by Beverly Long
It was the very last thing she intended to do. Her parents would demand an explanation. She’d be lucky if they didn’t arrange a twenty-four-hour guard. “No,” she said, wanting to keep it simple.
He studied her. “Your parents don’t know about any of this, do they? About Sandy Bird, the robbery?”
He had good intuition. It was probably what made him a good detective. “What I tell my parents isn’t really any of your business.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t even know you until—”
He waved a hand impatiently. “I know why you want me keeping my nose out of it. What I don’t understand is why you won’t tell your parents.”
She sighed. “Since I was thirteen, my parents have pretty much lived in a constant state of worry, just terrified that something was going to happen to me. I hurt them when I insisted upon coming to Chicago like Tessa. I won’t hurt them more by sharing the grim details of what has happened in the last week. I’m not sure they could survive it.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He leaned his head against the door and closed his eyes. Finally he opened them. “I guess I never really thought about what it must have been like for you.”
She didn’t want his sympathy. But it suddenly didn’t seem right to fling it back in his face. “I think we can agree that I didn’t walk a mile in your moccasins either.”
He rubbed a hand across his jaw. “Look, it’s not safe for you to stay here.”
“I’ll go back to the hotel. I was planning on staying there until this place got repainted anyway.”
Sam shook his head. “Maybe this guy is watching you. Maybe he knows where you’re staying.”
It made her skin crawl. “Fine. I’ll stay somewhere else.” Where, she had no idea. Hannah would certainly offer up a couch, but there was no way she wanted to involve anybody else in this mess.
He stared at her. “You could stay at my house.”
It was so unexpected that she leaned against the kitchen counter for support. “What?”
“Just for a few days. Just until I can get my head around this, figure out the next steps.”
She couldn’t figure out anything. It was all a confusing mess. Tessa had loved this man, had planned to marry him. Yet, her parents believed he’d had something to do with her death. “I...I can’t.”
He ran his hand through his short hair. “You’re afraid of me, aren’t you? Afraid to be in my house because maybe I am some whack job who took a two-by-four to your sister?” His voice was laced with pain.
“It’s too complicated,” she said. Before she could add any other explanation, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.
“I’m going to simplify it.” He motioned her close and tilted the phone away from his ear, allowing her to hear the person on the other end. She listened as he succinctly told his boss about the threat and that he intended to stash her at his house.
He ended the call and slammed his cell phone shut. “Do I need to take an ad out in the paper, too? Perhaps a photo of me with a caption that says lock this man up if something happens to Claire Fontaine?”
He was obnoxious and insulting and she wanted to fire back, but she didn’t. She’d hurt him. Badly. “Don’t push it, Sam,” she said, wanting him to know that she understood, but that she still wasn’t going to be bullied. “I’ll need a few minutes to get some clothes packed.”
* * *
THEY DIDN’T TALK on the fifteen-minute drive to his house, and Sam was okay with that. He didn’t want to argue about her staying, didn’t want to talk about Tessa and he sure as hell didn’t want to talk about the tape that was burning a hole in his pocket. Instead, he watched the traffic around him, took a few unnecessary turns and was confident that nobody had followed him.
He parked on the street and they walked up the steps. As he unlocked the front door, he turned. “I hope you’re not allergic to dogs,” he said.
“I don’t think so. I never had one.”
“Yeah, well, just watch your shoes. He likes to chew.”
Once inside, Nightmare came running. When he saw Claire, he did a little circle thing with his body, wagged his tail so hard that it hit the wall, and acted like he’d fallen paws first into love. It didn’t help that Claire dropped her bag, sunk to her knees and wrapped her arms around the big, black moose.
“Oh, you’re so pretty.”
Nightmare put his nose in the air, like he understood that he’d finally arrived. Somebody appreciated him. “Great watchdog,” Sam said. “Maybe you could show her where the silverware is.” He looked at Claire. “Not that I have any good silverware or that I think you’d be interested in it if I did.”
Claire smiled.
And she sparkled. Even with tired eyes, she lit up the room and he felt the same shortness of breath that had hit him when she’d opened her apartment door earlier. Maybe he had some kind of lung disease.
Nightmare rolled over and let Claire pat his stomach. “Oh, you sweet thing,” Claire crooned.
Sam could swear the dog had a grin on his face.
Sam led her into the kitchen, where he stuck his head in the fridge. “There’s some soda and some beer. I’m sorry, I don’t have any wine.” He straightened up and shut the door. With a long stretch, he grabbed the newspapers off the table and dumped them into the wastebasket at the end of his counter. He picked up the open box of cereal next to his stove and shoved it into a cupboard. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I would have cleaned.”
Claire shrugged. “Looks lived-in. I hate houses where everything has to be just so. It’s like you can’t even breathe in them.”
Sam turned his head away from her and stared inside the cupboard at the boxes of cereal, the peanut butter and the cookies that he hadn’t been able to resist. If Sam remembered right, Lucille Fontaine, of the Fontaine Fixture dynasty, had been a neat-freak. She’d kept a live-in maid busy full-time just dusting and sweeping their twenty-room mansion. For months after Tessa’s murder, when the police were still circling, he’d dreamed of those bedrooms. Dreamed about being locked up and when his parents had come to find him, the Fontaines had moved him to another bedroom, then another. Until finally his family had given up and gone away.
He slammed the open cupboard door shut. “I’m out of here,” he said. “I’ll be late, so...just go to bed whenever you want. Second door on the right is the extra bedroom. I’ve got a computer in there and some weights, but if you can walk around that, the futon is pretty comfortable. Bathroom is at the end of the hall.”
She waved a hand. “It’ll be fine.”
She was wrong. Nothing had really been fine for a long time. “Please don’t leave the house. It’s possible you might hear someone on the back stairs. I rent the third floor to Dolores Ames and her son, Tom. Their number is right here.” He pointed to a margarita-glass magnet on the refrigerator.
“If anything seems odd,” he continued on, “call 9-1-1. Don’t hesitate. Just do it.”
“I will. I’ll be fine. We don’t even know that I’m in any danger. The caller might just have been trying to shake me up.”
Yeah, well, he’d shaken things up. Sam felt as if his insides were in a blender. “Just be alert,” he said as he pulled the door shut behind him. As he hurried down the steps, he was pushing buttons on his cell phone. When Cruz answered, Sam didn’t waste time. “I need you to meet me at the station. I’ve got a tape of a call that Claire got on her answering machine.”
“Who has answering machines with tapes anymore?”
“We’re lucky that Claire and Nadine did.” It was an old one, probably something the Fontaines had in their basement and insisted Claire take with her. They wouldn’t want their calls missed.
“Who left the message?” Cruz asked.
“I don’t know.” All he really knew was that he was a thread away from being completely unraveled. “Maybe from the robber? He knew about the panties. The guy also knew about Tessa. He said that Claire and Tessa w
ere pretty, but that Tessa...that Tessa hadn’t been so pretty when she was dead and wouldn’t it be too bad if the same thing happened to Claire.”
He heard Cruz suck in a breath, but his partner didn’t say anything.
“Well?” Sam prompted, fighting the urge to slam his fist through his car window.
“Are you okay, Sam?” Cruz asked.
He was so far from okay that he could even remember what it looked like. “I need your help, Cruz. We have got to find this guy.”
“How’s Claire?”
Shocked. Scared, maybe. In denial, for sure. He hadn’t taken the time to really analyze it. He couldn’t stay. Every time he’d looked at her, he’d seen a young blond-haired girl, her head bashed in, her light extinguished. “She’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got her stashed at my house.”
“If you want to stay with her, I’ll take the tape in.”
“No.” Eleven years ago he hadn’t been able to finish it. This time he would. Whatever it took, he’d do it.
Chapter Five
Twenty minutes later, Sam pulled the investigation file on Tessa’s murder. It was yellowed with age and smelled like a file smells when it’s been boxed away. When it’s been forgotten.
Never.
He owed Tessa more than that.
“You really think the person who called Claire had something to do with the robbery and Tessa’s murder?” Cruz asked. “And what does that have to do with Sandy Bird?”
“I don’t know.” Sam opened the flap and pulled out the contents. Loose pictures of Tessa, facedown on the tile floor where she’d fallen, slipped out.
Cruz reached over, picked one up, studied it, then put it back, facedown. “If that was Meg...” he said, his voice trailing off. “You know, Sam, no one would think less of you if you went home and let me review the file.”
“I can’t do that.”
Cruz shrugged. “I didn’t think so.” He held out his hand. “Give me half of that.”
A half hour later, Sam felt like he’d been sucked back eleven years, that it was the beginning of the summer between his junior and senior year in college, and he had the world by the tail. He had a calling—journalism. He had a great love—Tessa. He’d had it all.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the time it takes to crush a person’s skull, he had nothing.
He’d first seen Tessa Fontaine three weeks into his freshman year. They’d been at a dorm party, the kind where noise and guests and beer spill out into the hallway and the lobby. In the corner of said lobby, Tessa’s date for the night had seemed determined to stick his tongue down Tessa’s throat every chance he got.
Not that Tessa had seemed to mind all that much.
And that should have been enough for Sam to turn the other way, to start looking for his own entertainment—in those days, it would have been the closest game of poker. But there’d been something about the long-legged, blond-haired beauty that had drawn and kept his attention.
That had ended up being a very good thing for Tessa. When her date had led her to an empty room at the end of the hallway, Sam had been close enough to hear the first scream. He’d gotten inside the room, landed his fist solidly into the guy’s nose, and hustled Tessa out of the room before anybody else noticed the young woman with the front of her shirt ripped from collar to waist.
They’d spent the night in his dorm room. Talking. Him in the desk chair and Tessa sitting on the bed, dwarfed by one of his T-shirts. He’d fallen first in lust and then in love, but they’d come so quick on the heels of one another that he’d been hard-pressed at eighteen to separate the difference.
By Christmas, they’d been sleeping together. When they’d parted at break, and she’d gone home to her big house in Nebraska and he’d gone back to Minnesota, he’d wondered how he might survive.
He’d told Jake about her and his brother, home on leave from the service, had given him a case of condoms for Christmas. He’d understood the subtle message. Nobody needed to tell him not to screw up his plans, his dreams. How would he be a great journalist and earn a Pulitzer before he was thirty if he didn’t finish college?
When he’d returned to school for the spring semester and she’d fallen into his arms, all had been right with the world. They’d been inseparable for sophomore and junior year and senior year, on her twenty-second birthday, he’d asked her to marry him. Three weeks later, she was dead.
It had been relatively quick, or so the medical examiner had said. That statement, no doubt meant to bring comfort, had brought none. He’d gone through the motions of life, attending her funeral, helping her roommates pack up her things, throwing away the toiletries she’d kept at his apartment.
And then there’d been the circus of accusations and questions and even threats. Just tell us the truth. That’s what the police had said to him.
The truth was the downward spiral that had started when he gathered Tessa’s cold body in his arms was gaining speed.
After the police had officially discounted him as a suspect, he’d quietly fallen apart. He’d stopped going to school, stopped eating, living mostly on alcohol and sleeping pills.
When he’d gone home for Thanksgiving his senior year, he’d seen the despair in his parents’ eyes. But it hadn’t mattered. He’d gone back to Chicago but didn’t attend a single class between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
He failed every one of his classes that term and when it came time to sign up for classes for the spring semester, he didn’t bother. He barely bothered to get out of bed.
Nothing mattered. Tessa was dead.
His parents had insisted he come home. His mother had coddled, his father had bullied, and he’d started fantasizing about ways to kill himself. He blew off the appointments with the psychologist, refused to talk to the priest that his mother dragged home and spent most of the days sleeping.
He was a train wreck.
His parents, worn down by the strain of the looming possibility that they were losing their son, fought constantly. The weekend that Sam should have graduated from college, his father moved out. Sam hadn’t even come out of the basement to say goodbye.
If Jake hadn’t come home when he did from his thank-you-very-much-Uncle-Sam tour of duty, taken one look at him and literally dragged him up the basement stairs, he knew he’d be dead by now.
He’d dried out and in the process had realized he wasn’t dried up. He’d returned to school in the fall, changed his major to law enforcement and graduated three semesters later. His parents had found their way back, too, to each other, to him.
And he’d managed to get on with his life. Had forgotten about getting a Pulitzer and had focused on getting scum off the street. And told himself that if he wasn’t happy, he was at least content.
It had been enough.
And then, damn it, Claire Fontaine had waltzed into his life.
Beautiful. Sexy. Smart.
Vulnerable.
He looked back down at the file. He’d read every word many times. And he was going to do it all again. He couldn’t afford to miss anything.
Claire couldn’t afford for him to miss anything.
Three hours later, he looked up to see Cruz smother a yawn. Sam reached over and snagged the half of the file that Cruz had been reading. He stuffed it into his backpack. “Go home,” he said.
“We could probably both use some sleep,” Cruz said, pushing his chair back from his desk.
Sam didn’t want to close his eyes ever again. But he nodded and the two men walked out to the mostly deserted parking lot. He drove home. When he got there, he sat in his dark car, staring up at his dark windows.
He was so weary. Not just from tonight. From everything. From years of pretending that he didn’t mind coming home to a dark, empty house. From the stress of being slap-happy for his brother Jake who was going to be a father any day, but knowing deep down that it wasn’t ever going to happen for him. From being afraid, truly afraid, to ever love again.
Whoever had said
that it was better to have loved and lost had never really lost. It was better just to make do, to keep on pretending that this was the life you picked, wanted even.
Sam let himself into the quiet house. The first thing he noticed was that Nightmare didn’t come to greet him. The second, that Claire had washed the few dirty dishes that had been in the sink. Quietly, he walked down the hallway. He didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to check on her, but he couldn’t make himself go past.
He pushed open the door and froze. She was wearing a nightgown. It was white, cotton, and probably respectable when she stood up. But right now, she was lying on her side and it had ridden up practically to her waist. He could see the feminine curve of her upper leg, the bright blue silk of her underwear.
And like some goofball, he heard the old playground chant: I see London, I see France. I see Claire’s underpants. Nightmare, who lay at the end of the bed, cocked his head as if he couldn’t wait to see where this was going. Sam, feeling a little light-headed, backed out of the room.
Nowhere. It was going nowhere.
* * *
SAM CHECKED ON CLAIRE three times during the night and was careful to keep his eyes focused shoulder-height and above. It would have been nice if she’d snored and drooled, but she slept like a lady, her mouth shut and her breathing even.
At six, when he poked his head in the door, she had her eyes open, and he felt about as edgy as he’d felt the night before when he’d tucked his tail between his legs and run. “Good morning,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“Rested,” she admitted. “You were right, it’s a pretty comfortable futon.” She smiled at Nightmare, who lay on top of the blanket, across her lower legs.
“Get off,” he said. “You’re a nuisance.”
She reached out and patted the dog. “You’re fine. Don’t listen to him.”
Sam sighed. “Not to worry. It hasn’t been a problem in the past.”
She laughed and then, as if she suddenly remembered where she was, she stopped. “I sort of crashed last night,” she said. “I didn’t even hear you come home.”