Seduced by Love, Claimed by Passion~Summer Box Set

by Helen Conrad

  “So where are the rest of them?” she asked as they cruised back toward the station.

  “Who?”

  “The old gang. Jimmy DeWitt and Rodney Harris and … “

  “Gone. Every one of them. Gone.” He pulled up in the sheriff’s parking area and stopped next to her car, then turned to look at her. “You and me. We’re the only ones who are back.”

  “I’m not back,” she said defensively.

  “Okay,” he said, shrugging. “I guess it’s only me, then.”

  She frowned, gazing at him. “What about little Debbie Do-right?” she asked. “Did you ever marry her or what?”

  He took a deep breath and restrained himself from grabbing her by the neck. “Her name was Debbie Dole. And no, we never got married.”

  “Whew. Dodged that bullet, huh?”

  He frowned at her, trying to look fierce. “She was very sweet.”

  “That she was. So sweet it made my teeth hurt.”

  Still, it gave her a perverse sense of satisfaction to know he hadn’t married Debbie. The fact that he’d wanted to at one time still stung.

  Senior Prom Night had been a doozy all right. She wondered if they would ever be able to talk about it. Maybe take back a few things they’d said to each other that night. Maybe apologize for some of the things they’d done.

  Maybe not. Let sleeping dogs lie. There was wisdom in that old phrase.

  They made one more stop. Allison Verva was a veterinarian who lived way back off the road in a little cottage that reminded Kate of the Hansel and Greta stories.

  “I always wonder where she keeps the oven,” she whispered to Blake as they made their way to the front door.

  “What oven?” he asked.

  “The one she cooks the children in,” she said in a ghostly voice.

  His frown was disapproving, but she was pretty sure she saw a spark of laughter for just a moment.

  Susan had adored Allison, visiting her every day after school, helping her with the animals.

  “She was a regular animal helper volunteer,” Kate had told Blake before they’d parked in the turnout. “But then she started coming home with these weird mason jars full of strange looking liquids she refused to identify.” Kate shuddered, remembering. “It was creepy and Aunt Gladys did not go for it. She made her throw them out.”

  Allison answered the door right away, but she clung to it, only letting her face show, as though she was ready to close the door again if anything spooked her. She looked the same, like a hippie from the Sixties who had lost her way back to the commune.

  “Kate!” she cried when she saw who it was. “Oh my dear! It’s so nice to see you.”

  “Hi Allison. Nice to see you, too.”

  Allison blinked rapidly, looking at Blake, then back at Kate not moving her head, only her eyes. “What…what can I do for you?”

  “We’re just checking with some of the neighbors. Listen, you remember my sister Susan.”

  The woman glanced sideways at Blake and then looked away quickly. “Of course. One of my best helpers ever.”

  “Have you seen her lately?”

  A tiny shudder seemed to go through the woman. “Why no. Why do you ask?”

  “Susan wrote me that she was coming here to check out the old house. I thought she might have stopped by to see you. You were one of her favorite people from the old days.”

  “Well, that’s very kind of you, I’m sure.”

  “But she didn’t stop by?”

  “Oh no. I haven’t seen her in years.” She smiled fleetingly and turned to shut her door. “Well, good bye now.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kate said, sticking her foot out to make sure she couldn’t close it. “Have you heard anything from her at all?”

  “No.” She looked down at Kate’s intruding foot and frowned. But then she looked up and a different look came over her face, a look of pure wariness. “Are you going out to that house?” she asked, looking worried.

  “My old house? Sure. Why, is there a problem?”

  She glanced at Blake, then leaned closer to Kate and said, almost whispering, “I just think you should be very careful. That house is not fit to live in.”

  Kate’s eyebrows rose. What a strange thing to say. “How do you know? Have you been in there lately?”

  She drew back. “No, of course not. But I’ve heard….” She started to turn away again and Kate reached out and touched her arm.

  “Who told you?”

  She pulled her arm back quickly, getting behind the door again. “No one. No one at all.”

  Kate frowned. She was getting the distinct impression that Allison might have been ready to talk a bit more if Blake hadn’t been there. She made a mental note to come back later, alone.

  “She’s lying,” said Blake when they were back in the patrol car.

  “You really think so?”

  “Absolutely. It’s obvious.”

  Kate turned to study his face. “So what is she lying about?”

  He glanced at her as though it was too noticeable to bear mentioning. “About who told her your house was a mess.”

  Kate frowned. “Who then?”

  “It was Joe Bob.”

  “Oh.” That wasn’t what she’d been thinking. “So you don’t think she’s seen Susan?”

  He’d started the engine but when she spoke, he put his foot on the brake and turned to face her.

  “No one has seen Susan,” he said, pronouncing each word carefully to make sure she understood. “Susan never came here.”

  Kate drew back, resenting his tone. “How do you know that?”

  “Listen to me, Kate Becker. You’re here on a wild goose chase. You don’t belong here. That place you think you’re going to stay in is in no condition for a decent woman to stay in. Go to the motel, why don’t you? And then in the morning, leave.”

  She blinked at him, wondering at his intensity.

  “Susan isn’t here,” he continued. “Why don’t you go to where she really was lat seen and take the plunge. Go from there. Find out where she really went. Maybe you’ll actually find your sister that way. Instead of…”

  He stopped himself but she had a feeling she knew what he’d been about to say.

  “Instead of filling up a busy cop’s day with nonsense. Is that it?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  She gave him a bleak smile. He thought she was going to take offense, but she wasn’t that churlish. A little churlish, maybe. But not that bad.

  And anyway, he might actually have a point. “All right, Mr. Blake. I’ll do some thinkin’ on it.”

  He looked surprised. “You do that.”

  “Meanwhile, I’m going to go stay at the old house.”

  He shook his head, obviously frustrated with her and her crazy attitude. “You gotta do what you gotta do, I suppose. Just don’t call me in the middle of the night. Okay?”

  “Why would I call you, Officer Spanner? You think I’m going to get scared in the night and need a big, strong, handsome man to come and take care of me?”

  That flustered him-- and that made her grin.

  “Don’t give me a second thought,” she said. “Just one night and I’ll probably be moving on.”

  “Yeah. Good idea.” He looked so relieved, it almost hurt her feelings.

  ************

  The sun had crept down the horizon and was now hidden by the mountains, and its last lingering rays were refracted by Blake’s window blind. Fading light streamed through the slats and formed a pattern on the wall just above his couch, like bars in a prison wall. He shut them all the way and sat down in the dim room.

  Musty smells from the outside had crept into his place, and despite the cold that came with the sun’s descent, he left the door open and set a fan to circulate the air. He didn’t mind the cold outside – it was the cold inside himself that bothered him.

  Kate’s arrival was strange and off-putting, but he sure could have handled it better.
She believed he’d egged on her behavior – well, she’d done the same. That smug manner of hers, the constant one-upmanship was enough to drive any man crazy.

  But he knew there was more to it than that. Seeing her again meant confronting the fact that she’d followed her dream out of here and ended up successful. Too bad he couldn’t say the same. He’d come back to this backwater town to lick his wounds, and the last person he wanted crowing about that was Kate.

  What was she doing here anyway? She said she was looking for Susan. Right. Maybe. But there was no sign that Susan had been here. Maybe it was time for her to try someplace else.

  Yes, that was the ticket. She needed to leave, scram, vamoose. Go annoy some other cop in some other town. Leave him alone.

  Blake was a born cop – even when he was a kid and he and Jim Tourney and Susan and Kate would play out in the woods, if they stepped over a line it would be Blake who stood in the way. He kept them restricted. No vandalism, no rock throwing. And the irony was that Blake wasn’t a killjoy. He remembered the time little obnoxious Timmy Waits followed them into the woods, it was Blake who got the rope and secured him to a tree, to “protect him from bears.”

  He grabbed a beer, which was about the only resident of his refrigerator other than some bread and the rudiments of sandwich making. He liked to think of himself living simply, but the truth was that in the last three years he’d hardly lived at all. It was back in Seattle where he’d done his living, as a detective in the missing persons bureau, missing child division. It was often heart-breaking work: the intensity, the pity, the apprehension, and then, more often than not, the job had to be turned over to the homicide division.

  And then there were the ones you screwed up. Those were the ones that haunted you.

  Blake downed his beer, but didn’t grab another. He would have to be on call tonight. He was on call every night, because when Blake wasn't working, he didn’t have anything but himself and his memory, the two things in the world he hated the most.

  Chapter Three

  Kate didn’t smile much when she got home. The whole big place wasn’t just filled with cold reminders of “Miss Havisham”, the name she and her sister had chosen for their unloving aunt, looking coldly on the two children in her charge. It also still had the smell, something that Kate had always associated with her – a sort of soap mixed with ammonia-- permeated everything when they were kids. Even their bagged lunches (which Susan always had to make for them, since Gladys never got up to see the kids off to school) had the taste.

  It was much fainter now, but still there. More present was an indistinct rotting smell. The house had been ill-treated in the years that Kate had been gone. The front porch groaned and sagged as she walked on it – she was sure the wood there was rotten. And though there was still some light outside, Kate had to turn on a flashlight to see in the house. There were lights in the house, but with the disrepair of everything else she was afraid to use them. A few of the windows were broken, and had been boarded up to keep out the elements.

  Joe Bob must have done that work. A pity he couldn’t have kept the rest of the house in better repair. Kate was walking through what was once the living room. Dust covered everything, and cobwebs stretched across the room at all angles. It was like the place had been used as a spider gymnasium.

  Had Susan actually made her way here? Kate tried to imagine what it would have seemed to her, expecting the faux Victorian glory that had been its hallmark when they were children, and instead finding just an overgrown hovel. She would have been crushed. Susan always lived in a dream world that she created, and when it didn’t pan out, which it never could, it always sent her into a tailspin, breaking down any personal progress that she had made in the meantime.

  Kate figured that was exactly what happened this time. She came here with big dreams of playing house, and when the house didn’t comply, she ran away.

  And aren’t you running away yourself? Aren’t you running from your work in the city? The thought was annoying, primarily because it was true.

  She’d had a hard time making herself come on into the house when she’d first arrived, but once she’d taken that step, the next seemed easier. She moved into the kitchen, and flashed her light through there. The table where they had endured their silent dinners was still there, but its legs weren’t. Maybe they were in the dining room proper. She could imagine rats deciding that the table didn’t belong in the kitchen, and starting to move it piece by piece. Good for them.

  A light switch was on the nearby wall. Kate flicked it on, not expecting much. Why would there still be electricity, after all? She’d packed a couple of camping lanterns to use out in the car. But the lights came on for a second, then something sparked and they shut off. Kate could hear sizzling along the wall, and she slapped the light switch back off.

  “Note to self – stop doing anything,” she said aloud. Her voice sounded weak and small inside the massive house. It felt like the entire place was built for its belittling effect – the ceilings were too high, even here in the kitchen, and it looked like the counter was built at an odd height. Oh well – it was Kate’s house now, she could do whatever she wanted with it.

  And the first thing she wanted to do was leave it and go grab a room in a motel. Preferably one far away from Whispering Pines and big old annoying Blake Spanner.

  The more she thought about the time they spent together the more irked she felt. He wasn’t even cordial! She wasn’t some twelve year old brat trying to best him at everything anymore. He was better left ignored, she decided.

  Then why was she spending all this time thinking about him? That was another question to leave alone, but she knew she wouldn’t. It was part of being a lawyer that she could never let go: questions had to be followed to their logical conclusions, even if she didn’t like the answers. Information was there to be processed and understood, and she didn’t understand why Blake Spanner kept coming to mind.

  Maybe because the house was so depressing. She stopped in the downstairs bathroom and turned on the faucet as a test. After a few seconds of it chugging like an old motor giving up the ghost, some black stuff masquerading as water sputtered out, and then some brown. Once the leaves came out Kate was bored with the novelty – she just wanted water.

  After a solid minute of spewing filth, water, clean and good, finally did start to pour. This meant that the showers upstairs and down should work, though she wasn’t certain whether the water heater would. She went back to the front room, ducking twice under complex meshes of webs, and kicked at the knee high pile of mail that had been placed there. She tried to ignore the sound of tiny little insect feet scuttling from their hiding places inside the pile, and looked for a gas bill.

  It was resting next to its friends the phone bill and the electricity bill. Bright red letters were printed on all the envelopes, saying things like “Final Notice” or “Repossession Imminent”. Funny that most things still seemed to be working. Still, it was comforting to know that she would still have to pay for all the utilities, even if things didn’t work. Aunt Gladys had left behind a healthy sum of cash as well as the house, but most of it had gone to pay off the inheritance tax. If she wanted to actually get this place up and running, she’d have to dig into her own coffers.

  Kate sat down on a small pillow of junk mail on the floor and shone the light up on the high ceiling. A light fixture was there, but she wasn’t about to try and turn it on. The whole place might go up. She would need an electrician, maybe a plumber, a gas man... and she hadn't even given any consideration to her accommodations. Maybe she'd be right here on the floor with the bugs and the mail. She opened the front door to let the last rays of external light shine in.

  There was precious little illumination out there, but it did brighten the gloom a little bit. It also gave Kate a good view of her car. It was a cute little PT Cruiser she'd bought just a couple of years ago, and she had much more affection for it than any man she'd had the misfortune of dating since.
All of San Francisco was starting to sour in her mind, just like Whispering Pines had once. The back seat of the car was piled high with bags and trunk, a reminder that this trip back home was as much a retreat as anything else.

  I'm no different from Susan, she thought. Running when the going gets tough.

  But why back to Whispering Pines? There was less work here, certainly less stimulation, and, if Blake Spanner was any indication, the pickings here in Whispering Pines weren't going to be any more impressive. Boy, Blake had gotten on her nerves. That must be the reason she kept thinking of him.

  ***

  "Is that a duck?"

  Kate lifted her head from her pillow, her speech half slurred by fatigue. It was about two in the morning, and she'd gotten maybe an hour’s worth of sleep since getting to bed at ten.

  To think some people went to the country for peace and quiet! Crickets were fiddling right outside her window, the mosquitoes buzzed too. June bugs bashed against the screen that blocked the bedroom window (thank God her old room was facing away from the road, where no rocks had found it.) Most unnerving were the coyotes howling out low and frightening songs, and their equally maddening responses.

  Lower and stranger were the frogs, but it was the duck that finally made Kate sit up in frustration. She glanced out the window, and caught a quick glimpse of the white feathered nuisance just outside the door before it disappeared, quacking all the while.

  In her high-rise apartment in San Francisco, she was above a lot of the noise of the city, and if she was bothered by aviary, it sure did not quack. The thing should be asleep, Kate reasoned, or maybe roasting on a spit or flying south or...

  She gasped as she saw a light flicker on the ground, a lantern-held candlelight that shuddered in the wind. It moved along the brush, but whatever hand held it was hidden in the overgrowth.