“I thought I saw a shadow. And Peaches was barking.” She shrugged as she went back into the house. “Probably another squirrel.”
He noted the tension in her jaw. “What did you really think it was?”
She flashed an embarrassed half smile. “Peeping Tom?”
“I didn’t see anyone walking away when I came up. No reports of any Peeping Toms in the neighborhood either, or any home invasions. Dogs will bark at anything.”
“I know. I’m getting used to it.” She drew a deep breath. “I appreciate your help with the collar.”
“No problem. You know how to reach me if you need anything.” Because that was what this was about—him helping a citizen in need. Not about the way the weight seemed to lift from his chest when he was with Sophie.
He’d had business out this way, had to drive out to his house on his lunch break to let Joe’s sister, the Realtor, quickly run through it to get some ideas. After she left, he’d thought he would check in on Sophie and the dog. End of story.
“I better get going.” He strode to her front door, then through it with a quick wave.
He had plenty to do at the station and more at home when he got off shift. Maybe coming back to Sophie wouldn’t be the best thing. According to the Realtor, he needed to put half his stuff in storage. He needed to refresh his bathrooms and kitchen—whatever that meant. And he needed to update the landscaping.
But before he left, he walked around her house, looking at the ground. No footprints in the grass that he could see. Then again, a flagstone path led to the gate, so someone could have walked down here without leaving prints.
He watched the dog for a second, now chasing birds in the back. Just because the dog had barked earlier didn’t mean somebody had been around. The Labrador he’d had as a kid used to bark at the wind.
If anyone decided to case out the neighborhood, Sophie Curtis’s cottage, the most modest house on the street, wouldn’t be their top pick. The front porch needed a paint job, and the windows needed replacing. The place didn’t exactly scream money.
Yet he could afford to drive by now and then when he was on duty and maybe ask the others to keep an eye on the place, he thought just as his phone rang.
“We got some prelim lab results on the Haynes case,” Joe said on the other end. “It’s not much. All they have so far is that the blood on the ground came from one person. It’s the vic’s.”
“Of course it is.” An obvious link to the killer would have been too easy. He glanced at the time on the display. “Why are you still in?”
Joe had the night shift that ended at six in the morning. He’d stayed on to help Chase with a violent arrest, but still being at the office at noon was overdoing it. Just because Bing didn’t have a life, he didn’t expect his officers to do the same.
“I thought I’d go through e-mail and phone records again. Now that we know it’s murder instead of her just running off, I want to double-check everything, in case we missed a clue in the first round of interviews.”
And because of the possible connection to him, Bing thought, part of him touched. He had good men in his department. He cleared his throat. “Find anything?”
“Not yet. I’m still looking.
He got into his car and started up the engine. “Go home. You put in enough hours. You’re entitled to a life while you’re young and pretty,” he joked as his phone beeped. “Gotta go. Mike’s on the other line.” He switched between the two men.
“I think I might have something here, Captain. I’m at the bank. One of the tellers remembers Kristine Haynes being here the morning of her disappearance. Routine transaction. But the teller remembers her being in the week before, with a man. She remembers them specifically because they were fighting the entire time they were standing in line.”
“Start the warrant request for the security videos.” He stepped on the gas. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
* * *
Jeremy called just as Sophie was getting ready for bed. “How was your checkup?”
“Pretty good,” she told him, turning back the covers.
“I want to come over and see you.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. I’m fine. Really.”
“Well, I don’t think you are,” he snapped, then tempered his voice. “I could help. I could take care of you—”
“Don’t you have a new girlfriend?”
A long pause came. “It didn’t work out. I miss you.”
“We’ve both moved on.”
“You have someone?” His voice rose.
“That’s not what I meant. We both have different lives than when we were together. We want different things.”
“And if I still want you? I think about you all the time. We could have something good together again.”
“But only on your terms?”
“What’s wrong with me wanting to take care of you? I could have gone to your appointment with you. Wouldn’t it have been better than going alone? Two people can pay better attention than one. What if you missed something important Dr. Pratt said?”
“I have a full printout of everything I’m supposed to be taking, eating, and doing. And Wendy came.” They needed a change of subject. “How is work?” He ran a small business consulting agency.
“Okay. You know how difficult it is to run a business and be the boss, taking care of employees. My decisions determine whether they can put food on the table for their kids.”
“I know. You’re doing a good thing.”
“So can I come and see you? We really need to talk.”
“Can’t right now, not this week, and not the next one either. Sorry. I’m up to my neck in work.” And she wasn’t lying. Two new work orders had come in while she’d been busy with Peaches and Bing.
“You need me to protect you,” Jeremy insisted. “It’s just not safe for you without me.”
She pressed her lips together. Telling him about some random guy peeking in her windows lately would definitely be a bad idea, she decided, even as guilt bubbled up inside and nearly swayed her. Guilt said she owed Jeremy. And going back to the familiar, even if not the best thing, was always a temptation. Starting something new and unknown had an enormous potential for disaster.
But also for reward.
Illness had defined her for too long. She refused to be defined by fear. There was no going back, only marching resolutely forward.
“You need me,” he insisted. “I could make everything easier.”
He didn’t understand her, and she wasn’t sure he ever could. “I’m not looking for easy.” She was looking for something real.
She shook her head when, for some reason, Bing’s mocha eyes popped into her mind.
Chapter Six
Sophie woke to a call from Dr. Pratt the next morning.
“Biopsy and lab work are as good as can be.”
She breathed easier for the first time that week, her lips snapping into a smile. “Thank you so much for letting me know.”
“That pet you asked about,” the doctor went on. “I’m going to tentatively approve it. As long as he’s one hundred percent healthy and clean. Maybe something small would be good to start with.”
She sat up in bed, her gaze settling on her unplanted forest as she glanced outside. “How about gardening?”
“Don’t push it, young lady. I don’t want you playing in dirt.”
“Yes, sir.” Her results were good. Nothing else mattered. But her eyes narrowed as she took a second look at her plants outside.
Her entire row of boxwood bushes was missing.
So as soon as she thanked the doctor for the good news and hung up, she threw on some clothes and hurried outside to investigate.
About a hundred dollars’ worth of plants had walked off in the night. Frustration pumped through her as she marched inside to call the police.
While she waited for them, she fed Peaches, then brushed her teeth and washed her face. She hadn’t asked for Bing. Petty theft wouldn’t require the captain of the police. But he came anyway.
He seemed tired and preoccupied as he strode up her walkway and, maybe for that reason, more approachable than he’d ever been. He looked sexy in the morning. She pushed the thought away and went to meet him halfway.
“Thanks for coming out. This is what I was talking about.” She gestured toward the empty strip of flat grass, irritated all over again.
“When did this happen?”
“Sometime last night after you left.”
“Peaches didn’t bark?”
It was the first time she’d seen him in uniform, and it fit him pretty darn well, distracting her for a second, but then she caught herself and shook her head. “If he did, it didn’t wake me. He’s in the back, and my bedroom’s in the front.” She hesitated. “It’s probably unrelated, but… When I first moved in last year, I planted a row of flowers.” Practically wearing a hazmat suit to dig them in. “They were torn out by the next day.”
“Stolen?”
“No. Just killed.”
His mocha eyes narrowed. “You have any enemies?”
“I’ve been sick most of my life, haven’t had the chance to do much of anything, let alone anything controversial enough for someone to want to hurt me. I’m going to make up for that,” she added.
A dark eyebrow slid up his forehead. “Making enemies?”
“No. Doing all the things I missed.”
“Keep it on the right side of the law. Fought with anyone lately? Ex-boyfriend?”
“Jeremy wouldn’t do something like this.”
“Jeremy who?”
“Jeremy Denvil. Ex-fiancé.”
“Don’t know him. Lives in Broslin?”
“Actually, I’m not sure where he lives right now. But he has his own consulting company. He rents a small office in Wilmington.”
He pulled a notebook from his pocket and wrote down the name.
She shouldn’t have mentioned Jeremy. “I don’t want him contacted.”
He ignored that. “How big were the bushes that went missing?”
“About a foot. I had a dozen. I was going to edge the walkway with them. In the winter, once they grew, they would catch some of the snow, so I would have less to shovel.
“Good plan.” He wrote some more. “Would they fit in the trunk of a regular car?”
She thought for a minute, trying to visualize it. “Probably.”
He put away the notebook. “I’ll walk around. See what I can see.”
Standing there and staring at him felt silly, so she went inside to put on coffee.
Twenty minutes passed before he came in after her.
“I didn’t see any tire tracks. I wouldn’t necessarily, unless they pulled up on your lawn. But the bushes were small enough to carry them out to a vehicle waiting by the curb.” His voice wasn’t exactly laced with optimism. “I’m going to file a report when I get back to the station. Just to make things official.”
“What are the chances of finding something like this?”
“Unless someone saw the car and wrote down the license plate, close to nil.” He gave it to her straight. She liked that. She wasn’t in the mood for sugarcoating.
So there went a hundred bucks. He’d probably known that before he came out, but he’d come anyway, immediately. She appreciated that.
“Would you like some coffee? Decaf.” She flashed an apologetic look. “I’m not allowed the real thing. If it’s okay for you to accept it while on duty.” She’d seen something about that on a prime-time crime show.
“I’m not on duty yet. I was just heading to the station when I heard that you called in. I keep the scanner on all the time. Occupational hazard.”
“Milk and sugar?”
“Black.” And when she handed him the cup, he said, “Why don’t we sit outside on the deck for a minute?”
She grabbed her coat before she followed him out. The morning was pretty nice, the back of her house facing southeast, full sun, but she didn’t want to take any chances.
He set his coffee on the patio table before he squatted and patted the dog. Then he straightened and pulled a tennis ball from his pocket and threw it. Peaches took off racing after it, his ears flopping in the wind.
The display of unbridled joy put a smile on her face.
“Had a couple of these in the garage. I thought I’d bring one over for him,” he told her as he sat in one of the chairs. And when Peaches brought the ball back, he threw it again. “How are you doing with the dog?”
His long legs stretched in front of him. There was no getting around the admission that he was one sexy cop. “We’re getting used to each other.”
“Still no calls?”
She shook her head. “I even put up a notice on Craigslist and a couple of other places online. Called the vets and let them know too. Put up posters at the grocery store and the post office. How can someone have a pet that’s gone missing for three days and not be driving around looking for it? They don’t even deserve him.”
“You’re getting attached.” He grinned at her.
Holy heavens. Her coffee went down the wrong way. She coughed as she choked a little. The uniform and the grin were too much. She shifted in her seat.
Peaches ran back to them. This time, instead of giving the ball to Bing, the dog dropped it at her feet, then stepped back and tilted his head at her expectantly.
She glanced between the dog and Bing. “See that puzzled look? He does that all the time. As if he doesn’t know what to make of me. He doesn’t do that with you.”
“He can probably read your ambivalent body language.”
Way to go to make her feel even more self-aware. She picked up the ball and threw it, making a mental note to wash her hands with antibacterial soap as soon as she went back inside.
“So when is the landscaper coming?” he asked.
“Haven’t found the right one yet.” The right price, actually. She was still paying off her astronomical medical bills. It didn’t leave much for extras.
“I could swing by tonight and drag them back behind the fence. Might be safer there than sitting by the road,” he offered.
There he went with wanting to save her again. “Only if I can pay you for it.”
He stared at her for a moment, then narrowed his eyes. “You said you were good with design?”
“Do it for a living.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, his bicep making an interesting bulge under his shirt. “How about this? I put your garden into the ground tomorrow. I have the day off, since I have some weekend shifts. Then, when you have the time, you design my front yard. I’m putting the house up for sale.”