think.”
“That’s good. Then I don’t have to guess.”
She laughed, putting her gloved hand on his. “You can read suspects, but not me.”
His gaze took in her hand. She’d left a smudge of dirt that he wiped off. “Guess it’s tough when the printing is too close to your face.”
“You want some lunch?” she asked.
“If you have some. If not I can pick some up on the way back to the office.”
She pulled off her flowered gloves then stood. “I’m hungry, too. Starved in fact.”
“You have a tape worm?”
He followed her into her house. His house since he still made the mortgage payments. His residence until he’d walked out three years ago.
Her hips swayed as she walked in front of him. Once her movements made him hot; now her attempts at seduction annoyed him. There’d been that one night, but he’d made the situation clear to Dolores.
“Sit,” she commanded before she crossed to the refrigerator.
“I’m sure I can find stuff.”
She shook her head. “It’ll give me something to do while I think of how I tell you my news.”
Her being nice meant she wanted something. His defenses slammed closed, his teeth clenched. She wasn’t getting anything from him.
He sat at the scarred Formica table on a chair with ripped upholstery. She hadn’t replaced it yet and he had some hot memories from this piece of furniture. “What news?” Would she get to it already?
Shrugging out of his suit jacket, he slid it onto the isHback of what had been his chair. The same cat clock’s tail twitched the seconds. The place even smelled the same, a mixture of grease and cologne.
She stopped in the middle of making a sandwich. Her tired gaze came to him. “I’m pregnant.”
Chapter Two
Zach blinked. Holy shit. One night. “A baby?”
Dolores eyed him as if he would tell her the answer to a philosophical question.
When she didn’t deny it he said, “Oh?” His tongue couldn’t move properly.
She had always wanted children. He hadn’t and Dolores didn’t tell him her desire until after they married. Another example of how she manipulated him. He hoped she wasn’t doing it again.
“Thanks.” She whirled back to her lunch-making. “It’s yours.”
He glanced out the window then back to Dolores’ back. “Okay.”
A small child could have decked him at that moment.
“I know you didn’t want children, but I’m keeping this baby.”
Zach stood and bridged the distance between them. She didn’t shy away. He didn’t touch her, but she put her arms around him.
“Do you think it’s a good idea? Bringing this baby into an already broken home? Not even a home anymore.”
She shoved him away from her. “This is regardless of what contribution you planned to make.”
He swallowed hard. “Are you really prepared to take care of a baby? Financially and emotionally?”
Her gaze went through him. “Yes.”
He knew how to take responsibility. “I need to time to wrap my brain around this.”
He walked away from her, back to the chair. He paused, then sat down.
“Fine. I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” she said.
She dropped a plate with a sandwich in front of him.
He shook his head, but the idea of a baby lingered on in the outskirts of his consciousness. He could go with a subject change if she could. “So tell me about the car that pulled away,” Zach said.
Her butt landed in the chair across from him. “I’m renting out the apartment above the garage.”
He paused with the sandwich halfway to his mouth. The apartment was livable, but not luxurious. They’d planned on using it as a guest suite, but the marriage had fallen apart. “Why?”
“I need the money.”
“I’ll give you more if that’s what you need.”
She smiled. “That’s generous, but I know how much you make. And now you have a new business.”
“I could find something else to do.” Not.
The next best thing to being a cop was being a private investigator in his mind. That’s what he told himself each morning when he didn’t want to get out of bed.
She laughed. “Oh, Zach, you wouldn’t want to do anything else. It’s as if dead people call to you.”
Knowing she was correct, he blew out a breath. “Well, then at least let me have her checked out.”
Dolores ran a hand through her auburn hair.
“Let me find out for sure.”
She picked at her sandwich. “Her name’s Grace Harmony. She’s new in town.”
He reached across and took her hand. As always he said, “I’ll take care of everything.”
***
A background check of Grace Harmony topped Zach’s To-Do list.
But instead of coming back to an empty store front office on Main Street of Glen Hills, someone paced on the sidewalk in front. Why was she out front? She lived upstairs.
Dressed in a caftan in more colors than he could name, Celia Johnson looked worried and determined. He didn’t know why she felt the need to dress the part of a kook. When she’d come to the police station, out of deference to him, she’d looked respectable in a navy suit and sensible pumps. Now she looked like a circus clown on acid.
Zach groaned, then unlocked his front door as if the cause of his downfall with the Centre County Prosecutor’s office didn’t exist.
“Zach.”
Her shrill voice rattled his bones and sent a chill down his spine on such a warm day. His hand paused on the doorknob. “Yes, Celia.”
She stood with her tangled, from-a-bottle red hair rioting around her face while her bearing remained straight and true. “We need to speak.”
“I don’t think so. You’ve done plenty of damage and I’d hoped I’d seen the last of you.”
Trudging into his office, he tried to pull the door closed behind him. Celia held a multi-ringed hand on it. “This is serious. There’s going to be another fire.”
Frustration gnashed his teeth. He’d been down this road and he didn’t like the scenery. “That serial arsonist has been tried and convicted. He’s serving his sentence as we speak.”
“It isn’t the same one. A copycat.”
Zach landed in his chair then rubbed a hand down his face. Maybe if he “yessed” her to death she’d go away. “How do you know this?”
“May I sit?”
He indicated the second-hand chair he’d bought for real clients when he hung out his private eye shingle. Tugging a notepad closer, he reached for a pen. “Go ahead.”
She pressed her lips together as if something undesirable would escape them. He didn’t roll his eyes at her theatrics, but that took all of his restraint.
“I dreamt it last night,” she said when her gyrations were done.
“You said that last time and we arrested the wrong guy.”
She shook her head. “No, you didn’t listen to all that I said.”
“Whatever, Celia. Say what you have to say then leave. You probably have to be at work.”
