Shadow's Lady (A Pajaro Bay Cozy Mystery + Sweet Romance)

by Lee, Barbara Cool

  Halfway down the hall she froze, horror washing over her like a wave.

  No he wasn't.

  Matteo DiPietro. Matteo's on the Wharf. The best and only Italian restaurant in a small town where gossip traveled as quickly as the ocean breezes. It all came rushing back to her. The dinner in the restaurant on the wharf: 'You ought to have more kids to keep up with this crowd,' she had joked to Mrs. DiPietro. The DiPietro daughters zipped past them, taking orders and bussing dishes with clockwork efficiency while a crowd waited impatiently in the lobby for one of the coveted tables to become available.

  But instead of smiling at the joke, or puffing up with pride at her brood, Mrs. DiPietro had reacted with a look Lori could only interpret as grief. The woman, who suddenly looked very old and bent with worry, had murmured something polite as she set their steaming plates of seafood pasta on the table and then quickly disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Lori knew she had said something very wrong, but she hadn't known what until Aunt Zee had explained that the family's eldest child wasn't going to be waiting tables in their restaurant any time soon.

  Because Matt DiPietro was the Shadow.

  The murderer.

  chapter seven

  The soup bowl hit the floor with a crash.

  "Are you all right?" The Shadow's voice came from behind the bedroom door. "What was that noise?"

  "Nothing." She picked up the pieces of the broken bowl as quietly as possible.

  "Are you hurt?" he asked. "Do you need help?" She heard the brass bed creak. He must be trying to get up.

  "No!" She swallowed hard, then tried it again, in what she hoped was a calmer voice. "No, thank you. I just dropped the soup bowl. I don't need any help. Go back to sleep."

  "Okay," he said. "Be careful not to cut yourself."

  She held her breath and waited until she heard the bed creak again as he presumably lay back down.

  •••

  She spent a sleepless night at the kitchen table, with one hand on a heavy, snow-globe paperweight in case he came for her in the middle of the night.

  At least she intended for it to be a sleepless night. But the strain of the day must have finally gotten the better of her.

  She woke up with a stiff neck, her head resting on the kitchen table. Ophelia's fluffy tail waved about, slapping her across the face.

  "Ack! Move, beast!"

  Ophie jumped down off the table, then up onto the Aga.

  She looked around the kitchen. The lights were on. Rain pattered against the kitchen window, and the foghorn was sounding. The kitchen clock said 10:15. There was some light outside the window, so it must be 10:15 in the morning, not evening. But why was she holding a paperweight?

  She was dressed in her jeans and tee-shirt. Her latest batch of photos were scattered across the table. She must have been working and dozed off.

  She got up and shuffled over to the Aga to put the kettle on. Wow, there sure was a lot more cat hair on the pine floor than she ever remembered seeing before.

  And it was black.

  Dog hair.

  It all came back to her—the howl of the dog, the seizure by the cliff, the injured pirate sleeping down the hall in her brass bed.

  The paperweight in her hand was to protect her from the Shadow.

  A paperweight wouldn't be much help against a murderer. She set it down on the table.

  She had a whopper of a headache. She'd had a seizure yesterday. No wonder she kept falling asleep. It was amazing she'd stayed conscious as long as she had.

  She felt like she was going to be sick. What kind of monster had she brought into this house?

  During their dinner at Matteo's Restaurant, Aunt Zee had been reluctant to give her details about the DiPietros. She had thought it odd that the great-aunt who always joyfully regaled her with gossip about every Hollywood star and jet-setter would balk at telling the story of one local boy gone bad.

  But Aunt Zee had said this was different. This was a genuine tragedy: the story of a small-town family that had worked to give their kids a better life, only to have their eldest son become one of the most despicable gangsters on the West Coast.

  Matt DiPietro. The Shadow. She wished she had been able to drag more info out of Aunt Zee.

  It wasn't like she could go wake him up and ask him what the story was. 'So, I hear you murder people,' she might start. 'Is there much money in that line of work?'

  What had Aunt Zee said? She tried to remember every detail of that dinner at Matteo's.

  He had been a high school football star (she'd been right in thinking he was a dumb jock), had gone off to college, but had gotten involved in some sort of drug gang and had killed some rival gangster. He had gotten off on a technicality or something—No! He'd been acquitted because the witnesses were scared to testify. It was like something out of The Godfather.

  He had earned the nickname Shadow because he could slip past the cops without getting caught, Aunt Zee had said.

  She was out here alone with an evil, dangerous man who had brought his family nothing but grief and shame.

  And from the sound of the foghorn outside, she wasn't leaving the island any time soon.

  How had she gotten herself into this mess?

  Simple. She had been stupid, and reckless, and impulsive, and a dozen other things she was smarter than to be, and now she was paying for it.

  Cut yourself some slack. Okay, so she had been a bit foolish running off to this island alone, but she had handled things pretty well, all things considered. After all, "helpless little Lori" had saved a man's life.

  It was just her bad luck that saving this particular life hadn't done the world any favors.

  She briefly pondered the logistics of pushing the brass bed outside and dumping its occupant back over the cliff whence he'd come.

  "Nah," she said to Ophie. "The seals are dying often enough without that slime mucking up their tide pools."

  Speaking of the slime, she'd better figure out if he was still asleep, or (she should be so lucky) if he'd gone sleepwalking during the night and wandered off the edge of the cliff.

  She needed a plan.

  She reached for the little AM/FM radio she kept on the kitchen counter, and turned the dial.

  Rock music, some weird old radio program (that was the Pajaro Bay channel), mariachi music, commercial, commercial. Where was that news station?

  There. Traffic report. She reached for the opened package of chocolate cookies on the counter while she listened.

  There was something voyeuristic about hearing a report of traffic jams on the Golden Gate Bridge from a hundred miles away. All those people out there stuck in traffic thought they were having a bad day. She'd be glad to trade places with them.

  But the weather report following the traffic update announced her doom. How dare that reporter say "small craft advisory still in effect—storms continuing throughout the day" with such an obscenely happy sound in his voice?

  She had to get out of here, she realized as she switched off the radio. It was one thing to come out here alone to prove she could be independent, but she couldn't possibly stay on the island with a murderer. There had to be some way to get a message to the Coast Guard. She'd better check out the ruined radio and see if there was a chance she could get it working. Without that, she was stuck.

  She rubbed her stiff neck. How long had she slept? More importantly, was that man still unconscious in the bedroom, or was he creeping around here somewhere?

  •••

  Lori knelt over him. "There, there," she whispered in that throaty voice. The moonlight made her a pale siren: her hair wisps of platinum, her body all soft curves in a silvery beaded gown that skimmed her figure from shoulder to ankle. Cool jazz music wafted through the air, echoing her every movement. The lighthouse seemed bigger than he remembered it, like an art deco ballroom with marble floors and a giant fan-shaped window through which the moon lit the scene with a shimmering silver light.

  T
he night was freezing—a bitter cold that left him lying on the floor, too weak to move. Lori's skin was luminescent as the moon itself, but he hadn't enough strength to lift his arms and touch her. "There, there," she said again. Her hand brushed over his leg, but he felt no pain, even where his blood oozed out, gray against the black of his tuxedo. "You're safe now, Matteo. I won't ever leave you."

  He awoke with a start, and the dream faded to a memory like an old black-and-white print.

  Where could that dream have come from? Him in a tuxedo, her in an evening gown, like actors in an old movie. But the blood. Gray or red, he had been covered in blood. He had a feeling that part was real, even if the blonde siren wasn't.

  But what was real?

  From somewhere down by the foot of the bed, a loud, rhythmic snoring emanated. He tried to reconcile the nasal onslaught with the dream of the tiny blonde siren, with no luck. That couldn't be her.

  He struggled with this idea for a while until he realized that the heavy fur blanket on his leg was breathing.

  "Get off me, Shadowfax!" He pushed at the pile of fur with his right leg, and it snorted, then rolled over onto his left leg.

  The pain shot through him like a bullet. In an instant he was sitting up, pushing the dog out of bed with both arms, and at the same time instinctively stifling the moan that almost escaped his lips.

  He had been shot. He had lain bleeding, on the rocks, and Lori had saved him. He was in the Pajaro Island lighthouse.

  All these thoughts hit him at once, followed closely by the thought of little Lori, dead, because he'd led a gang of vicious smugglers to her doorstep.

  He was a step towards the door before he realized his left leg was not going to support his weight.

  He made it back to the bed, and lay there, panting, shivering, trying to think. If only it wasn't so cold.

  He wrapped the bedspread around himself, and curled up next to the dog, clinging to its warmth. The dog rolled over and started snoring again.

  Lori wasn't dead. If Moreno's man had followed him to the island, Matt would be dead. If he was alive, she must be too.

  But what had he said to Lori? He racked his brain, trying to think. He was so cold. He couldn't remember. Certainly, no matter how out of it he felt, he couldn't have told her the truth: that he was working undercover for the Project. He would never have revealed that. The world must know him as the Shadow, nothing else. That identity was so well-ingrained in him he wouldn't break even under torture.

  He was the Shadow. Sometimes he believed it himself. It was safer to believe himself a vicious killer than to remember the world he'd left, full of everyday people—like angelic little Lorelei York.

  She was hardly the kind of person he met in his world of dark alleys and death threats. What had possessed him to tell her his name? She had acted like the name meant nothing to her, but it was an unnecessary risk just the same. He didn't really know this woman. She had seemed a fragile innocent, but things weren't always what they seemed. He had fallen hard for her, and it was making him foolish, and reckless. But he couldn't afford to frighten her with his murderous persona. He needed her help.

  Relax. Get a hold of yourself, you idiot. You're the infamous Shadow, cold-blooded killer and bringer of doom. You've gotta be able to think yourself out of this little jam.

  He had to pull himself together if he was going to protect Lori from what lurked out there on the open sea.

  •••

  Well, the radio was D.O.A. She had held onto a tiny bit of hope, but looking down at it, in its final resting place on the lighthouse tower's stone floor, she knew without a doubt it was a goner. There weren't any parts big enough to even begin to put back together.

  She left it there and went back down the hall.

  So that was out. No communication. Now what about the murderous thug in her bed?

  Lori crept down the hall in her stocking feet until she stood outside the bedroom door.

  The brilliant plan she'd concocted was to quietly ease the door open for a quick peek at her hopefully sleeping quarry, and then improvise from there.

  But the dog was too quick for her. Before she could touch the doorknob she heard the scratch of toenails on the wood floor, and then a whine that could wake the dead.

  "What's up, boy?" came the now-familiar voice from inside. The brass bed creaked.

  The dog scratched against the door.

  Lori took a deep breath, and opened the door.

  "Hi," she said cheerfully. "Are you awake?"

  He lay curled up sideways on the bed. He was wide awake, and staring at her.

  "It's freezing in here," he said.

  He was hunkered down under the chenille bedspread like he was cold. The room wasn't that cold.

  "I'd better take your temperature," she said before realizing she didn't care if the Shadow caught pneumonia and died.

  "Thank you," he said, and closed his eyes. Always polite. She supposed that was how he fooled people.

  She fetched a thermometer from the first aid kit in the bathroom and came back.

  He hadn't moved.

  He could break a woman's heart, looking like that: drop-dead gorgeous and sweetly vulnerable at the same time.

  She nudged him, and, when he opened his eyes, handed him the thermometer.

  He thanked her again, and stuck the thermometer in his mouth.

  He was good. She bet women fell for his nice-guy routine all the time. Well, not her. She knew the truth.

  She had dragged him here, forgiven him for destroying her radio, and fed him chicken soup, and all the while he'd been putting on that sweet little boy, lost-surfer-with-the-soul-of-a-poet act. And she'd fallen for it.

  The blush rose on her cheeks when she thought about how she had fallen right into his trap. He had seemed so friendly and nice. He had acted concerned about her welfare, even when he was wounded and exhausted.

  How could her instincts have been so wrong? 'Are you okay?' he'd asked at the cliff, and again when she dropped the bowl. He quoted Shakespeare, and he had that mane of long dark curls, and he named his dog after the horse in Lord of the Rings, which was a very un-dumb-jocklike thing to do, and he looked at her like he thought she was an angel...

  ...and she was a shallow, brain-dead bimbo who thought a man must be a good person just because the muscles on his chest rippled every time he moved.

  He took the thermometer out of his mouth, but seemed to have trouble focusing to read it.

  "Here," she said sharply, and held out her hand.

  He gave her the thermometer.

  95.1 degrees. He was cold. Probably hypothermia. Great.

  She was not going to nursemaid a killer.

  "I'll get you another blanket and some more hot soup," she said.

  "Thank you," he said again, and it just made her more mad.

  "Yeah, right," she said.

  •••

  After fetching the blanket and soup for him she left him there. In her bed. The creep.

  She spent an incredibly long time in the bathroom brushing her hair. Then her teeth needed flossing. After that the bathtub ring simply cried out for some attention. While she crouched on her knees, sponging lemon verbena cleaner on the claw-foot bathtub, the futility of what she was doing finally struck her. She couldn't spend the next few days examining the contents of the medicine cabinet. Eventually she would have to open the door and face the Shadow.

  When she emerged from her hour in the bathroom, she found him seated at the kitchen table, dressed in a skimpier version of the wetsuit he'd had on before.

  "A dive skin," he said when he noticed her looking at him. "Keeps you warmer when you go out in cold weather." The dive skin looked like a slick black version of long underwear, with elbow-length sleeves and knee-length shorts. The outfit should have made him look ridiculous, but of course it didn't. He couldn't look unattractive if he tried.

  The dog sprawled next to the stove in Ophelia's usual place. Lori finally spotted a fluf
fy gray dust bunny crouched under the settee in the adjoining sitting room. The dust bunny was growling. Apparently Ophie had decided to try the avoidance method with their house guests, too. Outside the windows, the fog drifted past, obscuring the trees at the cliff's edge.

  "There's a small craft advisory up," the Shadow said, nodding toward the radio. His smile was wan. "I guess you're stuck with me another day."

  Lori said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  He had pulled his hair back into a ponytail. It made him appear more rakish than ever. She wished he wasn't so handsome. Was that why she had trusted him? Was she that shallow, to think a man was trustworthy because he looked like a gorgeous pirate?

  The dog scratched at the kitchen door and whined. "I'd better let him out," he said. He leaned against the table edge to raise himself out of the seat. The table tipped toward him. He let go, then put his hands on the chair arms and tried again to lift himself up out of the chair.

  "I'll do it," she said. "We just got you warmed up." She took the dog out through the storm porch, opened the door and the dog bounded out into the fog. She followed him out to make sure he didn't get lost again.

  She shivered as soon as the fog cut through her thin shirt, but she sure wasn't going back in there until she'd had a good long walk.

  "Where'd you go, dog?" she whispered. A bank of fog in front of her blocked her way, daring her to plunge into it. She could hear Shadowfax's bark from somewhere that seemed far away, then nothing but the ocean's endless roar.

  Great. That dog really had run off. She stepped off the porch steps and the fog followed her, swirling around her ankles in silent accompaniment.

  "Come on, Shadowfax. Stop goofing around."

  A black blur appeared suddenly out of the fog in front of her. He grinned a toothy smile at her and then put his muddy paws up on her, knocking her backwards.

  She just managed to stay on her feet. "You crazy mutt!"

  The dog sidled up against her, bumping her with his side and grinning. He was a powerful animal, and she almost lost her balance again. Why was he doing that? He didn't seem vicious, but he was so pushy.