Carolina Isle (Edenton 2)

“Even in a mess like this, you never stop coming on to a woman. I must say that you had me going there for a moment with your sad little story about being rich and unloved.”

“You didn’t believe me?”

“Not a word of it.”

“So I don’t get a good-bye kiss?”

“I told you, I’m not going back. I’m staying with you, but before you get any ideas, I want to know what you’re up to.”

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, looking around the dark forest. They could see no one and the only sound was of frogs and mosquitoes. “I think that whoever is watching has seen all he needs to.”

“You feel it too?” Sara asked, rubbing her arms as the hairs were standing on end. It was probably eighty-five degrees but she felt cold. When R.J. started to put his arm around her, she pulled away. “I want to know what you’re planning to do.” She didn’t look at him but she knew that he was in a dilemma. For all that he called her, fifty times a day sometimes, he was still a very private man. For the first few months she worked for him, she thought that there wasn’t anything in his life that she didn’t know about. But then he’d announced a merger with another company and she realized that she’d never heard a word about it. He’d done all the research and the paperwork by himself. If she knew nothing else about R. J. Brompton, it was that he was a man of many secrets. Now he was trying to decide whether or not to share his secrets.

Sara was silent as they walked back toward the town. She knew better than to try to force him to tell her what he was planning to do—or even to persuade him. He had to make up his own mind.

“I’m going to visit Mrs. Nezbit,” R.J. said at last.

“You’re going to seduce the widow?” Sara asked, aghast.

“Could you get your mind above the belt for a few minutes?” R.J. snapped. “She’ll know something. If nothing else, she’ll know his enemies. Who hated him enough to kill him?”

Sara remembered the man’s angry hostility when they’d seen him in the bar. “Based on my experience, I think maybe several people wanted to kill him. Even Ms. Vancurren said he was a liar and a thief.”

“A liar and a loser,” R.J. said quietly. “Are you slipping on me that you didn’t remember that?”

“I remembered. Maybe it was something else that made me think he was a thief.”

“Could it have been the twenty-thousand-dollar watch he was wearing?”

“I didn’t notice that.”

“I did and I think you did subliminally. Phyllis said he was rich.”

Sara stopped walking. “You want to find out how he got rich, don’t you? Maybe he was blackmailing someone and his victim got fed up and murdered him.”

“And we happened along and they tried to pin it on us,” R.J. added.

“What’s going to happen when there is no body found?”

He started walking again. “I thought about that. How can we be accused with no body? That freezer was plugged in but the food in it was old. I don’t think it’s been opened in a long time, certainly not on a daily basis. It could be a while before they find the body in there.”

“But then the killer will be looking for it over the side of the cliff.”

“And wherever the kids tossed their dummy.”

“Why do you keep calling them ‘kids’? Ariel is the same age as I am.”

“I’ve heard that great emotion is what makes you grow up. If that’s true, are you and Ariel the same age?”

“I think that with my dad I may be about a hundred and fifty.”

“And I’m a thousand.”

“You?” she asked. “Since when do you have any emotion? I’ve seen you dump women without a backward glance.”

“Their tears were over losing my bank account.”

“Not all of them. What about Tiffany?”