Marie Ferrarella - Sundays Are for Murder

Charley laughed softly. “You and me both, Dakota.”

The dog returned to angle her head beneath her mistress’s hand. It was almost as if the animal was petting her instead of the other way around. Charley smiled to herself. Dakota had her trained well.

She could barely place one foot in front of the other and make her way to the living room where the sofa beckoned to her. Sinking into the cushion was like sinking into an old friend. The slightly worn gray upholstery embraced her.

A beat later, Dakota joined her.

Charley closed her eyes, petting the animal again. She’d long since given up trying to keep the dog off the furniture. The sofa was her favorite spot. But Dakota listened to her most of the time, which was more than she could say for the rest of the world.

After a moment, Charley forced herself to open her eyes again. It was either that or fall asleep sitting up. Turning in Dakota’s direction, she noticed that the telephone on the table beside the sofa was rhythmically blinking at her like a red-eyed, menstruating Cyclops.

Three quick blinks, then a long one. That meant three calls.

Charley frowned.

She didn’t have to listen to the messages. Experience told her who had called. He must have heard it on the news, she thought grimly. She had to psych herself up before she tackled returning the calls.

Better yet, she needed to hear a friendly voice first. Charley picked up the cordless receiver and pressed a single button on the keypad, the one connecting her to the only person she could turn to at a moment like this.

It took several rings before she heard the phone being picked up. The moment she heard the deep, rumbly voice honed by years of devoted Scotch-and-soda imbibing, she smiled.

“Hello?”

Charley didn’t bother with a greeting. She didn’t need to. Slipping into a conversation with Ben Temple was as easy as breathing.

“They gave me a new partner today.” She couldn’t help making it sound like an accusation.

She heard the voice on the other end chuckle. “About time.”

She could envision Ben leaning back in that chair he always favored, the one his late wife had begged him to get rid of. Worn, shapeless and faded in a multitude of places, the once-hunter-green recliner matched nothing in the house except for Ben. “I kept hoping you’d change your mind and come back.”

The shoulder that had caught the bullet still hurt when he moved it a certain way. It probably always would. At sixty-three, he didn’t heal the way he had at twenty.

“If I do, it’s going to be to sit behind a desk and puzzle things out, Charley. Don’t forget, I’m not the man I used to be.”

She knew Ben was only baiting her, but she hated it anyway. “You will always be the man you used to be.”

Ben chuckled again, clearly warmed by her loyalty. Childless, he thought of Charley as the daughter he would have liked to have had if Ruth could have had children. “Saying it doesn’t make it so, kid. Saddest thing in the world to watch is a player who doesn’t know when to leave the field.”

“Just because a pitcher loses his arm doesn’t mean he can’t be used for another position in the game.” She was only half kidding even though she knew that Ben had made up his mind. Had known it even when she’d gone to the hospital to visit him right after his operation. Ben’s disability leave had swiftly taken on signs of a more permanent nature. “You wouldn’t have to leap over any tall buildings in a single bound. I could do that for you.”

“Charley—”

“I know, I know.” She tried to sound upbeat, but the truth was, she missed him. He’d been gone only six weeks and she’d visited him as often as she could, but she missed him. Missed seeing his rumpled, lived-in face looking at her from across their desks every day. “But you can’t like just sitting around the house, doing nothing. I know you better than that, Ben.”

“I’m not sitting around, getting bored,” he protested good-naturedly. “I signed up for a night class. I’m finally learning Spanish the way you always kept telling me to. And I’ve got twenty-eight years of TV programs and books to catch up on. Got a whole bunch of tapes and DVDs,” he added to back up his claim. “So give me a few years to get bored. I’ve earned it, kid.”

“I know you have.”

He heard the sadness in her voice and felt the prick of nostalgia. But that part of his life was behind him now, just as being part of a marriage was behind him. “So, tell me. How’s this new guy working out for you?”

Dakota had moved her chin onto her lap. Charley began to stroke the dog’s head. It soothed her. “He’s not you.”

Humor echoed in his tone. “Ugly, huh?” When his former partner didn’t immediately respond, Ben knew what that meant. He’d intended his gibe as a joke, but he’d managed to stumble on a little bit of truth in the process. “Not so ugly, I take it.”

Charley paused before answering. She wanted to be fair. Special Agent Nick Brannigan might have struck her as being a lot of things, none of which she particularly liked, but ugly was not one of them.

“No,” she finally allowed, “not so ugly.”

What she didn’t say spoke volumes to Ben. He’d tried to pair her off with one of his nephews once, but it hadn’t gone too well. That didn’t change his opinion that Charley needed someone in her life. Someone to go home to. Or with.

“So tell me about him,” he coaxed.

“Not much to tell.” She tried to remember what Alice had told her when the woman had stopped by her desk that afternoon. The A.D.’s secretary had managed to just catch her in between trips out of the office. She and Brannigan had canvassed the entire neighborhood, spoken to a good portion of the people listed in Stacy Pembroke’s address book and met with a very broken up Robert Pullman at his restaurant. The man spent most of the interview fighting tears even as he attempted to deny that he and Stacy had been romantically involved. “His name’s Nick Brannigan. He’s just transferred from Washington, D.C. Been with the Bureau for about as long as I have. Maybe longer.”

Ben picked up on the obvious. “Then you must have trained together.”

It gave her pause. For some reason, she hadn’t thought of that. She tried to recall the people in her class at Quantico. As best she could remember, Brannigan’s face hadn’t been among them. “Not that I recall. And I’m pretty sure I would have remembered him.”

Ben had spent five years learning to pick up subtle nuances in her voice. “Are you butting heads with him yet?”

“I never butt heads.”

Ben laughed. “Yeah, you do. With everything and everyone who gets in your way.” His tone grew a little more serious. He worried about her. “You don’t have me around to smooth things out anymore, Charley. You’re going to have to mind your ps and qs.”

She loved his quaint sayings. “Ps and qs I can mind, Ben. It’s orders from people when they’re clearly wrong that I’ve got trouble with.”

“Try not to have trouble with them,” Ben advised. And then he paused before saying, “I hear he’s surfaced again.”

Ben had been on the task force with her. She’d only taken over as primary after he went on disability. “Yeah. He’s crawled out of the woodwork. But this time we’re going to get him, Ben.”

He knew what it meant to her. “Just don’t get hurt doing it.”

Charley smiled. She liked her independence, liked having no restrictions except the rules of the Bureau. But she had to admit she liked to know that someone worried about her.

“I’ll do my best.” Call waiting sent a pulse through the receiver. She was tempted to ignore it, just as she was ignoring the blinking answering machine. But eventually, she was going to have to face him. It might as well be now. “Ben, I’m getting another call.”