Out of Nowhere

by Beverly Bird

  One way or the other, she reasoned, she had to know. At noon she reached for her telephone, not at all sure what she would say when and if she got Whittington on the line, knowing only that she had to do something to nudge him in the right direction before anymore time was wasted. It buzzed as soon as she touched it.

  Debbie’s voice came over the intercom. “It’s Mrs. Beckley over at Toyland on Line One.”

  Tara grinned. She was due for some good news for a change. The woman had been searching for a certain doll for her collection for months now. She grabbed the phone. “You found it!”

  “Oh, dear. I’m afraid not.”

  And that quickly Tara felt her stomach roll.

  Whittington. Somehow she knew, against all odds, that this call had something to do with Fox Whittington.

  “There was a police detective here after you left,” Mrs. Beckley said fretfully. “I struggled with myself for hours but I finally decided that you have a right to know.”

  “Thank you,” Tara said tonelessly. “What did he want?”

  “He asked who you sent the toys to.”

  Her stomach spasmed in panic. “It’s none of his business! It has nothing to do with this mess!”

  “Well, I couldn’t know that, dear. I have no idea what sort of mess you’re in.”

  “I’m not in a mess! He just thinks I am! Did you tell him?”

  The woman’s hesitation was her answer. Tara hung up. Her phone buzzed again immediately. She snapped it up and snarled into it. “What?”

  It was Debbie again. “Your lunch is here.”

  Tara took a moment to breathe. It would be a chicken Caesar salad then, she thought, instead of the satisfaction of committing murder upon Whittington. That was probably best. Killing a police officer—a detective—could get a little dicey in a court of law.

  “Thanks,” she muttered. “Send it in.” She hadn’t quite hung up the phone again when her office door opened too quickly.

  “I would have taken you for the crudités and dip sort,” Fox drawled. “Not anchovies.”

  Tara’s heart slammed once. Then she reached for a paperweight on her desk and heaved it.

  Whittington ducked it neatly and it sailed out into the hall, thudding against the wall there more or less like the Rose had done Monday night. Then he stood in her doorway, leaning one leather-clad shoulder against the jamb. He held her lunch.

  “What have you done with the delivery boy?” she demanded.

  “What did you do to Stephen?” he countered. He straightened away from the door and sauntered into the room.

  Tara’s breath fell short as he faced her over her desk. The sudden heat of the air between them seemed to hum, like it could do right before lightning struck. She snagged the bag from his hands to break the spell. “Don’t wait for a tip.”

  “I’ll settle for information.”

  “Then buy a newspaper.”

  “What are you hiding?” His voice was suddenly soft and thoughtful as he leaned one hip on her desk. “And why?”

  Tell him. The whispery thought was sneaky and insidious in her head. But then, it had been tantalizing her all morning. If she told him, he would leave her alone. If she told him everything that had happened Monday night, he would admit that he had the ruby. Maybe. If he really did have it at all. And if he didn’t, then he’d start looking in the right place for it.

  “What does my date book have to say on the subject?” she asked instead.

  Incredibly, he took it out of his pocket and flipped it open with deliberate nonchalance. He kept it with him? Tara fought the urge to grab for it.

  “It says you’re a very busy lady,” he murmured thoughtfully.

  “I am. I have work to do. You’ll have to go.”

  “Where were you last night? Really.”

  “In bed. Asleep, until you woke me. I had a headache, which you gave to me.”

  A grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “Tell me the truth, darlin’, and I promise I’ll go.”

  Her muscles turned to something that felt like warm molasses. Darlin’…such gentle persuasion. Tara sat quickly in her desk chair and pulled her lunch toward her.

  She wore denim today, Fox noticed, trim jeans and a starched white shirt. Small silver and turquoise studs decorated her ears. And that glorious hair fell wildly past her shoulders in artful disarray. On her feet were black boots with silver buckles.

  Not his style, he told himself again. Not at all. He felt his pulse give a kick as he tried to imagine Adelia in boots and turquoise and failed miserably. Everything about this woman said class, strength, confidence, cool aplomb…but then he saw a hint of something in her eyes before she averted them.

  He was starting to get to her but he found less satisfaction in that than he would have a week ago. There were layers to her, he realized. There was a certain delicacy after all beneath that will of iron, and it shook him more than he cared to admit.

  As he watched, she lifted the anchovies from her salad and set them aside. So he’d been right about that. Fox reached for the little plastic fork that had come with her lunch. He speared a piece of romaine, then one of the anchovies before she slapped his hand. He managed to get the morsel to his mouth anyway.

  “Go buy your own food,” she growled.

  “Where were we? Ah, I remember now. I was asking you for the truth.”

  “Are we going to trade questions again?”

  “If you like.”

  “I like. What does the C in your name stand for?”

  Like the first time she had asked, a quick spasm of discomfort seemed to touch his features. She was onto something here, Tara realized. For once, he was off balance. She filed the discovery away for future reference.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “Carnivorous?” she guessed. “Crass?” He shot her a warning look. “It must be something particularly unflattering or you’d tell me.”

  “I’m not telling you because it’s none of your business.”

  “I could say the same thing to you about my date book.”

  “Except you killed someone and stole a ruby, which more or less negates any right you might have to privacy.”

  The hurt was quick and stunning, though he’d said it before.

  She didn’t, wouldn’t care what he thought of her. But she did care about the Rose. Desperately. “If I talk to you,” she countered, “will you leave me alone?”

  If she coughed up the truth then this intriguing game of cat-and-mouse would be over, Fox thought. He felt the oddest sense of disappointment shift inside him. When, he wondered, had she become intriguing? “That’s what I’ve been angling for,” he said shortly.

  “Then give me a day, maybe two, to think about it.”

  “With all due respect, the trail could get very cold by then.”

  “So go look for your killer elsewhere. It’s not me.”

  “And what do I have to base that on?”

  “My word.”

  She looked at him and now her eyes were more midnight than dawn. And he found himself believing her intrinsically, with something in his soul.

  Fox fought off the sensation…hard. She’d been there, damn it. Granted, there was barely a trace of physical evidence to tie her to the scene so far, only a couple of perfect fingerprints on the library phone. They were as yet unmatched because her own weren’t on file so he had nothing to compare them to—unless he arrested her. The fireplace poker had been wiped clean.

  He’d stake odds that she’d been the one to call 911 and he’d be able to match her voice to the tape. He figured she’d done it because she’d discovered Stephen dead on his library floor. But had she arrived to find him that way or had something transpired—had he somehow ended up dead—while she was there?

  Fox rose from her desk. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m just going to keep an eye on you while you make up your mind.” He was halfway to the door again when her voice made him pause.

  “The toys
had nothing to do with this. Why couldn’t you have just left that alone?”

  He glanced back at her. “Because it’s my job not to. By the way, you could have saved a mint doing that shopping at a department store.”

  She came to her feet in anger. “Then most of those kids would never know how it could have been.”

  It was a flat statement, but he understood. Plenty of people would donate action figures and the standard games to Father O’Neill’s cause. Tara was giving them something to cherish.

  Fox could have sworn he felt his heart move in his chest.

  “I want you out of my life,” she whispered.

  “I know,” he said just as quietly.

  Fox stepped through her office door and closed it behind him. Suddenly, he had the ridiculous but very strong feeling that when this was cleared up, when he did leave her life…there’d be nothing. Nothing but perfect toys for strangers.

  Chapter 5

  “You’re entirely too trusting, my dear,” Marshall T. Ellinghusen said. “You believe in the integrity of the law, and that’s admirable, but were it ever so sterling as you imagine I would not be driving this Rolls.”

  Tara’s gaze skipped to the lawyer across the front seat of the automobile in question. Cal Mazzeone’s area of expertise was probate court. When she’d called him Friday night to tell him what she wanted to do, he’d insisted that his partner should accompany her to police headquarters. Marsh Ellinghusen had rescued all manner of rapists, thieves and killers from the jaws of the State penitentiary. He practiced criminal law.

  So what was she doing with him? Tara wondered dazedly. All she wanted was to make a statement and tell the truth. She wanted this whole business over.

  When she’d finally gotten to the dry cleaner’s at a quarter past six on Friday, Fox Whittington had strolled in right behind her, holding her bag of clothing. On Saturday night, he’d personally stood guard beneath her apartment window and she’d felt his gaze run over her skin like warm sand even though he was seven floors and a city street away. On Sunday morning he’d knocked on her door holding the morning’s newspaper and a bag of croissants. That was why she and Ellinghusen were floating across the city as gently as though the Rolls were a feather on the breeze. It was why each heartbeat carried her closer to potential disaster.

  “I didn’t do anything,” she said for what seemed like the thousandth time.

  “Which is precisely why we ought to leave well enough alone.” Ellinghusen turned onto Eighth Street. “You’re opening a can of worms and all manner of nastiness could spew forth. Please don’t forget that anything you say today can be used against you in a court of law if this detective doesn’t like the sound of it.”

  Tara shrugged stiffly. It was a risk she had to take.

  Every moment Fox Whittington spent sniffing around her was one in which the real killer was slipping away. And if Whittington truly didn’t have the Rose and Stephen’s killer did, then that was intolerable. It was almost as painful as having him sift through all the shadows and corners of her world.

  At first it had amused her that he thought her date book in any way reflected her life. Then he had grilled Betty Beckley and he’d found out about the toys. He’d asked the gallery owner about her, not to mention her doorman. Tara’s heart beat like the wings of a bird trying to take flight at the thought of anybody getting inside the walls of her life that way.

  And Fox Whittington wasn’t just anybody. He was a man whose touch she could feel through faux fur. He made the air change when he got too close to her. He said things like darlin’. He had to go, she thought, before he did any of that again.

  Marsh Ellinghusen parked in the municipal lot across from police headquarters with only a minimal wince at the idea of leaving a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of automobile in such squalid surroundings. They went inside, where Whittington and his partner were waiting for them in the Robbery-Homicide office.

  Surprise kicked inside Tara. Somehow, she’d envisioned that it would be just her and Whittington, one on one, with Ellinghusen hovering protectively in the background. But as soon as they entered the large common area the R-H detectives shared, a man with shaggy golden hair pointed to an interrogation room at the back.

  “I’m Rafe Montiel,” he said. “I work with Fox. Let’s do this in there. It’s more private.”

  Tara nodded mutely. She did not want to look at Whittington but her gaze was drawn to him anyway. He lounged in a chair behind one of the desks. He wore dark blue slacks and a blue oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up on his forearms. He bounced the tip of a pen up and down on the blotter. He looked relaxed, even lazy, but he had the sharp and steady eyes of a hawk.

  Then Rafe Montiel pulled a tape recorder from a desk drawer and suddenly Whittington was on his feet.

  “I’ll take care of this,” he said.

  His partner looked at him and lifted a brow. He handed him the tape recorder.

  Whittington shook his head. “I’ll do it the old-fashioned way.” He took a notepad from his desk instead.

  Tara followed them into the interrogation room on unsteady legs. What had that been about?

  Ellinghusen was behind her, keeping close. When they were all seated at the long, metal table inside the room, the lawyer spoke in a rich, intimidating baritone. “You should know that I’ve strongly advised my client against doing this.”

  Fox gave him a mild nod. “I’m sure you have.”

  “It’s clear you have nothing to charge her with, no evidence to speak of.”

  “Barely even any fingerprints in Carmen’s home.” His blue devil’s eyes found Tara’s. “I consider that somewhat remarkable given that she visited her stepbrother with such regularity. Isn’t that right, Ms. Cole?”

  There was no time like the present, Tara thought. “Actually, I lied about that part.”

  Marsh Ellinghusen made a sound as though he was choking. “I’d like a word with my client before we go any further.”

  “It’s okay,” Tara told him, though she had no idea if it was or not. But something drove her now and it was hard and hot and urgent. She had to be honest with Fox Whittington or somehow she knew this would never be over. She’d never get the Rose back, and he would be there, moving through all the little cubbyholes of her life, forever. “I rarely visited Stephen,” she said. “I hated him.”

  Whittington scribbled something on his notepad.

  Ellinghusen came to his feet. “I have to insist—”

  “I was only there that night to try to buy the Rose back from him,” Tara interrupted quickly. “And I only touched the telephone. If you found just a few prints, then I’d guess that’s where they were.”

  A corner of Whittington’s mouth tugged into a brief smile. It was acknowledgment enough, she thought.

  “You called 911,” he said.

  Tara nodded, her turn to concede. “The front door was open when I got there. I thought that was odd but I went in anyway. I went down the hallway to the library because that is—was—Stephen’s favorite room. It used to be his father’s place and I think it fed Stephen’s ego to take it over after Scott died. Anyway, I figured that was where I would find him.”

  She was telling the truth.

  Fox watched her face. So far, at least, every word she spoke was from her heart. He knew because her gaze had turned inward. She walked through the night again in her memory, her dark eyes seeing things he couldn’t see. Fox put his pen down carefully and ignored Rafe’s questioning look.

  “And I did find him,” she said quietly. “I guess what you need to know is that he was already dead.”

  “What time was this?”

  Tara’s gaze sharpened on him again. “We were supposed to meet at seven o’clock. It was a few minutes after that when I arrived.”

  The coroner had put Carmen’s time of death at no later than five-thirty. Fox leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “How did you get there?”

  “How? I
took a cab.”

  “Do you remember the company?”

  “I always call Yellow.”

  Even better, Fox thought. They could verify it then. She was as innocent as he was and now he could prove it to Plattsmier. He briefly considered dancing a jig on a table-top. He opened his mouth to ask another question when she frowned.

  “Why aren’t you writing any of this down?” she asked.

  Fox straightened in his chair. “I’ve got a photographic memory.”

  Tara put her hands quickly beneath the table. “What kind of stone is in my pinky ring?”

  He felt the first moment of percussion behind his eyes, telling him that another headache was coming on. “You never told me what kind of stone it is.”

  “So you only remember what you’re told?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “What’s my secretary’s name?”

  “I don’t know. She never mentioned it.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  Fox had a perfect image of wrapping his hands around that long, graceful throat of hers as she tilted her chin up haughtily. “What are you up to?” he asked warily.

  “I’m checking your memory.”

  “I’ll help you. We were talking about what happened just as you arrived at Stephen Carmen’s home last Monday night. Does that sound about right?”

  “Close enough. But I still want to know why you’re not writing any of this down. For that matter, why didn’t you want to use the tape recorder?”

  “Tara, please desist,” Ellinghusen said.

  Fox flashed the man a glance. “Good point, counselor. Muzzle your client.”

  Muzzle her? Tara opened her mouth, enraged, then her air left her in a painful rush as she realized she’d been right.

  He was protecting her. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name, as certainly as she knew that the stone in her ring was another ruby. It was a small one her mother had given her when she was six to amuse her until she grew up and could have the Rose. She cherished it almost as much as the real thing.