HIS PARTNER'S WIFE

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Or fall asleep at last, which wouldn't make her much of a baby-sitter.

  In the dining room, she found John and his children seated at their places at the table, which had been nicely set as if for company, with quilted place mats and cloth napkins. As a centerpiece, asters in bright colors made a casual bouquet in a cream-colored pitcher. French doors were closed against a gray, misty day.

  She stood in the doorway unnoticed for a moment, feeling as if she were outside, nose pressed to the glass, looking in at a perfect family tableau. Father and children were laughing together, the affection, humor and patience so obvious she felt a pang of envy. For what, Natalie knew quite well. Stuart had squelched her first tentative suggestion that they think about having children. On their wedding day, she had just assumed…

  It hurt still, remembering Stuart's quick, thoughtless, "What the hell would we want brats for?"

  She must have made a sound, a movement, because John's head turned sharply, his grin fading.

  "Good morning." He searched her face with grave, intent eyes even as he gestured at an empty chair. "Mom's making bacon and eggs. She wouldn't let us help." A faint smile pulled at his mouth. "We've been complaining about how slow the service is. My tip isn't going to be big."

  "Daddy!" His son giggled. "Grandma doesn't want money!"

  Evan McLean was a miniature of his father: russet, wavy hair, vivid blue eyes and big feet that suggested someday he'd match Dad's size as well. Natalie wondered if John had had freckles, too, at five years old.

  From the lines in his face, she doubted he'd slept any more than she had, if at all, but he had obviously just showered and shaved. His wet hair was slicked back, the auburn darkened by water. Despite the tiredness that creased his brow and added years, he crackled with energy and the grin he gave his son came readily.

  "You don't think Grandma would scoop up a buck if I left one?"

  Evan looked crafty. "I bet she'd give it to me. Why don't you leave a dollar and we'll find out. Okay?"

  "Greedy," his sister scoffed. Maddie McLean had her mom's blond hair and blue eyes of a softer hue than her father's. Gawky and skinny at this age, she wasn't pretty in a dimpled little-girl way, but Natalie was willing to bet Maddie would be a beauty by the time she was sixteen.

  "Just to see," Evan insisted.

  "Uh-huh." She rolled her eyes. "Like you'd give it back to Dad."

  Her brother bounced indignantly. "I would!" He stole a glance at his father. "If he said I had to."

  John laughed, although he still watched Natalie. "Let's not put Grandma to the test, shall we?" The door from the kitchen swung open and he said, "Ah. Looks like breakfast is going to be served."

  "At last!" Evan said.

  Carrying a plate of toast in one hand and a heaping bowl of scrambled eggs in the other, his grandmother bent a look on him. "Young man, that didn't sound very polite."

  Even at five, he had the grace to blush. "I'm just awful hungry, Grandma."

  "Ah." Still sounding severe, she said, "You need to learn to think 'at last,' not say it. That's the secret to good manners."

  His forehead crinkled. "You mean, I can be really rude, just to myself?"

  "That's right." A tall woman with beautiful bone structure and gray-streaked red hair cut very short, his grandmother headed back to the kitchen. Just before disappearing through the swinging door, she added, "Truly nice people, however, don't think rude things, either."

  "Oh." Looking very small, Evan beseeched his father. "Is that true?"

  "Here's a secret, bud." John lowered his voice. "I can't imagine a single person so saintly that he or she doesn't think rude things once in a while. Just so you keep 'em to yourself, you can be a nice person."

  Maddie sat with a very straight back and head held regally high. "But you're boys. Girls are lots nicer. Aren't they, Natalie?"

  Weary as she was, Natalie had to laugh. "Let's see, what grade are you in? Third?"

  Maddie nodded. "He's only in kindergarten."

  So much for the illusion of family harmony she had seen like a shimmering mirage before she stepped into the dining room.

  "Right. My point is, girls are lots nicer than boys at your age. I'm pretty sure boys reach their peak of awfulness in about fourth grade. But then they do start getting better."

  "Really?" both kids said simultaneously.

  "I can be awful?" Evan sounded delighted at the prospect.

  "You mean, they get worse?" his sister asked in horror.

  "'Fraid so," Natalie said sympathetically. "Or, at least, that's my recollection."

  John was laughing as his mother returned with a plate of bacon and another with sausage.

  "In case anyone would prefer it to bacon," she said, slapping down the plate. "If that's funny."

  The laugh still lingering on his mouth, John said, "Sit down, Mom. This looks fabulous. No, we were talking about the horrors boys are capable of. Fourth grade was definitely my peak of awfulness."

  Mrs. McLean didn't hesitate. "For all of you. No," she corrected herself, handing Natalie the bowl of scrambled eggs to dish up. "Hugh was slow maturing. Fifth or sixth grade was his worst. Do you remember that poor girl who had a terrible crush on him and sent him a poem she'd written?"

  John paused with the plate of toast in one hand. A grin deepened the creases in his cheeks. "Oh, yeah. He wrote her a poem in return. Rhymed pretty well, too, as I recall. Actually—" he cleared his throat "—I helped. Just with the rhyming. Which, come to think of it, would suggest that I was still awful in … what would I have been?"

  "A freshman in high school." His mother sounded acerbic. "I can't believe you helped him."

  "What did it say?" Evan demanded.

  "Something about her stink and, um, why she had to pad her bra and her laugh sounding like…" He stopped. "Never mind."

  "Awesome," Evan breathed. "Uncle Hugh?"

  "It was not awesome," his grandmother snapped. "It was cruel. Hugh was unable to play Little League that year in consequence."

  Evan's eyes grew big. "Oh."

  "What did you do, Daddy?" Maddie asked. "When you were in fourth grade?"

  He layered jam on his toast and waved the bread knife dismissively. "Oh, I was just repulsive. My idea of falling-down-funny was a fart joke or tripping another kid or somebody making a dumb mistake in an oral presentation."

  "That's what all the boys in my class are like!" Maddie exclaimed. "My own dad was like that?"

  "Yup." He tousled her hair. "I don't have a single excuse, kiddo."

  "Gol," she muttered.

  "If your father had been here," Mrs. McLean began, with a sniff.

  A shadow crossed John's face and was gone before Natalie was quite sure she'd seen it. "He was here, Mom. I was in fifth grade when he died."

  "Grandad was shot, right?" Enjoying the gory idea that he had a relative who had died a bloody death, Evan shoveled in a huge mouthful of scrambled eggs and chewed enthusiastically while he waited for the familiar answer.

  That same snap in her voice, his grandmother said, "You know perfectly well that he was, young man, and it's not something we discuss in that tone."

  He immediately seemed to shrink. "I didn't mean…" he mumbled around his food.

  His father laid a big hand on his shoulder. "It's okay. We know." The gaze he turned on his mother was cold. "Evan is five years old. Death is very academic to him. And he never knew his grandfather."

  Her nostrils flared, and her stare didn't back away from his. "Hugh was barely older than Evan when he lost his father."

  Tension fairly crackled between them. "And he had to deal with it. My son doesn't." Deliberately he turned his head, dismissing her. "Natalie, once you've eaten, we should probably talk."

  Aware out of the corner of her eye that his mother had flushed, Natalie nodded. "Whenever you're ready." She looked apologetically at Mrs. McLean.

  "I'm not very hungry, I'm afraid. Although this is delicious."

  "A decent br
eakfast will make you feel better."

  "Yes," she said meekly. "I'm sure. It's just that I keep thinking…" She had to swallow on a bout of nausea.

  Mrs. McLean's face softened marginally. "Perhaps a cup of tea. With honey?" She stood, surveying everyone's plates. "Children, please eat. Evan, smaller bites." She swept out.

  "I…" Natalie tried to think of something tactful to say. "She's being very kind."

  "In her own way," John said dryly.

  John brought a cup of coffee and Natalie her tea when they left the children with their grandmother and retired to his home office.

  Family obviously wasn't checked at the door to this room with warm woodwork, white walls and floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Childish drawings filled a bulletin board, and some action figures lay on the hardwood floor in positions that suggested they had died rather like their grandfather. A one-legged Barbie lay among them.

  John nudged at the doll with his foot. "My son is bloodthirsty," he remarked ruefully.

  "Aren't most little boys? I know my nephew is."

  He sat rather heavily in his leather office chair, his tiredness suddenly visible. "Having known the reality, my mother isn't very comfortable with that fact."

  "How could she be?" Natalie said with quick sympathy. "It must have been horrible to lose her husband that way, and to have to raise three kids by herself."

  He made a rough sound. "I only wish she could have let us forget, just now and again, how Dad died."

  Startled, Natalie asked, "What do you mean?"

  John rotated his head as though his neck was stiff. Sounding impatient with himself, he said almost brusquely, "Never mind. It's nothing. History." He sighed. "Natalie, we identified the dead guy."

  In an instant forgetting his unusual sharpness toward his mother, she locked her hands together. Her voice came out breathless with the anxiety that suddenly gripped her. "Really? So fast?"

  "Geoff and I both recognized him. We had to hunt through mug shots to come up with a name, but we'd been in on his arrest four years ago. Stuart was the arresting officer."

  Natalie sat silent for a moment, absorbing the news that her husband had once arrested the man who yesterday had died in her house, in Stuart's den.

  "What did he do?" she finally asked tentatively. "Was it burglary?"

  "His name was Ronald Floyd. He was a midlevel drug dealer."

  A drug dealer? She groped for understanding. "But why would he have been in my house? Did he think Stuart was still alive and he was, well, looking for revenge or something?"

  John reached out and covered her knotted hands with his for a brief, reassuring moment. "I doubt it. This guy has been arrested half a dozen times before. Yeah, he got put away this time for a decent prison term, but it wasn't because Stuart had hunted him down. We got a tip. A whole crowd of us was waiting when Floyd docked at the marina with a boat hold full of coke. The fact that Stuart cuffed and booked him was just chance."

  Perhaps it was lack of sleep that made her feel so stupid. "Then … what do you think?"

  He shook his head. "I've got to tell you, I don't know what to think. The fact that there's a connection between Stuart and the dead man makes me curious. I don't believe in coincidences, and it would be one hell of a coincidence if our guy, fresh out of prison for dealing, had just happened to decide to break into your house of all others. And, oh yeah, instead of walking back out, happy, with your TV and stereo, he instead gets himself killed in your husband's office."

  During this speech, her anxiety had sharpened into a knife blade of fear. She dampened her lips. "Then he must have been looking for something."

  "That's one possibility," John agreed.

  "But what?"

  To her dismay, he shook his head again. "I wish I knew, Natalie. Any ideas would be appreciated. Stuart didn't brag about collecting anything valuable, did he? Stamps, coins? He didn't tell the whole world that he had his life savings stored as gold bullion in his house?"

  She was shaking her head the whole time he talked. "He played golf. He liked old car shows. He did tear stamps off envelopes if he thought they were curiosities—there are a bunch of German ones somewhere because he had a cousin in Munich, but he didn't know anything about stamps. Or coins or…" She couldn't even think of what else he might reasonably have collected. "And his life savings, which weren't all that much, were in a mutual fund and a twelvemonth CD."

  So casually she knew he'd been waiting to slip the question in, John asked, "What about you? Antique jewelry Stuart might have bragged to someone else about?"

  Again she shook her head hopelessly. "The closest thing to a valuable antique that I have is a set of early Nancy Drew mysteries. I can't imagine that your drug dealer wanted The Secret of the Old Clock."

  "That does seem unlikely," he admitted.

  "Besides," she pointed out, "Stuart and I hadn't even met five years ago. So they couldn't have chatted about my collection of Nancy Drew. And how would they have run into each other since, if this guy didn't get out of prison until after Stuart was dead?"

  "True enough." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I'm groping here, Natalie."

  She nodded, understanding. It was a form of brainstorming, like sessions they had at the paper.

  "What will you do next?" she asked.

  "Talk to Floyd's friends or relatives. I'm heading for Tacoma this morning to tell his parents about his death and find out whether they knew a damn thing about what he was up to. Hell, maybe he wrote them letters about how he intended to rifle Det. Stuart Reed's house when he was released. And, oh, yeah, his buddy Bill Doe wanted to help. We should be so lucky."

  She nodded.

  "Then we'll wait for fingerprint ID," he continued. "Take a harder look at your house." His tone changed, his eyes softened. "I'm sorry, Natalie. We need to see if we can find something Floyd might have been looking for."

  "I understand." Strangely, the idea of him searching her possessions wasn't all that disturbing. She had always found him a comfortable man.

  If she had been more self-conscious around him yesterday and today, it was hardly surprising. Their roles had shifted; his job required him to consider even her as a suspect.

  And somehow here in John's home, she was discovering tensions she hadn't known existed. He clearly harbored some resentment concerning his mother, for example. His protectiveness toward his children had seemed both natural and misplaced—except that she didn't know why he was still angry at his mother. Once she would have said she could ask him anything, but the guard he'd snapped into place when she asked made her realize their friendship had been more superficial than she'd realized. There was so much about the inner man she didn't know. And so much about herself she had never told him, including a biggie, considering he had been Stuart's friend first. He had assumed her marriage was completely happy, Natalie knew, and she had never disabused him.

  She came back to the present to realize that he was looking at her strangely. Had she been staring? Had he said something?

  Rushing into speech to fill what must have been a peculiar silence, she argued, "But mightn't the murderer have taken whatever it was?"

  He grimaced. "Unfortunately, that's a possibility, too. But what the hell could it have been?" Now he sounded frustrated. "You've surely looked through the records Stuart left. The files in the desk seemed orderly and totally uninteresting to anyone else. None of the boxes in the closet had been ripped open. Your place wasn't ransacked. Had anything been disturbed that you noticed?"

  "No." She pressed her lips together. "It was strange, wasn't it? The house seemed so normal. Untouched. Only, there was this dead man upstairs. It would almost have been easier if the house had been tossed. You know?"

  "Violence should spread ripples," he said unexpectedly.

  She blinked. "Yes. Exactly."

  "I need to be on my way." He didn't move. "What are your plans today?"

  "I hadn't thought yet." She hesitated. "I could watch your kids if that would fr
ee your mom to go home."

  His dark brows drew together. "I'm not going to use you. You're a guest."

  Puzzled by the edge in his voice, Natalie said, "It's nice of you to have me here, John, but it won't hurt me to help out a little."

  "You always want to pay your way, don't you?"

  "Is that so bad?" she asked quietly.

  He got to his feet and looked down at her. "Just this once," he said, almost harshly, "do me a favor. Accept my help without baby-sitting my kids, bringing me cookies or knitting me a sweater. Okay?"

  "I don't—"

  "Yeah. You do." He reached out, touched her cheek, the most fleeting of contacts but enough like a caress to steal her breath. "Friends don't have to be repaid."

  She found herself nodding dumbly. "Yes. Okay."

  "Do something self-indulgent today. Get a massage. Go to a movie. Hey, go back to bed."

  "I'm going horseback riding." She hadn't known she'd decided.

  His quick, warm smile erased the harshness on a face made more angular by lack of sleep. "Good girl. Sounds like the right medicine. You probably don't get enough chances."

  "I go two or three times a week."

  The one gift from Stuart that she truly loved was Foxfire, the bloodred Arabian stallion she kept stabled at a ranch just outside of town. He was probably too much of a handful for her. He wasn't mean, but he danced and twisted and fussed over the smallest leaf blowing across the path. Despite his value, she'd considered having him gelded, but everyone who saw him thought she should put him up for stud. She'd pried out of Stuart the fact that he'd paid an outrageous twenty-five thousand dollars for the horse, and she was told she could maybe charge five hundred for each live birth. But to do that, she'd have to move him to a different farm where workers knew how to handle breeding, and she guessed if he was being regularly bred, with his blood fired up he might be even harder to handle. Since she did so love riding her elegant Arabian, it seemed more bother than it would be worth. She didn't really need the money. Except that it made sense, of course, to geld him if she wasn't going to breed him.