by Linda Howard
She was immersed in the third episode when her cell phone rang. The sound automatically made her tense, because she used her cell almost exclusively for work. Warily she picked it up and looked at the window. Bishop Delaney? Why on earth would he be calling? She clicked on the call.
“Hi, Bishop. Is something wrong?”
“There’s been a murder at the reception hall,” he said baldly. “I don’t know who, but I thought, well, we did leave you there with Carnivore Edwards.”
After a blank second during which she digested the news, she got a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Oh my God. Do you think Melissa—” She couldn’t complete the thought. It would be so horrible if Melissa had been attacked and murdered, though she was the most likely victim, considering the location. “Are you certain there was a murder?”
“That’s what a friend of mine heard. He was driving home and tried to take that route, but the street was blocked off and he had to take a detour. He stopped and asked at the nearest service station, of course, and they told him they’d heard some woman had been killed.”
“When? What time?” There might have been a function held at the reception hall that night, though if there had been one scheduled Melissa hadn’t mentioned it. You could never predict what might happen when a group of people got together. She hoped there had been an event held at the hall tonight, because that would drastically cut the odds that Melissa had been the one harmed.
“Haven’t been able to find out. Details at eleven.”
Jaclyn hadn’t intended to stay up that long, but now she had to, to find out who had been murdered. She and Bishop spent a few minutes speculating on what might have happened, but that was unproductive because neither of them had any way of knowing. After they hung up she switched to each of the local network stations in turn, but none of them had anything showing other than regular programming, not even a news crawl at the bottom of the screen. Murder wasn’t huge news in Atlanta unless someone important was involved, or the crime was particularly gruesome.
Her doorbell rang at nine forty-five. She was so on edge that she shot to her feet, her heartbeat hammering. Who on earth—?
She glanced down at herself, and grabbed a sweater from the entry closet to cover her obviously braless state, and pulled it on as she peeked through the peephole.
Eric?
He was undoubtedly one of the men standing on her stoop. In a flash the worst possible reason for his presence hit her like a blow a thousand times harder than Carrie Edwards’s slap. Oh. My. God. Madelyn. Something had happened to her mother. The murder—
She fumbled with the lock, and jerked the door open. Her lips felt numb as she stared up at him. “Mom?” she asked in a thin, tight voice. “Is my mom okay?”
Eric and the other man glanced at each other. “As far as we know,” he said, and she almost collapsed with relief, sagging against the door frame.
“This is Sergeant Garvey,” he said, introducing the other man. “May we come in? We’d like to ask you some questions about Carrie Edwards.”
She’d been so white when she’d jerked the door open that he’d thought she was about to faint. She still seemed shaky as she stepped back. “Carrie? I mean, yes, come in. So my mom—and it wasn’t Melissa. Was it? Did Carrie kill Melissa?” She clenched her hands together almost as if she were praying, standing there in the small entry, her blue eyes huge in her pale, strained face.
She looked as freshly clean and unadorned and unabashedly sexy as she had the night before, Eric thought, though a sweater covered the tank top tonight. As he and Garvey stepped in he saw the open closet door in the entry, a coat hanger still swaying slightly, and knew she’d grabbed the sweater just before opening the door. Part of him regretted that, because he wanted to see her breasts again. Another part of him was glad she’d put on the sweater, because he sure as hell didn’t want Garvey seeing them. Distantly he recognized that feeling possessive about her wasn’t good, but that was something he’d deal with later.
Garvey’s sharp gaze was taking in everything, from every detail of the stylish town house to Jaclyn herself. The sergeant had put in years on the detective level, in some rough places, before settling in Hopewell and moving up the ranks. As for Eric, given his previous involvement with Jaclyn, there wasn’t any way he’d be allowed to question her by himself, which was fine with him. Whether she was guilty or innocent, Garvey was there as another set of eyes, another honed instinct, and as a witness that the job had been done right.
“Carrie Edwards was murdered this afternoon,” he said. “How were you aware of this?”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “Not that it was Carrie, I mean. I got a phone call—” She waved a hand toward the living room, which was evidently meant to indicate a phone was in there somewhere, then took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Let’s sit down, please. Would you like some coffee? I can put on a pot of coffee.”
“No, thanks,” Eric said hastily, before Garvey could accept. He didn’t want to deal with that swill again, not even a polite sip or two. They all sat down, and Jaclyn picked up the remote to turn off the television. He slipped his notebook out of his inside jacket pocket and made some notes.
“Who called you?” he asked, keeping his tone as conversational as possible.
“Bishop Delaney. He’s the floral designer who’s doing Carrie’s wedding. Was doing it, anyway. He’d heard—A friend of his had called, told him a woman had been killed at the reception hall, so he called me.”
“Why did he call you?”
“Because this afternoon he and the other vendors left me there alone with Carrie and he thought—oh.” The last word escaped her on a little gasp and she froze, her face going even whiter as she stared at him. She swallowed, her lips moving several times even though nothing else came out.
He watched her reach the inescapable conclusion, watched the expression in her eyes change from blank shock to a quick flash of anger, before going blank again. This time, though, the blankness was more of a deliberate shield.
“You know what happened this afternoon,” she said flatly. “You think I killed her.”
Chapter Ten
“WE’RE QUESTIONING EVERYONE,” HE REPLIED IN A smooth tone. “Why exactly did this Bishop Delaney call you?”
She didn’t believe him. Oh, she believed they would eventually question everyone who had been at the reception hall that afternoon, but considering what had happened, she had to be at the top of their suspect list.
The sharp twist of pain in her chest both surprised and dismayed her. She didn’t want to feel hurt. It was stupid. Intellectually, she knew that Eric was doing his job, knew she couldn’t expect him to do anything else. They had no ties. They hadn’t even dated. There was nothing between them other than a one-night stand.
But however sound and rational her intellect could be, emotionally she felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. It wasn’t any one thing, it was everything together: the shock and uneasiness over learning someone had been murdered at the reception hall, and thinking it might be Melissa, who was a friend even if she wasn’t a close one; then there had been the visceral, unreasoning panic when she’d thought Eric had come to notify her that something had happened to Madelyn. Jaclyn thought of herself as a basically strong person, but in that moment the black terror had almost sent her to her knees. Just when she’d been pulling herself back from the edge of that, she’d been body-slammed by the realization that Eric, to whom she’d given more of herself in one night than she’d ever given to her husband, actually suspected she was a murderer.
She had barely been able to keep from hurling herself into his arms, seeking refuge and comfort from the horrible moment when she’d thought something had happened to her mother. She’d wanted to curl up on his lap like a child, hide her face in his broad shoulder, and let him close out the world. What had she thought? That one night together meant anything more than sex? If so, he’d certainly disabused her of that silliness. Instead of
comfort from him, she’d gotten an interrogation. Boy, what a wake-up call.
She could barely breathe from the weight pressing on her chest. Even realizing that the sense of betrayal she felt was irrational didn’t neutralize the hurt she felt. For a mortifying second she thought she might embarrass herself by bursting into tears, but she swallowed hard and focused on the other man, whose name she couldn’t remember. He was older than Eric, shorter, graying hair, but there was breadth to his shoulders and a direct alertness to his gaze.
“I’m sorry,” she managed to say, though her voice was still a little thin and shaky. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Garvey,” he said. “Sergeant Randall Garvey.”
“Sergeant Garvey,” she repeated, and swallowed again. The weight on her chest loosened and she was able to suck in some much-needed air. Her head cleared a little. Eric had asked her the same question twice, and neither he nor Sergeant Garvey would like it if they had to ask it a third time. “Bishop—I think he was worried that something had happened to me. The afternoon meeting with Carrie was a disaster, and he and the other vendors left me alone with her, except for Melissa—Melissa DeWitt—but she was in her office.”
“Why was he worried?”
“Why ask when you already know she slapped me?” Jaclyn flared, but she kept her gaze locked on Sergeant Garvey even though it was Eric who asked the question. It would be too weird to meet Garvey’s eyes while she was talking to Eric, so instead she focused on his tie.
“We’re just trying to find out what happened. Why did she slap you?”
“I’m not certain. She’d insulted Estefani Morales, the veil-maker, and Estefani was on the verge of quitting. The dressmaker had already quit, just before I got to the reception hall this afternoon. Carrie took a call from her fiancé, Sean Dennison, and while she was talking to him I tried to calm Estefani down. Bishop and I were talking to her, and I said we’d move on to the wedding cake and decide about the veil later. When Carrie got off the phone with Sean, she knocked everything off the table, came rushing over, and slapped me and told me I was fired.” Automatically she put her hand to her cheek, though the sting was gone.
“I imagine handling the Dennison wedding paid you a hefty fee.”
“It did, yes.” She knew exactly where he was going with this, and thanked heaven that their standard contract had them, and her, covered.
“You’d have had to refund the money when you were fired?”
She was on solid ground here, and her voice gained a little confidence. “No. Our contract clearly states that in case the job is terminated, our fee will be prorated based on the amount of work done. Because Carrie’s wedding is—was—so soon and I’d already overseen most of the event, I’m guessing that the amount we’d have had to refund was in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars. Everything was in place, except for the details she hadn’t decided on yet. The proration clause is in there to prevent people from firing us at the last minute and refusing to pay anything. It’s happened.”
“The dressmaker is …”
“Gretchen Gibson. She’d finished the dresses, but yesterday Carrie decided she didn’t like them, wanted to change them. I told her there probably wasn’t time, not to mention the bridesmaids probably couldn’t afford to have other dresses made, and Gretchen told her the same thing. Carrie doesn’t—didn’t—like being told ‘no.’” She couldn’t remember to use the past tense. Somehow she couldn’t absorb that Carrie was really dead, that someone had murdered her. She’d been a nasty piece of work, but Jaclyn hadn’t wished her any harm … nothing beyond wishing she’d fall on her face as she walked down the aisle, maybe. Or that someone would spill a glass of pink champagne on her head. That would be fun to see. But murder? No.
Eric was making notes; though she didn’t look directly at him, she could see him in her peripheral vision. Lest Sergeant Garvey think she was staring at his chest, she moved her gaze down to his knees, then thought better of that and moved on to his feet. His shoes were scuffed on the toes.
“When Ms. Edwards slapped you, what did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” He sounded skeptical. “Come on, Ms. Wilde, you had to have done something.”
“I didn’t hit her back, if that’s what you mean,” she told Garvey’s shoes. Maybe it was time to focus on something else, because how long could she be expected to stare at someone’s shoes? She shouldn’t have turned off the television; if it were on, she could stare at the screen while she answered Eric’s questions. She might not be able to focus on whether the buyer bought house number one, two, or three, but at least she wouldn’t look as if she had a shoe fetish. “I wanted to. I wanted to punch her in the nose. But I didn’t. Planning events is my livelihood, and punching a client wouldn’t exactly be good advertising.” Unless all potential clients knew Carrie, she thought, in which case punching her might be considered a plus. She didn’t share that particular observation, though.
“But what exactly did you do?”
She took a deep breath, trying to organize her jumbled memories of the afternoon. She might as well tell them everything she could remember, even the things that didn’t make her look good, because hearing them from her had to be better than hearing them from someone else, right? “Carrie threatened to ruin Premier’s reputation; she said that no one would ever use us again. I really wanted to punch her then, but Bishop told me not to, that she’d have me arrested for assault if I did, and right then I was the one with the advantage because she’d hit me. So I didn’t. I decided to be as professional as possible, under the circumstances. I got all of the vendors out of there, told them to reschedule, and told Carrie that if she hit me again I’d have her arrested.” That particular memory burned, because it connected to Eric, and how she’d told Carrie she was involved with him and any complaint Carrie made wouldn’t gain any traction. Evidently that was so not true.
She cleared her throat. “I also told her that I take kickboxing, and if she hit me again I’d wipe the floor with her ass. I don’t. Take kickboxing, that is. Anyway, I figured the lie would stop her if she’d been about to take another swing at me.” She simply couldn’t stare at Garvey’s shoes any longer. Desperately she looked at his left hand. Wedding ring in place. A few freckles on his thick fingers, maybe, but with just the lamps on she couldn’t be certain.
“What happened then?”
“Um … she threatened to sue us to get all of her money back. I told her to go ahead, that she’d signed a contract and she’d hit me in front of five witnesses. She said the witnesses wouldn’t say anything if they wanted to keep their jobs, and I told her they didn’t need her job. Then I told her to have a happy wedding, that maybe someone would show up other than the poor fool who was marrying her, or words to that effect. Then I left.”
“Who were the five witnesses?”
She gave them the names of the four vendors who’d been there, plus Melissa DeWitt.
“I thought you said Mrs. DeWitt was in her office.”
“She was, at that time. After Carrie slapped me, I asked Melissa to let me handle things, so she said she had some phone calls to make and left. Then I got the vendors out of there, before they got drawn into a fight. Carrie and I had it out alone, then I left.”
“What time was this?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I called my mother—she’s also my business partner in Premier,” she said for Garvey’s benefit, as Eric already knew that. “We met at Claire’s for some coffee and a muffin, and I filled her in on what had happened. The time will be on my cell phone,” she said, pointing to it. “Also the time that Bishop called me, if you’re interested.”
Evidently Eric was interested, because he picked up her phone, then paused and said, “May I?”
“Of course.” She didn’t have anything to hide, and they couldn’t prove she’d killed Carrie for the simple reason that she hadn’t. There was that pesky thing called circumstantial evidence, though, plus cau
se, and she had to admit she could be in some trouble there. She had to forget her hurt feelings and concentrate solely on the current situation, which was serious.
He flipped her phone open and ran through her call log, jotting down times and numbers. “Did anyone see you leave?” he asked in a casual tone as he closed the phone and placed it back on the table.
“A man drove up as I was leaving, but I don’t know who he was.”
There was a pause. “A man?”
“A gray-haired man. He was wearing a suit. That’s really all I can tell you.”
“Did you see his car?”
“Um … it was silver. A sedan. I didn’t notice the make.”
“Did he go inside?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Not really. He was walking toward the side door, but I didn’t actually see him go inside.”
“Did you go straight from the reception hall to Claire’s?”
“Yes. Mom had some time before she had to be at the wedding we had scheduled tonight.” Automatically Jaclyn checked the time, vaguely noticing how nice it was to look at something other than Garvey. “The reception should be over soon; she might check in to tell me how things went.”
“What did you do after you left Claire’s?”
“I came home. I had a pile of laundry to do.”
“Did you see anyone, talk to anyone?”
“No, not until Bishop called to tell me someone had been murdered at the reception hall.”
“Did you go back to the reception hall?”
“No, why would I?” she asked blankly.
“Your briefcase was found on the floor. Maybe you went back to retrieve it, found that Ms. Edwards was still there, and the two of you had another altercation.”
“My br—” Jaclyn stopped, blinking in astonishment. How could she have forgotten her briefcase? Why hadn’t she noticed it before now? Having it in her hand was as natural as having on clothes. She looked around, as if it might magically appear, but he was right: no briefcase.