“Why didn’t you tell that to the police?” he asked. “Reading the report, I got the impression you went outside to confront Lowell.”
“I said I went outside and found Lowell there.” Details of the interview eluded her. “At least, I think that’s what I said. I was so dazed, I’m not sure how I phrased it.”
“So you wouldn’t have had any reason to take a knife.” His jaw worked. “Except that you were being stalked.”
“By Lowell,” she said. “I think.”
“You’re not sure about that, either?”
“I never actually saw him or heard his voice on the phone,” she admitted. “But it was exactly the same stuff he pulled after I moved out.”
“You’re sure it was him the first time?”
“He admitted it,” she said. “Once we resolved the issues in our divorce, he apologized.” Something else occurred to her. “Wednesday night, he did confess that he’d been watching me. He said he saw me come home alone.”
“Did he say why or for how long he’d been doing it?” Dirk asked hoarsely.
She shook her head.
“Did my brother ever hit you? In all the time you were married?”
“No.” She might have felt intimidated by Lowell’s world and in awe of her powerful husband, but she wouldn’t have tolerated physical abuse.
Dirk was absorbed in his speculation. “So what we have is someone harassing you, and my brother watching the house, then coming forward to talk to you. You smack your head into the hummingbird feeder and wake up holding a knife. In the meantime, someone has stabbed Lowell to death.”
“Unless I’ve blocked something out, which is what the police seem to believe.”
“That’s what I assumed, too, until now,” Dirk said. “Think hard, Joni. Does anyone have a grudge against you or Lowell?”
“Not that I know of. Except Kim, maybe.”
“Any man who’s shown you undue attention? What about your boss?”
“Basil’s always been kind of strange,” she admitted. “But I don’t think he’s dangerous.”
“How long have you worked for him?”
“A year and three months, roughly. I got a job fairly soon after the divorce.” Her system must have absorbed energy from lunch because Joni felt stronger now. “He’s never asked me out, but he’s never come over here before, either.”
Dirk took a small notebook from his pocket and jotted in it. “Any other men?”
She thought of Charlie. “Jeff’s soccer coach brought me flowers at the hospital, but I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. He’s never behaved in a threatening way. I hardly know him.”
“What about women?” he asked. “A rival at work? Or anywhere else?”
“Well, Mrs. Wright never seemed to care for me very much.” That was the Petersons’ longtime housekeeper. “I don’t think I lived up to her notion of the right kind of woman for Lowell.”
“She doted on my brother,” Dirk said. “She certainly wouldn’t have killed him.”
“So there we are,” Joni said. “Back to me with an unidentified knife in my hand.”
Dirk put the notebook away. “And the possibility of a killer on the loose.”
“But if someone wanted me dead, ho—or she—had every opportunity to kill me that night,” she noted.
“Maybe he didn’t want you dead. Maybe he wants you for himself.”
The shivering came from deep inside. Being stalked by Lowell had seemed annoying but only a little scary. The possibility that there might be some madman who believed he could possess Joni aroused a deep and chilling dread.
“You’re cold.” Dirk leaned toward her protectively.
“No. I’m scared.” But she wouldn’t let herself panic. She needed to understand the killer so she could figure out who he might be. “If he...wants me, why try to frame me for murder?”
Dirk considered for a moment. “From the profiles I’ve read of stalkers, a man like that might be trying to punish you. It’s all part of his need to take control of your life. Herb said you and Lowell were getting friendly again. That could’ve set him off.”
“But if I were in prison, he couldn’t have me.”
“Maybe he doesn’t think that clearly. Or he might’ve assumed you’d get off on a plea of self-defense.”
The possibility of a psychopathic stalker was almost worse than the fear that she’d stabbed Lowell and blocked it out. “This is so bizarre.”
“I could be wrong. There might not be such a man at all.” Dirk’s tone was noncommittal. “Just to be on the safe side—do you have a security system?”
She shook her head.
“It didn’t occur to you that installing one might be a good idea?” His dark eyebrows arched quesdoningly.
“I didn’t believe Lowell would hurt me.” In retrospect, Joni wished that she had paid more attention to her ex-husband’s protestations of innocence. After talking to Dirk, she was almost certain now that whoever had made those phone calls and committed the vandalism, it hadn’t been Lowell but someone else. Someone deadly.
“I don’t suppose you keep a gun in the house?”
“Not with an eight-year-old running around. I’d rather something happened to me because I didn’t have a gun than have my son get hurt because I did,” she asserted.
Dirk’s expression softened. “You have that mothering instinct full force, don’t you?”
“Of course.” She refrained from wondering aloud how he could have so little in the way of fatherly instincts. Men were different from women that way, she supposed. Maybe he realized that a globe-trotter was in no position to raise a child. Or perhaps he’d distanced himself so completely that he didn’t think of Jeff as his son.
“Where are your Yellow Pages?”
She blinked at the sudden request. “In the drawer under the phone.”
“You’re going to get a security system, today if possible.” He stood and strode toward the phone. “I’ll pay for it.”
“Thanks. I’d be grateful.” Until now, a household alarm system had sounded like more nuisance than it was worth and the cost would have strained her budget. But she could see that she needed one.
Dirk spent the next twenty minutes on the phone, trying to find a company that would promise immediate installation. Finally, he yielded to the inevitable and made an appointment.
“It’s a good system,” he said after hanging up. “They’ll wire all the windows as well as the doors. Unfortunately, we can’t get it installed until Wednesday.”
“That sounds so far off.”
“It’s the soonest anyone could come. I’ll sleep here until then.” He wasn’t asking; he was telling.
“Sleep here?” Joni stared at Dirk as he paced to the window to look out. He had a well-developed build, a bit more compact than Lowell’s, and a cocky way of holding himself. This strange, alluring man intended to live in her house for the next five days? “I don’t think so.
“What are you worried about—gossip?” he challenged. “As if people weren’t already running off at the mouth? Besides, I’m your brother-in-law.”
“Ex-brother-in-law.”
“Joni,” he said, “there’s no way I’m leaving you here unguarded.”
“Mom?” Jeff wandered through the kitchen doorway. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Your uncle wants to move in for a few days,” she said.
“To watch over you.” Dirk gave the boy a smile. “If you don’t mind.”
His little face lit up. “Really? Would you? That would be nice, wouldn’t it, Mom?”
Joni’s spirits sank. She didn’t want her son becoming too attached to Dirk and complicating an already difficult situation. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Please.” Where had that worried frown come from? Jeff seemed to have grown suddenly older. “Dad died right outside. Uncle Dirk knows how to protect us, don’t you?”
“I won’t let anything happen to either of you.”
The man set one hand on his son’s shoulder. For the first time, Joni noticed that they had matching indentations in their left cheeks.
“I’ll sleep better if he’s here,” Jeff pleaded.
Joni swallowed her objections. Dirk’s reassuring presence would help her son through these next few days as he absorbed the fact that he would never see his daddy again. It might help her, too.
“All right,” she conceded. “He can stay until we get our security system installed.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Jeff said, and then, no doubt parroting a phrase he’d heard on television, added, “You won’t regret this.”
Dirk chuckled. “I certainly hope not.”
Joni hoped not, too.
Chapter Six
Both Jeff and Joni retired to bed early. With the house quiet, Dirk went into the kitchen and cleaned up the remains of their fast-food dinner.
Detective MacDougall had come by earlier to collect the knife and interview Joni about it. Dirk couldn’t tell from his reaction whether he believed her story, and Joni seemed too exhausted to care.
After grilling her, the man had spent several hours examining the contents of kitchen drawers, the dishwasher and refrigerator, then prowling the patio. Finally. he’d removed the yellow tape and departed with the knife.
In the den, Dirk went to work hanging his clothes in the closet and tucking his underwear into the only drawer in an end table. Cramped quarters, but he’d certainly stayed in worse.
When he’d stopped by the Peterson estate that afternoon to retrieve his belongings, Mrs. Wright had frowned in disapproval at learning that he was moving to Joni’s house. After working for his family for twenty years, she was taking Lowell’s death hard.
She’d softened after Dirk pointed out that he was staying there for Jeff’s sake. But was he really? he wondered as he opened the couch into a bed.
Joni had asked his advice about the knife, but beyond that, she didn’t seem to think she needed help. He had a feeling she wasn’t used to leaning on anyone.
Damn it, he wanted her to lean on him. Or at least to spend more time with him. He wanted a chance to discover the side of herself that she hid from the world.
Those brown-specked green eyes had a way of confronting him boldly, then flicking shyly away, that made him itch to find out what she was thinking. To touch her skin and feel the silkiness of her hair and surprise her in a hundred subtle ways.
He wondered how Joni would react if he took her in his arms. Whether her mouth would yield beneath his and her body come alive. Whether her hands would grip his shoulders as he eased open the buttons on her blouse...
Great idea, Dirk told himself harshly. If he made love to Joni, then what?
He hated staying in one place for long and backed off at the first sign of anyone trying to rein him in. That was how life had shaped him, and it was too late to change his character now.
During his last year in security work, he’d become involved with a bodyguard named Elena. A beautiful woman with white-blond hair and a crackling sense of humor, she had a black belt in karate but was growing tired of constant travel and danger.
By that time, Dirk was considering leaving the security firm to start his own business. When an entrepreneur for whom he’d consulted offered him a chance to join a new venture, Dirk decided to invest his savings and go for it.
Elena announced she was ready for marriage and children. Dirk wanted those things, too, someday. But, excited about his new challenge, he asked her to give him more time.
His new firm had brokered computer services in a country carved from the former Soviet Union. Dirk worked day and night, setting up a system that matched local companies with experts from around the world. His consultants could do anything from putting together a firm’s hardware system to custom-designing its software.
Once the company was running smoothly, Dirk sold his share for a large sum. He’d identified another business opportunity, this one in central Africa, and proposed it to a group of venture capitalists. That led to establishing his own consulting company.
For the first time in his life, he felt in charge and powerful. Like someone his father would have respected.
Tired of waiting, Elena took on another assignment in South America. The man she was protecting turned out to be the target of drug dealers. He died in an ambush of machine-gun fire. So did she.
Remembering the day he’d received the news still felt like a punch in the gut. Dirk had loved Elena, and he’d failed her.
Maybe he hadn’t been honest enough, with her or with himself. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be anyone’s husband.
In the five years since then, he’d always seemed to need another mountain to climb. Just thinking about some of the projects he was juggling made the adrenaline start to pump.
Joni didn’t strike him as the type to want a short-term affair, and Dirk didn’t intend to hang around Viento del Mar for long. The best thing he could do would be to watch over her, strictly as a friend, until she recovered her health.
That, and find out what had happened to his brother.
As he went into the hall bathroom to stow his shaving kit, Dirk heard steady breathing from Jeff’s bedroom. Joni’s door was closed, and he guessed she would be asleep by now, too.
His watch showed five past eight. It was at about this hour two nights ago that his brother had been slain.
If he walked through the scenario from Lowell’s perspective, trying to view it with his brother’s eyes, he might gain a better understanding of what had happened. Experience had taught him that even the smallest details could change the big picture.
First, Dirk decided, he had to set the scene as it had been that night. Remembering the description from the police report, he switched on the rear porch light. Leaving the kitchen and den illuminated, he donned a windbreaker, picked up a flashlight and went outside.
Lowell’s car had been found around the block, parked out of sight. No one recalled seeing any other strange cars in the neighborhood, although he wasn’t sure the police had talked to all possible witnesses.
MacDougall had speculated that Lowell must have watched the property from behind, on the slope, although the rain had destroyed any evidence of where he’d waited. Lowell had been wearing a thin suit, though, so he hadn’t come prepared for a lengthy stakeout.
Dirk decided to start in front. His brother must have arrived from that direction at some point. Besides, for security reasons, it was important to get a sense of how the area looked after dark.
He descended the sloping driveway, past his rented sedan. Down the street, a car turned into a driveway, its headlights cutting a swath through the darkness before shutting off. Somewhere a dog barked, once, twice, and then stopped.
Darkness fell, deep and layered. There was no street-level illumination, and clouds blocked the moon. Even through the windbreaker, Dirk could feel the October chill.
Standing in front of the house, he scanned the neighborhood. All the structures were one story; from seeing them in daylight, he recalled that they were stucco with wood trim, designed to blend with the environment.
On Joni’s side, the houses sat against the perimeter of the development, with only woodlands beyond. On the opposite side of the street, the residences were half-hidden on rolling lots.
Just beyond Joni’s place lay a cul-de-sac. Because of the curvature and an intervening stand of trees, the end house was some distance away and at an angle that made it unlikely the occupants could see much of her front yard, let alone the back.
Turning, Dirk scrutinized Joni’s house. Light glimmered from the living room, while the thin front curtain allowed a glimpse inside. All he could see, though, was a framed print on the wall. Not enough to satisfy anyone intent on observing her. A watcher would have to choose a position behind the house all right.
According to Dirk’s research, the woods stretched for miles, crossed by a few hiking trails. Only someone who knew the area could have come that wa
y by night.
Lowell had never been the outdoor type. In addition, although he could be impulsive, his temper usually subsided with time. He might not be quick to forgive, but he wasn’t the type to calculate a slow-burning revenge, either.
Yet he admitted he was watching Joni. Why?
Hands jammed into his pockets, Dirk trudged up the driveway. He didn’t want to believe that his brother had threatened her, any more than he wanted to accept that she had killed him. So far, however, nothing but the existence of a second knife indicated a third party might have been involved. Until he found more evidence, he must not let wishful thinking affect his judgment.
Joni reminded Dirk a lot of himself in his younger days, when he’d had to weather his father’s faultfinding and Lowell’s frequent digs. He, too, had built up a cautious exterior and learned to hold his feelings inside. Most of the time anyway. That didn’t mean she was like him in other ways. Even Herb had some doubts about her, or why would he have pressed Dirk to begin this investigation?
At the top of the driveway, he followed a concrete walkway behind the garage. Stopping short of the diffused glow from the porch light, Dirk surveyed the patio. Even in moonlight, it was full of shadows, and the sky had been overcast on Wednesday. Joni had said she didn’t realize anyone was there until the last minute, and he could believe it.
Dirk turned his attention to the slope, or what little he could see of it. It would be almost impossible to descend in the dark without making a racket. Besides, Joni had said Lowell came from this side, near the garage.
There was nowhere to hide, this close to the house. Swinging around, Dirk headed for the short drop that divided Joni’s yard from the neighbor’s. As he neared the divide, the leaves of a thick shrub grazed his face. He pushed them aside, then realized as they rustled and swayed that what he’d assumed was a bush was instead a long branch.
With his flashlight, Dirk traced it backward. The branch and several others arced outward from a tree located a short ways uphill, on the property line.
His Secret Son Page 6
