Love And Lies

by Dawn Stewardson

  “You said you got delayed,” Cade reminded her as they started down the stairs. “Did Bud the baby-sitter corner you with one of his stories?”

  Didn’t she just wish that was all it had been. She shook her head. “I’ll tell you about it when we get to the bar.”

  The Judge and Liz had asked her not to say anything about the murder until the sheriff’s people arrived—so the guests wouldn’t panic at the thought of a killer loose on the island. But Cade wasn’t the type to panic. And telling him was hardly the same as shouting the news from her balcony. Besides, she had to tell someone for the sake of her own mental health.

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs, though, she began having second thoughts. Liz and the Judge were standing right there, huddled in conversation, and the glance Liz gave her was definitely meant as a reminder to keep quiet.

  She managed a reassuring smile and introduced them to Cade. Then, after the four of them had exchanged a few pleasantries, Cade steered her across the lobby and into a bar that looked as if it belonged in a private men’s club.

  Its walls were the color of sage; the old-fashioned couches and wing chairs were covered in dark green leather. And the draperies, which were shutting out most of the late-afternoon light, were exactly the same shade of deep green velvet as the ones Scarlett had fashioned into a dress. The bartender, who nodded a greeting from behind the bar, was a good-looking black man of about fifty.

  “I talked to him for a few minutes,” Cade said, “while I was scoping things out. His name’s Desmond, and he grew up here on the island. He was telling me some really interesting things about it. For example, there are a couple of ancient tunnels leading from the cellar downstairs.”

  “Really? I didn’t know you could have tunnels on islands.”

  Cade shrugged. “They’d just have to be well supported. At any rate, Desmond’s lived here most of his life. Says he intends to die here.”

  “Mmm,” Talia murmured, leaving it at that. She didn’t want to think about anyone else dying here. One person had been more than enough.

  THE BARTENDER SET Cade’s glass of beer on the low table in front of the couch, along with the mint julep he’d recommended Talia try.

  “I hope you enjoy it,” he told her. “I grow the mint myself.”

  The smile she gave him was strained, and it added to Cade’s sense something was very wrong. Normally Talia was easy to talk to. And she had a quirky sense of humor he really got a kick out of. But since he’d found her standing in her doorway, she’d been acting as if her best friend had just died.

  He took a sip of beer, then sat back and watched her absently fiddle with her coaster. He liked looking at her, even though he knew it was about as smart as looking at a dish of ice cream while you were on a diet. But hell, any man in his right mind would like looking at Talia.

  Her long tangle of sun-streaked hair framed a face that belonged in some upscale magazine. Her smooth skin was lightly tanned, her eyes a gorgeous deep blue, her cheekbones high and pronounced and her features regular—except for her mouth. She had the fullest, most luscious mouth he’d ever seen. All in all, it was tough to believe she was thirty years old and still single. Apparently, though, the right man had just never come along.

  “You were going to tell me,” he said at last, “why you took forever getting to your room.”

  Instead of telling him, she tasted her drink.

  He tried not to begin staring at her lips again, but that proved to be like trying not to eat another spoon’ ful of ice cream after you’d broken down and eaten the first one. There was something about her mouth that…

  Well, it had made him start dreaming of kissing her before the trial had even gone into its second week— which, under normal circumstances would have had him running for the hills. The last thing he’d ever do was let himself get involved with another beautiful woman, because he’d seen firsthand what happened when the honeymoon was over and a beautiful woman began missing all the male attention she was used to getting.

  But the way things were in this situation, he hadn’t been able to run. He’d been forced to spend six entire weeks in close proximity to Talia Sagourin. Of course, he’d admit that he hadn’t exactly been forced to sit beside her at lunch every day. Or spend the breaks with her. But when she’d turned out to be fun, on top of gorgeous…

  “Cade,” she said, finally looking at him, “something happened when I was on the way to my room. I’m not supposed to talk about it yet. The Judge and Liz didn’t want any of the other guests knowing for a while. But I need to tell someone.”

  He nodded. Then, while he waited for her to continue, he let himself go back to just looking at her.

  After all, there was really no reason to worry about being attracted to her. Hell, all he had to do was keep on playing look-but-don’t-touch for however long they were at Bride’s Bay. Then, once the deliberations were finished, once she wasn’t right there in front of him day in and day out, he’d have no problem at all.

  “Did you hear a scream?” she asked at last. “Not long after you went upstairs?”

  “No, but when I got to the room Harlan was in the shower and the TV was on. Between it and the water running, I wouldn’t have heard anything short of a bomb going off. But what happened?”

  She glanced over to where the bartender was busily polishing a glass, then leaned a little closer to Cade. Close enough that he could smell her perfume. Its elusive scent made him think of a secluded stretch of beach on a warm starry night. And it made playing his game of look-but-don’t-touch just a little trickier.

  “A woman was murdered,” Talia said quietly. “That woman who came over on the ferry with us.”

  Her words banished every thought of secluded beaches and starry nights, and he suddenly understood why she’d turned quiet and serious. He put down his beer and listened to her story. When she finished he ordered a second mint julep for her and a double Jack Daniels on the rocks for himself.

  He was having one hell of a time thinking past the possibility she could have been dead now rather than here with him. And he needed something a lot stronger than another beer to help him cope with how much that possibility upset him. Maybe there’d been more danger in spending so much time with her than he’d realized.

  The bartender arrived with their fresh drinks, and once he left Cade downed a slug of the bourbon. Then he got straight to what was worrying him most. “This theory of the Judge’s…that it might not have been a thief…”

  “You mean his theory it might have been someone waiting in there to kill me,” Talia said bluntly.

  Cade took another gulp of his drink. “That’s just not…There’s no reason someone might have been… is there?”

  She stared down at the table.

  “Well?” he pressed. “Is there?”

  “Probably not.”

  “What do you mean, probably not?”

  “I mean…”

  She looked up and gazed at him with those big blue eyes, making his heart skip a couple of beats.

  “From the moment the Judge raised the possibility,” she murmured, “I’ve been asking myself, if maybe someone does have a reason.”

  “And?”

  “And I have an overactive imagination. So I sometimes get way off base wondering about things.”

  “Things like what? Specifically in this case, I mean.”

  “Cade…do you think Joey Carpaccio might rather have me dead than deliberating his fate?”

  Chapter Three

  Did Joey Carpaccio want Talia dead? Cade sat rubbing his jaw and thinking there wasn’t nearly enough Jack Daniels left in his glass. After hearing that question he could do with an entire bottle.

  He wanted to keep thinking straight, though, so he didn’t even glance toward the bar. Instead, he tried to decide if she could be onto the truth, if those three bullets really had been meant for her—courtesy of the accused. The thought made his chest feel strangely hollow.

  Joe
y Carpaccio wasn’t a man you’d want against you. His rumored mob connections were undoubtedly a whole lot more than rumors, and the guy was a murderer—guilty as charged. He’d had the best lawyers money could buy, but even they hadn’t been able to come up with a credible defense.

  Oh, not that he’d killed his wife himself. He had an airtight alibi for the evening of the murder, and the prosecution had never accused him of actually being the shooter. But they’d sure put together a strong case for his having planned the killing. And if he’d arranged for one death, why not two?

  “Joey’s lawyers didn’t want me on the jury, you know,” Talia said, breaking the silence. “You didn’t sit in on much of the jury selection because you were the first one accepted, but they had a lot of potential women jurors excused.”

  “I realized they must have. I guess they figured the odds were better on men being sympathetic.”

  She smiled wanly. “By sympathetic, should I assume you mean they’d relate to Joey’s situation more easily than women would? Relate to a man’s murdering his wife because she was unfaithful?”

  “Well…yeah.” Cade drained the last few drops of his bourbon. This conversation was hitting a little close to home. He could relate, too damn well, to a guy whose wife had cheated on him. Even so, he couldn’t see letting Joey get away with murder.

  That put Cade in the minority, though. Only three jurors had voted guilty after the morning’s closing arguments. He had. So had Talia, she’d told him afterward. He wasn’t sure who the other one was, but he’d been surprised there were only three of them.

  The way he saw it, the defense’s unknown-intruder theory was a total crock. There was no way he’d believe someone with a gun had just happened into the Carpaccio house while Maria Carpaccio and her lover were in bed. But most of the jurors were obviously willing to give Joey the benefit of the doubt—whether his defense was lame or not.

  “The only reason I ended up being accepted,” Talia was saying, “is that they’d run out of peremptory challenges before they questioned me. So they had to either accept me or come up with a good reason I might be biased, and they didn’t.”

  Cade nodded, wondering if the way she seemed to be adding things up actually made sense. He’d buy the fact Joey’s lawyers hadn’t wanted her on the jury. But it was a long leap from that to the idea Joey had arranged for someone to kill her. And she had admitted to an overactive imagination.

  “If Joey was so worried about you,” he finally asked, “why would he have waited till now to try something? Why didn’t he get his friends to take care of it while the trial was under way? I mean, you live alone, so surely it would’ve been easy enough to…” He stopped speaking when he realized he was only making her more upset.

  “That occurred to me, too,” she murmured. “But I figure if anything had happened during the trial, the police would’ve suspected Joey was behind it. So maybe he was just hoping we’d all vote not guilty.”

  “If he actually thought we would, it would make him quite the optimist.”

  “Well, regardless of that, maybe when we didn’t acquit him he decided getting rid of me had become critical. No matter whether the police suspected him or not.”

  “But he couldn’t have been sure which way you voted.”

  “I think he’d have made a pretty good guess, don’t you? Especially if…oh, Cade, here goes my imagination again, but what if he was concerned about me and had his friends do some poking around?”

  He waited for her to go on, curious about what she was worried Joey’s friends might have found. He hadn’t suspected her of having any deep dark secrets in her past.

  “Would they have come up with something interesting?” he finally said.

  Talia nodded. “There’s something his lawyers missed during the jury selection. When they questioned me, they asked about my practice, but they didn’t think to ask if I take on any pro bono projects. If they had I’d have had to tell them I do volunteer counseling at a shelter called Safe Haven.”

  “A shelter? For the homeless?”

  “No, it’s a shelter for battered women. And if Joey’s lawyers had known I do work there, I’m sure they’d have gotten me disqualified. They’d have claimed that since Joey was accused of killing his wife…Well, you see what I’m getting at.”

  Cade sat back on the couch, deciding maybe it wasn’t really such a long leap to the idea that Joey had arranged for someone to kill her.

  “And if his lawyers had claimed you couldn’t be impartial,” he said at last, “would they have been right?”

  “I don’t think so, although it’s a question I wrestled with at the time. I thought I could be fair, but I kept wondering if I was only fooling myself. Because I really didn’t want to be disqualified, not when they’d been so blatantly stacking the jury with men.

  “And now that the trial’s over, I honestly think it was just hearing the evidence that made me certain Joey’s guilty. I’m sure nothing else influenced me.”

  Cade nodded. The evidence had convinced him, too, so why not her? When he glanced at her again she was looking past him—across the bar. He followed the direction of her gaze and saw that a man of about forty had come in. Of average height and build, with short brown hair, he was wearing a dark suit and a deadly serious expression. He didn’t look like a hotel guest in search of a drink.

  He headed over to where they were sitting. “Ms. Talia Sagourin?”

  Talia nodded.

  “I’m Detective Frank Boscoe of the county sheriff’s department. I’m in charge of the investigation into Ruth Wertman’s death. If you’d come with me, please, I’d like to ask you some questions about it.”

  CADE WAITED in the lobby, one eye on what was happening around him, the other on the closed door of Liz Jermain’s office. Frank Boscoe and his partner had commandeered it for their questioning, and Talia was still in there with them. As for the rest of what was going on, Liz and the Judge had filled him in on the basics.

  While he and Talia had been in the bar, a whole slew of people had arrived from the sheriff’s department.

  Crime-scene specialists were upstairs now going over room 203 with the proverbial fine-tooth comb. Elsewhere, a team of detectives were questioning people. Two of them had already spoken to him, asking where he’d been at three-forty-five, the time of the murder.

  When he told them he’d been in his room and hadn’t heard a thing over the sound of the television and the shower, that had been that. But he gathered they were in the process of asking everyone, guests and staff, about whether they’d seen or heard anything unusual.

  His gaze drifted to where Liz and the Judge had been standing for the past ten minutes—plotting a damage-control strategy, he assumed. By now everyone knew about the murder. And almost all the guests, he’d gathered from bits of conversations, were wondering whether they’d be in any danger if they remained at the resort. He hadn’t seen anyone actually check out, but that might only be because the evening ferry had already left.

  Finally the Judge turned away from Liz and headed for the stairs. Cade hurried over to intercept him. He had a question that needed an answer.

  “Judge Bradshaw?” he called, stopping the older man as he reached the staircase. “Sorry to interrupt you, sir. I know you’re busy.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind being interrupted, Cade. I’m just on my way to phone my wife to tell her what’s happened, and it’s not a conversation I’m looking forward to. In fact, I’ve been putting off calling her, because I know she’s going to be dreadfully upset.”

  “I can imagine.”

  The Judge nodded. “She’s in Atlanta visiting her brother, and the best thing she could do is just stay put for the moment. But I’m going to have a devil of a time convincing her. You didn’t stop me to hear about my wife, though. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d just like to ask you something about jury deliberations.”

  “Oh, I think you should be asking your court officer, not me. I saw
Bud going into the dining room, so you could catch him there.”

  “Well…” Cade thought rapidly. It was going to be pretty obvious why he was asking his question, and the Judge had to be more discreet than Bud. Almost anyone would be. So if he didn’t want this talked about, the Judge was his man. “It’s nothing to do with our particular jury,” he finally tried. “It’s just a general question.”

  “Ah. All right, then, go ahead.”

  “Well, once a jury’s been sequestered, what’s the procedure if something happens to one of the jurors?”

  “If something happens to one of them?”

  “Uh-huh.” Doing his best to look nonchalant, Cade pressed on. “Say he…has a heart attack or something. Say he ends up in the hospital, and can’t take part in the deliberations. Would the others continue on without him, or would there be a new jury selected and a retrial?”

  The Judge peered intently at him for a minute. “All right,” he finally said, “to give you a general answer to your general question, if a juror is forced to withdraw, for whatever reason, the remaining eleven jurors would normally continue to deliberate without him. If more than one juror was forced to drop out, the trial judge would decide whether the remaining number should continue or if there should be a retrial.”

  “I see,” Cade said. He had his answer, but it sure wasn’t the one he’d wanted.

  “Do you think you have just cause to be worried about Talia?” the Judge asked quietly.

  Cade met his gaze, wondering exactly how much cause was just under these circumstances. He was sure Joey wouldn’t want to go through a retrial, but now he knew that if somebody killed Talia it wouldn’t mean a retrial. Was there just cause to worry about that? And there were three jurors convinced Joey was guilty, but if somebody killed Talia there’d be only two. Was there just cause to worry about that?

  “I’m not sure, sir,” he finally said. “I hope there’s not reason to worry, but I’m not sure.”