“I could’ve had affairs, too, Detective. I’ve had my opportunities, believe me. But I didn’t. And do you know why? Because I loved my husband.”
Her voice broke, and she stood. Slowly she walked over to the desk at the corner of the room and rested her hands on it, lowering her head so that he couldn’t see her face. Morgan couldn’t help feeling her grief was genuine, but still there was something about Sylvia that set his instincts on alert.
As he left, Morgan told her to be sure and call if she thought of anything else that might be relevant. In his car, a bag he’d picked up from Walker’s Hardware that morning reminded him of the next job on his list. Now that the interview with Sylvia Hawthorne was out of the way, he might as well get at it. He knew he wouldn’t relax until it was taken care of.
On the way, he checked his messages. As soon as he heard Trista’s voice, he dialed her number. At her office he got a recording: “Trista Emerson’s office will be closed until further notice. If you’d like to leave a message—”
Impatiently, Morgan hung up and tried her home number. When he got her answering machine there he hung up. Where the hell was she? And what was this information she had that she thought was so important?
THE MINUTE TRISTA OPENED her apartment door, she sensed something was wrong. Pausing, her hand still on the door handle, she listened. There it was again, a strange tapping sound. Coming from her bedroom.
Oh, no. Not again. She was just about to make a quiet retreat when she heard her name.
“Trista, is that you?”
Morgan. The tension drained from her body and she felt a moment of relief. Then she wondered what in the world he was doing here. Was he checking up on her? Or worse, snooping behind her back?
“Yes, it’s me,” she called back. “The person who lives here.” As she spoke, she shut the door behind her and followed the sound of his voice.
“About time you showed up. I got your message, but couldn’t reach you at the office or at home. So I decided I’d better come over here and check things out for myself.”
“I had lunch with Suni, then ran a few errands.” She paused at the bedroom door. She’d been expecting a return message from Morgan on her machine when she got home—not his physical presence.
“What on earth are you doing?”
He was leaning out of the window, screwdriver in hand. His sport coat was strewn across the cream cotton of her bedspread, and the sleeves of his black shirt were rolled up to his elbows.
Morgan spared her a quick, impatient glance. “Installing window locks. What does it look like? You already know how easy it is for someone to climb up to your balcony. And these windows of yours are so simple to break into, even a kid could do it. I’ve already taken care of your patio door. This is the last. It would be much easier if you’d hold this damn window open for me, though. It keeps crashing down on my head.”
Reluctantly Trista stepped forward. “You didn’t need to do this.”
He ignored her protestation, instead guiding her hands to the bottom of the heavy wooden window. “That’s right. Hold it up as high as you can while I attach this mechanism to the bottom of the frame.”
She tried to avoid touching him, but it was impossible. His back pressed against her side as he fussed with aligning the screws. Despite the layers of clothing separating them, it was impossible not to feel the straining of his muscles, the seductive warmth of his body heat.
Against her will her body responded. Her breathing became shallow and fast. Her heart raced. Her body throbbed and tingled much as it had last night, no matter how hard she tried to deny it. Morgan shifted his position. Now the arm that had pressed against her shoulder brushed gently against the side of her breast, and Trista pulled away as suddenly as if she’d been scalded by hot water.
“Watch it!” Morgan grabbed at the frame a split second before it landed on the back of his skull.
“Sorry.” She repositioned herself and took a fresh grip on the window, turning her head away from him so she couldn’t watch him work. She stared at the dresser on the wall in front of her, her gaze traveling up the large oval mirror, stopping suddenly as she caught his look in the reflection. For a second he paused and she read in his expression a hint of the smoldering passion she’d seen there last night. So he felt it, too.
In the space of a second his expression changed, turning cold and hard. He looked at her the way she imagined a murderer might look at his victim before he squeezed the trigger. It wasn’t just anger. He despised her. Maybe even hated her. She felt her insides turn to ice, shocked and frightened by the intensity of his emotion. She looked away from the mirror, turning her glance even higher, concentrating on the patterns in the stippled ceiling.
“Will you please tell me why you’re doing this? You’re not my husband anymore. It’s not up to you to look after me.”
“Thanks for pointing that out.” He twisted the screwdriver one more time, then threw it on the bed. “You can let go now.”
Trista rubbed the circulation back into her arms as he showed her how the new lock worked.
“Thanks,” she said hesitantly, turning her back as he reached for his jacket. After a few seconds of silence she glanced over her shoulder and found him standing, arms crossed over his chest.
“How do you do it?” he asked, his voice bitter. “You really couldn’t care less, could you? About me, or our marriage…”
“Always so quick to pass judgment, aren’t you, Morgan? You have no idea how I feel—”
“Oh don’t I? Didn’t I lose a child, too?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
TRISTA STARED AT Morgan, stricken. He put a hand to his forehead.
“I don’t know why I said that. I’m sorry, Trista.”
Why should he apologize? It was true. She wasn’t the only one who’d lost a child. What Morgan didn’t seem to realize was that she’d never forgotten that he’d lost his son because of her.
“Let’s go sit in the kitchen.” Morgan placed a tentative hand on her shoulder. “We need to talk.”
He was trying to make peace, to call a truce between them. She followed him dully, and sat at the counter as he perused the fridge.
“How about a glass of juice?”
“Sure.”
He poured two glasses.
Trista took a sip, then a deep breath. “How did you get in?”
“Through the window,” He gave her a half-sheepish, half-roguish grin that reminded her painfully of the man he’d been when they’d first met. It had been passion that first drew them together, and she knew that passion was still under the surface between them. A danger, but only one of many. She looked away, trying to harden her heart against him.
“Isn’t that against the law?”
“Aren’t you the one who used to tell me things aren’t always black and white?”
That reminded her of their university days again. He’d dropped out of law school for that very reason. Morgan wasn’t keen on the color gray.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t be able to do it again now that you have proper locks on your windows.”
Trista rolled her eyes. “And I thought you had important police business to do this morning.”
“I did.” Morgan downed his juice in one swallow, then set down the glass. “I went to talk to Daniel Hawthorne’s widow right after I called you.”
“And—?”
“Well, it’s never easy, as you know. If she had a hand in his murder, she wasn’t giving anything away. Despite the affair, she said she really loved her husband, and I couldn’t help but believe her.”
Trista nodded. “She loved her husband almost to the point of obsession. If he wasn’t where he was supposed to be when he was supposed to be, she would lose her grip on reality. And yet, despite her strong feelings, she was continually critical of him.”
“Do you think she could have killed him?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. I guess I could see her killing someone
more than I could see Nan doing it. But it doesn’t really matter, because she couldn’t have. That was what I was phoning to tell you. Sylvia was in my office yesterday between one and one-thirty. She and her husband had stopped seeing me about three months ago and this was the first time I’d seen her since then.”
“Between one and one-thirty,” Morgan mused. “That could well provide her with an alibi for her husband’s murder. But if she and her husband were no longer clients, what was she doing in your office?”
“It is strange,” Trista agreed. “She was upset because Daniel canceled their lunch engagement on account of an unexpected faculty meeting. She phoned the university and discovered there was no meeting.”
“He canceled his class to meet our mystery lover at the Moondust Motel,” Morgan confirmed.
“Obviously her suspicion about him resuming his affair was true. I have another curious piece of information for you. Brenda told me Sylvia was also at our office on Tuesday around one. Supposedly she wanted to talk with me, but when I saw Sylvia on Wednesday she didn’t mention a word about it…”
Morgan pulled out his pad and made a note. “So she could have taken the key. By the way, where was Brenda when Sylvia came to your office on Wednesday?”
Trista frowned, not wanting to give him the answer. The fact that Brenda happened to be on lunch break at the times of the two murders was a coincidence. But she knew better than to expect Morgan to believe that.
“Well?” he pressed.
“Another long lunch break. But so what? Brenda often takes a two-hour lunch when she’s meeting someone. Other days she brings her lunch and doesn’t take a break at all.”
“It’s not the length of her workday that I’m worried about.”
“You can’t seriously suspect Brenda?” She made the objection out of a sense of loyalty to her secretary, not admitting to Morgan that she herself had considered whether or not Brenda might be the connection between the two murdered men.
“Well, when I asked her for an alibi for Monday afternoon she said she didn’t have one. If she was meeting someone for lunch, don’t you think she would have told me about it?”
“It doesn’t sound good, I admit, but there has to be some explanation.”
“Any chance Brenda could be the mystery lover we’re looking for?”
She gave him a disbelieving look, all the while wondering if the idea was as preposterous as it seemed. Her instincts told her Brenda was far too professional—but, even so, there was something secretive in the way Brenda kept to herself.
“I’m glad you decided to close your office.”
“It was a difficult decision. But after last night… seeing Daniel’s body coming out of that motel room on a stretcher…” How could she have carried on with business as usual? Especially if there was a chance she could be putting more of her clients at risk.
Was Brenda responsible? She still couldn’t believe it, but in her heart she knew that possibility was the main reason she’d felt they had to close.
From the grim look on Morgan’s face, she suspected he was thinking along the same lines.
“There must be some way of finding out who the mystery lover was.”
“Undoubtedly. The scope has narrowed now that we have the two murders. It seems quite likely these men were seeing the same woman, so we have to find a link between Walker and Hawthorne. They worked in different circles, lived in completely different areas of the city. Unfortunately, your office is the only link we’ve discovered so far.”
Her office. Trista tugged a hand through her hair. Did that mean she was on the suspect list?
“I’m still searching for more connections,” Morgan said, possibly in an attempt to be reassuring. “I was planning to stop by the university this afternoon, to see if Hawthorne’s colleagues have any insights.”
He slid off his stool and Trista followed him to the front door.
“I’m not sure if this will help, but Sylvia did bring up the name of a female assistant professor regularly in our sessions. Sylvia was obviously jealous of the woman, although Daniel swore they were only friends.”
“Who was it?”
“I’m not sure I should tell you her name.” She could see Morgan becoming angry. “I’m not trying to be obstructive. Believe me, I want to help you find the mystery lover, more than you could believe.” Wasn’t it, after all, the only way she could clear Brenda, and herself, from the suspect list? “Maybe if I came along, I could try to make sure you talk to her, without actually having to identify her.”
“Pardon me? Did you just say come along? Since when did you turn detective?”
“These are my clients that are dying, Morgan. I’m not going to stand around and watch it happen.”
“When I asked for your cooperation, I didn’t expect you to take this on as a full-time job.”
Meaning he didn’t want her hanging around him any more than she had to. She could understand that, she felt the same way. But this was something she had to do. “I may be of some use,” she said. “After all, I knew the Hawthornes and you didn’t.”
Morgan frowned. She could see he wanted to tell her to forget it. But he didn’t. Instead, he just shook his head and walked out the door. She followed.
THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO was the largest university in Canada, with several campuses located in the larger Toronto area. Daniel had taught in the central St. George Campus, which sprawled from the Parliament buildings on University Avenue to the fabric district on Spadina Avenue.
Morgan parked off of St. George Street, and from there he and Trista cut across tended landscaping to the Ramsay Wright Zoological Building. It was a large, modern building of dull brown brick, not one of Morgan’s favorites. He preferred the older architecture of the residence buildings across the street. He preceded Trista up the steps of the entrance on the north side, then held the door for her.
It was strange, to be on this campus again with Trista by his side. Passing a group of summer school students, he was struck by how young they looked. He remembered feeling so mature at that age, yet really, their lives were just beginning. With luck, theirs would turn out better than his had.
Who could have guessed, when he’d first met Trista, what tragedy would lie in the future? All he’d cared about at the time had been getting her attention. It had taken him weeks of maneuvering to convince her to go out with him.
“I can’t believe we were in their place little more than ten years ago,” Trista said as they waited for an elevator. He looked up from his notepad in time to catch a wistful expression on her face as she watched the students receding from the building.
“A lot has happened since those days.” He put out a hand to hold the elevator door for her and thought about the crowd they’d hung out with when they’d gone to university. Most he hadn’t seen in years, which was just as well since he remembered the common opinion on his and Trista’s relationship had been that it wouldn’t last. He’d hate for those people to know they’d been right.
They had to ask directions to find Hawthorne’s office. It was a small, windowless room, tidy even though most of the floor space was taken up with a desk and three chairs, and a huge pine bookshelf crammed with books. The drawers of the metal file cabinet were carefully labeled, and the papers on his desk were organized into stacks, weighed down with various rock samples.
No, fossils, Morgan realized as he picked one up and saw the delicate pattern of a fern etched into it.
Morgan remembered how neatly the man’s clothes had been folded on the dresser at the motel. An organized, methodical man.
Interestingly, there was nothing personal in the room. No pictures of family members. No knickknacks. Even the coffee mug on the corner of the desk was impersonal—a plain, utilitarian white. Trista set off in search of a water fountain, leaving him to explore in peace.
Lonely. The impression lodged in Morgan’s brain, and wouldn’t go away. He looked over the shelves of books, opened drawer after dra
wer, and saw nothing that didn’t appear to belong in the office of a biology professor. Finally he examined the top drawer of the desk, and in there he found Daniel’s appointment book.
Morgan flipped back to last fall. For a period of about two months, every Wednesday was circled, but there was no mention of a place, a time or a person. He swallowed his disappointment. Of course he hadn’t expected to find the mystery lover’s identity as easily as this. But it would have been nice.
Morgan flipped forward to the current week, where, once again, Wednesday was circled in red ink. Had the affair been about to resume as Sylvia presumed? Thinking of the scene he’d found at the Moondust Motel, it seemed likely.
As he closed the appointment book and slipped it back in the drawer, he sensed someone at the door behind him. Someone who wasn’t Trista.
“Yes?” He turned to see an attractive woman of about forty, with long dark hair and exotic toffee-colored eyes set in an olive-toned face.
“I was just wondering what you were doing in Daniel Hawthorne’s office, but now that I see you, I realize you must be with the police.” She smiled, displaying an intriguing mixture of confidence and curiosity.
“That’s right,” Morgan replied. He didn’t like being pegged so easily, but at least it suggested the woman was intuitive. Perhaps here he would find some answers.
“So sad about poor Daniel,” she said, sitting in a chair beside him. She had long, slender legs, which she crossed to show to their advantage.
Morgan glanced from her legs to her face, and saw from her satisfied expression that he’d been meant to enjoy the view.
“Did you know Daniel well?” he asked. He chose to remain standing, leaning against the desk and looking down at the extraordinary woman before him. He was confident that this was the person Trista had been referring to when she’d spoken of the colleague Sylvia had been so jealous of.
She nodded. “I’m Maxine Pellicci. I have the office next door. I probably knew Daniel as well, if not better, than any of his colleagues. No,” she continued, noting his raised eyebrows. “I did not have an affair with him.” She emphasized the him as if to say there had been others.
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