by Tami Hoag
Dane clenched his teeth against a surge of pure unbridled lust. She had just painted one very erotic picture of herself for him.
Elizabeth glanced away the carnal heat in his gaze. “What happens now?” she asked softly.
A loaded question. His libido had a few suggestions that tried to crowd ahead of good sense. He cursed himself for letting sex drag his thoughts away from his job, but he realized that it was in part a defense mechanism. He didn't want to have to deal with what was to come next. He had grown up in Still Creek, knew most of its three thousand residents by sight if not by name. He didn't want murder to have any part in life here.
“Now, you go home, Miss Lizzie,” he said, rising.
Elizabeth gave him a skeptical look. “Just like that?”
“Don't take any long vacations.”
She rolled her eyes at the cliché as she rose and gathered her belongings.
There was a sharp rap on the door and Lorraine poked her head into the office. “Dane, Amy just called from the Rochester airport.”
His face dropped. “Amy. Shit. I forgot all about her.” He sucked in a deep breath and blew it out as he tunneled his fingers back through his hair. Guilt gave him a swift kick, but there wasn't anything to be done about it. “I can't leave here now. Send Kenny to get her.”
Lorraine pinched her colorless lips together in silent disapproval and retreated.
“Flying in paramours, Sheriff?” Elizabeth asked, shrugging the straps of her camera and purse over her shoulder. “My, my. What will the taxpayers think?”
He gave her a look. “Amy is my daughter.”
The girl with the pigtails. For some reason Elizabeth didn't want to think of him as a father. It made him seem too . . . human. She didn't want to think of him as a single parent because then they would have something in common, and that seemed more dangerous than good.
“See you around, cowboy.” She paused with her hand on the doorknob and gave him a mocking smile. “Before I go, do you have a statement for the local press?”
“Not one you could print in the paper.”
“Any idea who killed him?”
“Oh, I have my ideas, Miss Stuart.” He tapped two fingers to his temple. “I think I'll just keep them up here for now.”
“Careful they don't get lost, sugar.”
Dane watched her saunter out of his office, not caring that she'd gotten the last word for the moment. He had a feeling he wasn't finished with Miss Elizabeth Stuart. Not by a long shot.
SIX
ELIZABETH FLIPPED ON EVERY LIGHT SWITCH SHE passed, needing to flood the house with brightness and chase away all the sinister shadows that lurked in the corners. The back porch light revealed an ancient chest-type freezer with boxes stacked haphazardly on it and on the warped wooden floor around it, most of them loaded with useless things she had yet to unpack since the move. The kitchen light—two rings of fluorescent glare installed during some tasteless era twenty or thirty years previous—illuminated a good-size room that was hung with peeling orange and yellow wallpaper in a fruit motif. The kitchen cupboards had been painted diarrhea brown. Half of them had doors either missing or hanging drunkenly by one hinge.
The room was a disaster area. A half-dozen cereal boxes stood open on the chipped-Formica-topped table. Trace had forgotten to put the milk away. After a good twelve hours sitting open in a warm room, the carton gave off an aroma, sticky-sweet and sour. Dirty dishes were piled in the stainless-steel sink some brainless wonder had installed smack in a corner with no adjacent countertop. The old black-and-orange linoleum had big ragged chunks missing. The floor around the table was littered with a mismatched family of rather large athletic shoes.
“By golly, I'm just gonna have to up and fire that maid.”
Elizabeth cast a wry look in the direction of Deputy Kaufman, who had driven her home, catching him checking his receding hairline in the side of the old chrome toaster. He straightened quickly, his apple-round cheeks flushing pink. A nervous laugh rattled out of him, as if she'd just told a joke in a language he didn't quite comprehend. He was about as transparent as a teenager with his first big crush. Elizabeth sighed inwardly.
“Thanks for seeing me home, Deputy. I imagine you'll be wanting to get on home yourself, as late as it is. Your wife will be worried.”
“Oh, I'm not married,” he rushed to assure her, hope leaping bright in his eyes.
She picked an oven mitt off the table and tapped it thoughtfully against her cheek. “You're not?” She thought the surprise in her voice probably rang true enough for a man. “Well, I can't believe some sweet young thing hasn't scooped you up by now.”
The compliment had Kaufman glowing.
“If I hadn't just plain sworn off men . . .” She let the sentence trail off, shaking her head in regret. The deputy's optimism leaked out of him on a sigh. He seemed to shrink a little before her eyes, like a slowly deflating balloon.
Resigned once again to his protect-and-serve role, he glanced around the room, eyes widening as if he had suddenly come out of a trance and was seeing the mess for the first time. He recovered admirably. “Um . . . would you like for me to look through the house? I couldn't help but notice you didn't have the door locked.”
“Honey, in this dump, I'm lucky I have doors, period.”
What little money she'd had left after the lawyers had finished picking through her divorce settlement had gone to buy the Clarion, with a little left over to put away for Trace's college fund. The Drewes place had been the best she could afford, and what a sad statement that was, she thought, looking up at a ceiling that was cracked into a giant spiderweb of lines. It was a far cry from the penthouse in Stuart Tower, where every detail right down to the toilet paper had been picked out by a covey of decorators. It had taken her weeks to get over the feeling that she shouldn't sit down on any of the chairs or sofas. No, the Drewes place was more like the little cockroach haven she had shared with Trace's daddy back in Bardette half a lifetime ago, where the plaster peeled off the walls like giant scabs and someone had stolen every single doorknob in the place and sold it for scrap. At least she hadn't found any rattlesnakes in this house—yet.
“Oh, it just needs a little fixing up,” the deputy said charitably.
“That's what the real estate agent told me.” Elizabeth's mouth twisted into a grimace as she led the way into a dining room that smelled of eau de dead mouse. “I'm starting to see y'all have a true bent for understatement up here.”
She followed him through the two main floors of the house, declining the trip to the basement. Any fiend willing to hide out down there could have the place all to himself as far as she was concerned. The search turned up nothing but proof that she was a dismal failure as a housekeeper. No one was hiding in her closet or anywhere else. The house was empty. No sign of a murderer. No sign of Trace.
Kaufman blushed clear to the bald spot on the crown of his head as he collected the clothes Jantzen wanted as evidence, digging the provocative red underwear out of the wastebasket with kitchen tongs. He put the ensemble in a brown paper bag and toted it to the back door.
“Are you sure you'll be all right here alone?” he asked, his brows making a little tent above his puppy eyes. “I'm sure I could get my sister-in-law to come out and stay with you. She used to be in the army.”
Elizabeth mustered a smile for him. “No, thanks anyway. My son should be home soon. I'll be fine.”
He hummed a little note of worry and shuffled his heavy shoes. “We'll be driving by now and again, so when you hear a car, don't worry. I'd like to set someone to keep watch all night, but we don't have a very big staff—”
“I understand. Really, I'll be fine.”
He looked a little depressed at the fact that she wasn't begging him to stay and protect her. Men. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Kaufman tipped his head politely, his shy blush returning under the dim porch light. “It was nice meeting you.”
Elizabeth bit the inside of h
er cheek. Lord have mercy, she'd just fallen smack into the twilight zone, hadn't she? Exchanging pleasantries with a law officer after a night of murder and mayhem. It couldn't get much weirder than that. She hoped.
She went and stood at the kitchen window, watching as he drove away. Cute guy. And as sweet as he could be—unlike a certain boss of his, she reflected sourly as his taillights glowed off into the distance. She hadn't heard Dane Jantzen express any concern over her well-being. He hadn't made any effort to come out here and see to her safety or peace of mind. Arrogant jerk.
The silence of the house closed in on her abruptly, like a door slamming. She was alone in a house that gave no pretense of being a home.
Alone. The word gnawed at her stomach. She'd never cared much for being alone, but it seemed that was the way she'd lived most of her life. Alone, if not physically, emotionally. Testimony to the fact that everything she wanted most always seemed furthest out of reach. All she had ever really wanted from as far back as she could remember was to be important to somebody, to be loved, to be needed, but that didn't seem to be in the cards for her.
Her daddy had been lost in his need for her dead mother, ignoring Elizabeth and taking what solace he could find in a whiskey bottle. She'd been nothing more to J.C. than an extra piece of baggage to drag along as he'd drifted from ranch to ranch, looking for a job he could stick with until his next big bender. At seventeen she'd been dazzled by Bobby Lee Breland, third best calf roper on the West Texas rodeo circuit. A green-eyed rascal with the devil's grin and more charm than any man had a right to. And she'd been the light of his life . . . for about six months. Their marriage had lasted through his affairs with Miss Texas Barrel Racing and the Panhandle Stampede Queen only because of Elizabeth's determination that Trace have a father. But she'd drawn the line at second runner-up for the Rattlesnake Roundup Days pageant and moved on with her life—alone, nineteen, with a baby, no friends, and no prospects.
It seemed history was repeating itself, she thought as she pulled herself back to the present and looked around the depressing mess that was her kitchen. Brock had cheated on her, she'd been forced to move on, and here she was, in a place where she knew one person, on her own with a son who had become a stranger to her and a future that looked shaky at best.
Tears threatened as Elizabeth looked around the room, her eyes settling on the wall clock. One A.M. Trace should have been home two hours ago. Dammit, tonight of all nights he could have made it home on time. A man had had his throat slit not much more than a mile from here. Her motherly instincts rushed up to clog her throat with fear for her only child.
The killer had to have been nearby still when she'd found the body. She was sure she'd felt someone watching her, felt the evil in the air. He could be there, in the woods, waiting for another victim. And Trace was out on the road on his bike, alone in the dark.
She turned and stared out the kitchen window, straining her eyes against the blackness, seeing nothing but her own reflection in the glass. And she felt it again—that sense of being watched, that feeling of something malicious and malevolent hanging thick in the air, reaching through the window to run bony fingers down her neck and send shivers skittering over her skin. To the west, lightning spread across the sky like cracks in a windshield. Thunder rumbled like distant cannon fire.
Something in the air. Something heavy and violent.
The hair rose up on the back of her neck and she hugged herself against a chill of sudden vulnerability.
The sound of the screen door slapping against the frame went through her like a gunshot. She wheeled and bolted back against the counter, belatedly wishing she'd gotten out the pistol she'd stolen from Brock's collection. Instinctively she reached for something to protect herself with. Her trembling fingers closed on the handle of a steak knife that had been left on the counter to harden with a crust of A-1 Sauce. She pulled the knife up in front of her as the kitchen door swung open and Trace ambled in.
“Shit,” he drawled, eye's lighting on the knife. “I figured you might ground me, but stabbing seems a little extreme. I'm only a couple hours late.”
Elizabeth's breath left her in a gust that took most of her strength with it. The adrenaline that had had her poised to defend herself rushed out of her, leaving her so weak she thought her knees might buckle. Her heart pounded with a mix of relief and leftover terror.
“You scared the life out of me!” she accused Trace. “A man was killed just down the road from here tonight.”
Trace blinked at her. He had never been one to betray his feelings with his expression. From boyhood he had worn one face—serious, brooding. He had inherited her looks more than his father's—the dark hair, which he wore cropped short and parted on the right, the rectangular face with its strong, stubborn chin and short, straight nose. He even had her mouth. His lips were clear-cut and sensuous, more so the older he got. The contrast between that lush mouth and the lean planes of cheeks that were now seeing a razor several times a week was too sexy for a mother to contemplate. Elizabeth regularly thanked God Trace hadn't inherited his daddy's undying hunger for things high-breasted and nubile, because she couldn't see why any female would want to resist him.
He looked at her now, gray-green eyes steady behind the lenses of his Buddy Holly–style glasses. “Well, I didn't kill him,” he said blandly. His gaze slid pointedly to her hand. “Did you?”
Elizabeth set the knife down on the counter and tried to rub some of the white out of her knuckles. The fear she'd known the instant before her son had opened the door had diluted to embarrassment, as fear often does. She warded the feeling off, turning her mind away from thoughts of murder, switching it to mother mode.
“You were supposed to be home at eleven. What have you been doing?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled, dodging her eyes. His broadening shoulders gave a defensive shrug and he jammed his fists into the pockets of his faded jeans. He was already a couple of inches past Elizabeth's five eight, and was in a transition period between lanky and something sturdier. She doubted any of his shirts would fit him by fall; the white cotton T-shirt he wore now looked so small on him. He shifted from one sneakered foot to the other as she waited for a better answer. “I just been hanging out, that's all,” he said at last.
“Where?”
“In town.”
“With who?”
“No one!” he barked. He shot her a glare, eyes narrowing in resentment, mouth tightening. “What is this—the goddamn third degree? Want to set me under a spotlight and whip me with a truncheon? I wasn't doing anything!”
Elizabeth bit her tongue and crossed her arms over her chest to keep from walking up to him and shaking him. He was lying. Unlike his father, Trace had never been good at it. Not as a little boy who had had a habit of sneaking into the cookie jar before supper or as a teenager who had gotten himself into far worse trouble than spoiling his appetite. Whether he was a poor liar naturally or by design, Elizabeth had never been able to decide, but whatever the case, lies hung on Trace like a cheap suit. He rolled his shoulders now, uncomfortable with the fit.
She wasn't supposed to call him on it. That's what the counselor in Atlanta had said. They would never build a relationship if they couldn't lay a foundation of trust. Elizabeth had wondered more than once if the man had ever had a son who'd dabbled with drugs and been arrested for joy riding. She doubted it. Malcolm Browne, with his anemic looks and candy-striped bow ties, had always struck her as being strange as a three-dollar bill. But for what he'd soaked Brock for the sessions, she had figured he must be good, smart at least. Half of Atlanta's bluebloods had sent their kids to him to get straightened out. Too bad Brock had kicked them out before the counselor had managed to get the kinks out of Trace. Too bad she had been so damn busy trying to fit in with Atlanta society she couldn't keep him from turning into this surly, angry youth in the first place, she thought as guilt reached in and grabbed her by the heart.
“You can do nothing with no one right
here,” she said quietly.
“Oh, yeah, these are such luxurious accommodations.” Trace sneered. “I just love lying around here. Watch the plaster peel. Smell the dead mice rot under the floor. It's a regular laugh a minute.”
Elizabeth sighed and took a step toward him, reaching out with one hand. “I know you're bored, honey—”
“You don't know anything!” He suddenly exploded with all the fury of a bomb, anger rolling out of him in waves. He seemed suddenly bigger, more male, looming over her, his shoulders taut, the muscles in his bare arms standing out in sharp definition as he held his clenched fists waist-high. Behind his glasses his eyes were stormy and burning with frustration.
Elizabeth thought for a millisecond that he might actually strike out at her physically, and the thought sent a tide of nausea surging through her. He had never raised a hand to her. As a little boy he had seldom raised his voice. But his temper had grown unpredictable with the flux of his hormones. And with the use of cocaine. She didn't think he could be using again. He hadn't shown any other signs and didn't have any money. That was probably the best part of being broke; Trace couldn't afford to get into the kind of trouble he'd gravitated toward in Atlanta.
He reined in his burst of emotion and abruptly turned away from her, slamming a cupboard door that bounced back open mockingly. He slammed it twice more, harder and harder, with the same result. Finally he swore and kicked the door below it. “I hate this place!”
He braced his hands against the counter and stood with his back to her, his head down, shoulders heaving as he gulped air. Inadequacy and despair swamped Elizabeth like a tidal wave. This wasn't what she had wanted for them. Even when it had become clear that Brock was going to give her little more than the shit end of the stick in the divorce, she had pictured a better fresh start than this.
It had sounded so good in her head. A small town in Minnesota, a business of her own, working with her old college pal Jolynn. A farmhouse for herself and Trace, a place where they could spend quiet evenings and get to know each other again. Sit on the porch and watch the sun set. Reality was proving to be just one boot in the teeth after another.