreement," Walker answered. "How about a boyfriend?"

"No." She shook her head and kept her eyes on the document before her. She hadn't had a serious relationship for some time. Finding an enlightened and physically appealing man was proving to be extremely difficult. When her spirit and mind saidf yes, her body usually said no way. Or vice versa. She ran her fingers through her hair as she studied the papers before her. "I don't have one."

"You do now. Say hello to your new boyfriend."

An awful foreboding brushed up Gabrielle's spine, and she glanced at the front of Joe Shanahan's crisp white shirt. Her gaze moved up the stripes on his tie to his tan throat, over his chin to the finely etched lines of his mouth. The corners of his lips slid upward into a slow, sensual smile. "Hello, sweet cheeks."

Gabrielle straightened and set the pen aside. "I want a lawyer."