Her Special Charm

She fingered the cameo at her throat. It already felt as if she’d worn it forever. Thoughts of Josh and the mistake she ultimately hadn’t made swiftly disappeared from her head.

Instead, she concentrated on the man who had reunited her with the cameo. One look at the determined set of his jaw told her that there was no arguing with the man. At least, not here. This was his terrain she was standing on.

Rising to her feet, Constance extended her hand toward him once again. His grip was firm. Like her father’s used to be.

The memory warmed her.

“I really don’t know how to thank you,” she repeated softly.

“Then don’t try.”

The way he said it, she knew he thought that put an end to it. She never liked being the one owing a favor. Her mother had raised her to believe that it was far better to give than to receive—and right now, she was on the receiving end. But not for long, she promised herself as she walked out of the squad room. She nodded at Detective Santini as she passed him.

“I see it’s still intact,” he commented.

She looked at him curiously. “What is?”

“Your head. Munro tends to bite people’s heads off—without meaning to,” he explained.

She turned her head side to side for his benefit. “Yes, still there.” And then she smiled at him as she left.

Santini sighed. If he didn’t have a wife and three kids… Glancing toward his partner in the distance, he shook his head. Some guys had all the luck. And didn’t even know it.

Chapter Four

Stooped beneath the weight of obvious disappointment, Santini dropped into the chair that Constance had just vacated and pinned his partner with a look of utter disbelief. “And that’s that?”

James shuffled through the files on his desk, trying to remember what he was supposed to do. He was in even less of a mood for what he knew was coming.

Santini rose, then sank down again. He gripped the armrests as if to provide emotional support for himself.

“You’re just letting a beautiful woman—a grateful beautiful woman—just walk away like that?”

James spared him exactly one glance. “Couldn’t think of anything to arrest her for.”

Santini snorted, shaking his head. “How about possession of gorgeous body with intent to make grown men humbly drop to their knees?”

A knowing half smile lifted the corners of James’s mouth as he continued his search. “Rita has you sleeping on the couch again, doesn’t she?”

Santini frowned. “We’re not talking about me, we’re talking about you.”

“No,” James said with finality, closing the last un-cooperative folder. “We’re not.” James shoved the folders into a haphazard pile. He far preferred being out in the field to dealing with paper anyway. “C’mon, let’s go. We’ve still got that last area to canvass.” He looked pointedly at his partner when the latter made no move to get up. “You know, that stuff they pay us for? It’s called detective work?”

Santini looked like a man whose hot air-balloon had been shot down before it ever had a chance to begin its journey. It was clear that he was hoping to experience a little vicarious thrill. “Well, at least you know that much.”

James pulled his jacket off the back of his chair, but didn’t bother putting it on. The two men walked toward the doorway leading out of the squad room. “Meaning?”

Santini moved fast to keep up. “Meaning you don’t know a good deal when you see one.”

It wasn’t a “good deal” he saw when he looked at Constance Beaulieu, it was trouble. Trouble with a capital T. He got enough of that on the job. “Maybe I don’t want ‘a good deal.’”

Santini halted just outside the squad room, looking at James as if he’d never seen him before. He lowered his voice as he asked, “Munro, you’re not…?”

James gave him a dark look. “No,” he said firmly, “I’m not.”

“Because it’s okay if you are.” Santini shrugged his wide shoulders. “It’s just going to take me some time to get used to, that’s all.”

James went to the stairwell, throwing open the fire door. He preferred taking the stairs to waiting for an elevator. It was faster. “The only thing I am is a man who’s getting really close to strangling his partner. And at this point, I don’t think any jury’s going to convict me.”

Santini followed him down. An huge sigh escaped his lips as he made it down three flights and then to the underground level behind James.

Holding the outer door open for him, James found his tolerance in short supply. “What?”

“Nothing.” They made their way through the underground parking structure to where James had left the car. “Just sometimes I wonder what God was thinking, wasting all those looks on a guy who doesn’t know what to do with them.”

Reaching the car, James got in behind the driver’s seat. The enclosed area felt stuffy. It didn’t improve his mood.

“I know what to do with them.” He jammed the key into the ignition and turned it. The engine hummed to life. “I wash them, I clothe them, and I get them over to a crime scene.” He glanced over his shoulder to see if the way was clear. It was, but he still didn’t back out. Instead, he gave Santini a warning look. “And if you don’t drop this, we’re going to have our own crime scene right here, right now. Except that you’re not going to be in any shape to investigate. Now am I making myself clear?”

“Yeah.”

Santini sounded more like a sulky child than a grade-A police detective, but he would take what he could get.

“Good. Now let’s see if anyone around Playa del Rio saw or heard anything yesterday that might be useful.”

For once, his partner didn’t hold out much hope. “Everybody’s going to have a terminal case of deafness,” Santini predicted.

James slanted a final look at his partner before he pulled out of the parking structure and onto the street. “They don’t know how lucky they are.”

It was the usual dance. The robbers had been quick, efficient and seemed to know exactly when to strike—when the register was fullest. After questioning dozens of employees, customers and people who lived and worked in the general vicinity of all five of the restaurants that had been hit in the last five months, they were still coming up empty. There were no leads, no clues.

In the winter, that kind of thing didn’t irritate him nearly as much as it did in the summer. Humidity always shrank his temper down to almost nonexistent, like a wool sweater thrown into the dryer set on hot.

The only good thing was that, confronted with the details of the case, Santini had finally stopped yammering about the woman who had come to claim her necklace.

Cameo, he mentally corrected himself. She’d called it a cameo. Him, he didn’t know the difference between a cameo and a camcorder. Things like that were Santini’s department. His partner had a keen eye when it came to possessions while James had the nose for something being out of kilter. For overlooked details and things that didn’t quite add up unless you tried using a different kind of math.

But not this time.

Leaving his car parked in the facility where he rented a monthly space, James crossed the street to get to his apartment. Heat rose almost like steam from the sidewalk, a testimony to the rain that had fallen earlier for a short duration. Not enough to cool, just enough to add to the stickiness of the night.

For the moment, the case had him stumped and he hated that. Hated feeling at a loss. There had to be something they were missing, some speck of a clue that by itself meant nothing but, in the proper light, made all the difference in the world.

The robberies were obviously the work of the same people. So far, though, he hadn’t been able to find the connection. The restaurant employees were different at each location. No one was related to anyone else. They ordered their meats and produce from different suppliers, used different employment agencies. Nothing was the same.

Yet something had to be. The robberies just didn’t have a random feel to them.

He tried to console himself by thinking that there would be a slipup. There always was. Someone got greedy, someone got sloppy. And when they did, he’d be there to catch them. It was as far into optimism as he ever allowed himself to venture.