Black Widow Read online

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Black Widow

  ISBN 9781419913990

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  Black Widow Copyright © 1999 Laurie Breton

  Cover art by Syneca.

  Electronic book Publication November 2007

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Black Widow

  Laurie Breton

  Prologue

  Elba, North Carolina

  May, 1994

  The Saab’s air conditioner was on the blink again, and the drive down from Richmond had been long and hot. But it had been well worth the trip. His presentation had impressed the hell out of Walston Associates. Just four years out of architectural school, and he’d been chosen from a field of two dozen architects to design Richmond’s newest skyscraper. At twenty-seven, Michael McAllister was about to hit the big-time.

  He unbuttoned his shirt collar and peeled damp cotton from sticky skin. The air was steamy, ripe with the scent of magnolias and heavy with the signs of an impending thunderstorm. His right hand strayed to the cellular phone mounted on the ten-year-old Saab’s dash. Kathryn. He should call Kath and give her the good news. Michael hesitated, hand still on the phone, then decided it would be better to tell her in person. He wanted to see her face when he broke the news.

  She’d been right all along. He had been terrified of going out on his own directly after college. It had been Kathryn who convinced him that starting his own firm was the right thing to do, Kathryn who believed in him so strongly that she’d never complained about surviving on the combined incomes of a struggling architect and a schoolteacher. If he had joined an established firm, he would have been buried in bureaucratic anonymity, and it might have been twenty years before a chance like this opened up for him.

  Trying to keep the Saab’s speed down to within ten miles per hour of the legal limit, Michael cruised the streets of the quiet residential neighborhood. He glanced at his watch as he turned in at the end of a long driveway flanked by twin yuccas and paved with crushed white limestone. 6:45. Kath would be out jogging. His wife jogged daily, faithfully, rain or shine. You could set your clock by her. It was one of the little quirks that endeared her to him. And to the neighbors, who had long since stopped gossiping about the crazy Yankee lady and had found somebody else to talk about.

  He parked beside her faded Plymouth. When they’d bought the old Chandler place, it had been deserted for years. The yard had been a jungle, and vermin had taken over the house. But Kath had fallen in love with the high ceilings, with the carved woodwork and the marble fireplace mantels. All the systems had been in working order, and they’d gotten it for a song. They’d tamed the jungle undergrowth and begun restoring the house, one room at a time, as their budget allowed.

  The oppressive heat followed him indoors, for they hadn’t yet installed central air-conditioning. A massive bouquet of magnolia blossoms dominated the center of the kitchen table. Michael hung his necktie over the back of a chair and took a pitcher of lemonade out of the refrigerator. The tinkling of the crystal stirrer woke Moses, who hopped down from the rocking chair, stretched, and began rubbing against Michael’s legs. “Hey, buddy,” Michael said, going down on one knee to rub the cat’s belly. “How’s it going?”

  He was still on his knee when he heard the thud. It sounded like somebody had dropped a heavy object on the hardwood floor above his head. Moses pricked up his ears and they both looked in the direction of the stairs. Michael rose and set down the stirrer. “Kath?” he said. “Is that you?”

  There was no answer.

  A rivulet of sweat trickled down his spine. He walked to the foot of the stairs and peered up into the gloom of the upstairs hall. “Kathryn?”

  Above his head, a floorboard creaked. And then silenced.

  And the hair on the back of Michael McAllister’s neck stood up.

  Above her head, thunder growled, and the air had that greenish sheen that presaged a thunderstorm. Back home, a storm would cool the air. Here, cool was little more than an abstract concept. Kathryn stripped off her sweatband and mopped her face. If she hurried, she could get a cold shower before the storm hit. Michael was due home tonight, and she didn’t want to greet him smelling like a quarterback.

  But when she turned into the driveway, past the yuccas and the blooming magnolia, Michael’s car was already there. So much for greeting him smelling like Jean Nate. Her scent would more closely resemble eau de Namath. She couldn’t wait to see him. He’d been gone for three days, the longest they’d ever been apart, and she was dying to hear how his meeting with Walston Associates had gone.

  Michael McAllister was a creative genius. Kathryn had recognized it the first day they met, in a life drawing class at Boston University. While Kathryn and the rest of the class had struggled to follow the demands of the instructor, Michael had managed, with a determination bordering on grimness, to capture the essence of the model in a few deft strokes. His tremendous creative energy was one of the things that had drawn Kathryn to him. That and the utter sincerity with which he conducted his life. Michael was an anachronism, a throwback to a gentler age, a true Southern gentleman.

  He had left the kitchen door ajar, and Kathryn closed it behind her. The lemonade pitcher sat in a puddle of condensation on the counter. Kathryn returned it to the refrigerator and wiped up the puddle. “Michael?” she said.

  There was no answer, but if he’d driven all the way from Richmond without air-conditioning, she’d be willing to bet he was in the shower. He’d been talking for weeks about taking the car into Rollie’s and having it fixed, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Maybe it wouldn’t matter that she smelled like a card-carrying member of the NFL. If she joined Michael in the shower, he would never notice.

  Outside, thunder grumbled, louder than before, and somewhere upstairs, Moses was yowling. Kathryn took the stairs at a trot, expecting to find Michael in the bathroom. But the shower was silent, the room empty. Down the hall, behind her closed bedroom door, Moses howled loud enough to wake the dead. No wonder they called it caterwauling. “Poor Mose,” she said. “You got shut in.”

  She turned the doorknob and Moses shot past her, all fourteen pounds of him, and thundered down the stairs. He raced behind the couch and stayed there, staring out at her, his eyes wild and huge. Kathryn gaped at him in amazement and turned back to the bedroom. “Michael?” she said, opening the door wider. “Are you—”

  The white bedroom carpet was dotted with crimson feline footprints.

  Blood. A lot of blood.

  Fear slammed into her. “Michael?” she cried, hearing th
e panic in her own voice. “Michael!” Chest aching, she edged into the room on legs that suddenly weighed a hundred pounds each. Michael McAllister lay face down on the white shag carpet, one arm flung over his head, the carpet beneath him saturated with blood. The telephone receiver dangled beside him, bleating indignantly. With a cry of despair, Kathryn dropped to her knees on the bloodstained carpet. Michael was a big man, and it took all her strength to roll him over. His head lolled at a crazy angle when she turned him, and his left arm flopped onto the carpet with a soft thud.

  Her twelve-inch wallpapering shears were embedded in his chest.

  Bile rose in her throat. Kathryn swayed, nearly fainted, unaware of the soft animal sounds that were coming from her throat. She grasped the handle to the shears and pulled them from his chest. For a moment, she just looked at them stupidly, and then she flung them across the room, where they slammed into a Hummel figurine and smashed it. She picked up his wrist, frantically sought a pulse. There was none. Overhead, a deafening clap of thunder shook the house. Her hands and her clothes smeared with blood, Kathryn dropped her husband’s arm and struggled to her feet. With a sob, she backed slowly away from him, then turned and ran, stumbling on the stairs, gasping for breath, numb with shock and terror. She shoved open the screen door and it slapped shut behind her as rain hammered down on the tile roof of the porch.

  She tripped on the steps and fell on her knees in the mud. For a moment she stayed there, pelted by rain, too stunned to move. Then she was up and running again, she didn’t know where, just running. She had to get away from what she’d seen. Away, away, away…

  Until she slammed up against an immovable object with so much force it temporarily knocked the breath from her. Arms reached out to catch her and the object turned into a man. Pure, visceral terror took over. Blinded by the rain and her tears, she fought him like an enraged grizzly, snarling like the wild animal she had become, kicking and gouging and biting. “Hey!” said a voice. “Take it easy, little lady!” She drove an elbow into his rib cage, and he grunted. “Earl!” he roared. “Get your ass over here and help me!”

  In the distance, a siren began to wail, faint at first, then louder. A second pair of arms wrapped themselves around her from behind, lifting her off her feet and rendering her helpless as a turned turtle. “No!” she screamed. “Let me go!” Her captor bent her arm backward, painfully, and clamped her wrists together in his massive fists. She kicked frantically at the other man, aiming for his crotch and missing.

  The shrieking of the siren grew unbearable, then squawked to a halt as a county rescue vehicle barreled into her driveway, skidding the last twenty feet on the wet limestone, missing by inches the police cruiser that was parked there.

  For the first time, she realized that her captors wore uniforms and badges. They were friends, not foes.

  All the starch went out of her. “Oh, God,” she said weakly, appealing to the stocky one, the one whose badge identified him as the chief of police. “Oh, thank God. My husband’s dead. You have to help me. Please!”

  The two officers looked at each other and then they looked back at her. “Ma’am,” the chief said, “maybe you’d best wait in the car.”

  Drenched to the bone, Kathryn sat in the backseat of the patrol car, rubbing the circulation back into her wrists as the red sweep of the ambulance’s revolving light reflected off the wet hood of the cruiser. The two police officers entered the house, guns drawn. Too drained to cry, Kathryn wrapped her arms around herself for warmth and listened to the indecipherable crackle and static of the police radio.

  The men emerged from the house with grim faces. They held a huddled conference on the porch with a yellow-slickered ambulance attendant, and then the chief of police ambled back to the cruiser. He slid into the driver’s seat and spoke into his two-way radio. “Ro, honey,” he said, “looks like we got us a nice little homicide out here. Want to round up Blake and Parker and send ‘em out to back us up? Ten-oh-five Ridgewood Road. Oh, and call the coroner for me, will you, sugar?”

  He opened a notebook, took a pen from his pocket, and clicked it. “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to ask you some questions, Miz—?”

  It took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her. “McAllister,” she said. “Kathryn McAllister.”

  “And the name of the deceased?”

  “Michael,” she said dully. Her voice broke as the pictures came flooding back, pictures that would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life. “Michael McAllister.”

  His eyes, already too small for his face, narrowed. “Judge McAllister’s boy?”

  Kathryn bit her upper lip. “Yes,” she said.

  He snapped the notebook shut and regarded her with keen interest. “Well, well,” he said. “Now ain’t that interesting? Well, Miz McAllister, I sure hope you got yourself a good lawyer.”

  She looked at him stupidly. “A lawyer,” she said. “Why would I need a lawyer?”

  He lifted his hat from his head, smoothed down what was left of his hair, and replaced the hat. “Well,” he said, “I don’t imagine Judge McAllister’s gonna take too kindly to you killing his only son.”

  Chapter One

  Wilmington, North Carolina

  August, 1998

  The Carolina Women’s Penitentiary sat squat and ugly in the midday sun, high on a bluff overlooking the Cape Fear River. Behind its drab concrete walls, four hundred women counted down the days of their penance. Before the massive iron gate, a lone figure stood, suitcase in hand, a slender woman dressed in stiff jeans, a clean white tee shirt, and cheap loafers. She held her shoulders back and her head high as she waited. There was a loud click and a buzz, and the gate swung open. Gripping the handle of her suitcase, Kathryn McAllister stepped through the opening to freedom.

  The gate slammed shut behind her, and Kathryn flinched, her reaction automatic after four years of doors closing behind her. But this time, she was on the outside. She set down the suitcase and took a deep breath of sweet, steamy air, holding it in until her lungs ached as she attempted to cleanse them of the stench of prison. But it was still there, would always be there, gnawing at the edges of memory long after it was gone from her lungs.

  Kathryn stepped out of the loafers, peeled off her socks, and wriggled her bare toes in the dry, red dust of the roadside. She tugged at the elastic band that held her hair back. It snapped, releasing the fall of honey-colored curls to her shoulders. Kathryn combed her hair back with the fingers of both hands and raised her face to the sun.

  After four years inside a damp, dark cell, its heat felt wonderful. She closed her eyes and reveled in the sunshine, replenishing her senses with the rich, earthy scent of summer, the buzzing of insects and the sweet trilling of birdsong.

  Presently, she became aware of another sound, this one mechanical. An automobile was racing down the road toward her, a cloud of dust billowing out behind it. The electric blue Mustang convertible approached at a velocity roughly comparable to that of the moon shuttle. With admirable precision, the driver swerved and halted the car neatly beside her. “Honey, I am so sorry,” Raelynn said in that sugared drawl. “We should have been in and out of the courtroom in ten minutes. An open-and-shut divorce case. Instead, that old buzzard Connolly had to pick this mornin’ to rake my client over the coals. Took me a half-hour afterward to calm her down.” Eyeing Kathryn through mirrored sunglasses, she shook her head in righteous indignation. “And here you are, left standin’ in the street.”

  Kathryn bent and picked up her suitcase. “At least,” she said wryly, “I’m on the right side of the fence.” She opened the passenger door, tossed the suitcase and her loafers in the back, and sank gratefully into the white vinyl bucket seat.

  Raelynn talked the way she drove, eighty miles an hour and with more verve than Kathryn had ever seen in another living soul. Freed of any necessity to attempt conversation, she leaned back in the seat and let the wind sweep through her hair as Raelynn’s monologue floated in one ear and out the othe
r.

  They traveled inland, leaving behind the coastal plain and entering the Piedmont, where each crumbling plantation house, each tin-roofed shanty on stilts, had its own cotton patch, often growing side by side with endless green fields of broadleaf tobacco. They drove through villages that were little more than a handful of shotgun houses gathered around a weathered Baptist church and a defunct gas station whose rusted pumps still displayed the Flying A.

  Raelynn finally ran down, and they traveled for a time in silence. A sign painted in blood red and tacked on a telephone pole warned sinners that Jesus was coming. “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing,” Raelynn said, tapping red-lacquered nails against the steering wheel, “coming back to Elba?”

  Kathryn’s spine stiffened. “We’ve been over this before,” she said.

  “And frankly, I still don’t get it. If I were you, I’d be on the first bus headed north of the Mason-Dixon line.”

  They passed another sign, warning them to repent or burn. “Somebody killed my husband,” Kathryn said, “and framed me for murder. I’m not going anywhere until I find out who.” She paused. “And why.”

  Raelynn tossed her thick, black hair away from her face. “As your attorney, I’m advising you against that course of action.”

  Kathryn turned her head and looked at Raelynn. “And as my friend?”

  Raelynn punched the accelerator and raced around a curve. “And as your friend,” she said, “I’m advising you to listen to your attorney.”

  Kathryn squared her jaw. “I can’t.”

  “Hell’s bells, Kat, you just got out of prison! Do you want to go back there?”

  Quietly, Kathryn said, “I’ll never go back there.”

  “Then give up this ridiculous obsession of yours and move on with your life. It’s too late to do Michael any good, and it’s not about to change anybody’s feelings toward you. The public has already crucified you. They’re not going to appreciate you rising like Lazarus to claim your innocence.”