Killer Smile. Marilyn Pappano
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because I don’t believe anyone has eyes that shade naturally. Oh, and she was wearing the cutest dress, sleeveless, scooped neck, with a fitted bodice and a drop waist with a little pleating that gave it really nice movement when she walked. And her shoes! OMG.”
Bewilderment joined Daniel’s annoyance. All this talking, and had she actually said anything? He didn’t know what size two meant in women’s clothing. Small, he presumed. He would also presume the unnatural eye color was blue, green or some shade of purple. But scooped neck? Fitted bodice? Drop waist?
“So, she was a small woman in a cute dress?”
Cheryl scowled at him. “Isn’t that what I just said?”
From his desk in the back, Ben snorted again. Daniel was glad he provided entertainment for the guy. That could be his new purpose in life. Or he could just go ahead and strangle Cheryl like he’d wanted to since fifteen minutes after meeting her. He would even write up the inventory of his own personal possessions, take his own fingerprints and lock himself in the holding cell. No jury who’d ever met Cheryl would find him guilty.
“Next time someone comes in, get a name, would you?” he groused, heading past her desk to his own in the back.
“I asked, but—”
Everyone else in the room—three detectives, five uniformed officers preparing for shift change and two dispatchers in their alcove to the left—all chimed in together, “She didn’t say.”
Sometimes he hated this place.
No one in the department had a private office besides the chief and the assistant chief, who was out of town for training. The detectives had desks clustered in the rear of the large room and conducted interviews in the conference room off to the right. Normally, he was okay with that, but there were days when a person needed a little privacy and right now, as he kicked off his wet shoes and peeled away his dripping socks, was one of those times.
“She makes LA look better every day,” Ben said from his desk a few feet away.
“I thought you’d never been to LA.”
“I haven’t, but I don’t need to see it to know it beats working with Cheryl.”
Wringing first one sock, then the other, over the trash can, Daniel scowled at him. “She likes you.”
“No, she just has more fun with you.”
Ben turned back to his computer, where he was making one of his infamous lists. He had one for everything, probably even sex, and reviewed them regularly. It was the way he worked. Daniel preferred keeping information in his head and staring into space while letting his subconscious brain piece it together. It was the way he worked.
Though in his lifetime there had been no shortage of people pointing out that his way looked an awful lot like daydreaming. He didn’t care. He produced results. That was what mattered.
Footsteps echoed in the lobby, but he didn’t turn to look at the newcomer. They had a desk sergeant for that—and, of course, Cheryl. Plus Morwenna, one of the dispatchers, was nearly as nosy as the secretary, just in a much more pleasant manner.
Ben’s chair creaked as he swiveled to face Daniel. “Do you want to interview the suspect or the victim in the morning?”
“Victim.” It was an easy choice. Ben was more comfortable with suspects, and he’d handled far more domestic assault cases. Daniel had too much experience with bullies and related far better to the victims. It was odd that empathy was one of his better traits as a detective when most people thought he came down on the lacking side of the emotional scale.
“Deal. So...you don’t know any pretty size-two blondes with a fondness for black dresses with fitted bodices?”
“What do you know about fitted bodices?” Then Daniel stopped typing mid-word, and he looked up at Ben. “Cheryl didn’t say the dress was black.”
“That’s some good detecting there, son.” Ben nodded toward the front counter.
As Daniel slowly swiveled his chair, he realized the room had gone quiet and everyone was waiting expectantly, their gazes shifting from him to the counter and back again. When his own gaze got there, he saw why. There was the blonde, tall, pretty, not small—just a couple inches shorter than him—but slim and curvy and definitely looking like a California beach girl. Her hair was super short—last time he’d seen her, it was long enough to wrap his hands in—and to anyone who didn’t know her, she looked like a ray of sunshine on a dreary day.
But he knew her.
He’d been engaged to marry her.
Until she’d dumped him in front of every single friend and relative they’d had.
What in hell was she doing here?
Natasha Spencer would bet there wasn’t a person in the room who had any idea how much it was killing her to stand there and let them—let Daniel—stare at her. She used to have a lot of nerve—more then than now. Back then, she would have dared them to look their longest and hardest. She even would have done a few model-on-the-runway turns so they could form their impressions, back and front. Now she just stood, half a smile frozen on her face, and wished for a sudden case of amnesia. People always stared, but if she didn’t know why, she couldn’t care.
She’d hoped Daniel would come to the counter, maybe walk off to a distant corner or even outside with her. There was an overhang out there that provided protection from the rain. But he showed no inclination to even rise from his chair. He was leaving it to her.
She took a few more steps, until the counter blocked her way, and tried for a better smile. “Hello, Daniel. I was wondering if we could talk.”
Her words echoed off the high ceiling, followed immediately by the swivel of eight or ten heads to look at him. His silence was going to be even more booming and echoey, the kind they could get lost in and never find their way out of, and the hell of it was, he was entitled.
“We could always talk. Our problem was communicating.”
Funny. The words were in what she considered his usual tone of voice: even, cool, rational, calm. Growing up the way she did, she’d always loved even, cool, rational and calm. It had soothed her every time he’d said something as benign as, Do you want seafood or Thai for dinner?
But there was an edge to his voice that she’d heard so seldom she rarely remembered it, a sharp edge that passed for angry in his cool, calm world. It made her gut tighten. She lived with guilt all the time, and she hated it. Almost as much as she hated coming here.
She couldn’t think of anything to say to that, especially nothing she wanted to say in front of his coworkers. She didn’t turn and slink out, though. Unless he’d changed tremendously in the past few years, he wouldn’t shut her out. He was too courteous to leave any conversation hanging like that and too curious to leave this one hanging. No matter what he felt, there was one question he would have to ask: Why the hell are you here?
Yeah, this was a curse-inducing moment if he’d ever had one.
Water was pooling around her shoes, and the air-conditioning gave her chills where her dress was damp from blowing rain. She’d left an umbrella next to the door, but it hadn’t proven much help when the wind brought the rain in sideways. She thought longingly of returning to the room she’d rented, taking a warm bath, having a bottle or two of wine and coming up with a new plan, because apparently this one wasn’t working.
Then, with a heavy sigh, Daniel stood and walked toward the counter. His feet were bare, she realized, cute with his dark gray suit, white dress shirt and black tie. He looked more approachable barefooted...though that was just fantasy. Sometimes he was an easy man for mushiness and sentimentality. Other times, he was logic and pragmatism personified.
He stopped with ten feet still between them. “What?”
She caught a whiff of the cologne he’d worn since