by Ken Casper
Fear replaced fury when he tapped on the window. Her head snapped up. He leaned over.
“What’s the matter?” he shouted through the glass. “What’s wrong?”
“Go away.” She swiped at the tears with her wrist.
He tried the door, but it was locked. “Damn it, Kelsey, talk to me.”
Her key went in. The engine roared to life. She rammed the transmission into gear and squealed out of the driveway, almost knocking him over.
The problem couldn’t be Catherine, he concluded. If she was sick or injured, Kelsey wouldn’t have reacted this way. Besides, there’d be an ambulance. Unless she’d already been taken away, but he would have heard about it on his police radio if something had happened to the chief.
He jumped back into his cruiser and shot down the driveway. The Honda was already out of sight. Calculating Kelsey was on her way back to the convent, he turned right at the end of the street and saw her car a block ahead. She didn’t come to a full stop at the stop sign or signal her turn. He flipped on his overhead light bar and hit the siren for a moment, enough to get her attention. Kelsey swerved to the right side of the tree-lined street. Her car tilted forward and rocked back when she slammed on the brakes.
Derek exited his cruiser and strode up to the left side of the vehicle and faced the driver.
“Roll down your window” he instructed in cop mode. He didn’t say please.
Jaw clenched, she glared up at him with venom in her eyes. He stared back unflinching. Defeated, she lowered the power window. “What do you want?”
“You were driving erratically, exceeding the speed limit in a built-up area, disregarded a traffic sign, failed to signal a turn and had poor control of your vehicle when you stopped.”
She inhaled and exhaled, her chest heaving.
“Get out of the car,” he ordered.
“What?” She shot daggers of defiance at him, but being a cop’s daughter she knew she had no choice. Resisting would only make matters worse.
“Get out of the car,” he repeated. “Now.”
If looks could kill . . . She opened the door and climbed out, her movements jerky, unsteady. Her hands were shaking. He reckoned her knees were weak, as well.
“I’m out. Now what, Officer?” she demanded. “Are you going to arrest me?”
“I don’t know. Have you done something that warrants taking you into custody, something I should know about?”
She clamped her mouth tight.
He moderated his tone, labored to keep his voice even, sympathetic. “What’s going on, Kelsey? Something’s wrong. Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t.”
“Then I can listen.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
They used to spend hours with each other, chattering about anything, everything. He thought they had no secrets from each other. Obviously he was wrong.
He considered his options. He couldn’t force her to talk to him, but he couldn’t let her go, either. Not in her present state. He’d never seen her so out of control. No telling what she might do to herself or someone else. She was an accident waiting to happen, and he refused to have that on his conscience.
“Then we’ll just wait here until you calm down. You’re too upset to drive. I have a duty to protect the public—”
His words incensed her anew. Her eyes were spanking fire.
“Don’t you dare preach to me about civic duties and responsibilities.”
Her outburst added further to his bewilderment, as if he’d just hit a hot button.
He said nothing for several seconds to give them both time to simmer down.
“I stopped by to see your mother,” he said, almost conversationally. “To give her a report she asked for that might help us figure out what happened to your dad.” The list of cases that might be affected by the debacle in the medical examiner’s office. “Is she all right?”
For a moment he thought Kelsey was going to relent. But the thaw was fleeting.
“Oh, she’s just fine,” she said, her words dripping with sarcasm. “She was screwing that detective she hired when I walked in.”
Derek’s jaw dropped, not only at the unwanted picture that came to mind, but he’d never heard Kelsey speak this way.
“I thought it was guys who hired playmates,” she said. “Of course, Rowan is younger. I guess that makes him a boy toy. I wonder if she pays him.”
Derek’s muscles tensed. “Shut up, Kelsey. Just shut up. You have no right to talk about your mother that way.”
“My grandmother told me she was a tramp. I guess she was right.”
He was having trouble getting all the words to connect. What did Amanda have to do with this? And why would she call Catherine a tramp? He’d met Kelsey’s grandmother a few times and didn’t like her. No matter how polite and well dressed he was, she always made him feel inferior, like the dirty slum kid he had once been.
“And you believed the old witch?” he asked.
“Don’t refer to my grandmother that way.”
He raised his eyebrows. “But it’s all right for you to call your mom a tramp? What the hell’s gotten into you, Kel?”
“I went home and found her in bed with him. You don’t think I should be upset about that?”
He’d had a minute to let the concept sink in and now tried to assess his reaction. Surprise, certainly. Disappointment? Not really. He liked Catherine. He liked Jeff, too, for that matter.
“They’re both mature adults,” he said. He could understand Kelsey being upset, but he still had the feeling there was more to this raw anger than finding a man in her mother’s bed.
She looked away, her expression one of disgust.
“She cares for him, Kel. I’ve spent more time with them than you have. I could see from the beginning they were attracted to each other.” When she didn’t respond, he asked, “Is the idea of sex so terrible? Is that why you don’t want to marry me? Because you’re afraid? There’s no need to be, sweetheart.” His voice softened to intimacy. Resisting the urge to reach out, to touch her was agony. “I promised you . . . that the first time—”
“Well—” she held her head up but refused to meet his eyes “—somebody beat you to it.”
He blinked. “What?” He must have misunderstood. “What did you say?”
She refused to make eye contact. “Can I go now?”
His blood was pounding in his ears. “No,” he shouted. Now he was the one whose nerves were shattered. “Kelsey, you can’t just make a statement like that and drive away.” She’d told him she was a virgin, that she was saving herself for him. “Are you telling me you’ve had sex with someone else? Who?” he demanded. “Tell me.”
“What happens in my life is none of your business.” She turned around and gripped the door handle.
“Kelsey, please,” he begged. His stomach knotted even as his muscles seemed to drain of strength. What did all of this mean? He put his hand on her shoulder to hold her, to steady himself. “If I’ve said or done anything—”
She shook loose. When she turned back to him this time, her soft eyes were brimming and filled with such wretchedness his heart ached for the anguish he found there. But he saw an emptiness, as well, as though she’d removed her soul and locked it away inside an impenetrable fortress.
His head still spinning, he dropped his hand, then stood and watched her climb back into her car and pull away.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
* * *
AFTER JEFF LEFT, Catherine returned to the master bedroom. She considered filling the tub with bubble bath and crawling into its soothing caress, but decided she needed the violence of a shower beating on her skin. She let the pinpricks of hot spray drum on the back of her neck and work the tight muscles while she hung her head and allowed tears to blend with the water sluicing down her chest, between her breasts.
She kept seeing the horror on Kelsey’s face.
&nbs
p; “Grandma was right. You are a slut.”
So Tyrone had co-opted her from the beginning, poisoned the well by telling his parents she had come on to him. It explained the hostility the senior Tanners had always felt for Catherine. Obviously Tyrone had been very careful to advise them not to mention it to Jordan. Apparently, too, Tyrone hadn’t told his wife, otherwise Melissa wouldn’t have been her friend all these years. Why hadn’t he told her? Because in spite of her devotion to him, Melissa had no illusions about the kind of man he was? Because, unlike his indulgent parents, she wouldn’t have believed him?
Catherine had been able to avoid a head-on confrontation with her in-laws before Jordan’s death, in part because she walked on eggshells around them, but mostly, she suspected, because they realized that through such a conflict they would lose their son again and a second breach would be permanent.
That Jordan was unconditionally on Catherine’s side had always been a source of tremendous security for her, but being the cause of the deterioration of her husband’s relationship with his parents had also been a burden. He wouldn’t have held it against her if those ties had finally been broken, but awareness that she had the power to cause a rift in the family weighed heavily on her shoulders.
Jordan was gone. Catherine was alone, and as far as Tyrone and his parents were concerned, vulnerable. Whether Marcus had approved Tyrone’s editorial attacks on her beforehand, she wasn’t sure. She doubted it. She’d never sensed the same depth of animosity from him as she had from his wife. Catherine had often wondered why Amanda disliked her so fiercely. Now she knew.
“Grandma wonders how many other men you’ve been screwing.”
Catherine’s eyes were bloodshot when she stepped from the shower. Lethargically she donned clean but frayed loose-fitting jeans and an unpressed cotton T-shirt, the outfit she wore for working in the garden.
Dressing for her therapy, as she called it, conjured up another memory. Jeff.
She’d been so unfair to him, starting with dismissing him from the police force last year. It still amazed her that he was willing to forgive her. Finding common ground had been remarkable enough, but that they should become lovers was astounding. She’d all but written off sex after Jordan died. For months the idea itself had been banished from her consciousness.
As she ran a comb through her damp hair, she realized what most attracted her to Jordan wasn’t physical, though he was a turn-on, but the warmth of companionship she felt when she was with him. Long talks about architecture, interior design, music. Sharing the kitchen, lingering over a meal or a glass of wine. She’d missed those things even more than the sex, and Jeff had given her both.
Now they were gone again. But for the plea in the depths of his hazel eyes, he had left without protest, yet with a promise to be around if she wanted him.
“Oh, sweetheart, if only you knew how much I do.”
Which brought her full circle to the loathing she’d seen on Kelsey’s face when she’d confronted her in the foyer. Loathing and shame. Catherine had never imagined her daughter would feel that way about her. How had they ever come to this?
The old woman’s accusation explained a lot, but not why Kelsey believed her. That was the biggest mystery of all.
The doorbell rang. Catherine’s pulse quickened. Kelsey had come back to apologize, to explain. She raced through the house to the front door and swung it open. “Kel—”
Derek stood there, looking shaken. “Uh, Chief—”
Hope crumbled. “Come in,” Catherine said, after her heart ceased its thumping. “I thought you were Kelsey.”
“I saw her when she left,” he said, stepping inside. “What happened . . . I mean she told me, but—”
“She told you?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.” He refused to make eye contact “It’s none of my business. I swear I’ll never—”
“I trust your discretion.” She tried to reassure him with a tight smile. “Let’s go sit down.”
“I brought you the names of the medical examiner cases—”
“We’ll get to them in a minute.”
She led him into the living room and motioned him to the couch. She took the chair on the other side of the coffee table.
“Derek, I’m very concerned about Kelsey. What happened between you is none of my business, but I hope you know you can confide in me whenever you want.”
“Yes, ma’am. Except nothing happened between us. I didn’t know—” He dropped his gaze, folded and unfolded his hands in his lap, bit his lip. Catherine had never seen him so nervous, so unsure of himself.
“Didn’t know what?” she prompted.
Silence lingered until he mumbled, “She said she isn’t a virgin anymore.”
Catherine was stunned. She’d never inquired into her daughter’s sex life. The two of them had had the appropriate discussions, about taking precautions, about being sure, but that had been a long time ago. Catherine had assumed Kelsey and Derek had at least experimented. “Does that mean you and she—”
“No, ma’am.” Again he refused to make eye contact.
“So she’s been with someone else.” Catherine muttered, more to herself than the young man sitting across from her. “Do you have any idea who . . . or when this happened?”
“No, ma’am.” His voice shook as he gave the polite but terse reply. Catherine realized he was embarrassed to the point of humiliation, and if she continued to press she would make matters worse. She didn’t want to alienate him.
“Thanks for being so honest.”
After the briefest of pauses, she reached for the manila envelope he’d placed on the table. “And thank you for getting this to me so quickly.”
“All the deaths that have gone through the M.E.’s office in the past eighteen months,” he said, snapping out of his funk, “ever since Cliburne Vale took over.”
She paged through till she came to the names beginning with T. There it was: Tanner, Jordan. Under the heading Manner of Death was the word: Accidental.
But was it?
JEFF’S NIGHT WAS RESTLESS. In his mind he kept seeing the transformation that came over Catherine when she realized Kelsey was standing in the bedroom doorway. The frolicking joy of uninhibited sex had shattered into embarrassment, then sheer terror.
He pictured the loneliness and despair in her eyes when she said goodbye. Perhaps Kelsey would never have approved of her mother remarrying, but Jeff also realized that even if Sister Kelsey gave her blessing, she wouldn’t condone her mother sleeping with a man outside wedlock.
Marriage. After his experience with Sandy, he’d given up on connubial bliss. He must have been out of circulation too long, though, if he was fantasizing about cherishing till-death-us-do-part after just a couple of lovemaking sessions.
Except this was different. Making love to Catherine was the result of what he felt for her, not the cause. That had been the problem with Sandy. They’d jumped into bed, indulged in casual, randy sex too soon—before they really knew each other. It was different with Catherine. Even if he couldn’t touch her again, he’d want to be with her. He’d still love her.
Maybe this was for the best. He had no right to be thinking of anything permanent with Catherine. There was the difference in their ages and social positions. He was the cop she’d fired from the force. That taint would be there forever. Hooking up with the chief of police would injure her reputation, and wouldn’t improve his. He’d be the gold digger, the fortune hunter who married for money and status.
Unable to sleep, he climbed out of bed, trekked to his home office and dug out the financial records he’d earlier tapped into.
Tyrone paid his bills online, no doubt for convenience, perhaps also because that Way he wouldn’t leave a paper trail.
“Oh, but you’re lazy,” he muttered when the Web site accepted the password that had taken Derek just six minutes to recover from Tyrone’s office computer. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you to use different passwords and cha
nge them frequently?”
At this point, Jeff wasn’t sure what he expected to find, but the mass of information was a challenge. Maybe somewhere in all the data was a clue to what had happened to Jordan Tanner.
“My, aren’t you a busy boy—and not particularly discreet.”
Tyrone spent lavish amounts at exclusive restaurants and high-priced nightclubs and sent flowers and chocolates to a host of women. Nothing to his wife.
The guy was a sleazebag of the first magnitude. Catherine said Melissa was aware of her husband’s infidelities and tolerated them. But did she? Jeff had seen the former model at Jones Hall the night of the charity concert. The woman was a knockout. Men stared at her as she walked by. How long could such a beauty endure being scorned? How would she take her retribution? Death and mutilation were ancient remedies. Based on Tyrone’s continued activity with women, he hadn’t been gelded.
Gas credit cards showed Tyrone made periodic trips to the Lake Conroe district north of Houston, no doubt to the Tanner compound Derek had told him about. A pattern began to emerge. Using a calendar to check dates, Jeff realized Tyrone gassed up there every Wednesday.
“So that’s how you spend your golf afternoons. But what’s this?”
A year ago last April, at the end of the month, he’d used his credit card at a convenience store on a Saturday afternoon.
“What were you doing up there that day? A family get-together?”
Something niggled at the back of bis mind, something Derek had mentioned. The date fell on the weekend at the end of April. Wasn’t that just before college exams? When Kelsey had used the place to study.
Jeff decided to drive to the lake the next morning, get the lay of the land firsthand and ask a few questions.
MONDAY MORNING was always hectic. Catherine reviewed the weekend blotter of arrests and incidents, met with various department heads and coordinated a week’s worth of appointments. She was annoyed when Captain Paul Radke, head of Internal Affairs hadn’t shown up by noon with the list of M.E. cases she’d asked for, but decided it was probably just as well. She had to speak at a Kiwanis luncheon, and by waiting until afterward she’d be better able to concentrate on the information he gave her.
