Flashback

by Cait London

  “But that’s what Kyle does. Or he did, when he was helping poor Mallory.”

  “Rachel hasn’t asked me to help her yet. She hasn’t had a room full of kids, some of them thinking that the balls are for throwing, the others wanting to play swords with the cues.”

  “Oh, he’s so good with kids, honey,” Patty stated sincerely.

  “Any special ones? Little boys? Or little girls?” Rachel asked smoothly.

  “Both,” Iris said. “You know, your sister, Jada is hoping that she’ll get married, but if she doesn’t, Kyle will—”

  “And either one of you? No kids with Kyle?” Rachel interrupted as though she didn’t want Kyle’s “sperm donor” job outlined.

  Both women stared at each other. “But we thought you knew those stories of Kyle and us. I met Kyle when I was dancing in a strip joint—” Patty began.

  “Let’s keep our romance private, okay?” Kyle asked quietly. “Just between us?”

  Patty and Iris frowned and looked confused. “But she thinks—”

  “Uh-huh, and that’s what I want her to think,” Kyle said.

  Rachel smiled warmly. “But I’m so interested in everything about your ‘romance.’ Was it separate or together?”

  “But you’re leaving now, aren’t you?” Kyle asked. “Things to do and all that? You probably don’t have time.”

  “Maybe I’ll come back when you’re not around,” Rachel said smoothly. “Just to get the full flavor of the romances and weddings. Girl stuff, you know, all the little details.”

  She bent to take Harry from Kyle’s lap and the cat immediately leaped up and ran out of sight. Kyle deliberately lowered his gaze to where that cord held the deep V of her pink sweater together and her breasts pressed together.

  “Real nice,” he drawled softly and enjoyed the flash of her eyes before she pushed away.

  When she went outside, Kyle stood at the doorway. The Cadillac’s starter clicked, but wouldn’t turn over, and behind the windshield, Rachel frowned at him. She opened the door and stalked to him, all curved and hot and—

  “What did you do to my car?”

  Kyle tried to look innocent. Removing the distributor cap was just a little safety plan to keep Rachel long enough to find out what she was doing and what she had learned. Whatever games he enjoyed playing with her, he’d promised Mallory to protect the little girl, and Rachel could unknowingly endanger her. “It needs a tune-up.”

  “It runs, doesn’t it? And how do you manage to keep two ex-wives happy?”

  “Hey, I’m a lovable kind of guy. Consenting adults and all that.” With that, he bent to kiss Rachel lightly. “Did you miss me?” he asked again, softly as he watched that pink tongue flick over her bottom lip.

  “You know, I did. I wondered when you’d turn up and give me that list I wanted.”

  “That’s not happening.”

  Rachel stood close to him. She framed his face with her hands and tilted his head toward hers. Her hands smoothed his chest, his ribs, and flowed down his waist to his hips. “Isn’t it?”

  Kyle knew what she was doing, but he was so far gone that he let her go all the way, pulling his keys out of his pocket. His body pounded as Rachel looked up at him, fluttered her eyelashes, and murmured, “You want me bad, Scanlon. You’re all revved and hot.”

  She was as right as a piston engine pumping away, timing-gear smooth and ready, but Kyle managed a cool, “Like I said, it’s all in the anticipation, the build up.”

  “I’d say you’re warmed and ready right now, chum.” She tossed his keys in the air and caught them. She walked to the Hummer, climbed into the driver’s seat, and started the engine. Through the open window, she said, “The list, Scanlon, and I want to know who that girl is. If you’d come clean about the payments Mallory was making to you, you’d make it a lot easier on yourself. Just one little tip to the IRS boys, and you’d be swimming in investigation.”

  She was right, of course. “But then so would Mallory and whoever took over her business, right?” he countered.

  Rachel was ready to trade barbs—“Racing, huh? If you took awards, they’d be on record somewhere, wouldn’t they? Under the name of Scanlon, or something else? You were twenty-one when you changed it, so all I have to do is follow that paper trail. All I need is a few free hours and I’ll have what I need.”

  “Always nice to know a lady is interested,” Kyle returned, but Rachel could make a man uneasy, especially if she were on the hunt for information he didn’t want revealed—that Mallory had hidden for years.

  When Rachel backed out of the gate, the big Hummer barely missed a side post before shooting forward and Kyle released the breath he’d been holding. “Busy girl. Smart one, too. You know about my name change, but that’s all you’ll find.”

  Rachel stood still inside her apartment. “Mallory?”

  She’d momentarily forgotten about her adopted sister’s death, or she’d wanted to forget it and wanted to see Mallory alive just once more…. But the shadows were too quiet, and Rachel’s senses were uneasy. The fine hair on her body had lifted, just as it had that night she’d been stalked three years ago. At the doorway, she turned to look at the parking lot. Atlantis Street was quiet, the streetlights casting shadows around the squarish Hummer. Natasha’s big neon fortune teller’s sign was pink in the mist, the street’s bricks gleaming, the trees surrounding the houses draped in night shadows.

  She closed the apartment’s door and locked it, turning the new dead bolt. She was uneasy, but then everything had a cause, she justified. “I’ve just finished sparring with Kyle again. He’s enough to set anyone off.”

  Rachel sat on the couch to tug off her western boots, then noted the slightly different position of her left jogger, which had been placed exactly parallel to the right one on the floor. She’d kicked them off, too, before leaving the apartment and the left shoe had been a little—The shoelaces had been tied in neat bows, when she had left them untied.

  Rachel shook her head. “Maybe I did that. I was all revved up about getting to Patty and Iris after work. Sometimes I’m thinking too hard, focused really hard, and do things automatically. Then I forget that I’ve done them—I’m just imagining things. No one has a key to this apartment except my mother. And she would have left a note—”

  She scanned the coffee table and then walked into the kitchen. There was no note on the table, but the cotton rug she’d placed in front of the sink had been moved slightly aside—or was she imagining that, too?

  She opened the cabinet door to see the stacked dishes standing tightly against that first protective block of wood concealing the tape, and the heavy mugs held the concealment for the rag doll and pins.

  She moved through the apartment and then opened the locked door leading to the billiards parlor. Downstairs, Rachel opened the cleaning closet and flipped on the overhead light bulb, noting the contents. A damp mop she had used that evening leaned slightly in its holding rack, the long absorbent cords neatly straightened. While closing Nine Balls, she’d been in a hurry and had mopped a sticky area by the minibar; she’d almost tossed the mop into the closet.

  The cues on the wall rack were neatly arranged as always, but something about them caused Rachel to study the cues more closely. Mallory’s inventory had a mix of maple wood and graphite cues with different shaft designs, single and two piece, larger or smaller tip, with a variety of leather or nylon wraps on the butt ends. The various styles had all been arranged neatly, separated into one or two-piece cues. “I do not like this, Mallory. Stop playing jokes. There’s no one here. There couldn’t be. Not with all the different locks I’ve just had installed.”

  On impulse, she picked up the telephone and dialed Jada’s cell phone number. “So you were out at Kyle’s tonight, huh?” Jada promptly asked.

  “Only because—” Rachel waited for Jada’s burst of laughter to stop before she continued, “Never mind. I’ve got his rig…it’s in my parking lot, so if you hear any gossip, just
say it was a loaner while he fixed mine. And don’t ask any questions. And how did you know that I was out at the garage?”

  “The highway goes right by his place, you know. A few people saw your Caddie parked out there, namely Shane. I cleaned at his house today and he called late to say I’d forgotten to leave my bill—I never leave a bill. I don’t know where that came from, unless he just wanted to talk with me. He’s a sweet, lonesome guy, and I could use a dose of that after Wussie-boy. Then Shane mentioned that he’d seen your yellow monster parked out at Scanlon’s. Plus, you closed early and Wanda Schmidt said you looked really sexy when you stopped to gas up Buttercup. You don’t usually dress in a tight pink sweater and western boots. That’s not you at all. You’re more the designer duds girl. So what were you doing with Kyle, hmm?”

  Shane Templeton had been checking on her, following her. He wanted that Bible and whatever else linked him to Mallory. A minister linked with a woman with Mallory’s reputation wouldn’t do….

  Jada cleared her throat nervously. “Um—Rache? I accidentally mentioned that voodoo doll to Shane. I didn’t mean to, but it just came out. He won’t say anything.”

  “It’s okay. But just watch who else you tell, okay?” Rachel said. Perhaps Jada’s little slip might cause Shane to make his own mistake and say the wrong thing about his relationship with Mallory.

  She glanced around the apartment. She hadn’t found the Bible or anything about Shane, except his picture, taken with the women serving the church dinner—and Mallory was one of them, looking aglow and young and in love. With Shane?

  “Don’t get any wrong ideas about my visit to Scanlon’s. I was visiting with his ex-wives, Patty and Iris.”

  “Oh, yeah. They’re really nice, aren’t they?”

  Jada did that snort-thing that signaled she was enjoying a joke and stifling a giggle, and Rachel asked, “What do you know about them? What’s the story?”

  She walked to the closet that held Mallory’s private things behind that block of cedar. The clothing that Rachel had stacked beside it remained neat and untouched. She slid the closet doors shut, then opened the other side to look at the chunk of cedar nailed into place.

  The phone’s steady scratch-scratch sound said Jada was filing her nails. She made a slurping sound that said her braces had caused her to drool slightly. “You had a reason for going there. Patty and Iris aren’t your usual social set and your outfit was picked to fit in with theirs, to make them comfortable. See? I’m not so dumb…. I think Kyle is a born collector of the helpless and needy. I mean, he’s a real nurturer of people who aren’t exactly on track with life, or the victims of it. That’s why I think he’ll make a good dad for my baby—should I miss out on Shane, who seems off track lately, by the way. You know, Mallory had a definite thing for him—”

  “Tell me more about that, Mallory’s relationship with Shane.”

  “Well, she wanted him and did the good church-goer role for a while. A lot of single women do that, and some of the married women are in love with him, too. But I think when she realized that Shane wasn’t returning the man-woman interest like she wanted, she dropped out. I asked her why once, and she said he was a nice guy and that they just didn’t fit. Shane probably thought he was helping Mallory, doing his ministry work, and she probably took it for something else—like patients who fall in love with their doctors. Women sometimes do the same thing with their ministers. Why all the questions?”

  Rachel traced her finger around the nails that had been hit several times, indenting the wood. It seemed like her sister had a penchant for hiding things behind blocks of wood. “I get lonesome over here, you know. You’re always good for news.”

  “You mean, I know a lot of gossip. Yeah, I suppose. Cleaning houses, you get a lot of inside info…for instance, there are a lot of invitations to women’s homes on Shane’s desk…all sorts of trumped-up reasons for him to stop by their places. He’s a nice guy…. Thoughtful…It’s easy to be nice to him. The Ladies Circle keeps his refrigerator filled, but they’re not going to swab his toilet bowl or scrub his floors.”

  Rachel retrieved a butter knife from the kitchen and slid it between the cedar and the side of the closet. Looking down at the inside of the closet to its end on the floor, she noted that it measured more than the top shelf. “Now back to Kyle’s ex-wives. You were saying?”

  “I think they’re strays that he’s collected. Like Mallory.”

  “He ruined Mallory. She wasn’t like that before he arrived in town.”

  “Says who? You? Rachel, you were usually so wrapped up in causes and your success, getting scholarships and good grades in college that you had tunnel vision. Except when it came to Kyle. What’s that noise I hear?”

  “I’m rearranging furniture.” Cradling the telephone to her ear, Rachel stood up on a chair and carefully nudged the wooden block until it loosened the nails. “Do you know anyone who wears size fourteen double wide, custom-made high heels?”

  “Probably someone does somewhere. Don’t have a clue. Why?”

  “Just curious. Did you know that Kyle races? Or did?”

  “Oh, jeez. That’s likely. He used to rev that little red sports car up and Mallory and I just held on hard while he laid rubber. He was probably good enough to drive professionally then, but he’s running that garage now.”

  Rachel wiggled the butter knife, wedging the nails farther out from the wall. “It’s not a common, fix-it mechanic’s garage. He’s custom rebuilding classics, or stripping the wrecked ones for parts. His actual inside garage is so clean it looks like a surgery room. He’s got shelves of itemized parts. That messy front office isn’t anything like the rest of the place. Even the old cars—classics, I guess—are lined up neatly. While his ex-wives were showing me around, I managed to flip through his books—just interested in his computer programs, you know. Or so they thought. He’s making a killing on restoring those classics, and he’d better not paint Buttercup any other color. I wouldn’t put it past him—”

  The cedar block came free to reveal a flat rectangular box. Fearing what was inside, Rachel lifted the lid.

  “Are you okay? I just heard you gasp,” Mallory asked anxiously.

  Rachel stepped down off the chair and then sat on it, studying the contents of the box. The book of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry was bound in white leather and several dried flowers were inside. A small plain gold wedding band was inside a carefully folded envelope. Rachel tried it on her left hand and it fit perfectly, just as it would have fit a hand the same size—Mallory’s. The inside of the book had been inscribed, “To Mallory. From Shane.”

  Just how friendly were Shane and Mallory? Rachel wondered. “I’m okay. Tell me about Kyle’s ex-wives. You said they were nice.”

  Jada snorted again, then released her bawdy laughter. It ended in gasps of breath, and when she could finally talk, she said, “I knew all that about his neat cataloging of parts and his garage. The guy has style. They’re not married to each other. Never have been. Patty and Iris need a place to crash periodically and have someone pay a few bills for them, and Kyle likes helping them. He’s never married—the whole ‘ex-wife’ thing started as a joke and just continued. I get the idea that he doesn’t think he’s material for that scene. Patty and Iris were married, several times, I guess, to losers who kept bothering them. Kyle ran off the losers, put Patty and Iris under his protection, sort of. He’s like that—sweet, kind of a knight in shining armor. You’re the only woman whoever gets upset with him.”

  “Uh-huh, he’s a real Prince Charming.”

  “Despite your sarcasm, you sound distracted. Are you okay?”

  “Um? Tired, I guess.” After hanging up, Rachel carefully replaced the poetry book, easing the wood block back into the same nail holes. She looked at the opposite end of the closet where the cedar block had not been nailed. “This was even more precious, wasn’t it, Mallory? You really loved Shane, didn’t you? This is what he was looking for, a link to him, and no
w I have it. He didn’t want people to know that you were involved, did he? What else didn’t he want people to know?”

  At midnight, Rachel still couldn’t sleep; she tossed off the blankets and decided to go into the living room to lie on the couch. In the dark, she thought of Mallory, the cloth doll, the girl in the scrapbook, and Shane Templeton who did, or did not, realize Mallory’s love. “I’d say a book of poetry and pressed flowers generally meant that you and Mallory had something going, Shane. Add that wedding ring, and I wonder exactly what.”

  She listened to the familiar muffled sounds of traffic passing on Atlantis Street, the building creaking, settling—and she drifted asleep, only to awaken again to the sound of the stairs creaking.

  Rachel held her breath as a man’s tall silhouette appeared on the light miniblinds covering the door’s window. “Who’s there? Kyle? If that is you, I am really not happy now. Just leave Buttercup’s keys—oh, yeah, you probably hot-wired her, right? Just go on your way—hot-wire your own rig—and take your full-of-it self back home.”

  Heavy footsteps pounded down the stairs and Rachel frowned and reached for the telephone. “Just when I was getting ready to call the police, too. You would have had a hard time explaining that one, wouldn’t you? As it is, you’re in for an ear-burning, Scanlon….”

  Ten

  “IT’S KYLE. OPEN UP.” AFTER RACHEL’S FRANTIC CALL, IT HAD taken Kyle exactly fifteen minutes to tug on his jeans, race the big Cadillac from his place to Nine Balls, park it, and run up the stairs.

  Kyle waited until Rachel peeked through the miniblinds and saw him standing beneath the porch light. Then the sound of furniture scraped the floor behind the door, the dead bolt clicked, and the door opened to reveal the apartment’s brightly lit rooms. Rachel was in the same pink top and tight jeans as he had last seen her. Only the pink sweater wasn’t tucked into her waistband and she was standing in her bare feet, her face scrubbed clean of everything but wide-eyed fear.

  “I thought it was you earlier,” she whispered unevenly. “I thought you might have brought Buttercup back and some man was standing in front of the door—”