by Nancy Bush
Consciousness slowly returned. What was she afraid of?
Cautiously, she pulled her head from beneath the king-sized pillow and glanced around. An unfamiliar bedroom. Lambert’s bedroom, she remembered with a rush of panic. She’d slept in Lambert’s bed.
Now her aches and pains made a bit more sense. His lovemaking had been rough and demanding. She’d had terrible dreams. Evil specters with leering faces and scraping claws. Yuck. Just touching on the memory made her mind shy away even now, in the bright light of day.
Where was Lambert?
Reaching out a tentative hand, she examined the other side of the bed. No body and no warmth. Either he didn’t sleep with her or he was an early riser.
She shivered. On shaking legs she headed for the master bath. Malachite green marble and matte black fixtures. An actual bear rug as a bath mat.
Twisting on the shower, she turned the water as hot as she could stand, then stood beneath the burning, stinging spray and fought back sudden, hysterical sobbing.
An hour later she was more in control, her hand almost steady as she applied makeup. In the mirror something caught her eye. A soft discoloration near her collarbone.
She twisted to look at her skin but it was too close to her neck. Leaning forward, she examined the area in the mirror. A spreading bruise.
Memory slammed into her. Thomas Daniels’s thick, red fist, smashing her cheekbone.
No.
That was a lie. Nothing had happened. It was her own fear. Fear, because he’d been such a sadistic bastard. He’d never touched her. Never.
Her hands spread protectively across her neck and collarbones. Not Lambert, either. This was explainable. She’d had too much to drink. Tripped. Stumbled into the wall. She could remember now. A drink. Something like gin . . . or something. And wasn’t there an archway that was kind of narrow? Between the bar and hallway? She’d been clumsy. She’d always been kind of clumsy, and after a few drinks . . . well, it was bound to happen.
Relief spread like liquid through her veins. Forcing a smile at her reflection, she applied soft pink lipstick. Her hand shook a little. Understandable. She was just going to have to tell Lambert not to give her anything to drink. She couldn’t hold her liquor. She was a terrible drunk.
Spying her suitcases and bags, she hesitated, unsure. Should she unpack? Was she moving in?
She should really call her agent. This no cell phone thing was killing her. She had to use Lambert’s landline.
“I’ll have Leo get back to you,” his snooty secretary told her.
“I’m not at home,” Denise said, giving her Lambert’s number.
“I’ll leave him the message.”
For a moment Denise considered calling Dinah. She owed her sister a phone call.
The bitch. The man-stealing bitch.
Swallowing, Denise reached into her shirt pocket for the business card she knew was in there. Empty.
Panic struck her. Where? Where?
Frantically, she threw open her cases, digging through her clothes, throwing them around the room, fighting a surging panic that threatened to engulf her.
She found Stone’s L.A. number and address in the pocket of her kelly green shirt. Of course. She’d been here a few days already. She’d just kind of forgotten. Trembling, she placed the call, only to reach a receptionist.
“Please,” Denise said, voice quivering. “I desperately need to talk to him.”
“I’ll tell him, Ms. Scott.”
She hated begging. Hated it. Stumbling back to the bathroom she grabbed a washrag, twisted it into a rope, and bit down on it. Shudders swept through her.
You are a total sicko. You need help. Serious help.
A dull chime sounded through the quiet house. Dimly, she understood it was the front bell. She ignored it, but the smothered-sounding peals continued. With an effort she unclamped her jaw, removed the washrag, examined her pale face in the mirror, fluffed her hair, then headed downstairs on unsteady legs.
“Who is it?” she asked, peering through the peephole.
One helluva good-looking man stood on the stoop.
Without waiting for an answer she flung open the door.
He stared at her and she stared at him.
“Denise Scott?” he asked in a quiet voice.
When she nodded, he offered her a warm, dry hand. Returning the handshake, she sensed the tremors that wracked her and wondered if he could feel it, too.
“Connor Jackley,” he said. “Private Investigator . . .”
He’d been to Wagon Wheel. He had a sister there. He’d grown up around Bend. He was an ex-cop. She sensed, though he didn’t say it, that he was on some kind of furlough. The P.I. thing wasn’t really him.
Lord, he possessed movie star looks. And that serious manner. Those soul-deep eyes. But he was no actor. This was his real self. A flesh-and-blood former L.A.P.D. cop with a mission.
What was he saying? Something about her family? Her family?
“I grew up on a farm in Indiana,” she said rotely.
He was talking again but she couldn’t make out the words. The buzz in her ears drowned out everything. Cold sweat broke out on her forehead.
“Ms. Scott . . . ?” His voice was wavery, dreamy, far, far away.
She awoke suddenly, flat on her back on the couch, staring up at the white molding surrounding the ceiling.
She was alone.
Oh, God!
“Ms. Scott?”
She gasped, shocked, then as she whipped around, disconcerted to see her visitor was seated on a nearby chair, watching her intently.
Her head throbbed. “What happened?”
“You seemed to pass out.”
“What . . . what time is it?”
“Five o’clock.”
Five o’clock. Denise collapsed back into the cushions and squeezed her eyes closed. She’d lost a whole day. Another whole day. And he’d been here the whole time.
“You didn’t rape me or anything, did you?” she muttered breezily, but the effect was spoiled by her trembling lips.
There was a long hesitation. Denise peered at him through the corners of her eyes. Seeing him reminded her achingly of John for some reason, though they weren’t anything alike in appearance.
“I almost called nine-one-one,” he said, “but you—”
“No!” she declared.
“—told me . . . that.”
She had to see John, she realized. Right away.
“Do you remember anything I told you earlier?” Connor Jackley asked, eyeing her closely.
“Uh . . . no.”
“About finding the remains of your stepfather?”
Denise blinked. Her eyelids felt weighted down by the proverbial bricks. She blinked again. “What?”
“I’m investigating the murder of Thomas Daniels, and I need your help.”
Footsteps sounded, soft, pantherlike. Lambert appeared in the doorway and gazed in a bored manner at the attractive Mr. Jackley.
“You’re here?” she asked, confused.
“Oh, yes. When I came home, your friend was watching over you and nothing I could say would get him to leave.” Lambert’s lip curled. Denise realized she’d seen him look at her that same way.
“I called the police,” Lambert went on, “but it turns out, this man practically is the police.” With that same predatory tread, he came to sit on the edge of the couch. He handed her a glass of water and a pill. “Don’t talk,” he added, pressing a finger to her lips. “Just relax.”
Denise couldn’t help picking up the vibes of distrust and macho injury radiating from Lambert. Connor Jackley had rubbed Lambert Wallace the wrong way with a steel rake.
“What was it you wanted again?” she asked, ignoring the pill.
“Thomas Daniels,” Connor reminded her. “Your stepfather.”
“I’m not from Indiana?” she asked, arching a brow.
That scared a smile out of him. “No.”
“Okay, okay
. You seem to have done your homework. Thomas Daniels was my stepfather,” she admitted, the words so difficult, they felt rusty inside her mouth.
“I need to know a little about him.”
She shook her head. “Does the word vile mean anything to you?”
“Vile in what way?”
“Am I under investigation?” she asked, fear shooting through her on the heels of sudden understanding.
“I’m not with the police any longer.”
Lambert snorted as if he didn’t believe that for a second. Connor Jackley did seem to have LAW ENFORCEMENT stamped all over him—good looks, or no.
“You don’t have to answer anything,” Lambert advised.
“No, no.” Denise struggled to sit up. She was more than willing to set the record straight. “You said he was murdered? Are you sure?”
Jackley didn’t spare her. “His skull was crushed.”
The pain behind Denise’s left eye was a needle, digging, digging, digging inside her brain. She covered the eye with one hand, willing the pain away. Unsuccessfully. “I don’t know . . .”
“Your mother died when you and your twin were in high school.”
“My twin,” Denise gasped, appalled at his knowledge. She refused to look at Lambert, uncomfortable with him listening in, unable to do anything about it.
“Your younger sister, Hayley, was a sophomore? There were a few months when you all lived with Daniels before you moved away.”
She narrowed her lashes. The pain was excruciating. The pain of searching for the memory. She couldn’t find it. Couldn’t find any of it, but in truth she didn’t look very hard. It just hurt too goddamn much.
“I don’t remember,” she murmured truthfully.
“Do you remember your mother’s death?” he asked.
Chrysanthemums. Gold and bloody orange and white. Smelling like weeds. The casket was open. Denise could see the top of her mother’s head, the streaks of gray against the softer blond-brown. “Yes.”
“Do you remember anything after that?”
She’d left the funeral with her boyfriend, Jimmy Fargo, even though Dinah hadn’t wanted her to. Jimmy had told her how sorry he was. He’d kissed her cheek and hugged her. It was fall. Hot and dry, and Jimmy had led her to their spot by the river where the Friday before they’d engaged in some serious making out. Denise turned her face into the side of his neck, her sorrow building into a terrible crescendo.
And Jimmy had felt her up.
“I don’t remember much,” Denise told Connor Jackley with a grimace.
“Tell me what you remember.”
Should she relate how Jimmy had then pressed her into the dry field grass, pulled at her dress with anxious, hurried fingers, then mounted her and shouted how much he loved her between grunts of pleasure?
Ah, yes. Sex. Her downfall. She’d let Jimmy Fargo take her without a peep of resistance. Even later, when she’d overheard him sniggering to a friend how he’d “fucked Denise Scott until she’d cried,” she hadn’t complained.
And still later, when she’d learned she was pregnant, and Jimmy Fargo, on the advice of his wealthy timber-baron father, had acted like he didn’t know her, she still hadn’t broken down.
Or, did you?
She couldn’t remember much of anything after that until she was on a bus, months later, heading for the bright lights of Hollywood. Dinah’d been with her. And Hayley. And Dinah told her about the miscarriage, and only then did she recall she’d even been pregnant.
“I didn’t know my stepfather was dead until you told me,” Denise related carefully. “I guess I thought he was still in Wagon Wheel, but I really never think about him. At least I try not to. He was mean. Deep-down mean. He used to scare me and my sisters.”
“What did he do?”
“Oh, he’d threaten to beat us if we didn’t mind him. That kind of thing. We tried to keep away from him. He hit Hayley once and Dinah nailed him with a bowling trophy he’d won when he was in high school.”
“Was this after your mother died?”
“I . . . don’t think so.” Denise gazed directly into the P.I.’s gray eyes. “No, wait, Dinah hit him on the shoulder, if that’s what you’re thinking! That didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“You’re saying Thomas Daniels was alive and well when you and your sisters left Wagon Wheel.”
“He was alive . . . I don’t think he was ever well.”
“Are you about finished?” Lambert asked. His arm was looped familiarly over the back of the couch and he traced a finger along Denise’s collarbone.
Shivering, she pulled in on herself. Jackley’s sharp eyes caught everything, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Do you have the addresses of your sisters?” he asked. “I’d like to talk to them.”
She shook her head.
“It would help my investigation,” he said.
He wasn’t going to go away. Those gray eyes were going to wait and wait and wait. “I have an address for Hayley but I haven’t talked to her in . . .” She shrugged.
“And Dinah?”
“I’d have to find her,” she said. “She’s hard to get hold of.”
His expression said, “I know you’re lying.” She waited, heart beating hard, waiting for him to call her on it, but instead he gave her a cell number where she could reach him after she got hold of Dinah.
With difficulty she climbed off the couch and mounted the stairs to her scattered belongings and the tiny address book she kept tucked away. She was tired. So very, very tired.
Dictating Hayley’s address and phone number to Jackley, she watched as he rapidly printed the information in a notebook. Hayley would be able to handle him. He wouldn’t stop her from her goals. Nothing could.
“Whoever killed him did the world a favor,” Denise heard herself say.
“It’s still murder.”
Lambert showed him out and Denise listened to his receding footsteps.
“Take this,” Lambert ordered, when he returned, pushing the pill on her again.
“Why do I feel so hung over?”
“Take the pill and you’ll stop feeling so awful.”
“Did you put something in my drink last night, Lambert?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” he exploded, his face bright red. “Take the damn pill and stop acting so neurotic!”
Denise sighed. She was sick of thinking so much anyway. Dutifully, she swallowed the pill—a tranquilizer to calm her nerves—then just as her bones began to melt along with her troubles, he brought her a snifter of brandy.
And just as she lifted the snifter to her lips, she saw her stepfather as if he were in the room with her.
Like this? You like this? SLAP! You like this, you bitch? Say it! Say it now! Now, now!
“Lambert . . . ?” Blindly, she reached out a hand.
He wasn’t there. She was alone. Alone with a monster.
She had a rock in her hand. Was it her hand? A rough chunk of gray and white granite. Slam! It broke against his skull. Slam! Blood poured, bright red and goddamn rivers of it. Over her hands and down his neck. Over his eye in scarlet rivulets. His eye rolled up. Slam! Slam! Slam!
And he staggered. Went down. And then the shovel. It took off half his face.
“Lambert . . .” she whispered, sliding away.
“Right here, baby. Right here . . .”
“Okay, sugar, you want a thrill? You deserve a thrill. A thr-r-r-illlll.” Her tongue suggestively circled a Pepto-Bismol pink painted mouth. She pursed her lips and kissed the air a couple of times for good measure. “Come on, come on. Whatcha waitin’ for? An invitation? Baby, I just gave you one.”
“How much?”
“What is this, a shakedown? Come on and show me some merchandise and I’ll tell you how much it’s worth,” she teased.
“You gotta give me a price.”
Was this guy green, or what? Hayley’d learned a few things from her nights of street walking and
Rule #1 was to never start spouting prices until he was as committed as his intended hooker for a night. This young yahoo had to be a rookie cop.
It was a game. One she was getting damn good at while she figured out how to approach John Callahan. And it was better than shacking up with doped-out losers with sick, albeit creative, fantasies.
The problem was, she was running out of time. Some of the prostitutes were on to her. They suspected she wasn’t who she said she was because she didn’t deliver. Right now they were trying to figure her out. Pretty soon they’d get rid of her. She made them nervous. Was she a cop, or what?
Gloria Carver had ceased to be her compatriot. She had business to take care of. Hayley’s interests and goals didn’t interest her anymore.
So now she was alone, but she’d watched the rest of the action long enough to get her patter down.
And it gave her a tremendous feeling of power.
“Come on . . .” Romeo touched her arm. “Tell me what you’ll do for me. Whet my appetite.”
“I’m gonna take you around the world.”
“Yeah, how?”
“Use your imagination, baby. I’m your goddamned travel agent.”
“I’ve only got fifty, sweetheart. Fifty do it for you?”
She clucked her tongue. “Oooh, boy. That would be one short trip.”
“A hundred? What do I get for a hundred?”
He was standing too close. She could feel his breath on her neck. Unconsciously she stepped away from him, needing space. Maybe he wasn’t a cop. Maybe he was something else. Something worse.
A black car slid into the curb next to them. Hayley ran her hands down her hips. Her skirt was black vinyl as were her thigh-high boots. A tan suede vest, cinched up the front by leather thongs, was all that kept her breasts from spilling out. She’d ratted her blond hair into a sexy, tossed tangle, caked on a ton of makeup, and completed the look with a pair of fake, black eyelashes.
“Let’s go for a ride,” Romeo said, jerking his head to the end of the block where a green sedan stood, its parking lights on.
“Nah . . .” She twisted away and pretended boredom. “I don’t think I can agree to your terms.”