The waiter arrived and put the pupu platter down in the center of the table.
“Stay away from the crab rangoon.” I swatted Libba’s hand away. “It’s all mine.”
When I got home, full of crab rangoon and Dungeness crab toast (because nothing says Pacific cuisine like crab pulled from the north Atlantic), Anarchy’s Gran Torino was parked in my driveway.
Not stopping, driving to the country club, the grocery store, or a quick shopping trip on the Plaza, would have been cowardly. It was also incredibly tempting. Nothing good ever came from one of Anarchy’s unexpected visits.
I’d given him two blood-spattered business cards.
What if he was here to tell me that John Phillips was dead too?
I parked, got out of my car, and walked to the front door.
It opened before I had a chance to dig for my keys.
Aggie stood on the other side. Her cheeks were red. Her hair seemed to spring from her head with extra verve. Her eyes snapped.
Uh-oh.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Detective Jones—” she twisted his name into an expletive “—is here to see you.”
“Are you all right?” I’d never seen Aggie angry before. She was a bit frightening.
“Fine. He’s in the kitchen.” She marched up the front stairs, each step, on each tread, echoing through the foyer. Quite something since a thick Oriental runner covered the wood.
I shuffled down the hallway to the kitchen. What had Anarchy said to Aggie? I cracked the swinging door and peeked inside.
Anarchy paced in front of the counter. His hair was messy as if he’d just run his fingers through it in frustration. The space between his brows was furrowed. His mouth he held in a grim line.
Confrontation made my stomach tighten like a fist. My stomach was currently full of seafood and Arnold Palmers. Maybe I should come back later…
Too late. He spotted me and the grim line of his mouth thinned even more.
I pushed open the door and pretended I hadn’t noticed he was incandescently angry. “What a nice surprise.”
“Ellison.” His voice rolled like thunder during a summer storm.
“I’ve just been lunching with Libba.” Not that he cared.
His hands were fisted, the knuckles white.
“Did Aggie offer you anything to drink? I can make coffee?”
He seemed to vibrate with strong emotion. “What the hell were you thinking?”
When? “Pardon me?”
“You went to see Brooks Harney’s widow!”
Oh, that. “I drove Aggie.”
“You went inside with her.”
Had Grace been with me, she would have described the neighborhood as sketchy. I would have agreed with her. “It didn’t seem particularly safe to wait in the car.”
“It wasn’t safe for you to be there at all!”
“As you can see, I made it home just fine. So did Aggie.”
“What were you doing there?”
“We wanted to find out if Brooks and Stormy were really married.”
To say Anarchy scowled doesn’t even approach a description of the look he gave me. Laser eyes. Hewn cheeks. Thinned lips. And his brows a straight, unforgiving line across his forehead. “You were meddling.” His voice matched his expression.
“I most certainly was not. Genevieve Harney asked Aggie to go and I could hardly let her take Bess.”
“Who. Is. Bess?”
“Aggie’s car.”
He leaned against the counter and his fingers gripped the edge so tightly it was a wonder the tiles didn’t crumble to dust.
“Bess isn’t exactly reliable,” I explained. He stared at me as if I were speaking gibberish and not perfectly phrased English. “I didn’t want Aggie to get stranded if Bess wouldn’t start. Sometimes she doesn’t. Start. The car. Not Aggie.”
“Did it occur to you that Stormy might have something to do with Brooks’ death? That you might have been paying a house call to a murderer?”
“The second clown was definitely a man.”
“Stormy has a brother.”
It’s hard to argue with facts. I went to the fridge, helped myself to a can of Tab, turned and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want anything?”
Anarchy growled.
I turned my back on him, pulled a glass from the cabinet, and filled it with ice from the freezer.
Behind me a volcano rumbled.
I reached back into the fridge for a wedge of lime.
“You could have been hurt!”
“I wasn’t.”
“Luckily.”
“You seem to think I’m incapable of taking care of myself.”
“How many times have you been hospitalized since we met?”
That was too much. I slammed the refrigerator door. And cracked the glass down on the counter with such force it was a wonder it didn’t shatter. I was more gentle with the Tab. With my hands free, I crossed my arms. “It is not your job to take care of me.”
He closed the space between us in one enormous stride. His hands circled my upper arms. Tightly.
“Do you have any idea what it does to me when I hear you’ve been hurt?”
My mouth went too dry to speak. Probably just as well since my mind went blank.
“Do you?”
Somehow I moved my chin from side to side.
“My heart stops, the ground beneath me gives way, and all I can think of is getting to your side.”
Tiny flecks of gold glinted in Anarchy’s brown eyes. Stubble darkened his cheeks. A vein on the side of his neck throbbed. Details are important. Details keep foolish women from melting into puddles on the kitchen floor.
His grip on my arms tightened. “You cannot put yourself in danger. I won’t allow it.”
Somewhere deep within me a tiny spark of annoyance flamed. Who was Anarchy Jones to tell me what I could and couldn’t do? Every man I knew from my father to Anarchy seemed to think I needed my decisions made for me.
I didn’t.
The spark inside me burned brighter. I wasn’t some helpless damsel in distress. And Anarchy wasn’t a knight come to save me. Nope. He was a man who thought me incapable of saving myself.
“I mean it, Ellison. You just can’t.”
The spark took hold and anger burned through my veins. “I didn’t ask you to worry about me.”
“How could I not?” “I’m not some helpless ninny.”
Anarchy blinked. And for a half-second confusion replaced grim resolve on his face. “I didn’t say you were.”
“As good as.” I pulled against his grip on my arms. I might as well have tried to pull free of the earth’s gravitational pull.
“You’re deliberately taking things the wrong way.”
I was not. “How many times have you been hospitalized since we met?” I mimicked. He’d said it. He couldn’t deny it.
“Dammit. I just want you safe.” He pulled me against his chest and kissed me. A claiming kiss. Hard. Demanding. More than I was ready for. But with one expert swipe of his tongue he eradicated all my objections, all my common sense. His kiss melted bone and good intentions.
Anarchy had ignored the electricity between us in the parking lot of the haunted house. He wasn’t ignoring it now. The air around us hummed with need and desire and passion.
He released my arms, wrapping me in an iron embrace.
My arms—traitors—snaked around his neck. My body, quite of its own accord, pressed against his.
“Mom, I’m home.”
I jumped away from Anarchy as if he was an overflowing tub of scalding water. Scalding was right. With one kiss he’d managed to burn away all my resolve.
Grace stood at the back door with Max’s leash in her hand. “Um…sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Max grumbled his agreement.
“You didn’t interrupt.” My nose itched like hell and my breath—I couldn’t quite catch it. “Detective Jones was just leaving
.”
“Are you sure?” Grace puckered her face—lips, nose, brow. “It looked like an interruption.”
I’d deal with her sass later. And—I narrowed my eyes—what was she doing wearing makeup on a run? Had she hoped to see Robbie Harney again?
She bent and unhooked Max’s leash.
Free, he trotted across the kitchen and positioned himself between Anarchy and me.
I scratched behind Max’s ears with a shaking hand, grateful that his body separated me from Anarchy. “Grace will see you out.”
Anarchy’s lips thinned. Grace’s brows rose. I gave Max a final pat and poured Tab over melting ice with a hand that still shook.
Aggie’s feet on the back steps alerted us to her arrival. She pushed open the door and regarded us all—my no-doubt flushed cheeks, Grace’s running clothes coupled with a perky ponytail and cherry lip gloss, the determined set of Max’s head, and Anarchy’s hewn expression. “You’re still here?”
It was an unconscionably rude thing to say to a guest in my home. I smiled at her. That raise I’d been thinking about was effective immediately.
Anarchy focused his gaze on me. “I mean it, Ellison. Stay out of this investigation.” He turned and stalked out of the kitchen.
“Anarchy, wait.”
He paused outside the door. “Brooks Harney worked for Kathleen O’Malley.”
The air around him stilled. “How do you know that?”
“She told me at Brooks’ funeral.”
He shook his head as if he despaired of my intelligence. “Stay. Out.”
“I’m not in.”
“Hmph.” He resumed his stalking, disappearing down the hall.
I jerked my chin at Grace. “Let him out then lock the door.”
She rolled her eyes but did as I asked.
When she’d disappeared through the hall door, I collapsed against the counter, took a deep breath and held it. My heart still raced and the ghost of Anarchy’s touch still traced my skin. The kitchen was ridiculously warm. I loosened the top button of my blouse and released the breath I was holding.
“He’s very high-handed,” said Aggie.
“Very.” I studied the grain of the hardwood floor.
“He can’t stop me—stop us—from asking questions.”
“No.” I agreed. “He can’t.”
“How did he know we’d been to see Stormy?”
“She told him.”
Max got up, went to his water dish, and drank deeply.
Aggie wagged a finger at him. “Don’t you drip water all over my clean floor.”
He dripped water on her clean floor.
“Aggie?”
“Yes.”
I fanned my face with my hand. “Do you know how to make crab rangoon?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect. I have to go to that Halloween party tonight but would you make some? Soon?” If I was going to be around Anarchy, I needed a regular source for crab and cream cheese or I might spontaneously combust.
Ten
I looked at the man waiting on my front stoop and blinked.
Once. Twice. Multiple times.
It was official. Hell had frozen over. Hunter Tafft was wearing a pink suit.
True, he made an incredibly handsome Gatsby. But pink?
He stepped forward and dropped a kiss on my cheek. “You look lovely.”
“Thank you,” I murmured. “Won’t you come in?”
Grace, who was thundering down the front stairs, paused mid-step. “I thought you might be Camille.” She tilted her head. “Gatsby and Daisy, right?”
Not by my intention. How was I to know Hunter would come up with a pink suit to go with my flapper costume?
“We’ll have a happier ending,” said Hunter.
One would hope since Gatsby ended up shot in a pool.
“Speaking of Camille, Aggie bought stovetop popcorn and Orange Crush for you.”
Grace rocketed down the rest of the stairs and joined us in the foyer. “Did she get pudding pops?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I guess if we’re going to have to stay home...”
“You are. You’re grounded.” Letting Camille spend the night was a huge concession on my part.
“Fine.” Grace infused the word with enough teenage angst to tighten my spine, then she headed toward the kitchen before I could think of a suitable response. Not that she’d have listened to a word I said. Not if her ponytail, swishing with the injustice of being grounded, was any indication.
“She’s a good kid,” said Hunter.
I didn’t argue. She was. Most days. “Would you like a drink?” I led him into the living room where a full ice bucket waited next to various bottles. “What’ll it be?”
“Scotch and water.”
I dropped ice cubes into a cut crystal glass, poured a healthy finger of scotch over them, then added a splash of water. “Did Libba tell you about my costume?” She must have, there was no way a man just decided to wear a pink suit.
“I asked.” He coupled his admission with a blinding smile—the kind that traveled from his mouth to his eyes to my stomach where it incited flip-flops.
The problem with Hunter Tafft was that he was too damned good looking. And charming. He was too damned charming as well. I handed him his drink.
“I hope you don’t mind that I came as Gatsby.”
“Of course not.” I minded. Nothing said serious couple like matching costumes. I poured some wine in a glass then raised it. “Cheers.”
Hunter clinked his scotch against my glass. “To the most beautiful woman I know.”
Not true but said with such sincerity that he left me tongue-tied. His toast required thanks but the signals from my brain to my mouth had lost their way. Maybe those signals were flip-flopping with the remains of Hunter’s smile somewhere in my intestines. I took a small sip of wine. “Where did you find a pink suit?”
“That’s my secret.” He sparkled at me—eyes, teeth, tan. “Your dress is stunning.”
At least that was true. “Thank you. I found it in a vintage shop in Paris.” With my free hand, I smoothed the fabric over my hip. A million Champagne colored bugle beads shimmied with the movement. “Libba’s attending the party with Jay. Did she also tell you that?”
Hunter’s thousand-watt smile dimmed. “No. She left that part out.”
“It’s always so crowded. I imagine we can avoid them if we try.” It was disloyal of me to even suggest such a thing, but the thought of another evening spent in Jay’s numbing company made me tired.
“I like the way you think.”
I took a step back, a step away from Hunter’s pink-suited perfection. First dressing like a couple, now making a plan for a party. It was too much.
He reached out and caught my wrist, stopping me from moving farther away.
“Ellison.” His voice was as smooth and intoxicating as the black label scotch in his glass.
My stomach gave up on flip-flops. It fluttered. Not butterfly flutters. Butterflies suggest the gentle motion of delicate wings. The fluttering in my stomach was more akin to a flag in a gale.
Using his hold on my wrist, Hunter pulled me closer to him. He smelled of some cologne I couldn’t identify—something manly and delectable.
He put his scotch down on the drinks cart and took the wine glass from my hand.
I should have objected, but he was a charmer and I was mesmerized.
The distant brngg brngg of a telephone should have brought me to my senses. It didn’t.
The fact that I’d already been kissed that day should have paralyzed me. It didn’t.
That Hunter and I were wandering down a path that could lead to an altar should have stopped me dead in my tracks. It didn’t.
Such is the power of Hunter’s charm. I wanted him to kiss me—even if he was wearing a pink suit. And who could blame me? The truth was he wore the damned thing better than Redford.
His lips touched mine and fireworks went off
around us. Bursts of light and energy that exactly mirrored the explosions in my veins.
His lips moved.
I melted.
Hunter. Ellison. A simple, dangerous equation.
“Mom.” Grace stood at the door. Her eyebrows had disappeared into her hairline and her eyes were as big as the coasters that protected the drink cart’s polished cherry finish from the sweat of our glasses.
Hunter released me. Slowly.
“What is it, Grace?” The heat that warmed my cheeks probably left me more pink than Hunter’s suit.
“There’s a woman named Priscilla Owens on the phone. I told her you were busy.” The skin across the top of Grace’s nose wrinkled. Apparently Grace did not much approve of what I’d been busy with. “She insists on speaking with you.”
“Fine.” My tongue held onto the n, making me sound surly and unpleasant. I took a breath. “I’ll take it in the study. Hunter, would you excuse me a moment please?”
I didn’t wait for his answer. I lifted my chin and brushed past my now smirking daughter.
In the study, I turned on a lamp and picked up the phone on my late husband’s desk. “Hello.”
“Mrs. Russell?”
“What can I do for you, Miss Owens?”
“I was hoping we could meet.”
She wanted to meet? “About what?”
“I was hoping you could tell me what you’d learned about Brooks’ death.”
I was silent. Seconds ticked by.
“Please?” A sound traveled through the phone line, the half-gulped sob of a woman trying not to cry.
“I don’t really know anything.”
“Apparently I didn’t either.” This she said with enough sourness to curdle cream. “Please?”
Brooks Harney had been a complex young man. Was it his sister’s death that haunted him or his mother’s blame? And the women. So many women. Stormy. But also, according to Kathleen O’Malley, multiple women at Club K. And finally, Priscilla, almost old enough to be his mother and fighting tears.
“I don’t know what I can tell you.”
“Please?” The word was positively ragged with emotion.
How could I refuse her? “Fine. Tomorrow morning for coffee?”
“I usually get home from a night’s work around six. Could we meet in the afternoon?”
Send in the Clowns (The Country Club Murders Book 4) Page 10
