Dying to Get Her Man, Page 3

  And because she was polite. And open to possibilities.

  "I'm sorry, but I don't know where Sam is. I can leave him a message if you want." Along with the half dozen or so she'd already recorded on his answering machine.

  Her own machine hadn't had a single message on it. Sam remained MIA. Or was that AWOL?

  "No, that's okay. I think I'd rather talk to you, if you don't mind. I mean, he's this big newspaper guy. I see his byline all the time. I'm not sure what I should say to him, Miss Marsh, and you're just... well, just a regular person."

  Right. And, for once, that might actually be an advantage. As she'd told Sam, he needed her help—of course, that was assuming she ever saw him again. "Shoot. Only call me Jennifer. You're making me feel ancient."

  "Okay. I know Aunt Suzanne loved Mr. Hovey, but I just don't think she would have killed herself over him. She'd been in love lots of times before."

  "She told you?"

  "Oh, yeah. She had tons of pictures of her old boyfriends in a box in her front closet. I know Mr. Hovey's death upset her terribly. She couldn't eat, she couldn't sleep. She wouldn't hardly talk to me, but I know she wouldn't do what she did, not without..."

  "You two were close?"

  "Mama gave me her name. And she lived with us up until I was eleven. She used to baby-sit for me when I was little. My mom's much older. There's a lot she doesn't understand. Aunt Suzanne was more like an older sister to me than an aunt. She helped me get through my teen years. I guess she was a little odd, like Mom says, but when she loved you, she loved you with her whole heart. And she did love me. I was going to be one of her bridesmaids."

  "So you knew Richard Hovey."

  "No. I hadn't met him yet. I work nights and that's when the two of them went out."

  "But he treated her well."

  "Oh, yeah. He was great."

  "And you know this because..."

  "She was always telling me about the nice things he did for her."

  "Like what?"

  Suzie shrugged. "Look, I know she was crushed, but you have to believe me. She wouldn't kill herself and not at least say good-bye." And for the first time, tears started down the girl's cheeks.

  "Suzie, people who commit suicide, the ones who don't want to be stopped, don't tell anyone what they've got planned," Jennifer said softly, playing devil's advocate. She grabbed a napkin and handed it to Suzie who dabbed at her eyes.

  "I understand that, but I know she would have left me a letter, something. But it's not even just that."

  "Yes?"

  "Aunt Suzanne was afraid."

  "Of what?"

  "Dying."

  "How do you know?"

  "The last time I saw her was down at her house. She hugged me to her so tight I could hardly breathe. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, 'Suzie, are you afraid to meet God?' I shook my head even though I am because I didn't know what she was getting at and I know you're not supposed to be afraid. Then she said, 'Do you think He forgives all of our sins if we ask Him to?' I told her yes because that's what she's always told me and that's what they teach us in church, but I could tell she wasn't convinced. She looked really upset, but a different upset from crying her heart out over someone that she loved. Like I said, she seemed scared. I can't bear to think of her dying like that, dying afraid."

  "Lots of people are scared to die, Suzie, but that doesn't keep them from killing themselves. Some are more afraid of living."

  "No, when I say she was scared, I don't mean of something in the future. I mean of something right then."

  "Do you think someone was threatening your aunt?"

  The girl dropped her gaze, and Muffy whimpered, snuffled at the girl's side, and laid her head in her lap. Suzie hugged the dog to her and looked up. "I don't know what else it could have been. I've never seen anyone old like that so shaken up. You've got to believe me, Jennifer. Aunt Suzanne told me flat out she didn't want to die, and you've got to help me prove it."

  Chapter 5

  Jennifer fed Suzie a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of cream of tomato soup and then sent her home with a promise to be in touch Monday, as soon as she'd found Sam. If she found Sam. Now she knew exactly how he'd felt in the restaurant when she'd insisted Suzanne's death wasn't suicide: helpless and at a loss to know exactly where to begin. Suspicion with no evidence of foul play led just about nowhere.

  She turned on her computer and tried to write, but all she could manage was to stare at the screen. Right or not, Suzie Turner needed help. She'd turned her grief over her aunt's death into a quest for truth instead of dealing with her loss.

  And Jennifer had tried to turn her worry over Sam into a need to tell him about Suzie Turner. Hah! As if that could work.

  She finally fell asleep that night, her stomach in knots, listening for the phone, wondering if she could have been so thoroughly fooled by some man about his feelings for her. She certainly could have been more open, both with Sam and herself, about her emotions. And if she felt she had so much to prove about her writing ability, why had it seemed so necessary to deny him that journey to her success? Sam believed enough in her writing to let her work with him. Shouldn't that be enough?

  But it hadn't just been her. Sam stayed so busy with work that she hadn't seen him regularly for some time. And if he hadn't had time to see her, when could he possibly have seen someone....

  Oh. Maybe he hadn't been quite so busy at work after all. And maybe when she'd stopped him from talking Saturday night, it hadn't been the L word he'd wanted to say. Maybe he'd been about to make one more attempt to tell her about Isabelle Renard.

  It was a long night that had very little to do with sleep. By the following morning, her self-esteem had taken a nosedive.

  She waited until nine o'clock and called the Telegraph offices. She was told that Sam hadn't made it in to work yet, that he already had a pile of messages waiting for him, and that no one had heard from him. Jennifer decided that she'd give him one more chance, but he'd better be home this time. She wouldn't seek him out again. Hurt was giving way to anger. If he didn't want to talk to her....

  She noted that his car was in the parking lot of his apartment building as she climbed the steps to his place in Macon's historic district. She raised her hand to knock. Did she really want to do this? Of course she did. Suzie Turner was depending on her.

  She barely tapped the door before Sam flung it open. He'd obviously just gotten out of bed. She looked him up and down. His dark hair was a mess, and he had on jeans and a chambray shirt that he hadn't yet buttoned. He wore dress clothes to work, so he must not be going in today.

  "So you're all right," she said. "I thought maybe you were lying dead in a ditch somewhere."

  "Jennifer." Her name sounded foreign on his tongue, or maybe that was only her imagination. He gave her a puzzled frown. "Of course I'm all right. Why would you think—"

  "Good. I just... I tried to call, but..." Would it kill him to jump in and help her out just a little? "Someone came by my place to see me yesterday—"

  "This really isn't a good time." He hastily buttoned his shirt and then took her elbow. "What if I call you—"

  "Pepper?" The voice was lilting. Jennifer had never actually heard a voice lilt before, although she'd written it enough times in her novels. So that's what the word meant: seductively inviting. It was coming from the direction of the bedroom—the only bedroom in Sam's apartment.

  Jennifer stopped dead. She wasn't going anywhere.

  "Pepper," the voice called again, saucy this time as befitted the word. "I couldn't find any conditioner. Don't you have any?"

  "Pepper?" Jennifer repeated.

  Sam squinted at her. "This doesn't look good, does it?"

  She squinted back. He was right about that.

  A slender, long-necked woman emerged from the hallway wearing a towel around her head and Sam's terry-cloth robe. She stopped, apparently startled at seeing Jennifer standing there. She looked Jennifer up and down, t
hen smiled a breathtaking smile and clutched the robe tightly across her chest. More modest around Jennifer than Sam it seemed.

  "I didn't hear the door," she said.

  Jennifer stared at her. She thought she was the woman from the newspaper, but Jennifer wanted to be sure. She, too, looked older than the photo. "Isabelle?"

  "Just Belle."

  "Right." Jennifer took one last look at Sam's stunned expression. "Have a nice life."

  Then she turned and walked rapidly away.

  He came after her, but she was faster. She got to her car first, jumped in, locked all the doors, and backed out with Sam pounding on the windows and shouting something at her. She couldn't hear a word, her heart was thumping so loudly in her ears. Then she floored the gas pedal and putted out of the parking lot as fast as her little Beetle would take her, hoping that thump she heard wasn't her tire running over his foot.

  Chapter 6

  Drat it all! Where could she go? If she went back to her apartment, Sam would find her there, assuming he was looking. But she wasn't ready yet to hear what he had to say about Belle, engagements, or her misinterpretation of their own relationship. She'd noticed the lack of a ring on Belle's finger, but the woman was steamy from a shower, if nothing else. She could well have taken the ring off.

  Jennifer had wasted a good part of yesterday and all of last night fretting over a man who obviously hadn't been thinking about her, and, damn it, she wasn't about to allow him to rob her of another day. She swatted at the tears spilling from the corners of her eyes and tried to stay focused on the road.

  What had Saturday night been about? What kind of game was Sam playing? Had he planned to fill her with wine, sweep her onto the dance floor, and then mention between nibbles to her earlobe, "Oh, by the way, I have a fiancée"?

  And what the heck was all that talk about their writing a book together? Not in this lifetime. Besides, Sam had other things on his mind at the moment, while she didn't. In fact, she had all the time in the world now that he was out of the picture.

  But Suzanne Gray had a story that begged to be told, a story about love gone bad, a woman's story, one that her niece desperately wanted unraveled. There was no law saying Jennifer couldn't write a book all by herself. She was certainly capable of it, and she needed a distraction in the worst way.

  Suzanne—foolish woman—had died, whether by her own hand or someone else's, over the love of one Richard Hovey. The question was why. And the best way to get a feel for exactly what had happened to poor, misguided Suzanne was to visit the scene of her death.

  Bibb Memorial Gardens looked deserted as her little Volkswagen Bug chugged through the old brick archway and over the narrow, winding road that snaked through the property. No wonder no one was out to pay their respects. It was as cold a Monday morning as she could remember, and her car's pathetic excuse for a heater was making far more noise than heat. She shivered—from anger or from cold, it was impossible to tell which—as she shifted into second gear and headed slowly up the little hill.

  Richard hadn't been buried long enough—less than a week—for a grave marker to be erected, but a fresh grave has a telltale mound of earth that takes months to settle. She passed one covered by a green canopy and heaps of cut flowers. Too fresh. But further up the hill, in the back section, she spotted a site near a large pine tree, maybe forty feet from the road.

  She stopped the car, pulled on the emergency brake, and got out. Darn it was cold, settle-down-into-your-bones cold, and the wind was fierce, chapping her cheeks where her tears had fallen. There was no sun, just a gray sky, a perfect fit for her mood.

  She found her way to the mound, careful not to step on any graves. The least one could do for the dead was to respect their space.

  The morning dew had frozen into ice crystals that clung to the grass. They crunched under her feet and dotted the plastic flower arrangements adorning most of the graves. Not even a single carnation was left to mourn this person's passing. Maybe the police had cleared them all away. Or the groundskeeper who'd found poor Suzanne, who had thrown herself away for some man who would never know the sacrifice she'd made.

  How had she felt, lying on that heap of earth, the cold creeping gradually into her flesh, numbing first her back, fingers and toes, and then robbing her calves and forearms of all sensation, while the ironic strains of the Beatles in the background promised love as the solution to her problems? Love she could no longer have. Love that was as dead as she was soon to be. Love that was only an illusion.

  Or had she been too out of it with pills to have felt anything? But she couldn't have been and still set up the scene.

  Why had she done such a thing to herself? Why hadn't she taken the pills and lain down in the comfort of her own warm bed, a photo of Richard clutched to her chest? Why hadn't she simply gone to join her love in her dreams? Why hadn't she signed that blasted suicide note?

  Because she hadn't killed herself, Jennifer concluded. Not that way. It just didn't make sense.

  Jennifer looked toward the road. Where had they found her car? It had to have been parked nearby.

  "A little cold for you to be out here."

  The voice startled her and she turned. "You shouldn't sneak up on a person like that. You could have given me a heart attack."

  The man grinned at her. His skin was dark and his upper lip sported a black mustache. He wore rumpled green work clothes, a thick jacket open down the front, worn-out brown boots, and a baseball cap that was pulled tight over his curly hair. "Well, now, I guess this is the place to have one. Eliminates the extra trip. 'Sides, I wasn't sneakin' nowhere. You were lost in your thoughts. You related to this one?" He pointed at the mound.

  "No. I don't even know who's buried here. I was looking for Richard Hovey's grave."

  "Hey, you all right?"

  "Sure. Why?"

  "Your eyes. They're all red."

  "Yeah, well, the wind makes them sting. Is this Hovey?"

  "Nah. He's back over near the crypt. C'mon, I'll show you."

  She followed him as he led her across the gently rolling hillside. She noticed he didn't mind stepping on graves, but then if he did mind, she couldn't imagine how he'd ever get any work done.

  "Here," he said. "It's not easy buryin' them when the ground's cold like this."

  This mound was more settled than the one before, perhaps because of all the police and news reporters tromping over it. The area looked as though it had been swept clean, yet one single red rose remained. "Thanks," Jennifer said.

  "Hey, no problem."

  The man seemed reluctant to leave, which was just as well because she didn't intend to let him get away, at least not before she'd asked him a question. "Were you the one who found Suzanne Gray?"

  "You a reporter?"

  "Nope."

  "Police?"

  "Do I look like a police officer?" Jennifer tried to smile.

  "Can't tell by looks since they took away all those macho requirements, but I figure you'd be flashin' a badge at me if you were. You weren't sweet on this guy, were you?" He grinned at her, but his eyes were serious, no doubt taking in the streaks her tears had left in her makeup. One suicide was probably more than the place needed.

  She shook her head. "I read about it in the newspaper. It just seems so sad." She let out a loud sniff and choked back more tears. It really was sad. Love was sad.

  "Women! You can call it whatever you want, but I call it just plain stupid." He bent and picked up the rose. "Why you all come up here and visit some dead man—"

  "Who's come up here?"

  "I don't know, but I keep finding these roses left here."

  Jennifer cleared her throat. "How many?"

  "One each day since the funeral."

  "Do you mind?" She put out her hand and he handed her the rose. The thorns had been removed. High quality. This one hadn't come from any grocery store.

  "You found her, didn't you?" Jennifer asked.

  "On my morning rounds. Good G
od o'mighty I don't ever wanna see a sight like what I saw that mornin'."

  "What did you see?"

  He hesitated.

  "No, really. You can tell me."

  "And why's that?"

  "Because... because I don't have anyone to tell." At least not yet. And if she ever did write a book about Suzanne, she'd ask his permission first.

  "I guess that's fair." He paused for a moment, staring toward the Ocmulgee River, but Jennifer felt certain he wasn't seeing the landscape. "She looked like a great big china doll lyin' there, laid out so fine, surrounded by all those flowers, her dark hair spread all around her head, wearin' a plain white summer dress. Her lips were real blue-like. Her eyes closed like she was sleepin'. Her eyebrows and eyelashes, her hair, too, were frosted like sugar had been sprinkled all over her. Still. Not a breath. Not a movement. I touched her just to make sure. Didn't need no doctor to tell me she was dead. I see dead people all the time, but I never seen one frozen stiff like that."

  "What kind of security do you have working here at night?"

  "Don't really have any. The police drive through every now and again. I've been workin' here fourteen years, and we haven't had no more than a couple of tipped gravestones in all that time. Kids. That was over in the old section. They don't allow nothin' but these flat markers these days."

  "Did you find anything not mentioned in the newspaper?"

  He shook his head. "Nothin' but the body, the cloth, the tape player, and the flowers she was holdin'. The police found an empty Southern Comfort bottle tossed behind that tree over there. It wasn't there the day before. I keep this place clean."

  If the cold hadn't gotten her, the combination of pills and alcohol would have.

  "How about her car?" Jennifer asked.

  "It was back over there a ways." He pointed toward the direction they'd come from. "I noticed it when I came in to work but didn't think nothin' of it. People come here all hours, but most of them who drive leave on their own."