Dead Giveaway

by Joanne Fluke

  Dressed in one of her seven compulsory training uniforms, Rachael faced her reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. Today’s pajama-like outfit was green, a color that would teach her serenity. She also had red for courage, yellow for vitality, blue for patience, white for purity, brown for modesty, and black for power and determination. Rachael’s dark curly hair was tucked up in a green turban to match, and she looked a bit like an oriental scrub nurse, except for her feet, which were bare and getting colder by the minute. She’d turned down the thermostat because her teacher claimed it was healthier to practice forms in a cold room.

  The expensive practice tape was playing something that sounded like the soundtrack from The Last Emperor. The music, guaranteed to focus concentration and clear the mind of distracting influences, wasn’t having its desired effect on Rachael this morning. All she could think of was the Johnson case. She’d spent two arduous months in preparation, but she knew Judge Ulrich would have to be deaf, blind, and dumb to rule in favor of a slum landlord like her client.

  Rachael exhaled and assumed the ready position. She’d practiced four forms already and now she was working on the fifth, something called Stork Cools Its Wings II. As the music decreased in volume and her teacher’s voice announced the form, Rachael did her best to follow the complicated instructions. The right foot steps to the side and takes the weight of the body, left toe touching for balance in front. Now the right elbow lifts to guard the throat while the left palm turns in to guard the hip, fingers pointing to the right.

  Rachael frowned and shifted from foot to foot. Did the left take the weight, or was it the right? Neither one seemed to work very well. This had all looked so easy when her teacher had demonstrated it in class last week. She was concentrating so hard on maintaining her balance that she didn’t see Clayton as he came in.

  “That’s quite a sight, Rachael. You look like a drunken windmill.”

  Rachael turned to look at him, an action that turned out to be her undoing. Her feet got tangled and she would have fallen if Clayton hadn’t wrapped his arms around her waist.

  “Not fair, Clay,” she protested. “I almost had it before you scared me.”

  “Sorry, Rachael.” Clayton looked concerned. “I thought it was advisable to lend a hand before you fell flat on your face.”

  Rachael smiled up at him. After six months as his mistress, the sight of him still made her a little breathless, although Clayton wasn’t really a handsome man. Of moderate height and weight, he had hazel eyes set just a little too close together and he tended to squint when he wasn’t wearing his glasses. His light brown hair was streaked with silver at the temples and rather than lend him a distinguished air, it only served to emphasize the lines in his face. Clayton was far from the Adonis that Rachael had pictured in her dreams, but there was something about him, something she couldn’t identify, that made her knees turn weak every time she thought of making love with him.

  Rachael pressed her body back against his and wiggled a little, knowing precisely what effect it would have. “You shouldn’t make fun of me, Clay. My teacher says that Tai Chi will help me get in touch with my body.”

  “I wasn’t aware you had a problem in that area.” Clayton’s voice took on the slightly husky tone that Rachael had come to recognize. She loosened the belt on her uniform and guided his hand to her breast. When she’d first come to work in his law firm, he’d been all business. It had taken a full three months before he’d noticed that his new junior lawyer was also an attractive woman.

  Clayton gulped as her fingers found the zipper of his pants. “Are you through with your karate for today?”

  “It’s Tai Chi, not karate, and I’ve done all I’m going to do for now. Just let me slip out of this and we can test what I learned about agility and balance.”

  Clayton’s breath caught in his throat as Rachael shrugged out of her pajama-like outfit. Barely over five feet tall, her body was compact and utterly feminine. Her skin was darker than his even though she never used the tanning booth up at the spa, a phenomenon she’d attributed to her mixed-blood ancestry. Her father had been a mulatto laborer, and her mother an underaged daughter of a Spanish diplomat. Rachael had been given up for adoption the night of her birth, and the identity of Rachael’s birth parents had been kept in strict confidence by the adoption agency. It was one of the reasons Rachael had decided to become a lawyer. Her first court appearance had been on her own behalf and the judge had granted her access to the adoption records.

  “Come on, Rachael.” Clayton reached out to grab her hands. “Let’s go back to bed.”

  “What’s wrong with right here? The rug’s nice and soft.”

  “But, Rachael . . . I don’t think I could be entirely comfortable here.”

  Rachael saw the lines of distress deepen in his face. It was definitely time to exorcise some ghosts.

  “Don’t be silly, Clay. I promise to do something that’ll take your mind off everything except me.”

  She put her lips to his ear and whispered exactly what she planned to do. Clayton’s face turned red and he grinned self-consciously. “That sounds wonderful, but shouldn’t we close the drapes first?”

  “On the fifth floor?” Rachael laughed. “Come on, Clay, loosen up.”

  Clayton hesitated. Then Rachael’s fingers reached their goal and his reticence vanished completely.

  Twenty Minutes before 10:57 AM

  Jack St. James took the breakfast tray from the nurse and set it back down on the counter. “Never mind, Miss Woodard. I’ll take her tray in this morning.”

  He didn’t miss the nurse’s frown as he filled a silver carafe with coffee and set it on the tray. The doctor had limited Betty’s caffeine intake, but she loved coffee and it certainly couldn’t do her much harm at this stage. She had so few pleasures left that it seemed cruel to deprive her of her morning coffee.

  “Is that decaffeinated, Mr. St. James?”

  “No.” Jack straightened up to his full five and a half feet and neatly faced down Betty’s nurse. This was quite a feat since Margaret Woodard was almost six feet tall and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. A small man, slightly though powerfully built, Jack had learned the trick of intimidation early in life. All it took was an authoritative tone and an unwavering gaze.

  “Since you’re taking the tray, I’ll come in to bathe her later.”

  He gave a smile of satisfaction as Margaret turned on her heel and headed back to her bedroom. It was nice to know he hadn’t lost his touch, not that the skill of facing people down was needed very often at Deer Creek Condos. It had come in handy when the telephone installer had claimed it wasn’t possible to run an extension of everyone’s line to a console up at the spa. And it had worked admirably the few times that cars filled with teenagers from Vegas had turned into their driveway to drink beer and enjoy the private view.

  Jack reached for the jar of honey butter and put it next to the croissants on the tray. Margaret claimed that Betty should watch her cholesterol, even though the doctor hadn’t mentioned it. Since Margaret was on a low-fat diet, Jack suspected she just didn’t want to cook two menus. Betty ate little enough as it was and Jack wanted her to enjoy her food. It was one of the reasons he came up to Betty’s unit for breakfast every morning. It was no fun eating alone and he’d noticed that Betty’s appetite increased when she had visitors. She seemed to enjoy the time he spent with her and Jack enjoyed it, too. Unlike the other women he knew, Betty didn’t make any demands on him, and, even more important, he could tell her all about his job as security chief without worrying that his confidences would be repeated.

  A couple of months ago, Jack had run a cable from the closed-circuit monitors in his security office to Betty’s bedroom television set so he could keep his eye on the building while he was visiting her. He hadn’t told anyone about the extra cable, and now he was glad he hadn’t, since Betty often watched what the other tenants were doing even when he wasn’t with her. Jack supposed it was an i
nvasion of privacy, but he didn’t see how it could possibly do any harm. He’d told Betty that the closed-circuit channels were secret; she shouldn’t watch them when anyone else was there. And since Betty thought the glimpses she got into the other tenants’ lives were movies, no one would be the wiser if she talked about them.

  Jack smoothed his close-cropped sandy hair and pinned on the name tag he’d ordered a month ago. It was white plastic and it said “JACK” in large black letters. Betty knew him, but she had trouble remembering his name. Whenever that happened, she cried in frustration. His name tag solved the problem.

  He carried the tray into Betty’s room, shutting the door behind him. The big master bedroom had been especially designed to meet Betty’s needs. There was a huge television set on the wall opposite the bed and a rack of DVDs was within Betty’s reach. The DVD player/recorder sat on the bedside table so Betty could record or watch any movie she wished and a built-in bookcase next to the bed was filled with Betty’s favorite things.

  In bits and pieces over the past two years, Jack had acquired the stories behind Betty’s mementos. There was a collection of shells she’d gathered in the Bahamas, several pieces of ebony sculpture she’d brought back from Africa, a hand-thrown clay pot she’d fallen in love with in Guatemala and a Royal Dalton tea service she’d shipped back from England. Clearly, Betty had come from a wealthy family, but Margaret had told him that she’d been hired by the law firm that paid her salary. She knew nothing personal about Betty; only the medical history in the doctor’s report. No one in the building had any additional information, not even Marc, who’d purchased the land on Deer Creek Road from the lawyers who handled Betty’s trust.

  Ten years younger than Jack, Betty was thirty-four. That meant her parents would be in their fifties or sixties if they were living. Since Betty had no visitors in addition to the residents of the building and received no mail, Jack assumed she had no living relatives.

  By nature curious, Jack had gone straight to the source. Betty’s life was an unsolved puzzle and Jack hated loose ends. All she could tell him was that she had no family. Of course it didn’t really matter, now that everyone in the building had adopted her as one of their own.

  Betty was sitting up in bed, watching television. She was dressed in the green silk kimono that Clayton and Rachael had brought her from Japan and her light brown hair was tied back with a matching ribbon. She looked lovely and completely normal. There were no physical signs of the debilitating disease.

  Jack set the tray on the table by the bed and leaned over to kiss her. Her cheek was a little too warm and he made a mental note to ask the nurse to check her temperature. “You look pretty this morning, Betty.”

  “Thank you.” Glancing at his name tag, Betty flashed a big smile. “Happy to see you, Jack.”

  “I’m happy to see you, too. What are you watching?”

  “Answers.” Betty nodded. “I’m watching answers, Jack.”

  For a moment Jack was puzzled. Then he noticed that the television was turned to a quiz show. Questions and answers. Everything Betty said made sense if he thought about it from her point of view.

  “Drink?” Betty looked hopeful as he poured two cups of coffee from the silver carafe. “Brown is better than green.”

  Jack grinned. “I know it is, Betty. And this is coffee. Real coffee, not that awful herbal tea.”

  Betty nodded and took a sip. Then she drained her cup and held it out for more. “Caffeine is contraindicated in cases of hypertension.”

  “What was that?” Jack stared at her in shock.

  “I . . . I forget.” Betty looked confused. “Shotgunning again, Jack.”

  Jack nodded. He knew exactly what Betty meant. Sometimes her words came out all in a rush, like the pellets in a shotgun shell. At those times she was amazingly fluent. On other occasions, when she reflected first, the words got short-circuited somehow.

  “Go out today, Jack? Or is it ice?”

  “It’s cold today, Betty, but maybe tomorrow.” Jack caught the disappointment on her face and quickly changed the subject. “Look at this. Croissants and honey butter. Shall I fix one for you?”

  “No, please.” Betty nodded and Jack began to butter the flaky pastry. At first he’d been thoroughly disconcerted when Betty said no and nodded yes. Then he’d realized that her body language was much more accurate than her words.

  Betty took the croissant he offered and nibbled at it daintily. “Will the cowgirl come?”

  Jack nodded. Jayne dropped by every morning. He’d have to call her and tell her to wear a name tag.

  “She comes after breakfast, Jack?”

  “That’s right. Jayne’ll be here after breakfast.”

  “Jayne.” Betty repeated the name. “My in-between name is Jayne.”

  “Your middle name is Jayne? I didn’t know that.” Jack smiled at her. The doctor’s report had listed her name as Betty Matteo with no middle name. Another piece of the puzzle.

  “Call me B. J. The J for Jayne and the B for . . . what’s my front name, Jack?”

  “It’s Betty.” Jack turned away slightly to hide the moisture in his eyes. At times like this, he almost wished he wouldn’t be around when Betty’s illness took its unrelenting course and all the name tags in the world wouldn’t help.

  Fifteen Minutes before 10:57 AM

  Marc Davies rolled out of bed, pulled on a red silk dressing gown with an elaborate MD embroidered over the pocket and hurried to open the blackout drapes that enabled him to sleep late after a night on the town. The wind was whipping up gusts of snow that rattled against the pane, creating the snare drum sound that had roused him after only three hours of sleep.

  As he surveyed the scene, a smile replaced the frown on Marc’s face. He ran his fingers through his curly dark hair and sighed in satisfaction. The sky was a mottled gunmetal gray and the wind was rising fast. Foul weather on the mountain was a great excuse to stay home most of the day.

  Marc took time to pull on a pair of fur-lined slippers before punching out his office number on the bedroom phone. Waiting for his secretary to answer, he grabbed the aspirin bottle on the table by the bed and swallowed three.

  “It’s me, Tam. Cancel my noon meeting, will you? Tell Nicholson I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped. There’s a winter storm warning and I’m stuck up here on the mountain.”

  Marc grinned as Tammy asked the predictable question. “Hell, no. I’ll be in later this afternoon. One other thing, call the electrician and ask if he finished those junction boxes at the Sandhill development. I need them in today.”

  Marc was halfway across the room before he remembered. He picked up the phone again and pressed the redial button. “Tam? If I don’t get in before you leave, meet me at the Golden Steer at seven. I want you to soften up a prospective buyer for Johnny Day’s unit. Name’s Roy Perkins.”

  Just as soon as he’d hung up, Marc turned on his answer phone, started the coffee, and headed for the shower. He still felt a little groggy from lack of sleep, and last night had been a disaster. He’d entertained Sam Webber, the man who owned the land he needed for his next housing development, flying him in from Dallas first-class and picking him up at the airport in a limo. The little man in the ridiculous ten-gallon hat had seemed to enjoy himself during the dinner, but when Marc offered the services of a genuine showgirl for the rest of the evening, Sam had been less than interested. He told Marc he’d ordered a book on blackjack from a television ad, and he really wanted to try out its “sure-fire” system.

  Marc had paid off the showgirl and sent her home in a cab. Whatever the pint-size Texan wanted was fine with him. So they’d started at one end of the strip and worked their way to the other, Marc watching while Sam swilled cheap booze, played impossible hunches, and hopped from table to table in casino after casino. The little Texan had been up five hundred dollars when they’d left for the airport at seven in the morning, despite the fact that he’d done everything wrong. As Sam had gone up the ram
p to board, he’d thanked Marc effusively for the night on the town. He’d said that it was the best fun he’d had in years and he was real sorry, but he’d changed his mind about selling his land. He’d decided to hang on to it for a while, to see if it would go up in value.

  Marc stepped into the giant shower stall and sighed as the hot water chased away the stiffness in his shoulders. Watching someone gamble was hard work. You sat or stood in one place for hours and the tension was just as bad as it would be in any high-powered business deal. And even though he’d managed to slip Sam enough chips to make him think he’d won, Marc had ended up with nothing but a giant headache.

  He studied his image in the steamy mirror as he toweled dry. Pretty good for a guy approaching his fortieth birthday, lean and tall with what Tammy called devil eyes. They were a shade between dark green and blue, and his black eyebrows almost met in the center.

  Marc tossed the towel in the hamper and dressed in a dark green velvet monogrammed sweatsuit. All his clothes were designer originals, carefully crafted to complement his dark complexion and accentuate his height. Several women had compared him to the tall, dark stranger who lived in their fantasies and he encouraged that image by living the life of a freewheeling bachelor. He enjoyed women, lots of them, as frequently as he could manage, but none had managed to lure him into one of Vegas’s sixteen deluxe wedding chapels.

  He went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee, black and strong. On his way out the door, he grabbed a couple of raspberry Danish from the bag on the counter and headed for his game room.

  Marc flicked the wall switch and grinned as his pinball machines came to life. Moira had carpeted the room in midnight blue; the walls and ceiling as well. With recessed lighting, it resembled a dark cavern. Each pinball machine was set back in its own alcove. There were twelve in all, enough variety so he’d never be bored.