When Night Falls (30 page)

She jerked open a hidden cabinet and replaced the deadly bow in its holding place. She added a hunting arrow to the two already labeled “Uma and Shelly,” and resting on prongs. Beneath the new arrow Pearl scribbled on the wall, “Mitchell.”

This was where she could be free. This was where Clyde could come to her, no restrictions, no confining family, no endless daily routines—no Walter. No fat, disgusting, drunk-after-eight o’clock, rutting Walter.

How dared he father Shelly’s baby? How dared he taunt her with Dani?

How dared Lauren grab the scarf intended to mark Shelly for Pete’s bullet?

How dared Uma take up with a Warren?

Pearl ripped off her man’s hat and rummaged her fingers through her hair, loosening it. She glanced around the masculine room—a plain cot, a table, and a lantern with matches. She sailed the hat to the cot and struck a match, lighting the kerosene lantern carefully and adjusting the wick.

Her daughters would be coming home next week from Walter’s sister in Connecticut. She would take them to New York for school clothes shopping, and Pearl’s roaming at night would have to stop—until school started.

Pearl kicked off her shoes, loosened her wide, masculine tie, and lit one of Walter’s best black-market Havana cigars. She straddled a chair and placed her arms across the back as she smoked the cigar Walter thought was designated only for him.

Walter responded well to drugs at night, just a drop or two added to his usual whiskey sour to make him sleep heavily as Pearl moved around as she wished.

She blew a perfect circle of smoke in the air, then smaller ones. “No more perfect Pearl. Pearl is going to be strong now. Old pitiful, weak Pearl has to go, and new Pearl will handle her life as she wishes. First Uma—an accident, somehow—then grief will make Shelly’s distraction fatal, and then Pearl. It’s perfectly logical, and all before the last petal falls on the last rose…I see no problem at all, Clyde.”

Uma’s fingers prowled up Mitchell’s chest and he lazily captured them, and brought them to him. “I think we should go hunting—”

“I agree—”

“Not there!” she exclaimed laughingly as he tossed the sheet over their heads and foraged downward. He nuzzled and made growling noises as Uma pulled his head upward.

She sat up, pressing the sheet against her as Mitchell lay back on the pillow, his arms behind his head, the picture of a very satisfied male. He traced a finger over her bare shoulder and Uma recognized that sultry, hungry look. “I was going with Shelly, but you’ll do.”

“Great. I’m second choice.” He eased upright slightly to nuzzle at her breasts, suckling through the material.

Uma closed her eyes and let the warm, moist tugging zip through her body, lodging low in her. “Don’t distract me.”

“You
are
the distraction.” Mitchell drew a line over her breasts and eased the material away.

“I can’t think when you look at me like that.”

“That’s the general idea, hot stuff.” There was that devastating, pure male grin flashing at her.

She caught his hair and bent to give him a raw, open kiss. “I need your complete attention.”

Mitchell sat up and looped his arms around her, laughing
as he dragged her back on top of him. “What’s up?”

She could
feel
what was up and quite ready. “Not that. We need to talk.”

He withdrew just that wary bit, and she sensed his shields shimmering, warding off any talk of his mother.

“Roman knows that I’m with you, and he’s watching my house, right?”

“Uh-huh.” Mitchell’s tone was flat and cautious.

“Mitchell, listen. It’s just an idea, but we have to do something about whoever caused Lauren to be killed, and Rosalie, and the rest. I know this town better than anyone. You lived in the country and couldn’t know the hidden places in Madrid, but as girls, we loved them—they were our secrets. The old root cellars, used to keep jars and potatoes, and our protection against tornados. There is an old root cellar behind our house. There are doors on the outside of old houses that no one in Madrid ever locks. They lead to basements. And anyone can hide in the root cellars, the basements, and hide deep in the overgrown bushes. Shelly and I put together a map of Madrid, and it is literally possible to cross from rooftop to rooftop through town. You can see everything that happens from on top of Mike’s bar. If someone knew this town well enough, they could come and go as they pleased.”

Mitchell was on his feet, striding out of the bedroom. Wrapping the sheet around herself, Uma hurried after him. “What are you doing?”

Nude, striding through the house in a gleaming flow of powerful muscles, Mitchell jerked open the back door and gave a low whistle. Several neighborhood dogs started barking, and Roman suddenly appeared from the shadows. “What’s up?”

Mitchell turned to Uma. “Where is that root cellar?”

He was standing there, absolutely naked and as casual as if he were dressed, plunging through a business meeting in
which he intended to win. Uma struggled to answer his question. “In the backyard, out in the brush between the field and the old rose trellis.”

“Get on it, Roman. There’s a passage that leads into the house.”

“Holy—” Roman nodded curtly and slid into the darkness.

Mitchell waited a moment, and then closed and locked the back door. He paced the length of the kitchen, his big body tense and coiled. Uma stood back, stunned at the picture of Mitchell, nude and scowling, haunches hollowed with muscles, broad shoulders narrowing down to his waist, his masculinity shadowed as he stalked back again, looming over her. “Whoever it is could have come into your house and killed you in your sleep. You should have told me.”

“Are you with me, or not?”

“As a backup to Shelly? Sure. Love to. Thanks for the invitation.”

“Then get dressed and I’ll get some clothes from Lauren’s room. We were the same size. I don’t want to alarm the neighbors, but if the house has been watched, maybe whoever it is doing this has left something on the rose bushes that are everywhere. I thought we could check the neighborhood without upsetting anyone, then work our way to Rosalie’s house. I’d prefer that no one knew we were snooping through her house for clues.”

Mitchell uttered a low curse, and Uma said, “No, it isn’t a dingbat idea. If you’re not up for it, Shelly will help me. Pearl is pretty shattered at the moment. I had to defend you against her.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Defend me? How so?”

“You needed my protection, and that’s all I’m going to say about it. Oh, I wish I had my sports bra—”

Moments later, Mitchell let Uma out of the house. “You look cute,” he drawled, patting her bottom.

“I don’t have any briefs on and I’ve never, ever gone out of the house without a bra since I was a little girl.”

His “mmm” sounded as if he were anticipating a delicious event.

“You’re full of surprises, honey,” Mitchell admitted slowly as her small flashlight caught a thread on the rose bushes between his house and hers.

Roman appeared out of the night. Then, seeing Mitchell and Uma, he nodded. “What’s up?”

Mitchell held up the single thread. “Our boy lost something. We’re going on a little sightseeing tour. Take care.”

“Take care,” Roman answered, and slipped back into the night again.

They moved silently across the street to where the BBs had to have been fired. Another thread, a different color, clung to an opulent rambling scarlet rose bush. Uma held his hand as they moved between several other houses, pointing out the old cellars, the outside basement doors, until they were on Main Street, moving down an alley.

“I’m starting to enjoy this,” Mitchell whispered as his hands eased her bottom higher and she climbed up onto the paint store’s roof.

“If you do put in that big super center building and supply store that everyone wants, you’re going to run a lot of little people out of business.”

Mitchell stepped on a trash bin, grabbed a television antenna and hefted himself upward. “If you fall—”

“We did this all the time—Lauren, Shelly, Pearl, and me. I miss Lauren so,” she finished fiercely. “Come on.”

She made her way to the top of the roof and lay down. When Mitchell didn’t lie down beside her to scan the street below, she looked upward to see him considering her backside. “No briefs, huh? Just you under those pants?”

“Not now. Mitchell, we’re on duty.”

“Uh-huh.” He lay down beside her, but one big hand
found her bottom, caressing it. He bent to kiss her, and she tasted the passion lingering between them. “I just love it when you’re so Double-O-Seven.”

“You’re enjoying this, and if you don’t stop making fun of me, you can just go home.”

He tugged her braid. “Whoops. Sorry.”

Mitchell’s expression said he wasn’t; he was like a child enjoying a game, a playful little boy inside the man who held his emotions so tightly in check. “You’re irritating me. Shelly would have been a better partner than you.”

“Roman is set to marry her, you know. That might cut down this midnight roaming. You might be forced to ask me again. Now, why are we here?”

“Mrs. Dougan wouldn’t give Elinor Stills a cutting from her rose bush, so Elinor decided to steal a start. She really needs to place better in competition, so she got up at two o’clock one morning and bicycled to Mrs. Dougan’s, where she got her clipping. On her way, she noticed a sleek little back Miata cruising through town—no lights.”

“Uh, makes sense. Pete Jones was the suspect in a Miata theft. They never found the car.” Mitchell’s hand prowled down to her bottom, then back up to her pants’ elastic waistband. He lifted it slightly and turned to peer down at her briefless bottom. “Mmm. Interesting.”

He bent to lightly bite her there and Uma stiffened, shocked at his play. He lifted his head to grin at her. “I love getting to you—seeing your face go absolutely blank before the blush sets in. You really don’t know how to play, do you, honey?”

“Sure I do. I’ve played games all my life.”

“Chess…Parcheesi…bridge…croquet?” he mocked. “All very ladylike.”

“Any game you want to play, I can play.”

“We’ll see.”

Uma put her hand over his face and pushed gently; she
wasn’t certain how to handle Mitchell in a playful mood. “Jones has been dead for a year. Mrs. Dougan saw the Miata in May. I just found out today, when she called to gossip—and to tell me that Pearl is hunting things for her bazaar. I feel badly about having to put Pearl in her place. She’s had such a hard life.”

“I think you are the sexiest woman I have ever known,” Mitchell whispered rawly as he drew her over him.

“Here?” she asked after an earthshaking kiss. Mitchell’s hands were easing open their clothing. “We’ll roll off the roof, and how would we explain that? Oh, Mitchell—”

Clinging to the rooftop by her fingertips, Uma held her breath as he slid into her, full and heavy and hot.

Fifteen minutes later, Mitchell helped a very shaky Uma down from the rooftop, catching her as she leaped into his arms. After gently placing her on the ground, he kissed her softly, and smoothed her disheveled braids.

“I certainly didn’t see that coming,” she managed, still stunned by the passion she hadn’t expected to flame so quickly between them.

He tugged one braid, and there was that lazy pleased smile, so delicious she could almost devour him again. “You did okay.”

Uma couldn’t help but throw her arms around his shoulders and open her already sensitive lips to his. “What am I going to do with you?”

His smile said he already had a suggestion. “You’ll think of something. Right now, take me to Rosalie’s.”

Minutes later, Rosalie’s house was dark—except for the small flashlight Uma used to show Mitchell the receipts for cloth that Rosalie had special ordered for her customers. “See? This one isn’t for cloth, but references her letter questioning what thread they recommended for a special 1930s fabric. Her appointment book was missing, but I started going through her tax receipts for the last year.”

“Good girl.”

“I think there’s a connection to the bullets that shot up the old windmill—and Pete—but I can’t make it. It might be something.”

Mitchell jotted down the name of the manufacturer on a scrap of a paper and tucked it into his jeans. “Could be. Let’s go home.”

But Uma’s flashlight had caught the small trash basket, overflowing with scraps. She bent to collect the one that wasn’t summer flowers and cotton, but a heavier weave. “Do you think these scraps might match that thread?”

“Maybe. Keep it.” He glanced outside the lace-covered window to where Lonny’s police car was gliding beneath a streetlight. “Let’s go.”

In Mitchell’s shower later, Uma gave herself to his gentle hands, to the sensation that she was finally home. Mitchell eased her out of the shower and began drying her. He traced the tiny stretch marks on her belly. “Tell me about Christina.”

“She was my world—from the moment she was conceived.”

He nodded slowly. “You’re a woman who deserves a family. You never wanted to try again?”

“I think,” she whispered honestly, “that she was so perfect that I feared nothing could compare, that I couldn’t love another child as I did her.”

The bathroom light caught the water droplets in Mitchell’s hair, face, and shoulders as Uma studied him. She traced her fingertip across his brows, wiping the water there. He’d gone to another place suddenly, drawing away from her. “Mitchell?”

“I—” he began slowly, unevenly. The steamy mirror behind him revealed a powerful male back and a woman’s soft, almost ethereal face looking up at him, her hands smoothing his hair.

Gentleness ran between them, and playfulness and passion so deep it tore at her control. With Mitchell she was free and alive—

He placed her fingertips on his lips. “When I held that baby, I wondered if Dad had felt that with us, a life so new and fragile. I felt as if I were cracking open, peering into an unknown storm of life that I’d never experienced. I just knew that there was a truth I didn’t know—or that I was ignoring. And I had nowhere to go, not really, except back here.”