Deadlier than the Male

by Sharon Sala

  “I had a bit of help,” he said modestly, but she saw fierce pride in his expression, pride tempered by the sadness of the tragedy that had taken place so nearby. A tragedy that had marked him as much as it had Rebecca.

  Abruptly, the girl’s last picture, the one Mara had been looking at just before the gas had overwhelmed her, flashed through her mind. The screaming face, the outstretched arms, the bluff whose horrifyingly familiar silhouette she’d noticed just before they pulled into the gates.

  Along with the memory came her suspicion that Rebecca had seen something. That the child had been a witness to her mother’s murder.

  “It’s a gorgeous home,” Mara forced herself to say, rather than bring up what she was really thinking about. Not to mention that it occurred to her that Rebecca might be drawing nightmares or dark imaginings. To discuss the subject would be too cruel—not until she knew for sure. Besides, though Mara hated herself for thinking it, a tiny but obstinate part of her was still reserving judgment on Adam himself. Though she saw no more than a generous, caring man and concerned father, she’d seen no warning signs from her fiancé, either.

  When Adam thanked her for the compliment, his smile struck at the heart of her, struck her with the confidence that this man was no Jerry. She would stake her life on it.

  And maybe she was.

  Approaching the huge two-story house along a winding drive, she noticed that the ornate but tasteful wrought iron that ringed the house gave way to a transparent fence perhaps a hundred yards behind the back of the house, which faced the bluff’s edge. While it made sense that Adam wouldn’t block his gorgeous view of the surrounding rock formations and the town so far below, she wondered how sad he must feel, looking out each day over the very spot where his wife had fallen to her death.

  As they pulled in to the garage, her phone rang. Pulling it from her bag, she sighed and looked at Adam. “It’s Mrs. Rhodes.”

  “Go ahead and take it. I’ll be right inside,” he said, climbing from the car.

  “I hope you’re feeling better.” Mrs. Rhodes sounded amazingly sincere for a woman who’d been threatening to fire her. “I’ve been so concerned.”

  “Thanks. I’m doing better,” Mara said stiffly. “Well enough to return to school if—”

  “About that, Mara.” Mrs. Rhodes cleared her throat. “I’ve been talking about your, ah, situation with the superintendent. And we both agree, paid administrative leave’s the best choice for the moment.”

  Mara’s jaw dropped. “But that’s what districts do when a teacher is under investigation. I haven’t broken any laws.”

  “No one’s accusing you, but this is a special situation. It’s clear some unbalanced individual wishes to harm you. What if he were to show up during school hours? We certainly can’t risk a situation like the one in Indiana.”

  Mara knew she was referring to a tragedy two months earlier, when a teacher’s estranged husband had barged into her class and shot her, then himself, traumatizing a room full of fourth graders. The incident had been extensively reported in the media, amid calls for increased security in schools.

  “Until the criminal who tried to harm you is caught,” Mrs. Rhodes said, “I’m afraid we absolutely can’t allow your presence to jeopardize staff and student safety.”

  As sensible as Mrs. Rhodes’ precaution sounded, Mara couldn’t help suspecting the woman was using this situation as an excuse to get rid of a “problem teacher.” Because heaven forbid the principal should risk exposure to any new ideas. But there was no talking Jillian Rhodes out of her decision, in part because Mara had no idea how to defend herself, much less a class of second graders, from a threat she didn’t understand.

  As the conversation wrapped up, the door into the garage opened and Rebecca peeked out, her thin arms full of kitten, and her eyes so full of need and hope that Mara felt her objections to Adam’s offer crumble into dust.

  Chapter 9

  “W ish I had some solid information for you, Jakes,” Ronnie Rayburn said the next day.

  Standing there in the sheriff’s office, Adam was beginning to wonder whether the sheriff spent his time doing anything but politicking—and seducing disaffected housewives. “That’s the same garbage I heard after Christine died, every day for months. I suppose you’re going to rule this one an accident, as well? You think Mara Stillwell accidentally ducted that exhaust into her own casita?”

  Rayburn had the stones to smirk. “Not likely. Still can’t believe she didn’t see it when she ran out to start the thing.”

  Adam shrugged. “She was in a hurry because of the rain, she told me. She hardly looked at the generator, except to use the electric starter. You come up with any prints?”

  “Other than hers, just from your guys, and they all check out. And no witnesses saw anything suspicious, not there, not at the school, and not around your construction site.”

  “What about the phone threat? Mara said you were going to try and trace it through her service provider.”

  Rayburn made a show of pushing back his leather chair and crossing his ankles on his desktop, an obvious attempt to impress upon Adam that he was the man in charge here, before shaking his blond head. “Blocked call turned out to be from one of those pay-as-you-go cell phones, purchased for cash from the Flagstaff Wal-Mart. Just far away enough to stay anonymous.”

  “Somebody figured you’d be looking.”

  The sheriff cursed TV criminal investigation shows for educating criminals in the name of entertainment, then said, “You’ve still got your usual cretins committing crimes, but the smart ones, the ones that care if they get caught and think it through first…” He shook his head in disgust.

  “So what’s your theory on this?”

  “Well, I can’t come up with any credible reason why anybody’d want to hurt Miss Stillwell. Maybe a couple of ladies aren’t so excited about her new teaching methods, but that’s not what I would call a solid motive for murder.”

  Adam nodded, though it grated to agree with Rayburn.

  The sheriff’s wide-set gaze turned thoughtful. “Was wondering about you, though, whether there’s been another lady in your life of late. Maybe the territorial type who’d take exception to you paying Mara special attention.”

  “A woman? You think a woman could have—”

  Another shrug. “Those red footprints in Miss Stillwell’s classroom were on the small side.”

  “Like a teenager’s, Mara told me.”

  “Or a woman’s.”

  Adam shook his head. “Since my wife, there’s been no other woman.” Not till Mara. Certainly Barbara Fairmont was interested, but he’d given her so little encouragement, he could hardly picture her obsessing. Knowing her reputation, she would just move on to another victim and try him again after her next marriage failed.

  “You sure there was no one at all? C’mon, Mr. Jakes,” Rayburn said. “Rich, good-looking fellow in his prime—wasn’t there a one-night stand or two? A little phone sex, or maybe just a flirtation that went too far? We all have our weak moments.”

  “You slimy son of a—” Adam struggled to rein in his contempt for the man hiding safely behind his desk, his badge and his gun. “Don’t even think of lumping me in with the likes of you. I’ve been busy with my project. Tied up tending to my daughter. A daughter I’m raising alone, thanks to—”

  Jerking his feet off the desk, the sheriff rose to his feet, a warning in his hazel eyes. “I don’t believe I’d go there. Not unless you want to be the richest man who’s ever seen the inside of my jail.”

  Adam stood glaring, thinking it always came back to the money, the fortune he’d cobbled out of nothing but sheer nerve, student loans and sweat. No matter how hard he’d worked for it or how humble his background, people either envied, sucked up to or hated him by virtue of what he had that they didn’t.

  Rayburn’s expression softened. “I know you want to blame me,” he said thoughtfully. “And to tell the truth, I’ve asked myself the s
ame questions. Whether something I did or didn’t do helped drive Christine to that bluff. But did you ever stop to wonder if maybe you’re focusing on my part, holding on to anger at me, so you don’t have to look at yourself?”

  “Why don’t you skip the psychology and just find whoever’s out to hurt Mara?”

  “I will find him,” the sheriff promised. “’Cause I’m damned well going to prove to you I can.”

  “You do that, Rayburn,” was the best Adam could manage on his way out of the office.

  Because if he stayed in there one more minute, he was either going to end up shot or behind bars.

  At a low table in the house’s library, Mara prompted Rebecca on a word from a story about a bear family struggling to trick a bee out of her honey. Freed from the worry of stumbling in front of her peers, the little girl was willing to “risk” sounding out words when needed, and she answered Mara’s comprehension questions like a trouper.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” Mara said. “Let’s write a story about the bee, how she feels about these big, hairy monsters taking all her honey.”

  Grinning, Rebecca shook one small fist. “I’ll sting you all, you honey-stealers!” Turning a pleading look toward Mara, she added, “But can’t I just draw it? I don’t want to write.”

  Mara noticed the wheedling tone and the calculation gleaming in the girl’s blue eyes. On her home turf, she was testing Mara, trying to find out how much she could get away with.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Mara countered. “We’ll write the story first. Then, if you work hard and do a good job, we’ll make it into a storybook, with a front and back cover, and some illustrations—pictures.”

  “You mean like in a real book?” Excitement crept into the girl’s voice.

  “I do. Which means we have to make the story the very best it can be.”

  They worked for some time after that, Rebecca impressing Mara with her sustained effort and imagination. But no sooner had the girl started drawing than she veered totally off course, her pale eyes glazing over as she moved from the furious queen bee in the foreground to a deadly serious subject….

  A familiar scene, this time silhouetted in the moonlight: one figure clearly pushing the other from a ledge. To Mara, both looked identical, prompting a new idea. Did the child mean to express, perhaps unconsciously, that her mother had destroyed herself?

  Or did Rebecca truly believe that another woman had committed the murder on the bluffs? Had the child actually witnessed her mother’s violent death?

  This time, however, Mara decided to break the spell instead of just observing. To interrupt Rebecca’s waking nightmare to try to find out what she dreamed.

  Mara touched the child’s arm, but it wasn’t till she held it still that Rebecca looked up, surprise written in her eyes.

  “What is it you’re seeing?” Mara asked her. “Who is it you’re drawing?”

  Trembling, Rebecca glanced down at the picture, seeing it as if for the first time, before bursting into loud sobs, sobs that refused to ease no matter how hard Mara tried to offer comfort.

  Minutes later, Rebecca raced upstairs, her bedroom door slamming behind her.

  Mrs. Somers appeared at that moment, her hands on hips, to scowl at Mara. “What on earth are you doing to that child?”

  Mara ached to follow Rebecca, but the housekeeper’s fierce expression assured her that she was going nowhere without an explanation.

  “I only asked her to tell me about the picture she was drawing. She was supposed to be illustrating a story we’d been working on, but instead she—”

  “Those drawings…” Mrs. Somers fretted with her strand of pearls. “That poor child.”

  “So you’ve seen them?”

  A troubled expression pinched Mrs. Somers’ regal features. “I have indeed, and I can tell you, if you don’t want her to completely shut down again, don’t bother her about them. I won’t have Rebecca upset like this. I can’t bear to see her hurt any more.”

  “Do you really think I’m trying to upset her? Haven’t I been working with her for months on my own time to get her talking?” From the first moment Mara had arrived here, she’d sensed Mrs. Somers’ disapproval, but she couldn’t let it go unchallenged. If the two of them didn’t iron things out, Adam’s longtime housekeeper, who had been with the family since Rebecca’s second birthday, could make her own situation miserable.

  “You’ve been working on something, all right. An M.R.S. degree to top off that bachelor’s, from what I’ve heard.”

  “Who told you that?” Mara demanded.

  Mrs. Somers stiffened, lifting her chin. “I have a friend who works for the mother of another of your students. And you’ll never imagine what she overheard—what her Mrs. Fairmont saw with her own eyes going on between her son’s teacher and my poor Mr. Jakes.”

  Red Bluff, Mara decided, ought to just change its name to Peyton Place and be done with it. “I’m here to teach Rebecca,” she insisted.

  With a disdainful sniff, the older woman brushed past her to stride toward the staircase calling, “Rebecca, please come out and have a cookie. Come sit with me and forget whatever your teacher did to make you cry.”

  Chapter 10

  J ust shy of midnight Friday, Adam answered the phone in his study, where he’d been listening to music and worrying over Rebecca’s psychiatrist’s recent advice on how to help her.

  “Hi, Adam, this is Barbara.” Whispering like a serpent through tall grasses, her voice raised the fine hairs on the back of his neck.

  Revulsion quickly followed. “I’m surprised to hear from you, after our last conversation.”

  “I’ve been feeling bad about that.” Her shift to poutiness came through loud and clear. “I don’t want you being all mad at me.”

  “Then you should apologize to Mara Stillwell.”

  “I could do that, maybe. But first, I’d like the chance to make it up to you. I really was a very bad girl. When I saw the two of you together, my little green-eyed monster popped right out.”

  “Have you been drinking, Barbara?”

  She giggled, a sound like fingernails raking down a chalkboard. “Maybe a teensy bit. But mostly, I’m just lonely, Adam. Bored and lonely, and hoping for a little company to get me through it. Some strapping male company to see me through the night.”

  “I don’t think so.” He let his tone convey the “not in a million years” part.

  But whether she was drunk, stubborn or flat-out crazy, Barbara kept on going, her voice going kittenish as she began describing the negligee that she was wearing, how she was taking it off and reaching down to touch—

  Wincing, he said, “’Night, Barbara,” and broke the connection. How the devil was he going to get it through that woman’s head that he had no interest in her? Never had and never would, regardless of what he felt for Mara.

  But it occurred to him that, hopeless though it was, Barbara wasn’t giving up her bizarre fixation anytime soon. And that, despite his earlier skepticism, she might well have taken extreme steps to ensure she had no competition.

  He wondered how extreme those steps might have been. Could she really have been responsible for the attempt on Mara’s life? Or was it possible this went back all the way to Christine? He thought about his daughter’s drawings, about the monstrous clawed hands she sometimes included in them.

  No, that couldn’t be it. Couldn’t. It was insane to even think it. But by their very nature, obsessions weren’t sane, and Barbara Fairmont was giving every sign that she’d slipped into obsession territory.

  Still, he could all too easily imagine Ronnie Rayburn laughing off the idea that a woman of Barbara’s reputation posed a danger because she’d called him seeking sex. Before Adam was willing to make a fool of himself with such a wild accusation, he was going to confront Barbara face-to-face.

  Tomorrow, he decided, not wanting to take the slightest chance of seeing her with—or especially without—that negligee.

  Alone since
Rebecca had begged to take Jasper for the night, Mara lay back on the sumptuous burgundy bedding in her beautifully appointed guest suite, a set of rooms more spacious than any place she’d ever lived as an adult. She could have pushed a button to automatically screen the huge window so she would be able to sleep in the following morning. Instead, she stayed awake, watching for the meteors that occasionally streaked across the star field, as she tried—and failed—to put Barbara Fairmont’s ugly gossip out of her mind.

  The woman was like a cracked barrel of toxic waste in the town reservoir, poisoning minds against her, from Jillian Rhodes to the other PTO mothers all the way to Mrs. Somers, who was undermining Mara’s efforts to help Rebecca and darting suspicious looks across the table where Adam insisted they all take meals together.

  How long would it be before Babzilla managed to taint Mara’s relationship with Adam, too? She fell asleep wondering what she could possibly do, short of leaving town, to solve the problem.

  Sometime later, the soft trill of her cell phone woke her. Half-asleep, she reached for it, murmuring, “Hello?”

  A grotesque voice warped the night around her. “Her nails were torn, did you know? Ripped from where she clung to the bluff’s edge—until he stomped down on her fingers. Are you hanging on tight, little teacher? Waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

  “Barbara Fairmont,” Mara managed, though she couldn’t be sure. But there was something feminine, she thought, in the cadence of the artificially distorted words, the tenor of the phrasing. “I swear, I’m going to call the sheriff. This is sick. Just crazy.”

  Laughter followed—definitely female. “You’re as stupid as you are stubborn, little teacher. So be it. You’ve been warned.”

  Hot fury had Mara shooting back, “This time, try coming after me to my face and see what it gets you, you psycho.” But she was yelling at dead air, she realized. The caller’s way of getting the last word.