LITMIR.BIZ

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      “You’ve seen too many movies,” Sam said more gruffly than he intended, slapping their dishes and utensils into the dishwasher. “We’re going to sit on a hot, tarred rooftop adjacent to the parking garage of the Metropole Hotel, waiting for a sixty-six-year-old man to finish his weekly tryst with his twenty-year-old receptionist, then watch him walk her to her car and kiss her good-night.”

      “That doesn’t sound too exciting,” Laura said.

      “Told ya.” He wiped his hands on one of his mother’s cross-stitched dishtowels and returned it to its metal bar beside the sink.

      “And then?” she asked. “What happens next? You call the police and have him arrested?”

      “Nope. Then I take a picture of the lovers, have it developed, and I give the print to a sweet little old lady with blue hair who’s still ninety-nine percent convinced that her husband of forty-two years is playing gin rummy every Wednesday night.”

      The playful light in Laura’s eyes went out like two candles being snuffed, and for a second, Sam regretted his candor.

      “Well, you asked,” he said. “Cases like that are the bulk of my work. Rescuing dames in distress is just a sideline.”

      He had hoped she’d laugh at that, lame as it was, but she didn’t. Suddenly she looked less like a dame in distress than a sad little girl, playing dress up in her mother’s clothes.

      Reaching out, she straightened the dishtowel on its rod, then sighed. “You’re right. It’s not like the movies.”

      “You don’t have to come along, you know. You really will be all right here if you want to stay.”

      She shook her head. “I’ll just stick with you for a while, if you don’t mind.”

      “I don’t mind. It’ll be nice to have company. Only…”

      “Only what?”

      “Well, the last time I saw a private eye’s assistant dressed like this…” He dropped his gaze to the soft drapery of blue velvet sloping from her delicate collarbone. “…it was in a movie. Maybe there’s something in one of the closets upstairs that might be a little bit less, um…”

      “Vintage?” she suggested, the twinkle returning to her eyes.

      “That, too.” Sam stepped away from the sink, blaming the current spike in his temperature on all that humidity from the hot rinse water. “Come on. Let’s have a look.”

      Sam leaned against the wall outside his mother’s bedroom, listening to the distinctive sounds of a woman dressing and undressing, to the slide of hangers across a metal rod, the slithering of fabrics over skin, the puttings on and the peelings off, the snapping of snaps and the long glide of zippers opening and closing.

      When he’d suggested that Laura might find something to wear in his late mother’s closet, he hadn’t expected her search to take so long, much less to take on the proportions of a Broadway production number. He needed to get back to the city to set up his surveillance.

      “Are you about done in there?” he asked through the crack in the door.

      “Just about,” Laura called out, her voice slightly muffled by what sounded like crisp taffeta. “How long ago did you say your mother passed away?”

      “Last year.” He heard more rustling, more zipping or unzipping before she spoke again.

      “White Shoulders,” she said.

      “Pardon?”

      “Her fragrance. She wore White Shoulders, didn’t she?”

      Did she? Sam didn’t have a clue, and he said so just as Laura suddenly appeared in the doorway.

      “Some detective you are,” she said, coming out into the hall while adjusting the shoulders and the neckline of her dress, which, to Sam’s amazement, just happened to be the same, skimpy blue velvet getup she’d been wearing all day.

      “I thought you were going to change,” he said. “What happened? Didn’t anything fit?”

      “Just about everything fit.”

      “Well, what then?”

      She was quiet a moment, standing with her hands on her hips and staring down at the floor. Then she sighed and gave a small shrug. “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, Sam, when I tell you. Promise me you won’t, okay?”

      “The wrong idea? About what?” he snapped.

      “Don’t be so angry.”

      “I’m not angry,” he said, sounding more baffled now than angry. “I’ve just been hanging out here listening to you try on enough outfits to clothe the female population of a small city. And then, after all that, you come out in…” He stabbed a finger at her dress. “…in this.”

      “This,” she said, jutting her chin into his face, “doesn’t smell like White Shoulders.”

      “So?”

      “So?” Her volume increased to match, if not drown out, his. “So, if it’s all right with you, Sam Zachary, I just didn’t want to smell like your mother.”

      She flounced past him to stomp down the stairs, as much as anyone could stomp in stiletto heels, leaving Sam standing there shaking his head and wondering why it made any difference who she smelled like when he had no intention of getting close enough to tell.

      And even if he did get close enough, say, to kiss her, there was no way he was ever going to confuse Laura McNeal with his mother.

      Chapter 3

      It was good to be back in the city, Laura thought. Well, sort of. If you didn’t mind climbing six flights of smelly, littered stairs in a dark abandoned building, then camping out on a scratchy army blanket flung out on a hot, tarred roof where shards of broken liquor bottles glittered in the summer moonlight.

      She wasn’t complaining, though. Not out loud, anyway. Not even when her heels had stuck fast and deep in soft tar bubbles and Sam Zachary had to pick her up and carry her across the roof and then go back to retrieve her captured shoes. She didn’t complain aloud even when the army blanket beneath her began to feel as if it was deliberately clawing at the backs of her thighs and calves. Not even when she decided she was about to die of thirst.

      Eyeing the big canvas bag that Sam had brought with him and parked on a corner of the blanket, she asked, “You don’t happen to have a can of soda or a water bottle in there, do you?”

      He was sitting beside her as he had been for the past hour or so, knees drawn up, arms looped casually over them, and his gaze trained permanently on the cement maze of the parking garage next door. “Sorry.”

      Laura made a dry little noise deep in her throat, then ran her fingers through the damp locks of her hair, wondering vaguely if she might be able to lick some of that moisture from her hands. “It must be ninety degrees up here,” she said, hoping he’d take the not-so-subtle hint.

      “Probably.”

      “Definitely.” Laura shifted on the blanket, letting it take a bite out of her right thigh now that it had pretty much chewed up her left.

      Now, too late, she wished that she had changed into one of Sam’s mother’s outfits, regardless of their ingrained fragrance. Maybe the light blue pincord suit with its boxy jacket and long A-line skirt. Or maybe the navy piqué dress with the delicate lace collar. Both had fit her perfectly.

      But, while she was trying on the garments, Laura had come to the conclusion that his mother’s lingering scent would only make Sam sad, and she had decided that she’d rather keep looking inappropriate, if not bizarre, than cause this man a single moment of heartache. He had such a nice smile. Well, when he wasn’t frowning.

      She glanced over at him.

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