Wicked Women Whodunit

by Davidson, MaryJanice

  Time for a distraction. A big one. Anything to take her mind off last night and the weekend-long repeat performances she’d imagined in graphic detail as she drifted off to sleep.

  Not to mention that other fantasy, the know-it-all voice in her head whispered. The one where Will chucks it all to move to the city with you, to dedicate his life there to your eternal, daily sexual pleasure and maybe learn to cook, so you can watch him making scrambled eggs in an apron and nothing else ...

  “Stop that,” she said out loud, setting down her coffee cup and standing up. This was ridiculous. Maybe she should have checked into a sanitarium. Her life had obviously taken a big toll on her sanity if one night with a nice guy—okay, a funny, sweet, deliciously sexy guy with the most talented tongue she’d probably ever know—had turned her into a sniveling, moping fool. Men left the morning after—happened all the time, to her and every other woman she knew. Men and commitment, even the simple next-day kind, didn’t mix on a regular basis, unless the planets were aligned just right and all the portents were favorable.

  And lately, her life was a favorable-portent-free zone.

  Arms folded over her chest, she surveyed her options. She could poke around the cottage. She could rummage through the cupboards for something other than chocolate, which always seemed pointless in situations like this. She could take a shower. She could ... take a walk! In the snow. Down the road.

  Which was, conveniently, where Will lived.

  Even to her, the idea seemed vaguely like something a stalker would do, but she could play it cool. “Oh, hey there,” she imagined herself saying as she bumped into him, all innocence. “Will, right? Great body you’ve got there. If you’re not doing anything later, bring it on over, and maybe we can reacquaint it with mine.”

  Maybe cool wasn’t in her repertoire. Not that it mattered—she probably wouldn’t even see him. He’d most likely holed up in his bachelor bedroom for a daylong nap, and nothing short of a lightning strike would wake him up after all that sex.

  But it couldn’t hurt to get a little exercise, she told herself, poking through the hall closet for a stray hat and a pair of mittens. She’d just burn off some calories with a trudge through the snow, and then she’d come back, curiosity satisfied and her quota of healthy behavior fulfilled for the day. Or maybe the weekend.

  He’d mentioned that his house was farther down the road, so she went out the back door, wrapping her arms around her middle when the frigid, wet air hit her face, dismayed at the amount of snow piled on the back porch steps. But she could see a house through the trees, the bare branches frosted with thick white powder. It was like a storybook out here, white-laced and quiet, the snow still falling in fat, twirling flakes.

  And Will’s house fit right in, a neat gray cottage trimmed with gingerbread and an inviting porch, the dark blue shutters edged with snowy fringe.

  To hell with it, she’d just plow through the accumulation on the steps and worry about the ruin of her sneakers later.

  But two steps down, her right foot hit something solid, and she drew back, wincing.

  And then gasping, as she realized the contact had dislodged the topmost layer of snow from what looked very much like the back of a man’s head.

  Inching down the other side of the steps, she stood in the snow and squinted at the shape, her heart thudding like a wild thing in her chest.

  It was a man, all right. A very dead man. Faintly, her internal jukebox cued up the music from Psycho.

  Shaking it off, she bit her lip and reached out with one mittened hand to brush the snow from his face—and realized she was staring at Will. Blond hair spiked with icicles, that gorgeous jaw blue with cold, his mouth a grim, frozen line ...

  “Oh my God oh my God oh my God,” she whispered into the still air. Her bad luck had just reached previously unknown heights. The poor guy had slept with her once and wound up dead.

  Dead. Dead! Dead? How the hell was he dead? He couldn’t be dead; he’d been perfectly healthy, if stamina was any marker, and very much alive just hours ago. Unless he’d left in the middle of the night ... in which case maybe he hadn’t enjoyed himself as much as she’d believed. . .

  Oh, God, she was really losing it. Here she was staring at this beautiful man’s snow-covered corpse and trying to massage her ego at the same time. It was panic, plain and simple.

  But she couldn’t panic. She had to ... what? Call 911. That was the first step in any emergency. But did they have 911 up here? Would it matter? Trembling hard now and slightly nauseous, she glanced up at the sky. The storm wasn’t even over, and the roads probably hadn’t been plowed.

  Then again, it wasn’t like he needed an ambulance.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered again, sitting down abruptly in the snow, fighting tears that were going to be truly hysterical if she let them come. Will DeMaio, her gorgeous one-night stand, was really, truly dead.

  And it hadn’t been kind—he looked awful. Stunned, and somehow older. Not that it mattered. Because he was dead.

  But ... how? She stiffened, picturing the angry contractor from the bar. What had his scary friend said? That they would “take care of business” later?

  Good God. She’d had no idea that a streak of violence ran through the construction business.

  But then there was Jill ... It wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that Stalker Girl had snapped, following them out of the bar, waiting, maybe watching ...

  She shivered, but this time the cause was revulsion, the creepy, skin-crawling kind, instead of the cold. If Jill had done this, waiting for her chance when Will left, she could still be waiting, to finish the job ...

  Oh, God. She sniffled, trying to get herself together and think, when a hand on her shoulder tore a startled scream from her throat. Scrambling to her feet, she looked up and felt a dizzy wave of confusion that seemed very likely the precursor to a faint.

  It wasn’t Jill. It was a man standing beside her, a brown bag of groceries in one arm and a concerned frown on his face. And the man was Will.

  “Lanie? What’s wrong?”

  “Will?” She backed away from him, her face as white as the snow, her eyes huge and confused and ... glistening? Was she crying? What the hell was going on? He’d just gone into town for bagels, for God’s sake, and he’d left her a note.

  “Lanie, it’s me,” he said, looking around for a place to set down the bag when he saw what had spooked her.

  And found himself more than a little spooked in turn.

  Stumbling, he swallowed hard and blindly shoved the bag at Lanie. What the fuck had happened here? Where had his father come from, and why the hell was he dead on the Seavers’ back porch?

  “Will?”

  Lanie’s voice was shaking, but he knew it was more than the unwelcome shock of a corpse. It was whom she’d thought the corpse was—him.

  “Lanie, it’s me,” he said, turning to drag her close, running his hands over her trembling back, the brown bag a lumpy obstacle between them. “I mean, I’m me, and that’s ... that’s my father, Mike DeMaio. Oh, Jesus.”

  “Your ... father?”

  “The same.” He couldn’t stop staring at the body, even though his hands continued their soothing circles through Lanie’s wildly inappropriate spring coat. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew she was in shock, as well as nearly frozen, but his feet wouldn’t work to move them into the house. In a minute, maybe he could manage it, but right now he needed to process the fact that his father—the lazy, bitter, selfish sonofabitch who had given Will little more than his name—was gone. The bloody, gaping wound in his neck was proof of that.

  And then he needed to start thinking about the why and the how and the who.

  “Will, I’m so ...” Lanie shook her head, her eyes wide and grief-stricken when he faced her. “Well, sorry, obviously, but the word seems pretty inadequate for this situation.”

  “It’s okay,” he said vaguely, turning to look back at his father. When h
ad he shown up in town, and why was he on the Seavers’ back porch? The questions racing through his head all needed answers, but first, he wanted to get Lanie in the house and sit down himself. Preferably with a double shot of something alcoholic.

  Willing his feet to move, he steered her toward the steps, careful to help her past the body, and realized only as they entered the kitchen that she’d been chattering nervously all the while.

  “... you’d left,” she was saying, her mittened hands gesturing wildly, “so I thought I’d take a walk, see your house, you know? And I know that sounds a little desperate, but I was confused, because last night seemed so great—and I really do get that it doesn’t matter right now, but I wanted to explain why I was out there and—”

  He held up a hand to stem the rushing tide of words, guiding her into one of the chairs and setting her down in it. “I went to get bagels, and my car. I left you a note.”

  Her pretty pink mouth opened in surprise. “Oh.”

  If only he could spend the rest of the day focusing on that mouth, he thought, straddling a chair and resting his chin on his folded arms. That would be good. Even better would be focusing on the rest of her, too, head to foot and all the sweetly lickable parts in between.

  “I guess you didn’t find it,” he said, raising his head to reach out and take her hand. Her wet mittens were still in place, and he pulled them off. “You looked so peaceful this morning, I didn’t think you’d be up for a while.”

  “I tossed the covers.” Now her cheeks were pink with embarrassment. “It’s probably on the floor somewhere. And it really doesn’t matter, not with ... your dad.”

  Right. Actually, wrong. Mike DeMaio had fathered him, but he’d never, not for a minute, been his “dad.” Heaving a frustrated sigh, Will got up and paced the length of the kitchen. He’d wanted a lot of things from the man over the years, like for him to wake up and remember he had a kid who needed a guy to play with, to come to back-to-school night, to give a thumbs-up to a Halloween costume. That had changed to simply wanting him to get a job and stop mooching off Will’s mom whenever he needed beer money. For the last twenty years, he’d just wanted him gone. Still, he’d never wanted this.

  “Should we call the police department? Or 911?” Lanie asked him. “I wasn’t sure which, and I was still pretty much panicking when you showed up, and since I’m not from around here I didn’t know ...”

  Something too close to hysteria edged Lanie’s voice, and Will stopped beside her chair, absently noting the wet, striped knit cap squashed over her messy curls. He plucked it off her head before squatting to take her hands in his, and she bit her bottom lip as he searched her eyes.

  “The roads aren’t cleared yet—I couldn’t even dig my car out,” he told her. “And the girl at the store told me there was a big crash on Route 26—every cop in the county is probably over there now. Just let me think for a minute before we do anything—he’s not going to be any less dead by then.”

  He swallowed hard when he’d said the word aloud. Dead. Christ, what the hell was going on? The last he’d heard, his dad was somewhere in the Carolinas, scraping together an existence with his most recent girlfriend. Will hadn’t received one of his “Hey, old buddy, old pal, got any spare cash?” calls in almost four years. Neither had his mother, although now that she was in Maryland with her sister, he wouldn’t know if she was telling him the truth. Her reserves of pity went far deeper than Will’s, and she dipped into them a little too often for Will’s taste.

  And now Lanie had found him dead on the back steps of the Seavers’ cabin. Lanie—Jesus. She’d come to Churchville for a quiet weekend away from the city, and stumbled into a murder.

  A murder?

  Holy fuck. Staring at Lanie, he realized his face must have registered his shock because hers went pale and scared as she looked at him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

  “Will?”

  He didn’t answer, because his mind was racing. Who would want to kill his father? Thirty years ago, he might have said Grandpa Tom, but he was long dead, and the rest of his mother’s family had pretty much washed their hands of the whole situation.

  “Will?” Lanie sounded terrified now, and he dragged his gaze to her face.

  “Did you ... see anything out there?” he said. “Aside from the body, I mean?” Even in his own ears, his voice sounded gruff.

  “See anything like what?” Then it struck her, and her mouth opened again, a tempting pink O that should have been reserved for nothing but satisfied sighs. “Oh, God, you mean like a ... murder weapon?”

  “Pretty much.” He stood up, suddenly too restless to stay in one place. A murder weapon. This was not how he’d pictured spending this morning. Or any morning. In this or any other lifetime.

  “But ...” She shook her head, making her curls bounce, and twisted around to follow his progress as he paced. “Who would want to kill him? Does he have any, I don’t know, enemies?”

  “He hasn’t lived here in more than ten years.” He ran a hand through his hair, spiking it restlessly. It didn’t make sense, any of it. Unless ...

  Lanie’s voice broke into his thoughts. “But who would want him dead, then?”

  “That’s just it,” he told her. “No one I can think of. Not here, a dozen yards from my house.”

  He watched as the idea struck her—he didn’t think her face could get any paler. She looked ghostly in the wan light.

  “So you’re saying maybe he wasn’t the real victim.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “Maybe someone. . .”

  He finished the thought for her, gripping the edge of the counter so tight, his knuckles ached. “Maybe someone wanted to kill me.”

  Five

  It couldn’t be, Lanie thought, trying to ignore the frightening way her heart had sped up again, like a train out of control. Why would anyone want to kill Will?

  Maybe he is an axe murderer. Or a bondage master. What do you really know about him?

  No way. It was ridiculous, it was maybe even naïve, but in her bones, she knew that Will DeMaio was a nice guy. A good guy.

  And no one was killing a good guy on her watch.

  Especially not if it was her bad luck that had set off this whole nightmare.

  Will was pacing again, his jaw set in a grim, tight line, and he was talking more to himself than to her. “I just don’t get it,” he muttered. “I mean, why was he here? And why here? This house, I mean. It doesn’t make sense.”

  This house ... Lanie sat up straight, glancing at the end of the counter. “Will? Did he drink, your dad? And smoke?”

  “You better believe it.” He snorted. “He rarely did anything else.”

  She got up and nudged him aside to open the cabinet door below the sink. “I found this earlier,” she said, pointing to the empty bottle of whiskey, “and those,” she added, gesturing to the crowded ashtray. “Do you think he was staying ... here?”

  “Could be.” His eyes narrowed as he crossed his arms over his chest. He was so tense, he looked as if he would snap if she brushed against him accidentally. “He knew the people who used to own this place before your friends—he might have known where a spare key was.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, though,” she said, sitting down again. “Wouldn’t you have noticed him over here?”

  “I was away until Wednesday, up in Boston.”

  She squashed the urge to ask him whom he’d been visiting—or, more specifically, whether his friend was the female variety. It wasn’t important, not right now. Not with his dad murdered in very cold blood on the back porch, and Will most likely the bullet’s intended recipient.

  It didn’t really make sense, because she certainly didn’t have any experience with murder—and she took it for granted Will didn’t either—but while her life was far from perfect lately, it was sort of like a dresser with a wobbly foot. It was irritating, a little troublesome, but ultimately fixable, even if in the short term all she could do was shim up the wo
bble with a matchbook.

  This was like the whole dresser falling apart after someone had taken an axe to it. And then setting it on fire.

  No way was she going to shake Will’s hand, thank him for the lovely orgasms, and leave him with a charred and smoking ruin.

  She couldn’t explain that to Will, of course. But she was going to have to inform him that she intended to help pretty much right now, because the look on his face screamed, “Thanks for everything, but we should probably say good-bye now.”

  And it was a decent motivation, as far as she was concerned. Not many guys would expect a woman he’d slept with once to stick around when messing around turned into murder. But she was damned if she was going to let her recent run of disasters trickle over onto him. Violent death was a whole other level of really bad karma. It wasn’t her violent death, thank goodness, but it was on her back steps, and it was the father of her one-night stand.

  Will was opening his mouth, and before he could get a word out, she scrambled for something that wouldn’t make her sound like a lunatic.

  “I want to help,” she blurted, squaring her shoulders for the argument she desperately hoped wasn’t coming. “This is ... well, this is kind of a nightmare, actually, but for you, not for me, but I’m here, and I really like you, and I just ... well, if you want the truth, it’s all my fault anyway.”

  So much for not sounding like a lunatic.

  But Will was even more adorable when he was stunned, in the I-have-no-idea-what-you-just-said way, of course, not the my-father’s-been-murdered way. It took him a blinking, mouth-gaping minute to process what she’d said, and then all he could manage was, “Excuse me?”