Sudden Exposure (33 page)

Now a fire worthy of Brian Boru, the Celtic king, crackled, and leapt wildly in the great hearth. Smoke rejected by the inadequate flue seasoned the air. On the disc player a guitar and a cello keened, the sound drifting off into the smoke. I nestled back into the sofa cushions and smiled at Howard. He wrapped his long arm around my shoulder, pulled me closer against him. “I didn’t pay enough attention to those cute little ears when they were covered with hair,” he said, and nuzzled one. “And I did think that by the time I got back, you’d have collared my nudist.”

“Gone. The nudists were just cogs in the wheels of private enterprise.”

“Very private enterprise.” He laughed. “Maybe someone will sue over Rent-a-Freak. That’d be a show.”

When he settled back, I grinned at him—in time to see his blue eyes narrow covetously. But his gaze was no longer on me, it was at the wall beside the fireplace, specifically at the cracks and gouges therein.

“Howard,” I said, reaching for my wineglass, “you’ve gotten off very easy on this bet of ours. You’ve been away from your temptation. Me, on the other hand—well, chocolate didn’t leave town.”

Howard laughed delightedly. The man really loved to win.

“But now,” I said, running my finger under the edge of his collar, “you’ve got the whole weekend here.”

“Hmm. And just what is it you have in mind?” he asked as suspiciously as I’d ever heard him.

“The month runs another eleven days.”

He was figuring, I could tell. He was concluding that he was about to lose not one but two weekends of the joy of spackling, the satisfaction of sanding, the pristine pleasure of painting. “So?”

“So, we’re adults. In our time we’ve made mistakes, done stupid things, misjudged effects. But we are mature adults. Let’s scrap the bet.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“And hit a twenty-four-hour grocery for ice cream, is that what you mean?”

“No. I can go on without sweets. It’s no big thing.”

Howard was laughing.

“No, really. I could shift into fruits, and uh, stuff.”

He threw his head back and roared. “I was just picturing you whipping up carrots and yams.”

“Howard, I’ve just single-handedly corralled a murderer. I’m sure I could do whatever it is you do to a yam.” Ignoring his hoots of laughter, I went on. “I could go either way on junk food. But like I said, I’m a sensible adult. Why should I fill my mouth with orange tuber when I could have chocolate? I mean, people have been committed for less than that.”

Howard’s laugh eased off, but he was still smiling. He lifted the skewer of the last chicken brochette out of the Da Nang Restaurant carton. “You know, Jill, you really are lucky that Doyle likes you. Brucker’s got a lot of ties in Sacramento. The guy is pissed. You could have been in a lot of trouble.”

“I may have closed another case today.”

“Changing the subject?”

“Not totally.”

“Okay, which case?”

“Candace Upton.”

“The one who’s getting the phantom calls from former Presidents?”

“Right. First thing I got on shift today was another call back for her. By now half of patrol has dealt with her. But I don’t think she’ll be bothering patrol again.”

“Who will she be after?”

I leaned back, propped my feet on the coffee table, and took a bite of Howard’s brochette. “Well, Howard, you remember that framed photo Brucker displays so proudly on his office wall? I photocopied it, affixed Brucker’s card, and slipped it under Candace Upton’s door.”

It took Howard a moment to recall the picture of Brucker shaking the hand of Ronald Reagan.

Susan Dunlap (b. 1943) is the author of more than twenty mystery novels and a founding member of Sisters in Crime, an organization that promotes women in the field of crime writing.

Born in New York City, Dunlap entered Bucknell University as a math major, but quickly switched to English. After earning a master’s degree in education from the University of North Carolina, she taught junior high before becoming a social worker. Her jobs took her all over the country, from Baltimore to New York and finally to Northern California, where many of her novels take place.

One night, while reading an Agatha Christie novel, Dunlap told her husband that she thought she could write mysteries. When he asked her to prove it, she accepted the challenge. Dunlap wrote in her spare time, completing six manuscripts before selling her first book,
Karma
(1981), which began a ten-book series about brash Berkeley cop Jill Smith.

After selling her second novel, Dunlap quit her job to write fulltime. While penning the Jill Smith mysteries, she also wrote three novels about utility-meter-reading amateur sleuth Vejay Haskell. In 1989, she published
Pious Deception
, the first in a series starring former medical examiner Kiernan O’Shaughnessy. To research the O’Shaughnessy and Smith series, Dunlap rode along with police officers, attended autopsies, and spent ten weeks studying the daily operations of the Berkeley Police Department.

Dunlap concluded the Smith series with
Cop Out
(1997). In 2006 she published
A Single Eye
, her first mystery featuring Darcy Lott, a Zen Buddhist stuntwoman. Her most recent novel is
No Footprints
(2012), the fifth in the Darcy Lott series.

In addition to writing, Dunlap has taught yoga and worked for a private investigator on death penalty defense cases and as a paralegal. In 1986, she helped found Sisters in Crime, an organization that supports women in the field of mystery writing. She lives and writes near San Francisco.