Читать книгу Hometown Detective - Jennifer Morey - Страница 13
ОглавлениеRoman saw Kendra walking toward him on the sidewalk and felt a surge of triumph. He hadn’t been sure she’d take the bait and meet him. He didn’t think anything she said about her sister’s death would change his initial assessment, but the contacts she’d had with her sister and their secretive nature had compelled him to at least follow up. And this wouldn’t be a complete waste of time if he shared a nice evening with a beautiful woman. His drive to avenge victims led him to where he was most needed and he had other cases that needed him more than it appeared Kendra needed him, but one night wouldn’t harm anything.
As she neared, he took in her form in a wide-leg, Jackie O–looking jumpsuit with a draped neckline, cap sleeves and a leather belt. He could see the hint of movement of her breasts and a slender waistline. She moved gracefully, long legs gliding along. She’d moved similarly in her shop last night, an angel in silhouette.
She stopped right before him. “The only reason I’m here is to talk about Kaelyn’s murder.”
“And have a drink with me.” He held the pub door open for her.
She eyed him suspiciously as she passed.
Pete’s Old Ale House teemed with business on this Wednesday evening. Workers celebrated hump day and others participated in a dart tournament. The bartender waved from behind the bar and Roman saw Kendra wave back. The fresh flowers on each round table and booth indicated the owner had a running account with her shop. She probably had a similar relationship with the baker. She must be well-known in town and have a good reputation. Marketing prowess or genuine lover of mankind? He’d met many ambitious women like her and none of them cared more about him than their passion for achievement. Still, something about her drew him in.
He followed her to the only round table left vacant. A group of men dressed in business casual laughed about the day’s highlights at the table next to them. Two women leaned forward toward each other at a booth in an intense girl talk. The dart competition made the most noise, cheers from those standing near the throwing point and nearby tables filled with friends and spouses. Regulars sat at the bar, keeping to themselves or engaging in talk with the fellow beside them.
While not a kid place, the pub was clean and well maintained for its age, which must be more than a hundred years. The wood bar with its ornate and swirling trim looked original, but refurbished, same with the trim around the mirrored wall and shelves of booze bottles. The dark brown wood floor, polished and unblemished, must have been replaced. Modern pendant lighting over the bar and larger fixtures over the dining area provided ample illumination without the glare of brightness. Historical photos on the walls finished the aesthetic appeal.
The bartender spoke to the waitress on his way over to their table. She stopped and went to another table instead.
“Your usual?” the bartender asked.
“Hi, Pete. Yes.”
“I’ll have what she’s having,” Roman said, continuing to observe the pub and its inhabitants.
The bartender returned with frosty mugs of beer.
“Imported lager,” she said, sipping. “Mmm.”
“Do you come here because he buys your flowers or for the beer?” he asked.
She smiled, her bright and sunny personality shining through. “Both. Pete’s a good guy.”
“What about the baker?”
“He and his wife are kindhearted people who love each other. Most of us can only wish we were as lucky.”
She seemed so humble for one who had so much. Uncomfortable with the spark that zapped him unexpectedly, Roman tasted the beer. Not bad. A little light, but not bad.
Her cheerful glow remained and she leaned back, drawing his attention to her teasingly concealed breasts. Why was he so attracted to her? He’d met pretty women like her before. What make her so different? If she was a cop or another detective, or anyone who worked in the trenches like him, he might understand these stirrings of desire. But she didn’t work in the trenches. She had created a perfect world for herself, even surrounding herself with friends like Pete.
Time to slow down this Cupid’s arrow. What better way than to beat her at a game of pool?
Standing, he picked up his beer. “You any good at pool?” He started for the single pool table, neglected on dart tournament night.
Lingering behind a second or two, she at last took her beer and followed. Her slow steps and curious eyes said she suspected his motives. Was this about pool or was this about the two of them?
“I thought we were going to discuss my sister’s case.” She stopped near him beside the pool table.
He choose a cue stick, ignoring how she kept calling her sister’s death a case. He hadn’t decided if it was one or not. “I’d like to get to know my new client before we get into death and destruction.”
“Does that mean you’re going to take the case?”
He had to admit, she had a strong theory that Kaelyn might have intended to run away and live near her secret twin. Kendra hadn’t been mentioned anywhere in any reports he’d read.
“Let’s play pool.” He grinned in a way that often wooed women.
She eyed him warily—she didn’t trust easily. He began to pick up on those undercurrents. She wanted to talk about Kaelyn Johnston’s death, and he wanted to slow things down. She must know or have some idea that he was attracted to her.
Finally, her cautious nature eased a little and she stepped forward to put coins in the old game table. Bent over as she inserted the coins, her eyes lifted and he saw a mischievous smile in them.
“I’m really good at this game,” she said.
Delighted she’d relented and decided to have some fun, he said with equal flirtation, “Let’s find out how good.”
He racked the balls while she chose a stick. He liked watching her move, graceful arms and legs and a shapely butt.
Facing him with a stick, she chalked the end and looked at him.
“You break,” he said.
“You are so going to lose.”
Roman chuckled as he watched her break the balls and sink a solid. Moving around the table for her next shot, she gave him another nice view of her posterior as she made another shot. She sank another solid.
“When Kaelyn and I were six, I remember I was inside playing with dolls and she got mad at me for not wanting to go outside and play on the swing set.” She lowered into position for a more complicated shot and sank yet another solid.
He began to wonder if he’d ever get to play.
“She went outside by herself.” Kendra studied the table for her next shot. “After a while, I stopped playing dolls because I had this awful feeling. My first thought was of Kaelyn.” She poised for another shot and missed this time. Unfazed, she faced him. “I left the bedroom we shared and went to the back door. My mother was out there and lifted Kaelyn. She had blood all over her face. My parents rushed her to the hospital and she had seventeen stitches put in her forehead. She pushed the double swing and it swung back and struck her. I felt so bad after that. If I’d have been with her, she wouldn’t have been hurt.”
What was the point of this story? He didn’t ask.
“I felt that way on and off after we were split up, but I attributed it to my own situation. I felt that way again the day Kaelyn died.”
Roman kept his expression carefully blank. She had a bad feeling the day Kaelyn killed herself? Is that why she thought her twin sister had been murdered? He didn’t do weird. Maybe he should have stuck with meeting for coffee in the morning, report ready and in hand.
“Except this feeling was different. Instead of worry over Kaelyn being hurt, I felt an element of danger, as though Kaelyn might be in bad trouble. I can’t explain it. I only know what I felt, and there can be no coincidence because my twin sister died that day, maybe just shortly after. I felt that way for nearly an hour, and then the feeling sort of...faded. I tried calling and she didn’t answer. The next day, I finally reached her adoptive mother, who told me she’d killed herself.”
Roman wouldn’t comment on what he thought of telepathic twins, or their ability to possess extrasensory perception. He didn’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural, but he also didn’t disbelieve. She stepped back from the table. “It’s your turn.”
He chose his shot and aimed, missing by an inch. “Where are you from?”
Instead of answering, she studied him awhile. “Why am I getting this feeling you’re trying to make a move on me instead of helping solve Kaelyn’s murder?”
He grinned again and this time not to woo her. She’d made him grin with her wit. No man fooled this woman. He felt attraction mushroom to the realm of uncontrollable.
“Your turn.”
After a knowing, soft smile, she studied the table, and then went to bend for her shot and made it. “I was born in Chicago.”
“Your family moved here after that?”
“No.” Pausing for her next shot, she straightened and looked at him. “Our parents were killed in a mass shooting.”
He didn’t hear that often. Not ever. “That’s terrible.” Now he knew why she and Kaelyn had been apart.
“We were in a bank when some robbers came in with guns. Kaelyn and I got to the floor like Mother said. Our dad tried to stop the robbers and our mother tried to stop him from stopping the robbers. They were shot.”
While he tried to imagine how awful that would be, she made another solid and walked around the table to choose her next move. Did nothing ruffle this woman or was she just calculating?
“That was the beginning of the nightmare,” she said.
She might be baiting him to get him to start asking questions, but what she revealed didn’t jibe with his first impression of her, the polished, successful entrepreneur who’d made a cushy life for herself.
“What happened?” he indulged her by asking. He also wanted to know.
“We became wards of the state. No one wanted to adopt two children, so we were split up. I didn’t know where Kaelyn was taken.” She made her shot and sank another solid and faced him, holding her cue stick upright. “When I was twelve, my adoptive father lost his job. A year went by and he still hadn’t found anything. My adoptive mother didn’t make enough to support us all and things went downhill from there.”
That explanation he hadn’t expected. While she had struck him as one of those fortunate types who did with ease anything they set their mind to do, she hadn’t had an easy start.
He waited for her to shoot again.
“I went hungry a lot and wore the same clothes to school. By the time I was seventeen, our house had been foreclosed and we were living in a trailer. That’s all my adoptive mother could afford.” She bent with her stick and aimed. “The day my adoptive father forgot to pick me up after a school event and a strange man tried to get me to get into his car as I walked home was the day I decided I’d had enough. I ran away. I lived with my best friend’s older sister until I graduated from high school. My adoptive parents didn’t even report me missing.”
She hit the ball hard and it crashed into the hole. “Now you know the background of me and my twin sister, how we got separated anyway.” She sank all the solids except the eight ball. Roman had all of his striped balls still on the table.
Calling the corner hole, she shot the eight ball there. Then, smiling slightly, she held her cue stick upright. “What about you? Everybody has a story. What’s yours? Do you have any tragedies haunting you?”
His childhood had been heaven compared to hers. Heaven compared to most he met. He supposed he should be happy she didn’t use her past to segue into her sister’s case.
“The only tragedies I’ve experienced are the ones victims tell from their graves.” He inserted more coins. “I’ll break this time.”
He racked the balls. As he leaned over and broke, he wondered how Kendra had gone from a runaway to a shop owner. She looked young for her age. Late twenties instead of forty-one, just a couple years younger than him.
He sank two solids. Grinning at her, he moved to his next shot.
She smiled back. “You haven’t told me about your childhood.”
“Nothing to tell.” He made his next shot and sank another ball. “I was an only child of an apothecary and a crime novelist. I grew up in a fantasy world.”
“Crime novelist.” She tapped her forefinger on her lower lip. “William Cooper... The William Cooper? The Australian?”
“You’ve heard of him?” His father was a popular novelist but not the Stephen King variety.
“Who hasn’t heard of him? Wow. You’re the son of a celebrity. And Australian. You have a very subtle accent.”
“I was basically raised in the States.”
“You do have a Rick Grimes kind of look to you,” she said.
Great. She thought he looked like the star of The Walking Dead. “My dad’s not really a celebrity.” He made his next shot and missed. “That was your fault.”
She laughed lightly. “And your mother is a what? What’s an apothecary?”
“She bought an old pharmacy and turned it into an apothecary museum. She studied chemistry in college and developed an odd fascination with herbal medicine.”
“That’s not so odd. What’s odd is they have a son who became a crime detective.” A band had begun to play and she started tapping her foot to the beat.
“That’s odd?”
“Well...maybe not since your dad is a crime novelist. But your profession isn’t as...fascinating as theirs.”
“Are you always this blunt?” He didn’t dislike that about her.
“Best way to be. I wish everyone treated me the same.” Still holding her stick upright, her enchanted expression smoothed and her foot stopped tapping as though something came to her. “Wait a minute. I know that museum. It’s here in Chesterville.” She sucked in a breath. “Are you from here?”
She caught him. They now had a connection. She lived in his hometown. “It’s your turn.”
“You are?”
“Are you going to rob me of my chance to beat you?”
Laughing, she went to make her move, missing the striped ball. “How is it that you’re from here and assigned to my sister’s case?”
“There is no case yet. My boss made me come. He did that on purpose.”
“So you could see your family? How sweet. A lot of bosses aren’t like that.”
“I didn’t want to go see them.” This might venture into the Too Personal zone. When he’d lured her out tonight, he had done it with the intention of sharing a night with her before he went back to work in Wyoming or wherever the need took him. He hadn’t anticipated getting to know her and she him.
“What? Why not?”
He leaned over the table, aiming his stick.
“You do have a tragic story to tell.”
“No, I don’t. I just didn’t feel like seeing them now, that’s all.” He hit a ball and it plunked into a hole.
“They’re your family. Don’t they know you’re here?”
Standing up, he turned and stepped toward her, stopping close. “I came here to see you.” He moved around her to make his next shot, sinking another ball.
“Is it because they’re so much larger than you?”
“No. I love my parents and they love me. I had a painfully normal childhood.” He dropped another ball.
“What is that?” she asked as though she didn’t know.
“Normal. Bedtime stories.” He’d had lots of those. “Be home by ten. Eat your vegetables. Don’t drink. Don’t smoke. Don’t do drugs. You can do anything you put your mind to do. Love you and hugs.”
“What’s so painful about that?”
She didn’t get it and he wasn’t going to explain. His childhood had been painful because it had been so idyllic. But idyllic hadn’t prepared him for the world. All the encouragement to do what his heart told him hadn’t opened his mind and soul to awareness of what his heart told him. His heart hadn’t told him anything. He’d gone to school to become a crime detective because he’d always been fascinated with his father, his imagination, his success. He’d never achieve that kind of success. He had to be satisfied with what he had.
He continued to drop balls up to the eight. He was going to cream her. Noticing her slanted smile, he sensed her good-sport realization that she was going to lose.
Moving to make the final shot, he stopped close to her again, seeing her sparkling green eyes get all flustered again. “Any last words?”
She breathed a shaky laugh, one born of attraction.
He called the hole and won the game.
Wandering over to him, she held her stick in one hand, not having to tip her head back much to look up at his face. He took in her relaxed face that held a hint of flirtation and felt himself responding. “Are you as good at dancing as you are at playing pool?”
“Yes. And I love country music.”
Good because he liked the song the band had started playing.
* * *
By the eighth or ninth song, Kendra wrapped her arms around Roman as the melody slowed. She couldn’t remember having this much fun with anyone. They’d drunk more beer and danced the night away. Last call had been announced and she regretted the night coming to an end. She’d forgotten all about why he’d come to town. She cherished moments like this, when the world’s ugliest blows fell away and only celebration lifted her.
She didn’t think Roman paid much attention to how or why they’d ended up dancing this close, either. Maybe with whatever kept him from seeing his family he needed a getaway, too. Or maybe this had nothing to do with getaways. Maybe they just liked each other.
She leaned back to see his ruggedly handsome face, so dark and edgy with those light gray eyes that could be a wolf’s. His gaze moved down to her mouth, and then slowly rose to her eyes. The beer must be clouding both their judgments.
“All right, folks, time to close up.”
Realizing the band had stopped playing and had begun to pack up their equipment, Kendra stepped back from Roman.
“Why don’t you come back to my hotel room with me and convince me why I should start calling this a case?” Roman asked.
“Do you expect me to seduce you into taking it?”
“There’s nothing to take yet.”
“Stop saying that,” she said, unable to repress a soft laugh.
“And no, I don’t expect you to seduce me. I’d rather this night not end so soon, that’s all.” He swung her into a music-free turn and bent her over his arm.
“Me, neither.”
Grinning, he lifted her up against him.
“Why is that?” she asked with her mouth close to his.
“Let’s not think about it.” Moving back, he took her hand and led her from the pub.
With her head fuzzy and light, she stepped outside with him. “For the record, I’m not going to sleep with you.”
“Good.”
She laughed because she heard what she’d been thinking and feeling, that together they’d enjoyed the evening and wanted to keep the momentum going.
