Mr. Perfect Read online

  Neither T.J. nor Luna had worked the day before, either. They had arrived on her doorstep a little after eight A.M., their eyes in the same condition hers had been. Shelley had whacked off more slices from her cucumber, then set about making more pancakes, which were as comforting to her friends as they had been to Jaine.

  Shelley had never met Marci, but she was willing to listen to them talk about her, which they had done all day long. They had cried a lot, laughed some, and wasted a lot of time hazarding theories about what had happened, since Brick was undeniably in the clear. They knew they weren’t going to stumble on The Truth, but talking about it helped. Marci’s death was so unbelievable that only by endlessly rehashing it could they gradually come to terms with losing her.

  For once, she wasn’t early. Mr. deWynter was already there, and he immediately asked her to step into his office.

  Jaine sighed. She might be head of payroll, but unfortunately the position carried no power, only responsibility. By leaving work early on Monday and not working at all on Tuesday, she had left them short-handed. DeWynter must have been sweating, wondering if they would get everything finished in time; people tended to get unreasonable when their paychecks didn’t arrive on schedule.

  She was prepared to accept his criticism, so she was taken aback when he said, “I want to tell you how sorry I am about your friend. That’s an awful thing to happen.”

  She had sworn she wouldn’t cry at work today, but deWynter’s unexpected sympathy almost did her in. She blinked to hold back the tears. “Thank you,” she said. “It is awful. And I want to apologize for leaving the department in the lurch on Monday—”

  He shook his head. “I understand. We put in some extra hours, but no one complained. When is the funeral service scheduled?”

  “It hasn’t been, yet. The autopsy—”

  “Oh, of course, of course. Please let me know when it will be; a lot of people here at Hammerstead would like to attend.”

  Jaine nodded her promise, and escaped back to her own desk and a pile of work.

  She had known the day would be tough, but she hadn’t anticipated quite how tough. Gina and all the others in her department had to extend their sympathies, of course, which almost had her weeping again. Since she didn’t have a cucumber with her, she had to fight the tears all day long.

  Without it being planned, both T.J. and Luna showed up at lunch time. “Railroad Pizza?” T.J. asked, and they all got in T.J.’s car for the short drive.

  They had just received their vegetarian pizzas when Jaine remembered she hadn’t told them about the crank phone call she had received just before they arrived the day before. “I finally got one of those ‘Which one are you?’ calls,” she said.

  “Aren’t they creepy?” Luna took an unenthusiastic bite of pizza. Her lovely face looked as if she had aged ten years in the last two days. “Since the rest of us have had at least two of them, I’m surprised it took him so long to get to you.”

  “Well, I have had a lot of hang-ups on my answering machine, but I just assumed they were from reporters.”

  “Probably. God knows we’ve all had plenty of those.” T.J. rubbed her forehead. “My head is pounding. I think it finally really hit me last night when I got home, and I cried until I was sick. Galan—”

  Jaine looked up. “Yes, how is the Galan situation? Is he still bunking down in a motel?”

  “No. He was at work Monday when we heard, of course, but he had called several times and left messages for me, and he came home that night. I guess the situation is still up in the air. What with Marci, I haven’t felt like hashing things out with him. He’s been pretty quiet, but… considerate, too. Maybe he’s hoping I’ll forget.” She took an almost vicious bite of pizza.

  “Guess there’s not much chance of that,” Jaine said dryly, and Luna smiled.

  “Not in this lifetime,” T.J. said. “But let’s talk about something interesting, like Sam.” She got a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. “I can’t believe you thought that sexy hunk was a drug-dealing drunk.”

  Jaine found that she, too, could smile today. “What can I say? He cleans up well. You should see him when he’s wearing old, torn clothes, hasn’t shaved, and is in a really bad mood.”

  “Those dark eyes … Wow.” Luna fanned herself with her hand. “Plus he has a really nice set of shoulders, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  Jaine refrained from saying that she had noticed everything about Sam. They didn’t need to know about the kitchen-window episode. Funny, she thought, she had regaled them almost every day with tales about her fractious encounters with him when she still thought he was a drunken jerk, but once things started getting more personal between them, she had stopped talking about him.

  “He’s hot for you, too,” T.J. added. “That man wants to jump your bones. Take my word for it.”

  “Maybe,” Jaine said vaguely She didn’t want to discuss how badly her bones wanted to be jumped by him, or how close they had already been to making love.

  “You don’t have to be psychic to know that,” Luna told T.J., her tone wry. “He came right out and said so.”

  T.J. laughed. “So he did. He isn’t shy, is he?”

  No, shy was one thing Sam Donovan definitely wasn’t. Brash, cocky, arrogant, smart, sexy, sweet—those words described him down to his bones. She doubted he had a single shy gene in his body, thank God.

  T.J.’s cell phone rang. “It’s probably Galan,” she said, sighing as she fished it out of her purse. She flipped it open and punched the receive button. “Hello?”

  Jaine watched as her face turned red. “How did you get this number?” she snapped, and punched the off button. “Bastard,” she muttered as she returned the phone to her purse.

  “I take it that wasn’t Galan,” Jaine said.

  “It was that creep.” T.J.’s voice quivered with anger. “I’d like to know how he got my cell number, because I don’t give it out a lot.”

  “Is there an information for cell numbers, maybe?” Luna asked.

  “The account’s in Galan’s name, not mine, so how would he know I’m the one who carries the phone?”

  “What did he say?” asked Jaine.

  “The usual ‘Which one are you?’ crap. Then he said, ‘Marci.’ Just her name. Damn him, that’s a sick thing to do.”

  Jaine put down her slice of pizza. She was suddenly cold all over, the fine hairs at the nape of her neck standing up. My God, what if those phone calls had something to do with Marci’s murder? Maybe it was a stretch, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was some weirdo who really, really hated them because of the List, and now he was coming after them one by one—

  She was hyperventilating. T.J. and Luna were both staring at her. “What’s wrong?” Luna asked in alarm.

  “I just had the most horrible thought,” Jaine whispered. “What if he’s the one who killed Marci? What if he’s after us all?”

  Twin expressions of pure shock crossed their faces. “No way,” Luna said in instant rejection.

  “Why not?”

  “Because! That’s so crazy. Things like that don’t happen. Well, maybe to celebrities, but not to normal people.”

  “Marci was murdered,” Jaine said, still unable to get much volume to her voice. “Was that normal?” She shivered. “The phone calls at home I didn’t think much about, but you’re right, T.J., how did he get your cell phone number? I’m sure there are ways, but most people wouldn’t know how. Are we being stalked?”

  Both of them stared at her again.

  “Now I’ m scared,” Luna said after a moment. “You live alone, I live alone, Galan doesn’t get home until almost midnight, and Marci was alone.”

  “But how would he know that? I mean, Brick was living with her until just the day before,” T.J. protested.

  Her intuition gave Jaine another kick in the gut. She thought she was going to be ill. “It was in the newspaper—’no sign of forced entry.’ I heard Sam talking on the phone. They thought it