If A Man Answers

by Merline Lovelace

  “Listen to the way he rounds his vowels,” she instructed. “He came from the upper Midwest, I’m sure. Wisconsin. Maybe Michigan. And there! Did you catch the way he pronounces ‘i-dee-ah.’ That’s pure New England. The congressman traveled some before he took up residence in Nevada.”

  “She nailed him!” the station manager exclaimed. “We’ve got Walters’s bio somewhere here on file, but if my memory serves me, he was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and graduated with top honors from Harvard. He settled in Nevada after he married Jessica MacGïver, great-granddaughter of old Jessie MacGiver.”

  At his listeners’ uncomprehending expressions, the manager flapped a hand tipped with brown, nicotinestained fingers.

  “MacGiver was one of the early prospectors in these parts. He discovered the Blue Diamond, which turned out to be the richest silver mines in this state. One of the richest in the country, as a matter of fact. The old man’s son diversified into other minerals... copper, tungsten, lithium...and made another killing. Jessica MacGiver inherited a financial empire that would make Bill Gates’s pile look like play money.”

  Kaplan eyed the man thoughtfully. “You know a lot about the family.”

  “I should.” His smoke-wrinkled lips twisted. “MacGiver, Inc., owns this station, plus a half dozen newspapers around the state.”

  “I bet the congressman doesn’t pay much for his political ads,” Molly muttered.

  The manager re-cued the tape, his pallid eyes zinging from the politician’s handsome face to her taut one. “What’s Walters done, anyway?”

  “We don’t know that he’s done anything,” Kaplan responded evenly.

  “Come on,” the newsman huffed. “What gives? Are you investigating him for illegal campaign contributions? Misuse of government aircraft?”

  “Not at this time, and if I were you,” Kaplan added laconically, “I’d be real careful about mentioning our visit here. To anyone. I doubt if Mrs. Walters would appreciate it if one of her employees started unfounded rumors flying about her husband.”

  With that unsubtle hint, the detective lifted the tape off the mixer. “I’ll take this, if you don’t mind.”

  “No, no, of course not.”

  After the controlled dimness of the TV station, the blazing morning heat hit Molly like a hammer. She stepped into the searing sunlight, half blinded and wholly shaken by the idea that she might have just identified a member of one of the most powerful families in her adopted state as a murderer.

  “What do we do now?” she asked Kaplan, sliding on a pair of oversized sunglasses to shield her eyes from the shimmering white light.

  He rubbed his hand across his jowls, his black eyes thoughtful. Obviously Molly’s disclosures had had more of an impact on him than he’d let on inside the production booth.

  “I’ll check out Walters’s whereabouts on the night of the murder,” he said slowly. “I’ll also see if there’s any record that he owns a .38 special. I’ll get back to you with whatever I find out.”

  Molly nodded, both disappointed and secretly a little relieved. While she wanted Walters brought to justice, she wasn’t looking forward to what came next. She wouldn’t mind taking a few days or weeks or even months to get over her jitters before she had to face the politician across a courtroom.

  Kaplan started to turn away, then swung back. “Look, Ms. Duncan, you’ve convinced me that it could have been Walters you heard on the phone that day.”

  She anticipated the “but” before it came.

  “The thing is, the D.A. won’t press the case against him without some hard, corroborating evidence.”

  “And you don’t think you’ll find that corroborating evidence, do you?”

  “No. Number one, a man like Walters is too smart to leave any. Number two...”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve spent some twenty-three years on the Las Vegas police force. During those years, I’ve seen supposedly upstanding citizens commit crimes that turned even my stomach. Yet I’ve never heard any snitch or undercover cop even whisper the congressman’s name in conjunction with anything off-color. No gambling debts, no under-the-table donations to his campaign, nothing.”

  “So what are you suggesting? That I forget what I heard? Or lie about it?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just suggesting you keep quiet until I have a chance to check Walters’s whereabouts the night of the murder, that’s all. This case has the potential to get real nasty, real fast.”

  “Thanks for the warning...I think.”

  The detective shrugged and left with another promise to call when and if he turned up any information.

  “Why the heck am I starting to feel like the guilty one here?” she muttered to his back.

  She slumped a hip against the Trans Am’s fender. Instantly, hot metal seared through her dress. With a short, pithy oath, she leaped away from the fender and smacked into Sam. He steadied her, his face tight behind the aviator glasses.

  “Don’t you start, too,” she warned, pulling free. She slid into the white convertible, wincing when the baked seats came in contact with the backs of her thighs. A quick twist of the key overcranked the engine, which in turn caused Sam to wince. Feeling even more disgruntled than she had when she slipped out of his arms and headed for the shower earlier this morning, Molly threw him an accusing look.

  “I know this Walters is a friend of yours.”

  “An acquaintance.”

  “Whatever.” Shoving the convertible into reverse, she wheeled it out of the parking slot. “I don’t need you to remind me again that I only heard him for a few seconds. Or how powerful he is.”

  “I hadn’t planned to.”

  “And I don’t need anyone telling me that whole thing is going to detonate like a nuclear device when the media gets hold of it.”

  “No, you don’t.” He slid his sunglasses down his nose and returned her glare. “Would it do any good to remind you that I’m not the responsible party here, either?”

  “You’re just as responsible as I am,” she shot back.

  “Come again?”

  Molly knew she was being unreasonable. She recognized that her emotions were riding a towering crest from last night and this morning. Still she couldn’t hold back a snide little reminder.

  “If you hadn’t been inflicting Buck Randall on me night after night, I wouldn’t have called to complain, I wouldn’t have heard a shooting, and I wouldn’t be about to finger a U.S. congressman for murder.”

  Yeah, Sam thought. And I wouldn’t be having dinner tonight with the divine Davinia and her masseur, instead of locking Molly’s front door, dragging her down onto the nearest horizontal surface, and kissing her until her bones rattled, which was the only way he could think of at the moment to shake her out of her present snit.

  Shoving his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, he tucked his arms across his chest. This was going to be a long day. And an even longer night.

  Chapter 9

  By the time Molly dropped Sam off at his place and got back to her office at the visitors’ bureau, she’d recovered some measure of her equanimity. Thankfully, Davinia hadn’t yet returned to the office. Molly’s timely meeting with a German trade delegation at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino won her a further reprieve from the third-degree she knew her boss would subject her to.

  After the lengthy meeting at the Excalibur, she dialed her voice mail to check her messages. Her stomach knotted when she heard Detective Kaplan’s voice asking her to call him as soon as possible. When she reached him at his office, he cut right to the point.

  “Walters has an airtight alibi for the night of the murder. He and his wife were the guests of honor at a fund-raiser at the Mirage. According to my sources, the governor, some two thousand assorted wellheeled contributors and an entire galaxy of Vegas’s resident entertainers attended the bash.”

  Caught between relief and an instinctive need to refute the evidence, Molly stared through the plastic shield of the phone b
ooth at Excalibur’s version of the haunted forest outside Camelot. Moss draped from shadowy overhead limbs, and a gray-bearded Merlin wandered the black-and-red carpeted floor, hawking puppets to a group of shy, smiling Japanese tourists.

  “What time did the fund-raiser end?” she asked, frowning at Merlin.

  “According to my sources, the entertainment ran longer than anticipated. The party started to break up just past one, but Walters and his wife lingered until most of the guests departed the scene. I’ve verified that he was at the Mirage until 2:00 a.m.”

  “The shooting occurred just after one,” Molly murmured.

  “We’re still checking the gun records, but it doesn’t look like the congressman is our killer.”

  “No,” she conceded slowly, “it doesn’t.”

  Molly hung up a moment later. Doubt swarmed inside her head like annoying little gnats. She would have staked everything she owned on the certainty that she’d heard Joshua Walters at Joey the Horse’s apartment. Unless the congressman had a twin or he’d taken a few lessons from Sigfried and Roy in magic and illusions, she must have heard wrong.

  She was still puzzling over the question of how Walters could have been in two places at the same time when she drove home a little past five that evening. The sight of the garage next door yawning open and Sam bent over the fender of the Mustang pushed the congressman to the periphery of her mind. Instant, deliciously carnal thoughts leaped to center stage.

  Okay, she told herself as Sam unbent All right. The dizzy loop her stomach just performed was perfectly natural, a normal, healthy woman’s response to those thigh-hugging jeans and that stretch of white T-shirt across his broad chest. She didn’t have to panic. She wasn’t in love with him or anything. Only in lust

  Very much in lust, she admitted as he wiped his hands on a rag. She braked the Trans Am to a halt, waiting while he crossed the driveway. His dark brown hair gleamed with sweat at the temples, and the damp patches on his T-shirt had Molly’s hands clenching on the steering wheel. But it was his face that twisted her heart.

  His cheekbones jutted in stark relief, stretching his tanned skin into a thin membrane. His mouth formed a narrow slash. And his eyes... Molly could have cried at the tight, white lines fanning from their corners.

  “Bad day?” she asked softly.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  The clipped response warned her that he didn’t want any sympathy. That and the hard line to his jaw.

  “I talked to Kaplan a while ago,” she said, burying her ache for Sam in the casual information. “Your friend Walters was the guest of honor at a fund-raiser the night of the murder. He didn’t leave the gala until an hour or so after the shooting.”

  His expression didn’t soften. If anything, it torqued up another degree. He was hurting, Molly knew. Badly. Her heart twisted for him.

  “I won’t say that I’m not relieved,” he told her. “Josh Walters has done a helluva lot for this state and for the country. I like the man. I didn’t like the idea that he’s a murderer.”

  “I don’t particularly like it, either. Look, Sam, do you mind if we take a rain check on dinner with Davinia and Antonio? We, uh, didn’t get much sleep last night and I’m whipped.”

  He skimmed her face with tight, shuttered eyes. Heat rose in her cheeks. She didn’t know which was worse. Remembering the strenuous activities that had precluded sleep last night or letting Sam believe that she didn’t want to repeat them.

  She did, she acknowledged. With every hormone in her body. But not until she’d worked through her own confused reaction to this man. And certainly not until he could look at her without pain gouging deep grooves on either side of his mouth.

  “I’ll call Davinia and beg off. She’ll understand.”

  That was the understatement of the week. Her boss would not only understand, she’d put her own spin on things. No doubt she’d chuckle evilly and remind Molly that she and Sam needed to come up for air sometime.

  Sam cocked his head slowly, as if wary of moving too fast. “Backing off, Molly?”

  “A little,” she admitted, sliding her hands back and forth on the steering wheel. “I think we might need to slow things down.”

  “Why?”

  The simple question demanded the truth.

  “I rushed into one relationship and ended up couchless.” Her smile invited him to understand. “I don’t want to rush into another one with a man I was about to declare all-out war on a week ago. Let’s take this slow, Sam, and see what develops.”

  Sam told himself that she was right. Between the sharp spikes shooting into the back of his skull, he acknowledged that it wouldn’t hurt to slow things down just a little. The problem was, he was afraid he’d gone beyond slow. He’d passed that point at Caesars Palace, when he’d glanced across the booth and watched Molly pretend to enjoy an art form she despised. Or maybe when she giggled helplessly and collapsed against him in the driver’s seat of the Mustang. For sure when she shimmied and shivered and welcomed him into her body.

  Sam had spent most of the day thinking about what he wanted from and with Molly Duncan, and it wasn’t slow. All morning he’d tried to figure out how to shield her from the ugliness of this damned murder, which could have gotten even uglier real quick. A good chunk of the afternoon went to wondering just how she’d take to being shielded, from murder or from anything else.

  Then the first distress signals had started. Low in his skull. Blunt at first. Gradually sharper and sharper. He’d worked out on the gym until his muscles screamed. Finally, he’d buried himself in the dim sanctuary under the Mustang’s hood. Now, he fought to keep a rusty edge from his voice as he forced himself to agree with Molly.

  “You’re right. Maybe we’d better back off for a while.” His mouth twisted in what he hoped was a smile. “For tonight, anyway. See you.”

  Molly couldn’t let him walk away like this. Shoving the Trans Am into park, she pushed the door open and slid out

  “Sam! Wait.”

  He swung back to her, so stiff and taut he might have been carved from stone. Lava rock crunched under her soles as she closed the short distance between them. Her heart aching, she laid a hand on his arm.

  “Would it help if I came over for a while? I could talk to you while you work out.”

  The muscles under her fingertips flinched. His eyes turned to slate.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Sam, I can see you’re hurting. Let me help. As a friend...or a pesky, interfering neighbor, if nothing else.”

  He hesitated, then lifted a hand to cup her cheek. His thumb brushed her lower lip.

  “Thanks for the offer, neighbor, but you look as whipped as I feel. Get some sleep, then we’ll take this discussion up where we left off.”

  The way his thumb teased her lip suggested that they’d take up more than the discussion. The kiss he dropped on her mouth confirmed it.

  Molly watched him bury himself under the hood of his toy again. Feeling more confused than ever, she reclaimed her car and hit the garage opener. The door rumbled up, then down, closing out the slanting desert sunlight, the heat and Sam Henderson.

  Five hours later, she blew out a long, irritated puff of air and let the bedroom shade drop.

  Dammit! Sleep pulled at her like a high-powered magnet. The nest she’d made in the bedcovers sang out her name. She needed sleep. She craved total oblivion.

  Even more, she craved the man next door. Her head could enumerate every reason why she should stick to her determination to put some space between them. Her body refused to listen to them. Her heart... Well, her heart bled every time she climbed out of bed and padded to the window to check the light spilling out of Sam’s great room window.

  She sank down into the nest again. Drawing up her legs, she plopped her chin on her knees. The facial slathered across her nose and cheeks cracked a bit. A flake or two drifted down to settle on the pale green duvet.

  Sam didn’t want her hovering over him. He’d made th
at clear enough. He didn’t even want her talking to him. As grim as he’d looked earlier, he probably didn’t even want to...

  The shrill ring of the phone had her jumping half out of her Syracuse University sleep shirt. She waited until her breath returned, then reached across the covers to snatch up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “I saw your light. Are you all right?”

  Sam’s deep drawl sent a slide of relief through Molly. He sounded less strung out, almost relaxed.

  “I’m fine,” she murmured, hugging her knees. “I just couldn’t sleep. How about you? Are you okay?”

  “Not quite okay, but better than before.”

  “I’m glad,” she said simply.

  A small silence spun out between them, easy and companionable. The sexual tension was still there. It simmered just below the surface, like a rich, bubbling broth just removed from the burner. A layer of the friendship Sam had rejected earlier lay atop it right now. Molly had to admit the sex was better, much better, but this would do nicely.

  He broke the stillness first. “Josh Walters’s campaign ad came on again earlier this evening. I taped it, and watched it while I worked out.”

  “And?”

  He hesitated. “And I remembered a small incident, nothing significant, but it got me thinking.”

  Molly sat up, her pulse quickening. “What kind of an incident?”

  “Remember I told you I took the congressman up for a flight a few years ago?”

  “I remember.” A dry note crept into her voice. “As I recall, that came up right after you all but accused me of hitting the Coors again for suggesting Walters could be a murderer.”

  “Yeah, well, that might have been when it was.”

  Molly settled for that almost-apology. “So what was this incident you remembered?”

  “I didn’t see it,” he cautioned. “I only heard about it second or third hand.”