Tomb With a View

What with getting tag-teamed by Marjorie and the most long-winded guy ever to hold public office, I needed a break, and fast. I drove to the administration building and snuck in through the back door, the better to avoid Ella and any phone messages Jennine might have taken for me while I was out. I had the latest issue of Marie Claire in my desk and that salad I had brought for lunch. If I could buy myself an hour of quiet time, I could put up my feet and get down to what was really important. An article on the hottest fashions coming for fall sure beat an hour with Marjorie or a dead president any day. Smiling at the very thought of avoiding my coworkers and chilling out for a while, I walked into my office and found—

Flowers!

I swear I felt the blood drain out of my face. I was left feeling cold and clammy, and I stood riveted to a spot near the door and forced myself to take a good, long look around. There was no one there. I knew this for sure because even though my office isn’t very big, I checked out every nook and cranny twice, even behind the door and under my desk. When I was one hundred percent certain that I was alone, I closed the door behind me and went over to the desk for a better look at the bouquet that had been left on my computer keyboard. It was a bunch of white roses and pink carnations with their stems wound with pink satin ribbon, and for I don’t know how long, I stared down at the flowers, listening to the blood whoosh in my ears and my heartbeat pound out a deafening rhythm.

Yes, I admit this all sounds a little over the top and (dare I say it?) crazy, too. Actually, I had good reason.

See, as if I didn’t have enough to deal with earlier in the summer when I was working on that cemetery restoration project and solving a twenty-five-year-old murder, I found out something really creepy—I had a stalker. And not just any stalker, one with bad taste in flowers, candy, and all-wrong-for-my-coloring lipstick. He’d been lying low since I’d wrapped up that last case, and always up for a good game of denial, I’d convinced myself that maybe I’d gotten lucky and he’d fallen off the face of the earth. It would have been nice to go right on believing it, too—if not for this bunch of flowers.

I scraped my suddenly damp palms against my shirtdress and poked the bouquet with one finger. Nothing happened.

Realizing just how nutsy it was to think something might, I wasn’t sure who I was angrier at—the stalker, who’d gotten to me so badly I was poking flowers to see if they’d blow up or something, or myself, for giving in to the fear. There was one thing I was sure of, though. I wasn’t going to take it anymore.

The thought burning in my brain, I grabbed the bouquet and marched out to the reception area with it.

“Jennine.” I don’t think I could have possibly surprised her since I was flaming mad and my peep-toe sandals banged against the floor, but she was scribbling a note on a message pad decorated with kittens, and she jumped a mile when I called her name. I stood in the doorway between the hallway and the reception area and waved the bouquet of flowers. “I’ve had it with this. I mean, really. I. Have. Had. It. And you’re going to help me put a stop to this horse hockey. I need to know who brought these flowers and I need to know it right now.”

In her job as receptionist, Jennine sees plenty of people, but they are not routinely five-foot-eleven redheads in full anger mode. Her eyes wide, she stared at me like I was making a scene (which I was, but since it was justified, that didn’t count). Then she simply blinked, and pointed a finger behind me.

I turned and saw what I’d been too hopped up to see when I stomped through the hallway—a man standing over on my right, his arms crossed over his chipped-from-granite chest, his shoulders resting casually against the wall.

“Quinn!” My voice was much too breathy and I cursed myself for giving in to the surprise and him for having the nerve to show up out of nowhere and pull the rug out from under me. At the same time I thanked the fashion gods for watching over me and making sure I looked as good as I did that day; I wondered if Quinn didn’t have a direct line to the same deities. He was wearing a charcoal suit and a shirt so white, it nearly blinded me. His tie was colorful in an I-am-a-detective-with-excellent-taste-and-I-don’t-need-to-prove-it-to-anyone way, a refined swirl of black, gray, and white with just enough red splashed in for good measure.

Delectability aside, this was the same man who’d walked out on me not three weeks earlier. I told myself not to forget it (as if I could), narrowed my eyes, and it was a good thing I had that bouquet of flowers. Hanging on to it prevented me from digging my nails into the palms of my hands. Quinn was taller than President James A. Garfield. I looked him in the eye. “What do you want?”