“Jeffrey.” Grant knew he didn’t like to be called by his first name. He, therefore, always used it.
With no suggestion that Grant get comfortable, he snapped, “Explain what in hell you’re thinking of, spending nights at Kathryn Riley’s.”
Having had a bad feeling this was going to be the topic, Grant had braced himself not to give away his wariness or the anger that simmered just below it. Uninvited, he pulled up a chair, sat and stretched out his legs as if he was completely at his ease.
“You heard about the fire at the nursery?”
“Of course I heard about it.”
“Ms. Riley is being terrorized,” Grant said flatly. “I believe she’s in danger. I doubt you’d agree to extend the city budget to provide around-the-clock protection to her. I’m making damn sure she doesn’t get killed before I can figure out who’s after her.”
Lips thinning, Mortensen contemplated him. “She could have set up that fire herself. Given the time of day, she wasn’t in any real danger.”
Resisting the temptation to lunge across the desk and slug the son of a bitch, Grant took a moment to get a grip on himself before he said, “She was treated for smoke inhalation. Another couple of minutes, and she’d have died. Yeah, there was a real possibility she would be rescued. There was an equal possibility the rescue wouldn’t have come in time.” He gave that a minute to sink in. “Want to explain how she locked herself in with a hasp that closes on the outside?”
The city manager made an impatient gesture. “She must have friends. For God’s sake, use your head. Who else would have any reason to kill Hugh?”
“Plenty of people.” Grant summarized the investigation to date. “I trust you’ll keep this to yourself,” he added.
An irritated flush mottled Mortensen’s cheeks. “I don’t chatter about city business. I also don’t display my bias to any and all eyes when I’m conducting an inquiry. Your conduct is indefensible.”
Too pissed now to be politic, Grant rose to his feet. “Take it up with the city council,” he suggested in a hard voice. “In the meantime, I’ll be doing my job.”
He stalked out, shutting the door behind him with enough force to make the glass shiver although he hadn’t quite slammed it. Damn it. He didn’t really think he’d lose his job over this, but it was conceivable. He’d had a suspicion for a while that Mortensen would like nothing better than to find an excuse to get rid of him.
“To hell with him,” he muttered, earning a startled look from a middle-aged woman exiting the women’s restroom. Grant didn’t apologize. He kept going. Thanks to Mortensen, he’d already wasted fifteen minutes. He had barely another hour to work on a background check of Annika Lindstrom and Lisa Llewellyn before he had to leave.
There was no way he was letting Kat go home to an empty house.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AS THE WEEK WENT ON, Kat got quieter and quieter. Grant could see the strain wearing on her.
Tonight, over dinner, she told him that she’d bought a window at a secondhand store. “James is going to install it in the shed.”Grant doubted anyone would ever be trapped in the toolshed again before it was set on fire, but he didn’t blame her for planning an escape route nonetheless. James, he knew, had already torn out the burned portions of the walls and rebuilt them. The guy was apparently handy.
“Sounds like a good idea,” he said.
With her fork, she poked at her asparagus without actually impaling a spear. After a minute, she said, “People are talking.”
Pretending to be unconcerned, he raised his eyebrows. “About?”
She lifted her gaze to his. “Us.”
He tensed. “I know.”
“Grant, at the best of times there’d be plenty of people who would frown about their police chief openly living with a woman he’s not married to. This is a conservative community, you know.”
“I have noticed that,” he said drily. “Although you’ve got to admit, it’s ridiculous that we’re having this discussion at all in this day and time.”
“We wouldn’t be if you weren’t a public official. But you know what? You can’t tell me the citizens of Dallas or Seattle or, heck, San Francisco, would like it any better. Your private life is supposed to be aboveboard and by the book. Or at least out of sight.”
He didn’t like where she was going with this. “That may be true,” he conceded, “but these circumstances are a little out of the ordinary, you have to admit. I’m not leaving you alone any more than I can help.”
Kat quit pretending to eat and set down her fork. “Grant, you could get in trouble over this. You know darn well half the people in this town think I had something to do with Hugh’s death. You’re supposed to be investigating. Instead, you’re sleeping with me.”
Despite everything, he grinned at her. “And enjoying it.”
Kat let out a frustrated huff. “What if you lose your job over me?”
He shrugged. “Then I find a new one.”
She stared at him with seeming despair. “You’re not going to back down, are you?”
Deadly serious now, he said, “Nope.”
He could see the worries churning in her, and God knows he shared them. The city manager had gone ahead and started talking to council members. One who didn’t much like Mortensen had told Grant privately, and added that he’d better clean up his act. Meanwhile, he felt as if he was spinning his wheels on the investigation.
Lisa Llewellyn was looking less viable as a suspect, if only because he hadn’t been able to figure out where she would have stashed the two missing trucks and two sets of skeletal remains. She and her husband had a smallish house in town and owned no other property that he could find. Turned out she had a fifteen-year-old stepson who lived with them, too, which limited her movements and privacy. She had no family nearby; her parents had a ranch near Cheyenne, Wyoming, and her one brother lived in Montana.
Meanwhile, Grant had come up with another possibility, a woman named Crystal Sanderson. He’d been more than interested to see that she had appeared on the list of customers at the nursery on the second day when the first bones had appeared. In recent years, she’d been only an occasional attendee of garden club meetings, but she had apparently been way more gung ho back when Hugh was the central attraction at them. She was a good-looking woman whose marriage broke up the year after Hugh’s death. That alone had caught Grant’s attention. Since the divorce, she’d lived with a wheelchair-bound, elderly father in the family home on what had once been a dairy farm—which meant there were half a dozen barns and outbuildings, long abandoned. Grant had taken an illicit scouting expedition and been able to see into a couple of the barns and a loafing shed, but had noticed a concrete structure with a tin roof and no windows as well as a large detached garage with two small windows covered by roll-down shades. He’d loitered in a side road a quarter of a mile away and seen that Crystal did not park her wheelchair-friendly van in the garage.
He’d checked out Annika Lindstrom’s place, too, waiting until he saw her drive away in her shiny black Land Rover. He’d been all too conscious of how much trouble he would be in if he got caught trespassing and peering into windows, but he was getting edgier with every day that passed, more certain that time was running out. It wasn’t as if he had even a shadow of a justification for search warrants. “I’ve got a bad feeling” wasn’t going to cut it. He couldn’t take anything he learned in illicit searches to court, but all he was looking for was a reason to focus his suspicion.
He was no gardener, but even he could tell that Annika’s would be spectacular in another month, when more was in bloom. Flower beds were sharply edged and gracefully curved within a meandering, emerald green lawn that didn’t look anything like the one he reluctantly mowed once a week front and back of his place. Vines clambered up trellises and the pillared porch of an elegant, Colonial-style house. More were expertly trained on half a dozen arbors, painted white and deep green to echo the colors on the house clapboards and s
hutters. Small, weeping trees and sculptural shrubs suggested skillful pruning. Stone statues and huge terracotta pots peeked out here and there. He could hear the trickle of a small waterfall coming from somewhere. Brick and cobblestone walkways led to hidden alcoves.
The potting shed was a work of art, the greenhouse handsome and integrated into the garden design.
This landscape had required a massive infusion of cash and labor. Grant didn’t blame Greg Buckmeier for his bitterness. If you were any normal human being, there was no way you could realistically compete with Annika’s garden.
A tall, perfectly trimmed hedge disguised the garage. The windows sparkled and, looking in, Grant saw a second vehicle, this one a beige sedan of some kind. A Camry, he thought; a nice enough car that no one would be surprised to see her driving it, but innocuous enough not to draw attention, either.
An even taller hedge and a cedar fence nearly buried in honeysuckle would keep visitors to the garden from even noticing the two big metal buildings on the back of the property. Annika’s husband, Grant had been told, had been a car collector. Nobody knew whether she’d kept the cars or sold them. Clearly, money wasn’t much of an issue, so she might have held on to them for sentimental reasons.
Unfortunately, neither building had a window, and the rolling, garage-style doors and smaller side doors were all locked. Frustrated, he finally gave up.
Kat had been asking questions about the investigation, but Grant was torn about how much to tell her. He had an obligation to keep what he learned confidential. He’d already said a hell of a lot more to her than he should have. Besides, these women might be friends of hers. He knew all three were good customers. She had to be uncomfortable already around anyone who could conceivably have been one of her husband’s lovers.
He sure as hell didn’t want her to get in a car to go anywhere with one of them, though.
Why limit it to those three? Grant reflected. He didn’t want her alone with anyone right now.
But when he said as much, she jumped up from the table.
“Not Joan? What about my other employees? How do you expect me to run a business?”
He knew she was getting mad to cover her fear. “Damn it, Kat. I’m just asking you to be careful. Is that unreasonable?”
Hugging herself, she paced to the window, looked out for a minute, then swung back to face him. “I hate this. I hate everything about it.”
He would have been afraid she was including having him in her bed at night if it weren’t for the way she responded to his touch. What he felt when they made love bore only a distant relationship to anything he’d ever experienced before. He knew it was the same for her.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I don’t blame you. Just…be patient. That’s all I’m asking.”
She pressed her lips together and for a minute he thought she might cry. But he wasn’t surprised when she did battle with herself and won. Her jaw firmed. “I’m going to clean up the kitchen and then take a hot bath.”
“Leave the dirty dishes to me,” he said. “You cooked. Go take your bath.”
“Fine.” She wheeled and left the kitchen. Her footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Grant didn’t follow her for quite a while. Plainly, she needed some time alone. She was under a lot of stress right now. It occurred to him, too, that she’d lived alone for four years now. All of a sudden a man had, for all practical purposes, moved in with her and taken over her life. It had to be unsettling.
He realized he was frowning as he climbed the stairs. He’d lived alone for the past four years, too. He would have expected living so intimately with another person to require an adjustment. It had with Rachel. He wasn’t sure he ever really had adjusted. She’d flown home without him to visit her family a few times, when he and she were still in Dallas, and he’d been ashamed to be intensely grateful for a week or two of solitude.
With Kat, though, it was different. This morning he’d woken up before she did, and found her draped over him. Her head was nestled on his shoulder, her arm stretched across his chest and her hand tucked cozily in his armpit. One of her legs, silky smooth, lay across his.
He’d rolled his head slightly so he could see her face, her lips softly parted, her eyes flickering behind delicate, blue-veined lids. Her hair, that glorious, indescribable hair, tumbled over his shoulder and arm. He could feel her breasts pressed against his side and chest. He’d all but held his breath, not wanting to wake her, and was struck by the damnedest feeling. He could hardly contain whatever it was, as if he was a bottle of champagne, or maybe pop, that had been given a good shake and was near to exploding with thousands of tiny, lighter-than-air bubbles.
He was happier than he ever remembered being in his life. He’d wanted to stay there in that bed forever. To hell with the needs of his bladder or his stomach’s demands. He’d lain there smiling, probably looking like some kind of besotted fool, and thought, This is all I ask. To wake up every morning with Kat in my bed. In my arms. He wouldn’t have called himself a praying man, but he thought maybe that’s what he was doing.
Inevitably, she’d woken up. She nuzzled him sleepily and his body hardened, but then she gave a little squeak at her first sight of the clock and leaped from bed, grumbling that she’d forgotten to set the alarm.
So much for staying there forever.
Tonight, he finished cleaning the kitchen and then watched the ten o’clock news before he went up. He hoped she had succeeded in contending with whatever mood had been gripping her this evening.
The bedroom was dark but for the bedside lamp. Kat had a couple of pillows piled behind her and was reading. He’d glanced at the book that morning. It seemed to be a compilation of essays on the peculiar joys of digging in the dirt and watching things grow.
When he came out of the bathroom, she’d set the book aside and restored one of the pillows to his side. She watched as he stripped his clothes off. He went around to his side and got in under the covers, unable to hide his arousal.
Kat rolled to face him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
He stroked her cheek. “For what?”
“Being difficult.”
“You’re not difficult.” He brushed his lips over her forehead, her temples, her cheeks. “You’re scared and mad. That’s not the same thing.”
He felt her stillness. After a moment, she said, “I guess I am.”
“I am, too,” he murmured. “I want you safe, Kat.”
“But I am when I’m with you.”
He lifted his head enough to give her a half smile. “You sure about that? I feel a little bit dangerous right now.”
Her mouth was curved, too, when it met his. One deep, drugging kiss later, she whispered, “Oh, I think I can handle some risks.”
He laughed. “I like the way you handle me, babe. Keep right on doing it.”
Her hand slid down his body and found its target. “As if I needed permission.”
Grant pretty well ran out of words after that, and if her sighs and moans were any indication, she did, too.
Half an hour later, as he edged toward sleep, he realized he was smiling again. Broadly. Idiotically.
GRANT HADN’T BEEN CRAZY about her going on her own, but Kat ignored him and drove to Skagit County the next day to visit RoozenGaarde, Tulip Town and a couple of smaller bulb farms. She liked to see for herself some of the new hybrids when they were in bloom. She was less inclined to carry ones that didn’t hold up to the incessant Northwest rain, for example.
She walked through display gardens, making notes in her catalogs. There was a new grape hyacinth with snow-white edging the traditional deep purple. She was seeing the late season daffodils now and the early tulips. She made a mental note to come again in a few weeks for the later tulips.The colors were spectacular, and not only in the display gardens. Driving here, she’d passed acres and acres of tulips in glorious bloom—fields of yellow and deep rose and scarlet. Even on a weekday like this, traffic on the narrow, two-lane c
ountry roads was slow, with so many cars pulled onto the shoulder so that the tourists could snap pictures. You couldn’t pay her enough to come up here on a weekend.
Usually, she’d feel refreshed by an outing like this. Today, Kat brooded.
Grant didn’t want to talk about the flack he had to be taking for planting himself so solidly and publicly at her side. He might shrug off the threat to his job, but she couldn’t. Not when it was her fault. It was her life that was a mess, not his. She couldn’t help thinking that none of this would be happening if she hadn’t stuck her head in the sand and refused to see that Hugh had the moral code and habits of a tomcat. She’d gambled so much on him when she married him, and for her, trusting someone was hard. Really hard. Then, she hadn’t been able to admit to herself how badly she’d screwed up. If she had…
She’d have left him. Somebody might still have killed him, but she wouldn’t be tangled up in it. Grant wouldn’t be stuck feeling he had to protect her whatever the cost to him.
It scared her, to think of him paying such a big price for her.
Everything she felt for him scared her. It was so huge, so out of her control. If she trusted him completely, one of two things would happen: either he’d let her down the way Hugh had, or he’d suffer on her behalf. Kat hated both ideas. Panic kept pressing on her rib cage. She’d realized she’d been staring at a bed of mixed tulips and hyacinths for several minutes without seeing it at all or even noticing the heady scent of the hyacinths.
What if she found somewhere else to stay? Someplace she’d be safe, so Grant didn’t have to worry?
Not Joan’s—she was married and her thirty-year-old daughter was home with two young children after a divorce. Kat ran through the few other possibilities, but really none of them were good enough friends she felt like she could ask such a huge favor. She could go to a hotel and change rooms every night like a spy on the run…but a determined enemy could follow her from the nursery.
If it wasn’t spring, she’d think about going to Hawaii for a couple of weeks, leaving the nursery in Joan’s competent hands. But it was spring, and she couldn’t possibly leave. They were getting busier by the day.
Bone Deep Page 18
