Shadowed Paradise (5 page)

“
Did you say your name is blue, like
the color?” Claire asked as Brad found a glass and poured her a
beer. They sat, facing each other, at the kitchen table.

“
Yeah. Long story. I’ll tell you about
it sometime.”

Claire couldn’t take her eyes off his pale
glistening hair, framing his face and tumbling damply over his
shoulders. Brad Blue had more hair than she did. “What were you
going to say to Jamie about your hair before you changed your
mind?”

His lips curled in a long, lazy smile. “That
I started to wear it this way because my grandfather hated it.”

“
You still have a
grandfather?”

“
Eighty-five, going on a hundred and
ten. The most cantankerous, difficult, miserable son of a bitch
you’d ever care to not meet. He made my mother’s life hell, not to
mention my grandmother’s.” Brad stopped abruptly, chugged the rest
of his beer. Leaning his chair back at a precarious angle, he
retrieved another bottle from the refrigerator.

“
Sorry,” he murmured as he popped the
cap with his fingers. “As I said, ‘long story.’ I’ll tell you
sometime.”

So much for innocuous topics of conversation.
Claire had her own difficulties with family skeletons. “I want to
apologize for Jamie—”

“
Don’t. He’s a good kid.”

“
Yes, he is, but I want you to
understand. There was an incident. As you say, ‘long story,’ but he
was involved with a lot of sirens and lights and people asking him
questions. Most of the time he’s fine, but there in the truck, all
alone, not knowing what had happened to me . . . when he heard the
noise, saw all the lights, it was just too much.”

“
I told you, no need to explain. I
figured it must be something like that. You don’t owe me any
details. I just happened to be in the right place at the right
time. I’m glad I could help. As it turned out, you didn’t really
need me.”

Didn’t need him?
“You kept me sane,” Claire told him flatly.

“
No. You’re a tough lady. You’d have
made it on your own.”

“
I’d still be out there, banging on
doors, trying to find someone who hadn’t gone north for the
summer.”

Brad chuckled. “You’re probably right. As I
said, I’m glad I came along.”

A flash of headlights signaled the arrival of
the tow truck. Not until Claire saw Brad Blue pay the tow truck
driver did she realize just how far her wits had gone begging. Brad
waved off her sputtered apologies, her insistence on writing him a
check. She stood there, cheeks burning, as he test-drove her car
out to the main road and back.

Her problem was that Jim had spoiled
her . . . or, more likely, his tight grasp on the fabric of their
lives was all part of his Big Secret.
Mustn’t let Claire find out
. Car problems, house
problems, school problems—he had smoothed the rough edges of her
life with a genuine flair for getting things done.

He had, in the end, even killed himself with
style.

After Brad pronounced the Toyota fit to
drive, Claire walked with him to the pickup, where he stood looking
down at her, far too close for comfort. Her hormones waged war with
her pride. Fate had dropped this incredible hunk in her lap, and he
was about to drive away. Out of her life. Maybe she should just
grab him by the lapels and—

“
Tell you what,” Brad drawled, “if it
makes you feel better, you can buy me dinner. We can trade long
stories. How about tomorrow night?”

“
Lord love a duck!” Jody burst out as
she came charging back into the front office. “One of them even
wanted to know if the unit had a steam iron? Can you imagine
calling from Michigan for that? Ocean view maybe, but a
steam iron
? Who irons anyway? Do
you?”

Claire came back to the world with a rude
thump. The little colorful icons glowed on the screen in front of
her. It was morning. She was in the office. She was supposed to be
working, not dreaming about some schizoid developer who would
probably turn out to be cheating on his wife. She practically
dented the mouse as she shut down Windows in order to boot the
DOS-based access to the Multiple Listing Service.

“
Uh, no.” Claire gave Jody a belated
answer to her question. “I almost never iron. It’s like there’s
some law that says you’re a wimp if your all-cotton doesn’t have
wrinkles.”

She didn’t hear Jody’s appreciative laughter.
The words on the screen caught her full attention. Claire was about
to run the daily Hot Sheet, the list of all real estate activities
in greater Golden Beach, an area that stretched twenty-five miles
along the Gulf Coast but was only about eight miles wide, bounded
on the west by the Gulf of Mexico and on the east by the Calusa
River. Beyond the river, there was nothing but jungle and cow
country.

But today something was different. The first
item on the MLS was always the list of messages. Usually innocuous,
even boring—the next meeting of the Board of Realtors, the latest
lecture in the on-going education series, but today . . .

“
Look at this,” Claire called to Jody.
The teenager came up behind her to read the screen over her
shoulder.

WARNING. YESTERDAY’S
UNFORTUNATE DEATH OF MANATEE
REALTOR BETTY
SIFFERT, THOUGH THOUGHT TO BE DUE TO NATURAL CAUSES, REMINDS US
ONCE AGAIN OF THE BOARD’S SAFETY TIPS:

1. DO NOT SIT AN OPEN HOUSE WITHOUT A PHONE.
IF NECESSARY, BORROW A CELL PHONE!

2. IF MAKING AN APPOINTMENT TO MEET A
STRANGER AT A HOUSE, ASK ANOTHER AGENT TO GO WITH YOU.

3. #2 ABOVE APPLIES TO LISTING APPOINTMENTS
AS WELL AS SHOWING APPOINTMENTS.

FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS FOR BETTY SIFFERT HAVE
NOT YET BEEN COMPLETED. FURTHER DETAILS AS SOON AS WE GET THEM.

“
I guess I better print it and post
it,” Claire said to Jody. “I didn’t have time to read the paper
this morning. Did you hear what happened?”

“
It was pretty grim.” Jody’s customary
ebullience shut down. “The house she was holding open on Sunday was
vacant. No phone. When she didn’t come home to supper, her husband
drove over and found her floating in the pool. They think she must
have slipped and hit her head, but nobody really knows. They’re
trying to locate anybody who might have seen her on Sunday, but
with the weather so bad, it’s possible no one showed up at her Open
House at all.”

Or perhaps only one.

Had it really been an accident? A shiver
began in Claire’s toes and went straight up to the roots of her
hair. The warning notice hadn’t been that scary, so why the bad
feeling? Guilt? Because a woman died, while her own heart was
singing for the first time in years.

And all because she had a date with Brad
Blue. She hadn’t had a date since—Claire winced as she counted
back. Eleven years. No wonder she had butterflies.

“
There was another one,” Jody was
saying. “Last year. A Realtor was found dead in her car out east of
I-75. She’d been strangled. All they could ever discover was that
she’d had a call from a man asking her to meet him at one of her
listings out on Needle Key. No one ever saw her alive
again.”

“
Jody, are you sure about
that?”

“
May my hard drive crash if I’m making
it up,” Jody vowed, holding up her right hand, palm out. “I’m a
native. Fourth generation ranch family. The body was found on my
uncle’s land. That was just before he decided to sell out for that
new development east of I-75.”

“
That wouldn’t be Brad Blue’s
development, would it?”

Jody’s lively brown eyes opened wide. “No
way. Brad’s building closer to town. My uncle’s land’s ten miles
north of here. Where’d you meet Brad?”

So Claire told her.

As Jody drank in the story in installments
between the ringing of the phone, they were joined by Vicky
DelVecchio, who eavesdropped with shameless intensity. Vicky was T
& T’s most successful agent, although there were those who
alleged the size of her commissions was exceeded only by the size
of her mouth. Her jet black hair was cut in an artful cap; her red
and purple silk jacket hung with graceful abandon over her short
red silk skirt. Her makeup was flawless. Vicky assisted Phil
Tierney in managing the daily working of the office and, as a team,
the two long-time Realtors were formidable. They reminded Claire of
better days when she might have been able to compete. Days whose
frivolous pleasure had been forever erased by nightmare memories
that refused to be exorcized.

“
O-o-oh,” Jody moaned, “I can’t believe
your luck! Of all the men in town, it had to be Brad Blue. Do you
know what I’d give to be rescued by his cousin Slade? They’re both
such hunks. Only Slade’s seventeen, Brad’s uncle Garrett’s son.
He’s a year ahead of me in school, and I could just die for him. I
mean, Claire, how did you stand it? Wasn’t it just about the most
romantic thing that ever happened to you?”

“
Jody!” Vicky’s reprimand brought the
teenager’s enthusiasm to a crashing halt.

“
Claire, I’m sorry,” Jody cried. “That
was so stupid. I never thought about you being widowed and all. I’m
an idiot. Forgive me.”

“
There’s nothing to forgive,” Claire
assured her. “Jim’s been gone two years now, and I didn’t even live
here then. How could you possibly remember?”

Besides, Jody had been right. It
was
just about the most romantic
thing that ever happened to her.

“
I’d go a little easy on telling the
story,” Vicky advised, with a nod toward Phil Tierney’s unoccupied
office. “Brad Blue is Phil’s ex.” A not-quite-hidden gleam revealed
her satisfaction in dropping this little bombshell.

Grimly, Claire congratulated herself on her
hard-won ability to keep a straight face while taking a blow to the
gut.

“
Ancient history,” Jody asserted.
“About the time I was born, wasn’t it?”

“
They were both right out of college,”
Vicky said. “Did the expected childhood sweetheart thing . . .and
it just didn’t work. Nobody was ever sure why. They’d known each
other forever.”

Very deliberately, Claire turned to her
screen, hit Print. She would not think about Brad and Phil. Her
hunky hero and her boss.

Claire glided across the room with what she
hoped was a good show of cool indifference and posted the Realtor
Warning, as well as the daily Hot Sheet, to the office bulletin
board.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!

Brad Blue had once loved a strong, dynamic
woman who was far more outgoing, competent and spectacular in every
way than Claire Langdon could ever be. If Phil Tierney was the kind
of woman he preferred . . .

Warning
. There
were all kinds of warnings. Her personal one was as clear as the
one from the Board of Realtors.

Claire stared at the bulletin board,
frowning. Time to bite the bullet. She had a job to do. Removing
the push-pins she’d just shoved in, she slapped the warning notice
onto the copier, making a copy for each Realtor at T & T. With
a grim sense of satisfaction, Claire stuck one in each mail slot.
See, she was doing her job, even if her dreams had taken yet
another mortal blow.

Twenty minutes later, Maggie McKinnon,
T & T’s newest Realtor, let out a wail as she clutched the
warning notice, her face a picture of frustration. “What am I
supposed to do?” she demanded. “A man just called who wants to list
his house for sale. It’s my first listing call
. And I’m supposed to take another agent with me?
I can’t, I just can’t! I’ve never done a listing
presentation. I know I’ll make a hash of it. I can’t have someone
watching me do it!”

“
Did he give you a reference, mention
some reason he called T & T?” Claire asked.

“
No-o.” Maggie’s lip quivered. A
childless divorcée, she had recently moved to Golden Beach from
Ohio, feeling a responsibility to be near her aging
parents.

“
What’s the address?” Vicky
demanded.

When Maggie told her, the older agent gave a
derisive snort. “Jake!” she bawled across the room.

Jake Spanos liked to call himself a “street
kid.” Eschewing the gulffront condos and bayfront mansions, he
specialized in low-cost housing for Golden Beach’s service
community. He supported a wife and two small children on sales
commissions less than half the size of those earned by agents
selling the upper middle class and luxury housing prevalent in
Golden Beach.

Claire watched, fascinated, as Vicky deftly
arranged for Jake to accompany Maggie on her listing appointment.
Maggie might not be thrilled, but no one was less threatening than
Jake Spanos.

Claire began the computer research for
Maggie’s appointment. Plat map, square footage, comparable sales,
current listings. By the time Maggie left with high hopes of
listing a mobile home in Trailer City, Claire had provided her with
an eight-page market evaluation complete with a personalized cover
sheet. A grateful Maggie even confided to Claire that she didn’t
mind Jake tagging along. It
was
a bit scary to be going off alone to meet some strange man in
his home.

Claire sighed as she watched the two agents
go out into the summer heat. The situation inside had heated up as
well. Only the agents who had been out showing property all day had
not heard some version of Claire’s adventure. Although she had
carefully avoided telling anyone about her dinner date, in an
office full of outgoing personalities whose stock in trade was
persistence and asking the right questions, Claire hadn’t stood a
chance of keeping it a secret.