Rising Heat (61 page)

By the time I got to the police station, I was working up to a good old-fashioned tizzy fit, as my grandmother used to say. I quickly parked, locked my truck, and then nearly ran up the stairs into the police station. A different officer stood at the front desk. He glanced up at me in question.

“I’d like to see Detective Cutter please,” I said.

“Is he expecting you?” the officer asked.

“No, but I need to talk to him. My name is Tracy Whitcomb. I came yesterday. It’s an emergency!”

“Just a moment, let me see if he’s in the office.”

I paced nervously while the desk officer disappeared through the doorway. Like yesterday, I heard voices talking quietly, and then the desk officer reappeared and gestured.

“You can come on back, Miss Whitcomb,” he said.

I didn’t wait for him to open the swinging gate, but walked through on my own and brushed my way past him into the detective’s office. Once again, Detective Cutter was sitting alone. He still looked rumpled, but he had shaved and was wearing a different colored dress shirt. No tie. His suit jacket hung on the back of his chair.

“Miss Whitcomb,” he said. “What brings you—?”

“Look at this,” I said, extending the postcard and shaking it in my hand as if to emphasize its seriousness.

He glanced at it and then cautiously reached out and took it by the edges, read it, and then looked up at me again.

“Well, chances are we won’t be able to get any fingerprints off it now,” he stated matter-of-factly.

Crap. I should have been more careful. Still. “Well?”

“How and when did you get this?”

I was just about to answer when Detective Westin entered and sat down at his desk. Cutter wordlessly handed him the postcard. Like Cutter, Weston took it and held it by the edges.

“It was in my mailbox,” I explained. “I went to get my mail about fifteen minutes ago, and there it was, in my mailbox!”

“Did you see anyone put it there?” Detective Westin asked. “Could it have been the mailman?”

I stared at him. “Why would the mailman—?”

“Maybe he’s your secret admirer,” Westin shrugged.

I barely restrained myself from stomping my foot in frustration. “Secret admirer or not, this is unacceptable! What can you do?”

Detective Cutter was about to say something when Westin spoke up. “Like we explained to you yesterday, Miss Whitcomb, there’s really not much we can do. You haven’t been personally confronted. You haven’t been injured—”

“Do I have to be hurt or verbally threatened before you can do something?” I asked in disbelief.

Cutter reached for the postcard, again holding it by the edges. “We can dust for fingerprints, but I doubt it will do any good.”

“Why do you say that?”

Cutter seemed to hesitate. “If it
is
a stalker, Miss Whitcomb, chances are that he used gloves. There’s no stamp on it, so it’s not like we can even test for DNA, not that we could anyway, with our funding. No address, no postmark. Someone placed this in your mailbox, probably sometime during the night.”

I stared at both of them. “What am I supposed to do? Wait until someone attacks me? Look, I work from home—”

“Just exactly what do you do, Miss Whitcomb?” Westin asked.

“I’m self-employed. I’m a freelance website designer.”

He nodded and once again reiterated the standard line. I had not been physically accosted. No property had been damaged. I’d had the locks changed.

“You could set up an alarm system,” he suggested.

I couldn’t believe this. My idyllic getaway. Was this what I had to worry about? Surveillance systems, alarms, growing paranoia? Who was this person? I tried to think, but couldn’t remember anyone who had shown me anything other than passing attention since I had moved here. The writing was not familiar.

“I’m sympathetic to your situation,” Detective Cutter said, handing the postcard back. “Unfortunately, our hands are tied. I will submit this for fingerprint analysis if you want, but—”

“Never mind,” I sighed, shaking my head as I slid the postcard into my back pocket. “You’re probably right. Unless it’s a local kid playing a horrible prank on me, whoever left that and the other note probably took precautions.”

“You have the other note? The one that was attached to the flower?” Westin asked.

I nodded. “Yes, I put it in a Ziploc bag last night and it’s at my house, in my freezer. Why?”

Before Westin could reply, Detective Cutter spoke up. “Miss Whitcomb, we can’t do anything at the moment, but I do have a friend that might be able to help.”

I glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“I have a friend who’s a private investigator—”

“Are you talking about Hawk?” Westin interrupted.

Cutter nodded. “Like I said, he’s a private investigator. He’s licensed and doesn’t have the same strictures in regard to investigating as we do—”

I heard Detective Westin mumble under his breath, something about half-breed wannabe detectives. What? I glanced from him to Cutter. “I can’t afford a private detective! You know how much they cost?”

Cutter shook his head. “His name is David Lance Hawk. He’ll work out some kind of a deal for you.” He reached for his notepad and quickly jotted something on it.

He extended the paper toward me. At first, I was hesitant to take it. The police weren’t going to help me. Cutter’s suggestion that I resort to a PI emphasized that. I couldn’t believe that I actually had to be hurt, or worse, before the police would step in and do something.

I hesitantly reached for the scrap of paper upon which Detective Cutter had written down the P.I.’s name and address. I glanced at Cutter and then at Westin, who was shaking his head. “Thanks a lot,” I said, in a fit of pique. “I heard about that poor woman who was murdered in Cottsville. I just hope you don’t get called out to my house and find me stabbed to death in my bedroom because no one took me seriously.”

“Miss Whitcomb—”

“Never mind,” I said to Detective Cutter. I turned to leave the office. “It’s just too bad that something terrible has to happen before you guys can get involved.”

With that, I stormed out of the office and through the swinging gate, the desk officer staring after me in surprise. I strong-armed the front door and in a huff walked down the steps to my truck. I climbed inside and sat there fuming for several moments. I glanced at the crumpled piece of paper in my hand.

David Lance Hawk. Should I go see him? I shook my head. I couldn’t afford a private investigator. Why did Detective Cutter think that his friend could help me when they couldn’t? I didn’t have any proof of anything, let alone a stalker or dangerous situation. This could all be chalked up to a stupid prank by one of the neighborhood teens. I doubted it, but it was possible.

Torn between feeling stupid and letting my imagination run away with me, I decided not to throw caution to the wind. I guess the least I could do was visit the private detective, see what he thought about the situation. But I swear, if he patronized me or so much as shrugged at my situation, somebody was going to get hurt!

T
o say that David Lance Hawk was nothing that I had expected would — I’m saying that a lot lately — be the understatement of the year. I was getting a little more familiar with the layout of the town and had a rough idea where the P.I.’s office was located, so it didn’t take me more than ten minutes or so to find it. It was on the northern edge of town. In fact, his office was on the upstairs floor of an old Victorian that shared the lower floor with, of all things, a quilt shop. Outside, near the front porch leading to the main entrance hung two shingles. One stated “David Lance Hawk, P.I.” and the other “Quilts R Us”.

I shook my head at that, but not for long. As I entered the front door, I immediately stepped into the Quilts R Us shop. A little bell over the door tinkled gently as I entered.

“Hello!”

The voice came from behind the counter. I looked up to find a middle-aged woman emerging from what looked to be a storeroom at the far side of the counter.

“Can I help you?” she asked, eyebrows lifted in the hopes of a sale.

While I had always wanted to learn how to quilt, now was not the time. “Thank you, no. I’m looking for the private investigator.”

She nodded and gestured. “The stairs to his office are just beyond that door.”

I glanced where the woman pointed and then saw the sign with an arrow. Written in marker on a sheet of laminated typing paper in big block letters. ‘Hawk – upstairs’. A thick black arrow pointed the way.

Thanking the lady, I opened the door and found myself facing a narrow set of enclosed stairs. Was the investigator in? I hadn’t seen any cars outside in the parking lot. Then again, it was still early. That made me wonder what time the P.I. got in. I supposed he could establish his own hours. If he wasn’t there, I was going to forget the whole thing.

At the top of the stairs was a single old-fashioned door with one of those iced glass window panes in the top. Bottom half wood, top half glass. Nothing on the window to designate what kind of business establishment was behind the door. I did see a small “sign” next to the door, much like the sign downstairs. This one provided a single instruction.

“Ring bell before entering.”

“What the heck?” I mumbled.

Nevertheless, I pressed the bell, heard it ring on the other side, and then opened the door. Stopped dead in my tracks. Oh my Lord.

My eyes widened as I gazed my fill. A tall man, no, a massive man, stood at the other end of the small office space, his back to me. It looked like he was in the process of pulling on a T-shirt. My eyes were riveted to his back, a very muscular back. Broad, muscled shoulders, very defined trapezius muscles, a rib cage that quite literally tantalized my fingers to trace along its contours down to a waistline without an ounce of fat. A slight flaring of the hips, where his jeans hung low. I just barely saw a glimpse of two dimples before they disappeared beneath the waistband.

To my surprise, my body zinged. I felt a tingling in my nether regions. I almost felt as if the wind had been knocked out of me. What the hell? That had never happened before. When he turned around, I nearly lost it. If I thought his back was well defined, I was hard pressed to describe his front. Pecs bigger than my hand could span, well-developed and undulating softly as he spun around, the shirt half over his head. He made a sound deep in his throat, but I wasn’t looking at his face. Heavens no.

My eyes traversed his pecs, a tight little nipple on each one, and then naturally traveled downward. Every abdominal muscle was emphasized and delineated. He was hairless, his skin bronzed.

For some reason, I imagined I could feel the heat of his skin way over here by the door. I continued to stand, one hand on the doorknob, the other held out as if to ward something off. My mouth hung open, my eyes wide as his head finally emerged from the opening of the T-shirt. If I was disposed to fainting, I think I might’ve fainted.

Okay, I’ve seen good looking guys before. I’ve been to the gym a time or two, so it’s not like I wasn’t used to seeing skin. But this guy? This David Lance Hawk? I was speechless. You know those photographs of Native Americans you see in your history books back in school? That’s what he looked like. Strong, high forehead, a noble nose, deep set black eyes, high cheekbones, a firm jaw, and lips to die for. Long black eyelashes that nearly made me jealous.

Despite the unfathomable look in those black pupils, I nevertheless had an overwhelming urge to throw myself into his arms, to tell him to kiss me. His lips, turned down in a very slight frown at the moment, were nevertheless full. I wanted to—

“Did you read the sign outside the door?” he asked, settling the shirt down around his waist. With both hands, he swept his hair up from beneath the shirt. It settled around his shoulders and hung down to his shoulder blades in the back. A bluish-black color, like a raven’s wing in the sunshine.

I swallowed. Surprised to find myself stammering. “Yes… I did. I rang the bell and then entered.”

“Usually, it’s customary to at least wait for a reply.”

His frown should’ve intimidated me, but at the moment I was still stunned with his physical appearance. Talk about an alpha male! The first thing I had noticed, and was still imprinted on my brain, besides the muscles and the Coppertone skin of course, was the tattoo that draped over his shoulder, from the bottom of his left shoulder blade, over the top, and then ended just above his left nipple.

I’d never seen anything like it. It had a light reddish brown background that looked like a wampum belt, complete with shadowing and little undulating waves. On top of that were four outlined squares, each a slightly different size and in turn linked by a bar. In the center, just below his collarbone, was the middle, and in the middle something that could have been either a tree or a stylized flame. At each end of the ‘belt’ was tattooed a bear claw. It was as if he read my mind.

“It’s called a Hiawatha belt. It symbolizes the five nations of the Iroquois Confederacy; the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, and the Oneida.”

“It’s beautiful,” I murmured, and I wasn’t just talking about the tattoo. The way the tattoo had moved was captivating.

So was he.

I continued to stare at him, not quite sure what to think. Before he had yanked his shirt down, I’d seen several scars. Bad boy turned good? Black sheep of the family trying to make good? How in the world had Detective Cutter met this guy?

Hawk gestured to the single chair in front of a beat up old desk that looked like it came from a school district yard sale. He quickly removed a stack of folders crammed with papers from it, and then gestured for me to sit down.

“My name is David Lance Hawk. You can call me Lance or Hawk. As you can tell from the sign downstairs, I’m a private investigator.”

He stared at me with an unblinking gaze. His eyes roamed from my ponytail to my face, lingering a bit on my lips before they quickly swept downward. What was he thinking? My nipples tightened and tingled as his gaze quickly swept over my torso and then skimmed downward.