CHAPTER TWELVE #2
“It makes no sense that she would give you this list of names when she had to know they wouldn’t help her.
Don’t you agree?” he asked her as he looked at her.
When he saw her so close to him, and he saw that sweet innocence in her eyes, and that beautiful mouth, and that gorgeous smooth skin, he had an urge to kiss her.
Or to wrap her in his arms. Or both. Which baffled him.
Why did he continue to have such a strong reaction to her?
But when Maude looked into his eyes, she could only see a man staring so intensely into her eyes that she wondered what he was seeing that held his attention so distinctly. And his eyes were tired. She could see some redness there. But they were also blue like the ocean. Just gorgeous.
So gorgeous that she suddenly remembered. “Wait a minute,” she said out loud. “I remember you. We met four years ago, at my publisher’s party. At Natasha’s meet and greet.”
Edmund was so close to her mouth that he couldn’t but stare at it. “At last she remembers,” he said.
“You were Natasha’s brother back then?”
He smiled. “I would have thought so.”
“No I mean, I thought you might have been her boyfriend. Or her husband.”
He frowned. “What on earth gave you that idea?”
She really couldn’t say what. “I don’t know. But that’s what I thought.”
Is that why you turned me down, he wanted to ask her. But didn’t.
They both looked away from each other and back at the list. “I thought there might be some code inside that list,” said Maude, “like the first letters spelling out a word, or something like that. But I didn’t see anything.”
Edmund leaned back, still staring at the list. “Not the first letter,” he said, “but surely the third one.”
Maude, shocked that he saw something, snatched the list from him and looked herself. He stared at her smooth dark neck. At her thick, soft hair. At her small, unblemished arms coming down from her satin, coffee-colored sleeveless blouse.
And that was when Maude saw it too. “I see where the third letter of the first nine names spells out SAFE DEPOS. You think she meant safe deposit box?”
“I think so. Look at the numbers.”
Maude looked. She was shocked again. “Wait a minute,” she said. “The last five numbers aren’t in sequential order.”
“Right.”
“Instead of being 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, they’re 8,4,7,6 and then 10.” She looked at Edmund. “That must be her safe deposit box number.”
“Right. At least those four out of order numbers might be.”
“Which might be where the information is stored. She had to find somebody she could trust to get this list to you. She had to know you were smart enough to figure it out.”
“Or perhaps she figured you were,” Edmund said.
Maude smiled. She appreciated the compliment. Then she shook her head. “Wow. She knew what she was doing.”
“Yes she did.”
Maude smiled. It was a lovely smile, he thought.
But then her smile turned into a disappointed look.
He saw the look. “What’s wrong?” he asked her.
“People on my job say I’m not a great journalist because I spend too much time trying to get the story right rather than trying to get the story out. And here was the clue right under my nose and I didn’t even see it. You aren’t even an investigative journalist, but you saw it right away.”
“That’s because I know my sister.” When Maude looked at him, he couldn’t help himself. He placed his hand on her back and began rubbing her. “Don’t beat yourself up,” he said. “You did nothing wrong.”
Maude could feel her body temperature rising when he began massaging her back.
But unbeknownst to her, a sudden look appeared in her eyes that was filled with bewilderment, as if she, like he, was wondering why he was touching her so affectionately.
He didn’t know her like that. He didn’t know her at all!
It felt to him as if he knew her very well, but feelings didn’t count. He quickly removed his hand.
Maude immediately missed his touch. The kind of few weeks she’d had made it clear she needed a touch.
It also made it super clear, now that she no longer had a boyfriend nor a job, how very alone in this world she truly was.
That was probably one of the main reasons why she was even there.
She had nowhere else to be. “Why wouldn’t your sister just tell me the code rather than give me a list to run down? ”
“Each of them probably told you a piece of the puzzle. You just wasn’t listening.”
This felt so over Maude’s head that she could feel herself getting dizzy with it. “Maybe that was why everybody, and I mean everybody on that list were so negative.”
Then that sad look appeared in her eyes again and Edmund could hardly take it.
He wanted this girl in his arms. And he did it.
He pulled her into his arms. “It’s okay,” he said to her.
“You’re here. You did the right thing. I’ll get my investigators to find out where that safe deposit box is located and see what’s inside.
I’ll also get them to look into what we can do for Natasha to get her out of jail. If she isn’t already.”
“She isn’t,” said Maude. “People accused of murder in our county aren’t allowed to be bonded out.”
But both of them were more preoccupied with his arms around her and her head against him.
For Maude, it was that same feeling of protection that overcame her when she sat in his lap at his sister’s meet and greet. But it was a dead end street kind of feeling because it was going nowhere and even she knew that.
But for Edmund, it was that feeling of need. As if he didn’t just want her, but he needed her, and that scared him. That scared him to death.
He quickly released her, she leaned away from him, and he stood up. “I have a major surgery to perform first thing in the morning,” he said. “I’d better call it a night.” He began heading to the front door.
Maude, already dizzy by her reaction to him, and the fact that they met before, hurried to grab her shoulder bag and follow him out. She was being dismissed again. But at least Natasha was going to get some help.
“What you need to do,” Edmund said when they made it to the front door, “is to go down that list and try and recall every one of those conversations you had with the people on that list.”
“Yes sir.”
“Then you need to jot down everything you can remember of each one of those conversations, and then contact me.”
“I tried to contact you for several days but you wouldn’t return my calls.”
“Give me your phone.”
She pulled it out, put in her password, and then handed it to him.
“This is my private number,” he said as he put his number into her contacts. “If you find anything odd, you call and let me know.”
“I will,” she said. “And somebody’s going to look into that safe deposit box?”
“My investigators, yes. But knowing my sister and how chaos follows her, I don’t think that will tell the whole story. Or even most of it. I’ll have my lead investigator contact each person as well, but they may have told you what they won’t tell him.”
Maude nodded. “Okay.” Although she was still disappointed in herself for not figuring that out herself, she was glad he figured it out. And she was overwhelmed by his presence.
She extended her hand to Edmund. “Thank you for helping her,” she said.
But when their hands touched, both of them felt a sensation rippled through their bodies.
His eyes grew heavier, lustfully, as if it was purely just that for him.
But her eyes grew larger, as if she’d never felt that way before.
It was a sensual feeling for her as well, but one so deep down she couldn’t even quantify it.
She couldn’t even explain why she was feeling that way.
But she wasn’t alone. Because although his eyes said lust alone, his heart made it clear that there was so much more to it than that. And that was just as new to him as it was to Maude.
But when he opened the door to the cool night air, he suddenly felt a sense of obligation to her. He was not the man for her. Because she was not the kind of woman that would accept his lack of commitment. “Are you going to be okay?”
“You mean the cool breeze?”
That was only partly what he meant, but he took it. “Yes,” he said.
She pulled a small jacket from her shoulder bag. “I always come prepared,” she said as she sat her bag down and put on the jacket. Which only made her outfit look like even more of a smorgasbord of thrown together pieces. A fashion disaster just like he said.
“I hope you be very successful,” she said to him.
He was confused. “At what exactly?”
“Your surgery in the morning.”
“Oh!” That was so automatic to him that he never even let it cross his mind until he was actually in the operating room. “It will be,” he said confidently.
Maude looked at him. “Lord willing it will be,” she said with that smile he actually found attractive too.
“Because if the Lord ain’t willing, your patient is in trouble.
” So stop being so cocky about it, she wanted to add, but didn’t.
He heard her out. He was going to help Natasha. She did what she came to do.
Besides, he gave her some serious food for thought that just might help Natasha’s investigation alone, and her investigation too.
Because now that she knew what Ross Hampton was really all about, which seemed to be framing women for murders he just might be committing, she wasn’t about to quit.
If anything that visit with Natasha’s brother made her all the more determined to find out the truth and publish the story that could relaunch her floundering career. This was a very successful trip.
Then she looked at Edmund again. And she smiled that angelic smile again. And those eyes. He, which meant she, was in trouble if he didn’t hurry up and close that door. “Good night,” he said to her once she was off of his threshold and actually outside.
“Good night,” she said with a little wave, then he closed himself safely in, and left her safely out.
It was a strange feeling when that door shut.
For that small time she spent with him, she felt as if she had something going on.
As if she wasn’t alone in the world anymore.
But as soon as that door slammed shut, she felt that aloneness like a slap in the face.
But she was so accustomed to nobody caring if she lived or died that she got on with it. She walked off of his porch.
Even when she was with all her other boyfriends and they knew she had to work a case that had her out late at night alone, they never once offered to accompany her to make sure she got where she had to be safely.
And if they never cared, or her aunt would abandon her the way she did, why should some stranger she’d just met break the mole?
After pulling out her phone and ordering up an Uber, she made her way off of Edmund’s property and headed for the front gate of the gated community where the meet up point with the Uber driver was determined to be.
She gathered her shoulder bag close to her small body to fend off the cool night air despite her windbreaker, and she walked. She felt so alone, but she walked on.