Partners in Crime

by Alicia Scott

  As a devastating summer storm hits Grand Springs, Colorado, the next thirty-six hours will change the town and its residents forever…

  Josie Reynolds lost a friend and mentor when mayor Olivia Stuart died. How could anyone think she was guilty of murder? But clearly that’s just what Detective Jack Stryker thinks. Josie wants to clear her name, but she’s tangled with the law before. She doesn’t know whether to set Jack straight or stay off his radar.

  “Straight Arrow” Jack Stryker has to find Olivia’s killer. Josie matches the description of the murder suspect and his instincts tell him she’s hiding something. But the closer he gets to Josie, the more he’s drawn to his prime suspect. For the first time in his career he’s afraid of what his investigation might reveal.

  Book 9 of the 36 Hours series. Don’t miss Book 10: The blackout traps Paige Summers in an elevator with a sexy cowboy. But what will she do Monday morning when she finds out he’s her new boss? Find out in Beverly Barton’s Nine Months.

  Partners in Crime

  Alicia Scott

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  About the Author

  Prologue

  After midnight, most people in Grand Springs were safely tucked in bed. The hospital still hummed with life, of course. Lately, the police department, as well. But most people in the quiet community were in bed by eleven, and most of the ranchers were in bed well before that.

  That’s why Josie liked midnight so well. No more phones jangling with questions from the local businesspeople who’d watched their dreams swept away in just thirty-six hours of rain, mud slides and lightning—one of the worst rainstorms ever to hit Colorado. No more farmers, standing before her desk in their mud-splattered boots and well-broken-in jeans, slowly twisting the brims of their hats as they asked her how they were supposed to get their cows through the winter when their fields were so buried in silt and mud it would take twelve months of expensive rehabilitation before they’d be fit to grow hay again. No more Hal Stuart demanding yet another cut of Grand Springs’s budget because he was acting mayor, dammit, and when he said jump, you’d better say “How high?”

  Late at night, Josie could shut the door of her treasurer’s office, take the phone off the hook and finally get work done. She figured and refigured the cost of the flooding and power outage. She looked at pictures of the holes that had appeared in the mountain passes, whole chunks of road swept away by mud slides. She pondered the impact on families, not all of whom were insured, and especially on the farmers who’d never thought to buy flood insurance—then watched half of their cows drown in water that just wouldn’t stop.

  Josie didn’t have easy answers. She couldn’t get the county commissioners to focus on the complex ones. So she worked until three or four in the morning most nights, trying to bring order to the chaos. And she pretended that when she finally went home to sleep, she didn’t still see Olivia, her best friend and Grand Springs’s indomitable mayor, dying in her arms while the world raged and howled around them.

  Her eyes grew blurry as 2:00 a.m. came and went. She pored over information on federal aid programs. She read about the adopt-a-farm programs other states had used to weather such disasters. She jotted down notes on the strip mining information Hal wanted. She wrote herself a reminder on the upcoming Band, Bingo, Bake Sale fund-raiser next week.

  She tried valiantly to keep her eyes open.

  The pen slipped from between her fingers. Her head nodded against her chest. Her red, exhausted eyes gave in and closed.

  She slid down into her chair, and the sleep hit her all at once and with a fury.

  * * *

  Dark clouds teeming rain. The sky booming and cracking with a vengeful electrical storm. The thunder so close it echoed through the exposed-beam hallway of the Squaw Creek Lodge.

  Josie ran down the hall. Searching, searching, searching. Hal’s wedding was about to begin. Where was Olivia? Olivia would never be late for her own son’s wedding.

  She had to find Olivia. The foreboding rolled in her stomach like an echo of the storm, dark and horrible.

  A blurry shape in white brushed her shoulder. The bride. Randi, Hal Stuart’s bride, running down the hall. Why was the bride running away from the wedding?

  Thunder cracked. The lodge shuddered. Another boom and the lodge plunged into blackness.

  A cry. “The bride has disappeared!”

  Chaos.

  The glow of a candle abruptly appeared, illuminating the end of the hallway. Josie ran toward it. She saw Hal, pale and harried. She heard more voices. “My God, I think she’s unconscious!” In the distance, someone’s phone rang.

  Where was Olivia?

  Suddenly the lodge was gone. She was out in the night, the wind buffeting her practical economy car, the rain slapping her windshield. Her long blond hair had been ripped free from its knot and was now plastered against her cheeks. Her favorite black cocktail suit, drenched and ruined, clung to her skin.

  She drove, the road lights out, the streets flooded, the storm fierce and merciless.

  Olivia, Olivia, Olivia. She had to find Olivia.

  She reached Olivia’s street. She turned into the darkened drive. The wind howled.

  No lights appeared on in the house. Not even the reassuring flicker of a candle. Black, black house. Dark, dark night.

  For a moment, Josie was frozen by her own fear.

  I know what’s in that house. I know what I’m going to find.

  Her dream lurched, twisted, then turned on itself like a cannibal.

  The storm was gone. The sky was clear, blue, gentle with spring. She was twelve years old, pushing open the gate of the white picket fence, walking up the drive of their suburban home. Cutoff jeans left her long legs bare and nut brown. Her simple white T-shirt billowed comfortably around her arms. She was barefoot. She was humming.

  “Mom, I’m home!”

  Her dream lurched again, and the whipping wind made her stagger back.

  Josie fought her way to Olivia’s back door. She peered through the window as the lightning cracked.

  Twist.

  Flipping her blond ponytail out of her way, she skipped through the back door, eager to tell her mother about her day—Twist.

  Olivia, sprawled on the elegant black-and-white kitchen floor, prostrate in a sea of teal-colored silk.

  Josie fumbled with the knob. She cried out her friend’s name. She raised her fist and prepared to smash the window.

  The door opened in her hand, unlocked all along, and she rushed into the house.

  Twist.

  The scent of fresh-baked cookies and spring tulips. The warm, familiar undertones of vanilla and nutmeg. She walked through the kitchen, wondering why her mother wasn’t sitting at the simple block wood table the way she usually did, then passed through the kitchen into the entryway. Stopping. Freezing. Crying.

  “Mom? Mom? Mommy!”

  Twist.

  “Olivia! Dear God, Olivia!”

  Her friend was motionless on the floor and the scent of gardenias was cloying and thick.

  Josie fell to her knees, shaking her best friend’s shoulders. Olivia didn’t move.

  Dear God, Josie couldn’t find a pulse.

  “Don’t die on me,” she whispered. “Please, please, don’t die on me. You’re the only person I’ve trusted. T
he only person who’s believed in me. Olivia…”

  Twist.

  The feel of the old hardwood floors against her tender knees. The scent of the lemon beeswax her mother used to polish what life she could into the old floors. Little Josie touched her mother’s beautiful gold hair and felt the chill on her cooling skin.

  Keening, sobbing, crying. Rocking back and forth, not knowing what to do. Her mom looked so beautiful, her golden hair pooled around her, her white cotton dress draped around her twisted limbs. Her blue eyes, so much like Josie’s, were open. But they stared sightlessly at the ceiling, and would never blink again.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Twist.

  “Think, Josie, think—911. Call 911!”

  She grabbed the cordless phone from the kitchen counter. No dial tone. The power outage had rendered it useless. She threw it across the room. Another bolt of lightning seared the kitchen. She spotted Olivia’s purse on the kitchen table. The cell phone.

  Josie grabbed the purse. She pawed through it then turned it over and dumped out the smart phone. Dial, dial, dial.

  “Please, I need an ambulance. I think she’s dead.”

  The dispatcher asked questions. Josie fumbled through answers. She checked for noticeable injuries. She began to administer CPR. She hunched over her best friend’s body, massaged her chest and tried to will the life back into her.

  Live, live, live.

  Sirens cut through the roaring night. Then the jangle of EMTs sounded down the sidewalk. Dimly, she heard herself cry, “In here, in here. Breathe, Olivia! Damn you, breathe!”

  The EMTs rushed into the kitchen. They pushed her aside, then hunched over Olivia, muttering to each other, continuing with CPR.

  “Let’s move.”

  Suddenly they had Olivia strapped to the stretcher. They were rolling away, back into the horrible night. Josie wanted to go in the ambulance. She wanted to hold Olivia’s hand and beg her to live.

  The EMTs left Josie behind. She stood in the rain, watching the ambulance disappear, reaching out her hands. The storm continued. She didn’t notice it anymore.

  Live. Live. Live.

  Twist.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

  * * *

  Josie jerked awake at her desk. She rubbed her temples furiously, then scrubbed at the moisture now staining her cheeks. It didn’t help. The images remained behind her eyelids, the past and present too intertwined to be separated.

  And all the work in the world, all the nightmares in the world, didn’t change the outcome of either night.

  Olivia had died at the hospital. A heart attack was the initial ruling. But days later, Detective Stone Richardson raised some questions, and further investigation revealed that she’d been poisoned—someone had thrust a hypodermic full of undiluted potassium into her leg, causing nearly instant cardiac arrest.

  Olivia had been murdered, and nothing in Grand Springs had been the same.

  Death. Pain. Betrayal.

  I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, Josie reminded herself. Sitting alone in her shadowed office, however, she still couldn’t escape her next thought.

  Not this time.

  Chapter One

  September 22

  “Uh-oh. Here comes trouble.”

  “Hmm?” Detective Jack Stryker lifted his scrunched eyes from the coroner’s report and belatedly followed his partner’s gaze. “Damn.”

  “Just what we need,” Detective Stone Richardson agreed, “like a hound dog needs a flea.”

  “At least fleas don’t campaign for your vote—they know they’re a nuisance.” Jack sighed. He tucked the coroner’s report back into the Olivia Stuart file with a last glance of frustration and longing. The answers were in there somewhere, he just knew it. He’d missed something the first time around, made a mistake. He didn’t screw up often, but he must have this time, because it had been more than three months and they still had no leads on the Olivia Stuart case.

  And now Hal Stuart, acting mayor of Grand Springs and one of the most annoying men God had ever created, had entered the police station. He wove through the corridor like a tin soldier, his arms held tightly against his double-breasted suit as if he didn’t want to touch anything—the dirt might rub off.

  Hal Stuart didn’t come to the police station often—Jack figured it was too long on chaos and too short on decoration for his taste. The plain corridor poured into the main room, comprised of a beat-up wood floor, numerous metal desks and one wall of windows. In the corner, the lone office belonged to Frank Sanderson, the chief of police. It was as bare bones and worn as the rest of the place. As Sanderson had informed Hal during his last visit, he had better things to do than pick out wallpaper.

  Grand Springs was becoming a big city in many ways, and it had a growing drug problem and overworked police department to prove it. Now it also had the murder of Grand Springs’s mayor, Olivia Stuart, making the pressure even more intense.

  Jack planted his feet on the floor and summoned a last deep breath. He was tired—he often worked until ten at night, then brought work home with him—but it didn’t show. He’d already smoothed his face into the bland, capable expression cops wore for outsiders. He’d learned a lot about how to handle politicians over the years.

  Stone, who prided himself on irreverence, leaned back and propped up his feet on his desk in a deliberately casual pose.

  “Don’t antagonize him,” Jack ordered under his breath as Hal entered the main room. “It just encourages him to talk more.”

  “But baiting him is the only sport I get around here.”

  “It’s not a sport—to be a sport, it would have to be a challenge.”

  Stone was still chuckling softly when Hal planted himself in front of their desks. The acting mayor’s soft features were already screwed into a scowl. His blond hair, normally carefully smoothed back, looked mussed, and his tailored suit was uncharacteristically disarrayed. Someone, Jack thought, must be making the acting mayor actually work. Judging by the look on his face, he wasn’t happy about it, either.

  “Howdy, Hal,” Stone sang out. “Nice of you to drop on by. Did you bring us poor slaving public servants any lunch?”

  Hal’s frown grew, the look in his eyes uncertain. He crossed his arms over his chest and adopted a firm expression.

  “No. Look, I’m a very busy man, so let’s make this quick—”

  “Of course,” Stone said politely. Jack hid his wince behind a small cough. When Hal said “let’s make this quick” it meant it was going to be long.

  “I’ve given you three months!” Hal announced. “In the beginning, everything was upside down from the power outage, I understood that. Then there were the immediate needs of restoring order and policing the streets after the ensuing accidents and incidents. But it’s late September now. The other situations are in the past, and I want to know—why isn’t my mother’s case being given top priority?”

  “It is,” Jack said. He didn’t need a lecture on his job. He already knew that the chances of solving a three-and-a-half-month-old murder case were slim. It ate away at him every night as he pored over old case notes, wondering why they couldn’t connect the dots.

  “Then, you have new leads to report?”

  “No,” Stone said. “But we’ve processed forty-six people for vandalism and theft, fifteen men for drunken and disorderly conduct, and six people for brawling. Plus, we’ve worked on finding your vanished bride as well as the mother who abandoned her baby at the hospital, and then your sister, Eve, and her daughter, Molly, when they were kidnapped. We’ve also worked on discovering the true identity of Martin Smith, evacuating people from unstable areas and delivering supplies to people cut off by the mud slides. Oh, and I foiled a bank robbery. A pretty slow summer here in Grand Springs, wouldn’t you say, Stryker?”

  “We’re giving the investigation everything we can,” Jack translated for Hal. He gave Stone a meaningful look that his part
ner ignored.

  “Didn’t Randi give you a name? What more do you require?” Randi Howell was Hal’s former fiancée. She’d fled on their wedding day due to her own misgivings…and two thugs who had caught her eavesdropping on their conversation.

  “Randi reported that she overhead one of the men say, ‘Jo will take care of the broad—it’s her specialty.’ The statement’s too vague,” Jack said matter-of-factly. “We can’t be sure they were talking about Olivia. We can’t even be sure ‘take care of the broad’ means murder. And we have no idea who ‘Jo’ is.”

  “As far as we know, Jo could be an acupuncture specialist,” Stone volunteered. “We can’t arrest everyone named Jo based on a statement like that.”

  Hal’s face reddened. He turned on Stone. “And your friend the psychic woman, doesn’t she know anything else? Or is she talking to Elvis instead these days?”

  Jack placed his hand on Stone’s arm to keep him sitting. As Hal well knew, Jessica Hanson was a little more than Stone’s friend. She was now his wife. And she wasn’t exactly a psychic. The visions she’d experienced after hitting her head during the blackout in June had stopped, and no one was certain why they had happened or what they had meant.

  For a bit, however, Jessica had been plagued by the image of a tall, blond woman stabbing a hypodermic needle into Olivia’s leg. These “visions” were always followed by the scent of gardenias.

  Hal had been informed of all this. He had also been told that someone had sent a bowl of gardenias as a funeral bouquet to Olivia Stuart’s house. The flowers hadn’t included a card and Eve Stuart, Hal’s sister, could only vaguely recall an elegantly dressed blonde standing in the doorway with the bowl. Stone had tested the bowl for fingerprints. Nothing.

  Jack said now, “As you know, Hal, we followed up on Jessica’s ‘visions.’ Stone had the doctors examine the body, and the autopsy confirmed that Olivia had been injected with a dose of pure potassium, leading to immediate cardiac arrest. That’s all Jessica saw and it’s been noted.”