by D. D. Ayres
“I’ll take care of it later. I’ve got some paperwork to do back at the office after I drop you back at the motel.”
She pressed a second hand to his bare shoulder as if she could stop him from rising. “You’re not going anywhere on that leg tonight. You can deal with paperwork tomorrow.”
Her hands felt good against his skin. He wished she’d slide them lower.
“Can’t I do something to help?”
He ground his teeth. One day ago, he knew he would have answered with a crude suggestion. But he couldn’t do that, not when she was looking at him with more admiration and empathy than any other human had in a long long time. Something just under his heart drew tight with a pain tougher to deal with than his stump. He knew he would never again hurt or disrespect her. On his life. That realization made him very nervous.
He looked away. “It’s no big deal. Just clomping around on a given day, pounding the stump, can make it swell or shrink. See this beauty right here?” He pointed to a bright-red bruised area. “I call them stump hickeys.”
“Because the fit wasn’t good.” She nodded. “An air pocket suctioned the skin into a classic bruise. I read about that. Do you have a lotion or salve for this?”
“Yeah.” He pointed to a tube of ointment on the dresser. She read about it? She was reading up on the care of amputated limbs? That knot under his heart tightened.
She picked up the tube and came back. “I can put it on for you but you should wash and dry the area first. Let me get something to do that.”
She headed for the bathroom before he could move an inch. When she turned her back, he stood up and hopped quickly over to the bed and sat, so that he could toss one end of the comforter over his good leg and hide his hard-on.
She came back with a soapy cloth and a towel. “You clean up while I find some bandages to cover your scrapes.”
“Don’t have any bandages.”
She stopped short. “What about the K-9 first-aid kit we gave you?”
He grinned. “Fast thinking. Under the sink, downstairs.”
Jori came back with her booty of gauze, sterile bandages, hydrogen peroxide, an anti-bacterial ointment, and medical adhesive tape. By then he’d been able to clean his stump.
She examined it and then noticed his complete disregard for the rest. There were a few scrapes he probably couldn’t easily reach. “Let me help with the other wounds.”
“I can do it.”
“Sure you can, but you’ll like it better if I do it.”
She met his hot heavy gaze, but he didn’t say a word. He simply rolled onto his side on the bed.
“Ow. Ow. Ouch!”
“What a baby.” Jori leaned in close to the abrasion on his hip as she gently applied a fresh pad with hydrogen peroxide. “You’re like raw meat here.”
“Uh-huh. But if you don’t stop handling my butt like that you’re going to have to deal with the consequences.”
Jori laughed. “You’re in no shape to make good on those threats just now.”
Law chuckled. She had no idea. The shape he was in, covered discreetly by a towel, could have her walking funny for a week.
But he didn’t want her to stop touching him. Her fingers were soothing and cool and efficient as she cleaned and bandaged him. She wasn’t feeling what he was feeling. But he could so easily change that. A quick flip of his hips and her fingers would slide off his hip and into his groin where she might caress every throbbing inch of him.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. He needed to think about something, anything else. “Tell me about the night Brody Rogers died.”
Jori stilled. Her gaze shifted from her work to meet his. Her guard was up. “Why?”
“I read your trial records.” Law shifted back so that he could sit up. Talking to her with his bare ass in her face didn’t seem right. “It was a lot harder to gain access to the grand jury records. I’ve learned what I can. But I want to hear your side.”
“Why?”
She straightened away from him, arms folding defensively across her chest. “Last time we talked you said you didn’t care what I’d done or why. What’s changed?”
He pushed a hand through his hair, searching for simple honesty in his reply. “I don’t know, Jori. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”
She gave him a look. He tried to look as innocent as a man with ulterior intentions could. It must have been pretty damn convincing since she finally shrugged. “Finish what you need to do. We’ll talk over dinner.”
* * *
“This is good.” Law scooped up another forkful. “What do you call it, friggin’ what?”
“Frittata.” Jori sat at the table beside him, cradling a cup of coffee like it was the only warmth in the whole world. “I didn’t have much to work with, some eggs, milk, a hunk of cheddar, and an onion.”
“And peas.” He stared at the green spheres dotting the puffy omelet. “I hate peas.” But he shoved the forkful in his mouth and sighed in satisfaction.
“You had four bags of peas in the freezer.”
“I use them as ice packs.”
“Oh.” Jori almost smiled. But she couldn’t forget the conversation they needed to have.
Argyle had made herself at home in Jori’s lap, but kept creeping up to peer over the rim of the table at Jori’s regrettably unserved plate.
Jori couldn’t even think about swallowing food. Not when she knew Law was waiting for her to tell him her story. If he had done research on her, he must know everything. Why did she need to say it out loud? What did he need to hear?
She watched him eat. He was dressed again in a waffle-weave Henley and sweat shorts with one empty leg. He looked good, as if the pain and bruising hidden beneath his clothing didn’t exist.
She’d been startled to see him on crutches but she didn’t say anything. What he had done today he had done for strangers, for law and order. It had cost him. But he seemed at peace with that. She was impressed, and wary. She couldn’t afford to care so much about him, or his good opinion. Not when she was becoming emotionally involved. He’d warned her away from that. He was law enforcement tough, unsentimental, and probably jaded from years of perp lies. She couldn’t expect him to believe a thing she said. Talking about Brody should put up walls for both of them.
She took a gulp of her coffee. “What do you want to know about Brody?”
“I need to know the facts, as you remember them.” Law put down his fork, though he looked at the remaining frittata with longing. “Humor me. What happened the night Brody died? Had you seen him earlier?”
“Yes. He came by the apartment but said he was going to a frat party up on Beaver Lake. One of his alumni chapter members has a weekend place up there.”
“You get a name?” She shook her head but leaned back, braced for trouble.
Law was choosing his way carefully, in full interrogation mode, planning when to reveal what he’d learned independently as he went along. He was leading her somewhere but he needed to know some things first. So he needed to mix it up, put her at ease. “How did you two meet?”
She didn’t say anything for several seconds. “We met at a frat party on campus. Brody was an alum of the fraternity but he said he liked the vibe of campus frat life so he went back to the campus house as often as he could. He’d worked for Tice Industries so he was a bit older. Handsome, funny, definitely more sophisticated than the average frat boy.”
“So you fell for him.” Law tried to keep his tone light. He’d known and both envied and disapproved of the type while he worked his way through college.
“I did, for a while.” She shook her head. “He had dreams, and even bigger ambition. But no patience. He was always looking for shortcuts. He knew how to bend rules and make people like it. Everything with Brody was a calculation. In the end, I realized that I was one of his shortcuts. It changed things.”
“In what way?”
She got up, set Argyle on the floor, and began to move around, as if the acti
on helped her think. “We got engaged on Valentine’s Day and I moved into his Fayetteville apartment. Brody worked in Fort Smith but kept a place near campus because he was there every weekend to party. He said I should live with him so we could make the most of whatever time we had together. It was my final semester of school. I was starting to cram for my finals and interviewing for grad schools, too. I thought being alone, out of the sorority house, would help. But Brody wasn’t very understanding about the fact that I wasn’t interested in partying from Friday night until early Sunday morning.”
A smile lifted one corner of Law’s mouth. “So, you were once one of those wild sorority girls I used to stop for driving drunk? They’d sometimes flash their tits at me in the hope of getting away without a ticket.”
“Did it work?”
“Never. But I always enjoyed the view.”
Jori rolled her eyes. “That was never me. I was the responsible sorority sister who made certain everyone else got home safe. It was one of the things Brody said he liked about me. He said the fact that I was good at managing chaos meant I’d make a good corporate wife.”
Law watched her closely, wondering if she knew she winced when she’d described herself as a corporate wife. Maybe that’s what she meant by being part of Rogers’s calculation. “You did drink?”
“Sure.”
“Do a little weed?”
“Once. Didn’t like it.”
“Brody give it to you?”
“No. It was at a rush, freshman year. Why? You think I’m lying about not knowing he was a drug dealer?”
“I think you were either lying to yourself or ignoring signs you didn’t want to think about.”
His blunt honesty took Jori’s breath away. But what else could she expect? That’s what everyone thought. Even her family wondered. And what could it possibly matter now? But she’d had four years to wonder just who Brody’s clients were.
“I caught him once with a stack of cash.” She made a large C-bracket between fingers and thumb. “He said he was acting as the bank for his fraternity’s fantasy football league. He said it was nothing to worry about—an in-house transaction among brothers. Nothing bad could happen. I told him I didn’t like it. Gambling was illegal on campus.”
“That kind of gambling’s pretty much illegal all over.” Law reached for the last of the frittata, giving her a second to breathe. “Did you ever see him high?”
“Drunk. Of course.”
“Pills or coke?”
“No.”
He looked up to catch her expression. “Would you know?”
To his surprise, she thought about it. “I knew casually a few students on campus who did drugs. Mostly to get their party on. But Brody was never spaced out. Sometimes he was wired. All talk and continuous action. He said it was because he’d had a really crazy week at work and needed to work the energy off.”
“Then he probably preferred uppers. Businessmen often do.”
Law reached for his laptop, shoved his flash drive in, and brought up a page. “The autopsy report says Brody was high on coke when he died.”
Jori didn’t answer. She’d learned that fact at the same time the public did. Along with the news that he’d been carrying drugs and several thousand in cash. “So I was guilty by association.”
“Yes.” He didn’t sugarcoat it. She’d already suffered the legal consequences. “The law allows persons to be prosecuted simply if they benefited from drug money. Brody made money selling drugs. It’s impossible to say which part of that money paid for things like your apartment, your engagement ring, or anything else he gave you. The law takes the broad view and can confiscate it all.” He waited a beat before going on. She’d heard it before. Still, he felt like a bully reminding her of it all.
When she didn’t respond he looked up. The sight of her kicked him in the gut. She was standing very still, the only movement the fingers of her right hand shifting the loose end of her braid. But her soft mouth was pinched by sadness, the same sadness that slouched through her body and made her seem smaller and more vulnerable. It was as if she’d just heard the guilty verdict delivered all over again.
He wanted to go to her, to touch her, but he didn’t dare. He was being a cop now. A professional would just move on. He could only move forward.
“Tell me about your relationship with Erin Foster.”
She looked startled to hear the name. But she didn’t question why he was asking about the woman. “We belonged to the same sorority. But she was three years ahead of me. Graduated after my freshman year. She was in law school with my brother. So I saw her only from time to time on campus and at college functions.”
“Friendly?”
Something flashed across her face. “We weren’t friends. She and Brody were together until just before we met.”
“Is that significant?”
“Only that Erin never let me forget it. Whenever we happened to run into each other she made a point to ask about Brody and then imply that she had recently seen him. As if she thought I’d be jealous.”
“Were you?”
She just stared at him. Clearly the answer was no. He was pretty sure after what he’d learned that she was wrong about Rogers. It irked him that she still believed the douchebag. “For the record, I think you were used. A man who hides his stash in his girlfriend’s place is looking for a scapegoat. Pimps and dealers do it all the time. Rogers had a plan if he was caught. You were his patsy.”
He tried to ignore the sick look that washed through her expression. Jesus. He thought what he said would help break the spell of Rogers. But the echo of his words in his ears sounded coldhearted.
Even as he was freaking at the possibility of making her cry, though, the detective part of him noticed that she didn’t look so hurt. She did look angry. He watched that emotion smooth the pinched look from her face until her eyes were bright with it.
“I know I was stupid. I was a sorority girl with bleached-blond hair and all the right clothes dating a member of the Tice family. I was self-involved and while not totally an all-about-me girl, I knew that marrying Brody would make me a fixture in society. It was only when I accepted his ring that I discovered I didn’t want it, any of it.” She looked straight at Law. “I wasn’t going to marry him.”
Law knew she was talking to herself as much as him. He kept eating, just to have something to do that kept him from staring as he listened to her answers. To his surprise, Argyle appeared on his lap and tried to make herself at home. But she kept sliding off his stump. Law grabbed her and tucked her in his right arm. “Tell me more about the night he died.”
She made a turn around the room. “It was late April. I’d been trying to get up the courage to give back the ring almost since the day I accepted it.” She glanced down at her left hand, as if expecting to see the engagement ring she’d once worn. “I was glad he wasn’t staying regularly at the apartment. He’d begun making excuses about not showing up for the weekend, or until Saturday night. Then leaving first thing Sunday morning. I didn’t even ask why. I wanted out.” She glanced at Law again. “I didn’t love him. Not really.”
Law broke off a bit of frittata and fed it to Argyle. “Then why did you go down without a fight?”
“What are you talking about? We had a big wicked fight that night. I threw the ring at him and told him to pack and get out.”
This was news. It wasn’t in the court record. “What did he do?”
“He said a few ugly things and left.”
“What did he take with him?” Argyle purred and rubbed herself against Law’s Henley.
Jori frowned. “Nothing.” Her voice trailed off in thought. “He did go into the bedroom. I thought he was going to pack so I didn’t follow him. But when he came back he had nothing except the leather backpack with his laptop that he carried everywhere.”
“How long was he in the bedroom?” Argyle pawed lightly at the hand Law ate with.
She frowned. “I don’t remember. I
just wanted him to leave.”
Law waited a beat. “When did you learn about the accident?”
She flinched. “When the police came to my door at five a.m. with a warrant to search the apartment. I don’t even think I heard anything they said after they told me Brody had died when his car went off the highway and crashed.” All the blood had drained from her lips.
Ridiculously jealous that a man who’d been dead more than four years could make her so sad, Law pushed on quickly. “Why didn’t your attorney use the breakup as motive for you being framed by Rogers?”
“He said what happened between me and Brody wasn’t relevant. That I had been found, independently, in possession of illegal substances and that I was being tried for drug possession.”
“But they wouldn’t have searched your apartment if Rogers hadn’t been found in possession first. Your defense attorney wasn’t worth spit because he didn’t argue cause.”
She rounded on him, her face flushed. “My parents hired the best lawyer they could find. They tried everything. It didn’t work.” She was back on the brink of emotions Law was pretty certain he couldn’t handle. So he pushed on, again.
“Did you tell your counsel that Brody was cheating on you?”
Jori waved a hand. “Brody wasn’t cheating.”
Law licked a greasy finger clean then touched his keyboard until he found what he wanted. “According to the statement of a woman named Erin Foster, Brody Rogers had been with her on the night he died.” He watched Jori’s expression closely. “Did you know about that?”
Jori frowned. “Where did you get that information?”
“It was in the affidavits presented to the grand jury looking into Rogers’s death. In her interview, Foster says Rogers came to tell her that he’d broken off his engagement to you, that he said he’d been having second thoughts for a while.”
She was blinking hard. “That’s so like Brody!” She paused and jerked her head as if tossing off some burden.
Law was losing patience. “And your counsel never thought it might be a good idea to follow up and see exactly what they were doing together?” He saw her face. “I don’t mean screwing each other, Jori. Rogers was high the night he died. Think about it. Some people drink their troubles away. Addicts get high together. Didn’t you ever wonder who Rogers’s customers were?”
