If Looks Could Kill (3 page)

Four pins. She heard them snick back into place when she let the tension go. Simple pin and tumbler, so that all she had to do was keep the pressure on, just a little, to rotate the lock, and rake the other pick over the pins, forcing them back above the shear line. Then, voila, she'd be in.

Except that she'd been raking those damn pins for over seven minutes now. If she had really been in North St. Louis, she would have been caught or dead five minutes ago. Thank God she was only doing it in Pyrite.

"Son of a bitch."

She let go once more, the pins clicking back down. Wiped her hands against her pants and took slow, careful breaths to ward away the unreasoning panic. It was too damn dark here. There were things rustling behind her in the corners, things Chris wouldn't see when she turned around. She rubbed at her face a little with a hand that shook. And then, her gaze turned to the half block of Pyrite she could see, she slid her picks back in and tried again.

Ed Williams was heading for his car from the Train Wreck Saloon across Main. Early for Ed. Usually he didn't amble home until after midnight, and that didn't take into account the nights of the Fraternal Order of the Bisons' meeting. Guess he was going to miss another of Ed Junior's star turns at right forward.

"Come on, come on," she muttered irritably to the door, shifting weight. "Either open or I just pull out the Beretta and put a couple of rounds through you."

There wasn't even a snick. The lock just slid around to the right, as if it were the most natural thing to do. Chris took another quick look around and soundlessly levered the lock open. For the first time she allowed a smile of triumph. They couldn't get her now. She was in.

The door opened easily in her hand. Her crepe-soled shoes didn't make a sound as she eased through the door. She imagined that she was even the only one who heard the way her heart hammered with relief.

Sucking in a very careful breath, she moved into the shop—and came to a dead halt. There facing her was a very upset man holding what appeared to be a Glock .40 semiautomatic in a regulation hold. The kind of two-handed hold that went with the uniform and the brand-new gold badge that was pinned to its chest.

Chris took a look at the barrel that was pointing right at her own not-very-considerable chest and let out another oath. "I guess I wasn't as good as I thought, huh, Eloise?"

Just behind the new police chief and to his right, Eloise managed a nervous little smile of apology. "I suppose not, dear."

"You were just about to tell me who you are," the officer said, not bothering to lower the gun.

Chris tried her best smile, even with a perfectly illegal set of lock picks in her upraised hands. Interesting man.

He was younger than she'd anticipated, still balancing right around forty, with a tall, rangy body and salt-and-pepper hair. Chris had heard someone's features described once as "fifty miles of bad road." That, she thought, would describe the new police chief. Except that his road had a very intriguing pothole in it, and not a very old one at that. A jagged, angry-looking scar traced his left temple from cheek to hairline, missing his noticeably unamused eye by a fraction of an inch.

"I'm Chris Jackson," Chris said, hands still carefully held where he could see them. "I, uh, live nearby."

"She owns the store," Eloise insisted, from the tone of her voice, not for the first time.

The chief never pulled his disconcertingly intense gray eyes from Chris's chagrined features. "Then why didn't you come in the front door?" he asked in a gentle voice that belied the steely attention he was paying her. "It was open."

Chris fought the urge to duck her gaze and dig a rueful toe into the tiled floor. "Because I'm practicing."

"Breaking and entering?"

"Is it breaking and entering if it's your own place of business?"

"Until you can better explain that set of lock picks, it is."

For the first time, Chris noticed that she wasn't the only one sweating here. The new chief had a definite sheen on his forehead. And his hands weren't as steady as they could have been. She took another look and saw that what she had mistaken for natural suspicion was anger, and wondered who was the target. Her or him?

"I bought them from a locksmith friend up in Farmington," she admitted. "He's the one who taught me the craft." That didn't seem to be making much of an impression. She tried the rest of the truth. "I'm an author."

Still no noticeable reaction, no easing of posture. "And?"

"And I've lived in Pyrite for the last five years. When I need to try something new for a book, the town lets me practice on it."

Only Chris seemed to notice the agitated nodding of Eloise's head, or the fact that even when Eloise moved with all that conviction, her hair didn't move.

"When Billy Johnson locked his keys in his foreign car last month, Chris was the only one who could get in for him," the little woman insisted. "And she rewired the Reverend Bobby Rayford's security system so she could get in any of his doors with the garage door opener. It was most amazing."

All that seemed to do was make the chief even more uncomfortable. "Handy, aren't you?"

"But harmless. Can you put that thing away, please?"

"Maybe when I see some identification."

Chris let out another sigh as she motioned to the black jumpsuit and knit cap she wore for camouflage. "I didn't bring my purse."

Chris thought she detected a hint of amusement. "No second-story man worth his salt goes out without some phony ID."

"Come on," she insisted, just a little unnerved by the deadly aim of that gun. "Do I look like a burglar..." Her protestation died a little when she considered the fact that she had, in fact, made it a point to look just like a burglar.

"It doesn't matter what you look like," he countered equably. "Some of the nastiest mopes I've met have looked like choirboys."

She did at least manage a new grin. "Which means that you could actually be a peeping tom with a badge fetish."

"Oh, no, dear," Eloise chimed in. "He's the police chief." Then she turned on the chief. "And she's the owner. I promise."

"Have you ever had a victim stand up for the perp?" Chris asked.

"All the time." Even so, the gun came up and the chief relaxed his posture. Chris figured it was about time to make those belated introductions she should have taken care of when the chief showed up in town.

"How about if I explain the whole thing over a cup of coffee?" she asked, pocketing the picks and pulling off the knit cap. "You have at least another half hour before anybody makes it back from the basketball game."

The chief hesitated a moment, his eyes zeroed in on hers, although Chris couldn't decide whether in judgment, consternation, or amusement. The chief seemed to keep his better emotions to himself. Finally, though, he holstered his gun and lifted his own cap to run a hand through his hair.

"If coffee'll help things make more sense," he obliged.

Chris nodded and held out her free hand. "Chris Jackson," she reintroduced herself. "I'd promised myself I was going to go by and warn you about Pyrite's nefarious secret right away, but I've been a little preoccupied."

He took her hand in an uncompromising grip, and Chris was damned if she didn't see a twinkle in those eyes. "Burglary'll do that. Al MacNamara."

"Welcome to town, Chief MacNamara." His palm was just as damp as hers, which intrigued Chris even more. Letting go, she turned toward the partitioned area behind the cash register. "Do you take anything in your coffee?"

She assumed he'd follow. He did.

"No, thanks."

"Eloise?"

Eloise waved from where she was bent back over the cash register. "I'm tallying receipts, dear. Go right ahead."

Much better to catch the best dirt from a safe distance, Chris knew. Eloise's head was tilted so that her hearing aid could pick up the conversation like a directional mike.

Chris fought a grin as she hefted a coffeepot that had been brewing since sometime before lunch. "Pyrite must be a change after Chicago, huh?"

The chief hooked a thumb in his belt. "Quieter."

Chris let go with a laugh that echoed all around the high ceilinged old building. "You," she accused, "are a master of understatement."

He accepted his mug and a seat after Chris cleared her tax receipts and one of the attack cats off it. Chris perched on the six inches of free space on her desk. Or rather, Eloise's desk. Chris made only nominal appearances at the How Do, even when she came in by the front door.

"You say you're an author?" MacNamara asked from behind his mug, his attention skipping restlessly around an area decorated in early wallboard and stock overrun.

"Card-carrying. It's kind of the town's little secret. Nobody knows I live here, and I'd prefer it that way."

"Your pseudonym Stephen King?"

"No. C. J. Turner."

That provoked the most interesting reaction yet. Halfway to taking another sip of coffee, the chief left his mug hanging in midair as he let his gaze settle right back in on Chris.

"The suspense writer?"

She nodded, still uncomfortable with the astonishment that usually met that statement.

"I pictured you older," he admitted. "And a lot balder."

Chris offered a bright grin. "A misconception I work hard to encourage. I find it much easier to write if I don't have to deal with any of the little complications of, um, notoriety."

The chief took his sip of coffee, but his features didn't ease any. He didn't look away from Chris, either, which suddenly made her just a little nervous. She had a feeling she was well acquainted with other varieties of that look, and none of them had anything to do with fame or accomplishment.

"Is there a problem?"

He made it a point to finish his coffee before answering.

"Pyrite isn't exactly the place you'd expect to find a name like C. J. Turner. The book covers all say he lives in Taos."

"I drove through there once," Chris said, her voice hesitant. "I thought it would be a nice place to set an author."

But the chief was looking around the store. "Don't you have a phone?"

"I do here," she said, giving him his lead. "It has an answering machine I check at least once every couple of weeks whether it needs it or not."

He nodded, almost as if coming to some conclusion as he stroked at his upper lip with two fingers, an instinctive action of concentration. Chris wondered distractedly how long it had been since he'd shaved off his mustache.

"At least it makes sense now," he said almost to himself.

She did her best to remain polite as the first tendrils of dread curled through her. After passing acquaintance with bad news, she'd developed an unerring instinct for it. Her tolerance for it wasn't nearly as good.

The chief returned his attention to her. "Call came in about you today. I thought it was a mistake."

Chris saw something she didn't like at all behind those experienced eyes.

"A call?"

As if it had been choreographed, his walkie-talkie sputtered to life.

"Dispatch to the chief, come in."

With an apologetic look at Chris, he unclipped the small mike from his shirt pocket and answered. "MacNamara here."

Chris saw Eloise lean over a little to hear better. Eloise had a police scanner at home and watched every true crime show on television. Chris knew it was because she'd never experienced violence firsthand that the little woman found it so fascinating secondhand. For Chris's part, she could only hold onto her fraying patience as tightly as she did the cooling mug of coffee in her hand.

"Wilson just called in, sir," Tina Elcorn's voice rasped from the receiver on the chief's belt. "He walked into a fight up at the Tip A Few."

MacNamara only allowed a brief tightening of his features to betray his irritation. "Well, tell him to handle it."

"There are ten of them and one of him."

Down went the cup. "On my way. Get the sheriff to back him up."

He reclipped the mike and turned back for the front door.

"I thought it was going to be quiet here," he groused, raking a hand through his hair before resettling his cap as he stalked past the wide-eyed Eloise.

Chris followed right on his heels. "You must have us confused with Utopia," she offered dryly. "It's a couple of counties over."

MacNamara turned to her with the closest thing he seemed to have to a smile. "Mayor Sullins told me the town went weeks without anything happening."

"He's talking about real estate, not stupidity."

Chris lasted until MacNamara opened the front door. Maybe he was already thinking about something else, but she wasn't.

"Chief MacNamara."

A chilly evening breeze snaked in. MacNamara turned just shy of leaving. "Oh, yeah," he said, stopping, his body already geared up for whatever waited for him up across the tracks. "I'm sorry. The call. Seems there's a homicide detective from St. Louis looking to talk to you."

Chris fought to hold onto the cup in her suddenly cold hands. "Homicide?" she asked, her voice carefully neutral, the dread exploding straight into panic.