by Laura Pender
Detective Sergeant Wilkes put his hands on his hips and looked at Tess as though he’d just uncovered an entirely new class of fool. She hadn’t asked for him when she called 911 for fear of exactly this reaction, but he’d come anyway. And now she knew that Gabriel had been right when he’d counseled against calling the police.
“Yes,” she said, “I do expect you to believe me, because it’s the truth.”
“Lady, you wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you,” Wilkes scoffed.
“What about the broken window and the footprints outside,” she argued. “What about the razor blade and the pictures knocked down from the wall in my room? How do you account for that?”
“Oh, please, do I have to go through all the ways you screwed up when you fabricated the evidence?” he asked sarcastically.
She gasped. “Fabricated!”
“Yes, fabricated,” he insisted. “First of all, anybody can buy a razor blade and knock a couple pictures off a wall. And you blew it with the window because it was obviously broken out, not in. If you break a window to get into some place, the glass will land on the floor inside, not in a flower bed.”
“He didn’t break it coming in! He did that in the fight!”
“The fight where you forcibly threw him out the window?”
“Yes.”
“Stop insulting my intelligence. You didn’t throw an intruder out of here any more than you threw your husband out before. You’re lying.”
“Is this attitude of yours just to compensate for the lousy search you did earlier?” Tess asked recklessly.
“You neglected to tell us that you weren’t renting the garage,” he said angrily. “You set us up to find the knife. You wanted to be certain it wasn’t usable in court.”
“I didn’t know the knife was there and I didn’t know it made any difference anyway,” Tess insisted. “When will you people figure out that you’re investigating the wrong person?”
“We’re not,” he said. “All we need is new proof.”
“What about the footprints outside my window?”
“You put on a pair of men’s shoes and faked it.”
“So where are the shoes now? Search the house again if you want. Where are the man’s muddy shoes that I’m supposed to have used?”
“You could have thrown them in the neighbor’s trash- All I know is that you went to a K mart and purchased men’s clothing on your way home this evening. A pair of shoes was among the items you bought.”
“Oh, hell,” Tess sighed. “You people haven’t wasted any time in trying to make my life into a total disaster, have you?”
“Just quit trying to outmaneuver us, Miss Miller,” Wilkes said smugly. “You’re wasting everybody’s time. we had a car passing here every five minutes and nobody saw anyone enter or leave the house after you came home.”
“He came in through my bedroom window in the rear of the house,” Tess insisted. “Of course you didn’t see him.”
“How very convenient for you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get home.”
“You’re cheering the killer on, aren’t you? You’d like nothing better than to find me dead, apparently by my own hand.”
“No, I’d be disappointed. I’d rather convict you in court,” he snapped. “Is that all you require of us tonight?”
“Yes, get the hell out of my house,” she said. “And you can call off your blind surveillance team, too, because I’m going to bed now. I usually leave for work at about twenty of nine, so they can pick me up on their way from the doughnut shop.”
“I’ll run my own investigation, thank you.” Wilkes turned and jerked his head toward the door. To the two uniformed officers that had come with him, he said, “Let’s get out of here before she starts blaming Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Tess clenched her teeth and remained silent. She knew that whatever she might say now, it would very likely land her back behind bars. And while jail might be safer, it was the last place she wanted—or needed—to be. No, she had to have her freedom to catch the man who was trying to kill her!
“Gabriel?”
“Yes, love,” he said, stepping out from the kitchen. “I heard it all.”
“Then you know we’ve got to find this man on our own.”
“That I do,” he said, smiling. “And I’ll gladly break the scoundrel’s neck for you, lass. See if I don’t.”
“No, don’t do that. We need to catch him alive and able to talk,” Tess said. “That’s an absolute necessity. But first we’ve got to catch him.”
Tess sat on the couch, leaning her head back against the cushions and staring at the ceiling. Gabriel sat beside her and playfully brushed the hair on her shoulder with a finger.
“You say you’ve made no enemies,” he said reflectively.
“None. I mean, it would take a pretty serious grievance to lead to this.”
“Aye, it would. So, what have you been witness to of late that would cause such hatred?”
“Nothing,” she said with resignation.
“Come now, you must have seen something. Or at least been in a position where someone thought you saw something.”
“We’ve been over that, and there’s absolutely nothing. I haven’t done anything or seen anything unusual. Except for meeting you, that is.”
“Then it’s back to your husband’s business.”
“But I had nothing to do with that except to sign a couple of papers. And,” she added, sighing, “I signed everything back before the divorce. I don’t have any claim to anything related to Cage Real Estate Development.”
“Then it must relate to the beach this Saturday last.”
“Why?”
“Because nobody tried to kill you before then, did they? And as you yourself said, you haven’t done anything to set someone off like this.”
“But I didn’t see or do anything unusual that night, either. I was too busy trying not to drown.”
“But the killer probably doesn’t know that,” he said.
“You may be right: ”
“You’re being hounded for the sake of something you didn’t see but perhaps might have.”
“All right, then. I parked in the lot at Bernie’s on the beach,” Tess said. “Maybe something happened there. My car was in the lot overnight after all. If something happened there after hours, they might have tracked me down through my license plates.”
“That’s surely possible. Anything else?”
“No. I took a walk and went for a swim. You know what happened after that.”
“Aye,” he said, running the tip of his finger down her cheek.
“After you left me, I fell asleep. When I woke up, I went home.”
“Nothing else?”
“No, nothing.”
“When did you meet the moneylender?”
“Sunday morning. He came down from his house near the beach.”
“So then it’s the banker,” Gabriel said.
“What? Oh, get real! He’s a guy who gets by on his checkbook not his brawn. Hardly a murderer. And what could he have been doing that he didn’t want me to see anyway?”
“That’s what we’ll have to find out on the morrow,” Gabriel said. “Unless you’d like to call him on your speaking machine and ask him the question outright. I’m sure we could both do without the suspense.”
“I’m sure not going to call him,” Tess said. “Especially since he didn’t do it. That would be insulting.”
“Insulting? I’d say assaulting a woman in her home is a far greater insult.”
“But it wasn’t him.”
“Well, I’ll agree that bankers usually hire their dirty deeds done,” Gabriel said. “But I believe him guilty of something.”
Tess looked closely at the man then, noticing the furrowed brow above his noble green eyes. Though he was smiling, there was clearly tension in that face.
“Gabriel, are you jealous?”
“Me?” He frowned, then smiled. He caught the lobe
of Tess’s ear between his thumb and index finger and then tugged. “Aye, that I am. I hope with all of my heart that the man is guilty as sin, for he’s the only competition I’ve got with you.”
“I’ll tell you a secret,” she whispered. “He’s no competition at all.”
Tess kissed his cheek and snuggled her head against his chin as the secure feeling at his nearness grew within her again.
“Don’t you ever go away,” she murmured. “I’d rather die than lose you.”
“I’m not leaving.” He kissed the crown of her head, comforting her with a strong arm around her shoulders.
She could have sat like that forever, safe in his arms. It felt so good, and the pressures of the day seemed to melt away at his touch, leaving her to drift in the security of his strength until she fell peacefully asleep.
Gabriel carried her carefully to her bed, laid her down and covered her with the sheet. Then he lay beside her and watched her sleep, content just to be near her. Eventually, for the first time in centuries, he, too, fell soundly asleep
WHILE TESS AND GABRIEL slumbered, the intricate knot of Darrell Cage’s finances began to unravel at a faster pace It began when Sergeant Wilkes returned to the station after Tess’s call. He checked the report on the search of Darrell’s office, which had been conducted by another unit that afternoon. Once he’d seen that, he hurried to the evidence locker to look at the material they’d brought in. Hours later, he was a bit more optimistic about his chances of nailing Tess Miller for the crime.
Jay Sturgis was working later than usual that night, too. In order to begin construction of a multimillion-dollar retail and entertainment complex between Tampa and Los Palmas, Carl Downey needed the key piece of beachfront property that Darrell had put into his wife’s name. It was up to Jay to secure the property now, and he had to do it without bringing too much undue attention to bear on the acquisition.
Without the beach, the site lost its prime attraction; it was the reason for the majority of the rentals they had lined up to date. If Darrell had made Tess deed the property back to him before his untimely death, they would have had nothing to worry about. But now, Darrell’s murder could bring any dealings between Tess Miller and Carl Downey under official scrutiny. In turn, that could slow them down—stop them entirely. They could miss their start date and the tax abatements Los Palmas had granted to get the project in town. That would mean lost revenue over the long run of the complex. But, even more importantly, a late start might mean defaulting on their completion bond with the bank. Timing was everything.
Jay wondered how much Carl had thought about the timing. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine one of the other big construction companies who had been bidding for this land committing murder to keep Downey from succeeding. Jay could also imagine Carl Downey doing just that to keep the others in check.
He could only hope Carl wasn’t mixed up in Darrell’s murder. Jay could see no benefit to them, but it was possible that Carl had some broader scheme in mind. Or Cage might have been trying to up his share in the project and Carl just decided that it was better to be rid of him. Jay could only hope it wasn’t so. As it was, they were only technically in violation of the law on this deal. Murder was far more than a technicality.
ACROSS TOWN, A MAN STOOD in the darkened living room of his tenth-floor hotel suite and finished changing the dressing on his badly gouged elbow. The cut was long and ragged but it wasn’t terribly deep, so he had decided against stitches and had doctored himself with iodine and bandages. It seemed as though the wound had stopped bleeding. He’d be all right.
As he looked across town toward the ocean from his hotel window, he tried to piece together his experience that night. She’d been alone in the house; he was sure of that. It should have been a simple matter to subdue her and arrange for her “suicide.” He had at least a forty-pound weight advantage, to say nothing of muscle, yet she’d thrown him like a linebacker.
He couldn’t understand how that had happened. One moment she was beneath him struggling ineffectively, and the next she was pitching him against the wall. He wouldn’t have believed it possible if he hadn’t experienced it himself. And even more disturbing was his feeling of absolute helplessness during her attack. All he could think of was escaping and getting as far away from her as possible, and he hated himself for feeling like that.
She was only a woman after all.
It was just too bad that she was in his way on this deal. He didn’t like the idea of killing a woman, but since the knife wasn’t usable against her in court, he couldn’t be sure that she would be convicted. The police might still come looking for him. He just couldn’t afford to have any loose ends on this deal. There was too much money involved.
Of course, if he hadn’t slipped one of the hotel steak knives into his pocket at dinner, he could have avoided this, too. It might have been embarrassing, but he probably could have talked himself out of a jam with the husband. That was nothing more than spilled milk now, and there was no sense regretting it.
He’d have another chance at the lovely Tess Miller. She was just a lone woman after all.
Chapter Twelve
Tess was conspicuously punctual in her arrival at work on Tuesday morning, but James Bentsen was in his own office, so he didn’t see her entrance. She was uneasy at first, wondering just what the news reports had said about her last night and how much anybody here had seen
Barb Davis reassured her immediately by greeting her with a big smile and saying, “So how’s the jailbird this morning?” and laughing heartily. That seemed to break the ice, and both she and Juanita gathered around her to ask about the ordeal she’d been through.
“What about work?” Tess asked them. “Did they get through their meeting yesterday all right?”
“Not to hear Bentsen talk about it,” Juanita said. “I swear that man would have a problem finding twenty bucks on the sidewalk. We didn’t really need those numbers except to confirm verbal reports.”
“But Bentsen likes to have paper in his hand,” Barb returned. “I could have given him my grocery list,”
“I’m not quite at six months yet, so I’m worried,” Tess admitted. “They could save themselves from having to hand out a raise by letting me go right now.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Juanita said. “But nobody mentioned anything about firing you. Of course, that was yesterday afternoon and you hadn’t been on the news yet.”
“The news reports didn’t mention the company, did they?”
“Yes, I’m afraid they did,” Barb said. “They described how you were picked up at work and everything.”
“Oh, well, I guess all I can do is try to catch up on yesterday’s work and see what happens,” Tess said as she pulled her chair out from her desk.
“Miss Miller, would you come to my office?” James Bentsen called. “If you ladies are quite through chatting, that is.”
Tess walked to the man’s office and stood while he walked around his desk and sat.
“You may sit,” he said.
Tess sat, determined not to apologize for yesterday’s problems. It hadn’t been her doing after all, and so she had no reason to make amends.
“Tess, you’ve been a good employee here,” he acknowledged. “Very good with the books, but this business yesterday is...well, embarrassing to the company. Surely the investigation will be continuing for some months. Our directors have talked it over, and rather than take the risk that the good name of Crowe Tool will be associated with a tawdry business like murder, we feel we must let you go.”
It was as simple as that—get in the news, lose your job.
“Mr. Bentsen, I—” Tess began angrily.
“I’m sure you wish an apology could make it all better. So do I, Miss Miller. But it won’t. In business, your name is everything, and this will be bad for our name if we continue to be linked to the crime through the news media.”
“I wasn’t about to apologize, Mr. Bentsen,” Tess said. “
I was only going to say that it’s not fair that I be penalized for the police department’s mistake.”
“No, I’m sure it isn’t,” he admitted. “But that is just the way it is. You understand, I’m sure, that this is a business decision, and it has nothing to do with you.”
“And nothing to do with my good work here,” she said sourly.
“Excellent work, certainly. But the world is full of accountants, Miss Miller.”
“Yes,” she said, standing. “Unfortunately, it’s full of jerks, too. I assume that I’m through today?”
“Yes. You may take some time to clean out your desk, of course.”
“There’s nothing in my desk,” she snapped.
“Good. Well, then, have Juanita issue you a check for money owed and severance pay. Good luck, Miss Miller.” He stood, extending his hand.
“Thank you,” she said, ignoring his hand. “Goodbye.”
James Bentsen was wise to remain in his office after dismissing Tess, for the opinions expressed about him while Juanita wrote out Tess’s check would have been alarming even for someone with his steely reserve. In the end, however, they agreed that no matter how unfair or inhumane it might be, Tess probably had no legal grounds to dispute him.
“Hey, ladies, what’s happening here?” Betty Crown rushed up from the factory as Tess was folding her check into her pocketbook. “The rumor mill says Tess got canned. Is that true?”
“Yes, it’s true,” Tess told her friend.
“Bentsen can’t do that,” Betty declared, turning toward his office door. “I’ll go tell that ignorant—”
“No.” Tess stopped Betty’s movement toward the manager’s office by placing a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Why lose your job over mine? I’ll be all right, Betty. Really.”
“Sure you’ll be fine,” the other woman said. “But I’d still like to give him a piece of my mind since he obviously has so little of his own.”
“He wouldn’t know what to do with it,” Tess said, laughing. “I’d better get out of here so you guys can go back to work. I’ll stay in touch, don’t you worry.”