Born to Be Wild (26 page)

At midnight, after she'd gone over her lines for the next day so many times Mary Lisa figured she'd recite them in her dreams, she snuggled down, exhausted and mellow after an hour in the immense hot tub at Carlo's house six doors down the street. Elizabeh had called her a natural at the firing range and surely that had to count for something. Though she felt tired, she found she couldn't sleep—her mind kept churning, wouldn't quiet down. And Jack was there, always there, and she marveled that he'd come into her life at such a time. Well, if she couldn't sleep, it only seemed right the sexy bozo in Goddard Bay shouldn't either. She dialed Jack's cell number.

He answered on the fourth ring, his voice low and irritated. “If this isn't an emergency, I'm going to bust your ass.”

“What if this were your mother?”

Silence, then, “You're right. Not cool. What's up, kiddo?”

“Has Detective Vasquez called you?”

“No. What happened?” His voice was alert now. She suddenly saw him sitting up in bed, chest bare, a sheet pulled up to his waist, or maybe it was real warm tonight in Goddard Bay, and he didn't need a sheet. Maybe he was lying there, all sprawled out, every lovely inch of him nice and bare.

“Mary Lisa, you there?”

The picture tube in her brain went blank. “No, nothing's happened. I thought Detective Vasquez might have told you something. You know, cop to cop. I know it's late, but I couldn't sleep. Another thing, I called you earlier this evening only you didn't answer. What's up? Where were you?”

His voice changed subtly. It was lighter, with a hint of amusement she immediately distrusted. “I was busy tonight and turned my phone off.” She could see that sexy grin of his, see it clear as day. “Now don't think I didn't check my messages, I did. I mean if someone had capped you, Daniel would have called a dozen times and I'd have called him back. Is that okay with you, Mom?”

“No, not okay, you jerk. Where were you?”

“Speaking of moms, did you know I ran into your mom this afternoon near the station? She actually stopped me in my car to tell me to keep away from Kelly, that her little darling was fragile and didn't need me messing with her. Isn't that a corker?”

So he wasn't going to tell her what he was doing this evening. Maybe she could take him down on the beach again, and after she kicked him a couple of times, she could cover him like a spandex wet suit. “Why would Mom do that? I mean, why would she have to?”

“Well, Mary Lisa, I think Kelly may have told her she was going to come over to my office. I'd just gotten back from the D.A.'s office, tired and hungry, and she was waiting there to tell me she was making spaghetti and meatballs with garlic toast and spinach salad, and I should come over for dinner.”

Deep, dead silence. He had the nerve to laugh.

“I hope you enjoyed the meal.” You jerk. She disconnected.

Her phone rang three seconds later.

“Ouch. Don't hang up again, Mary Lisa. Okay, the truth is I didn't go to dinner with her, but I'll tell you, it was tough to turn down. I was really hungry.”

“You're a sorry excuse for a man.”

“Yes, well, uh, tell me, is it a beautiful night down there?”

“Oh, yes, it's calm and warm. The moonlight is making the ocean glitter like there are diamonds strewn on top of it. Is it warm in Goddard Bay?”

“Nah, cold as January and fog thick enough to keep you indoors with some good home-cooked chili, wishing for someone to huddle up with for warmth.”

Cold as January? That meant pajamas or a blanket to his neck. That was a pity. “Well, don't drive off a cliff in the fog,” she said, in a voice that sounded like she was going to hang up again.

“Wait a second, Mary Lisa, let me tell you what happened up here this afternoon.”

“Okay, what happened? You solve the case?”

“Not quite yet. Pitty Pat called me, said to come over to the Maynard house—that's where the murdered son-in-law lived with his wife, Marci.”

“She's living there by herself?”

“Yep. You're not going to believe this.”

“Okay, hotshot, I'm all atwitter. What happened?”

Jack yawned really big, and Mary Lisa could swear he was scratching his belly. Her heart did a mad leap. “I pull in the driveway right behind John's Beemer. He's standing next to the living room window. He hears me, waves me over. He whispers, ‘Your timing's perfect. Take a look.'”

He paused again—this time on purpose, for effect. “Have you ever thought of being an actor, Jack? That's some timing shtick you've got there. Okay, what did you see?”

“The murdered husband's widow—Marci—she was on her knees doing a Paris Hilton on her dead husband's older brother, Mick.”

“What?”

“You remember Mick Maynard, don't you? He owns a local auto repair shop on Indiana Avenue. He's been divorced about three years now, his ex took the kids to live in Salem.”

“But that's nuts!”

“Yeah, well, I'll tell you John was so shocked he could hardly get enough spit in his mouth to say anything.”

“But why would Marci do that? I know I told you I didn't like her in high school, but I wasn't really all that serious. But this? I mean, her husband's murdered, her father's now murdered too—”

“Agreed.”

“Well, whatever the reason, you're a couple of Peeping Toms, pretending it's okay because you're a cop. You're disgusting, Jack Wolf.”

“Well, not really. It's an investigation. Well, okay, maybe it wasn't necessary to look.”

She couldn't help herself. “Okay, what happened?”

He had the gall to laugh at her.

“Come on, Jack, tell me you and John left immediately, tell me you didn't keep looking.”

“Actually, we did stop looking. It felt too weird. We gave them another ten minutes since neither of us knew what—well, never mind that. Then we went to the door.”

“Wait a minute here.” Mary Lisa sputtered into the phone. “You said John called you to come over. Are you telling me she was on her knees for more than ten minutes?”

Jack grinned. “I wondered the same thing. John said there were lots of preliminaries. The main feature started a couple of minutes before I drove up.” He paused. “Do you want me to go on?”

She cleared her throat. “Please do.”

“Like I said, after ten minutes we knocked on the front door. Mick answered. He had a beer in his hand and he had this complacent smirk on his face—every guy in the universe knows that look.”

“So does every woman, you jackass.”

“Maybe, but like I said, a guy always knows. So Mick gives us both this look like
I ain't feeling no pain and you schmucks are
and offers us a beer. Then Marci comes out and she's all chirpy, got this flush on her cheeks. John tells Marci he'd like to speak to her and you know what? She looks at Mick, silently asking him what to do. He gives her a little nod, hands her his beer can, stretches, and tells us he'll be leaving us to it and out the door he goes.”

“Don't tell me he was whistling.”

“Could have been. So John asks Marci how long she's been seeing Mick, you know, he's trying to ease into it, but she sings right out that it's been a week now and he's made her feel so much better about things. How after Jason's murder he was such a comfort to her, but now—she stops talking and stands there and glows. And John and I are thinking about how she's certainly made old Mick feel better.”

“I'm sorry, Jack, but I have to say it. That's incredibly tacky. Her husband was murdered such a short time ago.”

“Not to mention her dad. We asked her about who could have killed her father, asked her whether she or her mother had visited the Goddard Bay Inn. She claimed she didn't know a thing, that her mother adored her father and wouldn't ever have hurt him, that she was devastated. Meanwhile, she's still glowing. Then a yapping dog comes racing into the living room and she gets all kissy-face with it. She says she's devastated too and she's so grateful to Mick for helping her get through this nightmare. When I ask her how long Mick's been on the scene, she loses her glow and gets all huffy. She claims she was never unfaithful to Jason—what a horrible thing that would be for us to think—particularly since Jason was Mick's younger brother. Anyway, that's all that's happened up here. I know you want more details, Mary Lisa, but I'm a cop and all those little details are privileged info. Hey, I'm glad you called. Do you think you can go to sleep now?”

“I sure hope so. Hey, I'm nearly nodding off into the phone.”

He laughed. “Sure you are.”

“Thanks for getting my mind off my own troubles. Did I ever tell you I think you're a good man? Good night, Jack.” She disconnected, pleased she'd managed not to ask him if he was wearing pajamas.

BORN TO BE WILD

Sunday Cavendish walks into her grandfather's library, past paneled bookshelves filled with books, dark leather furniture, and thick draperies. It's old-money rich, understated and elegant.

“Hello, Grandfather.”

Nelson Blakeney Cavendish II, eighty-one years old, looking frail but with a lovely head of white hair, is sitting in a big leather chair reading the newspaper. He looks up, nods.

She walks to the leather chair opposite him and sits down. “My father is in town.”

She watches him closely as she says it. Slowly, he folds the newspaper and lays it on his lap. “Your mother told me.” He shrugs. “What does he want?”

“I don't know, he hasn't told me. I understand that Grandmother eavesdropped on your conversation with him twenty-seven years ago, that you tried to kill him with a gun but he took it away from you.”

The old man doesn't hesitate, shrugs. “I'm glad he did. It would have been difficult to keep his death by gunshot out of the papers and behind the doors in the D.A.'s office.”

“Difficult even for you?”

“Yes, even for me. Not impossible, I would probably have managed it, since I was the one who put the D.A. in office in the first place and the last thing he'd ever want to do is embarrass me.”

“Grandmother said my father accused you of breaking the law—extortion, stock manipulations—business as usual?”

“Your grandmother was always a fanciful woman.”

“Then why is it you never call me by my name?”

He stares at her a long moment. Finally he says, “It's a ridiculous name given to you by a pompous, hypocritical charlatan who has done nothing in his life but swindle people out of their money with the idiotic promise of setting them on the path to eternal life. It makes me sick, always has.”

“Me as well,” Sunday says.

He looks surprised.

“The thing is, I'm not at all sure my father is a charlatan. Have you ever watched him on TV?”

Her grandfather looks disgusted. “Oh, he's a good actor, I know that. He has an oily charm that appeals to gullible people. Don't let him draw you in because that's why he's come back—to draw you in, to make you believe all of us were wrong about him.”

“That's certainly possible,” Sunday says. “Was it true? Did you cheat people? Break laws? Ruin lives?”

He gives a scratchy laugh. “You, of all people, ask me that? You know as well as I do that power, no matter how wisely used, can have bad consequences, for some. When elephants fight, the grass suffers, as they say. You do it yourself every day. Have you done a head count of the people you've hurt with your company policies? Your buyouts? You don't think much about who gets hurt, do you? Of course not. Your mother never did either. She enjoyed having power, until you managed to take it from her. Are you honest enough to admit it? Tough enough?”

She looks at him steadily. “You wanted to kill your own son-in-law because he stood up to you?”

She waits a moment, but he doesn't answer her.

“Why did you react so violently to what he said to you?”

“You're like a damned lawyer. You don't answer a question, you ask another one. Your mother trained you well.”

“My mother never trained me at all. What she did was send me out of the country. Or was it you who did that? You who saw to it that I, the hypocrite's seed, was removed from your sight?”

He sips a glass of water from the carafe at his side. He sets the glass down, looks at her thoughtfully. “Self-pity doesn't suit you, it hangs better on Susan. Maybe it was good for your character that your mother cut you loose—very well, that
we
cut you loose. Yes, I was the one who insisted I wanted you gone.” He snaps his fingers in her face. “Gone.”

She is stiff with pain, but she tries not to show it. She's known how he felt, but hasn't ever admitted it, never asked him or her mother. She stares at him. She smiles. “Why then, thank you, Grandfather.”

“You're good. Very good. You would have made an excellent lawyer.”

She draws a breath, shrugs. “Think of it as part of your heritage, Grandfather—and his.”

Her grandfather looks at her broodingly—

“Clear!”

The last scene. A relief. Once out of her makeup, back into jeans and a T-shirt, Mary Lisa walked out of the studio into the bright late afternoon sunlight. She rummaged in her purse for her sunglasses. There were people from the studio scattered around her. She raised her face to the sun, smiled. She'd wait for Lou Lou right there.

But then she heard Lou Lou yelling her name. She heard a scream, and then the rumble of a motorcycle. It was close, coming closer. It was jumping the curb, roaring louder than a rocket now, coming straight at her.