Murder on Lovers' Lane (Brody and Hannigan Mysteries) (3 page)

"We're not after someone who targets students.  We're after someone who targets lovers," he said quietly, his expression turning serious.

"And you want him to go after us."

He nodded.  "I guess I should have asked if you wanted to be a target before I suggested it to the dean, though."

"Yes.  You should have."

"You want out?"

"I didn't say that."  She sighed, caught in a chaotic stream of conflicting thoughts and emotions.  She wasn't a natural martyr, so the idea of becoming bait to a brutal murderer wasn't high on her lists of ways to spend her off-duty hours.  The Lovers' Lane killer wasn't exactly a slow build sort of homicidal maniac.  He'd killed eight people in the last month and a half.  He could strike again within the week, for all they knew.

But perhaps even more daunting than the idea of being in a killer's crosshairs was the thought of pretending to be Lee Brody's significant other.  Playacting was all well and good—she'd done her share of it during her early days, trying to prove her worth in the thankless hell pit of the Vice squad.

But pretending to be Brody's lover?

Dangerous to ponder when there was a part of her that damned near gloried at the idea.

"I can get someone else," he suggested.  "Maybe Danbury from Vice—"

"No," she said, unable to stop herself.  "I'll do it."

The satisfaction gleaming in his dark gaze made her stomach hurt.  He'd known she'd insist on playing Juliet to his Romeo.  Tossing in Jill Danbury as incentive had been a cynical ploy, since he knew how little she cared for the leggy blonde who'd spent six months as Brody's on-again, off-again girlfriend about a year ago.

Of course, he believed her animosity was borne of partnerly protectiveness, since Danbury lived to play mind games with the men she dated, and Brody, despite his intelligence and sophistication, had been no exception.

He had no idea how much sheer envy had to do with Hannigan's dislike of his old girlfriend.

They walked back to Dr. Silor's desk, where the dean sat patiently, waiting for them to sort out their decision.  "Am I to let Dr. Flanders know to expect two late registrations for the seven o'clock class this evening?"

Brody gave Hannigan a long, considering look, his eyes bright with anticipation.  He turned to the dean.  "Yes, sir, I believe you are."

It had been nearly a decade since Brody had been a college student of any sort, but he'd spent six years, from the ages of seventeen to twenty-three, at two of the South's best schools; undergrad at Duke and law school at Virginia.

His father, Leland Stafford Brody, Jr., had followed his own father into partnership at Stafford, Brody and Brody, one of the state's oldest and most prestigious firms.  He'd clearly expected Brody to follow suit.  But somewhere in the middle of his final year of law school in Virginia, a trip to the FBI Academy at Quantico had infected Brody with a desire to practice law enforcement instead.  He'd gone as far as applying to the FBI when his mother had nearly died in a car accident.  Though he'd moved back home to be near her during her long recuperation and rehabilitation, he'd resisted his father's pressure to join the law firm, applying to the Weatherford Police Academy instead.

It had been nearly four years after that before he'd gotten his first look at Estella Hannigan's small, trim figure and lethal glare.

"Do you remember the first time we met?" he asked her over the phone as he stepped into a clean pair of jeans and zipped the fly. 

"I think you spilled coffee on me," she answered in her flat drawl.  "Something annoying like that."

"You were dressed like a runaway or something—hair frizzed up and the waistband of your jeans down to your ass crack—"

"Flattering."

He grinned at the memory.  "You had that temporary tramp stamp on your back, remember?  The one with the dragon—"

"And I'm not going to get a permanent one, so stop begging."

An image rose to his mind—his mouth pressed against pale green ink etched into the velvety flesh at the small of her back.  "It was sexy," he growled, and realized at her sudden silence that he hadn't managed to infuse the admission with the necessary humor.  He laughed weakly.  "At least, until it started peeling off."

She joined his laughter, and he thought he heard a hint of relief in her tone.  "You about ready?"

"Yes."  He shoved his wallet into his pocket and grabbed his keys.  "You?"

"Sitting by the door, waiting."

He pictured her there, knees together, feet flat on the floor, her hands folded patiently, seated on the straight-backed chair in the foyer.  She'd be dressed in some neat college-appropriate suit—maybe a skirt, he imagined, and felt a tug low in his belly as he pictured her slim, toned legs and small feet tucked into a pair of stiletto heels—

No.  He drew his mind back sharply.  Stiletto heels weren't college-appropriate.  Or chasing-the-perp-appropriate, either.

He sighed.

Hannigan lived in a Craftsman bungalow on Rosedale Drive.  She was as proud of that little house as she was of anything she owned, though it was old, modest and in dire need of a little extra TLC that Hannigan rarely had time to give it.

She'd done something new to it over the weekend, he realized as he pulled up to the curb in front.  He considered the facade as he headed up the flagstone walkway and realized, finally, that she'd painted the shutters that flanked the four-paned windows on the front of the house.

"You've painted the shutters—" he began when the door opened after his first knock.  But the rest of his thought vanished as his eyes settled on Hannigan's navel.

He swallowed his surprise.  "That's new."

She followed his gaze down to the sliver of skin visible between her jeans and her T-shirt, where a tiny gold hoop threaded through the skin of her navel.  "Oh.  Yeah.  Something I did a few years ago, when I was feeling kind of boring.  It hurt, so I quickly regretted it."

"But it didn't close up?"

She shrugged.  "I used navel rings sometimes in Vice.  Thought it might make me look younger and edgier."

It made her look sexy as hell.

"Does it still hurt?" he asked to distract himself.

"Sometimes," she admitted. 

"Maybe you could get your granny to brew up some witch hazel from that bush out back.  Isn't that supposed to be good for stuff like that?" 

She rolled her eyes.  "Stuff like navel ring irritation?"

She had to say navel ring again, didn't she?

"This is an earring, actually," she added, giving the ring a little flick that made Brody's nether region snap to attention again.

He looked away, studying the newly-painted shutters.  She'd chosen a dusky blue color that reminded him of the color her eyes turned when she wore a navy suit.  Frosty on the outside, blazing sapphire on the inside.

"You look nice," she said in a tone that sounded more polite than sincere.  It might have been deflating to some men, that tone, but he'd long ago realized that for Hannigan, any compliment at all was sincere, regardless of her offhand tone.  She wasn't a woman who indulged in small talk or polite inanities.  What she said was what she meant.

He made himself look back at her and registered, for the first time, that she was wearing something besides the thin gold navel ring.  Her top was a short, tight-fitting T-shirt, in a charcoal gray that darkened her eyes to smoke.  Her jeans were low cut, baring her flat belly and the curve of her hip bones.  For a small woman, she had generous hips, shapely enough to make a man's mind wander to thoughts of anchoring himself between her well-toned thighs and never leaving again.

"Let's go—don't want to be late to class," he murmured, dropping his gaze to her feet.  No stilettos—he'd been right about that, at least.  But the peek-a-boo thong sandals and the bright green polish on her small toenails were sexy as hell.

He opened the car door for her, the show of chivalry earning a quirk of her dark eyebrow.  He shrugged and closed the door behind her, taking a few deep breaths to ward off a full-blown case of lust.

He eased behind the steering wheel.  "I know we're supposed to be bait.  But aren't you overdoing it a bit?"

"I'm wearing a bra," she answered defensively.

Thank God for that, he thought.

"But not panties. I couldn't find any that didn't show a panty line."

He jerked the gear shift too far and the car lurched forward instead of backwards.  He put on the brakes, took another deep breath and managed to get the car in reverse.

He hoped they'd make it to the college in one piece.

Chapter Three

There were twenty-five students in Dr. Sydney Flanders' Introduction to American Literature class, not counting the ones who had already become victims of the Lovers' Lane killer.  The majority, Hannigan was surprised to discover, were males.  College had been a while ago, but she hadn't remembered a surplus of male students in her lit classes.

But then, none of her classes had been taught by anyone who looked like Sydney Flanders.

The name had faked her off.  Sydney Flanders wasn't the tweed-suited, gray haired English professor smelling of old books and pipe smoke she'd expected to totter into the class and start teaching the virtues and vices of James Fennimore Cooper. Instead, Dr. Sydney Flanders floated in on a delicate cloud of White Linen, dressed in a pale pink sundress that showed off her golden tan and long, shapely legs.

In the chair beside Hannigan, Brody sat up a little straighter.  She stifled the urge to elbow him in the ribs.

"Lovely to see two new students with us this evening," Dr. Flanders smiled toward both of them.  Her periwinkle blue eyes settled rather warmly on Brody's perfect, perfect face.  Hannigan felt her temper start to simmer and fought to turn down the heat before she did something stupid.

"I'm saddened to tell you that we've lost another classmate, however," Dr. Flanders added in a grim tone, dragging her gaze from Brody's face and looking around the room.

"It was the Lovers' Lane killer, wasn't it?" one of the boys across the room asked in a dark tone.

Hannigan had to stop herself from answering with a non-committal non-answer, as she was prone to do when asked an inconvenient question by a member of the press.  She slumped in her seat, her T-shirt riding up until it sat just under her ribcage.  She heard a soft intake of breath next to her and saw that Brody's gaze had settled once again on the shiny gold ring looped through the skin of her navel.

Men
, she thought and nudged him with her elbow, making him look up at her.  "If you're a good boy," she whispered lightly, "I'll let you play with it later."

She expected him to grin at her.  But he just stared back at her, his eyes smoldering like coals.

She felt an answering heat low in her belly, spreading downward like a wildfire.  Dragging her gaze away, she looked up at Dr. Flanders, in her neat pink sundress, and wondered if she was just imagining the desire she'd seen in her partner's eyes because she wanted so much to believe he could picture her as a lover and not just his partner.

Despite Dr. Flanders' obvious charms, and her own appreciation for American literature, Hannigan found the lecture less than a distraction from her inconvenient bout of lust for her partner.  Maybe if they'd joined the class late enough to be in the middle of a Twain lecture, she might have stood a chance.  Or even a dose of Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" might have helped drag her mind back to less carnal thoughts by virtue of its cautionary tone.

But no.  Dr. Flanders' choice of topics for that evening's class was the subversive sexuality of John Cleland's
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.

"Isn't that British lit?" Hannigan groused softly to Brody, trying not to dwell on how damned good he smelled at the moment. 

His answer was to scoot closer, sliding his arm along the back of her chair until his fingertips brushed the bare skin of her arm.  "Shh," he whispered, his breath warm against her cheek.

To her credit, Dr. Flanders managed to draw the discussion of Cleland's erotic novel into a broader discussion of the contrasting Puritan influence on American literature that lasted long past its 17th century roots.  The professor sat on the edge of her desk and crossed one shapely leg over the other, eliciting a collective intake of breath among the males of the room. 

To his credit, Brody didn't react.  Hannigan glanced up at him and saw that he was looking at her navel ring again.  She tugged her T-shirt down over the distracting bauble and heard Brody sigh.

"Cleland's work is extremely modern in its treatment of sexuality as a source of pleasure and joy," Dr. Flanders said.  "Contrast it with
The Scarlet Letter'
s more quintessentially American treatment of illicit sex as sin that requires punishment and sacrifice."

"
The Scarlet Letter
is a little more complex than that," Hannigan whispered to Brody.  "It's subversive in its own way—"

As Brody turned curious eyes to her, Dr. Flanders paused in the middle of her dissertation at the front. "Ms—" She paused to check the roll sheet lying next to her on the desk.  "Ms. Harris?"

It took a second for Hannigan to remember that Harris was her undercover alias.  She lifted her gaze to the front, feeling guilty.  "Yes?"

"You have an opinion you'd like to share it with the rest of the class?"

Heat flooded her neck and cheeks, spreading down her back until she felt like a quivering pool of molten embarrassment.  It was just like being back in college, a wide-eyed hayseed drowning in a whirlpool of worldly knowledge and sophistication.

Then she felt Brody's hand flatten against the middle of her back, warm and solid.  A surge of confidence flooded her, drowning the doubts.

"I don't think it's fair to say
The Scarlet Letter
is primarily puritanical in outlook," she said aloud.  "Hawthorne's lush natural imagery and the moral of his tale suggest a God more forgiving than the Puritans whose judgments rule Hester Prynne's life.  Hester is the heroine, not the villain, despite her sin.  And Dimmesdale's iniquity is the wellspring of his empathy with man's sinfulness and ultimately makes him a more powerful preacher."