by Beverly Bird
But there was nothing unsure in Angela’s eyes. Nor was there a trace of apology in her voice. She must have gone through hell, he realized, and it had broken something inside her; it had shamed her, but she wouldn’t accept guilt. What had she said that day in the Limo? Keeping your attention in line is your problem, Counselor.
She was an extraordinary woman.
Jesse came up off the sofa. “I’m sorry.” And he heard his own words and was sickened all over again. As though they could change any of what had happened to her. He began to pace. “I need to think.”
“About what?” she demanded. “You don’t—”
“I believe you,” he interrupted harshly.
“But?” Her voice sounded suddenly like a whip cracking. He stopped to look back at her.
“But this is a delicate, highly complicated situation.”
“Because you’re a Hadley,” she said flatly.
“Get off that, Angela. Now.”
His voice turned to ice, frigid with warning. It frightened her a little. She stared at him.
“Because I’m the district attorney,” he clarified tightly, “and because this bastard is running against me as of late yesterday afternoon. And every move I make now, every word I utter, is going to be put under a damned microscope. And what about you? You can’t fight back blindly or you’ll come off looking crazy again! Even that note is something you could have planted yourself. It’s typed.”
She swayed. “Yes,” she admitted, and her voice was stricken.
“Whatever method we use to deal with this has to be absolutely, one hundred percent above reproach or it’s going to backfire on both of us.”
“Yes,” she acknowledged again. And, oh, the we sounded so sweet, so good now. It was all she had.
Charlie had once again stripped everything away from her. Except this man. He would stand beside her. She believed that until Jesse spoke again.
“And while I don’t doubt for a moment that the creep did what you say,” he added, “I keep coming up against a brick wall when I try to consider him doing this to you now.”
She flew off the sofa. “Fine. Get out. I’ll deal with it myself.”
“Over my dead body.”
She laughed shrilly. “Watch what you say, Jesse. I already have one corpse in the fridge, thanks to him.”
“He’s known Lisette Chauncy all his life!”
“He’d psychotic!”
A knock sounded on the door. They both jumped and clamped their mouths shut at the same time.
“Are you all right in there?” Angela’s secretary called out.
“Yes,” Angela returned. “Everything’s fine.” She looked at Jesse. “We were shouting,” she said, dazed.
Jesse cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
She shivered. From the very beginning, his ability to do that, to apologize and express gratitude, had touched her deeply. Because it was not a well-known Hadley trait. And that made her honest. Honest? she thought wildly. She was about to bare her very soul.
“I need so desperately for you to believe me. I cannot, will not, stand silently by while that man runs for district attorney. He terrifies me. But I have to do something.”
Fresh respect washed through him. He stared at her.
“I’m not foolish enough to think that anyone will believe me this time, either,” she allowed hoarsely. “I will be ignored, ridiculed and made to look like a fool.”
Jesse watched her, unable to say anything. His heart was moving hard. He knew that she was asking for something immense—at least to her. It was somehow a thousand times more intimate than if they had tumbled together onto that sofa and made love. He was both terrified that she was going to say it and holding his breath in something very close to pain in case she might not.
“You asked me to trust you,” she continued, her voice shaking. “And now you know why it doesn’t come easily to me. But I’m trying. God knows, I’m trying. I’m giving this to you, Jesse. I’m asking you to believe in me. Help me. Stand by me. Please.”
He chose his words very carefully. “Would you have me go along with you blindly?”
“What do you mean?” Her eyes narrowed.
“Would you have me believe you without question? Or do you want someone sensible, someone armed with concrete facts, on your side?”
“I don’t understand,” she whispered.
“We can rush out of here right now if you like. We can go out there and point our fingers at Charlie Price and make our accusations. At which point the Wendell Glowans of the world—” he winced briefly at that “—are going to ask us for the connection. For the proof. And at least some of the people are not going to believe me any more than they’ll believe you.”
“But you’re a Hadley,” she objected.
“Doesn’t matter. Because we have no visible thread between what he did then and what’s going on now. We have supposition, a motive and that’s all. We need proof, Angela.”
He waited. He was appealing to her mind. He was praying that she was reachable beneath her justified anger and resentment and panic. When she nodded slowly, he let himself breathe.
“I don’t have any proof that he’s doing this,” she admitted quietly. “But there’s not a single doubt in my heart.”
“Worse, Price has at least one bit of ammunition to prove that we’re all wet,” he added.
She paled. “What?”
Jesse spoke the things that bothered him most about her theory. “Angela, Charlie Price is a reasonably well-known man in this city. Don’t you think that if he was the one who tried to relieve your office of Lisette’s body yesterday, then Brigid would have recognized him?” He paused, thinking that Brigid had thought maybe she had. And Charlie’s picture wasn’t really in the papers that often. Only someone who religiously read the society pages might have known him.
He’d work on that later.
“Don’t you think that that reporter—Carper—would have recognized him?” he asked her. But Carper hadn’t met with the man, he recalled. He’d merely encountered a voice on the phone. “At the very least, my secretary would have done so, if he was in my office to take those tapes out of my cabinet. She’s met him before.” Unless, he thought, Libby had not been at her desk at the time. If it had been after hours Price wouldn’t have logged in. And Jesse had only looked at the logs for the past six weeks. There was nothing to say that he hadn’t been there seven weeks ago.
Jesse rubbed his forehead against a headache that was getting worse by the minute.
“We need facts. Proof,” he said again, more to convince himself.
“He won’t allow it.” She groaned. “He’s smart. Shrewd. Manipulative.”
“And you’re smarter. I’m shrewder. And I can manipulate with the best of them.”
“Oh, Jesse,” she breathed.
He reached out a hand, thinking to soothe the frown from her forehead. Then he hesitated. “Can I touch you?”
“You’ve never asked before.” Angela flinched and her eyes filled. “It’s not...like you.”
He felt shamed at the truth of that, and small.
She hugged herself, then sighed. “Do you know,” she asked slowly, “that I don’t think I ever really believed you’d consider me to be...tainted? Or even to be the kind of woman your uncle thought I was?”
He was more curious than surprised, but his heart thumped. “Why?”
“Because we danced at Tessa’s wedding.”
Her mind was leaps and bounds ahead of him again. “So?”
“When I pointed out that we had stopped dancing, that we were just standing there, you apologized. Like I deserved... respect.”
He was a little shocked to realize that he remembered that, too, and that something so small and innocuous had stuck in his brain. Then again, he had been noticing the most infinitesimal things about her from the beginning. And the biggest things about himself.
“You’re not a real Hadley,” she declared.
He was almost amus
ed. “I’m not sure my father would be pleased to hear that.”
One corner of her mouth moved, but she didn’t smile. “I’m sure not.”
“So how did you come to that conclusion?”
“Because you also told me that day that you didn’t want to be mayor.”
He gave a bark of ironic laughter and she lifted one shoulder in a careful shrug.
“Also, I figured that anyone who got physically ill over what had happened to Lisette Chauncy couldn’t be all bad. You did throw up that day, didn’t you?”
He felt embarrassed. “I have an ulcer.”
“Because you work too hard and take it all too much to heart.”
“Now you sound like my sister.”
“What I can’t figure out is...” Angela’s heart was thrumming hard now. She wasn’t sure she wanted to ask again, and knew that she needed to know. Because somehow they were turning a corner here. They’d gone from reluctant acquaintances—at least on her part—to some sort of friendship, and then he had kissed her. And she had liked every one of those occasions very much.
Now she had all but begged him to be a man she could trust.
“Why me?” she blurted.
Jesse frowned. “Why not you?”
“Because the last time I saw your picture in the paper, it was with that West Indian model.”
“Caro,” he said blankly.
“Yes. And before that, it was Sabina Rousseau. The actress.”
He was uncomfortable. “So what’s your point?”
“I don’t hold a candle to either of them.”
He looked at her, incredulously at first, then with some discomfort. He’d once thought the same thing himself.
He’d been wrong.
“I don’t like to be touched,” she confessed.
“Understandably.” Then he realized that she was waiting for him to go on. “It’s your mind. I was first attracted to your mind.” And then it was her strength, he decided. And her desperate pride. But her intellect—that had come first. It was, he remembered, one of the biggest reasons he had gone to her office on the morning Lisette was killed.
Angela gave a quick, breathless laugh. “Sure. That’s why you were staring at my legs that day in the limo.”
“Believe me, I’ve noticed everything else, as well.” Until holding back had gone from vague instinct to a deliberate, painful effort. “But your wariness is one of the first things a man...I don’t know, feels about you,” he added. “And that’s a challenge.”
He thought suddenly that that was probably what had happened to Charlie Price, all those years ago. Charlie had wanted her. She would have remained aloof even then—she’d said she hadn’t liked him. The fact that she was a poor student on a scholarship, while Charlie had everything wealth and position could offer, must have inflamed him.
Price had gotten to her before they’d even gone back to school that year. He’d probably spent that entire summer obsessing about her, Jesse guessed, and then he had erupted. She’d had the audacity to try to prevent him from having something he wanted.
Anger spurted through him again, the kind of anger that needed a target, the kind that almost demanded he throttle something. Then he realized that she was still watching him closely. And it touched him all over again that despite her defensiveness, her brittle independence, she needed his assurance.
“You’re all layers,” he finished. “Contradictions. Flowers and death. That hit me right off the bat. And it intrigued me.”
“Oh,” she said in a small voice.
“You’re a relief.”
“A relief?” she echoed uncertainly.
“When I talk to you, I don’t have to explain things twice.” He smiled briefly. “And your eyes didn’t glaze over with boredom last night. It’s pleasant, though I’d be the first to admit that I never expected it to be. Angela, those other women can’t hold a candle to you.”
“Ah.” Her heart skipped. “Ah,” she said again, pleasure swelling. She laughed nervously. “Well, I don’t think I’ve ever been wanted for my mind before.” Mostly it intimidated men, she found. That, and the fact that she could never respond to them physically.
Because she couldn’t trust them. And she realized then that she’d responded to Jesse so far, almost from the start, because her heart innately did. He was strong. And while she feared masculine strength, she also knew that, deep down inside herself where it counted, she also needed it. Deep down inside, she ached for someone she could lean on occasionally, someone strong enough to bear the weight, who would never use that strength to overpower her.
The phone rang, jarring both of them.
Angela recovered and moved quickly to her desk to see that it was her own personal extension, not her secretary putting through a random call. She knew who it was before she answered.
“Hello, Captain,” she said evenly.
“Doctor, I’ve got to reiterate that it’s in your best interest—” Kennery began.
She cut him off. “I’ve thought about what you said. I agree—I think I’d do better to bring an attorney.” She looked up and caught Jesse’s eye. He held her gaze.
And then he smiled.
Chapter 14
Roger Kennery was built like a barrel. He had large, meaty hands and a florid face. At the moment, his features were even more splotched with red than usual. He was clearly frustrated and angry.
Jesse took over.
His stride was aggressive as he entered the office. “I’m not pressing any charges,” he said flatly before he even sat. “Given that, I’m not sure what we’re doing here.”
Kennery’s gaze moved to him. “Now, see, this is my problem,” he snapped. “Are you going to tell me why? Something’s going on here, and I’ve got a good portion of my unit working on this murder case. If you’ve got evidence—”
“We don’t,” Jesse said shortly. “What do your guys have?”
Kennery glared at him. “I share, and you close the door?” he growled. For a moment, Angela expected him to close up, as well. Then he let out a hefty breath. “Okay, okay. We’ve got tread marks on Lisette’s driveway. They’re consistent with a late-model Mercedes sedan.”
Jesse flinched. “Fancy that.” But Price drove one, too, he recalled.
“Does your office have anything that would support or shadow that?” Kennery asked pointedly.
Jesse was quiet, then he conceded, “Not yet.”
Kennery swore. Jesse leaned forward in his chair.
“Look,” he relented, “if I sat here and gave you an earful of what I suspect, you’d no doubt have me committed. The only physical evidence that I have and your guys don’t is something that was only discovered this morning.” He told him about the note.
He’d sent it by messenger to Eric, Angela knew, hoping that maybe they could trace the typewriter, a staggering long shot
“One of my investigators is working with a copy,” he finished, “with instructions to send the original to the crime lab for possible fingerprinting. I’ll make sure your guys get a full report.”
“That’s something, I guess,” Kennery muttered, slightly mollified. “Get Homicide a copy as well, though. Let’s see what they can do about tracing it, too.”
Jesse hesitated so infinitesimally, Angela was pretty sure she was the only one who caught it.
“Of course,” he said stiffly.
“I want the bastard who shot that bullet into the woman’s head,” Kennery said gruffly.
“I honestly can’t help you there,” Jesse replied. “I have nothing on that.”
Kennery leaned back and laced his fingers together behind his head. “I’m going to hate this, aren’t I?” he asked sourly.
Jesse almost smiled. “That’s a safe assumption.” Roger didn’t answer. “All I’m holding back from you are a few guesses, Roger, which at this point are nothing more than shots in the dark. Making accusations at this point could be more dangerous than not doing so.”
Kenne
ry thought about that. “Hell,” he muttered. “First Benami in January, and now this.”
“And you don’t even know the half of it,” Angela muttered under her breath.
Kennery heard her anyway. He looked at her sharply. “I also got the preliminary report back on that splicing machine an hour ago.”
Angela held her breath. “And?”
“Your prints aren’t on it.”
She breathed again.
“Unfortunately, no one else’s are, either.”
Jesse swore. “That would have been too easy.”
“Yeah,” Kennery agreed. “Well, I’ve still got a plan here, whether or not you want to let me in on what you suspect. Tell me if it might help. It’ll make me feel better, anyway.”
Jesse nodded. His cool amazed Angela.
“I think the doctor should make herself scarce for a while.”
“Scarce?” Angela repeated blankly.
“I like it,” Jesse said immediately.
“Well, I don’t!” Angela cried. “You’re talking about my going away somewhere? No! I have a job to do!”
“Oh, you’ll do it,” Kennery said. “You’ll be at work. Other than a select handful of people, I think everyone else should just assume that you’re going about your business as usual.”
Jesse saw from her expression that, for once, she was not catching on. She was too personally involved, he felt, too threatened.
“Angela,” he said quietly, “what Roger is saying is that we can put a stop to this lunatic. We might not catch him, but at least we can exonerate you. We can clear up that end of it and take the public hassle off Homicide as to whether or not Roger’s going to charge you with anything. And if this guy can’t discredit you, we’ve also taken away his motive.”
“You’re saying that if he does anything else, then my own whereabouts at the time would be covered.” She looked at Kennery. “You’d be able to say for certain that it couldn’t possibly have been me.”
Kennery nodded. “One of the things that bothers me most about all this is that we have no way of proving that you’re not involved. You can’t provide any alibis. So we’ll give you someone. We’ll put one of my detectives on you twenty-four hours around the clock. Something else happens, and this time we’ll have a bona fide witness to say you were otherwise occupied.”