by Holmes, Dee
“Mom, why don’t you take Lisa out to the sun-porch. I’ll deal with Gladys.”
His sister sailed in, smelling like grape bubble gum and looking about twelve with her hair in braids. “I’ll take her. Where’s Kathleen?”
“That was what I asked and nearly got my head bitten off,” his mother said, handing Lisa to Darlene and touching the baby’s shirt “Kathleen would have put the buttons in back and the lace in front.”
Booth had had enough. “What the hell is this? The woman isn’t attached to me like my right arm.”
“Are we in a bad mood?” Darlene asked.
“Your brother isn’t having a good day.”
“I’m having a fabulous day.”
“Did they have a fight?” Darlene whispered to their mother while peering at him. She drew closer to her mother and cradled Lisa a little tighter.
“Probably just a lovers’ spat. She’s at the carriage house.”
“And he’s here all edgy and snarly and looking very unhappy.” Darlene raised an eyebrow, then touched her tongue to her upper lip, a habit she displayed whenever she thought she had the upper hand with her brother. “This is not the highway to happy endings, Booth.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“No, this isn’t good at all. And Kathleen is such a cool lady. I mean, what did you do to her?” But without waiting for him to say anything, she rolled on. “Mom and I will be glad to keep Lisa while you go and apologize. A private apology with the lights low and the music soft works every time.”
Booth glowered at Darlene, then gripped the door handle. “Better make tracks, muskrat, or Gladys, the self-appointed moral police chief, will be lecturing you on your shorts and skimpy top.”
“Get me outta here.” And she disappeared with Lisa, making the baby giggle.
Booth took a deep breath and pulled open the door, delighted by Gladys’s surprised look at his presence.
“Well, well, fancy seeing you here.”
“I used to live here.”
“And it’s too bad you don’t anymore, instead of going off and doing sinful things with a loose woman. My poor Angie is barely cold in the ground.”
Booth narrowed his eyes. “Gladys, stop insulting Kathleen.”
“The truth will be very enlightening,” she said mysteriously.
Janet stepped between the two of them and invited Gladys inside. “Whatever have you brought? Not that collection of recipes you’ve been telling me about.”
“I did promise you those, didn’t I? Another time. These are some newspapers I found. I’ve been looking for days because I knew there was something in them that was important.”
She trundled into the house, heading for the kitchen, the scent of musty tweed and camphor wafting in her wake.
Booth looked at his mother. “Recipes?”
“She mentioned some old apple recipes of her grandmother’s, and I wanted to look through them for the cookbook the church is putting together for a fund-raiser.”
“Giving her a good excuse for a return trip.”
“Now, Booth, she is odd and cantankerous, but you’re the one who has the problems with her.”
Booth rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “Let’s go and see what’s in the bags, but I’m telling you right now, I don’t want her anywhere near Lisa.”
“I understand.”
He glanced at the ceiling. “Thank you, God.”
By the time they reached the kitchen, what had looked like bags of randomly stuffed newspapers had been emptied, with the tabloid pages spread out on the table and continuing onto the counter. Gladys stood to the side, rocking back and forth like a preening mistress of ceremonies secure in her presentation of the scandal of the year.
She watched Booth, giving him the eerie sense she was about to pronounce judgment. She wore a boater with limp ribbons and clusters of dusty pansies weighing down the brim. Its outdated whimsy actually softened her face, but Booth was in no mood to notice. The woman was weird.
“What do you have here, Gladys? These are all grocery-store tabloids,” Janet said in a friendly tone.
“Where the real news is,” she replied.
“Yeah, I’ve been following all those space-alien scoops.”
She turned and glared at Booth. “You won’t be talkin’ so sure when you take a closer look. The one there on the end of the counter. Start there.”
Humor her, he thought, barely glancing at the screaming headlines—until he got to the one she indicated.
Wanted Woman Escapes Wyoming Statewide Roadblock. Then in a smaller caption: What Went Wrong between a Deputy Sheriff and His Lovely Wife That Made Her Shoot Him?
Booth drew closer, and when the name Kathleen Hanes, beneath a grainy photo of a man and woman swam up at him, he stared in disbelief.
“Kathleen?”
Gladys snipped, “So you do recognize her. I knew when I saw her with you that there was something familiar about her. So I went home and began looking through all my papers. It took some time, but I knew I’d seen her face.”
Booth stared, looking at one, and then the next and the next. The stories were dated June, and typically salacious and sensationalized, but he couldn’t get beyond the gist of them. Kathleen was a fugitive, wanted for murder.
Janet came closer, gasping when she comprehended what she was seeing. “There has to be some mistake.”
Booth felt as if he’d been sucker punched. The headlines screamed, the pictures bled through the text with painful clarity. Photos of Kathleen and her husband, Steve, on their wedding day, a picture of Steve Hanes when he was sworn in as deputy sheriff, and a discomforting shot of the murder scene, hours after the fact. There was a splash of photos of police cars around a simple white house with brown trim that squatted amid flats of sagebrush. A pine forest on one side of a nearby barn reached hopefully into a canyon of clouds. A flag hung limply from a pole in the front yard.
If not for the cop cars, it would have looked idyllic—Middle America where the flag was still saluted and lemonade served on hot summer afternoons.
Booth had never been to Wyoming, but he associated the state with cowboys, endless stretches of highway and hundreds of miles between one town and the next. The Kathleen he knew didn’t fit in Wyoming, and for damn sure she didn’t fit the tabloid portrayal of a wanted killer.
“Booth?” His mother had gripped his arm, and he could feel her body shaking. His own felt numb. “What can all this mean? There has to be a mistake. It is a mistake, isn’t it?” Her eyes were wide and worried. “Isn’t it?”
Booth slipped an arm around his mother and gave her an encouraging hug.
“My newspapers don’t lie,” Gladys said.
“But they exaggerate,” Janet said, her voice breaking. “And they make things up. Why, some of these very papers have been sued for false reporting.”
“It’s the truth!”
Booth released his mother. “Well, I’ll tell you what, Gladys,” he said, bearing down on her. “I’m a cop, and if anyone would know any of this stuff, it would be me, and I don’t know a thing about it. And if Kathleen were some dangerous gun-waving fugitive, her picture would be plastered all over television and in newspapers with more credibility than these rags you read.”
By the time he finished, Gladys was hugging her empty bags to her chest. “Just ’cuz you don’t like it don’t make it a lie.”
Booth glared at her. “You know what I don’t like? You. I want you to take your goddamned newspapers and your goddamned warped perceptions and get the hell away from me and my family.”
“Janet,” the old woman sputtered, “are you going to let him talk to me that way?”
“Yes, Gladys, I am.” Janet gathered up all the papers and put them into one of the bags and handed them to her. “I feel sorry for you, Gladys, but I can’t let you hurt people I care about. And that includes Kathleen.”
Booth turned his back and walked out the door. He felt dirty, slimy and angry. At
Gladys for dumping on him whatever twisted piece of truth there was in those tabloids, and at Kathleen for not trusting him enough to tell him. He wanted to believe it was all some made-up tale for juicy-gossip purposes, but there were some details he couldn’t ignore. Her separation from her father and brothers, her mother’s death and the fact that Kathleen was an accomplished pianist who had given lessons the first few years of her marriage. The story supported what he knew about her, despite her vagueness about where she’d come from and about her past in general. And it answered the question of why she feared cops. God knows what Hanes had done to her to deserve being killed, but Booth would bet his own years in law enforcement that their marriage hadn’t won any blue ribbons for happiness or quality of life.
In the distance he heard the front door close and then his mother’s approaching footsteps.
She touched his back. “What are you going to do, Booth? I know you can find out very quickly if there is any truth to this nonsense.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. Now he had the right name to run through NCIC, or he could call the Wyoming State Police, or he could ask Kathleen directly. All three possibilities lay in his belly like rat poison.
“You don’t want to know, do you?”
No! But a hard-assed denial was a position he couldn’t defend. His silence would become complicity. Withholding evidence could cost him his job; it would damage his reputation for integrity, and to what end? Gladys would make sure her tabloids landed on the chief’s desk, and she’d relish the moment.
He turned and kissed his mother’s cheek, then stepped past her.
She caught his arm. “Where are you going?”
“Downtown. I have to check this all out.”
“Booth, are you going to have to arrest her?”
“If this is all true, yes.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
AT 1:15 A.M. ON Wednesday morning, after he left police headquarters, instead of going home, Booth turned into the drive that led to the carriage house. The early morning was warm and humid; the night sounds of crickets and the faraway barking of a dog were overwhelmed by the rolling tones and chords of “Memories” from Cats. Kathleen’s piano had arrived, and she was obviously in her glory.
Getting out of his car, Booth stood in the darkness listening. He could vividly imagine her fingers sweeping across the keys, her face expressing the intensity of the music. He was struck by how badly he wanted her, and at the same time by how furious he was that he’d opened the door that had brought her into his life in the first place.
It wasn’t rational, it wasn’t objective, it wasn’t even marginally imaginative, but the dichotomy defined the murky seesaw of his thought processes over the hours since reading Gladys’s tabloids.
He shoved a hand through his hair, rubbed at his eyes and cursed his unending exhaustion. He hadn’t been home since Gladys had made her presentation. He’d been on the phone, checking police files, digging through every possibility he could think of for some hint that all the evidence he was coming up with wasn’t true. He desperately needed to find a hole in the story—one hole that would reveal some screwup, either massive or minor.
And he hadn’t.
He walked up to the front entrance of the carriage house and found the screen unlocked.
Booth snorted in disgust. She was alone at one in the morning in a desolate area on the outskirts of Crosby, and she hadn’t locked the doors? Careless or stupid or foolishly innocent about intruders. Booth applied the latter instinctively. And naiveté just didn’t fit the profile of someone who’d blown away her husband. That was his problem. The facts he’d gathered about the Steve Hanes murder were pretty condemning, but his gut or his heart wanted desperately for there to be another explanation. He wanted to find that hole.
He wanted that explanation from her, and he wanted it tonight.
He opened the door and stepped inside. Light and music flooded the air as he turned the corner into a massive room with a gleaming hardwood floor. Centered perfectly on a round burgundy carpet beneath the exposed oak ceiling beams was a baby grand piano.
Kathleen sat on the bench, looking fragile and small, as if she’d been a forgotten last performer at a music recital. She faced away from him. Her back was ruler straight, her hair loose and tumbling around her shoulders. She wore an oversize sweatshirt and her legs were bare. Her equally bare feet worked the foot petals furiously.
Booth stood still, the music enveloping him as he wanted to envelop her. His body, weary just minutes ago, was now tense and alert. Every moment of uncertainty drifted away, every testy conversation they’d had no longer mattered, every instant of mistrust was reduced to ashes and dust.
Nothing mattered to him but now and her and...
Then he moved up behind her, swiftly and silently. In the deepest part of his being, his restraint released into lightning and heat, becoming a thundering swell of need and anticipation. He brought one hand around to cover her anticipated scream of alarm, and at the same time he used the other to turn her to face him.
For a second she froze, and Booth’s mouth covered hers. She pushed at him, grabbing handfuls of his shirt. Booth felt the scrape of her nails through the cloth, and sweat broke out across his belly. Then her resistance collapsed into a moan and he tasted her hunger, drank in her thirst.
He straddled the bench, not once lifting his mouth, plunging his tongue even deeper while he lifted her across his thighs. That was when he knew she wore nothing beneath the sweatshirt.
Positioned so that her body was glued to his, he moved his hands under the shirt, gripping her hips, bringing her even closer. He slid his palms up her sides, cupping and circling her breasts.
She broke the kiss and tipped her head back, staring at him, her eyes pools of allure.
“What are you doing here?” she whispered.
“This is what I’m doing here.” His mouth devoured hers once again.
She gasped, her fingers tangling in his hair. “But it’s over between us.”
Booth suckled her breasts, then buried his mouth in her neck. “Then climb off, babe, and I’ll go away.”
She closed her eyes and he counted the beats of silence while his body hummed hotter.
“You know I can’t.”
“I was counting on that. Come here.”
Her arms slid around him, their grip tight and unrelenting; her mouth moved over his with a hunger he welcomed and devoured.
She kissed him deep and deeper still, then sank back, her breath rushing, her gaze hot with passion. Booth reached for her, but her hands went to his jeans, one tugging at the belt while the other moved over him so possessively he nearly lost control.
She slipped off him and stood staring, looking as if she’d wanted this moment as much as he had. Then, as if this were their last chance to be together, she tugged him from the bench and onto the floor. She slipped off her shorts, then pulled her sweatshirt over her head.
She was naked and aroused and shaking with her power over him. Booth blew out the breath he’d been holding, got his pants open and barely below his hips before she’d sunk down on top of him. The dark heat of her tore through him as she moved and swayed and held him. Nothing mattered beyond the next erotic moment.
Neither spoke. Neither needed to. As their bodies tangled, bathed in the light from the lamp beside the piano, Booth settled into a different realm than he’d ever known. Hypnotic, mystical, saturating. Her body lifted and settled and lifted and settled again. He gripped her hips, whipped his head back, his teeth clenched.
His climax pounded through him, rushing, racing, rolling forth in a bone-wrenching renewal. He held her so tight, so close, she became a part of him, making him unsure whether his grip was to keep her from falling or himself from dying.
Kathleen came in a sweep of heat and pleasure, her body arcing and then falling in a boneless heap across him.
They lay replete, their bodies sweaty, satiated but still quivering with a wild savagery.
“I didn’t know you were coming.”
His eyes still closed, he grinned at the double meaning. “I didn’t, either.”
“This doesn’t change anything.”
“Everything is already changed.”
She reached for her sweatshirt and pulled it over her head. Booth watched, unmindful of his own clothes. She stood, stepping out of his reach.
He knew she was nervous and uneasy. “I still have some things at your place. I’ll get them tomorrow. Today was just too busy.”
“Yeah, busy for me, too.”
She gave him an odd look, then added, “I had to give notice at the restaurant, do the paperwork for Eric, and then the piano arrived a few hours ago. I have your key, and as long as you’re here—”
“Forget the key and the itinerary,” he said, annoyed that she was acting as if he were already out of her life.
She stared down at him, and he made his face relax. One thing he didn’t want was an argument.
“You come here in the middle of the night, catch me off guard and we have sex, when we haven’t even been speaking to each other for the past few days. Something is going on.”
“Well something certainly was.”
But she didn’t laugh and she didn’t smile. She planted her hands on her hips and glared down at him. “You took me by surprise.”
“Uh-huh. You were wet the second I touched you.”
“Music arouses me.”
Booth winked. “I’ll remember that.”
She narrowed her gaze, started to say something and then shut her mouth.
Booth rolled to his feet, fastening his jeans and dragging his hands down his face. He could still smell her, and the scent stirred his gut anew. “So when did the piano arrive?”