Blood Trail - By Tanya Huff Page 0,64

learn certain subtle signs, playing spot-the-cop became a game easy to win. Mark Williams had long ago taken the trouble to learn the signs. It never hurt to be prepared and this wasn't the first time that preparation had paid off.

What's she got to do with those werewolves though, that's the question. Maybe the aged uncle hasn 't been as clever as he thought. If she's a friend of the family, and a cop...

He came out from behind the tree as she disappeared up a side street at the other end of the parking lot. He couldn't tell if she was packing heat, but then, she could be packing a cannon in that oversized bag of hers and no one would be the wiser. Thinking furiously, he sauntered slowly across the street. If she could prove the aged uncle had been blowing away the neighbor's dogs, she didn't have to bring up the subject of werewolves at all. Uncle Carl would. And Uncle Carl would get locked away in a loonybin. And there would go his own chance to score big.

She was onto something. The pine needles on yesterday's T-shirt proved she'd found the tree and he'd be willing to bet that that little lost waif routine she'd pulled in the aged uncle's flower factory was just a ploy to get close.

He laid his hand against the sun-warmed metal of the BMW.

I'm not going to lose this chance.

She wouldn't appreciate it. She'd say he was interfering, that she could take care of herself, that he should stop being such a patronizing s.o.b.. Mike Celluci put down the electric razor and glared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

He'd made up his mind. He was going to London. And Vicki Nelson could just fold that into corners and sit on it.

He had no idea what this Henry Fitzroy had gotten her involved with nor did he really care. London, Ontario probably couldn't come up with something Vicki couldn't handle - as far as he knew, the city didn't have nuclear capabilities. Fitzroy himself, however, that was a different matter.

Yanking a clean golf shirt down over his head, Celluci reviewed all he had learned about this historical romance writer. Historical romances, for God's sake. What kind of job is that for a man? He paid his parking tickets on time, he hadn't fought the speeding ticket he'd received a year ago, and he had no criminal record of any kind. His books sold well, he banked at Canada Trust, he paid his taxes, and his charity of choice appeared to be the Red Cross. Not many people knew him and the night guard at his condo both respected and feared him.

All this was fine as far as it went, but a lot of the paper records that modern man carried around with him from birth, were missing from Mr. Fitzroy's life. Not the important things, Celluci admitted, shoving his shirttails down behind the waistband of his pants, but enough of the little things that it set off warning bells. He couldn't dig any deeper, not without having his initial less than ethical investigations come to light, but he could lay his findings before Vicki. She used to be a cop. She'd know what the holes in Fitzroy's background meant.

Organized crime. The police didn't run into it often in Canada, but the pattern fit.

Celluci grinned. Vicki would demand an immediate explanation. He hoped he'd be there to hear Fitzroy try and talk his way out of it.

2:15. Family obligations would keep him in Scarborough until five at the earliest and even at that his sisters would squawk. He shuddered. Two hours of eating burned hamburgers, surrounded by a horde of shrieking nieces and nephews, listening to his brothers-in-law discussing the rising crime statistics and criticizing the police; what a way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

"Okay, so if the gun part of Rod and Gun Club refers to the rifle range and stuff," Peter, having convinced Rose that he should have a chance to drive, pulled carefully out of the parking lot, "what's the rod mean?"

"I haven't the faintest idea," Vicki admitted, smoothing the directions out on her knee. The napkin had a few grease stains on it, but the map was actually quite legible. "Maybe they teach fly-tying or something."

"Fly-tying?" Rose repeated.

"That'd take one real small lasso, there, pardner," Peter added, turning north.

Vicki spent the next few blocks explaining what she knew about tying bits of feathers to hooks. As explanations went, it