Joan Pickart - Body of Evidence

Once in the frigid basement, she handed him the keys. “My car’s over there, the dark green sedan.”

The tone of her voice said it all for Josh. He’d started something he shouldn’t have, and she resented him now as only a woman perceiving herself scorned could resent a man. God help him, he thought, he hadn’t meant to make Maggie feel scorned, or anything else, for that matter.

“Uh, maybe we should talk about it,” he said without quite meeting her eyes. Damn it, he should have insisted on talking about it upstairs the minute he’d backed off.

Maggie’s eyes flashed pure fire at him. “There’s nothing to talk about. Are you going to try starting my car, or have you changed your mind about that, too?”

Josh knew when to quit. Forcing an issue with a furious woman not only wasn’t smart; it might reasonably be classified as temporary insanity.

He walked away from her without another word, heading for her car.

Maggie worked at the lab all day, going as far with the ice picks as she could without specific instructions to cover the investigative spectrum with them, which would have included DNA analysis. DNA testing would have been imperative if any genetic material had shown up at the murder scene from a second person, ostensibly the killer. Since there was nothing except Franklin Gardner’s own blood, there was no reason to analyze his DNA. Not yet, at any rate.

Maggie’s stack of written reports grew as the morning passed. Around two, she made copies of everything to take with her for the case file, delivered the originals to the clerical department for permanent recording, then gathered her belongings and drove to the Detective Bureau.

The second she walked in someone drawled, “Heard you had car trouble this morning.”

“My, how news does travel around here,” Maggie said wryly. “It was no big deal, just a dead battery. Everything’s fine now.”

“Well, I heard that Benton raced to your rescue.”

Maggie caught the teasing twinkle in the other officer’s eyes. Personal relationships weren’t encouraged between cops, but they happened, and when they did the gossip, the innuendo and the comical remarks-not all of them clean-went on until either the relationship fizzled out or it became old news and everyone got bored with it.

Maggie raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes. “D’ya think he’s on the verge of popping the question? A guy fixing a girl’s car is pretty serious stuff.”

The detective walked off laughing, relieving most of Maggie’s concern about a perfectly innocent incident feeding the gossip mill. True, the morning might not have turned out so innocently if Benton had followed through with that kiss, but he hadn’t and that was the end of it.

At least that was what she’d been telling herself all day. It began and ended all in a matter of thirty seconds, so for God’s sake stop making a big deal out of it. Romance is a lost art, and if you’re naive enough to think that an incomplete pass pertains to anything but a football play, you are living in the dark ages, my girl!

It was sound advice but impossible to accept as the final word on this morning’s episode. Just thinking of it again stirred Maggie’s ire, and she slapped her copies of the lab reports down on her desk, shed her heavy coat and hung it on a nearby hook, all with a sour expression on her face. After shoving her gloves and scarf into her backpack, then leaving everything behind that she’d brought in with her, she went to the New Case file cabinet to get the Gardner file.

It wasn’t there. Obviously one of the other detectives on the case was using it. If it was Josh…?

Frowning, Maggie returned to her desk and sat down. Avoiding Josh for any length of time was impossible, but she wished it weren’t. In fact, she wished she never had to look into those gray eyes of his ever again. He’d humiliated her, not by making his desire to kiss her so obvious, but because he’d changed his mind while looking directly into her ridiculously love-struck eyes. Well, maybe not love, but certainly he must have sensed her weak-kneed acquiescence and anticipation of the big event. Damn him, would she ever live it down?

Sighing because she would rather be laughing than crying-if only to herself-she began thumbing through the reports in front of her. She knew them by heart, but it was something to do until she figured out a way to get hold of the Gardner case file without running into Benton.

Maggie narrowed her eyes in thought. Maybe Colin Waters had it. Actually anyone in the building with an investigative interest in the homicide could be looking through it.

If Maggie had lifted her gaze just a little, and then looked to the left, she would have seen Detective Benton watching her. Josh had called the crime lab, learned that Maggie had left for the day and then taken the case file and headed for the squad room and her assigned desk.

But upon entering the room and seeing her so intently studying the papers in front of her, obviously concentrating so deeply that she heard none of the noise around her, he had stopped dead in his tracks. He should not have made that move this morning, but he couldn’t help wishing that he’d taken it to its logical conclusion. All day he had paid the ultimate price for behaving like a gentleman instead of the horny toad Maggie had turned him into. She drew him irresistibly, and he ached now just from looking at her. It was a shock of huge proportions; never could he have imagined himself getting all hot and bothered over Tim’s kid sister.

Muttering under his breath, he began moving again, walking over to Maggie’s desk. “You might want to see this,” he said gruffly, and laid the case file near her right hand.

Maggie saw that it was the Gardner case file. “Yes, thank you,” she said coolly, although it was a miracle that the sudden flash of heat all but melting her vital organs didn’t show in her voice. She realized with a heavy heart that this could not go on. Her career was at stake, as well as her peace of mind. There had to be a way to bring this unbearable tension between her and Josh to a head and then quash it forever.

“I have these to add to the file,” she said, indicating the reports in front of her.

“Did you run across anything unusual?”

“Actually, no. Whoever killed Franklin Gardner left no part of himself behind. He…or she…is either very lucky or very smart about forensic procedures.”

“Yes, well, that happens. Take a look at the file and if you want to talk afterward, I’ll be around.” Abruptly, Josh turned and left.

Maggie watched him go, but instead of hating him as she had believed to be the case earlier that day, she felt so much yearning that tears pricked her eyes. Heaving a sigh of despair-what in heaven’s name had she done that was so terrible she deserved to fall for a guy who had the ability to look right through her?-she reached for the case file and opened it.

The first thing she saw was the autopsy report and she quickly read that Franklin Gardner had died from a blow to the back of his skull. The ice pick wasn’t meaningless, but it had not been the cause of Gardner ’s death!

But why on earth would anyone stab a dead man? Stab him over and over again? Hadn’t Gardner appeared dead? Was it possible that Franklin Gardner had accidentally fallen and hit his head on the corner of the table? Then someone, the person who had been in the study with him, had used what he had thought was merely unconsciousness as an opportunity to stab the life out of the disabled man?

Frowning, Maggie read on: Bruising on victim’s face appears to have been made by something the attacker was wearing, most likely a large ring. My Lord, the poor man was also beaten?

Maggie sat back, contemplating the conflicting information. After a few minutes she checked the other reports in the file. So far Detectives Waters and Wilson had interviewed the housekeeper and the building supervisor. Miriam Hobart merely repeated in her statement what Maggie had already been told. An unknown noise woke her, she got up to check on it and found Mr. Gardner on the floor in the study. Frightened, she rushed back to her room and called 9-1-1.