Turn Me Loose (Paradise, Idaho)

by Rosalind James

  “Really?” she asked innocently. “And I’m not even wearing my bikini anymore.”

  “Noticed that, too. And that was a lot of logic you had going on back there, by the way. About the lentils.”

  Oh. So this wasn’t going to be just flirting. Which was good, of course. Even though she wanted to flirt. She yawned, covering her mouth with her hand. “You surprised?”

  “Nope.” He took a sharp curve at just enough speed, not trying to show off for her. “I hope they find out who did it. It’s more than dying that way. That’s an . . . an indignity, to be dumped like that, left in a ditch for the animals. That’s an insult.”

  “Yeah.” She was all the way awake now, and all the way sobered, too. “Maybe that was part of it. It’s probably the husband, or the boyfriend. Or the ex, more likely. That’s who kills women. That doesn’t take much logic at all. They’ll be looking for somebody whose wife left him recently, a guy who’s telling people she left town, ran off with somebody else. And I’ll bet that’s who it’ll be. That’d be why he’d want her to be . . . insulted, too. To sort of suffer, even after she died, even though I know that makes no sense. Because he was mad. You’re right, it was an angry thing to do. Like murder ever isn’t angry, but still. It’s what bad guys do. They think they own you. They think that if you leave them, they have a . . . a right.”

  He glanced at her again. “You scared of your own ex?”

  “No,” she said, then had to stop and think a minute. “I never was,” she said slowly. “I’m pretty tough.”

  “Another thing I’ve noticed.”

  “But a man can change when you leave him. You never know until you break up how he’s going to take it. And, yeah, he’s changed. I talked to him a while back, because my sister . . . well. Anyway. I thought Stacy might have been hanging out over there, and I was upset about it. And he was . . . pretty ugly. It wasn’t good.”

  A few beats went by, as if he were trying to decide which topic to pursue. “Has she always lived with you?” he finally asked. “Stacy?”

  “No. It’s only been two weeks. Because she’d gotten off track.”

  “And you’re the one to get her back on.”

  “I’m living in town, and she’s a junior at the university. And I’m the oldest. Of six. Fair warning. Probably why I’m not that easily intimidated.”

  He smiled again, just a movement at the corner of his mouth. “I’ve got two younger sisters myself.”

  “Hopeless,” she said, and he laughed, then sobered.

  “I was thinking about something else, too,” he said. “Cal seemed to think that girl was young. Maybe too young to have an ex-husband. I wonder what made him think that, if she’d been there a while.”

  She considered for a minute. “That’d be an impression, wouldn’t you say? Something about her build, probably. Her clothes. The long hair. Something you’d notice in an instant, without even knowing you’d noticed it.”

  “Bet you’re right. That’s logical, too.”

  “Well, I’m a logical girl.”

  “Yep. You’re all kinds of things.”

  “This isn’t the sexiest conversation we’ve ever had,” she said. “Talking about murder. Dealing with murder. What a day.”

  “Like I said. You’re all kinds of things.”

  That was good. The murder . . . it was bad. But what he’d said was good. She leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and let herself drift with the music, with the moment, as Travis steered around the curves of the quiet two-lane back toward Paradise.

  She opened her eyes again when the tires were scrunching over the gravel of her street. He pulled the truck to a stop at the curb and kept the motor running.

  “I’ll just say again,” he said, “it turned out to be a pretty good day despite everything. Thanks for going with me.”

  “Mm.” She unfastened her seat belt, but didn’t rush to hop out. “It was good. Because you talked to me, and you took me seriously, and you didn’t grab me.”

  He smiled, slow and sure, and her heart skipped a beat. “Going to grab you now all the same.”

  He leaned over and . . . didn’t grab her. Instead, his hand cradled her head, just as it had that first night. He tunneled his fingers through her still-damp hair, stroked his thumb softly over her cheek, then looked into her eyes, and she felt something pass between them, as real and strong as if he’d spoken it aloud. Her lips parted in response, and only then did he touch his mouth to hers. A soft thing. An invitation, his lips brushing lightly over hers, waking her body up, bringing her to life as surely as a prince in a fairy tale.

  She had a hand behind his own head now, and at last, she was feeling his thick hair beneath her fingers again. Testing the texture and length of it, seeing whether she could hold him like that. And finding out that she could.

  The kiss got hotter, then, his mouth not quite as gentle, and her lips parted more under his. Somehow, her own mouth seemed to be connected to . . . everywhere, and the flames were licking. Growing. He took the invitation, deepened the kiss, and got his other hand on her waist to pull her closer. She was falling into him, tasting the heat and the desire in him, her hand still wrapped in his hair, her body pressed back against the door. He was on her like a man ought to be, and she was making some sounds into his mouth that she couldn’t help one bit. And he was taking them in and asking for more.

  Until, that is, a movement in her peripheral vision had her stiffening. Dell, walking Charlie on his red leash, heading across the street in front of the truck toward home. The old lady smiled and gave the two of them a cheerful wave as she passed, and that broke the moment right up.

  Travis must have seen her, too, because he took his mouth away, which made her moan in protest. Then he sat up.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s still right there between us, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t . . .” She had to clear her throat. “In front of my house. During the day.”

  His hand came out to trace over her cheek again and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m happy to kiss you anywhere, but you’re right. I’m thinking we might need some privacy pretty soon here.”

  “You’re still leaving in December.”

  “Well, there’s that,” he agreed, his face serious.

  “If only kissing you didn’t feel so good,” she sighed, turning her face into his palm.

  “Damn, girl. You’re just put on this earth to test me, aren’t you?”

  “Self-control is a virtue, they say.” She was getting some back herself. Except that right after that, she pressed a kiss into his palm. And then she might have bitten the meaty part a little. Just a little. Just a nip, because she needed to.

  He didn’t say anything. He just reached for her and, this time, pulled her over to his side and took her mouth hard, making her gasp. And then he pulled back and gave her a slap on the hip that made her jump.

  “Then stop tempting me,” he said.

  “You always spank girls?” She did her best to scowl at him.

  That killer half smile. “Only if I really like them. And this would be where I shift gears like I’m being spontaneous and issue a suave dinner invitation to keep the day going.”

  “I can’t do tonight.” Actually, she could have, but it was better to make sure he cared enough to come back. Even though it was tough. She didn’t have that much self-control herself, it seemed. She wanted to taste him. She wanted to feel him. Every bit of him.

  He frowned, and she thought, You can’t even wait one day? and tried not to be unreasonably disappointed. She had nothing at stake here. Nothing at all.

  “I’m leaving for San Francisco tomorrow,” he said. “Won’t be back until Tuesday.”

  “Oh. You’ve got a class, though.”

  “I’ll be back for my class, boss. Flying out of Union City. I’ve got a meeting Monday.”

  “Oh,” she said again. “Flying from Union City’s expensive.” Everyone she knew spent the extra ninety minut
es and made the drive to Spokane.

  “Luckily, I’m rich.”

  “Right.” She was flustered, completely off balance. She’d managed to forget that part. “I thought you said you were done down there.”

  “It’s a meeting about a new venture.” He shot another look across at her. “Something I came up with this summer and have been messing around with some.”

  “Oh.” She should say something besides that. “But you’ve got the classes this semester.”

  “Yep. It wouldn’t be now. It’s in the talking stage, that’s all. What do you think about next week? Dinner? Swim? You name it.”

  “We’ll see.” December really was it, then. Any delusional hope she might have cherished of his sticking around was just that. Of course it was. She reached down and grabbed her bag, then hopped down from the truck, and he was already around with a hand under her elbow, helping her down.

  “I’ve been climbing out of pickups since I was four,” she told him.

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s my excuse to touch you, and I’m taking it.”

  “Seems to me you already did that,” she said as he gave the truck door a slam and walked up the sidewalk beside her. “And you don’t have to walk me to my door.”

  “Well, I do if I want to kiss you good-bye.”

  Which he did. Broad daylight and all, and he took his time, too. When he was done, she stayed inside his arms a moment despite all her doubts, rested her cheek against his chest, and said, “Maybe next week. Maybe.”

  “Phone number,” he said. “So I can get that in writing.”

  She pulled back and smiled up at him. “Think you can manage to hang on to it this time?”

  “Oh,” he said, “I think so.”

  She could have gone straight into the house. She could have. Instead, she leaned against the door and watched Travis walk down the sidewalk with his loose-limbed stride, just because she liked looking at him. He was all long legs and coordinated movement. He walked like he swam. Like he danced. Like he made love. Like he knew exactly what he was doing.

  “Oh, yeah, honey,” she heard from a few yards away. “That’s some man.”

  Travis was in the truck, now, lifting a hand in farewell and heading out. Rochelle sighed and turned to Dell, who had her flowered garden gloves on and was deadheading roses. Right where the action was, as usual.

  “Yeah,” Rochelle said. “Probably shouldn’t have let him make out with me right here, huh?”

  Dell gave her deep, rich chuckle. “You just try to stop him. Of course he’s going to kiss you in front of your house. That’s a man thing. Letting anyone who might be sniffing around know you’re taken.”

  “I am not taken.”

  “No?” Dell was in a pink flowered blouse and white capri pants today. And matching earrings, naturally. “Well, you will be pretty soon, I’ll bet. What he was packing in those jeans wasn’t because he was happy to see me.”

  “You are a wicked old lady,” Rochelle said, trying without success not to laugh.

  “I might be old, but my eyes still work fine.” Dell wielded her trimmers with gusto. “I’d have been grabbing that one with both hands. Looked to me like it would take both hands.”

  “That is disgusting. And you would not have. You were happily married when you were my age.”

  “Like Randy always said,” Dell shot back without missing a beat. “Once you’ve got the best, don’t need the rest. But I haven’t seen you getting the best. Not until now.”

  DEDUCTIONS

  Jim Lawson sat with three other deputies and Tony DeMarco, the department’s shiny-new big-city detective, in the sheriff’s department’s bare conference room. Monday afternoon, the temperature in the room ice cold, the AC turned too low, as usual, against the heat outside.

  “No word yet on who she is,” DeMarco started off. “Still waiting on the DNA, and no missing persons yet that match, not anywhere even reasonably close by. But I got the preliminary report from the pathologist this morning. He’s saying she’s late teens, and he’s calling it manual strangulation, and two and a half weeks ago.”

  Jim’s head came up fast at that, but all he said was, “Huh.”

  It wasn’t what any of them had been expecting to hear. Especially if nobody had come forward to report a missing woman. A missing girl. No friends, no family? Her body had probably been brought to the spot from outside the area, then, but that didn’t fit, either. Up a farm road, in a ditch? That sounded like somebody local.

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said. “Her hyoid bone wasn’t broken, but that’s probably because she was young, and the doc says they’re less likely to break with a victim under thirty. But it was damaged, and he thinks that’s enough.”

  Jim had been a deputy for six years now. As far as looking at dead people went, the job beat being an Army Ranger all to hell. But he’d still seen his share, and not always on the highways. He had a little girl of his own, though, and women and children—that got him every time, no matter how hard he worked to hide it.

  “Domestic, then, probably,” he said. “Strangulation’s up close and personal.” And one of the most common kinds of battery men inflicted on women. Domestic abuse was about power and control, and there was nothing more controlling than cutting off a woman’s air. “But a guy doesn’t usually murder his ex, or his girlfriend, up a farm road out in the fields. He does it at home and takes her out there to dump her body. But she doesn’t seem to be local, so . . .”

  DeMarco looked miffed that he wasn’t the one offering the psychological insight, and Jim sighed inside. That was the problem with having a Chicago cop as your detective. He tended to think you were all a bunch of hicks who couldn’t detect a gas station robbery.

  “Right,” DeMarco said. “It could be a serial killer, of course. Or just rough sex that went bad. She could’ve been a hitchhiker, something like that. Doc can’t tell by the exam if she was raped, which would be useful information. She probably wasn’t, though, not with her jeans fastened. We’ll have to wait and hope on the DNA for that, too, and under her fingernails, in case she clawed at him. Can’t tell much at all from the exam, not weeks later. Too damn many animals.”

  Mark Lawrence, a young deputy working his first homicide, made a faint noise in the back of his throat. He’d puked at the scene. But then, so had Jim’s cousin Cal, when he’d discovered the body. Some things were never going to be easy to see.

  “One other thing that makes it more likely to be domestic,” DeMarco said. “Blood test says she was pregnant. Get a DNA test on that, and we’ll really have something.”

  The room went quiet for a second. A man who’d kill a pregnant woman—that was one Jim could never wrap his mind around. Not just your partner, but your baby? If anything was lower than that, he didn’t know what it would be. He looked around the table, and he could tell he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Most of these guys had kids.

  Something else was hanging around at the edges of his mind. He searched for it, but he couldn’t quite find it.

  “Any significance in the exact location, do you think?” DeMarco asked. At least he was willing to ask. “That it was on Jackson’s land? Anybody with a grudge against him that you know of? Although obviously, the mutt was trying to hide her. He didn’t mean the body to be discovered at all. But that if it had been discovered, it would point to Jackson?”

  Jim’s broad hand came down so hard on the table that the coffee in his Styrofoam cup jumped, scattering a few drops. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s what I was missing. Lentils.”

  LOOKING AT YOU

  Three fifteen on Tuesday afternoon, and Rochelle wasn’t disappointed that Travis hadn’t been by to see her. Hardly at all. His class had been over for more than half an hour. She wasn’t proud that she’d looked it up to make sure.

  He’s busy, she told herself.

  Or he doesn’t think there’s any rush, the other half of her, the voice of experience, put in. He’s sure you’ll be here waiting.
Not like she could go anywhere.

  But he’d texted her while he’d been gone. He’d thought it was important then. Starting right away, on Sunday.

  San Francisco’s 56 degrees. Be careful what you wish for.

  She’d answered him, Talking about the weather?

  And had gotten back, Not anymore. And forget what I said about being careful. Go ahead and wish. I know I am.

  Thought you weren’t a good talker, she’d typed.

  I’m working on it, he’d replied. How’m I doing?

  She’d heard from him again on Monday morning. Before his meeting, presumably. So she’d still been on his mind, which was good to know, wasn’t it?

  Forgot to say. Don’t go kissing anybody else while I’m gone.

  And she’d texted back, after an appropriate interval, Think you get to tell me that?

  No interval at all, then.

  Oh, yeah. I think so.

  Which could have had her crossing her legs under her desk.

  She might have dressed with some extra . . . care today too. A pretty, slim midnight-blue skirt in soft-as-butter Tencel, with a wrap-twist waist that gave her hourglass figure some extra emphasis. And a pale-blue top over a lace-trimmed white camisole that dipped just a bit in the center in a very nice V. It didn’t show anything, but it might make a man’s eye travel, if he were so inclined. Women weren’t the only ones who liked to follow arrows. And if she were wearing a higher-heeled sandal than normal? If she felt like putting some extra sway in her step, that was her business.

  Except that he wasn’t going to see it. Not if he didn’t come by.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said aloud. “What are you, fourteen?”

  “Sorry?” Dr. Olsen said, and she jumped. She hadn’t even seen him coming out of his office. He dumped some memos into her in-box and looked at her inquiringly.

  “Nothing,” she said, determined not to blush. She reached into her bottom drawer and pulled out her purse and her “Back in 15 Minutes” desk sign. “I’m going on break. Back soon.”