Sex, Lies, And Online Dating

Chapter 5

Storyteller: Seeks Smooth Talker…

Monday morning, Quinn walked into the briefing room and shot the shit with a few guys from the crime lab. While they talked about old cases, his gaze took in the marker board. Lucy’s name was still at the top in bold red, and two lines were drawn to the second and third murder victims.

He grabbed a cup of coffee and took a seat. He opened his notebook on the table in front of him to the notes he’d written about Lucy. Everything he had was circumstantial, but when put together, it painted a fairly damning picture. He ran a hand down his gold-and-blue-striped tie and wondered how long it would take before someone mentioned the kiss he’d put on Lucy the previous Friday night.

“You sure didn’t kiss Maureen like you kissed Lucy,” Kurt managed through a huge grin as he entered the room and sat next to Quinn.

“Jealous?” Quinn asked through a smile as he pulled back the cuff of his dress shirt to look at his watch. One minute after eight. Kurt had waited a whole minute. If anything, Quinn was surprised that Kurt hadn’t razzed him about it Saturday night when they’d met before his setup with Maureen.

“Not jealous. Impressed by how fast you work.”

“I had to convince Lucy she needed to see me again. Maureen didn’t need convincing.” He turned a page in his notes. If his date with Lucy had been a real one, he’d have used more finesse. He would have taken his time and asked for her phone number. If he’d had time, he would have charmed her into giving him what he wanted instead of grabbing her and kissing her into submission. When given a choice, Quinn always preferred to take his time, although he had to admit that grabbing her up and getting to it hadn’t been too bad. Not at all. In fact, it might have been a little too good.

“By the sound of Lucy’s moan, that was some convincing.”

“It’s a dirty job, Weber.” He hadn’t expected it to be so easy, either. He’d expected Lucy to pull back and slap him.

“But somebody’s gotta do it. Right?”

“Right.” Instead of slapping him, she’d done the unexpected and melted into his chest. Her response had surprised the hell out of him, and for a moment, as he’d tasted her mouth and felt the warm pull of desire, he’d forgotten who she was and exactly why he’d been standing there kissing her on a downtown street. For a few moments, she’d been just a beautiful woman and he’d been just a man. He’d let the heat of her response go straight to his head, and lower. For a few moments he’d forgotten that he’d just been doing his job.

“I don’t blame you for not wanting to tongue tangle with bignsassy,” Kurt said, pulling Quinn’s thoughts away from kissing Lucy. “After listening to the most recent tape, I’m convinced you’re right. She’s as dumb as a doorknob. I don’t understand how the woman can keep a job.”

“Maureen works for the government,” Quinn explained. There was no confusing the quick hug and kiss on the cheek he’d given Maureen for the DNA transfer he’d exchanged with Lucy. He’d always been able to tell if a woman would be any good in bed by the way she kissed. Lucy’s kiss had knocked him on his ass.

Anita Landers entered the briefing room, followed by Sergeant Mitchell. They went over the latest reports from the print lab. Quinn wasn’t surprised to hear that neither of the sets of prints from Lucy and Maureen matched any of the prints found at the three crime scenes. None of the prints at the scenes matched each other. Long blonde hairs found on all three victims had matched each other but were synthetic. They still had nothing solid.

The discussion moved from prints to the latest tapes. “Tell me anything new that you got the other night,” the sergeant said.

Quinn flipped a few pages to the notes he’d taken while listening to the last tape. “Lucy Rothschild is still claiming to be a nurse. She admits that she hasn’t been out of town in the past few months and said she quit dating because she was becoming bitter and jaded. She lied about knowing any of the murdered men, and she seems to know that we don’t have a lot of evidence.” Although he couldn’t say why, he felt compelled to add, “All of that is completely circumstantial.”

“True, but we know she met Lawrence Craig. Why would she lie about that if she didn’t have something to hide?” Mitchell asked.

Quinn shrugged. She was a habitual liar, but that didn’t prove she killed anyone. “We could always bring her in and question her,” he reminded the sergeant.

Mitchell thought about it, then shook his head. “Not yet.”

Next, they discussed Maureen Dempsey. Quinn thought they should concentrate less effort on Maureen, if not cross her off the list completely.

“She believes those stories printed in that Weekly News of the World,” Kurt pointed out. “She’s crazy as all hell.”

“Crazy enough to kill three men?”

“Maybe crazy enough,” Quinn pointed out. “But I doubt she’s smart enough.” Maureen had been so easy to lead. She’d admitted having met all three victims and that she’d been sorry to hear about their deaths. She’d told Quinn she’d prayed for their families and made donations to various religious organizations in their names. She’d said she lived in the grip of grace and danced with Jesus. Quinn had been educated in Catholic schools, but he hadn’t had a real clue what she’d meant.

Mitchell scratched the top of his crew cut. “When are you seeing her again?”

“Tomorrow afternoon.”

“If we can’t eliminate her completely, she stays on the list.” The sergeant rocked back on the heels of his wingtips and asked, “What do you have, Kurt?”

They talked about the other suspects Kurt had set up for dates and about pulling in more resources so that Quinn and Kurt could concentrate on the top four or five. After the meeting broke up, the sergeant asked, “What do you two have going today?”

“After we finish here, I’m going to follow up with the victims’ families,” Quinn informed him. “Later we’re heading over to Barnes and Noble again. We need to talk to some of the workers who were off the last time we were there.” He flipped a few pages in his notes. “Two of them will be working this afternoon.”

A few minutes later, Quinn headed to his office. He had two other investigations he was working besides the Breathless case. Wednesday he had to testify in United States v. Raymond Deluca, an arson case involving a gasoline accelerant, resulting in the deaths of Mr. Deluca’s wife and her three children from a previous marriage. The toxicology report indicated that all four victims had ingested large amounts of phenobarbital, the medication Mrs. Deluca took to control her epilepsy. Raymond claimed his wife had been depressed and must have waited for him to go out of town to kill herself and her children. He had a receipt from a Holiday Inn in Salt Lake for the night of the fire, but as Quinn had discovered, there was also a debit card transaction at 2:35 a.m. for five gallons of gas purchased at the Shell station a few minutes from the Deluca house off Maple Grove. A half hour later, a neighbor had smelled smoke and called 911.

The prosecution would present a new woman and an insurance policy as motive for the crime. Raymond Deluca’s attorney would try and disprove the motive as he worked to shred Quinn’s time line. Quinn needed to reread his notes before he entered the courtroom Wednesday.

Quinn spent the rest of the morning chasing down leads and searching for information about Lucy on the Internet. He visited her website again to see if it had been updated in the past few days. It hadn’t. At noon, he and Kurt jumped in an unmarked car and headed to Barnes and Noble. They met with the two employees in a room filled with boxes of books.

Jan Bright was short with long, kinky eighties hair. She wore some kind of plaid dress that she’d buttoned around her throat. Cynthia Pool’s platinum blonde hair was cut close to her head, and her white blouse had an embroidered Mickey Mouse climbing out of the pocket. Both women were very thin and in their mid to late forties.

Quinn pulled a piece of paper out of his notebook. On it were the photos of Charles Wilson, Dave Anderson, and Lawrence Craig. He handed it to Jan Bright. “Do you recall seeing any of these men?”

She shook her head and passed the paper to Cynthia Pool.

“Yeah, they look familiar. Especially him,” Cynthia said and pointed to the second murder victim, Dave Anderson. “I think he used to come in quite a bit on Friday nights.” She looked back up, and her nose scrunched. “He was one of those.”

“One of those?”

“Those single guys who come in looking for single women,” Cynthia explained. “Bookstores are the new singles bars. Men and women come in here on Friday and Saturday nights to hook up.”

Quinn and Kurt glanced at each other. They’d known each other long enough, worked enough cases together, to know what the other was thinking. Men and women hooking up in bookstores was not only news to both of them but it was also a valuable piece of information.

Kurt asked, “Did you ever see any of these men meet with women or leave with anyone?”

“I don’t recall. Do you remember, Jan?”

“No. I really don’t pay attention to who’s hooking up with whom in the aisles.” She folded her arms across her chest and looked at a point somewhere above Quinn’s left shoulder. “I think it’s disturbing.”

Cynthia shrugged her shoulders and handed over the paper. “So, those are the men who were murdered?”

“Yes.” Quinn slid the photographs into his leather notebook. He and Kurt pulled out their business cards. “If either of you ladies remember anything else, give one of us a call.” Cynthia took the cards, while they practically had to slap them in Jan’s hand.

As the two detectives passed the café on their way out, they spotted a poster with Lucy’s name on it. The green-and-beige sign sat on an easel beside a table stacked with her books. The sign advertised a meeting of the Women of Mystery, with guest speaker, mystery writer Lucy Rothschild.

Kurt pointed at the poster. “That’s this Saturday.”

“Wonder what goes on in a Women of Mystery meeting?”

“Maybe we should check it out.”

“Maybe.” Quinn picked up one of Lucy’s books and thumbed through it. “Right now, I’m more interested in what Cynthia Pool and Jan Bright had to say about people hooking up in the aisles of bookstores.”

“You think Breathless picks up men in bookstores?”

“Could be.” Quinn set the book down and glanced at the café to his right. A couple sat at one of the small square tables, while a man with a laptop sat at another. Quinn imagined the place packed. The perfect hunting ground. “We need to put someone undercover in here. Not me or you. Someone the employees won’t recognize.” He returned his attention to the stack of Lucy’s books. “Someone who’s unknown to the suspects we’ve met or interviewed,” he added as the two detectives turned and headed for the doors.

The afternoon sun hit Quinn full in the face, and he reached for the sunglasses in his breast pocket. He slid them on the bridge of his nose as they moved through the parking lot to the unmarked police cruiser. He still wasn’t convinced Lucy was Breathless. Yes, she’d told some lies and could be tied to two of the victims. But she just didn’t seem…aggressive or kinky. She’d responded to his kiss, and within his hands, she’d turned warm and willing. Not the kind of woman to go to a man’s house after a few dates, cuff him to his bed, and snuff out his life. No, she seemed like the kind of woman who’d have entirely different plans for a man cuffed and at her mercy.

Of course, that could be his dick talking.

“Are you kidding?” Maddie asked as she pushed her Mexican rice to the side of her plate.

“No, he just grabbed me and planted a kiss on me.”

“How was it?” Adele asked as she reached for a pitcher of blue margaritas in the center of the table.

Lucy bit her bottom lip, but the corners of her mouth turned up anyway. “Amazing.” She looked across her shoulder at Clare’s smile. Out of the three of them, Clare would be the only one to give her wholesale support. Clare truly did believe in what she wrote for a living. In romance and soul mates and happily ever after. Clare was also the most delusional when it came to men.

“How long have you known this Quinn guy?” Maddie wanted to know. “A week?”

“A little over a week. Tonight will be our third date,” Lucy answered with a stretch of the truth. If she counted the first time they’d met at Starbucks. Which she really didn’t. Nor had she considered the drink they’d had together a real date, until he’d kissed her. The kiss had been very real.

Adele poured margarita into her glass and set the pitcher back in the center of the table. “And you let him kiss you on your first date? That’s not like you.”

Let. Once his mouth had touched hers, there’d been no thought of letting. Just doing.

“You have to be careful, Lucy,” Maddie said as if she were her mother when, in fact, Maddie was only a year older than Lucy.

“He’s just a nice normal guy. He’s a plumber and owns his own business.”

“I think you should go for it.” Clare paused to take a drink of her own blue margarita, then added, “I know you all don’t believe in it, but there is such a thing as love at first sight. It happens all the time.”

Lucy smiled to herself. Or lust at first kiss, at any rate.

A frown puckered Adele’s brow. “I don’t know, Lucy. I dated a plumber once. He was weird.”

“Where did you meet him?” Lucy asked to take the attention off herself.

“At The Society for Creative Anachronism.” Adele shrugged, then dug into her fajita salad.

Maddie’s fork paused on the edge of her plate. “You’re shitting me.”

Adele shook her head. “No. I was writing my medieval time travel and I needed to do some research. They meet in that park off Fort, a few blocks from my house, to sword fight and all that. So I decided to watch and ask questions.”

“Was your boyfriend Sir Lancelot?” Maddie asked.

“No.” Lucy nudged Clare in the arm with her elbow. “Isn’t it Sir Lance of Lotta Love?”

Clare smiled, her blue eyes alight with humor. “It’s Sir Steely Lance of Love.”

“Funny.” One corner of Adele’s mouth turned up as she tried to look offended. “He was Sir Richard the Resplendent.”

“Not to repeat, Maddie,” Lucy said as she reached for her margarita, “but you’re shitting me. Right?”

Adele shook her head. “No. His real name was Dexter Potter. And he looked good in a pair of tights. Large codpiece, if you get my meaning.”

“Oh.”

“Well then.”

Maddie picked at her chicken burrito and pushed the tortilla to the side with the rice. “Are we talking ‘come to momma,’ big? Or ‘I ain’t birthing no babies,’ big?” Maddie held up one finger. “Because there is a difference, ladies. More than nine inches is-”

“Gee, Maddie,” Clare interrupted as she glanced about. “Time and place.”

“What? No one can hear me.”

Lucy laughed and changed the subject again. “Are you still doing Atkins?” she asked Maddie.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “And it’s a bitch. I’m getting really tired of eating steak with a side of pork chops and a pound of butter for dessert.”

“That doesn’t sound healthy.” Adele reached for the pepper and came close to dipping one large breast into her salad. “What does Mr. hardluvnman look like?” she asked Lucy.

Lucy cut into her chicken chimichanga. “He’s tall, dark, and very good looking.” And he could kiss all rational thought right out of her head. “He likes to bird hunt with his dog, and he watches Cold Case Files. His family lives here in town, and his father died a few years ago.” He could put sex into his voice and take her breath away. “His wife died last year, and he’s lonely.”

“Uh-oh.” Adele replaced the pepper and sat back.

“What uh-oh?” Lucy asked, although she knew the answer.

“You’re going to try and rescue him just like all the others.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You always say that,” Clare reminded her. “And you always get your heart broken.” She cut into her enchilada and shook her head. “If you get involved with him, you make sure he treats you right. Like Lonny. He’s the love of my life.”

While Clare looked down at her lunch, the other three gave each other meaningful glances. Clare’s boyfriend, Lonny, was a nice guy, and he did treat her well. He remembered birthdays and holidays and wasn’t jealous or possessive. He would have been the perfect boyfriend if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was gay. Everyone knew it. Everyone, it seemed, but Clare. Either she wasn’t as smart as all of her degrees suggested, or she was in deep denial. Lucy and the others tended to believe the latter. Clare was a great person and a wonderful friend, but it was like she had a force field in front of her face and anything unpleasant bounced off. They were all secretly afraid of what might happen when she found out “the love of her life” was out loving men at the Balcony Bar behind her back.

“You’re all wrong. I’m not attracted to Quinn because I feel sorry for him. Or because he needs to be rescued. I’m attracted to him because…” She thought of his intense brown eyes and long lashes. His square jaw covered in five o’clock shadow and the sensual curve of his mouth. “Because when he looks at me, he’s looking at me. When he asks me about my life, I feel like he really wants to know. That he’s not asking just so he can spend the rest of the time talking about himself. When I’m with him, he makes me feel like he’s really into me.” She took a bite of her lunch and looked at the stunned faces of her friends. “What?”

“You sound like you’re falling for him,” Maddie pointed out.

“Yep,” Adele added.

Clare nodded. “That’s what it sounds like.”

“No, it doesn’t. I have a book to write. I don’t have time to squander on a man.” Lucy reached for her drink. “And besides, I don’t know him well enough to be falling for him. Half the time I don’t know whether to be flattered by his attention or scared.”

A crease appeared between Maddie’s dark brows. “Why are you scared? Is he crazy? What did he do?”

“Nothing. Maybe scared is too strong a word.” Lucy paused and tilted her head to one side. “Puzzled might be better.”

“Why are you puzzled?”

“Because he wants to see more of me. He wants to call me and take me out and-”

“He’s pursuing you,” Clare pointed out.

“I guess.” Lucy paused a moment to collect her thoughts. “It’s just that I’ve never met a man who wanted to see so much of me right off. You know how men are, they take you out and might call you again in a week or two or not at all. Quinn doesn’t seem to know that he’s supposed to keep me waiting by the phone, wondering why he isn’t asking me out again.”

“Wait.” Adele held up her fork. “You don’t want to go out with him because he seems really interested in you? Now that’s crazy.”

Lucy shrugged. Maybe, but there was something about him that she just couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something that told her he was too good to be true, and in her experience, if something looked too good to be true, it was too good to be true. “Maybe I don’t trust the whole my-wife-died thing. I don’t get the impression that he’s lying about it-exactly. I can’t put my finger on it, but I just don’t trust him completely.” She shook her head and cut into her chimichanga. “Maybe I’m being overly suspicious.”

Adele looked up from her salad. “Get him to take you to his house. If he won’t take you, then it’s probably because his wife isn’t really dead.”

“Are you high? That’s how Richard Franko got five of his victims,” Maddie said, referring to the serial killer she’d written about several years ago. “He just invited them home and, like lambs to slaughter, they went. Lucy could be walking into a nightmare.”

It really was no wonder Maddie didn’t date. She viewed most men she met as psychopathic killers. “He’s not a killer. I just wonder if he’s too good to be real.”

“Adele might be on to something,” Clare said. “If you see his house, you can tell right away if he’s still married, or if he’s set up a shag pad. If he won’t take you home, he’s married. If he does take you home-”

“Then he’ll expect sex,” Maddie interrupted.

“True.” The thought of having sex with Quinn wasn’t unappealing, but so soon after meeting him was out of the question.

“If you’re going to be foolish enough to go to his house,” Maddie said, “be sure and take the personal protection I’ve given you.”

“I will,” Lucy promised. For Christmas the previous year, Maddie had given them all pepper spray, a personal alarm, a stun pen, and a pair of brass knuckles. “And I’ll make sure I have my car,” she added, even though she wasn’t even sure she would ever end up at Quinn’s house. “So I can leave before there’s any danger of getting naked.”

“I don’t know which is more dangerous,” Adele said. “You at some guy’s house you don’t know, or driving your car.”

“I’m an excellent driver,” Lucy insisted.

“That’s what Rain Man said,” Clare pointed out.

Lucy knew that her friends thought she was a bad driver, but she wasn’t. Sure, she drove a little fast and yelled things at other cars, but she hadn’t had a wreck in five years. “How’s everyone else’s love life?” she asked, purposely changing the subject once again.

“Nonexistent,” Maddie complained. “There aren’t any men in this town.”

Adele reached for her margarita. “I found an old face scrubby and a Crock-Pot on my porch yesterday.”

“Dwayne,” the other three said, all at the same time. Alean, mean, buff machine, Dwayne Larkin hung drywall for a living, and for two years Adele had thought he just might be Mr. Right. She’d overlooked his habit of picking his teeth at the table and smelling the armpits of his shirts before he put them on. Because he looked kind of like Viggo Mortensen, she’d put up with his beer-guzzling, belching ways, right up to the moment he’d told her she was getting a “fat ass.” No one used the f-word in reference to Adele’s ass, and she’d kicked him out of her life. Too bad he wouldn’t go completely. Every few weeks, Adele would find one or two of the things she’d left at his house sitting on her front porch. No note. No Dwayne. Just random stuff.

“Sheesh. He just doesn’t give up.”

“It’s like he’s holding your stuff hostage,” Lucy commented. “Doling it out like body parts or something.”

“It’s creepy.”

“How much more does he have?”

Adele shrugged. “I don’t know. We were together for two years, and I stayed at his house a lot. I’m sure there’s more.”

“If I hadn’t already killed Dwayne off in Shot of Love,” Lucy said, referring to her third book, “I’d kill him for you.”

“Thank you.”

The subject changed from men to writing, and by the time Lucy paid her portion of the check, they’d given Adele advice on what to do about her problem with Dwayne and helped Clare plot the next three chapters of her book.

Earlier, Lucy had printed out the first six chapters of her current manuscript for Maddie to look over for inconsistencies and mistakes. Maddie might be a little freaky and inappropriate sometimes, but she was brilliant and gave excellent critiques. In turn, Lucy helped Maddie out when she needed it.

Maddie followed Lucy to her car. “Promise you’ll be careful about this Quinn guy.”

Lucy handed over the manuscript pages and looked into Maddie’s brown eyes. Sometimes Lucy got the feeling that her friend was hiding from something. Something that she hid behind her brash personality. Something she never shared with anyone. Lucy wasn’t the sort of person to dig and pry, but if Maddie ever wanted to share, Lucy would be there to listen. “I promise,” she said. “And you promise not to be such a hard ass.”

Maddie said but didn’t promise a thing.

Lucy jumped in her car. On the drive home, her thoughts returned to Quinn. Maybe Adele and Clare were right. Maybe he was just a normal man pursuing her. Maybe she was looking for trouble.

She wove in and out of traffic and blew through a yellow light on Thirteenth and Fort, telling herself that it was safer to go through a yellow than to slam on her brakes. As she drove past the junior high she’d attended as a teenager, the rational part of her brain took the opportunity to ask her if normal men trolled for women in chat rooms. No, they didn’t. Not unless there was something wrong with them. Or…they were in it for sex.

After a few more turns, she pulled into the alley behind her house. When she was with Quinn, she didn’t get the perv or creep vibe. On the contrary. More like he had a smooth sexual energy vibe. One that she had to admit was a little mesmerizing.

She hit the garage door opener pinned to the visor and waited for the old wooden door to lift. A lot of the houses in Boise’s North End had been built around the turn of the twentieth century and still had carriage blocks by the curbs. But once Packards started rolling into town, Boiseans abandoned their carriages and built small detached garages in their backyards. Many of the single-car structures like Lucy’s were still in use because there wasn’t room for anything larger.

Lucy pulled the Beemer inside and shut the garage door. She entered the back of her house through the kitchen and tossed her purse on the tile counter. She looked out the window over the sink and into the neighbor’s backyard. Mrs. Riley was out back, pulling up plastic poinsettias and replacing them with bright tulips. Plastic, of course. She would repeat the process this coming summer and fall. Lucy had asked her once why she planted plastic flowers each season, and she had answered as if it had been the most logical thing in the world, “Why, because I like pretty things.” Which also explained why she’d painted her house bright yellow, blue, and green.

As Lucy watched Mrs. Riley work in the yard, her thoughts returned to Quinn and her date with him that evening. She was looking forward to seeing him more than she wanted to admit. More than was wise, since she didn’t even know him.

It was possible he was a plumber trying to move on after the death of his wife, but it was just as possible that he was one of the seventy percent who were online just looking for quick sex.

Lucy supposed the bigger question, and the one more difficult to answer was, why was she picking him apart only to make excuses to put him back together again? Why was she obsessing over a guy she didn’t know?