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  She had to admit the offer was exceedingly tempting. Every fiber in her body suddenly begged her for the opportunity to just curl up on a soft surface and shut her eyes. But there was no way she had any intention of shirking her duties.

  “Thanks, but no. I’ll manage,” she insisted.

  “If you say so,” he answered glibly.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Kendra’s tone was firm even if her resolve wasn’t quite there yet.

  Chapter 7

  When questioned about Summer Miller, the heavyset man with the curly, faded yellow-white hair sadly shook his head.

  “No, I had to let her go. PartyTyme! is owned by this family-run corporation and they have very strict rules,” he told them solemnly. He paused for a moment to reengage in his ongoing battle with his ever-sinking trousers, pulling them up to just beneath his expanded waistline. Temporarily, they hung on his hips before once again beginning a slow descent. “There’s zero tolerance for drugs. Summer failed the last random test we had and bam, she was out the door.”

  “Summer had a drug habit?” Kendra asked. According to the M.E., the first tox screen had been negative. Maybe further testing was in order.

  Harvey Abernathy raised his seriously sloping shoulders in a hapless shrug that seemed over before it started.

  “I never saw any evidence of it in her work, but, yeah, I guess she had to,” he concluded. “Otherwise, she would have passed the test. But there are no second chances here. So I had to let her go, even though I didn’t want to. She was a good worker.”

  “When was this?” Abilene asked.

  “A week ago last Monday. My guess was that she had to have been partying all weekend for it to still be in her system like that. But I don’t really know,” he quickly added, his small eyes darting from one face to the other. “I don’t do things like that myself.” His voice was breathless and almost wistful as he told them this.

  “Was she close to or friendly with anyone here?” Kendra asked. She glanced over her shoulder at the cubicles scattered about the floor. There was a person within each enclosure, manning a phone. Planning parties, she imagined.

  “You could try talking to Suzanne Del Vecchio,” he said, pointing to a cubicle on the left. A thin brunette was seated at the desk there. Unlike the others, she wasn’t on the phone. She was typing something on the keyboard. “I saw them going out to lunch a few times.” Abernathy shook his head again. “Too bad Summer had a drug problem,” he said with real feeling. “She really was a good worker when the chips were down and we had a deadline to meet.”

  Kendra forced a smile to her lips. “Thank you for your help, Mr. Abernathy.” She closed her notepad and tucked it back into her pocket. “We’ll just go have a few words with Suzanne and maybe a couple of your other employees, if it’s all right with you.”

  The sloping shoulders rose a little and collapsed again. “Have at it,” he told them, gesturing vaguely toward Suzanne’s cubicle and beyond. He watched them as they left his cluttered, claustrophobic office.

  “Drug problem?” Abilene questioned somewhat skeptically the moment they left the supervisor’s office. The idea seemed rather clichéd, but then, clichés existed for a reason.

  “The M.E. didn’t find any needle marks on her,” Kendra offered.

  “Lots of ways to take drugs,” he reminded her.

  She glanced at him. What was this, Rookie 101? “Thank you, I did not know that,” she said, enunciating each word.

  Rather than retreat because he was obviously rubbing her the wrong way—again—Abilene grinned and inclined his head.

  “Glad to help.” He saw his partner’s lips move, but whatever she was saying, it was too low for him to hear. He had a feeling that it was probably better that way—for both of them.

  * * *

  “Yeah, we hung out together sometimes,” Suzanne Del Vecchio told the two detectives who’d entered her cubicle and asked about Summer Miller. “Whenever her boyfriend was working overtime,” she qualified. “Otherwise, she was always with him. They were going to get married, at least that was what she kept telling me.”

  “You didn’t believe her?” Abilene questioned.

  The brunette shrugged. “I figure men tell you a lot of things they don’t mean just to get their way.”

  Amen to that, Kendra thought. “You never met him?” she asked the other woman.

  “Once or twice,” Suzanne allowed. “He seemed nice enough, I guess. Why? You think that he’s the one who killed her?” she asked eagerly. When neither of the two detectives answered her, she told them, “The story’s all over the office. Personally, he didn’t look like a killer. But then, you never can tell.”

  Kendra was tempted to ask the woman what she thought a killer was supposed to look like, but that was only being testy, so she kept the question to herself. Instead, she focused on the new piece of information they’d just discovered.

  “Your supervisor said she was fired for having a drug problem. What do you know about that?”

  Suzanne blew out an impatient breath and snorted contemptuously. “Summer didn’t have a drug problem. He has the drug problem,” she accused, her brown eyes momentarily darting in the direction of Abernathy’s glass-enclosed office. “Always watching people like some card-carrying Nazi.”

  “Your company has a strict no-drug policy,” Abilene pointed out.

  “Well, maybe it shouldn’t,” Suzanne said defiantly. “Besides, Summer didn’t have a drug problem, she did drugs.”

  “The difference being?” Kendra asked.

  A slight look of condescension entered Suzanne’s brown eyes. “The difference being was that Summer did drugs socially. Like once in a while. She wasn’t an addict,” Suzanne said with feeling. “She could take them or leave them. Her boyfriend was strait-laced so she made sure she never had any on her around him.”

  “And when she was doing these drugs ‘socially,’ ” Abilene began, using Suzanne’s terminology. “Where did she get them?”

  Suzanne frowned and looked at the corner of her desk. “I don’t know,” she said, annoyed at being asked the question.

  “You’re lying,” Abilene told her, his voice mild. When the girl glanced up at him sharply, a denial ready to burst from her lips, Abilene went on talking. “CSI 101: you just said that without making eye contact. If you were telling the truth, you wouldn’t have stared at your desk. Now why don’t we save everybody a whole lot of time, and you tell me who Summer’s drug contact was.”

  When Suzanne’s look turned defiant with an underlying element of fear, Kendra set her mind at ease the best she could. “We’re not out to make a drug bust, Suzanne. All we want to do is find out who killed Summer. This dealer who provided her with happy pills might be able to point us in the right direction. Don’t you want whoever did this to Summer to pay?”

  Torn, the brunette began to waver. “Well, yeah, sure. Oh, okay,” she finally relented, exasperated. Opening her purse, she pulled a card out of her wallet and handed it to Abilene, then belatedly said, “I was just holding that card for her.”

  Abilene exchanged looks with his partner. The hell she was, he thought, even though he nodded solemnly at her statement. “Lucky for us you were.” He indicated the card. “Mind if we take this?”

  Relieved not to be arrested, Suzanne merely waved the card away. “No, keep it for as long as you want. Keep it forever. I don’t have any need for it now that Summer’s gone.” The last word echoed of sadness as the reality of the situation finally began to penetrate.

  Abilene glanced at the card before tucking it into his shirt pocket. He frowned. “This is the address of a pet store.”

  “Yeah. It’s his day job,” Suzanne told them. “That’s his name on the bottom.”

  “ ‘John Smith,’ ” Abilene read out loud. There was no missing the sarcasm in his voice.

  “Original,” Kendra commented dryly.

  “Probably all he could come up with while on his designer drugs,”
Abilene speculated. He looked at the young woman who’d given them the card. “We’ll be in touch if we have any more questions.” He could have sworn the brunette cringed a little.

  * * *

  The pet store on “John Smith’s” card was located at the end of a strip mall in one of the older sections of the city. The entire block had seen better days and most of the businesses that had been here then had gone off in search of those days, leaving behind empty windows and emptier stores. The pet store had once been next door to a video rental store. The only thing left to testify to this was an old poster for The Lord of the Rings that had been abandoned in the window and was now burned by the sun and curling away from the glass. The glue on the tape used to keep the poster in its place had long since dried up.

  The pet shop itself, while still operational, was a rather sad-looking place. There were no energetic little puppies or kittens or rabbits to snare the attention of people passing by. For the most part, there were no people passing by and that was just as well. Rather than pets looking for a good home, shredded newspaper remained as the makeshift bathroom for whatever small animals had once been in the window.

  Looking through the dirty glass, Kendra scanned the interior. “Looks like it’s closed.”

  “No, I see some movement,” Abilene contradicted. “There, in the back. Next to that rear door.”

  As he said it, the tall, somewhat scruffy-looking thin man who had caught his attention bolted through the same door.

  “Guess he’s not interested in making new friends,” Kendra quipped as they quickly rounded the building to the back of the store and the alleyway that ran the length of the strip mall.

  “Maybe he’s just shy,” Abilene responded dryly.

  When they reached the alley behind the pet store, there was less than a beat before someone started shooting at them.

  The moment he heard the sound of the first gunshot, Abilene yanked Kendra’s arm and pulled her to the ground, throwing himself on top of her to shield her from the bullets. Discarded large cartons that had once contained giant supplies of pet food provided partial shelter.

  Despite the dire situation, Abilene was not unaware of the feel of her body beneath his. Nor was he oblivious to the very strong reaction he was having to her.

  Forcing his mind back to the immediate problem, Abilene scanned the area to see where the gunfire had originated. His body still pressed completely over hers, he pulled out his own weapon and returned rapid fire.

  “I’ll cover you,” he told her. “You get back into the building.”

  “The hell I will. But you can get off me,” she ordered. She couldn’t breathe with his weight on her and more than that, she didn’t like the reaction she was having to his body aligned with hers this way. Every inch of her body was aware of his. Big-time.

  The sudden guttural scream told them that despite all odds and very poor visibility, Abilene had somehow managed to hit the fleeing suspect who was firing wildly at them.

  “You shot me!” The bewildered, belligerent accusation echoed in the empty alley. “I’m bleeding!” the dealer cried in panic. “Help me! I’m dying!”

  “That’s one hell of a drama queen,” Abilene commented.

  “You’re still on top of me,” Kendra pointed out through clenched teeth.

  “So I am.” Abilene drew back slowly. On his feet, he offered her a hand, which she ignored.

  “If that’s a chuckle,” she warned as she scrambled to her feet, “you’re a dead man.”

  “Just clearing my throat,” her partner told her innocently.

  Kendra gave him a dirty look, then turned her attention to the man who was still screaming that he was dying.

  “We can get you to a doctor,” she called out, raising her voice above the panicked dealer’s cries. “But you have to throw out your gun.”

  “John Smith” was all but sobbing now. “Okay, okay, okay, here it is.” He tossed it out then came out himself from behind the Dumpster he’d used for cover. “Now get me some help before I bleed to death!”

  On her feet, she was about to take the lead and was utterly surprised when Abilene caught her arm again. But this time, rather than pull her down to the ground, he merely switched places with her, going first.

  She knew what he was doing—putting himself in harm’s way instead of her, just in case the man had another weapon hidden somewhere. While a part of her appreciated the fact that he was trying to protect her, that was not the way a partnership like theirs was supposed to work.

  What was with this man, anyway? Were his testosterone levels off the chart?

  “What?” she demanded, trying to pull him back—it was like trying to move a mountain, something else to annoy her about him. “Are you suddenly bulletproof?”

  “Didn’t you know that?” he deadpanned. “It’s right there in my résumé. Page two: Bullets just bounce off me without leaving a dent.”

  “Must have missed that part.” Her own weapon drawn, they approached Summer’s alleged recreational drug supplier, watching for any sudden moves. But the part-time pet store employee had morphed from preening drug supplier to a frightened stuck pig. All he wanted was to have the bullet removed from his arm and the bleeding stanched.

  “Can you stop the bleeding?” she asked Abilene. Her plan was to extract information from the man in exchange for taking him to the hospital—but she wanted the information first, because she knew if it was the other way around, the drug dealer would renege and give them nothing.

  “You mean like putting my finger in the hole?” Abilene asked innocently. “Yeah, I can do that.”

  Even as he said it, Abilene placed his thumb over where the bullet had entered the dealer’s shoulder. The man let loose with a blood-curdling scream.

  “I need to get to a hospital,” he cried. “You gotta get me to a hospital.” The man was practically begging now.

  “As soon as you tell me why you killed Summer Miller,” Abilene told him.

  The man stared at him, bewildered. “Who?” he cried, shaking his head at the same time to actively deny any wrongdoing.

  “Summer Miller.” Kendra dug into her back pocket and pulled out the photograph of the dead woman that the M.E. had given her. Summer was lying on the autopsy table, waiting to be taken apart bit by bit. “You supplied her with drugs.”

  Squinting, the man finally nodded, obviously recognizing the dead woman. “Yeah, I supplied her, but I didn’t kill her.” His head jerked up as he demanded wildly, “Why would I kill her? That’s bad for business.” Hysteria punctuated his words. “I’m bleeding to death here. You don’t get me to that hospital, I’m gonna die!”

  “If you didn’t kill her, then maybe you can tell us where you were three days ago, say all day?” Abilene asked him.

  The dealer shook his head, the ends of his dirty hair swinging about like stretched-out commas. “I don’t know,” he wailed.

  It wasn’t easy, since at bottom she was a caregiver, but Kendra remained firm. “Not good enough,” she told him with a shake of her head. She looked at her partner and asked, “You have a Band-Aid on you, Abilene? I’m fresh out.”

  “Sorry, never carry any,” he told her, playing along for the dealer’s benefit.

  The latter was becoming genuinely panicked. “Wait, wait, I do know. I remember. I was in San Francisco,” the man cried. Relief flooded his expression because he remembered. “At this big party.”

  “San Francisco,” Kendra echoed somewhat skeptically. “And you can prove this?”

  He looked at her wild-eyed, sweating profusely and seemingly light-headed.

  Kendra knew they only had a couple of minutes left, if that much, before they lost their advantage and had to take the man to the nearest E.R. He was losing blood and at this rate, he would pass out on them.

  “I got money from the ATM down the block from the party. I had to make change for this big ape who only had hundred-dollar bills on him. He was showing off for this skanky-looking girl he w
as with.” The man was babbling now. “They’ve got cameras, right? The ATMs, they’ve got cameras? You can see it’s me on the camera. I wasn’t anywhere near that dead girl.”

  Abilene was as calm as the other man was agitated. “They’re supposed to. You’d better hope that yours was working.”

  The next moment, he was forced to catch the dealer as the man’s eyes rolled up in his head and, passing out, he pitched forward.

  Holding him upright, Abilene looked at Kendra. “Get enough?” he asked.

  “Provided he was telling the truth and the camera was working, yes, we’ve got enough to either clear him or put him closer to the scene,” she answered. And then her eyes narrowed as she saw a bright streak of red across the back of Abilene’s shirt. It was dripping down his sleeve. “What’s that?” she asked, even though, as far as she was concerned, it was a rhetorical question. When Abilene turned his head and looked at her quizzically, she pointed to the back of his arm.

  Craning his neck, Abilene glanced at it and then shrugged off her question and the streak. “The guy’s blood.”

  The hell it was. “I don’t think so,” she said flatly. “Not at this angle.” Inspecting his upper arm quickly as Abilene held onto the drug dealer to keep the unconscious man from sinking to the pavement, Kendra bit off half a curse. “Dammit, you’re hit. He shot you, probably while you were playing at being a bulletproof shield and draping yourself over me.”

  Abilene grinned broadly at her, despite the stinging sensation that was beginning to penetrate his consciousness. “Was it good for you, too, Good?” he cracked.

  “Abilene—” There was a warning note in her voice that told him to back off. She didn’t consider this a laughing matter. And she definitely didn’t want to revisit that one flash of heat she’d felt when his body had pressed into hers.

  Again he shrugged in response, but this time there were consequences to the action. She saw the wince he tried to cover up.

  “All in a day’s work, Good,” Abilene told her cavalierly.

  “Yeah, if you’re working as a superhero,” she countered, her temper fraying. He could have been killed, playing the hero. And it would have been her fault, she thought with a twinge of guilt. She couldn’t have been able to handle that, having Abilene die because of her. “You didn’t have to throw yourself over me like that,” she insisted angrily. “I have a gun and I know how to use it.”