Marie Ferrarella - Sundays Are for Murder

“Are you pumping me, Special Agent Brannigan?”

His expression was unreadable. She didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or genuine. “Wouldn’t dream of it. Just making conversation with my new partner.”

She studied him for a moment over the rim of her swiftly cooling container of coffee. “You’d rather be working with a man, wouldn’t you?”

The question had come out of the blue. As far as he knew, he’d done nothing to give her that impression. Maybe she was speaking from experience. “All things being equal, I just want to work with a good agent. Male, female or pollywog, doesn’t matter to me.”

His response amused her. “The recruitment for pollywogs is drastically down this year,” she deadpanned. “Something about a height requirement.”

Nick matched her, tone for tone. To anyone listening, they could have been engaged in a serious conversation. “Oh really? I would have thought it might have something to do with the fact that they have trouble hitting the mark on the target range.”

She nodded, this time using the container to hide the smile that was curving her mouth. “No opposable thumbs.”

“No hands to put them on,” he countered.

“That, too.” She lowered the container. The smile remained. “Maybe we’ll get along after all, Special Agent Brannigan.”

It would go a long way to making things easier. “Then maybe you’ll call me Nick.”

“Maybe,” Charley allowed as she returned to her desk. She added, “We’ll see,” and then got to work.

THE MOMENT Robert Pullman saw them enter his restaurant and head straight toward him, he looked uncomfortable. Rounding the reservations desk, he waved to one of the hostesses, indicating that she should take his place.

It was obvious that the handsome owner didn’t want them to be overheard.

“We have a few questions we’d like to ask you, Mr. Pullman,” Charley told the man.

The restaurant owner stood about six-two, and right now every inch of him seemed to sweat.

“Of course. Anything I can do to help,” he murmured. “If we could just go into my office.”

“Your office is fine,” Charley agreed obligingly.

As she followed Pullman to the rear of the restaurant, she was aware of the fact that her new partner wasn’t trying to take over the interview. She appreciated that. At the same time she couldn’t help wondering why. In her experience, men Brannigan’s age usually engaged in some sort of jockeying for position. So far, he hadn’t. She didn’t know whether to relax or remain on her guard. He could be counting on her relaxing that guard.

Only time would tell, she supposed.

The moment the door was closed, she appraised Pullman. Mr. Forty-two Tall, she thought. She was willing to bet a month’s salary that the clothes in Stacy Pembroke’s bedroom belonged to him.

“What size are you, Mr. Pullman?” she asked mildly.

Pullman seemed in danger of swallowing his own tongue. “Excuse me?”

“What size are you?” Charley repeated. “Specifically in jackets.” Charley glanced over toward her left where Nick was standing. “I’d guess a forty-two tall.” She turned her head toward Nick. “How about you, Special Agent Brannigan?”

Nick backed her up. “That would be my guess.”

Pullman’s intake of breath was audible. It told them everything they needed to know.

“We found clothes in Stacy Pembroke’s bedroom, Mr. Pullman,” Charley told the man. “Men’s clothes.”

“Piled up on the floor,” Nick interjected in a low-key voice. “Like she was dumping someone.”

Charley straightened slightly. The look in Pullman’s eyes was that of a cornered animal. “That wouldn’t have been you, would it, Mr. Pullman?”

“Was Stacy dumping you?” Nick pressed.

Pullman looked nervously from one FBI agent to another. She was willing to wager that ordinarily Pullman was probably a smooth operator. But the layers were being peeled away, leaving a frightened man beneath. A frightened, married man who didn’t want his wife to know about his affair. Graying at the temples and more than twenty years Stacy’s senior, Pullman had probably seen the young waitress as a fantasy come true.

“No!” he cried with emphasis, then realized what he had just admitted to. “I mean—” Desperate, he appealed to Nick in an apparent man-to-man play for sympathy. “Look, if my wife finds out that I was having an affair, she’s going to leave me.”

“I think, right at this moment, having your wife walk out on you might be the least of your problems,” Nick said.

Pullman’s brown eyes grew huge as the words registered. “You think I did this?” His head almost swiveled as he glanced from one agent to the other. His voice fairly squeaked. “You think that I killed Stacy?”

Charley exchanged looks with Nick before answering. “The thought did cross our minds.”

“No. Hell no.” Pullman’s voice rose with each word of denial. “I can’t even kill a roach. Ask anyone.” He pointed wildly toward the outer room. “I get one of the busboys to stomp on it.”

“So who did you get to stomp on Stacy?” Charley asked, moving in a little closer to the man.

Pullman squirmed. “It’s not like that.”

Quietly Nick had moved to his other side. “Tell me what it is like, Mr. Pullman,” he urged evenly.

“Stacy was fun. She made me feel young again. The way I hadn’t felt in years.”

Same old story, Charley thought. Older man needing affirmation, younger woman needing trinkets. But she wanted Pullman to spell it out for them. “And what did you make her feel like, Mr. Pullman?”

Pullman gave a helpless shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t know. I—I gave her things.”

The owner looked from one to the other again uncertainly. Was he trying to guess if he’d given the right answer? Charley wondered. Was this the guilt of a cheating husband they were witnessing, or of a murderer? Everybody was a suspect. Until they had their man.

“Like promises?” Nick guessed.

“No,” Pullman cried.

Charley was quick to push the advantage. If Pullman was going to be pressured into telling the truth, it would be now. “Maybe you promised to marry her and she found out you were lying.”

“No!”

Charley continued as if the man hadn’t made the protest. “Stacy threatened to tell your wife about the two of you. You saw your business going south, losing everything you’d worked for. You tried to talk Stacy out of it, she refused. You lost your head. You grabbed her by the throat and squeezed, trying to get her to say she wouldn’t ruin your life. You squeezed a little too hard.” Charley lifted a shoulder casually. “These things happen.”

“No, no.” Panic was rising in Pullman’s voice. “That’s insane.” He was visibly shaking now. Charley raised her eyes to Nick. Her partner kept a solemn expression in place as he listened to the restaurant owner. “Look, I never laid a hand on her. Ever,” he emphasized. “I really liked her. A lot. I wouldn’t have hurt her. I swear,” he repeated, his eyes pleading with them to believe him.

“You were the last one she talked to. We checked the phone records,” Charley interjected before the man could protest.

The breath Pullman released was shaky. He was a man on a tightrope, knowing he couldn’t remain in place but afraid of falling if he took a step. “I did call her on Sunday. But it was to tell her that I couldn’t make it. She got really angry at me and hung up. It was the last time I talked to her.”

The significance of his own words seemed to penetrate. Pullman pressed his lips together, struggling with tears. The tears won. They slid down his cheeks. He brushed them away angrily.

“The last time,” he repeated in a voice choked with emotion. He looked directly at Charlie and added, “I swear.”

“You swear a lot, Mr. Pullman.” A tolerant sigh escaped her lips. After a beat, Charley nodded. “All right, Mr. Pullman. That’s all for now. We’ll be in touch.”

THEY LEFT HIM standing in his office, visibly shaken. Not by the threat of incarceration, Nick thought, but because the death of his mistress had finally registered.

Walking out of the building, Nick automatically held the door open for his partner. He was mildly surprised that Charley didn’t say something about being able to get her own door. Maybe she wasn’t all that militant after all.

“You believe him?” she asked as they approached her vehicle.

Nick didn’t have to think about it. He’d formed an opinion during the questioning.

“Yeah, I do.” Then, because he knew she wanted reasons, he added, “Pullman really looks broken up about the girl’s murder.”

After deactivating the security alarm, Charley opened the white Honda’s door and got in behind the wheel. “Could just be acting.”

After getting in on the passenger side, Nick buckled up. “I don’t think so.”

Instead of starting the car, she turned to him, curious. The beginning of a working relationship was like a dance with a stranger. You had to feel him out, make sure you didn’t wind up with flat, crushed feet. “And you base this on what, gut instinct?”

Nick shrugged. “For lack of a better word, yes.”

Key in the ignition, Charley started the car. She kept her profile to him so he wouldn’t notice her amused smile. “How often has your gut been right?”

“More than not.” He shifted in his seat as she peeled out. The woman had an Indianapolis 500 complex, but he was determined not to show her that her driving rattled him. “Besides, aren’t we operating under the assumption that the girl was murdered by the Sunday Killer?”

She glanced in her rearview mirror. Traffic was almost nonexistent. Just the way she liked it. She opened up a little more. “Just ruling out a copycat murder.”

“I thought the tiny cross on her forehead did that,” he reminded her.

For the most part, he was right. But she liked to cover all contingencies, just in case. “Just crossing my ts and dotting my is.”

He knew law-enforcement agents who needed only a hint before they ran with something. She was more meticulous than he would have thought.

“You always so thorough?”

“Always,” she answered with finality. “If you want a case that’ll stand up in court, you have to make sure you don’t leave anything for the other side to pick up on.”

“Makes sense,” Nick allowed. “So we’re back to looking for the Sunday Killer.”

“Yeah.” And she wanted the man so bad she could taste it. She realized that she was holding on to the wheel with enough strength that her knuckles were turning white. With effort, she forced herself to relax her grip. “Let’s hope forensics has come up with something for us. Fibers, hairs, something.”

The people in the crime-scene-investigation department had taken an incredible number of items from the scene. Undoubtedly, most would lead them to a dead end.

Nick glanced at her rigid profile. The case meant a lot to her. Considering her connection, he didn’t wonder. “You feeling lucky?”

Charley stared straight ahead as she drove. She hadn’t felt lucky in a long, long time. “No.”

“Me, neither.” He sank back in his seat, crossing his arms before him. He figured whatever luck he had was being used up right now, as he sat here, watching the scenery whiz by. So far, the woman hadn’t crashed them. “Let’s hope anyway.”

NATASHYA KOVAL WAS bent over her work when they entered the lab twenty minutes later. She glanced in their direction, then smiled.