Passion to Die For
Passion to Die For
Marilyn Pappano
I wish to God you were dead. Little did Ellie Chase know those would be the last words she ever spoke to her estranged mother. When Martha's body was found the next morning, all eyes were on Ellie… who couldn't remember what she'd done that night. So when Tommy Maricci–the man she refused to let herself love– came to her rescue, she couldn't say no.Tommy believed in his former girlfriend's innocence–no matter how damning the evidence against her was. She may have broken his heart, but he took her into his home for protection. Because if Ellie wasn't the killer, someone had set her up. And Tommy refused to let anyone hurt the woman he loved.
“You were leaving.” His voice was soft, his tone not dismayed or disappointed, but disillusioned. “Without saying goodbye. And you weren’t coming back.”
And finally she had no choice but to face him. The lie was there, ready to come out—I needed a break. Just a few days. Charleston or Savannah or Beaufort. I would have been back later in the week. But all she did was nod.
It was as if something in him snapped. He advanced on her, backing her against the wall, not touching her but holding her there all the same, his body mere inches from hers, his hands on the wall on either side of her head, his face bent to hers. “Why?” he demanded, the question all the more fierce for its low, insistent tone. “Because of Martha? Who was she, Ellie? What did she want from you? Where were you going? What about us?”
She took a breath, shallow and painful, and whispered, “There is no ‘us.’”
Dear Reader,
When Detective Tommy Maricci made his first appearance in Copper Lake, I knew immediately that he would be a future hero. Who could resist a tall, dark and sexy Italian-American cop? Not me. I married one. (Though deli owner Ellie Chase tries her best. Otherwise, there’d be no story.)
Having a cop in the family comes in really handy when you’re writing romantic suspense. I’m the rare author who doesn’t like interviewing sources for my books, so my husband handles all that for me. If he doesn’t know the answer to a particular question in any aspect of law enforcement or the justice system, one of his buddies does. Another plus: his years with the police department and the Naval Criminal Investigation Service have given him excellent investigative and interrogation skills, so he can also get the answers for all my non-cop questions, too. A resource, a researcher and my own hero all rolled into one. What more could I ask for?
Hope you enjoy this visit with my second-favorite Italian American cop.
Marilyn
Passion to Die For
Marilyn Pappano
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MARILYN PAPPANO
has spent most of her life growing into the person she was meant to be, but isn’t there yet. She’s been blessed by family—her husband, their son, his lovely wife and a grandson who is almost certainly the most beautiful and talented baby in the world—and friends, along with a writing career that’s made her one of the luckiest people around. Her passions, besides those already listed, include the pack of wild dogs who make their home in her house, fighting the good fight against the weeds that make up her yard, killing the creepy-crawlies that slither out of those weeds and, of course, anything having to do with books.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
Ellie Chase loved her job. Owning a restaurant had long been a dream of hers, way back in the times when she didn’t have many dreams, when she was sleeping on the street or scrounging for a meal. She’d savored sweet visions of a diner, a café, a bistro, warm when it was cold, dry when it rained, safe and welcoming and, of course, filled with all the good food her sixteen-year-old belly had ached for.
Tonight, though, she’d rather be working nine to five at some dreary job where all the responsibilities fell on someone else’s shoulders.
She was seated on a stool at the end of their newly installed bar, receipts, schedules and a glass of iced tea in front of her. Outside it was pouring rain, and the temperature was about twenty degrees colder than normal for October in east-central Georgia. In spite of the weather, business had been good—if you counted running out of broccoli cheese soup, fresh bread and banana cheesecake as good. The oven was being temperamental again, and so was Dharma, her self-proclaimed chef. One of the waitresses had called in sick, a customer had mumbled something about a problem in the men’s bathroom and Tommy Maricci had come in for dinner.
With a date.
To top it all off, her feet were aching, her head was throbbing and though it was nearly closing time, no one besides her and her staff showed any interest in going home.
Carmen, her best waitress and unofficial assistant manager, slid onto the stool next to her. “You want me to comp Russ and Jamie for their dinner?”
“Yes, please.” Russ Calloway, owner of Copper Lake’s biggest construction company, had fixed the overflowing toilet in the men’s room, saving her from putting in a call to her overpriced and very-difficult-to-reach plumber. She was grateful, even if he had come in with Tommy and his date.
“I want you to know, I didn’t step on Sophy’s toes, spill her drink on her or spit in her food, even though I was tempted.”
Ellie managed only half a smile. “Sophy’s nice.”
“I know, and if I worked for her over in the quilt shop instead of here, I’d be hating you. But I don’t. The least he could do is take his dates somewhere else.”
“His money is as good as anyone else’s. Besides, I’m so over him that I don’t care.”
Carmen gave her a long look, from the top of her head to the pointed toes of her favorite black heels. Tommy’s favorite, the devil residing on her shoulder whispered. They made her legs look a mile long and showed her butt to good advantage—Amanda Calloway, retired exotic dancer, had taught her that—and they drew the sweetest, naughtiest little grin from Tommy every time he saw her wearing them.
At least, they used to.
“Uh-huh,” Carmen drawled at last. “I can tell from the way you’re hiding in here instead of working out front like you always do. And from all those dates you’ve been accepting.”
“Hey, your social life is active enough for both of us.”
Carmen snorted. “I’m married, honey. My social life consists of work, church, taxiing the kids around and trying to schedule sex with my husband at least once a month.”
“You’ve got five kids. See how well you’re succeeding?” Ellie hadn’t had sex since last April. She’d thought it was make-up sex—her relationship with Tommy had always been an on-again, off-again thing. When it was over, he’d put on his clothes, kissed her, said he was sorry and walked out. She’d known it would happen someday—people always gave up on her eventually—but not that day. It had hurt more than it was supposed to.
But she was over it now.
And if she told the lie often enough, she might even believe it.
With a grunt, Carmen slid to her feet. “Let me start politely hurrying these people along. They need to get home where they belong so we can do the same.”
Ellie’s house on Cypress Creek Road was pretty, cozy, had two bedrooms and was even emptier than her life. It was the place where she stayed, but it wasn’t home. She didn’t belong there. She’d never really belonged anywhere besides the restaurant.
But it was more than she’d ever expected to have. She wouldn’t whine about the things that were missing.
She’d just gotten back to work when Gina, one of the part-time waitresses, approached. “Hey, Ellie, there’s a woman out front who wants to talk to you.”
“An unhappy customer?” she asked warily. Her food was first-rate and the service even better, but some people always found something to complain about. She comped more meals than anyone could reasonably expect in the name of customer satisfaction.
“Nope. Never seen her before. I told her I’d bring her back here, but she said no, she would wait on the porch.”
Great. In the cold. At least the awning Ellie had installed over the summer would keep her dry. Still, she swung by the office to grab her coat before she skirted through the main dining room to the front door. Unwillingly her gaze strayed to the three tables pushed together in the center of the room, where Tommy Maricci and Sophy Marchand were sitting with Russ and Robbie Calloway and their wives. Their dessert plates were empty, and they were making the restless movements Ellie associated with saying goodbyes.
Tommy would take Sophy home, of course, even though the house that held her shop on the first floor and her apartment on the second was just across the square and around the corner. He would escort her inside; maybe because he was a cop, maybe because his father had raised him right, he was big on that sort of thing. Would he spend the night? Was he sleeping with her?
She didn’t care. She was over him.
A blast of cold hit when she opened the door. A woman waited in the shadows at the end of the porch, her back to Ellie, the hood of her trench coat pulled over her head.
Ellie shrugged into her own coat, belting the wool around her waist, uncuffing the sleeves so they covered most of her fingers. Stopping a few feet from the woman, she said, “Hi. I’m Ellie Chase. I understand you want to talk to me.”
“Ellie. Is that short for something?”
The voice was low, hoarse, probably from years of smoking. Even with the breeze and the fresh scent of rain, Ellie could smell stale cigarette smoke, as if it permeated the woman so thoroughly that it had no choice but to leach into the air surrounding her.
“Ellen,” she said impatiently. “Can I help you with something?”
“Ellen. Hmm. You sure? You don’t look like an Ellen. In fact, you look like…oh, a Bethany to me.”
Wind gusted along the length of the porch. That was the reason Ellie felt so cold inside, why she felt as if her knees might give out. She staggered a step before gripping the back of the nearest chair, her fingers knotting so tightly around the cold wood that they went instantly numb.
“I’m sure,” she said, her voice sounding flat and cold. “I know my own name.”
Slowly the woman turned. The hood cast shadows over the upper half of her face, leaving only an impression in the dim light of aged skin, deep grooves, an overglossed mouth. “So do I,” she said. “I know the name you use now, and I know the name you were born to. Bethany Ann Dempsey.”
She raised one weathered hand to pull the hood back, and Ellie stared. Her stomach knotted, and tremors shot through her, making her shiver uncontrollably inside her coat. It had been fifteen years since she’d last seen the woman, and time hadn’t been kind. Her hair was a dull, lifeless gray, her skin sallow. Too much tobacco, too much booze and too damn much meanness had combined to add an additional fifteen years to her face. The only thing that remained the same as in Ellie’s memories was her eyes. Blue. Cold. Cruel.
“What’s the matter, Beth?” The woman smiled, and that, too, was the same: smug and vicious. “Surprised to see your mama?”
For a moment, a dull haze surrounded Ellie, blocking out sound, cold, rain and wind. Anger, loss and panic welled inside her, each fighting for control, the anger curling her fingers into fists, the panic urging her to run, run right now. That terrified little girl would have run, but she was gone. The woman she’d become wouldn’t give in to emotion.
“As far as I’m concerned, my mother died fifteen years ago.” Shoulders back, Ellie turned and took a few steps toward the door before Martha Dempsey spoke again.
“You’ve made a place for yourself here, haven’t you? Nice restaurant. Nice little blue house. You go to church. You’re a member of the Copper Lake Merchants’ Association. You rub elbows with the rich folks in town. People think you’re something, don’t they? But they don’t know what I know.”
Ellie hovered, frozen in the act of taking a step. After a quavery moment, her foot touched the floor and she pivoted to face Martha, freezing again when the screen door creaked open. Jamie and Russ Calloway came out first, not noticing her, heading directly for the steps. Behind them were Robbie Calloway and Sophy Marchand, lost in conversation, and bringing up the rear were Robbie’s wife, Anamaria, and Tommy.
Half wishing to remain unseen, Ellie knew it wasn’t going to happen. Anamaria was her closest friend in town, and she was sensitive to emotions, conflicts and auras. Her gaze came immediately to Ellie’s, her dark eyes taking in what was probably a fireworks display of auras.
Moving gracefully despite her pregnancy, Anamaria closed the distance between them, smiled at Martha, then wrapped one arm around Ellie. “Dinner was wonderful, as usual, Ellie.” Leaning closer, her mouth brushing Ellie’s ear, she murmured, “If you need me…”
“Thanks.” Ellie squeezed her hand more tightly than she’d intended, too aware that Tommy was waiting, a distinct look of suspicion on his face. All the other times they’d broken up, they’d remained friends, but this time he never smiled at her and never spoke if he could avoid it. This time he’d said it was for good, and though she’d denied it for the first month, finally she believed him.
When Anamaria went back to him at the top of the steps, he was still wearing that look. His gaze met hers for an instant, but he didn’t acknowledge her. Instead, he broke contact, took Anamaria’s arm and escorted her down the wet steps.
“Does she know?” Martha asked, her tone sly and taunting. “Do they?”
People believed she had no family, that her parents were dead and all that was left were distant cousins. They thought she’d been raised in Charleston, where she had, in fact, done a fair amount of growing up, that she’d lived a normal, if somewhat family-deficient, life.
Ironically, Anamaria, whom she’d known the shortest time, had guessed there was more to Ellie than the story she told. But that was none of Martha’s business. Nothing about Ellie was her business.
“How did you find me?”
Martha grinned and lifted one bony shoulder in a shrug. “I’ve got my sources.”
“What do you want?”
Martha felt in her pockets, coming up with a pack of cigarettes and a cheap lighter. Ellie let her shake one out and slide it between her lips, then said, “Don’t smoke here.”
Martha hesitated, hands cupped to protect the lighter’s flame, then slowly lowered it. She left the cigarette in her mouth, though. For forty years she’d talked around one. Lit or unlit didn’t matter. “Your father died four months ago.”
No surprise. No disappointment. No regret. The news meant nothing to Ellie, and that was a sad thing.
“Nothing to keep me in Atlanta anymore.”
Oliver Dempsey may not have amounted to anything as a father, but he’d brought home a steady paycheck, enough to cover the basics: housing, transportation, food, booze, tobacco. He’d resented spending any of that paycheck on a teenage daughter whom he considered pretty much worthless, but he’d taken good care of himself and Martha.
And now she wanted someone else to take care of her.
Ellie wanted to laugh, but was afraid what kind of sound would squeeze through the tightness in her throat. “You want money. From me. Is that it?”
Martha stiffened defensively. “I am your mother.”
“Like hell you are. You gave birth to me, you changed a few diapers and you fed me until I was old enough to feed myself. That doesn’t make you my mother.”
“Don’t you get smart with me—”
“Remember the last time I saw you?” Ellie interrupted. “When I pleaded with you to let me come home? When I was hungry and sleeping in abandoned buildings and I begged you to help me?”
Martha’s expression was contempt tinged with regret. Not because she regretted throwing her teenage daughter out of the house, not because she’d never loved or protected Ellie the way a mother was supposed to, but because her past actions were going to interfere with getting what she wanted now. She was about to be held accountable, and Martha had always hated being accountable.
“You had to learn a lesson,” she said sourly.
“What lesson? That I couldn’t count on my parents? I already knew that. That the next carton of cigarettes and the next case of beer were more important to you than me? I knew that, too. Just what the hell lesson was I supposed to be learning out there?”
“Don’t you cuss at me. I didn’t tolerate it back then, and I won’t now. You won’t disrespect me.”
The urge to laugh bubbled inside Ellie. The idea that she felt anything remotely resembling respect for this woman was ludicrous. If Martha dropped dead in front of her right that moment, she would feel nothing more than relief that such an ugly part of her life had ended.
“You want money,” Ellie said again, her voice flat. “How much?”
Martha smiled, showing teeth in need of care and greed that made her eyes damn near sparkle. “Well, now, it’s hard to say. Like I said, your daddy’s dead. There’s no reason for me to stay in Atlanta, and truth is, it’s a little late in life for me to be starting a new career. I kind of like the idea of retiring, resettling to be close to my girl and the grandbabies she’s sure to give me someday. I looked around that pretty little house of yours, and that back bedroom would suit me fine. I could even help out down here sometimes, you know, welcome customers to our restaurant and chat with them about this and that.”
Ellie’s spine was stiff enough to hurt. There was no way she would ever let Martha move into her house or help out at her restaurant. She’d burn both places down before letting Martha taint them. Drawing on the cold deep inside her, she said, “So you get a better life than you’ve ever known. And what do I get in return?”
Martha’s vicious smile reappeared. “Your fancy friends don’t find out about this.” From under the trench coat, she produced a manila envelope. “Here. You can keep it. It’s just copies.”
When Ellie made no move to touch it, Martha tossed the envelope on the seat of the rocker next to her, then tugged her coat tighter. “I don’t expect you to say yes right now. Take a walk down Memory Lane. Think about what you stand to lose. I’ll be in touch with you in a day or two.”
Ellie numbly watched her pull the hood over her limp hair, then clump past and down the steps into the rain. She didn’t look to see which way Martha went. The only place Ellie wanted her to go was away, and that wasn’t going to happen until she had what she wanted.
When everything was still, Ellie picked up the envelope with unwilling fingers and hid it inside her own coat. She would take that stroll down Memory Lane—more like Nightmare Street—later. First, she had a restaurant to close for the night.
The clock in the hall chimed eleven times, rousing Tommy from the edges of sleep. The television was still on, framed between his booted feet propped on the coffee table, and Sophy was snuggled beside him, her sweater rustling against his shirt as she shifted. Damn, he must have fallen asleep not long after they’d settled on the couch.
“I should go home.”
“Or you could spend the night.”
He could. It wasn’t as if he had someone to go home to. And he’d slept over before—not a lot but enough to be comfortable with the idea. But having dinner at Ellie’s Deli had guaranteed that his mind would be on someone else—looking for glimpses of her, waiting for her to come to the table to greet them like the old friends they were, wondering how he’d been lucky enough to go there on a day when she wore his favorite outfit: white blouse with a deep V and black skirt that clung to her hips so snugly that it needed a slit so she could walk. Conservative clothes that concealed a tiny lace bra and matching thong, all set off by those incredible black heels. Just the sight of them…
His body twitched, and he silently cursed, hoping Sophy hadn’t noticed. He wouldn’t insult her by pretending he wanted her when Ellie was all over his mind. Her sleek blond hair. Her amazing legs. The confident way she moved. Her smiles, ranging from polite to intimate to wicked.
Oh, yeah, and the drop-dead cold shoulder she gave him these days.
“When it takes you that long to come up with an answer, it’s pretty clear.” Sophy sat up, lowering her feet to the floor.
An answer to…? Then he remembered: staying the night. “I’m sorry, babe. It’s just…I’ve got to work tomorrow, and it’s been a long day—”
“And spending the evening at Ellie’s wasn’t the best way to get in the mood to sleep with another woman.” Sophy scooted to the edge of the couch, then looked at him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Rumor is that you broke up with her. If she’s got this much effect on you six months later, why’d you do it?”
He’d issued an ultimatum, and then he’d had to live with it. He’d demanded marriage, kids, living together, commitment and she’d opted for nothing. It had been a lonely six months, but faced with the same situation, he’d make the same demand. He wanted more than a long-term girlfriend. If she couldn’t give him that, someone else could.
Like Sophy.
“It’s complicated,” he said, getting to his feet and pulling her with him. Keeping hold of her hand, he went to the front door, where he snagged his jacket from the coat tree. After sliding it on, he wrapped his arms around Sophy and kissed her.
She tilted her head so the kiss fell on her cheek. “Are you still in love with her?”
Grimly he gave the best answer he could. “I’m trying not to be.”
Sophy studied him for a moment, then leaned forward and brushed her mouth across his. “You’re still welcome to spend the night. I know, not tonight. But maybe next time.”
“Sure.” Provided they didn’t go to the deli, and he didn’t see or think about Ellie all night. Yeah, then he might be good for someone else.
“It’s all right about her,” Sophy said. “I mean, I knew going in…”
Somehow that didn’t make him feel better. He said goodbye and brushed a kiss across her forehead, then opened the door to a blast of cold air. Closing it quickly behind him, he took the wooden steps two at a time, shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and set off down the street.
It had been Sophy’s suggestion that they walk home from dinner. Between the canopies that covered the storefronts and the live oaks that shielded the path through the square, they’d arrived significantly drier than if they’d walked the block north with no cover to his SUV. Now, with everything closed up for the night and the streets empty, he wished for a closer parking space.
Tommy was passing the gazebo in the square when a rustle of movement caught his attention. Someone hunkered on one of the benches inside the structure. The dark coat could belong to anyone; the pale blond hair could only be Ellie’s. What the hell was she doing there?
He wanted to walk on. He should have, but he was a cop. He didn’t like things out of place, and Ellie alone in the square late at night was definitely out of place. She should have finished closing up the restaurant over an hour ago, should have been home in bed.
Should have been home in bed with him.
When his boot landed on the first step, she stiffened, then whirled around to face him. There was a moment of surprise on her face, then that blankness he’d come to associate with her. She sat straighter, pulled her coat tighter and something papery rustled.
He stopped halfway up the steps, on eye level with her, and allowed himself a moment to just look at her. Light blond hair falling past her chin, sleek and elegant like her. Skin the color of warm, dark honey. Brown eyes, a surprise on first sight, damned sexy every other time. She was shorter than his five feet eleven inches, slender, with great breasts and hips, but always lamenting that she enjoyed her own food too much.
He’d never agreed. Not from the very first time he’d seen her and thought damn. Damn, she was beautiful. Damn, she was hot. Damn, he was lost. Five years he’d been lost, and he’d hoped to stay that way forever.
His hands clenched inside his pockets. “You okay?”
“Of course.”
Of course. During all the rough patches they’d gone through, she’d never cried, pouted or moped. She’d never pleaded with him or shown a moment’s weakness. She’d always been stronger, less affected, than he. He admired her strength, but would it have killed her to need him even half as much as he’d needed her?
“What are you doing out here?”
“Enjoying the lovely evening. What are you doing?”
“I was at Sophy’s.”
If that news bothered her, she didn’t let it show. Was she the least bit jealous? He wished. Did she miss him? Maybe. Would she ever marry him? Doubtful. If she hadn’t loved him enough after five years, why should a sixth or eighth or tenth year make a difference?
“How is Sophy?” she asked.
“You could have come to the table and seen for yourself this evening.” He’d waited through the appetizers and the salads for her to do just that. By the time the main course had arrived, he’d accepted that she wasn’t going to.
“I was busy.”
“You’re always busy. Running things. Talking to customers.” Was it a good thing that she’d avoided his table? Had she not wanted to acknowledge him with Sophy?
He took another step up. “I saw you talking to that woman on the porch.” Stupid comment. Of course he’d seen them and she knew it; he’d passed within a few feet of them. “I didn’t recognize her.”
The thin light from the streetlamps showed her shrug, stiff and awkward. “She doesn’t live here.”
“An old friend?”
“No.”
“A relative?”
She was stiffer, more awkward. “Just someone who wanted something.”
He thought back to the woman. If asked, he would have said he hadn’t really paid much attention to her; he’d been too busy not paying attention to Ellie. But he’d seen enough. The woman had looked to be in her sixties, average height and weight. Gray hair, sallow complexion, a heavy smoker and on edge. Even when standing still, she hadn’t been still. Shifting her weight, her gaze darting about, her attention honed.
What had she wanted from Ellie? A handout? A favor? And why Ellie?
Because they shared a connection somewhere in their past? In the five years Ellie had lived in Copper Lake, she’d had little to say about her twenty-five years elsewhere. She was an only child, her parents were dead, and her only relatives were distant, figuratively and literally. He knew she’d had some unhappy times, but she’d never been open to discussing them.
A woman should be willing to discuss her hurts and disappointments with the man she’d been seeing for the better part of five years.
The wind gusted, scattering sodden dead leaves across the square, and it sent a chill through him. His jeans and leather jacket weren’t enough to stand up to the cold, but Ellie didn’t seem to notice the temperature. Granted, she wore a long wool coat, but there was an air of detachment about her. Anamaria would probably say her aura was the translucent shade of blue ice.
“Why don’t you go home?” he suggested, wanting very much to do the same.
“Are you going to continue harassing me if I don’t, Detective?”
“Come on, Ellie.” He wasn’t comfortable leaving her, or any other woman, alone in the gazebo with midnight approaching. Copper Lake’s crime rate was nothing compared to the big cities, but bad things still happened to innocent people.
She opened her mouth as if to argue, then closed it again and stood, arms still folded across her middle. There was another papery crackle. From something hidden beneath her coat?
She passed without touching him, and when he fell into step beside her, she scowled. “I can make it to my car alone.”
“It’s on my way.”
Those were the last words either of them said until they reached the small parking lot that opened off the alley behind the deli. Her lime-green VW Beetle was the only car in the lot, parked under the lone streetlight, its lights flashing when she clicked the remote. She would have gotten in and driven away without a word, but he laid his hand on her arm, stopping her.
“Ellie, if you need to talk—”
Even through the bulk of the coat, he felt her muscles clench. She looked at him, then at his hand, and he withdrew it. The night chill had nothing on her gaze. “Thank you for the escort.”
Her polite words were as bogus as his response. “You’re welcome.” Pushing his hand into his pocket, Tommy stepped back and watched as she slid behind the wheel, started the engine, then drove away. He stood motionless long after her taillights disappeared down the alley, until another blast of wind hit him, this time dampened with more rain moving in.
Damn, she was cold. Damn, she was distant.
And damned if he didn’t still love her.
Ellie’s house was located at the end of Cypress Creek Road, just before it made a sharp right turn and became Magnolia Drive. It wasn’t a trendy part of town; her neighbors were mostly as old as her house, on the downhill side of sixty. The house was small, but the floors were hardwood, it had an attached garage and the price had been reasonable. Besides, most of her waking hours were spent at the restaurant. The house was used mostly for sleeping and doing laundry.
And, off and on until last spring, for having great sex with Tommy.
She would have been touched by his stopping at the gazebo and walking her to her car if she didn’t know him so well. He would have stopped for anyone, ex-lover, acquaintance or total stranger. He was a protector from the inside out. Ensuring other people’s safety wasn’t just his job; it was who he was.
She’d desperately needed someone like that fifteen years ago. She hadn’t had him then, and she couldn’t have him now. Didn’t deserve him now.
She let herself into the house from the garage, leaving her coat in the utility room and walking through the dimly lit kitchen into the living room. None of the furniture was anything special, and the dishes and linens had been chosen by an accommodating clerk at the housewares shop at the mall. Ellie could walk away from it all and never miss a thing.
Except, possibly, the four-inch heels she admired before kicking them off her feet.
Once she was settled comfortably on the couch, she reached for the large envelope Martha had given her, sure what was inside before she opened it. Police reports, complaints, convictions, photographs. It hurt to see herself at fifteen—still young and naive—and then at sixteen and seventeen. Like Martha, she had aged far more than the months could account for. By the age of eighteen, there’d been a hollowness about her, in her face and her eyes and her soul. She’d wanted to end it all—the pain, the shame. She’d had only one reason to live, and even that had been short-term.
Ellie went to the fireplace, put a sheet of paper on the grate and struck a match to it. As the edges curled with flame, she added another page, then another, report after photo after complaint. When the last piece was burning, she held the envelope over it, feeling the heat from the fire, holding it until she risked a burn. It dropped to the ashes on the grate, and the flames consumed it with a final wisp of smoke and a lingering, sooty fragrance. She stirred the ashes with the fireplace poker, breaking them into smaller pieces that fell through the grate, grinding them to powder until she was satisfied they’d been destroyed.
All those years ago, she hadn’t thought she would live to see thirty. And here she was, not only alive but reasonably well. She had a house and a business. She had the friendship and respect of the people she did business with. She was a success by anyone’s standards.
Would she still be a success if she refused Martha’s blackmail?
She wanted to believe the answer was yes, that her friends would remain her friends, that who she’d become would be more important to them than who she’d been. She wanted to believe that she was good enough, changed enough, to rise above her past.
She wanted to believe that she’d earned the life she had now, that she deserved it.
But the truth was, she didn’t know. She was a fraud, masquerading as someone no different from anyone else in Copper Lake. She’d lied to them about her background and her family. Ellie Chase was someone they could relate to. Bethany Dempsey wasn’t.
She was no stranger to disappointment and rejection. Her mother and father hadn’t been the first to turn away from her, nor had they been the last. And if her own parents hadn’t been able to accept and forgive her, how could she count on people like the Calloways to do so?
How could she ever expect Tommy—the protector, the cop, the good guy—to do so?
She could leave. Disappear. Put the restaurant and house up for sale. Only her lawyer would need to know how to contact her, and Jamie Munroe-Calloway wouldn’t share that information with anyone, especially Martha.
Let the mother who’d abandoned her bleed her dry, give up everything that mattered and run away like a coward, or stand up to Martha and risk the loss of everything—and everyone—that mattered.
It was a hell of a choice.
Chapter 2
“I hate rain.”
Tommy leaned his head against the Charger’s headrest and watched the house down the street through slitted eyes. He was partnered with Katherine Isaacs this week and wondering whether it was because he was good at what he did or if the lieutenant was punishing him for something.
Kiki might be the department’s newest detective, but she was also its biggest whiner. She bitched about everything: rain, sun, heat, cold, driving, not driving, having to arrest someone, not getting to arrest someone.
“Piss off, Kiki,” he muttered, shifting in the seat.
She scowled at him. “I hate that nickname.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whine to someone who cares.” It was warm inside the car, so he switched the engine on long enough to crack the windows an inch or two. Fresh air blew in, the raindrops it carried a small price to pay for its cooling effect. They’d been parked under the trees down the road from a drug dealer’s house for hours now, the black Dodge practically disappearing in the gloomy overcast, and so far they hadn’t seen anything more interesting than a dog taking a leak on the dealer’s steps.
“Are you always this pleasant on surveillance?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“You’re supposed to be teaching me.”
She stabbed at the button to roll up the window, but he’d turned off the car again. The rain wasn’t coming in on her side, but the humidity was. Before long, her hair would frizz out like a ’70s Afro. He knew, because she’d whined about it the first time he’d rolled down the windows.
Sprawled in the driver’s seat, head tilted back, he said, “Okay, listen up. This is me teaching. When you do surveillance, you park someplace where you’re not real noticeable, you settle in and you watch your target. If you’re real lucky, you’ll actually see something. Most of the time, you sit until your butt goes numb and you get nada. You don’t eat anything that smells offensive. You don’t get crumbs or wrappers in my car. You don’t drink more than your bladder will hold. You don’t fall asleep. And you don’t complain.” He turned his head so he could see her. “Oh, wait, I forgot who I was talking to. Kiki Isaacs, queen of complainers.”
“That’s Detective Queen of Complainers to you.” She fluffed her brown hair, starting its inevitable frizz. “I don’t complain. I make my opinions known. Keeping things inside is bad for your health.”
“Then you must be the healthiest person I’ve ever met. Be quiet now. You’re fogging up my windows.” He used a napkin to wipe the windshield, then leaned back again.
The house they were watching sat isolated from its neighbors. A fire had taken out the house to the west, and the one to the east had been leveled by a tornado. That probably suited Steve Terrell just fine. His own lot was overgrown, and junk filled the yard. The screens on the windows were torn and rusted, patches of shingles were missing from the roof and the paint was a truly ugly shade of purple.
An informant had told them that Terrell was expecting a shipment around nine that morning, but it was now one in the afternoon and there hadn’t been any movement on the street at all. Even the neighbors were either gone or staying home.
Drifting on the damp air came the scent of wood smoke and Tommy breathed deeply. He’d given up smoking more than a year ago. It had taken him six months to get from five cigarettes a day to none. He’d think it was completely out of his system, and then he’d catch a whiff of smoke—even the sour stench of burning leaves—and want a cigarette so badly he could taste it. Kiki’s slow intake of breath, a signal that she was about to speak again, doubled the desire.
“How long do we wait?”
“The guy might have had car trouble. He might have gotten a late start, or the weather might have slowed him down.”
“Or your informant might have given you bad information. He might have just liked the idea of us sitting out here in the rain waiting for something that was never going to happen in the first place.”
“Maybe.”
She repeated her question. “So how long do we wait?”
“As long as it takes.” She was probably right. This bust was a bust. But just to keep her from thinking she’d nagged him into giving up, he waited another half hour before finally starting the engine. The Dodge Charger turned with a powerful rumble, and he pulled out of the trees and drove away from Terrell’s house.
Kiki gave an exaggerated sigh of relief, then looked slyly at him. “I saw you at Ellie’s last night with Sophy.”
“Yeah.” Tommy resisted the urge to fidget. His dating Sophy wasn’t a secret. He’d been seeing her for a month, though he’d never taken her to the deli. Though he’d been a regular since the doors opened, taking his current girlfriend to his ex-girlfriend’s restaurant seemed a really lousy idea. Last night the choice hadn’t been his. Anamaria had been craving prime rib, and Ellie’s was the best in town.
He missed the food there. Almost as much as he missed Ellie.
“Sophy and I are friends. If you break her heart, I’ll have to shoot you.”
After turning onto Carolina Avenue, he gave Kiki a sharp look, then deliberately changed the subject. “I’m taking you back to the station. Then I’m going looking for my informant.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, thanks.”
“Come on, Maricci—”
“He’s called a confidential informant for a reason. Besides, you wouldn’t like the places he hangs out.”
“Tommy—”
He pulled to a stop in front of the Copper Lake Police Department and waited pointedly for her to get out of the car. When she didn’t move, he said, “Go inside, Kiki. Do your nails or fix your hair or something. I’ll swing back after I’m done.”
With a scowl, she climbed out, muttering something about macho jerks and pissants. Grinning, he pulled out of the parking lot and headed back downtown. He did intend to go looking for his informant, but not until he’d gotten something to eat, along with a strong cup of coffee.
He circled halfway around the square before finding a parking space near A Cuppa Joe. As he got out of the Charger, a figure crossing the street caught his attention. She wore a long coat that was too big, the hood pulled up over gray hair and a lined face, and trudged through the crosswalk with a plastic shopping bag clutched in each hand.
It was the woman Ellie had been talking to on the porch last night, the out-of-towner who wanted something from her. Ellie hadn’t been happy to see her or to talk about her with him in the square…though these days she wasn’t happy talking about anything with him.
On impulse, he met the woman as she stepped onto the curb. “Can I help you with your bags?”
She drew up short and fixed a suspicious stare on him. “Do I look like I need help?”
“No, ma’am. I just thought—”
“Who are you?”
“Tommy Maricci.” He gestured to the gold shield clipped onto his belt, and her gaze dropped, then returned to his face.
“I haven’t done nothin’ wrong.”
“I didn’t say you had. I just thought you might like some help. Maybe a ride to get out of this rain.” A blast of wind kicked up behind her, bringing with it the smell of stale smoke and liquor.
Shifting the bags to one hand, she raised the other to tug her hood back enough to see him better. “You always offer innocent strangers rides?”
“More often than you’d think.”
“Huh. All right. I’ll take your ride.” She handed both bags to him, then shoved her hands into her coat pockets. “It is a bit chilly for this time of year. And I’m not going far. Just to the Jasmine.”
Her blue eyes narrowed, clearly expecting some response from him, but he was good at hiding surprise. The Jasmine was a restored three-storied brick-and-plaster post-Civil War beauty on two prime acres east of downtown. Now a bed-and-breakfast, it was by far the most expensive place to stay in Copper Lake. Not what he would have expected for this woman.
Though his job had taught him to expect the unexpected.
“My car’s over there.” He gestured toward the Charger, and they’d walked a few yards when she inhaled deeply.
“Nothing smells as good on a chilly day as a cup of strong coffee.”
Especially with a little something extra in it to help warm a body, he thought, catching another whiff of alcohol. “I was just heading for a cup. Do you have time?”
Her laughter was throaty and grating. “I have nothin’ but time. Are you treating?”
“Sure.”
“Well, then, why don’t you put them bags up and I’ll wait inside out of the cold?” Without pausing for his agreement, she pivoted and walked into A Cuppa Joe.
Tommy unlocked the car door and set the bags in the back. As the plastic sides sagged, he saw two cartons of cigarettes, a six-pack of beer, chips and three large bags of candy. Tucked between the beer and the Enquirer was a slim brown bag, the kind used at the local liquor stores. Booze, chocolate and a gossip rag…the basic requirements of life.
After closing and locking the door, he strode down the sidewalk and into the coffee shop. The woman was standing at the counter, head tilted back, studying the menu on the wall. She’d pushed the hood off her head, leaving her hair sticking out like tufts of straw, and, like the night before, she gave off an air of watchfulness. “Does that offer go for plain coffee or the grande-mocha-latte-chino good stuff?”
“Whatever you want.”
A twenty-something girl with bottled black hair and deep purple lips waited idly for their order, tapping an orange fingernail on the counter. A person could be forgiven for thinking she was already in the Halloween spirit, but she looked like that every day of the year. After the woman ordered a caramel-hazelnut something-or-other, Tommy asked for his usual—high-octane Brazilian blend with a slice of cream-cheese-filled pumpkin bread.
“Make that two slices,” the woman said with a sly smile. “I’ll find a table.”
Midafternoon, with only a couple of other customers, that was no hardship. She chose one near the front window but away from the draft of the door. By the time Tommy set down the tray with their food, she’d removed her coat and sat, legs crossed, hands clasped on the tabletop. Her fingers were short, stubby and nicotine stained, her nails blunt and unpolished. The skin on her hands, like on her face, was weathered and worn. Not by work, he suspected. She didn’t strike him as a woman who indulged in hard work.
And she didn’t strike him as a woman who would have even the vaguest connection to Ellie. Ellie was so elegant and polished and…just different.
“I didn’t get your name,” he said as he set a tall foamy cup and a saucer with bread in front of her.
“I didn’t offer it.” She swiped a finger in the whipped cream that topped her drink, licked it clean, then shrugged. “Martha Dempsey.”
“Are you here on vacation? Visiting friends? Just passing through?”
Picking up her fork, she wagged it in his direction. “That’s the bad thing about cops. They’re always asking questions.”
“We’re just curious people.” And he wasn’t asking even a fraction of the questions running through his mind. Who are you? Why are you here? How do you know Ellie? What do you want from her?
“I seen you last night. At the restaurant down the street. With that pregnant black girl. Is she your girl?” There was an undertone of something—disapproval, bigotry—that made her voice coarse, ugly.
“I like to think she could have been if my buddy hadn’t met her first.” He’d liked Anamaria from the first time they’d met, but Robbie, she insisted, had been her destiny. God knows, she’d certainly turned him around. The shallow Calloway brother, the irresponsible one, had taken to marriage and impending fatherhood as well as or better than any of his more responsible brothers.
“She’s not your kind,” Martha said dismissively.
Before he could ask just how she meant that, she shifted her gaze outside to a temporary sign in the square, announcing the date and time of the annual Halloween celebration. “This isn’t a bad little town. I’m thinking I could live out my last days here.”
And what would Ellie think of that? “I’ve lived all my days here, except for four years in college. I like it.” He stirred sugar into his coffee, then took a careful sip before asking, “Where do you live now?”
“Atlanta. Big place. You can stay twenty years in the same house and still not know your neighbor’s name.” She gave him another of those sly looks. “I bet you know pretty much everything about everyone in town. Or, at least, you think you do.”
“I’m not sure you can ever know everything about a person.” He was probably the only one in town who didn’t have much in the way of secrets. The only major events in his life—his mother’s alcoholism, her leaving when he was five and abandoning him, his falling in love with Ellie and her not loving him back—were common knowledge. He had nothing to hide.
“What do you know about Ellie Chase?”
He stilled in the act of reaching for another bite of pumpkin bread. Laying his fork carefully on the plate, he folded his hands around his coffee cup instead. “She’s got the best restaurant in town. Everyone likes her. She’s good to work for. She’s active in the community.” He paused. “I know you know her.”
Ellie hadn’t actually said that. Martha Dempsey was just someone who wanted something, she’d said. Someone from the past she never talked about, he’d inferred.
Martha’s smile was crooked. “A long time ago,” she said. “I hadn’t seen her since she was a teenager.”
“Is she the reason you came here?”
She studied him a moment, then took a drink of coffee, slurping to get whipped cream, as well. With a drop clinging to her upper lip, she said, “What you call curiosity, Mr. Police Detective, some people consider plain old nosiness.”
“Is she?”
After another drink, she shook her head. “Her being here is just a happy coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.” And Ellie certainly hadn’t seemed happy.
That earned a sharp laugh from her. “I don’t believe in little green men from Mars, neither, but that don’t mean they aren’t out there. Now…tell me about this Halloween festival.”
A shrill whistle startled Ellie, who’d been staring off into the distance. She shifted her gaze to the door of her office where Sherry, one of the waitresses, stood, a takeout bag in hand.
“I called your name three times. You imagining yourself on some Caribbean beach with a hot cabana boy?”
If only her mind had wandered someplace so pleasant…But no, she’d been distant in years, not so much in mileage. “You bet,” she lied, forcing a smile. “The sun was warm, the sand was endless and the rum never stopped flowing.”
“Well, come back to reality, where the sky is gray, the temperature is cold and the rain hasn’t stopped falling.” Sherry held up the bag. “Joe’s order is ready.”
Ellie looked blankly at the bag before remembering: Joe Saldana had called in an order to go, and she’d offered to deliver it to him. He’d promised her a tall chai tea, his own special blend, as a fee.
“I can take it for you.”
“You’re married, Sherry,” Ellie reminded her as she rose from the chair, then took her jacket from the coat tree in the corner.
“But there’s no harm in looking.”
The waitress handed over the bag, and the fragrant aromas of the day’s special—roasted chicken, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, along with a piece of apple pie—drifted into the air. It was enough to remind Ellie that she had skipped lunch, and breakfast, as well. She hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of food.
Not with the sour stenches of fear, bourbon and nicotine that had gripped her for the past fifteen hours or so.
“I’ll tell Joe you send your regards,” she said as she squeezed past Sherry and started down the hall.
“Oh, honey,” Sherry murmured behind her. “I want to give him a whole lot more than that.”
Ellie’s faint smile faded before she reached the door. They’d had a busy lunch, and one of the staff had called in sick, so she’d had to pitch in and wait tables. Busy was good; it kept her from thinking about anything more than the task at hand.
But busy couldn’t last forever, and once the lunch rush was over, she’d retreated to her office and brooded. She’d faced a lot of problems in her life, but there had always been solutions. This one had solutions, too—just none that she could face at the moment.
The rain came in steady, small plops against her lemon-yellow slicker until she reached the protection of the awnings that fronted the other businesses on the block. There she pushed the hood back and drew in a deep breath of fresh, clean air. Speaking to the few people she passed on the sidewalk, Ellie realized with some measure of surprise that she would miss Copper Lake if she had to leave. She’d tried not to get overly attached to the town or the people in it. Home was a concept, not a place, and people let you down. From the day she’d come there, she’d wanted to be able to leave without regret.
Tried. Wanted. Truth was, she was attached. She could own another dozen restaurants, and none of them would mean the same as the deli. She could make a hundred new friends, but they would never replace Anamaria and Jamie, the Calloways, Carmen and everyone else. She could have a thousand more affairs, but not one of them—
Grimly she stopped herself midthought as the fragrance of fresh-roasted coffee drifted into her senses. A Cuppa Joe occupied the corner lot, a full block from her own place. Ironically, Joe Saldana hadn’t named the gourmet shop. It was just coincidence that Joe now owned A Cuppa Joe.
I don’t believe in coincidence.
Scowling at the words she’d heard more than once from Tommy, she pushed open the plate-glass door and went inside. Louis Armstrong played softly on the stereo—Joe didn’t listen to anything recorded after 1960—and coffee scents perfumed the air.
She was halfway across the shop, already anticipating the first sip of chai tea, when she realized that something was amiss. Slowing her steps, Ellie glanced over her shoulder, then came to an abrupt stop and turned.
Martha was sitting at the front table farthest from the door.
With Tommy.
A chill shivered through her as she stared at them and they stared back. There was malice in Martha’s expression, speculation and something more in Tommy’s. A little longing. Maybe regret. Definitely curiosity.
How had they wound up in the coffee shop together? Had it been Tommy’s doing, his way of finding out answers she hadn’t given him the night before? Or had Martha sought him out? Did she somehow know they’d been involved?
Ellie couldn’t speak, couldn’t move or look away, until Joe’s voice broke the shock that held her.
“Hey, Ellie. How much do I owe you?”
Bit by bit, she forced her attention from Tommy and Martha to Joe, who was sliding his wallet from his hip pocket as he came out from behind the counter. She tried to remember how much the lunch special was, but couldn’t. Gratefully, though, she recognized the ticket nestled atop the foam container in the plastic bag and pulled it out, handing it over.
“Nina’s getting your tea,” Joe said, offering her a ten-dollar bill in exchange for the bag. “Why don’t you come on back with me?”
Ellie still felt Tommy’s and Martha’s gazes, though, prickling down her spine and into her somersaulting stomach as Joe took her arm, guiding her behind the counter. She numbly went along. As soon as they reached the rear space that served as both storeroom and office, he closed the door and the prickling went away.
He released her, went to the battered desk and unpacked his lunch. “So you and Maricci still aren’t friendly.”
She shook her head.
“I doubt you have to worry much about the woman with him. She’s not his type.”
He was wrong. Martha was the biggest worry in her life.
“Okay, bad joke. What’s wrong? This is hardly the first time you’ve seen him since…” With typical male tact, he shrugged instead of finishing. Since he walked away from you. Since he gave up on you.
“It’s not that,” she said, and it was only half a lie. She could handle seeing Tommy. She could even handle seeing him with Sophy. But with Martha, who hadn’t been satisfied with ruining her life fifteen years ago? Who’d come to Copper Lake for the sole purpose of ruining what was left?
“Then what is it?” Joe asked as he cut a generous bite of chicken.
“Complicated,” she said with a helpless shrug.
“Sex always is.”
Leave it to a man to boil down her and Tommy’s relationship to its most basic component. If it were only sex, they would have no problem, because the sex was always good.
“And how’s your sex life?” she asked to change the subject.
“I’m thinking about it.”
She snorted. In the year since he’d come to town, he’d caught the eye of every available woman—and a few who weren’t. Six foot four, tanned, muscular, with unruly blond hair and blue eyes, he could have women lined up around the block. Had had women lined up the day he’d reopened A Cuppa Joe after remodeling. But to the best of her knowledge, he’d never gone out with any of them. He was friendly, considerate and disinterested.
“How long can a man go without?” she asked.
His forehead wrinkled for a moment, then smoothed. “Eighteen months, two weeks and three days. And counting.”
She gazed at him a long time, while he sampled the mashed potatoes, dipped a forkful of dressing into the gravy, then cut another piece of chicken. Finally she shook her head and started toward the rear wall. “Can I use your back door?”
“You gonna slink back down the alley to the diner? Coward.” But he gestured toward the door with careless approval.
She let herself out the door with a wave, then stood underneath the roof overhang while pulling the slicker hood into place. Hands shoved into her pockets, she turned left toward the deli, but after a dozen feet, turned around and headed along the sidewalk in the other direction instead. Shivering more than the weather called for, she turned at the next block and headed aimlessly out of the business district and into a neighborhood of lovely old homes.
Five years ago Ellie had chosen Copper Lake as her new home based on only one thing: the two-hundred-year-old general store turned restaurant turned hot investment property. Randolph Aiken, her mentor, for lack of a better word, had contacted her in Charleston, where she’d been working for a friend of his in a lush, plush, black-tie restaurant and told her about the space. It would be a great investment, he’d said, for that money she’d been saving.
Payoff money.
When she’d driven through Copper Lake that first time, her initial thought had been that it was too pretty, too small-town perfect. She didn’t belong in such a place.
But she hadn’t fit in in Charleston, either, or Atlanta. She didn’t belong anywhere, so she might as well not belong in Copper Lake, where she could have her own modest restaurant.
Then something strange had happened along the way. The town and its people had made a place for her. They’d welcomed her, befriended her and treated her like any normal person.
Tommy’s welcome had been the sweetest.
A short, sharp tap of a car horn sounded as she was about to cross a driveway. She drew up short, realizing she’d reached the Jasmine, one of Copper Lake’s historic gems, as an elegant gray Mercedes glided to a stop in front of her. The driver rolled down the window, and both he and the passenger, the inn’s owners, smiled up at her. “Look at this, Jared. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and Ellie Chase is out taking a stroll,” Jeffrey Goldman said.
“Let me mark this date on the calendar. I do believe it’s a first,” Jared Franklin replied.
Ellie couldn’t help but smile at both men. Like her, like Joe Saldana, they’d come to Copper Lake to make a new start. Unlike her and Joe, everyone knew the basic facts of their lives. They were open and unashamed; they had nothing to hide.
“I’m not at the deli all the time,” she protested.
“No, of course not,” Jeffrey agreed. “You have to sleep sometime.”
“You’re not still sleeping on that couch in your office, are you?” Jared asked.
“One time. And it was just a nap. I’d worked late the night before for…What was it? Oh, yeah, your birthday party.” Ironic that a birthday party for a retired lawyer had turned into the largest and most boisterous private event the restaurant had ever hosted. The sheer number of people who’d made the drive from Atlanta had been astounding—lawyers, judges, criminals. She’d spent half the night in the kitchen, afraid she would run into someone who’d known her from before.
That was no way to live, but if she gave in to Martha’s blackmail demands, she would live the rest of her life just like that.
“Why don’t you let us give you a ride to wherever you’re going?” Jeffrey asked.
She was about to say no, thanks, when another car approached. It was black and looked so unlike a police car, she had once teased, that of course it was. The turn signal was on, the driver—Tommy, of course—preparing to turn into the Jasmine’s other entrance, the one that circled around to the small guest parking area. In the passenger seat, a glimpse of sallow skin and tufty gray hair proved that Martha was still with him.
It was hard to walk off your problems when they kept showing up.
Turning her gaze back to the men, Ellie smiled. “If you’re not worried that I’ll ruin your upholstery, I would like a ride back to the deli.”
“Upholstery can be cleaned,” Jeffrey said with a negligible wave.
The electric locks clicked, and she opened the rear door before either man could get out to do so for her. As she slid onto the buttery leather seat, the Charger disappeared behind a hedge of neatly groomed azaleas.
“Do you have a guest named Martha?” she asked, striving for a conversational tone as the Mercedes began moving again.
Jared’s nose twitched subtly. “Yes, we do.”
“She came to the restaurant last night. Wow. I couldn’t afford to stay at your place unless you hired me as the live-in help. I guess appearances really can be deceiving.”
Jeffrey ignored Jared’s snort. “She has money. We have rooms. And you know, we’d always cut you a deal, Ellie. You’re our favorite restaurant owner in town.”
“She has money, all right,” Jared said. “She paid for a week from a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills. Said she’d never stayed in a place quite so fancy.” He put a twang on the last few words that should have made Ellie smile, but didn’t.
Where had Martha gotten a stack of hundred-dollar bills? Had Oliver had life insurance enough for her to bury him, pay her usual bills and allow her to splurge on a two-hundred-dollar-a-night bed-and-breakfast? Maybe she hadn’t wasted any money on a burial. After all, he was no use to her dead.
Just as her daughter had been no use to her.
It didn’t make sense. If Martha needed money—and she must; how else would she survive with her aversion to work?—why wasn’t she staying at the Riverview Motel? One night at the Jasmine would cover nearly a week at the Riverview.
Thinking about it made her head hurt. Thinking about Martha with Tommy made it hurt worse.
Staring out the window, she listened to Jeffrey and Jared’s idle chatter until they reached the restaurant. She thanked them for the ride and climbed out into heavier rain.
“Next time you need a break from work, come on over,” Jared invited. “I’ll fix you my special Long Island iced tea, and we’ll dish on all the guests. I could tell you things…”
Politely she said she would, then hurried along the sidewalk and up the steps to the porch. As she shrugged out of her slicker, she remembered that she’d forgotten to pick up her chai tea at A Cuppa Joe.
Too bad. She could have used it.
Tommy didn’t feel guilty for taking care of personal matters on department time. He put in way more than his forty hours a week, routinely getting called out too early in the morning and too late at night, to say nothing of spending more than a fair amount of his evenings writing and reading reports, studying notes and trying to figure out why people did the things they did.
The rain had stopped after he’d dropped Martha Dempsey off at the Jasmine, and now the sun was making a so-so stab at breaking through the clouds in the western sky. Finding no space on the square, he parked in Robbie’s law office lot and jogged across the street, careful not to spill the still-warm chai tea in the cup he carried.
Ellie’s Deli sat fifteen feet back from the sidewalk, the path to the steps flanked on both sides with beds of yellow and purple pansies. Those had been his mother’s favorite flowers, back in the days when she’d found the energy to plant anything at all, and his father had continued to plant them for years. The autumn he’d stopped, Tommy thought, was when he’d finally accepted that Lilah wasn’t coming back.
By then, she’d been gone for eleven years.
Like father, like son. Mooning endlessly over women who didn’t want them.
The main dining room was empty except for a half dozen girls gathered in one corner wearing the uniform of Copper Lake High School cheerleaders, and a waitress, poring over a textbook while waiting for something to do.
“Is Ellie here?”
The waitress, a high school student herself, nodded before a burst of laughter drew her gaze, a bit longing, to the girls. It wasn’t fun, Tommy would bet, having to wait on the cool kids. Thanks to his friendship with Robbie, he’d been one of the cool kids in school, for all the difference it made. Some of them had gone on to achieve a lot; some of them were regular visitors at the Copper Lake Correctional Facility.
“She’s in her office,” the girl said. “I’ll get her—”
“That’s okay. I know the way.” He passed through the main dining room, past the bathrooms and the bar, dimly lit for now, until the evening bartender came on at five, then stopped at the next door. For more than four years, he’d been in the habit of walking right in, without a knock or warning. But such familiarity didn’t seem appropriate at the moment.
Then his jaw tightened. How had his life come to this, that familiarity with the one woman he knew better than himself wasn’t appropriate?
He rapped at the door, sharper than he’d intended to, and a quiet invitation followed. “Come in.”
He could do the polite thing: give the tea to the girl up front and let her deliver it. Or the smart thing: toss the cup in the nearest trash can and beat it out the back door. But he didn’t stand a chance trying to find out what he wanted to know by being polite, and he couldn’t spend even a moment with her if he slipped out the back door the way she had earlier. So he twisted the knob, let himself in and closed the door behind him.
Ellie was a hands-on manager, chatting with the guests, refilling drinks, clearing tables, delivering food and even, on a regular basis, rolling up her sleeves in the kitchen. She knew every job as well as her employees and was energetic enough that she could run the place sans two or three of them without showing the strain.
This afternoon, as she sat alone in her office, doing nothing, the strain showed.
He set the chai tea on the middle of the desk pad, nudged the visitor chair with one boot toe, then took a few steps back to lean instead against a narrow oak table that butted up to the wall. “Nina said you forgot that.”
She didn’t touch the cup. “She could have delivered it herself or just thrown it away.”
“She was too busy.” Joe’s was a popular place after school, with its wireless Internet connections and doctored drinks that tasted more like dessert than coffee. Besides, Tommy hadn’t given her much of a chance. She left without her tea, Nina had complained, and he’d been quick to respond. I’ll take it to her.
Martha Dempsey had given him a look, part slyness, part meanness and part curiosity. He’d ignored her. Though ignoring Martha Dempsey too often, he figured, was the express route to trouble.
Ellie looked at it a moment as if she might do what he hadn’t: throw it away. She even picked it up and started to turn to the side, but the wisps of steam drifting up from the small hole in the lid were rich with cinnamon and cloves. Instead of completing the move toward the wastebasket behind her desk, she lifted the cover, wrapped both hands around the still-warm cup and breathed deeply. After taking a tentative sip, then a long, savoring drink, she grudgingly said, “Thank you.”
He watched her, taking far too much pleasure in her pleasure, growing warm inside his jacket, remembering not long ago when he would have made some suggestive comment, when she would have responded with suggestiveness of her own. Back when they were together. When he’d thought they had a chance.
He waited until she lowered the cup again to remark, “You saw that I had coffee with Martha Dempsey.”
Darkness eased into Ellie’s features—nothing so obvious as a scowl, just a subtle displeasure, dislike, distrust. If he didn’t know her so well, he probably would have missed it. “Your idea or hers?”
“Mine. I’m a cop, Ellie. I get answers one way or another.”
“And what answers are you looking for about her?”
“She’s new in town. She looks like she doesn’t have a dime, but she’s staying at the Jasmine. And just the sight of her upsets you.” He shrugged. “All that makes me curious.”
“You could mind your own business.”
Though she was totally serious, he laughed. “I haven’t minded my own business since I was five years old. That’s why I became a cop in the first place.” He’d always wanted answers, and if he didn’t get them the usual way, he found them another.
“Martha said she hasn’t seen you since you were a teenager. That her coming to Copper Lake and finding you here is a happy coincidence.”
When neither comment drew a response from her, Tommy fired off a third one, embellished for effect. “She said she’s looking forward to living out her life here, close to you.”
Something flashed in Ellie’s eyes, and a muscle convulsed in her jaw with the effort to keep her mouth shut, but she succeeded. After a moment, with a faintly strangled quality to her voice, she replied, “It’s a free country. She can move wherever she wants.”
“Why wouldn’t you want her here?”
“Why would I? I hardly know the woman, and I have no desire to get to know her better.”
“Where do you know her from?”
A heavy silence developed as Ellie studied him. Her chin was lifted, the soft swing of her pale hair brushing the delicate skin there. Her heart rate had settled to its usual throb, visible at the base of her throat, and her features looked as if they had been carved from ice.
Finally she rose from the desk, circling to the front, mimicking his pose. Her hips rested against the worn oak, her ankles crossed, her fingers still cradling the tea. “She’s from my father’s past,” she said flatly. “Not mine.”
Maybe two yards of dull pine separated their feet. As relaxed as she looked, it should be an easy thing to push away from the table and reach her before she could think about retreating. But her ease was deceptive. If he so much as breathed deeply, she would be an instant from fleeing.
In five years she hadn’t talked a lot about her parents. Her upbringing had been boringly conventional. Mother, father and only child, blue house not far from the beach, across the Cooper River from Charleston. Mother had died in a car wreck eight or ten years ago, father soon after of a heart attack. Normal life. No unusual traumas, no major dramas.
And he’d had no reason to doubt her. For every person who found comfort in talking about times that were past and people who were gone, there was one who found it tough. Some memories were better kept to oneself.
She’s from my father’s past.
Some hurts, like a father’s betrayal of a mother, were better buried.
Silence settled, as if one confidence was all she had in her. He wished he could close that six-foot distance, earn another secret or even just a moment being silent together. Six months ago he could have held her, and she would have let him. Let him, but not opened to him. There had always been distance between them, that had pushed them apart time after time, that had caused him to finally give her an ultimatum: commit or end it. All or nothing.
Saying “I want everything” was a hell of a lot easier than living with nothing.
“Well…” They both spoke at once, both broke off at once.
Ellie moved away from the desk. “I’ve got things to do….”
“Yeah. Me, too.” Still, it took an effort for him to move. He wished she would walk past him and into the hall. Not too close. Just enough that her clothing would brush his, that her perfume would tickle his nose.
She didn’t, though, instead returning to her desk, focusing her attention on the paperwork there. Grimly, he walked out.
Chapter 3
When Ellie walked onto the porch Friday afternoon, the sun was shining, making it warm enough for short sleeves. After the previous day’s rain, everything downtown had a fresh, clean look to it: the color of the flowers brighter, the contrast against the grass sharper, the smells of sawn wood richer and earthier. The news reports called for good weather through the weekend, with an appropriate fall crackle in the air on Saturday for the Copper Lake Halloween Festival.
The sound of rhythmic hammering came from the square where a half-dozen teams of volunteers were building the booths for the festival. Most of the local restaurants sponsored a booth; Ellie’s was a prime corner section, directly across the street from the deli. There would also be the usual carnival-type food—funnel cakes, Sno-Cones, deep-fried everything—and simple old-fashioned games like bobbing for apples and musical chairs. There would be costume parades across the front veranda of River’s Edge, the grand Greek Revival plantation home on the southeast side of the square, and a band would set up in the gazebo.
A lot of good fun for kids and their families and people who had dates, she thought sourly.
A sleek vintage Corvette pulled to the curb at the end of the walk, top down in deference to the weather. Her hair tied back with a red print scarf, Anamaria looked exotic and sexy as usual. She was a beautiful woman, and deeply in love with her husband. Those Calloway boys—and their wives—had all the luck.
Ellie slid into the passenger seat. “I thought you didn’t like to drive the ’Vette.”
“Oh, I like to,” Anamaria replied breezily. “I just don’t like Robbie to know.”
Robbie was inordinately proud of the vehicle he’d bought as little more than a rusted heap and rebuilt from the ground up. Since his marriage to Anamaria, it had been a sore point that she preferred to drive her nothing-special Honda over his restored baby.
“Besides,” Anamaria said, resting one hand lightly on the swelling of her stomach, “I figure if I want to drive it, I’d better do it before Gloriane gets too big.”
Ellie’s gaze dropped to Anamaria’s belly; then she pointedly looked away. She never thought about having children. Never. It was safer that way. Well, except when she saw an expectant mother or a sweet, innocent infant. Or when she watched Russ and Jamie fussing over two-month-old Sara Elizabeth. Or noticed how solicitous Robbie was of Anamaria. Or let her defenses down and remembered back to when she was a child herself and for such a very short time, things had seemed…hopeful.
For a moment she closed her eyes, grinding her teeth, shoring up that little bit of weakness around her heart. When Anamaria’s hand settled on her arm, it startled her eyes open again.
“Are you all right?”
It was such an easy question to lie to. She’d been doing it for years—smiling, tossing off an airy I’m fine. Truthfully, for a good portion of the past five years, she had been fine. She’d had more in her life—a career, a home, a good man and dear friends—than she’d ever dreamed of.
Now, thanks to Martha, it was hard to imagine that anything would ever be fine again.
Still, she managed an uneven smile. “I’m fine. How is Mama Odette?”
Anamaria clearly recognized the question for the evasive tactic it was, but let it slide. “She’s great. The doctors say she’s got the heart of a woman half her age.” After a pause, she went on with a sly smile. “And Mama Odette says she’s not giving it back.”
Ellie laughed in the moment before her thoughts took a melancholy turn. Anamaria had never known her father, and her mother had died when she was a little girl. But she’d had an amazing family welcoming her with open arms—her grandmother, Odette; her aunts and their daughters; Odette’s sisters and their daughters. Dozens of strong, smart and loving Duquesne women gathering her in.
And Ellie had had her mother and her father, neither of whom had wanted kids in the first place. Her paternal grandmother had been a cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking old woman who’d scared the wits out of Ellie every chance she got, and her maternal grandparents had never been a part of her life. She’d had aunts and uncles but could hardly remember them, had cousins but had never known them.
It wasn’t fair—all those people who’d loved Anamaria, and not even one who’d wanted Ellie.
Life ain’t fair, Martha had often said as she’d unscrewed the cap from yet another bottle of booze.
The click of the turn signal penetrated Ellie’s thoughts, and she looked up to see that they’d reached the mall. It was small, but it offered a lot, including their reason for coming there. In a small first-level storefront was the Seasonal Store. If you celebrated a holiday, any holiday, the Seasonal Store was the place to shop. Right now the front half was filled with all things Halloween, while in the rear, Christmas was encroaching on the space allocated to Thanksgiving.
“You shouldn’t have put off buying your costume for so long,” Anamaria admonished as they wound through the racks. “There’s not a lot left for adults.”
“Are you dressing up?” It had taken Ellie’s staff three years to nag her into joining them among the ranks of the costumed. She’d had fun. She’d felt free. She had looked forward to repeating it this year…until things had changed.
“Of course I am,” Anamaria replied, then added drama to her voice. “I’m going as the great Queen Moon, who knows all, hears all and sees all, but doesn’t tell all for less than a gold doubloon.” She took a costume from the rack, studied it a moment, then returned it to pick up a different garment. “There really was a Moon in our family—she was Mama Odette’s great-grandmother—and her faithful believers really did call her Queen. Who knows? Maybe I’ll channel her Saturday night.”
Psychic gifts ran strong in the Duquesne family. It had made Ellie wary when she’d first met Anamaria. Could Anamaria see things that no one else could? she’d wondered. Would she give away secrets Ellie had so stubbornly kept?
The answers, the last six months had determined: seeing secrets? Probably. Sharing them? Definitely not.
“How about this?”
Ellie turned away from a moldy-looking corpse outfit to find Anamaria holding a full black skirt. She lifted one flirty strip of nearly transparent fabric, then let it flutter down again. “Just a skirt?”
“I have a white peasant top you can borrow and a burgundy velvet shawl with fringe. And some black knee boots, a scarf to tie over your hair, maybe a long wig and voilà.”
“Voilà what?” Ellie asked drily. “Serving wench? Pirate lady?”
“Depending on how low we can get the neck of the blouse, maybe pirate’s lady friend,” Anamaria teased.
“I think she was closer the first time with wench,” a voice said from behind Ellie. “After all, isn’t that just an old-fashioned way of saying whore?”
Ellie restrained the impulse to whirl around. She didn’t need to look to know it was Martha who had spoken, didn’t need to give her the satisfaction of knowing she’d caught Ellie off-guard.
Anamaria gave Martha a long, level look, then took hold of Ellie’s arm. “Let’s find a wig.”
Ellie’s feet automatically followed Anamaria’s lead, but Martha wasn’t about to be ignored.
“You’re that psychic girl that’s married to the youngest Calloway boy, aren’t you? Man, you must have put some mighty good voodoo on him, getting him to marry you, what with him being rich and white and you being neither.” Martha fluffed her hair and smiled broadly. “What does your psychic gift say about me?”
“Just ignore her,” Ellie said, but Anamaria wasn’t listening.
She walked in a slow circle around Martha. “Your whole life, you’ve cared for no one but yourself. You’ve disappointed and hurt all those who should have mattered to you. But there’s still time to change. You can’t undo the past, but you can change the future.”
Martha’s eyes widened for an instant; then her laughter sounded, loud and coarse. “I surely do intend to change my future. Wow, you really must be psychic or something. Don’t you think, Ellie?”
Ellie’s face was hot, her stomach knotted. She wanted to stick her fingers in her ears so she would never have to hear that voice or that laughter again, wanted to scrub her eyes with her knuckles to chase away the sight of that smug, vicious face. But she would never be free of Martha now that the woman had tracked her down, so running was next on her list of desires. She’d even taken a step back when Martha’s gaze shifted past her, and the woman gave a friendly wave.
“There’s Reverend Fitzgerald’s wife, Kayla. Such a nice girl. We met at the church this morning—I dropped in for a little meditation time—and she invited me to go shopping with her. She needs a birthday gift for her mother-in-law, who’s about my age. Thanks for the advice, Anamaria. And, Ellie—” her blue gaze sharpened “—I’ll be seeing you around.”
Ellie wondered if Anamaria heard the threat in those last words as clearly as she did. Martha was doing a very good job of insinuating herself into the lives of Ellie’s friends. They were nice people; they’d never suspect her of having an ulterior motive. And once she’d weaseled her way in, how much easier would it be for her to convince them of the truth of her tales about Ellie? She would paint herself the victim, the loving mother who had tried so desperately to help her out-of-control daughter, and people would have no choice but to believe her.
And she had proof.
Once Martha exited into the mall, the air inside the shop became easier to breathe. Ellie took a cleansing breath, chasing away the last of the cigarette and booze odor, and found Anamaria studying her somberly, her dark eyes troubled.
“Who is she, Ellie?”
Numbly she shook her head, then dug some nonchalance from deep inside. “Just some wacko who seems to have fixated on me. No big deal.”
“As I recall, the last wacko in town who fixated on someone tried to kill both my brother- and sister-in-law. The Calloway family in general and Russ and Jamie in particular considered it a very big deal.”
“This woman’s not violent.” Not beyond a slap now and then. The occasional physical violence had been easier to endure than Martha’s relentlessly cold treatment. Bruises healed. Emotional scars didn’t.
“That’s what they thought about Lys Paxton until she started trying to kill people.”
Ellie moved past displays of candy, spiders and webs, camouflage face paint and long fake fingernails in deep purple, black and bloodred, and Anamaria followed. “Martha Dempsey is many things,” she said, shooting for a breezy tone, “but she’s not a killer.”
“What is she to you?”
“A blast from the past. How’s this?” Stopping in front of a selection of cheap wigs, Ellie picked up one from the top row and clamped it onto her head. The mirror next to the display showed a fringe of brow-brushing bangs and a straight fall of silken strands that ended past her shoulders. The jet-black hue gave her skin a sickly blue tinge.
“Unless you’re going as a wench of the undead, that is so not your color,” Anamaria teased. “Try this.”
She handed over another long wig, this one dark copper and curly. The color wasn’t as surprising a contrast as the black wig, but it was different enough to be fun. She pulled it off again and combed her fingers through her own blond hair. “Let me pay for this and the skirt, then let’s get out of here.” She didn’t want to run into Martha again and certainly didn’t want to be reminded how easily the woman was finding welcome in Ellie’s own town.
She’d checked out and they were walking back through the mall to the entrance when a laugh echoed across the space. She tried to ignore it, but her gaze traveled that direction anyway, to the few occupied tables at the sidewalk café that fronted the fountain. Kayla Fitzgerald sat at one, her smile serene, and Martha sat to her left. At the next table, chairs turned for easier conversation, were Sara Calloway and Jack Greyson, the man she old-fashionedly referred to as her beau.
A chill swept over Ellie. Kayla was the pastor’s wife; she had to be nice to strangers. But Sara was Anamaria’s mother-in-law. More important, she was the closest thing to a mother Tommy had ever had.
She’s taunting you, a voice in Ellie’s head whispered. She’s saying, “Look how easily I can get to them, and there’s only one way you can stop me.”
Only one way to Martha’s way of thinking: give her money and trust her to go away…until the money ran out and she needed more. Ellie could give her everything and still never buy her silence.
If there was just some way to get rid of her for good…
Get rid of her. The words echoed across the years, hurtful, yet another betrayal to a girl who’d already experienced too many. They slowed her steps until she was hardly moving.
Ellie didn’t have a clue how to manipulate and control people, but she knew someone who did. Part of Randolph Aiken’s duties as lawyer to his respectable and influential Old South family had involved persuading people who might prove cause for embarrassment to disappear, to keep their distance from and their silence about the family.
People like Ellie.
She didn’t know if Randolph had taken a liking to all the people he threatened on behalf of the Aikens, but his attitude toward her had always been somewhat paternal. He’d given her advice, stayed in touch with her long after she’d expected him to vanish, had helped her move to Charleston and put her life back together. It was his contacts that had gotten her her first job, his assistance that had led to her owning her own restaurant.
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Marilyn Pappano
I wish to God you were dead. Little did Ellie Chase know those would be the last words she ever spoke to her estranged mother. When Martha's body was found the next morning, all eyes were on Ellie… who couldn't remember what she'd done that night. So when Tommy Maricci–the man she refused to let herself love– came to her rescue, she couldn't say no.Tommy believed in his former girlfriend's innocence–no matter how damning the evidence against her was. She may have broken his heart, but he took her into his home for protection. Because if Ellie wasn't the killer, someone had set her up. And Tommy refused to let anyone hurt the woman he loved.
“You were leaving.” His voice was soft, his tone not dismayed or disappointed, but disillusioned. “Without saying goodbye. And you weren’t coming back.”
And finally she had no choice but to face him. The lie was there, ready to come out—I needed a break. Just a few days. Charleston or Savannah or Beaufort. I would have been back later in the week. But all she did was nod.
It was as if something in him snapped. He advanced on her, backing her against the wall, not touching her but holding her there all the same, his body mere inches from hers, his hands on the wall on either side of her head, his face bent to hers. “Why?” he demanded, the question all the more fierce for its low, insistent tone. “Because of Martha? Who was she, Ellie? What did she want from you? Where were you going? What about us?”
She took a breath, shallow and painful, and whispered, “There is no ‘us.’”
Dear Reader,
When Detective Tommy Maricci made his first appearance in Copper Lake, I knew immediately that he would be a future hero. Who could resist a tall, dark and sexy Italian-American cop? Not me. I married one. (Though deli owner Ellie Chase tries her best. Otherwise, there’d be no story.)
Having a cop in the family comes in really handy when you’re writing romantic suspense. I’m the rare author who doesn’t like interviewing sources for my books, so my husband handles all that for me. If he doesn’t know the answer to a particular question in any aspect of law enforcement or the justice system, one of his buddies does. Another plus: his years with the police department and the Naval Criminal Investigation Service have given him excellent investigative and interrogation skills, so he can also get the answers for all my non-cop questions, too. A resource, a researcher and my own hero all rolled into one. What more could I ask for?
Hope you enjoy this visit with my second-favorite Italian American cop.
Marilyn
Passion to Die For
Marilyn Pappano
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
MARILYN PAPPANO
has spent most of her life growing into the person she was meant to be, but isn’t there yet. She’s been blessed by family—her husband, their son, his lovely wife and a grandson who is almost certainly the most beautiful and talented baby in the world—and friends, along with a writing career that’s made her one of the luckiest people around. Her passions, besides those already listed, include the pack of wild dogs who make their home in her house, fighting the good fight against the weeds that make up her yard, killing the creepy-crawlies that slither out of those weeds and, of course, anything having to do with books.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
Ellie Chase loved her job. Owning a restaurant had long been a dream of hers, way back in the times when she didn’t have many dreams, when she was sleeping on the street or scrounging for a meal. She’d savored sweet visions of a diner, a café, a bistro, warm when it was cold, dry when it rained, safe and welcoming and, of course, filled with all the good food her sixteen-year-old belly had ached for.
Tonight, though, she’d rather be working nine to five at some dreary job where all the responsibilities fell on someone else’s shoulders.
She was seated on a stool at the end of their newly installed bar, receipts, schedules and a glass of iced tea in front of her. Outside it was pouring rain, and the temperature was about twenty degrees colder than normal for October in east-central Georgia. In spite of the weather, business had been good—if you counted running out of broccoli cheese soup, fresh bread and banana cheesecake as good. The oven was being temperamental again, and so was Dharma, her self-proclaimed chef. One of the waitresses had called in sick, a customer had mumbled something about a problem in the men’s bathroom and Tommy Maricci had come in for dinner.
With a date.
To top it all off, her feet were aching, her head was throbbing and though it was nearly closing time, no one besides her and her staff showed any interest in going home.
Carmen, her best waitress and unofficial assistant manager, slid onto the stool next to her. “You want me to comp Russ and Jamie for their dinner?”
“Yes, please.” Russ Calloway, owner of Copper Lake’s biggest construction company, had fixed the overflowing toilet in the men’s room, saving her from putting in a call to her overpriced and very-difficult-to-reach plumber. She was grateful, even if he had come in with Tommy and his date.
“I want you to know, I didn’t step on Sophy’s toes, spill her drink on her or spit in her food, even though I was tempted.”
Ellie managed only half a smile. “Sophy’s nice.”
“I know, and if I worked for her over in the quilt shop instead of here, I’d be hating you. But I don’t. The least he could do is take his dates somewhere else.”
“His money is as good as anyone else’s. Besides, I’m so over him that I don’t care.”
Carmen gave her a long look, from the top of her head to the pointed toes of her favorite black heels. Tommy’s favorite, the devil residing on her shoulder whispered. They made her legs look a mile long and showed her butt to good advantage—Amanda Calloway, retired exotic dancer, had taught her that—and they drew the sweetest, naughtiest little grin from Tommy every time he saw her wearing them.
At least, they used to.
“Uh-huh,” Carmen drawled at last. “I can tell from the way you’re hiding in here instead of working out front like you always do. And from all those dates you’ve been accepting.”
“Hey, your social life is active enough for both of us.”
Carmen snorted. “I’m married, honey. My social life consists of work, church, taxiing the kids around and trying to schedule sex with my husband at least once a month.”
“You’ve got five kids. See how well you’re succeeding?” Ellie hadn’t had sex since last April. She’d thought it was make-up sex—her relationship with Tommy had always been an on-again, off-again thing. When it was over, he’d put on his clothes, kissed her, said he was sorry and walked out. She’d known it would happen someday—people always gave up on her eventually—but not that day. It had hurt more than it was supposed to.
But she was over it now.
And if she told the lie often enough, she might even believe it.
With a grunt, Carmen slid to her feet. “Let me start politely hurrying these people along. They need to get home where they belong so we can do the same.”
Ellie’s house on Cypress Creek Road was pretty, cozy, had two bedrooms and was even emptier than her life. It was the place where she stayed, but it wasn’t home. She didn’t belong there. She’d never really belonged anywhere besides the restaurant.
But it was more than she’d ever expected to have. She wouldn’t whine about the things that were missing.
She’d just gotten back to work when Gina, one of the part-time waitresses, approached. “Hey, Ellie, there’s a woman out front who wants to talk to you.”
“An unhappy customer?” she asked warily. Her food was first-rate and the service even better, but some people always found something to complain about. She comped more meals than anyone could reasonably expect in the name of customer satisfaction.
“Nope. Never seen her before. I told her I’d bring her back here, but she said no, she would wait on the porch.”
Great. In the cold. At least the awning Ellie had installed over the summer would keep her dry. Still, she swung by the office to grab her coat before she skirted through the main dining room to the front door. Unwillingly her gaze strayed to the three tables pushed together in the center of the room, where Tommy Maricci and Sophy Marchand were sitting with Russ and Robbie Calloway and their wives. Their dessert plates were empty, and they were making the restless movements Ellie associated with saying goodbyes.
Tommy would take Sophy home, of course, even though the house that held her shop on the first floor and her apartment on the second was just across the square and around the corner. He would escort her inside; maybe because he was a cop, maybe because his father had raised him right, he was big on that sort of thing. Would he spend the night? Was he sleeping with her?
She didn’t care. She was over him.
A blast of cold hit when she opened the door. A woman waited in the shadows at the end of the porch, her back to Ellie, the hood of her trench coat pulled over her head.
Ellie shrugged into her own coat, belting the wool around her waist, uncuffing the sleeves so they covered most of her fingers. Stopping a few feet from the woman, she said, “Hi. I’m Ellie Chase. I understand you want to talk to me.”
“Ellie. Is that short for something?”
The voice was low, hoarse, probably from years of smoking. Even with the breeze and the fresh scent of rain, Ellie could smell stale cigarette smoke, as if it permeated the woman so thoroughly that it had no choice but to leach into the air surrounding her.
“Ellen,” she said impatiently. “Can I help you with something?”
“Ellen. Hmm. You sure? You don’t look like an Ellen. In fact, you look like…oh, a Bethany to me.”
Wind gusted along the length of the porch. That was the reason Ellie felt so cold inside, why she felt as if her knees might give out. She staggered a step before gripping the back of the nearest chair, her fingers knotting so tightly around the cold wood that they went instantly numb.
“I’m sure,” she said, her voice sounding flat and cold. “I know my own name.”
Slowly the woman turned. The hood cast shadows over the upper half of her face, leaving only an impression in the dim light of aged skin, deep grooves, an overglossed mouth. “So do I,” she said. “I know the name you use now, and I know the name you were born to. Bethany Ann Dempsey.”
She raised one weathered hand to pull the hood back, and Ellie stared. Her stomach knotted, and tremors shot through her, making her shiver uncontrollably inside her coat. It had been fifteen years since she’d last seen the woman, and time hadn’t been kind. Her hair was a dull, lifeless gray, her skin sallow. Too much tobacco, too much booze and too damn much meanness had combined to add an additional fifteen years to her face. The only thing that remained the same as in Ellie’s memories was her eyes. Blue. Cold. Cruel.
“What’s the matter, Beth?” The woman smiled, and that, too, was the same: smug and vicious. “Surprised to see your mama?”
For a moment, a dull haze surrounded Ellie, blocking out sound, cold, rain and wind. Anger, loss and panic welled inside her, each fighting for control, the anger curling her fingers into fists, the panic urging her to run, run right now. That terrified little girl would have run, but she was gone. The woman she’d become wouldn’t give in to emotion.
“As far as I’m concerned, my mother died fifteen years ago.” Shoulders back, Ellie turned and took a few steps toward the door before Martha Dempsey spoke again.
“You’ve made a place for yourself here, haven’t you? Nice restaurant. Nice little blue house. You go to church. You’re a member of the Copper Lake Merchants’ Association. You rub elbows with the rich folks in town. People think you’re something, don’t they? But they don’t know what I know.”
Ellie hovered, frozen in the act of taking a step. After a quavery moment, her foot touched the floor and she pivoted to face Martha, freezing again when the screen door creaked open. Jamie and Russ Calloway came out first, not noticing her, heading directly for the steps. Behind them were Robbie Calloway and Sophy Marchand, lost in conversation, and bringing up the rear were Robbie’s wife, Anamaria, and Tommy.
Half wishing to remain unseen, Ellie knew it wasn’t going to happen. Anamaria was her closest friend in town, and she was sensitive to emotions, conflicts and auras. Her gaze came immediately to Ellie’s, her dark eyes taking in what was probably a fireworks display of auras.
Moving gracefully despite her pregnancy, Anamaria closed the distance between them, smiled at Martha, then wrapped one arm around Ellie. “Dinner was wonderful, as usual, Ellie.” Leaning closer, her mouth brushing Ellie’s ear, she murmured, “If you need me…”
“Thanks.” Ellie squeezed her hand more tightly than she’d intended, too aware that Tommy was waiting, a distinct look of suspicion on his face. All the other times they’d broken up, they’d remained friends, but this time he never smiled at her and never spoke if he could avoid it. This time he’d said it was for good, and though she’d denied it for the first month, finally she believed him.
When Anamaria went back to him at the top of the steps, he was still wearing that look. His gaze met hers for an instant, but he didn’t acknowledge her. Instead, he broke contact, took Anamaria’s arm and escorted her down the wet steps.
“Does she know?” Martha asked, her tone sly and taunting. “Do they?”
People believed she had no family, that her parents were dead and all that was left were distant cousins. They thought she’d been raised in Charleston, where she had, in fact, done a fair amount of growing up, that she’d lived a normal, if somewhat family-deficient, life.
Ironically, Anamaria, whom she’d known the shortest time, had guessed there was more to Ellie than the story she told. But that was none of Martha’s business. Nothing about Ellie was her business.
“How did you find me?”
Martha grinned and lifted one bony shoulder in a shrug. “I’ve got my sources.”
“What do you want?”
Martha felt in her pockets, coming up with a pack of cigarettes and a cheap lighter. Ellie let her shake one out and slide it between her lips, then said, “Don’t smoke here.”
Martha hesitated, hands cupped to protect the lighter’s flame, then slowly lowered it. She left the cigarette in her mouth, though. For forty years she’d talked around one. Lit or unlit didn’t matter. “Your father died four months ago.”
No surprise. No disappointment. No regret. The news meant nothing to Ellie, and that was a sad thing.
“Nothing to keep me in Atlanta anymore.”
Oliver Dempsey may not have amounted to anything as a father, but he’d brought home a steady paycheck, enough to cover the basics: housing, transportation, food, booze, tobacco. He’d resented spending any of that paycheck on a teenage daughter whom he considered pretty much worthless, but he’d taken good care of himself and Martha.
And now she wanted someone else to take care of her.
Ellie wanted to laugh, but was afraid what kind of sound would squeeze through the tightness in her throat. “You want money. From me. Is that it?”
Martha stiffened defensively. “I am your mother.”
“Like hell you are. You gave birth to me, you changed a few diapers and you fed me until I was old enough to feed myself. That doesn’t make you my mother.”
“Don’t you get smart with me—”
“Remember the last time I saw you?” Ellie interrupted. “When I pleaded with you to let me come home? When I was hungry and sleeping in abandoned buildings and I begged you to help me?”
Martha’s expression was contempt tinged with regret. Not because she regretted throwing her teenage daughter out of the house, not because she’d never loved or protected Ellie the way a mother was supposed to, but because her past actions were going to interfere with getting what she wanted now. She was about to be held accountable, and Martha had always hated being accountable.
“You had to learn a lesson,” she said sourly.
“What lesson? That I couldn’t count on my parents? I already knew that. That the next carton of cigarettes and the next case of beer were more important to you than me? I knew that, too. Just what the hell lesson was I supposed to be learning out there?”
“Don’t you cuss at me. I didn’t tolerate it back then, and I won’t now. You won’t disrespect me.”
The urge to laugh bubbled inside Ellie. The idea that she felt anything remotely resembling respect for this woman was ludicrous. If Martha dropped dead in front of her right that moment, she would feel nothing more than relief that such an ugly part of her life had ended.
“You want money,” Ellie said again, her voice flat. “How much?”
Martha smiled, showing teeth in need of care and greed that made her eyes damn near sparkle. “Well, now, it’s hard to say. Like I said, your daddy’s dead. There’s no reason for me to stay in Atlanta, and truth is, it’s a little late in life for me to be starting a new career. I kind of like the idea of retiring, resettling to be close to my girl and the grandbabies she’s sure to give me someday. I looked around that pretty little house of yours, and that back bedroom would suit me fine. I could even help out down here sometimes, you know, welcome customers to our restaurant and chat with them about this and that.”
Ellie’s spine was stiff enough to hurt. There was no way she would ever let Martha move into her house or help out at her restaurant. She’d burn both places down before letting Martha taint them. Drawing on the cold deep inside her, she said, “So you get a better life than you’ve ever known. And what do I get in return?”
Martha’s vicious smile reappeared. “Your fancy friends don’t find out about this.” From under the trench coat, she produced a manila envelope. “Here. You can keep it. It’s just copies.”
When Ellie made no move to touch it, Martha tossed the envelope on the seat of the rocker next to her, then tugged her coat tighter. “I don’t expect you to say yes right now. Take a walk down Memory Lane. Think about what you stand to lose. I’ll be in touch with you in a day or two.”
Ellie numbly watched her pull the hood over her limp hair, then clump past and down the steps into the rain. She didn’t look to see which way Martha went. The only place Ellie wanted her to go was away, and that wasn’t going to happen until she had what she wanted.
When everything was still, Ellie picked up the envelope with unwilling fingers and hid it inside her own coat. She would take that stroll down Memory Lane—more like Nightmare Street—later. First, she had a restaurant to close for the night.
The clock in the hall chimed eleven times, rousing Tommy from the edges of sleep. The television was still on, framed between his booted feet propped on the coffee table, and Sophy was snuggled beside him, her sweater rustling against his shirt as she shifted. Damn, he must have fallen asleep not long after they’d settled on the couch.
“I should go home.”
“Or you could spend the night.”
He could. It wasn’t as if he had someone to go home to. And he’d slept over before—not a lot but enough to be comfortable with the idea. But having dinner at Ellie’s Deli had guaranteed that his mind would be on someone else—looking for glimpses of her, waiting for her to come to the table to greet them like the old friends they were, wondering how he’d been lucky enough to go there on a day when she wore his favorite outfit: white blouse with a deep V and black skirt that clung to her hips so snugly that it needed a slit so she could walk. Conservative clothes that concealed a tiny lace bra and matching thong, all set off by those incredible black heels. Just the sight of them…
His body twitched, and he silently cursed, hoping Sophy hadn’t noticed. He wouldn’t insult her by pretending he wanted her when Ellie was all over his mind. Her sleek blond hair. Her amazing legs. The confident way she moved. Her smiles, ranging from polite to intimate to wicked.
Oh, yeah, and the drop-dead cold shoulder she gave him these days.
“When it takes you that long to come up with an answer, it’s pretty clear.” Sophy sat up, lowering her feet to the floor.
An answer to…? Then he remembered: staying the night. “I’m sorry, babe. It’s just…I’ve got to work tomorrow, and it’s been a long day—”
“And spending the evening at Ellie’s wasn’t the best way to get in the mood to sleep with another woman.” Sophy scooted to the edge of the couch, then looked at him. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Rumor is that you broke up with her. If she’s got this much effect on you six months later, why’d you do it?”
He’d issued an ultimatum, and then he’d had to live with it. He’d demanded marriage, kids, living together, commitment and she’d opted for nothing. It had been a lonely six months, but faced with the same situation, he’d make the same demand. He wanted more than a long-term girlfriend. If she couldn’t give him that, someone else could.
Like Sophy.
“It’s complicated,” he said, getting to his feet and pulling her with him. Keeping hold of her hand, he went to the front door, where he snagged his jacket from the coat tree. After sliding it on, he wrapped his arms around Sophy and kissed her.
She tilted her head so the kiss fell on her cheek. “Are you still in love with her?”
Grimly he gave the best answer he could. “I’m trying not to be.”
Sophy studied him for a moment, then leaned forward and brushed her mouth across his. “You’re still welcome to spend the night. I know, not tonight. But maybe next time.”
“Sure.” Provided they didn’t go to the deli, and he didn’t see or think about Ellie all night. Yeah, then he might be good for someone else.
“It’s all right about her,” Sophy said. “I mean, I knew going in…”
Somehow that didn’t make him feel better. He said goodbye and brushed a kiss across her forehead, then opened the door to a blast of cold air. Closing it quickly behind him, he took the wooden steps two at a time, shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and set off down the street.
It had been Sophy’s suggestion that they walk home from dinner. Between the canopies that covered the storefronts and the live oaks that shielded the path through the square, they’d arrived significantly drier than if they’d walked the block north with no cover to his SUV. Now, with everything closed up for the night and the streets empty, he wished for a closer parking space.
Tommy was passing the gazebo in the square when a rustle of movement caught his attention. Someone hunkered on one of the benches inside the structure. The dark coat could belong to anyone; the pale blond hair could only be Ellie’s. What the hell was she doing there?
He wanted to walk on. He should have, but he was a cop. He didn’t like things out of place, and Ellie alone in the square late at night was definitely out of place. She should have finished closing up the restaurant over an hour ago, should have been home in bed.
Should have been home in bed with him.
When his boot landed on the first step, she stiffened, then whirled around to face him. There was a moment of surprise on her face, then that blankness he’d come to associate with her. She sat straighter, pulled her coat tighter and something papery rustled.
He stopped halfway up the steps, on eye level with her, and allowed himself a moment to just look at her. Light blond hair falling past her chin, sleek and elegant like her. Skin the color of warm, dark honey. Brown eyes, a surprise on first sight, damned sexy every other time. She was shorter than his five feet eleven inches, slender, with great breasts and hips, but always lamenting that she enjoyed her own food too much.
He’d never agreed. Not from the very first time he’d seen her and thought damn. Damn, she was beautiful. Damn, she was hot. Damn, he was lost. Five years he’d been lost, and he’d hoped to stay that way forever.
His hands clenched inside his pockets. “You okay?”
“Of course.”
Of course. During all the rough patches they’d gone through, she’d never cried, pouted or moped. She’d never pleaded with him or shown a moment’s weakness. She’d always been stronger, less affected, than he. He admired her strength, but would it have killed her to need him even half as much as he’d needed her?
“What are you doing out here?”
“Enjoying the lovely evening. What are you doing?”
“I was at Sophy’s.”
If that news bothered her, she didn’t let it show. Was she the least bit jealous? He wished. Did she miss him? Maybe. Would she ever marry him? Doubtful. If she hadn’t loved him enough after five years, why should a sixth or eighth or tenth year make a difference?
“How is Sophy?” she asked.
“You could have come to the table and seen for yourself this evening.” He’d waited through the appetizers and the salads for her to do just that. By the time the main course had arrived, he’d accepted that she wasn’t going to.
“I was busy.”
“You’re always busy. Running things. Talking to customers.” Was it a good thing that she’d avoided his table? Had she not wanted to acknowledge him with Sophy?
He took another step up. “I saw you talking to that woman on the porch.” Stupid comment. Of course he’d seen them and she knew it; he’d passed within a few feet of them. “I didn’t recognize her.”
The thin light from the streetlamps showed her shrug, stiff and awkward. “She doesn’t live here.”
“An old friend?”
“No.”
“A relative?”
She was stiffer, more awkward. “Just someone who wanted something.”
He thought back to the woman. If asked, he would have said he hadn’t really paid much attention to her; he’d been too busy not paying attention to Ellie. But he’d seen enough. The woman had looked to be in her sixties, average height and weight. Gray hair, sallow complexion, a heavy smoker and on edge. Even when standing still, she hadn’t been still. Shifting her weight, her gaze darting about, her attention honed.
What had she wanted from Ellie? A handout? A favor? And why Ellie?
Because they shared a connection somewhere in their past? In the five years Ellie had lived in Copper Lake, she’d had little to say about her twenty-five years elsewhere. She was an only child, her parents were dead, and her only relatives were distant, figuratively and literally. He knew she’d had some unhappy times, but she’d never been open to discussing them.
A woman should be willing to discuss her hurts and disappointments with the man she’d been seeing for the better part of five years.
The wind gusted, scattering sodden dead leaves across the square, and it sent a chill through him. His jeans and leather jacket weren’t enough to stand up to the cold, but Ellie didn’t seem to notice the temperature. Granted, she wore a long wool coat, but there was an air of detachment about her. Anamaria would probably say her aura was the translucent shade of blue ice.
“Why don’t you go home?” he suggested, wanting very much to do the same.
“Are you going to continue harassing me if I don’t, Detective?”
“Come on, Ellie.” He wasn’t comfortable leaving her, or any other woman, alone in the gazebo with midnight approaching. Copper Lake’s crime rate was nothing compared to the big cities, but bad things still happened to innocent people.
She opened her mouth as if to argue, then closed it again and stood, arms still folded across her middle. There was another papery crackle. From something hidden beneath her coat?
She passed without touching him, and when he fell into step beside her, she scowled. “I can make it to my car alone.”
“It’s on my way.”
Those were the last words either of them said until they reached the small parking lot that opened off the alley behind the deli. Her lime-green VW Beetle was the only car in the lot, parked under the lone streetlight, its lights flashing when she clicked the remote. She would have gotten in and driven away without a word, but he laid his hand on her arm, stopping her.
“Ellie, if you need to talk—”
Even through the bulk of the coat, he felt her muscles clench. She looked at him, then at his hand, and he withdrew it. The night chill had nothing on her gaze. “Thank you for the escort.”
Her polite words were as bogus as his response. “You’re welcome.” Pushing his hand into his pocket, Tommy stepped back and watched as she slid behind the wheel, started the engine, then drove away. He stood motionless long after her taillights disappeared down the alley, until another blast of wind hit him, this time dampened with more rain moving in.
Damn, she was cold. Damn, she was distant.
And damned if he didn’t still love her.
Ellie’s house was located at the end of Cypress Creek Road, just before it made a sharp right turn and became Magnolia Drive. It wasn’t a trendy part of town; her neighbors were mostly as old as her house, on the downhill side of sixty. The house was small, but the floors were hardwood, it had an attached garage and the price had been reasonable. Besides, most of her waking hours were spent at the restaurant. The house was used mostly for sleeping and doing laundry.
And, off and on until last spring, for having great sex with Tommy.
She would have been touched by his stopping at the gazebo and walking her to her car if she didn’t know him so well. He would have stopped for anyone, ex-lover, acquaintance or total stranger. He was a protector from the inside out. Ensuring other people’s safety wasn’t just his job; it was who he was.
She’d desperately needed someone like that fifteen years ago. She hadn’t had him then, and she couldn’t have him now. Didn’t deserve him now.
She let herself into the house from the garage, leaving her coat in the utility room and walking through the dimly lit kitchen into the living room. None of the furniture was anything special, and the dishes and linens had been chosen by an accommodating clerk at the housewares shop at the mall. Ellie could walk away from it all and never miss a thing.
Except, possibly, the four-inch heels she admired before kicking them off her feet.
Once she was settled comfortably on the couch, she reached for the large envelope Martha had given her, sure what was inside before she opened it. Police reports, complaints, convictions, photographs. It hurt to see herself at fifteen—still young and naive—and then at sixteen and seventeen. Like Martha, she had aged far more than the months could account for. By the age of eighteen, there’d been a hollowness about her, in her face and her eyes and her soul. She’d wanted to end it all—the pain, the shame. She’d had only one reason to live, and even that had been short-term.
Ellie went to the fireplace, put a sheet of paper on the grate and struck a match to it. As the edges curled with flame, she added another page, then another, report after photo after complaint. When the last piece was burning, she held the envelope over it, feeling the heat from the fire, holding it until she risked a burn. It dropped to the ashes on the grate, and the flames consumed it with a final wisp of smoke and a lingering, sooty fragrance. She stirred the ashes with the fireplace poker, breaking them into smaller pieces that fell through the grate, grinding them to powder until she was satisfied they’d been destroyed.
All those years ago, she hadn’t thought she would live to see thirty. And here she was, not only alive but reasonably well. She had a house and a business. She had the friendship and respect of the people she did business with. She was a success by anyone’s standards.
Would she still be a success if she refused Martha’s blackmail?
She wanted to believe the answer was yes, that her friends would remain her friends, that who she’d become would be more important to them than who she’d been. She wanted to believe that she was good enough, changed enough, to rise above her past.
She wanted to believe that she’d earned the life she had now, that she deserved it.
But the truth was, she didn’t know. She was a fraud, masquerading as someone no different from anyone else in Copper Lake. She’d lied to them about her background and her family. Ellie Chase was someone they could relate to. Bethany Dempsey wasn’t.
She was no stranger to disappointment and rejection. Her mother and father hadn’t been the first to turn away from her, nor had they been the last. And if her own parents hadn’t been able to accept and forgive her, how could she count on people like the Calloways to do so?
How could she ever expect Tommy—the protector, the cop, the good guy—to do so?
She could leave. Disappear. Put the restaurant and house up for sale. Only her lawyer would need to know how to contact her, and Jamie Munroe-Calloway wouldn’t share that information with anyone, especially Martha.
Let the mother who’d abandoned her bleed her dry, give up everything that mattered and run away like a coward, or stand up to Martha and risk the loss of everything—and everyone—that mattered.
It was a hell of a choice.
Chapter 2
“I hate rain.”
Tommy leaned his head against the Charger’s headrest and watched the house down the street through slitted eyes. He was partnered with Katherine Isaacs this week and wondering whether it was because he was good at what he did or if the lieutenant was punishing him for something.
Kiki might be the department’s newest detective, but she was also its biggest whiner. She bitched about everything: rain, sun, heat, cold, driving, not driving, having to arrest someone, not getting to arrest someone.
“Piss off, Kiki,” he muttered, shifting in the seat.
She scowled at him. “I hate that nickname.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whine to someone who cares.” It was warm inside the car, so he switched the engine on long enough to crack the windows an inch or two. Fresh air blew in, the raindrops it carried a small price to pay for its cooling effect. They’d been parked under the trees down the road from a drug dealer’s house for hours now, the black Dodge practically disappearing in the gloomy overcast, and so far they hadn’t seen anything more interesting than a dog taking a leak on the dealer’s steps.
“Are you always this pleasant on surveillance?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“You’re supposed to be teaching me.”
She stabbed at the button to roll up the window, but he’d turned off the car again. The rain wasn’t coming in on her side, but the humidity was. Before long, her hair would frizz out like a ’70s Afro. He knew, because she’d whined about it the first time he’d rolled down the windows.
Sprawled in the driver’s seat, head tilted back, he said, “Okay, listen up. This is me teaching. When you do surveillance, you park someplace where you’re not real noticeable, you settle in and you watch your target. If you’re real lucky, you’ll actually see something. Most of the time, you sit until your butt goes numb and you get nada. You don’t eat anything that smells offensive. You don’t get crumbs or wrappers in my car. You don’t drink more than your bladder will hold. You don’t fall asleep. And you don’t complain.” He turned his head so he could see her. “Oh, wait, I forgot who I was talking to. Kiki Isaacs, queen of complainers.”
“That’s Detective Queen of Complainers to you.” She fluffed her brown hair, starting its inevitable frizz. “I don’t complain. I make my opinions known. Keeping things inside is bad for your health.”
“Then you must be the healthiest person I’ve ever met. Be quiet now. You’re fogging up my windows.” He used a napkin to wipe the windshield, then leaned back again.
The house they were watching sat isolated from its neighbors. A fire had taken out the house to the west, and the one to the east had been leveled by a tornado. That probably suited Steve Terrell just fine. His own lot was overgrown, and junk filled the yard. The screens on the windows were torn and rusted, patches of shingles were missing from the roof and the paint was a truly ugly shade of purple.
An informant had told them that Terrell was expecting a shipment around nine that morning, but it was now one in the afternoon and there hadn’t been any movement on the street at all. Even the neighbors were either gone or staying home.
Drifting on the damp air came the scent of wood smoke and Tommy breathed deeply. He’d given up smoking more than a year ago. It had taken him six months to get from five cigarettes a day to none. He’d think it was completely out of his system, and then he’d catch a whiff of smoke—even the sour stench of burning leaves—and want a cigarette so badly he could taste it. Kiki’s slow intake of breath, a signal that she was about to speak again, doubled the desire.
“How long do we wait?”
“The guy might have had car trouble. He might have gotten a late start, or the weather might have slowed him down.”
“Or your informant might have given you bad information. He might have just liked the idea of us sitting out here in the rain waiting for something that was never going to happen in the first place.”
“Maybe.”
She repeated her question. “So how long do we wait?”
“As long as it takes.” She was probably right. This bust was a bust. But just to keep her from thinking she’d nagged him into giving up, he waited another half hour before finally starting the engine. The Dodge Charger turned with a powerful rumble, and he pulled out of the trees and drove away from Terrell’s house.
Kiki gave an exaggerated sigh of relief, then looked slyly at him. “I saw you at Ellie’s last night with Sophy.”
“Yeah.” Tommy resisted the urge to fidget. His dating Sophy wasn’t a secret. He’d been seeing her for a month, though he’d never taken her to the deli. Though he’d been a regular since the doors opened, taking his current girlfriend to his ex-girlfriend’s restaurant seemed a really lousy idea. Last night the choice hadn’t been his. Anamaria had been craving prime rib, and Ellie’s was the best in town.
He missed the food there. Almost as much as he missed Ellie.
“Sophy and I are friends. If you break her heart, I’ll have to shoot you.”
After turning onto Carolina Avenue, he gave Kiki a sharp look, then deliberately changed the subject. “I’m taking you back to the station. Then I’m going looking for my informant.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, thanks.”
“Come on, Maricci—”
“He’s called a confidential informant for a reason. Besides, you wouldn’t like the places he hangs out.”
“Tommy—”
He pulled to a stop in front of the Copper Lake Police Department and waited pointedly for her to get out of the car. When she didn’t move, he said, “Go inside, Kiki. Do your nails or fix your hair or something. I’ll swing back after I’m done.”
With a scowl, she climbed out, muttering something about macho jerks and pissants. Grinning, he pulled out of the parking lot and headed back downtown. He did intend to go looking for his informant, but not until he’d gotten something to eat, along with a strong cup of coffee.
He circled halfway around the square before finding a parking space near A Cuppa Joe. As he got out of the Charger, a figure crossing the street caught his attention. She wore a long coat that was too big, the hood pulled up over gray hair and a lined face, and trudged through the crosswalk with a plastic shopping bag clutched in each hand.
It was the woman Ellie had been talking to on the porch last night, the out-of-towner who wanted something from her. Ellie hadn’t been happy to see her or to talk about her with him in the square…though these days she wasn’t happy talking about anything with him.
On impulse, he met the woman as she stepped onto the curb. “Can I help you with your bags?”
She drew up short and fixed a suspicious stare on him. “Do I look like I need help?”
“No, ma’am. I just thought—”
“Who are you?”
“Tommy Maricci.” He gestured to the gold shield clipped onto his belt, and her gaze dropped, then returned to his face.
“I haven’t done nothin’ wrong.”
“I didn’t say you had. I just thought you might like some help. Maybe a ride to get out of this rain.” A blast of wind kicked up behind her, bringing with it the smell of stale smoke and liquor.
Shifting the bags to one hand, she raised the other to tug her hood back enough to see him better. “You always offer innocent strangers rides?”
“More often than you’d think.”
“Huh. All right. I’ll take your ride.” She handed both bags to him, then shoved her hands into her coat pockets. “It is a bit chilly for this time of year. And I’m not going far. Just to the Jasmine.”
Her blue eyes narrowed, clearly expecting some response from him, but he was good at hiding surprise. The Jasmine was a restored three-storied brick-and-plaster post-Civil War beauty on two prime acres east of downtown. Now a bed-and-breakfast, it was by far the most expensive place to stay in Copper Lake. Not what he would have expected for this woman.
Though his job had taught him to expect the unexpected.
“My car’s over there.” He gestured toward the Charger, and they’d walked a few yards when she inhaled deeply.
“Nothing smells as good on a chilly day as a cup of strong coffee.”
Especially with a little something extra in it to help warm a body, he thought, catching another whiff of alcohol. “I was just heading for a cup. Do you have time?”
Her laughter was throaty and grating. “I have nothin’ but time. Are you treating?”
“Sure.”
“Well, then, why don’t you put them bags up and I’ll wait inside out of the cold?” Without pausing for his agreement, she pivoted and walked into A Cuppa Joe.
Tommy unlocked the car door and set the bags in the back. As the plastic sides sagged, he saw two cartons of cigarettes, a six-pack of beer, chips and three large bags of candy. Tucked between the beer and the Enquirer was a slim brown bag, the kind used at the local liquor stores. Booze, chocolate and a gossip rag…the basic requirements of life.
After closing and locking the door, he strode down the sidewalk and into the coffee shop. The woman was standing at the counter, head tilted back, studying the menu on the wall. She’d pushed the hood off her head, leaving her hair sticking out like tufts of straw, and, like the night before, she gave off an air of watchfulness. “Does that offer go for plain coffee or the grande-mocha-latte-chino good stuff?”
“Whatever you want.”
A twenty-something girl with bottled black hair and deep purple lips waited idly for their order, tapping an orange fingernail on the counter. A person could be forgiven for thinking she was already in the Halloween spirit, but she looked like that every day of the year. After the woman ordered a caramel-hazelnut something-or-other, Tommy asked for his usual—high-octane Brazilian blend with a slice of cream-cheese-filled pumpkin bread.
“Make that two slices,” the woman said with a sly smile. “I’ll find a table.”
Midafternoon, with only a couple of other customers, that was no hardship. She chose one near the front window but away from the draft of the door. By the time Tommy set down the tray with their food, she’d removed her coat and sat, legs crossed, hands clasped on the tabletop. Her fingers were short, stubby and nicotine stained, her nails blunt and unpolished. The skin on her hands, like on her face, was weathered and worn. Not by work, he suspected. She didn’t strike him as a woman who indulged in hard work.
And she didn’t strike him as a woman who would have even the vaguest connection to Ellie. Ellie was so elegant and polished and…just different.
“I didn’t get your name,” he said as he set a tall foamy cup and a saucer with bread in front of her.
“I didn’t offer it.” She swiped a finger in the whipped cream that topped her drink, licked it clean, then shrugged. “Martha Dempsey.”
“Are you here on vacation? Visiting friends? Just passing through?”
Picking up her fork, she wagged it in his direction. “That’s the bad thing about cops. They’re always asking questions.”
“We’re just curious people.” And he wasn’t asking even a fraction of the questions running through his mind. Who are you? Why are you here? How do you know Ellie? What do you want from her?
“I seen you last night. At the restaurant down the street. With that pregnant black girl. Is she your girl?” There was an undertone of something—disapproval, bigotry—that made her voice coarse, ugly.
“I like to think she could have been if my buddy hadn’t met her first.” He’d liked Anamaria from the first time they’d met, but Robbie, she insisted, had been her destiny. God knows, she’d certainly turned him around. The shallow Calloway brother, the irresponsible one, had taken to marriage and impending fatherhood as well as or better than any of his more responsible brothers.
“She’s not your kind,” Martha said dismissively.
Before he could ask just how she meant that, she shifted her gaze outside to a temporary sign in the square, announcing the date and time of the annual Halloween celebration. “This isn’t a bad little town. I’m thinking I could live out my last days here.”
And what would Ellie think of that? “I’ve lived all my days here, except for four years in college. I like it.” He stirred sugar into his coffee, then took a careful sip before asking, “Where do you live now?”
“Atlanta. Big place. You can stay twenty years in the same house and still not know your neighbor’s name.” She gave him another of those sly looks. “I bet you know pretty much everything about everyone in town. Or, at least, you think you do.”
“I’m not sure you can ever know everything about a person.” He was probably the only one in town who didn’t have much in the way of secrets. The only major events in his life—his mother’s alcoholism, her leaving when he was five and abandoning him, his falling in love with Ellie and her not loving him back—were common knowledge. He had nothing to hide.
“What do you know about Ellie Chase?”
He stilled in the act of reaching for another bite of pumpkin bread. Laying his fork carefully on the plate, he folded his hands around his coffee cup instead. “She’s got the best restaurant in town. Everyone likes her. She’s good to work for. She’s active in the community.” He paused. “I know you know her.”
Ellie hadn’t actually said that. Martha Dempsey was just someone who wanted something, she’d said. Someone from the past she never talked about, he’d inferred.
Martha’s smile was crooked. “A long time ago,” she said. “I hadn’t seen her since she was a teenager.”
“Is she the reason you came here?”
She studied him a moment, then took a drink of coffee, slurping to get whipped cream, as well. With a drop clinging to her upper lip, she said, “What you call curiosity, Mr. Police Detective, some people consider plain old nosiness.”
“Is she?”
After another drink, she shook her head. “Her being here is just a happy coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.” And Ellie certainly hadn’t seemed happy.
That earned a sharp laugh from her. “I don’t believe in little green men from Mars, neither, but that don’t mean they aren’t out there. Now…tell me about this Halloween festival.”
A shrill whistle startled Ellie, who’d been staring off into the distance. She shifted her gaze to the door of her office where Sherry, one of the waitresses, stood, a takeout bag in hand.
“I called your name three times. You imagining yourself on some Caribbean beach with a hot cabana boy?”
If only her mind had wandered someplace so pleasant…But no, she’d been distant in years, not so much in mileage. “You bet,” she lied, forcing a smile. “The sun was warm, the sand was endless and the rum never stopped flowing.”
“Well, come back to reality, where the sky is gray, the temperature is cold and the rain hasn’t stopped falling.” Sherry held up the bag. “Joe’s order is ready.”
Ellie looked blankly at the bag before remembering: Joe Saldana had called in an order to go, and she’d offered to deliver it to him. He’d promised her a tall chai tea, his own special blend, as a fee.
“I can take it for you.”
“You’re married, Sherry,” Ellie reminded her as she rose from the chair, then took her jacket from the coat tree in the corner.
“But there’s no harm in looking.”
The waitress handed over the bag, and the fragrant aromas of the day’s special—roasted chicken, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, along with a piece of apple pie—drifted into the air. It was enough to remind Ellie that she had skipped lunch, and breakfast, as well. She hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of food.
Not with the sour stenches of fear, bourbon and nicotine that had gripped her for the past fifteen hours or so.
“I’ll tell Joe you send your regards,” she said as she squeezed past Sherry and started down the hall.
“Oh, honey,” Sherry murmured behind her. “I want to give him a whole lot more than that.”
Ellie’s faint smile faded before she reached the door. They’d had a busy lunch, and one of the staff had called in sick, so she’d had to pitch in and wait tables. Busy was good; it kept her from thinking about anything more than the task at hand.
But busy couldn’t last forever, and once the lunch rush was over, she’d retreated to her office and brooded. She’d faced a lot of problems in her life, but there had always been solutions. This one had solutions, too—just none that she could face at the moment.
The rain came in steady, small plops against her lemon-yellow slicker until she reached the protection of the awnings that fronted the other businesses on the block. There she pushed the hood back and drew in a deep breath of fresh, clean air. Speaking to the few people she passed on the sidewalk, Ellie realized with some measure of surprise that she would miss Copper Lake if she had to leave. She’d tried not to get overly attached to the town or the people in it. Home was a concept, not a place, and people let you down. From the day she’d come there, she’d wanted to be able to leave without regret.
Tried. Wanted. Truth was, she was attached. She could own another dozen restaurants, and none of them would mean the same as the deli. She could make a hundred new friends, but they would never replace Anamaria and Jamie, the Calloways, Carmen and everyone else. She could have a thousand more affairs, but not one of them—
Grimly she stopped herself midthought as the fragrance of fresh-roasted coffee drifted into her senses. A Cuppa Joe occupied the corner lot, a full block from her own place. Ironically, Joe Saldana hadn’t named the gourmet shop. It was just coincidence that Joe now owned A Cuppa Joe.
I don’t believe in coincidence.
Scowling at the words she’d heard more than once from Tommy, she pushed open the plate-glass door and went inside. Louis Armstrong played softly on the stereo—Joe didn’t listen to anything recorded after 1960—and coffee scents perfumed the air.
She was halfway across the shop, already anticipating the first sip of chai tea, when she realized that something was amiss. Slowing her steps, Ellie glanced over her shoulder, then came to an abrupt stop and turned.
Martha was sitting at the front table farthest from the door.
With Tommy.
A chill shivered through her as she stared at them and they stared back. There was malice in Martha’s expression, speculation and something more in Tommy’s. A little longing. Maybe regret. Definitely curiosity.
How had they wound up in the coffee shop together? Had it been Tommy’s doing, his way of finding out answers she hadn’t given him the night before? Or had Martha sought him out? Did she somehow know they’d been involved?
Ellie couldn’t speak, couldn’t move or look away, until Joe’s voice broke the shock that held her.
“Hey, Ellie. How much do I owe you?”
Bit by bit, she forced her attention from Tommy and Martha to Joe, who was sliding his wallet from his hip pocket as he came out from behind the counter. She tried to remember how much the lunch special was, but couldn’t. Gratefully, though, she recognized the ticket nestled atop the foam container in the plastic bag and pulled it out, handing it over.
“Nina’s getting your tea,” Joe said, offering her a ten-dollar bill in exchange for the bag. “Why don’t you come on back with me?”
Ellie still felt Tommy’s and Martha’s gazes, though, prickling down her spine and into her somersaulting stomach as Joe took her arm, guiding her behind the counter. She numbly went along. As soon as they reached the rear space that served as both storeroom and office, he closed the door and the prickling went away.
He released her, went to the battered desk and unpacked his lunch. “So you and Maricci still aren’t friendly.”
She shook her head.
“I doubt you have to worry much about the woman with him. She’s not his type.”
He was wrong. Martha was the biggest worry in her life.
“Okay, bad joke. What’s wrong? This is hardly the first time you’ve seen him since…” With typical male tact, he shrugged instead of finishing. Since he walked away from you. Since he gave up on you.
“It’s not that,” she said, and it was only half a lie. She could handle seeing Tommy. She could even handle seeing him with Sophy. But with Martha, who hadn’t been satisfied with ruining her life fifteen years ago? Who’d come to Copper Lake for the sole purpose of ruining what was left?
“Then what is it?” Joe asked as he cut a generous bite of chicken.
“Complicated,” she said with a helpless shrug.
“Sex always is.”
Leave it to a man to boil down her and Tommy’s relationship to its most basic component. If it were only sex, they would have no problem, because the sex was always good.
“And how’s your sex life?” she asked to change the subject.
“I’m thinking about it.”
She snorted. In the year since he’d come to town, he’d caught the eye of every available woman—and a few who weren’t. Six foot four, tanned, muscular, with unruly blond hair and blue eyes, he could have women lined up around the block. Had had women lined up the day he’d reopened A Cuppa Joe after remodeling. But to the best of her knowledge, he’d never gone out with any of them. He was friendly, considerate and disinterested.
“How long can a man go without?” she asked.
His forehead wrinkled for a moment, then smoothed. “Eighteen months, two weeks and three days. And counting.”
She gazed at him a long time, while he sampled the mashed potatoes, dipped a forkful of dressing into the gravy, then cut another piece of chicken. Finally she shook her head and started toward the rear wall. “Can I use your back door?”
“You gonna slink back down the alley to the diner? Coward.” But he gestured toward the door with careless approval.
She let herself out the door with a wave, then stood underneath the roof overhang while pulling the slicker hood into place. Hands shoved into her pockets, she turned left toward the deli, but after a dozen feet, turned around and headed along the sidewalk in the other direction instead. Shivering more than the weather called for, she turned at the next block and headed aimlessly out of the business district and into a neighborhood of lovely old homes.
Five years ago Ellie had chosen Copper Lake as her new home based on only one thing: the two-hundred-year-old general store turned restaurant turned hot investment property. Randolph Aiken, her mentor, for lack of a better word, had contacted her in Charleston, where she’d been working for a friend of his in a lush, plush, black-tie restaurant and told her about the space. It would be a great investment, he’d said, for that money she’d been saving.
Payoff money.
When she’d driven through Copper Lake that first time, her initial thought had been that it was too pretty, too small-town perfect. She didn’t belong in such a place.
But she hadn’t fit in in Charleston, either, or Atlanta. She didn’t belong anywhere, so she might as well not belong in Copper Lake, where she could have her own modest restaurant.
Then something strange had happened along the way. The town and its people had made a place for her. They’d welcomed her, befriended her and treated her like any normal person.
Tommy’s welcome had been the sweetest.
A short, sharp tap of a car horn sounded as she was about to cross a driveway. She drew up short, realizing she’d reached the Jasmine, one of Copper Lake’s historic gems, as an elegant gray Mercedes glided to a stop in front of her. The driver rolled down the window, and both he and the passenger, the inn’s owners, smiled up at her. “Look at this, Jared. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and Ellie Chase is out taking a stroll,” Jeffrey Goldman said.
“Let me mark this date on the calendar. I do believe it’s a first,” Jared Franklin replied.
Ellie couldn’t help but smile at both men. Like her, like Joe Saldana, they’d come to Copper Lake to make a new start. Unlike her and Joe, everyone knew the basic facts of their lives. They were open and unashamed; they had nothing to hide.
“I’m not at the deli all the time,” she protested.
“No, of course not,” Jeffrey agreed. “You have to sleep sometime.”
“You’re not still sleeping on that couch in your office, are you?” Jared asked.
“One time. And it was just a nap. I’d worked late the night before for…What was it? Oh, yeah, your birthday party.” Ironic that a birthday party for a retired lawyer had turned into the largest and most boisterous private event the restaurant had ever hosted. The sheer number of people who’d made the drive from Atlanta had been astounding—lawyers, judges, criminals. She’d spent half the night in the kitchen, afraid she would run into someone who’d known her from before.
That was no way to live, but if she gave in to Martha’s blackmail demands, she would live the rest of her life just like that.
“Why don’t you let us give you a ride to wherever you’re going?” Jeffrey asked.
She was about to say no, thanks, when another car approached. It was black and looked so unlike a police car, she had once teased, that of course it was. The turn signal was on, the driver—Tommy, of course—preparing to turn into the Jasmine’s other entrance, the one that circled around to the small guest parking area. In the passenger seat, a glimpse of sallow skin and tufty gray hair proved that Martha was still with him.
It was hard to walk off your problems when they kept showing up.
Turning her gaze back to the men, Ellie smiled. “If you’re not worried that I’ll ruin your upholstery, I would like a ride back to the deli.”
“Upholstery can be cleaned,” Jeffrey said with a negligible wave.
The electric locks clicked, and she opened the rear door before either man could get out to do so for her. As she slid onto the buttery leather seat, the Charger disappeared behind a hedge of neatly groomed azaleas.
“Do you have a guest named Martha?” she asked, striving for a conversational tone as the Mercedes began moving again.
Jared’s nose twitched subtly. “Yes, we do.”
“She came to the restaurant last night. Wow. I couldn’t afford to stay at your place unless you hired me as the live-in help. I guess appearances really can be deceiving.”
Jeffrey ignored Jared’s snort. “She has money. We have rooms. And you know, we’d always cut you a deal, Ellie. You’re our favorite restaurant owner in town.”
“She has money, all right,” Jared said. “She paid for a week from a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills. Said she’d never stayed in a place quite so fancy.” He put a twang on the last few words that should have made Ellie smile, but didn’t.
Where had Martha gotten a stack of hundred-dollar bills? Had Oliver had life insurance enough for her to bury him, pay her usual bills and allow her to splurge on a two-hundred-dollar-a-night bed-and-breakfast? Maybe she hadn’t wasted any money on a burial. After all, he was no use to her dead.
Just as her daughter had been no use to her.
It didn’t make sense. If Martha needed money—and she must; how else would she survive with her aversion to work?—why wasn’t she staying at the Riverview Motel? One night at the Jasmine would cover nearly a week at the Riverview.
Thinking about it made her head hurt. Thinking about Martha with Tommy made it hurt worse.
Staring out the window, she listened to Jeffrey and Jared’s idle chatter until they reached the restaurant. She thanked them for the ride and climbed out into heavier rain.
“Next time you need a break from work, come on over,” Jared invited. “I’ll fix you my special Long Island iced tea, and we’ll dish on all the guests. I could tell you things…”
Politely she said she would, then hurried along the sidewalk and up the steps to the porch. As she shrugged out of her slicker, she remembered that she’d forgotten to pick up her chai tea at A Cuppa Joe.
Too bad. She could have used it.
Tommy didn’t feel guilty for taking care of personal matters on department time. He put in way more than his forty hours a week, routinely getting called out too early in the morning and too late at night, to say nothing of spending more than a fair amount of his evenings writing and reading reports, studying notes and trying to figure out why people did the things they did.
The rain had stopped after he’d dropped Martha Dempsey off at the Jasmine, and now the sun was making a so-so stab at breaking through the clouds in the western sky. Finding no space on the square, he parked in Robbie’s law office lot and jogged across the street, careful not to spill the still-warm chai tea in the cup he carried.
Ellie’s Deli sat fifteen feet back from the sidewalk, the path to the steps flanked on both sides with beds of yellow and purple pansies. Those had been his mother’s favorite flowers, back in the days when she’d found the energy to plant anything at all, and his father had continued to plant them for years. The autumn he’d stopped, Tommy thought, was when he’d finally accepted that Lilah wasn’t coming back.
By then, she’d been gone for eleven years.
Like father, like son. Mooning endlessly over women who didn’t want them.
The main dining room was empty except for a half dozen girls gathered in one corner wearing the uniform of Copper Lake High School cheerleaders, and a waitress, poring over a textbook while waiting for something to do.
“Is Ellie here?”
The waitress, a high school student herself, nodded before a burst of laughter drew her gaze, a bit longing, to the girls. It wasn’t fun, Tommy would bet, having to wait on the cool kids. Thanks to his friendship with Robbie, he’d been one of the cool kids in school, for all the difference it made. Some of them had gone on to achieve a lot; some of them were regular visitors at the Copper Lake Correctional Facility.
“She’s in her office,” the girl said. “I’ll get her—”
“That’s okay. I know the way.” He passed through the main dining room, past the bathrooms and the bar, dimly lit for now, until the evening bartender came on at five, then stopped at the next door. For more than four years, he’d been in the habit of walking right in, without a knock or warning. But such familiarity didn’t seem appropriate at the moment.
Then his jaw tightened. How had his life come to this, that familiarity with the one woman he knew better than himself wasn’t appropriate?
He rapped at the door, sharper than he’d intended to, and a quiet invitation followed. “Come in.”
He could do the polite thing: give the tea to the girl up front and let her deliver it. Or the smart thing: toss the cup in the nearest trash can and beat it out the back door. But he didn’t stand a chance trying to find out what he wanted to know by being polite, and he couldn’t spend even a moment with her if he slipped out the back door the way she had earlier. So he twisted the knob, let himself in and closed the door behind him.
Ellie was a hands-on manager, chatting with the guests, refilling drinks, clearing tables, delivering food and even, on a regular basis, rolling up her sleeves in the kitchen. She knew every job as well as her employees and was energetic enough that she could run the place sans two or three of them without showing the strain.
This afternoon, as she sat alone in her office, doing nothing, the strain showed.
He set the chai tea on the middle of the desk pad, nudged the visitor chair with one boot toe, then took a few steps back to lean instead against a narrow oak table that butted up to the wall. “Nina said you forgot that.”
She didn’t touch the cup. “She could have delivered it herself or just thrown it away.”
“She was too busy.” Joe’s was a popular place after school, with its wireless Internet connections and doctored drinks that tasted more like dessert than coffee. Besides, Tommy hadn’t given her much of a chance. She left without her tea, Nina had complained, and he’d been quick to respond. I’ll take it to her.
Martha Dempsey had given him a look, part slyness, part meanness and part curiosity. He’d ignored her. Though ignoring Martha Dempsey too often, he figured, was the express route to trouble.
Ellie looked at it a moment as if she might do what he hadn’t: throw it away. She even picked it up and started to turn to the side, but the wisps of steam drifting up from the small hole in the lid were rich with cinnamon and cloves. Instead of completing the move toward the wastebasket behind her desk, she lifted the cover, wrapped both hands around the still-warm cup and breathed deeply. After taking a tentative sip, then a long, savoring drink, she grudgingly said, “Thank you.”
He watched her, taking far too much pleasure in her pleasure, growing warm inside his jacket, remembering not long ago when he would have made some suggestive comment, when she would have responded with suggestiveness of her own. Back when they were together. When he’d thought they had a chance.
He waited until she lowered the cup again to remark, “You saw that I had coffee with Martha Dempsey.”
Darkness eased into Ellie’s features—nothing so obvious as a scowl, just a subtle displeasure, dislike, distrust. If he didn’t know her so well, he probably would have missed it. “Your idea or hers?”
“Mine. I’m a cop, Ellie. I get answers one way or another.”
“And what answers are you looking for about her?”
“She’s new in town. She looks like she doesn’t have a dime, but she’s staying at the Jasmine. And just the sight of her upsets you.” He shrugged. “All that makes me curious.”
“You could mind your own business.”
Though she was totally serious, he laughed. “I haven’t minded my own business since I was five years old. That’s why I became a cop in the first place.” He’d always wanted answers, and if he didn’t get them the usual way, he found them another.
“Martha said she hasn’t seen you since you were a teenager. That her coming to Copper Lake and finding you here is a happy coincidence.”
When neither comment drew a response from her, Tommy fired off a third one, embellished for effect. “She said she’s looking forward to living out her life here, close to you.”
Something flashed in Ellie’s eyes, and a muscle convulsed in her jaw with the effort to keep her mouth shut, but she succeeded. After a moment, with a faintly strangled quality to her voice, she replied, “It’s a free country. She can move wherever she wants.”
“Why wouldn’t you want her here?”
“Why would I? I hardly know the woman, and I have no desire to get to know her better.”
“Where do you know her from?”
A heavy silence developed as Ellie studied him. Her chin was lifted, the soft swing of her pale hair brushing the delicate skin there. Her heart rate had settled to its usual throb, visible at the base of her throat, and her features looked as if they had been carved from ice.
Finally she rose from the desk, circling to the front, mimicking his pose. Her hips rested against the worn oak, her ankles crossed, her fingers still cradling the tea. “She’s from my father’s past,” she said flatly. “Not mine.”
Maybe two yards of dull pine separated their feet. As relaxed as she looked, it should be an easy thing to push away from the table and reach her before she could think about retreating. But her ease was deceptive. If he so much as breathed deeply, she would be an instant from fleeing.
In five years she hadn’t talked a lot about her parents. Her upbringing had been boringly conventional. Mother, father and only child, blue house not far from the beach, across the Cooper River from Charleston. Mother had died in a car wreck eight or ten years ago, father soon after of a heart attack. Normal life. No unusual traumas, no major dramas.
And he’d had no reason to doubt her. For every person who found comfort in talking about times that were past and people who were gone, there was one who found it tough. Some memories were better kept to oneself.
She’s from my father’s past.
Some hurts, like a father’s betrayal of a mother, were better buried.
Silence settled, as if one confidence was all she had in her. He wished he could close that six-foot distance, earn another secret or even just a moment being silent together. Six months ago he could have held her, and she would have let him. Let him, but not opened to him. There had always been distance between them, that had pushed them apart time after time, that had caused him to finally give her an ultimatum: commit or end it. All or nothing.
Saying “I want everything” was a hell of a lot easier than living with nothing.
“Well…” They both spoke at once, both broke off at once.
Ellie moved away from the desk. “I’ve got things to do….”
“Yeah. Me, too.” Still, it took an effort for him to move. He wished she would walk past him and into the hall. Not too close. Just enough that her clothing would brush his, that her perfume would tickle his nose.
She didn’t, though, instead returning to her desk, focusing her attention on the paperwork there. Grimly, he walked out.
Chapter 3
When Ellie walked onto the porch Friday afternoon, the sun was shining, making it warm enough for short sleeves. After the previous day’s rain, everything downtown had a fresh, clean look to it: the color of the flowers brighter, the contrast against the grass sharper, the smells of sawn wood richer and earthier. The news reports called for good weather through the weekend, with an appropriate fall crackle in the air on Saturday for the Copper Lake Halloween Festival.
The sound of rhythmic hammering came from the square where a half-dozen teams of volunteers were building the booths for the festival. Most of the local restaurants sponsored a booth; Ellie’s was a prime corner section, directly across the street from the deli. There would also be the usual carnival-type food—funnel cakes, Sno-Cones, deep-fried everything—and simple old-fashioned games like bobbing for apples and musical chairs. There would be costume parades across the front veranda of River’s Edge, the grand Greek Revival plantation home on the southeast side of the square, and a band would set up in the gazebo.
A lot of good fun for kids and their families and people who had dates, she thought sourly.
A sleek vintage Corvette pulled to the curb at the end of the walk, top down in deference to the weather. Her hair tied back with a red print scarf, Anamaria looked exotic and sexy as usual. She was a beautiful woman, and deeply in love with her husband. Those Calloway boys—and their wives—had all the luck.
Ellie slid into the passenger seat. “I thought you didn’t like to drive the ’Vette.”
“Oh, I like to,” Anamaria replied breezily. “I just don’t like Robbie to know.”
Robbie was inordinately proud of the vehicle he’d bought as little more than a rusted heap and rebuilt from the ground up. Since his marriage to Anamaria, it had been a sore point that she preferred to drive her nothing-special Honda over his restored baby.
“Besides,” Anamaria said, resting one hand lightly on the swelling of her stomach, “I figure if I want to drive it, I’d better do it before Gloriane gets too big.”
Ellie’s gaze dropped to Anamaria’s belly; then she pointedly looked away. She never thought about having children. Never. It was safer that way. Well, except when she saw an expectant mother or a sweet, innocent infant. Or when she watched Russ and Jamie fussing over two-month-old Sara Elizabeth. Or noticed how solicitous Robbie was of Anamaria. Or let her defenses down and remembered back to when she was a child herself and for such a very short time, things had seemed…hopeful.
For a moment she closed her eyes, grinding her teeth, shoring up that little bit of weakness around her heart. When Anamaria’s hand settled on her arm, it startled her eyes open again.
“Are you all right?”
It was such an easy question to lie to. She’d been doing it for years—smiling, tossing off an airy I’m fine. Truthfully, for a good portion of the past five years, she had been fine. She’d had more in her life—a career, a home, a good man and dear friends—than she’d ever dreamed of.
Now, thanks to Martha, it was hard to imagine that anything would ever be fine again.
Still, she managed an uneven smile. “I’m fine. How is Mama Odette?”
Anamaria clearly recognized the question for the evasive tactic it was, but let it slide. “She’s great. The doctors say she’s got the heart of a woman half her age.” After a pause, she went on with a sly smile. “And Mama Odette says she’s not giving it back.”
Ellie laughed in the moment before her thoughts took a melancholy turn. Anamaria had never known her father, and her mother had died when she was a little girl. But she’d had an amazing family welcoming her with open arms—her grandmother, Odette; her aunts and their daughters; Odette’s sisters and their daughters. Dozens of strong, smart and loving Duquesne women gathering her in.
And Ellie had had her mother and her father, neither of whom had wanted kids in the first place. Her paternal grandmother had been a cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking old woman who’d scared the wits out of Ellie every chance she got, and her maternal grandparents had never been a part of her life. She’d had aunts and uncles but could hardly remember them, had cousins but had never known them.
It wasn’t fair—all those people who’d loved Anamaria, and not even one who’d wanted Ellie.
Life ain’t fair, Martha had often said as she’d unscrewed the cap from yet another bottle of booze.
The click of the turn signal penetrated Ellie’s thoughts, and she looked up to see that they’d reached the mall. It was small, but it offered a lot, including their reason for coming there. In a small first-level storefront was the Seasonal Store. If you celebrated a holiday, any holiday, the Seasonal Store was the place to shop. Right now the front half was filled with all things Halloween, while in the rear, Christmas was encroaching on the space allocated to Thanksgiving.
“You shouldn’t have put off buying your costume for so long,” Anamaria admonished as they wound through the racks. “There’s not a lot left for adults.”
“Are you dressing up?” It had taken Ellie’s staff three years to nag her into joining them among the ranks of the costumed. She’d had fun. She’d felt free. She had looked forward to repeating it this year…until things had changed.
“Of course I am,” Anamaria replied, then added drama to her voice. “I’m going as the great Queen Moon, who knows all, hears all and sees all, but doesn’t tell all for less than a gold doubloon.” She took a costume from the rack, studied it a moment, then returned it to pick up a different garment. “There really was a Moon in our family—she was Mama Odette’s great-grandmother—and her faithful believers really did call her Queen. Who knows? Maybe I’ll channel her Saturday night.”
Psychic gifts ran strong in the Duquesne family. It had made Ellie wary when she’d first met Anamaria. Could Anamaria see things that no one else could? she’d wondered. Would she give away secrets Ellie had so stubbornly kept?
The answers, the last six months had determined: seeing secrets? Probably. Sharing them? Definitely not.
“How about this?”
Ellie turned away from a moldy-looking corpse outfit to find Anamaria holding a full black skirt. She lifted one flirty strip of nearly transparent fabric, then let it flutter down again. “Just a skirt?”
“I have a white peasant top you can borrow and a burgundy velvet shawl with fringe. And some black knee boots, a scarf to tie over your hair, maybe a long wig and voilà.”
“Voilà what?” Ellie asked drily. “Serving wench? Pirate lady?”
“Depending on how low we can get the neck of the blouse, maybe pirate’s lady friend,” Anamaria teased.
“I think she was closer the first time with wench,” a voice said from behind Ellie. “After all, isn’t that just an old-fashioned way of saying whore?”
Ellie restrained the impulse to whirl around. She didn’t need to look to know it was Martha who had spoken, didn’t need to give her the satisfaction of knowing she’d caught Ellie off-guard.
Anamaria gave Martha a long, level look, then took hold of Ellie’s arm. “Let’s find a wig.”
Ellie’s feet automatically followed Anamaria’s lead, but Martha wasn’t about to be ignored.
“You’re that psychic girl that’s married to the youngest Calloway boy, aren’t you? Man, you must have put some mighty good voodoo on him, getting him to marry you, what with him being rich and white and you being neither.” Martha fluffed her hair and smiled broadly. “What does your psychic gift say about me?”
“Just ignore her,” Ellie said, but Anamaria wasn’t listening.
She walked in a slow circle around Martha. “Your whole life, you’ve cared for no one but yourself. You’ve disappointed and hurt all those who should have mattered to you. But there’s still time to change. You can’t undo the past, but you can change the future.”
Martha’s eyes widened for an instant; then her laughter sounded, loud and coarse. “I surely do intend to change my future. Wow, you really must be psychic or something. Don’t you think, Ellie?”
Ellie’s face was hot, her stomach knotted. She wanted to stick her fingers in her ears so she would never have to hear that voice or that laughter again, wanted to scrub her eyes with her knuckles to chase away the sight of that smug, vicious face. But she would never be free of Martha now that the woman had tracked her down, so running was next on her list of desires. She’d even taken a step back when Martha’s gaze shifted past her, and the woman gave a friendly wave.
“There’s Reverend Fitzgerald’s wife, Kayla. Such a nice girl. We met at the church this morning—I dropped in for a little meditation time—and she invited me to go shopping with her. She needs a birthday gift for her mother-in-law, who’s about my age. Thanks for the advice, Anamaria. And, Ellie—” her blue gaze sharpened “—I’ll be seeing you around.”
Ellie wondered if Anamaria heard the threat in those last words as clearly as she did. Martha was doing a very good job of insinuating herself into the lives of Ellie’s friends. They were nice people; they’d never suspect her of having an ulterior motive. And once she’d weaseled her way in, how much easier would it be for her to convince them of the truth of her tales about Ellie? She would paint herself the victim, the loving mother who had tried so desperately to help her out-of-control daughter, and people would have no choice but to believe her.
And she had proof.
Once Martha exited into the mall, the air inside the shop became easier to breathe. Ellie took a cleansing breath, chasing away the last of the cigarette and booze odor, and found Anamaria studying her somberly, her dark eyes troubled.
“Who is she, Ellie?”
Numbly she shook her head, then dug some nonchalance from deep inside. “Just some wacko who seems to have fixated on me. No big deal.”
“As I recall, the last wacko in town who fixated on someone tried to kill both my brother- and sister-in-law. The Calloway family in general and Russ and Jamie in particular considered it a very big deal.”
“This woman’s not violent.” Not beyond a slap now and then. The occasional physical violence had been easier to endure than Martha’s relentlessly cold treatment. Bruises healed. Emotional scars didn’t.
“That’s what they thought about Lys Paxton until she started trying to kill people.”
Ellie moved past displays of candy, spiders and webs, camouflage face paint and long fake fingernails in deep purple, black and bloodred, and Anamaria followed. “Martha Dempsey is many things,” she said, shooting for a breezy tone, “but she’s not a killer.”
“What is she to you?”
“A blast from the past. How’s this?” Stopping in front of a selection of cheap wigs, Ellie picked up one from the top row and clamped it onto her head. The mirror next to the display showed a fringe of brow-brushing bangs and a straight fall of silken strands that ended past her shoulders. The jet-black hue gave her skin a sickly blue tinge.
“Unless you’re going as a wench of the undead, that is so not your color,” Anamaria teased. “Try this.”
She handed over another long wig, this one dark copper and curly. The color wasn’t as surprising a contrast as the black wig, but it was different enough to be fun. She pulled it off again and combed her fingers through her own blond hair. “Let me pay for this and the skirt, then let’s get out of here.” She didn’t want to run into Martha again and certainly didn’t want to be reminded how easily the woman was finding welcome in Ellie’s own town.
She’d checked out and they were walking back through the mall to the entrance when a laugh echoed across the space. She tried to ignore it, but her gaze traveled that direction anyway, to the few occupied tables at the sidewalk café that fronted the fountain. Kayla Fitzgerald sat at one, her smile serene, and Martha sat to her left. At the next table, chairs turned for easier conversation, were Sara Calloway and Jack Greyson, the man she old-fashionedly referred to as her beau.
A chill swept over Ellie. Kayla was the pastor’s wife; she had to be nice to strangers. But Sara was Anamaria’s mother-in-law. More important, she was the closest thing to a mother Tommy had ever had.
She’s taunting you, a voice in Ellie’s head whispered. She’s saying, “Look how easily I can get to them, and there’s only one way you can stop me.”
Only one way to Martha’s way of thinking: give her money and trust her to go away…until the money ran out and she needed more. Ellie could give her everything and still never buy her silence.
If there was just some way to get rid of her for good…
Get rid of her. The words echoed across the years, hurtful, yet another betrayal to a girl who’d already experienced too many. They slowed her steps until she was hardly moving.
Ellie didn’t have a clue how to manipulate and control people, but she knew someone who did. Part of Randolph Aiken’s duties as lawyer to his respectable and influential Old South family had involved persuading people who might prove cause for embarrassment to disappear, to keep their distance from and their silence about the family.
People like Ellie.
She didn’t know if Randolph had taken a liking to all the people he threatened on behalf of the Aikens, but his attitude toward her had always been somewhat paternal. He’d given her advice, stayed in touch with her long after she’d expected him to vanish, had helped her move to Charleston and put her life back together. It was his contacts that had gotten her her first job, his assistance that had led to her owning her own restaurant.
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Marilyn Pappano
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: I wish to God you were dead. Little did Ellie Chase know those would be the last words she ever spoke to her estranged mother. When Martha′s body was found the next morning, all eyes were on Ellie… who couldn′t remember what she′d done that night. So when Tommy Maricci–the man she refused to let herself love– came to her rescue, she couldn′t say no.Tommy believed in his former girlfriend′s innocence–no matter how damning the evidence against her was. She may have broken his heart, but he took her into his home for protection. Because if Ellie wasn′t the killer, someone had set her up. And Tommy refused to let anyone hurt the woman he loved.