Dark and Deadly

by Jeanne Adams

“A relationship? Paul was Todd’s lawyer. Paul was Todd’s best man at our wedding. He was Todd’s best friend. They’d talked about going into business someday, but other than that, I don’t know.” The look of sly innuendo on Sorrell’s face led her to another conclusion.

  “Oh, no, not that. You mean like lovers? No way.” The idea gave her the creeps. Having slept with Todd, she knew he liked women. As to Paul, he’d been the campus lothario—known as Love-’em-and-leave-’em-Jameson. She told the detectives about both men’s proclivities with as straight a face as she could manage.

  “So what do you think of Jameson?”

  Cheap shot. Marsden could obviously read body language and tone.

  “I don’t like him, but you’ve obviously guessed that. He never approved of me, or of my relationship with Todd.”

  She tried to be brief, but Marsden kept prodding her.

  “How do you know he didn’t approve?”

  She stalled, but he pressed. Finally she gave in.

  “In a drunken rant back in our college days, he told Todd that he was a fool to date me. Then later in grad school, he told Todd he was crazy to marry me, and that we’d be miserable together.

  “Even up to the day of our wedding, he tried to talk Todd out of it. When Todd came to tell me he was backing out of the wedding, I thought Paul was to blame and I socked Todd and told him to tell Paul Jameson to,” Torie hesitated, but decided since she’d said this much, she might as well get the rest of the sorry, embarrassing story on the table. “Well, I told him to tell Paul to get, uh, screwed. Except I used the other word, the f-word. I’m afraid the whole church heard it because Paul walked in as I hit Todd.”

  “Wow. I’ll bet that caused an uproar.” Sorrels’s eyes were dancing with humor, but his face remained bland. She thought she caught the barest twitch of a smile. She was still mortified to have cussed in church, and to have had virtually everyone in the world she cared about hear her do it.

  “Understatement of the century, I’m afraid. So Paul still doesn’t like me, nor I him.”

  “And Todd called off the wedding because?”

  “He won the Lotto jackpot.”

  “And didn’t…ah…” Marsden stopped mid-sentence and busied himself making notes. Evidently he was drawing his own conclusions as to why Todd had called it off.

  “I believe we’ll want to talk to Mister Jameson a bit more about your situation, and about Mister Peterson’s whereabouts.”

  “It isn’t unusual,” Sorrels spoke now, “for one party in a situation to have…unrequited feelings…for another man. It’s possible that Mister Jameson may know more than he’s telling.”

  The very idea was ludicrous, and she very nearly told them so. But even all these years later, she still held a grudge against Paul. She was sure that his antipathy had been a factor in the decisions Todd had made when he’d won the money. The first and only person Todd told about his winnings before he told Torie had been Paul.

  Given that, she could see why the detectives would see Paul in a skewed light, but the idea that Paul was gay nearly made her laugh out loud. His bearing and demeanor was all male—all red-blooded male. He was very determinedly heterosexual. She knew that intimately. Of course that knowledge was connected with a lot of bad memories.

  Then and now, the intensity of his sensuality, the way he sometimes looked at her made her terribly uncomfortable. Between that and his repeated, public declarations that she was all wrong for Todd, Torie disliked him intensely. When she and Todd moved in together before the wedding, she’d asked Todd not to invite him to parties or dinners at their house. Nor did she ever want to be left alone with him.

  She didn’t hate him. He made her feel and remember things that she wasn’t prepared to deal with.

  Just one more reason Paul hated her.

  As if he’d read her thoughts, Sorrels spoke. “So do you know why Mister Jameson doesn’t like you or why he would try to break up your relationship?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m sure you have some idea.” Sorrels shot her a knowing look. “Most women have an inkling about that sort of thing.”

  “I don’t know for sure. He thought Todd would stray. Wouldn’t be able to be faithful. Or so he said. I never thought that at all. Todd kept his word, so I thought Paul was being, I don’t know, overprotective.”

  “Of you?”

  Torie frowned. That angle hadn’t occurred to her. “No, like I said, he doesn’t like me. I guess he was protecting Todd from the possibility of an expensive divorce later. He is a lawyer.”

  “Did you and Mister Peterson have a prenuptial agreement?”

  “A what? No, that wasn’t Todd’s style. Or mine. Besides, it doesn’t matter now, does it? It was five years ago.”

  “Maybe it matters to Mister Jameson.”

  Paul Jameson’s face leaped into her mind. Lean and tan, as it had been in their college days. Everybody’s pal. Everyone except her. He’d been so attractive, so ready to go out or make out with anyone. Just not her. Until after that one night.

  Steering away from that thought, she shifted to wondering about her cousin. Ironically, Dev was a similar type. Very masculine, very much the easygoing friendly playboy sort. But he didn’t set her teeth on edge.

  Dev.

  Oh, Lord.

  “Do you need anything more from me? I need to find out about my cousin, go see him if I can.”

  “I don’t think so. We’ll keep you up to date on our findings, Ms. Hagen. Please let us know if you think of anything else. However, before you go anywhere, there’s another officer who wants to speak to you about your cousin’s incident.”

  Incident? Nope. It was an attack. How could she expect these men to understand the curse? But she hadn’t dated Dev. Why had he been a victim? GoodMama was going to be so upset. Not only had Torie not heeded the warning about the fire—although honestly she hadn’t had any time to do so—but Dev had gotten hurt as well. GoodMama would be frantic, and further upset and outraged that Torie had embroiled her favorite great-grandson in her own personal curse, sending him to the hospital.

  Oh, man she was in so much trouble. She’d be lucky if GoodMama didn’t put her own curse on her troublesome great-granddaughter.

  She was so caught up in her thoughts as the investigators left that she barely registered when her best friend Pam slipped into the room.

  “Girl, you look like a thundercloud.”

  “Jeez!” Torie yipped in surprise. “You scared the crap out of me.”

  Pam set the bakery box of doughnuts on the table, dropped her fat purse in the chair, and stretched over the bed to give Torie a firm, best-friend hug. “Don’t know why, it’s like Grand Central in here, all the comings and goings. Who were the two stuffed shirts? They looked like insurance salesmen or cops.”

  “Ding, ding, ding. Give the lady a prize,” Torie joked as she returned the pressure. Having Pam there to support her brought her to tears. Pam was so strong, such a great friend. With everything that had happened to her over the past five years, and even before when they were in college, Pam had been and still was her anchor to sanity.

  Torie wiped her eyes as Pam plopped into the chair. “So, tell me everything,” she demanded, digging a can of Diet Pepsi from her purse. After unwrapping a straw, she took a long drink, and grabbed a doughnut. “Well?”

  “They’re the fire inspectors assigned to my case. My house was torched, no accident.”

  “You need a lucky clover or rabbit’s foot, girlfriend. No, scratch that, everyone around you, the males at least, need a clover. Better yet, I need to rub your shoulder for luck. You manage to end up okay when everyone around you is getting knocked for a loop.”

  “Yeah, well, I got the loop knocked out of me this time,” Torie pointed to her bandaged head. “And Dev. Oh, Pam, Dev’s been hurt.” Torie reached for her hand. “You have to find out how he is. They said he was here in this hospital, on the third floor.”

  “Oh, man
, really? Dev?” Pam sat forward, drink forgotten. “The sexy-cousin-from-New-Orleans-Dev? Don’t tell me he’s one of the men fatales.” Men fatales was the moniker Pam had hung on the men who had dated Torie, and suffered for the privilege.

  “I don’t know. I think so, but we never actually dated.”

  “You didn’t date Jorge either. He fixed your plumbing and your roof, was at your house for a few meals, and viola, he’s left with a broken leg from a hit-and-run.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, item one on the agenda is to see about Devastating Cousin Devereaux.” Pam made a check mark in the air. “Item two, we need to talk about how to deal with the cleanup of you-know-what.”

  “They can’t find out about that.”

  “Who?”

  “The investigators. I told them you and I went out for a drink after work, then I came straight home after getting some groceries.”

  “We did have a drink.” Pam shot her a wicked grin. “And a chaser.”

  Torie groaned, but smiled. “Yeah, we chased, and got chased, but nobody knows it was us, right? We have to keep it that way.”

  “No worries. I have the mangy dog stashed at Carlos’s house.” Pam had a legion of friends, mostly male, who would do anything for her, up to and probably including murder. She attracted men like bees to honey, and even when she didn’t date them, or even acknowledge them, they still hung around, doing her favors at the slightest whiff of a whim.

  “Is he okay?”

  “Yeah, Carlos knows what to do, and how to handle him.”

  “Thank goodness for Carlos. Will he keep it quiet?”

  “For me? Of course. I promised to bake him my special German chocolate cake.”

  When Torie dated a man he ended up in mortal peril; with Pam, they got cake. And probably coffee, too.

  “So I’ll go see about Devereaux. By the way, what’s his last name?”

  “Chance. Like take-a-chance.”

  “I’d love to,” Pam quipped, picking up her bag.

  “Har, har. Would you mind getting me something to read too? Like a magazine or something?”

  “Your wish is my command.” Pam dug around in her capacious purse and pulled out a People magazine, along with an InStyle and the Moore Manor spring issue.

  “The Moore Manor’s the most interesting, of course. Wait till you hear who they picked for Fall. Enjoy. I’ll be back in a jiff.”

  Pam skipped out the door, a woman on a mission. Torie was about to buzz the nurse when another man walked in. Unfamiliar, but obviously a cop. He was gray-haired, but fairly young. As evidence, he immediately flashed a badge.

  “Sorry to bother you, Ms. Hagen, but I’m Officer Tibbet. I’m here about your—” he consulted a notepad. “cousin, is it? Mister Devereaux Chance?”

  “Yes, do you know how he is? My friend’s gone to check on him.”

  “He’s been out of surgery for a while now, and the nurses say he’s doing great, considering.”

  “Surgery,” Torie managed weakly, envisioning all manner of terrible things.

  “Yeah. You knew he was stabbed, yes?”

  “Yes. The other officers, the fire investigators, they told me.”

  “He got some licks in, too, evidently. Your cousin’s no slouch in the self-defense area, I’m guessing.”

  “No, I’m sure he’s very proficient. I know he did a stint with some kind of bodyguard business, or something.”

  “Hmmm, yeah, I’m figuring it’s the ‘or something’ part, but either way, he fought back. Problem was he got a whack on the head as part of the package, so he didn’t get a look at his attacker.”

  The officer took her through the same time line the detectives had, but he dug deeper into her dating habits and her situation with Todd, searching for a link among the men she’d dated. A link other than her.

  “The investigators gave me their data, what they pulled out of the database. This is the run of all the guys who uh,” he cleared his throat. “Anyway, I wonder if you’d look over this list, and see if I’ve left anyone off.”

  She looked. Read the notes he’d penciled in next to each name: burglary, vandalism, arson. Arson. Two hit-and-run accidents, identity theft issues—although that one had been weird. The culprit had actually closed everything and told the credit bureaus the guy was dead.

  The only one missing from the list was Christian.

  Closing her eyes against the continued pain in her heart, she told him about her dates with Christian, and what had happened.

  “Hit-and-run?”

  “That’s what they told me.”

  Tibbet took Christian’s name and last address, and jotted down the date of his death.

  Where was Todd? Paul Jameson paced the lush confines of his office, worrying over the whereabouts of his best friend. He was sure that Todd was in trouble, just as he was sure that Torie Hagen had something to do with it. He’d told the police, when he reported Todd missing that she was the one with the most to gain by Todd being in trouble.

  After all, she stood to inherit everything.

  Not that she knew that. Unless Todd had been stupid enough to tell her.

  He hoped Todd hadn’t been that rash.

  The woman was a menace. Everything she touched—especially Todd—was damaged. He’d been glad when Todd had left her. There had been a time when he wanted her for himself. Even now he could see her, picture her athletic build and her twinkling brown eyes. Thinking about her, though, brought him around to the memory of her terrified face, from the incident in college to the look on her face as she socked Todd at the church.

  Neither memory was pleasant, and pretty much negated any feelings of warmth he’d ever had for her in the first place. And, of course, after the disaster at the church, she’d run away, leaving Todd and Paul to clean up the mess.

  “Mister Jameson? There are two investigators here about a fire.” His starchy assistant sounded affronted at the very idea of the officers.

  “A fire? Todd?” Paul hurried toward her and the door. “Send them in.”

  “Of course,” she said, unbending enough to add, “I hope everything’s all right with Mister Peterson.”

  “I do, too, Martha. I do, too.”

  “Gentlemen.” Martha ushered the two men into the office, where Paul shook their hands and showed them to the chairs opposite his desk. “How can I help you? Have you heard from Todd? Found him?”

  “We’re not missing persons, Mister Jameson. We’re fire investigators. I’m Investigator Sorrels, he’s Chief Marsden. We’re here about a fire at Victoria Hagen’s home. Could you tell us where you were between six and eight p.m. last night?”

  “Torie? A fire? Oh, my God. Is she okay?”

  “You seem concerned, Mister Jameson,” Chief Marsden drawled. “I’ve been given to understand that there’s bad blood between the two of you.”

  “Bad blood?” Paul could hear the harshness of his own words. “Not so much that I’d torch her house. As to your question, I was here, working on a deposition with a client, a stenographer, and my assistant until nearly nine.”

  “If I could get the stenographer’s name?”

  It pissed him off, but Paul gave them the woman’s name. The sooner they ruled him out, the better. “Is Torie okay?”

  “She’s in the hospital.” This was from the chief again, Marsden. “She got a conk on the head, a nasty cut. We’re investigating who might have wanted to hurt her. Do you know anyone else who bore her a grudge, Mister Jameson?”

  “You say that as if you think I bore her one. I didn’t.”

  “And yet you didn’t want her marrying your best friend. Why?”

  “There were a lot of reasons. What does that have to do with anything now? That was five years ago.”

  “Humor us.” Sorrels smiled. “Never know when things are connected.”

  “I didn’t think they were well matched.”

  “Were you interested in Mister Peterson, and didn’t want Torie to mar
ry him?” Sorrels shot back.

  “Interested…” Paul threw his head back and laughed. Wait till he told Todd. “Uh, no. Did Torie tell you that?” He hadn’t thought she’d be that petty.

  “No, actually she didn’t. Quite the opposite. Did you prefer her for yourself?”

  Paul tamped down his anger at the question. These were experienced investigators. No need to give them anymore ammunition to look his way.

  “No, but I did see that she was a far more serious, settle-down kind of girl. My friend was and is a happy-go-lucky sort. He didn’t need to get married that young. Then things changed, and he didn’t.” Paul sighed. “Regardless, that was years ago. Todd has moved on with his life, and so, I presume, has Torie.”

  “Ms. Hagen indicated that she and Mister Peterson were to have lunch today, after he had a meeting with you. Were you aware of that?”

  Paul frowned. Damn Todd and his endless need to make it up to Torie. Hadn’t he done enough in apology for leaving her?

  He shut down that line of thinking, since it was particularly fruitless. He’d never been able to convince Todd that Torie wasn’t damaged for life by being left at the altar.

  It served nothing to lie to the men before him, so Paul answered with the truth.

  “No, I didn’t know that. I would have tried to talk him out of it if I had. That’s probably why he didn’t tell me.”

  “Do you have any idea why he’d want to meet with her, and hide it from you?”

  “He knew I wouldn’t approve.”

  “And was your approval so important to him?” This from the taller one, Sorrels.

  “We were friends, Inspector. I was also his counsel. Todd hasn’t had an easy life, even with the money he won. I assume you know about the money?”

  “Yes,” Marsden replied. “Ms. Hagen indicated that he’d won a considerable sum, and that the win was the reason he called off the wedding. Do you agree with her assessment?”

  “I do. I think he also had cold feet. He was worried about her mother’s interfering ways, and about his own ability to be faithful. His eyes wandered a lot when they were dating. He never cheated on her, but I believe he thought about it.”

  Paul closed his eyes. He remembered how he’d once pulled Todd back from the brink when his flirting had nearly gone too far with a waitress in a bar. Paul hadn’t wanted to see either Todd or Torie hurt. That had been the first time Paul had tried to talk him out of the marriage.