The Homecoming (13 page)
Authors: JoAnn Ross
He stood in the doorway, blocking the entry. “I believe she’s sleeping.”
“Then perhaps you could wake her?” It was not a request, and they both knew it. Kara also knew that legally Gerald could refuse her entrance to his home. But she doubted he’d want to take things that far.
She was right.
“Of course.” He stepped aside and waved them into the two-story foyer. The floor was a flow of white marble; oil paintings hung on gold silk-draped walls. “Wait here,” he instructed them. “I’ll go get her.”
“Wow,” Kyle said, looking up at a chandelier the size of a Volkswagen that hung from a ceiling painted with a fresco of the historic Shelter Bay Gerald’s ancestors had settled. “These are some digs.”
“I wouldn’t want to be the one who had to clean all those crystals,” Kara said.
Margaret Gardner approached dressed in an ice blue silk robe, which backed up Gerald’s story about her having at least been getting ready for bed. She was carrying a glass of red wine.
The blotchy red mark on the side of her face suggested she’d been the one to call 911.
“Mrs. Gardner.” They’d met just last week, when the woman had headed up a fund- raiser for domestic violence victims. Which now had Kara wondering if her decision to volunteer had been based on personal experience. “As I told your husband, we received a call regarding a situation here at your home.”
“That was a mistake.” She weaved a bit on the satin-heeled mules that matched the robe. “Gerald and I had an argument.”
“May I ask what it was about?” Kara asked carefully.
“Cars,” Gerald answered before his wife had a chance to respond.
“Cars?”
“Margaret has her heart set on a BMW convertible as a wedding gift.”
“My first car was a BMW,” she explained. “Daddy bought it for me for my sixteenth birthday.” She shot her husband a sharp look. “He appreciated German craftsmanship.”
Gerald flushed at that, making Kara wonder how often he found himself being compared to his wife’s father. Who, she remembered, was some über-wealthy stockbroker in Portland.
“I tried to explain how it would be inappropriate for us to drive a vehicle I don’t sell,” he said. “Especially a foreign one.”
“I see.” Kara turned back to his wife. “Did this argument become physical?”
“Of course not.” Margaret lifted her chin. “Surely you’re not suggesting we’d come to blows over something so trivial? Not that there’s anything trivial about having a car that fits our status,” she couldn’t help telling her husband.
“Yet you called nine- one-one,” Kara pressed on. “And spoke to my dispatcher.”
“Oh, that.” She waved the glass, causing a bit of burgundy wine to slosh onto the snowy floor. “That was an unfortunate mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“I was angry at Gerald. And I’ll admit to perhaps having a bit too much wine. So when he said buying me a foreign car would be professionally embarrassing for him, I decided to show him how real embarrassment would feel.”
“The nine-one-one system wasn’t created as a vehicle to punish spouses,” Kara pointed out, “but to protect.”
“I realize that.” Margaret’s lips turned down in a moue. “And I apologize.”
“We’ll be writing a check for a generous contribution to the department first thing in the morning,” Gerald assured her.
“That’s not necessary.” It irked her that he thought she’d take a bribe. But she kept her expression, and her tone, professionally smooth. “But I do have one more question.” She turned back toward his wife. “May I ask how you got that mark on your face?”
“My face?” The woman raised a hand laden with a diamond the size of Alaska to her cheek. “Oh, now, that’s truly embarrassing. I’m afraid, as our argument progressed, I had a bit too much to drink. When I decided to go to bed—alone”—she shot Gerald another look—“I stumbled over the cedar trunk at the bottom of our bed and hit my face on the wooden bedpost.”
Every instinct Kara possessed told her it was a lie. She’d seen too many cases where wives, for varying reasons, backed up an abusing spouse.
She decided to try again. “You’re sure that’s what happened.”
“Absolutely.” Margaret Gardner’s eyes widened. “Surely you don’t suspect Gerald of striking me?”
“We’re here because you called nine- one-one,” Kara reminded her yet again. “The mark on your face would suggest that could be a possibility.”
“My husband may be unreasonable. But he’d never strike anyone.” She shook her expertly streaked ash blond head. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. The call was unfortunate. I’ve learned my lesson and I honestly apologize for causing you and your deputy to come out here.”
There was nothing Kara could do. This time. She truly hoped there wouldn’t be another.
“They were playing us, weren’t they?” Kyle asked as they walked back out to their cars. “Mrs. Gardner just wanted to get back at her husband.”
“It could’ve gone down like she said,” Kara allowed.
“But you don’t think so?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“But you’re going to write it up.”
“You bet.” The days of cops giving such calls a pass were, she hoped, long over. “So, if Gerald does turn out to be an abusive husband, at least his wife will have a record of this call.”
“That sucks if she lied for him.”
“One thing you learn in this job,” she said, “is that you can’t fix everything.”
“I know that. But it still sucks.”
Kara couldn’t disagree.
14
“Oh, my God!” Kara put her hand above her eyes, as if blocking out the morning’s bright early-June sun. “I think I’ve just been blinded for life by the dazzle that would be a Navy SEAL in dress whites.”
“Very funny,” Sax drawled as he sauntered into her office the morning after the discovery of the skull with a sexy, easy-hipped stride that would have any woman with blood still running in her veins wanting to scoop him up with a chip. “And putting on these choker whites I never intended to wear again wasn’t exactly my idea.”
Kara reached into her top drawer and took out her shades—partly to play along with the blinding metaphor, but also to keep him from seeing the out-and-out lust that had to be flashing in her eyes like the light bar at the top of her patrol car.
“Funny. I have a problem envisioning anyone forcing you to do anything you don’t want to.”
“It was the parade committee’s idea,” he muttered, throwing his body into a wooden chair on the visitor’s side of the desk. “When I reluctantly agreed to go along with this cockamamie parade, I’d planned to wear my cammies. But then the whole thing escalated into a big deal and the damn committee and, God help me, my mother started pushing for the whites.”
“The town wants a hero.”
“I’m no hero.”
“So you keep saying. But nevertheless, to paraphrase a certain politician, you’ve got to hold a parade with the hero you’ve got. Who would be you. So you’ve got to expect them to go full-out. Besides, during tough times, something like this celebration gives everyone something to smile about.”
“Everyone but the guy stuck in the damn convertible waving to the crowd and feeling like a fool.” He ran his finger around the high, tight collar, which, perversely, had her wanting to lick his tanned neck. “I even tried to get the guys down at the VFW hall to back me up.”
“I take it from your scowl and the fact that you’re not wearing cammies—which, by the way, wouldn’t be any big deal around here, since just about every male wears them for hunting, fishing, and even mowing the lawn—they backed the parade committee instead.”
“Got it in one.”
He looked surly and hot. Kara reminded herself that she’d never been attracted to bad boys. But that didn’t prevent the flutter behind her sternum.
“You’re still the grand marshal,” she reminded him. “The reason for the parade in the first place. So I’d imagine that if you decided to show up in a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops, looking like an escapee from Margaritaville, no one would do anything about it.”
“That’s probably true enough.”
He sighed heavily. Stretched out his long legs while spreading them in a way that drew her eyes to an impressive package she had no business checking out.
“So?” she asked through lips that had gone ridiculously dry. She was about to lick them, then realized, just in time, that he’d undoubtedly take it as a come-on. “If you’ve already got an excuse not to wear it, why, then, are you decked out in that Harm Rabb JAG uniform?”
“Did you not hear me when I said my mother wanted me to look like the Good Humor man?”
“Oh.” The flutter behind her sternum warmed dangerously. “You’re making the grand sacrifice for your mom. That’s sweet.”
He dragged both hands down his face. When she imagined those long, dark fingers cupping her breasts, playing with her nipples—which seemed to have taken on a mind of their own, pressing like pebbles against the front of her uniform—the warmth slid lower, into the pit of Kara’s stomach.
“It is what it is,” he muttered. Then he sighed heavily in a way that lifted his chest, which bore an impressive display of ribbons and medals.
“You’ve been busy since you left town,” she said. Jared had earned his share of campaign ribbons and medals, but not nearly as many as these.
Sax glanced down at the colorful military fruit salad. “Yeah. I even won best of show.” Humor burst like sunshine through the stormy irritation in his eyes.
She laughed, grateful for the change in mood while at the same time unsettled that she found him even more dangerous when he was smiling.
“They say,” she said, feeling at ease with him again, in much the same way she had when Jared had essentially handed her over to him for safekeeping, “that a woman can always tell how a man’s going to treat his wife by watching how he treats his mother.”
A dark brow arched as he looked at her, the intensity in his eyes not just due to their color, but frankly sexual interest. “You thinking about asking me to marry you?”
“Of course not.” She felt the color burning in her cheeks. Which was ridiculous. The one thing she’d inherited from her mother was her absolute inability to blush. “It was merely a statement.”
Channeling her cool-as-a-cucumber mother, she took off the dark glasses, leaned back in her chair, and crossed her legs. Even though he couldn’t see them behind the desk, for some insane reason she was wishing she were wearing something other than these ugly khaki pants.
“So, since apparently you didn’t come here this morning to bring me a Fudgsicle, I take it you’re here about the discovery on your beach.”
“It’s a public beach,” he reminded her. “But yeah.” He reached into a pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “Cait McKade’s interested. And she figured that, rather than talk to me, then have me talk to you, then go back around again, it would be more efficient if you just called her directly. So here’s her number.”
He leaned forward, invading her space to hand it to her. When she took the paper, their fingers brushed, causing a spark of electricity that had her nearly pulling her hand away.
“Thanks. I really appreciate this.” Had he noticed? Or had the reaction been solely on her part?
Sax had noticed. And damned if it hadn’t felt like someone had touched a bare, hot wire to his fingers. The way her eyes had widened—just for a brief second, but long enough to give her away—Sax realized she felt it, too.
“No problem,” he said. “I hear you’re looking at some cold cases.”
She angled her chin. Narrowed those expressive eyes. He wouldn’t have guessed a cop would allow her feelings to show so easily. Then again, maybe he’d just gotten around her shields.
Sax liked that idea. A lot.
“And where did you hear I was looking into cold cases?”
“This morning, at the Grateful Bread, when I dropped in for breakfast.” He shrugged. “It appears our pieces of skeleton are topic one on the gossip line. Even topping speculation that Brad Pitt and Angelina are going to be making themselves a movie here.”
“And wouldn’t that just make my day. I can’t imagine what the security for such an event would involve. . .
“As for the cold case topic, John O’Roarke eats at the Grateful Bread every morning. But he wouldn’t have said anything about it.”
“When it came up, he neither confirmed nor denied.”
“And Maude always brings yogurt from home. So it wasn’t likely she’d be there.”
“Wasn’t this morning.”
“So how did the word get out?”
“Then it’s true?”
“Not really. Well, I intend to, since it’s a logical thing to do, especially since Maude said my father was looking into cold cases before he died and—”
“He was?”
“Apparently. But his records are a mess. I tried wading through the box last night, but Trey was having a Friday-night sleepover, and between the manic, crazy blare of Wii Mario Kart racing and the constant need for refueling the players, who appeared to have developed tapeworms, I didn’t get a chance to sort them all out.”
She shrugged as she stood up. “Want some coffee?”
“I wouldn’t turn it down.”
“Black?”
He nodded. Although she appeared to be a cop through and through, the sway of her hips as she crossed the room revealed a woman beneath that starched uniform. A woman with one hell of a nice ass. “No sugar.”
“Besides,” Kara said as she poured the coffee into one of the extra mugs, refilled her own, and stirred in two yellow packets, “it’s not as if our John or Jane Doe hasn’t been dead for a while. Another day probably won’t make that much difference.”
“Probably won’t. Thanks.” As he took the coffee she handed him, his eyes skimmed to the gun at her hip. “That’s loaded, right?”
“This may be Mayberry on the bay, but I’m not Barney Fife. Of course it’s loaded. Why?”
“I was just thinking about your dad. And how he died.”
“What does that have to do with . . .” Her voice trailed off as his words sank in. “Surely you’re not suggesting his shooting death might not have been an accident?”
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