In Confidence

by Karen Young

  Cam nodded. “Like I said, I’m working on it. I don’t want to spook him.”

  “He doesn’t seem affected?”

  “No, not that I can tell. Nick’s strong enough to reject Tyson’s one-on-one instruction, in spite of the fact that he might be jeopardizing his chance at a terrific scholarship.”

  “I don’t mean to suggest anything negative about your boy,” Pete said, speaking cautiously again, “but do you think it’s possible that Jack wasn’t strong enough to cope with whatever might be going on in Tyson’s house?”

  “That’s just it,” Cam said, rubbing at the six-o’clock stubble on his chin. “Jack was strong and he was street smart. He wasn’t the kind of kid likely to be goaded into doing something against his will. That’s why it doesn’t make sense that he would have just killed himself rather than face a challenge.”

  Pete opened the center drawer of his desk, took out a pen and a small notebook. “Let me do some nosing around,” he said, making a few notes. He scribbled in silence for a minute or two, then closed the flap on the notebook and slipped it into his breast pocket. “You must have spoken to Tyson when it happened. What did he say?”

  “Yeah, I did. Same thing he said yesterday. He claimed to be shocked and baffled.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Yeah, I spoke to him as practice was winding down. Except for the trappings of his office being substantially improved, there was no change. Again, he didn’t have a clue. But if he had to guess, he’d say it was drugs. Which is what he said then. But no one else admits having been aware of Jack getting into drugs, Pete. No one.”

  “Okay. Give me a few days. I’ll let you know something either way. Now—” Singletary leaned forward, both forearms on his desk “—my turn.”

  Saying nothing, Cam waited, reading the look on Pete’s face warily and gearing up internally for a skirmish.

  “I noticed when we were putting in those shelves that you weren’t exactly a stranger to Rachel. I was wondering if you might have noticed what a fine woman she is.”

  “Only a dead man wouldn’t notice,” Cam said, still cautious.

  Pete was nodding, not quite smiling. “Then I guess it wouldn’t exactly be a hardship to spend an evening with her. Am I right?”

  “Are you trying to fix me up with a date, Chief?”

  “No, I’m trying to fix me up with a date.” Pete glanced at his computer monitor, reached over to his mouse and clicked something. To Cam, it appeared to be simply a way to buy time as he figured out what he wanted to say. “You met Marta Saturday afternoon when we were installing those shelves for Rachel, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s my ex-fiancée, and because of a stupid mistake I made, that was the first opportunity I’ve had to actually talk to her for five years. She’s flatly refused any contact with me since the day she returned my ring.”

  “She seemed talkative enough Saturday.”

  “Yeah, but it was mostly zingers and sarcasm. The only reason she spoke then is that I caught her off guard. I stopped at Rachel’s house when I was driving by and saw Marta in the garage, otherwise I’d still be wishing. I know she wanted to split, but Rachel managed to keep her from bolting. Rachel tried to intervene when Marta broke our engagement.”

  “Yeah, she can be like that.”

  Pete’s eyebrows rose. “I won’t ask how she’s ‘intervened’ in your affairs.”

  “Good.”

  “Anyway, she thought Marta should at least give me a chance to explain, but it was no use. Marta was hurt, pissed off and bent on punishing me.” He had the stress ball in his hand again. “And with good reason.”

  “Not that it’s any of my business,” Cam said, still in the dark as to where this was going, “but, just for the sake of the conversation, what did you do?”

  “Marta had some serious hang-ups about me being a cop and we fought about it. I mean, we really disagreed. I was ambitious to a fault in those days and resented like hell what I saw as her blind prejudice about everything to do with law enforcement. I knew where she was coming from—her dad was a cop and he was killed on duty by some crazed jerk. It was a domestic disturbance. You never know what you’re stepping into on a 10:16. So, Marta was paranoid about my line of work. She kept nagging me to apply to law school.” His lips twisted into something like a smile. “I felt it was…not so much a rejection of my job as a rejection of me, you know what I mean?”

  “And so you retaliated…how?”

  He gave a short laugh. “Sounds like a passel of excuses, doesn’t it? Long story short, there was this gung ho rookie cop, cute, sexy and so goddamned approving of everything I did and said. I got drunk one night and brought her back to my apartment and we had sex. Mindless, comforting sex. Marta walked in and found us.”

  “Whoa.” Cam recalled his own unbridled rage when he discovered Cara’s infidelity and found it difficult to work up much sympathy for Singletary.

  “She didn’t just return my ring,” Pete said, “she flushed it down the toilet. Right then and there.”

  “I’m not surprised, and from the way she handled the tools required to put those shelves together, you should be grateful there was no power drill handy.”

  “Yeah, don’t think I wasn’t. Then I found out the man she’d married had died of cancer. And ever since, I’ve been working on a plan for a lifestyle that Marta might not reject outright.” Pete glanced at the window where Rose Hill’s rush-hour traffic moved leisurely. “I think I’ve found it.”

  Cam’s gaze went to the array of photos and commendations on the wall behind Singletary. “You left a successful career at Dallas PD to be police chief here in Rose Hill because of a woman?”

  “Because of Marta. She married Jorge Ruiz six months after we split. On the rebound, damn it. Then, after I got over being royally pissed, I realized how I’d screwed up and what it meant. It looked like I was going to spend the rest of my life without her.” He studied the stress ball in his hand. “I’m sorry about Jorge dying. Honest to God. But he did die, and because of that, I have a second chance.”

  “And I’m hearing all this because—”

  “What’s your relationship with Rachel?”

  “No relationship. She lives next door. We’re neighbors.” Cam was beginning to get an idea of where this was going and wasn’t ready to share the way Pete obviously was.

  “I’m thinking of having a housewarming,” Pete said. “Saturday night. Just a few people.”

  “I’ll send a gift,” Cam said.

  “I was thinking of you more in the way of an escort,” Pete said.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess. I’ll be escorting Rachel, who will try to persuade Marta to join us.”

  “Exactly what I had in mind,” Pete said, then quickly scooted his chair closer to the desk. “Wait, just hear me out. I know if you and Rachel come to the party, there’s at least a chance Marta can be persuaded to come, too. No way she’d come on her own. And no way she’d agree to anything resembling a date with me.”

  “You mentioned a few people.”

  “Counting myself, four. That’s a few.” He dropped his head for a second before looking up into Cam’s face and admitting, “I don’t know anybody else yet.”

  “What about the city council?” Cam asked sarcastically. “You clearly have friends there.”

  “Come on. You like Rachel. I saw the way you looked at her Saturday.”

  “As you say, she’s a beautiful woman.”

  “Is that what I said?” He was smiling.

  Cam didn’t bother to deny that he liked Rachel. He liked her too much. He hadn’t been involved with a woman since his divorce, and he found himself thinking about her more and more. He liked talking to her, being with her. Touching her. If he thought she was ready, he’d like to do a lot more than that.

  “You’ll be doing me a favor, man.” Pete paused, and Cam gave him credit for not stating the obvious. But what Cam needed from Pete was far more than a s
ocial favor. If he started an investigation of Tyson’s affairs and it was somehow discovered, Pete might find his carefully planned new life in Rose Hill over before it ever started.

  Cam found himself on his feet again. “I’ll give it a shot, but if you’d asked a month ago, there would have been no chance Rachel would let me escort her anywhere. And not because I wouldn’t like her company,” he said slowly, “but she wouldn’t like mine. We were barely speaking then.”

  “That’s hard to believe, considering how tight the two of you were when we were putting up those shelves. What’s the problem?”

  Cam’s hand was clamped to the back of his neck. He was going to have to share, after all. “We have some unfortunate history. Rachel was the school’s guidance counselor when Jack transferred from New York. She had him in her office several times before it happened. Afterward—” He knew pain showed on his face and he looked away. “After it happened, I was all hung up in looking to blame someone for failing to do something. Rachel was handy. Shrinks are supposed to know this stuff, right? So I was pretty unpleasant. Had an ugly scene in her office. Of course, there was plenty of blame to go around, starting with Cara and me, and I’m coming to terms with that now. But at the time—”

  “You showed your ass.”

  Cam nodded ruefully.

  “Looks to me as if you’re on the way to making amends for that,” Pete said. “But even if Rachel was the type to hold a grudge—and she isn’t—she’ll do this just to throw Marta and me together for an evening. She’s a romantic at heart…Rachel, not Marta. The three of you can come together, then after, I’ll drive Marta home. That is, if she’ll let me.”

  Cam headed for the door, knowing he’d been outflanked. “How long will I have to wait to see Jack’s file?”

  “Got it right here.” Pete immediately faced his computer terminal, pressed the print button and settled back in his chair, grinning. “Social hour begins at six-thirty. What’s your beer preference?”

  Sixteen

  “Who was that on the phone?” Dinah looked into the den where Rachel stood holding the cordless in her hand with a peculiar expression on her face. “Rachel? Is it bad news? Is it Ted? What has he done now?”

  Rachel turned her head, realized she still held the telephone and laid it on the table. “What? Oh, no, it wasn’t Ted. It was Cam.” She still gazed thoughtfully at the phone.

  “Cam? Well, did he have bad news? Has his book been panned?”

  Rachel gave her mother a distracted look. “No. I mean, he certainly wouldn’t want to discuss that with me if it was…” Her words trailed off.

  “What? What! You’re looking a lot like you did when Stephanie called to tell you that Ted had cashed in your CDs.” Dinah made her way across the den, picked up the cordless and put it back on its base. “So what did he want?”

  “He asked me to come over.”

  After a startled moment, Dinah walked to the television set and turned down the volume. “Well, now things are getting interesting. I had hope when the two of you had drinks together, but I thought I’d have to wait a lot longer before you got together again. You can be cautious to a fault, Rachel.”

  She gave Dinah an exasperated look. “For heaven’s sake, Mother. It’s nothing like that. It’s probably something about Monk Tyson. Or Jack. He was going to see Pete and try to get access to the police report, if possible. Or it could be the kids are bugging him and rather than speak to them directly, he’ll tell me. He needs his privacy, and in spite of me trying to head them off, they’re both over there a lot, especially Nick.”

  “Cam’s capable of protecting his privacy. He doesn’t need you to do it for him.”

  “Hmm, that’s what he told me, but—” Rachel picked up a Game Boy lying on the floor and put it on the table beside the phone, then scooped up a couple of cushions and tossed them on the sofa where they belonged. “Or it could be Kendall. She showed me her latest pictures yesterday and Cam and his house were in a lot of them. She’s fascinated with his tale of a ghostly ancestor. I told her she wasn’t to be bugging him, but she said he told her the ghost had been prowling lately and maybe if she took some pictures, he might show up in them. Can you believe that?”

  “He was teasing her, Rachel.” Dinah leaned against the chair, smiling. “Could be he recognizes someone with an imagination on a par with his own. And as for Nick, Cam’s just about the only male influence in the boy’s life at the moment with the exception of that smarmy Monk Tyson.”

  “I don’t want either of them becoming a nuisance.”

  “I repeat, he’s perfectly capable of getting rid of children who are annoying him, Rachel. He doesn’t have to ask you over for that.”

  “Then why in the world did he?”

  “Because he likes you?”

  “Mother, be serious.” Rachel headed for her bedroom to change out of the clothes she’d worn to school that day. It would not be possible to hide the traces of black eyeliner and purple mascara on the front of her white blouse where Tamika Jessup, a ninth grader, had wept inconsolably in Rachel’s arms after failing to make the cheerleading squad for next year. No amount of sympathy had brought a letup of the girl’s tears, and since it was nearing the end of the day, Rachel had finally resorted to driving her home herself. By the time they’d reached Tamika’s neighborhood, she had not calmed down. Then, when Rachel explained to the girl’s mother why she was upset, Mrs. Jessup was almost as disappointed as her daughter. And she made no secret of it. Which told Rachel a lot about the values of the Jessup family.

  “Wear something sexy.”

  Dinah stood in the doorway watching Rachel remove her blouse. Rachel sighed, tossed it in a hamper and went to her closet. “How about this?” She pulled out a slinky black sequined top that she’d worn once on New Year’s Eve. Backless, too.

  Dinah laughed. “It’s only when you’re my age and have my eccentricities that you can get away with sequins before eight, dear.” She crossed the room and took a seat on the side of Rachel’s bed. “But better sequins than the oversize sweats I’ll bet you were going to wear.”

  Rachel stopped rummaging through her closet and looked at her mother. “Why are you so determined to pretend that there’s a chance in hell of Cameron Ford as a possible replacement for Ted? That is, if I were looking for a replacement, which I’m not.”

  Dinah put a forefinger to her temple and pretended to think hard. “Beats me, except, as I’ve pointed out before, he’s interesting, sexy, successful and right next door.”

  Ignoring that, Rachel held up an outfit. “How’s this?”

  “Excellent choice.” Her mother eyed with surprised approval the smart little T-shirt and classic jeans Rachel had purchased last weekend. Now that she’d skinnyed down, she actually had precious few items in her closet that fit. Besides, if Cam was going to issue a complaint about her kids, she didn’t want to look…matronly.

  “I wish I had time for a snack before I go over,” she said, wriggling into the snug jeans. “I skipped lunch. What are the chances there’s an apple left? I meant to do some grocery shopping on my way home, but by the time I left Tamika’s house, it was time to pick Kendall up from her piano lesson.”

  Dinah got up, seeing something on the T-shirt. “I don’t have to look,” she said, peeling off a stick-on size tag beneath Rachel’s left breast. “The cupboard’s bare. But don’t worry, Kendy and I will make a run to Kroger’s, and by the time you get back, the pantry will be replenished.”

  Rachel sighed. “Mother, I’m going to owe you half my share of the settlement when Ted’s lawsuit is resolved. Not only for groceries. I can easily repay you for that, but for all the hassle. We’ve moved in and invaded your privacy, you’re often stuck chauffeuring the kids, your house is a wreck because they never pick anything up, and they’re always tying up your phone. I don’t know how you can ever make a call these days.” She dropped both hands to her sides. “How can you stand it?”

  “Oh, hush! We’ve discus
sed everything you’re moaning about a dozen times.” Dinah stepped back and gave Rachel a critical once-over. “But if it were a problem, I’d probably die of old age waiting for that rascal Ted to settle up with you.”

  Rachel studied herself in the mirror and decided to change her earrings. “He called me today at school and said Walter was playing hardball with Francine over the divorce. She was very upset, he told me.”

  “Francine.” Dinah gave a snort of disgust. “What did the silly twit expect, a generous cash settlement and warm wishes for continued happiness after she betrayed him with his business partner?” Leaning against the dresser, she watched Rachel sort through her jewelry box. “I can’t find much to admire in your ex, honeybun, but I wouldn’t wish a future with Francine on any man, not even Ted. Which reminds me, why was he calling you to whine about it? You should charge him for an hour of psychological counseling.”

  Rachel laughed. “Maybe, but we shrinks never counsel family. I know, I know,” she said quickly. “Ted is no longer family.”

  “Damn right.”

  She finished fastening small gold circlets on her ears and faced her mother. “How do I look?”

  “Very foxy.”

  “Oh, please.”

  Dinah put both hands on her hips. “Listen to me, Rachel Rene. You’ve proved in the past six months that you’re strong, resilient and, in spite of Ted’s stupidity, far less embittered than I think I would have been. And on top of that, you’re lovelier than you’ve ever been in your life.”

  Rachel grinned. “And you’re oh so unbiased, Mom.” But she reached for her mother and hugged her. “But thanks, anyway.”

  Dinah gave her a little swat on the behind. “Now, go and dazzle that sexy Cameron Ford.”

  Rachel didn’t bother with a reply to that. “Since I’m not sure how long I’ll be, I need to check that Nick’s working on that biology project. It’s due Friday, and as usual, he’s left it to the last minute.”

  When she opened the door, Nick was sprawled on his bed, staring at the ceiling. She heard the muffled bass of a rap CD going in the earphones he wore on his head. He glanced at her, gave a resigned sigh and rolled up to a sitting position. Clearly bracing for a lecture, he made no move to shut down the music.