On the fourth pass a voice broke in above the chopper noise. “Get the blue sedan.”
The picture danced with vibration but held fast to the car as a man emerged, glanced up at the helicopter, and returned to the car. The vibration grew worse, and the picture lost clarity. There was the voice again. “One of the mounts is loose. See if you can—” The screen filled with blue sky, then abrupt blackness.
Dave hit the remote button to rewind the cassette. “He was right. The mount was loose.”
“Do you have any idea what this was all about?”
“No. But I know where to get the answer.” He reached for the cordless phone on the coffee table and dialed. “Howard? This is Dave. I have your tape.”
Kate’s eyes got wide. “Howard Berk? How do you know?”
“I recognized his voice. At least I think I recognized his voice.” He returned the phone to the table. “That was his answering machine. Now all we have to do is wait for him to wake up.”
“This is very creepy. Why would Howard Berk be making videos of my house?”
“My guess is your house was incidental. It happened to be in the flight path. You know anything about the people living in the other house on the tape?”
Kate thought about it. “Not much. That’s a rental property. They moved in about the same time you did. Don’t you know them?”
“No. Lots of different people go in and out. No one ever says hello.”
“Maybe they’re spies.”
“More likely they’re musicians who’ve forgotten to pay their parking citations.” He ran a fingertip along the line of her chin. “Are you tired?”
“Out on my feet.” She’d had a full day, and the cocoa was warm in her stomach. She felt her eyelids droop and blinked them open.
Dave sighed and scooped her into his arms. He carried her into his room and tumbled her into bed. “Are you too tired?”
Kate laughed. “If I say yes, do I get kicked out of this bed?”
“If you say yes, you get to sleep here alone tonight.”
He’d smiled when he’d said it, but she knew he was serious. All she had to do was hold out her hand and he’d be next to her. It was enormously tempting. She couldn’t think of anything nicer than to spend the night wrapped in his arms. She’d known Anatole for a hundred years, slept with him for two, been married to him for one year, and she’d never felt this close, this comfortable, this loving toward him.
David Dodd inspired trust. He was fun. He was intelligent. He was sensitive and sexy. Make that very sexy. She was about to invite him to share the bed when she inadvertently yawned.
Dave grimaced. “Guess that answers my question.” He tucked the quilt around her and bent to kiss her good night. His lips brushed over hers, settling gently, their mouths parted, and the kiss deepened.
Kate wound her arms around him and pulled him closer. “You shouldn’t jump to conclusions.”
His response was swift and silent, his hands taking possession a heartbeat ahead of his mouth. He planned to marry this woman, and if he did, he’d remain married to her for the rest of his life. Put in that perspective, this night should seem insignificant. He should be able to lay this night aside and wait for another evening. A more romantic evening with all the traditional trappings. But he knew that was nonsense. He’d lost all perspective. Kate brought out a response in him that ripped through logic and challenged his self-control. His hands roamed under the nightgown with deliberate exploration.
Flesh met where clothes had been discarded, and they were lost to their passion. Nothing was forbidden. Everything was sacred. What pleasure they’d anticipated paled in comparison to the reality. “Pretty,” he whispered, kissing her breasts, her belly, then moving lower.
He made sure she was satisfied, then he took her, murmuring her name when his own release came.
Afterward there weren’t any words that could adequately explain what had just taken place, so they didn’t speak. They remained entwined, ignoring the tangled sheet and scattered bedclothes, neither wanting to feel alone even for a second.
It was barely light when Kate awoke. She took a moment to orient herself, to come to terms with the warm form beside her. Someone was hammering in the distance. The carpenter, she thought. No, that was yesterday. She heard Dave swear and roll away from her.
He pulled on his jeans before he walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside. “Howard Berk, of course.” He glanced at Kate. “Maybe you’d better get dressed.”
Kate pushed the hair from her eyes. “I haven’t any clothes. I came over here in my nightgown.”
He shrugged into a shirt and grinned. “What’s mine is yours.”
She squirmed out of bed. “Nicely put.”
His smile broadened. He gave her a loving pat on her bare bottom, took the tape from the dresser top, and prepared to saunter down the stairs. “Guess I’ll go let old Howie in.”
By the time the door was opened, Howard Berk’s knuckles were bruised. He grinned affably at Dave and shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “Got your message.”
Dave motioned him in. “Coffee?”
“I’d kill for a cup of coffee.”
“Bad choice of words, Howie.”
“Figure of speech.”
“Uh-huh.” Dave padded barefoot to the kitchen and plugged in the coffeemaker. “So what’s going on?”
Howard slouched in a kitchen chair. “Not much.” He pointed to the cassette Dave had placed on the counter. “That the tape?”
“Yup.”
“Looks like it’s in okay shape.”
“Yup.”
Howard sighed. “How did you know to call me?”
“You recorded your voice while you were taping, and I recognized it when we played it back.” He sliced three pumpernickel bagels and slid them under the broiler. “Jeez, Howard, don’t they teach you anything in spy school? Don’t you watch television?”
Howard laughed. “I’m not a spy. I’m an undercover cop. I’m telling you since you’ve already seen the tape; we’ve had that house across the street under surveillance for the past three months. I even joined the Potatoes as an excuse to be in the neighborhood.”
Dave added water and ground Colombian to the coffeemaker. He put the toasted bagels on a plate and set them on the table with a tub of cream cheese. “You think they’re practicing a little chemistry in their basement?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, but, if I were you, I wouldn’t light a match on that side of the street.”
“Gotcha,” Dave said. He poured Howard a cup of coffee and sat opposite him. “The quality of the tape isn’t all that good. Lots of vibration. You’re going to have to isolate a frame and use some high resolution.”
Howard studied him as he chewed his bagel. “Do we have a face?”
“Yup. Looked right up at you.”
He nodded. “It was worth it, then.”
Kate joined them. “It was worth a hole in my roof?”
Howard looked apologetic. “It was an accident.”
“Some accident. You could have killed me. And what about trying to break into my house?”
“We weren’t trying to break into your house. We were searching the roof. The house was supposed to be empty. I pulled the fence section back to see if there was any evidence of the recorder crashing through the hole, and some crazy old lady almost blew my brains out!”
Dave spread cream cheese on a bagel and refrained from commenting on the location of Howard’s brains. He looked up at Kate and caught her smiling and knew she’d had the same thought.
“Then she took a shot at my partner. She have a license for that bazooka?”
Dave refilled Howard’s cup. “Absolutely. You want another bagel?”
“Better not. My wife has me on a diet.”
“So last night you tried a look-around in the helicopter?”
“Yeah. We were in the neighborhood, doing support for a car chase, and thought we’d give it one last
shot. Sometimes things show up with the spot that don’t show up in daylight. But we didn’t find anything. Where was it?”
“In my azalea,” Kate said. “I saw it from my second-story window.”
Howard pushed back from the table and picked up the cassette. “I’m surprised it wasn’t ruined by the rain. Do you still have the camera?”
Dave handed him a box filled with the camera pieces. “Playing basketball on Thursday?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Probably.”
Howard tucked the box under his arm and looked longingly at the remaining bagel. “I’ve got to go. I’m late for a briefing.”
Dave grinned. “Be a shame to waste that bagel, Howard.”
“You know what she gave me for breakfast? Half a grapefruit and a slice of whole wheat bread. And then she gave me my choice of margarine or jelly. She said it was too many calories if I had both.”
Dave clucked his tongue. “Cops need more than that. Suppose you got shot today because you were weak from food deprivation?”
Howard’s face was a study in solemnity. “You’re right, Dodd. I could very well die for lack of that margarine.” He spread a thick layer of cream cheese on the bagel. “As much as I hate to do this, I’m going to have to eat this whole bagel.”
Dave saw him to the door. “Do me a favor, Howie, next time bag the helicopter and shoot from my window.”
When Dave returned to the kitchen Kate had finished her coffee and was rinsing out her cup. He shook his head. “Uh-oh, I don’t like the looks of this.”
“I’m late!”
“How could you be late at seven-thirty in the morning?”
“I go to an exercise class at eight and a rehearsal at ten. Then at one o’clock I’m giving a noonday recital in a nursing home in Arlington. I have students from three to five. That means I’ll get stuck in rush-hour traffic again. But I don’t have to be at the Kennedy Center until eight tonight…”
“I thought maybe I could take you someplace nice for dinner.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t have time for dinner.” Her regret was genuine. She would have liked to spend an hour or two holding hands and talking. Something important had happened between them, and she didn’t want to treat it casually.
“Will I see you after the performance tonight?”
“Yes! That’d be great.” She ran upstairs and retrieved her nightgown. “I have to go to a reception immediately following, but I should be home around twelve.”
He caught her by the waist and drew her to him. His kiss was gentle and lingering. “Be careful driving. You rush around too much.”
“My day is too short. I need two more hours.”
He’d already reached the same conclusion. She had no Dave time.
Chapter 6
Kate sprinted from the car to her front porch and swore profusely when her house key balked in the lock. She jiggled the key, counted to ten, and closed her eyes in relief when the door swung open. There’d been a minor accident on Constitution Avenue that had backed traffic up clear to Virginia.
The house was dark and silent. Obviously Elsie wasn’t home. She checked her watch. Seven-ten. That was worthy of a few more four-letter words. Kate flung her purse and her packages on the floor and ran up the stairs. It took her thirty seconds of trying various light switches before she realized she had no electricity. She looked out her bedroom window and saw light in other houses on A Street. It had to be her circuit breaker.
She snatched a flashlight from her dresser drawer and took off for her cellar. She had her hand on the cellar doorknob when she saw the yellow note tacked at eye level. “Kate, Beaman accidentally cut through a power line. Electrician will be around in morning. Dave.”
She grabbed a dinner plate drying in the dish drain and smashed it on the floor. “Feel better?” she asked herself. No. She’d have to smash service for eight to feel better today. Now what? She needed a fast shower, and she couldn’t take it in the dark. She returned to her bedroom, threw lingerie, shoes, and makeup in her bag, and took her black cape and a black velvet gown from her closet.
She knocked at Dave’s door, but no one answered, so she let herself in and found him on the kitchen floor, playing with a train. He’d set up an elaborate system of tracks with tunnels and fake mountains and railroad crossings that flashed red lights.
He looked up when her shoes entered his field of vision. “Do you believe this? Isn’t this great? Listen to this, I can make it sound just like a steam engine…”
Kate looked at him coolly. He was thirty-one years old, and he was on his hands and knees playing with a choo-choo. And that wasn’t the worst of it. She was falling for him. Katherine Finn was falling for a man who spent his entire day playing with choo-choo trains. While she was scrambling from one activity to the next, trying to earn a living, trying to become a better cellist, trying to be a good teacher, David Dodd was perfecting the sound of steam. It was frightening. She didn’t have the time or the emotional energy to come to terms with it now, so she filed it away.
“Would it be all right if I use your shower?”
“Sure. Do I get to scrub your back?”
“No.”
“How about your front? I can do amazing things with soap.”
“No! I’m in a hurry.”
He followed her upstairs. “You’re always in a hurry. You need to slow down…”
“I don’t want to slow down. I like being busy.”
Dave took the gown from her and hung it in his closet. She was crackling with energy. Her green eyes flashed at him, and her hair looked as if it might catch fire at any minute. No wonder they called her the Formidable Finn, he thought. Although he knew he should keep quiet, he couldn’t resist making one further comment. “Don’t you think your day seems just a smidgen crowded?”
She kicked her shoes off and pulled the sweater over her head, leaving her in jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt.
“I’ll admit I could benefit from a little organization, but I love all the things I do. Even the practicing. You know, I can’t wait to get up in the morning and sit down with my cello. That’s why I practice so early. It isn’t to get it over with, it’s because I can’t wait any longer to play, to perfect a new piece, to enjoy an old favorite.”
He couldn’t understand that, she thought, because he had no purpose to his life. He was a couch potato. He’d reverted back to childhood. He was a wasteoid. He was the man of her dreams, and she was afraid living with him would be a nightmare. His laziness and lack of motivation would drive her crazy. And what would happen when he frittered away his millions? Sad, she thought. Very sad. She sighed at him and shook her head. “Poor Dave.”
He didn’t know what that meant, but he didn’t think it sounded good. “Poor Dave?”
“Your life is boring!”
“How can you say that? I bought a train today.”
Kate felt her anger rise. He wasn’t perfect. Dammit. He’d made her care about him, and now he was turning out to have a major character flaw. She’d been daydreaming about him all day. She’d considered a relationship. She’d even thought about marriage. And here he was, playing with trains.
“You know what you’re doing?” she said. “You’re raining on my parade.”
“Want to run that by me again?”
“When are you going to grow up?”
“I am grown-up.”
She stormed off to the bathroom. “You’re not grown-up. You spend your whole day playing.”
He raised his eyebrows. “So do you. You play your cello.”
“Well, of course I play my cello. That’s a different kind of play. That’s a figure of speech,” she sputtered. She locked herself in the bathroom, stripped, and jumped into the shower. Good thing she was late, she thought. If she’d had more time, she’d have burst into tears.
Dave knew she would break their date, but he waited anyway, listening for the sound of her car. She came home a little before twelve and went to her house
, not his. He wanted to believe she’d merely gone home to change, but in his heart he knew better. She was angry with him because she thought he lacked ambition. She thought fun was frivolous. She didn’t like trains.
He cringed at the thought of her discovering his attic. His most prized possessions were in the attic, and she’d hate them. She’d think he was a total fruitcake. Upstairs he had: two hundred and twelve issues of Spider-Man comic books; his Spike Jones record collection; his Dick Tracy decoder ring; seventy-three Matchbox cars; a Tonka dump truck and fire engine. And that was just the beginning. He had bubble-gum machines and a pinball machine and WWE action figures.
“Business investments,” he said to his empty house. “Mood music. After all, creative inspiration doesn’t come easy. Some people turn to alcohol, some to drugs… I like toys.”
She avoided him like the plague all day Wednesday, barely waving as she rushed in and out of her house. He was a nice person, but he simply wasn’t for her, she told herself. Yessir, nip this romance in the bud, she decided, before it gets impossibly painful. She’d lived with a man who wasn’t precisely right, and she knew what happened. Loneliness, frustration, and anger. It was a dead-end street.
“What happened to David Dodd?” Elsie asked while she rooted in the refrigerator, looking for supper. “Haven’t seen him around today.”
Kate poked in her cup of yogurt and wished it were a hot fudge sundae. “He probably had some pressing business to attend to. Maybe the supermarket got in a new shipment of comic books.”
“You sound like someone’s standing on your toes. He dump on you?”
Kate wrinkled her nose. “No, he didn’t dump on me. There was nothing to dump. It was all in the preliminary stages.”
Elsie looked disgusted. “The man is a prize, and you let him get away?”
Kate had to admit, he was pretty terrific. She heard herself sigh and gave herself a mental shake. Pull yourself together, Kate. Go practice some Haydn. That was always a sobering experience.
Elsie took a TV dinner from the freezer and slid it into the microwave. “You know what you need? You need a change of pace. You need to do something different. Take your mind off your problems.”