by Nora Roberts
TWELVE
He wanted to get into the barn, and Ford figured if he tried it, it would add a few more layers to the suspect cake the cops were baking for him.
He was a suspect. It was actually kind of cool.
God, once a nerd always a nerd, he thought as he went through a series of lats and flys.
Once he’d worked up a sweat and an appetite, he checked in with the hospital, downed some cereal. Showered, shaved, dressed, he stepped into his office, up to his workstation.
He closed his eyes, held up his hands and said, “Draco braz minto.”
The childhood ritual put everything outside the work, and Ford into it. He sat, picked up his tools and began to draw the first panel for Brid.
CILLA HAD her chair angled toward the bed so she could look directly into Steve’s face as she spoke. And she spoke, keeping up a constant one-sided conversation, as if any appreciable stretch of silence could be deadly.
“So it’s moving. Clicking along better than I anticipated, even with the changes and additions I made to the original plans. The attic space shows real promise. Later on, I’m going to go pick out the flooring for up there, and the fixtures and tiles for that bath, and the master. We’ll be able to have a beer out on the patio, soon as you’re ready. What I need is pots. A couple of big-ass pots. Monsters. Oh, and I’m going to plant tomatoes. I think it’s about the right time to do that. And, like, peppers, maybe carrots and beans. I should wait until next year when the house is done, but I think I could scratch out a square for a little garden now. Then—”
“Miss McGowan.”
Cilla took a breath. When it hurt her chest to draw it in, it told her she’d been pushing too hard. “Yes.” What was the nurse’s name, the nurse with the curly blond hair and warm brown eyes? “Dee. It’s Cilla.”
“Cilla. The police are out there. A couple of detectives. They asked to speak to you.”
“Oh. Sure. Just a sec. I’ve got to do this thing,” she told Steve. “I’ll be back.”
Spotting the cops was the easiest thing she’d done all day, Cilla thought. She stepped up to them. “I’m Cilla McGowan.”
“Detective Wilson. My partner, Detective Urick. Is there somewhere we could talk?”
“There’s a little waiting room down here. They’ve got something they call coffee. You’re looking into what happened to Steve now,” she said as she led the way.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then you know he didn’t trip over his own feet, bash himself in the head and fall under his own bike.” She hit the coffeepot, added powdered creamer. “Do you know what did happen?”
“We’re looking into it,” Urick said. “Do you know anyone who’d wish Mr. Chensky harm?”
“No. He’s only been here a few days. Steve makes friends, not enemies.”
“You were married.”
“That’s right.”
“No hard feelings?” Wilson prompted.
“None. We were friends before we got married. We’ve stayed friends.”
“He’s living with you.”
“No, he’s visiting me, and giving me a hand for a couple of weeks on the house. I’m rehabbing the house. He’s in the business.”
“Rock the House,” Urick commented. “I’ve caught the show.”
“Best there is. You want to know if we’re sleeping together. No. We have, but we’re not.”
Wilson pursed his lips, nodded. “Your neighbor, Mr. Sawyer, states that he saw a prowler on your property a few nights ago.”
“Yeah, the night Steve got in. Steve heard something outside.”
“You didn’t.”
“No, I sleep like a rock. But Steve woke me up, said he heard something. I brushed it off.” The guilt wormed its way back. “Then Ford mentioned the flashlight he’d seen. I was supposed to get a padlock for the barn, and I let it slip by.”
“We noticed you seem to be using the barn to store things. Boxes, furniture . . .”
“Junk,” Cilla finished, and nodded at Urick. “I brought it down from the attic. I’m having the attic finished off and needed to clear it out. I’ve been sorting, but it’s a big job. I thought I’d separated what struck me as potentially valuable, but it’s hard to tell on a couple of passes.”
“You didn’t notice anything missing?”
“Not at this point.”
“Some of the boxes were crushed, the furniture knocked over.” Wilson gestured. “It looked, possibly, as if Mr. Chensky drove his bike into the barn, lost control, went down.”
“That’s not what happened. You know he wasn’t drunk or stoned.”
“His alcohol level was well under the legal limit,” Urick agreed. “There were no drugs in his system.”
Inside her chest, her heart began a tripping beat. “A sober man, and one who’s straddled a Harley for about a dozen years, doesn’t get off the bike, open the door, get back on the bike and yee-haw drive in over a bunch of boxes and furniture.”
“The X-rays indicate Mr. Chensky was struck at the base of the skull. Probably a crowbar or tire iron.”
Cilla pressed her hand to her heart as it tightened to a fist. “Oh, God.”
“The force of the blow pitched him forward, dropped him so that he hit the concrete floor, which caused the second fracture. Our reconstruction indicates the Harley was rolled to where Mr. Chensky lay, then pushed over on top of him, breaking two of his ribs and bruising his kidney.”
Urick waited, watched as Cilla set her coffee down, as her hand trembled. Her color went from pale to ghostly. “Now, let me ask you again. Do you know anyone who’d wish Mr. Chensky harm?”
“No. No, I don’t know anyone who’d want to hurt him. Who’d do something like that to him.”
“How did Sawyer get along with him?”
“Ford?” For a moment she went blank. “Fine. They hit it off. Big-time. Steve’s a fan. He’s even got . . . Oh, for God’s sake.”
Understanding, Cilla pressed her fingers to her eyes, then dragged them back through her hair. “Okay, follow the dots, please. I am not and was not sleeping with Steve. I am not and was not sleeping with Ford, though that is on the table. Ford did not attack Steve in a jealous rage, as I don’t think he has a lot of rage in the first place and, more importantly, he knew there was nothing to be jealous about. I was up front with him regarding my relationship with Steve, and in fact was out with Ford the night Steve got hurt. The night both myself And Ford knew Steve had gone out to sniff around Shanna Stiles. There’s no romantic or sexual triangle here. This isn’t about sex.”
“Miss McGowan, it looks as though someone was in your barn, and may have been lying in wait. You and Sawyer knew Mr. Chensky had gone out for the evening, and that he stored his motorcycle in the barn.”
“That’s right, that’s absolutely right, Detective Wilson. Just like we both knew he’d gone out to try to score with a very attractive brunette. Neither of us could know if he’d get lucky or bomb out. So you’re suggesting that after spending the evening with me, Ford snuck back, hid out in my barn, just in case Steve came back. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Shock, anger, guilt, annoyance all drained into sheer misery. “None of this makes any sense.”
“We’d like you to go through the items you have stored in the barn, see if anything’s been disturbed or taken.”
“All right.”
“Your grandmother left a deep mark,” Wilson continued. “I’d guess most people figured anything of hers in that house was taken away a long time ago. Word gets out, as word will, there’s still some things around, someone might be interested enough to break into a barn.”
“And fracture a man’s skull. Yeah. The thing is? Most of what’s in the barn is from the McGowans. The ordinary side of the family.”
She went back to Steve, but this time sat in silence.
When she left, walked to the elevator, she saw her father get off the car. “Dad.”
“Cilla.” He strode quickly toward he
r, took her shoulders. “How is he?”
“The same, I guess. He’s critical. He came through the surgery, and that’s a plus, but . . . A lot of buts and ifs and maybes.”
“I’m so sorry.” He pulled her tight for a moment. “I know I only met him a couple of times, but I liked him. What can I do?”
“I just don’t know.”
“Let me take you downstairs, get some food in you.”
“No, actually, I’m just leaving for a while. I have some errands.” To get out, to do, to stop thinking for just a couple of hours. “Maybe . . . Do you think you could go in and sit with him for a little bit? Talk to him? He liked you, too.”
“Sure, I will.”
“And when you leave? Remind him that I’ll be back later. I’ll be back.”
“All right.”
Nodding, she pressed for the elevator, hitched her bag on her shoulder. “I appreciate . . . I really appreciate you coming. You barely know him. Hell, you barely know me.”
“Cilla—”
“But you came.” She stepped into the elevator, turned, met her father’s eyes. “You came. It means a lot,” she said as the doors closed between them.
WORK. WORK GOT HER THROUGH the day. And the next day. She was better at work, she thought, than at sentiment, at expressing emotions—unless they were scripted. She made her schedule, and stuck to it. So many hours on the house, on the landscaping, so many at the hospital, so many in the barn.
That left her so many hours to fall on her air mattress and clock out.
So far, she thought, so good.
Except Steve’s mother had jumped down off her broomstick and thrown the schedule into the Dumpster. So, more time for work, Cilla told herself. More time to get things done.
She picked up a pole lamp, scowled at the six funnel-shaped shades running down the spotted brass rod. “What were they smoking when they bought this?”
On impulse, she took a few running steps and launched it at the open barn doors like a javelin. Then yipped when Ford stepped into view. He jumped back so the lamp whizzed by his face with a few layers of dust to spare.
“Jesus Christ!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you.”
“Shouldn’t you yell ‘fore,’ or something?” he demanded. “How the hell would I have explained that one? Yes, Doctor, I’ve been impaled through the brain by perhaps the ugliest pole lamp in the history of pole lamps.”
“I don’t think it would’ve impaled. More dented. Anyway, it offended my eye.”
“Yeah, mine too. Almost literally. What are you doing back here? It’s early for you,” he added when she frowned at him. “I saw your car. I thought maybe . . .”
“No. Nothing new. Except Steve’s mother’s there.”
“Yeah. I ran into her this morning for a minute.” He dipped his hands into his pockets, hunched a little. “She’s scary.”
“She hates me. For marrying Steve, for divorcing him. She doesn’t actually like Steve all that much, but me? She hates. So I cleared the field. Deserted, actually. I don’t do well with mothers.”
“You do okay with your stepmom. She sent over that nice casserole last night.”
“Tuna noodle. I’m not sure that’s a sign of affection.”
“It is, take my word.” He stepped through and around some of the mess to get to her, to touch her cheek. “You’re working too hard, beautiful blond girl.”
“I’m not.” She pulled away, kicked at one of the boxes. “The cops want me to go through this stuff, to see if anything’s missing.”
“Yeah. I think I’ve been bumped down the suspect list, which is oddly disappointing. Tall White Guy asked me to sign a copy of The Seeker: Indestructible for his grandson.”
“Tall . . . oh, Urick. I told them it wasn’t about you or Steve or me. But what the hell is here? What’s here somebody would want so damn bad? It’s junk. It’s trash. It should be tossed, all of it. I’m tossing it,” she decided in an instant. “Help me toss it.”
He grabbed her, pulled her back up as she started to drag up a box. “No. You don’t toss when you’re churned up. And you know that what someone might have wanted isn’t here. Because you already found it and put it somewhere else.”
“The letters.”
“That’s right. Did you tell the cops about the letters?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Partly because all I could really think about at first was Steve. And what would they do with the letters? Thirty-five-year-old letters, unsigned, no return address.”
“Fingerprints, DNA. Don’t you watch CSI?”
“Fact, fantasy. And it’ll leak. It always leaks, that is a fact. Letters from a lover, days before her death. Was it suicide? Was it murder? Was she carrying a love child? All the speculation, the print, the airtime, the reporters, the obsessed fans, it all pumps up. Any chance I had here, at peace, at a life, pretty much goes up in flames.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to live like that, in the crosshairs of the camera lens. I want this to be my home.” She heard the edge of desperation in her own voice but couldn’t dull it. “I wanted to bring something back from her, and for her. But I wanted it to be mine at the end of the day.”
“You don’t want to know who wrote those letters?”
“Yes, I do. I do. But I don’t want to ruin his life, Ford, or his children’s lives because he had an affair, because he broke off the affair. Even if he was cruel about it. There has to be a statute of limitations. Thirty years should cover it.”
“Agreed.”
He said nothing more, just watched her, looked into her eyes until she closed them.
“How could anyone prove it?” she demanded. “If, if, if she didn’t kill herself. If, if, if some of the conspiracy theories have been close to true and someone—this someone—made her take the pills, or slipped them to her. How could we prove it?”
“I don’t know, but the first step would be asking the right people the right questions.”
“I don’t know the people or the questions, and I can’t think about this. Not now. I need to get through today, then get through tomorrow. I need—”
She threw herself against him, locking her arms around his neck while her mouth latched on to his. He wasn’t prepared for the eruption, the bursts of desperation and appetite. Who could have been? With quick, catchy gasps, low, sexy moans, she devoured. She hooked one of those long, long legs around him, sank her teeth into his bottom lip, tugged. And he went instantly, helplessly, hard as stone.
She rubbed her body against his until he could literally feel the blood draining out of his head and heading south. “Lock the door.” Her lips moved to his ear, parted on a breathless whisper. “Lock the door.”
He quivered, felt the shock of need ram into him—head, belly, loins—like fists. “Wait.” Even as he said it his mouth collided with hers again for one more greedy gulp. But he managed to order himself to pull back, to get his hands on her shoulders to peel her away, a couple of inches.
“Wait,” he repeated, and momentarily forgot his train of thought as those brilliant blue eyes burned into his.
“No. Now.”
“Cilla. Whoa. Jeez. I can pretty much feel myself growing breasts as I say this.”
She took his hands, pulled them down, pressed. “Those are mine.”
“Yeah.” Soft, firm. “They are.” And with considerable regret, and what he considered heroic restraint, he put his hands back on her shoulders. “Where was I? I meant to say, even at the risk of sounding like a girl, this isn’t right.”
She slid her hand over his crotch. “Then what’s this?”
“The penis has a mind of its own. And boy, oh boy,” he managed as he took her wandering hand and yanked it up. “I should get an award for this. A monument. Let’s just step back.”
“Step back?” Shock and insult leaped out with the words. “Why? What the hell is wrong wit
h you?”
“The penis is asking those exact questions. But the thing is . . . wait,” he ordered, taking a firm hold of her arms when she started to jerk away. “The thing is, Cilla, you don’t toss stuff out when you’re churned up. Just like when you’re churned up, you don’t . . . lock the barn door.”
“It’s just sex.”
“Maybe. Maybe. But when it happens? It’s going to be just you and me. Just you.” He tested his willpower by leaning down and taking her mouth in a slow, soft kiss. “Just me. No Steve or Steve’s mom, no Janet Hardy, no letters. Just us, Cilla. I want lots of alone with you.”
She let out a sigh, gave one of the boxes a halfhearted kick. “How am I supposed to feel pissed off and rejected after that?” Hooking her thumbs in her pockets, she lowered her gaze deliberately to his crotch. “Looks like that’s still doing a lot of thinking. What are you going to do about it?”
“I just need to get a picture of Maylene Gunner in my head.”
“Maylene Gunner.”
“Maylene was mean as a snake, big as a battleship and ugly as homemade sin. She beat the living snot out of me when I was eight.”
No, she couldn’t possibly stay pissed off. “Why would Maylene do that?”
“Because I had drawn a very unflattering portrait of her. I didn’t possess the talent to draw a flattering one. Da Vinci didn’t possess that much talent. I drew her as a kind of Good-year Blimp, soaring and farting. Very colorful. Little people on the ground clutching themselves or lying sprawled and unconscious, running for cover.”
“Cruel,” Cilla said as her lips twitched.
“I was eight. In any case, she got wind—so to speak—and ambushed me and proceeded to pound me to dust. So when I need to, I just picture that Jupiter-sized face, and . . .” He glanced down, smiled. “There we go. Retired from the field.”
Cilla studied him a moment. “You’re a very strange man, Ford. Yet oddly appealing. Like your dog.”
“Don’t get me started again. Even Maylene Gunner has only so much power. Why don’t I give you a hand here, then we’ll go see Steve together. Between the two of us, we can take his mama.”