Attempted Matrimony

by Joanna Wayne

“It did appear you were having an intriguing dream.”

  “Not intriguing, but disturbing. I’m glad you woke me.”

  “You were calling for your cop friend. It must have been quite a meeting the two of you had this afternoon to arouse such subconscious energy.”

  “We had coffee and talked about the phone calls from Karen Tucker. I already told you all of that.”

  “Just coffee and talk.” His tone was accusing. “But still the man haunts your dreams.”

  Damn him. She was the one who had the right to be angry, and not over some inscrutable dream. “I’m not going to justify my nightmares to you, Malcomb. I’m certain it was the stress of the day, the talk of murder that got to me.”

  “Then you must stop talking of murder.”

  “I hope to. But I’m not the one with ties to Karen Tucker.”

  “Talk like that is why I don’t want you to see the detective again. He does nothing but fill your head with doubts and meaningless suspicions. And now he fills your nights with frightening dreams. If he has questions about Karen Tucker, he can come to me. You are not to see him again unless I’m present.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hands in his. “Is that clear, Nicole?”

  “Are you threatening me, Malcomb?”

  “Of course not, darling. I’m protecting you.”

  “The way you were protecting me when you lied about knowing Karen Tucker?”

  “Exactly. Karen is not a part of our life, Nicole.”

  “She isn’t a part of anyone’s life anymore.”

  “Then I see no reason for us to waste time talking about her.”

  His tone was cool, detached. He let go of her hand and stood. “It’s been a long day. If you’re okay now, I’m going downstairs to make myself a sandwich. Then I’m coming to bed, hopefully to get a full night’s rest. I don’t want to hear any more talk of Karen Tucker or Dallas Mitchell.”

  “Fine. I’m tired of talking about Karen myself.” But whether he liked it or not, they would have to talk about their foundering marriage soon, see if there was enough left to salvage.

  She wasn’t sure there was anymore. Lies, deceptions, locked doors… And now the casual way Malcomb talked of Karen’s murder, as if it were of no consequence to him even though he’d spent hours on the phone counseling her… It was as if Nicole were trapped in a dark cave, with every turn taking her deeper into the blackness and away from the chance of escape.

  She raised herself on one elbow to turn out the light, and felt an unfamiliar ache in her arm. She ran her fingers along the muscle and noticed blotchy red marks that hadn’t been there earlier, in the same spot where she’d dreamed someone was clutching her arm. But dreams didn’t leave physical evidence. She must have slammed it into the headboard while she was thrashing in her sleep. Unless…

  No, Malcomb wouldn’t have clutched her that hard, not even if he were shaking her awake. He had his faults, but he would never physically hurt her or anyone else. He was a doctor, spent his days healing and saving lives.

  Still, when she flicked off the lamp and closed her eyes, she prayed she’d be asleep when he came to bed. She didn’t want to see him, didn’t want his touch or to have him pull her into the circle of his arms.

  Most of all she didn’t want him to make love with her. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again.

  MORNING BROUGHT SUNSHINE and brisk fall weather that invigorated Nicole’s spirit, made her feel confident and bold. Even Malcomb had been pleasant this morning, waking early and surprising her with breakfast in bed. Marvelous waffles topped with raspberries, blueberries and sweet cream, served with strong black coffee and fresh squeezed orange juice.

  But one morning did not a marriage make.

  She turned her car into the parking lot of the group home, determined to stuff her marital conflicts into a holding chamber. The rest of the morning belonged to Ronnie. She couldn’t take him home for the weekend, so she’d brought a sampling of home to him.

  His ball and glove for a game of catch, his worn denim jacket with invincible stains on the front and a rip in the sleeve—the one he liked to wear when he helped rake the yard. And the King Arthur chess set their father had brought him from England years ago. Ronnie had played the game for hours when it was new, even moving the pawns around the board on his own when no one had time to play with him.

  His skill at chess amazed everybody, even the doctors who had said all along that standardized tests were ineffective at measuring the level of intelligence locked inside the mystery of autism. He couldn’t carry on a simple conversation with strangers, but he could analyze the most complex chess moves.

  Grabbing the tote of goodies, she shoved the car door shut with her hip and practically ran up the walk, realizing that she needed the interaction with Ronnie as much as he needed her. The old saying about blood being thicker than water must be truer than she’d thought, or perhaps it was just knowing that there were no hidden agendas with Ronnie.

  Ronnie came bounding around the corner of the house before she made it to the door. And right behind him was Dallas Mitchell. She stopped in her tracks, troubled by a surge of something that felt way too much like attraction.

  “Hi, Nicole. You know me, Dallas?”

  As usual, Ronnie’s words were tangled, but his joy was obvious. She wasn’t surprised. Making people feel special had always been part of Dallas’s magic. It had worked on her once.

  “I know Dallas,” she said.

  “You said it was all right if I came out for a visit,” Dallas said, reaching to take the bag of equipment from her hand.

  “I just didn’t expect you to be here this morning.”

  “I can leave and come back later.”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  His lips parted in a grin that opened a cache of heated memories. “Yes…and no.”

  The intelligent response would be to ask him to leave. “Then stay,” she said, through a mouth suddenly as dry as burned toast. One more sign that she was not nearly as smart as she liked to think she was.

  NICOLE SAT ON THE EDGE of the concrete picnic table, her legs dangling over the side, while she watched Dallas and Ronnie toss the softball back and forth in the monotonous rhythm that Ronnie loved. Not too hard. Not too soft. Nothing he’d have to reach for, just the steady motion of throw and catch, the ball plopping into the web of the leather glove like the beat of a familiar song.

  Driving to Ford Park had been Dallas’s idea. They’d come in his car, had even stopped at Popeye’s for a basket of chicken and a container of baked beans—Ronnie’s favorite—then visited a convenience store for added picnic supplies. They’d spent the first hour after their arrival following Ronnie along the edge of Cross Lake as he explored beneath every rock and tossed pebbles into the still water to watch the ever widening ripples until they disappeared.

  “I say we stop and eat,” Dallas said, holding the ball instead of tossing it back. “What do you say, Ronnie?”

  “Stop and eat. Stop and eat. Yes. Yes. Stop and eat chicken.”

  “Race you to the table,” Dallas called.

  Ronnie took off running, in the opposite direction, laughing and kicking through the pine straw. Dallas chased behind him for a few minutes, then quit to retrieve the food from the car. He plopped it down on the table beside Nicole. Ronnie followed him, like a puppy trotting after a beloved master, until a butterfly captured his attention and he went chasing after that.

  “Stay where we can see you, Ronnie,” Dallas called.

  “Stay where you can see me.”

  “Right.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m amazed that he remembers you,” Nicole said, ripping open a bag of potato chips. “I don’t recall his ever having done that with anyone before, not after a nine year absence.”

  Dallas pulled three cans of soda from the ice. “What makes you think it’s been nine years since I’ve seen Ronnie?”

  “Because that’s when…” When he’d jum
ped her bones and then dumped her. And why hadn’t she just said it? It certainly wasn’t as if it had been a secret. She turned away, busied herself forking up pieces of chicken and plopping them onto paper plates. “Didn’t you stop seeing Ronnie when you stopped working for my father’s campaign?”

  “I didn’t see any reason to. Ronnie and I had become friends, and the senator said it was okay if I visited him occasionally.”

  “You came to our house?”

  “Not often, but sometimes. And not when you were there. You went from Tulane to Washington, remember? You weren’t in Shreveport very often. Once he moved to the group home, I came by every month or so until a few months ago.”

  “Why did you stop then?”

  Dallas eyed her suspiciously. “I would have thought you knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “Dr. Lancaster ran into me at the home one Friday afternoon when he’d come to pick up Ronnie, and told me to stay away.”

  “Malcomb never mentioned that to me.”

  “Maybe it slipped his mind.”

  Yeah, like so many other things had. “When was that?”

  “Last December. The day before Ronnie’s birthday. I’d come by to take him for ice cream to celebrate.”

  Ronnie’s birthday. A week before the wedding. Even then Malcomb had had his secrets, played his games of manipulation. The truth slammed into her, made her nauseous and shaky. “Did he say why?”

  “Only that Ronnie had been upset lately and that the two of you had decided to limit his time with people who weren’t members of the family.”

  They had never had any such conversation. She’d been a dolt, buying Malcomb’s whole seduction package, waltzing down the aisle in her gown of white. She’d believed that what they had was special, not the kind of crazed passion she’d shared with Dallas, but something real and lasting. Now she had to wonder if Malcomb hadn’t had some ulterior motive behind every moment they’d shared—including the marriage. Only she couldn’t imagine what that could be.

  “Are you all right, Nicole?”

  “No. I’m not all right, Dallas, but I will be.” He started to say something else, but she put up a hand to stop him. “Let’s just leave it at that. If you’ll get Ronnie, I think we should eat and get him back to the home before he gets overly tired.”

  He shrugged. “If that’s what you want.”

  “It’s what I want.”

  By the time Ronnie made it to the table, she was tugging her sweater off. Either the temperature had climbed or the frustration and fury that were churning inside her were generating their own heat.

  Dallas and Ronnie were laughing. Nice that they could. She reached across the table and handed Ronnie a filled plate.

  Dallas caught her hand as she put it down, his gaze glued to the five small bruises on her arm that were turning a ghastly shade of purple. “How did that happen?”

  “Who knows? I bruise easily.”

  “Sit under the tree,” Ronnie said, picking up his plate.

  “You can sit under the tree,” Nicole said. “It’s nice and shady there. I’ll come and sit beside you.”

  Before she could make a move to follow Ronnie, Dallas grabbed her around the waist. He fitted his hand around her arm, placing the tips of his fingers over the bruises. “Those were made by someone’s fingers. Did Malcomb do it?” His voice was too low for Ronnie to hear, but loud enough that she didn’t miss the anger in his tone.

  “I told you I don’t know how I got them, but I’m certain they’re not from someone’s fingers. I would have remembered that.” She pulled away from him and joined Ronnie on a carpet of pine straw. She could tell Dallas didn’t believe her. She wasn’t certain herself, but she couldn’t let him become involved in her personal life. She had far too many problems to deal with already.

  Dallas sat next to her, their knees occasionally touching, the air around them so rife with awareness that she could barely swallow the food. When her cellular phone rang, she answered, breathing a sigh of relief at the welcome distraction.

  It was Matilda. Nicole knew something was seriously the matter by the time they got through the hellos.

  “My sister-in-law, Penny Washington, just called,” Matilda explained. “I know you’ve never met her, but she’s a nurse at Mercy General Hospital and she needs to talk to you.”

  “Talk to me about what?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. All she’d say is that it has something to do with your husband and a friend of hers who was murdered.”

  “Was her friend Karen Tucker?”

  “Yes.”

  Dallas had perked up the second she mentioned the victim’s name. Nicole stood and walked away from him and Ronnie, but he followed, glaring at her as she talked. “Do you have Penny’s phone number?” she asked.

  “Yes, but she doesn’t want to talk to you over the phone. She says she needs to see you in person.”

  “Does this have something to do with the murder?”

  “I would guess that, but I don’t know for sure. I tried to get more out of her, but she was so upset over her friend’s death that I hated to keep pressing her for information.”

  “Then give me her address. I’m at the park with Ronnie now, but I’ll go by there as soon as I drop him back at the group home.” She copied down the street number, her hand shaking so badly her handwriting was barely legible.

  “Who was that?” Dallas asked the instant she broke the connection.

  She explained and watched his expression grow grim.

  “Call her back. I want to talk to her.”

  “She’s not going to tell you anything more than she told me.”

  “She might. Call her back—please.”

  Nicole sighed in frustration and punched in Matilda’s number, handing him the phone when it started to ring. She watched with fascination as he fell back into his detective role. All business, so absorbed in the conversation he never looked up from the path he paced. He’d matured since their days working for her father’s campaign, though he still had that swaggering manner that challenged anyone to mess with him.

  Everyone except her. He’d all but dared her to let him give her a ride home on his motorcycle that last night before she’d left Shreveport to go back to New Orleans and Tulane University. She’d accepted in a heartbeat, had already fallen for him so hard by then that she’d have gone skinny-dipping in ice water if he’d asked.

  They’d gotten caught in a summer thunderstorm, had been dripping wet by the time they’d run into the game room over the garage. He’d started stripping out of his clothes before they were even in the door, and then he’d started on hers.

  The memories hit with a vengeance, so hot and alive that she could feel his hands slipping under her skirt and inside her panties. Could taste his kiss, all wet and salty and brutally possessive. Could hear the jagged puffs of his breath when he’d climaxed a second after she’d discovered the thrill of pure passionate delirium.

  She collapsed against a tree, her heart racing as if she’d just jogged out here from town. She shouldn’t be having these thoughts. All their relationship had amounted to was a one-night stand nine years ago. She was over him. It was just the problems she was facing now that made the memories so potent.

  “Eat your chicken, Nicole. Eat your chicken.” Ronnie pointed to her untouched plate of food. “Eat your dinner.”

  “You’re right. I should eat.” Only her stomach was turning somersaults and would surely rebel at the appearance of food. She pretended to nibble on a chicken leg to appease Ronnie while she waited for Dallas to rejoin them. He was frowning when he did.

  “Did Matilda tell you anything?” she asked.

  “Nothing that made a lot of sense.”

  “Hopefully I’ll find out more when I see her sister-in-law.”

  “There’s no reason for you to see Penny Washington. I told Matilda that. I’m not dragging you into this investigation.”

  “That’s not the way you felt y
esterday.”

  “Yesterday I had no choice. Today I do.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Dallas. Her sister-in-law wants to see me, and I’m going.”

  “Ridiculous. Ridiculous. Ridiculous.”

  The word apparently intrigued Ronnie. He repeated it while he stirred his fork round and round in his plate, pushing drippy clumps of beans over the side and onto the ground.

  Dallas took her hand and tugged her away from Ronnie. “This is a homicide investigation, Nicole. Which means we’re dealing with a dangerous killer. It’s not a game of Clue.”

  “Good, because if it’s a game, I’m not having any fun. What Penny Washington has to tell me concerns my husband, and I will go and find out what she has to say.”

  “They put people in jail for interfering with a criminal investigation.”

  Nicole put out her hands, palms up, her wrists touching. “Do you have your handcuffs with you?”

  He shook his head and stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. Maybe she had, but right now she just didn’t care. Her name and phone number had been in the murdered woman’s pocket. Her husband had spent his evenings for the past three weeks on the phone with the victim. No matter what Malcomb or Dallas said, she was very definitely involved.

  “Why are you doing this, Nicole?”

  “Because I’m sick and tired of being the only one who doesn’t know what’s going on with my husband. Now if you want to come with me, Dallas, you’re welcome. But I am going.”

  She was no longer interested in eating. Dallas was. He ate the rest of the chicken and most of the beans before he was ready to pack up, take Ronnie back to the home and pay a visit to Penny Washington to delve into the next episode in the continuing soap opera of the secret lives of Malcomb Lancaster.

  Malcomb might even win an Emmy for best performance by a liar and a cheat. And Nicole knew just what she’d like him to do with it.

  PENNY WASHINGTON LIVED in a small house in an older neighborhood just off Youree Drive. The lawn was manicured, the flower beds filled with blooming chrysanthemums, an eclectic mix of purple, gold and white. A small bike rested at a strange angle at the side of the driveway, as if its rider had just jumped off and let it fall. And the smell of charcoal and grilled beef drifted over from a neighbor’s backyard.