“So. Did ya watch?” Travis asked as he grabbed a can of Pepsi.
Beau pulled a strand of pasta from a boiling pot. “No way. I pumped iron for two hours. Between a million phone calls.”
“You didn’t even watch the race?” Travis felt his blood pressure rise and forced himself to take a deep breath, like that doctor had told him.
“I’ll watch the replay at the shop tomorrow,” Beau said, blowing on a noodle.
“I watched,” Cece said. “Pretty smart pit strategy for that number sixty-eight car during the last yellow flag, didn’t you think?”
Travis dropped to the bar stool across from her. Son of a bitch, she was dead right. “Yeah, and that little bit of engine trouble that Dallas had helped everybody pick up a few points. ’Cept us, of course.”
Beau swore under his breath. “I coulda beat them all today.”
“Well, buddy, shit happens.” Travis took a swig and shivered as it iced his gullet.
None of them spoke for a minute. Another song started, some female singer. The utensils scraped the salad bowl and the water on the stove bubbled. Time to eat the old blackbird.
“Listen, missy.” Travis rubbed his thumb along the condensation on the can. “I know you think you done something to bring this on.” He looked up into her pain-filled eyes. “But you just gotta shitcan all that guilt, and face facts. I dreamt up this silly engagement thing and I was…I was testin’ you…” Travis swallowed. Man alive, he hated this.
She bit her lip and blinked damp eyes. Oh, Jesus. He’d made her cry. Suddenly Beau turned from the stove and stared at her, a weird, expectant look on his face.
“Anyway,” Travis said to fill the awkward silence, “Olivia Ambrose was kinda loony. And not just where Beau was concerned, honest.”
“Thanks, Travis,” Cece finally replied. “I appreciate what you’re saying.”
He held her sincere gaze for a minute and could have sworn he felt something. A truce, maybe. A link. Well, they both cared about Beau, so there must be something.
She picked up her wineglass and held it toward his Pepsi can in a silent toast, sending a rush of relief and fondness through him. Boy oh boy, she was the real deal.
“Now I got a question.” He looked at both of them. “Which one of you was bleeding in the motor coach?”
“What?” they answered in unison.
“They found blood in your motor coach. Didn’t you see it?”
“Where was it?” Cece asked.
“Outside the bathroom, I think. And in the kitchen. Somebody from the Long Pond Fire Department called me when they finished goin’ through what was left of the motor home.”
Cece turned to Beau. “There was no blood in there when I left for the party.”
Beau ran his hand over a day-old beard. “I nicked myself shaving, but not enough to leave blood. I remember it because I threw my razor down, and today I couldn’t find it in the stuff I brought back from my motor coach.”
“Well, there is another possibility, I guess,” Travis said quietly. “She…uh,…could have taken your razor and tried to…” God, he hated to add to Cece’s guilt.
“You think she tried to kill herself before she set the fire?” Beau asked, shaking his head in doubt. “It wasn’t a straight razor, for God’s sake, Travis. It was a shaving razor.”
“But she was messed up,” Travis insisted. “She could have thought it would do the job.”
Cece just stared straight ahead, then started nippin’ at her bottom lip just the way he did when he was real worried about something. “Will there be an autopsy?” she asked.
“I would imagine that’s standard procedure,” Beau answered.
Travis saw a tiny vein begin to pound in Cece’s neck as the color drained from her face. “It might shed some light on what happened,” she said quietly.
“What’s your theory?” Travis asked pointedly.
She looked away. “I have no idea.”
He stared back at her. It was just as plain as her pretty catlike eyes that Cece Benson was lying about something. Was it possible she knew more about Olivia’s death than she let on? What did she mean when she said it was “her fault” over and over last night?
“An autopsy will tell us what we already know,” Beau said. “She died from smoke inhalation or asphyxiation from a fire she either started by accident or on purpose.”
“Or,” Travis said, leaning forward, “someone else set it when they saw her go inside.”
Chapter
Twenty
“Who the hell would want to do that?” Beau burst out. “Plenty of people wanted to throttle her at times, but no one would kill her.”
Celeste kept her eyes on Travis, reading the accusation in his eyes. Good Lord, what did he think?
Beau crossed his arms and stared from one to the other. “Harlan,” he finally said. “We’re overlooking the obvious here.”
Travis finally looked at Beau. “Harlan?”
“Maybe he dropped the match.”
“Harlan…wouldn’t…” Travis’s voice started to trail off. “Why?”
Beau shook his head. “Livvie knew an awful lot about his business dealings.” He raised a dubious eyebrow at Travis but didn’t elaborate. Then he looked at Celeste. “What exactly did she say to you at the dinner?”
She resisted the urge to scowl at him. Did he think she’d discuss her pretend identity in front of Travis? “Just…that…nothing, really.”
“Didn’t sound like nothin’ to me,” Travis said harshly.
Celeste stared defiantly at Travis. “She thought it strange that I hadn’t known Beau very long. I think she might have suspected our engagement was a ruse.”
Travis rubbed his arms wearily, shaking his head. “Nah. She wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box, I hate to tell you.”
“When I saw Harlan in the bar, he said something like ‘she’s all taken care of.’ And he told me he’d seen you outside,” Beau said to Cece.
“I wasn’t outside until I left with you.”
He gave them an I-told-you-so look. “Maybe he was setting you up for the fall. Don’t they always look at the husband first in these kind of things?”
Travis snorted. “Or the ex-boyfriend.”
“Me?” Beau’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Or the ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend,” Travis added as he dropped his soda can in the trash.
“Beau and I were together the whole time,” Celeste told Travis. She lifted the salad bowl and carried it to the kitchen table she’d set earlier.
“Not the whole time,” Beau said casually. “I couldn’t find you for a while after the speeches.”
She froze, the bowl poised in midair. “I was backstage and in the bathroom. What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing. I just want you to see how easily the wrong theory can be formed. By the police or by the media or”—he looked at Travis—“by anyone.”
“Stop it!” She banged the salad bowl on the table.
Without a word, Travis left the room.
“He thinks I started that fire.” Indignation choked her. “That I’m hiding something—”
“Which you are.”
“Not where Olivia is concerned. You’re her ex-lover.”
He pulled back as though she’d slapped him. “True. And we could twist this thing enough so that we all have a reason to get rid of her, but nothing so sinister happened. Olivia was drunk and dropped a cigarette.”
“Where did the blood come from?” she demanded.
“They’ll figure it out,” he assured her, framing her face with his hands. “Now listen to me. He’s staying for dinner. Now’s your chance to bond, babe.”
“Right.” She laughed bitterly. “Before or after he tries to pin her death on me?”
“Hey, that pit strategy comment just about folded him in half. He’s falling for you.” He slid his hands into her hair and lifted her face toward him. “Like I am.”
She heard Travis
’s footsteps just as the water on the stove bubbled over to a violent hiss over the gas flames.
“Better watch your pasta, boy,” Travis chuckled as he came around the corner and opened a cupboard with an air of familiarity. As Beau poured the spaghetti into a colander, Travis put a plate, fork, and knife at one end of the table. These two men had obviously shared a few meals together.
They served themselves, and Travis spent most of the dinner rehashing the race for Beau. When they’d almost finished eating, Beau abruptly changed the subject.
“What did you think of Cece’s video?” he asked Travis.
Travis wiped his mouth and dropped his napkin on the table. “I want a copy,” he said simply. “ ’Course I’ll need to edit out all that shit about my championship.”
“Your cup?” She couldn’t believe he didn’t want to relish reaching the pinnacle of his career. “That’s part of Chastaine history, isn’t it?”
“One lousy championship just proves that even a blind dog finds a bone once in a while.”
“I only have one ‘lousy’ championship,” Beau countered. “And I’m damn proud of it.”
“Mine was dumb luck. Yours was raw talent. Big difference.”
“Why do you say it was luck?” Celeste asked.
“ ’Cause a couple of the series leaders had bad accidents and poor finishes, and I was in the right place at the right time for enough races to put me in the lead. I really was never that good a driver.”
She regarded him closely. “Then why’d you get into racing in the first place?”
“I started racin’ cause something happened that made me want to die.” She saw him swallow hard, and her heart rate increased. What was he going to say? “I didn’t have the balls to commit suicide, so I thought I might go out in a blaze of glory.”
“Suicide?” Her chest squeezed as he pushed his chair from the table, and she resisted the urge to reach over and stop him, begging for more details. “Why on earth would you want to do that?” Tell me, Travis.
He didn’t look at her. “Thanks for the meal, Beau. I’m gonna hit the road.” He finally gave Celeste a cursory glance. “We’ll get through this just like we get through everything else.”
Beau stood. “I’ll walk you to the door, Travis.”
Something happened that made me want to die.
She happened. That’s what must have made him want to die.
Beau returned in a moment, a smug look on his face as he sat. “Well, what do you know? You got more outta him in one dinner than I did in twenty years.”
She folded her napkin into a neat rectangle. “How soon can I take that blood test?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Okay. Let’s do that.” At the relief she saw in his eyes, she held up a hand. “Just the test, Beau. That’s all.”
“That’s enough.” A broad smile broke across his face, and she realized that Beau probably thought his little dinner party had been a tremendous success.
Beau poured the last of the red wine from the bottle they’d shared over dinner and settled into his favorite chair by the pool. Celeste had disappeared an hour earlier, probably taking a bath or just soaking up some solitude in the guest suite.
He cursed the fact that she’d taken her own room. He wanted her tonight. He wanted to finish what they’d started on the track. He inhaled the humid, tropical air and remembered the way she’d writhed in pleasure, the slick, wet response he’d felt—
“I just wanted to say good night.”
Her voice yanked him back to reality. “So early?”
She approached the table, the dim fiber-optic lights of the pool coloring her shirt and shorts in a purplish cast. “Last night really took it out of me.”
He gently kicked the leg of the other chair. “Come on. Postpone your bedtime and talk for five minutes.”
She silently agreed by sitting down.
“Interested in a swim?” he asked. “The water’s warm.”
She shook her head and glanced at the water. “I might tomorrow morning.”
He sat and looked across the massive patio and beyond it, to the detached garage across a rolling lawn and beyond it the black water of the lake. “Feel free to use the gym too, if you want. I don’t get that many guests, so I’m happy to share.”
“What about your mother?” she asked.
“My mother?” What the hell did she have to do with anything?
“Doesn’t she come and visit you?”
“Not anymore. She got remarried about, oh, five or six years ago. I don’t like the guy. So we don’t see each other much.”
“Do you talk to her very often?”
“Once every couple weeks. I call her if I’m in a wreck. She doesn’t believe I’m okay until she hears from me.” He laughed a little. “God bless her, she does watch every race.”
She reached over for his wineglass. “May I?”
“How un-Celeste of you.”
She gave a quick, throaty laugh. “You bring out the worst in me.”
Arousal jolted through him at the possibilities.
“So,” she said, getting comfortable in her chair. “You hate your stepfather and you can’t make a commitment. Vat else do ve need to know about this patient, Doctor Freud?”
He couldn’t help laughing. “I don’t hate my stepfather. I just don’t like him. He’s stuffy and…old. He drives a Chrysler. And who said anything about commitments?”
Her playful expression evaporated. “You said no one ever stayed overnight in your motor coach.” She leaned her elbows on the table. “What about Olivia?”
His gut squeezed a little. He’d managed to go a few minutes without seeing the gruesome image of her dead body. He took a deep drink of his wine and set the glass on the table between them.
“Were you in love with her?”
“For a few minutes. We were an even match, Livvie and me. We weren’t together long, but we sure had each other’s number. And it got real exhausting.”
“Why?”
“She required full throttle and high maintenance.” Livvie Wolowicz had come after him with unbridled single-mindedness. It was a definite turn-on. At first. Then it was just plain excruciating. “She’d been around the tracks as long as she’d been alive.”
“Was her family in racing?”
He snorted at the idea. “Hardly. Her dad was serious white trash who abused her emotionally, if not otherwise. Livvie was what is affectionately known as a track toy.”
“A what?”
“Groupies who get a lot more than autographs.”
“And you liked that?” He heard the incredulity and disgust in her voice.
“By the time she’d gotten to championship-level racing, she’d elevated herself to the star status and only ‘did’ the winners.”
Celeste shifted away from him, her distaste palpable.
“She wasn’t a prostitute or anything,” he said, oddly defensive of Olivia. “It’s like girls who follow rock bands. They get to an elite status if they’re pretty and enough fun.” He paused, hating the way it sounded. “Aw, hell, Celeste. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I haven’t lived in a bubble, Beau. I know there’s a big, bad world out there. I may not want to be part of it, but I’m curious.”
The words jabbed him. Of course she’d never want to be a part of his world, not once she’d experienced its unsightly underbelly. The queen of England would wrinkle her nose at the sordid goings-on around the racetrack.
“You gotta understand what it’s like for a driver who’s single. The married guys travel with their wives and kids, they go to the chapel on Sundays before the races, they take their wives to all the fund-raisers and sponsor events. But if you’re not married, there’s no normal social life. No way to meet a girl and go out with her when you’re on the road for thirty-six weeks a year. So you date the ones who travel the circuit.” Livvie had been the best of them, a beautiful, dry-witted, leggy redhead who loved nothing more than eas
y sex after a hard race. Or so he thought.
“What happened?”
“We were together a while. She didn’t live in the coach with me, but she hung out after races and we…well—she got pregnant.”
He stared at the pool, remembering the night he found Livvie curled up on the bathroom floor. The river of blood, the horror and pain in her eyes mixed with guilt. Poor girl. She hadn’t gotten a break. “She’d told me she was on the pill, but she lied.”
“Did she have a baby?”
“She miscarried. It was the first I knew about her pregnancy. I got her airlifted to a hospital, but she lost the baby and had to have a hysterectomy.” He took a deep breath and rubbed his face, remembering. “She really took it hard. She thought if she had my baby, I would have married her.”
Celeste sat silently for a moment, then asked, “Would you have?”
“Maybe. Probably. But it would never have lasted, and now I’d have a divorce and a kid and a whole pack of troubles.” They’d been dark days, for both of them. “I don’t want kids, and I came damn close to having one anyway.”
He felt the scrutiny of her gaze. “Why don’t you want kids?”
For the life of him, he couldn’t think of why. Not at that moment. Not sitting across the table, sharing a glass of wine with beautiful, sensitive, classy Celeste Bennett who no doubt planned to have many children, and a stable, normal life.
“It was really hard losing my dad,” he said. “Really, incredibly, miserably hard. With the way I live, I could easily inflict that misery on my own son in one split-second crash. And I just don’t want to.”
She didn’t say anything, and he waited for her to say she understood. But she didn’t. “Does that sound horrendously selfish to you?” he finally asked.
She gave him a tight smile. “I’m hardly one to pass judgment on people who can’t come to terms with their past, Beau.”
“It’s not about coming to terms with my past,” he insisted. “I just don’t want to get involved to the point where people I love might have to suffer from my personal decisions.”
“So what do you do?” she asked. “Do you just have brief, meaningless affairs? Do you have a toy at every track? Others like Olivia?”
Killer Curves Page 19
