by Cait London
Trina studied her daughter. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re looking for some reason Mallory took her life. Haven’t we all blamed ourselves enough?”
“Scanlon. I’m looking for information on him.”
“Kyle?”
“He changed his name legally when he was twenty-one. The question is: Who was he before that?”
“If I know you, you’ve got your business connections working on that one. I blame myself, you know, for your need to succeed. Your guard is always up when it comes to men. As a child, you saw me working too hard, desperate to make money to survive and wishing I had that college degree behind me to make a better living for us. I think if you’d have had a better father image—”
Trina looked at Rachel’s raised eyebrows. “If you’d have had any kind of a good father image, your take on men might have been better. I blame myself for that. It seems like Jada went one way, marrying a man like your father, and you went a totally different direction, not really trusting one at all.”
“Okay, Mom. You opened this conversation…. Tell me again why you never remarried. You’re pretty sexy still, Mom, and I’ve seen men’s heads turn toward you more than once. You dated and you were asked to get married a few times through the years. Jada and I are grown now, so if you waited, that’s no excuse.”
“I have what I want—a comfortable relationship. And you may be right, that deep down, I still don’t trust enough to marry…I did love your father, though. But now, I’m worried about you, that my experience with your father may have wrongly influenced you. You’re pretty, you’re smart, and you could be pushing away love. Life cheated me when it came to love and that isn’t what I want for you girls.”
“I’m a career woman and I like it, Mom. Please don’t worry. You first.”
As Trina lined up to break the balls, Rachel watched a boy on a bicycle ride by the window. Who was the girl with Kyle in Mallory’s scrapbook? And Why was Kyle with the girl?
Then: Who did that cloth doll represent?
Was that man somehow connected to the child?
The first answer came back as Any Man. After a week of getting used to Nine Balls patrons, their preferred times and keeping the minibar stocked, Rachel had learned that deals were made at Nine Balls, the businessmen scheduling for afternoon games. Other men put in a fast game after five-thirty with a sly request that they be “invisible” for “anyone who might ask,” which translated to wives with dinner on the table.
They were no more curious about Rachel than she was about them. She dismissed the usual morning checkers crowd, the older retired men, needing a place away from wives, who wanted to do their cleaning without husbands underfoot. After realizing Tommy’s involvement with Mallory, Rachel was careful to note men who were looking at her with sexual interest, as if she might replace Mallory. Too many of them had fine brown hair….
Trina’s arm went around Rachel. “Honey? Where did you just go off to?”
“I’m just enjoying the first Ladies-Only tonight. Are you staying?”
“No, Bob and I are watching a movie, a western, at his place. He’s cooking Italian. I’ll see you tomorrow and bring leftovers. So Kyle still has Harry?”
Rachel thought of the phone calls that consisted only of a cat’s purring sounds. “I’ve been too busy to deal with Harry, but I am getting him back.”
“I heard that Harry is getting fed well—Iris has been checking out the fisherman’s catch—”
Rachel turned to her mother who was placing the cue in the wall rack. “You mean that they might be feeding my cat fish guts?”
Aware that Rachel was furious, Trina said lightly, “Oh, I have no idea.”
“I’ll kill him, Scanlon, if he lets anything happen to Harry.” That young tom had come from the park’s bushes after Rachel’s attack; he’d licked her face and had lain close to her, warming her stunned, icy body. She’d carried him home that night and he’d stayed near as if he sensed that in her trauma, she needed a friend…. “I love that cat. But Harry isn’t exactly happy with this place. He tried to run out of the door from the minute I put him down on the floor. Either that, or he hides and won’t come out.”
Trina kissed Rachel’s cheek. “Cats choose their people, remember? Got to go. If Jada turns up, tell her I’m at Bob’s, okay?”
At eight o’clock Nine Balls’ tables were filled with women. Rachel knew some of them from her previous visits. Several twenty-ish women were lively, adding whoops and catcalls to the steady hum of gossip, all of which Rachel listened to as she moved around the room.
They were all curious about her, cautious about what they said about Mallory, about when Rachel would sell the billiards parlor, and about the details of Mallory’s death. Apparently gossip of the burning of Mallory’s things had reached all of them. Whatever the case, Nine Balls was packed with women, and while watching the tables’ reservation schedules, refilling the mini-bar’s supplies and promoting the upcoming children’s Saturday morning lessons, Rachel listened very carefully to the gossip about their husbands and boyfriends.
As arranged, Terri, Sally Mae, Dorothy, and Jasmine arrived on their usual nine o’clock schedule for an hour of playing time that Mallory would sometimes let extend into a late-night girl’s session without paying for the tables. At nine o’clock on a Monday night, the other women were leaving and Rachel made the rounds, encouraging them to come back and handing out free one-night courtesy passes.
When Rachel turned back to the four women who usually played after nine o’clock, Sally Mae seemed embarrassed; she looked away from Rachel and chattered nervously to the other women. She played briefly, then left because “the kids both have a cold and Tommy just isn’t good at taking their temperatures.”
Rachel methodically played each woman, listening to her talk about her family, the everyday stuff. But she focused on information about their husbands. Terri Samson had a new boyfriend and was excited about him. She wasn’t ready to give his name, because they “weren’t in really solid yet.”
“I’d like to know more about Mallory’s boyfriends, more about her life,” Rachel said and noted that Jasmine Parker missed an easy shot.
“She had a few, I guess…sounds like,” Dorothy said quietly and avoided looking at anyone else. But her fingers, formed around the cue, gripped it too tightly. She jabbed at the ball, rather than her usual smooth, easy stroke.
“I’ve heard a few husbands were involved,” Rachel said quietly at the next table and noted Sally Mae’s indrawn hiss of breath, her furious expression.
“Leave Mallory in peace,” Terri said quietly, almost defensively as she moved around Rachel to line up for a shot. She bent, positioning for the shot and called it, “Eight ball, corner pocket. Don’t stir up Neptune’s Landing on a witch hunt that could hurt too many people.”
Terri missed the shot; Rachel made it and said, “I’d like to talk to you privately, Terri.”
The attorney’s expression hardened. “Sorry, no can do. Mallory was my client and what she said stays with me. Let her rest, Rachel.”
Rachel met the attorney’s cold blue stare as she racked the balls for a new game. “I owe her, Terri, and she deserves more than the way she died.”
Terri didn’t wait; she lined up the cue ball and shot, breaking the “rack.” She moved to sight in on the one ball, aiming for the corner pocket. “Rebuild this place. That should be enough.”
When she missed, Rachel lifted her cue. Terri gripped it, studying the inlaid design. “That was Mallory’s.”
“It was and it should be used. As her attorney, you should know that everything she had is now mine.”
“You’re not exactly making friends by asking so many questions.” Terri released the cue and Rachel shot, hitting two balls, each rolling into separate pockets. “You dig up dirt and someone could get hurt,” Terri warned quietly.
Rachel hadn’t really played in years, but she intended to win this game, and the other silent one. She finished the “rack” quickly and
turned to see the women studying her. “I want the names of any man involved with Mallory, and I’d appreciate your help.”
After a static silence, Terri put her cue into its custom case and snapped it closed. “Game is over.”
In her apartment later, Rachel worked on her laptop on the kitchen table until the figures started to blur. With her own savings invested, Nine Balls just might get back on a paying basis—it would take expensive radio ads, promotions, freebies….
Tired and aching from the routine nightly cleaning, Rachel lay down on her couch and watched the candlelight throw shadows on the wall. “You’re still here, aren’t you, Mallory? You want him caught, don’t you? But you want to protect those you love? Is that it? Help me, Mallory. Give me something to work on—”
If you do anything to my family, I’ll haunt you forever…. That eerie light in Nine Balls’ upstairs apartment reminded the man of another woman and her endless chanting.
He could almost see Mallory now, her long red hair tight with natural ringlets, bending over her candles, her eyes green as a witch’s amid that pale angular face. She had rocked as she chanted to the candles. She’d fashioned a doll from the hair from his brush and from a blue-striped dress shirt, and no matter what he did to her, Mallory would not give it to him.
Instead, she had chanted the words damning him, and he could never erase the curses that clung to him, even after her death. He’d taken her charms as he found them, partly to take away something she seemed to need, and partly to make certain nothing was in them that could lead to him.
“In a way, only I know of what you did, and that makes me special, doesn’t it, Mallory? You only revealed to me that part of you that you didn’t want the Everlys to know about?”
Rachel’s long yellow Cadillac sat next to the apartment stairs, gleaming alone in the streetlight. The mist that enfolded and hid him had settled onto the waxed finish and sparkled like jewels as he thought about Rachel. She was up there, burning candles, just as Mallory used to do. “Sisters beneath the skin, witches the both of them….”
But Rachel was steel to Mallory’s pliability, and intent upon piercing the secret that bound him to Mallory….
In the shadows of Atlantis Street, the damp ocean air settled into his clothing, causing a chill to settle into his bones. Or was it the echo of Mallory’s chanting?
She was dead now, mourned by a few, and he wasn’t one of them. Mallory had known too much and eventually, she would have exposed him, and ruined his life.
The woman in the apartment now was asking too many questions and that meant Rachel knew something, too. But Rachel already had a taste of what he could do…he might just have to do it again….
“None of this is my doing. Mallory lured me into sin. It was all her fault.”
The steady drip of water from the tree branches onto his head had created a headache and each drop brought echoes of Mallory’s litany—If you do anything to my family, I’ll haunt you forever….
“I wondered when Rachel would get around to my girls.”
At nine o’clock on Wednesday evening, Kyle entered his home and looked at the women who had just stopped line dancing. Patty and Iris let out delighted squeals and came running toward him.
The third woman stood in the center of his living room, her hands on her hips and her stance pure attitude. Rachel was dressed in a tight pink sweater with a cord barely keeping the edges of the bodice closed, and tight jeans rolled up to the top of western boots; it was the kind of look that would appeal to Patty and Iris, both fond of tight, revealing clothing.
Rachel’s lips were glossy, her hair was in a spiky-looking ponytail, and her cheeks were flushed; her dark eyes burned him from within heavy layers of shadow and mascara. The big flashy hoop earrings were a real surprise, shimmering a little to tell him that she was holding back a brewing temper. And that tapping foot wasn’t keeping time to the music….
“Hi, honey,” Kyle murmured directly to her as Patty and Iris stood on either side, hugging and kissing him.
He handed each woman a gift-wrapped package and wallowed a bit in their excited, “Ooo…you never forget. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
The woman standing in the middle of the room looked grimly disgusted and he gave her a big grin that he knew would irritate. “If I’d known you were waiting for me, I’d have brought something for you, too.”
Rachel’s “Spare me” was flat and hard.
“Something big with a bow wrapped around it, too.” Kyle enjoyed the slow perfect flush that his sensual remark brought to her cheeks; her anger spiked in the tight set of those glossy lips and her jaw, the way her eyes nailed him.
Kyle let his grin widen as the other women gushed about their sexy thongs and stuffed teddy bear gifts. Road weary, his back hurting from bending beneath a racing motor’s hood and running on a lack of sleep because Rachel’s kiss had left him simmering, Kyle was in a perfect mood to tangle with her.
Or make love to her. The cord zigzagging down her front exposed her rounded breasts. “That hot sexy look is good on you,” he stated, just to start the ball rolling.
“So you’ve been gone for three days, huh? You look like crap.”
“Thanks. Always good to hear those sweet little nothings.” Kyle moved into his favorite easy chair and Patty promptly lifted his feet to the footstool, then unlaced his work boots, taking them off.
“You feel like dancing with us, Kyle-honey?” Iris asked hopefully.
“Maybe later. I just got in. Give me a break, will you?” he asked with a smile and a pat to her bottom. When she giggled, he smiled at Rachel, who looked disgusted and ripe for taunting.
“Get me a beer, will you, Iris?” he asked. “Beer, Rachel?”
“Sure. Love one.” She wasn’t backing down, a real player, Kyle decided, admiring Rachel as she sat gracefully onto a couch. She crossed her legs and tapped her fingers on the arm as if she were a business executive, poised for a tough meeting. She smiled tightly and asked, “So where have you been, honey?”
He took the beer bottle Patty handed him and thought of the elegant wineglasses at Rachel’s home; the glassware marked the differences in their lives, that common didn’t mix with elegant. “Thanks, Patty. Rachel might like a glass.”
“The bottle is fine,” Rachel stated.
“Napkin?” he pushed and smiled as Rachel took the perspiring bottle and wiped it on the arm of the large couch.
“I’m fine.”
He lifted his bottle to toast her and their eyes locked, both understanding the purpose for her visit. Rachel was here to get information, and she wasn’t running. A man had to love a woman like that—The thought stunned Kyle and he sipped his beer to recover; a man had to be a fool to get tied up with a woman as headstrong and independent as Rachel. “You are truly that—fine. Learn anything useful?”
“You weren’t supposed to be back tonight, you know,” Rachel returned sweetly and lifted her bottle to drink. “So where have you been?”
“We didn’t know, honey, or we would have told her,” Patty said.
Kyle decided that with Rachel around and obviously prowling for information, he needed to caution Patty and Iris about his privacy.
He settled down to place his head on the back of the chair and enjoyed watching Rachel on the hunt. He’d been hunted by women before, but Rachel could definitely raise his body to alert—especially dressed like that, the light gleaming on the wedge of curves exposed by that cord…. “I’ve been gone, now I’m back. Everything okay at your place?”
“Just fine. I had the tour earlier. Your parts room—very neat and organized—the bedrooms, one for each ex-wife. I’ll bet that’s handy.”
Patty and Iris had come to sit on the edge of his chair. “She loved your room, honey,” Iris said warmly. “We thought we might show her your racing pictures later.”
He wasn’t surprised. Rachel wanted to know about that young girl in the photograph, and she was looking for damning information
about him. “It’s boring and in the past. I was a kid. That can’t interest any one. I’m better looking now.”
“Racing, hmm? Now that’s interesting.” Rachel smiled and lifted her eyebrows. Anyone who didn’t know her better wouldn’t notice that narrowed intense look.
“That was a long time ago.” Harry chose that moment to come from wherever he’d been hiding and leap up onto Kyle’s lap. Just to up Rachel’s brewing temper, Kyle stroked Harry and the tomcat’s purring sounded loudly.
The cord confining her breasts lifted as Rachel breathed deeply, apparently controlling herself as she calmly sipped her beer. Kyle appreciated that: the way Rachel kept focused on what she wanted, those dark brown eyes locked onto him.
“Oh, I’m interested,” she said. “I like old jock stories. But if you’re not talking tonight, there are always other times. I’d better go. And I’m taking my cat with me.”
“Ohh,” Patty and Iris cooed in disappointed unison.
“We were having so much fun. We were just talking about how we met you and how you’re always so good to us, Kyle. See if you can’t make her stay longer,” Patty said.
“I would, if Kyle is telling stories.”
Kyle lifted his beer bottle in a toast; Rachel was still in there, angling for answers. “Pass. I’m tired.”
“Oh,” Rachel’s feigned unhappy sigh matched the other women’s. “That’s too bad.”
“You missed me, huh, Rachel?”
“I wouldn’t exactly say that.”
Kyle noticed Patty and Iris’s quiet, alert interest, the way they watched Rachel and then him, then back again. “She’s hot for me,” he explained. “Can’t leave me alone.”
The other women giggled knowingly, but Rachel was on her feet, her eyes flashing. Then she smiled slowly. The smile didn’t reach her eyes as Harry rolled over to have his belly scratched and his purring sounded even louder. “He wishes. Patty and Iris, make sure you come into Nine Balls when you can. I’ll give you free lessons, but not on Saturday morning, because that’s time I’m reserving for children and youth sessions.”
