How to Score Page 6

  “Investigate federal crimes, search for fugitives, help out local law enforcement when they need it—whatever needs doing.”

  “Do you have a specialty?”

  “I work a lot of organized-crime cases.”

  Her eyes widened. “You mean the Cosa Nostra?”

  He shook his head. “Mainly the Russian mob or the Calabrian Mafia.”

  “I’ve never heard of the Calabrian thing.”

  “It’s a group of much smaller, less organized crime families from another part of Italy.”

  Sammi’s hazel eyes regarded him with rapt attention. “What sorts of things do they do?”

  “Typical, everyday family activities—racketeering, heroin trafficking, murder.”

  Her eyes widened. “Yikes. My parents just took us to the park.”

  Chase grinned, then caught himself. What was he doing, running off at the mouth about his work? He was here to find out about her.

  He looked around, and his gaze lit on a collection of photos on a narrow sideboard in the breakfast nook. He moved toward it and picked up a photo of a smiling couple. “Are these your parents?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do they live around here?”

  She shook her head. “My mom is traveling with a children’s theater troupe, and my dad died about ten years ago.”

  “Sorry about your dad. Why was he in the wheel-chair?”

  “He was a policeman. He was shot in the line of duty.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s rough.”

  “Yeah.” A shadow passed over her eyes. “Another cop accidentally shot him during a scuffle with an armed-robbery suspect.”

  Chase winced. Injuring a fellow officer was every officer’s worst nightmare.

  “Did that happen in Tulsa?”

  She shook her head. “We lived in Dallas. But I’ve always wanted to move to Tulsa. My grandparents lived here and we visited a lot.” She picked up a photo of a smiling elderly couple on a porch swing and handed it to him. “Their house was my favorite place in the world.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  She nodded, her eyes taking on a soft fondness. “Just walking through their door made you feel good. Their house always smelled like baking bread or cookies or pot roast, and someone was always laughing. I think it was such a happy place because it was so filled with love.” She blew out a wistful sigh. “They were married more than fifty years, and they still acted like newlyweds. They adored each other. In fact, my grandmother died six months after Gramps passed away. The doctor said she died of a broken heart.”

  Chase had heard of couples like that but had never seen one at close range.

  He picked up the next photo, which showed a shorter, younger-looking brunette standing beside Sammi in a graduation gown. “Who’s this?”

  Sammi stepped beside him, so close he could smell the fruity scent of her hair. “My sister, Chloe. She lives across town. She looks a lot different now that her hair is dyed blue.”

  Chase’s eyebrows rose. “What does she do?”

  “She’s a starving artist, complete with garret.”

  “I wasn’t aware Tulsa had any garrets.”

  Sammi’s mouth curved in a wry smile. “Leave it to Chloe to find one. But then, Chloe has special talents like that.”

  Sammi slid into one of the chairs at the small breakfast nook. “So tell me about your family.”

  He sank into the chair across the old table. Man, he hated questions about his family. “There’s not much to tell. I have a younger brother, and that’s it.”

  “What does he do?”

  The last thing he wanted to talk to Sammi about was his brother. Better to just keep his background vague, avoid mentioning his name, and move this conversation to another subject, pronto. “He’s, uh, into consulting.” He shifted his weight and shifted the topic. “So—do you run every morning?”

  “Usually every evening. I’m not much of a morning person. I was out this morning because my life coach suggested it.”

  She was up-front about things, he had to give her that. Unfortunately, he couldn’t return the favor. He furrowed his brow and feigned confusion. “Your what?”

  “Life coach. It’s like a counselor or a therapist, only more hands-on.”

  His glance slid over her. Man, I’d like to be more hands-on. Annoyed at himself for the wayward thought, he forced himself to look away.

  She tipped her head and regarded him. “You know, you sound kind of like him.”

  Uh-oh. She was way too observant. “Lots of people tell me I sound like someone they know. The FBI trains us to sound like Joe Average, and I guess it works.” He’d have to remember to talk at a higher pitch next time he spoke to her on the phone. He leaned forward and clasped his hands together on the table. “How does this coach thing work?”

  “He gives me assignments, kind of like a coach gives athletes exercises. He’s trying to help me build skills to deal with my problem areas.”

  “Which are?”

  “My job, my situation with my landlord, and my social life.”

  “What’s up with your social life?”

  “Nothing. That’s the problem.” She grinned and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “What about yours? What do you do when you’re not chasing Mafia types or jogging?”

  Other than impersonate my brother? “I love to be outdoors. I have a little piece of land in the Ouachita Mountains, and I go there whenever I can.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard that’s beautiful.” She rose and moved to the coffeepot as it gurgled out the last drops. “Isn’t there some kind of scenic highway up there?”

  “Yeah.” He stood, as well, and moved back to the counter. “The Talimena Skyline Drive.”

  “Sounds terrific. The closest I ever get to nature is my backyard or Riverside Park. I’d love to try roughing it sometime.”

  I’d love to take you. The words were on the tip of his tongue. What the heck was he doing? He couldn’t see her if he were coaching her. He shouldn’t even be here now.

  She pulled a sugar bowl out of the cabinet, then turned toward him. “Are you going up there this weekend?”

  Why was she asking? Was she angling for an invitation? The idea had a dangerous amount of appeal. He shook his head. “Afraid not. I promised my partner I’d help out at his dad’s booth at an auto swap meet. He and his dad are vintage car buffs, and they sell old parts.”

  “Oh.” She glanced up, her eyes wide. “I didn’t realize you have a… partner.”

  The odd way she said the word jolted him. Oh, hell—she thought he meant life partner! “My FBI partner,” Chase said quickly. “I don’t have the, uh, other kind.”

  “Oh.” Her cheeks turned pink. She turned away and pulled two spoons out of a drawer. “Not that I thought… I mean, not that you can always tell, but until you said that, I didn’t think that you were… I mean, I don’t want you to think that I thought that you were… ” She turned back around. The pink was spreading down her neck. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But you didn’t strike me that way when you were lying on top of me.” Her blush now reached the tips of her ears. “That didn’t come out right, either. I mean, when we fell, I felt a certain chemistry… ” Her face and neck were now completely crimson. “Not chemistry. That’s the wrong word. More of a vibe. I mean, I just got the sense that you were… that you were very… ”

  Interested? Attracted? Aroused? “Straight?” he supplied.

  She nodded.

  “Good read.” God, but the girl could blush. They should name a paint color after the shade of her face: Mortification Scarlet. He grinned at her. “I picked up the same vibe about you.”

  “Um… yeah.” Her face was the color of a third-degree burn.

  He grinned as she turned to the cabinet and stood on tiptoe, reaching toward a shelf of coffee mugs. Her shorts rode up, exposing the curve of two round cheeks. Oh, yeah. There was chemistry, all right. And it was making the room suddenly very warm.


  She pulled down two mugs. One said, “Don’t make me get the flying monkeys,” and the other said, “Cowabunga, dude.” She handed him the Cowabunga cup and poured coffee in it as the dog ambled past. She overfilled it, sloshing coffee on his fingers. He jerked back, only to find the dog behind him. The dog barked, and Chase lurched forward, causing more coffee to slosh out of the cup onto his wrist. Sammi reached out to take his mug and spilled still more hot coffee—this time straight from the pot—onto his shorts.

  “Ow!”

  “Oh, no!” Her free hand flew over her mouth. “Are you all right?”

  His family jewels were parboiled, but aside from that, he was just peachy. Chase yanked the steaming shorts away from his skin. “I’m fine,” he said through clenched teeth.

  Sammi set down the coffeepot, grabbed a dish towel off the sink, and dropped to her knees. “I’m so, so sorry,” she said, wiping at his crotch, her fingers working up the leg of his shorts as she mopped the wet fabric.

  He looked down at her, kneeling in front of him, her hands on his groin, and felt a surge of heat unrelated to the spilled coffee. Apparently the scalding hadn’t permanently wilted his spinach. Stifling a groan, he grabbed her hands, stilling them. “I’ll take it from here.”

  “Oh.” Her face was the color of a radish. “Sure. I, uh—” She rapidly thrust the towel at him and backed away on her knees. “I-I’m so, so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Do you need some ice?”

  Yeah, but not for the coffee burn. What he needed was to get out of here, ASAP. “No. No, thanks. I’d better get going.” He handed her back the towel. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “But you haven’t even had any!”

  “That’s all right. I didn’t realize how late it’s gotten. I’d better run.”

  Away. Fast. What the hell was he doing here, anyway? He’d intended to just get a glimpse of her in the park, not come to her house. This had been a bad idea—a very bad idea. One thing was for sure: she wasn’t kidding about being a hazard to men.

  “I’m mortified.” Her eyes were twin hazel tortes of distress. “I just can’t apologize enough.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s no problem.” But it would be, if he didn’t get the heck out of Dodge. He bobbed his head and backed toward the exit. “It was nice meeting you.”

  With that, he turned and hauled his burning crotch out the door.

  Chapter Four

  At precisely 8:15, Arlene Arnette parked her white Ford Taurus next to a yellow patrol car emblazoned “Guardian Security” in the staff parking lot behind the Phelps Mansion and Art Deco Museum. The night security officer inside the vehicle flashed a jack-o’-lantern smile and rolled down his window as she climbed out.

  “Mornin’, Miss Arlene.”

  “Good morning, Ernie,” Arlene said, extracting the keys to the mansion from the side pocket of her black leather purse. “Did you have a quiet night?”

  Ernie bobbed his lightbulb-shaped head. “Yes, ma’am. Downright boring.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’re ready to get home and get some sleep.” Although he’d probably gotten a good portion of his night’s rest while he was on duty, Arlene thought wryly. She’d pulled up more than once to find him snoring in his front seat.

  “Have a nice day,” she said, giving him a little wave as she started toward the house.

  “You, too, Miss Arlene.”

  Arlene pressed her lips together as she crossed the parking lot. It was hard to remember the last time she’d had a day that qualified as nice. Most days were simply to be gotten through, and others were full of problems. Ever since Sammi had arrived—and what kind of ridiculous name was that for a woman, anyway?—the problems had multiplied exponentially.

  But she wasn’t going to think about that now. Early mornings, when she had the mansion to herself, were her favorite time of day. She walked up the stone steps to the service entrance, inserted her key into three separate locks, and opened the door, then punched a code into the gray security box on the wall. She waved to Ernie—she’d instructed him to always wait until she made it safely inside before he left—then closed the door and locked it behind her.

  The mansion greeted her with stony silence. She’d been the curator for twenty-seven years, but every time she entered the place, it felt cold and unwelcoming—just like the reception she’d received when she’d first come here for a Phelps Oil Christmas party forty-seven years ago.

  Only now, Arlene thought with satisfaction, she was the woman who belonged here. She walked to the butler’s pantry and proprietarily adjusted the thermostat on the wall. She did that every morning, and every morning she received an inordinate amount of pleasure from it. Her lips curving in satisfaction, she turned and headed down the hallway that led to the grand foyer.

  She saw it every day, but it still dazzled her. Rumor had it that a famous Hollywood director had modeled the set of a Cary Grant movie after it, and although she couldn’t confirm it, Arlene was convinced it was true. The floor was white marble, inset with a dramatic black marble starburst in the center. Above the inlay hung a monolithic starburst chandelier sparkling with fifteen hundred triangular crystals. Just beyond, two staircases gracefully curved upward. Black wrought-iron banisters that replicated the starburst pattern rimmed the marble stairs. The left staircase held portraits of the elder Chandler Phelps and his wife; the right side, Chandler Junior and Justine.

  As always, Arlene veered to the right. The metal banister chilled her palm as her soft-soled Easy Spirit shoes squished on the marble steps. She deliberately avoided looking at the painting of Justine but paused in front of the portrait of Chandler Jr., as she did every morning. The painting didn’t do him justice. Oh, it captured his physical form—his dark hair, his broad shoulders, his neatly trimmed mustache—but it didn’t capture the sparkle in his eyes, or the sensuality of his mouth, the mouth that had fit so perfectly against her own. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to recall it. She used to be able to almost taste him when she thought about it hard enough, but more and more, she couldn’t really conjure it up. The memory was like a rail station fading in the distance as a train carried her farther and farther away.

  At the top of the stairs, Arlene turned right and headed down the long hallway of the master wing. Most visitors to the mansion headed straight for Justine’s suite at the end of the hall. It was the opulent room, the one that drew all the oohs and ahs. Filled with gilt furniture and covered in yellow floral chintz from the walls to the elaborate canopy bed, the room was dramatic, glamorous, and ultrafeminine.

  But Arlene had no use for it. She marched straight to the bedroom next to it. Compared to Justine’s room, it was stark and plain and almost severe. The furnishings were oversized style moderne—angular and unornamented rose-wood, with clean lines and sharp corners. The bed was draped in dark red wool, as were the floor-to-ceiling windows. Two club chairs upholstered in a red and blue cubist print sat across from the simple marble fireplace.

  Arlene took off her shoes, unhooked the burgundy velvet rope across the door that kept the tourists at bay, and stepped into the bedroom. She closed her eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply; sometimes when she first stepped in here, she thought she smelled the ghost of Chandler’s aftershave or caught the faintest hint of his cigar smoke. Not today. She hadn’t smelled either in quite some time.

  With a sigh, she headed for the nightstand beside his bed and picked up his chrome alarm clock, made in France in 1925. It still kept perfect time. Winding the key, she pulled out the alarm button.

  And then, as she did every weekday morning, she turned to the bed, pulled back the covers—and crawled between the sheets.

  Sammi’s brow furrowed as she punched the buzzer at the service entrance for the sixth time. This was weird. Ms. Arnette’s car was in the parking lot, so she must be inside, and yet the door was locked and she wasn’t answering.

  Maybe she was down in the basement, sorting through Ju
stine Phelps’s clothes. While Ms. Arnette was recovering from her heart attack, Sammi had discovered trunks and trunks of Justine’s designer clothing, and as far as Sammi could tell, they hadn’t been opened in nearly thirty years. Almost all of the female visitors to the mansion wanted to know more about Chandler Jr.’s beautiful wife, so Sammi had gotten approval from the museum’s board of directors to put together a collection of her gowns.

  When Ms. Arnette had returned to work and learned about it, she’d thrown a hissy fit. She’d ordered Sammi to stay away from the trunks and then gone to the board and protested the project. “We don’t have the time or the space for a display.”

  “We could put it in the basement,” Sammi had argued. “And I’ll handle all the work. I would love to go through the trunks and catalogue the contents.”

  “That’s a task I would need to perform myself,” Ms. Arnette had said in a prickly remember-your-place tone. “I know what’s valuable and what isn’t.” And you won’t. Ms. Arnette clearly viewed her as incompetent, even though Sammi held a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in museology. Ms. Arnette’s credentials consisted solely of having worked as Chandler Phelps’s personal assistant for twenty years, but in her mind, that trumped formal education.

  Sammi brushed a strand of hair from her eyes and pulled her cell phone out of her purse. Ms. Arnette might not be able to hear the doorbell from the basement, but the basement had a phone extension.

  Through the door, she could hear the phone ring, unanswered.

  Sammi’s chest tightened. Ms. Arnette was sixty-eight—older than Sammi’s father had been when he’d died of a heart attack—and she’d already had one massive coronary. What if she’d suffered another?

  Sammi closed her phone and pulled her keychain out of her purse. The board had given her a key to the museum when she’d first been hired, but when Ms. Arnette had returned to work, she’d requested it back. “The more people who mess with the locks and the alarm, the greater the margin of error,” the woman had said.

  Sammi had politely refused to return it. “I won’t use it unless I have to, but the board wants me to have it in case of an emergency,” she’d said.