Raintree

by Linda Howard

  And she was pissed.

  “So what are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I just wanted a salad,” she said softly.

  “In Wilmington,” he clarified. “This is a relatively small department. I know the detectives from the other divisions, and I know the uniforms. You’re not one of them, so how did you end up with this ill-advised and temporary assignment as my partner?”

  She didn’t take the bait. “I transferred in from Raleigh. I worked vice there for the past two years.”

  He was surprised. She looked too young to have been a detective for two years. “How old are you?”

  She didn’t seem to be offended by the question, as some women might have been. “Twenty-nine.”

  So she was on the fast track. Ambitious, smart, maybe even a little bit greedy. “Why the move?”

  “My mother lives here in Wilmington. She needs family close by, so I decided it was time to come back home.”

  “Is she sick?”

  “No.” Malory squirmed a little, obviously getting uncomfortable with the personal nature of the discussion. “She fell last year. It wasn’t anything serious. She sprained her ankle and hobbled for a couple of weeks.”

  “But it worried you,” he said. Of course it did. Malory was so earnest, so relentlessly dedicated and serious. If anything had happened to her mother, she would see it as somehow being her fault. And so here she was.

  “It worried me a little,” she confessed. “What about you?” she asked quickly, turning the subject of the conversation around. “Do you have family close by? Other than Echo, that is.”

  People who asked too many questions always made him nervous. Why did she need to know about his family? Of course, he had started this personal discussion. Turnabout was fair play, he supposed. “I have a sister and a niece who live in the western part of the state, a few hours away, a brother in Nevada and cousins everywhere I turn.”

  That last bit got a small smile out of her. Nice. Maybe she wasn’t entirely earnest, after all.

  “What about your parents?” she asked.

  “They’re dead.”

  Her smile faded quickly. “Sorry.”

  “They were murdered when I was seventeen,” he said without emotion. “Anything else you want to know?”

  “I didn’t mean to pry.”

  Of course she hadn’t, but his blunt answer had killed the conversation, just as he had hoped. This woman could play hell with his life on so many levels if she made even half an effort. Scary notion.

  Tanya placed two very full plates on the table, along with two tall glasses of iced tea.

  “Raintree,” Malory said in a lowered voice, after Tanya walked away. “Everything on my plate but the turnip greens is fried.”

  “Yep,” he answered as he dug in. “Good stuff.”

  They both turned their attention to eating, Hope slightly less enthusiastic than Gideon about the fare, though after a few bites she relaxed and started to enjoy the meal. Gideon was glad for the silence, but it also made him nervous, because there was a level of comfort in it.

  He didn’t need or want a partner. He’d tolerated Leon for three and a half years, and in the end they’d made a pretty good team. Gideon solved the cases; Leon did the paper work and handled the bullshit. At the end of the day they both looked good and everyone was happy. Hope Malory did not look like a happy person.

  “I think she’s killed before,” a soft voice called.

  Gideon turned his head to glance into the unoccupied booth behind him. Well, it had been unoccupied—until Sherry Bishop arrived. She looked less solid than she had back at the apartment, but it was definitely her. “What?” he asked softly.

  “Raintree,” Malory began, “are you all…”

  He silenced his new partner with a lifted hand but never took his eyes from Sherry.

  “The woman who killed me,” the ghost said. “She wasn’t at all afraid or even nervous, just anxious. Wound up, the way Echo and I always were before a gig. I think she liked it. I think she enjoyed killing me.”

  “Raintree,” Malory said again, her voice sharper than before.

  Gideon lifted his hand once more, this time with a raised finger to indicate silence.

  “Shake that finger at me again and I’ll break it off.”

  Sherry Bishop disappeared, and Gideon turned around to face an angry and confused Detective Malory.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking.”

  “You have an odd way of thinking.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  Something in her expression changed. Her eyes grew softer, her lips fuller, and something worse than anger appeared. Curiosity. “But apparently it works,” she said. “How do you do it?”

  “Think?” He knew what she was asking; he just didn’t want to go there.

  “I’ve never known a detective with a record like yours. Except for that one case last year, your record is flawless.”

  “I know Stiles did it, I just can’t prove it. Yet.”

  “How?” she whispered. “How do you know?”

  It was easiest to pretend that he was like everyone else when the question came up. He had a gift for seeing small things that others missed; he had an eye for detail; he saw patterns; he was dedicated to solving each and every case. All those things were true, but they weren’t the reason for his almost flawless record.

  “I talk to dead people.”

  Malory’s response was immediate and not at all unexpected. She laughed out loud. The laugh did great things to her face. Her eyes sparkled; her cheeks grew pink; her lips turned up at the corners. It struck Gideon sharply that he felt much too comfortable with Hope Malory. That laugh was nicely familiar. He could get used to this…and he couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Hope drove slowly past Raintree’s house, and the sight of his house didn’t allay her suspicions at all.

  The three-story pale gray Carolina-style house right on Wrightsville Beach hadn’t been bought on a cop’s salary, that was for sure. This was one of the nicest areas along the strip, and he owned one of the nicest houses. She’d already done some investigating, and she knew what he’d paid for the place when he’d moved in four years ago.

  There was a three-car garage at the end of a short paved driveway. She knew, even though the garage doors were down, that every bay was filled. Raintree owned a black ’66 Mustang, the convertible he’d driven today; a ’57 Chevy Bel Air, turquoise and cream; and a ’74 Dodge Challenger in rally-red, whatever that was.

  Money aside, no one was as good a cop as Gideon Raintree seemed to be. Most of the murders he’d solved were drug related, which meant he could very well be connected to someone in the community of dealers. Someone high enough up to be able to buy his own cop. Was her new partner involved with the criminal element in Wilmington?

  I talk to dead people my ass.

  The houses on this strip of the beach were impressive, but space was at a premium, and they had been built very close together. One colorful house after another lined this street, and Raintree’s tastefully painted gray was one of the finest. Why hadn’t anyone ever questioned his lifestyle?

  Every detective she knew wanted to work homicide. It was high-profile; it was important. And yet five months after his partner’s retirement, Raintree was still working alone—or had been, until she’d come along. The new chief had told her the other detectives weren’t interested in working with Raintree. They didn’t want to get lost in the shuffle, always being second man on the team, or else they knew Raintree liked to work alone and didn’t want to be the one to rock the boat. In other words, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

  Hope had never minded rocking the boat.

  Maybe there were completely reasonable answers to all her questions about Raintree, but then again, maybe not. She had to know, before she got herself in too deep. Before she trusted him, before she accepted him.

  She knew in her gut that Raintree was a liar. Of course h
e lied on a regular basis: He had a penis. The question was, how deep did the lies go?

  Hope parked her blue Toyota down the street, where someone was having a gathering and an extra car wouldn’t stand out, and walked back to Raintree’s house. It was unlikely she would see anything this late at night, but she was so curious and wound up that she couldn’t possibly sleep. Since her mother never went to bed before 2:00 a.m. and the apartment over the shop was small, sleep wasn’t all that easy to come by, anyway.

  The house, the expensive suits, the cars…Raintree was definitely into something.

  The recently retired partner, Leon Franklin, came off as clean as a whistle when she looked into his background. Franklin had a little money in the bank, but not too much. A nice house, but not too nice. And everyone she’d talked to said Gideon Raintree was the brains of the operation. He got every homicide case in Wilmington, and he solved them all. It just wasn’t natural.

  Hope slipped into the darkness between Raintree’s house and the less subtle yellow house next door. She’d dressed in black for this outing, so she blended into the shadows. She wasn’t going to peek through a window and catch Raintree red-handed, but the more she knew about this guy, the better off she would be. There wasn’t any harm in just looking around his place a bit.

  Movement on the beach caught her attention, and she turned her head in that direction. Speak of the devil. Gideon Raintree was coming in from a swim, too-long hair slicked back, water dripping from his chest. He stepped from the sand onto his own private boardwalk and into more direct lighting. When the light from his deck hit him, she held her breath for a moment. He wore old, holey jeans that had been cut off just above the knees and that hung too low on his waist, thanks to the weight of the water. He wore nothing else, except a small silver charm that hung from a black cord around his neck.

  “Gideon,” a singsong voice called from the yellow house next to his. He stopped on the boardwalk and lifted his head, then smiled at the blonde who was leaning over her own balcony. Hope hadn’t seen so much as a hint of a smile like that one all day. Yeah, the guy was definitely trouble.

  “Hi, Honey.” Raintree leaned against the boardwalk railing and looked up.

  “We’re having a party Saturday night,” Honey said. “Wanna come?”

  “Thanks, but probably not. I’m working a case.”

  “That girl I saw on the news?” Honey said, her smile fading.

  “Yeah.”

  Another woman, a brunette this time, joined Honey at the balcony railing. “You’ll have the case solved by Saturday,” she said confidently.

  “If I do, I’ll drop by.”

  Both women leaned over the railing. They were wearing skimpy bathing suits, as any self-respecting beach bum would be on a warm June night. They practically preened for their neighbor’s benefit.

  Raintree was the kind of man a shallow woman might go for, Hope imagined. He had the looks and the bank account, and an obvious kind of charm that came with self-confidence. With those eyes and cheekbones, and the way he looked in those cutoffs, he might make a silly woman’s heart race.

  Hope had never been silly.

  “Why don’t you come on up now and have a drink with us?” Honey asked, as if the idea had just popped into her head, though she’d probably been planning to ask her studly neighbor up from the moment she’d seen him on the beach.

  “Sorry. Can’t do it.” Raintree turned toward his own house—and Hope—and it seemed to her that he actually looked directly at her. “I have company.”

  Hope held her breath. He couldn’t possibly see her there. Someone else was coming over, or else he was making an excuse to be polite. As if any red-blooded male would turn down “drinks” with Honey and the brunette bimbo.

  “Company?” Honey whined.

  “Yeah.” Raintree leaned against the walkway railing again and stared into the dark space between the two houses. “My new partner stopped by.”

  Hope muttered a few soft curse words she almost never used, and Raintree smiled as if he could hear her. That was impossible, of course. As impossible as him seeing her standing in the shadows.

  “Bring him on up,” the brunette said. “The more the merrier.”

  “Her,” Raintree responded without glancing up to his neighbors. “My new partner is a girl.”

  He’d said “girl” just to rile her, Hope knew, so she did her best not to react to the gibe.

  “Oh.” Honey sighed. “Well, you can bring her. I guess.” She sounded decidedly less enthusiastic, all of a sudden.

  “Thanks, but we’ll pass. We have work to discuss. Isn’t that right, Detective Malory?”

  Busted. Hope took a few steps so that she was caught in the soft light cast from both decks. It was apparently too late to hide. Was Raintree dangerous? Maybe he was. He looked dangerous enough. Then again, she was armed and knew how to defend herself, if it came to that. Somehow, she didn’t think it would.

  “That’s right,” she said, as she walked through sand and tall sea grass to the boardwalk.

  “How long have you been down there?” Honey asked.

  “Just a few minutes.”

  “You sure were quiet.”

  “I was just admiring the view.”

  The brunette sighed. “We certainly do understand that.”

  Hope felt herself blush. She’d meant the beach, of course, but from the tone of the bimbo’s voice they thought she meant…Oh, no. She did not want Raintree thinking she enjoyed looking at him. Even if she did. “I love the water.”

  “Me, too,” Gideon said.

  Hope bounded easily over the railing to join him.

  “Come on inside,” he said, turning his back on her and leading the way. “I guess you’re here to talk about the Bishop case.”

  “Yeah,” she said brightly. “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by this way.”

  He glanced over his shoulder and smiled, wickedly amused. “Not at all, Detective Malory. Not at all.”

  She was up to something. Pretty Detective Hope Malory was so wound up, so filled with an electricity of her own kind, that if he laid his hands on her, they would probably both explode. Not necessarily a bad idea.

  “I’m going to change.” Gideon gestured toward the kitchen. “Help yourself to something to drink and I’ll be right back.”

  Echo had slept here for a few hours and then driven to Charlotte. He’d talked to her on the phone, before heading out for a quick swim. She was still upset, but the panic had faded somewhat. Whether he liked it or not, Dewey was actually helping with the difficult situation.

  It didn’t take Gideon five minutes to put on dry clothes and towel dry his hair, and the entire time he kept asking himself, Why is Malory here? What does she want? If there were early results from the crime scene techs’ study of the murder scene, they would call him, not her. If she had a theory—and that was all she could possibly have at this point—it could have been communicated by telephone. The owner of the club where Echo’s band often played hadn’t been any help at all. So why was Malory here?

  He found out pretty quickly, right after stepping into the living room to find his new partner sitting in a leather chair with a glass of cold soda in one hand. “Nice place, Raintree,” she said as her eyes scanned the walls almost casually. “How do you manage this on a cop’s salary?”

  So that was it. She thought he was dirty, and she was here to find out how dirty. Did she want to join him in profitable corruption or toss his ass in jail? He would guess she was the ass-tossing sort, but he’d been wrong about women before. “My family has money.” He headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to make myself something to drink.”

  She nodded to the opposite side of the room, where a glass of soda much like hers sat on a coaster. “I already fixed you a drink.”

  “How do you know what I want? Psychic?”

  Again that fleeting but brilliant smile. “Your fridge was full of the stuff. I took a shot.”

  Gideon l
owered himself into a chair. Was it coincidence that she had placed his glass as far away from her chair as possible? No. Not a coincidence at all. Malory liked to look tough, but now and then he saw a hint of the skittish beneath her skin. When she’d talked about her mother falling and how she might need her daughter, when he’d looked her in the eye…he’d seen the vulnerability in her.

  She had certainly done her best to look tough tonight, in her black jeans and black T-shirt and pistol. “Family money,” she said, prompting him to continue.

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind of family money?”

  “My parents and my grandparents, as well as their parents and grandparents, were all successful. And lucky.”

  She looked him dead in the eye in that oddly annoying way she had. “I saw Echo’s apartment this morning. Is she from the poor side of the family?”

  “Echo is a rebel,” he explained. “Her parents very happily live off the family money. They travel, they sleep, they drink, they party. That’s about it. Echo wants to earn her own way. I admire that in her, even if she does sometimes cut off her nose to spite her face.”

  “Are you lucky?”

  He looked her over appreciatively and smiled. “Not tonight, I’m guessing.”

  She didn’t respond to the comment, not even to bristle. “You’re definitely lucky as a detective. I’ve seen your file.”

  “Goody for you. I’d like to have a look at yours.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  She took a drink of her soda, and he played with the condensation on his glass with one finger. If Malory got too nosy, if she asked too many damn questions, he would have to move. Dammit, he liked it here. He liked his house, and the men he worked with—most of them—and he loved being near the ocean. He had come to need it in a way he had never expected. For years he’d moved from department to department, always going to the place where he thought he was needed most. Sadly enough, his talents were called for just about everywhere, so he’d finally decided to settle down here.