Chapter Seventeen

 

I was dreaming about David.

We were arguing—nothing new there—but even in the dream, angry though I was, I had a sense of loss. A sense of the waste of it—the waste of what had once been real and genuine and good between us. Love. Yes, we had loved each other once, and after love had gone, I still had tried to hang on. Maybe David had too. There had been plenty of affairs—even before we made our relationship official with a commitment ceremony—but he had never wanted to end us. Not until Dicky Dickison.

Something had changed for us both with Dicky. Maybe this time it really was love for David. Or maybe I had run out of lies to tell myself. Or the energy to keep lying even if I could have come up with a story I could believe in.

In the dream, for the first time, I accepted that it was my failure and my loss—that I was alone now because of the choices I had made along the way. For starters, always choosing career over relationship. Was that because I’d known in my heart it was going to end this way? Everyone else had known. Maybe even David had known. But we had stuck it out for ten years. I might have stuck it out forever. Not because I still loved David or forgave him, but because my life was my work. I could shut David and his dick…er…Dickys out because my true life companions were Miss Butterwith and Mr. Pinkerton.

But in my dream it was hard to turn my back on David. Hard to walk away. Hard for David too because he came after me saying softly, “Kit…”

A gust of frigid air across my face. I unstuck my eyelashes, itched at my nose. That was funny. I never remembered David calling me…

“Kit?” a familiar and unwelcome voice demanded in my ear.

I sat up fast, the lousy mattress and my back both protesting the incautious move. I regret to say that the sound that issued forth from my lips was closer to girly squeal of terror than manly shout of outrage, but either way it worked and the sinister shadow looming over me backed up hastily.

“Why didn’t you answer me?” J.X. demanded.

At the same time I was yelling, “What are you doing in here?”

“I knocked and you didn’t answer. I called to you three times.” J.X. now stood a safe distance at the foot of my bed. He was wearing some kind of olive green rain poncho and a cowboy hat—and they suited him ridiculously well despite the fact that both hat and poncho were soaked.

“I couldn’t hear you over the rain,” I accused, untangling myself from the extra blanket.

“Or the snores.”

I kicked free of the final folds of wool. “That’s right. I wore myself out running amuck and killing people last night.”

He looked heavenward—reminding me of those somber portraits of saints right before their heroic breasts were riddled with arrows. “Look, I already said I don’t think you—”

“I don’t give a damn what you think. Why are you here?”

“I came to take you to dinner.”

“Ha! Flattering though that is, I’m not in the mood. However, if you’re willing to wait till I get out of prison in twenty years or so…” I rolled off the bed and staggered into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me and cutting off whatever his answer might have been.

When I emerged shortly thereafter, relieved and refreshed, he was sitting on the foot of the bed, his booted foot keeping time to an inaudible tune.

“Did you have a nice day?” I inquired more civilly. “Because I didn’t.”

“I don’t see what could have been so bad about it,” J.X. said. “It looks to me like you spent the afternoon napping and eating and reading. It’s certainly nice and warm in here.”

“You can skip the hard sell. ‘The caged bird sings with a fearful trill.’”

His brows drew together. “Tell me you haven’t been drinking.”

“I haven’t even had a cup of coffee since breakfast.”

He said placatingly, “Well, see, I’m going to escort you up to the house for dinner. You can have all the coffee you like.”

“Why the day pass, Marshal Dillon? Don’t tell me all the decent law-abiding folk have run out of things to talk about?”

He didn’t answer directly, his glance falling on the yellow legal pad which I had been using to jot down my thoughts and notes on the murder before I fell asleep. In the tone of one trying hard to change the subject to more pleasant matters, he said, “Were you working on your new project?”

“Yes.” I reached for the pad. “Some of us can’t get away with recycling old police reports. We actually have to make things up.”

“I’ll say. Including police procedures.”

“Police procedure is different in Britain.”

“You’re not kidding. And it’s especially different in St. Mary’s Mud or wherever you set those things.” He had picked up the pad before I could, but something—probably his own name—caught his eye, and he pulled the papers back and began to read.

“Do you mind?”

I didn’t quite dare grab the thing out of his hand, and he ignored me. As he read, his expression grew noticeably grimmer.

At last he looked up. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Preparing my defense. If I’m going to be arrested, I’m sure as hell going to supply the local cops with plenty of other possible scenarios.”

He nodded to himself, then ripped the sheets with my notes off the pad, folded them, and stuck them in his pocket.

I gaped at him as he handed me the blank pad back. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He was watching me with an oddly serious expression. “I can’t figure you out, Kit. You’re so clever in some ways. And in other ways you’re like the boy who was raised in a bubble. Has it occurred to you that one reason I’ve got you sequestered here is for your own protection?”

“No. That still hasn’t occurred to me.”

“Then think about it for a minute. For whatever reason, whoever killed Peaches and Steven wants you blamed for his—or her—crimes. Maybe you happened along at the right time. Or maybe it’s personal. Maybe someone here specifically wants you to take the rap for these homicides.”

“How could it be personal? I don’t know anyone here except you and Rachel.”

“You know Mindy.”

“Mindy?” He thought Mindy was trying to frame me?

J.X. said patiently, “I’m just saying, it might not be a coincidence that you’re being implicated in these crimes. It may be personal. If that’s the case, even if it’s not the case, the best way to defuse this guy—”

“Or gal.”

“Or gal—is to let them believe that their plan is going ahead without complication. If you appear to be a good fit for scapegoat, there’s less chance they might feel any need to…”

“To what?” I stared at him. “To kill me?”

“I don’t know.” His dark eyes were very serious as they met mine. “This is what I keep trying to tell you. We don’t know why they’ve targeted you. You need to be careful.”

“Well, I’d prefer not to be so careful that I end up doing time for a murder I didn’t commit.”

“Once you get out of here, you and your attorney can start putting together your defense. Hell, you might not even be arrested. But for now, keep a low profile.”

“How the hell lower can my profile go?” I objected. “I’m stored out here on the back forty. The only people with lower profiles are the ones rooming in the icehouse.”

“Kit.”

“All right.” I whirled away and strode up and down the floor in front of the fireplace. “So you don’t want me to ask any questions about the murder. You don’t want me writing down my theories. You want me to sit here like a good little patsy.”

“You got it.” He smiled, that wry white curve lightening the haughty lines of his patrician features. He glanced at his wristwatch. “And I want you to throw a coat on so we can get up to the house and have dinner.”

Still blinking in the reflection of that bright charm, I grabbed a fresh pair of corduroy jeans and a clean sweater and modestly retreated to the bathroom to change. When I reappeared in yet another overpriced ensemble—this time in Ralph Lauren black cords and an emerald green chunky ribbed mock turtleneck—J.X. stared at me and said awkwardly, “You look nice.”

“I’ve been having beauty treatments all day.”

He laughed.

“You think I’m kidding.”

I shrugged into my coat, and we went out into the rain-swept night. The rain flew in our faces in peppery blasts; the wind seemed to yank the breath right out of me.

Still, as we plowed our way upstream across the pasture that now resembled swampland, I found air enough to gasp, “What have you found out so far?”

He threw back, “I haven’t found anything out so far because I’m not investigating.”

“What do you mean, you’re not investigating? I thought you used to be some kind of hotshot police inspector?”

J.X. said tersely, “I’m not a cop anymore, and I’m sure as hell not an amateur sleuth.”

“You’re trying to tell me you’re not looking into this at all?”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you. We’re trapped here with someone who shows every sign of being totally ruthless when it comes to protecting his or her self. Poking into this could be hazardous to your—to anyone’s—health.”

“So you do think Krass’s murder is related to Peaches’?”

I stumbled in a gopher hole, and he put his hand out to steady me. He was slender, but he was wiry and very strong. “That’s pretty much a no-brainer. Steven sat in the bar that night hinting he knew something about Peaches’ murder. That was tantamount to announcing to the world at large that he had information that could destroy her killer.”

“That’s what I thought too.”

“That’s what everyone thought,” J.X. said dryly. “Which is why he should have kept his mouth shut. There’s no proof that he did know anything. Being Steven, he could have thought it was funny to stir everyone up.”

I thought about what Rita had said about Peaches being a shit stirrer. I remembered what else she had said.

“What did you argue about with Peaches the night before she was killed?” I asked.

“None of your business.”

He’d said it without missing a beat. It sort of irritated me. “What did you pick up beside Peaches’ body when we were by the shrine?”

He shot me a quick look. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“After you and Edgar carried Peaches to the truck, you came back and looked around where the body had lain. You knelt down and slipped something in your pocket.”

He put his hand on my arm and stopped walking. I stopped too. I couldn’t see his expression at all beneath the brim of the cowboy hat, but I could feel his warm breath against my face.

He said softly, “You’re not a very good listener, Christopher,” and placed his hands on either side of my head. There was nothing threatening about it. In fact, I sort of thought he was going to kiss me. As cold as his hands were, they were still warmer than the wind and rain sleeting against my skin. He was brushing his thumbs lightly against my cheekbones, the most insubstantial of caresses. It gave me funny chills, my skin seeming to tingle where he touched me.

He leaned forward and, his mouth a kiss away from mine, whispered, “Do you know how easy it would be for me to kill you?” His hands slid down to encircle my throat, and his thumbs rested delicately over the hollow at the lowest part of my neck.

The hair on the back of my neck rose. I stood very still while the pad of his thumb brushed the pulse pounding away in my throat.

“This is a pressure point. If I strike you hard here, I can knock you cold or kill you. It’s one of several ways I could take you out. I know a dozen different strikes and choke holds. I could say you attacked me and I tried to subdue you and it went wrong.”

Belatedly, I knocked his hands away and planted my own in J.X.’s chest—hard. He rocked but didn’t take so much as a step back. Even in the darkness I could see the white glimmer of his smile.

He asked conversationally, “You think you could outrun me or overpower me out here? Why don’t you try it?”

I started to shake with tension. “What’s your point, asshole?”

“My point,” he said curtly, “is that you don’t know who to trust. Which means you can’t afford to trust anyone, so you can’t—cannot—keep asking these questions. You’re going to get yourself killed. I can’t think of any other way to say it.”

“I got the message. I didn’t think I had to pretend with you.” I started to turn away, but he caught my arm.

“Kit, you have only my word for it that I didn’t kill Peaches or Steven.” He let go of my arm, adding, “If you think about it, I’m one of those people who might feel they have a personal grudge against you.”

I opened my mouth, but for once words deserted me.

J.X. turned away and started walking. After a pause I followed.

Glancing at me, he said, “A key fell off my fob; that’s what I was looking for on the ground where Peaches was found.”

Neither of us said anything else until we reached the lodge.