by Jane Graves
John made a note on his pad, and she wondered what she’d just said that he deemed to be noteworthy. That she didn’t sleep around? Given the accusations he’d thrown at her out in the woods, he’d probably find that hard to believe.
“So what happened between you that night?”
“Steve started talking to me about getting back together again. I couldn’t believe it. He said he’d been a fool, that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. I knew he was lying, but he sounded so sincere that I almost believed him.”
“Almost?”
“Right up to the time he suggested we go back to my apartment and...talk about it.”
Renee said those last three words with a lilting, suggestive tone, which was exactly the way Steve had said them as he backed her up against the wall and stared down at her, that hungry look in his eyes that said his current girlfriend, Rhonda the drug-addicted bimbo, must have brushed him off that evening, and he was looking for sex wherever he could get it.
“The last thing he wanted to do was talk,” Renee said. “He was looking to get laid. He had a lot of nerve thinking that I’d even consider it.”
“What did you do then?”
“Let’s just say that God gave women knees for a very good reason. He was still bent over double by the time I got on the elevator.”
“So you didn’t exactly part amicably.”
“You could say that. Why are you asking me all this? It has nothing to do with the robbery.”
“No, but it has to do with your alibi. I want to know if Steve would be likely to speak positively on your behalf. But after a knee to the groin, I assume he might not be so inclined.”
“It doesn’t matter. My attorney said Steve can’t be my alibi. The robbery occurred about ten-fifteen. I didn’t see Steve until almost eleven.”
“How long did you talk to him?”
“Only a few minutes.”
“You say he lives in a different building. Would he have to cross the parking lot where your car was parked to go into your building?”
Renee thought for a moment. “Yes.”
“Okay. If he was coming and going from your apartment building that night, he might have seen something. Somebody in the parking lot. Somebody near your car. Was he interviewed after the robbery?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Didn’t you tell them he was the closest thing you had to an alibi?”
“Yes, but nobody wanted to listen,” she said bitterly. “They had their suspect. And my attorney said it didn’t matter anyway, since the timing was all wrong.”
“If Steve had seen something, would he be vindictive enough to withhold information?”
Renee shook her head. “I don’t know. I mean, we’ve had our disagreements, but I don’t think he’d do anything to deliberately hurt me.”
“Even though you gave him a knee to the groin.”
“He deserved it.”
“That’s not the issue, Renee. Would he withhold information? Yes or no?”
Renee sighed, wishing now that she’d gotten her point across with something a little less extreme than a full-frontal testicular attack. “I really don’t know.”
“Okay,” John said. “How do you think the stuff got in the back of your car?”
“It’s like I told you before. My door locks don’t work. Anyone could have put it there. And think about it. What kind of a moron would I have to be to drive around with a gun and all that money in plain sight? If I were going to be an armed robber, don’t you think I’d be a smarter one than that?”
John didn’t respond. He hadn’t really responded to much of anything, except to quietly grill her, and it was driving her crazy.
“Do you know any women who might want to frame you for a crime? Blond women in particular?”
“Frame me?”
“In other words, Renee, do you have any enemies?” Rhonda came to mind—Steve’s new girlfriend. She had bleached-blond hair and a silicone-enhanced body that screamed cheap slut with every move she made. Rhonda had never been able to understand why Steve had once preferred Renee over her, and consequently she still saw Renee as a threat. The truth was that Rhonda didn’t have a thing to worry about where Steve was concerned. As long as she continued to give him sex whenever he snapped his fingers and didn’t gripe at him about his crappy lifestyle, he was hers forever.
Still, Rhonda’s jealousy and vindictiveness were legendary. When Renee and Steve had been dating, she’d once dropped four red socks into a batch of clothes Renee had in one of the washers in the laundry room, turning all her whites to a putrid shade of pink. But would the little hussy go so far as to commit a crime and implicate her? Renee didn’t think so.
“Steve’s new girlfriend, Rhonda, doesn’t like me. She’s still afraid I’m going to want Steve back and she’ll be out in the cold. But I really can’t see her doing something as awful as armed robbery and then framing me for it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, yeah. Isn’t that kind of a drastic thing to do to get a romantic rival out of the way?”
“People kill to get romantic rivals out of the way. Is she blond?”
“She’s Nice ’n Easy’s color of the week.”
“Would she have any other motive to commit robbery?”
“You mean, besides the fact that she’s a perpetually broke cocaine addict?”
“Casual use, or habitual?”
“She never leaves home without it.”
John made a note or two, then looked back up at Renee. “Let’s broaden this a little,” John said. “Are there any other blond women in the building who might resemble you enough for somebody to mistake you in a lineup?”
“The only ones I can think of are the hookers on the third floor.”
John raised an eyebrow.
“At least I think they’re hookers. Lots of men come and go from their apartment, and they always leave with smiles on their faces.”
“What’s the apartment number?”
“Three-seventeen.”
Then he asked her for the location of her apartment complex, and she gave that to him, too.
“Do you think they might have had something to do with it?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You seem to think it might have been somebody in my apartment complex who committed the robbery.”
“It’s within a quarter mile of the convenience store. Robberies are generally committed by people who live near the place they rob. If it happened as you say and the loot and gun were dropped in your car at that apartment complex, then it’s possible the crime was committed by someone who lives there.” He paused. “Or it could have been somebody who lives a hundred miles away.”
Or it could have been you. He didn’t say that, but the words hung in the air between them just the same.
John stared at his notes a moment more with intense concentration, as if looking at a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve. Finally he blew out a weary breath. “Anything else?”
She heard the real meaning of those words. Give me some reason why I shouldn’t yank you up right now and deliver you to the police station like I should have done an hour ago. Give me some reason to believe you.
And she had nothing.
“I-I don’t know what else to say,” she murmured.
He tap, tap, tapped his pen against the tabletop. For several long, excruciating moments it was the only sound in the room, with the possible exception of her heart, which was booming so hard inside her chest that seismographs in California had to be picking it up.
“I’m going to ask you one more question, Renee,” he said. “And I want the truth.”
She waited, her heartbeat reaching 8.5 on the Richter scale. He tapped his pen a time or two more.
“Back at that cabin. Why didn’t you shoot me when you had the chance?”
Because she hated guns. Because merely picking one up had scared her to death. Because she couldn’t have hurt
John, no matter what the circumstances.
Because she was innocent.
“John, if you didn’t know the answer to that question,” she said, “I don’t think I’d be here.”
He stared at her long and hard, and all at once she thought she’d made a huge mistake. Not good enough, Renee, she heard him saying, and for a few horrible, distressing moments, she pictured him standing up, dragging her out to his car, and heading straight for the police station.
Instead, he tossed his pen down and stood up. “Okay. That’s enough for tonight. If you want to take a shower, use the bathroom off my bedroom.”
Renee felt a whoosh of relief. “So I’m...I’m staying here tonight?”
“Yes. Tonight.”
He didn’t offer more, and she didn’t ask for more.
“Don’t get any ideas. The bathroom window’s painted shut. And shattering glass makes a lot of noise. I’d be able to hear it even over the shower. And don’t lock the door, or I’m breaking it down.”
“Okay.”
She’d have agreed to anything. After all, she was getting more than she’d ever thought she’d have right now—a place to stay tonight that didn’t involve metal bars and non-private toilets.
“John?” she said carefully. “What’s going to happen to me now?”
“We’ll talk about that tomorrow.”
“But—”
“Tomorrow.”
Renee clamped her mouth shut. You’re here instead of in jail. Don’t push it.
He led her to the bathroom. She looked down at herself, at her dirty jeans and the dead pine needles clinging here and there. “Do you have a washing machine?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“These are the only clothes I have. Would you mind running them through?”
He looked at her with utter disbelief. “This isn’t a luxury hotel.”
“Come on, John! Look at me.”
He squeezed his eyes closed painfully. “Just hand them to me out the door.”
“I’m going to need something to wear when I get out of the shower.”
With a heavy sigh, John fished through his closet and pulled out a worn flannel shirt and gave it to her. She went into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.
John waited outside the bathroom door, wondering at what point in time he’d become her personal valet. Bringing her here had been insane enough. Now he was doing her laundry?
A moment later the bathroom door opened a crack and she thrust her jeans and sweatshirt through the opening.
He grabbed them and started to walk away.
“John, wait!”
He turned back to see a pink satin bra and a pair of matching panties dangling from her hand. He just stared at them.
“John?”
She wiggled the undergarments. He watched the satin dance around for a moment, then took the unmentionables from her hand, trying not to think about the fact that this meant she was standing naked on the other side of that door.
She peered through the crack. “Be sure to separate the light stuff from the dark. Don’t put the jeans in hot water or they’ll shrink so much I won’t be able to get into them. And make sure you wash the undies in cold water. There’s a lot of static electricity now that it’s getting cooler. If you use a little fabric softener—”
“No fabric softener. No separating anything. Your clothes will have to fend for themselves.”
“Really, John. How hard is it to—”
He gave her a nasty warning stare.
“Oh, all right.” She twisted her mouth with disgust, then shut the door.
He took her dirty clothes and tossed them into the washer, intending to let the cycle go tonight and then dump it all in the dryer in the morning. Then he happened to think about his cell phone. He retrieved it from his car and plugged it in to recharge it. Then he returned to the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for Renee to get out of the shower.
He looked around the room, at the layer of dust on everything, the piles of junk mail on his dresser, his unmade bed. He thought about how his sister Sandy harped at him constantly about the condition of his house, telling him that any woman he dated who came here would throw up and leave, and then where would he be? Forty or fifty years old and unmarried, she said. That was where he’d be.
Suddenly, with Renee here, he felt self-conscious, but he didn’t know why. Probably because she was the only woman who’d ever seen the inside of his bedroom. Whenever he dated a woman, he always went to her place when any kind of intimacy was on the horizon because it was a whole lot easier for him to make a hasty exit. And it always seemed to come to that.
But Renee wasn’t a woman he was dating. Far from it.
He heard her turn off the shower. A moment later a loud whirring noise emanated from the bathroom, and he realized she must have located that old blow-dryer he’d stuck under the sink. A little while later she came out of the bathroom, and his heart just about stopped.
She was at least five-eight, so the tail of his shirt fell only to the middle of her thighs, allowing a good portion of her long, tanned legs to protrude from beneath it. She’d rolled the sleeves up, the bulky fabric at her elbows a sharp contrast to her slender forearms. Her hair was soft and full from blow drying, a lustrous shade of honey blond that glinted in the dim light of his bedroom.
Since her bra and panties were in the washer, she had to be wearing absolutely nothing under his shirt right now. The thought of her shifting in the night, of that shirt falling away to expose way more of her than he really ought to be looking at, made a little tremor of heat run right up his spine.
He motioned to the bed. “You can sleep here. But I have to lock you back up.”
She let out a weak, regretful sigh. “Please, John. I swear I won’t—”
He pointed. “Sit.”
She came around and sat dutifully on the edge of the bed. He picked up the cuff dangling from the headboard, took her wrist in his hand, and looped the cuff around it. It was such an incongruous sight—that warm, delicate wrist inside the cold metal handcuff. He clicked the cuff shut, reminding himself that she was a prisoner, not a woman he’d invited to spend the night, no matter how attractive she might be. No matter how fresh and pretty she looked. No matter how wonderful she smelled, with fresh scents of soap and shampoo and...
And spearmint toothpaste.
“Damn it, Renee, you did it again, didn’t you?”
“What?”
“Used my toothbrush!”
She looked at him with dumb disbelief. “You really are anal about that, aren’t you?”
“Fine. Consider that one yours. I’ll use my travel toothbrush, which, of course,” he said, grimacing, “you’ve already used, too.”
“I guess this isn’t a good time to tell you I shaved my legs with your razor.”
He glared at her. “Just keep your hands off my stuff!”
He stalked over to his closet, grabbed an old pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, then went into the bathroom and peeled off his dirty clothes. After a quick shower, he took his dirty clothes out to the utility room, then returned to the bedroom and pulled back the covers on the other side of the bed from where Renee lay.
“Are you sleeping here, too?” she asked.
“It’s the only bed in the house. I have exercise equipment in the other bedroom.”
“So the answer is yes?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
She shrugged. “No. No problem.”
“It isn’t as if we haven’t occupied the same bed before.”
“I know.”
“We’re just sleeping, Renee,” he said sharply. “Nothing else.”
“I think you made the ‘nothing else’ quite clear already today.”
“There’s not going to be any repeat of what happened out there in the woods. Do you understand?”
“Yes, John,” she said, a note of exasperation in her voice. “I get the picture. This is a no-sex
zone. I wouldn’t think of violating it.”
“See that you don’t.”
She stared at him a long time, then raised a single eyebrow with a look that seemed to say, Who are you trying to convince, John? Me or you?
For a moment, John felt positively transparent, as if she could read every thought he had. He crawled beneath the covers with his back to her, then turned out the lamp and settled his head against the pillow, acutely aware that she lay beneath the covers only a foot away—half-naked, blond, and beautiful.
Less than six hours ago, she’d been willing to have hot, steamy, down-in-the-dirt sex if he hadn’t called a halt to it. Was that why she’d asked where he was sleeping? Because she wanted to do something more than sleep?
No, dammit. Get that out of your mind. Where Renee is concerned, it’s hands off. Period.
Several minutes passed. John was hovering on the edge of sleep when he heard Renee’s voice.
“John?”
He sighed drowsily. “What do you want?”
A long silence passed between them. Then she shifted a bit and he heard her voice again, floating tentatively to him across the darkness.
“Why didn’t you take me to jail?”
That was a really good question. Why was she sleeping here instead of on a cot in the county jail? Why had he brought her to his house, for God’s sake? Why was he risking his career for a woman he didn’t even know who just might be guilty after all?
He would have liked to have given her some cop-like answer to shield himself, something like, The evidence is inconclusive, or It's my professional prerogative to get to the truth in any way I see fit, or even Just consider yourself lucky and shut up.
But he couldn’t.
He turned to face her. And that was a big, big mistake. With only the light from the streetlamp outside filtering through the blinds, he couldn’t make out the color of her eyes, but their luminescent quality was apparent nonetheless. Had a criminal ever been born who had eyes like that?
The late hour, the darkness, the way she’d whispered the question as if she were terrified of the answer—all those things seemed to make it impossible for him to speak anything but the truth.
“You’re here because I have some doubts about your guilt.”
“Then you believe I didn’t do it?”