by Tami Hoag
“Don’t say that,” he grumbled, pouting. “Never say that to me when Susie’s out of town.”
“I’m afraid your wife chose the wrong day to go on a shopping spree,” she said with venom. She couldn’t help but resent Susie Jarvis Cannon. Susie had money. She had a nice house, a new car that more than likely ran on all cylinders. She had Jolynn’s husband. Not that he was worth much out of bed. It was the principle of the thing that galled Jolynn. Susie had it all.
God, she really would have it all now that her father was dead. That Jarrold Jarvis was Susie’s father hit Jolynn like an unpleasant surprise. She supposed she should have felt an ounce of sympathy toward the girl, but she didn’t. She doubted Susie would grieve much on her way to the bank to pick up her inheritance.
Pushing herself away from the bed, out of Rich’s reach, she grabbed up a wrinkled blue shirt from the Cedar Lanes bowling alley and thrust her arms into the sleeves. Giving up, Rich settled back against the metal headboard that was made to look like genuine walnut. It gave a hollow thump as his weight dented a curve into it. He lit a cigarette as he watched her dress, his eyes lingering on every curve she covered, his gaze disturbingly detached.
Jolynn told herself she imagined the coldness. Then she told herself she was used to it, that she expected it, that it didn’t affect her. She had sex with him only because it was easy and habitual; it wasn’t as though she were still in love with him or anything.
She pulled her jeans on and sucked in a breath so she could close the button and zipper. She had the kind of figure that had regrettably gone out of fashion with poodle skirts—full breasts, well-rounded hips that had rounded a little more in the five years since her divorce. She was thirty-three and her metabolism was slowing down in direct proportion to the increase in her appetite for junk food. The extra weight added a fullness to her rectangular face that had the benefit of making her look younger than she was. A person had to peer closely to see the tiny lines of stress that had begun to fan out beside her eyes and around her kewpie-doll mouth.
“So what’s going on?” Rich asked, finally resigning himself to being something other than the center of attention for the moment.
Dragging a brush through her hair, Jolynn glanced at his reflection in the mirror above her dresser. Thirty-nine, a native son of Still Creek, he was handsome and he still radiated the arrogance he had cultivated as a high school jock—the high point of his life to date. He sat back in her bed as if he owned it, his straw-colored hair tousled, cigarette dangling beneath his mustache, one hand scratching absently through the thicket of rusty-gold curls on his chest. Elizabeth said he looked a little like Robert Redford as the Sundance Kid, only older and debauched. It was an apt description. There was a trace of meanness about his eyes and weakness in the line of his mouth that a person didn’t see until the initial dazzle of golden good looks had worn off. He had told her he was going to run for the state representative’s seat this fall. Jolynn wondered how many people would catch on to him before they cast their ballots.
Hate surged through her, as it always did when she looked at Rich and saw him for what he really was—the bastard who’d dumped her for a more advantageous marriage, then had the gall to come around expecting her to fall at his feet . . . which she did, again and again.
“Someone killed your dear old daddy-in-law tonight,” she said bluntly, reaching for a spray bottle of Charlie on the cluttered dresser top. She spritzed herself generously, hoping to camouflage the scent of sex that lingered on her. Her eyes never left the mirror.
“No,” Rich murmured, his face registering shock, but not much in the way of remorse. He set his cigarette aside in the overflowing ashtray on the nightstand, but didn’t move from the bed. “Killed him? Huh. I’ll be a son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, you are. I’d stay to console you,” Jo said dryly, grabbing her purse off the dresser, “but I’ve got a job to do.”
“I’d think your new boss would want to take this one,” he said. “She’s the hotshot headliner from Atlanta, right? I’d think she’d be right out there to grab all the glory herself.”
Jo gave him the same look she gave meat that had overstayed its welcome in her refrigerator. “All that thinking could tax your brain, Rich. I don’t want you to hurt yourself, but if you’d think again, you might figure out that nobody working on the Clarion is going to get any glory unless we’re hit and killed by a news van from Minneapolis.”
“Then why go?” he said, holding his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and taking a deep drag off it. The smoke he exhaled briefly wreathed his head in gray, then drifted up to add another layer of grime to the ceiling.
Jolynn looked at him with utter disgust, shaking her head in disbelief at her own stupidity for staying tangled up with him. “You just don’t get it, do you, Richard? Some of us don’t have wealthy wives to mooch off. Some of us take pride in doing a job. I happen to be good at what I do.”
“Yeah,” he sneered. “Too bad nobody gives a damn.”
She flinched as if he’d struck her. He had always known just where to stick the barb to make it hurt the most; it was one of the few things he really excelled at. Pain bled through her. Her hazel eyes narrowed to slits. “You jerk.”
She grabbed the first thing her hand fell on and flung it at him as hard as she could. He fended off the plastic container of Cover Girl face powder with his hands, knocking it aside and sending a mushroom cloud of fine dust into the air.
“Jesus, Jolynn!”
He hauled himself naked from the bed, choking on the combination of smoke and powder, half tripping as the sheet tangled around his knees. Jo turned and made a dash for the bedroom door, but was caught just shy of getting her hand on the doorknob. A strong arm banded across her midsection, and she was pulled back into the curve of Rich’s body as he bent over her. She struggled to get away—from Richard, from herself, from her dumpy little bedroom in her dumpy little house.
“Come on, Jolynn,” he cajoled, his mustache brushing the shell of her ear, scratchy and soft like the edge of an old shaving brush. He spewed out platitudes with the ease of long practice and little sincerity. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I just don’t want you to leave, baby.”
“Tough shit. I’m going,” she snapped, sniffing back tears. She may have had no pride when it came to sleeping with him, but she damn well wouldn’t cry in front of him. She shrugged him off and took another step toward the door.
“I’ll be here when you get back,” he murmured.
She hesitated with her hand on the tarnished brass knob, dredging up the nerve she never seemed to find when he showed up on her doorstep. “Don’t bother.”
Chapter Six
ELIZABETH FLIPPED ON EVERY LIGHT SWITCH SHE passed, needing to flood the house with brightness and chase away all the sinister shadows that lurked in the corners. The back porch light revealed an ancient chest-type freezer with boxes stacked haphazardly on it and on the warped wooden floor around it, most of them loaded with useless things she had yet to unpack since the move. The kitchen light—two rings of fluorescent glare installed during some tasteless era twenty or thirty years previous—illuminated a good-size room that was hung with peeling orange and yellow wallpaper in a fruit motif. The kitchen cupboards had been painted diarrhea brown. Half of them had doors either missing or hanging drunkenly by one hinge.
The room was a disaster area. A half-dozen cereal boxes stood open on the chipped-Formica-topped table. Trace had forgotten to put the milk away. After a good twelve hours sitting open in a warm room, the carton gave off an aroma, sticky-sweet and sour. Dirty dishes were piled in the stainless-steel sink some brainless wonder had installed smack in a corner with no adjacent countertop. The old black-and-orange linoleum had big ragged chunks missing. The floor around the table was littered with a mismatched family of rather large athletic shoes.
“By golly, I’m just gonna have to up and fire that maid.”
Elizabeth cast a wry look in th
e direction of Deputy Kaufman, who had driven her home, catching him checking his receding hairline in the side of the old chrome toaster. He straightened quickly, his apple-round cheeks flushing pink. A nervous laugh rattled out of him, as if she’d just told a joke in a language he didn’t quite comprehend. He was about as transparent as a teenager with his first big crush. Elizabeth sighed inwardly.
“Thanks for seeing me home, Deputy. I imagine you’ll be wanting to get on home yourself, as late as it is. Your wife will be worried.”
“Oh, I’m not married,” he rushed to assure her, hope leaping bright in his eyes.
She picked an oven mitt off the table and tapped it thoughtfully against her cheek. “You’re not?” She thought the surprise in her voice probably rang true enough for a man. “Well, I can’t believe some sweet young thing hasn’t scooped you up by now.”
The compliment had Kaufman glowing.
“If I hadn’t just plain sworn off men . . .” She let the sentence trail off, shaking her head in regret. The deputy’s optimism leaked out of him on a sigh. He seemed to shrink a little before her eyes, like a slowly deflating balloon.
Resigned once again to his protect-and-serve role, he glanced around the room, eyes widening as if he had suddenly come out of a trance and was seeing the mess for the first time. He recovered admirably. “Um . . . would you like for me to look through the house? I couldn’t help but notice you didn’t have the door locked.”
“Honey, in this dump, I’m lucky I have doors, period.”
What little money she’d had left after the lawyers had finished picking through her divorce settlement had gone to buy the Clarion, with a little left over to put away for Trace’s college fund. The Drewes place had been the best she could afford, and what a sad statement that was, she thought, looking up at a ceiling that was cracked into a giant spiderweb of lines. It was a far cry from the penthouse in Stuart Tower, where every detail right down to the toilet paper had been picked out by a covey of decorators. It had taken her weeks to get over the feeling that she shouldn’t sit down on any of the chairs or sofas. No, the Drewes place was more like the little cockroach haven she had shared with Trace’s daddy back in Bardette half a lifetime ago, where the plaster peeled off the walls like giant scabs and someone had stolen every single doorknob in the place and sold it for scrap. At least she hadn’t found any rattlesnakes in this house—yet.
“Oh, it just needs a little fixing up,” the deputy said charitably.
“That’s what the real estate agent told me.” Elizabeth’s mouth twisted into a grimace as she led the way into a dining room that smelled of eau de dead mouse. “I’m starting to see y’all have a true bent for understatement up here.”
She followed him through the two main floors of the house, declining the trip to the basement. Any fiend willing to hide out down there could have the place all to himself as far as she was concerned. The search turned up nothing but proof that she was a dismal failure as a housekeeper. No one was hiding in her closet or anywhere else. The house was empty. No sign of a murderer. No sign of Trace.
Kaufman blushed clear to the bald spot on the crown of his head as he collected the clothes Jantzen wanted as evidence, digging the provocative red underwear out of the wastebasket with kitchen tongs. He put the ensemble in a brown paper bag and toted it to the back door.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right here alone?” he asked, his brows making a little tent above his puppy eyes. “I’m sure I could get my sister-in-law to come out and stay with you. She used to be in the army.”
Elizabeth mustered a smile for him. “No, thanks anyway. My son should be home soon. I’ll be fine.”
He hummed a little note of worry and shuffled his heavy shoes. “We’ll be driving by now and again, so when you hear a car, don’t worry. I’d like to set someone to keep watch all night, but we don’t have a very big staff—”
“I understand. Really, I’ll be fine.”
He looked a little depressed at the fact that she wasn’t begging him to stay and protect her. Men. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Kaufman tipped his head politely, his shy blush returning under the dim porch light. “It was nice meeting you.”
Elizabeth bit the inside of her cheek. Lord have mercy, she’d just fallen smack into the twilight zone, hadn’t she? Exchanging pleasantries with a law officer after a night of murder and mayhem. It couldn’t get much weirder than that. She hoped.
She went and stood at the kitchen window, watching as he drove away. Cute guy. And as sweet as he could be—unlike a certain boss of his, she reflected sourly as his taillights glowed off into the distance. She hadn’t heard Dane Jantzen express any concern over her well-being. He hadn’t made any effort to come out here and see to her safety or peace of mind. Arrogant jerk.
The silence of the house closed in on her abruptly, like a door slamming. She was alone in a house that gave no pretense of being a home.
Alone. The word gnawed at her stomach. She’d never cared much for being alone, but it seemed that was the way she’d lived most of her life. Alone, if not physically, emotionally. Testimony to the fact that everything she wanted most always seemed furthest out of reach. All she had ever really wanted from as far back as she could remember was to be important to somebody, to be loved, to be needed, but that didn’t seem to be in the cards for her.
Her daddy had been lost in his need for her dead mother, ignoring Elizabeth and taking what solace he could find in a whiskey bottle. She’d been nothing more to J.C. than an extra piece of baggage to drag along as he’d drifted from ranch to ranch, looking for a job he could stick with until his next big bender. At seventeen she’d been dazzled by Bobby Lee Breland, third best calf roper on the West Texas rodeo circuit. A green-eyed rascal with the devil’s grin and more charm than any man had a right to. And she’d been the light of his life . . . for about six months. Their marriage had lasted through his affairs with Miss Texas Barrel Racing and the Panhandle Stampede Queen only because of Elizabeth’s determination that Trace have a father. But she’d drawn the line at second runner-up for the Rattlesnake Roundup Days pageant and moved on with her life—alone, nineteen, with a baby, no friends, and no prospects.
It seemed history was repeating itself, she thought as she pulled herself back to the present and looked around the depressing mess that was her kitchen. Brock had cheated on her, she’d been forced to move on, and here she was, in a place where she knew one person, on her own with a son who had become a stranger to her and a future that looked shaky at best.
Tears threatened as Elizabeth looked around the room, her eyes settling on the wall clock. One A.M. Trace should have been home two hours ago. Dammit, tonight of all nights he could have made it home on time. A man had had his throat slit not much more than a mile from here. Her motherly instincts rushed up to clog her throat with fear for her only child.
The killer had to have been nearby still when she’d found the body. She was sure she’d felt someone watching her, felt the evil in the air. He could be there, in the woods, waiting for another victim. And Trace was out on the road on his bike, alone in the dark.
She turned and stared out the kitchen window, straining her eyes against the blackness, seeing nothing but her own reflection in the glass. And she felt it again—that sense of being watched, that feeling of something malicious and malevolent hanging thick in the air, reaching through the window to run bony fingers down her neck and send shivers skittering over her skin. To the west, lightning spread across the sky like cracks in a windshield. Thunder rumbled like distant cannon fire.
Something in the air. Something heavy and violent.
The hair rose up on the back of her neck and she hugged herself against a chill of sudden vulnerability.
The sound of the screen door slapping against the frame went through her like a gunshot. She wheeled and bolted back against the counter, belatedly wishing she’d gotten out the pistol she’d stolen from Brock’s collection. Instinctively she reache
d for something to protect herself with. Her trembling fingers closed on the handle of a steak knife that had been left on the counter to harden with a crust of A-1 Sauce. She pulled the knife up in front of her as the kitchen door swung open and Trace ambled in.
“Shit,” he drawled, eye’s lighting on the knife. “I figured you might ground me, but stabbing seems a little extreme. I’m only a couple hours late.”
Elizabeth’s breath left her in a gust that took most of her strength with it. The adrenaline that had had her poised to defend herself rushed out of her, leaving her so weak she thought her knees might buckle. Her heart pounded with a mix of relief and leftover terror.
“You scared the life out of me!” she accused Trace. “A man was killed just down the road from here tonight.”
Trace blinked at her. He had never been one to betray his feelings with his expression. From boyhood he had worn one face—serious, brooding. He had inherited her looks more than his father’s—the dark hair, which he wore cropped short and parted on the right, the rectangular face with its strong, stubborn chin and short, straight nose. He even had her mouth. His lips were clear-cut and sensuous, more so the older he got. The contrast between that lush mouth and the lean planes of cheeks that were now seeing a razor several times a week was too sexy for a mother to contemplate. Elizabeth regularly thanked God Trace hadn’t inherited his daddy’s undying hunger for things high-breasted and nubile, because she couldn’t see why any female would want to resist him.