Drop Dead Gorgeous (6 page)

For a moment she felt a strange, cold fear inside.

“Like what?” she whispered.

“Our divorce.”
He rolled around, and she felt him trying to study her features. “Of course, we can still do it.”

“What?” she inquired, annoyed. “Brad, we are divorced. You do what you want to do. And you make big bucks, You could hire five women at a time if you wanted.”

She vaguely saw the motion as he shook his head. “I want
you
and another woman.”

“You’re a pervert.”

“No more so than any other red-blooded American male.”

“You’re cruel to me.”

“I’m complimenting you! I want
you,
and another woman.”

She shook her head, impatient as if she dealt with a child. Then she stroked his beautiful blond hair. “I’ve got to go.”

“Think about it, Just me and you, and another gorgeous woman. Just once. My birthday is coming up.”

She smacked him lightly in the jaw. “Pervert!”

“Hey, my old girlfriend is back in town as well. You and Lori Kelly. What a lineup.”

“Lori Kelly apparently had the sense to know that you were a pervert when we were in high school. And don’t do fantasies about my friends. It makes me uncomfortable.”

“It’s a great fantasy.”

“Brad—”

“All right! I’ll keep it in my head.”

“Great. Now I’ll feel awkward any time we’re together.”

“Hey, don’t. ’Cause you know something?” he said softly.

“What?”

“I do love you, you know.”

She smiled. He held her close. Just held her. It was nice. “I’ve got to go,” she said unhappily.

“I’ll give Tina a call, make sure she’s okay. You can stay a little longer, then I’ll follow you home. How’s that?”

“Nice, Brad, thanks.”

She watched as he dialed their daughter, talked to her, ascertained that everything was all right, and made her swear that she had the doors properly locked and the alarm on. He hung up, flicked on the television, told Jan he’d make them a couple of drinks, and padded out of the room.

She stared at the television. The late-night news was rehashing the earlier news. About Ellie.

“Turn it, please,” she said as Brad came back into the room, handing her a Jack Black and Seven.

He quickly flicked to the Playboy channel.

Jan groaned softly as a two-women, one-man sex scene popped onto the screen.

“So I’m a pervert, huh?”

“Yes,” she said primly.

“Aw, come on, just watch,” he said.

A few minutes later he was making love to her again. When it was over, he whispered, “We perverts need our fixes. Just once, Jan. For my birthday.”

She turned away from him, pulling the sheets over her head. “You want me to go pick up some girl?”

“Sure. Or I can pick her up for you. Or take you places where a woman would come on to you.”

“Pervert!” she said. “Think about it! What would you do if some girl came on to your daughter?”

He was quiet.

“Huh?”

“Kill her. Or him.”

“You couldn’t kill.”

“Yes, actually, I think that I could.”

4

B
rad Jackson lifted the receiver quickly as his bedside phone rang.

He usually let the machine get it.

But Jan had dozed off, and he had changed channels to watch the news again. Ellie. Poor damned Ellie.

“Hello?”

“Brad?”

“Yeah.” He frowned. “Ricky?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“Anything new on Ellie?”

“No,” Ricky said impatiently.

“You have any inside information?”

“Are you kidding? There was a leak somewhere in the department—you know there’s actually a half dozen teams on this case— and someone spilled just about everything we know. That news lady seems to have more information than I do. If I learn anything that I can tell you—”

“I’m just kind of worried. I have a wife and daughter, you know.”

“
Ex-wife.”

“Whatever, you know that I’m concerned about her.”

“Yeah. Well, Jan is a sensible woman; she’ll know to stay away from strangers.”

“Yeah,” Brad said dryly. He frowned. “You know, Ricky, it’s late—”

“I’m sorry. I needed a favor, You know that Sean Black is in town?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Brad murmured. He couldn’t help but know. Yeah, yeah, everyone had told him already—including Ricky. The great Sean Black was back. Poor boy/school hero. Football genius. Famous writer. The guy who muscled up by just waking in the morning. He’d almost been convicted of murder— and now people were half killing themselves to get the guy’s autograph.

“He wants to reach Lori Kelly. Or Corcoran, or whatever her name is now.”

Brad felt a prickle of annoyance run down his spine. He wasn’t really jealous of Sean Black, never had been. He’d had the advantages all his life; Sean had just been a hard-luck kid. But it had irritated him way back when that Lori had been such good friends with Sean— when he had supposedly been the hottest thing around and she’d been his privileged choice. That had been a long time ago. A lot was forgotten, but feelings, emotions,
annoyances
re
mained. He’d had a lot of knock-
downs since then, but he liked his life now. Jan was a great ex-wife. Available—without the nagging. He really did love her, and his daughter was a beauty queen and a brain, the perfect child. He did what he wanted and never went without.

But he had to admit, he’d been really curious to see Lori Kelly again himself. All right, so it was unlikely he’d get Jan and Lori into bed at the same time. He’d still like to see Lori.

Seemed Sean Black wanted to beat him to the punch.

“Do you have Lori’s number?” Ricky asked.

“Do I have her number
…
?” he repeated, then smiled, shaking his head with amusement as he looked to his side, where Jan was beginning to stir beneath the sheets. He smacked a hand on her rump, covering the mouthpiece on the phone with his other hand. “Hey—what’s Lori’s number?”

Jan turned over, hair tangled, eyes heavy— and still suspicious. “Why?”

“I’m going to call her over.”

She tried to hit him. He laughed, stopping her.

“Seriously, Ricky wants to know.”

“Ricky?”

“Ricky Garcia wants the number. For Sean.”

“Oh. For Sean!”
Jan sat up, hugging her knees to her chest. “I saw Lori tonight. I meant to tell her that Sean was in town
…
but then I saw the paper about poor Ellie and I blanked on that. Let’s se
e,
her number is four-four-four
…
four-four-four
…
damn! I forgot. But she’s listed. Under L. Corcoran, on Almansa.”

Brad conveyed that information to Ricky, told him to keep in touch, and hung up. Then he pretended to dial information and ask for the number, and then dial the number.

Jan sprang up. “What are you doing?”

He looked at her innocently. “Hey, I don’t want to let Sean get in there first, and there might be danger out there on the streets. She’s your friend, you should share. I’m calling Lori Kelly Corcoran to see if she wants in on my great stud service—”

Jan wrenched the phone out of his hands, her eyes wide, her features taut.

“Hey, now!” Brad teased.

“You leave Lori Kelly out of this.”

“Jan!”

“You were nuts about her in high school.”

“We were kids!”

“You said she was great.”

“She was.”

“She said you never touched her.”

“One of us is lying,” Brad said, eyes sparkling. Jan made a point of slamming the phone receiver down, and he started laughing, pinning her to the bed. “All right, all right, so we won’t ask Lori over. We’ll let her take the chance of picking up a homicidal maniac.”

“Sean always liked Lori; she can pick him up
.
”

“And maybe Sean is a homicidal maniac.”

“You’re a pervert, so maybe you’re a homicidal maniac, too.”

He ignored that. “Okay, so we’ll have to pick another woman. Just once. Then we could get married again.”

She inhaled sharply, staring at him.

“I’d have it all out of my system,” he said.

“Really? How could I ever be sure?”

“I’m getting older. Tired.”

She stared at him skeptically.

“Honest.”

She groaned.

He smiled. “Honestly honest. I wouldn’t take vows again without meaning to be faithful. Think about it.”

“Wait a minute. Are you trying to bribe me?” she said indignantly. “Marriage isn’t something decided because of a bribe.”

“Think about it,” he insisted.

* * *

T
rue to his word, Brad followed Jan home.

“Think about it!” he whispered one more time, nuzzling her earlobe on the front porch.

“I’ve thought!” she protested.

“Naw
…
I’ve sown the seeds. I know it.”

“Good night, Brad.”

She let herself in, reset the alarm, and checked on Tina, who was sleeping soundly.

In her own room she turned on the television, thinking she’d watch a movie until she fell asleep, and that would get her mind
off
Brad’s absurd proposal. But the channel was on CNN, and the news came blaring out at her again.

She did forget about Brad.

A serious, attractive young blond woman was talking about the awful thing that had happened to Ellie.

And all she could think about was murder.

5

A
t first Lori hadn’t been able to sleep. All the wine in the world wouldn’t have helped.

Then Lori dozed.

When she slept, she dreamed, reliving the past, knowing that she was reliving the past, unable to stop the frames of memory that played before her eyes.

She was seventeen that day at the rock pit. Her mother had told her that she was at the prime of life, with everything in the world going her way. She was young and literally a
beauty
queen,
having just been elected to the title of Miss Orange Blossom for their end-of-the-year dance and parade.

And her heart was breaking.

Over Sean.

In the endless days to come, she knew that any small twist of behavior on anyone’s part might have changed destiny, might have changed what happened, destroying so many young lives. But all she knew as the day
began was that she was dying…
over him.

Naturally, no one knew. She was Lori Kelly, and—partially because of Gramps and his wisdom!—she could pride herself on being kind and decent, but then, admittedly, she was a teenage girl, and she did have her ego and her pride. And though things might have been her own fault, she wa
s crushed by what had hap
pened between her and Sean.

Supposedly, she was in love with Brad Jackson. And they were the
perfect
couple. He was an honor student all the way, Key Club
, quarterback, blue-eyed, blond-
haired, could-trace-his-ancestors-
back-to-the-Mayflower
great. But beneath his polished veneer—just every once in a while—he wasn’t quite so nice. Her folks never saw it. They saw his all-American parents, officers in the yacht club, civic duty to a T. And Brad was okay. She knew him well enough, liked him— but knew what not to like as well.

Sean dated Mandy Olin. She was his age, voluptuous, a little wild, mad about him—and the child of rich folks as well. They didn’t approve of Sean. That might have been half
the reason Mandy dated him. Except that he was great. Everybody liked Sean. He never backed down in a fight, but he never started one, either.

Lori had always been in love with Sean.

Secretly, of course. She had her pride, and as long as he was with Mandy, she’d never let him know. Even those few times when they’d met on some different level, she’d been flippant, keeping her true feelings quiet.

And now Sean was leaving. They were all going in different directions, of course, but since Sean would be taking summer courses at col
lege,
he’d be leaving soon. They were just kids— that’s what Lori’s mother told her all the time. Just kids. They shouldn’t take things too seriously. Lori was too young to really be in love with anyone. After all, her whole life stretched in front of her. Naturally, if she continued a relationship with a nice boy like Brad, it would be good. Just so long as she stayed away from kids like Michael and Sean Black. Bad blood. Lori needed to go to college and create a promising future
for herself. She came from well-
educated people, and she had the chance to go for everything—a master’s degree, a doctorate! They weren’t poor folks, not from the wrong side of the tracks, and she didn’t want to wind up pregnant, saddled with a child.

Normally, her mother was all right. A parent, but a decent sort of parent. Lori loved her mother. But in this instance her mother was blind. She didn’t begin to realize that there
was no chance of Lori running off with Brad or, heaven forbid, having a baby with Brad. Although she was beginning to feel a little nervous about what had happened with Sean.

Her parents still gave her a hard time about their friendship. He lived in a tough section of Coconut Grove. His father was some kind of a security guard, for God’s sake. His mother was simply gone. He had a brother, Michael, one year older, who was constantly in trouble. He had another brother, Daniel, twenty already, in the service—no other choice, there’d been no future for the kid. They didn’t want her to be prejudiced against kids less fortunate than she was. It was just that Sean, with no mother, a broken-down father, and a brother with a record, didn’t have much chance; he and his kind were just bad news.

Except that he wasn’t. Gramps understood. Sometimes Sean could swagger. He was on the football team, and he was good. He had an afterschool job at a bookstore, and he still managed to keep a high B average. He was going to Florida State University on a scholarship—just a state school, but half the rich kids in the city
went
on to the same state schools, mainly because they could get in, and because they were known as party schools. Some of the state schools even had really great programs. But really smart rich kids went to Harvard or Yale, lazy or dumb rich kids went to state schools. Smart poor kids made it to state schools, and dumb poor kids wound up sleeping under bridges and drinking cheap booze
out of brown paper bags. That was the way it went, according to her parents. Thankfully, Sean was a smart poor kid.

Not that it should have mattered. Sean thought he was her friend. No matter what emotions she was harboring all those years, he was in love—or
lust, as the 4F club insisted—
with Mandy. And Lori dated Brad.

Except for those few occasions when she and Sean met alone by chance, then there had been that one night
…

Which was haunting her like crazy today.

They were all at the rock pit. The whole in crowd. They probably shouldn’t have gone swimming there all the time, but they did. It had been dug out for construction, then abandoned, in the southwest section of the city— it was dangerous, but cool. It ranged from twenty to fifty feet deep, and old wrecked cars had been junked in it, pines grew all around it, and it was off the beaten track. The ground around it was all like a white powdery sand, and it was great to stretch out on and tan, and the pines all around it provided perfect shelter for picnics. The way the ground had been dug out, there were all kinds of
dunes and little private, tree-
shaded copses as well.

Sean hadn’t been there when Lori had arrived with Susan Nichols and Jan Hunt. Neither had Brad. Last night had been grad night, and they’d all stayed out really late, and some of them were waking up slowly that morning.

Lori had a new bikini. It was coba
l
t-blue, and skimpy. Working carefully, she’d managed to get her pale skin to a fine tan, and she’d touched up her natural blond locks with a combination of vinegar and lemon—she could get away with that, her mother wouldn’t allow her to use any store-bought bleaches. She looked good that day, and she knew it. Her mother had wistfully told her that youth was beauty in itself, and she hadn’t even chastised her for the skimpy bikini. She’d just told her that she was beautiful. “Every kid’s mother tells her that, Mom,” Lori had protested. “No, honey, for real, you’re beautiful. Inside and out.” She should have felt great. Her folks had their hang-ups, but they were mostly all talk; they really weren’t too bad, and they did love her. They might have warned her against the Blacks, but they were always decent to Sean when he was over with the gang. She had one summer left, then she was off to college herself. Her brother, Andrew, one year her senior, just back from college for the summer, had quit acting like a complete jerk this year. Rather than constantly threatening to tell on one another now, they kept each other’s secrets.

Arriving at the rock pit, Susan, Jan, and Lori laid out their towels, popped open cans of soda, turned on the radio, and stretched out.

After a while Jan yawned and stretched. “I’m burning up. I’m going to hop in the water. Anyone coming?”

“I’ll go,” Susie said. “Lori?”

“Umm
…
not yet. I’m just beginning to feel
the sun,” Lori said. That wasn’t true. She was hoping that Sean would show up, see her stretched out in her new bikini, decide that she was beautiful—inside and out—and profess his undying love and devotion.

“Okay, bake then. The guys should be along soon, huh?” Sue said. She was dating Lori’s brother, Andrew. Ugh. There was no accounting for taste. But then again, Andrew was better than Ricky Garcia—who was still a creep in Lori’s eyes—and Jan and he had been a hot item now for two years.

“Yeah, sure, the guys will be along soon,” Lori said.

When the other two girls left her, more people began to arrive. Andrew showed up with their cousin, Josh, who was a senior as well, and Jeff Olin, Mandy’s brother, Andrew’s age. Her brother was a traitor, hanging around with Jeff, she determined. But, of course, she couldn’t tell him so. She had to smile through her teeth, or else she’d give herself away. Her brother knew her too well.

Josh tickled her and called her kid. She was glad there was no one there to see. Josh could just act so damned superior—unless he was being nice to her because one of his college buddies had a crush on her.

Mandy arrived—without Sean. She came with a girlfriend, Ellie LeBlanc. They were both nearly naked, Ellie in a dark-patterned suit that complimented her light complexion and dark hair, and Mandy in an animal print that complimented everything about her. The two of
them flirted with Andrew and Josh, then Ricky Garcia arrived, still hanging around with Ted Neeson, as he had been since junior high. Then Brad showed up with Michael Black. Brad came down on Susie’s towel next to Lori, running his hand over Lori’s bare midriff and kissing her lips. She tried hard not to make a face, or push his hand away. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked her, pale blue eyes flashing angrily.

Just call it off with the jerk, she told herself. But she felt guilty right away. Lots of the kids were sleeping together; she just didn’t want to sleep with him. He was the most popular guy in his class, he was smart, he was good-looking— she just didn’t want to. But if she could keep up the facade of being a steady
thing
together with just a few kisses and a little petting
…
“It’s just hot,” she lied.

But staring at her, he shook his head angrily. “It’s more than that. And you know what, Miss Orange Blossom? If you don’t want to do it, there are other girls who will.”

She stared at him, hoping that the others, still standing and talking, were unaware of the exchange.

“Look, I’m just not ready,” she lied.

“I’m a grown-up guy,” he told her. “With needs. It’s not like we’ve just started dating. God knows, I love you. Everyone is convinced we’ll get married.”

“But not yet. What if—”

“First of all, we’ll use protection. And if you get pregnant, we’ll just get married early.”

Her stomach tossed and turned.

“Brad,
I’
m just not ready.”

“Well, fuck you, then!” he said, his voice a taut whisper.

“Brad, don’t be mad—” she began, spurred by more than a twinge of guilt.

But he had stood, and already flirted with Mandy and Ellie along with the other guys. She closed her eyes, casting a crooked arm over them to shield them from the sun. “Hey, we’re going on down to the pit, kid!” her brother called to her. She waved a hand in the air. She heard laughter as they all headed off toward the water.

Her arm was still over her eyes when she felt someone come down beside her again. And then a subtle scent of well-known aftershave just lightly teased her senses, and she sat up with a jerk. Sean was next to her. He wasn’t laughing or smiling, and he wasn’t about to tease her. “Lori,” he said gravely.

“Sean.” She was instantly nervous, so afraid of making a fool of herself, of letting her heart show—and being rebuffed. She inclined her head. “Mandy headed for the water.” Just at that moment Ted Neeson came loping back toward them. “Hey, Lori, you gotta come see this one! Mandy’s got her top off, and the guys are playing keep-away with it. I— oh, Sean! Uh, hey, Sean! When did you get here? Sorry, buddy, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s all right,” Sean said evenly, dark blue eyes level, lips ruefully curled. “Mandy’s a big girl, a free agent. And her brother’s in the water, isn’t he?”

“Uh…
yeah!”

“Then, I’m sure if she needs a rescue, he’ll provide it.”

“Yeah, sure,” Ted said, and quickly went back the way he had come. He looked nervous as hell, as if he wished he hadn’t been the one to bring such sordid tidings to Sean’s attention.

“Mandy’s a free agent?” Lori inquired. When pushed, Sean did have a bad temper. And he’d broken up with Mandy once before in their junior year when he’d been out of town with the football team and rumor had arisen about Mandy fooling around with Ricky. Mandy was a wicked flirt—but she always proclaimed h
erself madly in love with Sean—
the only “real man” among the crowd. Rumor was that she’d been ready for a “real man” too, when Sean came along—she’d already fooled around with a number of older guys when they’d started dating, and she knew—in Jan’s words—just how to satisfy a guy.

Sean lifted his hands and shrugged. He was shirtless, and though he was still lean, he was already well muscled due to his football playing and the fact that he picked up any odd jobs mowing lawns and moving furniture for people whenever he
could. He worked shirt
less in the hot sun, so he was handsomely tanned, and he wore jeans cutoffs in which to swim. He had a serious look about him today and she found herself thinking that neither money nor a fancy home had much to do with making up a person; Sean was handsome with an arresting, strongly sculpted face, penetrating eyes, and a great height and body. She wanted to slip her arms around him then and there. She flipped back her hair instead.