The Damsel in This Dress Read online

  The Damsel in This Dress

  MARIANNE STILLINGS

  Dedication

  For Michael. You were my first reader, my first champion. When I cried into my pile of rejection slips, you reassured me, then urged me back to my computer. I could not have succeeded without your emotional and practical support. You’re my husband, my partner, my hero. Thank you for helping make my dreams come true.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  This was the woman who hated his books?

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  This was the woman who hated his books?

  Soldier moved a little closer, preparing to swoop in for the kill, when she raised her face to look up at him.

  Betsy Tremaine’s driver’s license probably stated her eye color as hazel. But hazel didn’t begin to cover it. Her eyes were like shards of colored glass, green and gold and aqua-marine. Those intelligent eyes were large and fringed with dark lashes. Something he couldn’t name shone from those eyes, and Soldier felt his heart poised to dive into their depths and drown there.

  Delicate brows arched in expectation. Her soft lips parted as if she were about to speak. Or be kissed.

  Soldier gave himself a mental shake. “I neglected to introduce myself earlier, didn’t I?”

  Taking her hand in his, he said, “My name is McKennitt. Jackson. Soldier. McKennitt. Most people call me Soldier.”

  A look of sheer panic crossed her face. She squeaked and tried to pull her hand away, but he held on tightly, incarcerating her fingers between his palms . . .

  Chapter 1

  September Seattle,

  Washington

  Hold on while I get out my thesaurus; this review is going to require more words than my paltry vocabulary contains. Ah, here we go: junk, dross, rubbish, detritus (oh, that’s a good one), baloney, claptrap, drivel . . .

  To continue would require more space than this column allows, so let me simply conclude by saying that Strike Three for Death, J. Soldier McKennitt’s latest so-called crime drama, is a waste of time and money. The plot is ludicrous, the characters stereotypical, the writing amateurish. What less could you ask for? This is the third installment in the Crimes of the Northwest series and while each entry has defied common sense and literary style, Strike Three for Death is the worst to date . . .

  * * *

  “There’s more. Wanna hear it?”

  Soldier McKennitt sprawled on his brother’s tan-striped couch, his long legs crossed at the ankles. Pinching his eyes closed, he rhythmically thumped his skull against the wall behind him. With each bump, the watercolor hanging above his head bounced.

  Finally letting his head rest against the white plaster, he opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “I think I’ve suffered enough,” he sighed. “Besides, something tells me it doesn’t get any better.”

  Soldier sent his brother a pleading look. “What in the hell does this woman have against me, Taylor? Six weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, but this, this broad hates everything I write!”

  Taylor McKennitt grinned as he handed Soldier the bottle of beer he’d just popped open. “Where have you been, sonny? ‘Broad’ is politically incorrect when referring to the female gender.”

  Taking a long swig of beer, Soldier swallowed, then offered, “Okay then, how about ‘bitch’?”

  “Bitch works. Have you ever met Ms. Whatsername?”

  “Tremaine. Elizabeth Carlisle Tremaine, and no, I’ve never had the pleasure.”

  Taylor tossed the Sunday paper onto the coffee table. “You live in north Seattle. What are you doing subscribing to the Port Henry Ledger? It’s way the hell up on the peninsula.”

  “I don’t subscribe. The lovely Ms. Tremaine sends me an edition whenever she trashes one of my books. She calls them reviews. I call them literary castration.”

  Taylor dropped down on the couch next to Soldier. Grabbing a note pad and colored pencils from his desk, he flipped to a clean page.

  “Okay, Detective McKennitt. Let’s do a little artist’s rendering here. Describe this flower of womanhood to me.”

  Soldier sat back and relaxed, closing his eyes again. As he took another pull of beer, he formed a wicked smile on his lips.

  “Okay. She has a long, thin face. Rather bony.”

  Taylor dutifully began sketching.

  “She’s really old, maybe sixty—”

  “Hey, Mom’s sixty.”

  “Okay, sixty-one. And she’s got carrot-orange hair that sticks out all over like she shoved her finger in a light socket. Her eyes are evil and black and too close together, and she has only one eyebrow, sort of shaped like a big M across her heavily wrinkled forehead.”

  “That’s good. What else?”

  Soldier sucked on the bottle for a second. “Her nose is long and thin with a bulb on the end. Oh, and don’t forget the wart,” he said, gesturing toward the paper with his beer bottle.

  “Does the wart have hair on it?”

  “It wouldn’t be wart-worthy if it didn’t.”

  “Right. Hair on the wart.” Taylor’s pencil scratched the paper in broad strokes.

  Soldier contemplated his nemesis once more. “She has a blunt chin and a thin, cruel mouth. All tight and puckered like she just licked the bottom of somebody’s shoe.” He grinned. “And she’s never had sex.”

  Taylor arched a dark brow. “Not even when she was young and wartless?”

  “Nah. I don’t see Ms. Tremaine letting a man near her,” Soldier said through a vicious grin. Swallowing another gulp of beer, he mumbled, “But I’ll bet she owns stock in Eveready batteries, if you get my drift.”

  Leaning over the sketch pad, he examined what Taylor had created. Gesturing with his index finger, he said, “You’ve got her tah-tahs too big. They should be more like prunes.”

  Taylor smirked. “She’s beginning to look like my ex-wife.”

  “I never saw your ex-wife’s prunes.”

  “Well, God knows every other man in town did.”

  Turning once again to the dour effigy Taylor had created, Soldier tapped his finger on the paper. With the beer bottle poised at his lips, he said, “Chin needs to be more mannish. And don’t forget the scar . . .”

  Betsy Tremaine rubbed her chin. It felt odd, as though somebody were tickling it. She wished. The stanza of an old song ran through her head: Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody . . . Except it was Sunday, but that didn’t really matter, not when you were alone every night of the week.

  Twenty-eight years old, and the only male in her life was Piddle, her mother’s five-hundred-year-old Chihuahua. Even now, the ancient creature lay hairless and trembling at her feet beneath the kitchen table. She was careful to move slowly around him, for the slightest noise would shatter his tenuous control and he’d live up to his name all over her floor.

  Scooping the last bite of chocolate mint chip ice cream into her mouth, Betsy tossed the empty contain
er in the trash and her spoon into the sink. Gently lifting Piddle from the floor, she rose and padded toward the living room.

  The house had been built in the Victorian style over a hundred years ago. For a structure of its era, the rooms were large, and what had once been the parlor was now used as the living room. The front of the house faced west, allowing the setting sun to filter through the long lace curtains. Everything in the room—from her grandmother’s antique porcelain vase, to the mahogany coffee table, to the tatted doilies that decorated the back of the couch—was tinted amber by the fading light of day.

  A flagstone fireplace dominated the center of the interior wall, its wide mantel displaying photographs of Loretta and Douglas Tremaine, laughing, their arms wound around each other, as well as photos of Betsy as a little girl, in what she had come to refer to as “the Before Time,” when her mother and father had loved each other and they had been a family.

  Nestled in the corner to the right of the fireplace sat Betsy’s work area. She shuffled over to the roll-top desk, an antediluvian piece of furniture that had once belonged to her great-grandfather. Now, it was piled high with books and papers, pencils, pens, more family photographs, and the latest National Geographic. An extra set of car keys peeked out of a cubbyhole, while a roll of stamps, paper clips, staples, and an assortment of office supplies lay strewn about in disorganized order.

  Betsy had anticipated a cool evening, so she’d built a little fire in the fireplace, its woodsy fragrance and warmth cheering her a bit. Glancing out the window, she noted the heavy clouds rolling in from the sea. Night would come early, she thought, along with lots and lots of rain.

  Another rainy night, she mused. In a couple of hours, while the raindrops tapped along the eaves, she’d be all snuggled down in her warm bed. Alone.

  She sighed. She needed to snap out of it. Sure, she lived by herself, but she was seldom truly lonely. It was just that . . . well, lately, she’d been feeling restless, expectant somehow, yet each new day was no different than the previous one. That was a little depressing, and depression made her introspective, and introspection always led to the fact that she was alone, and that always made her feel . . . well, lonely, dammit.

  Setting the dog on the Oriental carpet at her feet, she eased into the desk chair and punched the button to turn on her computer.

  “Okay, let’s see what’s happening in Cyberland,” she said to Piddle. The dog shivered but gave no response. Circling slowly, he finally settled between her feet, where he gave an exhausted sigh, then lowered his long lashes.

  Checking out the letter icon on the desktop, Betsy grinned. “Oh, lookie here, Pids. We’ve got mail. Maybe your mommy is coming home and you can go back to her house and ruin her rugs and stink up her kitchen. . . .”

  Piddle’s response was a congested wheeze as he drifted off to doggy dreamland.

  There were two e-mails from people whose names Betsy recognized. The one from her mother, vacationing for two months in Paris was just a quick hello. But the other one was from J. Soldier McKennitt. Her review of his latest book had hit the paper last week. Considering how much she had hated it, and had said so, he probably wasn’t writing to thank her.

  Dear Ms. Tremaine:

  I’m sorry you didn’t like my book. Since I have received a fairly good response from other critics around the country and have a somewhat faithful readership, I am curious as to what you found so objectionable about Strike Three for Death (not to mention One Gun and Murder for Two)?

  Any enlightenment you can give would be most appreciated.

  Yours,

  JSMc

  Betsy nudged the zoned-out dog with her toe. “Can you believe this, Pids? The nerve of that old geezer.”

  Her chair squeaked as she settled more deeply into the peony-and-rose-print chintz cushion. What should she say to this guy that hadn’t already been said in her review? It wasn’t as though anything she wrote in the Port Henry Ledger would make a difference in the sale of his books. Hers was a small town newspaper with a limited circulation, while he was published nationally. How on earth had he even seen a copy of the damn thing?

  In her job as editor of the Port Henry Ledger, she occasionally wrote book reviews just to give her something else to do. She enjoyed it and considered it a sort of public service, letting readers know which of the latest books were worth shelling out twenty-five bucks for and which to avoid.

  According to the back cover blurb of Strike Three for Death, J. Soldier McKennitt was a Seattle detective who fancied himself a writer and had taken to fictionalizing some of what he considered his more interesting cases. There was only a brief bio and no photo, which Betsy thought unusual. But maybe that was to prevent any problems with undercover work. Or maybe he was just plain old ugly.

  Betsy glanced down at Piddle. Speaking of ugly. Well, she had to come up with some kind of answer to Detective McKennitt’s note. Her heart squeezed in protest. She didn’t like confrontation, not even when it was only electronic.

  “Pids? Do you need to go out?” Stirring from his slumber, Piddle opened his luminous brown eyes, his long lashes fluttering as he gazed up at her. He gave one final shudder, then closed them again and went back to sleep.

  So much for creative avoidance, she thought. Taking a deep breath, Betsy began to type.

  Dear Detective McKennitt:

  Everything I had to say, I said in my review. Please keep in mind that mine is only one opinion. I’m glad you have such a large following and wish you continued success in your writing career.

  Betsy Tremaine

  There. Short, sweet, and to the point. Was she gracious or what. Not argumentative, not defensive, but definitely not an invitation for further discourse. End of story.

  Allowing herself a hearty yawn, she glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was almost seven. Okay, she’d get ready for bed, then read for a while before going to sleep. Tomorrow was Monday and she needed to get in early to prepare for the weekly staff meeting. Ryan Finlay, her boss, always ran the meeting, but she prepared the agenda. Her assistant Carla Denato would be in early too, to make coffee and set up the conference room.

  Bending, Betsy picked up a woozy Piddle and carried him through the kitchen to the back door. “Time to do your duty, Pids.”

  Opening the door, she set the dog on the porch. Cool, damp air drifted around her body, making her shiver. Stepping back inside, she closed the door against a whirl of dry leaves.

  She’d give him ten minutes. It would take him five just to move that ancient carcass to the middle of the yard and find a good spot, then five to stagger back. By that time she’d be ready for bed.

  As she jogged up the stairs to her room, she thought about her mother. Why on earth had she decided to go to Paris now of all times? And for two whole months.

  Betsy had planned to attend the four-day-long Northwest Crime and Punishment Writer’s Conference starting on Thursday in Seattle. She’d have to take the Pidster with her since she couldn’t afford to hire a dog-sitter for that amount of time, and a kennel was out of the question. God knew she needed the time away from work. With or without her mother’s dog in tow, Betsy intended to shove her job firmly into the recesses of her brain for four lovely days.

  She loved her job, adored it, but lately things seemed strained, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. People were talking about something, but they hushed up whenever she got within earshot. Since she’d never done anything out of the ordinary or weird in her life, her coworkers couldn’t possibly be whispering about her. Still, it gave her an uncomfortable feeling, and she was looking forward to a little breather.

  Quickly stripping off her clothes, Betsy tossed her lightweight flannel gown over her head then went into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth.

  She turned on the faucet then quickly turned it off. Was that a noise? She waited. Nothing. She twisted the faucet a second time, then quickly turned it off again. Yes, there had been a noise, but what was i
t and where had it come from?

  Wiping her hands on a towel, she padded down the stairs. Throughout the house, her drapes were pulled. Nobody could see in. Reaching the kitchen, she snapped off the light, then stood in the gloom and silence, listening. . . .

  There! A high-pitched yelp and then nothing. Piddle?

  The kitchen door screeched on its hinges as Betsy flung it open and snapped on the back porch light. She wrapped her arms around her waist against the chill and searched the landscape with narrowed eyes.

  Beyond the meager reach of the porch light, her quest was useless. Night fell quickly and completely this time of year, turning the lovely yard into unknown territory filled with shifting black shapes and foreboding shadows.

  Though she couldn’t see much at the moment, Betsy knew the yard itself was deep and wide, graced here and there with trees. An ancient willow filled the back corner, its long leaves turned yellow by an early frost. A few tall firs, dark and pungent, stood sentry around the perimeter. Several rhodies marched in a line against the back fence, and old roses—pink, cream, gold, their blooms fading as they succumbed to the change of seasons—hugged the back of the house near where she stood.

  Now, the atrium lay in shadows. All was still. Not so much as a leaf fluttered, and yet Betsy had the distinct feeling she could hear, or feel, the pulse of movement. Breathing.

  She sensed that eyes were fixed on her, but from where, she couldn’t tell.

  A mournful whine rose from the area of her feet, and she gasped and instinctively took a step back.

  Piddle? What the—

  The Chihuahua lay on his side on the porch, all four legs thrust stiffly away from his body. His chest heaved with labored breaths and his huge eyes stared helplessly into hers. He looked like a large paralyzed rat with a red collar.