Linda Howard - To Die For

I’d never fired anyone. A couple of people had quit, moved on to other jobs, but I’d been careful about whom I hired, instead of just picking any warm body that could fill a slot. I hired good people and I treated them well. None of my employees would kill me, because then there would go their 401Ks.

So that left personal. And I drew a huge blank on that.

“I’m ruling out anything that happened in high school,” I told Wyatt.

He coughed. “That’s probably safe, though sometimes those teenage things can really fester. Were you in a clique?”

Wyatt and I had gone to different high schools, plus he was a few years older, so he didn’t know anything about my school years. “I guess,” I said. “I was a cheerleader. I hung out with the other cheerleaders, though I did have this one friend who wasn’t a cheerleader and didn’t even go to the ball games.”

“Who was it?”

“Her name was Cleo Cleland. Say that three times real fast. Her parents must have been stoned on pot when they named her. They were from California, so she didn’t fit in real good when they moved here. Her mother was one of those natural-beauty-earth-mother types, with some feminist stuff thrown in, so she refused to let Cleo wear makeup or anything like that. So Cleo and I would both go to school early, and I’d take my makeup with me. We’d go into the girl’s restroom and I’d fix Cleo up for the day so no one would make fun of her. She had no clue about makeup when she moved here. It was awful.”

“I can imagine,” he murmured.

“Things got tricky when she started dating, because she’d have to figure out a way to put on her makeup without her mother seeing it. By that time she’d learned how, so I didn’t have to put it on for her anymore. But she couldn’t wait until she was out with her date, because then he’d see her without it, and that would be a disaster.”

“I don’t know about that. You’re cute without makeup.”

“I’m not sixteen now, either. At sixteen, I’d rather have died than let anyone see my natural face. You get convinced that it’s the makeup that’s pretty, not you. Well, I know some girls who felt that way. I never did, because I had Mom. She taught all three of us how to use makeup when we were still in grade school, so it was no big deal to us. See, makeup isn’t camouflage; it’s a weapon.”

“Do I want to know this?” he wondered aloud.

“Probably not. Most men just don’t get it. But at sixteen I did go through an insecure stage, because I had to fight so hard to keep my weight down.”

He gave me an incredulous look. “You were pudgy?”

I slapped his arm. “Of course not. I was a cheerleader, so I worked off my weight, but I was also a flyer.”

“A flyer.”

“You know. One of the ones who gets tossed by the other cheerleaders. The top of the pyramid. See, I’m five-four, so I’m tall for a flyer. Most flyers are five-two, something like that, and they keep their weight around a hundred pounds so it’ll be easier to throw them. I could be that slim, and be fifteen pounds heavier, because I’m taller. I had to really watch it.”

“My God, you must have been a toothpick.” He looked me over again. I weigh about one twenty-five now, but I’m strong and muscled, so that means I look as if I weigh ten or fifteen pounds lighter than that.

“But I also had to be strong,” I pointed out. “I had to have muscle. You can’t have muscle and be a toothpick. I had about a five-pound range where I had muscle but wasn’t too heavy, so I was constantly balancing my weight.”

“Was it really worth it, to jump around and wave pom-poms during a football game?”

See, he knew absolutely nothing about cheerleading. I glared at him. “I went to college on a cheerleading scholarship, so I’d say, yeah, it was worth it.”

“They give scholarships for that?”

“They give scholarships to guys who carry around a piece of pigskin, so why not?”

He had the wisdom to detour off that path. “Back to your high school days. You didn’t steal anyone’s boyfriend?”

I made a scornful noise. “I had my own boyfriends, thank you.”

“Other guys weren’t attracted to you?”

“So what if they were? I had a steady, and I didn’t pay any attention to anyone else.”

“Who was your steady? Jason?”

“No, Jason was my college guy. In high school it was Patrick Haley. He got killed in a motorcycle accident when he was twenty. We didn’t keep in touch after we broke up, so I don’t know if he was dating anyone special or not.”

“Scratch Patrick. Where’s Cleo Cleland now?”

“In Raleigh-Durham. She’s an industrial chemist. Once a year or so we get together for lunch and a movie. She’s married and has a four-year-old.”

He could scratch Cleo, too. Not because she was dead, but because Cleo was my pal. Besides, she was a woman, and he’d said the person trying to kill me was most likely a man.

“There has to be someone,” he said. “Someone you maybe haven’t thought about in years.”

He was right. This was personal, so it was someone I knew. And I was totally drawing a blank on anyone who might want to kill me.

Then inspiration hit.

“I know!” I crowed.

He jerked, instantly alert. “Who?”

“It has to be one of your girlfriends!”

The car swerved. Wyatt brought it back into the lane and glared over at me. “How did you come up with an idea like that?”

“Well, if it isn’t me, then it has to be you. I’m a nice person, and I don’t have any enemies that I know of. However, when was the first attempt? Right after we came back from the beach. How many people know you followed me there? After the way you acted Thursday night when Nicole was killed-”

“The way I acted?” he echoed in outraged astonishment.

“You told your guys that we were involved, right? Even though we weren’t. I saw the way they looked at me, and not one out of about fifty cops came to my rescue when you were manhandling me. So I figure you lied to them and said we were dating.”

His teeth were set. “I wasn’t manhandling you.”

“Stop latching on to insignificant details. And you were, too. But am I right so far? You told them we were seeing each other?”

“Yeah. Because we are.”

“That’s debatable-”

“We’re living together. We’re sleeping together. How in hell is it debatable whether or not we’re seeing each other?”

“Because we haven’t started dating yet and this is just temporary. Will you stop interrupting me? My point is, who were you seeing that you dropped like a hot potato to chase after me?”

He ground his teeth for a few seconds. I know because I could hear them. Then he said, “What makes you think I was seeing anyone?”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please. You know you’re to die for. You probably have women lined up.”

“I don’t have women- You think I’m to die for, huh?”

Now he sounded pleased. I wanted to beat my head against the dash, only it would hurt and I had enough aches and pains at the moment. “Wyatt!” I yelled. “Who were you dating?”

“No one in particular.”

“It doesn’t have to be ‘in particular’; it just has to be dating. Because some women have unrealistic expectations, you know. One date and they’re picking out a wedding gown. So who was the last person you dated, and who maybe thought there was something serious going on, then went totally postal when you followed me to the beach? Had you been on a date last Thursday, the night Nicole was killed?” Notice how I slipped that in, because I’d been wondering.