One We Love, The (16 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

I
didn’t think I
could handle returning to work, so I called Lisa and told her I wouldn’t be
back in. I’d tossed the words “family emergency” as I’d headed out the door earlier,
so she knew there was something going on. She’d reschedule my clients, making
the appropriate apologies and such.

I felt like I’d been slammed in the gut with a sledge
hammer. It didn’t matter that Blodgett was a seasoned cop or that, as a
detective, he was sure to have more enemies than kernels on a corn cob. Diana’s
eyes—the disappointment in them—haunted me.

Once I made it to the car I ran a self-check: I didn’t feel
like drinking. I was pretty sure I didn’t, anyway. I definitely wanted a
cigarette. Nothing new there. But that itchy, restlessness that blossomed from
the seed of guilt that had been planted didn’t bode well. It was still
mid-morning, but I headed for sanctuary.

There was also a stale cigarette funk that persisted despite
the HP & Me club going non-smoking earlier in the year. My itch kicked up a
notch. In the past, if I couldn’t drink, I could always smoke, and cigarettes
were proving more difficult than booze.

The club was deserted, a highly unusual event. I waited
around for a few minutes in case somebody wandered in for a cup of coffee, but
I was feeling too restless to stay long. I either needed a meeting, a cigarette,
or a distraction.

Moments later, I jumped in my car heading out of town toward
farmland and long stretches of woodland. Heading north.

To Marshall’s cabin.

As a distraction, there was none better. All I had to do was
allow the memory to surface of that dark, still evening where we’d lain
entwined on his couch, firelight dancing like fingers over bare skin, heat chasing
away the chill. I shivered just thinking about it. A small question of whether
I could find his cabin teased the edges of my concentration, but despite the
intervening months, I found it.

His driveway, a half-mile long dirt road, would be difficult
to plow in the winter. Turning in, I slowed. Thoughts of being snowed in with
my former boss made me smile. And wiggle a little, too.

But for now, autumn leaves crunched under the tires and the
sharp cracks of snapping twigs brought my focus back to the present. I slowed
the car even more as the reality of what I was doing shoved my lust-inspired impulse
sharply to the side.

This was so stupid.

I’d reached the curve, bringing the cabin into view. If I
tried to back out now, I’d
literally
have to back out, driving in
reverse. Frankly, the odds were that I’d end up in the ditch, which wasn’t
likely to ease my embarrassment. That’s what I told myself.

Besides, the sight of the cabin as it came in to view made
my heart thump wildly. I’d once called it “enchanted,” and it still lived up to
that. I was surprised it hadn’t sold, but then, the entire housing market had
crashed. Riverfront property was at the wrong end of the price range for
someone looking for a quick sale. Several weeks ago, I’d looked up the listing
online, just out of curiosity. Marshall had priced the cabin high, at a
pre-recession rate, a tactic sure to stall a quick sale. I’d hoped it meant he
was ambivalent about truly leaving.

His Saab was parked in its usual place. I noted the
Wisconsin license plates still affixed to it and smiled. More ambivalence? I
parked next to it and did a quick, girl-check of makeup, hair, and attire. More
office casual than sex kitten, but it would have to do. I spritzed a little perfume
from the travel bottle I kept in my console—a girl never knew when she’d need
to smell good—and pushed the door open.

Pine and wood smoke and crispness, if crispness had a smell,
filled my nostrils, making me wish I hadn’t spritzed. Nothing could compete
with the scent of Wisconsin woods.

Walking up to the cabin, my heart thudded heavily against my
rib cage. Images of Marshall streaked like shooting stars across my mind. I
knocked, hoping he was wearing the red flannel jacket. And jeans. Faded,
frayed,
tight
jeans.

He wasn’t.

She
was, however.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

T
all, statuesque,
blond, and beautiful—this bitch was made for hating. I got started on that
right away.

She wore fashionably faded jeans and a close-fitted, honey-hued
sweater, the kind that looks like she’d skinned a kitten. I could tell the faded
jeans were a calculated design detail, produced in a factory and not because
she felt at home in them. Didn’t matter though. She had enough confidence to
feel at home anywhere.

“May I help you?” Southern accent, warm and sugary.

I couldn’t answer. My voice was blocked by a clotting
mixture of jealousy and humiliation.

Her smile twitched a notch wider. I sensed she wasn’t trying
to be mean, but was amused at my bumbling. She looked past me to where my car
was parked. For some reason, I followed her gaze. She was probably looking for
a delivery van. I just looked stupid.

“Is Marshall here?” I finally managed.

“He sure is. Who shall I say is calling?” Looking relieved
that I’d managed to join the conversation, she opened the door a bit wider. The
bits I could see of the cabin behind her looked exactly the way it had in the
dreams I’d been having nightly. Except Marshall wasn’t lying naked on the
leather couch. Can’t have everything, I guess.

“I used to work with him. I’ll just, um, give him a call
later. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Her turn to fall silent. Although barely discernible, her
river-blue eyes narrowed just the slightest, teeniest bit. She was looking at
me differently now, eyes taking in details, categorizing rapidly. Subtly rescinding
her previous welcome, she eased the door back to her side.

 “You must be Letty,” she said.

“Yup.”
Yup?
Did I seriously just say
yup
to
this southern peach princess? I cleared my throat. “Listen, could you just let
Marshall know that I need to talk to him about an ethics investigation on a
file? There are some questions coming up about it.”

I turned away.

“Maybe you should leave your number,” she said.

I looked back and we locked eyes. I smiled. “That won’t be
necessary,” I said. “He’s got it.”

The door clicked firmly shut before I’d even cleared the
first stair.

Marshall wouldn’t have caught up to me if I hadn’t had to
pull over and throw up in the ditch—a behavior, since getting sober, that I
hadn’t expected to experience again. When I saw the Saab’s grill growing larger
and larger in my rear view mirror, I briefly considered a Dairy State
reenactment of a “Duke’s of Hazzard” back roads chase scene, but with my luck a
buck would choose that moment to ornament my hood. Instead, I pulled over and
popped a mint.

Our car doors slammed in unison. I walked to the back of my
car and leaned up against the trunk, attempting to disguise my shaking knees
with nonchalant indifference. Mentally, my brain was hopping as wildly as a sugared-up
squirrel, but I latched onto my “ethics file” excuse with grim determination.

As he walked up, I took a flash glance inventory: faded
jeans—the real kind—and a soft blue denim shirt. His “casual” didn’t come from
a factory. He took a stance directly in front of me, not saying anything. Just
stood there, too close, trying to catch my eyes with his. Not likely. I already
knew the dangers lurking in his dark brown eyes.

“Lisa found one of Regina’s old files—Bettina Reyes?—and we’ve
got some questions about it. It looks like some therapist has been up to some
hanky-panky with his client’s wife. I’ve met with the wife and she refuses to
tell—”

“Letty, I’m sorry.”

“Is this a confession? I’m a mandated reporter, you know.
I’m obligated by law to report sexual and physical abuse.”

“Letty—”

“Frankly, I always wondered why you took off so fast but I
guess it makes sense if you were running away from your mistakes.” I wanted to
bite my tongue off. I’d meant to be a smartass, but bringing up mistakes
reiterated his belief that our relationship was one of them. I hurried on. “At
least, I can stop having nightmares about Bob prancing naked through the
clinic.”

“Wait. What? Bob?”

“Never mind. If you’re the one who’s been shagging Regina’s
client, then Bob’s off the hook.”

“Letty, stop. I don’t have any idea what you’re talking
about, but if it has to do with seeing Bob naked, I don’t want to. We need to
talk.”

Weary, I dropped the pretense, wrapping my arms around my
center. I told myself it was chilly. “No, we don’t. There’s nothing to say.”

He sighed deeply enough to rattle the leaves lining the
ditch next to us. He kept tilting his head, trying to catch my eyes. Finally,
he reached out, grabbed my wrist and tugged me over to his car.

“Get in.”

“Whoa.” I pulled my arm away. “I’m not going back there.”

“Of course not. Just . . . get in. You’re shivering.”

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

I
knew as soon as
I settled into the seat that I’d made a tactical error. The car was too
comfortable, too intimate. It felt like we were in a time capsule, shut off
from the world. Plus it smelled like leather and Marshall—two scents I’d
fantasized combining in various, naughty ways. Sitting there, I thought of a
couple more.

He started the car, turned the heater on, and swiveled to
face me. This close, it was harder to avoid eye contact, another disadvantage.
I settled for staring at his shoulder. It was a nice shoulder, but unlike nice
butts, I’ve been known to resist shoulders.
“Letty,” he said. “There were so many times I wanted to tell you. It just . . .
it never seemed like the right time.”

My stomach did a slow roll, spreading heat throughout my
body.
Times?
So many
times?
Plural? We hadn’t been together
plural times since his return so that could only mean he was talking about
before he’d left.

“What are you talking about?” Now that I wanted eye contact,
his dipped away. “Marshall? How long have you been seeing her?”

“Look,” he said, “it’s complicated.”

I almost threw up again. “That is such a cliché. I cannot
believe you would pull that rancid old line out. What’s complicated? Either you
were seeing her and chasing me or not. See how simple that is? Now which is
it?”

“I wasn’t seeing her. We’re married.”

Literally. Could. Not. Speak. Even when I was drunk I’d
never messed with a married man. Not that I could remember anyway.

“Letty.” He reached for my hand. I slapped it away. “Letty,
look, we’re married, but not really. I mean, we were getting divorced. I came
here to Wisconsin when the director position opened, and Bobbi was going to
follow as soon as she closed out her job. But she never did, and after all
those months I realized she wasn’t going to. She came up with all kinds of
excuses, but the bottom line is she wanted to transfer to California and I hate
California. Anyway, there was no way the marriage was going anywhere. In fact,
once I started seeing you, I got all the papers in order and I was just waiting
for her to sign. I really wanted to tell you, but there was so much going on. I
mean, come on. You were being stalked. People were dying. I wanted to be there
for you, but I didn’t want to add to the chaos.”

My eyes widened so big I was afraid they were going to pop
out and roll to the floor. “So, wait a minute. Are you saying you kept your
marital status a secret for me? Really? For
me
? That’s a load of
bullshit and you know it. If you wanted to be there for me, fine. That’s
awesome. But you weren’t just there for me. You were, you know”—I waved my
hands over my body—“
there
for me.”

He grinned sheepishly, but I wasn’t trying to be funny and
it pissed me off even more.

“So, okay. What’s she doing here now? I thought you ran away
to your brother’s in Wyoming. Was that a lie, too?”

Well, that wiped the grin off his face. Got a little red,
too. “I didn’t lie. I did stay with Allan for a while. Okay, technically I was
still married, but Bobbi and I were through. It was dead long before you came
along. We just hadn’t stamped it DOA yet.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Why is she camping out in
your cabin? Are you reconciling? ’Cause she sure looked settled in and cozy
when I got there.”

“We had some legal stuff that she had to sign for the
realtor. Since we aren’t legally divorced . . .  Well, anyway, she’s going to
quit claim her ownership of the cabin, and I’m doing the same for the house in
Colorado. Even trade, pretty much. And then she’s free to go to California, and
I’m just . . . free.”

“That’s not the vibe I got when we were talking at the door.
She acted like she still had a claim, and not just on the cabin.”

Emotions struggled across his face. My heart hurt. I turned
away, propping my elbow on the window, staring out at the countryside. My
breath created little puffs on the chilly glass. There was still something
between them. Maybe something as ephemeral as the steam my lungs created
against the window glass, but something.

“Why did you let me think
I
was the problem? That I was
the one responsible for the problems between us?” I asked.

“When I left, it was because of what happened here, not
because of her. You want to call it running away, fine. Maybe it was. But let’s
face it, Letty, you let yourself get involved in a bad situation and—”

“I
what?
I let myself get involved? Are you kidding
me? I was being stalked. I was attacked. I didn’t ask for—”

“You didn’t back away from it either,” he interrupted.

The words hung in the air between us for several moments.

“I was supposed to back away from it?” I finally managed.
“How do you do that, Marshall? Some crazed asshole is coming after me and I’m
supposed to just sit there and offer him milk and cookies?”

“No. But you don’t have to rush toward it, either. You could
have let the police do their job. Instead, you kept things from them. You ran
around like Nancy Drew on steroids, and that pulled the people around you into
danger, too. Including me.”

It was the “pulling the people around you into danger” that
pushed me over the edge, of course.

“Hey, Marshall? You know what? I don’t think Regina’s death
was
an accident. I think she was stabbed with a knitting needle and tossed down the
stairs like a sack of garbage. Murdered, in other words. And I’m using my role
as her executor to check out the staff at the shelter and, guess what? I think
they’re acting mighty suspicious. Oh, and just so you know, I
did
talk
to Blodgett about it, but somebody knifed him—“

“Detective Blodgett was attacked?” His face paled.

“—from behind and he’s been in the hospital ever since. And
I didn’t”—my voice hitched—“I didn’t tell Diana, but I should have.” I took a
deep shuddery breath.

“Letty, please, I’m not saying—”

 “Bottom line? I don’t believe murder is somebody else’s
business. I think it’s everyone’s business and I plan to continue looking for
answers, at least until I can find enough evidence for the police to step in.  

“Oh, and by the way? I think Regina knew about Bob
schtupping the wife of one of his clients. So, he’s a suspect, too. That last
part happened on your watch, and I came out to ask if you remembered anything
more about it. That’s the
only
reason I came out here.”

He sat staring at me like I was a lunatic. Resisting the
urge to stick out my tongue, I settled for slamming the car door hard enough to
set the vehicle rocking.