I'd Kill For That

by Marcia Talley

  “I guess that’s fair. Me, I only want a little money out of the deal. There’s enough of it to go around, don’t you think?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to blackmail anyone.”

  “I meant, I’m not going to blackmail everyone. One’s enough.”

  She was studying Aaron now, wondering how she could use his intelligence and ambition for her own purposes. That he looked so unassuming, so nerdy, could only work in his favor. When he caught her staring at him, she glanced at her watch. “What can be keeping them this long? Should we go out and see if we can extricate the good doctor?”

  Aaron jumped to his feet. “We’ll work as a team.”

  “Have you seen Toni Sinclair anywhere around here?” Carnegie, the older security guard, had entered the bar so quietly that Laura dropped her celery stick on the carpet. “There’s been another murder,” he announced.

  “My god!” said Laura.

  “Bummer,” said Aaron.

  Behind them there was a gasp, and the trio turned just in time to see the door close silently over the back of Lydia Upshaw’s unmistakable electric blue Roberto Cavalli blouse.

  * * *

  Lydia rushed back to join her friends. “I was just coming out of the ladies’ when I heard voices. Carnegie’s inside looking for Toni! There’s been another murder!”

  Toni shot to her feet, her eyes as bugged out as her precious frog’s had been earlier. “He’s looking for me? Why? Why me? Did he say? Why would he be looking for me?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ve got to scram. We don’t want to be caught here with him.”

  They all looked down at Doctor Jefferson, who was trussed like a Christmas goose, bound securely to his chair. Renée said, “What are we going to do about him?”

  “This table’s pretty hidden. He’s not going anywhere. We’ll come back and deal with him later.”

  All four women scattered.

  * * *

  It hadn’t taken Carnegie long to round up Toni Sinclair—skulking down the driveway toward the rec center—and deliver her to Diane Robards in the Wild Goose Room for questioning. It hadn’t gone well. Toni expressed shock and surprise at the body in her koi pond, then clammed up.

  After Toni left, Diane laid her head on the desk and squeezed her eyes shut. “Something’s rotten in Gryphon Gate and I intend to find out what it is. If only people would start telling the truth.”

  Leland replied with a snort. When Diane met his gaze, his smile vanished. “I only meant that these folks wouldn’t know how to tell the truth if God Himself asked.” He walked up behind Diane and slid his hands across her shoulders. He began kneading her knotted muscles.

  If she’d been a lesser woman, she would have melted all over the desktop. Surprise at the familiarity turned into reluctant acceptance and then relief. And then her eyes rolled backward and she accidentally let out a low moan. Oh, jeez, she was a lesser woman!

  Shocked at her lack of self-control, Diane quickly turned around to face him. “We know Tiffany is lying. What did you think of Toni’s story?”

  “It sounded just like Mrs. Upshaw’s story. And Mrs. Lynch’s story. And Mrs. Vormeister’s story.”

  Diane was glad they were back on track, even as her gaze rested on his strong, masculine hands. “Exactly. It sounded rehearsed. While Anka was being murdered, they ran into Doctor Jefferson—who, I might add, had no business being in Gryphon Gate in the first place. They needed to talk to him urgently about”—she checked her notes— “overcharges on their bills, some of which occurred years ago. Yeah, right. Then he blew them off and left. And not a one of them saw where he was headed.”

  “Sounds fishy to me. Oh, sorry.” After the koi pond, fish were still a sore subject. “Mrs. Vormeister was really nervous, too. Did you notice how she kept tapping her fingers against the side of the chair?”

  Diane tilted her head. “Leland, why aren’t you a real cop? You’ve got the brains and you’ve got the brawn. You’re being wasted here in LaLa Land.”

  Her bluntness seemed to take him off guard, but she only knew blunt. Who had time to beat around bushes?

  “It’s … well, my father was a cop. A real cop.” He began to pace back and forth in front of the fireplace. Carved duck decoys stared at him from their perches on the elaborately carved mantel. “When I was growing up, I thought he was God. He was the fixer of all things, the champion of justice. I wanted to be just like him.” Leland paused and turned to face her. “When I was sixteen, he was killed during a bank robbery. I still wanted to be like him, but I didn’t want to be dead. His death broke my mother’s heart and she begged me not to join the force. This seemed a good compromise.” He lifted a shoulder. “It used to, anyway.”

  So he wasn’t simply pretending interest in her as a toehold to get onto the force. He just didn’t want to break his mama’s heart. Was this guy for real? All Diane knew was she wanted him in her life, but she didn’t know a thing about making that happen. She stood. “Let’s get out of here, get some fresh air.”

  Although it was nearly nine o’clock, the bar was empty, the residents safe and sound in their homes. Well, she hoped they were, anyway. Probably, they were in somebody else’s homes, somebody else’s beds. As long as they weren’t out killing anyone. She just couldn’t take another dead body.

  As they walked through the dimly lit room, Diane radioed one of her officers. “Found Doctor Jefferson yet?”

  “Negative. Left his office after lunch and hasn’t been there or at his home since. Hasn’t answered his pager either. We’ll keep looking.”

  Diane shook her head as they walked through the quiet hallway and out the back door to the pool area. The night air was fat with impending rain, and she inhaled deeply. Thunder rumbled overhead, seeming to echo for miles. “He’s been seen in Gryphon Gate twice now without having any business here. Maybe it’s as simple as him being our man.”

  “But you think it’s a woman,” Leland said with a hint of a teasing smile.

  “Or her accomplice, of course.”

  “Of course. The question is, was Anka’s murder related to the first two? She wasn’t killed like the others. And there’s the jewelry to consider.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time a maid lifted her employer’s jewels. Wouldn’t be the first time an employer killed a pilfering servant either. But why would she—or he—not recover the jewels? Why leave them there like a statement?”

  Her cell phone chirped. Cause of death had been confirmed. Anka had been drowned, pinned beneath the water until her lungs were full. Diane closed her eyes. How awful it must have been to see daylight and oxygen only two feet above you and not be able to breathe. She shook off the thought, and when she opened her eyes again, she was surprised to be gazing on more water.

  The pool was lit like a gemstone. You couldn’t tell a man had been murdered there only days before. They still hadn’t figured out why there had been no blood beneath McClintock’s body. They still hadn’t figured out a lot of things. She let out an exasperated sigh.

  “You should get some sleep,” Leland said as they skirted the pool. “You’ll probably figure it out in your dreams.”

  She smiled, touched that he cared about her well-being and that he had faith in her abilities. Unfortunately, all she could think about was falling asleep with Leland wrapped around her. Just sleep, just his warm body snuggled against hers, hearing him breathe in the darkened room. It had been a long time since anybody cared about her. When she looked up at him, he was watching her. How much had he read on her face?

  Too much, evidently. Leland cupped her cheek and rubbed his thumb across her lower lip. And then he leaned down and kissed her. His mouth moved across hers in a feather-light whisper, and her heartbeat pounded in her throat. When she opened instinctually to him, he deepened the kiss.

  “Let’s get you home,” he said in a husky voice. He took her hand and without saying a word led her toward the parking lot and the waiting cruiser.

&n
bsp; Diane wondered what he meant by getting her home. With him? To sleep? Or more? Her head swam with moral dilemmas. Oh, the way his hand felt as he decisively led her around a clump of manicured bushes!

  She would never know what Leland’s intentions were. She tripped over something in the dark and fell against him. Her instincts went on alert as Leland reached to his holster and his flashlight.

  “I believe we found the elusive Doctor Jefferson,” he said, still holding protectively onto her arm.

  She pulled away and followed the beam of light to the scene before them. The doctor was tied to one of the pool chairs, lashed to the arms and legs of the chair with rope. He lay on his back, his legs in the air. His formerly handsome face had been bashed in. She recognized the wound pattern. Unless she missed her guess, the M.E. would find it had been caused by the same smooth, cylindrical weapon used on Sigmond Vormeister and Lt. Col. Lance McClintock. Only this time the killer had gone overboard.

  “My team should be about finished with the body over at the Sinclair place,” she said. “At least they won’t have far to drive.” She sighed, exhausted. Could it get any worse?

  Leland knelt down next to Doctor Jefferson, shining the beam of light on the wreck of his face. “Oh, God, look at this. Someone’s gouged out his eyes.”

  And then it started to rain.

  12

  TONI SINCLAIR WAS FLOUNDERING in a nightmare from which she struggled to awaken, but no amount of pinching herself or trying to force her eyelids wider open would bring her out of it. No comforting hand reached across to her, no voice said soothingly, It isn’t real, don’t think of it anymore! Look, you’re safe in bed in your own room and everything is as it should be.

  On the contrary, nothing was as it should be. There had been two more murders, one of the bodies drowned in her koi pond! Thank heaven, at least Miranda had not been the one to find it. That was about the only mercy there was.

  Now Charles Jefferson was dead too, and hideously. The thought of what had been done to him made her sick. She could feel her stomach churning, as imagination of it touched the edge of her mind. She refused to let it come closer; once inside she would never be able to get rid of it. She would wake up sweating in the night with its horror embedded in her memory.

  She could control it! Of course she could. She had conquered the memory of Lincoln, hadn’t she? Well, almost. Surely if she could banish it altogether, she would be less than human. After all, Lincoln was Miranda’s father, and she had certainly loved him once.

  Can you forgive anyone for causing you that much pain?

  She sat huddled on the sofa, her knees drawn up as if she were cold inside, shivering, although it was still mild enough, even if it was getting oddly dark and there was a heaviness and an unease in the air.

  Lincoln had told her that she was naïve, that she expected far too much. She had wanted a dream man, not a real one, and it was her unspoken demands, her inability to love him as he was, that had driven him to seek other women—other girls, to be precise—who knew how to give what she could not.

  But that was not true. To begin with she had adored him, simply and naturally for who he was, his charm, his generosity, the way he made her laugh, the beliefs they shared. It had not fallen away bit by bit, but suddenly with a shattering pain. She had found the E-mails, the whole grubby truth spilling out in one drowning tide.

  He was right about one thing, she had lived in a dream. The Lincoln she had loved had never existed. The outer man was the same—the manner, the face, the voice, even the jokes. But the mind was alien—and soiled with lies.

  She had been so hurt she could not even remember all the things she had said and done in those first awful days, or had it been weeks? He had not even understood why she was furious. Then, when she could not be cajoled, charmed in the old ways, he had become angry, too, and blamed her. She could still see the bitterness in his face. How different he had looked. How could someone you had loved suddenly become completely hateful?

  But she could remember Jason Salinger, no matter how hard she tried to forget. And she had tried! She had tried with sleeping pills, with alcohol, with wishing until she dropped, or partying until everything else was a blur. But still he remained as huge and real as the week it had happened.

  He had found her when she was so vulnerable, when she had first discovered the truth. He had been a friend, listening, comforting, sympathizing. And of course, since he had worked for Lincoln in the business and even installed the security system here in the house, she had felt a unique kind of trust. He knew all about Lincoln and the girls; schoolgirls, only a few years older than Miranda was now! That thought woke a fury in her that could have killed Lincoln again, this time with her bare hands.

  But she wouldn’t have then! She wouldn’t! She hadn’t! They were just idle, stupid words, spoken in anger! She had NEVER meant it! Wasn’t there something in English history? Some king or other had cried out, “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” And someone listening had gone and murdered the archbishop. And the king got blamed for it! It wasn’t his fault. He had not meant it any more than she had.

  She had cried in Jason Salinger’s arms, broken by disillusion and hurting more than she could bear, and she had said she wished Lincoln were dead!

  Jason had listened. Then a few days later Lincoln was dead. It was not until after the funeral and the unquestioning verdict of accident that Jason had come back smiling and full of outward sympathy for the new widow. Then he had said how clever he had been, and wasn’t she pleased? And he hoped she was going to honor her debt to him with suitable payment. They had not discussed money, but hadn’t she said something about “give anything”? Well, he wasn’t greedy, but a nice lump sum of fifty thousand dollars would enable him to start off his own business very well. If anyone asked, she could call it a loan; only he really did not think he would ever find it necessary to repay her. He was sure she understood.

  She understood perfectly. There had been a few more “investments” in his business since then, made through an account she could not trace back to him. Wiser, he said, in case the weight of guilt for her husband’s death ever grew too heavy for her and she chose to confess it all to some psychiatrist. He could not take that chance. Guilt was a funny thing. It made otherwise reliable people oddly self-destructive. She might even become so irrational and unlike her usual self as to forget the possible consequences to Miranda.

  So, of course she had kept silent and paid him. It had made her isolated, unable even to look for any kind of further happiness, far less to accept it were it offered.

  Was she guilty in some deep moral way? She had said the words. Did that make her to blame for what Jason had done? It had never crossed her mind that he would act on them; they were just words cried out in her pain. But he had believed her! He had done it, and Lincoln was dead.

  Now, in spite of his earlier threats, Jason wanted to see her again privately, and she could think of no way at all to avoid it. She felt as if she were waiting for her own execution, and it was as inevitable as night falling.

  * * *

  Roman Gervase was sorry about the murders that had happened at Gryphon Gate. He certainly would not have wished them, but there were other things pressing on his mind far more importantly, such as at last resolving his own personal life, and equally importantly to him, doing something to help Toni Sinclair.

  Evidence to solve the first had finally fallen into his hands. Mignon must go. Of course that had been obvious for a long time. How to achieve it without having her financially around his neck for the rest of his life was another matter. And he must be blunt about it. If he connived, used legal trading, then it would haunt him forever. There were no new starts even to dream about, however hard one tried, or with all the luck in the world, if one were still dragging behind old guilt and memories.

  Which brought him to the second issue. How could he rid Toni of the demons that followed her and seemed to cloud every happiness she reached fo
r? That mattered to him, it mattered intensely. Even the thought of her face, her laughter, her eyes when she spoke of the wild creatures made him smile as he waited to confront Mignon. They were so different, the two women. Mignon was beautiful. Every man he had known thought so. He could see it in their expressions, even if they had not said. But it was all on the outside. It was shape, hair, texture of the skin, color of the eyes. It was empty.

  No, that was not true. There was greed in there, and vanity, and contempt for other people. There was mockery of mistakes, laughter at those who were weak or who failed. He was very tired of it.

  She came into the room barely noticing him. Even in the sombre light of the heavy overcast and first beginning rain she looked perfect. It did not move him at all. It was as if something inside him had grown up, put away the illusions of the child, and accepted reality.

  “What are you doing in here?” she said abruptly, irritated that for a moment she had been unaware of his presence.

  “Waiting for you,” he replied.

  She did not catch the change in his voice. “I’m busy, Roman. I really haven’t got time for talking now. There’s been another murder. The police are all over the place.” She was barely looking at him as she spoke.

  “Yes, I know,” he replied, moving to sit up a little straighter in the chair. “Doctor Jefferson. But it doesn’t concern us. At least it doesn’t concern me. And if you have something to do with it—”

  “Of course I haven’t!” she swung around, her eyes blazing. “Why would I have anything to do with murder? What are you accusing me of?”

  “Well, murder would do very well,” he said with the slightest smile. “But I haven’t any proof, and, honestly, I haven’t any reason to think you would.” He saw the amazement in her face with pleasure. “Adultery is good. Serial adultery is better. But I’m not sure in a place like Gryphon Gate that it would count for a lot, even on your scale.”