Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [539]
“Yes.”
It seemed a relief to him. Had he honestly believed he had imagined it? He even took a bite of the sandwich for himself and then pulled off another piece for Scrapple.
“But why? Why’s he picking on me?”
“You and Calvin Vargus intruded on his private hiding place. He might simply be doing the same to you.”
“Do you think he wants to hurt me? You know, like those others?”
Maggie looked for signs of fear, but now he seemed more interested in eating.
“He might just want to scare you,” she told him, but she wasn’t convinced. She wasn’t convinced the killer wasn’t still hiding in the shadows, watching despite Sheriff Watermeier’s men having checked the premises.
“I think I saw him,” Luc said matter-of-factly, but it made Maggie sit up.
“Where? When?”
“Yesterday. Maybe the day before. Just his reflection in a store window as I passed. I kept hearing footsteps…you know, following me, slowing when I slowed. Stopping when I stopped.”
Maggie tried to contain her excitement, letting him tell at his own pace, but she was impatient. He had already put the half-eaten sandwich back down and was staring into the dark again.
“What did the reflection look like?” she asked.
Luc was quiet and she thought he might be trying to remember, to conjure up the image. After a while, she asked again, “Luc, what did the reflection look like?”
He turned to her, his eyes darting back and forth before meeting hers when he said, “I’m sorry, who did you say you were?”
CHAPTER 47
Tully couldn’t be sure what her reaction would be, but he knew Dr. Patterson might be easier on him than O’Dell would be. Or at least that was his excuse for calling her, asking if he could run something by her. He could have told her about it over the phone or shown her by forwarding it to her e-mail, yet when she suggested that he stop by her brownstone again, he didn’t hesitate.
She opened the door to greet him with bare feet, but still wearing her skirt and silk blouse, her usual business attire, only without the jacket and with the blouse untucked, as if she had just gotten home.
“Come on in.” She left him and headed back to the kitchen where a pot was on the stove, emitting wonderful aromas of garlic and tomato. “Have you eaten? Because I haven’t and I’m starved for the first time in days.”
“Smells great,” he said, not wanting to admit that he had filled up on pizza with Emma and Aleesha.
“It’s nothing fancy. Just some spaghetti and marinara sauce.”
Tully checked her expression, wondering if perhaps this was some gesture, some reminder. Last year in Boston he had taken her to a small Italian restaurant, where she had shown him how to twirl his spaghetti correctly onto his fork in what he remembered to be an almost erotic experience. Or at least it had been for him.
While he looked for signs that she might also be remembering that evening, Gwen Patterson gave the sauce a quick stir, then starting slathering butter on a loaf of what looked like fresh bread. She wasn’t even paying attention to him. No, he must be wrong about her wanting to remind him of Boston. What an idiot he was. She had said she wanted to forget about it. She meant it. Why was he still thinking about it?
“Can I help?” he asked, taking off his jacket and putting the briefcase with his laptop computer on the kitchen counter.
“There’re some romaine hearts in the colander.” She pointed to the sink. “Would you mind pulling them apart for our salad?”
“Sure, I can do that,” he said, rolling up his shirtsleeves. Pulling apart hearts for a salad? Sure, he could do that, feeling relieved to recognize romaine hearts as lettuce. Why didn’t he pay more attention to these kinds of things and what they were called—romaine hearts and Picasso…Pablo Picasso? Maybe it was time that he did. If he could figure out who Britney was, what raves were and that the ingredients of wet included PCP and embalming fluid—which by the way, he had told Emma if he discovered her doing any drugs she would be grounded until she was thirty-five—then certainly