Suddenly it all made perfect sense to Charlotte. LoriSue was in her kitchen because of its geographic proximity to the Chippendales’ bachelor pad.
“Would you like to stay for dinner, LoriSue? We’ll be eating about six, and then it’s off to baseball and Boy Scouts.”
“Oh! No—but thanks. Got to get back to the office. Do you think you could give Justin a lift to the scout meeting?”
“Of course,” Charlotte said. Like tonight should be any different.
When LoriSue was safely on her way and the lasagna was in the oven, Charlotte crossed her arms over her chest and frowned in Bonnie’s direction. “Do you think she’s right about the guy next door?”
“No way,” Bonnie replied, slowly shaking her head. “LoriSue’s on the prowl, honey, and when a woman’s on the prowl, she can convince herself that the FedEx guy is a man in uniform. I know. I’ve been there.”
Charlotte laughed and set the oven timer. “You’re a riot, Bon.”
“I speak only the truth. I once was sure that Ned was the spitting image of Robert Redford.”
Charlotte spun around, her eyes quite wide. “Whoa. When was that?”
“When I was on the prowl. You see what I’m saying?”
He probably shouldn’t drink beer in the middle of the day, because that’s when he would start to feel a little sorry for himself. That’s when he’d start to think of Charlotte Tasker.
He’d wanted that woman for years. And he was certain that if things had been different—if his situation and hers had been different—they could have been happy together.
Jimmy Bettmyer sat at a table at the Creekside Inn and savored his Budweiser, thinking about the conversation they’d had yesterday in the school parking lot. Charlotte was a fighter, that was for sure, but he figured all the stubborn resistance would make the eventual surrender that much sweeter.
And she was going to give it up sooner or later. He knew it. A babe like her couldn’t survive without a man. He could see it in her eyes.
Jimmy looked around the bar and counted four women he’d slept with. Then he counted the total number of women in the place and realized he’d nailed about a fourth of the females present. Not a bad handicap.
Jimmy had no intention of getting drunk this afternoon. He had a showing at 6:00 and a closing at 7:30. He decided to head home, and left a buck on the table. He chuckled to himself at the use of the word home, because for the last five months home had been the basement rec room of the custom-designed $400,000 New French château he refused to vacate to the bitch who would eventually be his ex-wife.
Jimmy stood up and stretched, briefly wondering if chasing women would be nearly as much fun once he was divorced. He wondered if being married was half the thrill. He’d find out soon enough, he supposed.
Chapter Three
Roger was perplexed, but Joe wasn’t about to paint a detailed picture for him.
“We met a long time ago. That’s all.”
“When, exactly?”
“Thirteen years ago.”
“Where? Quantico?”
“Not really.”
“DEA-related? Was she an informant or something?”
Joe couldn’t stifle the laugh that erupted from his chest.
“Joe, for God’s sake, does she know your name? Does she know what you do for a living? Help me out here!”
“We never exchanged names.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I can’t stay here.”
“You’ve already told me that.”
“Just get me out—out of the Cincinnati area entirely.”
“You want another temporary assignment? You want another field office? But I promised Rich Baum you’d help him out with—”
“Just make it happen, Roger. Please. I need you to do this for me.”
“What exactly happened with this woman?”
Joe couldn’t answer.
“Oh, hell, Joe. Not that.” Roger sighed. “Look, I’ll do what I can, but it’s going to take a couple weeks to find another place—and it won’t be near as nice. You know I don’t have any more country estates up my sleeve.”
“A hotel is fine.”
“A goddamn hotel is not fine! You are a marked man!”
“But—”
“Unless you believe yourself to be in imminent danger of discovery, you will stay put until I can get something arranged. Do you hear me?”
Joe said nothing. He was on a landline telephone that prevented him from wandering back to the bathroom and peeking out the window, so he just stared at the closed blind, his breathing shallow, thinking of her.
“You still there, Bellacera?”
“Can you send that family’s background file to me? Give me an hour to get on the network—my computer stuff is still in boxes. They live in the house immediately to the”—Joe craned his neck to judge the angle of the sun—”immediately to the southwest of this address on Hayden Circle. I don’t have a street number. Yellow two-story. Kids, probably.”
Roger sighed again. “Yeah. Sure.”
“Thanks.”
“One thing before I go.” Roger’s voice was strained. “The nastiest Mexican drug cartel I’ve seen in twenty years in law enforcement killed your partner and has a million-dollar reward out for your head. I just want to make sure you understand those little details.”
Joe closed his eyes.
“Just hang tight until I tell you otherwise.”
As Joe disconnected, he told himself he’d be hanging all right—hanging upside down from the doorjamb by a string tied around his nuts at this rate.
How could this have happened? There she was, right next door! After all the years he’d searched for her, she was an arm’s length away and he couldn’t go to her! He couldn’t talk to her! He couldn’t get to know her!
Joe methodically sliced open the boxes one-by-one with his pocketknife, aware that the violent slashing motions might be on the verge of overkill. But it felt good. And as soon as the computer was up and running, he’d find where the movers had stashed his punching bags. Then he’d fight himself into a state of oblivion.
Ah, hell. She was so obviously married. Those were her kids. She was probably content in her little life here in Bum-Fuck with her lucky son-of-a-bitch husband, whoever he might be.
She probably didn’t even remember him.
Joe was sweating by the time he’d reached the last box and caught his reflection in the floor-length closet mirror. He stopped, straightened, and jogged to the glass, where he bared his teeth.
The left front tooth was as straight and white as its companion, but anyone who looked close enough could see it had a story to tell. It was his story, and hers, and dammit, every time he saw that tooth he thought of her, which meant he thought of her at least twice a day. Over thirteen years that was, what—nearly ten thousand times? And that didn’t even count all those times she’d invaded his dreams, when she’d come to him sticky with honeysuckle juice, her skin hot to the touch, so much fire in such an innocent-looking little package.
When she drove away that day, he’d forced himself not to turn around and memorize her license plate number. And it was surely the single biggest mistake he’d made in a life full of them. What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been thinking at all, of course. He’d been young and stupid and so damn sure that there would be an endless supply of incredible women in the world that he just let her drive away.
Joe let his mouth relax and stared intently at the man in the mirror. He was older and smarter now. He’d seen more than his share of injustice and violence, and it showed in the lines around his eyes, the taut pull of skin over his cheekbones. And lately, he swore he could sometimes see the Carmine Bellacera of his childhood staring back at him—except that his dad never went in for the reclusive writer look; it was GI Joe all the way to the grave.
Joe smiled sadly. He would turn thirty-eight next month holed up someplace alone, where no one knew his real name.
He went back to the boxes, knowing that he’d have to be completely insane to approach that woman before Roger could get him out of here.
He needed to stay alive, stay focused on the trial, and on his duty to Steve and his family. He couldn’t afford this distraction.
But damn.
She’d grown from pretty girl to beautiful woman, and he hadn’t been there to see it.
And knowing that made him feel more alone than he’d ever felt in his life.
It was only nine, so if she were good, she’d use this time to do her Tae Bo tape. No, wait—Charlotte had recently read a magazine article that said it was self-defeating to label yourself “good” or “bad” when the focus should be on the behavior itself. The article said that people make just two kinds of choices in life: harmful ones and helpful ones.
So after she checked on the kids, she headed downstairs and made the choice to find the box of Triscuits and the can of squirt cheese. Then made the choice to sit at the kitchen table and chow down.
“You only live once,” she said to no one, popping another salty, crunchy, squishy, artificially flavored tidbit in her mouth, thinking the whole time of the Chippendales dancer next door.
After a few more savory concoctions, Charlotte stuck the cracker box under her arm and tucked the squirt cheese in her shorts pocket and wandered out to the back patio. Though the days were growing longer, it was fully dark by now, and the neighborhood was quiet. She took a seat at the patio table and propped her feet on an empty chair.
Right after Kurt died, more than a few well-meaning people had asked if she planned to sell the house. The answer was no, not if she could help it.
She topped another cracker, a little shocked at how loud the aerosol sounded out here in the quiet.
She loved her home—the acre of yard that provided privacy and plenty of play room for the kids and Hoover, the mature shade trees, the roomy floor plan. She loved that her children felt like they belonged here. She loved that they felt close to Kurt.
What she didn’t love was the mortgage—$1,500 a month, every single month, even after refinancing.
She munched down hard on the Triscuit, wiping a few errant crumbs off her scout leader shirt.
She’d told herself countless times that it could have been worse—Kurt could have died with no insurance instead of a modest amount. He could have died leaving a mountain of debt instead of a few conservative investments. It’s just that no man thinks he’s going to drop dead at age thirty-four. And no woman thinks she’s going to walk into the family room to rouse her napping husband for dinner only to find him cold.
The bottom line was they weren’t prepared for the wage earner in their family to die. And Charlotte refused to go out and get a full-time nursing job with the kids this young. They needed her attention. They needed her time. They needed her—because she was all they had.
Multi-Tasker, Inc., was something she could do while the kids were in school. It was something she could juggle in the summer and something she could set aside if one of them was sick. With the life insurance and social security, it made them just enough money to squeak by.
She squirted out a big, sloppy pile of Day-Glo cheddar on a cracker and shoved the whole thing in her mouth.
She immediately stopped chewing and her ears pricked.
Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba…
It sounded like muffled gunfire. She choked down the cracker and sat up straight, her ears straining to identify its source.
Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba… Then she heard a loud “Uhmph!”
Charlotte shot to her feet and stared up toward the children’s bedroom windows. It wasn’t coming from there.
Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba…
Bonnie and Ned’s house was quiet. And it wasn’t coming from the Noonans’ over the back fence because they were still in Florida and their security system could wake the dead.
Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba… Her head whipped around—it had to be the Chippendales guy!
Charlotte gathered her snacks and tiptoed around to the driveway, where she stood half-hunched in the darkness, listening.
“Uhmph! Uh! Mmmm, mmmm, uhmph!”
“Good Lord,” Charlotte whispered to herself. Still hunched over, the Triscuits tucked close under her elbow, she glanced furtively up and down the street, making sure there were no cars or dog walkers coming. She then slipped past the pine trees to the edge of her property and sidled up to the privacy fence around the Connors’ inground pool and patio.
The sound was definitely coming from behind the fence, but it wasn’t the pool pump. It wasn’t mechanical.
Charlotte pressed her face up to the fence boards, and though she tried several angles—twisted around until her neck hurt—she couldn’t quite find a way to align her eyeball with the small vertical slits. She sure couldn’t peek over the fence—it was nine feet tall! So all she saw was a sliver of light and indistinct movement.
Thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba, thud-a-ba… “Uhmph!”
Someone was being murdered! That had to be it. She suppressed her gasp and skittered away from the fence, racing full speed to her own patio, running inside the back door. Hoover lay in wait, hair on end, ready to pounce—and his whole big body shuddered with relief that it was only her.
She slipped him a Triscuit. “Good boy, Hoov.”
Charlotte bolted the lock on the family room double doors. She did the same to the laundry room door leading to the garage, and the front door.
Then she took the stairs two at a time and, for lack of any other source of reassurance, she spoke to Hoover.
“We may have a situation on our hands,” she said.
The dog blinked and yawned, exposing a set of huge white canine teeth. He waited briefly for some kind of command, then burped and went into Matt’s room, where he collapsed in a heap.
“You call yourself a watchdog,” she muttered.
Then she saw them.
The spy binoculars sat precariously on the edge of Matt’s small desk, the lenses reflecting the hall light. She grabbed them, slinked down the hallway to her bedroom, and locked her door.
Now if this wasn’t the lowest point in her life, she didn’t know what was. She was going to spy on her new neighbor! And after the lecture she’d given Matt that very afternoon!
But that sound—it could be anything, right? And those animal noises! If it wasn’t murder, maybe he was injured. What if her new neighbor was having some kind of spasm or epileptic fit and swallowing his tongue?
She turned off all the lights in her room. She stood at the window facing the drive and tried to figure out how to focus the binoculars. She certainly wouldn’t be discovering any new solar systems with these cheap plastic things, but she hoped they could at least put her mind to rest about the tongue swallowing.
She aimed out the window, and in the light from the Connors’ patio she guided the binoculars through the tree branches, located the fence, and tilted down until she could see the pool area.
A punching bag. The guy was pounding on a punching bag. That realization took about a nanosecond to register in her brain before the real important information came to the forefront: LoriSue, God bless her slutty little soul, had been absolutely correct. He was male-stripper material, and he’d been thoughtful enough to strip to a pair of athletic shorts on his very first night in the neighborhood.
Charlotte prevented herself from crumpling to the carpet by leaning against the window frame. The binoculars clicked against the glass.
This was so wrong. So illegal. So bad. And so incredibly gratifying!
She chuckled to herself and found a comfortable stance, immediately deciding that LoriSue’s term “juicy piece of man” didn’t go far enough in describing the image now framed in the binocular lenses. In fact, Charlotte didn’t think there was a term for a man like him.
And he just kept punching, his back toward her, the little bag blu
rring and spinning from the impact of his boxing gloves. His longish hair was wet with perspiration and black against the nape of his neck. His cut shoulders, back, and arms rippled, glistening with sweat, an image made all the more surreal by the haze of moths drawn to the patio light.
“Moths to a flame,” Charlotte said out loud.
She stared, stupefied, watching his feet dance and his thighs and calves bunch up and release, his tight backside bounce and jut, his lungs pump air in and out of his body.
And just then, a thick, slow-moving fog of déjà vu began to roll through her. It was like she’d once had a dream about this or that her subconscious was whispering to her that this man reminded her of someone she once knew—or wait; maybe she’d once seen a movie where some pathetic, lonely widow stared at her attractive neighbor with her son’s cereal box binoculars!
She groaned and was about to put an end to the whole sorry business when the man stopped. He pulled his hands out of the gloves, tossed them on the pool deck, then shook his sweaty hair. He reached around, grabbed a water bottle, and playfully tossed it up over his head.
That’s the moment he turned toward her, snagging the plastic bottle in midair. She saw his face.
Charlotte’s legs didn’t hold.
Bonnie remembered the last time Charlotte told her to come over and bring a spiral cut ham. It was the night Kurt died. But he’d died at five-thirty on a Tuesday, so the Honey Baked Ham store at the mall was still open. It was almost ten tonight. And the closest thing she and Ned had to ham was a half-pound of smoked turkey breast from the Kroger deli case.
She poked her head in the family room double doors and was greeted by a snarling Hoover.
“Hey, Hoov.” Bonnie tore off a piece of turkey breast and the dog trotted happily away.
It took a moment before she located Charlotte. She was sitting cross-legged on the family room rug, wearing her blue and yellow scout leader uniform, her face pale and her gray eyes far too bright.
“Did you bring it?” Charlotte swiveled her head and Bonnie watched most of her hair slip out of her ponytail.