Shadowed Paradise

by Blair Bancroft

  Claire rejected the explanation with loathing. “It was just like a horror film. I was sitting there taking off my makeup when I looked in the mirror and saw this giant thing on the wall behind me. It’s black, it has eight legs. It’s the size of a dinner plate!”

  “Saucer maybe,” Brad conceded.

  “It is the biggest spider I have ever seen in my life,” Claire declared flatly. “I want it gone. Now. Where are you going?” she shrieked as Brad came out of the bathroom and headed toward the back stairs that led down to the kitchen.

  He paused, naked and limp, in the doorway. “It’s a hunter spider,” he explained patiently, “out on its nightly roach patrol. Hunters don’t make webs because they’re so damn fast on their feet—uh, legs. I pride myself on my reflexes, but if I tried to swat the damned thing with anything I have on hand, it would simply scoot away, dive back where it came from, and then you’d really be mad.” With a barely perceptible, but nonetheless annoying, shrug of his shoulders, Brad disappeared out the bedroom door.

  Claire never moved from her crouch in the center of the bed. She kept her eyes trained on the bathroom. If that thing came creeping—or possibly charging—into the bedroom, she was going to be prepared to run.

  A few minutes later, after Brad successfully demonstrated his spider removal technique using a combination of bug spray and a fly swatter, he presented the crumpled remains displayed on a bed of blue Kleenex. Claire cringed and burst into tears. “Take it away,” she sobbed. “I don’t think Florida likes me, I really don’t. I’m just not brave enough for this place.” She choked, hiccuped, clutched at the brand new crisp white sheets. “For heaven’s sake, bring me a Kleenex, a whole box. Nothing’s going to get me off this bed.”

  “Good,” Brad leered over his shoulder as he headed back to the bathroom after depositing Maisie’s remains in the wastebasket.

  Claire gulped, blew her nose, and eyed her husband rather sheepishly after he handed her the box of tissues.

  “Let me see,” he said as he sank down on the end of the bed. “I believe this is the woman who used to ride the subway in Manhattan, push a baby carriage in Central Park. The woman who took on the New York City D.A., the FBI, CIA, DEA, IRS, and the Justice Department. “Did I leave any out?”

  “ATF, FAA and Interpol,” Claire recited tonelessly, but her bottom lip gave a slight twitch.

  Brad’s pale brows arched over his high Slavic cheekbones. Point made.

  “Did it ever occur to you,” Claire inquired sweetly, hiking up one strap of the pink froth, “that I might prefer the whole alphabet soup to Maisie?”

  “Maisie is a danger only to cockroaches,” Brad pointed out blandly. Victory was his. No need to rub it in.

  Claire toyed with the serged hem of the silk that lay half way up her thigh. Her lower lip edged into a particularly feminine pout. “You never specified I had to be sensible,” she grumbled.

  Brad had few illusions. Maisie was simply the embodiment of all the nightmares Claire had suffered. By ridding the world of Maisie he had done what was expected of him. Protected her from Maisie, as she expected to be protected from other predators. Whether they had eight legs, six, four. Or two.

  Not that Claire didn’t want him. Hell, she might even love him. The day would come—at least he hoped it would—when she’d allow herself to love without fear or reservation, when she would trust him enough to admit that she loved him. Until then . . . it was his wedding night and his wife was scrunched up in a goddamn ball in the middle of the bed, looking as if she expected an army of Maisies to come charging out of the bathroom at any moment.

  “Uh, Claire,” Brad ventured, his eyes lingering on the swell of her breasts, the rosy thrust of her nipples beneath their flimsy covering, the darker triangle that marked her most private flesh. “Maisie’s gone, the guests are gone. We have the whole damn house to ourselves. Do you think we might get back to our wedding night? Ten minutes ago I was lying here ready and waiting. It wouldn’t take much encouragement to restore that condition.” Truthfully, even the lingering odor of insect killer couldn’t keep a good man down. He was recovering his enthusiasm with satisfying rapidity.

  “You’re Maisie, and I’m the cockroach, right?” Claire sniped in one last attempt to cling to her grievances. “You know,” she added slowly, “I was really ticked off about Phil, flaunting it right up front, but somewhere in the middle of the reception a thought occurred to me. If I kept telling myself she might become your aunt, the whole situation seemed like a sitcom.”

  Brad’s shout of laughter filled the bedroom, echoed through the cavernous bathroom and back again. In the end they both had to resort to the tissue box to wipe their streaming eyes. It was going to be all right, they both knew it. Whatever their reasons for marriage, they also wanted each other. Wanted love. Wanted to make a family together.

  It was enough.

  A bright flash came out of nowhere, illuminating the room. Thunder rumbled, a gust of wind slammed back the partially open French doors, riffled the long curtains at the sash windows into a mass of billowing white.

  In a cosmic replay of that fateful night in June, lightning flashed and thunder rolled, and Claire’s fears fell away. Here, close enough to touch, was life. Light flickered over the bronze of Brad’s bare skin, the crinkle of lines around his eyes, the pale blond halo of his unbound hair. He was here beside her, her very own heroic statue without the fig leaf. Waiting. Hopeful.

  The lightning strokes came faster; the thunder, nearly continuous. The deluge arrived on a sweeping whoosh of wind. Rain beat a steady drumroll against the barrel tile roof.

  Slowly, deliberately, Brad leaned forward, thrust an index finger under one of the spaghetti straps of Claire’s gown, and slipped it off her shoulder. She never took her eyes from his, never moved a muscle. She couldn’t breathe. Brad’s finger moved again. The second frail strap tumbled down. The finger moved on, catching a rhythm from the pounding rain, the flashes of light, the inevitable answering roar.

  He liked the feel of silk. It was almost as fine as flesh. It tantalized. Invited. Mocked the roughness of him, the hard edges of flesh and soul.

  He palmed her breasts, rotated his hands across the soft flesh. Claire felt it all the way to the pit of her being. He had barely laid a hand on her, and she was dizzy. There was only the pounding of her heart, obliterating the rain, the thunder, every reality beyond two people and a diminishing square of bed.

  Brad inched one finger under the edge of her drooping bodice. A slow, sensuous tug and the pink silk fell away, pooling around her waist. Each flicker of lightning revealed the gleam of his brilliant blue of his eyes, the sweat glistening on his bronzed forehead, a sheen of pure lust. His sex rose rigid from a nest of sandy blond curls.

  Claire fought for air—she must have been holding her breath. He was so beautiful, so perfect in his masculinity. She could smell his scent, part XS by Paco Rabanne–and didn’t he have an excess of everything a man needed to have?—and part essence of Brad Blue. Strong, proud, arrogant, and completely male.

  Reality faded. No lightning, no rain or thunder. No fluorescent bathroom light casting a soft rectangular glow onto the bedroom carpet. The world was contained on a kingsize bed. As Brad bent his head to suckle her breast, Claire fisted her hands in his unleashed hair and gave herself up to the glory of it. The miracle.

  Not until he had devoured every inch of her, and her own tongue had licked and teased until he begged her to stop, did Brad—on a mumbled chant of “Oh god, oh god, oh god”—inch his way inside to Claire’s counterpoint of “Yes, oh yes, oh yes!” A few strokes and they were over the precipice, tumbling into eternity, their convulsions shaking the bed, their cries echoed back by the now distant thunder.

  The rain dwindled to drips falling off the roof and striking the wrought iron balcony outside the French doors. Snuggled together, eyelids heavy with repletion, they felt the lightning fade, heard the thunder diminish to nothingness. As on that June night in the
midst of a flood, the storm ended and something more significant began.

  With a smile that could only be called smug and a gleam in the eye that could have only one ending, Brad returned to life, nuzzling his wife’s lips with his. If Claire had lived through the first time—and for a moment there, he’d had his doubts—he was ready, more than ready, to try again.

  The night, after all, was still young.

  The elevator was taking forever. Anticipation gripped him with a fierce joy beyond sex, beyond reason. His whole body was growing hard. Expanding, swelling, rising to the thrill of it, his mind soaring, gloating. Reason was plunging into that deep pit from which there was no return. Hell, yes! His mind was already there, his body soon to follow.

  But not before payback time. Not before he took care of Blue’s bitches.

  The elevator door slid silently open. He stepped out into the brisk seabreeze ten stories above the broad harbor that gave Manatee Bay its name. It felt good, momentarily cooling the engorged heat of him, the fevered desire. He drew a deep breath. Oh, yes! This was going to be the best one yet. The best by far. Maybe he’d do her before as well as after. For a moment he gripped the gallery’s iron railing, gazing out over the bay to the distant lights of the city, then down, far down, to the parking lot below. Some niggling remnant of rationality urged him to end it here, end it now, before anyone else died. It would be so easy, it was such a low railing . . .

  He slammed shut that tiny glimmer of reason. No way. He was going to finish what he started. Vengeance. Blue could have him, but not until he’d done one bitch, then the other. That was going to feel good, so good. Just thinking about this one made him king of the mountain. Omnipotent. All powerful. Lucifer incarnate.

  He loosed his grip on the railing, squared his shoulders, straightened his tie. He walked the few steps to the condo doorway and rang the bell. The eye peering at him through the peephole was grotesque. The face framed in the soft light of the quickly opened doorway was anything but. Major bitch, but stunningly beautiful. And wearing nothing but a red silk robe that barely covered her tight little ass.

  She was smiling up at him—incredibly, shockingly sexy. Exultant that he’d come to her at last.

  His breathing was erratic. If he didn’t do something fast, he was going to come in his goddamn pants.

  “Will wonders never cease,” Diane Lake murmured huskily. And stood aside to let him in.

  On Sunday afternoon Brad and Claire Blue opened the Amber Run sales office for business as usual. Almost as usual. Since the construction crews were off on Sunday, Brad normally kept an eye on Claire by hunkering down over his paperwork at the old oak desk that had been transferred from the trailer to the lattice-walled parking area under the model. Today, however, he pulled up a chair next to his bride’s elegant desk and simply gazed at her, savoring the satisfaction of knowing she was well and truly his. Jesus, it felt good! He was married. He had a son. And there would be others. Damn right, and the sooner the better. Brad was still wearing a fatuous grin when the first customers of the day came puffing up the stairs.

  All in all, it was a better-than-average Sunday afternoon. One contract, a “definite maybe,” a pleasing variety of complimentary remarks. Brad and Claire were just beginning the lengthy process of closing up the model—shutting all the doors and windows, turning out lights, setting the security alarm—when Claire paused with her hands above her head, her fingers gripping the top of one of the front windows. A white and green deputy sheriff’s patrol car was coming up the road, followed closely by what she suspected was an unmarked police car.

  Claire sucked in her breath. Why should she be surprised? It must be Task Force business. Dear God, please, not another body! There was an ominous aura about those cars pulling into the parking area below.

  Distinctly masculine footsteps sounded on the stairs. The door opened to reveal two familiar faces. “Tom . . . Bob,” Brad greeted the detectives who were members of the Special Task Force. “What’s up?”

  The two men, one about Brad’s age, the other in his mid-forties, appeared decidedly uncomfortable. They glanced at Claire, mumbled a greeting. An awkward pause as each seemed to be waiting for the other to speak. From her position by the window Claire could see that a uniformed deputy had remained below, standing casually at ease next to his patrol car. The gun on his hip suddenly loomed as large as a basketball. The hair on the back of her neck stood up. What was the deputy doing here? Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  “Uh, Brad,” said Bob Guthrie, the elder of the two detectives, “maybe we should talk privately.”

  “No need. My wife can hear whatever you have to say. What’s happened?”

  Tom Rausch darted a second glance at Claire, looked at his partner and stepped closer until he was almost chest-to-chest with Brad. “It’s about Diane Lake,” he hissed.

  “Go on.” Brad ground out.

  “She’s dead,” said Detective Guthrie baldly. “She was strangled. Probably raped.”

  “Oh, no.” Claire sagged against the sill of the still-open window.

  “Shit!” The word slid softly from between Brad’s grim lips. He stared down at the toe of his boot, scraped it idly along the shining surface of the ceramic tile. When he looked back up, he was all hard-eyed professional cop. “Tell me,” he snapped.

  “She was in her condo. Probably wouldn’t have been found until she failed to show up at the studio tomorrow,” Guthrie explained, “but she was scheduled to appear at some charity function at noon today. When she didn’t show and didn’t answer the phone, the sponsors sent someone over to check on her.”

  “Get on with it,” Brad growled, as the detective paused.

  “She’d been strangled,” Tom Rausch added quickly. “With her pantyhose. There’s some indication she’d been raped, but it’s too soon for confirmation on that.”

  “Pantyhose,” Brad repeated very quietly, “and Diane’s not a Realtor. So what are you guys doing here?”

  “Well—uh,” Guthrie stammered, “we don’t really see a connection to the serial killer unless it’s a copycat situation, but—um—the Sheriff’s out on his boat and . . . well, he’s on his way back, and since we knew you . . . he kinda asked us if we could stop by and—um—bring you in to talk to him.”

  “You’re taking me in for questioning?” Brad’s body tensed, like a tiger about to charge to the kill.

  “It was our wedding night,” Claire cried, coming off the wall in a rush. “You can’t actually think Brad had anything to do with it. And don’t give me any of that we’re just doing our job, ma’am. It’s absolutely physically impossible for Brad to have been in Manatee Bay last night.”

  “Maybe she’s been dead since before last night,” Guthrie pointed out, regaining a little of his professional cool. “We have to wait for the M.E.’s report.”

  “This is outrageous . . .”

  “It’s okay, Claire,” Brad said, tucking her against his side when she seemed ready to go toe-to-toe with Guthrie. “You’re absolutely right. But so are they. If Bill Jeffries wants to talk to me, that’s fine. I need some details on this thing, and I might as well get them first hand. I owe Diane that much. She may have been a pain in the ass, but she didn’t deserve to die.”

  Brad gave Claire a hug. “Go on now and finish closing up. You’ll probably have to come and pick me up later. Sorry about that.” He summoned a smile, placed a swift kiss on her mouth, and was gone, the two detectives slouching unhappily in his wake.

  From the window Claire watched as Brad got into the back seat of the unmarked car while the deputy stood by. His hand, she noticed, was resting lightly on his holster.

  Very slowly she slid the window shut and snapped the latch in place.

  “You’re an asshole, Bill.” Brad leaned back in his chair, eyeing Sheriff Jeffries with a mix of disgust and boredom. “If I wanted Diane dead, I sure as hell could have found a way that wouldn’t have landed me in your office the next day.”

  “
I doubt it,” the Sheriff countered. “No matter how she died, you’re the one with the most motive. Everyone knows she was driving you nuts . . . and then there was that scene with your wife in Phil’s office. Really bad, I hear. I bet you freaked big time.”

  “What scene?”

  “Whaddya mean, what scene?” Tom Rausch burst out from his seat beside his partner in the sheriff’s spacious office. “I swear the whole town’s heard how Diane came into T & T and told your new girlfriend to go to hell. Phil had to have her thrown out. Bodily.”

  “When was this?”

  “Your wife’s last day at T & T,” the sheriff told him. “You trying to tell me you didn’t know about it?”

  “Hell, no. No, I didn’t know about it,” Brad clarified.

  It was Guthrie’s turn. “Lake kept calling you, sending you gifts. You told her to get off your back, sent the gifts back? Right?”

  “True, but I didn’t kill her.”

  “All right, let’s back up a bit,” Jeffries interjected. “You admit Lake harassed you, but you claim you didn’t know she attacked your new girlfriend?”

  “Right.”

  “Guess everyone was afraid to tell you. Knew what a temper you have.” The sheriff leaned back in his chair, eyes slitted, fingers tapping the shining surface of his desk.

  “So I’ve got a temper.” Brad’s gaze was clear and cold.

  “And Diane Lake wouldn’t be the first person you’ve strangled.”

  “Fuck you, Jeffries!” Brad came out of his chair so fast the detectives were left clutching air. He towered over the sheriff, eyes blazing. “And I suppose you got to be sheriff because you never shot somebody in the line of duty,” he ground out, emphasizing each syllable. His muscles tensed as the two detectives got a grip on him at last. The sneer on his face said their hold would last just as long as he chose to let it.