“You did these, didn’t you?” I said, turning to look at him, waiting for his answer, but he hadn’t heard the question, apparently. He just stood there with that odd little smile.
When we pulled into the driveway at the estate, James was out of his door and opening mine before I’d collected my shoulder bag from the backseat. Oh, hell, I thought, I’m a big girl, and it’s not all that late. Besides, I really hadn’t learned anything from him yet.
But as I stepped from the car, I knew it was more than that. I could make all the excuses I wanted about how I was really inviting him in only to pump him for information, but in fact there was something very charming and exciting about the man, not to mention that his interest in me was doing great things for my recently bruised self-image. The fact that he might be dangerous as well only made him more interesting. Part of me hated myself for the attraction I felt, but it was not that part of me that spoke first.
“Would you like to come in for a drink? Actually, beer is about all I have. I haven’t had a chance to do much shopping lately.”
“That would be nice.”
“I’d better go lock up my dog first. She can get a little weird sometimes.”
I let myself in, took Abaco to the Gorda, and locked her into the wheelhouse. She stood up on her hind legs and rubbed her wet nose against the glass in the door. I felt sorry for her, but I pointed my finger: “Now, you be a good girl.”
James was leaning against his Jag, his head back, staring up at the sliver of a moon, very similar to the moon in his painting. He looked just like something out of one of those perfume ads where all the gorgeous people appear faintly sad. The gate squeaked, and he turned to look at me.
“Are you okay?” I asked him.
“I was just thinking about Elysia. It was such a waste to lose her like that.” His voice cracked, and his Adam’s apple dipped as he swallowed. I walked over and leaned my butt against the warm car hood next to him. The stars visible through the the branches of the oaks were few and far between, as the lights of the city just across the river had washed most of them away.
“What do you think really happened to Ely?”
Over the sound of the insects humming in the underbrush, I again heard him swallow. He opened his mouth as though he were about to say something, but then he only looked down at me and rested a hand on my shoulder. “You said something about a beer?”
I led him back to the cottage and unlocked the door. Before swinging it open, I felt a little moment of panic. For all I knew, this man had played a part in Ely’s death and could be plotting the same for me. After I’d switched the lamp on and the light filled the room, though, such fears seemed foolish. After all, he was the head honcho, the director of Harbor House. He probably dined at the mayor’s house, for Pete’s sake. And lots of people had seen us together this evening.
He went straight to the easel and paints.
“You paint?” he called out as I retrieved two beers from the fridge.
“Yeah, just as a hobby.” I handed him the can, and from his look, I could tell he would have preferred his beer in a glass. He took a paper napkin from the holder on the bar and began to wipe the aluminum top of the can.
“Are you any good?” He settled on the couch and stretched his arm across the back. I wondered if I was expected to sit inside that arm.
“Hmmm ... tough question. Technically, I’m decent, but I don’t have the passion for painting—you know, the artistic temperament. My mother had it, so I know what it is.” Standing in the center of the room with my back to him, I pointed to the dark canvas on the far wall. It depicted a bird-of-paradise flowering in an unruly garden in the midst of a threatening summer squall. “That’s one of hers. My mother had all this emotion in her, all this thought and spirit and soul that she just couldn’t express any other way.”
“I know what you are talking about. That is why many people paint.”
I turned to face him. “Of course. I saw that tonight in your paintings.” I didn’t go so far as to say that I found it very difficult to believe that such a warm, sociable person could make such cold paintings. “You said those canvases were several years old. Do you still paint?”
“No, I’ve found other outlets for my passion.”
He said it matter-of-factly, without a wink or a leer. My mother had found another outlet, too.
I turned back to my mother’s bird-of-paradise painting. “It tortured my mother when she couldn’t paint, when what she managed to get on canvas didn’t look like what was in her head. But when things were going well, she knew a real serenity. I just wish it had happened more often for her.”
The sofa creaked when he stood, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when he rested his hands on my shoulders.
“And your mother? Where is she today?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. As soon as the subject of her death came up, I was that little girl again, the one who couldn’t speak for months.
James bent down and brushed his lips against the side of my neck, and I could barely hide the shiver I felt. “It’s okay,” he whispered.
No matter that I’d been insisting to myself that I really was only with him to try to get some information from him, when he slowly turned me around and kissed my mouth, I didn’t push him away. My eyes closed, and I reached up and ran my hands lightly along his jawline. His skin was smooth and cool, not at all like B.J.’s.
B.J. I placed my hand in the center of his chest, applied gentle pressure, and our lips parted. “James, there’s something I need to ask you ...” I opened my eyes for just a second, and in that flash, I became aware of a movement just past his shoulder at the kitchen window. My eyes flew wide open, and I turned my head in time only to see the blur as a head ducked below the window. Through the closed window, I could hear the rustling of the vegetation as someone pushed through the bushes out there.
“What the hell—” I disentangled myself from James and ran for the front door.
My kitchen window, which is at the back of the cottage, is accessible only through the thicket of bushes that separates the Larsen estate from its neighbors. I pushed my way through the clipped ficus and bougainvillea, ignoring the thorns and branches that cut into my flesh. By the time I’d fought my way clear to the neighbor’s large expanse of lawn, there was no one in sight.
“Damn!” I looked down at my thighs. Blood trickled down from numerous slashes. “Shit.”
“Seychelle? Are you all right?” James’s voice sounded distant, muffled as it was by the thick hedge. Then Abaco started barking inside the wheelhouse.
“Yeah,” I shouted. “I’ll be right there.” I trotted down the hedge to the wooden gate that joined the two properties, where on the rare occasions when both sets of neighbors were in town at the same time, they could socialize without having to exit their enclaves. It was standing open.
James was in front of my cottage when I returned. “Look at you,” he said, the lines on his forehead clear above his arched brows.
I glanced down at my pareu. The cloth had ripped, and a piece hung to the ground. The blood on my legs was starting to coagulate.
“They’re just scratches. No big deal.”
The dog was still barking. “Abaco,” I shouted. “Quiet!”
“What was that all about?”
“Didn’t you see him, or at least hear him?”
James shook his head. “See what?”
“There was a man at my kitchen window. I didn’t get a clear look at him. I just saw him out of the corner of my eye.” I didn’t tell James, but there had been something familiar about that fleeting glimpse.
Had it been a prowler, someone else come to rob me, or someone who was spying on me? Suddenly, I remembered B.J. watching me from backstage at the Mai Kai.