Solid as Steele

by Rebecca York

  “Why would I come up with something so weird if it wasn’t true?”

  “You tell me.”

  She exploded with an unladylike curse. “I told you everything I could.”

  “Why did you call the Light Street office in the middle of the night?”

  She wasn’t going to tell him that she’d awakened wishing her husband were lying beside her in bed. Instead she said, “I was upset when I woke up. I was hoping to talk to Jo. She wouldn’t have put me through the third degree.”

  “She would have been remiss if she hadn’t questioned you.”

  “She wouldn’t have acted like I was part of a murder conspiracy!”

  Mack sighed. “Okay.”

  “So you finally believe me?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  Jamie heard herself saying words she thought she would never utter. “Why don’t you drop me off at my mom’s house. I’ll catch a ride home on my own.”

  “We can visit your mom, but then we’re going to try and figure out what happened to Lynn Vaughn. Where’s the house?”

  Feeling trapped, she gave him the address. Maybe she could slip out the back door and call one of her old friends in town while he was having a nice chat with the family. That thought made her bite back a sharp laugh. Yeah, Mom and Clark were going to charm the pants off Mack.

  She felt her stomach knot as Mack put the address into his GPS. Apparently going to see Mom was as threatening as being questioned about a murder.

  The place was at the south end of town—the low-rent district—and she gave the familiar location a critical look as they pulled up in front of the one-story bungalow. The lawn and shrubbery were scraggly, the porch sagged and paint was peeling from the wooden siding. Home sweet home.

  Embarrassed that one of her friends from Baltimore was seeing this house, she climbed out and headed up the cracked sidewalk with Mack right behind her.

  She thought about him as a friend, she realized. Maybe associate was more accurate. Or maybe they were playing detective and suspect.

  At the front door, she stopped and knocked. From the corner of her eye she saw a curtain move in the dirty front window and guy with a ruddy face and thinning hair look out.

  Clark Landon. Too bad Mom’s boyfriend was there.

  He opened the door and stared at Jamie.

  “What’s the Princess of Baltimore doing here?”

  “Mom asked me to visit.”

  “But that’s no reason for you to stop by, is it?” he shot back.

  Mack cleared his throat. “I asked Jamie to show me around Gaptown.”

  Clark took notice of the man standing behind Jamie and straightened his shoulders. “And who the hell are you?”

  “Mack Steele. A friend of Jamie’s.” He didn’t say, “Nice to meet you.”

  If Mack hadn’t been right behind her, she might have turned and left, but now she was trapped by her own bad idea.

  “Hey, Gloria, you won’t believe who’s here. It’s your hoity-toity daughter.”

  He stepped aside, and Jamie and Mack walked into the living room, which was cluttered with two beat-up sofas, an old-style clunky television set and beer cans on the maple coffee table. The brown carpet had turned several shades darker since Jamie had been home last. To the right, in the kitchen, the sink was piled with dirty dishes. The house smelled like cabbage that had been cooked a week ago and left out.

  She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, wondering how she could have brought Mack here.

  As they stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, Clark grabbed a corduroy car coat from a hook beside the door.

  “I’m going down to Louie’s,” he said, then stepped out the door, slamming it behind him.

  “Friendly,” Mack muttered.

  “He and I never got along.”

  “He’s not your father, right?”

  “Mom’s longtime boyfriend.”

  She closed her mouth abruptly as Gloria Wheeler shuffled into the living room. Jamie tried to see her from Mack’s point of view and took in a woman in her late fifties with graying hair dyed black-cat dark, a ruffled yellow blouse and beige polyester slacks, the outfit finished off with scuffed red slippers.

  No hug. No kiss. And she didn’t invite them to make themselves comfortable.

  Mom just stood with her hands on her hips and gave Jamie a long look, then switched her gaze to Mack.

  “I wasn’t expecting you to drop by, and Clark sure didn’t warn me that you had someone with you,” she said in an accusing voice.

  Jamie wondered what difference that made. Would Mom have rushed around cleaning up? Would she have had the table set so she could offer them tea and cookies? Or maybe she’d have changed her clothes and put on real shoes before coming out here.

  “We were in town,” Mack said, “and Jamie mentioned that she wanted to stop by.”

  “In town for what?”

  “I’m a private detective on a case. Since Jamie’s from here, I asked her to show me around Gaptown, Mrs.…?”

  “Wheeler,” she supplied as she looked Mack up and down, then switched her gaze back to her daughter.

  “You’ve taken up with another detective?”

  Jamie answered in a rush. “I haven’t taken up with him.”

  “I was a friend of Jamie’s husband, Craig,” Mack said.

  Mom’s knowing smile made Jamie cringe. What did she think? That they were sleeping together?

  “I guess it was a bad idea coming here,” she said.

  Gloria shrugged. “You said it, not me. You too good for Gaptown now?”

  Unable to contain her exasperation, Jamie asked quickly, “If you didn’t want me here, why did you write to me?”

  Gloria tipped her head to one side, considering. “I didn’t write you.”

  “But I got a letter from you last week.”

  Gloria’s voice hardened. “Not from me you didn’t.”

  Jamie swallowed, wondering why her mother was lying, but she knew from experience that making a point of it wasn’t going to get her anywhere. “I guess this was a mistake,” she murmured. “We won’t take up any more of your time.”

  “Suits me.”

  Without waiting for Mack, Jamie turned and fled the house. On the porch she took a deep breath. Behind her, she heard him say, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Wheeler.”

  Yeah, sure.

  Then he was hurrying after her down the sidewalk. When she’d climbed into the car, she kept her gaze down as she fumbled with her seat belt. Her hand was shaking, but she finally got it hooked.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was obviously a mistake dropping in there.”

  “Yeah.” He pulled away from the curb, and they rode in silence for a few moments until Mack cleared his throat.

  “Was your mom like that when you were little?”

  “Like what?”

  “Mean. Self-centered. And not much interested in keeping her house or herself neat.”

  “She was never much for housework, but she wasn’t so mean when I was little. I think she started reacting to her life.”

  “Some people cope better than others.”

  “She’s a very dependent woman who can’t function without a man to take care of her. Not that Clark Landon does much for her. My dad drank. She couldn’t leave him either. After he died, she went looking for another man and ended up with Landon, unfortunately.”

  She sat tensely in her seat, expecting some kind of cutting remark about Gloria from Mack. Instead he pulled up along the curb, under the branches of a maple tree and turned toward her.

  “I understand better than you think. My home life was no sitcom, either.”

  That surprised her. “What do you mean?”

  He laughed, the sound low and rough. “From what I can pick up on short acquaintance with Gloria, I guess my mom was the polar opposite of yours. When I was ten, she decided that she was tired of taking care of a husband and two kids. One day my older brother
and I came home from school, and she wasn’t there. We went looking for her and found out she’d cleared out the clothes she wanted and left the rest for Goodwill.

  “There was a note on the kitchen counter telling my dad not to try and contact her, and that she’d taken her share of the money in their bank account—which turned out to be most of it, since she said she’d been an unpaid housekeeper for years. That was the last we heard from her.” He sighed.

  “I don’t actually know if she’s dead or alive. I guess, being a detective and all, I could investigate and find out, but it doesn’t seem worth it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jamie murmured as she tried to imagine what his childhood must have been like.

  “Yeah, well, I guess neither one of us had the pleasure of growing up in a stable home. After she bailed out on us, Dad did the best he could, but he had to work, which left me and Sammy on our own a lot of the time. At least there was an upside. It made me self-sufficient. I learned to cook and do my own laundry. And I can sew on a button, come to that.”

  Jamie searched his face, touched that he’d revealed so much to her when he could have simply kept silent. She’d always thought of him as stable and grounded, and now he was letting her know that he’d overcome some serious obstacles. He was doing something else as well. Trying to help her understand that his visit to her family hadn’t shocked him. She appreciated the effort.

  She’d been through an emotional wringer during the past twenty hours, and the glimpse into his unhappy background made her want to…

  What? Thank him for revealing himself? Or maybe the wounded look in his eyes made her want to let him know that everything was all right. Whatever that meant.

  Without fully understanding her own motives, she reached for him and pulled him close.

  She’d felt safe in his arms last night when he’d come rushing over to find out what was wrong, and she’d never thanked him for that. She’d only bristled at the questions his job had compelled him to ask.

  Suddenly, everything had shifted. When she eased back and tipped her face up, she found that her mouth was only inches from his. It had been a long time since she’d kissed a man, and she’d be fooling herself if she tried to deny that she’d thought of kissing this man. For heartbeats, neither one of them moved, except for their shallow breathing. It wasn’t too late to stop. Somewhere in her mind she knew she should pull away, but she stayed where she was for a charged second and then another.

  She wasn’t sure which of them moved to close the gap, maybe both of them.

  “Jamie.” He said her name as their mouths met, and he moved his lips over hers in a kiss that was tender and needy and sexy, all at the same time.

  Wanting to shut out the world, she closed her eyes so that she could focus on the man who held her in his arms.

  She liked the taste of him. The texture of his lips. The heat of his body. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she felt her arms encircle his neck. In response, he gathered her closer as he turned his head first one way and then the other to change the angle of the kiss.

  Somewhere in her mind, a voice spoke. This is wrong. You shouldn’t be in his arms. You shouldn’t be kissing him. But it was impossible to heed that voice when it felt like the most natural thing in the world to be close to him like this. As she nestled in his embrace, she could imagine what it would be like to share more than this kiss with him. Not just a sexual encounter but all the emotions she’d kept bottled up inside her for long, lonely months.

  His tongue played with the seam of her lips, asking her to open for him, and she did, so that he could explore the line of her teeth, then stroke the sensitive tissue on the inside of her lips.

  She made a small sound deep in her throat, telling him she liked what he was doing. When his tongue dipped farther into her mouth, hot, needy sensations curled through her body.

  His hands stroked up and down her ribs, gliding upward to find the sides of her breasts, making her nipples tighten. She wanted to beg for more. She’d forgotten where they were. Forgotten why she shouldn’t allow this man such liberties.

  She tangled her hands in his thick, dark hair, loving the slightly rough texture. For months she’d wanted to touch him there, and now she had the freedom to do it. Sensations she hadn’t experienced for too long bombarded her body and overwhelmed her mind.

  Wanting more of him, she eased back a little so that she could pull open the front of his leather jacket and press her hands against his broad chest.

  “Yes,” he murmured, his mouth still on hers.

  She rubbed her hands against him, feeling hair crinkle through his shirt. It would be dark and thick and textured like the hair on his head.

  Through the fabric, she found a flat nipple, feeling it stiffen at her touch. Her other hand found the placket of his shirt. When she slipped two fingers inside, he dragged in a sharp breath.

  Her own nipples had tightened painfully, and she pictured herself dragging his hand to her breasts. Before she could do it, the sound of a car horn intruded into the fog of her brain.

  Jerking away from Mack, she looked wildly around and saw a pickup truck pulling into the driveway just ahead of them. An old guy behind the wheel was glaring at them like they’d been filming a porn movie in the street.

  Mack cursed under his breath and started the engine. The car bucked as he pulled away from the curb.

  Jamie flopped back into her seat, fumbling with the seat belt, her face hot.

  “Sorry,” he muttered as he put distance between themselves and the homeowner.

  She made some kind of sound that could have been agreement or condemnation. It would be easy to accuse him of taking advantage of her, but she knew that it wasn’t true. She’d been a willing participant in what they’d been doing, and she wasn’t even sure how far they would have gone if they hadn’t been interrupted.

  She might have admitted as much, but his next words sent her mind spinning off in an entirely different direction.

  “There are some things you didn’t tell me about Lynn Vaughn’s murder,” he said as he put distance between themselves and the guy who’d so rudely knocked them out of whatever fantasy they’d been sharing.

  “Oh great. You can’t deal with kissing me, so you’re switching back to Lynn Vaughn?” she said, hearing the grating sound of her own voice.

  “Can you?” he asked.

  He had a point. She’d ended up in his arms with very little provocation, and she’d started touching him in ways that were totally inappropriate. She had no excuse for that, other than her own emotional instability.

  She sighed. “Okay, we can get back to business. What do you want to know?”

  “You told me that you’d have dreams about bad things happening to people you knew, and they’d turn out to be true.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you saying that you knew Lynn Vaughn?”

  The question had edged into territory she didn’t want to explore with him. “Why do we have to keep talking about this?”

  “Because I’m going to have to call the police if we don’t.”

  Chapter Four

  The threat had the effect Mack must have been striving for. “I didn’t say it, but I did know her. She and I went to high school together.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  “It wasn’t relevant.”

  He looked at her, then turned back to the road. “It could be. Any detail could be.”

  When she said nothing, he asked, “Were you close?”

  She sighed. “We weren’t best buddies, but we knew each other. I know that when she graduated, she went to the University of Maryland in Baltimore. She became an emergency room nurse.”

  “Did you keep in touch with her?”

  “No. I kind of avoided Gaptown. I think you can figure out why.”

  “Yeah. But why do you think Lynn reached out to you? Did she know about your dreams?”

  “I didn’t advertise it. Nobody knew. Except Mo
m.”

  “Would she tell anyone?”

  “She kept it between us, because she didn’t want people to know there was something weird about her daughter.”

  A FEW MILES AWAY, Fred Hyde was touring the funhouse making sure everything was ready for the evening’s entertainment. He’d had a very satisfying time selecting the exhibits. He’d used some of the same ones as for his last guest. Others were new, and he’d taken down the funhouse mirrors. Those were too much of a cliché. Now he was trying to decide if he was going to use a witch’s face or a demon for the pop-up display on the first floor.

  The witch had worked very well. But it might be amusing to give the green-and-purple-faced demon a try.

  Still pondering the choice, he went back through his music selections, most of which he’d pulled from the soundtracks of slasher movies, although he also liked that spooky “Night on Bald Mountain.” He’d mixed and matched the tracks, and he hummed along as he listened to some of the cuts, then decided on the disc that started with the Night of the Living Dead and continued on to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

  After he’d satisfied himself with the preparations, he went downstairs to look at the woman who was sleeping in the cell he’d constructed in the basement. He’d built the walls of cinder block, and the door was reinforced, so there was no chance of escape.

  The woman on the narrow bunk inside was lying on her back, her blond hair fallen across her cheek. As he stood over her, he suppressed the urge to brush it back.

  Better not touch her until he was wearing his gloves and his Locard suit. Well, it wasn’t anything official. That’s what he called it. Locard was the French forensic scientist who’d first pointed out that when two objects touched, each would leave traces of themselves on the other. But that wasn’t going to happen with his suit made out of neoprene.

  He took a step back, still staring at the sleeping woman. He’d drugged her, and she wasn’t going to wake up for several hours. Plenty of time for him to go out to dinner, then put on his outfit. He’d be wearing it when he let her out of the cell, and then the games would begin. Of course, there might be fibers from the cape. But that didn’t matter. He’d bought it at a vintage clothing store in Boston, so nobody was going to connect it with murders in western Maryland.