Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  They’ve managed to cover their trail remarkably well until now.

  Now that Lucinda Sloan has found reason to kill off the competition in an elaborate set-up—making it look like the work of a homicidal stranger—all bets are off.

  Anything is possible.

  For all Frank knows, Randy was in on it.

  Lambert probably doesn’t think so. They’re buddies. And Lambert is an earnest type, which sometimes serves him well in police work, and sometimes does not.

  Which is why Frank is going to have to sit him down and make it very clear that he is not to involve Randy in this investigation.

  It shouldn’t be necessary, but he has a feeling it is.

  Frank already briefly cautioned him, before Lambert left to take Randy over to the morgue, not to reveal any of the details of the case that weren’t already revealed earlier in the meeting.

  “There are things we can’t have getting out,” Frank told Lambert, who certainly knows the drill. That’s how it always works with a homicide investigation. You keep certain details from the public and the press, details only the killer and those at the scene could possibly know.

  Like the bright red lipstick Carla Barakat was wearing.

  Lipstick she sure as hell didn’t apply herself, unless she was trying to look like a demented clown.

  “You didn’t tell Randy about the lipstick she had on, did you?” Frank asked Lambert, just to be sure.

  “Are you kidding? She was his wife.”

  Was being the key word.

  “I didn’t tell him anything like that. Why would I want to upset him even more?”

  “That’s good,” Frank said, knowing Randy wouldn’t see the lipstick at the morgue.

  It had, of course, been washed away, along with the blood, when the corpse was prepared for viewing. You do your best never to let the family members see anything upsetting when they get their last look at their dead loved one.

  But photographic evidence remains.

  Other evidence, too. Plenty of it.

  Frank fully intends to keep the specifics from being revealed to anyone outside the immediate investigation. Including Neal Bullard and Randy Barakat and Lucinda Sloan.

  Just in case the official shadow of suspicion falls on one—or for all he knows, more—of them.

  Chapter Ten

  “Sorry, I need to answer this,” Randy tells Lucinda, after checking Caller ID on his ringing cell phone.

  “It’s okay.” She stretches, rubs her eyes. “I should go.”

  “No. Not yet.” Is it wrong for him to need her so badly tonight?

  Her company, her comforting presence…and more. More than that.

  Yes, it’s wrong, but he can’t help it.

  “It’s getting late.” She starts gathering her things.

  The phone is still ringing.

  Randy has to get it.

  But first, he has to make her stay. “It’s not that late.”

  “It feels like the middle of the night.”

  “But—you need coffee.”

  “That’s okay—”

  “No, I already made it. Just let me take this call, and then we’ll have coffee.”

  “Okay,” she says around a yawn, and leans back.

  Relieved, Randy snaps open his phone. “What’s up, Dan?”

  “Where are you?”

  “Home. Why?”

  “Home…where?”

  “The cottage.”

  “Are you alone there?”

  Randy hesitates. “No. Why?”

  There’s a long pause, as if Lambert is wondering whether he should ask who might be there with him.

  As if he doesn’t know.

  “I was going to swing over there. There’s something you should take a look at.”

  “Want me to come down to headquarters?”

  “No,” Lambert says quickly. “You’re home, stay put. The weather’s crummy. I’ll just tell you about it.”

  “Tell me about what?” he asks, conscious of Lucinda beside him, trying to act as though she’s not listening to his side of the conversation—as if she can help it.

  He supposes he can go into the next room to take the call, but really, he has nothing to hide from her. Not anymore.

  “You’re never going to believe this, Randy.”

  “What?” He rakes his hands up his forehead, overtired, losing patience.

  “You know how you mentioned after we left the morgue that Carla was wearing a watch with her pajamas, and that was unusual? I went back over there after I dropped you off, and I checked out the watch. It was a Freestyle. Are you familiar with that brand?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing fancy. The strange thing is, the battery was dead. The hands were stopped at five-forty.”

  Randy can feel Lucinda trying to catch his eye, but he can’t even look at her, his heart racing.

  Why would Carla wear a watch with a dead battery?

  “And Randy—the watch was engraved. On the back.”

  “Engraved.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did it say?”

  Dan clears his throat. “Just the date she died and numbers. That’s all. Decimals. 74.2 and 39.6.”

  “74.2 and 39.6,” Randy repeats, with chilling recognition as Lucinda snaps blatantly to attention beside him.

  A quick perusal of the local publications in the hotel room tells him that West Division Street is where all the action is.

  Looks fairly easy to find, according to the map. He could take a cab—God knows he’s got plenty of ones to pay the fare, courtesy of the dead bartender’s wallet loaded with tips.

  But he has all the time in the world tonight, and he wants to relish every minute. He’ll stroll over.

  This has always been his favorite part: the anticipatory stage.

  The search: trolling for the perfect woman, considering and discarding potential candidates, waiting for the one who speaks to something inside him when he spots her, the one who fits the bill.

  He was cheated out of that last time. Carla Barakat was a necessity, but she didn’t fill his needs, really. Not the way all the others had.

  He had expected the kill to be diminished because of that. Had wondered whether he might even have misgivings about it after it was over.

  Like with his mother.

  But that was different.

  With her, there was no anticipatory stage, no search, no plan.

  Mother was never meant to die. Not at his hands, anyway.

  Unlike those who came before her.

  Unlike Carla, and those who will come after—including Lucinda Sloan.

  For a good fifteen minutes, Lucinda and Randy have analyzed the numbers—where they’ve appeared, what they might mean, what message Carla’s killer is trying to convey.

  “I feel like my brain just isn’t working,” Lucinda finally admits, sagging against the cushions, fighting yawn after yawn, aching with exhaustion.

  “Mine isn’t either. I’m wiped out.”

  She nods. She should get moving. Grab that cup of coffee, call Cam, go.

  Get moving, then.

  But her energy has been utterly depleted.

  She just needs to sit here a moment longer before facing the long drive.

  “I still can’t believe it,” Randy says again—mostly to himself. “I can’t believe someone just walked into that house and killed her.”

  “Did Carla say anything at all to make you think she felt like she was in danger?”

  “Carla didn’t say anything at all to me, period. We exchanged a few e-mails, stuff about the lawyers, accounts, that kind of thing. But we didn’t talk anymore.”

  “That’s so…” She shuts her mouth, thinking better of what she was about to say.

  “What?”

  “Just…It’s so ironic that you weren’t even speaking to each other in the end, and yet…you were her next of kin.”

  “It would be different if we were divorced, but that was st
ill a ways away. The thing is…I’m not just her next of kin, I’m her sole heir. I spoke to Gregg Genett today—he’s her lawyer—and he told me she hadn’t updated her will in a few years.”

  “Was she planning to, do you think?”

  “Probably. But like I said, she wasn’t one to take much initiative, and anyway—she didn’t have close family left, and her friends…Well, they kind of came and went over the years, so—” He breaks off as what sounds like a bucket full of marbles patters against the house.

  “What was that?” Lucinda jumps up and follows him to the window.

  Randy flips off the inside light so that they can see out. “Sleet,” he says unnecessarily.

  For a moment, they’re both silent.

  Side by side in the dark, they look out at the frozen precipitation slanting from the sky on a misty wind that rocks the tree branches.

  “You can’t go out in that.”

  Lucinda was just thinking the same thing. “I’ll be fine.”

  Not very convincing, but she has to go. She can’t stay here with him.

  “You won’t be fine. Stay with me tonight.”

  “No.”

  “Lucinda, there’s not a reason in the world you should go out in that.”

  Yes, there is.

  Standing here alone in the dark with him is just as unnerving as the storm outside, and—

  The sudden ring of a phone pierces the air.

  Her cell.

  Randy flicks the light on again. She goes to the kitchen to answer the phone, leaving it plugged into the wall, knowing the battery has barely begun to charge.

  It’s Neal. Of course. Wondering why she hasn’t called.

  “Hi, Neal, what’s up?”

  “Are you okay? You sound sick.”

  “That’s just my voice. You know how it gets when I’m tired.”

  “Are you on the road yet?”

  “No,” she admits, watching Randy fill two mugs with steaming coffee.

  “Then don’t go anywhere. It’s miserable out here. The causeway’s glare ice. Cars spinning out and off the road everywhere.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Randy shoots her a questioning look—wondering, no doubt, whether there’s been some new development in the case.

  “The roads are bad,” she tells him. “Neal doesn’t want me to leave here.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Ignoring the comment—and his blue, blue eyes—she turns her back a little, telling Neal, “I’ll wait it out for a while, then.”

  “Wait it out until tomorrow. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. The temperature will keep dropping overnight.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll make it home. I’ve driven through worse.”

  “I’m sure I have, too.”

  “You stay where you are. Do you hear me?”

  Bristling at his authoritative tone, she reminds herself that he’s only trying to keep her safe.

  Here alone overnight with Randy.

  Yeah, that’s safe.

  Hanging up the phone, Lucinda covers a yawn.

  “You can have the lovely Captain’s Quarters.” Randy arcs a hand toward the bedroom. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “I’m not putting you out of your bed tonight. I’ll take the couch.”

  “No, you won’t.” As she opens her mouth to protest, he stops her, saying, “I’m going to stay up a while, and you look ready for bed.”

  “I have to make a phone call first.”

  “I forgot. Do you still want coffee?”

  She eyes the two cups he’s just filled.

  Coffee will keep her up. It’ll keep them both up.

  Sleep. Sleep is safe.

  “I guess there’s no need for coffee if I don’t have to drive.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing.” Randy pours the coffee out in the sink. “What I could really use is a drink.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” she admits, and smiles faintly.

  Randy reaches up into a cupboard.

  Standing behind him, still holding her phone, she tries not to watch his sweater ride up, revealing the muscles of his lower back.

  He pulls down a bottle of Jack Daniels and plunks it on the counter, then looks at Lucinda. When she nods her approval, he wordlessly throws a couple of ice cubes into two glasses and pours.

  The phone in her hand beeps as she reaches for her drink.

  “Another call?”

  “No,” she tells Randy. “It means I’ve got messages.”

  No surprise, after a couple of days with no battery.

  She sips her drink, relishing the burn of bourbon sliding down her throat.

  “I need to check my voice mail before I make my call,” she tells him. “Is it okay if I go into your bedroom?”

  Randy nods and gulps his drink, as befits a man who’s been through hell in the last thirty-six hours.

  Cam has always loved a good storm—when Mike is home, and nobody has to go anywhere. When they can cuddle by a roaring fire in the brick-walled sunken sunroom that stretches along the back of the house, watching the snow fall past the tall windows and French doors.

  If Mike were here tonight instead of still out in Utah, she’d feel cozy as opposed to uneasy, listening to the wind howl and toss freezing rain at the windows.

  Well, maybe not cozy.

  The baby’s been fussy all evening. Every time Cam thinks she has her settled, she wakes fitfully ten or fifteen minutes later, crying.

  “Maybe it’s just from her cold,” Tess suggests, walking her wailing sister across the floor as Cam hunts for the infant thermometer to see if the fever is back. “Her nose is still kind of runny.”

  Thermometer in hand at last, Cam checks the baby.

  She’s got a fever.

  “Poor little thing. Hang onto her, Tess, while I see if we’ve got enough Tylenol drops to get her through the night.”

  Cam looks in the medicine cabinet in the half-bath off the kitchen.

  The Infant Tylenol is almost gone.

  If Mike were here, he’d run out to Rite Aid.

  If Mike were here, if Mike were here…

  How did she ever get through all those months without him last year?

  The phone rings just as she returns to the kitchen to take the whimpering baby from Tess.

  “That’s Daddy,” she says with absolute certainty.

  When two people have been a couple for as long as they have—and through as much together as they have—they don’t have to be psychic to know when they’re needed. “Can you grab the phone for me and tell him I’ll call him back in a few minutes, when I get Grace settled down?”

  “Sure.”

  Cam walks her miserable daughter into the next room, rubbing her back and bouncing her a little. “It’s okay, Grace. Mama’s here…. Mama’s here…. Shhh….”

  “Mom? It’s for you.” Tess appears in the doorway with the phone. “It’s not Daddy. It’s Lucinda.”

  Lucinda.

  Cam wondered when she was going to hear back from her. Then the baby grew fussy and Cam got busy with her, and forgot.

  Telling Lucinda about the note in the mail seems a lot less urgent now.

  But she takes the call anyway, handing Grace over to Tess.

  “Walk her up to her room and show her the stuffed animals. She likes that.”

  Grace sobs, and Tess gives Cam a dubious look. “Whatever. Come on, Grace. Let’s go see lamby and kitty cat!”

  Cam returns to the kitchen with the phone.

  Of course she didn’t tell Tess about the anonymous message in the mail. She’s not going to bring it up now, when Tess finally put last summer’s nightmare behind her.

  We all have.

  But it refuses to die.

  “Lucinda?”

  “Cam!” The voice on the other end of the line is raspy. “Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine. Are you sick?”
<
br />   “No. Just tired. I got all those messages, and I thought something awful must have happened.”

  “No, nothing like that. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “My cell battery died, and…I’ve been in the middle of something the last few days.”

  Something tells Cam that whatever something is, it’s not pleasant.

  “Are you all right? Other than being tired, I mean?”

  “Yes. Long story, and I’ve been meaning to call you and tell you about it, but—first tell me why you called me.”

  Cam opens the drawer and reaches toward the back, where she stashed the envelope. “It’s about my sister, actually….”

  She hears a gasp on the other end of the line and, startled, stops rifling through the drawer.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks Lucinda.

  “Nothing, just…What about your sister?”

  “Randy?”

  Sitting on the couch, empty glass in hand, he finds his morbid thoughts taking an abrupt detour when he looks up to see Lucinda standing in the bedroom doorway.

  He had been wondering about the arrangements that will have to be made when Carla’s body is released.

  Now his bourbon infused brain wonders what it would be like if he’d never married Carla at all; if Lucinda were his wife; if that bedroom over her shoulder belonged to the two of them instead of to the captain; if he could sweep her right back in there and hold her and never let her go.

  “We’ve got to call Santiago right away. And Neal. We’ve got to talk to Neal.”

  The urgency in Lucinda’s hoarse voice and the grim look on her face swipe errant thoughts from Randy’s mind.

  “What happened?”

  “That was Cam Hastings. She got a note in the mail—a picture of her sister Ava, and a note that said ‘I know what happened to her. Solve it and if you are right you will find me.’ Cam said there were a bunch of misspellings.”

  He considers that—does his best to, anyway, wishing he hadn’t finished a glass of bourbon while she was on the phone in the bedroom. His analytical powers are shot, dammit.

  Still, remembering all the kooks and cranks who popped up after he and Lucinda and the Hastings did their round of media interviews last August, he says, “It might not have anything to do with—”

  “It was written in red lipstick.”

  He curses under his breath. “Like your mirror.”