by Jenna Ryan
“You’re avoiding the question.”
If he expected annoyance he was disappointed. Amusement lit her eyes. “The answer, Dr. Detective, is because Deana’s father pushes very hard when he wants something, and he wanted Deana to succeed. He also knows many important people. Can you put the two things together or would you like me to add them up for you?”
“Your grandmother mentioned his string-pulling tactics.” Vachon ran a contemplative thumb over his lower lip. “How does Deana feel about being nudged along?”
“Oh, no.” Nikita made a sign of flat negation. “Deana’s her own person. She wasn’t pushed into medicine. She wanted to be a doctor, the best doctor ever. She’s wanted it her whole life. Getting to the top, whether aided by Dean or not, has been her goal from day one.”
“She must resent Martin’s, uh, tendencies, then.”
“So do I, but I wouldn’t kill anybody over them. Why do you keep harping on our motives, Vachon? What about Manny’s?”
“What about Flynn’s secrecy?”
“Or Sammy Slide’s cocksure attitude. He considers himself a ladies’ man, you know. Laverne probably rebuffed him.”
“Have you?”
“Once or twice. He stopped asking after my first week on the job.”
“Rejection might be reason enough in his mind to shove you down a hill.” Vachon checked the ends of his hair. They were dry, and so was his shirt “I brought Sammy in for questioning earlier tonight.”
She smiled, a wicked, devastating smile that sent the blood rushing to his lower limbs. “No confession, huh? But I bet he abused everyone at the station. What did he say?”
“He gave Laverne that ring Lally found on her nightstand. He called it a gift from a friend. It’s hard to prove much else at this point.”
Nikita knit her brow. “I thought she called it an engagement ring.”
“Maybe she wanted it to be one. The boyfriend in Cleveland exists, but there was no official engagement.” Vachon turned to survey the room, halted partway and frowned at the window.
“What?” Nikita asked at the checked motion.
“I saw a face.”
She crawled over on her knees. “Whose?”
“A woman’s, I think. There.” He spotted it again.
“Damn, it’s Lally.”
“Out here?” He started across the room.
Nikita beat him to the door. “I’ll handle this, Vachon. She isn’t always herself. You might misconstrue something she says.”
“Dr. N.?” Lally asked uncertainly.
“I’m here.” With a look that dared him to interfere, Nikita turned and opened the door. “It’s almost nine o’clock, Lally. You should be in your room.”
“I was walking,” Lally revealed. Her vacant tone brought to mind a zombie. “I saw the fire reflecting in the trees and came to look. Why are you here?”
“I was, uh—we were…”
Vachon had moved in order to see the new arrival. He understood at once why Nikita had lost her train of thought.
Lally Monk was dressed entirely in black. A knitted black hat dangled from her fingers.
“Hello, Detective,” she greeted him in a flat monotone. “I think you should go to Dr. Flynn’s laboratory. There’s going to be…”
Before she could finish, an explosion similar to a clap of thunder and deeper than a gunshot, rent the still night air. It came from the direction of the hospital.
Nikita stared at Lally as if the sound had not occurred. “A what, Lally?” she asked.
“Bang,” Lally whispered. Then her eyes rolled back in her skull and she pitched forward across the threshold.
“I DON’T KNOW what happened,” a bemused and smokyfaced Donald Flynn told everyone who rushed into his scorched laboratory. “A power surge, I think. I was, er, working, and suddenly half my system blew.”
Nikita surveyed the setup of Donald’s subject chair in relation to his machines. “I knew it,” she murmured. He’d been in the middle of a live experiment when the explosion had occurred. That meant at least some portion of his story was untrue. Possibly only the part where he insisted he’d been alone in his lab, but with Donald you never really knew.
His effeminate mannerisms always seemed exaggerated to Nikita. He liked women, she was sure of it, even if he’d never dated one to her or any other staff members’ knowledge.
Lally had recovered from her faint with remarkable swiftness. Nikita would have called it suspicious swiftness if Lally’s cheeks hadn’t remained so unnaturally pale, her eyes darting and unsure, her hand movements taut and anxious.
Vachon raised a brow at Nikita during the confused aftermath of the explosion and inquired doubtfully, “Does Lally claim to be psychic?” Nikita had been spared the necessity of an answer when someone claimed Vachon’s attention. Upon Deana’s arrival she’d made her escape from the lab.
There’d been no need to evacuate the hospital since there’d been no fire, only a great deal of melodramatic moaning on Donald’s part.
“Poor Lally, she’s sound asleep already,” Deana noted five minutes after she and Nikita had rounded up the curious patients and guided them upstairs. “What was she doing in the woods? The last I saw of her she was talking to Patti Warneckie.”
“Who?”
“One of Andrew Baines’s outpatients. Patti came in for her weekly session tonight You know her—she told you how pretty you were when she was being discharged two weeks ago.” Deana made a face. “She said I looked like a moppet.”
Nikita did remember. Pretty, voluptuous Patti with her Marilyn Monroe curves and her engaging smile. She’d liked the woman and half-wished she was still here. Patti and Lally had been very good friends.
Deana paced the softly illuminated hall while Nikita flicked off Lally’s light and closed the door. She wore Vachon’s coat. It fell to her ankles and hung inches too long in the sleeves. But it was warm and dry, and the haunting male scent of him seemed to be an integral part of the fibers. She resisted giving it back just yet.
“You didn’t answer me before,” Deana reminded her as they headed for the central staircase. “Why was Lally in the woods? For that matter, why were you and Vachon in the cottage? And why are your jeans wet?”
Nikita pushed back the coat sleeves. “In order, I don’t know, we were drying out, and because someone pushed me down Cottage Hill to the pond. The ice was thin. Vachon tried to help me and we both went through. Where’s Dean?”
Deana looked perplexed. “Daddy? I haven’t seen him. Was he here?”
“I bumped into him just as I was leaving for my walk.”
Deana’s forehead wrinkled. “I wonder. Why didn’t he—oh, well. Maybe he thought I was busy. I don’t like pranksters, Nikita. And I don’t like Lally’s behavior. A flash of foresight, which I don’t believe for a minute, and then she faints. You’re sure it was Lally out there and not Talia?”
“Positive.” Or at least ninety-nine percent sure. “She told us that Vachon should go to Donald’s laboratory. Then we heard an explosion. She went white, said there was going to be a bang, and fainted.”
Her friend eyed her critically. “That’s all of it?”
Deana was too damned perceptive. Blowing out an impatient breath, Nikita gave the heavy oak banister a thump with her palm. “All right, she was wearing black.”
“Which means?”
“Whoever pushed me down the hill was dressed all in black. I think that’s just a coincidence.”
“I don’t” Her forehead puckered with worry. Deana descended the last step. “Lally wears very little black, Niki. But I can tell you who does.”
“It was Lally at the cottage, Dee, not Talia.”
“Yes, but you don’t know who pushed you, do you?”
Nikita refused to allow her emotions to get the better of her. She knew Lally’s history. She knew her tendencies. She knew what triggered Talia’s emergence. Well, actually, she didn’t know that last thing, but she’d studied Lally enough
to be convinced that Talia was not violent Assertive, certainly, but she fought with words and attitude, not with muscles and bone.
A mumbled sound from the darkened library to their right was superseded by a red light flashing above the parking lot entrance. A security guard poked his head inside, started to say something, then grimaced as he was jostled aside by an older woman in a bright red winter overcoat and feathered hat. She used her cane to bulldoze past the human hurdle and hobbled in as if she owned the place.
“Fetch my granddaughter to me,” she commanded anyone within earshot. The admissions nurse smiled and gestured to the pair at the bottom of the stairs.
“Gran?” Nikita started forward in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
The old woman hobbled over, shedding snow from her high buttoned boots as she came. “I’ve got the limo outside. I’ve been visiting Mabel Lister at the Valley Convalescent Hospital just up the road. Hip replacement surgery.” She made a sour face. “The way the old bat carries on, you’d think they amputated both her legs and stuck on pegs instead.”
The “old bat,” as Nikita recalled, was eighty years old, thirteen years Adeline’s junior.
She kissed her grandmother, pulling Vachon’s coat tighter and belting it in the hope that Adeline wouldn’t notice her still damp jeans. It was a vain hope.
Adeline parted the coat and tapped Nikita’s knees with the cane. “Why are you wet? Did you fall in the swimming pool?”
“Something like that,” Nikita murmured.
“What’s that sound?” Adeline demanded as a man’s voice emanated from the library. “Hello, Deana,” she said over her shoulder. “You look tired. Have you seen Martin tonight?”
Deana widened exasperated eyes. “Was Martin here, too?”
Lost, Nikita said, “I’m still trying to figure out why Gran’s here. She doesn’t seem to want to see me.”
“Ah, so that’s where you got to.” Adeline let out a triumphant cackle and headed for the library. “I’d recognize that old pipe throat anywhere. I said I’d pick you up, and I’m as good as my word—a bit late thanks to gripy old Mabel, but here nonetheless.”
A man came across the threshold, stumbled slightly then recovered with the aid of his walking stick.
“Daddy!” Deana strode to his side. “Are you all right?”
“Sleepy,” he admitted, clearing his throat and blinking at the filtered light. “I must have dozed off.” He pinched her cheek. “Always the busy beaver. Right after I ran into Nikita I remembered you saying that you would be going off duty between eight and nine o’clock. I decided to wait. What time is it now?”
“Ten-seventeen,” a man’s voice informed them.
Nikita squashed a spurt of unwarranted pleasure at Vachon’s arrival. God help her, though, he looked frighteningly sexy in his damp black jeans, his long-sleeved rugby shirt with its two top buttons undone and his dark hair straggling over the collar.
Adeline’s face split into a delighted grin. “Detective Vachon! How wonderful to see you. You’re wet, too, I see. Fell into the swimming pool with my Niki, eh? Seems an odd way to get better acquainted.”
Nikita sighed, hooked an arm through her grandmother’s and explained. She finished with the explosion that had blown apart a quarter of Donald Flynn’s basement laboratory.
“Funny man, that Flynn,” Dean remarked, then pursed his lips. “I can’t imagine what Sherman Drake ever saw in him.”
“Talent, maybe?” Adeline suggested. “Now don’t all of you stare at me like I’ve grown a third eye. The boy’s pretty, is all, a late-twentieth-century fop.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief.
“Adeline,” Dean protested gently.
“Adeline, nothing.” She snorted. “It’s not up to me to say who did or didn’t kill that nurse, but I’d be willing to bet the investigation’s leaning toward you, Deana, and my gadabout grandson, Martin.”
“Me?” Deana all but squeaked the incredulous question. “But I was here the whole time—or, well, most of it.”
“You see?” Adeline cracked a canny eye at the general assemblage. “You probably all have an hour or so that can’t be substantiated by witnesses. Except for you, Vachon.” She glanced disinterestedly past Nikita. “Good evening, Detective Beldon. I hope you’ve come to help discover who pushed my Niki down a hill tonight”
“I, uh…” Manny recovered quickly and closed his mouth. “Actually—” his gaze flicked to Deana “—I’m investigating the explosion. Does this institution condone Donald Flynn’s experiments, De—Dr. Sorensen?”
Deana’s chin came up. “We allow him to conduct them,” she said briskly. “Or rather Dr. Drake allows it. I shouldn’t think there’s any malice in them.”
“Have you spoken to Dr. Drake tonight?” Manny asked.
Deana groaned. “Don’t remind me, please. I was on the phone with him when Donald’s lab went up in smoke. He’s not taking this well at all. He’s making noises about closing the doors. Says he doesn’t like the idea that someone at the hospital might be a killer.”
“And you don’t agree that a precautionary approach is the way to go?” Manny countered.
At Deana’s torn expression, Dean leveled Manny with a reproachful glare. “You have a nerve questioning my daughter in such a belligerent fashion, young man. I’ll have you know she is temporarily in charge of this hospital, and as such deserves your respect Overreacting to any adverse situation seldom proves beneficial. Were my Deana in full control of this establishment, I have no doubt that an explosion like the one you speak of, to say nothing of the murder recently committed on these grounds, would never have occurred.”
“Bull,” Adeline declared eloquently. “Bad things happen, Dean, no matter who’s in charge. Now let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? Drake’s having fits in Borneo, and Detective Vachon saved my granddaughter’s life tonight.”
“Actually,” Vachon began, but Adeline cut him off with a whack of her cane that barely missed hitting Manny’s toes.
“Quiet,” she ordered. “Accept the credit you deserve. Niki said you helped her out of the water and broke into the cottage. That’s good enough for me.” She stood back, proud as any queen. “In honor of this noble deed, I’m giving a dinner party. Nothing fancy, just all of us here and my grandson, assuming I can pin him down long enough to tell him about it. Today’s Friday. We’ll say tomorrow at eight. Dress is optional.”
“Uh, Gran…”
“No arguments, Niki, girl.” The cane swung toward her and stabbed the air for emphasis. “You and Deana were coming anyway. So was Dean and presumably Martin. That only leaves Vachon and Manny to manage their schedules. You mention my name to Captain Krige. He’ll let you come.”
“She has pull,” Nikita explained at Vachon’s frown.
“Come along, Dean,” Adeline directed Deana’s befuddledlooking father. “Niki, if you see Martin, tell him to be there. I’ve a game in mind for my party.”
Nikita had a horrible feeling she knew exactly what her grandmother was planning, but felt duty-bound to ask anyway. “What game, Gran?”
Adeline turned, her wrinkled face as mischievous as Rumpelstiltskin’s. “A murder, my dears. We’re going to try and solve the mystery of who murdered Laverne Fox.”
Chapter Nine
“Can I come in?”
Deana’s head was resting despondently on her desk. She looked up and stopped humming. “What? Oh, it’s you, Manny. Er, yes, come in for a minute. I still have things to clear up before I can leave.”
Why was she nervous, she wondered, rubbing clammy palms discreetly over her lab coat. She had nothing to fear from Manny—did she?
No, of course not. They’d known each other for years. She’d always prided herself on being able to judge people’s characters quickly.
Manny didn’t sit, but strolled to the window, hands stuffed firmly into his pockets.
“You seem edgy tonight, Deana,” he observed, his eyes on the darkened snow below. “Is t
he responsibility getting to you?”
That stung. She sprang from her chair. “I think you should leave, Mr. Beldon. I have enough to worry about without adding your name to the list.”
Keeping his hands in his coat pockets, Manny advanced on her. His gaze was steady on her round eyes. “Don’t look so worried, Dee,” he said. “I haven’t bitten a woman yet.”
Yes, but what other things might he have done to them? Deana’s eyes sought the door. She wanted to run, yet she couldn’t seem to move. He had the most riveting gaze, the most exquisitely angelic features. The question was, could she trust him? After all that had happened these past few days, could she trust anyone?
A smile that might have been called esoteric touched the corner of his beautiful mouth. He removed an ungloved hand from his pocket and held it out to her.
She stared, transfixed, wondering if those fingers would ultimately form the noose to end her life.
“Deana?” He spoke her name somberly, with the barest hint of a caress.
Moistening her lips, she slowly extended her hand until their fingertips touched.
“I’d never hurt you,” he promised.
It was the second time in her life a man had said those words to her—and the first time Deana believed them.
“NO, GRAN.” Nikita was adamant. “Lally Monk is in no fit state to come to your dinner party. Forget it.”
“I’ll ask Deana,” Adeline threatened.
“Ask away. Lally’s my patient, and I say she’s not coming tonight.”
They were in Adeline’s upstairs sitting room amid heaps of colorful outfits, which she’d tried on and summarily rejected. The maid began collecting the clothes but Adeline dismissed her. “Go set the table, Leona. I want to pester my granddaughter in private.” She waited until the woman was gone then stood and began flipping aside belts, shoes and blouses. “You’re spoiling my fun, Niki,” she complained. “I’m trying to help your sexy detective solve this murder, and all you can do is throw up roadblocks.”
“None of which seem capable of stopping my steamrolling grandmother.” Nikita caught a flying shoe, then shifted sideways as a long skirt wafted overhead. “I’ll make a deal with you. If Verity wants to come, she can. But not Lally, Gran. She’s too unstable.”