McCloud's Woman (7 page)

He hadn’t been called upon in the Balkan trials as often
as he’d expected. Thousands of people had been murdered in that war,
executed, women and children included. Their lives demanded justice.

TJ turned his back on the harbor and headed for his car.

He had to walk past the B&B again to get there. The
thick night air carried Mara’s laughter clearly, and he couldn’t resist
glancing toward the old converted mansion.

A tall, slender figure in flowing white adorned the wide
veranda, accompanied by a pair of business-suited men. She was
gesticulating gracefully in the manner that for one brief spring had
held TJ enthralled, so he knew the effect on her companions. She’d
always possessed enthusiasm and a
joie de vivre
that no other person of his acquaintance could equal once she got past her shyness.

“Oh,
People
magazine, definitely.” Her voice
carried as he passed the drive. “The town will be flocked with tourists.
Are you certain you’re prepared?”

The thick hedge obscured any reply as TJ walked on. His
teeth clenched at the mention of the press. Damn it, he didn’t need
journalists here poking around. He could hope the entertainment press
wouldn’t recognize his name.

Mara was promising the town council the moon, probably
with no chance of delivering. Tapping down his irritation, he made a
mental note to expect a deputation of city fathers in the morning,
complaining that the dig site interfered with tourism.

He hadn’t visited the excavation all day. He’d best go out
and pull his records into order. The scraps of evidence he had
extricated from the gravesite so far wouldn’t interest the local police
any more than archeological. He had a feeling that by the time he was
done, the police would definitely be interested.

That hadn’t been his original intention when he’d obtained the grant. Cleo would kill him.

With a wry grin, TJ concluded that would certainly solve a few problems.

***

“Offering to haul in new trees and shrubs was a stroke of
genius.” Ian returned the folded newspaper to the breakfast table the
next morning. The headline, HOLLYWOOD PRODUCER PROMISES PARK, landed
face up.

“A park won’t happen unless the state comes up with the
funds to buy the adjoining land.” Mara buttered her toast and glanced
out the bay window to the lush lawn and gardens of the B&B. “I have a
feeling it isn’t TJ who will come gunning after me, though. His
sister-in-law struck me as the type to dice me into little bits without a
qualm if I invade her island hideaway against her wishes.”

Still watching the window, Mara smiled as one of the
subjects in question stormed past the gardenia and down the drive,
brandishing a fresh newspaper in his fist. TJ. His expression was so
grim, she fully expected steam would pour from his ears shortly.

Uneasiness raised its ugly head, but she blithely added
jam to her toast while Ian checked the view to see what she was smiling
at. He whistled and hurriedly stood up.

“He’s all yours, babe. I have better things to do than be flattened before the day begins.”

“Cluck, cluck,” Mara mocked softly before taking a bite of
her toast. She was a pro at confrontation, but she preferred not to
engage in hostilities on an empty stomach.

TJ disappeared behind the enormous ferns on the wide veranda. The bell tinkling over the front door followed.
Here he comes
... she sang mentally, until she remembered the rest of the verse mentioned nervous breakdowns.

Her mother did those. Mara Simon wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Not until she could afford to pay the consequences.

Ian slithered out the back way as TJ stormed in the front.
Since Mara was the only other one of her company up at this hour, TJ
found her easily. She sighed in admiration at the way he filled out the
short-sleeved black polo and jeans. All that muscle wasted on an
egghead—pity. Must have been dig day instead of lab day, she surmised—no
starched white shirt.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” TJ shouted,
slamming the folded newspaper with the headline about the state park on
the table. The scar over his nose twitched furiously.

“Eating breakfast?” she inquired, flapping her artful
lashes at him while taking another bite of toast. She really did enjoy
throwing TJ McCloud for a loop every time she flaunted one of her new
assets.

He recovered quickly though, she noticed in
disappointment. Other men melted when she played innocent. TJ froze up
colder than an iceberg in Antarctica.

“You come out here for a few months, turn people’s lives
and an entire town upside-down with grandiose plans that can’t possibly
be accomplished, and plan on walking away as soon as all-out war ensues,
don’t you?”

“Want to add: ‘That isn’t the Patsy I used to know’ while
you’sre at it?” she asked sweetly, reaching for her coffee. Once, she
might have burst into tears at his scorn. Now, she girded her loins, so
to speak, and prepared for the showdown.

“Oh, I can do better than that.” He toned down his voice,
but it still dripped more scorn than her toast dripped butter. “Brad
always put others first, but baby sister takes the opposite tack,
doesn’t she? What you want counts most, and to hell with everyone else.”

“Brad put himself first that last time, though, didn’t he?” she countered flatly.

He looked startled at that observation.
Good
. She’d
had to live with the results of Brad’s death for seventeen damned
years. Slapping TJ with reality held a measure of satisfaction.

“Is that your excuse? You can ruin people’s lives because
of what happened to Brad? Grow up.” He clenched his fists as if to keep
from reaching for her. “We’ll fight you, tooth and nail. Cleo and Jared
are building something good out there. You have no intention of carrying
through on these lies.” He pointed at the newspaper article about the
park she was promoting.

“The entire town will be up in arms against Cleo and Jared
if they oppose a fantasy that’s never going to happen,” he growled. “I
won’t have you destroying their happiness for your own selfish
purposes.”

“Open the gate to the road, and it will all die down,” she purred. Always purr, no matter how badly rattled, she’d learned.

“Those gates will protect a murder investigation shortly,”
he growled back. “You might want to start considering which of your
newfound friends might have an interest in seeing a state park covering
up the evidence.”

He didn’t hang around to see how she would take that, but
strode off, completely unaware of Mara’s admiring interest in his tight
posterior. She figured the crack about a murder investigation was simply
one of TJ’s better attempts to unsettle her and dismissed it. TJ’s rear
end, however, was definitely a point to ponder. If she still wore
glasses, steam would be obscuring her view about now.

Just entering the dining room, Constantina swiveled her head to follow TJ’s progress.

“My, my,” she said with a sigh of pleasure, plopping down
in the chair Ian had vacated. “I don’t suppose I can hope that’s your
new director, can I?”

Mara snickered at the thought. “Not unless you favor the
Red Queen school of directing. ‘Off with her head!’ doesn’t work well in
Hollywood these days.”

“Oh, well, it was a nice thought,” Constantina said. “Men with hot tempers are equally hot in bed, you know.”

She’d sworn off men after Sid. Shrugging, Mara watched TJ
stride up the driveway to the street. If Brad hadn’t died, she might
have discovered what it was like to have a hot man in her bed. Her
libido did a shiver of ecstasy at just the image of TJ naked. But that
bird had flown. She had more important things to worry about.

The gardenia bush blocked her view of TJ reaching the
street, so she turned back to her table companion. “It’s more important
to make a lot of people happy than a few, isn’t it?”

“In my experience, you can’t make anybody happy, so don’t
bother trying.” Constantina signaled the waitress for coffee,
effectively ending useless speculation.

A park would make lots and lots of people happy, Mara
concluded, choosing to ignore her friend’s advice. The stuck-up wealthy
McClouds didn’t deserve their own private island.

“Talk to Mara Simon? Are you out of your mind?” Jared
asked in alarm as he flipped an antiquated rubber jar seal over the bony
uplifted middle finger of the skeleton in the corner.

TJ hit the delete button on his answering machine, erasing
the host of messages from VIPs demanding he return their calls. Colonel
Martin wasn’t among them, and he had a suspicion most of the others had
to do with Mara’s state park idea and his refusal to cooperate. He had
half the Defense Department down his back asking for his Balkan notes.
He didn’t know if they realized he had the other boxes or not, and he
didn’t care. He was a private contractor and his notes belonged to him.
If the feds couldn’t intimidate him, the local chamber of commerce
didn’t have a chance.

The call from the Charleston newspaper was reason for
fear, though. He calculated no one read the local rag, but the big city
papers were picked up by the national press. The national media hadn’t
caught on to his name yet, but if the colonel’s story grew any bigger,
one of them would recall his connection to the colonel. Time was running
out.

“Cleo would have my scalp if I got near the woman,” Jared
continued. “Besides, if Mara rescues Sid’s company, I could someday be
working with her. Hollywood’s a small town.”

“Fine. Then I’ll send back the grant money, pack my
things, and take that job in Mexico,” TJ responded absently to Jared’s
complaint. “You can explain to Cleo why bulldozers are plowing the dune
and land developers are knocking on your door. Little Patsy wins by a
forfeit.”

Jared emitted a rude sound. His throw missed the skeleton,
bouncing off the wall behind it. “Little Patsy was a holy terror even
in middle school. She always ruined the grade curve, and tattled to the
teacher if we got even.”

“That was two decades ago,” TJ shouted in frustration.
“And you probably set fire to her schoolbooks, if I remember your
tactics correctly. I told her to tell the teacher.”

Jared grinned, unconcerned about details. “Good thing they
pushed her into advanced classes. The two of you had a lot in common
back then. Wine her, dine her, woo her into our way of thinking, big
brother. She used to think you walked on water. I’m just the pest who
shot her with a water pistol.”

Wine her, dine her. That was easy for Jared to say. His
younger brother had wined and dined starlets and socialites for years,
while TJ had buried himself in labs with assistants who had a striking
resemblance to the Patsy he remembered, now that he thought about
it—brainy intellectuals with their hair pulled back and no makeup.

“If you’re not worried about a state park on your
doorstep, why should I be?” TJ asked gruffly, glaring at the counter
that served as his desk. Days’ worth of mail hadn’t been opened. Leona
hadn’t returned to open it.

Jared shrugged and gathered the rubber rings scattered
over the aging linoleum. “It’s all Hollywood hype. Nothing will come of
it but a lot of media attention. Hire your own spin doctors and toss it
back into her court.”

“That’ll solve all my problems,” TJ grumbled, locating a
letter opener and slicing open the envelope on top. “A PR person to
claim I’ve uncovered the murder of the century. Do PR people answer
mail?”

Jared dropped all the jar rings over the skeleton’s finger
and eyed his brother skeptically. “Something else eating you that
you’re not telling us about?”

TJ threw out an ad for an American Express platinum card
and sliced open a handwritten envelope addressed to Dr. McCloud. An
unsigned piece of school notebook paper fell out. Frowning, he glanced
over the arthritic scrawl, then handed it to Jared. “You tell me.”

His brother scanned the one-line note, whistled, then read
it more carefully. “All right, I’ll bite. Why should you watch your
back?” He quirked an eyebrow. “And how? Wear a mirror?”

Propping his shoulders against the wall behind his stool
and sprawling his legs out, TJ shrugged. “Better yet, is it a threat or a
warning?” he asked. “‘Watch your back’ is not a clarifying
communication.”

“Take it to the sheriff. Maybe he knows the local cranks
who do this kind of thing.” Jared threw the cryptic message back on the
counter. “We’ve got our share of wackos around here, but none of them
strike me as dangerous.”

The postmark was Charleston, but that didn’t mean anything. The local post office sent all its mail to the city for sorting.

Surely it was from a local prankster wanting the film to
go as planned. TJ couldn’t see how it would have any relation to the
Martin case. After all, no one but Leona knew he had the evidence boxes.

Leaving the mail on his desk, TJ grabbed the keys to his
excavation site and aimed for the door. Digging was uncomplicated and
vastly more interesting than anything in the office. The clavicle he’d
uncovered yesterday had shown definite signs of bullet damage. It was
the brass button he’d located earlier that fascinated him, though. It
certainly looked like a Nazi insignia. He’d start checking the internet
tonight.

“Squirt Patsy with a water gun next time you see her,” TJ
advised as he shoved his brother out the door ahead of him. “See how
much of the Hollywood façade washes off.”

Jared chuckled. “Not on your life, bro. She’ll tattle to
Sid, and I’d be blackballed for life. You’re the man. I’m just the class
clown.”

TJ was damned tired of being The Man. That’s why he’d
taken this beach job in the first place—to take a vacation from the
burden of responsibility for a while. Maybe Mexico wasn’t such a bad
idea after all.

As they exited the storefront, Mara waved gaily at them
from across the street. In her high-heeled mules, she towered over the
town mayor and the local reporter she held captive. Given the cleavage
at their eye level, TJ figured they had no reason for complaint. For a
small southern town where all the women dressed in Laura Ashley dresses
and pearls, Mara in her tight red leather miniskirt and belly-baring
crop top must be a sight the men would relish for years to come.