Playing with Fire (6 page)

“No.” Maggie’s answer this time was sure and quick, but she knew it was too little, too late.

“Do you hold a valid driver’s license?”

“Yes.”

“Is nursing your profession?”

“Yes.”

He looked up finally and gave her an all-clear smile as he flipped off the machine and reached to help her strip off the bits of electronic hardware. Maggie imagined he’d caught a lot of liars over the years, so many that his poker face never slipped.

“Thank you.” Maggie didn’t know what else to say. The man knew she was a liar. She knew she was a liar. And pretty soon Grayson would know it too.

Beau swore, first at the attorney who’d held him up in court testifying all day, and then at the black night, which had begun to spit rain at him. The winding road was obstacle enough; he didn’t need a downpour too. There hadn’t been a single streetlight to relieve the darkness since civilization disappeared from his rearview mirror—if the small sewage plant and the flock of apartments on Gardere could be called civilization.

Finally giving up hope of man-made or moonlight, he flipped his headlights to bright and concentrated on the twisting black ribbon that would eventually lead him to Maggie St. John. For all its age and legend, River Road was little more than a two-lane country road going nowhere fast. The Mississippi River levee lay like a dark, malignant hump to the west. Desolate grazing pasture flowed away from the road to the east. Maybe “desolate” was too harsh a word to describe this stretch, but houses were definitely sparse.

So was traffic. This would be one nasty place to break
down, especially for a woman. Not for the first time Beau wondered why Maggie chose to live so far away from Baton Rouge. So isolated. Slowing the car, he checked the number on the oversize mailbox for one of the few plantation-style homes on the road. Maggie’s house couldn’t be much farther, a couple of miles at most.

If she thought ignoring phone messages was going to make him go away, she was sadly mistaken. Beau wanted an explanation for the polygraph results. If she wasn’t at home, he’d wait, but he didn’t think he’d have to wait long. All her nursing pals agreed that Maggie worked too hard, played just as hard when the mood struck her, and spent a lot of her free time in what her friends called “that big old house she loves.”

A number of the nurses had mistaken his professional interest in Maggie for personal interest.
Mistaken?
Sly winks had accompanied innocent observations that Maggie could generally be found at home most weeknights. That would suit him just fine since he wanted to settle this tonight.

Settle what? There isn’t anything to settle
, he argued with himself. Logic said she did it. One of the polygraphs agreed. Instincts that had never steered him wrong were suddenly screaming at him to steer clear of Maggie St. John.

So why was he on River Road, steering right toward her—toward the inevitable—and hoping she could explain away the unexplainable? Because he wanted to see her alone. Away from the office, away from the hospital. He wanted to see the real Maggie and not the tough cookie she invented for the world.

Beau pressed the accelerator almost to the floor. He
wasn’t used to having a woman destroy his objectivity. That’s what Maggie had done with her one-two punch of vulnerability and sensuality. He was focused on her and not on the case. No matter how much he pretended, seeing her at her home wasn’t about getting answers or collecting evidence; it was about understanding Maggie. About
wanting
Maggie.

And he hated that. He didn’t like wanting anyone.

As he passed a ramshackle barn, Beau slowed his car, checked another mailbox, and braked to a sudden stop. Rain pounded the hood and roof of the car as he stared. Even in the dark, Maggie’s house commanded attention.

“That big old house she loves” was a white gothic—the kind of house with a square room at the top like the pilot house on a steamboat and ornate trim. A gallery wrapped around the second floor as well as the first. Every light in the place was on. A few oval windows spilled colored light through stained glass.

Ancient and unpruned magnolia trees rose from the ground to the left of the house. They formed a shield that almost hid the field and old barn from view. Or almost hid Maggie’s house from the field. Beau wasn’t certain which property the magnolias protected.

This wasn’t the home he had envisioned for Maggie. It wasn’t nearly modern enough and much too big for one person. Upkeep and the mortgage had to take every dime she made. Beau pulled into the drive, gravel crunching beneath the wheels as he eased up behind the flirty little sports car. The red convertible Mustang was a speeding ticket waiting to happen and
exactly
what he had expected Maggie to drive. She had the hair for it.

Looking at the car and then the house, Beau decided that nurses made more money than he thought. Or property on River Road was cheaper than he thought.

Beau killed the engine and scooped up the manila envelope on the seat next to him. Getting her statement signed was his excuse for knocking on her door. Not that he needed an excuse, but he was experienced enough to know she wasn’t going to invite him in without a reason. And he wanted that invitation.

As he slid out of the car, a curtain in one of the front rooms drifted open an inch. Maggie was definitely home, and she knew he was here. Despite the rain soaking his clothes, Beau stared straight at the window, letting her get a good look before he slammed the door. The curtain finally dropped when he headed for the porch.

By the time he climbed the steps, the rattle of a chain and clunk of a dead bolt mechanism reached his ears. He waited patiently on the edge of the porch, out of the rain but not too close to the door. The pause between unlocking and opening it stretched so long, Beau wondered if she’d changed her mind. Then, with a whoosh, the door swung back.

A screen door still separated them, but Maggie’s silhouette had the same effect on him now that her body in broad daylight had had on the whole squad room. It redirected his thoughts from taking care of business to thoughts of touching her.

Didn’t the woman own decent clothes?

Her short overalls were so faded and worn that he knew they’d feel like old flannel beneath his hands. Her shoulders were bare beneath the wide denim straps. No, they weren’t, he realized. Thin spaghetti straps for some
sort of skimpy, low-cut top were barely visible to the side of the denim straps.

“Let me guess,” she said, one hand in her pocket and the other still on the doorknob. “You were in the neighborhood?”

Maybe someone else might have missed the tightness in her voice, the tiniest hint of rigid control. But Beau didn’t miss it, and that’s when he knew. Maggie wasn’t going to have an explanation for the polygraph irregularity, no funny, smart-ass story of why she hesitated on that question. She was worried. Probably praying he hadn’t found out about the test yet and wondering what he intended to do about it.

Nothing, Maggie. Absolutely nothing
, he decided. At least not tonight. He already had the answer he’d come for, but it wasn’t the one he’d been hoping to get.

Motioning with the damp manila envelope, he said, “I got tied up in court and missed you at the hospital. I wanted to get the statement signed and out of the way tonight.”

Maggie glanced at her watch. “Nine o’clock’s a little late even for you to be working.” She looked up with a speculative glint in her eye, and he knew she was about to push his buttons again. “But then I guess the devil’s work is never done.”

“You sure are quick with that mouth, Maggie. Are you as quick with a pen?” Stepping closer, he offered the envelope. “You may want to read it first. I can wait out here if you’d like.”

Maggie realized his offer to stay outside was a not-so-subtle hint to invite him in, and she balked. Having him in her home felt like letting a hungry wolf in with the
sheep and hoping he wouldn’t eat too much. It was impossible to know if she should or shouldn’t. Her judgment was shot. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep for three days. She was afraid to sleep. Afraid to dream.

And afraid to spend any time alone with the man on her doorstep.

Whatever drove Grayson to venture out of the city tonight, it wasn’t to get the statement signed. No, he wanted something else entirely, and he was playing this little game to get it. She just didn’t know what “it” was. Nor could she guess from his poker face if he’d seen the results of the polygraph.

As he said this morning, she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. Opening the screen door, she took the envelope and called his bluff. “You didn’t need this tonight.”

“No, I didn’t,” he admitted easily. “But I don’t like loose ends.”

Hairs prickled on the back of Maggie’s neck at the way his voice dropped almost to a whisper. At the way he caught the screen to keep it from closing. The palm tree tie and the gun were missing. His sleeves were rolled up, but he wasn’t off duty. The badge was still clipped to his belt. And to his soul, if she were any judge of character.

Maggie remembered one of the few pieces of advice her mother had ever given her. Advice had always seemed to come when Mama was breaking up with whichever man paid the rent, and her advice was usually followed by an order to pack the suitcases. At barely eight years old Maggie hadn’t understood most of the warnings, but this particular one made perfect sense now.

Run like hell from a man like that, baby. You can’t lie to him, and you can’t cheat on him.

It was too late to run. She had nowhere to hide. Nothing to do but see it through—something her mother had never done. Maggie used her memories of her mother as a moral compass. If Mama pointed south, Maggie went north.

“You’re wet,” she finally said.

He shoved a hand through his hair, slicking it back into place. “Occupational hazard.”

Fiddling with the brads on the envelope, Maggie moved away from the door. “Look, I’m not a fast reader. You better come in, Mr. Grayson. I-I’ll get you a towel. And a pen.”

“The name’s Beau,” he told her and crossed the threshold, taking care to stand on the vestibule rug. “Don’t go to any trouble on my account.”

“It’s a little late to worry about making trouble, don’t you think? Especially when you’ve come all this way to investigate what your prime suspect is”—she made quotation marks with her free hand—“
really like.
So here we are. The air conditioner’s broken, and the living room’s that way. Don’t hold it against me.”

Beau watched her disappear around a corner, presumably to get a towel. The lack of air-conditioning explained her propensity for skimpy clothing, but when he turned his head in the direction she’d pointed, he wasn’t certain what to make of the living room. Maggie was neither a decorator nor a housekeeper.

Muddy sheets were thrown over two couches that faced each other. Stacked on the floor, on end tables, around the hearth, and on the coffee table were books
and magazines. The corners jutted out at odd angles as if the material was constantly being sorted through and haphazardly restacked. Bits of paper marking places stuck out of the pages.

Beau wove his way through the maze, trying to get a feel for her reading tastes. They surprised him. The room was filled with travel guides,
National Geographic
magazines, history books, and how- to books for sailing around the world, mountain climbing, and do-it-yourself safaris. Intrigued, he hunkered down beside a stack near the fireplace, but the smell of smoke distracted him.

Fresh smoke.

Twisting toward the hearth, he wondered why someone with a broken air conditioner would want to start a fire in July.
Without wood.
The unusual always got his attention. There weren’t any coals, no charred pieces of wood in the fireplace. Just the curled gray ash remains of some papers, which had obviously been laid on the grate and set on fire.

He leaned and held his hand close to the ashes, checking for heat coming off the firebrick or the grate. None, but then he didn’t really expect any. He’d love to know exactly what Maggie had burned. Journal pages? Wouldn’t that be convenient timing. And smart if she’d written more than she should.

Getting the charred paper out and reconstituting it was tricky, but it could be done. He had the fixing spray in the car trunk with his gear. He had a guy at the state crime lab who could flatten it and develop an image on photographic paper, but without a search warrant Beau couldn’t take anything. Unless it was in plain sight and obviously incriminating.

Damn.

Women loved to wipe the slate clean by burning things—old love letters, mementos, anything that reminded them of who or what they wanted to forget. The problem with burning your memories was that you could never get them back.
What did you burn, Maggie? What do you want to forget?

He heard footsteps in the hall, and he started to twist back to the books when an unburned scrap by the leg of the grate caught his eye, It was the printed corner of something, charred only on the edge. Beau didn’t bother to examine it. Reflex took over. He simply grabbed it and put it in his shirt pocket as he reached for a book and pretended to read, his back still to the archway.

He noticed ashes on his fingers and pocket. Surreptitiously he slipped the fingers in the crook of his knee and twisted a couple of times as he pulled them out. It’d have to do. The pocket would have to wait.

“You’ve got some hobby here, Mag—”

Beau froze as a hot, dry puff of air brushed his neck, accompanied by a soft and serious growl. Every hair on his head stood straight up. Silently he tried to calculate how big the dog had to be if it was breathing down his neck, but gave up because he didn’t like the answer.

“Nice doggie,” he crooned. The growl escalated. Beau shut up and willed Maggie to hurry.

Moving his head only a quarter inch at a time, he tried to get a look at his problem. When the largest set of canines he’d ever seen came into view, Beau felt the color drain from his face.

“Gwendolyn, no! Don’t eat the man.” Maggie’s voice
had never been so welcome, even when she added, “He’ll give you indigestion.”