Detective Defender

by Marilyn Pappano

  “You know, for the last however many years,” he warned, “I’ve only gotten insults from you. If you stop being hostile and start paying compliments, I won’t know how to act.”

  Though her cheeks flushed, her mouth was too full of hot, tender, juicy chicken with the perfect amount of crispy crust. When she swallowed it, she wiped her fingers delicately. “You can’t deny you trolled for women while you were married.”

  “I’m not proud of it, but I don’t deny it.” His eyes twinkled. “You were much nicer before you knew.”

  “You weren’t a cheat before I knew.”

  “Did one of your ex-boyfriends cheat on you?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Not my ex-husband, either, and not my dad on my mom or vice versa. I just grew up believing that there were certain things you honored, and marriage vows were high on that list. I know people get married for a lot of reasons, but done right, it’s supposed to be a commitment, a partnership, giving and taking and growing together.” She chewed a bite of potato salad, savoring the sweet mayo, the tang of the mustard and the bite of the pickle juice in the dressing. “I sound really old-fashioned, don’t I?”

  “You sound like my sisters.” He waited a beat before continuing. “Who are really old-fashioned.” After a moment, though, with a drumstick in his hand, he gestured. “You were right, Martine. It was a really crappy thing to do. I knew it then. I know it better now. I can’t change what I did then, but I can say I wouldn’t do it now.”

  Martine found herself entirely too tempted to believe his words. She managed a smile, but it wasn’t as light as she’d hoped for. “Aw, Jack tells me that your fellow detectives rate the odds of you and monogamy ever being mentioned in the same sentence at somewhere around one in a billion.”

  His smile was designed for sarcasm. “Jack should keep his mouth shut. I believe in monogamy. I really do. I think people who claim it’s an unnatural state just use that as an excuse for their own behavior.”

  “I think you’re right,” Martine said, and his brows arched as he leaned closer.

  “What was that? Could you repeat it?”

  She laughed. She actually felt good enough to laugh. Oh, how she’d missed it.

  Before the thought of asking what he’d learned about the case could even fully form in her brain, she said, “Tell me how you terrorized your sisters growing up.”

  “Why does everyone think that? I was their favorite brother.”

  “And only brother. You told me you had advanced training in making them hysterical by the time you were ten.”

  “Oh, yeah, I did.” He finished his chicken and picked up a spoonful of macaroni and cheese. “Imagine the kind of things you and your girls got into, only ten times more complicated. That’s Dani and Rebecca. They were regular little generals of chaos, enlisting all the kids in town and half the adults in their mischief. And they always looked so innocent, with pigtails or braids, big eyes and the sweetest, most adorable smiles. They were a menace to the parish, only no one really believed they were capable of the pranks they pulled. People always thought I was behind most of them, but truthfully, no one could get you like Dani and Becca could.”

  Discovering that her plate was clean, Martine considered getting a refill, then decided she was good. Tucking her feet into the seat, she held her glass in both hands and settled in. “What about now? Are they still master manipulators?”

  “Pretty much. Dani runs marketing at Cypress Hill, and Becca’s in charge of everything else. They’ve got five kids between them who are being homeschooled and get to do things that are cool and actually make school look fun. The kids also help out at the big house. Everyone’s got chores, even me, and the conse—” he hesitated so briefly over the word that she doubted anyone else would have noticed “—um, consequences of not doing them can be severe.”

  That was the way to handle it: just let the word and its ugliness slide away, out of her mind. There would always be time to face up to her situation, but pleasant, easy moments like this had been hard to find lately.

  “It’s funny to think that I might have met your parents or your sisters when my mom and I toured the place.”

  “You might even have met me. I haven’t lived there since high school, but I’ve gone back for plenty of visits.”

  She might have seen him—younger, less polished, still too damn good-looking for his own good, charming and brash—but she doubted she could have met him and forgotten. She’d always had a fine appreciation for handsome, sexy men.

  Then he said, “Nah. I would have remembered meeting you.” Adding with unshakable confidence, “And you would have remembered meeting me.”

  She smiled sweetly. “I love modest men.” She studied her glass, shaking it just enough to make the ice cubes clink, before lifting her gaze back to Jimmy. She didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to leave this comfortable moment for the darkness that her life had become, but the question slipped out despite her best intentions. “How did your meeting with Paulina’s husband go?”

  His humor giving way to seriousness, he gave what she was sure was an abbreviated version. She wondered what kind of guy Paulina had chosen to marry—her tastes in high school boys had varied widely—and sadly recalled their old promises that they would each be maid of honor to the other. But that night had happened, and Martine’s maid of honor had been a roommate she’d lost touch with before her first anniversary rolled around. Who had been there for Paulina? Had the other three girls been invited, or had she left out everyone from the first eighteen years of her life on the big day?

  “I haven’t located Irena Young yet, but I did find out that Katie Jo Fletcher died in prison last fall.”

  The news gave her a bit of a jolt. “I’m sorry, for both her and Irena. She had a sad life.” After a moment, she gestured to her laptop on the coffee table. “People say you can find anyone and anything on the internet, but it’s not true, is it? I’ve Googled and Binged and searched every other way I could think of for Tallie and Robin, but I haven’t found anything of use.”

  Finished with his meal, he settled more comfortably, too. Even sprawled back on the couch as he was, there was no mistaking the fine quality of his suit or the high price of his shoes. A public servant with a private fortune—or, at least, enough for occasional splurges.

  But he looked just as good in jeans and a T-shirt.

  Probably even better in nothing at all.

  “Internet or not, if someone doesn’t want to be found and is reasonably intelligent, they can hide as easily as ever. You ditch your credit cards, your cell phone, your email and your vehicle, you use public transportation, you pay cash, and you’re officially off the grid. Look at Paulina. Three months on the run, police and private investigators looking for her, and they couldn’t trace her beyond the first twenty-four hours. All we know about the time she was missing is that she bought a burner phone and used cash.”

  “And that she came here. And she was scared.” Martine did her best to ignore the shiver of her own fear. It was futile when Jimmy, his voice grim, finished.

  “And now she’s dead.”

  * * *

  After taking their dishes into the kitchen, Martine cleaned up quickly, brewed coffee for Jimmy and poured another glass of wine for herself, then glanced out the kitchen window. The rain shimmered in the air, falling in slow flat drops...that were actually snowflakes. For an instant, she brightened inside with just a hint of the wonder she’d always felt as a child when they’d been blessed with snow. Now she liked it mostly when it disappeared overnight, but it was gorgeous in its pristine falling state. Tourists didn’t like snow in New Orleans, either, and business had been off enough the past week.

  She used a small plate to make a tray for Jimmy, holding coffee, cream and sugar, and carried that and her wine to the living room. “It’s snowing.”

&nb
sp; “Oh, boy,” he said sourly. “Police work is so much fun when you add slick roads and ice and inexperienced drivers.”

  Martine sat, sipped her wine, then returned to their earlier conversation. “Why didn’t Paulina tell her husband? Why not call the police? She had resources. Why didn’t she use them?”

  Jimmy tilted his head to one side, then the other, as if releasing the tension gathered there, before lifting both shoulders in a weary shrug. “Maybe she thought running away would protect her family from the danger. Maybe she was too ashamed to admit what you guys had done, or maybe she’d lived with the secret so long, she believed it more than ever and just couldn’t face the con—”

  Consequences. It wasn’t as easy this time to just let the word slide away.

  “I don’t know if I showed good sense in not believing we were responsible for Fletcher’s death or if I’ve just been selfishly going along in my own little world, refusing to acknowledge the impact of what we did.”

  His dark eyes narrowing, Jimmy patted the sofa cushion beside him. “Come here.”

  Something warm and promising curled in her stomach, even as some smidgen of lingering wariness warned her against it. He was here only because of his job; she was a subject in his investigation, nothing more. It wasn’t supposed to be anything more. How could it ever be? As he’d pointed out, she hadn’t spoken a civil word to him since that party, in a quiet dark nook in Evie’s garden, his arms wrapped around her, his tongue halfway down her throat, his hands doing incredible things to her body and her willpower, when his phone had rung. Her dazed brain had been stunned when he pulled away to check the screen, then put it away again. My wife, he’d murmured carelessly. I’ll call her later.

  Even now, she felt a flare of that old dismay, disgust, scorn...and disappointment, because up to that point, she’d been thoroughly captivated by him. She would have followed him anywhere, would have plastered herself so firmly against him that she might have absorbed at least parts of him into her soul. She’d thought he might be...special.

  That had happened six years ago, but since then he’d never made any secret of his attraction to her, even when she’d found it annoying rather than flattering. He was waiting, he’d told her once after the divorce, for her to give up her grudge so they could pick up where they’d left off. She’d suggested he would burn in hell first.

  The wary voice in her head wasn’t trying hard enough to warn her away. Without permission from her brain, her feet slid to the floor, her hands gripped the chair arms to push herself up, and she eased around the corner of the coffee table to sit down, half a cushion between her and Jimmy.

  “Big step,” he teased as she turned to face him. “No kitchen knife handy, my dinner fork is out of your reach, nothing to crack my skull with.”

  Her smile felt steadier than she’d thought it would be. “I still have your Taser and pepper spray. Having watched a few episodes of Cops, I’ve always wondered how much fun it would be to Tase someone in a nondangerous situation.”

  “I’m not volunteering. Though on a busy night on Bourbon Street, offer fifteen bucks, and I bet you’ll get plenty of takers, especially if you video it and promise to put it on YouTube.”

  She smiled, thinking of the foolish and reckless young men she’d known. Some outgrew it in their twenties; some took until their thirties; and some, she supposed, never outgrew it at all. Jimmy, she was pretty convinced, was a bit of a mix. He took his job seriously as hell, the rest of life not so much. He could be grown up when the situation required it, but he enjoyed the rest of his life as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Could he enjoy the rest of his life with the restrictions imposed by a monogamous relationship?

  The question faded away when he moved, and her heart increased its steady beat. This close, she could better smell his cologne, could see the stubble of beard dotting his jaw and the tired lines etching the corners of his eyes and mouth. He’d had a couple of long days and was planning to have a few more, she suspected, until he caught the killer or at least scared him—or her—off.

  His strong, comforting hand claimed hers, his fingers lacing with hers, the pad of his thumb rubbing firmly back and forth over the heel of her palm. “Fletcher’s death wasn’t your fault, Martine, and there’s nothing selfish about acknowledging that. The fact that the other girls believed it didn’t make them right. The fact that the killer might have gotten a couple ideas from you still doesn’t make you responsible. You didn’t know you were being spied on. You didn’t put the thought of murder or the capacity for it into Katie Jo or Irena or anyone else. You know human nature. People don’t become violent because they overhear girls playing. William Fletcher died because he was a lousy husband and stepfather and a teacher with a fondness for doing God knows what to kids. Period.”

  She must not have looked convinced, because he squeezed her fingers lightly. “You ever see a movie where a woman fakes her own death to get away from an abusive husband, he finds her and she kills him? What if someone else who sees it uses that as a blueprint to escape her own abuser, right down to the murder at the end? Does that make the screenwriter or the producer or the actress responsible?”

  “Of course not,” she murmured.

  “And you’re not, either. There’s nothing original, Martine—not one single action in the history of mankind that hasn’t been done before. Every good thing you can think of, every bad thing, millions of other people have already thought of them. And in my experience, most murderers don’t need inspiration. They just need opportunity.”

  She sighed, tilted her head to one side to study him and bumped his arm, resting on the back of the sofa. Automatically, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, scooted her closer and guided her head to his own shoulder.

  Damn. The closer she got, the better he smelled. The better she felt. And oh, hell, yes, the better he felt. Hard muscle, soft skin, power, courage. He was a protector—her protector, for the moment—and she reveled in it in a way she never would have thought possible. Even the crazed-killer fear was calmer, almost dormant. For the first time in two days, she could relax, close her eyes, turn off the worries and feel normal again.

  She would never undervalue feeling normal again.

  She lost track of how long they sat there, warmed by his body and his presence, feeling a sense of ease seep through her with each breath, thinking that grudges became burdens after a while and when the wronged person—in this case, Alia—didn’t hold a grudge, wasn’t it presumptuous of Martine to?

  You just want to have sex with him, her wariness pointed out. Just like you wanted that night and practically every time you’ve seen him since.

  A faint smile curved her lips. Her wary nature knew her well, probably because they’d kept such close company all this time.

  “What are you smiling about?” His voice was soft, his mouth close enough that she felt his breath on her cheek.

  She fibbed. “You smell like apple pie.”

  “Nah, you smell the apple pie in the kitchen.” After a pause, he shifted his shoulder, gently nudging her cheek, and repeated, “Hey, there’s apple pie in the kitchen.”

  His boyish tone made her laugh. “Dessert coming right up. I’m guessing you like it warm with ice cream melting over the top.”

  “Hell, yeah.”

  She started to push up from the couch, but his hand stopped her. His eyes were dark, the familiar intensity back in place, but this time it wasn’t for the case. It was for her, and the same sharp awareness sliced through her. His lips parted, and she wondered—anticipated—what he would say, but she would never know because, after a moment, they curved into a smile. His fingers stroked hers gently, lightly, before he stood up, then pulled her to her feet.

  “I’ll help you.”

  He’d been doing that all along—helping her to feel secure, helping her deal
with Paulina’s death, helping her find the answers to the million questions that plagued her. Given the way things had been between them before, she was impressed. And grateful. And regretful. And hopeful.

  Her work and her friends had exposed her to a lot of mysteries in life, but this might be the biggest surprise of all.

  Jimmy DiBiase had become the light in her life.

  * * *

  By the time Jimmy motivated himself enough to get off the couch one last time to go home, the snow was falling harder, accumulating thickly on all the flat surfaces except the middle of the street. Only a few tourists were on the sidewalks, warmed by spirits, he would bet, and traffic was almost nonexistent. His car gleamed white in the light from the street lamps, with enough of the cold stuff piled on it that he wished for gloves. And a heavier coat.

  Martine wasn’t wearing any coat at all. Just jeans that fitted snugly to every curve and a long-sleeved touristy shirt paying homage to New Orleans’s chicory coffee that did the same. She hugged her arms across her middle as they watched the snow in companionable silence from the doorway. Comfortable silence. The only thing that would make it better was if they were watching from her window upstairs, where the air was warm and the bedroom was only a few yards away.

  “You like snow?” she asked after a moment.

  “Nope. But when it’s like this, all fat and thick and nothing’s turned to ice yet, it’s damn pretty to watch.” He knew he should leave: tell her good-night, wait to hear the locks click and the planter scrape as she dragged it back into place, then clear enough of the car windows to get himself home. He was tired. She was cold. Standing here would just make him more tired and her colder.

  But it was hard to take that first step over the threshold.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets, felt the keys there held together with a small wire loop and remembered one of his reasons for coming over tonight. “Here are the keys to your new lock.” He pressed them into her hand, her fingers already cold. “I know it’s a hassle, but for right now you need to open it from inside the courtyard. The chain is looped around that cast-iron planter, and the lock is against the planter, so no one can reach it to cut it.”