Twist

Book 8: Frank Quinn Novel

by John Lutz

Genres: Thrillers

Synopsis

Kill…or be killed

Frank Quinn is a decorated ex-cop. A former homicide detective specializing in tracking serial killers. Now his niece, Carlie Clark, needs help. Someone is stalking her, and the NYPD can't stop him. A blonde, blue-eyed beauty, Carlie fits the victim type of the killer who's been terrorizing women-leaving them bound, gagged, and tortured with surgical precision. To win against the most personal adversary of his career, Quinn will have to set the perfect trap. All he needs is the perfect bait…

"Lutz offers up a heart-pouding roller coaster of a tale." -Jeffery Deaver

Release date: October 1, 2013

Publisher: Pinnacle Books

Print pages: 480

Sample

Medford County, Kansas, 1984

Abbey Taylor trusted to God and Ford to get her into Medford so she could buy some groceries. She was driving the family’s old pickup truck. It was harder and harder for her to get around, much less into town, so she figured she should take advantage of feeling good on a nice sunny day and load up on whatever she could afford.

Billy had stayed home from work again today and was sleeping off another night out with his buddies. That involved plenty of meth, which was why he was in no condition to go in to work as an auto mechanic in Medford. All he wanted was to lie on the old vinyl couch and listen to some natter-head on the radio railing about how crooked the government was. Hell, everybody knew that already.

So Abbey, in her ninth month of pregnancy, left Billy to his anarchist dreams and waddled out to the old truck parked in the shade.

The truck was black, so it soaked up the sun, and as soon as she managed to climb inside, Abbey cranked down the windows. That let a nice breeze in, scented by the nearby stand of pine trees.

She turned the ignition key one bump, and needles moved on the gauges. The gas gauge, which was usually accurate, indicated over a quarter of a tank. Abbey knew from experience that would carry her into town and back.

The engine stuttered once and then turned over and ran smoothly enough, though it did clatter some. She released the emergency brake, shoved the gear-shift lever into first. The truck bucked some when she turned onto the dirt road, but she got it going smoothly in second and kept it in that gear so she could navigate around the worst of the ruts and holes. One particular bump was so jarring that she feared for the baby.

Soon she was on blacktop, and she put the truck in gear and drove smoothly along. The ride into town was pretty, the road lined with conifers and old sycamore trees and cottonwoods. The warm breeze coming through the open windows whisked away most of the oil and gas odor seeping up through the floorboards.

About halfway to town, on a slight hill, the motor began to run rough and seemed to lose power.

Abbey stomped down on the clutch and jammed the truck into a lower gear. That got her more power, but only briefly.

Then the engine chattered and died, and she steered the truck to the slanted road shoulder.

Abbey cursed herself for trusting the old truck. And she was worried about how Billy was going to react when he found out she’d run out of gas on the little traveled county road to Medford.

She heard a hissing sound and saw steam rising from beneath the hood. A closer look at the gauges showed that she hadn’t run out of gas at all. The truck had simply overheated. She thought of Billy at home on the couch.

Where’s a mechanic when you need one?

At least it had happened where she’d been able to steer the balky vehicle into the shade.

Abbey tried to judge just where she was stranded. It was almost the halfway point, and a far walk for anyone, much less a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy.

What if . . .

But Abbey didn’t want to think about that.

She opened the door and kicked it wide with her left foot, then wrestled herself sideways out from behind the steering wheel. It was less trouble than it might have been because the truck was on a slant to the left, and her real problem was to catch herself when her feet contacted the ground and keep her balance so she wouldn’t go rolling down the grade. Despite her problems, thinking of what that might look like made her almost smile.

Abbey stood with her hand against the sun-heated metal of the front fender for a moment, gaining her balance, then waddled around to the front of the truck.

Steam was still rolling out from underneath, but the hissing had stopped. She knew then that she’d screwed up. She wanted to see what the problem might be, but she’d forgotten to release the hood latch in the truck’s cab. Keeping both hands on the truck to help keep her balance, she made her way back to the open door on the driver’s side.

She was halfway there when she heard the sound of a motor.

So there was another vehicle on the county road!

Abbey felt like singing with relief.

Then she realized she might have a problem. There was no guarantee the driver of whatever was coming would notice the truck pulled well off the shoulder like it was.

She tried to make her way back to the road side of the truck, all the while listening to the approaching car or truck motor getting louder.

Damn! It went past her. A dusty white van with tinted windows, rocking along faster than was lawful. Its radio or cassette player had been on. Abbey had heard a snatch of music as it passed.

Wait! She heard music now. A rock band. Sounded like the Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”

Abbey thought, Ain’t that the truth?

Then she heard the motor, growing louder.

She had been seen! The van was backing up.

She glimpsed it between the trees, then it rolled backward around the shallow bend and slowed.

It parked only a few feet from the truck. Mick Jagger shouted, “I cain’t get no—I cain’t get no—” as the van’s door opened and a heavyset, smiling woman awkwardly got down from behind the steering wheel and slammed the door shut behind her.

She was tall as well as bulky, and stood with her thick arms crossed, looking at Abbey, then the truck and the puddle beneath its front bumper, then back at Abbey. Her smile widened, showing bad teeth with wide spaces between them. Though badly in need of dental work, it was a kind smile and Abbey was glad to return it.

“Hell,” the woman said, “you got yourself a problem, sweetheart. But it ain’t hopeless.” Her voice was highly pitched but authoritative, each word abrupt.

“The engine just stopped on me,” Abbey said. “Overheated.”

“I’ll say. I’m familiar with these things.” She strode over to the truck, the soles of her faded gray tennis shoes crunching on the gravel. “You know where the hood latch is?”

Abbey shrugged.

The woman went around to the driver’s-side door and opened it, reached inside and did something. The hood jumped upward a few inches. She slammed the truck door shut then walked around and raised the hood all the way, exposing the engine and the steaming radiator.

“Don’t s’pose you carry any water,” she said.

Abbey shook her head no. “Maybe we oughta take the cap off the radiator. It might make it cool down faster.”

“Burn your hand, sweetheart. Maybe your whole damn arm. Gotta let these things run their course.” She propped her fists on her hips and glanced up and down the road. “Ain’t what you’d call heavily traveled.”

“Never is.”

“And you, in your delicate condition, oughta be someplace outta the sun.”

“Couldn’t argue that.”

“My name’s Mildred,” the woman said.

“Abigail Taylor. Or just Abbey.”

“You was headed for Medford?”

“Was.”

“I’m goin’ that direction, Just Abbey. How about I drive you there, you do whatever it is you gotta do, then we can come back this way with a jug or two of water. That might be all you need to get back home. You got a husband?”

Abbey was taken slightly aback by the question. “Sure do. He’s home sleepin’ now. Had hisself a rough night.”

“Men!” Mildred said. “Still tryin’ to get at you, I bet.”

“Uh, no,” Abbey said. “It’s close enough now, that’s stopped till after the baby.”

“Baby good an’ healthy?”

Abbey had to smile. “Doctor says so.”

Mildred held her arm to balance her as they walked over to the van; then she helped Abbey up onto the passenger seat, next to the driver’s.

Abbey settled into the seat while Mildred climbed up behind the steering wheel and got the van started. It rode kind of bumpy, but Abbey was glad to be moving.

“Gotta stop by my place and pick up somethin’ on the way into town,” Mildred said. “You mind?”

“Not at all,” Abbey said.

Mildred turned the air conditioner on high and aimed one of the dashboard vents directly at Abbey.

“Too much?”

“Just right,” Abbey said.

The day wasn’t turning out to be such a disaster, after all. And she’d made a new friend.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

New York City, the present

Some people thought it would never rain again in New York. It had been almost a month since a drop of moisture had made it to the ground. The sky remained almost cloudless. The brick and stone buildings, the concrete streets and sidewalks, were heating up like the walls and floor of a kiln that didn’t cool all the way down at night.

Quinn was fully dressed except for his shoes. He was asleep on the sofa in the brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street, lying on his back with an arm flung across his eyes to keep out the sunbeam that seemed to be tracking him no matter which way he turned.

The sun had sent a beam in beneath a crookedly closed drape, and an elongated rectangle of sunlight lay with geometric precision in the middle of the carpet. The brownstone didn’t have central air, and the powerful window units were running almost constantly, barely holding the summer heat at bay.

Quinn was a big man, and solid. He took up most of the sofa. Ordinarily he’d be working this afternoon, but business was slow at Quinn and Associates Investigative Agency.

Quinn knew Pearl was holding down the office. Fedderman was talking to a man in Queens whose car kept being stolen again and again. Sal Vitali and Harold Mishkin were down in New Jersey, keeping close watch on a wayward wife, whose husband had hired Q&A to see if she was cheating on him, and was himself cheating on her. Quinn knew the parties were, most likely, more in need of a marriage counselor than a detective agency.

He’d seen this before. Harold Mishkin would probably wind up consoling and counseling. He was a friend and mediator to all humankind, and probably should never have been a cop. The NYPD, the violent streets of New York, hadn’t seemed to coarsen him or wise him up over the years. It was a good thing his partner, Sal Vitali, looked out for him.

Maybe because of the heat and drought, crime seemed to be taking a break in New York City. Legal chicanery was no doubt still going strong, but only a small percentage of the illegal was finding its way to Q&A. The cheating married couple, the guy with the stolen and stolen car. That was about it for now.

Quinn stirred. He knew someone had entered the living room. Jody Jason, Pearl’s daughter, and Quinn’s ersatz daughter, who lived upstairs. He didn’t move his arm or open his eyes. “ ’Lo, Jody.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Your perfume.”

“I’m not wearing any.”

“The distinctive sound of your shoes on the stairs.”

“I’m in my stocking feet.”

“Okay,” Quinn said, opening his eyes and scooting up to a sitting position. “You and I are the only ones in the house, so it had to be you.”

“Not exactly a Sherlock moment,” she said.

Jody, skinny, large-breasted like her mother, with springy red hair unlike her mother’s raven black hair, grinned at him. Pearl was in the grin, all right. “Occam’s razor,” she said. She was kind of a smart-ass.

That attitude could help her in her work. She was an associate attorney with a small law firm, Prather and Pierce, that fought the good fight against big business, big government, big anything that had deep pockets. The average age of the attorneys at Prather and Pierce was about twenty-five.

“I didn’t know Occam needed a shave.”

“Always.” She headed for the kitchen. “Want some coffee?”

“No, it might make me vibrate.”

“Something cool?”

“Makes more sense.”

He heard her fidget around in the kitchen, then she reappeared with a mug in each hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Yours is orange juice.”

If it moves, sue it, was lettered on the mugs. She handed him his orange juice and then settled down across from him in a chair, tucking her jeans-clad legs beneath her slender body. “Business will pick up,” she said.

“Not if some guy’s car stops getting stolen.”

“Huh?”

Quinn tilted back his head and downed half his orange juice. It was cold and tasted great. “This case Fedderman’s on. Guy’s a graffiti artist, uses spray paint, dolled up his car so good it keeps getting stolen.”

“He should take some color photos of the car, leave them stuck under a wiper blade. Maybe the thieves will be satisfied with a picture and leave the real thing at the curb.”

“I’ll suggest that to Fedderman.”

“Feds will understand.”

“Like Occam.”

Jody looked off to the side and thought for a moment. “No,” she said, “like Feds.”

“Sometimes,” Quinn said, “you are eerily like your mother.”

“That a compliment?”

“A warning.”

She took a long sip of her coffee. “Business will pick up,” she assured Quinn. “In this city, with all the dealing and stealing that has to be set right, Q&A will get its share. Maybe something by way of your friend Renz.”

“I’d rather Renz not be involved. He complicates things.”

“Still,” Jody said, “he’s the police commissioner.”

“Occam with a beard,” Quinn said. “And unshaven scruples.”

“Yeah,” Jody replied. “That’s more like normal life.”

“If there is such a thing,” Quinn said, finishing off his orange juice. He licked his lips. “Any more of this in the fridge?”

“Nope. Nothing cold except beer and bottled water.”

“Let me think,” Quinn said.

Medford County, 1984

Umph!That couldn’t have been good for the baby. Abbey held onto the armrest and console so she wouldn’t bump around so much.

Mildred turned the dusty white van onto a narrow dirt road, then hard left onto a gravel driveway that wound uphill through the trees. Clumps of dirt and stones clunked off the insides of the wheel wells.

The driveway leveled off, and the van jounced over a yard that was mostly weeds and bare earth. Mildred parked in the shade near a ramshackle house with sagging gutters and a plank front porch. It needed paint so badly it was impossible to know what color it had been. Nearby, at the end of a curved walkway set with uneven stepping stones, was a wooden outhouse.

“Don’t believe what ya see,” Mildred said. “We’ve had indoor plumbing a good while.”

Abbey could only nod.

“I’ll leave the motor running and the AC on so you’ll be comfortable,” Mildred said. She struggled down out of the van and slammed the door behind her.

Abbey saw her go into the house, then emerge a few minutes later with a large cardboard box. The van’s rear doors opened. One of them squeaked loudly. Abbey craned her neck to glance back and see what was going on, only to find that the back of the van was sealed off by unpainted plywood, blocking her view. She could hear Mildred moving around back there, loading the box, or whatever it held, into the vehicle.

After about fifteen minutes, gravel and leaves crunched and Mildred appeared outside the door on Abbey’s side. She opened the door.

“C’mon down outta there, sweetheart. I wanna show you something.”

“Is it important?” Abbey asked, remembering how difficult it had been to climb into the van.

“I would sure say so.” Mildred smiled.

Abbey didn’t have her seat belt fastened, because of the baby, so she swiveled her body awkwardly and controlled her breathing while Mildred’s strong hands helped her to back down out of the van.

When she gained her balance, Mildred held her by the elbow and supported her while they walked to the back of the van. Both doors were hanging wide open.

Mildred turned her so she could see into the back of the van.

Abbey didn’t know quite what to think. The rear seats had been removed and there was black plastic covering the van’s floor. Clouded white plastic was stuck with duct tape to the sides of the van and to the plywood panel separating the rear of the vehicle from the driver and passenger seats. There was nothing else in the van except for a medium-sized cardboard box up front by the plastic and plywood.

“Get in,” Mildred said.

Abbey thought she must have misheard. “I beg your—”

“In!”

Mildred shoved Abbey forward so her knees were against the edge of the van floor, then placed a hand on the back of her neck and bent her forward so Abbey’s palms were on the black plastic.

“Now listen here—”Abbey began. Her words were cut short by a hard blow to the back of her head.

“Crawl on up there!” Mildred said. “And mind you don’t harm the baby.”

“I don’t—”

Another slap to the back of the head. “Get goin’, you fat sow, and make sure your belly don’t drag.”

When Abbey had crawled painfully up into the back of the van, Mildred scrambled in beside her, looming over her, smelling of stale sweat.

“Wanna scream and get it over with?” Mildred asked. “Ain’t nobody out here to hear you.”

“I wanna know what the hell—”

A wide rectangle of duct tape was slapped across Abbey’s mouth. She was pushed forward so all her weight was on her stomach. “Can’t be helped, sweetheart,” Mildred said by way of apology. There were ripping sounds—more tape being stripped from the roll. Mildred bent Abbey’s arms behind her and taped her wrists together. “Now let’s turn you over.”

With practiced ease, Mildred crossed Abbey’s ankles and wrestled her onto her back. The pain in Abbey’s arms bound behind her was severe as the weight of her pregnancy settled. Mildred forced Abbey’s left leg over and taped her ankle to a steel loop screwed into the van floor. Did the same with her right leg.

Abbey was lying with her legs spread now, unable to move, with Mildred between her knees. She had never felt so vulnerable.

Mildred, breathing hard from her effort, reached forward beyond Abbey, grunting as part of her weight came down on the bound woman. Abbey caught a whiff of her foul breath as Mildred strained to drag the cardboard box across the plastic on the floor, closer so she could reach inside.

Abbey was almost bursting with rage. If she could only get her hands around Mildred’s fat throat she’d kill her!

She really felt that she could kill this woman!

More fetid breath as Mildred forced words through clenched teeth. “Careless bitch like you, in your delicate condition, take off in a rattletrap truck that overheats, don’t deserve no baby. Oughta be a law.”

Abbey stared at her. What the hell does all that mean?

Fear began to edge through Abbey’s rage. Real fear. It had been in the background of her mind, waiting, as if primping to play its biggest role ever. Now it came to occupy every molecule of her bound body. Abbey understood that kind of fear. It meant she was aware of something she didn’t yet fully comprehend, that she couldn’t yet face.

But that she must face.

Mildred lifted a small folded white blanket from the box and laid it against the side of the van. She arranged it gently. Then she drew from the box a knife with a sharp point and a long, serrated blade.

Abbey thought her lungs might rupture as she screamed into the duct tape so hard that the muffled sound almost made it out of the van.

Mildred held up the knife so Abbey could see it.

“Know what happens now?”

Abbey knew.

New York City, the present

He was real.

There he was again. He must know she got off work at Gowns ’n’ Gifts at five o’clock, because shortly thereafter she would see him.

Though he kept his distance, he didn’t seem to mind that she saw him.

Bonnie Anderson was sure she was being stalked. It had been going on for over a week. Each time she saw him she’d be more afraid. She wasn’t imagining him. Though in truth she’d never gotten a clear look at him. Often his head was bowed so the bill of the cap he usually wore blocked or shadowed his face. But there was something about him, in his movements. A resoluteness. A man with something on his mind.

With me on his mind.

Bonnie shuddered and crossed the street.

He followed, of course.

She stopped.

He stopped.

Bonnie was a beauty, with long blond hair, a slender, shapely body, and a face whose planes and angles had intrigued a college art class almost as much as the rest of her. That was all too apparent with the male students, which always amused Bonnie.

No doubt the man following her was similarly aroused, but he didn’t amuse her. He scared her in a subtle way that made her body seem drugged.

She was sure he wanted her to see him, wanted her fear to grow. For some reason, he was nurturing her dread.

She glanced back over her shoulder, and there he was.

He stood now about a hundred feet behind her on the crowded sidewalk, statue still, and stared from beneath the shadowed arc of his ball-cap bill. It was odd how she couldn’t see his eyes but felt them on her.

Her fear expanded, and with it her anger.

You want me to be afraid, you bastard!

She spun on her heel and walked directly toward him. Cope with your fears by facing them. He seemed to smile—she couldn’t be sure—as he leisurely entered a nearby deli.

Without hesitation she followed him into the deli.

It wasn’t much cooler in there than outside.

A gondola with steel trays of heated food ran down the middle of the deli. Shelves of packaged food were along one side wall. A series of glass-door coolers ran along the opposite wall, stacked with bottled and canned drinks and dairy products. Beyond the coolers, more shelves of groceries. People were milling about at the counter and among the shelves and coolers. A few of them were carrying wire baskets.

Bonnie looked around for the blue ball cap and didn’t see it. Didn’t see the bastard. She went to the back of the deli and walked along the heads of the aisles, pausing to stare down each one.

He was gone. Somehow he was gone.

Had he been the product of her imagination? A mirage, maybe, from the heat.

Probably he wanted her to think that. Actually, he might have slipped back outside when she had her back momentarily turned and she was striding along the cooler aisle. He’d had time to manage that. Just.

Charging back out onto the sidewalk, Bonnie bumped into a woman hard enough to make her stagger.

“I’m sorry, too,” the woman snarled

Everybody was irritable. The weather.

A male voice behind Bonnie said, “Bump into me, sweetheart.”

She turned and saw a boy about sixteen leering at her. He wilted and backed away as she glared at him; then he walked past her and over by the curb without glancing back at her.

If only they were all so easy to discourage.

A dry breeze was blowing, turning the city into a convection oven. Bonnie wished to hell it would rain at least enough to cool down all the damned steel and concrete in the city. She looked up at the sky, not expecting to see a cloud. There were two small ones. They looked as dry as cotton.

Bonnie was only a few blocks from her apartment. She walked them uneasily, unable to keep her head still, trying to catch another glimpse of the man who’d been dogging her.

But she knew she wouldn’t see him. He was through with her for now. She hoped.

Sal Vitali and Harold Mishkin sat in Sal’s car and watched for Joan Plunket to emerge with her not-so-secret lover, Foster Oaks, from their room at the Blue Sparrow Motel in New Jersey. They both knew the couple would emerge soon. They must.

The detectives knew that Bob Plunket, Joan’s husband, was right now in a Manhattan hotel room with his own not-so-secret lover, his fellow accountant Laura Loodner. Laura Loodner’s husband, a jeweler named Marty, knew nothing and loved only his cat.

It was Bob Plunket who’d hired Q&A to get the goods on his wife, Joan.

It was Sal and Harold’s job to keep track of this marital mess. The case involved a lot of staking out, spending time in the car as they were doing now, watching and waiting. Sal hated this part of detective work. He usually drove the car. Harold usually drove him crazy.

Like this evening, as the two men sat in Sal’s old Taurus in the Blue Sparrow parking lot and watched and watched the door to room 256. It was a maroon door, like all the others, on a catwalk that looked down on a swimming pool where four or five teenagers were frolicking. Sal had only a quarter tank of gas, so they didn’t want to roll the windows up and idle the engine so they could use the air conditioner. They sat with the windows down and were grateful for a slight, hot breeze moving through the car.

A short man but powerfully built, Sal had been Harold’s partner in the NYPD for twelve years, where he’d fallen into the habit of looking out for the weak-stomached, sensitive Harold. The other thing about Harold was that he could be obtuse as well as brilliant, and damned aggravating. But the two men were close, like dogs that had for years gotten each other’s backs in a kennel full of biters. They were stuck with each other. Harold didn’t mind. Sal did, but he was resigned.

The teenagers, along with Harold, were making the bored and jumpy Sal nervous with their noise. That was why Sal had parked the Taurus here, under a shade tree, still with an unbroken view of room 256, but with greatly reduced noise from the pool area. Now Sal had only Harold to endure. That was enough.

They’d both gotten tired of listening to music on the radio, and besides, that was running down the battery, so Sal switched off the radio and they simply sat and watched and prayed for the door to 256 to open.

“Whaddya suppose they’re doing in there?” Harold asked.

Sal sighed. “Scrabble, most likely.” He had a voice like stones rattling around in a drum.

“I think our client’s nuts,” Harold said. “His wife is twice the looker of that accountant chick.”

“They work together,” Sal said. “Office romance.”

“Both accountants.”

“Go figure.”

“Figure what?

“Never mind.”

Sal thought that might be the end of conversation for a while, but he heard a loud ripping sound.

“Thought I might show you this,” Harold said. “My cousin Sedge, the one in advertising, gave me a tip, and I’m passing it on to you.”

Sal looked over to see that Harold was wearing what looked like a black Velcro glove.

“New product,” Harold said. “Sticky Hand. Sedge has the advertising account, and they’re going to do the stigma act on this and sell millions of them.”

Sal said, “What in the hell is it? And what’s the stigma act?” He looked hopefully at 256. It didn’t move.

“Sticky hand is for people with HSS.”

Sal yawned. “Which is?”

“Hair-shedding syndrome.”

“Never heard of it.”

“You will soon. After the stigma campaign.”

Sal had to admit this sort of interested him. “There’s going to be an HSS campaign?”

“Certainly is. TV, radio, newspapers. Attractive women won’t get dates because men will notice the hair on their shoulders or arms. Hair from their own heads. They’re shedding. The guy says to his guy friend, ‘I like her, but she doesn’t turn me on. Not with that HSS.’ ”

“Then what?”

“Then somebody tells her about Sticky Hand and her troubles are over.”

“My God,” Sal said.

“But Sticky Hand has other uses. Like with Larry.”

“Who is?”

“Sedge’s dog. He’s a collie. Now, Larry sheds—”

“They’re out,” Sal said. He handed the camera to Harold, who had the better angle. Joan Plunket was standing on the catwalk outside 256, which was still open. Joan made sure her blouse was tucked in, smoothed her slacks. “Get that shot,” Sal said, “when she’s rearranging her clothes.”

“That dog sheds all over everything—”

Foster Oaks appeared and closed the door to 256 behind him. His suit coat was tossed over his shoulder, like he was Frank Sinatra. He impulsively leaned down and kissed Joan Plunket on the lips. Used his free hand to caress her breast.

“Get that!” Sal said. “Get that one, Harold!”

“The average person sheds eighty hairs per day,” Harold said. “Everyone will be ashamed to have HSS. Everyone will shed approximately eighty hairs per day. Approximately everyone will buy a Sticky Hand.”

Joan and Foster Oaks were walking along the catwalk now, holding hands.

“Where’s the shutter button on this thing?” Harold asked.

“Goddamn it, Harold!”

But Harold was smiling.

He passed the digital camera to Sal, who went to SLIDESHOW and clicked on it.

Harold had managed to get photographs of Joan Plunket and Foster Oaks that were almost pornographic.

Harold for you.

Bonnie realized she was walking too fast in this heat. Perspiration had soaked into her clothes and lay as a sheen on her arms.

I must not smell so good. Hope he doesn’t notice.

She slowed down and relaxed somewhat, thinking about Rob Masters. She’d met him two weeks ago at Grounds for Everything, a neighborhood coffee shop. They’d fallen into easy conversation. He was a sales rep for a line of furniture. Bonnie was a sales clerk in a bridal shop. Gowns ’n’ Gifts. Small world, both of them being in sales.

“I didn’t think that many people still went in for large traditional weddings,” he’d said, over his vanilla latte.

“You’d be surprised. There’s a big demand for gowns and bridesmaid dresses.”

“Not to mention gifts.” He smiled. That was one of the things she liked most about him, his smile. It held nothing back, and was like a glimpse of something beautiful inside him. He was just . . . normal in the looks department, but you could trust a man who smiled like t