Detective on the Hunt

by Marilyn Pappano

  He’d recognized one other thing about her. “And you do like to win.”

  “I do.”

  It was one of her strengths. Probably one of her weaknesses, too. In matters big or small, great or piddling, in love or war.

  Especially in love or war.

  * * *

  The sun glinted so brightly off the snow and leftover ice that Quint’s sunglasses weren’t dark enough to keep an ache from starting behind his eyes. He wanted nothing more than to go home, take a couple of aspirin tablets and sleep about twelve hours, but that would only delay the inevitable. JJ had to see Maura Evans face-to-face, and Sam wanted him to be there when it happened.

  Maybe she wouldn’t be home. Maybe she was sleeping off a midweek drunk and wouldn’t answer the door. Maybe, like her friend Mel, she’d packed up and fled town before the storm hit last night.

  Or maybe she would open the door, greet her childhood babysitter like a long-lost friend, explain the last three months of her behavior to everyone’s satisfaction, and JJ’s case would be officially closed. She would be free to go back to South Carolina, report in to her idiot boss and jump right back into her usual routine.

  An odd little spot deep inside Quint really sort of hoped that didn’t happen. Not yet. Not when he hadn’t...

  What?

  He didn’t even know.

  Willow Street was untraveled past the Berryhills’ house, where four small kids were probably driving their mother a little more insane than usual. No tire tracks, no footprints, no one in or out. The pricey little convertible Maura drove wasn’t made for bad weather, and she was probably no more experienced with these road conditions than JJ. At the gate, he turned into the driveway, parking about the same place he’d parked when he’d written Maura that last ticket.

  She wasn’t the first woman who’d come on to him in an effort to avoid a ticket. But she was the only one who’d actually tempted him. Her boldness. Her beauty. His loneliness. It was what shamed him: that he had been tempted. That he’d actually considered using her, with just as little emotion and just as little caring, as she would have used him. That he would have dishonored Linny’s memory that way.

  That he would have, he’d eventually realized, dishonored Maura, too.

  Maybe she wouldn’t remember him. To her, he’d probably just been some lowly civil servant, someone to amuse herself with for an hour or two. She’d probably forgotten everything about him the moment she’d slammed the door on him.

  “Are you going to wait here?”

  JJ’s voice startled him from his thoughts. She’d opened the passenger door and sat sideways in the seat, one leg already out. “Is that an option?” He hoped she didn’t identify the hopeful tone faint in his voice.

  “No.” She glanced ahead, then asked, “Is it just me, or is this place kind of creepy?”

  He looked at the house. It stood two stories, blocky and plain, built of brick so deep a red that it came close to black. The door was white, the shutters black, the windows tall and symmetrical, every one covered inside with drapes. Instead of a porch, there was a small stoop with a concrete planter on each side that held the spindly skeletons of bushes long dead.

  The lawn was big, patches of newly greened grass mixed with tall yellowed weeds. The leaves not stubborn enough to evade the wind piled against the foundation from corner to corner, in the branches of the lifeless shrubs, in the corners around the door. The sidewalk hadn’t been edged in so long that snakes of dead grass crept across the surface, the tall red cedar in the middle of the yard was dying and volunteer seedlings had popped up in a dozen places. Red cedars were notoriously prolific in Oklahoma. Left unchecked, they would take over the entire acreage more quickly than seemed possible.

  “It’s not creepy. Just neglected.”

  “Miss Georgie wouldn’t like that.”

  “No. You’d think Maura would have hired someone to clean up last fall or to get ready for spring.”

  “I’m not sure she gets that things have to actually be done. East Oaks, the family home, makes Tara from Gone With the Wind look like servants’ quarters. When she got up in the morning, every room in the house was spotless, the grass was manicured and the pool was sparkling fresh and clean. Meals appeared on the table, and when she dropped dirty clothes on the floor, they reappeared, magically clean, in her closet. Which, by the way, even when she was ten, was bigger than my entire condo.”

  It was a life he could hardly imagine. He’d been putting his dirty clothes in a hamper for as long as he could remember. Setting the table, helping in the garden, loading the dishwasher, doing his own laundry, picking up whether he’d made the mess or someone else had—that had been life in the Foster household. They’d known where food came from, how grass got mowed, how clothes got clean.

  He tuned back to her last comment. “You live in a condo?”

  JJ flashed a smile. “I know how things get done. That’s why I have nine hundred square feet of low-maintenance paradise.” After a pause, she slid to the ground. “Shall we?”

  Do we have to? he wanted to ask, but of course they did. He cut the engine, removed his seat belt and opened his own door. Meeting at the front of the truck, they left a trail of footprints across the pristine snow of the driveway, along the sidewalk and to the entry.

  JJ rang the doorbell, then stamped her feet on the cement stoop. “I never understood why people choose such solid doors, then put windows on either side. I don’t want people looking inside my place before I have a chance to look out at them.”

  He looked in the nearest sidelight. No lights were on inside, and the covered windows left the space in shadow. The door opened into a foyer, a chandelier overhead and stairs on the right side climbing to the second floor. The front room—Georgie had never cared for words like living room or parlor—was to the left, barely visible beyond its arched double doorway, and her husband’s study opened on the right.

  “I didn’t call ahead because I doubt she wants to see anyone from home, but it looks like maybe I should have.” JJ pushed the bell again, its echoes faint.

  Shadowy movement on the stairs reminded Quint he was peeping into someone else’s home. He stepped back, standing squarely in the middle of the stoop, and opened his mouth to say their summons was being answered when a thin, surly voice inside bellowed, “Don’t ring that damn bell again!”

  “Oh good. She’s already happy to see us,” JJ said with a cynical grin.

  The woman ignored the sidelights and jerked the door open to glare at them. “Why are you ringing my bell?”

  “Because that’s the usual way to let someone know they have company.” JJ’s smile wasn’t her usual one, full of warmth and damn near oozing friendliness. This was her professional smile—polite, cordial. Her whole manner was: the way she stood a little straighter, held her head a little higher, offered her hand for a shake. “It’s been a long time, Maura.”

  “Anything beyond last week is a long time,” Maura muttered before shoving her hair back from her face. “You’ll have to remind me when we met.”

  “Fifteen, maybe sixteen years ago. You were ten, it was summer and I apparently wasn’t the most memorable babysitter you ever had. JJ Logan.”

  Seconds ticked past as Maura stared at her, her brows drawn together, her blue eyes narrowing. Abruptly, a look of surprise crossed her face. “JJ! Oh my God. You were probably the best babysitter I ever had.” She stepped forward, grabbing JJ in a hug that struck Quint as both awkwardly given and awkwardly received, then hastily drew back from the door, a shiver running through her. “You should come inside. This old house is impossible to keep warm. It’s been awful all winter, and that comes from someone who spent a whole winter in ice hotels in Switzerland.”

  JJ entered first, and Quint followed. So far, he didn’t think Maura had even noticed him. Good.

  It was warmer in the house, though
not comfortably so, as Maura had said. It took a lot to heat a foyer with a twenty-five-foot ceiling, especially with a marble floor, no rugs, no furniture, nothing to help the furnace with its job. The space smelled musty, as if it hadn’t been thoroughly cleaned in at least as long as the yard hadn’t been properly cared for.

  Maura led the way past the front room, once home to antiques and Turkish rugs and now holding a lonely couch, and the dining room, totally empty, to the single large room at the back of the house. The kitchen occupied the left side, with a space in the center for a table and chairs, and the right side had been built for low tables, cozy couches and the kind of chairs a person could curl up in. The old rocking chair he’d sat in yesterday at Georgie’s apartment had always held a place of pride next to the fireplace. Now the space had one Asian rug that couldn’t be more than a year old, a leather sofa and two matching chairs that looked and felt obscenely expensive when he sat in one, and that was it.

  JJ took a seat on the sofa while Maura went straight to the fireplace. She pushed the button that lit the gas, turned the flames to high, then sat on the hearth, huddling as if she might never get warm.

  It had been three months since the scene in the driveway. She was much prettier in his recollections, much more put together. Amazing what makeup, combed hair and a nice dress could do. Granted, they’d apparently woken her up, if her sweatpants, thin T-shirt and bedhead were anything to judge by. Her eyes were bleary, and an air of overindulgence made her less memorable. Partying, booze, sex, drugs...whatever she was getting too much of was taking its toll.

  “So.” She tucked her hands between her knees. “Why are you in Cedar Creek?”

  JJ relaxed on the couch, one hand at her side, fingers gently testing the texture of the expensive leather. “Your godfather is worried about you.”

  “My—” A scowl shifted across Maura’s face, drawing her mouth taut, emphasizing the hollows in her cheeks and the shadows under her eyes. She wore the expression as comfortably as Quint did, but with extra layers of surliness and disdain. That was one big difference between them: Maura felt disdain for much of the world, while the only person Quint held in true disdain was himself.

  “Winchester. Nosy old bastard. I’m twenty-five years old. What I do with my life and my money is none of his business.”

  Her words made Quint’s head throb worse. He wasn’t surprised that she showed such loathing for a man with whom she’d always been close. It was easy to love a person when he had no authority over you. Winchester and his wife had been her parents’ best friends, the easygoing godparents who never told her no, never tried to control her, just loved her from the sidelines. But with her parents’ deaths, he’d become the man who reined in her spending and therefore her activities, and she was in rebellion.

  Money had destroyed stronger relationships too many times to count.

  “He’s not only your godfather, Maura, he’s the executor of the estate. Your parents chose him to help you manage your inheritance and give you advice.”

  “My parents.” Maura scoffed as she straightened. Sort of. Her spine was still rounded, her shoulders still slumped. Her knees rested together, and one socked foot sat on top of the other. “What kind of parents go off and get themselves killed, give their only child a kajillion dollars, then take it back and say, oh, you can only spend what the godfather says you can? The selfish kind, and Winchester is just like them. What good does all that money do me when I can’t freaking have it? Is this some kind of punishment? Some sort of payback from the grave?”

  Quint shifted his head a fraction to the left to watch the impact of the words on JJ. Her brows twitched upward, and thin, nearly invisible lines etched out from the corners of her eyes and mouth. He could see the rigid set of her jaw and the even more rigid set of her shoulders as she drew a deep breath. Though to a casual observer, she seemed hardly affected by Maura’s anger, he recognized surprise in her, maybe some shock and even a dose of anger.

  “They were the kind of parents who loved you dearly, Maura. You know that. They loved you enough to make sure you were taken care of for the rest of your life. Those first few years, you were grieving, stunned. You could hardly make decisions for yourself. You needed Travis Winchester’s help.” JJ paused, then tried another tack. “You know your friends back home all have the same sort of setup with their trusts. An allowance now, a lump-sum payment when they turn twenty-five or thirty or thirty-five, another when they turn forty or fifty. The richer they are, the longer it takes to get the entire amount, and Maura, you’re the richest of all of them.”

  For the first time since she’d opened the door, Maura smiled. It was a smug, happy, greedy smile. “I am, aren’t I? More than any of them.” But like a balloon leaking air, the cheeriness seeped away, and she huddled down again, grousing, “I thought I would get it all when I turned twenty-five, but that was two months ago, and here I am, still broke.”

  “You get your first lump-sum payment in five more years,” JJ said evenly. “But seriously, your allowance is more than a million dollars a year, and Mr. Winchester releases other monies for special purchases. What do you want that $1.2 million a year won’t pay for?”

  Maura’s gaze dropped, and her lower lip slid into a pout. She lifted her right hand, inspecting her nails, four of them long and polished, one bitten to the quick. She picked at that nail for a moment, tearing off a strip of skin, then squeezed the finger tightly, forcing the drop of blood to well larger.

  While she stared, sullen and defensive, a soft thud came from above. JJ’s and Quint’s gazes both went straight to the ceiling, but Maura pretended not to notice. An instant later, there was another thud.

  “I’m sorry,” JJ said even though it was clear to him that she wasn’t. “Did we interrupt something?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Maura muttered.

  “I heard a door close upstairs. Do you have a guest waiting for you?”

  “There’s no one there.”

  “Are you sure? I’m a cop now, Maura. I’d be happy to go up and check things out.”

  “Would you freaking forget about it? The point is that money belongs to me. Not my grandfather—”

  “Godfather.”

  “Whatever. Since it’s mine, why can’t I have it when I want it?”

  “Because your parents’ wills said—”

  “I don’t care about their damn wills!” Maura jumped to her feet and, ignoring the blood on her finger, clenched her fists and tucked her arms across her chest. “You need to go. Tell the old bastard I want more money or else. Go on, get out. Get out!”

  JJ stood, dignified and controlled, though her face was a few shades paler. Quint did, too, and followed her back through the house to the front door. Maura jerked the door open wide and pointed that one blood-tipped finger toward the stoop. JJ was outside and he was one step away when Maura finally looked at him. Really looked at him. No, no, no, he hoped, but per usual, there was no hope.

  “Officer Foster,” she said in a manner that reminded him of a big hungry cat sighting its prey. The change from hostile to seductive was as quick as turning on a light, as drastic as going from deep black to midday sun. “When are you going to take me up on my offer?”

  He was hot and antsy inside, feeling the wicked gleam of her gaze, the watchful curiosity of JJ’s. Maura came closer, backing him against the doorjamb, so close he could identify distinct scents: sweat, the sour after note of wine, a hint of weed, an elegant but worn-out perfume. She smiled like that big hungry cat, unaware that at this moment, she looked far more down-and-out doper than million-dollar princess.

  “I didn’t pay that ticket,” she said throatily. Instead of sounding sexy, though, he was reminded of a cat about to hack up a ball of hair. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back and put handcuffs on me. Then we could have some real fun.”

  JJ’s dry voice, bare
ly audible, came from the top step. “Ah, the ten thousand handcuff jokes we hear all the time.”

  The reminder of her presence turned off the sex nymph and brought back the anger. “You know what? I lied before. You were a stupid, bad babysitter. I told my parents to never hire you back, and they never did.”

  So there! She didn’t add the juvenile taunt, but she might as well have. She gave Quint a shove on the shoulder that wouldn’t have moved him half an inch if he hadn’t been eager to go, then slammed the door. The lock clicked loudly an instant later.

  He and JJ walked to the truck in silence. A few deep breaths of cold air cleaned away the smells of Maura and her musty, dusty house, and the pounding in his head took a respite, far too brief but long enough for him to get settled in the driver’s seat.

  JJ gave him a long look before he reached for the gearshift, a questioning, wondering—judging?—sort of look. “So, Quint,” she said as he backed out of the drive. “Tell me about this offer.”

  Chapter 5

  He didn’t, of course. He didn’t say much of anything on the drive to the hotel, grunting a time or two, not meeting JJ’s gaze. Out front, he’d muttered something about being in touch, then gone off to finish his shift.

  Now JJ lay in the middle of the bed in her hotel room, shoes off, feet propped carefully on the iron birds that decorated the footboard. A pillow was stuffed under her head, a stack of file folders to one side, her cell and tablet on the other. She’d intended to use the time to type notes of the interview, to devote her quick and complicated brain to figuring out Maura’s juvenile and complicated behaviors, but instead, her thoughts had drifted from Maura to Quint and back like a pendulum. She’d found herself completely unable to focus on one of them for longer than a few minutes before the other beckoned her, and now, with dinnertime approaching, her empty stomach was demanding its share of attention, too.