Dark Paradise

by Tami Hoag

  Bryce took her hands and turned her to face him when she would have reached for the door handle. His expression was earnest and fatherly—or what she had always imagined fatherly should be. Certainly her father had never shown this kind of interest in her. He'd never shown an interest in any of his children, had treated them as if they were nothing more than half a dozen stray dogs that seemed constantly underfoot.

  “Don't let this broken heart close you off, honey,” Bryce advised. “Your husband is a fool. If he fell off the earth tomorrow, the world would go on turning, you would still have a life, and, I dare say, it would be a better one. You have so much within yourself you have yet to discover and explore, so much potential. Don't snuff it out.”

  Tears sprang to Samantha's eyes. Why couldn't Will be the one telling her how wonderful she was? Because he obviously didn't see in her what Bryce saw. If he had, he wouldn't have gone looking for that elusive something in other women.

  “Hey, no tears, now,” Bryce murmured, reaching up to brush one from her cheek. “You've cried enough. When is your next day off?”

  “The day after tomorrow.”

  “Perfect,” he said, smiling. “You'll come out to the ranch and spend the day. Go swimming, go riding, be with people who appreciate you.”

  She started to protest, but he didn't listen. He squeezed her hands and leaned forward to brush a paternal kiss against her cheek.

  “I'll pick you up myself. Be ready by nine. We'll go riding. Have a picnic. It'll be great.”

  Then he was gone, gliding down off her shabby porch and striding gracefully toward the sleek Mercedes.

  Samantha let herself into the darkened house, not bothering to turn on a light. The light from the streetlamp on the corner shone in through the windows well enough for her to see. As always, she had harbored the secret hope that Will would be waiting for her. It was a hope she never acknowledged until the disappointment struck her.

  He wasn't there. He was probably down at the Hell and Gone, laughing and drinking, his arm around some girl with tight jeans and big boobs. He probably wasn't thinking about her, didn't wonder if she was lonely, didn't know she had spent the evening with people who drove sports cars and drank champagne. Would he care?

  The question slipped into her heart like a knife. Now that there was no one to see them, no one to talk her out of them, the tears fell. She sank down onto the scarred wooden floor of the living room, bending over, curling into a ball. Her long braid fell over her shoulder and lay like a length of rope on the floor.

  Rascal scampered in from the kitchen, all feet and ears and wagging tail. He was part golden retriever and part who-knew-what, big and clumsy and brimming with love. He barked at her for a moment, growls and whines mixing in his throat as he tried to decide what to do about her. Finally, Samantha sat up and reached for him, and he clambered into her lap, all too happy to give her something to hug and to lick the tears from her cheeks.

  And she wrapped her arms around the puppy and sobbed as hard as her heart could stand, crushed by the thought that the dog he had given her cared more about her than Will.

  “What do you think? Does the Jennings woman know what Lucy was into?”

  Bryce turned and admired his cousin. She was quite stunning by moonlight. “I don't know yet. She hasn't given any indication of it.”

  Sharon reached back with one hand and freed her blond mane from its neat twist, tossing her head. “I can't imagine Lucy leaving everything to her without including all her dirty little secrets in the bargain.”

  “It won't matter,” he said, thinking of other complications. “Nothing to worry over.”

  He really wasn't concerned at all. It was a game to him. A game he couldn't lose. The stakes were huge for some, but he held nearly all the cards. That was the beauty of power and a brilliant mind.

  Lucy had understood. She might eventually have been a worthy rival for him, or a worthy partner. He had certainly enjoyed her charms in bed and out enough to consider the possibilities.

  Pity she was dead.

  CHAPTER

  9

  MARI'S FIRST order of business the next morning—after watching the sunrise—was a trip to Our Own Hardware to purchase cleaning supplies. She loaded up on sponges and cleansers, bought a bucket and a mop and a broom, not willing to count on Lucy to have owned this sort of thing. She shot the breeze with Marcia, who worked the counter, starting with a friendly debate over Formula 409 versus Fantastik, and going from there into a light discussion of local politics and the pros and cons of home permanents.

  From the hardware she jaywalked to the Rainbow and had a cup of coffee and a slice of lemon meringue pie with Nora. Nora directed her to the Carnegie Library, and she went in search of books about llamas, finding one in the small children's section of the cramped old building. There was nothing on the care and understanding of mules, but since mules were so closely related to horses, she hunted up a couple of texts on horsemanship for a refresher course.

  She struck up a conversation with old Hal Linderman, who had taught math in the New Eden high school for forty years before retiring to become the town librarian. An hour later she had a temporary library card and an invitation to join the Presbyterian church.

  Pleased, she headed back toward her Honda. She would pick up a supply of junk food at the Gas N' Go and head out to the ranch for a day of cleaning, reading, and contemplating. Cutting across the square, she paused to watch the sculptor at work out in front of the courthouse. Marcia at the hardware store had been dubious about the project. She couldn't see what good it would do, but Mari stood outside the roped-off area and studied the model, finding it interesting.

  “It symbolizes the conflict of old ways and new ways coming together to bond into something strong and beautiful,” Colleen Bentsen said. She was dressed for welding from the mask tilted back on her head to the torch in her gloved hand. She had her coveralls unzipped partway, revealing a T-shirt from Hamline University. Hal Ketchum sang out of the speakers of a boom box on the other side of her cluttered pen. There was a long table lined with tools and piles of what looked like scrap metal.

  “Sounds good to me,” Mari said. She tilted her head and scrutinized the lines of the model. “I like the elements—the rough and the smooth twining into a single arm that will be stronger than its individual components.”

  The artist beamed. “Exactly.”

  That kind of partnership between the old and the new factions of New Eden seemed unlikely, but Mari was the last person to shoot down idealism. Dreams were important. To her way of thinking, even unattainable goals were worth striving for.

  She thought of her own goals as she drove out of town. There had been a time when she had dreamed of making it big as a singer and songwriter, but her parents had pressed hard for college and a career in law. She had fought them and fought within herself, the independent young woman in her warring with the insecure child. The factions compromised. Her dreams lost. No one lived happily ever after.

  What's wrong with being a court reporter? You wanted me to go into law. That's a job in law.

  We wanted you to be a lawyer, Marilee. You're so bright. You have so much potential. You could be anything you want.

  Fine. I want to be a court reporter.

  It wasn't that she wanted to be a court reporter. She didn't want to be a lawyer. Court reporting seemed like a fair compromise. She could still see her parents wagging their heads sadly, wondering where they went wrong, wondering why the rogue gene of the Jennings clan had surfaced in their progeny. She could still feel their disappointment weighing down her heart like a stone. She still mourned sometimes for the dreams she had given up in her futile attempt to please them.

  “The slate's clean now, Marilee,” she said over the twang of Bruce Hornsby's piano. She sped toward the ranch with the windows down, the wind whipping her hair into a frenzy. “Dream new. Dream large.”

  But there were too many loose ends in the present to focus on the futur
e, and the only large thing that came to mind was J. D. Rafferty.

  She spent the rest of the day cleaning. Her housekeeping habits had always leaned toward a binge and purge cycle. She would let clutter accumulate, oblivious of it for weeks, then suddenly she would see it, as if she had just come out of a trance, and she would throw herself into the task of cleaning with dedication and enthusiasm until the place sparkled. The mess in Lucy's house couldn't be ignored. Nor could Mari's need to get rid of it. The destruction by the vandals was too much of an insult to the memory of her friend and too reminiscent of random violence. The pall of that hung in the air, and she opened all the windows in the place in the attempt to dispel it.

  She started in the kitchen, scraping the mess off the floor, scrubbing the Mexican tile, washing out the refrigerator. By the end of the day she had worked her way through the great room. The dead ficus had been dragged out, the prints on the walls straightened, the Berber rug vacuumed. There was nothing she could do about the split in the seat of the red leather sofa except hide it with a multicolored serape she had found in a heap next to the woodbox. She salvaged what throw pillows she could and discarded the others. The kindling that had been a rocking chair and an end table were hauled outside.

  Mr. Peanut watched the proceedings from his perch on the thick wood mantel of the fieldstone fireplace. Mari imagined Lucy's spirit lurking behind the painted eyes, snickering as she worked herself toward exhaustion. Lucy's knack for avoiding physical work—for roping other people into doing it for her—had been phenomenal.

  I should have been born into your family instead of you, Marilee.

  God knew she would have fit the Jennings clan like a glove in many respects. Their family motto was “Live well, dress well, and hire help.” Mari had always consoled Lucy with the fact that her mother wouldn't have tolerated Lucy's promiscuity. In view of Lucy's taste for life in the fast lane, it was better that she didn't have a mother looking over her shoulder.

  Mari found herself regretting the words now when she thought of Lucy dying alone. Shed a tear or two for me. No one else will.

  With the great room finished, Mari looked through what was left of a glass-paneled door into a cozy study and groaned in agony at the sight of it. There were books and papers everywhere. Smashed statuary and more mutilated plants. A bronze sculpture of an eagle with outstretched wings had been used like a bludgeon on the sleek walnut desk, splintering the top. Mari couldn't even begin to think about tackling it. Instead, she pulled the last two cans of a six-pack of Miller Lite out of the fridge by their plastic collar and went outside.

  The sun had begun its downward slide behind the mountains to the west, casting the valley in a warm bath of amber and shadow. She stood on the deck for a long while, staring down at the stream, realizing that the animals she had seen grazing along its banks weren't horses at all, but the llamas.

  The thought of their gentle eyes and regal bearing made her smile. She wanted to just go and be with them and listen to their pleasant humming. She would sit on the fence and let them rub their noses over her. She would talk to them and try to absorb their air of wisdom. They would want their supper and she would tell them to wait until Rafferty came.

  She wasn't sure he would come today. The book she had read over her lunch break had been short on details about llama diets. They had an inexhaustible supply of grass and water. Perhaps they got the feed pellets only as a supplement once or twice a week. At any rate, Rafferty probably had better things to do with his time than troop down for a chore any ten-year-old ranch kid could have mastered. God knew, he didn't even like her. He had kissed her in anger, had pinned her down beneath him because she had attacked him.

  And he held you while you cried because why, Marilee?

  Because I didn't give him a choice.

  She scowled at the reminder. Still, he had agreed to help her with the animals. Because she was his neighbor.

  That was part of the code of the West, she suspected. Part of Rafferty's personal code. That touched her heart in a spot she hadn't even known was vulnerable. She had spent too many years working in a world where it was every man for himself.

  Feeling restless, she walked around to the front of the house and wandered across the yard toward the out-buildings, going in search of llamas. The lawn needed mowing in a big way. Add that to the list for tomorrow: find a lawn mower or bring a llama into the yard. She tried to think what Lucy must have done. Nothing, of course. She had gotten someone else to do it for her. Kendall Morton, hired hand from the Outer Limits.

  She wanted to ask Sheriff Quinn a question or two about Morton. If they were in California, she could have called any one of half a dozen friends in law enforcement and had the guy checked out for wants and warrants or a prior record. But this was not California.

  A hired hand, she mused. A ranch in a place where land was worth its weight in gold. A herd of exotic animals. A new Range Rover in the garage sitting beside Lucy's red Miata. Where the hell had all the money come from?

  A windfall, Lucy had told her. An inheritance from some remote relative. But who would have left her that kind of money when no one had cared enough about her to rescue her from the endless string of foster homes she had endured growing up?

  The questions raised an uneasiness in her that itched beneath her skin. Stupid, Marilee, it doesn't matter anymore. Lucy's gone. Her killer's been punished.

  Punished. She sniffed in disgust. A suspended sentence and thousand-dollar fine. Life came cheap when you were a plastic surgeon from Beverly Hills and had influential friends. She tried to picture the man, tried to imagine him crying all through the brief court proceedings that were mere stage dressing for a guilty plea. He hadn't meant to shoot Lucy. He hadn't known Lucy was there. He had walked away and left her to rot.

  No matter how Mari replayed it, she couldn't muster much compassion for Sheffield. It always came down to the same conclusion. He had behaved irresponsibly, cost a human life, and the consequences of his actions hadn't even put a dent in his wallet. She knew damn well if the shooter had been some out-of-work cowboy, he'd be whiling away his days at the expense of the state for a year or better. Lady Justice may have been blind, but she could smell money a mile off, and her scales tipped accordingly.

  But what if Sheffield hadn't shot Lucy after all?

  Stopping at the corral, Mari hooked a sneaker over the bottom rail and lay her arms on one higher up, the beer cans dangling down. She wished fervently for a cigarette, but denied herself the pleasure. Earlier in the day she had actually stooped to searching beneath her car seats for strays, coming up with three. Two remained in the breast pocket of her jacket.

  She had vowed to start a new life. No more dead-end career. No more living in the shadow of her parents' expectations. No more meaningless relationships. Throwing out her cigarettes had been symbolic. She had taken up smoking in the first place to appease the tension and tedium of her job. She had chucked the job, so she had chucked the cigarettes. New Eden had sounded like the perfect place to start that new life. A sabbatical in paradise. No smoking, no stress allowed.

  But her head was pounding and her mood was low. Her nerves were jangling like a wind chime in a cyclone. She fingered the flap of the jacket pocket. Just one . . .

  Rafferty chose that moment to make his appearance, riding down out of the wooded cover of the hillside on his big sorrel horse. The brim of his black hat shaded his eyes, but his mouth was set in a grim line and he held himself in a way that suggested he hurt all over but would never display the weakness of slouching. Something about that touched Mari, and she did her best to shake it off. She had never had time for bone-headed males who set their pride ahead of their common sense. There shouldn't have been anything appealing about this one.

  “Fixing to set the place on fire again?” J.D. drawled, nodding toward the pile of dead plants and splintered furniture that crowned the charred remains of her business suits in the center of the corral.

  Mari gave him a
look. “Yeah, I wanted the chance to have you tackle me again. I've got three or four ribs you somehow neglected to crack yesterday.”

  He swung off his horse, swallowing the groan that threatened. He'd been in one saddle or another since dawn. There had been a time when his body hadn't protested that kind of abuse, but that time had passed a couple of birthdays back. He narrowed his eyes at the woman before him. “Way I recall, you jumped me.”

  “Yeah, well, I hate to disappoint you, but don't expect it to happen again tonight,” she grumbled, rolling a shoulder. “I'm beat.”

  She looked more tousled than usual, her wild hair escaping the bonds of a ponytail in rippling waves. She had a smudge of dirt on her chin and her eyes seemed deeper and larger, dominating a face that had a delicate and strained quality to it.

  “Yeah, I hear those vacations can be hell on a person,” he said dryly.

  “I stopped calling it a vacation when I found out my friend was dead,” Mari said sharply. “And for your information, I've been working all day, trying to set the house to rights. I'm sure that doesn't compare to punching out cows or whatever it is you do with your time, but it's hard work to me.”

  He growled at her a little and started toward the barn. Instantly, Mari wanted him back. Not that she wanted him personally, she assured herself. She just wanted the company. She wasn't used to so much solitude. Even a conversation with Rafferty seemed preferable to the tangle of thoughts and feelings that had been tumbling around inside her all day.

  “Hey, wait,” she ordered, skipping to catch up with him. “You want a beer?”

  “Why?” he asked, turning back toward her. “Trying to ply me with liquor again, Mary Lee?”

  He smiled that slow, sardonic smile, a predatory-male gleam in his eye.

  “I already told you that wasn't necessary,” he said, his low voice abrading her nerve endings like sandpaper. “Just say the word. I could stand to ride something softer than a horse tonight.”