Free The Gingerbread Man by MAGGIE SHAYNE Page B

someone?”
    His voice came from right behind her, and she jumped. Then she bit her lip and closed her eyes, still not facing him. Damn, he’d caught her staring off toward his place. He would probably reach the same conclusions that her mother had.
    “I ... was just wondering if your burglar had come back.” There, that was better. She turned, trying for a smug expression.
    He said, “He might have for all I know. I haven’t been home all day.”
    “I know.” She frowned, and felt a stirring discomfort because he stood so close.
    “Did you see anything suspicious?” he asked.
    Holly shrugged. “It’s not like I’ve been watching.”
    “No?”
    She shook her head.
    “Then how did you know I hadn’t been home yet?”
    “Lucky guess.” She saw his Jeep now, in the vacant area they used as a parking lot for lakefront gatherings. He’d parked there and come straight here, rather than going back to the cabin first. Almost as if he were in a hurry. He wore jeans and a brown leather jacket, unzipped so that his blue button-down shirt showed underneath. It wasn’t tucked in tightly, so it bagged. She wondered if he ate enough. A cop his age should have a paunch. He had a haggard look to him—eyes slightly heavy lidded, and shadowed. He didn’t have laugh lines around his eyes. He needed them.
    His eyes met hers, and she knew he was aware of her perusal.
    “Oh, Detective O’Mally, there you are!” Doris called, hurrying from the table she’d commandeered to where the two of them stood, gazes locked. “Holly was getting impatient, wondering where you were.”
    That was enough to make Holly break eye contact. She jerked her gaze toward her mother and felt her face heat. “I was not.”
    Vince could have smirked at her, but he didn’t. He shifted his feet, maybe a little uncomfortable. “Sorry I’m late, Ms. Newman.”
    “Doris, please. And there’s no need to apologize.”
    “Doris,” he said. “And there is. I had some errands to run, and it took longer than I expected.”
    “Have you had any luck tracking down your library book bandit?” She asked the question, Holly thought, as if he were chasing down an armed bank robber, and it was the most interesting case in the history of criminal justice.
    “None at all.” He worked up a smile for her. Holly thought his smiles always looked as if they took effort to produce. “Fortunately, it doesn’t matter, since I’m on vacation.”
    “So you keep insisting,” Holly muttered.
    He glanced at her sharply, about to say something rude, she was sure, but then his eyes widened on something beyond her, distracting him. “You’re shitting me. Is that who it looks like?”
    Holly turned to follow his gaze, and spotted the town’s reclusive celebrity settling into his lawn chair, as his niece draped a blanket over his shoulders. He’d barely got himself seated before several children made a beeline for him. He was surrounded in a matter of seconds. “You didn’t know Reginald D’Voe lived out here?” Holly asked.
    He shot her a glance. “I knew he had a place here, years ago, but I read that he moved to the west coast.”
    “You never would have struck me as a fawning fan, Vince,” she said, fighting a smile.
    His brows creased. “I don’t fawn.” Still, it was the first time she’d seen him lose that preoccupied scowl of his. “I grew up on horror flicks, though, and I think he starred in most of them. I was planning to drive by his house while I was out here, just to see what it looked like.”
    “It looks like something out of Scooby Doo, just about like you’d expect, I suppose. It’s that creepy-looking one on the hill.” Holly pointed across the lake, to where the house loomed, its windows dark, its shape like a phantom against the night sky.
    “Of course it is,” he said, shaking his head as if he should have guessed.
    Doris chimed in, “Reggie’s something of a recluse, you know.”
    “Yes, I know, I read that somewhere,