by Tami Hoag
“What if he wasn't?” Jo murmured.
For a long moment they sat looking at each other, excitement crackling in the air between them as possibilities and motives tumbled through their heads.
Jolynn glanced at her watch. “Shit, we don't have time to work on this. If we're going to get the mockup of the special edition done and over to Grafton, we've got to haul ass, boss.”
The days of local newspapers printing their own editions off a Linotype machine had come and gone. It was the age of the personal computer—even in remote burgs like Still Creek. Part of Elizabeth's initial investment in the Clarion had been two new IBM personal systems for herself and Jolynn. They did their own typesetting, but the actual printing of the paper was done at a large central press in Grafton. The foreman had promised to squeeze their special edition in between the regular appointments of a half-dozen other local newspapers. Time on the presses was carefully doled out. Elizabeth had had to beg and cajole to get them worked in.
Jolynn was right, they would have to put the juicy information Phyllis had given them on the shelf for later consideration, but consider it she would. Maybe Dane Jantzen was going to be happy pinning this murder on a drifter and closing the case, but she wanted the truth. The Clarion might not reach millions or pack the political wallop Brock Stuart's newspapers did, but, by God, it would print the truth—not what was easiest or least offensive or most sensational or the word according to Brock. The truth. And if she had to stir the mud beneath the surface of Still Creek to get at it, then that was what she would do.
DOG-TIRED AND BONE-WEARY, DANE SLUMPED DOWN INTO his chair. He couldn't remember feeling this exhausted since his last training camp with the Raiders, when age and injury had made death seem preferable. His eyelids fell like blackout curtains and he dropped his head back and groaned. He'd spent the worst part of the afternoon tramping up and down the steep hills of Hudson Woods, literally beating the bushes for any sign of Carney Fox. It was now 6:45 and he had nothing to show for his efforts but a tear in the leg of his jeans, a piercing pain in his knee, and a mood that was blacker than pitch.
They'd been over nearly every square inch of Tyler County since the murder and found not hide nor hair of their quarry. Weasly little shit. He was probably halfway to Canada by now, crawling his way along through drainpipes like a sewer rat. If there had been any doubt in Dane's mind that Carney had done the killing, this would have sealed the issue. A man didn't go to ground unless he had some reason to hide.
Dane was willing to bet when the fingerprint information came back from the lab in St. Paul, there would be a nice fat Carney print among the dozens of incidentals left in and on Jarvis's Lincoln. Then he'd nail Carney's bony little butt to the wall. Provided they could find him.
He rubbed his hands over his face and slicked his hair back, peeling his gritty eyes open to take in the carnage of his once-immaculate office. Foam cups were on every available surface. One had tipped over on a mountain of paperwork, dotting the top report with rippling brown coffee stains. Half-eaten sandwiches had been abandoned here and there, candy wrappers strewn through dozens of statements, cake crumbs scattered like dust over the black-and-white blow-ups of the crime scene. The scent of male sweat hung in the air, and just beneath it lay the insidious aroma of dog.
Yeager and his damn bird dog. The agent had taken the dog with them to Hudson Woods. It had gotten hair all over the backseat of the Bronco, and the only thing the worthless mutt had done was wear himself out marking trees.
“Christ, I'll be glad when this is over,” Dane whispered, lifting his gaze to the ceiling.
He wanted his life back, his nice, orderly, peaceful life. But he wouldn't get it back tonight. He still had every available man out hunting for his suspect. Yeager had taken over the operation in the field for the evening. Dane was grabbing five minutes to choke down a sandwich and call Amy. Then he would be on his way to Minneapolis to witness the autopsy. The call had come down from the Hennepin County M.E.'s office midafternoon that they would be squeezing Jarvis in as after-dinner entertainment.
The only other man Dane could spare for the job was Ellstrom, and even though the cause of death seemed more than obvious, he didn't trust Ellstrom not to screw up on some essential detail. Besides, he felt a certain obligation. This was his county. A man under his protection had been murdered. It seemed only right that he witness the proceedings in person.
He looked down at his blotter and the neatly wrapped ham salad sandwich Lorraine had left for him and grimaced.
The door swung open as he reached for the phone, and Elizabeth Stuart ambled in. She had traded Jo Neilsen's gold lamé Christmas blouse for a plain white cotton T-shirt, which she wore tucked into her jeans.
He could just make out the scalloped outline of her bra. He had been present when Kaufman had been cataloging the items of clothing she had discarded after finding the body. The lady had some kind of taste in underwear. Sensuous, sexy, expensive.
Expensive. The word cooled his ardor with a chill reminder of who Elizabeth Stuart was and what kind of woman she was—expensive, ambitious, the kind who attached herself to men who could afford to buy her imported lace panties.
“Don't they knock on doors where you come from?” he asked irritably.
Elizabeth slowly paced the length of the time line that was taped to the wall, mentally photographing details from the corner of her eye. “I didn't want to risk the return of the formidable Miz Worth to her desk. I got the feeling she doesn't much care for me.”
“She's gone for the day. You're safe.”
He pushed himself out of his chair and moved to block her path along the time line. Elizabeth pulled herself up just short of running into him. Foolish, she told herself. He wasn't about to give an inch. All she'd done by challenging him was put herself too blasted close.
“I thought you had a hot date with a deadline.”
“We finished.”
She stepped back and dropped into the visitor's chair, frowning as he chose to sit on the edge of the desk directly in front of her rather than behind the expanse of oak. He had changed out of the dress clothes he'd worn for the press conference, trading them for a chambray work shirt, faded jeans, and battered leather work boots.
“I came by some information that might be of use to you,” she said.
“What kind of information?”
“The kind that gives a whole lot of other people motive to kill Jarrold Jarvis. It seems he did a little loan-sharking on the side,” she said. “Loaned people money, kept their names in a little black book.”
The tension fell out of Dane's shoulders. “Oh, that.” He got up and wandered away from the desk, trying to work a kink out of the shoulder he had separated twice during the '79 season.
Elizabeth stared up at him in disbelief. “What do you mean—‘Oh, that'? You knew?”
“Of course I knew, this is a small town. Jarrold was a source of money if you needed it bad enough. It's nothing.”
“Nothing!” She catapulted herself up out of the chair and took a step toward him. “How can you say it's nothing? What if one of those upstanding citizens got tired of paying him back? What if old Jarrold was putting the screws to somebody who couldn't cough up the cash so they offed him?”
“Offed him?” Dane gave her a look. “Where do you get this stuff—television?”
“The point is, any one of those people might have killed him,” she insisted.
“We know who killed him.”
“You know who you want to have killed him.”
Irritation pulled Dane's brows together. “What's that supposed to mean?”
“It means you'd rather pin the rap on some poor fool who wandered down from the steel belt than look in your own backyard—”
“It's the Iron Range,” he corrected her impatiently. “And I don't have to look in my own backyard.”
“Afraid of what you might find?”
“No,” he said, moving half a step closer to her
, his hands jammed at the waist of his jeans. “I know exactly what I'll find. That's why I don't have to look there. I have a suspect who had motive and opportunity and I have no doubt he had the means too. Why should I go looking for something more? You think I don't have better things to do than sit around here dreaming up murder mysteries?”
“Even if Fox did kill him, that doesn't mean he wasn't just the hitter—”
“Fox?” Dane snapped. “Who the fuck gave you that name?”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Everybody in town figured it out in about two seconds.”
He rubbed a hand over his face and slicked his hair back, squeezing his eyes shut like a man in the grip of a muscle spasm. “Shit.”
Elizabeth pressed on with her theory. “Someone could have paid him—”
Dane gave a bark of laughter. “Jesus, what are you—some kind of conspiracy nut? You think Lee Harvey Oswald was a fall guy? You think man walking on the moon was a hoax? You think Reagan knew about Iran-Contra?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said with a decisive nod. “I never did like that man—not even on Death Valley Days.”
Dane rolled his eyes heavenward and ground his teeth. Lord, why did he have to be saddled with a murder and Elizabeth Stuart all at the same time? He wasn't in the mood for this, didn't have the patience for it. Reining in his temper, he drew a long, slow breath. She was only trying to help, he realized that. It wasn't entirely her fault his blood pressure was moving into the red zone.
“Most crime is simple,” he said in the same tone of false equanimity he might use with an annoying two-year-old. “Most criminals are stupid. Carney Fox killed Jarrold Jarvis for his money and for the sheer fun of it and vamoosed. End of story.”
Elizabeth stared up at him, incredulous, barely controlling the urge to grab him and shake him. She felt full of the truth, brimming with motives and secrets, enthusiastic to do her part for justice, but the man in charge of justice didn't want to hear what she had to say. “You're not going to do anything with my information? You're not going to look for this book or question anybody or—”
“No.”
“Unbelievable,” she muttered, shaking her head as if dazed. “You don't care that one of your most prominent citizens was a loan shark—”
“He was not a loan shark—”
“You don't care that a dozen different people had reason to want him dead.” He drew breath for another protest, but Elizabeth didn't wait to hear it. “You don't care about finding the truth,” she said, caught between cynicism and disbelief. “All you care about is closing this up in minimum time with minimum fuss.”
“I don't care about running my ass ragged over some half-baked theory.”
“You want to blame some outsider and close the case. Keep your little tourist town looking squeaky-clean no matter what kind of dirt there is under the rug.” She narrowed her eyes and looked at him with disgust. “You're lazy, that's what you are.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dane snarled, his temper spiking upward as her accusation hit a nerve that had been rubbed raw long ago. “Well, you talk too damn much.”
And they had gotten too damn close. They realized it at exactly the same second, Dane thought. She was standing no more than a hairbreadth away, her breasts rising and falling as she gulped air. A flush of color stained her cheeks and her eyes widened, the pupils dilating as she stared up at him.
He tried to tell himself to back off, but he couldn't. Wouldn't. Something more powerful than common sense pulled him toward her, heated his blood, drew his eyes to her mouth. That lush, lush mouth. That tantalizing little scar crooked at the corner of her lips. He had wanted a taste of her from the moment he'd first laid eyes on her, and now, he couldn't think of a single reason he shouldn't take that taste.
Her lips parted slightly and Dane took the action as a silent invitation, dropping his mouth to hers before she could tell him different.
Soft, sweet. All he had imagined. More than he had bargained for. A warning bell sounded somewhere in the back of his mind, but desire swept through like a flood and drowned the alarm, leaving nothing but that incredible heat in its wake. He tangled a fist in her hair and tilted her head back, giving him better access, a better angle.
Elizabeth gasped slightly at the shock of their bodies coming together, at the surprise of his lips touching hers, and he took advantage, sliding his tongue slowly into the warm, wet cavern of her mouth. He kissed her slowly, deeply, taking her, possessing her, staking a claim. He swept a hand down her back and over her buttocks, cupping her, lifting her into him.
Elizabeth trembled and groaned, barely aware that she had made the sound. She couldn't remember the last time a man had touched her like this, made her want like this. It thrilled her and frightened her and made her burn with shame.
She'd sworn off men, sworn off this man in particular. He was dangerous in a way that had nothing to do with the laws of man and everything to do with the laws of nature. He thought she was what Brock and the press had painted her to be—an easy lay, an expensive whore.
She uncurled the fists she had wound into his shirt and pressed her hands flat against his chest as she wrenched her mouth away from his.
“And here I thought we didn't agree on anything,” Dane murmured.
A tremor of hurt shuddered through Elizabeth. At that moment she hated him just about as much as she hated anything. Hated him for thinking what everyone thought. Hated him for making her want. Hated him for making her hate herself.
“We don't,” she whispered bitterly.
He lifted a hand and gently brushed a strand of hair from the curve of her cheek. “Liar.”
Slowly, seductively, he traced the tip of his thumb along her cheek to touch the corner of her mouth and the scar that hooked down from it. Desire jumped along her nerve endings. Anger flared right behind it. Gaze locked on his, she tilted her chin down and bit him.
Dane hissed a breath in through his teeth and jerked his hand back. Elizabeth started to back away from him, but his left hand still rested on the curve of her hip. His fingers tightened, holding her in place.
“Doc Truman called.”
The announcement boomed loud as thunder across the office. Elizabeth bolted, swinging toward the door and the oversize figure of Deputy Ellstrom that blocked it.
Ellstrom looked from Elizabeth's guilty face to his boss. Jantzen sat back against the edge of his desk, anger and arrogance radiating from him like steam. He had his fists jammed into the pockets of his jeans, but the pose didn't do much to hide the fact that the man was hard as a pike.
That bastard gets everything, Boyd thought bitterly, his stomach churning. Power, position, women. People around town still bowed down to him because he used to be able to catch a football. Well, that wouldn't last. Boyd was a man with a plan. He'd come out on top . . . if he could just find that damned note. Nerves twisted his intestines like bony hands wringing out a dishrag.
“Deputy.” Dane's gaze locked on Ellstrom. “Do you possess the motor skills and base intelligence required to raise your fist and knock on a door before you open it?”
Ellstrom chewed back a retort. It wouldn't do him any good to mouth off now. He had thought he could get some use out of the Stuart woman, having her quote him in the paper and whatnot, but it was plain what side of the bed she was playing on. Jantzen was primed and ready. In another minute he would have been getting his wick dipped, the lucky son of a bitch. “Doc Truman called,” he said again.
Elizabeth strained against the urge to run away in humiliation. Ellstrom took half a step back from the doorway, making an opening that wasn't quite wide enough for her to walk through without turning sideways. She could feel his eyes on her and knew if she cared to look she would see that damned smug disdain, that knowing male contemptuousness that made her mad enough to choke. He and Jantzen would probably have a good snicker about this after she left. It wouldn't matter that they hated each other. Men unfailingly banded together when it came to sports and wom
en.
“Excuse me, Deputy,” she snarled. “Your belly's in the way.”
Ellstrom grunted in affront and took another step back, his frown cutting deeper lines into his fleshy face. Elizabeth brushed past him, taking her first step through the doorway, when Jantzen's voice stopped her.
“This discussion isn't over, Miss Stuart.” He spoke casually, but a thread of steel lay under the deceptive laziness of his tone. A promise. A threat.
Elizabeth shot him a malevolent look over her shoulder. “It is as far as I'm concerned. You can do something with the information I gave you or you can sit around with your thumb up your ass. I'm going looking for the truth, whether you want me to find it or not.”
AARON WAS STILL AT THE HOUSE WHEN ELIZABETH finally made it home. He looked up as she walked into the kitchen, glancing at her over the tops of his spectacles as he carefully cleaned his tools and put them away in his toolbox.
“It's past seven,” she said, slinging her purse over the back of a chair. Too tired to give a rip about decorum, she straddled the chair and sank down onto the cracked seat, dropping her chin on her hands on the chair's back. “I thought you'd be long gone by now.”
Aaron picked a fleck of brown paint off the end of a screwdriver, then wiped the tool with a flannel rag he carried for the purpose, his mouth turned down in concentration. A man kept his tools as he kept his life—neat and orderly. He slid the screwdriver into its proper place in the box. “A good day's work for a day's wage,” he said.
Elizabeth gave a weary hoot of laughter. “You don't belong to a union, do you?”
He didn't get the joke, but he smiled a little just the same. It seemed the thing to do. “I belong to the church, to the Gemei,” he said, taking up a pair of pliers and beginning the process of inspecting and cleaning once more. He glanced at Elizabeth out of the corner of his eye. She looked ready to fall asleep where she sat, straddling the kitchen chair like a man, her wild black hair falling around her in decadent disarray. “You are yourself late, Elizabeth Stuart. You don't belong to no union neither, I'm guessing.”
