Читать книгу All A Man Can Do - Virginia Kantra - Страница 11

Tess slid into the dark booth at the back of the Blue Moon and pushed a coffee mug toward Jarek Denko. Her own stomach cramped with hunger and nerves. She should never have skipped breakfast.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she said.

The creases deepened on either side of his hard mouth. “Over coffee?”

“In bars.”

Denko looked around at the empty tables. Sunlight slanted through the shutters, gleaming on the bottles, dimming the neon beer signs along the walls. “I didn’t know this place even opened at ten.”

“Depends on who you know,” Tess said smugly.

He blew on his coffee before sipping it. Cautious, she thought.

“And you know everybody,” he said.

“Pretty much.”

“Convenient,” he remarked.

She shrugged. “As long as you don’t mind everybody thinking that they know you.”

“Is that a problem for you?”

Tess wondered if the gloomy booth was dark enough to hide her wince. She flashed him a smile, in case it wasn’t. “It’s a problem for anyone growing up in a small town.”

“Don’t tell me that,” he complained mildly. “I just moved here.”

“I think you’ll be okay. You look pretty grown-up to me.”

Grown-up. Yes. Hard and assured and competent. Tess had enjoyed watching him take command away from Bud Sweet, admired his immediate concern for poor Carolyn Logan.

Jarek set down his mug. “Honey, I’m past the age of worrying what other people think of me. But I’m planning on raising my daughter in this town.”

Tess toyed with objecting to the “honey” and then gave it up. Three days ago, she’d swapped saliva with this man in front of his brother and a bar full of cops. She supposed that kiss created a bond, of sorts.

“Is she coming to stay with you soon? Your daughter?”

“For the weekend. Next weekend.” He glanced at the bare table in front of her. “Aren’t you getting anything?”

Okay, not much of a bond, she thought wryly. He still wouldn’t discuss his family with her. “Tim’s bringing me orange juice.”

On cue, the bar owner appeared, a well-built, closely shaven man in his forties.

He offered her a tall, cold glass and a smile. “Here you go, Tess. You get home all right last night?”

Tess thought of Carolyn Logan and shivered. “I… Yes, I did.”

“Just wanted to be sure. It was pretty late when you left.” He turned to Jarek. “How’s the coffee?”

“Fine. Thanks. You Tim Brown? The owner?”

Tim looked surprised. “That’s right.”

“Jarek Denko.”

“The new police chief,” Tess contributed.

“Yeah, I heard,” Tim said. He stuck out his hand. The two men shook.

“Well…” Tim hesitated. “Can I get you folks anything else?”

“We’re good, thanks,” Jarek said.

Tim went back to the register. Tess waited for Jarek to say, “Nice guy,” which is what everybody always said when they met Tim. When he didn’t, she said it for him.

“Tim’s a nice guy.”

Jarek took another sip of coffee. “He grow up here, too?”

“No. He moved here from Chicago. He did something for the city. Sanitation? Firefighter? But he married a local girl. A cheerleader, even.” Jarek raised his brows slightly. Tess explained. “Heather Brown went to school with my brother.”

“Wouldn’t that make her a little young for him?”

Tess thought so. But she said, “Not really. Tim had the looks to attract her and the money to keep her. The bar does very well during the season.”

“And the rest of the year?”

“It pulls in enough locals to stay open. The after-shift crowd from the paper mill, mostly. There’s not much to do in Eden on a Friday or Saturday night. Except the Algonquin lounge, and most people can’t afford to drink there. I can’t, anyway.”

“Is that what you were doing here last night? Drinking?”

Tess suppressed a flash of annoyance. “No. I was meeting someone.” When Jarek didn’t react, didn’t say anything at all, she sighed. “My brother. I was meeting my brother. He’s a bartender here.”

“What’s his name?”

“Mark.” Tess scowled. Jarek had actually taken out a little notebook and was writing stuff down. “But he doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Was he here?”

“Yes. He was working.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Well, yes. I told you, I came here to meet him.” Because Mark, irresponsible, unreliable and infuriating as he was, could always make her feel better. And since her abortive kiss with Denko on Wednesday night, Tess had been feeling pretty lousy.

None of which she was confiding to Jarek Denko.

“Was that before or after you saw Carolyn Logan?” he asked.

“Before. We were talking, and then I went to the ladies’, and when I got back, she was sitting at the bar.”

Denko scratched something down. “What time would that have been?”

Tess did her best not to be intimidated by the damn notebook. Reporters used notebooks, too. It wasn’t as if anything she said was going to be used against her. “Ten? Around then, anyway.”

“Was she with anyone? Friends? A boyfriend?”

Tess shook her head. “She was alone. She had plans to come up with her roommate, but they fell through. She told me she didn’t want to waste a guaranteed reservation, so she decided to make the trip alone.”

“A reservation? You know where?”

Tess frowned. “The Bide-A-Wee, I think. In the lodge.”

Jarek made another note. “Anybody hit on her while you two were talking?”

“I…” Tess stared into her orange juice, trying to recreate the scene in her mind. At the cash register, Tim Brown hunched over a calculator and a legal pad, reconciling the previous night’s take. “Not really. She left a couple of times to dance. We both did. But mostly we just talked.”

“We? You and Carolyn?”

No point in muddying the waters, Tess thought. “Yes.”

“And your brother?”

Tess felt sick. Stupid. She had nothing to worry about. The years when she had to protect Mark were over. He was a grown man, a former marine who had returned from overseas with a chip on his shoulder, a tattoo on his arm and training in weapons and self-defense. None of which she needed to share with Denko. “I told you. He was tending bar.”

“Right. He drive you home?”

“No. He lives at the other end of the marina. He’s got an apartment over one of the boathouses.”

“But you stuck around, maybe? Till he got off work.”

“No.” She wished to God that she had. “I left early. Around midnight.”

“And was the victim, Carolyn, still there at ‘around midnight’?”

“Yes.”

“Still alone. Sitting at the bar?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t know what time she left.”

Tess picked at her paper napkin. “No.”

“You okay?” Denko asked gruffly.

She straightened defensively against the vinyl seat back. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Maybe because an hour ago you saw somebody you knew, somebody you’d talked with, hauled off in an ambulance?”

She was getting used to his perception. She wasn’t quite as prepared for the way it made her feel: naked and warm.

But then he spoiled it all by adding, “Or could be there’s something you’d like to tell me you haven’t gotten around to yet.”

“You have a nasty, suspicious mind, did you know that?”

His smile glimmered like a break in the ice. “Goes with the job.”

“I’m not sure I like your job.”

“Are you going to tell me about your ride in the police car when you were fourteen?”

Ouch. “No. Are you going to tell me why you cleared all your officers from the scene and called in the state crime scene investigation team?”

Something gleamed in his eyes. Respect, maybe. Or annoyance. “Noticed that, did you?”

“Yes. Is it relevant?”

“Relevant to what?”

She pulled out her own notebook. Let him see how he liked being the one questioned for a change. “To my story about the attack.”

“Police blotter stuff,” he said dismissively. “Not much of a story.”

She tapped her pen against the blank page. “Maybe not in Chicago. But if tourists are getting raped by the side of the road in Eden, it is definitely a story.”

She thought he tensed, but his voice remained calm as he corrected her. “One woman was attacked. That hardly constitutes a crime pattern, even in Eden. You shouldn’t sensationalize.”

She glared. “I don’t call it sensationalism to warn the community.”

“That’s very public-spirited of you.”

“You have a problem with that?”

“Not at all,” he replied. “If the public interest is your actual objective.”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you really interested in getting a warning out there, or do you just want to get a headline with your name under it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, I’m a real glory hound, writing for the Eden Gazette.”

“Big stories get picked up by bigger papers,” he observed.

Her heart hammered. “And do you think this could be a big story?”

His lips firmed. “I think you might make it into one. If it suited your purpose.”

She ran a hand through her hair in frustration. “Look, I’m not acting from sinister motives here. I just don’t like secrets. I especially don’t like the police keeping secrets.” Boy, there was an understatement. She pushed away a sixteen-year-old memory. “And I don’t appreciate you standing in the way of a story.”

“Understood. I don’t like secrets, either.” His eyes, cool and steady as rain, met hers. “And I won’t tolerate anyone standing in the way of an investigation.”

Mark DeLucca had a face like an archangel on a cathedral wall and an assassin’s flat, black gaze. It was a look likely to appeal to a lot of women, Jarek figured. Daring ones. Dumb ones. It remained to be seen if the victim, young Carolyn Logan, fit into either category.

“Your sister mentioned that Miss Logan spent a lot of time at the bar last night,” Jarek said.

Mark continued to brush paint on the bottom of a skiff with sure, even strokes. Around the graying wooden dock, sunlight sparkled on dark water. The wind swayed the pines and tattered the white clouds high overhead. The whole scene was straight out of one of Pop’s fishing magazines or a glossy Great Lakes travel brochure.

DeLucca looked almost as at home in this environment—a fallen angel in Eden—as Jarek felt out of place.

The younger man dipped his brush in a can of blue paint. “She was there.”

His response didn’t make it clear whether he meant his sister or Carolyn Logan. But at least he was talking.

Yeah, and if he said something incriminating and Tess found out about it, she’d likely murder them both.

Jarek shook his head. He had enough troubles with this case without worrying about Tess’s reaction to him questioning her brother.

“Did you serve Miss Logan?” he asked.

Mark’s mouth twisted with bitter humor. “I don’t violate the underage drinking laws, if that’s what you’re asking. I carded her.”

“And?”

“I gave her a Coke. She was nineteen.”

A baby, thought Jarek, and imagined his daughter, his Allie, reaching nineteen. Damn it, Eden was supposed to be a safe place to raise children.

“Notice anything else?”

“It was an Illinois license, and she lied about her weight.” Mark DeLucca shrugged. “Nothing unusual about either one.”

“What about her conversation with your sister?”

“What about it?”

“Do you remember what they talked about?” Did you talk with Carolyn Logan? Flirt with her? Rape her?

“Why don’t you ask Tess?”

“I’m asking you.”

Mark DeLucca’s eyes glittered with black amusement. “Well, now you can ask her. Because she just got out of her car, and she’s coming over.”

Jarek turned. Tess’s car was parked in the shadow of the boathouse, and Tess herself was striding down the dock.

His headache returned with a vengeance. But despite his pounding head, he admired the picture she made, flying toward them with all the elegance and wicked intent of one of those black-necked geese defending its young. She wore jeans, and boots that were more suited to Michigan Avenue than a dock in the lake district, and an expression between hope and fury.

He caught himself stuffing his hands deeper into his pockets and smiled in wry recognition. Look, don’t touch.

She stopped beside them, her breath quick through parted lips, her golden eyes bright and narrow with suspicion. “Mark.”

Her brother straightened, wiping his hands on the thighs of his jeans. “Tess.” His dry tone was a parody of hers.

Not a lot of love lost there, Jarek thought. But then she reached out and touched his jacket sleeve, and his hand covered hers in quick reassurance before they both turned to face Jarek. Now he saw the family resemblance he had missed before: the dark, straight hair and the dark, arched brows and the go-to-hell tilt of the jaw. Only Tess’s mouth was full and soft, and Mark’s eyes were black and cold.

“You didn’t waste any time getting over here,” Tess said to Jarek.

He met her gaze and her accusation calmly. “Neither did you.”

“Do you two know each other?” Mark asked.

“We’ve met,” said Jarek.

Tess’s mouth flattened. “He pulled me out of a cop and groupie bar on Wednesday night.”

Mark went as still as a coiled snake.

“Just keeping her out of trouble,” Jarek said evenly.

“That’s usually her job,” Mark said.

Jarek raised an eyebrow. “Is that what she does? Keeps you out of trouble?”

Mark slanted a sharp grin at his sister. “When we were growing up, yeah. Not so much since I got back to town.”

“You were away?” Jarek asked, deceptively polite.

“Six years.”

He didn’t elaborate.

“Prison?” Jarek asked.

The grin broadened. “Marines. So I figure I’m big enough to watch out for myself now.” DeLucca looked at Jarek, and the amusement left his face. “And for her.”

He was being warned off, Jarek thought. Fair enough. If his sister looked like Tess DeLucca, he’d bristle, too. But, Nora, bless her, had never been the black leather pants type.

Tess elbowed her brother in the ribs. “Stop it,” she said. “So, what did you tell him?”

“Same as you, I bet. I met the girl last night. I didn’t know her personally. I’m sorry some son of a bitch hurt her, and I don’t know who did it.”

Jarek persisted. “You can’t remember who else she spoke with?”

“A bunch of rich kids came over from the Algonquin. I thought she was with them at first.” His shoulder jerked. “Frankly I was more concerned with what my customers were drinking than who they were groping on the dance floor.”

“And was Miss Logan groping anyone?”

Mark DeLucca’s dark brows drew together in thought. “No,” he answered at last, slowly. “No, she wasn’t. She shot down Carl Taylor.”

Who the hell was Carl Taylor?

“Taylor’s Gas-N-Go,” Tess offered before he could ask. “Married, two kids.”

It was the kind of background information that Jarek desperately needed and sorely missed. And, because of Tess’s undisguised partiality for her brother, the kind of lead he couldn’t depend on.

“Thanks. So, she left alone…what time, Mr. DeLucca?”

“Late. Twelve-thirty?”

“That fits what I told you,” Tess said.

Jarek threw her an annoyed look. She smiled back, both challenge and apology bright in those wide gold eyes. Why had he thought life would be simpler in Eden?

Do the job, he told himself. “You were responsible for closing up?” he asked Mark.

“Not last night, no. I clocked out around one.”

“Also alone,” Jarek said.

The gleam again. “If I’d been in the mood for company, I could have had some.”

Okay, that was probably true. The DeLuccas were a good-looking family. “So, you weren’t in the mood. Did you drive?”

“Are you kidding? I live five minutes away.”

“But you do have a car.”

“Sure. Right over there by the boathouse.”

Jarek followed his nod. Parked beside Tess’s tiny compact was a black Jeep Cherokee with dings in the side and mud on the tire guards. Very macho.

“Mind if I take a look?”

Tess cocked her chin. “Do you have a search warrant?”

Jarek understood family loyalty. Hell, he admired it, and the stubborn angle of her jaw, but he wasn’t going to let either one get in his way.

“Do I need one?” he asked Mark.

“If I say yes, will you go away and never come back?” Mark met Jarek’s eyes and smiled slightly. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He gestured toward the Jeep. “Be my guest.”

Jarek waited for Mark to pull out his keys and slouch ahead along the dock. Tess fell in beside them. The wind flattened her shirt against that amazing chest and plucked at her hair. Jarek caught a whiff of her shampoo, musky and incongruous against a background of diesel, woods and rising water.