Bringing her a present wasn’t going to change a thing, but it was a typical male peace offering.
Men were just the same, every one of them: They all panted after whatever it was they couldn’t have.
Molly had had a busy day. Since she hadn’t had to work, because it was a Tuesday and Keeneland wasn’t running, she had done a million other things instead, determined not to give herself time to think about Will or anything else. She cleaned house, went to the Laundromat, and drove to Lexington to visit the resale shops to see if she could find something for Ashley to wear to the homecoming dance, which was only a few days away. Meaning to take her sister back with her if she found anything worth trying on, she had fallen in love with an ankle-length ivory silk slip dress with tiny spaghetti straps and a slight flare at the hem. She’d bought it for a ridiculously low price, with the understanding that it could be returned if Ashley didn’t like it. Ashley had already tried it on and pronounced herself delighted with it, though Molly had a few misgivings. It was, she thought, too old for her sister. But unless they could find something better before Friday, it would have to do.
Molly would just have to see if she couldn’t persuade Ashley to cover up some of that slinkiness with a sweater.
Ashley was in the kitchen now, humming happily as she mashed the potatoes. Using a fork, Molly turned coated pieces of chicken in a frying pan of sizzling hot grease, and kept an eye on the green beans simmering on the back of the stove. Sam and Susan were at the table finishing up a homework project that called for them to make an entire Comanche settlement out of homemade modeling clay. Mike was in the living room, supposedly working on his research paper.
“It’s Will!” Susan said excitedly when Will tapped at the screen. Scrambling to let him in, she saw the present and stared at it big-eyed.
“Is that for Molly?” Susan asked with hushed respect as Will walked past her into the kitchen. Molly, turning her back on the newcomer, prepared to treat the gift—and the giver—with disdain.
“Nope,” Will said cheerfully, ignoring Molly’s icy silence and casting no more than a cursory glance over her flannel shirt, sweat pants and bare feet. “It’s for Ashley.”
“For me?” Ashley looked at him with amazement as he held out the beautifully wrapped box to her.
Will grinned and nodded. Ashley dropped the potato masher into the pan with a clatter and took the present. She looked down at it for a moment, then up at Will.
“Open it,” he said.
“Open it, open it!” the twins echoed. Sam abandoned the Indian village to join Susan in crowding around Ashley. Mike, apparently drawn by the noise, came to lounge in the kitchen doorway and watch.
Trying not to feel affronted, Molly shifted the chicken from the skillet onto a serving platter, and observed the proceedings out of the corner of her eye.
Ashley removed the wrappings slowly, much to the twins’ loudly expressed disgust, folding the paper with care and setting the ribbon aside for later reuse. The box was shiny white cardboard with the name of an exclusive retailer swirled across the lid in gold. When Ashley somewhat hesitantly removed the lid, layers of white tissue paper billowed out.
“What on earth …?” Ashley breathed, setting the box on the table and delving beneath the tissue paper, suddenly more eager than shy. “Oh, my!”
Gasping, Ashley lifted a dress from the box. A prom dress, to be precise, in a delicate shade of rose pink, with a demure off-the-shoulder neckline adorned in the middle by a silk rose. The dress was made with a fitted bodice and a filmy skirt that fell to the floor in layers of ruffles.
“Oh, my!” Ashley said again, staring at the dress as she held it at arm’s length in front of her.
“Ashley, it’s beautiful!” Susan breathed.
“It’s a dress,” Sam said to Mike with obvious disappointment. Mike grimaced in sympathetic response.
“Molly, look!” Ashley turned to hold the dress out for her older sister’s inspection.
“It’s gorgeous, Ash,” Molly said, loath to rain on Ashley’s parade just because she was determined to have nothing more to do with Will. The dress would suit Ashley like a dream, and it had clearly cost the earth. Far more than they could have afforded to spend. “Absolutely gorgeous.”
“But I already have that white dress.” Ever conscientious, Ashley remembered the dress Molly had bought for her and looked troubled.
Molly shook her head. “This one is perfect. I can take the other back.”
“I love it.” A smile trembled on Ashley’s lips. Her eyes shone as she looked down at the pink dress again. At her sister’s transparent delight, Molly felt a glow of gratitude toward Will, which she immediately suppressed. Yes, he was kind—and strong and handsome and sexy, too, if she were honest—but he was leaving. By the time he left, she was determined to feel nothing for him at all.
“Thank you, Will,” Ashley said softly, her gaze swinging, around to where he stood grinning at her. Then she crossed the room, put a hand on his shoulder, and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
“You’re welcome,” Will said as she stepped back to smile at him. “I figured it was the least I could do after stepping on your toes so many times.”
“Stepping on my toes …!” Ashley laughed, a merry sound of pure joy, and shook her head. For an instant Molly got a glimpse of the lovely woman Ashley would be when she finally grew into herself.
“Try it on,” Susan urged. Ashley, more than willing, picked up the dress and headed toward the bathroom.
“I suppose you’re going to want to stay for supper,” Molly said in a sour aside to Will as she rescued the potatoes Ashley had abandoned, and began to wield the potato masher on them with more force than was necessary.
“Not tonight.” He glanced over to where Mike still lounged in the living room doorway, and raised his voice. “Mike and I are going to go shoot some hoops. I thought we’d grab a bite somewhere afterward.”
“You are?” Astounded, Molly looked from Will to her brother to find that Mike had straightened away from the door frame, his expression more eager than she had seen it in months.
“Yeah,” Mike said, carefully casual. Then, to Will, “Ready to go?”
“As soon as we admire your sister’s dress,” Will said as Ashley emerged from the bathroom with a shy “What do you think?”
She looked beautiful, was what Molly thought as Ashley pirouetted rather awkwardly before them. The soft rose of the dress made her skin seem creamy rather than pale, and the off-the-shoulder neckline was both flattering and modest. It was the perfect gown for a young girl to wear to her first dance. Molly was suddenly fiercely glad that Ashley possessed it, even if it was Will who had bought it for her.
“You look fantastic,” Molly said, and everyone else—even Mike and Sam—echoed the compliment. Flushing at the praise, Ashley nevertheless looked supremely happy as she went to take the dress off.
“Ready?” Will said to Mike when Ashley had retired to the bathroom again.
Mike nodded and headed toward the door.
“I won’t keep him out late,” Will called back over his shoulder as he followed Mike out the door. “See ya.”
Molly was left staring after them with the potato masher suspended over the pan.
“Do you believe that?” she said to Ashley, who had emerged from the bathroom in her jeans and was reverently folding her new dress back into its bed of tissues.
“What?” Ashley asked with dreamy inattention. It was clear from her sister’s face that she was now so in charity with Will over the dress that she didn’t see anything the least bit odd about Mike’s going off with him so readily, so Molly forebore saying anything more. But she was frowning as she dished up supper, and cross for the rest of the night.
35
October 18, 1995
Before dawn the next morning, Will sat in front of the monitor in the van and moodily watched Molly muck out a stall. Her back was to the camera, as it had been pretty much the entire
time he had been sitting there. He had been up all night going over the contents of Don Simpson’s files. His eyes felt grainy as they followed Molly’s movements. By this time he had every barn at Keeneland wired, copies of the office files of the four men under investigation, bank records, employment records, criminal records and racing records for just about every horse at Keeneland. It all added up to exactly nothing. He was getting desperate to find even one ringer. The puzzling thing about it was, the suspect trainers were still winning with long-shot horses—but legitimate long-shot horses, at least as far as he could tell. That left two possibilities: Either there were no ringers, which meant he had completely screwed up from the beginning and Lawrence had lied to him, or he was missing something. Much as he hated to face it, Will had a feeling that the second possibility was the correct one: He was missing something. But what?
It was galling to think that crooked horse races were being run right under his nose and he could not uncover how it was being done, but he was afraid that was the case.
Lawrence’s “suicide” was another sticking point. For Will’s money, it was just too convenient.
The blackmail note on which he had pinned such high hopes had not provided any enlightenment either; the only fingerprints on it belonged to Lawrence himself. If it even was a blackmail note. At this point, who knew?
His usual instinct for a case seemed to have deserted him on this one. Will had a pretty good inkling as to the reason why: He could not focus on it with his normal degree of concentration. The answer to the “why” to that was even now filling his monitor’s screen: Molly. In the schmaltzy words of the old song, she had him bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.
Horny, too, though the song hadn’t said anything about that.
His relationship with Molly was interfering with his work.
The van door opened. Will glanced up as Murphy, clad in his faux lawn service uniform and a good half-hour early, stepped inside. Murphy looked surprised to see him. They had agreed that Will, in his guise as Molly’s boyfriend, would stay away from the van unless absolutely necessary.
One glance at the monitor appeared to answer Murphy’s unspoken question concerning Will’s presence, however. Will flushed, and had to fight an urge to flip the dial.
“Nothing happening in Barn 15,” Will said as he turned casually away from the monitor.
Murphy was not deceived. He eased himself down on the couch and pulled a chocolate-covered doughnut out of the brown paper bag he held.
“So how’s the belle of Woodford County today?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow at Molly’s image on the monitor as he offered the paper bag to Will.
The belle of Woodford County. It was a good name for her. Will shrugged, and waved the bag away.
“Fine, as far as I know.”
Murphy took a bite out of his doughnut, and glanced at the monitor again. “Don’t look like she’s fine to me.”
“What do you mean?” Will swiveled around to look at the monitor himself.
“She’s crying.”
Molly was on her knees spreading fresh straw on the floor of the stall. She was facing the camera now. Will could clearly see the tears running down her cheeks.
For a moment he watched, paralyzed.
“Shit,” Will said, and got to his feet. Murphy, the dog, was grinning widely as Will exited the van.
Though it was growing brighter by the minute outside, the lights in the barn were on. Will nodded at a security guard who was strolling out as he entered. The man nodded back without much interest. In a stall near the door, a swarthy little groom was holding on to a halter and crooning in Spanish to an obviously agitated horse. The groom glanced around as Will went by, but said nothing. The horse nickered and stomped its feet. There were some empty stalls, then the fuzzy donkey—burro—with the name Will couldn’t remember twitched its ears at him. Farther along, another horse put its head out of its stall and watched him pass with almost human curiosity.
Molly was in a stall at the far end. Will reached it and rested his arms on top of the partly closed Dutch door, watching her. She was still on her knees, turned away from him, spreading straw for all she was worth. The overhead light lent a glossy sheen to her wavy dark hair, which spilled over her shoulders and down her back. When he thought about it, Will realized that he had never seen her wear her hair loose to work before. Then he figured out that she must be trying to hide the mark on her neck. He hadn’t given a girl a hickey since high school. Remembering the particulars surrounding the giving of this one, he felt a stab of desire that aimed straight for his ulcer. As he eyed her back, Will’s mouth twisted in wry amusement at his own reaction. Clad in old jeans and sneakers and an open flannel shirt over a turtleneck, Molly was still lovely enough to give him a stomachache.
As he watched, she lifted a hand to her eyes, brushing at them angrily. He heard an audible sniff.
“What’s the matter, Molly?” His voice was tender. She jumped as if she had been shot, stumbled to her feet and whirled to glare at him, scrubbing at her cheeks with both hands.
“What are you doing here?” She was actively hostile—but then she spoiled it with a loud sniff.
“I just happened to be in the neighborhood …” he said with irony as he opened the stall door and walked inside. “You want to tell me what’s wrong, or do I get to guess?” His voice sharpened. “Is it Mike?”
He stopped in front of her. She looked up at him, and he saw that despite her efforts her big brown eyes still brimmed with tears. He wondered if she had been crying long. From the look of her, she had.
“Go away,” she said as a tear coursed down her cheek. She brushed it away with a muttered curse, and glared at him.
“Did something happen to one of the kids?” Will was surprised at the degree of anxiety he felt. Like their older sister, the younger Ballard siblings had in some inexplicable fashion managed to worm their way into his heart to a surprising degree.
“No.” Molly’s voice was curt. She turned her back on him and picked up a pitchfork, using it to spread out the straw. “Go away. I don’t want to see you, and anyway you’re going to get me in trouble if Mr. Simpson catches you in here. We’re not supposed to have visitors while we’re working.”
“I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s the matter. Somehow I don’t think you’re the type to cry just because you’re having a virulent attack of PMS.”
Will had dealt with enough women to know that any male reference to PMS was the equivalent of waving a red flag before a bull, and it worked that way with Molly too. She swung around to face him, eyes glittering, teeth gritted, and a pitchfork in her hands.
“Get,” she said, sounding as if she meant it.
“Not till you tell me why you’re crying.” Will stood his ground, but eyed the pitchfork warily.
“If you have to know, it’s Sheila,” she said after a moment.
Will had heard the name before, but he couldn’t quite place it. Reaching out, he caught the shank of the pitchfork, pulled it out of her hands, and leaned it up against the side of the stall.
“Sheila?” he questioned, turning back to her.
“The mare.” Molly spat the words at him.
“The mare?” Will repeated stupidly, still not quite making the connection.
“The mare in the field. The mare the horse slasher attacked. Remember her?” Molly threw the words out as if she hated him. Her fists were clenched and her eyes sparkled with anger. Will might have been fooled into thinking that she was furious rather than hurting—but then another fat tear coursed down her cheek.
Will looked at her, said a swear word under his breath, caught her wrist, and pulled her into his arms. Molly resisted, her body rigid, her hands pushing against his chest.
“What about Sheila?” Will asked, his voice as soft as his eyes as she glared up at him. His arms were locked around her waist. He had no intention of letting her go.
Molly’s lower lip quivered. All the fight went out of
her suddenly. Her gaze dropped and she leaned into him, resting her forehead against his chest.
“They put her down this morning,” she said in a muffled voice to his expensive silk tie.
Her shoulders shook. Will realized that she was crying, and realized, too, that what she had told him meant the horse was dead. He tightened his arms around her slender form, bent his head and pressed his lips to her hair. Murmuring almost meaningless words of comfort, he rocked her back and forth, kissing the tip of her ear, her temple, whatever he could reach. She snuggled closer, burrowing against him like a small child seeking warmth, and wrapped her arms around his waist beneath his jacket.
It was only when she looked up and he bent his head to kiss her mouth that Will remembered they were on Candid Camera. Moving one hand behind his back, he gave Murphy the bird. Then his lips found Molly’s, and he forgot all about Murphy again.
Approaching voices broke them apart. Molly pushed against his shoulders, Will glanced up, and then she was out of his arms, frantically tidying her hair and clothes and wiping at her face with the tail of her shirt. Will straightened his tie and buttoned his coat, watching her quizzically. She didn’t so much as look at him as she hurried to the stall door and stepped out into the wide barn corridor, closing the door behind her.
“Yo, Miss Molly!” The exuberant greeting left Will in no doubt as to the identity of at least one of the newcomers: Thornton Wyland. He started to follow Molly, to make his presence known. Then he hesitated. She’d said his presence would get her into trouble. Will realized if he emerged from the same empty stall that she had just exited, that might very well be true. So he stuck his hands in his pockets and stayed where he was, feeling like a fool as he skulked out of sight.
“Hello—Molly?” The voice, with its slight hesitation, as if the speaker couldn’t quite remember Molly’s name, was a woman’s. Peering through a crack in the wooden wall and feeling about ten years old, Will recognized Helen Trapp.
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