by Adrianne Lee
It didn’t bear thinking about. Yet on the drive to work, old fears and guilts pecked at him. Was the rose significant in another crime? Or had it been placed on his porch as a symbol of love? Maybe by Eden? No. It had still been raining when Eden left. She wouldn’t have returned.
However, just thinking about Eden eased the tension gripping him. He hummed along with a CD the rest of the way to the University of Washington Medical Center. He occupied a two-room office on the sixteenth floor of the BB Tower, a seventeen-story structure attached to the east side of the hospital.
He hurried through the busy halls, certain Colleen MacLaine, his secretary of the past year, had beaten him in, a rare occurrence. The aroma of fresh coffee greeted him, confirming his assumption as he entered the main door and giving him the first sense of normalcy he’d had since last night.
Colleen looked up from her desk, her large, cobalt blue eyes lighting at the sight of him. “Get held up in traffic?”
“Slept through the alarm.” It was a wonder he’d slept at all.
“You probably needed the extra rest.” Colleen’s fawn brown hair was twined in a French braid with a forest green ribbon at its tip that matched the color of her severely cut suit. Her face was pretty, her manner demure, emphasized by the crisp white blouse she wore buttoned to her chin.
He set his briefcase, with the Ziploc bag tucked inside, on the floor beside Colleen’s desk, strode to the coffeemaker and snatched up his regular cup. He never should have allowed Eden to run out last night. Who knew what was going on in that beautiful head of hers this morning? Maybe he should call her now.
He noticed Colleen was grimacing as she did when she had something to tell him she knew he wouldn’t like. “What?”
“Uh, Ms. Prescott arrived about ten minutes ago. She insisted on waiting in your office.”
It was his strict policy that no one wait unattended in his private office. David pulled his mouth into a flat line, and in justification of herself, Colleen added, “She was so very upset.”
He nodded. “It’s all right.”
Colleen’s shoulders sagged in relief. “I gave her some coffee.”
“Good.” Anxious to see Eden, he finished filling his own cup, then swung open his office door, speaking her name before he saw her. “Eden?”
But it wasn’t Eden waiting in the high-backed chair across from his desk. Peter Prescott’s sister, Valerie, rose to her full five feet nine inches and whirled around to face him. One vivid ginger eyebrow arched like an arrow toward her slicked-back auburn hair. “Eden? Surely you aren’t expecting her this morning?”
David flinched. No, he supposed he wasn’t expecting Eden this morning. Drawing in the scent of Valerie’s perfume—an aroma that brought to mind again the white rose on his doorstep—David wondered anew who’d left it and why.
His office, as all the windowed offices on this floor, had three glass panels, separated by chrome frames, set high in the end wall above a chest-high heating system that ran the length of the wall. Only the middle window could be opened, and that could only be opened with a special key kept by security.
Besides his desk and two high-backed leather chairs, his own contributions to the decor, there were built-in bookshelves, two shoulder-height metal filing cabinets and an easy chair in the corner. Colleen had contributed two jade plants that reposed atop the heating unit and thrived with her care.
Distracted, David skirted his desk and set his cup on its satiny walnut finish, and it occurred to him that he had not expected Valerie this morning, either. She was no longer his patient, hadn’t been since about a month or more before she’d recommended Eden and Beth to him.
But Colleen was right; something had Valerie terribly upset. Her hazel eyes were red-streaked and puffy as if from crying. Usually only her beloved brother, Peter, reduced her to tears. He couldn’t help wondering if Prescott had burned Valerie with that acid tongue of his in the wake of asking Eden for a divorce. “Did we have an appointment, Valerie?”
“No. But—” She choked on a sob. Tears sprang to her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “I—I thought you’d understand.”
David instantly regretted the brusque tone in his voice. Surely he could spare her a few minutes. “Understand what?”
“That I’d need to talk to you. H-how am I going to go on ... now that he’s been killed?”
David’s confusion deepened. His mind was too crammed with his own worries to decipher what Valerie was saying. He schooled his patience and said gently, “Perhaps you should start from the beginning. Who’s been killed?”
“Why, Peter, of course. Haven’t you listened to a radio? Read a newspaper? He was murdered last night by that—that ungrateful wife of his.”
“What?” David’s mouth dropped onto his chest and hung open like a sprung door. “How?”
Valerie withdrew a lace hankie from the sleeve of her black dress and waved it at him, wafting her rosy scent across the expanse of the desk, before she brought it to her nose and sniffled. “Shot him... probably with my little gun... it’s missing, you know. And that rude policeman said Peter was killed with a small-caliber weapon.”
David felt as if a bullet had pierced his own heart. Eden? Never. She wasn’t capable of murder. He gripped the arms of his chair. But he dare not contradict Valerie. Their years of therapy had unmasked her jealousy of Eden, a resentment that bad started the moment Peter proposed marriage.
Dear God, when had Prescott been killed? Where? At home? A sheet of ice spread through his belly, and he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Had the police arrested Eden? “Wh-where is Eden now?”
Valerie sat straighter, obviously affronted by the concern in his voice. “Home, with Beth. Hasn’t even shed a single tear. But dear Beth hasn’t taken the news much better than I. She’s so fragile, you know. Like me, I suppose.” She cleared her throat, and fresh tears trickled down her cheeks. “Could you possibly give me some more of those little mood pills? I can’t seem to quit shaking or crying.”
If Peter had been murdered at the home, the police would surely have declared it a crime scene and required the women to move out during the investigation. He breathed slightly easier.
“Dr. Coulter?” Valerie snuffled.
David gave her a sympathetic smile. “I’m sorry, Valerie. Sorry about your loss and that I can’t help you with a prescription. You’re no longer my patient. I suggest you see your M.D.”
LYNZY ANDERS, David’s student assistant, was conferring with Colleen over the morning newspaper when he came out of his office minutes after Valerie left. Colleen turned back to her typewriter.
But his student assistant made no pretense of working. She shoved her shoulder-length, straight, dark brown hair away from her oval face. The young woman’s appearance was all what-you-see-is-what-you-get. But something in the depths of her coffee brown eyes had long made him wonder at the sensitivity hidden behind her normally friendly-clown attitude. She poked the newspaper. “Have you seen this?”
Still reeling from the news, he moved closer and peered over her shoulder at the front page of the Seattle Times. Peter Prescott’s photo stood out beneath the headline Local Businessman Murdered. “No. But it seems I’m the only one in town who hasn’t.”
“Not Prescott,” Lynzy said, annoyed impatience in her tone. “The woman who was killed with him.”
Valerie hadn’t mentioned any woman being killed with Prescott. His gut clenched. Peter’s new lady?
Lynzy tapped the article, arching her neck to look back and up at him. “Shannon Smalley.”
“Shannon was with Peter Prescott?” Stunned disbelief jackknifed his knees, and David dropped onto the chair beside his secretary’s desk. Shannon was supposed to have had dinner with him last night, but she’d called to say she was spending the night with ... Pete. Peter Prescott? Shannon was the woman Prescott had left Eden for? He muttered, “Not Shannon and Peter Prescott?”
“Yes.” Lynzy nodded with macabre relish. “They were
murdered at her house in Klahanie—one of those housing developments in the Issaquah Plateau.”
Colleen stopped typing and twisted in her swivel chair. Her eyes seemed as round as cue balls. “I don’t understand what a rich guy who rubbed elbows with the movers and shakers of the world was even doing with someone like her.”
“Come on, girl.” Lynzy rolled her eyes. “It’s so obvious. Read between the lines.”
The secretary blushed crimson. “But how would he even know her? She was a dental receptionist.”
“My dentist’s receptionist,” David answered in a flat voice, adding almost to himself, “I think the Prescotts are also Dr. Dayton’s patients ... probably where Prescott met her.”
He scanned the article, seeking details, needing explanations for the unexplainable. The words seemed to blur. Shock waves rocked David, pitching him back in time, dredging up his own connection to Shannon ... and her older sister—a friend of Colleen’s, who also happened to be a nurse in the transplant wing of this very hospital.
Lynzy scooted one miniskirted hip onto Colleen’s desk, revealing the edge of a small rose tattoo just above her knee. Swinging a long, boot-clad leg to some beat of her own, she said, “You do remember... her name was on Rose Hatcher’s hit list.”
He hadn’t forgotten. He doubted Lynzy or Colleen had forgotten, either.
Colleen fingered her high collar as if it were choking her. “Your name and mine were also on that list, Lynzy.”
“Yeah, it gives me goose bumps just remembering. Hey, Doc, you haven’t gotten any more white roses, have you?”
David felt the heat drain from his face.
“I was just kidding, Doc.” Lynzy’s nervous laugh died. “Hey, are you all right? You’re kind of green.”
But David didn’t hear her; his mind was on the crushed rose. What did it mean? Why had it been left on his doorstep? Was someone trying to make him think Shannon was dead because of him? All he’d done was recommend her for the receptionist’s job. David rubbed his eyes with the flat of his hand. No. This time had nothing to do with that time. Rose Hatcher was locked away. She couldn’t have killed Shannon.
But someone had. Eden’s words rang through his head. The only way is to stop Peter. No! His stomach roiled. He clenched his fists.
Lynzy touched his arm. “Doc, maybe you should lie down in your office for a while.”
David shook his head. “No. I—I have an errand to run.”
Afraid and shell-shocked, torn between rushing to Eden and taking the rose to the police, he snatched up his briefcase, which he’d forgotten beside Colleen’s desk. “Reschedule this morning’s appointments. I can be reached on my car phone if the need arises.”
He darted out into a day that now promised to be anything but a good one, and five minutes later telephoned Eden’s house. Her recorded voice asked him to leave a message after the beep. Frustrated, he punched the Off button and dropped the phone on the seat beside his briefcase, which contained the crushed rose. Eden could be screening calls, but he wasn’t about to leave a message that anyone might overhear.
Say, Valerie. Or the police.
The heavy freeway traffic tried his patience, and by the time he reached Issaquah, his nerves were frayed. Front Street traffic was even worse: stop-and-go. The half-mile drive to Sunset Way took ten minutes. He drew a ragged breath as he finally pulled into a parking space at the Issaquah police station. Staring at the building, he felt as if the whole awful nightmare had started again. Or that it had never ended.
AT THE ISSAQUAH police station, Eden sat in a windowless room that smelled of stale cigarette smoke and depression. The overhead light was glaringly bright, and the headache she’d had all night had worsened into a steady, thumping pain, like a sledgehammer slamming against her temples.
With her back to the open door, she waited on an uncomfortable chair, her shaking hands clenched in her lap as she tried blocking out the memory of how Peter had looked when she’d gone to identify his body an hour earlier. How could someone be so alive one moment and so...so—? She jammed her hand against her belly. There was no associating the vital man she’d lived with for seven years with that cold object lying on a slab in the King County Morgue.
Voices filtered in from an open door down the hallway, bits and pieces of conversation. Desperate for a distraction, she listened. “Shannon Smalley...why do I ... connect her with ... shrink Coulter?”
Eden’s spine stiffened. Were they talking about David? She craned to hear better.
“Her name...the hit list that deranged student of the doc’s who murdered—”
Eden lost the last few words, but then the louder of the two voices boomed clearly. “Hah! I remember now. Man, I don’t like coincidences.”
A door banged shut, cutting off the rest of the conversation. The stagnant air in the small room seemed thicker than ever, and Eden felt as if her lungs couldn’t draw in enough oxygen to keep her alive. Of course, David knew Shannon Smalley from Dr. Dayton’s office, but if she’d understood correctly, Shannon had somehow been involved in the death of that student of his a while back. But how?
Footsteps behind her sent the thought scurrying. Every nerve in her body felt pinched as Kollecki entered and kicked the door shut. His dark red hair was slicked off his high forehead as if he’d just showered and hadn’t bothered to dry it. He carried two disposable cups of steaming liquid. “Thought you’d like some coffee.”
“Thank you.” The words came out raspy. Her mouth was too dry, but the taste of bile at the back of her throat kept her from reaching for the coffee cup he set near her hand.
He scraped back a chair and sat opposite her, pulled a tablet and pen from his suit pocket, flipped through a few pages, then lifted his dark, intense gaze to her. “Now, Mrs. Prescott, what time did you last see your husband?”
“Yesterday, around 6:00 p.m.” She focused on that image of Peter, shoving the other vile one away, shoving the worrisome thoughts of David further yet.
“Would that be the same time he told you about his affair with Miss Smalley?”
As if reaching for a lifeline, Eden curled her small, trembling hands around the cup. Last night she’d wished for someone to discuss her problems with, but never in her wildest imaginings had she envisioned it would be a police detective. But it was, and under the circumstances, she decided, honesty was probably the best policy. “My husband wasn’t just having an affair with Ms. Smalley, he intended to marry her.”
Kollecki’s eyebrows twitched. “So he wanted a divorce?”
Eden nodded, suspecting he already knew that.
“Did you argue the point?”
“No.” She shook her head. “No one argued with Peter.”
“So a divorce was okay with you?”
Eden took a gulp of coffee. Hot and acrid, it rolled over her tongue and landed in her queasy stomach like a fiery ball of oil. Yesterday at this time, the answer to that question would likely have been a resounding no.
But by the time she’d arrived home last night, determined to find a lawyer who’d stave off Peter’s intention of dropping Beth from his insurance, she could honestly say she’d come to terms with the idea.
Of course, a good deal of the credit was David’s. He’d helped her rediscover her self-respect and shown her that there were marvelous experiences awaiting her in this life. She stared at the dark coffee. “I wasn’t sorry the marriage was over, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Oh, really?” Kollecki studied her, then checked his notepad. “According to your sister-in-law, you signed an ironclad prenuptial agreement.”
Eden glanced at the wall behind him. What could she say? There was no justifying being young and naive, being just plain stupid, being so desperate for a better life she’d jumped at the first offer. “Yes, I did.”
“Ms. Prescott says you inherit half of your deceased husband’s estate now.”
Ice threaded her heart. “That’s a term of the agreement.”
&nb
sp; “How fortunate for you that he was killed before he could get his divorce.”
She gasped, jerking her gaze back to Kollecki’s. “What a vicious thing to say! Lots of people have lousy marriages, Peter and I included. But I never wished him dead.”
She glared at him but could no longer keep at bay the awful image from the morgue. The coffee churned in her stomach. She was going to be sick. “I couldn’t kill anyone.”
“Your sister-in-law seems to have a different opinion.”
“She’s high-strung. She became hysterical at the news and accused everyone whose name popped into her head, including poor Beth.” Eden had paid little attention. Surely the police weren’t giving Valerie’s ravings credence? Fear crawled through her. “Valerie was very attached to her brother.”
“I heard he didn’t treat her well.”
Eden’s eyebrows shot up. Who would have told him a thing like that? Not Valerie, not Beth and not her. Beth’s nurse? Ariel Bell might have overheard conversations and related tales of, or perhaps been the victim of, Peter’s sharp tongue. It would certainly explain Ariel’s dislike of him.
“I need to know where you were last night between nine and midnight.”
Eden shoved the coffee to one side. The ache inside her head vied with the pain in her stomach. She’d left David’s around nine. She massaged her temples with her fingertips. If only she’d gone directly home, then Beth or her nurse might still have been awake and could have verified her whereabouts. Then perhaps telling Kollecki she’d been at David’s would help. But now . . .
If the police discovered she was in love with David, had made love to David ... Shivers raced over her flesh as she recalled the things she’d said to David, realizing how they must sound to him now, how her words could be used against her. Motive. She had it in spades.
And what about David and his declaration that he’d do anything he could to help her? What about his connection to Shannon Smalley? The fear inside her leapt another three notches. She decided not to mention David—unless it became absolutely necessary. “I ... just drove around ... for hours.”