Confessions (17 page)

“Fine. You can think while we drive over to Garvey's place. I need to talk to the guy some more and having you there might ease the process.”

Her smile faded. “I'm not going to help build a case against Clint.”

Knowing how eager she was to be in on the investigation, Trace once again admired her loyalty. “I just want to talk to the guy, that's all. Besides, if you're friends, it
seems as if you wouldn't want him to be alone on the day the woman he loves is buried.”

“You're sneaky,” she accused. “But right. Let's get going. I've had about all the strolls down memory lane I can handle for one afternoon.”

“Why don't you wait in the truck,” Trace suggested, handing her the keys to the Suburban. “I'll go tell everyone you're coming with me.”

“Fine.” He'd turned and was headed back toward the house when she called out to him.

He looked back over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Would you do me a favor and check on Maggie?” Trace could see Mariah's frown all the way across the crushed gravel parking area. “I'm worried about her.”

Trace discovered the reason for Mariah's concern when he entered the library in search of Maggie and found her filling a sterling silver flask from a crystal decanter.

“Oh!” She spun around at the sound of the door opening and sloshed the clear liquor onto the Navaho rug underfoot. “You startled me, Sheriff.”

Her voice was slurred and her remarkable eyes even brighter than usual. Trace was not surprised that Maggie was on her way to getting drunk. Hell, if he was burying his kid, he'd probably tie one on, too. What saddened him was that she was drinking alone. And in secret.

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry 'bout it.” She returned the decanter to the desk with exaggerated care and managed to replace the top on the second try. “I do hope you're not planning to give me a breathalyzer test, Sheriff. Because I'm afraid I might fail.”

With several percentage points to spare, Trace agreed silently as she made her way unsteadily toward him. “You're not driving back to the lodge, are you?”

“Of course not. I'm a star, darling.” Frown lines mo
mentarily furrowed her brow. “Or I once was.” The frown faded, chased away by a soft smile he suspected was directed inward. “Surely you know that we stars always travel in limos.”

“That's what I've heard.”

“Well, as we speak, mine is waiting for me outside.” She waved a slow, graceful hand. “I never—ever—drive drunk. Not since…well—” she shook her head distractedly “—that's not important.”

“Mariah wanted me to tell you that she's leaving with me.”

“I don't blame you both for wanting a little time alone.” She sighed. “I certainly remember when I was young.”

“Actually, your daughter's assisting me on the investigation.”

“What a good idea.” She nodded enthusiastically, causing a few more hairs to escape the French roll. “Mariah's a very bright girl. And she writes crime dramas all the time, so she'll be a grand help in solving your crime.”

She was literally swaying, like a graceful willow in the breeze. Trace worried that she was on the verge of passing out.

“Would you like me to help you out to your car, Ms. McKenna?”

“That would be charming.” She gave him her full, thousand-watt Technicolor smile. “But please, darling, you must call me Maggie. Ms. McKenna makes me feel so horridly old.”

She placed a beringed hand on his arm. Several excellent quality diamonds glittered like ice beneath the diffused light of the overhead brass and copper chandelier. “It's so nice to know chivalry still exists.” Only her remarkable acting talent kept her words understandable. Her breath was warm and tinged with the scent of juniper ber
ries. Trace felt his stomach lurch at the all too familiar aroma. Although never known to be overly choosy—about her men or her liquor—his mother had favored gin.

“May I ask you one more favor, Sheriff?”

“Of course.”

“Please don't tell Mariah I've fallen off the wagon. The poor darling does worry so.”

From her concerned expression when she'd asked him to check on Maggie, Trace had a feeling Mariah knew exactly what was going on with her mother. “Don't worry.” He put his hand over hers and wrapped his other arm around her wasp-slender waist, to hold her up. “Your secret's safe with me.”

“You're such a nice man. My knight in shining armor.” She went up on her toes and kissed him. Smack on the lips. A wet, friendly kiss that Trace was relieved carried no sexual undertones.

Unwilling to submit her to her ex-husband's contempt, Trace slipped Maggie out the back way, through the kitchen door.

“Aren't you clever.” Relief at avoiding Matthew vibrated in Maggie's husky voice. “Do you know, if I were only a few years younger, and Mariah wasn't my daughter, I believe I might be tempted give her a run for her money where you're concerned, Sheriff.”

“I don't think you understand my relationship with your daughter.”

In a sudden move that took him by surprise, she straightened and gave him that riveting gaze that had transfixed two generations of moviegoers. “I may be tipsy, Sheriff. But I'm not stupid. Nor am I blind. You're attracted to Mariah. As she is to you.”

Her high heels were not made for walking in gravel. When she stumbled, Trace was there to catch her and keep her on her feet. “I think it's wonderful Mariah has finally
found someone good enough for her,” the older woman declared. “If only poor dear Laura had stayed with Clint.” A single tear slipped out of the corner of her eye and trailed forlornly down her cheek, sparkling like a loose diamond on her porcelain skin. “She'd still be alive today.”

Her eyes chilled with an icy anger that reminded Trace of stilettos of ice. “Damn Matthew for breaking them up,” she spat out. “If only Laura had held her ground…. If only she'd trusted in love….”

The Phoenix limo driver—his crisp navy uniform incongruous in this rural western setting—saw them coming. He tossed down his magazine and scrambled out of the car to open the back door with a flourish.

“Thank you, darling.” Maggie patted the driver's tanned cheek.

“Do you believe your son-in-law killed your daughter?” Trace asked.

Maggie's eyes momentarily cleared again. Her direct, no-holds-barred gaze reminded him of Mariah.

“Of course Alan killed Laura. Who else is there?”

Who else, indeed? Trace wondered as he returned to the Suburban.

“She's drunk, isn't she?” Mariah asked in a flat tone.

“Look,” he began to defend Maggie, “she's had a rough couple of days, and—”

“You don't have to make up excuses. I know them all.” Mariah slumped down in the seat, folded her arms across her breasts and shot a baleful look after the departing limousine. “Damn. She's been dry for nearly a year.”

He twisted the key. The motor came to life with a roar. “Dry isn't sober.”

She glanced over at him. “True.”

He appreciated her not asking. Enough so that he de
cided yet again to tell her the truth. “My mother was a drunk.”

“Oh.” She digested that. “So, I guess you and I have something in common after all, Callahan.” Besides a dangerous desire to jump each other's bones, she tacked on silently.

If anyone had ever suggested that he and Mariah Swann might have anything in common, he would have compared the surface of their individual lives and insisted the idea was crazy. But now, thinking back on that all too familiar glaze in Maggie McKenna's movie-star emerald eyes, Trace decided there was some truth in Mariah's softly issued statement.

There were seemingly no similarities between Maggie McKenna and Reba Callahan. One had been a movie star, the other a prostitute. One spent her days in a mansion in Beverly Hills that had once belonged to a famous silent film star, the other, while she'd been alive, had moved from trailer to trailer, jail to jail. One lived in a world of privilege, the other struggled in an endless cycle of abuse and pain.

But the single common, undeniable denominator shared by both women was an overwhelming weakness for gin.

And that being the case, Trace realized that Mariah might actually know something about his own days spent in hell.

“You might just have something there,” he conceded.

T
he interview with Clint Garvey was short and would have been mostly uneventful if it hadn't been for the unwanted surge of emotion—a feeling dangerously like jealousy—that coursed through Trace as he watched Mariah being enfolded into the rancher's strong arms.

“Poor Clint,” she murmured later, as she and Trace drove back to town. “He looked even worse than I feel.”

Trace silently concurred. Garvey's weather-hewn face had been the unhealthy color of ashes and his eyes had been home to a thousand-yard stare Trace had witnessed in cops who'd seen one too many grisly homicides. The slightly glazed look in those distant eyes suggested Maggie hadn't been the only one hitting the bottle that afternoon.

He'd considered telling Garvey that booze wouldn't help, then decided against it. Hell, he was a cop, not a social worker. And besides, Trace knew all too well that the way out of hell was long and hard.

“I hope you're not using Clint's financial problems as a motive,” Mariah said. “Most of the ranchers play the
futures market. And they all take a bath from time to time.”

“Maybe some can afford it more than others.”

She shrugged. “The greater the risk, the greater the reward.”

To herself Mariah vowed to figure out some way to talk Clint into letting her lend him some money. The problem was, the man was a typical rancher—frustratingly independent.

“By the way, what was it you wanted to talk to Alan about?”

“Nothing in particular. I'm just trying to reconcile some discrepancies in his story.”

“Any you care to share with me?”

“Not particularly.” If Fletcher had murdered his wife, Trace wanted to be able to hand a prosecutable case over to Jess. He had the feeling that Mariah would be willing to stomp all over the senator's constitutional rights to put him behind bars.

Her next words confirmed his suspicions. “I should shoot him myself.”

“I wouldn't advise it,” Trace replied blandly. “Accommodations at Whiskey River's jail are not up to the standards you're undoubtedly used to at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

“There you go again, stereotyping me as some Hollywood rich bitch,” she complained. “Besides, ridding the world of Alan Fletcher would probably be worth doing hard time.”

He thought about his long-ago days on the other side of the criminal justice system. When he'd spent eighteen months as a guest of the Texas State Correctional System.

“That's easy to say. More difficult to do.”

They both fell silent, lost in their own thoughts.

Mariah was looking out the passenger window. The
view of the valley below was spectacular, but from the dejected slump of her shoulders, he suspected she wasn't enjoying the scenery.

The guilt had crept back, like a thief in the night.

“You know, you're not to blame,” he said.

She looked toward him, clearly surprised that he'd divined her thoughts so accurately. “Our fight ten years ago was all my fault.” She felt a painful hitch in her heart. “If we'd stayed closer, I would have known what was happening in her life.”

Despite her vow not to cry, a lump rose in her throat. Mariah swallowed to force the words past it. “I could have helped her, dammit.” Her voice was frail and fractured, her eyes forlorn.

Although he knew little about comforting a woman, Trace was struck by an urge to pull over at the upcoming turnout, put his arm around Mariah's slumped shoulders, draw her close and kiss those full, trembling lips. An urge he resisted.

“Maybe. Maybe not. It's still not your fault that Laura's dead.”

He was a fine one to talk, Mariah considered. She gave him a long, serious look. “The same way it's not your fault that Daniel Murphy died?”

Even after all this time, his partner's name struck a painful chord. The sick frustration he always felt whenever he thought of that day twisted at his gut. Uncomfortable with both the subject and her examination, he shifted. “That's different.”

“Is it?” She looked at him for another full moment, her own pained eyes turning soft and thoughtful. “I don't think so.”

Silence settled over them again. Realizing that she'd gotten all she was going to get out of Trace for now, Mariah sighed and returned her gaze out the window.

Neither spoke until he pulled up in front of the lodge. As he pulled beneath the porte cochere, she went for her door handle. “Thanks for the lift.”

“I'll walk up with you.”

Although she opened her mouth to tell him that it wasn't necessary, Trace had pocketed the key and was out of the truck before she could get a word out.

She stopped at the desk and retrieved a stack of pink message slips. “Condolences, condolences, sorry for your loss,” she read as they rode the elevator up to the third floor. She shook her head. “Your loss. As if Laura were some keys I misplaced. Or a ring that was stolen.”

“People have a hard time with death.”

“I know.” Another faint, rippling sigh. As they walked down the hallway, her hips swayed, causing her red silk skirt to rustle softly, like the wind in the top of the pine trees outside. “And I suppose murder makes everyone even more uncomfortable.”

“Death is natural. Murder isn't.”

“Ain't that the truth,” she muttered. As she went to unlock the door, Mariah was appalled to discover that she was not as calm and collected as she'd been trying so hard to appear.

Without a word, Trace took the coded card from her trembling hand and slipped it into the lock. The door opened onto a room filled with flowers. Arrangements covered every flat surface; larger bouquets had been placed on the floor. Trace thought it looked as if someone had thrown a grenade into the middle of the Rose Parade.

“You must have a lot of friends.”

“Mostly acquaintances. Hollywood's not exactly the type of place geared to deep and lasting relationships.”

He stopped in front of an enormous spray of orchids and tiger lilies. “‘Keep your chin up, kiddo,'” he read
aloud as Mariah crossed the room to the bar. “‘Sly.'” He shot her a quick look. “As in Stallone?”

She shrugged. “I did a little fix-up work on one of his scripts a few years ago. Actually, he might be one of the few people who qualifies as a friend. He taught me some martial arts and I taught him that putting a little romance into his stories wouldn't drive away his core audience of teenage boys.”

Even as he told himself that it was absolutely none of his business, Trace wondered if she'd added a little romance to the actor's personal life. That was when he realized that if the sight of her in Garvey's arms had caused a prick of jealousy, the thought of her in a clinch with some overly macho movie star was even worse.

Cursing himself for allowing Mariah to get under his skin this way, Trace reminded himself that these flowers were proof positive that the lady was definitely out of his league.

She was looking into the bar refrigerator. “Want a beer? Or I seem to have quite a selection of hard stuff.”

Annoyed by his reaction at the innocuous card, Trace said, “No time. I've got to go.”

She glanced up, surprised by the sudden gruffness in his tone. “Fine.” She refrained from pointing out that if he was in such a damn hurry, he shouldn't have bothered coming upstairs with her in the first place. “Thanks for the lift.”

“No problem.”

He was already headed toward the door. Weaving her way through the baskets of flowers, Mariah caught up with him.

“I've got another cheery Swann family meeting in the lawyer's office tomorrow morning at nine.” The reading of Laura's will. “I'll drop by your office afterward and fill you in on the details.”

“Fine.” He'd already tried to get a copy of the victim's will prior to today's funeral, but her attorney—a stubborn old cowboy lawyer from the old school—had refused to let him see it until after the reading, citing attorney-client privilege. Trace had considered getting a court order, but decided that since none of the suspects were going anywhere, he could wait a few hours.

He was standing in the open doorway, looking down at Mariah in a way that made her feel as if she were not being looked at, but into. His eyes were like warm, sensual fingers, touching her everywhere. She felt the sudden charge in the air and couldn't quite decide whether to fight it or go with the flow.

“Is there something else?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Driven by a recklessness he could not quite understand, nor control, he did what he'd been wanting to do since she'd climbed down from her Jeep at the Fletcher ranch and came stomping toward him in her pointy-toed boots, her long legs eating up the ground, breasts bouncing in that scarlet silk blouse, eyes hidden by wide wraparound glasses, radiating a fuck-you, rebellious attitude that was palpable. She'd reminded him of a female James Dean in skintight designer jeans. The kind of woman who could give any red-blooded male a fever.

His head swooped down, like an eagle diving for prey, and then his mouth was pressed hard against hers. The suddenness of the kiss, and the way it literally stole her breath away, made Mariah's head swim. Sensation after sensation streamed into her system like a fast-flowing river, crashing into hot rising tides of desire.

His hands fisted in her hair, holding her hostage to the mind-blinding kiss, preventing her from breaking away. As if she could, even if she'd wanted to. Which she didn't.

Through her wildly spinning senses, as she plunged
greedily into the kiss, Mariah realized that for the first time in her life, she had neither mind nor reason. Nor will. Swept along on that raging torrent, she was totally in this man's power. And what was even more of a surprise was that instead of finding such surrender frightening or de-meaning, Mariah found it thrilling.

Emotions she'd kept locked up inside her since identifying Laura's body broke free, like from behind a broken dam. With a shudder and a half sob, she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung. A low, throaty moan escaped her when he changed the angle of the kiss and separated her lips with his tongue, filling her mouth with his taste.

Control disintegrated as she met the probing thrust of his tongue eagerly, desperately. Never had she been so helpless. Never had she been so needy. And never had she felt so aroused.

She would have done anything. Given him anything. Sensing that, Trace reluctantly decided that things had already gone far enough. If she kept moving her hips against his groin that way, he'd end up taking her here and now, surrounded by all those flowers. And while it might do something for the ache, it would be an unneeded complication to his case.

As quickly as the heated kiss began, it was over. Trace abruptly severed the wonderfully devastating contact, leaving Mariah stunned. She blinked up at him, uncomprehendingly.

“I'm sorry.” His tone was more gruff than planned.

“Sorry?” She was stunned, confused and resentful about the way he'd made her lose control, then had the nerve to look at her as if it had been all her doing. “About what?”

“That shouldn't have happened.”

She refused to let him see how his words stung. “You didn't do it alone.” She crossed her arms over her chest
and willed herself to some semblance of calm. Which was difficult since every nerve ending in her body was still tingling from that devastating kiss.

“No.” Both his expression and his tone were grim. The consequences of his impulsive behavior had been as uncalculated as the kiss had been unplanned. Trace was furious at himself for wanting her so badly and irritated at her for making him want her. “But it could be a problem.”

“Only if we let it.” She could still taste him on her lips. Unconsciously Mariah gathered in the lingering flavors of rich, dark coffee, cinnamon chewing gum and aroused male.

The sight of her tongue circling those rosy lips he could still taste caused a surge of unbridled lust. Cursing under his breath, Trace took off his hat and dragged his hand through his hair. As she watched the thrust of his fingers, Mariah was struck by a needle sharp desire to feel those strong dark hands on her body.

From the expertise in his heated kiss, she had no doubt that the sheriff had bedded more than his share of women. And, she had no doubt, satisfied them all. So why should the act of two adults sharing a simple kiss make him so angry?

All right, she admitted reluctantly, it was more than a simple kiss. It was a world-class humdinger of a kiss that had left her feeling hot as sin and tingling all over. But the attraction, and their heated response to it had been entirely mutual. So what was his problem?

As she continued to look up at him, Trace, who was a pro at keeping his mouth shut during interrogations, felt an uncharacteristic need to fill in the lingering silence.

“Damn.” He jammed the black Stetson back atop his head. “The thing is, you've had a rough day. I had no right taking advantage of you that way.”

“Ah.” He was, she considered with grim humor, definitely one of the good guys. In fact, from what she'd seen of him thus far, if she'd been working in Hollywood during those days of the old western melodramas, she couldn't imagine a man more suited to wearing a white hat.

“Let me see if I understand this correctly.” She leaned against the doorjamb, feeling a sense of humor she'd thought had died with Laura beginning to return. “You're feeling guilty because you're afraid that in my weakened emotional condition, I wasn't able to say no. Is that it?”

He frowned, sensing where she was going and knew there was a trap at the end of the road. “In a way, I suppose, that's what I was thinking.”

“You were supposed to be a hotshot detective in your past life, Callahan. So tell me, did you happen to notice any signs of resistance?”

“No, but—”

“You didn't because there weren't any. I wanted that to happen. Actually, I was hoping you'd kiss me earlier, back at the ranch. And for the record, that kiss was the first time I've felt alive in days.”