Of course, then the elevator would start again.
Cecilia’s administrative assistant was in her office. Bettina Warren was in her early forties, with short dark hair and stern features. Dressed in no-nonsense business attire, the woman could have been a sergeant in the army.
And she guarded her army—Cecilia—very zealously.
“Do you have a warrant to be here?”
Her first question didn’t bode well for the remainder of the visit. Or for the hope that they would gain a thing from being there. Scott glanced at Laurel, and with a lowering of his lids, he turned the next few minutes over to her.
“The thing is,” she said, sitting on the edge of one of the hard wooden chairs in front of Ms. Warren’s desk, “this is not an official investigation at all. We started out doing a favor for a friend and have grown increasingly concerned about the welfare of two other people we’ve never met. One of them is Cecilia Hamilton. At this point we’d like only for you to hear us out. If, after that, you want us to leave, we’ll do so immediately without speaking to another person in the company.”
If Scott hadn’t been so besotted with Laurel, he’d have had to interrupt her already. He couldn’t make that promise.
But she had. And he was damn well going to have to abide by it. Melting into the back of the room, he comforted himself with the sure knowledge that Laurel was going to win Ms. Warren’s trust—which would make keeping that promise a moot point.
She went on to give Cecilia’s assistant more information than Scott would have. She didn’t, of course, mention anything that was, at that moment, only theory, like William’s possible blackmail scheme or the fact that Cecilia might very well be Leslie Renwick’s birth mother.
She looked so beautiful sitting there, her features animated with the empathy and apprehension she was feeling. She literally took his breath away—and for a second, rational thought, as well, as he tried to imagine an entire lifetime without her.
When Laurel fell quiet, the drill sergeant leaned forward, hands resting a body’s width apart on her desk. “What do you need to know?” she asked Laurel.
It wasn’t often that Scott found himself invisible, but on some level, the experience was not altogether a bad one.
“When was the last time you saw or heard from Cecilia?” Laurel asked.
“She was up here last week, finishing up business so that she could spend the rest of the summer in New Ashford.”
“When did she leave here?”
“Saturday morning. She was meeting someone in Cooper’s Corner before going out to her place.”
“Do you know who she was meeting?”
“No, though I suspected it might be a man.”
Laurel’s back was straight, her body still as she perched on the edge of the chair, facing Ms. Warren. Scott had the distinct feeling she was aware of him behind her, though.
“Does she date often?” Laurel asked the question Scott would have.
“No. Not at all. Which is why I think she was seeing a man. She was completely evasive—and a little nervous and shy—about the meeting. I’ve been here for twenty years and I’ve never seen Ms. Hamilton act that way.”
Wishing he felt comfortable enough to take out his notebook, Scott settled for inscribing that last telling remark in caps on his mental notepad.
“And you haven’t heard from her since the meeting?”
“No.”
“Is that unusual?”
“Very,” Ms. Warren said, her right thumb tapping on a file. She might be the epitome of control, but the woman was worried.
And that worried Scott.
“But then so is buying a summer home three hours from the company. I’ve just been telling myself this is all part of the recovery-from-grief process. Though Mr. Hamilton was so old, Ms. Hamilton is still a relatively young woman with a lot of years ahead of her.”
As Scott silently surveyed the room, compiling a character sketch of Cecilia Hamilton, the two women chatted about the indomitable businesswoman Cecilia had become over the years. And the loyal, compassionate and caring employer as well.
Scott added everything to his checklist. “Did she have any family other than Mr. Hamilton’s son, William?” he asked when Laurel reached the end of her questioning.
“The only family I’ve ever known of is a younger brother,” she said, meeting Scott’s gaze directly.
Coming forward, he took the seat next to Laurel, giving her a quick glance of gratitude and praise.
“Does he work here?” he asked the older woman.
Bettina Warren shook her head. “He’s in prison—has been for the past ten years.”
Scott’s internal alarm started to peal. “What’s he up for?”
“Hustling and drugs, mostly, but from what I understand, he’s been in trouble on and off since he was a teenager.”
“Cecilia talks to you about this?” Laurel’s gaze was intent on the other woman. Scott could almost see the human-interest story churning inside her mind.
“Never,” Ms. Warren surprised Scott by saying. “Ms. Hamilton was like a mother hen with that man, always sticking up for him, protecting him. But in an office like this you hear things, you know?”
Ms. Warren glanced toward the two doors across from her. They both had nameplates. One for Ms. Hamilton and one for her late husband. It didn’t take a detective to figure out that Cecilia’s assistant had overheard a conversation or two between husband and wife.
“Dennis Arnett was the only thing I ever heard the two of them fight about—maybe because her brother was the only reason she ever stood up to him. Mr. Hamilton was a pretty stern man. People didn’t cross him often.”
With only one more piece of helpful information forthcoming—the name of the prison Dennis Arnett, Cecilia’s fifty-four-year old brother, was in—Laurel and Scott prepared to take their leave. They made sure Bettina Warren had Scott’s cell phone number—and obtained her assurance that she’d call the second she thought of anything else.
* * *
NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, Laurel desperately wished that Scott were Paul as she sat with him at a diner across the street from Hamilton Lending and watched him make a series of calls, trying to find out what he could about Dennis Arnett.
Immediately she felt guilty for being disloyal to Scott, her very dear friend. She should be celebrating her chance to be with him again. And then, in her twisted way, she felt guilty for the disloyalty to Paul that thought generated.
It hadn’t quite been dinnertime when they’d left Bettina Warren, so they’d just ordered coffee. Black. Laurel was seriously considering loading up with enough cream to dilute the thick liquid, but wasn’t sure how to get enough room in her cup to do so.
Drinking the nasty stuff to make room was not an option.
She noticed that after an initial sip, Scott hadn’t touched his cup, either.
She’d already given her impressions of the afternoon to the trusty little machine in her purse and was eager for Scott to get off the phone and tell her what he’d found out about Dennis Arnett.
“He’s out of prison.” Scott’s voice was clipped as he dropped his cell phone on the table. “He got out last month. Has a place in Worcester...”
Heart pounding, Laurel held his gaze, trying to read his mind. “Where Leslie’s from.”
His nod couldn’t have been more serious.
“You think he’s involved in all of this?”
“I think we’d be remiss to dismiss the possibility.”
“What would he be after?” Rearranging her silverware on the paper napkin on which it lay, Laurel came up with her own silent answers to her question.
“Money would be the obvious thing. He has a very wealthy sister.”
That had been her guess.
/> “But from what Ms. Warren said, that Cecilia was always protecting him, wouldn’t you think she’d just give it to him?”
“Unless his years in prison made him greedy and he asked for more than she was willing to part with. You have to consider this was a woman who gave up her youth to marry a sugar daddy. Money’s got to be pretty big on her list of priorities.”
She frowned, only now realizing something that had been bothering her. “Ms. Warren’s description of Cecilia sure doesn’t fit the profile of a gold digger, does it?”
Shaking his head, Scott added several packs of sugar to his coffee. “People change. Plus, you have to consider that Bettina Warren is Cecilia’s employee. She’s bound to have a biased view.”
“It’s also possible that Cecilia wasn’t a gold digger at all. Maybe she just fell in love with William Sr. and wanted to spend her life with him.”
“Anything’s possible.” Scott didn’t sound as if he thought it likely, though, and that bothered Laurel a lot.
“So where do we go from here?” she asked.
“I put a call into his parole officer, but he’d already left for the day. I think he’s our next bet.”
Without even tasting the coffee to see if there was any improvement, Scott threw a couple of bills on the table and stood.
“Shall we go?”
Laurel followed him as naturally and willingly as if she’d vowed to do so for the rest of her life.
She almost stalled in her tracks. Where had that thought come from?
She’d just confused him with Paul again. That had to be it. It wouldn’t happen again.
* * *
HE’D NEVER KNOWN TORTURE could be so sweet. All day as they’d driven across the state, and now again, encased in the close confines of the Blazer with Laurel, her lilac scent filling the air, Scott could have been in heaven.
If he hadn’t already earned his entrance to hell.
Hour after hour he’d talked to her, listened to her laugh at the jokes he told, heard about some of the more heart-wrenching stories she’d covered. Hour after hour he’d imagined what it would have been like if he’d been the one she’d fallen in love with all those years ago.
It was a dangerous road to travel.
As an officer of the law, Scott knew better than to court danger. He had enough of it come his way all by itself.
“I’d like to head back toward Worcester,” Scott said, “so we can meet with Arnett’s parole officer first thing in the morning.”
He held his breath, waiting for Laurel to agree. Hoping that she would—and that she wouldn’t.
She did.
It was hard to believe, as they arrived back in Worcester, that they’d been there only that morning. Even for Scott, it had been one hell of a long day. He got them a couple of rooms in a well-known roadside motel. Generic, but nice enough to have thick towels and a basket full of free toiletries in the bathroom. Most important, it was clean.
“You hungry?” Laurel asked as they stood outside the doors to their adjoining rooms. They’d had a late lunch, but that had been hours ago.
“A little,” Scott said. He’d been thinking of room service.
“You want to order a pizza and watch a movie?”
If it hadn’t been for the flash of vulnerability he’d seen in her eyes, he’d have said no immediately. He’d already told himself—unequivocally—that he was going to leave her at her door and not see or speak to her again until he picked her up in the morning.
“Sure.” He cursed himself for the fool he knew himself to be.
He wasn’t made of iron.
* * *
SHE STILL PICKED the cheese off her pizza, eating it first, and saving the crust until last. It had always driven him crazy.
So did the way she licked her fingers, her tongue savoring every one, as though the appendage were part of the meal itself. He’d been ashamed more than once to find himself fantasizing about his tongue tasting her that way. And other ways as well...
“You think William’s dead?” she asked, frowning down at a piece of half-burnt pepperoni.
“No.” He wasn’t ready to believe that.
“You think William and Cecilia got to Leslie’s and then Dennis came and surprised them all?”
“Or maybe Leslie and Dennis surprised them. Let’s not forget, the Renwicks are Hamilton’s biggest client. As Cecilia’s brother, it’s not completely impossible that Dennis would have known Leslie. Maybe she fell in love with him, which he could have used to his advantage. They might be working together.”
“Do you really think that would have happened? That Cecilia would have let her brother be around her own daughter?”
“No.”
“Me, neither.”
“I’m not ready to rule out the possibility that Dennis knows Leslie now, however,” he said, pushing the box of pizza away. He’d had enough. “Or that someone is willing to do something life threatening to get their hands on the money Cecilia transferred.”
“William’s been gone five days without even so much as calling Twin Oaks to say he’s been delayed. Foul play’s a strong possibility.”
Scott was pretty much certain that Byrd was not missing of his own accord. “I’m not giving up hope that we’ll find him unharmed,” he said.
And he wasn’t.
But as each day passed, hope was waning.
* * *
SHE’D RENTED While You Were Sleeping, from the in-room movie selection. A romantic comedy about a woman pretending to be the fiancée of a man who is comatose in the hospital after an accident, the movie seemed an innocuous choice. Though it was a few years old, neither of them had seen it before.
Unless it was on late-night television, Scott hadn’t seen a movie in three and a half years, and was thankful Laurel didn’t ask why not.
He was glad she’d chosen a comedy. As far as he was concerned they’d had enough drama that week.
Lying back on one bed, she’d waited for him to settle on the other before starting the movie. If he turned himself just a little and propped his head up on both pillows, he could almost not see her lying on the bed next to him. It wasn’t as if this was the first time they’d been in a motel room together. There’d been several times when he had taken trips with Laurel and Paul for one reason or another. She and Paul had shared one bed, while he’d lain awake all night in the other, burning up with need—and jealousy of the older brother he’d adored.
The movie was cute, the heroine funny and compelling as she made her way through life alone, creating her own happiness where there was no one else to create it for her.
In many ways, she reminded him of Laurel.
No matter what life handed to Lucy in the movie, she wasn’t hard or bitter. Even losing her beloved father did not strip her of her belief in good things to come.
Lying there, more emotionally than physically exhausted, Scott thought of how alone Laurel was in the world. Yet like the movie heroine she didn’t let that aloneness harden her heart or sour her on life.
He found himself falling in love with Laurel all over again.
They were about halfway through the movie before he realized she was crying. Quietly the tears rolled down her cheeks. He didn’t know when she’d availed herself of a tissue, but as he watched, she surreptitiously wiped her nose without making a sound.
She was trying so hard to cover her reaction to the movie that he wondered if maybe it would be kinder to pretend he didn’t notice. Damn that movie for billing itself as a comedy when it was causing Laurel such grief.
With a furtive glance in his direction, Laurel caught him watching her—not the movie. He knew he should look away. His conscience told him he had to look away. Danger lurked in the emotion-laden air between them.
But
those beautiful gray eyes were filled with heartache and loneliness, and he couldn’t look away.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“YOU WANT TO talk about it?”
Laurel shook her head.
She did want to. So badly. She just didn’t know how. Having spent so much of her life hurting inside by herself, she hardly knew what else to do.
“You sure?” Scott’s gaze was soft, inviting.
She nodded, but she couldn’t quit crying. It was like that sometimes; the hurt would well up until it was an overwhelming physical ache. When that happened she had to just let it have its way, let it hurt, until some of the pressure eased and she could go on.
“Can you at least tell me what in particular about the movie is so upsetting to you?”
What she wanted to do was lay her head on his shoulder and cry until there were no tears left. She wanted to be comforted like a child.
And like a woman.
“It’s Lucy, you know?” She wasn’t sure where the words came from. She wasn’t good at this sort of thing—explaining her feelings.
She understood them perfectly. She just didn’t know how to put them into words without losing the intensity in the telling.
And it was the intensity that was so hard to live with.
“What about her?”
“Her whole life.” The tears continued to drip slowly down as she spoke. Lying back against the headboard, pillows propped behind her back, Laurel shredded the tissue she held between her hands. “The aloneness. I feel it so acutely.”
She studied the floral pattern on the bedspread and the threads in the quilting. Anything but look at Scott. She couldn’t get that close. Couldn’t have him seeing inside her.
“Because she’s celebrating Christmas alone?” he asked.
“It’s more than that.”
“What?”
In spite of her inclination not to, she glanced over at him. He lay on his side, his head propped on his hand, watching her. His focus was so complete it was as though he was physically touching her.
“She has no one who knows her—really knows her. No one who shares a history with her, who remembers what she was like as a baby. No one who shares a single genetic trait with her. No one to belong to.”
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