Still Waters (13 page)

His gaze drifted back up and caught on hers. She blinked, like someone trying to come out of a trance, and the tip of her tongue skimmed across her bottom lip.

He wanted to kiss her. For an instant he couldn't see any reason not to lean down and taste that mouth. It was a matter of simple, unbridled lust, he told himself. A male wanting a female. Nothing complicated, nothing emotional. She made him hot, and his body wanted a chance to do something about it.

He cupped her cheek, catching his thumb beneath her chin and tilting her face to a better angle.

“Dane!”

Edith Truman's voice cut through the sensual haze. Dane shook off the spell and turned around. Edith stood at the door with a dishtowel knotted in her hands, looking like his grandmother come out to call him in for pie. Having been married to Doc Truman for nearly sixty years, she had seen more than her share of human trauma and was luckily a woman who thrived during times of crisis. Her eyes were bright as she leaned out the door.

“Mark just called to see if you were still here. They're getting things set up for the press conference, and apparently there's some disagreement over who gets to sit at the head table.”

Dane raised a hand in a gesture that managed to combine acknowledgment and resignation. “I'm on my way.” He glanced over his shoulder at Elizabeth.

“Come on, trouble,” he said, starting for the truck. “It's showtime.”

“Would you mind dropping me off at Jolynn's?” Elizabeth asked, falling in step beside him. “I might attract undue attention if I show up at your little soiree looking like this.”

Dane imagined she would attract attention if she showed up in a nun's habit, but he kept that comment to himself and muttered a grudging yes.

“You're a prince,” Elizabeth said, climbing into the cab of the Bronco. She bit back a chuckle at the look he shot her. He wanted her to think he wasn't anything but a tough, ornery son of a gun with a badge. He didn't much like the idea that she had caught a glimpse of something nicer in him.

“Don't spread it around,” he grumbled, sliding behind the wheel. “I'm not running a taxi service either, so don't expect me to hang around and wait for you while you try to decide what the latest fashion for a press conference is.”

“No, sir.” She saluted him smartly, winning another disgruntled snarl for her efforts, then she relaxed against the seat and studied him for a minute as he started the truck and headed south again. “Much as it pains me to be civil to you,” she said soberly, “I do thank you.”

“For what?”

She toyed with the strap of the seat belt, uncomfortable, uncertain of her footing on this ground. She could stand toe-to-toe and fight with him. This was much trickier. It skirted the edges of liking him, and that seemed unwise. “For being decent,” she said at last.

“I'm midwestern, it's ingrained.”

“It wasn't ingrained in any of those women standing on that veranda.”

“You're new here,” Dane said, feeling a little embarrassed that he had to make excuses for his townspeople. “They don't know anything about you except—”

“Except that I'm a notorious, man-hopping divorcee from the South,” Elizabeth finished, her mouth twisting at the injustice. “They know what they've read and they know I'm not one of them. I'm familiar with the routine, Sheriff. I've been through other versions of it before. Let me tell you, sugar, these old gals have got nothing on the ladies of Atlanta. I'm just not holding up as well these days, that's all.”

Dane looked at her, his curiosity stirring at the remembered pain in her eyes. For a minute he forgot that he didn't want to get to know the woman behind the infamous legend. “I can't imagine that you didn't fit in in Atlanta.”

She arched a brow. “Why? Because I have a drawl? Well, it's the wrong drawl, and I've got the wrong bloodlines, and I was born in the wrong town. The only thing I did right was marry money and enough of it so that all those little blue-blooded belles had to put up with me and smile while they were at it. But then, that's one of the traits of a true southern belle—she can cut you right down to the bone all the while looking like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. I am here to say it, darlin', God didn't make a more vicious creature than an Atlanta Junior Leaguer with a mood on. Every minute I lived there I had the feeling they didn't figure I knew enough not to wear white shoes after Labor Day.”

Dane steered the Bronco over to the curb across the street from Jolynn Nielsen's house and let the engine idle. “Why can't you wear white shoes after Labor Day?”

Elizabeth laughed, the tension dissipating. “Honey, you will never make it into the Junior League.”

It sounded to him like nobody should want to. The picture Elizabeth painted was of an enclave of bitches waiting with claws extended to pounce on the first person to pick up the wrong fork at dinner. He rolled his eyes. “I'm crushed.”

“And I'm grateful.” She smiled at him softly and held his handkerchief out to him. “Thanks. See you at the press conference, cowboy.”

He dropped the handkerchief in the litter basket that hung from a knob on his door, then shot her a parting look. “
Please
don't get into any more trouble,” he said tightly.

She batted her lashes in innocence as she settled her purse strap on her shoulder and slid down out of the truck. “Trouble? Who? Me?”

NINE

C
HRIST ALMIGHTY, SHE CAME RIGHT AT ME,
”
ELIZABETH
said, dragging her T-shirt off over her head. “Came right at me looking like Tammy Faye Baker in a frenzy—all crazed and bug-eyed, with this big cone of hair and makeup done like she got caught in an explosion at the cosmetics counter in Woolworth's. I never had anything like that happen in all my born days.”

With a grimace of distaste Jolynn lifted the discarded shirt off her bed, gingerly pinching the neck band between thumb and forefinger, and dropped it to the floor.

“I guess now I know how the Panhandle Rodeo Queen must have felt that time I caught her in bed with Bobby Lee and I took after him with the pellet gun we used to shoot rats with.” Elizabeth shivered, recalling again the wild look on Helen Jarvis's face as she'd launched that plate. “Shook me something terrible.”

She went to her friend's closet and stood there in her jeans and bra, eyes scanning the array of blouses for something suitable for a news conference. The closet wasn't offering much. That Jolynn's wardrobe had suffered in the years since her divorce was readily apparent. There wasn't a suit or linen blouse to be had. Jo was partial to men's flannel shirts for winter and men's work shirts for summer. Uncomplicated, unflattering, the costumes seemed to suit Jolynn's general air of being downtrodden. Elizabeth made a mental note to drag her off on a shopping trip as soon as things settled down and they were making a little money. She dug to the back of the closet and plucked out an oversize imitation gold lamé blouse. It was a bit much for day wear, but it was better than a castoff from the friendly staff at Harley's Texaco.

“This'll do.”

Jolynn frowned. “Hey, that's my good Christmas blouse!”

“I'll be careful.”

“Burn a hole in it and we won't have to wait for lung cancer to do you in—I'll kill you myself.”

“If we can sell enough newspapers between now and Christmas, I'll buy you two of the real thing as a bonus,” Elizabeth said, slipping the blouse on and starting on the fake rhinestone buttons. “Provided some crazed woman doesn't do me in first,” she added, shuddering again. Her fingers stilled on the third button, and she looked up at Jolynn, eyes full of confusion and traces of hurt. “I can't figure it, Jo. I only found the body, I didn't kill him. What'd I ever do to Helen Jarvis to make her throw a Jell-O fish at me?”

Jolynn sat down on the bed and busied herself tracing a pattern in the dust on the nightstand. She'd known Elizabeth since their college days in El Paso when she had been an army brat off her father's short leash for the first time in her life and Elizabeth had been a struggling young single mother taking classes and working two jobs. They had forged a bond then that had lasted through good times and bad, through changes in fortune and changes in marital status. She figured she knew Elizabeth better than anyone, and she knew how what she had to say was going to sting. For all her don't-give-a-damn attitude, Elizabeth had a heart more tender than most and an ego that had been sorely abused of late.

“It's not what you did to Helen,” she said hesitantly. “It's what Helen thinks you did with Jarrold.” Elizabeth blinked at her in confusion and Jo pressed on, her mouth twisting a little on the taste of the words. “The rumor going around this morning is that you and Jarrold had been meeting out at Still Waters to do the horizontal hokey-pokey.”

Elizabeth's jaw dropped. “I hardly knew the man!” she protested, jerking back a step as if Jolynn had lashed out at her physically. “And what I did know I loathed and despised!”

Jolynn drew a sad face in the table dust. “Yeah, well . . . so the story goes. I don't doubt but that Helen is more upset about the rumors than she is about Jarrold lying cold on a slab down at Davidson's. You're upstaging her grieving-widow act.”

“Eeewwl” Elizabeth shook herself, the very thought of having sex with Jarrold Jarvis making her skin crawl. “Where'd you hear all this?”

“At the Coffee Cup. I stopped in, hoping to catch that BCA guy having breakfast.”

“And did you?”

“No, but Phyllis filled me in on this latest tidbit. Everybody knows you found the body.”

“And everybody knows I'll just drop my panties for anything with testosterone,” Elizabeth said bitterly. She shook her head and blew out a breath. “Doesn't matter what he looks like, acts like, smells like. If he's got a third leg and walks upright, I'll be there with bells on.”

A storm cloud and jagged line of lightning joined the sad face on the nightstand. Jo's heart squeezed a little. “Phyllis set a few people straight.” Not that they had listened or cared. In Jolynn's experience, people were much more eager to believe the worst than the truth. In a town the size of Still Creek, gossip was served up and devoured as an essential part of the daily diet.

“Well, God bless Phyllis anyway.” Elizabeth slumped down on the bed beside her friend and stared across the room at her reflection in the dresser mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she could have benefited greatly from a generous application of her Elizabeth Arden concealer. With the gold blouse and twinkling buttons, she looked like a pathetic refugee from a bad New Year's party. A sense of despair ballooned inside her, hollow and aching. She raked a hand back through her hair and heaved another sigh.

“I really wanted things to be different here,” she said quietly, letting a little of that despair trickle out in hope of relieving the pressure. “I wanted this place to be like some kind of magic kingdom where nobody ever heard of Brock Stuart and people didn't snap up ugly like dogs after meat scraps.” She managed a little laugh. “Instead of Oz, I fell down the rabbit hole. Dead bodies, women throwing food at me, the lord high sheriff dragging me around like a captured fugitive. Lord love a duck, I should have moved to Outer goddamn Mongolia.”

Jolynn gave her an affectionate bump with her shoulder. “You wouldn't like it. You can't get good candy bars there. They make everything out of rancid yak milk.”

A weak smile tugged at Elizabeth's lips and she chuckled. She had one friend. That counted for something. “Is that a fact?”

“You bet.” Jo pulled open the drawer on the nightstand and rummaged through her stash. “Snickers or Baby Ruth?”

“Snickers.”

She pulled out a candy bar for Elizabeth and one for herself. They sat in companionable silence for a moment, consoling themselves with chocolate.

“How'd it go at the scene?” Elizabeth asked.

Jo peeled back a little more of the candy wrapper and cleared her throat. “It was kind of like being at a party, only more macabre. There was this weird sort of festival atmosphere, reporters swarming all around, chatting, drinking coffee. The crime lab guys were a hoot.”

“Did you learn anything?”

“Aside from a couple of truly tasteless jokes about severed heads? Not much.” She took another bite of Baby Ruth and talked around it. “I thought this was interesting—he wasn't killed in the car. All the blood was spilled on a spot to the south and west of the building site.”

Elizabeth worked a peanut between her molars as her brain chewed on the information. “So why put him back in the car? Jantzen says they think some drifter killed him for his pocket money. Why would the guy take the time to put the body back in the car—especially if he was going to steal the Lincoln too?”

“Maybe he wanted company on the trip to Des Moines.”

“Jolynn!”

“No, really,” she insisted, shifting on the bed like a kid settling in for a good ghost story. Her small hazel eyes were bright as glass marbles with enthusiasm for the topic. “Why not take the body? Take old Jarrold and the car and boot it into another jurisdiction. Ditch the corpse in one spot, the car in another, the murder weapon someplace else. That kind of stuff screws the cops up royally. It's what all the great serial killers do.”

Elizabeth gave her a look. “You been reading up on it, have you?”

Jolynn shrugged without remorse and took another bite of her candy bar. “It's a fascinating subject, if you've got the stomach for it.”

“Which I don't. Any whispers of who did it?”

She shook her head, sending a mass of overpermed curls tumbling into her eyes. She raked them back with her free hand. “Not a word. I managed to get a second with Yeager after the hoopla had died down. He's the regional BCA man. Cute guy.” The corners of her kewpie-doll mouth curled upward, and she dropped her gaze to her lap, concentrating much too hard on picking up a crumb of chocolate and popping it in her mouth. Yeager probably hadn't even noticed she was female. There was really no point in acting like a teenager with a crush. “All he could talk about was what a shame it was they cut down that woods to build Still Waters. He says it was a prime turkey-hunting spot.”

“That's not what was getting hunted there last night.”

Sobering, Jo toyed with the ragged ends of her candy wrapper. “No.”

Silence descended between them again. A moment of quiet in memory of the dead. Most everyone would have respect for Jarrold Jarvis in death, Elizabeth reflected, even if they hadn't in life. That's the way people were—perverse, hypocritical. It was almost enough to make her join a convent. Almost. If it weren't for the fact that nuns didn't drink or smoke or get their nails done in Vivacious Red . . . And then there was that celibacy thing. Even though she'd sworn off men for the time being, that didn't mean she would want to sleep alone forever.

“So what's the story on Jantzen anyway?” she asked, wishing instantly she would just bite her stupid tongue off and be done with it. She wasn't supposed to want to know more about him.

Jolynn arched a brow. “Great Dane?”

Elizabeth scowled and picked at a long-dried fleck of white paint on the leg of her jeans. “I haven't seen anything about him that's all that great,” she grumbled, feigning disinterest.

Her friend howled, laughing, rocking back on the bed and slapping her thigh. “Oh, come on! The man could cut a swath through Hollywood, and you know it.”

“If he's so fabulous, how come you're not after him?” she asked peevishly.

Jolynn didn't bat an eye at the remark. “It doesn't matter who's after him,” she said. “He's not playing.”

“Get out,” Elizabeth scoffed, giving her a shove. “Do not try to tell me he's gay. If he's gay, I'm the queen of England.”

“He's not gay. He just doesn't go for local girls,” Jolynn explained, shredding the loose pieces of her candy bar wrapper methodically as she spoke. “He married his hometown sweetheart way back when. Played pro football for the Raiders for a few years. Then he blew his knee, blew his career, and the wife blew him off. Rumor has it, he's seeing someone from out of town, but he manages to keep his private life very separate from his public one—which is no mean feat in a town this size. Why?” she asked, casting Elizabeth a sly look as she nibbled at a peanut. “You interested?”

“Hardly,” Elizabeth sniffed. “I've done sworn off men. He's been hounding me, that's all. About the murder and everything.”

She scanned the room in order to avoid the mental image of Dane Jantzen bending over her with his handkerchief, shielding her from the scathing gazes of the ladies of Lutheran guild, wiping the Jell-O off her with a look of disgruntled sympathy in his eyes.

Jolynn wasn't any more talented domestically than Elizabeth herself. The bed wasn't made. The hamper beside the dresser was overflowing, the clothes looking as though they were trying to escape before they could be subjected to the tortures of the washing machine. A mountain of notes, books, and junk-food wrappers rose up on the back of the nightstand behind the telephone, the alarm clock, and a dirty ashtray.

The nightstand jerked her gaze back when she would have looked on.

“How's your headache?” she asked innocently.

“My what?” Jo bit off a chunk of nougat, but froze in mid-chew as she followed Elizabeth's meaningful gaze to the ashtray. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment as she mentally called Rich Cannon a dozen of her favorite names. He couldn't even go to the effort of cleaning up after himself, the lazy bum. He came in, took what he wanted and left, leaving half a dozen cigarette butts and the toilet seat up.

“Don't say it,” she muttered through her teeth, her self-esteem sliding down somewhere around her feet.

Elizabeth ignored the request. That Rich Cannon thought he could just swagger in and have Jo service him galled her no end. And that Jolynn let him get away with it galled her even worse. “You deserve better, Jolynn.”

Appetite gone, Jo set her candy bar aside and pushed herself to her feet, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Yeah,” she said, looking down at her battered Reeboks. “Don't we all.”

“He was here when I called you last night, wasn't he?” Elizabeth had been too distracted to notice anything odd in Jolynn's voice during the call. She'd been too caught up in her own nightmare to think her best, and nearly her only friend had been lying to her.

Jolynn didn't answer, which was answer enough.

“How did he take the news of his father-in-law's demise?”

She gave a shrug of affected indifference. “With a grunt and a snort. His usual show of sensitivity.”

The image wasn't difficult to conjure up. From what Elizabeth had seen, Rich Cannon had no concern for anyone or anything that didn't directly affect Rich Cannon. He certainly didn't show any sign of caring for Jolynn. She was a convenience to him, one he took advantage of without compunction or remorse.

“He's using you, Jolynn.”

“There's a news flash.” She plucked up the damning evidence and dumped it in the wastebasket, ashtray and all, sending up a fine plume of tobacco ash. “Well, I'm using him too, you know,” she pointed out as she straightened. “Did you ever think of that? The man is hung like Secretariat. Sometimes it's worth a bit of personal degradation to go for a little pony ride.”

Elizabeth refrained from comment. Jolynn had a look of desperate revelation in her eyes, as if this particular defense had only just occurred to her. Elizabeth didn't have it in her to call her on it. At any rate, there wasn't time.