As Good As Dead (Griffin Powell Book 4)

by Beverly Barton

  Perhaps later tonight. The sooner the better.

  But for now he needed to search Timmons’s body and his house to make sure he didn’t keep any kind of records about the clientele his whores serviced. And he had to be very careful that he left behind no clues that would link him with Timmons’s murder. He’d been careful to wear gloves. No fingerprints. Later he’d burn the gloves, as well as every article of clothing he was wearing.

  With expert ease, he riffled through Timmons’s pockets. Then, finding nothing, he went through all the drawers, closets and cabinets in the house, but came up empty-handed. He couldn’t afford to stay here much longer. The longer he remained at the crime scene, the greater the likelihood he’d get caught.

  Cracking the door several inches, he peered outside and saw no one. Good. Maybe he could make it to his car, which he’d parked down the road, without being seen by any nosy neighbors. The fact that there weren’t any streetlights outside of town meant the only source of illumination at night came from the moon. His arrival and departure were less likely to be observed out here than on a well-lit street. And the houses were separated by acres instead of feet, some sitting a good ways off the road. But on the off chance someone did see him, he’d have to think up a reasonable excuse for being in this area. He wasn’t worried. He was a smart man. He’d think of something.

  Becky knocked on the motel room door.

  “It’s unlocked,” he said.

  She opened the door and found the room dark, the only light coming from the neon motel sign flickering outside the window. This john was her second for the night, which wasn’t unusual for a Saturday, but when Jeremy had told her to meet this guy at the Cloud View, she’d come close to saying no. She hated this creepy old motel that had been used primarily by tourists back in the sixties, long before she was born. Now, the place was a rathole and the customers were mostly drug addicts and other scum of the earth types. This was only her third time here and she dreaded spending even an hour in one of the beds. The last time she’d been here, she’d killed a roach the size of a half dollar as it crawled across the bathroom floor.

  “Come inside and close the door.”

  What was wrong with this guy’s voice? He sounded like he had a cold or something.

  An odd feeling shivered through her as she entered the room and closed the door behind her. The room was not only dark, but chilly. Either this guy liked the cold or the heat wasn’t working.

  “Mind if I turn on a light?” she asked.

  “Leave the lights off,” he said in that strange, husky voice.

  “Sure.” Her gut instinct warned her that something wasn’t quite right about this guy, but then again she’d felt this way before. Half the men she serviced were oddballs. But what the hell, a buck was a buck. “So what do you want? Jeremy didn’t say whether you wanted a blow job or—”

  “I want you to take off your clothes and lie down on the bed,” he told her.

  “You won’t be able to see much with the lights off,” she said. “If you want to get your money’s worth—”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll get what I paid for…and then some.”

  What the hell did he mean by that? And then some?

  “Hey, I should warn you that I’m not into anything too kinky. You can spank me or ass fuck me or piss on me, but that’s it. Understand?”

  He chuckled, then tossed something through the air. It landed at her feet. She looked down, then bent over and felt around until her hand encountered a corded string of some kind. After picking it up, she held it up to the window and saw it was a dark satin ribbon.

  “Tie it around your neck,” he said. “That’s not too kinky, is it?”

  Becky tied the ribbon around her neck, then moved toward the bed. As she stripped out of her clothes, she watched the shadow in the corner of the room and knew that he was staring at her. She could feel his gaze raking over her, almost as if he was touching her.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  “Are you?”

  “I’m naked, in the bed, and I’ve got the ribbon tied around my neck. Anything else you want, just tell me.”

  “Look on the nightstand,” he said. “There’s a glass of wine there. I’d like for you to drink it.”

  “You want me to drink alone?”

  “I have my glass here with me.” He tapped the side of the flute he held.

  “Okay, sure.”

  He couldn’t see her clearly in the semidarkness, but he could make out her form and the bright red highlights in her hair. The neon sign outside provided just enough light for him to maneuver in the room without giving Becky a good look at him. He couldn’t let her see him clearly, because she would recognize him and possibly balk.

  As she sipped the wine, he set his empty glass on the floor and moved closer to the bed, but kept himself in the shadows.

  “Finish it off, then we’ll get down to business,” he said.

  “I’ll take a few more sips, she said. “But I really hate the taste of wine.”

  “Just a few more sips will be fine.” She didn’t have to be unconscious, just subdued enough so that she wouldn’t fight him. He’d learned, early on, that Dinah would fight him every time, if he didn’t drug her, so he’d realized that that was exactly what she’d wanted him to do. She’d been the one to set in place so many of the rules for the little game they played each time he killed her.

  After she’d taken a few more sips of the wine, he walked over and stood by the side of the bed. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “A little groggy,” she said. “I’m not used to wine. I guess that’s why I feel so funny.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably why.”

  She crawled into the bed, atop the covers, and held out her arms to him. “If you don’t have any condoms, I’ve got some. Just check the pockets of my jeans.”

  “I have my own, thank you.”

  “What’s your pleasure? Got a favorite position?”

  “Turn over. We’ll do it from the rear the first time. I want to butt-fuck you.”

  “You’re paying for more than once?” she asked. “Did you okay that with Jeremy? I think he’s lined up a third ‘date’ for me tonight.”

  “I took care of everything with Jeremy.”

  Oh, he’d taken care of Jeremy all right. That slimy little bastard wouldn’t be sending any other whores out on assignments tonight or tomorrow night or ever. He’d had no choice but to use Timmons to secure Becky’s services tonight. He’d known all along that he’d have to kill Timmons. He never left any loose ends. That’s why he’d been able to find Dinah and kill her, over and over again. Because he outsmarted the law. Every time.

  At first Becky had wondered why those few sips of wine had gotten her so drunk, but then she’d figured it out pretty damn quick. The asshole had drugged the wine. Had he thought she’d put up a fuss when he’d wanted to ass fuck her the first time?

  Afterward, she must have fallen asleep for a while, something she never did. He was feeling her up again now, his hands on her tits, squeezing. But there was something odd about the way he was touching her. It was his hands. Was he wearing gloves?

  Becky’s eyelids flew open; she stared up into his face. The blinking light coming through the window hit him, spotlighting his features. Oh, God! She should have known it was him.

  “It’s you,” she said.

  “It’s me.”

  He put his hands beneath her hips and lifted her. His hard dick pressed against her pubic hair. She felt the plastic gloves he wore as they scraped over her backside.

  “What’s with the gloves?” she asked. “Afraid you’ll catch something?”

  “They’re a precaution,” he told her. “I always wear them. You know that, Dinah. I can’t leave behind any evidence. If the police ever caught me, it would be the end of our games.”

  “What—what games? And who is Dinah?”

  Evidence? The police? What the hell was he talking about—oh, God, no.
Please no.

  He rammed into her hard and fast. She cried out.

  “It is you, Dinah,” he said. “I thought it was, but now I’m sure.”

  Sheer panic encompassed her. This guy was freaking nuts.

  “Let me go. I don’t want—”

  He covered her mouth with his hand. “Don’t talk.”

  She murmured her pleas against his open palm, then tried to bite his hand.

  “Why are you fighting me? You want this as much as I do,” he said. “You love playing our little game. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t keep coming back from the dead.”

  Becky screamed inside her mind. This couldn’t be happening. It had to be a horrible dream. She was too young to die.

  Don’t kill me, she pleaded silently. Please, don’t kill me. Oh, God in heaven, help me!

  CHAPTER 8

  Reve smiled and nodded and replied with yes or no to anything the others asked, but she focused on the room itself. She had noted earlier today that Genny Madoc’s home was filled with antiques. Every room she had seen evoked images of a bygone era. Some of the furniture was museum quality and would sell for a small fortune. When she inquired about the age of the farmhouse itself this afternoon, Genny had told her that it was well over a hundred years old, built by her great-grandfather, and had replaced an old log cabin constructed by a distant ancestor in the nineteenth century.

  A glowing fire shimmered in the large fireplace, the blaze reflected in the glass chimneys of the two oil lamps flanking the sofa. The old, wide plank flooring glistened from the patina of numerous waxings and the wood-paneled, wainscoted walls gleamed with the richness of aged pine. This room—this entire house—expressed a quality and charm no interior decorator could ever reproduce. It possessed warmth and comfort, proclaiming the character of the people who lived here and the generations who had come before. This structure was a home, not merely a house.

  Suddenly Reve felt terribly alone, more so than she’d ever felt in her parents’ elegant Lookout Mountain mansion, now that she was the sole occupant. And when she heard Jazzy and Caleb laughing at something Dallas had said, she envied how comfortable they were around one another. Friends who had no hidden agendas. Friends who simply enjoyed being together.

  And as if she wasn’t feeling bad enough at that particular moment, she felt even worse when she saw Jacob following Genny into the living room. Reve groaned. She had hoped he’d already left. Apparently not. Genny must have persuaded him to stay, despite his rush to leave. It had been embarrassingly obvious to everyone that she—the outsider—was the reason he hadn’t wanted to stay for a visit with family and friends.

  Genny smiled at Reve as she joined the others, but Jacob avoided looking at her as he made his way across the room to stand near the fireplace. Noting the sullen expression on his face, she surmised that he didn’t want to be in her company anymore than she wanted to be in his. So why was Genny forcing the issue? Why hadn’t she let him leave when he’d wanted to go?

  “Dallas, help me get the wine,” Genny said.

  Her husband followed her to the large cupboard on the far side of the room. Genny opened the double glass doors and removed six wine glasses. Austrian crystal, unless Reve missed her guess. Dallas lifted a glass jug, removed the cork and poured the homemade wine into the glasses, then picked up two and brought one to her and handed Jazzy the other.

  Once everyone had a glass, Dallas lifted his and said, “Here’s to Jazzy and Caleb. May their upcoming marriage bring them as much happiness as Genny and I have found in ours.”

  “I’ll definitely drink to that,” Caleb said.

  “That was very sweet, Dallas,” Jazzy told him. “Thank you.”

  When everyone else took a sip of the wine, Reve did, too, and discovered it wasn’t half bad. Nothing to compare to a truly excellent vintage, but nevertheless definitely palatable.

  “So, what do you think of Ludie’s wine?” Dallas asked.

  Reve found herself glancing toward Jacob, expecting him to make some acrid remark. And at that exact moment, he looked right at her. Their gazes locked and held. No one said a word. Silence hung heavily over the room. Reve’s heartbeat accelerated maddeningly.

  “It’s quite good,” she finally managed to reply and sensed that everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  “You met Ludie, didn’t you?” Jazzy asked. “She was the old Cherokee woman who was with Aunt Sally that first day you came to Cherokee Pointe.”

  “Yes, I met her,” Reve said. “She’s the woman who makes those delicious desserts for your restaurant, isn’t she?”

  “That’s Ludie. But she’s also Aunt Sally’s best friend and just like family to me.”

  Did that mean, if she and Jazzy were sisters, that she’d be expected to consider both Sally Talbot and Ludie as family? For the life of her, she couldn’t see herself embracing a nutty old mountain woman who chewed tobacco and her Indian friend as family.

  Watch out, Reve, your snobbery is showing again.

  During the next hour, Jacob gradually joined the others in conversation and appeared more relaxed, but he didn’t speak directly to Reve nor did he ever look right at her again. She tried her best to be friendly, but she realized she was carefully watching everything she said, not wanting to offend anyone, not even Jacob. Unable to fully participate in the camaraderie, she withdrew more and more, a well-learned defense mechanism that she had relied on all her life. In her world, she was respected and deferred to by others, only occasionally running into people who weren’t impressed by her wealth and social standing. But as a child, she’d often felt out of place, the odd girl out, with her peers. In those instances, she had retreated into the safety of stubborn shyness.

  Jazzy sat on the sofa, Caleb beside her, his arm resting across the sofa back behind Jazzy’s head. Genny sat on a round leather ottoman near the fireplace, and Jacob stood behind her, while each took a turn recounting his or her particular take on an event from their shared childhoods.

  “You should have seen Granny’s face,” Genny said.

  “Yeah, it was all she could do not to laugh, but she told us, in no uncertain terms, that young ladies didn’t run around naked, not even in the summertime.” Jazzy looked up at Jacob.

  “And it was all your fault that we got in trouble because you told on us.”

  “I swear I didn’t tell her that you two eight-year-olds were skinny-dipping in the pond in front of half a dozen other kids. It must have been somebody else. Maybe one of the Winstead boys.” The twinkle in Jacob’s eyes revealed the uselessness of trying to defend himself from a crime of which he was obviously guilty.

  “Yeah, tell that to somebody who’ll believe you,” Jazzy said. “Neither Aaron nor Miles Winstead would have told on us. Aaron was sweet on me, and Miles would have walked over hot coals for Genny.”

  “Especially after he saw her naked as a jaybird,” Jacob said, then roared with laughter.

  “What did your grandmother do?” Caleb asked Genny, once the boisterous laughter died down.

  “She gave me a spanking, made Jazzy and me put on our clothes and then she marched Jazzy home, with me in tow, and told Miss Sally what had happened.”

  “And then I got my butt blistered.” Jazzy laughed.

  Dallas came over to where Reve stood by the windows, in the same room and yet separate from the others. “Those three grew up together. They’re like siblings who share the same memories. It took me a while to begin to fit in, to feel as if I were a part of that golden circle. And Caleb only recently joined the ranks.” Dallas spoke quietly so that their conversation remained private.

  Reve nodded, not sure what message Dallas was trying to convey.

  “Give yourself time and you’ll fit in. You’ll become one of us,” he told her. “If you want to be a part of that closeness, that sense of belonging to a special family, you can be.”

  Reve wanted to tell him that she had no desire to be a part of Jazzy’s extended family, that she could care less a
bout fitting in, in fact she abhorred the idea of being one of these people. But the denial died on her lips. Partly because the comments would have offended, but mostly because she realized her denial wasn’t true. Somewhere deep down inside her lonely soul, she envied them all and wanted what Genny had with Dallas and Jazzy had with Caleb.

  “I suppose you believe, as Genny does, that Jazzy and I are twins.”

  “If my wife says she knows it for a fact, then it’s a fact,” Dallas said with utter conviction. “You and Jazzy are twins. You’re family. And if you’re Jazzy’s family, then you’re Genny’s, too.” He paused, glanced lovingly at his wife and then looked back at Reve. “They’re not keeping you out, you know. Jazzy and Genny will welcome you with open arms. All you have to do is reach out to them.”

  “And what about Jacob?” Reve whispered. “He really doesn’t like me.” Now why had she said that to Dallas? He’d think she gave a damn about what Jacob Butler thought. And she didn’t!

  “Genny says she’s never seen Jacob take an instant dislike to anybody the way he has you.” When Reve gazed at him in disbelief, surprised by his honesty, Dallas laughed softly. “And she also said that you’re the first woman she’s ever known who didn’t swoon at Jacob’s feet.”

  The corners of Reve’s mouth twitched, and finally she smiled.

  “Give yourself time to get to know him, and I think you’ll discover that Jacob is a good man,” Dallas said. “Actually, he’s one of the finest men I’ve ever known.”

  “Really?”

  Before Reve had a chance to completely digest Dallas’s high praise of the sheriff, Jazzy and Caleb stood up and each hugged Genny in turn, then Jazzy hugged Jacob.

  “We’ve got to be going. It’s nearly eight-thirty and we need to get to Jazzy’s Joint by nine, before things get rowdy.” Caleb glanced over at Reve. “We can drop you off at your cabin on the way, if you’re ready to go.”

  Reve started to say that she was more than ready to leave, when Genny spoke up hurriedly, “You two go on to work. Reve can stay and visit a while longer. Jacob would be glad to drop her off when he goes back to town later.”