Jenna Ryan - Mistletoe and Murder

O’Keefe returned to his car to contact the captain. Jacob set his sights on the house. His biggest priority at the moment was to find Romana.

Wind buffeted him as he jogged toward the front porch. When he reached it, he saw a stout, wooly bear gesturing at a taller, calmer silhouette who was endeavoring to quiet it.

Sentence fragments reached him. Jacob took the stairs two at a time.

“I know what I heard,” the female bear insisted. “And where the shots came from. I called the police straight away.”

Shoving his gun into the top of his jeans, Jacob opened his jacket and showed her the badge clipped to his belt loop.

The relief on Romana’s face was a palpable thing, but whether it was the result of seeing him safe or at being interrupted, he wasn’t sure.

Go with the heart, he decided.

“Are you a neighbor?” he asked the woman.

A round, lined face peered up at him. She pointed with a mittened hand. “I live over there. Heard gunshots, thought Patrick might have been hurt by a burglar. Unless he’s working, he’s not usually out and about at night.”

“Keeps to himself, does he?” Jacob asked while Romana leaned on the railing and took what was probably a well-deserved rest.

“I’ve tried to be neighborly.” The woman sniffed. “Offered to bring him a homemade fruitcake. He said he’d take it. No ‘thank you,’ just a flat, he’d take it. I told my husband I thought he was a strange one. Spends half the nights he’s home up on the third floor doing heaven knows what. Attic light shines right in our bedroom window. We had to buy blackout blinds so we could sleep. My husband figures Patrick being a doctor and all, he might be going over patient files. I have to remind him that the man’s a doctor for dead people, and you can’t bring that kind of work home with you. Not unless you’re a ghoul.”

Romana arched meaningful eyebrows at Jacob and glanced upward. He nodded, took the woman by her wooly upper arms and shuffled her gently toward the stairs.

“Do me a favor, Mrs…”

“Brenner. Kate Brenner. My husband’s Peter Brenner, of Brenner’s Plumbing and Electric.”

“Mrs. Brenner,” Jacob interrupted before she could rev up. “I need you to go back to your house and watch for anyone or anything suspicious. If you see Patrick North, call my cell phone.” He dug a card from his back pocket.

“Where’ll you be?” she demanded.

“Locking up Mr. North’s place.”

“So that wasn’t him went out of here on a stretcher?”

Jacob looked at Romana.

She smiled and shrugged. “Hey, I’m just an unpaid bystander with no information to impart. Except that the guy on the stretcher was alive when he left here.”

“Go home, Mrs. Brenner,” Jacob repeated. “This is a police matter. We’ll deal with it.”

She wanted to object but the expression on his face stopped her. With his card crumpled in her fist, she toddled down the stairs, across the snowy yard and out of sight.

“Thanks for the help, Professor.” Jacob started toward her, his eyes dark and focused. “What cat stole your tongue all of a sudden?”

The last word pretty much died when, with a lightning-quick move, she reached out, snatched up the sides of his jacket and yanked his mouth onto hers.

THE KISS WAS GREAT, exactly what Romana needed to blow the negative energy out of her system. Jacob was safe. Finally, she could function without the oppressive weight of fear crushing her thoughts.

It hardly surprised her that Patrick had escaped-if you could call being on the run wearing nothing but a bathrobe, T-shirt and jeans an escape. The temperature had to be below twenty degrees by now, so unless he knew of a refuge nearby, he wouldn’t be running for long.

With O’Keefe still making calls in his car, she and Jacob mounted the stairs to the attic.

Romana didn’t know what she expected to find there, but it wasn’t the sight that greeted her when they opened the door.

“Oh…wow!” She held the snow-dampened hair from her eyes, pivoted slowly in the center of Patrick’s attic. “This is-well, sick.”

He’d pinned photographs of Belinda, scores of them, to the walls. Many were life sized. All of them were lewd.

Looking up, Romana spied a larger-than-life shot of an impossibly contorted Belinda Critch peering down at her from the ceiling. “My God, how did she get into that position?”

“She was double-jointed.”

With her gaze fastened to the ceiling, she traced the serpentine coil of Belinda’s body with a curious finger. “That’s more than double-jointed, Jacob, that’s a woman with no bones.” She continued to stare, fascinated and repulsed at the same time. “Did you know she could do that?”

A smile that looked suspiciously like a tease appeared as Jacob sifted through snapshots on a rickety table. “I knew she was flexible…”

“Okay, people.” O’Keefe pushed through the door. “I just got off the phone with Harris and… Holy-whoa. What’s all this?” His jaw dropped. “Man, oh, man, this guy is one sick puppy.”

“Tell us about it,” Romana murmured.

His phone rang, and still shaking his head, he stepped onto the landing to answer it.

Romana studied a montage of nude body parts. “Handcuffs with spikes,” she noted, and ran her finger over the shiny chain. Her stomach pitched. “You don’t think he-no, he wouldn’t. Would he?”

“Hurt Fitz?” Jacob came up behind her, rubbed her arms through her coat and kissed her hair. “I doubt it. He was obsessed with Belinda. They’re together in at least half of these shots, so obviously they had an affair.”

“Unless he’s a computer whiz, and he created the photos. His own virtual reality.”

“Always a possibility.”

She pressed herself into him, absorbed his warmth and strength. “I knew he loved her, knew it but didn’t take it any further than that. So was it Patrick who frightened Belinda to the point that she wanted a restraining order?”

“Answer’s probably yes.” O’Keefe came back through the door, pocketing his phone. He shook his head one last time at the photographic wallpaper. “Man, oh man, what some minds can do. That was Harris. Patrick North’s been picked up. He hailed a taxi three blocks from here.”

“The driver let him get in?” Romana was incredulous. “I’d have gunned it in the opposite direction.”

“The guy’s been driving for thirty years, probably seen it all. He got a message through to headquarters. Two patrols intercepted his car. North’s being transported to a well-guarded hospital room. Apparently, he’s decided that everyone in the world knows he murdered Belinda. First Fitz showed up on his doorstep, then after she got away, Critch appeared. Finally, you two descended on him.”

“Critch said he had no idea Patrick and Belinda were involved,” Romana recalled. “He came to find out if Belinda had mentioned being afraid of or worried about someone other than Jacob. He said that lately he’d been starting to wonder if he might not be wrong about who killed her.”

Wrapping his forearm lightly around her neck, Jacob leaned over to ask, “Did he define lately? This is Sunday night, Romana. Twenty-four hours ago, he showed up disguised as a caterer at a Christmas party and left two pipe bombs behind when he took off.”

“Hey, we didn’t get into time frames, and I have to tell you, he threw me totally when he admitted that maybe he’d been wrong about you. Of all the things I expected him to say, that was pretty much at the bottom of the list. Except…” Another memory slipped in and brought her eyebrows together. “He mentioned the Christmas cards. Not once but a couple times.”

Making a final sweep of the walls, Jacob motioned to O’Keefe and ushered Romana from the room. “Don’t tell me he apologized for sending them.”