Dating Can Be Deadly

was born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada, where she alternated between fending off frostbite in winter and mosquito bites in summer. Her earliest childhood memories are the musky, dusty scent of the local library bookmobile and losing herself in the adventures of Nancy Drew.

At the tender age of eight, Wendy’s writing career sprouted when she penned the poignant tale of a cup of flour’s journey to become a birthday cake. After a writing hiatus that lasted a few decades, she rediscovered her muse, her sanity and a sated harmony in putting pen to paper once again.

Wendy now resides on the west coast of Canada with her five biggest fans—her husband and their four beautiful children. This is her debut novel.

Dating Can Be Deadly

Wendy Roberts

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Deepest thanks to my mom and dad

for showing me laughter through all things.

For my husband, Brent, for saying I could,

and for my children, Sarah, Daniel, Donovan

and Devin, for making it all worthwhile.

Contents

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 One

I charged through Seattle’s Memorial Cemetery with my arms pumping and heart pounding. My mouth wheezed in great mouthfuls of dreary afternoon drizzle while I ruined a perfectly good pair of black leather sling-backs. To top that off, the purse snatcher, who was at least double my twenty-six years and probably a heroin addict as well, had easily outrun me.

I had a choice, I could either A) continue to run with the hope that I’d eventually wear the thief down with my persistence or B) give up on ever seeing my shoulder bag, a suede Prada knockoff, ever again.

Exhaustion won. I gave up and staggered to a stop. I apologized to Samuel Harvey, 1910-1973, whose tombstone I leaned against while recovering from the impromptu workout.

“He got away?” Stumbling in my direction, with high heels sinking in the sodden grass and with ample bosom rising and falling in deep gasps, was my good friend Jenny. She propped herself up at the opposite corner of Samuel Harvey’s resting place. “Damn! I thought you had him.”

“This is what happens when you can no longer afford to go to the gym.” I panted. “A senior citizen junky makes off with your bag and leaves you whimpering in a graveyard.”

“This is what happens when your car dies and you’re forced to stand around on Baldwin Street,” corrected Jenny. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the red hair color, Claret Classic, was courtesy of this week’s sale at Neuman Drugs. Next, Jenny dug in her purse and pulled out a cigarette. She lit up then nodded her head in the direction the thief had taken. “Let’s go after him.”

“I’d rather—” stick a pen in my eye, have a pap test, visit my mother… “—not.”

“Well, we should check. Maybe he ditched your bag somewhere?”

“What’s the point?” I asked, sulkily digging up sod with the toe of one of my wrecked shoes.

“Maybe he just snatched the cash and dumped the rest.” Jenny took a deep drag on the cigarette and blew the smoke out in a long stream. “Of course I’d be able to catch him myself, if I wasn’t retaining all this water.”

I knew Jenny was retaining twenty-five years of fried food, not water, but she was my best friend so I supported her delusions of water retention, just like she supported my fantasy that being able to type seventy words a minute meant I was physically fit.

“Replacing your ID and credit card is going to be a real pain,” Jenny added.

I hit my forehead with the heel of my hand. “Damn! My Visa!”

My credit card was the only thing preventing me from having to beg dinners off my mother until next payday. I had a sudden and nauseating vision of endless meals sitting across from Mom explaining why I haven’t married and have no prospects, why I haven’t a better job and no prospects and why I haven’t cut my hair, lowered my hemlines, taken a class….

I hurled myself down the stone pathway.

“Wait up, Tab! I’ll come with ya!” Jenny flicked her smoke into a nearby puddle and followed in my wake up a narrow walkway.

The path led us between tombstones and grave markers. When we began to climb a slight incline nearing a clump of tall blue spruce, I suddenly stopped walking and Jenny slammed right into me.

“What is it? Do you see your bag?” Jenny flicked her gaze left and right then sidestepped around me to look at me full in the face. Her eyes widened. “Oh, no.”

“What?”

“You’re doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

“That thing you do with your eyes when you blink a lot.”

“I do not blink a lot.”

“Uh-huh.” Jenny planted thick fingers on wide hips. “Yeah, well, tell your eyelids that ’cause right now they’re doing the mambo.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose with my fingers and squeezed my eyes shut.

“What is it?” she demanded impatiently.

“Nothing.” I nibbled my lower lip and glanced nervously at a nearby tree. “Let’s go.” I whirled on my heel to beat a fast retreat.

“Whoa!” Jenny clamped her fingers on my elbow. “You had one of those premonitions, right?”

I sighed, “I don’t have premonitions. It’s more like a deep feeling of foreboding.” With the occasional bleary snapshot thrown in for good measure.

Jenny nodded vigorously. “Yeah, like the time you knew something was wrong at home and you found out your dad had just had a heart attack, or that time you knew Martha was preggers even before she did.”

I pulled my elbow from her grasp and crossed my arms over my chest. “Actually, it’s more like that feeling I got when you fixed me up with your cousin Ted and his leg-humping dog, or the time you told me the shrimp in your fridge were fresh.”

“Well, maybe this time your bad feeling is telling you that your purse is over there behind that tree and the bad part is that only the cash is missing.”

The feeling in my gut wasn’t exactly saying purse, it was saying something darker. Evil. I shuddered and wished I hadn’t quit smoking last month.

Then again, I reasoned, I’d had the same feeling when I was sixteen and Mom found me out behind the garden shed with Todd Verbicki’s hands down my pants. I relented and Jenny and I made our way across the mossy grass to the spruce that had garnered my attention. We walked around it.

“Huh. Nothing,” I said, then Jenny was suddenly doing deep breathing exercises behind me.

“Aw, man,” she whispered hoarsely. “I think I’m gonna puke.”

I reluctantly turned and scanned the source of her nausea. My gaze landed on a grisly scene. At the foot of the next tree, a cat—or whatever was left of one—had been brutally eviscerated. Its corpse lay in the center of a blood-soaked pentagram that had been dug into the dirt.

“Let’s bolt,” I choked out.

“And it was just totally and completely gross!” Jenny announced, concluding her description of our escapade. The three of us—me, Jenny and her roommate—were huddled in their small apartment at the kitchen table over a plate of brownies.

“You really predicted it, Tabitha?” Lara asked, eyes wide from behind thick black-rimmed glasses.

“No.” I sighed, because now I’d have to correct all of Jenny’s exaggerations. “To start with, my car was not carjacked, it merely died over on Baldwin Street. Jen and I were waiting for a bus when the purse snatcher grabbed my bag. He was at least fifty and most likely a druggy, not a green beret set on revenge.” I rolled my eyes at Jen, who was biting into her fourth brownie. “But, yes, there was a cat that was cut up and it was humongously gross. I only had a bad feeling about what was behind the tree, I didn’t drop into a trancelike state and predict the second coming.”

Jenny harrumphed. “Nothing wrong with adding a bit of color to a story.”

Why would you need to make a horrible event sound even worse?

“Did you call the cops?” Lara asked.

Jenny and I looked at each other then back at Lara and shrugged.

“You should call someone, shouldn’t you?” She pushed. “The ASPCA? The groundskeeper for the cemetery?”

We shook our heads.

“What for?” Jenny asked. “They never catch purse snatchers and the cat’s dead—nothing will change that.”

“And it’s not like the Seattle PD is going to launch a door-to-door search for either my forty dollars or for some sicko who likes to hurt animals,” I put in.

“Yeah, but the pentagram.” Lara shook her head slowly from side to side. “That says bad shit, like satanic stuff or something.”

“Actually I think pentagrams are usually linked more to Wicca and witches, right?” Jenny asked.

Both turned and stared expectantly at me.

“What?” I demanded. “I don’t follow that stuff anymore, you know that! Anyway, mutilated animals…” I shuddered. “That sounds satanic to me.”

“If it’s the devil, then we’ll say a prayer,” Jenny commented sarcastically. “That doesn’t mean we need to get in his face.”

There was a pause while we each considered our own thoughts on the matter.

“So, where’s your car?” Lara asked, brushing brownie crumbs from her sweater.

“We towed it to Doug’s garage,” I replied.

“Your cousin, Doug?” Lara asked Jenny. “The one with no neck?”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Jenny agreed.

Then, as if thinking of my 1995 Ford Escort summoned it to respond, my cell phone rang. It was the mechanic. The conversation was short and afterward I laid my head down on the table and moaned.

“Is she having another one of her visions?” Lara asked Jenny.

“Nah.” Jenny chewed another brownie. “Just an emotional meltdown.”

“My car,” I murmured against the cool pine table. “It’s going to cost almost eight hundred bucks to fix it.”

“Wow,” Jenny sympathized. “You could probably just buy another Escort for that price, right?”

I lifted my head to glare at her.

“Okay, maybe not one as nice as yours,” she conceded. “Guess you’ll be taking the bus for a while.”

“I hate the bus,” I whined. “Where am I going to get that kind of cash?”

Half an hour later we concluded that I could save up enough to pay for the repair if I gave up a few necessities like Starbucks, Vogue magazine and food for the next six months.

“Or you could just get another job,” Lara suggested, placing a soup-bowl size mug of thick black coffee in front of me. “They’re looking for another person to help behind the concession counter at the Movie Megaplex.”

Lara was the queen of part-time. She held four part-time jobs and kept her schedules straight on a large white wipe-off board in her bedroom.

“No way! I’m already putting in my forty hours a week at McAuley and Malcolm.” And it felt more like fifty.

“Well, technically you don’t work a full forty hours,” Jenny pointed out. “You’re usually at least a half hour late, you take long lunches and you leave early. My guess is you really only work about thirty hours a week. Of course, it’s better than when you were smoking and taking all those puff breaks.”

Jenny and I worked together at the law firm of McAuley and Malcolm. Jenny had the prestigious title of legal secretary while I was only the lowly receptionist. Jenny also covered my ass whenever I was away from my desk so she knew all about my lack of attendance.

“Still, what about my social life?” I drank from the hot coffee and felt my armor crumpling. This was my social life.

“I’ll loan you fifty bucks until payday, Tab,” Jen offered generously.

“Come with me tonight and I’ll get Harold to hire you,” Lara announced, as if it were all settled. “A few nights a week and you’ll quickly have your car repairs paid for.”

After a little more coffee and lots more cajoling, Lara convinced me. I called in to report my stolen Visa and then we headed out to the movie theatre where I was introduced to Harold Wembly. He was a beanpole young man with acne-scarred skin and the manager of the Movie Megaplex.

“So you want a career as a Megaplex counter assistant?” his eyes gleamed with power.

“Um, well sure, I guess.” I turned and raised my eyebrows at Lara.

“You’re in luck.” He clapped his hands. “You can start tonight. Joan called in sick and Lara here can show you the ropes. After tonight you’ll work from Wednesday to Saturday, six-thirty ’til midnight.”

“F-four nights a week?” I stuttered. “I was thinking maybe two.”

“Bus,” Lara hissed in my ear. “Do it his way and you’ll get your car back before the November downpours start.”

I sighed. “That’ll be fine.”

Harold tossed me a yellow button-down Henley shirt that had Megaplex embroidered in green over the pocket and popcorn-butter stains on the cuffs.

It was still half an hour before the theater would open so Lara took me to the staff room and introduced me to the two other girls who’d be dishing up popcorn with us. Then she brought me down to the huge counter and familiarized me with movie munchie etiquette.

“There are three basic sizes—jumbo, enormous and colossal.” She pointed to the three-dimensional poster on the wall.

“You mean small, medium and large.”

Lara covered my mouth with her hand and slid her gaze to the left and right. “Don’t ever let Harold hear you refer to the sizes that way, or you’ll be fired on the spot.”

Oh, boy.

“The drinks are the same sizes and you need to fill the cups half with ice before pouring in the pop.” She opened a refrigerator beneath the counter. “Bottled water is kept here.”

“What if they want regular water, from a tap?”

Lara shook her head. “Strictly forbidden. There’s a firing squad outside waiting to shoot the first person who offers free water.”

I almost thought she was kidding.

A few minutes later, after I solemnly swore to never ever touch the popcorn maker, Lara pronounced me ready to serve.

“This isn’t so bad,” I said. “Other than the fact that I’m a fashion nightmare.” Looking down at the running shoes Lara had loaned me, I adjusted the black skirt I’d worn to the office that day and tugged a strand of my wispy brown hair out of my eyes.

Obviously I’d spoken too soon because less than two hours later I was run off my feet and had a river of perspiration flowing between my breasts.

“Great. You survived the first half,” Lara said, smiling and wiping at drink spills on the counter. “Other than the time you nearly dumped a tray of drinks on that asshole who grabbed your boob.”

I groaned and pressed a hand to my lower back. “How much longer?”

“Those were the early moviegoers,” Lara stated, pushing her glasses back on her nose and blowing her black hair out of her eyes. “Thursdays can get pretty busy. The next wave will start in about twenty minutes.”

“The next wave?” I replied weakly.

“We can take a break now, if you’d like.”

The second wave wasn’t a wave; it was a tidal storm.

Huge lineups formed in front of each of the four cashiers but my lineup was continuously longer than all the rest. Not only was I slower at serving than the others, but I was also working the register nearest the ticket counter. I was tired. Exhausted. My mind was in a complete daze and my contact lenses were beginning to fuse permanently to my corneas. But suddenly, things came back into focus, or rather, someone. Oh, no!

I whirled to fill an order and met up with Lara at the popcorn. “You gotta switch lines with me!” I hissed.

“No way. The new girl always gets the first register.”

“But Clay Sanderson’s in my line! He’s one of the partners at the law firm. I don’t want him to see me!”

Lara glanced over her shoulder. “Which one is he?”

I continued to scoop popcorn into an already overflowing jumbo-size container. “Golden hair, body like a Greek god, has on a brown leather jacket and there’s a blonde, a model-type, hanging off his arm,” I whispered.

Lara looked again. “He’s gorgeous! Sure, I’ll wait on him.” She undid the top button on her shirt. “But after he’s gone, we switch back.”

Lara hustled up to my line that was easily double the length of hers and I scrambled over to the next cash register trying to keep my gaze away from Clay Sanderson in case he spotted me. No chance of that, though; he only had eyes for the blonde in the stiletto heels.

A few minutes later I glanced over and couldn’t see Clay in Lara’s lineup. I figured he’d already gone, so I was preparing to switch back when I noticed Lara had a weird look on her face and was nodding sideways in my direction.

“I’ll have two medium Cokes and a large popcorn,” a deep baritone voice sounded in front of me.

I turned my head and looked straight into Clay Sanderson’s azure eyes. I guess being a partner in a law firm meant you had enough brains to switch to the snack lineup that had less of a crowd.

I swallowed thickly. “You mean two enormous drinks and a colossal popcorn?” I asked, offering up a tentative smile.

The corners of his mouth twitched into a lopsided grin. “Sure.”

I quickly headed to the drink dispenser. Maybe he didn’t recognize me? Sure we saw each other every day, when he walked into the office, but I did have a forgettable face. Not like his blond girlfriend.

Returning to the counter with his order, I rang up the total. I offered two dollars in change to him and he reached across and held my hand while he took the bills and stated, “Your secret is safe with me.”

When I looked at my hand I expected melted flesh where he’d touched me. Then he leaned in, and for a split second I actually thought he was going to kiss me, when instead, he whispered, “By the way, you have some popcorn, uh—” His gaze moved down to my chest then back up to my face. I could feel my cheeks becoming red.

I noticed there were a few popcorn kernels balanced precariously in my cleavage. When I looked up again he was gone.

The rest of the shift was quieter, but I was relieved when it finally ended just before midnight. Lara linked her arm in mine as we stepped out of the theatre and into the chilly night air.

“He said he’d keep it a secret, right? So what are you so worried about?”

“I dunno,” I replied glumly, as we cut across the parking lot.

“Oh. I get it.” Lara nudged me with her elbow. “This is the suit you’ve been drooling over for years, huh? Mr. Sexy Lawyer at your firm.”

I began to protest, then relented. “I was surprised he even recognized me.”

“Why wouldn’t he? You’ve been working at that firm for what? Two years?”

“Yeah, but did you get a load of his girlfriend?”

“Yeah, I see your point.”

We continued our walk. My apartment was less than a block from the movie theatre but I was accompanying Lara across the street to her bus stop.

“You don’t have to wait with me,” Lara said. “The bus will be here in less than five minutes. Go on home. You look beat.”

“I am beat. It’s just that…” My eyes were drawn to the old building behind us. It looked like it had been a store at one point, but now it was boarded up with posted signs indicating it was zoned for demolition. My heart was jackhammering painfully inside my chest.

“Oh, my God! You’re doing that thing with your eyes!” Lara grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me roughly. “What is it?” She looked around wildly.

“I’ve got a real bad feeling about that place.” I looked up the road and nodded with my chin. “There’s another bus stop a block up. I’ll walk you over there.”

She shook her head. “No way.” She pointed to the building behind us. “Besides, there’s nobody in there, it’s pitch-dark.”

“Yeah, but still…” My palms were beginning to sweat and I had more than a bad feeling now—I had an image of a woman flash in my mind. A very dead woman. “Oh jeez.” I rubbed at my eyes. “Come on!” I yanked Lara by the elbow and tried pulling her up the road.

She tugged her arm free and studied my face. “You’re really scared. Is this another cat thing? I don’t spook easily but you are making me so curious.” She headed for the main entrance to the vacant building.

My stomach was churning as I followed her. There wasn’t much to see. It was a dilapidated gray stucco building with Keep Out signs hammered to the front door and a cement lot that circled the structure. Lara walked determinedly around the perimeter of the building. At the back, where a board had fallen away, she paused before peering inside the abandoned structure.

“Nothing!” She let out a disgusted breath. “I’m telling you, Tabitha, after everything Jenny’s told me about this psychic thing you’ve got going on, I’m kinda disappointed.”

“Yeah, well, Jenny does tend to exaggerate.” I glanced around and sighed with relief that no bogeymen were lurking in the parking lot behind us either. “Guess my feeling was off.” I didn’t want to think about the image that had flashed through my mind. “Let’s go.”

“Hey, what’s that?” Lara asked before we’d taken a step.

“What?”

“Painted on that Dumpster.” She nodded to the corner of the parking lot with her chin. “Could that be…” She began walking toward it. “Oh, my God, it is! It’s a pentagram! You said there was one at the cemetery, too, right?!”

My feet froze to the pavement. A streetlight in the corner of the lot angled a dim yellow sheen bathing the Dumpster in an eerie glow. Spray-painted over the words, Pacific Refuse Inc., was a black pentagram. That real bad feeling I’d had earlier returned. Lara walked closer to the bin and was now only a couple of feet away.

“Don’t,” I said weakly.

“It’s just a Dumpster.” She looked over her shoulder at me and made clucking noises. “Unless you’re thinking there’s something in here besides trash, like maybe another mutilated cat or something.”

“It’s the or something that bothers me and I’m not hanging around to find out.” I stomped away hoping that Lara would follow, but after a dozen steps I looked over my shoulder and saw that she was not behind me. She’d done the exact opposite—she’d shimmied up the side of the Dumpster.

“You know what?” Her voice echoed loudly inside the container. She shoved herself off, landed on her feet and wiped her hands on her jacket with a look of revulsion.

“What?”

“The Dumpster’s empty but there’s a puddle of something inside there. It looks like it could be blood. Of course, it’s hard to tell in the dark.”

My throat tightened. “I’m guessing there’s a lot more blood than would come from a cat, right?”

“Yep. A lot more.”

I wanted to run. Run far. Run fast. Lara, on the other hand, did the exact opposite, again. She called the cops.

Twenty minutes later I was sitting curbside with a good view of one of Seattle’s finest shining his flashlight into the Dumpster. He pushed himself off it in much the same manner as Lara had and then his partner climbed up and did a similar look-see inside with his flashlight. Lara was pacing nonstop in front of me, her face bright with excitement.

After a few minutes, the cops strode over. One was a fiftyish Hispanic guy with a thick mustache. The other was a younger cop who was built like a refrigerator with stringy blond hair.

Refrigerator Cop spoke first, addressing Lara. “You’re right that it looks like blood but, obviously, we can’t tell just by looking at it that it’s from a human. Probably somebody just dumped some meat.”