Deadly Intent (24 page)

“Hello, Detective Ryan.” The words sounded stiff to her, and she reminded herself to work on her attitude before he started wondering why she was being so defensive. “You’re not coaching today?”

“I just got off duty.” He stopped to follow the course of a fly ball that the Falcons’ center fielder caught easily. “Jordan has been talking about this game all week,” he said.

“So has Ben. I couldn’t get him to eat any lunch.”

They watched as Ben, playing second base, rushed to catch a fast ground ball the pitcher had missed. The crowd roared, drowning Abbie’s cheers. Leaning toward her, John said, “Think my team is in trouble?”

“Time will tell.” Although his presence made her uneasy, she couldn’t help glancing at him from time to time, struck by how different he was from the man who had questioned her on Friday. It was easy to see why the single mothers she knew were lusting after him. There was something both dangerous and reassuring about him—a quiet strength that made you instantly aware that should trouble occur, John Ryan was the kind of man you wanted in your corner.

“How long has Jordan been playing ball?” she asked.

“Since he could walk. He used to watch me play for the township police team. By the time he was three, he knew the name of every player and the position they played. He

had his first home run when he was six and last year he made MVP. He also plays soccer in the fall and basketball in the winter.” He grinned. “Are you sorry you asked?”

She returned the smile. “Not at all.”

A man proud of his son. She liked that. Jack had never shown much interest in Ben’s accomplishments. He had barely reacted when she had told him he had missed Ben’s first steps. “There’ll be plenty more where those came from,” was his reply.

The sudden silence that fell over the field made her snap back to attention. It was the last inning and the Cardinals’ last batter was getting into position. Aware so much rested on his young shoulders, the boy swung the bat a few times, slashing through the air, then, finally ready, he sank his feet into the sandy ground and gave a nod to the pitcher on Ben’s team.

The sharp crack of the bat brought the crowd to its feet. The ball took off like a rocket, while nearly two hundred people jumped and cheered for the Cardinals as the ball landed well beyond the fence. Grinning, the batter took his time running the bases, and was nearly swallowed up by his teammates as they ran out of the dugout to congratulate him on his home run.

The Falcons’ winning streak had just been broken, but not their spirit. Though momentarily stunned by the unexpected home run, they recovered quickly, and, in a show of good sportsmanship that made Abbie proud, each player went to congratulate their rivals. Abbie could already see Ben going from boy to boy and pointing in her direction. Within minutes, she was surrounded by a sea of happy faces as she passed the cupcakes around.

“Great game, Jordan,” she said as she handed John’s son one of the treats.

“Thanks.” He beamed at his father. “We’re tied for first place now. Aren’t we, Ben?”

Ben’s tongue came out to lick some of the frosting. His eyes shone with friendly mischief. “Yeah, but for how long?”

The teasing forgotten, they were soon chatting away about the all-star picks that would take place in a couple of weeks. Jordan was a handsome boy, a head taller than Ben and athletic-looking, like his father. He also had his father’s mischievous grin and dark hair. Only his eyes, a clear green, were his mother’s. Abbie had seen Clarice Ryan once or twice, always perfectly dressed and rather distant, as though a Little League ball field was the last place on earth she wanted to be.

“I tell you what,” John said, taking Abbie by surprise. “Since neither of you boys had lunch, why don’t I take everyone out for pizza?”

Jordan squinted against the sun. “The whole team. Dad’?”

“No, smarty-pants, just the four of us.” He looked at Abbie. “If that’s all right with Ben’s mom.”

Excited at the prospect, Ben turned imploring eyes toward Abbie. “Oh, Mom, can we?”

Abbie was already trying to come up with a graceful way to say no. A casual conversation at the ball field was fine, but anything more than that was asking for trouble. “I’m not sure we have time.”

“Sure we do. The restaurant is closed on Sundays,” Ben told John as if that explained everything.

“I was thinking more in terms of your homework, Ben. You didn’t finish it, remember?”

“I can finish it tonight. Please Mom, let’s go for a pizza. I’m staaarving.” As if the emphasis on the word wasn’t enough of an attention getter, he pressed his hand to his

stomach and made a face, mimicking what she assumed was a starving boy.

Abbie laughed. “All right, all right. I know when I’m beat. We’ll go.”

John gave a nod. “Good. Want to ride with us?”

“I have my car. I can take both boys. Just tell me where we’re going.”

“Conte’s Pizzeria, next to the police station. Know where it is?”

“Sure we do,” Ben said excitedly. “We go there all the time.”

John watched Abbie walk away, momentarily mesmerized by the gentle sway of her hips. He was shaken from his lusty thoughts when she stopped by her car to let the boys in.

Abbie DiAngelo drove an SUV. The same type of vehicle the police lab suspected had been at the crime scene. John’s gaze drifted down to the tires, and although he couldn’t read the make from where he stood, he was ready to bet a month’s salary they were Goodyear.

But so what, he reasoned as he walked toward his own car. In the last five years, the number of people driving SUV’s in the United States had nearly tripled. And Princeton was no exception. The fact that Abbie drove a sport utility vehicle was no indication she was involved in the murder. Especially since she had told him she hadn’t left the restaurant until after eleven.

Because he was a cop twenty-four hours a day, he was still thinking about Abbie’s truck when he walked into Conte’s Pizzeria five minutes later. But the moment he saw her and the two boys waving at him from a back booth, he put his thoughts aside and went to join them.

After finding out they both had a fondness for anchovies,

Abbie and John shared a pie, while the boys, who had made disgusted faces at the word anchovy, ordered a plain pizza.

As expected, the conversation centered around professional baseball, their favorite teams and players.

“Hey,” Ben told Jordan as he slurped the last of his Coke through a straw. “Want to see my baseball card collection?”

Jordan’s eyes lit up. “When?”

“How about now?” He turned to Abbie, who clearly did not see the next question coming and had no time to hide her dismay. “They can come to the house, right, Mom?”

As much as John would have loved to prolong the afternoon, he felt obligated to come to Abbie’s rescue. “I think your mom probably has other plans for today, Ben.”

But Ben was relentless. “No, she doesn’t. Do you, Mom?” He didn’t let her finish. “Sundays are our ‘do nothing’ days. We just hang around the house and swim, or play games. You like to swim, don’t you, Jordan?”

“Jordan doesn’t have his swimming trunks, Ben,” John said quickly. “Maybe another time?”

But like Ben, Jordan didn’t let obstacles stand in his way. “You could stop home and pick up a pair, couldn’t you, Dad? And I could ride to Ben’s house with Ms. DiAngelo.”

This time John couldn’t come with an answer and apparently neither could Abbie.

“Oh, why not?” she said with a laugh. “Clearly, this is one battle we’re not going to win.”

Twenty-Five

John stood in Abbie’s kitchen watching her feed fresh lemons into a juicer. Sunlight poured through the open French doors, settling on the counter and streaking her hair with fiery highlights. Outside, the boys splashed in the pool, practicing their cannonballs with great exuberance, judging from the noise they were making and the soaked concrete deck.

The house, a rambling, revamped farmhouse, had been as much of a surprise to John as its owner. Set on a slight rise, it offered a spectacular view of the rolling hills that surrounded the property. The interior was all log walls and wood floors polished to a soft patina that gave the DiAngelos” home a unique country charm. But it was the kitchen, snugly tucked beneath an open loft, that was the focus point. It reminded John of Abbie’s restaurant. Colors were everywhere—on the blue-tiled island with its well used copper pots hanging from a wrought-iron rack, on the walls where bunches of garlic, red peppers and various wildflowers hung, and on the counter where a huge blue bowl held an assortment of green, yellow and red peppers. Against the wall, a stone fireplace was flanked by two deep chairs in a rusty shade and a mosaic coffee table where the boys had left their baseball cards.

As for Abbie herself, she was even more beautiful in casual clothes than she had been in her elegant outfit a few

days ago. She wore white cotton shorts that showed spectacular legs, a rather distracting aqua T-shirt and white sandals. He tried not to think of the way his arm had brushed against her in Campagne’s kitchen yesterday. Or how the feel of that firm round breast had sent his blood pumping. It wasn’t easy.

Reluctantly, he tore his eyes away from her and looked around him. “This is quite a place you have here.”

“Thank you. It didn’t always look that way.”

“I know. Most people in the department are familiar with this property. Mrs. Ramsey used to call us on a regular basis, either to rescue her cat or to help her with a fallen tree.”

Abbie laughed. “Did she really?”

“We didn’t mind. In fact, we used to fight about who would answer the call, because there was always a homemade lunch waiting for us and a plate of cookies to take back to the station. Not to mention that her donations to the police athletic league and numerous other charities were unequaled.”

“Catherine is a very generous woman.”

“I was surprised to find out she had sold the property, though. She was very attached to it.”

Abbie selected another lemon and inspected it carefully before cutting it in two. “She held on to it as long as she could, but it had become too much for her. She had help, of course, but you know how she was, always wanting to do everything herself.”

‘ ‘I thought a developer would have jumped at the chance to build a handful of luxury homes on this tract.”

“Oh, they wanted to, believe me.” She reached across the counter for a glass pitcher and he caught a whiff of her perfume again—a light, feminine fragrance he had smelled at the restaurant. “Developers had been courting her for

years, offering her insane amounts of money for the land. But Catherine, as you know, was a wealthy woman. She didn’t care about money. All she wanted was for someone to maintain the beauty of the area. When she heard I was looking for a piece of land to build my house on, she came to see me. At first I just laughed, because I knew I’d never be able to pay her what I assumed she wanted. She surprised me by making me an offer I couldn’t refuse. All she wanted in exchange was my promise—in writing—that I would never sell a single acre to developers.”

John gazed at the high open-beamed ceiling, which hadn’t been here before. He had always been fond of wood. “Has she seen what you’ve done with the place?”

“Catherine is a frequent guest here. She loves every nook and cranny. Sometimes she teases me, claiming she wants to buy the property back.”

“Isn’t a place like this hard to maintain?”

She looked amused. ‘ ‘You mean, do I manage to cut the grass, clean the pool, change the lightbulbs, all those manly things men do around the house?”

He laughed. “Something like that.”

“The same young man who cuts my mother’s grass cuts mine. And he plows in the winter. The big jobs are done by a handyman, and the rest I do myself, with Ben’s help.”

“You seem very self-sufficient.”

“You sound .surprised.”

“A little, but not in the way you think. I was simply wondering why someone with your looks, and brains, never got remarried.”

“I guess I haven’t found the right man.”

“Are you looking?” The question was out before he could stop it, and it surprised him as much as it did her.

She recovered quickly, though, and slanted him a mocking look. “Do you have someone in mind?”

“You never know.”

“What about you? Why didn’t you remarry?”

“Too busy, too fussy.” He grinned and borrowed her phrase. “Never found the right woman.”

Maybe he had. Maybe she was standing right here. Suddenly that big word—commitment—didn’t sound so threatening anymore. He watched her pour the contents from the juicer into the pitcher, admiring her quick, precise movements as she added a few tablespoons of sugar, a handful of ice cubes and water.

“I didn’t know anyone made lemonade that way anymore.”

“In this house, it’s the real thing or nothing at all.” She set the pitcher on a waiting tray. “One of my mother’s mottoes I still live by.”

He remembered reading how her mother had influenced her life and the choices Abbie had made. He suddenly found himself wanting to know everything about her, and those around her. “You and your mother must be very close.”

“We are.” She pointed to a cabinet. “Would you please get me four glasses from the top shelf? The tall ones with the blue shells?”

He took the glasses down and set them on the counter. “Do you see her often?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Your mother.”

“Yes, I do,” she said a little curtly. She handed him the tray. “You can take this out. I’ll bring extra ice.”

Surprised by her abrupt tone, he started to say something, then stopped himself. Something had ticked her off. Maybe she didn’t like people prying into her private life. Or maybe her mother’s illness made her uncomfortable.

Even though the disease had been around for some time now, some people still found it difficult to talk about it.

But no matter how he tried to justify her sudden change in behavior, he had a nagging suspicion it was somehow related to her stepbrother’s murder. He didn’t know how, but he couldn’t shake off the thought, especially after he had seen her get into her SUV earlier.

Abbie wasn’t sure when the conversation turned from polite chitchat to something more personal, or who had initiated the sudden change. She had been on her guard at first, all too aware of the risks she was taking having this man in her house. She had soon realized that her fears were unfounded. John Ryan was not only easy to talk to, his candor was quite refreshing. At least when he was off duty.

John was more interested in hearing about her ex husband than Abbie was in talking about him, but after cutting short his questions about her mother earlier, discussing her failed marriage wasn’t that difficult.

“Jack was always a driven man,” she explained, glad she no longer felt any rancor toward him. ‘ ‘Unfortunately, most of that drive went into his law practice. When I complained he wasn’t spending enough time with Ben and me, he kept telling me the reason he worked so hard was so I could have everything I wanted.”

‘ ‘So his job was the reason the two of you split up?”

“No, not his job. Mine. Jack didn’t want me to work. He said it made him look bad vis-a-vis his colleagues, whose wives spent their time playing tennis or golf, and sponsoring scores of charities. The problem was, I wanted to work. I took pride in what I did. And since my catering job made it possible for me to be home with Ben, I didn’t see any harm in doing what I loved to do. But Jack saw it differently.”

“How long have you been divorced?”

“Four years.”

“His idea or yours?”

She smiled. “Are you always this nosy? Or is your curiosity a professional hazard?”

He threw his head back and gave a hearty laugh. “Touche. I’m sorry.”

“I was just teasing.” She watched the two boys race across the pool in a furious crawl. “Jack and I realized we no longer had a marriage at about the same time. The difference was that I wanted a divorce and he didn’t. To him, divorce meant failure, and he hates failure of any kind. When he realized I wasn’t budging, he tried to get me to change my mind by filing for full custody of Ben. The judge’s decision to rule in my favor was another slap in his face. Outside the courthouse, he actually threatened to kidnap Ben. I had to get a restraining order against him.”

“Does he ever see his son?”

“Yes, but not very often, even though I lifted the restraining order long ago.” She picked up her glass and twirled the ice cubes around. “Jack moved his law practice to Edison and claims he doesn’t have time to come down, even though he’s less than an hour away. He keeps in touch through phone calls and email.”

John gazed toward the pool where Ben and Jordan had started a splashing fight. “That’s got to be tough on your son.”

“It was, at first. Jack may not have been the greatest father in the world, but Ben looked up to him, and when he left, his little world collapsed.”

“How did you handle it?”

She had always been fiercely protective of her private life, but here she was, opening up to a man who was prac

tically a stranger, and not feeling the least bit awkward about it.

“I kept him busy. And then later, when I decided to open the restaurant, I made him an integral part of that decision. He loved that, being consulted, being made to feel important. I know I’ll never be able to take the place of a father, but we’re very close. And he has Brady when he’s in need of some serious male bonding.”

“Your sous-chef?”

She nodded and drained the last of her lemonade. “He’s good for Ben.”

Afraid they’d start talking about her mother again, she skillfully guided the conversation toward John’s own family. She discovered that he had a wonderful sense of humor, especially when he told her about a recent visit he’d had—the second this year—to the headmistress at FitzRandolph. All wit disappeared, however, when he mentioned his ex wife’s intentions—intentions he had quickly put an end to—of sending Jordan to military school.

“I wish I could have him with me full-time,” he said seriously. “I know that’s what Jordan wants.”

“Then why don’t you talk to your ex-wife? Tell her how you feel.”

“If I was doing anything else but police work, I would have made my move long ago. But with my hours...” He shook his head.

Abbie felt sorry for him. This was a man who truly wanted to be a full-time dad and couldn’t. Or thought he couldn’t. “I felt the same way when I decided to open Campagne,” she said, hoping he’d find her experience helpful. “In fact, I almost gave up my dream. I told myself the hours would be too long, the stress too high, the profits nonexistent—at least at first.”

“But you made it work.”

“It wasn’t easy, but yes, I worked it out, with a little help from my friends—Claudia, who pitches in and babysits occasionally, and Tiffany, the college girl who takes over for me when I’m not home. For a long time, my mother was also able to help, but...” She bit her lower lip, realizing that this time it was she who had brought her mother into the conversation.

His expression softened. “How severe is your mother’s illness?”

Abbie gave a fatalistic shrug. “Not too—yet. Some days are better than others. She’s hard to predict.”

“She lives alone?”

“Not anymore. I hired a wonderful woman to stay with her. They get along beautifully.” She smiled. “Until they find something to disagree on. Then watch out.”

She caught him looking at her in a funny way and let out a nervous laugh. “What?”

“You’re quite a remarkable woman, Abbie DiAngelo.”

Abbie felt herself blush. She had never been good at accepting compliments, especially when they were made by a man as attractive and magnetic as John Ryan. She was searching for a witty reply, when the boys jumped out of the pool to announce they were hungry again.

Twenty-Six

“Today was great, wasn’t it, Dad?”

John had just pulled into Clarice’s driveway. At his son’s question, he threw the gearshift into park and turned around in his seat. “Yes, it was, son. You and Ben had a lot of fun together.”