The Case of the Confirmed Bachelor Page 3

  She shook her head. “I’m always up at dawn.”

  “Just like old times,” he recalled. “I hope you don’t have plans to climb the drain pipe, just like old times, and climb in a bedroom window.”

  She caught her breath. “It was only once or twice, and it was Helen’s room I climbed into!”

  “You were such a tomboy,” he mused. “Hell with a bat in sandlot baseball, the most formidable tackle we had in football, and not a bad tree climber. You don’t look much different today.”

  She grimaced. “Don’t I know it.” She sighed. “No matter what I eat, I can’t put on a pound.”

  “Wait until you hit middle age.”

  “That’s a few years away,” she said with a faint smile.

  “Yes. Quite a few. Get some sleep.”

  “You, too. Good night.”

  He returned the sentiment and watched her walk to her front door. Old times. He thought back to warm summer evenings when he’d bring his dates home and they’d all sit on chairs on the lawn and watch Helen and Tabby, who were a few years younger, chase fireflies on the lush lawn. He supposed Tabby would watch her own children do that very thing one day.

  He didn’t want to think about that. He went back inside and tried to pick up his mystery novel again, but he’d lost his taste for it. He put it down and went to bed, hours and hours before usual.

  Tabby was dressed in a floral skirt and white knit blouse when he called for her the next morning just at eight. He wasn’t much more dressed up than she was, comfortable in slacks and a red knit shirt. He scowled down at her.

  “Must you always screw your hair up like that? I haven’t seen it long in quite a while.”

  “It’s hot around my neck,” she said evasively. “I only let it down at night.”

  “For Daniel?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Do we go in your car or mine?” she asked, ignoring the question.

  “Mine, definitely,” he said with a disparaging glance at hers. “I like having room for my head.”

  “The seat lets down.”

  “I can’t drive lying on my back.”

  “Nick!”

  “Come on.” He led her to the big sedan he’d rented and helped her inside. “Direct me. It’s been a long time since I’ve driven here.”

  “Not so long,” she replied. “You didn’t leave until you quit the FBI. That’s only been about four years ago.”

  “It seems like forever sometimes.”

  “I guess Houston is a lot different.”

  “Only when it floods. Otherwise, it’s a lot of concrete and steel and pavement. Just like every other city. It’s Washington with a drawl.”

  She laughed softly. “I suppose most cities are alike. I haven’t traveled much. And when I do, it’s to places that seem pretty primitive by modern standards.”

  “To digs, I gather?”

  “That’s right. I went out to the Custer battlefield in Montana a few years ago to help archaeologists and other anthropologists identify some remains. Then I had a stint in Arizona with some Hohokam ruins and once I flew down to Georgia where they were excavating an eighteenth-century cabin.”

  “How exciting.”

  “Not to you,” she conceded. “But it’s life and breath to me. I want to investigate aboriginal sites in Australia and explore some of the Greek and Roman ruins they’re just beginning to excavate. I want to go to Machu Picchu in Peru and to the Maya and Toltec and Olmec ruins in Mexico and Central America.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “I want to go to Africa and to China… Oh, Nick, there’s a world of mysteries out there just waiting to be solved!”

  He glanced at her. “You sound like a detective.”

  “I am, sort of,” she argued. “I look for clues in the past, and you look for them in the present. It’s still all investigation, you know.”

  He turned his attention back to the road. “I suppose. It depends on your point of view.”

  She studied him briefly. “You aren’t smoking. Helen said you’d quit.”

  “Five weeks now,” he replied. “I only had the jitters once Lassiter asked us all to give it up, to help him. Tess made him quit,” he said with a grin. “Imagine, old Nail Eater being led around by a woman.”

  “I doubt she’s leading him around. He probably loves her and wants to make her happy. He’ll live longer if he doesn’t smoke.”

  “We’re all going to die eventually,” he reminded her. “Some of us might do it a little quicker, but we don’t have much choice.”

  “The law of entropy.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s what scientists call it—the law of entropy. It means that everything grows old and dies.”

  “As long as we’re scientific about it,” he said mockingly.

  She adjusted her glasses, pushing them back up on her nose. “No need to be sarcastic. Turn here.” She pointed.

  He drove into the parking lot and pulled into a space marked Visitors. “Why here?”

  “You don’t have a sticker that permits you to park here,” she reminded him. “If you park in a student’s spot, you’ll be towed. I know you wouldn’t like that.”

  “It’s not my car,” he reminded her.

  “You rented it. You’d have to liberate it.”

  “I love the way you use words,” he chuckled as he got out of the car and helped her out.

  “Nice manners,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

  “You opened the door for me back when I broke my leg in your senior year of school. Drove me back and forth to work every day, too, on your way.”

  “Wasn’t I sweet?” she asked wistfully. “Ah, those good old days.”

  “You were less irritating then.”

  “So were you,” she tossed back. She cocked her head and studied him. “Footloose Nick,” she murmured. “I suppose you’ll end up in a shoot-out with spies somewhere and they’ll mount you on a wall or something.”

  He grinned. “Lovely thought. How kind of you.”

  She gave up. “My office is on the second floor.”

  She led him into the big brick building, past the admissions office and up the staircase that led to the history and sociology departments.

  “I’m down the hall. The historians have this wing. The sociology department here is rather small, although we offer some interesting courses.”

  “Anthropology is sociology,” he remarked. “I took one course of it in college myself. Sociology and law go hand in hand, did you know?”

  “Sure!” she said, unlocking her office. “That’s the biology lab down the hall. They’re only up here temporarily while their facilities are being remodeled. They have snakes in there,” she said with a shiver.

  A primal scream echoed down the hall with its high ceilings. “Is that one of them?” he asked.

  “Snakes don’t scream,” she muttered. “No, that’s Pal.”

  “Who? Or should I say what?”

  “Pal’s a what, all right. He’s the missing link. That’s what we call him up here. Australopithecus insidious.”

  “Greek.”

  “Latin,” she corrected. “Pidgin Latin. What I mean, is that Pal is too smart to be a monkey. We have to lock him up. He likes to rip up textbooks. And if you ever leave your keys lying around when he’s on the loose, you’ll never see them again.”

  “Isn’t he caged?”

  “Usually. He picks the lock.” She laughed. “The last time he got out, the administrator and several members of the board of trustees were having a catered meeting in the conference room. Pal got in there and started pelting everybody with melon balls and rolls.”

  “I’ll bet that went over well with the guests.”

  “Guest,” she corrected. “It was a senator from Maryland. We never did get that funding we needed for a new research project.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me? Out of idle curiosity, what were you going to research?”

  Her eyes brighte
ned. “Primate social behavior.”

  He burst out laughing. “It seems to me that you’re doing enough of that without funding.”

  “That’s exactly what our president said. Here.” She opened the door to a Spartan office with a desk, a chair, and a bookcase jammed full of reference books. On her desk were stacks of paper and a college handbook. “Like most everyone else here, I’m a faculty advisor. In my spare time, I teach anthropology.”

  He stood looking down at her with open curiosity. “You were always a brain. I used to feel threatened by you sometimes. No matter what I knew, you seemed to know more.”

  “Brains can be a curse when you’re a young girl,” she replied with faint bitterness. “But they last a lot longer than a voluptuous figure and a pretty face,” she added.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he mused. “Except that you need feeding up.”

  “Oh, I’ll spread out one day. This is where the artifact was lying when it vanished.”

  She pointed to a central spot on the desk.

  “How long ago did it walk off?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  He nodded and pulled a small leather-bound kit out of his pocket. “Go and read a book or make a telephone call for a few minutes while I do a little investigating.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Dust your desk for fingerprints and look for clues, of course. Has anyone been at this desk except you since the artifact was taken?”

  She shook her head.

  “Good. That narrows it down a bit.”

  She started to ask him more questions, but he was knee-deep in thought and investigation. She shrugged and left him there.

  Minutes later, he straightened, irritated by the lack of fingerprints. The desk had a rough surface, which made it hard to find a full print. But a tiny piece of what looked like hair lay on a white sheet of paper, and that he took with him, securing it with a pair of tweezers and sticking it in a tiny plastic bag that he then sealed. It wasn’t much, but if it was human hair, the lab over at the FBI could tell them plenty about it. It was amazing how much data one strand of hair could provide. It was strangely coarse. He dismissed it instantly when Tabby came in the door, his eyes watchful as they skimmed over her. She made him feel as if he’d only just come back from a long journey. It was a very pleasant sensation. When he was with her, his restlessness seemed to go momentarily into eclipse.

  “Anything?” Tabby asked hopefully.

  Her question diverted him. “Not much,” he said. “I couldn’t get a full print….”

  He stopped as a tall, unsmiling man appeared in the doorway behind Tabby.

  “This is Dr. Daniel Myers,” she introduced the new comer, who was wearing a dark blue suit with a white shirt and conventional tie. On a Saturday, he was dressed like a preacher, which gave Nick a pretty accurate picture of his meticulous personality.

  “Nick Reed,” Nick said, introducing himself. He didn’t offer his hand. Nor did Daniel, he noticed with some amusement.

  “You must be discreet,” he cautioned Nick. “I’m sure you understand what a theft like this could do to the image of Thorn College.”

  “Certainly,” he agreed. “As aware as I am of what it could do to Tabby’s future.”

  “Tabby?”

  “Her family and mine have been close all our lives,” Nick told the man.

  “It sounds like something one would call a cat, don’t you think, darling?” he asked Tabby, and slid a long arm over her thin shoulders.

  Nick just stopped himself from leaping forward. Incredible, he thought, how his mind reacted to the sight. Tabby was like a sister to him. Perhaps he only felt protective. That had to be it.

  He pocketed the sealed plastic envelope. “I’ll run this over to the lab. I have a friend there.”

  “Will he be at work on Saturday?”

  “Since I phoned him at home last night and asked him to meet me there, I do hope so,” he replied.

  “That was kind of him,” she said.

  “I’ll drop you off on my way to FBI headquarters,” he offered.

  Daniel seemed to grow two feet. “That’s hardly necessary,” he said stiffly, and his arm drew Tabby closer. “Tabitha must have told you that we’re to shop for an engagement ring today.”

  “Yes, I hear you’re planning to be married,” Nick said.

  “A very sensible move, too,” Daniel said carelessly. “I live alone and so does Tabitha. She had that huge house and lot, where we can live, and her car is paid for.” He hugged her close. “She likes keeping house and cooking, so I’ll have plenty of time to work on my book.”

  Nick was going to explode. He knew he was. “Book?”

  “Our book,” Tabby inserted with a glare at Daniel. “It’s a new perspective on what I found at the Custer battlefield after the fire.”

  “And includes information I dug out about its history,” Daniel added quickly. “Tabitha could hardly do it without my help on the grammar and punctuation.”

  Nick’s eyebrows jerked up. “You think Tabby needs help with those? Are we talking about the girl who was school spelling champion in seventh grade and won a scholarship to Thorn College?”

  Daniel shifted on his feet. “I have a master’s degree in English.” His watery blue eyes made mincemeat of Nick. “What was your field of study, Mr. Reed?” he asked with pleasant sarcasm, as if he considered that a detective probably had less than a high school education. In fact, an FBI agent was preferred to have a bachelor’s degree in accounting or a law degree. Nick had a law degree. It wasn’t something he’d ever boasted about. He wasn’t going to now, either, if that careless, mocking smile he gave Daniel was any indication.

  “Oh, I know a little about the law,” Nick said. “I am, after all, a trained detective.”

  “Like a police officer.” Daniel nodded, looking superior. “They’re only required to have a high school education or its equivalent, I believe?”

  Nick stiffened. But before he could explode, and he looked close to it, Tabby stepped in.

  “We really have to go, Daniel,” she said. “Thanks again, Nick. I’ll talk to you later.”

  He murmured something and Tabby moved Daniel out into the hall with unusual dexterity.

  “I don’t like that man,” Daniel said angrily as they walked down the hall.

  “I know,” she said, soothing him.

  A loud screech sounded as they passed the temporary biology lab. “I don’t like that monkey, either.”

  “Yes, Daniel. Let’s go.”

  A door opened at the end of the hall and a small man with a moustache came out, pausing as he saw Daniel and Tabby. He looked uncomfortable for an instant. “Uh, the missing artifact,” he said to Tabby. “Found it yet?”

  “No. But I’ve engaged a private detective to look for it,” she began.

  Dr. Flannery stood very still for a moment. “Detective?”

  “Just to look for the pottery,” she said.

  “Of course. Of course.” He turned and moved off down the hall, stopped suddenly, turned and went back the other way with a mumbled goodbye.

  “Flannery is a flake,” Daniel muttered as they left the building. “He spends too much time with those monkeys. He’s beginning to act like them.”

  “Primates,” she corrected. “They’re very nice when you get to know them. Even Pal. He’s intelligent, you know, that’s why he gets into so much trouble.”

  “Maybe Flannery took that piece of pottery,” he said speculatively. “Did you know that his house was repossessed just recently? He’s in financial trouble. Some collectors would pay anything for a find like that.”

  “Yes, I know. But it couldn’t have been Dr. Flannery,” she said stubbornly. “My goodness, he’s a biologist, not a thief!”

  “Desperate men do desperate things,” he said. He slid his hand into hers. “You are going to marry me, aren’t you? We’re very compatible, and this will certainly be a successful book. Pr
obably the first of many.” His eyes had a faraway look. “I’ve always dreamed of being in print.”

  “Daniel, you aren’t marrying me so that we can write a book together, are you?” she teased.

  He cleared his throat. “Of course not. Don’t be silly.”

  She wasn’t being silly. Daniel kissed her only when he had to, and not very enthusiastically. He’d never tried to step over the line, to be amorous. He never sent her flowers or phoned her at midnight just to talk. He only ever talked about writing. She sighed. Marriage was what she’d always wanted, but this wasn’t how she’d envisioned it. Not at all like this.

  Her dreams had been passionate ones, full of Nick. Dreams died hard, and hers never had. Now that he was back in her life, she’d have to start all over again forgetting him. Perhaps, she thought, it would be easier when he left. Meanwhile, all she had to do was live through the next week, and hope that he could clear her name. If he couldn’t, she thought with real fear, she might not even have a job much longer!

  Tabitha couldn’t find a ring she liked. Honestly, she wasn’t that interested in marrying Daniel at all. He seemed bent on using her, while she was hitting back at Nick in the only way she knew. It was ridiculous to promise to marry one man just to show another that someone found her desirable. As if Nick was fooled! He’d seen right through Daniel’s motives for the engagement. Probably through Tabby’s, too. She flushed.

  Daniel had taken her to a nice restaurant for lunch. She was nibbling dessert while he went to the bathroom.

  Her mind was far away from the strawberry shortcake she was eating. It was on that fatal New Year’s Eve party.

  She’d felt as if anything was possible that night. She’d been wearing a black dress with spaghetti straps, her long hair around her shoulders. She’d left her glasses off—despite the fact that she was nearly blind without them—and put on much more makeup than usual. Helen had told her that Nick was finally ready to settle down and that it was Tabby he really wanted. That bit of encouragement had been just enough, along with the alcohol, to make her act totally out of character.

  Nick, gloriously handsome Nick, had been leaning against a door frame sipping punch. Tabby had stared at him with her heart in her eyes, drowning in the sight of him. She’d loved him for, oh, so long!