by Delynn Royer
“Johnny got a call that night after Lenore Stewart left,” Sean said. “It was from a woman. It was you.”
“So what if it was? I called Johnny a lot.”
“Johnny went out alone that night. He believed he had nothing to fear from the person he was meeting.”
Nell said nothing as two patrolmen passed by, climbing the steps into the granite building. A Model T bleated its horn on the street.
Sean took a few steps toward her. Was she made of ice? He wanted to rattle her. He wanted to see her flinch...just once. “Johnny thought he was meeting you, didn’t he? How’d you get him out? Maybe for a little messing around in the park?”
Nell looked amused. “A change of scenery is always nice.”
“Instead, he met up with Keegan and Grottano. That had to be a cold surprise. I wonder who gave Keegan the mistaken idea that Johnny was getting ready to sing to the feds?”
Nell held his gaze, no longer appearing so amused. Something had deadened behind those beautiful eyes.
“And I wonder who told them that Johnny kept his records in a safe in his bedroom? I saw it that night, hanging open like Johnny had cleaned it out himself. It wasn’t blown open and it wasn’t jimmied. Who knew the combination to that safe?”
“There was nothing in it anyway,” she said coolly.
“Right,” Sean said. “That’s why Keegan began to suspect that you weren’t playing it straight. Their next stop was your place. Were you home when they tore through your house, or did you walk in later like you said? Was anything you told me the truth?”
“You have a good imagination. Can you prove any of this?”
“Nah, not now that Keegan and Grottano are conveniently on ice, but it had to be you. There’s no one else. Why’d you do it?”
Color rose on her cheeks. Her lips pressed together, then she turned and started to walk away again, but Sean followed. He didn’t just want to know—he needed to know. It was only one piece of unfinished business between them. “Why, Nell? Because Johnny filed for divorce? Because he was set to marry Lenore? Because he was ready to cut you out of his will?”
She stopped again as two men in business suits brushed by them on the sidewalk, immersed in a conversation of their own.
“It couldn’t have just been about money.” Sean prodded. “There’s no shortage of men who’d give you anything you want. And it couldn’t have been Lenore either. Johnny always had his other women. You put up with that for years. What the hell was so different this time?”
Nell turned back slowly, anger brimming in her eyes—he’d hit his mark. She spoke from between her teeth. “Even if I’d had anything to do with that night, it wouldn’t have been about money. Don’t you ever think that.”
“You still care what I think?”
For a moment, Nell didn’t answer, then, “You don’t understand. I loved Johnny.”
Sean looked into her eyes and knew in that moment that his anger was pointless. He pitied her. “I know you did.”
Snowflakes swirled around them, and Nell watched him for so long that Sean thought she would end it by walking away, but she didn’t. Instead, she said flatly, “We were only married three months when I found out I was going to have a baby. Johnny wasn’t happy about it. He gave me some money and an address and told me to take care of it.”
Sean said nothing to fill the silence when she paused. He was thinking about Caruso on the Victrola and playing stickball in the streets. Three lads and one girl chasing up Tenth Avenue after the New York Central. In his mind, he saw a beautiful girl with violet eyes in secondhand clothes... Be here for me?
“It wasn’t what I expected,” she said. “I didn’t know it would be so—” She stopped, lowered her gaze. “I nearly died. I was in the hospital for a week afterwards. Johnny said he was sorry. He brought me flowers, a diamond necklace.”
Nell paused as a trio of working women approached on the sidewalk—their voices high, their laughter shrill. She continued only after they passed. “We never talked about it again. There would never be children, but that was all right. He didn’t want them and I could live with that, and we were fine.”
“Except for the other women,” Sean said.
Nell brushed this off with an impatient shake of her head. “Johnny was a bastard, but he always came back to me. I just got tired of waiting around at home. Once I moved out, suddenly it was like I was the mistress and his mistresses were his wives. He started sneaking out to meet me after his chippies went home. Every time I would start seeing someone else, he went crazy, threatened to have the guy rubbed out by one of his goons.”
“Until Lenore?” Sean asked.
“She was no different than the rest.” Nell said this bitterly, and Sean realized it wasn’t Johnny’s relationship with Lenore that had changed Nell and Johnny’s lifelong game.
It was Mary Patterson.
“Johnny wanted kids,” Sean said as it came clear. He and Johnny were the same age, still in their prime but past the age of carefree youth. The subtle realization that one wouldn’t live forever, that one didn’t have all the time in the world was just beginning to nibble at the edge of awareness.
“Johnny wanted kids.” Nell spat out the word. “After all these years, he started talking about his legacy and about carrying on his name and how Lenore would be the mother of his sons, and—”
“John was a fool,” Sean said. It was the truth. Nell was responsible for her actions, but instead of simply loving her, Johnny had thoughtlessly fueled her jealousy for years. He’d helped make her into what she’d become.
Something changed in Nell’s expression. She seemed to emerge from the past into the present. The anger drained from the rigid set of her jaw. “Maybe so,” she said softly, “but not as foolish as the girl who made a wrong choice fourteen years ago.”
When Sean said nothing, she reached up to touch his face. She lifted her chin, almost as if to kiss him, but stopped. A wistful smile formed and, behind her eyes, Sean glimpsed the Nell he used to know.
She was still there, that daring young girl from the West Side. He’d loved that girl, and maybe she’d loved him too. It had been real enough. But that girl was now buried so deep beneath the hardened, cynical woman Nell had become, she was gone forever.
“I guess we all have to live with our choices.” Her hand dropped away and she reached instead to clutch the collar of her coat tighter against the chill.
“So, Grottano never admitted it, you know. Was it you who set me up?” Sean knew he shouldn’t care if she’d switched his gun that night at his apartment but part of him did. Maybe he needed to know how much of a chump he’d been to trust in the past they’d shared.
She smiled mirthlessly. “I guess it says something about how far we’ve come that you have to ask.”
“I guess it does.”
“The answer is no, Sean. It was Grottano. You really think I could do that to you?”
“Four men are dead, Nell.”
She appeared unmoved. “And were they good men?”
“That doesn’t matter. If I could, I’d have to send you up for this. You know that, don’t you?”
“Eh.” She lifted a shoulder. “I’d get off.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You probably would.”
Her smile was slow in coming and bittersweet. “Goodbye, Sean.”
After all they’d been to each other, there should have been more to say. But there wasn’t. “So long, Nell.”
Sean watched as she walked away, eventually disappearing into a stream of pedestrians after she crossed Franklin Street. He should have felt sad or frustrated or angry, but he felt none of those things. He felt instead like a weight had been lifted from his heart.
“She’s no angel.”
Sean hadn’t heard Trix approach. When she stoo
d next to him, he saw she’d donned her coat. It was the plain navy blue one that she’d worn the first day he’d seen her in the elevator. He much preferred it to her flashy sealskin fur. “But I guess I was wrong, after all,” she added.
Sean looked back to the point where Nell had disappeared from view. The snowfall was picking up, thickening, dropping more quickly so that it was now accumulating on the pavement. He smiled. “Wrong about what?”
“About Nell being involved in her husband’s murder.”
“Oh, that.”
Trixie sighed. “It was just Keegan and Grottano all along. I guess it’s good that I didn’t bet any money on it.”
“Hmm, yeah.” Sean thought for a second about telling her the truth. Then he thought for two seconds about the I-told-you-so’s that would follow. Nah. He turned to her. The simple cloche hat she wore now was the one that brought out the dazzling blue of her eyes. Gorgeous. “That’s why it’s best to leave these things to the professionals.”
She gave him a teasing smile. “Oh, I don’t know. I think we made a pretty good team. Maybe we should partner up.”
Sean looked behind her to see they were alone. “Speaking of partners, where’s your fella?”
“My what?” She looked puzzled, confirming his suspicions. If he hadn’t been so distracted by the case, he would’ve known from the start. There was no fella.
He wanted to laugh, but he kept his expression serious. There had to be some price to pay for lying to a cop. “Your fella,” he said. “Your camera boy.”
“My...?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Mr. MacDougle?”
Comprehension dawned. “Oh, you mean, Finn? He’s inside with Miles, hoping to get a good shot of the D.A.” She looked contrite. “Uh, about that.”
“About what?”
“About what I said before. It wasn’t exactly true about Finn and me. I mean, we’re partners and all, but not—”
“Lovers?”
“Riiight.” She offered him her most beguiling “gee whiz” smile. “Forgive me?”
Not yet. “You lied.”
“It wasn’t exactly a lie,” she began, then, seeing that her ploy hadn’t worked, she scowled. “All right, I lied. But it was only because you made me so mad, acting like that kiss you gave me was nothing. A case. Out of line. A mistake. You know, sometimes you can get pretty full of yourself, Detective.”
“You’re a treacherous woman, Trixie Frank.”
“Huh?”
He took her by the waist. “I like that.”
She gasped when he planted a long, very satisfying kiss on her that was by far no mistake. When he came up for air, she grinned. “Yowza. Crime really does pay off.”
“How about me and you, we grab some dinner later?”
“Um, sure, but wouldn’t that be...out of line?”
“I certainly hope so.” When Sean let her go, he noted with satisfaction that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were bright. He winked and adjusted his fedora. “I’ll call.”
She winked back. “I’ll answer.”
When Sean walked away, he smiled as the strains of a popular song began to play through his mind. It was the one Trix had been humming the first time she’d called him at the Alhambra. What was the name of it? “It Had to Be...”? Nah. It didn’t matter. For the first time in a long while, Sean Costigan’s step was light as he set out toward Centre Street.
* * * * *
About the Author
Delynn Royer is the older, smarter, funnier, more ornery alter ego of author Donna Grove, who, as a young mother, published several historical romances. The first, A Touch of Camelot, won a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart Award. Soon after that, Delynn set aside her pen to concentrate on her day job and raising her two sons.
Motherhood never ends, but college tuition bills do. Delynn has returned to her first love, writing, and is happy to be at work on new titles that she hopes will entertain and lighten readers’ hearts. Aside from delving into the historical research that inspires her novels, Delynn enjoys classic movies, reading, travel and yoga. She lives with her husband in Pennsylvania.
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ISBN-13: 9781426898129
IT HAD TO BE YOU
Copyright © 2014 by D.L. Royer
Edited by Mallory Braus
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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