Welcome to Temptation

  “If you ask me, it’s the perfect time,” Davy said. “Amy, get the car and back it up as close to the trees as you can.” When she’d splashed off into the yard, Davy said, “She’s not going to make it in L.A.”

  “Thank you for sharing,” Sophie said. “Can we worry about that when we’ve gotten rid of this body?”

  Once they had Zane in the trunk, Davy said, “Okay, where?”

  “Someplace where they’ll find him fast,” Sophie said, hugging herself against the downpour. “I am not covering up a crime if this is one.”

  “I’m pretty sure this is one,” Davy said. “You need someplace dark with a lot of people. Temptation have a lovers’ lane?”

  “Oh, not there,” Sophie said, and Amy said, “That’s perfect. I’ll drive.”

  Any lingering thoughts Rachel might have entertained about ever going back to Rob were vanquished after an hour and a half spent parked with him behind the Tavern with the rain drumming on the roof.

  “You know, Rache,” he said. “We’re really not together anymore.”

  “I know that,” she said. “I don’t want you. But Zane was so awful—” She drank another slug of the scotch Rob had brought for her and wished for the four thousandth time that Leo wasn’t out of town.

  Rob frowned at Rachel. “I still don’t get what happened.”

  “I told you, I went out behind the house to meet you, and he was there,” Rachel said. “He was staggering and he grabbed me and—” She took another drink and sniffed. “Thank God my mom doesn’t know about that. Thank God my dad doesn’t know about that.”

  “He’d kill him,” Rob said.

  “I just need a chance to calm down,” Rachel said. “I just need to be calm before I see my parents again because you know—”

  “Yeah,” Rob said. “But I think you should tell your dad.”

  “Why?” Rachel said, and then she got it and looked at him with contempt. “So he can kill Zane and you can get Clea. Get real.” The idea was so dumb, she stopped shaking and took another drink. “You know, you have to get over her. She’s going to eat you alive.”

  “She already did,” Rob said, his voice smug with satisfaction.

  “Oh, gross,” Rachel said. Then, after a moment, she said, “So you’re doing it.”

  “Yeah,” Rob said.

  “Fabulous,” Rachel said. You are such a dumbass. Strangely enough, hearing about what a fool Rob was being was calming her down faster than anything. “So is she going to leave him for you?”

  “If she can get the money back.” Rob sounded truly disturbed. “If she can get the money, we can go anywhere, but without it, she’s stuck with him.” He pounded his fist on the steering wheel. “Man, I hate that guy.”

  “Whatever happened to true love being all you need?”

  “We’re talking over a million here, Rache,” Rob said, sounding like a man of the world. “You don’t just walk away from that kind of capital.”

  Rachel was willing to bet that was a direct quote from Clea, and she had to admit it was a lot of money. But if she cared about somebody, she’d go with him without the money. If Leo got wiped out and asked her to go to L.A. to help him rebuild, she’d do it in a second, and she wasn’t even in love with him. She could waitress to support them while Leo found his feet again.

  Rob said, “So are you okay now? Because I got things to do,” and Rachel gave up her rescue fantasy and said, “Yeah. Take me home. And thank you. For this.”

  “Hey,” Rob said. “I owe you that much. I dumped you for Clea, and you’re being great.”

  “Oh.” Rachel thought about clueing him in to the fact that she’d already dumped him, and decided there was no point. “Well, if you love her, you love her.”

  “I love her,” Rob said, and his voice was sure as he put the car in gear.

  “Good luck,” Rachel said. You’re gonna need it,

  Rob pulled out from the back of the Tavern through the sheeting rain, and the car bumped over something. “Shit,” he said, and stopped the car. “I think I hit a dog.”

  “Oh, no.” Rachel looked back, but it was too dark. “I didn’t hear a yipe.”

  “Stay here.” Rob slammed the door and she could see him splash around to the back of the car and bend down. Ten seconds later, he was back in the driver’s seat, drenched and shaking.

  “I hit Zane.”

  “What?” Rachel froze. “What do you mean, you hit Zane? I didn’t see anybody! We didn’t hit anybody!”

  “I hit Zane. He’s dead.” Rob was sweating now. “Oh, God. They’ll think I did it on purpose to get Clea.”

  “He’s dead? Get us out of here,” Rachel said.

  “I just —We can’t—”

  Rachel grabbed his T-shirt and pulled him to her, nose to nose. “Get. Us. Out. Of here. Now!”

  Rob nodded and put the car in gear. And when they peeled out of the parking lot, Rachel said calmly, “Slow down. We don’t want Wes picking us up for reckless op.”

  Rob shook his head and slowed down. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to do nothing.” Rachel felt panic rise and stepped on it. There was already one loser in the car; they didn’t need two. “We’re going to go home and go to bed like good children. And we’re going to be really surprised in the morning when we find out he’s dead.”

  “I killed him,” Rob said.

  “Clea will be so grateful,” Rachel said.

  In the green light from the dashboard, she saw Rob’s face change from panic-stricken to panic-thoughtful.

  “There you go,” she said. “Always looking on the bright side of life.”

  At eleven-thirty Phin was in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the drumming rain and waiting for Sophie to call, when the phone rang. He picked it up and said, “If this is an apology, you better be naked.”

  “It’s not an apology,” Wes said. “I’m at the Tavern. Pete Alcott just ran over Zane Black.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Phin said. “I suppose Zane was too drunk to move out of the way.”

  “Too dead,” Wes said. “He appears to have been murdered first. Ed’s going to do a preliminary right away and an autopsy tomorrow.”

  “I’ll meet you at the infirmary,” Phin said. “Maybe Ed’ll decide Zane died of a heart attack.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Wes said. “There’s a bullet in his back.”

  Zane didn’t look good dead. He was damp and pasty and slack-jawed and squashed as he lay on Ed’s table under the unforgiving florescent light.

  “He was wearing your letter sweater,” Wes told Phin when he came in.

  “He can keep it,” Phin said.

  “A lot of people didn’t like this guy,” Ed said from behind the table.

  “Nobody liked him,” Phin said. “But I didn’t think they’d kill him because he was an asshole.”

  “You taking this down, Duane?” Ed said, and Wes’s deputy nodded. “Starting at the top of the head, there’s a contusion on the left temple with wood fragments in it.”

  “Somebody hit him with a club?” Wes said. “What about the bullet hole?”

  “Getting to that.” Ed pointed to Zane’s eyes. “Somebody also sprayed a corrosive at him. See the red patches around the eyes? Probably Mace, but not necessarily.”

  Mace. Sophie.

  “And there are bruises on his throat where somebody choked him,” Ed went on.

  “That would be me,” Phin said. “He was still alive after that.”

  Ed looked at him with the contempt he deserved. “Thought you’d gotten over that temper.”

  “He annoyed me severely,” Phin said.

  Ed nodded and went on. “Then there’s the bullet hole in his shoulder. A .22. Which appears to have been fired at close range from behind and below.”

  “Close range? Somebody shot him in the shoulder with a popgun?” Phin shook his head, incredulous. “Why? To get his attention?”

  “And there are also several c
uts and scrapes on his arms and hands,” Ed finished. “And his ankle is swollen. Looks like a bad sprain.”

  “That’s not funny,” Wes said.

  “No, but it’s true,” Ed said. “And here’s something else you’re not going to like: None of that would have killed him. But he was definitely dead when Pete and somebody else ran over him.”

  “ ‘Somebody else’?” Wes looked annoyed.

  “Looks like two different tire tracks to me. Pete’s truck and somebody’s car.”

  “Then what did kill him?” Phin said. “The combination of wounds?”

  “I’ll do the autopsy tomorrow,” Ed said. “My best guess right now, given the state of his clothing, is that he drowned.”

  Wes scowled. “Very funny.”

  “No. His clothes are damp clear through. He spent some time in the water.”

  “It’s raining like hell out there,” Phin said.

  “No,” Ed said. “He’s been underwater, not just rained on.”

  “River or bath?” Wes said, and Ed said, “What am I? A magician? After the autopsy, maybe; when the lab report comes back, definitely.”

  “That’ll be Monday, at least,” Wes said gloomily. “Probably later. It’s Labor Day.”

  “Okay, then,” Ed said. “Here’s a guess: The river. That would make sense with all the scratches, that he fell through some brush.”

  “Yes, but who’d do all this?” Phin said. “If you tried to kill somebody by shooting him almost point-blank and missed, you wouldn’t drop the gun and reach for the Mace. You’d shoot him again. And if that didn’t work, you wouldn’t pick up a club. And you sure as hell wouldn’t drown him.”

  “More than one attacker?” Wes shook his head. “Okay, Zane pissed off everybody in town, but I find it hard to believe they all decided to get even in the same two hours.”

  “Maybe they, like, planned it,” Duane said.

  “Conspiracy?” Phin snorted. “You couldn’t get four people in this town to agree to kick him on the shin on the same day, let alone kill him.”

  “I heard he caused a ruckus at the Tavern,” Ed said.

  “A ruckus, yes,” Wes said. “But nothing to make anybody shoot him.”

  Phin thought about Georgia, white with rage and shame. “Maybe.”

  Ed pulled the sheet back over Zane’s body. “Could you two go argue someplace else? I have to operate on this guy in the morning.”

  Phin looked back at Zane lumped on the table under the sheet and felt a confusion of sympathy, regret, distaste, and exasperation. Zane had done nothing but make trouble since he’d come to town, but he didn’t deserve to die for it. And now here he was, with people who didn’t like him arguing over his body, and nobody to mourn for him. “Clea’s his next of kin. Somebody should tell her.”

  “That’ll be me,” Wes said, standing up.

  “Want some company?” Phin said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Wes said.

  Sophie had showered and was knocking back her second cider and peach brandy when the squad car pulled up. She’d been okay until they’d unwrapped Zane, and then he wasn’t a fish-covered bundle anymore, he was Zane, cold and stiffening with his eyes wide open, wearing Phin’s letter sweater. They’d left him propped on the slope behind the Tavern in as lifelike a position as they could manage, but as they’d pulled away, Davy had said, “Damn. He fell,” and Sophie had gone green again.

  Davy looked out the screen door now. “It’s Wes. And Harvard. The gang’s all here. Suck it up, Soph. You’re a Dempsey.”

  “Right,” Sophie said, and hit the brandy again.

  Phin didn’t look happy to see her, and he didn’t say much. Wes asked to see Clea, and when Amy went up to check Clea’s bedroom, she was there, alone. That was so strange as to make anybody suspicious, but Clea’s performance after that was so good that even Sophie had to give her points. She didn’t play the grief-stricken widow, but she looked shocked, stunned, and all the other appropriate emotions on being informed that somebody she’d once slept with on a regular basis was now sleeping permanently.

  “I can’t believe it,” Clea said. “He was always having those blackouts, but I thought that was just for attention.” She put her hand to her eyes as if to block out the pain, and Sophie saw Davy’s face twist just for a moment. He can’t still care about her, Sophie thought, and then Wes took her attention again.

  “Uh, we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a natural death, Clea,” Wes was saying. “He was assaulted before he died.”

  “Assaulted?” Clea blinked up at him, her china-blue eyes opening and closing like an expensive doll’s. “But why?”

  “We’re working on that,” Wes said. “Right now we’re just trying to get some information. When was the last time you saw him?”

  “At the Tavern.” Clea sniffed. “He was so awful, and I couldn’t stand it anymore so I had Rob bring me here.”

  “And you didn’t see him after that?” Wes was patient but not stupid.

  “I saw him,” Davy said. “About nine. I followed him back after that mess at the Tavern, but he was being a real butthead, so I left him alone. He took that sweater and went out the back door and headed out past the dock.”

  “Toward the Old Bridge?” Wes said.

  Davy shrugged. “Toward something. He wasn’t wandering. He was going somewhere, although he seemed a little... sluggish.”

  “Sluggish.” Wes nodded. “Like he’d been hit?”

  “Or he was drunk.” Davy shook his head. “I didn’t get close. He pretty much walked through the house and out again.”

  Wes turned to Sophie and she thought, I have the blood of a thousand felons in my veins. I can lie to the police.

  “Did you see him, Sophie?” Wes asked, Sophie shook her head and hugged Lassie to her. She hadn’t seen him. That thing with the staring eyes hadn’t been anyone she knew.

  “I came back with Phin.” She swallowed and said, “I can’t believe he’s dead. I hate this.”

  “I know,” Wes said, and Phin told him, “We came back to the farm about nine-thirty and I was here until almost eleven. We didn’t see him at all.”

  “You left before eleven,” Wes said, and Phin turned to look at Davy and said, “Yep.”

  “I came and got Sophie,” Davy said. “That dumb dog had jumped in the river again and was mud all over. So we put him in the bathtub and washed him off.”

  Phin got very still, and Sophie remembered her lie to him, that she’d forgotten something she had planned with Davy.

  Next time she moved a body, she was going to make sure all the stories were straight.

  “So the last time anybody saw Zane he was heading out the back door,” Wes said. “About...”

  “Nine-thirty maybe,” Davy said. “Phin and Sophie came in after that, so before they came in, he left.”

  Sophie risked a look at Phin and met his eyes. He wasn’t buying any of it.

  “One other thing.” Wes looked at Sophie. “Anybody here have Mace?”

  “Mace?” Sophie blinked at him and clutched Lassie harder. Rachel. “Mace. No.”

  “Okay.” Wes nodded. He began to ask Clea about Zane’s life in Cincinnati, and Davy faded up the stairs as Phin crooked his finger at Sophie. “Could I see you a minute, please?” he said, and she went out on the porch with him.

  Lightning split the sky and the thunder followed it as the rain pelted down. “What happened?” he said to her over the storm, and she thought, I wish I could tell him everything. But he’d have to tell Wes to protect his job and his family of politicians, and there was no way she was going to betray her family of felons. For the first time, she wished she didn’t have quite so much family.

  “Nothing. Davy and I washed the dog and that was it.”

  “You’re lying,” he said, not angry, and she shrugged. “Where’s your Mace?”

  “I don’t have any Mace.”

  “You said, that first night at the Tavern—”

  “It was a joke,” Sophi
e said. “I don’t have Mace.”

  Phin leaned down to her. “Believe it or not, I’m on your side.”

  She felt the tears start. “I know,” she whispered, and he kissed her until she stopped crying.

  “Yell if you need me,” he said when Wes came out, and then they left.

  When Sophie went back inside, Clea had gone back upstairs, and Davy was there.