by Nora Roberts
“Just a thought.” Because he recognized the tone in his partner’s voice, he let it ride. Ben had already had to deal with his wife being involved in a homicide investigation. “You know, it’s more likely that someone busted in, came across her, and lost it.”
“But it doesn’t feel right.”
“No,” Ed agreed as he pulled open the car door. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“We’re going to have to talk to Grace again.”
“I know.”
He had to listen again. It had been too long. As soon as his last class was over, he came home to lock himself in his room. He’d wanted to ditch school altogether that day, but knew his father would be involved if he was reported. So he’d sat through all of his classes, a quiet, bright, well-behaved boy who spoke in a clear voice. The fact was, he blended in so well none of his teachers would have noticed him if he wasn’t the son of a potential president.
Jerald didn’t like to be obtrusive. He didn’t like people to look at him because if they looked too long they might see some of his secrets.
It was rare that he took the chance of tapping into Fantasy’s line during the day. He liked the dark better; he could imagine so much better in the dark. But since Desiree, he’d been obsessed. He put on his headphones and cued his terminal. Sitting back, he waited for the right voice.
He knew Eileen’s. It didn’t interest him. Too businesslike. The other one, the one who worked at night, wasn’t right either. Too young, too prim. Neither of them ever made any promises.
He closed his eyes and waited. Somehow he was sure, absolutely sure, that he would find the right one soon.
When he did, her name was Roxanne.
Chapter 7
Hyacinths. Grace sat on the steps in front of her sister’s house and stared at the pink and white hyacinths that had opened, thankful their scent was too light to carry. She’d had enough of the fragrance of flowers that day. The hyacinths looked different, too—sturdy and hopeful beside the cracking concrete. They didn’t remind her of white caskets and weeping.
She couldn’t sit with her parents any longer. Though she hated herself for it, she had left them huddled together over their endless cups of tea and escaped, needing the air, the sun, the solitude. She had to stop grieving, even if only for an hour.
Occasionally a car passed, so she watched. A few children in the neighborhood were taking advantage of the warming weather and lengthening days to ride bikes or skateboards over the uneven sidewalk. Their calls to each other were the calls of the summer that was just around the corner. Now and then one would stare over at the house with the round, avid eyes of the curious. The word was out, Grace thought, and cautious parents had warned their sons and daughters to stay clear. If the house remained empty long, those kids would be daring each other to go as far as the porch to touch the forbidden. The very brave might race to the windows and peek in.
The haunted house. The Murder House. And the children’s palms would sweat, their hearts thunder as they ran away again to report their derring-do to their less courageous friends. She’d have done exactly the same as a child.
Murder was so fascinating, so irresistible.
Already, Grace knew, Kathleen’s murder would have been discussed in the quiet little houses up and down the street. New locks would have been bought and installed. Windows and doors would be checked with extra care. Then a few weeks would pass, and with the buffer of time, people would forget. After all, it hadn’t happened to them.
But she wouldn’t forget. Grace rubbed her fingers under her eyes. She couldn’t forget.
When she recognized Ed’s car pulling up, she drew a deep breath. She hadn’t realized she’d been waiting for him but had no trouble admitting it now. She rose and cut across the grass, arriving at his car just as he stepped out.
“You put in long hours, Detective.”
“Goes with the territory.” He jingled his keys before he popped the trunk. All that was left of her makeup were a few swipes of mascara. “You all right?”
“So far.” She glanced back toward the house. Her mother had just switched on the kitchen light. “I’m taking my parents to the airport in the morning. It doesn’t help them or me for them to stay here, so I convinced them to go. They’re propping each other up.” She ran her hands along the hips of her slacks, then finding nothing better to do with them, stuck them in her pockets. “You know, I never realized how married they were, how really married, until the last couple of days.”
“At times like this it helps to have someone.”
“I think they’re going to be all right. They’ve … they’ve accepted it.”
“What about you?”
Grace glanced up at him, then away again. The answer was in her eyes. Acceptance was still a long way off. “They’re going home for a few days, then flying out to the coast to see Kevin, my sister’s son.”
“You going with them?”
“No. I thought about it, but—not now. I don’t know, the funeral seemed to steady them.”
“And you?”
“I hated it. The first thing I’m going to do when I get back to New York is check into cremations.” She pulled both hands through her hair. “Christ, that sounds sick.”
“No, it doesn’t. Funerals force you to face the fact of dying. That’s their purpose, isn’t it?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out the purpose all day. I think I prefer the way the Vikings did it. Out to sea in a burning boat. Now that’s a send-off. I don’t like thinking of her in a box.” Catching herself, she turned back to him. It was better, far better, to think of the children playing across the street and the flowers just opening. “Sorry. I came out here to stop dwelling on it. I told my parents I was going for a walk. I didn’t get very far.”
“You want to walk?”
Grace shook her head and touched his arm. Decent. She’d been on the mark when she’d tagged that one-word description to him. “You are a nice man. I want to apologize for dumping on you the other night.”
“It’s okay. You had a point.” A mother called for her children from a porch across the street and bargaining ensued for an extra fifteen minutes.
“I’m not sorry for what I said, but for the way I said it. I go for long stretches of time without having much contact with people, then when I do I always end up being pushy.” She turned to watch the children again. She could remember playing like that, running fast to beat sundown. She and Kathleen together on a street not so very different from this one. “So, are we still friends?”
“Sure.” He took the hand she offered and held it.
That was exactly what she’d needed. Until the contact had been made, she hadn’t realized it. “Does that mean we can have dinner or something before I go back?”
He didn’t release her hand but curled his fingers around hers. “When are you leaving?”
“I’m not sure. There are a lot of loose ends. Probably next week.” Without thinking, just going with the urge, she lifted their joined hands to her cheek. It felt good, the contact. She knew she needed it as much as she needed long spells of time by herself. Right now she didn’t want to think of solitude. “You ever get to New York?”
“Not so far. You’re getting cold,” he murmured as his knuckles grazed over her skin. “You shouldn’t have come out without a jacket.”
She smiled as she released his hand. His lingered a few seconds more on her cheek. Grace had always moved on instinct, accepted the scrapes along with the pleasures. Before he could drop his hand, she slipped her arms around him. “Do you mind? I need something to show me I’m still alive.”
She lifted her face and closed her mouth quietly over his.
Solid. That was the first thought that ran through her mind. This was solid, this was tangible. His mouth was warm against hers, and giving. He didn’t push or grope or try to impress with smooth technique. He simply kissed her back. The cushion of his beard brought comfort. The sudden tightening of his fingers on
her skin brought excitement. How wonderful it was to discover she could still need and appreciate both. She was alive, all right. And it felt wonderful.
She’d taken him by surprise, but he found his footing quickly enough. He’d wanted to hold her like this, let his hands wander through her hair. Dusk fell with a chill around them so he drew her closer, warming her. He felt his pulse pick up rhythm and race as her body softened against his.
She drew away slowly, a bit stunned by her own reaction. He let her go, though the wildly romantic image of sweeping her into his arms and into his house hadn’t faded.
“Thanks,” she managed.
“Anytime.”
She laughed, surprised that she was nervous, delighted that she’d been moved. “I’d better let you get going. I know you work at night. The lights,” she explained when he lifted a brow.
“I’ve been putting the bathroom together. I’m almost down to the wallpaper.”
She glanced in his trunk and saw four five-gallon buckets of paste. “Must be some bathroom.”
“Paste was on sale.”
“My mother would love you,” she said, smiling. “I’d better go in, I don’t want them to worry. I’ll see you later.”
“Tomorrow. I’ll fix you dinner.”
“Okay.” She started back across the lawn, then stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Hold the carrot juice.”
Roxanne had been born Mary. She’d always harbored a hint of resentment for her parents’ lack of imagination. If she’d been given a more exotic name, a more sophisticated, more frivolous name, she’d also wondered, would she have become a different person?
Mary Grice was twenty-eight, single, and seventy-five pounds overweight. She’d started to run to fat as an adolescent and easily blamed that on her parents as well. Fat genes, her mother was wont to say, and with some truth. The full truth was, however, that the Grices, as a family, had enjoyed a long-standing love affair with food. Eating was a religious experience, and the Grices—Moma, Popa, and Mary—a devoted congregation.
Mary had grown up in a house where the pantry and refrigerator overflowed with chips and dips and cans of chocolate syrup. She’d learned to take the erector set of bread and meat and cheese and build a sandwich of gastronomic wonder, then wash it all down with a quart of chocolate milk and still have room for a box of Ho-Ho’s.
Her skin had revolted during her teens and had resembled one of the bubbly pizzas she was so fond of, so that now, nearing thirty, she still bore the pits and scars. She’d gotten into the habit of plastering her skin with heavy pancake foundation, and in the warm weather, when her sweat glands opened, her makeup cracked and ran like the face of a melting rubber doll.
She’d gone through high school and college without a date. Her personality had been such that she hadn’t even been able to attain the position of friend and confidante. Food had again come to the rescue. Whenever her feelings were hurt or her sex drive hummed, Mary would stuff a double cheeseburger or a plate of fudge brownies into her mouth.
She’d lost sight of her neck at twenty. It had simply vanished in a riot of flabby folds. She wore her hair long and straight, clipped back with a barrette. There were too many mirrors in the beauty parlor. She did, occasionally, go with a whim and dye it herself, a siren red, a raven black, and once, a flashy Harlow blond. Each change had made her feel like a different person. Anyone would do, as long as she wasn’t herself.
When her doctor warned her about her rising blood pressure and the strain on her heart, she fixed her scale so that she weighed in ten pounds lighter. She’d enjoyed that illusion so much she’d soon put on another ten and had considered herself back to normal.
Then she invented Roxanne.
Roxanne was sultry. Roxanne was, God bless her, a tramp. Roxanne was a size four. Roxanne could turn an iceberg into a mass of steam, as long as the iceberg was male. No inhibitions, no pretensions, and no morals; that was Roxanne.
Roxanne liked sex, anytime, anywhere, anyhow. If a man wanted to talk sex, the hard, fast, and dirty kind, Roxanne was his girl.
Mary had gone to Fantasy on a whim. She didn’t need the extra money. She’d gotten a lot of studying done over plates of roast beef and Cheez Whiz in college. She’d majored in economics and now worked for one of the top brokerage houses in the country. To most of her clients, she was just a voice over the phone. And that’s what had triggered the idea.
Perhaps it had been one of nature’s little jokes to gift her with a beautiful voice. It was soft and sweetly pitched. It had a tendency to grow breathy when she became excited, so that it projected the image of a small, delicate woman of breeding. The thought of using it to do more than sell tax-exempt bonds and mutual-fund shares had been too tempting to resist.
Mary considered herself a phone whore. She was aware that Eileen thought of the business as a social service, but Mary liked the very idea of being a whore. She was in the business of sex for hire, and her pistols were hot and smoking. Every frustration, every desire, every sweat-soaked dream she’d ever had could be eased by a seven-minute conversation.
In her mind she’d been to bed with every man she’d ever spoken to. In reality she’d never had sex. The conversations she had with faceless men were the release valves to the pressure cooker of her own desires. She fulfilled the fantasies of her clients for a buck a minute, and got more than her own money’s worth.
By day, she watched the stock index, sold T-bills, and bought commodities futures. At night, she traded her full-figured suit for her best Frederick’s of Hollywood and became Roxanne.
And she loved it.
Mary, or Roxanne, was one of the few employees of Fantasy, Incorporated who took calls seven nights a week. If one of the other women found a man too intense, or his tastes too odd, Roxanne was more than willing to take up the slack. The money she made went to red silk lingerie, vanilla incense, and food. Especially food. Between calls, Mary could wolf down a jumbo tin of potato chips with a pint of garlic and sour cream dip.
She knew Lawrence’s voice and his preferences very well. Though he wasn’t one of her kinkier clients, he enjoyed being surprised occasionally with images of leather and handcuffs. He’d been honest with her about his appearance. No one would lie about an overbite and astigmatism. She talked to him three times a week. One three-minute quickie and two seven-minute regulars. He was an accountant, so besides sex, they had a professional rapport.
Roxanne had candles flickering all over her bedroom. Red ones. She liked to set the mood for herself as she sprawled over her queen-size bed with a two-liter bottle of Classic Coke. She’d splurged on satin pillows and had propped herself up against them. As she spoke, she wound the phone cord around her fingers.
“You know I love to talk to you, Lawrence. I get excited just thinking about hearing your voice. I’m wearing a new nightgown. It’s red. You can see right through it.” She laughed and snuggled against the pillows. At that moment, she was a hundred-and-five-pound waif with legs that wouldn’t quit. “You’re so naughty, Lawrence. If that’s what you want me to do, I’m doing it right now, and pretending it’s you. All right, just listen. Listen and I’ll tell you everything.”
He knew he was rushing it, but dammit, he had to see if it could happen again. Roxanne sounded so beautiful. As soon as he’d heard her voice, he’d known. The flesh on his arms had puckered up and the ache between his legs had come on hard and fast.
She had to be the next one. She was waiting for him. Not teasing, not promising like Desiree. This was the next level. Roxanne spoke of things his imagination hadn’t ever conjured up. She wanted him to hurt her. How could he resist?
But he had to be careful.
This neighborhood wasn’t as quiet as the other one. Traffic rushed up and down the street and pedestrians streamed along the sidewalk. Maybe it was better this way. He might be seen, recognized. That added its own edge.
Her apartment building faced Wisconsin Avenue. Jerald had parked two blocks away. During
the walk, he’d forced himself to move slowly, not so much out of caution but out of the desire to take in everything about the night. There were clouds and a light wind. His face stayed cool, but inside the pockets of his school jacket, his hands were hot and wet. He closed his fingers over the rope he’d taken from the utility room. Roxanne would appreciate that he’d remembered what she liked, and how she liked it.
He was supposed to be at the library doing research on a report on World War II. He’d written the report a week before, but his mother wouldn’t know the difference. She’d flown to Michigan to beat the campaign drums on the trail with his father.
When school was out, he’d be expected to join them for the hot, frantic summer months of politicking. He hadn’t yet decided how to avoid that, but he didn’t doubt he would. There were six weeks to go before graduation.
Fucking prissy prep school, he thought without much heat. Once he was in college, he would be his own man. He wouldn’t have to make excuses about libraries or club meetings or movies to get out for a couple of hours at night.
When his father won the election, there would be the Secret Service to deal with. Jerald looked forward to outwitting them. Bunch of robots in suits and ties.
Stepping into the shrubbery, he took out a tube of cocaine. He snorted it quickly and felt his mind crystallize into a pinpoint of thought.
Roxanne.
Smiling, he skirted around the back of the apartment building. He didn’t bother to look around, but carefully cut through the glass of her living room window. No one could stop him now. He was too powerful. And Roxanne was waiting.
He nicked himself on the glass as he reached in to turn the lock, but merely sucked on the wound as he drew up the pane. It was dark inside, and his heart was beginning to hammer a bit too fast. Jerald hitched himself up and in. He didn’t bother to close the window behind him.
She would be waiting for him, waiting for him to hurt her, to make her sweat and scream. She would be waiting for him to take her to the ultimate climax.