“I’ll get forensics in here,” Jared said from behind her.
She whirled on him. “And what will they tell you? That some criminals did this to my house? That will be news, won’t it?”
“I don’t know why you’re angry at me,” he said as he followed her out of the room. “These weren’t my men.”
“Not through any intent of yours!”
“That’s true, I did try to…” He straightened his shoulders. “To keep you from throwing me out, I tried to make you see the seriousness of this situation. I didn’t tell you this, but an agent was murdered here in Arundel just before you arrived.”
At that she turned and looked back at him, her hands into fists, her eyes narrow with anger. “Now that’s news! An FBI agent got killed. Isn’t that what happens to you guys? Isn’t the whole idea that you’re supposed to fight trouble? So one of them was down here, in a small town, snooping around, no doubt asking a lot of questions about people’s private business and he—”
“She.”
“Oh,” Eden said. “A woman.”
“Go on. What were you going to say?”
“How did it happen?”
“Hit-and-run.”
Eden gave a sigh. “A hit-and-run could have been an accident. She wasn’t necessarily murdered.” Her anger was returning. “And as for this today, did any of you think that those men were after you?”
He didn’t answer her, and she didn’t expect him to. She threw open the door to her bedroom and saw that it was exactly as she’d left it. Apparently, no one had been inside. The fact that no one had tried to find anything in her bedroom made her more sure that whoever had done this today had been after McBride, not her. With every minute that went by, she was more sure that his spy, this man Appleby or whatever his name was, had probably wanted her to publish his tell-all book, and, as McBride had said, maybe he’d not wanted the FBI to find out about it, so he’d tried to destroy Eden’s name. Maybe he was afraid that the FBI would block the publication of his book. He, like everyone else who wrote, wanted that greatest of achievements: immortality, a book that lived forever.
Eden thought that after her meeting with Brad, she’d call her publishing house and see if any reader had read a book written by a man who’d been a spy. Or maybe he’d done what Eden had with the Farrington data and fictionalized his story. She glanced at the blue boxes stacked in the corner of her bedroom. Four of the manuscripts were by unknown authors. Eden was to read them and give a report. If the book was good, it would be given to an editor who had an in-house office to be read again, and perhaps published. If the book was no good, it would be sent back to the author with a polite thankyou. For all Eden knew—because she’d had no time to work—Applegate’s book could be in that stack. Maybe the men who’d vandalized her house were looking for the manuscript but hadn’t found it. But that made no sense, as the boxes were in plain sight.
Turning, she faced McBride. “As you can see, no one has searched my room. That’s because they have no interest in me. If you look in your room, you’ll probably find it’s been torn apart. Now, Mr. McBride, I’m going to take a shower, then I’m going to meet a man I’m beginning to like a great deal. So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll—”
She wasn’t prepared for Jared’s lightning-fast movement. She had the door half closed when his arm reached out, grabbed her, and pulled her out of the room. He half threw her behind the door. “What—?” she began but didn’t finish her sentence because McBride nearly leaped into her bedroom. Was someone hiding in there? She put her hand to her throat and her heart raced. When she heard no sound from him, her heart calmed down and she tiptoed around the door. McBride was standing in her room, staring at her bed. The covers had been thrown back, but as far as she could see, there was nothing unusual. Straightening, she walked into the room. “There’s no one here,” she said.
Jared held out his arm to keep her from getting any closer to the bed. “Go down to the end of the hall,” he said quietly and calmly, “and get a broom. No, get two of them, then come back here. Don’t make any noise and move slowly.”
She wanted to ask questions, wanted to make him explain himself, but then she saw her bedcovers move. Something was alive and under the covers! She backed out of the room slowly, then ran down the hall to the closet that held the brooms and the stairs down. The door was open, and two brooms and an old mop were halfway out, but, as far as she could tell, no one but the two of them had been down the stairs. It was so unusual for a staircase to lead out of a broom closet that the intruders hadn’t checked.
Grabbing two brooms with sturdy handles, she went back to the bedroom. McBride hadn’t moved. In the middle of the bed was the head of a snake. It seemed to be warm and cozy under Eden’s covers and in no hurry to leave. It was staring up at McBride as though it wanted to say hello.
Without looking at her, Jared reached out his hand for the brooms. “Would you please go to that far window, open it, then go downstairs?” he said in a quiet, even voice.
Eden walked slowly toward the window, her back against the armoire that was against the wall. The snake turned to look at her, but it didn’t otherwise move. It seemed to have chosen McBride as its prey, and Eden was of little interest. At the window, she had to push upward hard. The wood in the windows had been replaced as was necessary to keep them from rotting, but they were still over two hundred years old—and they were a pain in the neck to work. More than once, years ago, Eden had looked at the ads for Pella and Andersen windows with longing.
Finally, the window was up. There were no weights inside it so it wouldn’t stay up. She grabbed one of the blue boxes on the floor and stuck it in the window—she hoped it was the spy’s manuscript. Once the window was open, she made her way back to the door, keeping against the wall and the furniture. As far as she could tell, McBride hadn’t taken his eyes off the snake. They seemed to be hypnotized by each other.
Eden left the room but stayed just outside the door and watched. As though he were a snake charmer, McBride used a broom in his left hand to attract the snake’s attention. With his right, he eased the second broom down under the snake’s body, which had begun to emerge from under the warmth of the covers. It took time and patience, but soon he had the broom handle under the snake. When Jared lifted, the snake wrapped itself around the handle, and Jared quickly walked toward the open window. It was only a few steps but it seemed to take an hour. In one quick movement, he reached the window, then he dropped the enormous snake outside.
Relieved, Eden opened the door and started back into her bedroom, but McBride put his hand up to stop her. “Let me check the place out,” he said, then began a slow, systematic search of her bedroom, then her bath.
He found a little copperhead inside the big armoire at the foot of her bed. It liked the warmth of the TV set and had curled up under it. Eden would never have seen it until she was bitten as she reached for something inside the cabinet. Under her bed, inside her gardening shoes, was a red-bellied moccasin. In her bathroom, behind a stack of towels in a cupboard, was a cottonmouth.
She stood at the door, growing weaker every time McBride pulled another poisonous snake out of her room. She figured a sack full of them had been released in her bedroom, then the door closed. She watched as he turned over chairs, stripped the bed, lifted the mattress and springs. He climbed on a chair and looked on top of the armoire, and on top of the mirror over the dresser. He lay down on the floor on his back and scooted under her bed, looking over every inch of it with a flashlight.
When he was sure that her room was clean, they went to his bedroom and he began to search it. There were no snakes in his room. Only in Eden’s.
At last, she sat down on the old chest in the hallway and sighed. “Someone wants me dead.”
“It would look that way,” he said quietly, looking at her in speculation. “You and I have to figure out what you know or who you know. We have to—”
Everything that was happening to her was so o
ut of everyday life, that she couldn’t really deal with it. If she thought about what was happening now, she’d start thinking about what happened to her when she was just a girl, and that would lead to thinking about Mrs. Farrington’s son. No, it was better to try to keep her life as normal as possible. She looked at her watch, then jumped up and started running for the stairs. “I have to meet Brad!”
“Ms. Palmer,” Jared called out, running down the stairs after her. “You can’t go anywhere. It’s too dangerous. Eden! Wait!”
She paid no attention to him. As she ran through the hall downstairs, she grabbed her handbag and her car keys and kept running toward her car.
“I have to search your car. You can not go! Do you hear me?”
Eden unlocked her car door, then stood by it for a second. “Mr. McBride, I am forty-five years old and I’ve had to deal with loser men all my life. Now, at last, I think I may have possibly found a winner. If you think that the FBI, a bunch of murderers, and a few poisonous snakes are going to deter me, then all I can say is that you don’t know anything about women.”
Jared barely made it into the passenger seat before she spun out of the driveway and headed into Arundel.
Chapter Nine
“YOU are a truly remarkable man,” Eden said as she used the rearview mirror of the parked car to put on lipstick. Just down the road, she could see Brad’s car at the John Deere dealership. She could also see a long-haired young man standing beside him, and from the stiffness of their bodies, she could tell they weren’t having a good time. Eden had pulled off the road to take the cosmetics she always carried with her out of her bag and do her face. Her hair was a mess, but thanks to a good New York cut, she could make it look all right. She lined her eyes, curled her pale lashes, and coated them with mascara.
“It would be too much for me to hope that that was a compliment,” Jared said. “I want to know what you’re going to tell Granville about why I’m with you—and planning to stay glued to you.”
“You’re remarkable because I’ve never heard anyone complain as much as you do. You’ve not taken a breath between your complaints since we left the house.”
“I have to use words because my department frowns on their agents using force on a person they think might be an ordinary citizen.”
“I am ordinary,” Eden said, glancing from the mirror to the dealership down the road. Now Brad was gesturing at the young man. She’d better hurry before they resorted to fisticuffs.
Jared followed her glance. “Don’t you know that men don’t like to be chased?” he said.
She gave him a look. “Women do the choosing and every man knows that. You know, you’re beginning to sound jealous.”
“Not quite. It may surprise you to know that outside of work I have a private life. I even have a girlfriend.”
“I’m so glad for you. Not for her, but for you.” She gave herself one last look in the mirror, saw that it was the best she was going to be able to do, then turned the key in the ignition and started the car.
“What are you going to tell him about me?” Jared asked again. “And you’d better think of something, because I’m not going to leave your side. You get killed under my watch and I’ll never get my pension.”
She gave him a quick look to see if he was kidding. “Who could imagine that you have a girlfriend?” she muttered.
In seconds, she was at the tractor dealership. She parked the car at the far side of the lot and walked toward Brad. She was determined to ignore McBride and to forget all about what they’d been through that morning. She wasn’t going to let Brad know anything about spies or the FBI or men who tore up her house. She knew the people of Arundel; they maybe have forgiven her for an illegitimate child, but whatever had happened in her life to make the FBI interested in her might be too much.
On the short ride into town, McBride hadn’t shut up about how serious the matter was, and how they had to figure out what she knew and why Applegate had swallowed her name. He told her that she should stay away from Granville until this was settled. When he’d pointed out that if those sapphires were ever found, she, as Mrs. Farrington’s heir, would be the owner of them, Eden’s eyes sparked fire. “Are you hinting that Braddon Granville is after what I own—if it were even to be found, that is? Are you saying that he doesn’t like me but what I may have inherited?”
Jared had backed down after that.
Now, as she walked toward Brad, wishing she’d thought to grab some clothes other than jeans, she was trying to think about how she was going to explain McBride’s presence. What was she to say about why he was with her? That she felt so guilty about hurting him that she was adopting him? How was she to explain that he intended to follow her everywhere? At least that’s what he was saying he was going to do. He said he was going to remain in her house and search her room every day, and that he was going to set up surveillance equipment outside. He said he was determined that she wasn’t going to get killed while he was in charge of her safety. She would have been flattered by his concern if he hadn’t said it in a way that made her think that her death would be nothing more than a blot on his record.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” Eden said, holding out her hand to shake Brad’s. She was very aware of McBride behind her and of Brad’s questioning eyes on him. Brad took her hand, but then he leaned forward and kissed her cheeks, one after the other in the European way. Eden wanted to throw her arms around his neck and tell him of all the horrible things that had happened to her that morning. But she didn’t. She kept calm and looked past Brad at the tall young man behind him. He was handsome, but he also looked angry and sullen.
“You must be Mr. Robicheaux,” Eden said, extending her hand.
“Yeah,” he said, taking her hand but looking confused as to who she was and why she was there. He also looked at the man behind her.
“McBride, isn’t it?” Brad said, extending his hand to shake Jared’s. “Are you looking for a tractor to buy?”
“Actually, I’m following Eden. We’re cousins,” McBride said.
Eden didn’t look at him. She kept her eyes on Brad and gave him a weak smile, and had no idea what to say.
But she didn’t have to worry, as McBride took care of the explanation. She should have known that he was a fabulous liar in all aspects of life. “Third cousins, so we’re not really close. On her mother’s side, so the names are different. We were truly amazed to find the connection, but then I was told that I had relatives out this way, so that’s why I came here in the first place. My mother’s people knew Eden’s mother, but our families weren’t close. You know how that is.” Halting, he gave Brad a huge smile.
Slowly, so she wouldn’t erupt in anger, Eden turned to Jared. “I think we have other things to talk about than our, uh, relationship,” she said calmly. “And I don’t think Mr. Granville wants to hear about our family connection, such as it is. Mr., uh, Jared, why don’t you go inside and get yourself a Coca-Cola? I’m sure there’s a machine inside.”
“Only if you go with me, cousin dear,” he said, smiling at her. Taking a step toward her, he put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Imagine my delight in finding my own cousin. After all these years apart, now I can’t bear to be away from her for even a minute.”
Eden, her eyes on Brad’s, kicked sideways, knowing that she’d hit the pistol strapped to McBride’s ankle and cause him pain. He covered his wince of pain well, but his fingers dug into Eden’s shoulders until tears came to her eyes. Twisting, she got out from under his grasp. “Maybe we should talk about the business at hand,” she said.
“Yes, well, uh,” Brad said, looking from Eden to Jared and back again.
Eden turned to the young man who’d been watching all of this with the same sullenness, but now there seemed to be a hint of amusement in his eyes. He is one good-looking young man, she thought, and she could see why Camden Granville had fallen for him. The sullen, angry look wasn’t something that would appeal to her, but she could imag
ine that some girls would like it. “What has Brad told you about me?” she asked, turning her back on Brad and McBride, who were glaring at each other like dogs about to fight.
Reluctantly, Remi took his eyes away from the men. He seemed to be enjoying his father-in-law’s discomfort. “Not a word, ma’am,” he said in that accent of deep Louisiana. Cajun.
Oh, yeah, Eden thought. She understood Camden completely. She headed toward the small tractors, away from the quarter-of-a-million-dollar combines, and Remi followed. Behind them, Brad and McBride walked slowly, side by side.
“I’ve had some experience in designing eighteenth-century–style gardens,” she said to Remi. “So Brad thought that maybe you and I could work together. Do you think that’s possible?”
“If you’re willing to put up with my father-in-law’s tightfistedness, and his constant complaining, yeah, sure. What do I know about designing fancy gardens? At home we let the Lord grow what we eat.”
She smiled at him. “If I plant okra will you make me a pot of gumbo?”
“Why, shore, sugah,” he said, drawling. “I’ll cook you anythin’ you want.”
Yes, indeedy, Eden thought. Understand it well. “If you don’t know about garden design, what do you know about landscaping?”
“If you ask my father-in-law, not a damned thing, but I know about the land and plants and about machines. What else do I need to know?”
“Nothing,” Eden said and almost added “darlin’.” “Can you set fence posts? Lay bricks in concrete? Most important, can you take orders from a woman?”
“Been doin’ it all my life in one way or another,” he said, smiling at her in that soft way that only Southern men can. “And if I don’t know how to do it, I can learn. Maybe you’ll teach me.”
“Maybe I will,” she said in the same tone. Oh! But it was good to be back in the South!
First Impressions Page 13