Kitabı oku: «The Secret Lives of Doctors' Wives»

Dead Men Do Tell Lies…Frequently

Becoming a doctor’s wife was Rose Marie Castle’s way of obtaining the beautiful life she wasn’t born into. But after being jilted at the altar by Mr Prominent Plastic Surgeon, this ageing beauty stumbles braless and pantyless out of her fortieth birthday party and into a murder investigation.

Dr Pierce Carver is Austin’s very own smoothtalking, fast-living, upwardly mobile, womanising…murder victim. And with his three ex-wives, widow, stepdaughters and estranged sons crawling out of the woodwork, it can finally be revealed just how many lives one man can lead.

Rosie’s sexy teen crush Michael Nash still remembers the time they spent together under the palm trees in Mexico. As the acting homicide detective on Rosie’s case, he just can’t agree with her on who derailed whose life. But with so much blame to pass, why not share it?

Now this nurse turned premature (yet never matured) grandmother has a coming-of-middle-age journey to take and a whodunit to unravel. With a rough-cut Texan police officer on her trail, Rosie snoops to find her fairy-tale ending behind the lies where the beautiful life loses its lustre.

Once, all she desired was Dr Pierce Carver’s head on a silver platter, and everyone knows it. Too bad her dreams do come true.

Also available from Ann Major

THE GIRL WITH THE GOLDEN SPURS

THE HOT LADIES MURDER CLUB

THE
SECRET
LIVES
OF
DOCTORS’
WIVES
ANN
MAJOR

www.mirabooks.co.uk

This book is dedicated to Tara Gavin.

She contributed the title and

much more, as always.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I need to thank Kimberly Huett for her help.

Prologue

Austin, Texas

He remembered the flash of the blade, the slender hand in the dark. His screams had been followed by eerie silence. Too late he recalled that this house had a history of tragedy.

The dying man could barely hear Rose Marie Castle’s flying bare feet on the sculpted stone staircase. Besides her shoes, she was missing several intimate garments that, doubtless, the police would find later.

Run, run as fast as you can…

His hands were bound together with Rosie’s silky black bra. Her paring knife was lodged firmly in his Adam’s apple. The security cameras would capture incriminating images of her escape, but he would be dead long before she was brought to justice, which could be slow, even in Texas.

The deathblow had been savage. Delicate vertebrae had been smashed, his spinal cord nicked or severed. He’d had no sensation of falling as he’d crumpled to the white carpet, his blood staining it a vivid crimson.

He’d been a fool, ensnared like a stupid fly in a web. Because of her—the bitch.

He was cold to the marrow of his bones.

Downstairs, Rosie let out a panicked little cry. She began to pound on the door with her fists. When it finally opened, and she stumbled outside, the prisms of the chandelier above the grand staircase tinkled.

He thought of his mother and father. Of the old life and its false promises; of all the bitter years when he’d longed for vengeance, which would have been his—except for her.

Down the hill, the big engine of her Beamer purred to life. When she sped away, his useless body convulsed. As his eyeballs rolled upward, he heard the wind in the branches of the pecan trees outside. She must have left the door open in her haste to escape.

The harsh music of the cicadas joined the sweeter chime of the chandelier that she’d imported from Paris.

Paris, France; not Paris, Texas. What grand ambitions she’d had before the wedding.

Run, run; you can’t catch me…

Like hell.

She’d pay. She deserved to pay.

His body convulsed one final time.

He thought about her dreams of being a grand lady in Austin society, married to the eminent plastic surgeon Pierce Carver. She’d wanted to live down the poverty and shame of her childhood.

Was there enough money or fame to heal such wounds?

The dying man almost felt pity for Rose Marie Castle as he died.

But not quite.

One

Austin, Texas

“Oh my God! More blood?” She’d thought it was only a nick.

Rosie couldn’t believe what had just happened. Pierce had gotten angry so quickly. He’d seemed weird, strung out, not himself at all.

Her every breath was a harsh, tortured rasp as she grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her cut finger and the steering wheel. She didn’t want to think about her former fiancé, or their quarrel, or how quickly the violence had escalated.

Perspiration drenched her, not just because it was a hot, sultry August night or because of the champagne she’d drunk with Pierce before the evening had gone wrong. Or because today was her fortieth birthday and maybe she was simply having an early hot flash.

She rubbed her head. Her scalp hurt where Pierce’s watch had caught her hair. He hadn’t cared that he’d hurt her. In fact, he’d smiled.

She wrapped the tissue around her finger and applied pressure. When the Beamer’s tires squealed, rounding a sharp curve, she gripped the wheel. It wasn’t like her to mistreat her car by driving too fast. She was that anxious to get away.

Well, at least she was finally over him. No more wisecracks to the other nurses about wanting revenge, to salve her wounded ego because they knew he’d dumped her for Anita.

For what it was worth, tonight Mr. Prominent Plastic Surgeon hadn’t paid her a dime of the money he owed her, either. Big surprise. She still didn’t know why she’d snapped. But for sure, she had bigger problems now than the money he’d owed her.

What had she ever seen in Pierce? He was a gifted doctor, and being a nurse, she’d admired that. She’d been having a hard time accepting her grown daughter’s lifestyle, so maybe he’d come along when she’d needed to feel successful in other areas of her life. Being seen on the arm of a handsome plastic surgeon had made her feel good.

But even before he’d dumped her, the romance had taken a dark turn. Like a lot of Rosie’s boyfriends—and there’d been a lot, way too many in some people’s opinions, such as her mother’s—Pierce had developed the knack for punching the wrong buttons. He brought out the Bad Rosie, just like her mom, Hazel, did sometimes, which was why Rosie should have been delighted when he’d jilted her for a younger woman right before their wedding day nearly a year ago.

Okay, so Rosie hadn’t been delighted or acted mature, despite her “mature” age. Okay, so maybe that was partly because she’d been feeling romantic about being a bride again, and partly because she’d seen Dr. Pierce Carver as the ticket to the sparkling train car.

Rosie’s least favorite movie scene of all time, and of course it had to be the one that haunted her, was the opening sequence in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories. In the scene, poor Woody sat in a dark, dirty train car with a bunch of other pathetic losers. Unfortunately, he had looked out the window just in time to see a sparkling train car filled with happy, glamorous people drinking champagne streak by him, and he had despaired.

There’d been a lot of times when Rosie would have sold her soul to be in that sparkling car.

Pierce had come into her life just when she’d been feeling superguilty about Carmen dancing at The Cellar and neglecting her five-year-old daughter, Alexis, to the point that Rosie had had to take Alexis under her wing. Pierce had seemed glamorous and caring and sure of himself, when she’d been feeling vulnerable because she was getting older and didn’t have enough to show for it.

When he had jilted her and she’d had to face reality again, she’d had to see a shrink for a while to reclaim her sanity—on a weekly basis, as a matter of fact.

So—okay. Okay. Okay.

Rosie really had thought she was over Pierce, until he’d called tonight. He’d flattered her and said he was tying up loose ends. He’d promised to pay her the money he owed her, and she’d agreed to give him a new key to the warehouse where he stored some medical records.

Now she was racing down the curving, narrow road in Westlake Hills that led through sweetsmelling juniper-covered, limestone hills, away from his mansion.

Rosie lifted her gaze to the rearview mirror. She caught a glimpse of one blue eye and her coppery-red curls. She adjusted the mirror and saw her shoes on the back seat.

As for her bra and panties…Her heart began to beat fast. She did not want to dwell on missing underwear.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

She couldn’t believe he’d made her feel so vulnerable and lonely. Why else had she started stripping for him and…

He’d said she was beautiful, and maybe she was…for her age. She was slim. Her legs were long. Okay, so maybe she was a little worried about her neck at times. Just as she lifted her chin to check it in her rearview mirror, her cell phone vibrated on her lap.

Damn. No way could she talk to anybody.

But when she picked up the phone, she saw Yolie’s name highlighted in brilliant blue. Yolie had let her and Alexis move in when Rosie’s house had burned not long after Pierce had jilted her. Alexis was home with Jennifer, who was just a teenager. A responsible one, but still a teenager. Yolie was supposed to go to her ranch tonight.

What if there was a problem? Rosie had to answer.

“Where’ve you been? Celebrating your big birthday with a lot of sex and sin and alcohol, I hope,” Yolie said in that crisp, in-your-face voice she usually reserved for the managers of her various fast-food Taco Bonito restaurants.

No way was Rosie admitting the truth. That she’d gone to Pierce’s. That she’d almost…Not to Yolie, of all people! Yolie, who, among her many identities, happened to be one of Pierce’s ex-wives.

Yolie had totally agreed with Nan, Rosie’s shrink, when she’d advised Rosie not to date for a while, so that she could confront the psychic wounds of her childhood. Whatever.

They both said she’d obsessed about Pierce for too long. They’d been the first to quit laughing when she’d joked about having vengeful fantasies, although Yolie had enjoyed her saying she’d have Pierce’s head on a silver platter if he kept refusing to pay her what he owed her.

Alarmed that Yolie, who hadn’t gotten rich in the fast-food business by being the dimmest bulb in the kitchen, might somehow hear the quiver in her voice and suspect something, Rosie tensed.

“Oh…I was at my house—you know, painting with Harry…so that someday—sooner rather than later—you’ll have your mansion back to yourself.” Not exactly a lie.

Harry’s main job was to run her rental properties, which included houses in her old East Austin neighborhood, as well as the warehouse where Pierce stored some of his stuff. Of late, Harry had been the contractor on her house.

“Really? Until midnight? I just got back from your place. Harry was smoking grass in that portable potty your nosy, next-door neighbor, Mirabella, is always in such a snit about. Would you believe Mirabella was actually up and that she and her dog watched me from her kitchen window? Does she ever mind her own business?”

“She makes a career of running me down to the entire neighborhood.”

“When I knocked on the door of the portable potty, I almost got high myself on fumes when he kicked it open. Harry was pretty fuzzy headed, but he did say he thought Jennifer called you around 11:00 p.m., maybe about Alexis, because you sure peeled rubber when you left.”

Busted. Rosie swallowed. She’d been only too happy to let him think it was Jennifer, her favorite babysitter.

But had she actually said she was going home to check on Alexis? No. Did she have to account for her actions to Harry, of all people? Definitely—no!

“I…” With Yolie, who was way smarter than Harry, sometimes the less said, the better. “So…what’s up?”

“I was on my way out the door, late as usual, to go to the ranch, when Beth called. In fact, I just left Jennifer and Alexis, who are fine, by the way. Beth sounds frantic. Says she’s been calling you for over an hour…”

Beth was an R.N. in the I.C.U. at Brackenridge Hospital, where Rosie worked. Beth had been sick earlier in the week, and Rosie had had to pull double shifts. Not fun, since she needed every spare minute to clean and paint her burned-out mess of a house because Harry’s progress on the job had been so slow and her neighbors, stirred up by Mirabella, were bugging her about the unmowed brown grass and the awful orange portable potty in her front yard.

“Beth?”

“She said to call her at the unit ASAP.” Yolie paused. “Oh, and before I forget, I left you a teeny piece of double-fudge, Italian-cream chocolate cake in the fridge for your birthday.”

“You swore you wouldn’t—” Rosie stopped herself.

There was no point in arguing with Yolie, who was a larger woman, who loved to cook, and who ate whatever she wanted. She wasn’t neurotic about her butt size or her jean size or even the fact that her next big birthday would be fifty. She had a thing for younger men, too. Her current hottie was Xavier, her gardener, of all people. He was ambitious. Yolie was always helping him with his English. He was going to school, and he worked for Taco Bonito, too. The one condition she’d made when Rosie had moved in was to leave Xavier strictly alone—or she’d teasingly threatened to turn her into taco meat for her restaurant chain.

Of course, Rosie had promised to leave the yardman to his clipping, but that was before she’d seen Xavier, who had a head of thick black hair, a body of sleek dark muscles and a lopsided smile that reminded her too much of the first man she’d ever given her heart to, under a palm tree in Mexico, no less.

“I swore I wouldn’t make brownies, but didn’t say anything about Italian-cream cake,” Yolie said. “Life is far too short and much too cruel to live without chocolate. You’re only forty once, sweetie. Enjoy…that is, if you ever get home tonight.”

Before Yolie, who no doubt had time to talk, went on to press her for details about where she’d been, exactly, Rosie hung up and dialed Beth.

“I’m sorry to bother you…but I really really need you to come in,” Beth began. “Just for an hour—it’s an emergency.”

“It’s after midnight. Can’t a supervisor pull a nurse off another floor? I can’t just…”

“Please.”

“I’m out. I’m a mess.” She couldn’t very well say, “You think you have problems? This has been the most terrible night of my life! I’m braless and pantyless and so totally mental after losing it with Pierce and Pierce losing it with me that there is no way I could take care of patients.”

Aloud she said, “Why don’t you get Margaret to find somebody?” Margaret was their supervisor.

“I can’t. I just can’t.” Beth, who wasn’t one to give details about her personal life, and who was usually very stoic, started in with broken sobs.

This was bad.

“I am not coming in!”

Two

In the mock Tuscan villa down the hill from Dr. Pierce Carver’s four-acre lot and mansion, Amanda Jones, who was a light sleeper, especially when Ralph was out of town on business, was awakened by the faint but persistent sound of her neighbor’s car alarm.

She sat up and listened.

When it didn’t stop, she grew frightened and went to the window. Pierce was anal about his Porsche.

No matter how hard she squinted, she couldn’t see much of Carver’s property through the thick cedar and oak. Suddenly, two black figures burst out of the darkness from the direction of the Carvers’ house and raced down the strip of road that wound in front of both their houses.

Since she wasn’t about to turn off her own house alarm and go out in the dark and investigate, or even step out onto her upstairs balcony, which had such spectacular views of the sparkling city far below, she went back to her bedside table and called Pierce’s place. When his answering machine picked up on the first ring, she hung up without leaving a message. Then she dialed 911.

Michael Nash had a bad case of brain fog. Not great when you’re Homicide and you’ve got a body upstairs with a paring knife in his Adam’s apple, and two punks in black with blood on their shoes handcuffed to a tree in the victim’s front yard.

The body was probably that of Dr. Pierce Carver. Who the hell else could it be?

Funny, the rich jerk just happened to be somebody Michael had something in common with—namely a woman. Rose Marie Castle, to be exact. Nash knew Carver was a prick because Rose Marie had told him so and quite heatedly—after Michael had ticketed her for stalking the bastard with her Beamer last year. Apparently, Carver had dumped her for a younger model, Anita Somebody from Guatemala. Rosie never had taken failure well.

Not that Michael wanted to think about Rosie or that night ever again because, as usual, she’d twisted him around her little finger and had made a fool out of him.

Carver and she had probably deserved each other. Rosie was trouble, always had been and probably always would be. She’d cut Michael’s heart out on more than one occasion. Just not with a paring knife.

Hell, maybe he should count his blessings.

But murder? Rosie couldn’t have anything to do with this. Still, she’d been royally pissed at the guy.

Michael glanced up from his notebook and said a silent prayer for the dead man in the house. Not that he was sure there was anybody up there to listen. Still, his mother had taken him to church when he was a kid. Old habits died hard.

Michael glanced at the punks handcuffed to the tree and then at his watch. It was late, nearly 2:00 a.m. He lacked the energy to deal with their lies.

Liars! He hated liars!

Too bad, Nash. Everybody lied to cops. The murderers lied because they had to. Witnesses lied to cover up all sorts of minor peccadilloes that as often as not had nothing to do with the case. Everybody else lied just for the sheer joy of it.

His head was pounding as he approached the punks again. His eyes felt grainy. On top of that he was sweltering out here even at this hour.

Michael needed to share a cold beer with Ronnie Bob at The Tavern before heading home, where he would’ve loved to zone out channel surfing. Maybe watch a tiger eat a zebra or a rattler pounce on a mouse before he passed out on his couch.

Instead, he forced himself to concentrate on the shifty-eyed kids in the faded black T-shirts and ragged jeans, slouching against the tree trunk. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Even though Michael didn’t think they had a damn thing to do with the murder, the older kid had a prior for car theft. No, they’d been after the Porsche and had set off the car alarm that had alerted Amanda Jones down the hill.

“You just got out of a detention center for stealing cars,” Michael began. “Am I right—Paulo—”

“Pablo.” The kid spat the name.

“Sorry.” Feeling the kid’s hatred, Michael scratched through the u and jotted a b on top of it. “Pablo.”

“We was joggin’.” This from Raul.

Michael’s thick, black brows shot together in a lethal frown. “Right. And you two live…where? Eight miles from here? East Austin. My old neighborhood.”

Rosie’s, too. Not that she liked to admit it even now that it was becoming rather gentrified.

“It’s a free country,” Pablo spat.

Michael was lifting his head to stare at the kid again when Ronnie Bob Keith’s florid face appeared at the front door. Keith’s smirk was a mile wide as he waved a plastic Baggie.

Michael loped toward his partner.

“Raul dropped his wallet. They were up there, all right. Their bloody footprints are everywhere. Talk about contaminating the scene!”

Michael returned with the evidence. Clenching the Baggie, he eyeballed the older kid. “Pablo, my men just found your little brother’s wallet in a pool of blood by a man with a knife in his throat, and you don’t know nothing?”

“Right.”

“How about you—Raul?”

Raul started shaking and refused to look up from the ground.

Michael continued to stare at Pablo. The youth was too tall and too skinny for his large frame. He wore a dirty red bandana. A greasy dark braid hung down the middle of his back. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and eased his weight from one foot to the other, his soulless eyes gazing anywhere but at Raul or Michael.

Michael wanted to know what the kids knew, what they’d seen, but he was going to have to take them downtown and separate them.

Sweat dripped from his brow onto his notepad as he sucked in a long, exasperated breath. “Kid, we’re getting nowhere fast.”

“I told you all I know.”

The fog in Michael’s brain thickened. He held up the wallet again. “You’re going to change your bullshit story before I’m through.”

Pablo stared at his dirty athletic shoes.

“Damn it! You were all over the house! Did you see anybody else? Hear anything?”

“Man, I don’t have to take this. I’m only sixteen.”

“Kids like you get tried as adults all the time. You think about that—Paulo.”

“Pablo! You think I’m just a kid, but I know my rights. We don’t have to talk to no cop without our lawyer.”

“All right. Have it your way.” Michael left them and headed toward the house.

“Hey! You! Come back here! Let us go!”

As their screams grew louder, Michael took the stairs beneath the brilliant chandelier two at a time.

To hell with them!

Finally, Beth had made it back to the hospital.

Maybe it was the late hour, maybe Rosie was just exhausted, maybe she’d seen too many scenes on TV where women got assaulted in parking garages, or maybe it was aftershocks from her ugly run-in with Pierce—whatever, Rosie had a bad case of the jitters as she climbed the concrete stairs to the fourth floor in the hospital parking garage. She was nearly to her Beamer when her cell phone rang.

Climbing faster, she dug for it in her purse, and for her keys, too, only to panic when she read Yolie’s home phone number in the little blue window.

It was well after two-thirty. Jennifer and Alexis were home alone now, since Yolie had driven to the ranch.

Rosie pushed open the door to the fourth floor. “Jennifer?” Her voice echoed in the dimly lit garage.

“Alexis is gone!” the teenager shrieked without preamble. “I’ve looked everywhere!”

Seeing her Beamer, Rosie raced to it. “She can’t be…gone. She’s hiding or something.”

“No…I’ve looked everywhere.”

With shaking hands, Rosie unlocked the car and got in. “Did you check the pool?”

“I turned on the pool lights and the floodlights and everything…She went to bed with Blue Binkie not long after Yolie left. My boyfriend called, and I was on the phone for a while. Then I went up to check on her. I swear, she was fine, but now her bed’s empty. I checked every door and window. They’re all locked. Your bedroom’s empty, except for Lula.”

Lula was Yolie’s huge, white poodle.

Rosie couldn’t believe anything else could go wrong—even if it was her birthday. Alexis gone?

Rosie squeezed her eyes shut and fought panic, not for the first time tonight. As she started the ignition, she thought about their mysterious break-in two days ago. That had been so strange…just as Pierce calling her tonight had been strange. Looking back, the break-in felt almost like an omen.

Yolie’s security company had phoned her and said the alarm was going off. When they’d checked it out, the kitchen door had been unlocked, but shut. Oddly, Lula had been locked in an upstairs bathroom without food or water, barking her head off. When Rosie had gone up to let her out, Yolie’s favorite pink bath mat had been nothing but bits of rubber and pink fuzz.

Other than that, there had been no signs of an intruder. Nor had any valuables been missing.

So, who had unlocked the door and set off the alarm? Who had locked Lula upstairs? Lula had a bad habit of biting postmen and pool men, but she’d let herself be locked in the bathroom without shedding so much as a drop of blood on the white wall-to-wall carpet.

“Shit happens,” the security guy had said, as if that explained it. “Or you have a mystery intruder. Somebody who’s got a key. Somebody your doggie knows. Or you’ve got a glitch in your system somewhere.”

“Check the system,” Yolie had said.

“I’m so scared, Ms. Castle,” Jennifer whispered now, cutting into Rosie’s thoughts.

Me, too, Rosie thought.

She wound her way down the parking garage ramp and soon was speeding west on Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The house is so big and dark…And there’s all these spooky sounds. I’ve been hearing them ever since Yolie put the garage door down and drove away.”

“Then call 911! I’ll be there as fast as I can, but I’m at least ten minutes away!”

Oh, why hadn’t Yolie installed cameras?

The break-in had seemed so insignificant. It was odd how the small moments and the casual decisions could turn out to be the most important ones of all.

What if…Rosie simply hadn’t gone to Pierce’s tonight?

She forced herself to concentrate on her driving and getting home safely so she could find Alexis. Darling precious Alexis.

Alexis had to be all right.

A distant light switched from green to yellow to red.

Rosie slowed, looked both ways; then she stomped down hard on the gas pedal. She prayed that Michael wasn’t nearby in his radio car, ready to pounce again, like he had that night a year ago when she’d seen Pierce jogging and had decided it was time to confront him about the rent.

No sign of a radio car.

Rosie shot through the light.

Michael was worrying over his report in his unmarked four-door Crown Vic in front of Carver’s mansion.

The scene, the punks, the victim, all felt wrong. Why? What was he missing?

Keith was leaning back in the passenger seat smoking while Michael went over the facts one last time. Suddenly they caught a call about a missing little girl on their radio.

The name Alexis Castle meant nothing to Michael. The name Rose Marie Castle charged through him in a soul-searing bolt.

Castle. His old girlfriend, Rosie. Carver’s girlfriend, too.

Her grandkid missing tonight? That was a helluva coincidence. What was going on? He had to make sure Rosie and the kid were okay.

“We’re not taking another damn call.” Keith’s eyes flashed in the dark as he sent a smoke ring toward the ceiling.

“The grandmother’s the victim’s ex-girlfriend.”

“Shit.” Keith blew another smoke ring and settled back in his seat.

Michael was glad Keith decided to give him the silent treatment instead of pumping him with questions. He wasn’t in the mood to discuss Rosie, whom he had no desire to see ever again.

Still, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about her.

A year ago, Michael had caught her on the rebound from a bad relationship with the dead man. And damn it, as always, they’d ended up in bed.

So what else was new? He’d been her first back in high school, but then she’d dumped him, married, had a kid. Not that his own life had been any less complicated. Last year when he’d run into Rosie, he’d been separated from his wife, Marie.

Funny that her name was Rosie’s middle name.

Not so funny.

Michael’s mouth thinned at the memory of Rosie’s long, honey-gold legs wrapped around his on that hellishly hot Sunday, the morning after. They’d cuddled all night long, but come morning, she’d turned on him.

Why was it that, with a little alcohol on board, two former lovers feeling the need for a little TLC could take up right where they’d left off?

It had been a pretty amazing night. He might have been well on his way to falling in love with her again, but the next morning she’d taken one look at his black head on her pillow and had started throwing things at him—first his shirt, then his jeans and then his boots. When she’d gone for the lamp and handcuffs, he’d locked himself in the bathroom.

Good thing, too. She’d smashed the lamp against the door. Next, he’d heard the handcuffs bounce off the wall. Then she’d run just like before, screaming, “You ruined my life—all over again!”

What the hell had that meant? She’d run out on him after high school. He’d called her a few times, but she’d always hung up on him.

When his wife had finally called him back, he’d stupidly confessed about Rosie, and that had been the final straw for Marie. Since their divorce, he’d been lonely as hell.

So, now Rosie’s granddaughter was missing.

He hoped to hell Rosie wasn’t connected to this murder. Or that the kid wasn’t in the hands of whoever had cut Carver up.

Just the thought and his palms began to sweat. Gut instinct told him to get over there fast.

Without so much as a glance toward his silent partner, Michael started the ignition.

As he drove, he thought about the missing kid. When his marriage hadn’t worked out, he’d been glad Marie and he hadn’t had children. Still, deep down, not having them was one of life’s big disappointments.

What if Rosie’s granddaughter’s life depended on somebody who gave a damn making the right decision?

Hell.

When he stepped on the gas, Keith swore viciously and flicked his cigarette lighter.

Three

The large windows of Yolie’s mansion threw long bright rectangles of yellow out onto the dark lawn as Rosie pulled up. Red and blue lights blinking, cop cars were everywhere.

Alexis, please…Please be okay, baby.

Rosie parked the Beamer in the driveway, got out and ran stumbling up the dark sidewalk. Besides the radio cars, several cars she’d never seen before were parked on the narrow street in front of the house. Dark, shadowy figures moved about near the brilliantly lit pool house and pool.

Expecting the worst inside, she struggled with her keys and pushed the big door open.

“Jennifer?”

Her coppery curls bouncing and her blue eyes as bright as lasers in her olive-toned face, Alexis got up from the television set and hurled herself into her grandmother’s arms, nearly knocking her down.

“You didn’t come home when you said, Mimi!”

Rosie swallowed guiltily and tried not to think about why.

“So, I went to your bed! I crawled under the covers with Lula on top so I could hide and surprise you! I guess I fell asleep, and I didn’t hear Jennifer when she called me! So, guess what? She called the nice policeman! But don’t give me a time-out! Please don’t!”

Rosie pressed the slim child close and drank in the musky fragrances of unwashed little girl, sweaty curls and peppermint breath. Her nose was running, too.

“You’re okay? You’re really okay! Oh, honey…” Relief flooded Rosie as she searched her purse for a tissue. Finally. Something good had happened since she’d turned forty.

“You’re squeezing me, Mimi!”

As she hugged Alexis even closer, Rosie slowly became aware of the tall, dark, lean-hipped man writing something on a notepad.

The police! She was in no shape to deal with them. When he strode into the living room and stood over her, tingles of alarm coursed through her. Then her gaze climbed a pair of long muscular legs encased in rumpled black slacks.

Familiar long muscular legs.

For no reason at all she remembered the furious rattle of palm fronds, the sound of a Mexican xylophone, the salty air that smelled of the sea…and the sting of hot skin from that awful sunburn she’d gotten from lying on the beach in the shade too long with Michael.

It couldn’t be him…Not Michael Nash!

Michael wore a brown sport coat that needed an iron. His tie had been yanked loose at his throat. There were shadows under his long-lashed, dark eyes that hadn’t been there when he’d fast-talked and fast-kissed and fast-petted her into riding off on the back of his motorcycle to Veracruz, Mexico, the day after they’d graduated from high school.

Michael. He had a tattoo of a cute little palm tree on his chest over his heart, which matched the one she had over her left breast. Thank God they were both clothed.

With a low moan, she stood up slowly and blew out a mortified breath. She’d dressed in such a hurry at Pierce’s and then at the hospital again that she was sure she looked even more of a mess than Michael did.

Michael turned off the TV and shot her his famous football star grin that back in high school had made all the cheerleaders want to sleep with him. Okay, obviously she’d gone for it, too.

Alexis must’ve fallen for the smile because she ran over to him and lowered her lashes much too fetchingly for Rosie’s peace of mind. And she was all of five.

Oh, my God!

Rosie watched in horror as he knelt. Oh, how she hated how infinitely gentle his voice was when he spoke to the little girl. “You okay, sweetheart?”

Alexis nodded up at him. Holding her blue blanket, she twisted it to and fro shyly.

“Of all the cops in this city—you had to be the one to come.” Rosie ran her hands through her wildly tangled hair. Then she snapped, “Alexis, it’s time for bed!”

The child put her hands on her hips. Her jaw squared mulishly. “I’m not sleepy.”

“I thought you were a homicide detective,” Rosie said to Michael.

“So you remember?” His grin twisted. “I like it that you paid attention. Your babysitter called 911. I heard your name.”

“So you volunteered?”

His eyes darkened, and she felt a little scared.

“Something like that.” He lowered his voice, but not before she caught the edge in it. “Fond memories.”

Why did he look so serious? Why was he studying her so intently with those cop’s eyes of his? As if she’d committed a crime?

She tried not to think about Pierce. “Aren’t there enough bad guys to keep you busy?”

“Maybe I prefer bad girls.”

“I’m a good witch,” Alexis said, and batted her lashes at him.

“Yes, you are, darling,” Rosie agreed, glad of the distraction. “The best little witch ever to ride a broom with her very own Blue Binkie. But it’s time for all good witches to go to bed.”

As Michael continued to watch Rosie, his grin made her feel feverish and anxious.

She was forty, for heaven’s sake. A grown-up. A grandmother. She was too old to get the chills because of him, of all people.

Michael shifted so that he faced her. She grew even warier of his penetrating gaze.

“I thought cops were supposed to be doughnut addicts with weight problems. When are you going to get fat and old?”

“You look good, too, Rosie. So good, you make me remember palm trees and…that night last year.”

She flushed. “Don’t!”

He grinned. “What are you—forty?”

She lifted her chin. “Don’t remind me.”

“Palm trees?” Alexis whispered eagerly. “Can we go to the beach, Mimi? I love the beach.”

“Hush.” She had to get Alexis to bed and Michael out of here fast before he grew bossy or inquisitive, or her hormones started acting up.

“I’ve got some guys outside making sure everything is all right,” he said, in that deep, oddly tense, authoritative tone she’d never liked. “They walked Jennifer home. I stayed inside watching cartoons with Alexis to wait for you.”

He glanced at his watch and then at her again. Maybe it was just her, but she thought his detective eyes glinted suspiciously. “So, where were you…so late?”

“There was an emergency. I’m a nurse. I—I had to go in to work,” she said, finger-combing her hair as he continued to watch her, still in that too-assessing way of his.

“Your babysitter seemed to be expecting you much earlier. I think Alexis and she got nervous…”

“Jennifer knew I had to work.” Rosie felt herself flushing guiltily. Then she bristled. What business was it of his? For a second or two she considered telling him about the break-in two days ago, but that would only prolong the encounter.

She glanced pointedly toward the door. “Well, Alexis is safe and sound now, so, again, thank you.”

A beat passed.

He didn’t budge. Not even when Alexis rubbed her eyes again.

“Look, I really do need to get her to bed,” Rosie said desperately. “You know the way out.”

He was still watching her in that way that so unnerved her when he said, “I called the hospital, and your supervisor said you were off all day and that you came in briefly around twelve-thirty…and that—”

Because of her fear and guilt, Rosie’s temper blazed out of control. She felt her face grow hot. But instead of saying anything, she took Alexis’s hand and hurried her upstairs. But as she ran, she was aware of him standing there, not moving, his keen gaze burning into her back.

In her bathroom, she strained her ears trying to hear the door close behind him. When she thought she’d heard it, she tried to forget him.

Not a chance of that! Not when Alexis turned to her, bright-eyed and curious. “Are you in love with him, Mimi?”

“What?”

“Are you?”

When she shook her head, Alexis, who was clearly in the midst of her first crush, smiled and then gushed in a confidential tone, “Good. Because I am.”

Oh, God…Unwanted memories swamped Rosie—her arms laced around Michael’s young, lean back as they roared toward Mexico, the wind gusting against their skin; his long naked body on top of hers at that secluded beach with the palms after he’d taken her virginity. Last of all she remembered the compassion in his eyes as she’d poured her heart out to him in that bar last year after he’d ticketed her. When she’d finished talking, she’d leaned across the table and kissed him as if he were the only person in her whole life who’d ever really mattered. His answering kiss had been equally tender and hot and all-consuming.

Nobody else had ever made her feel as if she was the only one.

Rosie yanked the brush through Alexis’s hair and then washed her face, but she was too tired and upset to bathe her.

“Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, after a night’s sleep, we’ll bathe together,” she said, forcing a bright smile.

Alexis set Blue Binkie on the counter and squirted a blob of jewel-blue toothpaste on her brush, and for once didn’t argue, so Rosie got to splash cold water on her own face in relative peace.

“I want to sleep with you,” Alexis said when they were finished.

“Yes, I’d like that, too.” Rosie wiped a bit of shiny blue off the corner of Alexis’s mouth. “We’ll have our very own slumber party.” How Rosie had longed for such closeness to Carmen, Alexis’s mother, when Carmen had been young. But it hadn’t happened back then, and it still hadn’t happened.

Someday.

When they closed the bedroom door, Rosie gently tucked the little girl, Blue Binkie, several books that she demanded, and three of her favorite stuffed animals under the covers of her king-size bed. When Alexis rolled over, hugging her blanket and shutting her eyes, Rosie tiptoed downstairs, intending to turn the lights out, lock up and set the alarm.

Instead, she nearly screamed when she saw Michael sprawled on the couch, writing in his little notebook.

“I thought you’d left.”

He looked up, his eyes hard with suspicion.

“Cute kid,” he said, forcing a mildness in his low tone. “Real cute. Reminds me of you. I envy you. I never had kids.”

Quickly, she glanced at him and at her family pictures right behind him, and then away. Had he looked at them?

Deep breath. Deep breath.

“You have to go,” she said. “Now.”

“Why the hell are you so afraid of me?”

“Who’s afraid? I was just worried Alexis might wake up and get scared.”

“There’s no need to be afraid of me, you know.”

“Right. I’m not.”

“Besides, I thought we kind of clicked again last year.”

At the reminder, a ripple of tension raced down her spine. Maybe if she went on the attack, he would leave.

“Look, I was going through a rough time last year. You were pushy as hell. You took advantage. I made up my mind a long time ago…that you and I…weren’t right for each other.”

He slammed his notebook aside and sat up straighter. “Oh, right, blame me for what happened. Revenge fantasies cause you to chase your old boyfriend down with your Beamer, and then when I ticket you and prevent you from doing murder or whatever you intended, you reach under the table and grab—”

“Okay! I don’t need a replay!”

“What was I—a revenge fuck?”

“Oh…! Is that what you told everybody you know—that I threw myself at you?”

“It damn sure would have been the truth. What about the revenge part? Is that why you did it?”

She marched toward him, intending to pound his wide chest. But as soon as she entered his space, she grew jittery and halted. Suddenly she was too afraid of his power and her own vulnerability after all that had happened tonight. Besides, anytime she saw him, guilt about the past swept her.

He lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry I said that. And about what happened last year, I was a self-serving…er, pushy jerk…To let you feel me up right there in the bar. And then to kiss you back when you kissed me.”

Just when her blood came to a rolling boil again, he paused.

“To let me?”

“Rosie, be fair. The sex was your idea. You knew how easy it was for you to stir me up in high school,” he stated. “And you’d learned a lot since then. I was going through a rough patch with my wife, too.”

“Your wife? You…you dog! I can’t believe this!” Oh, yes, yes she could. After tonight, she could believe anything. Men were scum. “You were married?”

“Was.”

This was bad.

She gulped in a breath, almost strangling. She knew she should drop it, but she couldn’t. “You should’ve stopped at that first kiss—or at least by the second.”

“So should you. The truth is, you sort of pushed, too. I mean, your hands were doing all those things under the table.”

“But you were married.”

“Not anymore—thanks to you.”

“What? You’re blaming me? Oh…!”

“When Marie and I were making up, I’m afraid I told her about us.”

“Marie? Her name’s Marie, too? And what’s this us? There is, I mean was, no us.”

“I tried to explain that to her. Stupidly, I thought I should try to be honest when we started over.”

“And you were dumb enough to tell her about us?”

“Us. There! You said it, too!”

Images of what she’d done with Michael sprang into vivid color in her imagination. This was a nightmare. She couldn’t believe Michael had turned up the same night she’d seen Pierce again.

“How much did you tell her?”

“Too much.”

Everything. He’d told his wife everything!

Why had she picked Michael to sleep with instead of some stranger? The point had been to reassure herself she was still even capable of sex after the number Pierce had done on her. Period. She’d wanted no attachments. Who better than a man she knew she had to be done with?

Strangely, the sex with Michael had quickly become a compulsion. After a kiss or two, she couldn’t have stopped had her life depended on it. He’d made her feel too damned attractive, and she’d craved that after the way Pierce had discarded her.

A minute passed, and then another. The silence between them grew thick and heavy. Michael’s eyes were so intense they were giving her a bad case of the chills.

“Last year you were so upset with that doctor, you wanted to kill him,” he murmured. “You over the bastard yet?”

The question caught her off guard, and she spoke too abruptly and too defensively. “Yes!”

He was watching her eyes, reading her. “Ever see him?”

“No!” She forced herself to look Michael squarely in the eye.

“Ever talk to him?”

“No!” Her heart raced. But why was Michael probing so hard?

After a long moment of scrutinizing her, Michael’s hard face relaxed again, and she decided maybe she’d pulled it off.

“Good,” he said, his tone oddly controlled.

“Officer Nash, it’s late,” she stated.

“Michael,” he murmured.

She went to the front door and opened it. She smiled when he grabbed his notebook and got up.

He glanced around. Fortunately, the family photos didn’t seem to attract his attention. But he’d had a lot of time alone with them in the den. Still, he had no reason to be suspicious. But if he looked at Carmen’s pictures too closely…

“Nice house. Nice couch. And the pool. The pool’s great. You always did like to swim. I remember when we ran away together, how you wanted to go to that beach with all the palms and skinny-dip.”

She tensed again but said nothing.

“What about your art? You still draw everything you see?”

She shook her head.

“That’s too bad. You were good. I remember how you wanted to be a famous artist.”

His comment made her feel wistful. As a kid she’d seen her art as a way out of East Austin and the deadend kind of life Hazel had led, just as Michael had seen playing college football as his ticket to success. Both of them had been through so much. First they’d blamed each other for their fathers’ tragedy. Only with time had he seen that her pain was as great as his, and their mutual pain had caused them to form a bond. Then she’d gotten pregnant and made her decision.

Rosie felt the stirring of a vague, nostalgic longing. For what? It wasn’t as if things could have ever worked out between them.

She’d done what she’d thought best, and now they both, him unwittingly, had to live with the consequences. Period. There was no going back.

Unable to read her mind, he grinned and changed tack. “I notice this house belongs to one of your ex-fiancé’s ex-wives, Yolie Carver. The fast-food taco queen.”

He’d emphasized the name Carver, and Rosie tensed again.

“You’re not living with her just to cozy up to his family? You’re not still stalking…” His eyes darkened.

“You were leaving,” she reminded him, shakily. “Little girl found. Case closed.” She tried to make her voice light.

“Right. Just curious. You always did want to live high, princess.”

“Is that a crime?”

“Some things never change, I guess. Is that what you have against me? That I’m a cop? That I can’t afford a house like this? If you weren’t out for revenge, is that why you could bed me, but then be so anxious to get rid of me—”

“Why did you give up being a big pro football star?”

“You mean why’d I quit, just when I was set to rake in millions?”

“To become a cop?”

“You think I was a fool?”

“I didn’t say that.”

His daddy had been a cop. And he’d said he’d hated his daddy. Maybe being a cop was a calling.

Michael had moved up the ranks fast. She wondered if it was because he was good or because he knew the right people. Or because he was on the take like his daddy. Or maybe he felt he had to live down what his daddy had done.

“Why are you so damn set against me?” he demanded.

“Look, I don’t need this,” she whispered.

He pitched a business card onto Yolie’s gleaming coffee table.

She felt a strange, aching disappointment that she didn’t understand. As if her heart was breaking as it had all those years ago when she’d decided to dump him.

He’d ruined her life. Because of what had happened with him, she’d given up her art…and everything else she’d longed to have and be. Now she was a nobody, she, who’d been alive with ambition and so damned eager for a ticket on the glittering train car.

She picked up his business card and then set it down again.

“Well, you know where to find me, princess.”

As he walked toward her, invading her personal space as only he could, his eyes burned her neckline. She blushed and became annoyed that he could upset her just by getting too close.

“I just broke up with my girlfriend. Maybe I could take you…and Alexis, too, to Zilker Park or something. Maybe teach her to throw a Frisbee. Maybe ride the little train…You have my card.”

“I don’t think so.”

He brushed past her and stepped outside. She shot the bolt and leaned against the door, rasping in quick breaths as his brisk footsteps receded down the walk. For a long time, she just stood there, feeling as if she were melting on the outside but frozen in the middle.

He’d invited Alexis to the park. Why did that touch her? Had he felt some bond with the child? Did he suspect the truth, maybe, on some subconscious level?

Feeling a strange need to call him back, she rushed to her window and watched his lean form slide into a battered, blue Crown Victoria with a tall antenna on the trunk. Her heart caught. He looked so lonely out there in the dark.

Only after his engine started was she able to break the connection and make herself march to the kitchen. She was lusting for Michael, which meant she probably should indulge herself with some of Yolie’s birthday cake. But when she opened the fridge and saw the huge piece of chocolate cake, the red candle on top of it spelled Forty.

Teeny piece. Trust me.

She pulled the awful candle off and licked the length of it.

Delicious! Sinfully so!

As she threw it in the trash, she imagined herself trying to zip her forty-year-old butt into her new spandex jeans. When she returned to the fridge, she pushed the cake plate behind the milk carton and grabbed an apple. She went to the drawer where she kept her favorite Kasumi paring knife, which Pierce had bought her on a trip they’d made together to Japan.

It wasn’t there.

Frustrated, she dashed about the kitchen, jerking all the drawers open. Finally, she settled on a dull blade from Yolie’s block. Then she sliced the apple into bite-size chunks and poured herself a glass of water.

The knife would probably turn up where she least expected it.

After putting her glass and Yolie’s knife in the dishwasher, she went upstairs, undressed and got into bed with Alexis. She reached toward the lamp chain to switch on the light and then stopped herself. When her thoughts turned to Michael again, she felt weak and empty and strange.

Her heart pounded as she remembered how lonely he’d looked as he’d gotten in his car. He’d hit it off with Alexis. He’d wanted to take them to Zilker Park.

Feeling confused, she reached for Alexis and snuggled closer to her and tried to forget Pierce, Michael and her stressful night.

Forty. Life felt frighteningly too real. She wanted to be a kid again and believe she could have the fairy tale.

One thing was for sure.

She needed to put both her old flames in the past—where they belonged.

Four

When the phone rang at 5:00 a.m., Rosie’s first weary reflex was to reach for Alexis to reassure herself that she was still there. Only after stroking the little girl’s soft, warm shoulders and fingering her copper curls did she lift the receiver and turn on the light.

“Rose Marie!”

At her daughter’s angry shriek, Rosie jerked to a sitting position, both hands shaking. Carmen, who was twenty-one—make that an immature, mixedup and wild twenty-one—called her “Rose Marie” these days—to distance herself, she’d explained, and rather nastily. Carmen, who shared an apartment with two other dancers, never phoned her if she could avoid it. Obviously, this was an emergency.

Holding the phone, Rosie lay back, feeling groggy with exhaustion. How long had she slept? Two hours, maybe? She shut her eyes and tried to concentrate on whatever it was Carmen was saying.

“Hazel called me. She’s out of her mind again. Only worse than usual.”

Carmen had started calling her grandmother by her first name, too, which was really annoying to Hazel, especially since Rosie found herself doing it, as well.

“Why did Mother call you? Did she forget my number or something?”

“She says it was a bad birthday for you and she didn’t want to make it worse, and that besides, she only wants me, that’s she’s scared of you.”

Deep breath. “Scared of me?”

“She started hollering every time I started to call you. I couldn’t call until the doctor came. He’s in with her right now. She keeps saying you killed him.”

“Killed who? Did I miss something?”

“Pierce. She says somebody killed him tonight. You haven’t seen him or been around him lately, have you?”

A chill went through Rosie.

“Hey, Mom, please tell me you didn’t catch him jogging on your way home, and lose it again.”

She’d lost it all right.

So had Pierce. “That isn’t funny,” she whispered, her voice strangled.

Carmen heaved out a long sigh. “That’s like a huge relief. Huge. With Hazel wicking out all the time, the last thing I need is a homicidal maniac for a mother.”

“So, at least you still claim me.”

“As if I have a choice.”

“Excuse me?”

“If anything happened to you, who will take care of Alexis?”

“Where are you?” Rosie demanded.

“The E.R. Brackenridge Hospital. You’ve got to get over here. I can’t take much more.”

“Ditto.” It would be an understatement to say that Carmen’s many talents did not lie in the nursing field. “You’ll have to take care of Alexis then. And that means being patient and nice and—”

“Fine! Just get here. Another hour and I’ll be singing the loony tunes along with Hazel.”

Except for her slack mouth, which she licked constantly, and her wild eyes darting everywhere, Hazel looked good. She’d had a lot of work, as Pierce used to say, and such good work, she looked years younger than she was.

She was clutching a stuffed cat and dressed in skintight black slacks and a black, long-sleeved shirt emblazoned with the message, Keep Austin Weird in red. There were red cats all over it.

Her mother—the Cat Woman.

Hazel’s coppery-gold curls were bright and held back from her face with two red, sparkly, cat-shaped barrettes. She’d obviously had her hair and nails done recently, and her perfectly painted lips were the same bright shade as her nails and the cats on her T-shirt.

Like a lot of women of her generation, Hazel believed it was important to coordinate accessories. Maybe the lipstick and polish and the cats were a little too vivid for a woman her age, but then that was Hazel—a little bit gaudy—and into turning back the clock rather than aging gracefully, whatever the hell that cliché was supposed to mean.

So, why had Hazel snapped this time? Twice before she’d lost it after a bout of flu, coupled with sleepless nights.

“The date on my tombstone has to be March 2, 1945!” Hazel shouted from her gurney to no one in particular as Rosie pushed the door open, tugging a sleepy Alexis inside with her.

“That’s your birthday, Mom. And don’t shout. I’m right here.”

“Finally!” Carmen snapped. Her dark eyes that were too much like a certain cop’s flashed with irritation as she shot to her feet and yanked Alexis toward her.

“Stop it! You’re hurting me!” Alexis fought to pull loose.

“Don’t be such a whiny baby! We’re outta here!”

“Hello to you, too,” Rosie said. “And, hey, be nice to her. She’s a little girl.”

“I’m being way nicer than you and Hazel ever were to me! I’ll park her in front of the TV. Will that make you happy?”

“Ouch!” Rosie said, feeling a guilt pang. She had left Carmen with Hazel when she’d gone to college and when she’d worked. But she’d had to.

“Murder,” Hazel said. “I told you to kill that arrogant bastard. It’s about time you killed Carver!”

Still worrying about how Alexis would fare with Carmen, Rosie sat down by the gurney. “Mom, Pierce is fine, and I’d appreciate it if you don’t talk about him and me here…at the hospital. People might get the wrong idea.”

Hazel stared at the green walls. “When did I die?”

“You’re not dead. You’re going to be fine. You just need to try to calm down and get some rest. That’s why you’re here. When you’re better, you can go home.”

“You’re still in love with that motorcycle guy. He’s Carmen’s real daddy, isn’t he? Your daddy shot his daddy. It was an accident, you know.”

Rosie covered her face. How much did her mother know? She’d never told Hazel very much about Michael.

Families! Did all families share the obnoxious talent hers had of being able to ferret out its members’ best-kept secrets and then broadcast them to the universe?

“Where’s the doctor?” Hazel demanded, frowning in confusion.

“He’s already seen you.”

“When the TV said Pierce was stabbed tonight, I knew right off who killed him. It’s in your blood.”

Rosie sighed, struggling for professional patience. “Mom, Pierce is fine. I saw him earlier.”

“You’re twelve years old, Rosie. Mother committed suicide.” Hazel’s eyes rounded in fright and then in guilt. She gulped in a big breath and clamped both hands over her mouth. “Oops, I’m not supposed to tell that. She died in her sleep.”

“Mom, please. Just don’t talk anymore right now.”

“You’re still in love with that motorcycle guy. Is that why you stabbed Pierce?”

Rosie rubbed her brows with a sigh. “Mom, please…”

“Your father said murder’s as easy as dog shit, and he would know, now wouldn’t he? I’m who I am—I’m really me!”

Rosie popped her knuckles and stared up at the ceiling. She felt so helpless she wanted to scream. Get me out of here!

“It’s me who’s dead over there,” Hazel said, staring wildly past Rosie and pointing out the door at a figure on a gurney. Her brow knitted into rigid lines, which meant she was late for her botox shot. Then Hazel slid off the bed and began to pace in small, tight circles. “I have to get over there—so I’ll see you again.”

Thankfully, the nurse came in, and Hazel went still. “We have a bed for her upstairs,” the woman said in a kind, low tone. “Are you the sister?”

Grrr. “Daughter.”

Hazel dashed behind Rosie and squatted down, using Rosie as a shield between her and the nurse. “Is she going to close the casket? Tell her not to close the casket!”

“You’re not dead yet, Mom. You’re just here for a little rest.”

“Are you nuts? This place is a madhouse.”

Five minutes later Rosie was sitting across from the admissions clerk, a middle-aged woman with a pinched mouth and piercing eyes, who kept handing her endless stacks of papers to sign so her mother could be admitted.

“That lady over there is pointing at you,” the woman said, just as Hazel began to shriek again. “Is that your sister?”

“My mom,” she said through gritted teeth.

Her mother’s screams grew more frantic as an orderly wheeled her toward the bank of elevators at the end of the hall.

“I was a virgin and didn’t know what the hell was going on,” Hazel yelled. “Daddy had never had sex before, either. I was a nymphomaniac and screwed everything that came down the walk.”

When Hazel suddenly spotted Rosie, her voice grew louder. “Rosie—do you know what’s wrong with you? You’ve been frigid ever since you screwed that motorcycle guy! You need to learn about oral sex!”

“Mom!”

“My cats! Charlie and his friends! I’ve got to get home!”

“I’ll feed Charlie, Mother.”

Hazel struggled to get out of the wheelchair, but the orderly gripped her arm. At the use of force, Hazel’s voice grew more hysterical.

“My daughter killed Dr. Carver! She stabbed him! Because I told her to. And because she’s still in love with that motorcycle guy.”

Shuddering Rosie covered her eyes with her hands. When she looked up and peered through her fingers, the admissions clerk’s huge, magnified gaze was devouring her with what seemed to be excessive lurid interest.

Story of her life—being publicly humiliated by her family. Reason number one Pierce had dumped her for Anita and her girls, which he’d once described as aristocratic little ladies.

“I’m sorry,” Rosie whispered. “There’s not a word of truth in anything she’s said. She’s totally out of her mind.”

“Not about Dr. Carver, she’s not,” the clerk stated in a conspiratorial whisper.

“What?”

The woman’s thin brows lifted as she continued to study Rosie as if she were a microbe under a microscope. “I heard about his murder when I took my break. He’s dead. It’s a real shame, too. He had a lot of talent. We have lots of his patients here. He used to bring us candy all the time. Chocolate truffles. The best. Godiva.”

Rosie blew out some air and then fought for her next breath. The blood drained from her face. She almost felt as if she might faint. Pierce…dead?

He’d been horribly alive last night. He’d been his impossible, arrogant self. He couldn’t be dead!

He’d better not be, girlfriend. What if you were the last person to see him alive?

“You…you can’t be serious…about Dr. Carver…”

“He was stabbed in the face. Him, handsome as he was even at fifty. Multiple stab wounds. They say that except for the eyes, you wouldn’t know him. His head was practically severed from his body.”

Unconscious of the movement, Rose Marie sank her own head lower into her shoulders as if to protect it from being lopped off. “Oh, no. No. No.”

“Crime of passion,” the admissions clerk continued. “A woman did it, if you ask me.”

“Why do you say that?”

Lowering her voice even further, she said, “Dr. Carver had a real reputation with the young nurses around here. I’d see him come in here, smiling at the prettiest women. He thought he was God’s gift.”

Oh, my God…What if I really was the last person to see him alive…I mean, besides the real murderer? My bra and panties!

What if the police found them?

Why did I have to tell everyone last year every vengeful fantasy I had about him, including joking about wanting his head on a platter?

“Be careful what you wish for,” her daddy used to say before the tragedy, back when she’d been a kid and they’d still been pals. “Because it’ll come back and bite you in the butt. Every time, sugarbun.”

What was she going to do?

Five

“There’s damn sure no page-turner as good as reading about the vicious murder of your ex, is there?” Yolie said, fluffing her spiky blond hair.

Yolie’s big white house was located in a posh, central Austin neighborhood. Todd, her seventeen-year-old son by Pierce, occupied the pool house when he was in town, which wasn’t often, since he went to boarding school. Darius, her twenty-five-year-old stepson, Pierce’s son from Vanessa, his first wife, who’d killed herself, stayed in the pool house as well on the rare occasions when he was in Austin. A college dropout, he did a lot of drifting.

The sun beat down on the pool as Rosie swam frantic laps. Yolie avidly read the newspaper in a chaise longue next to the pool house, which the maid was readying because both boys had called and said they would be arriving soon due to their father’s demise.

Yolie looked up from the paper. “Hey, can you believe this? It says right here that Michael Nash is the detective in charge of the case. Wasn’t he the guy you used to date, the hottie who gave you that ticket last year?”

Yolie tossed a section of the newspaper onto the ground and grabbed another.

At the mention of Michael, Rosie felt sick and faint as she emerged dripping from the pool. She toweled off before sinking back onto her own chaise longue. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

“You damn sure got your wish. You should be a happy camper.”

“What?”

“Pierce getting himself murdered and all. It’s what you wanted.”

“No. How can you say that?”

“You do remember telling everybody you wanted his head on a platter?”

“I was joking.”

“Frankly, I loved the image.”

“Yolie! Listen to me! I went over there last night. To Pierce’s! And then Michael Nash…who must have already known about Pierce by then…answered the call about Alexis.”

Slowly, Yolie set the paper down and stared at her.

“Pierce called me. Not Jennifer. I…I let Harry think it was Jennifer.”

“You went over there? Were you out of your mind?”

“He owed me money.”

“That is so lame. That’s not why you went over there, and you know it.”

“He was alive and furious at me, but he was searching the house for an intruder when I left him.”

“What time did Nash show up over here?”

Rosie froze. “I…I think he already knew. I think that’s why he came. He kept asking me if I’d seen Pierce…And I lied.”

“You should talk to a criminal attorney first thing,” Yolie said in that maddeningly decisive way of hers—like there was no other opinion in the universe.

Despite the intense heat, Rosie shivered. “A criminal attorney?” She moaned. “But I didn’t do anything!”

“But the police—that Michael guy—obviously thinks otherwise. You were there last night. Lucky thing Joe Benson’s right next door.”

Joe Benson was both a criminal attorney and the stepfather of Jennifer.

Rosie flung the last of the articles about Pierce she’d devoured earlier onto the litter of newspapers that lay between her chaise longue and Yolie’s. At least there’d been no mention of a bra or panties being found at the scene.

Guilt struck her. She should be with her mother, not lying out by the pool under the leafy shade of the towering pecan trees, consumed with fear for herself.

How could all this be happening at once? Pierce calling her? Going over there and stupidly quarreling with him when she should have just walked out? His getting himself stabbed? Michael being involved? Not to mention Hazel’s having another breakdown?

Oh, God! This meant Michael would be back in her life big time. What if he found out about Carmen, too?

Rosie’s nerves began to jump. Her inner thermostat went haywire. Suddenly she felt as if she was freezing.

“So, tell me, why do I need to see Joe?”

“For advice, sweetie. Just for advice.”

“Which will cost a bundle.”

“You’d rather have free room and board in prison?”

Rosie’s chest went tight. “I really should go check on Hazel.”

“Forget Hazel. She’s got round-the-clock doctors and nurses.”

“They are not her daughter. She wants me. Only me.”

“You were the last person to see your murdered exboyfriend alive!”

“Except for whoever really killed him.”

“What exactly happened at Pierce’s?”

Rosie hissed in a deep breath. “Okay, like I told you, he called about eleven.”

“And you just had to run over there.”

“When I saw his name in the Caller ID window of my cell, I popped the rubber band on my wrist three times. I swear I tried not to answer. But Ticia Morgan had already told me Anita had left Pierce, and maybe I wanted to gloat a little.”

Yolie nodded almost wearily. “Ticia? John’s child bride?”

John Morgan was Pierce’s new plastic surgery partner.

“Yes. So, Ticia called yesterday to tell me that Anita had phoned her. Apparently, Anita was telling anybody who would listen that Pierce was an obsessive-compulsive, alcoholic monster.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Anita kept screaming that he’d threatened to send her daughters back to Guatemala because they wouldn’t follow all his nit-picky rules.”

“What did they do—wear their shoes in the house?”

“Yes, and they wanted credit cards, cell phones, driver’s ed lessons, television sets, and cars, too.”

“Hello? Why did he think they married him? Still, you should never have talked to Ticia. Or Pierce.”

“I know.”

“So, what did he want?”

“He wished me a happy birthday. He said he couldn’t stop thinking about me. He said Anita was a mistake and that he wanted me back.”

“He wanted you back? After you sent him that painting where you made his Mr. Willie look like a shriveled peanut, and his entire staff laughed when he opened it? He wanted you back? And you bought it?”

“Well, not at first, but he was totally sober.”

“You could tell that over the phone?”

“He said he wanted a new warehouse key. And I said he’d have to pay the rent. He said he would pay it.”

“This from the man who won’t pay for his wife’s kids? And you went over there?”

Rosie nodded miserably.

“And?”

“We drank some champagne.”

“Not good. How much?”

“He kept my flute full while he gave me a tour of the house, so I didn’t really count.”

“Did he touch you? Did anybody take anything off?”

Rosie flushed as she remembered their first kiss on the stairway beneath the chandelier. They’d still been dressed then. Even though their mouths and bodies had fit just like always, something had felt wrong to her. She’d kissed him harder, searching for what she’d once thought she’d had with him, but the soul-deep wrongness had persisted.

So why had she ended up naked in his upstairs guest bedroom? If it hadn’t been for her hearing that noise in the master bedroom and getting spooked, no telling what might have happened.

“Pierce refused to pay the rent, so I left.”

“That’s it? You were there an hour. No funny stuff?”

Rosie remembered quarreling with Pierce when she’d heard that sound in the next bedroom. She’d accused him of inviting her over to make Anita jealous. He’d sworn they were alone. Then she’d heard another sound and had grabbed her clothes and had made him go check the rest of the house. Rosie had left too fast to locate her underwear.

Rosie rubbed the back of her neck where the muscles had begun to tighten. Then she drew a deep breath.

“Okay. I get it. There was some funny stuff.”

“I didn’t go to bed with him!”

“Since he’s dead, I think you’d better get your story straight before you say something really stupid to Nash. Make an appointment with Joe. Besides being my next-door neighbor, he’s an old, old friend of mine.”

Translation: a favorite lover.

“You remember, he came to the Christmas block party.”

And got soused on the bourbon-laced eggnog and left a bruise the size of an apple on my left butt cheek when he pinched me.

“Just don’t talk to the police without him being there. He knows his stuff.”

“The police?” Rosie squeaked. “You really think they’ll…that Michael will think…that I…”

“I think it’s wise to consider worst-case scenario.”

Rosie swallowed. No sooner had Yolie said that than the image of her own slender neck on a chopping block sprang up in her mind.

“A high-profile murder like this? The cops have got to pin this on somebody, sweetie-pie. Who better than the girl who tried to mow him down with her Beamer? Don’t you think it’s odd that he died on the night you say he wanted you back?”

“Okay, he got me naked.” A shiver of remorse traced through Rose Marie. “I got cold feet, though. We had a fight. When I left, I…I couldn’t find my bra and panties.”

“So, they’re at Pierce’s?”

They stared at each other. Or the police have them was the thought that ran through their minds.

Rosie lay back down on the chaise longue and stared up at bright spots of blue through the trees. “I never thought people we actually know—respectable people—got themselves murdered. Handsome, wealthy plastic surgeons, not even jerks like Pierce, don’t get hacked to death by some knife-wielding maniac.”

“Too bad for Pierce the murderer didn’t read your little rule book.”

“This whole thing is making me sick.” Rosie shivered. At the same time, the more stories she read about his glamorous ex-wives, including Yolie, the more she began to feel ignored, invisible. It was a feeling she’d experienced growing up poor in East Austin. She hated it.

“I was his fiancée. But do I merit so much as a footnote?”

“Be careful what you wish for, sweetie-pie.” Yolie flipped a newspaper page and then sighed in disgust. “Where do these yokels get their information? ‘Austin has lost a self-sacrificing missionary…’ Self-sacrificing, my ass. Those surgeries he did in Central America on all those kids with cleft palates were all about his precious image.”

“You don’t know that for sure. I went with him on lots of those trips.”

“And you never doubted his motives?”

“He was a doctor with valuable skills. I just assumed—”

“When are you ever going to wake up? Pierce was so aware of appearances,” Yolie continued. “When I started gaining the weight, he was on me all the time about it, taunting me about other women, wanting me to do liposuction. All he ever cared about was making money and getting his name on the front page while squiring some stick-thin stacked bimbo around.”

Very conscious of her C-cup boobs that Pierce had enhanced, Rosie glared at her.

“Sorry.”

“He taunted me because of my low-class background,” Rosie said.

“Looks like he finally played his little games on the wrong woman.”

“So, who do you think killed him?” Rosie asked.

“Lots of people probably weren’t exactly thrilled with him. But to kill a person with a knife, you’ve got to get up close…and get ugly.”

“There was that guy who sued him because he wasn’t thrilled with his penile implant.”

“Not to mention Pierce had four wives, and God knows how many other women. And that’s just his sex life, which wasn’t really all that hot, now was it? But who stabs a lousy lay? I mean, why bother?”

Yolie’s analysis was making Rosie increasingly uncomfortable.

“And then do you ever wonder why Pierce was so hard to get to know?” Yolie continued. “Remember how he used to have to control every damn conversation? When we went out to dinner, we always had to discuss some bullshit story he’d read in the New Yorker instead of real life. Intelligent conversation, he called it. Whatever it was, it was impersonal as hell, and he had to be in control. I was married to him for a lot of years, and I don’t think I ever really knew him. Do you ever wonder if there was anything there…beneath his external glamour? It was scary, in a way.”

“What are you saying?”

“You don’t just get murdered for no reason. What if there was some dark secret in his past? Or a secret vice or addiction? I mean, why was he always as closedup as a damn clam—if he wasn’t hiding something?”

“That’s so melodramatic.”

“Hey, getting your head nearly chopped off is pretty melodramatic.” Yolie stabbed a fingernail at a front-page article. “It says right here he grew up in Beaumont. He never said a damn thing about Beaumont to me. Did he ever talk about his childhood to you?”

Rosie shook her head. But then, she’d never talked about her childhood, either.

“So, he’s either a blank disc or there are plenty of secrets on the old hard drive,” Yolie said. “He had a quick temper and a sharp tongue and the endearing quality of abusing his women when he was in a certain mood…at least verbally. That we know. Then there’s the drinking. Not to mention his mysterious disappearances.”

“Are you going to the memorial service?”

“I’ve got a son by the arrogant bastard and no alibi. Of course I’m going! In situations such as these, appearances are everything.”

“Alibi?” Rosie’s heart jumped to her throat and began to thump.

“The cops are going to want to know where everybody was if his killer doesn’t walk into the police station and hand them the bloody knife. Except for talking to you on my mobile, you and I’ve got zip for an alibi.”

Rosie shivered so hard her teeth chattered. “At least you weren’t actually there! You’ve been happily divorced from him for years. That’s hardly a motive.”

“I hated the son of a bitch. Does that count?”

“I, on the other hand, ran out of his brilliantly lit mansion braless and pantyless on the night he died. Anyone, a neighbor, a jogger, might have seen me. What if he or she misinterpreted what he saw? What if the cops find my bra and panties?”

“Then your underwear is hanging out in plastic Baggies. Call Joe. First thing Monday.”

Feeling too hot, Rosie got up and dived into the pool. She didn’t come up until her lungs were burning for air.

If Michael had her underwear in plastic Baggies and he found out about Carmen, which he would if he hung around at all, he’d nail Rosie just to get revenge.

Unless she solved the murder for him.