Suzanne Forster - The Arrangement

The shower came on full force in the next room. He’d left the door partially open, probably for ventilation. Clearly, he was more comfortable with their accommodations than she was. But that didn’t stop her eyes from going straight to the crack in the door. Only the sink and mirror were in her line of sight, but that was enough to present what seemed like an irresistible opportunity.

Moments later the water abruptly stopped and the shower door banged open. He appeared at the sink, which allowed her to see him lather up and shave. He’d knotted a white bath sheet around his hips, and her eyes were unavoidably drawn to the knot. But his arms were the sexiest part of his body. She could have watched the play of his triceps, the ripple of cords and veins, for hours. God help her. This was not the distraction she needed.

She closed her eyes, but the memories came flooding back, anyway. She remembered so vividly when she’d first become aware of him in the periphery of her life, the wild infatuation and hero worship, the falling in love from a distance and never believing it could be reciprocated.

Was this the same man she’d felt all those things for? If she couldn’t answer any other question about her life, she wanted the answer to that one. She wanted to know if he’d hurt the other woman in his life—and if he meant her harm.

Her feelings for him were massively conflicted. She flinched when he got too close, yet a part of her still wanted that, and she couldn’t explain why. Or maybe she could. Maybe what she missed was the slow-burning dream, the wondering what it would be like with him. She wanted the Andrew Villard she’d fallen in love with from a distance.

Tony Bogart printed his name in block letters in the motel’s guest registry. He was in Mirage Bay unofficially, but he had no desire to hide his presence or his intentions. He wanted people to know he was investigating the murder of his brother—and possibly a second murder associated with his brother’s death, though he had no actual proof of that yet, just a telephone tip from his anonymous snitch.

“I got a room with a partial view of the water, special for you,” the aging female desk clerk said, sliding an old-fashioned brass door key across the counter to Tony. Disco music throbbed at low volume from the clock radio on the rusting metal file cabinet behind her.

“You gonna want more than one of these?” she asked.

The woman’s too-quick smile revealed a missing back tooth and skin like fine red fishnet, yet she wasn’t above flirting. Her wink sent a flash of annoyance through Tony. She wanted something, probably a tip, but she’d done nothing to deserve that except BS him, and badly at that. Tony despised lazy con artists. They insulted their mark’s intelligence.

“I worked at this motel when I was a kid,” he said. “Every room has at least a partial view. Most have full views.”

“Yeah? You worked here, at the Sand Castle?” She turned the registry around to read it. “Tony Bogart?”

She tilted back, inspecting him with a gimlet eye. “Are you related to Vern Bogart? I went to high school with him.”

Tony nodded. She’d made no excuses about the view. That got her points for being ballsy. “Vernon is my dad.”

A quick, sly grin appeared, as if she were remembering. “Your dad was a handsome man,” she said. “Tall with real narrow hips, and sandy-brown hair, cut close to his head, a lot like yours. Nice pair of ears, too. A man’s got to have good snug ears with short hair.”

She tapped her long sparkly fingernails to the theme from the movie Flashdance . “What’s Vern doing with himself these days? Probably married with a pack of grandkids. How about you? You married?”

She cocked an eyebrow, and her sexual boldness made Tony feel sick to his stomach. But she was clearly a long-term local, and might know something. No harm letting her think she was seducing him while he pumped her for information.

“Dad moved away a few months ago,” he said, “after my brother, Butch, died.”

“Butch Bogart? That kid who got himself stuck with a pitchfork was your brother? The whole town was talking about that. Happened last winter, right? Hotter than hell that day, Santa Ana winds, electrical storms?”

“Stuck seventeen times ,” Tony corrected. “Not very likely he did it to himself.”

“Oh, right, sorry.” She wrinkled her nose. “How awful for Vern—and you, too.”

“Yeah, well, life goes on. You do the best you can.” And sometimes you make a mess of it, like Vernon Bogart had, but Tony didn’t feel like telling this woman that his father had failed miserably with his children. He’d been too hard on Tony, probably because of the grief he couldn’t express, and too soft on Butch. He’d coddled and overindulged the latter to the point that Butch didn’t think anyone else’s rules applied to him.

“Did they find out who did it?” the clerk asked. “The last I remember they thought it was that local girl, Marnie something. She vanished, right? Did they ever find her?”

“Not yet .” Marnie Hazelton had been everyone’s prime suspect back in February, but Tony wasn’t so sure now. He had another lead, but he still had every intention of hunting down Marnie. Last February, he’d paid a visit to Josephine Hazelton, the crazy old lady who’d raised Marnie. She sold vegetables and odds and ends at the flea market, and people seemed to like her, but Tony’s gut had told him she was holding back. So he and Gramma Jo would go another round as soon as he was settled in.

After that, he had a social call to make on a cheating ex-girlfriend. That should be interesting. What Tony didn’t have was a solid motive for any of his suspects, except that his brother had been a classic bully who enjoyed harassing anyone weaker than he was, women as well as men.

“You tell your dad I asked about him,” the clerk chirped. “You never said whether he was married or single.”

“Single since my mother died over twenty years ago. He’s not the marrying kind.”

“Well now, that don’t matter. Don’t need to be married to have a cup of coffee, as far as I know.”

Tony nodded, trying to be polite, which was more than his dad would have been. Vernon had never cared about anything except riding hard on his two boys and fly-fishing on a river, any river. He wouldn’t have given this toothless floozie a second look, but then, he probably wouldn’t have given Pamela Anderson a second look. He wasn’t a big fan of the fairer sex. He thought women talked too much and did too little. “Whiny, conniving liars, all of them,” he was fond of saying.

The clerk shut off the CD player. “I wonder if I knew your mother. She probably went to school with Vern and me.”

“Mind your own fucking business.” Tony’s voice dropped to a whisper. He brought his fist down on the counter with enough force to knock over her empty coffee cup. “There is nothing you know or need to know about my mother.”

The clerk’s eyes widened. She stepped back from the counter, eyeing the phone that she’d just distanced herself from. “I didn’t mean nothing. I was just being nice.”

Tony flashed his agent’s badge. “You and I are going to be fine,” he told her. “Just make sure I get fresh sheets once a day. Fresh, not flipped—and don’t ever mention my mother again.”

5

Alison was swishing with peppermint-flavored mouthwash when she heard a tap on the bathroom door.

“Can you help me with this tie pin?” Andrew called to her.

She gurgled for him to wait as she spat out the stream of blue, then blotted her mouth on a towel. With nothing on but panties, she grabbed her dress off the hanger on the door. A bra wasn’t possible because of the halter-top cut of the gown, but at least it should be quick and easy to slip into.