“It’s the boat! The name of it is the Sun-Chaser! It belonged to that senator there, and now he’s dead too! Don’t you see, Jerry, everybody connected with that boat is ending up dead! Oh, my God, it must have been him! He took Susan and Claire out that night on the boat! He must have killed them! Look, it’s the Sun-Chaser—” another picture of the yacht was just coming up—“and it’s his! It had to be him!”
“Marla,” Jerry said. He was staring dubiously at the screen and apparently at the same time trying to unscramble what she was talking about. “If, as you say, the Senator there took Susan and Claire out in his boat and killed them, then who killed him? He’s dead now too.”
That bit of logic gave Marla pause. Jerry was right. Senator whatever-his-name-was was dead. Murdered. Just like Susan and, she was positive, Claire. Just like, she was pretty sure, the Beautiful Model Agency people. Just like she would have been if she hadn’t managed to stay one step ahead of the killer all this time.
Looking at the Senator on the screen, laughing and happy as he was surrounded by his wife—another wife—and young children in a picture taken years ago, Marla realized something else: This was not the man who had ransacked her apartment, or followed her to the residential hotel.
No way.
Could the guy have been a hired killer? Yes, but then in killing the Senator he would have turned on his own master.
So what was going on?
They were showing pictures of the funeral now, of the beautiful young trophy wife—that was how the reporter described her—who was suspected of the Senator’s murder.
Marla didn’t quite have it all figured out, but she was willing to bet the young wife hadn’t killed her husband.
It was too much of a coincidence that everybody who had had anything to do with that boat was ending up dead.
“It’s that boat. I know it’s that boat,” Marla said stubbornly to Jerry. “That’s the connection. He must have been on the boat, too, the same night as Susan and Claire. He must have been one of the Johns—ah, dates. Now he’s dead. Whoever killed Susan and Claire killed him too!”
“You’re reaching, Marla,” Jerry said.
“Jerry, I know I’m right. I know I am. I just have a real feeling about this!” She looked at him beseechingly. “Just—can you just get it checked out, please? Maybe if they find out who was on the boat that night, we’ll find out who is after me.”
The Senator’s second wife was on the screen again, arm in arm with her lawyer in the center of a small army of cops and a crushing tide of reporters.
Christine Gwen intoned, “Veronica Honneker is seen here with her lawyer, Daniel Osborn of Jackson. Osborn is one of the most highly regarded criminal attorneys in the state. His presence at her side lends credence to the story that Mrs. Honneker is about to be charged with her husband’s murder, wouldn’t you say, Burt?”
Burt Hall, the station’s anchor, took the ball as the coverage switched to him. “I don’t know, Christine. We’ll see. If what the tabloids are printing is true, it certainly seems like she has a motive. We’ve managed to obtain copies of the photographs that are shocking the nation tonight.”
Pictures of the second wife doing the nasty with a boyfriend flashed on the screen, accompanied by Hall’s voice-over. Marla took one look and clapped her hands over Lissy’s widening eyes.
Click went the TV as Jerry turned it off.
“I can’t believe they show that kind of stuff on television,” Jerry said disgustedly. “Okay, Lissy, let’s get back to the playhouse.”
Lissy had already pulled away from Marla’s makeshift blindfold.
“Mom, you didn’t have to do that. Don’t you think I’ve seen sex on TV before?” Lissy said scornfully over her shoulder as she headed for the kitchen. Jerry was right behind her.
“Jerry, what about this?” Marla trailed them. “You’ve got to call somebody and tell them. This is it, I’m telling you.”
Lissy went banging out through the screen door. Jerry paused just inside it, looking back over his shoulder at Marla.
“It’s Sunday, Marla,” he said patiently. “I’ll call the guys in Biloxi tomorrow and tell them what you think. But I have to say, it seems pretty far-fetched to me.”
“Jerry …”
“Gotta paint,” Jerry said with a grin, and went out into the backyard after Lissy.
Left alone, Marla stewed. She knew she was right. She knew it. But she had gotten the feeling for some time now that Jerry’s heart wasn’t really in this thing as if he didn’t care if it ever was solved.
He was happy having her and Lissy living with him, she knew. She cooked and cleaned and had sex with him whenever he wanted and was a pleasant, undemanding companion the rest of the time. Lissy he had obviously fallen for like a ton of bricks. Maybe he thought that if they never found out who was trying to kill her, she could never go back home.
Without Jerry to help her, there wasn’t much she could do, Marla thought.
Then she remembered the beautiful young second wife all but accused of her husband’s murder.
Now there was another interested party if she had ever seen one.
Mrs. Second Wife would surely be glad to get her hands on information that would help to clear her. And she would have the money, and the power, to launch an investigation to find out the truth.
If Marla could only, somehow, get in touch with her.
Marla remembered the name of the big-shot lawyer with her, and smiled.
Then she picked up the phone in the kitchen and, when the operator came on, asked for Jackson information.
Chapter
42
September 15th
12:45 A.M.
RONNIE LAY AWAKE in her borrowed bed at Sally McGuire’s, watching the moonlight paint patterns on the ceiling over her head and trying not to think. All about her the farmhouse settled, making ominous little creaking and groaning sounds. Sally had gone to bed at eleven-thirty, as seemed to be her custom. Having retired upstairs hours before, Ronnie had heard her come up.
After the ordeal of the funeral was over, she had thought—hoped—she would finally be able to sleep. Indeed she had fallen on top of the bed almost fully dressed, and zonked out. But two hours later she had awakened. Since then, though she had tried her best, she had not been able to lull herself back into unconsciousness.
The key, she thought desperately, lay in keeping her mind blank.
Everything that entered her head, from childhood memories to unwelcome thoughts of Lewis, to an aching longing for Tom, seemed to cause her pain.
She was sure she could sleep—if only she could not think.
They thought she had killed Lewis.
After awakening, she had taken a hot bath, soaking for almost an hour, shaving her legs with great care, creaming and moisturizing her face.
Her father had seen naked pictures of her with Tom.
Finally climbing out of the tub, she had brushed her teeth and brushed out her hair and put on one of her prettiest nightgowns, a spaghetti-strapped, flimsy pink silk affair that just brushed her ankles. Having been retrieved from her dresser at Sedgely—Selma had packed two suitcases of her clothes and had had them delivered to Dan Osborn’s office the day before—it smelled of the delicate honeysuckle sachets she kept tucked in her drawers.
The smell reminded her of Sedgely.
Sally’s second-floor guest room was comfortable, with a big double bed, a sturdy oak dresser, and a soft, low armchair in one corner. It was painted sky blue, with a white ceiling. There was one six-over-six-paned window hung with ruffled white curtains and fitted out with a pull-down shade. When the shade was pulled up, as Ronnie had it at the moment, moonlight spilled over the bed. With the light off, that was the only illumination.
Always before, her sisters and father had been so proud of her: the one Sibley who had made it big. The Senator’s wife. Today they had been fainted by her shame.
She could not keep her mind blank, try though she
would. She could not sleep.
Her father and sisters had flown back home. They would, they told her, come back if necessary for the trial. Oh, God, were they really going to try her for murdering Lewis? It seemed unbelievable.
Through the window she stared at stars twinkling in the wake of the moon far above. The sky was midnight blue and mysterious, the stars tiny glittering points of light. As a child she had always imagined they were fairies sprinkling magic dust as they flew about in the dark getting the world ready for daylight once again.
Not one word had been said by her father, her sisters, or herself about Tom. Though they had undoubtedly seen the pictures—Ronnie doubted if there was anyone in the country who hadn’t seen them by now—the subject had never come up. That’s how things were in her family. They never, ever talked about anything important. Even when her mother had left them, they had never discussed it. Not once, in all those years, had the subject ever come up.
The creakings and groanings grew louder. Listening, Ronnie thought she could almost hear the house breathing. Or was that Sally, two rooms away down the hall?
The sounds had a steady, almost furtive rhythm. As if someone were creeping up the stairs.…
Ronnie caught her breath, sitting bolt upright in bed.
The doorknob turned.
Lewis had been murdered. Was it now her turn?
A man’s tall silhouette was framed in the doorway. Ronnie’s fingers scrabbled for a possible weapon—the windup alarm clock on the bedside table was the best she could do—and she sucked breath into her suddenly reluctant lungs for a scream.
Moonlight touched the man’s hair.
“Tom?” Ronnie whispered.
“I thought you’d be asleep.” He shut the bedroom door very quietly, and came padding toward the bed. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and Ronnie realized he was wearing socks but no shoes.
“Tom!” Dropping the clock on the mattress, scrambling out from beneath the covers and off the bed, she threw herself at him, and he caught her in his arms.
“Shhh,” he cautioned even as he wrapped her in a bear hug so tight that it threatened to crack her ribs. “We don’t want to wake up—”
My mother was what he had been going to say, Ronnie knew. But he never finished, because he was occupied with kissing her. One hand moved to cup her head. His fingers slid through the thick fall of her hair to cradle her scalp. Her arms twined around his neck as she kissed him back in a way that said she would die if she didn’t.
She had not realized how cold and lost she had felt until she found herself wrapped in the warm security of his arms.
“Oh, Tom, I’m so glad you came!” she whispered against his throat when at last he lifted his head.
“I watched the whole damned shebang on TV. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there with you.”
“I wanted you.”
“I know.”
“Tom …”
“Shhh.” He kissed her again.
“I’m scared, Tom.” It was the first time Ronnie had admitted such a thing, even to herself.
“I love you.” He cupped her face with his hands and said the words almost against her mouth. “That’s what I was going to tell you in the four minutes we didn’t get in Dan’s office.”
“Oh, God.” Tilting her face up, she kissed him. Her arms slid around his waist, her hands burrowing under his shirt to touch his skin. Suddenly she needed to touch him, needed to love him, with a fierce mindless need that was as strong as the life force itself. She pushed his shirt up, and he let go of her long enough to pull it off, over his head, and let it drop.
Her open mouth ran along his neck, down through the soft brown wedge of hair on his chest, over his hard stomach to the button on his jeans. Then she was kneeling before him, nuzzling her face against him, pressing her mouth against his crotch, biting at the hard bulge she could feel straining against the soft blue denim of his fly.
“Jesus, Ronnie.” As her teeth found him, he jerked, sucking in his breath with an audible gasp. His hands were on her head, in her hair, but he didn’t try to pull her away from him. She didn’t stop, couldn’t stop. Her hands were urgent, tugging at his snap, pulling down his zipper, reaching inside his boxers until his member was free. He was huge and hot and pulsing and alive, and she took him in her mouth, cupping the vulnerable softness beneath with tender care. She kissed and suckled and nibbled and bit until every breath he took sounded like a groan.
Then his hands clenched in her hair. He pulled her mouth off him, yanked off his jeans, and dropped down on his knees in front of her. He pushed her onto her back in a glowing patch of moonlight, pulling her nightgown up and off as he did so. Lying on top of her, pulling her legs around his waist, he came into her hard.
Ronnie cried out. He muffled the sound with his kiss. His tongue filled her mouth, its scalding heat aping the fierce claiming movements of his body.
The carpet rasped against her back as he drove her down into it. Beneath it she could feel the hardness of the wooden floor. She clung to him, her fingers curling into his back. His skin was hot and damp with sweat, his muscles knotted with tension.
He was thrusting deep inside her, filling her, setting her on fire. She writhed beneath him, gasping her need into his mouth, her nails gouging his back, her hips lifting off the carpet in desperate answer to his passionate possession.
“Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom!” Gasping his name, quivering from head to toe, she came, spinning out of the world and up into the fairy-dust stars. He found his own release, groaning his pleasure against her throat as he ground himself deep into her quivering body.
Afterward Ronnie lay for long moments, her back prickling with rug burn from the carpet, her lungs constricted from the weight of his big body collapsed on top of her, her scalp tingling because of the way his hands were tangled in her hair.
She knew she should be uncomfortable, but she wasn’t.
It was incredible to once again feel alive.
She just wanted to hold him, and have him hold her.
Finally he stirred, pressed a kiss to the curve between her neck and shoulder where his face was buried, and levered himself up on one elbow.
“I feel better,” he said, smiling into her eyes.
“Me too.” She moved her hips a little, because now she really was being crushed, and he obligingly rolled to one side.
“Isn’t there something you think you ought to say to me?” he asked after a moment. He was lying beside her, his head propped on one hand, and he smoothed the hair back from her face as she looked up at him.
Ronnie thought for a moment. “ ‘Thanks, Tom, that was great’?” she ventured with a flickering smile.
He grinned. “That was good, I have to admit, but not quite what I had in mind.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So what do you want me to say?”
“Try ‘I love you, Tom.’ ”
“Oh.” A smile touched her lips and warmed her eyes. She looked up at his lean, handsome face. His hard jaw was dark with stubble, and there were shadows under his eyes, as if he’d been sleeping about as well as she had. In the spill of moonlight in which they lay his hair looked silver, and his eyes gleamed deeply blue. He was smiling at her tenderly.
“I love you, Tom,” she said, and meant it.
“Ah.” He kissed her, his lips gentle. “I love you, too, Ronnie.”
This time it was her turn to kiss him. It was a slow, leisurely kiss, and before it was done, he was hard again. She could feel the hot length of him prodding the outside of her thigh.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she said, when he made a movement as though to cover her body with his own. “There’s a bed up there, mister.”
Tom paused, poised above her with his straightened arms keeping his weight off of her, and glanced from her to the bed, which was approximately two feet to the right.
“You have a real thing for beds, don’t you?” he asked, and grinned.
&n
bsp; “Let’s see you lie here and get rug burn on your backside.”
“Rug burn?” His grin widened. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t look sorry. You don’t sound sorry either. You look like you think it’s funny.”
“Darlin’, nothing that causes you pain is funny to me.”
Because he sounded like he meant that, she kissed him. He kissed her back thoroughly, then entered her and rolled with her at the same time, so that this time he was the one who got rug burn on his backside.
After that they finally made it into bed.
He left before dawn. She was dozing when he slipped his arms from around her and tried to sneak away.
“Tom,” she protested drowsily.
“I’ve got to go.”
She knew he did. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” He kissed her mouth briefly, dressed, and was gone. Ronnie curled into the warm spot he had left in the bed, and finally, for the first time since Lewis’s death, fell deeply, dreamlessly asleep.
Chapter
43
September 19th
11:45 A.M.
“RONNIE, DEAR, I hate to say this, but I think you’d better either duck out the back door or run upstairs. We’ve got company.” Alerted by the sound of a car pulling into the gravel driveway, Sally was looking out the kitchen window as she spoke. The two of them were sitting in perfect harmony at the round oak table. Ronnie was breaking snap beans into a pot, and Sally was peeling apples for a pie. There was going to be a potluck that night at the church Sally attended. Notable cook that she was, Sally had been asked to bring several dishes.
“Oh, my,” Sally added, still looking out the window.
Ronnie looked out, too, and saw Mark slamming the door of Tom’s car and stalking toward the house.
“I’d say he and his dad have had a fight,” Sally said with grim humor. Ronnie ran for the back door like a scalded cat. She let herself out the back just as Mark slammed in through the front.
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