His Partner's Wife (15 page)

Baxter slammed his car door. "If it had been that easy,
he would have taken it the first time."

John waited until his partner joined him on the sidewalk.
"The fact that he was back in the study last night doesn't sit right with
me. He had time after he conked Floyd over the head. The garage … well, now,
that might take you a month to search. But unless the guy is looking for
something so small it could be anywhere … hell, say, a microchip, he had plenty
of time to check out the study."

"Unless he panicked." Baxter gazed at the house
with the avid look of a hunter sizing up a set of antlers from a blind.

John grimaced. "Possible."

"Natalie home?"

"She went to work." He'd wondered about that,
since it was Saturday, but she'd claimed she had to. And maybe it was just as
well that she'd be busy today.

"What's she going to do tonight?"

"Sleep in my guest room. She intends to have a security
alarm system installed, but that'll take a few days. In the meantime, I don't
want her here."

The balding detective jerked his attention from the house.
"Did he know she was home last night?"

"Car was in the driveway." That really bothered
John. It took serious balls to break into a house knowing the home owner was
sacked out in the master bedroom. Had the intruder been willing to kill again?
Hell, he'd done it at least once before. Was the idea now so casual to him, he
didn't mind taking that kind of risk? Or, worse yet, had he half hoped he'd
have an excuse to do her? Even more sickening, had he
intended
to kill
her when he was done in the house? Maybe rape her first?

Those were the fears that made John sweat.

Baxter grunted. "I didn't like her moving back in
here."

"We noticed," he said dryly. "And, yeah, you
were right. Consider it acknowledged."

Geoff Baxter's grin didn't last long. "This is one time
I wish I'd been wrong. I don't like to think of Natalie in there with the
bejesus being scared out of her."

"I think she's tougher than that." Like many cops,
John didn't much like the idea of every home owner keeping a gun under the
pillow, but he was going to suggest that Natalie buy one and take a few lessons
at the range on how to use it. If that bastard had come through her bedroom
door last night, he would have been asking to get blasted.

Once in the house, he and Baxter each took a room and began
a meticulous search of the residence. Bookcases: every book came down, got
flipped through, the space behind examined. Using a small screwdriver, one or
the other took the back off all the electronics components to see if something
had been tucked away. Baxter pulled up loose carpet in a corner of the study;
John yanked a few more inches of peeling vinyl in a corner of the utility room.
Light fixtures that weren't encased in years' worth of dried paint came off so
that one of the two detectives could reach a hand into the cavity behind.

When they started on the kitchen, neither man commented on
the implications if they found something here or in Natalie's bedroom. They
searched the cupboards—behind the pans and the soup cans and the bucket in the
broom closet. They looked for false cans designed to hide valuables, opened the
tops of spice containers, checked to be sure cereal boxes held cereal. John's
partner pulled the panel off the front of the dishwasher, groped the pipes
under the sink, felt to be sure nothing was taped to the top of a cupboard.
They didn't look at each other when they were done, but John at least breathed
a sigh of relief.

Feeling even more squeamish, he took Natalie's bedroom while
Baxter went down to the utility room. One of the two closets he found nearly
empty. She'd evidently either packed away most of Stuart's things or given them
to the Salvation Army. Nonetheless, he inspected the closet carefully. The
master bath didn't take long. Natalie was neat, her makeup relatively simple
and all in one drawer. Nothing was concealed in the toilet tank or on the rim
along the top of the shower stall.

Trying hard to divorce himself from images of Natalie
splayed on the bed, John lifted mattress and springs and found more of nothing.
The woman had even vacuumed under it, clearly. He couldn't remember the last
time he'd moved his own. Lining up the pillows, tucking in sheets and
respreading the comforter tested his discipline. Her scent, flowery in a way
that never cloyed, clung to the bedding. For just an instant, he
saw
her,
hair spread on the pillow, arms flung above her head, nightgown pulled tight
across her breasts and high on her thighs, which were splayed invitingly. Her
dark eyes laughed at him.

Swearing, John turned to her closet.

It was as neat as the bathroom, shoes set in pairs on the
floor, the suits, dresses and blouses that hung all categorized. Feeling like a
bastard, he checked pockets, the boxes on the shelf, the depths of ski boots
and riding boots.

He was probably too hasty by the time he got to the dresser.
One drawer held nightgowns, a couple of T-shirt ones on top of an old-fashioned
lacy white gown—the kind parents bought their daughter and hoped she'd wear on
her wedding night—and at the bottom a spaghetti-strap, teal silk number that
would cling to her body like a teenage boy's wet dream.

John tried to refold so that she wouldn't know he'd looked.

Jeans in another drawer, T-shirts in a third, and underwear
and bras in the top. He shoved it closed without hunting. The low-cut,
lace-edged satin bra on top would haunt him as it was. If Natalie had a secret,
he reasoned, she wouldn't have left it to be found by the cops she knew were
searching her house today.

The relief John had felt at finishing in the kitchen was
nothing to the sense of deliverance and shame he had as he walked out of
Natalie's bedroom.

He and Baxter met in the family room, where there was plenty
of the crap Stuart Reed had carefully packed away in cardboard boxes, the tops
sealed with tape. Fishing lures, tangled line and old reels, saved by a man who
hadn't hooked a fish in ten years. Paperback westerns and thrillers that could
have been traded or given to the library before the pages yellowed. Bowling
ball and shoes.

"Oh, hell, maybe he used those," John muttered.

One box was packed with childhood memorabilia, the kind of
stuff a mother saved. It was with both melancholy and unease that John sifted
through drawings a dead man had done when he was five and his second-grade
report cards. The photo albums couldn't be ignored. John found himself getting
caught up in those, in the story he hadn't known of a skinny boy who was sulky
in nearly every one and who seemed to shrink away from his father in the family
snapshots. A newer album held newspaper clippings about every arrest of note
Reed had ever made, all with his name highlighted.

Baxter wasn't interested. "Just make sure nothing's
stuck between the pages," he said impatiently. "He'd have shown these
to Natalie. If he hid something, it's in the garage."

Baxter's mood was deteriorating. John watched him dump thick
etched glass and china beer steins back into a box without rewrapping them in
newspaper. A clank as he kicked the box into the corner of the family room made
John wince.

"Natalie could sell those if you don't break
them," he said mildly.

"They're too damned ugly for anyone to want."
There was something almost feverish about the way he ripped the tape off the
next box, then moments later lost interest in what appeared to be really old
family photos—even tintypes—and petulantly jammed them back into the carton
before grabbing for the next.

"Looks like the last of these," John said at last.

Crouched on his heels and shoveling through some kind of
financial records, Baxter didn't seem to hear him.

John laid a hand on his shoulder.

His partner jerked and wheeled, abruptly relaxing.
"Damn, don't sneak up on me!"

"Interesting?" John nodded at the stock report in
Baxter's hand.

The other man gave him a blank look. "Why do I care
what stocks Stuart Reed inherited from his mother? He probably spent the
proceeds on beer mugs."

"Let's lay off for the day," John said mildly.
"We can start in the garage Monday."

Baxter's face darkened. "Should be tomorrow. He might
come back."

"I take the kids to see Debbie. Anyway, he's not going
to come back in broad daylight."

"Tomorrow's Sunday?" It could have been a
revelation.

"Pretty sure."

As if the concession were grudging, Baxter gave an abrupt
nod. "Yeah, okay. Monday."

"Natalie will be home any minute."

"Right." He scowled impartially around the family
room, then dropped the year-end report he held back in the box and closed the
top. "I need to head home anyway."

Edging into the personal more than usual, John asked,
"Is something wrong?"

Baxter made a disgusted sound. "What would be
wrong?"

The list of possibilities was long: his wife had thrown him
out of the house or found a lump in her breast; he'd discovered a
thousand-dollar mistake in his checking account or rot in the subfloor of his
upstairs bathroom.

John settled for a mild, "You're in a bad mood."

"This is just such a G.D. waste of time," his
partner snarled. "And we've got another couple of days of it."

John didn't say that he'd always figured that searching
Natalie's house was a waste of time. Instead, he said, "My bet is, we
don't find a damn thing."

Baxter savagely kicked one of the boxes, then swore.
"Something has to be here. It's the only explanation."

Was it? John didn't say anything. Cops all had cases that
hit where it hurt for some reason. Stuart Reed and Baxter had been friends.

Hell, maybe Geoff Baxter was better friends with Natalie,
too, than John had realized. The idea irked him, but he couldn't put his finger
on why. It shouldn't be a surprise: Baxter had mentioned being over here for
dinner just the week before the murder, and John knew he'd done work around the
house for Natalie, too. Evidently it had been with his wife's blessing, as
Linda and Natalie seemed to be friends as well.

Well, Baxter wasn't the only one who was hot and bothered
about this murder. Security system or no, John was grimly determined that
Natalie wouldn't be moving home again until they'd made an arrest. He hadn't
mentioned that to her yet. He figured he'd save the fight for later.

His partner left and Natalie rolled into the driveway not
five minutes later. John had been waiting at the front window like a nosy old
lady. He met her at the door.

Strain showed on her face as she set down her purse on the
hall table. "Did you find anything?"

She didn't say,
Any
luck?
She was between a rock and hard
place here. Without clues, they wouldn't find the murderer, but anything cached
in this house that was worth killing over would point a nasty, accusing finger
at Stuart. For her sake, John hoped he and his partner wouldn't uncover that
reputedly stolen shipment of heroin.

"Nothing," he said now. "Didn't expect there
would be."

She gave a jerky nod, lips pressed together. "I'll just
pack. You don't have to wait. I know the way to your door."

"I'd rather you're not here alone."

"The Porters probably have their binoculars trained on
us right this minute."

He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. "Unless
it's nap time."

He was glad to see amusement mingle with her exasperation.
"Anybody ever tell you, you're a stubborn man?"

"My mother," he said laconically.

Sounding thoughtful, Natalie said, "She tells me Maddie
is stubborn, too."

"As a mule. Maybe it's hereditary."

"Or learned," she suggested with a wry look over
her shoulder from halfway up the stairs.

While he waited, John thought reminiscently of the fights
he'd had with his firstborn when she was a preschooler because she was determined
to wear some eye-popping combination. She always wanted to express her feminine
side—that was how he humorously saw it, anyway—with something like pink
flowered leggings, and the fact that she was a modern woman in the making with
a neon orange or black-and-white zebra-striped top. Whatever shoes he or Debbie
would get out for her were never right. She'd scream her head off if she
couldn't wear sandals in the snow or galoshes in August. The parents of the
other preschoolers must have whispered about Maddie's mom and dad. Hell, maybe
they were right to. What normal adult consistently lost every skirmish with a
four-year-old?