“Take a load off,” he said, finally removing the brazen hand. With it went the heat.
I sat down—then yelped. I lifted my leg, wondering what in the world I’d sat on. The quick motion threw up my skirt, which was considerably longer than the skirts I was used to wearing. The material was deep red and of high quality—inside, it was lined with crimson silk. To my surprise, under the lush material my legs were encased in dark nylon stockings. On my feet I saw four-inch heels and wondered vaguely how I had managed to cross the room. The stab of pain, I discovered, was the result of sitting on a twisted metal garter—something I had never worn in my life!
As I hastily adjusted my silky lingerie, I couldn’t help but reveal my naked thighs. When I looked up again, Jack Shepard was staring at me, his expression so open and raw, it gave me a moment’s shock. The man hadn’t bothered in the least to mask his interest. Clearly, he had no sense of propriety.
“Thanks, baby,” he said as he unbuttoned his jacket, holding my gaze. “A flash of gam always brightens a Joe’s afternoon.”
He shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, a worn leather office antique—at least to my eyes. His white cotton shirt outlined a solid physique. Belying my earlier opinion about the fraud of the double-breasted jacket, the shoulders revealed actually were ridiculously broad; the waist, in truth, trim and narrow; and the dark shoulder holster, strapped tightly against his form, made the muscles even more impossible to miss.
I wouldn’t have expected such a slab of man to move around the room with grace. But he circled the heavy desk with the ease of a predator, his gaze continuously summing me up.
Finally he stopped directly in front of my chair and leaned against the block of battered wood behind him. A five o’clock shadow, a shade darker than his sandy-brown hair, dusted his square jaw. His tie was blue and frayed at the tips. I followed his hand as it reached down and lifted a spotted shot glass.
“Fill her up?” he asked, tapping the glass with one finger.
“Pardon me?”
“Would you like a drink? Scotch is all the hooch this bar is serving.”
“Scotch will be fine,” I replied, surprising myself.
A moment later, Jack placed a glass of amber liquid in my hand.
Jack poured another drink and swirled the glass. Then he leaned against the desk again. An eyebrow rose expectantly.
Stalling for time, I took a sip. The alcohol burned my throat.
“You ready to spill?” he asked while I sputtered.
I nodded, feeling like a suspect under the lamps.
“Tell me what they said. The marks I had you tail.”
“It was hard to hear everything. A lot of the words were muffled. But I overheard enough to make me certain they’re having an affair.”
“Tell me something I don’t know. That much was obvious from the way they treated each other in your store. I know feuding lovers when I see them—or ex-lovers.”
“Okay, here’s something you don’t know. I’m pretty sure I heard Kenneth Franken confess to killing Timothy Brennan.”
“Oh, you did? Did you? And you actually heard the words ‘I killed Brennan’ come out of the guy’s mouth?”
“Well, no. Not exactly.” I shifted uneasily. The long skirt annoyed me, so I pulled it up and crossed my legs. Jack’s gaze shifted from my face down to my knees, then slowly up again.
“Well, what ‘exactly’ did you hear?”
“Shelby asked Ken if he was sorry he did it. Ken said he wasn’t and that he’d do it again. And finally Shelby said it was all over and done with anyway—and now Ken could divorce Deirdre and have a life with her.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So you see, it sure sounds like Ken was the one who might have killed Brennan. He didn’t say how or anything, but you seem to think that syringe played a role. Maybe he stuck Brennan with poison somehow.”
“Don’t you think Brennan would have noticed something like a needle going into him?”
“Oh, right . . . maybe Ken simply pretended that he’d accidentally poked Brennan with a pair of scissors or a sharp pencil. Then maybe he gave the syringe to Shelby, who hid it in the women’s room for him—and Shelby had Josh retrieve it.”
“Except Josh had to search the women’s room, didn’t he? If he’d been sent to retrieve it, wouldn’t he know where it was?”
“Oh, yes, that’s right.”
“And what’s Kenneth’s motive for killing Brennan? What does he gain?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t like Brennan, though. He called him a bastard. Maybe he just disliked him enough to kill him.”
“Doesn’t fit. The man has too much to lose to risk a murder rap when he could have just told the old jerk to go to hell.”
I slumped in my seat. “I guess I don’t know what to make of it all, then.”
Jack’s eyes studied me some more. I put my hand to my throat, partially to hide my deep cleavage, where his gaze had decided to settle.
“Eavesdropping’s a funny thing, doll, your marks talking about washing the green and you think he’s talking about laundering money, when all along he’s making a salad.”
“Excuse me?”
“Did you hear anything else? Think, now.”
“Kenneth said something about how ‘thank you’ just wasn’t in Timothy Brennan’s vocabulary. And that Brennan ‘stood in the way.’ ”
“The way of what?” asked Jack.
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
“What do you think he meant, then?”
“How should I know?”
Jack narrowed his eyes and finished off his drink in a single gulp. “You’ve got to listen to more than words in this business, doll. You’ve got to listen to what’s under them.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ken was bitter because Tim had been ungrateful for something Ken did for him,” said Jack. “That means Ken did something big for Tim—so big that he was still boiling about it, even with the old man lying on an M.E.’s slab. Think. What could Ken have done for Brennan that was so big, so important that it would still be sticking in his craw?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
Jack got up from the desk and strode to the window, his back to me. “To hell with you. You’re not even trying.”
“I am so! I tailed them, didn’t I? I almost got run down by a truck, for heaven’s sake!”
Jack wheeled. “Then you weren’t paying attention. And that’s your problem, doll face, you want to stick your head in the ground, avoid confrontation, run and hide from any jerk who challenges you. You want to keep thinking the world is some play-fair sandbox. But you’d better open your eyes, sweetheart, or next time that truck’s going to leave tread marks on your face. Then where will that little tyke of yours be—left without a mother or a father?!”