by Tami Hoag
“Richard.” She groaned his name, disgusted with him and with herself.
She never failed to feel dirty and cheap after one of their little assignations. And she never failed to succumb to his charm the next time he came around. It was one of life's little cycles she couldn't seem to get out of. Like her period, she hated it but was always relieved when it arrived. That was about how she felt regarding Richard.
He had shown up on her back doorstep at eight-thirty, unannounced, unexpected, urgent. And she had taken him to her bed without so much as saying hello.
She grabbed his wrists now as his fingers slid into the tangle of dark curls at the apex of her thighs. He had broad hands with short, thick fingers and uncommonly well-kept fingernails. He hadn't bothered to remove either the wedding ring Susie Jarvis had put on his finger or the watch Jolynn had given him on their own fifth wedding anniversary.
“Now is not the time,” she said, trying to pry his hands off her body.
“Don't say that,” he grumbled, pouting. “Never say that to me when Susie's out of town.”
“I'm afraid your wife chose the wrong day to go on a shopping spree,” she said with venom. She couldn't help but resent Susie Jarvis Cannon. Susie had money. She had a nice house, a new car that more than likely ran on all cylinders. She had Jolynn's husband. Not that he was worth much out of bed. It was the principle of the thing that galled Jolynn. Susie had it all.
God, she really would have it all now that her father was dead. That Jarrold Jarvis was Susie's father hit Jolynn like an unpleasant surprise. She supposed she should have felt an ounce of sympathy toward the girl, but she didn't. She doubted Susie would grieve much on her way to the bank to pick up her inheritance.
Pushing herself away from the bed, out of Rich's reach, she grabbed up a wrinkled blue shirt from the Cedar Lanes bowling alley and thrust her arms into the sleeves. Giving up, Rich settled back against the metal headboard that was made to look like genuine walnut. It gave a hollow thump as his weight dented a curve into it. He lit a cigarette as he watched her dress, his eyes lingering on every curve she covered, his gaze disturbingly detached.
Jolynn told herself she imagined the coldness. Then she told herself she was used to it, that she expected it, that it didn't affect her. She had sex with him only because it was easy and habitual; it wasn't as though she were still in love with him or anything.
She pulled her jeans on and sucked in a breath so she could close the button and zipper. She had the kind of figure that had regrettably gone out of fashion with poodle skirts—full breasts, well-rounded hips that had rounded a little more in the five years since her divorce. She was thirty-three and her metabolism was slowing down in direct proportion to the increase in her appetite for junk food. The extra weight added a fullness to her rectangular face that had the benefit of making her look younger than she was. A person had to peer closely to see the tiny lines of stress that had begun to fan out beside her eyes and around her kewpie-doll mouth.
“So what's going on?” Rich asked, finally resigning himself to being something other than the center of attention for the moment.
Dragging a brush through her hair, Jolynn glanced at his reflection in the mirror above her dresser. Thirty-nine, a native son of Still Creek, he was handsome and he still radiated the arrogance he had cultivated as a high school jock—the high point of his life to date. He sat back in her bed as if he owned it, his straw-colored hair tousled, cigarette dangling beneath his mustache, one hand scratching absently through the thicket of rusty-gold curls on his chest. Elizabeth said he looked a little like Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid, only older and debauched. It was an apt description. There was a trace of meanness about his eyes and weakness in the line of his mouth that a person didn't see until the initial dazzle of golden good looks had worn off. He had told her he was going to run for the state representative's seat this fall. Jolynn wondered how many people would catch on to him before they cast their ballots.
Hate surged through her, as it always did when she looked at Rich and saw him for what he really was—the bastard who'd dumped her for a more advantageous marriage, then had the gall to come around expecting her to fall at his feet . . . which she did, again and again.
“Someone killed your dear old daddy-in-law tonight,” she said bluntly, reaching for a spray bottle of Charlie on the cluttered dresser top. She spritzed herself generously, hoping to camouflage the scent of sex that lingered on her. Her eyes never left the mirror.
“No,” Rich murmured, his face registering shock, but not much in the way of remorse. He set his cigarette aside in the overflowing ashtray on the nightstand, but didn't move from the bed. “Killed him? Huh. I'll be a son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, you are. I'd stay to console you,” Jo said dryly, grabbing her purse off the dresser, “but I've got a job to do.”
“I'd think your new boss would want to take this one,” he said. “She's the hotshot headliner from Atlanta, right? I'd think she'd be right out there to grab all the glory herself.”
Jo gave him the same look she gave meat that had overstayed its welcome in her refrigerator. “All that thinking could tax your brain, Rich. I don't want you to hurt yourself, but if you'd think again, you might figure out that nobody working on the Clarion is going to get any glory unless we're hit and killed by a news van from Minneapolis.”
“Then why go?” he said, holding his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and taking a deep drag off it. The smoke he exhaled briefly wreathed his head in gray, then drifted up to add another layer of grime to the ceiling.
Jolynn looked at him with utter disgust, shaking her head in disbelief at her own stupidity for staying tangled up with him. “You just don't get it, do you, Richard? Some of us don't have wealthy wives to mooch off. Some of us take pride in doing a job. I happen to be good at what I do.”
“Yeah,” he sneered. “Too bad nobody gives a damn.”
She flinched as if he'd struck her. He had always known just where to stick the barb to make it hurt the most; it was one of the few things he really excelled at. Pain bled through her. Her hazel eyes narrowed to slits. “You jerk.”
She grabbed the first thing her hand fell on and flung it at him as hard as she could. He fended off the plastic container of Cover Girl face powder with his hands, knocking it aside and sending a mushroom cloud of fine dust into the air.
“Jesus, Jolynn!”
He hauled himself naked from the bed, choking on the combination of smoke and powder, half tripping as the sheet tangled around his knees. Jo turned and made a dash for the bedroom door, but was caught just shy of getting her hand on the doorknob. A strong arm banded across her midsection, and she was pulled back into the curve of Rich's body as he bent over her. She struggled to get away—from Richard, from herself, from her dumpy little bedroom in her dumpy little house.
“Come on, Jolynn,” he cajoled, his mustache brushing the shell of her ear, scratchy and soft like the edge of an old shaving brush. He spewed out platitudes with the ease of long practice and little sincerity. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I just don't want you to leave, baby.”
“Tough shit. I'm going,” she snapped, sniffing back tears. She may have had no pride when it came to sleeping with him, but she damn well wouldn't cry in front of him. She shrugged him off and took another step toward the door.
“I'll be here when you get back,” he murmured.
She hesitated with her hand on the tarnished brass knob, dredging up the nerve she never seemed to find when he showed up on her doorstep. “Don't bother.”
FIVE
“YOU'D BETTER WAIT IN THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE.”
Lorraine Worth grasped Elizabeth firmly by the elbow and propelled her through the maze of gray metal desks toward the door of Dane Jantzen's private lair. Behind them and beyond the incessant ringing of the phone, Elizabeth could hear a commotion in the outer hall and guessed that some of the press had decided to stake out the courthouse, to lay in wait
for the sheriff. Lorraine looked extremely peeved at the prospect of having to deal with them, her thin lips pressing into a grim white line, penciled brows slashing down above her cat-eye glasses like dark bolts of lightning. Without another word the dispatcher hustled Elizabeth into the office, thrust a cup of black coffee into her hand, and bolted back for her station, swinging the door shut behind her.
Elizabeth set the coffee aside and dug a cigarette out of her purse. A brass plaque on the desk shone up at her under the glare of the fluorescent light, the words THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING etched in bold black. She flipped it facedown and lit up. Jantzen could thank someone else for not smoking. After what she'd been through, she damn well deserved a cigarette at the very least.
The lighter she used was wafer-thin, twenty-four-carat gold, engraved on the flat side with the words “To B from E with Love”—one of the small prizes she had managed to get away with when Brock had told her to move out of their penthouse apartment in Stuart Tower. The Nikon now reposing in the visitor's chair with its hideously expensive Hasselblad lens pointing at the ceiling was another. Small victories.
It wasn't that she approved of stealing. She didn't. Beneath her veneer of practical cynicism she was basically a morally upstanding sort of person. What she believed in was justice. But sometimes a person had to make her own. Brock had screwed her eight ways to Sunday in the divorce. She'd come away from the marriage battered and bloodied emotionally. A lighter and a camera didn't seem like much in the way of compensation, but they helped a little.
Trying not to think about it, she prowled around Dane Jantzen's office, the Virginia Slim smoldering in her right hand. She paused in her pacing long enough to bring it to her lips and take a deep, calming drag. She would have sold her soul for a tumbler of the forty-two-year-old malt whiskey Brock had specially flown in from Scotland—of which she had a case in her kitchen cupboard—but the best the dispatcher had been able to manage was coffee. Lorraine Worth probably didn't approve of strong drink; she had that kind of tight-ass Baptist look about her.
Elizabeth eyed the coffee cup perched on the corner of the sturdy oak desk and frowned. Caffeine was the last thing she needed. She wanted nothing more than a long, hot bath, the comfort of her bed, and a few hours of blessed oblivion. But her desires lingered out on the far horizon, shimmering like a mirage. What had already been an endless night was only going to get longer. And when the end of it finally came, and she was allowed to go home, there would be little comfort to be had. She didn't have a bathtub; she had a tin shower stall that was as narrow as a coffin and just about as pleasant to be in. She might have hot water, but it would be tinted orange from rusty old pipes. She had her bed, her big brass whorehouse bed, as Brock had called it, but she wasn't counting on getting much in the way of sleep. She doubted she would be able to close her eyes without seeing Jarrold Jarvis spring out of his car like a broken jack-in-the-box.
To distract herself from the disturbing images, she continued her tour of Jantzen's office, studying, looking for clues about the man. Not that she cared on a personal level. From what she'd seen, Dane Jantzen was a grade A bastard. It was just good sense to know your adversary, that was all. She'd learned that lesson the hard way. Besides, she was going to want every detail she could get for her story. She was a journalist now, albeit at a two-bit weekly newspaper in middle-of-nowhere Minnesota, but a journalist nevertheless, and she was determined to do the job right.
The office was unremarkable. Flat white paint on the walls. One large window that would have given a panoramic view of the outer office had the blinds been raised. Industrial-grade gray carpet. A row of black file cabinets. The usual office paraphernalia, including a personal computer. Diplomas and citations hung in simple black frames on one wall. There was nothing here of Dane Jantzen the man, no mounted deer heads or bowling trophies or souvenirs from his football days.
He was neat. Not a good sign. Men who were neat liked to be in control of everything and everyone around them. Brock was fanatically fastidious and he wanted to control the whole blessed world. Dane Jantzen's desk shouted control. Files were labeled, stacked and lined up just so. His blotter was spotless. His pens were all in their little ceramic holder, tips down, arranged left to right by ink color, no doubt.
Beside the telephone was the one personal item in the room—a small wooden picture frame. Dangling her cigarette from her lip, Elizabeth lifted the frame and turned it for a look. The photograph was of a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven, just showing signs of growing into a gangly youth. Brown hair sprouted out the sides of her head in pigtails that hung past her shoulders. She was smiling shyly, crinkling her nose, emphasizing the freckles on her cheeks. Dressed in baggy shorts and a blazing orange T-shirt, she stood on a lawn somewhere holding up a sign done in multicolored Magic Markers that read I LOVE YOU, DADDY.
Elizabeth felt a jolt of surprise and something else. Daddy. “Holy Mike,” she muttered. “Somebody actually married the son of a bitch.”
“She has since seen the error of her ways, I assure you.”
Elizabeth whirled toward the sound of that sardonic voice, managing to look guilty and knock her coffee to the floor all at once.
“Shit! I'm sorry.”
Dane stuck his head out into the hall and calmly called to Lorraine for a towel.
“I was looking for an ashtray,” Elizabeth lied, not quite able to meet his steady gaze as he turned back toward her. She stooped down and grabbed the cup, dabbing ineffectually at the stain on the rug with a wadded-up tissue she'd fished out of the pocket of her jeans.
“I don't smoke.” He hitched at his slacks and hunkered down in front of her, his mouth twitching at one corner with cynical amusement. “It's not good for you.”
She forced a wry laugh, dousing the stub of her cigarette in what coffee was left in the cup. “What is these days besides oat bran and abstinence?”
“Telling the truth, for starters,” he said placidly.
She raised her head and sucked in a breath of air, startled by his nearness. He made no move to touch her, but she could feel him just the same, as if he'd reached out and caressed her.
Instinctively she leaned back, but her fanny hit the front of his desk and she realized he had her trapped. It wasn't a pleasant sensation.
“Telling the truth is my business, Sheriff,” she said, struggling to sound prim instead of breathless.
“Really? I thought you were a reporter.”
“Your towel, Sheriff.”
At Lorraine's stern, disapproving voice, Dane pushed himself to his feet and took the towel the dispatcher thrust at him.
“Thank you, Lorraine.”
“I've told those people out there you have nothing further to say, but they aren't leaving. Apparently they're waiting for her,” she said, stabbing Elizabeth with pointed look.
She rose on shaky legs, setting aside the coffee cup. She opened her mouth to speak, but Dane answered for her.
“She won't have anything to say to them.”
Eyes narrowed in annoyance, Elizabeth propped a hand on her hip. “I can speak for myself, thank you very much.”
“Not to the press you can't.”
“You're not a judge, you can't impose a gag order.”
He smiled slightly, wolfishly. “No, but if you push me far enough, I might be tempted to use one of these towels to accomplish the same job.” He turned to Lorraine, all the blatant sexuality tamed into a look of authority no sane person would have questioned. “Have Ellstrom roust them out of here. I'll be holding a press conference in the morning.”
The secretary nodded smartly and went to do his bidding. Dane dropped the towel to the wet spot on the floor and stepped on it with the toe of his shoe.
“For your information,” Elizabeth said defensively, “I had no intention of talking to them tonight.”
She wrapped her left arm across her stomach and rubbed at her bottom lip with her right thumb—nervously. No question about that. He wondered wha
t she had to be so skittish about. What she had seen? What she had done? The electricity that sizzled in the air between them every time he got a little too close? No, he doubted that last one. She was far too experienced at wrapping men around her pinky to be shy of him. Unless it was his title that frightened her off.
“Is your refusal to talk to them just professional discourtesy, or are you more concerned about incriminating yourself?”
“Why should I be worried about that?” she challenged him. “You haven't charged me with anything. Or is that your cute little way of telling me you've decided I killed Jarvis, then obligingly called 911?” She crossed both arms in front of her. “Please, Sheriff, I hope I don't look that stupid.”
“Naw . . . stupid isn't how you look at all, Mrs. Stuart,” he drawled, sliding into the upholstered chair behind his desk.
Because he knew it would rattle her, he let his gaze glide down her from the top of her head to the wet spot on the knee of her tight jeans where the coffee had gotten her on its way to the floor. He was being an asshole and he knew it, but he couldn't seem to help himself. Elizabeth Stuart was just the kind of woman who brought out the bastard in him—beautiful, ambitious, greedy, willing to use herself to get what she wanted, willing to use anyone she knew. His gaze drifted back up and lingered on the swells of her breasts.
“You ought to about have it all memorized by now, hadn't you?” Elizabeth snapped, dropping her hands to her hips.
He didn't apologize for his rudeness. Elizabeth doubted he ever apologized for anything. He nodded toward the visitor's chair in a silent order for her to sit. He sat behind his desk with a kind of negligent grace, elbows braced on the arms of his chair, fingers steepled, brooding eyes staring at her.
“Have a seat, Mrs. Stuart.”
“Miss,” she corrected him, moving her camera from the chair to the top of a stack of files on the desk. She settled herself and pulled her purse into her lap to hunt for another cigarette.