Ulterior Motives

by Terri Blackstock

  “Okay,” Sharon said. “And Emily, what color do you think the flowers were?”

  “Purple!” Emily cried.

  “That’s right,” Sharon said. “How did you know?”

  Emily shrugged and giggled.

  “But one day, something terrible happened.”

  “What, Mommy?” Christy asked, her eyes growing big. “Did somebody break into her house and rob her?”

  Sharon thought for a moment. “No. One day, she went ice-skating on the pond near her house, because she didn’t live in Florida, she lived in . . .”

  “Alaska!” Christy provided.

  “That’s right. And she went ice skating, and while she was gone, some mean man came and . . .”

  “Picked all her flowers!” Christy said. “And he sold them at the flea market, because they had fleas!”

  They all laughed and lay back down, and Sharon went on with the story.

  Anne climbed the stairs and walked up the hall to say good night to Emily. As she neared the door, she could hear laughter. It was good to hear Emily giggle again, she thought, and she paused and listened. Then she heard Sharon’s voice, embroidering a story that had them both enthralled.

  She went to the door and looked in. Sharon lay between the two girls on the big canopy bed, an arm around each of them, giggling right along with them.

  Anne stepped back, suddenly jealous again. Not only were they beholden to Sharon because of their dependence on her for shelter and money, but she feared that Emily was getting too attached to this home and this family. She was losing Ben, she was losing Emily, and she’d already lost control of her life . . .

  Slowly, she went back down the stairs to Bobby’s room. He was sleeping soundly now that he’d been given the medication he needed. She sat down in the rocking chair in the darkened room, trying to figure out where to turn with the anxious, dangerous emotions holding her in their vicious grip.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The phone rang once, and as usual, Jenny quickly answered it. After a moment, she yelled down the stairs, “Daddy! It’s for you!”

  Ben took the call in the study, hoping it was Lynda. “Hello?”

  “Ben, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  “Nelson?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m still in London. I had hoped to get home to attend Louis’s funeral, but there was too much fog on the ground, so the planes weren’t taking off.”

  “How did you know where I was?”

  “When I had the money wired to the courthouse, the secretary there told me you had moved in with your ex. I have to admit it was a little surprising. If I’d known you really didn’t have a place to live, I could have offered you the use of my house.”

  “Yeah, well, I appreciate it, but it’s a done deal now. We have to stay until this whole thing is cleared up. Listen, thanks for the bond money. I promise you’ll get it back. I’ll be acquitted.”

  “Of course you will. Have they got any leads?”

  “I seem to be the only one. Despite the fact that this guy even broke in here today.”

  “Broke in? Are you serious?”

  “The police don’t seem to think so. They think I did it.”

  Nelson paused a moment, as if thinking. “Look, the moment I arrive, I’ll go straight to the police and vouch for you, for what it’s worth. This is ludicrous. Ben, do you think Louis was involved in something we don’t know about?”

  “Who knows?” Ben asked dejectedly. “When do you think you’ll be here, anyway?”

  “Probably in the next couple of days, if the weather clears. Have you thought about what you’re going to do for money?”

  “Yeah, a lot,” Ben said. “I didn’t get my last paycheck, and my paintings are all still locked in the gallery.”

  “Well, I’ve picked up a few things here that need some restoration work. Do you feel like doing them?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I need the work.”

  “Fine. Well, just cross your fingers that I’ll arrive there soon. It’s all going to work out, Ben. You’ll see.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Home was a word that Tony only had a passing acquaintance with, especially these days when he spent so much time working. As he came in now, he shrugged wearily out of his sport coat and unfastened his shoulder holster. Dropping it on the counter, he carried the sport coat through the immaculate living room and into the bedroom. He hadn’t slept much in the last few days, but the bed was made, anyway. Everything was in its place, perfectly in order. Normally, he found some degree of comfort in the small house he had built for himself, once he realized that he would probably never be married.

  He walked across the white carpet and into the walk-in closet, where he hung his coat. Then, stepping out of his shoes, he padded back into the living room. Slumping down into his favorite chair, he pulled up his feet and stared at the vaulted ceiling.

  It had been a horrendous, grueling afternoon, grilling neighbors who had seen nothing but wanted to waste his and Larry’s time talking, trying to find out what was going on in the interesting and complex family that occupied the Robinson house. He’d learned more details than he’d ever intended to gather today—that Sharon Robinson rarely dated, that she was very successful on the real-estate scene, that her children were the best behaved on the street. He’d heard stories of how she’d helped elderly neighbors during the power outage last summer when the temperatures had soared to over 100 degrees. One single mother had shared how Sharon had kept her kids for an entire week while their mother was hospitalized for a ruptured appendix, then took care of her for a couple of weeks more until she had recovered.

  She was too good for her own good, some of the neighbors agreed. And they all lamented the fact that she had been bamboozled into taking in her no-account ex this way, especially when everyone knew he’d killed that Dubose fellow. He suspected there would have been neighborhood complaints about his even being in the neighborhood, if it weren’t for their great respect for Sharon herself.

  But it wasn’t those conversations that kept playing through his mind, but the one he’d last had with her. She’d said his apathy was dangerous. He worried that her generosity was.

  He glanced at the phone and thought of calling her, just to let her know that he had taken it all seriously, that he had interviewed neighbors and had spent much of the early evening running down a list of people found in Dubose’s Rolodex, matching them with his desk diary, and trying to determine who they needed to talk to next. But none of that mattered, he thought. He had done all that work mostly to humor Sharon. In his mind, Ben was the murderer, and all the work he did would only prove that. He just couldn’t understand why it was so hard for her to see.

  Maybe it was because she’d been married to the guy, he thought. She couldn’t admit that she had been blind all those years. That he was ruthless and cold-blooded. That she’d had children with a man who could kill.

  No one liked facing up to facts like that.

  But he worried about her, and about the undying loyalty and unwavering faith that could get her into trouble. He wondered if she’d cooled down, or if, in the dark quiet of her night, she was wondering if, just maybe, Tony could be right. If Ben might have done all this, after all.

  His eyes strayed to the telephone, and he started to pick it up. Then he thought better of it. He didn’t need to entertain these lingering thoughts about Sharon Robinson. She had too many problems. He needed to do his job and stay away from her. Wasn’t that what he’d told Larry so many times? His cardinal rule—not getting personally involved in his cases—had always stuck, even when his partner disregarded it.

  But he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t shake her from his mind. He could pick up the phone right now and call any number of women to have dinner with him and go have a drink at the Step-pin’ Out across town. Or he could just show up there, and meet new ones. It was his common MO for Saturday night.

  Tonight, however, his heart just wasn’t in
it. And he wasn’t interested in meeting any other women. Tonight, only Sharon Robinson occupied his thoughts.

  He tried to rationalize. He told himself that this case wasn’t about her. She was only involved by virtue of her former marriage to the defendant. If he called her, it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest, would it?

  He looked at the phone again, and finally picked it up. Quickly, he dialed information, asked for her number, then punched it out. He waited as it rang once, twice . . .

  “Hello?”

  It was her older daughter’s voice, and he cleared his throat and said, “May I speak to Sharon, please?”

  “Yes, just a moment.”

  She was polite, he thought, just as the neighbors had said. He waited for a moment, then heard another extension being picked up, as the first one cut off.

  “Hello?”

  “Sharon? It’s Tony.”

  “Yes?” she said coldly, obviously still perturbed at him.

  He smiled. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  He could see that this wasn’t going to be easy, so he softened his voice and gave a stab at being contrite. “Look, I’m really sorry I made you mad today. But I spent the rest of the day interviewing neighbors. None of them saw anything, so now I’m working on friends and colleagues of Dubose who might have had a vendetta against him.”

  She let that sink in for a moment, then asked, “What about the fingerprints?”

  “They all belonged to those of you living in the house. No one new.”

  She was quiet again. “Well, at least you’re trying. I appreciate that.”

  His smile returned, then faded again. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He imagined her sinking into a chair, letting down her guard. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just tired. I don’t know how well I’ll sleep tonight. Tony?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry about all the things I said to you today. I was under a lot of stress, but I had no right to lash out at you like that. You were just doing your job.”

  “You didn’t think I was doing it well. You have the right to that opinion.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t have the right to beat you up with it. I’m sorry.”

  He couldn’t believe he had called her to apologize, and had wound up getting one from her.

  “You work really hard, don’t you?” she asked. “Day and night, weekends . . .”

  “It depends on what I’m working on. It’s not usually so bad.”

  “But you and Larry are the only two detectives in the whole force, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “Then you get all the junk. How do you ever have any time to yourself?”

  He smiled. “I take time. I could say the same thing about you. From talking to your neighbors, I’d say that between being the best real-estate agent in town and the best neighbor on your block, not to mention the best mother and the best ex-wife, I can’t imagine how you ever get time to yourself.”

  She laughed softly, a sound that lightened his heart.

  “For instance, what were you doing when I called? I’ll bet you were cleaning up the mess from the break-in.”

  “Wrong,” she said. “I finished that earlier.”

  “What then?”

  He could hear the smile in her voice. “If you must know, I was under the fig tree.”

  “Under the fig tree?” he asked. “Is that a fig tree in your backyard?”

  She laughed louder now, and he couldn’t help grinning. “No. That’s an oak. ‘Under the fig tree’ is just an expression.”

  He let his feet down and sat up. “What does it mean?”

  “Have you ever read the Bible, Tony?”

  He frowned. “No. I can’t say I have.”

  She didn’t seem surprised. “Well, there’s a passage in the first chapter of John, where Jesus is calling his first few disciples. He finds Philip and tells him, ‘Follow me,’ and then Philip goes and tells Nathaniel that he’s found the Messiah. Nathaniel doesn’t believe him, so Philip tells him to just come and see. Nathaniel goes with Philip to meet Jesus, and when Jesus sees him, he says, ‘Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.’ And Nathaniel asks him how he knew him.”

  “Yeah?” Tony asked, a little surprised that a Bible story could hold his interest for this long.

  “Jesus says, ‘I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.’”

  “So? He saw him under a tree. What’s the big deal?”

  “In those days, ‘under the fig tree’ meant ‘seeking God.’ When a man wanted to pray, often the coolest place was under a fig tree, so he’d go there to be alone and to pray. It became a common expression. Instead of saying you were praying and seeking God, you’d say you were ‘under the fig tree.’”

  “Oh,” Tony said. “So you meant that you were praying?” The thought made him a little uncomfortable. As long as they were talking about some story in the Bible that had nothing to do with him, he was fine. But he hated it when these spiritual subjects cropped into his own comfort zone.

  “Right,” she said. “So you see? I do get some time to myself now and then. Sometimes I just have to take it.”

  “But I didn’t mean praying time. I meant time that’s good for you. Recreation. Something that’s not an obligation, but a pleasure.”

  “I don’t pray to fulfill an obligation, Tony. And it’s pure pleasure. Even when I’m on my knees begging him for answers.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, though he didn’t have a clue. “But I just mean . . . well, you know, people like you . . . like us . . . they’re prone to burnout. It’s a big danger, you know. You have to take time out. Do things for yourself. Go to a movie. Out to dinner. Whatever.”

  He didn’t know why he was getting so tongue-tied and nervous. He asked women out all the time, and he was smooth. Very smooth. Tonight he felt like an awkward kid asking the homecoming queen for a date.

  “Well, yes,” she agreed. “Those things are nice. If you have someone to do them with.”

  “Well, of course. I mean, not by yourself. Maybe with someone. Like me.” He grinned then and winced, covering his face and kicking himself for sounding like a jerk. He leaned forward, holding the phone close to his ear. “Sharon, I’m trying to ask you for a date, but I’m doing an incredibly poor job of it.”

  There was a stunned silence for a moment. Finally, she said, “Well, yes. I mean, if it’s okay. Not a conflict of interest or anything. I mean, you are working on Ben’s case.”

  “It should be okay,” he said.

  She drew in a deep breath and let it out quickly. “Well, okay. When?”

  “Well, we could wait until the case is over . . . but that could be a while. And frankly, I don’t want to wait that long. How about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” she said. “I go to church twice on Sundays. But you’re welcome to join me.”

  He had walked into that one, he thought, but he could walk right back out. “Church and I don’t really get along,” he said. “How about after church tomorrow night? What time do you get home?”

  “About seven-thirty,” she said. “I guess dinner would be all right.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  He smiled. “Okay. Great. I’ll make reservations someplace nice. And I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon and let you know what time.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll look forward to it.”

  Again, he felt like that awkward kid as he leaned back in his chair and mouthed “yes!” to the ceiling. Then trying to temper his voice, he said, “Well, I’ll talk to you tomorrow then. Good night, Sharon.”

  “Good night.”

  He hung onto the phone as she hung up, then dropped it into its cradle and stared back at the ceiling again. What had he done?

  He was going out with a woman who was tied up in a case he was worki
ng on, and she was a Christian, and she had kids, and she had her ex-husband who was quite possibly a killer living with her . ..

  Great going, Tony, he thought. You know how to pick ’em. The more complicated, the better. Like you don’t have enough problems already.

  But it didn’t matter to him as he sprang out of his chair, fully renewed, and headed for the kitchen to find something to eat.

  Across town, Sharon smiled and stared at the telephone for a long moment. She had consented to going out with the cop who was trying to prove Ben’s guilt. She had consented to going out with a guy who had never read word one of the Bible, a guy who was obviously uncomfortable talking about spiritual things, a guy who would never darken the doors of a church unless a crime had been committed there.

  Was she crazy?

  Probably, but it had been so long since she’d been attracted to any of the men who had asked her out. Maybe just one date wouldn’t hurt. She could use the distraction—and the boost—after all the tension around here.

  And there was no shortage of baby-sitters.

  The truth was, she looked forward to it, but that anticipation only scared her. Tony was certain that Ben was a killer. Tony, who saw criminals every day, heard all their excuses, their alibis, their lies. Could it be that he saw something in Ben that she couldn’t see?

  She got up and pulled on her robe and padded up the dark hallway. What was Ben doing now? Where was he?

  She saw a light on in her study, and went to the door. Standing back, she listened. Was he in there?

  Slowly, she peered around the doorway.

  Ben was there, reclining back in her leather chair, his feet propped on her desk. On his chest slept Bobby, his breathing much better now that he’d been medicated. Memories flooded through her of the same man lying on an orange bean bag with newborn Jenny on his chest. She had a snapshot of it somewhere. Could that same man have turned into a killer?

  Confused by her disturbing thoughts, she turned and headed back to her room. She turned the light out and curled up on her bed. Wondering whether she’d done the right thing by agreeing to go out with the detective, she went back under the fig tree again.