CRY UNCLE

by Judith Arnold

  Yeah, she deserved to die. The world would be a better place minus one uppity professional woman.

  He drove onto the highway, southbound. The asphalt was slick with rain, forcing him to slow down. He batted down his rising frustration. So what if he got to the airport five minutes later? The less time he hung around the terminal, the less chance some TSA bozo might pull him out of the security line and do a thorough check on his background—or his suitcase.

  Up ahead he saw a swarm of red lights. Brake lights. Traffic jam.

  “Shit!” He banged his fist against the steering wheel, then struggled to rein in his temper. Traffic happened. He was just going to have to be patient.

  This wasn’t merely traffic, he realized after his car caught up to the mass of motionless vehicles clogging the highway. No one was moving, period. A few drivers climbed out of their vehicles to see what was going on. Mick climbed out, too.

  Around a bend in the road he saw a jack-knifed eighteen-wheeler, the trailer of which had skidded sideways to block all three southbound lanes. Somewhere behind him, Mick heard the approaching wail of a siren.

  He spat out a few foul words. It could take hours for the truck to be removed from the highway. Mick didn’t have hours.

  He yanked open his car door, slumped onto the seat and slammed the door shut. In his rear view mirror he saw two state troopers cruising along the shoulder, their blue lights flashing. Behind them was another vehicle, this one beaming a flashing yellow light. A tow truck.

  Oh, right. One little tow truck was going to clean up this mess.

  Drumming his fingers against the dashboard, he watched the troopers and the wrecker cruise past. He counted to five, then eased his car onto the shoulder. Shifting into reverse, he backed up to the exit ramp, all the while praying that no more cops would be coming along for a few minutes.

  A couple of cars honked at him as he coasted backward past them. A van pulled onto the shoulder, following his example. Good thing, Mick thought. He would be less conspicuous if he wasn’t the only driver breaking the law to escape the gridlock up ahead.

  Slowly, cautiously, he made his way down the ramp to the street. At the bottom, he navigated a three-point turn and headed west, leaving the traffic-snarled highway behind. “Yes!” he hissed triumphantly.

  Okay. One disaster averted. Now he had to find an alternate route to the airport—and he had to make tracks. That one good-for-nothing eighteen-wheeler had cost him fifteen precious minutes.

  He veered around the block, meandering through damp, dark streets, weaving his way toward Route 99. He tried not to look at the dashboard clock, but its digits glared at him, taunting him.

  Damn it. If he didn’t catch this flight, he’d have to wait a day—assuming he could even get a seat on the next flight. The longer he waited, the greater the chance that Pamela Hayes would move on, change her name again, do something to screw him the way she’d screwed him in court. He just wanted to take care of her so he could get on with his life.

  He pressed harder on the gas pedal. He was a better driver than that idiot trucker. He wasn’t going to skid. Seattle residents knew how to drive in wet weather; it was the only kind of weather they had.

  The light ahead turned from green to yellow. Mick didn’t have time for red lights. He floored the pedal and zoomed through the intersection. And heard a siren as a traffic cop turned the corner, switched on his lights, and chased down Mick Morrow, professional murderer, for running a red light.

  ***

  “JOE?” HER VOICE emerged as a whisper, uncertain. Just a minute ago she’d been steaming with rage. She’d actually wanted to punch him, shake him, force him to acknowledge her.

  She hadn’t been prepared for him to acknowledge her like this, though. Even worse, she hadn’t expected to respond to his kiss, to feel the steaming rage turn to steamier desire as he twined his fingers through her hair and slid his lips from her mouth to the bridge of her nose, to her forehead.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  For what? Making light of Lizard’s nudist proclivities? Treating Pamela so cavalierly? Or kissing her?

  She hated him for his ability to arouse her with his touch, with the lean grace of his body as he closed in on her. She struggled valiantly to resist her treacherous reaction to him. “What’s going on, Joe?” she asked. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You’re my wife.” He said it as if it were news to him, a profound revelation.

  “You could have fooled me.”

  He slid one hand from her hair to her shoulder and down her arm, to capture her left hand in his. With his thumb he traced the thick gold band that marked her as his wife. “Why did you marry me, Pamela?” he asked.

  She frowned, momentarily bewildered by both his question and her own uncertainty as to her answer. For a strange, unnerving moment she believed she’d married Jonas Brenner because his eyes were so blue. Because his smile was so deliciously wicked. Because deep in some hitherto unknown part of her soul she’d been longing for a bum in torn jeans and an earring to become a part of her life.

  “I told you,” she said, lowering her gaze so she wouldn’t have to see his handsome face, his intense stare. “There’s a hit man after me.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  Her frown intensified. She took a step back and found herself pressed against the counter. She’d thought—maybe even hoped, in that same hitherto unknown part of her soul—that Joe was going to seduce her. Obviously he was more in the mood for a chat. But if they were going to talk instead of make love, they ought to be talking about Lizard, not Mick Morrow.

  “Tell me about this hit man who’s after you.” Joe remained close to her, his thumb strumming across her knuckles. His chest remained an inch from hers; his feet remained apart, framing hers.

  She didn’t want to talk about the murder she’d witnessed. Whenever she talked about it—whenever she even thought about it—dread welled up inside her, making her feel weak and wretched.

  “Pam.” He released her hand and let out a long breath. “A hit man isn’t stalking you,” he said, sounding oddly disappointed.

  “Of course he is,” she retorted. “His name is Mick Morrow, and he’s a cold-blooded killer.”

  “Mick Morrow.” Joe scratched his chin thoughtfully. His fingernails made a rasping sound against the day-old stubble of beard. “It doesn’t sound like a hit man’s name.”

  “What name would you prefer? Black Jack Morrow? Homicide Morrow? AK-47 Morrow?”

  “He uses an AK-47?” This took Joe aback. “A semi-automatic?”

  “No. He uses an ugly little pistol. At least, that was what he used to kill Larry Ebersole.”

  Joe regarded her with what appeared to be strained patience. “Who’s Larry Ebersole?”

  Pamela sighed. It was going to be a long night. Edging past Joe, she reached for the unopened bottle of beer and gave the cap a sharp twist. “If you really want to go into all this, let’s sit down.”

  Joe nodded, but instead of pulling out a chair at the kitchen table, he took Pamela’s hand and his beer and led her out onto the screened porch, onto the old sofa along the back wall. Light from the kitchen spilled through the door, and the air on the porch was stirred by the songs of the night—crickets, bullfrogs and the whisper of the wind as it sifted through the fronds of the royal palms surrounding the house.

  Pamela eyed the wrought-iron table on the other side of the porch. She remembered the luncheon Joe had hosted on the porch to press his case for marriage. Lizard had called her ugly that afternoon, and Pamela had felt emotionally battered and afraid.

  She no longer felt battered. She probably should feel afraid—the word from Seattle was that Morrow was still out on bail—but somehow, being married to Joe had given her courage. If she could take on Lizard and win, if she could endure her inscrutable husband, if she could survive the dense, muggy heat of Key West, then surely she could handle Mick Morrow’s being at liberty in Seattle.

 
Joe sat a couple of feet away from her on the couch, angling his body so he could view her. The diffuse light from the kitchen transformed his face into a study of amber-lighted planes and shadows. The gold hoop in his earlobe looked like a tiny arc of sunshine when the light caught it.

  Despite his earring, despite his mussed hair and his torn jeans, he didn’t seem like a bum to her now. He was too complicated to be a bum. Too perplexing. The way he scrutinized her, the way he waited to hear her explanation, the way his eyes glinted with a strange blend of distrust and need and hope...

  She had to remind herself that this man, this utter stranger, this impish bartender and doting uncle, was her husband.

  “I was the architect on a project,” she began, then took a sip of her beer and turned to stare out at the dark back yard. “A suburban mini-mall. Larry Ebersole was the contractor.”

  Joe nodded.

  “Larry had low-balled the project, snagged the contract, and found a million ways to jack up the price once ground-breaking began. That’s how contractors work—they write up as cheap an estimate as they dare, and once the project is underway, they tell the owner, ‘Oh, you wanted double-glazed windows? The estimate was only for single-glazed. Double-glazed is going to cost you more.’ Or, ‘You want French doors? Read the small print. The estimate stipulates sliders, not French doors.’ And they inflate the price to cover all the specs they pretend they didn’t know about when they’d gone to contract.”

  “Pretty sleazy.”

  “That’s the way they work. Anyway, the owner of this project wasn’t having any of it. He insisted he’d contracted for double-glazed windows from the start, and if Larry Ebersole didn’t bring the job in at the agreed-upon price, the owner intended to sue the pants off him. So Larry was in a financial bind.”

  “What did you have to do with this?”

  “Nothing—except that as the architect on the project, I would visit the site every now and then to see how things were moving along. A few times when I was there, I saw Larry talking to this fellow, Mick Morrow. Larry told me Morrow was a money man who could extend him the credit he needed to get the job done on budget. That was all I knew. The financing of the project was none of my business. My firm had gotten its design fee directly from the owner.”

  She drank some more beer and glanced at Joe, wondering how such details could possibly interest him. He appeared fascinated, though, so she lowered her bottle and continued.

  “One evening, I was supposed to meet some friends at the symphony. I decided to detour to the construction site, just to see how things were progressing. When I approached the trailer I heard voices through the window. Mick Morrow was yelling at Larry Ebersole for failing to make timely payments, or some such thing. I have the feeling Morrow had bankrolled him for a lot more than just this one project.

  “In any case, Larry bolted from the trailer, and Morrow followed him. He kind of...tackled Larry.” Her voice trailed off; her hands grew clammy in her lap. Shivers traveled the length of her nervous system. Describing the scene forced her to relive it, picturing it vividly, feeling the cool evening air at the construction site, hiding in the dank shadows of the construction tractors. “When Larry was on the ground, Morrow pulled out this little gun and shot him in the back of the head.” She had to force out the words. Her throat was squeezed shut, choking her.

  Joe slid along the sofa cushions until he could put his arm around her. “Not a pretty picture,” he said.

  “No.” The single syllable slid out on a whimper.

  Joe ran his hand up and down her arm, consoling. “I take it this thug didn’t realize he had an audience.”

  She confirmed his guess with a shake of her head. “I stayed in the shadows. I probably should have stepped forward, though. Maybe Larry would be alive today if I had.”

  “Or maybe you wouldn’t be alive today. If the guy could kill one person, he’d kill two. You think he’s still trying to kill you now. I’m sure it would have been easier for him to off you then and there.”

  She nodded, trying to shrug off the chills that continued to rack her. Joe tightened his arm around her. “I suppose I knew instinctively that I ought to stay in the shadows. I didn’t move until Morrow had driven away. Then I went over to Larry. He...he was...”

  Joe spared her from having to say it. “I get the idea.” His hand continued to caress her, his palm warm and strong on her bare skin. It wasn’t the sort of thing an utter stranger or a bum did, or even a man trying to get a woman into bed. It was the gesture of a friend, a husband. “You didn’t have to testify against him, did you?”

  “Of course I did. Testifying against him was the proper thing to do. The moral thing. He was convicted of first-degree murder, thanks to my testimony.”

  “Which has endeared you to him forever.”

  “I wouldn’t have been in trouble today if the conviction hadn’t been set aside.” The chills lost their grip on her. Joe’s nearness thawed her.

  “How did that happen? What went wrong?”

  “One of the jurors had gone to primary school with Larry’s widow. Why that fact didn’t emerge during jury selection is a mystery, but the judge had to throw out the verdict and schedule a new trial. And meanwhile, Morrow somehow got himself released on bail. He’s free to roam the streets and hunt me down.”

  “Do you have nightmares?” he asked.

  She shot him a surprised look. Nobody—not even her parents—had ever thought to ask her that. “Yes,” she admitted. “Sometimes. I see Larry Ebersole lying on the ground, with that little hole at the base of his skull. There wasn’t much blood. It was just...this horrible little hole.” She closed her eyes, trying to erase the image.

  Joe eased her against him, guiding her head to rest on his shoulder. “So...once they put this ass back on trial, you intend to testify against him again?”

  “I have to. If I don’t, he goes free.”

  “I can’t believe they released him on bail.”

  “I think he has friends in high places.”

  “How do you know he’s still in Seattle?”

  “I call my attorney on a regular basis—and once the phone bill comes, Joe, I’ll reimburse you for those calls.”

  “Forget that,” he said sharply. His tone was gentler when he asked, “Who keeps your folks up on things?”

  “The police.”

  “The same police who don’t believe your in any danger?”

  She smiled grimly. “Also the D.A.’s office. He’s on my side, at least. He needs me alive to make his case.” She relaxed in the protective curve of his arm, soothed by the patterns his fingers traced against the skin of her upper arm. She hadn’t felt this close to him since their wedding. “Why did you ask me all this tonight, Jonas?”

  He sighed, set his bottle down beside hers on the floor, and closed both arms around her. “I don’t know,” he said, then shook his head. “Yeah, I do know. I didn’t believe you.”

  She flinched. Wriggling out of his arms, she twisted to confront him. “What do you mean?”

  “Pam.” Without her to hold, he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He folded them, then separated them and tapped his fingertips against his knees. “You showed up on the island one day, out of the blue, and when Kitty told you I was looking for a wife, you actually agreed to meet me. Look at us, Pam—we’re a total mismatch, right? You’re a fancy architect and I’m a no-frills barkeep.” He spread his hands palm up, as if to say, Here I am—what you see is what you get. “We swapped stories, got hitched, and—let’s face it—you’ve had proof that my story is true. Lizard exists, the social worker’s been here, you’ve talked to my lawyer.... You know I was telling the truth about why I wanted to marry you. You’ve seen my evidence.”

  “And you haven’t seen mine,” she said quietly, her voice edged with indignation.

  “That’s right. I haven’t.”

  All this time—had he thought she was lying? Misrepresenting herself? Marrying him under fa
lse pretenses? Trying to trick him for some reason?

  Perhaps she didn’t have the right to resent him for not trusting her—but for heaven’s sake, he trusted her with his niece. He trusted her with his home. “Maybe if you were around more often, you would have found plenty of reasons to believe me. You would have seen me telephoning my parents—”

  “Pamela.” He gathered her hands in his. “I haven’t been around very much because I want you. And I kept asking myself, ‘Who is this woman?’ I had no answers, Pam—and it scared me, because even though I didn’t know who the hell you were or what you were up to, I still wanted you.”

  “Well.” She wished she could stay angry, but his candor wouldn’t allow it. “Do you have answers now?”

  “I guess I have enough.” His hands were so much larger than hers, his fingers long and blunt, his palms thick and smooth. “Tonight, when you lit into me...” He grinned and shook his head. “It didn’t matter anymore what your story was or how much evidence I’d seen. All that mattered was that you cared enough about Lizard to fight for her. You were ready to go the distance for her, just because you cared. And damn it, Pam—that made me want you even more. More than I thought I’d ever want a woman.”

  He kissed her again, slowly this time, not to shut her up but to open her. His lips caressed hers, brushed and brushed again, teasing, enticing, melting the last vestiges of her resistance. Joe didn’t want her because she was pretty. He didn’t want her because he was horny. He wanted her because she’d cared enough about his niece—and about what was right—to fight him.

  And that, she realized, was exactly what she wanted him to want her for.

  He drew her onto his lap and circled his arms around her waist. His mouth opened against hers, and she welcomed the sweet invasion of his tongue. He slid his hand across her back, exploring the ridge of her spine, the bony width of her shoulders. “Pam,” he whispered, “Pam...”