by Bush, Nancy
“Where do you want to go?” he asked.
“Home?”
When he didn’t argue, she was almost disappointed, but then when he drove right past the turn that would take them to her apartment, she said, “Uh . . .” and pointed at the road they should have taken.
“Oh, I thought you meant my home,” he said, fighting a smile.
She laughed. “You’re too slick for your own good.”
“Want to go back to yours?”
“No,” she said after a moment.
They drove to another part of Laurelton and down a lane to a small rambler home that made her give him a long look as he pulled into the garage. He pushed the remote as they climbed from the vehicle and the garage door rattled down behind them. Then Jake opened a side door that led into the house.
“Not what you expected, huh?” he said, as he flipped on the lights.
They were standing in a family room off the kitchen, which Jake walked across on his way to a back patio. He slid open the sliding glass door and beckoned her to follow him outside.
September moved into the warm outside air and admitted, “I pictured you in a downtown high-rise condominium.”
“My office is a little like that,” he admitted. “But I’m moving when the lease is up.”
“To where?”
“I don’t know. Guess I need to figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.”
“Sounds . . . uncertain.”
“Yeah, well.”
The patio was lit by outdoor lights and Jake moved to the table, picked up a lighter, and touched the flame to the wick of a fat yellow candle that sat inside a large, clear votive in the center of a small table. There were two cushioned lounge chairs and he brushed one off with his hand, inviting her to sit down, which she did, lying back and looking toward the stars. She heard him brushing off his own chair, then he perched on the edge of it. “I have beer and not much else.”
“Let me think . . . okay, I’ll take a beer.”
He flashed her a smile and headed into the house. She heard the refrigerator door open, then the snap of the tops being popped, and a few minutes later he returned, handing her a longneck Bud and keeping one for himself. “I should have asked if you wanted a glass.”
“This is fine,” she assured him, and it was.
They sat drinking in relative silence, feeling the heat of the day dissipating, watching the flickering candle. “How’s the investigation going?” he asked after a while.
“I’ve got a lot of pieces that could mean something, or not, or I don’t know.”
“Can you tell me?”
“Some of it.” She looked at the shadowed planes of his face. “There’s definitely an elementary school connection somehow. I don’t know if he went to our school, or knew someone who did, but it keeps circling back there. The FBI’s on the case now, but I haven’t really confided in them about this yet.”
“Yeah?”
“They want to kick me off the case because of the artwork. I don’t want to be kicked off the case.”
“You want to get this guy yourself.”
“I want to be a part of the posse, yeah.”
“What’s the grade school connection?” he asked.
“Well . . .” She shrugged, then she told him how Ms. Osborne had phoned her back and she’d told her about the artwork and asked her if she knew the name Wart, which she hadn’t. From that, September ran through her meeting with Mrs. McBride where the teacher had mentioned theirs was a problem class, especially with three of the boys, for various reasons. She finished with, “Neither of them knew anyone nicknamed Wart. I tried that name out with a nurse who’d worked at Grandview Mental Hospital when Tripp’s uncle was on staff there, but she didn’t know it, either.”
“Who told you about Wart, in the first place?”
“I heard it from Ben Schmidt, Sheila’s sixth grade boyfriend. And then, I talked to a couple of her other school friends that Ben told me about, Andrew Welke and his wife, Caitlyn, and they said Sheila thought this Wart was weird. That he maybe had a real interest in knives, and that he possibly went to Sunset Elementary before transferring to their school, Twin Oaks. They also said they heard that he might be dead, or in jail, or something. No one seems to really remember, though. I’m not convinced that Wart isn’t a catchall term that Sheila might have used. She used ‘psycho’ in her everyday language, so maybe ‘wart’ as well.”
“Maybe when she was younger. I never heard her say that.”
“But how well did you know her?” September questioned. “You said yourself, she was more of an acquaintance.”
“She was.” He peeled part of the label of the beer with his thumb, staring down at it thoughtfully.
The conversation lulled. She wondered how much she should tell him. It wasn’t like she was giving away state secrets, but there was an unspoken understanding that the less civilians knew, the better. Still . . . “We learned today that Emmy Decatur was a patient at Grandview for a while. Her parents held that back because they were embarrassed. Emmy let her roommate think they’d kicked her out of the house in high school rather than admit the truth. She might’ve been there about the same time Dr. Navarone was on staff.”
“You think Glenda Tripp and Emmy Decatur crossed paths?”
“With each other, or maybe with someone else,” she agreed. “Glenda told a coworker she’d had sex with someone on her uncle’s examining table. She didn’t say exactly when, but it appears to be when she was a teenager.”
“Huh.” He shot her a look. “Sounds less romantic than in a grape arbor.”
Her thoughts flew to the memory of that night and she pulled them back, aware that her pulse had increased at the fact that he was remembering that.
“So, you think it’s someone who went to our grade school?” he asked, when she went quiet.
“Or, knew someone who did and was connected that way. Then, he met Sheila at Twin Oaks, but from there . . . I don’t know about Grandview.”
“Because Sheila never went to Grandview. Only Decatur and Tripp.”
“I just wish there was some common denominator for all of them. So, if the killer knows Sheila, it’s maybe through elementary school, but I can’t make a connection to Grandview with her.” She exhaled heavily. “But then maybe she just met him at The Barn Door and the rest is coincidental.”
“Except there was that guy who hassled her at the bar. Someone she knew from the past.”
“Yeah . . . maybe this Wart/psycho character. Maybe someone else.” She made a face and took another pull on her beer.
“Don’t get discouraged,” he said.
“I’m not, I’m just . . .”
“What?”
He moved from his chair to perch on hers. They stared at each other through the uncertain light thrown by the candle. He put his hand on her knee and through the skirt she felt her skin turn to fire.
“Confused, mostly,” she said.
He leaned over and kissed her, pressing his lips to hers, testing her response.
September closed her eyes, kissing him back, fully aware that she was recalling those moments amongst the vines, comparing. His weight pushed her further into the chair and she was conscious of every place their bodies touched: legs, hips, arms, mouth.
Am I going to really do this? she thought, with a quick calculation of her time of the month. She was close to her period, so she was sure she was okay; she was as regular as clockwork. And she wasn’t sexually active enough to carry condoms with her. If you looked in her purse, you’d be more likely to find a gun.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked, his breath hot on her lips.
“Remembering . . .”
He propped himself up on one elbow, staring down at her face. “I didn’t get the impression at our first meeting that they were good memories, but now . . . ?”
“I’ve had a change of heart.”
He reached out and touched her chin, cupping it with strong f
ingers. “How much of a change?” he asked in a low voice.
For an answer she ran her hand over the edge of his beard-roughened jaw, then brought his mouth back to within a hair’s-breadth of hers. “I think . . .”
“Yes?”
For an answer she reached her lips up to his, pressing her mouth to his, straining upward. He slid his body atop hers, never breaking the kiss, and his right hand moved downward to cup her breast. September’s pulse was running light and fast, and when his tongue entered her mouth she felt herself go limp.
His hips moved against hers and she answered with the same age-old motion. She could feel the escalation of her rasping breath, and she slid her arms around him, sliding her fingers beneath his waistband, tugging up his shirt. With a muscular twist he was leaning away from her, balanced on one hip while he ripped at the buttons of his shirt. She swept his hands away and undid them herself, sliding his shirt from warm, hard shoulders.
As soon as he was shirtless he worked on her top, pulling her arms above her head and tugging the salmon-colored shirt up over them. Then his head bent to her flesh-colored bra and he placed his mouth over one breast, suckling through the sheer fabric and causing a shot of desire to streak through her inner core.
“Oh . . . God . . . I . . .” She held her breath, surprised, torn between a groan of desire and shaking laughter.
“What?” he asked, balancing himself on both hands, staring down at her, his hips pressed hard against hers. It was impossible not to feel his hardness and her legs moved apart of their own accord; September was sure she hadn’t willed it, but then, later, she thought maybe she had.
“I’m . . .”
He waited.
“I think I’ve wanted this for a long time.”
He flashed a white grin at her, and then very slowly moved down her body, his hands tugging on her pants, pulling them over her hips, and then following with her panties, pulling off shoes, socks, and everything in the process until she was completely nude. Swiftly, he pulled off his own pants, boxers and all, and then he lay half atop her, half beside her, his mouth nuzzling her ear and throat.
“I get the feeling you’re more expert at this than I am,” she said on a gasp as his mouth moved lower to capture her nipple. Heat shot through her and her head lolled back. She caught a glimpse of the sky and a billion stars before she squeezed her eyes closed.
“The only woman I’ve been with in forever was Loni,” he admitted.
“But Sheila . . .”
“No. I told you.” And then he shook his head. “She was married.”
She believed him. Not that it could matter in the larger scheme of things, could it? If there was a bigger issue it was that he was involved in the case, at least peripherally, and she should know better.
And then she gasped, “Wait . . . don’t . . . !” Her eyes flew open, because he was moving south to the center of her and her fingers were suddenly gripping his hair, hanging on for dear life.
He had the nerve to chuckle and then keep right on and a moment later, September bit down on her lower lip to fight back a scream of surprise and dark desire. And then he was kissing her and licking her and her hips were rising to meet him and she said, “Oh, God!” and pulled him to her, grabbing him and holding her arms around him and he entered her so smoothly that she was shocked it hadn’t been more effort except that she felt like pure liquid.
She slid her mouth over his cheek and tasted the saltiness of his flesh, dragging his mouth to hers as he pushed against her. And then they were in rhythm, moving together, and he pulled back and looked down at her and she stared up at him and then his mouth crashed down on hers once more and within moments her whole body was shuddering and she was flying, flying, and there was so much desire, and love and emotion that she was afraid she would cry, or scream, or something, but all she did was hold everything inside in a deep crushing grip until the waves crested and she could let out that pent-up air on a huge exhalation at the moment of his own climax.
And then he lay atop her, their hearts beating wildly, and for a few moments September just lay mesmerized, still staring at the clouds.
“I . . .” he said doubtfully, not lifting his head from her breast.
She froze a moment, her heart jerking. He wasn’t going to already regret this, was he? She wouldn’t be able to stand it.
“No condom,” he said then, sounding stunned.
Her relief was so enormous she started to laugh, sounding half-hysterical. “I don’t have any, but it won’t be a problem, timing-wise, I’m pretty sure.”
He lifted his head and looked at her. She could see the smile now on his lips. “This time,” he said.
“This time.”
“It’s at the top of my shopping list for the future,” he said, and then bent down to begin lazily kissing her and starting all over again.
Thursday morning September went to work in a daze. Agents Bethwick and Donley wanted a meeting but she barely heard one word of it. They had nothing much further to report on Lulu Luxe’s killer, although the john thought there might have been a white van parked in the lot not far from his car. It had already been determined the guy was half-wasted, though he wouldn’t admit to it and add to his transgressions by admitting to driving drunk.
Sandler looked her way to see if she wanted to report on their own investigation, but she signaled that Gretchen could take over. What followed was an abbreviated version of looking into Glenda Navarone Tripp’s history that involved a possible sexual relationship with someone on the premises of what had once been Grandview Mental Hospital. She left out everything that had to do with Emmy Decatur, and September’s ongoing probing into the killer’s possible association with Sunset Elementary School. The agents both stared at them silently. Maybe they thought Sandler and September were holding back, or maybe they just thought they were incompetent. From September’s point of view, it didn’t really matter which. They were following leads and that was that.
And all she could think about were Jake Westerly’s hands and lips upon her skin, and twice she felt her face flush when a particular memory struck home.
Holy God.
“You okay?” Gretchen asked, looking over at her when the meeting broke up.
“Yeah, why?”
“You look, I don’t know . . . shell-shocked, maybe.”
“You said that the pieces would come together,” September said, desperately trying to change the subject. “How can you be so sure?”
Gretchen shot a look to the agents, then at George, who was absorbed in a phone conversation that held all his attention. “Well, what do we know for certain, and what are we guessing at? Let’s go someplace where we can talk alone.”
“You want to leave the station?”
“Yeah, I’m due for a latte, aren’t you?”
“An iced coffee. Sure.”
They left a few moments later and this time September drove, taking her Pilot. The nearest coffee place was a Starbucks, and after they’d purchased their drinks, they sat at a tiny table for two in the corner rather than head into the growing heat of the day.
They spent about an hour hashing out what they had so far and it boiled down to a few facts and a lot of theories.
“You know we rechecked out The Barn Door, but we haven’t visited Emmy’s Gulliver’s, and Glenda’s Lariat again,” Gretchen said.
“We should do that,” September agreed. “And I want to interview Hague Dugan, too.”
“I thought you said the sister—Dawn Markam-Manning—said he wasn’t at Grandview when Glenda and Emmy were.”
“He wasn’t. But his name keeps cropping up in both the Zuma investigation and this one, and we’ve always known there was something between them.”
She shrugged and nodded. “How you gonna interview him?”
“I’ll ask Auggie. He wants to help on our investigation. I’ve been trying to keep him out, but now with the feds here it hardly matters. Now, it’s just whether he has the time.”
>
“Hague is Liv’s brother. If he can’t help you, maybe she can.”
“Maybe,” September agreed.
Liv Dugan was her brother’s newest love interest, and she’d been a person of interest on the Zuma case. September didn’t know her all that well, but she sensed her brother was deeply involved with her. This was no quick fling spawned in the heat of the investigation.
“All right, let’s go back,” Sandler said. “Let’s go to Gulliver’s first, around four, and if we have time we’ll hit The Lariat right afterward.”
“I’ll call Auggie and maybe Liv.”
Back at the station, George was annoyed and frazzled. “Where the hell did you run off to? We’ve got a murdersuicide on East Blankenshire. Somebody’s gotta go there.”
“What’s taking you so long?” Gretchen asked.
George flushed. He never liked leaving his computer and desk chair. “I don’t have a partner right now.”
“What’s the story?” she asked in a long-suffering tone, rolling her eyes.
“Hey, fuck it,” George muttered. “I’ll go alone.”
“You shoulda gone twenty minutes ago,” Gretchen pointed out. “Fine, I’ll go with you. Frick and Frack don’t care what we do on the Do Unto Others case anyway.” She gave September a long look full of meaning. She wanted her to continue forging ahead.
As they headed out, she heard George say, “They were losing their house and all their money. Foreclosure and bankruptcy. Looks like the husband couldn’t take it, so he shot his wife, and then shot himself.”
“So, the wife didn’t sign on for this.”
“Doesn’t look like it. . . .”
“Son of a bitch,” September hissed through her teeth to no one in particular. She couldn’t stand these guys who became judge, jury, and owner of their wives or girlfriends, treating them like they had no mind of their own, as if their lives had no worth whatsoever.
She texted Auggie with a request to visit Hague, maybe with Liv.
While she was waiting for him to respond, Agent Donley cruised over her way, causing her to sit up straight. He leaned a hip casually against the edge of the desk and said, “What’s with the guy out front?”, hooking a thumb over his shoulder.