Love is Murder (7 page)

Shivering from the cold March breeze whipping around her damp body, she hugged herself tightly as she scanned the area in every direction. The rain had let up and was now only a misty drizzle. She needed to get up and start moving, to keep running. It was only a matter of time before Jed found her. He was good at tracking, good at figuring out what the other guy was going to do, good at his job as a police detective.

And he had been a good friend to her. Her protector. Her lover.

She loved Jed. And he loved her.

No, it was all pretense on his part. He doesn’t love me. He poisoned the champagne. Did he? Are you sure? Maybe the poison wasn’t in the champagne. But if he didn’t poison me, who did? And why is Jed chasing me?

Are you sure Jed is the man hunting you?

Yes, she was sure because she recognized his voice, the only voice she could hear out there in the wet, foggy darkness.

Olivia forced herself up and onto her feet. Simply standing was a monumental task. She swayed, dizziness spinning her head. Somewhere nearby a dog barked and then another farther away answered the first one’s howl. In the eerie silence that followed, she heard footsteps again, faint at first, and then coming closer and closer.

Struggling with every step she took, she moved away from the shadowy corner of the café and inched her way along the buildings until she reached the entrance to the alley. A streetlight shone dimly into the backstreet, giving her a semiclear view, enough to see that if she entered the narrow passage, she wouldn’t be trapped. The alley went straight through and came out on the other side. Keeping close to the wall, she crept silently along the paved path until she reached a large Dumpster blocking her way. The stench of garbage assailed her senses and once again nausea threatened. Holding her breath until she slipped past the full Dumpster, she managed not to vomit.

Winded, her sides aching, every muscle in her body rioting, Olivia paused halfway into the alley, pressed her back against the damp stone wall and listened. The sound of her labored breaths echoed inside her head. And the distinct tapping of footsteps drew nearer.

Dear God, he was in the alley behind her. What was she going to do? She couldn’t run, could barely walk. If only she had some way to protect herself.

She had taken the self-defense classes Jed had insisted on and she had kept the small handgun he had bought for her and taught her how to use. But the gun was locked away in her apartment and if he caught her, she didn’t have the strength to fight him. If she hadn’t been poisoned…

Why would Jed have signed her up for self-defense classes if he hadn’t wanted her to be able to protect herself? And why would he have bought her a pistol and given her lessons at a local firing range if he had been planning to kill her? It didn’t make any sense.

“I love your hair,” he had told her as he had lifted a strand and wound it around his finger.

“I’m not a natural blonde, you know. I was when I was a child, but underneath this expensive dye job, it’s a mousy brown.”

He had laughed and kissed her. “Anything else about you fake?” He had caressed her, skimming his hand over first one breast and then the other, running his fingers down across her belly and cupping her mound with gentle possessiveness.

“What do you think?” she had teased him.

“I think everything else is one hundred percent real, but before I make a definite decision, I believe further investigation is in order.”

That had been the first time they had made love, the night she had realized she was madly in love with her knight in shining armor. They hadn’t said I love you then. Not until months later.

Months? How many months?

“Olivia,” he called to her.

It was Jed’s voice. He was the man in the alley behind her, the man who had been chasing her.

You love him. He loves you. You trust him. You know he would never hurt you. Listen to your heart. What if the poison had been in the food? What if someone at the restaurant…? No, that doesn’t make any sense, either.

“Jed,” she cried out to him. “Help me, Jed. I’m so sick. I’ve been poisoned.”

She crumpled down onto the damp pavement, drew her legs up and bowed her head as she waited for Jed. Was he her rescuer, her true hero? Or was he her killer?

“I’m here, honey. Everything is going to be all right.”

She could make out only a man’s silhouette as he approached, but the moment he took her hand in his and she felt the tender strength of his touch, she closed her eyes and sighed. He took her in his arms, lifted her, carried her, held her close.

“Poisoned,” she repeated. “Hospital.”

“Hush, Olivia. Hush, sweetheart. Just relax and rest. You’re going to be fine. I promise.”

Jed Merrill kept his promises. Always. He was a man of honor and integrity. He would never hurt her. Why had she ever thought he had poisoned her? It was the champagne. He had brought a bottle of expensive Dom Pérignon. She remembered he had opened the bottle and poured the bubbly wine into their glasses.

“Here’s to us, to our future together.”

She’d been so happy. They had been celebrating something important. But what?

Somehow, someway, someone had poisoned her. The only person she knew who wanted her dead was Dalton Carr. Without her eyewitness testimony, the D.A.’s case wouldn’t be as strong and there was a chance Dalton would be found not guilty.

“Jed,” she managed to whisper his name.

“Don’t talk. Just rest.”

“Poison. Who?”

Jed didn’t answer her. But she could hear him talking to someone else. She couldn’t make out what they were saying. Who was he talking to?

Oh, God, she was sleepy. So sleepy. Was she dying?

I don’t want to die. I want to live. I’m young and in love. I have my whole life ahead of me. Jed and I are going to get married.

A shudder racked Olivia from head to toe. Gentle hands lifted a blanket up and over her, tucking it around her shoulders. She sighed as sleep overcame her. Her last coherent thought was the memory of Jed proposing, her accepting, him putting a ring on her finger, and then popping open the champagne.

They had been celebrating their engagement.

* * *

Olivia woke to morning sunlight winking through the partially closed blinds at the double windows. She stretched languidly, but paused midstretch when she realized just how sore her body was, from throat to rib cage to abdomen. And then she realized she was not at home, not in her own bed, and she wasn’t at Jed’s place, either. Glancing around the room, scanning the pale walls, the tiled floor, the IV bag hanging beside the bed, and the hustle and bustle of people outside her half-open door, Olivia knew she was in the hospital.

What was she doing here?

She had been sick, so very sick. Had someone really poisoned her? Had she run from her apartment? Had Jed chased her through downtown Florence? Had he saved her, brought her here to the hospital?

Olivia found the buttons on the remote that controlled her bed and lifted the head of the bed into a sitting position. Looking down at herself, she found she was wearing the ever-fashionable hospital gown and the IV was hooked up to a needle in her left hand. For the first time in hours—maybe days—her mind was clear and her memory intact.

The door swung open and Jed, carrying a foam cup filled with hot coffee, came into her room. The moment he saw that she was awake, he rushed over to her, set his coffee on the bedside table and eased down next to her.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck,” she told him.

“Not a Mack truck, just a wicked bout of food poisoning.”

“Food poisoning?”

“Apparently the takeout you picked up for our dinner took you out. Or possibly something you ate for lunch.”

“You’re okay, aren’t you?”

“I’m fine because we didn’t eat the same thing. I ate beef. You ate chicken. And I didn’t eat any dessert with the cream sauce. Honey, don’t you remember waking up around two o’clock with severe vomiting and—?”

“Yes, I remember now. I started vomiting and had diarrhea. I had chills and a fever and a horrible headache.”

“I finally managed to persuade you to let me take you to the E.R. around eight o’clock yesterday morning. We were lucky. You were only slightly dehydrated.” He glanced at the IV bag and then back at Olivia. “It was killing me to see you in so much pain.”

“Jed, I—I must have had some crazy dreams or something. I didn’t run away from you, did I?”

“You couldn’t have run away if you’d wanted to, honey. You were really out of it.” He caressed her cheek. “Hell of way to end our engagement celebration.”

“How long have I been in the hospital?”

“Almost twenty-four hours. You’ve been asleep most of that time, coming to now and then, and talking crazy.”

“You’ve been here the whole time, haven’t you?”

“Where else would I be?”

She leaned into Jed, placing her head on his chest and wrapping her arms around his waist. He embraced her carefully. “Did I accuse you of poisoning me?” She tried to laugh, but couldn’t.

Jed kissed the top of her head. “You kept saying something about poison, but then you mumbled a lot of gibberish.”

“Dalton Carr is dead, isn’t he?”

Jed cupped her chin and lifted it so that she had to look up at him. “You were having a nightmare about Dalton Carr? Oh, Olivia, I’m sorry. I thought you had moved past the horror of what happened to you back then.”

“I thought so, too.” She tried to smile, but the effort failed. “I testified, didn’t I? He was convicted of second-degree murder. That was nearly two years ago. And he committed suicide in jail before he could be transferred to prison.”

Olivia closed her eyes and clung to Jed, shivering as the memories exploded inside her. In her drug-induced sleep, her mind had combined various aspects of her life—her near-death experience the night Dalton had tried to kill her, the fear she had lived with until after the trial, her relationship with Jed that had grown slowly from friendship into passion, their engagement celebration and her battle with food poisoning.

Opening her eyes, she gazed up at Jed. “I love you. And I’m sorry that in my crazy dreams I thought you had poisoned me.”

He lowered his head and kissed her. Sweetly. Gently. “You had a difficult time trusting anyone after what happened. Even me. Maybe this was your subconscious way of working out the last of your trust issues and completely letting go of the all-too-real nightmare Dalton Carr put you through.”

Maybe Jed was right. Maybe it had taken being poisoned—even if it was food poisoning—to cleanse her mind and heart from the fear and distrust that had poisoned her life for the past few years. Now she truly was free. Free to move forward into the future with the man she loved, the man she knew she could trust completely.

* * * * *

SPEECHLESS

Robert Browne

This story, written in first person, beautifully expresses universal insecurities about love, loss and trust. Expect a twist. ~SB

The only reason I was there was because of my mother.

I had always trusted David implicitly and couldn’t quite believe that I had let myself be talked into doing what I was doing. I am, after all, a grown woman, and this was bordering on high school behavior. I’d felt silly about it from the very beginning and had hesitated more than once before finally punching the key on my computer to print out my boarding pass.

Yet there I was, six hours later, on a cool Wednesday night, sitting in a rented car several hundred miles from home, watching the entrance to the Traveler’s Inn in Los Angeles, with the keen obsessiveness of a stalker.

Maybe I didn’t trust David as much as I thought I did. Or maybe it had nothing to do with him at all.

It was my mother’s fault.

It always is.

And who could blame her? The woman had been through two nasty divorces and thought of the male species as a contaminated breed. To her mind,
no
man could be trusted. Especially if they had yet to produce a ring or even utter the word
marriage
.

They were all barely a step above animals, whose need to seduce just about anything with legs would always take precedence over a committed relationship. Even one as committed as David’s and mine.

Mother barely knew David, but that didn’t stop her from judging him, or complaining about the shiftiness of his eyes. Something I’d never noticed myself. I’d always thought he had beautiful eyes. A startling blue that was one of his main attractions.

So
why,
then, was I there?

I won’t try to explain the mother-daughter dynamic to you. I don’t think there’s a psychologist on earth who can come within a hairbreadth of unraveling its complexity. But if you’re a woman and you have a mother—and I think most of us do—it doesn’t really
need
to be explained.

You just
know,
don’t you?

Bottom line, I was there simply because I wanted to get the nosy bitch off my back. I wanted to prove to her, once and for all, that she was wrong—
dead wrong
—about the man I loved.

Unfortunately, things didn’t quite turn out the way I thought they would.

* * *

As a sales rep for a small, struggling software firm, it was part of David’s job to travel. He left town at least once a month and I wasn’t ashamed to say that I missed him like crazy. If you’ve ever watched that show about the people stranded on an island after a plane crash, you’ll remember the tall, athletic blond guy who looks like a surfer slash underwear model slash soccer player.

That’s David.

Well, not
really
—but that’s pretty much what he looks like. And because of this, I’d be lying to you if I said I never worried about other women.

When I first met David in a bar in Boise, I was so intensely attracted to him that I immediately invited him home for the night. And what a wonderful night it was. So I’d never had much trouble imagining that other women might be compelled to do exactly the same thing. And if they did, and David were to succumb, I knew they wouldn’t be disappointed. He had a way of using his hands that was quite unlike any man I’d ever been with.