Beau straightened, suddenly wary. He shifted his attention from her long enough to check the room for sharp objects. He was safe. At least physically. The risk associated with Maggie St. John would be allowing her vulnerability to cloud his thinking or excuse her behavior.
Not that she looked vulnerable or in need of excuses at the moment.
Beau tried to reconcile the frightened woman he’d seen curled into a ball with the tough blonde in front of him. Neither of them were what he expected. One settled disputes with a scalpel, and the other looked petrified of her own shadow.
Not that his expectations were important to the case. Based on her proximity to the fire, she was his prime suspect. His job wasn’t to understand her; it was to arrest her or clear her. Simple. Except that he doubted anything about Maggie St. John was simple. His reaction to her wasn’t.
Running his gaze over her once more, he looked for signs that she regretted the incident with Thibodeaux. Instead of her eyes dropping, her chin came up, and she met his scrutiny with a challenging glare of her own. Beau was left with the certainty that the lecherous Dr. Thibodeaux wasn’t very bright. He’d certainly picked the wrong lady to mess with.
Playing the amused “good cop” as he took a step closer, he asked, “So how is the good doctor?” in the same conversational tone he used to comment on the weather.
Her chin came down a fraction, and she seemed to deflate, as if relieved she didn’t have another lecture to endure, another battle to fight, another defense in a long line of defenses. Beau wondered if Maggie fought from habit, and how many fights she’d won over the years. Probably more than she lost, he decided.
“Thibodeaux isn’t sliced up, if that’s what you’re trying to find out. I never intended to hurt him.” Regret finally seeped into the words, and her guard inched down again. “I didn’t even realize I had anything in my hand until he started backing up. At first I thought my genuine outrage had finally made an impression on his thick skull. Then I saw I was making each of my points with the scalpel.”
Maggie raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Maybe I should have tried it sooner. I had the man’s complete attention.”
“Lady, you would have had mine.” With or without the scalpel.
Maggie shot him a quick look, wondering if he knew how little she wanted his attention. Right now she wanted him to close his notebook, to stop looking at her as if he could see through her, and to go away. The more questions he asked, the worse her headache was going to get. Already the top of her head was about to explode.
Rubbing her eyes for a second, Maggie insisted, “I just wanted him to comprehend, once and for all, that he had to leave the nurses alone. I didn’t intend to assault him with a deadly weapon.”
“I’m sure that made a difference with the hospital review board.”
“Not particularly.” She laughed. “But since this wasn’t the first time a nurse complained about Thibodeaux’s touchy-feely style, they weren’t in any position to play hardball. They promised not to fire me if I didn’t sue them.”
“Seems like a classic win-win situation for everyone.”
She threaded both hands through her hair and rubbed the back of her neck. “As long as I was willing to tuck my tail between my legs and slink off into the bayou.”
“You think accepting the reassignment was slinking off?”
“Not hardly. First, they suspended me for a week, and then they reassigned me. I was supposed to use my time off to reflect on the error of my ways.”
“Did you?”
“Of course.” Sarcasm dripped from every word as she dropped her hands to her hips. “Next time I’ll put the scalpel down first.”
“You still seem hostile toward the hospital.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” she asked sharply.
“I don’t know. The question is, ‘Are you?’ ”
Of course she was angry, but admitting it would put her name at the top of a very short list of suspects. If she wasn’t already there. Maggie closed her left eye against the sharp jab of pain that struck without warning. Thinking clearly had become a problem. Grayson was pushing hot buttons and putting her on the defensive. But then that wasn’t very hard to do lately.
Her whole life had been a game of hurry up and wait, full of promises that her turn was next or that things would get better. Well, that turn had never come. Things never got better. So she’d made her own opportunities. It wasn’t a crime to have a temper. It wasn’t a crime to feel injustice. Even though Grayson seemed to think so. God, he looked so irritatingly confident. The man stumbled over a motive and figured he had the case solved.
When the throb subsided she told him, “No matter what you think, I wasn’t angry enough to set the whole hospital on fire.”
He let the silence surround them, press them together. Then he softly suggested, “Maybe you were angry enough to set just a little piece of it on fire?”
Maggie sucked in a sharp breath and then had to admit the man was good at his job. His voice was deep and low, compelling and understanding. There was even a hint of approval. His was the kind of voice that could make a woman confess to anything.
He’d maneuvered until those big, broad shoulders of his were close enough to do some good—if she’d been looking for comfort or to unburden herself of guilt. She could see that his collar button was loose and that a tiny nick had been left behind by his careless razor—and was unexpectedly swamped by her awareness of the man.
He hadn’t written anything in that book for a while. All of his attention was focused on her. Maggie had the odd sensation that Grayson had the power to narrow the world down to the barest essentials. There were no consequences beyond this room. In a matter of seconds he’d managed to invade her space and create the illusion of safety. No one had ever made her feel safe.
How had he done that?
How could he make people believe in him so easily, believe in his protection? That was an incredibly seductive quality. Maggie imagined people told him terrifying secrets. But it was a talent totally wasted on her. He couldn’t protect her from what she feared, and she wasn’t guilty of what he suspected.
Maggie decided to push a few of Grayson’s buttons. He deserved it for playing so cavalierly with her emotions. Maggie cast her eyes down as if overcome by guilt and leaned, her breasts almost touching his chest.
At the last possible moment before collision, she swept her gaze up to his and whispered, “Good try. But I’m not confessing.”
Beau decided that Maggie could drive a man crazy with very little effort. His brain stopped functioning on logic and processed only the input from his senses. She generated a remarkable amount of heat, imprinting the feel of her body without his having held her in his arms. Muscles tightened in his belly at the sensuality staring at him from twilight-blue eyes. A man could lose himself for days in those eyes. Mascara smudges at the corners only made them look bigger. Luminescent skin, big blue eyes, pale blond hair. This was “Daddy’s little angel” all grown up into the fallen angel any man would want. He sure did.
But he didn’t need this right now. Not with her. Not with the woman he’d seen balancing precariously on the edge of control less than fifteen minutes ago. He didn’t care to travel that road. For once in his life, his days and nights were just the way he liked them. Simple, calm, and routine.
He usually won more than he lost at the department’s monthly poker game. His coveted courtside seats for Louisiana State University basketball ensured that his phone rang regularly as each of his firehouse pals tried to wheedle their way into that second seat. There was even an occasional relationship with a carefully chosen lady, who knew the ground rules for a no-strings-but-an-extra-toothbrush-in-the-bathroom affair. He liked passion in a woman. Intelligence? Absolutely. But not trouble.
Nope, he didn’t need chemistry right now.
He couldn’t even be sure if the invitation he saw in her eyes was genuine or just a dog and pony show for the investigator. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman made a pass at him in hopes of obscuring the facts. Beau looked down, at the point their bodies almost touched, and then back at Maggie. “I don’t think you want to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Make me angry.”
“Is that what I’m doing?” The exaggerated innocence in her tone tipped him off a second before anger replaced seduction in her eyes. “Who do you think you are, Grayson? Manipulating the situation! Toying with people’s emotions and lives when you don’t have a shred of evidence!”
“Trust me.” Beau backed away, giving her space. “I haven’t begun to toy with you.”
“Right.” She held out her arms and crossed them at the wrists. “You’re probably waiting until you drag me downtown where you have all your interrogation tools. So, why don’t you break out the cuffs, and let’s get this over with. You obviously think I set the fire.”
He ignored her. “Do you smoke, Ms. St. John?”
Slowly she dropped her arms, obviously puzzled. “Not anymore. I quit. Several years ago.”
“Cold turkey?”
“No, I used the patch.”
“Relapses?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? People under stress tend to backslide.”
“Who said I was under stress?”
“You attacked someone with a scalpel.”
Maggie threw up her hands and rolled her eyes. “I explained that! It was a mistake!”
“Was the panic attack I saw a mistake? You haven’t explained that.”
“It wasn’t a panic attack.”
“What brand did you smoke?”
Beau watched the flicker of uncertainty cross her face at his abrupt change of subject. Most witnesses would have answered the question from reflex. Not Maggie; she was careful.
He could predict her internal dilemma so easily. It’d take her about half a second to figure out that he’d found something in the utility room. Then she’d try to remember if anyone else in ER or the clinic or the morgue smoked her brand. When she couldn’t remember, she’d wonder if she should lie.
A ghost of a smile played at the corners of her mouth when she said, “I smoked whatever brand happened to be on special. I’m thrifty.”
“You had no regular brand?”
“You say that like you think I’m lying.”
“Are you?”
“Want me to take a lie detector test?”
“Not yet.” He made a few more notes in his book and handed it to her. “What I’d like you to do is look this over. It’s an informal statement. I want you to sign it. Just in case you get hit by a truck before you can come downtown to give us your formal statement.”
Hesitantly, Maggie reached for the pad. “You really do think I did it, don’t you?”
“It’s just routine. Especially in hospital fires.” He handed her the pen. “Before you sign I’d like you to add the time you left the floor for the morgue, and an estimate of how long it took you to reach the site of the fire.”
She scribbled the information down. “Routine, hell.” After glancing over the notes, she signed with a flourish and sailed the pen and pad over to the gurney beside him.
“There. All signed. Now if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”
“When could you—?”
“Monday morning. Bright and early. I’ll give you your official statement, and then you can compare the two to your heart’s content.”
“I’m sure they’ll be just fine.”
“Of course they will. The story won’t change, because it’s the truth. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s bad enough you think I caused that fire, but you think I’m stupid enough to hang around and discover it!”
“Happens all the time. People love to be heroes.”
“Not me.” She brushed past him and pulled open the door. “Shall I bring the rack on Monday or do you have your own?”
“I think it’s a little too early in our relationship to use the rack. Just bring a couple of silk scarves and I’ll tie you tightly to your chair. Nine o’clock?”
He thought she was going to leave without saying anything else, but she halted in the doorway and gripped the jamb with a ringless hand. Looking over her shoulder, she said, “I’ll cooperate. Even bring the silk scarves, if that’s what it takes to convince you. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t voice your suspicions until you’re sure one way or the other. Dead sure. There are a lot of people here at Our Lady of Servitude who’d love to have an excuse to toss me out. Please don’t give them one.”
“Ms. St. John, you haven’t been accused of anything.”
“Be sure and tell that to everyone you talk with. The speed of Internet information doesn’t even compare with a hospital grapevine.”
She disappeared around the corner of the door, and Beau felt the energy in the room leave with her. All that remained was his conviction that Maggie had something to hide. He had no prints, no eyewitnesses as to how the fire began, and negligible physical evidence. On the other hand, he had opportunity and motive.
As well as a couple of other people to see. He checked his notes. Bennett. What did Maggie call him? Dr. Just-Call-Me-God.
Beau snapped his notebook shut. It was a place to start.
Maggie checked in with Donna long enough to grab her purse and make her interview with Grayson sound like a boring Dragnet episode. Then she pleaded nausea from the smell of the smoke as an excuse to go home. That much was true. The odor was in her clothes, her hair, in her mind.
As soon as the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, Maggie raced through the long, wide lobby. She wanted out, away from institutional walls that closed in around her. The pretense she’d put up for Grayson and Donna was crumbling fast, and falling apart in front of the entire hospital wouldn’t do her career any good. They wouldn’t understand. How could they? None of them had a clue.
This wasn’t about the fight with Bennett. Or the suspension. Or the reassignment. Or even the linen-room fire. This wasn’t about the hospital at all. It was about a dead past that wouldn’t stay buried.
Eighteen years ago she would have given anything for those memories. She’d spent so much time trying to get them back, thinking they would give her peace of mind. Finally she’d quit asking questions that had no answers and accepted the night was gone. She’d learned how to live in the present without regretting the past. So, why was she remembering now?
Hot, humid air blasted Maggie as she stepped into the steam bath masquerading as July in Baton Rouge. The shock was welcome. She needed something to ground her in the present.
The employee parking garage was to the right, the emergency parking lot to her left. Waves of heat rose from it, distorting the images of the cars. That’s what her brain felt like—one image overlaying another and distorting them both. As far as she was concerned she’d rather the images never got any clearer.
In fact she was going to do her best to prevent it. All she needed was a little rest, a little quiet, and a big bowl of cookie dough. Everything else would sort itself out. Maggie was halfway home, and halfway to believing there wouldn’t be any more memories when the wail of an ambulance siren in the distance triggered one. The present vanished, and she was alone in the Louisiana night.
“Sarah!” The word rang in her mind, superimposed over the sound of the approaching ambulance, its siren at full cry.
Then the angry blast of a car horn jolted Maggie back to the present and splintered the image into a thousand pieces. Her heart stopped and thudded painfully into a rhythm that was too fast. Instinctively she swerved to avoid a collision, but her attention was far from the road.
“No, no, no,” she whispered, flexing her fingers around the wheel. “No more. I don’t want to know.”
It wasn’t her fault. It couldn’t have been her fault. They said it wasn’t her fault. Over and over she tried to reassure herself that they were right. So what if she remembered? It wouldn’t change anything.
Yes, it would.
Maggie checked her mirror, yanked the wheel hard to the left, and made a U-turn. She didn’t care. She had to see Carolyn. If anyone could understand, it would be Carolyn. Maybe if she talked about it, the memories would lose their power.
She hadn’t realized how deeply a ten-year-old could feel terror. Or how many details could be crammed into a split second of time. She had smelled freshly cut grass. Remembered how the front of the house looked at night. The hydrangeas were in bloom. In the daylight they had been big blue balls of tissue-paper flowers. On that night they were just gray, washed out by the moonlight.
Maggie’s foot settled heavily on the pedal. She cranked up the volume on the radio and tuned it to an oldies station. She could sing the words to the old songs, and if she could sing, she could stay focused on something else besides that night.
She sang all the way to Carolyn’s beauty shop.
The parking lot was full, and the receptionist was new. When Maggie smiled and started to the back without stopping, the girl jumped up. “Oh, no! You can’t—”
Carolyn’s horrified exclamation cut her off. “Good Lord!” She had a bottle of color in one hand and a small mixing bowl in the other. Otherwise she would probably have pressed her hands to her carefully made-up face in dismay. “Maggie St. John, you look like something the cat wouldn’t even bother to drag in! Well, obviously this is an emergency, so don’t you worry. I’ll fit you in somehow. We better start you with a facial steam. You look gray, darlin’. I mean gray!”
“It’s coming back,” Maggie said without preamble when Carolyn finished. She didn’t know how else to say it. “The night Sarah died. The fire. I remembered something. It’s coming back.”
As Maggie finished, she realized the place was as quiet as the morgue at Cloister. Shop gossiping had ceased the moment the customers and operators had turned to see what Carolyn classified as an emergency. When Maggie blurted her secret, everyone had hung on every single word. Good manners had kept them from gasping as she dropped the bombshell about death and a fire, but any number of them now sat with open mouths.
Great. Maggie pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. What else could she screw up today?
Maggie adjusted the strap on her purse and waited for Carolyn to say something. That’s what good friends were for. They filled in awkward silences and shined a three-hundred-watt flashlight called “perspective” on problems. Carolyn Poag was a gem at that job. She was seven years older, and in all the years Maggie had known her, she had yet to panic over anything.
“Beth Anne!” Carolyn called. “I was about to start Mrs. Pierce’s color. Could you be a sweetie and do it for me? She needs extra developing time, so don’t rush it.”
“Sure.” A tiny woman with spiky moussed hair came over.
Carolyn handed off the items without ever looking at Beth Anne or even smiling at Mrs. Pierce. “I’ll be in my office.” She cocked her head at Maggie in invitation.
“Jesus, Carolyn,” Maggie told her quietly as she followed the hennaed redhead toward the back of the shop. “This is not what I hoped for. You were supposed to laugh, not rearrange your appointments. You were supposed to look at me blankly and ask, ‘So what’s the big deal?’ ”
The door clicked behind them. Carolyn gave her a hug that looked casual and felt solid. Then she shoved her toward a chair. “There are some great big ears and itty-bitty minds out there. If I’d said a word to you, you would have kept on spilling your guts. You are primed like a pump, ready to gush. This is better. So, tell me, kiddo. What’s the big deal?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Maggie’s voice rose more than she intended. Her stomach flipped unpleasantly. Suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell anyone, but it was too late to hide her head in the sand. “It’s coming back.”
For the first time emotion registered on Carolyn’s face. Her brown eyes took on a sad quality as she untied her shop apron and lifted it over her head. “Yeah. I heard. You knew this might happen someday. Chances are a few isolated sense memories are all you’ll ever get back without more intensive therapy. You gave that up years ago. Swore you’d never go back to those quacks. Amen. So you got one tiny memory back—”
“Three. Three tiny memories. All of them just as clear as a movie still.”
Shock replaced the sadness, and Carolyn sat down on the edge of the desk. “Three? This happened three times?” She spread her hands. “H-how?”
Maggie started with the fire and stumbled through her interrogation by Grayson, surprised at how uncertain she was of what to tell and what to leave out. Her encounter with the man had felt personal, intimate. He lingered in her mind, a strong presence amid the chaos. Finally she told Carolyn about the siren and the near wreck.
“I’m afraid to go to sleep tonight,” Maggie confessed, dragging a hand through her hair, pulling it back from her face. “Jesus, Carolyn, what if I started the fire that killed Sarah? I don’t know if I can live with that.”
“It was a grease fire!” Carolyn was adamant, speaking with the conviction of someone who’d been down this path before. “Sarah got the munchies. She started to make french fries, and she fell asleep in the den. That’s how it started. It wasn’t you. They called it accidental.”
“Everyone just assumed it was Sarah’s fault.” Maggie got up to pace, but the room only allowed her a couple of steps. She paced anyway. “What if she was already asleep and I started it? Why else would I block the memories of that entire day all these years?”
“You were ten years old. That’s why. It would have scared anyone. You were a foster kid with problems for God’s sake. You’d been shuffled around for years. I can only imagine what went through your mind when you saw your first real home go up in flames. You adored Sarah. She was like a big sister to you, but she was my best friend since grade school. I knew her better than anyone. She was careless sometimes. It wasn’t you.”
“Don’t be too sure.” Maggie stopped pacing and finally voiced what had been eating away at her. “You know what my problems were.”
“So you played with matches! Maybe you lit a pile of leaves or two. You didn’t set this fire, Maggie. I know it. I know you. Believe me if you won’t believe your own heart.”
Maggie slid down in the chair and leaned her head back. “Boy, I would love to.”
“Then do. Look. My own Andrea is barely older than Sarah was then. I’m telling you—seventeen isn’t a very bright age.” Carolyn plopped down behind the desk. “She does dumb stuff all the time like leaving the iron on. She could burn the house down.”
“Oh, really? Last week you told me how clever Andrea was.”
“She is. She can twist and fold condom packets into roses and wire them to sticks. Imagine how proud that makes me. My only hope is that she can sell enough safe-sex bouquets to support me in my old age.”
In spite of herself, Maggie smiled. Andrea was the joy in her mother’s life, and a surrogate niece to Maggie. For a second she thought about Andrea’s age—Sarah’s age. When she’d been ten, seventeen had seemed to mature to her. Now that she was pushing thirty, seventeen seemed barely out of diapers.
Seventeen-year-olds did dumb things. Carolyn was right.
Lifting her head up, she asked, “So, you don’t think these memories are the beginning of the end?”
Carolyn shifted a pile of paper so she could lean forward. “If you hadn’t opened that closet door and found that fire, none of this would have happened. It won’t happen again.”
“What if it does?”
“If it does, then we’ll have to deal with it. But if you stop opening up burning closets, you won’t have to worry. The memories can all stay buried, and you can get on with your life.”
“It’s not that simple.” Maggie confessed the last of the bad news. “The arson investigator—Grayson? He thinks I’m responsible for that burning closet.”
“Maggie! No!”
“Oh, yeah. He’s got his eye on me. He’s not going to let me put this behind me or go away. Not until he’s good and ready.”
“Has he accused you?”
“Not in so many words, but then he doesn’t use a lot of words. He’s the strong, silent type that gets you right in the knees. I have to go down Monday and give my formal statement. God only knows what information he will have dredged up by then.”
“Call me when you’re done?”
Maggie grabbed her purse and stood up again. “Sure. Why not? I’m allowed one phone call. Might as well call you. Then you can call the lawyer.”