CHAPTER TEN
Jack drove home in distinct discomfort. He’d let that kiss get out of hand, partly because they’d been standing in the open doorway of Gabby’s hotel room. A corner of the bed was in sight. And, damn, he knew she wanted him, too. She had tried hard to meld her body to his while he kissed her until he couldn’t think about anything but her taste and her generous breasts pressed to his chest and the feel of her nicely rounded hip enclosed in his hand.
Braking now at a red light, he bumped his head against the steering wheel a couple of times. Thank God she’d come to her senses, because he had a bad feeling he’d passed the point of reason. And even though he’d never been in this position before, he strongly suspected that, while a woman could forgive a man for a lot, sleeping with her before true confessions wouldn’t go over well.
I’m not lying to her. Exactly.
Good try. Every time Gabby started to open up about her mother’s murder or anything related to it, he was viciously torn between not hurting her and wanting to push until her memories broke free.
He wasn’t so different from the original investigators, he admitted, not liking the comparison but unable to deny it. He hoped he was more competent. Compassionate, too. He hadn’t blown this by making love to a woman whose testimony he needed, but he’d come close. And he couldn’t forget that those cops had been straight with her—they were police detectives interviewing her because of what she’d seen. Even a kid understood that.
Him, he was a police detective who was pretending his profession was incidental to his relationship with her. Had to be habit that had him jumping on her every time something slipped out. How many times had he apologized now?
Driving on autopilot, not so smart for anyone in law enforcement, Jack knew himself to be in deep trouble. He was seriously in danger of falling in love with a courageous, vulnerable, damaged woman who trusted him and shouldn’t. A woman he’d been lying to since day one.
No, he should be glad she’d suddenly panicked and retreated into her room without inviting him to join her. Too bad his body still ached.
* * *
GABBY SHOULD HAVE been tired after Jack left—it wasn’t as if she’d been sleeping well—but she wasn’t. There was bound to be something on TV that could hold her attention. If not, the hotel offered a long list of current and older movies she could select from.
Latching on to the idea, she picked up the remote and started clicking through channels. She could watch hockey, football, basketball—hey, that game might actually be live—or curling. Gabby stayed on that channel for a few minutes. Men whisking brooms around on the ice held a certain fascination. Since she didn’t understand what was going on, she clicked the channel button again. She lingered here and there, catching scenes from familiar movies and other ones from shows that didn’t quite entice her to stick with them.
Suddenly, Ghostbusters popped up. Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and one of the other guys whose names she didn’t remember were running out of a building, garbed in their ghost-hunting getups. Gabby’s heart took a sickening thud. Her hand was shaking so much, it took several seconds for her to push another button. This one turned the TV off.
She stared at the dark screen as if it were a window behind which a monster had showed its face. Ridiculous, but she’d never been able to watch any of the Ghostbusters movies once she was old enough to appreciate them. Ric had had the original two on video and thought they were the best. He frequently had one or the other on when she wanted to watch something different, or was playing in the living room while he watched. She’d been way too young to appreciate the movies, but they were still embedded in her brain. She pictured her mother rolling her eyes and saying, “Not that again! For heaven’s sake, turn it off!”
So why did the very idea of Ghostbusters disturb her so much? And why hadn’t she ever asked herself that question? She’d just...shied away.
It wasn’t the actors, she was confident about that, or even the story lines. The whole idea was clever. And ghosts...she didn’t believe in those. As awful as visiting the house had been, Mom hadn’t been lingering.
So, what?
Confronting her disquiet directly for the first time, Gabby knew the answer almost instantly. It was the marshmallow man. Pulse racing, she opened her laptop case and went online, querying Ghostbusters. There he was, the eerily friendly-looking white monster striding down the street, towering over the people.
Just as he’d towered over her.
Teeth clenched tight, she closed the laptop. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man had murdered her mother. No, of course not—but her childish mind had related the killer to the movie visual. Gabby closed her eyes. White, loose fabric, covering the head, too. Gloves, there must have been gloves, and foot coverings.
In her nightmare, blood had dripped from a white elbow.
Wow. It seemed clear as day suddenly. That made her wonder if she could be manufacturing a memory, but she knew she wasn’t. And she finally understood why she’d immediately clicked away from any news coverage during the pandemic showing medical personnel and body recovery workers wearing protective suits. She’d been annoyed by her own squeamishness without questioning the reason for it.
Her nightmares had diminished as the years went on, and they had always varied. Sometimes, all she could recall was blood, or her mother’s face or the smell of the dirty clothes forming the cocoon that saved her life. The memory of the puffy white getup had obviously lurked in her subconscious, but maybe it was the most recent nightmares that made it resurface.
Her first instinct was to call Jack. Gabby actually looked around for her phone before realizing how late it was. He might still be up...but, really, telling him could wait. It wasn’t like she could describe the killer, or suddenly remembered her mother exclaiming, “John Smith, why are you here?” This memory was another piece to the picture, that was all.
It wasn’t like Jack was investigating the crime, but she gathered he did work on homicides. He could surely make note of what she’d recalled, in case any other information ever surfaced. Although actually...in a way he was on the case, considering the possible attempts on her life. He was certainly determined to keep her alive, and the best way to do that was to identify her mother’s murderer.
Or for her to fly back East and never visit Leclaire again, she supposed, oddly depressed by the idea. Ric would come visit her, she felt sure. Their relationship had come at least that far. But Jack...what if she never saw him again?
Oh, even thinking that was ridiculous. It wasn’t much over a week ago that they’d met. No surprise, he was still largely a mystery to her. He had a lot locked down tight, she suspected. Of course, he wasn’t alone in that, but circumstances had forced her to reveal more of herself to him and to her brother than she ever had to anyone before.
And that probably explained why she was starting to remember the few horrific minutes that had changed her life forever.
* * *
“WELL, NEITHER OF my kids was the same age as Colleen,” Annette Davis told Jack. A pleasant-looking, slim woman who appeared younger than her sixty-five years, she hadn’t bothered dyeing her short dark hair, which was attractively streaked with silver.
He’d called ahead to ask if she had time to speak to him. While they were still on the porch, she pointed out the house where Colleen’s parents had lived.
“They retired to Arizona.” Leading the way into the living room of the nice rambler, she shook her head. “They were both killed in an awful head-on collision on the highway not that much later. Gabrielle would have been only two or three.”
When she offered him a cup of coffee, he accepted. If he ever knew, he’d forgotten what had happened to Gabby’s maternal grandparents. She hadn’t mentioned them. Probably didn’t remember them at all. Isabel, he seemed to recall Ric saying, was a sister to this grandmother who’d died so unexpectedly.
> Gabby’s family had suffered too much tragedy.
When Annette returned, he got her talking about the family next-door and Colleen in particular. She was such a nice girl, of course, but he had the sense that Annette really meant it.
“A good Catholic girl,” she added. “Our families belonged to the same church. Dolly and I served on the altar guild together, and put together dozens of potlucks over the years. My Matthew was an altar boy. Colleen sang in the choir her last few years of high school. She had the loveliest voice! I know she was active with the youth group, too. That girl never ran wild. Why, Russ and I had far more trouble with our daughter, although thank the good Lord she’s happily married now, with three youngsters of her own.”
“Colleen was an only child?”
“Yes, her parents doted on her, but she never acted as if she’d been spoiled.”
It took her some effort, but she came up with the names of a couple of girls she remembered Colleen running around with. Both families had worshipped at St. Stephen’s. Annette’s still did.
“Of course Colleen brought her family there, too, and Raul continued to bring Ric.” Sadness softened this nice woman’s face. “Ric had his father buried in the churchyard, right next to his mother, but like so many young people, his attendance at services dropped off as time passed. I hope he makes his way back.” Her expression brightened. “Has he married?”
“No.” Jack didn’t see how it would hurt to tell Annette about Gabby so he did. She grew teary at the idea of little Gabby home again.
“Having something so appalling happen to Colleen shocked everyone. Some of us who knew her still talk about it.”
Jack had a thought. “I don’t suppose the priest Colleen would have known is still at St. Stephen’s.”
“Oh, heavens no! We’ve had several changes. Father Ambrose was transferred... Oh, let me think.” She pondered. “Matthew was in college, so Colleen would have been seventeen or eighteen, I think. We all missed him so much. His place was taken by Father Paul, who was also gone by the time Colleen died. We had Father Michael after that. He only retired a few years ago.” Suddenly she blushed and pressed her hands to her cheeks. “I’m sure that was far more than you wanted to know! Gracious, you should have stopped me.”
“No, I’m interested,” he said, honestly. “A priest she trusted might be someone Colleen would go to if something was troubling her.”
“That’s true, although she wouldn’t confess unless she felt she’d done something wrong.”
He thought, but didn’t say, Maybe she did. Maybe she had an affair. Maybe she’d just flirted when a good Catholic girl—or woman—shouldn’t have. Slipped out at night without her parents knowing.
Except her killer didn’t rape her, making it unlikely his motivation was sexual.
Having considered the possibility that the relationship between the killer and Colleen had dated back to her teenage years, he asked whether Annette knew if Colleen had had any boyfriends in high school.
“No boyfriends, as far as I know. I think Dolly would have said. Colleen had this one stretch—I want to say her sophomore year—when she suddenly started wearing more makeup and, well, revealing clothes. You know. She and her mother had more than a few clashes, although I thought Dolly was overreacting.” She shook her head. “It almost had to be a boy, don’t you think? By that summer, she’d changed again. No more silliness. She seemed more mature after that. Quieter, more service oriented.”
Or was she wary? Nervous around boys? Or had the desire to be of service to others been a way of atoning for what she’d viewed as a mistake? Could there have been a pregnancy and abortion? If she’d taken that route, she might well not have told her parents if she could have gotten away with it, but might have confessed to her priest.
Yet none of that explained the boy growing into a man who’d hated Colleen enough to murder her so brutally.
He could only hope what few school friends of Colleen’s he’d been able to identify would be as helpful as this woman—and that Colleen had confided any problems she’d had then with boys. Or men, for that matter.
He’d been following other threads, but none that seemed very promising. Two men the original investigators had identified as friends or even just acquaintances of Raul and Colleen had caught Jack’s attention. Both had the kind of job that required them to wear uniforms. One repaired washers and dryers for Sears. He’d serviced appliances twice at the Ortiz house in the year and a half before the murder. The other was then a security guard at a manufacturing plant in Leclaire.
The security guard especially interested him. The man had changed jobs several times in the years before the murder. The detectives who interviewed Royce Tilman had no way of knowing that he’d be accused of rape a couple of years after Colleen’s death. He’d been arrested, but prosecutors didn’t feel they had enough evidence to bring him to trial. Not surprisingly, he was fired from his job.
The only thing was, his wife had stuck by him, and they’d moved out of the area. They’d gone to Bellingham, in western Washington, and stayed there for ten years. Royce had been steadily employed for those years.
That’s when Jack lost him. They had to have moved out of state. Monday he’d call the employer in Bellingham and find out if, when he was resigning, he’d told them where he was going.
Sitting in his vehicle, wishing the heat would crank up faster, Jack made another couple of phone calls in an attempt to locate Tilman. Both were futile.
Colleen’s friends next, he decided, then a coworker from the year she’d worked as a nurse before her marriage.
* * *
CONVERSATION LAPSED BRIEFLY while Gabby and Jack dug into their entrées. Tonight was Thai again, starting with fried spring rolls, one of her favorite foods. So far, neither had said anything about that kiss.
After a few bites of her red curry, Gabby gathered her resolve and laid down her fork. “Something happened last night.”
Jack’s gaze acquired an intensity it hadn’t had a second ago. “What?”
She told him about channel surfing, and how she’d happened on one of the Ghostbusters movies, then how it tied to her nightmare and ultimately to her memory.
“So that’s why—” He shook his head.
“Why?”
“I’ve gathered you didn’t see his face.”
“I was looking at his back when he killed Mom.” How calm she sounded. “The only thing is...” Oh, why say this?
He waited with his usual patience, until she finally admitted, “Lately, a couple of times in nightmares he’s suddenly looked at me. I’m not...really seeing a face, but...” She shook herself. “It’s probably symbolic of my fear that he’d see me.”
“Probably.” Jack said that more thoughtfully than she liked, but he must have learned to be dispassionate on the job. Then he studied her face, the lines deepening on his. “Why don’t we talk about something else until we’re done eating. Then...will you tell me everything you do remember? Maybe we can put it together into something that makes sense.”
Her heart tripped a few times. She told herself gathering her courage to tell him the one recollection wasn’t the same as immersing herself in the real nightmare. Plus, she thought she was ready. She appreciated the kindness she heard in his voice and the efforts he’d made to protect her, and by good fortune, he was a detective.
Gabby nodded. “Okay.”
He did shift the conversation, asking whether her aunt had been a churchgoer, saying his mom had dragged him and his sister to church—in their case, Presbyterian—every Sunday, but after the divorce, his attendance had lapsed along with his father’s.
Aunt Isabel had been Catholic as well, but Gabby hadn’t stayed faithful any more than he had.
“I suppose it’s hard to believe, doing the job you do,” she commented.
He grimaced. “It is. Not
impossible, but when you see something really bad, you have to ask why. When you don’t get an answer—” He lifted one shoulder.
“Yet our instinct when we’re scared is to pray.”
“Because we want to be bailed out. Is that real faith?”
They argued amicably about the unanswerable question, then talked about friends who’d made drastically different life choices than they had. Once again, Gabby thought how different her conversations with Jack were than what she was used to on dates.
After their plates had been removed and they were sipping coffee, he said, “Would you consider inviting me to your room to talk? Or coming back to my place?” His expression was grave, and she knew he wasn’t thinking about sex.
She nodded. “The hotel is closer.”
“Okay.”
In fact, they’d walked the several blocks to the restaurant, Jack staying on the curbside, his gaze constantly roving. He’d been so obviously in bodyguard mode, she hadn’t even tried to start a conversation.
It was the same as they walked back to the hotel. Plenty of people were still out and about, which meant he frequently put a hand on her back and edged her out of the way of other pedestrians. She remembered what Ric said about Jack having eyes in the back of his head, and that had never seemed more true than tonight. He knew when people approached or came out of open doorways, even behind them, and screened her with his body when cars passed.
The reminder that there was a good reason for him to be so cautious wasn’t exactly soothing, even if she was grateful for it. Then there was her agreement to let him interview her in a way that hadn’t happened since her traumatic experiences as a little girl. By the time they passed through the hotel lobby and got into an elevator, Gabby felt sure a doctor reading her blood pressure right now would insist on medication.
But during that silent ride up in the elevator, she stiffened her spine enough to add that extra half inch to her height, and determined that she was going through with this. The time was right, and this man was right.
Harlequin Intrigue May 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 48
