by MJ Rodgers
“Funny, Jerry. Very, very funny. And how magnanimous of you to encourage me to call now, when you know perfectly well I didn’t write the number down.”
Jerry let out an internal sigh of relief. “Well, guess that’s that then.”
“Of course, they’ll broadcast the number again on next Monday night’s show,” Wendy said, a bit of hope rising in her voice.
Jerry should have known he’d counted his blessings too soon.
“Still, that’s four whole days away!” Wendy lamented. “Who knows what could happen to Jamie and Tony in the
meantime. I’ve waited far too long.”
“You’ve been watching too many of those soaps again, Wendy. There’s nothing urgent at stake here. She’s waited fifteen years. She can wait four more days.”
“Not if I can help it.” Wendy got up from the table.
“Where are you going?” Jerry asked.
“To call Maddy. She watches the show all the time, too. Maybe she remembers the number.”
Jerry’s eyes shot to the kitchen clock. “It’s not after seven yet. You won’t get the lower rate.”
Wendy grabbed the receiver of the kitchen wall phone and turned back to glare at her husband. “You want to know what you can do with that lower rate, Jerry?”
Jerry recognized that look in his wife’s eye. He buried his head back in the newspaper where he could focus on subjects with more uplifting topics such as arson and murder.
“I’LL SEE YOU INSIDE,” Matt said as he opened the car door for Jamie.
Jamie appreciated the gesture. Matt’s rough, gruff exterior might be right out of the Wild West. But today Jamie had begun to see that beneath this wild-as-the-west tough Texan was a man of real old southern charm.
The way he had handled the ruffled Erline Lagarrigue so smoothly had been real surprising and downright revealing.
She knew he had been attempting to make her feel better at lunch, too, when he assured her he’d find Tony. She didn’t believe a word of his denial that it was just what private investigators were trained to do.
Yes, it had been a revealing day, even if it had led to a dead end in her search for Tony.
Jamie glanced at her watch. It was nearly nine at night. The traveling and disappointment about Tony were taking their toll on her. All she wanted now was some food, a bath and her bed.
When they reached her door, Jamie was surprised to see a large white envelope taped to its front. “Jamie Lee” had been sprawled across it.
“What’s this?” she mused aloud, pulling the taped envelope off the door.
She slit open the back and pulled out the card from inside. It had a big red heart on it, just like a Valentine’s Day card.
“One of your admirers must have missed you today,” Matt said from just behind her.
“I don’t have any admirers,” Jamie answered absently, her fingers tracing over the velveteen heart.
“I believe your dates would disagree,” Matt said, a slight edge to his typically cool, gravelly voice.
“I haven’t dated anyone since Cade and I divorced two years ago. This is a beautiful card. I can’t imagine who could have sent it. Just one way to find out.”
“No, wait!”
She heard Matt’s warning just as she started to open the card. It came too late. The contents were already exploding right in her face.
Chapter Five
Jamie coughed and choked, trying to get the soot out of her nose and lungs. She was still holding the booby-trapped card with the word BANG written in big capital letters inside it.
Her hands were covered in the black soot that had shot out of the card when she opened it. So was her ice-blue silk dress. She didn’t even want to think what her face must look like.
Matt stepped close. She felt his warmth like an enormous blanket wrapping around her. An odd sensation rippled through her and she was suddenly shaky inside. Was it the shock catching up with her?
“Jamie, are you all right?”
His voice had a somewhat unusual sound to it. She tried to look up at him, but the soot sticking to her lashes wasn’t making it easy.
“No, I’m not all right,” she said. “I’m mad. What kind of sick joke is this?”
Matt’s head came closer as he read what was written inside the card. He smelled spicy clean and sultry warm, even-better than the scents of the rain shower and their dinner in Louisiana. Vaguely expectant quivers began to break out inside Jamie.
“Anger’s a good, healthy response,” Matt said. He stepped back. “A lot better than fear.”
Jamie thought his comment sounded strange. And then her eyes focused on the other words written inside the card.
You’re not getting a third warning.
“This is from that caller at the studio the other night,” she said, a rush of breath escaping her lungs as shocked surprise wiped out every other sensation.
“He would get my vote.”
A shiver ran down her spine. “Who’s trying to discourage me from finding Tony? And why? This isn’t making any sense.”
“Let me have that card. I’ll need it and the envelope to check for prints.”
Jamie realized that Matt was holding a pair of tweezers. He fastened them on the card. He adroitly slipped the card into a waiting cellophane bag and repeated the process with the envelope.
“Where did you get those cellophane bags?” she asked.
“I generally carry a few in my pocket.”
“Why?”
“They come in handy.”
“But how would you know you were going to need them?”
“Private investigators are always ready.”
“You yelled out a warning just as I was opening the card. You knew the card was booby-trapped, didn’t you?”
“I guessed it could be.”
“Why would you guess something like that?”
“You come home to find a card on your door that looks to be from a lover. Yet you say you aren’t going with anyone. Three nights ago you got a threatening call telling you not to
do something. You did it. It’s not such a leap to consider the
card might not be from a friendly source.”
“But how could he find out about my last name, much less my address? I’m not even in the telephone book.”
“For someone determined to do so, these things are easily obtained.”
“How?”
“I can think of half a dozen possibilities.”
“Give me one.”
“He could have been at the studio last night and seen you come out to your car. If he didn’t follow you here, all he had to do was call to find out who the car was registered to and your address.”
“Who would give out that information?”
“We’re in a computerized society. You’d be amazed at the amount of data that’s already been gathered on you and is sitting in various computer files just waiting to be accessed. Do you recognize the printing on this envelope or inside the card?”
Jamie peered at the envelope encased in the cellophane, which he was holding up for her to see.
“No.”
Jamie looked away from the offensive card to her grimy hands, her ruined dress. The ends of her bangs were black. She could taste the soot in her mouth. She could feel it on her cheeks, clumped on her eyelashes like thick mascara. Some of it was working its way into her eyes and stinging them.
“I have to wash off,” she said, digging in her purse for her keys. But as soon as she pulled them out, Matt took them from her.
“I’m going in first. Stay behind me. Close and lock the door as soon as you’re inside. Do it as quietly as possible.”
Jamie was appalled at the message in his words. “You don’t think someone’s in there?”
“I’m going to find out.”
“Matt, it doesn’t seem logical—”
“This isn’t a debatable issue, Jamie. I’m simply telling you what I’m going to do.”
And
was he ever. Jamie had once thought Cade stubborn. But Cade couldn’t hold a candle to the stubbornness she was finding in big brother Matt.
Under the circumstances, however, she didn’t take offense.
He unlocked the front door so silently that she wouldn’t have known he’d done it if she hadn’t watched. She followed him inside and closed and locked the door behind her as in-
structed. He motioned her to remain in the entry. He didn’t turn on the light.
She tensed as she watched him open the door to the hall closet, crouching just as though he expected an armed intruder might come barreling out from inside.
The closet was empty. Matt switched on the hall light.
She stayed put while he moved through the rest of the rooms with an intensity and swiftness that told her he has done this kind of thing before. And he took it seriously.
That thought was quite comforting.
When he returned to the front door, he towered over her like a mountain. It was something else that was beginning to strike her as comforting. More than comforting.
“You can go wash up now,” Matt said. “I’ll wait.”
Her heart skipped one beat too many.
“You’re waiting?”
“We have to talk about the plan for tomorrow.”
“Right,” Jamie said, heading for the bathroom. Of course, he wanted to talk business. What else? Where had her mind been?
When Jamie looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, a soot-splattered mess stared back at her. Unbidden images of another time when she’d stood in front of a mirror with a black face began to break through from the back of her mind.
She’d been running. Again. But this time she hadn’t been fast enough to get away. And this time it hadn’t been that man and woman after her.
This time it had been Wrey Kleinman. He had grabbed her just outside the school yard, thrown her to the ground, shoved her face down in the mud and sat on her. And then he had laughed. And laughed. Until Jamie had finally passed out from his weight crushing the breath out of her body.
Jamie resolutely looked away from her reflection, hating the taste of fear that coated her tongue. She took a deep, steadying breath and willed the vivid images to fade. She would not live memories and let them control her. She would live her life—the life she had made for herself and which she controlled.
By the time she had showered and shampooed her hair, she had washed away not just the soot but the past.
She wrapped her hair turban style in a towel and soothed her face with moisturizer. She tied her terry-cloth robe around her, slipped on her fuzzy slippers.
She returned to Matt to find him pacing the length of the living room. He stopped when she entered, and stared.
“Not exactly formal garb, I realize,” she said, quickly surmising the reason for his stare. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Matt looked away. “Whatever you wear is fine.”
“I’ll fix us something to eat,” she offered. “You must be hungry. Dinner was hours ago.”
“I can’t stay.”
Jamie fought down the disappointment that had arisen at his words. “I thought you wanted to talk?”
“This won’t take long. Do you still want to find this Tony Lagarrigue?”
His question surprised her. “Of course.”
“That could have been a letter bomb he taped to your door.”
“Tony had nothing to do with that card.”
“Even if he didn’t, that doesn’t change the fact that you could have been hurt.”
“Are you saying I’m in danger because I’m looking for Tony?”
“Whoever found out your last name and your address and rigged that card to spew out soot is going to a lot of trouble to try to warn you away.”
“Okay, Matt. I hear what you’re saying. But I think this is just the work of some half-wit. He’s not going to do anything serious.”
“And if you’re wrong?”
“Would you live your life kowtowing to some creep’s scare tactics?”
“I can take care of myself, should the necessity arise.”
“And I can take care of myself. There’s a good lock on my door. The windows are wired to an alarm system. I’ve been taking self-defense lessons for years. And if all that fails, I have a gun in the bedroom, which-thanks to Liz and my time out at the Bonner ranch-I know how to use quite well.”
“You going to strap it to your hips and tote it with you wherever you go?”
“Matt, I need to find Tony. You assured me today that you’d find him for me. Have you changed your mind?”
He looked at her long and hard. Jamie sensed that he was testing her resolve. She was determined he would not find it wanting.
Still, it wasn’t easy returning his steely-eyed scrutiny. Every time she met Matt’s eyes squarely, her nerves started to dance up a storm again. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why, but it felt as if she were actually close to danger. Of course, she knew that was silly. Matt was no danger to her.
“All right,” he said finally. “Tomorrow we go to Sweetspring.”
Jamie’s stomach lurched.
“Sweetspring? Why?”
“Because that’s the last place you saw Tony Lagarrigue. There should be some records there that will help us to trace him.”
Jamie walked past the overstuffed cream couch in her living room and sat on the matching chair, dotted with bright lemon and cinnamon throw pillows. She pulled off her slippers, curled her bare feet beneath her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Jamie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’d rather not go to Sweetspring.”
“Most folks never miss an opportunity to visit their hometown. Something about Sweetspring you don’t like?”
“There is plenty about Sweetspring I don’t like.”
“For instance?” he said.
The weak laugh that began in her throat rose up to disintegrate into a nervous, thin sigh.
“They say it’s hard to tell which smells worse, an oil well or a feedlot,” she said after a moment. “I’m here to tell you
it’s a feedlot. Sweetspring has a dandy one that reeks right through every inch of town. First day I ever got a lung full of clean air was the day I left. I never planned on going back.”
“Looks like your plans have changed.”
She glanced over at him and saw he had retreated to the far end of the room. He was casually peering out her drapes.
“I don’t suppose you could do this part alone?” she asked.
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
He turned back to look at her. “Because I might just come back with no leads at all if you’re not there to answer a crucial question when it comes up.”
“It appears I don’t have a choice here.”
“You can stop looking for Tony Lagarrigue.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll be by at eight tomorrow.”
Matt started for the door. He already had his hand on the doorknob by the time Jamie had risen from her chair.
“Just a minute, Matt,” she called out. He turned and waited until she had joined him.
She realized it was probably just the fact that she was in her slippers, but he seemed so incredibly towering and so far out of reach as she stood beside him.
“I appreciate your coming inside and making sure everything was secure. It was real thoughtful.”
“Private investigators are trained for this sort of thing.”
Jamie smiled. “So it was all just a matter of training?”
“That and the fact that if Cade or Liz. or Mama or Daddy read about your murder in tomorrow’s newspaper, I’d have never heard the end of it.”
Jamie laughed, rather delighted to find this funny side of
Matt. At least she thought it was a funny side. Come to think
of it, she was the only one laughing.
Big, powerful, puzzling Matt.
“Lock this behind me,”he said in that quiet, serious voice of his.
And then he just slipped out and was gone.
IT WAS A SWEET AND SUNNY kind of spring day. The land was low and flat and went on forever. Matt had been the world over, but his heart had never left West Texas’s wide-open spaces. It never would.
They’d been driving with the windows down. But fifty miles outside of Sweetspring Jamie had insisted that the windows be zipped up and the air conditioner turned on.
Matt figured it was memories of the feedlot that had prompted her request.
He wore comfortable jeans and boots and a western shirtwhat he deemed appropriate for a long drive through the dusty southwest on a warm late spring day.
He’d been surprised when Jamie answered the door in the kind of well-tailored suit dress that was far more appropriate to city work. Her matching heels were three inches high.
Jamie had always been a sophisticated dresser. She reminded him of the ladies of Dallas who didn’t do a whole lot of shopping outside of Neiman Marcus. But today he could see she had made a special emphasis to look even more well dressed.
He wondered why.
He’d seen her wearing pants plenty of times out at the ranch. She looked as good in them as she did in her fine suits and dresses. But then she looked good in everything.
He had a sudden mental vision of her walking into her living room the night before, scrubbed and shiny faced and covered top to bottom in terry cloth and fuzzy slippers, just as sweet and warm and cuddly as a newborn baby chick.
A baby chick who had informed him she had a gun she was prepared to use in the bedroom. He knew she could use it, too. He’d surreptitiously watched her practice out at the ranch. She was a fine shot, even better than Cade.
Matt’s mental musings had him almost missing the Welcome to Sweetspring sign.
“We’re here,” he said as he looked over at Jamie. She said nothing, just wore that familiar frown that had taken over her forehead the night before when he told her they’d be coming here.
He slowed to the requested twenty-five miles per hour as he drove down the main street.
It wasn’t much of a main street. A couple of restaurants, a few stores. It looked like the biggest industry was bars. There had to be a dozen of them, all with beer signs hanging outside the front and beat-up pickups with gun racks parked out back.
