“No, he doesn’t.” Ben smiled at her as he rose to his feet. “You’ve been an excellent witness, Ms. Baker.” He extracted a promise from her to inform him of any moves, and told her he’d keep her informed. Seth thanked her, too, then grinned at Ben as they walked to their car.
“I have Dietz on speed dial,” he said.
Jennifer Dietz was the Deputy Prosecuting Attorney they’d been working with on this investigation.
“Call her,” Ben agreed.
* * *
NICOLE CROSSED HER arms and adopted a combative stance as she waited with Ben for Rachel to rush to her room to grab her rolling pink suitcase. “What if you get called in to work?” she asked. “Tell me you have somebody responsible to watch over Rach until I can pick her up.”
They’d only had this same conversation twenty or thirty times. Had she dredged it up again because he’d been incautious enough during their phone conversation Wednesday to mention being out for dinner? Dumb to let it slip, given that Nic had been friendly, wanting to talk about an issue she had with Rachel’s teacher.
Now he unclenched his jaw enough to allow him to speak. “You’ve met Mrs. Chaffee. She’s watched Rachel a couple times before. Rachel likes her.”
“What if she’s not home?”
He kept his voice low, but wasn’t able to strip it entirely of anger. “I haven’t yet left my daughter alone, and I won’t. She’s as safe with me as she is with you.”
“Daddy?” Speaking from right behind her mother, Rachel sounded uncertain. He hadn’t heard her returning.
“Hey, kiddo.” Tilting his head to see past Nicole, he smiled at his little girl. “You sure you have everything?”
“Uh-huh. Bye, Mommy.” She submitted to a hug from her mother, then took Ben’s hand and trotted down the porch steps happily with him.
His last glimpse was of Nicole still standing in the doorway, even from a distance radiating hostility.
He tried to call up a recollection of the last time there’d been warmth between them and failed. Passion, yes, but it had been forever since he and Nicole had had fun talking over dinner, or since she’d asked about his day and seemed to care. And, yeah, he had asked about her day, and cared.
He heard his own voice. You’re saying that Nic drawing a line in the sand over the hours I worked was...a diversion. He rejected the thought between one blink and the next. No, there’d been love, all right. He just wished he knew what had killed her love for him.
“So, pumpkin, how was school?” he asked, looking in the rearview mirror to see Rach, and listened to her chatter.
She worked her way around to negotiating mode. “Can we have pizza, Daddy? You said—”
“We’re not going out tonight,” he told her firmly. “If you want pizza tomorrow after the movie, that’s what we’ll have. Tonight, I’m making tacos, which I know you like.”
She giggled. Which made him remember Eve’s laugh, but, no, he wasn’t going there.
“And for dessert,” he added, “we’re making cookies.”
“Can we make chocolate chip?” she begged.
“Nope, we’re doing cutout cookies like people make for Christmas, except we can make hearts and trees and unicorns and all kinds of shapes instead of reindeer and stars.”
Her face brightened. “With frosting?”
“And sprinkles.”
“That will be fun,” she decided, and bounced in her booster seat.
Unfortunately, he’d overestimated her attention span. She happily cut out enough cookies to fill one cookie sheet, “helped” him spread frosting once they’d come out of the oven and decorated about two cookies before asking if she could watch a movie now.
If she’d chosen How to Train Your Dragon 1 or 2, or even The Lego Movie, he might have joined her. But Frozen? He swore she watched it every time she came, and he knew she had it at home, too.
So he put the DVD in for her, poured her a glass of milk, gave her a couple of cookies and set himself to cutting out, baking and decorating a couple of dozen more. Slapping on frosting, he wondered how different it might have gone if Eve had been here. He bet she could have made decorating cookies fun.
* * *
ROD CARTER FINALLY agreed to meet with Eve on Saturday morning. It wasn’t as if she’d had any more interesting offers for the weekend. So why not work? she thought wryly. In an attempt not to think about Ben and Rachel and what they were doing, she turned her mind to Joel, who had sounded scared the last time they talked.
She had suggested a coffee shop, wanting to separate Rod from his wife and also be able to talk without either Joel or Gavin overhearing. She was already seated in a comfortable, upholstered chair with her chai, staking out a reasonably private corner, when he arrived ten minutes late.
“Sorry,” he said, when he joined her after getting his coffee. “Ah, Lynne wanted me to say how sorry she is that things aren’t so good with Joel. She’s really trying, you know.”
His discomfiture suggested he didn’t believe that, but Eve decided to steer away from challenging the statement right away.
“I’m sorry you weren’t there to talk the last couple times I’ve come out. You know Joel a lot better than your wife does.”
Lines deepened in his forehead. “I thought I did.”
“I gather Mr. Rowe is a difficult neighbor.” Eve sipped her tea.
Rod grunted. “You could say that.”
“Do you know who besides Joel has annoyed him?”
“Who hasn’t?” he muttered. “He reamed me out a month or so ago when some dog knocked over my garbage can and I wasn’t out there early enough in the morning to pick up all the crap.”
“Gavin?”
“Oh, Gavin has his car souped up and Rowe bitches about the racket.” He brooded briefly. “There’s no pleasing him. Guess he was never young.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a teenager in the neighborhood he likes.”
“Or a kid of any size. Trick-or-treaters don’t knock on his door, I can tell you that,” Rod said with feeling.
Time to lay it out. “Do you have any reason to believe Joel would be pulling these tricks on Mr. Rowe?”
He tried to meet her eyes and couldn’t. “It’s not me who is accusing Joel! It’s that son of a bitch next door.”
“Your wife seemed to be taking the accusations as fact.”
“She’s just pacifying the old man. Letting him think we’re dealing with it.”
“So you don’t believe Joel retaliated against him?”
He hesitated. “I don’t want to. Lynne...”
Eve waited him out.
“I’ve been working long hours lately.” He was a PUD lineman, and during winter in a wooded county, outages occurred with every windstorm.
Eve nodded her understanding.
“Lynne sees more of the boys than I do. Joel...he seems to resent her some, or at least she thinks so. He’s been a lot quieter lately. Kinda withdrawn. I thought he and Gavin would hit it off, but Joel hasn’t acted interested.”
Eve let herself look surprised. “He didn’t say anything like that to me.”
At last Rod met her eyes. “Would he?”
“Yes,” she said slowly. “I think he would. He’s been pretty open with me.”
Rod looked away again. Wondering what Joel had told her?
“It’s just teenage pranks.” Once again, he didn’t sound as if he quite believed what he was saying.
“Mr. Rowe could have been badly hurt by the rock through the window. That showed a degree of malice.”
Aforethought, she added silently.
He shifted in his chair, took a drink of his coffee, twitched a little. “Eve, I don’t know what I can tell you.”
They discussed Joel’s sch
ool performance, which was still excellent, his decision to go with the University of Oregon, Gavin’s adjustment to a new high school.
“He already has a girlfriend,” he said with a chuckle. “One of the cheerleaders, wouldn’t you know. Cute little thing.”
Eve hoped Joel hadn’t had his eye on that same cute little thing. She wouldn’t put it past Gavin to target a girl just because Joel liked her. Then she felt the smallest bit guilty about the antipathy she felt for a sixteen-year-old boy she really didn’t know that well.
She gave up shortly thereafter and let Rod make a hasty escape. Although she’d finished her tea, she sat where she was for a few more minutes, thinking. No great ideas came to mind. Her best hope was that the tricks had come to an end. As annoyed as she was at Officer Pruitt, his interest must surely be making the perpetrator nervous. He—and she couldn’t help seeing Gavin’s smug face—might not have believed Clement Rowe would call the police. Nothing had happened since Tuesday. Five days. That was good, right?
* * *
“IS SOMETHING UP?” Eve’s mother asked after passing her the butter. “We haven’t heard much from you lately. Or seen you.”
Her dad didn’t comment. A quiet man, he only continued eating, although Eve had no doubt he was paying attention.
She cast her mind back. In fact, the last time she’d seen her parents had been the Friday night at Seth’s when she’d met Ben for the first time.
“Just busy,” she said, and told them a little about Joel’s troubles. She’d bragged about him before, so they looked surprised.
“But he sounds like such a nice boy!” her mother exclaimed. “Surely no one really believes he’d try to hurt an old man.”
“I don’t. His foster father isn’t being as supportive as I’d like, though.”
“Boy has a lot to lose,” her dad remarked.
“I keep thinking that, too,” she agreed. “A few months from now, he’ll be gone. Doing something like this, he’d be risking his full ride to college. He’s too smart to do that, even if he had a nasty streak, which I swear he doesn’t.”
Eve talked a little more about her work, hoping to divert her mother from her curiosity about what had been occupying Eve’s time. For some reason, she didn’t want to talk about Ben. Maybe she was afraid to jinx the tentative beginning they’d made.
But she should have known Mom better than that. Into the first pause, she said, “You’re surely not working twenty-four hours a day.”
“Well, not quite. I actually did work yesterday.” She hesitated, conceding defeat. “I’ve started seeing someone. A guy, I mean. We’ve had dinner four or five times, seen a movie.” She shrugged. Silence answered her.
“Goodness,” her mother finally said. “Is this anyone we know?”
Damn. They did know Ben. No way she could lie.
“Ben Kemper, Seth’s partner. The man who came to Seth’s for dinner that night, with his little girl. That’s where we met.”
Her mother had gone very still. “Yes, of course I remember meeting him.”
“His little girl is so cute.”
“Yes.”
Dad watched Eve with a somber expression.
“Is something wrong?” she finally asked. “Did you not like him? Or you’ve heard something about him—?”
“Not at all. I’m just wondering why you didn’t mention him. You must have known we’d be interested.”
Oh, wonderful. She’d hurt their feelings. These days, her specialty.
She looked down at her plate, fumbling for an explanation she already knew would be inadequate. “It’s so...new. I wasn’t sure it would go anywhere.”
“But it sounds as if you’ve gotten together with him several times a week.”
“Yes. I just...” Oh, give it up. “I don’t know if he’s serious at all. He’s so handsome, I suppose I’m a little intimidated. Plus, there’s the fact I dated Seth last year. That makes it awkward.”
“I don’t know why it would,” her mother said. “With Seth engaged now, he’s not likely to mind.”
Oh, please, she thought. Seth wouldn’t have minded while they were dating if at any time she’d said, Sorry, and switched her attention to Ben. Because, face it, Seth had never worked up much interest in her.
She waited for the familiar burning sensation, but it never came.
I really don’t mind.
Because of Ben. And because she’d never been in love with Seth anyway.
Relief filled her. Oh, thank goodness, she was done with that silliness. Her pride had been bruised, that’s all. She pictured her adoptive sister’s approaching wedding and felt nothing but pleasure for Bailey, whose life hadn’t been easy. Falling in love, believing in a man, had been no cakewalk for her, either.
And she had more excuse than Eve did.
“I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could talk to me,” Eve’s mother said stiffly. “I thought we were closer than that.”
Kirk Lawson touched his wife’s hand. Eve had seen him do that so many times, sending an unspoken message that his wife always heeded.
Mom’s smile looked only a tiny bit forced. “Oh, don’t listen to me! I know you have friends to talk to. I miss you when we don’t see you, that’s all.”
Guilt, guilt. Resentment tangled in Eve’s chest along with regret that she hadn’t called and girlishly confided in her mother that she was seeing an amazing man who she thought could be the one.
As if she’d smacked into a solid wall, she knew why she hadn’t wanted anyone, and especially her parents, to know about Ben: because she didn’t believe anything would come of their relationship. It was too good to be true. He was too good for her.
And she was very afraid more than her pride would be hurt this time.
“We’ve had a good time talking,” she told her parents, “but the thing with Ben has been totally casual so far.” Except for his kisses, but no way was she talking about that. “I promise I’ll tell you if we get the least bit serious.”
Her mother shook her head. “I don’t know why I’m grumbling about you not calling. It’s not as if I couldn’t have called you.” She looked at Eve’s plate. “Eat, eat!”
Tension might be pasted over, but that didn’t mean Eve hadn’t hurt her mother’s feelings. Something she’d done often since Hope aka Bailey had made her wondrous reappearance.
What Mom didn’t get was that she hurt Eve’s feelings every time she rhapsodized about how happy she was because Hope was home. And Eve knew she was being petty, but, oh, it was hard not to be.
So she chattered gaily about a lengthy email from her college roommate, and knew from her father’s sidelong glance that she wasn’t fooling either of them.
CHAPTER FIVE
EVE DIDN’T RETURN the voice mail message Ben had left Sunday evening until lunchtime the next day. Her call caught him as he was walking into headquarters, carrying a deli lunch to be eaten at his desk.
“I put my phone on Silent while I was at my parents’” was her explanation.
Given her job, he didn’t believe for a minute she hadn’t checked messages. But, okay, she might just not have been in the mood to talk. Or maybe Sunday dinner at her parents was midafternoon and she’d gone out with friends later.
“Good weekend?” he asked.
“It was okay. How about yours? Was the movie a success?”
“Rachel enjoyed it. I thought it was a snoozer.” Ben had kept thinking that if Eve had been with them, he could have laid a casual arm around her, shared a few amused glances. He’d had to remind himself irritably that they weren’t going to play happy family. “Thank God it was short,” he added.
Eve laughed. “There are some entertaining animated movies.”
“I won’t argue. This wasn’t one of them.” He leane
d a shoulder against the wall outside the detective bull pen. “Can we do something one of the next couple of nights?”
“Hmm? Oh, sure.” A murmur of voices told him she’d been distracted. A moment later, she came back on. “Not tonight. There are some families I can only catch at home during the evening, so I schedule at least one a week.”
More disappointed than he would have wanted to admit, he said, “Tomorrow night? Maybe Thai again? Or how about Mexican?”
“Let’s do Mexican.” She suggested a favorite restaurant, they set a tentative time and she was gone, leaving Ben feeling...dissatisfied.
What would she say if he offered to cook dinner for her Friday night, assuming she didn’t make the same offer to him first? Damn it, they were adults! He wanted her, and was pretty sure she wanted him. They’d been dancing around each other for a couple of weeks now, mostly able to exchange only relatively chaste kisses when he walked her to her car in a parking lot with other people coming and going. Neither had commitments elsewhere, except his to his daughter. Why not move on to the good part?
But he’d seen Eve’s wariness and knew why not: she wasn’t ready. Plus, he couldn’t help wondering how much him closing her out this weekend had to do with the vague way she’d responded on the phone, as if he were a distant acquaintance she’d been surprised to hear from.
Yeah, well, tough shit, Ben thought.
If happy family was what she wanted from him, she was going to be disappointed.
He grimaced, knowing she wouldn’t be the only one who’d be disappointed.
Maybe he needed a new strategy. And speaking of dancing...it actually wasn’t a bad idea.
* * *
THE MUSIC PUMMELED Eve’s ears, reducing her to lip-reading and occasionally shouting a comment to Ben.
She was enjoying herself anyway. For Friday night, he’d suggested they go dancing at one of the Indian casinos. She’d never been to this one, but so far, the food and band were both good. Maybe it was just as well to do something fun and not be able to talk. She’d gotten a little frustrated this week because there was so much Ben didn’t want to talk about. His daughter, for one. His ex-wife...well. Eve made a face she hoped he wouldn’t notice with the dim lighting. Given the way she’d blown it the one time, any mention of Ben’s ex-wife was definitely off the table.
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