Boss Man

Unexpectedly, he reached out and pushed back a long strand of black hair that had escaped her braid. He tugged it behind her ear, his gaze intent and solemn as he watched her heartbeat race at her bodice. He heard her breath catch at the faint contact. He felt guilty. He could have been kinder to Violet. She had enough on her plate just with her mother to care for. She cared about him. She’d shown it, in so many ways, when she worked with him. He hadn’t wanted to encourage her, or give her false hope. But she looked so miserable.

“Take care of yourself,” he said quietly.

She swallowed, hard. “Yes, sir. You, too.”

He moved aside to let her pass. As she went by, a faint scent of roses drifted up into his nostrils. Amazing how much he missed that scent around his office. Violet had become almost like a stick of furniture in the past year, she was so familiar. But at the same time, he was aware of an odd, tender nurturing of himself that he’d never had in his adult life. Violet made him think of open fireplaces in winter, of warm lamplight in the darkness. Her absence had only served to make him realize how alone he was.

She walked on to the mail slots, unaware of his long, aching stare at her back. By the time she finished her chore, he was already out the door and climbing into his Mercedes.

Violet watched him drive away before she opened the door of the post office and went outside. It was starting to rain. She’d get wet, but she didn’t care. The odd, tender encounter made her head spin with pleasure. It would be a kind thought to brighten her lonely life.

There was a lot of talk around town about Janet Collins. She’d gone missing and Libby and Curt were the subject of a lot of gossip. Jordan Powell had been seen with Libby, but nobody took that seriously. He was also seen with old Senator Merrill’s daughter, Julie, doing the social rounds. Violet wondered if Libby felt the rejection as much as Violet felt it over Kemp. Her co-worker had a flaming crush on Jordan in recent weeks, but it seemed the feeling wasn’t reciprocated.

Violet’s mother seemed to be weakening as the days passed. It was hard for Violet to work and not worry about her. She’d started going back to the gym on her way home from work three days a week, but it was only for a half hour at a time. She’d splurged on a cell phone and she kept it with her all the time now, just in case there was ever an emergency when she wasn’t home. Her mother had a hot button on the new phone at home, too, so that she could push it and speed-dial Violet.

She had her long hair trimmed and frosted, and she actually asked a local boutique owner for tips on how to make the most of her full figure. She learned that lower cut blouses helped to diminish a full bosom. She also learned that a longer jacket flattered wide hips, and that straight lines made her look taller. She experimented with hairstyles until she found one that flattered her full face, and with makeup until she learned how to use it so that it looked natural. She was changing, growing, maturing, slimming. But all of it was a means to an end, as much as she hated to admit it. She wanted Blake Kemp to miss her, want her, ache for her when he looked at her. It was a hopeless dream, but she couldn’t let go of it.

Kemp, meanwhile, spent far too much time at his home thinking about ways and means to get Violet to come back.

He stretched out on his burgundy leather couch to watch the Weather Channel with his two female Siamese cats, Mee and Yow, curled against his chest. Mee, a big seal-point, rarely cuddled with him. Yow, a blue-point, was in his lap the minute he sat down. He felt a kinship with the cats, who had become his family. They sat with him while he watched television at night. They curled up on the big oak desk when he worked there at his computer. Late at night, they climbed under the covers on either side of him and purred him to sleep.

The Harts thought his cat mania was a little overdone. But, then, they weren’t really cat people, except for Cag and Tess. Their cats were mostly strays. Mee and Yow, on the other hand, were purebred. Blake had brought both of them home with him together from a pet store, where they’d been in cages behind glass for weeks, the last products of a cattery that had gone bankrupt. He’d felt sorry for them. More than likely, he told himself, they’d set him up. Cats were masters of the subtle suggestion. It was amazing how a fat, healthy cat could present itself as an emaciated, starving orphan. They were still playing mind tricks on him after four years of co-existence. It still worked, too.

He thought about Violet and her mother, and remembered that the elderly Mrs. Hardy was allergic to fur. Violet loved animals. She kept little figurines of cats on her desk. He’d never asked her to his home, but he was certain that she’d love his cats. He imagined she’d have Duke Wright bringing calves right up to the porch for her to pet.

His eyes flashed at the thought of Violet getting involved with the other man. Wright was bitter over the divorce and the custody suit his wife had brought against him. He blamed Kemp for it, but Kemp was only doing what any other attorney would have done in his place. If the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Wright was as happy as she seemed in that high-powered property law job she held in New York City, she wasn’t likely to ever come home. She loved the little boy as much as Duke did, and she felt it was better not to have him dangling between two parents. Kemp didn’t agree. A child had two parents. It would only lead to grief to deny access to either of them.

He shook his head. What a pity that people had children before they thought about the consequences. They never improved a bad marriage. Kemp’s clientele shot that truth home every time he handled a divorce case. The children were always the ones who suffered most.

Beka Wright had never admitted it, and Kemp never pried, but local gossip had it that Duke had deliberately hidden her birth control pills at a critical time, hoping that a baby would cure her of ambition. It hadn’t. He was an overbearing sort of man, who expected a woman to do exactly what he told her to do. His father had been the same, a domineering autocrat whose poor wife had walked in a cold rain with pneumonia while he was out of town one January weekend in a last, fatal attempt to escape him. Death had spared her further abuse. Duke had grown up with that same autocratic attitude and assumed that it was the way a normal man dealt with his wife. He was learning to his cost that marriage meant compromise.

Blake looked around at his house with its Western motifs, burgundy leather mingling with dark oak and cherry wood furniture. The carpet and the curtains were earth tones. He enjoyed a quiet atmosphere after the turmoil of his working life. But he wondered what a woman would do with the décor.

Mee curled her claws into his arm. He winced, and moved them. She was sound asleep, but when she felt his hand on her, she snuggled closer and started purring.

He laughed softly. No, he wasn’t the marrying sort. He was a gourmet cook. He did his own laundry and housework. He could sew on a button or make a bed. Like most other ex-special forces officers, he was independent and self-sufficient. A veteran of the first war with Iraq, he mustered out with the rank of captain. He’d been in the Army reserves after he graduated from law school and started practicing in Jacobsville, and his unit had been called up. He and Cag Hart had served in the same mechanized division. Few people knew that, because he and Cag didn’t talk much about the missions they’d shared. It forged bonds that noncombatants could not understand.

He reached for the remote control and changed the channel. He paused on the Weather Channel to see when the rain was going to stop, and then went on to the History channel, where he spent most of his free time in the evenings. He often thought that if he ever came across a woman who enjoyed military history, he might be coaxed into rejoining the social scene.

But then he remembered the woman he’d lost, and the ache started all over again. He turned up the volume and leaned back, his mind shifting to the recounting of Alexander the Great’s final successful campaign against the Persian king Darius in 331 B.C. at Gaugemela.

Violet was late getting home the following Friday. She’d stopped by the gym and then remembered that there was no milk in the house. She’d gone by the grocery store as well. When she pulled up into the driveway of the small, rickety rental house, she found her mother sitting on the ground beside the small flower garden at the porch steps. Mrs. Hardy wasn’t moving.

Panicking, Violet jumped out of her car without bothering to close the door, and ran toward her parent.

“Mama!” she screamed.

Her mother jerked, just faintly. Her blue eyes were startled as she turned her head and looked at her daughter. She was breathing heavily. But she laughed. “Darling, it’s all right!” she said at once. “I just got winded, that’s all! I’m all right!”

Violet knelt beside her. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. Her face was white. She was shaking.

“Oh, baby.” Mrs. Hardy winced as she reached out and cuddled Violet close, whispering soft endearments. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wanted to weed my flower bed and put out those little seedlings I’d grown in the kitchen window. I just worked a little too hard, that’s all. See? I’m fine.”

Violet pulled back, terrified. Her mother was all she had in the world. She loved her so much. How would she go on living if she lost her mother? That fear was written all over her.

Mrs. Hardy winced when she saw it. She hugged Violet close. “Violet,” she said sadly, “one day you’ll have to let me go. You know that.”

“I’m not ready yet,” Violet sobbed.

Mrs. Hardy sighed. She kissed Violet’s dark hair. “I know,” she murmured, her eyes faraway as they looked toward the horizon. “Neither am I.”

Later, as they sat over bowls of hot soup and fresh corn bread, Mrs. Hardy studied her daughter with concern.

“Violet, are you sure you’re happy working at Duke Wright’s place?” she asked.

“Of course I am,” Violet said stolidly.

“I think Mr. Kemp would like it if you went back to work with him.”

Violet stared at her with her spoonful of soup in midair. “Why would you say that, Mama?”

“Mabel, who works at your office, stopped by to see me at lunch. She says Mr. Kemp is so moody they can hardly work with him anymore. She said she thinks he misses you.”

Violet’s heart jumped. “That wasn’t how he sounded when I ran into him in the post office the other day,” she said. “But he was acting…oddly.”

The older woman smiled over her soup spoon. “Often men don’t know what they want until they lose it.”

“Bring on the day.” Violet laughed softly.

“So, dear, back to my first question. Do you like your new job?”

She nodded. “It’s challenging. I don’t have to deal with sad, angry, miserable people whose lives are in pieces. You know, I didn’t realize until I changed jobs how depressing it is to work in a law office. You see such tragedies.”

“I suppose cattle are a lot different.”

“There’s just so much to learn,” Violet agreed. “It’s so complex. There are so many factors that produce good beef. I thought it was only a matter of putting bulls and heifers in the same pasture and letting nature do its work.”

“It isn’t?” her mother asked, curious.

Violet grinned. “Want to know how it works?”

“Yes, indeed.”

So Violet spent the next half hour walking her mother, hypothetically speaking, through the steps involved in creating designer beef.

“Well!” the elderly woman exclaimed. “It isn’t simple at all.”

“No, it isn’t. The records are so complicated…”

The sudden ringing of the telephone interrupted Violet. She frowned. “It’s probably another telemarketer,” she muttered. “I wish we could afford one of those new answering machines and caller ID.”

“One day a millionaire will walk in the front door carrying a glass slipper and an engagement ring,” Mrs. Hardy ventured with a mischievous glance.

Violet laughed as she got up and went to answer the phone. “Hardy residence,” she said in her light, friendly tone.

“Violet?”

It was Kemp! She had to catch her breath before she could even answer him. “Yes, sir?” she stammered.

He hesitated. “I have to talk to you and your mother. It’s important. May I come over?”

Violet’s mind raced. The house was a mess. She was a mess. She was wearing jeans and a shirt that didn’t fit. Her hair needed washing. The living room needed vacuuming…!

“Who is it, dear?” Mrs. Hardy called.

“It’s Mr. Kemp, Mama. He says he needs to speak to us.”

“Isn’t it nice that we have some of that pound cake left?” Mrs. Hardy wondered aloud. “Tell him to come right on, dear.”

Violet ground her teeth together. “It’s all right,” she told Kemp.

“Fine. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” He hung up before Violet could ask him what he wanted.

She turned worriedly to her mother. “Do you think it might be something about me coming back to work for him?”

“Who can say? You should wash your hair, dear. You’ll have just enough time.”

“Not to do that and vacuum and pick up around the living room,” she wailed.

“Violet, the chores can wait,” her mother replied amusedly. “You can’t. Go, girl!”

Violet turned like a zombie and went right to the bathroom to wash her hair. By the time she heard Kemp pulling up in the driveway, she had on a nice low-cut short-sleeved blue sweater and clean white jeans. Her hair was clean and she left it down, because she didn’t have time to braid it. She was wearing bedroom shoes, but that wasn’t going to matter, she decided.

She opened the door.

Kemp gave her a quiet going-over with his pale blue eyes. But he didn’t remark about her appearance. He was scowling. “I have something to say that your mother needs to hear, but I don’t want to upset her.”

There went her dreams of being rehired. “What is it about?” she asked.

He drew in a sharp breath. “Violet, I want to have your father exhumed. I think Janet Collins killed him.”

Three

Violet wasn’t sure she was hearing right. She knew there was something going on with Janet Collins. Curt had come by her office when he carried a note to Duke from Jordan Powell, his boss. He’d told her that he and Libby were going to have to have their father exhumed because there were suspicions that Janet, their stepmother, might have killed him. She was suspected of killing at least one other elderly man by poison. Violet and her mother knew about the waitress Mr. Hardy had had his fling with. But they’d never questioned the cause of death. And they’d never found out who the waitress was. Now, a lot of questions she hadn’t wanted even to ask were suddenly being answered.

Her lips parted on a husky sigh. “Oh, dear.”

Kemp closed the door behind him and tilted Violet’s chin up to his eyes. “I don’t want to do this,” he said softly. “But there’s a very good chance that your father was murdered, Violet. You don’t want Janet Collins to get away with it, if she’s guilty. Neither do I.”

“You’re right,” she agreed. “But what about Mama?”

He drew in a long breath. “I have to have her signature. I can’t do it on yours alone.”

They exchanged worried looks.

His eyes suddenly narrowed on her oval face in its frame of dark hair. Her skin was clean and bright. She wasn’t wearing makeup, except a touch of pink lipstick. And that sweater…His eyes slid down to her breasts with quiet sensuality. They narrowed, as he appreciated how deliciously full-breasted she was. She had a small waist, too. The jeans emphasized the nicely rounded contours of her hips.

“I’ve lost weight!” she blurted out.

“Don’t lose any more,” he murmured absently. “You’re perfect.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Sir?” she stammered.

“If I weren’t a confirmed bachelor, you’d make my mouth water,” he replied quietly, and the eyes that met hers were steady, intent.

Her heart began racing. Her knees were weak. He wasn’t blind. Any minute, he was going to notice her helpless, headlong reaction.

“But I am a confirmed bachelor,” he added firmly, as much for his own benefit as for hers. “And this isn’t the time, anyway. May I come in?”

“Of course.” She closed the door behind him, unsettled by what he’d said.

“I planned to come by your office and tell you,” he said, his voice low, “but I got caught at the last minute and by the time I finished with an upset client, you’d already left Wright’s place. I’d hoped to have a little time to prepare you for what we have to do.” He glanced toward the living room door. “How is she?” he asked.

She bit her lower lip. “She’s had a slight spell this week,” she told him worriedly. “She thinks she’s stronger than she really is. Losing Daddy and finding out about his affair ruined her life.”

He bit back a harsh reply. “Should we have the doctor here while I tell her?”

She sighed wearily. “I don’t think it will matter.” She looked up at him. “She has to know. I don’t want Janet Collins to get away with murder. Neither will she. We both loved Daddy, in our way.”

“All right then.” He nodded for her to go ahead of him and he followed her into the room.

Her mother looked up and smiled. “Mr. Kemp! How nice to see you again!”

He smiled, pausing in front of her to shake her hand gently. “It’s good to see you, too, Mrs. Hardy. But I’m afraid I may have some upsetting news.”

She put down her knitting and sat up straight. “My daughter thinks I’m a marshmallow,” she said with an impish look at Violet. “But I’m tougher than I look, despite my rickety blood vessels.” She set her lips firmly. “You just tell me what I need to know, and I’ll do what I have to.”

His blue eyes twinkled. “You are a tough nut, aren’t you?” he teased.

She grinned at him, looking far younger than she was. “You bet. Go on. Spill it.”

His smile faded. Violet sat on the arm of her mother’s chair.

“It must be bad, if you’re both expecting me to keel over,” she said. “It’s something about Janet Collins, isn’t it?”

Violet gasped. Kemp’s eyebrows arched over the frames of his glasses.

“I’m not a petunia. I don’t just hang on the porch all the time,” Mrs. Hardy informed them. “I get my hair done, I go to the doctor’s office, I see a lot of people. I know that Libby and Curt Collins are up to their ears in trouble about their stepmother, and there’s a lot of talk that she’s been linked to the death of an old man in a nursing home. They said she took every penny he had. And then she went on to cheat Arthur and me out of our savings, a quarter of a million dollars. It wasn’t ever proven that it was her.”

“I’ve found an eyewitness who thinks she can place Janet Collins at the motel with Arthur the last day of his life,” Kemp told her, “just before the ambulance came to take him to the hospital. She ran out the door and was seen. At the hospital the doctor, not aware of any foul play, diagnosed a heart attack from the symptoms. There was no autopsy.”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Hardy said. She gave her audience a knowing look. “And you think she killed him, don’t you?” she asked Kemp.

He was impressed. “Yes, I do,” he told her honestly.

“I didn’t want to think about that, but I’ve had my doubts,” she said. “He never had heart trouble. There had been some mixup at a clinic in San Antonio and he ended up getting a heart catherization that he didn’t really need. What it showed was that his heart and arteries were in fine shape, no blockages at all. So it came as something of a surprise when he died only a month later of a supposed heart attack. But I was far too upset at his affair and his sudden death to think clearly.”

“If it’s any consolation, Janet Collins had a way with men,” Kemp replied. “She was known for playing up to older men, and she isn’t a bad-looking woman. Most men react predictably to a head-on assault.”

Violet was wondering irrelevantly if it would work with Kemp, but she pushed that thought to the back of her mind.

“Arthur had strayed before,” Mrs. Hardy said surprisingly, and with an apologetic glance at Violet. “He was a handsome, vital man, and I was always quiet and shy and rather ordinary.”

“You weren’t ordinary,” Violet protested.

“My people were very wealthy, dear,” she told her daughter sadly. “And Arthur was ambitious. He wanted his own accounting firm, and I helped him get it. Not that he didn’t work hard, but he’d never have made it without my backing. I think that hurt his pride. Maybe his…affairs…were a way of proving to himself that he could still appeal to beautiful women even as he got older. I’m sorry, Violet,” she added, patting her daughter’s thigh. “But parents are human, too. Arthur did love you, and he tried to be a good father, even if he wasn’t a good husband.”

Violet clenched her teeth. She could only imagine how it would have felt to her, if she’d been married and her husband thought nothing of having affairs with other women.

“By the time Arthur started straying,” Mrs. Hardy continued, “I was too fragile to leave him and strike out on my own. There was Violet, who needed both her parents and a stable environment. And I could no longer take care of myself. Arthur paid a price to stay with me, under the circumstances. I don’t really blame him for what he did.”

She did, though, and it showed. Violet hugged her close. “I blame him,” she murmured.

“So do I,” Kemp said, surprisingly firm. “Any honorable man would have asked for a divorce before getting involved with another woman.”

“Why, you Puritan,” Mrs. Hardy accused with a smile.

“I’ve got company,” he jerked his thumb at Violet.

Mrs. Hardy laughed. She folded her hands in her lap. “Okay, so we’ve settled that Arthur probably had an affair with Janet Collins and she may have been responsible for his death. But unless he’s exhumed, and an autopsy done, we can’t prove it. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Mr. Kemp?”

“You’re amazing, Mrs. Hardy,” Kemp replied with admiration in his pale blue eyes.

“I’m perceptive. Ask Violet.” The smile faded. “When do you want to do it?”

“As soon as possible. I’ll make the arrangements, if you’re willing. There will be papers to sign. It may make news as well.”

“I can manage. So can Violet,” Mrs. Hardy assured him, smiling up at her daughter.

“I can,” Violet assured him. “We’ll both do whatever’s necessary. Whatever Daddy did, she had no right to kill him.”

“Very well.” Kemp got up from the sofa and shook hands with Mrs. Hardy one last time. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I’ve got things underway. You’re taking this very well.”

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