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With a droll lift of her brow, Melody replied, “You could have, if you lived in Atlanta and happened to be watching the eleven-o’clock news that night. The Channel Six helicopter was flying to the scene of an accident and spotted me. They lit me up like a prisoner going over the wall and broadcast the image all over the airwaves for the entire city to see.”
Rosemary shook her head. “Ouch.”
“It gets better,” Tanya mumbled as she dipped a chip.
Yeah. It got better, in a sick, oh-God-can-you-believe-she-actually-did-that way. “I panicked,” Mel said flatly. “Dropped the evidence. Dashed for the ladder. Slipped in the spilled paint—which got all over me—and fell off the end of the platform. The Cherry Cordial should’ve been called Blood Red, because I looked like a monster out of a horror movie dangling up there. King Kong’s mutant baby or something.”
Beside her, Tanya tried to look sympathetic while also trying to hide a grin. Maybe someday Melody would laugh about it, too. Maybe when she was ninety and had managed to forget how stupid she must have looked on TV, hanging from the platform waiting for the firemen who’d rescued her with a ladder truck.
She had thought that was the most humiliating moment of her life, of all the humiliating moments she’d endured during her marriage to the prick with the drill. It’d been close. But it still couldn’t beat the day her divorce decree had come down.
“Oh, sugar, haven’t you heard?” Rosemary said, her lips curved in a smile. “Like Scarlett O’Hara used to say, ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’”
Paige frowned. “I thought Hannibal Lechter said that.”
Melody reached for a handful of tortilla chips, not caring how many calories were in each one. Without Bill frowning at her, she didn’t give a damn what she ate or how much weight she gained.
“I think,” Tanya interjected with a disgusted grunt, “it’s Klingon. Though I would have taken the Lechter approach.”
“I didn’t mind billboard vandalism, but I hadn’t reached the point where I wanted to kill my husband and eat his liver with some fava beans.” Melody ate a chip, then added, “So that’s the story. My life of crime and my fifteen minutes of fame.”
“You had a couple of decades of fame,” Paige reminded her.
Right. But no more. She was completely finished with all of that and intended to live life out of the spotlight from now on. Quiet, low-key, no scandals, no adventures.
“Do you have a copy of that news program?” Tanya asked, still looking amused. “You oughta keep it as a warning for any man you consider marrying in the future.”
“Ha-ha, I know, it’s all funny until a male judge who probably cheats on his wife, too, decided Bill’s reputation had been damaged for life and I owed him everything but my internal organs. Which will probably be awarded to him if I appeal.”
“But you are going to appeal, right?” Tanya suddenly sounded serious. They’d had this conversation before, and Melody knew her friend, the fighter, believed this situation could be fixed.
Mel wasn’t so sure. Not that she wouldn’t like her money back, or to at least make sure Bill didn’t get it. But she didn’t want to go back to her old life when she’d been the duped wife, the vengeful ex. Not to mention the target of Bill’s incessant anger and malicious threats.
He hadn’t liked being humiliated and her money apparently hadn’t eased the sting. He’s gone, she reminded herself, refusing to think of his visit to Savannah. Not to mention the heavy-breathing calls she’d received her first weeks in town…until she’d had her number changed. Long gone. And she was done with the past. It was time to find herself again. To stop looking back, to move on, focusing on the future.
Paige suddenly changed the subject. “Do you remember the last time we all came here? The night before Mel’s wedding?”
So much for not looking back. That’d lasted ten seconds.
“We were practically kids,” Tanya replied.
“Well, I happened to stumble across a souvenir from that night,” Paige said with a secretive smile. She reached into the duffel bag she’d been carrying when she’d arrived, and dug out a pad of paper. “Remember everything we talked about?”
It took Melody a moment to recall the entire evening, which seemed like the last truly happy one she’d had. Any happy ones she’d shared with Bill had been zapped out of her memory around year three of their marriage. But when Paige flipped open the notebook and turned it around to show the rest of them, she remembered. “Oh, our infamous Adultery Free Zone lists.”
“Right. We were going to go for it, no questions asked, no guilt, if we ever had the chance with one of these guys.”
“Well,” Rosemary said, “my go-for-it list is on my fridge. I’ve crossed off number five…that Atlanta Braves player? Met him at a New Year’s Eve party and we had sex in a coat closet as the ball was dropping.” Almost purring, she added, “Fortunately, he spent a lot more time going down than the ball did.”
Melody couldn’t help wondering if Rosemary would ever find one man who satisfied her as much as so many men did. “Uh, I thought the lists were a joke.”
“They were…until I met that Braves player.” Rosemary’s smile was definitely catlike. “Speaking of our lists, I’ve kept my copies of all of them. I even dug yours out, Mel, once I knew you were divorcing the dick with the drill and coming home.”
Grunting, Melody said, “Well, someone talking about me having sex is about as close to a sex life as I’ve had in a long time, so I guess I can’t gripe about it.”
The middle-aged owner with thinning dark hair walked by just in time for that comment; his speculative look made her grab for her margarita.
Tanya shuddered. “Quick, Paige, find Mel’s list. If there’s anybody who needs to get laid in this town, it’s her.”
Wrinkling her nose, Melody ignored her friend. But Paige had already started flipping through the notebook. “Oh, my,” she said. “Jonathan Rhodes…there’s a blast from the past.”
Glancing over her friend’s shoulder, Melody scooted her chair around to get a closer look. “Yikes. I forgot about him. He sure didn’t last long in Washington.”
“Probably only a bit longer than he lasted in the hooker’s bed,” Tanya said. “He didn’t even run for reelection after he got caught in that police raid at a sleazy hotel. He came back here to Savannah and returned to his law practice.”
Rosemary nodded, a speculative look in her eye. “Hmm…so he’s still around. A definite possibility, Mel.”
Melody shook her head. “Not happening. Even if the list was serious—which it’s not—I’m not interested in sex. I’m not feeling very charitable toward men right now.”
“Which is why you need to think like a man,” Rosemary said. “Go out and live a little, take what you can get. You might not have meant it the night we wrote these down, but you can mean it now.” Leaning forward, Rosemary continued almost fiercely, “Live, Mel. Get back to being the happy, confident girl you were that night and don’t let the bastard you married cause you one more minute of pain or self-doubt.”
Rosemary was the languid one, not the passionate one, so Melody was somewhat taken by surprise. It said a lot about how worried her friends were, which touched her. Deeply.
Knowing, however, that Rosemary was involved in a somewhat serious on-again, off-again romance, which she was keeping pretty close to her vest, Melody didn’t believe her friend was living by her own advice. But she had once. And it didn’t appear to have hurt her. So maybe…
No. She needed sex like a nun needed edible underwear.
Before Rosemary could keep arguing, Paige yelped, “Oh, yikes, this guy—number five—didn’t fare so well. Chef Charlie of Chez Jacques died about a month ago, in his own restaurant.”
“I heard he got drunk and choked on a meatball,” Tanya said. “Sounds like that man swallowed some dumb-ass pills first.”
“Creepy,” Paige said. Then she made the sign of the cross.
Tanya rolled her eyes. “You’re not Catholic.”
“It seemed appropriate.” In typical Paige fashion, she allowed herself to be completely distracted by a random thought. “Why do you think he was making meatballs? Isn’t Chez Jacques a French place? Do they serve meatballs? Is Charlie a French name?”
Tanya gave Paige an impatient glare. Then she pointed at the notebook. “Who else did Mel list?”
Yeah, who else? Melody had been so focused on her rocky marriage and horrible divorce for such a long time, she hadn’t thought about the list in ages. She didn’t even know where her originals were and had to read over Paige’s shoulder to remind herself who she’d once wanted so badly.
When her gaze fell on the name of a golfer who’d had a chance in the PGA some years ago, but had quickly fizzled out, she gasped.
“What?” Rosemary asked.
“You’re not going to believe this, but Kenny Traynor, that golfer who was supposedly gay? He was all over the news in Atlanta last month. He was killed in a weird accident in the locker room of the country club where he was a golf pro.”
They all fell silent as the reality sunk in. Two of the men Melody had joked about sleeping with had died since that night. Young men, healthy men. Paige was right…it was creepy.
Suddenly looking relieved, Paige smiled. “But number four—Drake Manning, the reporter—is still around. He’s an anchor on Channel Nine. And his hair hasn’t moved since you left.”
“He’s a pig,” Tanya said, her mouth tight.
Paige continued before Melody could question Tanya’s comment. “Now we come to number one, which was why I brought our lists. I saw this on eBay and had to get it for you.”
Reaching into her bag, Paige retrieved a plastic-wrapped magazine. Melody recognized it—and the picture on the cover—immediately. It was her marine, the one who’d saved the children. Her number-one fantasy man.
“You sure were drooling into your burrito when his picture came on the TV screen that night. Wasn’t she?” Paige said.
Tanya nodded. “Uh-huh! That boy was fine.”
Rosemary, for some reason, remained silent, just staring at the picture, a half smile on her lips. Melody couldn’t blame her. She was enraptured by the photo on the magazine, too. “Oh, my God, I hope I didn’t jinx this guy.”
“It would have made the news,” Paige said. “He was a Georgia hero. We would have heard if he hadn’t made it back.”
She prayed Paige was right. Because she’d hate to think of this particular man meeting some strange fate like the others.
The picture was every bit as dramatic—as compelling—as it had been that night six years ago. More so, really, since she was a woman now, not an immature girl, as she’d been when she got married. The only thing that hadn’t changed was the hunger.
The sudden flash of want surprised her. But it was there…strong, insistent. She was attracted to this stranger like she hadn’t been attracted to anyone in a long time.
“He looks familiar for some reason,” she murmured.
“Well, duh, of course he looks familiar,” Paige said. “You only lusted after him more than any guy you’d ever seen.”
“I know that. But there’s something else. I just can’t quite put my finger on it.” The little flash of intuition, recognition or memory disappeared as quickly as it had popped into her brain. “I wonder what happened to him after…”
“You have to go to the police.”
Shocked by Rosemary’s words, Melody just gaped. “Huh?”
“I mean it. Two out of five men on your list have died, both very recently. Both right here in Georgia, and under strange circumstances. We’re calling the police.”
Melody was shaking her head throughout Rosemary’s spiel. “That’s utterly ridiculous. This has nothing to do with me.”
Ignoring her, Rosemary reached for her cell phone. “I know someone on the Savannah PD.”
Though outwardly scoffing, a hint of concern did go through Melody’s mind. Still, she insisted, “I can’t do it. I’m not going to tell some cop that men I once wanted to have sex with are dropping like flies throughout the state of Georgia.”
“You sure won’t get a date that way,” Paige offered.
“Hush up, Paige,” Rosemary said. “Mel, I am not kidding. You just came through a divorce with a husband out for revenge.” Her eyes widened. “Bill knew about this list! I remember it came up during one of my visits to Atlanta a few years ago. He was joking about it, while you seemed to have forgotten the whole thing.”
She had almost forgotten about the list, which had at first been just a joke to her. Later, when it had become clear that her marriage had been an enormous mistake, the silly game had provided some fodder for late-night fantasies and dreams, but eventually, she’d stopped even dreaming. Fantasies, dreams and thoughts of her list had faded away…as had her marriage.
“Yeah, he knew,” she finally said. “He found all four of our lists in my purse during our honeymoon. We laughed about them and he even wrote out his own top five.”
Of course, Bill probably hadn’t been joking. She wouldn’t be surprised if the son of a bitch had crossed every name off his list before their fourth anniversary.
Don’t go there. She took a deep breath, forcing herself to focus on the bright, wide-open future with people who loved her. Not the gut-wrenching, humiliating past with people who’d been pitying her. Like all of her Atlanta friends, who had to have known about Bill’s affairs long before she did.
“That does it,” Rosemary said. “You’ve got to tell someone.”
By now, even skeptical Tanya was looking convinced, and Paige’s eyes were wide as she whispered, “Maybe she’s right.”
“I can’t tell a stranger that I sat down the night before my wedding and made a list of men I wanted to have sex with.”
Rosemary was already pushing buttons on her cell phone with the pointed tip of her nail. “You don’t have to go into that much detail, sugar. Just call it a little bridesmaid game. Men you’re attracted to—you don’t have to mention the adultery-free-zone part of it.” Then, before pushing the send button, she added, “This detective’s nice and discreet.” She glanced away, not meeting Mel’s eye. “He’s older. Kindly. Fatherly.”
Never having known for sure who—or where—her father was, Melody couldn’t take much comfort in that. “Rosemary…”
But before she could finish her sentence, she realized Rosemary was already talking in hushed tones to someone, her hand curved around the phone for privacy. A little late for that.
Outnumbered, confused and a teeny bit apprehensive, Melody realized she had no choice. Which was why, a minute later, she agreed to meet with Rosemary’s detective friend. Adamant about not barging into the police station, she at least got Rosemary to agree to set up an informal meeting in a public place.
It was ridiculous, of course. But she’d do it. At ten o’clock the next morning, at a diner on Abercorn Street not far from her own apartment, she’d meet with this detective, carefully tell him what she knew, hear him laugh, then forget about it.
Grabbing a pen, she jotted down the man’s name, writing it on the list Paige had torn out of the notebook. For evidence.
Yeesh. Her sexual-fantasy list possible evidence. How utterly embarrassing. She could only hope this Detective Walker was as nice and fatherly as Rosemary said he was.
And that he was very understanding.
CHAPTER TWO
“WAIT A MINUTE,” Nick Walker said, eyeing his partner on the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan PD. “You’re telling me some woman thinks a chef who choked on a meatball while drunk was actually murdered? And that his death might have something to do with the death of a golf pro in Atlanta?”
Nick made no effort to keep the skepticism out of his voice as he stared across his desk at his partner. Dex didn’t flinch away from the pointed look and Nick sat back in his chair, sighing heavily. Because apparently his friend was serious.
The two of them sat in the bustling station on Habersham Street, getting ready to start another day filled with the promise of lots of crime. First up was investigating a robbery-homicide at a nearby antique store that had been filling the local media. The case had brought pressure on the whole precinct—they’d just come from a bitch-out meeting during which their lieutenant had threatened bodily injury if it wasn’t solved soon.
It was a typical weekday morning—already over eighty degrees and sweltering, with air that smelled like used motor oil and felt about as thick. The window air conditioner chugged lazily, managing to circulate a breeze that could only be described as cool by a recent refugee from hell.
At every other desk sat another member of the squad, making calls, writing reports, delaying the inevitable moment when they’d have to leave the building and venture out into the wicked September morning. Because, damn, it hurt to breathe out there. The heat wave gripping the city had lasted nine weeks now. Might be another month before it dropped below eighty.
He hated the heat and not only because his skin hadn’t felt dry since Memorial Day. The hotter it got—the stickier it got—the more people heated up and committed crimes. Quick to anger, slow to reason, the city had been on a low rolling boil all summer and September hadn’t seemed to evaporate any of the steam.
“I know it’s probably a long shot, but it’s worth a conversation, isn’t it?” Dex asked, his tone even, his voice reasonable. As usual. The guy was nearly impossible to rile, unlike Nick who, truth be told, hadn’t been too sure he’d ever make detective given his tendency to erupt every now and again. He thought he’d done a pretty good job escaping his badass teenage years, when he’d literally fought his way out of his family’s Walkers-are-all-no-good-drunks reputation with his fists. But that old Walker temper did kick up once in a while.
“You’re really serious about this?” Nick asked.
“I am. It’s a long shot, but maybe there is some kind of connection between these two cases.”
“The Chez Jacques death isn’t a case—it was ruled an accident. The investigation’s been closed for a month.”
“So this tip probably won’t go anywhere. But since you caught the original call, isn’t it worth a conversation?”
If the request had come from Draco, Jones or one of the others, he would have immediately suspected some kind of setup. A practical joke at the very least. A blind date at the worst.
As the youngest on the squad, the newest detective and one of the only two unmarried men on this floor—the other being his partner—he was the target of a lot of jokes. Not to mention a lot of schemes to get him as tied-around-the-balls as every other poor married sucker he worked with.
But this was Dex. Mr. Serious. The most straightforward, honest, no-nonsense guy in the building. And his partner.
Dex was also the only one in the building who knew that Nick had once been married. Briefly. Badly. To a woman who’d then sabotaged Nick’s relationship with his entire family, separating them for a decade with her lies. So Dex wouldn’t play some kind of setup game with him.
“I know how it sounds, but Rosemary swears it’s true.”
Nick grunted but said nothing against Rosemary. He still hadn’t quite forgiven her for the stakeout snafu a few weeks ago, when he’d nearly blown his cover trying to help some woman move her furniture.
Some woman. Yeah, she had been that.
For some reason, he hadn’t been able to put her completely out of his mind since. Occasionally he’d even considered cruising by her place, seeing how she was doing. Seeing if she had any more chairs she needed moved.
He hadn’t done it. Not only because he just wasn’t in the market to meet a woman right now, but also because she’d seemed so damned vulnerable. So hurt. So desolate.
The last thing she needed was a visit from a workaholic cop who’d deceived her about who he was on the day they’d met.
“Rosemary swears, huh?” he finally said, knowing Dex was waiting for an answer.
“Yeah. And you know how she is.”
Oh, yes, he knew. Frankly, Nick didn’t know how his friend had hooked up with the woman, who was the spoiled, pampered daughter of one of the former mayors of Savannah. Yeah, she was hot, and she managed to keep Dex a lot more on edge than any woman he’d ever dated—which seemed a good thing for someone as quiet and uninvolved as his partner. The differences in their financial situations were glaringly obvious, and Dex had made more than one comment about trying to keep up with Rosemary.
Besides being rich, she was flighty. Not to mention oversexed, bored and pretentious.
Dex was about as down-to-earth and unpretentious as they came, which was one reason he and Nick got along so well. Nick hated pretension. He had no patience for the old guard who hadn’t yet realized the Civil War was over and the grand and glorious days of plantation owners were mere textbook footnotes.
Coming from a white trash Georgia family in a small town in the northwest corner of the state, he’d never realized the elitist culture still existed elsewhere. Sure, Joyful had been full of the haves and the have-nots, like every other town—the Walkers definitely being on the have-not list. But until he’d started working to solve some of the crimes targeting the upper crust of this old, proud city, he hadn’t realized how far in the past some people seemed to live.
That was how Dex had met Rosemary. Somebody had robbed a pricey house she had listed with her real-estate agency.
“I told Rosemary you’d meet the woman today at ten.” After naming the location, Dex added, “You’ll know her by her red hat.”
Nick didn’t respond right away, merely studying his friend, watching for a shift of the eyes or a tiny grin that would say he was being had. He saw neither. Just stalwart, calm Dex. The nice, stoic, friendly side of their good-cop, bad-cop routine.
“Why, exactly, did Rosemary decide I was the person who had to meet with this mystery woman? Why not you?”
“She apparently doesn’t like Northerners.”
The explanation wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense in a lot of other places. But this was Savannah. Dex, who hailed from Pennsylvania, had never lost the clipped tone or flat accent that pegged him as someone from above the Mason-Dixon line. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d been eyed with suspicion by some spoiled wannabe Southern belle.
Nick disliked the woman already.
He gave it one more shot. “Last I checked, Rosemary didn’t exactly admire my tact with women.”
A half smile appeared on Dex’s face. “Only because you told that reporter doing a story on Rosie’s real-estate business that you’d rather go to bed with a cross-dressing, three-armed circus freak than ever go out with her again.”
He remembered.
“I think Rosemary’s changed her mind,” Dex said. “She never liked Angie Jacobs anyway and didn’t much care that Angie dropped the story once she found out you were a friend of ours.”
Just as well, because Angie was a piranha.
“Rosemary now thinks you might just have great instincts.”
“Until the next time she decides I’m a cretin because you have a beer with me instead of meeting her at some party where they serve bait on crackers and call it gourmet cook-in’.”
“Careful, your moonshiner background is showing.”
Rolling his eyes, Nick rose to his feet and tossed a file at Dex. “Make yourself useful while I’m chasing your girlfriend’s boogeymen. See if you can find anything on this plate. Could be connected to the break-in on Wright Square.”
He hadn’t really expected Dex to complain, and he didn’t. Instead, he gave Nick a relieved smile. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
“You owe me many, especially for having to drive the P.O.S. during the Miller stakeout. But who’s counting?”
“Hey, we got him, didn’t we?”
That they had. They’d gotten him and the scumbag wouldn’t be putting his filth onto the streets of Savannah anytime soon.
Muttering under his breath about spoiled society brats with conspiracy complexes, Nick left the precinct and drove the short distance to the café. He could have walked the few blocks, but it was too hot and he was too irritated.