Copper Lake Confidential

chapter 8



Saturday was the longest day of Stephen’s life, or so it seemed. Time, thankfully, had taken the edges off some of the other longest days. Everything seemed easier in retrospect.

But he wasn’t interested in retrospect. He just wanted this evening—at least, this part of it—to be over so he could say good-night to Kiki, go home, change clothes and see Macy. Kiki wouldn’t even mind if she knew what was going through his head. So far, she’d spent the entire time doing some sort of weird stalking dance around Ty Gadney, one of her fellow detectives. From what Stephen could tell, she and Gadney had dated for a while, breaking up, getting back together and breaking up again. Apparently, the last breakup had been final, at least in Gadney’s mind. Not so in Kiki’s.

Stephen was pretty sure her mind was a very strange place.

They’d been at the party thirty minutes without so much as a glimpse of Marnie and her date. Had his sister lied about coming to the party to get him to bring Kiki? Had she been stood up, or had there never been a date in the first place? And who in Copper Lake could Marnie possibly consider—

“There’s your sister.” Kiki gestured with her wineglass, nearly sloshing the liquid over the rim, and gave a high wave with her free scarlet-tipped fingers. “Robinson! Over here!”

Stephen turned to see Marnie just inside the double doors. He blinked, did a double-take. She wore a dress. When had he last seen her in a dress? High school graduation? Bigger surprise: it was red. She was about as color-friendly as he was. If his closet was white, khaki and black, hers was brown, black and gray. Even bigger surprise: her shoes weren’t the score-one-for-comfort-zero-for-style clunkers he’d thought was all she owned but sandals. They were high heels. With thin straps. And also red.

And the biggest surprise of all: he recognized the man holding her hand. The great-grandson or -nephew of the elderly sisters who lived down the road from him. The long-haul trucker. How the hell had they even met? Marnie knew only police officers, lawyers and the occasional medical personnel who got involved in cases. Outside of that bunch, she didn’t know anyone alive and breathing besides Stephen.

“You clean up well, Robinson,” Kiki said when Marnie and her date joined them. She thrust out her hand to the man. “I’m Katherine Isaacs.”

“John Gutierrez.” He shook hands with her, then turned to Stephen. “I’ve seen you down the road. My aunts talk about you a lot.”

Stephen was still having trouble comprehending that Marnie was dating a truck driver. He really wasn’t a snob. She’d just never shown any interest in a man who didn’t have a string of letters after his name.

Marnie narrowed her gaze at him, and Kiki slapped him on the arm. “Jeez, say hello to the guy, Noble.”

Great. Kiki, queen of the bold, brash and insensitive, had to correct his behavior. That was just wrong.

“Sorry. I’m Stephen.” He shook hands then shoved both of his in his pants pockets. “I like that color, Marnie.”

Her gaze flickered to the trucker. “John suggested it. It’s...” She ran her fingers over a bit of fabric. “Red.”

Stephen grinned. He knew what she’d wanted to say: around 640 nanometers. She had always preferred to identify colors by their wavelength or spectrum. “It looks good on you.”

She glanced down at herself. “Yes, it does.”

“Hey, Noble, I’ll be back.” Kiki moved into the crowd with no stealth or, as far as that went, grace. She’d spotted Ty Gadney alone for a moment, and he was in her sights.

“Does she call everyone by their last name?” John asked.

“Only those not in her social circle.” Marnie immediately lost interest in her friend-of-a-friend. “I understand you’re spending time with Mark Howard’s widow.”

Stephen blinked. “And how did you hear that?”

“Never discount the effectiveness of gossip.”

“I work with real live people and I haven’t heard any gossip.”

Marnie shrugged. “The people you work with like you. They’re not going to gossip where you can hear.”

With little-brother sympathy, he wondered if the people she worked with didn’t like her. More likely, they didn’t know what to make of her.

“Mark Howard.” John frowned. “Isn’t he the guy—”

“I’d like a drink, John. Bottled water.”

Marnie never meant to be rude. She just saw no point in continuing with a conversation that had lost interest for her. Apparently, John knew her well enough to understand that because he grinned as if the interruption didn’t faze him. “With the cap still sealed. You want anything, Stephen?”

“No, thanks.”

They both watched until John disappeared into the crowd, then Stephen turned his gaze on Marnie and waited until she looked at him. He could ask what John had been about to say but figured he already knew: Isn’t he the guy who shot himself at the fancy plantation house? And though there were details Stephen didn’t know, he’d resisted Google and asking Marnie so far. He could wait for Macy to tell him herself.

“So...how long have you been seeing this guy?”

Marnie’s cheeks turned pink. “I assume by ‘seeing,’ you mean dating. This is actually our first date, though he spends most of his nights in town at my house.”

It was an evening for surprised blinks. He would probably need eyedrops before it was over. “He’s a truck driver.”

She didn’t take that the wrong way. He’d known she wouldn’t. “With degrees from Yale, Stanford and Princeton.”

“Wow. And most guys just take the commercial truck driver’s course.”

“He wasn’t happy with the confining nature of his life. He likes being on the road.”

“And he likes you.”

Her smile was faint and stilted. Thirty-seven years of practice had never succeeded at making it look natural. “What’s not to like? I’m intelligent and conversant on numerous subjects. I hold an interesting position in the lab. And I look good in red.”

“You do.” He gazed across the room and spotted Kiki cozy in a corner with Ty. “It’s not fair, you know. You’re here with someone you like and he likes you back, and I’ve got Detective Scary Pants.”

Macy’s nickname for Kiki actually made Marnie laugh. “I dare you to call her that when she’s within striking range. She considers Kiki a bad enough burden to bear.”

“I don’t accept life-threatening dares.” Stephen nodded to a couple of Calloways and their wives who said hello on their way by, saw his boss, Yancy, across the room and Zia with one of her brothers and Sophy Marchand strolling through open doors onto the veranda. “I have been spending a lot of time with Macy Howard,” he said without thinking.

“How is she?”

“She’s a little uneasy being back here.”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

An interesting comment from a woman who dealt with death and violence on a regular basis, one who found it difficult to relate to people on an emotional level. Again he resisted asking her to spill everything she knew about Macy and Mark.

“Gossip says she’s donating Fair Winds to be a museum and leaving town. Where is she going?”

That confirmed the identity of at least one of the gossips, not that he’d needed confirmation. If there was a story to be told, it was a sure bet Louise Wetherby would be telling it. Even if it wasn’t true. Maybe especially if it wasn’t true. “She hasn’t decided yet. And that applies to donating the home, too.”

“I feel sorry for her,” Marnie said, though the matching emotion was absent from her voice. “It wasn’t her fault her husband was the way he was, but people still included her in the talk. ‘She must have known, she must have suspected.’” She scoffed. “As if living with someone means you know what’s going on in his head.”

Stephen’s jaw clenched. It was getting harder not to ask. Hell, River’s Edge was filled with cops, lawyers and city officials. Probably every single person in the room knew way more about Macy’s life than he did.

But he was the only one who’d kissed her. Who knew how she tasted. How she felt. He was sure of that in his soul.

John returned with two bottles of water, one wrapped in a paper napkin for Marnie. He was good-looking, about forty, with glints of silver in his brown hair. He wore his suit better than Stephen did, and the calluses on his hands, as well. A long-haul trucker with degrees from three of the top universities in the country and obvious affection for Marnie. Stephen didn’t need to know anything else to like the man.

“Are you gone most of the time?” Stephen asked. “I was just thinking the other day that I hardly ever see you.”

“I’m here three or four days each month, but I spend most of that time with Marnie.”

“I had no clue.”

“We aren’t exactly hiding it. We have limited time. We prefer not to share it with anyone else.”

Marnie spoke up. “Just as you would rather be spending your evening alone with Macy than here with all these people.” She gestured around, then her faint smile returned. “Here comes Detective Scary Pants.” She finished with a soft snort of amusement.

Kiki was on her way back, making a beeline for him, and she didn’t look happy. He looked behind him. Ten feet to the hallway, another ten to the front door. He could claim an emergency call from the clinic.

Nah, she probably had her service revolver in her purse and would suggest putting the poor critter out of its misery.

“Come on, Noble, we’re outta here.” Ignoring Marnie and John, she dozed her way to the door, where she shot him a look that could kill over her shoulder.

“You’re getting lucky, man,” John said.

Stephen stared at him, both dismayed and turned off by the mere idea.

“She’s getting you out of here early,” John explained. “Another guy’s got her panties in a wad, and she’s not going to be asking you to help her out of them. You get to go home without her.”

“Noble!”

Stephen glanced at her, arms crossed, gaze narrowed, then at John—three prestigious university degrees? Panties in a wad?—then touched Marnie’s shoulder. “See you. Nice to meet you, John.”

By the time he caught up with Kiki, she was striding through the wrought-iron gate onto the sidewalk. He’d parked two blocks to the north after dropping her off at the entrance so she wouldn’t have to walk that far in her killer heels. Now she waited as if she expected him to pick her up.

“I’ll get the car,” he said, pausing beside her.

To his surprise, she turned. “I’ll walk with you.”

They’d covered a block in silence before he hesitantly asked, “What’s up with you and Ty?”

“Ty’s an idiot. He thinks we need a break.”

“I’m sorry.”

She scowled at him. “You’re an idiot if you think he’s getting it. Like I told him, it was a mutual decision to start dating. It has to be a mutual decision to stop. I don’t acknowledge his breakup.”

“I didn’t know you could refuse to acknowledge a breakup.”

“Of course you can.” Though she didn’t add an insult, her tone made clear there was another idiot implied. “There are two people in every relationship. Each one has equal say in what happens. You can’t start a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to be in it, and you can’t walk away from someone who doesn’t want to end it.”

Stephen grimaced, grateful she wasn’t looking at him. He was pretty sure she didn’t tolerate people who grimaced at her logic. “Substitute ‘marriage’ for ‘relationship,’ and you’re talking about divorce. And I’m pretty sure ‘breakup’ is the relationship equivalent of divorce.”

She stopped beside his car and gave him a scornful look from head to toe. “No wonder you’re single. Let me explain it in terms you can understand. Ty has commitment issues. We date. We have sex. We get intimate. He backs off, breaks up, wants to play the field. He gets over his fears, we get back together, we repeat. It’s our routine. But this time I’m going to get a different outcome. We’re going to deal with his issues, and I’m going to get a commitment.”

When she waited pointedly for a response, he said, “Oh.” It was the best he could manage.

But thirty minutes later, sitting at the island in Macy’s kitchen, he said what he really thought. “If Ty has any sense, the only commitment she’ll get is an involuntary one into a high-security loony bin for stalking him. She’s not only scary, she’s nuts.”

The spoon Macy was holding clattered to the floor, and she ducked to pick it up. It clattered again when she dropped it into the sink. When she turned, her smile was wan, her eyes shadowed. “From what I’ve heard, Ty Gadney is a smart man and a good detective. It probably is their routine to break up, get back together, break up again. My college roommate and her boyfriend were like that. We actually kept a chart on the refrigerator door. It had a green magnet for On and a red one for Off. I swear, sometimes it was the only way she could keep track. They got married after graduation.”

“And let me guess—they lived happily ever after?”

“Nope. Divorced at least three times in six years. They can’t live together, can’t live apart. I’m glad I’m not her.”

He slid off the stool and circled the island to slide his arms around her. “So am I, because I don’t believe in messing with a married woman, but I sure do like messing with you.” After brushing his mouth across hers, he quietly added, “I missed you.”

She didn’t say anything, but the squeeze of her fingers on his arms was comment enough.

* * *

Commitment. High-security loony bin. Nuts.

The words had made it almost impossible for Macy to breathe. Her first commitment had been voluntary and, for all its apparent openness, the hospital had definitely been high-security. It was the place where wealthy people went to rehab, recuperate and regain their sanity.

But she had not been nuts.

“You’re tense. Have a bad day?” His hands kneaded slowly along her spine, making her groan when they reached her shoulders.

“The day wasn’t so bad. I had trouble sleeping last night.” She’d tried to read, to sing herself to sleep with Clary’s favorite tunes. She’d paced the bedroom until her legs ached. She’d even moved the chair from the door, lifted Clary into her arms and searched the entire house for anything out of place. She’d wound up both physically and emotionally exhausted and had found nothing. Just that damn cologne bottle.

She was not nuts.

“Have you tried a sleeping pill?” Stephen asked, still rubbing knots from stiff muscles.

“I’ve taken them before. After Mark died. They knocked me out. I couldn’t wake up for a few hours, and when I did wake, I was groggy and tired. I also found out I was getting out of bed in the middle of the night and doing things—making coffee, calling people, carrying on entire conversations, even falling—and I couldn’t remember any of it. I couldn’t take care of Clary like that.” Not that she’d been taking care of Clary at the time.

“Clary could spend the night in the guesthouse.”

Adamantly she shook her head.

“I could spend the night here and make sure nothing happened.”

The offer sent sudden heat through her that eased her muscles even more. She raised her head and smiled at him. “Why would I want to be unconscious if you were spending the night?”

For a long time he looked at her with such intensity, such need. She recognized it because it was in her, too, sharp and edgy and restless. She hadn’t felt such complicated need in so long. For months all she’d worried about was gaining and maintaining control over the depression and anxiety that had crippled her, about being home again, being normal again, being a mom again. She hadn’t given much thought to being a woman again.

Timing was everything, and her family’s was exquisite. Just as he started to lean toward her, just as she stretched onto her toes to reach him, the back door flew open to the accompaniment of giggles.

“We’re not looking,” Clary and Anne chanted as they came into the room, though of course they were peeking through the spaces between the fingers covering their eyes.

“We just came for ice cream stuff,” Clary said, pretending to stumble around blindly before crashing into their legs. “Hey, Mama. Hey, Dr. Stephen.”

“Don’t mind us,” Anne instructed. “We’re just borrowing scoops and hot fudge sauce and...did I forget something, Clary?”

“AnAnne! We can’t have ice cream sundaes without ice cream!”

Smiling, Macy put a few steps between her and Stephen. “When you called, we’d just decided we needed ice cream to top off all that barbecue. Okay, ladies, you can open your eyes now.” She gestured to the tray she’d been fixing when Stephen dropped the nuts bomb. “I’ve got scoops, hot fudge, caramel, whipped cream and pecans.”

Both Clary and Anne danced around the kitchen, arms over their heads. “I scream, you scream, we both scream for ice cream. Yay!”

Stephen was laughing at their antics, and Macy couldn’t help but do the same. She adored her daughter’s silliness and her sister-in-law’s ability and willingness to dance and sing along with her. Anne had been such a blessing for their entire family.

As Stephen picked up the tray, Macy took two cartons from the freezer, then they headed for the guesthouse. Clary claimed Stephen’s attention, leaving Macy with Anne, who leaned close. “Do you wish we’d waited five minutes?”

“Nah. Well, maybe.”

Anne’s snort was soft. “If we’d been even two minutes slower, I’d be explaining to your daughter why Dr. Stephen’s tongue was down Mama’s throat and his hands were inside her clothes.”

As they passed the pool, serene and still in the cool night, Macy sighed. “Hmm. I wish you had waited.”

Impulsively Anne reached across and hugged her. “I like this one, Macy. He’s so much better for you than Mark.”

Macy totally agreed, but something perverse—a sense of fairness?—forced her to point out, “You didn’t even know Mark.”

“Hello? Serial killer? Suicide? Scandal? Months at the resort?” That was how Anne always referred to the hospital. It sounded so much better, she said, especially when telling people where her sister was. Her voice lowered even more. “The baby. That bastard cost you so much, Macy. He wasn’t worth any of it.”

Macy’s heart twinged at the mention of the baby, but she breathed it away and said, “He was worth Clary.”

Anne watched Clary skip up the steps and open the guesthouse door for Stephen, and she nodded. “He was definitely worth Clary. But the cute little nerd vet is so much better in every other way. And think of the cute little nerd kids he can give you.”

Cute little nerd. Not at all the way Macy would describe Stephen. Oh, he was certainly cute, if “cute” also meant “gorgeous.” Little, nah. He was tall enough and broad enough of shoulder to make any woman feel secure. Nerd? Well, maybe. Those glasses, the perennially uncombed hair and the limited wardrobe did tend to push him toward that classification.

But he was so much more. Sweet. Sincere. Real. There were no horrifying secrets hiding in his past.

Inside Brent scooped ice cream into dishes while Anne set up a topping bar. Declining the extra calories, Macy made herself comfortable on one of the couches, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet beneath her. Clary had climbed onto a chair dragged to the counter and was giving Stephen directions for the perfect hot fudge sundae covered with whipped cream.

For only the second time all day, Macy was relaxed. She could breathe without struggle. The common denominator: Stephen. She was falling hard for him, and it wasn’t fair. While he might not have any nasty secrets in his past, she had plenty in hers. He was fine with having a fling with the needy widow down the street, but didn’t he deserve to know before he had one with a serial killer’s widow? A woman who’d spent months in a loony bin? A woman who’d been so mentally fragile over her husband’s crimes and the loss of her baby that she couldn’t even deal with her baby who still lived?

Didn’t he have a right to decide whether to commit, even for one night, to a woman who might not be sane?

So much for relaxation and struggle-free breathing.

Stephen settled on the sofa next to her and placed Clary’s bowl on the coffee table. When he leaned back, he offered Macy his bowl. “Sure I can’t tempt you?”

She glanced at the chocolate chip ice cream nearly covered by caramel sauce and pecans and shook her head. “Not with that, you can’t.” In the past few minutes, her stomach had knotted enough that nothing more substantial than water could possibly get through.

Kiki Isaacs came up in the conversation, with Brent agreeing that she was stalker-crazy. Anne delicately licked a dollop of hot fudge from her spoon, then gestured with it. “Of course you can refuse to accept a breakup. It happens all the time. People fight, one of them says it’s over, the other one goes on with life as usual and before long it’s all forgotten. If this man keeps getting back together with her after he breaks up with her, what is she supposed to think? You know, it’s like the boy who cried wolf. Sooner or later, she stops believing he means what he says.”

“The boy who cried wolf was fibbing, and then there was a real wolf,” Clary announced. “That’s why I don’t fib. I don’t like wolves.”

Macy brushed her hand across Clary’s baby-soft hair.

“Maybe the guy’s afraid of her,” Brent said. “She’s nuts, and she carries a gun.”

“So does he,” Anne pointed out.

“Yeah, but being sane, he doesn’t want to use it against his wacko girlfriend.”

Macy’s nerves tightened before she realized that thought of her was nowhere in Brent’s mind. He wasn’t censoring himself or stumbling around trying to avoid words like nuts and wacko because he didn’t think of her that way. Affection flooded through her, then immediately dissipated. How quickly would his opinion change if he knew about the incidents this past week?

“Maybe she does come on a little strong,” Anne conceded, then she smiled a slow, warm, teasing smile. “Just for the record, sweetheart, I don’t accept breakups, either. When I said till death do us part, I meant it.”

“So did I.” Brent leaned over to kiss her, making Clary drop her spoon and clamp her hands over her eyes.

Mark apparently had meant his vows to last until death, as well. Heavens, so had Macy. She wondered if he’d ever imagined that would be only seven years. Had he known he would stop taking other people’s lives by taking his own? Had he worried how it would affect her? Had he cared?

The doctors had said he’d been capable of normal emotions. That he could have loved her and Clary as much as he’d claimed and still have the compulsion to kill. They hadn’t been able to say with as much certainty what had driven him to kill. Surely there was more to it than a memorable way to spend visits with Grandfather. There must have been something wrong in his brain, some damaged area that made murder acceptable for more reasons than the fact that his grandfather had done it.

When the leftover ice cream had melted in their bowls and Clary was running in hyper circles around the room, Macy and Stephen said good-night, and he gave Clary a piggyback ride to the house.

“Let’s go see Scooter,” she suggested as she ducked her head to get through the door.

“It’s too late. Scooter’s in bed asleep. That’s where you’re going to be in fifteen minutes.” Macy’s estimate was hopeful. Sometimes bath and bedtime ran closer to an hour, and she really didn’t want this to be one of those times.

“I’m not tired, Mama. Dr. Stephen, let’s watch TV. Do you like cartoons?”

“I do, but not at bedtime.” He grasped her by the waist and swung her to the floor.

Propping both hands on her hips, she scowled at him. “Quit saying it’s bedtime. I’m not sleepy!”

“Do dogs ever get this cranky when you try to send them to bed?” Macy whispered as she passed him.

“Are you kidding? They happily sleep twenty hours a day if you let them.”

Twenty hours of sleep sounded good to her at the moment. Maybe tonight would be more restful than the past few. “Tell Dr. Stephen good-night, then we have to get you into the bath.”

Clary’s eyes filled with tears, and her lower lip trembled. “I don’t wanna! I want to watch cartoons and play with Scooter! I don’t want a stupid bath and I don’t wanna go to stupid—”

“Clara.” Macy didn’t know if it was the look on her face, her tone or the use of her daughter’s given name, but that one word, said exactly like that, was usually enough to make Clary go silent. “Tell Dr. Stephen good-night.”

She scowled up at him again and automatically repeated, “Good night, Dr. Stephen.”

“Good night, Clary.”

“And tell Scooter good-night since I didn’t get to see him at all today.”

Stephen hid a smile. “I will.”

She started down the hall toward the stairs. “I didn’t get to watch cartoons, either, or go swimming or do anything fun at all, and now I have to go to bed when I’m not even tired.”

“Go in my bathroom and brush your teeth,” Macy called after her. “I’ll be there in just a minute.”

For a little girl, Clary made a remarkable amount of noise on the carpeted stairs. When the sound faded, Macy looked at Stephen, who’d given in to his amusement. “She’s a funny kid.”

It was a simple comment, but it warmed her heart. She’d known a lot of people during her marriage who weren’t as taken with children, neither their own nor anyone else’s. None had carried it to the extreme of Miss Willa, but there’d been definite boundaries—including nannies and boarding schools—to keep kids at a distance.

“I know you’ve had a long day, but...”

When she trailed off, he grinned. “I’m not tired, and I don’t want to watch cartoons or play with Scooter.”

She smiled back. “Can you hang around while I get her bathed and tucked? I’ll do it as quick as I can.”

“Sure. I’ll be—” He glanced around. The family room sofa was still filled with boxes, and the living room was so obviously not comfortable. “Out back. By the fountain. Is that okay?”

The thought of having that privacy with him, with the accompaniment of the bubbling and splashing of the fountain, was lovely. She’d hoped when she’d installed it that it would prove to be an intimate, romantic space to share, but Mark hadn’t cared for it. Still, it was all the way across the yard. Distance and the fountain could obscure any sound Clary might make. Any sound an intruder might make.

She gazed up the stairs, and Stephen must have caught it. “On the patio. Right by the door. Okay?”

Her smile came automatically, filled with gratitude for his understanding. “I’ll meet you there.”