Force of Habit: A Falcone & Driscoll Investigation (17 page)

“Here comes the climactic
battle.” Scott pulled Giulia closer to Hrunting’s monitor.

A hundred voices like fingernails on a chalkboard screeched out of the earpieces. All the players except Urnu and Lugal flinched. Ishtaria yanked off her headset, but put it back on a moment later. Leopard-vulture-spider creatures swarmed over the remaining opponents, dissolving one in venom, disemboweling another, slicing a third into strips just like giant cats used to do on Saturday-morning cartoons.

On-screen Urnu gestured, and all the creatures gathered behind him. With measured steps, he walked to the center of the battlefield where only the opposing leader remained. Urnu smiled. Giulia looked over the top of the monitor. Real-life Urnu had the same smile. He tapped several keys, and ogre-Urnu released a deafening shout. The others pounced on the vanquished leader, shredding and stamping. Urnu snapped his fingers. They fell away as Urnu reached a massive hand into the gore and came out with a tattered heart.

The gamers and the crowd began chanting in hushed voices. “Ur-nu. Ur-nu. Ur-nu.” Giulia, almost caught up in the moment herself, opened her mouth to join the chant.

Urnu swallowed the enemy’s heart.

The bar erupted in cheers. Giulia gagged. On screen, the Raging Death Clan crowded around Urnu as text and numbers appeared and disappeared over them and the victims. Their alter-egos tapped keys, never losing focus.

“Wasn’t that awesome, Giulia?” Scott squeezed her against his side. “The strategy, the cunning, the bloodlust.”

Giulia kept silent rather than ruin Scott’s mood with her true opinion. Scott finished his second ale and set the bottle on a table. “I’m almost powerful enough to petition Urnu for full membership. Kyle couldn’t give me details of his initiation, but he said the price was worth it.”

Snake-handling, maybe? How biblical.
Giulia could picture Urnu as a Great Awakening preacher, a dozen harmless corn snakes twined around him, mesmerizing his followers with those eyes. And skinny, cute Kyle taking one of those snakes, trembling because he wouldn’t know whether it was poisonous or not.

The gamers, laptops closed, mingled with their fans. Hrunting high-fived Scott and followed two redheads to the bar.

Scott leaned into Giulia’s ear. “Want to meet Urnu?”

“I don’t really—”

He turned on the pout. “Come on, Giulia, he’s almost as mysterious in person. Then I’ll take you home—it’s almost pumpkin time.”

She could resist the pout, but why? He’d made her forget the last few days. Meeting this role-player was easy repayment. “Sure. Introduce me to the lead ogre.”

As they weaved through the groupies, Ishtaria stopped in front of Urnu. He bared his teeth and snarled his fingers in her long blonde hair. She touched her tongue to her upper lip, and Urnu jerked her forward. His eyes took in the fans around them. Then with one hand in her hair and the other kneading her buttocks, he thrust his tongue in her mouth. She clamped her lips onto his and ground her hips into his pelvis.

Giulia looked away, looked back. In rhythm with Urnu’s hand, Scott kneaded her waist.

Good Lord, I hope that woman is wearing underwear. Did I just think that?
The hand on her own waist made longer strokes.
Don’t move that hand any farther up or down, Scott.
Her eyes locked on the victory tableau.
Lady, please stop rubbing yourself on his leg.

“Scott, dude! Did you see? Weren’t we awesome?” Kyle/Hrunting and his redheads returned, beers in hands.

Lugal the Spear pushed past Giulia as the blonde turned toward the bar. In half a dozen slow steps, Lugal stood before his leader like a penitent, his Schwarzeneggerian muscles drooping before Urnu’s wiry height. Giulia couldn’t hear their conversation over Kyle and Scott’s jabber, but she had the distinct impression that if the two men were alone, Lugal would be on his knees.

Urnu touched Lugal’s chest, right above his heart. A tattoo of a snake extended to strike ran from his wrist to his elbow. Lugal touched his forehead to the snake.

That proves it. The game is their religion. Well, I promised to play nice for Scott’s new preacher.
She touched Scott’s elbow to get his attention, sure that Lugal would leave after his obeisance.

Instead, Urnu replayed the last scene. He twisted his fingers into Lugal’s hair, grabbed his muscled buttocks, and crushed their lips together. Lugal clutched Urnu’s rump and pulled him closer.

Not in public—good Heavens.

Scott breathed, “I’d like to get a woman to dry-hump me like that.”

Giulia stiffened.

“Oh, not you, Giulia. I mean, not yet. I mean, this is just a first date and all. I’m a gentleman, really. Ask Kyle.” He yanked Kyle’s arm. “Right, Kyle?”

“Huh? Yeah. Sure. Scott’s a throwback to the fifties. Prince Charming and all that.” Kyle put an arm around the waists of his bookends. “I’m his foil. He tries to keep me honest, and I regale him with my conquests. You’re safe with him.”

Urnu and Lugal finally separated, and Scott took his place in the receiving line. “Urnu the Snake, you are awesome!” Scott high-fived him.

Urnu bared his teeth in his alter-ego’s smile. “I accept your homage, apprentice.” His greenish-gold eyes scrutinized Giulia. “Is this your consort?”

Scott smiled at Giulia. “I’m working on it. Urnu the Snake, this is Giulia.”

Urnu’s twisted smile expanded. “Indeed.” He held out his hand.

Politeness compelled her to take it. His grip was dry, and his hand trembled the slightest bit. Residual excitement, she supposed. Up close, she could see the metallic scales on the snake tattoo. Green and gold. The Clan took its colors from Urnu’s eyes.
Strange
didn’t begin to describe the groupies, the gamers—heck, the entire bar.

“I look forward to our next meeting, Giulia.” He released her hand, inclined his head to Scott, and walked to the bar. Ishtaria and Lugal opened a space for him between them.

“You’ve made a conquest, Giulia.” Scott stared after Urnu with just a hint of Lugal’s lust in his eyes.

Giulia flushed, then got a touch of the crawlies. “I don’t think so.”

“I don’t want the lord of the manor to exercise his right to take you from me anyway. You’re okay with dating a future ogre, right?”

“Let no one say I’m species-intolerant.”

“Ma’am, you’ve won my scaly heart. Shall we go?” As they passed the bar, Scott slugged Kyle’s shoulder. “Don’t drive home, Wizard.”

“Got cab fare stashed with the bartender.” He kissed the right-hand redhead. “Don’t expect me before morning, dude.”

Giulia would’ve liked to kiss Frank like that. Well, maybe not at first. There was zero chance of it happening anyway. That window had closed and locked when those photos appeared on the office door.

They crossed the parking lot, and Scott held the passenger door of his dark green Pathfinder for her.

Get a clue, Falcone. A hot, eligible man is driving you home.

She was going to take the plunge. He was willing and she was tired of being a throwback to Victorian times. Maybe she didn’t know how to dry-hump, but she could kiss. What had the February
Cosmo
said about red-hot kisses?

Scott braked hard and Giulia’s seat belt caught her.

“Oh, dear. I think I’ve been a colossal boor.” Giulia gave him an apologetic smile. “Please tell me we haven’t been driving long.”

Scott reached for her hand. “A few blocks. I tried to talk to you, but when you didn’t answer I figured I’d wait till you came back to earth.”

“You take me out and I ignore you. That’s got to be on the top ten list of reasons people don’t get a second date.”

“Giulia, the only way I wouldn’t ask you out again is if I dropped dead before tomorrow’s show.”

“Oh.” She squeezed his hand in return. “You’re in good health? No terminal conditions? No tendency to fall off roofs or jump in front of moving trains?”

“Damn. We’re here.” He escorted her to the door. “Barring fire, flood, or earthquake, I’ll see you at the Marquee tomorrow.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Kyle’s wrong, you know. I’m no Prince Charming.”

She knew a twinge of disappointment for the buried desire of every little girl to really, truly meet Prince Charming. “I didn’t expect you to be.”

“Prince Charming always seems to be too much of a wuss to show his feelings for the rescued princess. Myself, on the other hand—”

He cupped his hand on the back of her head and kissed her. She embraced him, and he trailed his other hand up and down her back. She shivered. A good shiver. Tomorrow night she’d pull that clingy red sweater out of the back of her closet. Never too late to become a consort.

Giulia blew through housecleaning
and grocery shopping Saturday morning. After lunch, she threw on capris and her black-and-white DMHO T-shirt and took the bus to Common Grounds.

Deep female singing voices hit her as soon as she opened the door.

She’d forgotten Evelyn’s open-mike Saturdays. Whoever these three were, at least they could carry a tune, unlike that Beach Boys tribute band on Memorial Day.

Giulia knocked on the counter and said to the back of Mingmei’s apron, “Hey, Mingmei. Can I get a medium iced chai?”

Mingmei started and turned around, raising her voice over the music. “Hey, Giulia. You working overtime?”

“Not really. Don’t you get off shift soon?”

“Three o’clock. Ten minutes.” Mingmei leaned forward, her striped hair brushing Giulia’s ear. “Something wrong?”

Giulia shook her head. “Need your advice.”

“Okay. No worries. Evelyn’s niece is working second shift today. She’s always on time.”

Sure enough, five minutes later Mingmei’s replacement walked in, waved at Giulia, and headed straight for the counter. Three women toting shopping bags followed her, debating in lawyerlike fashion about strawberry versus blueberry smoothies.

“Whew.” Mingmei slid into the chair opposite Giulia and drank sixteen ounces of water without taking a breath. “Okay, I’m all yours. What’cha need?”

“Makeup advice. I have a date tomorrow.” She patted her homemade messenger bag.

“Yes!” Mingmei high-fived her. “It’s about time. Do I know him? What’s he look like? Where are you going?”

“One at a time. Come upstairs to the office with me, and I’ll tell you on the way.”

As they climbed the stairs side by side, Giulia said, “His name’s Scott and he plays violin in the theater with me.”

“Is he the one with the great pecs? You mentioned him the day after that cast party.”

“That’s the one. He gave me a chocolate rose after last night’s show.”

Mingmei clapped her hands. “It’s only a short step to real flowers. Is he nice? How’s he kiss? He has kissed you, hasn’t he?”

An overnight delivery envelope hung on the doorknob in a plastic bag, addressed to Frank from someone in D.C. She slid it over her wrist and turned her key in the lock.

“Yeah, he has. I think he kisses, um, well, great.” Her ears tingled. “I don’t have a lot of experience to compare him with, though.”

“Girl, you are such an amateur.” Mingmei hugged her. “But I am so proud of you.”

“I have a ten-year drought to overcome.” Thank God for Mingmei. Who else would put up with her klutzy attempts at girl stuff?

“Just a sec.” She opened Frank’s office door and hung the delivery on his chair.

“What can I do to make him want you?”

“Mingmei...” She closed Frank’s door, shaking her head.

“Come on, Giulia, you’ve got that look in your eyes.” She glanced around. “Small office. Which desk is yours?”

“By the window. The one behind you is Sidney’s.” She set her messenger bag next to the phone.

Mingmei rolled Giulia’s chair into the center of the room and sat in it. “The fashion genie is out of her bottle. I hereby grant you three wishes.”

Giulia took a deep breath. She could—no, she would do this. Scott was going to ask her out again, and she was not going to look like a repressed, makeupless frump.

“Genie, please bring out your makeup wand. Scott should want to kiss this face.” She pulled out a quilted makeup bag.

“Let’s see your ammunition.” Mingmei dumped its contents on the desk. “Base matches your skin tone, good blusher, two lipsticks; let’s see here.” She opened the first tube. “A little orange for you.” She opened the second. “Metallic crimson. I like it.”

“It’s not too forward?”

“Forward?” She giggled. “Giulia, sometimes you talk like my grandmother. What colors of eyeshadow do you have?”

“Three shades of blue that are supposed to blend together, but I never figured out how.”

Mingmei held the two-inch rectangle by Giulia’s face. “Maybe... I’d prefer a gray to blend with the darkest blue.”

“I have that.” She sorted through the pile of samples sent to her as promotional gimmicks.

“Yes.” Mingmei set them side by side on the desk. “These are the right ones. Okay. Eyeliner? Mascara?”

“Brown? Black? That’s all I have.”

“Not brown. Black. You want drama.” She lined up everything on the desk. “All right, Cinderella. Prepare for transformation.”

After Mingmei left, Giulia went into Frank’s office to study the clue collage. Out of habit, she started to rip the overnighted envelope open, but stopped. She wasn’t the admin anymore. Face it—she wasn’t really an employee anymore. Plus, she would not open anyone else’s mail. No exceptions. End of discussion.

Sipping the chai, she pulled out a pen and some blank printer paper and brainstormed at Frank’s desk.

“Camille. You can make it to Blake’s and Pamela’s mailboxes and still be on time for work. Are you the Bible type? Would you strangle birds?” Giulia sketched two rows of attached boxes and filled in the exes’ names. “Sandra. You’d dye birds pink and blue. You might kill them, if it didn’t ruin your nails. Margaret.” She stirred the last of her drink with the straw. “I still get no feeling either way. Why are you such a mystery? Is your real self too hidden? Or are you simply a nice person who happens to be rich enough to attract Blake?

“Isabel. I saw a classic guardian angel painting in your hallway. You could be the Bible-quoter. Your cheerful face could easily hide a hellfire Protestant upbringing.” The chai faded into slurps of spiced air and she tossed the cup into the trash. “Elaine, being snooty doesn’t preclude being psycho. You could kill birds. Would you dye them? That’s what maids are for, right? You’d have a helper.”

Giulia’s slouch vanished. “Good heavens. What if she’s not working alone? That changes the whole dynamic. They’re all the type to have personal assistants. And if she’s using an assistant for all this, how far does she trust her?”

She pushed back her chair and paced the stuffy room. “It’s too dangerous. This stalker is one step from the edge. Would an assistant risk being named as an accessory just to keep a lucrative job?”

Giulia wouldn’t, but the lure of money... And if this hypothetical assistant had also been dumped by a lover... She’d be exactly the kind of person the stalker could talk into playing this game. In another set of boxes, she scribbled reasons each of the exes might use a partner in her “Blake or Bust” program.

She checked the time and had to unstick her watch from her wrist.

“Oh, no—did I sweat off the makeup?” She ran to the bathroom mirror. “Whew. Still looks the same. Kind of
Cosmo
girl-ish.”

Below her sketched charts, she wrote a note for Frank:
What if she has an accomplice? Unlikely, but we should consider it. See boxes above
.

She put the pages on his chair beneath the overnighted envelope and locked up.

“Something wrong?”

She jerked upright and spun around. “Frank.” Amazing how fast her heart rate could ramp up.

He was frowning, but that was his habitual expression when he looked at her now. “Why are you here?”

“I was brainstorming and needed the spreadsheet collage.”

“Shouldn’t you be out looking for your next job?”

“Shouldn’t you be pleased that I’m devoting extra time to finishing this case?”

“I managed without you for quite a while, Ms. Falcone. No one is indispensable.”

All her frustrated desire to kiss him burned to a crisp. “What’s your real problem, Mr. Driscoll? Worried I’ll bring undesirable companions into the office?” She pried open the circular clip on her key ring with one hand. Damn the man. If he was so pig-headed that he couldn’t let go of one wrong idea—

“What brilliant insights came to you in there?”

“Nothing brilliant. Just an idea we hadn’t thought of before.”
Stupid key
.
Now of all times it decides to jam
.

“Excuse me. You might not have thought of it. Give me credit for seeing a few more possibilities than you would. I am a professional.” He crossed his arms and smirked at her struggles with the key ring. “By the way, I see you’re painting your outside to match your new, improved inside.”

Her fingernail ripped.
Bite me, Frank. No, don’t say that. But don’t
be a doormat for him to smear his assumptions on, either.
“What are you doing here on a Saturday afternoon, Frank? Sherlock Holmes needed only a bit of cigarette ash and half a footprint to catch criminals. You should be sitting in your easy chair, eyes closed, with Yvonne massaging your feet to relieve stress and increase blood flow to the brain.” There. The key came free.

“Not everyone requires foreplay to do their job.”

“Damn you, Frank Driscoll.” She seized his hand and thrust the key into it.

He closed his hand around hers. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

“I agree. So is just about everything you’ve said to me since our friend learned to play with photo-manipulation software.”

He opened his hand and hers fell away. “You’re not going to beat that dead horse again, are you?”

“Here’s a bulletin for you: you know those tabloids that show photos of space aliens landing World War Two biplanes on the moon? Build on those fakes, and we may be able to have a civil discussion again.”

He pocketed the key. “Sidney e-mailed me. She’s uncomfortable when you’re in the office. What do you think should be done about that?”

Just like that, it all became too much. All Giulia wanted was never again to see this building or this office or this man she once admired. “You win, Frank. I quit. Tell Sidney she can do what she likes with the stuff in my desk.”

Giulia pushed past him, but he put out a hand to stop her. “What? What else do you need to say that you haven’t said with nauseating precision already?”

“You took me too literally. I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did. You didn’t have the guts to fire me, so you tried to push me into quitting.” She wrenched her shoulder away. “Why am I still talking to you?”

She reached the stairs, and her sandals slapped and echoed in the stairwell. She had to get out before she said something worse. Why wouldn’t the blasted street door open?

“Giulia, this has gotten out of hand.” Frank’s voice, right behind her.

She turned and faced him. “It got out of hand four days ago.”

“Perhaps we should revisit the problem. I told you how I think—thought of you. I want—”

“The problem, Mr. Driscoll, is you. Not my perceived behavior, not Sidney’s first harsh experience in dealing with co-workers, not your tomcatting client or his unhinged ex. Remind me to send a sympathy card to your future wife. Unless she’s Mother Teresa, she’s going to need a degree in psychology to make the marriage work.”

He flinched like she’d slapped him again. “I’ll mail you your last paycheck. Don’t feel you have to make polite conversation in the orchestra pit tonight, Ms. Falcone.”

“Already figured that, thanks.” She held out her hand, ingrained politeness overriding her anger. “Goodbye.”

He shook it. Firm. Businesslike. Distant. “Goodbye.”