Act V (15 page)

Brice just stared at him. “I know you
don’t exactly believe this whole precognition thing, but she was on
target last time.”

“
Yeah, I wish she hadn’t
been.”

“
I went over to her place
and stayed with her all night.”

Addy’s eyes lifted.
“You
stayed
with
her?”

“
I slept on the
couch.”

“
Oh.”

Brice walked into the break room and
came back with two cups of coffee. “The worse thing is that she
didn’t know the vics and couldn’t give me much of a description.
This could be anybody in town between the ages of 18 and 25. Oh
shoot, it could be anybody in the world in that age
range.”

Addison took a gulp of sugared, creamy
coffee. “Maybe, but what do you wanna bet it’s gonna happen right
here?”

*****

They spent the day
interviewing people who might have had a reason, any reason to be
angry enough with Claude Danning to want him dead, or perhaps would
benefit from his death. None of the people they interviewed rang
that intuition bell with which both men were very familiar. Though
everyone on the list had motive, nobody had motive,
opportunity
and
means. On top of that, nobody in the group was especially
versed in Shakespeare which might or might not have been important,
depending on whether Glynn’s theory was correct.

According to the police services
report, none of the unknown hairs from the house matched anything
in the system, so they were of no use at all. That didn’t mean that
none of the hairs came from the murderer, but without something to
match it to, they were no good. Everything they had led them back
to square one. And, of course, the search for the Ketamin origin
had turned up nothing.

“
Maybe we
should turn this one on its ear.” Brice murmured almost to himself.
That was their way of saying
think
outside the box.
“Maybe it’s time to look
at the murder weapon a little harder.”

“
We don’t have one.” Addison
reminded him.

“
Yeah, but we know what it
was, pretty much anyway, and we have Glynnis’ description from her
dream.”

“
Which won’t even be
considered in court.”

“
No, but
maybe it’ll take us to something that will.” Brice logged onto his
computer and went to Google. “You try the weapon’s database. It’s
not gonna be there but we have to check.” Then he entered three
words into the search engine—
dragon
long sword.

*****

At two o’clock, after diving down a
zillion internet rabbit holes, Brice gave up the search for dragon
long swords and decided he’d give it over to Handy and Hawkins for
the time being. He and Addy had a funeral to get to.

Claude Danning’s funeral was attended
by the best and the brightest of Clearview. There were also many
who just wanted to view the event out of morbid curiosity. Brice
and Addison weren’t interested in either group. They were looking
for a stand alone. Someone who tried to blend in with the crowd but
perhaps didn’t fit. Depending on the type of killer, it was a
common thing for murderers, especially the ones with outlandish
styles, to stalk the family after the fact, to mingle with the
crowd in order to hear bits and pieces about his or her work. That
was the man they were searching for. But nobody stood out as that
personality. Brice took photos of the crowd at the graveside just
in case, but he didn’t expect them to turn up a
murderer.

Afterward, he and Addy gave the widow
and the rest of the family their condolences and headed back to the
station to put in just a little more time.

*****

Glynnis was finishing up at the theatre
for the day when her cell phone rang. She sat down the lighting gel
she’d been examining and flipped the phone open.
“Hello?”

“
Glynn, it’s me.” Dorsey
sounded sober for a change. “Don’t hang up, okay?”

“
Did Mom give you this
number?”

“
No, I promised I wouldn’t
tell where I got it.”

“
Erica! I’ll kill
her.”

“
Don’t be mad, Glynn. I
bugged her about it until she felt sorry for me.”

Glynn didn’t respond.

“
If Erica thinks I deserve a
second chance, shouldn’t you at least think about it?”

Glynnis was in no mood for this. “What
do you want, Dorsey?”

“
Glynn, I’m sober…and I’m
working. You said if I got my act together…”

Glynnis sighed. He was right, she had
promised. “Okay, but remember, it’s not a date.”

“
Will you let me take you to
dinner tonight? I can pick you up at your place in an
hour.”

“
Make it an hour and a half.
I have to take Carl for a walk and get a shower.”

“
Thanks Glynn. I’ll see you
in a while. You won’t be sorry.”

Somehow she doubted that.

*****

Kenny turned the steaks over and
brushed marinade on the other side. “Gabby,” he called through the
door, “get the bread and salads ready, they’re done.” In a couple
of minutes Kenny walked into the kitchen with both steaks on a
platter. “Voila!” He made a flourish with his hand. “And you
thought you married me just for my good looks.”

Gabby smiled. She loved the fact that
Kenny was willing to do anything to make her laugh. It had been a
hard week with both sets of parents mad at them. She needed a
laugh. “You are truly multi-talented.”

“
Just wait until dinner is
over. I’ll show you multi-talented.”

She blushed. All this was still so new
to her that she didn’t know how to react sometimes. She was old
fashioned, she knew, but she had insisted that she and Kenny wait
until they were married for sex. Kenny hadn’t been too happy about
it but he loved her and they had waited. Now the two of them
couldn’t get enough of each other. She knew that the dishes would
probably have to wait for morning if Kenny had anything to say
about it. And that would be fine with her. He was wonderful and he
was her new life, only just beginning.

*****

Glynnis had just unclipped
Carl’s leash and pulled off her work clothes to get a shower when
the doorbell rang.
Please tell me that’s
not Dorsey already. He’s forty-five minutes early.
She grabbed her robe off the hook and wrapped it
as tightly as possible around her. It was a short, summer robe
covered with red hibiscus flowers, that reminded her of a geisha
girl in some sleazy tea house porn movie, but it wasn’t as if
anybody ever saw it except her. The bell rang again. “I’m coming!
Just hold on!” she yelled at the door. She grabbed a frantic Carl
by the collar and opened the door only a crack, but enough to see
that Brice was standing outside with a take-out bag in his
hand.
Dang!
“Brice, um…Oh come in. I’ll be right back. I’ve got to take a
quick shower.”

Brice sat the bag of Chinese down on
the table and watched with a whole lot more interest than he wanted
to admit as her shapely butt twitched away from him only barely
covered by that almost robe. “Going somewhere?”

“
Actually, yes,” she called
from the other room. “I promised Dorsey we’d go out to dinner
tonight and talk about…well I’m not sure what we’re talking about.
Hold on.”

Brice heard the shower running and felt
a twinge of jealousy. He knew he had no right—they weren’t in a
relationship, but he had been there to comfort her last night when
she had been crying. Well, at least she had called him, not
Timmons. He walked back into the kitchen and tossed the take-out
bag into the refrigerator. The shower shut off. That was fast. He
yelled into the bathroom, “Need any help?”

“
I’ve been dressing myself
for a long time now,” she called out, suppressing a very girlish
giggle. “But if you want, you can watch TV; the remote’s on the
coffee table.”

“
That’s okay,” he grinned to
himself, “it wasn’t the television I wanted to watch.” Sitting down
at the table, he commented out loud, “Do you think it’s a good idea
to go out with Timmons? He’s not really off the suspect list yet,
you know.”

She was brushing her hair as she
entered the room, dressed in jeans and a v-neck top that wasn’t
revealing, but made the mind wonder what else there was to see.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I heard my mother out here.”

“
Just doing my job, ma’am,”
he grunted, reaching down to pet Carl.

“
What? Taking me to
raise?”

“
Just be careful,
okay?”

She smiled at his concern. “Dorsey and
I dated a long time,” she told him. “He wouldn’t hurt me, not
physically anyway. And as far as being on your suspect list, that’s
just ridiculous. I’m the one that told him to go apologize to his
boss.” She sat down across from him at the table. “Of course, I
didn’t know he was talking about Claude Danning and I didn’t mean
for him to go to the man’s house late at night either. He was
drunk. He’s been known to do stupid stuff—but murder! No
way!”

His green eyes looked directly into
hers. “If he’s that stupid why are you going out with
him?”

She couldn’t help but feel a sense of
security with this man. He was determined to keep her safe. But he
wasn’t safe; he was definitely dangerous, and Glynnis wasn’t ready
for that, not yet. “Dorsey’s not always stupid, just when he
drinks. Are you worried?”

“
Well, yeah. I mean, that’s
pretty much why I came here tonight. I was worried about you. I
know you’re a big girl, it’s just…” He wasn’t going to win this
one. He changed the subject, a little. “Why did you break up with
him to begin with? Was it the drinking—or something
else?”

She picked at a dry cuticle on her left
thumb. “It was something else.”

“
Oh.” Brice seemed to find
his own hands very interesting. He knew he should leave it alone,
but he couldn’t. “What kind of fool runs around on somebody that
looks as good as you do?”

Her head snapped up. “It’s not always
about looks.”

“
Sorry,” he reached across
the table to touch her hand. She softened. “I didn’t mean to get so
personal. It’s just that you’re so beautiful and you have a brain,
a pretty damned good one as far as I can tell. You must know that.
I have a very hard time understanding how anyone can fool around on
someone like you.”

“
Thanks,” she said,
accepting the compliment. “It’s a lot more complicated than that
though.”

“
Do you want to tell
me?”

“
Maybe, but Dorsey will be
here soon. I promised I’d go to dinner with him.”

“
Will you call me later? So
I’ll know you’re okay?”

“
I thought you were trying
to keep your distance.”

Brice stared at the walls, and then his
feet. “That’s not working too well.” He stood and pointed to the
refrigerator. “You can keep the Moo Goo Gai Pan. Maybe we can share
it later on.”

She walked him to the door. “I’ll call.
How late is too late?”

He shrugged and squeezed her hand. “I
don’t sleep much. Call me when you get home. I don’t care how late
it is.” He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand and kissed
her softly. “Does he know?”

“
About what?”

“
About your dreams. Does he
know you’re precognitive?”

“
I never
got around to telling him.”
Just
imagine how he would have reacted to that if he couldn’t handle the
MS.

Chapter 11

Dorsey rolled up ten minutes later. The
door was open but he had the good sense to ring the bell and wait
to be invited in. There had been a time in their lives when that
wouldn’t have been necessary. That just wasn’t the case
now.

“
Hi.” He presented her with
a grocery store bouquet of daisies. “I thought you might like
these.”

“
Thanks.” She loved daisies.
“I’ll get a vase. Sit down.”

Dorsey lowered himself into a kitchen
chair. Carl sniffed at him, decided he wasn’t interested, and went
back into the den. There was a smell in here that Dorsey knew.
“When did you start wearing Old Spice?”

She clipped the bottom of each stem and
sat them down into a vase of water, dropping the packet of plant
food that came with the bundle into the vase. “I didn’t last time I
checked.”

“
Somebody has.”

Glynnis looked at his gleaming smile,
knowing that with very little effort she could slip into old habits
again. That made her just a little testy. “Dorsey, it’s none of
your business who’s been in my house.”

He started to reply to that but thought
better of it. “Ready for dinner? What would you like? Italian,
Greek, American?”

“
Anything’s fine, I’m
starving.”

“
American it is
then!”

She didn’t care. Not really. But the
funny thing was, she really had a strong craving for Moo Goo Gai
Pan.