by C. J. Thomas
She handed it to me. I opened it, pulling out what looked like a bill from the phone company. “What is this?”
“Emelia’s texts.”
I gaped at her. “How did he get a hold of this? We haven’t even gotten it, yet.”
She shrugged. “He’s rich, Dan.” Like that was all the answer I needed. It was, come to think of it.
I went through the messages. They were all from one number.
I read them to myself. It started with a text to Emelia: Did you give any thought to what we talked about?
Three minutes later, Emelia replied: Yes. I don’t know what you want from me.
A few minutes later: You know what I want from you. Exactly what I asked you for when we had our talk. Don’t play innocent.
Emelia replied almost instantly: I don’t know how you expect me to get my hands on that much cash at once. That’s what I mean.
The reply: That’s almost funny. With all the money you have? You’ll find a way. Sell a house, if you have to.
Wow—how much money was this person asking for, if they suggested selling a house?
Emelia waited twenty minutes, then: How do I know that once I give you the money, you’ll back off?
The reply: It’s a chance you’ll have to take. Have I ever played you like that before?
Emelia wrote: No, but you’ve never done this to me, either. I can’t believe you could be so cold.
The reply: Just get the money, Emelia. I’ll even let you work in installments if that makes it easier for you. Don’t ever say I wasn’t generous. Just remember what could happen if you don’t pay up. I’ll make things very uncomfortable for you. It’ll make my request seem like nothing in comparison.
I lowered the paper, my head spinning. “Somebody was blackmailing her? Why?”
“It doesn’t say why. I asked Austin about it. He said Emelia had nothing on her, at all. No past offenses, nothing. She didn’t tell him about this, either. He didn’t know somebody was extorting her. Looks like she kept secrets even from him.” Julia laughed softly, humorlessly.
“This doesn’t tell me anything about who sent them, though. There’s no name, just a phone number. I mean, I could call to see who the person is—”
Julia held up a hand to stop me. “I know who it is. I know that number.”
I waited. When she didn’t continue, I asked, “Who?”
“It’s Margo’s.”
I finally understood why she looked stunned. “Margo? Your friend, the writer?”
“Yes. Her. That’s her cell number.”
I looked from Julia to the list of messages. “Why would Margo blackmail her?”
Julia shrugged. “Why not? She had all the money in the world, didn’t she? It was Margo’s job to find out information for her magazine.”
“But, I mean, come on. Margo? You’re supposed to be friends. Would she be capable of something like this?”
“Dan, I have no idea. This is just as much a surprise for you as it is for me.” Her face looked like it would crumple in tears at any minute.
I softened. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push you so hard. I know this must come as a shock to you. I wouldn’t want to find out a friend of mine was capable of this.”
“I mean, I just sat beside her over drinks. Just tonight. She acted like nothing was wrong. We had lunch yesterday. Same thing. I would never have guessed she was capable of blackmail.”
“We never know what people are secretly capable of, do we? You and I should both know that by now.”
She chuckled. “True. Once again, just when I thought nothing could surprise me . . .”
“What does Haynes think about this? What was the context for giving this to you?”
“He’s afraid that once the article comes out, whatever Margo was trying to blackmail Emelia for will come out. He doesn’t want Emelia’s reputation tarnished like that.”
“What a prince he is,” I muttered.
“No, Dan. I believe him. I really do. He seems innocent in all this.”
I was skeptical, to say the least. I’d had my doubts at the office, but this new element threw a twist into everything. Why did Austin even have this evidence if he was innocent?
I was sure my face showed my skepticism since Julia scowled at me. “Sorry,” she said, “but that’s how I feel. Just like I felt Emelia didn’t kill herself. Remember? I was right then, wasn’t I?”
“Yeah, well, even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
“Very funny.” She folded her arms. “Say what you will, but I think he loved her. I think he still does.”
“So what’s he doing with Margo, then? If he’s carrying a burning torch for Emelia?”
Concern crossed Julia’s face. “I don’t know. Maybe . . . maybe she’s blackmailing him, too.”
I thought it best to avoid talking it out with her any further. She was already upset enough over the texts. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. I always think better when there isn’t the evidence of a tornado all around me.” Julia snickered as I lifted her bag. “What do you have in here? Bricks?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know, Detective?” She winked. I felt a stirring below the belt. All this tension hadn’t destroyed her mood, which was good news to me.
We walked down the stairs, teasing back and forth as we always did. I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else happening. Something deeper than even the brilliant Julia had considered.
She wanted to believe Austin was sincere. What if he wasn’t? What if he had those texts doctored somehow? What if they were entirely made up?
Just as Julia said earlier, he was rich—filthy fucking rich. He had the power to do anything, make anything happen. He’d only have to make a single phone call and history would be written in his favor.
What if he was trying to throw us off his scent? I had my doubts about his guilt, but I couldn’t completely let go of him as a suspect.
It wasn’t until we were in my car, pulling away from her garage that I remembered Margo’s car.
It wasn’t there when we left.
She was gone.
147
Julia
I WOULDN’T HAVE ADMITTED it aloud to Dan, but I was over-the-moon happy to be with him again. It wasn’t just the sense of relief I felt in his presence—though that would have been reason enough after the terror I’d felt when Austin showed up.
It was the way I discovered how much I’d missed him while we were apart all day. How was that possible?
Before Emelia’s body was discovered, we saw each other only occasionally, and never socially. The only contact we had was always in relation to a case.
So why was I so thrilled to be with him? Why did it feel so natural and right to sit beside him in the car while he drove us back to his house?
It never even occurred to me to get my car out of the garage, though that was the main reason I’d originally gone home.
When I was with him, I was more than happy to let him take the reins. It was all very unlike me, but I didn’t have to think about it. It felt normal. We could have been seeing each other for years, it felt so normal.
It felt right when I was with him. And I really liked knowing that he was there.
“I hate to throw more shop talk at you . . .” he murmured.
“I’m a workaholic, remember? Shoot.” I was more than ready to talk it out. I always felt better after airing out my theories, and Dan was one of the people I enjoyed talking with the most. He was so smart, so level-headed. He often saw angles on a case I never thought of.
And he listened to me. He took me seriously. Maybe he didn’t believe Austin loved Emelia, but he hadn’t seen the man’s face. He hadn’t heard his voice. It meant enough that Dan took my original theory seriously.
Otherwise, we might not even be together in the car.
The thought was enough to make me laugh. If he hadn’t dug deeper into the investigation, he never would have clued me in on the photos. I would
never have followed that angle on my story. The apartment wouldn’t have been ransacked, and I wouldn’t have spent the night with Dan.
Funny how life worked out sometimes. Because those handful of events, changed everything.
“Okay, so Austin knew about the article,” Dan said.
“Check.”
“How did he find out?”
“He cited unnamed sources.” I shrugged. “Like we already deduced, it’s his money. He can afford anything he wants. He can get information.”
“What if it wasn’t his money? What if it was Margo?”
That threw me. I hadn’t considered it at all when Austin first told me he had a source. But then, I didn’t know at the time about the texts between her and Emelia.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to believe it.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve always thought of her as being too professional for that.”
“Those texts weren’t very professional, if they were from her,” Dan reminded me.
I looked over at him, admiring his profile in the dim light from the car’s interior. How could an insufferable know-it-all be so handsome? “I understand that. Wait, what do you mean, if they were from her?”
“Remember, we have to consider every angle.”
I wasn’t ready to consider that angle yet. “All right. Professionalism aside, I thought she and I were better than that. We never went behind each other’s backs. I know I never did it to her, and I would have found out if she ever did it to me. The grapevine has a way of making sure you know when something like that happens. I’d have heard about it in a heartbeat.”
“So she wouldn’t have done it to you?”
“I don’t think so. No matter how googly-eyed she is over him, she wouldn’t have ratted on me like that. In fact, she tried to warn me about him tonight.”
“She did?”
“She warned me that he had the money and the power to make me pay for writing this article.”
“And yet, she’s still with him? When she’s afraid of him? Or, rather, afraid for you?”
“I know. It’s bizarre. I don’t like her being with him, to be honest.” Then again, from the tone of those texts, she could probably take care of herself.
“Do you think he’s got somebody working for him on your magazine? A source on the inside?”
“I never thought about that before.” I sat back, chewing my lip, mulling it over. Could it be one of my coworkers? It might have been any of them, frankly, especially the young-and-hungry cub reporters making next to nothing, living with two or three roommates just to make ends meet. If a man with the money and clout of Austin Haynes approached one of them with a wad of cash and a proposition, how many of them wouldn’t drop everything and do as he said? Still . . . I don’t know if many people even know I was writing the story.”
“What about your editor?”
“No way.” It wasn’t up for discussion. Sal was a reporter of the old days who believed in journalistic integrity. That was probably why he never rose any higher than an editor, since he wasn’t willing to dig along the bottom of the barrel for a story. He wouldn’t cheapen himself, or me, like that.
“So I guess that’s out, then.” We fell into silence, crawling down the freeway. It seemed there was never a good time to be on the road.
“You said he claimed to love her? Emelia, I mean?”
“Yes. He said he loved her very much, and always would.”
I thought I heard Dan scoff but couldn’t be sure. I decided to ignore it.
“Do you think it was sincere?”
I thought back. Did I? “It’s hard to say, honestly. He sounded like he meant it. He looked like he did. I know a liar a mile away, trust me. He didn’t look like he was lying. There weren’t even any fake tears. No quivering chin. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah. I’ve interviewed enough grieving husbands to know the real thing from the guy with the murder weapon stashed in the garage.”
“Charming,” I murmured.
“It’s the sad truth.”
I closed my hand over his where it rested on the gearshift. “I can see why you’re such a diehard romantic.” Even though I was only joking, I couldn’t help but thrill a little at the touch of my skin on his.
His hands. What they’d done to me. He was a powerful, experienced man. A man who liked to be in control. Desire crawled through me at the thought.
I pulled my hand back, reminding myself to keep my head in the game.
I saw the smile playing along the corners of his mouth, and when I glanced down at his lap, I didn’t think it was my imagination that the front of his pants tented a bit. He was just as eager to be with me as I was to be with him. It was a warm, good feeling—sexy, yes, but also nice. To be desired by somebody as desirable as him.
“You said it was hard to say,” Dan reminded me. “When I asked if you thought he was sincere. Why was it hard?”
I had to think back. What was I trying to say? My train of thought was all over the place, thanks to his sexiness and my inability to resist him. “Uh . . . oh, right. At the time, I wondered how sincere he could be if he was with Margo so soon after Emelia died. Doesn’t that sound strange?”
“Very. I thought about her tonight, myself. In relation to him.”
“Oh, how so?”
“I’ve had a very big day, Miss Mabel. I’ve been aching to tell you everything our junior detectives found out from Emelia’s staff. Like how she asked them never to tell another living soul about her relationship. How he flew out to Vail to ski with her for the weekend. How they screwed like animals in the back of her limo, once, when she had the driver pick Austin up from the airport.”
“Shut up! Spicy.”
“You’re telling me. The guy got pretty graphic in his interview regarding the sounds he heard coming from back there, even with the partition up.”
My eyes widened. “Hmm. How committed were they to keeping it a secret, if they were willing to do that?”
“I don’t know. My partner seems to believe it meant they were crazy about each other. You know, when you just can’t keep your hands off somebody? If you don’t touch them right away, you’ll die from needing them?”
I blushed furiously. Yes, I knew how that felt. I knew it very well. My eyes drifted over him. From the way Dan cleared his throat. I had a feeling he understood my reaction.
He sighed, then. His fingers tapped along the gear shift.
“I hate to say this.”
“Uh-oh,” I replied, already folding my arms. I didn’t think I would like hearing it then.
“I think you should back off the article.”
“You what?”
“See?” He looked at me, then back at the road. “There’s no telling you anything.”
“I don’t enjoy being told what to do. In case you didn’t know.”
“I know, which is why I leave my opinion for when I think it counts. It counts now. I’m serious.” He glanced at me. “This is too mixed-up. We need to have a few more pieces in place before I feel comfortable with you publishing. It’s not just a matter of your safety, either. It’s a matter of your integrity. A lot of this is still conjecture. And it’s getting thicker. Conflicting stories, the texts, his proclamation of love only days after we saw him with another woman. It’s too convoluted.”
I couldn’t disagree—it was a total mess, the entire case. If he thought I was going to let it go, however, he had another thing coming. Sometimes I wondered if he knew me at all.
I thought about Emelia. She was who the story was all about. I couldn’t lose sight of that. I fully believed she was the sweet, generous person Austin described her as being and the rest of world saw her as. Before the supposed OD, of course.
She deserved better than that. I had to be sure her killer was brought to justice.
No way I would let the son of a bitch walk . . . whoever he was.
I was less convinced than ever that Austin was the person
who did it. Dan seemed to think he was still in the running, though not at the top of his list.
Unless it was a crime of passion, something Austin did in the heat of the moment, I didn’t see how it could be him. Emelia wasn’t battered, shot, strangled.
Maybe he was a sociopath. I couldn’t deny that possibility. Even if they loved each other, somebody might have found out about their relationship.
If so, he might have decided his career was more important than the two of them being together. He might have hired a hit-man to kill her when she refused to accept their breakup. She might even have flown off the handle a little, threatened him, told him she’d expose them to the world if he didn’t stay with her.
If he felt cornered, he might have gone to extremes.
Might, might, might. All I had were theories, opinions, hearsay. I needed something a little more solid. I wouldn’t rest until I found it.
Then I would publish my article.
To hell with what anybody else thought about it.
I glanced over at Dan. Yes, to hell even with him, if he had a problem with me following my heart.
148
Dan
I DIDN’T KNOW if it was the attraction I felt toward Julia or the way my masculinity roared when it came time to protect her, but I was at a loss to control myself when we stepped inside my house. No sooner had I closed the locked the door than my hands were all over her, pinning her to the wall.
“Dan!” she screeched before any other exclamation was silenced with a deep, searching kiss. She kissed me back breathlessly, eagerly, crushing her lips against mine.
My cock sprang to life, looking for action. From the way Julia moaned into my mouth, I knew she wanted what I had in mind.
I pulled away just long enough to look into her eyes.
I saw certainty. Yes.
She was ready for me.
Our mouths met again, desperate for contact. Our tongues thrashed, sending bolts of pure pleasure straight to my groin. I already ached for her. With my hands beneath her firm, round ass, I lifted. She easily followed my lead, wrapping her legs around my waist. The pressure against my throbbing erection was bliss.