His Partner's Wife (11 page)

Somebody—presumably John—had thought to fold the fabric
carefully with the pattern pieces pinned inside. When she spread it back out,
she found the delicate tissue no more torn than when she first noticed that
Sasha had napped in here.

She unpinned and put the fabric in the hamper to wash. Using
tape she'd brought upstairs, she mended the brand-new pattern. The project was
to be a dress with pinafore for her five-year-old niece. Natalie's sister,
Maryke, didn't sew at all, and her daughter was to be the flower girl in an
outdoor wedding in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, where they lived. The
bride had chosen the powder-blue fabric and pattern. Fortunately, Natalie still
had several weeks.

She laid out the pinafore pattern on filmy white cotton with
a delicate pattern woven in, and cut it out, even getting a start on the
sewing. Pleasantly tired, she scooped Sasha's litter, checked that doors and
windows were locked and started up the stairs to bed with a book in hand.
Feeling like a coward, she nonetheless turned back around and grabbed a sturdy
maple chair from the kitchen, which she braced under the bedroom doorknob after
she'd pushed in the flimsy lock.

It
was enough
to allow her a good night's
sleep. After her morning shower, Natalie set the chair aside, a little
embarrassed at last night's fears. For goodness' sake, nobody was going to
break into her house in the middle of the night! With police having crawled all
over the place and left their yellow crime scene tape plastered everywhere, no
burglar—or murderer—in his right mind would come near her house. She was
probably safer than any home owner in Port Dare right this minute. She wouldn't
have moved home again if there was any real danger.

"I blame you, Detective Baxter," she muttered,
although in all fairness that darned yellow tape gave her the creeps this
morning, too, on her way downstairs.

The phone rang while her coffee was brewing. She picked it
up cautiously. Unless the press had really and truly lost interest, they'd
still be trying to reach her.

"Hello?"

"You okay?" John said.

"If somebody had murdered me in the middle of the
night, wouldn't it be a little late to ask if I'm okay?" Phone between her
shoulder and ear, she poured the coffee. "I'm fine, of course. Why
wouldn't I be?"

"I thought you might not sleep well."

"You were wrong. I slept like a baby. Which," she
said thoughtfully, "is one of those odd sayings. I stayed with my sister
for two weeks after she had her second child, and I swear he screamed all night
long. If he slept at all, it was in half-hour snatches. I, on the other hand,
didn't stir for eight hours."

"I'm glad to hear it." His voice had a rumble of
amusement. "Geoff was sure you'd be petrified."

"What did you think?" she couldn't resist asking.

"I think you wouldn't admit it if you had been."

He was right. Which meant he knew her all too well. "Is
that all you called for?"

"Yup." He paused. "And to let you know we may
be in and out today."

"Surely you've searched this place top to bottom."

"Not even close, and frankly, at this point, I can't
justify the hours it would take to winnow through every box in that damned
garage. Baxter doesn't agree. You know him, he's worried about you."

"I noticed," she said dryly.

He gave a grunt of amusement. "He was a little
heavy-handed yesterday, wasn't he?"

"I was ready to slam the door in his face."

"I did drag him away."

Natalie popped bread into the toaster, one eye on the clock.
"I duly offer thanks."

"The truth is, Floyd and some buddy of his probably
broke in to steal everything portable. They went to check out the study,
started to argue, and things escalated. The buddy panicked and ran."

The toast popped up. Natalie didn't move. "Except that
he just happened to have a pipe in his hand for bashing in his friend's
head."

Damn it, why couldn't she just accept the easy answer? The
one that made this crime random, having nothing to do with her?

She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. But her mind
stubbornly poked at the facts. Could the choice of her house truly
be
random,
when there was a connection between Stuart and the murdered man? And burglars
hardly ever killed each other in the middle of a job. She would have guessed
they worked quickly and silently. If you'd broken into somebody's house, it
would be the height of foolishness to start a loud argument when a neighbor
might be home to hear.

"Maybe the buddy always carried a length of pipe in
case the home owner strolled in the door unexpectedly," John suggested.

Comforted by the logical if unpleasant explanation—what if
she
had
strolled in her front door that morning?—Natalie reached for the butter knife.

"That makes sense," she admitted. "But what a
time to argue."

"Crooks are, by definition, dumb. We wouldn't catch
them otherwise."

This reminder, too, was comforting. She'd read about a
would-be bank robber who wrote his demand for money on the back of one of his
own deposit slips. Or the one who tried to rob the bank via the drive-up window
with bullet-proof glass—and then politely waited for the teller to package
money until the police arrived.

"Okay," she said. "I feel better. And—"
her gaze fell on the clock "—I'd better get moving or I'll be late for
work."

Yesterday she'd told John about today's meeting with a
representative from a major chain of hardware stores, during which she intended
to persuade him to advertise in the
Sentinel.
So far, despite opening a big new store in
Port Dare, the company had declined to include their weekly ad in the
Sentinel.
Most
residents also took at least the Sunday
Seattle
Times,
the manager of the local store
had said with a shrug. Today Natalie was armed with figures showing how many of
the
Sentinel's
subscribers did not, in fact, also subscribe to any
metropolitan newspaper.

"You go bag 'em, girl," John said now.

She laughed and hung up, feeling cheered by the
conversation. It was nice that somebody cared. And John had sounded looser,
friendlier, more like his usual self than he had these past few days. She hoped
he'd just been tired or nursing a headache, that his mood hadn't had anything
to do with her waylaying him for a midnight chat in her bathrobe, or—heaven
forbid!—that impulsive kiss.

Armored in her best suit, charcoal-gray wool that looked
businesslike while being formfitting enough to also be feminine, Natalie went
forth to battle. The district manager was more cordial than her previous
contact. He explained their reasoning, looked at her proposal, which outlined
costs and subscriber numbers—including those who
wouldn't
see his
weekly ad—and the full-color circular that his major competitor ran weekly. The
meeting ended with him noncommittal.

Two hours later he called to buy space. Her success softened
the usual daily annoyances, including a grocery store insert printed with a
huge error and intended to go into the morning paper.

She had dinner with a friend at a small waterfront seafood
restaurant, where she kept finding her gaze wandering to the marina below. Regina had excused herself to visit the ladies' room, so that for a moment Natalie didn't
have to hide her distraction.

The sun hadn't yet set, although the light was gradually
deepening, the water taking on a lavender tint that would become almost purple
as dusk settled.

Snow-white, clean-lined powerboats and sharp-masted sailboats
bobbed at the crisscrossed docks. A teak sailboat that must have been forty
feet long was slowly motoring in, the sails wrapped and figures bustling on
deck.

At the edge of the parking lot, Natalie could just see the
corner of a building topped with a bold black-and-white sign that promised
"Island Whale Watching." Was that where Ronald Floyd had worked? Was
this the marina where Stuart had arrested him? She tried to imagine the boat
easing in, the cops stepping from the darkness with guns drawn, and came up
with something like the gory scene at the end of
The Big Easy,
when
the Port Dare version had probably been far more mundane.

And it might not have taken place here at all, she reminded
herself. Another good-sized marina was tucked behind the arm of the spit to the
west. She'd caught a glimpse of tips of the masts from horseback the other day.
And it might even have been a cooperative sting with another police force. John
hadn't said.

Natalie had never asked to see a photograph of Ronald Floyd.
She tried not to think about him. When she did, he was … faceless. It was like
one of those investigative TV show interviews, where someone's face had been
blacked out and his voice distorted. The anonymity stole some of the humanity
from the person being interviewed. He was everybody and nobody at the same
time. So long as she didn't see his picture, she didn't have to know whether
he'd had a nice face or if sadness or fear lurked in his eyes. She didn't have
to care about him.

"Deep thoughts?" Regina asked, dropping her purse
onto the empty chair and sitting back down across from Natalie.

Feeling distaste at her own selfishness, Natalie lied.
"Not a one. Actually, I was gloating. Let me tell you about today's
triumph."

An emergency room nurse, Regina Gresch in return told a
hushed story about a prominent but nameless local citizen who had come into the
ER with broken glass in an orifice on her body where it didn't belong.

"Eew," Natalie pronounced. "Did she wear a
brown paper bag over her head?"

"Wouldn't have done any good." Straight-faced, Regina shook her head. "We require proof of insurance."

They both laughed. Later, driving home, Natalie thought
about how uncomfortable it would be to have a job where you found out things
about people that you didn't want to know and that you couldn't tell anyone, at
least with names attached.

Cops were the same, of course. Stuart had sometimes been
indiscreet with his wife, while at other times he had been grim and silent,
shaking his head when she asked what was bothering him. Neither police nor
hospital workers had the luxury of not seeing the victims.

She didn't envy John, who had had to tell Ronald Floyd's
parents their son was dead. Natalie wondered if they'd told stories about the
boy they remembered, whether they'd had grade-school photographs of him
displayed, if they'd insisted on bringing out an album to show John.

Trying to shake off the morbid thoughts, Natalie parked in
the driveway in front of her house. She'd have left lights on if she'd known Regina would call suggesting they have dinner.

The windows were blank and dark. She mentally traveled
inside, up the stairs, where the yellow police tape draped the doorway like a
cobweb. The door would push silently open. Inside gray fingerprint powder lay
on every surface like an ancient gathering of dust. There, in front of the
desk, was the rust-red stain of spilled blood.

She shuddered and wished suddenly, violently, that the study
had been gutted by fire. Damaged irreparably, so that she could start all over
with it.

Maybe she would. Instead of cleaning the carpet at all, she
could have it ripped out, Natalie thought on a rising bubble of hope, or
relief. She could paint and paper afresh, install filmy white pleated blinds,
have warm, shining hardwood floors installed. She hated that huge, ugly desk
and metal file cabinets. She'd sell the desk, carry the boxes to the garage
until she had time to go through them. Or, better yet,
make
the
time. Would Regina and some of her other friends help? Maybe, in a weekend,
they could make some inroads. If they priced everything as they weeded, she
could have a garage sale the next weekend, before the weather turned too rainy
for the year.

New optimism accompanied Natalie, a shimmery surface on the
well of disquiet as she unlocked the front door and groped for light switches.
The living room looked as it always did, the kitchen clean except for her
cereal bowl in the sink and a note on the counter. John's scrawl said,
"Done with study. You can get carpet cleaners out tomorrow."