Read Diagnosis: Danger Online

Authors: Marie Ferrarella

Tags: #Fiction, Romance

Diagnosis: Danger (8 page)

Any hope he’d been nurturing died the moment he said hello and heard Louis’s voice on the other end. “We got a body, partner.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to ask Louis to go solo on this case, at least for now. But Louis wouldn’t have called unless both their presences were required by the captain. Besides, this was his job, and it had always come first before any thoughts of temporary pleasure.

He tried to console himself with the thought that the longer the end of the hunt was put off, the longer the thrill of pursuit, of the unknown, would continue. Somehow, it seemed a cold consolation.

Phone to his ear, he half turned, creating a pocket of space for himself. “Where?”

“Central Park.”

The city had grown a great deal safer than it had been in the seventies and eighties, but there was still such a thing as common sense. Going into the park after dark was still not the smartest thing to do. But
people seemed to check their brains at the entrance. It never ceased to amaze him.

“Jogger?” he guessed. The wind shifted and he could have sworn he caught a whiff of vanilla. He turned slightly toward Natalya. Her perfume? Shampoo? Or just his imagination?

“Homeless guy,” Louis said. “He was stabbed several times, robbery obviously not the motive from the way he’s dressed. I’ve started without you,” Louis volunteered, then quipped, “but you know that it’s never any fun when I’m by myself.”

Mike bit off a sigh. There was no way around this. “All right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Sooner would be nice,” Louis told him. There was shouting in the background and Louis swore under his breath.

“Yeah.” Mike closed his phone, terminating the call. Regret nudged at him as he looked in Natalya’s direction. “Looks like I’m going to have to take you home.”

He’d come with her to her emergency, but she had a feeling that there wasn’t going to be any reciprocation. “I take it this isn’t a bring-your-date-to-the-office kind of thing.”

Mike felt his mouth curving almost on its own. She’d referred to herself as his date. Normally, he didn’t really like putting labels on things in his private life, but it didn’t bother him this time. Maybe it was the humor in her eyes, or the need he felt in his gut, he wasn’t sure, but something was definitely different here.

Or maybe that was because it’d been awhile since he’d been with anyone who remotely resembled a female without also being in the process of either questioning her, booking her or making notes before she was taken off to the morgue.

“Nope, I’m afraid not this time.” He fastened her chin strap for her. “I’ll take you home.”

She put her hand over his, stopping him. Or maybe just wanting to touch him. “I can still get a cab,” she reminded him.

He knew he should be on his way, grateful that she was being so understanding. But he wanted to bring her home. “This is faster, and I’d feel better knowing I brought you to your door.”

A smile played on her lips. One that seemed to find its way straight to his gut. “Wouldn’t want to get in the way of you feeling better,” she told him. With that, she got on behind him, secured her arms around his waist and leaned in close. “Home, James.”

Mike laughed as he kicked away the kickstand.

He’d meant just to leave her at the entrance to her building. The wind had picked up, making it even chillier than it already was, and he had a crime scene that was getting colder by the minute. But as Natalya slid off the back of his motorcycle, he could still feel the warmth of her body as she’d had it pressed against his. Instead of taking off, Mike found himself getting off the motorcycle, as well.

She took the gesture as one related to his previous claim to chivalry. “You
really
don’t have to bring me upstairs to my door,” she assured him. Amusement curved the edges of her lips, making them even more tempting than they already were.

“No,” he agreed, “I’ve got to get going.” But even as he said it, he made no move to get back on his bike. No move to leave her side.

“You’re not going,” she pointed out quietly. Nor did she want him to go, she realized, not entirely comfortable with the thought.

“No, I guess I’m not.”

Mike struggled for a moment, wanting to kiss her, feeling that, given the circumstances, it might still be inappropriate.

And then, he looked into her eyes and the argument was settled.

He brought his mouth down to hers ever so fleetingly. At least, that was the initial intent. But the best laid plans of mice and men and off-duty police detectives did not always play out as plotted. Drawing her closer into his arms, Mike deepened the kiss just enough to turn it from friendly into something more.

How much more, he wasn’t destined to find out just at that point. The middle of a street, even if it wasn’t crowded, wasn’t the place for this and he knew it. But it wasn’t until his cell phone rang again that actual contact was broken.

Damn technology,
he thought, struggling to keep
his frustration in check. He yanked out the cell phone, snapping it open and pressing it to his ear.

“Hello?” he managed, just pulling himself out of what was the beginning of a tailspin.

“You coming or what?”

Louis. The terms of justifiable homicide flashed through his head.

“I’m coming, Louis,” he bit off, then terminated the connection. He looked at Natalya. The outline of her lips was blurred. Seeing that excited him. “I’ve got to go.”

“I heard.” Which, considering how hard her heart was pounding, was nothing short of a minor miracle, Natalya thought.

Chapter 8

N
atalya shed her lab coat and hung it on the back of her door, then sat down at her desk for a moment before leaving the office for the night.

The restless feeling that had been steadily growing all day was only getting worse. She took a breath, then slowly let it out. As she did so, she told herself to take it light.

She hadn’t heard from Detective DiPalma in several days.

Four to be exact. And, despite the fact that her Monday had begun with a full complement of small patients all requiring her undivided attention, she grew progressively antsier as the day made its way
into night. Tuesday was no better. By Wednesday—today—her nerves felt stretched to the limit.

Get a grip, Nat.

Better that she should concentrate on more important things, she reminded herself, and looked at the phone on her desk. An example being, why hadn’t the morgue released Clancy’s body yet? Had they found something more? Or was this an annoying matter of getting lost in the shuffle? Had someone just forgotten to call her to let her know she could pick up Clancy’s remains? She didn’t want to make a pest of herself, but she did have a mortuary in Queens on standby. Clancy deserved a proper funeral.

Calling the morgue wouldn’t hurt anything, she silently insisted.

Just as her hand covered the black receiver, the phone rang beneath her palm. She debated letting her service answer it, then decided that the service would only call her and she in turn would only wind up calling back whoever was on the phone now.

Might as well eliminate the middle man.

She placed the receiver against her ear. “This is Dr. Pulaski.”

“Right.” The person on the other end seemed a little flustered, as if searching for the right words. “This is the coroner’s office. We just wanted to let you know that Mr. Donovan’s body has been released.”

Talk about coincidence,
she thought. Now she
could finally put Clancy to rest. “I’ll call the funeral parlor right away. They’ll be there to pick him up within the hour.” She refused to refer to Clancy’s body, lifeless or not, as “it.”

There was another pause on the other end. When he spoke, the man who’d called her sounded just the slightest bit confused. “They already came.”

She didn’t understand. What was he talking about? “Who came?”

“The guys from the funeral parlor.” There was a touch of exasperation in the man’s otherwise high-pitched voice. “I’m just calling because I happened to see your name on this paperwork, saying you wanted to be notified when we were through with the autopsy reports. I asked around but nobody called you.”

“No, nobody called me.” Natalya struggled to hang on to her temper. “What ‘guys’ from the funeral parlor?” she demanded. “And what funeral parlor?” To her best recollection, she hadn’t notified the coroner’s office as to which mortuary she wanted Clancy’s remains sent to. Had the mortuary gotten in touch with the morgue for some reason? It didn’t seem likely. But then, this man was telling her that Clancy’s body had been claimed. Was this some mistake? Had they taken Clancy’s body instead of someone else’s?

“Wait a sec.” As she listened impatiently, she heard paper being rustled on the other end. “Yes, here it is. Ellis Brothers. Ellis Brothers Mortuary. They sent
the hearse.” He cleared his throat a bit nervously. “I didn’t sign for the transport personally, but—”

She didn’t need to hear any more. “Thank you.” Natalya hung up, incensed. The receiver almost bounced out of the cradle.

What the hell was going on here? Was this some cruel joke on Tolliver’s part? Or was the man just feeling remorseful over the way he’d treated Clancy?

Somehow, she doubted it, not after all the things that Clancy had told her about the director. Tolliver didn’t seem like the remorseful type. If anything, he was more like the vengeful type.

In any case, she was more than fairly certain that Clancy wouldn’t have wanted Ellis Brothers handling the final arrangements for his funeral. He would have rather had her dig a space for him in her parents’ backyard and bury him there next to Tania’s five hamsters than fall into Tolliver’s hands.

Grabbing her coat and purse, Natalya hurried out of her office. An ironic smile twisted her lips. It looked as if she had to come to Clancy’s rescue one last time.

Natalya decided to walk to the Ellis Brothers Mortuary, too impatient to wait for a bus or crowded subway car. It took her a little over a half hour to get there.

Her feet ached. She’d been on them for most of the day, but her indignation pushed all that into the background.

She didn’t know what to make of the situation. It was possible, she supposed, that Clancy’s mother had had a last-minute change of heart and called the mortuary. If what Clancy had told her about the woman was true, Lucille Donovan had probably whined and begged until Tolliver had finally agreed to do the funeral at a cut rate. And that would be exactly what Clancy would get, cut rate.

Not if she could help it.

The rest of her less than sunny mood could be attributed to good-looking police detectives who kissed and disappeared off the face of the earth.

It irritated her that she hadn’t heard one word from DiPalma. Not that she’d expected any undying protestations of affection, but he
had
kissed her, and it had been pretty spectacular on her end. Had it been so awful for him that he’d gone into hiding? There were scores of men she’d seen over the years who would beg to differ with him.

And besides, the detective was supposed to get back to her about her theory that there was something shady going on at Ellis Brothers Mortuary. Had he just been humoring her in order to get her into bed with him, something that had obviously been shelved after he’d kissed and fled.

Natalya raised her collar as she lengthened her stride and picked up her pace. Her shoulders and elbows were jostled by strangers heading in the opposite direction.

Maybe
fled
was a bit strong, she reconsidered. DiPalma had left at a moderate speed on his motorcycle to go to the scene of a crime. But he might as well have fled since she hadn’t heard from him.

It wouldn’t be bothering her so much, she argued silently, angling her way through the crowd as she crossed the street, if she wasn’t waiting to hear from him about Clancy. After all, Clancy had been murdered.

She needed a clear head to put together the dressing-down she intended to give Tolliver if it turned out that he’d taken it upon himself to claim Clancy’s body without Mrs. Donovan’s authorization. Even if he was blameless in Clancy’s death, he’d still given Clancy a hard time while he was alive and she held that against the man.

By the time she arrived at the two-story gray stone building located in the middle of the block, it had begun to mist. Dewlike drops were clinging to her hair and her coat. It did nothing to improve her mood.

Walking in, Natalya shook off what she could of the rain. A blond receptionist who didn’t look as if she had a thought in the world looked up as Natalya entered the somberly lit foyer.

Natalya smoothed down her collar and opened her coat. “I’d like to see Mr. Tolliver, please.” A little water from her coat fell on the young woman’s desk. The receptionist made a great show of wiping it away.

“I’m sorry, but Mr. Tolliver is presently occupied.” She enunciated each word as if she’d memorized it.

Natalya was too keyed up to just stand quietly in the foyer, waiting for Tolliver to finish and be free. She glanced toward the sign on the door behind the young woman. The name plate read Walter Tolliver. She thought she detected the murmur of voices coming through the door.

Good enough for her, Natalya thought.

“This won’t take long,” she promised, circumventing the woman’s desk.

The latter was on her feet instantly, dismay and disbelief both stamped on her smooth face. “But you can’t—”

Natalya shot her a cold smile. This was for Clancy. “Oh, but I can,” she countered, opening the door. Tolliver, clad in gray, was standing behind his desk. “Mr. Tolliver, you have Clancy Donovan’s body—”

She stopped abruptly as she saw the person Tolliver had been talking with turn around.

Mike.

The surprise on his face came and went in less than a heartbeat, to be replaced by tolerant amusement as he nodded toward her. “Dr. Pulaski.”

Formal. He was being formal. Was this his way of indicating that they were going to be polite strangers by design, or was this for Tolliver’s benefit?

Life, she thought, would definitely be a whole lot simpler if she were a single-cell creature, not given to thought.

Now that she had a moment to get her bearings,
Natalya noticed that Tolliver looked decidedly uncomfortable. Because of her? Or because of what Mike was asking him? Either way, she’d stake her life that there was guilt involved.

“Detective DiPalma,” she acknowledged. She kept her voice as pleasant and noncommittal as possible. “Nice to see you again.”

“Mr. Tolliver,” the receptionist cried. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t keep her out.”

“No,” Natalya said, getting in the man’s face. “She couldn’t. Would you mind telling me why Clancy is here instead of the mortuary that I selected?”

Tolliver haughtily drew himself up. Straightening his shoulders made him look even thinner than he already did. “I thought, under the circumstances, giving him a decent burial was the only upstanding thing to do. I wasn’t aware of any other mortuary being involved.”

The man wouldn’t know “upstanding” if it ran him over, she thought angrily. And she wasn’t buying into his “decent thing to do” act for a second.

“And this is all at your expense.” She couldn’t keep the mocking tone out of her voice.

There was suppressed anger in Tolliver’s eyes, but he managed to keep it under a lid. Instead, he spread his hands out, the personification of innocence. “Since no one else came forward—”

There was definitely something going on here, she thought. Something more than she could put her
finger on right now. But she wasn’t about to be fooled, or intimidated, if that was Tolliver’s goal.

Her eyes narrowed. She never liked being dismissed or ignored. “I came forward, Mr. Tolliver.”

There was frost in his reply. It was obvious that, since she was a friend of Clancy’s, he disliked her by association. “I wasn’t informed of that.”

She half expected Mike to intervene. When he didn’t, she assumed he thought she could fight her own battles. She could and she did. “I left word with the coroner’s office that I was to be notified once they were satisfied with their autopsy.”

There was condescension hanging on every syllable. “There must have been some confusion,” Tolliver replied. It was easy to see that he couldn’t care less about her part in this, or about the body he’d offered to bury. Which, Mike thought, observing, went along with what the man had told him earlier. He wasn’t sure yet if he was buying what Tolliver was selling.

“We do excellent work here,” Tolliver assured Natalya.

They cut corners here, according to Clancy. And she believed him before she believed the two-dimensional man standing before her.

“Sorry, I’ve already made arrangements with another mortuary. They’ll be here shortly.” She had called the funeral parlor on her way over here, not wanting to waste any time. The receptionist assured
her that the car would be there to pick up “the deceased” within the hour.

It was still hard for her to think of Clancy that way. And having to deal with this reptile in an expensive suit didn’t help any.

A small sigh of exasperation escaped Tolliver’s lips. He inclined his head. “As you wish.” Then, as if Natalya didn’t even exist, he turned his eyes toward Mike. “Are we done here, Detective?”

He’d gotten a few answers he wanted to explore. “Yes. For now,” Mike qualified. The fact that Tolliver shifted ever so slightly and looked uncomfortable with the addition of the second sentence was not lost on him.

Mike looked at Natalya. There was fire in her eyes. No matter what he tried to tell himself to the contrary, the woman was magnificent. He’d wanted to call her the morning following the Central Park homicide that had taken him away from her. But the very fact that he wanted to call her as much as he did had kept him from doing it. The intensity of his desire unnerved him and put him on his guard. He thought some space might put things in perspective.

But, looking at her now, he realized that he’d been wrong. Space did nothing but increase the longing. Out of sight, out of mind definitely did not apply here.

“I’ll walk you out,” he offered, joining her. “Unless you have something else you want to say to Mr. Tolliver.”

There was a lot she wanted to say to Tolliver, but
she doubted that any of it would make an impression. Better not to waste words. The only thing the man understood was money. The best she could do was find out who had originally authorized that Ellis Brothers take care of burial arrangements for the city’s nameless dead and see what could be done about transferring that business somewhere else.

“No,” she replied, turning on her heel.

“Wait, you’re walking too fast,” Mike called after her as he lengthened his stride. “In a hurry to get somewhere?” he wanted to know.

She didn’t bother turning around, not wanting to see Tolliver again. “Just out of here, for one.”

“And for two?” Mike asked when she didn’t follow up her statement.

Natalya pressed her lips together. She didn’t answer. Even though she wanted to know why he hadn’t called, she couldn’t ask. Instead, she focused on why he’d come to see Tolliver in the first place.

They walked down the short corridor to the front door. The mist outside appeared to be gone, after having left its mark on the glass doors.

“I was beginning to think that you weren’t going to question Tolliver.”

He’d spent the last half hour questioning the man, tendering questions as subtly as he could so as not to alarm the director. He didn’t know if he linked Tolliver with the murder, but he knew he didn’t like him, period. Mike made a mental note to check out
the man’s alibi. The funeral director had said that he’d spent the evening sitting with the Wallace family, predominantly comforting Wallace’s bereaved widow.

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