Sex, Lies, And Online Dating

Chapter 16

Biggestfan: Seeks Object

of Obsession…

The next morning, Quinn stood in front of his bedroom mirror dressing for work just as he had for the past four years. Only this morning, he had an audience. She sat cross-legged in the middle of his bed, drinking coffee and wearing his T-shirt. After they’d made love yesterday, she’d handed him the tapes and they’d returned them to the evidence room.

An hour ago, he’d woken with her firm little behind against his groin and his hand on her full breast. It hadn’t been a bad way to wake up. Especially for a Monday morning. Particularly since he knew his day was going to go to hell once he got to work.

He shoved the tails of his blue dress shirt into his gray trousers and glanced at Lucy through the mirror. Her attention was directed on his hands as he zipped his pants. “I need to talk to you about something,” he said, beginning the conversation he’d been dreading since he’d read the most recent Breathless letter Saturday.

She looked up, and her eyes met his in the mirror. “What?”

“Once Sergeant Mitchell and the other detectives read the latest letter, they’re going to want to use you to draw the suspect out. I know we talked about this last week, and if you were anyone else, I’d agree with them. I’d do my best to talk you into staging something with the media or maybe a book signing. But you’re not just anyone. Not to me, and I want you to know you don’t have to do anything.”

She unfolded her legs, and Quinn’s gaze followed the progress of his T-shirt sliding up her bare thighs and behind as she scooted to the edge of the bed. She set the coffee on his dresser and came to stand in front of him. “I’ve actually given this some thought,” she said as she reached for the front of his shirt and buttoned it. “I want to do whatever it takes to get my life back as soon as possible.” She glanced up at him, then returned her gaze to the buttons. The top of her head was just beneath his chin. “As much as I like it here with you, I want my normal life back. I want you and me to be together like normal people.”

“How normal?” he asked the top of her head.

“You ask me out not because it’s your job but because you want to be with me. When you pick me up, I keep you waiting while I try on shoes like it’s a real date.” She looked up at him. “Stuff people do when they first start to go out together. We’ve kind of skipped all that. I know it sounds old-fashioned, especially considering how fast I ended up in bed with you, but I guess I want you to, you know, woo me.”

He chuckled. “I recall wooing the hell out of you last night.” She scowled as he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her against his chest. “Okay.” He pressed his lips to the top of her hairline. “When this is all over, I’ll come over and pick you up and you can keep me waiting while you change your shoes a million times. You can even torture me by trying on clothes and asking my opinion, although we both know my opinion really doesn’t matter. And even though I don’t need to lie to get you into bed, I’ll even tell you you’re a good driver.”

She tried not to smile. “And you’ll be nice to Snookie?”

Yesterday when they’d gone to Lucy’s house to feed her cat, Quinn had stepped on the damn cat’s tail. It had been an honest-to-God accident, but he wasn’t quite sure Lucy believed him. “I swear that was an accident,” he reminded her. “I didn’t see him.”

“How could you not see a twenty-pound cat sitting in the middle of the floor?”

Because he’d been watching Lucy’s breasts jiggle a bit as she’d poured cat food into a dish. He pulled her tighter against his chest. “In the future, I’ll watch where I’m walking.”

She laid her head against his shoulder and said, “I want my life back, Quinn. I want to be normal. If that means I have to do a news conference or book signing, let’s do it as soon as possible.”

“You’re sure?”

She nodded and took a step back. “Yes. I’m not afraid as much as I’m pissed off.” Her eyes got all Linda Blair squinty and shone with that unholy gleam he hadn’t seen since the day he’d sat in her car and told her Millie was his dog. He was glad to see it again. “She’s going down.”

He was glad that look wasn’t directed at him.

Quinn arrived at work ten minutes early, prepared to inform Sergeant Mitchell of the latest developments, but was informed that the sergeant was in a meeting and wouldn’t be in his office until that afternoon. Quinn felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. He had a reprieve for a few hours.

At ten after nine, a fingerprint technician walked into the briefing room, grinning from ear to ear. “We got a thumb print off the latest envelope,” he said. “It matches the thumb print taken from the seat in Robert Patterson’s truck.”

Quinn leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Thank you, Jesus.” They finally had a strong link between Breathless and the murders. Whoever had written the letters to Lucy had been in the Patterson truck. And whoever had written that last letter had seen Quinn and Lucy together and knew he was a cop. Breathless was starting to make mistakes.

Quinn looked at Kurt, and they both knew this was big. They were finally getting the break they needed, and Quinn wasn’t going to have to use Lucy. At least not yet. She could stay tucked safely in his house. Her and Millie.

“We’ve interviewed her, Kurt,” he said, referring to Breathless.

“You’re probably right,” the other detective said as he looked over a copy of the last letter.

Quinn opened his notebook and flipped to the suspect list. “We’ve cleared half, so-Son of a bitch!” He flipped to a Xerox with the vics’ photos on it, then his attention snapped to the print technician, who was still in the room, as he pointed to the page in his notebook. “I need you to process this. If our luck holds, we can get a matching print off it.”

“We must have shown that to twenty or thirty people,” Kurt reminded him.

“And half of those have been cleared.”

The fingerprint technician pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and removed the Xerox from Quinn’s notebook. He left, and Quinn went into his office to cool his heels and wait. He called the crime lab, but there was nothing new regarding hair and fibers found at the scenes. He checked in with the victims’ families and informed them of the fingerprint evidence. Then he called Lucy on his home phone.

“McIntyre residence,” she said. “Home of Quinn, crack detective and sexy man.”

At the sound of her voice, he felt an overwhelming potentcy squeeze his chest. “What if this call had been from my mother?”

“I looked at your caller ID before I picked up.”

He didn’t feel it in his whole chest, just the left side, near his heart. Like he had a blockage. “Are you bored?”

“No. I’m trying to get some work done.”

“You’re writing?” Last night he’d let her look over his files on the Breathless case. He hadn’t known she wore gold-framed reading glasses until she’d put them on the bridge of her nose. She’d looked hot. Of course, he thought she looked hot in everything or nothing at all.

“Trying to write. It’s not going well, but I’m hoping something will shake loose.” In the background, Millie started barking, like someone was busting into the house.

“What’s wrong with Millie?”

“Just a second.” There was a pause, and then, “She sees a cat on your lawn.”

“Ah, she’s protecting you from the neighborhood felines.”

Lucy laughed. A soft little sound that settled next to his clogged heart. “She doesn’t seem to be much of a guard dog, Quinn. If a burglar breaks in, she’ll show them where you keep your good stuff.”

Quinn chuckled. Lucy was his good stuff. “Maybe, but she’ll bark a lot while she points the way.” He pulled back his cuff and looked at his watch. It had been over an hour. “We got a print off the latest envelope,” he told her, but he didn’t have to mention how important it was. They talked about the case, and they talked about what they were going to do that night and what to have for dinner, like an old married couple. “When I get off work,” he said, “I’ll go feed your bag of fur.”

“His name is Mr. Snookums.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Her long-suffering sigh carried across the phone line. “I want to go with you because I have to look for a very important folder. I misplaced it somewhere in my house.”

“I’ll help you search for it,” he offered as the fingerprint technician entered his office. By the guy’s smile, Quinn knew they had another hit. “I need to go,” he said and hung up the telephone. “Well?”

“We have a matching index finger taken off the bottom of the vic paper.”

For a week Quinn had stared at the prints taken from the truck. He wanted to kick his own ass, but he didn’t have time. He stood and shoved his arms into his blazer, covering the pistol hooked to his belt. The list had just been culled down to a dozen suspects, and he knew the first place to look.

Lucy stared at the blinking cursor willing the words to flow from her fingertips and onto the computer screen. When they didn’t, she took off her glasses and set them on the kitchen table next to her laptop. Millie sat beside Lucy with her head on Lucy’s thigh. Lucy reached down and scratched the dog beneath the ear.

She’d thought that since she was feeling safer today, the muse fairy would tap her on the head and her writing would once again start to flow.

It wasn’t happening.

She blew out a breath and leaned back in the chair. If she had the critique from Maddie, she would at least have something to do. And hopefully, reworking a few chapters would kick-start the rest. She stood and walked into the living room. Millie followed close on her heels, and Lucy picked up the television remote and turned it on. She flipped to the twenty-four-hour news stations to see what had been happening in the world since her life had gotten so out of control. There was nothing on but depressing news, and she turned it to City Confidential and vegged out on the tube. What she’d told Quinn that morning was the truth. She wasn’t as scared as she was angry. She felt an impotent rage at the woman who’d pushed her into the worst writer’s block of her career.

She turned off the television and tossed the remote on the coffee table. She thought about Quinn and what he’d said yesterday about their elationship starting out under stress. She had to admit that it had started out a little less than orthodox. Okay, a lot less than orthodox. They’d both lied to each other and dated under false pretenses. But there had been no pretending when it had come to the sexual pull that they’d both felt from that first night in Starbucks. The way he’d looked at her hadn’t been a lie. Not then and not now. There was something a little overwhelming about it. Overwhelming and intoxicating at the same time.

He hadn’t told her he loved her, she reminded herself. But to be fair, she hadn’t told him either. He’d moved her into his house to keep her safe, and he’d taken the tapes out of the evidence room. Taken was a nice word for stolen. He’d done it for her. No, he hadn’t told her he loved her, but no man had ever risked so much to be with her.

Her cell phone rang, and she jumped a little.

“Hello.”

“Hello. Am I speaking to Lucy Rothschild?”

“Yes.”

“I found a folder that I believe belongs to you.”

Quinn stood in the inventory room at Barnes and Noble with his hands in his pants pockets, looking relaxed. In another room, Kurt was talking to the manager and letting her know that all Barnes and Noble employees were going to be reinterviewed.

“Lucy Rothschild has been receiving letters,” Quinn said after five minutes of small talk. Usually, he could warm up a suspect and get them to relax a little, but this one was so cold that it was as if she had an iceberg up her ass. “We believe the person sending the letters is responsible for the recent homicides we spoke to you about the last time we were here.”

Jan Bright looked at Quinn, then shifted her gaze to the shelf of books over his left shoulder. She didn’t speak.

“Do you know anything about those letters?”

She shook her head, and her long, wavy hair swayed across her shoulders.

“Would you be willing to come down to the station to be interviewed?”

“When?”

“Right now.”

“I suppose.” She glanced at Quinn, then returned her gaze somewhere behind him. “If I can help Lucy Rothschild, I’d be happy to do it. I’m very supportive of our local authors.”

“I’m sure Ms. Rothschild will appreciate it.”

The ride to the station took ten minutes, and once he had Jan in an interrogation room and the camera was rolling, he handed her a cup of water. Quinn smiled and once again endeavored to put her at ease. He asked her questions about the Women of Mystery and if she knew if any of them had a grudge against Lucy.

“Oh, no. They’re very supportive.” She polished off her water, and he offered to get her more. He picked up the cup by the handle and passed it to the fingerprint technician waiting outside the door. He left Jan alone for a few moments, and when he returned he had more water.

“Here you go,” he said and set the glass on the table.

“I had a cup before.” She met his gaze and held it.

“I accidentally dropped the cup.”

She frowned as if she didn’t believe him. Then she looked somewhere above his head. “I suppose you are having it analyzed for fingerprints.”

She was smarter than he’d thought. But then, Breathless was no idiot. “Why do you say that?”

“Because I am in a police interrogation room and you just switched cups on me. I’m in a mystery writer’s critique group, and I also read a lot of detective novels.”

No use in bullshitting her. Her prints were either going to match or they weren’t. “Where were you the night of April twenty-third?”

Her brows scrunched together. “The twenty-third?”

“During the day you were at the Women of Mystery meeting in Barnes and Noble. I saw you there. When you left, where did you go?”

“Some of the ladies and I went to Macaroni Grill. I had a few too many glasses of wine and got a little loose. I called my oldest son, and he came and got me.”

He couldn’t imagine Jan Bright loose. She was so uptight she could crap diamonds. “How old is your son?”

“Sixteen.”

The door opened a crack, and the lab technician stood on the other side shaking his head. Damn. For all her bizarre behavior, Jan Bright was not a murderer.

“Tell me about the people you work with. Any of them date customers they meet in the bookstore?”

“A few, maybe. I think it’s disgusting.”

“How about Cynthia Pool?”

Jan shook her head. “Oh, no. Cynthia would never date men who come into the bookstore.”

Quinn looked down at the notebook on the table in front of him. His gaze skimmed the next few names on his list. “Why’s that?”

“She thinks men are dirty.”

Quinn looked up. “‘Dirty’? Are those your words or hers?”

“Hers.”

“Do you think she hates men enough to kill them?”

“No. Cynthia is a very kind person. She had a really difficult marriage and divorce. Her husband was abusive and cheated on her, but she is not a murderess.” Jan laughed, a kind of strained sound, before she added, “And I’m sure she would never write upsetting letters to Lucy Rothschild. She’s her biggest fan.”