A Message for Abby

Was it marriage or pregnancy that had blunted her wary intelligence?

“Ben’s still hoping to find an eyewitness,” Abby said.

“Nobody is invisible,” Shea commented. “I might get lucky.”

A few nods all around, and Renee said, “If you’ll all excuse me, I’d better work on dinner.”

Abby stood, too, shaking her head at her older sister who was making “getting up” motions. “No, you stay put, Meg. Watching you on your feet makes me tired. I’ll help Renee.”

In the kitchen, Renee turned on the burner under a pan of green beans. “What’s the point of a threat if someone doesn’t understand it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Abby said with a sigh. “These rolls go in the oven?” At her sister’s nod, she ran cold water over the paper bag. “Maybe one of us is supposed to understand the threat. You ever arrested anyone for something having to do with blood on the seat or...” Knowing even that much sounded weak, she ran out of ideas. “Heck, maybe he’s a poacher who’s just trying to tell us he can kill a deer anytime he wants.”

“With my mother-in-law’s license plates on the pickup he stole up in the Dalles just so he could abandon it here?”

“Maybe it broke down.” Now she was the one trying to find an out, Abby thought ruefully.

“Oh, jeez.” Oven mitt dangling from her hand, Renee looked at her sister. “It’s all too tangled, isn’t it? Too...purposeful.”

“Yeah.” Abby stirred the green beans unnecessarily. “But what’s the purpose?”

Her sister actually shivered. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know.”

Abby rubbed the goose bumps on her own forearms. “Worse yet is the fact that we’re going to have to find out. One way or the other.”

Renee didn’t answer. She removed the turkey breast from the oven, popped the bag of rolls in, and took up the carving knife.

“I don’t see how Meg can have three weeks to go,” she said as if they’d been discussing their older sister all along. “I wish the doctor had done an ultrasound.”

“You’re not thinking twins?” Abby asked, shocked out of her absorption in the case.

“She’s awfully big.”

“Wouldn’t the doctor have noticed two heartbeats?”

“I don’t know.” Renee fretted. “But take a look at her.”

“Maybe they got the due date wrong.” There she went again; little Miss Pollyanna, smoothing away any difficulty.

“The doctor should know,” Renee said fiercely. “I just worry Meg’s not getting the care she should be.”

“Have you heard anything bad about Dr. Kennedy?”

“No-o.”

Then it came to Abby; she looked closely at her sister. “You’re just scared, aren’t you? It’s not as if having twins would be the end of the world for Meg. I mean, maybe she couldn’t go back to work, but she’s pretty much into this motherhood thing right now, anyway.” What the mysterious attraction was, Abby didn’t get. Emily was cute, sure, but her squall when she was tired made Abby think of fingernails maliciously drawn down a blackboard. But they weren’t talking about her, thank God. Dragging herself back to the point, Abby accused, “You’re afraid of losing her again.”

To her astonishment, Renee burst into tears. “Meg’s just so tired!” she wailed.

Abby gently took the carving knife from her sister’s hand, set it on the countertop and wrapped her in a hug. “Hey, what’s the deal?”

“I always said I’d make chief, and now I have, but I’d rather be pregnant!” Renee pulled back to show a pathetic, blotched face. “I want it so bad, but then sometimes I look at Meg and wonder if I really do, and if something happens to her I’ll be too scared ever to have a baby of my own! So really I’m self ish!”

Okay.

“Renee,” Abby said carefully, “you’re acting really weird. You know that, don’t you?”

A sniff and a nod were her answer; Renee had buried her face in a dishtowel, using it as a giant hankie.

“PMS?” Out of nowhere, a thought zapped Abby. “Are you sure you aren’t pregnant?”

“What?” Renee whipped the dishtowel from her face.

“You heard me.”

“I...” She blinked. Blinked again. “It must be PMS. You know I get cranky.”

“But not deranged,” Abby gently suggested. “When are you due?”

“Due? Meg’s the one... Oh. You mean...” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t keep track. It just... comes.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I guess it’s been a while.” Renee’s green-gold eyes widened. “Ohmygod. What if I’m pregnant?”

“You celebrate?”

“I’m being sworn in two weeks from tomorrow!”

“Surely you wouldn’t be the first police chief in America who was pregnant.”

“Most of them are still men.” That dry comment sounded more like Abby’s big—well, middle sister.

“Buy one of those home pregnancy tests,” Abby advised. “In the meantime, I’ll carve the turkey. You go do something to your face.”

Renee squeaked at the sight of herself reflected in the door of the top oven. “I promise. I’ll be right back!”

Shaking her head, Abby picked up the knife.

“Want me to do that?”

The deep voice came from so close behind her, she was the one to squeak and jump this time. Wheeling around, she pressed a hand to her chest. “You scared the daylights out of me!”

“Sorry.” Ben Shea lifted one dark brow as smoothly as Daniel did. It gave Ben’s face a saturnine look. “Just thought I’d offer to help.”

Crowd me, you mean, she thought unkindly. But this was her fault; she’d encouraged him by inviting him tonight. No surprise he didn’t want to be abandoned to her family.

“Here. You carve the turkey.” She set down the knife instead of handing it to him. “Renee didn’t feel good for a minute. I’ll see if the rolls are hot, figure out what else she was going to feed us.”

“All right,” Ben said agreeably.

A potato salad and a fruit salad were ready in the refrigerator. All Abby had to do was peel back the plastic wrap and stick in serving spoons.

She carried them out to the dining room, tickled Emily who giggled gratifyingly, and went back to the kitchen. Intent on his job, Ben barely glanced up.

“That wasn’t you crying, was it?”

“You heard...” She stopped. “I don’t cry.”

“You don’t cry.”

“That’s what I said.”

He looked her over with the same curiosity and lack of emotion he’d shown toward the bloody cab of the pickup. “You figure men don’t cry, so you shouldn’t, either?”

“I don’t care what men do,” Abby said shortly.

“As long as they’re fun.”

She lifted her chin a notch. “And it’s fun I can live without if I have to.”

He shook his head and went back to carving. “You got a real healthy attitude.”

Oh, yeah, he’s going to kiss you good-night now.

“You want a healthy attitude, don’t ask out another cop. Try the clerk at the health food store.”

“Very funny.”

What on earth was wrong with her? Ben Shea was nice; he was gorgeous; he was unmarried. Vouched for by her sister. She should be batting her eyelashes, not being as disagreeable as a streetwalker about to be booked.

Oh, good analogy, she told herself.

He studied her with those penetrating eyes. “When’s the last time you cried?”

“I don’t know. Years.”

He muttered a profanity. “Are you armor-plated? How can you help but cry sometimes?”

She froze in the act of taking the hot bag of rolls from the oven. “You cry?”

He wanted his shrug to look careless, she could tell. “Sometimes. Like just a couple of weeks ago. This guy killed his wife and two-year-old daughter, then swallowed the gun himself. It was seeing that kid...” His body jerked, and then his eyes shuttered and he went back to carving turkey. “I did my job, but when I got home, I cried. I’m not afraid to admit it.”

Her back to him, Abby dropped the crisp, hot paper bag on the counter. Cops and firefighters didn’t often confess to that kind of weakness—for so it would be considered in the station house. Maybe he’d done it to test her—to see how deep she went Maybe he was a sensitive kind of guy who liked talking about feelings.

Or maybe the sight of the dead child had eaten at his soul until he had to tell someone the horror, and she was just the lucky nominee. Whatever his reason for talking so frankly, she knew she couldn’t blow him off.

Past a sudden lump in her throat, she said abruptly, “It was two years ago. The last time I cried.” She wouldn’t look at him. “House fire. We found these kids, all under the bed. Like they were hiding from an intruder. But you can’t hide from fire, or smoke. They looked...like dolls. Waxy and stiff. The fire had been set. Mama had dumped her boyfriend, and he was pissed. Didn’t even get Mama. She’d left her three children, all under five, alone while she worked a graveyard shift cleaning an office building. After that night I decided to become an investigator. Putting out the fire isn’t enough anymore.”

Whether the tears had been cause or effect, she didn’t know. Maybe she’d become an investigator because she didn’t want to cry anymore, not to right wrongs. How could anyone judge her own motives?

All Abby knew was, she’d hidden under the bed more than once, small and scared.

And crying made her feel weak. A big girl now, she allowed no weakness.

“Shedding some tears helped,” Ben said. “I felt better.”

Abby dumped the rolls into a basket. “I didn’t.”

His hand shot out to stop her as she passed to return to the dining room. “Are you as tough as you sound, Abby Patton?”

Tough was her private ideal, not her public image. Tough was the shield she wore like a bulletproof vest—it would keep you alive only if no one noticed you were wearing it. Because if they did, they might shoot you in the head.

Letting someone—this man—see that tough outer shield might put her in danger.

So she batted her eyes, smiled slow and mysterious, and said, light and flirty, “Oh, I don’t know if tough’s the first word I associate with myself. What do you think, Detective Shea?”

Eyes narrowed, he let her go. “What I think is, finding out might be fun. And that’s important, right? Having fun?”

She had to work at making her smile saucy. “Oh, number one. Absolutely.” She could sound blithe, unconcerned. “Why don’t we go dancing after this?” Somewhere, she thought, with really loud music. Somewhere they couldn’t talk.

“Why don’t we,” he said. “Something tells me you’ll know just the place.”

CHAPTER THREE

ABBY HAD KNOWN A PLACE, all right. Ben’s ears were still ringing the next day when he drove toward the outskirts of Elk Springs to begin knocking on doors in hopes of hitting on someone who’d seen either the green pickup or a lone motorcyclist pass down Barton Road at the right time.

After leaving her brother-in-law’s last night, Abby had taken Ben to Paganucci’s, a club aimed at the twenty-something crowd. With a population of twenty thousand and climbing, Elk Springs had gone from hick town to resort town in a few short years, although the process had been well advanced by the time Ben had taken the job here. But even since he came, the downtown hardware store had moved off Main Street to make way for an art gallery and café combo. Downtown was no longer for locals. Now antique stores, boutiques and espresso joints jostled trendy restaurants and nightclubs that appealed to skiers.

Paganucci’s was one of them. Sleek decor, dim lighting jolted by flashes of brilliant white strobes, music that vibrated through the floor and penetrated the very air the way an electric shock did. The drinks had names he didn’t recognize. The other men looked as self-consciously stylish as Don Johnson had on “Miami Vice.”

In this crowd, Ben might as well have been a cow horse among the parade at Churchill Downs.

But he’d tried real hard to have fun. Or at least to look like he was having fun, which was what counted. He felt like a goddamn idiot out on the dance floor. But every time Abby leaped to her feet with that manic glitter in her eyes and said, “Let’s dance,” he said, “Sure.”

She was in restless motion the whole evening. Dancing, tapping her fingers, swaying to the music. Never really looking at him, her gaze always elsewhere, watching other couples dance, laugh, flirt. When she talked, it was with stagey animation. Oh, yeah, she was playing for the crowd.

Or for him, Ben wasn’t sure which.

He’d be ready to write off Abby Patton and any possibility of a future with her, except for one thing: he’d have sworn that she wasn’t having fun, either. She was making a point, hammering it home.

I’m not your type, she was saying. This is fun. This is me.

Ben didn’t buy it. She fidgeted too much; her gaiety was too forced. The only real moment they’d had all evening was during the one slow dance she’d allowed him. They’d gone toe to toe; he’d eased her up against him, felt the tension and the resistance shimmering through her. Picturing a coil of wire that kept springing free of his fingers, he had nonetheless played with the fantasy of what making love with her would be like. Abby Patton would be the farthest thing from passive. He pictured her determined to be on top, willing to wrestle him for the privilege.

Now that would be fun.

The music whispered of love and the soft light of the moon, of night breezes and the tangle of sheets. Even for him, the lilting notes were suddenly evocative, sensual. He bent his head, breathed in the tangy scent of her hair, gently rubbed the taut muscles of her lower back.

And, wonder of wonders, she began to relax. She let out a sigh, laid her cheek against his neck, matched the sway of her hips to his easy movements. For one brief shining moment, they meshed.

But the music died, to throb forth a frenzied beat. The strobelight blinded Ben. Abby shot away as if he were trying to cuff her. He’d swear she didn’t meet his eyes again all night.

And out in the parking lot, she had made a breezy escape. A good-night kiss was not on the books.

Caught up in remembering—regretting the lack of a kiss—Ben took a minute to snap back to the present.

“Damn,” he muttered.

He’d already driven past the last ranch before Barton Road stretched into empty country. He’d have to go a mile back. Hell, and that ranch house had been a hundred and fifty yards off the road. What were the chances anyone had noticed the traffic two days ago?

He didn’t think about not trying. He’d have gone through the motions no matter what, but under different circumstances that’s what he’d have been doing. Every question he asked would have been perfunctory.

Today his questions would be deadly serious. The Patton sisters were all cops. A threat against them was a threat against him and every other cop.

The shoulder of the road briefly widened and he made a U-turn.

He’d wanted to kiss one of the Patton sisters last night.

Abby Patton reminded Ben of the stray cat he’d been feeding for a couple of years now. Cinderella, he called her, Cindy for short. A dainty calico with the soft hues and electric-blue eyes of a Siamese mix, Cindy had been so wild at first, he had caught only glimpses of her. She’d gobbled the food he put out, always poised for flight, her head lifting constantly. She’d gotten wilder yet when he trapped her and had her spayed and vaccinated.

It had taken six months before she would come to his call, hovering a safe distance away while he opened a can. More months before she would allow him within an arm’s reach. This spring, he had touched her. She’d erupted into the air and fled, but come warily back. Now she let him stroke her back. Someday, he was going to cuddle that cat. Take her in the house, feel her curl trustingly at his feet during the night.

Cindy had never known loving care from a human being until Ben set out that first bowl of food. She’d probably had rocks thrown at her. Loud voices had run her off.

Ben wanted to know what Abby’s excuse was.

He had a feeling he might never find out, though. She hadn’t wanted to date him from the beginning, and her minor enthusiasm had clearly waned. He was betting that if he called her today and suggested they do it again, she’d have an excuse.

No, he thought, putting on his turn signal, excuses weren’t her style. She’d be blunt. I could tell you weren’t having fun, she’d say. Or, I didn’t have fun with you. Or, You’re not my type.

He wasn’t her type. She wasn’t his.

He wanted her anyway.

The tires crunched onto the long gravel driveway that led to a rundown ranch house. He took note of the dogs racing to meet him. the sagging barbed-wire fence, the gaping hole in the old barn roof, but he kept thinking about Abby Patton.

Maybe the challenge was what appealed to him. Maybe it was more complicated; could be he had some deep-seated need to erase fear where he found it, to coax trust from the smallest seed.

But Ben didn’t know why that would be. He was usually attracted to confident, smart women. He liked honesty, serenity, a witty tongue. Timid women in need of protection weren’t his thing.

He snorted at the idea of Abby Patton, arson investigator, needing a protector. At five foot ten inches or so, she wasn’t small.

But honest, serene... He didn’t think so. She might find serenity in her old age, but that was fifty years away, give or take a few. And blunt didn’t equate to honest. Ben doubted that Abby was honest even with herself about what she felt or why.

He shouldn’t want her any more than he should indulge the hope that the small feral cat living like a ghost around his house might someday become a real pet, the kind other people had.

Rolling to a stop, Ben shifted into park, set the hand brake and turned off the engine, giving the dust and the dogs a minute to settle.

Yeah, he thought, but just the other day Cindy had hopped onto the porch railing so close to his hand she was clearly asking to be petted. So you never knew, did you?

He opened his door just as a man came out of the barn.

“Goddamn it, shut your mouths up!”

A few yaps later the two shepherd mixes sniffed Ben’s hand and decided he wasn’t the enemy.

The rancher, tall and skeletal, must have been working on some piece of machinery. His hands were black with grease, some of which he’d smeared onto his face, weathered to the texture of the desert.

“Won’t offer to shake hands.” He cast a dubious eye at the shield Ben extended. “You fellas don’t get out this way much.”

“Not much reason,” Ben said. “Day before yesterday, a pickup was abandoned and set on fire up the road a piece. I’m wondering if you ever notice passing traffic.”

“If the dogs don’t bark, I don’t come out.”

“Kind of figured that.” Ben nodded ruefully. “Hope you don’t mind my asking.”

“Anybody can ask me anything.” The rancher shrugged. “You need a little old lady, hasn’t got much better to do than peep out from behind her blinds.”

Ben nodded toward the house. “You wouldn’t have a wife or mother in there?”

“Wife never looks away from her soaps.”

Ben extended a card. “Well, if you wouldn’t mind asking her tonight,” he said just as laconically. “I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll ask.”

He had already disappeared into the barn before Ben got back in behind the wheel. Tongues lolling, the dogs gave halfhearted chase. They’d given up long before he turned onto paved road.

This was going to be a waste of time. He’d known it would be. But hell, now and again you got a surprise. At least, you did if you looked for it.

Seemed to him, Abby Patton might be one of those surprises.

BURNED WOOD had the texture of alligator hide. Abby crunched across the blackened floor of the corner grocery store in her steel-reinforced boots, not worrying too much about where she stepped.

Char licked up the walls. This baby had definitely started at floor level.

It was a no-brainer, but she did a meticulous search anyway, clicking photographs as she went. They were essential to document what she saw. Good pictures sold the prosecutor’s case to the jury like no testimony ever could.

The wooden subfloor was deeply scorched in half a dozen places, always a dead giveaway. The samples she took would show the presence of a flammable liquid, sure as shootin’. Fuse box indicated no electrical troubles; the point of origin wasn’t near wiring, anyway.

What interested Abby was the lack of ash and bits of debris on the crumpled, seared metal shelving.

Earlier the owner had come out of his hysteria long enough to claim the store was fully stocked.

“What the hell do you think?” he demanded, face flushed with fury and—she suspected—guilt. “People keep coming back if they don’t find what they want the first time? This is a grocery store. We have regular deliveries.”

Yeah, but about six months ago Price-Right had built a big store three blocks away. A little mom-and-pop place like this might have been a going concern until then; people liked convenience. They wouldn’t do their week’s shopping here, they’d go to Safeway a mile away, but they’d stop by here for a six-pack or some forgotten item. But the small volume in a store this size meant prices had to be higher. A mile was one thing; three blocks was another. This past six months had to have been a struggle.

She wandered into the back, which had suffered damage from smoke and water but not fire. The loading area was empty; the office, bare bones. The computer was darn near an antique, unless its guts had been replaced. No TV or microwave or refrigerator. Either the owner had never had any of the comforts back here, or he’d moved them out before he’d torched his place.

Abby put her vials and bags of evidence along with her Minolta into the trunk of her car, then rang doorbells half a block each way. The stories she heard confirmed her suspicions.

“He was going out of business. Had to be,” one gruff, graying man with a paunch declared. “Who the hell was going to pay what he asked?”

“Even the freezers didn’t have much in them the last time I was there,” a housewife said. “I bought milk, but the date was a little past. Mr. Joseph said a delivery had been delayed, but I wondered.”

“Yeah, I saw him and his old lady moving a TV and microwave—I think that’s what it was—out the back two days ago,” said a neighbor, whose backyard abutted the alley. “Mr. Joseph said the TV at home had gone kaput. But it makes you wonder...”

Abby’s cell phone rang and she excused herself.

“Patton,” she said in answer.

“Hi, it’s Meg. Have you heard from Ben?”

Abby was annoyed to realize she felt mild disappointment that the caller wasn’t Ben Shea. Of course, their one date had been a flop. He wouldn’t be asking her again. She didn’t want him to ask her out again. But she had hoped for news about his door-to-door questioning.

“Nope,” she told her sister. “You?”

“Not a word.” Meg puffed out a sigh that expressed acute frustration. “If I didn’t feel about as mobile as a moose stuck in deep snow, I’d go back to work part-time. Darn it, I don’t know how seriously Ben is taking this.”

Abby tried to be fair. “Pretty seriously, I think. He listened to me. Come on, Meg. You’ve never had reservations about his work, have you?”

“No...” her sister said grudgingly. “I just... Oh, I feel useless. I hate it!”

Abby leaned against the fender of her car. “Meg, you’re having a baby in a few weeks. What could be more productive?”

Her sister took a few audible breaths. “You’re right,” she finally said. “I know you’re right. This is what I want to do. But I’m not used to twiddling my thumbs!” The last came out as a cry.

“I know, I know.” Abby did her best to be soothing. Oral back-patting. “Renee’s worried you’re going to have twins.”

This sigh had an exasperated note. “I’ve gained a normal amount. All women in their ninth month look like walruses wallowing on the beach. At least, all women whose babies are probably going to weigh eight or nine pounds.”

“It’s you Renee’s worried about. She doesn’t want to lose you again.”