To Trust a Stranger (8 page)

“That's the spirit. Hang tough.”

He turned up the ramp onto the expressway, heading northwest.

The streetlights glared yellow, completely outshining the moon. A few cars whizzed past, but not many. It was too late-or early, depending upon one's point of view-for the kind of heavy traffic that usually poured into and around Charleston in the summer, courtesy of clueless tourists who didn't know that summer was the worst possible time to visit, thanks to the humidity and swarms of biting insects.

A thought occurred to Julie. “Hey, wait a minute. How did you know which way to go? You don't know where I live. Do you?”

The glance he gave her was unreadable in the shadowy interior of the car. “I assumed you lived out in Summerville near your shop. Am I
 
wrong.”

“No-o, you're right. We live in Summerville.” She eyed him doubtfully. His reply had been just a shade too casual-hadn't it? Or was she being paranoid again?

It's not paranoid if they're really after you. The saying popped into her head uninvited. Under the circumstances, it seemed appropriate.

But Debbie had fallen into her life purely by chance, and since then he had put himself out to help her. More, he had proved to be kind and caring, a friend.

And she badly needed a friend.

“Just tell me where to turn off.” He sounded cheerfully unconcerned, and, because she really had no basis for them, she let her suspicions go.

“The first Summerville exit.”

“Same as the shop. What's it called?”

“Carolina Belle.”

“Maybe I'll stop in again sometime. If you start carrying larger sizes, that is.” A crooked smile accompanied his sideways glance.

“Actually, I only sell to the trade.” Julie smiled too at the sudden irresistible picture of Debbie in one of her gowns, and was grateful for the resulting easing of the tension that had her hands curled into fists in her lap.

“Pageant contestants, that is. And their handlers.”

“Are you telling me that you've got to be in a beauty contest to buy clothes at your shop?”

He sounded so affronted that Julie's smile broadened. “Basically.” As a former Miss South Carolina, a veteran of pageants from the age of two on, and the wife of a rich and prominent businessman, her credentials for running a shop that sold custom-designed and fitted evening gowns, swimsuits, and costumes for use on the state and national pageant circuit were impeccable. Carolina Belle was, in fact, quite successful, and she made a decent little income from it.

Divorcing Sid would be bad for business, she thought, and with that gloomy reflection felt her muscles start to tense all over again. Every other girl in
South Carolina
entered beauty pageants; it was almost a sport, like football or something. All the ones she took on liked to think that if they faithfully dieted and exercised and waxed and tanned and bleached and curled, they would end up just like Julie: Cinderella after the ball and the wedding to the prince.

An acrimonious divorce wasn't part of that dream.

Glancing down, she saw that her hands were once again curled into fists in her lap.

“Life's a bitch,” Debbie said.

Julie suddenly, totally agreed. “Amen.”

There was a pause as he sped up to pass a lumbering semi. Then he glanced at her.

“Listen, next time you feel like following your husband on one of his nocturnal adventures, don't. You want him followed, call a professional.”

If he was trying to distract her from her own gloomy thoughts, he succeeded.

“A professional?” She almost hooted. “A professional what? Husband follower?”

“Private investigator. You hire one, he gets the goods on your husband for you. It's a lot less messy than doing it yourself, believe me. And a lot less dangerous for you.”

“A private investigator?” Julie wrinkled up her nose doubtfully. “I wouldn't know how to go about finding one. It seems kind of risky just to look one up in the yellow pages. And-well, you know how things are around here. Everybody's related to everybody, or knows everybody, or something. Word would get out. There'd be gossip. Sid would find out.” Julie shuddered.

“Not if you got somebody you could trust.”

“There's nobody I trust. Not when it comes to Sid.” It was so true that there was a tinge of bitterness in her voice.

Sid was a Carlson, and a Sidney, and in
South Carolina
the Carlsons and the Sidneys, along with the Pughs and the Pettigrews and the Hughleys, were God. He was related, by blood or marriage, to half the population. The other half, like her own less-than-pedigreed family, just didn't count.

“You can trust me.”

“You?” She glanced at him in surprise.

“I'm the McQuarry half of McQuarry and Hinkle, Private Investigators.” He said it almost apologetically. Julie's eyes widened.

“You’re a private investigator? Are you serious?”

“Serious as a grave.”

“I never would have guessed.” Julie realized she still sounded incredulous. Debbie-a private investigator? Turning the notion over in her mind, Julie realized that it was no more mind-boggling than picturing him as a bank clerk. In fact, less. Everybody had to have a job. “Do people actually hire you to spy on their husbands?”

“All the time.” The skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled.

“Wives, too. You'd be amazed at how many spouses cheat. Sometimes I think most of '
em
do. What you're going through isn't anything out of the ordinary, believe me.”

That was so depressing that Julie was momentarily silenced. She didn't say anything more until a big green sign just a few hundred yards ahead jolted her back to reality.

“This is the exit!”

She thought he was going to miss it-she'd given the warning way too late-but he was already pulling into the appropriate lane as she spoke. Of course, she'd told him the first Summerville exit. Good thing he'd remembered.

The Blazer rolled down the ramp, paused at the red light at the bottom, then headed into the sleepy bedroom community of Summerville.

The tiny, picturesque town had an old-resort feel to it. The streets were wide and perpetually shady, lined with huge bearded live oaks and masses of azaleas. The historic district consisted of gracious antebellum structures complete with soaring Greek columns, some of which had been converted into shops and hotels and others of which remained private residences, nestled cozily side by side. Carolina Belle was located in an area of newer development a little to the north. At Julie's direction they turned the other way, heading toward the
Ashley
River
, where some of the finest new houses in the area had been built, many of them by All-American Builders. As they drove along the deserted streets, she checked the time again: 2:50. They were going to be cutting it close.

Butterflies took wing in her stomach. Returning to her house sudddenly seemed about as appealing as a convict might find returning to prison. She was going to have to face Sid and lie, face the police and lie ....

She really, truly, positively didn't want to go home. She had to struggle with herself not to ask him to turn the car around and floor it in the opposite direction.

“How long is it going to take you to break into the garage, do you think?” she asked, careful to keep her voice even.

“Not long. A couple of minutes.”

“Is that all?” It seemed a ridiculously short amount of time to circumvent metal garage doors and deadbolt locks.

“The house is new, you know. The locks are pretty sturdy. Oh, and what about the alarm system?”

If it went off, the police would come right away. He could be caught in the act.

“Was the alarm set? Did Sid set it when he left? Did you?” Julie thought. She'd been in such a hurry not to lose Sid ....

“Sid usually sets it before he goes to sleep. But it wasn't set when I left-it would have gone off-and I never touched it. So it's off.”

If Sid had set it before he left, he would have had to turn it off when he got back home. And whenever it was turned off, the alarm beeped a loud warning in their bedroom.

If she'd been asleep, she would almost certainly have woken up.

And Sid, knowing that, would have taken the safer route of not turning the alarm on at all. After all, there was no real risk. Crime in Summerville was practically nonexistent.

“Then we're in business.”

Julie pointed out her house, an eight-thousand-square-foot Greek Revival mansion that Sid had designed and built himself, and the Blazer stopped in front of it. The tall iron gates were still open-they stayed that way most of the time because it was a pain to wait for them to open electronically-but he didn't pull up the driveway.

“It'd be better if we walk up. That way, the neighbours won't see a strange car pulling into your driveway in the middle of the night,” he said, answering her unspoken question.

“Good idea.” Although the neighbours were in all likelihood sound asleep. At least the other houses-she could see only three from where she stood, the Macalasters', the DeForests', and the Cranes'-were all dark. Like her house, they had been designed and built by Sid's company to similarly tasteful specifications, although of course the facades were all different. Sutherland Estates was Sid's showcase development, which was why they had a house in it. Whichever development was his baby of the moment was where they lived.

Since their marriage, they'd had no permanent home. Sid's father his mother had died when Sid was young-was living with his girlfriend in the family's moldy Civil War-era mansion in Charles ton's historic district, which Sid, as the only child, expected to inherit one day. Given that circumstance, he'd seen no compelling reason to establish a real, true home of his own. At first, when Julie had hoped to fill the many rooms of the various big houses with children, she'd planned to go to the mat with Sid about settling down permanently as soon as she got pregnant. But Sid basically felt about children the way he felt about dogs, and he'd kept putting her off about having any of their own. She'd let the matter slide, and now she guessed that she wouldn't be going to the mat about living in this house permanently, either.
 

It was starting to look like she wouldn't be living in any house permanently. At least, not with Sid.

She and Debbie were both out of the vehicle now, and Julie was walking around it to join him. He was wearing the gloves, she saw as she reached him, and carrying a crowbar in one hand. Her stomach turned over at the thought of what they were about to do, but there was no help for it. She was just going to have to lie as convincingly as she could and hope for the best.

Too nervous to talk, she walked silently beside him up the driveway. It was paved in brick, and pink and white creeping petunias bloomed in bright profusion along the edges. Night reduced their colors to no more than shadowy patches of dark and light, but their perfume scented the air. Julie reached under a loose stone and grabbed the spare house key. The katydids were busy, adding their distinctive chorus to the soft chirp of the crickets and the piping of the tree frogs. The strategic stand of palmettos that, along with a brick privacy fence, provided protection from the Macalasters next door rustled faintly as some nocturnal animal moved about among the branches. The sound certainly didn't result from a breeze. There wasn't any. The air could only be described as sultry.

They reached the garage, a long, single-story brick rectangle angled away from the street with a quartet of identical white car doors set into it, and paused.

“Which one?” he asked.

Julie indicated the second door from the left.

He glanced at it. “Piece of cake.”

“You've been great/' she said, the words heartfelt, looking up at him through the shadowy darkness. “I don't know what I would have done without you tonight.”

“I try.” He smiled at her, a slow, charmingly crooked smile that did something funny to her insides. Reaching into his rear pocket, he pulled out his wallet, thumbed through the contents, and withdrew a white business card, which he handed to her. “My number's on this. Next time you get the urge to go chasing after your husband in the middle of the night, call me instead.”

“Will do.” She glanced down at the card. It was impossible to read anything in the darkness. “And I'll call you tomorrow about the damage to your car.”

“Sounds good.”

She needed to make a move. Seconds were ticking swiftly past, and seconds added up to minutes, and minutes were all she had. Still, she hated to walk away. She didn't want to go in. She wanted to stay out here in this heavy perfumed darkness forever with this stranger who had somehow morphed into her new best friend. So he happened to be a guy named Debbie: it didn't matter. It occurred to her that whoever he was, whatever he was, she felt safe with him. She'd gotten more comfort from him tonight than she had from her own husband in years. Once she walked away from him, she was on her own. Her problems were strictly hers to deal with.

“I've got to go in now.”

“Yeah.” He was hefting the crowbar in his gloved hands, his expression unreadable in the darkness. She summoned a smile. “If you hear about me being arrested on the morning news, you'll know just how bad a liar I am,” she said. Then she impulsively laid a hand on his arm, and rose up to press a quick kiss on his warm, sandpapery cheek.