“That you’re a regular old gumshoe? No, I don’t think so.” Phoebe O’Callahan’s eyes brightened and she dropped into a loud whisper. “What’s up? Are you on a case? Can I help?”
Daniel gazed at the grandmother who had often been more mother to him than anything else and felt a bit of his tension melt away. You couldn’t look at Phoebe and not want to smile.
“Not a case exactly. But I’ve got something I want to look into and it might help if people didn’t know I was a police detective.”
“Oh, goodie.” She pulled herself up against the pillows, her blue eyes sparkling. “What can I do?”
Daniel sighed and half laughed. He took his grandmother’s blue-veined hand in his larger paw and looked at her lovingly. She’d had a very scary fall the day before and he’d brought her in for observation. The doctors had found some problems and since she’d had numerous problems that required hospitalization lately, including a major threat to her hip, she was staying indefinitely while they ran tests and gave her time to recuperate.
“Your job—should you choose to accept it—is to heal those bruises and get yourself well again. That’s what you should be concentrating on.”
“Oh, Danny, come on,” she fretted. “I want to help. Give me a hint. What’s this all about?”
Daniel shook his head. He loved his grandmother, but he was beginning to sense the parameters of a conundrum looming, and when he was working he didn’t usually brook much frivolity. The trouble was, a certain type of frivolity was exactly what seemed to be going on here.
To put it bluntly, the place seemed to have been infected by a love virus—and a pretty nasty one at that. Everywhere you looked, people were billing and cooing. It was pretty disturbing—enough to put you off romance for life.
Just that morning, when he’d dropped by to see how his grandmother had made it through the night, a very angular and heavily made-up occupational therapist had asked him with much batting of eyes if he’d like to share a doughnut she’d saved for him. The cute redheaded nurse had told him he was too handsome to be running around loose, and a tiny little volunteer had offered to give him a neck rub. Women didn’t do that to him. He wasn’t the type. It was just plain weird.
He’d been asking around, trying to find what had changed to bring on this wave of everyone acting like dopey survivors from a sixties love-in. No one admitted to knowing what he was talking about. But the one thing he did know was that a new center had been opened on the hospital campus. He’d been at the ribbon-cutting ceremony, just by accident. Called the Healthy Living Clinic, it seemed to be a fitness center and it was definitely the subject of most of the buzz he heard around the halls. Something told him there was a connection. It might be time to give the clinic a visit.
“Let’s just say I’ve got a professionally open mind,” he said to Phoebe. “But suspicion is lurking in the corners of it.”
Abby Edwards closed her eyes and took a very deep breath. She had to get hold of herself. This was no time to panic. Just because she’d locked herself in the supply closet on the first full day in her new office at the Healthy Living Clinic didn’t mean she was going to prove to the world what a dunderheaded incompetent she was.
“It could have happened to anyone,” she murmured gloomily, trying to convince herself. “Anyone at all.”
Anyone with a disabled attention span and a brand-new inferiority complex that was growing like an overeating teenager.
“Oh!” she cried, rejecting the defeatism with all her might. “Never mind that. What I need is a plan.”
A plan. A plan.
She looked around at the shelves of paper, the boxes of paper clips, the stack of shiny brochures touting the benefits of the Healthy Living Clinic and Dr. Richie’s approach to total health and well-being. You’d think someone would have thought to stock a few tools along with the office supplies. If she could just find a screwdriver, she could go to work on the door hinges and make her escape.
This was so infuriating! She’d arrived this morning so full of excitement, determined to show Dr. Richie that he’d made a good move when he’d decided to take her up on her proposal to revamp his entire public relations operation. It had taken all the nerve she had to put together that presentation and approach the doctor on her own, much less demand larger office space to work in. She wasn’t used to fighting for that sort of thing. Success had always come easily to her in the past.
That was until she’d opened her own public relations firm. Somehow, as though she’d come under some sort of evil spell, she hadn’t managed to do one thing right and her business had failed.
Failed! The word made her gasp, even just thinking it. Failure just wasn’t possible. If her parents had any inkling…
No, she told herself fiercely. You cannot cry just because you’ve messed up again.
Still, she had to wonder. If there was no one there to see you cry, did it really matter?
Yes, it did, she decided. Tears were a sign of weakness. The first step toward that very failure she was so scared of. And she could not afford to fail at this job.
She shook away that nightmare thought. Her luck was supposed to have changed. Developing this new campaign for Dr. Richie was going to fix everything. If she ever got out of the supply closet.
“Hello. Anybody here?”
She froze, listening. Someone had come into the office. Decision time. Was she ready to reveal her pathetic mistake?
“Gone to lunch, I guess,” a male voice muttered.
She smiled her relief. She didn’t recognize the voice. There would be no problem if a stranger rescued her. Saved at last!
“Hello,” she called out. “I’m in here.”
After a pause, the voice spoke again. “In where?”
“In the supply closet. I’m locked in, actually. There’s no handle on this side. If you could just open the doors…”
A sharp click was followed by one of the doors opening slowly. Looking up, she found herself face to face with a very large, steel-jawed man with a suspicious look in his green eyes.
“What are you doing in there?” he asked abruptly.
Abby stiffened and her eyes narrowed. She’d been ready to be grateful. Honest she had. She’d been ready to smile and thank her rescuer with all her heart.
But there was something about the way he looked at her and the suspicious tone in his voice that set her off. She’d been through a lot in the last fifteen minutes, even if it was mostly in her own head. A little sympathetic treatment would have been just the thing. Instead, she got skepticism. Frustrated, and feeling awfully defensive, she reacted a little hastily to his obvious distrust.
“Who, me?” she said, knowing she sounded flippant but not caring very much. “Checking for termites, of course. I always lock myself in closets so I can catch the little buggers unaware.”
“Really.” He wasn’t moving aside and he filled the opening. His icy green eyes had a penetrating intensity. She felt, for a second or two, as if she was being X-rayed. “Find any?”
Her chin rose. “Not yet.” She knew she should smile right now. It was time to make friends, not war.
You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Abby. The phrase in her mother’s voice echoed in her head, but there was something so annoying about the way this man had jumped to the conclusion that she was up to no good, she just couldn’t make use of it.
“I have found evidence of other pests, however,” she said pointedly, flashing him a look. “I’m hoping I won’t have to call an exterminator.”
To his credit, one corner of his wide mouth quirked