Eight Classic Nora Roberts Romantic Suspense Novels

by Nora Roberts

  I’ll pass.

  Sarah smiled and ran her hand deliberately, seductively, up and down her cue. “Got another game in mind?”

  “Shit on Sunday.” Davey missed his next shot. “You’re up, Sarah.”

  “It’s gloomy in here without the juke.” Cam pulled some bills from his pocket. “Why don’t you get some change, Davey, pick us out some tunes? Get another beer for yourself while you’re at it.”

  “Sure.” He sauntered out.

  “Well …” Sarah leaned, long and slow, over the table, sighted in, and shot. “It’s nice to know you’d spend five bucks to be alone with me.” She tossed her hair back, tilted her head, then ran her tongue along her top lip. “Wanna play?”

  “Straight questions, Sarah. And I want straight answers.”

  “Ooh, that official talk makes me hot.”

  “Cut it out.” He grabbed her arm and jerked her upright. “What the hell did you mean the other day about me not knowing this town?”

  She walked her fingers up the front of his shirt. “You were away a long time, baby. Things change.”

  “You’re bullshitting me, Sarah. It didn’t have anything to do with me being away.”

  When she shrugged and started to turn, he pulled her back.

  Her eyes lit. “Go ahead. I like it rough. Remember?”

  “You threw out that bone about Parker. What do you know about why he left?”

  She slid her leg intimately between his. “What should I know?”

  “Give me an answer, Sarah. Things are happening here that shouldn’t be.”

  “Your stepfather gets himself beat to death. Your girlfriend runs a woman down. What’s it to me?”

  “Answers, damn it. Stick with Parker. Why did he leave?”

  “Because he got sick of the town, I guess. How should I know?”

  “You do know, and you were mad enough to almost tell me. Did he used to visit you upstairs?” He caught her hair and held her still. “Did he come up the back stairs for twenty a pop?”

  “What if he did?” She shoved Cam away. “What’s it to you who I fuck?”

  “Did he talk to you—after he’d rolled his fat body off yours, did he tell you things?”

  “Maybe.” She pulled out a cigarette. When she struck a match, her hands were shaking. “Men tell women like me all kinds of things—like they’d tell a doctor or a priest.” She laughed and blew out smoke. “Something you want to … tell me?”

  “After almost sixty years in this town, more than twenty-five as sheriff, he packs up and leaves. Why?”

  “Because the bitch he was married to wanted to move to Fort Lauderdale.”

  “He isn’t in Fort Lauderdale. He isn’t anywhere that I can find.”

  “Parker’s old news.” She picked up Cam’s beer and drank deeply. “Don’t you have enough to worry about? You still got a murder on your hands, don’t you? Or are you letting that slide?”

  “What do you know?” he asked softly. “Who told you things he shouldn’t have told you upstairs in that bed?”

  “I know all kinds of things.” She set the beer down again. “I know who has trouble at the bank, who cheats the IRS, and whose wife won’t do it more than once a week.” She pulled on the cigarette, exhaled. “And I know that you’re pissing a lot of people off by asking questions when everybody thinks you should be looking for psychopaths under rocks in the woods. There’s nothing I can tell you, Cam.”

  “Nothing you will tell me.”

  “I might have, once.” She picked up the cue and gave him a playful poke. “I might have done a lot for you once. Could’ve made things easy for you. But a woman like me looks out for herself, and I figure you’re on your way out. A murder, an attack, slaughtered cattle, all since you’ve been back.” Her eyes were sly with secrets. “Maybe somebody ought to ask you some questions.”

  He leaned close. “Figure this. If you know something you shouldn’t, I’m your best chance.”

  “I’m my best chance,” she corrected. “I always have been.” She turned her back on him and leaned over the table again. She spared him one last glance. “I heard your mama was packing up, too. I wonder why?” Sarah shot the cue ball into the pack and scattered balls.

  * * *

  By the light of her bedside lamp, Clare leafed through her father’s books. It wasn’t the first time. Over the last few nights, she had read them again and again, trying to understand the connection they had with the father she had known and adored. Trying to understand at all.

  She’d found six of them, in the boxes upstairs. Six that dealt with what Jean-Paul had called the left-hand path. A half-dozen books, most of them dog-eared, that touted, even celebrated, the freedoms of Satanism.

  What frightened her most was that they were not the screaming ravings of uneducated lunatics. They were slickly, somehow persuasively written and published by reputable houses. As an artist she viewed freedom of expression the same way she did breathing: No soul could exist without it. And yet each time she opened a volume her skin felt soiled. Each time she read, she suffered. Yet she continued to read, as her father must have, in secret, in shame, and in sorrow.

  He had been searching, she thought. Jack Kimball had been an open-minded man thirsty for knowledge, always ready to question the status quo. Perhaps he had developed an interest in the workings of Satanic cults in the same way he had honed his interest in politics, in art, in horticulture.

  She sat smoking, then easing her raw throat with tepid tap water, wishing she could convince her heart as easily as she convinced her head.

  He’d been a man who enjoyed being fascinated and challenged, being shown a different route. A rebel, she thought with a small smile, determined to break the strict mold in which his parents had struggled to enclose him. Raised by devout Catholics, he had often referred to his parents as Saint-Mom-and-Dad, as if they had been one holy entity.

  Often he’d told Blair and her stories about rising at dawn to make it to mass before school every day during Lent—and dozing through the sermon until his mother would jab him with an elbow. He’d had a never-ending supply of Catholic-school anecdotes, some hilarious, others a little scary. He’d told them how hurt and disappointed his parents had been when he refused to enter the priesthood. He had laughed when he related the way his mother had lit candle after candle, asking the Virgin to intercede so that her son would recognize his calling. But when he laughed, the bitterness had always come through.

  And she had overheard other stories—ones not for her ears. About how his parents had come to detest each other, how they had lived under the same roof, shared the same bed, year after year, without love, often using him as a kind of seesaw on which they weighed their bitter unhappiness. But there was no divorce in the eyes of the church, and those were the only eyes through which his parents could see.

  “Better to live in misery than in sin,” he’d recalled in disgust. “Christ, what hypocrites they were.”

  By the time he married, Jack Kimball had turned completely away from the church.

  Only to turn back, Clare thought now, almost as fanatically as his parents, some ten years later. And a few years after, he had picked up a bottle along with his rosary.

  Why?

  Was the answer somewhere in the books she had scattered over her bed?

  She didn’t want to believe that. Didn’t think she could face it. The father she had known had been solid, ambitious, delightful. How could a man who fretted over a sick rosebush have connected himself with a sect that advocated the sacrificing of animals, the shedding of innocent blood?

  It was inconceivable.

  And yet, there was the dream, the dream that had haunted her since childhood. She had only to close her eyes to see her father, glassy-eyed and naked, dancing around a fire pit with blood dripping from his fingers.

  It was symbolic, she told herself and hastily began to pile up books. Dr. Janowski had said—over and over—that she had never accepted her father’s death
. The dream was simply a reminder of the horror, the grief, the terror of losing him.

  But when she had switched off the light and lay sleepless in the dark, she knew that the dream had come to her long before her father died.

  Chapter 18

  By ten, Emmitsboro was packed. Sidewalks teemed with people, children racing away from harried parents, teenagers hoping to be seen by other teenagers, concessionaires hawking lemonade, hot dogs, and balloons.

  The older, or the wiser, of the crowd had their lawn chairs set up beside the curb, coolers of soft drinks close by. Since the road was closed off from Dog Run to Mousetown, people hiked in from their cars.

  Those fortunate enough to live along Main Street—or to know someone who did—sat on their freshly painted porches, under the shade of awnings. They sipped cold drinks from cans, nibbled chips, and talked gleefully about their neighbors or about parades gone by.

  In backyards picnics were already set—wooden tables covered with colorful paper cloths that fluttered in the light breeze. Grills had been scrubbed down, and beer and watermelon were chilling.

  Emmitsboro High had a new young band director. The old-timers looked forward to criticizing. It was a small, human pleasure.

  There was plenty of gossip. Talk about Biff Stokey’s murder had been relegated to second place by the attack on the woman from Pennsylvania. Farmers considered the butchering of Dopper’s cattle the number one topic of the day.

  But with a communal sigh of relief, most of the townspeople had resolved to put tensions aside and settled in to celebrate.

  The Hagerstown television station had sent a crew. Men sucked in their guts, and women patted their hair as the camera panned the crowd.

  There were twelve who stood among the crowd, hiding behind the colorful banners and laughter to celebrate their own secret rite. Their eyes might meet; the sign would be given. Discontent might simmer among them, but for today the town was theirs, even though the town didn’t know it.

  The black armbands each wore were not an homage to the dead but a symbol of their alliance with the Dark Lord. Their Memorial Day celebration would begin here, among the gleaming brass and twirling batons, and end on another night, very soon, in the secret circle deep in the woods.

  Someone would die, and the secret that had been held among the chosen few would continue to crouch in the darkness.

  In the grandstand Min Atherton preened. She enjoyed sitting up there, looking down on friends and enemies. She’d bought a brand-new cotton dress for the occasion and thought the big purple irises spread across her breasts and hips gave her a girlish look. She was a bit sorry she’d belted it so tight—particularly after indulging in two plates of fried dough—but her mother had always told her beauty must suffer.

  Her hair had been newly washed and set and sprayed so liberally it wouldn’t have moved in a tornado, much less the light spring breeze. It sat like a lacquer helmet atop her wide face.

  Nearby, her husband glad-handed with members of the town council. Min was pleased that he looked so grave and handsome in his buff-colored suit. He’d argued a bit about the red tie she’d chosen, but she convinced him it would look just right on TV. As always he had deferred to her.

  Min considered herself the perfect politician’s wife. The woman behind the man. And she enjoyed the power a woman could wield in secret. She fed him information she gleaned in the beauty parlor, in the market, over the backyard fence, and during bake sales. Often he would pat her hand and tell her she was better informed than the CIA.

  She didn’t need listening devices or hidden cameras. She had a nose for gossip the way a hound had a nose for blood. Min could masticate on a juicy morsel for days before swallowing it.

  It was, after all, her right as the wife of the mayor to know all there was to know.

  She scanned the noisy crowd with her greedy eyes.

  There was Sue Ann Reeder—now Bowers, six months gone and only four months married. That marriage wouldn’t last any longer than her first one had.

  Peggy Knight was buying her three brats soda pop and cotton candy. Teeth would rot out for sure.

  Mitzi Hawbaker had her youngest on her hip and was kissing her husband—tongue kissing, Min thought in disgust—right out on the street.

  She huffed and turned away, not only from the open display of spit swapping but also from the children. All the children. Watching them made her feel empty inside, despite the two helpings of fried dough.

  It wasn’t fair—it wasn’t right—that all those young sluts dropped babies the way a she-cat dropped kittens, year after year. And that she should have a sick and empty womb.

  She hated them, all of them, for their careless fertility.

  “Want a cold drink before it starts, Min?”

  Atherton put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. Min patted it—which was all the affection a wife need show in public—and smiled at him. “That’d be fine.”

  He loved her, she thought, as he hurried off to fetch the drink. And he was all the family she needed.

  With a little help from one of the councilmen, Gladys Finch, in her role as president of the historical society, climbed up on the grandstand in her sensible shoes. “Sure is a nice day for it. Remember how it rained last year?”

  “It’s a little warm.”

  Gladys nodded but felt delightfully cool in her blue-striped seersucker. “Our band has a good chance of winning this year.”

  “Humph.” Min didn’t approve of the new director’s notion of having the band play show tunes instead of Sousa. She spotted the Cramptons and waved, regally, she thought. “Lucy Crampton’s looking peaked.”

  “New diet,” Gladys said and irked Min because Min hadn’t heard about it first.

  “There’s Sarah Hewitt. Would you look at that?” She put a white-gloved hand to her mouth—not in shock, but to disguise the words. “High heels and a skirt that barely covers her privates. I don’t know how her poor mother holds her head up.”

  “Mary’s done her best with the girl.”

  “Should have taken a strap to her a time or two—Why, that’s Blair Kimball.”

  “So it is. My, doesn’t he look nice?”

  “Guess he came back because of his sister’s trouble. Now that’s a disgrace,” she continued before Gladys could comment. “Bringing those people right into town.”

  “What people?” Gladys looked and saw the LeBeaus walking with Clare. “Oh now, Min.”

  “I tell you it’s unnatural. You can spout off all you like, Gladys Finch, but if one of your chicks had taken it in their head to marry one, you’d have sung a different tune. Why, I remember the scandal when the Poffenburger boy brought that Vietnam woman back after the war.”

  “Their oldest girl’s an A student,” Gladys said dryly.

  “And no better than she has to be, I’m sure.” Min sniffed, then turned when her husband mounted the grandstand again. “Why now, thank you, James. I was just pointing Blair Kimball out to Gladys. Isn’t it nice that he came up for the parade?”

  “Yes, indeed. How are you this morning, Gladys?”

  “Fit as a fiddle. Heard you have a big town meeting on Wednesday. People are mighty concerned now that the landfill’s charging twenty-five dollars for a permit sticker. No doubt Poffenburger Refuse’ll raise the rates, and that’ll bump up taxes.”

  “The council and I are looking for solutions.” He took out his glasses, polished them. “Better get the speech-making over with so these people can have their parade.”

  He approached the mike, tapping on it to see if it was on, clearing his throat. There was a scream of feedback that had the crowd laughing, then quieting down to listen.

  He spoke about the valiant dead, the scourge of war, and the honor of God and country. There were those in the crowd who smiled secretly amid the cheers and applause. For the chosen dead, they thought, for the scourge of vengeance, for the honor of the Master.

  Power sang in the air. Soon, there would be fresh blood
.

  Ernie didn’t listen at all. He got enough of Mr. Atherton in school. Instead, he worked his way through the crowd, looking for Clare.

  He was watched—as he had been watched, carefully, consistently over the last days. It had been agreed. And it had been written. His soul was ready for the taking.

  “It starts down by the elementary school,” Clare was explaining to her friends. “Believe me, right about now, it’s utter chaos down there. Kids have lost their gloves or their boots. Some are throwing up in the bushes.”

  “Sounds delightful,” Angie commented.

  “Shut up, you jaded New Yorker,” Clare said and swung an arm around her shoulder. “Word is the high school band has a shot at top honors this year.”

  “What about the majorettes?” Angle’s husband asked.

  “Dozens of them, Jean-Paul,” Blair assured him. “A veritable bevy of high-stepping, nubile beauties. Pom-pom girls, too.”

  “Ah.”

  “Clare was almost a pom-pom girl.”

  “Blair, do you want to die?”

  “Truly?” Eyes glinting, Jean-Paul studied her. “But ma chère amie, you never told me.”

  “That’s because when she tried out, she tripped over her shoelaces.”

  “Betty Mesner untied them.” Clare pouted, remembering. “You dumped her, and she took it out on me.”

  “Yeah.” Blair grinned. “Those were the days. Why, hello, Annie.”

  Crazy Annie beamed. Parade day was her favorite day of the year, better even than Christmas or Easter. Already she’d had a grape snow cone. Her hands were purple and sticky from it.

  “I know you,” she said to Blair.

  “Sure you do. I’m Blair Kimball.”

  “I know you,” she repeated. “You used to play baseball down at the field. I would watch. I know you, too,” she said to Clare.

  “It’s nice to see you, Annie. Some of the roses are blooming,” she said, remembering how her father had often given Annie a flower.

  “I like roses the best.” She stared at Clare and saw Jack Kimball in her eyes, in the easy smile. “I’m sorry your daddy’s dead,” she said politely, as though it had just happened.