Detective On The Hunt

Quint blinked. He’d seen Georgie chew up grown people and spit ’em out. If she’d been a cat, she would have been the sort who tormented the mouse mercilessly before killing it. JJ should have been lucky to walk out of here with her skin intact.

Instead, they both looked smugly satisfied. Like they’d come to some kind of agreement and would now make nice of their own accord. He’d never seen Georgie make nice with anyone outside her family or his.

JJ set her clasped hands on her lap. “Have you met Maura?”

“Of course. I’m not going to let someone move into my own house without getting a good look at her. My granddaughter showed her the house.” Georgie’s faded gaze darted to Quint. “Twenty-three and hasn’t been to jail once.”

“Yet,” he tacked on, making her grin. Truth was, none of her family had been to jail in his lifetime. They’d gotten tamed before he was even born. But they’d still nursed that family animosity toward the law.

“She’s going to be a schoolteacher. Graduates from OSU next December.” Georgie rummaged in the drawer beside her chair and drew out an electronic cigarette. Her smoking had been the nastiest habit under the sun, his mother used to declare, even though Georgie had never smoked in anyone’s house, not even her own. At her age, he figured, she was entitled to a few vices. Smoking, a glass of whiskey before bed and terrorizing the other old folks in the home were all she could manage.

“When Maura decided she wanted the house, I had her come over here to sign the papers. We had lunch, just me and her and that obnoxious little friend of hers. Mel. I hope her real name was something like Mellissandriennalou. That twit walked through the door—” she gestured with her e-cig toward her own door “—took a sniff and said old people smell like death. Like she even knows what death smells like. Rude kid. I should have pinched her ear.”

JJ grinned. “You are like Grandmother Raynelle. I was convinced my right ear was going to be bigger than the left because of all the times she tweaked it.”

“Sounds like you needed it.”

Quint couldn’t quite see JJ as a disrespectful kid. Disobedient, sure. She struck him as someone who acted first and apologized later—sweetly, innocently and even faintly sincerely—if it was necessary. Even in her earlier exchange with Georgie, he suspected she’d already known how the old woman was going to react, so there’d been no real disrespect intended.

“Do you remember Mel’s last name?”

“Wasn’t even polite enough to offer it.”

“What did you think of their relationship?”

With the push of a button, Georgie reclined the chair, stretched out her legs and crossed her ankles, propping hot-pink running shoes on the footrest. “I thought they were family at first. Mel’s hair and eyes were brown, and Maura was a blue-eyed blonde, but other than that, they could have been sisters.

“But you could tell Maura had always had money and Mel never had. Maura was all elegant and confident, and Mel… There was a sort of hunger about her. Not physical, you know, but more as if life had been tough and she’d never known anything better. She didn’t look like money, you know? And telling me I smell. Twit.”

The image that formed in Quint’s mind didn’t create a warm-and-fuzzy feeling. Rude, disrespectful, didn’t know how to behave and eager to trade her tough life for something better. And that was apparently the only friend Maura had had. And then Mel had left her.

As unsympathetic as he intended to be, that thought told him he wasn’t succeeding.

Because that was just damn sad.

JJ tipped her head back and gazed at the ceiling. The mysterious Mel sounded like Maura’s friends back home, except that the Carolina friends mostly came from money, like her. JJ was familiar with some of them because of their run-ins with police that never resulted in consequences, some because of their parents’ friendships with her parents. Most of them she could recognize, maybe even identify by name, but that was all. She couldn’t recall a brown-haired, brown-eyed hard-luck kid who’d infiltrated the Evanston crowd and stuck with it.

The two women could have met in college or on the road. It didn’t seem possible Mel had toured a winter’s full of ice palace hotels in Norway or cruised the Mediterranean, but Maura had spent plenty of time in American cities, as well. They could have run into each other in any number of ways, hit it off and decided to roam together with Maura picking up the tab. She was very generous, Morwenna had said.

Because her companions had let her thoughts wander undisturbed—Quint probably preferred her silence, but as Miss Georgie had said, time was a-wasting—she filled the silence with an absentminded comment. “Your glass is beautiful.”

“It is. That swirly red-and-green one there—that was a Christmas gift from Maura. She brought it when she delivered the December rent. We had lunch together every month when she paid the rent, but after that, I never saw her again. The rent started coming in the mail.”

JJ studied the lamp with new interest. Maura had noticed the collection and taken the time to find a beautiful icicle-shaped addition. For a woman she didn’t really know and expected nothing from in return. That was the kind of thoughtfulness one expected of an Evans a few generations ago, not from the current one. If she made the right friends, fell in love with the right person, would Maura discover something of substance inside herself?

Possibly. But it didn’t seem likely that maybe-Melanie, maybe-Mellissandriennalou was the kind of friend who could anchor Maura in the real world. Instead, she appeared to have been along for the ride, enjoying the luxury until she’d gotten bored and moved on.

Leaving Maura one more loss to cope with.

Her muscles protesting too much sitting, JJ got to her feet. The rocker squeaked as Quint followed suit. “One last question, Miss Georgie. Did Maura say why she’d decided to stay in Cedar Creek?”

A rather sad look claimed Miss Georgie’s features. “She said it reminded her of home. You know, I never saw a person more lost than her.”

JJ felt a little sad, too, as she approached Miss Georgie and offered her hand. The old woman’s skin was dry and cool, marked with what Grandmother Raynelle had called wisdom spots, and her fingernails were painted a sparkly midnight blue.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Georgie.”

“For a copper, you’re not too bad.” The effect of Miss Georgie’s scowl was dampened by her sly wink.

“You’re not half as bad as you think you are.”

Miss Georgie chuckled. “You can come back sometime. We’ll see if I can change your mind about that.”

“I’d love to see you try.” JJ gave the thin hand a gentle squeeze, then turned toward the door.

She was halfway there when Miss Georgie spoke again. “Come over here, Quint.”

There was no doubt it was a command, and no doubt that he would obey it, JJ thought, hiding a grin, because that was the kind of person he was. She waited at the door while he did, indeed, obey and Miss Georgie took both of his hands in hers.

“How are you? Really?” Her voice was a murmur, but JJ shared one thing with the old woman: excellent hearing.

He looked as if he wanted to pull away, rush out the door and let the cold air drive away the flush to his cheeks. He didn’t, though. Instead, he muttered, “I’m okay. Really.”

Okay about what? It clearly wasn’t the throwaway question everybody used a dozen times a day. Something had happened in his recent past that worried the crusty old woman—something he didn’t want to discuss.

JJ turned her back, deliberately tuning out their conversation. She didn’t feel guilty for being curious. She wouldn’t be a police officer if she wasn’t curious about things, and she wouldn’t be a woman if she wasn’t curious about him. But she didn’t stoop to eavesdropping, not unless it involved a case.

After a moment, his footsteps sounded behind her. She opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. He closed the door and stopped beside her, looking to the right, the way they’d come, then to the left, where a red exit sign marked the stairwell. He looked like a man who very much wanted to take the stairs.

“Who’s in 318?”

His scowl wasn’t as fierce as Miss Georgie’s, but it was more sincere. “You noticed that.”

“I’m a copper.” The word made her grin. She might never call herself a cop again. “I get paid to notice things.” Turning 180 degrees, she started toward the stairway exit.

She was pretty sure that was relief radiating off him as he fell into step beside her. No answer was forthcoming, though, so she prompted him. “Family?”

The closing of the stairwell door was muffled by the sound of their boots, hers sharper, his more solid, descending the steps. He didn’t answer until they reached the second-floor landing. “Practically.”

It wasn’t much of an answer, but that was okay. She didn’t have the standing to insist on more. Though they’d spent half the morning together, they were still strangers. His life was his, and he got to choose what he wanted to share.

Besides, it wasn’t his life she wanted him to share.

She had a healthy regard for sex. She was thirty-seven and unencumbered by relationships. She’d come close to marrying once, a decade ago. Ryan had been a fellow officer who moved to Evanston after two years with the Columbia Police Department. He’d been sweet and smart and funny and everything she wanted in a guy…until she made detective before him.

When he’d broken the engagement and moved back to Columbia, it had stung her pride and made her doubt her judgment, but it hadn’t broken her heart. Which meant he really hadn’t been even close to everything she wanted in a guy.

Since then, she hadn’t gotten within squinting distance of marriage. She’d dated her share of men, had sex with some of them and not with others. She didn’t indulge in one-night stands or stranger sex because of the inherent risks. She still had a yearning, not necessarily for marriage but for commitment. For that one special man who would brighten her day just by being in it, who would love everything about her the same way she would love everything about him and would make her heart flutter when she was eighty.

But if she waited to meet Mr. Forever before she had sex again, she would be a very grumpy and cranky JJ, and that wasn’t a pretty sight.

The air broke over her, offensively cold, when she walked out the front door. This time, though, she didn’t stop in shock. Her steps lengthened as she practically jogged across the lot to Quint’s vehicle. The exercise, brief as it was, felt really good to muscles cramping from the same position for so very long. On another day, she might even have told Quint she would walk back to her car, enjoying the exercise, the fresh air and the budding of the trees. Today, spending one instant more than necessary outside was out of the question.

“What now?” Quint asked as they fastened their seat belts.

“Where can I buy a coat?”

“Walmart. Atwoods. It’s a farm and ranch supply store. Or there’s a little store about a mile north. We can stop there on the way back to the station.”

Ooh, she liked a man who didn’t whine about shopping. Her father and both her brothers-in-law acted as if their fingernails were being torn out with pliers every time they had to hang out in a women’s clothing department. Though, truthfully, JJ felt the same way when she accompanied her middle sister. Kylie could spend an hour choosing between two pairs of nearly identical jeans.

“Little store sounds fine. When it comes to warmth, I have no vanity.”

He reached into the back, snagging his duty jacket, and offered it to her. “Until the truck warms up.”

She hesitated half a second before accepting it, huddling beneath it like a blanket. It was big and heavy and smelled enticingly of scents undiluted by cologne. Shaving cream, detergent, fabric softener, soap. No floral or woodsy intruders, but plain, simple Quint. She drew a deep breath, then sighed happily, her chin tucked into the faux-fur collar.

It was a quick drive to the shopping center where the clothing shop nestled between a coffee shop and a grocery store. The air blowing from the truck’s heating vents wasn’t much warmer than outside when they parked, but she handed the jacket back, anyway. He didn’t insist she keep it, didn’t pretend he wasn’t finally feeling the cold himself, but shrugged into it as he got out.

She appreciated that fact. She’d never understood why men always offered their jackets to women who’d failed to dress warmly enough. Like the chill didn’t cut through their clothes just as easily? She had never been a Boy Scout, but she knew all about the consequences of not being prepared. You don’t take an umbrella on a soggy day, you get wet. You wear a sweater on a hot day, you get sweaty. You don’t take a heavy coat to a place known for its iffy weather, you get frozen lungs and blue skin.

Sadly, blue wasn’t really her color.

They hustled from the parking lot to the store. On the other side of the glass doors, warm air, an explosion of colors and rock music greeted them, along with a pretty girl sitting at the checkout counter and texting. Her hello was perfunctory until she glanced up. Then a smile split her face, she clutched her cell phone, jumped to her feet and rounded the corner to approach them. “What are you doing here? Did that six-pack of T-shirts you bought five years ago finally wear out? Can I take your picture and send it to everyone as proof of life?”

Curious, JJ looked from Quint to the girl. She was way too young for anything romantic between them. Sure, some older guys had to go young for an emotional-needs match, but he seemed far too stolid to date someone he could have fathered. Besides, with the blond hair, blue eyes and the square angle of both their jaws, she’d put money on a relative. Much younger sister, niece, cousin.

“If you take my picture and send it to everyone, there won’t be any life left in your phone by the time I finish grinding it into the ground,” he said, gaze narrowed, voice gravelly enough to give some weight to the threat.

But the girl wasn’t the least bit threatened. “Uncle Quint, you haven’t scared me since the time you caught me and my friends drinking beer at the park. That was ages ago.”

“Four years.”

“Like I said. Ages.” Her gaze shifted to JJ, raking up and down. “I love that jacket, but it’s way too cold for it today.”

“That’s why I’m here.” JJ saw racks of coats near the back of the store and headed that way. A murmured conversation drifted behind her—Quint’s voice low and raspy, the girl’s higher and lighter—then came the click of high heels on the tile floor. JJ lifted a black wool coat from the rack to examine it, and when she lowered it, the blonde was on the other side.

“Hi, I’m Lia, and though my job is to sell the merchandise, that coat is something my grandma would buy. We have a great plum one, and a persimmon one, and a gorgeous fuchsia. Even something like this brown does so much more for you than black. Plus, it’s more fitted, like your jacket, so you still have a shape when you’re wearing it, instead of being padded and curveless like the black one.” Lia held up the brown coat, flashed a smile at Quint, waiting by the register, and lowered her voice. “So you’re a friend of Uncle Quint’s.”

JJ couldn’t help but smile at both her fashion advice and her conspiratorial tone. “We just met this morning. I’m in town on business.” She patted her Taser after removing her own jacket and before pulling on the brown coat. The shade was rich and dark and reminded her of hot cocoa with just a sprinkle of cinnamon. Its luxe lining embraced her with warmth.

Lia smoothed the collar, then turned JJ to face a mirror. “See, the color plays up the reddish tints in your hair and those freckles you do a decent job of hiding. You really shouldn’t be hiding them. They’re there, they’re cute, and Uncle Quint likes freckles. And you can be warm without adding so much bulk.” Without a breath, she shifted gears again. “How long will you be here?”

“No idea. A few days, maybe a week.” She shrugged.

“Oh. Too bad…or maybe not. I mean, not everything’s got to be forever, right? You’re pretty, and you have good taste, and a week of innocent—”

Quint cleared his throat, and Lia literally jumped. Her face went pale, then a few shades darker than his own flush. “I’m telling Grandma you eavesdropped.”

“Grandma was the one who taught me that when your voice got quiet, you were up to something.”

Lia sniffed. “She should have been the cop in the family.” Her pout turned immediately to a smile when she turned back to JJ. “Do you like this coat, or would you like to see the persimmon one? And do you need a scarf or gloves to go with that? They’re right this way—”

The glimpse JJ got of Quint’s aggravated face as Lia pulled her away was sweet. He wasn’t terminally cranky, after all; he was kind to old ladies and fond of his niece. Chief Dipstick had clearly sent her here as punishment, but the universe had smiled on her by putting Quint in her path.

Wouldn’t that make the old man spit nails?

Quint stayed nearby while Lia rang up JJ’s coat, scarf and gloves, then cut the tags from them. The only way to stop a Foster woman from talking about anything and everything was to stand watch, ready to put the fear into them. He’d forgotten that when he’d let his niece wander off to wait on JJ. He hadn’t heard everything when he joined them, but he’d heard enough to get the impression that Lia was trying to set up JJ with someone, and since he was pretty much the only single guy in Lia’s life right now—definitely the only single one in JJ’s age range—he figured he’d been Lia’s target. All the Foster women—and, sadly, most of the men—thought another relationship was the best way to get him over the one he’d lost.

He rubbed idly at the center of his chest where it ached. There had been a few times in the beginning when he’d thought he was having a heart attack. Had hoped he was. He hadn’t wanted to live without Linny. Had never even imagined it. She’d been the best part of his life for so long, and the idea that he would have to live without her had been incomprehensible.

Forty was too young to die. Sure, it happened all the time—accidents, suicides, homicides—but natural causes fell pretty low on the list. Linny had never had surgery before. How could anyone have known she would have an adverse reaction?

Adverse reaction. A nicer, neater way of saying stroke. How in the hell had a healthy forty-year-old woman having a minor surgical procedure had a stroke and died on the table? How could anyone have prepared for that?

Slim fingers caught his hand and pulled it away from his chest. His vision was fuzzy when he focused, slowly clearing to show concern on Lia’s face as she gazed up at him.

“Uncle Quint?”

How many times had she spoken to him? Her expression suggested several. He squeezed her hand reassuringly. “What were you saying, Bean?”

As he’d expected, she rolled her eyes at her childhood nickname. “Mom is gonna call and see if we can have Easter at your house.”

Easter. Was it already time for that? Then came Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, the Fourth of July and enough birthdays to tire out a partier like Maura Evans. “She knows I prefer family get-togethers where I can go home when I’m done.”

She laughed. “That’s why she wants to do it at your place. So you can’t make an early escape.”

Quint tugged at his ear. He didn’t want a celebratory dinner at his house. Cleaning it to meet his mother’s standards wasn’t a problem; he kept it neat. An overgrown yard wasn’t an issue, either. He would surely mow it between now and then. But instead of saying no flat out and wiping that sweet grin from Lia’s face, he said, “I’ll think about it.”

“All right! We’re partying at Uncle Quint’s! I’ll tell Mom.” She folded JJ’s suede jacket and handed it to her. “Thank you for the business, it’s nice to meet you and have fun while you’re here.” She’d whipped her phone out before finishing the words and was already texting when they turned away. No doubt telling her mom that Easter was a go.

He walked behind JJ through narrow aisles to reach the door. Before she opened it, she pulled the new orange wool cap over her head and slid orange gloves onto her hands. This time, when they stepped outside, she didn’t act as if she were the loser in a game of freeze tag. “Your niece is cute.”

“Huh. How did ‘I’ll think about it’ turn into ‘Sure, bring the whole gang’?” He zipped his jacket, then shoved his hands into the pockets.

“When my mom said, ‘I’ll think about it,’ that was exactly what she meant. With our dad, my sisters and I heard what we wanted. And because we were so adorable, it usually worked for us.”

Adorable. That was his niece. She’d had him wrapped around her little finger when said finger was only an inch or two long. He could see some adorability in JJ, too. Some prettiness, too. He’d always thought of brown as kind of a noncolor, like white or black, but the brown coat looked good on her. It made him aware, even in the dreary lack of sunshine, that her hair wasn’t entirely brown but threaded through with strands that would gleam like copper in bright light. The color warmed her face and the fabric hugged her body, showing only a faint bump where her Taser was holstered.

She wasn’t so nothing special as he’d thought just a few hours ago.

Scowling, he climbed into the truck. Sam, JJ, Georgie and Lia—he’d talked to more people today than he usually did in three or four days combined. He was ready to take JJ back to her car and regain his usual solitude, but when he opened his mouth, that wasn’t even close to what he suggested.

“Want to get some lunch?”

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