Foul Play

They both stiffened as a light flashed on in the bedroom, casting a sliver of yellow under the closet door. More footsteps and suddenly the closet doors were flung open, and a perfectly tanned, naked arm reached into the closet and extracted a hanger. Clothes rustled, and the hanger returned with a dress draped over it. Veronica sighed heavily and kicked her shoes into the closet.

Amy waited, barely breathing. Hard to believe Veronica hadn’t seen them, hadn’t sensed their presence. They were so close to her. Amy could smell the cloying perfume of Veronica’s hairspray, and a disturbing idea skittered through her brain. It was the frightening acknowledgment of things unknown, of dangers present but never perceived. Had there ever been a man in her closet? If it could happen to Veronica, it could happen to Amy. Tonight she’d thoroughly examine her closets, and tomorrow she’d have better locks installed on her doors.

There was the whisper of clothing being dropped to the floor. Panties? Amy instinctively closed her eyes and immediately realized it was absurd… she was in the back of a dark closet and couldn’t see a thing. Her knees ached from standing at rigid attention as minutes elapsed.

“Thank goodness,” she whispered, almost collapsing with relief when she heard the shower turn on. The next few moments were a blur. Creeping through the bedroom into the living room, the foyer, out the front door.

“I don’t ever want to do this again,” Amy said, standing on the sidewalk, taking deep gulps of fresh air. “I’m going to go home and pretend this never happened.”

“Good idea. I just have one more eensy-teensy thing to do before we go home,” Jake said. “I want to check out the Dumpster.”

“Haven’t we seen enough garbage for one day?”

“Afraid not. We’ve seen your garbage, sweet thing. Now I want to see Veronica’s garbage.” Jake leaned into the refuse bin. “Damn, it’s dark in here. I wish I’d thought to bring a flashlight. I wish I’d… Oh hell!”

Amy let out a small shriek and clapped her hand over her mouth. He was in the Dumpster. She’d known it was going to happen. She could feel it in her bones. Murphy’s law. If anything can go wrong… it will. “Are you all right?” she asked, peering over the side.

“Yeah. I’m fine, and I found what I was looking for.”

“Rhode Island Red? Oh lord, don’t tell me you found Red. Don’t tell me they threw him away in the Dumpster.”

Jake hoisted himself out and landed with a squishy thud on the blacktop. “No, I didn’t find Red. I found his cage. Veronica threw Red’s cage away.”

A quiet feeling of dread stole across Amy’s chest, and she knew Jake’s instincts had been correct. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“I think Veronica knows the answer to that question.”

“I’m sorry he’s dead,” Amy said. “He was kind of special, wasn’t he?”

Jake took the car keys from his back pocket. “We’re not absolutely sure that he’s dead. We’re just sure he’s not living with Veronica. Let’s go home.”

Chapter Six

Amy jumped from the car as it came to a rolling stop in her driveway. “What was in that Dumpster? My nose will never be the same. My car will never be the same. I’ll probably have to sell it.”

Jake unfolded himself from the little sports car. “Are you trying to tell me I smell bad?”

“You are beyond bad. You are putrid.”

“Gee, I hadn’t noticed. Maybe that’s why my eyes are watering. I don’t suppose you’d allow me to use your shower?”

Amy unlocked her front door. “Not only will I allow you to use it-I’ll insist upon it. Just pitch your clothes out into the hall. Do you want me to wash them or bury them?”

“I leave that decision up to you.”

Amy decided to wash them. Twice. She stood for a minute in the laundry room, listening to the clothes agitate, feeling oddly wifely. There was a big, gorgeous naked man in her shower and a pair of navy briefs in her washer.

“I like it,” she said out loud, and she wondered if she was in love. She thought she’d been in love with Jeff. What a bummer that had been. She closed her eyes, but she couldn’t remember what Jeff looked like.

“Sad,” she said. “Really pathetic.”

Jake padded into the laundry room wearing a royal blue towel wrapped low on his hips. “What’s pathetic?”

“I was thinking about this person I used to know, and I couldn’t remember what he looked like.”

“Was this person important to you?”

Amy straightened the boxes of detergent on the shelf above the washer. “I used to think so. I was engaged to him.”

She took a long, hard look at Jake in his towel and was surprised to find she wasn’t nervous. Two days ago she’d almost fainted at the sight of his chest, and now she was ogling him practically in the buff without so much as a change of heartbeat. Well, maybe there was a slight change of heartbeat, but she wasn’t panic-stricken. She supposed washing men’s underwear made one much more worldly.

Jake crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorjamb. Engaged. A mysterious emotion shot through him. Jealousy? It was ridiculous, but it rankled him. He made an effort to keep his voice steady and light. “What happened?”

Amy smiled. “I used to find this story very embarrassing. Now I find it kind of funny. As you already know, I’ve never actually… um, you know.”

“I know.”

“It isn’t as if it was planned. I didn’t set out to remain a virgin all my life. I didn’t even have any grandiose romantic or moral ideas about saving myself for marriage. It just never seemed right. For a while there I was afraid I had some physical defect or maybe a hormone deficiency. I mean, you’d think that by the time you were twenty- six years old you’d have gotten the urge to make mad, passionate love to some man.

“Anyway, the year J got out of college, when I was teaching first grade, I decided it was time for me to fall in love and get married. Looking back on it, I guess Jeff was smarter than I was, because after we’d been engaged for two months he gave me an ultimatum. Something to the effect that he had no intention of ever buying a suit without first trying it on.”

Amy laughed at the expression on Jake’s face. “Don’t look so horrified. Jeff might have put it a little crudely, but he did me a favor. A marriage ceremony wouldn’t have made any difference in the way I felt about Jeff. I wasn’t in love with him, and I didn’t want to share my body with him.”

Amy made an expansive gesture with her arms. “Well, how about some lemonade?”

Jake followed her into the kitchen, enormously pleased that she’d never wanted another man, positively gloating over the fact that she wanted him. She did want him, didn’t she? “So, why did this change from embarrassing to funny?”

“Because…” Amy paused with her hand on the refrigerator door. “Because…” She stuck her head in the refrigerator to hide the blush staining her cheeks.

Because she’d finally found the right man. Because suddenly her hormones were working overtime, and she had demanding sensations in body parts she’d previously suspected might be missing nerve endings. Because not only was she attracted to Jake, but she liked him, she enjoyed being with him, she respected him… she loved him. She retreated from the refrigerator with a handful of lemons.

“Just because,” she said. End of discussion.

She caught a glimpse of tantalizing blue towel and busied herself with the lemons, paying strict attention to squeezing, measuring, and mixing her ingredients. She was afraid if she didn’t keep her hands busy squeezing lemons, she might squeeze something else. At the very least, she was tempted to rip his towel off. Lord, she was bad. All those years of dormant, suppressed desire were catching up with her.

“I have some gym clothes in the middle drawer of my dresser,” she said breathlessly, attributing it to the exertion of making lemonade. “Maybe you can find something more comfortable to wear. I have a pair of black