Wild at Heart

by Jane Graves

  “Brenda, your kind of help results in emergency room visits and prosthetic limbs.”

  “I’ll be subtle. I swear.”

  “Like a bulldozer is subtle.”

  “Hey, I don’t want to see Alex go down for this any more than you do! The worst he’s ever done to a woman is not return her phone calls. I imagine he could drive one to suicide or something. But commit murder? Never.”

  In Brenda-speak, that was a huge show of support.

  She continued to stare at Dave like an attack dog just waiting to be unsnapped from its leash. And surprisingly, the more Dave thought about it, the more he realized that she might be just the catalyst he needed to get Henderson to see things his way, especially since he’d be there to ensure that Brenda wouldn’t get out of hand and bring a second homicide into the family. Henderson hated John and Alex. He was scared of Brenda.

  Big difference.

  A lot of people thought Brenda was mildly deranged, and Dave couldn’t say he hadn’t wondered that himself a time or two. But mostly she was merely gung-ho in a way that put George Patton to shame. Ex-military, she’d done a tour of duty during Desert Storm. She was happy they’d won the war, but terribly disappointed that she hadn’t been able to personally gouge out Saddam Hussein’s eyeballs.

  “Okay, Brenda. Maybe I do need your help. Good cop, bad cop.” He gave her a sly look. “Which one do you want to be?”

  Brenda gave him that thin, calculating smile that always seeped onto her lips whenever she smelled blood. “Which one do you think?”

  At nine o’clock, Val pulled her car into a parking space outside her office, a small storefront on Fourteenth Street. Looking through the window of the nail salon next door, she saw Darla getting ready to open up. Val noticed that she’d switched from being a blonde to being a redhead over the weekend, which wasn’t a big surprise except for the fact that Darla was black. She always said that hair was no big deal. If you did something you hated, you could just shave your head and start all over again.

  Val waved to Darla as she got out of her car, and then unlocked the door of her office and went inside. She stopped. Listened. She heard nothing, but did that mean somebody wasn’t hiding in the bathroom, or in her small storage room in the back?

  Damn it. She hated this. She wasn’t going to be afraid. She wasn’t. She fired up her computer, then hauled out a few files. An hour or so later, she’d started to relax, convincing herself that it was dumb to be scared. After all, what kind of idiot would murder somebody at their place of business in broad daylight, then expect that nobody would see him leave the scene of the crime?

  She went to the bathroom. As she was coming out, she heard somebody on the sidewalk outside. Adrenaline surged through her.

  She ran to her desk, yanked her drawer open, circled her hand around the weapon she kept there, and hauled it out—just in time to see Darla come through the door carrying a McDonald’s sack in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

  Val let out a silent breath of relief. She stuck the weapon back in the drawer and managed to close it before Darla realized that she’d been only a few moments away from getting her head blown off. Her friend barging through her door about this time of morning was a commonplace event, yet Val had practically jumped out of her skin.

  Darla turned and saw the gauze bandage on Val’s temple, and her eyes widened.

  “What happened to you?”

  “It’s nothing. I just scraped it on one of my kitchen cabinet doors.”

  “Pretty big bandage for a little scrape.”

  “It was the only size I had.”

  She eyed Val critically. “You okay? You’re looking a little peaked.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Uh-huh. And I’m Madonna.”

  “Really?” Val said, sitting back down in her chair. “You’ve got a new look, Madonna. I like it.”

  “Yeah, I gained twenty pounds, aged ten years, and turned black.”

  “The hair’s nice.”

  “You like it?” Darla said, patting her newly tinted hair. “Melvin begged me to go back to red. Says it turns him on. Of course, he thinks I ought to dye all my hair red, if you know what I mean.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s only so much I’ll do for fashion’s sake.”

  “Or for Melvin’s sake.”

  “Whatever.”

  Darla slapped the sack and the newspaper down on Val’s desk. “Well, if something’s ailing you, Mac here will fix you right up.”

  Give Darla a choice between five-star cuisine and Chicken McNuggets, and she’d pick the Chicken McNuggets every time.

  Darla hauled the food out of the sack. “Egg McMuffin or sausage biscuit?”

  Val’s stomach was still in knots, and she didn’t think she could eat a thing.

  “Egg McMuffin.”

  Darla handed her the Egg McMuffin, then sat down in the chair beside Val’s desk and opened up the sausage biscuit for herself. Then she flipped open the newspaper. Glancing across her desk, Val saw yet another story about Shannon’s murder, and she hoped her friend would pass right over it.

  “Oooh, look at that,” Darla said. “Another story about that rich woman’s murder.”

  No such luck.

  “Did you read about it?” Darla asked.

  “Yeah. I read about it.”

  “It really was something. Strangulation. A sex thing. And a cop as a suspect, of all people.” Darla raised an eyebrow. “So what do you think? Did he do it?”

  On most days, Val didn’t mind Darla’s constant chatter, her excessive gossiping and her endless questions, because basically she was good at heart. Today, though, she really wished Darla would go back to sculpting nails, particularly when the questions she was asking were about Alex.

  “I have no idea,” Val said.

  “Well, I’m betting he’s guilty. I mean, who else would have done it? He was right there.”

  Val opened up the Egg McMuffin and took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. Barely.

  “It says right here that the dead woman was only twenty-eight. Her husband was fifty-four.” She made a scoffing noise. “What some women won’t do to get their hands on a hefty bank account. I guess he’s really rich, huh?”

  “They say he has a dollar or two.”

  “Says here they’re burying her at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Resthaven Memorial Garden—that ritzy cemetery on the north side. Shoot, her husband’s probably spending more to put her in the ground than I make in a year. You know, buying her one of those classy marble headstones, or maybe even a mausoleum vault. And don’t you know that every flower shop in town is bought out? And here I got my birthday coming up tomorrow.” She shook her head with disgust. “Now Melvin will have an excuse not to bring me flowers. I can hear him now: ‘I woulda brought you three dozen roses, Darla, sweetie, but there was that rich woman’s funeral. Not a flower was left in the city.’ ”

  The progression of Darla’s thought process had always amazed Val. Let her go long enough, and she’d turn a discussion of Sesame Street into a diatribe on nuclear war.

  Val pictured Reichert at that funeral, crying over his dead wife, as if he hadn’t been the one to put that belt around her neck. That infuriated Val. The only good thing about his presence there was that she’d have at least a couple of hours when she wouldn’t have to worry about him pointing a gun at her.

  Wait a minute. A couple of hours? When he wouldn’t be at home?

  “When did you say the funeral is?” she asked Darla.

  “Ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “At Resthaven?”

  “Yeah.”

  If Reichert wasn’t guilty, he would be saying good-bye to his dead wife. If he was, he’d want people to think that was what he was doing. Either way, he’d be there.

  And Val would be at his house.

  She’d disarm the security system, then pick the lock. Then she’d look for the kind of rifle that matched that bullet, and if she couldn’t find it, she’d scour
the house for evidence that Henderson hadn’t bothered to search for, some other tangible indication that maybe Reichert had a motive to kill his wife in addition to the fact that she was cheating on him. Financial records reflecting large amounts of money being moved for some reason. Recent insurance policies. Something. Anything. And if she found some evidence, at least she’d know for sure Reichert was the culprit, and then she could come up with a creative way to take him down. And even if she found no evidence, at the very least she could bug the house. Sooner or later he’d say something incriminating, and she’d nail him.

  Wait a minute. Dave was going to talk to Henderson sometime tomorrow. Should she wait to see what he found out about getting a search warrant?

  No. She couldn’t wait. Shannon was going to have only one funeral. Val knew she wouldn’t get this chance again. She had to strike now while the case was still fresh and Reichert would be certain to be out of the house.

  She decided she’d swing by the cemetery around ten o’clock tomorrow morning, spot Reichert’s car just to verify that he was there, then make her way over to his house.

  “Uh-oh,” Darla said. “You’ve got that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “The same one you had when that weird guy you dated once kept coming by your office. The pushy one. You got that look when you were thinking about how to get rid of him.”

  Val grinned. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Oh, yeah. Of course, now he thinks you’re a CIA operative who kills people for a living. So what is that devious little mind of yours up to now?”

  “Just a little business I have to take care of.”

  “I pity the poor soul who’s gonna be the recipient of that business.”

  “Now, Darla,” Val said with a smile, “I think I resent that.”

  “No way, honey. You’re my hero. Most women put up with way too much crap, me included. But not you.”

  Damn right, Val thought. She wasn’t about to sit around waiting for something else to happen. She was going to make something happen. She didn’t care what Alex had said about breaking into Reichert’s house. He wasn’t the one walking around with a bull’s-eye on the back of his head, just waiting for Reichert to take another shot at him.

  But he was the one who’d be going to prison if the real murderer wasn’t found.

  There had been many times in her short career as a private investigator when she’d bent the law, when she’d gotten information she wasn’t entitled to, using means that were a little underhanded, when she’d misled people into believing one thing when the reality was something else entirely. But she’d never actually broken the law. Then again, she’d never faced a situation where, if she didn’t, she herself was in danger. And even now, in spite of everything, the last thing she wanted was for Alex to go to prison for a crime he didn’t commit.

  Then she thought about how she’d lashed out at him yesterday, tossing all those old accusations in his face.

  Think what you want to, but I never meant to hurt you.

  His words had whirled around in her mind since yesterday, nagging at her, making her feel a little less righteous in the resentment she felt toward him. A part of her wanted to go on hating him forever, while another part wanted to believe that there was a way for them, after all this time, to finally reach an understanding.

  And maybe more.

  What’s the matter with you? How can you still have feelings for that man? How?

  Because when she thought about how he’d brought her home from the hospital, watched over her and tried to make sure she was safe, she wasn’t completely certain he was the rotten person she’d made him out to be, no matter what he’d done to her in the past.

  Breaking into that house was a risk. A big one. Even though she’d suggested it offhandedly to Alex, she wasn’t stupid enough to believe that there weren’t dangers involved. It might be the only way to save herself from another one of Reichert’s sniper shots, but she wasn’t certain she’d chance doing it for herself alone.

  For both of them, she would.

  On Tuesday morning, Alex sat in the living room of his apartment, surrounded by silence. He checked his watch for approximately the hundredth time that morning. It was ten minutes after ten—exactly four minutes later than the last time he looked.

  Why did he even bother? Time wasn’t going to move any faster than it already was, which was at a snail’s pace. But then again, what difference did it make? He had absolutely nowhere to go. If this had been any other Tuesday, he’d have been at work by now. But not today. And maybe never again.

  If Monday had been excruciatingly boring, Tuesday was turning out to be even worse. What did people who didn’t have jobs do all day? Stare at the four walls? Wear their fingers down to the knuckle hitting the buttons on the remote control? What kind of a life was that?

  Doing nothing gave a man way too much time to think. To reflect. To worry. To dwell on things that were better left untouched. Like what had happened with Val.

  Yes, there were kernels of truth in all the accusations Val had made. He’d known what was going to happen the next day, and still he’d slept with her. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that she was going to hate him for it.

  But there had been more to it than that. Exactly what, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that his motives were nothing like Val had alleged. If he’d just been looking to get laid, he could have found a hundred other women to be with that night who wouldn’t have hated him in the morning.

  That night, at that moment, it had to be Val. But how in the world could he ever make her understand that, particularly when he didn’t completely understand it himself?

  It was time he stopped trying to understand. Every time in his life when he’d gotten within shouting distance of her, something negative came of it. And right now, considering he was facing a murder charge, more negative was something he could really do without.

  If he were convicted of Shannon’s murder, he’d serve time. If he survived that, he’d be back out on the street. Jobless, because a felony conviction meant he’d never work as a police officer again. What would he do for a living? Just applying for a job with a record like that would be a nightmare.

  He thought about how Dave was going to talk to Henderson this morning. Maybe his brother could make him reconsider the warrant.

  Maybe pigs would fly.

  For lack of anything better to do, Alex flipped on the TV and ran the dial. A cooking show. An infomercial for a weight-loss product. Some crappy talk show full of degenerates talking trash to each other. A moldy old sitcom. He flipped the TV off and tossed the control to the sofa beside him.

  He picked up the newspaper from the coffee table, thumbed through it, then wished he hadn’t. Unfortunately, certain reporters thought Shannon’s murder deserved daily coverage even though absolutely nothing new had happened. The press was treating this as an open-and-shut case, and since he was a cop, they were doing it with as much sensationalism as possible. People loved that kind of thing. A cop goes bad, has wild, kinky sex, commits murder. Alex scanned the article and found out that he was right. There was nothing new, except the fact that Shannon’s funeral was today.

  Alex froze. Funeral?

  For a full ten seconds, he stared at the words on the page, the implication of them coming to him in bits and pieces. Funeral. Ten o’clock. Resthaven Memorial Gardens.

  Reichert would be there.

  All I have to do is find a time when I know he won’t be there.…

  Alex checked his watch. It was almost ten-fifteen.

  He tossed down the newspaper, yanked up his cordless phone, and dialed Val’s number. The phone rang three times, four, five. She didn’t answer.

  She was probably just in the shower. He told himself he’d call her back in five minutes. Three minutes later he tried again. No answer.

  He called directory assistance and got her office number. Three rings, voice mail.

  He laid
the phone back down. Okay. He had to get a grip here. She’d just been talking big. Surely she wouldn’t be stupid enough to break into Reichert’s house. For about fifteen seconds, he talked himself into that possibility, only to talk himself right back out of it again.

  He jumped up from the sofa and grabbed a gun, ignoring the fact that he no longer had a license to carry it. He snagged his car keys and tore out of his apartment. As he got into his car, he glanced around quickly to see if any holdouts from the press were still dogging him. When he saw no one, he decided that they’d given up camping on his doorstep and had gone on to bother somebody else. He got into his car and started the engine, then stopped for a moment, letting it idle.

  He shouldn’t be doing this. Val wasn’t his problem. He’d told her not to do it, so if she got caught breaking in, it was her own damned fault and she’d have to pay the price for it.

  Then he pictured Reichert coming home early. Picking up a rifle. And this time hitting his mark.

  Alex jammed his SUV into gear, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed for the Reichert house, hoping that Val wasn’t in the process of doing the stupidest thing imaginable.

  Who was he kidding? Of course she was. He only hoped he could get there in time to stop her.

  Ten minutes later he was rounding the corner onto Augusta Drive. He looked up the street and didn’t see her van. Then he swung around the end of the block and headed down the alley, holding out hope that she wasn’t as insane as he’d thought.

  She was.

  Her van rested on the shoulder of the alley drive two doors down from the Reichert house. He swung around it, then pulled up directly behind the Reichert’s backyard. A wood fence prohibited him from seeing the back of the house.

  Leaving his engine running, he rolled down the window and surveyed the area. Damn. Why hadn’t he anticipated this? Why hadn’t he stayed one step ahead of her, knowing she’d strike during the funeral?

  Because staying one step ahead of Valerie Parker was a full-time job and then some. And because it wasn’t his job in the first place.

  Reichert had murdered once. He probably wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Only this time he’d have cause to do it—she was an intruder in his house. He wouldn’t have to justify it. Wouldn’t have to pay for it. Shannon was dead. Val would be dead, too, and he’d be able to walk away from both crimes.