To Die For

he asked in a careful tone of voice.

“You know. On my hands. So you can tell if I’ve fired a gun.”

“Ohhh,” he said knowingly, nodding his head and shooting a quick, quelling glance at his partner, who had made a muffled noise. “That thingie test. You mean for gunpowder residue?”

“That’s it,” I said. Yes, I know they were trying hard not to laugh at me, but sometimes the dumb-blond stereotype has its uses. The less threatening I could appear, the better.

Well, Detective MacInnes took me at my word. A crime scene technician came with a tackle box full of stuff, and did an Instant Shooter I.D. test, rubbing my palms with fiberglass swabs, then putting the swabs in some chemical that was supposed to change colors if I had any gunpowder on my hands. I didn’t. I had expected them to spray my hands with something and hold them under a black light, but when I asked the technician, he said that was old hat. You learn something new every day.

Not that MacInnes and Forester relaxed procedure in any way after that. They kept asking questions-could I see the man’s features, tell what make of car he was driving, and so forth-while my car, the entire building, and adjacent properties were diligently searched, and only after they turned up nothing in the way of wet clothing did they conclude the interview, without even telling me not to leave town.

I knew Nicole had been shot at close range, because I had seen the man standing with her. Since she was lying beside her car at the far end of the parking lot, in the rain, and since I was the only completely dry person there-which was why they had looked for wet clothing, to make certain I hadn’t changed clothes-I therefore had not been out in the rain and couldn’t have done the deed myself. There were no wet prints other than those made by the officers coming in the front door; the back entrance was dry. My shoes were dry. My hands were dirty-indicating I hadn’t washed them-and my clothes were soiled. My cell phone had been under the car, with the 9-1 clearly visible in the window to show I had started to dial 911. In short, what they saw jibed with what I said, which is always a good thing.

I escaped to the bathroom, where I took care of a pressing problem, then washed my hands. The skinned patch on my palm was stinging, so then I went into my office and took out my first-aid kit. I squirted some antibiotic salve on the scrape, then covered it with a giant-size adhesive bandage.

I thought about calling Mom, just in case someone had heard something on their police scanner and called her, which would scare her and Dad to death, but figured it would be smarter to first ask the detectives if making calls was okay. I went to my office door and looked out, but they were busy and I didn’t interrupt.

Frankly, my butt was dragging. I was exhausted. The rain was pouring down and the sound made me even more tired, while the flashing lights outside gave me a headache. The cops looked tired, too, and miserably wet despite their rain gear. The best thing I could do, I decided, was make coffee. What cop didn’t like coffee?

I like flavored coffees, and always kept a variety of flavors in my office for my personal use, but in my experience men aren’t very adventurous when it comes to coffee-at least, southern men aren’t. A man from Seattle might not turn a hair at chocolate-almond-flavored coffee, or raspberry chocolate, but southern men generally want their coffee to taste like coffee and nothing else. I keep a nice, smooth breakfast blend for those with Y chromosomes, so I got it out of my supply cabinet and began scooping it into a paper filter. Then I added a dash of salt, which counteracts the natural bitterness of coffee, and just for good measure added one scoop of my chocolate-almond. That wouldn’t be enough for them to taste, but would give the brew an added mellowness.

My coffeemaker is one of those two-pot Bunn machines that makes an entire pot of coffee in about two minutes flat. No, I haven’t timed it, but I can go pee while it’s making and it’ll be finished when I am, which means it’s pretty damn fast.

I put one pot under the spout and used the other pot to pour in the water. While the coffee was making, I got out a supply of polystyrene coffee cups, creamer, sugar, red plastic stirrers, and arranged them beside the coffeemaker.

Very shortly Detective Forester followed his nose into my office, his sharp gaze noting the coffeemaker as soon as he entered.

“I just made a fresh pot of coffee,” I said as I sipped from my own cup, which was a nice cheerful yellow with the words “FORGIVE YOUR ENEMIES-IT MESSES WITH THEIR HEADS” emblazoned in purple around the bottom. Polystyrene is hell on lipstick, so I always use a real pottery cup-not that I had on any lipstick, but that’s beside the point. “Would you like some?”

“Has a cat got a tail?” he asked rhetorically, moving toward the pot.

“Depends on whether or not it’s a Manx.”

“Not.”

“Then, yes, the cat has a tail. Barring any unfortunate accidents, that is.”

He was smiling as he poured himself a cup. Cops must use telepathy to pass along the word that there’s fresh coffee in the vicinity, because within minutes there was a steady stream of both uniformed and plainclothes peacekeepers coming to my door. I put the first pot on the warmer on top, and began making a second pot. Soon I was switching pots again, and the third batch of coffee was brewing.

Making coffee kept me busy, and made the night a little less miserable for the cops. I actually got to drink a second cup myself. I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep that night anyway, so why not?

I asked Detective MacInnes if I could I call my mom, and he didn’t say no, he just said he’d appreciate it if I waited a while, because if he knew mothers, she’d come rushing down and he’d like to get the crime scene wrapped up first. Put like that-he was a man who understood mothers, all right-I just sat at my desk and sipped my coffee and tried to stop the trembling that kept seizing me at unexpected moments.

I should have called Mom anyway, so she could rush down and take care of me. The night had been bad enough already, right? Well, it got worse.

Chapter Three

I should have known he’d show up. He was, after all, a lieutenant with the police department, and in a fairly small town like ours-sixty-odd thousand people-murders weren’t an everyday occurrence. Probably most of the cops on duty were there, and a good many who weren’t.

I heard his voice before I saw him, and even after two years I recognized the deep timbre, the slight briskness that said he hadn’t spent his entire life in the south. It had been two years since I’d last seen the back of his head as he walked away from me without so much as a “Have a nice life,” and still I felt the bottom drop out of my stomach as if I were riding a Ferris wheel and just beginning the downward arc. Two damn years-and still my heartbeat speeded up.

At least I was still in my office when I heard his voice; he was just outside the door talking to a knot of cops, so I had a moment to prepare myself before he saw me.

Yes, we had a history, Lieutenant J. W. Bloodsworth and I. Two years ago, we had dated-three times, to be exact. His promotion to lieutenant was fairly recent, no more than a year ago, so then he’d been Sergeant Bloodsworth.

Have you ever met someone and every instinct, every hormone, sat up and took notice and whispered in your ear, “Oh, my God, this is it, this is the real thing, grab him and do it NOW!”? That was the way it had been from the first hello. The chemistry between us was incredible. From the moment we met-we were introduced by his mother, who belonged to Great Bods at the time-my heart literally fluttered whenever I saw him, and maybe his didn’t flutter, but he zeroed his attention in on me the way guys do when they see something they really really want, whether it’s a woman or a big-screen plasma TV, and there was that flare of heightened awareness between us that made me feel slightly electrified.

In retrospect, I’m sure a bug feels just the same way as it flies into a zapper.

Our first date passed in a blur of anticipation. Our first kiss was explosive. The only thing that kept me from sleeping with him on the first date was: (A) it’s so tacky, and (B) I wasn’t on birth control pills. I hate