3 Blood Lines (18 page)

“I’ve been hired to look into the deaths at the ROM and I wondered what you could tell me about them.”

“Hired by who?”

Vicki smiled in turn. “I can’t tell you that.”

“All right, tell me this: Why aren’t you picking Celluci’s brain.”

“Picked clean. And, as he tells me you’ve taken him off the case, I just wondered why.”

“You’ve never
just wondered
anything in your life, Nelson, but, in view of past services and because I’m a nice guy, I’ll tell you what I told him . . .”

As he spoke, Vicki hid a frown. He was telling her
exactly
what he told Celluci, word for word, as though it were something he’d memorized and now repeated by rote. And try as she would, she couldn’t get him to expand on it. Finally, she gave up and stood. “Well, thanks for the time and the coffee, but I’ve got to be . . .” A thick cream-colored envelope, its return address done in embossed gold ink caught her eye. “You going to a wedding?” she asked, picking it up.

“I’m going to a Halloween party at the Solicitor General’s.” Cantree snatched it out of her hand and Vicki stared at him.

“You’re bullshitting me?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He slapped the envelope down on his blotter. “Apparently the Honorable Member’s got some hot new adviser he wants everyone from department heads on up to meet.”

“Who?”

“How should I know? I haven’t met him yet. Some new guy in town with a lot of big ideas no doubt.”

Vicki reached down and twitched the invitation free. “The thirty-first. Next Saturday. Halloween. How nice, it’s a costume party.” She had an image of Inspector Cantree—who did look remarkably like James Earl Jones—dressed as Thulsa Doom, the villain of the first Conan movie, and hid a smile.

“Sure, nice for you, you haven’t been ordered to attend.” He grimaced and Vicki barely managed to save her fingers as he swept both invitation and envelope into the top drawer of his desk. “The Chief says we’re going, no excuses, and I hear the local OPP boys’ll be there as well. Not to mention the goddamned Solicitor General’s entire goddamned department.” The grimace hardened into a scowl. “Just the way I look forward to spending a Saturday night, talking shop with a bunch of politicians and political cops.”

“And very powerful people . . .” She caught the Inspector’s expression and grinned, masking a sudden rush of apprehension. “I see you at least got enough notice to get your loins properly girded.”

“You leave my loins out of this. And the damn thing came by special courier this morning.”

“Special courier? Don’t you find that a little strange?”

He snorted. “Ours is not to reason why . . .” The rest of the quote got lost in the shrilling of the phone and she mouthed,
I’ll see myself out
, as she backed toward the door.

Out on the street, Vicki looked back at Headquarters and shook her head.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

Sometimes, only a cliché seemed adequate.

“Did you ever find those papers you misplaced?”

“Papers?” Celluci asked, holding open the restaurant door.

“The papers your cousin came over to the museum for.” Dr. Shane shook her head at his blank expression. “You called her yesterday, asked her to check for them at the museum after work . . . ?”

All at once, Celluci understood. “Oh, that cousin. Those papers.” He wondered if Vicki had left him in the dark on purpose or if it just hadn’t occurred to her to fill him in on their new relationship. “They turned up this afternoon at the office. I guess I should’ve called to let you know.” He tried a charming smile and made a mental note to take care of Vicki later. “I
did
call to ask you to dinner.”

“So you did.”

She didn’t appear particularly charmed, but neither did she appear completely immune.

Celluci was having a little trouble deciding how to approach the evening. Rachel Shane could have information that would help them find and capture the mummy, which meant he’d have to question her and, to complicate matters, he couldn’t question her directly or she’d want to know why. He couldn’t
tell
her why.

No. Telling her would merely cut off the only source of information they had. A scientist trained to pull knowledge out of bits of old bone and pottery simply wouldn’t believe that a few of those old bones got up and committed murder on the say-so of a homicide detective, a smart-mouthed PI, and a . . . a romance writer. She’d need proof and he simply didn’t have any.

Telling her would also ensure that he’d never see her again, but with four people dead what she thought of him personally became significantly less important.

When it came right down to it, he needed the information and he’d have to use her interest in him—or, more exactly, her perception of his interest in her—to get it. He’d once watched Vicki pump a man dry by spending two hours batting her eyelashes and interjecting a breathless “Oh really?” into every pause in the conversation. He wouldn’t have to sink that low, but even so, Rachel Shane deserved better. God willing, he’d get a chance to make it up to her another time.

As dinner progressed, he had no trouble getting her to talk about herself and her work. The police had long since learned to exploit the human fondness for self-exposure and an amazing number of crimes were solved every year when the perpetrator just couldn’t keep quiet any longer and told all. Nor was it difficult to steer the conversation sideways into ancient Egypt.

“I have the feeling,” she said as the waiter set desert and coffee on the table, “that I should only have given you my name, rank, and serial number. I haven’t been so thoroughly interrogated since I defended my thesis.”

Celluci pushed the curl of hair back off his forehead and searched for something to say. He had, perhaps, been probing a little deeply. And he had, perhaps, not been as subtle as he could have been. The desire to be honest kept fighting with the need to be devious. “It’s just that it’s a relief not to be talking about police work,” he told her at last.

A chestnut brow rose. “Now, why don’t I believe that,” she mused, stirring cream into her coffee. “You’re trying to find something out, something important to you.” Lifting her chin, she looked him squarely in the eye. “You’d find out a lot faster, if you’d come right out and asked me. And then you wouldn’t have wasted an evening.”

“I don’t consider the evening to be a waste,” he protested.

“Ah. Then you found out what you needed to know.”

“Damnit, Vicki, don’t twist my words!”

Both brows rose, their movement cutting the silence to shreds. “Vicki?”

He
did
say Vicki. Oh, shit. “She’s an old colleague. We argue a lot. It just seems natural that a protest like that would have her name attached.”

The brows remained up.

Celluci sighed and spread his hands in surrender. “Rachel, I’m sorry. You were right, I did need information, but I can’t tell you why.”

“Why not?” The brows were down, but the tone was decidedly cool.

“It would put you in too much danger.” He waited for her protest, and when it didn’t come he realized he was waiting for Vicki’s protest.

“Does this have anything to do with Dr. Rax’s death?”

“Only indirectly.”

“I thought you were taken off the case.”

He shrugged. Anything he said at this point could give her ideas and telling her about hiring Vicki—not to mention Vicki’s supernatural sidekick—would only complicate things further.

“You know I’ll help in any way I can.”

Most of the people Celluci met divided the man and the cop into two very neat and separate packages. Certain subtle differences in tone and bearing indicated Rachel Shane had just closed the first package and opened the second.

She kept him in police officer mode for the rest of the evening, and when he dropped her off at her condo he had to admit that, although he felt like he’d just finished Archaeology 101, as far as dates went, it hadn’t been exactly a success. She obviously had no intention of inviting him in.

“Thank you for dinner, Mike.”

“You’re welcome. Can I call you again?”

“Well, I tell you what.” She looked up at him, her expression speculative. “You decide you want to see me and not the Assistant Curator of the Royal Ontario Museum’s Department of Egyptology
and
you dump the hidden agendas and I’ll think about it.” Tossing a half smile back over her shoulder, she went into the building.

Celluci shook his head and slid back into his car. In a number of ways Rachel reminded him of Vicki. Only not quite so . . . so . . .

“So Vicki,” he decided at last, pulling out of the driveway and turning east toward Huron Street without really thinking. It wasn’t until he was searching for a parking space, which was, as usual, in short supply around Vicki’s apartment, that he wondered what the hell he was doing.

He drove twice more around the block before a space opened up and he decided he didn’t need an excuse for being here; he didn’t even particularly need a reason.

 

When Vicki heard the key in the lock, she knew it had to be Celluci and, for one brief moment, she entertained two completely opposing reactions. By the time he got the door open, she’d managed to force order on the mental chaos and was ready for him.

If he thinks he’s going to get sympathy after Dr. Shane dumped him early, he can think again.
“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Why?” He threw his jacket over the brass hook in the hall. “Are you expecting Fitzroy?”

“What’s it to
you?”
She pushed up her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. “As a matter of fact, I’m not. He’s writing tonight.”

“Good for him. How long has this coffee been sitting here?”

“About an hour.” Settling her glasses back on her nose, she watched him fill a mug and rummage in the fridge for cream. He seemed, well, if she had to put a name to it, she’d say melancholy came closest.
Christ, maybe Dr. Shane broke his heart.
Her own heart gave a curious twist. She ignored it. “So. How went the date?”

He took a swallow of coffee. Two strides brought him across the tiny kitchen and up against the back of Vicki’s chair. “It went. What’s with all the books?”

“Research. Believe it or not, a history degree is appallingly short on coverage of ancient Egypt.”

Behind her, Celluci snorted. “You’re not going to find much help from historians.”

Vicki tilted her head back and smiled smugly up at him. “That’s why I’m researching myths and legends. So, uh, Dr. Shane didn’t respond to the celebrated Celluci charm? Guaranteed to get a confession at fifty paces?”

He pushed her head forward, put down the coffee cup, and dug his fingers into her shoulders. “I didn’t turn it on.”

She sucked in a sudden breath; part pain, part pleasure. “Why not?”
This is kind of like picking a scab,
she decided.
Once you get started, it’s hard to stop.

“Because she deserved better. Bad enough I spent the evening under false pretenses. I had no intention of compounding it. Christ, you’re tense.”

“It’s not tension, it’s muscle tone. What do you mean, she deserved better? You’ve got a lot of faults, Celluci, but I never thought false modesty was—ouch—one of them.”

“She deserved honesty. She deserved to have me thinking of her, not of how much she could tell me.”

Well, as my mother always says, if you don’t want to know, don’t ask.
“You liked her.”

“Don’t be an ass, Vicki. I wouldn’t have asked her out to dinner if I didn’t like her—I could have picked her brains in her office a hell of a lot more cheaply. I find her attractive, intelligent, self-confident . . .”

“. . . and, as a result, I found I spent most of the evening thinking about you.” He gave her shoulders a final dig, picked up his coffee, and went into the living room.

Vicki opened her mouth, closed it, and tried to sort out some kind of response. From the beginning, they’d never talked about their relationship; they’d accepted it; they’d left it alone. When they got back together last spring, it had been under those same parameters.
That son of a bitch is changing the rules . . .
But beneath the protest she recognized a surge of relief.
He spent most of the evening thinking about me.
And beneath the relief, a hint of panic.
Now what?

He was waiting for her to say something but she didn’t know what to say.
Oh, God, please, send a distraction!

The knock on the door jerked her around so fast her glasses slid down her nose. “Come in.”

“I asked for a distraction, not a disaster,” she muttered a moment later.

Celluci snapped the recliner forward. “I thought you were supposed to be writing tonight,” he growled, standing and scowling down the hall.

Henry smiled, deliberately provoking. He had known Celluci was in the apartment before he knocked; he could hear his voice, his movements, his heartbeat. But the mortal had the days; he would not have the darkness as well. “I was writing. I finished.”

“Another book?” The word book came out as if it were something that turned up on the soles of shoes after a brisk walk through a barnyard.

“No.” He hung his trench coat up beside Celluci’s jacket. “But I finished the work I intended to do tonight.”