Bitch Factor (40 page)

Receptionist Grimm lifted an appreciative eyebrow.

“Got your fighting clothes on, I see.”

Dixie grinned. “Knockout in the first round!” After reading Rebecca’s deposition, the ADA had conceded to dropping the charges against Parker. Dixie tipped a casual salute and reached for the brass doorknob to head for Belle’s office.

“Ms. Richards has someone with her,” Grimm said.

“I know.” Dixie’s grin widened.

“Ah, like that is it?” A lascivious smile spread across the woman’s stern face. “Here. This worked for me.” She flipped a Hershey’s Hug to Dixie from a bowl on her desk.

As she caught the candy and turned down the hall to Belle’s office, a flush of unexpected heat filled Dixie’s face. She had nothing to blush about, though. Not yet. Now that Parker was no longer a fugitive, she hoped to change all that.

In court that morning, Dixie had hung around long
enough to hear the DA’s announcement that he was dropping the charges against Parker, then she’d left to visit the nursing home, having missed her usual Sunday visitation. She entered her mother’s room feeling that something tightly constricted was unfolding inside her. Garla Jean lay as distant as ever, skin translucent, bright green eyes unfocused. Dixie had taken her mother’s hand, papery and almost weightless. “We both deserved a better life, Mama. I’m finally ready to get on with mine. Wherever you are in your mind, I hope there’s a shining white knight alongside you.” She pressed the frail hand to her lips, and left with the first deep sense of peace she could remember feeling around her mother since the days before Scully.

When Dixie swung into Belle’s office, the tension inside the room was thick enough to cut. The lawyer, classy in a slate-gray suit, sat at her desk, watching her client.

“Confession might be good for Rebecca’s black soul,” Belle was saying, “but it sure ruined the DA’s morning.”

Parker stood at the window, his back to the door, staring out at the Houston skyline.

“Reading it didn’t do much for my morning, either. The woman stole eight months of my life—yet, I feel guilty for being angry.”

“Two kids were murdered,” Dixie croaked in her new voice. “No amount of confessing can undo that. The fact sits like gunpowder in your belly. Makes you feel like exploding all over somebody.”

After a few more moments of silence, she heard Parker’s weighted sigh. “Guess you do know the feeling.” He turned to face her.

Despite the disquieting knowledge that he might drift out of her life at any moment, Dixie couldn’t suppress a certain hopeful anticipation. He was like no man she’d ever known, earthy, honest, caring, and when he turned on that devilish charm, a rogue as well as a gentleman.

“Think about Ellie,” Dixie said. “Without our involvement, without you telling me about the poison narcissus in my garden, she’d be dead, too. Now she’ll grow up healthy
and well loved.” Dixie had been at the hospital when they released Ellie to Jon Keyes. Still sniffling but well on the mend, the child had not even asked about her mother.

Belle opened her desk drawer and jingled a set of car keys.

“They released my Cadillac?” Parker said. “What about evidence?”

“Rebecca was smart enough to wear gloves. Unless she foolishly kept your spare car key, there’s no evidence that she ever drove the car.”

“You’re not
still
thinking of representing her?” Dixie said suspiciously.

“She hasn’t asked, but with a plea of diminished capacity—”

“You saw her in that deposition room, Belle. She’s not crazy. She knew exactly what she was doing when she killed those girls.”

“Trust me, any woman who would sacrifice her own children to buy a man’s love is emotionally and mentally unstable.”

“You’re a soft touch, Ric. Rebecca Payne doesn’t deserve you.”

Belle’s gray eyes leveled at Dixie. “Innocent until
proven
guilty, remember? Rebecca suffered her mother’s jealousy and wrath all those years—”

“I was there. I heard it all, too. Remember?”

“Can you blame her for frantically clutching at her own husbands? In the end, they did exactly what she’d always feared. They walked out.”

“Even Travis?”

Belle shrugged. “He’ll have his own load of guilt to shoulder. After all, she did it for him.”

Parker scooped up the car keys, the evidence release form, and his overcoat. He looked at Dixie as he headed for the door.

“Mind giving me a ride to pick up my car?” He’d taken his clothes home that morning when she drove him there to change into his suit for the trial.

“Sure” she croaked. She tipped Belle a wave and caught up with him.

“Don’t talk,” he said.

“I can now. It’s been more than forty-eight hours.” He was walking faster than she’d ever seen him move.

“You sound funny. I don’t think you should push it.”

All New Year’s weekend, he’d played Doctor Mom. She supposed it wasn’t easy to stop. The weather had stayed cold and wet. Parker picked up a dozen old movies from the video store and made three kinds of soup. She loved the attention, but she’d soaked up all the warm fuzzies she could stand for a while.

“Where to, after the auto depot?” Her throat did feel as if a pin were stabbing right through it every time she spoke.

“I don’t know.”

He jabbed the elevator button. The doors opened instantly. Dixie tried to recall whether she’d ever summoned the elevator from the forty-seventh floor and had it appear instantly.

“Still planning to sell your house?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

They rode down through all forty-seven floors in silence. His anger was still palpable. Dixie could understand how he felt. Despite the DA’s dismissing all charges, Parker’s life—his home, his job, his reputation—would never be the same. Much of his frustration came from-realizing that monsters can walk among normal people without horns and fangs to identify them.

“Think you might know anytime soon?” she asked. She had parked across the street at the Galleria Mall garage. He took her arm when the WALK sign blinked on.

“Know what?” he said.

“Whether you’ll be leaving town.”

He looked down at her as they crossed the street, and she was glad to see his blue eyes had regained their cynical amusement.

“Would you care?” he said.

“You’ve spoiled Mud rotten. He’ll be heartbroken if he doesn’t occasionally find chicken piccata in his dish.”

“And you?” They had reached the car in the underground garage. Parker stood so close she could feel his body heat, even through her coat. One corner of his mouth went up in a bland, impudent smile as his knuckles gently grazed her jaw-line. He lowered his voice so that it carried to her ears only. “Would you be heartbroken?”

She loved the way he smelled—bay rum, warm male skin, the pleasant aroma of coffee on his breath.

“What makes you think a badass bitch like me has a heart?”

“Anybody Mud likes can’t be all bad.”

His lips felt exactly as she’d expected, strong but soft.

“What do you say we pick up the beast,” he said softly. “Drive down to the beach. Look at some of those waterfront properties Carl told me about?”

“It’s January.”

“Then we’ll have the beach all to ourselves.”

“We’ll freeze.”

“I’ll see what I can do to keep you warm.”