Buried in Bargains (Good Buy Girls) (13 page)

She parked in her driveway and blew into the house on a draft of cold air. Jake, Sandy and Josh were eating at the kitchen table, and she knew that Laura had already made plans to go out with friends.

“Hi,” she said as she dumped her purse on the counter and bent over to kiss Josh’s head. Then she darted down the hall, calling, “Bye!”

In her room, Maggie pulled on a pretty green sweater to highlight her eyes. She ran a brush through her auburn hair and yanked on a pair of skinny jeans that she paired with black high-heel leather boots. She checked her makeup, which was always minimal, and slicked on some lip gloss just as there was a knock on the front door. She glanced at her alarm clock. Seven o’clock on the dot. She might have known Sam would be right on time.

She dashed down the hallway only to see that Jake had answered the door and was shaking hands with Sam while Sandy stood with Josh, who was tugging on Sam’s pant leg.

Sam hunkered low and was rewarded with a hug around the neck from the precocious toddler.

“Do you want to play trains with me?” Josh asked.

Sam’s smile was warm and lit up his blue eyes in a way that made Maggie catch her breath.

“I’d like to, little buddy, but I promised I’d take your Aunt Maggie to dinner,” he said. “Another time?”

“Promise,” Josh said.

Sam stood and ruffled Josh’s blond hair. “I promise.”

“Have fun, kids,” Jake said as he held the door open for them.

“Call if you’re going to be late,” Sandy said.

“She has a curfew,” Jake said to Sam. “We would hate to have to ground her.”

Maggie rolled her eyes at Sam, and he chuckled.

“Good night,
kids
,” she said as she pulled on her coat and slipped out the door.

As they walked to the car, she looked at Sam. “Sorry about that. My family isn’t used to me having dates.”

He grinned. “Is it wrong that that makes me happy?”

He held open the door, and she slid into the passenger seat of his squad car.

“Are you on duty?” she asked.

“Always,” he said.

He closed the door and circled around the car to the driver side. He got into the car and started the engine. Maggie felt a blast of heat shoot across her feet for which she was grateful.

As he reversed down the driveway, he braced his arm across the back of her seat. While he navigated the short drive, he glanced at her, and said, “So, do you want to tell me what you, Ginger and Claire were doing in Diane Jenkins’s apartment tonight?”

Chapter 16

Maggie contemplated bluffing. But really, what was the point? Ginger had been right. St. Stanley was the size of a Q-tip, and Maggie should have known that Sam would hear about their visit to Diane’s apartment.

“Are you mad?” she asked.

“Not as mad as I should be,” he said. “What were you hoping to find?”

“Something that would tell us about her past,” Maggie said.

“And you thought you’d be more skilled at searching someone’s house than a trained professional?”

“No, but I hoped we’d get lucky,” she said.

They were both quiet for a moment, and Maggie suspected she was about to have the worst date of her life. She had that
ick
feeling she always got when she felt guilty, and she really wasn’t enjoying it.

“So, did you?” he asked. “Get lucky?”

“No,” she said. “It was as if no one actually lived there.”

“Indeed,” he said.

Maggie studied his profile. She could see the muscle in his cheek moving; it was either clenching or having spasms. She wondered if she should call off their date. On top of the awkwardness and tension now between them, she also felt guilty about not being with Joanne. Claire was spending the night with her again, but Maggie felt like she should be taking a turn.

“Maybe we should postpone our date until things settle down,” she said. She realized as soon as she said it that she didn’t want to call it off, but she didn’t want to spend an awkward, guilt-ridden evening either.

“Is that what you want?” Sam stopped at the stop sign that led away from her street and glanced at her.

“No! Um, I mean, no, but I . . . What do you want to do?”

“Honestly, I have been a cop long enough to know that the lines between working and not working are very blurry,” he said. “If you get a chance to have dinner with a beautiful woman, then you take it, because you may not get another.”

Maggie smiled at him. She couldn’t help it. He’d called her beautiful and, coming from Sam . . . Well, his compliments always made her dizzy.

“Since you put it that way,” she said. “Onward.”

Sam grinned at her and turned left. They wound their way through town until they reached a small house on the edge of her neighborhood. Sam pulled into the driveway and switched the engine off.

Maggie glanced at the house and then at him. “Doesn’t the Hall family live here?”

“They did,” he said. “Until Mrs. Hall passed away and Mr. Hall went to live with his son in Richmond. We were on the force together.”

“That’s right,” Maggie said. “I forgot Christopher Hall became a cop, too. How is he?”

“Married with two kids in college,” he said. “He’s retired and has his own security company now. When he heard I was coming back, he offered to rent me his dad’s house since his dad was going to move in with him.”

Maggie turned and looked at the small bungalow. It was white with black shutters and a red front door. The lawn was neatly mowed and the bushes trimmed, but it lacked a lived-in look and reminded her of Diane’s apartment in that way. A wreath on the door or a swinging bench would help.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Sam said. “I thought I’d cook dinner and that way, if there is a break in the case and I have to go, we won’t be running out of a restaurant in the middle of the meal.”

“It’s fine,” Maggie assured him as he led her up the walkway to the house. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

“Mostly, it’s bachelor food,” he said. “Spaghetti with ketchup.”

Maggie cringed, and he laughed.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I turned it up a notch just for you.”

“I’m honored,” she said.

Sam studied her for a second; his eyes scanned her face as if trying to see inside her. Whatever he saw, he made no comment and Maggie didn’t ask.

“Come on,” he said. He held open the door and ushered her inside.

The first thing that struck Maggie was the lack of pictures on the walls. The furniture was very male, as in it was all brown leather, crowded around a huge television.

Sam led her through the living room and into a surprisingly modern kitchen with granite counters and copper pots hanging over an island in the middle of the room. A cozy dining nook with a round table and four chairs sat at the other end of the room overlooking a small but well-kept backyard.

The spotlight was on, and Maggie peered out the two French doors between the kitchen and the dining nook and noticed that there was a grill and an eating area on the small patio, and the lawn, although now brown from the winter, looked like it had been thick. There was no sign of a garden, just a plain wooden fence that enclosed the back.

A noise from near her feet sounded, and Maggie jumped back. One of the panels in the French door was actually a pet door. As it was pushed open, a bundle of gray-striped fur half fell and half tumbled onto the floor.

“Marshall Dillon,” Sam said to the cat. “What have you been up to, buddy?”

The cat, which looked to be somewhere between a kitten and a cat, galloped toward Sam as he squatted down. The gray fur ball stood on his back legs and placed his front feet on Sam’s knee. Sam leaned his head down and the two of them bumped foreheads, which Maggie took to be the cat’s version of a high five or a fist bump.

It was impossibly charming, and she found she was grinning stupidly at Sam as he scooped the cat up and held him with one arm while he turned to look at Maggie.

“Marshall Dillon?” she asked.

“We like to watch old
Gunsmoke
episodes together,” Sam explained. “And his stripes make an M on his forehead.”

He held the cat out so Maggie could see the M, which did sit right over his eyes like an inquisitive unibrow.

“Marshall adopted me the day after I moved in,” he said. “I tried keeping him in the house, but it didn’t go well. He peed all over the place and shredded a pair of my pants.”

He frowned at the cat, who blinked at him, the picture of innocence.

“So, he’s nipped and tucked, tagged and microchipped, but I’m respecting his need to be a free spirit and letting him go outside.”

“You sound like a worried parent,” she said.

“I know.” He looked chagrinned. “After all of these years on my own, having someone else to look after, well, it’s scary.”

Maggie lowered her head to hide her smile while she held out her hand for Marshall to inspect. He sniffed her and then rubbed the side of his face against her fingers. He started to purr, and Sam lifted his eyebrows in surprise.

“You’re the first person he’s taken to,” he said. “He scratched Deputy Rourke when he stopped by the other day, but then again, Rourke doesn’t smell as nice as you.”

Sam leaned over the cat and kissed Maggie lightly on the lips. As always, it left Maggie breathless.

“I’ve wanted to do that since I picked you up,” he said.

“Even though you’re mad at me?” she asked.

Sam put the cat down and pulled Maggie into his arms.

“I’m always mad at you,” he said. He kissed her again, more deeply this time. When he pulled back, he sighed. “And still I want to kiss you.”

Maggie laughed. “So, we’re okay?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “We still need to talk.”

“I thought that was my line,” she said. “I’m the girl.”

“Yeah, but I’m an evolved male, and I’m the one who’s mad,” he said.

“All righty, then,” she said.

He pulled a chair out from the counter and directed her to sit. He took out a wine bottle and handed it to her for inspection. Marshall Dillon glanced between them and meowed piteously until Sam went to the pantry tucked into the corner of the kitchen and took out a can of cat food.

Maggie poured the wine while Sam fed the cat. It was such a moment of domesticity that she wondered if this was what the end of the day would always be like with Sam. Then she shook her head. This was their first official date since they were kids. She really needed not to get ahead of herself.

Once Marshall Dillon was happily noshing his dinner, Sam washed his hands and set about making theirs. Maggie sipped her wine while she watched him. It was odd to have a man making dinner for her, and she realized none ever had before.

When she and Charlie were married, she had done all of the cooking because his job with the sheriff’s department had kept his hours in constant rotation. She didn’t date for years after he passed, because she was still grieving and her time was spent mostly providing for Laura. When she did finally start dating, it was always to go out to dinner or movies or an event. Sadly, she had never dated anyone long enough to have them cook for her. She had just never met anyone who’d made it past the third date.

Maggie watched as Sam put fettuccini into a big pot of boiling water. While that cooked, he prepped a salad. Maggie watched his hands move through the motions of slicing and dicing and tossing the salad.

When he was finished he put it on the small table for four, which she noted was set for two, and he lit a candle. Okay, the man was getting points for ambiance. He moved the wine bottle to the table and then returned to the stove where he melted a stick of butter in a skillet and added an equal amount of cream. He took a big bowl of freshly grated parmesan out of the fridge and then added just a bit of ground pepper to the butter-and-cream sauce. It looked wonderful, and Maggie surreptitiously checked her chin to make sure she wasn’t drooling.

Sam picked up a fork and used it to twirl a piece of fettuccini out of the pot. He flicked the pasta at the wall and it stuck.

He grinned at Maggie. “It’s ready!”

Maggie gave him a confused look.

“When I first moved to Richmond, I took a job in an Italian restaurant. That was how the chef tested the pasta,” he said.

He drained the rest of the pasta into a big metal colander and then poured the cream sauce into a huge pasta bowl followed by half of the parmesan.

He glanced into the bowl and then back at Maggie. “They’re getting to know each other.”

Maggie glanced into the bowl, too. It looked and smelled divine.

“Anyway, we used to make fettuccini Alfredo right at the table,” he said. “I thought it might give me that wow factor with you to show off the old skills.”

“Oh, you’ve got it,” Maggie assured him as he poured the pasta into the bowl and then tossed on the rest of the parmesan and used a big pair of tongs to lightly mix it all up.

“Dinner is served,” he said, and he led the way to the small table.

Maggie took the seat across from him and dished her own salad while he dug into the fettuccini, then they switched. Usually on dates she felt overly self-conscious about any lags in conversation, but with Sam the quiet felt natural. Of course, it also felt like he was gearing up for a lecture.

She was surprised to find that she didn’t mind. If she was honest, she figured she deserved one. She really wished she could say that they had found something in Diane’s apartment, something that would give them a clue to her past. Since they hadn’t, she figured she might as well go for broke and ask him about what had been bothering her ever since she’d been in Diane’s apartment.

“So I was wondering,” she began, pausing to take a sip of wine to fortify herself, “about those photographs you found.”

Sam looked at her and one of his eyebrows slowly rose higher than the other.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“’Fraid not,” she said. “When I was in the apartment, I was thinking about the pictures, and I remembered that you said some of them were of her in her apartment. Right?”

“You don’t really think I’m going to talk about this, do you?” he asked.

“Yes, I do,” she said.

Sam tucked into his pasta and Maggie did the same. She didn’t know if he was just avoiding the conversation or if he was stalling to build up his argument. She followed his example and forked up some of her pasta.

She popped it into her mouth and then her eyes went wide. It was a good thing she had a mouthful of food, or she might have proposed to him on the spot. The fettuccini was amazing, and she kept on eating, forgetting that she had just asked him a question.

When she’d taken several more bites, she glanced up to find Sam watching her with a small smile.

She gestured at her plate with her fork. “This is fantastic. I’m in awe of your culinary skills, truly.”

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m still not telling you about the photos.”

“What?” she protested. “You have to.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Okay,
have to
is too strong a phrase,” she said.

“Agreed,” he said.

She noticed the muscle in his jaw was clenching again. He put down his fork and met her gaze with his. His blue eyes were intense, and the mouthful of pasta she had just swallowed went down hard.

“Maggie, this case is dangerous,” he said. “Whoever killed Diane is a psychopath who likely viewed her as an object and enjoyed having her be helpless against him.”

Maggie shuddered at the mental picture, but Sam continued, as if determined to make her afraid.

“Strangulation isn’t the easiest way to kill someone,” he said. “A killer uses strangulation because he or she enjoys complete control over his victim.”