His Partner's Wife (26 page)

Last night he'd just stopped himself from saying something
to Natalie. Bad enough that he had to investigate under the table. But if he
was wrong—and he hoped like hell he was—John didn't want his partner ever to
know that any suspicion had even crossed his mind. Those kind of doubts weren't
something a man could forgive.

Using his cell phone during the drive to Natalie's, John put
out some tentative inquiries. He'd like to know how deep in debt Baxter was,
and especially whether he'd bought some goodies last year without waiting for
the cold cash to pay for them. Alternatively, had he been falling into debt for
years? Had he taken to spending Saturday nights at the tribal casino down the
road?

Or was he the stodgy guy he seemed, who put away ten percent
of his paycheck, regular as clockwork, into a retirement fund?

The calls, once made, couldn't be unmade. John only hoped
he'd chosen the right people to ask. Discreet people. Any ripple would tip off
a cop that he was being investigated.

Geoff was already there, pacing restlessly in the driveway.
"Damn it!" he exploded. "Where the hell have you been? Doing
your weekly grocery shop?"

"Just looking up Stuart's arrest records for more
ideas."

Baxter gave a disgusted grunt. "How are you going to
draw a line between A and B? We arrest people all the goddamn time. They don't
break into our houses hunting for something the minute they get out of the
pokey."

John unlocked the front door and let them into the quiet
house. Already the air felt musty, as if the place had been empty for too long.

"Maybe we've been jumping to conclusions," he said
mildly. "Who says he's looking for anything?"

"Huh?" Already at the door to the garage, Baxter
stared at him as if he were crazy. "Why'd he come back the second time if
he was done?"

"Could've left something behind the first time. Maybe
he likes revisiting murder sites. Maybe he was rooting around looking for
something likely to tie Natalie up with." None of which John believed, but
why not play devil's advocate?

Baxter wasn't interested in any half-baked theories. Shaking
his head in disgust, he headed into the garage. "You and I know there's
something here."

Actually, John didn't think there was. Or else they'd
already missed it, whatever it was. The dust in the back of the garage was too
thick, the cobwebs weighed down by years, not months. Gray dust clung to oily
parts of the carcass of a car that Stuart had apparently started to restore and
then lost interest in. Most of the cartons in the depths of the garage
contained the detritus from Stuart's mother, who had died ten, twelve years ago
of a heart attack that was an unheeded warning to her son.

"I'll bet Stuart never looked in these," John
commented after a wasted half hour. "This is minutes of garden club
meetings. Can you believe it?" Muttering under his breath, he hauled the
whole box out to a pile they would suggest Natalie recycle.

The middle-aged detective added another. "Tax returns
from the fifties. Looks like he moved his mom's stuff here intact. Probably
never had time to do anything with it."

John grunted. "He never had time to do anything with
his own crap. Lucky he didn't live to an old age. He'd have been one of those
coots who has to tunnel between towers of newspaper to get to the
bathroom."

"Or else he'd have made a fresh start somewhere on his
ill-gotten gains." Baxter's tone of irony didn't quite disguise something
else. Envy? Anger? Longing?

Or, John thought ruefully, was he tuning his own ears to
pick up waves that weren't there?

Instead of going back to work, Baxter blocked John's path,
his arms crossed. His tone was that of somebody starting an argument. "I
say we get into the safe-deposit box."

"Natalie says there's nothing unexpected there."

"Maybe her eyes aren't as sharp as ours."

John tried to hide his instinctive anger. Baxter was a cop,
and they were suspicious by nature. "You mean," he said mildly,
"she didn't notice half a dozen zeros in a bankbook?"

"Could be she doesn't know what a stock certificate
means. Or a little, bitty key to a storage locker."

"You really think that's likely?"

Face set in pugnacious lines, Baxter said, "Could be
she did see those zeroes."

John gave himself a minute, until the red haze cleared.
"She's your friend, too."

"We were both friends with Stuart." The big cop
shrugged. "Kind of makes you wonder how much you can trust your gut,
doesn't it?"

Oh, yeah. It did. Having your judgment prove to be so wrong
did set a guy to thinking. Things that weren't so pretty, like whether a cop
might have murdered a man for one reason only: so that he'd have the right and
even the duty to search a house for something he was personally seeking.

Something like his share of a half-a-million-dollar take.
Hell, no, not his share anymore—the whole garbanzo.

But then Baxter undercut him by giving a heavy sigh and
running a hand over his balding head. "What the hell am I saying? Natalie
Reed? I can't see it. Tell you the truth, I don't know what Stuart did to
deserve her. I always did wonder. No, I don't think she saw all those zeroes. I
just figure … a fresh eye…" He grimaced.

"And you're right, too." Easy to be generous when
a man felt guilty as hell. "I'm being defensive, and I know better."

His partner raised his brows. "You want to talk to
her?"

"I don't think she'll have a problem with it. I'll try
to set it up for tomorrow."

Baxter nodded and looked reluctantly toward the depths of
the garage. "I suppose we'd better get back to it."

"Hey." John slapped him on the back. "Look at
it this way. Maybe his mom had a jewelry box full of pearls and diamonds. If
Stuart never looked…"

Baxter's dour face creased into what might have been the
start of a grin. "What? We'll sell them and run away to Jamaica?"

"I was thinking the Riviera. Maybe the hills of Tuscany."

Det. Baxter finally did smile, a rusty twitch of the mouth.
Stretching, he said, "In that case, we'd better get back to work."

He walked in the door
to find
his mother, both brothers, Natalie and his kids all hanging out in the kitchen.
Natalie looked incredibly good in a V-necked sweater the color of a ripe
Italian plum over snug jeans and clogs.

He didn't have a chance to linger on his appraisal or the
faint flush that pinkened her cheeks, because his mother bent a critical look
on him.

"What
have
you been in?"

Natalie made a face. "My garage, I'm afraid."

"You should be afraid," John muttered.

Connor cuffed him. "Don't talk bad to the lady."

"The lady has stolen goods in her garage." He
didn't wait long enough to let her get scared. "All the records from the
Port Dare Garden Club."

His mother started. "Treasurer's reports?
Minutes?"

"Every one of them."

"Well." She appeared bemused. "I know there
are some missing years. Nobody seemed to quite know where they'd disappeared
to."

"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…"