by Nora Roberts
“Sure. Have a seat. Want some of the nastiest coffee in Wyoming?”
“I’ll skip it, but thanks. I wondered if you had any news.”
“Well, on the good-news front, everyone in Angel’s Fist’s accounted for. Same for any visitors we’ve had in and around last few days. No missing persons in the area matching the description of the woman you reported.”
“No one’s realized she’s gone yet. It’s only been a day.”
“That may be, and I’ll check on that periodically.”
“You think I imagined it.”
He walked over to the door, shut it, then came back to sit on the edge of his desk. There was nothing in his face but kindness and patience. “I can only tell you what I know. Right now, I know every female in my town is accounted for, and the visitors who’re here, or were here as of yesterday, are alive and well. And I know, because part of my job is to check these things out, that you had a bad time a couple years back.”
“That doesn’t have any bearing on this.”
“Maybe it does. Now I want you to take some time and think it all through. It could be you saw a couple of people, just as you said, having an argument. Maybe things even got physical. But you were some ways off, Reece, even with the field glasses. I want you to think if it’s possible both those people walked away.”
“She was dead.”
“Now, seeing as you were across the river, up on the trail, you couldn’t take her pulse, could you?”
“No, but—”
“I went over your statement a couple of times. You took off running, got Brody, went back. Got about thirty minutes there. Isn’t it possible that woman got up and walked off? Maybe still mad, maybe with a few bruises, but alive and healthy?”
The glass wasn’t half empty or half full, Reece thought. It was just a damn glass, and she’d seen it for herself. “She was dead. If she walked off, how do you explain the fact there were no tracks? No sign anyone had been there?”
He didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did that same endless patience was in his tone. It was beginning to crawl up her spine like spiders. “You’re not from around here, and it was your first time on the trail. You were shocked and upset. It’s a long river, Reece. Easy for you to mistake the spot when you got back with Brody. Hell, it could’ve been a half a mile on up.”
“I couldn’t have been that far off.”
“Well, I’ve looked the best I can, but it’s a lot of ground to cover. I went ahead and contacted the closest hospitals. No woman was admitted or treated who matched your description with trauma to the neck or the head. I’ll follow up on that again tomorrow.”
She got to her feet. “You don’t think I saw a thing.”
“You’re wrong. I think you saw something that scared and upset you. But I can’t find a single thing to support you witnessed a homicide. My advice is to let me follow through on this, and you’ve got my word I will. And you put it aside for now. I’m about to head on home, see my wife and kids. I’ll give you a lift.”
“I’d rather walk, clear my head.” She stepped to the door, turned. “That woman was dead, Sheriff. That’s not something I can just put aside.”
When she left, Mardson blew out a breath, shook his head. He’d do all he could do, he thought, and that was all that could be asked of a man.
Now he was going to take his dog and go home, and have dinner with his wife and kids.
10
BRODY GOT HIS beer and tossed a frozen pizza in the oven. When he punched the button on his answering machine, it spit out a message from his agent. The book scheduled for early fall had snagged a very decent book-club deal. Which might call for a second beer with dinner.
Maybe, with a part of his take from it, he’d splurge on a new TV. Plasma. He could hang it over the fireplace. Could you hang plasma screens over a fireplace? Or would the heat screw it up?
Well, he’d find out, because it would be very sweet to stretch out on the couch and watch ESPN on one of those big-ass screens.
But for now, he stood in the open doorway of his kitchen, drinking the beer in his hand while he watched the light soften and the shadows deepen toward evening.
The quiet went down just as smoothly as that first cold beer.
He had work to make up—can’t afford a big-ass plasma TV if you didn’t put in the time at the keyboard. Which meant he’d likely put in a couple hours on his current work-in-progress before he called it a night. Besides, he was looking forward to digging into it.
He had a woman to kill.
Still, over a beer, waiting for his pizza, he could spare the time to think about another woman.
She didn’t go down smooth. Reece Gilmore had too many jagged edges to slide easy into a man. Maybe that’s what made her so intriguing when he hadn’t had any intention of being intrigued. He liked the opposition of her—gutsy and fragile, cautious and rash. People who walked straight down one road got tedious after a while.
Added to it, he couldn’t help but feel they were in thissituation together.
Until they found their way through that situation, it would pay to find out more about her.
He glanced around. His laptop was on the table.
“No time like the present,” he decided, and with another sip of his beer, closed the door.
He booted up, then got the pizza out of the oven. The cutting wheel was, like his coffeemaker, one of his few kitchen essentials. He put the entire pie, cut into four slices, onto a plate, grabbed a couple paper towels and, popping the top on a second beer, considered it dinner.
He doubted it took him any longer than it had taken the sheriff to access background data on Reece. Googling her, he got enough hits to keep him busy, and interested.
He dug up an old article on up-and-coming Boston chefs that featured the then twenty-four-year-old Reece. He was right, he noted as he scanned the photo. She looked better carrying another ten pounds or so. In fact, she looked pretty damn amazing.
Young, vibrant,essential, somehow, grinning into the camera while holding a big blue bowl and a shining silver whisk. The article gave her educational background—a year in Paris added a lot of polish—personalized it with an anecdote about how she’d prepared five-course dinners for her dolls when she was a child.
It quoted both Tony and Terry Maneo, the owners of the restaurant where she’d worked—a couple who’d be dead in a few years. They stated she was not only the jewel of their business but one of the family.
There were other bits and pieces in the article, and a smattering of others. He learned she was orphaned at fifteen, raised from that point by her maternal grandmother. She’d remained single, spoke fluent French and enjoyed entertaining friends, among whom she was apparently renowned for her Sunday brunches.
Adjectives used to describe her wereenergetic, creative, adventurous and, his own previous choice,vibrant.
How would he describe her now? Brody asked himself as he sat back, chewed on pizza. Anal, nervous, determined.
Hot.
There was a splashyBoston Globe feature about her taking the position as head chef for a “wildly popular hot spot known for its American fusion cuisine and convivial atmosphere.”
The standard background/color data was included along with a photo of a more sophisticated-looking Reece wearing her hair up and back—nice neck—and posed in what he assumed would have been the stainless steel glory of her new kitchen in a sexy black suit and mile-high seductress-red heels.
“I’ll always treasure my years at Maneo’s, and everyone I’ve worked with or cooked for there. Tony and Terry Maneo not only gave me my first professional opportunities, but gave me an extended family. While I’ll miss the comfort and familiarity of Maneo’s, I’m thrilled and excited to join the creative team of Oasis. I intend to uphold the restaurant’s high standards—and add a few surprises.”
“Look good enough to eat yourself there, Slim,” he said aloud, scanning back from her quote to her photo.
He checked the date of the article, noted it had been published just about the time he told his editor at theTrib to kiss his ass. When he brought up the first report of the killings at Maneo’s, he saw it was three days after theGlobe feature.
Goddamn lousy deal, all around. Reece was listed as the only survivor, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds and in critical condition. Police were investigating and so on. It spoke of the owners, and the restaurant they’d run for more than a quarter of a century. There were quotes from family and friends—the shock, the tears, the outrage. The reporter used terms likebloodbath, carnage, brutality.
Subsequent articles reported the progress of the investigation—little to none—and Brody could read the frustration of the investigators in every clipped quote.
Funerals and memorial services were reported on for those who’d died. Reece’s condition was moved up to serious. She was reported to be under police protection.
Then it petered out, little by little, the stories moving from front page, above the fold, to page three, and back. There was a small mention, almost an afterthought, when Reece was released from the hospital. There was no quote from her, no photo.
That’s the way it went, Brody mused. News was only news until something else came along. It took juice to get the print, the airtime, and the juice had been wrung out of the Maneo Massacre, as the papers had dubbed it, in under three weeks.
The dead were buried, the killers unidentified, and the single survivor left to pick up what pieces she could from a shattered life.
WHILE BRODY FINISHED his pizza and read about her, Reece filled her little bathtub with hot water and an indulgent squirt of drugstore bath foam. She’d taken the aspirin, forced herself to eat some cheese and crackers, with a sprig of grapes to balance it out.
Now she was going to soak, drink her wine and start Brody’s book in the tub. She didn’t want to think about reality, at least not for the next hour. She debated whether or not to close and lock the bathroom door. She’d have preferred to lock it, but the room was so small she’d never be able to handle being closed in that way.
She’d tried it locked a couple of times already and had ended up scrambling out of the tub, dripping and panting, to reopen the door.
The front door was locked, she reminded herself, and the back of a chair under the handle. She was perfectly safe. But after she slid into the tub she had to sit up twice, to strain her body to see around the doorway into the living area. In case. To cock her ears for any sounds.
Impatient with herself, she took two long, slow sips of wine.
“Just stop it. Just relax. You used to love to do this, remember? Sit and soak in a bubble bath with a glass of wine and a book. It’s time to stop scrubbing yourself down in three minutes flat and scrambling out of the shower as if Norman Bates were waiting to hack you to death.
“And oh, forGod’s sake, shut up!”
She closed her eyes, took another sip of wine. Then opened the book.
The first line read:
Some said that Jack Brewster had been digging his own grave for years, but as the shovel bit through the hard winter earth he was a little pissed off to have that comment taken literally.
It made her smile, and hope that Jack wasn’t going to end up in the ground anytime soon.
She read for fifteen minutes before nerves had her scooting up to peer into the living area again. And Reece marked it as a new record. Pleased with herself, she managed another ten before the growing jitters told her she’d had enough.
Next time, she promised herself as she pulled the plug, she’d try for longer.
She liked the book, and that was a relief, she decided. She set it down so she could slather the body cream that matched the bath foam on her skin. She’d get into bed with it, that’s what she’d do. She’d use Brody’s Jack Brewster to close out all the places her mind wanted to go.
She wouldn’t write in her journal, not tonight.
Maybe she’d been upset with Sheriff Mardson when she left his office, but now that she was calmer she had to admit he was doing all he could possibly do.
Whether he believed her or not, he hadn’t been dismissive. Exactly.
So, she was going to do her best to take at least one piece of his advice. She was going to put it aside, just for a few hours.
She pulled on the flannel pants and T-shirt she wanted to sleep in, yanked the pins out of her hair. A small pot of tea, she thought, and an evening with a book.
After putting the kettle on, she tried to drum up some enthusiasm for making a sandwich. Instead she toyed with a menu for the next night.
Red meat, naturally. Maybe a little pot roast with a red wine sauce. She’d have to zip to the market as soon as she could manage a break, slap some marinade together. Easy enough, she thought as she started a list. New potatoes and carrots, fresh green beans if she could find them. A manly meal. Fat buttermilk biscuits.
She could do some stuffed button mushrooms, if time allowed, for an appetizer. And polish it off with berries and cream. No, too girlie. Apple brown betty, maybe. Simple, traditional food.
Would she end up in bed with him after? It wasn’t a good idea; in fact it was a terrible idea. But, damn it, he’d definitely gotten her juices flowing. There was relief in knowing theycould flow, and frustration in not being sure what she should or could do about it.
She should wash her sheets, just in case. She only had the one set, so she wroteLaundry with a question mark on her list. She’d need to get a good red wine. Maybe brandy, too. And damn it, she not only didn’t have any coffee, she had nothing to brew it in.
She stepped back, pressed fingers to the center of her forehead where the headache was sneaking back. She should cancel. Obviously she was going to make herself crazy trying to create the perfect meal when Brody would probably be fine with a couple of buffalo burgers and steak fries.
Smarter, better, she should cancel, pack her things, leave Joanie a note and get out of Angel’s Fist. What reason was there to stay?
A woman had been murdered, which was a good reason to leave the area. By now, or certainly soon, everyone in town would know she claimed to have seen murder done, and there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support that claim.
She didn’t want people looking at her out of the corner of their eyes again. Like she was a bomb ticking toward the blast. Besides, she’d made progress here, and could leave without shame. She was back to cooking, she’d set up an apartment—such as it was. She’d lasted twenty-five minutes in the bathtub.
She could feel her sexuality starting to simmer.
Another session with Brody, she thought, that sexuality was going to boil over. Nothing wrong with that, not a thing wrong with it. They were both unattached adults. Sex was healthy; contemplating having sex with an attractive man was a normal female activity.
It was progress.
So she could take all that progress, all those steps, and use them in the next town.
She set her pencil down when the kettle began to sputter. It was whistling shrilly when she reached up for a cup and saucer. No teapot, she remembered. Maybe in the next place she stopped she’d treat herself to one.
She turned off the burner, moved the kettle to a cool one. As the whistle died, someone banged on the door.
She’d have shrieked if she’d had the breath left in her for it. As it was, she jerked back hard enough to rap her hip on the counter. Even as her hand closed around the handle of her chef’s knife, Joanie’s voice barked through the locked door.
“Open up, for chrissake. I haven’t got all night.”
On jellied knees Reece hurried across the room and, as quietly as she could manage, drew the chair away. “Sorry, just a second!”
She unlocked the door, unlatched the security chain. “I was in the kitchen,” Reece said.
“Yeah, and this place is so spacious I’m surprised you heard me.” Joanie trooped in smelling of spices and smoke. “Scraped together the last bowl of that soup—have t
o make more next time. You eat?”
“Well, I—”
“Never mind.” Joanie set the covered hot take-away cup on the counter. “Eat now. Go on.” She waved impatiently when Reece hesitated. “It’s still hot. I’m taking my break.”
So saying, she walked to the front window, opened it a few inches. Then she took out a lighter and a pack of Marlboro Lights. “You gonna piss me off and say I can’t smoke in here?”
“No.” Having nothing else suitable, Reece carried over the tea saucer to serve as an ashtray. “How’s the crowd tonight?”
“Not bad. That soup was popular. You can do tomorrow’s if you’ve got an idea for it.”
“Sure, that’s no problem.”
“Sit down and eat.”
“You don’t have to stand by the window.”
“Used to it.” But Joanie planted a butt cheek on the sill. “Smells good in here.”
“I just had a bath. Tropical Mango.”
“Nice.” Joanie took a contemplative drag. “You got company coming?”
“What? No, no, not tonight.”
“Lo’s downstairs.” Absently, Joanie tapped ashes out the open window. “He wanted to bring that soup up. I don’t think it was to hit on you, especially as he said he thought Linda-gail should come up with him. Still, give him an inch.”
“That was nice of him.”
“He’s worried about you, figures you must be scared and upset.”
“Used to it,” Reece said with a half smile as she sat down to eat the soup. “But I’m doing all right.”
“He’s not the only one worried. Word’s got around, as word does, about what you saw on the trail yesterday.”
“Saw, or thought I saw?”
“Well, which is it?”
“I saw.”
“Okay then. Linda-gail wanted me to tell you she’d come up and stay the night if you didn’t want to be alone, or you could go to her place.”
Reece paused with the spoon partway to her lips. “She did?”
“No, I just made that up so you could gawk at me.”