Dead Giveaway

by Joanne Fluke

  Ellen glanced at the clock. It was three-thirty in the morning and Walker was gone again. She sighed and turned back to the eight-month-old issue of Newsweek she’d bought for the article about Justin Holmes, an artist who made life-size dolls in New York. She hadn’t bothered to read the rest of the magazine and now the news was too stale to hold much interest.

  Even though she tried not to think about it, Ellen’s mind turned to Vanessa. The thought of anyone trapped in a cold, dark place, bleeding to death all alone, was horrible. Ellen put the magazine back on the table and got up to pace across the floor. She’d give Walker another ten minutes before going up to the spa to look for him. She needed some company tonight to take her mind off the nightmare that had shaken her screaming from her bed, a recurrence of the graveyard dream she’d had last night. The only difference was that tonight’s version had gone on longer.

  Again, the hand from the grave had reached up to pull her down, and although she’d dug her fingers into the grass until her hands bled with the effort, it had dragged her down to lie in the damp, cold earth. Then something had embraced her there in the frigid ground, something cold and repulsive and evil. She’d been powerless to resist while it probed and fondled the most intimate recesses of her unwilling body, leaching the warmth from her flesh until she’d been waxen and paralyzed. Then, satisfied, it had given a maniacal shriek. And she had opened her eyes to see two people standing at the edge of the grave, watching her violation. She’d screamed so loud it had jolted her from the awful nightmare, but not before she’d recognized Vanessa and Johnny, laughing down at her.

  Now that the dream had run its course, its message was obvious. Her experience with Johnny had been even more traumatic than she’d realized. And even though she’d vowed not to trust any man again, the nightmare still roused its ugly head whenever she’d had a troubling day.

  After she’d hired Walker, it had stopped for a while, but now it was back with a vengeance. Was it because she was beginning to rely on Walker? If that was the case, she’d have to be very careful to see it went no further.

  Ellen walked across the room and confronted her image, the same old Ellen in the mirror, skinny as a stick and about as alluring as a wet dishrag. At the sound of a key in the lock, she raced back to the couch, picked up the magazine again, and flipped it open. She didn’t want Walker to think she’d been waiting up just for him.

  Walker looked startled to see her sitting up, two nights in a row. “Don’t tell me you couldn’t sleep again?”

  Ellen shrugged off his question. “I got up to make a sandwich. Then I didn’t feel like going back to bed.”

  “Want to go up to the Jacuzzi? It’s beautiful again tonight.” Walker gave her a smile that made her heart beat faster and Ellen smiled back. So that’s where he’d been all this time!

  “No, thanks, Walker. My bathing suit’s still damp from last night.”

  “Probably for the best. We’d have to be too quiet, anyway. Alan and Laureen are up there, camping out on the lounge chairs. The freezer must have gotten to them.”

  “I can understand that! I certainly wouldn’t want to sleep right next to . . .” Ellen stopped and shivered.

  “Me neither. How about a walk? It’s not that cold, and the snow’s stopped falling.”

  “Great.” Ellen got to her feet. “We’ve been cooped up inside since the avalanche hit. Just let me get my parka.”

  Walker glanced down at her feet and his grin got wider. “Better put on your boots, too. I don’t care if you go out in your nightgown and robe, but I don’t think those bunny slippers are snowproof.”

  “Wake up, Paul. I need you!”

  Paul opened his eyes to find Jayne leaning over him. He pulled her down and tried to kiss her, but she shook her head.

  “Not that. At least not right now. Are you awake?”

  Paul sat up and yawned. “I am awake. What is it, Jayne?”

  “I know what was wrong at Clayton and Rachael’s. I finally figured it out.”

  “Tell me.” Paul reached out for her hand. It was ice cold.

  “Rachael didn’t take her fur hat, the one she always wore to keep her ears warm. She told me she got terrible earaches if she didn’t wear it.”

  “Rachael may have had two hats. I would take the precaution of buying an additional, if I were that sensitive to the cold. I think you are mortgaging trouble, Jayne.”

  “Borrowing trouble.” Jayne flipped over on her stomach so her voice was muffled by the pillow. “I guess you’re right. It just bothered me, that’s all. Will you rub my back, honey? I missed your back rubs more than a greenhorn misses targets.”

  Paul straddled her body and began to massage her back, trying not to think of the other enjoyable things they could be doing in this very same position. He wasn’t successful, but Jayne relaxed at last and he continued to rub until her breathing was deep and regular and he was sure she was asleep. Then he covered her with the blankets and slid over to sit on the edge of the bed. Now he was wide-awake, wishing he’d given in to his impulse. Jayne would have welcomed him, he was sure, but he didn’t have the heart to wake her. Had Rachael owned two fur hats? The only person who could tell them was Rachael, herself.

  Paul got up and walked to the window, where he had an unobstructed view of the pine grove below. The moon, a bright silver sphere in the dark velvet sky, sparkled like gemstones on the smooth sheet of unbroken snow. He smiled as he recognized Ellen and Walker out for a midnight stroll.

  As he watched, Walker took Ellen’s arm to help her over an icy patch of ground, and Paul was pleased that Ellen didn’t pull away. He thought back to the first time he’d met Ellen, right after she’d moved into Charlotte and Lyle’s apartment. Painfully shy, she’d been friendly enough when she met her neighbors in the hall, but Johnny had been the only one she’d really talked to.

  Jayne had made the effort, inviting her to their brunches and parties, and by the end of the first year, they’d been playing tennis every morning, Jayne and Paul against Ellen and Johnny. Ellen had turned out to be a natural on the tennis court. Tall and built for speed, she was amazingly agile and her backhand was dynamite.

  Then the tennis had tapered off as the mannequin business had gone into production. Jayne had come home one day, awed by her first glimpse of Ellen’s mannequin, so Paul had gone to see the prototype for himself, and had barely been able to believe his eyes.

  The skin tone was wonderful, but he’d been much more impressed with Ellen’s design. How had she come up with those wonderfully neutral yet expressive features? And the pliable body that could be arranged in any of a thousand incredibly natural positions?

  They’d sat there sipping the champagne they’d brought and Ellen had shrugged off his praises. It had been pure luck, a pigment she’d mixed by accident while she was in college. Paul had sighed as he’d congratulated her, exasperated that Ellen didn’t recognize her own talent.

  One night, a few months later when they’d driven down to Vegas for a night on the town, they’d seen Ellen and Johnny in a restaurant. Jayne and Paul had been seated in another room, but a lattice room divider gave them a clear view of Ellen and Johnny’s table. There had been only one word for the expression on Ellen’s face and that meant trouble. Jayne and he both knew Johnny’s reputation.

  Jayne had tried to prepare Ellen for the inevitable, but there had been only so far she could go, and then the whole thing had blown up. Ellen had gone back to wearing her shapeless clothes and burying herself in her workroom. She’d turned down their invitations, claiming she was simply too busy to socialize. It wasn’t until Ellen had hired Walker as her general manager that things had begun to look up.

  Jayne whimpered in her sleep, reaching out for him, and Paul hurried back to the bed. He cuddled up to his sleeping wife, shaping his body around hers, and then he went back to sleep, home once again with the woman he loved.

  SEVENTEEN

  Ellen’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “You want me t
o do what?”

  “Come on, Ellen, just try it. It’s really a lot of fun.”

  “Forget it, Walker. That snow’s cold. And flat on my back? No, thanks!”

  Walker looked down at her with amusement and Ellen felt herself blushing. If anyone overheard them, it would be all over the building in no time flat. “Have a little common sense, Walker. What if someone saw us? I’d never be able to face them in the morning.”

  “That’s just an excuse.” Walker looked very serious. “You know no one’s up this time of night. And even if they see us, so what? They’d probably say, Isn’t that nice? Walker and Ellen are having fun in the snow. You’re just paranoid, Ellen. My wife showed me how when we first started dating, and we must have done it in every vacant lot in Chicago.”

  Ellen couldn’t help it. She almost fell over, she laughed so hard. Walker stared at her in confusion for a second, and then he started to laugh with her. “Okay, okay. I know how it sounds. But I still don’t see why you won’t try it. It’ll only take a couple of minutes.”

  “Only a couple of minutes?” Ellen doubled over with an attack of the giggles. “Okay, I’ll do it just to shut you up, but you’ll have to teach me. I’ve never done it with anyone else before.”

  That sent them off into new gales of laughter. Finally Walker calmed down enough to give her instructions.

  “Ready?” Walker pulled her over to a spot where the snow was an unbroken sheet of sparkling white. “Now remember, Ellen. You’re falling uphill and the snow is deep, so it’ll be just like landing on a feather bed. After you’re down, don’t move a muscle until I tell you what to do next.”

  Ellen gave a little cry as they fell backward. Her first instinct was to scramble to her feet, but she certainly didn’t want to do this twice.

  “Ellen? Are your arms tight against your hips?”

  “Yup.” She giggled.

  “Good.” Walker sounded very serious. “Did you ever do an exercise called the jumping jack in school?”

  “Of course I did. I used to teach first grade and Mary Christine Fanger lost her hair ribbon the first time we did it in gym.”

  “Good, you’ve got plenty of experience. We’re going to do a jumping jack with our arms. Leave them level with the snow and drag them up over your head. Then back down to your side again. That’ll make the wings.”

  “Got it.” Ellen raised her arms and brought them back down again. Walker was right. The snow was like a feather bed, a very cold feather bed, and she looked up into the deep black night to see thousands of stars sparkling overhead. They looked so close, she felt she could almost reach up and touch them. She shivered as she was suddenly struck by the vastness of space. She was only a miniscule speck of warm life in the icy void, so small and insignificant that she could disappear without anyone noticing or caring.

  “Now the legs.” Walker’s disembodied voice pulled her back and she had an almost overpowering urge to reach out to touch him, just to make sure he was real.

  “It’s almost the same as the arms. Spread them out as far as you can, then bring them back together again. And then don’t move. Ready?”

  “Yes.” Ellen pushed her legs out to the side and brought them back. Then, rather than risk feeling that terrible loneliness again, she shut her eyes and told herself that she wasn’t alone, that Walker was only a few feet away.

  “And now I bet you’re wondering how we get up without ruining it, right?”

  “I guess so.” Ellen smiled to herself. That problem hadn’t even occurred to her until right now. She turned her head just a fraction of an inch and watched Walker roll forward in one fluid motion until he was up on his feet. And then he was standing in front of her, smiling.

  “Hold out your hands and keep your body as stiff as a board.”

  Ellen hung on as Walker pulled her forward. A second later they were both standing at the foot of their creations.

  “They do look like angels!” Ellen studied them with an appraising eye. “That was fun in a crazy sort of way.”

  “Told you. And these are superior angels. If it doesn’t snow anymore tonight, they’ll still be there in the morning.”

  Ellen stomped her feet and brushed the powdery snow off her clothes. The night was friendly now that she could see Walker, and the air was crisp and clean with the scent of pine. “Come on, let’s walk through the pine grove. I’ve always wanted to go out there at night, but it’s frightening by yourself.”

  “Most things are.” Walker took her hand to help her down the steep incline, but they both slipped several times anyway. Ellen’s face was flushed and she was out of breath as they ended up running the last several feet to keep from falling.

  When they reached level ground, Walker still didn’t release her hand and Ellen found she was glad. It felt good to walk across the huge glittering sheet of snow, swinging arms.

  It was much darker when they entered the pine grove, where giant branches filtered the blue-white moonlight into lacy patterns against the snow. Ellen sighed in pure contentment; it was just as beautiful as she’d imagined. Pinecones hung from the branches like Christmas tree ornaments and icicles glistened in the blue-white light.

  “Come here for a minute, Ellen.” Walker reached out with one mittened hand and pulled her under the branches of a huge pine tree. “I used to love to play under these things when I was a kid.”

  Ellen ducked under a low branch. The top of her head brushed against it, sending down a shower of snow. Walker pulled her next to the trunk of the tree and dusted her off.

  “Look around. What do you think?”

  “It’s enchanting.” Ellen looked up at the dark cavern of branches above them, drooping down to touch the ground. “It’s like a little house under here, and it smells so good.”

  Walker nodded. “When I was a little kid, I told my mother I wanted to live under the pine tree in our backyard.”

  “I can see why.” Ellen looked down at the ground. There was no snow, only a cushion of aromatic pine needles. “Did she point out that it would get chilly in February?”

  “That’s exactly what she said. But I kept on dreaming of that little room under the pine tree, and when summer rolled around, I asked her again.”

  Ellen smiled. “And she said no?”

  “Nope. She said it’d be fine with her as long as I came in to wash up once in a while. So I fixed up a room under there with a sleeping bag and my comic books and a stash of cookies.”

  “She actually let you move out there?” Ellen turned to him in surprise. “If I’d tried to do something like that, my parents would have told me to grow up and quit acting so foolish.”

  Walker grinned. “My mother was a very smart woman. That night, she went upstairs to bed and I went out to my pine tree.”

  “What happened?”

  “Exactly what she figured. Bugs crawled on me, mosquitoes bit me, and it rained. One night was all it took.” Something about the wistful tone in Walker’s voice made Ellen feel sad. Perhaps a dream should be an end in itself. It was too easy to be disappointed when fantasies came true and weren’t like you’d imagined at all.

  “Why so sad?” Walker slipped his arm around her shoulder and gave her a little hug.

  Ellen swallowed hard before she could answer, and her voice was shaking. “You lost your dream forever. Don’t you think that’s sad?”

  “I didn’t lose my dream,” Walker protested gently. “I just tempered it with a little reality. I decided I’d rather live under a tree that had walls and a Plexiglas roof.”

  Ellen smiled, but before she could stop, the bitter tears of longing, the tears she had held back for so long, were rolling down her cheeks. Walker tightened his arms around her and Ellen felt herself falling into an abyss, a sheer drop of thousands of feet that was cushioned every inch of the way by his sheltering body. He held her for a long time. And then he parted the branches and led her back to the building.

  Marc was passing the window when he happened to look out a
nd see them heading for the entrance of the building, holding hands. Ellen and her faithful slave. He had absolutely nothing against blacks personally, hired them all the time for his construction crews, but this guy had a bad habit of poking his nose into places where it didn’t belong. Of course, he was a pretty good business manager for Ellen, digging out all those contracts that Johnny had arranged for Vegas Dolls. Marc had suspected that Johnny was up to something, but he hadn’t known the details until Walker had asked his advice on the shipping contract.

  He gave a wry smile, wondering whether they were sleeping together. The concept of a black guy getting to Ellen bothered him, although he supposed it shouldn’t. It was Ellen’s business and he had no stake in it. He’d never tried to pick up on her and he never would. She wasn’t his type. And if you looked at the whole thing objectively, Walker was a lot better bet than Johnny Day.

  Marc watched as they went into the building, then went to the liquor cabinet to pour himself a splash of vodka. He knew he ought to get some sleep, but his nerves were shot. Vanessa’s death bothered him a lot more than he’d figured and helping Walker lay her out in the freezer had been a total bummer. Perhaps it was because he’d slept with her just a couple of nights before, and the memories were still fresh. Vanessa had known how to please him and she’d been up for anything. Whenever she’d knocked on his door, he’d known he was in for a wild night. He hadn’t loved her, far from it, but they’d been two of a kind. On their last night together she’d told him they were animals in bed but nothing more than neighbors with their clothes on, a pretty deep thought for Vanessa. Knowing that he’d never get the chance to enjoy her gorgeous body and her warm, moist lips again was a real downer.

  He finished his drink and set the glass on the bar next to the one he’d used last night. It was over a week since Ramona had cleaned, and the mess was beginning to get to him. There was a film of dust so thick he could write in it on top of his smoked-glass and chrome coffee table, the white carpet in the living room had a red stain where he’d dropped a raspberry Danish, and his pinball machines needed a shot of Windex. He would have cleaned the place himself, but Ramona brought in her own cleaning supplies and he’d never bothered to stock them. Here he was, living in the most expensive condo he’d ever built, and it was turning into a dive.