Love by Association

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “What does that mean?”

  “I mean that if you’re going to spend your whole life putting me first, not only above yourself but above anyone you fall in love with, you’re probably not going to be as happy as you deserve to be.”

  Where had that come from?

  “Did Chantel...?”

  “No!” Julie interrupted him. “She didn’t. I have eyes, Colin. Not only that, I’ve been at the other end of your unblinking ones for ten years. Let me go, just a little. It’s not only okay, it’s healthy. That’s all I’m saying.”

  He nodded. Said okay. But he didn’t understand. Not really.

  The way things had been going lately, he wasn’t sure he would ever again have complete understanding. Of anything.

  * * *

  CHANTEL HAD THE seating chart memorized. She and Colin had already eaten and were in place at the front door, greeting everyone who came in, giving them their first clues for the evening. And directing them toward their tables. Julie would be seated with Leslie and her husband toward the front of the room. The Smyths, who were at the commissioner’s table, were on the opposite side of the room, toward the back.

  She and Wayne still didn’t know how deeply involved the commissioner was with the David Smyth cover-up, but they had determined that, with Chantel’s plan, it didn’t much matter. That was the beauty of it. Even if he was in over his head, he’d still have to hold the man until he was arrested if he was caught molesting a woman in front of their entire crowd.

  Most particularly since he’d know that the woman in question was one of his own.

  But if he wasn’t in that deep, if he was the man she’d honored and respected above all else this past year, then he would not only help her take down Smyth Jr. but by so doing should be able to help her convince Leslie to come forward and tell the truth about what her husband was doing to her. Help her see that at some point James Morrison was most likely going to turn his fists on their son, too.

  “You as ready as I am for this to be finished?” Colin leaned over to whisper after he’d given a long spiel about the pure gold pen and pencil set that were among all of the things he was soon to inherit.

  Batting her eyes at him, Chantel leaned forward far enough for him to see down the cleavage of her low-cut, short black dress and whispered back. “I’m ready to see if that gold pen of yours means as much to you as this does.”

  She was playing a part. And nervous as hell.

  The Smyths had yet to arrive. He’d seen them many times over the years, spoken to them, treated them cordially, but that didn’t mean he’d be happy about introducing them to Chantel. She got that.

  Brett Ackerman, founder of The Lemonade Stand—the unique women’s shelter that had provided Meri with a safe haven during the weeks she’d been on the run—was going to be there that night with his wife, Ella, the charge nurse in the neonatal intensive care unit at the new Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital. They hadn’t been sure they’d be able to make it because Ella was expecting their first child any minute, but she’d been adamant that if she hadn’t delivered yet, she wanted to be there.

  A member of the High Risk team herself, she was on sabbatical from it only until after her son was born.

  Though they knew nothing of the evening’s operation, they knew Chantel was undercover on a missive from the team. And, as they greeted her as if just meeting her for the first time, they managed to give her hand an extra squeeze.

  Their presence calmed nerves she hadn’t expected to have or planned for.

  She’d have liked to have had Max and Meri there. Unfortunately, they weren’t in the multimillionaire league.

  As it turned out, the meeting between her and both David Smyth Jr. and Sr. was mostly uneventful. They’d come in with at least ten other people directly in front of them, and Colin was busy with the first few couples when the Smyths walked past his little grouping to seek her out.

  Deliberately avoiding him? Probably.

  She was glad they’d shown him the respect of letting him know he intimidated them that much.

  She played her part with the father, making a comment about how handsome he looked that evening.

  When David took her hand, holding it a bit longer than his father had, she leaned forward and whispered in his ear, telling him, in the obviously made-up accent she’d adopted for her character that evening, that he was exactly what she’d go for if she were free to go.

  He looked surprised. And then grinned. She grinned right back.

  She knew that he was taking her bait.

  * * *

  LESLIE GAVE THE official start to the evening as soon as the last guests had arrived. With a little over two hundred people in the room, she was using a PA system and, in an impressively dramatic voice, informed everyone that just that afternoon, when they’d come to prepare for the evening’s entertainment, two bodies had been found on the premises—one in a bedroom and one elsewhere. She asked for everybody’s help in finding the murderer or murderers. She gave an official introduction to Chantel and Colin, the alleged heirs to the mansion, followed by a few guidelines that would rule the evening.

  A reward was being offered to the first person or persons who solved the crime—an exotic vacation for two.

  Over dinner, Colin and Chantel made their way around the room, leaning over to whisper things in their guests’ ears. Clues—some true, some completely bogus—for each one alone. It was up to them if they shared information among themselves. The evening would likely end sooner if they did, but she and Colin were careful to not give too many different clues to anyone sitting at the same table.

  Since Julie and Leslie had been in charge of assigning seats based on who would be more likely to pair up, they were pretty safe in their dissemination. No two people got the same information.

  Chantel had offered to take the Smyth table. She hit the commissioner up first. The secret she gave him was that she hoped he enjoyed his evening. She was a little nervous about the operation she was conducting that evening without his knowledge.

  Moving around the table, she took more time with all of the men than she did with the ladies. And told David Smyth that she hoped she’d see him upstairs, alone, later.

  She had a similar message for the other tables. That she’d like to see someone upstairs later. She told men at some tables, women at others.

  Entrapment wasn’t going to be an out for Smyth. She was going to have him dead to rights, in front of everyone he knew. An entire society would have to turn a blind eye to his criminal activities this time.

  She’d had a call from Wayne that afternoon. He was busy trying to track down other Smyth victims, talking to people who worked in the emergency room and researching known associates for anything that raised a flag. They had no idea who Max’s informant was and had no warrant to otherwise access emergency room information, and so far he’d had no luck but she was confident that once Smyth got caught, others would come forward.

  Her stomach was in knots as she and Colin helped the caterers deliver dessert trays to each of the thirty-four tables. As soon as the guests rose to start their sleuthing around the mansion, she had to head upstairs. Her murder was going to be one of the first things on the agenda. They couldn’t take a chance that someone would solve the mystery before the night’s events had a chance to play out.

  Nor did they want everyone dispersed before Leslie could make the announcement that there’d been another death upstairs, telling everyone they might want to view that crime scene, as well. She wasn’t going to say who’d been killed. There’d been some changes to her original plan, but she was still satisfied that it would work.

  This was at Chantel’s insistence, with Wayne’s input, to avoid any hint of entrapment.

  Colin was bound to hear about it—as guests visited him in the study with the safe.
Which was why he’d been told that there was a surprise twist to the evening.

  Confident that the plan was going to work, that they’d thought of and arranged for every eventuality, Chantel made her way upstairs as soon as she’d delivered her last dessert tray.

  She’d chosen the room with care. It was far enough away from the night’s events, from any other clues, to give Smyth the feeling of safety. Yet had an old antique air duct and heating register that would allow her voice to travel, and be heard, when she screamed. The room was empty—as were most of the upstairs rooms. Pulling her gun from her thigh holster, cocking it to put a bullet in the chamber so it was ready to go, she put it back.

  She was overreacting. She knew that. Smyth’s only violence happened when his victims were nearly comatose. He was a coward. She could take him hand-to-hand.

  But she was a cop on assignment. And always had a gun with her.

  Even in the hotel room with Colin. And at his house. Tucked away in a compartment at the bottom of her cosmetic bag when she couldn’t wear it on her person.

  The room was good. The camera in place. The gun was good.

  Pulling up her skirt a little, she lay down and opened her mouth.

  And then remembered that she’d forgotten to pop the packet of fake blood Leslie had brought for her with the rest of the props from the community college theater department.

  Sitting up, she grabbed it from just inside her holster and squirted a bit on her thigh and chest. What was left, she sprayed on the newly laid laminate wood floor.

  And then, as preplanned, she screamed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  COLIN PLAYED HIS PART. But as thirty minutes passed, as more people visited him, clearly enjoying themselves, when he should have felt satisfaction that the work was paying off, that the venture was successful and the library would be certain to receive over and above the projected donations, he grew increasingly unsettled.

  Chantel had been murdered. That was the big secret. From what he’d heard, there’d been a scream and then Leslie had called them all together in the main room to make the announcement. He didn’t understand how the maneuver added anything to the night’s adventure. Were people supposed to think that whoever had killed the first two perps was still among them?

  Still murdering?

  He didn’t like it. Too much tension could result in panic.

  Instinct told him to leave his post immediately. To investigate.

  His new outlook on life urged him to take a deep breath. To trust the women in his life to know what they were doing. Julie and Chantel were both writers.

  Who was he to question artistic license?

  When David Smyth Sr. entered his room, he was ready to bolt and kick ass. Not necessarily in that order.

  The elder Smyth was traveling the mansion with his wife, along with Paul and Patricia Reynolds, but entered the room alone as the other three were stopped by mutual friends just outside the door of the study.

  “I’m glad I have a minute alone with you, son,” said the man who’d once been his father’s best friend.

  “Don’t call me son.” Colin wanted to take the words back the second they were uttered. He was exposing himself. Something he’d sworn he would never do in front of that man.

  Smyth bowed his head. “I apologize.”

  What kind of game was the bastard playing?

  “I just wanted to tell you that you’ve found a good woman. That I know your father would approve. That I miss him every day of my life. And I regret every day of my life the position my son put me in. I hope that someday, when you have children of your own, you’ll understand.”

  Feeling the pulse beat at his temple, in time with the heat suffusing his entire head, Colin gritted his teeth.

  “I was glad to see your sister here tonight. I can’t tell you the number of nights I walk my house, unable to sleep, with her pain on my conscience.”

  Colin wanted to tell the man to rot in his hell. He thought he might have, but the others joined him before he got the words out of his clenched jaws.

  Then he just played his part.

  As always. He could count on himself for that.

  * * *

  CHANTEL HAD NO idea how two hundred people, in twos and fives, could all visit a room, gape at a prone body on the floor, look around at the rest of the nothingness and be gone within half an hour.

  What she did know was that as she lay there, peering at them all through the arm she’d thrown over her eyes—to give her a way to observe surreptitiously—was that David Smyth Jr. had had a gleam in his eye as he’d stood with his wife, listening to her chatter about the evidence in the room. The two of them had been traveling alone, and at first, Chantel had worried that her plan was going to fail. If David’s wife had no one else to talk to, he might not come up here alone...

  But then another couple joined them. A woman David’s wife was obviously fond of. When the woman, her husband and David’s wife all left the room, he paused, stared at her thigh and she knew that her plan was going to succeed. Because David Smyth Jr. wanted it to. She’d issued her invitation earlier, and he would have found a way to keep it even if she hadn’t made it easy for him.

  Video chip was on and in place. The cop was on duty.

  And justice would be done.

  * * *

  THREE PEOPLE WERE in the room with Colin when the lights went out. He’d been told to expect the moment, and he played along—pretending to be alarmed, wondering what was going on. The idea to lose the lights, momentarily, had been Julie’s—to add suspense to the evening.

  He hadn’t been sure of causing panic in the dark, but when Chantel and Leslie had agreed with Julie, he’d gone along with it. He’d do just about anything to encourage Julie’s self-confidence. She was there. Taking part.

  Thankful for the miracle, he made certain to instill calm in the three people he had with him and hoped to hell the evening’s guests played along as expected.

  Commissioner Reynolds was there. While Colin had no personal respect for the man, he did believe he was a great cop who wouldn’t want mayhem and panic to break out among his peers. Colin could always hope that the man’s presence would invite a feeling of safety among the guests.

  But he didn’t like being trapped in one room. Didn’t like Chantel and Julie out among the masses—masses that included the Smyth family—without him. He wasn’t comfortable sitting in the dark doing nothing.

  And he most definitely wanted the evening done.

  * * *

  THE LIGHTS WENT OUT. Chantel lay in the dark. On full alert.

  She couldn’t stop Junior from anything he might do until the lights came on and the camera caught him in the act, couldn’t render her second scream until everyone could see well enough to rush up and find out what was going on.

  Until she heard enough people milling around outside her door to know there would be enough of a crowd finding him in the act to raise enough of a stink that more of them would come to see for themselves what scandal was taking place.

  She wasn’t particularly a friend of the dark. She liked sitcoms to share the dark with her.

  She waited.

  No one came to her room.

  No one was there.

  And the lights turned back on.

  Shit.

  Where in the hell was he?

  The scumbag had to act true to character. Just one more time.

  She was not going to let him get away.

  The lights went out again.

  And Chantel willed the monster to come find her.

  * * *

  THE SECOND TIME the lights went out Colin went for the door. Six people were in the hallway, five were in his room.

  Most were chatting. About who done it
. And about their kids, too.

  He was overreacting, thinking only he could save the day.

  Julie’s words from earlier that evening came back to him.

  I’ve been at the other end of your unblinking eyes for ten years. Let me go, just a little. It’s not only okay, it’s healthy. That’s all I’m saying...

  He’d been holding his sister captive with his need to protect her. He’d let her go to a party, and she’d been raped. But he had to let her do this. And Chantel, too.

  So he tried, but he wondered if maybe, just maybe, she had it all wrong.

  * * *

  SHE HEARD THE door shut before she realized she wasn’t alone. He was one-up on her. She couldn’t afford a second.

  Her gun between her thighs was small comfort. Shooting Smyth would get her nothing but charged with attempted murder. Or, more likely, murder. Because if she shot she wasn’t going to miss.

  She had no way of knowing for sure that it was Smyth who’d joined her. In the dark, the small peephole she had in the crook of her arm gave her nothing.

  And then she smelled it. The same musky cinnamon smell he’d reeked of when she’d first met him that evening. She was never going to like cologne again. Or maybe she’d love it, because it gave her the impetus she needed.

  She was going to get this man. Put him down. For life.

  For all of the lives he’d taken...

  “Finally, I’ve got you all to myself,” he murmured. If she hadn’t already recognized his scent, she’d have known his voice.

  While her skin crawled, or maybe Johnson’s skin did, Chantel welcomed the adrenaline that surged through her.

  “You know I’m not really dead,” she said, losing the high-pitched ditzy voice she’d used earlier in the evening.

  “Of course. You want a drink? I brought one for me, too.”

  He handed her the glass in the dark. Sitting up, Chantel took it. “What is it?” she asked. Because a reasonable woman would.

  “Drink it, you’ll like it,” he told her.