Night Shift Read Free Page B

“I bet you’re a hell of a detective.”
    “Cilla.” Tired and wishing he was home with his wife, Mark scowled at her. “Let’s cooperate.” Ignoring her, he turned to the detectives again. “The calls started during last Tuesday’s show. None of us paid much attention, but they continued. The last one came in tonight, at 12:35.”
    “Do you have tapes?” Althea Grayson had already pulled out her notebook.
    “I started making copies of them after the third call.” At Cilla’s startled look, Mark merely shrugged. “A precaution. I have them in my office.”
    Boyd nodded to Althea. “Go ahead. I’ll take Ms. O’Roarke’s statement.”
    “Cooperate,” Mark said to Cilla, and led Althea out.
    In the ensuing silence, Cilla tapped a cigarette out of her dwindling pack and lit it with quick, jerky movements. Boyd drew in the scent longingly. He’d quit only six weeks, three days and twelve hours ago.
    “Slow death,” he commented.
    Cilla studied him through the haze of smoke. “You wanted a statement.”
    “Yeah.” Curious, he reached over to toy with a switch. Automatically she batted his fingers aside.
    “Hands off.”
    Boyd grinned. He had the distinct feeling that she was speaking of herself, as well as her equipment.
    She cued up an established hit. After opening her mike, she did a backsell on the song just fading—the title, the artist, the station’s call letters and her name. In an easy rhythm, she segued into the next selection. “Let’s make it quick,” she told him. “I don’t like company during my shift.”
    “You’re not exactly what I expected.”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    No, indeed, he thought. She was a hell of a lot more than he’d expected. “I’ve caught your show,” he said easily. “A few times.” More than a few. He’d lost more than a few hours’ sleep listening to that voice. Liquid sex. “I got this image, you know. Five-seven.” He took a casual glance from the top of her head, down her body, to the toe of her boots. “I guess I was close there. But I took you for a blonde, hair down to your waist, blue eyes, lots of … personality.” He grinned again, enjoying the annoyance in her eyes. Big brown eyes, he noted. Definitely different, and more appealing than his fantasy.
    “Sorry to disappoint you.”
    “Didn’t say I was disappointed.”
    She took a long, careful drag, then deliberately blew the smoke in his direction. If there was one thing she knew how to do, it was how to discourage an obnoxious male.
    “Do you want a statement or not, Slick?”
    “That’s what I’m here for.” He took a pad and the stub of a pencil out of his jacket pocket. “Shoot.”
    In clipped, dispassionate terms, she ran through every call, the times, the phrasing. She continued to work as she spoke, pushing in recorded tapes of commercials, cuing up a CD, replacing and selecting albums.
    Boyd’s brow rose as he wrote. He would check the tapes, of course, but he had the feeling that she was giving him word-for-word. In his job he respected a good memory.
    “You’ve been in town, what? Six months?”
    “More or less.”
    “Make any enemies?”
    “A salesman trying to hawk encyclopedias. I slammed the door on his foot.”
    Boyd spared her a glance. She was trying to make light of it, but she had crushed out her cigarette and was now gnawing on her thumbnail. “Dump any lovers?”
    “No.”
    “Have any?”
    Temper flashed in her eyes again. “You’re the detective. You find out.”
    “I would—if it was personal.” His eyes lifted again in a look that was so direct, so completely personal, that her palms began to sweat. “Right now I’m just doing my job. Jealousy and rejection are powerful motivators. According to your statements, most of the comments he made to you had to do with your sexual habits.”
    Bluntness might be her strong suit, but she wasn’t about to tell him that her only sexual habit was abstinence. “I’m not involved with anyone at