Caterpillar, a Paranormal Romance With a Touch of Horror (14 page)

I’d just belted my robe and was sitting down on my vanity stool to paint my toenails when the doorbell rang.  My stomach did a nervous flip.  I took the towel off my head and fluffed my hair then flipped it to the left, as usual, covering my scar.  I went to the peephole to confirm what I already knew.  Tegan was on my front porch.

When I saw him, the rest of my irritation melted away.  He’d changed clothes since I’d last seen him; he looked like a Calvin Klein model.  He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, the long sleeves pushed halfway up his forearms.  His hair looked like he’d run his fingers through it a thousand times and he needed another shave.  The dark stubble just made him look ruggedly handsome and a little bit dangerous.

I stopped with my hand on the doorknob, giving my dancing belly a few seconds to settle down.

He rang the doorbell again and my pulse fluttered with anticipation as I unlocked the door. 

“Can I come in?”

Wordlessly, I backed up and let him pass.  He didn’t need to know that I was no longer irritated and I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer that nugget of information.  I had enough problems without adding a lusty physical altercation to the mix. 

I closed the door and turned around.  Tegan had stopped right behind me.  My breath caught in my throat.  “What do you want, Tegan?”

“I hear you’re doing the interview with Megan and I wanted to talk to you about acceptable material to discuss.”

“Let me guess.  The weather and that’s it, right?” 

He eyed me, not amused by my sarcasm.  “You can talk about what’s happened.  Just don’t be too specific about what you saw.  Megan’s been briefed on what she’s permitted to ask.  She knows she can’t dig around for intimate details of the crime scene.  She’s going to gear this more toward your
reaction
to what you saw and a few of the more generic particulars.  She knows not to ask you for too much detail.  I’ll be there in case anything gets sticky.  Plus she wants to do a follow-up.” 

“Where is this all taking place, because I’ve got an open house and—”

“I know.”

“You know what?”

“About the open house.”

“Oh.”  I know my expression must’ve conveyed my confusion.  “How?  How would you know about my open house?”

“Because that’s where the interview’s scheduled to take place.” 

For the second time that day, I could feel a fit of temper threatening to rear its ugly head.  “Just who does she think—“

“Before you get all bent out of shape, let me just tell you that this was your boss’s idea.”

“What?  Audrey
knew?”

“She thought the interview would be a good way to clarify your involvement and the open house would be great publicity for the agency.  Not my call.”

“Oh.” 

“Sorry.” 

He seemed so sincere, I felt bad for being snarky.  “It’s not your fault.  I just didn’t want to do it to begin with and I don’t appreciate Bounty’s tactics, but…”  I trailed off.  There was nothing else to be said.  It is what it is.

“Megan’s a bit…
devilish
sometimes.”

I wondered about his choice of words and the emphasis he put on them, but chose not to comment.  I wasn’t ready to delve into the supernatural with him until he was ready to tell me what he was hiding.

“You didn’t look like you minded her company too much.”  I could’ve kicked myself for making the comment. It was rife with jealousy and Tegan was far too perceptive to have missed it.

“
Her
company is not what keeps me up at night,” he said, taking one small step closer to me.

Nervous all of a sudden, I raised my hand, as was my habit, to make sure my scar was covered.  Tegan caught my wrist.

“Don’t do that,” he said softly, his eyes never leaving mine.  Something was there in his face, something that looked remarkably similar to the strange yearning I felt for him.  With his other hand, Tegan gently moved my hair to the side.  I closed my eyes, steeling myself against the urge to turn my face away.  I felt the whisper of his lips as they brushed the scar at my left temple.  “You’re beautiful.” 

My eyes flew open, my heart squeezing painfully in my chest with words and emotions I couldn’t express.  But I was too late; he was already gone.

Chapter Thirteen

Wednesday.

After a night of fitful sleep, I awoke in the late morning feeling sluggish and emotionally hung over.  I stumbled into the kitchen, watching for spiders as I went, mentally kicking myself for forgetting the exterminator again.  I put the coffee on and rummaged for something to eat.  I settled on Funyuns.  Funyuns and coffee:  the breakfast of champions.

I took my steaming cup of coffee into the bathroom where I began my grooming ritual.  With my hair in rollers and my makeup on, I dressed, adding Aunt Jillian’s charm to my ensemble as well as dangly ruby earrings and a matching ring.  They were my mother’s, one of the few things of hers that weren’t lost in the fire.   

By the time I got to the office, I was once again in a snit over being forced to do the interview.  The last thing I needed was any more aggravation and yet, there, outside my office door was one huge aggravation in the form of Marvin Dennison, the resident pervert.  We called him Merv the Perv.

Marvin was a really pink, pig-looking man that had an unhealthy obsession with me.  In his early forties, he was short and round.  He wore his thinning hair in a hideous comb-over that barely covered his glossy pink scalp.  His eyes were small poop-brown beads in the dimpled pink moon of his face.  His wide nose was turned up on the end, clearly revealing both cavernous nostrils.  His hands were red and swollen and ended in chubby fingers that looked like pink sausages.  The buttons on his shirt strained to contain his paunch and his tie was always too short.  I’d always believed he had a glandular problem that caused him to sweat a lot.  He seemed always to be moist.

Merv was under the very mistaken impression that he was a ladies’ man when, in all actuality, he was offensive and chauvinistic to every organism that has ovaries.   He had a nasty habit of objectifying women in the worst possible way and I was no exception.

“Mornin’, Marvin.”  My approach should have caused him to move from in front of my door, but Merv only smiled.  He wasn’t going anywhere.

“Just barely.  It’s almost noon.”

“Mmm,” was all the response I could muster.

“Looking purrr-fect today, Kitty Cat.  Me-ow,” he said, raising his stumpy fingers in a clawing motion.  His beady little eyes roved me from head to toe. 

“Rapier wit you’ve got there, Marvin.  Rapier wit.”  Sarcasm was as lost on Merv as subtlety was; however, the fact that he was one hundred percent clueless didn’t stop me from using either one with alarming frequency.

“I know, right?” Merv said merrily, so proud of his cunning.

“Yep.  There’s no doubt about it.  You’re the stuff of champions, Marvin.”

“Got that right,” he agreed, raising his hand, poised to slap my behind as I walked by.  I stopped and gave him a look that I knew for a fact had shriveled better men.

“Do it and you’ll draw back a nub,” I said, looking at the hand that was mere inches from my butt.  It was stopped in mid air, hovering.  His expression was that of such surprise it was comical.  Maybe he wasn’t the village idiot after all.

“No touchie the goods, is that it?  I bet you’d like it.  Let me know if you change your mind.  These hands are open for business twenty-four seven.”

On second thought, only the village idiot would make such a sexually harassing statement in today’s litigious climate.  “Hands off, Marvin.  Not interested.  Not now, not ever.”

“Claws in, baby.  Claws in,” he chortled.  “I was just teasing.”  With that, Merv hiked up his pants, Chris Farley style, and moved on down the hall to torture someone else. 

I was putting my purse in my desk drawer when I heard Rainn’s voice carrying from the front.  “Stay away from me, Marvin.  If you walk over here, I
promise
you’ll limp back.”  I smiled to myself.  Rainn regularly cut Merv down to size with her razor sharp tongue.

I wasn’t sure why anyone put up with Merv, myself included.  Somehow he’d managed to avoid both prosecution and termination.  All I could figure was that he had dirt on somebody high on up the food chain—a lot of
really good
dirt.

Mentally, I shook off the grimy feeling I had from my run in with Merv.  I had too many other things to think about to let Marvin distract me for long.

I fished a notepad out of my drawer.  I began listing things that needed to be done in preparation for the event.  The open house was part of a marketing campaign for a three million dollar home.  I’d pulled out all the stops, which was expensive and meant that the event was to be by invitation only.  It was reserved for clients who could afford a purchase of that magnitude and the smattering of Realtors who represented them. 

Rainn was supposed to have faxed some documents to various vendors for me.  I went to the front to make sure she’d gotten it all done.

Rainn’s desk sat in a bayed area at the front of the building.  She was surrounded on three sides by glass.  I called it the fishbowl.

Rainn was on the phone.  She held up her finger, indicating she’d be another minute.  Deciding I’d wait, I plopped down in one of the heavily padded leather chairs that framed her desk.  When I sat down, the lightest hint of smoke drifted up from the chair.

I wrinkled my nose, but turned my attention to what was outside the windows and tried not to eavesdrop on Rainn’s conversation.  A familiar strawberry head drew my eye.  It was Audrey. 

Then I saw her companion. 

It surprised me to see her with Mayor Scruggs; I hadn’t been aware that they shared even a cordial relationship.  I watched the curious couple as they walked up the street a bit then stopped in front of a sleek black Mercedes.  Mayor Scruggs opened the passenger door, helped Audrey in then closed it and crossed to the driver side.  They sat inside the car for several minutes before they drove away, obviously engaged in some interesting conversation. 

“Wha’cha need, Cat?” Rainn asked when she concluded her conversation.  I tried to turn my attention back to the task at hand, but before I could knew it, a question popped out.

“Was that the mayor?  With Audrey?”

“It sure was,” Rainn confirmed, eyebrows raised, a grin bringing out twin dimples at the corners of her mouth.  She was like a shark that smelled blood in the water.  “You want the story?”  As if I could’ve prevented her from foisting it on me anyway.

“Of course.”   Office gossip wasn’t really my thing, but dirt on Audrey was almost like need-to-know information. 

Rainn leaned forward in her chair conspiratorially, looked left and right then, in hushed tones, told me the scoop on our fearless leader. 

According to Rainn, after the mayor’s car accident the year prior, among the myriad other things that had changed, he’d unofficially set his sights on the Governor’s Mansion. 
Officially,
however, he and his wife were downsizing from their posh Atlanta estate in favor of a smaller city dwelling so they could spend more time at their lake house.  And Audrey landed the listing.  I was completely unimpressed with the “juice” in Rainn’s juicy tidbit.  But then Rainn continued…to the good stuff. 

The rumor was that Audrey was showing the mayor views of a different kind, the kind of landscape where the hills and valleys are covered in expensive lingerie.  The speculation was that their alliance purportedly included Audrey at the head of the Governor’s dinner table rather than the current Mrs. Scruggs.  And how they were going to get rid of her without her taking the mayor down with her was anybody’s guess.