Murder in the Clear Zone Read online

  Damn the persistent, gnawing question. He pushed it away. She deserved his trust.

  He shuffled through the documents stacked beside him. The mattress gave slightly as he shifted his weight. He couldn’t seem to release the tension knotting his shoulder muscles. He propped two pillows against the headboard and plumped them with his fist. After he resettled himself into the pillows, he opened one of the envelopes and took out papers marked classified. They revealed that Charlie had worked undercover in the military. It was interesting information, but not helpful. Bard rubbed his jaw. He needed the name of one of the clear zone thieves so he could contact him and convince the scum that he wanted in on the fast money. But first he had to get Paula out of harm’s way. And persuading her to leave the clear zone would be harder than getting in with the gang.

  The bathroom door opened, and a faint scent of shampoo wafted around him. Paula stood in the doorway blotting her dripping ringlets with a large white towel. Her wet hair had darkened to the shade of amber seaweed. She’d changed into ocean-blue silk pajamas and a matching robe that clung enticingly to her curves.

  How could he spend the night in these close quarters and not make love to her? Two beds weren’t a sufficient obstacle. Considering the sexy way she looked right now, he needed barbed wire and an unscaleable block wall between them.

  He grabbed the room service menu and forced himself to concentrate on it. “I’m starved,” he said. “What sounds good to you?” After what Paula had been through, she deserved the finest on the menu and a bottle of good wine. And him on his best behavior. The last was the tough part. To distract himself, he read the menu to her from top to bottom, ending with roast beef topped with ragout of mushrooms and béarnaise sauce, his favorite. “Okay, which is it?” He hardly recognized the husky voice as his own.

  “It all sounds good,” she said, sitting down on the couch and drawing a leg up under her. “But, I’ll have to go with my favorite, roast beef.” Her eyes glinted with delight.

  He smiled. “Great choice.” He ordered a California wine to go with it, Michel Tribaut Rose 1985. “Bring an extra order of rolls and lots of butter,” he told the room service clerk.

  After Bard hung up, he picked up the journal and handed it to Paula. “Might as well stay busy until the food gets here.” Mostly he wanted to keep her mind off almost getting shot and his mind off the way those pajamas clung enticingly to her curves.

  “I can take a hint,” she said, putting on her glasses.

  ****

  Before adjusting them high on her nose, Paula peered over the rims at Bard. His earthy-brown, almost black hair was tousled and a hint of stubble shadowed his angular face. He left the bed and sank into an overstuffed chair at the opposite side of the room and reading the contents of one of Charlie’s letters.

  Paula tilted her head. Strange, how a desperate situation could lead a person to do something this rash. Here she was posing as the wife of a man she hardly knew.

  What kind of a woman would a man like Bard marry? Coming from a family with seven children, he would probably be attracted to a woman with a similar happy background.

  Paula sighed. She couldn’t change who she was. Could a person who’d been raised with cruelty and indifference learn the skills and patience needed to nurture the large brood of children Bard probably wanted? Surprisingly, she’d like to try. She’d always dreamed of a big family, longed for one. But perhaps raising children without a solid model to go by wouldn’t be fair. Children needed and deserved someone who knew what it took to make a happy home, someone like Bard.

  She’d bet he’d be a great husband and father, and she would lay odds that he’d be a gentle, considerate lover. Her heart pounded. She could almost feel his hands on her, slipping up her thigh—

  Bard glanced up and smiled. Paula felt her face blaze hot. She quickly adjusted her glasses and forced her attention where it belonged, on the journal. She’d only been reading a few minutes when she came upon an entry that made her mouth go dry.

  There wasn’t any evidence, Charlie had written, to prove Dan snuffed out his Grandma Emma. For Paula’s sake, I’m glad the case was closed, but I wonder why that cop, Cory, didn’t pursue it based upon Dan’s heavy gambling debts. Why would Cory purposely ignore the red flags? To protect Dan? Why?

  Paula’s senses reeled. Charlie had never discussed Grandma Emma’s death with her. It sounded like he suspected Dan of murder. What gambling debts was he talking about? She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them and stared up at the ceiling. Oh, Charlie, why didn’t we talk about this? Dan did a lot of irresponsible, and it seems now even dishonest things, but he couldn’t have been a killer. She swallowed to ease the ache in her throat. She couldn’t have loved a killer.

  “Something wrong?” Bard asked.

  Paula forced a smile. “No. Nothing.”

  No one else would ever see this journal. Charlie had written too many things that made her past appear more sordid than it was. Someone who didn’t know her well might even suspect her of being involved in the deaths of her loved ones.

  Fighting the knots in her stomach, she read on. The next page was a list of unfamiliar names. She made a permanent imprint on her mind, thinking one might be the guy who’d killed Charlie.

  At the tap on the door, Paula glanced up.

  “Who is it?” Bard asked in a husky voice that sent shivers humming under Paula’s skin.

  “Room service,” a man called.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bard looked through the peephole in the door. Satisfied it was safe, he opened the door and motioned for the swarthy guy in black trousers and red cummerbund to enter. Bard made a mental note of the name “Alfonso” embossed on the waiter’s ID tag.

  “Where would you like this, sir?” Alfonso asked.

  Bard glanced at Paula. “Terrace okay?” He needed the fresh sea air to keep his thinking clear, and to get them farther away from the beds. Each time he looked at them, he imagined Paula lying on perfumed sheets in those silky, blue pajamas beckoning to him.

  “Perfect,” she said, putting the journal aside.

  Bard inhaled aromas of beef as the waiter wheeled the cart past him. Alfonso took the lids off the steaming food with a flourish, then accepted his tip and left smiling.

  Paula joined Bard on the terrace. There was a flapping sound above them. “Look at those gulls,” Paula said with excitement in her voice. She leaned against the railing, her quickly drying coppery hair ruffling in the breeze.

  He looked where she was pointing. The gulls glided in white motion, soaring high, their wings tipped in gold from the orange blaze of sunset.

  Her love for birds was infectious, and sunsets were always romantic, but it was the fascination glowing on her face that fueled his excitement. His heart pounded with the same force as the sea slamming against the cliffs below. He longed to touch her curly damp hair, bury his face in it, inhale its fragrance.

  She cleared her throat. “I guess we should eat before it gets cold.” Her tentative words were more a question than a statement.

  Like a lifeline, he gripped the back of a chair and held it out for her. He assisted as she moved her chair closer to the table. Then he sat down next to her. She gracefully unfolded her napkin across her lap. She seemed so delicate. Nothing like the kind of woman who could defend herself against two armed men. “You were terrific today, bravely standing up to those men alone.”

  She lowered her gaze, veiling her eyes with lush, gold-tipped lashes. “Didn’t have much choice.”

  Bard took a roll from the basket that she passed to him. He spread it with butter and paused before he took a bite. “You’re good with guns,” he said. “Where’d you learn that?”

  She hesitated but after some urging, she told Bard about a foster dad named Leo Fletcher who’d forced her to learn to shoot in spite of her fear of guns.

  “You certainly don’t seem afraid of them anymore,” Bard said.

  “I’m not.” She quickly f
inished the wine in her glass as though trying to dull a bad memory. “I learned to enjoy shooting at cans but cried and purposely missed when Leo tried to make me shoot at rabbits or deer.”

  Bard imagined a big burly man standing over a sobbing child, trying to force her to kill in spite of her cries. The image turned his stomach. Bard gulped some wine. “How do people like Fletcher get to be foster parents?”

  Paula shrugged and pushed her half-empty plate to the side.

  Bard poured some more wine in her glass. “Were you ever tempted to shoot him?”

  Paula’s head jerked up. “Cory told you I killed one of my foster dads, didn’t he? You wonder if it’s true.”

  The sinking feeling in Bard’s stomach made him want to take back his question. “I’m sorry. It was a stupid question.”

  She stood with her half-filled wine glass in her hand and went to the terrace railing. She stared down at the waves crashing against the cliff below.

  After one of the longest moments in Bard’s life, Paula turned abruptly and faced him. “The foster dad who taught me to handle guns wasn’t the murdered one,” she said. “It was another sick bastard. Frank Grimes—the worst of the lot.”

  The tone of her voice left no doubt that she thought Grimes deserved killing. “What happened?” Bard expected to be told that it was none of his business.

  Paula’s eyes held his, piercing, searching. Her silence pounded his senses like the angrily flapping wings in the movie, The Birds.

  After an eternity, she drew in a deep breath and said softly, “Frank was kind to me in the beginning. He was the first foster parent to treat me like a human being. When I trusted him, he tried to….” Her voice trailed away like whispers on the wind.

  The words not said brought a lump to his throat. Bard locked on the word tried like a drowning man. Still, the pain in her eyes and the vibrations from her anguish sliced through him. He joined Paula at the railing and closed his hand over hers. “It’s okay. I don’t need it spelled out.” He suddenly wished he could do serious damage to the SOB himself. “Any man who forces himself on a female of any age deserves no mercy.”

  Paula bit her lip. “I try not to relive stuff like this. To make it short, Frank’s ring left this scar.” Her finger trembled as she pointed to the jagged white line in her eyebrow. “I got groggy from his blows to the face. Then someone came into the kitchen and shot him.”

  “Who?”

  Paula shrugged. “I was dazed, in shock. Later, my attorney advised me to say that I did it, in self-defense. He told me the police couldn’t find any evidence to prove my mysterious protector existed.”

  Bard’s stomach knotted. So that was why Cory thought she was guilty. Still, it appeared to be questionable advice from an attorney. Bard hadn’t been there, and he didn’t have all the facts, but it seemed like a ballistics expert could have judged the distance and angle of the bullet to prove her story, even without a witness, or proof of an intruder.

  Paula paced. “I was sixteen and scared. I let my attorney say and do whatever he thought best. But I didn’t kill Frank. I couldn’t even tell the police what happened to the gun.” Her voice wavered. She stopped and gripped the railing. “Do you believe me?”

  Sunset had turned her curly hair to gold. Stirred by the breeze, her blue silk robe rippled against her body, intimately caressing every curve. The hem lifted slightly. He moaned under his breath, but it wasn’t just lust that made it easy for him to believe whatever she said. Her story made a curious kind of sense. He pushed away a nagging doubt. “Oddly enough, I do.”

  “I wish the police did.”

  When she shivered, he took a step toward her and stopped. He didn’t dare touch her. The blood rushing through him warned that he was on dangerous ground.

  “Well, I’d better get back to the journal.” She didn’t move. Was her hesitation and the wistfulness in her voice an invitation for him to take her in his arms?

  Doubt still echoed in his brain. She’d been the beneficiary on the will of all those murdered people. He clenched his jaw, wishing he could erase the nagging worry about her story, and the growing fear that she already had far too much power over him.

  He squared his shoulders. “Right. We have to concentrate on our goal. Find Charlie’s killer before he finds us.”

  ****

  “This is interesting,” Paula said, paging through the journal. “There’s an attorney’s card stapled to one of the pages. The address is here in San Diego.”

  She struggled with the stubborn staple a moment then handed the card to Bard. Their fingers brushed, jolting Paula with an electric tingle that shot through her clear to her toes. Bard met her gaze for a sizzling instant. Her nerves tightened another notch.

  He broke eye contact and glanced at the card. “Leonard Lomas, Seaside Boulevard. Hmmm. Patent attorney? Know what he was doing for Charlie?”

  She cleared her throat. “Maybe something to do with his inventions.”

  “We’d better check it out.” Bard consulted his watch. “First thing in the morning.”

  Morning! As in after they had spent the night together. A warning heat rippled through her. She tried not to look at him. “What about Charlie’s documents?” Her breathing shallow, anticipating the deep, stirring rumble of his voice.

  “Copies of recorded patents mostly, also an honorable discharge, a little of everything except what we need.”

  The worry in his tone drew her traitorous gaze like a magnet. He looked tired, drained. She fought the urge to smooth the fine lines at the corners of his eyes.

  He shifted and looked away.

  Something was wrong. There had been something evasive in Bard’s manner from the moment they left The Corps building. The feeling was strong, getting stronger. She studied his eyes. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  A vein in his neck pulsated. “Look through these yourself if you want to.” He dropped the documents in her lap and headed for the door. “I’m going down to check the oil in the car. There won’t be time in the morning.”

  The door swung shut behind him. Paula rubbed her forehead to ease the beginning of a headache. Why had her question sent him tearing out of the room as if hornets were after him?

  When the answer failed to come, she blew up at wayward curl, and opened Charlie’s journal to where she’d left off and read: Paula organized the neighbors to stand up for their rights. I’m worried about that because of what’s going on. But she’s always been a fighter. First time I set eyes on her she’d taken on that bully, Nate. Nate had ripped her ragged blanket out of her hand. As hard as she was punching him, I wonder now, if I was saving her or him when I pulled them apart.

  Paula smiled through her sudden rush of tears and whispered, “You saved me, Charlie. Nate was pounding my brains out. And from then on, you were my hero.”

  She blinked back the moisture in her eyes and read on. I wish I could tell Paula the real reason I’m here. But knowing that would put her in danger.

  Paula slammed the flat of her hand onto the page. “Damn the secrets, Charlie. You betrayed our closeness. If you’d told me, we could have joined forces and maybe you’d still be alive.”

  She took a deep breath and flipped to the next day’s entries. The name Lopez came up several times. From the comments, he was just a guy Charlie had helped fix a motorcycle. Charlie had always loved taking things apart to see how they worked and was always able to put them back together.

  Paula bit her lower lip. She didn’t have time to let her memories get in the way. Not when she had the whole journal to read tonight. She forced herself to concentrate.

  After about forty pages, she rubbed the back of her neck and glanced at her watch. Two hours had passed. Where the devil was Bard? How long did it take to add a little oil to a car engine? What if the guys who shot at her found him, and he was lying bleeding somewhere? She dialed the lobby. When the desk clerk who had checked them in answered, she asked, “Is Mr—” Good Lord, what name had th
ey used to register? Then it came to her. “Is Mr. Chetney around anywhere?”

  The desk clerk said he’d look. An oldie, “Sentimental Journey” played softly in the background while she waited. When the clerk returned, he said, “He’s using the lobby phone. Shall I page him for you?”

  “No. Thanks. It’s all right. I’ll talk to him later.” She slammed the receiver down harder than she’d intended. Who would he be calling at this hour of the night? His roommate, Cory? A girlfriend? Or the man who ordered the attack on her birds? No! It didn’t even make sense to think that about Bard. She had to trust him.

  Paula snatched up the journal and settled down to read. Hours later, she finished the last page. The final entry was dated the day before Charlie was murdered. Deeter agreed to take me to #1. So Deeter was involved. Bard had been right about him. She shook her head. Deeter had been so helpful. He’d moved people and assisted in her effort to organize the neighbors. She’d accepted the good in him without question. It was that kindness thing again. She was always sucked in by it.

  Was she being taken in by Bard’s helpfulness?

  At the bottom of the last entry in Charlie’s journal was a long dash, then “Janus.”

  Paula closed the journal, took off her glasses, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Charlie Boy, did Deeter kill you? Or was it #1, whoever he is? Is Janus #1’s name. Or a code word?

  Janus was the two-faced Roman god. Was that a clue to his identity? Sighing, she got up and dropped the journal on the nightstand. She pulled back the bed covers on one of the king-sized beds. Where would Charlie’s clues lead her?

  Her life had been one of change, loss and instability, but now that Charlie was gone, the changes were happening so fast there wasn’t time to develop a new hard shell before trouble ripped away her old one. It was as though she’d boarded a runaway train: Destination Vulnerability. It was a trip she didn’t want to take.

  Ignoring the shiver that slid down her spine, she turned out the lights, leaving on the one in the bathroom for Bard to find his way.