Kill the Competition

by Stephanie Bond

She picked up the envelope, but when she heard Wade’s returning footsteps, she turned it facedown on the table.

  Wade gave her a too-cheerful smile. “Okay, let’s eat.”

  The fish sandwiches were good, and she was ravenous. In fact, she and Downey both made pigs out of themselves, although Wade still managed to outpace them. She told him about taking the polygraph exam and the general mood around the office.

  “No offense, but it seems like a fairly crazy place to work. Do you like it?”

  “I was looking forward to the challenge of growing the company to the point of taking it public.”

  “And now?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve decided to take things one day at a time.”

  “Good plan.”

  “So what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Truett and Salyers were riding you hard about taking some kind of exam.”

  He shifted in the seat. “The detective’s exam.”

  “You’re not interested?”

  “Not right now.” He drained his second beer, then stood. “Guess I’d better get that security alarm installed.”

  Belinda blinked at the sudden change in subject, then began to clear their meal. Downey followed Wade through the hallway like…like she used to trail Vince. Belinda smirked. Fickle feline. Feelings didn’t evaporate just like that, not if they had been true to begin with. She glanced at the facedown envelope and bit into her lip.

  “Belinda,” Wade called from the door. “I believe your couch is here.”

  She hurriedly dumped the trash, then went outside to guide the delivery men. Despite everything else, she allowed herself to be a tiny bit excited about finally having a new piece of furniture. Two burly men removed the sofa from a truck and carried it inside. She signed for it, then pulled away the plastic, revealing the deep red leather.

  Wade was attaching some kind of sensor thingy to the bay window. He wore a tool belt, and nicely. Downey wound between his feet, rubbing her head against his legs and purring like a vibrator.

  Shameless pussy.

  Wade nodded toward the sofa. “Nice.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Looks comfortable. Does it unfold to make a bed?”

  She coughed—probably cat hair in the air—then nodded.

  “I’ll be needing some new furniture soon,” he said. “The renovations to my den are almost finished.”

  “What did you do to it?”

  “The big jobs were refinishing the wood floors and replacing the crown molding.”

  “Wow. When do you have time for that?”

  He looked up from what he was doing and shrugged, then looked back down, and she understood—it was what he had thrown himself into when his marriage had dissolved. She had done the same thing with Kraft macaroni and cheese dinners.

  “What are you doing to my window?”

  “Since these don’t open, I’m installing a glass shattering sensor. If the glass is broken, an alarm will sound there.” He pointed up to a white box the size of a deck of cards sitting on the landing of her stairs, against the wall. “I’ll put motion sensors on the two windows in the kitchen.”

  “I think you’re overreacting.”

  He leveled his gray gaze on her. “I hope so.”

  There was that Southern I’ll-take-care-of-you attitude again. She tried to rally her feminist defenses, but they were cowering behind her ovaries. To be honest, it felt kind of good to be fussed over. “What am I supposed to do if the alarm sounds?”

  “Lock yourself in your bathroom and call 9-1-1. Do you have anything to protect yourself with?”

  “The detectives took Big Daddy.”

  “Oh, right.” He grinned. “The gift from your girlfriends.”

  “What would you suggest?”

  “A big dog that barks.”

  She pointed to his feet. “How about a little cat that bites?”

  “It’s not quite the same.”

  Belinda made a rueful noise. “You’re going to hurt Downey’s feelings. She thinks you like her.” She lowered herself to the couch for a trial sit, and sighed as the leather cushions hugged her.

  “I do like her,” he said, but he wasn’t looking at the cat.

  She squirmed farther down into the cushions, thinking what a great spot this would be if her television were working. And if Margo were alive.

  “You really should cover this window,” he said. “It’s like a huge glass door. Anyone can see in.”

  “I know, I had to scare Perry off when I got home.”

  He frowned. “You should have let me shoot him in the food court.”

  “He was just curious about all the commotion. I think he’s harmless.”

  “If you see him lurking around again, call the police and file a report.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wade gave the sensor a final inspection, then walked over to the couch and, after removing his tool belt, sat down on the couch next to her. He draped both arms along the back and made a satisfied noise as he settled into the creaky cushions. He turned his head and smiled. “Very nice.”

  With his leg pressed against hers, she could only nod and smile. Downey sought to join them, but Belinda shooed her away. “No,” she said in her best master voice. “You’ll scratch the leather.”

  “Aluminum foil,” Wade said.

  “Hm?” He was so close that she could feel his breath against her temple.

  “Put aluminum foil on the couch when you’re not using it. Cats hate the way it feels and sounds, so when she jumps on it, she’ll get a bad association with the couch.”

  “Oh,” she murmured, looking up to meet his gaze. “You know a lot about…cats.”

  “Not so much,” he said, and she could tell by the set of his jaw that he was feeling the same prickly awareness that she was feeling. Maybe the smell of new leather was an aphrodisiac.

  She swallowed audibly. “So…where do we go from here?”

  He turned and leaned in close. Her breath caught as he cupped his hand under her jaw and made his approach. In a split second, she registered so many details about his face—smoky gray eyes, shadowy square jaw, determined mouth. She managed to inhale just before his lips touched hers. The pressure was light at first, but within a couple of seconds, the kiss ignited, and soon they were going at it like a couple of teenagers. She kept waiting for the wrongness to set in, for the unfamiliarity of his touch to disturb her, but the overriding thought in her brain was that this man knew how to kiss. And his intensity alone hinted at other skills in his repertoire.

  She had mentally settled in for a nice long session of necking on the couch when he suddenly pulled away. While she recovered, he stood and pulled his hand down his face. “I’m sorry about that.”

  He was? She touched her tender mouth.

  “If I don’t behave myself,” he said in a thick voice, “Detective Salyers will yank me from this case. So, for now, we can’t ‘go’ anywhere.”

  She pressed her bruised lips together. “I meant…where does the investigation go from here?”

  His color rose. “Oh.”

  The phone rang, thank God. She jumped up from her couch to answer, hoping it wasn’t another reporter with disturbing details. “Hello?” She stared at the large impression her behind had left in the couch and willed it to fill in quickly.

  “Hello, dear, it’s Mother.”

  Of course it was. “Hi, Mom.”

  “Are you alone, or is your friend there?”

  She glanced at Wade and wet her lips. “What friend would that be, Mom?”

  “You know, your man friend.”

  “Oh, him.” She watched as Wade reattached his tool belt. “Yes, he’s here doing…handiwork.”

  Wade arched his eyebrow.

  Her mother partially covered the mouthpiece. “Franklin, he’s handy.” She came back on the line. “Your father wants to know if he knows anything about cars.”

  Wade walked away from her toward the k
itchen. “Tell Dad I don’t know. Where are you calling from?”

  “North Platte, Nebraska. The scenery is absolutely lovely.”

  “Are you taking a lot of pictures?” Her mother was a notoriously bad photographer.

  Barbara Hennessey sighed. “Yes, but I just discovered that somehow the camera lens cover has been on from Indianapolis to Omaha.”

  Somehow.

  “Did your sofa arrive, dear?”

  “Yes, just a few minutes ago, in fact.”

  “Is it still red?”

  “Um, yes.”

  Another sigh sounded. “I suppose there are worse things that could happen.”

  If her mother only knew.

  “I’d better let you get back to your guest. I’ll call you in another couple of days.”

  “Okay. Give my love to Dad. Talk to you soon.” Belinda hung up the phone and shook her head. Her poor dad had probably heard enough about her red couch to make him want to drive the Buick off a bridge.

  “Finished,” Wade said, walking back through the hallway, wiping his hands on the tail of his T-shirt.

  She dragged her gaze from the glimpses of his planed stomach. “That was quick.”

  “They’re contact sensors, so don’t forget and accidentally open your windows.”

  “I won’t.” She followed him to the door, almost tripping over Downey, who was trying to get there first.

  At the door he turned. “Call me if…anything.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “Thanks for the kiss—I mean fish. Thanks for the fish. Sandwiches. And the beer. And the security alarm.” She couldn’t shut up.

  “No problem,” he said with a little smile. “I’ll most likely see you tomorrow—about the investigation.”

  “Of course.”

  He left, and she closed the door before Downey could escape. The cat meowed and circled in place. Belinda sighed, scooped the forlorn feline into her arms, and carried her, wriggling, to the couch. “Don’t get your hopes up, old girl,” she murmured, stroking her pet’s dark fur to calm both of them. “We humans call it ‘being on the rebound.’ And when both humans are on the rebound, there’s another word for it: doomed.”

  Chapter 26

  Belinda descended the stairs to the eighth floor alone, relieved to be free of the women’s company after a tense morning car pool. Terse exchanges and rueful glances convinced her that something was going on between Libby and Carole and Rosemary that excluded her, probably something to do with Rosemary’s secret appointments. But frankly, she didn’t want to ask questions on the chance that she might be expected to answer some of her own, and she didn’t have the strength.

  Wade’s kiss and her reaction to it had dominated her concentration for most of the evening. Then her thoughts had switched to Julian and his possible involvement in the murder, and if there was a connection between Jeanie’s death and Margo’s. Around midnight she had begun to obsess over her part in the Payton acquisition. She needed to talk to Mr. Archer, but she planned to stall, hoping the missing contracts would turn up.

  Around 2:00 A.M., all the events of the past few days had gathered to press upon her mind like a vise. Hoping a cup of herbal tea would help her sleep, she had tied on her robe and walked downstairs by the illumination of strategic night-lights (for Downey’s sake, she’d told herself when she’d bought them).

  The sheet that she’d hung over the bay window had fallen onto the floor, allowing light from the dusk-to-dawn streetlamp to stream in. As she had walked by, the hair had stood up on her arms—she could have sworn someone had been at the window, peering in. Perry? She blinked, and whatever she’d thought she’d seen was gone. She’d laughed at herself and rehung the sheet. Instead of preparing tea, though, she’d curled up on the new couch that she’d covered with two quilts in deference to Downey’s claws until she could buy a couple of rolls of aluminum foil. She hadn’t worried about oversleeping because she hadn’t thought she’d be able to sleep.

  When Downey had licked her awake, the alarm on her clock upstairs had been sounding, her brain had been gummy, and her limbs leaden. The urge to lie there until Christmas had been appealing, but the sensation had been so similar to the way she’d felt the days following the wedding that it had frightened her into mobility. That, and the knowledge that the car pool was coming.

  By simply showing up, the girls had saved her from slipping into that murky place where she could wallow in the futility of Why me?, so at first she hadn’t minded the quiet in the car. But after an hour of listening to their prickly silence and a standin traffic reporter on the radio, she was ready to implode.

  Hopefully today they would find Jim Newberry, and the nightmare would end.

  Well, one of the nightmares—there was still the little matter of the missing contracts.

  She opened the stairwell door, strode into the reception area, and blinked at the welcoming party—Detectives Salyers and Truett, and a dour-faced woman she didn’t know. Wade Alexander stood in the wings, his expression regrettable, not unlike after he’d kissed her.

  “Good morning, Ms. Hennessey,” Truett said.

  “Good…morning.”

  “Where are your carpooling buddies?”

  She shifted her briefcase to her other hand. “They rode the elevator. Why?”

  “We found Jim Newberry.”

  Her pulse raced. “And?”

  “And he has an alibi for his whereabouts after leaving here Monday afternoon.”

  Dread washed over her just as the elevator doors opened and the women alighted. They came up short and stood expectantly.

  “And since Jim Newberry didn’t kill Margo Campbell,” he said to all of them, “we need to have a little powwow with your car pool and clear up a few inconsistencies.”

  She glanced at her friends, and the expressions on their pale faces sent a rock to her stomach. What was it Libby had once said about lies?

  “Lies are the glue that holds relationships together. We lie to our spouses, to our kids, to our ministers, and to ourselves.”

  Belinda swallowed. And to our friends?

  “Let’s get started,” Truett said, pulling a swivel chair to the end of the boardroom table. Libby sat to his right, and Rosemary to his left. Next to Rosemary sat Carole, then Detective Salyers. Across from Salyers sat Lieutenant Alexander. Belinda was wedged between him and Libby. The unknown woman sat away from the group, near the other end of the table. Everyone looked as if they wanted to be elsewhere.

  “I’d like to introduce Ms. Greer, Fulton County assistant district attorney. Ms. Greer is here as an observer.”

  Ms. Greer nodded solemnly.

  Belinda was quivering in her Aerosoles. A D.A.’s presence could not be a good thing. She had convinced herself that Jim Newberry had murdered Margo…eliminating him as a suspect tore the lid off an entire barrel of worms.

  “Lieutenant Alexander has been on the case from the beginning, so we asked him to be here out of professional courtesy.”

  Detective Salyers’s tiny smirk didn’t go unnoticed by Belinda. The comfort she took from Wade’s dominating presence next to her was negated by the fact that he was privy to so many nooks and crannies of her life—and before this interview ended, was likely to discover more.

  Truett slurped coffee from a Styrofoam cup and pushed a button on a tape recorder at his elbow. He recited the date and time and those present. “First, let me say that you ladies are here voluntarily and are not under arrest. You may refuse to answer questions at any time, and you may request an attorney at any time.”

  An attorney? How about her mommy?

  “Ladies, I got a dead woman in a trunk, and not a whole hell of a lot of answers.” Truett gave them a tight smile. “And the polygraph exams indicate that all of you are hiding something about the circumstances surrounding the murder.”

  Belinda’s heart pounded in her ears.

  “Since all of you had access to the car where the body was found, I thought it would be best if we sa
t down and talked through Monday’s events again, nice and slow like.” He glanced all around, pausing a few seconds on each of them. “Now, then—Ms. Hennessey, you drove the car pool Monday, with Ms. Janes and Ms. Marchand.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ms. Burchett, you drove separately.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “We’ll get back to that later.”

  Rosemary blanched but remained silent.

  “Ms. Hennessey, you said you parked your car on the eighth floor. Did you move your car during the course of the day?”

  “No.”

  “I understand that in the afternoon, you were called to Margo Campbell’s office for a performance evaluation.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your evaluation went well. You had been offered the CFO position?”

  When the other women looked her way, she squirmed. “Yes. Margo said she would make the announcement when she returned from vacation.”

  “But before you left her office, Jim Newberry forced his way in.”

  “Yes.”

  “After Newberry was taken away, then what?”

  Belinda shrugged. “I left Margo’s office, made a few phone calls.”

  “Did you run into Libby Janes in the ladies’ room?”

  Her memory clicked. “Yes.”

  He looked at his notes. “A witness said she went into the ladies’ room around 4:00 and that you and Ms. Janes were in the same stall. She recognized your shoes.”

  She looked at Libby, her cheeks flaming. Libby’s were pinker than usual, too.

  “I was upset about something,” Libby said, “and Belinda was being a friend.”

  “What were you upset about?” Detective Salyers asked.

  “My husband and I had been arguing about finances,” Libby said quickly.

  Belinda bit into her lower lip. From what she remembered, Libby had been upset about her evaluation, but she supposed it all led back to the fact that her husband was leaning on her about bringing in more money.

  Truett turned to her. “Ms. Hennessey, tell us again what happened at the end of the day.”

  “I wanted to talk to Margo about something before she left for vacation, so I asked Libby if she would drive home and let me pick up my car later, and she agreed.”