HIS PARTNER'S WIFE

by Janice Kay Johnson

  "Apparently Stuart's mother was once upon a time president. Or something. Either she absconded with the records, or she died before leaving office and nobody had the sense to reclaim them."

  "Well," she said again. "I will now, I suppose."

  He'd forgotten that his mother, who had taken up gardening in a big way once she had raised her boys, was also now a stalwart of the garden club. Probably running it with the proverbial iron fist inside a cute flowered ladies' gardening glove.

  "I'll rescue the garden club history from the recycling bin, then." He started toward the kitchen. "What are we having for dinner?"

  Hugh snapped a dish towel at him. "Get thee into the shower."

  "Lasagna," Maddie said brightly. "Grandma makes the best lasagna."

  "The best," Evan agreed.

  "And you two won't get any if you don't set the table this minute," John's kindly mother said sharply. Flattery got you nowhere.

  He did look like hell, he saw in the mirror above his dresser. Cobwebs clung like premature graying to his hair. Dirt streaked his face and turned his forearms gray above his wrists. Like a good boy, he'd washed his hands at Natalie's house.

  John stripped and showered, returning to the kitchen the minute he dressed and combed his hair.

  The kids, looking subdued, were setting out hot pads on the table. John paused to hug each of them. "Grandma in a bad mood?" he asked quietly.

  Evan squirmed uneasily. "Kinda."

  Maddie waited until he went back to the kitchen. "Grandma is mean to him sometimes," she said hurriedly. "I mean, he can be a brat, but this time he didn't do anything."

  John nodded. "Thanks for telling me. We'll talk about it later, okay?"

  "Okay." She cast a glance over her shoulder and raised her voice. "What do you want me to get next, Grandma?"

  Having forgotten that this was family night, John had harbored hopes of having a quiet talk with Natalie this evening. Instead, he refereed arguments between his brothers, seethed as Hugh flirted with Natalie just for the hell of it, and answered Evan's seemingly endless questions about why they had to do the Pledge of Allegiance every day, and why the teacher had told a girl in his class that they couldn't talk about God in class, that religious beliefs were private.

  "And when Jerome farted today, Mrs. Miller said bodily functions should be private, too," he reported. "Like, for the bathroom. But God's not for the bathroom. So why did she say…"

  "Evan, you are being entirely too loud," his grandmother said, a familiar edge in her voice. "And the bathroom is hardly open for discussion at the dinner table. Now, if you'd let your elders speak…"

  Seeing the way his son shrank down in his seat, John intervened, keeping his voice level with an effort. "Just about anything should be open for discussion at the dinner table. In this house, we don't believe children should be seen but not heard."

  "Did I say that?" she snapped. "Only that he's dominating the conversation. I believe Connor was trying to say something."

  "No hurry," John's brother said easily. "Ev, there are different kinds of privacy. Maybe Mrs. Miller should have chosen different words to make a distinction. Families have their own values. The school is trying not to influence those values. Farting, now…" He grinned at his mother.

  She sighed. "This family has no values."

  "You mean, we have no manners," Hugh suggested.

  Natalie stifled a giggle.

  "That, too," Mrs. McLean agreed tartly. "Natalie, how was your day?"

  Put on the spot, Natalie told a few amusing stories from the newsroom. It was the most he heard from her. After dinner, John and his brothers cleaned up. They lingered afterward, as was their habit, although his mother left, mentioning a financial study group meeting. While John was tucking the kids in, Natalie disappeared.

  "She said good night," Hugh said. He had his head in the refrigerator. "Anybody want a beer?"

  "Damn," John said. "Hold on. I wanted to talk to her."

  He knocked quietly on her bedroom door. "Come in," she called.

  Natalie sat in the flowered armchair, her feet tucked under her, a book open on her lap. Her shoes were on the rag rug in front of her, and her dark hair hung loose around her shoulders, fluffed as if she'd run her fingers through it. In the pool of lamplight, she looked pretty and cozy.

  "You didn't have to run off," John said.

  Her expression became stricken. "I'm sorry! Did it seem like I did? Oh, dear. I've just been dying to finish my book, and I thought you and your brothers would like some time to talk. Please tell them I didn't mean…"

  "They didn't think anything of your saying good night." John stood just inside the room, feeling awkward. "I wanted to make sure you didn't feel…"

  "I didn't."

  Her very poise frustrated him. Her gaze was now pleasantly inquiring. He could have been a stranger instead of the man who had made passionate love to her the night before.

  He was driven to assume a businesslike tone. "I'm wondering if Geoff and I can get into your safe-deposit box tomorrow."

  Something flickered in her eyes, but she agreed without hesitation. "Of course. I think I have to open it for you, unless you have a court order. Do you want to go first thing in the morning, or at the lunch hour?"

  "Morning's fine. We don't expect to find anything—"

  "But you need to look, not just take my word for it. I understand." She waited, eyebrows lifted, at last saying gently, "Is there anything else?"

  Talk to me, damn it.

  "I was hoping to kiss you," he said gruffly.

  "Oh." The exclamation came out breathlessly. Natalie jumped to her feet and rushed to him. "A kiss would be nice," she admitted, lifting her face to his.

  Yeah. Nice. With his two brothers in the living room, his children in bed upstairs, and no hope of this going anywhere.

  So he kept it tender, light, a promise instead of a demand. Nice.

  "Nice" was going to be a cold bedfellow tonight.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  « ^ »

  In the surreal quiet of the bank vault, the two men waited as Natalie unlocked the safe-deposit box and pulled it out. She carried it to the table, then stood back.

  "Do you mind?" John asked politely.

  "That's what we're here for."

  She knew it wouldn't take them five minutes to look through the papers Stuart had kept here. She had wondered why he bothered with a safe-deposit box and thought of canceling it, but hadn't because of the same inertia that had kept her from making other changes this past year.

  Don't make decisions too soon, everyone cautioned. They didn't know that she wasn't grieving the way they thought she was, but the shock of Stuart's sudden death had seemed to leave her with many of the traditional symptoms widows shared. Too many decisions to be made, maybe, and it seemed easiest to put them all off except those required for the funeral.

  After all, it had been his last chance to have his name in the newspaper. Feeling the irony and even some anger, she had carefully clipped both obituary and the brief article and placed them in his album. The End.

  The two men were huddled over the box. Geoff raised his head and said grumpily, "This is it?"

  She made an apologetic gesture. "I told you there wasn't much."

  "Have you taken anything out of here?"

  "No … yes," Natalie corrected herself, remembering. "Foxfire's registration papers. They're in the filing cabinet now, in the study. You must have seen them."

  Looking irritated, Geoff repeated, "Foxfire?"

  "My horse?"

  Under his breath, he muttered something no doubt better unheard, concluding with a growled, "Why the hell would anyone put an animal's papers in a safe-deposit box?"

  She didn't remind him that this particular animal was worth thousands.

  "Nothing else?" He sounded almost fierce. "There wasn't a key in here? Any papers you didn't understand? Something you've put out of your mind because it didn't seem im
portant?"

  John was unusually silent, letting his partner take the lead. Perhaps, she thought, because of what had happened between them. It must be terribly awkward to be investigating a woman you'd just slept with.

  "Nothing," she said, holding out her hands palm up, as if to show that they were empty. "The attorney who handled the probate was with me. You can have his phone number and talk to him if you'd like, but I'm sure he didn't remove anything. We glanced through the contents, he made a few notes, and the only thing I took was Foxfire's papers. We put everything back, and I haven't had any reason to open this safe-deposit box since." Quietly she added, "I'm sorry."

  Voice just as quiet, John said, "I didn't expect anything else."

  A frowning Geoff Baxter, she couldn't help noticing, didn't agree.

  Late the next afternoon, Natalie unlocked the front door of her house and stepped in, setting down the cat carrier but leaving the door open for John, who was following her up the walk with her suitcase. He, of course, had protested her decision to move home, but she'd been more determined, not less, because of their one night of lovemaking.

  In the two days since, it had seemed impossible to snatch even a few minutes alone together, never mind hours. John was working long days on another murder investigation, as well as Ronald Floyd's. If he ever had time during the day, she didn't. And either his mother dropped the kids off by five o'clock or John picked them up on his way home. He didn't sneak downstairs to her bedroom or suggest she creep up to his, a decision she respected. She hated to think of Evan having a nightmare and discovering her in bed with his daddy.

  So the time had come to put her life back on track. What would be, would be, with John. She was trying very hard to be a fatalist—or even an optimist—to combat the hollow feeling in her chest.

  Alone briefly in the entry, she looked around with curious reluctance. The house, so familiar, felt alien. No wonder. It had, after all, seen intruders twice this past month, a brutal murder upstairs, a top-to-bottom search by the police, and finally the installation of a security system.

  Her purse slid from her shoulder and plopped onto the carrier, startling her—and probably poor Sasha—briefly. Waiting, hesitating about stepping farther inside, Natalie had a sharp flashback to the day she had moved into this house, immediately after she and Stuart flew into SeaTac from their honeymoon in Maui. They had come straight here. All her belongings had gone into storage while they were away, and now this was home.

  Stuart hadn't carried her across the threshold. After the euphoria of the honeymoon, she had felt absurdly hurt by the absence of the traditional, if silly, gesture.

  "You know where everything is," he'd said over his shoulder as he went straight to the big-screen television and turned it on. He was channel surfing, one football game to another, his new wife apparently forgotten, when she quietly took her own suitcase upstairs to the master bedroom.

  She'd slept here before, helped make dinner, but as a guest. Now this house was home. But it felt … not like a place she would have chosen. The sound of the commentators' voices raised in excited argument floated from the downstairs. Clearly Stuart wasn't following her up. She bit her lip, sat down on the edge of the king-size bed, and cried a few quiet tears.

  Now Natalie shook her head hard to disperse the unwelcome memory. Today was different. This was just a house, and she owned it. The floor plan was identical to that of a dozen other houses in this development alone. Atmosphere, if any, came from paint and paper and wood, things that could be changed, and from the lives lived within the walls.

  She had to come home. She couldn't afford to make mortgage payments on this house and rent an apartment, too. Besides, if she was to sell this place, it was time she got to work weeding through Stuart's things. She'd procrastinated for a year. Enough was enough.

  A footstep sounded behind her. John set down her suitcase and closed the door with his shoulder. A frown drew his brows together as he watched her release Sasha from the carrier.

  The cat took a wild look around and bolted for the stairs.

  "She'll be okay," Natalie said aloud. As much for herself, she added, "We'll be okay."

  The brief silence was thick.

  "I don't like leaving you here."

  "I'll be safe with the security system. Besides…" Natalie turned with a smile that cost her. "We have no reason to think whoever broke in was interested in me. You've obviously searched this place top to bottom. Why would anybody bother to break in again?"

  His jaw tightened. "You were welcome at my house."

  "I know I was," Natalie said quietly. "But I couldn't just stay forever." She swallowed. Oh, dear. That was exactly what she wanted to do. "It was time," she concluded with another faint smile.

  "I'm going to miss you," John said in an odd voice.

  "Call me." Please.

  "Yeah. I'll do that." He reached for her suitcase. "Let me take this upstairs." Natalie wandered into the kitchen rather than follow him. The first thing she had to do was grocery shop, she realized, after opening the refrigerator. She was glad to seize on something so practical to do.

  The crime scene tape no longer barred the door to the garage. She opened it and peered in. If anything, the piles of boxes and the hulk of an MG that Stuart had thought he would restore but never got to looked more daunting. The car first, she thought. Tomorrow, she'd call around and find somebody who would haul it away for parts—assuming it had any usable ones. If not—the junkyard. That would give her room to work out there. She'd spend a whole weekend sorting the salable from stuff to go to the dump. It was still early enough in the fall that she could have a garage sale.

  Last night, when she'd said there might be things she would want to keep, John had grimaced.

  "Trust me. There won't be."

  Closing the door firmly and locking the new dead bolt, Natalie pushed away the cloud of depression that wanted to descend.

  The more of Stuart's possessions out of her hair the better. Her feelings about him were still tangled, but she knew she didn't want to keep much to remember him by.

  "What are you thinking?" John had come up behind her so silently she hadn't heard his approach.

  She turned with another of those determined smiles. "That I need groceries."

  "You could come home with me for dinner."

  Home. Oh, so easily, his house could be just that, enfolding her with a welcome she'd never found here.

  But then, John hadn't asked her to stay on any basis but as a guest, a nervous Nellie who was afraid to live in her own house alone.

  "Don't be silly. I've just gotten here."

  She followed him to the front door. There, he opened his arms and she went into them, for a moment gratefully resting her cheek against his chest.

  "Thank you," she whispered.

  He swallowed an oath and kissed her, hard and quick. An instant later, her front door opened and closed and he was gone.

  Fiercely she refused to let herself cry.

  Natalie waited just long enough for him to be well on his way home before following him out. She did a thorough grocery shop, then filled her evening with putting away what she'd bought, cooking dinner and returning the phone calls that had built up on her answering machine.

  Only then did she go upstairs, pausing just briefly at the open door to the study, not letting herself turn her head to look for a now nonexistent stain, before continuing to her bedroom.

  Sleep was slow coming, even after a plop announced Sasha's arrival. She declined to come up for a cuddle, but did deign to curl up behind Natalie's knees, a warm, comforting lump.

  At John's house, Natalie had been able to avoid thinking about Stuart and her own stupidity. Now, in the bed they'd shared during almost three years of marriage, she couldn't.

  How could she have deceived herself so completely?

  That was what bothered her most—the idea that she could have imagined herself in love with a man who could offer one face to the world and be s
omething so different behind it. Did she misjudge people as badly every day?

  What if John wasn't quite what he seemed to be, either? He'd told her that Stuart had had a partner in crime. Perhaps John felt a financial obligation to Debbie; perhaps he had one Natalie didn't know about. He could be desperate for money. Who better for Stuart to take into his confidence.

  No! Her fingers clenched on her covers. She would not believe that. Not of John, protective father and friend, tender, passionate lover, conscientious even toward his ex-wife.

  No. Anyone but John McLean.

  That insidious, internal voice, heard loudest at night, whispered, Yes, but you would never have believed it of Stuart. And you married him.

  She was able to defeat the voice more easily than she might have expected. She knew the difference now between a man like Stuart and one like John McLean. When she met Stuart, she had let herself be fooled by the exterior: the uniform and the broad shoulders and smiling eyes and heroic record. Face craggy rather than handsome, he'd been tall, athletic, unarguably brave. His sense of humor was sometimes vulgar or shocking, but she knew from friends that hospital workers were the same. Pathos could be defeated only with humor. He had courted her, talked of his exploits when she pushed, tried to make light of them.

  One night, while he was cooking dinner for them, she had discovered the album of newspaper clippings about him while she was browsing the shelves. He found her looking through it.

  She had been taken aback. That was a good way to put it. It had seemed a little odd, almost childishly proud, that this big tough cop combed through newspapers for his own name, even highlighting it sometimes.

  But when she looked up, he smiled crookedly. Nodding at the album, Stuart said, "That's to remind me in low moments that I can do some good."

  Of course her heart melted.

  More fool she.

  He abandoned the facade once they were married. He'd gotten annoyed a few times that she wouldn't use her influence at the Sentinel to be sure he was featured in write-ups. She'd seen him throw a temper tantrum after he was dismissed in print as "a second Port Dare officer." Oh, he'd pretend to be embarrassed afterward, give a boyish grin and say, "I just like to know that somebody notices the job I do." Somewhere along the way, she looked at him in the midst of a tirade and realized he was completely self-centered.