by Tami Hoag
She told herself it was a combination of her hangover and his height in cowboy boots, but the little voice of truth inside her clucked its tongue. The fact of the matter was he was too damn close and too damn male. The effect was unsetting in the extreme. She wished with all her heart to be anywhere else with anyone else.
“It wasn't an offer,” he said, his voice silky soft. “It was an order. You're coming with me. Now.”
EIGHT
GOD ALMIGHTY, YOU HAVE JUST CORNERED THE market on charm, haven't you?” Elizabeth shot her most scathing glare across the cab of the Bronco as it rumbled down the gravel road. She suspected it had no effect at all, it being hidden behind the lenses of her Ray-Bans, but the intent was there, burning in the air between them.
Dane bared his teeth. “Charm is my middle name.”
“Really? I would have thought it was something that started with an A.”
“Admirable?”
“Arrogant. Annoying. Ass—”
“Tut-tut, Ms. Stuart,” he clucked in mock affront. “Such language is unbecoming to a lady of your quality.”
Elizabeth snarled at him. “You wouldn't know quality if it spit in your face.”
She dug through her purse—the one item she had managed to grab as Dane had all but dragged her out of the house—and pulled out her compact and a tube of Passion Poppy lipstick. Snapping open the mirror, she watched her reflection bob up and down as she tried to put some color on her lips. “You could have given me ten minutes to change and put on a little makeup—”
“I've never known a woman who could make up her mind in ten minutes, let alone her face—”
“—but no, you've got to play Mr. Macho and drag me off at the crack of dawn for a press conference that doesn't start for hours. You know, you'd'a been a real hit in Nazi Germany. You could have been the poster boy for the SS.”
“Jesus Christ,” he grumbled. “I don't think denying you the time to put on mascara constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
“No, that part comes now,” Elizabeth said dryly. “Having to suffer your delightful company all the way to town, riding in this lumber wagon while I shove my best tube of Estée Lauder lipstick up my nose.”
Dane hit the brakes and sent the Bronco skidding to a halt. A little yelp of surprise escaped from Elizabeth as her purse went flying and her body hurtled toward the dash. She stuck out a hand to save herself, broke a nail, and thumped her head on the windshield just the same.
“Dammit to Hades, I spent ten dollars on these nails!” She shoved her sunglasses up on top of her head and examined the broken fingernail, running her thumb over its jagged edge.
Her nails were the one indulgence she allowed herself these days. She had always seen a good manicure as the mark of a true lady, and she clung to that symbol now that she couldn't afford any of the other trappings of sophistication. She had skipped lunch three times in the last week so she could have Ingrid Syverson at the Fashion-Aire Beauty Salon put on a triple coat of Vivacious Red. Now the whole effect was ruined.
“I told you to wear a seat belt,” Dane growled.
And she had refused just to irk him.
“You're a maniac, that's what you are,” she grumbled, picking up her slim gold compact and checking her reflection before stuffing it back into her purse along with a handful of junk that had flown out onto the floor. Lighter, tampons, coupons for frozen pizza at the Piggly Wiggly, five loose Junior Mints, and eighty-three cents.
“No,” Dane corrected her, the muscles in his jaw working as tension clenched his teeth together. “What I am is dead tired. I got an hour's sleep last night. I got to go home long enough to make sure some lunatic with a knife hadn't added my daughter to his list of things to do, then I spent the rest of the night at the station being hounded by reporters and racking my brain over who would have wanted to make Jarrold Jarvis shorter by a head.” He turned toward Elizabeth with a look that had her unconsciously bracing herself against the door. “I'm a man whose patience is running seriously in the red, and the last thing I need is some southern belle whining to me about her goddamn fingernails.”
Elizabeth straightened her sunglasses and primly resettled herself on the seat, smoothing her old UTEP T-shirt as if it were her finest designer blouse. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, collecting her poise as silence settled like dust in the cab of the truck.
“I do not whine,” she said stiffly, presenting him with her profile. “I pout.”
“Pouting is generally a silent endeavor,” Dane remarked. He slid the stick back into gear and the Bronco began to roll forward once more. “Maybe you're out of practice.”
Damn but if she didn't have to give him the last word. Why couldn't he have sent Deputy Kaufman to pick her up? That sweet little puppy-eyed man would have let her change clothes. Shoot, she probably could have shampooed her hair and shaved her legs too, for that matter. He would have inquired after her feelings instead of laying into her with fangs bared, like a bad-tempered wolf.
She snuck a glance at Dane out of the corner of her eye. He did look tired. His face was drawn, the skin stretched taut over the bones. He had shaved, but there wasn't much to be done about the lines of tension digging in around his mouth and eyes. A little trickle of sympathy leaked through Elizabeth. She supposed he had reason to be churlish. The weight of what had happened rested squarely on his shoulders, and, while they certainly looked strong enough to carry a load, that didn't make it fun.
“Did your daughter make it in all right?” She kicked herself for asking, but the words had snuck out of her mouth without permission. She had told herself she didn't want to know anything about his personal life, didn't want to draw any parallels between her life and his, but the horse was out of the barn now.
He shot her a suspicious look, like a wild dog wary of a handout from a stranger. “Yeah, fine.”
“She lives out of state, I guess.”
“Los Angeles.”
“That's a long way. Must be hard,” she murmured. Distance had never been a problem for Bobby Lee, she mused bitterly. He had never made any attempt to see Trace after she had moved out. But then, she doubted Bobby Lee kept a picture of their son in a frame on his desk either. Just that one little sign of fatherly caring put Dane Jantzen in a whole different league for her. She might have thought he was a jerk deluxe in every other way, but she couldn't help admiring a man who cared about his daughter.
“Yeah,” Dane admitted reluctantly. “It's tough. I don't get to spend much time with her as it is. Now I've got this murder—”
He checked himself abruptly. The last thing he needed to do was confide in this woman. Christ, what was he thinking? That she might sympathize because she was a single parent too? Fat chance that she would side with him. She was a mother, not a father. She had custody, not visitation. If there were comparisons to be drawn between his situation and hers, then surely she had more in common with Tricia than she did with him.
“Any leads on a suspect yet?” she asked.
He was glad for the change in subject. “Trying to get a scoop for the Clarion?”
“I'm trying to make conversation.”
“I thought you were going to pout. I'd really prefer if you pouted, actually.”
Elizabeth tilted her head to one side. “Well, we're not big on courting to each other's preferences, you and I, now, are we?”
Dane gave a snort. “Not so far.”
She studied him quietly for a moment, reflecting with some wonder on the antagonism that had instantly sprung up between them. She generally got on famously with men—as long as she wasn't married to them. A smile, a batted lash, a flirtatious word and she had the garden-variety man eating out of her hand. This one was more liable to bite her hand off. Her fingers curled protectively into fists against the soft leather of her Gucci bag.
“I'm not asking anything you won't tell at the press conference,” she said. “And I sure as hell can't run off and print it anywhere right now, ca
n I?” She glanced around the Bronco, which was outfitted with all the paraphernalia of a standard police cruiser, including the wire-mesh barrier between the front- and backseats. “I'm what you might call a captive audience.”
Dane rubbed a hand over his jaw, fighting off a yawn. What would it hurt to give her the same official statement he intended to give the rest of the press? He could consider it a practice run. Eyes on the road, he hit the blinker and turned onto the highway.
“We think it was a transient,” he said flatly. “Murder-robbery. He caught Jarvis alone after hours. Killed him. You came along before he had a chance to steal the car.”
The idea sent a shudder through Elizabeth. If she'd gotten there a little sooner, she would indeed have been a witness—or another victim. She remembered again the feeling of being watched as she'd stood there staring down at the body, and her skin crawled beneath a cold wave of pinpricks. Fear gripped her throat, and she had to nearly spit the words out of her mouth.
“His wallet was gone?”
“Empty. And the glove compartment had been rifled.”
“Maybe Jarrold was just out of cash.”
Dane shook his head. “Jarrold was never out of cash. Some men measure masculinity by the length of their cock; Jarrold Jarvis measured it by how big a wad a man carried in his hip pocket. I saw him at the Coffee Cup yesterday. Phyllis would have liked to have taken a frying pan after him. He paid for a dollar-ninety-eight check with a hundred and cleaned out her till. She had to send Renita to the bank and wait tables herself while All My Children was on. That's just about motive enough for Phyllis to have killed him herself. She gets cranky when she misses her soaps.”
Elizabeth nibbled at her ragged fingernail as she turned the possibilities over in her mind. “So what was this transient doing out at Still Waters? It's hardly on the way to anyplace. He'd have to be some piss-poor retarded kind of mugger to be looking for a victim out in the country like that.”
“He's not a mugger by trade. He's a man who saw an opportunity and acted on it. We get our share of drifters through here in the summer. Looking for farm work and odd jobs. There's been a guy hanging around town since April or so. Came down from the Iron Range. Said he was looking for work, but more like he was looking for trouble. He's been skirting the edges of having his butt thrown in jail since the day he got here.”
“This drifter have a name?”
“Yep.”
“You gonna share it with me?”
“Nope.”
“Is he in custody?” she asked, professional interest taking a backseat to her personal fears. She couldn't shake the feeling that the killer had seen her, had stood there and watched her, had been out there in the night as she'd waited for Trace to come home. She had sensed him, had felt the heaviness in the air, the electric tension of something dark and menacing.
“Not at the moment,” Dane said. “I've got every deputy in the county beating the bushes for him. If he's gone to ground around here, we'll find him.” And the case would be closed and everyone in Still Creek could go back to business as usual. He could take a few days off to get his first crop of hay in and to just be with his daughter. “We'll get him.”
“How'd he know Jarvis?”
“He tried to hire on at Still Waters and got turned down.”
“You think that's a motive to kill?”
“Depends on the man. In New York, Chicago, there are kids—sixteen, seventeen years old—willing to cut your throat if they happen to like the jacket you're wearing. This guy had the opportunity to see Jarrold flashing his cash around. Money will motivate people to do a lot of things.”
“Ain't that a fact,” Elizabeth murmured. A picture of Brock flashed through her mind. The man had more money than God and he'd still gone rabid at the idea of more. She doubted he would have let anything stand in his way of marrying that brainless twit of a European princess, Marissa Mount-Zaverzee. Marry-and-Mount-Me. Bags of money there. Rumor had it her daddy had bought their titles, that their blood was no more blue than a dirt farmer's, but that didn't make their money any less green.
“Know a little something about that, do you?” Dane eased off on the gas as they reached the edge of town, and shot her a hard glance.
Elizabeth was ready to snap back, but she caught something in his look, a cynicism that was old and ingrained, a bitterness that had to have predated her arrival in his life. She narrowed her eyes in speculation.
“Put the screws to you in the divorce, didn't she?”
He flinched as if she'd reached across the cab and pinched him hard. A ghost of a smile curled the corner of her mouth. It held no joy or humor, only weariness and the kind of knowledge she would gladly have done without.
“My luck,” she said on a long sigh, wishing for a cigarette. She had enough to deal with just scraping by through life right now. She surely didn't need a man with an ax to grind climbing on top of everything. She already felt as though she were in the middle of a stampede, fighting to keep her feet under her. Then along came Dane Jantzen, weighed down by a load of old emotional baggage, kicking at her for spite's sake.
She rolled her window down and let the cool morning air wash over her for a minute while she stewed. This would have been a good time to let things slide, she reflected, but she was sick of taking the blame for other people's sins. Besides, she'd never been much good at keeping her mouth shut when she had the need to say something.
“I'm not your ex-wife, Sheriff—”
“Thank God.”
She scowled at him as her temper simmered a little hotter, the flames of righteous indignation leaping up inside her. “I'll second that,” she said, “'cause dollars to doughnuts, you've got to be pure D hell to live with. But I don't need to be taking all kinds of shit from you because Mrs. Dane Jantzen got herself some shark lawyer and cleaned your pockets for you. That's your fault, sugar, not mine.”
“Yeah,” Dane drawled. “I guess you've got enough faults without me adding to them.”
Elizabeth gave a sniff and shook her head as they turned off Main Street and headed west on Itasca, skirting around an Amish buggy that was plodding toward the Piggly Wiggly. A round-faced boy no more than five peered out at them from the dark interior, eyes eager and owlish. He raised a chubby hand to wave, and his mother frowned at him and rattled off something in German.
“While wallowing in your sad and bitter past, you seem to have taken a wrong turn,” Elizabeth said sarcastically. “We're nowhere near the courthouse.”
“We're not going to the courthouse. I have to stop at the Jarvis place first. Helen Jarvis called in to say someone trashed their mailbox last night.”
“No fooling?” She sobered and shifted sideways on the seat. “The killer adding insult to injury?”
“Seems pretty juvenile.”
“I don't think our prison system is overflowing with psychologically mature men.”
He hit the blinker again and turned left, easing the Bronco to a stop in front of a glorified split-foyer house that had been overdressed with a row of fake Doric columns along the front. It had the look of a low-rent Tara, complete with a little grinning black-jockey hitching post standing beside the front step, as if Ashley Wilkes might actually ride up, tie his horse to it, and stay to chat about The War. Pink plastic flamingos lurked in the juniper bushes, their long necks bent at unnatural angles. Smack in the middle of the front yard, amid a riotous patch of pink petunias, stood an enormous carved stone fountain that would have looked more at home in Versailles.
At the end of the curving drive, the mailbox—encased in white imitation wrought-iron filigree—was in a sad state. It stood crumpled over sideways, like a skinny kid who'd had the wind knocked out of him by the class bully. The frame was twisted and scabs of paint were missing in a manner that suggested someone had tried to beat it to death with a tire iron.
The complete picture of Jarrold Jarvis's home had a weird, incongruous, surreal quality about it that made Elizabeth shiver in
distaste. If the king and queen of tacky had needed a palace, she thought, this would have been it.
“Christ in a miniskirt,” she muttered, leaning ahead. “I'll bet you a nickel they've got a black velvet painting of Elvis hanging over the imitation Louis XIV settee.”
“You lose.” Dane pulled the keys from the ignition and palmed them, flashing her a wry grin. “It's a bull-fighter. Wait here.”
“Wait here!” Elizabeth wailed.
He slammed his door on the rest of her indignant protest and started for the house. Elizabeth scrambled down out of the truck, pushing her sunglasses up on her nose and hitching her purse strap over her shoulder. If he thought she was going to stay in the car like some recalcitrant child and miss out on meeting the bereaved Mrs. Jarvis, he had another think coming. In the first place, that she offer her condolences was only decent. In the second place, she wanted to see what kind of woman had married a pig like Jarrold. Then there was the matter of her job.
She took one step toward the house, and Dane wheeled on her with a look that could have frozen molten lava. It stopped her in her tracks, discretion, for once, winning out over impulse. She shrugged and showed him a big, phony smile.
“Just stretching my legs,” she said meekly.
Dane snarled a little under his breath, backing toward the house until he was certain she wasn't going to follow him. He couldn't think of many more distasteful things than facing a new widow with a reporter in tow. God only knew what the amazing Miss Stuart might come up with—I'm sorry for your loss, Mrs. Jarvis. By the way, did your husband sleep around or anything? Just for the record. The public has a right to know.
Helen Toller Jarvis met him at the front door with a cherry Jell-O mold in hand. Short and moon-faced, she looked to be near fifty and was hardened rather than well preserved, as if the layer of plumpness under her skin had solidified into something more dense than fat. Her face was stretched unnaturally taut, the result of being the only recipient of a face-lift in all of Still Creek.
