by Nora Roberts
He hesitated. She looked so tired, so pale and so fragile. Where Julie had been long and willowy, Jamie was small and fine-boned. Both had carried a look of delicacy that he knew was deceptive. He’d often joked that the MacBride sisters were tough broads, bred to climb mountains and tramp through woods.
“Let’s get some coffee. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
Like her sister, Jamie had refused live-in staff. It was her house, by God, and she wouldn’t sacrifice her privacy. The day maid wouldn’t be in for another two hours, so she brewed the coffee herself while David sat at the counter and stared out the window.
They didn’t speak. In her head she ran over the tasks she would have to face that day. The call to her parents would be the worst, and she was already bracing for it. Funeral arrangements would have to be made—carefully, to ensure as much dignity and privacy as possible. The press would be salivating. She would make sure the television remained off as long as Olivia was in the house.
She set two cups of coffee on the counter, sat. “Tell me.”
“There isn’t much more than Detective Brady already told us,” David began. “There wasn’t any forced entry. She let him in. She was, ah, dressed for bed, but hadn’t been to bed. It looked as though she’d been in the living room working on clippings. You know how she liked to send your folks clippings.”
He rubbed both hands over his face, then picked up his coffee. “They must have argued. There were signs of a fight. He used the scissors on her.” Horror bloomed in his eyes. “Jamie, he must have lost his mind.”
His gaze came to hers, held. When he reached for her hand, she curled her fingers around his tightly. “Did he—was it quick?”
“I don’t—I’ve never seen—he went wild.” He closed his eyes a moment. She would hear, in any case. There would be leaks, there would be media full of truth and lies. “Jamie, she was . . . he stabbed her repeatedly, and slashed her throat.”
The color drained from her face, but her hand stayed firm in his. “She fought back. She must have fought him. Hurt him.”
“I don’t know. They have to do an autopsy. We’ll know more after that. They think Olivia saw some of it, saw something, then hid from him.” He drank coffee in the faint hope it would settle his jittery stomach. “They want to talk to her.”
“She can’t be put through that.” This time she jerked back, yanking her hand free. “She’s a baby, David. I won’t have them put her through that. They know he did it,” she said with a fierce and vicious bitterness. “I won’t have my sister’s child questioned by the police.”
David let out a long breath. “He’s claiming he found Julie that way. That he came in and found her already dead.”
“Liar.” Her eyes fired, and color flooded back into her face, harsh and passionate. “Murdering bastard. I want him dead. I want to kill him myself. He made her life a misery this past year, and now he’s killed her. Burning in hell isn’t enough.”
She whirled away, wanting to pound something, tear something to pieces. Then stopped short when she saw Olivia staring at her from the doorway with wide eyes.
“Livvy.”
“Where’s Mama?” Her bottom lip trembled. “I want my mama.”
“Livvy.” As temper drained into grief, and grief into helplessness, Jamie bent down and picked her up.
“The monster came and hurt Mama. Is she all right now?”
Over the child’s head, Jamie’s desperate eyes met her husband’s. He held out a hand, and she walked over so the three of them stood wrapped together.
“Your mother had to go away, Livvy.” Jamie closed her eyes as she pressed a kiss to Olivia’s head. “She didn’t want to, but she had to.”
“Is she coming back soon?”
There was a ripple in Jamie’s chest, like a wave breaking on rock. “No, honey. She’s not coming back.”
“She always comes back.”
“This time she can’t. She had to go to heaven and be an angel.”
Olivia knuckled her eyes. “Like a movie?”
As her legs began to tremble, Jamie sat, cradling her sister’s child. “No, baby, not like a movie this time.”
“The monster hurt her and I ran away. So she won’t come back. She’s mad at me.”
“No, no, Livvy.” Praying for wisdom, Jamie eased back, cupped Olivia’s face in her hands. “She wanted you to run away. She wanted you to be a smart girl, and run away and hide. To be safe. That was what she wanted most of all. If you hadn’t, she’d have been very sad.”
“Then she’ll come back tomorrow.” Tomorrow was a concept she knew only as later, another time, soon.
“Livvy.” With a nod to his wife, David slid the child onto his lap, relieved when she laid her head against his chest and sighed. “She can’t come back, but she’ll be watching you from up in heaven.”
“I don’t want her to be in heaven.” She began to cry now, soft, sniffling sobs. “I want to go home and see Mama.”
When Jamie reached for her, David shook his head. “Let her cry it out,” he murmured.
Jamie pressed her lips together, nodded. Then she rose to go up to her bedroom and call her parents.
two
The press stalked, a pack of rabid wolves scenting heart blood. At least that was how Jamie thought of them as she barricaded her family behind closed doors. To be fair, a great many of the reporters were shocked and grieving and broadcast the story with as much delicacy as the circumstances allowed.
Julie MacBride had been well loved—desired, admired and envied—but loved all the same.
But Jamie wasn’t feeling particularly fair. Not when Olivia sat like a doll in the guest room or wandered downstairs as thin and pale as a ghost. Wasn’t it enough that the child had lost her mother in the most horrible of ways? Wasn’t it enough that she, herself, had lost her sister, her twin, her closest friend?
But she had lived in the glittery world of Hollywood with its seductive shadows for eight years now. And she knew it was never enough.
Julie MacBride had been a public figure, a symbol of beauty, talent, sex with the girl-next-door spin, a country girl turned glamorous movie princess who’d married the reigning prince and lived with him in their polished castle in Beverly Hills.
Those who paid their money at the box office, who devoured glossy articles in People or absurdities in the tabloids, considered her theirs. Julie MacBride of the quick and brilliant smile and smoky voice.
But they didn’t know her. Oh, they thought they did, with their exposés, their interviews and glossy articles. Julie had certainly been open and honest in most of them. That was her way, and she’d never taken her success for granted. It had always thrilled and delighted her. But no matter how much print and tape and film they’d run on the actress, they’d never really understood the woman herself: her sense of fun and foolishness, her love of the forest and mountains of Washington State where she’d grown up, her absolute loyalty to family, her unshakable love and devotion to her daughter.
And her tragic and undying love for the man who’d killed her.
That was what Jamie found hardest to accept. She’d let him in, was all she could think. In the end, she’d gone with her heart and had opened the door to the man she loved, even knowing he’d stopped being that man.
Would she have done the same? They’d shared a great deal, more than sisters, more than friends. Part of it came from being twins, certainly, but added to that was their shared childhood in the deep woods. The hours, the days, the evenings they’d spent exploring together. Learning, loving the scents and sounds and secrets of the forest. Following tracks, sleeping under the stars. Sharing their dreams as naturally as they had once shared the womb.
Now it was as if something in Jamie had died as well. The kindest part, she thought. The freshest and most vulnerable part. She doubted she would ever be whole again. Knew she would never be the same again.
Strong, she could be strong. Would have to be. Olivia depended on he
r; David would need her. She knew he’d loved Julie, too, had thought of her as his own sister. And her parents as his own.
She stopped pacing to glance up the stairs. They were here now, up with Olivia in her room. They would need her, too. However sturdy they were, they would need their remaining child to help them get through the next weeks.
When the doorbell rang, she jumped, then closed her eyes. She who had once considered herself fearless was shaking at shadows and whispers. She drew a breath in, let it out slowly.
David had arranged for guards, and the reporters were ordered not to come onto the property. But over that long, terrible day one slipped through now and then. She wanted to ignore the bell. To let it ring and ring and ring. But that would disturb Olivia, upset her parents.
She marched toward the door intending to rip off the reporter’s skin, then through the etched-glass panels beside the wood she recognized the detectives who had come in the dark of the morning to tell her Julie was dead.
“Mrs. Melbourne. I’m sorry to disturb you.”
It was Frank Brady who spoke, and he whom Jamie focused on. “Detective Brady, isn’t it?”
“Yes, may we come in?”
“Of course.” She stepped back. Frank noted that she had enough control to keep behind the door, not to give the camera crews a shot at her. It had been her control he’d noted, and admired, the night before.
She’d rushed out of the house, he recalled, even before they’d fully braked at the entrance. But the minute she’d seen the girl in his arms, she’d seemed to snap back, to steady. She’d taken charge of her niece, bundling her close, carrying her upstairs.
He studied her again as she led them into the salon.
He knew now that she and Julie MacBride had been twins, with Jamie the elder by seven minutes. Yet there wasn’t as much resemblance as he might have expected. Julie MacBride had owned a blazing beauty—despite delicate features and that golden coloring, it had flamed out and all but burned the onlooker.
The sister had quieter looks, hair more brown than blond that was cut in a chin-length swing and worn sleek, eyes more chocolate than gold and lacking that sensuous heavy-lidded shape. She was about five-three, Frank calculated, probably about a hundred and ten pounds on slender bones where her sister had been a long-stemmed five-ten.
He wondered if she’d been envious of her sister, of that perfection of looks and the excess of fame.
“Can I get you anything? Coffee?”
It was Tracy who answered, judging that she needed to do something normal before getting down to business. “I wouldn’t mind some coffee, Mrs. Melbourne. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“No . . . we seem to have pots going day and night. I’ll see to it. Please sit down.”
“She’s holding up,” Tracy commented when he was alone with his partner.
“She’s got a way to go.” Frank flicked open the curtains a slit to study the mob of press at the edge of the property. “This one’s going to be a zoo, a long-running one. It’s not every day America’s princess gets cut to ribbons inside her own castle.”
“By the prince,” Tracy added. He tapped his pocket where he kept his cigarettes—then thought better of it. “We’ll get maybe one more shot at him before he pulls it together and calls for a lawyer.”
“Then we’d better make it a bull’s-eye.” Frank let the curtain close and turned as Jamie came back into the room with a tray of coffee.
He sat when she did. He didn’t smile. Her eyes told him she didn’t require or want pleasantries and masks. “We appreciate this, Mrs. Melbourne. We know this is a bad time for you.”
“Right now it seems it’ll never be anything else.” She waited while Tracy added two heaping spoonsful of sugar to his mug. “You want to talk to me about Julie.”
“Yes, ma’am. Were you aware that your sister placed a nine-one-one call due to a domestic disturbance three months ago?”
“Yes.” Her hands were steady as she lifted her own mug. “Sam came home in an abusive state of mind. Physically abusive this time.”
“This time?”
“He’d been verbally, emotionally abusive before.” Her voice was brisk and clear. She refused to let it quaver. “Over the last year and a half that I know of.”
“Is it your opinion Mr. Tanner has a problem with drugs?”
“You know very well Sam has a habit.” Her eyes stayed level on Frank’s. “If you haven’t figured that out, you’re in the wrong business.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Melbourne. Detective Brady and I are just trying to touch all the bases. We have to figure you’d know your sister’s husband, his routines. Maybe she talked to you about their personal problems.”
“She did, of course. Julie and I were very close. We could talk about anything.” For a moment, Jamie looked away, struggling to keep it all steady. Voice, hands, eyes. “I think it started a couple of years ago, social cocaine.” She smiled, but it was thin and hard. “Julie hated it. They argued about it. They began to argue over a great many things. His last two movies didn’t do as well as expected, critically or financially. Actors can be a tender species. Julie was worried because Sam became edgy, argumentative. But as much as she tried to smooth things over, her own career was soaring. He resented that, began to resent her.”
“He was jealous of her,” Frank prompted.
“Yes, when he should have been proud. They began to go out more, parties, clubs. He felt he needed to be seen. Julie supported him in that, but she was a homebody. I know it’s difficult to equate the image, the beauty, glamour, with a woman who was happiest at home, in her garden, with her daughter, but that was Julie.”
Her voice cracked. She cleared it, sipped more coffee and continued. “She was working on the feature with Lucas Manning, Smoke and Shadows. It was a demanding, difficult role. Very physical. Julie couldn’t afford to work twelve or fourteen hours, come home, then polish herself up for night after night on the town. She wanted time to relax, time with Olivia. So Sam started going out on his own.”
“There were some rumors about your sister and Manning.”
Jamie shifted her gaze to Tracy, nodded. “Yes, there usually are when two very attractive people fire up the screen. People romanticize, and they enjoy gossip. Sam hounded her about other men, and Lucas in particular most recently. The rumors were groundless. Julie considered Lucas a friend and a marvelous leading man.”
“How did Sam take it?” Frank asked her.
She sighed now and set down her mug, but didn’t rub at the ache behind her eyes. “If it had been three or four years ago, he’d have laughed it off, teased her about it. Instead he hounded her, sniped at her. He accused her of trying to run his life, of encouraging other men, then of being with other men. Lucas was his prime target. It hurt Julie very much.”
“Some women would turn to a friend, to another man under that kind of pressure.” Frank watched her steadily as her eyes flared, her mouth tightened.
“Julie took her marriage seriously. She loved her husband. Enough, as it turned out, to stick by him until he killed her. And if you want to turn this around and make her seem cheap and ordinary—”
“Mrs. Melbourne.” Frank lifted a hand. “If we want to close this case, to get justice for your sister, we need to ask. We need all the pieces.”
She ordered herself to breathe, slowly in, slowly out, and poured more coffee she didn’t want. “The pieces are simple. Her career was moving up, and his was shaky. The shakier it got, the more he did drugs and the more he turned the blame on her. She called the police that night last spring because he attacked her in their daughter’s room and she was afraid for Livvy. She was afraid for all of them.”
“She filed for divorce.”
“That was a difficult decision for her. She wanted Sam to get help, to go into counseling, and she used the separation as a hammer. Most of all, she wanted to protect her daughter. Sam had become unstable. She wouldn’t risk her child.”
“Yet i
t appears she opened the door to him on the night of her death.”
“Yes.” Jamie’s hand shook now. Once. She set the coffee down and folded both hands in her lap. “She loved him. Despite everything, she loved him and believed if he could beat the drugs they’d get back together. She wanted more children. She wanted her husband back. She was careful to keep the separation out of the press. Beyond the family, the only people who knew of it were the lawyers. She’d hoped to keep it that way as long as possible.”
“Would she have opened the door to him when he was under the influence of drugs?”
“That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
“I’m just trying to get a picture,” Frank told her.
“She must have. She wanted to help him, and she believed she could handle him. If it hadn’t been for Livvy, I don’t think she’d have filed papers.”
But her daughter had been in the house that night, Frank thought. In the house, and at risk. “You knew them both very well.”
“Yes.”
“In your opinion, is Sam Tanner capable of killing your sister?”
“The Sam Tanner Julie married would have thrown himself in front of a train to protect her.” Jamie picked up her coffee again, but it didn’t wash away the bitterness that coated her throat. “The one you have in custody is capable of anything. He killed my sister. He mutilated her, ripping her apart like an animal. I want him to die for it.”
She spoke coolly, but her eyes were ripe and hot with hate. Frank met that violent gaze, nodded. “I understand your feelings, Mrs. Melbourne.”
“No, no, detective. You couldn’t possibly.”
Frank let it go as Tracy shifted in his chair. “Mrs. Melbourne,” Frank began. “It would be very helpful if we were able to speak with Olivia.”
“She’s four years old.”
“I realize that. But the fact is, she’s a witness. We need to know what she saw, what she heard.” Reading both denial and hesitation on her face, he pressed. “Mrs. Melbourne, I don’t want to cause you or your family any more pain, and I don’t want to upset the child. But she’s part of this. A key part.”