“Where is it now?”
She pointed to the kitchen door. “Just outside, to the right. In a large plastic bag.”
Kayla felt herself shuddering again; it seemed her body hadn’t stopped quaking since she’d seen the dead rodent lying on her porch. It had been large and ugly, with its pointed snout and mouth agape, revealing sharp teeth, its tail long and skinny and somehow malevolent.
Her first instinct had been to vomit, but she’d swallowed back the bile. Then she’d wanted to close the door and deal with it later. Only the fact that a dead animal might attract other animals—like bears—made her decide she had to dispose of it, and quickly.
Without giving herself time to think, she’d dashed into the kitchen, gathered her plastic gloves, an entire roll of paper towels, and two plastic garbage bags, then dashed back to the porch. Again swallowing down the urge to throw up, she’d piled thick layers of paper toweling over the thing before counting to three then scooping it up and thrusting it into the bag, which she’d immediately tied shut. Then she’d inserted the bag into another and tied that one tightly. She’d torn through the house, set the sack outside the kitchen door, and shut and locked the door behind her. She hadn’t even wanted it in the mudroom, hadn’t wanted it anywhere under her roof.
That had been about three in the morning. She’d spent the rest of the night pacing the house, then had fallen asleep on the living room couch, awakening a couple of hours later with the sun. She’d forced herself to go outside and walk around the property. She’d checked the compost heap—nothing irregular. She’d looked for footprints—none that she could see. Finally, she’d headed back to her kitchen and brewed a huge pot of coffee.
Now she watched Paul as he stepped outside and grabbed the bag. He tore it open, reached in and pulled the dead animal out by its tail. She flinched, had to fight down nausea again as he turned it around, studied it.
“Hmm. No signs of injury. It wasn’t run over by a car, that’s for sure. Or attacked by an animal—there are no bite marks, no blood. In fact, it looks perfectly healthy. Except for the fact that it’s dead,” he added with one lifted eyebrow. “From natural causes. Which means other animals, usually. Or mankind. Maybe he ate something. Poison?”
“Rats get food poisoning?” A hysterical laugh escaped before she cupped a hand over her mouth. Uh-oh. She had to be careful. She was acting like a crazy woman.
A frown knit Paul’s dark eyebrows. “Hey, are you okay?”
“Just a little emotional. And I hate myself for it.”
“Why?”
“It’s so, you know, female, to get upset by rodents. And if you think this is bad, you don’t want to see me around snakes.”
“I’m not exactly jumping with joy here myself,” he said gruffly, then replaced the rodent corpse in the bag, closed it up, retied it and set it back down on the ground. “You haven’t set out traps or anything like that, have you?”
“No, not with Bailey around. And, well, I wouldn’t want to harm the wildlife around here.”
“Have you had any problems with rats up here?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Field mice, that’s all.”
“No noise in the eaves? Scurrying sounds?”
“I know what scurrying rats sound like,” she said darkly. “They were a fact of my childhood. It’s why I’m not real happy to have this little reminder.”
Kayla had just given him a small glimpse into her past, Paul realized. Small, but real.
“That’s tough.”
She shrugged off his attempt at being a nice guy. “What do you think I should do about this, Paul? I mean, why would someone or something leave me a dead rat? Was it some kind of present, do you think? Bears don’t bring people gifts, do they?” Again she stifled a giggle. “I mean, cats bring you dead birds as tokens of affection, but I’ve never heard of rats being presented in the same way, have you?”
“No,” he agreed, “not as presents. If this rat didn’t crawl onto your porch and just keel over, then this has a distinctly human feel to it. We need to call the cops.”
“I thought of that.”
“And?”
“I didn’t.”
“Why?”
“I thought I might be making too much of a fuss.”
“Better than not making enough of one.” He reached for the wall phone, picked up the receiver. “Who do you call if there’s trouble up here? Local? County? State cops?”
“I have no idea.”
“Sit down and drink your coffee. I’ll take care of this.”
She sat meekly, as though glad to have direction. Paul dialed 911 and was connected with the state police. At first they gave him some rigmarole about it being a nonemergency, but he finally got their attention when he mentioned he was speaking for the widow of the late Walter Thorne. They snapped to after that, said they’d have someone up there right away.
He reported all this to Kayla, who, now seated at the small kitchen table, thanked him but did not look pleased. “So, is someone playing a joke on me?”
“Maybe.”
“Or trying to frighten me?”
“Looks that way.”
“Well, good for them. It’s working.” She crossed her arms and hugged them tightly to her body.
He got her coffee cup and shoved it at her. “You shouldn’t be up here alone.” Dammit. He was concerned for her; she was way more fragile than she wanted to admit.
“But I want to be up here alone. It’s why I came here. To get away. To be alone.”
It came to him, suddenly, that with all the energy he was investing in Kayla’s well-being, he was forgetting his original reason for seeking out and getting this job. He was becoming soft, and that wouldn’t get him anywhere.
The opening had presented itself, and he needed to take advantage of it…even though he felt strangely guilty about capitalizing on her fear.
He sat down on the other chair and faced her across the small, cramped table. “Right now,” he said, “until we know what’s going on, you need someone to stay with you.”
“That defeats the purpose of being alone, doesn’t it?”
He pushed. He had to. “I don’t mean to open a sore subject, but with all those brothers, isn’t there one of them that you could ask? One of them you could get in touch with?”
“No,” she said, cutting him off, her back stiff. “And please don’t go there again.”
“Sorry,” he said, meaning it in more ways than one.
“No, I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to help, and I appreciate it.” She placed her hand on his arm and squeezed gently. Her fingers were cold, but his skin jumped, as though she’d brought heat to it. “It is a sore subject and I’m probably unreasonable. I worked my whole life to pull myself out of a pretty dismal childhood. And I’m just much better off not looking back. Which includes all talk about my family. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She removed her hand from his arm; he wanted to tell her to put it back.
Okay, then, he thought silently, this was a dead end. Kayla Thorne would not be helping him to find Jay Vinovich, aka Jay Goodall, who’d disappeared so that neither Paul nor his lawyer could depose him again. Which probably meant he wouldn’t be available for a new trial. Which probably meant a new trial might be moot, so Paul would remain free. Good news, for sure.
But his name and his rep would still be smeared. And that was almost worse than the prospect of going back inside.
He’d just have to find another way to track down Kayla’s brother.
The two state policemen who came were in uniform. One was young, mid-twenties or so with a full head of black hair; the other was nearing fifty, paunchy and balding. Paul watched as Kayla did most of the talking, introducing himself to them by first name only, saying he was the handyman and had arrived there an hour before. He didn’t let them know he’d been on the force in Albany, or that he’d served time; if they knew the latter they would have directed their suspicions on hi
m. It was common practice—a guy had a record, he was the number-one suspect.
Kayla took them out on the porch and to the compost heap, filling them in on what had happened last night and two nights earlier. The younger cop was bored, barely polite; the older one, Sergeant Miles, was kinder. He said it sure sounded like neighborhood kids up to mischief. But they would file a report.
When Paul wondered aloud if they were going to autopsy the rat, they both looked at him with “Are you putting me on?” expressions, but on Kayla’s insistence, they took the rodent corpse with them for storage and possible further use in the investigation.
After they left, Kayla and Paul stood outside and watched them back down the driveway. Then she turned to him with an arched eyebrow. “Lot of good that did.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, I know. It wasn’t much help.”
“And now I look like some hysterical fool.”
“Yeah, but now you’re on record, in case.”
She frowned. “You mean, in case there’re more…incidents?”
Again, he shrugged. “Hey, who knows? And this way there’s a paper trail.”
She nibbled her bottom lip. “Oh.”
“Look,” he said abruptly. “I’d better get to those rain gutters and the roof.”
She seemed startled at the change of subject, then her hand flew to her mouth. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” She looked so damned apologetic, he felt irritated with her. She didn’t get it. He wasn’t doing her any favors, he was just responding like any man would to any woman in trouble.
“You’re not bothering me,” he said gruffly.
Over the next hour, his mind zipped all over the place as he pondered the situation. Kayla was of no use to him anymore, as far as clearing his name went. But he would stay, for a few days, anyway, because something fishy was going on. If someone was out there, trying to do her harm, he didn’t like that, didn’t like that at all.
She was no longer a face on the TV. He knew her now. As a human being. As a person. A woman.
A woman he wanted in his bed. Her bed. Hell, any bed.
As he made his way carefully over the pitched roof, checking for rotting shingles, he wondered if she was aware that she sent him a lot of mixed signals. He was no dummy; at some level, he turned her on.
But she wasn’t too nuts about that fact, he also got that. And she wasn’t the “roll in the hay and forget about it” type, which was all he was interested in. And despite her modest clothing and attitude, she was very wealthy and he was an ex-con with no money, no rep. So for all those reasons—and probably more that he wasn’t considering—it was a dead end sex-wise.
But she was in trouble, and had no idea why, and that got to him, big-time.
Maybe, like the two state cops had said, what was going on was only a neighborhood kid doing mischief. Or maybe that scumbag who’d threatened her yesterday was trying to scare her. Whatever. He didn’t like people who threatened women. He’d been raised that way and nothing was going to change him.
Which was why he found himself climbing back down the ladder and walking around the house till he found her, turning over the earth in her garden. “Kayla?”
She looked up at him. “Yes?”
“Why don’t I stay here tonight?”
Startled, her eyes widened. “Oh, no, I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t ask. I offered.”
She gave it two seconds of thought, then broke eye contact and went back to her weeding. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Thanks, anyway.”
Late that afternoon, Kayla was driving down the mountain, headed to Susanville, when she saw Paul, his backpack strapped on his back, walking along the road.
She applied the brakes, lowered the passenger window and called out, “Give you a lift?”
“Thanks,” he said, and got in.
“Don’t you have a car?” she asked as she drove on.
“No.”
“Then how have you been getting up here?”
“Hank drops me off in the morning, when he can. Otherwise I hike it. And I walk home at night.”
“But it’s more than three miles to Cragsmont.”
“Believe me, I consider it a gift to be able to walk three miles.”
She nodded. Of course he would appreciate the freedom, the open space. “Well, I’m on my way down to Susanville, so I can drop you off at Cragsmont on the way.”
“Actually, if you’re going to Susanville, can I hitch a ride with you? I’ve got some business to attend to.”
“Glad to.”
Kayla chastised herself for having given no thought as to how Paul got to and from working for her. She hadn’t even noticed the lack of another vehicle in her driveway. Had the years with Walter turned her into one of those women who expected the help to magically arrive and depart, to have no lives of their own except to serve their employers?
She hated the thought. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“It didn’t occur to me that you didn’t have your own transportation.”
“I don’t have much of anything.” He shrugged. “That’s how it is when you’ve been incarcerated. No car, no money, nothing. My lawyer and my ex got everything.”
He said it without a trace of self-pity, or much emotion at all, but she felt for him, anyway. This wasn’t a career criminal; this was a proud man who had had a family and a job with respect—he’d risen to the rank of detective, Hank had told her—and now, to be reduced to little more than a minimum-wage worker…
Just how much did he get paid out of the money she gave to Hank? Kayla wondered. But then she dismissed the thought as none of her business. She needed to steer clear of Paul Fitzgerald and his troubles.
Except that she didn’t seem to be able to. “Has the adjustment to being out been difficult?”
His answer was a small, mirthless chuckle. “Not as difficult as the adjustment to going in.”
“I can only imagine.”
“No, you can’t.” After a moment, he added darkly, “Trust me. You don’t want to.”
She assumed that was all he was willing to say, but he surprised her by telling her more. “Yeah. In one nightmarish month, I lost my job, my wife, my freedom and the respect of my peers. Most of all I lost my good name. I think that killed me most of all.”
“Oh, Paul. How awful.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw, which she now knew meant he was feeling emotions he didn’t want to show. “I’m going to get it all back,” he said, steel in his tone. “When I get the evidence on the creeps who did this to me, believe me, they’ll pay. Big time.”
“You want revenge.”
“Damn right. And I’ll get it. I intend to destroy the people who destroyed me.”
From someone else, the words might have sounded melodramatic, but from Paul Fitzgerald, they came across as the simple, stark truth.
So much anger, she thought, so much bitterness. His unexpressed rage filled the car’s atmosphere, made her edgy, uncomfortable. Not only because all masculine anger felt threatening, but because his need for revenge was familiar to her. She’d felt the same way once, a long time ago.
Paul wanted to kick himself for revealing so much of his insides to Kayla. It was way too intimate, too naked. She was his employer, not his friend, and he cursed himself silently.
As if his harsh statement had swept away the need for any more attempts at communication, they were silent with each other the rest of the ride down the mountain. She was a good driver and she maneuvered the Mercedes around the twists and curves with ease. Classy car, costly car, and it purred. His hands flexed. Man, would he love to get behind the wheel of this baby.
In the light of the fading day, they drove past Cragsmont’s town center, which consisted of a post office, a park, a couple of other one-story buildings, and Hank’s hardware store, and then through Hilltown—a gas station and convenience store—until finally they were on flat ground, in the va
lley heading into Susanville.
“Where can I drop you?” Kayla asked, breaking the silence.
He shrugged. “Wherever it’s convenient for you.”
“It’s convenient for me to drop you where you’re going,” she insisted. “Which is…?”
“The library.”
She steered the car along the main drag, then turned left onto a side street, pulling up in front of a three-story, wood-framed Victorian with the words Susanville Library on a wooden post in front.
Paul reached for the door handle, turning to thank her, but was stopped by the expression on her face: she seemed to be looking inward, mulling over a difficult decision. He waited. Finally, she eased the gear handle into Park and turned a troubled, blue-eyed gaze on him, a frown between her brows. “Paul?”
“Yes?”
“About what we were talking about before,” she said hesitantly. “I know it’s none of my business, but I can’t help hearing how much…rage you have inside you. I want you to understand that, well, I know what you’re feeling. Needless to say, you have every right to your anger….” She stopped.
“But?”
She placed her hand on his arm, the way she did when she needed to make a point, wanted him to hear her. “I’m going to sound preachy here.”
He stiffened, then muttered, “Go on.”
“That kind of emotion will eat you up inside. It will hold you back, make you bitter. You won’t be able to start your life again until you let go of it.”
She was right on the money: she sounded preachy. Her words of advice made him feel belligerent. “Oh, really. And just what do you know about it?”
“Quite a lot, actually,” she said grimly, then offered a brief, sad smile.
His hostility ebbed as, frowning, he gazed at that lovely face of hers, waiting for her to go on. But she didn’t. What kind of pain had she experienced? Hell, how could anything in Kayla Vinovich Thorne’s life possibly compare to what he’d been through?
As he asked himself that question, he realized that it not only smacked of self-pity, but was pretty strong evidence of his own self-absorption.
Understandable, sure, but still…
What was her story? He really wanted to know. One of five kids, she’d said, all boys except for her. Had they beaten her? Abused her? The thought was not a pleasant one, and it made that easily tapped anger of his begin to simmer. The way she talked—or refused to talk—about her family might mean she was an abuse victim. Sexual or otherwise. Damn.
Whispers in the Night Page 7