Never Sleep With Strangers

by Heather Graham

  Except for all the blood she had seen afterward.

  She frowned as the water cascaded over her, wondering why the blood bothered her so much when no one appeared to be seriously injured.

  There had just been so much of it.

  Still, everyone seemed to have a cut. And every man here seemed to have forgotten how to shave.

  Including Jon.

  He hadn’t just bled a little bit. His robe had been drenched with wet, sticky blood.

  From a shaving cut?

  And despite herself, she couldn’t help but be haunted by the thought that…

  He had lied to her last night. And if he had lied to her last night…

  Might it all be a lie?

  17

  With plenty of wood piled by the hearths in the library, and the great hall, Jon went upstairs to shower. He stopped by Sabrina’s room, but she wasn’t there. His heart started pounding, and he berated himself, wondering why he should feel fear every time he didn’t see her. Of all of them here, Sabrina was the least likely to be in danger. She hadn’t been here when Cassie was killed. She hadn’t been part of any sex or revenge games. She wasn’t a danger to anyone.

  Hearing Sabrina’s laughter from V.J.’s room, he sighed in relief. Apparently the two women were deep in pleasant conversation. He went on to his own room, wondering why nagging suspicion still plagued him. Dianne had been certain that someone had killed her mother. Jon had never felt more uncertain about anything in his life. Had Cassie been killed? Or had it been a tragic accident?

  Strange things had happened here since this week began, yet what, exactly, did they mean? Anyone—not necessarily guilty of murder—might have wanted to torment Susan Sharp. She had tortured all of them at one time or another, and she could be, even as a female, such a pompous prick. There was also the note he had received. But again, maybe someone not guilty of murder had sent him the note just to make sure he paid—either for Cassie’s death or for just not loving her enough. The gunshot in the hallway, however, was not so easily explained.

  But what did these odd events add up to?

  Nothing! he prayed.

  In his own room, because he seemed to be growing paranoid, he made sure that the door to the secret passage was secure. It was. Then he showered and attended to other details of running the castle.

  It was early evening when he walked back down to the library, and once again it seemed that he was hosting a group of pleasant, normal, innocent men and women.

  A poker game was in full-tilt. Reggie was winning, taking pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters and the occasional dollar bill from Joe, Tom, V.J. and Thayer. Joshua, Sabrina, Brett, Anna Lee, Camy and Dianne were involved in a game of Uno.

  Only Susan Sharp seemed to be missing. Again.

  “Hey, Jon!” V.J. said, smiling as he came into the room. There was a new glow about her now that she and Tom were out in the open about their feelings.

  “Jon, join us!” Reggie said.

  “She’ll fleece you!” Brett warned. “Come play Uno. It’s more cutthroat but cheaper.”

  “Brett, pay attention. Draw four cards,” Anna Lee said.

  “Oh! You monster! You did that to me?” Brett cried.

  “You don’t know the half of it, honey,” Anna Lee returned in a mock Mae West voice.

  “Reverse!” Sabrina announced.

  Jon caught her eye as she glanced up at him. There was something different about the way she looked at him. He frowned.

  Had all this sordidness finally become too much for her? No, it wasn’t like Sabrina to judge. And yet…

  She was looking at him differently.

  Guardedly.

  “Aargh!” Brett cried. “Help! These women are out to get me.”

  “Uno!” Camy announced.

  “Someone get that woman,” Dianne commanded. “She’s about to win!”

  “Well, that is the point of the game, isn’t it?” Camy asked. She smiled and looked at Jon happily.

  “That’s the point of the game,” he said lightly. In a way, it was nice that Susan wasn’t around, saying things that hurt people and stirring up trouble. Still, at this point, he was beginning to get worried.

  “No one has seen Susan yet?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Thayer said, studying his cards. “But she left us a note.”

  “Left a note? Where?” Jon asked with a frown.

  “Out!” Camy cried. She rose from the round oak game table and walked to the mantel. “Jennie found this when she came to set us up with drinks.” She grimaced. “Want me to read it?”

  “Go on—do. Jon will enjoy it as much as the rest of us, I’m sure,” Joe said dryly.

  Camy read aloud.

  “To all you murderous, pathetic little pricks—leave me the hell alone. I don’t wish to see or talk to any of you, and don’t begin to imagine that any of you could ever suck up to me again after what has happened here. You’re sick, all of you. I warn you again—while we’re stuck here, stay away from me! Otherwise, I will prosecute, and if I can’t land your sorry asses in jail, I’ll see to it that none of you ever writes for a legitimate publisher again.

  Susan.”

  Camy looked at Jon apologetically.

  “She sure does sound pissed off,” Dianne murmured.

  “Bully for her,” V.J. said.

  Tom shrugged. “I say what I said before. Fuck her.”

  “Really,” Brett said, “who the hell does she think she is? I’ve never heard anything like it! Threatening us that way. As if she has the power to keep all of us from ever writing again.”

  Joe played a card. “Funny, you’d think Susan would know better. She might stick a few knives into us, the way Cassie could, but she’d never in a thousand years convince a publisher not to go to contract with an author who was bringing in the bucks.”

  “All right, all right,” Jon said. “We’ve established the fact that Susan is a bitch. But I’m still worried about her.”

  “Jon,” Sabrina said, looking up at him. Blue eyes liquid, hair streaming gold in the firelight, she was wearing a royal blue knit that clung to every curve of her body. He could pick out the subtle scent of her perfume, and he suddenly wanted to forget the hell about Susan Sharp and everyone else as well.

  Except that there was that something different about Sabrina now….

  “I knocked on Susan’s door,” she said. “I tried to talk to her. In fact, I carried on something of a conversation with her locked door. I don’t think I’ve done anything to make her angry with me, but she wouldn’t respond at all.”

  “Well, she can’t stay holed up in her room for days,” Jon said impatiently.

  Brett looked up. “Why not?” he asked hopefully.

  “Please, let’s just leave her?” Dianne asked.

  “Maybe she’ll eventually starve to death,” V.J. commented happily.

  “No, she won’t,” Dianne told her. “She wrote another note, ‘To the servants,’ ordering that a tray be set in front of her door twice a day until this wretched, snowbound event comes to an end.”

  “Jon, it sounds as if she’s really fuming and doesn’t want to be disturbed,” Joshua told him.

  Jon lowered his head, smiling slightly. They were all more than willing to leave well enough alone where Susan was concerned. He looked up again. “Sorry, guys. I’m still worried. We’ve got to go check up on her.”

  “Oh. Let’s not,” Reggie said.

  “Well, I’ll check on her then.”

  “Oh, we’ll all go,” Thayer said. “I’m out of nickels anyway, thanks to this old card shark.”

  “Card shark, yes, but I’m the only one who gets to call me old!” Reggie warned him. “But wait, Jon, let’s enjoy our dinner first, and then we’ll go and eat some crow with Susan. It will be easier on a full stomach.”

  Jon arched a brow. With a mischievous glint in her eyes, Dianne abruptly dropped to her knees, clasping her hands as if in prayer and looking up at him entreatingly. “Pleas
e, please, sir, just dinner. Let us have dinner in peace.”

  “Come on now, Dianne,” he said, laughing. But then Joe Johnston was down on his knees as well, “Oh, yes, yes, please, sir, just give us some supper…in peace.”

  “Really, if you think—”

  “Puh-lease!” Anna Lee added dramatically, kneeling, too. Laughing, Camy, Joshua and Brett joined the other supplicants on the floor.

  “Dinner,” Jon said firmly, shaking a finger at them, “but no more delays.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, sir!” Brett cried.

  “Get up, the lot of you,” Jon said, chuckling. “Dinner—and then we go upstairs and talk to Susan and at the very least make sure that she’s all right.”

  He turned around and strode into the great hall.

  Jennie was seeing to the Sterno fires beneath the chafing dishes. “We are getting quite inventive, sir!” she told Jon cheerfully. “Everything tonight was cooked upon the open flame. Well, except, of course, the salad, and that wasn’t cooked a’tall! But we’ve lovely steaks and chops. No electric, but the snow itself is pr’sarving our food.”

  “Thank you, Jennie,” he told her.

  His guests remained in high spirits as they filled their plates and sat down by candlelight. A fire burned merrily in the hearth. Sabrina was quietly elegant, smiling, laughing, responding to the comments around her—but not to him. She wasn’t exactly ignoring him, but she was somehow avoiding him, even though she was sitting beside him. What the hell had happened? he wondered.

  Then he found himself wondering, as well, what would have happened if she hadn’t disappeared years ago? Might they have stayed together then, eventually married? Hosted these parties, both enjoying them? Sabrina complemented the castle, and, he thought, she complemented him. She brought out the best in him. And if they had somehow stayed together, wed, would Cassie still be alive, a guest here tonight?

  And would Sabrina be looking at him differently, as she had earlier, before…

  Before what? He was baffled.

  Sabrina suddenly looked at him and smiled, though her gaze still seemed guarded. Her blue eyes were dazzling, caught by the firelight. “What are you thinking?” she asked him, under cover of the chatter and laughter.

  “That I wish you’d never run away. Maybe we could have changed fate.”

  She flushed slightly, looking down at the table. “Maybe you see more in me than is really there.”

  “What do you mean?” Jon protested.

  “Well,” she said quietly, “I’d like to think I have some strength, the courage of my convictions. But when Cassie came to you that day—”

  “What?”

  “I folded like an envelope,” she said ruefully.

  “But that was a long time ago. And it’s my turn. What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing, really.” She looked away.

  “You’re lying.”

  She shrugged.

  “Tell me.”

  “Nothing…really.”

  “Something, really.”

  She shook her head slightly. “There’s just suddenly…so much blood around!”

  “Really?”

  She looked at him steadily. “Yes.”

  He arched a brow.

  “There was blood all over your robe.”

  “I told you, I cut myself shaving.”

  “Then it looked as if you cut your throat shaving.”

  Startled, he sat back. “What is it you think I’ve done?” He lowered his head, closer to hers, lest the others hear their conversation. “My wife wasn’t stabbed to death—she went over a balcony. And to the best of my knowledge, we’ve no other corpses around, other than the long-buried ones in the crypt.”

  Sabrina didn’t answer. She was looking at Anna Lee, who was studying them with a frown.

  Anna Lee smiled when she caught Jon’s eye. “You know what’s a dreadful shame?” she queried generally.

  Before Jon could answer, Brett did. “Yes. We didn’t get our host to confess to any deep, dark sins.”

  Anna Lee laughed. “That’s not what I was referring to, but, yes, well, there’s that, too, of course.”

  “I had no sins!” Jon said lightly, lifting his wineglass to Anna Lee.

  “Bull,” Brett objected. “Cassie told me you were seeing someone.” He flushed when the words were out. “Sorry, I, uh…” He stiffened in his chair and shrugged, then couldn’t seem to resist asking, “Who was it?”

  Jon sat back. “It wasn’t—”

  “It wasn’t me!” Reggie announced, fluffing her hair.

  “Nor me!” V.J. assured them, laughing.

  “Not his stepdaughter,” Dianne said dryly.

  “Well, I was trying, but it wasn’t me,” Anna Lee murmured.

  “Susan?” a number of them said in unison.

  “No!” Jon protested. He shook his head, sipping his wine again, glad to see that Sabrina seemed amused rather than horrified. “I wasn’t seeing anyone here at all.”

  “But someone, somewhere,” V.J. guessed. “Who was she?”

  Jon gave in. “None of you know her, and it was only an occasional thing, as we both traveled frequently. Her home base was Edinburgh, but we met in the States. She’s an interior decorator, and she’d done some work for me in New York. Are you all happy now, or do you need more specifics?”

  “Well, I’d love to hear every last detail!” Anna Lee teased.

  “I think he’s making it all up, protecting someone here!” Joe announced.

  “Well, we’ve all denied it,” V.J. said. “I had a husband at the time, and that was it for me. I haven’t young Anna Lee’s stamina. Sorry, no offense meant, Anna Lee.”

  “None taken,” Anna Lee said dryly.

  “He wouldn’t dream of touching his stepdaughter,” Dianne said, gazing at Jon. “Even if his stepdaughter might have been willing,” she added softly.

  “Don’t you all go looking at me!” Reggie declared.

  “I wasn’t here,” Sabrina reminded them quietly.

  “So that leaves…” Joe began.

  “Susan!” Tom said again, making a face.

  “Right. Why would he be protecting Susan? Who in his or her right mind could think that Susan needed protection?” Thayer demanded.

  “Ah, but maybe Jon wasn’t behaving quite so innocently. Perhaps there was some forbidden affair, the castle laird’s seduction of some sweet young thing from the village who came in to cook or clean,” Joshua suggested, teasing, his eyes dancing. They all laughed.

  “Indeed! We should check out the chamber of horrors for some young, innocent, unknown face!” V.J. suggested, waggling her eyebrows.

  “You may look wherever you wish,” Jon said. “But since it wasn’t my ‘sins’ you were really after to begin with, Anna Lee, just what were you referring to when you said it was a dreadful shame?”

  “Oh, just that we never solved the whodunit. It was really great fun, and so well-done. Who did kill your brother, Demented Dick?”

  “Let’s solve it now,” V.J. said.

  “We don’t have half the clues. We didn’t play the game,” Thayer protested.

  “Then we’ll just talk it through, lay out the suspects and the clues, and we’ll each make a determination!” Dianne said. “Jon?”

  “Sure, why not?” he said.

  Sabrina leaned forward. “Two of us are guilty, right?”

  “Well, I’m innocent, seeing as how I was killed in chapel,” Brett murmured.

  “Right,” Sabrina said. “Mr. Buttle, the Butler, was killed—probably because he saw something.”

  “My guess,” Brett said, “is that it was Thayer’s character, JoJo Scuchi, who killed Demented Darryl—because of an affair gone awry. Or…JoJo Scuchi was having an affair with Susan’s character, Carla, the call girl with the clap, and he killed Demented Darryl for having given her the disease!”

  “As demented Dick’s and Demented Darryl’s dad, I’m innocent,” Tom Heart said. “I’m ce
rtain of that.”

  “And as Tilly Transvestite, I know that I’m innocent, as well. Number one—I’m not sure how, but I’m their mother. And I’m just too weird and caught up in my own psychological problems to kill others,” Joe said with certainty.

  “I think the Duchess—Sabrina—did it,” Dianne surmised. “Demented Darryl tried to ditch out on back payments he owed her. She’s been pretending to be a dignified duchess, when we all know that she was the queen of sleaze. The butler knew about her transactions. He’d had seen too much, and he had to go.”

  “Sabrina was in the chapel when Brett bought it, remember?” V.J. said.

  “So we’re back to her needing an accomplice,” Joe stated.

  “Okay, Camy,” Jon said, looking at his assistant. “We need a few more clues from the game. Are there two murderers?”

  Camy glanced at Joshua, evidently sorry to part with information and give up the game. He shrugged at her. “Well, tell them.”

  “Yes, there are two murderers. I’ll give you that much. You all figure out the rest.”

  “Give us this, too, please,” Sabrina persisted. “Brett—Mr Buttle—is dead, and therefore innocent. And I don’t think that Carla, the call girl, is guilty, either. I think that her character was supposed to be the next to go.”

  “Maybe,” Camy said.

  “But Susan’s character isn’t the murderer,” Jon stated. Camy shook her head. “No, she’s not.”

  “And my character is innocent, too. Mary, the Hare Krishna—she’s innocent, right?” Dianne demanded.

  “A Hare Krishna? You’re daffy, not guilty,” Joshua teased.

  Dianne smiled at him. Josh smiled back. Jon wondered if his stepdaughter didn’t seem to be growing more and more fond of the artist.

  “Well, we’re eliminating suspects, at least,” Tom said.

  “As Tilly Transvestite, the dear boys’ mum. I am innocent, aren’t I?” Joe asked. “You don’t need to answer, Camy. I can see by your face that it’s the truth. After their miraculous births, I surely wouldn’t do in one of my children.”