by Linda Howard
“That would be wonderful. Or we could all go to Milo's. Shaw is beginning to complain because he hasn't had a hamburger yet.”
Sarah felt a private little zing at the mention of Milo's. Maybe one day she wouldn't associate Cahill's kisses with the hamburgers, but right now the two were closely linked in her mind. She felt a sudden intense craving for a hamburger herself.
Staying in Mountain Brook meant she would be seeing him again. She didn't know if that was good or bad, but she definitely knew the idea was exciting.
Barbara didn't know it, but the cleaners were at the house now. The rate for cleaning on Sunday night was higher than during the week, but Sarah thought it was well worth it for the Judge's family to be able to get into the house as early as possible tomorrow, since Barbara and her brood had a late-afternoon flight back to Dallas. Sarah planned, after leaving the Wynfrey, to go to the house to check that the cleaning job was adequate, but then she was going back to the inn to spend the night. Even though her quarters were totally separate, she wasn't ready yet to be alone there. Going back wouldn't be easy, she thought.
Nor was it. The cleaners were already gone when she got there later that night, and she had to force herself to go inside, to walk down the hall and look into the library. A strong sense of déjà vu seized her just outside the door, and she froze; when she looked inside, would the Judge be sitting there in his recliner, his blood and brains splattered against the far wall, and on the carpet? Would the smell still be there?
No, the smell was gone. She would be able to tell from here if it lingered, wouldn't she? The odor had been pervasive, finding its way down the hall, into the breakfast room, even the kitchen. All she could smell now was something clean and citrusy.
Steeling herself, she entered the library. The cleaners had done a good job with the carpet and wall; they had evidently cleaned the carpet in the entire room, so no one could tell by a clean spot exactly where they had removed a stain. The recliner was gone; she had no idea where it was. Maybe the police had it, though what they would want with the recliner, she couldn't imagine. Or perhaps the cleaners had removed it from the room for some reason; maybe the odor was impossible to remove from leather.
Tomorrow she would ask the whereabouts of the recliner. It might be in the garage, but she wasn't going to look for it tonight. Slowly she backed out of the room, turning out the light and closing the door. She didn't imagine she would ever again enter that room, for any reason.
She hadn't collected the mail since Wednesday, but someone, probably Cahill, had brought it in and put it on the kitchen island. He'd have gone through the mail, of course, to see if there was anything suspicious, any correspondence that bore looking into. She flipped through the stack; if there had been anything unusual, Cahill had taken it with him, because all she saw was the normal bills, catalogs, and magazines.
She left the mail on the island and went upstairs to her quarters. Everything was subtly wrong, out of place; someone had searched every inch, so she supposed she should be grateful for the relative neatness. At least the contents of drawers hadn't been dumped on the floor and left. She straightened the books in the bookcase, neatly stacked the few magazines, put the potted plants back in place, adjusted the position of a vase, some framed pictures.
In the bedroom, her bed had been stripped. She gathered the discarded sheets to put in the wash, then went into the bathroom and began methodically putting it to rights. She couldn't put her life back the way it was, but she could reconstruct her immediate surroundings.
She put out fresh towels, and arranged all her cosmetics the way she preferred.
Back in the bedroom, she remade the bed, then opened the double closet doors and began rehanging her clothes, arranging them so what she wore most often was close to hand. Her shoes were a jumbled mess; she pulled all of them out of the closet, then sat down on the floor and paired them up, putting them back in the closet in neat rows.
She really hated that someone had gone through her underwear drawer. She was a bit of a fanatic about her underwear, courtesy of two brothers who had loved to tease her by hiding it, or by tying her bra to a forked stick to make a slingshot. Older brothers were a real trial. She wished now she had a video of Noel with her very first pair of lacy panties stuck on his head; she'd love to show it to his Marine buddies. Her brothers had never treated Jennifer like that, but then she would only have cried, and that was no fun. Sarah had chased after them with fury in her eyes and murder in her heart; if she'd ever caught them, blood would have been shed.
Sarah had been forced to hide her underwear for years, stuffing it in unlikely places so Daniel and Noel couldn't find it. Once they were gone, she had reveled in being able to have a real underwear drawer. She always neatly folded each garment, and the lacy, sexy stuff was in its own drawer. She didn't segregate by color—she wasn't that far gone—but it truly annoyed her to see her careful stacks all messed up and mixed together.
Cahill had probably searched her underwear drawer personally. He looked like the type who would enjoy something like that. She could just see him holding up a pair of black lace—
Oh, yes, she could see him. A wave of heat washed over her. She knew she was in real trouble, when the idea of him going through her underwear turned her on instead of making her angry.
Maybe she should forget caution and just go for broke. She'd never devoted herself to a relationship before, but maybe Cahill was someone she could truly love. Maybe there could be something real and permanent between them, and she was in danger of losing it because she couldn't stop listening to her head instead of her heart. Yes, he'd just come through a rough divorce; a year wasn't enough time to emotionally recover; he'd admitted as much himself. Yes, the odds said he was a bad risk right now. But sometimes you lucked out, and won by going against the odds.
So the real question was did she have the guts to give it all she had, to stop holding back? She had always used the Plan as an excuse for walking away before a relationship could really go anywhere; that excuse was real, because she truly wanted to execute the Plan; but the other part of her reason was that loving someone meant giving away some of your personal control, and she had always prized that above any man she was dating.
If she became involved with Cahill, she might eventually walk away from him, but she wouldn't walk away heart-whole. He could do some damage to her. She suspected she could love him as she had never loved anyone before, if she let him get close.
No matter what she decided, there were risks—big ones. She could either risk loving him and losing him, or she could risk missing out on the love of her life because she was afraid.
Sarah didn't like thinking herself cowardly, in anything.
“Do you recognize this man?” Cahill asked the next morning, letting a blurry photograph slide from a big envelope down onto the breakfast table. The photograph had been enhanced and enlarged, and it was still piss-poor. It was, however, all he had.
Sarah looked at the photograph and gave a decisive shake of her head. Randall, Barbara, and Jon all crowded around and stared at it. “I don't think so,” Randall said doubtfully. “Not without seeing his face. He doesn't ring any bells, though. Why?”
“He made the last call to your father, from a pay phone in the Galleria.”
Barbara jerked back as if stung. “You mean he might be the killer?”
“I can't make that assumption,” Cahill said evenly. “I'd like to, but I can't. But your father might have said something to this man about a visitor he was expecting, or any other detail that might help. I'd definitely like to talk to this guy.”
They all stared at the photograph again, as if concentration would wrest an elusive memory from their brains. The man in the photograph was trim, wearing a light-colored suit, with neat pale hair, either blond or gray. His head was turned so that the camera caught only the line of his left jaw and cheekbone. Unless you knew the man well, it would be impossible to recognize him from that picture.
&n
bsp; Sarah handed Cahill a cup of coffee and tilted her head for another look at the photograph. “He's wearing a suit,” she said. “The weather was warm last Wednesday.”
Both Randall and Jon looked up, their attention caught. “It was too warm to wear a jacket,” Jon said, “unless you were wearing a suit for work.”
Barbara looked puzzled. “So what?”
“So he's white-collar,” Cahill explained. “Professional.”
She sighed. “All of Daddy's friends were white-collar professionals.”
“Retired,” Sarah put in. “That man isn't retired.”
“He's younger than Daddy, then, but that's obvious from the picture. Either that or he's had a face-lift.” Barbara pointed to the fairly firm jawline.
“Take what you know,” Cahill prompted. “Younger than your father—say, no older than early fifties—professional. The hair is probably gray, or blond that's going gray. He's in good shape, trim, I estimate about six feet tall. No one comes to mind?”
They all shook their heads, regretfully.
“Well, if you think of anything, let me know.” Cahill replaced the photograph in the envelope. “Don't concentrate on his close friends, but on someone he would know only casually.”
“Sarah would be more help there than any of us,” Jon said. “We've all lived away from the area for years, so we don't know anyone he may have met recently.” He made a wry face. “By ‘recently' I mean the last ten years, at least.”
“Longer than that.” Barbara sighed. “Dwight and I moved to Dallas before Shaw was born, and he's nineteen. Make that twenty years. I'm afraid we won't be any help there, Detective. Sarah is your only hope.”
Everyone looked at Sarah, who shook her head. “He knew so many people. He was forever nodding to someone, then saying he didn't remember his name but he worked with so-and-so. He never really talked about anyone other than his close circle of buddies.”
“So unless this guy”—Cahill tapped the envelope—“calls again, he's a dead end.”
“I'm afraid so, at least as far as I'm concerned. One of the neighbors might recognize him, or you might try the Judge's friends. They were a pretty close group.”
“I'll do that.” He looked at the others. “I need to get back to work, but is there anything I can do for you here?”
Barbara gave him a sad, gentle smile. “We're just packing up photographs and personal items that we want to keep. Thank you for all you've done, the advice you've given. I know you'll do everything possible to find whoever killed Daddy.”
“Yes, ma'am, I will.” He glanced at Sarah. “Would you walk out to the car, Miss Stevens?”
The day was warmer than the day before, but still chilly enough that she grabbed a jacket on the way out. The sun was bright, picking out the fresh, bright colors of spring, the pink of the azaleas, the tender green of new leaves, the white and pink dogwoods. Sarah squinted at the brightness, lifting her hand to shade her eyes.
“What is it, Detective Cahill?”
“Nothing much, I just wanted a minute alone with you. What are your plans for now? They'll be selling the house, right? What are you going to do?”
“I'm staying here, for now. They all have to leave this afternoon, so I'll handle all the packing, getting things ready for the house to be put on the market.”
“You're staying here? In the house?”
“I can look after things better if I'm here, on-site.”
“Will it bother you to be here alone?”
“It bothers me that the Judge is dead. It bothers me to go into the library, because I keep seeing his body there, and smelling . . . smelling things. But it doesn't bother me to be alone. I think what happened was targeted specifically at him, though I have no idea why. So I'm not in any danger.” She paused, struck by a fleeting expression on his tough face. “Am I? Is there something you haven't told me?”
“No, nothing. I think you're safe. It's just that you have more guts than most people. A lot of men I know wouldn't want to stay here by themselves.”
“So who says men have more guts than women?”
He grinned at the challenge in her voice. “No one. Men just tend to do stupid things out of pride. Now that I've admitted we're all idiots, will you have dinner with me tonight?”
“What? Go out with an idiot?”
“Think of the entertainment value.”
“You have a point.” She smiled up at him. “I'd like that, then. What time, and where are we going?”
“Six-thirty, and we'll go someplace casual, if that's all right with you.”
“Casual is great.”
He winked at her as he got in the car. “See you at six-thirty.”
Her heart was lighter as she went back inside the house. She still grieved, but life did go on; the awful thing about clichés was that they were usually right. The terrible pain and depression had lifted, and she was already looking ahead, focusing on the future. She had chores to accomplish, affairs to be put in order, a job to find.
But more immediately, she had a date with Cahill.
CHAPTER 14
“YOU'LL NEVER GUESS,” SHE SAID BY WAY OF GREETING when she opened the door to him that night, “what came in the mail today.”
He tensed. “Another gift?”
“Something almost worse,” she grumbled. “Two job offers.”
His dark, level brows knotted. “And that's bad, how?”
“They were postmarked Saturday. These people must have written the letters almost immediately after they heard about the Judge.”
“I repeat: That's bad, how?”
She gave him an impatient glance. “Vultures. It's like people who read the obituaries and call the surviving spouse for a date immediately after the funeral.”
“I think it's smart, if they want you. Get an offer in first, and you might take it before any others come in.”
“Too late, since I had one week before last, right after that segment aired.”
“But they didn't know that. I'd do the same thing,” he said reasonably. “I see you, I want you, I make my move and try to cut out anyone else thinking the same thing.”
She snorted as she pulled on her jacket. “Really bad analogy, Cahill. You saw, and you ran.”
“Don't I get brownie points for working up enough courage to come back?”
“No. I don't work on the points system.”
“Then I guess I'll have to rely on physical coercion.” He caught the front of her jacket in his fist and pulled her to him. Sarah lifted her head to meet his kiss; it wasn't until his mouth touched hers that she realized how sharp was her need to feel this again, to have him hold her. Their tongues engaged in slow combat, sliding, probing, twining. He wasn't in any hurry, and neither was she.
He lifted his mouth enough to murmur, “Are you coerced yet?”
“Not yet. Keep trying.”
His mouth curled in a smile as he rested his forehead against hers. “I don't want to overstep my bounds. Give me some ground rules, here. If I get rowdy and out of control, at what point do you slap my face? The trick is to stop just short of that point.”
Sarah lifted her brows. “I don't slap faces; I kick asses.”
“Wow. That sounds interesting. Pants up, or down?”
She buried her face against his jacket, snickering. “I should have guessed you'd be a pervert.”
“A boy just wants to have fun.” His big, warm hand slid up and down her back in a restless movement that told her he didn't like restraining himself, but was doing it anyway. “And if we don't get going, I may get my ass kicked. I've never been very good at knowing when to stop.”
On the contrary, he had wooing down to a fine art—for wooing her, anyway. He made it very plain he was attracted, but didn't come on too hot and heavy for the early stages of getting to know each other. She was thoroughly charmed by his wry humor, more charmed than she wanted him to know. If he pushed his luck, she thought, she might very well end up in bed with him, and sh
e deeply appreciated that he was restraining himself because she suspected he knew exactly how charmed she was. Cahill was one sharp cookie.
“Did either of the job offers look interesting?” he asked as he opened the door of his truck for her.
“No, they both wanted me to start immediately, and that's out. I'll be here at least another month; when the house is ready to close up, I doubt the family will want to continue paying my salary just to sit in my quarters, so I don't expect it to last much more than a month, but I'm not free until then.”
“You don't think they'll hold the position open? It isn't as if butlers are thick on the ground around here.”
She shrugged. “They might, they might not. I think they only want me because of the so-called celebrity factor, and I don't like the idea of that.”
“Since you're trained as a bodyguard, too, will you consider only jobs with that need?”
“That would be nice,” she said wryly. “The pay is a lot higher. But, no, a lot of things come into consideration. How much I like the family, for one thing. Whether or not there are any positions open for both butler and bodyguard, where in the country the job is, things like that.”
“You don't like certain parts of the country?”
“It isn't that. I'm a military brat; I'm used to living just about anywhere. But my parents and sister live in Florida, and I like for visiting them to be fairly convenient.”
“You're close to your folks?”
“We talk on the phone a lot. I don't get to see them as much as I'd like, maybe three or four times a year, but I'd say we're close. Even though my brothers are both in the military and are sent all over the world, still, we manage phone calls. How about you?”
“Well, we're originally from this area, so I have aunts and uncles and cousins scattered all over central Alabama. My sister, DeeDee, lives in Redneck Riviera—that's Gulf Shores, to outsiders—and my brother, Dudley Do-Right, lives in Montgomery.”
“DeeDee and Do-Right?” she asked, amused.