Just for a second, her pretty lips parted, and his heart revved in his chest like a dirt-track race car. And then she hit him with her fake, hostessy smile, and he knew he'd been imagining that brief moment of regret.
"That's too bad," she said.
"I'll get over it," he drawled.
So, they both were lying. He wasn't about to admit his breath still backed up in his lungs every time he looked at her.
"Goodbye, Maddox."
She didn't have to tell him twice.
* * *
Chapter 2
«^»
Maddox heard the familiar blip of a police siren behind him. He glanced over his shoulder just as the squad car coasted to the curb and stopped, blue lights flashing. Well, damn. He turned slowly, resisting the impulse to put his hands up.
The door opened. A big, dark, uniformed cop got out and walked toward him with a wide smile.
"Cut me a break," Maddox said.
Patrol Officer Tom Creech, former third-string fullback for the Cutler Cougars, grinned all over his broad face. "Hey, Mad Dog. Heard you were back. Can I give you a lift?"
Maddox caught himself angling to leave his gun arm free and forced himself to relax. He wasn't jumpy. He did not feel vulnerable, whatever the department shrink said. He was fine.
"Hey, Creepy. Nope. I'm just going for a walk."
"Actually…" The patrolman shifted his weight from foot to foot. "I thought maybe I could give you a ride to the station house. Your old man wants to see you."
"The chief? Hell, he can talk to me at home."
"He wants to talk to you now."
Maddox raised both eyebrows. "And he sent you to bring me in?"
Tom rolled his shoulder uncomfortably.
Maddox swore.
His high school teammate grinned, friendly as the Newfoundland dog he resembled. "Hey, come on, Mad Dog, it'll be like old times. Remember when we stuck potatoes up Reverend Dean's tailpipe, and your father had us picked up on eight counts of criminal mischief?"
"The good old days," Maddox said dryly.
"That's right."
He clamped his jaw. Hell, it wasn't Creepy's fault the chief's idea of a cozy father-son chat was to drag his butt down to the station house in a squad car. "Fine. I'll go quietly."
"Great." Tom beamed. Maddox reached for the passenger side door. "Um … you got to get in the back, old buddy."
The patrolman's smile faded under Maddox's hard stare.
"Sorry," Tom said. "Department regulations."
"Screw department regulations. It's been twelve years since I've ridden in back."
"Right," Tom said hastily. "Front seat it is."
He eased his bulk behind the wheel and waited until Maddox slid in beside him before starting the patrol car. "Guess you're kind of a celebrity now."
Maddox clenched his jaw. "That's one way to look at it."
"Saved those kids' lives, the paper said."
At the cost of one of their own. Maddox stared through the windshield at the gold and green bars of sunlight sliding across the hood. "Drop it, Creepy."
Tom sent him a surprised look. "Sure. Say… You hear the Cougars took the division title again last year?"
Maddox roused himself to a show of interest. "Big deal around here, huh?"
"I'll say. Your father damn near closed the town for a day. 'Course, it's not like when you and Rob won that state championship."
Maddox knew what was expected of him. Not to deliver would have been like kicking his hound dog. He'd been accused of many things, but cruelty to animals wasn't one of them. "It was a team effort, Creepy. You all did a good job."
Tom's grin spread from one big ear to the other. "Yeah, I guess we did. Remember that party afterward at Betty Lou Burton's when you and Robbo spiked the punch and I spent the whole night throwing up in the bathroom? Man, those were the days. Remember that night?"
He remembered. The vision of Ann's hurt face rose up to haunt him. He'd come to Cutler to escape his demons. He'd forgotten the power of old ghosts.
* * *
His father's office hadn't changed in twelve years. Hell, neither had his father. The cinder-block walls were still painted dingy white. The North Carolina Agriculture calendar still hung beside a photo of the chief standing with the governor and a yellowed newspaper headline proclaiming Cutler Cougars Roar. Files crammed the tops of the cabinets. A dying vine—presumably not the same one—still decorated the windowsill.
Chief Wallace Palmer stood behind his desk, straight and imposing as the Confederate soldier in front of the county courthouse, a big-shouldered, red-faced, gray-haired old son of the South.
"I still think you made a mistake, leaving Atlanta under suspicion."
Maddox slouched in the brown vinyl monstrosity that was some bureaucrat's idea of an office chair. "The investigation is closed," he said evenly. "It was a clean shoot. My job isn't compromised."
"But your name is."
He had no answer for that. His father was right.
"You ought to get back to work," the chief stated definitively.
Right again. Unfortunately, the department didn't see it that way.
Maddox studied the burning tip of his cigarette. "Yeah, well, I've got six more weeks before I can go back on the street. Department policy."
The chief clasped his hands behind his back. "Don't you have somebody waiting for you back in Atlanta? What about that girl you were seeing?"
"Sandra?"
"Was that her name?"
Maddox drew in a long, slow drag of his cigarette and released it carefully. "That's over."
"She didn't like the publicity?"
"No. She liked it too much. I didn't like reading the details of my private life in the Journal-Constitution."
The chief snorted. "I saw that one. 'Smolders with suppressed energy on and off the job,' wasn't that it? Some damn fool sent me a clipping."
Father and son exchanged a brief, rare look of shared disgust.
And then the chief shifted his stance. "Well, you're too old to loaf around the house for the next six weeks. What are you planning to do with yourself?"
Maddox released another breath, watching the curling smoke, surprised that the old man could still get to him. What the hell had he been thinking, running home to lick his wounds? The chief had always been able to smell blood. "Get drunk?"
The chief glared. "It's not funny, MD."
"I'm not laughing."
"As long as you're here you can make yourself useful. Put some time in for me."
"You're joking," Maddox said flatly.
The chief's red face turned redder. Just his luck high blood pressure ran in the family. "No. Bud Williams's wife got a teaching job over in Wake County, and they're moving. I need somebody to take his place."
"Not me. I told you, I'm on leave."
"And I'm a detective short."
More than anything else, Maddox wanted to forget the events of the last two months in the reassuring routine of the street. He was a cop, damn it. A good one. He wanted to get back to it. But not in Cutler, where every second citizen remembered him as a seventeen-year-old juvenile delinquent. And not for his father.
"Leaving you with a force of—what? Five? You'll manage. This town is hardly a major crime center."
"Listen, Mr. Big City Cop, we have a situation here. We've got a big felony trial in a few weeks, and I'm not satisfied with the direction the D.A.'s office is taking."
"What kind of situation?"
"Case came up last year. I thought I told you."
Oh, right. He'd had maybe two phone calls from his father in the past nine months, and a card at Christmas. Maddox had always figured the lack of contact was one of the advantages of working for the Atlanta PD. Maybe he'd been wrong.
He shook out another cigarette and lipped it from the pack. "Why don't you remind me?"
The chief hesitated. "It's a stupid thing."
He looked up from lighting his smoke, his
attention caught by his father's unusual indecision.
"It's all on account of that outsider getting involved, that Boston fellow who married Val Cutler. He got Ed Cutler over at the bank all stirred up, and now we've got a bunch of bleeding hearts targeting a man for something he didn't do." The chief stared at him fixedly. "You should know what that's like."
Oh, no. He'd had enough experts poking around in his feelings, trying to stir up some big confession of resentment toward the shooter, the department, the media. He wasn't going there again. Especially not with the old man.
He pocketed his lighter. "Not really," he said coolly. "I never denied I shot that boy. So, who's the target?"
"Rob Cross."
That was a kicker. Rob Cross was the John Kennedy of Cutler, North Carolina. One of the good guys, one of the golden boys, with a "just folks" smile and a steady job at the bank. His people knew your people and your people wished you were him.
Maddox swallowed an old resentment. "I saw Ann Cross at Val's place," he said slowly. "She told me they were separated."
The chief smiled without warmth or humor. "Really? And did she also mention she's helping frame her husband for attempted murder?"
"What the hell are you talking about?"
The chief tapped together a stack of papers, straightening the edges of an already squared file.
"Ann Cross stole deposit money from that restaurant where she works. Rob accepted the deposits at the bank, but he says he didn't know what she was doing. She claims he was behind the whole thing. Whatever, they both got felony convictions—him for embezzlement, her for larceny."
It was like hearing the Tooth Fairy was wanted for breaking and entering. Maddox scowled. For years, he'd squashed the temptation to ask after Annie. He'd cut off conversations at the mention of her name. This was a hell of a way to catch up.
He wasn't surprised anymore by the stupid, criminal things people did. But Annie… He didn't want her to be guilty. Of course, the way things had been running for him lately, that alone was cause enough to believe she could be.
"You're still talking theft, not murder," he said. "Well, now, the restaurant owner alleges Rob did more than steal from her. They have a history, you know, Rob and Val MacNeill. She says that during their latest … disagreement, he knocked her out and set fire to the place."
"Damn. Did he?"
"Look, everybody knows Rob has a problem with his temper. He admits to hitting the MacNeill girl. But arson? What did he have to gain?"
The thought of the big blond athlete using his fists on any woman burned in Maddox's gut. But he kept his voice cool. "He still at the bank?"
"No," the chief said. Reluctantly, Maddox thought. "The bank president is Val's father. Of course he couldn't keep Rob on after he was charged."
"So, where does Ann come into the picture?"
"Witness for the prosecution."
Maddox froze. "She was there?"
"No, she's some kind of character witness. Trying to pin all the blame on Rob. Rob," the chief repeated, shaking his head in disbelief.
The whole thing stunk like three-day-old roadkill. "Why would she do that?"
"Who knows why those Barclays do anything? She and Rob are getting divorced. She's mad at him, is my guess."
"The DA. still wouldn't go forward with the case without proof."
"You defending her, MD?"
He grabbed for his patience. "No. I'm just saying—"
His father looked him over scornfully. "I always thought you were sweet on her."
"Bit late for you to be taking an interest in my love life, Dad. Besides, what's that got to do with anything?"
"Nothing. It should have nothing to do with it. You've got your problems, son, but I always hoped you were a good-enough cop not to let personal feelings interfere with the job."
There was just enough truth laced in the accusation for it to sting. Maddox blew smoke deliberately. "You mean, like you do?"
"Don't get cute with me, MD. I've been doing my job since before you were born. Rob Cross has been arrested and charged. But as I see it, I have a duty to use my judgment in this or any other investigation."
"And your judgment tells you Rob didn't do it?"
"That's what I want you to find out."
"No."
"You could help Rob," his father insisted. "He needs you."
That appeal had worked in high school when Maddox was a center and his biggest goal in life had been protecting Rob's quarterback butt. He wasn't in high school any longer.
He raised his eyebrows. "'Go, Cougars'? I don't think so."
"Damn it, boy, you were teammates. State champions, thanks to him."
"That always meant more to you than me."
The chief leaned both hands flat on his desk. "It still counts for something."
"Not to me, it doesn't."
"Don't you feel any loyalty? What kind of man are you?" Sharpshooter Hero. Kid-Killer Cop. The headlines still burned.
Maddox regarded the smoldering eye of his cigarette before he dropped it, grinding the butt into the floor. "I'm a cop on suspension. And I left my badge back in Atlanta."
Before he was out of the building, he lit up another cigarette. He'd picked a hell of a time to play at coming home. He wasn't about to give up smoking.
* * *
"Cool. It's a new Droid Zone book," nine-year-old Mitchell said with unusual enthusiasm. He plucked the paperback from the rack as they stood in the checkout line. "Can I get it?"
Ann wanted to say no. The unexpected meeting with Maddox had upset her. There were too many years and too great a distance between her old dreams and her new reality. She could barely afford toilet paper this week.
She brushed her son's fine, straight hair out of his eyes. He needed a haircut too. They couldn't afford that either. "How much?"
He consulted the cover. "Three ninety-nine," he said hopefully. "Please?"
Ann sighed. The long summer stretched before them. Once the empty days had been filled with the wide, flat waters of the club swimming pool, and the corner room with its computer and its bunk for a friend to sleep over when Rob was away, and the big-screen TV in a long room chilled to movie-theater cool.
There had been no swimming pool this summer, no computer and only one trip to the movies. Mitchell had spent the two weeks since school let out alternating between the hot public day camp in a dusty park and their cramped two-bedroom bungalow.
Oh, God, what if she'd been wrong? She'd wanted so many things for her son, and now she was balking at the cost of a book.
"Dad could get it for me," Mitchell suggested.
Of course he could. But he wouldn't. Rob didn't encourage his son's flights of imagination. Ann straightened her spine. "No, we'll get it today. Your dad is taking you to basketball practice on Thursday."
Mitchell lowered Droid Zone 11: The Resurgence. "Do I have to go?"
Rob insisted that his skinny, bookish son participate in at least one team sport. Ann wasn't interested in raising this generation's Golden Boy Cross. But she accepted that Mitchell needed some masculine bond with his father. Besides, she couldn't afford to violate their custody agreement.
"Well, your daddy and I agreed he could see you one night a week. Don't you have fun there?"
"It's all right," Mitchell said.
Meaning, Ann guessed, it's - awful - but - I - don't - want - to - worry - you. Guilt squeezed her heart.
"Mitchell, honey…"
He ducked his head. "Come on, Mom. The cashier's waiting."
Sighing, she nudged her cart along the narrow aisle. A front wheel jammed against the magazine rack, and when she jostled the cart to free it, her purse swung from her shoulder and knocked a candy display off the counter.
"Mo-om!" Mitchell wailed, embarrassed.
"Got it," a rough male voice said behind her.
She turned, her face already hot. Maddox Palmer stood in line behind her, his hands steadying the box of candy dispensers and his
hooded eyes amused.
Her mouth dried. Oh, no, she thought. She didn't want to recognize the speeding of her heart or the flutter in her stomach. Feelings like that could turn on you. Men could turn on you.
"I'm sorry," she blurted.
"No problem," he said.
Mitchell was watching, his green eyes guarded. Growing up with the echoes and bumps-in-the-night that marked his parents' marriage had made him sensitive to undertones.
She touched his forearm, hiding her own misgivings to reassure him. "My son, Mitchell. Mitchell, this is Mr. Palmer. He … I…" He shot that boy and the department fired him. "We went to school together," she finished weakly.
Maddox nodded. "Hey."
"Nice to meet you," Mitchell mumbled politely.
Ann lifted a plastic gallon of milk onto the moving belt. "What are you doing here?"
Maddox grinned at her, that rare, invitation-to-trouble grin he'd turned on her in seventh grade, and she almost forgot to be afraid. "In the grocery store? Buying groceries."
She glanced back at his cart. Beer, bread and cigarettes humped together with a roll of paper towels and a carton of orange juice. "You don't eat much," she observed.
"I can't cook much."
She smiled faintly. "That would explain the cereal and peanut butter."
"I eat out a lot," he said defensively.
"I imagine you have to."
He shrugged. "Don't you? Working in a restaurant and all."
Val encouraged Ann to take her meals at Wild Thymes, but she, resisted accepting charity. And she couldn't afford anything else. She shook her head, letting her hair veil her expression. "I don't work dinners very often. And I like to cook."
"Yeah? What does she make?" he asked Mitchell.
Put on the spot, Mitchell shuffled. "Well…"
Rob would have snapped at her son to speak up. Maddox just waited, like one of those Catholic priests. Or a cop.
"Tacos," Mitchell managed to say at last. "She makes good tacos. And spaghetti and hot dogs and stuff like that."
Cheap meals. A far cry from the beef and three sides Rob had expected on the table every night. She waited for Maddox to make some disparaging comment.
"Sounds good. Maybe I should come to your house for dinner."
MAD DOG AND ANNIE Page 2