Instantly, there was a quickly smothered exclamation of surprise nearby, a rustle of bushes, and the sound of somebody moving rapidly away from him on the other side of the wall. Somebody was trespassing on his property!
“What the devil!” He was over the wall like a shot, and charging through the bushes in hot pursuit of the person he’d heard running away.
Was he about to apprehend the vandal who’d been upsetting the neighborhood? McLain wondered briefly if the culprit was armed. No matter, the bushes would make it difficult for anyone to bring a weapon to bear before McLain would be on him, and then it would be too late. Like any Marine, McLain excelled at hand-to- hand combat.
“Besides, so far the toughest things you’ve taken on are rose bushes, you jerk!” he muttered as he pushed through his own dense shrubbery in pursuit.
He heard the crunch of gravel briefly as his quarry broke cover and hit the driveway. Bursting from the shrubbery himself, he sprinted down the drive, peering from side to side, searching the clear expanses of lawn for a running figure and the shadows for someone attempting to hide.
He passed the Chamberlain house, then the side of the Clarkes, and reached the street still breathing easily. Turning right, he continued his search at a jog along the front of the Clarkes and the McWilliams. Seeing nobody, he turned down the side of that house toward Samantha’s. Still no sign of the person he hunted.
Suddenly the peace of the night was shattered by ferocious, ear-piercing barking.
McLain gave a start and missed a step, nearly turning his ankle. “Damn dust mop!” What the Masters woman’s mutt lacked in size, he sure as hell made up for in volume!
Lights sprang on in the Masters house, and Samantha appeared at the front door. “Who’s there? Is something the matter?” She bent and scooped up the yapping dog, unlatched the screen with her free hand, and stepped out onto her porch. “Hush. Hush, Rags,” she quieted the snarling animal.
“Good God, Woman! Do you always dash out into the night when there’s a ruckus?” McLain’s voice was rough with annoyance.
“If I choose to.” Samantha informed him coolly. “And I didn’t dash, as you so quaintly put it. I merely stepped out to see what all the fuss was about.” She enjoyed adding, “And please keep your voice down. You’ll wake the neighbors.”
“Lady, you’re kidding yourself if you think anybody slept through that mutt’s yapping.” He glared at Rags.
Rags began percolating. The little dog clearly resented being called a mutt.
Samantha ignored McLain’s jibe. “What’s going on?”
“On my way home I heard somebody crashing through my bushes.”
“Come in.” Samantha stepped back and swung the door wide.
McLain scowled. He didn’t take kindly to orders from anybody in skirts, but guessed this wasn’t the time to say so. Irritably, he brushed past her into the house.
“Some coffee? It’s still warm.”
“Rather have another cup of chocolate. I’m wired enough without more caffeine.”
“I’ll bet you are.” She led the way to the kitchen and set about fixing more hot chocolate. It didn’t seem the time to tell him there was as much caffeine in it as there was in coffee. “Did you get a look at who you were chasing?”
“Not a glimpse. First he was in my shrubbery, then on and off the drive before I could get clear of the blasted greenery. I searched as well as I could running to be sure he didn’t get away, but never saw hide nor hair of the bast . . . , er, him.”
Samantha smiled a frosty thank-you for his moderating his language and stirred the heated milk into the powder in two mugs. Adding miniature marshmallows to make up for the fact that she was giving him instant chocolate this time, she handed McLain his mug. “You say ‘him,’ are you sure it was a man?”
“Can’t be sure of anything, but I got the impression the body barging through the bushes was a heavy one.”
Samantha repressed a shiver. The idea of a large person vandalizing the neighborhood definitely didn’t appeal to her.
Until this moment, she’d been sure it was kids with too much time on their hands and too little parental supervision concerning their whereabouts. That certainly wouldn’t be a new story—that of bored teens turning to wanton destruction of property. They frequently did such things. It was often their way of working off resentment toward a society that seemed to produce them only to ignore them.
She’d always believed that maybe their misbehavior was a way of getting noticed. Reluctant to think that they realized the extent of the heartbreak and injury they sometimes caused by their actions, she preferred to think them thoughtless rather than malicious.
She placed the blame on their desire to gain a little attention from society in general and their parents in particular. Sadly, nobody seemed to have time for children anymore.
Now, however, that theory didn’t fit. It seemed there was something much more sinister going on. She gestured McLain to the cozy breakfast table, and joined him. “What do you think?”
“I think Frank and I are going to mount a watch and catch that bird.”
“Frank?”
“Frank Takamoto, my ex-gunnery sergeant. Now he looks after me.”
That must have been the man with the velvet voice who’d answered McLain’s phone. Mystery solved. “Good idea. I’ll help.”
“No deal. Women have no business chasing around in the dark after somebody who could turn ugly.”
Samantha fought a surge of annoyance. Why was it this man thought everybody should live in the dark ages just because he did? “There are women in combat with our troops all over the world, you know,” she said quietly.
“Yeah. And more than one poor sap is probably in an early grave because he stuck his neck out to save some dame in combat boots.”
Samantha stared at him. Opened her mouth then closed it. She had to admit that what he said was probably true. She hoped that men would continue to revere and protect women. In fact that was one of the things that disturbed her, too, about women on the battlefield—that women might cause men to take risks they might not take for another man. The good Lord knew that men took horrendous chances to save their buddies in every battle, but she still felt they would go beyond that to save a woman soldier. Even so, she didn’t like to hear McLain saying it.
“Colonel McLain, some of our women soldiers acquitted themselves very well,” she said firmly.
McLain snorted. “Yeah, and I’d like to remind you that they did a fine job before they elbowed themselves into the fighting end of things, too. They were just great at doing the stateside jobs, freeing up men to go out and do the fighting. In my opinion, they should have stuck with that.” His chin jutted at her aggressively.
Samantha started to speak, then decided it was pointless. McLain wasn’t going to change his opinion about women in combat just because she argued with him. Besides, she wasn’t sure he wasn’t right. Maybe women weren’t made to charge around with eighty pound packs on their backs.
He was, however, going to change his mind about her helping catch the person who’d vandalized her tulip tree. It was her tulip tree. And she and Andrew had planted it with their very own four hands. Colonel John Francis McLain was going to change his mind about her helping trap the vandal who had injured that precious tree, by golly, or her name wasn’t Samantha Eugenie Swann Masters!
Chapter Eight
The next evening, Samantha put her strategy into operation. That afternoon, she’d thrown Rags’s ball for him until the little fellow was completely worn out. Then, when at last it was dark and he was deeply asleep, lying stretched out flat on his thick blue cushion with his silky mustache whuffling as he snored, she crept from the house.
She stood with her back against the door for a moment, waiting for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark. She wondered if perhaps her purpose had somehow influenced the night. It certainly seemed a lot darker than it did when she just went walking in the garden at night.
Samantha shivered once in tribute to her feminine fear of the dark and re-tightened the knot of the black silk scarf she’d used to cover her bright light-brown- almost-blonde hair. It seemed a little chillier, too. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees from what it had been before she’d changed into her black slacks and turtleneck, bought for the occasion just this afternoon.
She slithered along in the shadows, searching ahead and around her for any sign of another person in the dark. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she disturbed a sleeping bird and it flew from its nest in a bush at her shoulder.
“Steady, old girl,” she whispered to herself as she rounded the corner of her house and wondered how to cross the expanse of lawn without cover. She was just congratulating herself on her very professional use of the word ‘cover’, and was definitely feeling bolder, when a hand seized her arm in an iron grip.
Her captor’s other hand clamped over her mouth to stifle the scream that rose in her throat. She struggled madly, but her assailant pulled her against his chest with an arm like a steel vise and held her there easily.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing out here?” McLain snarled in her ear.
Samantha relaxed in relief, then stiffened again in anger.
“Please watch your language, Colonel McLain,” she snapped at him.
“And will you puleeeze keep your voice down!”
“Sorry.” This time she whispered.
“Damn well should be. If the vandal was anywhere around here, you’ve certainly scared him off.” His scowl got even fiercer. “Probably for good!”
“Wonderful!” she hissed at him. Somehow her sarcasm lacked its usual force when whispered. Vastly irritated that that was so, she tore her arm free of his grip. “Then we won’t have to worry about any more damage to the gardens in the neighborhood.” She turned to stomp off.
“Damnit, woman, Where the blazes are you going now?”
Still whispering, she told him, “To someplace where the air is a little less blue.” She turned back to put McLain in his place, “It may come as a shock to you, Colonel McLain, but not every woman enjoys being treated to parade ground profanity.”
McLain’s face broke into a grin. “Okay, okay.” He lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I was out of line. I apologize. All right?”
Samantha stared at him a long minute. Oh, dear. He had his face painted with smears of black paint just like a commando. Perhaps she should have done something like that. Would cold cream take it all off, she wondered.
Suddenly, into the silent moment Samantha had created between them, came the unmistakable sound of the latch on the gate to the Chamberlains’s beautiful backyard being released.
McLain and she stared at each other. Triumphant messages flashed back and forth between them. Their quarrel was forgotten instantly. The vandal! They had him cornered!
Stealthily McLain began to creep toward the sound. He grabbed Samantha’s wrist and pulled her into a crouching position behind some Azaleas. Slowly they parted the bushes and looked into the next yard.
A dark figure, obviously trying to escape detection, rounded the Chamberlains’s screened porch and set off across their front yard. Thirty seconds later, gravel crunched under his shoes and he had disappeared around one of the massive granite pillars that marked the entrance to the Stoddards’s . . . no, to McLain’s driveway. Then after the brief crunch of gravel, soft silence told them their quarry had stepped off the driveway onto its grass verge.
Hurrying, they made their way to the spot at which the man had disappeared. Tiptoeing along behind McLain, Samantha had to admit that she found his wiry bulk a great comfort. Maybe she was even a little glad they’d found the vandal together. She wasn’t quite as eager to make a single-handed capture as she’d been in the daylight. Maybe she owed an apology to the crusty Colonel.
Yes. And maybe she’d get it done, too. Just as soon as she saw pigs fly!
She stifled an exclamation as he slammed her against the brick wall that surrounded his place.
“Where’s he gone?” McLain breathed into her ear.
“Probably into your tool storage shed.” She refrained from adding “Stupid,” but just barely. She was overwhelmed by exasperation. Honestly. There wasn’t anywhere else the man could have gone!
“What tool storage shed?” McLain whispered. He was clearly at a loss.
“That tool storage shed,” Samantha said scathingly, losing most of the effect she was after because she had to whisper it to him. But her gesture lifting one arm dramatically with her wrist leading, then raising her hand to flick her pointing finger forward in an imperious thrust said it all.
McLain looked at her as if he thought she’d lost her mind, then sighted down her rigid arm to where a low mound of earth rose from its Tidewater-flat surroundings. At the same time he realized that he was now the happy owner of an almost underground tool storage shed he heard the soft plop of its door falling closed.
Samantha pushed away from the wall as the dark shape they were tracking hurried off toward the other end of it. Their quarry was making for Laura’s!
Samantha moved cautiously in that direction. McLain was close on her heels. They both saw the man’s silhouette briefly as he clambered up and over the wall. Samantha fought through the last of McLain’s shrubbery and burst out on to the lawn. She increased her speed as she felt the smooth surface under her feet.
McLain grabbed her by the back of her new black turtleneck and pulled her to an abrupt halt. “Hold on,” he hissed. “I don’t think he knows we’re after him.”
“So what! Let’s catch him! And stop stretching my new sweater.” Samantha slapped at his hand.
“Blast your sweater. We have a good chance to see what he’s up to. If I can keep you from charging in like an old fire horse, maybe we can learn whether or not he has an accomplice.”
“Oh.”
Fortunately for their shaky truce, McLain didn’t comment further.
Samantha was smarting. Old fire horse indeed! She tried to make it feel better by balancing the epithet against his suggestion that they might capture the vandal’s accomplice as well. She didn’t succeed.
With Samantha darting dagger glances at McLain, they crept toward the wall at the point at which the vandal had climbed it. McLain placed his hands flat on the bricks that capped it and, as an impressed Samantha watched, raised his body to the top of the wall.
Straddling it, he looked down at her and put his finger to his lips. When he started to throw his leg over to drop down the other side, Samantha caught his ankle in a determined grip.
Gently he tried to kick free. Samantha pulled down sharply. McLain glared at her and gestured over the wall. Samantha glared back and shook her head so hard that her black silk scarf slipped down around her neck.
Rolling his eyes skyward, McLain reached down a hand. Firmly grasping her wrists, he gave a heave, and she was sitting on the top of the wall with him.
Samantha gave him a smile that was half thanks and half triumph, and rubbed her wrists.
McLain looked as if he could cheerfully shove her off the six-foot wall.
Together they peered through the darkness. Where on Laura’s property was he?
Suddenly, Samantha heard a familiar rattle. Terracotta rang its sandy peal as one flower pot fell against another.
In her excitement, Samantha clutched McLain’s camouflaged sleeve.
“Damnit, woman. Don’t push me off the wall.” His cursing, Samantha noted, lacked its usual zest when whispered.
“Be still,” Samantha hissed back at him. “He’s in the greenhouse!”
“How do you know that?” Even he hadn’t placed the single noise, muffled as it was in the mist that was twisting up through Laura’s property from the river.
“It’s the only place Laura keeps empty flower pots.” She peered down trying to figure out a way to get off the wall.
McLain stopped her squirming with a non
e-too- gentle hand on her thigh.
Samantha shot him a withering look and pushed his hand off her leg.
McLain slithered soundlessly to the ground, turned and held up his arms to her. She launched herself with some trepidation, and was standing beside him a split second later.
“I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell you to wait here,” he said so softly she almost didn’t hear him.
“None whatsoever.” Even in a whisper, Samantha managed a tone that left no doubt that she was in the game to stay.
“Okay. Is there a light in the greenhouse?”
“Certainly.”
“When I throw open the door, switch it on.” He moved smoothly toward the greenhouse door.
Samantha hated to interrupt such practiced and perfect stalking, but she had to. She grabbed the back of his jacket and yanked him to a halt.
She got immense satisfaction from the scowl with which he rewarded her action. “Can’t,” she told him. “The switch is in the house. The only light you can turn on from out here is a bulb with a string hanging in the center of the greenhouse.”
“Shit,” he said succinctly, keeping his voice low.
“Colonel McLain!” In her indignation, Samantha spoke aloud.
There was a startled exclamation from the man in Laura’s greenhouse. Then he was running for the door, knocking flower pots and plants out of his way as he came.
McLain ran to meet him. The vandal didn’t have a chance. As he emerged from the glass house, McLain tackled him. The force of his momentum carried the two of them out onto the lawn where they crashed to the ground without McLain relinquishing his grip.
The vandal cried, “Please! Let me go! I’m not doing anyone any harm.”
A startled Samantha recognized the man’s voice. “Good heavens!” she exclaimed. “Art Chamberlain! What on earth are you doing out here?”
Murder Makes it Mine Page 6
