Alaughing, playful serial killer. Now that was seriously twisted. “Did you see anything else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If you remember anything, give me a call.” Quinn handed him a business card. “I’m sure I’ll be in touch with more questions.”
As Quinn left the office, a patrol officer informed him the couple in room thirty-five might have heard something. The deceased excluded, room thirty-six looked just like thirty-five. Aprostitute in a dingy white sweater sat on the bed, picking at her arms, her eyes vacant, drugged, bored. The man beside her looked up through a pair of thick glasses. His hair was slicked back and his arms were crossed over his thin chest.
“Can I smoke?” the woman asked.
“Go ahead.”
Quinn wrote down their names and the time they’d checked into the motel. The man stood up and started to pace. “I gotta get out of here. I was just going out for paper towels and dog food. My wife can’t know I had a date.”
Quinn looked at the guy and his choice of “dates” and didn’t feel a bit sorry for him. The slob’s wife should know what she lay down with every night. But that wasn’t Quinn’s job. Not these days. “You’ll leave when I’m convinced you’ve told me everything you heard or saw.”
“I told the other cops. I heard some banging like a bed hitting the wall, but I figured…someone was having wild sex.” He shrugged. “I didn’t see anything.”
“How about you?” Quinn asked the prostitute, who was now picking at her cuticles. Lovely.
“I didn’t see nothin’,” she said, moving her jaw like all addicts tended to do. “They was here before us.”
“How do you know?”
“I could hear ’em. Like he said.” She took a drag off her cigarette, then added, “Just some banging. But you hear that a lot around here.”
Quinn handed them both his card and told them to call if they remembered anything. As he left the room, the coroner arrived, and they entered the crime scene together. An investigator knelt in the doorway dusting the jamb with black powder. “There’s dozens of overlapping prints here,” he complained as Quinn slid past. “It’s going to take months to process these.”
Too bad they didn’t have months.
“Another poor bastard,” the coroner said as he and Quinn snapped on new pairs of gloves, “just trying to get laid.” The coroner estimated time and probable cause of death, and Quinn photographed the rope tied to the bedframe.
An hour after the coroner arrived at the scene, the body was released, and Quinn filled Kurt in on what the manager had seen. Admittedly, it wasn’t much, but it was more than they’d had before. He knew better than to get real excited about a woman in a turquoise hat and red coat. What Kurt told him next had him rethinking the direction of the case.
“There’s a lot of ladies with turquoise hats these days. It has something to do with that Peacock Society.”
Quinn took a measuring wheel from his duffle. “Peacock Society?” He looked over at Kurt. What the hell was a Peacock Society?
“Yeah. These days, all the older ladies are in that club where they wear big hats and bright colors.” Kurt placed an evidence flag on the carpet next to a black button. “I think they have meetings and stuff.”
“It’s on account of that book,” the investigator collecting prints at the door told them. “Some lady wrote a book about women wearing peacock feathers because they don’t need men.”
Quinn rolled the tape wheel across the small room and wrote down the measurement. “Did you read the book?” he asked the investigator.
“No, but I saw it at Walden’s in the mall,” the guy answered as he placed clear tape on the black prints, then transferred them to the lift card.
Quinn didn’t bother pointing out that seeing a book wasn’t quite the same as reading it. Instead, he took more measurements and drew a rough sketch of the room. Tomorrow he’d track down information on a Peacock Society. If there was such a club in town, he’d check it out.
“Why did Breathless kill in a motel this time?” Kurt wondered out loud as he looked for more evidence in the dirty carpet. “Why take the risk?”
“Probably because men are scared and aren’t taking women home,” Quinn speculated.
“Maybe she’s getting bolder.”
“They usually do.” Quinn glanced about the crime scene, then looked at his watch. He figured they might be done in time for breakfast.
Lucy poured herself a cup of coffee and pushed her wet hair behind her ears. She’d slept little the night before, tossing and turning and thinking about what had happened at Quinn’s house, until finally she’d gotten out of bed and decided to work. The upside was that she’d written ten pages. The downside was that she was tired this morning.
She’d finally fallen asleep around three, only to be back up again at eight. It could only mean one thing. One terrifying thing.
She was in love with Quinn. She didn’t know how it had happened. One second she’d been answering questions for the Women of Mystery, and then she’d looked up and seen him watching her. Wham, she’d felt it just like that, and there had been no turning back to the second before. No turning back her feelings to when she’d been confused about how she felt.
She’d known him just over a week. People didn’t fall in love in a week. It was supposed to take longer. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or both.
Lucy took her coffee into her bedroom and slipped on a pair of pink panties and bra. Quinn hadn’t called her after he’d rushed her out the door. The last she’d seen of him had been his back as he’d hurried inside his house. Something horrible had happened, but all he’d told her was that it had been related to his work. So how horrible could it have been? Yeah, stopped-up toilets and busted pipes were a drag, but not life or death.
She pulled out a pair of jeans and a woman’s marathon T-shirt from the time she’d signed up to run but had accidentally on purpose slept in until after the starting gun. Maybe someone had broken into Quinn’s work and stolen equipment. She’d heard on the news the other night that theft on job sites was a real problem. Although honestly, she couldn’t understand the rush. He hadn’t been able to get rid of her fast enough, and that worried her.
Alot.
Her feelings were so new. So scary. So sudden, and she hadn’t a clue how Quinn felt about her. Well okay, there were certain times when she was sure he was attracted to her. Like when he looked at her or kissed her or touched her, but that wasn’t love.
Lucy pushed her feet into a pair of slippers, then grabbed her coffee on the way out of the room. Last night when she’d decided to get out of bed and work, she’d searched her briefcase for the six chapters Maddie had returned to her yesterday. The collapsible folder hadn’t been there, and she’d figured she’d left it in her car. As much as she felt safe in her home and in her neighborhood, there was no way she’d been willing to walk outside to her garage at 3:00 a.m.
The soles of her slippers slipped across the tiles in her kitchen and slapped the concrete stairs and sidewalk as she made her way outside to the garage. She searched the BMW and found a stick of gum, a pen, and a window scraper under the seats. No folder. She retraced her steps back inside, looked up the number, and called Barnes and Noble. Jan Bright hadn’t seen it, but she said she would ask the employees and the Women of Mystery.
The doorbell rang as she hung up, and she moved across the living room. She looked through the peephole at Quinn, and her heart did that crazy speedup slowdown thing. He wore black-framed sunglasses to shield his eyes from the brilliant morning sun, and dark stubble covered the lower half of his face.
She opened the door as a gust of cool air ruffled his dark hair. “Good morning.” He was wearing the same clothes that he’d worn the night before-a white dress shirt and jeans. He hadn’t been to bed, and he should have looked a rumpled mess. He didn’t. He looked like someone she’d like to reach out and touch, soothing his brow and feeling his rough cheek against her palm. He looked like someone she’d like to undress and tuck into her bed.
From behind his glasses, he gazed at her for several long moments before he asked, “May I come in?”
“Of course.” She opened the door wide, and he moved past her, bringing the scent of spring on his skin. “Coffee?” she offered as she shut the door.
