Night Whispers

by Judith McNaught

  “You weren’t!”

  “Yes, I was. However, during mass, my attention constantly wandered to a girl I liked who always sat in the third pew at ten o’clock mass. It made me feel like a letch.”

  “How did you handle that?”

  “First, I tried to impress her by genuflecting deeper and appearing more skillful and adept than any of the other servers.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Not the way I wanted it to work. I was so good I had to serve two masses instead of one all that year, but Mary Sue Bonner continued to ignore me.”

  “It’s hard to imagine a girl ignoring you, even then.”

  “I found it a little unsettling, myself.”

  “Oh, well, win some, lose some, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know. All I knew was that I wanted Mary Sue Bonner.”

  He almost never talked about his past, and Sloan was intrigued by this unprecedented glimpse of him as an uncertain adolescent.

  He lifted his brows. “Since piety and religious fervor didn’t impress her, I caught up with her after ten o’clock mass and persuaded her to go to Sander’s ice cream shop with me. She had a chocolate ice cream cone. I had strawberry shortcake . . .”

  He was waiting for her to ask what happened after that, and Sloan was helpless to resist the temptation to hazard a guess. “And then I suppose you had Mary Sue?”

  “No, actually, I didn’t. I tried for the next two years, but she was immune to me. Just like you.”

  He was so damned handsome and so uncharacteristically disgruntled that Sloan felt a little flattered without knowing why.

  “Speaking of you,” he said abruptly, “I don’t suppose you’d consider going to Pete’s party with me tomorrow night?”

  “I’m on duty, but I plan to go there later.”

  “And if you weren’t on duty, would you go with me?”

  “No,” said Sloan with a jaunty smile to take the sting out of her answer, though she doubted he was stung at all. “In the first place, as I already explained, we work together.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t you watch television? Cops are supposed to become romantically involved.”

  “In the second place,” she finished lightly, ignoring that, “as I also told you before, I have a rule that I do not go out with any man who is a hundred times more attractive than I am. It’s just too hard on my fragile ego.” He accepted her refusal with the same unaffected good humor he had before, thus proving he didn’t really care one way or the other.

  “In that case,” he said, “I might as well go and have lunch.”

  “This time, don’t let the girls fight over who gets to buy it for you,” Sloan teased as she began tidying up the table. “It’s a terrible thing to watch.”

  “Speaking of admirers,” he said, “Sara has evidently acquired a new one. He was hanging around, talking to her earlier; then she brought him by here and introduced him to me. His name’s Jonathan. Poor bastard,” Jess added. “If he doesn’t have a few million dollars in the bank, he’s wasting his time. Sara’s a flirt.” He stepped over the ropes that secured the tent to the stakes in the ground. “I think I’ll give some of that chili you recommended a try.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Sloan warned, breaking into a mischievous grin.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I heard that it’s so bad that the first aid trailer is dispensing prescriptions for a number of unpleasant stomach ailments.”

  “Are you serious?”

  She slowly nodded, her smile widening. “Completely serious.”

  Jess gave a shout of laughter and headed off across the grass in the opposite direction from the chili stand, toward the booths where pizza and hot dogs were available. He paused to say hello to Sara, who was still engrossed in conversation with Mrs. Peale and was holding one of Mrs. Peale’s cats while they chatted.

  Afterward, he stopped to talk to a group of children. He crouched down so that he’d be closer to their height, and whatever he said to them made them laugh. Sloan watched him, wishing a little wistfully that she could simply go out with him and not worry about the outcome.

  In view of Jess’s preference for tall, gorgeous women, Sloan had been stunned when he asked her out to dinner a few weeks ago and even more shocked when he asked her out again. It was so tempting to say yes. She liked him immensely, and he possessed nearly all the qualities that she wanted in a man, but Jess Jessup was simply too good-looking for comfort. Unlike Sara, who wanted glamour and excitement in her marriage and who was determined to find a man who had it all—looks, charm, and money— Sloan wanted almost the opposite. She wanted “Normal.”

  She wanted a man who was kind, affectionate, intelligent, and dependable. In short, she wanted a life that was different from the one she’d known and yet similar enough to be comfortable—a simple life in Bell Harbor like the one she’d had, but with children and a husband who would be a loving, faithful, and reliable father. She wanted her children to be able to depend on their father’s love and support. She wanted to be able to depend on that herself—for a lifetime.

  Jess Jessup would have been perfect in so many ways, except that he attracted women like a human magnet, and in Sloan’s opinion, that did not make him a good lifetime marriage prospect. The fact that he possessed all her other criteria in abundance made him too tempting and too risky, so she regretfully decided to avoid any sort of personal relationship with him, and that included dinner dates.

  Besides, any sort of serious relationship with Jess or another police officer would surely become a distraction at work, and Sloan didn’t want anything to compromise her performance. She loved her job and she liked working with the ninety law enforcement officers who made up Bell Harbor’s police force. Like Jess, they were friendly and supportive, and she knew they genuinely liked her.

  • • •

  By four in the afternoon, Sloan was more than ready to go home. Caruso and Ingersoll had both gone home shortly after lunch, complaining of intestinal “flu,” which meant Jess and Sloan were stuck there until dispatch could send over replacements.

  She’d been on duty since eight o’clock that morning, and she was looking forward to a leisurely bath, a light dinner, and then finishing the book she was reading in bed. Sara had left an hour ago, after stopping by to tell Sloan that Mrs. Peale had invited her over Tuesday night to see her house and talk about redecorating the first floor. For some reason, the elderly woman wanted Sloan to be there, too, and after securing Sloan’s agreement, Sara had dashed off to get ready for a date with the promising lawyer she’d recently met, whose name, she said, was Jonathan.

  The approach of the dinner hour had temporarily emptied out most of the park, and Sloan was sitting beside Jess, her elbows propped on the table, her face cupped in her palms.

  “You look like a forlorn little girl,” Jess chided, leaning back in his metal chair and watching the people moving slowly toward the parking lot. “Are you tired or just bored?”

  “I’m feeling guilty about Ingersoll and Caruso,” she admitted.

  “I’m not,” Jess said, and chuckled to prove it. “You’ll be a heroine again when the guys find out.”

  “Do not say anything,” Sloan warned. “There are no secrets in Bell Harbor, not in our department.”

  “Relax, Detective Reynolds. I was only joking.” His voice took on a warm, somber tone Sloan had never heard him use before. “For your information, I would probably go to amazing lengths to protect you from harm; I would not purposely cause you any.”

  Sloan’s hands fell away, and she turned to him, her eyes searching his handsome, smiling face, her expression one of comic disbelief. “Jess, are you flirting with me?”

  He looked past her. “Here come our replacements.” He stood up and looked around for anything he might be leaving behind. “What are your plans for tonight?” he asked conversationally as Reagan and Burnby strolled toward them.

  “I’m going to bed with a good book. What abo
ut you?”

  “I have a hot date,” he stated, banishing Sloan’s impression that he was flirting with her and making her laugh.

  “Jerk,” she called him affectionately; then she ducked into the tent to retrieve her purse. Officers Reagan and Burnby were standing at the table, ready to take over, when she emerged. They were both in their early forties, reliable and personable Bell Harbor cops who remembered when traffic violations and domestic disputes were about all they had to deal with, family men with wives who went to PTA and children in Little League. “Anything happening?” Ted Burnby asked her.

  Sloan slipped the shoulder strap of her brown leather handbag over her shoulder and stepped over the tent ropes. “No.”

  “Yes,” Jess contradicted. “Sloan just called me a jerk.”

  “Sounds like you’re making progress,” Burnby joked, with a wink at Sloan. “Sloan’s right,” Reagan contributed, grinning. “You are a jerk.”

  “Try the chili when you get a chance,” Jess countered slyly, stepping over the tent ropes right behind Sloan.

  She swung around so suddenly that she bumped into Jess, who had to grab the rope for balance. “Don’t go near that chili,” Sloan warned, looking around him at the others. “It made Ingersoll and Caruso sick.”

  “Killjoy,” Jess complained, turning her around and giving her a light shove in the general direction of the parking lot. “Spoilsport.”

  Sloan’s shoulders shook with laughter. “Idiot,” she retorted.

  “Hey, Sloan,” Burnby called after her. “You’re in the news again. That domestic call you were on last night made the news on Channel Six. You did good, kiddo.”

  Sloan nodded, but she was far from thrilled. She’d seen the newsclip on the six A.M. news and forgotten about it, but it certainly explained why Captain Ingersoll was in a particularly surly mood today.

  As she walked away with Jess Jessup, Burnby and Reagan studied them with fascinated interest. “What do you think?” Reagan asked, referring to the betting pool at the office. “Is Jess going to get her into bed, or not? I’ve bet five bucks that Sloan won’t go for it.”

  “I’ve got ten bucks on Jess.”

  Burnby squinted into the sunlight, still studying the pair, who’d stopped to talk to some people near the edge of the park. “If Sloan finds out about the pool, all hell will break loose.”

  “I got news for you,” Reagan said, his belly shaking with laughter. “I think Sloan already knows about it, and so there’s no way she’s going to let him win. I think she knows about the pool, only she’s too smart and too classy to let on.”

  Sloan’s vehicle, an unmarked white Chevrolet provided by the city of Bell Harbor, was parked next to Jess’s. After waving good-bye to him, she paused with the car door open and her right foot on the floorboard. Partly from habit and partly from a vague sense of uneasiness, she looked around at the scene to assure herself that everything looked peaceful and normal.

  Bell Harbor was growing so dramatically that dozens of unfamiliar faces were appearing every day. She didn’t recognize the heavyset teenage girl who had a toddler by the hand, or the grandmother with twins chasing each other around her, or the bearded man reading the newspaper beneath a tree. The dramatic influx of new residents had brought prosperity and tax benefits to the city; it had also brought a dramatic increase in crime as Bell Harbor went from a sleepy seaside community to a thriving little metropolis.

  No more than one hundred fifty people were enjoying the park. Clarence the Clown was taking an hour off for dinner, and so were the jugglers. Most of the booths and tents were deserted, save for the people who were manning them. The park bench near Sara’s tent was empty, and there was no sign of a clean-cut stranger wearing a yellow cotton jacket that seemed out of place on such a balmy, sunny day.

  Satisfied, Sloan got into her car, started the engine, and glanced in the rearview mirror. No one was behind her, and she slipped the gearshift into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot, driving slowly down the winding gaslit street that bisected the park.

  Earlier, when Burnby had congratulated her, he’d been referring to the night before, when she had gently coaxed an enraged, drunken ex-husband, bent on killing his ex-wife’s boyfriend, into putting down his gun. When he balked at going to prison for an “unfinished” crime, Sloan had persuaded him to look at his impending prison time as an “opportunity” to “relax” and to think about finding a more-deserving woman who would appreciate his “true qualities.” No one would have known about that if the defendant hadn’t granted an interview to the local television station and told the reporter what Sloan had said to persuade him to put down his weapon. Although the defendant hadn’t seen the grim humor in Sloan’s advice to him, the media caught on at once, and as of this morning, Sloan was once again an unwilling local heroine, only this time praised for her wit, not her courage, in adverse circumstances.

  Last night, Captain Ingersoll had given her grudging praise for the way she’d handled the situation, but this morning’s. media coverage had obviously ticked him off again. To a certain extent, she could understand his attitude. She did get more attention because she was a female.

  As she drove past the main intersection at the entrance to the park, Sloan deliberately switched her thoughts to something more pleasant, like the leisurely bubble bath she planned to take in a few minutes. She turned left onto Blythe Lane, a wide cobblestone street lined with fashionable boutiques and upscale specialty shops, each with a chic curved green canopy marking the entrance and a huge potted palm at the curb.

  She rarely drove through the business district without being struck by the transformation it had undergone in the last few years. Although the population boom had originally evoked a bitter outcry, the complaints from longtime residents diminished abruptly as property values soared and struggling locally owned businesses became thriving enterprises, almost overnight.

  Eager to continue attracting prosperous new taxpayers, the city council took advantage of the town’s charitable mood by pushing through a series of mammoth bond issues designed to modernize and beautify the community. At the urging of Mayor Blumenthal’s ambitious, influential wife, a team of Palm Beach architects was hired and the transformation began.

  By the time it was complete, the widespread effect was one of carefully planned, prosperous charm that made Bell Harbor resemble Palm Beach—which was precisely what Mrs. Blumenthal had wanted. Using her influence and the taxpayers’ money, she turned her attention from commercial buildings to the public buildings, beginning with city hall.

  Holiday traffic was heavy, and it was nearly fifteen minutes before Sloan turned onto her street and pulled into the driveway of the gray-and-white stucco cottage on the corner that she loved. The beach was across the street, and she could hear the surf and the laughter of children and calls from parents.

  A half block away, a dark blue sedan pulled into a parking space behind a minivan, but there was nothing unusual about that. It seemed like any other holiday weekend.

  Sloan put the key in the front-door lock, already dreaming of soaking in a hot bath and spending the rest of her evening with the mystery novel she’d been reading in bed. Sara couldn’t comprehend why Sloan would prefer to spend Saturday night with a good book rather than on a date, but Sara hated to be alone. For Sloan the choice between a date with someone she knew she could never be interested in and time spent alone reading a book was an easy one to make. She vastly preferred the book.

  She smiled as she remembered that she didn’t have to go on duty until tomorrow afternoon, when she taught her self-defense class.

  4

  The police department was located in the new city hall building, an attractive three-story white stucco building with a red tile roof and a wide, gracefully arched loggia that wrapped around it. Surrounded by a lush green lawn dotted with palm trees and antique gas lamps, Bell Harbor’s city hall was not only inviting, it was functional.

  Oak-paneled courtrooms and an audi
torium that was used mostly for town meetings occupied the third floor; the mayor’s office, the clerks offices, and the records department occupied the second; while most of the first floor was designated for the police department.

  Sara’s firm had been hired to plan the interior, and her flair was apparent in the mayor’s lavishly appointed office and in the courtrooms, where the chairs were upholstered in an attractive dark blue and beige fabric that complemented the carpeting.

  When it came to the area designated for the police department, Sara and her partners had been given a comparatively small budget and strict requirements that didn’t allow them much room for flexibility or creativity.

  The center of that vast area was taken up with thirty desks arranged in three rows, each desk with its own computer terminal, two-drawer file cabinet, swivel chair, and side chair. Glass-fronted offices designated for ranking police officers were at the front of the vast room, and conference rooms lined the left and right sides. At the rear of the area, concealed from view by a heavy door that was always kept closed, was a long, narrow lockup used for temporarily detaining offenders who were being charged and booked.

  In a valiant effort to diminish the harsh institutional effect of a sea of beige linoleum, beige metal desks, and beige computer monitors, Sara’s firm had had the center area covered with a dark blue and beige commercial carpet and ordered matching draperies hung at the windows. Unfortunately, the carpet was continually soiled by food, drinks, and dirt tracked in by the ninety police officers who used the room in three shifts, around the clock.

  Sloan was one of the few officers who appreciated Sara’s efforts, or even noticed them, but on that day, she was as oblivious to her surroundings as everyone else. Holidays were always a busy time for the police, but this one seemed even noisier and more hectic than usual. Telephones rang incessantly, and loud voices, punctuated with bursts of nervous laughter, echoed down the hallway from an anteroom where forty women were gathering for Sloan’s first self-defense class. The conference rooms were all being used by officers interviewing witnesses and talking to suspects involved in a robbery by a group of teenagers that had ended up in a high-speed chase and then a huge pileup on the interstate. Parents of the teenagers and lawyers representing the families tied up the telephones and paced in the hall.