Dangerous Attraction

by Susan Vaughan

  No one paid him any mind. Exactly his intention.

  After another gulp of his long-neck, he thanked the common sense that prompted him to avoid the draft. The bottled brew tasted enough like piss. Besides, after a sleepless night, even a small amount of alcohol could blur his senses. Not something he could afford in this joint.

  Sleepless, all right. And he suspected Claire hadn’t rested any too well herself. The lady had backbone, but that call had frightened her badly.

  Circumstances were requiring that he add protection to his damn investigation. Bodyguard—the job he should avoid. Even though she thought he’d moved in for his own safety, he suspected she was in more danger than she knew. Foolish female, if she trusted him to protect her.

  God, I can’t protect her. Don’t make me have to protect her. Not another one.

  Maybe to shield herself from him after that incendiary kiss, she’d tried to stash him at the end of the hall—away from her room. He’d insisted on bedding down next door.

  Where he heard her run the shower, imagined warm water sliding over her smoothly rounded curves. Where he heard every slide of silk sheets as she turned over on that sinfully large bed. Where remembering the sensations of their forbidden kiss and her sighed responses swelled him harder than the amber bottle he gripped now.

  Shunting aside the unwanted daydream, he swallowed another gulp of beer. With an assessing glance through the smoke and gloom, he leaned against the cracked plastic of his back booth.

  He saw few females present other than a wide-bodied waitress who could double as bouncer. In front of the jukebox, a brassy blonde in a fringed leather miniskirt and a scrawny male in stained jeans and a black vest, no shirt, ground their pelvises together to a Merle Haggard lament. Another woman, her lumpy curves shoe-horned into jeans and a leopard-print top sidled up to one of the fishermen.

  Both women looked like they spent most of their time at Butch’s. Or on their backs in the rooms advertised on a wall sign: Rooms—Hourly Rates.

  A couple of other females, more serious drinkers, sat at rickety tables with equally serious male guzzlers.

  A moment later, every female head, waitress-bouncer’s included, turned toward the door. Michael looked in the same direction.

  Ricardo Cruz had arrived.

  Michael chuckled to himself. He should have known. Happened every time that Cuban stud entered a room. His dark good looks, dimple and wicked pirate grin lured females from five to ninety-five like nectar drew bees.

  Michael’s partner, Ricardo Cruz, was the son of a Cuban refugee and a Miami lounge singer. Florida-born, Cruz had inherited looks, intelligence and a sharp sense of irony from his parents—added to his own fierce dedication to justice.

  Male heads turned to check out the new arrival. One glance at Cruz’s biker boots and the leather jacket snug across his wide shoulders convinced even the most antagonistic drunk to let him join Michael unchallenged.

  Every female gaze followed his ambling walk.

  “Yo, Cruz, nice entrance. You practice that woman-slaying look in front of a mirror?” Michael signaled to the waitress.

  “You bet, mano, just like you do that fearsome scowl. Must’ve scared the crap out of these drunks.” Cruz slid into the opposite seat.

  Michael grunted noncommittally and slugged down the last of his beer. Though he didn’t rehearse, he knew his powerful build and grim countenance prevented a confrontation in a bar that welcomed only regulars. “You find this sty okay?”

  “No sweat. Why here?”

  “Two reasons. Figured a workmen’s local dive was the last place the Colombians would hang out.”

  Cruz lowered his voice. “From the name, I thought Butch’s was some kind of female biker bar.”

  “So that explains the get-up.”

  “Wait until the boss gets the bill for this prime leather.” A grin slashed across Cruz’s face. “And the second reason?”

  “Got the list of Paul Santerre’s suppliers from his old man. He owns the business now. I’m looking for a guy who hangs out here sometimes. A lobsterman named Larson. Didn’t get along with Santerre.”

  The waitress brought their beers and mopped several days’ sticky residue from the cracked plastic tabletop—a courtesy she hadn’t bothered to perform for Michael.

  “Thanks, sweetheart, you’re a peach.” Cruz gave her a bedroom-eyed wink.

  When she left, he turned to Michael. “What did this guy have against Paul Santerre?”

  “Don’t know, but word is he hated Santerre’s guts. He might tell us something the others won’t.” Michael angled his head toward the bar’s rowdy gathering. “But he’s not here.”

  “You got a picture?” Cruz’s gaze followed his partner’s.

  “No picture. Big blond guy.” Michael chewed on his lower lip. “Larson had an accident on his boat. Got his arm caught in the winch line. Halfway severed at the wrist. Couldn’t get loose and couldn’t get help. He sawed off the rest himself with his boat knife.”

  “Tough son of a bitch. So you’re looking for a guy with one hand.”

  “Artificial hand.”

  Michael slid his half-finished beer to one side. “Did you find anything about El Halcón’s boys being in town?”

  “Checked the license number you gave me with the rental agency. Dark guy, middle-aged, name of Tony Colombo.”

  “Wonder what wise-ass thought that one up.” Michael’s lip curled in scorn.

  “Description sounds like Raoul Olívas, one of El Halcón’s lieutenants. Cruel bastard, likes to do his boss’s dirty work. The other two are probably just muscle.”

  “They still around?”

  Cruz shook his head. “No reason they have to stay in Weymouth. Could be in Portland, even Portsmouth, for that matter. You think they contacted the widow?”

  “Someone did.” Michael explained about the anonymous phone caller and the intruder. But not the kiss. No need to reveal something that shouldn’t have happened and wouldn’t be repeated.

  Even now the memory of how soft and warm Claire felt in his arms, how her lips fit so perfectly, so hotly to his, and how much he wanted her affected his body with dramatic suddenness. With effort, he kept his expression bland when he said he was staying at the house.

  “All right!” Cruz slapped him on the shoulder. “Quinn, I do like your moves. That close to the Widow Spider, you ought to be able to wrap this up quick.”

  Michael doubted it. “Russ Santerre’s still tiptoeing around something he knows. I’ll go see him again. If I can get away from my ‘partner.”’

  “How’d you manage today?”

  “Told her I had an appointment with the state detective. She avoids the cops when she can. That prick Pratt’s given her a hard time.”

  “She’s getting to you, Quinn.” Cruz grinned and hoisted his bottle in a toast. “The original hard case is softening. Don’t forget what you’re there for.”

  “You’re damn right to doubt my reliability.”

  “Man, you got to let go of what happened with that kid.”

  “That kid’s name was Kathy.” Michael ground his beer bottle into the table surface.

  “Anyone can miss a shot. Even an old college medal-winner like you.”

  “Not like that. Not in a hostage situation. I was too strung out to be the sharpshooter that day. I should have known better.” His voice barely carried above the nearby din. “Because of my arrogance, a child died.”

  Cruz heaved a sigh. “Not arrogance, grief. Boss should have known better. And it wasn’t your fault, anyway.”

  Michael didn’t want to drag his friend through yet another post mortem of his own problems. “About the widow and drugs,” he said, “I’m beginning to wonder.”

  “Next you’re going to tell me you don’t think she’s murdered anyone.”

  Although doubts about Claire as a killer assailed him, Michael would say nothing for the time being. The sensationalism surrounding the case had died down months ago. Why
did someone telephone her with threats now? Threats against him.

  Maybe the real murderer.

  “Russ Santerre and the widow aren’t the only ones with secrets,” he said. “The damn DEA’s holding out on us—on me, anyway. Why didn’t I know from the get-go that Santerre Seafood was a one-man operation? That Marie Claire Saint-Ange sold it to her in-law? And that Paul Santerre’s boat has been in dry dock for months?”

  “You’re right, partner. All that info is easy enough to dig up without an undercover agent,” Cruz agreed. “What do you think the chief is up to?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t like it. Any of it. If I find out my own office is behind those anonymous phone calls and they’ve pitched me naked into a damn hornet’s nest…” Michael slammed one fist against the already dented wall.

  No one at the bar noticed.

  “About those phone calls,” Cruz began.

  “What about them?” Michael growled. Preparing to leave, he levered out of the cramped booth.

  “The caller said, ‘He’s next.’”

  “Yeah. So?”

  Cruz stood, too. He slid supple leather gloves on, one finger at a time.

  Female gazes homed in on his every smooth movement.

  “But only the widow heard those words. You didn’t hear the voice yourself.” One ebony eyebrow arched, he waited for Michael’s acquiescence before continuing. “Then how can you be certain what was said? If there have really been other calls.”

  A few minutes later when he started his Cherokee’s engine, Michael admitted Cruz was right. She was getting to him. Anonymous calls, yes, but threats? He’d never even thought of the possibility that she had fabricated the warning message. Had the widow spun a trap for him?

  Pete Larson was a bear of a man. A polar bear, Claire amended, as she noticed his rolled-up shirtsleeves. He beckoned to Quinn and her with his prosthetic hand, then ducked back inside his garage workshop. A pickup sat in the driveway surrounded by bikes and saucer sleds, the debris of children in a hurry for lunch.

  She exited Quinn’s SUV and tugged her coat collar tighter around her neck. The promise of more snow hung pregnant in the swollen bellies of the lowering clouds.

  Larson agreed to talk to them as long as he could continue repairing his lobster traps. That meant shivering in an unheated garage. Again.

  “What is it with these fishermen?” she muttered to Quinn as they picked their way up the toy-littered driveway. At the side of the garage stood two snow forts, and inside one a stock of snowballs. “Is it some Down-East code or a macho thing that requires them all to work without heat?”

  His hard mouth flirted with a grin. “These temperatures shouldn’t bother you. Where you grew up, nearly in Canada, doesn’t it stay at zero until spring?”

  “True, but we knew enough to heat our houses and worksheds. Besides, here it’s a damper cold that eats into your bones.” Claire thrust her gloved hands into her pockets. She’d never seen Quinn with gloves or a hat. Yesterday when they’d met with another fisherman, she’d stamped her booted feet to assure herself they were still attached, and Quinn hadn’t even zipped up his parka. “Cold doesn’t seem to bother you, I’ve noticed.”

  He stopped at the walk-in door to the one-car garage and gaped at her as if she were the odd one. “I don’t mind it. If you spend enough time in the out-of-doors, your body adapts, and you don’t feel the cold.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, Quinn. Was it outdoor stakeouts that gave you that winter tan?”

  “No. Camping.” The crinkles beside his eyes and the tan they revealed drew her gaze. He turned the doorknob.

  “Camping?” She blinked her disbelief. “You mean like in a tent? In the tropics somewhere?” She and Jonathan had spent their honeymoon in a platform tent on one of the Virgin Islands. That kind of camping she understood.

  “I mean in a tent.” He held the door for her to enter the garage. “But not in the tropics. In the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I trekked in and camped for two months before coming to Weymouth.”

  “Mon Dieu, whatever for?” Had Quinn gone after a fugitive or a survivalist? One of those people who wanted to be able to survive in the wilderness when the nuclear holocaust came? Or was he one of them? “For a client?”

  He scraped his strong white teeth on his lower lip as he seemed to contemplate his response. Grief hovered in the depths of his gray eyes. “Something happened, a…loss in my life. It was…an escape, a chance to experience the peace of nature, to live on the edge and challenge myself. A vacation, if you like,” he finished awkwardly.

  “You folks comin’ in or you goin’ to stand out there gabbin’?”

  At the sharp tone of Larson’s question, Claire scooted inside with Quinn close behind her.

  What had happened to him? Her grief and trouble were paraded for all the world to see, but Quinn kept his bottled up under pressure. He’d opened up a part of himself that she thought he usually kept hidden behind the tough, ironic facade he presented to the world. In spite of her resolve to avoid interest in his affairs, to avoid knowing anything personal about him at all, she wanted to understand more.

  Rather than question her anticipation at the prospect, she focused her attention on their host.

  After closing the door behind them, Michael took a second to collect himself. Only yesterday he’d resolved to distance himself from the tempting widow, and today he’d blabbed more to her about his wilderness retreat than he ever had to Cruz, his friend and partner. What the hell was wrong with him?

  Striding toward the burly lobsterman, he held out his hand. “Thanks for taking time to see us, Larson. Do you know Ms. Saint-Ange?”

  The big blond man smiled and stretched out his good right hand. “We never met before, but I’ve seen you.”

  Michael watched Claire’s tentative greeting. They’d both expected the same fear superimposed with hostility projected by her father-in-law and the other fishermen.

  She hurried to the lobster-crate seat Larson offered beside an ineffectual kerosene heater. Chagrined that he’d not noticed the cold affecting her, Michael watched as she settled down and wrapped her long coat around her wool-clad legs. During the last few days, she’d trooped from fishing boat to dock to unheated shed with him. Uncomplaining. Until today.

  Camping in the tropics. If he took her camping on some sandy island, he’d peel away the bulky coat and tweed slacks to bare her soft skin and sleek body to the sun. And to him.

  Jeez, where did that idea come from? Maybe the cold was affecting him after all.

  The Gallic head tilt and her quizzical expression snapped him to attention. He must look like a daydreaming fool.

  “As I told you,” Michael said to the lobsterman, “I’m talking to Paul Santerre’s seafood suppliers. The police must have already questioned you, but I hoped you might tell us your ideas about his death.”

  “Funny you should say that.” Larson scratched his blond head with the forefinger of his lifelike prosthesis. “The cops never asked me squat. Not that I could’ve told ’em anything. I hadn’t seen Santerre in four months when I heard he died.”

  He reached inside the boxy, rectangular wire trap on his workbench. “Hope you don’t mind if I go ahead with my repairs. Crabs and sea urchins tear up the pot heads somethin’ fierce.” He winked at Claire. “Uh, that’s the nylon net contraption that keeps the bug from gettin’ back out.”

  Michael knew he must have looked perplexed because Claire said from her crate perch, “Bug is the fishermen’s term for lobster, Quinn. You go ahead with your work, Mr. Larson.”

  “Word is you didn’t like Santerre much,” Michael said. He already knew the CID hadn’t bothered to talk to any of Santerre’s suppliers. Maybe it was as Claire had insisted. They had their suspect—his widow.

  “Hell, that’s puttin’ it mildly. I hated the bastard’s guts.” Larson held up his left hand. “You see this bionic hand I got? With it, I can do my haulin’ with near the same efficien
cy as before. But Paul, he weren’t interested in givin’ me a chance to prove it.”

  “I know my husband wasn’t always easy to get along with. What did he do to you?” Claire asked. She removed her gloves and clasped her hands in her lap. Beside her on the crate lay five metal clamps she aligned in an even row.

  “What did Paul do to me?” His face grew grim. “When I lost my hand, most ever’body around town offered their help. My oldest boy—he was nine—and my wife did my haulin’, and neighbors and other folks I didn’t even know brought food and donated money for medical bills.”

  “That’s the wonderful thing about a small town,” Claire said. “Everybody pitches in.”

  That acceptance and community spirit didn’t apply to her, the ostracized Widow Spider, Michael knew. And still she could express sincere sympathy for another’s benefit.

  “Except Paul,” the big blond man continued. “We went to high school together, but that didn’t cut any ice with him. He dropped me from his list. Canceled all orders and replaced me. Guess I should’ve known what he was like.”

  “What do you mean?” Michael said. Understanding Paul’s own motivation seemed key.

  Larson pointed to the lobster shell tacked to one wall. “My first bug,” he said with a proud grin. “Did you know bugs are cannibals? If their claws ain’t bound in the crate, they’ll attack, climb on, fight, and even eat one another in competition for food. For bein’ top bug, so to speak.

  “Paul was like that. ’Long as things went his way, his claws was closed and harmless. Cross him or defy him and he’d chop you to shreds.”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know about his ending your contract.” Clutching her gloves, Claire came to stand beside Michael. “Paul didn’t confide much about his business to me. If I’d known…”

  His arm itched to slide around her shoulders. Claire was tall, nearly his height, but at this moment, trembling at his side, she looked small and vulnerable.

  “Don’t you fret none about it, Ms. Saint-Ange,” Larson continued. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I’m gonna speak my piece. I don’t know if his death were an accident or if someone killed him. If it was you who deep-sixed him, I hope they never prove it. Good riddance to the son of a bitch.”