Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (132 page)

“I think you know. Forgive me? You’re going to forgive me?”

“Look, I know I haven’t been the perfect fiancé. Lately I haven’t called as often as I should have. And I should have come when you were in the hospital. We drifted apart for a bit. Naturally I’ll shoulder some of the blame.”

She had waited for him to say something about Karen, but it was obvious he had no intention of bringing her up.

“It’s more than that.”

He raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Karen? Midnight call at your apartment last week? Sleepy Kar answers. Ring a bell?’

A measure of color drained from his face.

“Ohh-kay,”
she said, leaning back in her chair and hugging herself.

“Robbi, babe, it was only—shit, it was little more than a one-night stand. Hardly worth discussing. Dammit, it meant nothing.”

She stood, went to the sink, her back to him. “I’m afraid I can’t say that about my relationship. Jake means something to me.”

For the longest time all was quiet. At last she heard the kitchen chair scrape on the floor, then the soft sound of his bare feet as he crossed the linoleum. He had left the room.

Robbi sighed heavily. She poured another cup of coffee and sat at the table again.

Five minutes later, dressed in dry clothes, his travel bag over his shoulder, he paused at the doorway to say, “They’re a bitch.”

She looked at him.

“Long distance relationships.” He walked on.

She heard the front door open and close.

If the situation hadn’t been so depressing, she would have laughed.

________

Jake thrust the throttle on the speedboat forward. There was a light chop on the surface of Lake Tahoe, just enough to make the fast-moving boat handle like a car with four flats jouncing at breakneck speed on railroad ties. The pounding felt good.

Icy water sprayed over the side of the windshield, stinging, soaking him through. That felt good too.

Fools deserved worse. He’d been a top-notch fool. How often did he fall in love? Twice, that’s how often. Susan and Roberta. It took falling in love with Roberta to get over Susan. What would it take to get over Roberta? A lobotomy
.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“Little one, can you swing by and get me tonight?” Sophie asked Roberta the following day. They were outside, washing the front windows of the center. “My car’s wheezing again. Sounds undoubtedly terminal this time.”

Robbi stared absently at the soapy water on the glass as it rapidly evaporated in the late morning heat. Before the fiasco in her kitchen the day before, Robbi had hoped to go to the dinner dance with Jake. She had tried calling him, but reached the answering machine at both numbers. Would he call her? Would he ever want to see her again?

“If you have other plans…” Sophie began.

“No,” Robbi said quickly. She was no longer in high school, waiting for the phone to ring. This was a job, not a social event. “No, I don’t have other plans. I’ll pick you up at six.”

“You’re a sweetheart.” Sophie picked up the bucket of dirty water and headed for the back entrance. “When I come back I want an update on Roberta Paxton. I’m a couple of chapters behind and something tells me our heroine is at a turning point in her life.”

Reflected in the window in front of her, Robbi saw a moss-green sedan pull to the curb. Detective Avondale got out, flicked a cigarette into the street, then made his way across the lawn to where she stood on the ladder.

“Good morning.” Avondale carried a small plastic shopping bag and a file folder.

“Morning.” Robbi climbed down from the ladder.

“Miss Paxton, I have some shots, mug shots, could you have a look?”

Robbi wiped her hands on the back of her jeans, took the four sheets—each containing six photographs—and carefully looked them over.

“No. He’s not there.”

Avondale grunted. He opened the small shopping bag. “Maybe we’ll have better luck here. I have some personal items that belonged to Belinda Sardi. Thought maybe you’d have a look at them, or hold them, or whatever it is you do about these kind of things. Y’know, the vibes and all.”

Robbi’s stomach tightened. After her experience with the black hole the night she’d held Maggie’s wristwatch, she’d vowed never to attempt that again. “I can’t, Detective Avondale. I’d like to help, but I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“I can’t connect with the victims. I don’t know why, but nothing comes. Nothing positive, that is.”

“Couldn’t hurt to try, now could it? Mrs. Sardi went to the trouble to get me these things.” He held the bag out to her.

She shrank back. “No.”

“Okay, Miss Paxton. I don’t profess to know the supernatural psyche and what’s dangerous and what isn’t. If you say you can’t, then you can’t, and I respect that.” Avondale stared candidly into her eyes. “Police work is what I do, and I’m about to ask you to consider participating in something that could also be dangerous…in a physical way.”

“You want me to reveal myself to the killer,” she stated flatly.

“In a sense, you were a witness to last night’s murder.”

“There were two on-the-scene eyewitnesses. The men from the Chinese restaurant.”

“They didn’t see the killer clearly. He deliberately kept his back to them. Now, a clairvoyant observer—hell, it’ll get press…” He let his eyes finish the sentence.

Robbi broke eye contact, focused on two little diaper-clad toddlers playing in a sprinkler half a block down the street. Just the thought of that man knowing her identity terrified her. There was no doubt in her mind he would come after her. If he wasn’t already looking for her.

“Twenty-four-hour police protection. A tracer to monitor your every move. We wire you, just like in the movies.” Avondale touched her arm. “Mace, gun, flamethrower, whatever makes you feel safe.”

“The policewoman had it all,” Robbi said softly. “It didn’t stop him from killing her in an alley with people looking on.”

The tall, thin policeman shifted, obviously uncomfortable. “You’re right, there’s no guarantees.” Avondale smiled weakly. “For now, Miss Paxton, just consider it. Who’s to say that he’d even come after you if he knew who you were? He might sense a trap and run.”

“I doubt it.”

He gave her arm a squeeze. “Let me know if you change your mind. I’ll get out of your hair now so you can get back to work.” As he backed up he pointed to a streaked windowpane. “Wadded-up newspaper. The only way to clean glass.”

“Oh, Detective Avondale?” She stopped him before he reached the car. “I haven’t been able to contact Carl Masser and I’m worried. I’ve been calling morning and night for two days.”

“Masser? Isn’t he the one who filed the report on the second missing woman?”

“Yes. Margaret Wilson, his fiancée. I told him everything I told you.”

“You think he might’ve gone looking for this gal’s killer?”

“He might have.”

“I’ll check it out.”

He waved as he drove away.

“Cop?” Sophie said, returning with a full bucket of clean water.

“Yeah. They want to use me as bait.”

Sophie directed a long, hard stare at Roberta. “Little one, don’t do it.”

“I could be valuable to them.”

“You’re valuable to us, to the women and kids in the shelter. We don’t want to lose you.”

Robbi climbed the ladder and went back to washing the window. The squeegee squealed across the clean glass. The sound reminded her of a woman’s scream.

She shivered in the ninety-degree heat.

________

Jake paced his office, flipping through the half dozen index cards. He paused in the practice delivery of his speech for the SSWC’s banquet that night.

Should he call her?

He turned, stared at the phone as though it would do or say something to help him decide. The instrument remained rigid and uncommunicative, offering nothing.

He lifted the receiver, listened to the droning dial tone, then replaced it.

The Wall Street Wonder was definitely back in the picture.

Screw it. Don’t be a bigger fool.

At this point it was up to her.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

On the second floor of John Ascuaga’s Nugget Hotel and Casino, tuxedoed waiters readied the Rose Ballroom for the Silver State Women’s Center annual black tie dinner dance. In the middle of each round, double-linen-covered table, among the sparkling crystal and silver, stood centerpieces of magenta candles, off-white gardenias, and pale baby’s breath.

At six-thirty Roberta and Sophie met the other staff members and volunteers.

Sophie tugged at the clingy material of her red and silver knit dress. “After tonight this dress goes in the donation bin. It’s a goddamn creeper, and these silver threads itch like a bitch.” She shifted from one high-heeled foot to another. “The shoes I’m losing as soon as the lights go down. They don’t make comfortable heels for giants.”

“You look lovely,” Roberta said.

“You
look lovely. I look like a Tijuana taxi.”

Robbi wore a kelly green, above-the-knee silk dress of simple lines. The straight-across strapless bodice was a panel of shiny satin. Her only jewelry of faux emerald drop earrings sparkled through long spiral masses of shiny hair.

A few early arrivals to the seventy-five-dollar-a-plate dinner milled around the two cocktail bars. Since there were no name cards, Jake would select his own place at one of the three head tables—if he came.

Within a half hour the huge room was crowded. A second glass of Chardonnay was pressed into Roberta’s hand by an attorney she scarcely knew. As the man expounded on the virtues of mountain biking, she listened absently, sipped her wine, her gaze involuntarily going to the main doors time and again. At eight-ten Sophie claimed the microphone and announced dinner.

Slowly, throughout the room, the more than three hundred people took their places. Robbi stood indecisively at a head table. Sophie, Valerie, the staff physician, and Roberta, were each to head a separate table. Before Roberta could protest, a dark-haired man in his early forties had pulled a chair out for her. She reluctantly slid into it. While the man introduced himself, she was aware of someone taking the seat on her other side. Her pulse raced. Was it Jake? She dared not look, afraid of appearing too eager. A pungent musky smell of a man’s cologne indicated it was not Jake.

The man who had held her chair was Zachary Nether, a representative of the Bank of Western Nevada, one of SSWC’s newest and more outstanding contributors.

“What good fortune. I’m to have the prettiest woman in the room as my dinner companion.”

Nether’s cool gray eyes stared boldly into hers. “And I thought this was going to be just another tedious fundraiser.” His gaze dropped to her bodice.

Robbi smiled self-consciously and turned to the heavyset man on her right who was already digging into the basket of rolls. She introduced herself.

He ripped the dinner roll apart, dropped it on his bread plate, and extended a crumb littered hand for her to shake.