by Mallory Kane
He nodded tentatively. “You’ll come over tonight?”
She put on a smile for him. “Of course. I’ll fix dinner, and we’ll let Aunt Bode meet Jack.”
After Virgil left, Holly looked at Jack. “He’s worried about me.”
“I know.” Jack gave a brisk nod. “Tell me about that detective who has a thing for you.”
Holly gawked at him. “What? Are you talking about T-Bone?”
“He turned bright red when he saw you. Then there was his threat.”
“T-Bone? Threat?” She thought back over what T-Bone had said and laughed. “You mean about answering to him? That’s just an expression. You’re in the south, Jack. People take family and friends seriously. And they talk like that. Surely even you know that was no threat.”
Jack didn’t crack a smile. “Has he ever asked you out? Made overtures to you?”
“T-Bone? He’s married with two kids.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Holly sighed in exasperation. “No, dear, he’s never asked me out. He’s older than me. He’d graduated by the time I started high school.”
“So had I.”
She stared at him. Suddenly, Jack O’Hara moved a little bit closer to her universe. He wasn’t just an FBI agent. He had a life, a past. He was thirty-two or thirty-three years old—four years older than her.
But there all resemblance between him and anyone she’d ever known ended. He was defined by his job, focused, serious, yet detached. He asked questions and filed away the answers like a computer.
“You cannot possibly think T-Bone is a suspect because he blushed. He’s always gotten embarrassed easily.”
Jack looked at her steadily.
“Oh God.” She collapsed back in her chair. “You’re going to do this to everyone I know. This is going to tear the town apart.”
Jack shifted in his chair. “Holly, I know it’s hard second-guessing everyone around you—”
“It’s easy for you to say you know, but you don’t. When this is all over, you’ll just dust off your hands and go home. I have to stay here and live with all these people you’re accusing.”
“When this is all over, everyone will understand. They’ll support you because you’re one of them.”
“You really don’t get it, do you.” She lifted her hair off her hot neck. “If what you say is true, then the killer is one of them, too. And no matter how it turns out, my life will never be the same. The last thing I want is people finding out about this. Offering casseroles and sympathy, walking around on eggshells as if they think I’m going to fall apart—or worse, let them down. Like it would be a big catastrophe if I was too distraught to organize the Wellness Picnic this year.” She stopped, ashamed of her bitter outburst.
“Maybe it’s how they let you know how important you are to them.”
His words were awkward, but somehow more comforting than all the fussing and food her neighbors considered appropriate for sympathy.
Was she too hard on her friends and neighbors? On herself? Was she the only one who demanded the perfection and supreme organization she’d surrounded herself with?
“So, how did your husband die exactly?”
“Back to the business at hand,” she muttered.
He looked up, but she shook her head. “Never mind.” How had Brad died? Carelessly. Too young. “He slipped in the locker room shower.”
“He was alone.”
She nodded. “He’d been refinishing the gym floor.”
“The autopsy indicated a broken neck and a massive contusion on the back of his head.”
A twinge of pain began behind her right eye. She rubbed her temple, recognizing the signs of a migraine headache. “I know what the autopsy indicated,” she said tiredly.
“But there was no investigation?”
She glared at him. “You know there was no investigation.”
“Are you aware that the Medical Examiner noted that the appearance of the contusion possibly indicated a second blow? Or that there were questionable bruises on his neck?”
Holly’s face drained of color. “Questionable bruises?”
Jack nodded. “Apparently your husband’s family doctor said Brad was a hands-on football coach and could have gotten the bruises during practice.”
Holly looked down at her hands. Jack was turning her world inside out, speaking his devastating words in his calm, reasonable voice. “Nobody told me.”
Jack looked at her steadily. “Your uncle Virgil asked that you not be upset unnecessarily.”
“So there’s no question Brad was murdered?”
“Our medical experts are studying the autopsy report.” Jack pulled the second note toward him.
“‘Dearest,’” he read softly, as if to himself. “‘You deserve more than I can ever give. Oh which were best, to roam or rest? The land’s lap or the water’s breast. Do not grieve. I am always nearby. Remember, my dearest love, the best is yet to be.’”
Holly felt a chill run up her spine as Jack read the words.
“‘The best is yet to be,’” he repeated, then wrote something on his notepad.
“Do you recognize it?” Holly asked.
“Browning.”
“Of course.” Her pulse sped up. “I thought it sounded familiar.”
His hair slid over his forehead as he nodded. He pushed his fingers through it absently. “‘Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.’ Is there any significance to you, either in the words or in the fact that it’s Browning?”
“No.” She shook her head and got up. “I’m going to turn on this air conditioner, if it will even work.”
She pressed the power button on the ancient window unit and sat back down as it lumbered to life, coughing out a mildewy smell. Holly raised her face to the cool, musty air. “I barely remember Browning from high school English. I thought he was kind of depressing and sappy.”
Jack held up the second note. “How did you find this one?”
Holly sighed and closed her eyes for an instant. “I didn’t. Danny did. He was investigating Ralph’s disappearance and he found the note in with the wedding gifts I was returning. That was back in November.”
“And Ralph had been missing how long?”
“Since early October.”
“Less than two months before the wedding.”
His flat tone spoke volumes, as usual.
“You think Ralph is dead, don’t you. Do you think he was killed so…so I wouldn’t marry him?” Holly had admitted that possibility to herself, but she’d never said it out loud.
Jack nodded, hating to quash her thread of hope. “We’re pretty sure he’s dead.”
“But what about Danny? What was the point in killing him?”
That was the question that had plagued him. “You didn’t put Danny’s name on your list either. Were you and he seeing each other?”
“No! I mean, we were friends. He was investigating Ralph’s disappearance and he helped me a lot.” Holly paused.
Jack saw her eyes shining with unshed tears. Had she been in love with Danny? A vision of Holly and Danny together flashed through his brain. He clamped his jaw.
God knew anybody who met Danny loved him. He and Danny had been best friends since grade school in Memphis. Danny was the reason Jack was here.
He pulled his thoughts back to the young woman across the table from him. She had the frightened, bewildered air about her that he’d seen in the faces of too many stalking victims. But underlying her fear was that core of strength that surprised and impressed him. Although he could tell she was stretched thin, she was clinging with all her might to control her life.
She wasn’t going to allow the stalker to win, not if she could help it. That certainty emanated from her like a fever. He admired her for that, even while he acknowledged that her determination was going to make his job a lot harder. He’d already found out that their relationship was destined to be a battle of wills.
When
he realized he was staring at her, he looked away, pulling the third note toward him. This one was the most intriguing of all.
“‘Poor sweet Holly,’” he read. “‘Ah but a day and the world’s changed. You miss your friend and he misses you. He held this rose of love, the wasp inside and all. Fear not my dearest love. When you are ready I will be here.’”
Jack’s deep voice spoke those awful words that echoed in Holly’s dreams, that made her know this nightmare was real.
“Where was this one?”
Her gaze slid past him as she remembered. “It was with a stack of mail.”
“In the mailbox? So it had an envelope?”
“Yes. No.” She frowned. “I’m not sure.” She paused. “No. It wasn’t in an envelope.”
Jack’s nod reminded her of his certainty that the stalker had access to her home. She shuddered. Uncle Virgil was right. Jack’s questions were unnerving and unnecessary. He already knew all this.
“When did you find it?”
“Four weeks ago today.”
“Right about the time you announced your trip.”
“You know, I didn’t announce my trip. I’m not the town celebrity.”
Jack raised that irritating brow. “Maybe not, but didn’t everyone in town know you were going to Chicago for that seminar?”
She shrugged. “Probably. Living in a small town is kind of like living in a glass house.”
“So your stalker knew you were leaving.”
“Oh God, that’s true.” A shiver of revulsion skimmed down her spine. “I just want a normal life,” she said sadly.
“Then, work with me. Where was this note?” He pushed it toward her.
She suppressed the urge to push it away. “It wasn’t with sympathy cards or wedding gifts, like the other two. There was no occasion that called for a card. It was just there.”
That was the important thing. Holly understood, just as he did, the significance of the third note: there was no reason for it. It had arrived three months after Danny’s death.
“Was this the first time you’d spent any time out of town in a while?”
She nodded. “With my job at the hospital and my fitness classes, plus cooking for Uncle Virgil and Aunt Bode three nights a week, it’s been two years since I’ve taken any time off.”
“Stalkers like to maintain a steady uninterrupted sense of control. Any break in routine, like your trip out of town, can cause severe agitation, trigger the stalker’s need for attention.”
Holly’s eyes widened like those of a small animal trapped by a predator. Suppressing the urge to reassure her, knowing she needed to understand just how dangerous her stalker was, Jack deliberately turned his attention back to the last note.
Thank God her great-uncle had been smart enough to bag it. Chief McCray had had the police lab in Jackson check for latent prints on all three notes, but nothing conclusive had shown up. From Jack’s inspection, they looked clean, and the paper was unremarkable. It was standard copier paper. No watermark or identifiable grain.
He hoped the FBI lab could pull enough epithelial cells for a DNA match. Then all he’d have to do was line up everybody in Maze and swab them for DNA. He snorted to himself. Fat chance of that.
“So, about Detective Barbour,” he prompted.
Holly wondered at the shadow in his expression. His mouth was set, his eyes dark. She could almost think it was sadness.
“Danny died of a wasp sting. When I saw the reference to the wasp in the note, it really spooked me. I thought someone had a sick sense of humor.”
“Everything the stalker does is deliberate. Danny’s death was no accident. Nor was the note. There was a lethal concentration of venom in his system, many times the amount in a single wasp sting.”
“Oh, no.” Holly absorbed this new, horrific information. Her heart beat painfully in her chest and her throat felt clogged with tears. “So Danny was murdered, too—” Her voice broke. “But why? It doesn’t make any sense to kill Danny.”
Jack’s face was inscrutable. “There are only two explanations for why the killer targeted Danny.”
Holly waited, dreading the words he was about to say, hating the fact that she already knew them.
“Either because you and Danny were becoming too intimate, or because Danny had discovered the killer’s identity.”
She wanted to clamp her palms over her ears and pretend she didn’t know that Danny had died because of his association with her. “We weren’t intimate.”
“Tell me about the day he died.”
“He was invited to Uncle Virgil’s for dinner that night,” she said shakily. Her throat tightened and the dull pain behind her right eye became sharper. She rubbed her temple.
“When he didn’t answer his home phone or his cell, Uncle Virgil sent the officers on duty to his apartment and…found him—” Her voice gave out.
“He was dead.”
She nodded, the sad, lost look shadowing her face.
Jack’s heart twisted in compassion for her. He’d always hated this part of his job. This mining of people’s memories in order to put together a profile of the victims. It was necessary, though, because only with a complete understanding of the victims could he come to understand the killer.
This time was doubly hard, because Holly wasn’t the only one grieving for Danny Barbour. He was, too. If he’d gotten back to his friend in time, maybe Danny would still be alive.
“Danny thought the person sending the notes could have killed Brad and Ralph.”
Jack knew that Danny hadn’t mentioned his theory to Virgil McCray because he didn’t want to alarm Holly’s great-uncle unnecessarily. He’d said that on the voice-mail message he’d left for Jack while Jack was in the hospital.
“Danny said the person believed only I would understand his messages. He said obsessed admirers build up a fantasy in their mind, thinking they have a relationship when there isn’t one. But why didn’t the third note come in March, when Danny died, instead of three months later?”
Jack agreed. That was the question. The third note was different, out of place, out of time.
Holly groped for a chair and sat down. “Danny always said the notes held the clues.” She laughed, sounding faintly hysterical. “I guess he didn’t know how right he was. Of all the detectives who have worked for Uncle Virgil, Danny was the most dedicated. It was like an obsession with him.”
Jack suppressed a sad smile. Danny had always been like that, even when they were kids. He’d thrown himself into everything he did with his whole heart and soul, unlike Jack, who had spent the years after his mother’s death learning how to shield his emotions behind a wall of icy reserve.
Jack wasn’t sure why anyone would invest their whole heart and soul in anything. There was too much chance of being hurt.
“Jack? What about Danny’s casebook? Was there anything in there that would help?”
The small, bound notebook in his jacket pocket felt as heavy as lead. He wasn’t ready to reveal that Danny had been his best friend. Holly might be less inclined to trust him fully if she thought he had a personal agenda. She didn’t know him, didn’t understand how committed he was to separating his emotions from his job. He would never jeopardize a case that way. “I’ll have to take a look at it.”
“Well, do. I can’t believe Uncle Virgil didn’t give it to you, because Danny wrote everything in that book.”
She wasn’t exactly right. Danny had used his casebook to record his notes on cases, but he was very careful not to write his theories or his suspicions in it. Danny knew that notes could be entered into evidence. A good lawman kept his speculations in his head.
However, he had jotted a note to call Jack.
Jack resisted the temptation to put his hand in his pocket. “I’ll check into it.”
“I think it would help you a lot. Danny thought Ralph might have been drowned.”
“So do I, because of the reference to water in the note. Your fiancé never arri
ved at the pharmacy meeting he was scheduled to attend at a restaurant overlooking the Barnett reservoir in Jackson. Detective Barbour had asked to have area lakes, including the reservoir dragged. We’re going ahead with that.”
Holly’s wide-eyed gaze filled with sadness. “I had hoped Ralph had just gotten cold feet.”
He hurt for her. He knew he was systematically destroying all the false assurances she’d gathered around herself to cushion her from the truth. As he’d told her on the plane, she did it to feel safe, but her sense of security was based on false premises, and deep down she knew it.
A deep yearning came over him to gather her close, to shield her. But hiding behind him wouldn’t make her safe. He needed her to be clear-headed, to concentrate on the facts so she could help him find the killer.
“Jack? Danny was a good cop. How could the killer have gotten close enough to kill him?”
“He died from an anaphylactic reaction to a lethal dose of wasp venom. That indicates murder at a distance. The autopsy didn’t turn up an injection site. Just that one wasp sting. For the moment, we’re not sure.”
Holly made a little choked noise, and Jack noticed how pale she was. She massaged her neck and frowned. “I’m sorry, but I need to go home. I left my migraine tablets and I need one if I’m going to cook for Uncle Virgil and Aunt Bode this evening.”
“When do you go back to work?”
“I took vacation from the hospital this week, but I have two elderly aerobics classes. My ladies are counting on me.”
And he already knew enough about her to know she wouldn’t let them down.
“So you didn’t free up your schedule for your honeymoon?” He tossed the words out without thinking.
She glanced up, and something hot and compelling flashed between them. He felt it like a chain of fire, drawing them together, threatening to engulf them if they got too close.
After a moment Holly closed her eyes, breaking the spell. She rubbed her temple. “Somehow I guessed this marriage wouldn’t include a honeymoon.”
THEY DROVE SILENTLY through the quiet tree-lined streets of Maze in Holly’s car. Jack noticed that everybody craned their necks and stared as they drove by. Small towns.
