Читать книгу A Message for Abby - Janice Johnson Kay - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

ABBY HAD KNOWN A PLACE, all right. Ben’s ears were still ringing the next day when he drove toward the outskirts of Elk Springs to begin knocking on doors in hopes of hitting on someone who’d seen either the green pickup or a lone motorcyclist pass down Barton Road at the right time.

After leaving her brother-in-law’s last night, Abby had taken Ben to Paganucci’s, a club aimed at the twenty-something crowd. With a population of twenty thousand and climbing, Elk Springs had gone from hick town to resort town in a few short years, although the process had been well advanced by the time Ben had taken the job here. But even since he came, the downtown hardware store had moved off Main Street to make way for an art gallery and café combo. Downtown was no longer for locals. Now antique stores, boutiques and espresso joints jostled trendy restaurants and nightclubs that appealed to skiers.

Paganucci’s was one of them. Sleek decor, dim lighting jolted by flashes of brilliant white strobes, music that vibrated through the floor and penetrated the very air the way an electric shock did. The drinks had names he didn’t recognize. The other men looked as self-consciously stylish as Don Johnson had on “Miami Vice.”

In this crowd, Ben might as well have been a cow horse among the parade at Churchill Downs.

But he’d tried real hard to have fun. Or at least to look like he was having fun, which was what counted. He felt like a goddamn idiot out on the dance floor. But every time Abby leaped to her feet with that manic glitter in her eyes and said, “Let’s dance,” he said, “Sure.”

She was in restless motion the whole evening. Dancing, tapping her fingers, swaying to the music. Never really looking at him, her gaze always elsewhere, watching other couples dance, laugh, flirt. When she talked, it was with stagey animation. Oh, yeah, she was playing for the crowd.

Or for him, Ben wasn’t sure which.

He’d be ready to write off Abby Patton and any possibility of a future with her, except for one thing: he’d have sworn that she wasn’t having fun, either. She was making a point, hammering it home.

I’m not your type, she was saying. This is fun. This is me.

Ben didn’t buy it. She fidgeted too much; her gaiety was too forced. The only real moment they’d had all evening was during the one slow dance she’d allowed him. They’d gone toe to toe; he’d eased her up against him, felt the tension and the resistance shimmering through her. Picturing a coil of wire that kept springing free of his fingers, he had nonetheless played with the fantasy of what making love with her would be like. Abby Patton would be the farthest thing from passive. He pictured her determined to be on top, willing to wrestle him for the privilege.

Now that would be fun.

The music whispered of love and the soft light of the moon, of night breezes and the tangle of sheets. Even for him, the lilting notes were suddenly evocative, sensual. He bent his head, breathed in the tangy scent of her hair, gently rubbed the taut muscles of her lower back.

And, wonder of wonders, she began to relax. She let out a sigh, laid her cheek against his neck, matched the sway of her hips to his easy movements. For one brief shining moment, they meshed.

But the music died, to throb forth a frenzied beat. The strobelight blinded Ben. Abby shot away as if he were trying to cuff her. He’d swear she didn’t meet his eyes again all night.

And out in the parking lot, she had made a breezy escape. A good-night kiss was not on the books.

Caught up in remembering—regretting the lack of a kiss—Ben took a minute to snap back to the present.

“Damn,” he muttered.

He’d already driven past the last ranch before Barton Road stretched into empty country. He’d have to go a mile back. Hell, and that ranch house had been a hundred and fifty yards off the road. What were the chances anyone had noticed the traffic two days ago?

He didn’t think about not trying. He’d have gone through the motions no matter what, but under different circumstances that’s what he’d have been doing. Every question he asked would have been perfunctory.

Today his questions would be deadly serious. The Patton sisters were all cops. A threat against them was a threat against him and every other cop.

The shoulder of the road briefly widened and he made a U-turn.

He’d wanted to kiss one of the Patton sisters last night.

Abby Patton reminded Ben of the stray cat he’d been feeding for a couple of years now. Cinderella, he called her, Cindy for short. A dainty calico with the soft hues and electric-blue eyes of a Siamese mix, Cindy had been so wild at first, he had caught only glimpses of her. She’d gobbled the food he put out, always poised for flight, her head lifting constantly. She’d gotten wilder yet when he trapped her and had her spayed and vaccinated.

It had taken six months before she would come to his call, hovering a safe distance away while he opened a can. More months before she would allow him within an arm’s reach. This spring, he had touched her. She’d erupted into the air and fled, but come warily back. Now she let him stroke her back. Someday, he was going to cuddle that cat. Take her in the house, feel her curl trustingly at his feet during the night.

Cindy had never known loving care from a human being until Ben set out that first bowl of food. She’d probably had rocks thrown at her. Loud voices had run her off.

Ben wanted to know what Abby’s excuse was.

He had a feeling he might never find out, though. She hadn’t wanted to date him from the beginning, and her minor enthusiasm had clearly waned. He was betting that if he called her today and suggested they do it again, she’d have an excuse.

No, he thought, putting on his turn signal, excuses weren’t her style. She’d be blunt. I could tell you weren’t having fun, she’d say. Or, I didn’t have fun with you. Or, You’re not my type.

He wasn’t her type. She wasn’t his.

He wanted her anyway.

The tires crunched onto the long gravel driveway that led to a rundown ranch house. He took note of the dogs racing to meet him. the sagging barbed-wire fence, the gaping hole in the old barn roof, but he kept thinking about Abby Patton.

Maybe the challenge was what appealed to him. Maybe it was more complicated; could be he had some deep-seated need to erase fear where he found it, to coax trust from the smallest seed.

But Ben didn’t know why that would be. He was usually attracted to confident, smart women. He liked honesty, serenity, a witty tongue. Timid women in need of protection weren’t his thing.

He snorted at the idea of Abby Patton, arson investigator, needing a protector. At five foot ten inches or so, she wasn’t small.

But honest, serene... He didn’t think so. She might find serenity in her old age, but that was fifty years away, give or take a few. And blunt didn’t equate to honest. Ben doubted that Abby was honest even with herself about what she felt or why.

He shouldn’t want her any more than he should indulge the hope that the small feral cat living like a ghost around his house might someday become a real pet, the kind other people had.

Rolling to a stop, Ben shifted into park, set the hand brake and turned off the engine, giving the dust and the dogs a minute to settle.

Yeah, he thought, but just the other day Cindy had hopped onto the porch railing so close to his hand she was clearly asking to be petted. So you never knew, did you?

He opened his door just as a man came out of the barn.

“Goddamn it, shut your mouths up!”

A few yaps later the two shepherd mixes sniffed Ben’s hand and decided he wasn’t the enemy.

The rancher, tall and skeletal, must have been working on some piece of machinery. His hands were black with grease, some of which he’d smeared onto his face, weathered to the texture of the desert.

“Won’t offer to shake hands.” He cast a dubious eye at the shield Ben extended. “You fellas don’t get out this way much.”

“Not much reason,” Ben said. “Day before yesterday, a pickup was abandoned and set on fire up the road a piece. I’m wondering if you ever notice passing traffic.”

“If the dogs don’t bark, I don’t come out.”

“Kind of figured that.” Ben nodded ruefully. “Hope you don’t mind my asking.”

“Anybody can ask me anything.” The rancher shrugged. “You need a little old lady, hasn’t got much better to do than peep out from behind her blinds.”

Ben nodded toward the house. “You wouldn’t have a wife or mother in there?”

“Wife never looks away from her soaps.”

Ben extended a card. “Well, if you wouldn’t mind asking her tonight,” he said just as laconically. “I’d appreciate it.”

“I’ll ask.”

He had already disappeared into the barn before Ben got back in behind the wheel. Tongues lolling, the dogs gave halfhearted chase. They’d given up long before he turned onto paved road.

This was going to be a waste of time. He’d known it would be. But hell, now and again you got a surprise. At least, you did if you looked for it.

Seemed to him, Abby Patton might be one of those surprises.

BURNED WOOD had the texture of alligator hide. Abby crunched across the blackened floor of the corner grocery store in her steel-reinforced boots, not worrying too much about where she stepped.

Char licked up the walls. This baby had definitely started at floor level.

It was a no-brainer, but she did a meticulous search anyway, clicking photographs as she went. They were essential to document what she saw. Good pictures sold the prosecutor’s case to the jury like no testimony ever could.

The wooden subfloor was deeply scorched in half a dozen places, always a dead giveaway. The samples she took would show the presence of a flammable liquid, sure as shootin’. Fuse box indicated no electrical troubles; the point of origin wasn’t near wiring, anyway.

What interested Abby was the lack of ash and bits of debris on the crumpled, seared metal shelving.

Earlier the owner had come out of his hysteria long enough to claim the store was fully stocked.

“What the hell do you think?” he demanded, face flushed with fury and—she suspected—guilt. “People keep coming back if they don’t find what they want the first time? This is a grocery store. We have regular deliveries.”

Yeah, but about six months ago Price-Right had built a big store three blocks away. A little mom-and-pop place like this might have been a going concern until then; people liked convenience. They wouldn’t do their week’s shopping here, they’d go to Safeway a mile away, but they’d stop by here for a six-pack or some forgotten item. But the small volume in a store this size meant prices had to be higher. A mile was one thing; three blocks was another. This past six months had to have been a struggle.

She wandered into the back, which had suffered damage from smoke and water but not fire. The loading area was empty; the office, bare bones. The computer was darn near an antique, unless its guts had been replaced. No TV or microwave or refrigerator. Either the owner had never had any of the comforts back here, or he’d moved them out before he’d torched his place.

Abby put her vials and bags of evidence along with her Minolta into the trunk of her car, then rang doorbells half a block each way. The stories she heard confirmed her suspicions.

“He was going out of business. Had to be,” one gruff, graying man with a paunch declared. “Who the hell was going to pay what he asked?”

“Even the freezers didn’t have much in them the last time I was there,” a housewife said. “I bought milk, but the date was a little past. Mr. Joseph said a delivery had been delayed, but I wondered.”

“Yeah, I saw him and his old lady moving a TV and microwave—I think that’s what it was—out the back two days ago,” said a neighbor, whose backyard abutted the alley. “Mr. Joseph said the TV at home had gone kaput. But it makes you wonder...”

Abby’s cell phone rang and she excused herself.

“Patton,” she said in answer.

“Hi, it’s Meg. Have you heard from Ben?”

Abby was annoyed to realize she felt mild disappointment that the caller wasn’t Ben Shea. Of course, their one date had been a flop. He wouldn’t be asking her again. She didn’t want him to ask her out again. But she had hoped for news about his door-to-door questioning.

“Nope,” she told her sister. “You?”

“Not a word.” Meg puffed out a sigh that expressed acute frustration. “If I didn’t feel about as mobile as a moose stuck in deep snow, I’d go back to work part-time. Darn it, I don’t know how seriously Ben is taking this.”

Abby tried to be fair. “Pretty seriously, I think. He listened to me. Come on, Meg. You’ve never had reservations about his work, have you?”

“No...” her sister said grudgingly. “I just... Oh, I feel useless. I hate it!”

Abby leaned against the fender of her car. “Meg, you’re having a baby in a few weeks. What could be more productive?”

Her sister took a few audible breaths. “You’re right,” she finally said. “I know you’re right. This is what I want to do. But I’m not used to twiddling my thumbs!” The last came out as a cry.

“I know, I know.” Abby did her best to be soothing. Oral back-patting. “Renee’s worried you’re going to have twins.”

This sigh had an exasperated note. “I’ve gained a normal amount. All women in their ninth month look like walruses wallowing on the beach. At least, all women whose babies are probably going to weigh eight or nine pounds.”

“It’s you Renee’s worried about. She doesn’t want to lose you again.”

“She told you that?” Meg sounded surprised.

“I pried it out of her.”

“That’s not like you.”

Stung, Abby asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You usually avoid any emotional issues,” her sister said bluntly. “I’d have expected you to make an excuse to avoid having that kind of conversation with Renee. Not push for it.”

“She was crying!” Damn it, why feel hurt? Meg was right; Abby usually did evade sticky, weepy situations. There was nothing wrong with that. She just wasn’t good at them.

“You mean, you walked in on her crying?”

“No, we talked about you, and then I suggested that maybe she wasn’t worried about twins, she was scared of losing you, and—” Abby stopped. Swallowed. “I care.”

Her sister’s voice softened. “I know you do.”

“Anyway, you might talk to her.”

“Okay. Sure.” Meg paused. “Why don’t I call Ben, too?”

Quickly—too quickly—Abby said, “No, I’ll do that. You’re on maternity leave. The case is mine, anyway. I’ll let you know if he’s learned anything.”

Feeling grumpy, she had to get in the car and hunt through her leather folder to find Ben Shea’s card. Why hadn’t he gotten in touch with her? Why was she having to beg for information?

His cell phone was either turned off or he was out of the area, a mechanical voice informed her. Voice mail told her Ben Shea wasn’t available. “But leave a message!” the chirpy canned voice encouraged her.

Abby did, short and to the point. “Call me,” she said tersely.

He did. An hour later. She was back in her office, writing up a report on the mom-and-pop grocery incendiary fire.

“Shea, here. Don’t have much to report,” he said.

“Sorry I didn’t get to you sooner.”

Considering they had dated the night before, she thought that was pretty brisk. How are you? Hope you had fun last night, would have been nice. This was not the way to get the girl, Abby thought derogatorily.

Of course, maybe he didn’t want to get the girl.

Which was fine with her.

“Nobody paid any attention to the traffic?”

“One guy heard a motorcycle pass about the right time. He was shoveling manure behind the barn, couldn’t see the road, but he admitted that his dream is to buy a Harley-Davidson when he retires. He figures he and his wife can see the country on it.”

For no good reason, Abby was diverted from the point. “What’s she think of that?”

“Not much, from the rolled eyes I saw in the background.”

She snorted. “Why would he expect anything different? Who wants to stare at a man’s back for hours every day?”

“You’d want to be the one gripping the handlebars, wouldn’t you?” An odd tone infused his voice.

“Darn tootin’ I would.” Abby wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Why should men get all the fun while women went along for the ride?

After a brief pause Ben mused, “Seems a shame. The guy looked so wistful.”

“We all have dreams.” And she didn’t want to talk about ones that were doomed.

“Yeah, well, the point here is, he noticed the growl of the motorcycle because it triggered a brief fantasy of him eating up the miles on a hog. The one he heard wasn’t a Harley—something smaller, less powerful.”

“And easier to lift into and out of the bed of a pickup truck.”

“You got it.”

“So now what?”

“Unless forensic evidence shows us something—and I’m betting it won’t—we’re out of luck. You know that.”

“Until something else happens,” Abby said slowly.

“If it happens.”

“If,” she agreed.

“I don’t like it.” Shea was silent for a moment. For the first time he sounded human, even intimate. “I’m sorry, Abby. I wish there was more I could do.”

“No. No, that’s okay. I know there isn’t. I was just hoping...”

“Would you have dinner with me Friday?” he asked abruptly.

A rush of relief disconcerted her. She just didn’t like feeling rejected, Abby told herself.

Perversely, she didn’t say, “Yes. Please.” She didn’t tease or flirt. Oh, no. Those were ways to land the guy. She didn’t want to land this one.

“Last night wasn’t a great success,” she said instead. “I could tell that wasn’t your scene.”

“Friday night, it’ll be my choice.”

“Which is?” she asked, immediately suspicious.

“Haven’t decided yet. What do you say?”

Her eyes narrowed. “How about you decide first.”

“What, you’re a coward?” he mocked. “I won’t take you skydiving, if that’s what scares you.”

“I took skydiving lessons a couple of years ago. Not much scares me.”

“And here I thought you’d say, ‘nothing scares me.’”

Just like that, anger blossomed in her chest like a water balloon smacking down on the pavement. “You don’t think much of me, do you? Why did you ask me out in the first place?”

He was silent so long, she almost ended the call. The anger spread down to her fingertips, burning as it went.

When Shea did speak, the timbre of his voice had changed; the mockery was gone, leaving something quiet and too solemn in its place. “I think I would like you, if you’d let me get to know you.”

“What do you call last night?” Abby asked tartly.

“Did we exchange ten words?”

“We were supposed to be having fun.”

“My eardrums still hurt.”

“Like I said, I could tell it wasn’t your scene.” She sounded brittle, even to herself. “Which suggests we don’t have much in common.”

Anger to match hers sparked in his voice. “I’d say we have a hell of a lot in common. We do the same kind of job. We have to live with having seen things other people never do. We care about the same things. We both live alone, isolated partly by our jobs. We probably shop at the same goddamn grocery stores. We could exchange recipes.”

She was fighting a losing battle; she could feel it. But “stubborn” was Abby’s middle name. “That’s one more thing we don’t have in common. I’d have to tell you my favorite microwave dinners.”

“You don’t cook?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“I like to cook. See? We’re made for each other.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “All right, all right,” Abby conceded. “Just let me know whether to wear shorts or a strapless dress, okay?”

“I will.” Amusement played a bass note in his slow, deep voice. “As soon as I decide.”

“But tell me one thing, will you?” Get it out front, she decided.

“Sure.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Shea echoed. Although he asked, “What do you mean?” he sounded wary, which meant he’d guessed.

“Why me? Why are you so determined? Is it just the challenge?”

Again he was silent for a long moment. Again his voice had changed, although this time she couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking. “No. I like a challenge. But...no.”

“What, then?”

“You’re beautiful.”

“No more so than plenty of other women. Most of whom are easier to get along with than I am.”

“You look lonely.”

“Lonely?” Abby gave a derisive laugh. “You’re seeing things.”

“I don’t think so.”

“And if I am? So what?”

“I thought we might...connect. That’s all. Do we have to analyze our relationship already?”

She let out a sigh he wouldn’t be able to hear. “No. I just wanted to find out whether it was my charm that had gotten to you.”

“That was it,” he agreed.

“Friday,” she said. “Call me before then.”

ABBY HAD A LATE DINNER: a spinach salad and microwave penne pasta. Afterward she tried to read, but found her attention wandering. TV seemed like an idea, but nothing on tonight grabbed her. Using the remote control, she turned the television off just as her telephone rang.

“Abby, Scott here,” Meg’s husband said. “I’m up at the ski area. Just leaving. I need you to look at something. Can you come?”

“Up to Juanita Butte?”

“I’m sorry. I know it’s late.” He sounded grim. “But I really think you need to see it”

A chill stirred the hair on her nape. “What is it?”

“I’d rather you see for yourself,” Scott repeated.

“Is this something like the fire?”

“Yeah. But uglier. Or maybe it just got to me personally, I’m not sure.”

“All right.” She was already slipping her feet into canvas sneakers. “Don’t move. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

The clock on the dashboard said 9:04. Here at midsummer, night was just settling, the first layer like purple gauze, the next denser and darker.

The mountain loop highway climbed fast, bare at this time of year. Abby rolled down her window and breathed in the distinctive scent of pine and earth ground from red lava. The air was cool, dry; it became cold as the elevation rose. In the shadow of the mountain, nightfall came more drastically. She switched on her bright lights, noting how little traffic she met.

The ski area parking lot opened before her, huge, bare and empty, a paved sea that looked alien in the middle of nowhere. She could just make out the bulk of the lodge and the first lift towers rearing above. Patches of snow still lay up there, where plows had formed towering banks during the winter. Her high beams spotlighted Scott McNeil’s Jeep Cherokee. parked in its usual spot behind the lodge. He was half sitting on the bumper.

She parked next to him and climbed out, flashlight in hand. “What is it?”

A big man with dark auburn hair, he nodded toward the driver’s side of his Jeep. “Over there.”

She circled the back bumper, then stopped, shock stealing her breath.

A child’s car seat sat beside the driver’s door, facing the parking lot and highway. Just as Emily’s car seat had, the freezing cold night when she had been abandoned.

A doll was buckled into this seat. Abby trained her flashlight beam on it, wanting to be mistaken about what she was seeing.

The doll was plastic, the kind with arms and legs and a head that attached to sockets in the hard body.

This one was missing its head. From the empty, blackened socket, trickles of red dripped down the pink dress.