A One-Woman Man

by ML Gamble

  But nothing comforted her or erased the images from her mind. Even with her eyes open she could see her real mother, blond hair, slim fingers, lying on her back on a linoleum floor covered with glass, dead and silent as the night.

  Elizabeth poured the milk into a mug and stood sipping it, looking out the back windows. She saw the dark lawn and acreage beyond her mother’s garden, the shape of the caretaker’s cottage, the outline of her father’s car. She wanted to cry but instead rested her head against the wall, reaching out to touch the cold plastic of the phone.

  She wanted to talk to Tommy Lee. He had dropped her off at two-thirty this afternoon, and had called when she was at a party with her parents, leaving a message that he would pick her up tomorrow morning at eleven. Suddenly Elizabeth wanted him to come over and hold her like he had today in his sister’s office. She wanted to kiss him the way she had on the desk, as she had in her mind a hundred times since then. She lifted the receiver, then laughed at her own stupidity. She didn’t even have his phone number. And now it was four in the morning.

  Elizabeth hung up the phone and poured out the rest of the milk. She turned the lights back down and started up the stairway. Had she turned off the pan of milk? She walked to the stove and saw that she had, then her eye caught a shadow on the wall. A shadow that slowly moved.

  Her heart pounding, Elizabeth turned in the dark toward the window across the small kitchen. There, outlined by the light from the quarter moon, was the silhouette of a man. He was still, watchful. Tall, with big shoulders, the man wore a hat with a bit of a brim, like a Greek fisherman. He was holding something long and cylindrical in his hand.

  A gun. A shotgun.

  A scream crept up her throat and she bit down on her knuckle to keep from crying out. The shadow moved away from the center of the window, along the back of the house. Toward the door. Elizabeth bent down and peered over the counter toward the back door, which had only a flimsy piece of lace covering it. He would see her. She ducked lower, her mind a blank. Should she cry out? Would he shoot her, come in and kill the judge and Miss Lou in their beds?

  Elizabeth heard the knob turn back and forth quickly, while the man checked the lock. She would have to make a run for it, she decided. Cross the kitchen and go upstairs. There was one door to lock, and she would have time to rouse her parents and call the police from the upstairs phone.

  Her ears straining for the least sound, she held her breath, poised to run. And heard footsteps, hollow on the cement steps outside, moving away from the house.

  He was leaving. Or was he going around to the front? Elizabeth stood upright, and screamed when the light went on behind her.

  “Elizabeth, I’m sorry child!” Judge Monette cried out.

  “Daddy! I’m sorry,” she said, racing across the slippery floor to give him a hug.’

  “Why on earth did you yell like that? Why are you up at all?”

  “Baylor?” Miss Lou’s voice called from the stairway. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, Lou. Go back to bed, darling. I just scared the daylights out of Elizabeth.”

  “Elizabeth? Is she up? I’ll be right down, you two,” she called out.

  The judge hugged Elizabeth to him. “Now you’ve done it. Neither of us gets to eat cookies now.”

  “Daddy,” Elizabeth countered, “I think I saw someone outside.”

  “What? Where?” He brushed by her and headed for the back door.

  “Out on the back lawn, in front of the windows.”

  Her father leaned down and peered into the darkness. “Don’t see anything. Although there’s a light on at Clay’s. Maybe he was up looking around.”

  Relief flooded through her veins. But what about the gun? Of course, her father had several old guns he used for hunting ducks. Surely he would have given one of them to his caretaker to hoist around while he checked locks. “What a jerk I am, Daddy. I’m going to go back upstairs. Night.” She kissed him, then hugged her mother as she entered the room. “See you in a few hours.”

  Then she was gone.

  “What’s going on?” Miss Lou asked.

  The judge shook his head. “I think she had a nightmare. So bad she thought she saw someone outside.”

  Miss Lou collapsed into a chair. “That poor, poor girl. We should never have told her—”

  The judge grabbed a bag of cookies and slapped them onto the table in front of his wife of forty years. “Stop it. You were everything a mother should be and could be to that child since the day we set eyes on her. She knows it. You know it. You’re still the best thing that’s ever happened to either one of us. We did the best we could. We’ll get her through this. So have a cookie. Eat.”

  Miss Lou squeezed Baylor’s hand and kissed him. But when she picked up a cookie and nibbled it, her eyes glancing toward the stairs, she could taste nothing but fear.

  Chapter Nine

  Tommy Lee pressed down on the gas pedal, not liking one bit the way the brief exchange with the woman next to him had gone. All he said to her when she had walked into the kitchen where he was waiting was, “Hey, Queen of Midnight,” and she had snapped his head off.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean any disrespect. But the word I hear on the streets is that you’re it.”

  “Well, you’ve been traveling on the wrong streets, Tommy Lee. Now, let’s go, I’ve got a lot of things for us to do if we’re going to make any progress on what you’ve been hired for.”

  He had wanted to grab her and kiss her like he had yesterday, but Elizabeth was emitting enough “Don’t touch me” vibes to stop a tank. She was dressed in a pleated skirt and heavy wool hose, little black boots, and a vivid blue sweater that showed off her curves and brought out the color of her eyes. He was letting himself feel bowled over by how beautiful she was, but managed to act nonchalant in the face of her mood. With a grin he had said goodbye to Miss Lou—who had sat quietly through her daughter’s ill-mannered welcome—and followed Elizabeth out to the truck.

  He hadn’t tried to open the door for her, which was just as well, because he didn’t trust himself to stand that close to her and not take her in his arms. And he hadn’t spoken to her at all during the last fifteen minutes, which was also just as well since he found himself feeling so stirred up and mistreated. He didn’t want to talk for fear he would open his mouth and whine like a high-school boy.

  Which was how he felt, he suddenly realized. Like a damned high-school kid, head over heels in love with the prom queen, too tongue-tied to speak what was in his heart.

  Which was probably the first smart thing he had done in the past thirty-six hours, he realized. With a cold blast of reason Tommy Lee told himself he must have read this whole thing with Elizabeth the wrong way.

  She had not been attracted to him.

  She had only been looking for some comfort after two horrendous attempts on her life. She had no feelings for him—a washed-up cop with an uncertain future. Hadn’t she just told him she thought of him as only an employee? Hadn’t she?

  He felt a flush creeping up his chest to his neck and gripped the steering wheel with both hands to keep from punching it. What a jackass he had been.

  “Where are we going?” Elizabeth suddenly asked.

  “You talking to me?”

  She pursed her lips in a way that made his gut twist. “Doing your Robert De Niro impression this morning, Mr. McCall?”

  “You playing your Cruella deVil role, Miss Monette? Maybe I can find some puppies for you to skin and get you in a better frame of mind.”

  That backed her down a bit, he was happy to see. She lowered her eyes to her hands, which had twisted up the blue woolen scarf hanging from her coat as if it were a hankie. She jutted out her chin and stared straight out the window, but he knew she was trying to keep from crying.

  Suddenly Tommy Lee had a terrible feeling he had judged everything wrong this morning. He might not have known the woman long, but he knew her well enough t
o know she wasn’t a snob, or mean as a snake, despite her testiness earlier. Elizabeth Monette was the real thing.

  “What happened since I saw you last?” he asked quietly, willing to take another hit to get to the bottom of her troubles.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Something is wrong with you, woman. It doesn’t take a damn detective to tell that.” His eyes bore into hers. “Why don’t you tell me about it. Since I’m working for you, and all. Hell, I’ll just add another charge to your bill if I can fix it.”

  Elizabeth blinked quickly, and he watched as two tears tumbled down her wind-pinked cheeks and fell onto her sweater. She dug her hand around in the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, which she threw onto the seat beside her.

  Steadying the truck’s wheel with his left hand, Tommy Lee picked up the coarse sheet of paper and stared at the cutout letters pasted onto it. “The next time, you are dead, Elizabeth. Long live the Queen.”

  He cursed and looked at her. “When did you get this?”

  “I found it this morning when I went out to get the newspaper. It was stuck in the back door.”

  He cursed again, realizing his prints and hers had probably obliterated any pertinent evidence of the sender. “Did you call Chief Foley?”

  Her eyes were round, the thick lashes wet. “No. I thought I would talk it over with you first.”

  “Dammit, Elizabeth! This lunatic was on your property yesterday sometime. You should have had the cops out there dusting for prints, looking for footprints and such.”

  “I didn’t want to scare my parents to death—” she began.

  “Oh, so you’ll hide it and act like this is nothing?”

  “We’re good at hiding things in my family,” she said, her voice touched with bitterness.

  “Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself about that,” he retorted. “Your parents are people, which means they are not perfect. I’m sure they thought they were doing the best thing for you by not telling you about the adoption.”

  “I know that, but…” Her voice trailed off, then she said rapidly, “It’s just so damn frustrating, Tommy Lee. To think your whole life you are a certain person, then to find out at twenty-five, that you’re not that person at all.”

  “Why aren’t you? Being related by blood to a couple of other people doesn’t change how you act, what you’ve done, who you love. Does it?”

  Elizabeth started to smile at him, that million-dollarbeam-of-sunlight smile, but she quickly swallowed it “I’m sorry I was so short with you this morning. You are right. But let’s stop indulging my personal problems and talk about what we’re going to do next.”

  He glanced at his watch and frowned. He really wanted to talk with Chief Foley about these letters. He had made a mistake not mentioning them to him earlier. “Okay. We’re almost at Baptist Haven. I’m taking you to see Emmett Peach.” As she sucked in her breath in surprise, Tommy Lee filled her in on his visit the day before with the elderly lawyer.

  “He knows who my grandmother is?”

  “Evidently he knew both grandmothers,” Tommy Lee replied, pleased that her eyes had brightened a bit at his news. “He wasn’t completely lucid, but I think once he meets you, he’ll share some information that should make finding your parents’ identities fairly simple. And as soon as we’re done there, we’ll go over to the police station and bring Foley up to speed on all this. Maybe he can post a guard at night, or something.”

  “The judge would never stand for that.”

  “I’m sure the judge would stand for anything that would make you a little safer.”

  “Do you really think I’m still in danger? I thought with those men dead…”

  He pulled on his mustache. “The morgue has two dead men, Elizabeth. And someone still on the loose who is brazen enough to come onto your property in the middle of the night sounds pretty dangerous to me.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, her voice tight. “But then we have to go to the deAngelis law firm.”

  “Where?”

  “Down on Market Street. DeAngelis used to practice with Mr. Peach. They’ve operated out of the same building for forty years, so I’m hoping they may have some files on my adoption. Maybe Mr. Peach will call them for us, pave the way.”

  “How’d you find out about that?”

  Elizabeth explained she had spent her evening with her parents going over all the documents the judge and Miss Lou had regarding her adoption. “Anyway, with what we’ve both found out already, we’re on our way!” Despite her optimism, she suddenly felt a stab of regret that her formal association with the handsome ex-cop was going to be terminated so quickly. Of course, after yesterday, she would have thought they would still have quite a personal relationship, but could she be sure?

  Brushing aside the thought, Elizabeth picked up the letter again. “By the way, I think I saw the guy who left this.”

  Tommy Lee jerked his head around to her so fast that the truck swerved. “What? When?”

  Elizabeth told him about the shadow on the window. “But when the judge came downstairs and saw the light on at the caretaker’s house, we just assumed—”

  “Assumed! God in heaven, Elizabeth. Don’t ever assume. When you assume, all you do is make an ass of you and me. Haven’t you ever heard that little expression?”

  “Tommy Lee, I really don’t appreciate these paternal little lectures. Honestly, you’re never going to make it as a detective if you don’t get control of yourself.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And he didn’t, or at least, he hoped he didn’t. His ego spoke next, ignoring the warning from his brain. “Unless you’re referring to yesterday in Dottie’s office. And if you are, Miss Monette, let me apologize for kissing you. It won’t happen again, I’ll make damn sure of that.”

  She looked miserable, and shocked over what he had said. “I wasn’t talking about that. But thank you for bringing it up. And if that’s the way you want it, that’s fine by me.”

  The way he wanted it, he thought to himself in frustration. Of course, he didn’t want it that way. But how the hell did she want it? He turned into the parking lot of Baptist Haven too fast, and the rear wheels fishtailed on the salted asphalt. “Fine by me, too.”

  He was glad she looked upset. He stared out the front windshield, then gasped. His pettiness with Elizabeth, which he was already feeling bad about, flew out of his mind like a bat from a barn as the scene before him flashed a big red stop sign in his brain.

  There were four Belle Fleur city police cars parked in the retirement-home parking lot, three with lights flashing. The fourth, the chief’s new Buick, sat at the entrance. A uniformed cop was leaning against the hood, talking on the phone. The driver’s door was open, as if the chief intended to come running out and jump in. Since the town only had nine units, whatever had brought out this many cops had to be majorleague. Tommy Lee spotted Mayor Prince’s yellow Mercedes-Benz in the front row of the visitors’ section and let out a low whistle.

  “What’s happened?” Elizabeth asked in a dazed voice.

  “Something big.” He stopped the truck and jumped down, reflexively reaching for his gun. It wasn’t there and his hand moved nervously away from his leg. “Stay here, Elizabeth. Let me find out what’s going on.”

  For once, she did what he said without any argument.

  Sergeant Bulow flipped off the cell phone he was carrying and nodded at Tommy Lee. “Hey, man, I was just tracking you down. Chief wants to see you.”

  Tommy Lee glanced toward Elizabeth. The hair on the back of his neck was tingling, and he had the odd notion he should run, and take the woman waiting along with him. “What happened in there, Bulow?”

  The ruddy-faced sergeant shook his head. “An old man got hisself dead last night, shot up with enough drugs to kill a bull. Same old gent someone hit upside the head with a Bible last week.”

  “Emmett Peach.” Tommy Lee’s voice felt strained. He didn
’t like the way Bulow’s head snapped back at hearing the victim’s name coming from his mouth.

  “How did you know that?”

  “A guess. Where’s Foley?”

  “Around back. He said I’m supposed to take you to the station when I find you, but since you’re here, maybe I should tell him.”

  The tense feeling in Tommy Lee’s neck crawled down his back and grabbed onto his spine. He glanced over at his truck just as Elizabeth Monette slammed the door and began walking toward them. So much for listening to him.

  Bulow looked toward the pickup and frowned. “Isn’t that the Monette woman?”

  Tommy Lee ignored the question. “What’s going on out back, Bulow?”

  The cop turned again to Tommy Lee. “We got a double on our hands here, Tommy Lee. Asides from Mr. Peach, a woman by the name of Lucille Thompkins got her head near blowed off with a shotgun.” He shook his head. “Four murders in two days. Belle Fleur ain’t had but five other murders the whole twenty years I been on this job. What the hell you got yourself involved in, son?”

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER Chief Foley joined Tommy Lee and Elizabeth in the hospital administrator’s empty conference room. The chief was obviously unhappy, and he directed the brunt of his anger at his ex-favorite cop.

  “I’m not liking things around here at all, Tommy Lee,” Chief Foley began, settling at the head of the small, overly waxed table. His sunglasses slid a couple of inches when he laid them down and he covered them with his call used hand. “For some reason, you are personally acquainted with four-out-of-four dead bodies Dr. Willis at the morgue is going be preparing for the ground. Care to explain why you’re suddenly on such close terms with the about-to-dies?”