I remembered the sound of Jake’s moan, loud in my ear, and the feel of my nipples hardening in anticipation. I felt my dream blending with reality, felt myself coming up from the depths of unconsciousness into the cool night air of our bedroom and realized he had removed my fingers with a tortured groan.
I heard myself moan, “No,” as he pulled me back down onto his chest.
“Go back to sleep, baby. We must’ve forgotten the rules while we were sleeping.”
“But I was so close.”
“You were?” A brief silence, then, “Close your eyes, baby. Keep on dreaming.”
I felt his fingers touch my skin again, sliding deep inside me, moving slowly, rhythmically building my body’s response. I couldn’t stop. I knew I should, but I couldn’t.
His voice, hushed in my ear, whispered, “Let it go, Stella. Come to me.”
His fingers were everywhere, sliding slick against each sensitive nerve ending, teasing, promising, but never hurrying. I felt myself hesitate, reluctant to let go, poised on the edge of explosion and release, but unable to give myself over to the ecstasy.
He read me. He read my body and ran his tongue the length of my torso. I forgot to breathe. He bypassed his fingers, nipped gently at the tender skin of my inner thighs and began teasing me. His tongue moved closer and closer. The anticipation built.
“Please, Jake!” I cried finally. “Please.”
Again the whisper. “Tell me what you want. Say the words.”
“Oh, Jake.”
“Say it, Stella. I can’t until you do.”
“Taste me, Jake. Please.”
His tongue moved the few remaining inches and I lost track of anything other than the blinding need I had for his touch. He gripped my hips with his hands and pulled me to him. I moaned as I came with an urgency that drove all conscious thought from my head.
The memory made me sit up, wide-eyed, and look around the sunny room. Had I been dreaming? Had I reached for him in the night? Had he taken me beyond any prior point of comparison and then, what, gone to sleep? Had we made love or had it been all about me, with no fulfillment for him? Surely I would’ve remembered making love with Jake?
The door creaked open and he walked in, two coffee mugs in his hand.
“You’re up. Good. I brought you some coffee.”
He walked around the bed, set the mugs down on the nightstand and bent to kiss me gently on the lips.
“How’d you sleep?”
I stared up at him. He was dressed, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and seemed not to notice that I was naked. It was almost as if nothing had ever happened, which plagued me, because now I wasn’t sure. What exactly had gone on?
“You all right?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
“Good. We’ve got a lot to get to today. See you downstairs.”
He turned and was almost out of the room before I found my voice.
“Jake?”
He looked back at me. “Yes?”
“About last night…”
He walked back to the bed, rounding to my side and sat down on the edge.
“Did we…” My voice trailed off because I wasn’t sure exactly how to phrase the question.
“Baby, last night was wonderful. I loved holding you.” He leaned over and patted my hip. “Now, let’s get a move on, all right?”
“Wait. I mean, did we?”
Jake frowned. “Did we what? I told you four glasses of Chianti was too much.”
“Not that. I mean… I know we didn’t do that! I mean, did you…did we… Or, did we?”
He looked puzzled. “Stella, honey, drink the coffee. I had no idea you were such an airhead in the morning.”
“Never mind. I’ll see you downstairs.”
He smiled, but I thought I saw something else in his eyes, a glint of pleasure at my confusion perhaps?
“See you downstairs,” he said, and was gone.
By the time I’d showered, dressed and finished my coffee, I’d managed to convince myself that I’d been dreaming. I’d taken my desires and fulfilled them with a dream, pure and simple. It was the only way I could work with Jake and still function.
I walked downstairs and found the others eating breakfast. Lloyd sat at his customary place at the head of the table but Fang was nowhere in sight.
“Oatmeal?” Aunt Lucy asked. “I got brown sugar and raisins, too.”
I nodded, noticing Lloyd was eating eggs and bacon.
“Fake eggs,” Nina said, shaking her head. “I don’t know how he eats them.”
I looked around the room. “Where’s Fang?”
“You didn’t hear her last night?” Jake asked. The twinkle was definitely there in his eyes.
“No. I didn’t hear a thing.”
Jake nodded. “Well, she was down here scratching at the door and moaning. Must’ve been around four. I came down and let her out. I hate to see something trapped when it needs to be released.”
Definite twinkle. I felt my cheeks begin to burn.
“Fang’s claustrophobic?” Nina asked.
“Nah, she probably wanted to go sleep where she’s most comfortable. Once she got to feeling better I’m sure she was ready for a good night’s sleep.”
His eyes met mine and I choked on my coffee. The doorbell rang and Jake became all business, reaching for his Sig-Sauer as he walked to the door and cautiously opened it.
“Express mail,” a female voice said.
There was a brief exchange and then Jake walked back to the kitchen, a large cardboard envelope in hand.
“The picture,” I said. “Great. Open it.”
Jake took out his knife and slowly slit the top of the envelope and reached inside to pull out a small photograph, its edges curled with age. He stood, examining the picture for a long moment before handing it over to me.
“Well, this shouldn’t take too long,” he said. “We can track these people through the real-estate records.”
I took the picture from him and stared down at the family standing in front of their beach house. Two young boys, one tow-headed, the other dark, stood in front of a man and woman. They stood smiling out at the camera, their Victorian beach cottage in much better repair than it had been last night when we’d recovered Lloyd.
“I don’t believe it,” I said, passing the photo along to Nina. “Look at those two little boys. That’s Fred May and Doug Hirshfield, isn’t it?”
Nina squinted, frowned and studied the photograph intently. Spike leaned over and looked, too. Nina nodded.
“That’s them, all right,” she said. “I’d know that face anywhere, at any age.”
“Even better,” Jake murmured. “Now all we do is find Fred May’s long-lost brother. Piece of cake.”
Spike frowned. “Stella, didn’t you say that Mrs. May said Doug is dead?”
Nina answered for me. “She gets a little confused, I think. Fred’s the one who died, but I think she doesn’t want to accept that, so she says Doug is dead and Fred is missing.”
Made sense to me. Now all we had to do was find Doug Hirshfield, and that was standard P.I. routine work. If the man had a driver’s license or a social security number, we’d have his location by the afternoon.
I looked at Jake. “So do we go back to Glenn Ford and run a computer search or do you call one of your buddies?”
Jake’s Delta Force background and CIA contacts made getting need-to-know-only information a whole lot easier to obtain. It was another good reason for having Jake as a business partner and not using him for more personal pursuits and needs.
A detailed vision from my late-night dream popped, unwanted, into my head and I was momentarily breathless. It had to have been a dream; no human male could ever please a woman so completely. I’d probably heard Fang scratching and moaning, incorporated the sounds into my own wet dream and that was that. Right?
“Ready to go?”
Jake’s voice startled me. I looked up to see him standing in the entrance to t
he kitchen with his jacket on and my coat in his hand.
“Go?” I echoed stupidly.
“Don’t you think we ought to check in with Tom and let him know about last night?”
“Why would we—”
Jake interrupted before I could make a total fool of myself.
“We should tell him about Joey Smack’s men taking Lloyd and how we broke into that house to find him. Someone’s liable to report a break-in, you know. I wouldn’t want him going through all the trouble to find burglars or vandals when it was just us.”
I exhaled slowly and nodded. What was wrong with my brain this morning? Of course we needed to talk to Tom. He might even be able to help us locate Doug Hirshfield.
“Coming,” I said, and blushed all over again.
Spike got up with me and said, “I’ll lock the door behind you. Don’t worry, we’ve got this end of things covered.”
She nodded slightly in Aunt Lucy’s direction as I met her gaze.
“Thanks, Spike. Call us if you need us.”
I followed Jake out into the frigid January morning, blinking at the brilliant sunlight as I watched him simultaneously unlock the truck, climb up into the cab and dial a number on his cell phone.
He cranked the engine and pulled out into the street.
“Hey, baby,” he said. “Call me.” He clicked the phone shut and turned on the radio.
“Checking in with your harem?” I asked.
Jake’s eyebrows rose and his mouth twitched with a suppressed smile.
“Jealous?”
I felt heat flooding into my face and gave myself a huge mental bitch slap. What possessed me to say that?
“Nope, not at all. Just making conversation.”
Jake’s mouth twitched again as he slowed the truck down in front of Marti’s Café.
“Well, lucky for you Tom’s at the diner and you won’t be needing those witty conversational skills after all.”
He pulled into a parking space in front of the tiny restaurant and cut the engine. Tom’s unmarked police car sat two car lengths behind us. Inside, Tom sat at the counter in his usual place, his head bent in deep conversation with Marti and a uniformed officer.
All three of them looked up when we walked in, and while Tom and Marti smiled a greeting, not one of them looked at all happy. The young uniform slid off his stool, said his goodbyes and walked past us, nodding to Jake as he passed. Tom called after him.
“Make sure you lock that up in the safe, Cal, okay?”
“Gotcha, Detective.”
Tom patted the stool beside him, smiled up at us and said, “Have a seat.”
I took the stool next to Tom and smiled when Marti arrived with two fresh cups of coffee.
“Anything new with your homicide?” Jake asked.
The smile vanished from Tom’s face and his eyes darkened. “Yeah. Son of a bitch. Turns out she was pregnant, about twelve weeks along.”
“Poor thing,” I murmured. “Guess Nina was wrong about her.”
Marti heard me, but the other two were talking about the forensic details.
“How was your cousin wrong?” she asked. “I didn’t think that girl was ever wrong about anything.”
I smiled at her. “Well, she may act like a dingbat, but Nina certainly seems to have a gift for uncovering the truth. I hate having to tell her she was wrong about Rebecca DeWitt.”
Marti was distracted for a moment by a customer who stuck out his mug for a refill. When she returned, I continued.
“Nina had it all figured that because Rebecca was her beloved Fred May’s literary agent, she committed suicide on the second anniversary of his death. Her being pregnant negates that theory in my opinion. It proves she was in love with someone else and wouldn’t have killed herself over Fred, especially if she was carrying another man’s child. She had too much to live for.”
Marti shook her head. “Who’d have figured you for a romantic?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if she slipped up, got pregnant in a drunken stupor to a one-night stand, and killed herself because she realized she’d ruined her life and all was lost? Now, do you want the daily special or something from the menu?”
I stared at her, slack-jawed.
“It’s French toast today,” she added.
“Marti, her hands were duct-taped behind her. How do you commit suicide with your hands tied?”
“First things first,” she said. “French toast or something else?”
“French toast.”
Marti nodded. “Good choice.”
She scribbled on her order pad, slipped the paper onto the counter of the pass-through window behind her, and turned back around to find all three of us watching her.
“She didn’t kill herself, honey,” Tom said.
Marti raised an eyebrow. “See? That’s a man for you. Come in on the last half of something and think you got the big picture. I never said Rebecca DeWitt killed herself. I was merely offering Stella here, an alternative.”
She looked at me. “Becca DeWitt was Fred’s literary agent, not his girlfriend. Besides, she was dating some other guy. That’s why she was down here so often, even with Fred May dead. She’d come to see this other fella.”
“Who?” I asked.
Marti shrugged. “I don’t know. What do I look like, People magazine? I just know people saw her around every now and then. ’Course, everyone knew her on account of Fred. I heard she was seeing some guy.”
Tom leaned forward a little, turned so we could hear him without any of Marti’s other patrons overhearing.
“I tried to follow up on that. A few people remember seeing her with a man, but I get twelve different descriptions and not one name. I don’t know if this mystery guy has anything to do with her death or not. We think she may have been the victim of a robbery. We found her car yesterday. It was abandoned off I–95. Rebecca’s wallet was missing.”
“They killed her and dumped her body in the ocean?” I asked, incredulous. “I didn’t think car thieves went to all that trouble.”
Tom shrugged. “They don’t usually, but it could’ve been the easiest way to get rid of her. If she died here, then they could’ve driven over the canal bridge, thrown her body off and kept on going. The M.E. puts time of death around 4:00 a.m. Low tide peaks around 6:00 a.m. Current would’ve been going out and the body would’ve ridden with it.”
Jake frowned. “So a car thief who also fishes or knows the tidal charts takes this into consideration before he jacks your victim? That doesn’t make sense.”
Marti arrived with two orders of French toast and bacon, plopped the second one down in front of Jake and said, “You looked like you could use a little sweetening this morning. Eat up.”
Tom held his cup out to Marti for a refill and when she reached to take it, I noticed their fingers brush in a quick caress. When she took the coffeepot farther down the line of customers, he returned to Jake’s question.
“I’m not saying he was a smart car thief, just lucky. And I don’t think he meant to kill her, either.”
I put my fork down. “Now, how can you know that?”
“Preliminary autopsy results show she was dead when she hit the water. She had a stroke.” Tom pulled a notepad from his shirt pocket and studied it. “Stroke due to carotid dissection. Apparently that can happen to anyone at any age. Now, the attack probably added enough stress to trigger the stroke, but nobody outright killed the woman.”
Marti passed by, filled my cup and shook her head. “Fry the bastard anyway, just on principle,” she said, and walked off.
Tom smiled after her. “Wouldn’t want to piss her off,” he murmured.
“I heard that.” Marti called over her shoulder.
Tom’s grin grew wider and he shook his head ruefully. “Shoulda found that woman years ago.”
Jake smiled, saw me look at him and winked. “Well, sometimes they’re just not ripe for the picking. Maybe it’s better that you found her now.
Imagine how wild she must’ve been ten years ago.”
“Oh, please,” I said. “How would you know?”
Tom’s cell phone rang, preventing him from answering. I heard him say, “Good. That’s what I wanted to know.”
He listened intently for another moment, his head cocked to one side, staring at Marti but clearly focused on his conversation.
“But you’re fairly certain it’s his work?”
There was another pause and Jake shot a questioning glance in my direction. Tom snapped the cell phone shut and sat staring at his empty plate for a moment. It was all I could do not to grab him and say “What?” Instead, I focused on Marti’s amazing French toast.
Indirectly, perhaps, a case could be made for my curiosity. DeWitt had been Fred May’s literary agent and Fred May’s adopted brother could be the man we were looking for.
“The car thief obviously didn’t read much,” he said finally. “There was an unpublished Fred May manuscript under the driver’s seat of Rebecca DeWitt’s car. She was sitting on a gold mine and her attacker never even knew it.”
“I thought Fred May was dead,” Jake said, pushing his empty plate aside.
Tom nodded. “He is, but apparently he was one hell of a prolific guy. This makes two complete novels that’ve turned up since his death.”
Marti caught Tom’s eye and winked. He blushed and gently pushed his coffee cup out toward her, a signal that didn’t mean he wanted coffee. She slowly began working her way back toward us, stopping at each filled seat to check on her customers or to tease them gently about one thing or another.
“How do they keep finding his work?” Jake asked.
“Well, you know, he was from here, so there’s his home place and then there’s the house where he lived. I suppose there were papers and stuff in both homes.”
Marti was three customers away, talking with an elderly couple about homemade applesauce. She seemed mesmerized by their conversation, and yet I could tell she was also watching the kitchen staff, listening in on what bits of our conversation she could catch and monitoring her other customers. She proved this by jumping right into our conversation a moment later.
“You know they found the first book when they put Fred’s place on the market.”
“Who found it?” I asked.
Stella, Get Your Man Page 18