Free Black Widow by Laurie Breton Page B

him. “Nick,” she said softly. “Don’t. Please.”
    “I have to go,” he said. “I’ll check the closets and look under the bed.”
    “Damn it, DiSalvo, don’t be this way.”
    “Don’t bother to see me out. I know where the door is.”
     
    When he got to work the next morning, there was a note on his desk requesting his immediate presence in the mayor’s office. He poured himself a cup of coffee and went upstairs. Marilu Kelso, the mayor’s secretary, smiled at him in a way that, had he been fifteen years younger, might have tempted him. But she was only five years older than his daughter, for Christ’s sake. “Mayor says to go right in, Chief DiSalvo,” she said, batting luxurious lashes, assisted no doubt by Maybelline, as he passed.
    Mayor Wayne Stevens was the only black elected official in Elba. When longtime mayor John Chamberlain had retired, Stevens had run against Dewey Webb and had won by a landslide. He was now halfway through his second term, and he held the enviable position of being liked by the majority of his constituents, both black and white.
    Stevens was busy writing something on a sheet of paper. “Be with you in a minute,” he said. “Sit down.”
    Nick sat and waited, listening to the scratch of pen against paper. Stevens crossed a final t and scrawled his signature across the bottom of the page, capped the pen and set it down. He shoved the paper aside. “Chief DiSalvo,” he said.
    “Mayor Stevens.”
    Nick waited. The mayor steepled his fingers on the desk top. “I heard about last night’s little episode at Kathryn McAllister’s residence.”
    He smiled thinly. “Word does get around in this town, doesn’t it?”
    “I don’t like to see this kind of thing going on in my town. Ever since that woman got here, she’s done nothing but stir up trouble.”
    Nick raised an eyebrow. “She’s not the one who left a five-foot rattlesnake in a box on her porch.”
    “No. But she obviously provoked somebody else into doing it. Do you have any leads?”
    “Not yet. But we’re working on it.”
    “Chief DiSalvo, I realize this is a delicate issue, but I feel I have to ask. What in hell were you doing at her home in the first place?”
    He felt the jolt all the way to his stomach. Sitting up straighter, he said carefully, “We’d just had dinner together. I was escorting the lady home.”
    The mayor looked pained. “Do you really think it’s appropriate,” he said, “for you to be having a relationship with this woman?”
    “I had dinner with her, Mayor. That hardly constitutes a relationship.”
    “Nevertheless, Mr. DiSalvo, it’s not quite seemly for the chief of police to be seen squiring around a convicted felon.”
    Nick leaned forward in his chair. “I have a couple of problems with that, Mayor. Number one, her conviction was overturned — ”
    “In the eyes of the court, Nick. Certainly not in the eyes of the three thousand people who live in this town.”
    “And second, it’s none of anybody’s business who I have dinner with when I’m off duty. My private life is my own business.”
    “Wrong again, Chief. I speak from experience when I say that as a public official in this town, you don’t have a private life.” The mayor leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Look, Nick, this town has eyes and ears, and every move you make, in or out of uniform, is meticulously scrutinized. If you look bad, the town looks bad, and our citizens won’t stand for it.”
    The fury rose so quickly he shot to his feet. “As chief of police,” he said, “I was hired to maintain peace in this town. To protect its citizens. Am I correct?”
    Stevens sighed. “Yes,” he said, “but—”
    “Do you have a problem with the way I’m performing my duties?”
    The mayor’s mouth thinned. “No,” he said.
    “Good.” Nick slung his cup of coffee into the wastebasket and stalked to the door. “When you have any complaints about my job performance, you let me