abrielle phoned her business attorney, who gave her the name of a criminal defense lawyer. She envisioned Jerry Spence. Someone in a buckskin coat to kick butt on her behalf. She got Ronald Lowman, a cocky young guy with razor cut hair and a Brooks Brothers suit. He met with her in a holding cell for ten minutes, then left her alone again. When he returned, he wasn't so sure of himself.

"I've just spoken with the prosecutor," he began. "They're going to proceed with the aggravated charges against you. They think you know something about Mr. Hillard's stolen Monet, and they're not going to let you just walk out of here."

"I don't know anything about that stupid painting. I'm innocent," she said, frowning at the man she'd hired to protect her interests.

"Listen, Ms. Breedlove, I believe you're innocent. But we've got Prosecuting Attorney Blackburn, Chief of Police Walker, Captain Luchetti, and at least one detective who aren't convinced." He let out a deep breath and folded his arms across his chest. "They're not going to go easy on you. Not now that you know you and your partner are suspects. If we refuse to assist them in this investigation, they'll proceed with the aggravated assault charge. But they really don't want to do that. They want Mr. Carter, his private books, and his contacts. They want Mr. Hillard's art back, if possible. They want your cooperation."

She knew what they wanted, and she didn't need an attorney just out of law school to tell her. In order to save herself, she had to participate in an undercover police investigation. She had to convince Kevin she'd hired her boyfriend to work as a handyman in their shop. She had to keep her mouth shut and look the other way while Detective Doom gathered evidence to convict her good friend and business partner of a felony.

For the first time in her life, her beliefs and her desires counted for nothing. No one seemed to care that what they were asking her to do conflicted with her morals, those bits and pieces of morality she'd assembled from different religions and cultures throughout her life. They were asking her to break principles that demanded honesty, asking her to betray a friend.

"I don't believe Kevin has stolen anything."

"I'm not here to represent your partner. I'm here to help you, but if he is guilty, he's implicated you in a serious crime. You could lose your business, or at the very least, your reputation as an honest businesswoman. And if Kevin is innocent, you've got nothing to lose and absolutely nothing to fear. Look at it as helping to clear his name. Or we can go to court. If we request a jury trial, you probably won't serve time. But you will have a felony conviction on your record."

She looked up at him. The idea of a felony conviction upset her more than she'd ever realized it would. Of course, she'd never thought of herself as a felon before. "What if I say yes and they come into my shop, tear it up, then leave?"

He stood and glanced at his wristwatch. "Let me talk to the prosecutor and see if we can't get a few more concessions. They want your cooperation pretty badly, so I think they'll work with us."

"So you think I should sign the agreement?"

"It's up to you, but it would be your best option. You let them work undercover for a few days, then they're gone. I'll make sure they leave your store in the same condition it's in now, or better. You get to keep your right to vote, and you even get to keep your right to own a gun. Although I would recommend that you get a license to carry concealed."

It seemed so simple, yet so horrible. But in the end, she signed the agreement that would make her a confidential informant. She signed it along with a consent-to-search form and wondered if they'd give her a code name like a Bond Girl.

After she was released, she went home and tried to lose herself in the pleasure she usually found blending essential oils. She needed to finish her basil and neroli massage oil before the Coeur Festival, but when she tried to fill the small blue bottles, she made a mess and had to stop. She wasn't much more successful at placing the labels on, either.

Her mind and spirit were divided, and she had to try and relax, to bring them in sync. She sat cross-legged in her bedroom and sought to find her quiet center before her head exploded. But Joe Shanahan's brooding face kept popping into her brain, disturbing her meditation.

Detective Shanahan was the exact opposite of any man she would ever consider dating. He had dark untamed hair, dark skin, and intense brown eyes. Full, unsmiling mouth. Broad shoulders and big impersonal hands. He was a real throwback… but there had been those few days, before she'd decided he was a stalker, that she'd found his dark, brooding looks wildly sensual. When he'd looked at her from beneath those black lashes and she'd melted a little right there in the frozen foods aisle. His size and presence reeked of strength and confidence, and no matter how often in her life she'd tried to ignore big, bulky he-men, she wasn't always successful.

It was her height. Her height always caused her eyes to wander to the biggest man around. She was five eleven, although she would never admit to being an inch over five ten. For as long as she could remember, she'd had height-related issues. All through school she'd been the tallest girl in her class. She'd been clumsy and bony and had grown taller each day.

She'd prayed to every god she could think of for intervention. She'd wanted to wake up petite with small breasts and feet. Of course, that had never happened, but by her senior year, the boys had caught up with her, and a few had passed her enough to ask her out. Her first boyfriend had been the captain of the basketball team. But after three months, he'd dumped her for the head cheerleader. Five foot two Mindy Crenshaw.

She had to remind herself not to slouch when she stood next to short women.

Gabrielle gave up on finding balance and drew a warm bath instead. She added a special oil mixture of lavender, ylang-ylang, and rose absolute to the water. The essential blend was reputed to aid in relaxation. Gabrielle didn't know if it worked, but it did smell wonderful. She slipped into the scented bath and leaned her head back against the edge of the tub. Warmth enveloped her, and she closed her eyes. The events of the day raced through her mind, and only the memory of Joe Shanahan, laying on the ground at her feet, his breath knocked from his lungs and his lashes stuck to his eyelids, brought a smile to her lips. The memory succeeded in relaxing her where an hour of meditation had failed.

She held on to the memory and the hope that maybe someday, if she were real good and her karma chose to reward her, she might get the chance to blast him with another can of super-hold.

Joe entered the back door of his parents' house without knocking and set the pet carrier on the kitchen counter. He heard the television from the direction of the family room to his right. A cupboard door sat propped against the front of the stove, and a drill lay next to the sink. One more project forgotten before it was finished. Joe's father, Dewey, had provided a comfortable life for his wife and five children off his income as a homebuilder, but he never seemed to complete anything in his own house. Joe knew from years of experience that it would take his mother's threatening to hire someone else before the job would suddenly get done.

"Is anyone home?" Joe called, even though he'd spotted both his parents' cars in the garage.

"Is that you, Joey?" Joyce Shanahan's voice could barely be heard over the sound of tanks and gunfire. He'd interrupted one of his father's favorite pasttimes. John Wayne movies.

"Yeah, it's me." He reached into the carrier, and Sam scrambled up his arm.

Joyce walked into the kitchen, her black-and-white streaked hair pulled back from her face with a stretchy red headband. She took one look at the twelve-inch gray African parrot perched on Joe's shoulder and stopped in her tracks. Her lips disappeared into her mouth, and displeasure lowered her brows.

"I couldn't leave him at home," Joe began before she could voice her distress. "You know how he gets when he doesn't get enough attention. I made him promise to behave this time." He shrugged and glanced at his bird. "Tell her, Sam."

The parrot blinked its yellow-and-black eyes and shifted from one foot to the other. "Go ahead, make my day," Sam cried in a shrill voice.

Joe turned his gaze to his mother and smiled like a proud parent. "See, I substituted his Jerry Springer tape for Clint Eastwood."

Joyce folded her arms across the front of her Betty Boop T-shirt. She was barely five feet tall, but she had always been queen, king, and dictator of the Shanahan household. "If he starts with the potty mouth again, he has to leave."

"The grandkids taught him those swear words when they were here for Easter," he said, referring to all ten of his nieces and nephews.

"Don't you dare blame that bird's bad behavior on my grandchildren." Joyce sighed and dropped her hands to her waist. "Have you eaten dinner?"

"Yeah, I grabbed something on my way home from work."

"Don't tell me, greasy deli chicken and those horrible potato wedges." She shook her head. "I have some leftover lasagna and a nice green salad. You take some home with you."

Like a lot of families, the Shanahan women showed their love and concern through food. Usually Joe didn't mind—except when they all decided to show him at the same time. Or when they discussed his eating habits as if he were ten and living on potato chips. "That'd be great." He turned to Sam. "Grandma made you lasagna."

"Humph. Since he's likely to be the closest thing I get to a grandbaby out of you, I guess he's welcome. But you just better make sure he's cleaned up his language."

Talk of grandbabies was Joe's cue to retreat. He knew that if he didn't escape now the conversation would take an inevitable turn toward the women who seemed to enter and exit his life on a frequent basis. "Sam's reformed," he said as he slid past his mother and moved into the family room, decorated with his mother's most recent garage sale find—a pair of iron wall sconces and matching shield of armor. He found his father relaxed in his brown La-Z-Boy, remote in one hand, tall glass of iced tea in the other. A pack of cigarettes and lighter sat on a lamptable separating the chair from the matching sofa. Dewey was in his late sixties, and Joe had recently noticed something odd happening to his father's hair. It was still thick and completely white, but in the last year it had started to grow straight forward as if he were sitting with a strong wind at his back.

"They don't make movies like this anymore," Dewey said without taking his eyes from the console television. He turned down the volume before he added, "All those special effects they use these days just aren't the same as the real thing. John Wayne knew how to fight and make it look good."

As soon as Joe sat, Sam hopped off his shoulder and gripped the back of the sofa with his scaly black feet. "Don't go too far away," Joe told his bird, then reached for a cigarette. He slid the Marlboro through his fingers, but he didn't light it. He wanted Sam to breathe as little secondhand smoke as possible.

"You start smoking again?" Dewey asked, finally pulling his gaze from the Duke. "I thought you quit. What happened?"

"Norris Hillard," was all Joe said. He didn't need to elaborate. Everyone in the free world knew about the stolen Monet by now. He wanted everyone to know. He wanted the people involved to be nervous. Nervous people made mistakes. When they did, he'd be right there, ready to take them down. But he wouldn't be taking down Gabrielle Breedlove.

It wouldn't matter if she were involved up to her sweet little behind. It didn't matter if she'd cut the painting from its frame. She'd been given complete immunity—not only from the assault charges and any subsequent indictments stemming from the Hillard case but she also wouldn't be prosecuted for any of the antique thefts, either. That lawyer of hers might be young, but he was a sharp little weasel.

"Any leads?"

"A few." His father didn't ask the obvious questions, and Joe didn't offer any explanations. "I need to borrow your drill and a few of your tools." Even if he could, Joe didn't want to talk about his confidential informant. Not only did he distrust informants but his latest was as flaky as a box of Post Toasties, and that stunt with the derringer had nearly cost him another demotion. And this time, they wouldn't pussyfoot around and call it a transfer. After the nightmare that had taken place in the park that morning, he had to deliver Carter's head on a platter. He had to redeem himself. If not, he feared they'd bust him so far down into the patrol division that he'd never see the light of day. He didn't have anything against uniformed police. They were the frontline guys, and he couldn't do his job without them, but he'd worked too long, and put up with too much crap, to let a gun-toting redhead screw up his career.

"Joe, I picked up something for you last weekend," his mother informed him as she breezed through the room on her way toward the back of the house.

The last "something" his mother had "picked up" for him had been a matching pair of aluminum peacocks that were supposed to hang on the wall. At the moment they were beneath his bed next to a huge macrame owl. "Ah, geez," he groaned and tossed the unlit cigarette on the lamptable. "I wish she wouldn't do that. I hate that garage sale shit."

"Don't fight it, son, it's a sickness," his father said and returned his attention to the television. "It's a disease like alcoholism. She's powerless over her addiction."

When Joyce Shanahan returned, she carried a saddle cut in half, lengthwise. "I got this for five dollars," she bragged and set it on the floor next to Joe's foot. "They wanted ten, but I dickered them down."

"I hate that garage sale shit," Sam mimicked, then added a shrill "Braa—ck" for good measure.

Joyce's gaze moved from her son to the bird on the back of her couch. "He'd better not make a mess on my davenport."

Joe couldn't promise a thing. He pointed to the saddle. "What am I supposed to do with it? Find half a horse?"

"You hang it on the wall." The telephone rang, and she added over her shoulder as she headed toward the kitchen, "It's got some little loops on the one side."

"Better nail it to the wall studs, son," his father advised. "Or that thing's liable to pull down your drywall."

Joe stared at the saddle with its one stirrup. The space beneath his bed was about to get real crowded. His mother's laughter erupted from the other room, startling Sam. He flapped his wings, showing the red feathers beneath his tail, then he flew to the television and perched on top of a wooden birdhouse with a fake nest and plastic eggs glued at the bottom. He tilted his gray head to one side, raised his beak, and did a carbon imitation of the ringing telephone.

"Sam, don't do it," Joe warned a fraction of a second before the bird mimicked Joyce's laugh so perfectly that it was downright spooky.

"That bird of yours is going to end up in a bag of Shake 'n Bake," his father predicted.

"Don't I know it." He just hoped Sam wouldn't take it into his head to tear apart that little wooden house with his beak.

The front door opened with a loud bang, and Joe's seven-year-old nephew Todd ran into the house, followed by thirteen-year-old Christy and ten-year-old Sara, Joe's nieces.

"Hi, Uncle Joe," his nieces chimed at the same time.

"Hey, girls."

"Did you bring Sam?" Christy wanted to know.

Joe nodded to the television. "He's getting a little nervous. Don't yell around him and make sudden moves. And don't teach him any more bad words."

"We won't, Uncle Joe" Sara promised, her eyes a little too wide, a little too innocent.

"What's that?" Todd asked, pointing to the saddle.

"It's half a saddle."

"Why?"

Exactly. "Do you want it?"

"Cool!"

Joe's sister Tanya entered the house next and shut the door behind her. "Hi, Daddy," she said, then turned her attention to her brother. "Hi Joey. I see Mom gave you the saddle. Can you believe she got it for five bucks?"

Obviously Tanya had been infected with the garage sale sickness too.

"Who farted? Braa—ck."

"Hey you guys," Joe admonished the two girls, who were falling on the floor in a fit of laughter.

"What's so funny?" his mother asked as she walked into the room, but before anyone could answer, the telephone rang again. "For pity's sake." She shook her head and moved to the kitchen once more, only to return a few short moments later still shaking her head. "They hung up before I could answer."

Joe slanted a skeptical gaze at his bird, and his suspicions were confirmed when Sam cocked his head to one side and the telephone just happened to ring again.

"Pity's sake." His mother spun toward the kitchen.

"My dad ate a bug," Todd told Joe, drawing his attention to him. "We roasted hot dogs and he ate a bug."

"Yeah, Ben took him camping because he thinks the girls and I are turning him into a sissy," Joe's sister elaborated as she sat on the sofa next to him. "He said he needed to get Todd away and do man stuff."

Joe understood perfectly. He'd been raised with four older sisters, who'd dressed him up in their clothes and made him wear lipstick. At the age of eight, they'd convinced him he'd been born a hermaphrodite named Josephine. He hadn't even known what a hermaphrodite was until he'd turned twelve and could look it up in the dictionary. After that, for several weeks, he'd lived in fear of growing big breasts like his oldest sister, Penny. Luckily, his father had caught him checking out his body for weird changes, and he'd assured Joe that he wasn't a hermaphrodite. Then he'd taken him camping and fishing and hadn't made him bathe for a week.

His sisters stuck together like Bondini and never forgot a damn thing. Growing up, they'd loved to harass him, and they'd been just plain hell on his psyche. But if he ever suspected that for one second the men in his sisters' lives weren't treating them right, he'd gladly beat the shit out of them.

"And I guess a bug landed on Todd's hot dog so he cried and wouldn't eat it," Tanya continued. "Which is completely understandable, and I don't blame him one bit, but Ben grabbed the bug and ate it, trying to be macho. He said, "If I can eat the damn bug, you can eat the damn hot dog."

Sounded reasonable. "Did you eat the hot dog?" Joe asked his nephew.

Todd nodded, and his smile showed his missing front teeth. "Then I ate a bug too. A black one."

Joe looked into his nephew's freckled face, and they shared a conspiratorial smile. The "I can pee standing up" guy-club smile. A smile girls could never understand.

"They hung up again," Joyce announced to the room.

"You need to get Caller ID," Tanya advised. "We've got it, and I always check to see who's calling before I answer."

"I just might do that," his mother said as she lowered herself into an old tole-painted rocker, but just as her butt hit the seat, the ringing started again. "This is getting old," she sighed and rose. "Someone is playing on the phone."

"Use last call return. I'll show you." Tanya stood and followed her mother into the kitchen.

The girls dissolved into a new fit of laughter, and Todd covered his mouth with his hand.

"Yep," Dewey said without taking his eyes off the Duke, "that bird is flirting with disaster all right."

Joe wove his fingers behind his head, crossed his ankles, and relaxed for the first time since the theft of Mr. Hillard's Monet. The Shanahans were a large, rowdy bunch, and sitting on his mother's couch surrounded by the commotion felt like coming home. It also reminded him of his own empty house across town.

Up until about a year ago, he hadn't worried all that much about finding a wife and starting a family. He'd always thought he had time, but getting shot tended to put one's life in perspective. It reminded a man of what was really important in life. A family of his own.

True, he did have Sam, and living with Sam was like living with a naughty, but very entertaining, two-year-old. But he couldn't build campfires and roast weenies with Sam. He couldn't eat bugs. Most of the other cops his age had children, and as he'd lain around his house recuperating, with nothing but time on his hands, he'd begun to wonder what it would be like to sit on the sidelines at a Little League game and watch his kids run around the bases. Seeing his own children in his head was the easy part. Picturing a wife was a bit more difficult.

He didn't think he was too picky, but he knew what he wanted and what he didn't want. He didn't want a woman who freaked out about little things like monthly anniversaries and who didn't like Sam. He knew from experience that he didn't want a vegetarian who was overly concerned about fat grams and the size of her minuscule thighs.

He wanted to come home from work and have someone waiting for him. He wanted to walk in the door without dinner in his hand. He wanted a down-to-earth girl, someone who had both feet planted firmly on the ground. And of course, he wanted someone who liked sex the way he liked it. Hot, definitely hot. Sometimes down and out dirty, sometimes not, but always uninhibited. He wanted a woman who wasn't afraid to touch him or afraid to let him touch her. He wanted to look at her and feel lust twist low in his gut. He wanted to look at her and know she felt the same thing for him.

He'd always figured he'd know the right woman when he met her. He didn't really know how he'd know, he just would. He'd feel it smack him between the eyes like a knock-out punch or a bolt of lightning, and that would be it. He'd know.

Tanya walked back into the room with a frown wrinkling her brow. "That last call return number belonged to mom's friend Bernese.

Why would Bernese make a prank phone call?"

Joe shrugged and decided to throw his sister off the track of the real culprit. "Maybe she's bored. When I was a rookie, an old lady called in about once a month to report that someone kept breaking into her house, attempting to steal her priceless afghans."

"And they weren't?"

"Hell no. You should've seen those things— all bright green and orange and purple. Damn near made you go blind just looking at 'em. Anyway, she'd always have Nilla Wafers and root beer waiting for us. Sometimes old people get real lonely and do weird things just to have someone to talk to."

Tanya's brown eyes stared into his, and her frown deepened. "That's what's going to happen to you if you don't find someone to take care of you."

The women in his family had always nagged him about his love life, but ever since he'd been shot, his mother and sisters had stepped up their efforts to see him happily wed. They equated marriage with happiness. They wanted him to settle down into their version of a nice cozy life, and while he understood their concern, they drove him crazy with it. He didn't dare let them know he'd actually been giving it some serious thought. If he did, they'd be all over him like magpies on roadkill.

"I know a really nice woman who—"

"No," Joe interrupted, not even willing to consider one of his sister's friends. He could just imagine having every little detail reported back to his family. He was thirty-five, but his sisters still treated him as if he were five. As if he couldn't find his own ass if they didn't tell him it was at the bottom of his spine.

"Why?"

"I don't like nice women."

"That's what's wrong with you. You're more interested in the size of hooters than personality."

"There's nothing wrong with me. And it's not the size of hooters, it's the shape that counts."

Tanya snorted, and he didn't remember ever hearing a sound like that coming out of a woman before.

"What?" he asked.

"You're going to be a very lonely old man."

"I have Sam to keep me company, and he'll probably outlive me."

"A bird doesn't count, Joey. Do you have a girlfriend these days? Someone you might consider bringing around to meet your family? Someone you might consider marrying?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I haven't found the right woman."

"If men on death row find women to marry, how hard can it be?"