Deadly Deceptions (27 page)

“No, you won't.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You said it yourself. I'm too good a lover to throw over. If we were together right now, I'd go down on you and prove my point.”

Heat surged through me. My nipples hardened, and I got damp. “I don't have time for phone sex,” I said.

He laughed. “I'll be in Shiloh sometime tomorrow. Plan on a wild ride, cowgirl—no phone required.”

I groaned.

Tucker laughed again. “Are you sure you don't have time for a little phone sex?” he teased in a low drawl.

At least, I
think
he was teasing. I didn't risk finding out. “I'll call you in four hours,” I said. Then I hung up, drew a couple of deep breaths, squirmed on the car seat and got back on the highway.

He didn't call me again.

Good thing. If he had, I probably would have pulled over and stuck both feet against the dashboard while he talked me through two or three noisy climaxes.

Talk about your roadside attraction.
See the Amazing Orgasmic Woman, three miles ahead.

 

I
T TOOK
D
AVE AND ME
another fourteen hours to reach Shiloh, and by the time we pulled into town and checked in to the Lakeside Motel, we were too pooped to look for anybody. I did manage to ask the desk clerk if she'd seen a woman matching Greer's description—blond, slender, cast on her left arm—and she said no.

I figured she was probably lying—Shiloh is the sort of place where everybody knows everybody else—but there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

Dave had kibble for supper.

I had a chocolate bar scrounged from the glove compartment of my car.

Once I'd dined, I showered, tossed back the covers on the rent-a-bed and crashed.

It wasn't until the next morning, when I wanted to dress, that I realized I hadn't packed my usual trash-bag suitcase before leaving the apartment in Cave Creek. I was going to have to make do with the sundress and bra I'd been wearing for two days already, at least until I could scope out the local shopping opportunities. I chucked the panties, and not just because I knew Tucker was on his way.

One cannot fight crime in dirty underwear. It's too distracting.

So after Dave lifted his leg next to one of the picnic tables down by the lake and pooped for an encore, we got into the Volvo to cruise. No Wal-Mart and no Target, but there was a place called Nellie's Boutique. Nellie's, a small, narrow storefront that ran deep—all the way back to the alley behind it, as I soon learned—was caught in a time warp, circa 1955. The abandoned movie theater next door only added to the spooky nostalgia.

“Stay here,” I told Dave as I got out of the car. As if he was going to crank up the engine and go joyriding or something. I dumped a bottle of water into one of the bowls I'd brought along, so he was good to go, for hydration purposes anyway. And he probably
would
go if I didn't get my butt back there pretty quickly and walk him again.

I'd parked across the street from Nellie's, leaving a window cracked so Dave could breathe, and as I was crossing, I had a totally weird experience—one I could not have predicted, even after making the acquaintance of several dead people and zooming out of my body that day at the shooting range.

For half a heartbeat, maybe less than that, I was back in that same darkened room, but this time there was an image on the screen instead of the spinning spiral. One small, pink ballet slipper, lying forlornly on the ground.

I knew it belonged to Gillian.

In the next moment I slammed back into my body.

I was standing in the middle of the street, with one hand over my mouth.

The honking of a car horn jarred me out of my stupor.

I turned, heart pounding, and waved apologetically to the driver of a muddy pickup truck. The guy behind the wheel, sporting a straw cowboy hat, smiled and raised an index finger in acknowledgment.

I hurried on, heading for Nellie's.

What had just happened here? Had my brain short-circuited, or was it residual fatigue, or the fact that I needed breakfast almost as much as I needed a fresh supply of underwear?

Maybe what I
really
needed was psychotropic medication.

I was understandably shaken, and there would be no making sense of the astral-projection thing until I'd had coffee and protein. I couldn't think straight without breakfast—or without panties.

A little bell jingled over the door as I entered Nellie's.

I made quick work of shopping, selecting two bras, three pairs of nylon panties and several cotton sundresses. A heavy woman with dyed red hair and makeup that looked thick enough to be peeled off her face in a single pull greeted me with a suspicious smile.

“Are you Nellie?” I asked as I forked over my ATM card to pay for the new wardrobe.

“Nellie's been dead for twenty years,” she said. “I'm Sally Swenson.” She bagged my purchases and handed back my ATM card, after studying my name on the front of it.

It was all I could do not to shinny into a pair of those new panties right there in front of the sales counter, I felt that vulnerable.

“You just passing through Shiloh, Mojo?” Sally inquired. Her tone when she said “Mojo,” indicated that she considered it strange, but she didn't seem unfriendly—just curious.

I nodded, reaching for the bags. “Can you tell me where the Severn farm is?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

Sally's eyes widened. “It's out on Route 2, a mile or so past the cemetery,” she said. “Nobody lives there now.”

I was still light-headed, and I'd broken out in a cold sweat during my out-of-body experience. Normally I'm a pretty quick thinker, but I couldn't come up with a single viable excuse for wanting to visit an empty farmhouse.

“Oh,” I said, hoping I looked smarter than I sounded—or felt.

Sally shuddered, as though a veil of cobwebs had just dropped from the ceiling and settled over her. “Somebody ought to burn that place to the ground,” she said. “Nothing left but rats and bad memories. Kids go out there to drink beer and smoke dope. It's a public menace, that house, practically falling in on itself. Ask me, it would be a good thing if it did.”

There were so many questions I wanted to ask, but I was a little off my game. I gripped the counter edge with one hand and leaned against it a little.

“Are you all right?” Sally asked.

“Fine,” I lied. “What happened to Mr. and Mrs. Severn…and their daughter—what was her name?”

“Fred died. Alice moved away after that—married a forest ranger or something. Rick's been in and out of jail since that accident of his.” Sally narrowed her eyes and peered at me. “What's your connection to the Severns, anyhow? You're not a reporter, are you? Or somebody from one of those tabloid TV shows?”

“I knew—Molly. Their older daughter.”

“Well, if you have any idea where she is,” Sally said, “you'd better tell the cops. She's wanted for attempted murder.”

“I haven't seen her in a while,” I replied.

Sally looked downright suspicious now. “She ruined a lot of people's lives, that Molly Stillwell. Fred senior's, certainly. She
poisoned
that poor man. Alice all but dried up and blew away, trying to take care of him. And as for Rick and Tessa—”

I grabbed hold of the name. “Tessa. What happened to her?”

“In and out of drug rehab. Married and divorced a couple of times. Last I heard, she was in a mental hospital in Missoula. Slashed her wrists with a broken bottle and almost bled to death. The police found her in an alley.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling numb now, as well as dizzy.

I left, carrying the bags to the car.

Dave was glad to see me, but then, Dave was
always
glad to see me, which is definitely not the case with everybody.

I stood a moment next to the driver's door, breathing deeply.

Once I was inside the car, I snatched a pair of pink panties from the stash, jerked off the price tag and, after checking in all directions to make sure I wouldn't be observed, wriggled into them.

“There,” I told Dave. “That's better.”

Tucker was due to hit town anytime now, I reminded myself. The panties would be sliding back down around my ankles as soon as we were alone, and as badly as I'd wanted to put them on, I probably wouldn't protest. In the meantime, though, it was good not to feel naked.

Dave and I headed for the local pancake house, which had outside seating—picnic tables under a dented metal awning. Together we consumed the three-egg special with a short stack and crisp bacon on the side, although Dave's appetite was a little more delicate than mine, since he'd had kibble back at the motel.

We piled back into the Volvo and drove up and down every street in Shiloh. It didn't take long, since there weren't all that many, but I got a good sense of the place.

Next I found Route 2 and followed it for miles, but if the Severn farmhouse was there, I didn't see it. It could have been at the end of any number of dirt roads, with rusted rural mailboxes teetering at their weedy bases. Sally had mentioned a cemetery, but I couldn't find that, either.

I didn't think I'd go down in history as one of the great detectives.

Finally I turned around and headed back toward Shiloh, intending to ask directions—of anybody but Sally Swenson—to the Severn place.

There was a grassy, tree-shaded park in the center of town, fronting the lake, and it looked inviting. I decided to stop there and let my dog do his business while I thought about who I ought to approach, and what I'd say when I did.

I clipped Dave's leash to his collar and grabbed the half roll of toilet paper I'd snitched from a public restroom on the drive up from Arizona in case his business happened to be the goopy kind.

There was a modest stone fountain in the middle of the park, and an old man in overalls, a long-sleeved shirt and a billed cap sat on the edge, smiling as Dave lapped at the water. I was pretty sure the codger was alive, but the clothes made me wonder. They could have harkened from a variety of decades.

“Hello,” I said.

“Howdy,” he answered. “You from around here?”

“No,” I replied. “Arizona.”

“Long way from home.”

I nodded. Dave was really sucking up the water; the sound nearly drowned out the old man's voice. “This is a nice park,” I said.

“We like it.”

Not a talker, then. I'd have to prod him a little.

“I guess you've probably lived around Shiloh for a long time.”

He tilted his head back to study me more closely. “All my life,” he said.

“You must have known the Severn family, then.”

He nodded. “Talk about a bad-luck bunch,” he mused.

“I've been trying to find their house,” I said.

“Why would you want to do that? Nobody's there.”

“I'm in real estate,” I replied, inspired.

“You couldn't get a plugged nickel for the place, even if you put a dump-truck load of cash into renovating it first.”

“I'm still curious.”
And I think my sister is hiding in the cellar.

The old man shrugged. Took a little notepad from his overall pocket, along with the stub of a pencil, which he touched to the tip of his tongue before drawing what appeared to be a crude map. “Mind you don't fall through a floor or something, snooping around out there,” he said.

Blushing because he'd pegged me for a snooper, I studied the map. Three tiny crosses indicated the aforementioned cemetery, and he'd drawn a tiny stick house at the junction of two roads.

Dave stopped lapping at the fountain water and sniffed the grass around my feet.

“I'll be careful,” I promised belatedly.

“I hope that's true,” the man replied. “Because nothing else you said was. You some kind of cop or insurance investigator or something?”

I shook my head.

He gave a good-natured little snort of amusement. Then he spat, narrowly missing the dog, who didn't seem to mind. I let Dave off the leash, since there was nobody around besides the old man and me, but I was watching Farmer Brown from under my lashes the whole time.

About that time, Dave let out a yelp, and I looked up to see that he'd wandered some distance away. Now he was darting toward me, with two rottweilers on his trail, like the hounds of hell, closing fast.

Dave hit me like a bullet, scrambled right up my body. I clasped him in both arms, but the rottweilers kept coming. They were planning on having Dave for breakfast—and they'd chew right through me to get to him.