Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (119 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

With their backs to the sun, they strolled east along Victorian Square. A slight breeze whispered against Robbi’s face. A hansom carriage conveying tourists through the town square passed them on the cobbled lane. Robbi quietly took in the sights. Trees, shrubs, and bright flowers, black wrought-iron lampposts, spiked railings, and white lattice gazebos made up Victorian Plaza. Ahead she could see the new amphitheater filling with people.

A dull ache in her ankle made her slow her pace. Jake noticed, offered his arm. They entered John Ascuaga’s Nugget, made their way through the teeming casino to Trader Dick’s and took a booth in the cocktail lounge away from the band.

Roberta’s mind kept returning to the women in the photographs and the visions. Something gnawed at her, something that Jake had brought up a few days before.

“You asked me once if I could be clairvoyant at will,” she said.

“You said you couldn’t.”

“I’d like to try again.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I’ll be tied up all day in a rummage sale for the center, but tomorrow night’s okay. Can you come over around eight?”

“Eight it is.”

________

They waited to be called for dinner. Robbi sipped the wine, her second, or was it her third? Whatever, the alcohol was taking effect. With the band playing mood songs, she felt relaxed and warm all over, more relaxed than she’d felt in a long, long time.

“Robbi, tell me about the other experiences. The ones when you were young.”

She toyed with a cocktail napkin. “My grandmother was the first. She lived in Rhode Island, nearly three thousand miles away. I couldn’t have been more than three at the time. I saw her fall down the cellar steps. I don’t remember the details or if I told anyone about it. There was a funeral. Years later I learned she’d broken her hip in the fall and died of exposure on the icy concrete floor. I often wonder, had I said something about what I saw, could she have been saved?”

“Christ, Roberta, you were just a baby. Who would have believed you?”

“Next was my best friend in first grade. Peggy had leukemia. I knew she was going to die. Everyone knew it. One day I was in the school lunchroom and suddenly all the activity around me stopped. I saw Peg in her bed with her family gathered all around. I watched as she took her last breath. She died at noon that day.”

Jake laid a hand over her trembling one. “And your brother…?

The mention of Ronnie brought back that crushing feeling in her chest. She felt her throat constrict. “Ronnie drowned. It was an accident. He—” Roberta blinked back the tears that abruptly sprang into her eyes. “I can’t… I can’t talk about Ronnie. Not now anyway. Too much wine, I’ll be blubbering.”

“I understand,” he said. “Only visions of death?”

She nodded. “Once or twice after that, when something would flash across my mind, I ignored it. Wouldn’t let it develop into anything. I managed to repress it—whatever it was. I didn’t understand it, and I sure as hell didn’t want it. Eventually, I stopped having the visions. Until Angela, that is.”

Jake’s hand squeezed hers. She looked over at the man who’d been a companion for the past four days. His gaze met hers and locked. He stared at her with a veiled look that told her nothing, yet made her tremble inside. In the flickering candlelight, his eyes were deep, hypnotic. She returned his stare, seemingly powerless to break contact. She felt something in a hollow part of her glow faintly, embers that had lain smoldering. She was being drawn in by the sheer heat. Mesmerized.

The maitre d’ appeared, informed them their booth was ready.

Robbi was jolted back to awareness. She looked at Jake for some sign that he had felt something of what she’d felt, but he was already standing, buttoning his suit jacket and gazing around the lounge.

________

Jake forced himself back to his present surroundings with the ease of dragging a bucket underwater. For a moment he was completely, utterly lost. Lost? Where? He couldn’t say. Only that it was a very erotic place, warm and fleshy and moist, filled with a specific woman’s scent—and a specific woman. This evening was proving difficult. And only a moment before, her soft voice relating things personal and obviously painful, he’d wanted to draw her into his arms and hold her tenderly.

Over dinner she asked him questions about himself. He told her he grew up in a large house in a small town in central Kansas. The only boy of five kids, fourth in the birth order. Their mother died of a viral infection when he was seven, recasting his three older sisters into a single-parenting role.

“What was it like having three sisters mother you?”

“Heaven and hell. But I had male support. My father and grandfather.”

“What did your father do for a living?”

“Both he and Grandpa were wallpaper hangers. They had a business together.”

Roberta laughed lightly. “So that’s where you got the experience when you were in college.”

“Right.”

“Happy family?”

He smiled. Aside from losing his mother, his childhood had been idyllic. When he spoke of his carefree childhood and wholesome family, Jake saw something in her eyes—envy, a quiet longing.

“Tell me about you,” Jake said.

She talked eagerly about her young sister, spoke briefly of her mother, yet said nothing of her father, her childhood, or her fiancé, the Wall Street Wonder.

“What about your father?”

“Are you trying to spoil this pleasant evening?”

“I met your father about eight years ago at a luncheon. He was the guest speaker.”

“What did you think of him? Not the psychiatrist, but the man?”

“Intense,” Jake said, watching her closely. “Angry.”

She smiled cryptically, then smoothly maneuvered the topic back to him.

By the time they had finished dinner and stepped out of the casino into the plaza, it was nearly ten. The sky to the west, above the ragged, midnight-blue mountain peaks, glowed a luminous shade of ultramarine. At night, with the old-fashioned streetlamps glowing and the dazzling casino lights, the town looked like a movie set. A Dixie band with strumming banjos and clinking tambourines accompanied a barbershop quartet in the large gazebo bandstand directly in front of them.

Roberta leaned into him as they walked back to his car. She was slightly inebriated, which he found charming. Usually nervous and uptight, she was at ease tonight. Her smile, quick to come, lit up her face. This was the real Roberta Paxton. Or, he surmised, as close to what her personality had been like before the accident and all the tumult it had evoked.

He wanted the real Roberta Paxton. Wanted her with a profound ache.

________

On the ride home, Jake was quiet, almost pensive. She stole glances at his firmly set profile and wondered if he was upset with her for drinking too much.

At her door, unwilling to end the evening, she said, “Jake, let’s try the ESP.” She had her key in hand, trying to fit it into the lock with rubbery fingers.

“What? Now?” he said.

“Yes, right now.”

“It’s late.”

“I’m not tired. I feel good.”

“You feel good because you’re tipsy.” He spoke in a flat tone.

“So what if I’m tipsy,” she said defiantly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been tipsy, or relaxed or…or…” She let the words die away.

“Or what?” he asked quietly.

She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“We’ll work on it tomorrow night,” Jake said, helping her insert the key in the lock.

Pushing the door open, she turned to step up onto the threshold when her ankle, weak from walking in the plaza, gave out. She felt herself falling, reached out abruptly. Suddenly strong arms were around her waist, twisting her around to face him. He held her against him with her back pressed to the doorframe.

“You okay?”

“No,” she said softly, putting her arms around his neck, leaning into him.

His arms tightened around her. And then she was staring into his eyes, eyes that seemed to harbor a feverish glint. Not sure who made the first move, though she suspected she did, her eyes closed and she felt his lips on hers; at first light and tender, an instant later they were hot and moist and alive with a fierce energy.

The intensity of their passion startled her. So swift, so forceful. What had been building between the two of them these past weeks had reached volatile proportions. She wanted him. Wanted him now before she could think about it.

He moaned, then abruptly pulled away from her.

Robbi opened her eyes and stared at him, questioning.

He shook his head sadly, reached out and tenderly touched her jaw with the tips of his fingers. He lifted her into the entry, turned, and was gone.

She sank to the floor, her legs too weak to hold her.

________

At the corner of Roberta’s street, at the stop sign, he gripped the steering wheel and shook it viciously, then laughed ironically. It seemed he spent a lot of time at this miserable stop sign, contemplative time, time spent easing the pressure in his crotch.

She had a guy in another part of the country. Over six months separated. Undoubtedly she was lonely, perhaps longing for a man’s touch, but definitely intoxicated and therefore not in full control of herself. Tonight she wanted him. But tomorrow, sober, she would probably regret everything. It had been up to him to draw the line.

So what was he, for chrissake, the policeman of logic and emotion?

He laughed again. Only one other time in his life had he felt such wanting. Such obsession.

Oh, God, he was in trouble.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

When Jake entered the lake house the phone had rung a half dozen times. Wiping engine grease from his hands, he answered.

“Dr. Reynolds, its Lois Paxton.”

“Mrs. Paxton, how are you?”

“I hope I’m not disturbing you. I’m calling about my daughter, Roberta.”

Jake’s stomach twisted at the mention of her. An image of her in his arms, her body pressed to his, played across his mind. “Yes?” he said through a tightness in his throat.

“Well, I want to thank you for seeing her and, of course, to find out how she’s doing?”

“Mrs. Paxton, I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding.”

“You’re seeing her, aren’t you?”

“Your daughter does not want professional help from me or from anyone.”

“No one knows that better than I. Her father, you see, he—well, it doesn’t matter. I won’t take up anymore of your time. I know you tried and I thank you for that. Please send me a bill, Doctor.” A click and the hissing line told him she had disconnected.

He considered calling her back, then decided to leave it be. He should have made it clear to her in the beginning that he had absolutely no intention, for any amount of money, of treating her daughter on the sly.

Roberta Paxton did need help. But psychiatric help? Again he thought of Susan and felt that familiar ache.

Susan.
Five years ago, at the age of thirty, Jake met Susan Calla, a psychological assistant, at a seminar in Reno. She was beautiful, intelligent, and the most sensual woman he’d ever encountered. He embraced her. Became
obsessed
with her. Blinded by a consuming love lust, he overlooked or made excuses for the subtle signs of emotional instability that had gradually begun to surface. After moving in together, the barriers fell away one by one. Daily the chronic lying, the tantrums, the paranoia emerged. When he suggested she get counseling from one of the staff doctors, she refused, and at that point seemed to go off the deep end. He tried to break it off. She sank deeper, threatening suicide if he left.
Fatal Attraction
personified. For two endless, roller-coaster years he remained trapped in a web of sex and sickness, his own sanity teetering precariously on the edge. His own sanity…

Jake stared out the window at the shimmering turquoise lake and willed himself out of the past. There was nothing he could do for Susan now.

But he might be able to help Roberta. It was impossible to shut her out of his thoughts. Images of her haunted him. A thrill shot through him just thinking about seeing her that night.