by Jenna Ryan
He tumbled onto the sheet beside her, panting and exhausted. He groaned and rolled in disbelief onto his back. “I didn’t expect that.”
Neither had Nikita. The impact of her climax left her stunned and a little unnerved. How was it possible that this had happened between them? They who had sworn up and down not to become involved.
“I think,” she said softly, “that we both messed up. We should have baked cookies instead.” A lump of something almost understood throbbed in her throat She squeezed her eyes closed. “Damn your magic, Vachon. I don’t want to care about you. It doesn’t fit into my plans.”
He rolled onto his right elbow to stare at her. “Mine, either,” he said gently. “But I’ll make a deal with you.” His knuckles grazed the side of her jaw, making her tremble all over again. “Just for tonight, let’s pretend you have no plans, and I have no bone to pick with you.”
“Let Fate control the dance until the darkness is gone? It’s from an old poem,” she explained at his inquisitive look. “I don’t know who wrote it, but I’m willing to try it for a night if you are.”
“One night,” Vachon agreed, lowering his mouth to hers. “Then we’ll be the masters of our own fate again—assuming we ever were in the first place.”
LALLY DREAMED of a boat with brightly colored sails and grinning officers who tap-danced and sang to her as she came on board. Beneath the song, a voice whispered in her ear. She didn’t want to hear it; she wanted to wake up.
“Verity?” she called weakly in her sleep. A hand pressed onto hers, fingers gloved. The voice droned in her head.
The sailors kept on dancing, then burst into song. Where was Talia? Why didn’t she see things, too? It wasn’t fair.
The grinning crew vanished. In their place appeared trees, snow-covered and familiar. The woods where they’d gone to build their fairy-tale scene. Verity had let her do the Beast She was a truly good friend. But would she stay a friend after she got better, or would she leave like Patti?
An old show tune filled her head. Something about candy shops and peppermint.
“Dr. N.?” Lally cried in a pitiful whisper.
But it wasn’t Dr. N. whose hand gripped hers so tightly, who floated with her among the snow figures.
Lally moved restlessly beneath the covers. Why couldn’t she wake up? Was hot cocoa really so good at making people sleep?
The Beast leered at her. He looked wrong. Tilted. He needed fixing. Tomorrow, she thought then sighed as her mind finally began to slip sideways into darkness. Everything would be better soon; it all just had to be made right before she could relax.
A fleeting impression of a party came to her. No one laughed, but there were plenty of people there, eight or nine at least Dr. Nikita looked troubled. Dr. Deana looked sadly guilty. Martin looked angry. Detective Beldon looked cold. He also looked at Dr. D. from time to time. Detective Vachon took turns looking at everyone, but mostly he looked at Dr. N. Dr. Flynn—Lally shuddered.
Patti had liked to look at Donald Flynn. Did Verity like looking at him or at someone else? She was looking at her lap right now. Dr. Flynn didn’t seem to care; he just kept looking at Dr. Nikita. And that funny old man in the corner—Lally had seen him before. He came to the hospital sometimes to visit his daughter, Deana. He tried not to look angry but he was. His bent fingers kept clasping and unclasping the stick he had propped between his knees. An old lady scurried about banging her cane and pointing it at people. Lally wished she would point it somewhere specific, but the exact spot eluded her. Whose face swam in her head?
Corkscrews spun across the image, making it fuzzy. Wish I got asked to parties, Lally thought. Wish I had Talia’s strength. Wish, no—yes—I wish someone would do for me what he or she did for Laverne and Patti. I wish someone would come here and make me dead
As she sank further into the dream, it occurred to her that her last wish might very well be granted, very soon.
Chapter Thirteen
“You look disgustingly happy,” Deana noted drolly when Nikita answered her knock late Sunday morning. “Is he still here?”
Nikita controlled her expression and opened the door wider. “I am, no, and what’s wrong?”
“Nothing more than yesterday, except that I need coffee.”
“Didn’t you—” Nikita bit her tongue to stop the indelicate question. “Come on in. I wanted to talk to you about Lally, anyway.”
“Oh?” Deana seemed more tired than interested. Obviously she had not returned to her office last night.
Belting her robe, Nikita pushed all thoughts of Vachon firmly to one side and started for the kitchen. “I wrote you a note,” she said with a subtle glance over her shoulder.
Deana’s lips thinned. “I was out, Niki. It’s nobody’s business where.”
“No, it isn’t,” Nikita agreed. “I just thought you might want to talk.”
“I don’t.” Deana softened the flat remark with a ghost of a smile, then said quietly, “But thanks all the same. Are we still on for tonight?”
“As far as I know.” Nikita measured out freshly ground Kona, pictured Vachon’s face when he’d brought her a cup earlier, then shook herself and said, “Dee, about Lally…”
“Yes—about her. I hear you met Talia.” She dropped onto one of the counter stools, propped her elbows up and supported her chin on her hands. “Verity called it a ‘spooky encounter.’ Was she hostile?”
“No more than I expected.” Nikita glanced up. “Talia’s a definite personality, Dee, but I don’t think she controls Lally.”
Deana gave a short laugh. “You must be joking. She’s assertiveness personified.”
“She isn’t psychic.”
“Neither are we, but—what’s your point?”
“I’m not sure I have one yet. I just don’t think Lally’s as incapable as she seems. I’m not saying that Talia isn’t stronger emotionally, but I don’t believe she’s in charge of things.”
Deana shook her head. “You’re wrong, Niki—thanks.” She accepted a steaming mug, sipped and gave a pleasurable sigh. “Talia is everything Lally isn’t, and that includes forceful and decisive. Hers is a take-charge personality, you must see that.”
“Talia can take charge all she wants,” Nikita replied. “That doesn’t mean Lally accepts her word as law.”
“So, what then? Are you implying that Lally’s misrepresenting herself?”
“I don’t know. She’s a complicated person.”
“So’s Vachon, but you appear to be making out just fine with him.” She waved the remark off before Nikita could react. “Sorry, bad choice of words. You know what I mean.”
“Fortunately, I do.”
Nikita studied her old friend while she blew on her coffee. Deana had visible shadows under her eyes. In spite of that, however, her face glowed in a way it hadn’t for years, maybe ever. Why that should make her feel sorry for Martin, she couldn’t imagine. Martin would willingly seduce the entire female population of the Americas, without qualm or hesitation. Martin had been drunk last night. He’d also—what?
There’d been something about him, Nikita realized, a nagging thing she needed to get clear in her head because it felt important.
He’d reacted strangely, maybe that was it He’d seemed rattled by more than the two women’s murders. He hadn’t been pleased by Deana’s absence. In fact he’d been downright agitated by it. Why? Had he come to her in search of an alibi? Was he afraid she would be unable, perhaps even unwilling, to provide it for him?
Now there was a horrible thought. For Martin to crawl to Deana for an alibi would be tantamount to an admission of guilt, in the eyes of the police, at any rate.
“He didn’t do it,” she stated. “I know he didn’t”
Confusion clouded Deana’s eyes. “Who are you talking about?”
Nikita shivered. “Martin.”
“Oh. I thought—oh. Well, of course he didn’t,” she added with credible conviction. “Martin’s egocentric, but he’s not homicidal.”
>
Her relief and subsequent cover-up were obvious to Nikita. Who had Deana thought she meant? Not her father, surely.
Good Lord, where had that idea come from? Dean Hawthorne, a murderer? That would be as ludicrous as suspecting Adeline.
Wrapping her hands around her mug, Nikita sat opposite Deana. “Whoever killed them is sick, Dee.”
Her friend’s eyes lowered. “I know.”
“You think it’s Lally, don’t you?”
“I think it could be Talia.”
“Same difference in a prison cell.”
“She’d never go to prison, Niki. No judge would allow it. She’d be placed in a state psychiatric ward.”
“A state prison psychiatric ward.”
“Would you rather she killed someone else?”
Nikita ground her teeth. “We don’t know that she killed anyone at all. I saw Verity, and I think someone else, sneaking out of the freezer yesterday. She was in the freezer, Dee, where Patti’s body was found hanging like a side of beef.”
Deana’s cheeks blanched. “What was Verity doing in the freezer?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her.”
To Nikita’s shock, her friend’s round brown eyes filled with slow tears. Her voice was a shaky whisper. “Martin worked at a little grocery store while he was at college, remember?”
Nikita took her hand, instantly concerned. “Edgar’s Food Stop, I remember. What about it?”
“We were dating at the time. He—we used to meet there sometimes late at night when there were hardly any customers. Edgar had this big meat locker in the butcher section. He called it that, anyway. It was really a huge old walk-in freezer. Niki, we used to sneak in there sometimes and make our plans for the night. It was a little joke. Our little joke! Now you tell me that you saw Verity and probably someone else sneaking out of the freezer here.”
Nikita swore violently to herself. “It’s a coincidence, Dee. Martin wouldn’t And Verity certainly wouldn’t It’s a coincidence,” she repeated emphatically.
Deana gave a sad little smile. “You’re too generous, Niki. It’s no coincidence. But you know what?” She sat up, shoulders set. “I don’t think I care anymore. There’s more to me than playing the role of understanding wife. Daddy was right, Martin is and always will be a playboy. I’m going to accept that and deal with it as I should have a long time ago.” She stood, pain and wounded pride shimmering in her eyes. “You’re closer to Verity than I am, Niki. But being distant, I have the advantage of seeing her more clearly than you. She got hurt at Baylor. Laverne stole her man. That humiliated her. Make no mistake, Verity came here after her breakdown intending to duke it out with her nemesis. That’s the kind of person she is. There isn’t a bygone that’s gone by Verity Whyte. Except that guts aren’t her forte. Laverne would have laughed in her face if Verity had confronted her openly. So she crawled off and did what women sometimes do to retaliate. They do the same thing to another woman that was done to them.”
“That,” Nikita retorted, turning a flash of temper to cold calm, “is bull, and you know it. Verity might very well have been in that freezer with Martin. For all I know she might even be sleeping with him. But if she is, she’s not doing it because Laverne Fox did it to her. She’s…”
“Unwell.” Deana let out a long, tremulous breath. Her shoulders slumped in a gesture of defeat “I’m sorry, Niki. I know she’s ill. I’m upset. I need to mink.”
As swiftly as it had risen, Nikita’s temper subsided. The sympathy she’d felt for Verity shifted to Deana. “I’m sorry, too,” she said, pushing a dark tangle of hair from her face and forcing a smile. “We’re both reacting badly to this. You because Martin’s your husband, and me because he’s my brother. Poor Verity’s become our whipping boy.”
“My whipping boy,” Deana corrected. She started for the door. “I’m not totally wrong, though, Niki. There’s more to Verity than you think—and not all of it good. But then I suppose—” she paused on the threshold, her eyes dry and resolute “—that the same could be said for any of us. We are none of us entirely what other people think. One of us is a murderer, and my doubts about Lally notwithstanding, I’d bet my bottom dollar that most of us will be shocked as hell when we discover who it is.”
SUNDAY MORNINGS at the North Boston precinct were notoriously slow, not because half the city hadn’t been on a rampage the night before, but for the simple reason that departmental cutbacks had long ago forced the police commissioner’s hand. Slow Sundays seemed the logical way to go.
Vachon downed three cups of coffee at the Red Kettle Diner across the street, ordered himself not to dwell on thoughts of Nikita and sex beyond belief, accepted that he was wasting his time with that vain hope and plowed his way to the station.
He loved her, damn it. Adored her and wanted to tell her that in as many ways as he could think of. On the other hand, he still had strong doubts about her profession and even stronger doubts about her defense-lawyer brother. Maybe Martin Sorensen had killed Laverne and Patti, maybe he hadn’t. One thing was sure, his legal practice was a complete joke. He tried two cases a year, tops. The biggest feather in his cap so far was the fact that he’d managed to get drug dealer Paulie Warsaw acquitted of murder. And he’d only done that through dubious loopholes and payoffs to people in positions of power. How, Vachon wondered, could he love a woman with a brother like that?
Dropping into his chair, he rubbed his gritty eyes with the heels of his hands. He wasn’t tired physically—although they’d made love twice, baked a batch of cookies, drunk two glasses of wine, then made love again on the floor by a crackling hearth fire—so much as mentally worn out both by his feelings for Nikita and by this case.
God knew he had plenty of suspects and solid motives for most of them. Even those people with flimsier motives were viable. What troubled him was the kind of person who would drug and stab a woman, then follow those things up by snapping her right index finger and wrapping a strand of hair around it.
“A person who would do that could only be mentally ill, Vachon,” Nikita had told him while they’d mixed cookie batter. “If not that, then it’s as you said before—whoever’s doing this wants you to believe you’re dealing with a disturbed personality.”
“Like Talia?” he’d asked, then kicked himself for his lack of discretion.
Nikita’s eyes had darkened. Her fingers strangled the wooden spoon. “Lally isn’t a murderer. I don’t believe she’d allow Talia to be one, either.”
“Does Lally influence Talia’s behavior?”
“If you want my professional opinion, I’d say, yes, she does. But you’re getting stuck on Lally as a killer, and that’s not fair. What about Sammy Slide? He certainly could have hit me over the head yesterday. So could Donald. He still hasn’t come out of his lab, you know, and he’s not answering his phone.”
“Tell me about it,” Vachon had muttered.
“And I don’t care what you say.” She’d jabbed the spoon into his bare shoulder. “That partner of yours is about as saintly as a serpent. I think he has motive plus.”
So did Deana, Vachon reflected. And Martin, if current gossip around the hospital was to be believed.
He punched up the list of suspects, scanned it twice, then typed Verity Whyte’s name. Her motive for the first murder was entirely credible, even if Nikita had defended her like a mother bear. For the second death, however, he wasn’t so sure.
“’Morning, partner.”
Manny emerged from the stairwell in yesterday’s rumpled clothes, his hair disheveled and damp from the snow, holding a chipped mug of coffee in his hand. “Verity?” Swallowing a steaming mouthful, Manny elevated mildly surprised brows at the name flashing on the monitor. “She seems a less likely suspect than others to me.”
Vachon shrugged. “She’s friends with Lally Monk. So was Patti. Maybe Verity was jealous of Patti’s and Lally’s friendship.”
“That’s a stretch. Personally, I’d go
with Martin or that slime-bag orderly. He thinks he’s hot enough to spontaneously combust. The word is he hit on Laverne and Patti.”
“Whose word?” Vachon wanted to know.
“De—Dr. Sorensen.”
Vachon considered the slip with half-lidded eyes. “How does Deana Sorensen know when Sammy Slide hits on women?”
“Patti told her, complained about him, in fact. She called him an octopus when she was an inpatient and asked that he not be assigned to her. As for Flynn—” he flipped out his notebook “—Patti was caught a couple times by Dr. Baines sneaking into the west wing cellar. He’s not sure why. Could be for a rendezvous with the weird doctor.”
“Did Baines tell you that?”
“No, but he corroborated the report—after a little friendly persuasion.”
How friendly, Vachon wondered in rising mistrust. Manny had been known to bully suspects on occasion. Twice, his testimony in court had been dismissed for that reason. But that was years ago. Manny was a good cop, and good cops learned from their mistakes.
Out of deference to his partner, Vachon concentrated on Donald Flynn. Flynn had asked Nikita to come to his lab yesterday. For what reason? To arrange a meeting, then knock her out would be well beyond the bounds of stupidity—unless Flynn had known he could use Sammy Slide as a dupe.
Connections, Vachon thought That’s what they needed to establish. In what way were the two dead women connected, and to whom could they both be linked?
Martin, Deana, Dean Hawthorne. All had motive and opportunity. Manny? No, he wouldn’t believe that. Lally? Absolutely. Verity? Possibly. Sammy Slide? The jilted Lothario idea felt a bit thin, but crimes had been committed for less. Donald Flynn? A firm enough suspect if Manny’s “report” proved accurate.
Manny sipped and settled behind his computer. “You going to the hospital today?”
“Probably.”
Eyes fixed on the monitor, Manny remarked, “She’s pretty, but I wouldn’t get in too deep if I were you.”
Vachon found himself resenting the idea of a personal conversation. “I can handle my life, partner.”