Reunion in Death

«Jeez. I was sixteen.» He pushed his hat back on his head, took out a bandanna to mop sweat from his brow. «Boy's sixteen, he doesn't think with his brain. If you know what I mean.»

«You had sex with her.»

«She'd come out to the stables. Mucking out was part of my chores. She'd smell like glory and be wearing some tight shirt and tiny little shorts. God almighty, she was a looker. We started fooling around the way kids do. Then we started fooling around some more.» He stared down at his boots again. «We'd sneak out of the house a lot that summer, make love in one of the stalls. I'd always put fresh hay in. Then she started coming up to the house, climbing in through my window. It was exciting at first, but, Jesus, my ma found out, she'd of skinned me alive. And, well damn it, I was sixteen, and there were all these other girls. Guy starts looking around. Julianna, she'd barely give me room to breathe, and it started making me itchy.»

«You broke it off with her.»

«Tried to once, and she tore into me like a hellcat.» He looked up again. «Biting, scratching. Nobody pushed her aside, she said. Scared me, cause she looked half-crazy. Then she started crying and begging, and well, one thing led to another and we were at it again. And the next day, Julianna marches right into my house, into the kitchen, and tells my mother I've been poking at her. And if she doesn't send me away somewhere, she's going to her step-daddy and have my daddy fired.»

He paused, then to Eve's surprise, smiled. «My ma, she never did take shit off anybody. Boss's daughter or not. Tells Julianna she's not to come into her home without an invitation ever again. And she won't tolerate some little tramp called her that standing in her kitchen threatening her family. Told her to scat, and if there'd been poking going on, that poking would damn well stop. Said she'd be speaking to Julianna's ma about it.»

«Did she?»

«My ma says she's going to do something, she does it, so I gotta figure. Never told me what was said between them, but Julianna didn't come 'round the stables again that summer. Didn't see her around at all. But I got house arrest for a damn month myself and a lecture that burned my ears off.»

«And after that summer?»

«I never really talked with her again. She came up to me once when I was out with a girl, said insulting things about a sensitive part of my anatomy. Said it in a quiet voice, real cold, with a smirk on her face. And once I found a dead skunk in my bed had to figure it was her. And…»

«And?»

«Never told anybody.» He shifted, set his jaw. «Night before my wedding, that would be six years ago last month, she called me. Said she wanted to give me her best wishes. But it was the way she said it, like she was, beg pardon, telling me to screw myself. And how she knew I'd be thinking of her on my wedding night, because she'd be thinking of me. How maybe she'd come see me sometime, and we'd talk about old times. I knew she was in prison. It shook me up a little, but I didn't see the point in telling anybody. I was getting married the next day.»

«Has she contacted you since?»

«No, but this past Valentine's Day I got a package. There was a dead rat inside. Looked like it'd been poisoned. I didn't tell anybody about that either. Just got rid of it. Ma'am, I was sixteen. We just rolled in the hay for a couple months one summer. I got a wife, a son, a baby on the way. What the hell does she want to mess with me for after all this time?»

«He rejected her,» Eve told Roarke when they were back in the car. «She went after a boy her own age, and he stopped wanting her before she stopped wanting him. Then his mother stood up to her. Two slaps. Intolerable.»

«If she'd been a normal girl, that would have crushed her temporarily. Then she'd have moved on. Instead, she decided to seduce her stepfather. Older men, like her father, were more easily controlled, more inclined to see her as flawless.»

«It was more than seducing him. It was using the sex to crush him, and her mother. To punish and to profit. She hadn't worked up to killing yet, but it was only a matter of time. Why damage when you can utterly destroy? She got what she wanted from that, but still couldn't forget that rejection.»

She couldn't remember what it felt like to be a fifteen-year-old girl. Small wonder, Eve thought. She'd never been a normal teenager. And neither, it seemed, had Julianna Dunne.

«Calls him on his wedding night,» Eve went on. «She's careful what she says in case he reports it, but she says enough to know he'll be upset, shaken up, and that he won't be able to stop himself from thinking about her on his wedding night. Plant the seed.»

«What are you going to do about him?»

«He's worried enough about his family to work with the locals. He's going to talk to Parker as well, and my impression is Parker will go the extra mile with ranch security. I'll talk to the cops down here, make sure they're doing their job. Then I'll do mine and find her.»

«Then we're off for New York now?»