With a Southern Touch: AdamA Night in ParadiseGarden Cop

by Jennifer Blake

  That wouldn’t work as long as he had two women dependent on him. He couldn’t move as fast or as quietly, and couldn’t afford to take chances. The best bet seemed to be to sit tight and call for backup.

  Replacing the receiver in its wall cradle, he reached for the cell phone that he’d left lying on the table. He paused for a moment to recall the number for Roan’s office, then began to punch it into the lighted panel.

  A scream rang out from the sitting room. Adam dropped the phone on the cabinet top and ran.

  Kim Belzoni was crouched in a chair with her face in her hands. Lara looked up from where she was bending over her as he skidded to a halt on the center rug. In the dim light from the kitchen, he searched her face for some hint of injury or threat. “What is it?” he demanded. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. It’s only that—”

  “Nothing?” Her aunt lifted her tear-stained face. “You call it nothing that three men are waiting outside to kill me? Nothing, that I’ve been beaten and abused and hounded from my home, and now have to wait while my niece and an absolute stranger decide whether I live or die? I can’t stand it. I can’t!”

  The last words were spoken on another wail. Adam hovered, feeling helpless, while his heartbeat dropped back to something near a normal pace.

  “I told you it’s all right,” Lara said, rubbing her aunt’s shoulder. “Neither of us is going to give you up.”

  “But he’s going to turn me over to the police anyway,” Kim said with a stabbing look in Adam’s direction. “I might as well be dead!”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do mean it. You haven’t a clue what prison is like, but I do because I went with Ernesto once to visit his brother. Once was enough to see the crudeness, the ugliness, and complete lack of privacy. Then I’ll always be looking over my shoulder for the person Ernesto’s uncle will send after me. If I survive, it’ll be a miracle.”

  “You killed a man,” Adam said in his most patient tone. “Did you think there’d be no consequences?”

  “If I hadn’t shot Ernesto he’d have killed me!”

  “You won’t go to prison unless you’re convicted, and you won’t be convicted if you’re innocent of the intent to commit murder. But you still have to tell it to the judge.”

  “What if the Belzoni family is a major contributor to this judge’s retirement fund? What then?”

  “You appeal and ask for a change of venue.”

  “With what for money? Ernesto’s estate will be tied up for years, and I’m not eligible for his life insurance, if he had any, which I doubt. I’d be broke if I hadn’t managed to stash a little money away, but it’s all I’ve got to live on. No, no, I have to get away. I just have to!”

  “If you manage that, what happens to Lara? Or to me, for that matter?”

  “We’ll all go. It’s the only way.”

  Kim Belzoni stared at him with such intensity in her red-rimmed eyes that it seemed she willed him to do as she asked. Adam still couldn’t agree. “The best thing to do is call Roan. He and his deputies can be here with sirens blasting in ten minutes flat.”

  “To take me into custody? No thanks.”

  There was no reasoning with the woman. Stifling an exasperated sigh, he glanced at Lara. She was watching him with waiting stillness in her eyes, as if she expected something more from him. What it might be, he couldn’t imagine since he was fresh out of ideas.

  It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. Swinging around, Adam headed back toward the kitchen and his cell phone.

  “Wait!”

  It was Lara’s aunt who called out to him. As he turned back, she lowered her head, plucking at the pile of her terry housecoat. “I… I don’t really mean to be so selfish or cause so much trouble. Neither of you would be in this mess if it weren’t for me, and I’m sorry for that. I wouldn’t have anything happen to Lara for the world, or to you either, Adam. I’d change things, make them better, it if I could.”

  “Oh, Aunt Kim,” Lara said softly as she rubbed her aunt’s shoulder.

  Kim gave a quick shake of her head. “It’s just that… I don’t know. Everything is so mixed up in my mind. Sometimes it seems like a dream. I can still see Ernesto coming at me, still feel it as he hit me so I stumbled against the bedside table. The drawer fell open and the gun was just there. The next thing, I knew, he was clutching at the hole in his chest.”

  So it had been self-defense, Adam thought. Either that or Kim Belzoni was an extremely good actress. Aloud, he asked, “Why didn’t you call 911 for an ambulance?”

  “It was no use, I could see that. I… I panicked. At least, I suppose that’s what you’d call it. I don’t actually remember. I must have just left the house, walked away from the whole mess. Everything is a blank until I came to myself, heading out of New Orleans on Interstate 10 in a gypsy cab. I still had the gun with me, lying on my lap.”

  Tears overflowed her eyes, and she put her hands to her face as if overcome by emotion. With a gesture of distress and apology, she stood up and moved toward the kitchen as though in search of a tissue or paper towel to wipe her face. When the swinging doors had closed behind her, Adam turned to Lara.

  “You believe her?” he asked at once.

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Maybe because her story is so convenient, coming after I hinted just now that a plea of self-defense might help?”

  “You have a cynical mind,” she said in scathing accusation. “Can’t you tell how upset she is about it?”

  He shifted the muscles of one shoulder in moody acknowledgment. “She can be upset and still be guilty, can’t she?”

  “Oh, please.”

  “I’d like to believe her, since I’d rather not think about what I might be taking her back to face.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Louisiana favors death by lethal injection for capital crimes.”

  A shudder rippled through Lara, though her face remained composed. “But you aren’t convinced?”

  “I could be, possibly, if I knew whether she thought I’d turn her in faster if she was innocent than if she was guilty.”

  Lara gave a mirthless laugh. “I’m not sure her mind is as devious as yours.”

  “Count on it,” he said, barely glancing at her.

  “In that case,” she told him after a few quiet seconds, “I’d have to say she may have told you what happened to gain sympathy, but probably not to sway your decision. Aunt Kim was never a very forceful personality. She was kind to me while I was growing up, always smiling, always full of things she wanted to see and do. She was special, with the kind of presence actors sometimes have that makes people turn and stare. But whatever life plans she may have had, she never had the drive to reach them. She drifted into situations and out of them again, seemingly without conscious decision. If she murdered Ernesto Belzoni, it was because he gave her no alternative.”

  The description seemed to fit, for what it was worth. He’d have to consider it later. Right this moment, he had another priority. “This weapon she mentioned, did she still have it when she got here?”

  “On the front seat of her car. She wanted me to get rid of it for her, since she couldn’t stand to touch it.”

  “It was a high-caliber pistol I suppose, if she offed Belzoni with a single shot, even if it was at close range. So did you bury it, or just give it a good fling into the bushes?”

  “I heard your SUV on the drive when I set out to take care of it,” she informed him. “I brought it back inside. It’s in my bedroom upstairs.”

  “Could you bring…”

  He stopped as a noise from the kitchen registered in his mind. He’d been hearing the sound of water running into a sink for several minutes, much longer than it should have taken for Kim to splash her face or even to fill a glass to drink. Swinging around on his heel without another word, he headed in that direction.

  Lara’s aunt had her back turned to him as she stood at the double sink. White suds mounded
one side of it, as if it had been filled for washing dishes. She glanced up, using the dark surface of the big window in front of her as a mirror to check his entry. Then without turning, she reached and picked up his cell phone.

  “Don’t!” he commanded.

  She paid no attention. Holding the phone above the soapy water, she opened her fingers and dropped it.

  The phone seemed to fall in slow motion, endlessly plummeting, down through bubbles that fragmented on impact, billowing upward in a froth of tiny, iridescent globules. The gray plastic phone created a white crater that spread in a circular fountain, splashing, hissing. Then the foam closed over it, hiding it from sight.

  Adam cursed. Springing to the sink, he plunged his hand into the hot, soapy water. Behind him, he heard Lara enter the kitchen and her sharp exclamation followed by a spate of questions. Kim backed away without attempting to answer.

  By the time he fished the phone out of the sink and brought it up, dripping soapsuds, Lara had found a dish towel. She held it out, and he snatched it from her to wrap the phone. With fast, economical moves, he blotted away the water, turned the phone first one way and then another to drain it then flipped open the case and repeated the process. When it was as dry as it was going to get, he stood looking at it.

  Waiting was unlikely to help matters. He squared his shoulders and punched the power button.

  Nothing.

  He tried again, then again, with the same result. He even punched in the numbers that would place his delayed call to Roan, for what good it did him. Snapping the phone shut, he stood with it clenched in his fist while breathing slowly in and out through his nose. Then he turned his gaze to Lara. Indicating the dead device, he asked in deliberate tones, “I don’t suppose you have one of these.”

  “I haven’t needed one,” she answered.

  “We need one now. The regular phone line has been cut.” He looked at Kim. “You?”

  She sank down on a chair at the table as if destroying the phone had taken the last of her energy. “Not with me. It fell out of my purse while I was looking for my gas card. It’s in the car…in the barn.”

  “Figures.” Every ounce of his considerable disgust was in that laconic comment.

  Lara moistened her lips, dividing a nervous glance between him and her aunt as if half-afraid he might attack Kim. “What now?”

  It was a good question. In a harsh drawl, he asked, “Either of you ladies know how to fire a weapon?”

  “If you’re thinking of some gung ho commando patrol—”

  “Hardly. More like manning the barricades and forcing the goons outside to track us down, room by room.”

  “I can shoot,” Kim said, her voice nearly inaudible. “My third husband loved to hunt. Our honeymoon was spent on safari, though he was in the bush more than he was with me. Our guide thought I should learn to shoot for my own protection so he…taught me.”

  “And which one of them wound up with you as his trophy?” The question popped out before Adam could prevent it.

  “Neither,” Lara’s aunt shot back in a flash of spirit. “Being mounted and stuffed out in the dirt and the flies wasn’t my idea of bliss.”

  He deserved that, he thought, even as he felt the back of his neck grow hot. A swift glance at the limpid irony in Lara’s face informed him that she thought so, too. “I don’t think that story is something you want to tell the judge at your criminal hearing,” he said in an attempt to regain his lost authority. “He might jump to the wrong conclusion.”

  Kim Belzoni didn’t answer, but only looked down at her clasped hands.

  It didn’t make him feel any better.

  “Fine,” Lara said. “We have one weapon and they have three—or maybe more, I don’t know. Somehow, I don’t like the odds.”

  “You have a better idea?” He leaned against the cabinet behind him and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “We could slip out the back, make our way through the woods to a neighbor’s house to call Roan.”

  “If they aren’t watching the exits, they’re dumber than I think,” he said with precision.

  She pressed her mouth into a straight line and clasped her arms over her diaphragm in an unconscious parody of his stance. At least he hoped it was unconscious. The gesture had a vastly different effect on her feminine curves, one that did nothing to help his thought processes.

  “Okay. Here we go.” He straightened, clapping his hands together like a coach ready to present a brilliant game plan. “We have only one pistol, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have weapons. Kitchen cabinets and household junk drawers are packed with them—knives, scissors, hammers, screwdrivers, slicers and dicers. Household chemicals can be turned into lethal weapons. We may be outnumbered, but we aren’t out. Lara, I need drain cleaner, for a start, then detergent and gelatin.”

  She didn’t move. “We, Aunt Kim and I, are supposed to stab and slice and fling these explosives or whatever around?”

  “You don’t think you can do it?”

  “Do you?”

  “Come on, where’s your black widow spider instinct? The female of the species is supposed to be more deadly, and so on? Think of it as preserving your home. Or if that doesn’t do it, pretend those jerks out there are me.”

  The ghost of a smile came and went across her face. “Now there’s an incentive.”

  “Thought so,” he said, and was much more aware than he wanted to be of the smooth surfaces of her lips, and the warmth that curled in the pit of his stomach as he watched them. This wasn’t the time or the place. Or was it? Libido in the human animal was supposed to be strongest when faced with extinction, wasn’t it? On a deep breath, he said, “Right. Time’s running out, ladies. Let’s get to it.”

  Lara swung around and left the kitchen, probably to find the drain cleaner. The swinging door squeaked back and forth for a second then was still. In the quiet that descended, Adam looked at Kim. She was staring at him with doubt and dread stamped plainly on her features.

  He knew just how she felt.

  Seven

  Lara slipped through the dark rooms without turning on the lights. She was used to it, for one thing, but she didn’t want to advertise the fact that anything unusual was going on. The men outside would expect them to be huddling together in panic mode. They didn’t really know Adam Benedict or they’d be a great deal more wary. Still, it would be better not to put them on alert.

  What would she and Aunt Kim have done if they’d been alone in the house when the men showed up? It would all be over by now, she suspected. Adam’s presence had forced her visitors to rethink their options. The end result might be the same, but at least it gave them a chance.

  Courage and fidelity. The colors signifying those qualities had been almost blinding as they stood in the kitchen just now. Even when she had tested Adam, they had not dimmed. Something else had flowed beneath them, however, something as electrifying as it was disturbing. She had felt as well as seen the golden heat of his desire. It had enveloped her, surrounding her with such flowing power that she had been unable to move for long seconds. It was dangerous, she knew, because it would be so easy to become lost in it.

  She needed no such complication, not now and not with this man. She was happy on her own. She enjoyed her solitary lifestyle, did not require male companionship or even sex to complete her life. She could take care of herself, under most circumstances anyway.

  Black widow spider syndrome, indeed. A small smile curved her mouth as she remembered the amusement and challenge in Adam’s face as he’d said those words. He was right, naturally; women were more than capable of violence with good reason. Those reasons were usually self-preservation and protection of their young, rather than posturing for show. That didn’t make them better than men, but only indicated that it was nature’s way to save female energy for things that mattered.

  At the stair landing she paused to glance out the oval window of etched glass that was set into the wall. It looked down on the front
drive. She could make out the figure of the driver where he still sat in the car. He was no doubt assigned to watch the front door. The other two were nowhere in sight, which probably meant that Adam was right, and they were covering the back.

  Was he correct about there being no way out? Or was staying more risky than trying to leave? Whose instincts should she trust, his or her own?

  For the moment, she would accept his judgment. But she reserved the right to change her mind. There were more than two exits to the house.

  Continuing toward the upstairs bathroom, she kept her eyes open for possibilities. By the time she’d gathered what she needed and made her way back to the kitchen, she was primed and ready. She waited, however, until Adam was busy with his chemical mixture.

  “If you’re doing what I think,” she said in conversational tones as she stood watching over his shoulder, “I can’t say I’m too thrilled. Burning my grandmother’s house down around our ears doesn’t seem the best way to be rid of our guests.”

  “It may not be necessary.”

  “Then again, it may?”

  He turned his head to give her a harassed look. “You have a better idea?”

  It was the opening she needed. “Old Victorian houses like these often have a couple of side doors for the convenience of the different generations living under the same roof. This one has an extra from the breakfast room and another from an upstairs sitting room with an outside stair that ends in the herb garden.”

  “You think they aren’t watching all exits?”

  “They can’t be everywhere,” she pointed out. “Even if they’re watching the doors, there are dozens of man-sized windows in this old pile.”

  “So I’m to hold the castle while you climb down from the tower and go for help?”

  The hint of sarcasm in his voice scraped on her nerves. “I’m not living in a fairy tale just because I’m female, thank you very much. Besides, I have no intention of deserting you.”