Now. She willed herself. Move.
Rising quickly, she sprinted for the door, and then stood to the side, like a cop about to bust in. She listened carefully, straining to pick out any sound that signaled Rod heading her way. When she heard none, she closed her hand over the knob and slowly twisted. Rod’s stereo, now belting out Whip It!, masked the sound of the back door opening. Guy was obsessed with the eighties. She stepped inside, taking in the view of a sunroom, and guided the door to a quiet close behind her.
Immediately, she sought out a hiding place, settling for a spot behind a blue suede sofa, straddling two corner walls of the room. Just as she was starting to wonder how long she’d have to hide there, she heard Rod walk into the room. Fear pushed her heartbeat faster.
She heard what sounded like a door latching, followed by the sound of his footsteps moving back out of the room. Seconds later, the stereo shut off, followed by what sounded like the side door closing and a car starting up and pulling away.
Remaining frozen behind the sofa, she waited for what seemed like another hour to pass, but according to her watch was less than two minutes. Long enough. She emerged from hiding. Relaxing now, she gave herself a tour of the house. The sunroom led to a kitchen, which fronted a pantry, a small lavatory and a mudroom leading to the garage. As expected, the garage was empty. Next, she scoped out his living room, dining room and gaped in awe at his bedroom. Mirrors, handcuffs, whips and a pole. She felt ill just looking at it. His basement, however, provided her with the most interest. Two computers, a large screen TV, digital camera system, DVD player, and a wall of two-drawer-high filing cabinets. Four in all. Every cabinet had a black, metal finish. Stacked side by side, they took up most of the surface area along the wall. All were unlabeled. Worse still, all of them were locked.
Jamie sat down at a desk in front of one of the computers and tried to think. She could not fail now. Not after coming so close. Rod kept his dirty films in those cabinets. She’d bet money on it. And she had to get them open. What would work though? A bobby pin? A credit card? A crowbar? She opened the drawers to the desk where she sat, but found nothing. Where would Rod keep the keys? Not with him. No. He wouldn’t want to risk losing them. But where else might he keep them? She remembered the handcuff collection decorating his bedroom wall. Handcuffs had keys. Maybe he would keep them all in the same place.
Rushing back upstairs, she ran into his bedroom and began pulling open drawers. T-shirts in one drawer. Pullovers in another. Underwear in the next. Everything neatly folded and organized. She opened another drawer. Socks. As she pulled the drawer fully open, she heard a jingling at the back. She pulled the drawer out farther. Tucked behind neatly folded rows of blue, black and brown dress socks, she found what she was looking for; a large, wire-hoop key ring full of keys.
Running back downstairs, she worked quickly, opening cabinet after cabinet. Every cabinet held the same thing. Hanging file folders of DVDs, each one labeled with a name and date. As the dates became more recent, the videos were accompanied by stacks of photos. She had to be close to the current year now. She continued looking at names and dates. Most of the names were meaningless to her, but a few she recognized. Like Darla Arnold, Carole Mance and Patrice McKenzie. It was the fourth and final cabinet where she found the one movie she didn’t want to find. One labeled Janelle Tyler-Beck. Dated April 1st of the current year. April Fool’s Day. Like some sick joke.
An uncomfortable feeling pitted itself in her stomach. The slime bag wasn’t lying after all. She looked at the name and date again, as if she’d misread it somehow. Nothing changed, no matter how hard she stared at it.
This would kill Nick.
Her heart ached for him. The memory of his reaction to Rod’s allegations sprang to her unbidden. The look on his face. The hurt in his eyes. She remembered that awful afternoon at his house, after he’d seen Janelle dead at the golf club and spent the entire day sitting in his chair pounding down scotch. She remembered what he’d said about Janelle being about to leave him. Had he suspected she’d been having an affair with someone even then? She’d watched Nick drink himself to a stupor that day, and now she couldn’t push the image from her mind. The guy was holding it together by a thread, and this would kill him.
Could she really let that happen?
He had loved Janelle. And Janelle had betrayed him.
With Rod Skinner.
How could she?
Nick was a great guy. He didn’t deserve this. Sadness, confusion and anger cycled through her. As if she were going through all the emotions Nick would feel if he knew this movie existed. And she knew she could never tell him. Could never let him feel the awful hurt that would be his if he found out the truth.
She needed to get out of here. She needed to leave without setting off Rod’s security system. Methodically, she went back through his house, pulling open drawers and cabinets, and wondering how long she’d have to remain hidden inside if she couldn’t find a way out. And whether she’d be able to slip back out without him noticing. No way was she going to try and charm him if she got caught inside. He’d just have to call the police.
Fortunately, a search through his kitchen cupboards turned up the password, scrawled on a notepad. She headed for the garage door and switched off the alarm before leaving. When she was safely out to the street and down the road, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed Nick’s cell.
“Yes?” He sounded tired.
“Hey!” She mustered the brightest, most cheerful sound to her voice she could manage. “I’ve been through every one of Rod Skinner’s file cabinets and guess what?”
“What?”
“There is no movie of your wife.”
“Jamie, I could kiss you. That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
He sounded happy. She had made the right decision.
And he could kiss her. He had kissed her. Made her tingle all the way to her toes. Had he forgotten that kiss? Probably. He’d been awfully drunk.
“I can’t believe Rod thought I would buy such an outrageous lie,” he said. “Janelle would never have slept with him. She hated him.”
Jamie hated to hear him jump to Janelle’s defense. But she’d spared him the pain, and that was what mattered. “Listen,” she said. “Any chance you could send someone over here to pick me up? Danny took off to follow Darla and left me stranded.”
“Darla Arnold?”
“Yeah. How do you like that? Danny and I found them lounging outside on his patio. She was naked, by the way. I got pictures, and I tried to tape their conversation using Danny’s recorder, but I don’t know if I got anything. Anyway, he does have a movie of her.”
“Darla naked. Now there’s a surprise.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“This is all getting to be pretty fishy.”
“You’re reading my mind today. So, can you send over a car?”
“Sure. I’ve got something going on at my place right now, but Art’s working on a story nearby. I’ll have him pick you up.”
“Thanks.”
As Jamie ended the call, she realized she now felt one more emotion. Disgust. Nick had believed Janelle wouldn’t cheat on him with Rod. And the woman didn’t deserve it.
Jamie wished Janelle was alive now, just so she could slap her.
Chapter 15
A small weight loosened and fell from Nick’s shoulders. Rod was lying. He did not have a sex tape of Janelle. Nick had doubted him, but until he’d actually heard Jamie’s confirmation, he hadn’t felt sure.
Jamie had risked a lot breaking into Rod’s house. Too much. What could she possibly have been thinking? His thoughts dragged stubbornly back to the afternoon following Janelle’s death. Jamie’s insistence on coming home with him. Her worry for him. Her response to his kiss. Was it possible he wasn’t the only one sitting around thinking thoughts better left unimagined?
He returned to the present. At least a sex tape of Rod and Janelle wasn’t something he had
to worry about while Sarge Freeman and her detectives searched his house looking through Janelle’s things. As promised, they’d come bearing a search warrant.
His cell phone rang again. Looking at the incoming number, he saw it was his circulation manager. “Give me the good word, Steve. What’s our circulation up to?”
“Over five million copies since we plastered Darla Arnold’s cat fight with Mindy LePage on the cover.”
“Excellent.” Once again, gut instinct had paid off. “Guess those girls were an even bigger draw than we’d hoped.”
“Too bad for Darla’s old man. Like to know how he feels having you make money off his family’s problems for a change.”
Nick sighed. No comparison to how he felt. “Thanks for calling with the good news. I’ll look over your numbers in the morning.” He ended the call just as Sarge came downstairs, fresh from her search of Janelle’s room.
“Didn’t you tell me your marriage was fine, Mr. Beck?”
“I did.” He should have seen that one coming. Of course Sarge would find his and Janelle’s sleeping arrangements further cause for suspicion.
“Then why was your wife sleeping in the guest room?”
“She didn’t like my snoring.” He said it flippantly, and knew from the frown on Sarge’s face she didn’t believe him. He returned her frown with a smile, noticing she carried a small item that looked like a matchbook cover in a plastic baggie. “What’s that?”
She tucked the baggie into her coat pocket. “Evidence.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“We’ll talk about that later.”
He didn’t like being kept in the dark. Or being treated like the enemy. “Aren’t we on the same side?” he asked. “Don’t we both want Janelle’s killer caught and punished? What more do I have to do to clear my name and stop being treated like a suspect?”
Her grim expression froze on her face like she’d just stared at the Medusa. “Stop nosing around in this investigation, Mr. Beck, and let me do my job.”
Frowning, he moved aside and made his way back to the library. Detective Sanchez was inside, pulling books off the bookshelves. “Miguel.” He greeted the man. “How goes the search?”
The man looked up briefly from a stack of books he was leafing through. “Tedious.”
Nick stopped trying to talk to the man. The guy wasn’t any more sociable than anyone else who’d barged into his home today. Instead, he went to the living room, sat down and wondered, inevitably, what was on the matchbook cover Sarge found so interesting. In and of itself, it meant nothing. Janelle had smoked for years, and everyone who knew her knew it. So what was it evidence of? Her desire to die of lung cancer? Perhaps it came from some place Sarge found suspicious. But where? Unwanted thoughts of Rod Skinner’s bragging gnawed at him. The man had been so cocky, so sure of himself. But no. There had been no movie of her at his house. Jamie had just said so. The guy was a con man and a liar.
Still, what if Rod hadn’t kept the movie at his house? What if he had already sold it? Given it to Peter Arnold? There could have been more going on between Rod and Darla Arnold today than just sex. Nick tensed up all over again. One way or the other, he had to know the truth. He was tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
A buzzing doorbell disturbed his train wreck of thoughts and he gladly rose to greet it. Until he opened his front door. “Darla.” She stood on his doorstep, smiling like she was about to announce him the winner of the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. Had she come straight here from Rod’s? Or swung by to visit Daddy Dearest first? He frowned. “What are you doing here?”
Her smile quickly faded. “Nice greeting. You could try saying hello, you know.”
“Fine. Hello. Now what are you doing here?”
“Have it your way then. Your gruffness is part of your charm, after all.”
She breezed past him and into the house, minus an invite. The afternoon held a mild chill and she’d been draped in a loose-knit white sweater, which she took off and flung casually over the arm of his couch. The baby doll dress she wore underneath was low-cut and made of a white, silky material with shimmering silver threads woven through it. A silver, silk bow, planted just below the steep v-neck, exposed a good portion of her cleavage. It was the bow he noticed first, drawing his gaze to her moderately sized breasts. The ones that threatened to play peek-a-boo any second. He pictured her showing up at Rod’s house in that dress and wondered just how long the two of them had been bumping and grinding.
He had the advantage of knowing about her connection with Rod, without her knowing he knew. An advantage he decided to keep. “Make yourself at home,” he said, not bothering to mask his sarcasm.
Her perky smile never left her face. “Don’t worry, gorgeous. I intend to.”
The comment came just as Sarge slipped into the room behind him. Perfect.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Beck. I didn’t realize you were expecting company today.”
The professional tone never left her voice, but he heard the suspicion in it all the same. He looked the police woman in the eye, never wavering. “I wasn’t.”
“I see.” She stared at Darla with unmasked curiosity. “Very well. I believe we’re about finished here. The detectives and I can see ourselves out.”
He nodded, watching her leave. Great. Sarge had taken one look at the scantily clad Darla and figured he was having an affair. At the very least, it was one more suspicion for her to investigate. And Darla could now go back to Daddy and report the police were searching the Beck household. One more ‘tidbit’ for her daddy’s paper. His life had become nothing short of a tennis match, with the cops on one side and Peter Arnold on the other. He, of course, was the ball.
As soon as the police were clear of his house, he turned to Darla. “You mind telling me why you’re here?”
Tossing her blonde curls to the side of her face, she leaned back into his couch. “You know, Nick, I still remember when you worked for my father. I was just a little girl then. Do you remember?”
Nine going on thirty, as he recalled. Continuing to stand, he folded his arms across his chest. “Is that why you’re here? To discuss old times? Or are you just trying to help your father dig up more dirt on me?”
“That wasn’t very nice.” She pouted. “And neither was that article you printed in your paper about me.”
“If you have a complaint about the article, Darla, you can leave it at my office. I don’t take them at home. Or in person.”
“That’s not the only reason I’m here.”
“Then enlighten me.”
“I like you, Nick. I’ve had a crush on you since we first met.”
He remembered her as a young girl, always dressing to look older, wearing clothes he never would have let a daughter of his leave the house in. Hanging out at her father’s offices, trying to sound grown-up as she dished the latest celebrity gossip with her father’s employees. And stealing things from his desk every chance she got. Stapler. Tape dispenser. Pens. Had she really had a crush on him? “Is that right?”
“Yes. It is.”
She uncrossed her legs now, spreading them apart until her dress rode high up her thighs, revealing an absence of underwear. He looked away quickly, his disgust with Peter rising. He’d always known the man had loose morals, but this was low, even for him. What kind of man sent his daughter off to seduce another man just to get gossip for his newspaper?
Sympathy for her found its way into his heart. For both the little girl she had once been, pretentious maybe, but with some innocence still intact, and for the troubled young woman she had grown into. He had no intention of letting Peter use her to try and get to him. “Go home,” he told her, keeping his voice low and gentle. “Tell your father you couldn’t get anywhere with me.”
“I don’t work for him.” Her tone was sharp, and unexpected. “And stop treating me like I’m some daddy’s girl, because I’m not.”
Where had that come from? “I think you mi
sunderstand my meaning, Darla.”
“And I think you misunderstand mine.” Sounding coy now, she rose from his couch, stepped in front of him and placed her hand firmly over his crotch. “So let me make it clear for you. I’ll forget the cops were searching your house if you do a good enough job persuading me.”
He pushed her hand away from him. “Go home,” he said again, brusquely this time. “And tell your father anything you like about the very routine and fully-cooperated-with investigation you witnessed. I have nothing to hide.”
“Really?”
She reached for his crotch again, but he caught her hand this time and held her at bay. She laughed; a teasing laugh that mocked him. Defiance held her gaze, and beneath that, a kind of vulnerability that almost pleaded with him.
“You’re afraid of me,” she said. “Afraid of what you might feel if you let yourself make love to me.”
Still gripping her wrist, he half-walked, half-pulled her to his front door. “I’m not making love to you, Darla. Ever.”
Yanking her hand away, her coy, seductive smile thinned out and her expression hardened into a glare. “Never say never, Nick. I’m used to getting what I want.”
“Then you’d better start wanting something else, or you’re going to learn first-hand about disappointment.”
“You haven’t heard the last of me.”
He let her stomp all the way out his front door before responding. “Don’t come back here. And I do mean never.”
Incredible. He went to look for some aspirin and braced for the next Peter Arnold headline.
Chapter 16
Sarge held the matchbook cover up, reading the message scrawled inside one more time.
Gossip (Desire Never Dies) Page 7
