McCloud's Woman (14 page)

He’d rather think about anything than about how he’d spent
last night. He didn’t want to analyze his abysmal behavior as any more
than stress relief and the by-product of alcohol. He definitely did not
want to know Mara’s motivation for taking him to her room. He’d just
mark it up to her living in Hollywood too long.

Maybe he should move to Hollywood. He’d never even
imagined that kind of erotic experience. He would spend the rest of his
life dreaming of having it again. Just what he needed, two Simonettis
haunting his head, one dead and one vibrantly alive.

Parking in the alley, TJ rounded the corner to discover Roger leaning against the storefront, waiting for him.

“Late night?” the reporter inquired as TJ stalked up and
stuck his key in the door. “Some guys have all the luck. I just found
out who Mara Simon is.”

“Tad slow, aren’t you?” Shoving the door open, TJ hit the
light switch. His foot encountered a fallen chair before his brain
registered the havoc strewn across the floor.

All his meticulously labeled slides and notes and the
artifacts he’d been working on for weeks lay strewn across the cheap
vinyl. He’d wanted something to drive last night out of his head. This
hadn’t been what he had in mind.

Spray-painted in red across the wall was the message YANKEE, GO HOME!

“Looks like someone doesn’t like you, old boy.” Roger pushed past a frozen TJ to examine the destruction.

“Don’t,” TJ commanded.

Roger halted where he was.

“You’ll disturb the evidence.” He thought he sounded calm, but rage roared in his head so loudly that his ears rang with it.

Roger shrugged and stepped back. “You’re the man. Want me to call the police, or you want at it first?”

This time, TJ was glad he was he man. This was how he’d
gained his reputation. No two-bit, fly-by-night vandal could escape a
trained observer who’d caught war criminals with far more experience and
blood on their hands than the pathetic jerk who’d trashed his office.

“Right,” Roger said, as if TJ had actually answered his question. “I’ll get out of your way.”

TJ was already examining the size-twelve footprint in the
dust beneath the overturned table. His expertise might be forensic
anthropology, but his training had taught him to look far beyond bones.

“Do that,” TJ answered gruffly.

“You know I’ll be back,” Roger warned. “The colonel’s
story is too big. I thought you were the one man I could count on to
give me the truth. I didn’t picture you as the sort to cover up for
corrupt officials.”

“Don’t come back until you can prove Martin is anything
other than the man who saved our lives and taught us how to survive out
there.” Searching for anything that looked out of place, TJ turned his
back on the reporter. “Until then, go far, far away.”

“What makes you so certain he didn’t do this?” Roger
responded, indicating the mayhem. “Maybe it’s a warning to tell you to
go back to Africa. Maybe someone thinks you know more than you do and
wants you out of here.”

TJ turned a scathing look at him. “Rog, you’ve got a nose
for news but no understanding of human nature. A sniveling coward did
this. You want to call Martin a sniveling coward?”

“You have some better explanation for this senseless
destruction? Give me something, McCloud. Your pal is about to go up in
flames and your office is trashed. I don’t believe in coincidences.”

TJ slid a piece of paper underneath a gray hair snagged on a torn piece of vinyl. “I can give you at least three explanations.”

Roger waited.

Folding the paper and tucking it into his pocket, TJ stood
up again. “Either Mara’s movie crew got tired of waiting around,
someone wants to cover up a sixty-year old murder, or someone just plain
doesn’t like me.”

Or any combination of the above, but Roger could figure that out for himself.

Checking the once-locked closet in the back room, TJ
cursed at the paper evidence strewn across the floor. Good thing he’d
taken the rest of the boxes to storage.

“The limo can’t take me to the set?” Glynis Everett gasped
in the same tones of horror that she’d used in a B film at the
beginning of her career.

Glynis might think she was the next Julia Roberts, but her
star was still of second-tier star and didn’t rate maximum perks. Mara
ticked off a note on her clipboard and ignored the dramatics. Once upon a
time she’d been burdened with the need to make everyone happy. Scenes
like this had burned out that need years ago. “If you can’t walk to the
beach, you can take an ATV. Surely you’re not too old to enjoy the
experience.”

Okay, so that last remark was malicious spite in
retaliation for Glynis trying to move in on TJ last night. Glynis’s
official age was six years younger than Mara’s real age, and Mara would
resent every year of that difference if she believed in official bios.
She didn’t. Hollywood worshipped youth and Glynis catered to the media.
Mara calculated her star had hit the big three-oh last year.

She could tell from Glynis’s angry silence that the dig
had hit home. Having won the battle, Mara graciously gestured at her
limo driver and bodyguard. “Jim, take Miss Everett out to the island,
would you? I have a few more things to do here. You can pick me up
later.”

Gratified at the offer of the best car available, Glynis
slinked off without further argument. Checking the actress’s footwear,
Mara grinned. Glynis would have to ride the ATV or break her fool neck
trying to cross the dune in those heels.

“Perhaps I ought to open a shoe rental stand,” a dry voice remarked.

Spinning around, Mara caught Cleo McCloud eyeing the
departing actress with cynical interest. Enjoying being on the same
wavelength with another woman for a change, Mara pocketed her cell phone
and set aside her pen to welcome Tim’s sister-in-law. “A shoe rental
will work only if you persuade them to check their egos at the door.”

A brief grin of appreciation flitted across Cleo’s face.
Shoving her hands into the pockets of her baggy camp shorts, she
sauntered closer. “A moment ago, I was thinking you might be better at
scaring off tourists in my driveway than the mechanical witch I used to
hang there, but maybe you’re human after all.”

The blunt honesty hit Mara’s funny bone, and she laughed
at what should have been an insult. “I operate on automatic once
production starts. Snap, and I snap harder, so watch out.”

Cleo eyed her with curiosity. “Snap too hard, and you
break. Been there, done that. But I didn’t come over here to hand out
bad psychology, I’m looking for TJ. He didn’t come home last night, and
this morning he has police tape across his office door. I figure he’s a
big boy and can take care of himself, but Matty still gets upset when he
sees police tape. I told him I’d make certain everything is all right.”

Mara had the feeling that this was a long speech for Cleo,
and that she had to care about TJ a great deal more than she let on.
Living in a shallow world that didn’t look beneath surfaces, Mara
normally would have accepted Cleo’s speech at face value.

Today, the idea of anything happening to TJ aroused irrational panic.

“TJ spent the night here.” Mara tried to act calm while
her insane imagination flew over all the things that might have
happened. “He was fine when he left a few hours ago.”

Unthinkingly, she looked for Jim to see if he’d heard
anything on his scanner, but cursing, she remembered her driver had left
for the beach. Shoving the clipboard at one of the dozen assistants
running around trying to get the crew off, Mara strode for the street.
“Where’s the police station?”

Running backward in front of her, Cleo spread her arms and
blocked Mara’s path. “Whoa, sister! No point in going off like a cocked
pistol. If TJ was alive and well this morning, then he’s terrorizing
some poor official somewhere. You really don’t want to face the sheriff
after Tim’s worked him over.”

Heart rate reducing to almost normal, Mara halted and
tried to locate her equilibrium. She couldn’t. Police tape and TJ
stirred ancient, moldering fears. “How do we know TJ’s murdered body
isn’t behind that tape?” she demanded.

Cleo snorted in a definitely unladylike manner. “This is a
small town. If TJ had been murdered, my phones would be ringing off the
hook. Silence means no one got hurt. That’s all that’s important. Sorry
if I disturbed you, but I wanted to be able to tell the kid his uncle
could still beat him up when he gets home.”

Still not convinced, Mara restlessly continued pacing toward the street. “What about Jared? Wouldn’t TJ have called him?”

Cleo laughed and fell into step with her. “Just exactly
how well do you know the McCloud men? Walking testimonies to
testosterone, the three of them. Men like that don’t communicate, they
compete.”

Mara considered that and kept walking. She might want to
beat the aggravating beast to a pulp, but nobody—no one, ever—had
treated her as if she were the moon and stars all wrapped in precious
silk as TJ had last night.

Yeah, he had a little temper control problem when she
pushed too hard, but given how that had turned out, he could lose
control with her any time he chose. “They can communicate, if pressed,”
Mara replied. “TJ’s likely to blame me or the crew if anything happened.
Where’s the sheriff’s office?”

Cleo whistled and glanced up and down the street as they
emerged from the inn yard. “Forget the sheriff. Let’s try the café.”
Without waiting for agreement, she strode off in the direction of the
harbor.

All right, so networking worked the same in small- town
America as it did in Hollywood. One just needed to know where the in
crowd hung. She could accept that. Glancing down at her curve-clinging
white knit jumpsuit, Mara felt the old self-consciousness return.
“They’re not going to talk with me around, are they? Maybe I should go
back—”

Impatiently, Cleo tugged open a glass door painted with
blue dolphins. “Don’t wimp out now. You want to look like an albino
giraffe, make ’em accept albino giraffes.”

Albino giraffe? Startled by this perspective on her
carefully chosen designer outfit, Mara instinctively sought
retaliation—until she encountered a roomful of expectant faces watching
their entrance, and froze. She hadn’t been so nervous before an audience
since high school graduation. Gingerly, she trailed Cleo into the
lion’s den.

“Where’s TJ?” Cleo demanded of no one in particular,
weaving her way between tables to the counter. “Did he finally murder
his assistant?”

“Someone trashed his office,” a gum-chewing waitress responded laconically. “Gonna introduce us to your friend?”

“Why? So you can ask for an autograph? I don’t think so.”
Cleo appropriated a stool at the counter and spun it to face the
grizzled old man on her left. “Hey, Ed, thought you were going to keep
an eye on those pirate bones of Tim’s.”

Having the feeling that she’d stumbled into Oz again, or
at least through a rabbit hole, Mara smiled apologetically at the
unperturbed waitress and ordered a coffee. Nearly six feet in her high
heels and stacked curls, she towered over her audience. Lowering herself
to the stool on Cleo’s right, she attempted invisibility while waiting
for a reply to Cleo’s question.

She might as well have attempted to feel inconspicuous
sitting on a mantel flapping angel wings before a choir of awestruck
kids. All eyes focused on her.

“Ain’t pirate bones,” the old man scoffed, tipping the
beak of his John Deere cap to Mara. “German, if anything. Bet he’ll find
their sub if he digs deep enough.”

“You’ll be the first to know if he does,” Cleo assured
him, before turning back to the waitress. “All right, you win. This is
Mara Simon, and she’s running the show over at the inn. Now tell us
where big brother is.”

The lanky waitress set two steaming mugs of coffee in
front of them. “Pleased to meetcha, Miss Simon. Don’t mind Cleo’s
manners. She’s equally rude to everyone.”

So this is what it was like to suffer culture shock, Mara
decided, sipping her coffee and wondering how to reply. No false smiles
or kissy faces, no charming lies, Versace halter tops, or glass
slippers. Maybe she’d been gone from Brooklyn too long. Had people been
this up-front there? If so, she didn’t remember it. She’d done a damned
good job of forgetting her childhood.

She had the nervous feeling everyone in the room hung on
her reply. Setting the cup down, she tried to adapt to her surroundings.
“Not rude, but blunt, I’d say,” she answered cautiously. “Cleo is blunt
and concerned. Police tape means bad things where I come from.” Bad
line, she reprimanded herself. Next, they’d be asking where she came
from.

Cleo expertly diverted their attention. “Yeah, I’m
concerned. No one else is crazy enough to rent my beach house in the
middle of hurricane season. I’m in danger of losing money here. Has the
sheriff locked him up?”

Laughter rippled through the room, and Mara relaxed.
Always take a good guide into strange territory, she noted in her mental
PDA. Hurricane season? She pushed that particular piece of panic aside.

“Nah, McCloud is threatening to call in the state cops if
the sheriff don’t get off his fat duff and do something. Some kid
trashed his office,” a baseball-capped man commented from a nearby
table.

“Duff” and not “ass,” Mara mused. Definitely a time warp.
She breathed a little easier knowing TJ was up to his usual macho
tactics and not harmed in any way.

“Thanks, Goober,” Cleo called. “Does the sheriff need rescuing or should I leave them alone?”

More laughter. No longer feeling as if she were the target
of everyone’s gaze, Mara relaxed. Getting into the scene, she tried a
line of her own. “Let the sheriff call the cops,” she said blithely,
helping herself to a donut from the plastic case on the counter. “I’ll
add them to the cast. The role of pirate should come naturally.”