Heather Graham (8 page)

She’d died for her dreams, so it seemed.

He heard a noise at his front door and reached automatically for his police-issue gun, nestled in its holster on the chair by his bed. Then he realized that a key had turned in the lock. Michael. He rose quickly, slipping into his briefs and a pair of jeans. He was barely dressed when he heard a tapping on his bedroom door, which was standing ajar.

“Grandpa?”

“Come on in, Munchkin,” he called, opening the door. Michael’s daughter, Brit, just turned six, stood staring up at him with her grandmother’s big blue eyes. Brit frowned, studying him. He realized his hair was still tousled from the shower. He must look like death warmed over.

“Daddy didn’t think you could be home so late. I said that you were. I saw the car.”

“You’re a smart girl.”

“I’m going to be a detective one day,” she told him proudly.

He arched a brow. He opened his mouth to tell her to be something else; police work was dangerous. He didn’t want her hurt.

He thought, though, that he didn’t have the right to tell her such a thing.
Life
was dangerous, and he’d worry about her forever no matter what; but she had a right to choose what she wanted to do with her own life. Though he’d been the cop, Maggie was the one the family had lost.

He smoothed back her rich, strawberry blond curls, smiling. “You remember this, young lady. You can grow up to be anything you want to be. Anything you’re willing to work hard to be.”

She smiled, then frowned again. “You look all tired, Grandpa.”

“I just woke up and took a shower.”

Brit’s eyes were huge and round with sincerity. “It must have been your soap, Grandpa. Your soap couldn’t have been right. You must have needed to be ‘Zestfully’ clean. Or maybe you needed the ‘Eye Opener.’ I think.”

“The Eye Opener?”

Startled, Mark looked past his granddaughter to his son, who stood in the center of the living room. Michael was the spitting image of Mark in his youth. His son shrugged sheepishly. “I believe that one is Coast. I’ve been telling Lucy that Brit’s seeing too much television lately. Our life has become one long commercial. Professional hazard.”

“Hmm.” He glanced down at Brit. “Honey, I’ll get myself into a store today and get the right stuff. Boy, if I’d only known it was all in the soap!” He brushed her chin with his knuckles, then looked back to his son. “What are you doing here? Since when are ad execs off during the week?”

“No school and no day care this week and Stephanie had a doctor’s appointment, so I took the morning off. I came over to get Brit’s bathing suit bag—I left it here a couple of weeks ago with all her pool toys and such in it.”

“You know you’re welcome anytime.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you. You’re not usually home now.”

“I know.”

“Have you had breakfast yet, Grandpa?” Brit asked anxiously. “‘Milk does a body good.’”

“Oh, boy,” Mark said.

“Ask Granddad if he wants to go out for late breakfast, Brit. We’ll make him put milk in his coffee.”

“A quick breakfast,” Mark said. “Really quick. I’ve got to get to work—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Michael interrupted, smiling. He looked like Mark, but he had his mother’s dimples. “I’ve seen the morning paper. The front page is all about the—” He hesitated, glancing at his daughter’s head. “About the girl. Your name’s all through the story.”

“My name?” Mark said with a groan.

“Super-cop. Right on it in seconds. Heading up the investigation, the crime already solved. Put a shirt on. You can read it over coffee in the park.”

Waking had been bad enough. She’d felt more tired than when she’d finally gone to sleep to begin with. Then she had something of a wine hangover, made worse by the dullness in her heart as she admitted to herself that what had happened last night had been real, and it wasn’t going to go away.

Next, she had seen the paper. The “journalist” on the story had done a gory job of it, cleanly judging and convicting Jon, and doing macabre comparisons between the artist’s favorite colors in his paintings and his favorite colors in life and death—reds and crimsons. The journalist stated that “reputable” sources had said that Jon Marcel had enjoyed a heated affair with Gina L’Aveau which had erupted in violent arguments before.

She was grateful once again that Katie was in the Amazon. And even more grateful that Jon probably had not been given a copy of the paper.

If he had regained consciousness.

Which he hadn’t, she discovered when she reached the hospital.

In fact, he had slipped into a coma.

That news had sunk her into deep depression, despite the doctor’s assurances that although a coma was dangerous, Jon might pull out of it at any time. He sat with her at least twenty minutes, perhaps thirty. She thought that maybe she had lost a part of her own mind because it seemed that for all his talking, she didn’t comprehend one bit of his technical jargon. She’d read a Robin Cook book called
Coma
. The patients in the book had been used for body parts. There was no way they were going to tell her that a coma was okay.

She sat by Jon during the afternoon, holding his hand, talking because the nurses assured her that it would be good if she talked to him. There were police officers on duty in the hospital; one just outside the intensive care doorway, and another ready to spell him, keeping his vigil out in the most comfortable realm of the waiting room. Nurses and cops whispered; she didn’t hear them.

It was around six when she became aware that someone was behind her. Someone who had been standing there, silently watching her. She was aware of a very soft and subtle scent of aftershave.

It fit him, she thought. A woodsy scent. Rugged. But not too much. Dashed on quickly.

She wasn’t surprised when she turned to see that the lieutenant was behind her.

She was alarmed, however, when she felt a rush of tears rising to her eyes.

“Come on, now,” he said, his voice surprisingly gentle. “It’s not that bad.”

She swallowed hard. “Not for you. The paper agrees with you. Jon Marcel is a monster.”

“He can still make it.”

“He can still make it. He’s in a coma, and the papers have him convicted.”

“He can come out of this and defend himself.”

“Yeah,” she said without conviction.

“So that’s it? You’re beaten? Licked?”

She spun around to stare at him. That half smile was back on his lips.

“You’ve decided he’s innocent?”

“I haven’t. Have you decided he’s guilty?”

“No!”

He shrugged. “Well, it will be a battle, then. You don’t look ready for it.”

She arched a brow.

“You look beat. Last night I thought you were thirty. You’re closer to forty this morning.”

Ann stared at him, amazed. “Lieutenant, that’s downright rude.”

He grimaced. “Sorry.”

“And by the way, you look like hell, too.”

“I know. My granddaughter told me so.”

“You have a
granddaughter
?”

He half smiled, nodded, and stepped closer to the bed, to Jon, with all his tubes and mechanical extensions. Despite herself, she tensed.

“Be—umm—careful,” she warned.

“Mrs. Marcel, I assure you, I don’t intend to pull any plugs. Whether you want to believe me or not, I’m anxious myself that this man live.”

He assessed Jon, then glanced her way. “He’s going to make it.”

“You really want him to make it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“So you can convict him.”

“If he’s guilty. If he’s not, he may know something.”

“He does know...something,” Ann said.

“He must. He’s talking already.”

“He’s talking already? Amazing,” Ann said suspiciously. “What’s he saying?”

“He’s saying that you need to get out of here for a while. You need to stroll down the street, get some sunshine, smell some flowers. Sit at an outdoor cafe and have some café au lait and beignets, baguettes, cheese, protein, chocolate—food. Put some color into your cheeks, and some sustenance into your soul.”

“I’m not in the mood to wander aimlessly.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you wander aimlessly. I’d like some café au lait.”

“Is that an invitation, Lieutenant?” she inquired, surprised.

“It is.”

“Are you going to grill me?”

“I think you’ve been grilled enough lately. I really could use some caffeine and cholesterol.”

“What would your wife think of you sharing caffeine and cholesterol with the ex-wife of one of your alleged murderers?”

“If she were alive, Maggie would think you were heartily in need of something. Shall we go?”

She was still damned suspicious, and she knew that it showed. But he reached out a hand to help her rise from her chair, and though she hesitated, she took it.

His grip was strong. Powerful. Something in his hold seemed to offer her renewed strength. She did need coffee. Not hospital coffee out of a paper cup. Real, rich, New Orleans brew. Hot and mixed with steamed milk.

She stared at his hand, holding hers. Tanned, with blunt cut, clean nails.

“I—”

“Well?”

“I’m not sure. Do you know a place that’s quiet, but offers a pleasant view, coffee strong enough to kill, and something incredibly sugary for dessert?”

“I do.”

“You’re sure.”

“Mrs. Marcel, I know the city like the back of my own hand.”

“Native child?”

“So damned native it hurts at times.”

“There’s not much by the hospital.”

“I’ve got my car.”

She must have hesitated again.

He sighed impatiently. “Mrs. Marcel, are you afraid of me?”

“Certainly not. Other than the fact that you would probably stoop to any means or measure to get me to say something that would help convict Jon, I’m sure you’re a lovely man.”

“That may be true, but...”

“But?”

“I like my opponents kicking and screaming back. You’re too beat. For the moment, you’re safe. Time out. Shall we go?”

She had no reason to trust him.

But he tugged on her hand, drawing her to her feet. His grip remained firm, and the warmth in it seemed to give her strength.

“Don’t you have to go to work or something?” she demanded as a last out.

He hesitated, just slightly. “I’ve been working all afternoon,” he told her. “I’ll probably go back to work again later. Come on.”

He released her hand and propelled her before him. She took one last look back at Jon.

He appeared to be sleeping peacefully enough.

And the hand felt oddly good.

Even if it did belong to Lieutenant Eagle Eyes.

Even if she wasn’t quite sure she dared believe in this moment’s truce...

C
INDY CAME INTO THE
club early; she needed to do some mending on her white costume. More than that, she needed not to be alone.

The club was quiet when she came in. April, who was willing to dance for less money on the early shift in exchange for earlier nights, was on stage alone. The music was played by a DJ until nine weeknights, ten weekends, when the Dixie Boys came on. The bar was filled with nine-to-fivers who had stopped for a drink with friends on their way home, most yuppies with kids and wives at their houses. They were a laid-back, courteous crowd, and though April received a wolf whistle now and then, for the most part, the married-man types—and a few of their nine-to-five female counterparts—appreciated the music, dance and ambience, and watched with polite, low-key behavior.

Gregory was sitting at the bar, nursing a drink. He was a studious musician who came in early often enough to check on the instruments, and sometimes, to work on something new out back in what had once been a carriage house and now served as practice room cum storage for everyone who did everything at the club.

He seldom sat at the bar with a drink, unless it was a Coca-Cola.

Seeing him brooding and to a side by himself, Cindy came along and crawled up on the stool beside him.

“Gregory,” she said carefully.

He nodded. “Hey, kid.”

“You okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah, how about you.”

“Shaken,” Cindy admitted.

“Yeah, shaken. I would say that I am damned shaken. There are just no guarantees, you know.” He stared at the stage unseeingly. “I miss her. I miss her already. I miss her because she was so damned happy lately. Because she—she
believed
.”

Cindy took his hand in hers and squeezed it. “I miss her, too.”

“I thought she was going to be so happy. I thought she was going to have everything she wanted. She had lots of friends, lots of people who cared. Hell, she’d had lots of guys, but this one...I thought he was different, the artist, you know? I thought that he really loved her. That he’d see past everything she’d done in her life. I thought he was going to marry her and be decent and everything else. Hell, Cindy, I thought he was so much better than the trash she mixed up with half the time! Guys who abused her, mistreated her...here comes the guy with the gentle way about him, the understanding...” He paused, shaking his head in disbelief and utter disgust. He cast back his head and threw back what looked like bourbon on the rocks in a single swallow. The whole of his powerful frame shuddered. “The good guy kills her.”

Cindy hesitated. “Maybe it’s not fair to condemn him so quickly.”

“Haven’t you read the newspapers?”

“Yes, but someone else might have killed her, Gregory. I know that sometimes...well, I don’t know what was going on exactly, but she was still seeing Harry Duval upon occasion.”

“Yeah, she was still seeing Harry. I thought Harry might be the bastard. He never wanted anything exclusive with Gina, but then again, he never really wanted to let her go.” Gregory looked at Cindy, his large, dark eyes haunted, handsome black face drawn. “I accused Harry right away.”

“And?”

“He swore he didn’t do it. He accused me of having done it.”

“You?”

“Yeah.”

“My God, what did you say?”

“Of course I swore that
I
didn’t do it.”

“If you were to ask Jon Marcel,” Cindy said, “I betcha he’d deny that he did it as well.”