Odette C. Bell - Ladies in Luck - An Unlucky Reunion

by Odette C. Bell

  Sighing through my teeth, I finally stripped, got in the shower, and told myself to get over it.

  Chapter 13

  By the time I got out of the shower, Annabelle had already whipped up an amazing meal, and we wasted a few hours easily chatting before we headed back out to town.

  Any possible feeling of ill will I’d held towards Annabelle and her slightly strange behavior was gone for good.

  She was genuinely nice, friendly, and clearly wanted to get to know me while helping me out.

  In fact, I was laughing at another one of her rather dry jokes as we finally made it into the pub.

  I stopped laughing almost immediately.

  Everybody was standing around justifiably morose, talking in hushed voices.

  Fuck. I was a bitch. Seriously, again I’d forgotten about the murders. Or rather than forgotten about them, I’d managed to push them from my mind for a few precious, if indiscrete seconds.

  Making our way up to the bar, I let Annabelle order the drinks as I turned and surveyed the people around me.

  Some faces I recognized, some I didn’t, yet all looked suitably respectful and silent.

  “Hey,” someone said softly from my side.

  I turned to see Thorne.

  “You came,” he pointed out quietly.

  I nodded my head.

  “You look… ,” he trailed off.

  “Nice?”

  “Yeah,” he managed softly.

  “I sure hope she looks nice,” Annabelle interrupted as she turned around and handed me a drink, “that’s my top and jacket.”

  “Then those are nice clothes, Annabelle,” as Thorne spoke, he looked at his drink quickly, a little too quickly.

  Letting my brow crumple, I reminded myself that small towns were, by definition, small towns. Everybody knew everybody else. You knew everything about their lives too. I’d joked before that Annabelle and Thorne could get along well, but now I realized they must have had loads of opportunities.

  Something was keeping them apart.

  “Now I know you can’t tell us anything, but this being Wetlake, I’m going to ask anyway. Do you have any leads? Have you caught the serial killer yet?” Annabelle asked directly.

  Thorne looked up sharply at two little words: serial killer.

  Everybody else was referring to what had happened as murders. Only two people referred to it as serial killing: Denver and Annabelle.

  “You’re right about that, Annabelle; I’m not going to share details with you. But we’re trying as hard as we can to solve this.”

  I took a sip of my drink and then another as I realized I desperately needed something to do with my hands and my attention. This conversation was rapidly becoming awkward, and I was stuck in the middle of it.

  “How’s Nancy?” I asked quickly.

  Both Thorne and Annabelle looked at me sharply, but the quality of their gazes was completely different. While Thorne looked a little shocked and sickened, Annabelle just looked… sharp. Yet that sharp flicker didn’t last long.

  “Okay,” he answered simply. “But I’m not going to tell you anything more, and please don’t ask me.”

  I nodded.” Sorry.”

  “You don’t have to apologize,” he tried.

  Damn, you couldn’t script a more awkward scene.

  We could barely look at each other and we could barely talk to each other, and there Annabelle was, looming over Thorne’s shoulder, making him even more nervous with every passing second.

  I suddenly realized there might be a history between those two, but I sure as heck wasn’t forward enough to pry.

  “Do you have any word from the mechanic?” Thorne nodded my way.

  “He said it will take a while to repair. Plus, he has to coordinate with the hire car company.”

  “I’m sorry you have to stay longer than you wanted to.” He took a sip of his beer.

  “You’ve got a big life to get back to,” Annabelle added.

  I tapped my finger hard on the side of my glass, but I didn’t say anything. “How is the… ,” I began asking, determined to shift the subject off the murders and myself. But I couldn’t think of anything to ask, and it would be exceedingly pathetic and banal to inquire about how the weather had been of late.

  “I need to talk to you,” someone snapped from behind me.

  Turning, I already knew who it was. Not only did I recognize the voice, I recognized the sudden and sour change to Thorne’s expression.

  Denver.

  There he was in that exact same suit, that exact same tie, and that exact same shirt. Either he owned matching copies of everything, or he hadn’t changed clothes since he’d arrived in Wetlake.

  Neither had he changed expressions, because he still looked at me with that dark and barely concealed fury.

  “We’re kind of busy here,” Thorne said through gritted teeth.

  Denver didn’t even look down; he only glared my way. He flicked his head towards the door.

  It was beyond rude.

  Okay, Thorne had overstated it when he’d said we were busy; I was standing there trying not to look too awkward while grasping for a question that didn’t include the weather. Still, you didn’t come up to somebody, nod your head towards the door, and demand they come and talk to you.

  “Where do you get off being so—” Thorne began.

  “It’s fine.” I put a hand in front of Thorne to stop him from killing his brother. “I’ll just be a few seconds,” I said, turning my attention back to Denver.

  His jaw was locked, his expression stiff and unyielding.

  When we made it out of the pub, I was suddenly caught by how chilly the air felt, reinforced by how darn frosty Denver was as he led me forward along the street.

  The top and jacket I’d borrowed from Annabelle were made out of thin fabric, so I immediately brought my arms around myself and tried to rub some warmth into my bristling flesh.

  Denver glanced at me, but he sure as heck didn’t offer me his coat. Instead he gestured for me to walk on a little.

  “You know, what is this about?” I trotted along after him, but I made sure to give the back of his head a solid death stare.

  Hot or not, a tortured soul or not, this arrogant act of Denver’s would get old pretty quickly.

  “I didn’t want to talk to you about the case in front of the people at the pub,” he finally answered as he drew me into the mouth of an alleyway.

  “Right… ,” I managed. Though I’d opened my mouth intending to fire another volley his way, I quickly processed what he’d said. “What’s… going on?”

  He didn’t answer me immediately. Instead he took a step back, thumbing his nose as he looked down at the ground. “Things are a lot more complicated than they look.”

  Why did I get the sudden impression that Denver wasn’t just talking about the case? There was something about the exact attention behind his gaze and the way he kept glancing my way with jerky movements that told me he was trying to imply a lot more than his words revealed.

  Nodding, I neatened my hair. “Okay.”

  It was a pathetically weak thing to say, but I didn’t know what to add. Though Denver loved to ask questions, he did not like to answer them. No doubt I could have him pinned up against the wall with a knife to his throat and the guy wouldn’t reveal a thing.

  Though having him pinned up to the wall was a suddenly distracting and rather improper thought considering the situation, I quickly coughed and fixed my attention on a small, dark section of wall behind his left shoulder.

  “A lot of things aren’t making sense here,” he now added, his voice hoarse, “this is a confusing situation.”

  I nodded enthusiastically.

  Which was stupid, because this was not a situation to get enthusiastic about.

  Blushing and glad for the dark night around us, I let my arms drop from around my middle as heat took to my skin. “Yes it is,” I agreed weakly.

  “There is a lot that can g
o wrong,” he managed.

  I nodded. Hell, I nodded so quickly and so repeatedly I could have been one of those Elvis dolls you stick on the dashboard of your car to impress old people and the very, very young.

  He dwindled into silence.

  I had to say something.

  “Denver… look, I’m sorry about before,” I teetered back and forth on my feet, unsure whether I wanted to take a step closer or a step away.

  “It was reckless,” he said blankly.

  I clenched my teeth together and sucked a breath through them.

  “But maybe I got a little… ,” he trailed off and coughed.

  “Angry, frustrated, rude?” I suggested.

  He looked up darkly, though somewhere under the pools of shadow drawing beneath his heavy eyebrows was a flicker of humor. “Maybe,” he growled.

  I managed a cautious smile. “What is this really about? I’m picking up on a subtle undercurrent,” I pointed out bravely.

  “It’s about the murders,” he answered, not budging slightly.

  Damn, Denver knew how to keep his true intentions hidden.

  Fine, if he wanted to play that game, I was happy to join him.

  “I thought… you might want to know what’s going on,” he straightened his shoulders as if he were getting ready to tackle an immovable object head on.

  That immovable object was undoubtedly me.

  Yet if he wasn’t going to say what was really on his mind, I wasn’t going to budge either.

  “And I thought you would not be able to tell me.”

  “You’re right; I’m not going to tell you everything,” he conceded.

  Well darn, wasn’t this just the most edgy, tense conversation I’d ever had.

  I waited.

  “I thought you’d want to know that we couldn’t find anything too suspicious with your car.”

  I faltered at that. I hadn’t even begun to suspect that there would be anything suspiciously wrong with my car.

  Before another surge of fright could tackle me to my knees, Denver shook his head rapidly. “On the face of it, it appears to have just broken down.”

  “Right… ,” I managed.

  “I talked to the mechanic, and it should be ready in several days.”

  I nodded. If I’d been feeling in a bolshie mood, I would have pointed out that it was not Denver’s place to go talking about my car to the mechanic; it was my car. Then again, he was a Federal Agent investigating two heinous murders, so I kept my mouth shut.

  Staring at my shoes as if they held the secrets of the universe, I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, I glanced up to find him staring at his own shoes with just the same level of fixed concentration.

  Dear god, I felt like I was back in high school. In the real world, in the adult world, you didn’t have conversations as awkward and stilted as this. If you had something to say, you just said it. If you were too polite or sensible to open your mouth, you excused yourself and walked away instead. You didn’t just stand there in the mouth of an alleyway shuffling your feet.

  “Patti—”

  “Denver,” I said at the same time.

  “You go first,” I prompted.

  He paused then swallowed gruffly. “You should stick to main roads when you head home,” he managed hesitantly, clearly changing what he wanted to say at the last moment.

  “So I can head off on my own then?”

  “At this stage it seems fine. Thorne was right. None of the other victims received threats like yours; they didn’t receive threats at all. No postcards, no news-letter messages, no blue pins. As far as we can tell, they had no warning. Though I don’t for one second think that means anything conclusive,” he snapped ferociously.

  I put a hand up. “I’m not arguing with you, Denver. Despite the fact I think you’re a jerk, I also think you’re a trustworthy one and a well-trained one too. And I already told you, I will do what you tell me to.”

  I could have said a lot of things, and I could have used insults a lot worse than world’s biggest jerk. Nevertheless, my words had an effect on Denver. Rather than letting loose with another blast of rage, he pressed his lips together into a hard and thin line. “I thought you said I wasn’t a jerk?”

  I raised an eyebrow tersely. “I’m a complicated woman.”

  Denver laughed.

  He actually laughed. “Now that’s an understatement.”

  “And what, you’re a simple guy? If you were a simple guy, we wouldn’t be having this conversation full of double entendres and things left unsaid.”

  He stopped laughing.

  Instead he again stood there silently with all the intensity of a star.

  “It’s a bad idea to get involved with you right now,” he answered through gritted teeth.

  Wow, he was being honest and upfront, finally.

  “You are 100% right,” I swallowed any disappointment that dared to tighten my stomach. “So let’s leave what’s in the past in the past. What I need to know from you now is whether I can leave when my car is ready and whether I will be safe.”

  “No new information has come up. Though I can’t repeat the exact details of the investigation, I can say that currently you’re not in it. Nothing seems to indicate… you will be next,” he managed uncomfortably.

  Forcing myself to straighten my back and steel my breath to stop my fear from spiraling out of control, I nodded stiffly.

  Then I stopped.

  No new information had come up, I repeated his words in my mind and they instantly reminded me of what I’d learnt about Nancy.

  Maybe he saw my sudden unease, because his eyebrows crumpled down in a snap. “What?” He even took a jerky step towards me.

  “I… ,” I swallowed, my mouth dry and my throat itchy, “look, it’s likely nothing, but,” I began.

  “Tell me,” he snapped.

  “Nancy,” I said simply.

  “I’m not going to tell you what happened,” he began.

  I put my hand up to stop him. “No, look, I was talking to Annabelle, and she told me some… disturbing things about Nancy. Apparently, Nancy was the one who printed those postcards out, and Annabelle caught her defiling yearbook photos of me too. And apparently she went to great lengths to try to find out where I lived and how much I earn.”

  Denver snapped his lips closed and looked pensive.

  I wanted him to say something, but instead he clutched his chin with one hand and rubbed his bristle with crooked fingers.

  “Annabelle also said that… Nancy was always unstable, psychopathic even. I know this is going to sound strange, but ever since she saw me, she’s been acting very strange around me.”

  “Is that it?”

  I gave a startled breath. Is that it? I’d just told him that Nancy had been asking suspicious questions about me and was likely the one who’d stashed a threatening postcard in my room.

  No, that wasn’t it. He was the FBI Agent here; surely, he knew what would come next. He had to question Nancy, he had to find out if she was the murderer, and he had to stop her before she struck again.

  Blinking at him with surprise, it didn’t take too long for those rugged eyebrows of his to descend even closer to his already perfectly narrowed eyes. “You need to stop before you accuse her,” he said bluntly, “you need a lot more evidence than that.”

  I put my hands up in exasperation. He’d seen her, right? The little jacket of hysteria she’d shrug into just to get male attention? He remembered that, right? Or was his memory too focused on the leopard print cleavage?

  I found myself pressing my lips together and grinding my teeth. This was not how I had imagined this going down. In my mind, even though I didn’t entirely like Denver, I still trusted him. And unlike Thorne—as bad as it sounded—I knew Denver would do his job well.

  Well, right now he didn’t appear to be doing his job well; he didn’t appear to be doing it at all.

  “Are you even going to investigate this? Or are you just go
ing to go back to Nancy and let her fall into your arms and thank you for all your heroic efforts?” my voice brimmed with sarcasm.

  Even as I said it, I realized it was a mistake.

  You couldn’t tease some men, because there were some men like Denver Scott—firecrackers dressed up in suits with jaws hard as steel.

  “You want to stop right there,” he spat, “before you do yourself even more of a disgrace. Do you think you’re better than everybody else, Patti? Do you think you can run around casting aspersions on people? Do you think you know more about this case than the FBI does?”

  I reeled back.

  It was a combination of what he was saying and how he was saying it.

  “Stop it,” I spat back, “why does everyone keep on saying that? I have never brought up my wealth. I don’t care how much you earn. I don’t even want to know. All I want is not to wind up dead on the front porch of a high school I hated bitterly. Is that too much to ask?” my voice started to crack.

  “Do you have any idea—” he began.

  He did not get to finish.

  At that moment, someone shrieked his name. And I do mean shriek. It was the kind of noise that echoed off the walls and punched its way into your eardrums like the blast of a jet engine.

  “Denver, oh my god, Denver,” Nancy called as she made her way across the street.

  Denver turned faster than I’d ever seen anyone move before.

  “What are you doing out of the police station?” He ran up to her as she ran over to him.

  “I had to find you. So I slipped out the back,” she waved a hand at her face as crocodile tears slipped down her smooth, alabaster cheeks and chin.

  “What, why?”

  As Nancy reached Denver, he willingly placed an arm around her shoulder for support and that of course elicited a soft little moan from her.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Denver saw it, and the look he shot me could have shattered diamond.

  “Why did you leave the police station? Why did you have to find me?” Denver asked Nancy as he looked down into her eyes.

  “I’m just so scared. I don’t know who to trust. And I think one of the officers there—oh, this is going to sound incredible, but he’s acting strangely. I’m almost sure he has something to do with this,” Nancy managed as her lips wobbled around her words.