The Novels of Nora Roberts, Volume 4

by Nora Roberts

  “I don’t believe in luck.” He pulled up at his cabin.

  From the back of the car he took the hefty box of her kitchen tools, slid the strap of her laptop case over his shoulder. He left the second box and the duffel for her.

  Inside, he set the box on the floor. “I’m not putting this stuff away.” He took the other box from her, set it down. “Go on up and take a shower.”

  “I think a bath.” She managed a smile, sniffed the back of her own hand. “Pretty bad.”

  “Not if you like stale beer and smoke.” He took the frozen peas out of the lighter box, tossed them to her. “Use this.”

  She went up, ran the tub hot. Sinking into it, she pressed the cold bag on her throbbing cheek. Then scooted straight up when Brody walked in.

  “Aspirin,” he said. He set the bottle, a glass of water on the lip of the tub, then walked out.

  When she came out wearing a baggy gray T-shirt with red stains and a pair of loose flannel pants, he was standing by the window. He turned, cocked his head.

  “Nice outfit.”

  “I don’t have a lot left.”

  “Well. You can put what you do have left in there.” He jerked a thumb at his dresser. “I cleaned out a couple drawers.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s not a marriage proposal.”

  “Check. I’ll, ah, do it tomorrow. I’m really tired. I’m sorry, Brody, but did you—”

  “Yes. The doors are locked.”

  “Okay.” She slipped into bed and sighed at the sheer relief it gave her.

  Moments later, the lights switched off, the mattress dipped. Then his body was warm against hers, and his arm draped around her waist.

  She took his hand. She fell asleep with her fingers linked with his, too exhausted to dream.

  23

  BRODY DROVE REECE to Joanie’s at six sharp. The lights were on in the diner, a hard shine against the dark. A pickup truck sat at the curb along with a vile green dumpster, top up, already half loaded with drywall and debris.

  The sight of it had Reece’s shoulders going tight as she walked by. “How much do you think this is going to cost?”

  “I haven’t got a clue.” Brody shrugged. “My manliness doesn’t extend into this area.”

  Insurance was all well and good, Reece thought. But what about the deductible? She walked inside to see Joanie, hands on hips, frowning up at a curtain of plastic. She wore the work boots Reece had seen in the mudroom the first time they baked together, rough brown trousers and a tan western-style shirt with one of the breast pockets bulging a bit with what was, surely, her always handy pack of Marlboro Lights.

  Behind the plastic, Reece could see a couple of men on stepladders.

  The place smelled of coffee and wet. The big fan continued to whirl, chilling the air.

  “You’re not on until eleven today,” Joanie said without looking around.

  “I’m working off my part of this. Argue,” Reece added, “and I’ll just quit, move to Jackson Hole and get a job there. You’ll not only be shy a couple of booths but a cook.”

  Joanie stayed just as she was. “These boys’ve been at this an hour already. Go on back and rustle them up a couple of cattleman’s breakfasts.”

  “How do they want their eggs?”

  “Fry ’em. Sunny side.”

  Brody stepped up to Joanie as Reece headed back. “Did you get any sleep?”

  “I can sleep when I’m dead. Are you just here to chauffeur her around and send her smoldering looks, or are you apt to be useful?”

  “I can multitask.”

  “Then go on in there, see what Reuben and Joe can use you for. We’ll have customers coming in before long. Reece, make that three cattleman’s.”

  REECE SERVED THEM herself, at the counter, as Joanie had Bebe hauling in tables to make up for lost seating. The regular early birds were already dribbling in, and the always sleepy morning guy shuffled in the back door to wash dishes.

  No one complained about the inconvenience or the mess, but it held as top topic of conversation throughout the morning. When speculative looks were sent her way, Reece told herself it was no less than she could expect. But they ate her food, clattered dishes, and at ten sharp someone had the juke going over the noise of hammer and saw.

  She had the day’s soup in the kettle and was making salsa when Linda-gail slipped back. “What an awful mess. You must be so mad at me.”

  “I was.” Reece chopped and considered trying out a little bruschetta on the lunch crowd. “Then I looked at the big picture and decided it wasn’t your fault. Well, not completely your fault.”

  “Really? I feel like such an ass.”

  “You were an ass.” She paused long enough to grab a bottle of water. “But that was only one element that contributed to the general mayhem.”

  “Oh, Reece honey. Your poor face.”

  “Don’t remind me.” But since she had, Reece held the cold bottle against her bruised cheek for a moment. “Does it look terrible?”

  “Of course it doesn’t. You couldn’t.”

  “That bad, huh? Between the riot at Clancy’s and the mess here, people are going to have something to talk about for a week.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “No.” Apparently her days of wallowing in guilt were over. Cheers. “It’s really not.”

  “Does anybody know how it happened? I mean, who’d do something so stupid and mean?” Linda-gail looked around, watched Brody and Reuben carrying in some drywall. “The bright side is, I heard Joanie say she might as well paint the whole damn place as slap some just on the ceiling. We could use some freshening up.”

  “Crappy way to redecorate.”

  Linda-gail rubbed a hand up and down Reece’s back. “I’m just so sorry about everything.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Lo isn’t speaking to me.”

  “He will. But maybe you should do the talking first. When there’s something you want, something you need, life’s too short to play games with it.”

  “Maybe. Reece, I want you to know that if you need to, you can stay at my place as long as you want.”

  “Thanks.” She glanced over her shoulder. “He gave me two drawers.”

  Linda-gail’s eyes went wide and bright. “Oh, Reece!” She wrapped her arms around Reece’s waist and rocked side to side. “That is just awesome.”

  “It’s drawers, Linda-gail. But yeah, it’s a nice step.”

  “Linda-gail Case, I don’t believe I’m paying you to dance.” Joanie walked in, gave the soup a stir. “Rick’s out front, Reece, wants to talk to you soon as you can. You can use my office if you want privacy.”

  “I guess that’s best.” But then she turned, saw the people lingering over coffee at the counter, at tables. “No, I think we’ll have this conversation out front. People’ll just talk about me more if we go behind closed doors.”

  With a light of approval in her eyes, Joanie nodded. “Good for you.”

  Reece left her apron on, took the water with her. Rick was loitering by the counter, and straightened when she came out. “Reece. Why don’t we go sit in the back?”

  “Out here’s fine. Table five’s empty. Linda-gail,” Reece called without taking her eyes from Rick’s. “Would you bring the sheriff some coffee? Table five.”

  She led the way, sat. “Is Min pressing charges?”

  “No.” He took out his notebook. “Talked to her again this morning, and she allows as you didn’t so much hit her as get pushed into her. And on some rethinking, witnesses agree you didn’t push over a table, but fell on one when other people scrambled to get away or join in the brawl. Before we move on from that, the consensus, you could say, is that the business at Clancy’s was a result of a series of lamebrain actions by a number of people.”

  “Me included.”

  “Well.” He smiled, just a little around the edges. “You do seem to draw…responses. Now.” He paused, looked toward the plastic and the noise
of drywall being hammered in place. “Why don’t you tell me about this one?”

  “After I left your office, Brody drove me back here. We went upstairs. I heard water running, and when we went in, the bathroom door was closed. Water leaking under it. Someone had turned the water on in the tub, plugged it up. It flooded.”

  “Someone?”

  She’d prepared for this, and kept her gaze level. Kept her voice clear and firm. “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there. You know I wasn’t there because you know I was at Clancy’s, then at your office.”

  “I know you were at Clancy’s a couple hours, at my office a couple hours. From what I’ve been told, what I can see, the water was running for some time. Hard to pin down just how long.”

  “I didn’t turn the water on. After my shift, I went upstairs to change my shoes and…”

  “And?”

  Check the locks, the windows. “Nothing. I changed my shoes, and I went back down to meet Linda-gail. I couldn’t have been upstairs for more than three minutes.”

  “Did you go in the bathroom?”

  “Yes, I used the bathroom, and I checked the clothes I had hanging on the shower rod to see how well they were drying. That’s it. I had no reason to turn the water on.”

  “The clothes you took to the laundry at the hotel earlier?”

  Okay, she thought. All right. “Yes. And, yes, someone took the clothes I’d washed and put in the dryerout of the dryer and put them back in the washer. I’d taken them down there, put them in to wash, went home, came back, put them in the dryer, came home again. And when I went back to get them, they were in the washer.”

  He glanced up as Linda-gail brought his coffee, and a poached egg on toast for Reece. “Joanie says you’re to eat that, Reece. Can I get you something else, Sheriff?”

  “No, just the coffee, thanks.”

  “Linda-gail can tell you I wasn’t upstairs more than a couple minutes before we went to Clancy’s.”

  “Sure.” The confirmation came after only a whisper of hesitation. “She was up and down, two shakes.”

  “You didn’t go up with her?” Rick asked.

  “Well, no. I just went in the bathroom here, fixed up my makeup and fiddled with my hair a little. Reece was right here waiting for me when I came out. Couldn’t have been but a few minutes. Somebody played a stupid trick, a mean one. That’s what happened.”

  “Why would I turn the water on?” Reece demanded. “I was going out.”

  “I’m not saying you did. And I’m not saying if you did you turned it on to cause any of this.” He pulled at his ear. “Sometimes, when you’ve got a lot on your mind, you forget. Pot on the stove, phone off the hook. It’s natural enough.”

  “It wouldn’t be natural to run a bath when you had no intention of taking one, then walk out and leave the water on. And that’s not what I did.”

  “’Course you didn’t.” Linda-gail laid a hand on Reece’s shoulder, rubbed. And Reece wondered if there was a hint of doubt along with the comfort of the gesture.

  “Someone’s been in my apartment,” Reece said. “This isn’t the first time.”

  Rick leveled his gaze at Reece. “First I’m hearing about it. Thanks, Linda-gail. I’ll let you know if we need anything else.”

  “All right. Reece, you eat now. You haven’t had anything all day, and if that plate comes back untouched, Joanie’s going to be mad.”

  “It started right after I saw the murder,” Reece began. She told him: the guidebook, the door, the bathroom, finding her things packed, the boots and the bowls. The pills, the photograph album. She forced herself to eat a little, hoping the action would somehow give her statements more validity.

  He took notes, asked questions. His voice was flat and cool.

  “Why didn’t you report these incidents before?”

  “Because I knew you’d think just what you’re thinking now. That I either did them or I imagined them.”

  “You don’t have a window into my head, Reece.” There was a quality in his voice that warned her his patience was at a low ebb. “Have you noticed anyone loitering around?”

  “Half the town loiters here at some point.”

  “Who has access to your key?”

  “I keep it with me. There’s a spare in Joanie’s office.”

  “Brody have one?”

  “No, no, Brody doesn’t have one.”

  “You had trouble, had words with anyone in town?”

  “Not until I clocked Min at Clancy’s last night.”

  He gave her that faint smile again. “I think we can rule her out.”

  “He must have seen me.”

  “Who?”

  “The man, by the river. The one I saw strangle that woman.”

  Rick drew a breath, sat back. “Saw you, at that distance? The distance you gave in your statement?”

  “Not me. I mean he must have seen there was someone on the trail. It wouldn’t take any effort to find out it was me, not after the whole town knew about it. So he’s trying to discredit me as a witness.”

  Rick closed his book.

  “What are you going to do?” Reece demanded.

  “I’m going to do my job. I’m going to look into it. Next time something happens, you need to tell me about it. I can’t help you if I don’t know you’ve got trouble.”

  “All right. Have they identified the woman? The body?”

  “Haven’t matched dental records yet. She’s still a Jane Doe. Have you thought about it? Can you confirm she’s the woman you saw?”

  “I can’t. She’s not.”

  “Well then.” He pushed to his feet. “You got a place to stay while these repairs are going on?”

  “I’m at Brody’s.”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  Reece rose, cleared the table herself. Back in the kitchen Joanie scowled at the half-eaten egg. “Something wrong with my cooking?”

  “No. He doesn’t believe me.”

  “Doesn’t matter if he does or he doesn’t, he’ll do what he’s paid to do. I want some of those cluckers barbecued for the lunch special. You’re behind.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “And make up some potato salad. You got your famous fresh dill in the cooler. Use it.”

  REECE WAS ENDING the first of a double shift when Rick tracked down Doc Wallace. In strong, even strokes, Doc rowed his boat to its mooring on the lake. Rick grabbed the line, secured it. “You got a fishing license?”

  “You see any damn fish? You hear the one about the game warden come across this woman in a boat, reading a book. Asks her if she has a fishing license. She says she’s not fishing, she’s reading a book.” Doc climbed nimbly out of his boat. “Game warden says ‘You got the equipment for fishing in there, so I’m going to have to write you a citation.’ She says, ‘You do that, I’m going to have to bring sexual molestation charges against you.’”

  Rick waited patiently while Doc took off his prescription sunglasses, polished them on the tail of his shirt. “Well, the warden says with some outrage, ‘Lady, I never sexually molested you.’ And she says, ‘But you got the equipment for it.’”

  Rick’s laugh was quick and easy. “Pretty good. Nothing biting today?”

  “Not a damn thing on my line.” Doc laid his rod over his shoulder. “Pretty day not to catch fish though.”

  “It is that. You got a few minutes?”

  “Got more than a few. It’s my day off. Could use a walk after sitting in that boat the last couple hours.”

  They fell into step, slowly following the curve of the lake. “Reece Gilmore’s been to see you, I hear. Medically.”

  “You know I can’t talk about that kind of thing, Rick.”

  “Not asking you to. We’re going to be talking in the hypothetical area of things.”

  “That’s a shaky line.”

  “It shakes too much, you can step off.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “You heard about what happened at Joanie�
��s place.”

  “Water damage.”

  “I got a statement from Reece. Says she never turned the water on in the tub. Says someone’s been getting into her apartment, doing things in there. Says someone took her laundry out of the dryer and put it back into the washer down in the hotel basement while she wasn’t there. Now maybe somebody around here’s taking a dislike to her. Though she’s a likeable enough woman, if you ask me.”

  “There are some people who take a dislike to the likeable.”

  “True enough. Yesterday she all but falls in the lake. Then she’s running down the street in her bare feet. She’s climbing down Brenda’s throat about somebody going down to the laundry, messing with her clothes. Last night she’s in a brawl at Clancy’s.”

  “Oh now, Rick, I heard all about that foolishness. Linda-gail flaunting some tourist in Lo’s face to get his goat. And she got it.”

  “My point is, Reece was involved.” The sun glinted off Rick’s dark glasses as he turned his head to look at Doc. Behind them, boats sailed across the water, through the mirrored mountains. “We haven’t had this much trouble in town all at once, not before she came around.”

  “You think she’s causing all this. Why would she?”

  Rick held up a hand as they walked. “I’m asking, hypothetically, if you had a patient with a history of emotional and mental problems, if that patient could likely function well enough for the most part. And have, well, what you might call delusions, or hell, just plain forgetfulness.”

  “Hell, Rick, you could have just plain forgetfulness, and you could toss in a few delusions now and then.”

  “This is more than forgetting where you left your keys. Could this be in her head, Doc?”

  “Hypothetically, it could. But could’s not is, Rick. There’s no crime if she’s been forgetful. But there’s a crime if someone’s doing this to that girl.”

  “I’m going to keep an eye on it. On her.”

  Doc nodded, and they walked a little more in companionable silence.

  “Well, I guess I’ll go on up to the hotel, take a look down in the laundry,” Rick said.