You Must Remember This

by Marilyn Pappano

  “Men are rarely harmless, and a drunk man will do things he would never even imagine when he’s sober.”

  Another faint smile. “I’m grateful for your help.” She removed her shoes, sensible flats, and tucked her feet beneath her. “You said last night that you feel a connection to Olivia Stuart, that her death or possibly her life was important to you in some way.”

  Her reminder put him on guard, tightening the muscles in his neck and jaw. He didn’t want her to remember that she had wondered if he had played some role in the mayor’s murder, didn’t want her to think of him as a man who might have ordered the killing of an innocent woman. He didn’t change the subject, though. He just waited.

  “Does anyone have any idea why she was killed?” Juliet asked.

  “Just theories. The most popular one involved coal mining. Her last word before she died was ‘coal’ or something similar. There’s been a lot of strip mining in the region. One of the companies wanted to come into the county right outside town, and Olivia was against it.”

  “Why? Every town needs economic development.”

  “Many people feel strip mining is best for the company’s economic development, not the town’s. After a while, the mine shuts down and moves on, their employees are out of work, and the county is left with a scarred mountainside that doesn’t do much in the way of attracting tourists. A lot of people around here are against it. Olivia happened to be one of the most vocal.”

  “Is the mining profitable enough to make killing one opponent a reasonable solution?”

  “If you’re the sort of person who finds killing for any reason reasonable,” Martin replied.

  “What other theories?”

  “Apparently there were some problems in town before she was elected mayor. She’s credited with cleaning them up. Maybe someone held a grudge. Or maybe it was personal and had nothing to do with her position as mayor.”

  “But from what I’ve heard, it doesn’t seem she had an enemy in the world,” Juliet remarked.

  He gave her a dry look. “With the police looking for someone to blame for her murder, would you admit it if you’d wanted her dead?”

  When she broke her long silence, it was with a quiet question. “You wonder if you wanted her dead, don’t you?”

  He didn’t succumb to the denial that came so easily. “Yes. I wasn’t here when she was drugged, but maybe that’s why I was coming here—to see for myself that she was dead and to pay the people hired to kill her.”

  “You didn’t have much money on you when you showed up at the emergency room.”

  “No, but it could have been in the car.”

  “What would it take to find the car?”

  “An act of God. Either it was stolen or it’s buried out there under tons of mud in one of those deep ravines. I don’t think I’m ever going to see it again.”

  She fell silent again for a time, then gave a great sigh. “I don’t know how to prove who you are, but maybe we could prove who you aren’t.”

  “Who aren’t I?”

  “Olivia Stuart’s murderer.”

  “How would we do that?”

  “By finding the person who is.”

  “The police have been trying for ten months. How are we going to succeed where they’ve failed?”

  “I don’t know, but at least we’ve got something to work with. It won’t answer all your questions, but it will ease your mind on that one.”

  “And what if we prove that it is me?”

  “We won’t.”

  “You can’t go into this with preconceived ideas or prejudices. What if we prove that I did order Olivia’s murder?”

  “Then we’ll deal with it.”

  He liked the way she said we, as if they were a team. It made him feel not quite so alone. But the reality was, if Juliet proved him a killer, he was the one who would deal with it. He was the one who would go to prison for it. “So where do we start?”

  She looked at a loss. She was a computer whiz, he reminded himself, not a cop. Still, she was probably logical and methodical—two important qualities in a cop. “I guess we start with Olivia. You said she had two children.”

  “Hal, a city councilman, and Eve Redtree.”

  “Redtree. Rio Redtree’s wife?”

  He nodded. After a long estrangement, Eve Stuart had married the local reporter last fall, giving their little girl Molly a real family for the first time in her young life.

  “What about a husband? Did Olivia have one?”

  “I’ve never heard any mention of one. I assumed she’d been divorced a long time.”

  “Did she have any other family here? Had she always lived here?”

  Leaving his chair, he picked up the pad and pen next to the phone and handed them to her. “Make a list. I’ll get some answers tomorrow.”

  Chapter Four

  “Are you busy?”

  Her head was bent, her eyes on the computer screen, her fingers typing away on the keyboard. What about that picture didn’t look busy? Juliet groused silently as Mariellen plopped down in the chair across the desk. She finished the list she was typing, then looked at her young clerk. She’d often wondered just how much work Mariellen got done on Juliet’s library days, with no one to supervise her. She suspected not much. “Why aren’t you at work?”

  “I was. I took an early lunch.”

  “It’s not even ten-thirty yet.”

  The clerk shrugged. “I heard you ran into a little trouble at the Saloon last night.”

  Grand Springs was, for all its size, still a small town at heart. It didn’t take long for gossip to circulate, even about something as insignificant as her run-in with the drunken cowboy. “It was no big deal.”

  “Jimmy Ray’s not usually such a pain. In fact, he’s a pretty nice guy. He does like to party, though. He must have tied on a few too many, to be hitting on you.” The young woman’s voice caught, and embarrassment crept in. “Not that there’s anything wrong with hitting on you—I mean, unless you don’t want him to. I imagine there must be plenty of men somewhere who would make a pass at you if you wanted them to, but…” She blew out her breath. “You’re just not Jimmy Ray’s type.”

  Resisting the urge to point out to her clerk that she’d been at the Saloon with a man who had turned her down, Juliet looked at her. “Now, that’s a relief.”

  “Oh, hey, he’s a lot of fun, really. He just likes young and less…settled women.”

  Juliet’s fingers returned to the keyboard, typing in commands. She’d been wrong last night when she’d thought that she had once been as young as Mariellen. She’d never been that young. If that was “less settled,” then hooray for settling in.

  “He said some mean son of a bitch practically dislocated his shoulder. From his description, I knew it could only be Martin Smith. He likes older women, of course.”

  Annoyance crept into Juliet’s voice. “Is there anything you need, Mariellen? Because if there isn’t, I know for a fact that you’ve got enough work piled on your desk back at the department to keep you busy until this time next year.”

  “I just wanted to tell you that Jimmy Ray’s not a bad guy. I’ve known him all my life. I lived just down the street from his grandparents, and we played together practically since we were in diapers.”

  Finally she was interested enough to turn away from the computer. “You were born and raised here, weren’t you?”

  Mariellen nodded. “You want to know anything about Grand Springs, if I don’t know it, I can tell you who does.”

  “Tell me about the mayor. The last mayor. Olivia Stuart.”

  “Oh. Well, her son Hal is real cute, but he’s kind of old—like, nearly forty or something. I grew up with Eve. She’s just a year or two older than me.”

  Inwardly Juliet scowled at the description of Hal Stuart. He was cute, but as for old, her best guess was that he was a few years younger than her, and she was still closer to thirty—just barely—than forty. “What about Olivia’s h
usband?”

  “She wasn’t married when she died.”

  “What about the kids’ father?”

  “Oh, him. He’s dead. He died years ago, when Eve was just a baby. I probably wasn’t even born yet. I don’t know how, but it wasn’t a natural death, like, he didn’t drop dead of a heart attack or anything. After Olivia died, I heard my parents talking about how hard it must be for Eve and Hal to lose both parents the way they did.”

  “Did Olivia have any enemies?”

  “Oh, no way. Everyone liked her. She was cool.”

  At least one person hadn’t liked her enough to send Dean Springer to hire a killer, and Springer hadn’t cared enough to try to foil the plot. It hadn’t been Martin. She was convinced of that…almost. Of course, she didn’t want to believe that she was attracted to, spending time with and having lustful thoughts about a murderer, but some cautious part of her knew his self-incriminating theory was entirely possible. He’d been on his way to town at the time of her killing. After the accident, when nothing else had held any significance for him, not even the sight of his own face, her death had mattered. He knew things that it seemed only a cop or a criminal should know, and he was no cop—the lack of fingerprints on record with the FBI proved that. Then, there were the scars.

  And last night. Simmering under his anger last night had been barely leashed brutality. He could have torn Jimmy Ray apart limb by limb without breaking a sweat. He was no stranger to violence.

  But that didn’t make him a killer.

  Whatever he had been before the accident didn’t have to affect what he was now. He’d been given an opportunity to become a different man, and regaining his memory didn’t have to change that.

  “Hello? You in there, Juliet?”

  Fingers waved languidly in front of her face. Startled, she refocused her gaze on Mariellen.

  “Sometimes I think communicating with you would be easier if you had a keyboard attached. What were you thinking about?”

  “Nothing. What were you saying?”

  “Nothing much. If you’re really interested in Olivia, you should talk to Donna Sanderson, the chief’s wife. They were good friends and ran the charity fund-raiser together every year. I’d better get back to work. See you tomorrow.” Mariellen stood and smoothed her skirt over her hips before sashaying away. Her blouse fitted snugly, and the skirt stopped just a fraction above what was decent, leaving mile-long legs exposed. In her own simple cotton dress that reached almost to her ankles, Juliet felt overdressed, overly modest and dowdy.

  The dress was a twin to the one she’d worn two nights ago—that one in a soft pastel print, this one a bold cranberry solid—and Martin hadn’t looked as if he’d found the style the least bit dowdy. In fact, he’d looked…

  She thought back to the moment when she’d realized she was no longer alone, when she’d looked up and seen him standing so still. There had been guilt and embarrassment, but before that, just for an instant, there had been arousal. Just the tiniest flare of arousal.

  Ignoring the longing deep inside, she scoffed at her own thoughts. Martin Smith could have any single woman in town and more than a few of the married ones. All he had to do was give his chosen one a wink and a wicked grin and she would come running. He wasn’t likely to settle for her, especially when she was already helping him, no strings attached.

  But maybe he was willing to settle. Hadn’t he described her voice as sultry? And claimed something appealing—damned appealing—about the women shy girls became? Hadn’t he wanted to dance with her, pulling her onto the floor, urging her in his own sultry voice, Closer…closer…just let me move and you follow…as easy as sex… Hadn’t he told the cowboy, She is taken. She’s mine?

  With a frustrated sigh, Juliet lowered her head until it bumped against the desktop. None of it meant anything. He was a charmer. Flattering and pleasing women—all women—was just part of who he was. It didn’t mean a thing.

  “I admit, there are times when the computers make me bang my head against the nearest hard surface, but I thought you were above that.”

  She turned her head to one side and through a curtain of hair saw Tracey Mendez, one of the reference librarians, in her office door. With another sigh, she sat up. “Computers don’t frustrate me. Everything else in the world does.”

  “So you’re a mere mortal, after all.” She offered the folder she held. “I printed out the Stuart clip file as you asked. I would’ve thought the police would already have copies of all these articles.”

  Juliet’s smile was faint as she accepted the folder. She hadn’t actually said that the copies were for Stone or Jack, but she also hadn’t admitted they were for her and Martin. The fewer people who knew they were snooping around, the better, so when Tracey had made the assumption, she had let her. “Thanks a lot.”

  Tracey lingered at the door. “I heard about last night.”

  Heat seeped into Juliet’s face. Was she also convinced that Jimmy Ray had been drunk because he’d chosen to make a pass at her? Was that what everyone in town thought? “It was just a misunderstanding.”

  “Yeah, Jimmy Ray Bullock thought tight Wranglers, scuffed boots and a charmingly youthful grin were enough to get him any woman in the house.” Then she grinned delightedly. “There are times it’s enough to tempt me. Of course, I don’t have Martin Smith hovering around ready to defend my honor. He could tempt me anytime.”

  She waved on her way out, and Juliet responded with a nod while staring at the manila folder. It was such a temptation to open it and dive in, but this wasn’t business. It could wait until later.

  It did wait. Her workday officially ended at five, but it took her fifteen minutes to convince herself to try to find Martin and another fifteen minutes to find out that he’d left the church and was most likely at his apartment.

  She climbed the steep stairs, caught her breath at the top, considered leaving again, then forced herself to knock. It had been about ten years since she’d shown up uninvited at a man’s apartment. She’d met Jerry in an IT class at the university, and he’d evolved from fellow nerd to study partner to her only truly serious relationship. Then, out of the blue, he announced that he had fallen in love with an empty-headed ditz who couldn’t find the on button to a computer if it was painted Day-Glo green and whistling Dixie. Her parents had thought her heart was broken. It wasn’t.

  Martin opened the door, bringing her back to the present. He was a heartbreaker. Not Jerry.

  His hair was wet and stuck up at angles, and a towel hung around his neck, obscuring all but a tanned strip of chest. His button-front jeans rode low on his hips with the top two buttons undone, and his feet were bare. The sight was enough to take a woman’s breath away.

  She shouldn’t have come, she thought, her gaze riveted on those unfastened buttons. Even if he’d been fully dressed, this was his home, and she hadn’t been invited, and his bed was just a dozen feet behind him, and there was no way she could go inside or even stand here outside and make intelligent conversation. She should give him the articles to go over alone or invite him to her house or, better, to some restaurant where noise, lights and other diners would distract her and give her half a chance at not making a fool of herself.

  “Hey. Come on in.”

  “I—” Her feet ignored her brain’s command and carried her over the threshold. The place was dark—not enough windows—but basically neat. The bed dominated the room—big, empty, unmade. In the months he’d lived here, how many women had slipped between the plain white sheets and helped rumple the covers? In the years before he came here, how many women had shared his bed?

  He closed the door, then started for the bathroom. “Have a seat. I’ll be done in a minute.”

  She watched him, catching a glimpse in the dim light of one of the scars from when he’d been shot in the back. Had he been running away, trying to save himself, or had his attacker been too cowardly to face him and instead ambushed him from behind? And why had this unknown person
wanted him dead? What had Martin done to deserve such an attempt?

  She straightened the pillows on the couch and sat down. It faced the bed and made thinking impossible. Quickly she moved to the chair, but she could still see the bed from the corner of her eye. Calling herself pathetic, she moved to the small square dining table, pulled out the chair that would put her back to the rest of the room and sat down.

  In the bathroom Martin listened to the soft tread of her footsteps as he finished drying off, then pulled on the shirt hanging on the door hook. She was slow to settle. It probably wasn’t easy when everything centered on the bed, when she surely must suspect by now that bed was exactly where he wanted her. He was surprised that she’d even had the nerve to come here. He would have bet that she was too shy, too needy of her own turf, to set foot in his apartment.

  If she’d delayed five or ten minutes, he would have been out of here, on his way to her house to compare notes on the Stuarts. He was glad she hadn’t, though. As uncomfortable as it surely made her, he liked the idea of her and a bed in the same room. He wanted to look at her and see the bed, wanted to imagine her naked in it, wanted to taunt himself with thoughts of what they could do in it. He wanted the sweet, hot suffering, wanted to believe that someday it could come to fulfillment.

  If he found out who he was, what he was. If he could live with what he found out.

  He combed his hair, tucked his shirt in and buttoned his jeans, then opened the door, his gaze going straight to the couch, the chair, the bed, all empty. She was sitting primly at the dining table, nothing in front of her but a wall that needed painting. At least she was still here. She’d found the only seat in the house that avoided the bed, but she was here.

  “Want a soda?”

  She didn’t look at him but shook her head.

  “It’s safe to look. I’m all buttoned up and decent and everything,” he teased softly as he slid into the chair across from her.

  She lifted her gaze, but her face warmed at the hint that he knew she had noticed his unbuttoned jeans. Her voice quavered as she laid the folder she’d been clutching on the table between them. “I have printouts of every article the Grand Springs Herald has ever published about any of the Stuarts.”