Dark Paradise (38 page)

"Wondering if you ever . . . were together in this room."

"Lucy doesn't have anything to do with us."

"My mistake." She tried for sarcasm in her laugh and winced at the

hollowness of it. "I forgot. It wasn't anything personal. Just sex."

"I told you once, I won't pretend I liked her."

"What about me, J.D.?" She looked up at him, too proud, too hurt,

leading with her chin. "Will you pretend you like me?"

He swore under his breath. "What's this about, Marilee?
 
You want a

promise from me?
 
You want pretty words?
 
You got the wrong cowboy."

She shook her head and looked back out the window.

She didn't have the right to ask for anything more than what he'd given.

She was a big girl. She'd known from the start what J.D. wanted; he'd

been very plain about it. It wasn't his fault her moment of self-revelation

had come too late.

"Give me a break here, Rafferty. It's been a tough week, you know," she

said softly.

J.D. stepped up behind her and slid his arms around her, fitting her

against his body, enveloping her in his strength. "Tired?" he asked,

pressing his lips to her temple.

The tears burned hot behind her eyes. He couldn't know how tired she

was - tired of being the odd one out, tired of being confused. She had

come to Montana to rest, to rejuvenate, to pass some time with a friend.

Instead, she was being put through tests of endurance and strength. Her

nerve endings felt raw, exposed. Her friend was dead and she wasn't sure

why. She wasn't sure she wanted to know.

But the questions wouldn't go away. There was no one else to find the

answers. No one else cared.

"These vacations are hell on a person, you know." The words were little

more than a rasp through the knot of tears in her throat.

"Come here," J.D. whispered, turning her around in his arms. He cradled

her head against his chest, fingers tangled in the hopeless wilderness

of her hair. He rubbed her back and murmured to her, and his heart

squeezed at the sound of her grudging tears. He didn't question the

tenderness that ached through him like a virus; he ignored it. It didn't

mean anything. It was just a moment in time.

A moment he wouldn't have given Lucy MacAdam or any woman who had come

before her. A moment some nameless, lonely part of him wanted to go on

forever.

"You caught me fresh out of handkerchiefs," he said.

Marilee sniffed and laughed, amazed that he would come up with a sense

of humor when she needed it most.

"That's okay," she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "It's not my robe."

He caught hold of the end of a sleeve and gently dried the tears from

her cheeks. "I suppose you burned yours in a symbolic gesture against

terry cloth."

"Another joke. Careful, Rafferty, you'll strain yourself." She shot him

a wry look. "You're being awfully nice. What's your angle?"

"I reckon I owe you," he answered, dancing around the truth. "My uncle

took a shot at you. You didn't have any business going up on that ridge

after I told you not to, but I don't guess you deserved to get the

bejesus scared out of you either."

"Your compassion is overwhelming."

He didn't smile at her sarcasm. He studied her face, lifting a hand to

touch the bruise on her cheekbone. "You got this when you fell off the

mule?"

"That one and a few others. I suppose I should be glad I didn't break my

neck."

You should be glad Del didn't want You dead. The words whiled through

his brain, but J.D. kept them to himself, them and the sense of dread

that rose inside him.

"He just wants to be left alone," he said. "The war tore him up inside,

ruined his mind."

"Shouldn't he be in a hospital?"

"He was for a few years. It nearly killed him being locked up like that.

The doctors didn't help him. No one gave a damn. Finally I just brought

him home. He's family. He belongs on the Stars and Bars."

"Just like that?
 
A lot of people wouldn't want him around. A lot of

people wouldn't want the responsibility."

"Yeah, well, that's what's wrong with this country. People have no

integrity anymore, no sense of accountability."

Except J.D. Rafferty. The thought brought a pang of tenderness to

Marilee's heart. J.D. Rafferty, the last cowboy hero, the last honest

man. He had a code of honor and a way of life that had died out

everywhere but in Clint Eastwood movies. He was a hard man; it wouldn't

be wise to romanticize that. But then she thought of him going to take

his uncle out of some bleak V.A. hospital.

He couldn't have been more than a teenager at the time, and yet he had

taken that responsibility. As he had taken responsibility for the ranch.

She thought of what Tucker had told her about him, thought of the child

he had never been, thought of the man he had become and the

vulnerability he showed no one. Dangerous thoughts. As dangerous to her

heart as Del Rafferty had been to her health and well-being

"He scared me, J.D. What if he killed Lucy?" she said softly.

"He didn't."

"Can you really be that sure?"

No, he couldn't, but he'd die before he said so. A part Of him died just

thinking it. Del was family. The Raffertys stuck together, come hell or

high water. Lucy was gone; nothing would change that. "Let it go. It was

an accident, Marilee."

But as they stood there, staring out at the rain, each lost in private

thoughts, neither one of them really believed it.

J.D. left at eight to go to a Montana Stockgrowers meeting in town. He

would miss the bulk of the meeting, but he needed to talk with a couple

of people about putting a deal together for the Flying K.

Still wrapped in the terry robe, Marilee stood on the porch and watched

him drive away into the gloom of the rainy night. A thick fog hugged the

ground, soft gray, eerily buoyant. It crept around the tree trunks like

smoke and drifted down across the ranch yard. Marilee pulled the

oversize robe tighter around her and shivered. It might have seemed

romantic while J.D. was here. Alone it was just plain creepy.

Her thoughts kept drifting to Del Rafferty, living alone on the side of

the mountain. Del and his guns. Del and his visions. He didn't like

blondes. He didn't like strangers. Staring up at the wooded hillside,

she thought she could feel his tormented gaze on her. She could imagine

him bringing her into focus behind the cross hairs of a rifle scope. Had

he seen Lucy the same way?

Her Stomach churning - from anxiety and starvation - she went back into the

house. She needed to borrow some more clothes and go back to town. As

peaceful as she found this place during the day, she didn't relish the

idea of being there alone at night when her mind was filled with

thoughts of madmen. She preferred her room at the lodge, not only for

safety purposes but because she had yet to accept that this place

belonged to her. She couldn't quite bring herself to take the gift. She

couldn't see why she deserved it. She couldn't see what strings Lucy

might have left attached to it.

She found a pair of jeans a size too small, a T-shirt from Cal-Davis

three sizes too big, and a pair of Keds that fit just right. Not high

fashion, but no one at the Burger King drive-thru was liable to

complain. She jogged down the stairs and started for the front door with

visions of bacon cheeseburgers dancing in her head.

As she turned at the foot of the stairs, her attention caught on the

broken door to the study, and another jumble of questions tumbled

through her mind. Questions with names attached. MacDonald Townsend. Ben

Lucas. Evan Bryce.

Stepping over broken glass, she went in and flicked on a brass-desk lamp

that hadn't been smashed during the vandal's spree. The desk itself was

ruined, the bronze eagle sculpture imbedded in the center of its

splintered top.

Another ficus had died a lingering death, uprooted from its pot. The

stenotype machine Lucy had apparently kept for old time's sake sat

undisturbed on an oak pedestal near the picture window. A monument to

her past life.

The floor was littered with papers that had been torn from a filing

cabinet. Meaningless stuff - warranties, ownership papers, llama journals,

tax files.

Books had been hurled from the shelves built in along the back wall and

lay scattered across the pine floor.

Marilee's gaze scanned the titles and authors' names absently. Lucy's

tastes had run from courtroom thrillers to pothoiler glitz novels to The

Prince of Tides. There were law books and books devoted to enhancing

sexual performance. One thick volume of the Martindale-Hubbell law

directory lay on the floor beside a copy of Shared Intimacies.

Martin-Hubbell.

You won't get into Martin-Hubbell, but my name will live on in infamy.

The line from Lucy's letter played through her head.

She picked up the book from the floor and fanned through the pages.

Volume three, listing California attorneys P-Z. Another volume rested on

the bookshelf - volume nine, which included listings for six

states - Montana and five that began with the letter N. There was nothing

out of the ordinary about either book. They were the standard tomes,

bound in mustard-gold cloth with titles in tasteful, discreet gold-foil

type. Between the covers was the usual listing of practice profiles,

professional biographies, services, and supplies.

A complete set would have been composed of fifteen volumes, plus

indexes, but Lucy would have had no use for all of them. Marilee wasn't

even sure why she would have had the book for Montana when she had left

the profession before moving here. She would have expected to find only

the two fat volumes embracing the names of the zillion lawyers that

infested California.

Two volumes.

"So where is the two?

She looked under the furniture, in the cold ashes of the stone

fireplace, beneath the desk drawers that had been pulled out and dumped.

There was no sign of Martindale-Hubbell volume two, California A-O.

Marilee looked around the room at the utter destruction, a chill

radiating outward from the pit of her stomach.

What if this hadn't been vandalism?
 
What if it wasn't a drunk from the

Hell and Gone who had broken into Miller Daggrepont's office? Daggrepont

was Lucy's attorney.

Lucy, who had known secrets about powerful people.

We all have our calling in life. Mine was being a thorn in wealthy paws.

. . .

She thought of the ranch, the llamas, the cars in the garage, the

fortune in clothes strewn across the bedroom floor. Money. Where had she

gotten all the money?

Only one answer made any sense at all. A terrible logic that allowed

jagged puzzle pieces to fall into place.

Blackmail.

In her mind's eye she could see Lucy grinning her secretive, cynical

grin, eyes glittering with sardonic amusement.

"Oh, God, Lucy," she whispered, trembling. "What have you done?"

Miller Daggrepont was a man who knew how and when to seize opportunity.

He knew the value of patience and the advantages of remorselessness.

He was a man of many talents and schemes, none of them large. The

talents were just enough to navigate him through the small labyrinths of

the schemes. The profits weren't huge, but they were growing.

He had been helping himself to trust funds and estates for years. No one