Thea Devine (23 page)

She felt a chill of recognition. Reese, of all people, had defined the thing that she hadn’t wanted to admit to herself. And more than that, she thought, she wanted a man to love.
She had a man she could love
.

Only she didn’t want the attachments that went along
with it.

“That’s very perceptive, Reese.”

“I care about you, Maggie.”

“I appreciate that.”

Appreciate it more, he thought while his lips said, “Give me a chance to love you,” and his engorged manhood reached for her.

Now he had said it, and at least she didn’t snap out an immediate rejection. He felt a rush of hope. When she finally looked as if she were about to speak, he held up his slightly shaking hand. “Don’t say anything now, Maggie.”

“I can’t let you …”

“Let me,” he rasped.

“Reese, it won’t—”

“It
could
.” His frustration level was rising now. How could it matter to her who was giving it to her?
How? She
couldn’t have feelings for that cowdog, damn her. He wouldn’t
let
her.

“I can’t talk to you.”

He wouldn’t beg her again, he thought. Now he would tell her. “I’m taking my chance, Maggie.”

“Fine.”

That was too cavalier, as if it didn’t matter. She was really something, he thought. He really did admire her disdain. He would have believed it if he didn’t
know
different. He felt a distinct urge to show her, right there, right then, and make her beg for him. An image of her that night blasted through his mind: her intimate sigh … he couldn’t get the moment out of his mind, didn’t want to, because he meant to repeat it sometime in the future with her, oh yes, her….

Chapter Fourteen

Sheriff Edson was waiting for her when she and Reese returned.

A feeling of foreboding settled in her gut. She felt the net pulling in around her, fractionally tighter, enough to scare her.

“Sheriff? What can I do for you?”

“Like to talk to you again, Maggie.”

“Fine. What would you like to know? Sit down.”

He sat where she indicated, by her worktable, and she sat opposite him and waited. Maybe it was better, she thought, not to have to respond to Reese’s heated looks and sulky manner right now. He was acting as though the sheriff had come by expressly to spoil the afternoon for
him
.

“Well, we gotta go over this again, Maggie. We can’t find a particle of a clue to lead us to A.J.’s murderer. I have to consider other theories that could fit the facts of what we do know.”

“And all you do know has come from me,” Maggie finished for him. She didn’t know what to think, what to do. And Reese was
hovering
, damn him.

“That’s right, Maggie.” He sounded regretful, and she felt a pang of gratitude for that. He wasn’t a stranger to
her, although he had come to town well after Maggie’s father had taken over
the Morning Call
. He didn’t want to accuse her of anything. He just needed to see the sense of her story, to understand where she was, what she was doing, and
if
she could have been anywhere else but where she had told him. “I hope you don’t mind going through it again.”

She shook her head. “Maybe it would help if you understood that A.J. used to come in every day practically at the crack of dawn, and that my schedule pretty well met his. That is, usually he would be here before me, and I would come down from the apartment at about six o’clock. There would be coffee—sometimes I would make it, but most times A.J. did—and we would start our day’s work before anyone arrived. That Saturday I was down earlier, and I was in the back room when I heard the key being inserted in the lock. And then I heard two shots, and I’m sure I was running in there before the second one was fired. It took me seconds to get in there—too late. He must have just opened the door because he was lying on the threshold as if the bullet had pushed him against it. There was blood everywhere. His head … well, you know.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d show me exactly where you were sitting that morning, Maggie.”

She took him into the back room to show him the type case and the tall stool on which she had daydreamed the morning away.

The sheriff sat in her chair. “About six in the morning, you say?”

She nodded.

“Came down early to …?”

“Think.” How could she tell him about what.

“Think. All right. So you are sitting here, you are having coffee? Having coffee and you are thinking.” He sat himself down on the stool as he considered her
actions, almost as if he were trying to put himself in her place, to imagine it as she had told it to him. “And then …?”

“I heard A.J.’s key.”

“Ah, the key. Yes. Now Maggie, would you very much mind going out to the front door and inserting your key?”

“No, not at all.” She stalked through the front office, telling everyone to be quiet, and she went outside, closed and locked the door, and then inserted her key and opened it. She did that twice and then she returned to the sheriff.

He looked doubtful. “I’m not sure I heard that, Maggie.”

“Well, of course it’s a lot noisier on the street now,” she pointed out, feeling a chill at his words.

“Who cleaned up the blood?”

“Dennis took care of it.”

“All right. You heard this key, you heard the shots, you ran with the first shot—let me time it. You run, Maggie.”

She took his place on the stool, and when he clapped his hands, she bolted off of it and dashed into the front room and stopped as if she could still see the body.

“Ten seconds, Maggie,” the sheriff said behind her. “Maybe.”

“He was shot from behind,” she said stiffly.

“Early in the morning, Maggie.
Early
in the morning.”

“Not by me. I don’t even own a gun.”

“Not even for protection? Dennis never insisted?”

“Never. I think he thought
he
would protect me.”

Edson allowed himself a faint smile. “Well, now, there’s this other explanation …”

“I know it. I supposedly hear him coming and run around front from the back door there, shoot him, and then duck back in here and pretend to discover
the body.”

“That’s the one. Care to try it, Maggie?”

“Fine,” she said shortly, taking her place on the stool again. He clapped, and she ran across the room, out the door, around the short side of the building, timed her acted shots, and ran back into the building, angry and out of breath. Insane and impossible. “And besides,” she added for good measure, “someone could have seen me.”

“Thirty seconds, Maggie, more or less. Not much time. Time for someone to forget he had seen you actually.”

“Only if you are determined to make me the prime suspect. Where is the gun then, Sheriff?”

“You tell me, Maggie.”

“There is no gun. I had no reason to want to kill A.J. I just loved him.”

“Frank’s man, Maggie. Maybe he’s a little resentful of Frank leaving him nothing and you getting everything. Maybe he’s pushing you a little too much …”

“A.J.?” she said incredulously. “You can’t twist the reality to fit the facts, Sheriff. A.J. loved it here. I loved him, I did not kill him, and if he had wanted
anything
, I would have given it to him, including a lot more money.”

“You say now,” the sheriff said complacently. “All right, Maggie. I have no more questions.”

“That’s good.” She escorted him to the door, a stormy expression on her face. “You can’t believe I would do anything to hurt A.J. after all these years.”

The sheriff saluted her grimly. “Someone did, Maggie. Someone did.”

By the time she dragged herself upstairs to go to bed she was exhausted. Reese had gone ahead of her, only after much importuning on her part, and she had had the feeling after he left that he had wanted her to coax him like that.

She did not need the burden of Reese’s touchy little demands right now. She didn’t want to have to prove that she recognized he had feelings for her. It was too wearing; it was like catering to the petulance of a child.

The net had been pulled tighter tonight. It seemed to her that the sheriff wanted to convince himself that only she could have fired the shots that killed A.J. It was appalling to her that he had made her reenact his fictitious version of events, and positively shocking how little time it would have taken to commit the murder.

… So little time that someone else had gotten away with it.

But why A.J.?
Why?

It was the question that accompanied her dreams every night. And sometimes she almost thought she would find the answer in her dreams too.

Logan pervaded her dreams too, always lamenting the lack of time, demanding to know if she didn’t mind that people were watching. Those dreams took place in a strange world where the passion only escalated no matter where they were and what they did, and in those dreams she never cared who was watching as long as she could have Logan’s caresses:

Come to the ranch, the Logan of her dreams this night said, and everyone around her clapped and agreed she should go to the ranch.

But then they can’t watch us, she protested, as if that were the most important of the things between them. I must have them watching us. Anywhere we want to go, anything we want to do, we have the freedom now. I can’t lose my freedom. I can’t lose the thing that drives me. I can’t lose you. I want
everything
.

The watchers began clapping rhythmically in a corner behind her. You have to make a choice. You have to make a choice.

Another burden pulling her down weighting her,
Logan’s weight, so welcome, so hot for her, and then gone. She clutched the darkness in this dream. I’ll make a choice, she swore. When I find A.J.’s murderer, I’ll make a choice … I’ll make a choice …

A crashing thump. A voice this time frantic: “
MAGGIE!
” followed by a jarring, smashing, splintering noise. She jolted awake to the smell of smoke and a fierce heat and Reese in her room, reaching blindly for her, grasping her hand as she choked on the smoke and reached for her robe. “Don’t take anything, Maggie. We’ve got to get out of here,
now!
”

She moved, pulling the robe behind her, following him by hanging onto his hand to the parlor, to the door to the outside stairs. She heard the crackle of flames below, felt the heat of the floor under her feet, heard the rush of the fire as it ate through the wood. “Oh my God,” she moaned, “the office …”

“
Maggie!
” he hissed urgently, throwing open the door. She ran to him and out the door onto the cold wooden staircase. “It could go any minute. Mother got out. Get down there now!”

“Oh my God, oh my God …” She scrambled down the stairs and onto the street. There was a crowd watching and a bell clanging somewhere in the distance, summoning the haphazard crew of fire volunteers.

They would be too late, she thought. The fire was suddenly everywhere, licking merrily through the windows and flaming up the wood. The office was burning, all the paper … Frank’s desk. Lord! Frank’s desk, the painting, the files, the worktables … She heaved a huge sigh and then became aware that onlookers were watching her.

In the glow of the fire she looked down at herself in her thin cotton gown and bare feet. The watchers! She became aware suddenly that she was clutching her robe. She threw it around her hastily, but their eyes watched
her. They knew who she was, and it was just like her dreams.

Reese came to her finally and watched it to the end with her, as the bucket brigade threw ineffectual little buckets of water anywhere they could and beat at the flames.

“It’s gone, Maggie,” he said finally, slipping his arm around her shoulders. She didn’t protest, and for a moment it was perfect. She was in her gown and her thin robe and she was totally his, needing him, needing a man just at that moment. “We’ll go to the hotel, Maggie. I already sent someone to make arrangements.”

She nodded, she couldn’t keep her eyes from that fearsome blaze, or bear to look at the watchers all around her.

“I can’t believe this,” she murmured. “My father bought the building and restructured it for the newspaper. And Frank …”

“Frank’s gone, the
Morning Call
is gone. Only we are here, Maggie, you and I.”

“I …” she started to say and stopped short. The sheriff was watching her and watching the building burn; she felt that chill again as he began walking toward her.

“Well now, Maggie.”

“Sheriff,” she whispered.

“Mighty convenient fire,” he said conversationally.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, Maggie. I’m hot on your tail and suddenly the building burns down? Evidence gone, things I hadn’t even thought to look for yet? Think about it, Maggie. It’s a mighty timely fire, wouldn’t you say?”

In the morning Dennis came to their suite of rooms, which consisted of a sitting room and three bedrooms all interconnected. He didn’t look pleased, and Maggie
wasn’t too happy either.

“Who is paying for this, and for how long, Maggie?” he asked her briskly, sitting himself at the table with a briefcase and a scad of legal papers. She sat across from him in her robe and nightgown, feeling acutely uncomfortable because she felt as though he were scolding a child.

“I have no clothes, Dennis,” she said stonily. “
They
have no clothes. They don’t have income. I do.”

“It’s not bottomless.”

“I grant you we don’t need a suite, but I assure you it helped a little in terms of getting us through the ordeal.”

“Fine. Just remember the cost. Management loved Frank but they never gave anyone a break, especially in times of distress. Have all the bills sent to me. And you sign that so that I have discretionary power to pay them.”

Maggie glanced at the paper. “I think not, Dennis. I’d rather tote up the totals myself.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be occupied with starting up again?” he asked, incredulous.

“I’m not sure, Dennis. The damned thing only burned down about twelve hours ago, I swear, I don’t know just
how
I feel.”

“All right. I’ll send over the dress lady, whatever her name is. We’ll get you some clothes and we’ll talk to the management. We’ll see what happens.”

“Thank you, Dennis. Could you order up some breakfast, too?”

“Anything you want, Maggie. I’m only your obedient servant, after all.”

That sounded bitter, she thought later as she drank her coffee sitting across from Reese. His mother was prostrate, he reported; they might even have to call in a doctor.

“Fine,” Maggie said. She thought she would rather say fine to anything today than having to make any decisions
but the most vital ones—like what to have for breakfast.

She felt as though everything had been wiped away. She had nothing, but she was not without resources. It was just that the thing that mattered the most was gone. She was exhausted and empty. She had nothing to do with her hands.

There wasn’t even a piece of paper or a pencil in the whole of this expensive suite.

“How is it that
you
have something to wear?” she asked Reese, suddenly aware that he was dressed in pants and a soft cotton shirt.

“I hadn’t undressed when I smelled the smoke,” he said briefly, picking up his cup of coffee and bringing it to his lips. He did like sitting across a table from Maggie this way, just as he had envisioned. The thin material of her nightclothes clung to her and her hair was a tumble of touchable curls, disheveled from a very restless sleep. “Don’t worry about the sheriff, Maggie. He just had to say that. It’s not an accusation. He’s fishing, and he doesn’t have a lick of bait.”

“Well, he isn’t baiting
you
,” Maggie said tartly, “so I’m afraid I can’t get too comfortable with your assurances. However, I do want to go back to the office sometime today with you.”