Mink Too, All the Riches in the World Can't Buy Love Read online

  “The old man and Uncle Ted drove out to their house and brought her and the kid in to identify him.”

  “I shoulda been there. At least I can attend the funeral. When is it, Jake?”

  Jake stopped stroking her head and squeezed an arm. “Sorry, Lizzie, it was yesterday.”

  “Christ, couldn’t they wait?” Liz sniffed.

  “We weren’t sure that you were gonna come out of the coma, Sis. It was pretty touch and go for a while. You had a concussion from the explosion. Your head took a real beating. They were considering opening your skull to relieve some of the pressure on your brain. The doctors said all the jarring from the explosions made your brain swell. Dad and I wouldn’t let them. Somebody tinkering around up there sounded repugnant to us.” Jake pointed to his head. “The doctors couldn’t guarantee you’d be the same mule-headed woman we love, Kid, so we said no dice.”

  Jake didn’t tell her how scared he and the old man were when she stayed in the coma for days. He refused to tell her how the doctor told them if she remained comatose beyond thirty days, the odds against a full recovery multiplied. He remembered how he and the old man stayed at her bedside throughout the ordeal and how Uncle Ted joined them every night. They prayed and cried, then prayed some more that she’d be the same feisty woman they knew and loved. When she regained consciousness yesterday and started demanding food, Jake knew she’d be all right.

  What he didn’t know was the identity of the woman sneaking into the ICU late at night to stand by her bed. According to the nursing staff, somehow, the woman knew when Liz was alone. She simply appeared in the room for a few quiet moments. They claimed she never said anything, just stood over the bed studying Liz, then she’d leave as quietly as she’d entered. Jake scratched his chin. Liz hadn’t mentioned dating anyone special in her weekly calls, so he couldn’t explain it. He thought it was strange but didn’t think it was the time to ask her. He could always ask the nursing staff to find out later if the question was still on his mind.

  “Here, Kid, blow your nose.” Jake offered Liz a tissue just as the door sprang open.

  A stunning woman hurried through the door but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the big man sitting on the edge of the bed with his arm around Liz Gilmore.

  “Oh, I thought you’d be… I didn’t realize that you were conscious yet.” Hazel eyes widened as they stared at Jake, then Liz. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “You came to gloat, did you?” Liz asked sarcastically. “Or maybe you want more swimming lessons.”

  Susan Drummond’s eyes narrowed as she glared at Liz. “I see somebody’s taking care of you very well!” Her eyes zeroed in on Jake’s arm around Liz’s shoulder.

  Jake tightened his grip on his sister’s shoulder, then whispered in her ear, “She’s gorgeous, Kid. Introduce me.”

  “Okay, okay! Turn me loose, Jake,” Liz hissed, then pushed him in the chest. She rubbed her aching shoulder where Jake pinched it. She watched Jake get into his sweet-talking I’m-a-lonely-Black-brother mode.

  “Sorry, Honey, I didn’t catch your name.” Jake slipped off the bed and strolled over to Susan Drummond. He smiled at her like a Cheshire cat who’d just seen his dinner. “I’m a friend… a dear friend of the family. I’m Jake, and you are?” He offered a large hand for her to shake.

  Susan looked up into dark, almost black eyes. His eyes looked soft like black velvet. They were sparkling at her.

  “I was just going for coffee.” The neatly trimmed goatee made him look like a sexy pirate. “Can I bring you back something, Miss?”

  Susan shook her head no. “I’m sorry. For a moment, you reminded me of someone, but I can’t quite place the face. I’m Susan Drummond.”

  It took most people a while before they realized that Jake was a male version of Liz, just darker and heavier, or maybe Liz was a lighter feminine version of him. Whatever the case, people didn’t see the resemblance until one or the other mentioned it. Then the familiar features all fell into place. When they were children, it was easier to see because their features weren’t as defined. Liz was as tall as her brother was then. Until she developed breasts and an ass, most people thought the old man had two sons, since she was as good at sports as Jake was.

  In junior high school, they competed for some of the same positions on the volleyball, softball, and track teams. He was better at football than she was, but Liz was better at basketball. It all changed when she started high school and discovered women. Not that she could act on the discovery, but it tempted her. She waited until college before sleeping with a woman. In her second year of college, Liz had her first romance with a woman. The affair didn’t last, but it introduced her to the world of loving women. She never looked back or regretted being a part of it.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Drummond. Why does that name sound familiar?” Jake smiled at her. “Are you sure that I can’t tempt you into sharing a cup of coffee? Maybe we could find out why your last name sounds so familiar.” Dark eyes danced as he looked down at her.

  “If you don’t mind, Jake, I’d like to speak with Sergeant Gilmore alone, please.”

  “Sure, just kick me to the curb, Miss Drummond,” Jake murmured, grinning broadly.

  Susan smiled in response, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes.

  “Christ, Jake! Leave the woman alone. Aren’t you engaged or something?” Liz muttered. Her brother’s obvious attraction for a woman that she regarded as an enemy annoyed her.

  “Okay, all right. I’m going.” Jake rolled his eyes skyward and walked to the door, mumbling. “Lord, save me from mouthy, hardheaded women!”

  Once her brother left, Liz turned her anger about Danny’s death on Susan Drummond full force. “I can’t think of a single thing we have to say to each other, Miss Drummond, so what do you want?” Liz folded her arms and angrily glared at her.

  “I came by to thank you for saving my father’s life and to say how sorry I was about your friend the flagman.”

  “Thanks for nothing!” Liz snarled. She didn’t mean what she’d said to Susan, but right now, she wanted to hurt somebody and she was the nearest target. Her shoulders stiffened with tension as she leaned forward to wait for Susan to say something flippant and then leave.

  Rather than heading for the door, Susan stood in the middle of the room and studied Liz with a puzzled expression.

  “Was there something else, Miss Drummond?” Liz asked. She wished the Drummond woman could read her mind and just disappear.

  “I realize we didn’t have the best working relationship, Sergeant.” Susan hesitated to ask the next question as she noted Liz Gilmore’s stubborn, unbending stance. She also noticed how Liz didn’t look well. Her coloring was pale and her eyes looked tired and sad.

  “No kidding!”

  Ignoring the intended barb, Susan continued with her little speech. She’d spent several hours rehearsing it in front of her bedroom mirror. “I was wondering if you noticed anything odd at the construction site just before the…er…explosion.” Her voice faded away when she noticed the cold, hard look that came into the sergeant’s eyes.

  Liz was angry that Susan was still in the room. To top it off, she was asking questions that she had no right to ask. Susan Drummond’s questions were taking her mind where it didn’t belong. It was bringing back such unpleasant memories that she had to shut up the Drummond woman quickly. She knew the one thing that would force Susan to leave her alone. She wanted to hurt the Drummond woman the way she was hurting right now over Danny’s death. Thinking about the conversation later, Liz was ashamed she’d been so rude, but Susan should have left things alone.

  “You mean besides finding your old man banging his secretary in the construction trailer? No, Danny and I didn’t notice anything else wrong at the site.” Hard dark eyes glared at Susan Drummond.

  “Excuse me, what did you just say?” Susan stepped dangerously close to the bed and returned the sergeant’s angry glare.

&nbs
p; “I said besides finding your old man fucking his…”

  The slap resounded in Liz’s ears before she could finish her sentence. It must have been all the medication in her system that slowed her reaction time, so she didn’t see the hand coming. Instead, she felt its result as she sampled the metallic taste of blood in her mouth when the force of the slap caused her to bite into her lip.

  “You bitch! How dare you say that about my daddy?” Susan was seething with fury.

  “That’s the second time you’ve put your hands on an officer of the law! Do it again and I’ll throw you so far under the jail that they’ll have to airmail light in to you! I don’t give a shit who your goddamned daddy is! Get the hell out of my room!” Liz’s eyes narrowed. She seriously considered leaping off the bed to kick Susan Drummond’s ass, but she suddenly felt drained. She watched Susan Drummond storm out of the room in a rage of white-hot fury. A minute later, the door swung open.

  “Goddamn it, Drummond! I told you to get the hell... Oh, it’s you, Jake. Sorry about that.” Liz lay back against the pillow. She sighed and closed her eyes. “God, I’m tired.”

  Jake frowned as he read the anger written across his sister’s drawn face. “What the hell did you say to the Drummond woman? She shot out of here like a cannonball. She almost knocked me over. I’m still pulling daggers out of my back from the look she gave me. That’s one angry woman, Sis.”

  Liz shrugged and tried to sound casual. “I told her what I saw at the site before the explosion.”

  “Which was?”

  “Oh, it was nothing.” Liz decided to be honest with her brother. “Okay, so I saw her father screwing his secretary in the construction trailer.”

  Jake’s eyes widened. “Jesus Christ, Lizzie! You told her that? Did you know he almost died with Danny? The guy is an old man, Lizzie! He almost died on the operating table from the debris that fell on him. As it is, he’s going be out of commission for a long time. They tell me his daughter…” Jake’s eyes brightened with recognition. He nodded at the door. “Ah, so that’s Drummond’s daughter? I guess that’s how I know the name.”

  Liz nodded but didn’t explain her uncharacteristically foul-tempered behavior.

  “Well, you better apologize to her real quick! She’s gonna be running the company until her father recovers.”

  “Yeah, right, Jake! They must be hard up for executives at ODC to let that crazy bitch run anything.”

  “That disparaging remark shows how little you know about your own town, Lizzie. The talk is she earned an MBA from Harvard six years ago. She’s just never used it down here.”

  “Humph, from what I’ve seen, she’s never worked a day in her life, Jake!” Liz sat up in bed, then angrily rubbed at her temples. She could feel the beginnings of a nasty migraine.

  “Take it easy, Lizzie.” Jake decided to change the subject. He’d never seen his sister this affected by someone she barely knew. “You wanna tell me what else you saw at the site, Sis?”

  “It wasn’t so much what I saw, Jake. It’s what I smelled and heard. We investigated the place because Danny smelled gas. I figured there was leak somewhere. That’s why Danny and I tried to get everyone out. Danny and I smelled it. The odor smelled stronger around the trailer and near one of the bulldozers.” Liz frowned. “I didn’t remember that until now. I think I heard two explosions, not one, or maybe it was three. It was hard to tell because we were running so fast. The first one was weaker than the second one, probably because we were farther away from it. I think we ran directly into the path of the second explosion without knowing it. I figured it was an accident. Crews are always drilling into old gas lines in the area and causing leaks.” Liz paused and rubbed her chin. “Jake, I don’t know what to think.” She frowned at her brother. “What’s Uncle Ted say?”

  “He’s sending some stuff to the lab before he officially closes the case.”

  “He thinks it was an accident, doesn’t he, Jake?”

  Jake nodded. “Yeah, Lizzie, he does.”

  “What do you think, Jake?” Lizzie searched her brother’s face and then yawned.

  “I think you need to rest, Sis.” Jake grinned and then winked at his sister. “Then I think you should apologize to Miss Drummond.”

  “Oh come on, Jake! It’s bad enough that I found the old buzzard screwing a secretary young enough to be his daughter in the middle of the evening with the trailer door unlocked. The woman couldn’t have been more than twenty-nine on a good day, Jake. He was screwing with the door unlocked too! I mean, anyone coulda come in on them just as Danny and I did. Christ, the old man gives me the creeps, Jake. Least he coulda done was call me to thank me for saving his life instead of sending that daughter of his to see me.” Liz gingerly touched her face where Susan Drummond slapped her.

  “Kid, I’d be willing to bet he didn’t send her. He probably doesn’t know she came by to see you. Men like him never do stuff like that. I bet he had the secretary paid off and then fired her soon as he could! Rich men like him don’t want to leave dirty linen lying around for the wrong people to find.”

  Jake stopped talking to examine his sister’s face. “Hey, Lizzie, are you asleep?” He grinned as he watched his sister fall asleep again. He leaned over to kiss her. “Night, Lizzie. Sleep well, Kid. I’ll see ya later.”

  The doctors told him and her old man that she’d tire easily for the next couple of weeks. They recommended that she take it easy. Uncle Ted said she could have the next three weeks off but knowing Lizzie, they’d be lucky to keep her away from work for the next week. Liz had boundless energy. She always beat the odds when it came to illness.

  He remembered when she broke her ankle during a junior high school volleyball tournament. The doctors estimated she’d be in a cast for seven to eight weeks and another three weeks of physical therapy to make her healthy again. The cast stayed on for five weeks. By the eighth week, Lizzie was back in the starting lineup. The old man never knew the nights she spent in immense pain as she forced her ankle to support her weight in the exercises she had Jake help her perform. Jake knew because he was the one who sneaked out to the kitchen bring the ice packs for her ankle and massaged it until it stopped aching.

  He wondered if he should track Susan Drummond down and apologize for his headstrong sister. Nah, it was better to let Lizzie figure stuff out without his help. She had to live down here, but he didn’t. Although if he’d seen Susan Drummond when his father first talked to both of them about moving here eighteen months ago, he might have said yes. Yeah right, whom was he kidding? A divorced NYPD lieutenant didn’t walk away from a job that took twelve hard years to earn.

  Lizzie made the right decision coming down here. New York City just wasn’t working for her anymore. It was harder for a woman to be a cop there. When the woman was openly gay, well, that could spell trouble. She was able to handle most stuff the department threw at her, but some of the precinct talk was disturbing. Several of the cops refused to ride with her on patrol. They claimed that they were afraid of being labeled gay by association or of contracting AIDS or a truckload of other fears. Jake thought it was all crap. He knew cops because it was his business to know them. When they didn’t like a fellow cop, they could jack her up. Nobody could prove what happened out there on the street. Meanwhile, she’d still be injured or dead. The city had a reputation for being liberal, cosmopolitan even, but some prejudices died harder than others did. Jake didn’t want his sister winding up as a statistic in somebody’s police report. He thought the move down here was a great idea for Lizzie.

  He climbed into the rental car and drove to the Hanley house to check on Jennifer and Danny Jr. It was too bad he and Beth didn’t have kids. He’d bet they’d still be together if they’d had children. When he thought about Beth Gilmore, he imagined the tall, willowy chocolate brown model he married five years ago. They’d been divorced for three years, but he still called her from time to time. Periodically, they’d sleep together if neither one was dating anyone. After
two or three weeks of intense togetherness, he or Beth would remember why they couldn’t live together. Their affair would cool down until the next flare-up.

  Lizzie told him once how she could never see what he saw in Beth. She thought her former sister-in-law was a scrawny, empty-headed ball of fluff that got lucky with a modeling career and a loving ex-husband. Lizzie was civil to Beth, but that was all. They never shared anything. An evening with the two of them in the same room was something he didn’t wish on his worst enemy. He sighed as he drove down the road to the Hanley’s trailer park. “Danny Jr. is a cute kid,” he muttered.

  Who did the hell does Elizabeth Gilmore think she is? How could she slander my father like that? Susan Drummond wanted to scream at her. Hadn’t Gilmore learned anything in the three weeks she’d been teaching her how to float…things like I still have the power. She marched down the hall deep in thought. I should have slapped her again for good measure. Arrest me and throw me under the jail, indeed! Just let her try! My father would fire her immediately with one phone call to the sheriff. She was damn lucky the drug search crap didn’t get her butt canned five weeks ago!

  Susan frowned when she thought back to the first “lesson.” Becky described in detail how angry the sergeant was when she finally came out in the tank suit and found her student had disappeared. Too bad she’d missed that. She would love to see Liz Gilmore wearing the first thong she offered her. It showed off all the right naked areas and especially emphasized the full breasts she noticed on the woman. Did she know how much her eyes heated up my body or how good her kisses felt? She sighed. Why was her mind making the trip down memory lane? If tonight’s uncouth behavior was an indicator of Liz’s feelings, Susan guessed she’d never know. She suspected Liz Gilmore’s interest lay in finding out who killed the flagman. So why did she throw her out? It didn’t make sense. She exhaled heavily. After tonight’s argument, she doubted if the sergeant would be willing to help her with anything, not that she had the time.