Sundays Are for Murder Page 12

  Grabbing the receiver, Nick brought it to his ear. Seething.

  “Look, you jerk—”

  “Is that any way for you to talk to your mother?” The voice on the other end of the line was teeming with amusement.

  The fury instantly left him, like water running down an unobstructed drain. “Mom?” Her laugh took away the last doubt as to her identity.

  “Really, Nickolas, what kind of people does the Bureau have you dealing with out there?”

  His family had known about Linda and had mourned the senseless death of the baby they would never come to know. But there was no way he was going to tell his mother that Dixon had materialized on this side of the Rockies and was leaving gutted calling cards on his doorstep.

  “Just some wrong number that keeps calling. Nearly broke my neck last time, answering it.”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line that told him he hadn’t fooled her. Not for a moment. He and his mother were very much alike, which meant their minds worked along the same paths.

  “Wrong number,” she repeated slowly. “Is it that girl’s brother? Does he still hold you accountable?”

  He didn’t want her worrying. “No, just a wrong number,” he insisted. “It happens, Mom. Don’t let your imagination run away with you.”

  The small sigh on the other end told him she wasn’t buying it. “Nick, is your nose growing?”

  “Maybe just a little.”

  “Nick, if it is him,” she instructed in the firm, unshakable voice of a colonel’s wife, “I want you to go to the police.”

  Nick laughed. Unbelievable. He had towered over her by the time he was twelve and she still insisted on treating him as if he needed help crossing the street. “Mom, I’m an FBI agent. The police come to me.”

  If he meant to make her laugh, he failed. “This is different.”

  “No,” Nick pointed out patiently, “he’s an ex-criminal and not too bright to boot. I can handle it.” Tactfully, he moved the conversation away from him and back to her. “So, why did you call?”

  “I need an excuse to talk to my son?”

  “You usually come up with one as a cover,” he reminded her.

  His mother laughed. He missed that sound, Nick thought. Missed being home. His apartment was more than decent, but it didn’t feel like home, just a place to store his boxes and his life until he got it together a little more.

  “I wanted to know if you were going to be home for the holidays.”

  “Holidays,” he repeated. “As in Christmas?”

  “Yes.”

  It was his turn to laugh. “Mom, that’s more than six months away.”

  “I like to plan ahead.”

  “As long as you don’t set the table early,” he kidded her. “Sure, I’ll be home. Where else would I be?”

  “I have your promise?”

  He heard the hint of sadness in her voice. That wasn’t like her. “Why, what’s up?”

  “Nothing. I just miss you, that’s all. You were always my favorite—” she confided in hushed tones, adding, “Don’t tell the others.”

  It was a familiar game, one his mother had played with him as well as Jeff and Ashley since they were old enough to remember. They knew she had no favorite. Helen Brannigan’s heart was bigger than the Grand Canyon and she shared it with all of them.

  “I won’t.” Taking a beer out of the refrigerator, Nick balanced the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he popped the tab. “So, tell me what’s been going on with you and everyone,” he coaxed. Returning to the living room, he sat down on the sofa and leaned back, losing himself in the conversation and the sound of his mother’s voice.

  For the next half hour, he was back in D.C.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHARLEY BECAME AWARE of the aroma the moment she walked into the task-force area the next morning. It filled her senses half a heartbeat before she saw that her desk had been turned into a giant bakery display dish.

  Files were neatly pushed to one side, the computer monitor angled so that it faced sideways instead of forward. Someone had used the rest of the available space on her desk to deposit a variety of baked goods. There were at least five kinds of cookies with an abundance of each variety, a huge angel food cake frosted in virginal white, and a pie overflowing with cinnamon-spiced apples beneath its crust.

  The aroma alone made her stomach plead for attention. And samples.

  Where the hell had all this come from and what was it doing on her desk? Looking around for an explanation, Charley found that she didn’t have far to look.

  Bill Chan came in right behind her. And headed straight toward the goods. She took that as an admission of culpability.

  “Your girlfriend have a going-out-of-business sale, Bill?”

  Holding up his hand for a time-out, Bill swallowed a mouthful of chocolate-chip cookie. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t bring this in.” He pointed out the obvious. “If I had, it would have been on my desk, not yours.” Taking two more cookies, he retreated to his desk. Several crumbs fell to mark his passage.

  “Is this bring-food-to-work day?” Nick asked, walking in. “If it is, nobody told me.” Without waiting for an invitation, he snagged a macaroon cookie. “Good,” he pronounced, nodding his head as if to underscore his opinion. “Why’s it all on your desk?”

  Charley spread her hands. “Not a clue.”

  Over her shoulder Charley saw Sam enter, holding his coffee mug. By the look of him, he’d already been in the task room this morning. Which meant that he might have brought them in. Sam’s wife Eva loved to cook and was always sending food into the office.

  Charley beckoned him over to her desk. “You responsible for this?”

  By the look on his face, Charley realized that this was the first Sam had seen of the display.

  “No, but hey, this solves my breakfast dilemma.” Setting his mug down on his desk, Sam proceeded to help himself to one of each variety of cookie. He held them against his chest and retreated to his desk to enjoy his booty.

  “Hey look,” Nick announced loudly, pointing to something partially hidden beneath one of the platters. “A clue.” He picked up a small, cream-colored card, embossed with the letter A. Inside was a neatly handwritten note. “And it appears to be addressed to you.” He held it out to her, a whimsical expression on his face indicating that he might pull the note back as she reached for it.

  Charley snatched it away from Nick’s hand.

  “Charley’s got a secret admirer,” Bill teased.

  “Who really knows his way around a stove,” Sam added, polishing off a second cookie.

  Charley tuned out the ribbing as she scanned the note. She looked up at the other agents in dismay. Obviously no good deed went unpunished. “This is from Alice.”

  “Alice made all this?” Bill looked incredulously at the baked goods on her desk. His expression turned sly as he looked back at her. “Maybe someone should tell A.D. Kelly’s secretary you don’t bat for that team.”

  “Alice isn’t gay,” Charley retorted. “She’s just needy.” Very needy, she added silently. There had to be something she could do to help the woman. The wheels in her head turned and her eyes swept over the three men in the room. “Speaking of which, any of you know someone we could fix her up with?”

  “Alice?” Bill asked. “You mean like in go out with?”

  She took offense for the woman. There was no doubt in her mind that Alice Sullivan had been a victim of teasing all her life. Everything about her fairly screamed of it. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  “What about you, Chan?” Sam proposed. “Alice can bake for you. These are even better than your girlfriend makes.”

  “Baking isn’t Abby’s only attribute,” Bill informed his partner with a smile that had Charley rolling her eyes.

  She knew the rookie Jack was married so there was no point in going there. “Seriously, guys, if you could come up with someone, it might go a long way toward building u
p Alice’s self-esteem.” She deliberately looked at Nick.

  Nick raised his hands, warding off any further suggestions that might come out of Charley’s mouth. He backed away at the same time. “Sorry, I’m too busy catching bad guys.”

  He was right. They were wasting precious time. Charley looked around for an available space to house the desserts.

  “Speaking of which,” Bill added his two cents, “since we found that link between the first and last victim, I went over the reports on the women I was supposed to review and talked to some of the family members again.”

  She noted that Bill had deliberately not made any reference to Cris’s name or her relationship with her twin. She flashed him a grateful smile as she said, “And?”

  Bill seemed particularly satisfied with himself. “Amanda Watley and Donna Baker both had affairs with married men,” he said, referring to the two by name.

  “Same goes for Carla Sommers and Lilah Gibbs,” Jack reported, helping himself to a piece of the pie.

  Sam wiped his mouth. Finished for the time being, he tossed the crumpled napkin into the wastebasket beneath his desk. “Mine, too. Lynn Todd and Melissa Winthrop were both having affairs with married men at the time of their deaths.”

  Charley was stunned. How had that gone undetected before? She and the team had been brought in when the serial killer had murdered his fourth victim and the pattern had established itself. Someone should have noticed before now.

  “Why didn’t anyone say anything before?” Charley asked in frustration.

  “An affair with a married man isn’t exactly something you shout from the rooftops, Charley,” Sam reminded her. “You know, don’t speak ill of the dead, that kind of thing. Whoever knew about the victim’s affair must have decided to keep it to themselves. Keep the victim’s name unsullied.”

  “Unsullied?” Bill echoed, looking at his partner. “Who talks like that?”

  Sam frowned at him.

  She didn’t have time for another round of the boys’ club. “What about the others?” she asked. “Did they all have affairs with married men?”

  “Still trying to track that piece of information down about Sally Forbs, but I got the best friend to finally admit it about Sandra Cummings,” Nick told her.

  She turned to look at her partner. This was his doing. If Nick hadn’t pointed it out, hadn’t started digging into her sister’s past, they wouldn’t be working on this link. He deserved to have that acknowledged, even if it did bother her.

  “This could be it,” Charley finally said. “This could be our link. Good work.”

  Nick nodded at the acknowledgment. Jack was still chewing on the significance of what they’d discovered. “So that means, what? Our killer is a deranged minister casting the first stone?”

  Sam shrugged. “Whatever message he’s trying to get across, it’s tied in with the cross he carves on their foreheads.”

  “Maybe there is no message,” Charley said, thinking out loud. The others looked at her. “Maybe what he’s doing is just between the killer and his victim.”

  Nick extrapolated on her theory. “Vengeance?” he guessed, looking at her.

  “That,” she allowed, and then she took it in another biblical direction. “Or salvation.”

  “Salvation?” Nick echoed.

  She nodded. “After saying the blessing over the deceased, the priest makes the sign of the cross. That’s a symbol that the dead person’s soul is being commended to God, sent off to heaven, that sort of thing. Maybe the serial killer thinks that by killing these sinners—which is what the Bible calls people committing adultery—he’s sending them off to a better life.”

  “Or maybe he acts on the rage he feels,” Sam said.

  Nick disagreed. “Rage might be too strong a word here. If there was rage, he’d carve up their faces or their bodies. Or assault them sexually, degrading them. Even if he was impotent, he could use any number of surrogate instruments to achieve penetration. But he doesn’t. I think Charley’s right. This has to do with saving.”

  Sam sighed, shaking his head as he reviewed the photographs on the wall. “Only thing I’m interested in is saving the next victim,” he commented.

  “Amen to that.”

  They turned to see Alice standing in the doorway. The secretary was staring at the array with a sad expression on her face. As she sensed their attention, her eyes darted from one agent to another before she lowered her gaze to the points of her shoes. She appeared clearly embarrassed at having interrupted them.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to butt in.”

  Charley stepped forward, crossing to her. “You weren’t. Um, Alice—” she lowered her voice “—may I speak to you for a moment?”

  Nerves seemed to surface as Alice bobbed her head up and down. Her tone matched Charley’s. “Of course.”

  Hooking her arm through Alice’s, Charley brought the woman over to the side. Her manner was gentle, kind. Alice shifted nervously from foot to foot.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate all this, Alice…” she began “…but well, I’m on a diet and all this is very hard to resist.”

  “Oh.” She looked over her shoulder at the display. She’d probably spent all evening baking, putting her heart into her offerings. Her shoulders seemed to visibly sag. “I’m sorry—”

  “There’s nothing to apologize for,” Charley assured her quickly. She didn’t want to offend the woman. Her goal was to make sure she didn’t go overboard like this again. “It’s all really wonderful. I had no idea you could bake like that.”

  “Just something I used to do to please my father,” she volunteered. “Before he died.”

  Charley nodded. “I’m sure you succeeded. As a matter of fact, you might even consider this as another profession. But I don’t think the A.D. would appreciate one of the desks being turned into a bakery display if he came out and saw all this.”

  Alice’s eyes widened behind her glasses. “A.D. Kelly.” The lingering effects of the chewing-out she’d received yesterday were still very much with her. “Do you think he’d get angry?”

  “Not angry, but—” Charley stopped abruptly. Music worked to soothe people, so did food. Maybe Alice could use this to her advantage. “Why don’t you offer some of these cookies to him? Might be a good way to get on his better side.” If such a thing existed at the moment. Pressure to solve the case was being brought down on Kelly, who in turn was leaning on them.

  Never harder than she leaned on herself, Charley thought.

  Disappointment drizzled down Alice’s angular face, although she struggled not to show it as she gathered up her offerings. “If you say so.”

  “Not everything,” Charley interjected, placing her hand over the other woman’s to still it. “Leave a little something for us.”

  Alice smiled at her. “For you,” she emphasized, deliberately avoiding looking at the others. The woman took as much as she could carry in one trip and retreated.

  Bill exchanged looks with Jack and struggled hard to suppress the grin that wanted to surface. “Definitely batting for the other team,” he repeated as he sat down at his desk.

  Charley didn’t bother coming to the woman’s defense again. Her mind was already elsewhere. She was trying to figure out exactly how the link they’d just uncovered was going to help them find the serial killer.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “WANT TO GO get a drink?”

  Charley didn’t realize the question was directed at her. She was still lost in thought, trying to figure out what it all meant. Why someone was killing women having affairs with married men.

  Or, in their eagerness to find a link between the victims, had they strayed in an unproductive direction?

  When the voiced question finally registered, she looked up, convinced that she had imagined the invitation coming from Brannigan. At this point, she was probably on the verge of hallucinating.

  It had been another long, hard, fruitless day, filled with endless r
eports to wade through and frustrating interviews to reconduct. Interviews that led nowhere and yielded nothing new. Even the phone calls from people swearing they knew who the killer was had tapered off.

  Charley felt she and the task force were going around in circles. As much as she wanted to solve the case her hope was fading. She felt as if she’d been through all this before. Again and again. Even the new link that Brannigan had uncovered had brought them back to the same old place. The corner of Nowhere and Nothing.

  Brannigan.

  He was looking at her across their two desks, his expression that of a man waiting for a response. Since there was no one else left in the vicinity, it was safe to assume he was the one to have posed the question to her.

  But she sincerely doubted it was what she thought he had said.

  They’d been partnered a month now and although there might have been tiny moments when she could have sworn she’d felt some kind of electricity, she chalked it up to a malfunction on her part. A malfunction brought on by too much work and not enough sleep. Even as the spark registered, she convinced herself that it was only in her imagination.

  What else could it be? Together a month and in all that time, they had yet to socialize off the job. Going out the door together to head their separate ways had been as close as they’d come.

  “Excuse me?” Charley asked.

  “A drink,” Nick repeated, as if all his energy had left the building. “Would you like to go out and get one?”

  Charley stared. Was it her imagination, or was the lighting in the area dimmer with just the two of them here? Was the Bureau economizing on electricity?

  The words emerged slowly, teenagers slipping out of the house after curfew. “With you?”

  Nick blew out a breath. “No, I’m taking a survey. Of course with me.” His eyes seemed to examine her. Probably trying to detect if she had a brain, Charley thought. “Why else would I ask?”

  Charley shrugged, stalling for time and wondering why she felt so undecided. If Ben had suggested it, she would have jumped at the chance. And if Bill or Sam had asked, even in the early days, she wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment. Why was she hesitating now? What was there about Brannigan that was so different?