Once Bitten (A Melanie Travis Mystery) (19 page)

“It’s fine. Better than fine. It’s a great idea. Of course Davey’s outgrown that little hoop. I should have thought to do something about it myself—”

Bob’s hand reached up, fingers pressing against my lips. I knew he wanted only to silence me, but the move felt unbearably erotic. For a moment, I not only couldn’t speak, I couldn’t breathe. I had to force myself to concentrate so I could hear what Bob was saying.

“It’s harder for you to see these things because you have him every day and the changes come so gradually.” Bob sighed. “He’s growing up so quickly. And you’re doing a wonderful job, Mel.”

“Thanks.” I exhaled slowly. It felt as though I’d been holding my breath for a week. “He loves having you here.”

Bob flipped off the light, then reached for the overhead door. I stepped back out of the way as he pulled it down into place.

Over the rumble of castors rolling through the grooves, I could have sworn I heard him say, “Maybe I should stay here, then.”

“What?”

Bob straightened, turned, and smiled. “Nothing.”

Nothing indeed.

I
nside, Davey and Faith were waiting for us.

“What took you guys so long?” my son complained.

“We were looking at your new basketball hoop,” I said.

Davey’s eyes lit up. “You mean it’s all right?”

“Fine by me. You and Dad are the ones who are going to do all the work. And speaking of work, thanks for straightening up the garage.”

Davey’s small frame swelled with pride. “We cleaned for
hours.”

“It looks like it. You did a terrific job.”

I looked through the living room into the dining room and saw that the table was set for two. In the center, pale pink roses were floating in a low vase. They were flanked by a pair of polished candlesticks, holding new ivory-colored tapers.

“What’s up?” I asked.

Davey giggled. Bob closed the front door. Was I the only one who noticed that nobody answered?

“Remember our deal,” Bob said in an undertone to Davey.

I have mother’s ears, teacher’s ears. Nothing sneaky gets past me. “What deal?” I asked.

Davey lifted his hand to his mouth and yawned lustily. “I’m really tired,” he said. “I think I’ll go to bed.”

“Now? It’s barely seven o’clock.”

“G’night!” Davey scampered up the steps. Faith trotted along behind him.

That left just the two of us, and all at once, my ex-husband’s ears were looking a little pink.

“Bob?”

His smile was hesitant, tentative. “Surprise.”

I gazed once more toward the dining room, considered my options, and decided that I quite liked the notion of being cosseted. “You cooked dinner, too?”

“Too?”

“I thought the clean garage was my surprise.”

Briefly, Bob looked taken aback. “The garage? What’s romantic about that?”

Little did he know.

I walked through to the dining room and stopped beside the table, lowering my face to inhale the roses’ heady scent. “Is that what you were aiming for, romance?”

The color in Bob’s ears spread to his cheeks. “Umm . . . I guess. Is it working?”

“It’s working.” I turned to face him. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He looked like a man who needed desperately to find something to do with his hands. “I have some wine chilling in the refrigerator. Would you like a glass?”

“Sure.”

Why not? I thought. This was Bob’s show. He could run it any way he liked. I followed him out to the kitchen. Whatever he had in the oven smelled wonderful.

“What’s for dinner?”

He pulled out a cold bottle of chardonnay and attacked the cork with a corkscrew. “You know I don’t actually cook.”

“Still?”

When Bob and I were together, hamburgers, charred on the grill, had been the limit of his culinary expertise. But he’d had years since then—most of them bachelor years—to rectify that situation.

“Still.” He eased the cork out of the bottle and filled two wine goblets. “Frank told me about a little catering shop in Greenwich.”

“Not Fabulous Food?”

“That’s the one. He recommended the veal piccata.”

“I love veal piccata.”

“I know.”

Bob handed me a glass, then held his own aloft. “How about a toast?”

“To what?”

“Old friends.” He cocked a brow. “New beginnings?”

I found myself hesitating. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Are you so sure it isn’t?”

“No.”

Bob reached over and gently raised my arm. “Then let’s just go with that for now.”

The older I get, the more I’ve realized there are some things in life that maybe we aren’t meant to understand. Or to examine. Or to rail against. Sometimes you just have to let go and let fate take you for a ride. So I didn’t have all the answers. Maybe, for once, I could just stop asking so many questions.

I lit the candles while Bob served the food. The veal piccata was indeed fabulous and we both dug in hungrily. Neither of us mentioned a word about sublimation. And since Davey kept whispering instructions to Faith to be quiet, we both realized that our son was eavesdropping from the top of the stairs.

Some day when I look back on my life and think about the times I shared with Bob, I’m sure I’ll remember that night as one of the best. Even now, I’m not sure how the evening would have ended if we hadn’t been interrupted. Was the shrill ring of the telephone a kindness or a curse? A calamity or a good excuse? I’ll probably never know.

Dishes piled in the sink for later, candles burned halfway down, we were lingering over coffee when the call came.

“Leave it,” said Bob, reaching across the table to take my hand as I started to get up. “Let the machine get it.”

I sat back down, but I was listening. So was he. Hearing the quick beep, I tensed slightly.

“Melanie? It’s Bertie. If you’re there, pick up. I have to talk to you. It’s important.”

I heard Bob sigh, felt his reluctance as he released my hand. I was already rising.

I headed out to the kitchen and lifted the receiver. “I’m here. What is it? Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine and so is Frank.” Bertie sounded relieved to have found me. “Bob, too, I think, though I don’t know where he is.”

“He’s here.”

“There?” Her voice squeaked. “With you?”

“Yes, with me. We were eating dinner.”

“Isn’t it kind of late for that?”

I shrugged at Bob, who was frowning, and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Is that what you called me about?”

“No, of course not . . . sorry. It’s Josh. You know, my cousin? He’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

In the dining room, Bob pushed back his chair and stood. I guessed he’d heard enough to realize that I wouldn’t be returning to the table any time soon. He carried my coffee cup over and set it next to me on the counter. I nodded my thanks.

“Actually,” Bertie reconsidered, “it’s worse than that. I should have started at the beginning. Sara’s stepfather is dead.”

I straightened abruptly, the last vestiges of my mellow mood slipping away. “What happened?”

“He was murdered.”

“When?”

“I think around an hour ago. I just heard about it from Josh.”

“What does he have to do with it?”

“That’s the thing, he says nothing. But he was there.”

“Where?”

“At the Warings’, when Grant was shot. There was an intruder and a struggle. Grant was shot in the throat. He died almost instantly.”

“Where was Josh while this was happening?” I asked. “Where were Sara and Delilah? And what was Josh doing at the Warings’ to begin with?”

“I’m not sure.” Bertie’s voice was tight. “There are a few holes in what Josh told me. He called from the Warings’ house a few minutes ago. The police are there, and they’ve detained him for questioning.”

“He called you and you called me?” I asked incredulously. “Bertie, are you nuts? You should have called him a lawyer.”

“I thought of that, but Josh said there was no need. He’s just going to tell the police everything he knows about what happened. Josh said he’d come over here when he was done. I thought maybe you could come, too.”

“I’m on my way.” A sudden thought struck me. “Bertie, did Josh mention if Sara was there?”

“Yes, I guess so. He said that Delilah was nearly hysterical and Sara was trying to find a doctor to come and sedate her.”

“So she hasn’t disappeared again or anything?”

“I don’t think so.”

That was a relief.

“You’re going out,” Bob said as I hung up. The statement was devoid of censure, but he didn’t sound happy.

“I’m sorry. I have to.” I slipped my arms around his shoulders and pulled him close for a hug. I
was
sorry. I knew how hard he’d worked to make the evening perfect. “Everything was wonderful.”

“For me, too,” said Bob. “Do you want me to stay with Davey?”

“Can you?”

“Of course.” His smile was wry as he glanced toward the sink. “Besides, I guess I’ve got some more cleaning up to do.”

If he was trying to make me feel guilty, he was succeeding. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to indulge Bob or the emotion. I grabbed my purse and keys off the counter and hurried out the door.

It took me twenty minutes to reach Bertie’s place in Wilton. I sped most of the way. Murder is a rare occurrence in lower Fairfield County. Right then, I figured the New Canaan police had bigger things to worry about than whether or not I was breaking the traffic laws in their jurisdiction.

Bertie’s house was in north Wilton, almost on the Ridgefield border. She was lucky enough to have a piece of land that was tucked in alongside a nature preserve, and due to the demands of her job, she usually had about a dozen dogs in residence. The basement of her home had been converted into kennel space to accommodate the lodgers.

When I pulled up to the small frame house, all the outdoor lights were on. Bertie met me on the porch. She must have been waiting by a front window.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I apologize for dragging you all the way over here, but I couldn’t think who else to call. Josh just phoned. He should be here any minute.”

Bertie’s living room was cluttered and comfortable. Her furniture was overstuffed and often covered with animal hair. Bertie didn’t give a damn. She usually had a dog or two loose in the house, but that night they’d all been put away in their pens. As I sat down, a gray striped tomcat with white paws and a bushy tail sauntered into the room and hopped nimbly onto my lap.

“Beagle, cut that out,” Bertie grumbled as the cat began to rub its head back and forth across the front of my sweater. Being a cat, Beagle ignored her.

“That’s all right, I don’t mind.”

Actually I thought their association was rather funny. Bertie, whose first love was dogs of all shapes and sizes, had found the scrawny, scrappy kitten abandoned by the side of the road, and nursed him back to health. Initially loathe to admit that she’d become a cat owner, much less a cat lover, she’d named Beagle after a favorite breed of hound. As if that somehow lessened the sting.

“As long as he doesn’t try to sharpen his claws on me.”

Bertie grinned. “He’ll work his way around to that once he gets you softened up.”

We both heard the sound of an approaching car, and Bertie hopped up to open the door again. Josh walked in the house looking pale and tired, and more than a little shell-shocked.

“Are you okay?” Bertie asked.

Josh shrugged. He pulled off his leather jacket and wool muffler and handed them to his cousin. Since he didn’t seem surprised to see me, I figured Bertie had told him I’d be coming. He walked into the living room and slumped onto the couch, automatically lifting both feet and placing them on the scarred chest that served as a coffee table.

“What happened?” I asked.

Josh raised a weary hand and rubbed it across his eyes. “Grant Waring’s dead. Shot.”

“Do the police know who did it?” Bertie walked over and sat down beside him.

“No. Right now, they probably don’t know a whole lot more than I do.”

“Tell us about it,” I said.

“According to Delilah, she was reading in the library. Grant was in his office. She heard some sort of crash, then she thought she heard someone yelling but she couldn’t make out any words. Next thing she knew, there was a shot. She went running into the office and found Grant bleeding on the floor.”

“Where were you while all this was going on?”

“In my car, heading down the driveway. I’d stopped by earlier to see Sara. She and I had talked, and I left. She called me on my cell phone as I was driving away.

“At first I couldn’t make out a word she was saying. I thought we had a bad connection, but then I realized she was screaming and gasping for breath. She told me someone had broken into the house and shot Grant, so I immediately turned around and went back.”

“So you weren’t actually in the house when it happened?”

“No. I just told you that, didn’t I?” Josh’s voice held steady. “Nor did I see anyone outside. The police already asked me about that, too.”

“Did Delilah have any idea who this intruder was?” Bertie asked.

“Delilah wasn’t . . .” He stopped and shook his head. “She wasn’t really coherent. Not when I got there, and not for the police either. She and Sara both had blood all over them. Sara said they’d tried CPR, but I don’t know why. One look and anyone would have known—”

“You saw the body?” Bertie’s eyes were wide.

“What choice did I have? I went tearing back up to the house and ran inside. Sara and Delilah were both frantic. I didn’t know how bad things really were. I thought maybe I could help. . . .”

Josh’s voice trailed away. He looked down at his hands. His fingers were clasped tightly in his lap.