by Lee, Rachel
“Then why did you ask? It’s none of your damn business.”
“Well,” he said bluntly, “it is. I was wondering if I could stop sweating.”
“Sweating?” Anger gave way to confusion.
“Sweating,” he repeated, and gave her a bold once-over with his eyes that clarified his meaning beyond any doubt.
Anna felt his look like an electric shock. Her breathing stopped, and she was sure her heart almost did, too. It had been a long time since she had felt such a reaction, and even though this was the worst time possible, and the worst man possible, she couldn’t stop the feeling.
After a moment she found her voice. “Keep sweating,” she said.
He apparently read her response correctly, because he smiled. Then he laughed heartily. And all the tension went out of the room like the helium from a punctured balloon.
When he stopped laughing, he turned serious. “You know this is bad timing.”
“I know, you’re investigating me, too. Well, investigate away. You won’t find anything. I’ve never even had a speeding ticket.”
“No sense of adventure, huh?”
It was the same accusation Nancy frequently leveled at her, but somehow this time it didn’t sting. Maybe because she was feeling adventurous for a change.
“Maybe after we clear this up,” he said. “And you know? I never meant to say that. Tape my lips shut.”
“You couldn’t eat. But I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you.”
“Thanks.”
But she knew she wasn’t going to forget, not when he’d filled her with a wonderful glow. All of a sudden she felt attractive. Beautiful even. A veritable Helen of Troy. No way was she going to relinquish that; it came too rarely in life, if at all.
But she felt easier with him now. He wasn’t just an adversary who might be helping to build a case with her; he was a man who was interested in her. A normal, familiar thing. An identifiable role to play. It was so welcome after days of playing out a scenario that had no known parameters.
Nancy was right; she wasn’t adventurous at all.
They ate indoors, all of them agreeing it was just too humid to eat on the lanai. Trina wanted to hear all about Austin, so Nancy regaled her for a while with tales of cowboys and rodeos as if Austin weren’t a thoroughly modern city. Apparently it was just what Trina wanted to hear.
“We never go anywhere,” Trina said toward the end of the meal.
“What are you talking about?” Gil asked. “We go lots of places.”
She screwed up her face. “In Florida.”
“Ahh,” he said. “Just Florida. Vacation paradise. The place that hosts three-quarters of the world’s Canadians for the winter every year. The place that is crawling with tourists from all over the world. The place other people pay small fortunes just to visit.”
Trina wrinkled her nose at him. “It’s not the same.”
“Hmm.” He pretended to think seriously about it. “So I guess I should ditch the plan to spend a week in Orlando with you in July?”
“Orlando?” Her face lit up. “We haven’t been there in a long time.”
“I know. I figured Disney World, Universal Studios, and Sea World are missing us.”
Her eyes started sparkling. “Daddy, really?”
“It was the plan.”
“Oh, wow! We can do Epcot this time?”
“I promise.”
Nancy looked at Anna. “I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to die of envy. Of course, you probably want to go visit some dusty museum.”
“Actually, I was thinking about taking a cruise to Merida. Visiting some ruins.”
Nancy shook her head. “I knew ruins had to get into it somewhere.” She turned to Gil. “Just a warning. Nothing makes my sister happier than the relics of dead civilizations. You might want to ride a roller coaster, but she wants to climb a pyramid. In a jungle.”
“Hey, I get on roller coasters, too,” Anna protested. “I rode the Kumba at Busch Gardens.”
“After I dragged you kicking and screaming into the car.”
Trina giggled. Gil was grinning. Nancy looked at him. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Actually,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind climbing some pyramids myself. And I like museums.”
“The exhibit today was neat,” Trina allowed. “Anna, Nancy said you designed all that yourself.”
“Well, I had the overall concept. But it took a lot of people to refine it and carry it out.”
“Well, it was cool. I especially liked going down into the tomb. It was so creepy. Too bad the dagger wasn’t there, though.”
And there it was again, Anna thought, lying on the table among them, dark and ugly. Shadowing them.
Trina looked around. “Did I say something wrong?”
“No, of course not,” Anna hastened to assure her, managing a smile. “Thank you for your compliments.”
But the darkness remained. And when Gil and Trina departed an hour later, they didn’t take it with them.
On the drive home, Trina chattered cheerfully about the day. Gil needed only one ear to attend her. The rest of his mind was busy thinking about Anna. So she collected replicas of things she could never possess. She had seemed to be okay with that fact, but the detective in him was suspicious enough to wonder.
Someone with Anna’s interests, who also had a strong acquisitive streak, might be tempted. Given that the dagger was associated with her father’s death, she might be even more tempted. Hell, she’d been the initial thrust behind the whole exhibit. Maybe all of this was to get her hands on something she coveted, something that had a personal connection for her. Maybe she’d even had help. Maybe her accomplice was a murderer.
He didn’t want to think that, but even though he was strongly attracted to her, he couldn’t forget who he was. He’d sacrificed a lot in his life to be a good cop, and he wasn’t about to mess that up by allowing himself to be misled by a little lust.
“Anna and Nancy are really neat,” Trina announced. “Even if Anna’s a little stodgy.”
“Stodgy?” He glanced at her. “Stodgy” was the last word that came to his mind to describe Anna. She had unusual interests, yes, but that didn’t make her stodgy.
“Oh, you know,” Trina said. “Like a parent.”
“Oh.” As far as he was concerned, that was a recommendation. “We need to have a talk, Trina.”
She sighed, that world-weary sigh of a teenager who knew what was coming and figured she could write the lecture herself. “I don’t want to talk about Jamie.”
“Maybe not, but I do.”
“Dad…”
“Just listen to me. I have to work tomorrow, and I’m not going to spend the day wondering what kind of trouble you’re getting into.”
She folded her arms, and frowned, the picture of someone who wasn’t going to really hear a word. So he decided not to pull any punches.
“Jamie is abusive,” he said flatly. “He took you where you didn’t want to go, he refused to bring you home, and when you argued with him he kicked sand at you and threatened to hit you. That is abuse.”
“You cops,” she said bitterly. “You’re all so paranoid.”
That had come directly out of her mother’s mouth. He’d lost count of the times he’d heard the woman say that over the years. “I’m not paranoid. But I’ve been around the block enough times to know what’s what. And you have not.”
She glared at him. He could feel the heat without looking.
“Jamie is history,” he said flatly. “He’s gone. If you don’t listen to me and something else happens, I’m going to get a restraining order to keep him away from you. And if he lays so much as one finger on you in anger, I’ll lock him away for a long time.”
“Fine,” she said angrily. “I’ll see him after I go home anyway. Mom doesn’t hate him.”
“You will not.”
“Yes I will, and you can’t stop me. You don’t have custody, Mom does
!”
He refrained from telling her that didn’t matter. In fact, he was trying to clamp down on himself. How many times did he have to learn that laying down the law to a child her age never worked?
But Trina hadn’t finished. As they pulled into the driveway in stony silence, she burst out, “You cops are awful! You push people around all the time like you own the world!”
She ran into the house ahead of him and slammed the door hard enough to rattle the windows. And Gil started kicking himself in the butt. God, would he never learn?
“He’s sweet on you,” Nancy announced later. They’d sat around drinking tea together since their guests departed, but neither of them had much to say.
“No he’s not,” Anna said. She looked at the clock. “Time for bed.”
Nancy sighed. “Annie, it was a burglary. You didn’t do it. They’ll figure that out. But there’s no point ruining every minute of your life from now until they do by brooding about it.”
Nancy didn’t know about the envelope on her desk. Regardless, it wasn’t the first time they’d failed to see eye to eye. Nancy lived far more in the moment than Anna, who had a tendency to look far enough down the road to see consequences. A tendency, perhaps, to worry too much.
“It doesn’t matter, Nance,” she said finally. “He’s working on a case I’m involved in. Nothing can come of it.”
“Yeah, right. Cases end, and Gil is still a man who’s looking at you like candy in a candy-store window.”
“Damn it, Nance, I don’t want to be candy for some guy. Plenty of guys think I’m candy. I want something more than that.”
“Ever the dreamer,” Nancy commented.
“And you aren’t? Come off it.”
Nancy smiled. “But you have to start at the candy stage, Annie. That’s where it all begins. They start salivating, and then they start unwrapping. That’s when they get to know the real you.”
Anna couldn’t think of a comeback, and that irritated her. But it irritated her every time her sister started trying to change her. They might be identical in appearance, startlingly so, but their personalities were very different. Nancy just didn’t seem able to accept that. She was always pushing Anna one way or another, almost like their mother.
“I’m sorry, Nance. I’m the person I am, and you’re just going to have to accept that.”
Nancy’s smile faded. “Of course you are. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“Yes you did, but it’s okay. I’m used to it. You and Mom and Auntie have always wondered if I was some kind of changeling.” She managed a small smile. “I supposed I’m lucky we’re twins. Otherwise, they’d have been convinced some fairy put me under a cabbage leaf.”
Nancy grew patently concerned. “Annie…”
“It’s okay. We’ll both feel better in the morning. I’m off to bed.”
Then she escaped before her sister could try to smooth things over in a way that would only wind up coming around to the same things. Anna wasn’t adventurous enough, Anna was too straitlaced, Anna was too practical, too quiet, too anything except eccentric the way they were. She was used to it.
In her room, she pulled out a light cotton sleep shirt and changed into it.
It had been a long day, she thought. Exhaustion had been building like a storm on the horizon, growing heavier and darker since the very first thing when Señor Cuestas had arrived. Not that she could blame him for being annoyed and demanding. In his shoes, she’d probably have been every bit as difficult.
Then there had been the clipping with the scrawled message. The instant it popped into her mind, she shied away from it. It might, she thought, just be someone’s bad idea of a practical joke. It might have no direct link to the person who had taken the dagger and killed Eddy Malacek. But she couldn’t quite believe that, so she refused to think about it.
She needed to sleep. She needed to hide in dreams before she picked up her worries again. There was no point being anxious tonight; she couldn’t do a damn thing about any of it.
Sighing, shivering as a draft from the air conditioner snaked over her skin, she leaned down and pulled her covers back.
And froze.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered helplessly. “Oh, my God!”
There on her sheets, gleaming evilly in the lamplight, was the dagger.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Temple Terrace cops milled around in the house, talking in low voices. Her bedroom had been invaded by a crowd of strangers. Anna sat on the couch, huddled beneath a comforter, and Nancy sat beside her, with an arm around her shoulders.
Tebbins was there, too, called in once the Temple Terrace police realized this was related to a Tampa case. He was dressed meticulously as always in one of his outdated suits with a red bow tie. He seemed to be everywhere, talking to everyone in a low voice.
Part of Anna wished she could hear what he was saying. The rest of her seemed to be in shock, a place that was cold and dark, where her thoughts hung in suspended animation. She was past feeling anything at all. It was as if her essence had shrunk until she was nothing but a tiny pinprick, a mote floating in the darkest reaches of the universe.
If she shrank enough, perhaps she could cease to be.
Tebbins joined them, pulling the Boston rocker over so he could face Anna. “Can you answer some questions now?”
She nodded, but moving her head was difficult, as if she were controlling it by marionette strings from far away. The movement was jerky, unfamiliar.
“I can answer most of them,” Nancy said protectively. “We left the house together at eight-thirty this morning. I hung around the museum until I could get into the exhibit. I left about two, did some shopping, got back here around four. Anna pulled in at about six-thirty.”
“So no one was home between eight-thirty and four?”
Nancy nodded. “About that. We had guests for dinner. Anna showered and changed right before they arrived, while I was preparing the food. They left at about nine-thirty, we sat around drinking tea until… I guess it was eleven or so. Then Anna went into her room, and the next thing I knew she was screaming.”
Tebbins nodded, making notes.
“But I already told them all of this,” Nancy said.
“Different police departments.” Tebbins smiled, twisted his moustache, and leaned back.
“But how did it happen?” Nancy demanded. “The house was locked when we left, and it was locked when I got home. Nothing was disturbed.” She glanced at Anna. “Well, nothing, apparently, except Anna’s bed.”
Tebbins looked at Anna. “There’s a broken latch on one of the windows in your room. Do you know anything about that?”
Anna felt her heart skip. Oh, God, she was starting to come back. She didn’t want to come back, not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“It… I noticed it was broken last week. I meant to get it fixed….” Her voice trailed off.
Tebbins nodded. “Well, that’s probably how it happened. Do you have any idea how the latch got broken?”
“No.” She stirred herself mentally, trying to focus more on what he needed from her, trying to help him catch the creep before anything else happened. “The piece that swivels was missing. It kind of bothered me, because I couldn’t find it on the floor. But nothing else was missing and… well, I used to keep a wastebasket there, and I wasn’t sure when it popped off.”
Tebbins twisted his moustache. “You keep that window closed and locked all the time?”
“Yes. It’s in the back, and it’s my bedroom…” She shivered suddenly and felt Nancy’s arm tighten around her.
“Wise of you.” Tebbins took some time to scribble on his notepad. He then looked at Nancy. “You can account for your whereabouts after you left the museum?”
“Jesus.” Nancy stiffened, then shook her head. “You bet your sweet bippy I can. You want to see the receipts from my shopping? I’ll bet they all have the time and dates on them.”
“If you please.”
“D
amn,” Nancy muttered, rising from the couch. “What kind of jerk thinks I’d do something like this to my sister?”
Tebbins answered. “The kind of jerk who’s seen too much of what family members can do to each other.”
Anna sprang to her sister’s defense. “Nancy wouldn’t ever do something like this to me.”
“That’s what they all say.”
Anna decided she didn’t like Tebbins at all. Then she remembered that he was the only thing that stood between her and the snake who was tormenting her. It didn’t help much to realize that her only potential savior was hateful.
She was starting to come back, starting to awaken again to the enormity of what had happened, and she clung to her hatred of Tebbins, nursing it in the hopes it would grow big enough to blot out everything else. Instead, it shrank, giving way to terror and despair. By the time Nancy returned with her receipts, Anna was shaking.
While Tebbins examined the receipts, Nancy sat beside Anna again and put her arm around her. “It’s going to be okay,” Nancy said. “We’re not going to stay here. We’re going to find a nice hotel. Someplace he can’t find you.”
Terror gave way to anger, snapping before the force of it. “A hotel? Are you crazy, Nance? He could get in and out of there a lot easier than he can get in here. And he could find us. All he has to do is follow me from work!”
Nancy appeared taken aback. “I didn’t think of that.”
“You never think more than two minutes ahead.”
“Jeez, Annie…”
But Anna didn’t feel apologetic. Her life was in danger, and nobody seemed to have any useful suggestions. Tebbins was sitting there looking like he thought she’d done all of this to herself, and she was sure Gil thought the same thing, especially considering how he’d looked at her collection of replicas. She was alone, and she had never been more frightened in her life. Anger was the only antidote.
A man in a Temple Terrace uniform came over to them, carrying the dagger in a plastic bag. “No prints,” he said.