Dirty Little Secrets (Romantic Mystery) Book 1 in the J.J. Graves Series

by Hart, Liliana

  He ignored me and turned his speculation to Brody. “You must be the writer,” he said, snapping another picture. “You’re front page news. Along with the murders that is. We haven’t had this much excitement in town since the Graves killed themselves driving their car over that cliff. Death sells lots of papers.” He chuckled and my blood boiled.

  “They didn’t drive over a cliff on purpose, Floyd,” I said, standing on my toes and pointing my finger in his chest. “It was an accident.”

  “You can’t prove that, Jaye. I heard from good sources that your parents were fighting like cats and dogs that day, and a witness said he swore he saw your dad speed up near the end of the cliff road.”

  “Yeah, except no one could confirm your sources. But that didn’t stop you from printing the lies in your trashy paper.”

  He smirked because he knew the damage had already been done. Everyone in town believed my parents had killed themselves because of Floyd Parker. My hands shook, I was so angry. He changed the subject abruptly, leaving me flustered. I wasn’t good with verbal sparring.

  “I see you’ve found another man to screw to save you from your loneliness. It’s really rather pathetic.” He looked at Brody with sympathy. “She’ll love you and leave you, just like she did to me. Though it wasn’t all that great. Pretty terrible actually.” He waggled his eyebrows and looked at my boobs. “But maybe she’s gotten better with practice. Does she still make that little noise…”

  Brody’s elbow connected with Floyd’s gut before he could finish and the air whooshed out of his mouth. The hallway teemed with police and the crime scene unit, and they’d all stopped working to listen to me and Floyd. I wasn’t sure how long Jack had been standing there, but I found it difficult to look him in the eyes when he came up beside me.

  “You’re not supposed to be up here Floyd,” Jack said, hitting the elevator button and clamping a hand on Floyd’s shoulder.

  “Freedom of the press, Sheriff,” he said with a sneer.

  “Which doesn’t mean shit when I’m trying to catch a murderer,” Jack said, getting right in his face. “You know, Floyd? You’ve been one of the first people on the scene of both murders. That seems pretty suspicious to me. Maybe you knew where the crime scenes were because you were the one to kill these women.”

  “Give me a break,” Floyd said. “Or maybe I’m just better at getting information than your Keystone Kops. This rabble couldn’t find their assholes if they had a mirror. Whoever’s killing these women will get away with murder,” he said with a cruel smile. “Tough break, Jack. Maybe I should do an editorial on the sad state of our police force. How does that sound?” Floyd asked, shoving a mini recorder in Jack’s face.

  Jack didn’t even flinch. “Floyd Parker, where were you the night Fiona Murphy died?”

  Floyd laughed until he saw Jack was dead serious. “Give me a break, Jack. How the hell should I know?”

  “Detective Nash,” Jack said. “Escort Mr. Parker to the station. Maybe he can come up with an alibi.”

  “This is bullshit!” Floyd yelled, shoving Jack in the chest and pushing him into the wall. “Do you hear me? Bullshit. I’m going to own you and this whole goddamn town by the time I’m finished suing you.”

  Jack stood completely still, his fists balled down at his sides. “Nash,” he said again. “Hold Mr. Parker on assault charges until I can question him.” Jack’s eyes never left Floyd’s.

  “My pleasure, sir,” Nash said.

  “If you go peacefully, Floyd, we’ll do it without the restraints,” Jack said.

  The elevator doors opened and Nash pushed Floyd inside. Floyd’s face was red with anger and veins bulged in his forehead. If I were Jack, I wouldn’t turn my back on Floyd any time soon. Violence shimmered from every pore of Floyd’s body, and he wasn’t doing a very good job of controlling it. Men with that kind of explosive temper were capable of all types of things. I thought maybe Jack knew exactly what he’d been doing when he’d provoked Floyd.

  The elevator doors closed, and the silence in the hallway was thick with emotion. Jack turned to me, but I still couldn’t manage to look him in the face. I was embarrassed and angry. Sleeping with Floyd had been one of the lowest points of my life. Now everyone in town was going to know about it. And worse than the embarrassment, I was hurt. Mostly because there could have been a smidgen of truth to Floyd’s story about my parents. I just didn’t know.

  I could feel Jack’s stare boring into me and finally looked up. His eyes held a mixture of anger, sympathy and something else. Disappointment? Or was I just projecting my own feelings?

  “I don’t want to hear about it, Jack. It was a long time ago.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything about your poor judgment. I’ll save the potential blackmail information and use it later when I want something,” he said, like he hadn’t just been on the verge of a fight.

  “Figures,” I said.

  “That’s what friends are for.” He started down the hall and Brody and I followed behind him. I slung the camera around my neck.

  “Congratulations, by the way, on making it here on time,” Jack said. “I figured you’d be at least an hour. Made me lose twenty bucks.”

  “Remind me to tell you about the wonders of multitasking sometime.”

  “If that means what I think it means, I’ll pass. You should’ve worn a turtleneck,” Jack said, eyeing my neck. He looked up and at least bothered to nod to Brody in acknowledgment, even if he didn’t speak.

  The door to room 508 stood open, and black fingerprint dust covered most of its surface and the door knob. I took in the general atmosphere of the room before I went to look at the body. Jack and Brody stood still and quiet beside me. Out of respect or to gauge my reaction, I didn’t know. Cops moved throughout the room slowly, some doing their jobs fiercely, others frozen in shock. Jeremy Mooney had tears tracking silently down his face.

  “Who is it?” I finally asked.

  “Amanda Wallace,” Jack said.

  I closed my eyes and let the news wash over and through me. Another Bloody Mary resident. I’d held a slight hope that the body would be from another town, so I wouldn’t have to face the death of another neighbor.

  “Let’s go look at the body,” I said. “And then I want you to walk me through it. Kendra and Owen will be here shortly to transport the body.”

  Kendra Bloom and Owen Ferguson were pathology students at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical College, and they came to see me on Mondays and Wednesdays. Mostly I just helped them study since we hardly ever saw any action in Bloody Mary. It was part of their program since they were both first year students, but next year they’d go off to a bigger lab and a more important doctor.

  Amanda Wallace’s nude body was lying naked and face up on the king sized bed. Red rose petals were spread underneath her and a rope of pearls was wrapped around her neck so tight they were embedded in the skin.

  I snapped a few pictures then opened my bag and pulled out a pair of surgical gloves. Amanda’s hands were still grasping the pearls, freezing her last struggles before death. I motioned Brody to the other side of the bed so he could get a better idea of what I was doing.

  “Cadaveric spasm is obvious by the way her hands are still locked at her throat,” I told Brody. I realized Jack was just behind me as well and turned to talk to him as I went over the body.

  “Usually it takes the body a couple of hours to settle into rigor, which always begins with the face and works its way down the body. But in a case where there was strenuous activity or struggle, something where the heart rate is accelerated, parts of the body can go into immediate rigor.”

  “Does that mean death was recent?” Jack asked.

  “Not necessarily.” I already had a pretty good estimate of time of death, but I checked her body temperature to confirm my thoughts.

  Her body was pale, paler than the whitest marble, and I knew when we turned her the blood would be gathered at the lowest point of h
er body, mostly the buttocks and lower back.

  “She’s got some skin under the nails,” I said. I bagged her hands to keep the DNA from being contaminated.

  “Do you think she got him?” Jack asked.

  “I’d say it’s probably her own. She’s got scratches under her neck where she was trying to claw at the restriction, but we could get lucky.”

  “I need some luck,” Jack said.

  I checked the thermometer. “She’s cold. I’d put time of death right around twenty-four hours,” I said.

  “Shit,” Jack said. I knew he was frustrated because twenty-four hours was a long time after a murder. A lot could happen in twenty-four hours.

  “She’s already at the beginning stages of algor mortis,” I said. Algor mortis was what happened when a person came out of rigor. As rigor started with the face and worked its way down the body, coming out of it began the same way. Amanda’s cheeks had already taken on a flaccid state, and the rest of her would follow over the next day or two. It was always a pain to have to massage a body out of the rigor state before I could embalm them. Fortunately, I had interns who could take care of that task for me.

  “She’s been sexually assaulted. I’ll collect a sperm sample so you can compare it to the other,” I said. I stood and gently turned her over. As I’d expected, her buttocks and lower back were a dark purple against the paleness of the rest of her skin. I looked for any similar blows like the one that was on the back of Fiona’s head, but I couldn’t see anything that would cause immediate distress.

  “No blows or questionable bruising. A couple of contusions around the wrists, but that’s the most of it,” I said as I laid her back down and pulled off my gloves.

  Kendra and Owen stood just inside the door, and I motioned for them to come take the body away. It was always best to think of them as the body instead of Amanda Wallace, married mother of two and treasurer for The Ladies of King George County.

  “He was obviously able to overpower her without knocking her unconscious. What the hell was she doing here?”

  Jack ran his fingers through his dark hair and looked ten years older than his thirty years. “Next of kin hasn’t been notified yet,” he said.

  I was surprised to hear that. I figured as soon as the body of the councilman’s wife had been discovered, Jack would have sent a policeman to let Harvey know. “Why not?”

  “Because I need to ask Harvey some questions, and I need to have a clear theory to do it so he doesn’t try to start an uprising against me. Why else would Amanda rent a hotel room when she lives less than twenty minutes away?”

  Technically the Hanover Hotel was in King George instead of Bloody Mary because it sat on the east side of Queen Mary Road. “She was having an affair?”

  “Looks like it to me,” he said. “This room was rented under her own name for the whole weekend. She told the front desk manager she was going to make use of the spa for a relaxing couple of days and treat herself. So if you say she’s been dead close to twenty-four hours, Saturday night was when her visitor came and stayed through to early morning by the looks of the breakfast trays.

  “The Do Not Disturb sign was out, but she was supposed to check out at eight o’clock this morning. The floor maid was the one to find her when she came to clean the room. She’s already been questioned and was sent home sedated.”

  I tried to look around the room through Jack’s eyes. It was set for seduction—the rose petals, candle tapers burned so all was left was a puddle of wax, a sheer nightgown thrown over the chair.

  “Maybe Harvey was her visitor.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t see a woman pulling out the stops like this when she makes it a point to tell people she’s escaping for the weekend. Remember I told you Saturday night I had to go break up a fight at the lodge between Bob and Harvey. That was about one A.M. and both of them were piss-faced drunk. I gave them a warning and sent them both home to find their beds. I very seriously doubt Harvey had it in him to come here and make love to his wife all night.”

  “So Mrs. Wallace invites her lover to her hotel room, they make love all night, get up the next morning and order breakfast and then he decides to kill her? That doesn’t play for me,” I said.

  “Me either,” Jack said. “But what if the killer came after her lover had already gone? We tracked down the bell hop who delivered the room service, but he didn’t see anyone in the room besides Mrs. Wallace.”

  “Wait. And she just lets him in?” Brody asked skeptically. He’d been so quiet I’d frankly forgotten that he was there.

  “Let’s say the lover leaves first thing Sunday morning,” Jack said. “She kisses him goodbye and then decides to take a shower. After she showers, she does whatever it is women do to make themselves up in the mornings. There are enough cosmetics on the counter in there to fill up a department store.”

  Jack pointed to the silky peach robe lying on the floor close to where Amanda’s body had been. “So she puts on a robe, and then she hears a knock at the door. She obviously opened the door for whoever was there, which leads me to believe she knew her killer.”

  “Geez, Jack. She’s the wife of a councilman,” I said. “She knows everyone in town.”

  “It makes sense that you’re looking for one of your own,” Brody said. “The killer is someone who knows both Fiona and Amanda—their habits and obviously their secrets. An outsider wouldn’t be so specific.”

  “I know,” Jack said. A look passed between him and Brody that I didn’t understand, but the moment was broken when Jack continued with his timeline.

  “So she lets the killer in and shuts the door behind him, and then he muscles her into doing what he wants instead of incapacitating her like he did Fiona. There’s only one other couple booked on this floor at the far end of the hall, so chances are no one would have heard a scuffle or any screams. We’re looking for a man with some strength. She fought him, but he still overpowered her. And when he was finished killing her he planted one of Harvey Wallace’s cuff links on the floor slightly under the bed.”

  Jack held up a plastic baggie with a black and gold cufflink that had the letter W printed on it. Everybody in town knew that was one of Harvey’s favorite set of cufflinks. It had been a wedding gift from Amanda.

  “That’s handy,” I said.

  “Or maybe it really was Harvey. That would explain why she let him in. Maybe it all just boils down to an old-fashioned lover’s quarrel.”

  “So where do we start?” I asked.

  “I’d think with the logical choice. The husband. In a community as small as this there’s no telling how long it would be before he found out about the affair.”

  Ah, so that’s why Jack hadn’t sent anyone to break the news to the husband. He wanted to see his reaction first hand. “The husband was the logical choice in Fiona’s death, too,” I said. “That’s where all the evidence pointed.”

  “Don’t remind me,” he said. “Fool-proof evidence has been part of the problem to begin with. Meaning that I’m the one that looks like a fool.”

  “What about the lover?” Brody asked.

  “He’ll be next on my list. We just have to find him first. There aren’t cameras on the floors, but there are a few in the lobby. We’ll look at them and see if we can get an identity.”

  I went over to Brody and spoke softly. “I’m going to head over to the Wallace’s with Jack to break the news.”

  “That’s not a conversation I’d want to be a part of,” he said, shaking his head.

  No kidding. I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect either.

  “I’m going to head back over to the Bed and Breakfast for a while to get some work done,” Brody said. “I wanted to let you know that I ate breakfast in the dining room here at the hotel yesterday morning to keep Mrs. Baker from asking me where I’d spent the night, so Jack will see me on the tape.”

  “I’ll give him a heads up,” I said.

  “Call me when you get finished and I’ll
pick up dinner.”

  “It could be late.”

  “I do my best work late at night,” he said with a wink.

  I gave him a quick kiss and then made my way back over to Jack who was giving last minute instructions to one of his officers.

  “Are you done playing kissy-face?” he asked.

  “Unless you want one too, big guy,” I said.

  He looked at his watch and sighed. “Christ, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. I’ve got to wrap things up here, and I need to run by the station to check on Floyd’s status. I’m going to make him sweat for as long as I can before I question him. That’ll give you time to give Amanda’s body a cursory glance to see if you find anything unusual. I’ll pick you up at the funeral home in about an hour, and then we can go see if Harvey Wallace knew who his wife was having an affair with.”

  I blew out a breath and closed my eyes. “That’ll be fun.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I was pretty sure Harvey Wallace had no idea about his wife’s extramarital affair, considering he collapsed at my feet once Jack told him about the nature of his wife’s death.

  It had taken death threats and blackmail to keep the news of Amanda’s murder from hitting the grapevine. Most of the threats were directed at Barbara Blanton in the dispatcher’s office because she could never keep her big mouth shut.

  “Geez, Jack. Maybe break the news a little easier next time,” I said. Harvey was crumpled on the floor like a rag doll and lay pale and still as death. I bent down to make sure he was still breathing and gave Jack the thumbs up sign when I saw his chest rise.

  “I wasn’t going to draw it out,” Jack said, rolling his eyes. “That makes it worse for everyone. Bad news should be delivered quick and clean. Like a band-aid.”

  “So says the guy not lying in a heap on the floor. Help me get him to the sofa.”

  Jack lifted Harvey up without my help and moved him to the sofa. Someone had been working out, I thought, eyeing the arm bulges appreciatively. I was still a woman, even if I was having regular sex now. “Damn, Jack, that’s impressive,” I said.