Mystery Man

Chapter Two

“I don’t like having you around that boy,” Canton told his daughter when they were back in their beach house. “His mother is a flake.”

Karie had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting out the truth. Obviously the Curtis duo didn’t want it known that they were little brother and big sister, not son and mother. Karie would keep her new friend’s secret, but it wasn’t going to be easy.

Her eyes went to the new hardcover murder mystery on the coffee table. There was a neat brown leather bookmark holding Canton’s place in it. On the cover in huge red block letters were the title, “CATACOMB,” and the author’s name—Diane Woody.

There was a photo in the back of the book, on the slick jacket, but it was of a woman with long hair and dark glasses wearing a hat with a big brim. It didn’t even look like their neighbor. But it was. Karie knew because Kurt had told her, with some pride, who his sister was. She was thrilled to know, even secondhand, a big-time mystery writer like Diane Woody. Her father was one of the biggest fans of the bestselling mystery author, but he wouldn’t recognize her from that book jacket. Maybe it was a good thing. Apparently she didn’t want to be recognized.

“Kurt’s nice,” she told her father. “He’s twelve. He likes people. He’s honest and kind. And Janine’s nice, too.”

His eyebrows lifted as he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Janine?” he murmured, involuntarily liking the sound of the name on his lips.

“His…mother.”

“You learned all that about him in one day?”

She shrugged. “Actions speak louder than words, isn’t that what you always say?”

His face softened, just a little. He loved his daughter. “Just don’t go wandering off with him again, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And don’t go to his home,” he added through his teeth. “Because even if he can’t help what he’s got for a mother, I don’t want you associating with her. Is that clear?”

“Oh, yes, sir!”

“Good. Get dressed. We don’t have much time.”

In the days that followed, Kurt and Karie were inseparable. Karie, as usual, agreed with whatever her father told her to do and then did what she pleased. He was so busy trying to regroup that he usually forgot his orders five minutes after he gave them, anyway.

So Karie and Kurt concocted their “sea serpent,” piece by painstaking piece, concealing it under the Rourke beach house for safety. Meanwhile, they watched World War III develop between their respective relatives.

The first salvo came suddenly and without warning. Kurt had gone out to play baseball with Karie. This was something new for him. His parents were studious and bookwormish, not athletic. And even though Janine was more than willing to share the occasional game of ball toss, she wasn’t a baseball fanatic. Kurt had grown to his present age without much tutoring in sports, except what he played at the private school where his parents sent him. And that was precious little, because the owners were too wary of lawsuits to let the children do much rough-and-tumble stuff.

Karie had no hang-ups at all about playing tackle football on the beach or smacking a hardball with her regulation bat. She gave the bat to Kurt and told him to do his best. Unfortunately, he did, on the very first try.

Canton Rourke came storming up onto the porch of the beach house and right onto the open patio without a knock. Janine, lost in the fifth chapter of her new book, was so foggy that she saw him without really seeing him. She was in the middle of a chase scene, locked into character and time and place, totally mindless and floating in the computer screen. She stared at him blankly.

He looked furious. The blue eyes under that jutting brow were blazing from his lean face. He had a hardball in one hand. He stuck it under her nose.

“It’s a baseball,” she said helpfully.

“I know what the damned thing is,” he said in a tone that would have affected her if she hadn’t been deep in concentration. “I just picked it up off my living-room floor. It went through the bay window.”

“You shouldn’t let the kids play baseball in the house,” she instructed.

“They weren’t playing in the damned house! Your son slammed it through the window!”

Her eyebrows rose. Things were beginning to focus in the real world. Her mind lost the last thread of connection with her plot. Before she lost her bearings too far, she saved the file before she swung her chair back to face her angry neighbor.

“Nonsense,” she said. “Kurt doesn’t have a baseball. Come to think of it, I don’t think he knows how to use a bat, either.”

He threw the ball up and caught it, deliberately.

“All right, what do you want me to do about it?” she asked wearily.

“I want you to teach him not to hit balls through people’s windows,” he said shortly. “It’s a damned nuisance trying to find a glass company down here, especially one that can get a repair done quickly.”

“Put some plastic over the hole with tape,” she suggested.

“Your son did the damage,” he continued with a mocking smile. “The repair is going to be up to you, not me.”

“Me?”

“You.” He put the ball down firmly on her desk, noticing the computer and printer for the first time. His eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m writing a bestselling novel,” she said honestly.

He laughed without humor. “Sure.”

“It’s going to be great,” she continued with building anger. “It’s all about a—”

He held up a big, lean hand. “Spare me,” he said. “I don’t really want to hear the sordid details. No doubt you can draw plenty of material from your years in the commune.”

“Why, yes, I can,” she agreed with a vacant smile. “But I was going to say that this book is about a pompous businessman with delusions of grandeur.”

His eyebrows lifted. “How interesting.” He stuck his hands into his pockets and she fought a growing attraction to him. He really did have an extraordinary build for a man his age, which looked to be late thirties. He was lean and muscular and sensuous. He didn’t have a male-model sort of look, but there was something in the very set of his head, in the way he looked at her, that made her knees go weak.

His eye had been caught by an autographed photo peering out from under her mousepad. She’d hidden it there so that Kurt wouldn’t see it and tease her about her infatuation with her television hero. Sadly when she’d moved the mouse to save her file, she’d shifted the pad and revealed the photo.

His lean hand reached out and tugged at the corner. He didn’t wear jewelry of any kind, she noticed, and his fingernails were neatly trimmed and immaculate. He had beautiful hands, lightly tanned and strong.

“I like to watch the television series he’s in,” she said defensively, because he was staring intently at the photo.

His gaze lifted and he laughed softly. “Do you?” He handed it back and in the process, leaned close to her. “It’s one of my favorite shows, too,” he said, his voice dropping an octave, soft and deep and sensuous. “But this is the villain, you know, not the hero.”

She cleared her throat. He was close enough to make her uncomfortable. “So what?”

“He looks familiar, doesn’t he?” he murmured dryly.

She glared up at him. He really was far too close. Her heart skipped. “Does he?” she asked. Her voice sounded absolutely squeaky.

He stood up again, his hands back in his pockets, his smile so damned arrogant and knowing that she could have kicked him.

“Don’t you have a business empire to save or something?” she asked irritably.

“I suppose so. You can’t get that show down here, at least not in English,” he added.

“Yes. I know. That was the whole purpose of coming here,” she murmured absently.

“Ah, I see. Drying out, are we?”

She stood up. “You listen here…!”

He chuckled. “I have things to do. You’ll see to the window, of course.”

She took a steadying breath. “Of course.”

His eyes slid up and down her slender body with more than a little interest. “Odd.”

“What?”

“Do you mind if I test a theory?”

Her eyes were wary. “What sort of theory?”

He took his hands out of his pockets and moved close, very deliberately, his eyes staring straight into hers the whole while. When he was right up against her, almost touching her, he stopped. His hands remained at his side. He never touched her. But his eyes, his beautiful blue eyes, stared right down into hers and suddenly slipped to her mouth, tracing it with such sensuality that her lips parted on a shaky breath.

He moved again. His chest was touching her breasts now. She could smell the clean, sexy scent he wore. She could feel his warm, coffee-scented breath on her mouth as he breathed.

“How old are you?” he asked in a deep, sultry tone.

“Twenty-four,” she said in a strangled voice.

“Twenty-four.” He bent his head, so that his mouth was poised just above hers, tantalizing but not invasive, not aggressive at all. His breath made little patterns on her parted lips. “And you’ve had more than a handful of lovers?”

She wasn’t listening. Her eyes were on his mouth. It looked firm and hard and very capable. She wondered how it tasted. She wondered. She wished. She…wanted!

“Janine.”

The sound of her voice on his lips brought her wide, curious eyes up to meet his. They looked stunned, mesmerized.

His own eyes crinkled, as if he were smiling. All she saw was the warmth in them.

“If you’re the mother of a twelve-year-old,” he whispered deeply, “I’m a cactus plant.”

He lifted his head, gave her an amused, indulgent smile, turned and walked away without a single word or a backward glance, leaving her holding the ball. In more ways than one.

She got the glass fixed. It wasn’t easy, but she managed. However, she did dare Kurt to pick up a bat again.

“You don’t like him, do you?” he queried the day after the glass was repaired. “Why not? He seems to be good to Karie, and he isn’t exactly Mr. Nasty to me, either.”

She moved restlessly. “I’m trying to work,” she said evasively. She didn’t like to remember her last encounter with their neighbor. Weakness was dangerous around that tiger.

“He’s gone to California,” Kurt added.

Her fingers jumped on the keyboard, scattering letters across the screen. “Oh. Has he?”

“He’s going to talk to some people in Silicon Valley. I’ll bet he’ll make it right back to where he was before he’s through. His wife is going to be real sorry that she ran out on him when he lost it all.”

“No foresight,” she agreed. She saved the file. There was no sense working while Kurt was chattering away. She got up and stretched, moving to the patio window. She paused there, staring curiously. Karie was sitting on the beach on a towel. Nearby, a man stood watching her; a very dark man with sunglasses on and a suspicious look about him.

“Who’s that? Have you seen him before?” she asked Kurt.

He glanced out. “Yes. He was out there yesterday.”

“Who’s watching Karie while her father’s gone?”

“I think there’s a housekeeper who cooks for them,” he said. “He’s only away for the day, though.”

“That’s long enough for a kidnapper,” she said quietly. “He was very wealthy. Maybe someone wouldn’t know that, would make a try for Karie.”

“You mystery writers,” Kurt scoffed, “always looking on the dark side.”

“Dark side or not, he isn’t hurting Karie while I’m around!” She went right out the patio door and down the steps.

She walked toward the man. He saw her coming, and stepped back, looking as if he wasn’t sure what to do.

She went right up to him, aware that her two years of martial arts training might not be enough if he turned nasty. Well, she could always scream, and the beach was fairly crowded today.

“You’re on my property. What do you want?” she asked the man, who was tall and well-built and foreign looking.

His eyebrows rose above his sunglasses. “No hablo inglñaes,” he said, and grinned broadly.

She knew very little Spanish, but that phrase was one she’d had to learn. “And I don’t speak Spanish,” she returned with a sigh. “Well, you have to go. Go away. Away! Away!” She made a flapping gesture with her hand.

“Ah. ¡Vaya!” he said obligingly.

“That’s right. Vaya. Right now.”

He nodded, grinned again and went back down the beach in the opposite direction.

Janine watched him walk away. She had a nagging suspicion that he wasn’t hanging around here for his health.

She went down the beach to where Karie was sitting, spellbound at the scene she’d just witnessed. “Karie, I want you to come and stay with Kurt and me today while your dad’s gone,” she said. “I don’t like the way that man was watching you.”

“Neither do I,” Karie had to admit. She smiled ruefully. “Dad had a bodyguard back in Chicago. I never really got used to him. Down here it’s been quieter.”

“You do have a bodyguard. Me.”

Karie chuckled as she got up and shook out her towel. “I noticed. You weren’t scared of him at all, were you?”

“Kurt and I studied martial arts for two years. I’m pretty good at it.” She’d didn’t add that she’d also worked as a private investigator.

“Would you teach me?”

“That might not be a bad idea,” she considered. “Tell you what, Kurt and I will give you lessons on the sly. You may not want to share that with your dad right now. He’s mad enough about the window at the moment.”

“Dad isn’t mean,” Karie replied. “He’s pretty cool, most of the time. He has a terrible temper, of course.”

“I noticed.”

Karie smiled. “You have one, too. That man started backing up the minute you went toward him. You scared him.”

“Why, so I did,” Janine mused. She grinned with pride. “How about that?”

“I’m starved,” Karie said. “Maria went to the grocery store and she won’t be back for hours.”

“We’ll make sandwiches. I’ve got cake, too, for dessert. Coconut.”

“Wow! Radical!”

Janine smiled. She led the way back to the beach house, where an amused Kurt was waiting.

“Diane Woody to the rescue!” he chuckled.

She made a face at him. “I’m reading too much of my own publicity,” she conceded. “But the man left, didn’t he?”

“Left a jet trail behind him,” her brother agreed.

“What are you working on…oh! It’s him!” Karie gasped, picking up the photo of the television star in makeup that Janine had left on the desk. “Isn’t he cool? It’s my favorite show. I like the captain best, but this guy isn’t so bad. He sort of looks like Dad, you know?”

Janine didn’t say a word. But inside, she groaned.

She was feeding the kids coconut cake from a local store, and milk when a familiar threatening presence came through the patio doors without knocking. She gave him a glare that he simply ignored.

“Don’t you live at home anymore?” he asked his daughter irritably.

“There’s no cake at our place,” Karie said matter-of-factly.

“Where’s the housekeeper? I told her to stay with you.”

“She went shopping and never came back,” Janine said shortly. “Your daughter was on the beach being watched by a very suspicious-looking man.”

“Janine scared him off,” Karie offered, with a toothy grin. “She knows karate!”

The arrogant look that Canton Rourke gave her was unsettling. “Karate, hmmm?”

“I know a little,” she confessed.

“She went right up to that man and told him to go away,” Karie continued, unabashed. “Then she took me home with her.” She glowered at him. “I could have been kidnapped!”

He looked strange for a space of seconds, as if he couldn’t quite get his bearings.

“You shouldn’t have been out there alone,” he said finally.

“I was just lying on my beach towel.”

“Well, from now on, lie on the deck,” he replied curtly. “No more adventures.”

“Okay,” she said easily, and ate another chunk of cake.

“It’s coconut cake,” Kurt volunteered. “That little grocery store has them. Janie gets them all the time for us. They’re great.”

“I’d offer you a slice of cake, Mr. Rourke, but I’m sure you’re in a terrible hurry.”

“I suppose I must be. Come on, Karie.”

His daughter took a big swallow of milk and got up from the table. “Thanks, Janie!”

“You’re very welcome.” She glanced at Canton. “Housekeepers don’t make very good bodyguards.”

“I never meant her to be a watchdog, only a cook and housecleaner. Apparently I’d better look elsewhere.”

“It might be wise.”

His eyes slid down her long legs in worn jeans, down to her bare, pretty feet. He smiled in spite of himself. “Don’t like shoes, hmmm?”

“Shoes wear out. Skin doesn’t.”

He chuckled. “You sound like Einstein. I recall reading that he never wore socks, for the same reason.”

Her eyes lifted to his face and slid over it with that same sense of stomach-rapping excitement that she experienced the first time she saw it. He did so closely resemble her favorite series TV character. It was uncanny, really.

“Are you sure you don’t act?” she asked without meaning to.

He gave her a wry look. “I’m sure. And I’m not about to start, at my age.”

“There go your hopes, dashed for good,” Kurt murmured dryly. “He’s not an illegal alien trying to fit in with humans, Janie. Tough luck.”

She flushed. “Will you shut up!”

“What did you do with that autographed photo?” he asked as he passed the desk.

“Oh, she never has it out when she’s working,” Kurt volunteered. “If she can see it, she just sits and sighs over it and never gets a word on the screen.”

He scowled, interested. “What sort of work do you do?”

“She’s a secretary,” Kurt said for her, gleefully improvising. “Her boss is a real slave driver, so even on vacation, she has to take the computer with her so that she can use the computer’s fax modem to send her work to the office.”

He made an irritated sound. “Some boss.”

“He pays well,” she said, warming to Kurt’s improvisation. She sighed. “You know how it is, living in a commune, you get so out of touch with reality.” She contrived to look dreamy-eyed. “But eventually, one has to return to the real world and earn a living. It really is so hard to get used to material things again.”

His face closed up. He gave her a glare that could have stopped traffic and motioned to Karie to follow him. He stuck his hands into his pockets and walked out the door. He never looked back. It seemed to be a deep-seated characteristic.

Karie grinned and waved, following obediently.

When they were out of sight along the beach, Kurt joined her on the patio deck.

“What if that man wasn’t watching Karie at all?” she wondered aloud, having had time to formulate a different theory. “What if he’s a lookout for the pothunters?”

Kurt scowled. “You mean those people who steal artifacts from archaeological sites and sell them on the black market?”

“The very same.” She folded her arms over her T-shirt. “This is a brand-new site, unexplored and uncharted until now. Mom and Dad even noted that it seemed to be totally undisturbed. The Maya did some exquisite work with gold and precious jewels. What if there’s a king’s ransom located at the dig and someone knows about it?”

Kurt leaned against the railing. “They know it can happen. It did last time they found a site deep in the jungle, over near Chichñaen Itzñaa. But they had militia guarding them and the pothunters were caught.”

“Yes, but Mexico is hurting for money, and it’s hard to keep militia on a site all the time to guard a few archaeologists.”

“Dad has a gun.”

“And he can shoot it. Sure he can. But they can’t stay awake twenty-four hours a day, and even militia can be bribed.”

“You’re a whale of a comfort,” Kurt groaned.

“I’m sorry. I just think we should be on our guard. It could have been someone trying to kidnap Karie, but they’ve just as much incentive to kidnap us or at least keep a careful eye on us.”

“In other words, we’d better watch our backs.”

Janine smiled. “Exactly.”

“Suits me.” He sighed. “What a shame your alien hero can’t beam down here and help us out. I’ll bet he’d have the bad guys for breakfast.”

“Oh, they don’t eat humans,” she assured him.

“They might make an exception for pothunters.”

“You do have a point there. Come on. You can help me do the dishes.”

“Tell you what,” he said irrepressibly. “You do the dishes, and I’ll write your next chapter for you!”

“Be my guest.”

He gave her a wary look. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Wrong. Go for it.”

He was excited, elated. He took her at her word and went straight to the computer. He loaded her word processing program, pulled up the file where she’d left off, scanned the plot.

He sat and he sat and he sat. By the time she finished cleaning up the kitchen, he was still sitting.

“Nothing yet?” she asked.

He gave her a plaintive stare. “How do you do this?” he groaned. “I can’t even think of a single word to put on paper!”

“Thinking is the one thing I don’t do,” she told him. “Move.”

He got up and she sat down. She stared at the screen for just a minute, checked her place in the plot, put her fingers on the keyboard and just started typing. She was two pages into the new scene when Kurt let out a long sigh and walked away.

“Writers,” he said, “are strange.”

She chuckled to herself. “You don’t know the half of it,” she assured him, and kept right on typing.

Chapter Three

Janine was well into the book two days later when Karie came flying up the steps and in through the sliding glass doors.

“We’re having a party!” she announced breathlessly. “And you’re both invited.”

Janine’s mind was still in limbo, in the middle of a scene. She gave Karie a vacant stare.

“Oops! Sorry!” Karie said, having already learned in a space of days that writers can’t withdraw immediately when they’re deep into a scene. She backed out and went to find Kurt.

“What sort of party?” he asked when she joined him at the bottom of the steps at the beach.

“Just for a few of Dad’s friends, but I persuaded him to invite you and Janie, too. He feels guilty since he’s had to leave me alone so much for the past few years. So he lets me have my way a lot, to try and make it up to me.” She grinned at Kurt. “It’s sort of like having my own genie.”

“You’re blackmailing him.”

She laughed. “Exactly!”

His thin shoulders rose and fell. “I wouldn’t mind coming to the party, if you’re having something nice to eat. But Janie won’t,” he added with certainty. “She hates parties and socializing. And she doesn’t like your dad at all, can’t you tell?”

“He doesn’t like her much, either, but that’s no reason why they can’t be civil to each other at a party.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do. He’ll be on his best behavior. Did you know that he reads her books? He doesn’t know who she really is, of course, because I haven’t told him. But he’s got every book she’s ever written.”

“Good grief, didn’t he look at her picture on the book jacket?” Kurt burst out.

“I didn’t recognize her from it. Neither will he. It doesn’t really look like her, does it?”

He had to admit it didn’t. “She doesn’t like being recognized,” he confided. “It embarrasses her. She likes to write books, but she’s not much on publicity.”

“Why?”

“She’s shy, can you believe it?” he chuckled. “She runs the other way from interviews and conventions and publicity. It drove the publishing house nuts at first, but they finally found a way to capitalize on her eccentricity. They’ve made her into the original mystery woman. Nobody knows much about her, so she fascinates her reading public.”