“All right,” she said.
Anthony’s smile widened.
All right.
ZACK DUMPED HIS BAG on the quilt-covered spool bed in the attic bedroom. The ceiling was slung low and canted under the eaves, the wallpaper was scattered with tiny yellow flowers, and the little windows at the end of the room were patterned with diamond panes. “This is a great room,” he told Lucy, who’d followed him up the stairs. “If you had any sense, you’d be sleeping up here.”
Lucy took an extra blanket from the closet and draped it over the end of the bed. “I know. I wanted to put our bedroom up here, but Bradley said the one downstairs was bigger.”
Zack felt the same spurt of annoyance he was beginning to feel every time Lucy mentioned Bradley in the same breath with herself. “Why’d you listen to him?”
“Well, it was going to be his bedroom, too,” Lucy said, and Zack felt really annoyed.
He opened a drawer, unzipped his bag, and upended it into the drawer to unpack it. “Bradley is an idiot.”
Lucy shrugged. “Not really. It is warmer downstairs. You have to leave the door to the stairs open at night or this place gets really cold.”
Zack stopped trying to shove everything into the drawer. “How do you know?”
“I started sleeping up here in October. Bradley and I…had a disagreement.”
“Good for you.” Zack felt much better, and then he felt like a fool for feeling much better. Aside from that flash of lust he’d given in to in the driveway, he had no interest in this woman besides a passing sense of responsibility. All he had to do was find out what was in her damn house, get rid of it, and possibly arrest her ex-husband for attempted murder. Then he’d never have to see her again.
Lucy brushed against his arm as she moved beside him to spread his shirts evenly into the drawer. She smelled faintly of flowers and warmth.
Never seeing her again suddenly didn’t have much appeal.
He left the drawer open and stepped away from her. “Let’s start searching this place. Where’s the best place to start?”
“I threw all of Bradley’s stuff into the basement,” Lucy said, shoving the drawer closed. “You probably want that first.”
“Threw? Literally?”
“I stood at the top of the stairs and pitched it. It felt wonderful.”
Zack grinned at her suddenly, and Lucy looked startled. “I thought you were mad at me.”
“Naw. I just thought you were dead, and it threw me for a minute.”
“A minute?” Lucy said. “That’s all?”
“Well, then you showed up and the car exploded. I haven’t had much time to dwell on things lately.” Zack took her shoulders and turned her toward the stairs. “C’mon. Let’s go to the basement, so I can solve this case, and you can get rid of me.”
LUCY FELT GUILTY WHEN Zack whistled at the wreckage at the bottom of the stairs.
“I’ll pick it up.” She started past him, and he grabbed her arm.
“Look out. The stair rail’s gone.”
“I know. The chair fell through it.”
“The chair?”
“The chair I shoved down here.” Lucy peered cautiously over the broken rail. “See? It sort of rolled to the right, back there.”
“You threw a chair down these stairs?”
“I felt like it. Are we going down there or not?”
“Stay close to the wall, behind me.” Zack went down the stairs. “Don’t fall over the edge, or I’ll be picking splinters out of you for a week.”
Lucy put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “You know, I’m not helpless.”
Zack ignored her. He dragged the smashed cartons into the middle of the basement and shoved the chair upright. “Nice chair.”
“No, it’s not.” Lucy followed him down the stairs cautiously. “It’s ugly.”
“That’s just the upholstery. Cover that up and it’s a good chair.”
“It’s too big.”
“It’s a man’s chair.” Zack deepened his voice. “A manly chair for a manly man.”
“It was Bradley’s.”
Zack shrugged. “Okay, so it’s not that great. Are these all the boxes?”
“Just those three. And there’s nothing in them. I packed them up so I know. Just papers and junk.”
“Papers? I love papers. Do these papers have numbers on them?” Zack sat down on the floor next to the first box and pried at the layers of tape that sealed it. “Did you seal these for life? There must be twenty pounds of tape here.”
“I was a little enthusiastic.” Lucy turned back to the stairs. “Let me get a knife.”
“Good. Get me a beer while you’re at it.”
Lucy stopped halfway up the stairs. “I don’t have any beer.”
“Yes, you do. It’s in your refrigerator. I put it there myself. Can you cook Mexican?”
“I suppose,” Lucy said coldly. “Why?”
“I got some stuff when I picked up the beer on the way here. Nachos, olives, cheese, that kind of stuff.” Zack continued to poke at the box while he spoke, missing Lucy’s frown. “I figured you could cook. You look like the type. Could I have that knife, please?”
Right between your ribs, Lucy thought and blinked. Then she turned and went upstairs to get him his knife and beer.
Two hours later, they’d looked at every piece of paper and book in Bradley’s boxes and hadn’t found a clue.
“Half of this stuff is years old.” Zack sat on the floor by the stairs and stared at the mess. “Doesn’t he ever throw anything out?”
“I guess not.” Lucy threw the last of the papers back in the box. “It’s kind of sad, isn’t it? All his personal papers are business papers.”
Zack frowned at her. “Don’t start feeling sorry for him. He’s a rat.”
“Well, he wasn’t always a rat.”
“Oh, yeah. What was he?” Zack leaned back against the stairs and watched her. “What do you know about him? Where did he come from?”
Lucy sat down on one of the boxes. “I don’t know much. He’s from a little town in Pennsylvania called Beulah Ridge. It’s on the high-school yearbook in that box there beside you. His parents are both dead, and he hasn’t been back in years. We had a very small wedding, and Bradley didn’t invite more than two or three people, and he said none of them would be able to make it. It was just my parents and Tina and some friends from school.”
“Who did he send wedding invitations to?”
Lucy frowned, trying to remember. “I think a couple of friends from high school. Not family. And anyway, he was right. Nobody showed up that he invited. It was sad, really, but he didn’t seem to mind. Anyway, after the wedding, we just settled in here. He worked at the bank, and I taught school, and Maxwell and Heisenberg moved in. And then the blonde showed up, and he moved out, and we got divorced, and you mugged me in an alley.” She shrugged. “It’s never going to make a Movie of the Week, but that was my life.”
Zack snorted. “Bradley is a rat.”
“Oh, not entirely. He was really very nice to me for most of our marriage.”
Zack looked at her skeptically. “Then why did you move upstairs in October?”
“He snored.”
“Right.” Zack turned back to the boxes to pull the yearbook out again.
“Why doesn’t anybody ever believe that?” Lucy asked.
“Because no man in his right mind would let you out of his bed for that.” Zack flipped through the book. “Is this his high-school yearbook?”
“Yes,” Lucy said faintly.
“John Bradley the embezzler taught high school in California,” Zack said absently, as he flipped to the senior portrait section. “High-school phys ed. That was his downfall.”
“What do you mean, ‘downfall’?”
“He seduced a cheerleader.” Zack ran his finger down the page. “Knocked her up.”
Lucy’s head jerked up. “That’s awful! He should be in jail.”
&
nbsp; “I think so, too.” His finger stopped on one picture. “Of course, I also want him there for embezzlement. But he paid in his own way.”
“He must have lost his job. School administrators can be really good at ignoring anything ugly, but in this case…”
“Oh, yeah, he lost his job. But the best part is, the girl’s family was really powerful. A bunch of very big guys with very big bank accounts and very big shotguns. They probably could have killed him and gotten away with it, except there was Bianca with a baby on the way, so they did the next best thing. They got him a job in a bank and made him marry her.”
Lucy winced. “How awful for her. That’s barbaric.”
Zack snorted. “More than you know. I’ve talked to Bianca on the phone, and she is not a pleasant person. I almost felt sorry for John Bradley. I personally would have told Daddy to go ahead and shoot me rather than spend a week with her, let alone six years, but then Bradley and I are different.”
“You certainly are.” Lucy blushed when Zack looked up. “I mean, I can’t imagine you seducing a teenager.”
“Well, I tried hard enough when I was a teenager. I just never had much luck. My technique needed work.” He turned back to stare at the picture in the yearbook.
It doesn’t anymore, Lucy thought. Then she mentally shook herself. The moon must be full or something. Maybe she was ovulating, although she usually didn’t get this crazy. As a matter of fact, she’d never been this crazy. Maybe she’d just reached that mid-thirties plateau where a woman’s sexual desire was supposed to peak. Just her luck, she was peaking and here came Zack.
Of course, the real problem wasn’t that he turned her on. The real problem was that she liked being with him. She felt good around him. Happy. Warm.
Really warm.
Hot.
Okay, the other part of the real problem was that he turned her on.
“He doesn’t look like a crook,” Zack said suddenly.
“Who?”
“Porter. Your ex.”
Zack shoved the yearbook in front of her, his finger pointing to a picture on a senior gallery page. “He looks like an amoeba.”
“They all do. They’re so young.” Lucy looked down at her ex-husband, frozen forever at eighteen. He was as classically good-looking back then as he was now, but he was also as stiff and dull, too. “Poor Bradley.”
“Stop feeling sorry for him.” Zack took the yearbook back and leafed through it again. “He’s implicated in a major crime.”
“He is?”
“Yeah. He got a hotel room in Overlook. A woman was found shot there today. We don’t have any proof that he did it, but we’d like to talk to him.”
“You think Bradley shot somebody?” Lucy shook her head. “No. He’s not violent.”
“How do you know he’s not violent? He’s a rat, possibly an embezzler, and definitely a seducer of blondes. You found one in your living room, remember?”
“Not a chance.” Lucy’s voice was firm. “A rat, maybe, but not a seducer of blondes. The blonde must have seduced him. Bradley just wasn’t that interested in sex.”
Zack flipped back a page in the yearbook. “Bradley is an idiot.”
“Of course, maybe it was just me.”
“It wasn’t you.”
Lucy started at the warmth in his voice, but his attention was suddenly riveted to the yearbook. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I will be damned.”
“What?”
He shoved the book in front of her and pointed to a picture near the bottom of the page. The boy in the picture was good-looking in a sly way.
“I’ve seen that smile on kids before,” Lucy said. “I bet he was a cheat.”
“No kidding. Look at the name.” He pointed again and Lucy read the legend underneath.
Most Likely To Succeed
John Talbot Bradley
Six
“They went to high school together.” Zack’s voice was thick with triumph. “Both of them named Bradley could be a coincidence. Both of them involved with banks could be a coincidence. You in the restaurant yesterday at the same time as the phone tip? Not likely, but could be a coincidence. But now this…” He took the book back from her and gazed in satisfaction at the picture. “This is not a coincidence.”
“No,” Lucy said. “It’s not. I don’t understand any of this, but it’s not.”
Zack looked up from the book at the sadness in her voice. “Hey. This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”
Lucy bit her lip. “I just feel stupid. I never saw any of this in him, and I was married to him for eight months. I feel so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.” Zack flipped the book closed and stood, holding out his hand. “Come on. Let’s shove the rest of this stuff under the stairs and go up and call Tony. Then we can have dinner. What are you making, anyway?”
He grinned down at her, and she forgot Bradley for a minute and just basked in his nearness. Then she took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. “I’m not making dinner.” She dusted off the seat of her jeans. “You are.” She smiled up at him then, glad to have him so close. It was hard to stay depressed when he was so close.
“I don’t know how to cook.” He sounded distracted as he stared down at her.
“What’s wrong?”
Zack shook his head. “That’s some smile you’ve got there when you let it go all the way. I hadn’t seen it before. You should smile like that more often.” He turned her around and started her up the stairs, pushing her in front of him, and then stopped after the first step.
“What now?” Lucy looked back over her shoulder.
“Nice jeans,” he said, looking at her rear end. “Tight, though.”
Lucy felt herself go cold. She went up another step and turned around. “What did you say?”
He let his eyes drift up to meet hers. “I just hadn’t thought of you as the tight-jeans type.”
“Neither did Bradley.” Lucy felt suddenly remote. “Is this a problem?”
Zack frowned at her. “What are you talking about? What problem? I’m leering at your rear end. Slap me if you want to, but don’t look at me like that.”
“Oh.” Lucy blinked.
Zack’s frown dissolved. “I get it. Bradley didn’t like you in jeans.”
“Bradley liked me in suits. He hated jeans.”
“Bradley is an idiot. But then we already knew that. As far as I’m concerned, you should be wearing jeans all the time. Enough about you. I’m hungry. Move it.” He started up the stairs. “Now, as I was saying, I don’t cook.”
“You do now.” Lucy turned back and speeded up to keep him off her heels, relief making her buoyant. “I’m teaching you.”
“Whatever happened to women who like to cook for men every day?” Zack asked as she opened the door to the kitchen at the top of the stairs.
“There were never any women who liked to cook for men every day. There were only women who cooked for survival and pretended to like it. And now there are men who cook for survival. Like you. Think of this as survivalist training. Very macho.”
“I don’t think so,” Zack said, but he followed her through the door into the kitchen.
AN HOUR LATER, ZACK was feeling pretty good.
“I’m really great at this,” he announced as they sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, their plates on their laps and their backs against the rose-flowered love seat.
“Zack, they’re nachos.” Lucy protected hers from Einstein. “They’re very good, but they’re just nachos.”
“Yeah, but I made them. I think I have an instinct for this.”
“I’m just grateful you chose Mexican instead of French.” Lucy eyed the mound of food on her plate. “We’d be up to our hips in coq au vin.”
“We’ll do that tomorrow night,” Zack said, and Lucy said, “No, we won’t. Do you like chili?”
“Yeah, but that comes in a can. I want to chop something.” He grinned at her, and she felt her heart lurch
sideways.
Oh, boy, she thought, but all she said was, “You can make chili from scratch. And you get to chop the onions. You’ll like it.”
“Great.” Zack scooped up another nacho with pride.
“Forget it,” he said to Maxwell who was doing his best impression of a starving dog. “It’s all mine.”
Lucy laughed. “Anthony was right. You are like a little kid. Who’s fed you up to now? Your mom?”
“Nope. Mostly, I eat out. Sometimes I open a can or nuke something, but not too often. Canned stuff tastes terrible, and the frozen stuff is worse.”
“And you’re how old? This is just amazing.”
“Hey, I’m alive and healthy. I’m doing okay.” Zack scooped another nacho. “What were you discussing me with Tony for, anyway?”
“He said you have a concussion.” Lucy looked apologetic. “I feel awful about that.”
Zack met her eyes. “You still made me cook.”
“Well, I didn’t feel that awful. Besides, you liked it.”
“It’s the principle of the thing.” Zack ate another nacho. “What else did Tony tell you?”
Lucy blinked. “I don’t remember.”
“Oh, yes, you do, Blinky. Come on. Give.”
“I thought he was very nice,” Lucy said primly, her chin in the air.
Zack shook his head. “You stay away from him. You’re not his type.”
Lucy’s chin dropped. “That’s not what I meant. And what do you mean, I’m not his type?”
“He’s into plastic Yuppies. You know, suits and running shoes and briefcases and car phones.” Zack shuddered at the thought and started on another nacho.
“And what’s your type?” Lucy asked, and then mentally kicked herself. That’s all she needed was for him to start thinking she was interested.
“I don’t have a type,” Zack said. “I’m an equal-opportunity lover.”
“How very broad-minded of you,” Lucy said, and fed a nacho to Einstein on the sly.
“Speaking of types, how did you end up with Bradley?”
“Well, I had decided to get married because of the second law of thermonuclear dynamics.” Lucy kept her voice brisk to keep herself from getting emotional. “And about that time, he picked me up in the library at the university. I considered it a sign.”