If Looks Could Kill (6 page)

She immediately wanted to apologize, to ask him to forget she'd spoken, because, of course, he knew. He knew that she'd want more from him than anyone else who would ask about that scar that puckered the side of his face. Other people would be curious about simple logistics. What, where, when, how, why. But Chris was different. She'd want to know implication, impact. She'd mine the darkness beneath that careful wince to know what that scar had to do with his running from Chicago for a place like Pyrite. What the cost had been to his courage, his self-image, his pride. And Chris wouldn't need words for her answer.

It was a place Chris had no right to invade. It was the secret to her writing that she could so easily see in when others couldn't. She sometimes forgot that it was an intrusion.

She'd already raised her hand, ready to rescind her request, when the doorbell rang. Again.

Again Chris checked the grandfather clock. This time Chief MacNamara did it with her.

"Well, hell," Chris groused, climbing to her feet. "That's probably Sergeant Lawson now."

"If that's Bobby Lee," Shelly called, her voice echoing faintly. "I'm not here."

"If it's Bobby Lee," Chris reminded her, "the police chief's here. You won't have to worry about a thing."

The police chief grimaced. "I'm off duty."

Chris waved him off. "If you were off duty, you'd be smoking."

It still wasn't Bobby Lee. This time it was Victor and Lester, Chris's next door neighbor. Neighbors.

"Are you all right?" Lester demanded in his high, childish lisp.

Chris battled back a delighted chuckle. This was beginning to look like a conspiracy to keep her mind off her problems.

"I'm fine," she reassured with a sincere smile, but for Victor, whose big brown eyes were wide with worry. "What are you doing out this late, Victor?"

"And Lester," the dummy insisted.

Chris gave in and looked at the dummy nestled in the crook of Victor's left arm. "And Lester."

"We saw the police chief here," Victor finally spoke, his own voice a softer, kinder version of the dummy's. "We wanted to make sure you were OK."

Chris pushed open the screen door. Well, if MacNamara wanted to find out about the town he'd inherited with that gold badge, he couldn't have visited on a better night. "Come on in and ask him yourself."

By the time Chris turned to make introductions, MacNamara was back on his feet. In fact, he was over by the jukebox retrieving that ashtray. She didn't blame him.

"Police Chief MacNamara, I'd like to introduce you to my neighbor... s. Victor Marshall and the incomparable Lester."

MacNamara looked hard-pressed for tact. Chris could read every one of the reactions crossing his mind, every instinctive crack and comment he battled as he studied the frail, serious young man who stood before him holding the red-haired, freckle-faced dummy. All the chief allowed, though, was a fairly controlled, "Nice to meet you."

Chris allowed herself to relax.

"We heard about you," Lester announced, his round hand-painted head bobbing as if in examination.

Chief MacNamara kept an admirably straight face. "Did you?"

This time Victor nodded. "We've always wanted to go to Chicago. Do some of the clubs there. We're up in St. Louis all the time, but it's so provincial there, they just didn't understand our humor. You know what I mean?"

The chief seemed reduced to nodding. Chris did her best to keep a straight face. He was really getting it with both barrels tonight, and he hadn't even met Miss Harmonia Mae Switzer.

"Victor has been studying ventriloquism since he was ten," Chris said, wishing, as she did every time she saw Victor, that she could sneak him into one of her books. Considering the fact that he could quote each one chapter and verse better than the Reverend Mister Bobby Rayford could the Bible, it would have been like sneaking Russian words into
The Star Spangled Banner
. "He's been trying to find an agent who'll handle him... and Lester."

"I think it's because Lester looks so much like Ron Howard," Victor said quickly, as he always did. "I was actually trying to make him look like Holden Caulfield, because, of course, he
is
the quintessential young man. I'm afraid, though, he ended up looking like Opie Taylor. A more identifiable social figure, I suppose. But I think agents object to the similarities. Like he might get mad. But he wouldn't. I've written him about it on numerous occasions. And, of course, I've consulted with my good friend Chris." Both of them looked over to her. Only Victor smiled. "Because, of course, she's famous, too—"

"You asshole!" Lester immediately protested, the voice scathing. "That's a secret!"

Victor swung those liquid eyes Chris's way.

"The chief knows," she assured them gently.

It actually looked as if both of them sighed in relief. "Well, that's good," Victor said with a bright smile for Chief MacNamara. "That means you can help us all keep her identity safe. It's quite a job sometimes, you know."

The chief was already taking his first drag off an unfiltered cigarette. "I'll bet."

"She's most ingenious," Victor enthused, now warming to his subject. "Would you care to read her reviews some time? I have them in my home next door."

The chief was going to demur. Lester didn't let him. "My home?" he shrieked.
"My
home? Listen, you dickhead, who's the one who pays the bills?"

Victor damn near crumbled into a little pile. Another of Chris's legacies. Lester saved all the interesting stuff for her.

"Excuse him," Victor begged. "He's had a bad day."

"Can't I even say hi to Lester?" Shelly demanded.

Chris was beginning to get a headache. "He can hear you fine from there."

Greetings were summarily exchanged, and Victor eased himself and Lester back outside. Just to be sure, before she shut the door again Chris took a quick glance up and down the sidewalk. No more company from the looks of it. The only porchlight on was hers, and the police cruiser was darkened and still over on the church parking lot. She wondered if Curtis's chief knew.

"I should probably be going as well," he said from behind her.

Chris didn't close the door after all. "You're sure? Give me five minutes and I can probably scare up the town librarian and a couple of Hell's Angels."

"Not for my benefit, thanks." He stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray, a lumpish green remnant from the ceramics class Eloise had taken after seeing
Ghost.
"Is this the way your nights all go?"

Leaning against the open door, Chris took a contemplative look out toward the silent, darkened street. "Usually I'm the only vampire in town. But Lester worries about me."

The chief stopped alongside her, his own gaze following hers pretty closely. "Lester?"

"And Victor."

That brought him to a bit of headshaking. "He's... uh..."

"Always been like that," Chris said. "Nobody's seen those two apart for the last ten years. But since Victor's mama left him about half a million dollars, it doesn't seem to matter much."

The chief leveled a slightly bemused look at her. "A lot of material in this town for a book, huh?"

Chris chuckled. "Yeah, but I'd have to wait until they're all dead to publish it."

Still standing there, the chilly night air carrying in the last taste of winter, the two of them went on considering the town outside. The chief finally gave his head one last shake.

"Well, it's unique, I'll give you that."

"And you haven't even seen the Mobile Home Hall of Fame yet, have you?"

There didn't seem to be any appropriate response to that, so the chief just pushed open the screen door. It creaked egregiously, startling somebody's dog down the street.

"I appreciate your stopping by," Chris said. "I'll call Sergeant Lawson tomorrow and let you know what she says."

MacNamara made it almost all the way out before he stopped. "You could do me one favor."

"If you want to book Victor and Lester, you'll have to call them yourself. They do a great Good Cop-Bad Cop routine."

Another scowl, this one a beauty. "I was wondering if you had a copy of
Hell Hath No Fury
I could borrow."

"Chris!"

"Chapter three!" Chris yelled over her shoulder, then turned back to her guest. "You don't want me to just tell you who did it? I happen to be in a good position to know."

Maybe she was the only one who tended toward manic humor along about three in the morning. The chief was just looking tired. Chris noticed his hand stray not to his lip, but his temple to worry at the scar.

"I've never read C. J. Turner," he admitted. "I thought I should at least be conversant with the subject."

"You probably read nonfiction," Chris said. "And occupational magazines."

"Nope."

Chris waited a second for elaboration, but she just wasn't going to get it. Not one for self-exposure, the chief. "Well, I'm crushed that you've missed out on such a wonderful experience," she said, "but I'd be happy to rectify the omission. Hang on."

C. J. Turner lived in the far corner of the balcony with volumes on forensics research, penal codes, first aid and toxicology, and a giant jar of jelly beans. Chris trotted up to C.J.'s corner and unearthed a box of books in the bottom cabinet.

"Hell Hath No Fury,"
she announced, returning to hand it off to the still-bemused policeman. "The story of what finally happens when a long-suffering wife is pushed too far. I'm really sorry if this is the murder they're talking about. It wasn't one of my tidier ones."

The chief looked down at the stylized dust jacket, a geometric pattern in fuscia, blue, and black. "I'll let you know how I like it," he said, lifting it a bit in final salutation.

Chris finally managed to get him outside. The house was fifteen degrees cooler, and she was in shorts. And God only knew who else was waiting out there to knock on her door in search of some kind of help.

Injured puppies, she thought suddenly. I collect bruised people like some people pick up injured puppies. A gift. A curse. One of these nights, she just wasn't going to answer the door.

"Good night, Chief."

He nodded one last time as he climbed into his cruiser. "Good night, Miss Jackson."

Out of long habit, Chris waited until he got his car started before turning away. Once she did, though, she just stood there a moment, head now throbbing steadily, the soda her only nourishment since about lunchtime. She looked toward the bathroom and considered what lay inside. Considered what lurked in the corners of her very deliberately renovated house. Considered the fictitious mayhem she would be much happier escaping into than the misery that waited on the .other side of that door, or, for that matter, the other side of the dawn.

"Come on out," she called and then sighed. She might as well get it over with so she could go back to work. After all, it was a cinch she wasn't going to get any sleep tonight, either. Climbing back up into her loft, Chris collected the stuffed bear who shared her work chair with her and nestled it tight against her chest before heading back to face Shelly.

Chapter 3

She was crouched in the comer of the bathroom, huddled against the safety of the cool tile wall, curled so tightly into herself that maybe she couldn't see what her life had become. So she couldn't see in the mirror what she'd become, so long beaten down, so pummeled by fists and feet and words that she wasn't recognizable anymore. He'd find her. He always would. He'd beat her so badly she couldn't leave the house for a week, then beg her forgiveness.

And like every other time, she'd give it
...

Slipping a marker in the book, Mac shut it and dropped it on the table. He hadn't gotten to the murder yet, but he had a pretty good guess what it was going to be. He'd seen murders with scenarios just like this one. Wife abused so long that she decides there's only one way out. Self-protection all mixed up with desperation and rage, leaving behind a corpse that usually looked like bad hamburger and a perpetrator who met the police at the door with a watery smile.