The three of them hadn't noticed Gabrielle, or the customer looking at a display of porcelain vases.
"It's not that easy," Kevin said to the detective above him. "You have to have an informed eye and natural instincts to make money dealing in antiques."
Conversation stopped as Joe drilled two screws into the top of the metal standard. "Well, I know next to squat about antiques," he confessed as he climbed down from the ladder. "My mother is a garage sale fanatic, and all that stuff looks the same to me." He knelt beside Mara and drilled two remaining screws. "Thanks for the help," he said before standing once again.
"No problem. What else can I do for you?" Mara asked, looking as if she wanted to take a bite out of crime.
"I'm about finished." He braced his feet and drilled several more screws.
"Some people find antiques at garage sales," Kevin said when it was quiet once more. "But serious dealers usually only go to estate sales and auctions. That's how I met Gabrielle. We were both bidding on the same watercolor. It was a pastoral scene by a local artist."
"I don't know much about art either," Joe confessed and rested his forearm on a ladder rung, the drill still gripped in his hand like a.45 magnum. "If I wanted to buy a painting, I'd have to ask somebody who knows about that sort of thing."
"You'd be real smart to do that, too. Most people don't know what's really valuable and can't tell if their art is legitimate. You'd be surprised at how many fakes hang in prestigious galleries. There was a break-in at…"
"It was mourning art," Gabrielle interrupted before Kevin could incriminate himself further. "We were bidding on mourning pictures."
Kevin shook his head as she walked toward him. "I don't think so. Mourning pictures give me the creeps."
Joe looked at her over his shoulder. His gaze met hers as he said slowly, "Morning as in sunrise?" He wasn't fooled. He knew what she was doing.
"No." She didn't really care what he knew. "Mourning as in pictures made from the hair of the dearly departed. They were popular in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, and there is still a small market for hair art. Not everyone has an aversion to pictures made with great-great-great-grandmother's hair. Some of it is quite beautiful."
"Sounds morbid to me." Joe turned and used the orange cord to lower the drill to the floor.
Mara's nose wrinkled. "I agree with Joe. Morbid and disgusting."
Gabrielle loved hair art. She'd always found it fascinating, and no matter how irrational, Mara's opinion felt like a defection. "You need to help the customer looking at vases," she told her employee, the tone in her voice much harsher than she intended. Confusion furrowed Mara's brow as she walked across the store. The tic in Gabrielle's eye came back, and she pressed her fingers to it. Her life was falling apart, and the reason stood in front of her in tight jeans and a T-shirt, looking like one of those construction workers in a Diet Coke commercial.
"Are you feeling okay?" Kevin asked, his obvious concern making her feel worse.
"No, my head aches a little and my stomach feels queasy."
Joe reached across the short distance that separated them and pushed her hair behind her ear. He touched her as if he had the right, as if he cared about her. But of course he didn't. It was all an act to deceive Kevin.
"What did you eat for lunch?" he asked.
"Lunch didn't make me sick." She stared into his brown eyes and answered truthfully, "It started this morning." The funny little flutter in the pit of her stomach had started with a kiss. A kiss from an emotionally barren cop who disliked her as much as she disliked him. He patted her cheek with his warm palm as if to tell her to toughen up.
"It? Ah, cramps," Kevin deduced as if her behavior suddenly made perfect sense to him. "I thought you concocted an herbal remedy for those mood swings."
The corners of Joe's lips curved into an amused smile, and he lowered his hand and hooked his thumbs in his tool belt.
It was true. She'd created an essential oil that seemed to help her friend Francis with her PMS. But Gabrielle didn't need it. She didn't have PMS and she was always extremely nice to everyone-damnit. "I don't have mood swings." She crossed her arms under her breasts and tried not to glare. "I'm perfectly pleasant all the time. Ask anyone!"
The two men looked at her as if they were afraid to say another word. Kevin had clearly turned traitor on her. He'd defected to the enemy camp-his enemy.
"Maybe you should take the rest of the day off," Kevin suggested, but she couldn't. She had to stay and save him from Joe and from himself. "I used to have a girlfriend who laid around with a heating pad and ate chocolate. She said it was the only thing that seemed to help with those cramps and mood swings."
"I'm not having cramps or mood swings!" Weren't men supposed to hate talking about this sort of thing? Wasn't it supposed to freak them out? But neither man looked embarrassed; in fact, Joe looked as if he was trying not to laugh.
"Maybe you should take some Midol," Joe added through his smile, even though he knew perfectly well that what ailed her couldn't be cured with Midol.
Kevin nodded. Gabrielle's headache moved to her temples, and she no longer cared to save Kevin from Joe Shanahan or from prison. If he ended up as some iron-pumping convict's special buddy, her conscience was clear. Gabrielle raised her hands to the sides of her head as if to keep it from splitting.
"I've never seen her look this mad," Kevin said as if she weren't standing right in front of him.
Joe tilted his head to one side and pretended to study her. "I had a girlfriend who reminded me of a praying mantis once a month. If you said the wrong thing, she'd bite your head off. The rest of the time she was real sweet, though."
Gabrielle curled her nonviolent hands into fists and dropped them to her sides. She wanted to punch someone. Someone solid with dark hair and eyes. He was forcing her to have evil thoughts. Forcing her to create bad karma. "Which girlfriend was that? The one who dumped you after a whole two months?"
"She didn't dump me. I broke up with her." Joe reached for Gabrielle and wrapped his arm around her waist. He hauled her up against his side and caressed her skin through the thin nylon of her shirt. "God, I love it when you're jealous," he whispered in a low, sensual voice just above her ear. "You get all squinty-eyed and sexy."
His breath warmed her scalp, and if she turned her head just a little, his lips would brush her cheek. The wonderful smell of his skin enveloped her head, and she wondered how such an evil man could smell so heavenly. "You look normal," she said, "but you are really a demon from hell." She stuck her elbow in his ribs. Hard. The air whooshed from his lungs and she stepped out of his embrace.
"Guess this means I won't be getting any tonight," Joe groaned as he grabbed his side.
Kevin the defector laughed, as if the detective was a comedian.
"I'm going home," she said and walked from the room without looking back. She'd tried. If Kevin incriminated himself in her absence, her conscience was clear.
Kevin heard the back door slam shut, then he turned his gaze to Gabrielle's boyfriend. "She's really mad at you."
"She'll get over it. She just hates it when I mention old girlfriends." Joe shifted his weight to one foot and crossed his arms over his chest. "She told me that you and she dated once or twice."
Kevin looked for signs of jealousy but didn't see any. He'd seen the possessive way Joe touched Gabrielle, and he'd witnessed them kissing that morning. For as long as he'd known her, she'd gone for tall, skinny men. This guy was different. This guy was all bulky muscles and brute strength. She must be in love. "We went out a few times, but we make better friends," he assured Joe. Actually, he'd been a lot more interested in her than she'd been in him. "You don't have anything to worry about."