Sundays Are for Murder

Charley froze. All the warmth within the room seemed to evaporate in an instant. She didn’t have to ask what “another one” meant.

And it sent a chill through her heart.

The voice on the other end of the receiver belonged to assistant director George Kelly’s secretary. The woman was calling on his behalf to inform the special agents assigned to the serial killer task force that another victim had been claimed by the monster who was laying siege to the southland.

Charley pushed back her hair from her forehead. Damn it, anyway. “When?”

“They found the body this morning. It’s believed she was killed sometime yesterday. Kelly wants to hold a meeting as soon as possible.”

Yesterday. Sunday. The same day her sister had been killed. The same day all the victims had been killed. She was beginning to hate Sundays.

Sundays are for Murder

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dear Reader,

You know how you sometimes get a song, or more often, a lyric, stuck in your head and it follows you around for hours, sometimes days, teasing you, haunting you, giving you no peace? Well, that’s how it was with Sundays Are for Murder. It began as a kernel of an idea, just a hint, and it refused to leave me alone. It begged for development and when I had no time to devote to it, it would just sit back, popping up to haunt me whenever I had a couple of moments to rub together. Unlike bits and pieces of an idea that usually fade when I try to remember them, this story wouldn’t go away. It was there every December, my usual “downtime” when I try to catch up on the rest of my life, decorate a ten-foot tree and search for new recipes to try out on my unsuspecting family for Christmas. It became the white elephant in the room, except that no one could see it but me (in that respect, I suppose it was more like Harvey, the six-foot rabbit only James Stewart could see in the movie of the same name). Yes, I’ve been carrying the story around that long. So, finally, through the grace of Patience Smith, my beloved editor, Marsha Zinberg, executive editor in charge of miracles, and the powers that be, here’s the story that wouldn’t go away. I hope you find it entertaining (at least there’ll be one less place at the table for Christmas this year).

I wish you love,

To Patience Smith & Patricia Smith (no relation except for wonderfulness), for always believing in this, and to Marsha Zinberg, who let me do it.

You all have my greatest affection.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

BONUS FEATURES INSIDE

THE SPY WHO LOVED HER

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

HUSBANDS AND OTHER STRANGERS

CHAPTER ONE

PROLOGUE

IT WAS TIME.

He could feel it in the air, taste it on his tongue. Every fiber of his body told him that it was time, that it was Sunday. He knew without looking at the calendar, without hearing the thud of the Sunday paper as it landed on his rickety doorstep.

Because only on Sundays did the feeling come.

And it made his palms sweat, his fingers tingle, his loins tighten in anticipation. The need was getting too large to manage.

It was time again.

Sunday was his time to kill. Because only with death did salvation come.

It had to be quick. Before it was too late.

Each Sunday, the feeling grew until close to exploding within his veins. He was just the instrument.

He looked at his reflection and smiled. No one would ever suspect. No one would ever keep him from his work. He looked so kind, so harmless. There was a time when he had been all that. Oh, he hadn’t looked like the reflection in the mirror—that had taken time and talent and patience to achieve. But he’d been kind, harmless. Eager even. Eager to do the right thing, to be loved.

But all that was before.

Before the betrayal.

Before the need to purge and purify had begun. Before the deaths.

Before he had discovered that he liked it, the feeling of dispensing everlasting redemption. Because it was up to him to make it right. His father had seen to that. It was because of his father that the calling had come to him. The calling to set troubled souls free.

The calling came now.

He took a deep breath and began the ritual.

Because Sundays were for murder. And redemption.

CHAPTER ONE

STACY PEMBROKE WAS angry. Very angry at being shoved into second place.

Second place meant runner-up. Nobody ever remembered who came in second in anything. Second place was an insult. And lately, it was a position she was becoming all too familiar with. A position she had been forced to occupy much too often in the last few weeks. Maybe even the last few months if she was being honest with herself.

It was time for Robert to make up his damn mind.

“I don’t need this kind of grief,” she shouted into the telephone receiver, which she held in a death grip. She was squeezing so hard, if the receiver had had a pulse, it would have been erased by now. “Just who the hell do you think you are, canceling on me at the last minute this way? You think I have nothing better to do than sit around, waiting for you to show up on my door?”

The fact that she didn’t have anything better to do didn’t change her indignation. It was the principle of the whole thing. Robert was taking her for granted, something she had sworn would never happen to her. And if by some chance it did happen to her, she’d promised herself to take drastic measures. Like castrating the bastard who was guilty of the crime.

“I’ll make it up to you, baby, honest I will.”

Stacy fumed. He was whispering. Keeping his voice low so that she wouldn’t hear him. That harpy of a wife he supposedly hated. If she listened very closely, Stacy could almost hear Robert sweating. He had to be fidgeting, the way he did when he was caught in a lie.

Good. She hoped his damn blood pressure went through the roof, killing him. He deserved it. Nobody treated her like day-old trash and got away with it. For two cents, she’d pay a call to his precious Emily, tell her what her husband had been up to all those nights he’d told her he was working to provide a better future for them.

As she toyed with the thought, her full, freshly made-up lips peeled back into a smile. It would serve him right if she did just that.

“I am through rearranging my life for you, Robert.” And she meant it. She was through serving up her heart only to have it carved into small, bite-size pieces. “Now you’re obviously not going to leave that frozen Popsicle of a wife—”

On the other end of the line, Robert Pullman drew in a shallow breath. She could hear it. God, but he was a mouse. “I told you, the kids—”

“The kids. The kids. The kids!” Stacy shouted into the receiver, her face turning red, a stark contrast to her ash-blond hair and her all but alabaster skin. It was an effort for her to keep her temper from really breaking free. Her nerves were frayed and strained. These days, she reached the boiling point at lightning speed. But if she finally let go, she knew that she ran the imminent danger of falling completely apart.

If that was going to happen, it would be because of someone who was a hell of a better catch than Robert Pullman.

But her dwindling opinion of him didn’t stop her from verbally assaulting her lover for his transgression. “Don’t you think that I want kids of my own?”

Frustration throbbed in his voice. “Stacy, I know. Look, I don’t have much time to talk. Emily thinks I’m in the garage, working on a project.”

Emily. She’d have thought by now that Emily Pullman, along with her bratty kids, would have been a thing of the past. Hadn’t Robert promised her as much? When he couldn’t make Christmas last year because he had to take his family on a trip to Lake Tahoe, he’d promised her that this year, they would be ringing in the New Year together. Well, it didn’t look as if he was capable of ringing in a Sunday night, much less the New Year.

And she was sick of it.

“I hope to hell that it’s a noose to hang yourself with!”

“Honey,” Robert pleaded as loudly as a whisper would allow. “I know you’re mad—”

“Mad?” Stacy scoffed. “Mad? I am way past mad, Robert. I rounded the corner at ‘furious’ a long time ago. But you know what? I just don’t care anymore.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“The hell I don’t. You’ve stood me up for the last time. I’m having a cleansing bonfire tonight. I’m going to burn all the things you gave me—and the clothes you left here,” she added as the idea took on breadth and form. She knew how particular Robert was about his clothing, how everything had to be hung up just so. Well, she was going to take extra pleasure in stomping on all of it before she sent the articles to their final resting place. “As far as I’m concerned, you are just an unfortunate chapter of my life and I’m closing that chapter, Robert—”

“Stacy, please,” he begged, “don’t you think I’d rather be there with you?”

“If you wanted to be here, you would be here,” she retorted flatly. “I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Robert, but even a dull knife can cut once in a while. This is my once in a while, Robert. This is my time to cut bait and run. So I’m cutting you off at the knees. Go back to your ice queen—”

“Stacy—” Robert began, only to stop as another voice echoed in the background, calling him. A female voice. “In a minute,” he responded irritably.

Stacy’s fingers tightened so hard around the receiver, it was in danger of snapping. She’d been such a jerk, such a hopeless, stupid, stupid jerk. But that was all going to be behind her very soon.

“Go, Robert. Your wife’s calling,” she ordered him coldly.

“No, Stacy, I want—”

She cut him off before he could get any further. “It’s not about what you want, Robert. It’s about what I want for a change.”

With that, Stacy slammed the receiver back into its cradle.

Her tears began immediately. Tears of anger, of remorse and, most plentifully, of regret. Barrels of regret. Not for coming in between a husband and his wife, or even a father and his children. Regret that she had spent the past three years of her life, three of the most youthful-looking years at her disposal, sneaking around with a married man. In the beginning, she had been incredibly naive. Thrilled at the fleeting moments of attention he could spare her. Thrilled to have caught his eye to begin with. And he had been generous. Incredibly generous. Before Robert, there had only been costume jewelry. Now there were diamond earrings and gold bracelets.

Diamonds and gold. How the hell could she have sold herself so short? What was wrong with her, anyway?

Stacy stopped to look at herself in the oval hall mirror. What she saw was a still-gorgeous blonde in a filmy negligee. But for how much longer? God, she deserved better than to stand there, waiting for crumbs while Robert’s wife got to eat at the banquet table, devouring whole portions.

“Okay,” she addressed the woman in the mirror. “Okay, so we start over. We stay strong and we start over.” She said it over and over again, until she felt as if she meant it.

What would help, she thought, would be getting rid of every single shred of evidence that Robert had ever been in her life. She took a deep breath. It would be like a caterpillar shedding its cocoon.

“There’s still a butterfly in there,” she promised herself. “A butterfly that’s going to do hell of a lot better than Robert Pullman when she’s through.” It amounted to a declaration of independence. She was through with that lying cheat. That she was the one who had made him such didn’t trouble her in the least.

Crossing back to the bedroom, she went straight to the closet and began to pull Robert’s garments off their hangers. Stacy made a point of stomping on each item she took out, grinding her heel into the fabric.

She’d just yanked off his sweater, the black one she loved so much on him, when she heard the doorbell ringing. Her revelry froze.

Robert.

He didn’t live that far away from here. Only a few blocks. But there was always traffic to reckon with. Still. He must have gone through all the red lights to get here this fast.

A smug expression slipped over her lips. She knew he couldn’t stay away. Knew he wanted her. But she wasn’t won over that easily. Stacy intended on making him crawl for his supper. Or for his pleasure.

Maybe she’d take him back, maybe she wouldn’t, but whatever way she was going to play this, she was determined that he was going to beg.

Confidence filled her veins. She checked herself over in the mirror, ran her fingers through her storm of ash-blond hair, then subtly adjusted the negligee she’d put on when she’d thought he was coming over. Left on her own, she slept in the T-shirt that her first lover had left behind when he walked out on her. She’d spent the past eight years hating him.

Ready to knock him dead, Stacy made her way to the front door, the negligee she’d bought for Robert flapping in her wake as she moved.

“There’s nothing you can say to make me change my mind,” she announced, flipping the two locks the superintendent had recently placed on her door. “Because I—”

The second she yanked open the front door, she froze, stunned. Instead of the rugged physique of her lover, she was looking at a tall, thin, nervous-looking young man. He looked anywhere between his late twenties and early forties. He had the type of face that was impossible to place, although he did look vaguely familiar. But then, she waited on so many people during the course of the evening at Robert’s restaurant, it was hard to remember a select number, much less everyone.

“Oh.” Impatient, disappointed, Stacy gripped the doorknob. “Who are you?”

The man was dressed completely in brown. Brown shoes, brown slacks, brown pullover. He seemed to almost fade into the hallway. He cleared his throat before answering, as if he wasn’t accustomed to speaking to anyone but himself. One of those nerd types who invented things the world suddenly couldn’t do without, Stacy thought. She wondered if he’d done anything of importance and if he was worth a lot of money. Certainly he didn’t dress that way. But then, rich nerds never did.

“Jason, ma’am. Jason Parnell,” he added after a beat. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I live just down the hall.” Turning, he pointed vaguely toward the long hallway. “And my phone went out.” Brown eyes looked into hers, imploring. “I was wondering if I could use yours to call the phone company.”

She remained where she was, her hand still on the doorknob, ready to slam it shut. “It’s Sunday.”

He bobbed his head. “Yes, it is. But their customer service line is opened twenty-four/seven. You have to go through several menus, but you wind up with a live person eventually. I’ve been through this before,” he added sheepishly. “Um, I knocked on some of the other doors.” He turned again, nodding at the various apartment doors, behind which all sorts of lives were being led. “But you’re the only one who answered.”

“Look, I’m expecting someone—”

“I’ll be quick,” he promised. “My mother lives with me and she’s not well. That phone is her only lifeline when I’m at work. If I leave tomorrow morning and the phone’s down, she’ll be helpless.”

He looked pathetic, she thought. Exactly what she would have thought a man past the age of twenty and living with his mother would look like. She didn’t remember seeing him in the building before, but then, he was one of those people she wouldn’t have noticed unless he was lying on the pavement next to her feet.

She supposed there was something to be said about a man who cared that much about his mother. At least he was better than a dirty, rotten, cheating husband who used his wife as an alibi every time he didn’t want to bother coming over.

“Your mother, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am.” His head bobbed again, like a subservient creature. “She’s eighty-five and in a wheel-chair.”

“All right, all right, you’re breaking my heart.” With a sigh, Stacy opened the door and stepped back. “Come on in. But make it quick,” she added.

Turning away, she didn’t see the smile that curved her neighbor’s lips.

“As quick as I can. I promise.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE INSTANT the apartment door slammed shut behind her, Charlotte Dow tossed down the dog leash and began stripping off her dripping clothes.

Taking this as a signal that a new game was afoot, her sixty-seven-pound jogging companion stopped shaking herself off and watering everything in sight. Instead, the German shepherd leaped up in front of her to catch one of the flying garments. Only sharp reflexes on Charley’s part kept mistress and pet from tangling together and falling on the floor.

“Dakota, if you ever hope to see another table scrap, you’d better get your hairy little butt out of my way. Now. I’m running late,” Charley said.

Ears down, a mournful look aimed directly at Charley’s heart, the German shepherd retreated to her favorite sunken-in spot on the worn gray sofa, still dragging her leash with her.

Charley could all but hear the violins playing in the background. She frowned. Great, more guilt, just what she needed.

Hopping first on one foot, then the other, Charley yanked off her running shoes. She needed new ones, she noted. The heels were beginning to wear.

She heard Dakota sigh. “I know, I know, it’s my own fault. I should have remembered you don’t like running in the rain, not unless it’s after a cat.”

Which was exactly what had appeared on the greenbelt that ran just behind her apartment complex. A golden-colored ball of fur had materialized to taunt Dakota before turning tail and flying down off the path.

In her eagerness to give chase, Dakota had nearly sent Charley sprawling into the freshly formed mud created by an unexpected shower on the city. Who knew it was going to rain? Certainly not the weatherman.

Charley rotated her right shoulder. She had no doubts that her efforts to hang on to the dog had lengthened her right arm by an inch, possibly two. The dog was far from a puppy, so why did she still feel she could chase after cats and catch them?

For the same reason you’re always chasing after the bad guys, hell-bent to bring them all in, even with the odds against you.

Like dog, like master.

Charley tossed off the last of her wet clothes, grabbed the pile and hurried into the bathroom. Habit had her grabbing both her cell phone and the wireless phone that was perched on the table against the wall two steps shy of the entrance.

She was an FBI special agent attached to the Santa Ana field office. That meant on duty or off, she was on call twenty-four/seven. That meant everywhere, including the bathroom.

Charley closed the door behind her and set both phones on the window ledge in the shower stall before she slipped in. After angling the showerhead, she turned on the faucet. Warm water turned to hot almost immediately. Steam formed, embracing her, leaving its imprint in the form of tears along the light blue tiles.

It would have taken Charley no effort at all to remain there for the next hour, just letting the heat penetrate, melting the tension from her body. But there was no room for indulgence this morning. Her alarm clock had failed in its effort to rouse her. When she finally had woken up, thanks to Dakota’s cold nose pressed up against her spine, Charley had taken one glance at the clock and hit the ground running.

She was forty-five minutes behind schedule.

Another person would have foregone the four-mile jog that began each morning. But Charley was all about dedication and routine. Come six o’clock, she was out there, pounding along the thin ribbon of asphalt that threaded its way from one end of the greenbelt to the other. Rain or shine. Only the call of duty arriving in the middle of the night interfered with her schedule.

Charley shampooed her long blond hair while humming the chorus from the Rodgers and Hammer-stein song, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.” There was no man to wash out, not from her hair or her life, but she liked the song. She’d always taken comfort in the familiar.

Not like her twin sister. Cristine had always been the risk-taker, the one who was willing to rush off into the unknown. The one who hadn’t needed the familiar or the comforting. Charley had been the one who took things slow and easy.

And she’d been the one who’d survived.

Not now.

Charley shook thoughts of her sister away. Had to be the dank weather penetrating her soul. She liked the sunshine better.

She’d just started to work the lather out of her hair when the phone rang. The chimes identified it to be her cell, not the landline. The sound worked its way through the running water, through her humming.

Never a dull moment.

With a sigh, Charley wiped her eyes with her fingertips, shut the water and brought the cell phone down to her ear.

“Dow.”

“There’s been another one.”

Charley froze. All the warmth within the stall seemed to instantly evaporate. She didn’t have to ask another one what, she knew.

And it sent a chill through her heart.

The voice on the other end of the receiver belonged to Assistant Director George Kelly’s secretary, Alice Sullivan. The woman was calling on his behalf to inform the special agents assigned to the serial-killer task force that another victim had been claimed by the monster who was laying siege to the Southland.