“We’d like to see Mr. Reicher.”
“And you are?”
“Detectives Wilson and Waters.”
“Oh!” The young man leapt up. “I’m sure he’ll want to see you. He’s very upset about Mr. Gardner. Just a moment.”
He opened the door behind him, and disappeared inside. Less than a minute later he emerged again, and gestured them into the inner office. Again, the room was exquisitely and expensively decorated, but they had little time to notice the decor.
“What took you so long?” the man standing behind the large desk snapped.
Well, hello to you, too, Colin thought. He studied the tall man in the very expensive-looking suit. His assessment stalled at the man’s gray eyes; he’d seen warmer eyes on a python. Score one for Mrs. Carter, he thought. Cold was definitely the word. The chief operating officer of the Gardner Corporation was clearly a man used to being the boss. And pity the underlings, Colin added to himself.
“We’re working our way down the possible suspect list,” Colin said bluntly.
“Suspect list!” The eruption came just as he’d expected.
“Of course,” Wilson put in with an icy cool that would have done Cecelia Gardner proud. “You’re merely another name on it. We’ve eliminated several, we’re hoping to eliminate you.”
Reicher looked torn, as if uncertain whether to react to her placating words, or the disdain with which she spoke them. Silently Colin congratulated his new partner; he doubted Reicher often was at such a loss.
“As Detective Wilson said, we’re here to eliminate you from the list. So if you can just tell us where you were last night?”
“I was right here. Working late, as I often do.”
“Can anyone verify that?”
He turned on Wilson as she spoke. “My word isn’t good enough for you, Ms…Detective?”
To his own surprise, Colin took offense for her. But he said nothing, knowing she had to learn how to handle such things herself. Which, with her next words, she did quite effectively.
“Absolutely good enough for me, Mr. Reicher.” Her tone was sweet now. “I wouldn’t presume to doubt you without evidence. It’s just not good enough for the D.A., a judge and a jury.”
Reicher seemed to accept her new approach, but Colin had the strangest feeling he should have taken it as a sign to be even more careful.
“John, my assistant, can verify I was here. I’m afraid I kept him quite late on a project I’ve been trying to wind up.”
She continued her questioning. “As COO, you’d be aware of any business enemies Mr. Gardner might have?”
“Enemy enough to commit murder? I would be, if he had any. You’re wasting time if that’s your angle.”
“No deals that fell through, or hostile takeovers?”
“No. I told you you’re wasting your time. You should be looking for a dope-crazed burglar. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. Franklin’s death has caused a bit of chaos.”
Colin said nothing until they were back in the elevator and the doors had closed behind them.
“A dope-crazed burglar,” he repeated.
“Oh, please,” Wilson groaned.
“You don’t buy it?”
“I don’t buy that any doper would leave all that portable wealth behind. He’d take everything he could stuff in his pockets and then start filling the pillowcases.”
Okay, she does have it, he thought.
“What do you think of misters Gardner and Reicher?”
“One’s an arrogant bully and the other’s a cold, pompous snake. You pick which is which.”
Interesting that she’d thought snake just as he had. “With those eyes? No question, Reicher’s the reptile.”
They headed to the car for the trip back to the penthouse building to check on the videotapes. When they arrived, he parked in the loading zone in front, slapped an identifying placard on the dash, and they headed for the door.
“Where’s the equipment?” she asked.
“The basement.”
She nodded, and they took the stairs down.
The basement was as utilitarian as the rest of the building was elegant. Cool and a bit dim, it took up barely a third of the building’s footprint. The rest, he guessed, was given over to the parking garage that housed what was likely a fleet of vehicles as elite as their owners.
They stepped into a wide hallway. Off to the left were two doors labeled Maintenance and Utilities. To the right was a single, unmarked door. Without a word, they both turned that direction. As they got closer Colin saw light coming from under the door. He tried the knob, but it was, as he expected, locked. He rapped twice on the metal door.
For a moment there was only silence, but finally the sound of footsteps came from the other side of the door. After another moment, it opened. The man who handled the security cameras stood there, and Colin didn’t like the expression on his face.
“Something wrong, Mr. Bergen?”
“I…it’s impossible. It’s never happened before. I don’t know how… The equipment was fine when I got here, but…”
Something way down in Colin’s gut knotted. “But…?”
“The tape for last night…”
The man swallowed tightly, his eyes flicking nervously from Colin to Wilson.
“What about it?” Colin asked, his voice very quiet because he already knew the answer.
Bergen swallowed again.
“It’s gone.”
Chapter 4
“Now what do you suppose the odds are of that particular tape, and that tape only, going missing?” Waters mused aloud as they made their way into the station. Their quick run to the younger Gardner’s private college had netted them only the fact that it didn’t take long if you drove fast; the youngest Gardner had been off campus.
Darien shifted Gardner’s laptop, the evidence they were here to book, to her other arm. “About the same as the Cubs winning the World Series,” she muttered, without thought starting up the stairs for the detective office, even carrying the extra few pounds of the computer.
“Or less. If that’s possible,” Waters added with a quirk of his mouth as he started up with her.
“So, does that narrow us down to residents and their families? Those who knew about the cameras and where the recording equipment was?” Darien asked.
“And everyone from the security company. And anyone any of them might have told.”
“Or anybody who went looking, I suppose,” she said. “It wouldn’t be tough to figure out it would be in the basement. And we knew instantly the unlabeled door had to be it.”
“Exactly.”
They reached the Detective Bureau door, and Waters leaned around her to open the door. She’d long ago given up making an issue out of such things—she’d found too often they were a test of sorts—but when she stepped through she turned and held the door for him as he followed. He accepted the gesture without comment, and she wasn’t sure if she’d passed this test. If indeed it had been a test.
“Hey, if it isn’t the two-W detective team of Waters and the lovely Miss Darien. What have you two been up to in the stairway? Don’t you know it’s easier in an elevator?”
“Oh, joy,” Darien muttered. Then she flashed a quick look at Waters, hoping the mustached Detective Palmer, a man she’d only recently met but still could only describe as rude, crude and obnoxious, wasn’t his best buddy.
“Well, now, if it isn’t every woman’s dream come true,” Waters drawled.
“Hey, hey, you know they love me,” Palmer said, in jovial tones, proving to Darien what she’d already thought, that the man was too stupid to even know when he was being insulted. “You’re not the only chick magnet around here.”
Oh, puhleeze, Darien thought. “Excuse me,” she said. “I must be a matching pole.”
Palmer looked blank, but she caught Waters’s quick, appreciative grin just before she tried sidestepping around the sleaze to head for her desk.
&nb
sp; “I’d take it easy, honey,” Palmer said, his voice taking on a nasty undertone. He gave the computer she carried a look of disdain. “There’s a lot of people not very happy that you got this spot over guys who deserved it more. A lot of people asking why. And how.”
She stopped in her tracks. She knew exactly what he was implying, that she had slept her way here. She turned, and gave the man a level gaze.
“Are you trying, in your Neanderthal way, to make a point?” she asked sweetly. “If so, you’re going to have to spell it out. I’m just a silly little ol’ woman, after all.”
“Keeping in mind there’s a witness,” Waters said softly, surprising her.
Palmer frowned. But even he seemed to realize if he came right out and said what he was thinking it could boomerang on him.
“Yeah, right. Well, I don’t have to say a thing. We all know.” He slid Waters a sideways look, as if uncertain if he should include him in his generalization.
“Don’t you have some missing persons to look for?” Colin asked, knowing there had been several reports recently.
“Yeah, yeah,” Palmer muttered. Apparently deciding he was better off abandoning this particular ship, he turned and walked away, leaving them in the deserted hallway.
Darien felt a queasiness in her stomach that she fought not to show. She flicked a glance at Waters, who was watching her, his expression unreadable.
“So that’s what everybody thinks?”
“That’s what Palmer thinks,” Waters said. “I’d say you’d have to ask to find out what everybody else thinks.”
“No, thanks. I don’t care.” She took two steps, then stopped. She looked back at him. “No, maybe I do. If it’s what you think.”
He studied her for a long, silent moment. “I may not be sure why you’re here, but no, I don’t think you slept your way into this job.”
“Why?”
He seemed surprised at the question. “Almost ten years of being a cop teaches you to read people. If you’re paying attention.”
“Oh.” Then, as she realized she probably should, she said, “Thank you.”
“Don’t bother.” As if it were an afterthought he added, “Why did it matter what I thought?”
“Because it would be very hard for me to work with someone who thought I sold myself and my soul for the job,” she said bluntly.
This time she’d only gone those same two steps when he called her.
“Wilson?”
She turned to look over her shoulder at him.
“You handled him just right.”
A slow smile curved her mouth. “Thanks.”
Those simple words warmed her much more than they should have. And she thought that she could come to like Colin Waters, even if he was the resident division hunk.
They walked past Joshua Benton’s cubicle and Waters joked that he was likely locked up in the lab with Maggie Sutter, working miracles. She laughed in agreement; she’d seen the lab, but what went on there was as incredible to her as her expertise with computers was to technophobes.
An hour later, she realized she’d been mistaken. Not about feeling she could like Colin Waters, but about the height of his hunk status. Now, in close quarters with him—she’d been given a desk in the same cubicle in the open office area—she was aware of just how much attention he got from most of the females in the entire building. They were always stopping by on some pretext or other, hand delivering a phone message, a copy of a report, anything, all of which could have been sent through normal delivery channels. She felt a faint distaste growing as the parade continued. And the fact that Waters apparently saw nothing unusual about it told her how often it happened.
She wasn’t spared herself; the close and not very subtle inspection she got from the women told her that word of her assignment as his partner had spread rapidly. She couldn’t fault their taste—Colin was a very attractive man—but their methods made her feel a little bit ashamed to be female just now. Even if she had been interested, which of course she wasn’t, she would never try those kinds of maneuvers.
They’d agreed to divide up the reports on their initial interviews, and she’d been secretly relieved not to have simply been told to do it all, being the female, the rookie, and thus the most likely secretarial material available.
Once they were done, almost simultaneously, they filed the reports and headed back out to the parking lot. She’d retrieved her car when they’d returned to the apartment to find out about the missing tape. They had just reached it when her cell phone rang.
“Hi, babe, it’s me.”
“Hi, Tony. What’s up?”
“Getting ready to leave for the Yucatán, so I wanted to check in.”
“Check out, you mean,” she teased.
“That, too,” he said cheerfully. “Everything okay, fuzz lady?”
“Just busy. Have a good trip. Send me a postcard.”
“Don’t I always?”
“Unless you forget,” she said.
“Love ya,” Tony said.
“Love you, too. Be careful.”
“Always.”
She disconnected, then slid the phone back into her coat pocket. And became aware that Waters hadn’t walked on to his own car but was still here watching her.
“Boyfriend?”
It wasn’t any of his business, really, but she found herself answering him anyway, just to see what he’d say. “No. Ex-husband.”
That got you, she thought, hiding a smile at his startled look.
“Ex?” he asked after a moment. “Didn’t sound ex to me.”
“How do you talk to yours?” She knew from office gossip that he’d been married and divorced.
“I don’t,” he said flatly.
“That’s too bad.”
She thought she’d kept her voice fairly even, but he turned on her anyway. “You think all divorces should be…what’s that stupid word, amicable?”
She shrugged. “I just know mine was. Tony and I are still good friends.”
“Friends,” he muttered, still in that sour tone.
“We were friends before we got married, and should have stayed just friends. We were too young to understand what marriage was really all about.”
“Don’t tell me you were high-school sweethearts.”
“No. I was twenty, he was twenty-one, but we were still too young. It worked at first, but after about three years he got to thinking about how he hadn’t played enough.”
“So he cheated on you?”
“Tony? Good grief no. He would never do that. I didn’t mean that kind of playing. I meant literal play. Ski, bike, climb, you name it.”
“And you didn’t?”
“I enjoyed fun as much as anyone, but I also wanted to have kids. That was the break point for him. And it’s just as well. He wasn’t mature enough to raise a child, and he knew it. I respect him for that.”
“So, Wilson, you married a playaholic?”
She ignored his sharp sarcasm, but she did wonder what kind of nerve she’d hit. “Tony is who he is. Above all he’s honest. And that saved us both a lot of pain. I’m glad he’s my friend. Besides, my parents like him and he’s good to them, and I wouldn’t want to ruin that.”
“Honest,” Waters muttered.
He lapsed into silence, which left Darien wondering why on earth that had come pouring out of her. It was true she wasn’t uncomfortable talking about Tony and her marriage, but she didn’t usually tell near strangers all that.
It was too late now to worry about, so she turned her thoughts to something else, something that had just struck her when he’d made that comment about Tony being a playaholic. He’d called her Wilson. Unlike Palmer.
…Waters and the lovely Miss Darien.
She’d noticed that most cops called each other by their last names unless they were personal friends. But they called women by their first names. She hadn’t thought much about it until Palmer had made that rude, suggestive comment. And suddenly she w
as seeing it as something more, some subtle symptom of a man’s world that had yet to completely accept the intrusion of females.
But Colin Waters called her by her last name, just as he did most others. That comforted her somehow.
Great, Colin thought as he rubbed at his eyes. So your new partner, besides being gorgeous enough to stop most men in their tracks, was on the kiddie track. Was friendly with her ex-husband. Kept her parents happy. The proverbial, perfect girl next door. Exactly the kind of woman I always avoid.
He wasn’t sure why this realization bothered him. She was only his partner, after all.
It was odd that he was actually thinking of her that way already, as his partner. She hadn’t said all that much, either in interviews or in between, but what she had said had been right-on. She’d surprised him, more than once. As she’d been surprising him today; she’d set herself up this morning with a diet soda, then dug into Gardner’s laptop computer and had been hacking away ever since. She showed no sign of being aware of time passing, merely kept at it, with the occasional mutter to the computer screen that he’d noticed before in those who had carnal knowledge of the things.
He’d thought the words “carnal knowledge” as a joke about computer geeks, but somehow when applied to Darien Wilson, they managed to make him feel damned uncomfortable. He shifted in his chair and made himself go back to filing the last of their reports, and going through what had been added by the forensics team thus far.
“Sutter says the bruises on his face were likely made by a heavy ring of some kind.”
She paused then, looking up at last. “That helps.”
“If he’s still wearing it,” Colin said glumly.
She went back to her work. More and more time passed. There were moments of silence, followed by a series of quick keystrokes. More muttering, then more silence, more keystrokes. She was so intent that she didn’t even glance up as he went to the copy machine and then returned.
For a moment he stood looking over her shoulder. Instead of the usual software interfaces he was familiar with, there were strings of odd-looking characters on the screen. They made no sense at all to him, but she seemed to find them easily understandable. But then, while he was fairly computer literate, his comfort zone ended outside his regularly used software.
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