Killing Time. Leslie Kelly
you doing, roomie? Have a good flight?”
He almost heard her back crack as she straightened it in a stiff stance a Master Sergeant would envy. “This is your house?” Her voice didn’t so much as quiver.
“Yep.” He sat back down, throwing his cards face-down onto the pile in the center of the table. “Damn.”
“This is your house?” she repeated.
He looked up. “Uh-huh.”
Her already creamy face went a shade paler and her lips trembled a little bit. He wasn’t sure whether that was fury or dismay and had to gulp down another bit of unfamiliar guilt.
“Who was the woman? That day. Who was the older lady I met here, the one who baked the pie?”
“My mom.”
The guys, who’d slowly retaken their seats around the table, snorted. Then Jimmy said, “You need to change your locks.” He gave Caroline a glance and wagged his eyebrows at Mick. “Never know when she’s going to walk in on something, uh…personal.”
“Hey, she make you any of her chocolate chip cookies lately?” Eddie asked. Mick ignored him.
“You let me think…” she began.
He shrugged. “I tried to tell you this wouldn’t suit you.”
“I thought this was her house,” she said, not seeming to care that she was basically repeating herself.
“I never said she was the landlady. And you never asked.” Chuckling, he leaned back in his seat, kicking his feet out in front of him and crossing his hands behind his head. “Hope you don’t leave panty hose and women’s crap all over the bathroom.”
“You’re a dead man.”
Mick shrugged, reached over and picked up the new hand of cards that Ty had dealt. The other guys just watched. Considering how wildly unpredictable Caroline had been in the old days, he couldn’t have warned them what they might expect. She could turn and stalk out, not even giving him a chance to laugh and tell her he’d arranged for her to stay at Sophie’s place…and that he’d give her back every penny of her rent.
Or she could pick up the nearest object—even the shoe off her foot—and lob it at his head.
Instead, she shocked even him. Shrugging off the suit jacket in a smooth, feminine move that made her silky blouse pull tight against her curvy body, she kicked off her shoes and strode over.
“Deal me in.”
IN HER SMALL room in her brother’s rectory, Hester Tomlinson sat on her narrow bed. She stared at her black-and-white television as a commercial for Killing Time in a Small Town came on. She recognized the street scene, seeing familiar buildings as a man’s voice talked about bucolic small-town life.
“Some heavenly place,” she said with a snort.
The fellow doing the voice-over made Derryville sound like some Norman Rockwell painting. It wasn’t, as Hester knew better than anyone. “This town has secrets,” she mumbled, keeping her voice quiet since Bob was praying in the next room.
Praying for her, most likely, as he’d undoubtedly done every day of the nine hundred and sixty-two days since she’d come to live under his roof. Not that she was counting or anything.
She’d been doing some praying of her own lately. She prayed for practical things. A decent steak for once. A big fat emerald necklace that would look much too gaudy for a God-fearing woman.
And she prayed for more secrets. For the power that came with those secrets. For the money that came with the power of those secrets. Yes, indeed, she knew all about secrets, how to spot them, how to figure them out and how to benefit from them.
Hester considered herself a fine judge of character, in spite of her brief lapse in figuring out what was going on with that trashy Winchester girl. “Spiteful, ungrateful little wretch.”
The idea that Sophie Winchester had said what she’d said…had done what she’d done…had given Hester more than a few sleepless nights lately. Because if she could so completely misread a mealymouthed girl like that, what else might she have overlooked going on right beneath her nose here in Derryville?
A lot. Perhaps a profitable amount.
All that seemed somehow unimportant now. She turned her eyes to the TV again, unable to stop the dart of fear that made her quiver in her 3X cotton high-necked Sears nightie—the one she’d had to order from the catalogue since this lousy little town didn’t even have a decent department store. One more example that she was the queen fly on a dung heap.
But it was better than being queen of nothing.
Coming here to live with her younger brother after his spineless wife had died three years ago had given Hester something she’d never had before. Status. Respect. A position of authority. She wanted to keep it. So the minute she’d heard TV people were coming to town, she’d begun to panic. Bob had worried, too. The two of them had done what they could—him preaching in the pulpit, and her working the more insidious gossip lines.
It had happened anyway, thanks mostly to those Winchesters. That was one family even the powerful standing of the first lady of the local church couldn’t touch, as Sophie Winchester had already proved. No matter what Hester had done to spread rumors about the girl living in sin with the police chief, the thrown mud had slid off her like butter off Teflon.
Sometimes there was no justice. Sophie got away with her disrespect. Her brother Mick…well, he was fine to look at, Hester wasn’t too old to note that. But he was a sinner. One had only to look at him, at the way he smiled at women, at the way he wore his pants and the way he walked. Wicked.
Not that it mattered, because now the town was going to be filling up with wicked people. Those Hollywood types, with their prying eyes and their prying cameras. People who liked to learn secrets, just like Hester.
What if one of these sneaky newcomers, by remote chance, recognized her? It seemed doubtful. She’d changed in the past thirty years, Lord knew. But it wasn’t impossible.
And that was the only thing in the world that scared Miss Hester Tomlinson.
Exposure.
CHAPTER FIVE
CAROLINE HAD LEARNED how to play poker from her Uncle Louie, who was almost as much of a no-gooder as her own father. Uncle Louie had finally settled down and married Aunt Luanne; they were now affectionately called Loulou by everyone who knew them. He’d become a perfectly content husband, unlike her father, who was living someplace in Florida with his third wife.
One thing was sure. Uncle Louie had been a good teacher, beating Caroline out of every last penny in her piggy bank whenever he came to visit.
Thank you, Uncle Louie. She just loved being able to kick ass at cards. One ass, in particular. Mick’s.
“Hell, Caroline, if I’d known you were a card shark I would’ve charged you higher rent,” he muttered as he threw down another hand in disgust two hours later.
She shot him a disbelieving look, amazed that he had the nerve to bring up the subject of rent and renters. That conversation was coming, no doubt about it. But not now, not in front of witnesses who could be used to testify against her in the trial: the one she anticipated after she killed the guy.
She sipped at her now very watery scotch on the rocks, staring at her cards and humming the Alias theme under her breath. Kick-butt woman. That was appropriate tonight. Because she was going to kick Mick’s butt all over the place once they were alone.
But it’s such a nice butt.
No. No thinking of how Mick had looked while naked in his office a few weeks ago. Even as she ordered herself to get him out of her head, however, she knew she’d be unable to do it. The picture of Mick had remained in