in her lungs, she headed toward the furniture. She’d already been through the downstairs, putting aside the pieces she wanted to save and those that would be donated to the needy. She’d expected this to be easier somehow. The things that he had stored up here wouldn’t hold the keen reminders of him, nor still smell of his aftershave. There wouldn’t be memories of him here, as there were in every room below. He’d been a big man, but had filled a room more with his presence than his stature. It would be impossible to exorcise those memories from the house, and impossible to live with them. She’d placed it on the market earlier that week.
Tori worked her way trough the chairs and tables that he’d deemed too good to throw out. It took an hour to decide there was nothing in the collection that she wanted to save, and she restacked the pieces. She’d use the corner to separate those things to be gotten rid of from the things she wanted to keep. Most of what she had decided to hang on to was downstairs, but there wouldn’t be room for all of it in her small house. It would have to go into storage until she had a bigger place.
The newspapers could be tossed without going through them, she determined, passing by them in an effort to get at the boxes. But she must have brushed the stack as she went by, and the entire pile began a slow-motion sway. With a sense of futility, she leaped aside, just in time to avoid being nailed by the bundles as they tumbled to the floor.
The impact of their landing sent up a cloud of dust that sent her into a spasm of sneezing. When her eyes and lungs had cleared, she glared at the mess accusingly. Her dad had tended to keep any newspapers with articles that caught his imagination, talking vaguely about writing a book sometime when he retired. She’d never been able to imagine him in so sedentary a pastime, but had thought it a harmless enough intention until now.
Muttering a few choice words, she set to hauling the papers into yet another pile, this one designated for the trash heap. The headline leaped out at her from the top one of the bundle, and a quick flip through them showed a collection detailing the trial of the notorious New Orleans Ripper, who’d been caught and tried a decade earlier after killing a dozen women.
With a grimace, she pushed them aside and started some smaller, steadier piles. He’d had varied interests. Some of the papers were articles on fishing, a passion of his, others on the history of the city. But it was the bottom bundle that caught her eye, with a headline very like the one she’d clipped and placed in the file she’d given to Tremaine.
Tremaine Heiress Returned Safely.
With a sense of déjà vu she had a sudden recollection of James Tremaine’s face when he’d seen the similar headline in the file she’d given him. A grim mask had descended over his features, but not before she’d glimpsed the bitter resentment in his eyes. He’d made his feelings toward the press and public prying quite clear, but that didn’t stop her from reaching out, tugging at the string that bound the papers together. Flipping through them, she found stories detailing the kidnapping and the car accident a few months later. She scanned the stories, but they elicited no information she hadn’t found in her research earlier that week. Something clicked in the rereading, however, something she’d forgotten to ask Tremaine about. There had been a third passenger in the car. A third death.
To refresh her memory, she pulled the papers loose, looking for the articles detailing the accident and the follow-up investigation. The passenger’s name was given, but she was identified only as a family friend. Tori made a mental note to look up more about the woman.
She set aside the bundle of papers on the Tremaines and finished stacking the rest to be destroyed. But during the task, her gaze strayed more than once to the papers she’d saved. Her earlier excitement at having landed her first job on her own had been tempered by her troubling reaction to Tremaine. She’d thought her interest in the opposite sex had been laid to rest permanently upon the ignoble end of her marriage. Or, to be truthful, months before the official ending. As her husband’s criticism and dissatisfaction with her had grown, her hormones had gone dormant at approximately the same pace. Finding him in his parents’ pool house on top of Miss Texas Rose 1998 had nearly shredded what was left of her confidence. She’d had enough sense, however, to leave him and their marriage behind. And enough self-respect to first send his canary-yellow Ferarri convertible crashing through the fence to sink to the bottom of the pool. It was the only memory of her marriage that still had the power to bring a smile to her face.
Given that, it was more than a little disturbing to experience that inexplicable…awareness when she was near Tremaine. A woman would have to be in the grave not to react to his looks, and so her response to him was only too natural, a cause for celebration, even. But as comfortable as it would be to believe that’s all there was, Tori couldn’t prevent feeling a sliver of unease. There was something about the man that heightened all her sensitivities, which really wouldn’t do. Getting involved with a client was an ethically sticky situation.
A wry grin twisted her lips. Luckily, that was not likely to be a problem. She and Tremaine couldn’t have less in common if they’d been born on different planets. Her brief foray into the monied class during her marriage had taught her only too painfully that the rich were, indeed, different.
Moving to the boxes, she hauled down the top one and opened it. A familiar sight inside it surprised a laugh from her. There, folded neatly, was a sweater her dad had worn for more years than she cared to count. She’d replaced it nearly three years ago with one enough like it to satisfy the man, but he must have rescued this one from the trash and hidden it away. Anything that was a favorite of his was always deemed too good to be thrown out, despite its missing buttons and worn-through elbows. What he’d intended to do with it was anybody’s guess.
Nevertheless, she found herself folding it with care and setting it aside. Perhaps there was more of her father in her than she’d guessed, because she knew that she’d never be able to part with it now, either.
Beneath the sweater was a file folder stuffed with papers, which she shook out onto her lap. Her throat went abruptly dry as she recognized medical statements dating from the time her mother had grown sick. With hands that shook just slightly, she stuffed them back into the envelope. She could remember vividly when as a nine-year-old she’d packed away most of her mother’s things to prepare for their move back to New Orleans. Her death had been the first and only time she’d ever seen her big, capable father helpless.
The envelope beneath was one she recognized. It was a packet of love letters exchanged between her parents when her mother was in the Mayo Clinic. For years they’d been in the bedside table of her father’s room. When had he finally put them away? she wondered. Sometime after that instance when he’d come home unexpectedly and found her reading them. He’d been coldly furious, and she’d been ashamed of her snooping, unable to explain that the few letters she’d read had helped bring her mother within reach again, the words painting an almost real form for her that had previously only been viewed through a child’s eyes.
A foreign sound had her catapulting back into the present. Looking around carefully, she eyed the piles of junk suspiciously. Any one of them could be a hiding place for some disgusting four-legged creature. Although Tori was an animal lover, most were best enjoyed outside her home.
Rising to her feet she listened again, and her blood abruptly chilled. The noise that resounded didn’t come from the attic. It came from the floor below.
Someone was in the house.
The open door and the music that still poured from the CD player left little doubt as to her whereabouts. Scanning the area, she moved silently to the corner with the furniture. She grabbed a small, particularly ugly lamp, removed the shade and light bulb, and wrapped the cord securely around it. Hefting it with one hand, she was satisfied that it would make a useful club.
She heard footsteps below, but no one called out, as she would expect if a curious neighbor or the Realtor had come looking for her. She’d left the front door unlocked, as it had been afternoon when she’d started her task. But a glance out the tiny window showed that it was early evening now. Dusk and shadows would have fallen over the street. Most of the elderly neighbors would have already finished up their dinner dishes and be seated in front of the TVs with their front doors carefully