He grinned, not pausing in his brisk, practiced actions. “I like ruffling her feathers,” he admitted. “I thought about unsnapping my jeans, but I decided against it. Overkill.”
“It’s a good thing. You might not have made it back into the house unscathed, if you had.”
“Really pissed her off, huh?”
“Not exactly.”
He glanced up, his expression quizzical. Marlie smiled sweetly at him. “Lou fell in lust with your manly form, big boy.”
After a startled moment, he began laughing. He was too heavy for her to budge his chair, so she shoved the table away and planted her hands on his shoulders as she straddled the chair and sat down on his lap. His laughter stopped, that familiar tenseness hardening his features. “I know how she feels,” Marlie whispered, nuzzling his jaw. Her heart pounded at the scent of him, all hot, musky male mingled with the sharp odor of gun oil. She moved slowly against the ridge in his jeans.
“Wait.” His protest was feeble. “I have oil on my hands.”
“So? I’m washable,” she murmured, and that was all he needed to hear.
The weekend was wonderful. She ignored the frisson of alarm that was always there, never quite allowing her nerves to settle down, and enjoyed what she had. There were no visions, no false alarms of copycat murders. She suggested going over to his house to see how everything looked, but he was in a lazy mood and didn’t seem interested. They watched television and read. They tried out recipes … or rather, Marlie tried them out, while Dane kept her company and sampled the results. And they made love, often. It was exactly the type of life Marlie had always wanted, and always thought impossible.
By Monday, with nothing happening over the weekend, the press reports were scathing. The Orlando PD had overreacted, like Chicken Little squawking about the sky falling. One columnist suggested that not only had they made fools of themselves on the basis of two similar murders, but the hoopla might even have triggered the copycat murder of Felicia Alden.
“They forget,” Dane said sarcastically, “that the department isn’t responsible for all the publicity; the media did that. We’ve been trying to keep everything as low-key and under wraps as possible.”
Marlie gave him a troubled look. “But now, with them calling it a false alarm, people will stop being as careful. It’s giving him a greater opportunity of success.”
“Tell that to the press. All they’ll give you is the smart-ass answer that they don’t make the news, they just report it.”
“If reporting was all they did, that would be fine. But they angle it, they slant it, they ‘interpret’ it.”
He saw how truly upset she was; he was pissed off, but the press reports bothered Marlie on a deeper level. He remembered that her experiences with the media generally weren’t pleasant, and he swiftly changed the subject.
Janes was pleased with what he had accomplished over the weekend. He had made several casual trips by the Elrod house, and been delighted by what he had discovered so far. The house was large and upscale, set in the middle of a big lot with an excess of landscaping that would provide plenty of cover. Six-foot-high fences marked the boundary lines of almost every lot in the neighborhood, which further restricted any nosy neighbor’s observation.
He hadn’t seen Mr. Elrod, though the city directory listed one. Was he out of town? It was a concern that had been laughably easy to answer, though the answer had come from an unexpected source. Marilyn Elrod had conveniently left the house not five minutes before her mail was delivered, and Janes had simply used the opportunity to collect the mail and go through it. Some of the usual assortment of junk mail had been addressed to a Mr. James Elrod, confirming his existence. A more interesting envelope bore the imprint of an Orlando law firm. Janes didn’t hesitate to open it, and what he read greatly pleased him. It seemed Mr. and Mrs. Elrod were currently embroiled in divorce proceedings, and Mr. Elrod had recently moved out. What a pity.
He kept the letter, since it had been opened, and shoved the remainder of the mail back into the box. A quick look around the house revealed that there was no dog—if there had been, it would have been barking like mad by then—but there was an alarm system. Not particularly sophisticated, he saw, but a problem. Still, every system had a weakness, and he had no doubt that he would be able to find a means of entry. All in good time, though, all in good time. He wouldn’t make the mistake of hurrying as he had the last time.
“We’re being made to look like fools,” Chief Champlin growled. He wasn’t in a good mood. The mayor had raked him over the coals for jumping the gun and driving old women all over the city into hysteria. Not only that, the bad publicity had cost the city money. Orlando relied heavily on the tourist trade, with visitors from all over the world coming to the Mouse House. The rate of occupancy at the local motels and hotels had fallen off since the news had broken.
“I can’t believe this,” Bonness said plaintively. “Everyone is bitching because someone hasn’t been murdered!”
“There were just two murders. Granted, the details were eerie in their similarity—”
“The FBI agrees that it’s the same man,” Dane broke in. “We didn’t go out on a limb in this, Chief. He’s out there. With the Bureau’s help, we think we’ve identified at least seventeen other killings that he’s done.”
“So maybe he left the city when the news broke!” the chief snapped.
Dane shook his head. “We think he’s still here.”