“Just do the best you can.” He looked at his watch once again. “I’ve got to get out of here if I want to meet Cliff down at the station.” With a quick smile, he was gone, leaving Libby with the impression that he had somehow taken some of the color out of the kitchen when he left.
She poured herself another cup of coffee and sat back down at the table, staring absently out the window that looked out into his large backyard.
Thank God Tony seemed to be a stand-up kind of a guy. Circumstances make strange bedfellows, she thought, then shook her head. The last thing she wanted was a bedfellow of any kind. Still, she couldn’t deny the fact that she was attracted to Tony—attracted in a way that had her thinking of sultry nights, satin sheets and dangerous passion. It was crazy how those charcoal-flaming eyes of his made her remember the joy of making love, the fact that it had been a very long time since she’d indulged in that particular pleasure.
“Hormones,” she said aloud, draining her coffee cup and taking it to the sink. What she was suffering was nothing more than the resurgence of hormones too long denied.
She was pulled from her thoughts by the plaintivemeowsof Twilight, who sat at her feet and looked up at her expectantly. Knowing the cat was demanding breakfast, she quickly placed a dish with the leftover bacon and eggs down on the floor.
Seeing that Twilight was content, she found a piece of paper and a pen, then sat back down at the table, realizing it was time to get to work on the business at hand. She needed to think of names and items pawned on the day before the break-in. She knew the quicker they solved her little mystery, the quicker she could get back to the sanity of her own life.
* * *
“Tony, I’d really like to help you, but I’m on my way out. We’ve got a stiff downtown in an alley.”
“So, what else is new?” Tony asked wryly, grinning at the short, wiry man he considered his best friend.
Cliff didn’t return his smile. “What’s new is that this particular stiff is not the run-of-the-mill wino or junkie the downtown district normally turns up. Seems this guy was some sort of respected scientist until he wandered into the alley behind Bateman’s Shoe Repair and caught a bullet through his head.”
Tony’s blood suddenly raced through his veins. Bateman’s Shoe Repair was right next door to Libby’s pawnshop. Coincidence? His nose told him there were just too many damned coincidences in all of this mess. “Cliff, let me ride with you. This might tie into something I’ve been working on.”
Cliff frowned for a moment. “I don’t know…we’ve got heavy brass leaning on our butt on this one.”
“Come on, man,” Tony said urgently. “I’ve got a gorgeous blonde waiting for some answers, and my nose tells me this might be the place to start looking for some of those answers.”
“A gorgeous blonde, huh?” Cliff grinned in disbelief. He relented. “Okay, but make sure you stay out of the way.”
As they drove to the scene of the murder, Cliff filled Tony in on the details that were known so far. “The body was discovered about an hour ago by the garbagemen who service the area. They moved the Dumpster and the body was behind it. They immediately called the police.”
Tony looked out the passenger window of the patrol car and frowned as Cliff brought the car to a halt. He felt a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach as he saw the Dumpster, between the back door of Libby’s place and the shoe repair store next door. Surely there was no connection…surely the unusual things happening to Libby and the death of this scientist were totally unrelated.
He tugged at his mustache thoughtfully, smelling something dirty, something discernible only to his nose. Most people relied on their gut reaction. Tony relied on his nose. When he’d been a cop and a case went awry, he could always smell it happening. And in this particular case, he definitely smelled something ugly. Now, if he could just figure out what exactly it was that stank.
* * *
Libby grimaced and scratched out a name she had just written on the sheet of paper before her. The job of trying to remember everyone who had come into the shop on a particular day was more difficult than she’d thought it would be. Without her ledger, she was lost.
She looked down at the sheet of paper with a sigh of dissatisfaction. She knew the list was incomplete, but it was difficult to try to reconstruct an entire day of business from memory alone.
She placed her chin in her hands, struggling with not only the elusive names of customers, but the millions of unanswered questions that whirled around and around in her head. She looked up, startled as Tony burst through the doorway. “That was quick,” she exclaimed, noting by the kitchen clock that he had been gone less than an hour.
“Cliff was tied up with a murder case. Seems some sort of genius Defense Department scientist managed to get himself killed.”
“Here in Kansas City?” she asked in surprise, getting up to pour him a cup of coffee as he sat down at the table. “What would a Defense Department scientist be doing here in Kansas City?”
“It seems this guy was something of an enigma. He worked for the Defense Department in a lab in Washington, D.C, for almost twenty years. Then, two years ago, he quit the department and left D.C., retiring to a private lab in the Ozarks. Word has it that he was still doing projects for the government.” He nodded his thanks as she set the coffee cup before him, then rejoined him at the table. “From what Cliff was able to discover, he left the Ozarks area in a private plane on Tuesday, and arrived in Kansas City around nine o’clock, at which time he left the plane, instructing the pilot to be ready to take off again within an hour. He never made it back to the plane.” He leaned forward and Libby suddenly noticed the tenseness of his body. “His body was found behind the Dumpster between your pawnshop and Bateman’s Shoe Repair.”
Libby felt a cold finger of fear reach inside and caress the inside of her stomach. “You…you don’t think this has anything to do with me?” She paused a moment as he merely looked at her. “What…what was his name?”
“Jasper Higgens.”
“Oh my God,” she gasped.
“What?” Tony demanded.
“He was in my shop. Look, I have his name on my list.” She shoved the list of names at him, pointing to the scientist’s. “It was the first time he’d been in the shop, but I remembered his name because it was unusual,hewas unusual.” She gasped as another thought struck her. “He was in my shop around nine-thirty. My God, Tony, he must have been killed immediately after leaving the pawnshop.” She stared at Tony in horror.
Tony stumbled to his feet and took her by the shoulders. “Think, Libby. This is very important. What did he bring into the shop? What did he pawn?”
