Diana battled herself awake, clawing her way out of the dream.
Heavy darkness suffocated her and a sob jerked deep inside as she struggled to bring herself back to the present. Her hair was plastered to cheeks damp with sweat, her skin clammy with fear, and her breath caught and rasped in the dead silence.
She was curled up on the settee in Belinda’s den, a crocheted afghan tossed over her in protection against the chill Maine night. The Tiffany lamp by which she’d been reading still burned on the table next to her, creating a small circle of light in an otherwise dark, shadowed room.
The dream ebbed, but the fear, the visions and the sense of terror did not. She finally understood what it was: the heavy, claustrophobic sense of being smothered, of heavy softness pressing down over and into her nose and mouth as her arms and legs fought helplessly, unable to pull it away, unable to free herself from the dull, hot staleness of stunted air.
Before she fully shook herself from the nightmare’s grip, a remnant of the dream crystallized in her mind. The clarity was so perfect, so sudden and perfect, it was as though she was looking at a film before her eyes—only it was in her head, not on any screen anywhere.
It was Belinda. No, she was Belinda—Belinda struggling against a heavy force that pressed against her face, filled her nostrils, silenced her gaping, gasping mouth...then Belinda, slowing, succumbing to the inevitable end, sagging into stillness.
Diana froze. Her whole world stopped, her mind and body going deathly, silently still. Even the murmur of her heart, the shallowness of her breathing, the trembling of her nerves paused...and an incredible certainty flooded her. Then she knew.
She knew.
A movement in the doorway caused her to shriek, clapping her hand to her heart. “Jonathan!” The lurching of her stomach calmed and she regained the ability to speak. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“I thought you were coming to bed,” he said, his tone faintly accusing. “It’s after two.”
“I’m sorry. I fell asleep reading.” She could hardly form the words from lips that felt frozen in place. Her body was numb while nausea roiled in her belly and the trembling began in earnest. Hiding her shaking hands in the afghan, she looked toward Jonathan, wanting to rush into his arms—someone’s arms—for comfort...but something held her back.
Diana forced a smile as he approached. She couldn’t move to stand for fear her knees would buckle, and Jonathan’s sudden intrusion into her...whatever it was...left her feeling unfinished and disoriented. She blinked hard, gave her head a little shake, and shrugged off the remnants of the dream—or most of it, anyway.
He was dressed only in a pair of cotton boxers, and his half-nude body slanted toward her, lean and pale in the dim light. His sandy brown hair was mussed, tufting from his temples in soft fluffs, and the lids of his eyes drooped partly closed. He’d fallen asleep in bed while she straightened up, washed her face, brushed her teeth, fed the cats, locked the doors—did her normal nightly routine.
She couldn’t help but wonder if he was tired because he’d been up late—or even all night—the night before. With Valerie, the Vixen Surgeon.
Biting her lip, Diana silently chastised herself. I’ve got to let this go. He’s a good man. He loves me. He wants to marry me. I’m thirty-three, and I’m ready to get married. I may never have another chance.
“Diana, I haven’t seen you all week,” he reminded her coaxingly, pulling the afghan from her lap and tossing it on an ottoman. Taking her hand, he eased her to her feet, and the book she’d been reading thumped onto the floor.
When she would have reached for it, he gathered her to his bare chest, wrapping arms warm from sleep around her. “I’ve missed you, darling,” he murmured into her hair. “So much.”
Diana slid her arms around his waist and dropped her head onto his shoulder, willing herself to stay in the moment, to be with him. But she couldn’t relax, she couldn’t give in to the affection and emotion she’d once had. She felt nothing.
Bitter tears filled her eyes and she blinked them back, furious once again with him for breaking her trust, and with herself for this empty, bland feeling...and still uncomfortably aware of the horror of being asphyxiated in her dream.
Of Belinda being asphyxiated.
She felt the shift beneath his boxers as his arousal swelled, nudging against her. He dropped a kiss into her hair, then tilted his head back to kiss her on the mouth. Closed lips, warm and dry, the kiss was a formality, a prelude to what would follow. His hands slid to cup her bottom, pulling her closer to his erection.
She’d never been a particularly eager lover—sex was messy, and she worried about how she looked naked, along with a variety of other things—but now she felt a complete absence of interest. She felt nothing. Not even aversion.
Just...nothing.
“Why don’t you come to bed now,” he suggested in her ear, his mouth slipping to kiss a tender spot on her neck.
She wanted to want to go with him. She wanted things to be all right. She didn’t want this blank feeling rising between them. And she suddenly dreaded the thought of following him back into the bedroom where such a horrific thing had happened to Aunt Belinda in that room. In that bed.
“I ….” She pulled away, turned to pick up the book. “Not tonight, Jonathan.”
“What do you mean, not tonight?” He sounded shocked and irritated, and he had sleep-breath tinged with wine. “I came all the way up here to see you. I have to go back tomorrow.”
She folded the quilt deliberately, straightened the pillows, and replaced the book on its shelf. “I’m too tired,” she lied, not willing to go into the reasons. Not yet, not now. She’d get over this distance from him soon enough, but she needed time. “And you must be too, you fell asleep so quickly.”
“But now I’m awake,” he said, the hint of a whine in his doctor’s voice. “And so are you. Diana, you’re not still upset about...what happened, are you?”
She had to bite her tongue not to snap back at him, No, I’m not at all upset that I showed up to surprise you at your conference hotel and found another woman sharing your room. Why should I be? We’ve only been together a year, we’ve only been planning to get married this fall. Why should something like that bother me for more than, oh, say, a minute or two?
But instead of saying what she really wanted to, she put on the bland mask her mother had taught her to wear and said, “I’m just tired, Jonathan. And I’m still grieving for Aunt Bee. But I am ready to go to sleep.”
At least, she’d give him that. And maybe, just maybe, in the morning she’d wake up next to him and feel better.
* * *
Sunday mornings were lazy ones at the Tannock household. Ethan rolled out of bed—to Cady’s immense relief—at ten o’clock, and staggered sleepily to the door to let the whining dog out to do her business.
He stood in the doorway, arms folded over his bare chest and enjoyed the feel of the morning breeze over his naked body. Ethan yawned, stretching one arm straight into the air, and let it drop to scratch his head, then to his rump, then to adjust his balls. It was heaven living in a place where you could walk in your back yard naked.
Cady finished her business and decided she wanted to play, and Ethan, starting to become fully awake, stepped off the porch onto the lawn. His yard was a half-acre of clipped grass, studded with a few trees and surrounded by sky-scraping pines and heavy woods—and was less comfortable in the evenings than the morning because of the flies and mosquitoes. The lake glittered blue just down a small incline, between pines and maples and cottonwoods.
“Come on, Cady, let’s go swimming.” He grabbed a pair of shorts that hung over a chair on the deck.
At the suggestion, the lab dropped the stick she’d been prancing about with and tore down the incline, splashing gleefully into the water. Ethan yanked on the shorts, then followed Cady down a cedar chip path and dove quickly from his dock into the lake.
He surfaced, whooping from th
e refreshing eye-opener, and whipped his hair back. Cady paddled up next to him, thumping against him with her paws (and occasionally, with a claw), then headed back toward the shore where she could chase a goose. Ethan swam out from the tree-lined, shady shore and turned to look back.
His gaze went immediately to the white clapboard house just a half-mile down from his. It sat on a bigger hill than his cabin’s, and had a larger yard cleared of trees. Ethan could even see Diana’s pale gold Lexus sitting in the drive.
He floated on his back, narrowing his eyes against the sun. He tried to stop the mental image—but there it was: the ice-queen and her cardiologist, messing up those lacy pillows and embroidered sheets on that high Victorian bed.
Disgust roiled inside him once again—anger for Belinda, and annoyance for himself. Although Diana’s accusations had infuriated him at the time, he’d since come to realize that he didn’t give a rat’s behind what she thought about him …. And he actually felt more than a bit smug, knowing that she thought the worst of him while he knew the worst of her.
Ethan allowed himself to sink under the lake’s surface, then rise back up and let the water plaster his hair back. Cady was paddling back out to him, her nose just above the water, whuffling and snuffling. “Wanna go back?” he asked, then did a shallow dive, resurfacing several feet away.
They stumbled to shore at the same time, Cady shaking herself from head to tail as Ethan tossed his hair back and wiped the water from his eyes. They hurried back to the house, refreshed and hungry.
Just as they stepped onto the screened-in porch, Ethan heard the phone ringing. He grabbed a towel slung over a chair, pointed a finger at a dripping Cady and ordered, “Park it.” He grabbed the cordless just as the answering machine began to whir into action. “Tannock.”
“Hey, buddy, get off your ass and let’s go catch us some walleye.”
“Hey, man, what’s up?”
“I just told you. I’ll be over in fifteen with the worms and sandwiches if you supply the boat and the poles.” Joe Tettmueller’s voice had such a drawl to it that even when he was furious, the end of the sentence didn’t catch up to the beginning until the next day.
“Sure sounds better than what I had planned. Make sure you bring some of Lucy’s corned beef for me. A big thick one.”
True to his word—for he drove faster than he spoke—Joe Cap, as he was commonly called—pealed down the gravel drive in his shiny, nick-free, black F10 pickup minutes later.
Taking the tackle box and four fishing poles, along with a net and a six-pack, Ethan commented, “You’re not on today, I guess?” He gestured to the beer.
“Naw. We had enough excitement down the station the last month what with Bella and Tommy’s till bein’ broken into, and Bee Lawry bein’ found, and a fender-bender down over on 213 with some drunk tourists, that I decided to give myself the day off.” Joe Tettmueller was the chief of the two-member police force in Damariscotta.
The two men trudged down the incline, carrying a large cooler suspended between them, Cady tramping through the brush in a zigzag toward the lake. “Yeah,” Ethan said as he tossed the tackle box into the small dinghy. “That’s too bad about Belinda. I wish’t you’d have called me.”
“Sorry, buddy. You’re right. I shoulda done that. I just figured when you’re down to Princeton, you don’t want to be bothered with what’s going on up here.”
“Not true,” Ethan told his friend. “I’m more interested in what’s up here than what’s down there.”
“So you seen her niece here in town?” Joe smirked as he yanked a baseball cap down on the top of his buzzed head. “She’s pretty hot, and now she’s loaded, too.”
Irritation flitted through Ethan as he turned to step into the softly rocking boat. “Maybe hot looking, but an ice-cold ballbuster underneath. Besides, I don’t think Penny would take too kindly to hearing her husband talk that way.”
Joe actually looked a bit frightened at the thought, then his face shifted into a grin that matched his drawl as he stepped into the boat. “Naw, Ethan, I’m not looking for me—I’m looking for you. How long’s it been since you and Jenny split up? Two years? You’ve had that—what’d ya call it?—moratorium thing going on for long enough. You got t’be mighty lonely in that big old cabin.”
“Don’t be an ass, Cap. My cabin’s not that big, and yes, I’m still staying far away from any females. Especially that viper Diana Iverson. Cady and I are just fine all by ourselves.” Without waiting for his friend to sit, Ethan shoved the boat away from the dock with enough force to set it rocking. “Besides, she’s got a boyfriend.”
Cap glanced at him from under his brim as he sat down abruptly. “Sounds like you had a bit of a run-in with the lady lawyer. What happened? She didn’t seem that bad to me.”
Ethan chose a pole and unlatched the hook from its moor through one of the rings. Digging into a Styrofoam carton of rich black soil, he pulled out a squirming worm and wove it onto the hook. Then, setting it down, he gave the oars two powerful strokes before replying. “When did you have occasion to meet her?”
“At the funeral.”
“You went?”
“Yeah—I found ol’ Bee, and it didn’t seem right not to go.” He baited his own hook as he added as hastily as he ever did, “Not that I wouldn’t’ve not gone anyway, yannow.”
“I didn’t know what happened until I showed up at Belinda’s house the other night, and surprised the hell out of Diana.” His mouth quirked at the memory of her prune lips. The humor vanished and, after giving one more long, sweeping row, Ethan folded the oars back into the boat and looked out over the sparkling lake as they slowed to a mere drift.
Joe Cap slipped the anchor into the water with a minor splash and, with a quick flick of his wrist, sent a long, smooth cast over the lake. The fishing line glinted like a cobweb in the sunlight, then settled over and into the depths of blue.
“So you found her, huh?” Ethan’s line soared in a different direction, and was followed by a third and fourth cast...then all was peaceful.
“Yeah. She didn’t show for a doctor appointment, and Reardon got worried and called the station. I went down and got into the house and found her. Poor old woman—die alone like that.”
It was a shame Belinda died by herself, and a damn good thing Joe Cap’d found her so quickly. “She died in her sleep is what Diana told me.”
“Yep, so it appeared.”
“At least she didn’t go through any pain.”
“Nope. Hope not.” Joe’s attention was not fixed on the two fishing lines he owned, nor was it on the cooler through which Ethan had begun to rummage.
His statements sounded even less solid than usual, and Ethan noticed. “Everything all right, Cap?”
“Mm.” He thought about it for a moment, staring out at the lake. “She had a heart problem—documented in her medical records. There was no sign of struggle, of forced entry, of robbery...but something don’t seem right about it. It’s been bothering me...but I dunno what it is.” He sighed, then abruptly jerked to attention when one of the silvery lines shivered. “Got one!”
Quick as a flash, he grabbed the pole and began to manipulate the reel—in and out, in and out...pull’em in...slowly let it out—in a natural rhythm that echoed the lapping of waves against the boat.
Ethan’s line twanged, and he snatched the pole just as a third line began to bob in the water. Over shouts of glee and good-natured cursing, they worked the lines in the familiar pattern well into the afternoon.
* * *
The wind rushed through the Lexus’s moon roof, tossing Diana’s hair with the same abandon as her mind zipped through her thoughts. She was cruising at a speedy seventy miles per hour along Route 1, north from Portland, after dropping Jonathan off to catch his late afternoon flight.
As she maneuvered the car around smooth curves and up and down slight inclines, Diana considered the other question that had been brooding in her mind all day: Was it possible?
Had Belinda been murdered in her own bed?
And could it have been Ethan Tannock?
Keeping her lawyer hat on, and refusing to allow her dislike of the man to color her thoughts, Diana considered the situation. First of all, she was basing this on a dream. A mere dream.
Yes, a terrifyingly real one. One that she’d had every night since she arrived in Aunt Bee’s house, even though she hadn’t recognized it for what it was. And she’d awakened with a certainty that even she couldn’t shake, using her logical, science-based mind.
If it were true, then...who could have done it? And why?
Obviously, Ethan knew her well—well enough to walk into her house uninvited for a visit...unless, if he had killed her and he knew she was dead, he walked into the house intending for Diana to think he had that kind of freedom.
But he knew where the house key was hidden—so obviously Belinda had trusted him. Tapping her finger against the steering wheel, Diana frowned. Poor Aunt Bee...so gullible and trusting to be taken in by a pretty face.
But then...now that she was dead, Tannock’s source of money would also be gone, for Diana knew he hadn’t been named in the will. She, Diana, and the local animal shelter, were the only beneficiaries. So what motive was there for someone to kill Aunt Belinda if they weren’t going to inherit any of her money?
Ethan had been friendly to Diana—but not overly so, as if he were trying to inveigle his way into her good graces in order to keep the flow of money going.
She grimaced. If he had meant to cozy up to her, he’d definitely blundered that part of it, for it seemed he only knew how to rub her the wrong way. And aside from that, he had an almost accusatory hint in his eyes at times when he looked at her, as if he found something about her as distasteful as she did about him.
But, then...the way he’d been studying her at the Grille last night had caused her fingers to become clumsy and her heart to pump just a little faster. When he didn’t think she noticed, when she was busy trying to dig herself out from the hole he’d dug for her with the quilting group, she’d caught a look on his face. It was as far from distasteful as one could get. It was...thoughtful...heavy...avid.
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