by Alice Sharpe
He produced a notepad. “Just tell it all to me again.”
She launched into her story, again omitting her late-night visit, not mentioning the scarf, still uncertain that it wouldn’t be wise to do both.
It occurred to her how she could broach the subject of her uncle’s boxes. “Go ahead and set your cup on one of those cardboard boxes right there beside you,” she said. “You can’t hurt them. They’re Uncle Devon’s.”
He looked at the boxes and then at her, then at the boxes again. “I didn’t think his possessions had been released yet,” he said slowly. “I thought his estate was still tied up.”
“It is, but he gave me these boxes a month or so before he was killed,” she said. “They’re full of correspondence.” She didn’t add that all of it seemed to be over twenty years old. Instead, she watched his eyes like Alex had cautioned her to do, and sure enough, the sheriff did look uneasy.
“Funny he’d give that kind of stuff to you,” Kapp said.
She shrugged. “I was his only relative, Sheriff. Eventually I’ll see everything he owned, won’t I? There’s the wall safe in his home office and all his safety deposit boxes. The man never threw a thing away. I’ve just started going through these boxes. They’re full of some very interesting documents.”
He said, “Documents?”
Deciding on a forthright approach, she said, “It appears you were blackmailing him.”
His glance darted back to the boxes, then he stood abruptly. The cup flew from his knee and shattered on the floor. He knelt at once. “I’m sorry—” he began, but stopped. Standing up, the broken china and puddle of coffee still at his feet, he said, “What did you say?”
“You were blackmailing him,” she repeated, nodding discreetly at the boxes. “You blackmailed him into supporting your run for sheriff.”
She waited for his protest. After all, it wasn’t as though she had any real proof and it wasn’t as though a huge part of her didn’t suspect Kapp’s guilt existed solely in Alex’s head. But the sheriff stood there nervously rubbing his forehead, seemingly speechless, apparently unable to dissemble, to deny, to evade.
She found herself thinking, Alex and his friends are right: Roger Kapp is—was—a blackmailer!
Equally stunning was the realization that her uncle had been susceptible to coercion, he’d had something to hide.
The next thought left her reeling. What? What had Uncle Devon had to hide?
Kapp finally said, “That’s ridiculous.”
It was too late. With a burst of anger, she stood. “Did you hurt my cat, too? Did you try to hurt me? Did you break into my house last night?” Suddenly remembering to check his hands, she glanced down and saw that he had ordinary sized hands for a man, smaller than Alex’s, bigger than hers.
The gloves that had inadvertently been left behind, then stolen back in the dead of the night would fit this man.
He backed toward the door. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “If you’re in the middle of a crime wave, ask yourself when it started. I bet everything was fine until you invited Alex Chase back into your house, right? He’s after something and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what. Watch your step, be careful.”
“You blackmailed my uncle,” she said calmly which wasn’t easy given how anxious she felt. “What did you have on him? Did he get tired of paying, did he refuse to help you with your re-election campaign? I know how he was, I bet he decided you could go public with whatever you had on him. I bet he dared you to do it.”
The sheriff rallied. “You’re upset,” he said condescendingly.
“Damn right, I’m upset.”
“Why don’t you file charges against Chase, why don’t you face the truth about the man?” With that, he grabbed his hat and coat from the chair by the door where Liz had put them. Turning one last time, he said, “I don’t need your permission to investigate your uncle’s den again to see if there’s something there we missed the first time. I know you keep the housekeeper on to take care of the place, so as a courtesy, I’m telling you that next week we’ll be going back out there. You might want to alert her. I won’t be here again until I come to arrest your husband for murder. And this time, I promise, it will stick.”
“Promises, promises,” Alex said. As he strode into the room, Liz looked from one man to the other, their differences startling in such close proximity. One sandy colored from head to foot, sturdy, officious but presently flushed, the other darker, steamier, broader in shoulder, slimmer in hips…and more in control. This was something she’d always admired about Alex, whether flying up and down a basketball court or fighting an inferno—he responded to ultimate danger with a powerful sense of authority that was as intimidating as it was comforting. It all depended on whether you were for him or against him.
“You!” Sheriff Kapp bellowed.
“Listen to me, Kapp,” Alex said. “Liz doesn’t have one single piece of incriminating evidence against you. Those boxes are filled with childhood papers and some very old letters, most of which predate all of us. I asked her to insinuate that she had the goods on you, just to gauge your reaction, which was, by the way, interesting. I’m telling you this—” and here he paused to squeeze Liz’s shoulder “—so that you understand she poses no threat to you.”
“Threat?” Kapp said, eyebrows all but shooting right off his high forehead.
“You’re guilty as hell and you know it,” Alex said. “You blackmailed Devon Hiller. I don’t know why, but I’d bet my last dime that you did.”
Kapp stared hard at Alex, then shook his head. “So you’ve changed your story,” he said. “Now you’re innocent and I’m the bad guy? What about your confession, Chase?”
Liz held her breath, wondering how Alex would respond. She knew he was still adamant about not implicating her and she suspected that even if it meant he spent the next thirty years in prison, he’d stay that way.
She said, “Alex is innocent, Sheriff.”
She felt Alex’s body tense as the sheriff’s invasive glare went from him to her. Kapp seemed to consider her statement before saying, “The only reason I can think of for a man to confess to a murder he didn’t commit, is to protect someone he thinks did.”
“I can think of other reasons,” Alex said.
Liz stood there quietly. She felt trapped between two pit bulls. Throwing a scrap to either of them seemed foolhardy so she kept her mouth shut.
Alex said, “Just out of curiosity, Sheriff, do you have an alibi for the night Devon Hiller was murdered?”
Kapp smirked. “You may hoodwink Elizabeth with your innocent talk, but I’m not falling for this little game you’re playing. Not that I need one, but of course I have an alibi and no, I won’t discuss what it is with the likes of you.”
Alex dropped his hand and stepped forward. “You know when you said that you wouldn’t be back here again without a warrant for my arrest? I think that’s a good idea.”
“It’s up to you whether I come back or not,” Kapp said with a sinister gleam in his eyes. “Any more shenanigans and Elizabeth might decide to cut her losses. Who could blame her?”
He tugged on his hat and was gone.
Liz buried her face in her hands. She felt Alex’s arms surround her. She pushed herself away. Wiping tears from her eyes with shaky fingers, she said, “These aren’t tears of fear, Alex. These are tears of frustration. Sheriff Kapp is positive you not only killed Uncle Devon but that you’re a threat to me.”
Alex tilted her chin with a finger and kissed her lips.
She wasn’t finished. “I shouldn’t have accused him of trying to hurt me because now he knows something happened to me, and he thinks you did it.” Peering into his eyes, she added, “If something else happens to me, you’ll be in terrible trouble.”
His eyes suddenly hard and bright, he whispered, “If something else happens to you, I won’t care what kind of trouble I’m in.”
“But the sheriff thinks—”
“Let him think what he wants to think.”
“I can’t stand the way he acts like he’s so much better than you. I want him to know you’re innocent. You didn’t want me to tell him anything else, but—”
“What’s done is done and the look on his face was worth it.”
“We need to figure this out soon,” Liz said. “If Kapp was blackmailing my uncle then that means my uncle did something he was ashamed of or something illegal, something that might have driven the sheriff to murder. But we don’t know that for sure. Perhaps if we can figure out what Kapp had on Uncle Devon, we can figure out who else wanted him dead.”
“Unless it all begins and ends with Kapp,” Alex said stubbornly.
She shook her head and stared at him. Those incredible eyes, that defiant stance, the way he moved, the way he stood! She looked away at last, and desperate for a diversion, said, “Let’s go visit Sinbad.”
ALEX LINED a basket with a royal-blue towel and set it in a blocked off corner of the kitchen. As he passed the cold fireplace, he wished Liz was more comfortable with fire because he had a feeling the cat would crave warmth during his long convalescence, but her fear of it was too deep for him to excise. He’d tried, way back in high school when the school had set a bonfire before a home-coming game. Though he’d coaxed and cajoled, she wouldn’t go near it. Later that night she’d explained about her parents and he could still recall the profound sorrow he’d felt on her behalf.
His mother had walked out on him and his brothers when Alex was five years old. His father had abdicated parenthood by crawling into a bottle. Her parents were dead. Even as a kid, even hurting from all the blows life had dealt him, he’d known her situation was worse than his. Maybe his mother would come back someday, maybe his father would stop drinking and shape up. There was no such maybe for Liz.
When they met again after he’d become a fireman, he’d been almost certain his profession would bother her to the point where he’d have to make a choice: her or the fire department. She’d surprised him by accepting what he did though she didn’t like to hear stories about tragedies.
Then again, who did? The whole point of being a fireman was to prevent tragedies.
He walked down the hall to their bedroom. He liked to think of it that way though he was still keeping his distance, waiting for her to break down and beg him to ravish her. He’d missed so much of her pregnancy that she was like a foreigner to him in some ways, speaking a different language at times, sporting a different body, thinking thoughts that baffled him, keeping him at arm’s length.
The vet had sent a recovering Sinbad home with them and he found the cat and Liz not in their bedroom, but in her office. Liz was sitting at her desk. The cat was lying in a big box, his azure eyes still dazed. His hind leg was shaved from the operation that had included inserting a pin into the broken bone to keep it in place while it healed. The cat made a noise like a strangled lion as Alex approached.
He sat on his heels and scratched Sinbad’s head, amazed to hear a hoarse purr. You had to hand it to the little guy. Some human had hurt him this way and yet he was still willing to trust. Every time Alex saw the shaved fur, the stitches, he thought about how close he’d come to losing Liz. Every time he thought of the cruelty involved in willfully breaking the cat’s leg and winding twine around his neck, he wondered what else the person who had done this was capable of.
“How’s he doing?” he asked Liz.
“He’s still kind of dopey,” she said, swiveling in her chair to face him.
“I made him a basket and stuck it in the warmest corner of the kitchen, near the heater vent.”
“Good. I’ve been busy, too.” She took a piece of paper out of the printer. “I compiled the list of displaced shopkeepers we talked about. When I compared them to the guest list for Uncle Devon’s party, I found six names that matched. Two are very elderly people who didn’t make it to the party because they’re residents in a local nursing home and one is a woman who, at the time, was in the middle of a three month tour of Europe.”
“And the others?”
“Well, one of them is Harry Idle, believe it or not. Did he mention being invited to the party?”
“No. Odd.”
“Highly. The other two are women who ran a kitchen supply store at the corner of Fourth and Main umpteen years ago. It went belly-up when Uncle Devon opened the Harbor Lights Mall. They signed a lease to open a similar store at the mall just a few months ago, so I guess he invited them to the party because they were in negotiations at the time. I can check them out further.”
“What about the new strip mall? Any disgruntled people from that invited to your uncle’s party?”
“That mall went up on a piece of land that had been for sale forever. Uncle Devon got a great price and then it was rezoned and he built the mall. Four stores opened up. Three of them were established businesses anxious to move to a new and better location. The fourth is a grocery outlet in a part of town without one, so while it will have an impact, it’s not like it’s unexpected competition. It’s hard to see that anyone suffered too greatly from that mall.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll give Harry the third degree about why he never mentioned being at that party. I’d also like to know if he heard the car last night. Maybe he saw something that would help pin down the identity of the driver.”
She caught his hand. “Alex, we haven’t talked about what the sheriff said. If he’s going to recheck my uncle’s study—”
“Don’t worry, he won’t find your scarf. I rolled it up and hid it in that little spot you showed me when we were in high school.”
“Good. Still, if he’s going to look the place over, I’d like to, too.”
“Have you been there since—”
“Uncle Devon’s murder? No.” She shivered and added, “The housekeeper takes care of things.”
He let it drop.
He picked up the cat as gingerly as possible, and with Liz on his heels, carried him back to the kitchen. Sinbad accepted the basket with a surprisingly demure meow as Liz filled food and water bowls and set them inside the makeshift enclosure alongside his commode. Eventually, he made an attempt to get comfortable which seemed like a good omen.
“He’ll be fine,” Alex said.
“I know.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off the stitches.
Liz put her arms around him from the back and nuzzled his neck. She wasn’t tight against him, the baby precluded that, but her spontaneous show of affection made his heart soar. “It was sweet of you to make him his own little bed,” she said.
“I’m a sweet guy,” he said, gripping her hands and turning to face her.
“Unless you’re Harry Idle. Poor Harry.”
“Poor Harry, my foot.”
“Thank you for taking such good care of me,” she said softly.
“My pleasure.”
“I owe you so much. I owe you my life.”
He kissed her lips. For once, she didn’t pull away or pursue their interrupted conversation. He kissed her again and again until he felt her lips dissolve into spun sugar and his own body throb. Her fingers dug into his back as he loosened his grip and held her face between his hands. Her eyes were half-closed and the eager yet sensual look on her face made her so sexy that breathing became a chore.
“My precious, precious, love,” he whispered, kissing her eyelids, her earlobes, her chin.
She melted against him as much as a woman as pregnant as she was could. She didn’t pull away or tell him she wasn’t sure…. He wondered if he could lift her and her precious little bit of cargo into his arms and decided that hell, yes, he could pick her up and carry her to Canada if need be.
He tasted salt on his lips and opened his eyes. Hers were still closed, but two tears had escaped, had slipped by her defenses, leaving moist trails across her cheeks, down her throat and that’s what he’d tasted.
For an eternity, he held his breath and in the quiet recesses
of his mind, he heard her words. I owe you so much, she’d said, I owe you my life and then she’d offered herself to him after days of restraint.
He made himself say, “This isn’t the time, sweetheart.”
Her eyes fluttered open, the lashes slightly damp. “It isn’t?”
“No.”
“I know I’m not the same—”
“It’s not you,” he said softly, trailing one hand down her neck, across her full breasts, caressing her rounded belly. How could she doubt his need for her, his attraction to her? He added, “You’re perfect.”
“It’s everything else?”
“It’s everything else.”
She rested her head against his shoulder while he wondered if he was as dumb as a fence post or just plain crazy. But she was crying and that seemed wrong, that seemed sad, and when he kissed her sadness was the last emotion he felt. Did she think she owed him her body because he’d saved her? Did some part of her fear he wouldn’t be there for her if she wasn’t there for him?
At least they were coming closer together, at least it seemed they were in the same book if not on the same page, and holding her like this felt pretty damn good. He kissed her hairline and was entertaining second thoughts about the conclusions he’d reached when the phone rang. She lifted her head and stared into his eyes, hers dry now. She seemed as reluctant as he to sever this tie. It rang again and Sinbad yowled.
“If it bothers you so much, answer it yourself,” Alex growled at the cat, but the spell was broken and Liz drifted away with a final glance at him from over her shoulder that sent his libido into a futile overdrive. He went outside to find Harry Idle.
Chapter Eight
“I want to know if you’re mad at me,” Emily said, her voice both defensive and agitated.
Liz shifted the phone into her right hand and said, “Oh, Emily, no, of course not.”
“Because you haven’t called. Ron told me I was rude to your husband the other day.”
Liz sat down on a kitchen chair and peered through the window for a sign of Alex. All she could see from that angle were the bare branches of an apple tree. “I’ve been so busy, I’m sorry I haven’t called,” she said. “And don’t worry about Alex. He understands that you were…surprised…when he showed up at the restaurant.”
