In the Running Read online

  He fixed her with a beady eye. “Mattias has a lot of good in him, but he’s not a man you can count on, girl.”

  Reenie’s heart sank. She’d been trying not to see that.

  She followed Matt into the apartment where she had spent the most magical night of her life. He turned and looked at her. There was such warmth there. Right now, she told herself she didn’t care that he was a man with a short attention span. She needed everything he was, for however long they had together.

  “So,” she said, “did any of the papers make sense to you?”

  “Some,” he told her. “The printout shows how much Casen skimmed off before he split the profits with his partner, but it doesn’t tell us what the business was. There are clues that he’s been moving the money into offshore accounts, but none about where exactly they are. None of the other stuff makes any sense to me.”

  “Maybe I’d recognize something,” Reenie said, stifling a yawn.

  “Let’s try that in the morning. I’ve locked it all away and you’re too tired to do anything about it tonight. Besides,” He drew her into his arms. “it’s been too long since I held you the way I want to. Come to bed, Reenie.”

  Her lips were parted and waiting when he kissed her. The first gentle touch of his tongue on her lower lip sent tingles everywhere. It slid slowly into her mouth bringing the flavor of chocolate and coffee and sinfully delicious man. The rising warmth and stirring of need deep in her body felt so right, it seemed as if she’d been making love with him all her life.

  “All the way to bed?” She melted against the hardness that pressed more firmly against her abdomen.

  “We’d better move while we can,” he growled. Then he lifted her feet off the floor and, still holding her tight against him as if he’d never let her go, her temporary man carried her to the bedroom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Reenie stretched languorously. Every muscle in her body was delightfully weary. She luxuriated in the heat she felt along the length of her back and thighs, the heat that emanated from the Matt’s strong, hard body. She glanced at the clock on the dresser and sighed. She had to tear herself away and get over to the main house. She eased herself out from under the muscular arm that lay across her waist and made her way to the bathroom.

  She showered and dressed quickly. She was really getting to like this short haircut that needed only a fast brushing in the morning. She brushed her teeth and smeared on a touch of peach lipstick. The royal blue of her blouse emphasized the color of her eyes. Her eyes!

  “Oh, no!” she cried aloud.

  Almost instantly, Matt half-stumbled into the bathroom.

  “What?” he asked, looking around him wildly for whatever or whoever had upset her.

  She threw herself into his arms and burrowed her face in his chest.

  “What is it?” He took her face between his hands and repeated, “Reenie, tell me what is it?”

  “My eye,” she wailed, both blue eyes wide open and horrified. “The swelling is gone. I look like myself again. And I have to go over to the house.”

  “Beautiful,” he mumbled, as he stumbled back out the door. “Don’t leave. I’ll get dressed.”

  He was in the living room tucking his shirt into his jeans when she got there.

  “After you get Pete some breakfast,” he said, “we have to do something about those beautiful blue eyes. Do you think you could tolerate contact lenses?”

  “I suppose so. I’ve never given it much thought.” She cringed at the thought of sticking little plastic discs in her eyes, but now that the police knew of Danny’s murder, the search for her would be even more intense.

  “I know an optometrist in Midland. It’s only about an hour and a half away. I’ll see if she can fit you in later this morning.”

  “I’ll tell Pete I need my glasses changed and ask if he minds having his lunch left for him,” Reenie decided.

  When Matt told his father where they were going, Pete said pointedly, “Sandra Field’s mom says she’s a good optometrist. But are you sure she’s the right one for Reenie to go to?”

  The name rang a bell. Sandra Field was the woman Bronwyn had been teasing Matt about the other day, wasn’t it? Reenie silently seconded Pete’s hope that Matt knew what he was doing.

  Shortly after nine o’clock they were in the Jeep on their way to Midland. Luckily, the day was sunny and she could wear sunglasses during the drive without drawing attention to herself.

  If hearing the name of the woman Matt had apparently been involved with gave Reenie a painful twinge of jealousy, meeting the woman was torture.

  Doctor Sandra Field was not a tall woman but she radiated personality and her feminine assets were impressive. The doctor was delighted to see her good friend Matt and only too willing to do anything she could to make him happy. She smiled; her hazel eyes sparkled; her red hair bounced; her whole voluptuous person wriggled with happiness at seeing him; she did everything but wag her tail in greeting.

  The moment Matt got within range, she launched herself at him, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him enthusiastically on the mouth. Reenie wanted to tear her curvy little body off her man. Her man! The fierce possessiveness she felt for Matt was unwarranted but it was there.

  “It’s about time!” Sandra’s full red lips formed a little pout. “I’d begun to think that our friendship didn’t mean as much to you as it did to me.”

  “I ..um .. mislaid your number,” Matt mumbled uncomfortably.

  “Matt and I were very close for a couple of years.” Sandra explained to Reenie without loosening her grip on him. She gazed up into Matt’s eyes.

  “In high school,” he said quickly. Reenie could tell he was trying to disentangle himself without embarrassing his “close” friend by being too forceful about it.

  “You finally got my message, you naughty boy,” she said, giving him a little squeeze. “That Bronwyn is so forgetful. The minute I heard you were home, I told her to be sure to tell you to call me. I’ve missed you, Mattie.”

  When she removed one arm from around his neck to stroke his cheek, Matt turned quickly and escaped.

  “It’s been a lot of years, Sandra,” he said. “I meant to call. With being so busy at the marina and Pete’s operation …”

  He clamped an arm around Reenie’s waist. “And this is Reenie Kelly. You’d better explain to Sandra what you want, sweetheart.”

  Dr. Field’s smile dimmed a few kilowatts, but she was pleasantly businesslike when Reenie said she wanted chocolate brown contacts. She explained that she wanted to surprise some people.

  “They’ll be surprised all right. Most women would kill for eyes your color,” she said, giving Reenie a quick evaluative once-over. She smiled at Matt again. “I’ll have to examine Reenie’s eyes. We’ll be right back.”

  As she settled Reenie in the elaborate pedestal chair in her little examination room, she gave her an overly bright smile.

  “Matt always was a great guy,” she confided. “He was my first boyfriend and we were crazy about each other. I was devastated when he left to join the army. In those days, he was terribly shy and scrawny. I can’t believe my Mattie Hanson turned into that gorgeous hunk!”

  Reenie didn’t like the possessive “my Mattie Hanson” but she had to agree that he’d turned into a gorgeous hunk.

  A few minutes later, Reenie looked glumly into the mirror that Sandra held in front of her. The transformation from a slim, blue-eyed woman with well-cut shoulder-length blonde hair to a skinny, brown-eyed woman with a shaggy brown pixie cut was a dramatic change in the wrong direction. No one in her right mind would choose that kind of makeover. Reenie looked at the plain woman in the mirror and smiled wryly. Only the weight loss had not been a deliberate choice.

  Matt’s reaction buoyed her spirits.

  “Perfect!” he proclaimed, grasping both her hands and grinning at her. “The gang won’t recognize you. You’re sure to win the bet. Then you can go back to being my blue-eyed
beauty.”

  “I think I’ll wear them home to get used to them,” she said.

  They were almost back at the lake when Reenie voiced her main concern about the lenses. “Your explanation was great for your old cheer leader girl friend,” she said, unable to hide her resentment of the other woman, “but how do we explain the change of eye color to Pete and Bronwyn?”

  “How about something dumb like you did it to cheer yourself up? Or maybe tell some of the truth. You’re hiding from an old boyfriend. Pete and Wyn should buy that. Other people might not even notice. Your swollen eye and bruises were pretty spectacular. That’s what most people would remember.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “Sandra has changed a lot since high school.” He gave Reenie a smug half-smile that told her he’d noticed her little bout of jealousy. “She was quite chubby then and extremely quiet. We were both misfits but we liked each other. The summer I was fifteen I grew ten inches. I suddenly had to contend with being too tall and gawky as well as being terminally shy and sullen.”

  “Now, Sandra thinks you’re a gorgeous hunk.”

  “And you?”

  “I know you’re a gorgeous hunk,” she said with a reminiscent sigh that made Matt catch his breath.

  “We’re almost home,” he said, gruffly, speeding up a little.

  She took off her dark glasses. “I figure I have about an hour before I need to be at Pete’s to start dinner.”

  Their eyes met in heated understanding.

  Matt’s foot pressed more heavily on the accelerator.

  They were hurrying up the outside stairway to the apartment when they heard the telephone begin to ring. Matt reached it first.

  “Yes,” he snapped. “Yes, Jeff. We just got back from Midland.”

  He shrugged helplessly and rolled his eyes at Reenie. “What time did he call? All right, I’ll get right back to him. What’s his number?”

  He scribbled on the pad beside the phone and hung up. “Talk about rotten timing! I’m sorry, Reenie.” His own disappointment showed in his expression. “The manager of one of the big lodges that I’ve been trying to interest in letting us service their snow machines wants to talk to me. I have to get back to him right away.”

  “I understand,” Reenie said, standing on her tiptoes to brush his lips with hers. “I’ll get over to the house.”

  He pulled her back to kiss her properly. Too soon, he pulled his mouth away. “You’re addictive, little one. You’d better leave while I can still think straight.”

  Pete did a double take when he saw her, but did not comment on her new look.

  “Bronwyn called on her lunch break,” he told her as she began to wash up the few dishes he’d used for his own lunch. “I’m supposed to ask if you’d object to having Tommy’s birthday party here on Friday afternoon. She’d already invited six of his friends to come over for pizza after school before she knew she was starting back to work this week. Now, she won’t be able to get home until the same time the kids do. She’s having the meal delivered. You won’t have to do anything extra.”

  “My mother would have said having food delivered to a cook’s house was like sending coals to Newcastle,” Reenie said with a smile. “Of course, she can have Tommy’s party here. I’ll make the pizza and a fancy birthday cake, too. Just tell me what kind.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Pete said, obviously pleased with Reenie’s response. “And the cake has to be chocolate.”

  “It’s not your birthday, Pete,” she teased.

  “I know that,” he said, indignantly. “When Tommy got back from a friend’s birthday party a couple of weeks ago, I asked him what kind it was. You know, sometimes they have a swimming party, or go to a ball game.

  “He said, ‘Chocolate. That’s the best kind of birthday.’

  “So I guess the birthday is the cake, and the cake has to be chocolate.” He raised one bushy eyebrow and grinned. “Of course, chocolate is my favorite, too.”

  “The cake will be super chocolate,” Reenie promised.

  “I’m not supposed to come right out and ask you - just weasel around a bit and see if you might do her another favor.”

  She waited.

  “They’re having a fundraising bake sale for the GEL,” he said. “Bronwyn promised two dozen tarts.”

  “So long as I don’t have to attend. Cooking’s no problem.”

  He raised one bristly white eyebrow.

  “I’m not much for crowds,” she said. “And there’s someone I’m trying to avoid.”

  “Then, the brown eyes were a good idea.” He winked. “I’ll be in the study trying to make some sense of the inventory the students did before they left. Holler if you need me.”

  Pete left the kitchen pushing the walker in front of him like a shopping cart. “Think I’ll have Matt pick up one of those canes that has a four footed base. Maybe try it out tomorrow.”

  Pete knew the brown lenses were a disguise. Did he know who she was? Was that wink supposed to say he wasn’t going to use the hot line?

  When Gus’s patrol car drew up in front of the house about an hour later, Pete announced he was perfectly capable of answering his own door and sent her in search of a spy novel he said he’d seen on a shelf in Matt’s bedroom. Reenie thankfully ran upstairs and began the fruitless search. She wasn’t the slightest bit surprised when, as soon as Gus left about five minutes later, Pete called her down.

  “I found it!” His feigned annoyance at his own forgetfulness was unconvincing. “Forgot I left the darned thing in the study.”

  Then he gave her the same reassuring wink he’d given her earlier. “Feel like the old lady in the story. Minister asked her if she thought much about the Hereafter.

  ‘A couple of times a day,’ she told him. “I go upstairs or down to the basement and, when I get there, I have to ask myself, ‘Now what am I here after?’” He wheezed with laughter. “More truth than fiction in that!”

  Then after dinner, when Bronwyn and Tommy dropped by to see how he was feeling, Pete shooed Reenie and Matt out before Bronwyn could get close to her.

  “I wanted to talk to Reenie about the birthday party,” she objected.

  “I did that,” her father said. “See you in the morning, Reenie,” he called.

  Reenie wasn’t sure if the look on Bronwyn’s face was annoyance at her father’s bossiness or if she’d caught a glimpse of Reenie’s new eye color as they left.

  Matt didn’t appear to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. At least, he didn’t say anything if he had. He’d seemed preoccupied ever since he had arrived the house for dinner.

  “How did your meeting at the ski lodge go?” she asked as she hung up her jacket in the closet just inside the apartment.

  “Fine. We got the contract,” he said, absently. He pulled some sheets of paper out of his jacket pocket and put them on the table. “I made photocopies of this stuff this afternoon and put the originals in my safety deposit box in town. Maybe you can make sense of some of it.”

  Reenie picked up the top memo - the one that was written in large round letters and signed with an L. It said Glenlivet 2-4 - Hilt 923 and had Gran C. R.B. and some numbers slanted across the bottom as a kind of postscript.

  “I don’t recognize the writing,” she said thoughtfully. “The ‘L’ could stand for Danny’s cousin, Lucy Spadafore. She was with Jon in one of the photos.”

  “Does Casen call your grandmother ‘Gran’?”

  “I’m the only one who calls her that. She likes to be called ‘Glad’. Glenlivet is the brand Jon chooses when he drinks scotch. Maybe he and ‘L’ drink scotch together,” she mused. The thought of Jon with another woman didn’t bother her at all. How could she ever have considered marrying a man she didn’t care about? A man she didn’t even know?

  “Hilt 923 could be a room number at a Hilton hotel,” Matt added. “But which city?”

  “Jon and L. could have registered under the name Glenlivet.” Reenie
brightened. “And the dates could be the second to the fourth of the month. But what good does that do us?”

  “Not much,” Matt rubbed his eyes. “And I’m not getting anywhere with this printout. Somehow, we have to get our hands on the whole file. All we have is the part that interested DiMarco. The rest is probably on the hard disk of the computer that was stolen from your grandmother’s or on one of Casen’s back-up disks. Could you have missed a disk in that file drawer?”

  “The only thing besides invoices in that drawer was a box of candy. Probably Franz squirreled it away there. He’s the apprentice who accepted all the deliveries and passed the paperwork on to Danny. He’s the only other person who did any work in my little cubbyhole. Franz would know his marzipan was safe from me. Everyone knows I hate the stuff.” She hit her forehead with the heel of her hand. “Wait a minute. Franz is diabetic.”

  “So Danny would know neither of you would touch the box. What do you bet that’s where he hid the back-up disk?”

  “If it even exists.” Reenie breathed a long discouraged sigh.

  “Could you get me in there?”

  “Possibly,” she hedged. She still had her keys. “It would be easier for me to sneak in and out of there alone, though. I know the layout. And I know exactly where to look.”

  There was no way she was going to drag Matt anywhere near Wilson and whatever other muscle Jon was employing these days. This was her problem. She was the gullible one who’d become involved with Jon Casen. The last thing Reenie wanted to do was go back to Driftwood Lodge but she would before she let Matt near the place.

  “With my technicolor bruises, I stand out in a crowd. In a couple of days, though…”