Maynard wasn’t looking so much as listening to her neighbor Chris Blackburn’s thumbnail account of the attempted break-in on her midcentury town house.
“Your alarm went off when the guy tried to jimmy the back door.” Chris cocked a thumb over his shoulder. “He must have burned rubber across your lawn. Cops showed within four minutes.” He grinned. “That’s gotta be a first, right? I flashed my ID and went inside with them, but I don’t think whoever it was made it past the back stoop.” His grin widened as he rested both arms on her shoulders and set his face close to hers. “So how was your day, sweet cheeks? Did you cut into anyone worth mentioning?”
“A cute sixteen-year-old with a ruptured spleen and a guy with a gunshot wound to his right leg. Sorry, no gory details on that one.” Meliana looked past Chris at the pair of approaching detectives. “Hey, Julie.”
The female of the pair smiled. She had straight, chin-length blond hair, a squarish jaw and bright haze-green eyes. “Are you going to check your place with me, Mel, or hang out all day with that fed?”
“He’s being supportive,” Meliana said, but she tapped Chris’s arms with her index fingers and got him to drop them. “What do you think—did he get inside?”
“I doubt it.” With a nod to her partner and another head motion at Meliana, Julie started up the rear stairs. “I always think it’s weird when people try to break and enter town houses—them being so close together and all. But you’re on an end, so I suppose he figured he could pull it off. What are you doing, Blackburn?” she asked over her shoulder.
“Supporting a friend, Detective Denton.” He quirked a brow. “You got a problem with that?”
“I’ve got a problem with most feds, and you in particular. If Mel needed the FBI, which she doesn’t, her husband, your former partner, would pull rank on you in a minute. Go home and watch the Sox get their tails whipped.”
Chris’s brow went higher. “Aren’t you in Homicide these days? I don’t see any dead bodies around here.”
“It’s called looking out for a friend, Blackburn. Although you seem familiar with the concept, this isn’t your turf. Go away.”
Despite the situation, Meliana’s amusement rose. Julie and Chris had dated once, and it hadn’t gone well. They’d butted heads, tossed a little too much alcohol into an already volatile mix and very nearly wound up having their own private kickboxing match.
“That’s enough, you two. Do you have any idea who it was?”
“Not a clue. This neighborhood’s been pretty clean lately.”
“Except for the car thieves,” Chris remarked from behind.
“She still has her car, doesn’t she? I’ll go through the house with you, Mel, but it looks like the guy bolted when he heard the alarm.”
“Which is exactly what I said earlier,” Chris countered with a smug air.
Meliana jabbed his ribs. “Stop needling her, Blackburn, or I’ll think you’ve been spending time with Johnny.”
Chris snorted. “No one’s been spending time with your hubby—sorry, ex-hubby, Mel. He lives like a hermit up at Blue Lake. Last time I saw him he had one beer, two eggs and a few scary-looking slices of white bread in his fridge.”
They were separated, not divorced, Meliana reflected, but she let it go. “Eileen Crawford cleans house for him. She’ll stock his fridge. Did anyone look in my cookie jar? For money,” she added when Chris opened his mouth. “I keep extra cash inside for emergency pizzas.”
“God, you eat as bad as Johnny.” Julie pushed the door open. “It’s a miracle you two lived long enough to get married.”
“She dug a slug out of his chest is why they got married,” Chris said.
“Nice try, but how we met isn’t why we got married.” Meliana scanned the living room. “Seems fine here.”
It was the same in the bedrooms, the dining room, the bathrooms and the kitchen. Even her cookie jar rattled with loose change.
“A twenty, two tens and a chewed five-dollar bill. My neighbor’s new puppy’s teething,” Meliana explained, screwing the lid back on. “The only drugs I have are run-of-the-mill aspirin, and my wine cooler still has seventeen bottles inside. I’d say he took off.”
“Good.” Julie closed her notebook. “I can write my report and be home by seven. Hot date.” She grunted in Chris’s direction. “Thankfully, not with a fed. You know, the only one of their kind I’ve ever been able to tolerate is Johnny, and even then there were times when I wanted to shove his ID up his—nose. Shut up,” she said before Chris could speak. “I’m leaving, Mel. If you find anything missing, call me on my cell.”
Through the kitchen window Meliana watched the storm clouds creep inland from the lake. The premature darkness reminded her of her wedding day when thunder had rumbled in the background of the outdoor ceremony and lightning had ultimately struck one of the three trees on the perimeter. She had to admit, no matter how it had ended, her relationship with Johnny Grand had been anything but dull.
“What are you smiling at?” Chris lounged against the counter and threw a tangerine into the air. A shrewd brow went up. “Johnny?”
She laughed. “I swear that lightning bolt was an omen.”
“You think it was funny?”
“In retrospect. Come on, Chris, we were amazing for a while.”
“And then Johnny went undercover.”
“Yes.” She sighed. “He did.” Tossing her purse onto a chair, she headed for the stairs. “I need to change. I’m having dinner with the head of surgery and his wife tonight.”
Chris followed her up. “All by your lonesome?” He clucked his tongue. “Not good, angel face. But no fear, I happen to be free.”
“I’m not. I have a date.”
He caught up with her and handed the tangerine over her shoulder. “That’s not very nice, is it? Choosing a stranger over a friend and neighbor who’s been there for you through thick and thicker?”
“If that’s an offer of help, I accept.” Amusement danced in her eyes as she turned. “It’s a blind date, with the head of surgery’s wife’s nephew. You go in my place, tell the geek you like men who giggle and I’ll go for a nice long run on the beach.”
“On second thought, I might be getting a migraine.”
“Yeah, I figured.” She started for the bathroom, then paused and backtracked.
“What?”
She regarded her top dresser drawer. It was open almost a full three inches. She always closed her drawers, not because she was a neat freak but because she’d gotten a puppy recently and he’d chewed several pieces of her clothing to shreds. On the other hand, the puppy had pretty much grown into a dog at this point.
“Mel?”
She
