Spirit of a Hunter (24 page)

Finally, from a distance, I hear her shout, “He’s deeeeeeaaaad! Joey’s deeeeeaaaad.”

My first thought is,
You should always trust your gut
.

My second thought is that now, somehow, my mother will know I was in King Kullen. For weeks I will have to hear “What did you expect?” as though whenever you go to King Kullen someone turns up dead. And if the detective investigating the case turns out to be Detective Drew Scoones…well, I’ll never hear the end of that from her, either.

She still suspects I murdered the guy who was found dead on my doorstep last Halloween just to get Drew back into my life.

Several people head for the butcher’s freezer and I position myself to block them. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from finding people dead—and the guy on my doorstep wasn’t the first one—it’s that the police get very testy when you mess with their murder scenes.

“You can’t go in there until the police get here,” I say, stationing myself at the end of the butcher’s counter and in front of the Employees Only door, acting as if I’m some sort of authority. “You’ll contaminate the evidence if it turns out to be murder.”

Shouts and chaos. You’d think I’d know better than to throw the word
murder
around. Cell phones are flipping open and tongues are wagging.

I amend my statement quickly. “Which, of course, it probably isn’t. Murder, I mean. People die all the time, and it’s not always in hospitals or their own beds, or…” I babble when I’m nervous, and the idea of someone dead on the other side of the freezer door makes me very nervous.

So does the idea of seeing Drew Scoones again. Drew and I have this on-again, off-again sort of thing…that I kind of turned off.

Who knew he’d take it so personally when he tried to get serious and I responded by saying we could talk about
us
tomorrow—and then caught a plane to my parents’ condo in Boca the next day? In July. In the middle of a job.

For some crazy reason, he took that to mean that I was avoiding him and the subject of
us
.

That was three months ago. I haven’t seen him since.

The manager, who identifies himself and points to his nameplate in case I don’t believe him, says he has to go into
his cooler
. “Maybe Joey’s not dead,” he says. “Maybe he can be saved, and you’re letting him die in there. Did you ever think of that?”

In fact, I hadn’t. But I had thought that the murderer might try to go back in to make sure his tracks were covered, so I say that I will go in and check.

Which means that the manager and I couple up and go in together while everyone pushes against the doorway to peer in, erasing any chance of finding clean prints on that Employees Only door.

I expect to find carcasses of dead animals hanging from hooks, and maybe Joey hanging from one, too. I think it’s going to be very creepy and I steel myself, only to find a rather benign series of shelves with large slabs of meat laid out carefully on them, along with boxes and boxes marked simply Chicken.

Nothing scary here, unless you count the body of a middle-aged man with graying hair sprawled faceup on the floor. His eyes are wide open and unblinking. His shirt is stiff. His pants are stiff. His body is stiff. And his expression, you should forgive the pun—is frozen. Bill-the-manager crosses himself and stands mute while I pronounce the guy dead in a sort of
happy now?
tone.

“We should not be in here,” I say, and he nods his head emphatically and helps me push people out of the doorway just in time to hear the police sirens and see the cop cars pull up outside the big store windows.

Bobbie Lyons, my partner in Teddi Bayer Interior
Designs (and also my neighbor, my best friend and my private fashion police) and Mark, our carpenter (and my dogsitter, confidant and ego booster), rush in from next door. They beat the cops by a half step and shout out my name. People point in my direction.

After all the publicity that followed the unfortunate incident during which I shot my ex-husband, Rio Gallo, and then the subsequent murder of my first client—which I solved, I might add—it seems like the whole world, or at least all of Long Island, knows who I am.

Mark asks if I’m all right. (Did I remember to mention that the man is drop-dead-gorgeous-but-a-decade-too-young-for-me-yet-too-old-for-my-daughter-thank-god?) I don’t get a chance to answer him because the police are quickly closing in on the store manager and me.

“The woman—” I begin telling the police. Then I have to pause for the manager to fill in her name, which he does:
Fran
.

I continue. “Right. Fran. Fran went into the freezer to get a brisket. A moment later she came out and screamed that Joey was dead. So I’d say she was the one who discovered the body.”

“And you are…” the cop asks me. It comes out a bit like who do I
think
I am, rather than who am I really.

“An innocent bystander,” Bobbie, hair perfect, makeup just right, says, carefully placing her body between the cop and me.

“And she was just leaving,” Mark adds. They each take one of my arms.

Fran comes into the inner circle surrounding the
cops. In case it isn’t obvious from the hairnet and bloodstained white apron with Fran embroidered on it, I explain that she was the butcher who was going for the brisket. Mark and Bobbie take that as a signal that I’ve done my job and they can now get me out of there. They twist around, with me in the middle, as if we’re a Rockettes line, until we are facing away from the butcher counter. They’ve managed to propel me a few steps toward the exit when disaster—in the form of a Mazda RX7 pulling up at the loading curb—strikes.

Mark’s grip on my arm tightens like a vise. “Too late,” he says.

Bobbie’s expletive is unprintable. “Maybe there’s a back door,” she suggests, but Mark is right. It’s too late.

I’ve laid my eyes on Detective Scoones. And while my gut is trying to warn me that my heart shouldn’t go there, regions farther south are melting at just the sight of him.

“Walk,” Bobbie orders me.

And I try to. Really.

Walk
, I tell my feet.
Just put one foot in front of the other
.

I can do this because I know, in my heart of hearts, that if Drew Scoones was still interested in me, he’d have gotten in touch with me after I returned from Boca. And he didn’t.

Since he’s a detective, Drew doesn’t have to wear one of those dark blue Nassau County Police uniforms. Instead, he’s got on jeans, a tight-fitting T-shirt and a tweedy sports jacket. If you think that sounds good, you should see him. Chiseled features, cleft chin, brown
hair that’s naturally a little sandy in the front, a smile that…well, that doesn’t matter. He isn’t smiling now.

He walks up to me, tucks his sunglasses into his breast pocket and looks me over from head to toe.

“Well, if it isn’t Miss Cut and Run,” he says. “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere in Florida or something?” He looks at Mark accusingly, as if he was covering for me when he told Drew I was gone.

“Detective Scoones?” one of the uniforms says. “The stiff’s in the cooler and the woman who found him is over there.” He jerks his head in Fran’s direction.

Drew continues to stare at me.

You know how when you were young, your mother always told you to wear clean underwear in case you were in an accident? And how, a little farther on, she told you not to go out in hair rollers because you never knew who you might see—or who might see you? And how now your best friend says she wouldn’t be caught dead without makeup and suggests you shouldn’t, either?

Okay, today,
finally
, in my overalls and Converse sneakers, I get it.

I brush my hair out of my eyes. “Well, I’m back,” I say. As if he hasn’t known my exact whereabouts. The man is a detective, for heaven’s sake. “Been back awhile.”

Bobbie has watched the exchange and apparently decided she’s given Drew all the time he deserves. “And we’ve got work to do, so…” she says, grabbing my arm and giving Drew a little two-fingered wave goodbye.

As I back up a foot or two, the store manager sees his chance and places himself in front of Drew, trying
to get his attention. Maybe what makes Drew such a good detective is his ability to focus.

Only what he’s focusing on is me.

“Phone broken? Carrier pigeon died?” he asks me, taking in Fran, the manager, the meat counter and that Employees Only door, all without taking his eyes off me.

Mark tries to break the spell. “We’ve got work to do there, you’ve got work to do here, Scoones,” Mark says to him, gesturing toward next door. “So it’s back to the alley for us.”

Drew’s lip twitches. “You working the alley now?” he says.

“If you’d like to follow me,” Bill-the-manager, clearly exasperated, says to Drew—who doesn’t respond. It’s as if waiting for my answer is all he has to do.

So, fine. “You knew I was back,” I say.

The man has known my whereabouts every hour of the day for as long as I’ve known him. And my mother’s not the only one who won’t buy that he “just happened” to answer this particular call. In fact, I’m willing to bet my children’s lunch money that he’s taken every call within ten miles of my home since the day I got back.

And now he’s gotten lucky.

“
You
could have called
me
,” I say.

“You’re the one who said
tomorrow
for our talk and then flew the coop, chickie,” he says. “I figured the ball was in your court.”

“Detective?” the uniform says. “There’s something you ought to see in here.”

Drew gives me a look that amounts to
in or out?

He could be talking about the investigation, or about our relationship.

Bobbie tries to steer me away. Mark’s fists are balled. Drew waits me out, knowing I won’t be able to resist what might be a murder investigation.

Finally he turns and heads for the cooler.

And, like a puppy dog, I follow.

Bobbie grabs the back of my shirt and pulls me to a halt.

“I’m just going to show him something,” I say, yanking away.

“Yeah,” Bobbie says, pointedly looking at the buttons on my blouse. The two at breast level have popped. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Flying an eight-hour solo cross-country in a Piper Arrow with only the airplane’s crackling radio and a large bag of M&M’s for company, Sylvie Kurtz realized a pilot’s life wasn’t for her. The stories zooming in and out of her mind proved more entertaining than the flight itself. Not a quitter, she finished her pilot’s course and earned her commercial license and instrument rating.

Since then, she has traded in her wings for a keyboard where she lets her imagination soar to create fictional adventures that explore the power of love and the thrill of suspense. When not writing, she enjoys the outdoors with her husband and two children, quilt-making, photography and reading whatever catches her interest.

You can write to Sylvie at P.O. Box 702, Milford, NH 03055. And visit her Web site at
www.sylviekurtz.com
.

Books by Sylvie Kurtz

HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

653—REMEMBERING RED THUNDER*

657—RED THUNDER RECKONING*

712—UNDER LOCK AND KEY

767—HEART OF A HUNTER**

773—MASK OF A HUNTER**

822—A ROSE AT MIDNIGHT

866—EYE OF A HUNTER**

872—PRIDE OF A HUNTER**

960—PULL OF THE MOON

1004—SPIRIT OF A HUNTER**

*Flesh and Blood

**The Seekers

eISBN-13: 978-1-4603-3990-9

SPIRIT OF A HUNTER

Copyright © 2007 by Sylvie Kurtz

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

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