Free If Looks Could Kill by Eileen Dreyer

of those skinny swords'd fit real nice into the hole in his chest."
    "Epee," Chris whispered. She closed her eyes, quelled a sudden lurch of nausea.
    "That's the one," the detective agreed. "Now, I admit that I wouldn't have suspected a thing if I hadn't just been reading Hell Hath No Fury the day we got the call on the Weaver case—in fact, your favorite fan gave it to me. Anyway, it intrigued me a little. So I started checking back on some cases. I'm finding a real interesting pattern here."
    Chris wanted to wash her hands. She wanted to wash everything. Something was crawling all over her.
    Lawson didn't seem to notice the silence. "Now, I'm not sure if you just... you know, like, anticipated this stuff happenin', like the professor does in your books. Maybe you know more than you think. Maybe somebody's out there screwin' with our heads. One way or another, I'll guaran-goddamn-tee you it isn't gonna stop until we figure out what's goin' on. Now, you gonna help me or not?"
    Chris couldn't quite manage an answer. It wasn't a mistake. The murders were real. They were real and they were plotting out just like her books. She'd been having trouble sleeping again, staring into the darkness wondering why she felt chased, and suddenly she knew.
    Two years. It had been going on for two years. She felt invaded. She felt assaulted, sitting amid her plastic flowers and orphaned cats. She desperately wanted to get out of there, to run back home, to take off riding through the hills until she could find some new shoots of spring. Instead she sat right where she was and picked her pen back up.
    Very carefully, she ripped off the sheets she'd been doodling on and threw them in the trash. Then she turned her attention to the detective.
    "What do you want me to do?"

 
     
     
    Chapter 4

     
    "She's no moreeccentric than anybody else in this town."
    Mac took another sip of coffee and leaned back farther in his chair as he conversed with Sue through the office door. "I didn't say I called her eccentric, I said L. J. Watson did."
    Busy entering tax evaluations into the computer, Sue never bothered to look up from where she was working. She did allow Mac a laugh. "L. J. considers anyone who doesn't vote Republican and own a horse eccentric. Chris is just... Chris."
    "How long have you known her?"
    Now Sue looked up, her expression dry. "Is this interest professional or personal?"
    Mac afforded Sue the scowl that question deserved. After only a few days in town he found it necessary to remind himself at five-minute intervals that he wasn't in the big city anymore. "I can't afford personal interest. I'm paying off two wives and two kids. I'm just trying to catch up with that memo on my desk yesterday."
    "Five years," she said, going back to her computer. "We moved to town just about the same time."
    "What do you know about her?"
    "Other than the fact that she's my youngest's godmother and the family baby-sitter when Tom and I want to get out of town?"
    Mac went back to his coffee, the new budget still unperused on his desk and Curtis Marshall's health forms unfiled. "Yeah. Besides that."
    "Nothing very mysterious. She writes a hell of a book, tends to dress in bright colors, and likes her privacy enough that she hides here. Considering the fact that she's not only the most interesting person to hit town since Quantrell but also an active member in almost every town function, it's no big surprise that we let her."
    "Does she always take in teenagers for the night?"
    Sue smiled. "Teenagers, ventriloquists, old ladies who talk to fish. Chris is a sucker for a sob story. I think it's because she never had a family of her own. She's kind of adopted us."
    "No family?"
    "Foster homes. It's quite a success story, if she'd just admit it. She finally got out of the system at eighteen and worked her way through school... schools. She has about three degrees. She's got more useless information stuffed in that brain of hers than a 'Jeopardy'