Night Whispers

by Judith McNaught

  “Miss McMullin was right. Sloan is a real-life, honest-to-goodness hero,” Emma declared.

  “She’s really, truly brave,” Kenny announced.

  Butch Ingersoll felt compelled to qualify and limit the compliment. “She’s brave for a girl,” he declared dismissively, reminding an amused Sloan even more forcibly of Chief Ingersoll.

  Oddly, it was shy little Emma who sensed the insult. “Girls are just as brave as boys.”

  “They are not! She shouldn’t even be a policeman. That’s a man’s job. That’s why they call it policeman.”

  Emma took fierce umbrage at this final insult to her heroine. “My mommy,” she announced shrilly, “says Sloan Reynolds should be chief of police!”

  “Oh, yeah?” countered Butch Ingersoll. “Well, my grandpa is chief of police, and he says she’s a pain in the ass! My grandpa says she should get married and make babies. That’s what girls are for!”

  Emma opened her mouth to protest but couldn’t think how. “I hate you, Butch Ingersoll,” she cried instead, and raced off, clutching her doll—a fledgling feminist with tears in her eyes.

  “You shouldn’t have said that,” Kenny warned. “You made her cry.”

  “Who cares?” Butch said—a fledgling bigot with an attitude, like his grandfather.

  “If you’re real nice to her tomorrow, she’ll prob’ly forget what you said,” Kenny decided—a fledgling politician, like his father.

  2

  When the children were out of hearing, Sloan turned to Sara with a wry smile. “Until just now, I’ve never been able to decide whether I want to have a little girl or a little boy. Now I’m certain. I definitely want a little girl.”

  “As if you’ll have a choice,” Sara joked, familiar with this topic of conversation, which had become increasingly frequent. “And while you’re trying to decide the sex of your as-yet-unconceived infant, may I suggest you spend a little more time finding a prospective father and husband?”

  Sara dated constantly, and whenever she went out with a new man—which was regularly—she systematically looked over his friends with the specific intention of finding someone suitable for Sloan. As soon as she selected a likely prospect, she began a campaign to introduce him to Sloan. And no matter how many times her matchmaking efforts failed, she never stopped trying because she simply could not understand how Sloan could prefer an evening alone at home to the company of some reasonably attractive man, no matter how little they might have in common.

  “Who do you have in mind this time?” Sloan said warily as they started across the park toward the tents and booths set up by local businesses.

  “There’s a new face, right there,” Sara said, nodding toward a tall male in tan slacks and a pale yellow jacket who was leaning against a tree, watching the children gathered around Clarence the Clown, who was swiftly turning two red balloons into a red moose with antlers. The man’s shadowed face was in profile and he was drinking from a large paper cup. Sloan had noticed him a little earlier, watching her when she was talking to the children after the kite rescue, and since he was now watching the same group of children, she assumed he was a father who’d been assigned to keep his eye on his offspring. “He’s already someone’s father,” she said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because he’s been watching that same group of children for the last half hour.”

  Sara wasn’t willing to give up. “Just because he’s watching the children doesn’t mean one of them belongs to him.”

  “Then why do you suppose he’s watching them?”

  “Well, he could be—”

  “A child molester?” Sloan suggested dryly.

  As if he sensed he was being discussed, the man tossed his paper cup into the trash container beneath the tree and strolled off in the direction of the fire department’s newest fire engine, which had been drawing a sizable crowd.

  Sara glanced at her watch. “You’re in luck. I don’t have time for matchmaking today anyway. I’m on duty in our tent for three more hours.” Sara was staffing her interior design firm’s booth, where brochures were being dispensed along with free advice. “Not one reasonably attractive, eligible male has stopped to pick up a brochure or ask a question all day.”

  “Bummer,” Sloan teased.

  “You’re right,” Sara solemnly agreed as they strolled along the sidewalk. “Anyway, I decided to close the tent down for twenty minutes in case you wanted to get some lunch.”

  Sloan glanced at her watch. “In five minutes, I’m scheduled to take over our tent for another hour. I’ll have to wait until I’m off duty to get something to eat.”

  “Okay, but stay away from the chili, no matter what! Last night, there was some sort of contest to see who could make the hottest chili and Pete Salinas won the contest. There are signs all over his chili stand stating that it’s the hottest chili in Florida, but grown men are standing around trying to eat the stuff, even though it’s half jalapeño peppers and half beans. It’s a guy thing,” Sara explained with the breezy confidence of a woman who has thoroughly and enjoyably researched her subject, and therefore qualifies as an expert on men. “Proving they can eat hot chili is definitely a guy thing.”

  Despite Sara’s qualifications, Sloan was dubious about the conclusion she’d drawn. “The chili probably isn’t nearly as hot as you think it is.”

  “Oh, yes, it is. In fact, it’s not just hot, it’s lethal. Shirley Morrison is staffing the first aid station and she told me that victims of Pete’s chili have been coming to her for the last hour, complaining of everything from bellyaches to cramps and diarrhea.”

  • • •

  The police department’s tent was set up on the north side of the park, right next to the parking lot, while Sara’s tent was also on the north side, about thirty yards away. Sloan was about to comment on their proximity when Captain Ingersoll’s squad car came to a quick stop up ahead, beside the tent. While she watched, he heaved his heavy bulk from the front seat and slammed the door, then strolled over to their tent, carried on a brief conversation with Lieutenant Caruso, and began looking around the area with a dark frown. “If I’m any judge of facial expressions, I’d say he’s looking for me,” she said with a sigh.

  “You said you still have five more minutes before you’re supposed to take over.”

  “I do, but that won’t matter to—” She broke off suddenly, grabbing Sara’s wrist in her excitement. “Sara, look who’s waiting over there by your tent! It’s Mrs. Peale with a cat in each arm.” Mrs. Clifford Harrison Peale III was the widow of one of Bell Harbor’s founding citizens, and one of its richest. “There’s a fantastic potential client, just waiting for your excellent advice. She’s cranky, though. And very demanding.”

  “Fortunately, I am very patient and very flexible,” Sara said, and Sloan smothered a laugh as Sara broke into a run, angling to the left toward her tent. Sloan smoothed her hair into its ponytail, checked to make certain her white knit shirt was tucked neatly into the waistband of her khaki shorts, and angled to the right, toward the police department’s tent.

  3

  Captain Roy Ingersoll was standing at the table outside their tent, talking to Matt Caruso and Jess Jessup, whom she was due to relieve for lunch. Jess grinned when he saw her, Ingersoll glared at her, and Caruso, who was a spineless phony, automatically mimicked Jess’s smile, then checked to see Ingersoll’s expression and quickly switched to a glare.

  Normally, Sloan found something to like in nearly everyone, but she had a difficult time doing that with Caruso, who was not only a phony but Ingersoll’s full-time snitch. At thirty-three, Caruso was already sixty pounds overweight, with a round, pasty face, thinning hair, and a tendency to sweat profusely if Ingersoll so much as frowned at him.

  Ingersoll launched into a diatribe as soon as she reached him. “I realize that doing your job here isn’t as important to you as performing heroic feats in front of an adoring crowd,” he sneered, “but Lieutenant Caruso an
d I have been waiting to go to lunch. Do you think you could sit here for half an hour so we could eat?”

  Sometimes, his barbs really wounded, frequently they stung, but his latest criticism was so silly and unjust that he seemed more like a cranky child with gray hair and a beer belly than the heartless tyrant he frequently was. “Take your time,” Sloan said magnanimously. “I’m on duty for the next hour.”

  Having failed to evoke a response from her, he spun on his heel, but as he stepped away, he fired one more insulting remark over his shoulder. “Try not to mess up anything while we’re gone, Reynolds.”

  This time, his taunt embarrassed and irritated her because several people who were walking by heard what he said and because Caruso smirked at her. She waited until they were a few paces away; then she called out cheerfully, “Try the chili! Everyone says it’s great.” She remembered what Sara had said about the challenge of hot chili to men, and although Sara’s notion had seemed completely inane at the time, Sara was an unquestioned authority on men and male behavior. “You’d better stay away from it if you can’t handle jalapeño peppers, though!” she added, raising her voice a little to reach them.

  The two men turned long enough to give her identical smirks of confident male superiority; then they headed directly for Pete Salinas’s chili stand.

  Sloan bent her head to hide her smile and began straightening up the stacks of brochures on neighborhood-watch groups, civil service employment opportunities, and on the new self-defense classes for women being taught at city hall.

  Beside her, Jess Jessup watched Ingersoll and Caruso until they vanished into the crowd. “What a perfect pair. Ingersoll’s an egotist and Caruso is a sycophant.”

  Privately Sloan agreed with him, but she automatically chose to soothe a difficult situation rather than make it more inflammatory. “Ingersoll’s a good cop, though. You have to give him credit for that.”

  “You’re a damned good cop and he doesn’t give you any credit,” Jess countered.

  “He doesn’t give anyone any credit,” Sloan pointed out, refusing to let the discussion threaten the relaxed mood of the balmy afternoon.

  “Unless he happens to like them,” Jess argued irritably.

  Sloan shot him an irrepressible grin. “Who does he like?”

  Jess thought for a moment; then he chuckled. “No one,” he admitted. “He doesn’t like anyone.”

  They lapsed into comfortable silence, watching the crowd, returning friendly nods and smiles from people they knew or who knew them or who simply walked by. It began to amuse Sloan that several women had walked by more than once and that their smiles were becoming increasingly blatant and aimed directly at Jess.

  It amused her, but it didn’t surprise her. Jess Jessup had that effect on women no matter what he was wearing, but when he was in uniform, he looked as if he belonged in a Hollywood film, playing the part of the handsome, tough, charismatic cop. He had curly black hair, a flashing smile, a scar above his eyebrow that gave him a dangerous, rakish look, and a thoroughly incongruous dimple in one cheek that could soften his features to boyishness.

  He’d come to Bell Harbor a year ago, after spending seven years in Miami with the Dade County Police Department. Fed up with big city crime and big city traffic, he’d tossed a sleeping bag and change of clothes into his Jeep one weekend and driven north from Miami. With no particular destination in mind except a pretty stretch of beach, he found himself in Bell Harbor. After two days, he’d decided the little city was truly “home.”

  He applied for a position on Bell Harbor’s police force and unhesitatingly left Miami behind, along with the seniority and pension he’d earned while he was there. Competent, witty, and energetic, he was nearly as popular with his colleagues on Bell Harbor’s police force as he was with the city’s female population.

  Everyone at the department teased him about the increased number of emergency calls from “damsels in distress” that inevitably came in from his particular patrol area. The duty roster changed every three months, and wherever Jess’s new assignment placed him, it was inevitable that the calls from ladies would begin to increase.

  Everyone, from the secretaries to the desk sergeants, teased him about his attractiveness to women, and to his credit, he showed neither annoyance nor vanity. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the women Jess dated were all tall, willowy, and beautiful, Sloan would have believed he was oblivious to looks, his own or anyone else’s.

  At the moment, a redhead and two of her friends had concluded a brief huddle and were now heading straight toward their table. Sloan saw them and so did Jess. “Your fan club approaches,” she joked. “They’ve worked out a plan.”

  To her amusement, Jess actually tried to deter them by turning his head away from them and toward Sara’s tent. “It looks like Sara has a customer,” he said with unnecessary intensity, peering at that tent. “Isn’t that Mrs. Peale with her? I should probably go over there and say hello.”

  “Nice try,” Sloan teased. “But if you stand up and leave, they’ll either follow you or wait for you. They have that glazed, determined look that women get when you’re around.”

  “You don’t,” he said irritably, startling Sloan and then making her laugh.

  All three women were in their late twenties, attractive, with sleek, tanned bodies that were so perfect and voluptuous that Sloan was struck with admiration. The redhead was the spokesperson for the group, and her first words made it obvious they already knew Jess. “Hi, Jess. We decided you looked lonely over here.”

  “Really?” he said with a noncommittal smile.

  At closer range, it was apparent that they were all wearing a lot of makeup, and Sloan mentally adjusted their ages to early thirties.

  “Really,” the redhead said brightly, giving him a long, intense look that would have made Sloan blush if she’d tried it. When he didn’t seem to react to the invitation in her gaze, she tried a more practical tack. “It’s such a relief to know you’re the one on patrol in our neighborhood now.”

  “Why is that?” he asked with a smiling perversity that Sloan had seen him use to discourage women before.

  All three women looked startled but undiscouraged. “There’s a crazy man on the loose,” one of them reminded him unnecessarily, referring to the wave of burglaries that had left several elderly women savagely beaten and near death in their homes.

  “Women in this town are terrified, particularly single women!” the redhead put in. “And especially at night,” she added, increasing the wattage of her gaze.

  Jess smiled suddenly, acknowledging the message she was sending. “I can solve that for you,” he said, his tone heavy with promise.

  “You can?”

  “I can.” He turned abruptly to Sloan, forcing her from her comfortable position of amused observer to unwilling participant. “Would you hand me that clipboard and three of those brochures?” he said. Sloan did as he asked, and he gave a brochure to each of the three women; then he handed the redhead the clipboard. “Just put your names on that list.”

  They were all so willing to do anything he asked that they wrote their names and phone numbers on the list without question.

  “What did I sign up for?” the redhead asked, handing the clipboard back to him.

  “Self-defense classes,” he said with a wicked grin. “We’re giving four of them at city hall, and the first one is tomorrow afternoon,” he added, carefully omitting the information that Sloan was teaching most of the class, and that he would only be present to help her demonstrate some physical moves women could use to fend off an attacker.

  “We’ll be there,” the brunette promised, breaking her silence.

  “Don’t let me down,” he said warmly.

  “We won’t,” they promised before they walked away.

  They looked like Las Vegas chorus girls, Sloan decided, noting the choreographed movements of tight derrieres, long legs, and high-heeled sandals. A slight smile hovered at the corner of her mouth
as she tried to imagine herself in the role of uninhibited femme fatale. “Let’s hear it,” Jess said wryly.

  “Hear what?” she said, startled to discover that instead of watching the three women, he’d turned in his chair and was staring intently at her.

  “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking they looked like Las Vegas chorus girls,” Sloan said, bewildered and uneasy beneath his unwavering stare. Several times in the past, she’d caught him looking at her in that piercing, thoughtful way, and for some inexplicable reason, she had never wanted to ask for an explanation. At the department, Jess was renowned for his ability to extract confessions from suspects, simply by asking a question, then sitting across from them and staring at them until they began to answer. This gaze was less intimidating than that, but it was disconcerting nonetheless. “Honestly, that’s what I was thinking,” she insisted a little desperately.

  “That’s not all of it,” he persisted smoothly. “Not with that smile . . .”

  “Oh, the smile—” Sloan said, inexplicably relieved. “I was also trying to imagine myself in those heels and tight, skimpy shorts, strolling around in the park.”

  “I’d like to see you do that,” he said, and before Sloan could even form a reaction to that remark, he stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets, and said something that left her gaping at him. “While you’re at it, could you also slap on a half inch of makeup to hide that glowing skin. Dump some dye on that honey-blond hair, too, and get rid of those sun streaks.”

  “What?” she said on a choked laugh.

  He gazed down at her, his expression bemused. “Just do something so you stop reminding me of ice cream cones and strawberry shortcake.”

  Her laughter bubbled to the surface, dancing in her eyes and trembling in her voice. “Food? I remind you of food?”

  “You remind me of the way I felt when I was thirteen.”

  “What were you like at thirteen?” she asked, swallowing back a laugh.

  “I was an altar boy.”