“You want to know why I try to
look and act like a man?”

Ann’s tone was hard as she continued. “Well, I’ll tell you. A woman has to be tough to be a cop. Any show of softness hurts her effectiveness and her career. If I want to be soft, I do so out of the public eye.”

Diaz’s voice had the velvet undertone she’d heard him use on other women, but never her. “I’m not the public.”

“You’re one of those people who questions how tough I am every day.”

“What in hell gave you that idea?”

“Do you remember what you said to me after I was assigned to work with you?”

Brown eyes wary, Diaz shook his head.

“‘Here’s hoping you have half your old man’s goods.’” She quavered inside, having spent a lifetime wondering whether she did. “You put me on notice. My father was known for being tough. So what do you think? Do I have his goods?”

His jaw muscles spasmed. “You’re a better cop than he was.”

“What?”

“You use your head. He didn’t always.” He raised an eyebrow. “Close your mouth.”

Revelations
Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

When not writing or researching her books, Janice Kay Johnson quilts, grows antique roses, spends time with her two daughters, takes care of her cats and dogs (too many to itemize!) and volunteers at a no-kill cat shelter. Revelations tells the story of Ann Caldwell—first introduced to readers in Janice’s previous Superromance book, Mommy Said Goodbye.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

STANDING AT ATTENTION, shoulder to shoulder with her fellow police officers, Ann forced herself to look at the gleaming cobalt blue casket resting on a framework above a dark hole.

A funeral in all its solemnity was the worst of all places and times to become mired in self-pity.

“Comfort us in our sorrows at the death of our brother. Let our faith be our consolation, and eternal life our hope.”

She tried to make her mind a blank. If she let herself think, she either remembered her father’s funeral, so much like this one, and tears threatened, or she felt sorry for herself because she had no idea how to look pretty or flirt or make men feel protective and was therefore achingly lonely.

Spring sunlight didn’t yet bring much warmth to the cemetery grounds, but leaves budded on the maple and sycamore trees and on old lilacs. A bird twittered in the tree behind Ann and the phalanx of other solemn, uniformed police officers who had come to see one of their own laid to rest. Just as they had come to her father’s funeral last August.

“This joy that one we love has entered into the nearer presence of our Lord does not make human grief unchristian,” the pastor promised the grieving.

Did anyone truly grieve? Ann wondered. She’d known Leroy Pearce for most of her life—he’d been a crony of her father’s—and she couldn’t honestly say she’d liked the man. He’d been bigoted, crude and sexist. When Ann had transferred to Major Crimes, he’d refused to work with her.

“Sorry, babe,” he’d said with an insincere grin. “Can’t think of you as anything but a little girl.”

Huh. Girl was the relevant word. If she’d been her daddy’s son, he would have been thrilled to show him the ropes. But not her.

Okay, Leroy’s widow and daughter seemed to be genuinely grief-stricken. Ann was trying not to look at them, because her very own partner was hovering over the gently sobbing daughter, a divorcée in her late twenties, Ann’s age. He had one arm around her, while he held her elbow with his other hand. When Ann stole a look, Eva turned her head and cast a tear-drenched look up at Diaz.

It was enough to make Ann want to puke. Or go home and cry, she wasn’t sure which.

Her mind had wandered earlier, too, during the church service. She’d struggled to remember the words to hymns. She wasn’t the churchgoer she should be. When she was young, her mother had taken her, but later her father couldn’t be bothered. Maybe it was because her mother had been the one to take her that now Ann had no interest in sliding into a pew every Sunday morning. Besides, she’d spent too many of those Sundays crouched beside a body assessing blood spatter patterns. She’d quit thinking of Sunday morning and church as connected. Saturday night was too popular for committing murder.

“Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,” had sung the mourners at the church.

Almost everyone here to honor Leroy was a cop, and they’d sure seen scenes of deepest gloom. Ann had had to hustle to get home, shower and change into dress uniform for the funeral. Her morning had been spent in the parking lot of a biker bar, where a regular had been stabbed upwards of a hundred times and left to bleed any remaining life out on the pavement in a bronze slick.

Her partner had been there, too, scribbling notes and seeming unaffected by the remarkable amount of blood pooled on the pavement.

Now, at graveside, Diaz was a lot more moved by the grieving daughter, who just then sniffed and turned to lay her cheek on his shoulder. He patted her back.

Ann tried to remember if he’d even been at her father’s funeral. Maybe. Probably. But he hadn’t been at her side, prepared to blot her tears on his uniform front. The captain had been beside her, she remembered, but several feet away. She had stood staring down at the casket and the large hole beneath, icy with shock and grief and the paralyzing realization that she was truly alone now.

She’d always wished she had a sister or brother. Now she heard other officers complain about huge family get-togethers and their packs of nieces and nephews and their interfering mothers and brothers-in-law and what have you, and she was jealous. All she had left in the world were grandparents, and she hardly knew them. Because they didn’t live in the Northwest and hadn’t made much effort to stay close to her after her mother died, her relationship with them consisted of polite Christmas cards.

Ann’s eyes burned, and she tried to sniff without being audible. Damn it, why had her father had to die? Sure, he’d had a beer or two before he drove home that night, but not so much he should have missed a curve. But he had, and in his arrogance he hadn’t bothered with a seat belt. Investigators told Ann that he’d hit a tree with such force, they weren’t sure he would have survived even with the belt. His old pickup truck didn’t have an airbag, the only thing that might have saved him.

Don’t think about Dad, Ann ordered herself. Don’t think about the fact that his grave is only a hundred yards or so uphill. Or you’ll cry, and you can’t cry now, in front of everyone.

She was good at not crying. Her father had been disgusted when she cried. If she hurt herself and bore it stoically, he might nod with approval and say something like, “That’s good. You’re toughening up now.”

She used to think she had toughened up. Now she thought maybe she’d just been pretending all along, that inside she was still all girl.

On the outside…well, she had no idea how to be a girl. She was neither fish nor fowl, woman nor man. Her entire social life revolved around other cops, and it was limited. She had drinks with fellow officers on occasion, but there was always a barrier separating her from the men, and an even bigger one yawning between her and their wives and daughters and even the few other women cops she knew. They might wear a uniform and pack a gun during the day, but they also liked to shop and get makeovers and go dancing and crochet or quilt or “do” memory books. She would stand there with a smile frozen on her face and have no idea what they were talking about. She liked jewelry, but when would she wear it? She couldn’t imagine decorating the pages of a photo album filled with images of her father with metallic gel pens and cute stickers. She didn’t want mud all over her face or cucumbers slapped on her eyeballs. The reason women seemed to enjoy wandering the mall even when they didn’t need anything was as foreign, even unknowable, to her as the age-old hatreds in countries like Israel and Ireland. Her few friends were misfits in their own ways as much as she was, and therefore incapable of guiding her.

Depressed, she murmured, “Amen,” with the rest of the mourners, watched as the casket was lowered into the ground and the symbolic clod of earth thrown atop it. The widow let out a piercing cry that made Ann shudder and remember not just personal grief but also that morning’s visit to the biker’s girlfriend, who had dissolved right in front of them, her cry gurgling in her throat.

The crowd broke into small clumps of people who spoke in murmurs. Ann started toward the parking lot. Ahead of her Diaz walked beside the daughter, while their captain supported the sobbing widow.

Lucky she’d brought her own car, Ann thought. Separating her partner from the beautiful blonde would be a trick.

As if he knew she was thinking about him, he looked over his shoulder just then, scanning the crowd until his eyes met hers. For an instant she thought his expression was beseeching. She dismissed the idea immediately; Juan Diaz was plenty able to handle any woman. Still, she hesitated, then grudgingly started toward him. She ought to offer some condolences to Leroy Pearce’s widow and only daughter, she supposed. Their fathers had been friends.

Although he hadn’t looked back again, Diaz must have felt her approach, because he turned when she was only a few feet away.

“Ann. Do you know Eva Pearce?”

So she’d gone back to her maiden name after the divorce.

“Yes, since we were children.” Ann hesitated, trying to decide whether she should offer a hand or a hug or some other form of physical expression of sympathy, none of which came comfortably to her. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” Eva’s blue eyes filled with tears again. “Damn it, I can’t quit crying, and Daddy was such a…” She wiped her cheeks. “Forget I said that.”

Huh? What had she missed? “Forget you said what?”

Eva gave a choked laugh. “Bastard. He was such a bastard. He might have been my father, but I hated him half the time. That’s what you never heard me say.”

Ann shocked herself by admitting, “I felt the same about my father. You knew him. He was a bastard, too.”

Diaz had been gaping at the beautiful blonde. Now he gaped at Ann.

“There was a reason they were best friends.” Eva sniffed. “We played together when we were little. Do you remember?”

“You wanted to play Barbies, and I thought anything but Cops and Robbers was dumb.”

The blonde looked down at herself in her high-heeled pumps and chic black suit, then at Ann in her blue uniform and sturdy, brilliantly polished dress shoes, and laughed. “Neither of us has changed a bit.”

Ann grinned back. “Apparently not.”

“Can we get together and have coffee?” Eva asked. “We can bitch about our fathers and cry a little.”

“Yeah. I’d like that.” Somewhat to her surprise, Ann realized she would. She and this very feminine divorcée might not have much in common, but their fathers were a link.

“I’ll call you.” Eva gave her a watery smile, then offered Diaz a more charming one. “Thank you for your shoulder, Officer.”

“You’re more than welcome.” His voice was deep velvet.

“I suspect you were assigned the job of tending me, but I appreciate it anyway.” She sighed. “Speaking of tending, I’d better join my mother.”

Ann and her partner murmured appropriate things and watched her walk away, heels sinking into the grass so that her stride had more lurch than sway.

“Were you assigned the job?” Ann asked.

“I’ve had worse ones.”

“What?” She turned her head sharply. “You really were ordered to hover over her?”

“Yeah.” His mouth tilted. “‘Hovered’ wasn’t the word the captain used. ‘Make sure she’s all right’ is closer to what I recall him saying.”

They started walking.

“Nobody hovered over me when Dad died.” She hoped she didn’t sound petulant. “Did somebody fall down on the job?”

Amusement crinkled the skin at the corners of his dark eyes. “I wouldn’t know. I doubt anyone was ordered to lend his shoulder to you. You’re a cop.”

And therefore too tough to cry, at least in public. Her father had been born to be a cop. Ann wished she had been, that she didn’t have to pretend her nonchalance when she shrugged.

“Wouldn’t have known what to do with a shoulder if one had been offered.”

His smile vanished, and he studied her face for a long, uncomfortable moment. “That’s a shame,” he said at last. “Nobody would have thought less of you if you’d cried.”

“I’m a woman, or haven’t you noticed? A burly male cop makes the front of Time magazine when he cries over a wounded child. The public is moved by his tenderness. When a woman cop cries, everyone says, ‘See? She’s too softhearted. Should have been a teacher.’”

He shook his head. “The times, they are a’changing.”

Ann said something succinct and heartfelt.

Diaz laughed again. “You’re wrong. Most people accept women in damn near any profession. They don’t have to be manly to do the same job.”

“Damn straight they don’t!”

“Then why do you try…” He swallowed the rest of that sentence when he saw the storm clouds building on her face.

Rage had her hands shaking. Shame made her go for flippancy. “To hide my raving beauty? Gosh, I’m just inclined to think lashes weighted down with mascara—” she batted her eyes “—might blur my vision at a crucial moment. And lipstick…” She pursed her lips. “Well, bloodred isn’t my favorite color at the moment.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did,” she snapped, flippancy gone. “I’m just not girlie, okay?” Or beautiful, and no amount of mascara or lipstick would change that.

“Damn it, Caldwell, don’t put words in my mouth and thoughts in my head!” He stopped at his car and glowered at her. “You’re a good cop, and you’re a woman. So what?”

“So what” was about all she’d ever gotten in the way of sexual or romantic interest. Hearing the words said aloud stung, even if that wasn’t what he’d meant.

In a hard tone, she said, “You want to know why I try to look like a man, and act like one? Well, I’ll tell you. A woman has to be tough to be a cop. It’s a fact. Any show of softness hurts her effectiveness and her career. If I want to be soft, I do it off the job and out of the public eye.”

His voice went quiet, with that velvet undertone she had heard him use toward other women but not her. “I’m not the public.”

“You’re a colleague. You’re one of those people who questions how tough I am every day.”

“What in hell gave you that idea?”

She jutted her chin. “Do you remember what you said to me after I was assigned to work with you?”

Brown eyes wary, Diaz shook his head.

“‘Here’s hoping you’ve got half your old man’s goods.’” She’d quavered inside, after spending a lifetime wondering whether she did. “That’s what you said. You put me on warning. My father was known for being tough. Tenacious. Hard-assed. Not kindhearted, not soft. So, what do you think? Do I have my father’s goods?”

His jaw muscles spasmed. “You’re a better cop than he was.”

“What?”

“You heard me. You use your head. He didn’t always.” He raised an eyebrow. “Close your mouth.”

Her teeth snapped together and she felt a flush creep up her cheeks.

“Are we going to go back to work, or stand here chatting all day?”

“I have to run home and change.” As if he didn’t know.

“I’ll pick you up there.” Juan Diaz nodded, opened his car door and got in.

Ann took the hint and headed for her own vehicle.

Just as well, because she had to blink hard to stop tears. She felt like mush inside, because…

Because he’d given her an unexpected accolade, shinier than any medal. You’re a better cop than he was. She’d spent a lifetime trying to measure up to her father. Better? She didn’t believe it. Couldn’t. The words warmed a cold place in her chest anyway.

But she also wanted to cry because her father was gone and she’d never have the chance to win his complete approval. Her eyes were tearing up because she’d discovered she wasn’t the only one who hated her father at the same time as she loved him.

And, damn it, she wanted to cry because she knew damn well that Diaz would never see her as a woman. Whatever he said, he didn’t imagine her out of uniform, legs tangling with his, mouth soft under his, voice sexy in the darkness. It wasn’t him—she didn’t care about him. But she wished desperately some man would notice that, cop or no, she was a woman, with a woman’s needs and vulnerabilities.

But she also knew that would never happen. Women had to advertise, and she didn’t know how. Or even if she really wanted to.

Because what if she discovered that beneath the pretense she was too soft to be a cop? It was who she was, her only identity!

Behind the wheel of her car, Ann looked at herself in the rearview mirror. Blue eyes, brows she knew were too thick, brunette hair drawn tightly back from a pale, severe face.

Who are you kidding? her inner voice jeered. You have to have a product to advertise. Why bother?

With a steady hand, Ann started her car. Well, wasn’t it lucky she hadn’t grown up wanting to play Barbies.

JUAN DIAZ was in a lousy mood.

For starters, he hated funerals. He saw too much death in its rawest form to be fooled by the ceremony and glorious hymns and grand words into thinking an gels had anything to do with man’s last moments.

Leroy Pearce had fallen off a ladder and broken his neck. His house was on a hillside. Apparently his ladder wasn’t tall enough to reach the gutters from the downhill side of his plunging lot. So, like an idiot, he’d wired two aluminum ladders together and climbed them, unsteady as they must have been. As bulky as Leroy was, you’d have expected the wire to fail, but it hadn’t. Instead, he’d leaned too far or shifted his weight wrong, and the ladders, still rigged together, had fallen outward, crashing at last far down the brushy canyonside.

Leroy would have had plenty of time on the way down to know he was going to die. His skull had been crushed when he hit a tree.

Death was not pretty, and despite his Catholic up-bringing, Diaz doubted God had had anything to do with the time or occasion.

He had also spent the entire graveside service trying to keep an eye on Caldwell. An echo of her father’s, this funeral had to be dragging grief to the surface even if she’d tried tying cement blocks to it to keep it buried deep. He knew her well enough to be sure she wouldn’t burst into noisy sobs. He also knew she’d refuse to acknowledge feeling any upsurge of sadness. Ann Caldwell had spent the winter trying to convince him that she was as hard as her old man. He hoped she was lying to both of them.

Today, her face might have twitched a few times when the preacher talked about grief; could be she’d blinked more than normal. But when she’d walked up to him and Pearce’s daughter afterward, her eyes were dry. She’d surprised him, though, with her admission that she’d had mixed feelings about her father. He’d seemed to loom so large in her world, Diaz was sometimes tempted to turn on his flashlight to find his way through the gloom of Sgt. Michael Caldwell’s shadow.

Diaz was pissed by her attitude, too, her assumption that she constantly had to scramble to measure up. She was a good cop; she’d won awards, and risen to detective at record speed. Maybe she believed all good things had happened because of her name, not her own competence. Who the hell knew why she had such a chip on her shoulder?

He and Ann had had a few rough patches their first month together. She’d inherited from her father an obsessive determination to see a man named Craig Lofgren behind bars for murdering his wife despite the fact that her body had never been found. The whole thing had made Diaz uneasy. With no new evidence, there had been no justification for reopening the case, but her father had been unable to let it go and she’d seemed to feel a sacred duty to finish what he couldn’t.

Well, she’d done that without much help from Diaz, and Daddy wouldn’t have been happy, given the way he’d frothed at the mouth at the mere mention of Lofgren, a well-to-do airline pilot. Ann Caldwell had found the missing wife—alive and seemingly oblivious to the turbulence left in the wake of her disappearance. By careful, solid police work, she’d cleared Lofgren’s name.

She didn’t want to talk about the fact that Craig Lofgren never would have been under suspicion if her father had conducted an investigation anywhere as careful and impartial as hers.

“We all make mistakes,” was all she’d say.

Ignoring witnesses and evidence that didn’t fit your theory wasn’t making a mistake, in Diaz’s book. Every cop had prejudices. Keeping them on a short leash was part of the job.

Diaz had worked with a woman partner before. He’d been sorry when Melanie Najjar had decided during her second pregnancy that she wasn’t coming back to work. Maybe because she was married he’d been able to damn near forget she was a woman. It was funny, too, because Najjar had been considerably more feminine than Ann Caldwell. Petite, fiery, with a taste for bold colors in makeup and everything else. Perps sometimes surrendered just for the charge of being cuffed by her.

In six months of working with Caldwell, Diaz hadn’t forgotten for a single minute that she was a woman. Most of the time the knowledge didn’t get in the way. It was just there, a tiny irritant like a piece of grit in his sock or the twinge of a sore muscle. The kind of thing he could ignore, all the while knowing he was ignoring it.

He wouldn’t say he was attracted to her. How could he be, as plain as she managed to make herself despite vivid blue eyes, milk-white skin and hair the color of just-brewed coffee? She was either stocky or wore clothes that made her look that way, walked and talked like a man, refused to wear even a hint of lipstick and kept her hair drawn back so tightly he had no idea whether it was thin or thick. A man could pretty well assume she didn’t want anyone to be attracted to her.

She wasn’t his type, anyway. He wasn’t interested in marrying again. Cops weren’t good at ever after. Their wives—or husbands—started noticing they never seemed to make it home for dinner. When they were home in body, they tended not to be in spirit: they were too busy brooding over the mysteries of why people did the cruel or stupid things they did to notice that little Elena had hung a new picture she’d painted in kindergarten on the fridge and was eagerly waiting for Daddy to notice.

He’d been a crappy husband and an inadequate father. He didn’t watch reruns of failed TV shows, and he wasn’t going to act in his own.

Which meant he confined himself to women who wouldn’t want or expect a marriage proposal down the line. Pretty women out for a good time, cynical women who wanted dinner table conversation, good sex and no whiskers left in their bathroom sink.

Repressed, complicated women who didn’t know the meaning of a good time were off-limits. So, although he felt that irritating twinge now and again, like when he glanced at her beside him in the car and noticed the pure line of her throat or the delicacy of her cheekbones, or when she got ticked at him and her eyes flashed blue, or when she turned so that he couldn’t avoid noticing how full-breasted she was… Damn it, when he felt anything at all toward Ann Caldwell that had a sexual connotation, Diaz ignored it. And he intended to keep ignoring it.

Just as he had to shut off this protective streak. If she were a male partner, he wouldn’t have been watching her during the damn funeral, worried about her fragile emotional state. He’d have given her the credit of assuming she could handle renewed grief.

So why couldn’t he let it go where Caldwell was concerned?

Diaz scowled at the red light holding him up.

Because she was a woman, he concluded. And his gut instinct told him she was emotionally fragile, despite her kick-ass persona.

He didn’t want to worry about someone else. He could hardly deal with his own problems.

Ask for a change of partner, he thought, but knew he wouldn’t. If she found out he’d put in a request, he’d wound her, and he never wanted to do that. Besides, they worked well together now that they’d straightened out a few kinks.

He was exasperated to realize he’d worry about her even if they weren’t working together. Maybe especially if they weren’t. She was bullheaded sometimes. She needed him to moderate her tendency to charge ahead.

Uh-huh, his inner voice taunted. She needs you to protect her.

He swore out loud just as he pulled to the curb in front of her apartment complex. The piece of grit irritating his instep felt like a jagged chunk of gravel right now.

Caldwell stirred up something…brotherly in him. Yeah, that was it.

He was just damn grateful she was as plain as the cream-colored facade of her building, and that his flashes of awareness were few and far between.

Brotherly. Okay, he could be brotherly, even though he didn’t need another sister.

Diaz leaned on the horn.

CHAPTER TWO

“I’VE BEEN THINKING.” Seat-belted in, Ann took a cautious sip of the hot coffee she’d poured into an insulated cup just before she left the house.

After a glance to check for traffic, her partner accelerated away from the curb. “Yeah, me, too. I’m thinking we’ll find the slug who went berserk with the bowie knife holed up at his mama’s house. Hell, she’s probably doing his laundry, wondering why the water is running red.”

“Come on. He must have been soaked with blood. She isn’t wondering anything. If she’s doing his laundry, she knows she’s washing evidence.” Ann took another, more confident swallow of coffee. “But that’s not what I was thinking about.”

“No?” Diaz gave her an odd look before returning his attention to the road ahead.

She frowned, hoping she wouldn’t sound wacko. No, part of her wanted him to tell her she was just that. Convince her to drop the whole, creepy line of speculation.

“What I’m thinking,” she said, “is that two cops have died in really stupid accidents.”

“Two?” Another surprised, then speculative, glance. “Your father?”

“You don’t think not wearing a seat belt was stupid?”

“Yeah, I think it was stupid. Just…”

“Normal stupid? Instead of unbelievably stupid?”

“Right.” He slowed as a light turned yellow ahead. “Wiring two aluminum ladders together and then climbing damn near to the top of them, especially when you aren’t a lightweight… That’s unbelievably stupid.”

“Okay. Yeah. I agree.” She continued to frown. “Still…”

“Still, two cops have died in stupid accidents. Which took place six months apart.”

“That’s true. But do you remember a few months ago, when Reggie Roarke told everybody who’d listen about how someone tried to kill him?”

Diaz snorted. “Because he was on his back under a car raised by two flimsy jacks?”

“Uh-huh. Doing something stupid.”

Braked at the stoplight, he was silent. When she stole a glance, she saw that her partner was frowning, too.

“Something,” Ann added, “between normal stupid and unbelievably stupid.”

“Damn stupid,” Diaz supplied, but automatically, as if he was thinking hard.

Ann waited.

The light turned, and he started forward with the other cars. She wondered where they were going. No, she knew: the berserk biker’s mama’s house. At least this murder, hideous as it was, held no mystery. Half a dozen witnesses had seen the assault. Two, to their credit, had tried to stop it, and had gotten their hands and forearms sliced viciously for their efforts.

“He was high,” one of them said, shaking his head. “Crazy high.”

“On?” Ann had asked.

“Crack. But he might’ve had some other stuff, too.”

Unbelievably stupid seemed to be going around.

Now, still frowning, Diaz asked, “What was it Roarke claimed? That the car rocked, like someone was pushing it?”

“He said he heard footsteps. Thought it was his wife and started talking to her. Then the car rocked and he told her to knock it off. But it rocked harder, and he started scooting out. Didn’t make it before the first jack collapsed.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Diaz said thoughtfully. “I remember his face.”

With a bulbous nose, thick jowls and a bull-like neck, Big Reggie Roarke wasn’t a candidate for a calendar of hot law enforcement guys at the best of times. With a black eye, plaster across his nose and a cheekbone blossoming purple and puce, he’d probably scared his own grandkids.

She gave a quiet grunt of amusement. Yeah, okay. He probably scared them without the added beauty treatment. When she was a kid, he’d scared her when he came to the house.

“He was lucky,” Diaz ruminated. “Damn near got his skull crushed.”

Ann waited some more.

“You’re saying…what? That someone pushed the car off the jacks? That he wasn’t making it up to hide how damn careless he’d been?”

Trying not to sound tentative, she said, “Maybe.”

“And that your father and Leroy Pearce’s ‘accidents’ weren’t.”

“A little shove would have taken care of Leroy.”

Diaz made a sound of disgust. “A belch would have catapulted the idiot into space.”

“But what if you were watching, waiting for them to do something stupid? How much easier could murder get?”

He was shaking his head before she finished. “You’re reaching. What if we looked county-wide at accidental deaths in the past six months. You know what we’d find.”

She knew. “Amazing idiocy.”

“People who let their kids ride a dirt bike down a rocky, forty-five degree slope with no helmets on. I guarantee we’d come up with at least one mother who killed her baby because she was holding it on her lap in the car instead of using an infant seat. She thought she could hold on to him. How many times have we heard that?”

Too many.

“Remember the five-year-old killed because his dad tied his plastic saucer to the back of his truck when the roads were black ice? The truck went into a spin and slid right over him?”

“Who could forget?”

He was on a roll. “Oh, yeah. There were the sixteen-year-old jocks playing chicken on an empty road, both with too much testosterone to lose.”

They’d hit head-on, neither, apparently, having braked or turned the wheel.

“Okay, okay,” she conceded.

Diaz’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “Your dad. What are you suggesting? Somebody cut the brake lines?”

“No, the truck was checked over. I’m thinking he was forced off the road. Or tricked somehow—35th makes that sharp bend there.”

“Any dents on the side of the truck?”

“One long, deep scrape. But the cab crumpled, so it was hard to tell. Anyway, we all just figured someone had hit his truck in a parking lot.”

“He’d have bitched loud and long if something like that had happened.”

Yeah, he would have. He’d have ranted and raved. Thinking aloud, Ann said, “I don’t know if they checked for paint flakes in it or not.”

“We can find out,” her partner suggested.

“You don’t think I’m crazy?”

His grin was wry. “Probably. I shouldn’t encourage you. But…hell. We can ask a few questions.”

“Damn it,” Ann muttered. “I was hoping you’d say I was wacko. Then I could forget the whole idea.”

“You’re wacko,” he obliged. “Let’s forget it.”

“Now it’s too late.” She scowled. “Speaking of too late, do you suppose they looked for footprints at Leroy’s? Ground was soft.”

“I can’t imagine. By the time his wife and half a dozen neighbors rushed over, and the EMTs trampled the hillside bringing him up, what were the chances?”

Resigned, she made a face. “None. Of course.”

“Still, we could talk to neighbors. Maybe one of them saw somebody go around back, figured it was a friend, didn’t think anything of it.”

“And no one ever asked them.”

“Happens.” His tone was utterly expressionless.

Ann glanced at him, knowing darn well what he meant. Her father hadn’t asked some questions when he was investigating the disappearance of Julie Lofgren. If he’d asked them, he would have found her and saved her husband and kids an excruciating year and a half.

“Okay,” she agreed, then realized they were stopped.

The neighborhood on the fringes of Puyallup was run-down: paint peeling, lawns ragged, driveways filled with cinder-blocked wrecks. She’d been on domestic disturbance calls here when she was a patrol officer.

“Which house?”

“Two blocks down.”

“Do we want backup?” she asked.

“We’re waiting for it.”

“My, aren’t we efficient.”

He gave her another crooked grin, and Ann had one of those moments she hated, when something turned over in her chest and she had to admit he was an attractive man.

His dark hair and eyes went with the Hispanic name. He was half a head taller than she was: six foot one or two, she guessed. She’d found out he was eight years older than she was, which put him at thirty-six. Rumor said he’d been a state champion hurdler in college, which she could believe after seeing him run down a suspect.

Grooves bracketed his mouth, deepening when he was tired, adding puckish charm to his smiles. And damn it, his smiles were what got to her, with the glint in his eyes and the skin crinkling beside them. A face that was usually impassive became sexy.

He was probably a lady-killer. If she called him during off-hours, she often heard laughter and a feminine voice in the background. Unlike her, he apparently had an active social life.

He also had kids, she knew. A couple of times he’d offhandedly mentioned having them for a weekend. When she’d asked once what happened to his marriage, he’d only shrugged.

“I’m a cop.”

That couldn’t be the whole story. Plenty of cops did stay married, even seemed happy. But she had tried hard not to speculate; Diaz’s personal life wasn’t any of her business. They worked together. Period.

She just wished…oh, that he was fifty-five instead of thirty-six. Squat, or pudgy, or stringy, instead of lean and athletic. Maybe that he chewed tobacco, so his teeth were stained. Or…heck, she’d forget he was sexy-looking if he had a crude sense of humor and down-deep disdain for the pathetic excuses for humanity they often met in their jobs.

No such luck. As far as she could tell, Diaz was smart, occasionally funny, basically kind and dedicated to his job. She’d looked hard for faults and was irritated by how few she’d found.

He interrupted her reverie. “You’re thinking again.”

“What?” She knew she flushed. “I’m supposed to empty my mind while we sit here?”

He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Sitting’s over.”

A patrol car pulled in behind their unmarked blue sedan. The four police officers got out to hold a brief conference. The two uniforms nodded when told their role in the upcoming drama.

Minutes later, Diaz and Ann pulled up to the curb in front of a shabby white house. The squad car slammed to a stop in the driveway. The uniforms raced to the back of the house, while Ann followed Diaz to the front door.

She stood back while he took the lead, knocking hard and calling, “Police!”

The woman in the stained housecoat who came to the door tried to pretend she had no idea where her son was, but she was a lousy liar. Shouts in back told them their quarry had tried to make a break.

When the uniforms shoved him, handcuffed, unshaven, barefoot and screaming obscenities, around the house, she broke into tears.

“Don’t hurt Eddie! It’s not his fault. Those drugs, they got him by the throat and make him crazy! You gotta help him!” she begged, tears tracking a face aged by a life that couldn’t be any picnic.

“He’s in police custody. He won’t be hurt,” Diaz said, in a voice gentle enough to make her sag.

As the day unwound, damned if they didn’t find she was washing Eddie’s blood-soaked clothes. The vest, though, was black leather, and she hadn’t wanted to ruin it, or his good leather boots. It apparently hadn’t occurred to her that rusty streaks of dried blood on her pink plastic laundry basket might be hard to explain, too.

Dinner was sandwiches at Subway, with Diaz and Ann companionably sharing cookies and chips. She figured she’d gotten her daily vegetables in the lettuce, tomato and green pepper on the six-inch sub.

Their knees bumped under the small table. They talked in short bursts, until Diaz suddenly swore. “I was supposed to call Elena and Tony before eight.”

“Your kids.” She vaguely knew their names.

“Crap.” His shoulders slumped. “I’m always doing this.”

“They must understand.”

He gave a sharp, incredulous laugh. “They’re seven and nine. Of course they don’t understand.”

She bit her lip and said in a quiet voice, “I did at that age.”

“Your mother wasn’t telling you that your dad couldn’t be bothered with you.”

“My mother died when I was eight.” Her mother’s death was something she didn’t let herself think about, and mentioned only when it seemed unavoidable. Even then, she kept the statement matter-of-fact. No how or why; that was nobody’s business. Ann crumpled up her sandwich wrappings.

Mercifully, Diaz didn’t say, Oh, what happened to her? Instead he stared at her. “I didn’t know. Is that why…”

When he stopped, she said, “Why what?”

His big shoulders jerked. “I don’t know. Why you’re a cop.”

She heard the pause after “you’re.” He was thinking something else. Fill in the blank. “Like one of the guys.” When what he meant was, “Why you’re so unfeminine.”

The knowledge stung, as every such suggestion did. Especially lately.

“Yeah, Dad wasn’t much help at picking out a prom dress.” Flippancy seemed to be her best defense these days.

“You went?”

“Sure,” she lied. “Pretty in pink.”

He took a last swallow of soda, then rattled the ice cubes. “Pink isn’t your color. You should wear blue. To match your eyes.”

Rarely without a comeback, Ann didn’t have the slightest idea what to say. She couldn’t take offense at a casual observation. “Thank you” wasn’t called for. He hadn’t said, “You’d be beautiful in blue.”

He didn’t remark on her silence, only gathered up his wrappings and said, “Ready?”

In the car, she said, “Do you want to try calling your kids now?”

Diaz shook his head. “Cheri would just claim they’re asleep even if they’re not. I’m not in the mood for her digs.”

“I’m sorry,” Ann heard herself saying. “You’ve never said…”

“That my ex-wife hates my guts?” He made a sound in his throat. “That’s the way it is.”

Ann let the silence ride for a minute. She wasn’t real good at this interpersonal stuff. Would she seem uncaring if she didn’t ask questions? Nosy if she did? But she was curious, so finally she said, “You want to talk about it?”

His fingers tightened and loosened, tightened and loosened a couple of times on the wheel. He sighed, long and ragged. “Maybe another time, okay?”

She shrugged as if she didn’t care. “Sure.”

Conversation died there. When he dropped her in front of her complex, Ann said, “See you tomorrow.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”

He waited at the curb, as he always did on the rare occasions when he took her home, until she let herself in the door of her ground-floor unit. Chivalry, she had wondered before, or a cop’s paranoid belief that creeps lurked in every dark corner?

Damn it, she thought, standing in the middle of her living room, why was she obsessing about stuff that would never have occurred to her a year ago?

She knew the answer, and was shamed by it.

A year ago, she’d been so focused on winning her father’s approval, she hadn’t had time to sit back and wonder whether she was happy with herself or her life.

Now she did. And she wasn’t.

She liked being a cop. She just wished she had something, someone, else. She wished she knew how to have fun, how to flirt, how to feel pretty. A hobby would be good. Maybe a sport, like tennis. She jogged regularly, to stay in shape, and it did relax her. But jogging wasn’t fun.

The trouble was, she had no idea where to start to make changes. Her apartment needed something, for example. Okay, a lot. It had no character. But…decorating. How did you do that? She’d bought stuff before. Some of the furniture was hers. But whatever she brought home just never melded. A print would look lost on the wall where she hung it. A throw pillow on one end of the couch, bought in a rash moment, looked like an orphan from some exotic species, kindly taken in by a plain Jane mom.

Ann wandered into her bedroom, stripping as she went. She felt lighter the minute she laid her shoulder harness and gun on her bedside table. Unbuttoning her shirt, she eyed with equal disfavor the contents of her closet. What if some day she had call to look elegant, or flirty and sexy, or even just like a woman?

Out of luck. Even she could see that almost everything hanging in there was ugly. She never wore any of it anyway, except the blazers, Oxford cloth shirts and slacks that were her plainclothes uniform. She ought to bundle the rest up and give it to the Salvation Army. If they’d take it.

Still brooding, Ann changed into flannel pajama bottoms and a sacky T-shirt.

She could afford a new wardrobe, and to refurbish her apartment. Or even to buy a house. She’d been thinking of doing that. With what she’d saved and what she’d inherited from her father, money wasn’t an issue. She just didn’t want to waste it—buy a bunch of stuff and be as dissatisfied with it as she was by what she already owned.

Maybe she should hire a decorator. Of course, then the place would have character; it just wouldn’t be hers.

Depression hit her in a wave. What difference did it make what her apartment looked like? She hardly ever had anyone over anyway. She kidded herself when she said she had friends. Her “friends” were people she met to see a movie. Acquaintances was probably closer to the truth.

What she needed was someone to decorate her. In the act of getting her toothbrush and toothpaste out of the medicine cabinet, she stopped. Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea. You could get makeovers. Couldn’t you? And maybe go to some store like Nordstrom and find a friendly-looking clerk and say, “Help?”

She studied herself carefully in the mirror and wondered if she’d have the courage to appear in public wearing a short skirt or a tight top and with makeup on her face. What if she sauntered into work someday thinking she’d achieved chic, and everyone busted a gut laughing?

Ann made faces at herself in the mirror: bared her teeth, tried for a radiant smile, tilted her head this way and that to see herself at every angle.

She wasn’t that bad-looking. At least, she didn’t think so. Her skin was good, if too pale. She couldn’t seem to tan, no matter what she did. Her teeth were white and straight—her father had seen to that, when one front tooth started trying to cut in front of the other. Braces were a hideous memory, but she was grateful for the result. Her forehead was high—maybe too high, especially with her hair pulled back the way it was. Blue eyes, check. Normal lips, not pouty but not thin, either. Wavy dark hair that tumbled well past her shoulders when she let it free.

Below the neck…well. She was too buxom for her short stature, giving her the look of a fireplug. Ever since she turned eleven and started to develop, she’d been trying to hide her breasts. Her hips were wider than she liked, too; the uniform had never fit her right. Why couldn’t she be tall and lean? She was pretty well on the other end of the spectrum from the ethereal models men and women alike seemed to admire these days. But she was no Playboy bunny, either. She was too…compact. Too strong, despite a build that didn’t match who she really was.

But maybe, with the right clothes—whatever they were—she could look curvy instead of squat. She’d settle for that. If she could figure out what the right clothes were.

She grimaced at herself and stuck the toothbrush in her mouth. Like she was going to go waste a bunch of money on clothes.

But maybe, she could spend a little money. Just…oh, go to Nordstrom and wander around. Maybe try some clothes on, just for fun.

She’d done that once, when other girls were shopping for prom dresses. Ann had pretended she was, too, trying on long dresses sewn with glittery sequins or simple satin slip dresses. But they hadn’t looked right on her, and she had suddenly, in the dressing room at the Bon, felt so inadequate she’d ripped off the slinky royal blue number and scrambled into her own clothes, rushing out of the store.

The memory almost made her jettison the plan, but she was beginning to think she had to do something instead of just feeling miserable.

She wasn’t sixteen anymore. So, okay, her idea of shopping was usually marching into the store and buying a new pair of the same pants she always bought. But she could browse.

Ann made one last face at herself in the mirror.

It wasn’t like she had a whole lot else to do on her days off.

“DO YOU USUALLY use bold colors, or soft ones?”

Ann sat on a tall stool at the cosmetics counter feeling as if she were at the dentist. The makeup consultant, or whatever she called herself, even reminded Ann of the dental technician who cleaned her teeth. Blond, perky, relentless.

“Uh… Surprise me,” she improvised. “I’m here because I want a change.”

“Oh, what fun!” chirped Britny.

Yeah, that was how her name was spelled, according to the tasteful tag she wore on her bright blue lapel. Ann had almost asked if someone had made a mistake, but decided poor Britny’s parents had just decided to be creative. Make her stand out from the crowd.

Preparing her tools, Britny assured Ann, “You were smart to come with your face bare. Most people don’t, and then we have to start by washing off the old makeup.”

Ann made a noncommittal sound and warily watched the hand approaching her face with pale goop on a cotton ball.

“You have fabulous skin!” Britny spread the cool liquid across Ann’s cheeks, chin, upper lip. Ann almost asked why she had to cover her skin, if it was so fabulous, but was afraid if she opened her mouth her tongue would get coated, too. “Alabaster is our palest shade of foundation. It’s blending in beautifully.”

She continued to chatter as she outlined Ann’s lips with a colored pencil—to “define them” she explained—then filled in with lipstick. “Your brows could use some shaping,” she suggested. “They have a lovely arch, but a more delicate line would bring out your eyes.” She tilted her head and studied Ann as if she were a half-done canvas. Nodding, she agreed with herself. “Definitely. Jeannie down at Salon Francine does a wonderful job. I know she takes drop-ins.”

Keeping her eyes open while that hand approached with a sharp implement was all Ann could do. Grimly she gripped the edge of the seat, stared straight ahead, and let Britny draw lines on her lids, then “accentuate” her lashes with mascara. Eye shadow was “blended” and blush applied to cheeks. At last, Britny caroled, “Let’s see how you like this look!”

She tilted a round mirror on the glass top of the counter until Ann could gape at herself.

“Ohmygod.”

Britny beamed.

Another doll stared back at her. One with huge, mysterious blue eyes, mysteriously enhanced cheekbones, a mouth that…well, almost was pouty.

It also felt stiff. In fact, she was afraid if she smiled or raised an eyebrow or drew her lips back from her teeth the facade would crack.

Britny was suggesting that if she liked the “look” she could buy all this stuff. Ann wasn’t sure she’d be able to apply it—heck, if she’d ever have the nerve to try—but she nodded.

“Sure,” she said, moving her lips a minimal amount. “Fine. Put together what you think I’ll need.”

Ann admitted to being low on eye makeup remover—who knew you needed it? she’d have just used soap—and half a dozen other things.

In a state of shock, she wrote a check for more than she’d spent on her entire wardrobe in the last year, then obediently presented herself at the salon, where Jeannie happened to have an opening.

Ann had seen that Mel Gibson movie where he waxed his legs, so she knew the procedure hurt. She didn’t know it would be excruciating until she strangled a scream, her body levitating from the chair.

“Goodness, you’ve let these grow out!” Jeannie chided.

By the time she was done, Ann’s eyelids and entire forehead were in flames. She moaned when Jeannie laid a cool compress over her forehead and told her to relax for a few minutes.

Once the raging pain had subsided to sharp throbs, Jeannie was kind enough to take the bag of makeup from Ann’s nerveless hand and deftly apply foundation to cover the inflamed skin.

“Perfect!” she declared, turning the salon chair so Ann could stare dully at the new her.

Wow. Half her eyebrows were gone. The puffy red skin where the other half had been couldn’t be totally disguised. The effect was…she didn’t know. Maybe good when she healed.

Having a vision of how she’d look when the stubborn hair roots recovered and sprouted stubble, Ann asked suspiciously, “How often do I have to do this?”

She barely refrained from a moan at the answer. She had to put herself through this every few weeks so she could feel feminine?

“The price of beauty…” she muttered.

Jeannie laughed merrily. “If you don’t let them go, it doesn’t hurt nearly as much.”

“Okay,” Ann vowed. “I won’t. I promise.”

When she stood, she swayed, and Jeannie had to grab her arm. “Are you all right?”

“Sure.” Ann gave her head a little shake. “I’m fine.” She gave blood on a regular basis with less trauma.

She paid, ditched the idea of clothes shopping, and walked almost steadily out to her car. There, she stared with amazement in the rearview mirror at the new her, started the engine, and drove home.

Maybe she’d take this campaign to redo her image a little slower. She could put off shopping until next week. Or even the week after. She had to get used to the new eyebrows first. Figure out how to use all that stuff she’d just wasted a week’s salary on. How to wash it off if you couldn’t use soap.

Baby steps, she decided. Nothing radical.

In her slot at the complex, she bowed her head and pretended to be hunting for something in her purse when the young couple who lived in 203 walked by, bickering. Ann wasn’t ready to be seen.

Her stomach knotted, and she stole another look at herself in the mirror. Oh, God. Everyone would notice, wouldn’t they?

What would she say if someone—Diaz, for example—commented? Would she tell him fliply that they’d needed pruning?

With a whimper, she locked her car and raced for the safety of her apartment, the expensive bag of tricks she wouldn’t have the courage to use clutched in her hand.

CHAPTER THREE

SOMETHING WAS DIFFERENT about her. Diaz just couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

Driving again today, he kept stealing glances. It seemed every time he did, Caldwell averted her face.

He felt like he had when his ex had started striking poses the minute he’d walked in the door from work, and he’d known she must have a new hairdo, clothes, something. And he was supposed to notice.

Only, Caldwell didn’t want him to notice.

“You’re staring,” she snapped.

“You’ve done something to your face.”

She looked directly at him for the first time, defiance in her tight mouth and the jut of her chin. “Yeah? So?”

“Your eyebrows.” At a stop sign, he studied them—her—more closely. “Where the hell did they go?”

The minute the words were out, Diaz knew he’d blown it. You look great, was the all-purpose, correct remark.

Caldwell’s vivid blue eyes narrowed and her teeth showed. “I had my brows waxed,” she snarled. “That is, I believe, a normal thing for a woman to do.”

“Yeah, but you’re…” He cleared his throat.

“Not normal?” she inquired.

Knowing danger when he saw it, Diaz ignored the honk of some idiot who was in a hurry.

“You don’t do stuff like that,” he blurted.

“Because it’s a waste of time for me? Are you suggesting I’m hopeless?”

“Because you just don’t do it!” he all but shouted.

Somebody rapped on his window. “Hey, buddy, you want to quit arguing with your girlfriend and get a move on?”

Diaz hit the down button and fixed an icy stare on the red-faced Yuppie who thought the world would end if he was held up two minutes.

“Maybe you want to rethink interfering with law officers in the performance of their duties.”

“You’re cops?” His stare took in the grill between front and back seats, the radio and the gun that Caldwell displayed as she bent forward, casually letting her blazer fall open. “And you’re sitting at the stop sign…why?”

“I’m afraid that’s not your concern, sir.” Caldwell had a gift for cool dismissal. “Please return to your car.”

Diaz zipped the window back up, glanced both ways, and started across the intersection. His mouth began to curve into a grin before they made it across.

He turned his head to see his partner’s mouth twitch.

“God knows what he thought.”

A laugh bubbled out of her. “That we were conducting a stakeout?”

“Squabbling like a long-married couple is more like it.”

She drew back instantly without seeming to move a muscle. He just felt it; her contracting into her space, a turtle making sure its shell was ready and available. Diaz thought a faint flush touched her cheeks, too.

“You made me mad.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t very tactful,” he admitted. He took another glance. Definitely pink cheeks. And the eyebrows… Much as he hated to admit it, the shaping had the effect of opening her face, emphasizing eyes he’d always known were spectacular. “Actually, uh, I like what you did. It looks good.”

“Really?” She couldn’t know how uncertain she sounded.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m just not used to my partners having a makeover.”

“I didn’t go that far,” she said, really quickly, the pink in her cheeks deepening. “I only did my eyebrows.”

Uh-huh. She was hiding something. God. Had she had a bikini wax, too? Was that why she was embarrassed?

He felt a surge of lust that shocked him. It was all he could do not to let his gaze lower to her crotch. Just for a second, he’d imagined her naked, a thatch of silky dark hair at the vee between smooth thighs and a flat, pale belly.

He looked away from her so fast, something cracked in his neck. Don’t think of her that way, he ordered himself. She’s a cop, your partner. Never, ever, imagine her naked again.

Keeping himself from thinking anything at all seemed to be the only way he could prevent pictures from forming before his mind’s eye. But sustaining a giant blank like a dry-erase board where he normally had a tangle of thoughts and plans and images took an enormous effort. His palms grew sweaty.

“I made a few calls,” she said, breaking the silence and bailing him out.

“Calls?”

“About Dad. And Leroy Pearce.”

“Right.” He relaxed fractionally. He could think about this. “What’d you learn? Wait.” He put on his turn signal. “Let’s stop for a cup of coffee.”

No espresso here. The truck stop café had padded booths patched with duct tape, middle-aged waitresses in starched pink uniforms who willingly refilled white china mugs whenever the level dropped, and French fries that tasted so good, they were probably still being made in beef fat.

Reluctantly, he skipped the fries. Breakfast hadn’t been that long ago. But he figured a piece of pie would settle.

One of the things he liked about Ann Caldwell was her appetite. Most women were on a perpetual diet. She never seemed to give a thought to calories.

When he said, “Pie sounds good,” she agreed.

“Make mine cherry,” she told the waitress. “Warm.”

“À la mode?”

“Why not?”

“Boysenberry,” he said. “I’ll take the ice cream, too.”

“Okay,” he said, once the waitress had left them alone in a booth in the far corner. “Find out anything?”

“That scrape along the driver’s side door and fenders bothered the mechanic who looked at the truck after the accident. He mentioned it in his report, but no one picked up on it.”

“Who would remember if the scrapes were there before that night?” Diaz frowned. “Where was your father going?”

“He was on his way home from The Blue Moon.” The tavern was a popular hangout for the older cops. “He had a blood-alcohol level that would have gotten him in trouble if he’d been pulled over, too. That’s one reason ‘accident’ was the obvious answer. He was speeding, lost control on the curve…” She shrugged.

“What do you think?”

Her voice was clipped. “Dad liked his beer. But I never knew him even to wander across a center line when he was behind the wheel. He carried it well. You know?”

“That’s what they all say,” Diaz reminded her.

She grimaced. “Yeah, I know. But, see, he drove me places a lot when he’d had as much as a six-pack. And, if anything, he’d slow down. Get more cautious. He never speeded. He said he’d picked up too many body parts off highways. When I got my license, he told me that if I was ever ticketed for speeding, I wasn’t driving again for a year. If I was lucky.”

“He wasn’t, um…” Diaz tried to think how to phrase his question without offending her. “He hadn’t been feeling low about anything?”

His meaning sank in and her voice rose. “Low?”

The waitress brought their pies, but neither of them picked up a fork or broke their locked stare.

“You’re asking if he was depressed?” She flattened her hands on the table. “You think he might have committed suicide?”

“He drove at high speed into a tree. Yeah, the thought occurred to me.”

Her face worked, and he braced himself for the blast.

“No! He’d never do that!” She breathed heavily. “How can you even suggest…?” She broke off with a lurch, as if a sob had torn at her throat.

In alarm, he said, “Jeez, Caldwell. Don’t get worked up. I just figured I should throw the possibility on the table.”

“It’s a horrible thing to say!”

“I’m not making an accusation. I just asked. Cops commit suicide, just like other people.”

“Not my father!” she yelled.

Heads on the other side of the diner turned.

“Okay, okay,” Diaz soothed. “Had you seen him in the week before he died?”

“I talked to him the day before.” She glared at him as if he was going to argue. “He was feeling good about an arrest, and he claimed he had a break in the Lofgren case. He wanted to know why my arrests were so low for the month.” She swallowed. When she continued, she’d stripped her voice of emotion. The change was so stark from her passionate defense of a moment before, he knew the memory must burn in her belly. “Dad said if I couldn’t do the job, he’d seen an ad for a new session at the cosmetology school. Then he—” She stopped again. Deliberately relaxed, but Diaz saw the effort it took. She stirred her coffee, although the half a teaspoon of sugar she’d added had long since dissolved. “He was his usual supportive self. That was just his way.” She shrugged again. “He wasn’t any different than ever. If anything, he seemed to be in a good mood.”

Suddenly furious for reasons he hardly grasped, Diaz asked, “Then he what?”

She stared at him.

“Tell me.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I want to know,” he said, rough and unyielding.

Just audibly, she said, “He laughed. ‘Hell, they wouldn’t take you once they got a look at you.’ That’s what he said. But by God, if I couldn’t use the advantages he’d given me to do the job, I’d better start exploring other career paths.”

Diaz wished the son of a bitch was alive so he could plant a fist in his face. “He just couldn’t admit you might be his equal.”

“But why?” she whispered, as much to herself as to him. “Did he hate me?”

Diaz couldn’t remember ever hearing Sgt. Caldwell talk about his daughter. “Maybe,” he suggested, “he desperately had that urge men sometimes do to live on through a son. He couldn’t see himself in you, so you wouldn’t do.”

“I tried.” The two small words were as desolate as anything he’d ever heard.

“If he wasn’t proud of you, he didn’t deserve you.”

She looked at him with those vivid, desperate eyes. “You have a son and a daughter both, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” Picturing his kids, dark-haired and bright-faced, smart, mischievous, all bony elbows and knees and warm cuddly bodies at the same time, Diaz knew his voice softened. “Can I live again through my son but not my daughter? Is that what you’re asking?”

She glanced down, saw the ice cream melting in pale rivers around her pie, and picked up her fork. “I guess.”

“No.” He couldn’t imagine the concept, not the way she meant. “Actually, I see more of myself in Elena than Tony. He looks like his mom, loves to talk like she does. He’s creative, too, like she is. Elena’s more for mulling things over before she gives an opinion and takes action. Tony’s the rash one.”

Around a bite, Caldwell asked, “You were a cautious kid?”

“Yeah, I hung back.” Damn, this was good pie. “I can remember every time Mom served a new dish, I’d watch my sisters’ faces as they tried it before I put a bite in my mouth.”

Caldwell laughed, and he saw that some of the misery had left her face.

“Back to your father. We need to hit up his drinking buddies. Find out if anybody knows about the scrape on his truck.”

She nodded. “I can do that. I know his friends.”

“While you’re talking to Roarke, see if his story about the car that landed on his face has changed.”

Another nod.

“I’ll tackle Leroy’s neighbors. Talk to the widow, the EMTs. You never know. Someone might have noticed something.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Do we tell the lieutenant what we’re doing?”

“Not until we have something to go on. He’d say the whole idea is wacko and tell us to drop it.”

She laughed. “I told you I’d have let it go if you’d just said that in the first place.”

“The way you let the Lofgren thing go when I didn’t back you?”

His honest answer to their superior that he didn’t think the case justified reopening had been a betrayal, as far as Caldwell was concerned. Partners backed each other, she’d said. In general, Diaz agreed. Truth was, he didn’t think they’d find anything this time, either, in investigating the two deaths and the one near-miss. But Caldwell would feel better if she wasn’t left wondering, and that was good enough for him.

“That was different,” she said.

“This matters, too.”

Pushing her empty plate away, she cleared her throat. “I didn’t say it the other day, but I want you to know I appreciate you taking me seriously.”

“Yeah, yeah.” They were descending into Hallmark territory, which made him uncomfortable. If he’d talked about his feelings more readily, he might still be married. “Good cops have hunches. I figure this one might be legit.”

“Yeah.” She looked grateful. “I mean, I hope it’s not, but I’d like to be sure.”

Grateful. That stuck in his craw. Her bastard of a father had never respected her opinions or worth, so she was pathetically grateful when someone did. He almost liked it better when she snarled.

“You done?” he asked abruptly.

“What? Oh. Sure.” She drained her coffee and slid from the booth. “Pit stop.”

He made his own, taking a second to frown at himself in the blotchy mirror above the sink in the men’s room as he washed his hands. The face that looked back at him was older than he remembered being, grimmer. Every one of his thirty-six years showed today. He wondered how Ann Caldwell saw him, whether she ever…

No, damn it. He wasn’t going there. He didn’t want to know if she ever had moments like he’d had in the car, when she felt a flash of intense sexual awareness. Hell, he’d rather not know if she didn’t, either. A man had some pride.

NOT UNTIL late that afternoon could Diaz get over to Pearce’s house.

His widow answered the door, her eyes puffy and red-rimmed, her stare vague.

“Mrs. Pearce, I’m sorry to disturb you,” he began. “But I wonder if I could ask you a few questions.”

“Questions?”

“About your husband’s accident.”

“But…why?”

He came up with something slick about tying up loose ends, and she finally nodded and stood back.

The living room was dim with drapes drawn and only one lamp on. She sat in the large brown recliner that dwarfed her, and he guessed it had been her husband’s. A basket at her feet overflowed with crumpled tissues.

She wrapped an afghan around her shoulders as if she were chilled despite the warm room. “What do you want to know?”

Diaz flipped open his notebook and held his pencil above a blank page. “Were you home at the time of the accident?”

“Yes, but I didn’t know what he was doing. I was sewing in a room on the other side of the house. I heard a few thumps and vaguely wondered what he was up to.”

“I understand he had somebody stop by to speak to him?”

“Did he? I guess he might have.”

“Were both ladders his?”

She nodded, her mouth crimping. “I told him to call a service. Those gutters were so high off the ground, but he was determined…” She groped for a tissue.

Diaz gave her a moment to blow her nose and compose herself. “Did you hear him fall?”

She sniffed and shook her head. “I…I had the sewing machine running. I thought I heard a bellow and I stopped to see if Leroy was calling for me, but then when he didn’t again, I finished the seam.”

“You couldn’t have done anything,” he said gently.

Tears overflowed. “I’d have held the ladder if he’d asked. He was so stubborn!”

That was one way of putting it.

“How did you learn that he’d fallen?”

Mopping her cheeks, she said, “The doorbell rang. It was Ron Blackman from next door. He said…he said there’d been an accident, that he’d called 911 already.” Her voice faltered. “That Leroy had fallen.”

By the time she got out there, neighbors had gathered and several had slid down the bluff to Leroy. She didn’t actually remember who was there.

“Except Ruth Blackman. She had her arm around me.”

“But you knew everyone there?”

“All I could see was Leroy, crumpled against a tree.” Fresh tears filled her eyes. “I kept thinking he’d swear and sit up.”

Feeling cruel for making her relive her husband’s accident, Diaz thanked her and made his escape. He was glad that in her grief she hadn’t noticed the tenor of his questions.

The Blackmans, an older couple, were home next door. Their house, too, backed on the canyon.

Mrs. Blackman offered him coffee, which he accepted, and they talked readily about the tragedy.

“I heard him yell.” A tall, gaunt man with stooped shoulders and close-cropped white hair, Ron Blackman shook his head. “I was on the computer doing some research on a company I’m considering buying stock in. It took me, oh, a couple of minutes at least to get up and go out to the back deck.”

“As stiff as your back is,” his wife put in, “it might have been longer than that.”

“You saw him right away?” Diaz asked.

“I might not have noticed him at all, if the ladders hadn’t been lying on the rhododendrons.”

“Were you the first to see him?”

He considered. “Well, I don’t know. I heard a shout from the other side of the Pearces’. Jack Gunn. I guess we met at the top of the bluff. Got there about the same time.”

“So you were the first two on the scene?”

Unlike Mrs. Pearce, he was putting two and two together and making four.

“Do you mind my asking why the questions?”

Diaz shook his head. “You’ve probably answered every one of these questions already. I apologize, sir. But even a simple accident gets investigated pretty carefully when it’s a police officer who died.”

His expression cleared. “I understand.”

Diaz got the Blackmans to come up with a list of who had gathered in the Pearces’ narrow backyard. They hemmed and hawed and went back and forth before agreeing, with only slight hesitation, on a final list of names.

“I wish we knew whether he had just reached too far, or whether something distracted him.” Diaz closed his notebook. “Someone said they thought they’d heard him talking to someone a little earlier.”

“I did think I heard him talking,” Ruth Blackman said, a little timidly.

“Really?” Diaz hid his intense interest, keeping his tone casual. “Do you remember how much earlier?”

“Well…right before. I mean, I didn’t think anything of it. The day was a little chilly and damp, so not that many people were outside working, but the mail had come in the past hour. I said hello to Margie across the street when I fetched ours.” She added apologetically, “I can’t swear it was him. Somebody might have been talking in another yard.”

“You didn’t hear a second voice?”

“I don’t think so. I just vaguely wondered who’d made Leroy mad this time.”

So the voice wasn’t conversational. “Obviously, you didn’t glance out.”

She shook her head, her expression regretful. “If I’d seen Leroy up there like that, I would have called for Ron to go insist he get down. What was he thinking?”

“His wife thought she’d talked him into hiring a service to clean the gutters. She knew it wasn’t safe for him to do it.”

Mr. Blackman spoke up. “When he hired someone to work for him, he was never satisfied. A couple of years ago, he was working so much overtime he hired a lawn service, but he said they didn’t edge the lawn the way he liked and they overfertilized, so he’s been taking care of it himself since.”

There was a moment of silence as they all reflected on the fact that Leroy’s widow would now be hiring out all those jobs he would have been doing if only he hadn’t been an idiot and for all practical purposes killed himself.

Unless, of course, someone had given him a push.

Some neighbors weren’t home. Others hadn’t been home when Leroy died. Diaz did talk to Jack Gunn, who lived on the other side of the Pearces’. He came up with a different list of names of who’d been gathered to witness the tragedy. He shook his head and insisted that a couple of the people the Blackmans thought had been present weren’t there, and added a few of his own. Diaz knew from experience that every other person present would remember the scene differently, too. Neither, however, remembered anyone being there that they didn’t know.

Gunn, a beefy fellow in his forties, hadn’t heard voices before the accident, but admitted he’d been running a circular saw in his garage. “Stopped for a smoke. That’s when I heard Leroy yell and then fall.”

“Did you see or hear anyone leaving the scene?”

His gaze was sharp. “Leaving? Didn’t see anybody.” He frowned. “Thought I heard a car engine start up, though. Can’t swear to it. Just an impression.”

Back in his car, Diaz made notes of which neighbors he had yet to interview. He’d do better to come back on Saturday morning, when more people were likely to be home.

He hadn’t learned anything to prove Ann’s hunch, but he hadn’t disproved it, either. Pearce might have talked to someone in angry tones right before his fall—or he might not have. Someone might have started a car and driven away just as the neighbors were rushing to the Pearces’, but people did get in their cars and drive away for legitimate reasons.

He wouldn’t give up yet, but he wasn’t convinced.

“THIS POT ROAST is wonderful, Mary.” Ann sighed in pleasure. “I don’t do much real cooking.”

Mary Roarke, a comfortable, motherly woman, shook her head in disapproval. “You wouldn’t be so skinny if you did.”

Ann grinned at her. “Actually, considering my usual diet is Winchell’s for breakfast, McDonald’s for lunch and frozen meals I can microwave for dinner, my guess is I might actually lose weight if I started cooking good stuff.”

Mary shuddered. “My dear! I know you’re young, but you need to think about your health.”

“I was kidding.” Honesty compelled her to admit, “Partly. I eat more junk food than I should, but I actually start most mornings with a banana sliced on cereal, and I do have a vegetable with dinner.” Sometimes. Occasionally. “And I keep fruit around.”

“Are we going to have dessert or not?” her husband interrupted.

Mary stood as if invisible wires had lifted her. As cheerful as if her husband wasn’t glowering at her, she said, “Lemon meringue pie. Of course you’ll have a slice, Ann?”

“Couldn’t stop me,” Ann assured her. She waited until the plump woman in her fifties had disappeared into the kitchen before she said to her father’s old friend, “Reggie, I have something I wanted to ask you about.”

“Got to do with the job?”

“Uh…maybe. I don’t know,” she admitted.

Despite the couple of beers he’d downed, Reggie Roarke’s gaze sharpened. “Is this something we want to talk about in front of Mary?”

“I don’t know that, either. I was hoping you’d tell me more about your accident.”

His eyes bored into hers. “You got a reason?”

She hesitated. “I think I’d rather hear you tell me what happened first, if you don’t mind.”

He took a long swallow of beer from the can, his eyes never leaving hers. “All right. But let’s leave Mary out of it.”

His wife bustled back in with slabs of pie, dunes of meringue quivering above lemon filling. From the first bite, Ann forgot her purpose in being here. This pie was manna, the tart and sweet melting into a paean on her tongue.

Her husband ate his piece, grunted and pushed the empty plate aside. It was no wonder that Mary seemed so pleased at Ann’s heartfelt compliments.

“I made two. I’ll send you home with some. No, don’t argue,” she insisted, when Ann opened her mouth to make a polite if feeble protest.

“Ann’s here to talk business,” Reggie said brusquely. “We’ll take our coffee into the living room.”

Leaving Mary clearing off the table, Ann followed her dad’s partner to the front room, dominated by his and hers recliners and a big-screen television set. He sat in his recliner and waited while she took his wife’s. Ann found the effect rather strange. With both pointed at the TV, she had to turn her head to see him. She set her coffee cup to one side and saw that he’d brought a new can of beer instead.

“I remember hearing you talk about the accident once you were back at work,” she began. “But the details didn’t stick.”

Popping the top off the beer, he said, “I’ve got a ’71 ’Vette out in the garage. Been restoring it for a while.”

That day, he explained, he’d jacked it up so he could roll under it to perform some task that went right over Ann’s head. To her father’s disgust, she had never become fascinated by the workings of a combustion engine. Car talk, a staple of poker games with his friends, had bored her so completely she hadn’t even pretended to share his interest to please him.

“I was under the car when I heard footsteps coming into the garage.”

“From the street?” she interrupted.

“Right. Thought for a minute it was Mary and I wondered why she hadn’t come through the kitchen door, but she might have been out gossiping with a neighbor. I asked her what she wanted. Didn’t get an answer.”

“So this person was standing where your feet would have been sticking out from under the Corvette.”

He shook his head before she finished sketching the scene aloud. “No. See, that was a strange thing. Whoever it was went to the other side of the car. I tried to twist my head to see the feet, but I couldn’t. Whoever it was must have been behind the wheel. But I realized the footsteps hadn’t sounded like a woman’s. They were heavier than that. So then I started thinking, maybe it was Hank from two doors down. He likes to see how I’m coming. So I said, ‘Hank, that you?’”

She nodded, watching his face to judge whether he was telling the truth and nothing but. So far, she saw only outrage and residual fear.

“That’s when the car moved just a little. Scared the bejesus out of me, I can tell you!” His face flushed as he remembered. “‘Hey!’ I yelled. Something like that. Then I felt it rocking above me. I tried to shoot out from under there, but I didn’t want to use the under-carriage to move myself in case my push helped the bastard knock the ’Vette off the jacks. I was probably swearing.” He took a gulp of beer. The hand that set the can down might have had a tremor. “I didn’t make it. Turned out Mary was at the grocery store and I’d forgotten. She found me when she got home.”

Ann nodded. “You never did see feet, and the person didn’t say anything.”

“Not a word.” He shook his head. “Nobody believed that someone pushed the goddamn car off the blocks. They figured I was a dumb-ass who didn’t know how to jack up a car.” He glared at her as if she’d expressed that exact opinion. “But let me tell you, little girl, I’ve been working on cars since I was a kid. I know what happened.”

She wanted him to lay it out in blunt words. “What did happen?”

“Somebody tried to kill me.” His voice grated. “And they damn near succeeded.”

“Pretty unusual way to commit murder.” She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Somebody happening to wander by, seeing you in a vulnerable spot.”

He didn’t like doubt. “The scum watched for his chance, that’s all.”

“You have any ideas at all about who might want to kill you?”

He snorted at her naiveté. “I’ve been a cop for thirty-two years! I’ve put away my share of slugs. They’d probably all raise a glass if they heard I was dead.”

“Okay. Let me put it another way. Who would want you, Leroy Pearce and my dad all dead?”

He stared at her, a man who downed too many beers every night but was still a cop, could still draw a line from A to B to C. Reggie Roarke breathed a word as ugly as his nose.

“You’re thinking he murdered two of us and tried to kill me.”

Ann studied his expression of bafflement, anger, fear and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something that interested her because it was secretive.

“And I’m thinking he might not be done. Someone else might be on his list. Depending on why he’s mad. Also…” Ann paused to be sure she had his full attention. “I’m thinking he failed to kill you, which means he’ll be back.”

Aluminum crackled and tore as he crushed his empty beer can in his meaty fist. In a hard voice, he said, “And I’m thinking I’m done talking until you tell me what you know.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“SO, WHAT DID you tell Roarke?” Diaz asked.

Today’s lunch consisted of burgers, fries and milk shakes. Deserted when the two cops came in, the burger joint had filled like magic at noon. Empty booths on each side of theirs were now occupied by a pair of mothers with whiny toddlers and a morose teenager dressed in black and wearing a spiked dog collar around his neck.

In answer, Ann said, “Not much.” She bit one end off a fry.

Her partner grunted in amusement. “In other words, you told him the truth.”

“I was a little evasive. As if I knew more than I was saying.”

Although he’d been about to slurp strawberry milk shake through a straw, Diaz lifted his head and frowned. “Was that smart?”

Surprised, she set down her fries. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Let me ask this—why weren’t you straight with Reggie?”

While she tried to find words to describe her unsettling feeling that her father’s old friend had been hiding something, Ann watched the teenage boy in the next booth unwrap his second bacon cheeseburger. His world-weariness appeared not to be inhibiting his appetite.

“I don’t know,” she said after a minute. “There was something about the way Reggie got suspicious. As if…”

When she didn’t finish, Diaz did. “As if he wondered whether you might be working with Internal Affairs.”

“Yeah. He gave me this once-over, and I knew he was looking for a wire.” She’d actually been afraid for a minute, until she remembered that Mary was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher and wrapping pie in plastic for Ann to take home.

Diaz balled up a wrapper. “If you asked me a few questions about who might hate me, I wouldn’t get antsy. Because I’m not hiding anything.”

“You think Roarke is.”

He raised his brows. “Isn’t that why you went to talk to him?”

She narrowed her eyes, not liking where he was going. “Maybe.”

“If the two deaths weren’t accidents, if somebody tried to kill Roarke and all three of these incidents are linked, odds are these aren’t random attacks on cops.”

“They could be.” She scowled at him.

As relentless as an oncoming freight train, Diaz said, “If I’d been killed, and Pearce and…oh, hell, say, Dennis Fassett had been attacked, that might suggest random.” Fassett was a fresh-faced recruit who had puked at the sight of the bloodbath in front of the biker bar last week. “Random doesn’t hit three cops who’ve known each other and worked together for twenty-five years.”

She knew he was right, but she hated what he was suggesting. “Dad wasn’t dirty.”

“Didn’t say he was.”

One of the toddlers in the next booth lost patience and started to wail. Voice sharp, the kid’s mother tried to quiet him. When she didn’t succeed, the two women, still gossiping over the sobs, collected their garbage, bundled their children in parkas and gloves and hats with earflaps as if this was Juneau in January, and finally left. The kid’s face was turning purple as he screamed all the way to the door.

Ann muttered, “Talk about an argument for abstinence. They should borrow that kid as an object lesson for sex-ed classes at the high school.”

Diaz laughed, real amusement crinkling the skin beside his eyes. “I take it your biological clock isn’t ticking.”

She didn’t even know if she had one. She was still trying to figure out how girls got guys to ask them to the prom.

“Not if it means taking one of those home from the hospital.”

“They have their moments, you know.” His smile had changed, become tender.

Ann’s heart felt too big for her chest. Surreptitiously, she pressed her rib cage.

“Kids let you see the world fresh, through their eyes. When your baby smiles the first time, just for you, or you hear this giggle of pure glee, or you see understanding dawn on your little girl’s face…” He hunched his shoulders suddenly, as if embarrassed.

Damn it, her sinuses burned. She concentrated on her milk shake to hide emotions that embarrassed her.

Had her father felt that way about her, at least in the beginning? Had her first smile filled him with tenderness? Things had gone wrong, but she’d like to think he had loved her.

And Diaz… Why in heck did she turn to mush just because his eyes softened every time he mentioned his kids? Yeah, okay. It was a nice quality in a man. She was starting to think his ex-wife was an idiot. But she was not looking for a husband. Even if she had been, Juan Diaz wouldn’t be on her list. So she really, really needed to stop with the knees-buckling, heart-swelling thing.

“Yeah, maybe someday,” she mumbled.

He was looking at her in a way that made her shift on the hard plastic seat. “I’ll bet you were a tomboy. I can see you. Baseball cap turned backward, sneakers, knees ripped out on your jeans. Not taking any crap from the boys.”

He was right on, but she’d been like that because somehow, some way, she’d always known Daddy didn’t really want a little girl. He wanted a little boy.

Until she’d turned sixteen and suddenly in his eyes she was supposed to be a girl—she sure as hell was never going to measure up as a son. Why wasn’t she a beauty he could brag about to his friends? He’d have liked to make jokes about fighting off the boys, but it was painfully obvious to him and Ann both that no boys were interested. And she was still struggling to be that little girl in ripped jeans who didn’t take any crap from the boys.

“Got it in one.” She wadded up her garbage even though she hadn’t finished her fries. “Can we go?”

Something flickered in Diaz’s dark brown eyes, but he only nodded. “I’m done.”

They were on the way to the hospital to talk to a woman whose husband had beaten the crap out of her the night before. Or so said the neighbors who had called 911 after hearing an escalating fight, crashes and screams. The woman hadn’t been able to say anything; she’d lain unconscious on the floor, her face blood-smeared and distorted.

Ann and Diaz didn’t do the average domestic disturbance call anymore. This one wasn’t average. Gene Verger’s first wife had been viciously beaten to death. Police had never been able to prove he had killed her. He’d claimed he’d found her when he got home from work.

When a 911 call with his address came in, it was like little red cherries all lining up. People who’d seen Marianne Verger’s body had long memories.

His second wife looked grotesque. One eye was swollen shut; the other peered through a slit in purple flesh. One arm was in a cast, and the print of fingers was visible on her neck.

Ann took the lead. “Ms. Verger?”

The woman in the hospital bed gave the tiniest of nods, then winced. At least, Ann thought she had. With her face looking like a raw ribeye roast, reading expressions was a little difficult.

“We’re hoping you can give us a statement about last night.” Ann pulled up a chair.

Diaz stood near the foot of the bed, his notebook out. When the situation called for it, he was good at presenting himself as bland. Next best thing to invisible. This was one of those times.

Rochelle Verger studied him with what Ann took for suspicion, then turned her head on the pillow to scrutinize Ann.

“You’re not wearing uniforms,” she whispered, voice as damaged as her face and throat.

“No. I’m Detective Caldwell and this is my partner, Detective Diaz.” Ann showed her badge.

She struggled to swallow before asking, in that hoarse whisper, “Why you?”

Ann chose honesty. “Because of your husband’s history.”

The woman didn’t move for a long time. Finally, a tear seeped from her open eye.

“He’s been arrested,” Ann assured her. “He’s behind bars.”

“He… I fell. I always say I fell.” More tears dribbled down her cheek even as her eye closed.

Ann touched Rochelle’s lax hand. “He almost killed you.”

She cried, her mouth opening as tears ran into it. Her hand turned in Ann’s and clutched it in a painful, clawlike grip.

Never comfortable with emotional displays, Ann cleared her throat. “Hey. You’re safe now. He won’t get near you again.” When that had no effect, she repeated, “You’re safe. It’s okay.” Letting her hand be mauled, she kept murmuring the same things over and over. As if that would do any good.

At length the battered woman’s grip loosened and the agonized contortion of her face relaxed. Ann reached for a tissue and said, “Um, do you want to blow your nose?”

The one eye peered at her again. The mouth twisted into what might have been a laugh. Rochelle Verger nodded and took the tissue.

She dabbed rather than blew, and even that must have been painful.

At last, in an exhausted, hoarse whisper, she said, “He killed her. He tells me he did every time he beats me. He says I’m lucky.”

“Will you testify in court?”

The single eye fastened with heartrending intensity on Ann. “Do you promise he won’t get off? That I’ll be safe?”

At the foot of the bed, Diaz stirred.

Ann wanted, very badly, to promise anything. She wanted to twist Gene Verger’s nuts until he screamed.

But that swollen, discolored face, tracked with tears, the desperate strength of the fingers that had probably bruised Ann’s hand, stopped her.

“You know I can’t promise. He should get several years for what he did to you. Whether he’s convicted for murder depends partly on what he’s told you.”

The young woman who looked and sounded old started to whisper. Ann had to lean close to hear.

“He liked to talk about it. He liked to scare me. He told me everything.”

Ann smiled at her. “Then you have the power to put him away for a lifetime. If you choose to use it.”

The mouth twisted again, and this time Ann knew it was into an answering smile. In that raw whisper, she said, “I choose.”

ANN HESITATED outside the bistro, then squared her shoulders and walked in. She bolstered herself with the thought that at least her eyebrows looked great.

“Ann!” Eva Pearce waved from a round table by the window. “Over here.”

The hostess who had been about to waylay Ann smiled and gestured her ahead. Conscious of her plain navy slacks and blazer and solid, practical shoes in a way she wasn’t usually, Ann crossed the small dining room, passing several tables of women who all seemed to have Eva Pearce’s natural style.

“Thank you for coming.” Eva smiled. “Gosh, I’ve been looking forward to this. We should have gotten together to commiserate years ago.”

Some of the tension left Ann’s shoulders. “You mean, to bitch?”

The blonde laughed. “Why didn’t we? I so hated my father when I was about sixteen.”

“I thought I loved mine then.” The surprising admission just came out. Ann’s mouth almost dropped open at the implication: that later, she hadn’t loved him.

Or, at least, that she didn’t want to love him.

Eva didn’t seem surprised. “I had my phases, too. We never want to give up, do we?”

“I didn’t want to even after Dad died,” Ann admitted. “Isn’t that pathetic?”

Eva blinked. “Okay, you have to explain that one.”

Over glasses of wine and salads, Ann told her about the investigation that had been her father’s obsession and which she’d taken over after his death. “I told myself I owed it to him. But really, I kept imagining myself standing at his grave telling him I’d arrested the son of a bitch.” She shook her head. “As if…I don’t know.”

“You’d feel a ghostly pat on your back?”

Ann made a face. “Or some all-enveloping wave of pride. Heck, maybe a disembodied voice saying, ‘You done good, girl.’”

Eva’s laugh wasn’t the expected ladylike tinkle. Instead, it was hearty and uninhibited. “Hey, you never know! Maybe death softened the old bastards up.”

Ann snorted. “What are the odds of that?”

The other woman became pensive. “Do you ever wonder which direction they went?”

It was Ann’s turn to give a startled laugh. “I actually hadn’t thought about it. I haven’t really gotten used to Dad being gone. I still have the sense he’s looking over my shoulder.”

“Why?” Eva shook her head. “Let me rephrase. What I mean is, do you feel like he’d want to linger? Are we really talking woo-woo here? Or do you have a hang-up?”

Ann heaved a sigh. “I have a hang-up.” She had a sudden absurd image of herself standing up in front of a roomful of sympathetic strangers. My name is Ann Caldwell and I have a problem.

A dainty manicured hand with coral nails patted Ann’s. “Tell Sister Eva all.”

“This is supposed to be mutual,” Ann protested.

“Oh, it will be. Believe me, I have hang-ups, too. But you first. You’re more interesting.”

Oh, yeah. That was her, Ann thought. Fascinating. Riveting.

“I seriously doubt it.” She took a bite while she debated how much she really did want to confide in another woman. Sure, she’d casually known Eva since they were in kindergarten. But they’d never had a thing in common except their fathers, and they didn’t now.

Too, she was only starting to understand what she’d felt for her father. Some people seemed to need to babble about their every passing twinge of guilt, lust, resentment or smugness. Ann had never had anybody to talk emotions out with. She knew, on some level, that she had to do some of that if she was going to have friends. But theoretical knowledge wasn’t the same thing as breaking down in real life and pouring out her heart to someone she hadn’t exchanged more than greetings with since they were in fifth grade.

But…she was here. Another woman had actually called her and suggested getting together. For once, Ann had looked forward to a day off, because she had plans that weren’t solitary.

Now, that was pathetic.

“You had a mother,” she said. “I didn’t. I mean, not after she died.”

Eva’s delicate face hardened. “How true. You didn’t have to watch your mother trembling with anxiety as she rushed to do your daddy’s bidding because she was scared to death of him. Count your blessings.”

“Scared?” Ann forgot her own preoccupation. “You mean…?”

“He hit her? Sure he did. Carefully,” the other woman said, with something approaching hatred icing every word. “He wouldn’t want anyone to see a bruise and ask questions.”

Remembering Rochelle Verger’s damaged face, Ann felt the grip of rage. “Did he hurt you, too?”

“Once. That was the only thing that stiffened Mom’s spine. She told him if he ever touched me again, she’d take me and leave. He scoffed, but I think he believed her, because he never did. We had horrendous fights when I got old enough to scream back at him, and a couple of times he lifted his hand, but he always thought better of it.”

“Wow.” Food forgotten, Ann stared at Eva. “I never knew.”

“I was ashamed.” Eva gazed with seeming blindness at her salad plate. “I never told anyone. My friends knew he and I fought, but I never told them that sometimes, when he got mad enough at me, he took it out on Mom.”

Shock whammed her like a steel door of which she hadn’t stepped clear. “Oh, no! Eva…”

This new friend offered a twisted smile. “Pretty sick, huh?”

“You’re making me glad he had plenty of time to know he was going to die.” Seeing Eva wince, Ann closed her eyes. “That’s a horrible thing to say about your father. I’m sorry.”

“No. Don’t apologize. When I said I hated him most of the time, I meant it. Once I left home we worked out a civil relationship, but my teenage years were hell. I was so full of anger I couldn’t restrain myself, and then the next morning I’d see Mom moving stiffly and I’d know.” She shuddered. “I despised myself and him both. I was mad at her, too, for taking it. I will never understand…” Eva stopped. Let out a breath. “Mom won’t even talk about it.”

Ann bit her lip. “I almost envy you, being able to hate him like that. I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure out why nothing I ever did made my dad proud. Even when he did give a compliment, it was embedded with an insult. This time I’d done okay, unlike my usual, was always implied. I don’t remember him ever, once, telling me I was great at something.”

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