by Linda Turner
She had it halfway to her mouth when she suddenly froze. Dear God, had she lost her mind? What was she doing? She had to be at the police station in fifteen minutes! What was she going to do? Stroll in there with liquor on her breath?
Muttering a curse, she slammed the glass back down, uncaring that she’d splashed the expensive liquor all over her hand. She had to get control of herself or she was going to blow this and end up in jail again! One misstep, one slip of the tongue, and Law would know she’d put poison in Joe’s champagne….
Breaking out into a sweat at the thought, she stumbled toward the door. She had to sober herself up and get to the police station. “Inez!” she yelled harshly. “I need some coffee. Now!”
By the time she reached the police station, she’d downed an entire pot of coffee. It hadn’t helped. Regardless of how hard she tried, she couldn’t shake the image of Ellis’s dead body from her mind. If the cops were somehow able to connect that murder committed by Patsy Portman to Joe Colton’s wife, Meredith, it would be all over but the crying. She almost threw up in the parking lot just thinking about it.
“Don’t go there,” she mumbled as she staggered from her Mercedes and smoothed the material of her black silk shift over her hips. She had to concentrate on Meredith. She was the one the police were interested in, not Patsy. All she had to do was convince that awful detective that she was Joe’s faithful, loving wife, and no one would ever suspect that she had already killed one man and wanted another one dead.
Hanging on to that nasty little secret, she started up the stone steps to the front entrance, thankful that there was a balustrade to grab. Without it, she would have fallen flat on her face. She liked to think, however, that she hid it well. With her head held at a proud angle, she glided up the steps and walked into the station as if she owned the place. Adopting the same superior look that she’d seen Graham’s wife, Cynthia, adopt countless times, she looked down her nose at the cops and criminals alike who littered the foyer and let them know without saying a word that she was someone to be reckoned with. After all, she was Mrs. Joe Colton, dammit! She didn’t belong here.
“May I help you, ma’am?”
Her head starting to throb and bile rising in her throat, Patsy looked down at the policewoman at the desk who’d finally noticed her and snapped, “It’s about time! I’m here to see Detective Law.”
“Have a seat,” she said dryly, nodding to the benches that lined the walls on either side of the entry. “He’ll be with you in a minute.”
Irritated that the stiff-necked woman actually expected her to wait, Patsy took one look at the grimy benches and the even grimier people sitting on them and sniffed disdainfully. “I don’t think so.”
“Suit yourself,” the woman retorted and immediately turned her attention to the next person who walked in the door.
Tapping her foot impatiently, Patsy told herself she was giving Law five minutes, and not one second more. If he didn’t put in an appearance by then, she was walking out the door. If he didn’t like it, too damn bad. She wasn’t standing around with the dregs of Prosperino while he sat on his butt upstairs eating doughnuts and drinking stale coffee. Her time was valuable, even if his wasn’t.
One minute passed, then another, and with every tick of the clock, Patsy found it more and more difficult to focus on the anger that was the only thing holding her in the present. Clouds of images from the past swirled in her head like gathering thunderheads, threatening to break over her at any moment and drag her down into a living nightmare. Saliva pooling in her mouth, she swallowed, but it didn’t help. She needed some air. Whirling, she took a step toward the entrance.
“Mrs. Colton?”
Her stomach reeling, she almost didn’t stop. But then Thaddeus Law was standing directly in front of her, blocking her path, and she had no choice. He was a bear of a man, six-two if he was an inch, with the muscled chest and broad shoulders of a linebacker, and nothing short of a backhoe was going to budge him when he didn’t want to budge.
Neatly cornered, she fought back her nausea and lifted a delicate, disdaining hand to her mouth. “If you don’t mind, Detective, I was going outside for some fresh air. The stench in here is abominable.”
“Police work is a dirty business,” he said wryly. “Criminals carry their own special odor. Why don’t we go upstairs? It’s not so bad up there.”
The last thing she wanted to do was step farther into the bowels of the police station, where the flashbacks to her interrogation after Ellis’s murder would no doubt be worse than ever, but what else could she do? Law was already suspicious of her. His piercing blue eyes were as dark as midnight and seemed to see to her very soul. With one look, he struck fear in her.
She didn’t, however, dare look away or let him see just how shaken she was. He would eat that up with a spoon, and she’d be damned if she’d give him the satisfaction. “Anywhere is better than here,” she said coolly, with her nose in the air. “Lead the way.”
For a moment she caught the gleam of something in his eyes—speculation or amusement, she wasn’t sure which—then he led her to the elevator. When the doors slid shut on them and a half dozen other people, she felt like the walls of a cell were closing in on her. Perspiration beaded on her brow.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Colton? You look a little pale.”
He would notice, damn him. Staring straight ahead at the doors, she said stiffly, “I don’t like elevators, Detective.”
The doors opened then, thankfully, but her ordeal was only just beginning. “This way,” Law said, and motioned her into what she immediately recognized as an interrogation room.
Horrified, Patsy stopped at the doorway and said sharply, “What’s the meaning of this? I thought you just wanted to ask me a few questions about the party. You didn’t say this was an interrogation!”
The second the words were out of her mouth, Patsy wanted to kick herself. Dammit all, she didn’t want to give the jackass any reason to be suspicious of her, but that was exactly what she’d done. Any second now he was going to ask her why she was afraid of being interrogated. Did she have something to hide?
But instead of putting her on the spot, he only said, “Detectives Jones and Shoemaker are joining us, and my office isn’t much bigger than the elevator. I thought you’d be more comfortable in here.”
It was a plausible excuse, but Patsy trusted cops about as much as she did a snake poised to strike. Still, if he could play games, so could she. Dredging up a self-deprecating smile, she said, “I guess I put my foot in it then, didn’t I? Sorry about that.”
“Maybe some coffee would help,” he suggested. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”
He was gone before she could tell him that she’d already drunk enough coffee to float a battleship, and she was left with no choice but to take a chair at the table in the middle of the room. Hiding her distaste, she didn’t dare look at the mirror hanging on the wall opposite her. She wasn’t a fool—she knew it was a two-way mirror and that even now someone was watching her. Let them look. If they thought she was going to give herself away by doing something stupid, they were in for a rude awakening.
The door opened then and in walked Law, along with his two cronies, Jones and Shoemaker. All three of them had talked to her the night of the shooting, and every day since. They always used the excuse that they just needed some clarification about some of the guests, who was standing where, who hated whom, who came late or left early, but Patsy wasn’t a fool. She knew what they were doing. They hadn’t ruled her out as a suspect, and until they did, they intended to keep an eye on her and see if they could make her sweat—hence this little visit to the station to “talk.”
And it was working. They just didn’t know how well. Every time she inadvertently glanced at the mirror on the wall, images from the last interrogation she endured swam before her eyes. With shaking fingers, she took the coffee Thaddeus Law handed her and took a sip, only to nearly choke. “My God, what is this?”
“Some folks call it battery acid,” David Jones said with a chuckle. “If you put enough cream and sugar in it, it almost tastes like coffee.”
“Of course, it’s nothing like that fancy gourmet stuff you had at your husband’s party,” Mark Shoemaker said easily. “That was the best coffee I ever tasted.”
Flashing him Meredith’s simpering smile, Patsy silently congratulated herself on the way she’d kept her wits about her after the shooting. Playing the worried, tearful wife and concerned hostess to the hilt, she’d hovered over everyone like a mother hen, making sure the cops were well fed and supplied with all the coffee they could drink as they worked long into the night investigating the scene and talking to all the guests. It had been one of the best performances of her life.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” she said graciously. “It’s my husband’s favorite blend.”
“Speaking of your husband,” Thad said with a frown, bringing the conversation back to her reason for being there, “why were you standing at his left when the toasts started? Just moments before, hadn’t you been standing on his right? Why did you move?”
He threw the questions at her like darts, one after another, not giving her time to answer one before he thought of another, and every one hit its mark. Outraged, she almost told him to go to hell, but she never had to say a word. Before she could open her mouth, David Jones scowled at him and said, “Whoa, Thad, you’re coming on a little strong, aren’t you? She already told us why she moved. She had to instruct the caterers to make sure everyone had a glass of champagne for the toasts, and by the time she made her way back to where Joe was on the bandstand, everybody had gathered around him and she just squeezed in on the left.”
“There was nothing sinister about it,” she said in her own defense. “There was no place else for me to go.”
It was a logical excuse—and nothing but the truth, thank God, Patsy thought smugly. No one had to know that while she was gone, she’d slipped the poison in Joe’s champagne glass.
Pleased with herself, she saw that Jones and Shoemaker accepted her story without so much as blinking, but Law wasn’t nearly as easily satisfied. “All right, I’ll give you that,” he growled, “but that doesn’t explain why you were so nervous all evening. A number of people commented on the fact that you were fidgety and ill at ease all night. Why was that, Mrs. Colton? What were you so antsy about?”
“I had three hundred guests in my home, Detective,” she retorted haughtily. “Not to mention a band, dozens of wait staff, and security. Of course I was nervous. My husband was really looking forward to this party, and it was important to me that everyone enjoyed themselves. If you’d had that much responsibility on your shoulders, I’m sure you would have been more than a little nervous, too.”
Her tone was belligerent, and she didn’t give a damn. Yes, she’d been a nervous wreck at the party. And she’d had every right to be. She’d planned to kill her husband, for heaven’s sake! She could have been spared all that if she’d just known someone else was going to try to kill him, too!
“Please don’t be offended by Detective Law,” Mark Shoemaker said when she glared at the other man. “He’s new to the department, and sometimes he gets a little overzealous. He means well, though. We all want the same thing—the name of the shooter.”
They may have all had the same goal, but it was obvious that Jones and Shoemaker didn’t share Law’s suspicions of her. Taking over the questioning, they focused on Joe’s enemies and how someone not invited to the party might have gotten access to the ranch. And there was nothing Law could do but stew.
Delighted, it was all Patsy could do not to laugh. Let him suspect whatever he liked. No one was going to take him seriously. He was the new kid on the block and his opinion didn’t count for squat.
Ruthlessly fighting a smile, she patiently answered the other men’s questions and made sure she didn’t tell them anything that could be used against her. She was good. Damn good. By the time they finally thanked her for her help and announced that she was free to go, she’d convinced them she was as saintly as her precious sister.
All but Thaddeus Law, she corrected herself as she left the interrogation room and headed for the elevator. She didn’t spare him a glance, but she could feel his midnight-blue eyes piercing her back. And she knew she hadn’t heard the last from Detective Law.
Standing on the patio at the ranch with Joe and Rebecca, Austin finally felt like he was getting somewhere. It was about time! He had elaborate diagrams of where the band was, the buffet tables, and every guest that could be accounted for. But it wasn’t until he stood in the exact spot where Joe had been standing when the toasts began that he could actually see how the shooting played out. He still didn’t know who the shooter was, but he was slowly getting there.
“All right, Joe, you were standing here,” he said as he took a position where the bandstand had been set up for the party. “And you were looking…where? Straight ahead? At someone in the crowd off to your left or right? Where?”
“Straight ahead,” Joe said promptly. “I was waiting for everyone to fill their glasses, and there was this redheaded hippie waiter who was moving slower than Christmas—”
“A redheaded waiter?” Austin cut in with a frown, checking his notes. “Man or woman?”
“Man,” Rebecca answered for him. “I remember him now. He was tall and geeky, with stringy red hair he wore scraped back into a ponytail. He did look like a hippie—he even had an earring. And Joe’s right. He moved like a turtle stuck in molasses.”
“But who is this guy? I interviewed the wait staff. There was no redheaded hippie!”
Austin was positive he hadn’t talked to such a person, but they were just as positive the man had been there. Which meant he had missed him somehow. And if he’d missed one, how many others had slipped through the cracks without him even being aware of it?
“Damn!” he swore. “The caterer assured me the list he gave me was a complete list of everyone he’d hired for the night.”
“Maybe it was,” Rebecca said.
“Then how—”
“It was a large party—the caterer had to hire college kids to supplement his staff,” she explained. “And you know how they are. Something comes up or they decide they can’t work, they send someone in their place. The caterer probably didn’t even know the switch had been made. He was just glad he had a body to serve drinks.”
“Then how the hell is Austin going to find this guy?” Joe asked with a scowl. “He’s got no name, nothing to go on.”
That was a good question, one Austin didn’t have an answer for. “I don’t know,” he said grimly, “but I’ll track him down somehow. I have to. If he was standing where you both say he was, he might have seen the shooter. Do you remember where he was standing when the shot rang out?”
His dark brows knit together in a scowl, Joe stared at the spot where the waiter had been standing just minutes before the first toast. “It seems like he was at the back and a little bit to the right of center. I was waiting for him to finish serving everyone, but then Meredith came up on stage—”
“I thought she was standing right beside you?”
“She was, but she got called away for a few minutes. I don’t remember why…” Replaying images of the party in his head, he said, “Oh, that’s right. She had special champagne glasses for the two of us and had to get them from the bar. As soon as she returned, I lifted my glass for the toast, and the next thing I knew, a bullet grazed my cheek, and all hell broke loose.”
“And the waiter? Where was he? Could he have been the shooter? Maybe he wasn’t a college student at all, but a hired gun. Did you see him after the shooting? Did he stick around or walk away before the police got there?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Everyone was screaming, then the paramedics were there and the police, and it was a madhouse.”
“Everyone was so concerned about Joe that they were all rushing the bandstand,�
� Rebecca added. “I don’t remember seeing the waiter again, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. It’s all just kind of a blur.”
Unobtrusively standing in the shadow of the open door that opened onto the patio, listening to every word, Patsy wanted to scream. After all she’d endured at the police station, this was too much! This was her home—hers!—and there would be no secret meetings behind her back. She wouldn’t allow it. She couldn’t. Not with Austin. He was too sharp, too much like Thaddeus Law. Austin didn’t miss much, and with all the time he was spending at the ranch, it was only a matter of time before he discovered her and Joe’s marriage was nothing but a sham. From there, it was a simple step to conclude that she had everything to gain from Joe’s death and nothing to lose.
Sick at the thought of being discovered, she stepped boldly out onto the patio. She had to do something, had to stop Austin from getting too close to the truth, had to distract him and Joe and Rebecca from suspecting her. Playing the wounded wife, she cried, “How could you do this to me?”
Startled, Joe whirled and only just then caught sight of her. Confused, he frowned. “Do what to you? What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play innocent. You know very well what I’m talking about. From the very beginning, you thought I was the one responsible for the shooting, and now you’re trying to make Rebecca and Austin think the same way!”
“Oh, no, Meredith!” Rebecca said, horrified. “He wasn’t doing any such thing. We were just reenacting the shooting—”
“So I would walk in and hopefully give myself away,” she cut in shrilly. “Can’t you see what a setup this is? He planned this so he could catch me off guard. He hates me!”
“I do not!” Joe retorted, stung. “If you’ll just settle down and listen…”
But she’d worked herself up into a fine state and she had no intention of giving up center stage anytime soon. She had everyone’s attention and if she played this right, she’d make Joe—and Austin—feel so guilty for suspecting her that they’d never again consider her a suspect.