No Way to Kill a Lady (17 page)

“You're a man,” I explained rationally. “She's taking out her frustrations on the nearest representative of your sex.”

“
I
didn't get her pregnant.”

“I hate all men!” she bellowed over her shoulder.

Michael called after her, “Wasn't it me who called my lawyer to get you out of jail?”

She spun around, enraged. “I'm sick of men, all men, every man on the planet.” She pointed a shaking finger at Bruno. “That one had to come scampering into the woods! Scared the hell out of me.”

Bruno kept his hand clamped over his eye. “We heard a noise. I went to check. She jumped out of some bushes and hit me.”

“I had my pants down around my ankles and he sneaked up on me! With a baseball bat!”

He said, “It was a tree branch.”

“He tried to clobber me with it!”

“It was mistaken identity. I thought—­that is—­when she . . . er . . .”

“It's okay, Bruno,” Michael said. “Go get some ice.”

Emma whirled around and marched for the house. As she walked, she ripped the neon orange
POLICE CUSTODY
wristband from her arm.

I soothed the dog and the pig and Emma, too, as I used my key to let us into the kitchen. Toby ran past me, and Emma shoved through right behind him, taking time to deposit her wristband around Ralphie's ear. I barely prevented Ralphie from shouldering his way inside, too. As fetching as he looked with his ear ribbon, I didn't want a pig in my house. Once inside, I flipped on the light. Emma's face was red. She turned the faucet on to wash her hands.

“Take a deep breath and calm down,” I said. “Getting this worked up can't be good for the baby.”

“Cut the mother hen routine.”

I tossed Aunt Madeleine's book on the kitchen table. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving. The cops gave me a candy bar an hour ago. You owe me big, Sis. I haven't been arrested since I was picked up for shoplifting a six-­pack back in school. It's your fault I got nabbed tonight.”

“I'm sincerely sorry.”

“I hope it's worth it. Did you find anything in Quintain?”

“That can wait. How on earth did you get home? Where's your truck? It's not parked outside.”

“The police towed it.” She dried her hands on the kitchen towel. “I have to go back tomorrow. I hitchhiked here, then sneaked through the woods so Mick's goons wouldn't see me. The last thing I wanted to do was explain myself to a bunch of grinning wiseguys.”

I decided against telling her she'd been mistaken for Bigfoot. She had punched Bruno for less of an insult.

She threw the towel onto the counter. “Do you know how hard it is for a pregnant hitchhiker to get picked up? I spent twenty minutes with my thumb hanging out before Floreen Donaldson stopped for me.”

“Floreen, who used to clean for Mama?”

“Yes. She took one look at me and started on the story of Bathsheba. Why is it Bathsheba's fault if King David grabbed her off a rooftop, anyway? She got the bad rap, but he was the one who coveted his neighbor's wife in the first place. It's always the woman's fault.”

While she talked, I grabbed a loaf of whole wheat bread and the jar of peanut butter. Sugar and carbs—­always an antidote for female rage. With luck, I had a few chocolate chips in the pantry. I could add them to her sandwich.

Michael poked his head through the back door, using his knee to keep Ralphie from barging inside. “Is it safe to come in?”

“Sure. I could use a punching bag.” She was rubbing her belly as if to soothe the child within. Or maybe herself.

“Just so you know, there's somebody coming up the driveway,” Michael said.

“Who? Libby?”

“Nope. A guy in a BMW.”

Emma exploded with more swearing.

Michael ducked back outside. I made Emma a peanut butter sandwich and let her fume. When Michael returned, he was followed by a man I couldn't have been more surprised to see on Blackbird Farm.

“Hart,” I said, hardly able to conceal my astonishment. “What a pleasure to see you.”

He stepped into the kitchen, looking bewildered. “There's a pig on your porch. I think it's wearing a hair ribbon.”

“Really?” I asked with false cheer. “I wonder how that happened.”

Hart Jones, a successful stockbroker and Emma's summer paramour, wore a two-­thousand-­dollar suit and a pale silk tie, as if he'd just been called away from the symphony. He gave me a head-­to-­toe glance that absorbed the mud-­spattered condition of my clothes. If his first impulse was to recoil in horror, he mastered it with the kind of social skill men of his socioeconomic class probably learned from the cradle. “Hello, Nora. Did you have some kind of accident?”

“Heavens, no,” I said breezily. “Just doing a little late-­night gardening.” The stress of the evening was finally starting to get to me, I realized, and it took an effort to fight down the bubble of hysteria that threatened to burst out. “Hart, this is my—­this is Michael Abruzzo. Michael, this is Emma's—­this is Hart Jones.”

They shook hands politely, but I could see both men already knew plenty about the other's background. Last summer, Michael had listened to all of our sisterly discussions about Hart, and Hart had no doubt read all the newspaper coverage of the infamous heir to New Jersey's mob rackets. I wasn't sure which of them was more influenced by the other's advance publicity. Impressed or filled with instant loathing, I couldn't tell.

“What are you doing here?” Emma demanded, still flushed with embarrassment. But she was clearly determined to bluster through. She kept the table between herself and Hart.

“You called me.” Hart sounded just as testy. “From jail. Remember?”

“That was before my lawyer showed up,” she snapped. “I told you, you didn't have to come.”

“You said you'd been arrested,” he replied. “You think I could stay away after a call like that? I left Penny in her family's box at the opera. You think that was easy to explain?”

Hart Jones was a Philadelphia financial
wunderkind
who'd hooked up with Emma a few months back when he was trying to decide whether to settle down for better or for worse with Penny Haffenpepper, a Main Line heiress. I'm sure he intended his fling with my hot-­blooded sister to be a one-­night stand in a hotel suite, but it turned into a monthlong, torrid affair that resulted in Emma's current predicament. At the end of summer, though, Hart had disappeared from her life. I assumed Emma had broken things off with him and he'd gone back to his well-­behaved fiancée.

From the way the two of them glared at each other now, it didn't look as if the embers of romance were going to rekindle anytime soon. And yet . . . a dangerous static crackled in the air.

Emma said, “Well, you shouldn't have made the trip. Go home. You've probably got wedding details to plan.”

“They're already planned. The wedding's Christmas Eve.”

“Very romantic. Not to mention it'll be easy to remember your anniversary.”

“I'm not a forgetful person,” Hart said.

The electricity in the room was starting to feel like the buildup of lightning before a thunderstorm. Hastily, I gathered my jacket and Aunt Madeleine's ledger and began to edge toward the doorway. “Michael, why don't you and I . . . ?”

He deliberately ignored my suggestion, continuing to glower at Hart. “Maybe Em needs some help here.”

“I can fight my own battles, big guy.”

“Michael,” I said again.

Unwillingly, he headed across the kitchen. “Okay. G'night, Em. Glad to see you out of jail.”

She made another anatomically impossible suggestion without taking her glare from Hart's equally stormy face. Together, Michael and I fled the kitchen before the thunderclaps started.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

U
pstairs, I stripped off my sodden clothes and ran a hot bath in the claw-­foot tub. I hung the McQueen feather jacket on a hanger and gave it a long look. Only a miracle worker was going to save it. My hands must have trembled on the hanger, though, because the next moment Michael was taking them into his own, his palms warming my suddenly freezing fingers.

“You okay?” he asked.

“It's been a long night. I— There wasn't time to tell you earlier, but I found another body.”

He cursed. “What the hell?”

“Not a body, exactly, but a skeleton. While I was blundering around in the woods, I slipped and fell and—­well, suddenly I was holding a bone. I landed in the middle of—­of—­”

“Nora.” He took me in his arms and held me tightly. “Why didn't you say something earlier?”

I wrapped my arms around him and held on, pressing my cheek to his chest, very glad to be home at last. “I don't know. You came along, and there was Carrie to worry about, and I just—­I forgot, I guess.” Letting my weariness slip, I said, “I should call the police.”

“Not this minute.” He held me away and looked into my face. “You're shaken up.”

“I was afraid to call 911,” I admitted. “Because I'd have to explain what I was doing out in the woods. With Emma getting arrested—­I have to get my story straight, don't I? That sounds awful, but . . .”

“You're right. You have to think it through,” he said, sounding just as sorry about the situation as I felt.

I told him about falling and knocking the wind out of myself and how I'd ended up with a human bone in my hand. I hadn't been thinking straight.

“You were in shock,” he said gently. “I should have realized it before. C'mon. Take a bath and relax. Those bones aren't going anywhere. We'll figure out what to say to the police, and you can call in the morning.”

He ran the hot water while I stripped off my underwear. When his cell phone rang, I sprinkled bath beads into the water and swirled it with my hand. Suddenly I couldn't wait to soak my cares away.

In the adjacent bedroom, Michael sat on our bed and spoke briefly to his caller. Then he checked his cell phone messages.

“Anything from Carrie?” I called as I sank into the blessedly warm depths of the tub. I shook a few more bath beads into the water and breathed the fragrance.

“Not yet.” His voice carried easily from the bedroom. A moment later, he asked, “What's this book?”

“I stole it out of Aunt Madeleine's house.” I lathered up a loofah and set about scrubbing Quintain mud from my skin. “Take a look, if you like.”

As I shampooed my hair, I wondered what might be transpiring in the kitchen below.

Emma and Hart weren't exactly an odd couple. Hart, for all his sedate bankerly ways during the workweek, had a reputation for partying hard on the weekends. He rode a fast horse with one of the suburban fox hunts, and he had been known for knocking back a lot of liquor without showing many side effects. Like Emma, he enjoyed a good laugh. I imagined they partied hard when together.

I thought Hart had ended his roguish bachelor ways when he proposed to Penny Haffenpepper, who had the kind of pedigree as well as social and business contacts that could launch Hart into the top tier of the banking hierarchy. Penny's clan had a few quirks, of course, but they were very family-­oriented. Strict values, emphasis on education and quality time spent with each other. I thought her influence might have tamed Hart a little.

But Emma had phoned him tonight when she needed help. And he'd come running.

I wondered how soon they'd get around to discussing their baby.

After a while, Michael came into the bathroom with Madeleine's black ledger. He sat on the edge of the tub, unbuttoning his shirt one-­handed and skimming the pages with a puzzled frown on his face. “What is this, exactly?”

“I don't know. It was important to Aunt Madeleine, that's all I'm certain of. A long time ago she asked me to destroy it when she died.”

“Oh, yeah?” He went back into the bedroom and came back a minute later with his shirt off and wearing his reading glasses. “Have you read any of this stuff?”

My first glimpse of Michael's naked, post-­prison shoulders took my breath away. His jeans rode low on his hips, too, showing a tantalizing expanse of touchable muscle. It took all my self-­control not to pull him down into the water that instant. Although my mouth had gone dry, I managed to say in an almost normal voice, “I haven't had a chance yet. Why?”

“It's . . . I dunno. It's definitely a list of transactions.”

“What kind of transactions? Household expenses, you mean?”

“No,” he said.

At that moment, his cell phone rang again, and he went back into the bedroom to answer it.

I finished my bath as he spoke to someone on the phone, then made another call. I could tell from his tone it was business. Part of me hoped he'd shut off his phone for the night and join me in the tub. We'd begun many passionate nights just that way—­soaking and talking and exploring. I felt myself tremble at the memory of fierce love we'd made together. But now, he was distracted. Big-­time.

I pulled the plug from the drain and climbed out of the water, maybe not exactly fully in possession of my wits, but smelling wonderful, if I do say so. While Michael murmured in the bedroom, I wrapped myself in a plush towel. I shook my hair out, buffed it almost dry and left it tousled. I brushed my teeth and looked at my reflection in the mirror while holding the towel against my glowing body. I looked good. Maybe not like the vixenish courtesan Libby probably became when she was in the mood, or the dangerous sexpot Emma undoubtedly was in the bedroom.

But I could hold my own.

On the shelf over the tub I kept a collection of candles. Some of them had been gifts from Libby—­probably from her peace-­and-­seduction-­loving friends at the Pink Windowbox. With my sister's words of wisdom ringing in my ears, I lit two of the candles and carried them into the bedroom, still wrapped in my towel. I put the candles on the bedside table and snapped off the lamp. Instant ambiance. With a bottle of lotion, I sat on the edge of the bed.

I handed the bottle to Michael, and he pinned the phone to his shoulder while listening to his caller. He lathered up his hands and smoothed the fragrant cream onto my bare back.

“Okay,” he finally said to his caller. “If you take any more bets, you cover them yourself, got it? We're out.”

When he terminated the call, then shut off the phone and dropped it onto the bed, I said, “How's your gambling situation?”

“It'd be easier if there weren't so many big football games this weekend.”

“Exactly how much money does the Abruzzo family make in the gambling business?”

“About a million two a day.”

I must have been out of my wits for asking the question in the first place. But when I heard the answer, I utterly forgot about seduction. I clutched my towel tight, turned around and blinked at him. “A million dollars? Every day?”

He seemed equally surprised at having blurted out the information to me. “About that, yeah. Depends on what sports are in season. It's divided up, of course.”

“Divided among your employees, you mean.”

“The employees aren't mine.” He turned me around again and applied the lotion. “And some are more like partners. At various levels, there are street guys and management guys. And in-­between guys. It's complicated.”

“And lucrative.”

“Well, that's why nobody really wants to stop doing it.”

“I wonder,” I said tentatively, “if there's a way to keep doing it a little bit? Just enough to fix the roof, maybe?”

He laughed. “That's how it starts. First it's fixing the roof, and then you'll want a condo in Fort Lauderdale, and next thing you know you're negotiating the price of a compound in Switzerland.”

“I can see how it could be very tempting.”

“I'm pretty sure you have no idea how tempting.” Michael feathered lotion onto my skin.

“And the stolen cars? What about that?”

For the first time in our relationship, Michael didn't decline to discuss an Abruzzo family business. “It's more adventure, less payoff. Guy in Serbia wants a new Mercedes, one of my idiot cousins goes shopping at the mall parking lot.”

“You ship to Serbia?”

“And Libya and Turkey. A few places in between. Lots of South America. Venezuela. Haiti, too, maybe, but I'm not sure yet. Basically, the more unstable the country, the better for business. You don't want to know more.”

No, I didn't really want to know more. Carrie had been right about me—­I was a little brainwashed. All I truly knew was that tonight I wanted to forget it all except that Michael was here with me in the candlelight. Totally with me. His hands felt wonderful, and I could feel his attention slowly leave whatever business he was conducting and transfer to the job at hand. His touch grew more gentle, more languid. And when he finally brushed his lips to the back of my neck, I closed my eyes and released an unsteady sigh of desire.

“I've missed you,” I whispered.

“I'm here now,” he said against my skin.

I put my hand up to his cheek.

In my ear, he said, “I wanted to be here for you during Lexie's hearing. Was it bad?”

“Terrible. But I— For some reason, it was important for me to get through it alone. I owed Lexie my full attention.”

“You would,” he said with wry affection.

“It was difficult for me, but horrible for her. I'm not sure she'll ever forgive me, Michael. She'd have run away rather than face the judge, say what she did, if I hadn't insisted that she stay. So I wanted to stand with her. Take the punches, if that makes any sense.”

He kissed my bare shoulder. “It does.”

“But I worry she's lost to me forever.”

“You made the right choice.”

“I don't know . . .”

“Lexie had to face the consequences. It's part of the process.”

“Don't do the crime if you can't do the time?”

Michael didn't respond to that banality. In a moment, he said, “She's got to think things over for a while. It'll be good for her.”

“Will she think about—­what? Redeeming herself?”

“Whatever you want to call it. Changing her life. She was getting to be a powerful person. I know what that does to a soul. She'll see that, if it isn't too late. I don't think she's gone forever.”

“Michael,” I said after a while, “Libby said something today.”

“Uh-­oh.”

I smiled at his pretended trepidation. “No, it made me think. She said I'm the one who has to make the tough decisions. She wants me to talk to Rawlins about college. And to Emma about her baby. But I—­why does it have to be me?”

“It takes a lot of strength to make a hard choice.”

“I'm not strong.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Todd, though.” I thought of the worst failure of my life—­the thing that still pained my heart. “I couldn't keep Todd away from the drugs. I should have had him arrested, maybe, or sent to rehab—­something, anything. But I—­I couldn't do that.”

“Now you could,” Michael said. “Because he died. You'd make the hard choice now. You've already done it. For Lexie. With me.”

“I haven't made any choices for you.”

“You've given me the choices, and I had to pick. Either you or the life.” He pulled me back against him and was silent for a while, holding me snug. When he spoke again, his voice was rough in my ear. “I love you.”

He had stopped caressing me, so I said, “Are you okay?”

“I'm getting there.” He let out a sigh, and his breath was warm along the nape of my neck. “Look, I'm not sure I can explain it. But there's . . . You have to keep up a lot of shields in prison. Hold yourself inside.”

“You don't have to do that with me.”

“No, but—­I haven't been able to turn the switch, you know?”

He'd always been able to burn off excess energy by going to work—­immersing himself in the day-­to-­day management of whatever marginally criminal activities captured his creative mind at the time. He enjoyed outsmarting adversaries, took pleasure in staying just on the edge of the system.

My sisters laughingly called him the Mafia Prince, and part of me knew that's exactly what he was—­a prince of darkness, albeit one struggling to fight off his natural tendencies and find his way into the light. I worried that trapped at home, he had no release valve.

I had a feeling it was easier for him to tell me what was in his heart without looking into my face, so I leaned back into him. “You can't hurt me.”

“Yes,” he said. “I can.”

I pushed the towel away and took his hands in mine. I guided them up to touch my body, to explore all the places that ached for his attention. He let out a shaky sigh in my ear. When I drew his hand into my warmest, most tender spot, he gave up trying to hold back. We peeled off the rest of his clothes and pushed the bedclothes out of the way for a long, slow, luxurious reacquaintance. There was a stormy interlude in the middle, but I let him take what he needed. Maybe I needed it, too.

A couple of hours after we started, we went downstairs and made an enormous meal.

Emma and Hart were gone. Emma had left a note. She'd call tomorrow. While the food cooked, Michael pulled me into the scullery and stripped off my bathrobe again just to kiss me all over. We ate as if famished for more sustenance than mere pasta and went back up to bed to sleep wrapped tightly together, as if to prevent ever being apart again. For a few hours, it felt good to forget about our complicated lives.