Trigger Effect

by Maggie Price

  LeMonde slicked her tongue over her red-glossed bottom lip. “Lauren told me she liked having a variety of lovers. Often more than one at the same time.”

  “So, we’re talking group sex?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just men? Or men and women?”

  “She didn’t go into specifics.”

  “Were you one of those lovers?”

  LeMonde’s cool green eyes went frigid in a finger snap. “No. I have no desire to engage in sex with another woman. Or several men at the same time.”

  “Are you sure Lauren didn’t mention the names of any of her lovers?”

  “Positive. She acted very secretive about their identities. And where their encounters took place.”

  The image of the note that had been found folded inside Lauren’s glove gelled in Paige’s brain. “Did she mention anything to you about meeting someone at a place called Midnight?”

  “No.”

  “Did Davis Gillette know about his wife’s affairs? The group sex?”

  “I’m not sure. A politician’s career would have a hard time surviving something like that, so if he had known, I imagine he’d have done something about it.”

  “Such as?”

  “Divorce Lauren?” LeMonde spread her elegant fingers. “Murder her, maybe?”

  “Do you think Davis Gillette is capable of murder?”

  “I think most men are when they become obsessed with a woman who won’t give them what they want. Don’t you agree, Ms. Carmichael?”

  Paige had no intention of allowing the woman to take over the interview by asking questions. “Was the councilman obsessed with his wife?”

  “Completely. A little over a year ago, Lauren was hired as a hostess in the bar at our country club. My husband and I were having drinks with Davis her first night on the job. Lauren was young and beautiful. He didn’t say as much, of course, but I could tell by the way Davis watched her that he wanted her. And he got her.” LeMonde angled her chin. “I believe he would now agree that he got more than he bargained for.”

  From what Paige had heard so far, she’d say LeMonde had hit a bull’s-eye on that point. “You say you knew Lauren only a year. She’s a former cocktail waitress, you’re a socialite. Not your typical backgrounds for two women to become friends.”

  “We weren’t extremely close.”

  “Close enough for you to give her an alibi,” Paige countered. “Why is that?”

  “I liked Lauren. And she married a man who has immense social standing. Davis might possibly be our next governor, Lauren would have been the state’s First Lady. Considering those things, it isn’t odd we became friendly. Became aware of each other’s…interests.”

  Paige nodded. “Let’s get back to what you were doing while Lauren was off with other men.”

  LeMonde’s eyes narrowed. “I told you, I was tending to my own business.”

  “That business being a full social schedule that includes serving on several boards, volunteer work and fund-raising,” Paige said. “All areas where you might possibly run into Davis Gillette. Yet you were ‘not at all’ worried about that. Which tells me you weren’t going about your usual business during those times. What were you doing, Mrs. LeMonde, while Lauren was using you as an alibi?”

  “That’s none of your business. It’s private.”

  “Privacy doesn’t figure into a murder investigation,” Paige countered. “If you don’t answer our questions now, we’ll keep coming back until you do.”

  LeMonde linked her fingers together, forming a blockade with her arms while her gaze flicked to McCall. “I want assurances that what I say stays in strict confidence. There are…issues that would be devastating to not only my own marriage, but someone else’s if this information got out.”

  “We’ll do what we can.” McCall’s expression remained unreadable, but he’d warmed his voice up a couple of notches from Paige’s own cool tone. She knew he’d stepped into the “good cop” role because when a subject had something you wanted, someone needed to treat him or her with respect and importance.

  “And we do appreciate your candor,” he added. “The best thing you can do for yourself is take Ms. Carmichael’s advice and tell the truth.”

  “I have a…close relationship with another man. Lauren and I agreed that we would use each other as an alibi for those times we needed to be away from our husbands.”

  Paige shifted closer on the couch, invading LeMonde’s personal space. “So, while Lauren was off engaging in group sex, you were with your own married lover. Did Lauren know the man you’re seeing?”

  “No.” LeMonde’s creamy skin was flushed now. “And before you ask, there is no way I will divulge his name. My husband is a respected surgeon. Well-known in the community. But…he has a medical condition that no longer allows us to be intimate. And I have certain needs.” She shifted on the couch. “Quite frankly, I’m concerned about all the people who would get hurt unnecessarily if my other relationship were exposed. It’s as simple as that.”

  Despite her best intention not to react to LeMonde’s comment, Paige felt a tightening in her chest. Professionally, she should not feel this squeeze of resentment for the woman, but she did. And there was no rationale for Paige to acknowledge a common thread with both LeMonde’s husband and Davis Gillette, who on the surface had no idea of their spouses’ betrayal. Yet, sitting there, Paige felt empathy for the two men. Just as she again felt the nasty stab of hurt from her own husband’s treachery.

  And then came Isaac’s words, magnifying the pain. But losing that important function in your right hand wasn’t all you lost that night, was it? I smile when I conjecture what a blow that must have been to your pride. Your womanhood. How satisfying for me, knowing my actions brought you such personal humiliation.

  Paige studied LeMonde. And felt her dislike for the woman intensify, curling inside her into a hard ball. She knew she had to get out of LeMonde’s presence before she screwed things up.

  “Excuse me,” she improvised, “I set my cell on vibrate mode and I have a call coming in.” She unclipped her phone off the waistband of her slacks, pretended to check the display, then rose. “I’ve got to take this.”

  McCall’s eyes met hers and he squinted slightly, then he nodded. “All right.”

  “I’ll meet you outside.” She snagged her purse and coat, then headed out the door.

  Chapter 11

  “Why did you cut out of the interview?” McCall asked.

  They were the first words he’d uttered since he’d slid behind the wheel of his unmarked cruiser and driven away from the LeMondes’ stately digs. He’d steered through the rich neighborhood of professionally maintained landscapes and architect-designed houses, then pulled to a stop in a park as well tended as the surrounding lawns. The parking lot was deserted on this cold February morning.

  “I had to get out of there.” Paige’s chest gave a small heave as she stared out the windshield. Talking about what happened was like touching a wound, keeping it fresh and bleeding.

  “Yeah, I got that. What I don’t know is why.”

  “LeMonde was sitting there, spouting off ‘quite franklys’ and ‘it’s as simple as thats,’ and other phrases that show a total lack of commitment to what she’s saying. She wanted us to believe she was so worried about her husband’s feelings if he found out about her affair. She doesn’t give a damn about how he feels. Or about the vows they exchanged. All she cares about is protecting her own sorry butt.”

  Angled in his seat to face her, McCall rested one wrist over the steering wheel. “So, you picked up on some hot phrases that told you she was lying, and that pissed you off. Since a lot of people view lying to the cops as the equivalent of an Olympic sport, I have to figure this isn’t the first time you’ve encountered this particular phenomenon. And if you’re so sensitive about being lied to in general, you’d have never gotten pegged to work in Homicide at the Dallas PD. Which means there was something specific about LeMonde that t
ripped your trigger. We’re partners now, Carmichael. I need to know what’s going on.”

  Paige conceded he was right. Partners had to be able to trust each other, to know ahead of time how the other might react during interviews and interrogations. Having that information helped avoid potholes that could derail an investigation.

  “It’s a long story.”

  He checked his watch. “I don’t have to be in court to testify in that murder case for a couple of hours.”

  “Fine.” Paige settled back in her seat. “Right before I got promoted to Homicide, I pulled some ligaments when I tackled a do-wrong. My doc prescribed strengthening exercises. The personal trainer I was assigned to was a good-looking guy who was quick to flatter, quick to give compliments. Quick to charm. In short, I couldn’t resist him. Didn’t want to. We got married after about four months of heavy breathing.

  “Three years went by and things between us were great. Or so I thought. We’d even begun talking about starting a family. Then I snagged the ‘Gentleman Jim’ investigation and everything got put on hold. My husband said he understood, that the case could shoot my career up the ladder. Other cops on the task force were griping about the pressure they got at home over the long hours. Not me. My husband never once complained. I considered myself lucky to have found a guy like him.”

  Paige stared down at her hand. The scar symbolized so much more than just her taking a bullet. “The night Isaac shot me, I wound up in the E.R. A nurse was prepping me for surgery when this paperwork drone showed up, asking how I could have been admitted to their maternity ward that afternoon, and wound up in their E.R. that night, suffering from a line-of-duty gunshot wound. I told her she’d made a mistake. She showed me the forms that had been filled out that afternoon—everything was right, my name, address, date of birth, insurance information. And at the bottom of the forms was my husband’s signature.”

  “Christ,” McCall said, the investigator in him clearly theorizing what was coming.

  Paige stared out at the park’s bleak winter landscape. “I had no clue he had a girlfriend, much less a pregnant one. She didn’t have a job, and I covered him on my city health insurance, so he came up with this scheme to have her use my name when she saw an obstetrician. And when she gave birth. That way, my insurance would pay for everything. And I’d be clueless, which I might have been if we hadn’t all wound up at the same hospital.”

  “You found all that out the night Isaac shot you?”

  “Yes. I refused to let them put me under until I confronted my husband. Which was easy to do, since he was upstairs, cooing over his infant daughter.”

  “Talk about brutal.”

  “Almost as brutal as when the charming son of a bitch admitted he’d been seeing other women the entire time we’d been married.” She met McCall’s gaze. His dark eyes were steady, his expression straightforward with no hint of pity. “For a while, I couldn’t absorb the fact my marriage had been a scam. A joke. When it finally sunk in, I felt like a total idiot. I was a cop, I was supposed to be able to read people, not just accept at face value things people said to me.”

  “That’s the job, Carmichael. In an ideal world, you’re not supposed to have to put your personal life under a microscope.”

  “If I had, I maybe wouldn’t have wound up playing the part of the stereotypical gullible female.”

  “So, I take it that’s what Isaac was referring to in his e-mail. The blow to your pride, your womanhood. The humiliation.”

  “Yes. I have no clue how he found out about what happened to my marriage. Isaac was in custody. The jailers kept him in solitary, away from other prisoners. Nothing was said about my personal life during his trial.”

  “Sounds like he’s had someone delving into your business. That’s another reason your theory about him having an accomplice is sound.”

  “One who apparently knows the right places to dig.” The cruiser’s engine continued its soft idle while Paige again directed her gaze out the windshield. A swing set sat a few yards away, its empty swings stirring in the cold wind. The sun reflected brightly off a slide’s shiny surface. Scanning the park, Paige saw no one, yet the possibility she and McCall were being watched was real. Too real.

  She flexed her fingers. “Look, I’m sorry about walking out on the interview. Having Isaac goad me about my marriage, then listening to LeMonde talk about her affair… I just had to get out of there. Hardly professional on my part.”

  “Wrong,” McCall countered. “I’ve worked with cops who didn’t have the sense to take themselves out of an interview when things got personal. One detective I worked with totally lost it and let a child killer see how much he sickened him. The bastard clammed up just as he was about to tell us where he’d stashed a little girl’s body. That was two years ago, and we still haven’t found her. It says a lot for you, Carmichael, that you knew when to get yourself away from LeMonde.”

  She raised a shoulder. “Thanks.”

  “And it doesn’t say a lot for me that the first time you laid eyes on me, you thought of your slime-bucket ex.”

  “It was your charming grin, McCall. Then there was the oozing confidence that sent the message you might be considering me as your next conquest.”

  He gave her an appraising look across the car’s bench seat. “I haven’t tried to conquer you, now have I?”

  “No, and I salve my disappointment by telling myself Houdini is a busy guy.” She glanced at the clock in the dash. “Now that we’ve got this hashed out, why don’t we—”

  “What’s this ‘Houdini’ deal?”

  She saw from his slightly puzzled expression he didn’t know. Great move, Carmichael. “Nothing. Just a name I tossed out.”

  “I don’t have your skills, but I’ve got a bullshit meter that’s got a high success rate when it comes to spotting a lie. It’s blaring an alarm right now. Try telling the truth.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s a nickname you seem to have earned. Through your dealings with certain female co-workers.”

  He arched a brow. “Dealings?”

  She hesitated only a moment, then plunged in. “The rumor is that in bed, you perform magical feats.”

  “Well, now.” He tried hard to look wounded. “I feel so cheap.”

  “No, McCall, what you feel is your ego swelling because I just stroked it with that comment.” Some corner of her mind told her she ought to let things go. But the emotions that had rocked her over the past hours had kicked in and, as with riding a sled down an icy hill, there was no stopping. “You also happen to have earned the ‘Houdini’ nickname because you’re a pro at making a clean escape from any relationship. And it’s just too damn bad if the woman who gets left behind has a few scrapes to her heart.”

  Annoyance flickered over his face. “You listen to the department’s grapevine, and you think you know all about me, don’t you, Carmichael?”

  “You, and every other guy whose little black book has more entries than the Dallas white pages.” She blew out a breath, kicking herself mentally for letting her temper get the best of her. “Look, can we go now? We do have a homicide investigation to conduct.”

  His response was to reach for the key and shut off the idling engine. When he looked at her, the heat in his eyes was so intense it could have thawed an iceberg.

  Feeling a ripple of unease, she held up a hand, like a cop trying to slow traffic. “McCall—”

  He locked a hand around her wrist, pulled her a few inches closer. “Here’s some information the rumor mill seems to have forgotten. Probably because it happened when I was still in uniform. Back then, I was all ready to settle down. I wanted marriage, picket fences, kids, Little League, PTA, the works. And I knew exactly who I wanted that kind of life with. She was a former Miss Oklahoma, and we’d dated a couple of years. She said she wanted it all with me, too. Turns out, she changed her mind. The morning of the wedding, she called it off. Said she’d realized she had warm, fuzzy feelings for her talent manager. Does he
aring that make you think I know a few things about scrapes to the heart?”

  “It makes me think you know plenty,” Paige managed around the tightness in her throat.

  “I wound up with a head full of doubts, not even able to hang on to the memories because I wasn’t sure they were valid. What about all the things she’d said, the things we’d done over the years? Which parts of my life with her were truthful, which were the lies?”

  God, she’d felt the same thing. The very same.

  “McCall, I’m—”

  “It’s a fact I’ve been with my share of women since Miss Oklahoma did her disappearing act. I always make things plain that I’m not interested in anything long-term. And I don’t make promises I have no intention of keeping. So when things end, I walk away with a clean conscience. If that makes me a slimeball in your eyes, Carmichael, that’s too damn bad.”

  He released her wrist. A muscle worked in his jaw as he kept his gaze locked on hers. “Hell, it’s been years since I talked about my past.”

  “So, why tell me?” she asked quietly.

  “Seems you have the ability to push the right buttons. You’ve done that since I first laid eyes on you.” Angling his head, he regarded her with an unnerving intensity. And then she saw something settle in his eyes, a look as clear and knowing as a lion on the prowl. She knew instinctively that somewhere in the moment, his perception of her had changed. “Good thing I’m an ace detective.”

  She studied him warily. “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I suddenly have my own mystery to solve. That mystery being you. Why you get to me.” He skimmed a fingertip down her cheek, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. “You want to talk about this sudden development, Carmichael?”

  Awareness rose inside her. Which was not a good thing, since she had sworn she would never again act on any sort of attraction she felt to a man with the ability to juggle women with such skill. Don’t go down that path, she warned herself.