by Leslie Kelly
His brow shot up. “That’s all?”
“Well, no…he also took the blue bra-and-panty set I was wearing in that picture.”
A tiny smile appeared on those sexy lips. “Uh…was it peacock blue?”
“Oh, crap.”
He knew. Nick knew she was the Peacock Feather Girl. He’d probably seen the picture that had made it look like she was hardly wearing anything at all. How utterly embarrassing.
“It’s okay, I doubt anyone upstairs recognized you,” he murmured. “I certainly didn’t. Dex mentioned it.”
“Good old Rosemary,” she mumbled, shaking her head.
Then Nick straightened and leaned forward, dropping his elbows on his knees. “Melody, I think it is possible Jonathan Rhodes took your very famous lingerie, as well as the pink set he was wearing. He had a—hell, I don’t know how to describe it—I guess you’d call it a shrine or something, in his secret closet where we found the body. There was a padded hanger, with candles all around it, and a poster-size blowup of that picture on the wall behind it.”
“Oh, my God,” she groaned. No wonder he’d mentioned the cops not recognizing her: he’d been trying to make her feel better about the fact that every officer in Rhodes’s apartment had probably seen that poster. Hopefully he was right and they hadn’t recognized her from the photo that had made her leave the modeling world behind out of sheer embarrassment. Not to mention the need to have a normal life.
A normal life with the prick with the drill. That hadn’t worked out so well. As for the embarrassment thing? Yeesh. Not so well, either.
“I guess, if you think about it, the peacock set really would be the Holy Grail of women’s undies to a true collector,” he said. Then, looking curious, he asked, “How did you end up with it, anyway? Do models usually get to keep the stuff they’ve modeled?”
“Not usually. But Luscious Lingerie was a pretty small company and they were having serious financial problems at the time. They offered me the lingerie I’d modeled since they couldn’t come up with my full salary.”
Just as well. If she’d had the money, Bill would simply have ended up with that, too.
“Gotcha,” Nick said. Then he continued, “Anyway, the peacock lingerie is not in his ‘shrine.’ The hanger was empty and I would have recognized it if it were among his…collection.” His tone revealed his distaste for whatever else had been in Jonathan Rhodes’s closet. Aside from Jonathan Rhodes.
“Okay,” she mumbled, staring at him in confusion and disbelief. “So you think two different people stole my underwear today? Jonathan and whoever killed him?”
He stared at her. “That seems far-fetched, doesn’t it?”
“Well, yeah!”
“Which is why,” he said, his tone even and his expression grave again, “it’s fortunate that couple walked into your studio this afternoon.”
IF NICK HAD THOUGHT the murder of a tourist in an antique shop had been bad, it was nothing next to someone offing a former congressman dressed in a bra and panties. The whole city was talking, speculating, whispering. If somebody wrote a book about this case, he just prayed they had the good sense not to put a graveyard statue on the cover.
So far, he’d kept Melody out of the spotlight. He wanted to keep it that way. The woman was lucky that engaged couple had come into her studio completely by chance on Friday afternoon. Because even after they’d confirmed her story—and the timing—his lieutenant had kept a suspicious eye on the owner of the stolen underwear.
According to the medical examiner, the victim had been shot approximately two to three hours before his body was discovered by a friend of Rhodes’s, who had a key to the apartment. Between Nick’s own visit to the studio, Melody’s phone call with Rosemary, and her walk-in clients, Melody Tanner was in the clear. He didn’t even have to evaluate why he was so relieved by that…his interest in Melody was already much too intense to be convoluted with any suspicions of murder.
He’d never really believed her capable of it, anyway. Other than the fact that she threatened murder every ten minutes, Nick didn’t think Melody had a violent bone in her body. And frankly, with her friends, he didn’t blame her for the threats.
“How’s Melody holding up?” Dex asked, interrupting Nick’s train of thought. The two of them were back at the precinct, going over the crime-scene report. It had been four days since the murder and everything else had slid to the back burner for those in the precinct.
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen her since Friday night.”
His partner’s brow shot up. Hell, Nick couldn’t figure it out himself, so he sure couldn’t explain it to Dex. But for some reason, Mel was avoiding him, back to not taking his calls unless she absolutely had to. There had been two necessary phone conversations: one to give him the information on the engaged couple, and the other to confirm that her pink lingerie had been taken. She’d cut both calls short.
“You sure that’s wise?”
“She’s not a suspect,” Nick said, immediately stiffening. “Her alibi’s good.”
“I know that,” Dex’s said in the calm, reasonable voice that had been known to make criminals blab anything, thinking he was their best friend. Unlike Nick’s piercing, silent stare that intimidated them into doing the same thing. “I’m saying, we still haven’t found her rather infamous underwear. What if it wasn’t a random robbery by whoever killed Rhodes? What if the person who shot him had that motive all along…to steal the things Rhodes had already stolen from Miss Tanner?”
Nick raised a scoffing brow. “Murdered for a pair of panties and a bra? That’s pretty out there, even for Savannah.”
“I’m just saying…there wasn’t much else missing from the apartment. It’s possible the perp grabbed a few things on the spur of the moment to cover up his real objective. And since there was no sign of forced entry, we have to assume it was someone Jonathan let into the apartment. Maybe someone who had an interest in the same types of things.”
“Like wearing famous women’s underwear?” Nick’s tone revealed his skepticism.
“Yeah.”
Ridiculous. Outrageous.
Possible?
“Shit,” Nick muttered. “I’d hoped she was out of this altogether.”
“I don’t think she is,” Dex said. “Aside from her lingerie, there’s still the list connection.”
“You don’t really believe somebody’s knocking off men she once talked about having sex with, do you?”
Holding his stare evenly, Dex murmured, “I wasn’t the one who had the Atlanta PD fax over the report on the death of that golfer, Kenny Traynor.”
Nick shifted his gaze, wondering how his partner had found that out. He didn’t wonder for long—Dex was a quiet observer. He eventually found out everything. “Just covering bases.”
Dex didn’t let up. “Which means you’ve considered it, too.”
Yeah. As much as he hated to admit it, he had considered the possibility that the deaths were connected. But he hadn’t wanted anybody else to know he had considered it…not even Dex. He wanted Melody well and truly out of this thing, completely untouched by the three strange cases that were, in a small way, actually connected to her. Through the damn list.
“The Atlanta police ruled it an accident,” he explained. “A bizarre one. Traynor died in the locker room of a big country club when he decided to stick something other than his finger through a small hole in the wall.”
Dex wasn’t successful at hiding a flash of amusement. “A really small hole?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Poor guy.” Schooling his features back into his normal, reserved expression, Dex continued, “So did somebody on the other side of the wall get a little offended and take a butcher knife to…it?”
“No,” Nick said, marveling yet again over the stupidity of his fellow man. “He, uh…bumped into some frayed wiring. Since he was still wet from his shower, the poor dumb bastard went and electrocuted himself.”
Dex closed
his eyes and shuddered. Even Nick shifted in his pants, as he had when he’d first read the report…the whole thing—not the skimpy details released to the public.
“And the chef?”
Rubbing a weary hand over his eyes, Nick leaned against the side of his desk. “You saw him. It looked pretty basic to me. The guy was throwing meatballs into the air and catching them in his mouth like some people do with grapes or peanuts.”
“But meatballs don’t go down as easy,” Dex said.
“Exactly. It was late, he was alone and drunk. Accidental choking.”
There was that stupidity quotient again. It must have been what kept the gene pool thinned out since the black death had pretty much been wiped out and there were no more mastodons running around to take care of natural selection.
Dex frowned and crossed his arms, looking as confused as Nick about this convoluted set of circumstances. Could there possibly be a connection between the men on Melody’s list, or with Melody’s underwear, and three weird deaths, for God’s sake? Or was it all some huge, bizarre coincidence?
If this were a book or a movie, Nick would roll his eyes and say there was no such thing as that much coincidence. But in his life as a marine and as a cop, he knew coincidence was alive and kicking and more bizarre than any fictional scenario an author could dream up.
“What did Rosemary say about this whole mess?” Nick asked, curious to know how Melody’s friends were handling the situation.
“She’s worried. She’s been going over to Melody’s apartment, trying to talk her into coming to stay at her place.”
“She sure has the room,” Nick said, his voice deceptively quiet. He had never talked to Dex about Rosemary’s wealth…but the size of her house made it pretty obvious. “Speaking of Rosemary…everything okay? You find out what’s bothering her?”
Dex’s mouth tightened a bit. If Nick didn’t know him so well, he might have missed that small sign of tension.
“She really wants me to get to know her father. She’s having a family dinner tomorrow night.”
He said the words family dinner like someone else might say cannibalistic feast.
“Well, have fun,” Nick murmured, wishing his friend luck.
“About Melody…I guess she’s as stubborn as Rosie. She’s staying put in her apartment.”
Stubborn. Yeah, the woman was that.
“Does Rosemary really think there’s any kind of connection here?” Nick asked. Though Rosemary was a pain, she was sharp, and she knew Melody better than just about anybody. Though, not as well as Nick wanted to know her.
“She thinks it’s probably a strange coincidence, but if it turns out not to be, we should look at Melody’s ex-husband.”
“Her ex?” Nick had been curious, but he hadn’t gone down that road yet. Melody’s ex-husband seemed more like a cowardly heavy-breather than a killer.
“Yeah. I guess their split was pretty…unpleasant, and Melody initiated it. Rosie thinks this Dr. Todd guy might be angry and desperate enough to plot some pretty wild revenge.”
“Like murder?” Sounded crazy. But he’d heard of stranger scenarios. “Is the guy unbalanced enough to kill guys his ex-wife once fantasized about?”
“If so, you’d better start wearing your vest, since there’s only two of you left on that list,” Dex said. His tone was serious, but his lips quirked. “Speaking of which, three down and only one to go before you win by default.”
“Bite me.”
The comment didn’t even phase his partner. “You going to follow up on the ex?”
Nick nodded slowly, thinking over the ramifications. Of the ways in which Melody Tanner really could be caught up in this situation. “What if this person wasn’t doing it out of jealousy, but rather out of some kind of revenge? Wanting to set Melody up for it? If she hadn’t had those walk-in clients Friday, she probably wouldn’t have had an alibi.”
“Which makes her ex even more interesting.”
Nick nodded, agreeing completely. Melody probably wouldn’t like it, but he had no choice. He was going to have to pry into her past, her private life. And see what he could dig up about her divorce from Dr. Bill Todd of Atlanta.
“I don’t want to do this to her,” he murmured, realizing it was entirely true.
“I know.”
“God knows I wouldn’t want someone poking around in the charred remains of my marriage.”
Dex remained silent.
Nick sighed heavily, dropping his head back and looking up at the ceiling. He really had no choice. He was going to have to investigate what had probably been a very painful and ugly time in her life.
“But not now,” he whispered.
“Hmm?”
He straightened, giving his partner a look that dared him to argue. “I said not now. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”
And it was. Whatever ugly circumstances surrounded Melody’s divorce, they’d still be out there tomorrow.
For tonight, however, he just wanted to be with her. Without any of the other garbage that had been surrounding them practically from the moment they’d met.
Just…be with her.
IT HAD BEEN a few days, but as time went by, instead of starting to recover from what had happened to Jonathan Rhodes, Melody still couldn’t get it off her mind. She’d never known anyone who’d been murdered. Never known anyone who’d known anyone who’d been murdered!
Sure, like everyone in America, she’d seen cop shows and movies where bodies flew, blood spattered and victims fell prey to ax-wielding psychos wearing hockey masks. But she’d almost become immune to the concept—even to the word. Murder. Somewhere along the way, she’d stopped grasping the enormity of it.
She grasped it now, though. Between the time Rhodes had left her studio Friday afternoon—with her underwear tucked into his pockets or down his pants, eww—until that night when she’d gone to confront him, someone had gone into his apartment and shot the man dead.
Oh, yeah, she definitely grasped it.
The media was all over the story, particularly Channel 9’s Angie Jacobs and Drake Manning, who were the last reporters to socialize with the dead man. That had been at Rosemary’s party, where they’d been chatting so normally with Rhodes and with Melody. At first, the duo had played up the connection, accentuating their own personal grief. They’d each taken on the role of distraught former friend.
Until the underwear stuff had started coming out.
That’d definitely changed things. Both reporters had backed off on the personal angle, going in for the kill and digging up anything they could on the former congressman’s “perversions.” Jonathan Rhodes had gone from prominent attorney and friend to twisted sicko and pariah between two eleven-o’clock newscasts. Rabid dogs.
Melody had stopped watching the coverage. And now, finally, on Tuesday evening, she was almost starting to feel herself again. At least she wasn’t jumping at every noise in the old building in which she lived. She was the only tenant—since the unit right upstairs from hers was vacant—and every creak or moan in the foundation of the old townhouse had startled her all weekend.
Now, though, she realized as she made herself a light dinner, she was doing okay. At least she was finally putting the image of her blood-streaked underwear from her mind and not stewing so much over where her peacock panties had ended up.
Oh, she was still mad about it. But it was out of her hands. She had to think that whenever the police caught up with Jonathan’s killer, they’d find out what had happened to Melody’s underwear, too. Hopefully not after it had been worn by another sicko guy with a penchant for silk and feathers.
Pouring herself a glass of wine, she took a sip and began to fill a pot of water. She’d decided on penne pasta for one. When she heard a knock on her front door, she smiled and added more water to the pot, figuring it would instead be pasta for two. It appeared she was once again going to have a dinner guest. That was no surprise. Ever since Friday night, Tanya, Rosemary and Paige had take
n to popping over for any number of reasons, none of which were the real reason.
In truth, they were supporting her however they could. Not to mention trying to get back on her good side after their loose lips about the whole list thing.
Expecting to see Paige’s wide smile and a homemade cake, or Tanya’s jet-black hair and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s…or Rosemary holding the latest editions of every fashion magazine, Melody walked to the front door and pulled it open.
No wide smile. No cake. No liquor and no magazines.
Just pure, living, breathing temptation.
“Nick,” she breathed.
“You should have asked who was here, since you don’t have a peephole.”
Yes, she should have. At least then she might have been able to mentally prepare to see Nick Walker again in the flesh. Oh, such big, yummy flesh.
Feeling heat flood her cheeks, she instinctively reacted to his words…and her own hungry response to his nearness.
She shut the door right in his face.
Leaning her forehead against the doorjamb, she sucked in a few deep breaths, ordering her pulse to stop racing and her heart to stop doing that crazy, out-of-rhythm jerking in her chest.
He knocked again.
“Who is it?” she whispered, more in a stall for time than to make him laugh.
But laugh he did. “That’s better. Now let me in.”
Lifting her wineglass to her mouth and gulping down a big sip of merlot, she slowly did as he asked.
“Hi,” he said.
Unable to help herself, Melody raked a thorough look over him, from bottom to top. Nick was dressed the same way he’d been on the day they’d met at the diner—in tight, soft, perfectly broken in jeans that rode low on his lean hips. A hunter-green T-shirt emphasized his thick arms and wide shoulders. His cheeks were a little stubbly since it was well after five o’clock, and his hair was rumpled, as if he’d run his hand through it in frustration at least ten times today. But what really did her in was that devastating half smile on his delicious lips as he stared at her from the hallway.