Authors: Midnight Hour
“You look great, Mom,” Jessica said as Grace walked over to the table.
“You really do, judge Hart,” Linda echoed. “Thank you, both of you. Linda, I have my cell phone with me. If you need me, the number’s written down under the phone. Jess knows it. The next-door neighbor’s number is written down, too, the Allen’s. Bob Allen could get over here fast if necessary. Jessica, you guys stay inside and keep the doors locked. If anything should …”
“Go, Mom. I know the drill.” Jessica took a bite of stew. “We’ll call the cops if we need to, don’t worry.” “I’ll be home early,” Grace promised, and left.
As dates went, this one was pretty tame. She and John ate dinner side by side at one of the big tables,
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talked about nothing really, and then separated when dinner was over as he schmoozed his way around the room and she chatted with friends and acquaintances. By ten-thirty, Grace was ready to call it a night. DetachingJohn from potential future backers was tricky, however, and it was eleven o’clock before they were in the car headed home.
“Do you always leave parties this early?” he asked her with a teasing smile as he pulled into Spring Hill Lane.
“I’m sorry to drag you away,” Grace said, “But there’s something going on with my daughter and I really need to get home.”
“How old is she? Sixteen? Seventeen?” “Fifteen.”
“I imagine kids that age are a lot of trouble,” John said, commiserating. He was childless, Grace had learned over the course of the evening, and she realized from his manner when Jessica came up as a topic of conversation that he had no real interest in hearing about other people’s children.
Scratch John from her list of potential men-friends, she thought.
“Sometimes,” Grace admitted. They reached her driveway, pulling through the gates and past the hedge and stopping behind Linda’s car, which was illunuinated by the light in the black iron lamppost at the end of the walkway. When John reached for his door handle, Grace got out without waiting for him to come around and open her door.
The rain had stopped, but puddles on the pavement shone in the lamplight and the air was cool and damp.
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Rolling clouds hid the moon and stars from view, and made the world seem very dark beyond the yellow circle of light cast by the lamp. Grace walked around the car, braced for the awkward moment that always came at the end of dates.
“There’s no need to escort me to the door,” she said with a little laugh. Ending a date on the sidewalk was the most tactful means she had found to break it gently to a man that the evening was over. Though how any man could expect more, when they knew she had a teenage daughter in the house, was beyond her. Still, most if not all of thern seemed to.
I take it you’re not going to be asking me in,” John said with a rueful smile.
,’Jessica …” Grace explained with pseudoregretfulness. If she was being strictly honest, she would have to admit that she would not ask him in even iflessica did not exist. She liked him well enough, but she was not attracted to him.
“Maybe we can go out again,” he said, catching her by her arm as she walked near him and drawing her close. He was going to kiss her, Grace knew. Not that she rninded, not really. A kiss was small change in the currency of male-female relations, after all.
He did kiss her, holding her tight against him and invading her mouth with his tongue. As kisses went, it was perfectly pleasant. His lips were warm and soft, his tongue performed the obligatory maneuvers without being offensive, and his breath tasted faintly of Scotch, which he had been drinking. He was taller than her, though not by much, and his body was pleasantly firm. Grace kissed him back in an easy, relaxed fashion that
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said volumes about the lack of passion she was experiencling, then as soon as she decently could, eased herself out of his arms.
“How about lunch next week?” he asked, his voice slightly thickened.
Grace was already moving away from him. “I’ll have to check the calendar in my office. Call me and I’ll let you know,” she said with a wave and a friendly smile thrown over her shoulder. “Good night.”
“Good night.” John got back in his car. As Grace went up the steps, he reversed down the driveway, his headlights cutting bright swaths through the darkness.
Grace was grimacing, faintly, as she stepped onto the porch. She was tired, and her feet hurt in the highheeled shoes, and the waistband on her pantyhose was chafing her waist. She wouldn’t go out with John again, she thought, fumbling in her purse for the key. He was a nice enough guy, but …
A slight creak brought her gaze around to the deep shadows at the far end of the porch where the swing hung,
She gasped, her hand flying to her throat as her heart skipped a beat.
A man was sitting on the swing, legs spread, smoking a cigarette and watching her. She could just make out the bulky shape of his shoulders above the back of the swing, and the outline of his head. The tip of the cigarette glowed brightly as he brought it to his mouth, then dimmed as it fell again.
Cbapter
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OU SCAPLED THE LIFE OUT OF ME,- Grace said
11-ifuriously, recognizing Marino.
“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.” It was an idle observation. He took another drag on his cigarette, making the tip glow bright red again.
“I didn’t know you smoked,” she retaliated, walking toward him. He was wearing his leather bomberjacket, she saw, which was zipped almost all the way up to his throat, and jeans, Cigarette smoke, white and wispy, curled around his head. Its acrid smel] was in the air.
“Seems like there’s a lot we don’t know about each other, then, doesn’t it?” He eyed her and put the cigarette to his mouth again. “Nice outfit, by the way.”
“What are you doing here?” A thought seized Grace by the heart. “Jessica … 11
“She’s fine.” He took a final drag on the cigarette and then flipped it over the railing, into the big snowball bush by the steps.
“You shouldn’t do that. You could start a fire,” Grace protested, distracted.
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“It’s too wet. Anyway, you probably should know that the cigarette wasn’t mine. I used to smoke, a long time ago, but I quit, I found a pack with two cigarettes and a lighter in it hidden under the cushion here when I sat down. I decided to smoke ‘ern for the hell of it, to see if they tasted as good as I remembered. They didn’t.
I IWhose Grace began, but the snorting sound he made told her his opinion as eloquently as if he’d put it into words. “You think they’re Jessica’s?”
“Unless you sit out here on the porch and smoke.” “Oh, she doesn’t …” Grace began, then broke off under the weight of that derisive look. He was right, she realized, however much she hated to admit it. If cigarettes and a lighter had been hidden on the porch, their most likely owner was Jessica.
“What are you doing here?” she asked again, abandoning the topic of Jessica and the cigarettes for the inorrient. After everything she had been through with her daughter lately, discovering that she snuck cigarettes was almost smaH potatoes.
“I promised you I’d take this seriously, didn’t I? It occurred to me that if someone really is stalking Jessica, or you, they have to be hanging around your house a lot. I thought I’d sit out here in the dark awhfle and see what I could see.”
That made sense. It made such dazzlingly good sense that Grace was surprised she hadn’t thought of it herself For someone to have done the things that had been done, whoever it was had to be watching the house pretty closely. It should not be all that difficult to catch them in the act.
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“Have you seen anything?” she asked, suddenly feeling much better.
“Not a creature’s stirred,” he said. “That is, until your boyfriend pulled up.”
At the thought that he had witnessed that kissGrace snuck a quick look over the porch rail, trying to gauge exactly how much he could see, and decided that, as the kiss had taken place right in the pool of lamplight, he could see plenty-she felt a squirmy kind of embarrassment. Which was silly, she told herself firmly. She was a grown woman, and she had a perfect right to kiss whomever she wished-
“John’s a fellowjudge, not my boyfriend,” she said, then realized that she shouldn’t be explaining things to him at all.
11 Oh. I guess I didn’t realize that judges go around kissing each other good night. Cops don’t, as a general rule, but then, judges may be different.”
“Funny,” Grace said, with an intonation that meant the opposite.
“I try. “
“How was your niece’s christening, by the way?” “Good. The whole family turned out for it, twentyseven strong. The baby cried all the way through it. The rest of us were properly reverential, though.”
“There are twentyseven people in your family?” He shrugged. “I’m one of six brothers, all cops, all Catholic. What can I say?”
“Oh nry God.”
“That about sums it up.” “Are your parents still living?”
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“My mother is. My dad died twelve years ago. He was a cop, too.”
“Does your family all live here in town? Your mother and brothers?” Grace was fascinated by the idea of a family that large, and close enough that all would turn out to attend an infant’s christening. And all boys who grew up to be cops. His poor mother, was her crowning thought.
“Robby, the youngest, lives in Dayton, but he and his family drove up for the occasion.”
“Where are you in the group?” Grace asked. “Number two. After Dom-“
“He’s three years older than you. I remember.” Grace smiled faintly.
“Do you, now?” “So how old is he?”
“Dom? He’s forty-two. That makes me thirty-nine, if you were wondering.”
That was precisely what Grace had been wondering, but she wasn’t going to admit it.
“You want to come in and have a cup of coffee?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Nah.” The swing creaked again as he moved it slowly back and forth. The wind chimes tinkled briefly, and then fell silent. it was not a windy night, just damp and not iquite cold.
“I’ve got to go in and let Linda go.” “Fine.”
G irace hesitated, then turned and walked away. Extracting her key from her purse, she let herself into the house. Warmth greeted her, and the familiar smell of home. The downstairs lights were off except for the
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ones in the family room, at the very back of the house, where Linda was curled cozily on the couch watching a movie on HBO.
“Oh, hi, judge Hart,” Linda said, uncurling herself and standing up when she saw Grace in the doorway. “I didn’t expect you this early.”
Grace smiled. “I was tired. Where’s Jessica?” “She went to bed right before ten.”
“Everything go okay?” Grace walked back into the kitchen, where she had left her purse on the counter. Linda followed her, yawning and nodding at the same time. As Grace made fresh coffee, then paid her, they chatted. When Linda left, she used the kitchen door, and, Grace doubted that she was even aware of Marino sitting on the front porch, keeping watch.
She went upstairs to change clothes and check on Jessica. Jessica’s door was locked, Grace discovered as she turned the knob, then knocked softly with no result. She could hear the bass beat of a rock band thumping from inside the bedroom. From that Grace deduced that her daughter had fallen asleep while listening to her stereo. It wasn’t like Jessica to lock her bedroom door, but then, she herself had locked her bedroom door earlier this afternoon.
This thing was spooking them both.
Grace changed her dinner suit for the navy sweats she had worn earlier, went down to the kitchen, poured coffee into two mugs, and added to one of them the spoonful of sugar that she remembered Marino preferred. Grabbing a brown wool jacket from the coatrack, she pulled it on and returned to the front porch. Marino still sat on the swing, she saw, his head
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resting back against the cushion, his face turned so that he had a clear view of the yard.
He looked around as she stepped out onto the porch. It was about a quarter after twelve now, Grace guessed, and the air was definitely cold. The wind had picked up, and the wind chimes tinkled in perfect, mournful accompaniment to the ghostly sounds of rustling leaves and rubbing branches and dripping eaves.
“I brought you some coffee.” Grace held the mug out to him.
“Thanks.” He sat up, taking it from her.
“I appreciate this,” she said quietly, still standing in front of him. “You coming out here like this, I mean. I know you have better things to do.”
“No problem.” He took a sip of coffee, then looked up at her. “I’m a cop, remember? That’s what we do.” Grace sat down in the rocker closest to the swing, so
close that his knee fell just short of brushing her thigh when the swing moved. She cradled the coffee cup in both hands, savoring its warmth and fragrance.
“You’re not planning to sit out here all night, are you?” she asked, sipping.
“Whatever it takes,” he said. “It’s cold. You’ll freeze.” “No, I won’t.”
“Where’s your car?” She suddenly realized that the driveway was empty. Her Volvo was in the garage. “A couple of blocks over, parked on the street. I
wanted it to look like you and Jessica were here alone,” “What if whoever it is comes tomorrow night instead of tonight?”
“I plan to be out here tomorrow night, too.”
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“You can’t spend the rest of your life sitting up nights on my porch!”
11 1 don’t intend to. You get your locks changed and that security system put in on Monday, right?”
Grace stared at him through the darkness. And she realized something. He wasn’t sitting on her porch thinking he would catch anyone. He probably didn’t believe that anyone was even out there to catch. He was sitting on her porch in the wee hours of a cold, damp Saturday night simply because he knew that she and Jessica were afraid to sleep in the house alone.