Charade (25 page)

Chapter Thirty-three It's weird all right, but it isn't criminal--know what I mean?" Lieutenant Bud Hunsaker of the San Antonio Police Department wore checked polyester pants and black lizard cowboy boots with white stitching. His short-sleeved white shirt was stretched over a beer gut cinched by a tooled leather belt. His short, clip-on necktie lay diagonally across his chest. He had the bulk, the complexion, and the wheeze of an excellent candidate for a heart attack. From the moment Cat had entered his office, he'd been gnawing on an unlit, soggy cigar and--if the direction of his stare was any indication--carrying on a dialogue with her kneecaps. Now, he placed his meaty forearms on the desk and leaned forward. "Say, what's Doug Speer like? In person, I mean. He cracks me up, the way he's always getting the forecast wrong, then making a joke of it." "Doug Speer works for another station," Cat replied with a brittle smile. "I don't know him." "Oh, yeah, right. I'm always getting my weathermen mixed up."

"Can we please get back to these, Lieutenant?" Imperiously, she tapped the stack of paper she'd brought in with her and which now lay before him on his desk. He rolled the cigar from one stained corner of his fleshy lips to the other. "Ms. Delaney, a lady like you, being famous and all, a public figure so to speak, you gotta expect a certain amount of harassment like this." "I do, Lieutenant Hunsaker. When I appeared on Passages, I received lots of mail, including numerous marriage proposals. One man wrote a hundred times." "There you go." Grinning with satisfaction, he leaned back in his creaky chair as though she'd made his point for him. "But a marriage proposal per se isn't threatening. Neither are letters that gush praise or severely criticize my performance. By comparison, these are veiled threats. Especially the last one." She separated the fake obituary from the others. "What are you going to do about this?" He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and the chair groaned in protest. He picked up the single-spaced, typed sheet and reread the fabricated obit. Cat wasn't fooled by his feigned interest; she was being humored. He had already formed an opinion. Nothing short of an outright death threat was going to change his mind. He snorted loudly and swallowed the gunk he'd sucked out of his sinuses. "The way I see it, Ms. Delaney, some weirdo is trying to bug you." "Well, he's doing a damned good job of it, because I am bugged. I had deduced that much on my own. I came to you to find the weirdo and put a stop to the bugging." "It ain't as easy as it sounds." "It doesn't sound easy. If it were easy, I'd do it myself. The police are equipped to handle situations like this. Private citizens aren't." "How d'ya figure we ought to handle it?" "I don't know!" she cried in frustration. "Can't you trace the postmark? Or the typewriter? Or the brand of paper? Or the fingerprints on the paper?" He guffawed and winked at her. "You've been watching too many cop shows on TV." She wanted to rant and rave at him until she got him off his fat

butt and out beating the bushes for her stalker. But sounding like a hysterical female would only confirm his opinion that she was making a brouhaha over nothing more than nuisance mail. Rather than vent her temper, she said with chilly calmness, "Don't patronize me, Lieutenant Hunsaker." His ingratiating smile slipped a notch. "Now hold on, I wasn't--" "The only thing you haven't done is pat me on the head." She stood up and leaned across his desk. "I am a rational, adult person, capable of deductive reasoning, because in addition to a uterus, I'm also equipped with a brain. I don't suffer from PMS, and I'm not given to vapors. The differences between you and me are so myriad we could fill an encyclopedia with a list of them, but the least of those differences is that I've got on a skirt and you're wearing trousers. "Now, either you put down that disgusting cigar and start taking my problem seriously, or I'll jump rank and complain to your superior." She rapped her knuckles on his desk. "There must be some crime-solving method by which you could track down the person responsible for this." His face had turned the color of raw liver; he knew she had him. He stretched his neck to relieve the tightness of his collar, straightened his tie, removed the cigar from his mouth, and dropped it into his lap drawer. Then, attempting to smile, he asked her politely to sit down. "You know of anybody holding a grudge against you?" "No. Unless ..." She hesitated to voice her suspicions because she had nothing to substantiate them. "Unless what?" "There's another employee at WWSA--a young woman. She hasn't liked me since I began working there." She told him about her turbulent relationship with Melia King. "She eventually confessed to throwing away my medication, but I don't believe she could have rigged a studio light to fall. She was rehired shortly after I fired her and seems to enjoy her new position. I see her every day. We have little to say to each other. There's no love lost, but I'm almost positive her resentment has nothing to do with my transplant." "Ugly broad?"

"Excuse me?" "What does she look like? Could be she's just pea green." Cat gave a quick, negative shake of her head. "She's a stunner and could have her choice of men." "Maybe she didn't welcome the competition." His expression came close to a leer. Cat froze it into place with a frigid blast from her blue eyes. He harrumphed and again situated his wide rear end more comfortably in his chair. He picked up the obituary. "This language is sorta . . . unrefined." "I noticed that, too. It doesn't read like authentic newspaper copy." "And it doesn't give a cause of death." "Because that would put me on the alert. I'd know what to expect." "No one's actually approached you, issued threats, hung out around your place, anything like that?" "Not yet." Hunsaker grunted noncommittally, tugged on his lip, and expelled a gust of breath. To buy more time, he read the newspaper clippings yet again. Before speaking, he cleared his throat importantly. "These're from all over the country. The sumbitch has been busy." "Which I believe makes him all the more frightening," Cat said. "He's obviously obsessed with the fate of these transplantees. Whether or not he was responsible for their deaths, he has gone to great lengths to keep track of them." "Do you believe he was behind these so-called accidents?" he asked, his tone suggesting that he didn't ascribe to that theory. Cat wasn't sure whether she did, so she avoided a direct answer. "I feel it's significant that the dates of their deaths coincided with the anniversaries of their transplants, which also coincides with mine. That's too coincidental to be a coincidence." Thoughtfully, he once again tugged on his lower lip. "You ever meet your donor family?" "Do you think there's a connection?" "It's as good a guess as any. What do you know about your donor?" "Nothing. Until recently, I never wanted to know anything. But yesterday I contacted the organ bank that procured my heart and asked if my donor's family had queried them about me. They're

checking the records of the agency that harvested the heart, so it might be several days before I get an answer. If no inquiry's been made into my identity, then we'll know that's a cold trail." "How come?" "Policy. The identities of donors and recipients are kept strictly confidential unless both parties inquire about the other. Only then do the agencies disclose information. It's up to the individuals whether or not to make contact." "That's the only way somebody could find out who got a particular heart?" "Unless they were able to tap into the central computer in Virginia and learn the UNOS number." "Come again?" She explained to him what Dean had recently explained to her. "UNOS, United Network of Organ Sharing. Each organ and tissue donor is assigned a number soon after retrieval. This number is coded to provide the year, day, month, and chronology of when the organs were retrieved and accepted by an organ bank. It's a tracking device to help prevent black marketing of organs." He rubbed his hand over his face. "Jeez. This guy'd have to be smart." "That's what I've been trying to tell you." The more they hypothesized, the more frightened she became. "That brings us full circle, Lieutenant. What are you going to do to find him before he finds me?" "Truth be told, Ms. Delaney, there ain't a lot we can do." "Until I die in some freak accident, right?" "Calm down, now." "I'm calm." She rose to leave. "Unfortunately, so are you." Moving faster than she had believed him capable of, he rounded his desk and blocked her exit at his office door. "It's puzzling, I'll admit. But at this point it's hardly life-threatening. No crime's been committed. And we don't even know if foul play was involved in these other deaths, do we?" "No," she said tersely. "Still and all, I don't want you to leave thinking I don't take you serious. How's this? How's about I have a patrol car cruise your street for the next few weeks, keep an eye on your place?"

Laughing softly, she lowered her head and squeezed her temples between her thumb and middle finger. He just didn't get it. Her stalker was too clever to be caught by a cruising squad car. "Thank you very much, Lieutenant. I would appreciate any help you can provide." "That's what I'm here for." His smile expanded, and so did his chest. "Prob'ly what this is, somebody's just trying to spook you. Get under your skin, you know?" Eager to leave, she agreed. Believing he'd solved her problem, he made a gallant gesture of opening the door for her. "You call if you need me, you hear?" Sure, I'll call. And have you do what? Cat thought cynically. "Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Lieutenant Hunsaker." "You know, you're even prettier in person than you are on TV." "Thank you." "Uh, before you go, I's wondering . . . It's not every day I get a celebrity in my office. Could you sign your autograph for my wife? It'd really tickle her. Make it to Doris, okay? And you can put my name on it, too. If it's not too much to ask."

Chapter thirty-four

"What the hell are you doing?" "Burning the bacon." Using a fork because she hadn't found a pair of tongs in any of the kitchen drawers, Cat lifted a slice from the sizzling skillet. After her infuriating interview at the police station, she'd returned home and changed clothes. Too upset to work, she'd called Jeff and told him that she wouldn't be coming in. She needed a day off in which to think. For almost an hour she'd deliberated over what her next move should be. Before she had fully formulated the plan, she was pushing a cart down the aisle of a supermarket, shopping for food to prepare for a man she claimed to despise. "Hope you like it crisp." She laid the strip of bacon along with the others that were draining on a paper towel. "How do you like your eggs?" "How'd you get in?" "Through the front door. It was unlocked."

"Oh." He scratched his head. "Must've forgot to check it before going to bed." "Must have. Over easy or scrambled?" When he didn't answer, she cast a glance over her shoulder. He looked exactly as he had the morning she'd met him, except that this morning he had on boxer shorts rather than jeans. She tried to ignore how sexy he looked, his rangy body filling up the doorway with over six feet of rumpled, fresh-out-of-the-sack maleness. "Over easy or scrambled?" she repeated. "I'm better at scrambled." He placed his hands on his hips where the shorts rode low. "Any particular reason why you showed up this morning to cook my breakfast?" "Yes. As soon as you put on your pants and sit down to eat, I'll tell you." Shaking his head in bafflement, he turned and ambled out. By the time he returned to the kitchen dressed in a pair of threadbare Levi's and a plain white T-shirt, the food was ready. She poured them each a cup of coffee, set the filled plates on the table, and slid into a chair, indicating that he was to sit in the one across from her. He threw his leg over the back of it and straddled the seat, his knees poking out on each side. Temporarily passing on the food, he sipped from his mug of coffee while studying her through the steam that rose from it--another reminder of the morning they'd met. He said, "Does this have anything to do with the shortest route to a man's heart being through his stomach?"

"That theory bit the dust when blow-jobs were invented." He chuckled, then laughed out loud, then picked up his fork and began scooping scrambled eggs into his mouth. He polished off a strip of bacon in two bites and drained his orange juice in one gulp. "When did you last eat?" she asked. "I think I ordered a pizza yesterday," he replied after a moment's thought. "Or maybe it was the day before." "You've been engrossed in work?" "Hmm. Is there any more toast?" She put two more slices into the toaster. While waiting for it to

pop up, she poured him a refill of coffee. His fingers closed around her wrist as he tilted his head back to look up at her. "Just feeling a domestic urge this morning, Cat?" "Not really." "Then is this an act of charity?" "I hardly think you qualify." "Peace offering?" "Don't hold your breath." "This is going to cost me, right?" "Right." "Can I afford it?" "Unless you want the family jewels baptized with scalding coffee, you'd better let go of my wrist." His fingers sprang wide, instantly releasing her. She returned the carafe of coffee to the hot plate and retrieved his two slices of toast, unceremoniously tossing them onto his plate. "So we're still not friends," he commented as he slathered butter on his toast. "No." "Then I guess being lovers is out of the question." Watching his strong white teeth sink into the slice of buttery toast made her tummy flutter. She carried her plate to the sink, rinsed it, and placed it in the dishwasher. She tidied up the kitchen while he was finishing his meal. He took his plate to the sink, then poured himself a third cup of coffee and took it back to the table. Cat was cleaning crumbs off the table with a damp sponge when he hooked his arm around her waist and pulled her to him. He pressed his face into the giving softness of her middle, kissing her through her blouse, taking love bites, gnawing and growling affectionately. She refused to respond. She kept her hands raised to shoulder level, well away from touching him. Finally he raised his head. "You don't like?" "I like it a lot. You're very adept. But that's not what I'm here for." He dropped his arms, and his face turned hard and angry. "If you didn't come here to make peace--" "I didn't."

"Then why are you here?" "I'm getting to that." "Well do. If you didn't come over to play, I've got work to do." She didn't respond to his anger. After washing her hands and pouring herself another cup of coffee, she rejoined him at the table, bringing her handbag with her. From it she withdrew the copies of the clippings and the obituary and pushed them across the table to him. "Is this the top-secret stuff you showed to Webster the other night?" he asked. "So you had eavesdropped. I thought so." "A holdover habit from my days as a cop." "Or just plain rudeness." "Could be," he admitted with a shrug. "Nancy Webster thought you and her husband were having a teteatete." "As you know, we weren't." "So why let her think the worst? Why not just tell her the truth?" "Because the fewer who know about this, the better." He picked up the papers and began to read. By the time he got to the second one, he was thoughtfully rubbing the scar that slashed through his eyebrow. Between the second and third one, he gave her a hard, inquisitive glance. After reading the obit, he cursed softly and scraped back his chair. Legs stretched out at an angle, spine concave, he rested the sheets of paper on his midriff and read each of them again. When he was done, he sat up straighter, tossed the sheets onto the table, and looked at Cat. "You've got the originals?" "Plus the envelopes." "I heard you tell Webster that you'd been receiving these over the last several weeks." "That's right." "And you didn't see fit to mention them to me?" "They weren't any of your business." He swore. "Okay, that was a cheap shot," she admitted. "I didn't mention them to anyone until I received the third one." "Then who'd you tell? Besides Spicer. I know you must've showed them to Sweet Dean."