by Nora Roberts
All of her rage rolled into one hot ball inside her. She could already taste the blood.
“Fucking bitch.”
When he charged she planted her feet. She wanted violence. Welcomed it. Even as he swung back, he went sprawling.
“Try me,” Cade suggested, and hauled him to his feet. “Stay out of it,” he snapped, as people rushed up to interfere. “Come on, Billy. Let’s see how you handle me instead of a woman half your size.”
“You’ve had this coming for years.” The sneer was back. He crouched, burning with the need to restore himself in front of the town, desperate to pound his bunched fists into the haughty face of one of the Lavelles. “When I’m done with you, I’m going to have some fun with your whore sister and your cunt.”
He came in hard. Cade simply sidestepped. It only took two blows, an uppercut that snapped Billy’s head back and a fast, vicious jab to the gut.
Cade bent down and, pressing his thumb on Billy’s windpipe, whispered in his ear, “If you ever touch my sister or my woman, if you ever speak to them, ever look at them, I’ll wrap your balls around your throat and choke you with them.”
He dropped Billy’s head back to the ground and walked toward Tory without a backward glance. “This isn’t the place for you now.”
She couldn’t find her voice. She’d never seen fury burst, then retreat so easily. Almost elegantly, she thought. He’d battered a man to the ground without breaking a sweat and now he was speaking to her gently. And his eyes were cold as winter.
“Come on away with me now.”
“I have to stay.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Sorry to say, she does.” Carl D. walked up, turned his gaze down at Billy, rubbed his chin in a thoughtful manner. “Have some trouble out here?”
“Billy Clampett made insulting remarks.” Instantly soft tears swam into Faith’s eyes and turned them the color of dew-drenched bluebells. “He was—well, I can’t even begin, but he was very offensive to me and to Tory, then he …” She sniffled delicately. “Then he struck my poor little Bee here, and when Tory tried to stop him, he … If it hadn’t been for Cade, I don’t know what might have happened.”
She turned to Tory, sobbing quietly. “You could’ve taken him,” she murmured. “Fat, puss-faced asshole.”
Carl D. tucked his tongue in his cheek. After what he’d seen inside, this little comedy was an entertaining relief. “That about how it was?” he asked Cade.
“More or less.”
“I’ll have him taken in so’s he cools off some.” He glanced around, making eye contact with faces in the crowd as he gently chewed his gum. “Don’t think anybody wants to press charges here.”
“No, we’ll let it lay.”
“Good enough. I’m gonna need to talk to Tory here, and Faith, too. We can be a little more private down at the station.”
“Chief.” Wade joined them, stepping so casually over the half-conscious Billy, Faith had to disguise a snort of laughter with a wet sniffle. “My place is closer. I think it’d be more comfortable for the ladies.”
“We might could do that, for a start, anyway. I’m going to have one of my deputies take you on over. I’ll be along directly.”
“I’ll take them,” Wade said.
“You and Cade know most of these people. I’d appreciate if you’d give me a hand getting them to go on home. One of my men’ll see to the ladies here. I need to get their statements,” he said, before Cade could object. “That’s police business.”
“We can get there by ourselves.”
“Well now, Miss Faith, I’ll just send one of my men along with you. It’s procedure.” He signaled, and set the wheels in motion.
“Jesus, how does something like this happen in the middle of town?” Dwight rubbed at the tension in the back of his neck.
They’d managed to nudge most of the curious away from the building. Now it was darkness that gathered as he stood with his two oldest friends on the quiet lawn outside the apartment where death wore the symbol of yellow police tape.
“How much do you know?” Wade asked him.
“No more than anyone else, I expect. Carl D. didn’t let me past the edges, and I only got that far because I’m mayor. It looks like somebody broke into her place sometime yesterday. Maybe it was a robbery.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, shook his head. “Doesn’t seem like it. Didn’t look to me like she had a lot.”
“How’d they get by the dog?” Wade wondered.
“Dog?” Dwight looked blank a moment, then nodded. “Oh yeah. I don’t know. Maybe it was someone she knew. That makes more sense, doesn’t it? Maybe it was someone she knew, and they had an argument that got out of hand. She was in the bedroom,” he added on a sigh. “That much I know. The—well, the bits and pieces I heard said she was raped.”
“How was she killed?” Cade asked him.
“I don’t know. Carl D. was keeping a tight lid on most of it. Jesus, Wade, we were just talking about her the other night, remember. I ran into her coming out of your place.”
“Yeah, I remember.” He got a picture of her, bubbling over, flirting, while he examined Mongo.
“There were some murmurs in there.” Dwight jerked his head toward the sealed door. “About Tory Bodeen. Edgy talk,” he added. “I figure you’d want to know.” He sighed again. “This shouldn’t happen in the middle of damn town. People ought to be safe in their own houses. This is going to worry Lissy sick.”
“There’ll be a run on the hardware store and gun shop tomorrow,” Cade predicted. “Locks and ammo.”
“Oh Christ. I’d best call a town meeting, see if I can calm people down. I hope to God Carl D. has something on this by tomorrow. I’ve got to get back to Lissy. She’ll be in a state by now.” He shot one last look at the door. “This shouldn’t have happened here,” he repeated, and walked away.
“I only met her once. Just yesterday.”
Tory sat on Wade’s sofa with her hands neatly folded in her lap. She knew it was important to be calm and clear when talking to the police. They picked at emotion, used weaknesses as levers to pry out more than you wanted to say.
Then they made you ridiculous.
Then they betrayed you.
“You only met her the once.” Carl D. nodded, made his notes. He’d asked Faith to wait downstairs. He wanted his interviews, and the facts he gleaned from them, on separate pages. “Why’d you happen to go by her place today?”
“She applied for a job at my store.”
“That so?” He cocked a brow. “I thought she had herself a job. Teaching at the high school.”
“Yes, so she told me.” Answer the questions exactly, she reminded herself. Don’t add, don’t elaborate. “Not full-time until fall, though, and she wanted something part-time to supplement her income. And to keep her busy, I think. She seemed to have a lot of energy.”
“Uh-huh. So you went on and hired her.”
“No, not immediately. She gave me references.” Wrote them down, she remembered, along with her address, on the clipboard. The clipboard that she’d left on the counter when her father had come in. Oh God. Oh God.
“Well, that’s a sensible thing. Didn’t know you were hiring at your place.”
“I hadn’t really thought about it, until she came in. She was persuasive. I took some time to go over my budget and decided I could afford light part-time help. I checked her references this morning, then I called her. I got her machine and left a message.”
“Um-hmm.” He’d already heard her message, and the ones from Wade’s office. The one from her upstairs neighbor, the one from Lissy Frazier. Sherry Bellows had been a popular lady. “Then you decided to go on over in person.”
“After I closed for the day, I wanted a walk. I decided I’d take one through the park and drop by her apartment. That way, if she was in, I could discuss the job with her.”
“You went over there with Faith Lavelle?”
“No. I went over alone. I
ran into Faith outside the building, the back of the building. She said Sherry’s dog had been injured earlier in the day. He’d been hit by a car and Wade had treated him. She’d come over as a favor to Wade, as they’d been unable to reach her.”
“So you got there at the same time.”
“Yes, more or less. That would have been around six-thirty, as I closed up and left the shop about six-ten or six-fifteen.”
“And when Miss Bellows didn’t answer, you went on in looking for her.”
“No. Neither of us went inside.”
“But you saw something that worried you.” He looked up from his pad. She sat perfectly still, kept her eyes on his, and said nothing. “You were worried enough to call the police.”
“She didn’t return my call, though she appeared to be very eager for the job. She didn’t return Wade’s, though it was obvious to me from our one and only meeting that she adored her dog. Her blinds were shut, the door was closed. I called the police. Neither Faith nor I went inside. Neither of us saw anything. So I can’t tell you anything.”
He sat back, gnawed on his pencil. “Did you try the door?”
“No.”
“It wasn’t locked.” He let the silence hang, filled the time by getting out his pack of gum, offering it to Tory. When she shook her head he took out a stick, unwrapped it, carefully folded the wrapper.
Tory’s heart began to dance in her chest.
“So …” Carl D. folded the gum as carefully as he had its wrapper, slipped it into his mouth. “You two had gone over. Now, knowing Faith Lavelle, I’d say she’d have poked her head in—curiosity if nothing else. What’s this new teacher got in her place, that kind of thing.”
“She didn’t.”
“You knocked? Called out?”
“No, we—” She broke off, fell silent.
“You just stopped there at the door and decided to call the police.” He let out a sigh. “You’re going to make me pull some teeth here. Now, I’m a simple man, got simple ways. And I’ve been a cop more’n twenty years. Cop’s got instincts, gets hunches in the gut. Can’t always explain them. They just are. Could be you got like a hunch today outside the door of Sherry Bellows’s apartment.”
“It’s possible.”
“Some people tend toward hunches. You might say you had one eighteen years ago when you led us to Hope Lavelle. You had more of them up in New York. A lot of people were glad you did.”
His voice was kind, a soft roll of words, but his eyes, she noted, were watchful. “What happened in New York has nothing to do with this.”
“It has to do with you. Six kids got back home because you had hunches.”
“And one didn’t.”
“Six did,” Carl D. repeated.
“I can’t tell you any more than I’ve told you.”
“Maybe you can’t. Strikes me as more that you won’t. I was there eighteen years ago when you led us to that little girl. I’m a simple man with simple ways, but I was there. And I was there today, looking down at that young woman and what had been done to her. It took me back. I was at both those places, saw both those things. And so did you.”
“I didn’t go in.”
“But you saw.”
“No!” She surged to her feet. “I didn’t. I felt. I didn’t see, and I didn’t look. There was nothing I could do. She was dead, and there was nothing I could do for her. Or for Hope. Or any of them. I don’t want that inside me again. I’ve told you everything I know, exactly as it happened. Why isn’t that enough?”
“All right. Now, all right, Miss Tory. Why don’t you sit down there, try to relax, while I go down and talk to Faith.”
“I’d like to go home now.”
“You just sit down and catch your breath a little. We’ll see you get home soon enough.”
He chewed over his thoughts on her and her reaction to his questions as he walked downstairs. The girl, he decided, was a basket of troubles. He could be sorry for it. But that wouldn’t stop him from using her if it suited his purposes. He had a murder in his town. It wasn’t the first, but it was damn near the ugliest in a good many years.
And he was a man who had hunches. His gut told him Tory Bodeen was the key.
He found Cade pacing at the bottom of the stairs. “You can go on up to her. I expect she could use a shoulder. Your sister around?”
“She’s in the back, with Wade. He’s checking on the dog.”
“Too bad that dog can’t talk. Was Piney clipped him, wasn’t it?”
“So I’m told.”
“Yeah, too bad that dog can’t talk.” He patted his notebook pocket and wandered into the back.
Cade found Tory still sitting on the sofa.
“I should have just walked away. Or better, smarter, I should have let Faith go in the way she wanted to. Faith would have found her, we’d have called the police, and there’d have been no questions.”
He moved over to sit beside her. “Why didn’t you?”
“I didn’t want her to see what was in there. I didn’t want to see it, either. And now Chief Russ expects me to go into a trance and give him the name of the killer. It was Professor Plum in the conservatory with the candlestick. I’m not a goddamn board game.”
He took her hand. “You’ve every right to be angry. With him, with the situation. Why are you angry with yourself?”
“I’m not. Why would I be?” She looked down at their joined hands. “You bruised your knuckles.”
“Hurts like a son of a bitch.”
“Really? It didn’t seem like it when you hit him. It didn’t seem like you felt anything but mild annoyance. I really must swat this pesky fly, then get back to my book.”
He grinned at that, brought her hand to his lips. “As a Lavelle, one must maintain one’s dignity.”
“Bull. I said that’s what it seemed like, but that wasn’t the reality of it. Rage and disgust were the reality, and you enjoyed flattening him. I know,” she said with a sigh. “Because that’s what I was feeling. He’s an ugly man, and he’ll try to find another way to hurt you now. But he’ll come at your back, because he’s afraid of you. And no, that’s just good sense and a reasonable understanding of human nature, not my fabulous psychic powers.”
“Clampett doesn’t worry me.” He rubbed his bruised knuckles over her cheek. “Don’t let him worry you.”
“I wish I could.” She got to her feet. “I wish I could worry about him so it would occupy my mind. Why should I feel guilty?”
“I don’t know, Tory. Why should you?”
“I barely knew Sherry Bellows. I spent less than an hour with her, no more than a brush on my life. I’m sorry for what happened to her, but does that mean I have to get involved?”
“No.”
“It won’t change what happened to her. Nothing I do will change what happened. So what’s the point? Even if Chief Russ pretends he’s open to whatever I could do, in the end he’ll be just like the others. Why should I put myself in the middle of it only to be laughed at and dismissed?”
She rounded on him. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
“I’m waiting for you to come around to it.”
“You think you’re smart, don’t you? You think you know me so well. You don’t know me at all. I didn’t come back here to right wrongs or avenge a dead friend. I came back here to live my life and run my business.”
“All right.”
“Don’t say all right to me in that patient tone, when your eyes are telling me I’m a liar.”
Because her breath was starting to hitch, he rose and went to her. “I’ll go with you.”
She stared at him another moment, then just went into his arms. “God. Oh God.”
“We’ll go on down and tell the chief. I’ll stay with you.”
She nodded, held on another minute. And she accepted that after she was done in Sherry’s apartment, he might never want to hold her again.
22
“You need anything before we go
in?”
Tory was still fighting to calm her nerves, but met Carl D.’s gaze levelly. “What, like a crystal ball? A pack of tarot cards?”
He’d gone in the front as she’d requested, and unlocked the patio door from the inside, cut the seal, and stepped out where she waited with Cade.
There was less chance of being seen going in through the rear. The killer had known that, too.
Now Carl D. pushed back his hat to scratch his wide brow. “Guess you’re a mite put-out with me.”
“You pushed where I don’t like to be pushed. This isn’t going to be pleasant for me, and could very well be useless to you.”
“Miss Tory, I got a young woman about your age lying on a table down at the funeral parlor. County ME’s got his job to do on her. Her family’s coming down tomorrow morning. Wouldn’t call any of that pleasant for anybody.”
He’d wanted her to have that picture in her head. Tory acknowledged it with a nod. “You’re a harder man than I remember.”
“You’re a harder woman. I guess we both got reason.”
“Don’t talk to me.” She opened the door herself, stepped inside.
She’d braced herself, and concentrated on the light first. The light in the room as he’d flicked the switch. The light Sherry had permeated through the air.
It was a long time before she spoke. A long time, while what was left in the room slid inside her.
“She liked music. She liked noise. Being alone just wasn’t natural to her. She liked to have people over. Voices, movement. They’re all so fascinating to her. She loved to talk.”
There was fingerprint dust on the phone. She didn’t notice that it smeared her own fingers as she trailed them over it.
Who was Sherry Bellows? That had to come first.
“Conversations were like food to her. She’d have starved to death without them. She liked to find out about people, to listen to them talk about themselves. She was very happy here.”
