Night Moves : Dream Man/After the Night by Linda Howard
The blusher-pinkened cheeks paled a bit. “About Guy?” Her hands fluttered a bit, then she clasped them in her lap. “Why ask me?”
Faith paused. “Are you alone?” she finally asked, not wanting to cause the woman any trouble if someone should overhear their conversation.
“Why, yes. Lowell is in New York this week.”
That was fortuitous in one way, and not in another, because depending on her conversation with Yolanda, she might want to talk to Lowell, too. She took a deep breath and went right to the heart of the matter. “Were you having an affair with Guy that summer before he left?”
The blue eyes darkened with distress, and the cheeks paled even more. Yolanda stared at her, the seconds ticking away in silence. Faith waited for a denial, but instead Yolanda gave a curiously gentle sigh. “How did you find out?”
“I asked questions.” She didn’t say that it had evidently been common knowledge, for Ed Morgan to know about it. If Yolanda wanted to think she had been discreet, let her have that dubious comfort.
“That was the only time I was ever unfaithful to Lowell.” The older woman looked away, and her fingers plucked nervously at her slacks.
“I’m sure it was,” Faith said, because Yolanda seemed to need to be believed. “From what I’ve heard about Guy Rouillard, he was an expert at seduction.”
An unwilling, rueful little smile touched Yolanda’s lips. “He was, but I can’t blame it on him. I was determined to sleep with him before I ever approached him.” Her fingers continued their nervous little movements, now smoothing the upholstered arm of the chair. “I found out Lowell was carrying on with his secretary, and had been for years. I pitched a fit, let me tell you. I threatened him with all sorts of things if he didn’t stop, immediately, and divorce was the only one of them that wasn’t physically damaging. He begged me not to leave him, swore that she didn’t mean anything to him, it was just the sex, and he’d never do it again—you know, that kind of bull. But I caught him, not three weeks later. It’s so silly, the little things that give them away. When he undressed one night, his shorts were on wrong side out, the label visible in the back. The only way he could have gotten them turned wrong would be if he’d had them off.”
She shook her head, as if she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been more careful. The words were spilling out of her now, as if she had held them inside for twelve years. “I didn’t say anything to him. But the next day I called Guy and asked him to meet me at the summerhouse on their lake. Lowell and I, and some other friends, had been there for barbecues and picnics, so I knew the place.”
The summerhouse again! Faith thought wryly. Between father and son, the sheets in those two bedrooms must have stayed hot. “Why did you pick Guy?” she asked.
Yolanda gave her a surprised look. “Well, I’d hardly have picked anyone repulsive, would I?” she asked reasonably. “If I was going to have an affair, I at least wanted it to be with someone who knew what he was doing, and from Guy’s reputation, I thought he likely filled the bill. Then, too, Guy was safe. I intended to tell Lowell what I’d done, because what good is revenge if no one knows about it, and Guy was powerful enough that Lowell couldn’t do anything to him, if Lowell found out his identity. I intended to keep that secret, at least.
“So I met Guy at the summerhouse, and told him what I wanted. He was very sweet, very reasonable. He tried to talk me out of it, if you can imagine! Talk about a wound to the ego!” Yolanda smiled, her eyes misty with memory as they met Faith’s. “Here was a man who tomcatted all over the state, and he turned me down. I had always considered myself attractive, but evidently he didn’t. I almost cried. I did tear up a little bit, and Guy was frantic. He was so sweet, a real woman’s man. Tears turned him to mush. He started patting my shoulder, explaining that he really thought I was pretty and he’d love to take me to bed, but I had asked for all the wrong reasons, and Lowell was his friend—he went on and on.”
“But you finally convinced him?”
“What I said was, ‘If it isn’t you, it’ll be someone else.’ He just looked at me with those dark eyes that made you feel like you could drown in them, and I could tell he was wondering who I would pick next. He was worried about me, thinking I’d be down at Jimmy Jo’s, looking that crowd over for candidates. Then he took my hand, put it on his crotch, and he was ready. He said, ‘I’m it,’ and took me to the bedroom.” She shivered a little, her gaze unfocused as she looked back in time. She fell silent, and Faith waited patiently for her to sort through her memories.
“Can you imagine,” Yolanda finally said, her voice soft, “what it’s like to be married for twenty years, to love your husband and be perfectly satisfied in bed—and then find out that you had no idea what passion could be? Guy was . . . God, I can’t tell you what Guy was like as a lover. He made me scream, he made me feel and do things I didn’t—I only meant it to be that one time. But we stayed there the whole afternoon, making love.
“I didn’t tell Lowell. Telling him would have ended my revenge, and I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t stop seeing Guy. We met at least once a week, if I could manage it. Then he left.” She glanced at Faith, as if gauging the effect of her next sentence. “With your mother. When I heard, I cried for a week. And then I told Lowell.
“He was furious, of course. He ranted and raved, and threatened to divorce me. I sat there and watched him, not arguing or anything, and that made him even madder. Then I said, ‘You should always make sure your shorts are right side out before you put them back on,’ and he stopped dead, staring at me with his mouth open. He knew that I’d caught him again. I got up and left the room. He followed me about half an hour later, and he was crying. We made up,” she said, briskly now. “And as far as I know, he’s never been unfaithful again.”
“Did you ever hear from Guy?”
Slowly Yolanda shook her head. “I hoped, at first, but . . . no, he never wrote, or called.” Her lips trembled, and she looked at Faith with anguish stark on her face. “My God,” she whispered, “I loved him so.”
• • •
Another dead end, Faith thought as she drove home. According to Yolanda, her husband hadn’t known about her affair with Guy until after Guy had already disappeared, which put Lowell in the clear. Yolanda had been too open, too oblivious to even the possibility that Guy had been killed, or that there was the slightest reason why she shouldn’t unburden herself to Faith. Instead she had wound up clinging to Faith’s hands while she wept for a man whom she hadn’t seen in twelve years, but with whom she had shared a summer of passion.
She had finally recovered her poise, flustered and embarrassed. “My goodness, look at the time—I’m going to be late. I can’t imagine—I mean, you’re a stranger—crying all over you this way, carrying on—oh, my.” This last as she fully realized just what she had been saying to this stranger. She had stared at Faith with horrified dismay.
Feeling compelled to comfort Yolanda, Faith had touched her shoulder and said, “You needed to talk about it. I understand, and I swear I’ll keep your confidence.”
After a few strained seconds, Yolanda had relaxed. “I believe you. I don’t know why, but I do.”
So now Faith was left with no suspects or leads, not that she’d had anything concrete to begin with. All she had was questions, and her questions were annoying someone. The proof of that was in the note she’d found that morning. Whether the note was indicative of a guilty conscience, she didn’t know.
Nor did she know what else to do, except keep asking questions. Sooner or later, someone would be stung to respond.
If she could keep busy enough, maybe she wouldn’t think about Gray.
The theory was proving difficult to put into practice. She had avoided thinking about him, purposefully pushing him from her mind after she had left him the afternoon before. She had ignored the unfulfilled ache in her body, and refused to think about what had almost happened between them. But for all her will, her subconscious had betrayed her, admi
She had no more resistance to him; she might as well admit it. If he hadn’t said what he had, she’d have given in to him there on the grass. Her morals and standards were useless when he took her in his arms, paper tigers that were vanquished by his first kiss.
As she eliminated each person from her list of suspects, the tower of motive leaned more and more toward Gray. Logically, she could see it. Emotionally, the idea met with total rejection. Not Gray. Not Gray! She couldn’t believe it; she wouldn’t believe it. The man she knew was capable of going to extraordinary lengths to protect those he loved, but cold-blooded murder wasn’t one of them.
Her mother knew who the killer was. Faith was as certain of that as she’d ever been of anything. Getting Renee to admit it, however, would take some doing, for that would mean trouble for herself. Renee wasn’t likely to act against her own self-interest, certainly not for such an abstract notion as justice. Faith knew her mother well; if she pushed too hard, Renee would run, partly from fear, but the biggest reason would be to avoid trouble for herself. After wringing the information about the summerhouse from her, Faith knew she would have to wait awhile before calling again.
• • •
The box was delivered the next day.
She returned home from a grocery-shopping expedition to the neighboring parish, and after carrying the groceries in and putting them away, went out to the mailbox to collect the day’s mail. When she opened the lid of the oversized box, there was the usual assortment of bills, magazines, and sales papers lying there, with a box deposited on top of them. Curiously she picked it up; she hadn’t ordered anything, but the weight of the box was intriguing. The flaps had been sealed with shipping tape, and her name and address were scrawled across the top.
She carried everything in and placed it on the kitchen table. Taking a knife from the cabinet drawer, she slit the tape down the seam of the flap and opened the two halves, then parted the froth of tissue paper that had been used for packing.
After one horrified glance, she turned and vomited into the sink.
The cat wasn’t just dead, it had been mutilated. It was wrapped in plastic, probably to keep the smell from alerting anyone before the box was opened.
Faith didn’t think, she reacted instinctively. When the violent retching had stopped, she reached out blindly for the telephone.
She closed her eyes as the deep, smoky voice spoke in her ear, and she held on to the receiver as if it were a lifeline. “G-Gray,” she stammered, then fell silent as her mind went blank. What could she say to him? Help, I’m scared, and I need you? She had no claim on him. Their relationship was a volatile mixture of enmity and desire, and any weakness on her part would only give him another weapon. But she was both sickened and abruptly terrified, and he was the only person she could think of to call for help.
“Faith?” Something of her terror must have been evident in the one word she’d spoken, because his voice became very calm. “What is it?”
Turning her back on the obscenity on the table, she fought to regain control of her voice, but still it emerged as only a whisper. “There’s a . . . cat here,” she managed to say.
“A cat? Are you afraid of cats?”
She shook her head, then realized he couldn’t see her over the phone. Her silence must have made him think the answer was yes, though, because he said soothingly, “Just throw something at it; it’ll scat.”
She shook her head again, more violently this time. “No.” She took a deep breath. “Help.”
“All right.” Evidently deciding she was too terrified of cats to deal with it on her own, he assumed a brisk and reassuring tone. “I’ll be right there. Just sit someplace where you can’t see it, and I’ll take care of it when I get there.”
He hung up, and Faith took his advice. She couldn’t bear to be in the house with the thing, so she went outside on the porch and sat motionless in the swing, waiting numbly for him to arrive.
He was there in less than fifteen minutes, but those fifteen minutes seemed like an eternity. His tall form unfolded from the Jaguar, and he strolled up to the porch with his graceful, loose-hipped gait and a faint smile of masculine condescension on his lips, the hero arrived to save the helpless little woman from the ferocious beast. Faith didn’t take umbrage; he could think what he liked, if he would just get rid of that thing in her kitchen. She stared up at him, her face so bloodless that his smile faded.
“You’re really frightened, aren’t you?” he asked gently, hunkering down in front of her and taking one of her hands in his. Her fingers were icy, despite the steamy heat of the day. “Where is it?”
“In the kitchen,” she said, through stiff lips. “On the table.”
With a comforting pat to her hand, he stood and opened the screen door. Faith listened to his footsteps moving through the living room and into the kitchen.
“Goddamn fucking son of a bitch!” She heard the vicious curse, followed by a string of others. Then the back door slammed. She put her hands over her face. Oh, God, she should have warned him, she shouldn’t have given him the same shock she had received, but she simply hadn’t been able to say the right words.
A few minutes later he came around to the front of the house, and remounted the steps to the porch. His jaw was set, and his dark eyes were colder than she had ever seen them before, but this time his rage wasn’t turned on her.
“It’s all right,” he said, still in that gentle tone. “I got rid of it. Come inside, baby.” Putting his arm around her, he urged her up from the swing and into the house. He directed her toward the kitchen; she stiffened and tried to pull back, but he was having none of it. “It’s okay,” he reassured her, and forced her into a chair. “You look a little shocky. What do you have to drink around here?”
“There’s tea and orange juice in the refrigerator,” she said, her voice faint.
“I meant the alcoholic variety. Do you have any wine?”
She shook her head. “I don’t drink alcohol.”
Despite the fury in his eyes, he gave her a little grin. “Puritan,” he said mildly. “Okay, orange juice it is.” He took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with orange juice, then thrust it into her hand. “Drink it. All of it, while I make a call.”
She sipped obediently, more because it gave her something to concentrate on than because she wanted it. Gray opened the phone book, ran his finger down the first page, then punched in the number. “Sheriff McFane, please.”
Faith lifted her head, suddenly more alert. Gray stared down at her, his expression daring her to protest. “Mike, this is Gray. Could you come out to Faith Hardy’s house? Yeah, it’s the old Cleburne place. She just got a real ugly surprise in her mail. A dead cat . . . Yeah, there’s one of those, too.”
He hung up, and Faith cleared her throat. “One of what, too?”
“A threatening letter. Didn’t you see it?”
She shook her head. “No. All I saw was the cat.” A shudder rippled through her body, making the glass tremble in her hand.
He began opening and closing doors. “What are you looking for?” she asked.
“The coffee. After the sugar to counteract shock, you need a shot of caffeine.”
“I keep it in the refrigerator. Top shelf.”
He got out the canister, and she directed him to the filters. He made coffee rather competently, for a rich man who probably never did it at home, she thought, and felt a ghost of amusement flicker inside.
Once the coffee was in the process of making, he drew up another chair and sat facing her, so close that their legs touched, his on the outside of hers, warmly clasping. He didn’t ask her what had happened, knowing she would soon be going through that with the sheriff, and she was grateful for his tact. He just sat there, lending her his heat and the comfort of his nearness, those
To forestall just such an action, she took a healthy swallow of juice, and actually felt a slight lessening of tension in his muscles. “Don’t you dare,” she muttered. “I’m trying my best not to throw up again.”
The grimness of his expression was lightened briefly by amusement. “How did you know what I was thinking?”
“The way you were staring at the glass, and then at me.” She took another swallow. “I thought Deese was the sheriff.”
“He retired.” Gray had the fleeting thought that her memory of Sheriff Deese wouldn’t be a pleasant one, and wondered if that was why she had looked at him with such alarm when he’d asked for the sheriff. “You’ll like Michael McFane. How’s that for a good Irish name? He’s young for the job, still interested in keeping up with new techniques.” Mike had also been at the shack that night, Gray remembered, but Faith wouldn’t know that, probably wouldn’t recognize him. In her shock, the deputies would have been faceless uniformed figures. Only he and the sheriff, standing off to the side, would have been locked in her memory.
The puzzling contradiction formed in his mind. She had been obviously reluctant to meet Sheriff Deese, but she had never revealed any such uneasiness in her dealings with himself. She’d been bold, provoking, maddening, frustrating, but she’d never shown the least hesitation about being in his company.
Nor was hesitation something that had troubled him. Why else, when he’d gotten her call, he thought to remove a pesky cat from the premises, had he promptly canceled a business meeting and driven here as fast as possible, with Monica’s enraged protests still ringing in his ears? Faith had called him for help, and no matter how minor he thought the problem, he would help her if he could. As it turned out, the problem hadn’t been minor at all, and all his protective instincts had been outraged. He intended to find out who had done such a disgusting thing, and someone would catch hell. His fists ached with the need to pound them into the culprit’s face.