“Answers aren’t always available. This isn’t exactly a pension and benefits issue. The police think a burglar killed Brad. That kind of crime is notoriously hard to solve. It’s quite possible the murderer is in jail now for some other offense.”
“Do you believe that?”
It was getting a little hard to breathe. She tried another sip of wine in hopes of calming her jittery nerves.
“It’s comforting to think that the killer is probably off the streets,” she said.
“You don’t look particularly comforted. I assume that is because you believe that whoever murdered McAllister is probably not sitting in jail.”
How had the conversation strayed into such dangerous territory? Not an accident, that was certain. It was time to take the offensive.
“Why are you so interested in Brad’s death?” she asked coolly.
“Because you interest me, Clare Lancaster. What happened to your sister’s husband had a major impact on your life. It cost you a fiancé and it’s the reason you’re currently unemployed. Therefore it follows that I’m curious.”
She dared not move. “Why are you interested in me? Is it because Archer is your client?”
“No, Clare.” He smiled slowly, letting her see the hunter beneath the surface. “This is personal.”
Chapter Twelve
The incident in the parking garage had been a reckless, idiotic, potentially disastrous act, Valerie thought. She was still shaking.
She had made the mistake of giving in to impulse and an irresistible moment of opportunity. That must not happen again.
Luckily she had failed. What if she had succeeded? Yes, Clare would have been dead or grievously injured and that would have been enormously satisfying. But there would have been so many problems. How would she have concealed the damage to the car, for instance? Owen would most certainly have demanded an explanation. There would have been blood or some other type of forensic evidence left behind.
She might have been arrested, Valerie thought, horrified.
Shuddering, she gulped down half the martini and topped off the glass.
She had not followed Clare from the Glazebrook house with the intention of running her down. The plan had been to find out where she was staying in Phoenix. No one seemed to know anything other than that she was at a hotel near the airport.
Valerie clenched one hand into a fist. This morning she had opened a city map of Phoenix and drawn a circle around Phoenix Sky Harbor. She methodically called every hotel and motel within a two-mile radius of the airport. There was no Clare Lancaster registered at any of them.
Clever bitch. You know you’ve got a reason to be careful, don’t you?
The idea of watching the entrance to the gated community where she and Owen and the Glazebrooks lived had come to her that morning. Owen had said Clare had returned to Arizona because she was summoned by Archer Glazebrook. It made sense that sooner or later she would show up at the house again, if only to deal with the damaged rental car and pick up a new one.
The detour into the mall parking garage had come as a surprise. Valerie remembered how she had sat there, waiting, for nearly two hours in the damned heat before Clare returned. At the sight of her carrying shopping bags and acting so normal, just as if she hadn’t murdered Brad in cold blood, rage boiled up and spilled over.
Stupid, Valerie thought. So stupid.
Cradling the full martini glass in both hands, she walked gingerly across the white-on-white great room and sat down on the white leather sofa. She had to be careful. Owen had been furious two days before when she accidentally spilled a whole pitcher of martinis on the rug.
But she needed this drink badly. Her nerves were shot. She took another long swallow and set the glass on the table.
She held up her hand and stared at her shaking fingers. Maybe she ought to take one of the pills the doctor had given her. He warned her not to mix the meds with booze but she knew for a fact that people did it all the time. She had done it herself, more than once, recently. A good night’s sleep had been impossible to come by since the night of Brad’s murder, but she had discovered that a judicious mix of pills and alcohol made it possible to escape into oblivion for a few hours at a time.
No pills this evening, she decided. She did not want to sleep. She needed to think. She had to concentrate on what to do about Clare Lancaster.
Rage flashed through her. How dare Clare come back here after what she did?
Valerie took another fortifying gulp of martini and looked out the wall of windows toward the mountains.
She hated this place. She detested everything about the desert with its harsh, ugly plant life, its stinging insects and snakes, the relentless summer heat and the intense light. But most of all she hated knowing that Brad’s killer was walking around Stone Canyon as free as a bird.
Seeing Clare enter the Glazebrook house just as though she deserved to be treated like a member of the family was too much. No mother who had lost a son could be expected to tolerate that kind of affront.
She used both hands to raise the martini glass to her lips again. This time she hesitated. Then, very carefully, she set the glass back down on the white stone coffee table without taking a sip.
She really did need to think.
For a while the vengeance she had pursued these past six months had been enough to satisfy her. The first phone call, the one to Clare’s fiancé, had been extremely gratifying. Poor Greg Washburn was horrified to discover that Clare had been having an affair with her half sister’s husband. He was even more stunned to discover that, although she had not been arrested, many of those closest to the victim were convinced that Clare killed him. That kind of gossip was too much for any decent man. He’d had no choice but to end the engagement.
The phone call to the head of the Draper Trust where Clare worked had been just as satisfactory. Valerie placed the call in her capacity as president of the board of the Stone Canyon Arts Academy. Due diligence and all that. Just a word to the wise. Everyone in the charitable foundation business understood that the employees had to be purer than Caesar’s wife. If word got out that a member of the staff had been involved in an illicit love triangle that ended in murder the impact on future fund-raising efforts could be devastating. Reputation was everything in the world of high-end philanthropy.
She had refined her story as the months went by, perfecting it with additional phone calls to each of Clare’s prospective employers. It wasn’t that hard to learn the names of the charitable organizations that were considering her application. The world of charitable gift giving in the San Francisco Bay area, after all, was relatively small.
No, she assured each scandalized board director in turn, there was no hard evidence implicating Clare Lancaster but it was common knowledge in certain circles in Stone Canyon that she had been intimately involved with the victim. It was also well known that Archer Glazebrook had pulled a lot of strings to keep his illegitimate daughter out of jail. He had only done what he’d had to do, of course. After all, he had the reputation of his family to protect. But everyone knew the truth.
The phone calls that had destroyed Clare’s engagement and her career provided some justice. But now, Valerie thought, she had to face the possibility that those calls were the reason Clare had come back to Stone Canyon. Last night Owen told her that Archer was setting up a charitable foundation just to make sure Clare had a job.
It was too much, Valerie thought. Her plan of revenge had backfired on her. Clare was going to come out of this smelling like a rose. She would have the Glazebrook money and the Glazebrook power behind her.
That wasn’t right. Clare should be made to suffer for what she did to Brad. She had to pay.
Valerie focused on the mountains, trying to concentrate. It was so hard to keep her thoughts clear these days. She desperately needed to talk to someone.
There was only one person who understood the pain she was going through; only one person on the face of the earth who had
suffered as she had suffered when Brad was killed.
She reached for the cell phone.
Chapter Thirteen
This is personal.
That was nothing short of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, Jake thought. Way too much truth, probably. He had a strict policy when it came to dealing with the truth. He never used more of it than absolutely necessary when he was working. The truth often made people nervous. That was the last thing he wanted to do in Stone Canyon. It would only complicate an already extremely complicated project.
The smart thing would be to put some distance between Clare and himself until he had finished what he came here to do. But he was pretty sure that wasn’t going to be possible. Not now.
In spite of all the invisible flashing red warning lights going off around her, he felt compelled to get closer. Something inside him resonated with her gutsy attitude; made him want her on a visceral level. He had an overwhelming urge to find out how a woman who was clearly accustomed to fighting for everything she wanted responded when she went to bed with a man who applied the same technique to life. A man like him.
Dinner alone with her at the house had been a bad decision in what he suspected would be a long line of similarly bad moves. But somehow he could not bring himself to regret any of them. So much for the virtues of twenty-twenty foresight.
“It’s late.” Clare put down the empty teacup and checked her watch. “I should be getting back to the motel. Is the driver still around?”
“No.” He got to his feet, fighting a deep reluctance to let her go. “I’m going to drive you back to your motel.”
He backed the BMW out of the garage. When he bundled Clare into the front seat he experienced a proprietary satisfaction from the small act. His woman in his car. And they were going to drive off into the night together.
When he got behind the wheel, the dark, intimate confines of the front passenger compartment closed around him, sealing his doom.
So why wasn’t he a lot more worried?
So he had a rule against sleeping with anyone involved in a case. So what? Rules were made to be broken.
Of course, things usually went south when that kind of thing happened, but what the hell.
Clare said little as he piloted the BMW out of the foothills and back toward Phoenix. He made no move to force the conversation. They had talked a lot this evening, sometimes dancing around each other’s subtle probes, sometimes agreeing, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes smiling at the same ironic observations.
This was an opportunity to see if they could be quiet together.
By the time he drove into the nearly deserted parking lot of the Desert Dawn Motel, the question had been answered. The silence in the front seat had not separated them, he decided. Instead, it seemed to him that the sense of closeness had become more binding. There was always the possibility that, hungry as he was for her, he was misreading the feminine signals he was picking up but he didn’t think so.
He eased the car into a slot near the entrance, got out and walked with Clare to the lobby.
The same night clerk was on duty. He looked up from his magazine and gave Jake the same knowing smirk he had given him the night before. Jake contemplated the pleasant prospect of ripping the guy’s throat open with his bare teeth.
“I’m going to see the lady to her room,” he said instead.
Civilization at work. What a concept. No blood, no mess, no fun.
“Sure. Whatever.” The night clerk went back to his reading.
Jake took Clare’s arm and escorted her up the stairs. Then he guided her down the dimly lit hall, irritated again, as he had been the night before, by the knowledge that he was going to have to leave her here in this place with its dingy carpet and badly painted walls.
Clare got her door open and stepped across the threshold. She turned to look at Jake.
“Good night,” she said. “Dinner was terrific.”
“Glad you enjoyed it,” he said. He braced one hand on the doorjamb. “Now promise me you’ll check out of this place tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll only be here tonight and tomorrow night,” she said. “No point moving.”
“You’re stubborn, hardheaded and you don’t take good advice well,” he said. “I like that in a woman.”
She opened her mouth to respond.
“But there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing,” he added before she could say a word. “I want you to check out of here tomorrow.”
She gave him a long, considering look. “I realize that you’re accustomed to giving orders but there’s something you’re forgetting here.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t work for you.”
“Probably just as well,” he said. “Because I’ve got a feeling that I would have to fire you.”
“For being stubborn and hardheaded?”
“No,” he said. “So that I could do this.”
He gripped the doorjamb, leaned into the opening and kissed her. He was very careful not to touch her with his hands. This way she had the option of stepping back out of range.
She didn’t step back. Her mouth was soft and welcoming under his. She knew what he was and she wasn’t afraid of him. In fact, she seemed to like what she saw.
Desire arced through him, hot and exultant.
He went through the opening, never taking his mouth off Clare’s, and kicked the door closed with one foot.
Now he did put his hands on her, pulling her close so he could deepen the kiss. He heard her make a muffled, urgent little sound and felt her fingers curl around his shoulders. She gripped him hard, bracing herself, pulling him to her.
Her response to him revved up all his senses. This close to her he could sense her power. He knew she was probably picking up his as well. The effect was an exhilarating rush unlike anything he had ever experienced. The part of him that was never allowed out of control was suddenly running free in the night.
He urged her backward, driven by some vague notion of getting to the bed. But in the first chaotic moments of the kiss he had become disoriented. Clare stopped abruptly, her back against the wall, not a mattress. Desperate for her, he caught her wrists and pinned them on either side of her head.
She nipped at his throat in retaliation, letting him feel the edge of her teeth. Then she punished him further by drawing the inside of her leg up along the outside of his calf. He could feel the spike heel of her shoe through the fabric of his trousers. The sensual warning was the most erotic challenge he had ever encountered. It was a wonder he didn’t climax right then, he thought.
He fought back by capturing both her wrists in one hand and anchoring them over her head. The action freed his other hand. He used it to unfasten the clip that bound her hair. The silky tresses tumbled down over his fingers. He seized a fistful of the stuff and used it to hold her head still so he could kiss her again, openmouthed this time, wanting to taste her, needing to inhale her essence.
She twisted restlessly against him. He used his hips to nail her hard against the wall, letting her feel the size and shape of his erection. She reacted with a low, breathless moan. The spike heel of her shoe dug into his leg.
He slid his hand down the sweet curves of her breast and waist, all the way to her hip. There he paused and squeezed, savoring the resilient swell of feminine flesh and bone.
Clare was breathing faster now. Quick, shallow, hot little gasps that told him he was definitely not the only one on fire in this room.
When he raised his head he saw that she was watching him with dazed, unfocused eyes. He realized that she was surprised by her reaction.
“What?” he said, smiling a little. “You didn’t see this freight train bearing down on us all evening?”
“It’s not that.” She shook her head as though to clear it. “It’s just that I didn’t realize how I… Never mind.”
“Now, me, I knew it would be like this,” he said against her mouth. “Knew it the first time I saw y
ou.”
“Did you?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Inserting his fingers between the wall and Clare’s sleek back he found the zipper of the sexy little dress and peeled it down. The front of the garment fell away, revealing a lacy black strapless bra.
He had to release his captive’s hands in order to unfasten the bra. She responded by using her newfound freedom to yank at the buttons of his shirt with trembling fingers.
By the time the bra had disappeared, Clare had her hands flat against his bare chest. When he bent his mouth to taste one tight nipple she swayed against him. The leg that had been climbing his suddenly returned to the floor as she tried to steady herself.
“I don’t know why we’re doing this up against a wall when there’s a bed handy,” he muttered.
He scooped her into his arms and carried her out of the narrow confines of the entryway. He dropped her lightly onto the bed and put his hand on the buckle of his belt. Clare looked up at him with sultry welcome, lips parted in anticipation.
A series of sharp raps on the door reverberated through the room. Jake spun around. The sexual tension that had hardened every muscle in his body was instantly transmuted into another kind of tension via the dark, dangerous alchemy that linked sex and violence. In a heartbeat he had gone from wanting to claim his woman to wanting to protect her.
Talk about overreacting, he thought.
“If that’s the guy from the room next door, I’ve got a few words of advice for him,” he said.
“Wait,” Clare whispered. “I’ll handle this.” She raised her voice. “Who is it?”
“Management.” The familiar voice of the night clerk boomed loudly through the door. “Sorry to disturb you, Miss Lancaster, but we had a report that a second party was seen entering your room. And, uh, well, there’s a rule. It says that only the person who is legally registered in the room can occupy it. So, unless you, uh, want to pay an additional fee and register that guy who’s in there with you, I’m going to have to ask your guest to leave.”
“Well,” Clare murmured. “This is certainly one of life’s more embarrassing little moments.” She raised her voice again. “There’s been a misunderstanding. Just a second.”
White Lies Page 10