John pushed a second stool out. "Join me."
"I couldn't sleep." She scooted her rump onto the stool, keeping both hands on her robe so that it didn't gape above or below the belt.
Of course, nothing was so calculated to make him wonder what she wore under it. He hastily turned his attention to his dinner. Damn it, he did not want to have sexual fantasies, however fleeting, about Natalie Reed.
"Did you nap this afternoon?" Maybe not a smart question, as it made him picture that curly hair spread on her pillow, her cheeks flushed like Maddie's on the rare occasions when she would still lie down during the daytime.
Natalie shook her head. "I never do, you see. Going so against habit would have just made me think."
He chewed and swallowed, washing the bite down with a slug of milk. "What did you do, then?"
"Rode." The hand possessively clutching the robe at her bosom began to relax, as if she forgot she had to. "Then, believe it or not, I went shopping at the mall. A woman's refuge."
"Ah." Debbie had shopped, too, whether the credit cards were maxed out or not.
"I wasn't sure you could let me into my house. I bought some clothes for the next day or so."
"You didn't have to do that," he said roughly. "I could have gotten what you needed."
"No, that's okay." She bent her head and fingered the shawl collar of the robe, which he realized belatedly was his mother's. "I hardly ever take the time to shop, and I can use some new jeans and … things."
Panties? Bras? Another irritating, unsettling image of her lush body in dainty, lacy lingerie flitted through his mind. His brows drew together and he shoved another bite in, although the damn casserole seemed tasteless tonight.
She said quietly, "You looked angry earlier. And now you do again. Did something happen today?"
"What?" He realized he was glowering at her and wiped the expression from his face. "Sorry. No. Nothing happened. In fact, too little happened."
She didn't say anything. She never did probe. What he didn't offer, she didn't ask. Because she didn't care enough? Because she didn't think she had the right?
Had she been the same with Stuart? Or was Stuart the one who had taught her that what he didn't choose to tell her was none of her damned business?
The speculation felt disloyal. Stuart Reed and he had been partners. Friends. Yeah, there had been moments when John hadn't much liked him, but that was water under the bridge. Stuart was dead and buried. This was no time to question his character.
"I was thinking about my mother," John said abruptly, as much because he wasn't yet ready to admit he hadn't made an arrest today, that Natalie couldn't go home, that he didn't have a damned clue. "Like I said, she's too hard on Evan especially. I'm just not sure what to do about it."
"Have you talked to her?"
"I said something this morning."
"Did you?" Her voice was soft, uncritical, but he got the point.
Okay. So what he'd really done was snap at his mother.
"Talking to her isn't going to do any good."
"I don't understand." Tiny crinkles formed in her brow. "I always thought you were close to her."
John shoved his plate away on a sigh. "Yes and no. I stayed in town, I see her often. I appreciate what she did, somehow keeping us all together when she had no job skills and Dad hadn't left any life insurance." He didn't usually talk like this. What he felt toward Stuart's memory was nothing when compared to his fierce loyalty to family. But Natalie listened with those wide, compassionate eyes and no hint of judgment. He could use a sounding board.
"What did your mom do?"
"Worked two jobs. Apparently she'd learned to type in high school, and she managed to get a secretarial job even though she had no experience. Nights she cleaned office buildings."
"But when did she sleep?"
The question took him by surprise. "I don't know." He grimaced. "No, that's not true, of course. Whenever she got home in the middle of the night, maybe three o'clock to seven in the morning. A couple of hours after work in the afternoon." Somehow he hadn't thought about how sleep deprived his mother must have been all those years.
"What about you and your brothers? Did somebody take care of you when she was working?"
He shook his head. "I guess we were the original latchkey kids. We were all school age when Dad died. I watched Hugh and Connor after school until I started playing high school sports, and by then Con was old enough. Nighttimes she left us alone." He frowned, trying to remember. "I'm not sure she had the janitorial job the first year after Dad was killed. I was probably in middle school by the time she started that. Old enough to be in charge."
Still with puckered brow, Natalie studied his face. "Did you feel old enough?"
No. Hell, no.
The explosive quality of his realization startled him. Perhaps to disguise his quiet shock, John rubbed a hand over his chin, which felt bristly.
"You didn't, did you?" She was too damned perceptive.
"I went through a stretch when I was scared to death at night. The cops never arrested the guy who shot my dad. Did I ever tell you that? Every night I'd imagine he was breaking into that crummy apartment we rented. The building creaked and whimpered all night long. I was old enough to know the locks were flimsy. If he'd been able to kill my dad, who seemed huge and strong to me, what could I do?" He shook his head. "I never told my mother how scared I was. What could she have done? She had to work. As it was, she went without anything for herself to make sure three boys growing by half-foot leaps had enough on the table, decent clothes and the chance to play sports like our friends."
Now he felt like a son of a bitch, resenting the way his mother had brought him up. No, what he felt was childish, for forgetting how hard it had been for her.
"I must sound petty," he said.
"You mean, worrying about how she treats Evan?" She abandoned the collar of the robe, which gaped enough for him to glimpse flowered T-shirt fabric. So much for those visions of satin and lace. "It's your job to worry about your son."
John grunted. "Mom didn't have time to be soft with us. I think she forgot how to be soft."
"Was she different? Before?"
"Yeah." He stretched. "Dad was the one who was too busy to throw the ball or help me learn to ride my two-wheeler. I remember that especially, for some reason. I wasn't kidding about those half-foot leaps, by the way. I think I must have grown six inches that year. I was incredibly clumsy. My buddies were all racing up and down the sidewalk on their two-wheelers, and me, I was stuck with training wheels and humiliated. Mom would go out with me after dark, when no one would see us, and she'd run up and down the street holding me up. When she said she wouldn't let me fall, I believed her. One day, I just knew I could do it. I yelled for her to let go." A bittersweet smile tugged at his mouth. "I rode up to the end of the street, got off and turned the bike around, then got started all by myself. I can still see Mom, clapping and jumping up and down and laughing like crazy."
When he fell silent, Natalie said softly, "Maybe she could learn again."
John shook his head. "Mom's spent plenty of time with the kids since they were born. If she was going to, she would have by now."
"Hey. Don't give up on her."
He shrugged and said nothing for a moment. Time to change the subject.
Probably too abruptly, he said, "Ronald Floyd's parents didn't know anything. They saw their son a couple of times a year. He told them he was going straight, working at a marina."
Tension minutely tightened the muscles in her jaw and around her eyes. Her hand, lying on the counter, knotted. "Was he?"
"He did pilot whale-watching tours. He'd only been out of the joint a month, got the job two weeks ago. Mom and Dad didn't know why he had come straight back to Port Dare. We found some of his old acquaintances. Some admitted seeing him, some not. Nobody knew anything about him dealing, or taking up a new trade like B and E. He liked boats, they all agreed."
She thought about that. "Stu
art got seasick. He didn't even like to take the ferry."
"What about you?"
"Me?" She stiffened slightly, making him realize he'd sounded like a cop. "They're okay, I guess. I do enjoy taking the ferry to Canada. I haven't even done that since … oh, in May, I went up to see Butchart Gardens, when the rhododendrons were in bloom."
"No whale-watching trips?"
She shook her head.
He sighed. "I'm reaching here. I thought he might have seen you, maybe flirted. I don't know."
"You mean, that he was looking for me?" The thought obviously horrified her.
Sorry he'd raised it but knowing he'd needed to, John said, "I didn't really think he was. You work every day. If he'd done any checking, he'd have known that. And we can't forget that he wasn't alone. So who was with him and why?"
Tiny, worried lines crimped her forehead. "You really don't think they were there to burglarize, do you?"
"I can't say that. I'm eliminating other possibilities." John spread his hands. "According to Floyd's parents, the only grudge he harbored was against whoever tipped the cops off the night we arrested him. He never mentioned Stuart to them."
"Could that person have killed him?"
"Apparently he died a couple of years ago, while Floyd was still locked up. Or so he told his parents."
John's mouth twisted. "Unless he lied. And why would he have?"
Natalie brushed her hair back from her face, pulling it into a ponytail with one hand and twisting it into a sort of rough chignon. The movement parted the collar of the robe, and he saw both the swell of her breasts and the cartoon cats on her T-shirt nightgown. She left the heavy knot at her nape and tugged her robe together. Hell, had she seen him staring?
If so, she didn't show it. "What will you do now?" she asked.
"Search your house more carefully. Focus on fingerprints, trace evidence. Keep hoping we can find a neighbor, a delivery truck driver—somebody—who saw a vehicle parked in front of your house or in the driveway. In other words, boring police work."
She nodded. The knot slipped and tendrils curled against her neck. "When can I go home again?"
His gut instincts rebelled violently at the idea. Logic didn't support his unhappiness, however. Whatever had happened in Stuart's study had nothing to do with Natalie. The killer had had time to do whatever he'd gone there to do. Why would he come back?
"A couple of days, maybe," he said reluctantly. "Then, if you're comfortable going home, I don't see why you can't."
She nodded. "What else can I do? Drift around town taking turns being a guest at all my friends' houses? Put the house on the market? Even if I were going to do that, I'd have to go through Stuart's things first, have a garage sale—" she made a face "—probably a huge bonfire. Of course I have to go home."
His brows drew together.
Natalie laughed. "You don't like admitting I'm right, do you?"
"You know you can stay here as long as you need to."
"Yeah." She smiled. "But you know I can't."
He did. A few days here would be okay in the court of public opinion; people would figure he was helping her out for Stuart's sake. Any longer than that, whispers would start. John remembered his own brief discomfiture when he'd had to admit that his fingerprints would be all over Natalie's house. For her sake, he didn't want any whispers or lewd jokes.
"We'll get done with the house in the next couple of days," he promised. "In the meantime, I can take you over tomorrow to get clothes and anything else you need."
She nodded.
A moment of silence developed. John became newly conscious of the quiet and darkness beyond the lighted kitchen. Knowing everyone else was asleep made this conversation feel more intimate, as if they were married or something. If he moved his leg, his knee would bump hers. Their shoulders almost touched. Her hair was loose, her face scrubbed clean, the toes curled around the rungs of the stool bare. She was wearing a nightgown and robe, for Pete's sake. Here he was, smelling of beer and tobacco smoke from the bars he'd prowled, his jaw scratchy from a day's growth, his eyes likely bloodshot and his tiredness acute enough to have him swaying as he abruptly swiveled and stood.
He grabbed the edge of the counter. "Time to hit the sack."
She did just what he was hoping to avoid. She slid from the bar stool and touched him. "Are you all right?"
Her hand felt good on his bare forearm, below his rolled-up shirtsleeve. Warm, soft and, in some indefinable way, womanly. He despised himself for the shot of heat that steadying touch sent through him.
He couldn't insult her by backing away. All he could do was wait until her hand dropped to her side. He sounded a little hoarse to his own ears when he said, "Just light-headed for a minute. A good night's sleep will cure me."
Natalie's fingers curled into fists at her side. "Yes." This smile looked forced and her gaze slipped from his. "Of course. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kept you up talking."
"No apologies. I'm the one who dumped my troubles on you. Actually, talking helped me unwind." He managed a crooked imitation of a smile. "Maybe that's why I'm so tired now. I talked so damn much."
To his relief, her expression relaxed. "I'll have to try it sometime. But not," she said with a breath of laughter, when he started to open his mouth, "tonight. I'll see you in the morning, John. Thank you for … well, everything." Startling him, she rose on tiptoe and brushed the lightest of kisses on his cheek. Then, with a whisk of the robe, she passed him and left the kitchen, her bare feet silent on the tiled floor.
He stood frozen in her wake, conscious of the faint scent she'd left behind, something flowery that suited her.
Voice harsh and low, he said, "Damn, damn, damn."
* * *
Chapter 5
« ^ »
"This is a bad idea." Geoff Baxter reluctantly backed onto Natalie's porch, broad face set in a scowl. He had expressed the same sentiment a dozen times already. He didn't think it was safe for her to move back into the house, he had said. More than once. What if the killer returned? Aside from which, she'd be sullying a crime scene. She was in the way. She…
Mercifully, John had interrupted at that point.
Right now, if Geoff hadn't been standing with his head thrust pugnaciously forward, Natalie would have been tempted to thank him one more time—briskly—and shut the door in his face. As it was, the door would break his nose.
John stood a step behind his partner, expressionless. Except when he was talking to his children, his face had pretty much looked like that for the past three days. Which was one reason Natalie had been determined to go home. Obviously, that evening when she impulsively kissed his cheek, she had stepped over some boundary that defined their friendship. She'd felt the constraint ever since.
The two men had insisted on accompanying her, hovering like nervous parents over a reckless toddler as she put away fresh milk and eggs and carried her own bag upstairs just to prove to them and herself that she could walk past the study door without flinching.
It was closed, sealed with yellow "Do Not Cross" tape. As was the door to the garage.
"We think we're done with the study," John had explained, "but let's give it another day or two to be sure."
At which point, Geoff had shaken his head morosely. "Damn it, you shouldn't be back in the house until we're finished with it."
With eroding patience, Natalie had said flippantly, "You guessed! I did plan to peel that tape back and sneak in there tonight. You know, I always shake out the floor mats from my car in the study. And then, of course, I have to vacuum and wipe every single surface clean. Gracious, why don't I just get the shampooer out of the garage and do the carpet in there while I'm at it?"
Geoff had flushed dangerously, while John had given her a look he most likely reserved for one of his kids when they misbehaved in public.
She'd thrown up her hands and exhaled in a rush. "I'm sorry! But you've said yourself there are no fingerprints in the kitchen or my bedroom
or bathroom. Nobody laid a hand on the remote control or the toaster. You're done with the main part of the house."
Geoff had opened his mouth.
She swept on. "You've told me what not to do. Ask my fifth-grade teacher. I've always been obedient."
John had looked as if he was trying not to smile.
"So don't fuss!" she said now.
"Fuss!" Sweat beaded Geoff Baxter's receding forehead. "We're friends! Aren't friends supposed to worry?"
John laid an arm across his partner's shoulder and firmly turned him toward the street.
He gave Natalie one last, rivetingly intense look. "Call if you need me," he said, and steered his cursing partner from the porch and across the lawn—which really needed mowing now—to their dark blue sedan at the curb.
Natalie took a deep breath, closed the door and locked it. Alone at last.
"Thank goodness," she said aloud, but without quite the fervency she'd tried to tell herself she felt. Hastily she raised her voice again. "Sasha! Kitty, kitty. Those noisy men are gone. Come here, kitty, kitty. I'll open you a nice can of Fancy Feast."
No sign of the cat until Natalie reached the kitchen, when Sasha materialized by her food bowl.
"Oh, sweetie." Natalie plopped onto the kitchen floor and gathered the long-haired black cat into her arms. Sasha wasn't a particularly cuddly cat, preferring to choose her own time and place, but this time she submitted with good grace, even purring in her quiet, restrained way.
"You missed me," Natalie mumbled, gaining a mouthful of hair. Absurdly, tears pricked at her eyes and she gave the cat a squeeze.
Sasha looked up, round eyes molten copper, and abruptly butted her nose against Natalie's.
"You did!" She gave a sniff. "I'm so sorry I haven't been here, sweetie. It must have been scary."
Her half-Persian refugee from the animal shelter agreed in her tiny chirp that yes, she was scared of all those big, bad men. Leaping from Natalie's lap, she indicated that a particularly tasty treat would make her feel ever so much better.
Natalie laughed and blinked away the dampness. Ridiculous to cry just because she was glad to be home and glad she'd been missed. As she opened the can and served trout to the cat, she almost wished she hadn't paid for a housecleaning service to take care of the fingerprint powder and the dirty footprints on the carpet. It might have been good for her mental health to have something vigorous to do.
HIS PARTNER'S WIFE Page 6