Introduction

Tying the knot may be the toughest thing Nick Polchak has ever tried to do.

Nick Polchak is comfortable with bugs. Their world is orderly. He knows where he stands and exactly how to interpret the signs they give him. But a fiancee and an upcoming wedding? Not so much.

That's why-a mere four days before the nuptials-Nick finds himself driving to Philadelphia for the monthly meeting of the Vidocq society. Being among a group of forensic professionals consulting on cold cases will surely allow him to feel useful and normal.

But while there he discovers that a close friend has been murdered . . . and in classic Nick style, begins to follow the trail of evidence rather than returning to his fiancee. Fearing that his one-track mind won't lead him home by Saturday, Alena and three of her dogs go to track him down.

When she finally finds him, nothing is as Alena expected . . . because the twists in this case will surprise even the most dedicated Bug Man fans.

Editorial Review

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Excerpt

FRONT ROYAL, VIRGINIA

I’m not sure I can do this,” Nick said.

“I believe in you,” Alena reassured him. “I know you’ve got it in you.”

“It’s just not right. There are things no man should be asked to do.”

“Now listen,” Alena said. “I’ve seen you pick maggots off a two-week-old corpse without even turning up your nose.”

“Good idea,” Nick said. “Think about happy times.”

“What I’m saying is: If you can do that, you can manage this.”

Nick looked at the sign again: Weddings ’n’ Such: Everything You Need to Make Your Special Day Unforgettable.

He turned to Alena: “Is it hot in here or is it just me?”

“Nick—we haven’t even gone in yet.”

The door opened to the sound of electronic chimes playing

Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” Nick took a quick look around the room; he saw leather scrapbooks of sample wedding

announcements, satiny ring pillows with lace embroidery, gleaming bridesmaids’ and groomsmen’s gifts, and flowery silk nosegays. Nick had never felt so out of his element; he felt like an ant that had wandered into the wrong colony, secreting

some noxious alarm pheromone as he went, so that at any moment hundreds of angry workers might swarm all over him and shear off his limbs with their mandibles.

Alena took his hand. “Nick. Breathe.”

They sat in a pair of matching upholstered chairs that faced a large desk. On the desk was a silver dome-shaped bell; Alena leaned forward and gave it a tap. A moment later a woman emerged from a back room and stepped into the doorway with a blinding smile.

“Well, hello! Welcome to Weddings ’n’ Such! I’ll be right with you two—just let me grab my calendar!”

Nick cringed. The wedding planner looked middle-aged, probably in her midforties, with unnaturally blond hair and big bright eyes and a smile that seemed too big for her face. Nick thought the woman looked like she was waiting for the punch line of a joke—as if she might break out in laughter at any moment.

Alena leaned over to him. “What’s the matter with you?”

“She’s perky.”

“What?”

“I can’t do ‘perky’—it’s not in my genetic makeup.”

“She’s not perky, she’s just friendly.”

“Her face looks like one of those plasma balls at RadioShack.”

“Maybe she just likes her job.”

“I like my job, but I don’t glow in the dark.”

“Nick, we just got here—would you give the woman a chance?”

The wedding planner returned a moment later, sat down at her desk, and opened the calendar in front of her with a flourish.

Then she folded her hands, leaned forward on her elbows, and gave each of them a long lingering smile.

“I can’t do ‘perky,’ ” Nick said.

“I beg your pardon?”

Alena interrupted. “My name is Alena Savard, and this is my fiancé, Nick Polchak. We’re getting married.”

The woman gave them a look of astonished delight.

“Wow,” Nick said. “Are we your first customers?”

“Every customer is my first customer,” she said.

“So much for references.”

Alena ignored him. “We don’t know much about planning a wedding, so we thought we could use some help, and that’s why we’re here.”

“Well, you’ve come to the right place.”

“What a relief,” Nick said. “We tried Ace Hardware, but they didn’t have a clue. By the way, why does your sign say ‘Everything You Need to Make Your Special Day Unforgettable’? Why did you pick that word? I mean, when the Titanic hit the iceberg—that was ‘unforgettable’ too. Don’t you think you’re underpromising a little?”

Alena slapped a hand on Nick’s forearm and smiled at the proprietor. “I should probably explain what’s going on here. My fiancé feels a little out of place right now, and whenever that happens he turns into a complete idiot. Try not to take it personally—

he does it to everybody. If it makes you feel any better, he gets a lot worse than this.”

The woman turned to Nick with a look of pure compassion.

“I understand perfectly. Are you feeling a bit out of place, Nick?”

“I’d rather be staked down in a pit of flesh-eating beetles.”

“Now, Nick, I think you’re exaggerating.”

“No, that happened to me once. I actually preferred it.”

“It’s perfectly all right if you feel a little uncomfortable here—it’s only natural. Why, I’ve seen grown men have full-blown panic attacks in here.”

“Has anyone vomited yet? Because I want this day to be ‘unforgettable.’ ”

At that, the woman turned to Alena. “Perhaps it would help if we all got to know each other a little better. Tell me about yourselves . . . How did the two of you meet?”

“I suppose like anybody else,” Alena said with a shrug. “Nick was hired by the FBI to locate bodies in a lost graveyard. He needed a cadaver dog and I own one.”

“The soil in northern Virginia is very rocky,” Nick explained. “Ground-penetrating radar has a hard time distinguishing rock from human bone. Cadaver dogs are very effective at detecting

human remains, and Alena happened to have a very good one—that one there, in fact.”

The wedding planner slowly leaned across the desk and saw a mottled gray dog reclining beside Alena’s chair. The dog had one paw propped under its chin; the other leg was missing

entirely, severed cleanly at the shoulder. The dog made no movement in response to the planner’s attention; it just stared back at her with hollow blue eyes.

The planner’s own eyes widened . . .

“Relax,” Nick said. “It’s not a cadaver, it’s a cadaver dog.”

“I live by myself in a private compound in the mountains up above Endor,” Alena continued. “I don’t have a telephone, and my gate is always locked, so Nick climbed my fence one night and I ordered one of my guard dogs to grab him by the throat and pin him to the ground. That’s how we met.” She took Nick’s hand and smiled.

The wedding planner looked at Nick. “What sort of work do you do?”

“I’m a forensic entomologist,” Nick said. “I study the insects that are attracted to human remains, specifically in cases of suspected murder. These insects arrive at the body in a predictable

order, and they develop at a measurable rate. That makes it possible for people like me to calculate the postmortem interval—the amount of time that’s elapsed since the murder took place.”

The planner lowered her voice to a whisper. “Why would anyone want to do that?”

Nick glanced around the office. “Who knows why people do what they do?”

“And I train dogs,” Alena said simply.

The planner looked relieved. “How wonderful! You teach obedience school?”

“No, I train cadaver dogs to find human remains. I also train drug-sniffing dogs for the DEA and bomb-sniffers for ATF and Homeland Security; also search-and-rescue dogs, trackers, security dogs . . .”

Nick watched the planner’s face as it slowly fell. He almost felt sorry for her; if she was hoping to draw a wedding theme from their occupations, she was out of luck. Nobody wants to see a cake with a chalk line around it.

“Have the two of you set a date yet?” the planner asked.

“The last Saturday in May,” Alena replied.

“Good timing,” the planner said, noting the date in her calendar.

“You’ll beat the June rush.”

“Nick’s done teaching his classes by then.”

The planner turned to Nick. “So you’re a teacher?”

“I’m a professor of entomology at NC State,” Nick said, “but what I really love to do is—”

“Yes, I know,” she interrupted. “The . . . bug thing.”

Alena grinned at her fiancé. “They call Nick the Bug Man.”

“I’m sure they do,” the planner managed. “So where are you two planning to be married? Have you chosen the venue yet?” view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

Do you think Nick Polchak and Alena Savard are ready for marriage? If so, why? If not, what qualities do you think they’re lacking?

What was Nathan Donovan attempting to accomplish in Nick’s life?

What was Alena’s driving motivation throughout the book? What really caused her to pack up her dogs and go looking for Nick?

What do you think Alena meant in Chapter 41 when she told Nick, “I want a man to come after me—and I want him to keep on coming after me, even after he’s got me…I want you to chase me and keep on chasing me right up until the day one of us drops dead”?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Author Tim Downs' web site Tim Downs is happy to call-in to your book club as well as meet with clubs in the Raleigh, NC area. Email him at [email protected] to make arrangements.
»	Connect with Tim Downs on Facebook
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