Intimate Strangers Read online

  With a curse, he tried to find his stride again, but the pain slowed him down as he darted into the pathway where he and Molly had earlier emerged.

  By the time he reached the parking lot, a car was rapidly backing out of a space. He ran forward, trying to read the license plate, but it was smeared with mud. All he saw was a silver Honda speeding away.

  Breathing raggedly, he brushed the sand off his pant legs, then sat down hard on a set of steps. When another flash of movement caught his attention, he looked up, prepared to defend himself. It was Molly, coming around the corner of the building, carrying both their pairs of shoes and her panty hose.

  “What was that?” she asked, her eyes darting from him to the parking lot.

  “A spy.”

  He saw her face go pale. “What do you mean, a spy?”

  “Someone who was interested in what we were doing here and who took off when I spotted him. Do you know anyone who owns a silver Honda?”

  She shrugged. “Not that I know of, but I don’t pay a lot of attention to cars.”

  “Too bad.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not blaming it on you.”

  He shifted his foot and winced when his toes barely touched the concrete.

  “You’re hurt,” she observed.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “That’s what all the macho guys say. Let’s have a look.” She knelt in front of him and picked up his foot, cradling it in her palm.

  Despite the circumstances, the touch felt intimate. He leaned back and closed his eyes, sprawling across the steps, allowing himself to enjoy the sensation of her fingers sliding over his skin.

  “Am I hurting you?” she asked.

  “No.” He heard the strangled quality of his voice as he lay there unable to move.

  He was jolted back to reality when her finger slid across the end of his big toe. “That hurts.”

  “The skin isn’t broken. But I think you’re going to have a bruise. I can go back inside and get you some ice.”

  “I’ll be okay. Let’s just get out of here.” Sitting up, he reached for his shoes and socks. After gingerly slipping on the socks, he went on to the shoes, glad that the pair weren’t too tight.

  They got back into the car, and Molly inserted the key in the ignition, then sat staring through the windshield.

  “Why would someone be interested in what we’re doing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he answered, wondering if it was possible that somebody had caught on to him already. Denial came on the heels of the question, yet he couldn’t entirely dismiss the nagging doubt.

  “Do you want to call it quits for the day?” Molly asked.

  “No. Let’s look at some more properties,” he said aloud. Inwardly he was thinking he might have another chance to find out who was following them around—if anybody was following them.

  They were both silent as she turned onto the highway. They were heading toward his old house, and he found his chest tightening as his eyes scanned the mailboxes. He’d come into town from the other direction, and he hadn’t been up this way yet.

  The yellow and red For Sale sign at the end of the driveway was like a jolt to his senses. “There’s a real estate sign,” he heard himself saying when he knew he should keep his mouth shut.

  “That’s not a rental property.”

  “I’d like to see it,” he insisted.

  “A woman was murdered in that house.”

  He felt as if she’d punched him in the gut, and struggled to keep breathing normally. Had Veronica been murdered there? He didn’t know. How could Molly have more information than he did? He shot her a quick glance. She looked nervous, but she would if she thought this had really been a murder site. He craned his neck, just barely able to see the roofline from where they sat.

  “In that house? Are you sure?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I guess I shouldn’t have put it that way. The woman of the house was murdered, and her husband was convicted. Then new evidence came to light, and he got out of prison.”

  “I guess that makes the place hard to sell.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe I can get a good deal on it,” he said. “Let’s go have a look.”

  She made a small sound but did as he asked, turning in at the driveway. The road had seen better days, and she drove slowly to avoid the ruts.

  “What was her name?” he asked.

  “Veronica Randall.”

  He let the name hang in the closed atmosphere of the car. “I think I heard about the case,” he finally said. “I felt sorry for the poor guy. I guess somebody set him up.”

  “That’s what I always thought.”

  He felt some of the tightness in his chest ease, until he reminded himself that she could just be making conversation. Or maybe now that Mike Randall had gained his freedom, she was voicing the safer opinion.

  “Who would have wanted to make it look like he murdered his wife?” he asked.

  She shrugged, and he turned toward her, watching the way her hands gripped the wheel and the deep look of concentration on her face as she negotiated the rutted lane. Was the driving really all that difficult, or was she glad of the excuse to keep her attention focused on the task?

  He stopped wondering about her as they crested a small rise and the house came into view. Breathing was almost impossible as he stared at the Cape Cod he’d called home for five years. About the same amount of time he’d been in prison, actually. Memories assaulted him, some good, some terrible. He and Veronica had bought the place as a fixer-upper, and he’d put in hours of sweat equity, making it comfortable, weather tight and structurally sound. When Veronica had asked him to blast the ugly black paint off the fireplace and restore it to natural brick, he’d been glad to tackle the difficult task. She was the one who had done the decorating, mostly with wonderful finds she’d brought home from flea markets or traded from other dealers at antique shows.

  He’d been proud of their home, and at first they’d been happy. Then, little by little, their life together had begun disintegrating. He wasn’t even sure when it started happening. He’d been busy with his construction company, and maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe he hadn’t paid enough attention to her. All he knew was that one day he’d realized that they were both miserable.

  While his mind had been stuck in the past, he’d silently gotten out of the car and walked toward the front door, thinking that the house needed painting. One of the shutters was hanging at a drunken angle.

  Molly’s voice brought him back to the present. “We can’t go in.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…I don’t have the key.”

  He didn’t even miss a beat. “People hide keys outside.”

  “We’re talking about a house that hasn’t been lived in in six years.”

  “Let me look anyway,” he said, starting to search through the bushes. He knew where he’d always hidden the key. Either it was there or not. He quickly spotted the fake rock, but he didn’t go right to it. Instead, he pretended to extend his search, all the while aware that Molly’s speculative gaze was fixed on him.

  Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, a tiny voice in his head warned. Maybe he should get out while the getting was good. But he was in the grip of a compulsion that was making his heart pound and his palms turn sticky.

  Unable to wait any longer, he went back and picked up the rock. “Found it!”

  She looked around uneasily. “Mark, this isn’t such a good idea,” she said, echoing his earlier thought.

  He didn’t listen to either one of them. Instead, he hurried to the front door and inserted the key.

  The moment the door swung open, he knew he had made a mistake.

  Chapter Five

  He got only a quick glance into the living room. It was bare, except for the dried reddish-brown substance splattered about in a random pattern. The smell told him it wasn’t ketchup.

  He ba
cked out of the house, slamming the door behind him, silently cursing his impulsive decision to come here. If Molly weren’t with him, he would have gotten back into the car and driven away at top speed. But that wasn’t an option now.

  Behind him, her voice unsteady, she broke into his frantic thoughts. “What’s wrong?”

  “Blood,” he muttered.

  “Oh, God. No.” Her face contorted. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He couldn’t hide his shock. She was having the same response as he was, and he needed to understand why. Before he could form a question, a cloud of sand appeared over the rise, and another car came roaring up the lane like Old Nick was behind it.

  When it pulled to a stop in front of them and he saw the short, balding man who climbed out, Mark knew that he was well and truly trapped. There was no way to get out of the mess he’d created besides owning up to what he’d just found. Silently, he reached back and rubbed his fingers over the place where he’d gripped the doorknob, hoping he was smearing his prints enough to make them untraceable—although he supposed it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that Mike Randall’s prints were still on the doorknob. Did fingerprints age? He wished he’d checked up on that detail.

  Molly interrupted his whirling thoughts. “It’s Bill Bauder,” she whispered. “The newspaper editor. He sticks his nose into everything around here.”

  As Bauder approached them, an image flashed in his mind, an image of himself running headlong down the beach. He managed to stand where he was by reminding himself that the editor didn’t have a clue who he was.

  “What’s going on here?” Bauder asked.

  “Ms. Dumont was showing me this house,” Mark answered, keeping his voice low and controlled.

  “You’re the guy who said you were interested in rental property?”

  “Yes. How do you know?”

  “It’s my business to know what’s going on in Perry’s Cove,” Bauder answered before pointing out the obvious. “This place isn’t for rent.”

  Mark slipped his hands into his pockets. “Ms. Dumont was giving me some local history. When she told me the house was connected with a murder, I couldn’t resist having a look at it.” He turned to Molly. “How long ago was it?”

  “Six years. Something like that,” she murmured.

  “Unfortunately, when I stepped inside, I saw what looked like blood. That’s why we’re standing out here.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “Blood?”

  “Right, but I assume somebody would have cleaned it up from six years ago.”

  Bauder looked at him appraisingly. “And how did you get inside?”

  Mark flicked Molly a quick glance, then made a hasty decision. “The door was unlocked.”

  Beside him, he saw Molly shift her weight from one foot to the other. They both knew he’d gone looking for the key. Now he didn’t want to admit that. It sounded too calculating. His breath turned shallow as he waited for her to correct his version of the events. Instead, she nodded, and he felt some of the tightness in his chest ease.

  Bauder strode to the door, gripped the knob and turned it. More fingerprints obscuring his own, Mark thought.

  “Thanks,” he murmured in a voice so low that only Molly could catch the words.

  She looked as if she wanted to answer him, but they didn’t really have any privacy, not when Bauder stopped in his tracks almost as soon as he’d stepped briskly inside.

  “Damn,” the editor muttered as he rejoined them in the front yard. “What happened in there?”

  Mark spread his hands. “Your guess is as good as ours. Probably someone should call the sheriff,” he said, keeping his voice even. He and Molly had both been prepared to leave the scene of the crime until they’d been trapped here. Now he was acting helpful.

  “I can make the call for you,” Bauder said, whipping out his cell phone. It wasn’t 911, Mark realized as soon as he heard the conversation. Apparently the editor had the sheriff’s private line.

  “Dean, there’s a problem at the Randall house,” Bauder said with no preamble.

  Dean, Mark thought. Pretty chummy.

  In response to a question, the editor continued, “Molly Dumont was showing a client the property, and it looks like there’s been a massacre inside.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a massacre,” Mark said under his breath. There had been blood, but he hadn’t seen any body parts. He didn’t have any idea what had happened in there. Neither did Bauder, unless he had been personally involved and had been lying in wait, hoping someone would stumble onto the mess he’d created.

  Even as those thoughts formed, Mark recognized them as paranoid. Probably Bauder was simply exercising his newsman’s flare for the dramatic.

  He clicked off and turned back to Mark. “The sheriff will be here momentarily. He’d like to talk to you.”

  “We haven’t done anything wrong,” Mark answered, knowing as he said the words that they were absolutely no protection.

  He hadn’t done anything wrong six years ago, and he’d ended up in prison. The old memories had the power to make his palms go damp and his heart start to race.

  Struggling to shift his thoughts away from himself, he slid Molly a quick glance and saw that she was standing rigidly beside him like a soldier facing a firing squad.

  As soon as he took in her reaction, he wanted to sling a protective arm around her shoulder, but Bauder was watching them closely and Mark wasn’t going to do anything that might look inappropriate for their supposed relationship. As far as anyone else knew—as far as Molly knew—they had just met a few hours ago. He didn’t want to read in the local paper that the widow Molly Dumont seemed very cozy with a new client.

  He’d given himself an excellent reason for not touching her. But it wasn’t the only one. He’d had lots of practice in prison keeping his expression neutral, but he knew the poker face would dissolve if he made physical contact with her. So he stayed where he was.

  “You just got here?” Bauder asked casually. But Mark wasn’t fooled. He’d heard that voice turn from neutral to accusatory in the blink of an eye.

  He’d never liked Bill Bauder. He’d never trusted the man, even before the Voice of Perry’s Cove had taken up the vendetta against him. He knew that showing weakness in front of the editor was a mistake, so instead of shifting his gaze away, he gave the man a direct look. “I think you must know that we just arrived,” he answered, “since you showed up minutes after we did. Were you following us or something? I mean, is every real estate transaction down here a news story?”

  The editor had the grace to look embarrassed. “I wasn’t following you. I have my sources of information,” he said. “The Randall house is news. Someone saw a car turn in here, and I was in the vicinity.”

  “Well, I pity the poor bastard who buys this place,” he answered, then decided it was better not to establish his new persona as a belligerent character, so he switched his tone from confrontational to casual.

  “So what can you tell me about the old case?” he asked.

  “The husband, Mike Randall, was convicted of his wife’s murder. Then he hired a slick lawyer from up north who got the conviction reversed.”

  “So you think he really was guilty and his lawyer got him off?” Mark pressed.

  “I’m still reserving judgment.”

  Sure, Mark thought. DNA evidence was just a crock of moonshine. There had been plenty of inflammatory stories in the paper six years ago when Mike Randall had been accused of murder. Had Bauder written anything about the conviction being reversed, or wasn’t that important enough to print?

  He might have followed that line of inquiry, but a new sand cloud announced the arrival of another vehicle.

  Show time.

  AS MOLLY WATCHED the black-and-white cruiser coming over the curve of the hill, her stomach clenched. She had good reasons to despise Dean Hammer. But she wasn’t going to let the sheriff see anything of what she was feeling. Like Bill Bauder, he was an expe
rt at seizing on weakness and twisting it to his advantage.

  She cut a glance toward the man at her side. From the way he was standing, it looked as if he wasn’t any more pleased about confronting the law than she was.

  He’d lied about how they’d gotten into the house and she wanted to know why. Just the way he was probably wondering why she’d wanted to cut and run as soon as he’d found the mess inside.

  But there was no way they were going to exchange any of that information until they were alone again.

  The police car pulled to a stop and Hammer climbed out in that officious way he had, stopping to adjust the belt that held his gun and all the other equipment that made him look like a walking arsenal. He had a deputy with him. A guy named Cory Daniels, whom Molly didn’t like, either.

  The sheriff nodded to his friend Bauder, then waited until he was three feet from Mark and herself before saying in his lazy drawl, “I hear there’s been a deal of trouble up here.”

  “It looks that way,” Mark answered, “but I can’t tell for sure what happened.”

  “And you would be…?” the sheriff asked, getting out a notepad and pen.

  “Mark Ramsey,” he answered, his voice steady.

  “I saw you earlier. At the antique mall.”

  “That’s right.”

  Molly looked at Mark. Before he’d thrown her to the ground at the Calico Duck or after? Somehow the mall was the last place she would have pictured him going.

  “What’s your business in town?” the sheriff asked. Beside him, his deputy remained silent. But Molly couldn’t stop herself from calculating the odds. Three against two.

  “I’m a writer,” he said, giving the same answer he’d given her.

  “And how did you end up here? I mean, at this particular location?” The lawman gestured toward the house.

  “When Ms. Dumont told me there had been a murder connected with this property, I wanted to see it. I guess I should have left well enough alone.”