Bluer Than Velvet. Mary Mcbride

wracked her Suddenly Unprepared brain for an answer that wouldn’t unnerve this last-ditch detective as much as the truth had unnerved the first. If a real investigator didn’t want to have anything to do with her even on the phone, this guy would probably pick her up bodily and throw her out of his office.

      “I got it from the man I don’t want to find me so he can do it again,” she said as firmly as she could.

      “Did you call the police? File a report?”

      Laura just shook her head and tried to look pathetic, even more than she already did, so he wouldn’t ask why she hadn’t called the police. Nobody called the police about Art “the Hammer” Hammerman or his son, Artie, unless they had a particular fondness for black-and-blue or an incredible longing for plastic surgery or—worse—an outright death wish.

      “I’d recommend that you do,” he said. “File a report. The sooner the better.”

      “I’ll think about it.”

      Laura never meant to cry, but all of a sudden a big tear plopped on the blue velvet of her skirt, followed quickly by another and another. She brushed at them, then brushed again to reverse the dark nap of the velvet, then just kept brushing, unable to stop either that or the stupid crying.

      Oh, hell.

      Sam Zachary yanked open the warped, top right drawer of his secondhand desk. When he didn’t see a box of tissues, he slammed the drawer shut and opened the top left, the middle left, then every other drawer. He had scratch pads, legal pads, an outdated phone book, a lifetime supply of paper clips and cheap ballpoint pens, four cans of tomato juice and half a dozen granola bars, but not a single tissue for this weeping woman. Dammit.

      Then he heard the distinctive sound of a tissue being plucked from a box, and realized she had helped herself from the box hidden behind a stack of magazines and client files on the far side of his desk.

      “I’m sorry,” she blurted out between soggy sniffs. “I’ll be fine. I really will. Just give me a minute to get myself together, will you?”

      “Sure. Take your time.”

      Sam leaned back in his chair, battening down that natural instinct of his to wrap his arms around a crying female, especially this one in her ditzy little dress that left almost nothing to the imagination. Except that wasn’t quite true because his imagination had gone into overdrive the minute she’d walked into his office a little after noon like a blond, blue velvet vision teetering on three-inch spiked, rhinestone-studded heels. With a shiner the size of Rhode Island.

      He sighed softly. Why me?

      Using his surname plus initials rather than some macho company name and batting last in the Yellow Pages had been a fairly successful strategy thus far in limiting his business. He really hated his job, and used any excuse not to do it. Today was the twentieth, and just as soon as he wrapped up the surveillance on Millard Boynton—straying spouse No. 72—he planned to take the rest of the month off, add thirty or forty square feet to his vegetable garden, put in some good mileage on his rowing machine, and finally nail down Bach’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” on the piano.

      In a minute, once the waterworks stopped, Miss or Mrs. Laura McNeal was going to lift her blue velvet eyes from her blue velvet lap and ask him—no, she was going to implore him—to help her escape an abusive husband or, more likely, to elude an overly aggressive pimp.

      Sam Zachary was already framing his reply.

      No.

      He hadn’t gotten far beyond that thought when Miss or Mrs. Laura McNeal sniffed a conclusive sniff, wadded the soggy tissue in her fist, then recrossed her dynamite legs, and leaned forward.

      “Will you help me, Mr. Zachary? Please. I need to disappear.”

      Sam felt his eyes snap up from the wisp of black lace just visible at the leading edge of her neckline.

      “I’m not a magician,” he said half-heartedly.

      “Please.”

      “I’m pretty expensive,” he said. Coward.

      “How much?” She was already withdrawing a checkbook and a big blue fountain pen from a tiny beaded purse that didn’t look as if it could hold more than a key and a Kleenex.

      “A hundred dollars a day, plus expenses.” Liar. It’s two-fifty and you know it. He cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. The springs squealed like stuck pigs. “I’d need a hundred as an advance.” Instead of the usual five.

      “You’ve got it.”

      She wrote the check with a quick, left-handed flourish that struck Sam as a nearly impossible feat, then she ripped it out and waved it like a tiny flag of victory before she passed it across his desktop.

      “So, what do we do first?” she asked. “I mean, to make me disappear?”

      Sam closed his eyes a moment. That was one way of doing it, he thought.

      For starters, Zachary, S. U. had told Laura that he was going to take her someplace safe. That had entailed a walk down the three flights of stairs from his office and then a pretty precarious climb into the front seat of his battered, black Chevy Blazer truck, which had also afforded S.U. not only a further glimpse of thigh but the opportunity to clamp his hand to her blue velvet backside when one of her high heels slipped off the running board.

      Beside him now as he wove the vehicle through traffic, Laura asked, “So, what does the S.U. stand for?”

      “Sam,” he said, hitting the brakes for a sudden amber light. “Samuel Ulysses, actually.”

      “Oh, God.” Laura rolled her eyes. He was a Sam, even if he wasn’t Sam Spade. She started to giggle.

      “What’s so funny?”

      “Nothing.” The laughter she tried to stifle erupted in a snort. The facial contortion made her eye hurt. “It’s just sort of a private joke.”

      He gave her a sidelong glance—a fairly withering one, in her estimation—then said, “Between you and yourself, I take it.”

      “Sort of.” Laura sat up straighter, tugging her hemline down and her bodice up. “Sam’s a nice name, actually. You should use it in the phone book instead of those silly initials.”

      “I’ll take that into consideration.”

      He stepped on the gas, and Laura was pretty sure she saw his fingers tighten on the steering wheel and his mouth shape a tiny, impatient sneer. Oh, great. Her big Saint Bernard was turning out to be as irritable as a cocker spaniel. She sighed. This wasn’t going to work.

      “Look, maybe we should just forget…”

      Sam Zachary spoke the exact words, at that exact moment, in the same frustrated tone of voice. A quick little grin telegraphed across his lips before he stiffened them again.

      “I really do need some help,” Laura said quietly, looking down while she traced a beaded daisy on her handbag, not daring to look at him because she didn’t know whether or not she was going to dissolve into tears again. For someone who had barely shed a tear in the past decade, she was certainly making up for it now.

      “I know,” he answered just as quietly. “That’s why I’m taking you someplace where you’ll be safe.”

      Safe. That was all she wanted to be just then. Safe from rotten Artie Hammerman.

      Laura tilted her head back and closed her eyes, one of which had begun to throb painfully. Maybe it was all her fault. Maybe if she hadn’t accepted Artie’s first, surprising gift, none of this would have happened. But nobody had given her flowers since her senior prom, and suddenly, three weeks ago, there was her landlord’s bullnecked, muscle-bound son, dressed in a checked suit with foot wide lapels and a tie as wide as the Mississippi River, angling a huge box of long-stemmed, deep red American Beauties through the front door of her