Slade's Secret Son (10 page)

Without any preliminaries, they began to undress one another.

In spite of her familiarity with his body, the excitement of fresh adventure raged through Lisa. She loved touching him, running her hands over his chest, tasting the sweetness of his skin. And his body’s response told her that he was enjoying their tryst as much as she was.

Lifting her onto the bed, Slade experienced a rush of possessiveness. The intensity of it caused a jolt of uneasiness. They were compatible companions and friends, that was all, he told himself. He would let his feelings for her go no further. Satisfied he had his emotions in check once again, he concentrated on the physical side of their union, reveling in the pleasure she gave him and in doing all he could to please her as much.

When he entered her, Lisa felt as if they were truly one and realized that when she was with him like this, it felt so incredibly right. It was as if their bodies had been made for one another. Delicious erotic pleasure flowed through her filling her senses until her awareness of their uniting was all that existed for her. It had a power all its own that claimed every fiber of her being. Then suddenly her breath locked in her lungs and she joined Slade at the zenith.

Sated, lying beside him, Lisa knew this was where she belonged. She just wished Slade would allow her to become more than just a compatible companion. She took a long steadying breath. The trick was to not fall in love with him again. “I can do that,” she murmured out loud, using the sound of her voice to add strength to this vow.

“You can do what?” Slade asked.

She turned to look him in the eye. “I can stay as emotionally immune to you as you are to me.”

He smiled. “Then I know we can make this marriage work.”

Lisa told herself she should feel empowered or relieved or some other positive emotion. This time, she was setting the boundaries. But instead, she felt a small but deep circle of hollowness inside.

S
lade’s cell phone rang a little after eight the next morning.

It was Detective Overson. “I’d like for you and Miss Gray to come down to my office,” he requested. “There’s a woman here with a pretty farfetched story. But she swears it’s true.”

“It’s Mrs. Logan,” Slade corrected him, then asked, “Are you telling me you know who’s after Lisa?”

“Maybe. I need Mrs. Logan to verify some facts before we can take this seriously.”

“We’ll be there as soon as possible.”

Lisa stared at Slade as he hung up. “Was that Over-son? Does he know who’s after me?”

“Maybe. We need to get to his office.”

A short while later, they entered the detective’s office to discover a woman who looked to be in her early sixties. She was shaking and Lisa was afraid she was going to faint or, even worse, have a stroke or a heart attack.

“This is Mrs. Dorothy Parkens.” Overson made the introduction.

Tears welled in the woman’s eyes. “I really don’t know how I got mixed up in this.” Wringing her hands, she looked into Lisa’s face. “I am so sorry for all that you have been through. I thought they were just joking around.” The tears escaped and rolled down her cheeks. “It’s like a nightmare.”

Good description, Lisa mused silently.

“You know who’s been trying to kill Lisa?” Slade asked curtly.

Dorothy nodded her head. “It’s like I told the detective, I was out of town until just a few days ago. That was when I found out what was going on. At first I couldn’t believe it. Then, when I realized it was real, I got scared. They said that if I didn’t go along with them, they would kill George, that’s my husband, and frame me for it. I haven’t slept. I knew I had to do something to stop them. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to let them go around killing people so I made sure I wasn’t followed and came here.”

Lisa was finding it hard to believe that this little old lady who looked like someone’s grandmother was mixed up with killers, but she was clearly very upset and scared. “Who are
they?
”

“Claire Blout and Paula Morgan.”

“Claire Blout? Milton Blout’s wife?” Lisa pictured the middle-class, fifty-seven-year-old woman, a little on the stout side with graying hair. She looked sweet and innocent, like someone’s favorite aunt. “Why would she want me dead? And I don’t even know a Paula Morgan.”

Dorothy read the disbelief on Lisa’s face. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but it’s the truth. It all began with water aerobics.”

Slade frowned at the woman with an expression that suggested he thought her elevator didn’t go all the way to the top. “‘Water aerobics’?”

Dorothy’s expression turned grim and she nodded her head. “That’s where we met, Claire, Paula and me. They found me crying in the locker room. I needed someone to talk to and I was too embarrassed to talk to family. I had discovered that my husband had had a long string of affairs. He’d had a serious heart attack. He’d always handled the money and we’d always lived frugally…saving for our old age, he said. But the truth was he’d been spending tons on his other women. Anyway, he realized that if he did survive, he was in such bad shape I’d have to take over the finances, at least for a while, and I’d know something was wrong as soon as I saw what was coming in and what we had. And he needed me to nurse him. So he confessed and begged me to forgive him. I don’t believe in divorce so I really didn’t have a choice. Claire and Paula helped me through that difficult time.”

Lisa found herself wondering if Slade would ever cheat on her. The fact that he didn’t love her made that a possibility.
This is not the time or place to be thinking about him and your marriage
, she scoffed at herself.
This is the time and place to be concerned with whether you will live to have a future with anyone
. “I’m sorry your marriage turned out so badly, but would you please tell me why Claire Blout and Paula Morgan want me dead?” Lisa wanted the woman to get her back to their original subject.

Dorothy sighed and brushed the tears from her face. “Bad marriages. That’s the reason. Since his heart attack, I’ve taken good care of George. But the love is gone. I can’t get rid of the sense of betrayal.”

“That must be very difficult to live with,” Lisa sympathized.
Just the thought of Slade cheating on her while he was sharing her bed was painful and she wasn’t even under the delusion that he was in love with her.

“It is and Claire and Paula are both in sort of the same boat. They’re caught up in marriages they would prefer to be out of. Claire wants more excitement in her life. She feels that Milton is making her feel old before her time. And Paula is married to an abusive drunk. We started having coffee regularly after aerobics and venting our anger. Talking about how furious I was with George helped me get rid of some of my rage. Oh, I’ll admit, I’ll always be angry with him, but not enough to kill him.”

“Kill him? You actually considered killing your husband?” It was Slade who spoke.

Dorothy gave him a dry look. “Don’t you think that we women care as much about fidelity as men do? Men are always shooting their wives when the wives cheat on them.” Defiance flashed in her eyes. “I suppose you think it would be all right for a man to have a fling once in a while.”

“No. I believe that a man should live by his word.”

Lisa heard the commitment in Slade’s voice and knew that as long as they were married, he would never cheat on her. But then, why should he? His heart belonged to Claudette. She, Lisa, was merely a way for him to satisfy his physical needs.
Stop thinking about him!
she ordered herself, and focused her full attention on Dorothy.

Dorothy was looking up at Slade with admiration on her face. “Too bad my George didn’t feel that way.” Her grim expression returned. “But I just couldn’t kill him.”

“I’m confused,” Lisa said. “What has you killing George or not killing George got to do with me?”

“It wasn’t just me killing George. It was all of us
getting rid of our husbands. Claire saw this movie about these wives who got together and killed each other’s husbands. Since none of them had any obvious reason to kill whoever they killed, they weren’t suspected. In the movie it was only some silly, contrived accident that led the police to them.”

Lisa stared at this grandmotherly looking woman in disbelief. “The three of you plotted to kill each other’s husbands?”

“I didn’t actually think Claire and Paula were serious. I thought we were just fantasizing.” Her eyes pleaded with Lisa for understanding. “Wouldn’t you think it was just talk? We’re three old women. We’ve all lived a fairly routine life. At least, as far as I know, we have. How in the world was I supposed to know Claire and Paula were homicidal lunatics?”

“What you’re telling me doesn’t make any sense,” Lisa said coolly. “Claire didn’t need to kill Milton. He was giving her a divorce.” Her gaze bore into Dorothy, daring the woman to continue with this lie. “And she was the one who called off the divorce because she still loves him. I heard her over the phone. The two of them are like a couple of lovebirds.”

“Claire is a very good actress. But I can assure you that calling off the divorce had nothing to do with love. It had everything to do with money. Claire found out how little she would get. That’s why she called it off.”

Lisa had handled a couple of cases where the woman had decided to stay married simply because she’d have been nearly destitute if she’d gone through with the divorce. It wasn’t a healthy situation. But Claire and Milton had sounded so happy.

“Claire Blout told you that she was remaining with Milton so that she could kill him and get everything?”

“Not at first. We’d met for tea at a place outside of town…her choice. She said she’d decided to call off the divorce because she refused to give up money she felt she’d earned. Then she said that it would really be nice if Milton had an accident and died. That way she’d have her freedom, all of their assets and his life insurance policy to boot. Then, both Paula and I said that we wouldn’t miss our spouses, either.” Dorothy stiffened in defiance. “But, I would never really have considered doing anything to bring about George’s demise. I was just venting my anger. Anyway, that’s when Claire brought up the movie.” Dorothy looked panicky and tears again welled in her eyes. “She and Paula got to figuring out ways we could get rid of each other’s husbands. I joined in. I thought we were just joking around.”

“How did Lisa figure into all of this?” Slade demanded.

“When Claire told Milton that the reason she’d wanted the divorce was because she’d felt neglected and he confessed that he’d been so jealous he’d hired a private detective to see if she had a boyfriend, Claire realized that Miss Gray—”

“It’s Mrs. Logan now,” Slade interjected.

“Oh.” Fear showed on Dorothy’s face as if she expected him to seek vengeance on her at that moment.

“Please go on with your story,” Lisa encouraged gently.

The woman’s gaze swung to her. “Yes. As I was saying, Claire realized that you would probably have seen the three of us together and might put three and three together and figure out what was going on. So Claire and Paula decided they had to get rid of you first.”

Slade glowered at the woman. “Why didn’t you come forward when Lisa was shot?”

“I didn’t know about it. Like I said, I’ve been out of town. I didn’t even know Claire and Paula were serious about killing their husbands until I got back. About a month ago George was finally well enough to travel. I’d always wanted to go to Europe and to make amends he’d taken me. We were gone for four weeks. When I got back, Claire told me that they were going to put
our
plan into action as soon as they’d gotten rid of Mrs. Logan. I couldn’t believe they were really going through with it. I tried to reason with them, but they said it was too late and they told me how they’d already tried to get rid of her. That was when they threatened me and insisted I had to go along with them.”

“Claire Blout seemed so normal,” Lisa muttered.

“She is, mostly,” Dorothy said. “She and Paula are just a bit greedier, or maybe just more willing than the rest of us to go to extremes to get what they want.”

“Who took the shot at Lisa?” Slade asked, wanting to piece together the puzzle as completely as possible.

“Someone they hired out of one of those soldier of fortune magazines. Claire was furious when he refused to finish the job.”

Lisa regarded her skeptically. “Hired killers don’t usually stop before the job is done. It’s part of their code.”

“He hadn’t planned on everyone thinking he’d shot the wrong person. Instead of just having the local police looking for him, he had the FBI or whatever agency was protecting that gangster after him, too. And then, because the hit hadn’t been sanctioned by the mob, they put a contract out on him. At least, that was what he told Claire. Anyway, he took off and they decided they would do the job themselves.”

“So you’re telling us that these ladies tried to run Lisa down, built the bomb and cut the brake line?”

Dorothy nodded. “They found out how to build the bomb from the Internet. And they used a car maintenance manual to find out about the brake line. Paula had seen it done on television and figured it might work.”

“And how have they been tracking us?” Slade asked.

“Through your credit and bank cards. Claire enjoys hacking. She’s done it for ages. And, during an earlier episode in her marriage when she’d decided she wanted her own spending money, she’d worked for a while for one of those companies that checks people’s credit ratings. Somehow she managed to figure out how to actually access individual credit card records and with the way transactions are so quickly transferred to your account these days, she could follow you pretty closely. And I think they might have access to your cell phone records, as well. But I’m not sure about that. Paula said something about having a nephew who worked for one of the cell phone companies and that she was going to find out from him if there was a way of accessing accounts. She said he liked to show off and, if there was a way, she was sure she could trick him into showing her.”

Slade sat back and shook his head. “Women who you’d think were spending their time planning church socials or family gatherings, plotting murder to get rid of their husbands. It’s scary.” He turned to Overson. “So what do we do now?”

“That depends on Mrs. Parkens.”

Dorothy turned a questioning look on the detective. “I’ve told you everything.”

“Your word and a dollar will get us a cup of coffee at the courthouse,” he replied.

“You don’t believe me?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, but we need proof.”

“I’ll take a lie detector test.”

“That’s inadmissible in court.”

Panic entered Dorothy’s voice. “I don’t have any proof. I was just trying to do what I thought was right. Are you going to try to frame this whole business on me just because you need someone to arrest? Well, if you do, Mrs. Logan is going to remain in danger.”

Worried that the woman would suddenly become uncooperative, Lisa stepped in. “It isn’t that Detective Overson doesn’t trust you, it’s just that he needs physical proof.”

Overson smiled his best friendly smile. “I know you’ve taken a risk coming to us, and I’m not doubting you. But I need to ask you to do something else for us.”

Dorothy’s panic subsided a little, but her guardedness remained. “What?”

“If you would wear a wire and get the women to incriminate themselves on tape, we’d have a case.”

Dorothy paled. “They’ll kill me if they find out.”

“If you don’t help us, you’ll end up with innocent blood on your hands,” Slade said.

Dorothy looked pleadingly at Detective Overson. “Isn’t there some other way? They scare me.”

“It’s the only sure way of catching them,” Overson said.

Dorothy’s gaze again traveled around the small group. “I guess I don’t really have a choice.” Her eyes begged them to tell her that she did.

“I don’t see any other way.” Lisa broke the silence that had fallen over the room.