“Know what I think?”
He groaned. “No, but I have a hunch you’re about to tell me.”
She leaned forward over the low table and fixed him with a steely-eyed look. “I think someone set Leighton up to take the fall.”
He considered that briefly. “Not likely, but possible.”
“Very possible, if you ask me. Leighton Pitt was not in a murderous mood. He was looking to find a way to salvage his financial situation, not plotting revenge.”
“You could tell?” Elias asked dryly.
“Call it a hunch.”
“That’s about all you can call it. Charity, what are you leading up to here?”
She straightened her shoulders. “You are still vulnerable. And it makes me nervous.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If it turns out that Leighton has been framed, the finger of blame is going to be pointed right back at you again. I don’t like it.”
“It’s not my favorite finger, either,” he conceded, “but I doubt that it will be pointed in my direction.”
“You’re not in the clear, yet, Elias. I’ve been thinking about this all day. I’ve come to the conclusion that we should take proactive measures to make sure that no one tries to implicate you in this mess.”
Elias was suddenly very wary. “Proactive measures?”
“Right.” She got to her feet and scooped the dishes off the table in a single move. “We need to look into the facts ourselves. See if we can turn up a few clues.”
“Clues?” Wariness turned to outright alarm. “Are you nuts? This thing is over. Tybern’s a good cop. He wouldn’t have arrested Pitt unless he had solid grounds.”
She turned in the kitchen and looked at him over the top of the counter. Her eyes were shadowed with concern. “I don’t care what kind of evidence they found in the trunk of Leighton’s car. I don’t think he killed Gwen and Rick. That means that there’s still a killer running around loose. And as long as that’s true, you’re at risk. Because if Leighton Pitt can prove his innocence, you’re the next most likely suspect.”
“The hell I am.”
“It’s true, Elias. We have to do something to protect you. We need more information. If Swinton was blackmailing Phyllis, he may have been blackmailing others. It’s a reasonable assumption, isn’t it?”
She was doing this for him, Elias reminded himself. He took consolation from that knowledge.
“Just where do you suggest we start?” he asked cautiously.
“The old Rossiter place.” She dumped the dishes in the sink. “I would feel better if we could find someone else who was involved with Swinton. Someone who may have had something to hide. It will be dark soon. I want to take a quick look around Rick Swinton’s little love nest.”
The old Rossiter house was more than a quarter mile from the main road. It was hunkered down in the heavy shadows of a thick stand of fir. The rising slope of a hillside loomed over it, concealing the dilapidated structure from casual view.
It was a miserable-looking little cabin, Elias thought. Even at night it was plain that no one had done any repairs in years. The eaves drooped precariously over a back porch that looked as though it was on the verge of total collapse.
“So much for worrying about someone seeing our flashlights,” Charity said cheerfully as she walked around the hood of the Jeep to stand beside Elias. “You see? I told you this would be a piece of cake.”
He looked at her. She was dressed in a pair of jeans and a dark sweater. Her hair was tied in a ponytail. There was an air of anticipation and enthusiasm about her that made him distinctly uneasy. “For the record, I want to go down as saying that, while I appreciate your motives here, I’m not real happy with this plan of yours.”
“Did I carp and complain when you searched Swinton’s motor home?”
“Yes, you did. Endlessly.”
“Well, that was different. That night we had half the town parked nearby. Here we’re all alone.”
“Charity, this is not necessary. The odds of finding anything here are slim to nothing.”
“You never know. It’s a place to start. Come on, let’s go inside.” She walked determinedly toward the sloping back porch.
Elias thought wistfully of his original plans for the evening. Food and sex. Nice, basic, elemental things. By now he and Charity should have been in bed. But he could tell that there was no dissuading her from her goal.
Reluctantly, he followed her to the porch steps. Charity was already at a window. She trained the flashlight at the bottom of the sill.
“Do you know how to pry open a window?” she asked, fiddling with the latch.
“Why don’t you try the door, first?” Elias crossed the porch to the back door. “I doubt if anyone would bother to lock this place.”
He gripped the knob and twisted firmly. The door opened with a loud groan.
“Good thinking,” Charity said.
“Thank you. A man likes to feel useful around the place.” Elias led the way into the small cottage.
Charity followed quickly. The scent of mildew was strong.
“Whew.” Charity made a half-choking sound. “It smells terrible in here. Not exactly a perfumed love bower, is it?”
“No.” There was a feeling of unending dampness inside the house, as if it had not been aired out for years. “Maybe Rick’s partners liked the sleazy ambience.”
The flashlights picked up grimy gray covers draped over heavy furniture that was probably rotting quietly into the floor. The inside of the brick fireplace was blackened, but there was no sign that anyone had used it recently.
“Must have been a little chilly for Rick and his friends,” Elias said.
“I suppose they generated their own heat.” The floorboards groaned as Charity walked to a doorway and peered around the corner. “One small bedroom and a bath. That’s it.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. Let’s start with the bedroom. I gather that’s where most of the action took place.”
Without waiting for a response, she disappeared around the corner. A couple of seconds later Elias heard a startled gasp.
“What’s wrong?” He went to stand in the doorway. He took in the scene revealed by his flashlight and grinned in spite of his mood.
Charity was in the bedroom, her light aimed at the sagging carcass of an ancient iron bedstead. A bare, badly stained mattress sat on the drooping springs. A pair of padded leather handcuffs dangled from one post.
“I can’t imagine ever wanting to be chained to a bedpost,” Charity whispered.
“Those handcuffs aren’t real. They’re the quick-release gag type. Twist them a certain way, and you’re free.”
“How do you know?”
“A good shopkeeper knows his merchandise,” Elias said. “I’ve got some just like those for sale in Charms & Virtues.”
“Amazing.” She glanced at him and scowled. “Don’t just stand there. Help me look around.”
“Right. Clues. We need clues to save my hide in case Tybern comes gunning for me.” Elias started to stroll around the tiny bedroom. “What about the handcuffs? Think they might be a useful clue?”
“You’re not taking this very seriously, are you?” She was on her knees, bent low to look under the bed. “I’m telling you, Elias, you’re in a tricky position here.”
He aimed the beam of his flashlight at the enticing curve of her buttocks. Her jeans were stretched taut across her derriere. “You don’t have to tell me that. I’m well aware of it.”
“Go check out the bathroom.”
“To hear is to obey.” With a small sigh of regret, he turned away from the engaging sight of her up-thrust bottom. “But I have to tell you, I still don’t like this one damn bit. We’re not going to find anything useful, and even if we do, we won’t need it because Tybern has his suspect in custody.”
“Just in case,” Charity said. “I’ll feel a whole lot better if we can find somethin
g, anything, that points to someone else who might have had a reason to kill Swinton.”
“That still leaves the problem of finding someone other than Pitt who had a motive to murder Gwen.”
“There must be some other suspect. After all, Pitt himself told us about his financial problems after Gwen’s death. Why would he have done that? It was tantamount to telling us that he had a motive. A guilty man would never have done such a thing.”
“An interesting point,” Elias conceded. He wandered into the seedy-looking bathroom and flashed the light around the cracked and chipped porcelain fixtures. “Charity, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”
“What’s that?” Her voice was muffled.
“Are you doing this because I’ve become one of your salvage projects?”
“Salvage projects?”
“Like pulling Otis out of his depression or saving the landing.”
“I can’t hear you,” she called from the other room.
He went to the door of the bath. “I said, are you going to all this trouble because you’ve decided that you have some kind of responsibility toward me? Because, if that’s the case, I’d like to make it clear, I’m not just another pier shopkeeper or a depressed parrot who needs saving.”
“Elias, look at this.”
He walked out into the short hall and saw her standing in the bedroom doorway. He aimed the flashlight first at her excited face and then he switched the beam to the tiny object she held between her thumb and forefinger.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I can’t be sure, but I think it’s a piece of a chipped acrylic nail.”
“So? A lot of women wear those claws.”
“Yes,” Charity said with great satisfaction. “And if you’re from Whispering Waters Cove, chances are good that you have them done at Nails by Radiance.”
“I won’t argue with that conclusion. But it doesn’t tell you much.”
“We’ll see.” Charity removed a tissue from her pocket and carefully wrapped the nail fragment in it. “The only thing I can tell for certain is that it’s not Phyllis’s special color, Dartmoor Mauve. I’ll talk to Radiance in the morning. She should be able to identify it.”
“Fine. Talk to Radiance. In the meantime, would you mind answering my question?”
She looked up innocently. “What was it?”
He was beginning to get irritated. “I want to know why you’re doing this.”
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m doing it because you’re my friend.”
“You’re sure that’s the only reason?”
“What other reason could there be?” she asked.
“Who the hell knows?” he muttered, exasperated. “I just thought that there might be a more personal reason for your great interest in my welfare.”
“What could be more personal than our friendship?” she asked politely as she brushed past him in the hall.
Without any warning, his frustrated anger briefly swamped his self-control and common sense. He whirled around and trained the flashlight on her.
“Has it occurred to you that the reason you’re so damned worried about me is because you’re wildly, madly, passionately in love with me?” he asked with a fierceness that startled him.
“That, too,” she agreed.
17
Water never disappears forever. It flows back into the sea, becomes rain, forms a river, fills a pond, or cascades down a mountain. In one way or another, it always returns.
—“On the Way of Water,” from the journal of Hayden Stone
Big mistake, Charity thought. She had not meant to say the words aloud. Not after last night’s debacle. They had just sort of slipped out. An accident waiting to happen. Now here she was standing at the scene of the train wreck.
“Elias?”
He did not respond. He loomed in the deep shadow behind the glare of his flashlight, his face unreadable. But she did not need to see his expression. She could feel the impact her words had made. Elias was stunned. Shaken to the core, no doubt.
She felt a little sorry for him. His fancy philosophy was good at developing inner strength and self-control, but it did not handle deep emotions well. Charity knew of no philosophical framework that did. Human emotions were too mushy for such rigid constructs.
She should have kept her mouth shut, she thought. She knew he was not ready to deal with this. She aimed the beam of her own flashlight squarely in his face. He did not flinch or blink. He was frozen.
“Well, don’t just stand there like a deer caught in the headlights.” She knew her voice was laced with a distinctly waspish note, but there was nothing she could do about it. “It’s your own fault. You had to go and get sarcastic about the whole thing. You know how that irritates me. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m under a lot of stress at the moment. I sometimes act impulsively when I get under stress. I’ve explained that to you.”
He did not move or speak. With a sigh, Charity lowered her flashlight. The beam pooled on the floor at her feet while she studied Elias’s dark silhouette. The silence that gripped the old cabin was eerie. She could feel her pulse.
After a moment or two she began to get really worried.
“Are you okay, Elias? We can’t stand here staring into the dark all night. We’ve hung around long enough. We should be on our way.”
He finally moved. A single step toward her. “You can’t just leave it like that.” The words sounded strained and awkward, as if he had trouble stringing them together in a logical sentence.
“Why not?”
“Damn it, you know why not.” He took another step forward, moving with a stiff, jerky motion that was completely unlike his normal, gliding stride. “This is important. A lot more important than what we came out here to do.”
“I disagree,” she said crisply. “If you get arrested, we’re going to have a bigger problem on our hands than sorting out the interpersonal dynamics of our relationship.”
“Don’t,” he said, “make a joke of it.”
“Sorry.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure that I’m sorry?”
“No.” He came to a halt directly in front of her. His hand was clenched around the flashlight. The light poured down on the floorboards, flowing into the white pool created by her flashlight. “Are you sure about what you said a minute ago?”
“About being wildly, madly, passionately in love with you?” There did not seem to be much point in denying it. Charity resigned herself to the inevitable.
They had managed to sidestep the issue last night thanks to the timely distraction created by the discovery of Rick Swinton’s body. But she could hardly count on another, equally diverting event this evening. Not that she wanted one. Two murdered bodies were enough for one summer. She was certainly pushing the limits of her stress threshold.
“Yes.” Elias’s voice sounded disembodied, as though he spoke from a great distance. “Are you sure about being in love with me?”
“Very sure.” She raised her chin. She was vaguely surprised to realize that she did not feel even a tremor of anxiety now. It was certainty, not panic, that welled up inside her. “I’m sorry if that upsets your delicate philosophical balance, but you’ll just have to deal with it, Winters.”
“Last night.” He broke off, apparently searching for words. “Last night you said you wouldn’t move in with me because there was no love between us.”
“No, I didn’t say that. You weren’t listening, were you? I meant that I wanted us to be in love before we took that step. I once made the mistake of almost marrying a man for reasons based on friendship and business and feelings of family responsibility. I do not intend to repeat the error. I don’t think my medical insurance will cover another round of therapy.”
“Our relationship isn’t like that.”
“Technically speaking, you may be right. You’ve asked me to move in with you, not marry you. And I’ll admit that moving in with a man for reasons based on fri
endship with good sex is a distinct improvement over my relationship with Brett. The good sex was lacking last time. But it’s still not enough.”
“I want more than friendship, too.”
She stilled. “How much more?”
“I want you,” he whispered.
The aching hunger in his voice was getting to her. She knew she was weakening. She had to be careful, she warned herself. There was so much at risk.
“What are you prepared to give in return?” she asked softly.
“Whatever I can. Take whatever you want. Please.”
The stark please was her undoing. She could not refuse him a second time. She loved him, and he said that he was prepared to give her as much of himself as he could. Coming from Elias, that meant a lot. She wondered if he understood that he was as good as promising her that he would try to learn to open himself to love.
She smiled. “I guess I can work with that. All right, Elias. If you really want me to move in with you, I will. But I warn you, my furniture is coming with me. I’m not going to spend every evening sitting on the floor when I can kick back in my own Italian easy chair.”
“You’ve got a deal.” He reached for her.
“Uh, maybe we should get out of here before—”
Elias pulled her into his arms with such force that she dropped her flashlight in surprise. It rolled across the floorboards and fetched up against a wall.
She was crushed against his chest. She could hardly breath. Elias’s mouth was ravenous. His body was hard with his surging arousal. It was as if all of the intense emotions that he could not show in any other way were channeled into this one singular form of human communication.
“Elias, wait.” Charity managed to free her mouth from his, but she could not get his attention.
Denied her lips, he quested in another direction. She made a soft, half-strangled sound when she felt his teeth come together around her earlobe. A blazing excitement shot through her. Then his mouth moved lower to the curve of her throat. The handle of the flashlight pressed into her back. Elias’s free hand pushed through her hair, freeing it from the ponytail clip.