Linda Howard - To Die For

Wyatt didn’t even have any flavored coffee. All in all, his house was woefully ill-equipped to keep me satisfied.

By the time he came home that afternoon, I was ready to climb the walls. Out of sheer frustration I had even started another list of his transgressions, and the number one item was his lack of my favorite coffee. If I was going to stay there for the duration, I wanted to be comfortable. I also needed more of my clothes, and my favorite bath gel, and my scented shampoo, and all sorts of things.

He kissed me hello, then said he was going upstairs to change clothes. To get to the stairs, you have to go through the family room. I stayed in the kitchen, and listened to his footsteps come to a dead stop as he registered the change in his living environment.

He raised his voice and called, “What’s with the furniture?”

“I was bored,” I called back.

He muttered something that I couldn’t understand, and I heard him continue upstairs.

I’m not a helpless decoration. I had also gone through the contents of his refrigerator and found some hamburger meat in the freezer section. I’d browned the meat and made spaghetti sauce. Because he never came home at the same time two days in a row, I hadn’t put on the spaghetti to boil, so I did that now. He didn’t have rolls, but he did have loaf bread, and I buttered the slices and sprinkled them with garlic powder and cheese. Something else he didn’t have was the makings for a green salad. This was not what I considered a healthy meal, but considering the contents of his pantry and refrigerator, it was either that or beans from a can.

He came downstairs wearing only a pair of jeans, and my mouth watered when I saw him, with those tight abs and that muscled, hairy chest. To keep from drooling and embarrassing myself, I turned away and slid the baking sheet with the slices of bread on it into the oven. By the time they were nicely browned, the spaghetti would be done.

“This smells good,” he said as he set the table.

“Thank you. But unless we go grocery shopping, there’s nothing else to cook. What do you usually eat for supper?”

“I usually eat out. Breakfast here, supper out. It’s easier that way, because by the end of the day I’m tired and don’t want to fool with cooking.”

“I can’t eat out,” I said grumpily.

“Well, you could, if we go to another town. Want to do that tomorrow? That would count as a date, right?”

“No, it won’t.” I thought we’d covered that ground at the beach. “You eat anyway. A date would be if we did something you don’t normally do, like go to a play or a ballroom dancing exhibition.”

“How about a ball game?” he countered.

“There’s nothing going on now except baseball, and it’s stupid. There aren’t any cheerleaders. When it’s football season, then we’ll talk.”

He let my insult to baseball pass and instead filled our glasses with ice, then poured tea into them. “Forensics found something today,” he said abruptly.

I turned off the heat under the spaghetti. He sounded puzzled, as if he didn’t know what to make of whatever it was forensics had found. “What?”

“A couple of hairs, caught in the underside of your car. It’s a miracle they’re still there, considering the shape your car is in.”

“What can a couple of hairs tell you?” I asked. “If you had a suspect you could test for DNA, they would come in handy, but you don’t.”

“They’re dark, so they tell us the person is a brunette. And they’re about ten inches long, so that raises the strong possibility that we’re looking for a woman after all. Not a certainty, because a lot of men have long hair, but they’re testing the hairs for hair spray and styling gel, that sort of stuff. That should help, because not many men around here use stuff like that.”

“Jason does,” I pointed out.

“Jason is a girlie bastard with more vanity than brains,” was his succinctly delivered opinion.

Man, he didn’t like Jason. It warmed my heart.

“Do you know any women with dark hair who might want to kill you?” he asked.

“I know a lot of women with dark hair. It’s the last part that throws me.” I shrugged helplessly. The whole thing was a puzzle. “I haven’t even had a parking lot incident in years.”

“The reason may not be anything recent,” Wyatt said. “When Nicole Goodwin was murdered and you were named as a witness, someone probably saw an opportunity to kill you and blame it on Nicole’s killer. But Dwayne Bailey confessed to the murder, so there’s no reason for him to kill you.”

“Then why didn’t this person stop when he was arrested? Obviously it can’t be blamed on him, now.”

“Maybe, since she didn’t get caught, she figures she can do it and get away with it.”

“Have you thought about your dates for this past year or so?” I asked. “Were any of them brunette?”

“Yeah, sure, but I’m telling you, there was nothing serious going on.”

“Haul ’em all in and question them anyway,” I said in exasperation. This had to be personal, because I hadn’t done any of the other things that provide the usual motives for murder.

“How about the guys you’ve dated? Maybe one of them had an ex who was crazy about him-’crazy’ being the important word here-and got a real hate going for you when her guy started dating you.”

“That’s possible, I suppose.” I mulled it over. “I don’t remember anyone mentioning a crazy ex-girlfriend, though. No one said anything about being stalked, and this type of person would be a stalker, right?”

“Maybe, maybe not. We have to look at everything now, so I’ll need a list of everyone you’ve dated in the past couple of years.”

“Okay. Let’s start with you.” I smiled sweetly at him. “Let’s check out your girlfriends.”

You can see we weren’t going anywhere with that subject, so we abandoned it while we ate supper and cleaned up the dishes afterward. Then Wyatt shoved his recliner back in front of the television and settled in it with the newspaper, happy as a clam. I stood in front of him and glowered until he finally put the paper down and said, “What?”

“I’m bored. I haven’t left this house in two days.”

“That’s because you’re smart. Someone is trying to kill you, so you should stay where you can’t be seen.”

Did he think that was going to deflect me? “I could have gone somewhere today, to other towns, but I thought you would worry if I went out by myself.”

He gave a brief nod. “You’re right.”

“You’re here now.”

He sighed. “All right. What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

“That narrows it down. How about a movie? We can make the nine o’clock showing in Henderson. That’ll count as a date, right?”

“Right.” Henderson was a town about thirty miles away. It was almost seven now, so I went upstairs to get ready. The bruising on my face was already turning yellowish, thanks to Mom, and I used enough concealer to hide most of it. Then I dressed in long pants and a short-sleeved blouse, and tied the ends of the blouse at my waist. I brushed my hair, put on earrings, and I was set.

Wyatt, of course, was still reading the newspaper. And he was still half-naked.

“I’m ready,” I announced.

He glanced at his wristwatch. “We have plenty of time.” He went back to reading.

I found my list and added inattentive. You’d think he’d have wanted to make a better impression on our first date in two years. See, I knew sleeping with him so soon had been a big mistake. Already he was taking me for granted.

“I think I’ll move into one of the other bedrooms,” I mused aloud.