Dark Paradise (33 page)

Bars. The thread that bound them as brothers had always been strained as

their parents had pulled them in opposite directions. What if it broke?

What would he feel?
 
Relief?

"He won't," Tucker said with more conviction than he felt. He stepped

back from the fence, spat, and wiped his chin on the sleeve of his

shirt. "He won't. He's a Rafferty.

"You oughta get some sleep, son," he ordered.

He moved off toward the house, his gait the pained shuffle of an old

cowboy. J.D. stayed at the fence, knowing he would feel more peace with

the horses than he would in his bed. In his bed his thoughts would drift

toward Marilee and dangerous longings for things he could never have.

He turned toward Bryce's place, imagining that he could catch snatches

of music on the wind. She was there tonight, drinking Bryce's champagne

and laughing at his jokes. She was one of them, which quite simply meant

she could never be anything more to him than temptation.

Too bad. On nights like this one it would have been nice to have someone

to rub his shoulders and share his concerns, warm his bed and ease his

needs. And the taste of Marilee Jennings lingered in his mouth, and the

feel of her lingered against him. On nights like this one, when dawn

seemed a long way off, temptation was damn hard to resist.

Will sat on the back steps of the little house he had once shared with

his wife. Ex-wife. Ex-wife. The word still pulsed in his brain. The moon

was up, shining down on the fenced backyard. Rascal had been busy

excavating.

The place looked like the site of a treasure hunt. The pup lay on the

steps beside him with his big head on his big clumsy paws, twitching as

he dreamed puppy dreams.

The house behind them was dark and empty. Sam had gone once. She'd

gotten a taste of life on Mount Olympus and abandoned it. Will wondered

if she would ever come

"What's she got to come back to, Willie-boy?" he asked, Jack Daniel's

turning his speech to a molasses drawl. The bottle stood between his

booted feet, empty.

He wasn't drunk. He couldn't seem to get drunk tonight.

The liquor couldn't penetrate the fear, it only slowed down time, an

ugly trick. He didn't want more time to think. His thoughts ran around

and around, like a pup chasing its tail.

He didn't want a wife. Marriage was a prison sentence.

He'd seen that growing up. His father had sentenced his mother to a life

she'd grown tired of, then held on to her anyway. Marriage was stupid.

He'd thought so all along.

People should be free to move in and out of relationships as the tides

of attraction dictated. No ties, no guilt, no hard feelings.

So why did you marry Sam in the first place, Willie boy?

And why did that word stab at his chest like a dagger?

Ex-wife. Ex-wife. Ex-wife.

And why did he sit there feeling so damn scared and so damn lonely when

the moon was bright and the night was fragrant with the perfume of other

women?

Because you love her, stupid.

"You screwed up again, Willie-boy," he whispered as two tears swam over

his lashes and streaked down his face.

Marilee woke in the Adirondack chair as the first hint of morning turned

the sky a pearly gray.

Every part of her hurt from sleeping out in the cool damp night in an

unnatural position. She struggled up out of the chair and slumped around

the deck like Quasimodo, trying to work the kinks out, snagging the feet

of her convenience store nylons on the wood planks of the deck.

Her head was pounding from the French cigarettes and from the dreams

that had wrecked what little sleep she'd gotten. The images had slammed

around inside her head, screaming to get out, never finding the door,

never lining up neatly the way she wanted them to so that she could make

sense of all the dark clues and sinister feelings.

She leaned against the back of the chair and groaned, bringing a fist up

to rub her eyes and push her hair back.

Still clutched in her fist was the letter Lucy had left behind for her.

Unable to face it before coffee, she tucked it under the base of the

dew-covered peanut tin and went inside.

While she heated water on the stove for instant caffeine, she went into

the powder room off the kitchen and went through an abbreviated version

of her usual morning routine, trying not to look at herself in the

mirror.

But like driving by a car wreck, morbid curiosity got the better of her

and she chanced a glance, gasping in horror at the reflection. Her eyes

were shot through with jagged bolts of red and underlined with raccoon

rings of mascara. Rummaging through the small medicine cabinet, she

found a bottle of Murine and a jar of petroleum jelly and did her best

to repair the damage.

In Lucy's bedroom, where the aftermath of the vandals had yet to be

cleared away, Marilee dug through the rubble for something fresh to

wear. The mattress had been torn off the bed and slit open. A table lamp

had apparently been hurled into the large beveled glass mirror that hung

above the dresser. Clothing spewed out of open dresser drawers and

trailed across the floor from the closet, blouses and dresses lying on

the carpet with sleeves bent at strange angles, looking like inanimate

casualties. The only piece of glass intact in the room was a goldfish

bowl on the nightstand that was half full of condom packets.

Marilee pretended there was no mess. She ignored the condoms and the

statement they made about Lucy's lifestyle and went in search of

something to wear, digging up clean underwear, jeans, a T-shirt from

Mazatlan, and a neon-orange sweatshirt with an enormous, raised hot pink

outline of a woman's lips slanting across the front.

Coffee in hand, she went back out to the deck and lit the last of the

Gauloises. As sweet smoke curled up from the end of it, she picked up

the letter and studied it again. We all have our calling in life. . . .

Mine was being a thorn in wealthy paws. . . . It got me where you are

today. Or did it get me where I am?

The lines had made no sense at all when she had first read the letter.

Now her attention horned in on two sentences: It got me where you are

today. Or did it get me where I am?

Where you are today - the ranch. Or did it get me where I am - dead.

Marilee bit her lip as she sifted through the possibilities, each one

uglier than the last. Her heart picked up a beat and then another.

Caffeine, she told herself. Nicotine. Or the chance that Lucy had

foreseen her own murder.

Murder. She couldn't think of the word without seeing blood, without

seeing the photos from Sheriff Quinn's file. Lucy's lifeless body lying

in the grass, a hole blown through her.

Lucy knew things she shouldn't have about people with power, people with

money. The summer she had been sleeping with judge Townsend, he had

brought her to Montana for a weekend. She told Marilee that was how she

found her little ranch. Her hideout.

Outlaws had hideouts. Outlaws got shot.

Dr. Sheffield claimed he hadn't seen her. What if he had?
 
What if Lucy

had known something she shouldn't have about him?
 
What if the tears

he'd spilled at the hearing hadn't been from abject grief, but abject

guilt?

She stared down at the peanut tin, acutely aware of the expensive log

house behind her and the priceless land that stretched out before her,

of the llamas and the Range Rover, the pricey clothes strewn across the

floor of the bedroom, and the lavish lifestyle.

Lucy knew things she shouldn't have known about people with money and

power. Lucy was dead.

Marilee folded the note and tapped it against her pursed lips. She had

to see where the shooting had happened, to see for herself if it could

have been an accident. And she had to talk to the man who had found the

body - Del Rafferty - J.D. or no J.D.

By noon Marilee and Clyde were headed up the mountain, map in hand, for

all the good it would do her. Sheriff Quinn had drawn it on the back of

an old Burger King wrapper, scrawling instructions such as "bear left at

the blue rock" and "head north at the dead cow." Marilee figured she

would be lucky if she didn't end up in Canada.

The sheriff's words regarding Del Rafferty had been less than

encouraging. "You won't find him unless he wants you to, which he won't.

He don't take to strangers."

Marilee tried not to dwell on J.D.'s claim that his uncle could shoot

the balls off a mouse at two hundred yards

The higher they climbed up the side of the mountain, the more nervous

she became. The terrain was rugged, the trail obscure. The scenery might

have taken her breath away if she hadn't been too preoccupied to notice

it. Fragrant, shaded pine forests gave way to beautiful meadows, which

gave way to more forest. All of it high up and up, hurling itself at the

huge Montana sky. All Marilee could think was that the Lucy she had

known would never have taken the time to bruise her butt in this

godforsaken saddle, riding a mule halfway up the side of a mountain.

Never - unless there was something major in it for her.

Maybe she had come to rendezvous with Sheffield for a liaison. But why

here, when there were a million easier private places to get to?

"Too bad you can't talk, Clyde," she said to the mule, stroking his

slick warm neck. "You could tell me exactly what happened. Maybe we

should get M.E. Fralick to help us. She could probably hang some

crystals on you and commune with you on a psychic plane."

Clyde glanced back at her, a cynical look in his eyes, long ears

wiggling as a deer fly buzzed around them.

They stood at the edge of a clearing, resting. Marilee had let the mule

take a drink from the stream they had pretty much followed up the

mountain. Now she let him bury his nose in the clover for a moment, the

reins sliding through her fingers. She longed to climb down and stretch

her legs, but she was already stiff and sore from her ride to the Stars

and Bars the day before, and she was afraid if she got off, she may not

be able to get back on.

Overhead, gray clouds were rumbling across the sky like bloated sponges,

filling up the blue bowl, shutting out the sun. Great. They were a

zillion miles from home, and now it was going to rain. Consulting the

map, she tried to discern where they were while ignoring her stomach's

growls at the aroma of cheeseburger that clung to the paper.

She was fairly confident about having passed the blue rock, but the dead

cow was another matter. They had come across a scattered pile of

bleached bones, but she wasn't exactly an expert on the skeletal remains

of farm animals.

"It might have been a cow," she muttered. "Or we might be totally lost."

Clyde's head came up suddenly and the mule jumped forward, gathering his

muscular body beneath him, ready to bolt and run. The map flew out of

Marilee's hands as she scrambled to keep her seat and haul in the reins,

and the rattling paper further served to frighten the mule, who leapt

ahead another ten feet. Across the clearing, a pair of whitetail deer

bolted in unison and glided away into the cover of the forest.

Marilee pulled the mule around in a galloping circle, her heart in her

throat, every muscle tensed. Stay on, stay on, stay on!
 
The words

chanted through her mind a hundred miles an hour as she fought for

control of her mount. If she fell and Clyde took off, it was a hell of a

long walk back. Of course, if she fell and broke her neck, she wouldn't

have to worry about walking.

The mule came in hand and stopped, his head still high, his body