Jude Deveraux (28 page)

'Snooping
into my private e-mails and phone calls?' Jared asked, one eyebrow raised.

'Of
course. So what did you find out?'

Jared
got up again, trying not to pace but unable to sit still. When he'd heard that
a man had been killed so close to Eden and her daughter, he thought he was
going to go on a killing rampage himself. He'd wanted to gather guns and men
and planes and take them to Arundel, North Carolina, and kill . . . That was
the problem. They still had no idea who was behind whatever was going on. Two
agents dead and no idea why. All they knew was that things centered around Ms.
Eden Palmer and maybe around her old house. It had been with great reluctance
that he'd agreed to physically remove himself from the case and give the
impression that Eden was no longer being watched. But she
was
being
watched. The cameras were still in place inside her house and out, and men were
still stationed outside her house. Everything she did or said had been reported
on. Jared had watched some of the hours of tapes, and had read some of the
reports. The only thing he'd come up with is that if he were there he'd have
let Eden's whining daughter have a piece of his mind.

Bill
was still looking at him, waiting to hear what Jared had found out. That Bill
didn't know the exact contents of what Jared was doing on his own time was
reassuring. That meant   that   the blocks he'd  put
on his phone and computer were working.

'Something
about Ohio,' Bill said by way of encouragement.

'Yeah,
one Walter K. Runkel.'

'Let me
guess. The whining brat's father.'

Jared's
mouth turned into a smirk. It seemed that Bill had also seen some of the tapes.
'Exactly. Eden said he'd been the head deacon at her church, so I did a little
digging, made a few calls, and found out who he was.'

'And?'

'There was
a big scandal at that church about four years after Eden was tossed out by her
parents. The man who raped Eden got caught with another young girl.'

'Another
rape?'

'No.
Seems that it was mutual. There was a lot of commotion and accusations, but
there were no charges and no arrests were made. Runkel and the girl were
separated, then he went back to his wife and kids. As soon as the girl was of
age, they were at it again. The wife packed up the kids and moved to
California. As soon as the divorce was final, Runkel married the kid. Good
thing, because by then she was seven months pregnant.'

'You
think Eden knows any of this?'

'Not a
word of it. I think she's gone out of her way to not know any of it. When she
left that town, she left it forever.'

'So now
Runkel is living with the kid? She's how old now?'

'He
left her when she turned twenty. She took the kid and went back to her
parents.'

Bill
gave a low whistle. 'Where is he now?'

'Works in
a carpet store. He's in the same town and everybody knows to keep their young
girls away from him. He's no longer an active member of the church.'

'What
about Ms. Palmer's parents?'

'Both
dead.'

Bill
looked at the files on his desk. 'You don't think this Runkel had anything to
do with what's going on here, do you? Maybe he plans to blackmail Ms. Palmer.
I'm sure she'd pay him to make him stay away from her daughter and the
grandbaby.'

'I
thought of that, but he hasn't left town in years, and I checked his phone
records. No calls to North Carolina. I don't think he knows about Eden or her
daughter.'

Bill
looked at Jared for a moment. 'So what do you plan to do about him?'

'Except
for Eden, he doesn't seem to have done anything that he can be prosecuted for.
Or anything anyone knows about, that is.'

'Any
unsolved rapes on the books?' Bill asked, eyebrows raised.

'Three,'
Jared said with a half smile. 'I checked into it, and I think he probably did
it.'

'Did
they save DNA?'

'Yes.'
For a moment Bill and Jared looked at each other and nodded. Maybe Eden wasn't
willing to go through the horror of a trial, but maybe the other victims were.

'Get on
it,' Bill said.

'I've
already started.'

'So
what else?' Bill asked.

'Why
didn't you tell me that Tess Brewster had never had a paintbrush in her hands
in her life?'

'I knew
you'd find it out. Besides, when you're around Ms. Palmer, you don't think
about or see anything else. Just her.'

Jared
gave him a look that told him not to go there. 'What do you know?' Jared asked.

'Only
that Tess didn't paint those pictures. But she did take them to the frame
shop.'

Jared
sat down. 'Where did she get the pictures? You don't think she bought them, do
you? Maybe this is a red herring and she bought them at a garage sale and had
them framed. Maybe she was going to hang them in her apartment.'

'Did
she have an apartment? I thought she lived here at the agency. With you.'

Jared
smiled, and for the first time in days, he relaxed. 'Like all of us. So what's
the theory on the paintings?'

'I think
Tess wanted to hide them. She got them somewhere and wanted to hide them where
no one would look.'

'Ah,
yes, hide them in plain sight. So she took them to the frame shop and left them
there, meaning to return and get them later.'

'No,
she sent us the claim ticket.' Bill handed the piece of paper across the desk
to Jared.

'You
had this, but you didn't show it to me?'

'I
didn't know we had it. It was mixed in with her reports, and — '

Jared
looked at Bill in speculation. Was he telling the truth that they had
overlooked something  like  this?  Either  Bill 
wasn't  telling everything or he was flat out lying.

Bill
wouldn't meet Jared's eyes. 'I want you off the case,' he said quietly. 'Two
agents are dead, and we still don't know anything.'

Jared
gave his boss, his friend, a half smile. 'Afraid I'll bite the dust on this
one?'

'Hoping
for it,' Bill said, but his face was serious.

'What
are you doing to protect her?' Jared asked.

'We're
just trying to watch her, that's all. She has no idea a man was killed outside
her house last night. All she's concerned about is finding her son-in-law and
getting him to take his wife home.'

'So
where is the son-in-law?'

'Busy,'
Bill said.

'I see.
You're keeping him too busy to take his wife away. You don't want anything to
mess up the bait, do you? You're dangling this innocent woman in front of the
killer, so you might as well dangle the daughter too, is that it?'

'Maybe
if
you
had found out what she knows this wouldn't be happening,' Bill
snapped.

'She
doesn't know anything,' Jared shot back. 'At least not anything that would
cause some spy to swallow her name.'

'Yeah,
well, maybe. I'm not convinced.' He started to move the papers on his desk
about, letting Jared know that his time was up. 'You find out anything new, let
me know.'

'Yeah,
sure,' Jared said as he left the office. Outside the door, he leaned against
the wall and thought  for a moment.  He needed to find out who
painted those watercolors of Eden's old house. He needed to — Hell, there were
a thousand things that needed to be done, and he was going to do them. He went
back to his office and told his secretary that he wasn't feeling well. In fact,
he felt a bout of stomach flu combined with bubonic plague coming on, and he
thought he was going to be out of the office for at least a week, maybe two.

She
smiled at him conspiratorially. 'Call your mom and she'll get in touch with you
if there's an emergency?'

'Yeah,'
Jared said with a grin, then he grabbed a couple of firearms and was gone.

*   *   *

It took
all of Eden's courage to get dressed and drive to the Queen Anne office the
next morning. She wavered between fear and courage, then back again. What if
Brad wouldn't see her? What if he ordered her out of his office and told her he
never wanted to see her again? The next second she told herself that she was
being absurd. They were adults. She and Brad hardly knew each other, so he had
no claim on her and therefore no right to expect anything from her. In the next
moment she was down again as she thought about what Minnie had told her about
Brad's ex-wife and how she'd been unfaithful. 'I am not his wife!' she said
aloud as she pulled into the wide road that led to the clubhouse. 'And I wasn't
being unfaithful.'

This
morning with Melissa had been very bad.

During
the night her daughter seemed to have lost all her bravado. She'd stopped
complaining and telling Eden that she was in the right and that she should be
standing up to Stuart. Instead, Melissa had poked at her cereal and said that
Stuart was working very hard to make a home for her and the baby.

Part of
Eden thought she should stay at home and hold Melissa's hand. It was 'mother's
instinct.' When Melissa had been a child Eden had stayed home from work
whenever her daughter had even the slightest thing wrong with her — which is
why Eden had lost job after job. 'You do great work,' her employers had told
her. 'It's just that you're absent too many days, so we're going to have to let
you go.'

As Melissa
pushed her cereal around in her bowl, she looked up at Eden with sad eyes, the
same eyes she'd turned on her mother when she was a child. But Eden looked at
her hugely pregnant daughter and said, 'I'm going. Melissa, dear, you have my
cell number, the number of the doctor, and the hospital. If anything happens,
let me know.'

'But
what if I go into labor?' Melissa said as she jumped down from the bar stool —
and the dishes in the plate rack rattled.

'You
haven't even dropped yet,' Eden said, pulling on her cardigan. 'I think you
have at least six weeks before you deliver. Why don't you take a long, hot bath
and watch a few movies on TV? I'll be back this afternoon, and I'll bring some
fish. We'll wrap it in paper bags and bake it, like we did when you were a
child.'

'But,
Mother — ' Melissa began.

'You'll
be fine,' Eden said, then quickly kissed her daughter's cheek and hurried out
the door.

Now, as
she pulled into the parking lot of Queen Anne, her heart was pounding. How
angry was Brad? And how did he express anger? Yelling? No, that didn't seem
like him. Coldness? Did he just shut out a person and say nothing to them? Is
that how it would be from now on?

Eden
was sure her heart was in her throat as she walked into the office of Queen
Anne. She'd already driven past his law office downtown and seen that his car
wasn't there. She decided to go to Queen Anne, and if he wasn't there she was
going to try his house.

When
she knocked on his office door, no one answered, and when she tried the door,
it was locked.

She
felt as though someone was watching her. Turning, she looked into Minnie's
office and saw the young woman staring at her. But the moment Eden looked,
Minnie turned her head away. Eden didn't let that deter her. 'Minnie!' she said
brightly. 'How are you?'

Standing
behind her desk, Minnie gave Eden a look so cold that she wanted to run out the
door.

'Is
something wrong?' Eden asked, her voice close to breaking. Is this what she was
going to get when she saw Brad?

'Wrong?'
Minnie asked quietly, but in a deadly voice. 'You were rolling around naked in
the mud with
my
boyfriend, and you ask me if anything is wrong?'

'Your
boyfriend?' Eden asked, eyes wide.

'Do you
think he belonged to
you.
Do you think everything belongs to you?'

Eden
thought her brain must be spinning around inside her head. She took a deep
breath. 'I think that Jared McBride belongs to himself. Minnie, I wasn't naked.
No one was naked. The little truck got stuck in the mud, we were trying to push
it out, and we fell. That's all.'

'That's
not what I heard,' Minnie said as she opened a file drawer and jammed in a
folder.

'I can
assure you that — '

'Save
it,' Minnie said, turning to glare at Eden. 'And here I thought you were
different. You know what Brad went through with his wife. I told you the whole
story as a warning. He can't handle another adulterous woman in his life.'

'Now
wait a minute!' Eden said. Maybe she couldn't stand up to her pregnant
daughter, but this young woman was a whole other matter. 'First of all, I am no
one's
wife,
so adultery is impossible. And second, what's between
Braddon and me, and even between Jared and me, is no concern of yours.'

'Does
that mean that you think you can walk into this town and suddenly
you
know
what's best for everyone? Are those of us who love Brad to stand by in silence
and see him get hurt again? Is that what you think?'