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Now, Daniel’s survey of the family complete, Abby’s brother-in-law nodded toward Shea. “Good of you to come, Ben.”
The detective inclined his head. “Abby suggested it.”
Beside him, Abby said nothing. She wasn’t about to admit that she hadn’t invited him as the investigating officer, that in fact this was a trial run for a real date. That she was trying to decide whether her original assessment of Ben Shea was accurate.
Could she have a good time with the guy? Or would he be getting serious before he broke off the first kiss?
Really, it would be too bad if she had to tell him to get lost before that kiss. Darned if he didn’t look even better out of uniform than he did in. Faded jeans hugged long, powerful muscles in his thighs. A sage-green T-shirt got just as familiar with the planes of his chest and solid biceps. Nice neck, too, Abby thought, sneaking a glance. Tanned, smooth, strong without being bullish. Assertive jaw, sexy mouth, icy clear eyes, and cheekbones prominent enough to cast shadows on his clean-shaven cheeks.
Kissing him would be fine. Better than fine, she suspected. Maybe too fine, which was her biggest fear. Only once had she come close to falling in love, and what a mistake that had been! Jack Murray had been using her. She’d been barely out of high school, but she had spent years seething at the knowledge that she’d been a Meg substitute.
No, once was enough. Giving a man the upper hand—that was scary stuff. She didn’t need it.
“Abby?”
She started, to find that her entire family—and Ben—were staring at her.
“What?” she said.
Daniel lifted his brows in that way he had. “Why don’t you get this rolling? Tell us what you found.”
“And make it snappy.” Renee chimed in. “The turkey breast is coming out of the oven in fifteen minutes, whether we’re done talking or not.”
“Well, I don’t know what you think this will accomplish, but here goes.” Succinctly, Abby described the pickup, the lack of fingerprints, the blood and the short-lived fire.
“Maybe this guy was just dumb,” suggested Scott McNeil, Meg’s big auburn-haired husband. General manager of the ski area, he knew the great American public. “Believe me, dumb is not uncommon.”
“But why would he set a fire to burn up upholstery soaked with deer blood?” Meg asked, lines of worry puckering her forehead. She sat with her hands splayed on her belly, swollen with a baby due in a few weeks.
Daniel leaned forward. “Maybe because he took it out of season. He was afraid somebody would see the deer if he slung it in the bed of the pickup.”
“He could have just put a tarp over it,” Renee said. “Plastic garbage sacks. Anyway, the truck was stolen. He was abandoning it. Why bother with the fire?”
Forestalling Abby, Ben raised his voice. “You’re missing the point. None of this was casual. Whoever this guy is, he worked hard to get his hands on those license plates. There had to be a reason for that. A message. He’s saying, ‘See how easy I can get to you?’ And when part of that message is a whole hell of a lot of blood, I’d have to take that as a threat. Unless anybody has a better idea.”
No one did. He’d silenced them. They’d wanted to believe there might be logical explanations for what Abby had found yesterday—explanations that had nothing to do with the Barnard or Patton families. But Abby agreed with Ben: why waste time and hope?
A muscle jumping in his cheek, Daniel spoke up. “I talked to my mother again. With one exception, she’s never had an enemy. Some of you know she was raped years ago by a ranch hand.”
Will jerked. Obviously he hadn’t known. “Aunt Shirley was raped?”
His mother touched his arm. “Pretty crummy. huh?”
Looking disconcertingly like Jack, Will frowned. “But why didn’t I know?”
“Because it was her right to tell people or not,” Meg said gently.
“Oh.” The tangled emotions of a teenager flitted across his face, but at last he nodded.
Daniel continued. “Dad beat the crap out of the guy and threw him off the place. Mom didn’t want to testify. When this came out three years ago, we found out the bastard is in the Washington State penitentiary at Walla Walla for another rape. After you called yesterday—” he looked at Abby “—I had Renee check on him. Harris. Theon Josiah Harris. He’s out. They released him a year ago.”
“But what’s the connection? It doesn’t make sense,” Renee said persuasively. “Shirley didn’t prosecute. Why would he come back? He has nothing to get revenge for.”
Ben propped his elbows on the table. “Unless this guy has some reason to think she tried to get him. Maybe influenced a judge to give him the top end of the sentencing range.”
Will, with the gruff voice of a man, said, “But if Aunt Shirley never told anyone...”
No wonder he didn’t sound like a kid! Abby thought. Will Patton was used to cop talk. Murder and rape weren’t big-screen fun and games to this kid.
His mother shook her head. “Let’s face it, none of this is exactly sane. Going to all the trouble to steal those license plates out of a locked garage here on the ranch, then killing a deer just for the blood... Things fester, when someone is in prison long enough.”
“I don’t believe this has anything to do with Shirley.” Abby hated to be the one to remind them, but somebody had to. “This guy may have gone to a lot of trouble to steal the plates off her car, but that was nothing compared to finding a pickup that looked exactly like Daddy’s and stealing it.”
“That could be coincidence,” Renee said, but her voice held no conviction.
Abby shook her head, but said no more. What was the point?
Emily abandoned her puzzles, pieces scattered all over the floor, and trotted into the dining room. “Mama! I wanna sit on your lap.”
Meg gave her a distracted smile. “Sure, punkin, but I don’t have very much lap right now.”
“Why don’t you come and sit on Daddy’s?” Scott pushed back from the table and lifted the little girl into the air. Over her happy squeal, he said, “Seems to me we can’t do anything just yet except be extra careful.”
“Maybe nothing will come of this.” Meg almost sounded convinced.
Abby could hardly believe big sister Meg, the cop, could sound so foolishly optimistic. The bad guys would all go away. Why worry?
Was it marriage or pregnancy that had blunted her wary intelligence?
“Ben’s still hoping to find an eyewitness,” Abby said.
“Nobody is invisible,” Shea commented. “I might get lucky.”
A few nods all around, and Renee said, “If you’ll all excuse me, I’d better work on dinner.”
Abby stood, too, shaking her head at her older sister who was making “getting up” motions. “No, you stay put, Meg. Watching you on your feet makes me tired. I’ll help Renee.”
In the kitchen, Renee turned on the burner under a pan of green beans. “What’s the point of a threat if someone doesn’t understand it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Abby said with a sigh. “These rolls go in the oven?” At her sister’s nod, she ran cold water over the paper bag. “Maybe one of us is supposed to understand the threat. You ever arrested anyone for something having to do with blood on the seat or...” Knowing even that much sounded weak, she ran out of ideas. “Heck, maybe he’s a poacher who’s just trying to tell us he can kill a deer anytime he wants.”
“With my mother-in-law’s license plates on the pickup he stole up in the Dalles just so he could abandon it here?”
“Maybe it broke down.” Now she was the one trying to find an out, Abby thought ruefully.
“Oh, jeez.” Oven mitt dangling from her hand, Renee looked at her sister. “It’s all too tangled, isn’t it? Too...purposeful.”
“Yeah.” Abby stirred the green beans unnecessarily. “But what’s the purpose?”
Her sister actually shivered. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want to know.”
Abby rubbed the goose bumps on her own forearms. “Worse yet is the fact that we’re going to have to find out. One way or the other.”
Renee didn’t answer. She removed the turkey breast from the oven, popped the bag of rolls in, and took up the carving knife.
“I don’t see how Meg can have three weeks to go,” she said as if they’d been discussing their older sister all along. “I wish the doctor had done an ultrasound.”
“You’re not thinking twins?” Abby asked, shocked out of her absorption in the case.
“She’s awfully big.”
“Wouldn’t the doctor have noticed two heartbeats?”
“I don’t know.” Renee fretted. “But take a look at her.”
“Maybe they got the due date wrong.” There she went again; little Miss Pollyanna, smoothing away any difficulty.
“The doctor should know,” Renee said fiercely. “I just worry Meg’s not getting the care she should be.”
“Have you heard anything bad about Dr. Kennedy?”
“No-o.”
Then it came to Abby; she looked closely at her sister. “You’re just scared, aren’t you? It’s not as if having twins would be the end of the world for Meg. I mean, maybe she couldn’t go back to work, but she’s pretty much into this motherhood thing right now, anyway.” What the mysterious attraction was, Abby didn’t get. Emily was cute, sure, but her squall when she was tired made Abby think of fingernails maliciously drawn down a blackboard. But they weren’t talking about her, thank God. Dragging herself back to the point, Abby accused, “You’re afraid of losing her again.”
To her astonishment, Renee burst into tears. “Meg’s just so tired!” she wailed.
Abby gently took the carving knife from her sister’s hand, set it on the countertop and wrapped her in a hug. “Hey, what’s the deal?”
“I always said I’d make chief, and now I have, but I’d rather be pregnant!” Renee pulled back to show a pathetic, blotched face. “I want it so bad, but then sometimes I look at Meg and wonder if I really do, and if something happens to her I’ll be too scared ever to have a baby of my own! So really I’m self ish!”
Okay.
“Renee,” Abby said carefully, “you’re acting really weird. You know that, don’t you?”
A sniff and a nod were her answer; Renee had buried her face in a dishtowel, using it as a giant hankie.
“PMS?” Out of nowhere, a thought zapped Abby. “Are you sure you aren’t pregnant?”
“What?” Renee whipped the dishtowel from her face.
“You heard me.”
“I...” She blinked. Blinked again. “It must be PMS. You know I get cranky.”
“But not deranged,” Abby gently suggested. “When are you due?”
“Due? Meg’s the one... Oh. You mean...” Her brow furrowed. “I don’t keep track. It just... comes.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I guess it’s been a while.” Renee’s green-gold eyes widened. “Ohmygod. What if I’m pregnant?”
“You celebrate?”
“I’m being sworn in two weeks from tomorrow!”
“Surely you wouldn’t be the first police chief in America who was pregnant.”
“Most of them are still men.” That dry comment sounded more like Abby’s big—well, middle sister.
“Buy one of those home pregnancy tests,” Abby advised. “In the meantime, I’ll carve the turkey. You go do something to your face.”
Renee squeaked at the sight of herself reflected in the door of the top oven. “I promise. I’ll be right back!”
Shaking her head, Abby picked up the knife.
“Want me to do that?”
The deep voice came from so close behind her, she was the one to squeak and jump this time. Wheeling around, she pressed a hand to her chest. “You scared the daylights out of me!”
“Sorry.” Ben Shea lifted one dark brow as smoothly as Daniel did. It gave Ben’s face a saturnine look. “Just thought I’d offer to help.”
Crowd me, you mean, she thought unkindly. But this was her fault; she’d encouraged him by inviting him tonight. No surprise he didn’t want to be abandoned to her family.
“Here. You carve the turkey.” She set down the knife instead of handing it to him. “Renee didn’t feel good for a minute. I’ll see if the rolls are hot, figure out what else she was going to feed us.”
“All right,” Ben said agreeably.
A potato salad and a fruit salad were ready in the refrigerator. All Abby had to do was peel back the plastic wrap and stick in serving spoons.
She carried them out to the dining room, tickled Emily who giggled gratifyingly, and went back to the kitchen. Intent on his job, Ben barely glanced up.
“That wasn’t you crying, was it?”
“You heard...” She stopped. “I don’t cry.”
“You don’t cry.”
“That’s what I said.”
He looked her over with the same curiosity and lack of emotion he’d shown toward the bloody cab of the pickup. “You figure men don’t cry, so you shouldn’t, either?”
“I don’t care what men do,” Abby said shortly.
“As long as they’re fun.”
She lifted her chin a notch. “And it’s fun I can live without if I have to.”
