by Tami Hoag
The feeling was nothing new, but somehow it managed to hit her with an unexpected amount of hurt. Being snubbed by Atlanta’s upper crust when Brock’s propaganda campaign against her had been at its peak hadn’t broken her. But standing here next to Jarrold Jarvis’s lawn jockey with cherry Jell-O dripping down her and the venerable matrons of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church looking down their noses at her had tears crowding her throat.
“Why don’t you ladies go in and make some coffee,” Dane suggested.
He held Mavis’s elbow as she hefted herself up, the final remains of Grandma Schummacher’s plate crunching under her orthopedic shoes. Great, he thought, as if the town wasn’t already buzzing with news of the murder; now there would be this tale to tell and retell. How “that southern woman” made poor Helen Jarvis lose her mind.
As the last of the church ladies went into the house and the door swung shut behind them, Dane wheeled around. “Dammit, I told you to wait—”
The rest of his diatribe jammed in his throat. Elizabeth was standing there in her faded jeans and college T-shirt, scraping red Jell-O off herself, blinking back tears. Tears. Shit. He could take her tantrums and tirades. Her tart tongue kept her just where he wanted her—at arm’s length. But tears. He hadn’t expected tears, had never been sure what to do about them. Something suspiciously like tenderness sprang unexpectedly to life inside him, and he winced as if it were a thorn.
“Well,” she said on a shaky breath, trying to force one of her cocky grins. “So much for paying my respects.”
One fat crystalline drop rolled over her lashes onto her cheek. She swiped at it angrily, leaving a globby smear of gelatin. Dane swore under his breath. He stepped off the terrace, pulling an immaculate white handkerchief from his hip pocket.
“You really bring out the best in people,” he grumbled, rubbing at the mess on her cheek, focusing on the task instead of on the almost overwhelming desire to take her in his arms and hold her. Soft. He was going soft in his old age.
Elizabeth almost managed to chuckle. He had meant it facetiously, of course. Hadn’t given a thought to the fact that he was actually being nice to her for once in his accursed life, she was sure. But he was. There was sympathy in his eyes behind the annoyance, and he had positioned himself between her and the house, shielding her from view of anyone peering out between the Levolors.
“Could you rub a little harder?” she asked as he mushed her cheek up against the side of her nose. “I’ve never been partial to having skin there, and I think you’ve about got it scraped right off.”
Dane scowled at her but gentled his touch.
“Thank you,” she murmured, reaching up to take the handkerchief from him. “I’ll get the rest, if you don’t mind.”
The rest was on her chest. The idea of letting his hand drift down to touch her breasts wafted through her mind as she looked up at him, as her fingertips bumped against his on her cheek. Just a quick vignette of involuntary fantasy, a fleeting image of those long, elegant fingers brushing against her.
Dane glanced down at the globules of Jell-O clinging to the upper slopes of her breasts. His mind raced ahead to imagine what it might be like if she were naked and he were to gently rub those cool, glittering bits of sweetness over her skin, then lean down and let his mouth follow the trail. . . . Heat drifted through him, the core of it curling like a fist in the pit of his belly.
His gaze drifted back up and caught on hers. She blinked, like someone trying to come out of a trance, and the tip of her tongue skimmed across her bottom lip.
He wanted to kiss her. For an instant he couldn’t see any reason not to lean down and taste that mouth. It was a matter of simple, unbridled lust, he told himself. A male wanting a female. Nothing complicated, nothing emotional. She made him hot, and his body wanted a chance to do something about it.
He cupped her cheek, catching his thumb beneath her chin and tilting her face to a better angle.
“Dane!”
Edith Truman’s voice cut through the sensual haze. Dane shook off the spell and turned around. Edith stood at the door with a dishtowel knotted in her hands, looking like his grandmother come out to call him in for pie. Having been married to Doc Truman for nearly sixty years, she had seen more than her share of human trauma and was luckily a woman who thrived during times of crisis. Her eyes were bright as she leaned out the door.
“Mark just called to see if you were still here. They’re getting things set up for the press conference, and apparently there’s some disagreement over who gets to sit at the head table.”
Dane raised a hand in a gesture that managed to combine acknowledgment and resignation. “I’m on my way.” He glanced over his shoulder at Elizabeth.
“Come on, trouble,” he said, starting for the truck. “It’s showtime.”
“Would you mind dropping me off at Jolynn’s?” Elizabeth asked, falling in step beside him. “I might attract undue attention if I show up at your little soiree looking like this.”
Dane imagined she would attract attention if she showed up in a nun’s habit, but he kept that comment to himself and muttered a grudging yes.
“You’re a prince,” Elizabeth said, climbing into the cab of the Bronco. She bit back a chuckle at the look he shot her. He wanted her to think he wasn’t anything but a tough, ornery son of a gun with a badge. He didn’t much like the idea that she had caught a glimpse of something nicer in him.
“Don’t spread it around,” he grumbled, sliding behind the wheel. “I’m not running a taxi service either, so don’t expect me to hang around and wait for you while you try to decide what the latest fashion for a press conference is.”
“No, sir.” She saluted him smartly, winning another disgruntled snarl for her efforts, then she relaxed against the seat and studied him for a minute as he started the truck and headed south again. “Much as it pains me to be civil to you,” she said soberly, “I do thank you.”
“For what?”
She toyed with the strap of the seat belt, uncomfortable, uncertain of her footing on this ground. She could stand toe-to-toe and fight with him. This was much trickier. It skirted the edges of liking him, and that seemed unwise. “For being decent,” she said at last.
“I’m midwestern, it’s ingrained.”
“It wasn’t ingrained in any of those women standing on that veranda.”
“You’re new here,” Dane said, feeling a little embarrassed that he had to make excuses for his townspeople. “They don’t know anything about you except—”
“Except that I’m a notorious, man-hopping divorcee from the South,” Elizabeth finished, her mouth twisting at the injustice. “They know what they’ve read and they know I’m not one of them. I’m familiar with the routine, Sheriff. I’ve been through other versions of it before. Let me tell you, sugar, these old gals have got nothing on the ladies of Atlanta. I’m just not holding up as well these days, that’s all.”
Dane looked at her, his curiosity stirring at the remembered pain in her eyes. For a minute he forgot that he didn’t want to get to know the woman behind the infamous legend. “I can’t imagine that you didn’t fit in in Atlanta.”
She arched a brow. “Why? Because I have a drawl? Well, it’s the wrong drawl, and I’ve got the wrong bloodlines, and I was born in the wrong town. The only thing I did right was marry money and enough of it so that all those little blue-blooded belles had to put up with me and smile while they were at it. But then, that’s one of the traits of a true southern belle—she can cut you right down to the bone all the while looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. I am here to say it, darlin’, God didn’t make a more vicious creature than an Atlanta Junior Leaguer with a mood on. Every minute I lived there I had the feeling they didn’t figure I knew enough not to wear white shoes after Labor Day.”
Dane steered the Bronco over to the curb across the street from Jolynn Nielsen’s house and let the engine idle. “Why can’t you wear white shoes after Labor Day?”
It sounded to him like nobody should want to. The picture Elizabeth painted was of an enclave of bitches waiting with claws extended to pounce on the first person to pick up the wrong fork at dinner. He rolled his eyes. “I’m crushed.”
“And I’m grateful.” She smiled at him softly and held his handkerchief out to him. “Thanks. See you at the press conference, cowboy.”
He dropped the handkerchief in the litter basket that hung from a knob on his door, then shot her a parting look. “Please don’t get into any more trouble,” he said tightly.
She batted her lashes in innocence as she settled her purse strap on her shoulder and slid down out of the truck. “Trouble? Who? Me?”
Chapter Nine
CHRIST ALMIGHTY, SHE CAME RIGHT AT ME,” ELIZABETH said, dragging her T-shirt off over her head. “Came right at me looking like Tammy Faye Baker in a frenzy—all crazed and bug-eyed, with this big cone of hair and makeup done like she got caught in an explosion at the cosmetics counter in Woolworth’s. I never had anything like that happen in all my born days.”
With a grimace of distaste Jolynn lifted the discarded shirt off her bed, gingerly pinching the neck band between thumb and forefinger, and dropped it to the floor.
“I guess now I know how the Panhandle Rodeo Queen must have felt that time I caught her in bed with Bobby Lee and I took after him with the pellet gun we used to shoot rats with.” Elizabeth shivered, recalling again the wild look on Helen Jarvis’s face as she’d launched that plate. “Shook me something terrible.”
She went to her friend’s closet and stood there in her jeans and bra, eyes scanning the array of blouses for something suitable for a news conference. The closet wasn’t offering much. That Jolynn’s wardrobe had suffered in the years since her divorce was readily apparent. There wasn’t a suit or linen blouse to be had. Jo was partial to men’s flannel shirts for winter and men’s work shirts for summer. Uncomplicated, unflattering, the costumes seemed to suit Jolynn’s general air of being downtrodden. Elizabeth made a mental note to drag her off on a shopping trip as soon as things settled down and they were making a little money. She dug to the back of the closet and plucked out an oversize imitation gold lamé blouse. It was a bit much for day wear, but it was better than a castoff from the friendly staff at Harley’s Texaco.
“This’ll do.”
Jolynn frowned. “Hey, that’s my good Christmas blouse!”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Burn a hole in it and we won’t have to wait for lung cancer to do you in—I’ll kill you myself.”
“If we can sell enough newspapers between now and Christmas, I’ll buy you two of the real thing as a bonus,” Elizabeth said, slipping the blouse on and starting on the fake rhinestone buttons. “Provided some crazed woman doesn’t do me in first,” she added, shuddering again. Her fingers stilled on the third button, and she looked up at Jolynn, eyes full of confusion and traces of hurt. “I can’t figure it, Jo. I only found the body, I didn’t kill him. What’d I ever do to Helen Jarvis to make her throw a Jell-O fish at me?”
Jolynn sat down on the bed and busied herself tracing a pattern in the dust on the nightstand. She’d known Elizabeth since their college days in El Paso when she had been an army brat off her father’s short leash for the first time in her life and Elizabeth had been a struggling young single mother taking classes and working two jobs. They had forged a bond then that had lasted through good times and bad, through changes in fortune and changes in marital status. She figured she knew Elizabeth better than anyone, and she knew how what she had to say was going to sting. For all her don’t-give-a-damn attitude, Elizabeth had a heart more tender than most and an ego that had been sorely abused of late.
“It’s not what you did to Helen,” she said hesitantly. “It’s what Helen thinks you did with Jarrold.” Elizabeth blinked at her in confusion and Jo pressed on, her mouth twisting a little on the taste of the words. “The rumor going around this morning is that you and Jarrold had been meeting out at Still Waters to do the horizontal hokey-pokey.”
Elizabeth’s jaw dropped. “I hardly knew the man!” she protested, jerking back a step as if Jolynn had lashed out at her physically. “And what I did know I loathed and despised!”
Jolynn drew a sad face in the table dust. “Yeah, well . . . so the story goes. I don’t doubt but that Helen is more upset about the rumors than she is about Jarrold lying cold on a slab down at Davidson’s. You’re upstaging her grieving-widow act.”
“Eeewwl” Elizabeth shook herself, the very thought of having sex with Jarrold Jarvis making her skin crawl. “Where’d you hear all this?”
“At the Coffee Cup. I stopped in, hoping to catch that BCA guy having breakfast.”
“And did you?”
“No, but Phyllis filled me in on this latest tidbit. Everybody knows you found the body.”
“And everybody knows I’ll just drop my panties for anything with testosterone,” Elizabeth said bitterly. She shook her head and blew out a breath. “Doesn’t matter what he looks like, acts like, smells like. If he’s got a third leg and walks upright, I’ll be there with bells on.”
A storm cloud and jagged line of lightning joined the sad face on the nightstand. Jo’s heart squeezed a little. “Phyllis set a few people straight.” Not that they had listened or cared. In Jolynn’s experience, people were much more eager to believe the worst than the truth. In a town the size of Still Creek, gossip was served up and devoured as an essential part of the daily diet.
“Well, God bless Phyllis anyway.” Elizabeth slumped down on the bed beside her friend and stared across the room at her reflection in the dresser mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she could have benefited greatly from a generous application of her Elizabeth Arden concealer. With the gold blouse and twinkling buttons, she looked like a pathetic refugee from a bad New Year’s party. A sense of despair ballooned inside her, hollow and aching. She raked a hand back through her hair and heaved another sigh.
“I really wanted things to be different here,” she said quietly, letting a little of that despair trickle out in hope of relieving the pressure. “I wanted this place to be like some kind of magic kingdom where nobody ever heard of Brock Stuart and people didn’t snap up ugly like dogs after meat scraps.” She managed a little laugh. “Instead of Oz, I fell down the rabbit hole. Dead bodies, women throwing food at me, the lord high sheriff dragging me around like a captured fugitive. Lord love a duck, I should have moved to Outer goddamn Mongolia.”
Jolynn gave her an affectionate bump with her shoulder. “You wouldn’t like it. You can’t get good candy bars there. They make everything out of rancid yak milk.”
A weak smile tugged at Elizabeth’s lips and she chuckled. She had one friend. That counted for something. “Is that a fact?”
“You bet.” Jo pulled open the drawer on the nightstand and rummaged through her stash. “Snickers or Baby Ruth?”
“Snickers.”
She pulled out a candy bar for Elizabeth and one for herself. They sat in companionable silence for a moment, consoling themselves with chocolate.
“How’d it go at the scene?” Elizabeth asked.
Jo peeled back a little more of the candy wrapper and cleared her throat. “It was kind of like being at a party, only more macabre. There was this weird sort of festival atmosphere, reporters swarming all around, chatting, drinking coffee. The crime lab guys were a hoot.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“Aside from a couple of truly tasteless jokes about severed heads? Not much.” She took another bite of Baby Ruth and talked around it. “I thought this was interesting—he wasn’t killed in the car. All the blood was spilled on a spot to the south and west of the building site.”
Elizabeth worked a peanut between her molars as her brain chewed on the information. “So why put him back in the car? Jantzen says they thi
nk some drifter killed him for his pocket money. Why would the guy take the time to put the body back in the car—especially if he was going to steal the Lincoln too?”
“Maybe he wanted company on the trip to Des Moines.”
“Jolynn!”
“No, really,” she insisted, shifting on the bed like a kid settling in for a good ghost story. Her small hazel eyes were bright as glass marbles with enthusiasm for the topic. “Why not take the body? Take old Jarrold and the car and boot it into another jurisdiction. Ditch the corpse in one spot, the car in another, the murder weapon someplace else. That kind of stuff screws the cops up royally. It’s what all the great serial killers do.”
Elizabeth gave her a look. “You been reading up on it, have you?”
Jolynn shrugged without remorse and took another bite of her candy bar. “It’s a fascinating subject, if you’ve got the stomach for it.”