Читать книгу Whispers and Lies - Diane Pershing, Diane Pershing - Страница 10

Will rushed right back up the stairs and flung open the door to see Lou standing in the middle of the living room, her hand to her mouth and shaking her head. It was a small, high-ceilinged room with two archways, one that led to the rear of the house and another through which a kitchen was visible. The entire place was in shambles. Lamps were overturned, couch pillows strewn about, the drawers of a tall sideboard pulled out and their contents, mostly table linens and large platters, dumped on the floor. Paintings had been torn off the wall, their backs ripped open.

Quickly, Will closed the door, went to Lou and guided her to a small chair near the fireplace. “Sit,” he ordered, then added, “Stay here.” She did.

He picked up the fireplace poker and quickly searched the rest of the small living quarters. The rear arch led to two small bedrooms and a bath. The first bedroom was in as much disarray as the living room: clothing heaped on the floor of a closet, drawers opened, sheets and blankets tossed about. Whoever it was who had done this had been in a hurry. It looked as though a tornado had tunneled its way through. In the small bathroom, the contents of the medicine cabinet lay scattered on the tile floor. The second bedroom, however, was amazingly neat. It seemed obvious they hadn’t had time to get to this room before they’d taken off.

Will ran back to the living room and checked to see that Lou was still in the chair. She was, though she was still shaking. Then he headed into the kitchen and gazed around. Oven doors were open, cabinets had been gone through, even the refrigerator door stood ajar. He closed it, then returned to Lou.

Kneeling down in front of her, Will took both her freezing hands in his. Her face was white, her eyes huge and vulnerable. “No one’s here. You’re safe.”

She nodded.

“They didn’t get to the smaller bedroom, at least.”

She nodded again.

“Are you in shock? Talk to me.”

She shook her head, then managed, “Just…horrified.” She shrugged, a small helpless gesture. “And confused. Why? Who would do this?”

He stood, took out his cell phone and paced back and forth in front of the small fireplace as he placed a call to 911. After ascertaining that there didn’t seem to be imminent danger, the operator told him she’d report this immediately to the police.

Will squatted on his haunches, again took her cold hands in his and rubbed them together. “They’re on their way. Can I get you something? A glass of water?”

“Yes,” she said, licking around her mouth. “That would be nice.”

After double-locking the front door just to be safe, he headed to the kitchen and returned with a glass of water that Lou gulped down quickly. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she set the glass down on a side table, then gazed around the room again.

“I don’t understand.”

“This happened to me once in D.C. and when I got home I was shocked at first, then really pissed off. It’s a kind of violation, isn’t it?”

She nodded, but seemed distracted. After a moment, she shook her head slowly. “I thought it was nothing.”

“You thought what was nothing?”

“The last few days. I’ve had this…creepy feeling, like someone was watching me, following me.”

“Really?”

She nodded again, her brows furrowed. “It was nothing I could see, nothing tangible, but I sensed it. It was like he, they, whatever, were waiting for something. For me to do something.” She turned her gaze on him. “Since Mom died, I go down to the clinic in the morning and come back up here at night. I don’t much go anywhere else. And what I think, although I could be wrong, is that they were waiting for me to leave so they could do this. Does that sound nuts?”

“Not in the least.”

“And tonight there was a break in the pattern. I went out to dinner with you.” A look of sudden realization came over her face. “The men! Remember the two men, the ones who were in such a hurry right before we got here? They must have seen us coming and ran out before they could finish whatever they were here for. Oh!”

She stood abruptly, rushed to the smaller of the two bedrooms. Will followed. “Don’t touch anything before the cops get here.”

She knelt in front of the bed, lifted the spread and reached under. “I have to get Anthony.”

“Anthony?”

“My baby.” After a moment, she pulled out a highly protesting small black kitten with white paws, shivering and emitting tiny, pitiful little mews. Instead of rising again, Lou sat on the floor, leaned back against the bed and, cradling the terrified animal in her arms, murmured comforting words in a low, soothing voice.

Gazing down on the picture the two made, Will was oddly moved. The woman was something else; her place had been invaded, but she had put that aside to take care of a small, helpless animal.

The sound of heavy footsteps on the outside stairs was followed by a loud rapping on the door. “It’s Kevin Miller!”

“Kevin?” Will asked as he helped Lou to her feet and they made their way toward the front of the house.

“He’s our police chief.”

Will opened the door and sure enough, one of his buddies from high school stood there, wearing chinos and a dark blue sweatshirt with the legend Police Do It In Handcuffs scrawled across his ample chest. “Will?” he said, surprise on his round face. “Hey.”

The two men shook hands. “Kev.”

Kevin’s short hair was beginning to gray and his gut was somewhat more pronounced than it had been back in their school jock days, but he hadn’t changed much. He was still placid-looking and good-natured. He stepped inside, followed by a youthful uniformed cop. The rookie officer was introduced as Jack Kingman.

“How you doing, Dr. Lou?” Kevin asked.

She shrugged. “Not great.”

He perused the room, nodded. “So I see.” He turned to the kid. “Check the place out.”

“I already did,” Will offered. “No one’s here.”

“Not too smart.”

He shrugged. “I needed to make sure Lou was safe.”

“Check anyway,” Kevin told Kingman. “You know the drill, don’t touch anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And please,” Lou added, “the clinic downstairs? I need to know everything’s okay there.”

Kevin looked at the rookie. “Got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

After the young man took off, Kevin tugged a notebook and pen from his back pocket, and told Lou to sit on the part of the couch that was still cushioned. Kevin then pulled up a wooden chair from the dining room table and sat in front of her.

As Will perched on the arm of the couch, Kevin asked Lou, “Can you talk to me now?” When she nodded, he said, “Tell me what you know, from the beginning.”

She did so—the feeling of being followed the past few days, the men rushing down the street as she and Will came up, opening her door to discover the place had been thoroughly trashed.

“Anything taken?” Kevin asked, jotting down notes.

“I haven’t really had time to look around, but not as far as I can tell.”

“Any idea why they’d pick you or your place?”

“Not a one.”

“You got any valuables here?”

“Not a thing. Kevin, I swear I can’t think of any reason for this, none at all.”

The rookie cop returned. “All clear up here, sir.”

“Check the clinic now.”

“Yes, sir.”

He left by the front door and Kevin returned his attention to Lou. “So, you think you’ve been under some kind of scrutiny and that the two men who nearly knocked you guys down are connected to that. Do you know that, or just think it?” He framed the question neutrally, but Will could see the skepticism behind it.

“I think it.”

“Okay, then. Any enemies?”

“Me?” She shook her head again. “Honestly, I have nothing of value and no enemies.”

“Old boyfriends?”

“No one of any consequence. An ex-husband who I haven’t seen in years—he’s remarried and happily, so I hear. He lives out west in Oregon.”

Will mused aloud. “They were looking for something, don’t you think, Kev?”

He nodded. “Money, probably, or something they could pawn.”

“If they were,” Lou said, “they were clean out of luck. I mean, what with student loans, the mortgage, then setting up the clinic, Mom and I only recently got out of the red. All the furniture you see here is from thrift shops, with Mom working her magic on them. The only thing I can think of is some silver. You know, a few old place settings that we happened to pick up at a swap meet.” Still cradling the kitten, she rose from the couch and walked over to the sideboard where she peered into one of the drawers that was hanging open. “Nope. They’re still here.” She turned around, shrugged. “There’s nothing, Kevin, trust me.”

“Could be a random thing,” Kevin said. “But I don’t think it was.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because it was too thoroughly gone through,” Will said, then addressed the chief. “You mind, Kev?” An amused smile on his face, the other man shook his head. Will angled his body toward Lou, still standing behind him by the sideboard. “I used to be a beat reporter covering the D.C. cops and went to a lot of crime scenes. This is the kind of damage you see when someone is looking for one specific thing of value, something that might be hidden. You know, a first edition, a valuable painting, family heirlooms. Maybe important papers, like financial records in a divorce or some kind of evidence to be used in a lawsuit.”

She shook her head. “There’s nothing that complicated in my life, trust me.”

He believed her, as far as that went. But there could be something she had no knowledge of. The timing of the break-in was bothering him. Had his conversation with Lincoln earlier in the week set something sinister in motion? Lou said she’d had the feeling of having been watched for a few days. It was just three days ago that he’d talked to Linc and Lou’s mother had been mentioned.

Was there a connection? Was this reporter’s intuition or reporter’s overactive imagination at work?

He couldn’t be certain. In his profession, a prime credo was that all threads had to be followed to their source. “How about your mother?” he offered.

“How about my mother what?”

Kingman, the young officer, came pounding up the stairs and reported that everything downstairs was fine. The whole place was locked up tighter than a drum.

Lou seemed to relax just a bit at the news. After she thanked him, Kevin told him to wait at the foot of the stairs and to keep an eye out for anything suspicious.

“Yes, sir,” the young man said and went pounding down the stairs again. So much energy, Will thought with a smile.

Kevin said to Lou, “Your mother? Maybe she had something valuable here, something you didn’t know about.”

Shaking her head, she returned to the couch and sat down again. “I guess it’s possible.”

“Did you go through all her effects?” Will persisted.

“Her effects?” She snorted. “Her clothes and a couple of boxes in the attic, that’s all. Baby pictures, my school report cards, stuff like that.”

“Did she have a safe-deposit box?” Kevin asked.

“One at our bank. It contained her will, leaving everything to me. A small insurance policy.” She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“You holding up okay?” Will asked Lou.

“I’m tired, but I’m fine,” she said. “And now that the initial shock is over, you’re right, I’m starting to get pissed off.”

Kevin nodded. “Good. Can either of you describe the two men who rushed by you?”

Lou shook her head, but Will closed his eyes, pictured the scene. “Both wore black. One had longish brown hair tied at his neck. The other wore a baseball cap, black also, didn’t notice a logo. Their heads were lowered as they ran so I couldn’t see their faces, but I got the impression they were mid to late twenties.”

Kevin jotted down some notes, returned the pad and pen to his back pocket and stood up. “Well, it’s a start. I’ll check and see if there’s any kind of recent pattern in the area, two men breaking in when the owner isn’t home.” He headed for the front door. “Meantime, let’s close up the place. I’ll put a man on outside all night. My fingerprint guy will be back from vacation tomorrow. I’ll get him up here then. He’s good. Although they probably wore gloves.”

“Close up the place?” Lou said.

“You can’t stay here,” Will told her.

“But—”

He cut her off. “Absolutely not.”

“Hey, Dr. Lou,” Kevin explained, “if they were interrupted before they finished, they may come back.”

Her face went white again. “Oh.”

“Come with me to Nancy’s place,” Will said. “She’ll put you up.”

“No, that’s too much for her, with the wedding and all. I’ll go to a hotel.”

“You will not. You shouldn’t be alone. You’ve had a shock.”

“I’m fine now, Will,” she insisted stubbornly.

“Bull. You’re running on empty and you need to collapse someplace safe.”

With that, he took out his cell phone, contacted his sister, briefly explained what had happened and then handed the phone to Lou. Adjusting the kitten in the crook of her elbow, she put the phone to her ear. Whatever his sister said to her made her smile, then nod. “Okay, okay, you’ve convinced me.”

As she gave him back his phone, she said, “If I don’t come over, she’ll never speak to me again. I gave her enough grief refusing to be a bridesmaid, so I’m treading on thin ice as it is.”

Nancy Jamison was tall and bony, not beautiful, but the kind of woman who would grow more attractive with age. She had the Jamison dark hair and pronounced bone structure, but her eyes were light blue instead of green like Will’s. When she threw open the door and opened her arms, Lou went right into them, and, just like that, she was on the verge of tears again. She really had thought she was okay, had thought Will was fussing needlessly, but it turned out he was right.

He stood behind her, carrying everything—her overnight case, the cat carrier, litter box and litter. He wouldn’t hear of her lifting anything.

“You poor thing,” Nancy said, patting her on the back.

Lou withdrew from the hug. “I didn’t want to bother you so close to the wedding.”

“Stop it,” she said sternly, ushering her into the same house Lou had considered a second home for twenty years. As far as the eye could see, there were white boxes of all sizes opened, half-opened, still sealed. Wrapping paper was strewn all over the floors. Wedding gifts were taking over the place.

Will came in, closing the door behind them.

“You’re my friend. Of course you can stay,” Nancy said. “As long as you want. The place will be empty after the wedding while we’re on our honeymoon and my brother goes back to Washington.”

“Just tonight, thanks.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Oscar, obviously just awakened from a snooze, wandered into the foyer from the kitchen. The minute the pug saw and smelled the kitty box, he began to bark.

“Hush,” Nancy said.

“Oscar, behave,” Lou said sternly, and the sniffling, snorting dog stopped barking and backed off, his head lowered as though his feelings had been deeply hurt.

“What’s all the ruckus?”

Nancy’s fiancé Bob wandered from down the hall, dressed in an old robe, his glasses perched at an odd angle on his nose and his hair mussed. “Oh, hi, Lou,” he said with one of his sweet smiles.

“Bob, I’m so sorry I woke you up.”

“Go back to bed, honey.” Nancy shooed him away.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Nodding, he smiled one more time, turned right around and walked back down the hall.

Lou was shown to the guest room, just off the service porch connected to the kitchen. Then Nancy left her to join her brother, while Lou set up a little area for Anthony. She poured food in a bowl, gave him water, filled the litter box, and patted the sweet little thing until he stopped quaking.

As she was shutting the door behind her, she heard Nancy’s voice in the kitchen. “Imagine my surprise to hear that you and Lou had been out together.”

“Yeah. Funny, huh.”

“Strange, really. I never heard a word about the two of you being, you know, friendly.”

“There is no ‘two of us,’ Nan. When I took Oscar in this morning, I invited her to dinner tonight. You were busy with Bob and the wedding, and she’s good company. No biggie.”

Lou barely had time to be disappointed by Will’s answer before she heard Nancy reply, “Well, it’s just strange, you know, considering how she’s always—”

Lou so did not want her to finish that sentence; Nancy knew all about Lou’s long-ago crush on her brother, and Lou would be mortified to hear it revealed. Closing the bedroom door louder than necessary, she joined them in the kitchen, saying, “Poor Anthony, he’s totally traumatized. We found him in a Dumpster a couple of weeks ago. Heaven knows how he got there. And then he had to be isolated for a while, while he got over a bad wheeze. And he’s cross-eyed, poor baby, so no one seemed to want to adopt him. Then just last week, I decided to take him upstairs to live with me. And now this. Too much shuffling and moving around. It will be a long time until he can settle down and trust anyone.”

Nancy, who stood, hip propped against the stove, indicated the round wooden table in the corner. “Sit. I’m making tea. You want some?”

“Yes, please.” Lou sank into the soft cushion covering the chair, then gazed around, feeling thoroughly at home. All the warmth in this room had been created by Will and Nancy’s late mom, Lorna Jamison, a devoted homemaker and terrific cook, who had died two years after her husband’s untimely death in a railroad crash.

Nancy had not inherited her mother’s propensity for cozy homemaking; instead, the kitchen counters were strewn with books, file folders, old copies of the Courier. A pile of take-out pizza boxes were stacked on an old wicker chair in the corner.

As Lou turned to the other occupant at the table, he stood. “Excuse me for just a moment, will you?” Will said. “I need to make a couple of phone calls.”

After Lou had filled Nancy in on the break-in details, she managed to defer any questions about her evening with Will by asking how the wedding plans were going, which opened up a much more pleasant topic of conversation. As they sipped their tea, and Lou felt the hot liquid reaching the cold places and warming them up, Nancy explained that there was some kind of last-minute problem with the flowers. As the editor of a paper, Nancy was used to putting out fires and improvising solutions, so she was taking it all in stride; Bob, her fiancé, wasn’t. He wanted it all to be perfect, Nancy told Lou, and they both agreed that he was, by nature, both more detail-oriented and more romantic than Nancy.

“So what’s up with you and my brother?” Nancy asked finally, but Lou was rescued from having to answer by Will’s reentrance. Announcing she was thoroughly frazzled and exhausted, Nancy said she was going to bed. She gave Lou a quick conspiratorial wink as she left the room, which made her deeply uncomfortable. There was nothing “up” between her and Will.

But he’d kissed her tonight, hadn’t he? So maybe it wasn’t entirely absurd.

And what if he did kiss you? the voice of reason asked her. It was just that. One kiss.

A really nice kiss.

Which he’d broken off pretty quickly.

As he sat down, Will’s cell phone shrilled. He removed it from his pocket, flipped it open, announced, “Will Jamison here.” If he’d been expecting a specific call, this wasn’t it. Lou watched his face as, surprised, he said, “Oh. Hi.”

It was a woman. Lou knew it immediately, from the way he angled his body away from her just slightly and lowered his voice. “Fine. How about you?” He listened again, turned even farther away from her and said, “Yeah.”

Lou tried not to pay attention, really she did, but her imagination easily filled in the blanks. “How are you?” had been followed by “I miss you” and then “When are you getting back?”

Just then, Will said, “Monday.”

Yup, right on the money, Lou thought, and felt a piercing stab of jealousy. She immediately called herself all kinds of names for even feeling that way. Will had an entire life back in Washington she was not part of. He could even be serious about someone, for all she knew. He hadn’t mentioned that little fact, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t so.

She felt her heart sinking at the prospect of Will with someone he really cared about.

No. Not fair. Was she to spend her entire life mooning over a man who would never choose her?

But he kissed me.

Will hung up, smiled. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said, brightly, then yawned. It was totally unexpected, as was the next one. And like that, she remembered: she was plain wiped out.

“I have to go to sleep, Will. I’ve been up since four.”

“You mentioned that earlier. Why?”

“We had a little rescue operation this morning. A feral mama cat and six little ones living under a house. The only way we could get them was to surround and surprise them in the dark.”

“Did it work?”

“Somewhat. We got two of the kittens and the mama. You saw her today.”

“Ah, the furious feline.” He smiled his crooked smile and, despite herself, her heartbeat kicked up a notch. “Make that the furious, frantic, feral feline. Kind of has a ring to it.”

“The very one.”

“What about the other kittens?”

“They got away.”

“What will happen to them?”

“They weren’t weaned yet, so most likely they’ll die, if they’re not eaten by a predator first.”

Will was startled, not by what Lou said but by the way she said it. Matter-of-factly, with just a hint of sorrow.

“God, that’s horrible,” he said.

“Yes, it is.” He watched as she tried to stifle another yawn. “It’s also the way nature works—the strong and the cunning survive. I do what I can, Will. It’s not much.”

She rose from the table and took her cup over to the sink. Will watched her small body, the dejectedness in her shoulders. She was so tired and so sad; he wanted to comfort her, as Nancy had done at the front door. Put his arms around her. Hug her.

And not just as a friend.

Man, this was strange. The call just now from Barbara—the financial adviser to a prominent member of the House—had reminded him of the kind of woman he was always attracted to. Independent and self-sufficient, with a high-powered career. Worldly, sophisticated, somewhat self-centered and somewhat cynical, like him.

Sure Lou had a career she loved, and she was both independent and self-sufficient. But she was a generous, giving soul who wore her heart on her sleeve. At her core, she was a nester, a nurturer. He’d always preferred women who were neither. It was easier that way to avoid emotional attachments.

Even so, there it was, that attraction he felt for her. Lou represented life. She cared, and cared deeply, about animals and people and all living things. Sure, she covered it up with a quick wit and occasional sarcasm, and sure, there were old scars and recent pain, but the woman was a definite survivor. Like a plant in the presence of the sun, she always sought the light.

That light was damned attractive to someone dwelling in the dark, as he had been till recently.

But it wasn’t only what she represented; it was Lou herself. He liked her, apart from anything else. Which was why he reminded himself to keep hands off for the rest of his time here in Susanville. He didn’t need any involvements, especially with a woman who wouldn’t treat it casually and whose heart he would break. Will knew himself all too well. He might have hated his father, the founder and editor of the town’s single newspaper, for his workaholic nature which kept him from his family. And in his determination not to follow in his father’s footsteps, he might have run away from working on the paper.

But with maturity, he had come to understand that he was just like the old man—tunnel-visioned and driven. Career came first. So he had decided he could avoid hurting others—avoid making them suffer the same destiny as his own family had suffered—by never getting too involved with a woman, thus avoiding the possibility of a family of his own.

At this point in his life, he might have lost his taste for reporting on the world’s pain and violence, but he hadn’t lost his ambition, his need to get ahead, his hunger to be more. It was what drove him, gave him energy and a reason to get up every morning.

He rose, walked over to Lou at the sink. As he gazed into the sad, scared, tired brown eyes of Lou McAndrews—a woman he’d known for years but felt he had met today for the first time—he took her hand, squeezed it comfortingly and smiled. “You go to bed now, get some sleep. You’re safe here. I’ll see you in the morning.”

After a quick moment of hesitation, she nodded and left the room. Will sat some more at the kitchen table, thinking.

Mostly about the calls he’d made earlier from his bedroom, following through on that niggling little notion that wouldn’t go away. He’d punched in Lincoln’s number at his D.C. condo. When no one picked up, he’d left a message. Then he’d tried his Florida home and his cell phone. No answer at either. Will left messages everywhere, asking that Linc call him ASAP. That it was important.

He checked his watch. Midnight. Lincoln had always been reachable before, but he might be out, carousing with buddies or with a woman, might have his cell phone turned off.

Well, he’d done all he could do. It was time for him to go to bed.

Will tossed and turned all night, thinking about not getting through to Lincoln, and going in and out of dreams about Lou, who was spending the night just down the hall in the guest bedroom, probably cuddled up with a small, black cat.

Will wished he were there in its stead.