Under His Protection

by Amy J. Fetzer

  He thanked her and cut the connection, knowing his abruptness only made the rift between them wider. “She denies it.”

  “You’re going to believe a murder suspect?”

  “Mrs. Winfield is no longer a suspect. She’s never lied to the police.” Nash’s gaze pinned William Baylor to the chair. “And she has given us all information we’ve asked for.”

  She has now, Nash thought, knowing that the one conversation he’d been wanting to hear about had been about him, with Winfield making Lisa feel small and unworthy.

  “I’ll need you to amend your statement, Mr. Baylor.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And call yourself a lawyer. I’ll be back with a warrant to examine your personal and business files.”

  Not waiting for Baylor’s reaction, Nash left the office, striding through the hotel toward the reception area. John Chartres was at the front desk, and only his gaze shifted up as Nash paused to get his bearings. Chartres nodded slightly, the look smothered in smugness, and Nash scowled. The man’s butt was in the sling, so what did that look mean? Nash headed back to his office.

  He passed Lisa’s place. Cars lined the street, and he caught a glimpse of her in the garden area, talking with a customer.

  He ground his teeth, trying for calm and reason. And to see things from her side. She’d been pregnant and scared when she knew he wouldn’t be receptive to the idea of a baby, he thought. He wasn’t exactly her champion then, either. Last night after she’d told him, Nash recalled the conversations they’d had four years ago. She’d been subtle then, and since he was so wrapped up in the loss of his partner and not wanting to put Lisa in Laura’s position, he hadn’t heard what she was trying to say to him. Maybe, though, he hadn’t wanted to hear her. Love me or I’m leaving. And when he’d told her he wasn’t ever considering more than the here and now, she’d looked out for herself and cut the ties between them. Then she’d suffered losing their child alone.

  Alone.

  He should have been there. And the loss of what he never had felt like a lead jacket coating his heart.

  As he parked and went into the police station, part of him was still furious with Lisa for not telling him about the baby, yet knowing the truth didn’t make a difference now. Their child was gone. But he was just as mad at himself for not listening to her. For not seeing she was hurting. For tossing her love away. What are you willing to do to get it back? he thought. And could he?

  The phone startled him from his thoughts. He fought the urge to growl and tried for a polite “protect and serve” tone. The caller was Kathy Boon.

  Nash immediately motioned to an officer to trace the call. He’d been searching for her. She’d been using a fake driver’s license and name.

  “I was worried about you, Miss Boon. You disappeared.” Nash sat in his chair. “Are you all right?”

  “I just wanted to tell you that I had nothing to do with that man’s death.”

  “How can I be sure?”

  “You can’t. But I didn’t even know the man, Detective.”

  “I need to see you, speak with you again. You’re a witness to Chartres’s whereabouts.”

  “That can’t be helped,” she said, and Nash noticed that her voice sounded as if she was covering the phone so as not to be heard. “I told you all I could,” she whispered. “I can’t come back. I won’t.”

  His patience snapped. “Ma’am, your name isn’t Boon and your driver’s license is a fake, so why don’t you tell me what’s going on? Maybe I can help you.”

  “No! No,” she added a little more calmly, then said, “This isn’t your problem and you can’t help me. You’ll only get hurt, Detective. But Cal Preston, the man at the Fair Briar Plantation, had nothing to do with this, either.”

  How did she know he’d questioned Preston again? Fair Briar Plantation had been on Winfield’s list of properties to look at for purchase. And Preston had refused to sell, too. Did Winfield think that giving Lisa property was the way to get her back?

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Preston made a pass at me when I went there for a job and I decked him.”

  Nash wanted to smile at that, but his concern was for the terrified woman on the other end of the line. Bracing his elbows on his desk, Nash held his head in his hand. “I can protect you.”

  “Forget me. No one can.” The line went dead.

  Nash looked over at the officer.

  “It’s a cell phone. Nearest location we can get is Macon, Georgia. A truck stop on 95.”

  Good God, did she realize how dangerous that was? “Send her picture to the tri-state area, and alert the Georgia Highway Patrol.” Nash slipped out a copy of her photo and handed it to the officer. “Whoever she is, she’s in big trouble.”

  And too scared to come to the police.

  LISA OPENED her door and smiled. Her buddy Hope Randall held up two pints of ice cream and spoons. “Comfort food,” Hope proclaimed, then inclined her head toward the street. “Cute patrolman, should we ask him to join us?”

  Lisa glanced past Hope to the unmarked car that glared in the darkness. “He’s too young for you.”

  “No man single and over twenty-one is too young, honey.” Hope pushed her way inside the house. “Come on, you sounded awful on the phone. You practically begged for this ice cream and the extra pounds it’ll bring. Let’s talk. Or rather, you talk. I’ll listen and commiserate that all men are jerks and we women are far superior beings.”

  Smiling, Lisa snatched the pint of ice cream as she passed, broke it open and had a spoonful in her mouth before Hope found a seat in her living room. The ice cream tasted heavenly. And Lord, she’d missed her best pal. A private investigator and bounty hunter working for a law firm, Hope had been injured working on her last case, and as soon as the doctors said she could, she’d treated herself to a two-week vacation in the Caribbean. Right now, Lisa wished she’d gone with her.

  “Okay, spill. How was Grand Cayman Island?”

  “Expensive, sexy and with more rich men with offshore bank accounts than any single woman my age should be allowed near.”

  Lisa grinned. “Meet anyone?”

  Hope sent her a sly look. “I’m not the kiss-and-tell type.”

  “Hah! Since when?”

  “Since now.”

  “Ahh, find Mr. Right?”

  “Mister I-know-how-to-seduce-and-leave-a-lasting impression, but no, not Mr. Right.”

  “You never know.”

  “He hasn’t called, so I know.” Hope held a scoop of ice cream before her mouth and asked, “So what about Nash?” She shoved the spoon in her mouth and moaned over the taste.

  “What about him? I told you, he left here yesterday evening and I’ve heard from him once and it was police business.”

  “He’s the police, and you are his business right now. I consider this progress.”

  Lisa made a face.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Hope asked.

  “Nothing. Why should I?”

  “Want me to do some snooping on this case?”

  “I can’t afford you. Besides, if Nash can’t find anything, how could you?”

  “I don’t have the restrictions he has and I’m a woman. Show a man a little skin and he’s putty.”

  Lisa laughed.

  Hope shrugged. “Do you love him?”

  “Don’t know,” Lisa said around the ice cream. A voice in her head screamed, Would it hurt this much if you didn’t?

  “Yes, you do. You loved him once, Lisa, you can fall back into it again.”

  “Let’s not forget that I loved him, but he did not love me. Besides, too much has gone on. Peter, the baby…” She let that hang since Hope could fill in the blanks herself. She knew everything.

  “Don’t get so hopeless. Give the guy some time, for heaven’s sake. His reaction was normal, you know. Shock, hurt, feeling a bit betrayed.”

  “You said that on the phone.”

  “I
t bears repeating.”

  Lisa took a deep breath, the pint sweating in her hands. She jammed the spoon in and shoved more into her mouth. “Whose side are you on, anyway?” Lisa asked.

  “I love you both. But lets face it, Nash wasn’t exactly the open-door kind of guy. Dark and mysterious will only get you so far.”

  “He’s not mysterious. Not to me at least. I know he’s mad at me and he’s dealing with it in his own way, but if he can’t get past it, then that’s just… tough.”

  “Is it really?”

  “I broke up with the man because I didn’t want to trap him into something he didn’t want. I don’t see how that’s changed. Besides, I just got rid of one husband.”

  “Careful who you say that to, sugah,” Hope said, her attention on the pint she was emptying faster than Lisa’s.

  Lisa paled. “Oops.”

  Hope stopped eating long enough to push her hair off her shoulder. “He believes in you.”

  “He believes I’m innocent, not that I haven’t betrayed him by not telling him the truth.” Lisa started to scoop up more ice cream, then tossed in the spoon and set it aside. “Okay, fine, I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  A bolt of pain shot through her heart, and she inhaled. Their child was gone, long gone, but Nash was hurting now as she had. And now he’s blaming me for it.

  “That this will never stop hurting and if I let myself go, I’ll just get kicked in the teeth again.” Lisa felt tears burn her eyes and she didn’t want to cry. Dammit. She’d had enough of this. “This stinks.”

  “Yeah, it does. But Nash wears a white hat, Lisa, more on the inside than out. He might have been closed off before because of David’s death, but that was a while ago. Give it a chance,” Hope said.

  “I’m not ignoring him, he’s ignoring me.”

  “Then I say again, what are you going to do about it?”

  “Fight?”

  “Now that’s the Lisa I know.”

  “YOU HAD A CHANCE to look at that?” Standing in the doorway of Jack Walker’s office, Nash nodded at the preliminary report on the sheriff’s desk.

  Jack looked up, frowning. “You look like hell, Couviyon. Get in here and close the door.”

  “Didn’t sleep well last night. The report?” After closing the door, Nash dropped into a chair.

  Jack rose and turned to the coffeemaker, fixing Nash a cup. “Didn’t sleep at all from the looks of it.”

  Nash took the cup and sipped. Though Jack and he had been good friends for years, he was still his boss and Nash didn’t want to talk about Lisa with him. At least maybe not till Nash cooled off.

  “I’ve looked at those reports till they just blur into a gray mess.” And he wasn’t concentrating, either. He wanted to go see Lisa, but finding Winfield’s killer took precedence over his personal life. What life? he thought cynically, and swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “I’m missing something, something small.”

  “You never miss a thing,” Jack said. “And yeah, I read the reports. Talk.”

  “The doors to Winfield’s rooms were locked from the inside. There’s an outside staircase leading up to Winfield’s room, but no one occupied the lower room that night, and it was locked. No one saw anyone going up the staircase and the footprints are small but inconclusive. If Winfield did let someone in from the balcony, then it was someone he didn’t want anyone to see.”

  Jack nodded, absorbing. “The hair-fiber test back? Do we know if it’s a man or woman?”

  Nash shook his head. “Not yet, but I’m betting it’s a woman. Winfield was having an affair with Catherine Delan. For some time.”

  Jack winced. “Lisa know?”

  “It’s one of the reasons she left him. Now, the scarf around the neck and the tidy manner of death, well, a man would have done something more violent.”

  “Unless a man wanted it to look like a woman did it.”

  “I’ve thought of that. This person was smart. We don’t have a single print other than Winfield’s to lead us anywhere. Everything used can be linked to a dozen people aside from Lisa. Winfield knew his killer. No struggle, no forced entry. I’m betting he welcomed his killer inside the room. And with the hair fibers found in the bed, it wasn’t the first time. All I can prove is Catherine Delan didn’t take a flight here. If she drove, it’s a hell of a long way, and she didn’t strike me as a woman who would go out of her way to do anything for anyone, even murder.”

  “Chartres had the most to avenge,” Jack said. “Blackmail, losing his job at the Artisian. He was okay with Delan sleeping with Winfield to get his blackmail evidence back. Add that to pimping in New Orleans, and we know the man uses women.”

  “He was furious that Delan had talked to the police.”

  “Sure, she was his worker bee. And that she hooked for him confirms that he’s a user. But what’s that got to do with Lisa Winfield?”

  “Lisa was the perfect target,” Nash said. “Chartres had feelings for Delan, none for Winfield, and he didn’t know Lisa.”

  Jack leaned back in his chair, the wood and leather creaking as he propped his cowboy boots on the desk. In jeans and a pale plaid shirt, Jack Walker looked more like a farmer than a sheriff.

  “But did he know about the insurance policy?”

  “He won’t admit to it. But then, Lisa didn’t know, either. All Quinn found under Winfield’s nails was lily-of-the-valley oils, so he didn’t claw at his attacker. The ligatures left by the scarf were postmortem. As if the killer wanted him more dead than he already was.”

  “The apartment that was ransacked, what about that?” Jack asked.

  “It wasn’t ransacked, it was destroyed. It was rage, Jack. Passion. The knife in the mattress says revenge to me. And I think whoever killed Winfield and whoever destroyed that apartment is the same person.”

  “Alibis?”

  “No one but Chartres has one for the time Lisa was attacked. Chartres’s checks out, but when I saw him the other day, he had a strange look on his face.”

  “Strange how?”

  “As if he knew something that I should know.” Nash shook his head. “I don’t know. Just a hunch.”

  “The background check on Chartres tell you anything new?”

  “Nothing that I didn’t already know. He was never busted for pimping. And he’s been clean since. Until I have hair matches, I’m not getting very far.” He needed to know if the hairs were the same, female and matched Catherine Delan’s.

  “I’ll see what I can do to hurry it up.”

  Nash nodded and left the office. Suddenly Lisa’s image tripped into his mind. Instinctively he reached for his cell phone, then stopped. Mainly because he didn’t know what to say to her. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what he was feeling other than anger and disappointment. He wasn’t sure if it was in her or himself. He needed to get out of here, he thought, and was about to leave when an elderly man came into the station. He was nearly bald and had to be at least seventy-five, but his step was determined and fast. And headed right toward Nash.

  “Detective Couviyon, I’m Councilman Gramarr,” the man said, extending his hand.

  Nash shook it, then frowned slightly. The name was familiar. “You live next to the Baylor Inn.”

  “Yes, for forty years. I remembered something about the night that young man was killed.”

  Nash offered him a seat, his heartbeat picking up a bit. An officer called out, said he had a call from Chartres, and Nash waved him off to take a message. “Go ahead, sir.”

  “That night I was getting ready for bed. I usually close the shades and turn off most of the lights. I turned off all the lights except the bathroom. Left the windows open. There were guests of the inn on the patio, but they were not making any noise. Just before I crawled into bed, I saw a shadow pass over my wall that night.”

  Nash’s hopes fell. This was too weak a lead.

  “Now, son, I know what you’re thinking, but I’m on my top floor, which is level with the inn, an
d I’ve lived in that house a long time. If the moon is up and someone’s on the back staircase, it casts a shadow into my window. It’s rare, mind you, and I didn’t think much of it, because it happens when a good storm blows the trees. But this was different. I saw a figure.”

  “Did this figure go in?”

  “Well, the shadow disappeared, so I suspect so. But that’s hard to tell, because once I close my eyes, I’m out.”

  Baylor had insisted that none of his employees used the back stairs. “What time did you see this shadow?”

  “It was after ten.”

  “How’s your eyesight, Mr. Gramarr?”

  The older man’s gaze pinned him. “To read the paper, terrible, but I can still sight a deer at fifty yards, boy.”

  Nash smiled for the first time that day.

  “I’m sorry this took so long, but like I said, I didn’t think much of it till the other night when it happened again.”

  “Again?”

  “Yes, it was you walking up those steps.” Gramarr stood to leave. “You haven’t caught the killer, have you?”

  “No, sir. But I will.”

  At least he now knew how the killer had gotten inside Winfield’s room. And though he couldn’t prove it, he’d bet that gift basket was in the storage room on the second floor, delivered at six, then retrieved after Lisa left the suite. Chartres was an accomplice or had discovered it in the storage room and told no one. Nash tried calling Chartres at his home, but received no answer.

  He tried a couple of more times without success, then went for ice cream. It seemed the sane thing to do. His brain was smoking from going over the facts of the case, and he didn’t want to see Lisa right now. Being alone in a theater, a bar, or alone in his place didn’t appeal to him right now. He was walking into the quaint little shop when someone grabbed his arm.

  He turned sharply, his hand slipping inside his jacket for his weapon. A woman and a small boy stood near. “Laura?”

  “Don’t look so shocked, Nash,” his former partner’s widow said.