When You Dance With The Devil

by Gwynne Forster

  Francine sat forward, aware that Jolene was about to release a bombshell. “You’ve been what?”

  “I’ve been using them in every way that I could.”

  Francine didn’t want to believe what she heard. “And you’ve been killing your chances to develop a meaningful relationship. Men are human beings. They feel, hurt, ache, and love the same as we do. You’ll meet good ones and bad ones, honey, but you have to learn the difference.”

  Jolene traced boards on the parquet floor with her right foot, and Francine wanted to force the woman to look at her. Patience, girl, she counseled herself.

  “I . . . uh . . . I’ve already loused up with somebody who I . . . oh, heck. That’s water down the drain.”

  What could she say to that? She sensed that Jolene was warming up to her when Jolene changed the subject and said, “I’m sorry you lost your husband, Francine. That must have been a blow to you. You know, when I first saw you, I thought there was something sad about you, but I didn’t follow it up; I’m just beginning to think about other people.”

  Francine didn’t want to sink back into that loneliness, so she forced a smile. “It’s been eighteen months. I’ve learned to thank God that, for five years, I had greater happiness than some people have during their lifetime. I’d better get up to my room and make a few calls before it gets too late.” She stopped to say good night to Judd and Richard. “How’s the game?”

  “I’m winning as usual,” Judd said without taking his gaze from the cards in his hand. “Richard’s giving me a birthday party Saturday. That’s m’birthday. You coming?”

  “If that’s the invitation I’m getting, yes. I wouldn’t miss it.”

  Richard looked up at her with what appeared to be a reprimand in his eyes. “I completed the arrangements today. Tomorrow, you will all find an invitation under your door.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh my! Did I do bad?”

  “We missed your company tonight,” Judd said, and she knew that he had deliberately doused the flame of their rising conflict.

  Judd’s eyes had witnessed a lot in their day, and she didn’t doubt that he’d seen more in her and in Richard than either of them had seen in each other. She climbed the stairs with the unwanted weight of an attraction to Richard bearing on her. She had come to Pike Hill to locate a smuggler of illegal aliens, a man who always lived and operated around open waters, and she didn’t need to have her wits clogged by the numbing effects of passion.

  Marilyn moved from the doorway as he approached, and Richard knew she did that so as to have more privacy with him. “How’d you like the cheese soufflé tonight? I knew you would appreciate it if nobody else did.”

  “Up to your usual high standard. I’m planning a birthday party for Judd on Saturday night, and I’d like you to prepare the food. I have a menu, and I want you to follow it to the letter.”

  A smile crawled over her face, and he’d never seen anyone, not even a sexually sated woman, with a more exultant expression of satisfaction. “Honey, that’s right down my alley. I’ll fix you a party that’ll make their eyes pop out. Just tell me how much I can spend, and I’ll do the rest.”

  He didn’t blink. “I said I’ll give you a menu, and I want you to follow it. If you can’t do that, I’ll hire a caterer from Ocean City.”

  Her hands went to her hips, and her glare held no semblance of sexuality. “No caterer you hire is gonna cook in my kitchen.”

  His gaze bore into her. “In a battle of wills, Marilyn, if you tie up with me, you will lose. I appreciate that you’re a first class cook, but I want what I want the way I want it, and that’s what I’m used to getting. It’s my menu or a caterer. Is five hundred dollars adequate compensation for the extra work?”

  She drooped against the wall, rubbing and twisting her fingers and, for the first time since he’d known her, stripped of her aplomb.

  “Five hundred did you say?” She let out a long sigh. “Bring the menu to breakfast in the morning. I’ll need to order whatever we don’t have, so I’ll need to speak to Fannie.”

  “She’s already cleared it. The party will start at seven, replacing supper. Give me your grocery list, and I’ll shop for you in Ocean City or Ocean Pines.” She nodded, visibly subdued, and he hoped she wouldn’t give him any more trouble.

  He needed help choosing favors for his guests and, considering Fannie’s lack of imagination in decorating the house and her choice of table linens, he didn’t think she would be of much help. He didn’t want to ask Francine either. Something had happened between the two of them; she didn’t want it, and he didn’t trust that or any other attraction so long as Estelle Mitchell owned his heart. Moreover, he didn’t think Francine would accept the paltry affair that was all he could offer her. Yet, he wanted her, and he had a feeling that his newly found self-discipline and honor in regard to women was about to be tested.

  Lila Mae had no taste and, of the female boarders, that left Louvenia and Arnetha. Out of the question. Deliberately, he joined Jolene for breakfast and related to her his problem. To his amazement, her face lit up. “Balloons. We can fill ’em with helium, tie bunches of them to long ribbons, attach them to sandbags, and put clusters in the lounge and dining room. The more the better. How about a color scheme matching the balloons and table linens? And we can get party hats—” Flabbergasted, he stared at her. Speechless. Her enthusiasm seemed to wane. “You think that’s too much?”

  “I think it’s perfect. Wonderful. I had no idea what to do. Can we manage this by Saturday?”

  “I saw a party store in Salisbury near where I work. I can call you from there today while I’m on my lunch hour. What’s your cell phone number?”

  He gave it to her, and she told him to expect a call around twelve-thirty. She hurried off to work, and Judd soon joined him.

  “She’s a perfect example of what improper nurturing can do to a person,” Judd said after Richard related his conversation with Jolene. “A grown woman over thirty with breast milk still on her lips.”

  “Come on, Judd. You really believe she’s that naïve?”

  “She didn’t get a chance to be a normal teenager, so of course, she’s naïve,” Judd said. “That girl’s matured more in the six or seven months she’s been here than in her previous thirty-some years.”

  Richard sat back in his chair and allowed a long breath to leave him. “Makes me appreciate my parents more and more.”

  Judd nodded his thanks to Rodger when the man refilled his coffee cup. “Me, too. Good thing is that she realizes she’s handicapped.”

  “Man, that girl is smart. Think what she could have been if she’d had the opportunity.”

  “Yeah,” Judd said. “Six months ago, she was so drawn into herself, like a turtle hiding his head, that you wouldn’t have been able to figure out whether she was smart or stupid. One thing’s certain; something happened to make her open up.”

  “Right. I won’t be around much today. See you this evening.”

  He hadn’t expected to see Francine in Ocean Pines, although he knew she worked there, and he stumbled when he saw her get out of the driver’s side of a car that had police lights and megaphones attached to its roof.

  “What a surprise! I was about to look for a place to eat lunch. Do you have time to join me?” When she seemed taken aback, he added, “I only have time for a short one, but if you’re busy—” He let it hang.

  She pointed across the street. “I was about to eat in that restaurant over there. The food’s pretty good, but it might not be to your cultivated taste.”

  His right eyebrow shot up. “For a good part of my life, curried goat with rice and peas was my most frequent meal. My mother eventually learned to cook other things, thank goodness.” He fell into step with her and, a minute later, nearly knocked her down moving her from the path of an on-coming car as they attempted to cross the street.

  “Oops.” She said as they stood pressed together chest to chest. “That was close. You are very disconcerting.
I never start across the street without looking both ways.”

  Anxious to move the hardened tips of her breasts out of contact with his chest, he turned her to one side and, in response as, she raised an eyebrow, he said, “I probably saved your life, Francine, and that makes me responsible for you.”

  “I’m not going there, Richard.”

  He opened the restaurant door, stood aside, and allowed her to enter. “Refusing to entertain the idea does not, repeat does not, refute its veracity.”

  She ignored him. “I’ll have the shrimp scampi,” she told the waitress when they’d seated themselves.

  “I’ll have the same, along with rice and the chef’s salad.”

  Silence enveloped them while they waited for their food, and he was tempted to see how long she would allow it to prevail. After two or three minutes, he realized that she didn’t feel obliged to talk.

  “You’re neither shy nor skittish,” he said. “Is it possible that you just don’t want me to know who you are?”

  “Let’s say I’ve never had an impulse to satisfy other peoples’ curiosity about me.”

  It was a cop out, and she knew it. “I’m not ‘other people, as you put it, and we both know it. If you don’t want us to be any closer than we are, so be it. Right now, I’m not sure how free I am to enter into a meaningful relationship, but I do want to get to know you.”

  She stopped eating, put her fork down and frowned. “Not free? Are you married?”

  He rippled his long fingers over the white tablecloth, idly, as if he didn’t know he was doing it. “No, and I never have been, but when I realized that I wanted marriage, it was too late. Much too late.”

  “So you were a player who destroyed his chance and lost out to another man?”

  “Not quite, but close enough. I had more integrity than a player. In any case, those days are behind me.”

  “Do you still love her?” He thought he detected apprehension in her voice.

  “It’s been a year since I opened a newspaper and saw an announcement of her marriage, and I still think of her. There’s been no one since.”

  “I’m sorry, Richard. I’ve been a widow for eighteen months, and I haven’t formed any kind of liaison either.”

  “Were you happy . . . in your marriage, I mean?” It was too personal a question, but he had to know.

  “Oh, yes. In every respect.”

  “It must have been a terrible blow.” He hurt for her, and the realization that he had rarely before known such empathy for anyone made him uneasy.

  “It was, but I’m grateful for what I had.”

  A remarkable woman. The ringing of his cellular phone intruded upon his thoughts. “Excuse the disturbance, please,” he said. “I’m expecting this call.”

  “Hello . . . Great. Ask him if they will deliver it Friday, and we need a helium tank, too. You did? Super. Let me speak with him.” He gave the man his credit card number. “Good, I’ll expect it Friday morning. Listen, Jolene, pick out everything. Oh. Silver and blue will work fine, then. Twenty people. Right. Thanks a million.”

  He hung up and couldn’t help laughing as Francine gaped at him in astonishment. “Did you say Jolene? Our Jolene?” she asked.

  “She surprised me, too. I was in a quandary, mentioned the party to her at breakfast, and she was full of ideas. I think her mother impeded her maturity with her negative attitudes.

  “To say the least. That woman did a hatchet job on her daughter.”

  He didn’t want to talk about Jolene; it was Francine who interested him. “Is there a reason why I shouldn’t know you were driving a squad car?” He could see that she expected that or a similar question.

  “I don’t broadcast it, because wide knowledge of it might hinder success in what I’m doing right now.”

  “Nobody will learn it from me.”

  She leaned toward him. “Thanks. I was looking for someone that day on the beach.”

  “And you thought you recognized him?” She nodded, speared a shrimp with her fork and put it into her mouth. “He’s been in that area, and he hangs around the ocean and the bay.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “About five-eight, slim, could be Latin, Native American, African American or a Middle Easterner.”

  That reminded him of someone, and he put on his thinking cap. “Fits the guy who moved out of our boarding house a few days before you came. I think he had your room.”

  She stopped chewing. “Did he have a slight limp, so slight you’d hardly notice it?”

  He stared at her, mostly because her question stunned him. “I noticed it because it was pronounced whenever he walked down the stairs.”

  She reached for his hand and held it. “Richard, please don’t mention this to anyone, not even to Judd. I’ve been on this case for six months, and this is the first clue I’ve had that I’m on his trail. The man’s a smuggler. I work for the Treasury Department, but while I’m on this case, I’m a police lieutenant.”

  “My lips are sealed. I would never betray you. If there’s anything I learned as a diplomat, it’s how to keep my mouth shut.”

  A frown spread over her face. “You’re a diplomat?” She folded her arms and rested her back against the booth. “Why am I not shocked? That explains your persona.”

  He held up both hands, palms out. “I was for nearly thirteen years, but that’s in the past. I walked away from it, and I’m not sorry. By the way, do you have children?”

  “Uh—no. Why? Would it matter?”

  “Not to me,” he said. “If it did, would that bother you?”

  Her laugh wrapped around him like a blanket of warm chocolate fudge. “You could grow on me, Richard Peterson.”

  He showed her a sober face. “I like fast and permanent results. Where should I spread the fertilizer?”

  She looked him straight in the eye. “Wherever you think it would be most productive.”

  She could be a smart aleck, too, he noted, and he was not amused. “Don’t play with me, Francine. I’m serious, and you know it.”

  “And you think I’m not? I have to get back to work. Let’s go.”

  What could he say to that? This woman knew who she was and would issue a challenge as easily as she would accept one. Excitement coursed through him. He wanted to know her in every way that a man could know a woman. But she would never accept half a loaf, and as long as he saw Estelle Mitchell whenever he closed his eyes, he couldn’t give more.

  He took her hand, dropped some bills on the table and they left the restaurant. “My bill was eleven dollars,” she told him.

  He gazed steadily at her. “It was the least expensive date I’ve had in twenty years, but I enjoyed it far more than most, so please let me pay.”

  She stopped walking. “Don’t tell me you’re always so serious. By the way, what was the name of that man who had my room just prior to my arriving at the boarding house?”

  He didn’t remember. “I’ll ask Fannie at supper tonight. If you ask her, she’ll be curious as to why.”

  “You’re right. Thanks. I’ll see you this evening.”

  He walked with her to the squad car, leaned down and kissed her cheek. She gazed up at him, wide eyed. “Damn,” he said to himself. “Let me get the hell away from here.”

  Chapter Seven

  Richard bought a case each of Pinot Grigio wine, ginger ale, Coca-Cola, Pilsner beer, and other party essentials and stored it all in the trunk of Dan’s taxi. He had developed a fondness for Dan, the cabbie who had brought him to Pike Hill, and used his services whenever possible. Next, he tackled Marilyn’s grocery list and, by three o’clock in the afternoon, had finished shopping. Dan helped him carry the grocery bags into the house, and Marilyn rewarded the cabbie with a bag of warm buttermilk biscuits. Richard waited in the lounge for Jolene and was relieved when she arrived before five-thirty.

  “How do we do these balloons?” he asked her. She showed him, but suggested that they wait until Saturday morning to deco
rate. She assured him that it wouldn’t take long and suggested that they begin immediately after breakfast.

  “Do you like what I bought?”

  “Absolutely, and especially the colors. Silver and blue is a dignified combination that suits an older person.”

  “I hope you don’t mind that I added candles for the tables.”

  “I’m glad you did. I hadn’t remembered, and Marilyn’s making him a chocolate cake. I hope it all goes well.” It amazed him that he had more anxiety about Judd’s party than about some of the big and important international conferences over which he had presided.

  “It will be very special,” she said, and added with an expression of awe, “Imagine doing all this for somebody you didn’t know existed eight months ago. Until I came here, I wouldn’t have believed anybody would do such a thing. I’ll be down at seven in the morning, and we can start on the balloons after breakfast.”

  “Thanks. I will definitely need your help.” He mused over her words, marveling at their similarities to each other. Because of the treatment she’d received from her mother and the influence of her mother’s attitudes, she had had to learn late in life to care for others just as he had. He wasn’t very religious, but he suspected that Providence had a hand in bringing both of them to Thank the Lord Boarding House.

  By noon Saturday, Jolene, Fannie and he had made two dozen clusters of balloons that stood like trees of varying heights, suspended by silver and blue ribbons from the silver-colored sandbags that anchored them.

  Fannie stored them in the pantry. “We’ll decorate after lunch,” she told them. “I’m so excited. Richard, the Lord is definitely going to bless you and Jolene for making the old man feel so special.”

  Richard cocked an eyebrow. “Fannie, I never think of Judd as an old man. He beats me at cards just about every evening and swims along with me at least twice a week.”