Murder on Edisto (The Edisto Island Mysteries) (20 page)

“Like that’s gonna happen,” Jeb said, standing in boxers as rumpled as his hair. He peered at the gun. “You sleep with that, don’t you?”

“I misread the situation. Don’t worry about it.”

Crap, I forgot to get the paint for Peters.

Jeb smiled. “You thought someone was laying fire on your porch, didn’t you?”

“I was startled, butthead,” she said. “This isn’t my favorite time of day. Why aren’t you fishing?”

“Zeus didn’t have a client today, plus we got in around two. You were out of it, Mom. Didn’t even move when I peered in to tell you I was home.” He blinked a couple times. “How do
you
feel this morning? What did
you
do last night?”

The impromptu date flooded back, and she tried to hold a motherly tone while recalling one of the most fun evenings she’d had since . . . life quit being fun. “I feel fine. Had a great dinner with a new friend, then crashed around eleven. Ate too much. Why?”

The pounding started again.

“I can’t stand this,” Jeb said, covering his ears. “I’m taking a shower then going next door.”

“Zeus might be asleep.” She felt silly in her nightgown, the gun limp beside her.

“He might,” her son said, scratching in places Callie didn’t care to note. “But Sprite does yoga each morning with her mother, so she’ll be up.”

What was this?

“I saw that,” he said.

“What?”

“The oh-no-my-son-is-dating look.”

She tried for nonchalance. “Why wouldn’t you be dating? Wait. Was last night a date?”

“Didn’t start as a date, but it kinda ended up that way.” He beamed. “So, yeah.”

“Sprite Bianchi?”

“That’s her name, Mom.”

Callie walked toward the bedroom to put away the Glock, dying to know if they’d kissed. “Yes, and it’s an easy name to remember.” Not to mention the face, the body, all those curls. She especially wasn’t sure about the nubile come-hither bearing of a girl that came with such flamboyance.

Jeb left, laughing. “She’s cool, Mom. And she’s only one year younger.”

The numerical difference wasn’t Callie’s concern. It was the massive pheromone capacity of the girl. Like mother like daughter.

As the water warmed in the shower, Callie hung her nightgown on the back of her bathroom door. She studied her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. What was it about Sophie that made the woman so sexy? Was yoga that much different from running?

She touched the creases beneath her eyes and stretched the skin. Then she lifted her chin, checking elasticity. Head turned left, then right, not happy with the circles under her eyes, she recognized the effects of a mild hangover.

Bam. Bam. Bam
. Peters was relentless on the end of that hammer.

Jeb’s query about what she’d done last night told her he worried about her drinking again. She’d give him less opportunity to worry about that from this point forward. Last night would have been the first of her no-more-drinking plan, except for Mason. Grape soda. Slick date drink, that’s for sure. But she could have sent back the drink and abstained, so she couldn’t exactly blame the man. She’d just have to start again.

A warmth spread over her, down into her. She’d gone out, socially. The jaunt was meant to be a plan to retrieve information, but still, a date.

She held an arm under the water. Satisfied, she stepped under the hot spray. The stream ran into her hair, soaking it. As rivulets ran across her breasts and belly, she replayed the kiss. Roses, he’d said. She sniffed her shampoo, the too-sweet strawberry scent short-circuiting her imaginary foreplay.

The ride home in a convertible. Brahms playing.

She smoothed body wash across her chest then down to her navel.

His smooth voice relaxing her, in hindsight, tempting her. The wonderful way he’d painted a scene with smells to whisk away her fears. His reassuring guide up the stairs. The look they exchanged in the entryway.

She sudsed her sides, rising up and down her ribs, again and again. She moved to her hips, pretending the hands weren’t hers.

That kiss rejuvenated a want that seemed to bloom deep inside her, seeking its way to the surface. His lips had been so gentle, but he could have almost taken her from just the simple, sweet manner in which he cradled her face.

She jumped when her phone rang from the bedroom.

Bam. Bam. Bam
. The contractor went at it again.

“Jeb?” she hollered. “Can you get my phone in the bedroom?”

Nothing.

She shut off the water and dried herself, briefly wondering if she was desperate.

John had died two years ago, and Bonnie’s crib death had struck them both so deeply they hadn’t been intimate for most of the year following. She remembered all the overtime she and John would put in at work to forget and escape. The walls they’d built, as if they couldn’t let love sabotage them again.

They’d distanced themselves from each other long before the fire.

And she’d hated him for it. She’d hated herself for letting him.

She snatched up the phone. Stan had left a voice mail.

“Ring me back, Chicklet. A Deputy Raysor called twice about you. Ranting that you’re interfering with an investigation and trying to seduce their lead badge. I just listened. Refused to go into detail about you. When I said you needed to be wined and dined, I didn’t mean for you to go jump the first guy you met. Again, call me.”

She dropped her bare butt on the bed. That son-of-a-bitch Raysor. Her experience dealing with investigations exceeded all of the Edisto Beach uniforms put together, including the illustrious, pompous, loaned-out deputy she read as little more than a security guard.

Finger over the redial button, she changed her mind and hung up. She glanced at the phone’s clock. Nine a.m. Crap. She needed to get to the hardware store for paint.

Catching her nudity in the mirror, she stopped. Selfish pleasure with Mason had distracted her from the dangerous reality that somebody still watched her. Somebody who could’ve sat at Whaley’s drinking a beer for all she knew.

This morning started her fifth day at Edisto. A crime every single day since she’d arrived. But wasn’t danger an aphrodisiac? Had that been her flaw last night? Cops knew it. Criminals knew it. What else could explain her slip with Mason?

Please God, give this place a day devoid of burglaries and tragedy.
For her, for Seabrook, for the natives like Sophie who hadn’t grasped the gravity of the crimes. Let the badges find a breakthrough and everyone else enjoy normalcy.

Allow her to think about an ordinary future for a change.

A dab of make-up later, she put on khaki shorts, sandals, tank, and long sleeves.

“Ms. Morgan? Callie?” Peters hollered at the front door. “I didn’t see the paint.”

“Coming!” she yelled, grabbing her purse.

Peters gave her a crooked grin as she answered. “About to start sanding. Got all the steps taken care of.”

“On my way to get the paint now, Peters. Be back in an hour. That okay?”

“Sure,” he said, plugging in his extension cord.

The hardware store was only four miles up the highway. On the way back, she’d maybe stop at the gift shop next to the pizza take-out. Surely they would have rose-scented bath salts in stock.

Chapter 16

HOW MANY COLORS of peachy beige were there? Callie perused the selections in the Edisto Lowcountry Hardware store. Beverly once ranted when redecorating Lawton’s office about how paint swatches were lighter than they appeared on the wall. But this paint was renovating outdoor steps and railings. Even if it went on darker, wouldn’t the sun bleach it in, like, three months’ time?

“Can I help you?” asked a young man around twenty-five, a striking oriental tattoo peeking out from under his shirt sleeve.

“I can’t remember the color of my porch and stairs,” she said.

He gave a smirk that only the young could pull off so cute. “On the beach? Which house?”

“Chelsea Morning,” she replied.

“Oh, three rows back.” He reached across her and flipped swatches. “This one, or—” He extracted another one a row higher. “This one.”

Callie closed her gaping mouth and took the swatches. “How did you do that?”

“Ma’am, I was born out here. So, are you Lawton Cantrell’s daughter?”

Her short laugh caused a chubby middle-aged gent with beefy neck and calves to glance over further down the aisle. He raised a coy brow at her.

Shifting to give him her shoulder and no opportunity, she held the colors higher, as if studying them in the light. “Yeah, I am.”

The kid cut a glance at the other gentleman and spoke lower. “You found Beechum and ran screaming down the beach. You’re famous.”

Her humor melted into the scuffed linoleum floor. “Since you know me, you might as well pick out the shade. Which one?”

“Neither will match exactly, but either one’s close.” He pointed down the aisle. “Do you want paint and primer in one or latex acrylic?”

Callie studied the wall of uniform cans. “I don’t know.”

He grinned. “The green cans are on sale. Just get those. Let me know how many gallons, and I’ll mix it for you.”

She had no clue how much paint she needed. “Give me however many it’ll take to cover my front steps.”

The kid grabbed four cans as if they weighed no more than her cell phone, then hustled back for four more. Sinewy muscles bulging, he lifted them to the counter and got busy setting his color machine. Callie threw a couple brushes in the pile, and twenty minutes later she was rolling a cart to her car with her eight cans of Delta Sand. Seabrook’s police cruiser sat parked next to her Escape, its brake lights just going off.

She slowed. Mason’s revelation about the cop’s past had cast Seabrook in a new light and probably not as Mason intended. Just as she didn’t discuss her past to everyone, neither would Seabrook. Not about something so fragile.

What alienated those two men? Neither missed an opportunity to debase the other.

A young uniform hopped out of the patrol car. Short and all elbows, he caught Callie’s stare and tipped his head in recognition. “Can I help you?”

“Why are you here?” she asked, surprised not to see Seabrook.

Crap, that didn’t sound right.

“Bug spray,” he said, brows meeting in curiosity. “You?”

Callie nodded to the cart. “Paint. I’m Callie Morgan, by the way. I expected to see Officer Seabrook get out. He’s been driving this car.” Then she felt stupid. They probably shared vehicles. A police force this small probably couldn’t afford many cars. “I haven’t seen him since . . . anyway, how do you do? And you are—”

“Officer Francis Dickens.” He shook her hand almost as if she’d deplaned from a foreign embassy. “Nice to finally put a face with a name,” he said. “The boss is working a special, so I have his car.”

After-hours specials way out here? In cities, cops accepted private hires with malls, businesses, sporting events, for extra cash. Southern law enforcement wasn’t a lucrative profession.

“Where would you guys pick up specials? The Wyndham?” she asked.

“Oh, no, ma’am. Not what I meant. He’s sleuthing. Said not to disturb him unless it’s dire.” He ticked his chin to the left. “Bad time for all this, with tourist season and us being down a man.”

In Charleston, obsessed about his deceased wife? Or on Edisto, studying the murder and its subsequent burglaries? Asking the deputy, however, would force him to say he couldn’t say, and she didn’t want to put him in that position.

“Well,” she said, unlocking her car. “I’ll stay out of your way. Good luck keeping everybody in line. Got to go paint a porch.”

As she turned her car back toward the ocean, she pictured Seabrook pursuing some clue, interviewing neighbors. That’s what she’d do.

She turned in her driveway and shut off the ignition.
Damn.
She forgot the bath salts. Probably for the best anyway. If and when she decided to release herself into the sensual longings of a man, the terms
playboy
and
gathering
didn’t need to be part of the package. She’d never had a one-night stand in her life, and she could have strayed into that one way too easily.

Callie gathered her purse, knowing nobody would fill John’s size twelves, though. The shoes of a man who stored sweaty basketball Nikes so long in his car that Jeb demanded they pick up his friends in Callie’s SUV. John’s Jeep still sat in her parents’ garage, having been salvaged from the street that horrible night, parked there to allow her to back out of the garage and pull back in later. Lawton promised to have the vehicle tuned up before Jeb used it for college.

Jeb would drive that six-year-old black Wrangler until it coughed its last mile.

Peters greeted her as she got out. “Just in time, Callie.” He lifted cans from the back of her car and set them on the crushed shell drive. “They mixing more paint, or is this it?”

“Um, of course they are. How many do you need?”

“Two or three more for the front. That wood drinks paint like the desert soaks up a rain. Didn’t ask if you wanted the back steps done.” He paused in stop-sign fashion. “I’m not, repeat, not trying to take advantage of you. Got nothing on my schedule for a couple days, is all, but not like I couldn’t use a day or two off. I just need to know. No pressure.”

She hadn’t thought about the back. Counting the supplies, the two hundred dollar project was fast turning into a thousand dollar deal.

Callie crossed her arms. “Tell me how many gallons for the front and the back, and I’ll pay you triple the labor I already promised since there’s a side porch involved, too.”

“You’re a sport, Callie. A fine sport. You got me for three more days.”

She returned to the car, recalling their first meeting and the explained ritual the natives used in hiring Jack Peters. “Guess that means I’m supposed to feed you, huh?”