Black Widow

by Breton, Laurie

  Janine looked at her with renewed interest. “What kind of dog do you have?” she said.

  “A Rottweiler. Your dad gave him to me.”

  “Really, Daddy? You gave her a dog? How come we don’t have a dog?”

  “We don’t need a dog,” he said curtly. “I’ll drive you home.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Kathryn said. “It’s a beautiful night, I can walk. I am capable of walking, you know.”

  He gave her a look fraught with meaning. “Then I’ll walk you home.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll get my purse.”

  “I’ll be home in an hour or so,” he told Janine. “Don’t open the door to anybody you don’t know. Basically that means nobody but me or Caroline.”

  Janine sighed. “I’m thirteen years old, Daddy. I grew up in the city. I’m not stupid.”

  “I want you to remember,” he said, “that just because you’re in a small town, that doesn’t mean there’s no danger. There are bad people in small towns, too.”

  “Like Kathryn’s mother-in-law?”

  He met Kathryn’s eyes. “She’s the queen of mean,” he told his daughter. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s bad. Not in the sense I’m talking, anyway. But there are dangerous people around. We had a murder just the other day, and we still don’t know for sure who did it. And that scares the hell out of me.”

  “I don’t understand,” Janine said. “I thought you arrested somebody. Dewey something-or-other.”

  Again, his eyes met Kathryn’s, helpless and beseeching.

  “Shall I tell her?” she said.

  “Go ahead. It’s really your story to tell.”

  “Come on, sweetheart,” she said to Janine. “Let’s sit on the couch while I tell you all about it.”

  Janine looked from Kathryn to her father. “Okay,” she said.

  “Four years ago,” Kathryn said, settling onto the cushion beside her, “I came home one day and found my husband dead. He’d been murdered, stabbed to death with my wallpapering shears. I was young, and I was ignorant, and I was scared. I made the mistake of pulling the shears out of his body. By the time the police got there, I had his blood all over me and my prints on the murder weapon. They said I killed him, but I didn’t.” She leaned forward and took Janine’s hands in hers. “It’s important to me that you believe that. I was so scared. I loved Michael so much, and I couldn’t understand why they thought I would have killed him. It took me a while to figure out that I’d been set up. I took the fall for somebody else, somebody who made sure I was put away someplace where I couldn’t ask too many questions about what happened to Michael. I spent four years in prison, Janine. If you’ve never been there, you can’t imagine what that’s like. The kind of things that go on. The kind of people you’re forced to be with, day after day after day.”

  “It must have been scary,” Janine said.

  “It was very scary. But finally, my lawyer found new evidence and brought it to trial, and a judge released me. He overturned my conviction. And I came back to Elba to find out who really killed Michael.”

  “Why would anybody want to kill him?” she said. Her eyes narrowed in concentration, making her look so much like her father that it was startling. “Was he like that awful woman? His mother?”

  Kathryn closed her eyes at the poignancy of her memories. “No, honey,” she said, opening them again. “Michael was the kindest, sweetest man I’d ever known. He was nothing like his mother. I can’t imagine why anybody would have wanted to kill him. But I intend to find out. Now, Wanita Crumley is dead, and I think the two murders are related. I think that whoever killed Michael is the same person who killed Wanita. So does your dad. We don’t believe that Dewey killed her. But people around here have long memories, and they don’t believe I’m innocent. So I’m not exactly winning any popularity contests these days. Things have happened.”

  “Like the spray paint on Daddy’s Blazer?” Janine said.

  She decided it would be a good idea to skip over the snake incident. And the driver who’d nearly run her down. “Yes,” she said. “Like that. Which is why your dad wants you to be very careful. People know we’re—” She looked up at Nick, at a loss for words, uncertain of what their relationship really was. “Seeing each other,” she finished. “In their eyes, that makes him guilty by association. Neither one of us,” she said pointedly, “wants anything to happen to you as a result of this mess.”

  Janine spent a long time considering her words. Then she patted Kathryn’s hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “I believe you.” She turned to her father. “Daddy,” she said gravely, “I think it would be safer for you to drive Kathryn home.”

  When they were alone in the Blazer, she said, “That’s quite a kid you have there, DiSalvo.”

  “You’re telling me.” He shifted gears, threw an arm over the back of the seat and backed out of the driveway. Shifted again, and the truck lurched forward. “Okay,” he said, “now that we’re alone, you can tell me what’s got you so wired up.”

  So she told him, told him about Ruby Jackson, about the Businessmen’s Benevolent Association, about Ruby’s rich and handsome white lover. “I’m on to something,” she said. “I know it. There’s some connection here. Four people, four different lives. Ruby, Kevin, Michael, and Wanita. But I’ll be damned if I can figure out what connects the four of them.”

  He rubbed absently at his chin while he deliberated. “If there’s a connection,” he said at last, “we’ll find it. We’re too deep into this now to back off.”

  “Is that the reason behind tonight’s little performance?”

  He pulled up to the curb in front of her house and shut off the engine. “Tonight,” he said, stretching out his long legs, “I wanted to deliberately provoke somebody. I just wish to Christ I knew who it was.”

  “All signs,” she said, “point to my erstwhile father-in-law. The scumbag.”

  Still rubbing his chin, he said, “Mmph.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know exactly.”

  She turned, folded a leg beneath her, and studied him. “You don’t think Kevin’s the one?”

  “I honestly don’t know. A father killing his only son. A crime of passion, committed in a moment of rage? What possible motive could he have?”

  She thought about it. Except for the blood that ran in their veins, what did Michael and Kevin McAllister really have in common? Michael knew exactly what his father was, and had been determined not to turn out like him. Or like Neely, for that matter. He might have inherited his father’s looks, but the resemblance had ended there. Michael McAllister had been his own man, determined to make his way in this world not because of the McAllister name, but in spite of it.

  “What do you make of Neely and Shep?” he said.

  “It gives me the creepy-crawlies just to think about it. Do you suppose they’re doing it? Or just yearning after each other, committing the sin of lust in their hearts, like Jimmy Carter?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t imagine Neely messing up that perfect hair.”

  “Or taking off the pearls. I bet she wears them in the shower.”

  Dryly, he said, “Now there’s a picture worth a thousand words.”

  “You know,” she said, “Clara says she tried several times to tell Shep Henley that I was innocent, but he refused to listen. Couldn’t that be construed as obstruction of justice?”

  “He’s a cop. As far as he was concerned, he already had his killer, tried and convicted and sent up the river. Who’s going to listen to a batty old broad like Clara? Besides, can you imagine the headache he’d have gotten if he’d believed her, and started snooping around in a case that was already settled? It was a hell of a lot easier to just leave it alone.”

  She pursed her lips. “And leave me in prison,” she said.

  “Welcome to the American justice system.”

  “How can you sleep at night, DiSalvo, knowing
you’re a part of something so corrupt?”

  “I’m one of the good guys,” he said. “I put the bad guys in jail. Simple, first-grade logic.” He moved across the bench seat toward her, resting his arm on the back of the seat, near her shoulder. “By the way,” he said, his voice low and intimate and silken, “I meant to tell you earlier.” He toyed with the locket at her throat. “You’re looking pretty damn spectacular tonight, McAllister.”

  It was astonishing, the way just a few words from him, spoken in that particular tone of voice, could send goosebumps racing up her arms and down her belly. In a husky voice, she said, “You think so?”

  He reached out a hand to cup her cheek. His thumb, whisper-soft against her skin, moved sensually against her bottom lip, and she went limp in all those dark, fluid woman-places that only he could touch. “Nick,” she whispered.

  His mouth was soft on hers, and she kissed him with fierce eagerness, hands tangled in his dark hair as his tongue slithered against hers with exquisite delight, sparking a fire that burned, dark and throbbing, inside her. His hand slid beneath her skirt and his knuckles brushed the tender flesh at the inside of her thigh. She moaned softly and bit at her bottom lip. “Stop,” she gasped. “We’re right on the street where people can see us.”

  “They can’t see a thing,” he said. “Besides, the whole town knows we’re sleeping together. We might as well give ‘em something to talk about.”

  “Minnie Rawlings,” she said, “probably has her infrared binoculars…trained on us…even as we speak.”

  He skimmed fingertips up and down her inner thigh, causing her stomach to convulse in excitement. “You have the most spectacular legs,” he whispered against her throat, “that I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh, Christ, Nick,” she breathed, “don’t.”

  Beneath the flowered skirt, his hand reached the warm spot between her thighs. Knuckles brushing against the crotch of her panties, he said, “You don’t like it?”

  “You know I like it.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  He slipped a finger inside the panties, inside the place where she was already hot and wet and ready for him, and she moaned in ecstasy. “How much time do we have,” she said hoarsely, “before Janine sends out the bloodhounds?”

  His mouth grazed the flesh left bare by the scoop neck of her blouse. “Enough,” he said.

  “Let’s go in the house.”

  “I was just about to suggest that.”

  The instant the door shut behind them, he shoved her up against it, his mouth hungry on hers as he pressed his rock-hard pelvis against the soft, yearning hollow between her legs. Still kissing, he peeled off her blouse while she unbuckled his belt and tugged free the tails of his shirt. Across the living room floor and up the stairs, their clothes blazed a random trail of unorthodox pairings. Her panties and one of his socks in a puddle near the door. The other sock tangled with her bra, dangling from the fireplace screen. His belt coiled on the stairs next to the flowered skirt that huddled perilously close to the edge.

  He crawled onto the bed and pulled her down with him. Her blood running dark and sultry, she knelt over him and took him inside her, thick and hot and exquisitely hard. He groaned in utter defenselessness. Fluid and boneless, she closed her eyes and let her body lead her through the firestorm.

  His hands found her hips and his fingers sank into her tender flesh as he guided her movements, matched them to his own rhythm. Wave after wave of pleasure slammed into her, buoyed her up and took her higher and ever closer to the jagged edge of madness. “Look at me, Kat,” he demanded. “Open your eyes.”

  His eyes had gone soft and blurry with passion. Kathryn tilted forward and he cupped her face in his hands, and they watched each other, witnessed each other’s vulnerabilities, each other’s strengths, each other’s emotions. She’d never trusted a man this completely before, but Nick DiSalvo was no ordinary man. “Let it take you,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Let it take you while I watch.”

  When her body splintered, she cried out his name as fire raged upward from her core, stole away all her oxygen, tore through her from the center outward, leaving her limp and bruised and gasping. She fell onto him, spent and shuddering, and watched his face as he followed her over the edge. Nick looped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. Her heart was beating so hard she thought it might explode, and her breasts were squashed unceremoniously against that solid chest.

  Time passed. Eventually, she cleared her throat. Cleared it again. “Well,” she said.

  “Shut up, McAllister,” he said gruffly. “Don’t spoil it for me with your mouth.”

  Hiding a smile, she closed her eyes. After a while, she said, “Nick?”

  “Mmph.”

  “Do you think the Judge had something going with Wanita?”

  “Holy mother of Moses, McAllister. We just shared the most incredible sex that I’ve ever experienced in my entire thirty-five years, and you’re already thinking about Wanita? I must be losing my touch.” He sighed dramatically. “At least it was good for me.”

  “Fishing for compliments, are you, DiSalvo?”

  He lifted a strand of her hair and played with it. “A man likes to know when he’s done his job well.”

  She took his face between her hands, looked into those dark eyes. “You have done your job,” she said, “very, very well.”

  “Does that mean I can quit the day job now?”

  She raised both eyebrows. “So you can become a gigolo?”

  “It’s a dirty job,” he said, “but somebody has to do it.”

  “Sorry,” she said, “but I’m not sharing you, DiSalvo. Not until I’m good and done with you, anyway.”

  He rolled her onto her back and kissed her. “You’re a royal pain in the ass,” he said with a tenderness that was at odds with his words.

  She ran her fingertips up the back of his neck and into his hair. “You’ve already told me,” she reminded him. “I complicate your life.”

  He flicked aside the gold locket, kissed the spot where it had lain. “I shouldn’t even be here,” he said. “I have a daughter waiting for me at home.”

  Her hand paused in its stroking. “You’re free to leave,” she said, “any time you want to.”

  “That’s the problem, McAllister. I don’t want to.”

  For four years, finding Michael’s killer had been the only thing she thought about, the only thing she cared about, the only thing that mattered in her life. The need for justice had burned in her with obsessive fury. Now that she was so close, she couldn’t allow anything, not even her feelings for Nick DiSalvo, to get in her way. “You have to go home, Nick,” she said. “You can’t leave Janine alone.”

  “What the hell is this between us, Kathryn? Because it’s not just sex. We both know that. There’s something happening here, something that quite frankly scares the bejesus out of me. I’m coming damn close to saying something I can’t take back.”

  Her stomach turned over. “Don’t say it,” she begged. “Please don’t say it.”

  “You’re inside me, Kat, like an itch I just can’t scratch. But what happens after this is all over with? What then?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  His mouth thinned. “You’re a hard woman,” he said.

  “Not hard. Just determined.”

  His eyes stayed on hers, searching deep, gauging, assessing. And then he rolled away from her. “I have to go,” he said.

  She threw on a pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt and followed him downstairs. In the living room, in the dark, she stood by while he dressed silently, swiftly, every harsh, angry movement tearing holes in her heart. “Nick,” she pleaded. “Don’t be mad.”

  Curtly, he said, “I’m not.”

  “Look,” she said, “you have your job to do, and I have mine. You’ve known that right from the start.”

  He sat on the couch and yanked viciously at his shoelaces. “I don’t need this,” he said. “I
don’t need any of this.”

  “And you think I do?”

  “I think you’re deep into something that’s over your head, Kat, and you don’t know how to handle it.”

  Furious, she said, “I think I’ve done quite nicely at handling it. I tracked down Ruby Jackson, didn’t I? And nobody’s killed me yet.”

  He got up from the couch, stood there looking at her. “I wasn’t talking about the murders,” he said. “I was talking about us.”

  And without even reminding her to lock up, he slammed out the door.

  In disbelief, she stared at the closed door. And then, propelled by fury, she stormed across the room and flung it open. “Damn you, Nick DiSalvo!” she shouted. And then she froze as the shadowy figure who crouched on the ground beside the rear wheel of her Toyota looked up. Moonlight illuminated his face and flashed off the blade of the knife he’d just used to slash her tire. “Son of a bitch,” Nick said.

  The intruder dropped the knife. Like a bullet, he sprang to his feet and took off, with Nick in hot pursuit. In the kitchen, Elvis began barking. Kathryn grabbed her flashlight from the hall closet, stepped into her shoes, and sprinted after them. Footsteps pounded in the darkness ahead of her as they ran into the shadows beneath the trees. “Come back here, you little son of a bitch!” Nick said, and then they crashed into the underbrush. She followed them, flashlight beam bobbing crazily, kudzu vines slapping at her face, her heart thundering as she heard a grunt and then saw the two of them rolling, flattening underbrush, grunting and cussing as they struggled.

  “Let me go, you motherfucker!” the intruder said. “Let me go!”

  “You sleazy little punk!” Chest heaving with the effort, Nick pinned the intruder’s arms to the ground and straddled his chest, grabbed him by the shoulders and began shaking him.

  She finally reached them. “Nick!” she said, training the flashlight beam on the pair. “Nick, stop it!”

  He ignored her, just kept shaking. “Nick!” she shouted, grabbing at his shoulder and yanking him around. “Stop it! He’s just a boy!”