Still gasping for breath, Natalie lay huddled on the bed, staring stupidly at the two men struggling on the floor. Zeke had her assailant by the throat. The man clawed uselessly at Zeke’s wrists and thrashed his legs. No contest. Zeke was by far the stronger. In the moonlight, she could see the muscles on his back and shoulders bunching with the force of his grip.
It took a few seconds for Natalie to regain her wits. When she did, she sprang off the bed and ran to Zeke. “Stop!” she cried. “Zeke!” She grabbed his arm. “Zeke, please. You’re killing him! Stop it!”
At first, Zeke didn’t seem to hear her. Then, slowly, he loosened his hold on the man’s neck and sat back on his stomach. “Move, you son of a bitch, and I’ll finish you.”
The man grabbed his throat, rasping for oxygen. Natalie had an unholy urge to kick him now that he was helpless. Fortunately the door to the bedroom crashed open just then. Pete entered first, Valerie and Naomi right behind him. Valerie held a lamp in her hands and looked prepared to bean anyone who moved.
Still weak at the knees, Natalie sank onto the edge of the bed, grateful for the air that filled her lungs each time she breathed.
“The bastard was trying to smother Natalie with a pillow,” Zeke told Pete. “Somebody call the police before I kill him.”
Valerie set down the lamp and raced from the room. Hands at her hips, Naomi stood over Zeke and the other man. “Death is too easy. Let me have five minutes with the son of a bitch.”
Two hours later, Zeke and Natalie sat beside each other at the kitchen table, all of her family, except for the kids, seated around them. Natalie had just gotten Chad and Rosie settled down and back to sleep, and Detective Monroe had finally arrived to fill them in on Natalie’s attacker and explain why the man had tried to kill her. Oddly, the detective, who’d never been reticent in previous meetings, seemed to be searching for words.
Smoothing a hand over his balding head, Monroe finally met Natalie’s gaze. “It’s not often in my line of work that I find myself needing to apologize, Mrs. Patterson, but I was dead wrong about you.”
Natalie shifted on her chair. She was glad to have Zeke’s arm around her shoulders. With his free hand, he toyed with her fingers and gently touched the gouges on her palms left by her fingernails. “I guess even cops are allowed one mistake, Detective.”
“I came damned close to destroying your life.” The policeman looked so shamefaced and sincerely distressed that Natalie felt badly for him. “Saying I’m sorry doesn’t seem like enough.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Natalie pushed out. “Naturally I wish that you had believed me sooner. My children could have been killed in that car accident. But I also understand that yours is not an easy job, and the circumstantial evidence did point to me.”
The detective puffed air into his cheeks. Then he smiled slightly. “Thank you for that. I feel really rotten for putting you and your family through all this.”
Zeke tightened his arm around Natalie. “Who is the son of a bitch?” he demanded. “Natalie says she never saw him before.”
“That’s true. She didn’t. But unfortunately he had seen her.” Monroe drew a small black notebook from his jacket. As he opened the binder, he said, “The man’s name is Mike Salisbury. On the way to the station, he wouldn’t talk, but once we began interrogating him, he broke down and told us everything.” Monroe frowned at his notes and then glanced up at Zeke. “You were on the right track, thinking the killer was a Realtor. You were just suspicious of the wrong one. Turns out that Mr. Salisbury is another broker who got ripped off by Patterson, like Stan Ragnor.”
Zeke ran his hand over the sleeve of Natalie’s robe, his touch soothing her as the detective went on.
“Salisbury and Patterson had a written agreement to split the profits fifty-fifty on a land deal out on Twenty-seventh Street,” the aging policeman said. “Nothing notarized or drawn up by an attorney, just a simple preliminary agreement that one of them had typed up. On the day of the murder, Salisbury discovered that Robert Patterson had negotiated an exclusive two-party contract with the property owner behind his back, cutting him out of the deal.” Monroe’s plump face darkened. “When Salisbury confronted Patterson, Patterson just laughed, saying the initial agreement wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Salisbury had gone there, prepared to do murder, and Patterson’s attitude so enraged him that he followed through with it.”
Natalie shivered and leaned closer to Zeke. “Just like that? How can anyone take the life of another person and live with himself?”
Monroe just shook his head. “There’s no understanding human nature most times, Mrs. Patterson. I’ve spent three quarters of my career wondering what goes wrong inside people’s heads. On the outside looking in, it’s hard to figure how anyone can commit murder over money. But it happens. People get desperate, and they can’t see any way out. The first thing they know, they’ve got blood on their hands.”
“Why did Salisbury want Natalie dead?” Zeke asked.
Monroe flipped to another page, then closed the notebook. “He was terrified that she knew his name and might go to the police when she finally made the connection. The man’s wife is terminally ill with leukemia. Being a Realtor with a sporadic income, he couldn’t afford health insurance, and when she got sick, her medical expenses almost ruined him. Lost his car several months back and had to buy a junker, and now he’s on the verge of losing his house. Backed into a corner financially, he saw the land deal with Patterson as his only chance to pay off some of the bills and give his wife the care she deserved during the last days of her life.”
Natalie recalled that terrifying moment when she’d stared through the windshield at the back of a slow-moving cattle truck. Her kids had almost died over a land deal. A part of her could understand Salisbury’s rage at Robert, but her sympathy for him ended there. Chad and Rosie had never harmed anyone.
Monroe looked directly at Natalie as he continued. “Salisbury had been under incredible pressure, and when Patterson tried to cheat him, he snapped. Unfortunately, you happened along at the worst possible moment and almost caught Salisbury red-handed. According to him, after carrying Mr. Patterson out to the garage, he left without remembering to get the contract that he and your ex had drawn up. He’d just reentered the house to collect it when you walked in. He dove into a closet, hoping you’d leave. He’d parked on the next street over. There was nothing to tie him to the murder but that contract.”
“And when Natalie went into the study, Salisbury thought she’d seen it,” Naomi inserted hollowly.
Monroe nodded. “Fear of getting caught drove him straight over the edge. I’ve seen it happen more times than I like to count. A law-abiding citizen commits one crime, and then, to avoid prosecution, he finds himself doing things he never dreamed possible. He didn’t want to be arrested and have to leave his sick wife. His answer was to try and make sure that Mrs. Patterson didn’t remember the contract and go to the police.”
“Thank God he botched all the attempts on her life,” Valerie murmured.
“I’ll say,” Gramps seconded. “Was he the one who cut the eyebolts at the club?”
Monroe nodded and glanced regretfully at Zeke. “That was a brilliant move, actually, very clever for an amateur. If the platform had fallen on Mrs. Patterson, chances are good that it would have been ruled an accident.”
“I told you the bolts had been cut,” Zeke said, his voice a low growl.
The detective nodded again. “I apologize for not taking you seriously.” He lifted his shoulders in a weary shrug. “I’m just thankful that Mrs. Patterson wasn’t hurt and her kids are okay. Looking back on it, it’s a miracle that Salisbury wasn’t successful in at least one of the attempts.” He smiled sadly at Natalie. “I’ve heard of people having guardian angels. Yours must have been working overtime.”
Natalie shivered, remembering that horrible moment when she’d seen Frank buried under debris. Even with the piano to protect him, he’d be
en seriously injured. If not for Zeke’s quick reaction, she would have been killed. Perhaps she did have a guardian angel, she decided.
“How did Salisbury know which bedroom was Natalie’s?” Pete asked. “He could have just as easily climbed through Valerie’s window.”
“The night that Salisbury sabotaged Mrs. Patterson’s car, she ran to her window when she heard the gander honking,” Monroe explained. “Salisbury says he heard her call out and got a clear look at her in the moonlight, so he knew where she slept.” The detective sighed and shrugged again. “All his attempts to kill her and make it look like an accident had failed. In frustration and panic, he finally resorted to a personal attack to get the job done.”
Natalie closed her eyes and touched her throat, grateful that Zeke had arrived in time to stop the man from suffocating her.
Monroe went on talking, but his voice seemed distant, and the words no longer registered in Natalie’s mind. That was fine. She’d heard enough. It was over. Now she just wanted to put all the ugliness behind her.
Moments later, her parents escorted Detective Monroe to the door and bade him good night. When they returned to the kitchen, the room fell absolutely silent. Everyone sat around the table, staring off at nothing. For once, even Gramps seemed to be at a loss for words.
Valerie finally broke the silence. “How can a perfectly normal guy who’s never broken the law go off the deep end like that and murder someone? Even worse, how could he bring himself to try to kill Natalie, who’d never done a thing to him?”
“It sounds as if the man’s been under an incredible amount of stress for a long period of time,” Zeke said softly. “Losing someone you love isn’t easy. Add in financial problems and getting cheated out of the money you need to recover, and a lot of people might lose it.”
Naomi propped her elbows on the table. “My mother died of cancer. I saw what it did to my father.” She looked sadly at Natalie. “Over a period of time, he lost everything he’d worked for all his life, just trying to give her proper medical care. It changed him so. He’d always been a jovial, carefree man, and suddenly he yelled about nothing and never laughed anymore. One night I got a call from the police station, telling me he’d been picked up for shoplifting. I couldn’t believe it. My dad was honest to a fault. He’d never stolen anything in his life.” Naomi’s eyes went bright with tears. “Come to find out, he’d stolen some Maalox to settle Mama’s stomach.”
Pete nodded. “I remember that. When we brought him home, he sat on the sofa and cried like a baby. Everything he was, everything he’d ever prided himself on being, had been stripped away.” Pete waved his hand. “He never would have killed someone, though. That’s totally over the edge.”
“Totally,” Valerie agreed. “Monroe can say what he wants, but in my opinion, anyone who can be driven to commit murder probably always had the propensity.”
Gramps agreed with that theory, and everyone spent a few minutes rehashing the events of the evening. Finally Natalie passed a hand over her eyes and said in a taut voice, “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to discuss this anymore. Okay, guys? It happened, it’s over, and now I just need to move forward.”
“Amen,” Gramps said.
Naomi went to make tea. Valerie hopped up to put some cookies on a plate. Pete unearthed his stash of bourbon and poured everyone a shot. Conversation turned to mundane matters—the weather, a hinge on a cupboard that needed to be replaced, and a farming equipment exhibition scheduled for the following week. Natalie deeply appreciated everyone’s attempt to act normal when nerves were still raw and emotions ran high.
Thirty minutes later, she walked Zeke outside. Once on the back stoop, he held her gently in his arms—nothing more, just a wonderful hug that seemed to have no beginning and no end. Natalie could have leaned into his warmth and strength all night.
“You’re exhausted,” he finally whispered against her hair. “Maybe I should just stay home and see you tomorrow.”
She curled her fingers into fists to clasp his shirt. “I need you tonight.”
He ran a big hand up her back, his thumb doing fabulous things to the knots in her muscles. “If I come, will you promise to sleep? Nothing more. You’re so shaky it scares me.”
Natalie smoothed her hands over his shoulders, loving the power she felt beneath her palms. It was true; shock and exhaustion had her trembling. And the fact that he realized it and wanted nothing from her because of it nearly brought tears to her eyes. “Oh, Zeke, I love you so.”
His lips found the sensitive hollow beneath her ear. In a whisper that seemed to penetrate to her very bone marrow, he said, “Go upstairs, Bright Eyes. I’ll meet you there.”
“Why not go up with me like a normal person? Everyone knows we’re getting married. Pop won’t mind. Really. I think he knows that you come.”
“What he suspects and what he knows are two different things.” He leaned back to cup her face between her hands. “If you were any other woman on earth, I’d probably say yes. But you aren’t.” He gave her a slow, sheepish grin. “Don’t hang me for being old-fashioned. All right?”
She nodded because she sensed that he needed her to.
“You’re going to be my wife,” he whispered. “I’ve got your reputation to think about.”
As exhausted as she was, Natalie giggled. “My reputation. I see.”
“You’re special.” He kissed her eyebrows and the tip of her nose. “You’re the mother of my children, those already born, and those to come. I never want them to hear stories about their father sampling the milk before he paid for the cow. I want them to believe you’re above reproach.”
Natalie looped her arms around his neck. “Oh, God, I’m marrying a Neanderthal.”
“Actually, it’s been proven that Neanderthals aren’t in our chain.”
“Don’t split hairs. You’re archaic.”
He grinned and lightly kissed her. “You wanna throw me back?”
She tightened her hold on his shirt. “Never, Mr. Coulter. You’re a keeper. I’ll work on your impossibly old-fashioned ideals and get you straightened out.”
He chuckled. “Good luck. They’re ingrained. If my father knew I was sneaking into your room and sleeping with you under your father’s roof, he’d kick my ass all the way to Timbuktu and back again.” His dark brows snapped together. “Come to think of it, he’d kick my ass if he knew I was sleeping with you, period. He’s of the opinion that a man should be so in love with a woman that he’ll leap in with both feet without a trial run.”
Natalie thought about that for a moment. “And you aren’t that deeply in love with me?”
He bent his dark head and gently nipped her bottom lip. “The night I swore I loved tapioca, I made the leap, lady. There was no turning back then, and there’s no turning back now. Not for me.”
Natalie looked up at his shadowy features and loved him so much her heart hurt. The beauty of it was she believed him—absolutely, unequivocally, without any reservations. As long as he drew breath, he’d be there for her. “There’s no turning back for me, either.”
He caught her wrist, drew her hand from his neck, and kissed the ring he’d slipped onto her finger earlier that night. It seemed to Natalie that a century had passed since then. “Forever and for always,” he whispered.
And then he vanished into the darkness.
Natalie just smiled. She suspected that he would be waiting for her upstairs when she got there—Johnny-on-the-spot, as constant and dependable as Old Faithful.
That was such a lovely feeling to hold close to her heart as she went back inside to tell her family good night.
Epilogue
Zeke grabbed third gear, and Natalie snuggled happily against his side. Man and wife, at last. She was glad to have the ceremony behind them and the rest of their lives ahead of them, especially the next week, which was to be their honeymoon. She couldn’t help but envision their romantic stay at the coast, with beachfront motel rooms equipped with fireplaces,
patios that opened onto the ocean, long walks at low tide, and sex without Rosie anywhere nearby.
Not that she didn’t adore her daughter. It was just—well, Rosie did have a way of entering a bedroom at inappropriate times. Zeke laughingly called her a faulty little timer that always went off at the worst possible moment. Natalie couldn’t disagree with the description, even if Rosie was the sweetest interruption on earth.
“I love you,” she said, snuggling closer to Zeke on the front seat and putting as much husky desire into her voice as a woman could possibly muster.
“Prove it,” Zeke replied.
Natalie was thinking of ingenious ways to do that without making him drive into a ditch when her cell phone rang. She stared at the leopard-skin-encased gadget, wishing it would tuck itself into the glove compartment and shut up. This was her honeymoon. Her first and only honeymoon. She really didn’t want to answer that phone.
“How about if I ignore it?” she asked.
Zeke slanted a laser-blue glance at the ashtray, where she’d deposited the hated device—traveling contact with her crazy family. “Chad could have broken his arm. Better answer it.”
Natalie sighed and grabbed the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, Mom! It’s me.”
Chad. He didn’t sound mortally wounded, and she’d been gone less than five minutes. Natalie forced herself to say very sweetly, “Hi, honey. What’s up?” She would have gone to the bank on the fact that it was nothing earthshaking—nothing her mother couldn’t handle anyway. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I just wanted to tell you I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want a Sea Lion Caves T-shirt. I want a hat from Bandon.”
“Hmm. And that’s all?” Natalie heard her parents yelling at each other in the background. “What are Poppy and Grammy fighting about?”
“No big deal. Gramps doesn’t want to put in a dishwasher, and Grammy says she’s leaving again if he won’t.”
Natalie settled back against the seat and smiled. She could almost see her parents squared off over the dirty dishes. Pop would either watch Naomi leave or call Sears. Natalie had her money on Sears. Pete Westfield loved his ex-wife with all his being and, quite simply, couldn’t live happily without her.