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Authors: Beverly Barton

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Suspense

Close Enough to Kill (6 page)

BOOK: Close Enough to Kill
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He opened the middle desk drawer and brought out his sketch pad and pencil, then closed his eyes for just a moment—long enough to picture her in his mind. His eagerness transferred to his drawing as he quickly sketched Thomasina’s face, her flowing dark hair, her sweet smile, her long, slender neck, the curve of her naked shoulder.

There, that’s enough. Stop.

He laid the charcoal pencil aside and took a deep breath. Thinking of her naked, of her lush breasts, the nipples peaked, her flat belly, her nicely rounded hips, and that thatch of dark hair between her thighs aroused him unbearably. But he couldn’t draw her that way. Not yet. It wasn’t time.

Accept the pain. Make it your friend. Remember that waiting for her makes the moment you first come together all the sweeter.

Tomorrow, he’d find a way to deliver his note and little gifts. It shouldn’t be a problem. She drove into Adams Landing every Saturday morning and went to Robyn Granger’s gym.

 

Ron went around to the back door and pecked on the glass. When he’d called Abby to cancel their weekend plans, she’d been disappointed, but she’d understood. After all, he was a deputy, and the Stephanie Preston murder case was the biggest thing to happen in Adams County in a good ten years or longer.

He waited for Abby to come to the door; then when she didn’t, he pecked again and called her name softly. He had parked down the street and come down the alley, taking every precaution not to be seen. But hell, it was eleven-thirty—who’d be up at this hour staring out their windows?

“Abby, honey…”

He heard footsteps inside the dark kitchen, then the distinctive click of the deadbolt being unlocked. The minute she opened the door, he rushed inside, kicked the door shut behind himself, and grabbed her.

“Slow down,” she told him, then giggled when he grabbed her ass with both hands and yanked her up against his hard-as-a-rock penis.

“I can’t slow down, baby. I want you too much.”

He kissed her neck as he rubbed her mound against his arousal.

“You can at least wait till we get to the bedroom,” she said. “I’ve had a long, rough day and I don’t want to wind up with my butt on the floor or slammed up against the wall.”

“Ah, baby, you like it any way you can get it.”

When he lifted her up off the floor, she wrapped her legs around his hips and tossed back her head when he opened his mouth and covered one breast through the thin material of her shorty pajama top.

Clinging to him, whimpering and talking dirty, Abby encouraged him to hurry as he carried her out of the kitchen, up the hall and into her bedroom. After tossing her onto the bed, he stripped off his clothes, and by the time he came down over her, she was naked and ready. Without saying a word, she reached out, encircled his dick and slid a condom over it. No matter how turned on Abby got, she never forgot to make sure she was protected. He liked that about her, that she took care of herself instead of expecting him to do it.

He thrust into her with one powerful lunge and nearly came right off the bat. She was hot and wet and tight. When she bucked up, he clutched her buttocks and held her for half a second before retreating and plunging again.

“I’m not going to be able to hold it much longer, baby,” he told her.

She slid her hand between her legs and stroked herself. “I’ll just help things along.”

He paused, allowing her to go at it, all the while whispering in her ear, talking the talk, exciting her. In only a matter of minutes, she came in a frenzy, crying, shivering. He jack-hammered into her for a couple of seconds, then came, the top of his head exploding as he jetted into the condom.

Once he was spent, he rolled off her and onto the bed beside her. She cuddled up against him and said, “Get some rest. Next time I’m not going to let you off the hook so easily.”

Ron reached over and stroked her belly, then delved his hand between her thighs. She was damp and sticky. When he fingered her clitoris, she whimpered.

“Set the alarm, will you, babe? I need to leave here before sunrise. We don’t want to run the risk of somebody seeing me sneak out your back door.”

“I’ll set it for four,” she told him. “That’ll give us time for a good morning fuck.”

Chuckling, Ron closed his eyes and hugged up to Abby, spoon-fashion.

Chapter 6

Ever since her younger daughter had returned to Adams Landing and opened her own business—Robyn’s Fitness Center—Brenda Granger had made a point of taking an active part in several classes Robyn offered. Brenda’s favorite was the Saturday morning session where a group of women went from doing stretches together to alternating on all the various equipment—everything from the treadmills to the stationary bicycles. After the first hour, they took a water break, then after the second hour, many of them stayed on and had lunch together. Robyn provided fresh salads with low-fat dressing and yogurt for dessert.

Since Brenda had kept herself in shape all her life and had been blessed with a great metabolism, she hadn’t needed to worry about her weight until she went through menopause; then ten extra pounds had crept up around her hips and abdomen before she knew it. It had taken her two months of diet and exercise to get back down to what her husband laughingly referred to as her fighting weight.

As she stood back and watched Robyn, in her much-too-skimpy exercise costume, Brenda sighed, then took a hefty sip of bottled spring water. Her younger daughter resembled her a great deal, with a slender figure, full breasts and curly, jet-black hair. Thankfully, Robyn had also inherited her great metabolism, as well as her love for physical exercise to keep her fabulous body toned. She had gotten her height from her six-four father, just as her sister, Bernie, had. Robyn was five-eight, and Bernie was just a tad over five-nine.

Poor Bernie had not inherited her mother’s slender build or her great metabolism. Ever since childhood, Brenda’s elder daughter had been large boned and tended to gain weight easily, as R.B. did. Bernie was as much her father’s daughter as Robyn was her mother’s, in looks and temperament.

But both girls were equally disappointing to a mother who longed to see her daughters happily married and producing some grandchildren for her. After all, neither she nor R.B. was getting any younger. A woman of fifty-eight should already have several grandchildren.

At least Robyn was dating regularly, although Brenda didn’t always approve of the choices she made. Bernie, on the other hand, dated infrequently and seemed to let every good prospect slip through her fingers.

Brenda felt it her motherly duty to do what she could to help both girls find the proper mate. That’s why she had invited two very suitable young men to Sunday dinner tomorrow. Raymond Long was a fine man and not bad looking, despite being a bit of a nerd. He owned the local hardware store and could provide handsomely for a wife. Luckily, he had divorced that hussy wife of his before they’d had children. And it didn’t hurt that Raymond’s mother, Helen, had been one of Brenda’s best friends for ages. The other Sunday guests would include the new minister, Matthew Donaldson. Matthew was young, handsome, charismatic, and best of all, he was single.

“Are you staying for lunch, Brenda?” Abby Miller asked.

“I wouldn’t miss it.” Brenda smiled warmly at Abby, although she didn’t especially like the woman. Abby wore too much makeup, dyed her hair that phony blue-black and wore clothes that screamed trailer trash. And there was a rumor going around town that Abby was secretly seeing another man while her poor husband was off in the Middle East serving his country.

The others staying for lunch began making a circle in the middle of the exercise room floor. Brenda glanced around to ascertain just who was still here so she could decide who she wanted to sit by. One by one, she ruled out the women she did not want to talk to for the half-hour lunch session. Definitely not Abby Miller. She crossed Renee Michaels off her list immediately. That woman didn’t have a brain in her silly head. Besides, it was a known fact Renee was a slut. Deputy Holly Burcham was another no-no, but only because she was sitting beside Renee, as was Amber Claunch, whom Brenda liked.

“Hmm…” Brenda spotted Bernie’s secretary, Lisa Wiley, and started in her direction, but stopped the minute she saw Cathy Downs sit beside Lisa. Cathy was a sweet person, but she would bore you to tears with her incessant chatter. The woman never stopped talking—about her children, her husband Lieutenant John Downs and her latest diet. The plump chatterbox tried every new diet craze that came along and did her best to convince everyone else that this one was the miracle cure for overweight women.

As her gaze traveled the completely formed circle, she suddenly saw her perfect spot, right between Amy Simms and Thomasina Hardy. Brenda hurried across the room, then paused and looked from Amy to Thomasina.

“Would y’all mind making room for me?” Before either could reply, Brenda squeezed in between them, forcing them to separate enough to make room for her.

Amy smiled pleasantly at Brenda. “Yes, please, join us.”

“We were just talking about what happened to that poor girl, Stephanie Preston, from over in Scottsboro,” Thomasina said.

“It’s the world we live in.” Brenda shook her head sadly. “When I was a girl, you never heard of anything like that happening around here. Northeast Alabama was one of the safest places on earth to live. Why, my folks never locked the doors and we slept with the windows open and never worried about somebody breaking into the house.”

“All the article in this morning’s
Daily Reporter
said was that she’d been murdered.” Amy looked right at Brenda. “You don’t know anything else, do you? Something you could share with us?”

Brenda smiled, hoping her expression conveyed to these ladies that she did, indeed, know something very important about the murder case. Although she knew no more than they did, being the sheriff’s mother, as she had once been the sheriff’s wife, afforded her the privilege of pretending to be in possession of top-secret information.

“I’m afraid there’s nothing I’m at liberty to share with y’all,” Brenda said. “There are many things that can’t be shared with the public or it might jeopardize the case. I learned years ago, as R.B.’s wife, to keep my mouth shut.”

“Oh, Brenda, come on,” Amy cajoled. “Isn’t there some little something? You know we’d never tell a soul.”

Brenda shook her head, then leaned over and whispered to Amy, “Well…No, no, I can’t. Sorry.”

“We understand,” Thomasina said. “Besides, I’m not sure I want to know the details. Rumors are that she was naked when they found her, and you know what that usually means—it means she was probably raped. Poor girl.”

“Wonder if they think her husband killed her?” Amy said. “I tried to pry something out of Jerry Dale last night, but he wasn’t talking. I told him, what good is it for me to be the DA’s wife if the DA never tells me anything.”

All three women laughed.

“Did somebody tell a good joke?” Robyn asked as she pulled the serving cart behind herself.

“Not really,” Brenda replied. “It was just nervous laughter.”

“We were talking about that poor Stephanie Preston,” Thomasina said.

Robyn retrieved two salads in plastic containers from the serving cart, then handed one to Thomasina and the other to her mother. “You know, when she came up missing and all those searches didn’t turn up anything, I had a feeling she was dead. It gives me cold chills to think about what happened to her.” Robyn handed Amy a salad.

“We were trying to dig information out of your mother, but she won’t tell us anything,” Amy said.

Robyn eyed her mother speculatively, the corners of her wide, full mouth turning up ever so slightly. Brenda knew that expression only too well. It was Robyn’s shame-on-you-Mama look.

“Being members of the sheriff’s family doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in possession of any more information than the average citizen,” Robyn said, then winked at her mother.

Brenda let out a mental sigh of relief that her daughter hadn’t given her away. But then Robyn had been Brenda’s coconspirator all her life, backing her up, keeping her secrets, sharing in her love for gossip. Bernie had been the tattletale, always telling R.B. everything. Her elder daughter had never learned the art of telling socially acceptable little white lies. Like R.B., she could be too in-your-face blunt and brutally honest. That detrimental trait wasn’t very appealing to most men and was probably one of the reasons Bernie couldn’t find a husband. That and the fact that Bernie needed to lose twenty pounds.

 

Since the Preston home was in Jackson County, Sheriff Mays accompanied Bernie, Jim and Charlie Patterson when they met Kyle Preston and Stephanie’s parents at the white vinyl-sided house the newlywed couple had rented near Hollywood. Bernie asked the parents and husband to come outside with her and sit on the porch to talk to her and Ed Mays while Charlie Patterson and Jim Norton searched the house.

The parents sat side by side in the porch swing. The husband sat in one of the two white rocking chairs, while Ed Mays took the other. Bernie remained standing.

“I can only imagine how difficult this is for y’all.” Bernie looked at each of them individually. “And I’m truly sorry that we have to question y’all again.”

“Ed explained,” Jay Floyd, Stephanie’s father, said. “We want to do whatever we can to help y’all catch whoever killed our little girl.” Tears welled up in the middle-aged man’s faded brown eyes.

“We appreciate your cooperation.” Bernie glanced at Emmy Floyd, Stephanie’s mother, who sat quietly, tears streaming down her cheeks and a glazed expression on her face. She held her hands in her lap and kept twisting her gold wedding band around and around. Dear God, how horrible this must be for her. To lose a child would be bad enough, but to know that child had suffered repeated brutality for nearly two weeks would be something no mother could ever come to terms with.

Bernie turned to Kyle Preston, and she could tell by the glassy look in his eyes that he was still medicated. “Mr. Preston…Kyle…thank you for allowing us to search your house. I promise that Agent Patterson and Captain Norton will not tear things apart in the search.”

“I don’t know what they think they’ll find,” Kyle said. “If I’m not a suspect…” His voice cracked. He swallowed hard.

“You’re not a suspect, Kyle. Your in-laws verify the fact that you were at their house the evening Stephanie came up missing, that you two had eaten supper there before her night class and that you’d stayed on to help Mr. Floyd work on his tractor.”

“That’s right,” Jay Floyd said. “We expected Stephie to come back by and pick up Kyle, and when she didn’t show up by eleven, we called Ed.”

Bernie nodded. “I realize y’all have answered a lot of questions since that night, that y’all did everything you could to help us in our investigation then and again yesterday after we verified that Stephanie was dead.”

Emmy Floyd keened softly. Her lips puckered; her chin quivered. Jay scooted closer to his wife where they sat in the porch swing and put his arm around her shoulders.

“I hate to go over this again, but it’s possible something one of you thinks is totally insignificant might help us in the investigation.” Bernie eased backward and braced her hips against the porch banisters. “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Stephanie? Someone who was upset with her or had a grudge against one of you?”

“Our girl didn’t have an enemy in this world,” Jay said. “She was as good as gold.”

“Jay and Emmy don’t have any enemies,” Ed Mays told Bernie. “I don’t know a soul who doesn’t think the world of them and of all three of their kids, too.”

Bernie nodded again. “What about you, Kyle?”

“I don’t know of anybody, except maybe all of Stephie’s old boyfriends,” Kyle replied. “They gotta be jealous because I got Stephie.”

“She was a prize,” Jay said. “Pretty. Smart as a whip. A good girl.”

Old boyfriends. Hmm…Was it possible that an old boyfriend hated Stephanie for dumping him in favor of Kyle? Hated her enough to kidnap her, rape and torture her, then kill her?

“Was Stephanie dating someone she broke up with before the two of you got serious?” Bernie asked.

“I—I wasn’t serious about the old boyfriends,” Kyle said nervously. “The only boyfriend she ever had before me was Richie Lowery.”

“Richie was a good boy,” Jay said. “Besides, he’s the one who broke up with Stephie.”

“He might have been the one who ended things, but I think he wished he hadn’t,” Kyle said.

“What makes you say that?” Bernie asked.

Kyle glanced at his wife’s parents, then at Ed Mays. “Stephie got some notes and some little presents from him last month. She showed them to me and I told her that if he called her or bothered her, she was to tell me and I’d go have a talk with Richie. You know, beat the shit out of him if he messed with her.”

“Are you saying Richie was harassing Stephanie?” Bernie looked point-blank at Kyle.

“Nah, nothing like that. After a couple of notes and presents, nothing else happened. I guess when Stephie didn’t respond, he got the message that she was happily married.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about this before now?” Ed asked.

“I didn’t think about it,” Kyle admitted. “It wasn’t anything important. Like I said, nothing more ever came of it.”

“Where does Richie Lowery live?” Bernie posed this question to Stephanie’s parents.

“As far as I know, he still lives in Hollywood,” Jay said. “You don’t think Richie…” He cleared his throat. “The boy was all right. There’s no way he would have hurt Stephie. He wasn’t the type.”

“I understand,” Bernie said. “But it won’t hurt to question him.”

As she continued speaking with the family, periodically checking her watch and wondering just how long it would take Jim and Charlie to do a thorough inspection of the house, she became more and more certain that Stephanie’s parents and husband didn’t know anything that could shed new light on the case. That is, other than the information about Richie Lowery, which Bernie’s instincts told her probably wouldn’t amount to anything. Not unless Kyle wasn’t telling her everything. But the guy seemed to be an open book.

After running out of questions, Bernie let Ed take over and she sat back and listened. He talked to the family, reminisced about Stephanie and gave them the opportunity to relive happier days.

The front door opened and Jim peered out onto the porch. His gaze connected with Bernie’s. He nodded for her to come to him. She eased up from her perch on the banisters and headed toward the door.

BOOK: Close Enough to Kill
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