Free Nobody's Angel by Stacy Gail Page B

sped off with her satchel swinging. The quad’s bucolic peace clashed with the sudden chaos inside her as she tried to figure out if it was a good or bad thing that at last she had found a connection. Though of course, it was a thin connection. It could be nothing. A coincidence.
    Too bad she didn’t believe in coincidences.

Chapter Seven
    Why the hell didn’t the woman ever do things in broad daylight?
    The mask puckered over Zeke’s eyes as he scowled at Kendall, bouncing up the stairs to a second-story apartment as if she were going to a tea party instead of prowling one of the seediest housing blocks the Tenderloin had to offer. There was an upside, of course. Now that it was dark, he could move around within his cocoon of shadows, getting so close to her he could breathe in her blooming-lilies scent without her noticing.
    On the downside, night was the time for spirits to come out and play.
    Maybe nothing would happen, he thought without much hope as Kendall knocked on a door so grungy it looked scorched. It was still early. There was a rosy glow hanging in the west, so he might get lucky and she’d wrap up her business before the night creatures stirred in earnest.
    “Good evening. Are you Mrs. Abigail Denton?”
    His already-sharp senses snapped into hyper-drive as the door opened with a squeak any self-respecting haunted house would have been proud of. Framed in the doorway was an unpleasant-looking woman whose age was impossible to determine. From the stoop in her shoulders and the dour droop of her mouth, she could have been pushing seventy. But from her blond-streaked, pixie-styled hair, denim skirt and a neon pink top, he wouldn’t be surprised if it was a decade or two below that.
    “I’m changing back to my maiden name as soon as I can afford the legal crap, but for now Denton will do.” The woman’s voice matched her looks—miles and miles of bad road, with no end in sight. “Who’re you and whaddaya want?”
    Kendall dug into the wallet-sized purse slung diagonally across her front, and handed the woman a card. “I’m Kendall Glynn from KPOW News. May I come in to—”
    “No.”
    He snorted, then pulled at the layers of shadow around him when Kendall glanced toward his hiding place near the building’s outer stairwell.
    “All right.” As undaunted and stubborn as he had accused her of being, Kendall’s chin came up. “Forgive me for being forward, but may I ask you to confirm that it was your husband, Jimbo Denton, who passed away at Fisherman’s Wharf a few nights ago?”
    “I don’t need this crap.” Throwing a lethal look at Kendall, Mrs. Denton began to shut the door.
    Kendall slapped a hand against the door’s dirty surface. “And you do have a son, don’t you, Mrs. Denton? James Jr., who attends Bayside Community College, the same college where another murder-suicide took place earlier that morning?”
    For a dangerous moment, his concentration slipped and the shadows around him lightened. But he couldn’t help it. Damnation, she’d actually found a connection, when he would have sworn nine ways to Sunday there wouldn’t be one. Beauty and brains, guts and determination, all rolled into one dangerous package.
    No wonder he couldn’t resist her.
    The closing door suddenly sprang open and the woman stuck a gnarled, arthritic finger in Kendall’s face. “I won’t have you drag my boy into the gutter with his loser father. So what if Jimbo strangled his latest trailer-trash whore, then did his own sorry self in? Scumbag wasn’t worth the dynamite it’d take to blow him to hell, and I’m glad he’s gone. But I won’t have you say one word about my boy.”
    “Of course not. I merely wondered if your son had the chance to tell you about Denise Draper’s death at the hands of James’s former art professor.”
    “What? Denise? Are you talking about James’s girlfriend?”
    Kendall hesitated. “Is that what James told you? That they were in a