Dead Certain - Mariah Stewart [28]
“Fine.” She shrugged her indifference.
“Well, anything else I should know? Anything else you didn’t bother to report?”
“No. Just the calls and the roses.”
“I’ll get back to you when the tests on the gun are complete. In the meantime, I want you to tell me if you get any more calls or roses, or if anything else happens that might seem out of the ordinary. Anything that doesn’t feel right, anything that makes you the least bit uncomfortable, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem at the time. Deal?”
“All right.”
He nodded and walked toward the front of the house.
Amanda saw him out. She stood on the top step, watching his long form move down the walk. He paused midway, turned, and said, “I almost forgot. Earlier, when I asked you why you didn’t report the calls, you started to say something about the last time, but never finished. What were you going to say about the last time?”
“The last time, I did report the calls.” She crossed her arms. “I was told everyone got hang-up calls, that it was probably nothing more than someone dialing the wrong number.”
“And the roses? You reported those?”
“Of course. But Chief Anderson told me that I was a lucky girl. That most women would love to have a secret admirer sending her flowers every day.”
He visibly winced. He’d made a similar remark earlier.
“I’m sorry. That I wasn’t any more . . .” He appeared to be searching for the right word.
“Sensitive?” she offered sarcastically. “Informed?”
“Both. I’m sorry,” he repeated, and without waiting for her reply, proceeded down the path to his car.
As he drove away from Amanda Crosby’s house, Mercer’s eyes kept returning to his side view mirror, in which he could see that she still remained on the steps, even as he reached the stop sign at the end of her street. He wondered, after he’d made his turn, how long she stayed there.
He made two stops on his way home. One was at the station, where he immediately tagged and bagged the gun. The second was at the neighborhood convenience store, where he ordered a take-out sandwich. While the young man behind the deli counter made his ham and cheese, Sean strolled around the store, picking up a bag of chips and a plastic container of iced tea. On his way back to the counter, he passed a circular bin filled with flowers.
3 FOR $5, a handwritten sign announced.
“You sell a lot of those?” he asked the woman at the register.
“Sure.”
“You ever have roses?”
“Sometimes we get a few in. It depends on what the distributor has on his truck that day.” She began to ring up his purchases. “But you want roses, the supermarkets usually have those.”
“Which supermarkets?”
“All of them. They sell them by the stem or by the dozen. Nice to be able to stop and pick up something for dinner, grab a pretty something for the table at the same time.” She smiled at him. “The regular flowers are nice, but a rose really makes a statement, you know?”
He nodded and handed her a ten. While he waited for his change, he wondered what kind of a statement was being sent to Amanda. He was pretty certain it couldn’t be anything good.
It was almost ten when Sean closed Amanda Crosby’s file. He’d known that the mishandling of her case had led to the removal of the previous chief of police nearly a year ago, but he’d been unaware of all the facts, as had been painfully apparent earlier that day. He’d not known that the stalking had continued for a full six weeks before culminating in an attack that had left Amanda facially scarred. He’d noted the L-shaped mark on the upper part of her cheek near her left eye. According to the report, the cut had been made by a ring worn by her attacker. After witnessing her reaction to the hang-up calls, Sean was well aware that she’d been left with more than a physical scar.
He tried hard to push the image of her from his mind. Sweaty in shorts and that little top, her tanned, muscled arms and legs, her feet in bright yellow flip-flops.
She had pretty feet, he’d thought at the time. Long and slender, the toenails painted a deep burgundy red . . .
Don’t