That was another detail she didn't want to think about, Marci's body lying on a refrigerated slab for several days. "I'll go to work tomorrow, then. I'd like to help her sister with the arrangements, if she wants, but I don't guess there's anything to do yet."
"Not yet." He kissed her again, then lifted her hands, still holding the cucumber slices, and replaced them on her eyelids. "Keep them there. You look like hell."
"Gee, thanks," she said dryly, and heard him chuckle as he left.
There was that silence again. Then Shelley said, "He's different."
Different from Jaine's three ex-fiances, she meant. No joke.
"Yeah," she agreed.
"This looks pretty serious. You haven't known him for long."
If Shelley only knew! She was probably counting the entire three weeks Jaine had lived here. There was no telling what she would say if she knew that for the first two of those weeks Jaine had thought Sam was either a drunk or a drug dealer.
"I don't know how serious it is," she said, knowing she was lying. "I'm not rushing into anything." For her part, she couldn't get much more serious. She was in love with the big jerk. Exactly how or what he felt was still open for discussion.
"That's good," Shelley said. "The last thing you want is another broken engagement."
She could have gone all day without mentioning Jaine's miserable track record, but then Shelley had never been noted for her tact. On the other hand, Jaine had never doubted that her sister loved her, which made up for a lot of tactlessness.
The phone rang. Jaine removed the cucumber slices and reached for the cordless at the same time Shelley did. "Sam said for me to answer the phone," Shelley hissed, as if whoever was calling could hear her.
Ring.
"Since when do you take orders from someone you just warned me against?" Jaine asked dryly.
Ring.
"I didn't exactly warn – "
Ring.
Knowing the mini-argument could go on for half an hour, Jaine punched the "talk" button before the answering machine could pick up. "Hello."
"Which one are you?"
"What?" she asked in astonishment.
"Which one are you?"
She disconnected and set the phone down, frowning. "Who was it?" Shelley asked.
"A crank call. Marci, T.J. and Luna have been getting them since the List came out." Her voice caught a little when she mentioned Marci. "It's the same guy, he always says the same thing."
"Have you reported to the phone company that you're getting obscene calls?"
"They aren't obscene. He says, 'Which one are you?' in this weird whisper. I guess it's a guy, because it's hard to tell when someone's whispering."
Shelley rolled her eyes. "A crank call about the List? You can bet it's a guy. Al says all the guys at work have been really ticked off about parts of it. I'll let you guess which parts they don't like."
"The parts having to do with their parts?" As if she had to guess.
"Men are so predictable, aren't they?" Shelley moved around the kitchen, opening drawers and doors. "What are you doing?"
"Finding out where everything is so I won't have to look for anything when I start cooking."
"You're cooking? What?" For a slightly disjointed moment, Jaine wondered if Shelley had brought over the ingredients of whatever she planned to cook for her family's supper that night. After all, she had pulled a gigantic cucumber out of her purse; God only knew what else was in there. A roast, maybe?
"Breakfast," Shelley said. "For us. And you're going to eat it, too."
Actually, Jaine was hungry this morning, having skipped supper the night before. Did Shelley think she was crazy? No way was she going to argue with food. "I'll try," she said meekly, and replaced the cucumber slices on her eyes while her sister bustled around preparing made-from- scratch pancakes.
Corin sat staring at the phone, feeling his disappointment wash through him in waves. She hadn't told, either. At least she hadn't snapped at him the way the others had. He had thought she would, had prepared himself for whatever she might say. She had a big mouth on her, as his mother would have said. He often disapproved of the way she talked at work, with all that cursing. His mother wouldn't have liked her at all.
He didn't know what to do now. Killing the first bitch had been… so overwhelming. He hadn't expected that wild, hot rush of joy, almost of ecstasy. He had gloried in it, but afterward he had been frightened. What would Mother do if she knew he enjoyed it? He had always been so afraid she would find out his secret pleasure at her punishments. But the killing… oh, the killing. He closed his eyes, swaying back and forth a little as he relived every moment of it in his mind. The shock in the bitch's eyes that split second before the hammer hit her, the sodden thudding sounds, then the joy that leapt through his veins and the feeling of being all-powerful, of knowing she was helpless to stop him because he was so strong – Tears welled into his eyes, because he had enjoyed it so much and now it was over.
He hadn't enjoyed anything so much since the day he had killed Mother.
No – don't think about that. They said he shouldn't think about that. But they said he should take the pills, and they were wrong about that, weren't they? The pills made him go away. So maybe he should think about Mother. He went into the bathroom and checked in the mirror. Yes, he was still there.
He had brought a tube of lipstick from the bitch's house. He didn't know why. After she was dead, he had walked around, looking at her things, and when he was in her bathroom checking himself in the mirror, he had noticed the ungodly amount of makeup strewn about the bathroom, covering every flat surface. The bitch had certainly believed in beautifying herself, hadn't she? Well, she wouldn't be needing this anymore, he had thought, and slipped the lipstick into his pocket. Since that night it had been sitting on the vanity in his bathroom. He uncapped the tube and twisted the bottom. The obscenely shaped crimson length poked out, like a dog's penis. He knew what a dog's penis looked like because he had – no, don't think of that.
Leaning forward, he carefully outlined his lips in bright red. He straightened and stared at himself in the mirror. He smiled, his red lips stretching over his teeth, and he said, "Hello, Mother."
It was amazing, Jaine thought the next morning when she stepped onto the elevator at work, how her world could be so altered while most of the people who worked at Hammerstead were unaffected by Marci's death. Of course Luna and T.J. were as grief-stricken as she, and the people in Marci's department were sad and shocked, but most of the people she met on the way in had either not mentioned it at all or said something along the lines of, "Yeah, I heard about that. Awful, isn't it?" The computer nerds, of course, were unaffected by anything that didn't involve gigabytes. The elevator sign this morning read: NEW PRESS RELEASE BY THE FDA: RED MEAT IS NOT BAD FOR YOU. RESULTS OF TESTS SHOW IT IS FUZZY GREEN MEAT THAT IS BAD FOR YOU.
Since fuzzy green meat sounded like the ordinary contents of the average computer nerd's refrigerator, that notice probably had deep personal meaning for most of them, Jaine thought. On any other day, she would have laughed. Today she couldn't summon up even a smile.
Neither T.J. nor Luna had worked the day before, either. They had arrived on her doorstep a little after eight A.M. their eyes in the same condition hers had been. Shelley had whacked off more slices from her cucumber, then set about making more pancakes, which were as comforting to her friends as they had been to Jaine.
Shelley had never met Marci, but she was willing to listen to them talk about her, which they had done all day long. They had cried a lot, laughed some, and wasted a lot of time hazarding theories about what had happened, since Brick was undeniably in the clear. They knew they weren't going to stumble on The Truth, but talking about it helped. Marci's death was so unbelievable that only by endlessly rehashing it could they gradually come to terms with losing her.
For once, she wasn't early. Mr. de Wynter was already there, and he immediately asked her to step into his office. Jaine sighed. She might be head of payroll, but unfortunately the position carried no power, only responsibility. By leaving work early on Monday and not working at all on Tuesday, she had left them shorthanded. De Wynter must have been sweating, wondering if they would get everything finished in time; people tended to get unreasonable when their paychecks didn't arrive on schedule.
She was prepared to accept his criticism, so she was taken aback when he said, "I want to tell you how sorry I am about your friend. That's an awful thing to happen." She had sworn she wouldn't cry at work today, but de Wynter's unexpected sympathy almost did her in. She blinked to hold back the tears. "Thank you," she said. "It is awful. And I want to apologize for leaving the department in the lurch on Monday – "
He shook his head. "I understand. We put in some extra hours, but no one complained. When is the funeral service scheduled?"
"It hasn't been, yet. The autopsy – "
"Oh, of course, of course. Please let me know when it will be; a lot of people here at Hammerstead would like to attend."
Jaine nodded her promise, and escaped back to her own desk and a pile of work.
She had known the day would be tough, but she hadn't anticipated quite how tough. Gina and all the others in her department had to extend their sympathies, of course, which almost had her weeping again. Since she didn't have a cucumber with her, she had to fight the tears all day long.
Without it being planned, both T.J. and Luna showed up at lunchtime. "Railroad Pizza?" T.J. asked, and they all got in T.J.'s car for the short drive.
They had just received their vegetarian pizzas when Jaine remembered she hadn't told them about the crank phone call she had received just before they arrived they day before. "I finally got one of those 'Which one are you?' calls," she said.
"Aren't they creepy?" Luna took an unenthusiastic bite of pizza. Her lovely face looked as if she had aged ten years in the last two days. "Since the rest of us have had at least two of them, I'm surprised it took him so long to get to you."
"Well, I have had a lot of hang-ups on my answering machine, but I just assumed they were from reporters."
"Probably. God knows we've all had plenty of those." T.J. rubbed her forehead. "My head is pounding. I think it finally really hit me last night when I got home, and I cried until I was sick. Galan – "
Jaine looked up. "Yes, how is the Galan situation? Is he still bunking down in a motel?"
"No. He was at work Monday when we heard, of course, but he had called several times and left messages for me, and he came home that night. I guess the situation is still up in the air. What with Marci, I haven't felt like hashing things out with him. He's been pretty quiet, but… considerate, too. Maybe he's hoping I'll forget." She took an almost vicious bite of pizza.
"Guess there's not much chance of that," Jaine said dryly, and Luna smiled.
"Not in this lifetime," T.J. said. "But let's talk about something interesting, like Sam." She got a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. "I can't believe you thought that sexy hunk was a drug-dealing drunk."
Jaine found that she, too, could smile today. "What can I say? He cleans up well. You should see him when he's wearing old, torn clothes, hasn't shaved, and is in a really bad mood."
"Those dark eyes… Wow." Luna fanned herself with her hand. "Plus he has a really nice set of shoulders, in case you haven't noticed."
Jaine refrained from saying that she had noticed everything about Sam. They didn't need to know about the kitchen-window episode. Funny, she thought, she had regaled them almost every day with tales about her fractious encounters with him when she still thought he was a drunken jerk, but once things started getting more personal between them, she had stopped talking about him.
"He's hot for you, too," T.J. added. "That man wants to jump your bones. Take my word for it."
"Maybe," Jaine said vaguely. She didn't want to discuss how badly her bones wanted to be jumped by him, or how close they had already been to making love. "You don't have to be psychic to know that," Luna told T.J. her tone wry. "He came right out and said so." T.J. laughed. "So he did. He isn't shy, is he?" No, shy was one thing Sam Donovan definitely wasn't. Brash, cocky, arrogant, smart, sexy, sweet – those words described him down to his bones. She doubted he had a single shy gene in his body, thank God.
T.J.'s cell phone rang. "It's probably Galan," she said, sighing as she fished it out of her purse. She flipped it open and punched the receive button. "Hello?" Jaine watched as her face turned red. "How did you get this number?" she snapped, and punched the off button. "Bastard," she muttered as she returned the phone to her purse.
"I take it that wasn't Galan," Jaine said.
"It was that creep." T.J.'s voice quivered with anger. "I'd like to know how he got my cell number, because I don't give it out a lot."
"Is there an information for cell numbers, maybe?" Luna asked.
"The account's in Galan's name, not mine, so how would he know I'm the one who carries the phone?"