Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead (14 page)

She seemed dazed. “You’ll destroy his reputation.”

He could have, should have, told her that no one but he and
Madison knew what Dad had written. He was too enraged, too stunned, to feel like
soothing his mother’s fears. “Got to say, when I put Dad’s reputation on one
side of the scale, it seems pretty light compared to the hideous, unsolved
murder weighing down the other side.”

She kept staring.

Churning with frustration and too many other unresolved
emotions, Troy shook his head. “I think I’ll skip dessert, Mom. Thanks for
dinner.”

She was stuttering a protest while he kissed her on one cheek
and strode to the front door. He got out of there quick, before he could say
anything he would regret more than what had already passed between them.

Pulling away from the curb, Troy didn’t look back. He didn’t
want to see that his mother had followed him to the front door and was watching
him go. He didn’t want to see his mother, period. Right this second, he couldn’t
imagine when he would want to see her again.

* * *

M
ADISON
WAS
SURPRISED
when her doorbell rang just after eight that evening. Even friends
didn’t often drop by at this time of night without having called first.

She peeked through the small square of leaded glass panes to
see Troy, half turned away, his hands shoved in his pockets. She hurried to undo
the dead bolt and flung open the door. “Troy?”

“Hey.” He offered her a smile that didn’t quite come off. “You
busy?”

“Of course not. Come in.” She stepped back. “I was watching a
dumb comedy. I’ve hardly turned the TV on for the past month, but someone told
me this show was good. Apparently we don’t share the same sense of humor.”

He followed when Madison led the way into her living room and
used her remote to darken the television set. “Would you like coffee?” she
asked.

“Yeah...no. Hell, I don’t know. Sure. Maybe.”

Although disquieted by his indecision, she smiled. “Coffee it
is. Why don’t you come with me?”

He propped a hip against the kitchen counter while she put on a
pot.

“You went to your mom’s,” Madison ventured.

“Yeah, and stormed out.” He grimaced. “I was probably an SOB,
but goddamn it!”

“There’s a reason you haven’t talked about her.”

“You could say that.” He sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, I love
her. She was a great mom. I was closer to Dad as I got older, probably only
because I was a boy. Mom was never much into sports, although she came to my
games and cheered me on.”

“What kind of games?” Madison asked, momentarily diverted.

“The usual. Little League, Pop Warner football. Then I played
high school football and baseball.”

Madison nodded, leaning back against the cupboard and crossing
her arms.

“My parents were really in love.” He frowned. “Sometimes the
way they looked at each other made me uncomfortable. You know?” His eyes sought
hers. He seemed satisfied when she nodded again. “Mom hasn’t dealt very well
with losing Dad. It hit me hard, too, but I didn’t live with him. Sometimes I
still think, I’ll have to tell Dad... And then I remember.” He fell silent for a
moment. “At first I thought my mother’s grief was natural. Sometimes she
pretended for my sake, but mostly she’s turned inward. She doesn’t even want to
see friends. Until she discovered delivery, I did her grocery shopping for her.
That kind of thing.”

Madison had the uneasy feeling she knew where this was
going.

“She found a lawn service, so I didn’t have to mow anymore.
I’ve kept doing home repairs, picking up the odd thing at the hardware store or
the plant nursery for her.” His mouth curved into an utterly humorless smile.
“Funny how easy it is not to notice that a person never leaves her home.”

“Does she not go outside at all?”

“To her yard, yes. She’s always been a gardener and still is.
Far as I know, she grabs her mail and newspaper from the boxes outside the front
gate. I’d been thinking she still did things like go to the salon. But today she
told me breezily that she’s found a nice hairdresser who comes to her house. It
didn’t go so well when I told her she had a problem.”

“If she’s scared, it’s not surprising she’d be resistant to
admitting it.”

His eyes, she saw when they met hers, were like storm clouds.
“It might’ve helped if I hadn’t said that in the middle of an argument about
Dad. Turns out she’s known all these years that Dad didn’t go to the police when
he should have. I mentioned you and then your father. You should have seen her
face.”

Oh, wonderful.
She was falling in
love with a man whose mother had a major aversion to her family. An aversion
that would become something much worse if Dad really
had
murdered Mitch King.

Which he didn’t. You know he
didn’t.
Madison hid her expression by turning to reach into the upper
cupboard for mugs. Pouring gave her something to do.

“I said I bet she wished she could have gone to the time
capsule opening so she could make Dad’s little confession disappear. Except she
couldn’t make herself leave the house, could she?”

Madison winced. She could only imagine the tumult of emotions
both Troy and his mother had been feeling.

She cleared her throat slightly and turned back to face him.
“No, that probably wasn’t the best way you could have raised the agoraphobia
issue with her.”

“Tell me about it,” he muttered, reaching for the mug she
extended to him.

“Let’s go sit down,” she suggested.

In the living room he sank down on one end of the sofa and held
out his hand, drawing her with him. Madison, who hadn’t especially wanted coffee
anyway, set her mug down on the table, curled her feet under her and cuddled
into Troy’s embrace.

He took a swallow of his coffee and then set it down, too. His
arm tightened and she felt his cheek gently rubbing the top of her head.

“Short girl,” he said.

“Tall man.”

She loved the vibration of his chuckle under her ear and the
knowledge that talking to her had been enough to allow him to let some of his
frustration and anger and fear for his mother go. In fact, she felt squishy and
warm inside at the realization that he must have driven straight here from her
house.

“I needed you.” His mind had obviously been working on a
similar track.

“I’m glad,” she whispered, shifting so she could see his
face.

His kiss came swiftly. It metamorphosed from soft into urgent
with stunning speed. Within moments, she was plastered against him and his hands
gripped her butt, lifting and fitting her to him. Little sounds escaped her, and
her own hands squeezed the taut muscles in his shoulders. She was desperate to
climb a little higher onto him, to feel the ridge in his pants where it would do
the most good....

It might have been the desperation that triggered an internal
warning.
You’re not going to do this, remember?

She so didn’t want to listen. Didn’t care why making love with
Troy had once seemed like a bad idea.

But remembrance slipped into her head, anyway.
Dad.
It had to do with Dad.

Troy thought her father was a murderer. He might end up
arresting him, and she didn’t know if she could bear that.

She had gone still in his arms. The rhythmic kneading of his
hands slowed. He lifted his head and looked at her, his eyes heavy-lidded and
dark.

“Madison?”

“I’m sorry. This is, um, a little fast for me.” She flushed at
her own lie. She’d revved every bit as quickly as he had. In fact, she’d been
frighteningly close to launch, and they were both still fully dressed.

Muscles hardened under her hands. He searched her face for the
longest time. “Okay,” he said finally, voice rough and deep. He lifted her,
wincing as she scrambled to get off his lap and planted a knee close to his
groin. “Maybe I should go.”

“No!” She was as startled by her own cry as he looked. “Please
don’t.” Madison looked down at her hands. “To be honest, I’m a little mixed up
because of Dad and...and my fear of what might happen. But...I really like you.
I’m hoping you can be patient with me.” She hesitated. “I don’t want you to
leave,” she finished, her voice smaller.

His chest rose and fell with a long breath. She couldn’t help
seeing how aroused he was. But all he did was rest his head against the back of
the sofa, close his eyes and say, “Yeah, okay.”

“You understand?”

He groaned and opened his eyes. “I don’t want to, but I
do.”

“Really?”
Oh, that was
pathetic.

“I know how hard this is for you, Madison.” He reached out and
took her hand in his. “Don’t worry.”

She gulped. “Thank you.”

His expression was half amused, half...not. “We haven’t known
each other that long. What kind of creep would I be to throw a fit because you
said ‘Whoa, slow down, buddy’?”

A smile crept onto her face. “When you put it that way...”

The beginnings of his answering smile made her heart do some
peculiar gyrations. “I do,” he said in that husky voice. They sat and looked at
each other, Troy still with his head resting against the back of the sofa,
Madison half turning to face him, one foot under her. For what seemed like a
long time, all they did was look. Deeply, without any defenses.
Adults never simply stare at each other like this,
she
realized in some remote corner of her mind, but this felt...right.

Troy’s lashes finally swept down, veiling his eyes, and Madison
blinked. She hadn’t in ages. When he looked at her again, he was smiling
crookedly.

“I told my mother I wanted her to meet you.”

Madison’s stomach did a cartwheel. Or maybe it was her heart.
“This might not be the best time.”

“No.” His smile became more crooked and less happy. “It
seemed...meant to be that our fathers knew each other.”

“Maybe it was meant to be.”

“Maybe.” Lines gathered on his forehead. “But if so, not in the
way I thought.”

“No.” She felt light-headed. “What are you going to do about
your mother?”

“God,” he groaned. “I don’t know.”

“Do you have any other family?”

“No. I guess Mom had some kind of female problem and had to
have a hysterectomy when I was only three or four. They talked about trying to
adopt another kid but never did. They originally wanted to have a big family,
maybe three or four kids, because they were both onlys. Weirdly, one of the
things they had in common was that their parents were in their forties when they
had them. I don’t know if they were an afterthought, or their parents had
trouble getting pregnant, or what.”

“That might have been a big thing to have in common,” Madison
said thoughtfully. “I mean, the fact that their parents were so much older than
everyone else’s. Although it depends what kind of people they were.”

He was frowning into space. “Mom’s father was kind of a
bastard, from what she’s said, and her mom timid and quiet. Dad never said that
much about his parents, which probably means something.”

“Maybe they were both lonely.”

“And held on tight when they found somebody.” He grunted. “Now
Mom’s alone again.”

“No, she isn’t,” Madison said stoutly. “She has you.”

“Not the same.”

“She’s not too old to remarry.”

Troy gave her a “get real” look.

“Would you mind?”

He had to think about that. “No,” he said finally. “Of course
not. But I can’t see it.”

“I guess the first challenge is getting her out of the
house.”

He grunted again.

“Why are you so angry at her?”

“You can ask that?” he asked incredulously.

“You’re mad she didn’t tell you.” Madison was the one to do
some thinking this time. “Is that because you’re disappointed in her—I don’t
know, her ethics? Or because she’s holding on to her loyalty to your dad at your
expense?”

The moment the question was out, she regretted it. Too
late.

Troy swore, jackknifing to an upright position. “You don’t pull
any punches, do you?”

Madison bit her lip. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
Would he leave now? She’d understand if he was seriously pissed. She didn’t even
know his mother, and she hadn’t known
him
that long.
And here she was, psychoanalyzing him.

“No,” he said, a little hoarse. “I want you always to say what
you think. The hell of it is, you might be right. Partly right. Yeah, she
probably hurt my feelings and I didn’t even realize that’s what was going
on.”

“That’s probably natural,” she said tentatively.

He mumbled another curse. “Yeah? I thought I was all grown up,
past getting my feelings hurt because Mommy allied herself with Daddy instead of
me.”

Madison giggled.

Troy laughed, too, low and rueful. “On that note, I probably
should leave.”

“Before I say something else we’ll both be sorry for?”

“Before I kiss you again while we’re both so conveniently on
the couch. I can manage a polite good-night kiss at the door, though.”

“Oh, good.” She let him tug her to her feet. “I do love kissing
you.”

“I’m glad.” He had that heavy-lidded look again, but he kept
moving, towing her toward the front door. Where the kiss got a little heated,
but not out of control. “Tomorrow,” he promised, and left.

She stood without moving for too long. To her silent house, she
said finally, “I am in serious trouble.”

CHAPTER TEN

“Y
OU
’
RE
LOOKING
FOR
my brother?” Janet Short sounded
surprised. “May I ask why?”

Troy hesitated. It had taken him two days to get this woman on
the phone, and he didn’t want to lose her. On the other hand, he was wary that
she might call her brother to alert him.

“I’d rather not say, ma’am,” he said. “I can only tell you that
he’s not in trouble. I’m hoping he can give me some information, that’s
all.”

She dithered, but finally gave him the number. Frank, she said,
lived in Texas but worked on an oil drilling platform, so sometimes he could be
reached and sometimes not.

Hell,
Troy thought.
It would be a bitch if good ol’ Frank turned out to be
unavailable for the next month.
Wasn’t this still hurricane season in
the Gulf, too? Storms couldn’t be good for phone reception.

He dialed as quick as he could, though, wanting to beat Frank’s
sister to the punch.

On the fourth ring, a gruff male voice answered.

Troy identified himself and asked if he was speaking to Frank
Claybo, who had graduated from Wakefield College.

Silence.

“I haven’t been back to Frenchman Lake since the day after I
graduated. What’s this about?”

The spiel was well-practiced now. Police had reopened the
investigation into Mitchell King’s murder. New information had been received.
Detectives were trying to speak to any potential witnesses and also students who
might have known King well.

Claybo did not leap to offer observations or remembrances. Troy
could hear him breathing, and that was all.

“Your name was given to me as someone who might have
significant information regarding Mr. King,” Troy said. “I was told that you
identified him as a blackmailer.”

More silence. He didn’t hang up, which was something.

“I guess it doesn’t much matter anymore, does it?” Frank said
finally, sounding resigned.

“The murder?”

“No, any stupid thing I did.”

“Not unless that stupid thing included bashing in Mr. King’s
head,” Troy agreed.

“Oh, hell, I wasn’t that desperate. The asshole was
blackmailing me, though. I’m pretty sure he was blackmailing a bunch of
people.”

“Do you mind telling me what he was holding over you?”

“Why not? Like I said, it doesn’t matter anymore. I stole some
marijuana from—” He stopped as if belatedly nervous. Not wanting to tattle?
“This guy who was dealing. I’d have gotten the shit kicked out of me if the guy
found out. I always wondered if Mitch was blackmailing him, too, but that might
have taken more balls than he had.”

“What made you suspect you weren’t his only victim?”

Now that he’d gotten started, Frank seemed happy to open up. He
thought King’s approach was too slick; this wasn’t someone freaking himself out
because he’d seen an opportunity and dared to blackmail a fellow student for the
first time. The demand wasn’t unreasonable—fifty bucks a month until the end of
the school year. Like most students, Frank held a part-time job and all it meant
was that he couldn’t always afford to do stuff with friends.

“So he had a good idea what you could afford. Maybe guessed
your breaking point,” Troy said thoughtfully.

“He got it right on. Much more and I’d have been in trouble. As
it was, I kind of viewed it as penitence. I shouldn’t have ripped off that
baggie. So I was paying for it. You know?”

It occurred to Troy that the psychology might have been
familiar to King. Calculating how much pressure to bear, how much money to
demand, how much risk he was taking—all that required skill. The cost if he
screwed up was high. All it took was one victim saying “I don’t think so” and
going straight to the administration to end Mitch King’s career as blackmailer
and
his stint in academia.

“He kept a ledger,” Frank continued. “That’s what made me think
there were a bunch of us. He always had me hand the money over in person and
he’d note down my ‘payment’—that’s what he called it—in his ledger. Real
businesslike. My entries weren’t on the opening pages. He’d have to leaf a ways
into that book to find me. He’d turn over...” There was a pause. “Maybe ten,
twelve pages.”

“Can you describe this ledger?”

“It was black, I think a wire or plastic spiral binding,
nothing fancy. Pretty thin. You can buy things like that at any office supply
store. Maybe even grocery stores. He kept a pen clipped on it.”

“Where did you generally meet with him?”

“I’d only made three payments when he was killed. Uh...once he
told me he’d be sitting out on Allquist Field, like he was studying. After that
I’d watch him sometimes and see people come and go, but he was real good at
whisking that money out of my hand. It was hard to tell who was making payments
and who was stopping to talk.”

“Your other meetings with him?”

“He had me stop by his room once. The other time, uh, it was
the locker room at McKenna Center. He was wearing sweats, like he’d been working
out. I don’t know if he really had. I remember a towel was lying on the bench
beside him. As I was walking away, I looked back and saw that he’d moved it and
that damn ledger was under it.”

Troy’s eyebrows rose. The second towel in the sauna had been
covering the ledger, and that made its disappearance more complicated than he’d
thought. Probably if it had been blood-soaked, it would have been left behind.
No, chances were the towel had been used to wrap the ledger so no one saw it.
Which suggested the killer wasn’t wearing a jacket, or he could have tucked the
ledger inside it.

He grimaced. The guy might only have been rattled. Not thinking
at all, only desperate to get away.

Running away into the dark, something
clutched in his hand. Lying the next day about whether he’d ever made it to
McKenna Sports Center the night before.

He cleared his throat. “Did it cross your mind, when you heard
about the murder, that Mr. King might have been conducting business in the sauna
that night?”

This silence was answer enough. “Yeah,” Frank said finally, to
his credit. “But I talked myself out of believing it. I mean, the middle of the
night? And he was nude? Plus, if it was hot and steamy in there, the ink would
have run, wouldn’t it? So I figured he was pulling an all-nighter like the rest
of us. He presumably had to get the grades, too. Somebody was paying his
tuition, right?”

“He had parents,” Troy confirmed. Divorced, but both had kicked
in to pay the bill. They presumably had expected passing grades at a minimum.
Troy found himself hoping neither was alive to learn that their son had been
killed because he’d gone into business as a blackmailer. “Mr. King didn’t ask
you to come to the sauna, then?”

“No, I’d made my December payment a week or two before. I think
that was the time I went to his room.” This recollection came out as rueful.

He proved willing to dredge his memory for the names of
everyone he could remember seeing with King. Troy took a lot of notes. A part of
him was relieved that Madison’s father’s name wasn’t on the list. One
particularly interesting name was Gordon Haywood’s, the senator. Troy remembered
again Haywood’s hasty departure once he had his time capsule contribution back
in his hot little hand.

“You going to have to tell anyone about my part?” Frank finally
ventured.

“Who would care, except maybe your sister or parents?” Troy
asked. “It doesn’t sound as if you did anything that terrible.”

“Only time I ever stole anything. I still don’t know what I was
thinking. But, man, finding out someone had seen me and then getting blackmailed
really worked to deter any repeat, I’ve got to tell you.”

After he’d thanked Claybo and ended the call, Troy found
himself chuckling low in his throat. Gee, gosh, maybe they should fit a halo on
Mitch King’s memory. Could it be that
all
his
victims had thereafter seen the light and lived virtuously?

Guy Laclaire, for example, who set such uncompromisingly high
standards for his young daughter and who was a man who believed in honesty with
fervor. Had he, like Frank Claybo, learned his lesson from Mitchell King, the
worm who was getting rich at everyone else’s expense?

There was some irony there, Troy was sure.

* * *

H
E
WAS
SO
DAMN
EAGER
, driving to Madison’s house,
Troy didn’t recognize himself. There wasn’t even any special reason; clearly, he
wasn’t getting her into bed until this was all over. He was having dinner there.
Full stop. But he felt as excited as he had as a kid on his way to the fair, or
when he was eighteen and his parents had driven him to Seattle to leave him at
the UW the first time. He was yearning to be there.

Even more disturbing was realizing how much of a refuge Madison
had become for him.

Not until the evening he’d gone straight from his mother’s
house to hers had he suspected how much Madison was coming to mean to him.
Before that, he’d known he was sexually riveted by her, a fancy way of saying he
wanted her more than he’d wanted a woman in a long time, if ever. He knew he
liked her, that she was easy to talk to, that he was happy listening to her and
felt unexpectedly protective. There were times when she was talking about her
father or mother that he’d have given damn near anything to erase the more
hurtful memories and make her feel secure in a way he sensed she never had.

Loved.
Madison had never believed
herself to be loved—unshakably, bedrock-deep, no-matter-what loved.

And yeah, the very word was unsettling. He’d had relationships
that got pretty intense. But not once had Troy ever thought he was in love with
one of them. He figured maybe that was because of his parents. In them, he’d
seen love in action—the expression on their faces when they looked at each
other, the brief touches, the care they took of each other. They occasionally
squabbled; they never fought. He didn’t remember his parents ever raising their
voices, either at each other or him. He’d never seen his father check out
another woman, not even in that automatic way most men did.

Troy had never consciously thought,
That’s
what I want.
But he realized now he’d decided exactly that, probably
when he was quite young.

He needed a woman who would never bore him, who made him laugh.
A woman he could trust, yeah, unshakably, bedrock-deep, to keep liking and
loving him even through the tough times in their lives. On top of all that,
there had to be an explosive attraction between them, the feeling when he
touched her that only she would do, that he would never want to touch another
woman.

With Madison, it was all there.

Her face was beautiful to him, from her gently rounded chin to
the forehead that was high and had a curve that struck him as childlike. The
tiny dimple beside her mouth, Troy found irresistible. She had a cute nose with
a small bump on the bridge, fine-textured skin with a golden tone and those
warm, melting eyes. Damn, he loved her hair, from the hint of a widow’s peak to
the soft new hairs that tickled his mouth at her nape.

Even thinking about her lush body was enough to arouse him.

But
needing
a woman on a level that
had nothing to do with sex—that was something he’d never experienced before.

A man
should
want the woman he was
falling in love with. And Troy had been okay with the desire to keep her safe
and happy. He guessed that fit with his nature, although he’d never analyzed
himself that way before. When he did now, he discovered he held some probably
old-fashioned beliefs about a man being ready to stand between his family and
the world in all its violence and cruelty. Some of that was a natural offshoot
of being a cop.

He wanted her to turn to him with good news and bad, to share a
laugh, for comfort. For everything. Because she needed him.

The part he hadn’t expected was
his
need to turn to her. He had this hunger to talk over every problem with
her, personal and work-related. To bounce ideas off her, to share the weird shit
he saw and the funny moments. She never seemed to leave his head, which was more
than a little disconcerting.

And he had to face the fact that, after only two weeks, he
couldn’t imagine his life without her.

What he had no idea of was whether she felt anything close to
the same for him. He thought she did...but he also thought what she felt scared
her. Troy understood why that would be so. He had the advantage of having grown
up knowing he was loved, and with the ever-present example of his parents’ love
for each other. If Madison felt with anything like the intensity he did, she
probably couldn’t begin to understand it. Or maybe she did, but didn’t trust
what she felt or that
he
could feel the same.

They had some major obstacles facing them, and he had a bad
feeling they couldn’t begin to overcome any of them until the elephant wasn’t
lumbering along at their side anymore: until he could be certain Laclaire hadn’t
committed a brutal murder. Until both could know that he wouldn’t have to arrest
her father.

Troy didn’t see that happening real soon, given his
ever-growing list of suspects. He could spend months interviewing every student
who’d attended Wakefield College back then, and never arrive at an answer.

Then what?
he asked himself
bleakly. Would the uncertainty eat at Madison’s relationship with her dad...and
with him? Or could they put it behind them?

Could he accept having a father-in-law he seriously suspected
of having murdered someone?

And...what if Madison had to choose between the father who had
been her only security, and this guy she’d only met a few weeks before?