Waters Run Deep (21 page)

She opened her mouth to argue, but he held up a finger. “Don’t. You need rest.”

“I might have a concussion and shouldn’t sleep as a precaution.”

“Then you should have gone with the paramedics. Your job is to protect Spencer. You need rest so you have your wits about you.”

She frowned and it struck him that though this private investigator was sexy as hell, there was something attractive about her stubborn demeanor. God, but he’d always loved a woman who dug in and refused to surrender. A challenge. That was definitely Annie.

He watched her as her mind clicked through pros and cons of doing what he suggested and almost smiled as she sighed. “Fine, but tomorrow we need to meet. Jimmy called and—”

“Who’s Jimmy?”

“Howie.”

“Oh. So that was a ruse. I mean, of course it was a ruse.” He felt a little dense for not realizing the whole kiss in the woods thing was a total sham. Oh, he’d seen something shady about it, but jealousy had colored his response. “I’ll be here tomorrow so we’ll meet then. See what Jimmy’s got, we’ll compare notes and see what we can come up with.”

She nodded.

He couldn’t stop himself from taking the six steps necessary to reach her. She looked up at him and he felt his heart beat harder.

He traced the bruise forming around her bump. “You scared me.”

Her eyes looked bigger than normal. “I did?”

“Yeah,” he breathed before gently brushing his lips over hers. He added a soft kiss on her forehead, mindful of her injury.

“That’s something new for me. To feel the way I did when I saw you hurt. When I thought about what could have happened to you.”

Annie swallowed and then licked her lips. “This shouldn’t be happening. It doesn’t make sense to—”

He silenced her with another quick kiss. “I know, but that doesn’t change the fact there’s something between us. It’s not going away because we want it to.”

She brushed his jaw with her hand. “I’m scared.”

“That makes two of us.”

He delivered another kiss on her forehead, breathing deeply the essence of Annie. She smelled clean, like shampoo and baby powder. Not necessarily a turn-on, but he could grow to love the soft scent. He gave her a small shove toward the kitchen door.

“Go. We’ll talk in the morning.”

For once she didn’t argue. She disappeared through the swinging door with a resigned look.

Nate turned toward the refrigerator and took out his phone. Every cell in his body screamed for him to follow Annie, to watch over her, to hold her, but he had a job to do.

He’d asked her to think about something more after they solved the case, but did he want to go there? Was he ready for a serious relationship? Was any guy?

His phone rang.

Wynn.

No more thinking about relationships. Time to work. The faster he caught the scum slipping chicken bones in people’s refrigerators, the sooner he could find peace.

Maybe.

“Get your ass to Beau Soleil. Someone left a chicken in the fridge and it ain’t for dinner.”

“I’M STILL SCARED.” Tawny looked up from the patio where she perched in a teeny bikini on a chaise longue. She looked fantastic, except for the fear in her eyes.

Tawny, Jane and Annie had been sitting outside on the back patio in companionable silence, sipping drinks. Neither Tawny nor Jane had been needed on set that day and so had spent the morning sleeping in, then the afternoon sunning, reading tabloids and gossiping about the celebrities they knew in tinsel town. Annie now knew who was still in the closet, who’d gotten a little work done and who was addicted to pain meds. She could give a flying fig about insider information. She’d have rather had the day off so she could meet with Nate and check developments. It had been almost five days since she’d lost her gun.

“This detective will figure it out,” Jane said, fanning herself with the US magazine Tawny had asked Annie to pick up when she’d visited town that morning. “He looks so capable.”

At this Tawny smiled. “Oh, so that’s what you call it. I’d say he’s emphatically bedable.”

“Do you even know what ‘emphatic’ means?” Jane asked, lowering the magazine to slap at a mosquito.

“Exclamation point, dot, dot, dot,” Tawny said, pointing a finger after each dot.

Annie tried to pretend she wasn’t bothered by their talk. Of course women found Nate attractive. He was subtly hot, extremely masculine and emphatically intelligent. Exclamation point, dot, dot, dot. And though she’d slept with him, or rather not slept while having sex with him, she had no claim on the man. Not really.

But maybe.

“Spencer’s safe,” Annie said, taking another sip of the lemonade Picou had made. Spencer played in the shade of a broad-limbed oak, kicking the new ball she’d bought him a few hours earlier. They had gone into Bayou Bridge to buy a present for his cousin Braden, but Annie had learned the hard way children accustomed to getting whatever they want often demanded whatever they wanted. Loudly. The ball had been a compromise—one she knew she shouldn’t have made. But when people turned, stared and tsked, it kicked a gal into survival mode.

Spencer had gotten the stupid ball no matter what the damned parenting books had warned. The smug family psychologists who’d penned them hadn’t faced the power of Spencer Keene and his overly dramatic tantrums.

Annie, who had once faced the snub-nosed end of a loaded pistol and not even broken a sweat, had been beaten down by a five-year-old.

“Well, he’s safe for now, but what if that person had succeeded the other night? Look at Annie’s face. That could have been my birdie.” Tawny took another swig from her Bud Light and swiped her arm across her mouth.

Both women turned toward Annie and her fading bruise. “I got this because I wanted some water. That person wasn’t trying to hurt Spencer. Just leave that note.”

Tawny didn’t look convinced and Annie couldn’t blame her. The blood, ambulance and rotting chicken carcass seemed to foreshadow what could happen if the potential kidnapper wasn’t nabbed soon.

Tawny adjusted her nearly nonexistent bikini top and said, “What kind of freak leaves dead birds and chicken bones all over the place?”

“Mambos,” Picou said, entering the patio and setting a plate of fruit on the glass-topped table. “Voodoo priests and priestesses often use chicken blood in their prophecies.”

“Seriously?” Jane asked, tying her bikini top behind her neck and pulling on a light cotton cover-up. “Sounds like some churches I’ve been to.”

Picou launched into a lecture on ancient voodoo culture and its place in the modern world. Annie listened with one ear as she mulled over a few tidbits she’d heard over the course of the afternoon. It might not be much, but it had given credence to Jimmy’s idea Jane didn’t like Tawny as much as the actress thought she did.

Nothing about Jane seemed significant to the case until she had started ribbing Tawny about Carter, a bar and a mixed-up drink order.

Tawny had laughed about Carter ditching Jane at the bar to do the limbo with her on the dance floor, but Annie had sensed an edge to Jane’s words. Oh, she’d laughed, but not with her eyes. Annie knew how to connect dots and tried to put together a picture of what had happened.

She guessed Jane had been snaked. Tawny had been unemployed and passed over for more roles than she cared to mention, but grabbed the brass ring when she’d seduced Carter away from where Jane had him pinned at the bar. Then Jane had watched from the bar, nursing her own drink, as the blonde bombshell regaled Carter with her Arkansas accent, baby-blue eyes and double Ds. Two months later, Tawny was in production for a sitcom on Fox and wearing a five-carat diamond. Jane had ended up in the shower selling feminine-hygiene wash in a commercial.

Annie tapped a finger on the lip of the glass, wondering if man stealing was enough motivation to send threats and leave dead birds all over the place. She briefly touched the bruise covering her cheek and eye and winced. Then she thought about the movie with the boiled rabbit. Yeah, crazy people used whatever they could to exact revenge.

She hated sitting by doing nothing. She felt useless and wanted to be in on the investigation, doing something more active than playing nanny. But Ace hadn’t been happy with the developments, especially the stolen gun, and had insisted she stay put.

Spencer sprinted over to the patio. “Hey, guys, look at what I can do.”

He backed up, held the ball in front of him and kicked it. The line drive went right toward Jane’s upturned nose.

“Son of a bitch!” Jane screamed, cupping her hand over her nose as blood spurted between her fingers.

“Oh, my gosh,” Tawny cried, grabbing a napkin from beneath her beer and thrusting it at her friend. “Here.”

“Great,” Jane said, grabbing the napkin and holding it over her nose. Blood dripped over her fingers. Annie extracted several ice cubes from her glass, wrapped them in a napkin and handed it to the woman, who took it and replaced the blood-soaked one Tawny had given her.

“I’m sorry,” Spencer said, his face twisting into tearful grimace. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Well, you should be,” Jane hissed. “Look what you did to my nose.”

She removed the tissue, revealing a throbbing, Rudolph-worthy nose. Tears unwillingly slid down her checks, mingling with the blood still trickling from her nostrils. Annie couldn’t stop the Brady Bunch episode where Marsha got hammered with the football from playing in her mind. Jane’s sorta looked like Marsha’s…except real.

“He said he didn’t mean it,” Tawny said, reaching out and gathering her son into her arms. “It’s okay, birdie. You didn’t mean it.”

“Of course it’s okay. Nothing wrong with him ruining my nose. I only have to shoot two scenes tomorrow,” Jane said, rising and shoving the chair in which she’d spent the past few hours across the patio. “Spencer can do no wrong. You coddle him and let him get away with everything. He’s a spoiled brat and you’re going to regret it someday!”

Jane stalked toward the front of the house, passing Picou who’d gone inside to replenish the lemonade. The older woman spun and took in a sobbing Spencer, a bloody napkin and the ensuing squeal of tires. “What the—”

“An accident,” Annie said.

“She’s such a drama queen,” Tawny huffed, cradling her son and dropping kisses atop his sweaty head. “She pretends to like Spencer to get on my good side.”

Something prickled on Annie’s neck. “She doesn’t like Spencer?”

“She doesn’t like any kids. Thank goodness she can’t have any of her own. They’d be the saddest things ever.”

“Can’t have any?” Annie leaned forward. “As in physically can’t have any?”

“Is there another way to have them?” Tawny asked with a roll of her eyes. “Well, I guess people can adopt, but Jane had a hysterectomy when she was in her early twenties. Something about an abortion that went bad. Or maybe it was a tubal pregnancy.

I’m not sure because it happened before I knew her. Guess she forgot to take her hormones today because she’s in full-on bitch mode.”

Annie stood. Jane McEvoy had officially become a person of interest. “Did you tell the detectives investigating the case?”

Tawny frowned. “Why? What does her not having periods have to do with what’s going on with Spencer?”

Annie glanced at Picou. The older woman’s brow furrowed and she looked contemplative. She looked back at Tawny who looked as she always did. Clueless. “Well, maybe not, but who knows what drives people?”

Spencer’s sobs subsided into a sniffle as Picou sank down into the cushioned chair Jane had abandoned. The older woman tapped her chin. “Was Jane in California when you received the threats?”

“Yes,” Tawny and Annie said in unison.

Picou nodded. “And the threats didn’t start here until Spencer got here. Whoever’s making those threats is here. In Louisiana.

So anyone who was in California who is now in Louisiana is a suspect.”

Tawny shook her head. “There’s no way the nutcase is Jane. I know Jane. She was my roommate for three years, not to mention my maid of honor and Spencer’s godmother. She’s high-maintenance and sometimes a pain in the ass, but she’s not capable of doing something so mean.”

Annie wasn’t so sure. She held no idealized notion of friendship, maybe because she hadn’t had many true friends, but she’d seen cases where the most trusted turned out to be crooked and capable of atrocity. Perhaps Jane had nursed the anger against Tawny until it turned into something akin to hatred, something that had driven her to act criminally. “Still, you need to mention this to Picou’s son. Or that FBI guy.”

Picou nodded. “I sensed anxiety around that woman. Her aura is yellow. Something’s going on in her life that’s displeasing.”

Tawny shrugged. “It doesn’t have to do with me or Spencer. It has to do with Mick. I don’t feel comfortable telling on her. Her medical history is none of anyone’s business. In fact, I shouldn’t have told you.”

Tawny wasn’t going to throw a friend under the bus. Annie knew she could tell Nate, but Tawny needed to see withholding information held up investigations, including the one Annie did for Sterling Investigations. “Mrs. Keene, um, Tawny, I respect your loyalty. It’s an admirable trait in a friend, but Spencer is more important, don’t you think?”

The woman looked down at the boy resting his head on her stomach. The child wasn’t asleep, but he was soaking in his mother’s love. “Yeah. He’s the most important thing in my life.”

And that was why he was being used against her.

Picou cleared her throat. “So maybe it wouldn’t hurt to mention it to Nate. He’s a good guy. He wouldn’t let anything leak out about Jane that wasn’t necessary.”

Tawny nodded. “Okay. I’ll say something to him when I see him. He said he’d come by and give us a briefing on what they’ve found so far. Carter insisted.”

Picou nodded. “Sensible.”

Tawny chuckled. “I don’t think anyone has ever called me that before.”

Annie needed some time to meet with Nate herself. “I haven’t had a day off, Tawny, and I know—”

“You can take tomorrow off. I’m taking Spence to the water park and Brick will come with me.” She feathered her son’s hair.