The one in the front held out a sheet of paper. “Thank you for saving Lucky. Daddy said we could give this to you if you came.”
The crayon drawing depicted a blue-uniformed officer who was holding what looked like a hairy seal, but in reality was probably supposed to be a hamster—if slightly out of proportion.
“You’re welcome.” Bing’s throat tightened a little as the girls ran back to their father.
He folded the picture carefully, slipped it into his pocket, then got to work. A lot of dark looks were shot his way when he ordered everyone out to the driveway and told them they would have to be fingerprinted so the police could exclude their prints from the mix when they tried to identify the intruder’s.
While Joe worked on that, Bing walked through the house. Most of the damage had been done upstairs, in the bedroom and the home office. Here drawers had been pulled and overturned. The more he saw, the more his instincts prickled. This was definitely not a robbery cut short. Whoever had come in had spent plenty of time here. They’d have to canvass the neighborhood, see if anyone saw anything, although, chances were, most of the neighbors had been at the funeral.
When he was finished, he sat down to interview Brian Haynes in the kitchen: what time they left, what time they came home, who noticed the busted window, and the rest.
“We were gone about four hours. Dakota, my younger daughter, went to the bathroom when we came home and came out to tell me that the window was broken.”
Bing tapped his pen on his notebook. “Anything missing?”
“The gun I was using for target practice in the woods.” He closed his eyes for a second. “I’m sorry. I kept it locked away in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom.”
But the average medicine cabinet could be opened with a butter knife.
Since Haynes appeared to be plenty miserable about it, Bing decided to spare the lecture for the moment. They’d get back to it later. He took down the specifics instead. “What else?”
“I haven’t had a chance…” Haynes looked around as they were sitting at the table. “Everything’s messier. I didn’t notice that when we came in. I was—” He shook his head.
Too grief-stricken to pay attention to a few pillows turned over on the couch, Bing thought as the man continued.
“If they took something, it’s nothing obvious. TV and the video games are still here. My laptop.” He nodded toward the sleek black unit on the counter.
“Maybe the burglar was disturbed. He could have just come in, found the gun, then heard cars pulling up outside and he ran.” Yet the upstairs had been tossed pretty thoroughly, so the perp had spent time up there. “Odd that he wouldn’t grab anything else but the gun, no other valuables that he could easily fence.”
Haynes’s vacant gaze didn’t change. And it occurred to Bing that the man might have taken a mild sedative for the funeral.
“Do you think,” the grieving husband asked, “that the break-in could be connected to…”
He didn’t finish, but Bing knew what he meant. His wife’s murder.
“This is not as uncommon as you think.” He drew up a shoulder, then let it drop back. “The obituary in the paper contains your name plus time and date for the service. Some criminals target that kind of thing. They can find the address from the name, and they know the exact time when nobody will be there.”
“Wouldn’t that be too much of a coincidence? I mean she was killed last week, and today someone comes into the house.” Haynes kept fisting his hands, then catching himself and relaxing them over his knees.
Bing wasn’t a big believer in coincidences either. “Suppose someone was looking for something specific. Do you have any idea what it could be?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Has your wife ever brought home work?”
“Not really. When she was at work, she worked like crazy. But when she was at home, she spent her time with the girls. The home office is mine because I work from home. She didn’t even have a desk.”
“All right.” Bing closed his notebook. “Why don’t you go outside and join the others? We’ll finish dusting for prints, take some photos, and then we’ll let everyone back in.”
The man’s phone rang in his pocket. He hesitated.
“You can take that.”
Haynes picked up the call, listened with his eyes closed, then thanked the caller. Someone was probably calling to express condolences.
Since Joe was still working with the fingerprint kit, Bing sent Haynes outside, grabbed the camera, and began taking pictures. The missing gun bothered him, but if the break-in was connected to the murder, then the intruder had been looking for something else, something that would tie the killer to the crime.
But what was it?
* * *
The three days since Bing had kissed her passed in a blur, work taking up every minute. Every time Sophie went by Bing’s house on her evening walks, the house drew her, that eerie sense of déjà vu grabbing hold of her.
“I hate it,” she told Peaches, an excellent listener. She was finally comfortable enough with him to take him along for her walks.
“Some people think memories are stored in other places and not just our brains. They think body parts can remember. Like whoever had the heart before me could have lived in a house like this and now I remember it.”
Peaches didn’t look convinced.
“Stupid, right?”
She thought about attending a support group meeting but talked herself out of it. New heart. New house. New life. She wanted to leave her problems behind, not delve into them.
What she did want to delve into was that kiss with Bing.
But he hadn’t called, hadn’t stopped by to check on her, and hadn’t been home when she’d walked by his house, the windows dark in the evenings. He was probably working.
No sign of anyone today either, she thought as she walked Peaches in the cool of the evening.
“That kiss totally rocked my world,” she admitted. “The sad thing is, it doesn’t look like it meant all that much to him.” She sighed. “I’m now officially that girl who’s waiting for the guy to call. It bites.”
They walked to the intersection and turned down her street. “I refuse to be pitiful about it,” she told Peaches. “There are plenty of other fish in the sea.”
All true, but the sad thing was she wanted Bing.
She walked home with Peaches, gave him fresh water, washed her hands then went back to work. Best was to keep busy. She brought up the web site she was building for Mark Villon. He was a manager at some big corporation, but started flipping houses as a side job to make money. Not his only side business. He also ran a cigar club that sent a box of exotic cigars to its members each month, each box from a different country.
He was good at making money, but not nice about it. He had everything redesigned ten times, always pushing for more than her initial quote covered, and never wanting to pay extra for it. On top of that, he was always trying to flirt with her on the phone, pushing her lately to have coffee with him.
Sophie brought up the right screen. She had maybe four hours of work left on the project. She was going to send the finished product to him then, as a present to herself, never take another job from the man.
* * *
Neither the Haynes murder investigation nor the Haynes B&E investigation moved forward. Bing’s week ended up being utterly unproductive. By the time he had his next day off on Saturday, he was swimming in frustration.
Mark Villon had given another alibi, an outside client who couldn’t be reached at the moment. He’d simply mixed up his days the first time around, he claimed. Joe was checking out the new information. Maybe that, too, would prove to be a lie. Maybe Villon was playing for time.
His HR file had an interesting note in it, a complaint filed by a female coworker eighteen months ago. He’d wanted to take her out and had pushed too hard. He claimed he just wanted a date and anything else was a misunderstanding. He’d been moved to a different team, but didn’t receive a reprimand. The HR manager investigating the complaint, a single woman in her early thirties, had taken his side.
Any way Bing looked at it, Villon had potential as a suspect. But they had no actual proof that would tie him to the murder. So far.
Yet there was something in the air, that tension cops could feel just before a case broke. A storm neared. It couldn’t come soon enough, as far as he was concerned. Bing stood ready to face it.
He sat on his front stoop with his morning cup of coffee, waiting for Sophie to show up to help him with the landscaping, unsure how he should act when she arrived.
They’d kissed. That kind of thing always muddied the waters.
As hard as he’d been working his cases, she kept popping into his head over and over throughout the week. It’d been a very long time since a woman had occupied his thoughts like this. Part of him felt guilty about it, as if he was somehow unfaithful to Stacy’s memory. Yet even the guilt couldn’t keep him from looking forward to spending time with Sophie today.
Then she appeared at the end of the street, bright green folder in one hand, leash in the other, leading Peaches, and suddenly everything inside him relaxed.
The morning sunshine glinted off her hair. He watched her walk toward him in a green, long-sleeve top and a sexy pair of jeans, her red curls bouncing with every step, a little too aware of the dog, which showed in the stiffness of her right shoulder. She felt the fear but did what she had to anyway, the definition of courage. She was beautiful, compassionate, and brave. He swore under his breath, smart enough to know when he was in trouble.
He pushed to his feet as they reached his front lawn. “You two are best buddies now?”
She smiled. “I honestly don’t think he means to harm me.”
“That’s a big leap of faith from you. I’m proud of you. I mean it.”
She just about glowed under the praise.
He wanted to kiss her again. He wasn’t sure if he should, if she would want him to. And things felt different here, in front of the house he’d shared with Stacy. Something held him back.
There was an awkward moment, then, instead of pulling her to him as he wanted to, he spread his arms to gesture at the expanse of green. “Here it is. Feel free to work your magic.”
She glanced around, not looking the least bit daunted. “Let’s start with measuring.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think I have a tape measure this long.”
“You can just step it out.” She brimmed with can-do attitude. “Your boot has to be around a foot long. I brought grid paper. We mark where everything is; then I’ll enter it all into the software at home. I can work up a blueprint. I can even do a 3D rendering so you can see what everything will look like when you’re done with it.”
They started with the walkway.
“Any more garden theft?” he asked as they went, even though he’d driven by her place each day after work and hadn’t seen anything missing.
“So far, so good.”
“Peeping Tom?”
“Could have been just a shadow.”
He hoped so. He didn’t like to think that she might be in any kind of danger. He knew what she’d say if she caught him feeling protective toward her, and he stifled a smile. He liked her independent streak.
At the end of the walkway, they both turned at the same time, and the dog got between them, nudging Sophie off-balance. She tilted, bracing herself on his chest, glancing up with a startled look as he reached out to steady her, their lips inches from each other.
* * *
The moment was so ridiculously Hollywood romance, Sophie half expected a director to yell, “Cut!” from behind a bush any minute. But no interruptions came, and he kept holding her, searching her face as if looking for some kind of answer there.
She told herself that enjoying a strong pair of male arms around her didn’t make her a weak woman.
She wanted him to kiss her again. When she’d first walked up to him, she’d wondered if he would. He hadn’t. Which meant that first kiss had been just a fluke and was likely their last as well. So she pulled away.
He pulled her back. He tilted his head as if he was weighing something. “I want to kiss you.”
A thrill cut through her first, then alarm. She was not going to blurt out any kind of admission this time. She tried to play it cool. “I have issues.”
“I noticed.”
She bit her lip. “I don’t know why you want to kiss me. And if you do, I don’t know why you’re holding back. So I’m not sure how to act. People kiss all the time, no big deal. But the more we’re thinking about it, the bigger deal it seems. Is this a good idea? I thought it was, and then—”
He shook his head with a wry grin, his lips tantalizingly close. He smelled like coffee and man, a potent combination. “Overcomplicating things much?”
She blew out some air. “I can’t help it. I’m a woman.”
“Thank God for that.” And then he dipped his head and brushed his lips against hers, pulling back just when her fingertips began to tingle. “I’m okay with complications.”
She couldn’t hold back the smile that was spreading on her face.
His lips dipped for another brush against hers. “I keep meaning to keep my distance, but somehow I never manage,” he said when he pulled back again; then he drew a deep breath, taking her hands, looking into her eyes with a somber expression. “I want you. I’m not going to deny that. But I don’t think it’s right for me to move on until I give Stacy what’s due to her.”
He wanted her. Heat flooded her body. It took a lot not to just jump into his arms and embarrass herself completely. She tried to get her brain to work. “You mean justice?”
He nodded.
She tried to process that. “You have your own complications.” She thought for another second or two. “If you’re willing to work with mine, I’m willing to work with yours.”
“Okay.”
The sudden heat in his eyes took her breath away. Okay? Just like that? That easy? They were going to try to work out a relationship? She knew she had to be grinning like a lunatic but couldn’t stop herself.
Then Peaches saw a bird and lurched, yanking on the leash, yanking her away from him. She didn’t mind the break. She needed to gather her scrambled brain. “I guess he’s trying to tell us we should get to work.”