The Stolen Bride

by Jacqueline Diamond

  “If I knew, I’d tell you,” Chet answered. “That’s the truth. About the funds I borrowed…”

  “I’ll have to look into it.” Erin couldn’t commit herself without knowing how much he’d taken or what else he’d done. And didn’t the voters have a right to learn as much as possible about a man they might be choosing to represent them in Congress?

  “Fair enough.” Chet’s gaze fixed on the photo and he frowned.

  Why had he started to show it to her? Erin wondered. “What did you mean to say about my parents?”

  “Nothing.”

  Joseph caught her elbow. “Let’s go.”

  Despite her curiosity, Erin went with him. She didn’t want to risk another argument breaking out.

  Halfway down the driveway, her knees started to shake. She barely made it into the car.

  “You okay?” Joseph asked as they backed out.

  “I think I’m having a delayed reaction.”

  “There’s a blanket in the rear seat. I don’t want you going into shock.”

  She hugged herself. “Just keep driving. I’ll be fine when we get home.”

  In the yard, the headlights picked out the palm fronds. One of them swished, and she tried to see what had caused the movement. A raccoon or a possum?

  The vehicle straightened and the yard fell into darkness. Her nerves were probably playing tricks on her, anyway, Erin thought.

  “What made you say ‘Oh, no’?” Joseph asked. “I got worried.”

  “The gun.” Thank goodness he’d reminded her. “I looked in my purse and it’s gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Someone must have stolen it while I was at my mother’s and substituted a stapler. That’s why I didn’t notice the weight.”

  “You had it with you the whole time except at the end, right?”

  Erin couldn’t believe she’d made that mistake. “That’s right.” Before he could ask, she added, “It couldn’t have been Chet. He was never alone with it.”

  “I know,” he said. “You sent Brandy to fetch it.”

  “Lance could have taken it.” She searched her memory to recreate the scene at the Boldings’ house. “I think my mom was with him, though, so I doubt he’d have dared search my purse.”

  Joseph navigated toward the highway. “We have to report the theft, since the gun’s registered to me, but first we should figure out what to say. As a peace officer, I’m entitled to carry a concealed weapon.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “You’d need a license,” he agreed.

  She hadn’t meant to break the law. “What should we do?”

  “This is my fault. Under the circumstances, I felt the most important thing was to guard your life. Now I have to figure out how to keep you out of trouble.”

  “You were nearby,” she said. “Doesn’t that count?”

  “We’ll figure something out. Meanwhile, we’ve got a bigger problem.”

  “What?”

  “Finding out who took it and what they plan to do with it.”

  Erin hated to think what use someone might make of the weapon. “Let’s hope they just wanted to disarm me.”

  “Yes, let’s hope so.” Joseph reached over and smoothed her hair. “I guess I made a fool of myself, bursting into Chet’s house that way, but I’d make a fool of myself ten times over to protect you.”

  The warmth of his hand spread through Erin, relaxing the tightness in her shoulders and easing the dark cloud of dread in her heart. Despite everything that had happened, at least she was with Joseph.

  At least she was with Joseph. She hoped she’d stay with him for a very long time.

  Chapter Fifteen

  At home, an urgency seized them both to seek refuge in each other. Erin began stripping off her clothes as soon as they got inside, and Joseph unsnapped his belt buckle while following her into the bedroom.

  There was an extra measure of joy in the way skin whispered over skin. Their kisses were longer and sweeter than before, their closeness less self-conscious. When she welcomed Joseph inside her, Erin’s spirits soared.

  The world beyond this room ceased to exist as Joseph’s caresses unleashed a torrent of desire. Fierce longing swept her higher and higher, until she could scarcely bear the tension, and then over a waterfall into a rainbow plunge. Shimmering with ecstasy, Erin clung to her man, exulting in their shared power and in the unsuspected depths of her passion.

  She wished they could journey through time to retrieve the years they’d lost. At least, she thought gratefully, they’d come together now, united against the world. If only there were some way to guarantee she wouldn’t lose him again.

  After dozing, they ate a light supper. Then they made love again and slept all night in each other’s arms.

  TOWELING OFF her reddish-brown hair after they showered, Erin glowed in the morning light. With her heart-shaped face and delicate complexion, she reminded Joseph of a sprite too ethereal to capture. Well, he didn’t want to capture or control her, only to be with her.

  Pulling on a light jersey over his head, he lingered to watch Erin tuck her curves into a blouse and slacks. From a drawer, she removed a pendant and fastened it around her neck. Joseph was surprised to see a jagged half-heart of burnished gold settle into the hollow of her throat.

  “You still have it,” he marveled.

  “I was wearing it the day I got hit.” Erin regarded him through a curtain of hair. “I should have realized I’d never have done that if I’d intended to marry Chet.” She peered into the drawer. “Gee, I’m glad I took my will out of my purse. Otherwise whoever stole the gun might have found it, too.”

  “If it was Lance, at least he’d have known you were leaving your money to charity and not to your mother,” Joseph said.

  “That’s true.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “So if he’s trying to gain control of the company, he still has a motive to kill me. Maybe I should mail him a copy.”

  “You could simply let your mother know you’ve changed it. I’m sure she’d mention it to him.” Joseph almost smiled, imagining Lance’s fury at being outfoxed.

  “On the other hand, she might take it as a sign that I expect her to die.”

  “That never occurred to me.”

  From below on the street a car rumbled. Then another. And a third.

  “What on earth?” Erin said.

  Joseph flicked open the blinds. At first, he caught only a blurry glimpse, and then a car exactly like Rick’s came into view.

  Ordinarily, he’d have been glad to see his friend, but behind it drove a black-and-white patrol car, trailed by Chief Norris’s sedan. The chief and a uniformed patrolman hadn’t accompanied Rick on a social visit.

  Erin joined him at the window. “You don’t think they’re here with bad news about my mother, do you?”

  “That many cops? No.” An ugly sense of menace warned that it was bad news, all right, but not the kind she meant. “The only reason they’d bring that many officers is to arrest one or both of us.”

  “For what?”

  He had a nasty suspicion. “My fingerprints were on the missing gun. If somebody used it carefully enough, mine might be the only prints.”

  “You’re being framed?” A sick feeling twisted in the pit of her stomach. Just like his father. And it was her fault. She was the one who’d been stupid enough to leave her purse behind.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

  “I won’t let this happen,” she said.

  “They may arrest you, too.” If they took him into custody, they’d almost certainly hold Erin either as a suspect or a witness.

  That raised a frightening possibility. Supposing that Norris was involved in the attacks on her. That would give him both the time and the opportunity to stage a deadly “accident.”

  Joseph made a split-second decision. Regardless of the impact on his defense, he couldn’t let them get her. “Grab your purse and go out through the back before the patrolman cir
cles around.”

  “You need me to vouch for your whereabouts!”

  “We’ll deal with that problem later. If Norris gets his hands on you, you might not survive.”

  She paled. “Oh, my gosh!”

  “When you find a safe place, call a lawyer,” he told her. “Don’t phone me. They’ll be listening. Now hurry!”

  She grabbed her pocketbook. The drawn curtains of the main room prevented anyone from seeing as they sped to the rear door. “Go straight through the trees.” The thick clump should provide cover. “Cut over the hill to the next road.”

  “What if someone stops me?” Her eyes were wide with fear.

  “Insist on seeing a lawyer immediately. Say nothing until you talk to him, no matter what your instincts tell you,” Joseph said. “At this point, I don’t trust anyone except my mother.”

  “And mine.”

  In front of the house, car doors banged. Erin brushed a kiss across his cheek and whisked away, rubber-soled shoes carrying her noiselessly over the deck and into the grove.

  The doorbell rang. Fetching his service revolver from the bedroom, Joseph set it openly on the coffee table. He didn’t mean to provide an excuse for anyone to open fire.

  The bell chimed three times, fast. When he answered, Rick stood on the step, regret coloring his face.

  The chief waited to one side. The patrolman had to have gone around the house. If he’d noticed Erin fleeing, he’d have sounded the alarm, so Joseph hoped she’d avoided detection.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “May we come inside?”

  Although he had no idea what had brought them here, he knew better than to give them a chance to snoop. Or to plant evidence. “Do you have a warrant?”

  “Yes.”

  Bad news, Joseph thought. “Mind telling me what happened?”

  From the side, Norris said, “Where were you yesterday evening?”

  A flicker of Rick’s eyes showed his dismay at the inappropriate question, although he didn’t dare rebuke the chief openly. Instead, he began reciting the Miranda warning. “You have the right to remain silent…”

  A chill ran through Joseph as he listened to the familiar advisory. He almost regretted that the chief hadn’t kept questioning him, because without the warning, whatever he’d replied would have been inadmissible in court.

  “I’m not waiving my rights,” he told Rick when the detec tive produced a form for him to sign. “I don’t even know what crime you’re investigating.”

  His friend released a long breath. “I’m arresting you for the murder of Chet Dever.”

  “Someone killed Dever?” Stunned, Joseph tried to grasp the implications. At Chet’s house last night, the two men had argued loudly enough to be heard by a passerby or neighbor. That might make him a suspect, but by itself the circumstance wasn’t enough to justify a warrant.

  I got caught up in something a lot bigger than I expected. Chet hadn’t been kidding.

  “Where’s your service revolver?” Rick glanced past him. “Never mind. I see it.”

  “How’d it happen?” he asked, taking a long shot, since he didn’t expect an answer.

  “You should know,” Norris said. “It was your gun that killed him.”

  “Oh, for…!” Although he left the sentence incomplete, Rick didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. A basic rule of interrogation called for withholding facts in the hope that the suspect would implicate himself by accidentally revealing information. Apparently, the chief was too angry to care.

  “It got stolen last night. I don’t know for sure who took it but I have some idea.” Surely they’d realize that, by targeting him, they gave the real slayer more time to cover his or her tracks. “You need to talk to Lance Bolding and Brandy Schorr.” Of course either of them could have handed the gun over to a third party.

  “Don’t play games with me,” the chief said. “Your fingerprints were the only ones on it.”

  It had required foresight, sophistication and cunning to lift the gun from Erin’s purse without marring its surface and use it as a murder weapon. Brandy didn’t strike Joseph as that conniving or that smart, but Lance did. “Bolding had an argument with Chet.”

  “So did…” The chief bit off his words. He hadn’t entirely lost his senses.

  So did I, Joseph finished sternly. Obviously they’d done their homework. Some of it, anyway.

  After collecting the revolver, Rick patted him down for other weapons, set aside his wallet and took his cell phone. He undoubtedly intended to intercept any calls, as Joseph had anticipated.

  “Where’s Erin Marshall?” the chief demanded.

  “In the bathroom.” The longer he delayed them, the more chance she had of getting clear.

  Ruefully, Rick produced a pair of handcuffs. When the metal snicked around Joseph’s wrists, an impotent rage flared inside him.

  Even though Joseph hadn’t been present in the alley to see it, an imaginary vision of his father’s arrest had haunted him for years. Lewis, confused and injured, being cuffed and dragged off like a criminal. Finding himself accused of a crime he hadn’t committed and then, with sickening inevitability, being railroaded into prison while the town turned against his wife and son.

  The chief called Erin’s name, repeating it several times with increasing vehemence. “She’d better be safe,” Norris growled. “If you’ve done anything to her…”

  “You think I’d hurt her?” The idea was so preposterous Joseph hadn’t even considered they might suspect it.

  “After what you did to Chet, you’re obviously capable of anything.” Norris stalked off in search of Erin

  Joseph forced himself to check a passionate defense of his actions. A prosecutor would tease and torment any statement he made and use it against him. Although he’d refused to waive his rights, that only precluded an interrogation. Anything he volunteered could be used in court.

  The district attorney already had plenty to work with: motive, opportunity and means. And an easy way to discredit Jo seph’s only defense witness, on the grounds that she was his lover.

  Whoever had stolen his gun yesterday had made quick and deadly use of it, he thought. Yet the slayer couldn’t have known that Erin had never handled the gun. Perhaps it didn’t matter who took the blame. Maybe the point was simply to get away with murder.

  “Where is Erin?” Rick asked

  “She’s fine.”

  Norris stormed in from the bedroom. “She’s gone! What’ve you done with her, Lowery?”

  “Nothing.”

  “She witnessed the murder, didn’t she?” the chief demanded. “So you killed her. You never belonged on the force. I knew you’d turn out bad, but not this bad.”

  Joseph was too distressed to answer. Erin, he thought, what have I done?

  The chief, whether for ulterior motives or not, had already begun pinning the blame on Joseph for her possible murder. If the killer discovered he wasn’t likely to be charged, he’d have no further reason for caution.

  Especially if that killer was Edgar Norris.

  SIX WEEKS of convalescence had left Erin out of shape. To make matters worse, she kept slipping on the steep slope. After she cut across several roads and a couple of rear yards, her heart thrummed and her shins were aching.

  She pictured Joseph at the mercy of Chief Norris. What crime had been committed? Was someone dead?

  Maybe it wasn’t that serious. Chet might have filed a complaint against Joseph as payback for their quarrel, not to mention the canceled wedding. Then she remembered that the CEO depended on her goodwill to avoid ruin. It wasn’t likely he’d create trouble for her.

  Sinking onto a tree stump, Erin sucked into the autumn air. How ridiculous, she thought, that an heiress worth millions had to flee through backyards like a fugitive. But if you couldn’t trust the police, who could you trust?

  Suzanne. Not only was she Joseph’s mother, she worked for Abe Fitch. He could make a referral to a good criminal
attorney.

  Erin was reaching into her purse when the phone rang. Hoping it was Joseph with an all clear, she answered.

  “Erin? Thank goodness you’re okay.” Alice’s voice rang with relief.

  “I’m fine. You’re the one I’ve been concerned about,” Erin said.

  “I thought something terrible had happened!”

  Surely her mother didn’t know about the police showing up on Joseph’s doorstep. “Why?”

  “You haven’t heard?” Alice asked. “It’s all over the radio. Someone murdered Chet last night.”

  “He’s dead?” Erin saw the tall blond man leaning over her bed at the hospital, tenderly taking charge of her. At the church, arrogant and threatening when she called it off. At his house last night, warning of danger.

  She’d assumed he meant the risk of bringing his embezzlement to light. Why would anyone want to kill him?

  “A neighbor reported suspicious noises,” her mother went on. “The police don’t release details on that kind of thing, I guess. Anyway, they found him in the house.”

  “How awful. Who could have done this?”

  “According to the radio, there’s a suspect. They’ve haven’t released the name.” Her mother sounded shaken. “It’s horrible. Poor Chet. I don’t know what we’re going to do without him.”

  The missing gun. Was it the murder weapon? Was that why the police had come to Joseph’s house?

  What other reason could there be?

  Whoever had done this had to be desperate. And since the only people with access to the gun had been Lance and Brandy, that put her mother in immediate peril.

  “Mom, who’s there with you?”

  “Lance went to play golf again. He’s such an aficionado,” she said. “This whole business upsets me, but he doesn’t seem to care. He made some crack about never liking Chet in the first place.”

  “That’s disgusting.” As she talked, Erin began making her way downhill in search of a street sign that would tell her where to direct a cab.

  “Erin, when I first met Lance, we had such fun together. I resented it when you questioned my judgment.” Her mother’s voice broke. “Was I wrong? Did I bring this horror to the people I care about?”