Under His Protection
Under His Protection
Amy J. Fetzer
HE WAS SWORN TO UPHOLD THE LAWDetective Nash Couviyon never let emotion interfere with duty. But when his former flame Lisa Bracket was the victim of a frame-up, he knew he had to help her clear her name. Although Nash had thought he'd never see Lisa again, desire for her had always burned inside him. To the untrained eye she looked guilty. However, Nash knew Lisa was innocent of murder, and when she became the victim of a series of attacks, he knew his instincts had proved right. Now the only way to keep her safe and draw out the true killer was to place Lisa under his protection. But did duty alone motivate him or did he hope to rekindle the love they'd once shared?
Lisa’s life was on the line
Nash had to make it safe for her again. He understood the evidence of the case, but the attacks were directed at her. He was willing to take a bullet in the line of duty, but there was no way he’d drag Lisa into the danger of his job. Inevitably, anything more than friendship would do that.
Even as Nash insisted to himself that he was restraining his feelings, that he was keeping as much distance as he could, he also knew it was a lost cause. Lisa was in his blood.
Four years hadn’t changed that.
He should be smarter, he thought. A hell of a lot smarter. But he couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t let someone else hold her. Images of Lisa and the past they’d once shared crowded his brain.
Nash didn’t think he was strong enough to let her go….
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
Beginning this October, Harlequin Intrigue has expanded its lineup to six books! Publishing two more titles each month enables us to bring you an extraordinary selection of breathtaking stories of romantic suspense filled with exciting editorial variety—and we encourage you to try all that we have to offer.
Stock up on catnip! Caroline Burnes brings back your favorite feline sleuth to beckon you into a new mystery in the popular series FEAR FAMILIAR. This four-legged detective sticks his whiskers into the mix to help clear a stunning stuntwoman’s name in Familiar Double. Up next is Dani Sinclair’s new HEARTSKEEP trilogy starting with The Firstborn—a darkly sensual gothic romance that revolves around a sinister suspense plot. To lighten things up, bestselling Harlequin American Romance author Judy Christenberry crosses her beloved BRIDES FOR BROTHERS series into Harlequin Intrigue with Randall Renegade—a riveting reunion romance that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Keeping Baby Safe by Debra Webb could either passionately reunite a duty-bound COLBY AGENCY operative and his onetime lover—or tear them apart forever. Don’t miss the continuation of this action-packed series. Then Amy J. Fetzer launches our BACHELORS AT LARGE promotion featuring fearless men in blue with Under His Protection. Finally, watch for Dr. Bodyguard by debut author Jessica Andersen. Will a hunky doctor help penetrate the emotional walls around a lady genius before a madman closes in?
Pick up all six for a complete reading experience you won’t forget!
Enjoy,
Denise O’Sullivan
Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
Under His Protection
Amy J. Fetzer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amy J. Fetzer was born in New England and raised all over the world. She uses her own experiences in creating the characters and settings for her novels. Married more than twenty years to a United States Marine and the mother of two sons, Amy covets the moments when she can curl up with a cup of cappuccino and a good book.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Lisa Bracket-Winfield—Four years ago Lisa left Indigo with a painful secret she’ll never reveal.
Detective Nash Couviyon—When Lisa finally comes back into his life, it’s not as his friend or lover, but as his prime suspect in a strange murder.
Peter Winfield—the victim, hiding more secrets than his ex-wife ever knew.
William Reese Baylor—Owner of the Baylor Inn. Murder under his roof has cost him more than customers.
John Chartres—Baylor Inn’s concierge. Does his superior attitude and attention to detail include planning the perfect murder?
Kathy Boon—A new face in town. Did what she heard and saw lead to her disappearance?
Catherine Delan—Linked to a married man, she has more to gain than anyone. And that makes her dangerous.
Carl Forsythe—Is he the killer or the key to why Winfield was murdered?
To Ronnie,
aka Kelsey Roberts
For your guidance and insight
while I stumbled through in a new genre
For pink friends,
weekends of dressing badly
and free association moments
For being friends
and mostly, for staying that way
even when things get weird
Love you, girl.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Prologue
Indigo, South Carolina
His death smelled like lavender.
Moisture from his bath still hung in the air like a veil, preventing him from sensing more than the cramping in his stomach, the flashes of hot and cold thrashing over his skin. The gradually slowing beat of his heart.
His thoughts collided, spilling into one another till he couldn’t recall truth from memory, fiction from fact. The buzzing of the phone, half-off its cradle, droned like a fly. Was it day or night? He could see no more than slivers of light draped in shadows.
As he lay on the bed, a towel barely covering him, his body felt heavy, immobile, pressed into the antique quilt. He hated being helpless. He hated disorder and the vulgarity of illness. Fury worked beneath his clammy skin and he tried to use it to counter the seeping of strength from his body in thick, oppressing waves. How long had he felt this numb? Earlier he’d thought it was the flu. But he knew better. It was happening too fast. The fire beneath his skin, the furious headache that only grew stronger. His eyes shifted sluggishly, the simple effort like sand grinding behind his lids, and the room tilted, the furniture stretching like something out of a cartoon.
His heartbeat slowed, beating a painful dirge toward his death.
He tried to reach again for the phone to call for help, but his fingers only flexed with a faint spring, then went still. Regret lanced through him, and her face filled his mind. Always her. She was his wife. She always would be.
He hated being pitiful, pathetically weak. And he was. Completely. His heartbeat dropped another notch, and he couldn’t fill his lungs. Saliva dribbled from his mouth and down the side of his face. He heard a noise and blinked to focus. He hadn’t the strength to turn his head, and the indignity of it, the slovenliness, humiliated him.
He’d have preferred a bullet between the eyes, messy as that would be. They would find him like this, he thought. Wet, naked and in God knew what state. A shadow moved, a shape forming in the faint light.
Help! Thank God, help!
His whimper shamed him, but he was desperate. Then the figure leaned over the bed. His eyes widened, but only a fraction. Rage and confusion ground down to the marrow of his bones, and he choked on words he couldn’t form, couldn’t push past his lips.
Why?
His killer smiled and watched him die.
Chapter One
The damp heat of Indigo in September still clung like a bad tempered child. By eight in the morning its punishing grip was firm and hot and wouldn’t be tamed till well past sunset. Locals were used to it, visitors complained about it, but that Detective Nash Couviyon had to investigate a suspicious death this early was an indecent slap to the beauty of the nearly three-hundred-year-old town.
Worse when death occurred in the richly appointed Baylor Inn, the jewel of Southern hospitality in Indigo and smack-dab in the center of the historic old town. He could almost hear the mayor’s outrage at such an event occurring here and scaring the tourists.
By the time Nash had arrived at the suite, the officers had already sealed off the floor and taken photographs. Unfortunately there were no witnesses to the crime. The victim had been locked in his suite and found by a member of the housekeeping staff in the morning.
Nash took a sip of coffee from a paper cup so thin his fingers, encased in latex gloves, felt seared by the heat. He circumvented the room again. Antique dressers bore two hundred years of wear like an ancient king. The thick down comforter on the bed reminded him of how little sleep he’d had the night before. The body of the victim was sprawled across the wide mattress.
Nash ignored it for a moment, his gaze picking through details that were not so obvious: the crystal tumbler with the dregs of a cocktail, the unopened briefcase neatly tucked under the desk. The air was filled with a revolting combination of death and the sweetness of flowers. Very little was out of place, no signs of a struggle. The sofa and stuffed chairs sat facing the hearth, and the only furniture that wasn’t an antique was an armoire holding the television and VCR. Resting on the lowboy was a sweet-grass basket filled with teas, packaged snacks, flavored coffees and a china mug only a woman would use. On the basket was a small brass oval engraved with “Enchanted Garden.” He frowned. Enchanted Garden was a nursery his brother Temple used in his landscaping business. Nash took account of the contents and gestured to an officer, who then bagged it.
A look through the victim’s clothing hanging in the closet, shoes precisely two inches apart, socks arranged by color, told Nash that the victim was fanatical about his appearance. The remains on the room-service tray from the night before indicated he cared about what he ate, too. It was so healthy it made Nash cringe.
Nash moved to the bathroom before examining the body again. His gaze sharpened at the evidence, sifting normal from unusual. The victim had bathed leisurely. His neatly arranged shaving gear and toiletries added to Nash’s initial feeling that the victim was picky about order. Several candles littered the edge of the tub, burned down to the nubs and dripping into the cold, cloudy bathwater. The mess contradicted what he’d seen so far. Then he leaned over the tub to lift what looked like a large teabag out of the water. Untying the ribbon that secured the thing to the faucet, he sniffed. So that was where the flower smell came from, he thought, lowering it into the evidence bag, then marking it. He handed the bag to an officer, then left the bathroom and returned to the suite. He stopped at the foot of the bed, staring at the victim.
White male, perhaps thirty-five, naked except for a towel around his waist and the scarf wrapped around his throat. Muscular body even in death, stylish haircut, manicured nails.
“Everything tagged and bagged?” Nash asked the patrol supervisor.
“Except him,” the man said, then handed him the victim’s wallet as he walked past.
Absently Nash slipped the wallet from the evidence bag, yet his attention, for the moment, was on the coroner.
At the side of the bed, Quinn Kilpatrick examined the body. His thickly muscled arms strained against his jacket sleeves, and though Quinn was built like a linebacker, he handled the body as if it were fine porcelain.
“What do you have for me?”
“You cops, always impatient.” Quinn bagged the victim’s hands.
“Hey, pillage and plunder, murder and mayhem, are going on as we speak. We have to go out and be heroes.”
Quinn smirked, but didn’t glance up as he lifted the victim’s arm to look beneath. “Dead nine hours at least.”
“The scarf?”
Quinn eased the nearly transparent pale-green scarf from around the victim’s neck. “There are ligature marks, but they’re not really dark enough to indicate this was the cause of death. Maybe postmortem. No other signs of strangulation. I’ll know more when I get him into the lab.” Quinn straightened, frowning still. “See this?”
“The rash?”
“It’s not a rash, it’s a reaction.”
“He didn’t have any medication, except vitamins, but he took a bath. Maybe it’s from whatever he added to the water?” Nash could still smell the flowery fragrance.
Quinn started to put the scarf into an evidence bag, then frowned, smelling the fabric. He held it out to Nash, who moved near and inhaled.
“Perfume.” Something caught in his gut. “That’s familiar.” And he knew exactly where he’d smelled the fragrance before. It was the one Lisa wore.
Lisa Bracket… Oh, hell. Lisa Bracket Winfield. His gaze snapped to the ID, then the body.
Peter David Winfield. Lisa’s husband. The man she married, instead of him. Well, that wasn’t quite true, he argued. Nash’d never asked her to marry him. After a year of dating steadily, he’d never told her he loved her, and when he said he didn’t want to get serious, she’d ended their relationship. A few months later she was dating Winfield, and Nash, like a jerk, cut her completely out of his life like a bad-tempered high-school jock the day before the prom. Six months later she was gone. And married. But she was in town, that much he knew from Temple. Alone. So why wasn’t she here with Winfield?
He flipped through the wallet, and her familiar face stared back at him from a photo. It landed a punch right between the eyes.
Lisa in her wedding dress.
He closed his eyes briefly, remembering her face with four-year-old clarity, the feel of her body against his and what she did to him with just a look. Which was plenty. His mind was latched on to the memory of her last kiss when someone called his name.
Nash, still trapped in the past, rubbed his face and looked up.
“There’s a woman wanting to speak with you.”
“Tell her she’ll have to wait.”
“I think you should talk to her, sir.” The officer’s gaze shifted briefly to the body on the bed. “She’s the victim’s wife.”
Nash’s features tightened, and he stepped into the hall, his gaze moving immediately to the barricade. Lisa stood beyond, an officer keeping her back.
“Nash.”
If he thought the picture of her punched him in the gut, seeing her in person tore him in two. It was fast heartbeats and the need to touch her all over again. Four years had only made her more beautiful. Red-haired, green-eyed and willowy slim. And she was married.
Well, a widow.
Nash glanced inside the hotel room. Emergency medical technicians were lifting the sheet-wrapped victim into a body bag, then onto a stretcher. Pulling the door closed behind him, he motioned the officer to let her pass.
Immediately Nash ushered her away from the suite and into a room they’d commandeered for questioning potential witnesses. Once inside, he positioned a patrolman outside, then closed the door.
Lisa frowned at the way Nash was acting. She hadn’t seen him in ages except for passing glimpses from a car now and then. Indigo was small compared to New York, but being on the fringes of Charleston, it was plenty large enough to get lost in. Lost enough not to have come face-to-face like this.
For a few moments they just stared at each other. “Hello, Lisa,” Nash finally said.
Lisa felt her stomach lurch as his deep voice rolled over her. God, he looked good. “Hey, Nash. How’s life treating you?”
Lousy, he thought, but said, “Decent. It’s been a while.”
This came with a hint of apology. Lisa shrugged, although her heart was hopping like a frog in a pond. “About four years, huh?”
The stiffness between them was almost palpable as Nash’s gaze moved over her from head to foot. She looked bright and fresh, scrubbed healthy, her red tank top exposing tanned arms, the short denim skirt showing off her long legs. Great gams, his father would’ve called them. “You said you’d never come back to Indigo.”
Why was he bringing this up now? she wondered. “Things change. I was born here. This is my home. Besides, you pushed me to say that,” she said, remembering their last fight. “I was angry.”
“I didn’t push you anywhere. Hell, you’re the one who wanted to end—”
He stopped abruptly, and she could see him shut down, close off. Typical, she thought.
He ran his hand over his mouth and sighed. “Well, that was real mature,” he said sheepishly.
Yes, it was, she agreed silently, for both of them.
Coolly, he gestured to two chairs set opposite each other at a delicate Queen Anne table, and as she sat, he poured her a cup of coffee in china cups the hotel manager had set out. He added cream to hers, just the right amount, and that he remembered sent her to a strange place in her heart. She tried to leave it.
“What exactly is going on here, Nash?”
He met her gaze, his expression offering nothing. That wasn’t unusual for Nash Couviyon. Except for his younger brother Temple, keeping feelings all locked inside was a family trait. She studied him, his dark hair shorter than she remembered, though the rest of him had changed little. He sat, the fabric of his suit jacket pulling against his broad shoulders as he braced his arms on the tabletop. It was hard not to notice the size of him, that the delicate cup was like a glass ornament in his fist, easily crushed. Planed like a sculptor’s creation in stone, he looked deadly, unbreakable. Unshakable. The sharp line of his jaw slid unrelenting to his cheekbones, slightly hollow beneath blue eyes. Wicked blue eyes, she’d always thought. Eyes that melted her insides, yet there was no sign of softness in them now. They were glass hard. Pinning her.
She sent the stare right back at him, bracing herself against feeling anything for him. Even as she thought that, she knew it was impossible. This was Nash.
“My employee, Kate, called my cell phone,” she said, “and told me the police asked me to come over, though I have no idea what for. Care to explain?”
Nash hated this part and prayed she hadn’t been anywhere near her husband in the past twelve hours. “Your husband is dead.”
Her expression went slack. “That’s impossible.”
“I’m sorry, but he’s in the next room, with the coroner.”
“But he was fine last night.”
Oh, God. “You were with him?”
She didn’t clue in to the narrow look he shot her. “I was married to him, Nash. If he was in town, don’t you think we’d at least see each other?”
“But you haven’t been living in the same city?”
“That’s because we were divorcing. As of this morning, our divorce is final.”
Nash frowned. This was not the conversation he’d thought he’d be having with her right now.
“Who do you think killed him?” she asked.
“Why would you say that?”
“I noticed the badge, Nash.” Her gaze darted where it hung on his jacket pocket. “You’re a detective now, not the chief coroner.” She arched a brow. “And Peter was a stockbroker—he made enemies daily.”
“I work on all suspicious deaths. You one of those enemies?”
“No, of course not. Peter adored me.” Too much, she thought. That adoration had twisted into something ugly. “However, we’ve been legally separated for two and a half years.”
A year after her marriage they separated? He didn’t want to feel smug about that. “Legal separation before filing isn’t that long. Why not divorce sooner? Why now?”
His shock didn’t do a thing for her except make her feel sick. It was tough to admit that her marriage had failed so early. “I couldn’t afford to divorce him till recently, and he wouldn’t do it. In fact, last night, he…oh, jeez.”
For the first time it hit her, really hit her. And Nash watched as her features fell, her lower lip quivered. She looked down at the china cup, but when she brought it to her mouth, her trembling proved that her grip on her emotions was tenuous. She set the cup down.
Tears welled up in her eyes and fell. She cried without sound.
Nash ached to hold her, but he was on duty, and not one of her favorite people, so he kept his distance. She was a suspect, a prime one. She wouldn’t want his help, anyway, but it was killing him to watch her fight her tears. Lisa had always been a tough cookie, and to see her come apart was heartbreaking. Teardrops hit her hands and the table in tiny plops.
He felt them like gunshots.
He left his chair and grabbed a tissue, shoving it into her line of sight. She muttered thanks and took it. It was several more minutes before she regained her composure. Nash felt useless.
“I need to ask you a few more questions.”
She nodded and met his gaze, sniffling once.
Nash set a tape recorder on the table and pushed record. He recited her name, marital status, age, the time… Lisa didn’t hear the rest. She was too stunned to listen. Was he questioning her as a suspect or character witness?
“For the record, when did you last see Peter Winfield?”
She blinked at the recorder, then met his gaze. “Last night at around eight-thirty, nine o’clock. He’d called me and asked me to come over.”
“What happened?”
“He wanted one more chance to make me stay with him.”
“Make you?”
Always a cop, she thought, reading something into every little thing. “Well, make isn’t really correct. Convince would be a better word.” Threaten would be even better.
“Why did you divorce?”
She looked down at her coffee, watching the cream separate into a star shape. “Irreconcilable differences.”
“I don’t buy that for a second.”
Her gaze jerked to his. “It’s personal.” Nash wasn’t getting details. No one was.
“But you left town with him so quickly.”
This was old news, she thought. “It was four months after you and I had broken up, Nash. You’d already shoved me out of your life, so what do you care now?”
His mouth tightened, a lid on what he really wanted to say. “We were together for a year, and you never did give me a good reason for why you left me.”
She didn’t want to rehash this now. “Oh, there was plenty of reasons, they just weren’t yours. I needed someone who wanted what I did.” Someone to love me back, she thought. To want me for a lifetime and not just a frequent date.
“And did you get all you wanted?”
Damn him. He knew she hadn’t, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t deliriously happy with what she had right now. It wasn’t any of his business why her marriage ended, only that it had. And who was he to ask questions now when he didn’t bother four years ago? If he had, she’d have told him about their baby. “Are old feelings and reasons part of this investigation, Detective?”
Nash felt the slam of a door as if it hit his nose. She was right. He had to get back to business and not relive their past.
“Did you drive over last night?” he asked.
“No, it was only just getting dark and it was a clear night. I walked.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“Walking here? I imagine so. Anyone I know? I can’t say. When I got here, the restaurant was full, and the staff were waiting on guests. I came up here and knocked.”
“What was Winfield wearing when you saw him?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Answer the question, please.”
With the way he spoke to her, so cold and detached, as if they’d never shared a bed and some really great sex, she wondered if she should stop right now and call a lawyer. But she hadn’t done anything wrong.
“He was wearing Brooks khaki slacks, matching socks. A hunter-green, tailored, short-sleeve shirt, pressed and creased. Brown Florsheim shoes and a brown belt.” Good clothing had been an addiction of Peter’s.
Nash made notes in a black leather book. His gaze slid up to meet hers, and for a second his expression softened a fraction. Lisa glimpsed the man she once loved. Then just as quickly that man was gone again.
“Did anyone else know you were going to see him?”
“I might have mentioned it to my staff.” She wiped her eyes again, then threw the wad of tissue into a trash can.
“I’ll need to talk with them.”
Why? she wanted to know, but she didn’t argue. “Free country. They’re adults, not children. I’ll give you their home numbers.” She wrote the information on the back of a business card and handed it to him. He didn’t even glance at it, simply tucked it in his notebook. “Kate’s at the counter now, and Chris doesn’t come in till after his last class. He’s a college student at USC.”
Nash scribbled and she noticed the shorthand. She’d flunked that course.
“What were you wearing at the time you visited your husband?”
“A lime-green skirt and top, matching sandals and purse.”
He arched a brow.
“Matching jewelry, too. Wanna see it?”
“I’ll want to take all of it.”
“What?” Her eyes widened, and the feeling she’d had moments ago landed like a brick against her heart. “You think I had something to do with Peter’s death.”
Nash continued to write.
“Nash Couviyon!”
Still he didn’t comment, then slowly met her gaze again. “I don’t have an opinion yet. We need samples from your things to compare with what forensics finds in the room.”
“You definitely think he was murdered?”
Nash wasn’t ready to say so just yet. “The death of a healthy man is always suspicious.”
“Oh, for the love of Mike,” she said, and the air left her lungs in one shot. “You actually think I had something to do with it?”
Her words drained away any feeling she had, any trust she might have given him. Then the she-cat he remembered and had loved came racing back.
“This meeting is over,” she said.
He strove for patience. “Lisa, I have to look at all the possibilities.”
Her green eyes narrowed to slits. “Look elsewhere, Detective,” she said, and started to rise.
“Sit down!” he snapped.
Lisa lowered herself into the chair again, scowling at him.
“It’s either here or the station, Lisa. Your choice.”
She folded her arms and glared. “Fine. Ask away.”
“Did you carry anything into the room besides your handbag?”
Lisa searched his features. “No, but I had on a scarf.”
Something inside Nash froze. “Describe it please.”
“It was my grandmother’s. It’s pale green with hand-painted irises. It’s the reason I got here so quickly this morning. I was on my way here to get it back.”
“Why did you leave it?”
“I didn’t. It was in my hair, which I had in a ponytail. The scarf was tied around the rubber band to hide it. It must have come undone. It’s silk and slippery.”
Nash wrote, the notebook sliding on the highly polished table. The business card she’d given him showed and he flipped it over.
Lisa thought she saw sadness flicker in his eyes.
“The Enchanted Garden, that’s your business?”
“Yes.” She frowned. “Didn’t you already know that?”
Nash shook his head.
“I started it up about ten months ago. It’s on my land around the house and it’s doing really well.” Her brows knit. “I don’t get it. Your brother Temple buys some of his plants for his landscaping business from me. I thought you knew.”
“I knew he used this nursery, but he never mentioned it was yours.”
“Maybe he thought he was being disloyal to his older brother by doing business with me. I know how you Couviyon brothers stick together.”
“Obviously, Temple has his own set of rules.”
“I know, he’s an outrageous flirt.”
She was trying to ease the tension in the room. But Nash could feel it thicken the air. He tossed the card down and rose, moving to the door and speaking to the officer posted outside, who moved off to do his bidding. Nash waited, glancing back at her only once. She couldn’t have done this, he thought.
“Why didn’t you ever come by to say hello, Nash?”
“I knew you were here, Lisa.” He didn’t look at her. “I didn’t want to open that door again.” It hurt too much, he thought, then realized it still did.
“And saying hello, how’s your mama, would have been torture?”
“Yeah, it would have.”
Lisa’s lips tightened. Well, that said a lot, she thought.
“Why didn’t you come to me?” he asked.
“I was still married.”
Nash simply stared, wondering if she’d been single would they have gotten back together. And in the same moment he remembered that she had dumped him. She’d wanted picket fences and babies, and he couldn’t give her that. Aside from the fact that he’d just taken a bullet in the line of duty and lost his partner, he’d watched the devastation hit the widow and cut a strong woman off at the knees. He couldn’t do that to Lisa.
The officer returned, interrupting his thoughts and handing him two paper bags. Nash moved back to the table and set them on the floor. He reached into one and pulled out a plastic evidence bag.
“Is this your scarf?”
“Yes.” She extended a hand.
He pulled it back. “Evidence.”
“What do you mean, evidence? It’s my scarf.”
“It was found wrapped around the victim’s neck, Lisa.” Her eyes widened, and she went perfectly still. When she sank back into the chair, he asked, “Now do you want to tell me what you argued about?”
“No, I don’t. It was personal.”
Nash backed off for now. “Were you angry when you left here?”
“No, I was just tired, Detective.”
Nash heard the wall go up between them, even if he couldn’t see it. He returned the plastic envelope to the bag. “Do you make teas?”
She blinked, taken aback. “Yes, I do. My herb plants grow quickly in this weather, and I have to cut them back. It’s a waste not to do something with the herbs.”
“And do you sell the teas at your place of business?”
“Not as a regular commodity, no. I use the cuttings for cooking or rooting new plants. Occasionally I make bath teas, scented bath salts, a couple of mint and catnip drinking teas, and I put them in baskets with a live plant. But it’s not a main part of my business, and it’s time-consuming to put them together. So I make them up as requested.”
“The baskets are for regular sale?”
“No, only with the custom orders. They’re handmade, too expensive to make a profit and to keep a reasonable stock of them takes up considerable space.” Lisa glanced at the notes he was furiously writing. “Especially because the humidity can rot them. I run a nursery, not a bath-and-tea shop.”
“Did you bring one of these custom baskets to the hotel or have it delivered?”
Her brows knitted. “No.” Peter would have seen any gift as a peace offering. Heck, she thought, her very presence made him believe she wasn’t going to divorce him, although she’d signed the papers weeks before and it had been only a matter of the time line hitting a specified mark. One that had her in deep trouble right now, she suspected.
“Describe the baskets please.”
Lisa told him what they looked like, but when she described the brass oval engraved with “Enchanted Garden,” he wilted in his chair. She’d bet her best Kamali pumps that a basket just like one of hers was in that larger bag at his feet.
“Did you speak to anyone on your way to the Baylor Inn, and did anyone see you enter and or exit the building?”
That Nash wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t even acknowledge her with so much as a nod as he wrote, made her bristle. “I don’t recall. At the time I didn’t know I’d need an alibi. Now my husband is dead. My ex-husband. And you’ve all but accused me of his murder.”
“I don’t have enough evidence for charges.”
Something inside her shattered. “We have nothing more to say to each other.” She stood. “Unless it’s with my lawyer present.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say that, by law, he could hold her for questioning. “I’ll need everything you were wearing last night.”
“Fine. I’ll deliver the clothing to the station within the hour. Are we finished?”
“For now, yes.”
Lisa strode to the door. Before she could open it, Nash was there, his hand over her fist.
Her gaze snapped to his. He could taste her fury, it was so pungent.
“Back off, Detective.”
He didn’t. “Lisa, let’s not start like this.”
She laughed, sharp and bitter. “We aren’t starting a damn thing, Couviyon. We were finished four years ago.” Four years ago when I was pregnant with your child, she thought, knowing that if she’d ever considered telling him the truth, she sure didn’t now.
“You finished it. I didn’t.”
“You were never in the relationship, Nash. You had your own neat version and you kept me on the outside unless we were in bed.” She shook off his hand and jerked opened the door.
“Lisa. This is my job.”
“I’m thrilled for you. Go do it. And until you have something more than accusations, don’t come near me.”
She left, striding past the officers. Nash signaled to let her pass. She was pure anger in a snug skirt and high-heeled sandals.
“Seems like a hostile witness, Detective,” an officer said.
Nash let out a breath. “Oh, yeah.”
Chapter Two
Nash watched Lisa storm off, leaving him feeling twisted and confused. This was why he hadn’t dropped by her place to say hello, he thought. She did things to him no other woman had and he still hurt. The humiliation of being dumped by her hardly compared to the feelings of regret he’d had for months after learning she was six hundred miles away walking down the aisle with another man.
Seeing her today warned him he still wasn’t over her. Just looking into her eyes stung his heart.
Suddenly Quinn stuck his head out of the room, caught a glimpse of Lisa and whistled softly. Then he looked at Nash.
“That Couviyon charm not working today, laddie?”
Nash eyed Quinn. “You knew she was coming here?”
“I heard the supervisor call her. And yes, I also remembered her married name.”
Quinn’s look said Nash had had his head in the sand. Not good for a cop, Nash knew. “She’s divorced officially as of this morning.”
“So she was still the wife when the victim died?”
Any connection between Lisa and the victim was suspect and damaging, Nash thought. “As I recall, the exact time of death is your job, Kilpatrick,” he snarled, pushing past Quinn and into the suite.
Nash ordered a background check on the victim. And his wife.
“Detective?”
Nash rounded, ready to chew someone in two.
A short, wiry man in a black suit stepped into the room. “You couldn’t keep this quiet?” he said, glancing around.
Nash’s breath snapped out of him. Baylor, the owner of the hotel, and he looked pissed. The day was just getting better and better.
“There are other guests, you know, and they want back into their rooms.”
“They will be allowed in soon. And it’s a little hard to hide a suspicious death.”
The man’s eyes were glued to the black body bag rolling away on a stretcher. “Murder?”
Ignoring that, Nash took out his pad, and when he was about to escort Baylor to another room for questioning, the man rushed over to an officer dusting the dresser for prints. “Is that going to leave a stain? This chest is two hundred years old.”
The police officer gave Baylor a once-over, then glanced beyond him to Nash and said, “No sir,” before going back to work.
“Sir?” Nash crooked a finger. “You’re Mr. Will Baylor?”
The man nodded. “William Reese Baylor IV,” he clarified. “I’m the owner. My family built this home over 150 years ago.”
“Nice place,” Nash said, caring little about Baylor’s lineage and the inn’s history. His own family had a plantation, Indigo Run, on the edge of town that had been in operation since 1711. “You met the deceased?”
“Briefly when he checked in two days ago. Very nice man. He kept to himself.”
“Did he meet anyone here?”
“We don’t question our guests so personally. We pride ourselves on privacy, relaxation and discretion.”
Nash’s gaze narrowed dangerously, and the owner folded.
“Not that I know of. But I’m not here twenty-four seven. With the exception of lunch yesterday, I believe he dined in his suite.”
For a man here on business, Winfield didn’t do much, Nash thought. Except meet with Lisa. Winfield’s PalmPilot indicated he had three meetings but gave no names or times, only dates, and though the victim’s laptop was found in the room, they needed a password to access the data.
“How did they get in? Was it someone he knew?” Baylor moved to a set of French doors, but Nash stopped him from opening them, wiggling his own gloved fingers.
“Prints.”
Baylor glanced at the officer still kneeling by the chest of drawers. “Oh, yes, of course. This balcony leads to a separate entrance for this room and the one next door. There’s a staircase, very narrow and steep, leading to the lower floors outside the kitchen and a path to the patio. It was once the servants’ staircase.”
The door had an old-fashioned brass latch, one that you had to wrap your hand around to open. With a pen, Nash tried pushing it. It was locked from the inside. But that didn’t mean someone couldn’t have come up here and left this way. Checking that it had been already dusted, Nash opened it, careful not to step on the porch. Earlier, officers had canvassed the area, and it was going to take some manpower to see if anyone had noticed someone entering the suite through this door. He looked down, then squatted. They hadn’t had rain in a while, and the dust level was high. There were several shoe prints in the dust outside the door, and although they’d been lifted and logged already, there were two smaller sets. A woman’s?
Nash rubbed his face and straightened. “Who sent the basket?”
The owner frowned and Nash produced the sweet-grass basket with Lisa’s logo on the rim.
“I don’t know. It’s not something we ordered. We provide toiletries for our guests and we have better taste than to offer homemade items.” Baylor made a face at the basket. “We do seasonal fruit and flavored coffees, too.” He pointed to the silver tray on a stand near the windows. An officer was collecting it.
Nash stared at the basket. Most of it wasn’t homemade, and he wondered again about the teabag-shaped thing dangling from the bathtub faucet.
Another officer stripped the fitted sheet and quilt from the bed.
“No, no, no, that quilt is mine,” Baylor said.
Nash touched his arm. “It’s evidence. It’ll be returned to you.”
“It’s a hundred years old and in perfect condition, and it had better come back to me that way.” The odors hit Baylor and he blanched a bit. Death hung in the air like a vapor.
“If it’s so precious, why is it displayed on a bed?”
Baylor sniffed. “Ambiance.”
Nash suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “Take that up with forensics.” He handed him a card.
Baylor snatched it as if snatching the quilt, then looked around at his eighteenth-century-decorated suite. Nash saw him droop with disappointment.
“I’m not going to be able to rent this room for a while,” he said disparagingly.
“We’ll let you know when we’re done with it.”
“That’s not what I mean. Who’d want to stay here?”
“People die every day.”
Boarding-school posture gripped Baylor’s spine. “Not in my inn.”
Death was tough for most people. For Nash, it was his career. He spoke for the dead, investigated for them. And he had compassion for the people left behind. But Baylor was more concerned with hotel profits than the fact of a guest’s death. Takes all kinds, Nash thought.
“I need a list of who had access to this room. Everyone who has a master key to both doors and who was on duty for the past week.”
Baylor nodded.
Nash stared. “Today.”
Baylor’s expression held more than one man’s share of exasperation.
Nash added to it. “I’d like to speak to the staff, too.”
“Now? They’re busy with guests.”
Nash kept writing in his notepad, not looking up. “You know, Mr. Baylor, I’m getting the sense that you don’t want us to find out what happened.”
“Of course I do. It could have been an accident— maybe he banged his head in the tub or something.”
Nash’s brows drew together. How did this man know the victim was found wearing only a towel and the bathtub was full of water? Or was he just worried that if that was the case, the family would sue? “Where were you between 5:00 p.m. yesterday and this morning, Mr. Baylor?”
If the victim had been dead nine hours, then Nash had to narrow the suspect list.
Baylor gave Nash a look that said he thought himself beyond reproach. “I’ll give you my schedule. Follow me, and I’ll introduce you to the concierge.”
THE CONCIERGE, John Chartres, was a tall, narrow man with equally confined features, and for someone living in a southern seaboard town, he was as pale as the white shirt beneath his tailored suit. His black hair was swept back with a severity that sharpened his face and made his eyes and lips look vibrant against his skin. He wore disdain like a tie, and he rose from behind the delicate desk like a king from his throne. Oh, yeah, that says welcome to the Baylor real well, Nash thought cynically.
Then the man spoke and the New York accent, however he tried to hide it, hurt Nash’s ears.
“I didn’t see anyone go to his suite specifically. Perhaps you should question the housekeeping staff. I’m usually in my office.”
“Isn’t it your job to know all the guests? To see that their stay is perfect?”
“I delegate well.”
I’ll bet. And actually working your job was for the little people, Nash thought. “Did you know Mr. Winfield?”
“Other than his face and name, no. He was only a guest.”
Nash kept his features relaxed, but that the man kept shuffling through papers and not looking him in the eye said he was hiding something. Nash would have to dig a little with this one.
“You have a key to the door to the back staircase?”
“I have a key to every door in this hotel.”
“I’ll need a list of which keys each employee carries and where they are kept.”
Chartres gestured and Nash followed the man into the reception area and behind the counter.
Nash’s gaze swept the rows of keys. “You’re kidding, right? Anyone could take these.” The keys weren’t the computer-card type but old-fashioned brass, which he was sure added the same sort of ambiance as the antique quilt.
“Each room has inside locks, as well, and though they look old, they aren’t.” Chartres handed a key over.
It was chiseled like a house key, but the tab was brass with Victorian scroll.
“The balcony doors have no outside handles,” Chartres said, then explained, “The staff doesn’t use it. Though it’s sturdy, in keeping with the historical accuracy, the staircase remains steep and narrow. We discourage guests from opening the doors unless they are in residence. There is a push latch in case the door closes, but the inside lock must be disengaged.”
So, Nash thought, if anyone came into the room from that direction, the guest had to be expecting them and the locks had to be disengaged. The balcony doors had been locked from the inside when the police had arrived. Had Winfield opened them for his killer? Or his ex-wife? Even as the thought careened through his head, Nash hated himself for it. Lisa was not capable of murder. Not the Lisa he once knew.
“You said you were on duty?” Nash asked.
“Yes. And if you don’t mind, can we take this back into my office?”
As they headed in that direction, Chartres lagged behind, smiling at an elderly couple approaching the reception area. He slipped behind the gleaming counter to retrieve a few slips of paper, handing them to the couple. “Your phone messages,” Chartres said to them. “And your 7:00 p.m. reservations at Emily’s are set.”
Nash had to admit that when Chartres was talking with the hotel patrons, he was all smiles and warmth. The couple inquired about the police cars and ambulance, and Chartres explained that a guest had passed away during the night and for them not to worry. But then Nash shouldered his way past, introduced himself and questioned the elderly couple. It gained him nothing. Though their rooms were on the floor below, they insisted they were sound sleepers.
Chartres gestured to the office. “That was rude, Detective.”
“A policeman’s job is often rude. Everyone is a potential witness.” Nash’s look said the concierge was on that list, and Chartres stiffened, affronted. “At what time did you leave your post?” Nash asked once they were in the small office.
“I didn’t.”
“Not to eat, not to use the bathroom?”
“No. Meals are brought here, if I want. And I didn’t.”
“You didn’t make the rounds during the cocktail and dinner hour?”
“No.”
Then who’s to say he was even in the office? Nash thought. “You have a popular restaurant in this hotel, Mr. Chartres. You didn’t leave your office and stroll through, introducing yourself?”
“It was a quiet night.”
“Quiet enough not to notice someone heading up to Mr. Winfield’s room?”
“Apparently. This hotel is more like a home, the atmosphere unobstructed. It’s why we do so well. Not all the suites are occupied, anyway. We don’t check on the comings and goings of guests, only that while they’re here, they’re happy.”
“You had a delivery to a room, yet no one seems to recall receiving it.”
“What delivery?
“A basket from Enchanted Garden.”
“It may have been a gift from someone. All deliveries are signed for and recorded.” Chartres swiveled his chair toward a computer screen and tapped the keys. He peered. “The only deliveries were the daily flowers for the rooms, a guest’s dry cleaning and a package from High Cotton for the elderly couple you saw, which was placed in their room.”
That high-school class in shorthand came in handy sometimes, Nash thought as Chartres tried to sneak peeks at his notes. After a few more questions, Chartres printed out a list of the staff and phone numbers and a schedule roster. Nash folded it into his leather notebook, then stood, offering his hand. Chartres’s palm was smooth and dry, his grip firm.
Nash left, heading back upstairs again to check the outer doors. Officers were almost finished with the room and had double-checked outside for footprints. Nash opened the door and studied the deck, the path down to the first and second floors. He wondered if Baylor had the floor plans to this place and walked across the balcony and down the stairs. A private home was tucked only yards away, beside the hotel, and a privacy fence carved a smart line between the properties. The inn dining room was to the rear, a sizable portion of seating outdoors on a stone patio surrounded by exotic flowering shrubs and shaded with umbrellas. It was empty now.
Nash climbed back up the stairs to look around the suite once more. Was the scarf the murder weapon? If not, Winfield could have died from anything, food poisoning or heart trouble. Until he had an autopsy, Nash was finished here. He’d collect reports from the other officers, run a check on Winfield, and then he’d know where to go from there. At the moment there was too little evidence to point him in any direction.
Except at Lisa.
He was done for now, anyway, he reasoned and returned to his office, dropping into his chair and tossing his notebook on the desk. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, then sagged back into the chair. A bag of clothing marked “Lisa Bracket Winfield” was sealed and on his desk. A note from the sheriff said she’d offered prints before they’d asked. Her angry expression flashed like lightning in his mind. He could have handled that confrontation better, he thought. He knew he hadn’t accused her of the crime, but the questions always made people defensive. But what the hell was she hiding?
Winfield had been pushed to his death, but his instincts told Nash there was more than a silk scarf connecting this to Lisa. And he never ignored his instincts.
The phone shrilled and before it reached a second ring he snatched it up. “Couviyon.”
“Detective, this is Kathy Boon. I’m a housekeeper at the Baylor Inn. They, I mean my boss, wanted me to call you to tell you that I saw a woman go into Mr. Winfield’s room.”
“Describe her please.”
“Red hair, long, in a ponytail tied with a scarf. Killer outfit. Lime-green skirt, same color top but it had polka dots on it. She was about five-eight, I’d guess. Pretty. I noticed her because her handbag and shoes matched her skirt and not too many people can get away with wearing that color.”
Nash allowed himself a smile, then glanced at the shopping bag of clothes Lisa had turned in. “What time was it when you saw this woman?”
“About eight-thirtyish, maybe quarter to nine. I work till midnight, then come in at five, so that’s why I wasn’t around this morning.”
“Did you see her leave?”
“No, I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean anything. I go from the laundry to the rooms about a dozen times a night.”
“Did you see anyone else enter Mr. Winfield’s room?”
“Room service at about six.”
Winfield had been alive at six. The attendant had already confirmed delivering the meal around then. “Did you hear anything coming from Mr. Winfield’s room?”
She was quiet.
“Ma’am?”
“I’m thinking. No…well, I’m not sure. I heard arguing at a little past nine, but not enough to call the cops or anything. Oh, God, maybe I should have.”
“You couldn’t have known, ma’am.”
As she spoke, Nash checked the employee roster and found her name, marking beside it. His head was swimming, mostly with images of Lisa and the absolute fury she’d thrown at him.
“If I have any more questions, I’ll call you.”
“Yeah, sure, and if I think of anything more, I’ll let you know.”
He hung up and leaned back in his chair. Lisa had definitely been there. He hoped the coroner came back with something soon. Lisa wasn’t capable of hurting anyone. At least not physically. And as he remembered their conversation, he recognized his own bitterness, as well as hers.
What would have happened, he wondered, if he’d fought for her all those years ago? If he’d gone to her and said…what? That he loved her? Unfortunately he hadn’t realized he loved her until she was walking down the aisle with someone else and he was miles away regretting it.
The phone shrilled, jerking him from unhappy musing. He grabbed the receiver and punched line one. “Detective Couviyon.”
“Hey, Nash, this is your favorite lab rat.”
Nash smiled. The coroner, Quinn Kilpatrick. “Tell me you have something for me, good buddy.”
“The deceased died between ten and midnight. I’ll have more specific analysis in a few hours, a day max.”
“Cause of death?”
“Toxic poisoning.”
“What about the scarf?”
“That was after the fact. Poisoning looks like an overdose of digitalis, near as I can tell, but if you quote me right now, I’ll deny it.”
“How did he get it?”
“An injection, in a drink, food—a number of ways.”
“Could he have overdosed accidentally?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to nail this element, and I’m waiting on his med records to see if he was being treated for anything. Be patient.”
Nash didn’t have any patience today and struggled for a scrap. “I thought you couldn’t detect digitalis.”
“That’s why you can’t quote me.”
Nash hung up and studied his notes. Winfield had lived in New York and the NYPD had been notified. The victim’s apartment would be sealed off and swept for evidence. It was time, he thought, to find more suspects. Yet in the back of his mind lingered one troubling question. Had Lisa Bracket Winfield changed enough over the past four years to be capable of murder?
LISA SLID INTO the booth in the diner and smiled at her lawyer, Trisha Flynn. Trish had her notebook out, ready to talk.
“We could have met at the office, Lisa.”
Lisa shook her head, grateful for the cup of coffee waiting for her. “That would make me feel like a real suspect.”
“From what you told me, you’re the best possible one.”
“Gosh, you’re a fun date, huh?” Lisa’s heart sank and at the same time, anger unfolded. Was Peter going to keep ruining her life? “Dammit, Trish, I didn’t do this,” she said, trying to keep her voice down. “When I left Peter last night, he was very much alive.”
“And mad as hell, I’ll bet.”
Lisa scoffed. “He wasn’t getting his way, so yes, he was mad.” Lisa glanced at the menu, and they ordered, silent till the waitress left them.
“Was it the same argument?” Trish asked.
“Oh, yes. When was it not?”
“You don’t look upset that he’s dead.”
“I grieved. I loved him once upon a time.” And I loved Nash, too, she thought, and knew if it had been him who died, she wouldn’t be functioning nearly as well. “But you know better than anyone what it was like with him, Trish. And now to have Nash nosing around in my personal business, my marriage…”
“You should have told him.”
Trisha had been with her when she’d miscarried her baby. “Is that my lawyer or friend talking?” Lisa asked.
Trisha smiled, her dark hair sweeping over her shoulder as she reached for the creamer. “Your friend. Who’s on lawyer time.”
Lisa tried to smile and couldn’t. “I know you think Nash should know about the baby I lost, but I understand him better than he does. It wouldn’t have worked out then, and bringing it up now will only hurt him more.” Four years had eased the loss only a little.
“But Nash wants to know what you and Peter fought about.”
“I can’t, Trish.” Lisa’s eyes teared up, and she grabbed a paper napkin, blotting them. Wimp, she thought, you’ve been through worse. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, honey. We’ve all been there.” Lisa met her gaze. “Do you want me to petition to have him removed from the case?”
“You can do that?”
“He has a personal attachment.”
“No, it will just make me look guilty.”
“Is Nash an honest man, Lisa?” her lawyer asked.
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Would he use this to hurt you?”
“I…I don’t think so.”
Trish voiced no opinion on that, and Lisa wondered how bad this was going to get. “Okay, the conversation you and Peter had last night is inadmissible, and your word against a dead man’s is hearsay,” Trisha said. “Don’t worry about it now. It has no bearing on his death that I can see.”
Lisa relaxed back into the leather seat and nursed her coffee. “And if Nash believes it does?”
“Let’s wait to see what they come up with, because right now, we know you didn’t kill Peter.”
Lisa was grateful Trisha believed her, but the certainty that Nash didn’t was brewing like a storm inside her.
“Do you want me to hire a private detective to find out what I can?”
“No.”
Trisha eyed her, making notes.
“The police are working on it, Trish. I’m innocent.”
“Nash has already ordered a deep background check on Peter and it will include you.”
Lisa shrugged. “That can’t be helped.”
“And if he reads medical records?”
Suddenly Lisa went still. “Don’t they have to get a court order?”
“Not if you’re a suspect. And if you want to look innocent, you give them permission.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I have to.” But the thought of telling Nash the truth gave her nothing but pain. He might still be a little hurt, but the truth would destroy him.
Their food arrived. Lisa stared down at the healthy-looking green salad, then called the waitress back.
“I’ll start with dessert. Chocolate. Anything with chocolate.”
“Woman after my own heart,” the waitress said as she left.
Trisha shook her head, smiling.
Lisa shrugged. “Hey, I’ll jog an extra two miles.”
A minute later the waitress slid the dessert before her. And both women gaped at the five-layer torte covered in chocolate fudge.
“Better make that five miles,” Trisha said, laughing. “With sit-ups.”
Lisa stabbed a chunk of torte enjoying the calories one at a time. “You could join me, but I know how you look running in those high heels you refuse to lose. It ain’t pretty, sugah.”
Trisha smiled and forked a bite of the dessert.
Lisa devoured bite after bite, knowing that not even gooey chocolate would keep her mind off Nash and that he thought she was capable of murder.
Chapter Three
The next day Lisa was still fuming, and the best thing for her temper was to dig in the dirt. Leaving Kate to oversee the register, she repotted new stock and replaced the plants in the smaller gardens that had been sold in the past few days. She scrubbed terra-cotta pots, clipped cuttings, clipped herbs and tied them to dry, then deadheaded flowers. Anything to keep her mind off Nash Couviyon and the fact that he thought she was capable of killing another human being. It made her ill. And it hurt.
Lord, it hurt.
Obviously whatever relationship they’d had—and she still wasn’t certain they’d had a real one—meant nothing. Not when you’re faced with murder charges, she supposed.
Peter was dead. She grieved for him of course, but it was mild. That shamed her. She’d been his wife, in name only for the past three years. Still. He didn’t deserve to die, although she’d learned quickly in their marriage that he wasn’t a very nice person. Once she wore his ring, he’d become controlling, manipulative, obsessive.
He’d damn near driven her crazy in a few short months. And she’d learned her true purpose in his life. Be pretty, behave, give great parties, and schmooze…
A trophy wife.
Boy, did he learn he’d chosen poorly. And so did she. She’d left and started over. Started over a couple of times, in fact, she mused, and now she had every cent she’d earned in the past three years sunk into this house and her nursery business. She’d done most of the work herself and business was steady. Temple Couviyon had steered some contractors her way for her more exotic plants. Life was getting back to good, she thought, and felt as if she’d spent a century getting to this very moment.
And now it could be over. If word leaked out that she was a suspect in a murder case, she’d be ruined. Her reputation would be shot.
Shaking her head, she plowed her hands deep into the potting soil she was mixing. Though the fresh compost smelled fine, the stench of cow manure was strong enough to make her eyes water.
It was how Nash found her. Elbow deep in black dirt, pausing to add vermiculite to the mix. Outside the greenhouse, she kneaded and folded the soil, and although there were tears in her eyes, her expression said she wasn’t crying. She looked on that road between pissed off and pleased.
Nash wasn’t sure he should interrupt. “Lisa?”
She hesitated, then kept folding dirt in the large galvanized tub.
“What is it, Detective?” Lisa recognized his voice instantly, almost felt his presence before he spoke. It was irritating as hell that he could still do that to her.
He moved to her side. She glanced at him.
The impact of those green eyes left him momentarily hurting for air. “Peter was poisoned.”
Her head whipped to the side, her eyes wide. “Good Lord, how?”
“That we don’t know yet. Did he have heart trouble?”
She snorted and went back to mixing. “No. He was never sick. He’s…he was a guru about eating healthy foods, taking vitamins. Working out. It was really annoying that the man wouldn’t relax and just have fun. Be a slug, lie like a potato.” She bit her lip, knowing she’d said more than she should have. “I don’t think I should talk to you without a lawyer present.”
“You haven’t been charged.”
“And that makes a difference?”
“Cooperating will go in your favor. Do you want to impede an investigation?”
“I’ve told you all I can recall.”
“Except what you and Peter discussed, exactly.”
“He wanted me back… It doesn’t matter,” she said tiredly. “He was alive when I left him.” She moved to the sink and washed her hands. “I get it. You don’t have motive.”
“You were his wife—”
“Ex, or soon to be, at the time,” she stressed.
“—and you stood to gain. On the day of his death you were still legally married.”
“Splitting hairs, Nash. I didn’t ask for anything of his when I left him, and I hadn’t been his wife in any sense, including the biblical, for three years.”
Nash’s brows shot up. Where had she been all this time? “Not according to the legal system.”
“Fine. Have it your way. You always do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She turned, resting her rear against the sink edge and drying her hands. For a second she debated opening up this can of worms, then decided he could take a piece of the truth. “Four years ago you wanted me to wait around till you were ready for more than a few dates a month.”
Nash said nothing, bracing for the attack.
“You wanted me to be yours, but you weren’t willing to ever claim me. Even your brothers thought I was just a friend.”
The bitterness in her voice smacked him across the face. They’d shared a bed, shared each other, dammit. “So you went elsewhere?”
“I was still here before I met Peter and a couple of months after that.” She hooked the towel on a peg near the sink. “It doesn’t matter that it didn’t work out. At least I did something about it. Fish or cut bait, you know.”
“You’d have wanted to force me into something I didn’t want, then?”
She made a face. “No. Which is why I ended it.” So he wouldn’t feel he had to do the right thing because of their baby, she thought. “But that’s not the point. Face it, Nash. You weren’t ready for me.”
“You didn’t give me a chance.”
She made a sound between a laugh and disgust. “You had plenty of chances. You just didn’t want me the way I wanted you.” Forever.
There was hurt in her voice, a hint of it, barely disguised. She pushed past him, but didn’t make it far.
He caught her arm, the move putting her nearly against him. “My God, Lisa, did you think I didn’t care about you?” His gaze raked her face as he searched for something to grasp and knew he shouldn’t even be trying.
“Caring was all I got from you.” And a baby I never got to hold, she thought.
Nash struggled with his heart. He wanted to say things, things she needed to hear and he wanted to tell. But he couldn’t. Not when just looking at her pushed the heat simmering between them up a notch. Even in the apron and grubby T-shirt and steaming mad, she turned him inside out. He’d always felt incredible heat and electricity with her, more than anyone else. He’d never trusted it. And there was more here, this time. Yet the expression on her face said he didn’t have a chance. And the fact that he was prying into her life and considered her a prime suspect wasn’t helping his position. Did he want something with her? Was he willing to resurrect the past? No. Attraction was only about hormones, he thought, and forced himself to shut off the thoughts and turn up his cop brain.
He let her go. After a moment he asked, “What herbs and flowers do you use to make the teas?”
Back to detecting, she thought, rubbing the warmth from her arm. “For the bath I use lavender, rosemary, lemon balm…eucalyptus, if I have it. For drinking…mint, lemon mint, chamomile and catnip. A couple of other herbs if they’re growing well.” Her frown deepened. “Why?”
“I’m not at liberty to say right now.” Because he wasn’t certain how the digitalis got into Winfield’s system.
“Fine. Didn’t I tell you to talk to my lawyer next time you wanted to ask me anything?”
Nash pushed his fingers through his hair. “What are you hiding?”
“Not a thing.”
“Then talk to me.”
“Considering we have a past, I don’t think that’s wise.”
He knew she was right. It was almost a matter of pride to be objective with her stomping on his every effort. “I’m not trying to send you to jail over four-year-old jilted feelings, for pity’s sake.”
“Jilted, Nash? You have to be engaged to be jilted.”
With that she marched up the steps and into the house.
NASH SPENT the rest of the day trying not to brood and went through Winfield’s briefcase again. For a broker, there wasn’t much there. It was as if he’d put together this briefcase for just this trip. The PalmPilot gave Winfield’s schedule in New York, yet the appointments stopped the day he flew into nearby Charleston. There was a notation of a number. Nash called it. He got the Baylor Inn. Okay, nothing new there. What about the blank real-estate contracts in the victim’s briefcase?
He backtracked and called the man’s lawyer. After a ten-minute conversation in which Nash explained that his client was dead and privacy would only hinder finding out who killed him, the lawyer told him that Winfield had gone to Indigo to take up with old acquaintances and perhaps purchase property. No, the attorney said, he didn’t know what property Winfield was interested in. The record of Winfield’s calls from the hotel produced only one—to Lisa.
Nash spent the remainder of the afternoon calling Realtors and came up empty. Winfield hadn’t contacted any of the Indigo Realtors, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t searching outside the area. Maybe Winfield had been looking at real estate in Charleston, and was just using Indigo as a base because Lisa was here. Nash would have to widen his search and wondered what unsuspecting rookie he could sic on the job. Maybe Winfield spoke directly with the property owners?
Nash stared at the pile of evidence he still had.
Blank sale contracts. A PalmPilot that held nothing past the day he’d arrived and a laptop with a password even his best tech experts couldn’t get around. Then there was the picture of Lisa.
Talk to me, Winfield. Who wanted you dead?
He reached for the phone to call New York and see what the police had found in Winfield’s apartment, but caught a glance at the time. He muttered a curse and quit for the day, but when he was driving home, he decided to swing by the Baylor Inn and see if he could learn how the gift basket got into the hotel room. Although the concierge said all deliveries were recorded and signed for, the gift basket got past the reception desk somehow. This time, Nash went to talk to the lowest man on the totem pole. And struck gold.
The bellman, Mick, a young blond about eighteen, gave him an exasperated look. He was on his break and didn’t want to spend it talking to the police. “Look, man, I don’t know what else to tell you. It was the messenger service half the town uses. Mercury.”
Nash was relieved. Lisa had said she hadn’t delivered a basket. “Did you check it, stop them?”
“No. Not only is it not my job, they come in all the time—messages, flowers, deliveries from local shops. People vacation here, y’know, they buy stuff and don’t want to carry it around, so they have it delivered. The delivery people just go right to the room if they know which one. If no one’s there to accept it, they drop it off at the desk and I take it up later. I didn’t. Not to Mr. Winfield.”
This wasn’t the efficient picture the concierge had painted. “So you remember Winfield?”
The teen snorted. “Yeah, I do. He was a good tipper, but the man wanted you to practically cough up a lung for him for the cash.”
Nash smirked, wondering how Lisa could marry a guy like that. “Can you describe the messenger?”
“My height, black hair. Wearing a helmet, goggles and bike shorts.”
Nash had seen the riders around and made a note to call Mercury Messenger Service. At least he was getting somewhere. The searches on the other employees’ pasts would take a bit to compile. And read.
“What time was it when you saw the delivery?”
“About six.”
Nash dismissed the kid after handing him his card and reminding him that if he recalled anything else to phone him. The teen slouched away and Nash set out to find Kathy Boon; he was lucky enough to find her just starting her shift. She was in a second-floor storage room tying her sneakers.
She smiled brightly and the smile stayed there when he flashed his badge. “You caught me at a good time—I just got here.”
She was younger than he’d expected and she sure as hell didn’t look like a housekeeper. Peaches-and-cream skin was the first thing he noticed, then her eyes, crystal-blue and set gently in an angelic face. Rich, nut-colored hair surrounded her face and spilled onto her shoulders in fat curls. And man, did she have curves. Compact and wearing shorts and a polo shirt bearing the inn’s logo, she was adorable.
“Come on,” she said, curling a rubber band around the ponytail of hair. Still smiling, she inclined her head as she pushed a cart that looked too heavy for her to manage down the hall. “I didn’t think of anything else, Detective Couviyon.”
“It’s pronounced coo-vee-yon,” he corrected, smiling back. “Do you recall a messenger coming to Winfield’s room?”
She knocked on a suite door, called out, then let herself in with her passkey. “No, sorry. I didn’t see anyone but the redhead in lime-green. You should sit down, darlin’. You look exhausted.”
He was, and couldn’t recall the last time he ate, but continued, “Have you ever used the back stairs?”
“Good grief, no. Too steep and I don’t trust them. Plus, there’s no reason to trek up there.” She collected used glasses and plates, depositing them outside the door.
“Have you ever seen anyone go up there?”
“To the balcony? Only the guests use the balcony to watch the sunset. It’s eye-popping gorgeous, but I bet from up there, it’s magnificent.”
“Are you from around here?”
She kept her head down as she polished an antique clothes press. “No, farther north. Is there anything else, Detective? I’ve got six suites to clean and a double shift.”
Nash heard the sudden chill in her tone and frowned.
“Miss Boon?”
She looked up, her expression blank as a card.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
She looked thoughtful and he wondered if his suspicion was valid. “No, I don’t think so.”
Her hand trembled a bit as she lifted a vase and dusted beneath it. Nash recognized fear. Of him or of something else? “If you do think of anything else, call me.”
She nodded mutely. He slipped out of the room and didn’t see her drop to the bed and cover her face with her hands.
THE NEXT MORNING, after leftover Chinese food and a lousy night’s sleep, Nash nursed a cup of double-shot cappuccino from the Daily Grind while he waited for Kilpatrick to show up. The coroner’s office wasn’t exactly his favorite spot to spend the morning, but a vague message from Quinn had gotten him there early.
“It’s a bold and brash lad who thinks he can put his feet on my desk.”
Nash slid his feet to the floor and smiled. “I’ve never been known for subtlety. Didn’t think you were so possessive.”
“Never assume, Couviyon,” Quinn said.
“So what did you find?” Nash asked.
Quinn looked insulted. “What? No ‘thank you, Quinn, for the extra hours and being brilliant? For breaking a date with the cutest creature to walk in this town in six months?’”
“Oh, yeah, who?”
“Kate Holling. Lisa’s employee.”
Nash frowned. He didn’t remember the woman beyond blond hair and gold lipstick with dark liner. Kate didn’t seem like Quinn’s type. He usually went for the more exotic. “So was it worth the overtime?” He gestured to the lab.
Quinn flicked on all the lights and Nash winced at the fluorescent glare as the man moved to the coffeemaker and started a pot. “You could have been gracious and done this, you know.”
“With all these chemicals? I’d kill us.”
Quinn flipped the switch and faced him. “I found the exact cause and the method.”
“No kidding?”
Quinn slid a faintly insulted look to Nash, then said, “It wasn’t digitalis.”
“Good thing I didn’t quote you, then.”
“It was similar enough to be mistaken for causing heart failure, though.”
Impatient for coffee, Quinn pulled the pot out, shoved a cup under the drip, then reversed them. He sipped, making a face. “Field rations,” he murmured.
Quinn inclined his head, and the pair moved to the computer at the rear of the lab. The coroner tapped a few keys, calling up the results, and as they flicked and spread on the screen, he slipped into his lab coat.
“You owe my assistant Jarred for this. He’s the one who did a baseline for flowers.”
Flowers. Nash felt his heart slowly sinking to his stomach. Resigned, he settled into the neighboring chair and listened.
“The poison wasn’t ingested and here’s your murder weapon.” He dropped the evidence bag on the table in front of Nash.
Nash simply stared, feeling any hope drain away like rain down a gutter. It was the bath tea.
“That teabag in the hot water released the flower and herbal properties. Mostly the essential oils. Good for mood therapy and fragrance.”
“What was in it?”
“Lavender, rosemary.” Quinn met his gaze and added proudly, “Lily of the valley.”
“And?” Nash made a rolling motion for more.
“Convallaria majalis, better known as lily of the valley, is highly toxic, especially the leaves. Steeping it released the oils from the leaves, which are more toxic than the petals. The poison is a glycoside called convallatoxin, which works similarly to digitalis.”
“So you weren’t far off.”
Quinn snorted. Nash knew that wasn’t good enough for Quinn, in or out of the lab.
“All it has to do is seep into an orifice or a wound, and it starts working. Winfield had a couple of cuts on his back that look like scratches to me.” Quinn showed him pictures, pointing. “Other than that, the man had skin like a baby. If he dunked under the steaming water, got even a fraction of oil in his nose or mouth, he was as good as dead if he didn’t get help immediately.”
“Judging by the burned-down candles, I’d say he soaked for a while.”
“Didn’t have to,” Quinn said. “This works fast, and although dosage would be hard to judge, there was enough in that bath tea to kill him. He’d have felt too warm first, a headache, tense, instead of feeling relaxed. I imagine he stayed in the bath for a while, hoping that would go away, but in doing so, he just made it worse by giving the toxin more opportunity to get inside him.” Quinn tapped a spot on the pictures of Winfield’s body. “Remember the red patches? That’s part of the reaction, then hallucinations. He had dilated pupils, excess salivation—proved from the residue and stains—and then pop, heart failure.”
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Amy J. Fetzer
HE WAS SWORN TO UPHOLD THE LAWDetective Nash Couviyon never let emotion interfere with duty. But when his former flame Lisa Bracket was the victim of a frame-up, he knew he had to help her clear her name. Although Nash had thought he'd never see Lisa again, desire for her had always burned inside him. To the untrained eye she looked guilty. However, Nash knew Lisa was innocent of murder, and when she became the victim of a series of attacks, he knew his instincts had proved right. Now the only way to keep her safe and draw out the true killer was to place Lisa under his protection. But did duty alone motivate him or did he hope to rekindle the love they'd once shared?
Lisa’s life was on the line
Nash had to make it safe for her again. He understood the evidence of the case, but the attacks were directed at her. He was willing to take a bullet in the line of duty, but there was no way he’d drag Lisa into the danger of his job. Inevitably, anything more than friendship would do that.
Even as Nash insisted to himself that he was restraining his feelings, that he was keeping as much distance as he could, he also knew it was a lost cause. Lisa was in his blood.
Four years hadn’t changed that.
He should be smarter, he thought. A hell of a lot smarter. But he couldn’t let her go. He couldn’t let someone else hold her. Images of Lisa and the past they’d once shared crowded his brain.
Nash didn’t think he was strong enough to let her go….
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
Beginning this October, Harlequin Intrigue has expanded its lineup to six books! Publishing two more titles each month enables us to bring you an extraordinary selection of breathtaking stories of romantic suspense filled with exciting editorial variety—and we encourage you to try all that we have to offer.
Stock up on catnip! Caroline Burnes brings back your favorite feline sleuth to beckon you into a new mystery in the popular series FEAR FAMILIAR. This four-legged detective sticks his whiskers into the mix to help clear a stunning stuntwoman’s name in Familiar Double. Up next is Dani Sinclair’s new HEARTSKEEP trilogy starting with The Firstborn—a darkly sensual gothic romance that revolves around a sinister suspense plot. To lighten things up, bestselling Harlequin American Romance author Judy Christenberry crosses her beloved BRIDES FOR BROTHERS series into Harlequin Intrigue with Randall Renegade—a riveting reunion romance that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Keeping Baby Safe by Debra Webb could either passionately reunite a duty-bound COLBY AGENCY operative and his onetime lover—or tear them apart forever. Don’t miss the continuation of this action-packed series. Then Amy J. Fetzer launches our BACHELORS AT LARGE promotion featuring fearless men in blue with Under His Protection. Finally, watch for Dr. Bodyguard by debut author Jessica Andersen. Will a hunky doctor help penetrate the emotional walls around a lady genius before a madman closes in?
Pick up all six for a complete reading experience you won’t forget!
Enjoy,
Denise O’Sullivan
Senior Editor
Harlequin Intrigue
Under His Protection
Amy J. Fetzer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amy J. Fetzer was born in New England and raised all over the world. She uses her own experiences in creating the characters and settings for her novels. Married more than twenty years to a United States Marine and the mother of two sons, Amy covets the moments when she can curl up with a cup of cappuccino and a good book.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Lisa Bracket-Winfield—Four years ago Lisa left Indigo with a painful secret she’ll never reveal.
Detective Nash Couviyon—When Lisa finally comes back into his life, it’s not as his friend or lover, but as his prime suspect in a strange murder.
Peter Winfield—the victim, hiding more secrets than his ex-wife ever knew.
William Reese Baylor—Owner of the Baylor Inn. Murder under his roof has cost him more than customers.
John Chartres—Baylor Inn’s concierge. Does his superior attitude and attention to detail include planning the perfect murder?
Kathy Boon—A new face in town. Did what she heard and saw lead to her disappearance?
Catherine Delan—Linked to a married man, she has more to gain than anyone. And that makes her dangerous.
Carl Forsythe—Is he the killer or the key to why Winfield was murdered?
To Ronnie,
aka Kelsey Roberts
For your guidance and insight
while I stumbled through in a new genre
For pink friends,
weekends of dressing badly
and free association moments
For being friends
and mostly, for staying that way
even when things get weird
Love you, girl.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Prologue
Indigo, South Carolina
His death smelled like lavender.
Moisture from his bath still hung in the air like a veil, preventing him from sensing more than the cramping in his stomach, the flashes of hot and cold thrashing over his skin. The gradually slowing beat of his heart.
His thoughts collided, spilling into one another till he couldn’t recall truth from memory, fiction from fact. The buzzing of the phone, half-off its cradle, droned like a fly. Was it day or night? He could see no more than slivers of light draped in shadows.
As he lay on the bed, a towel barely covering him, his body felt heavy, immobile, pressed into the antique quilt. He hated being helpless. He hated disorder and the vulgarity of illness. Fury worked beneath his clammy skin and he tried to use it to counter the seeping of strength from his body in thick, oppressing waves. How long had he felt this numb? Earlier he’d thought it was the flu. But he knew better. It was happening too fast. The fire beneath his skin, the furious headache that only grew stronger. His eyes shifted sluggishly, the simple effort like sand grinding behind his lids, and the room tilted, the furniture stretching like something out of a cartoon.
His heartbeat slowed, beating a painful dirge toward his death.
He tried to reach again for the phone to call for help, but his fingers only flexed with a faint spring, then went still. Regret lanced through him, and her face filled his mind. Always her. She was his wife. She always would be.
He hated being pitiful, pathetically weak. And he was. Completely. His heartbeat dropped another notch, and he couldn’t fill his lungs. Saliva dribbled from his mouth and down the side of his face. He heard a noise and blinked to focus. He hadn’t the strength to turn his head, and the indignity of it, the slovenliness, humiliated him.
He’d have preferred a bullet between the eyes, messy as that would be. They would find him like this, he thought. Wet, naked and in God knew what state. A shadow moved, a shape forming in the faint light.
Help! Thank God, help!
His whimper shamed him, but he was desperate. Then the figure leaned over the bed. His eyes widened, but only a fraction. Rage and confusion ground down to the marrow of his bones, and he choked on words he couldn’t form, couldn’t push past his lips.
Why?
His killer smiled and watched him die.
Chapter One
The damp heat of Indigo in September still clung like a bad tempered child. By eight in the morning its punishing grip was firm and hot and wouldn’t be tamed till well past sunset. Locals were used to it, visitors complained about it, but that Detective Nash Couviyon had to investigate a suspicious death this early was an indecent slap to the beauty of the nearly three-hundred-year-old town.
Worse when death occurred in the richly appointed Baylor Inn, the jewel of Southern hospitality in Indigo and smack-dab in the center of the historic old town. He could almost hear the mayor’s outrage at such an event occurring here and scaring the tourists.
By the time Nash had arrived at the suite, the officers had already sealed off the floor and taken photographs. Unfortunately there were no witnesses to the crime. The victim had been locked in his suite and found by a member of the housekeeping staff in the morning.
Nash took a sip of coffee from a paper cup so thin his fingers, encased in latex gloves, felt seared by the heat. He circumvented the room again. Antique dressers bore two hundred years of wear like an ancient king. The thick down comforter on the bed reminded him of how little sleep he’d had the night before. The body of the victim was sprawled across the wide mattress.
Nash ignored it for a moment, his gaze picking through details that were not so obvious: the crystal tumbler with the dregs of a cocktail, the unopened briefcase neatly tucked under the desk. The air was filled with a revolting combination of death and the sweetness of flowers. Very little was out of place, no signs of a struggle. The sofa and stuffed chairs sat facing the hearth, and the only furniture that wasn’t an antique was an armoire holding the television and VCR. Resting on the lowboy was a sweet-grass basket filled with teas, packaged snacks, flavored coffees and a china mug only a woman would use. On the basket was a small brass oval engraved with “Enchanted Garden.” He frowned. Enchanted Garden was a nursery his brother Temple used in his landscaping business. Nash took account of the contents and gestured to an officer, who then bagged it.
A look through the victim’s clothing hanging in the closet, shoes precisely two inches apart, socks arranged by color, told Nash that the victim was fanatical about his appearance. The remains on the room-service tray from the night before indicated he cared about what he ate, too. It was so healthy it made Nash cringe.
Nash moved to the bathroom before examining the body again. His gaze sharpened at the evidence, sifting normal from unusual. The victim had bathed leisurely. His neatly arranged shaving gear and toiletries added to Nash’s initial feeling that the victim was picky about order. Several candles littered the edge of the tub, burned down to the nubs and dripping into the cold, cloudy bathwater. The mess contradicted what he’d seen so far. Then he leaned over the tub to lift what looked like a large teabag out of the water. Untying the ribbon that secured the thing to the faucet, he sniffed. So that was where the flower smell came from, he thought, lowering it into the evidence bag, then marking it. He handed the bag to an officer, then left the bathroom and returned to the suite. He stopped at the foot of the bed, staring at the victim.
White male, perhaps thirty-five, naked except for a towel around his waist and the scarf wrapped around his throat. Muscular body even in death, stylish haircut, manicured nails.
“Everything tagged and bagged?” Nash asked the patrol supervisor.
“Except him,” the man said, then handed him the victim’s wallet as he walked past.
Absently Nash slipped the wallet from the evidence bag, yet his attention, for the moment, was on the coroner.
At the side of the bed, Quinn Kilpatrick examined the body. His thickly muscled arms strained against his jacket sleeves, and though Quinn was built like a linebacker, he handled the body as if it were fine porcelain.
“What do you have for me?”
“You cops, always impatient.” Quinn bagged the victim’s hands.
“Hey, pillage and plunder, murder and mayhem, are going on as we speak. We have to go out and be heroes.”
Quinn smirked, but didn’t glance up as he lifted the victim’s arm to look beneath. “Dead nine hours at least.”
“The scarf?”
Quinn eased the nearly transparent pale-green scarf from around the victim’s neck. “There are ligature marks, but they’re not really dark enough to indicate this was the cause of death. Maybe postmortem. No other signs of strangulation. I’ll know more when I get him into the lab.” Quinn straightened, frowning still. “See this?”
“The rash?”
“It’s not a rash, it’s a reaction.”
“He didn’t have any medication, except vitamins, but he took a bath. Maybe it’s from whatever he added to the water?” Nash could still smell the flowery fragrance.
Quinn started to put the scarf into an evidence bag, then frowned, smelling the fabric. He held it out to Nash, who moved near and inhaled.
“Perfume.” Something caught in his gut. “That’s familiar.” And he knew exactly where he’d smelled the fragrance before. It was the one Lisa wore.
Lisa Bracket… Oh, hell. Lisa Bracket Winfield. His gaze snapped to the ID, then the body.
Peter David Winfield. Lisa’s husband. The man she married, instead of him. Well, that wasn’t quite true, he argued. Nash’d never asked her to marry him. After a year of dating steadily, he’d never told her he loved her, and when he said he didn’t want to get serious, she’d ended their relationship. A few months later she was dating Winfield, and Nash, like a jerk, cut her completely out of his life like a bad-tempered high-school jock the day before the prom. Six months later she was gone. And married. But she was in town, that much he knew from Temple. Alone. So why wasn’t she here with Winfield?
He flipped through the wallet, and her familiar face stared back at him from a photo. It landed a punch right between the eyes.
Lisa in her wedding dress.
He closed his eyes briefly, remembering her face with four-year-old clarity, the feel of her body against his and what she did to him with just a look. Which was plenty. His mind was latched on to the memory of her last kiss when someone called his name.
Nash, still trapped in the past, rubbed his face and looked up.
“There’s a woman wanting to speak with you.”
“Tell her she’ll have to wait.”
“I think you should talk to her, sir.” The officer’s gaze shifted briefly to the body on the bed. “She’s the victim’s wife.”
Nash’s features tightened, and he stepped into the hall, his gaze moving immediately to the barricade. Lisa stood beyond, an officer keeping her back.
“Nash.”
If he thought the picture of her punched him in the gut, seeing her in person tore him in two. It was fast heartbeats and the need to touch her all over again. Four years had only made her more beautiful. Red-haired, green-eyed and willowy slim. And she was married.
Well, a widow.
Nash glanced inside the hotel room. Emergency medical technicians were lifting the sheet-wrapped victim into a body bag, then onto a stretcher. Pulling the door closed behind him, he motioned the officer to let her pass.
Immediately Nash ushered her away from the suite and into a room they’d commandeered for questioning potential witnesses. Once inside, he positioned a patrolman outside, then closed the door.
Lisa frowned at the way Nash was acting. She hadn’t seen him in ages except for passing glimpses from a car now and then. Indigo was small compared to New York, but being on the fringes of Charleston, it was plenty large enough to get lost in. Lost enough not to have come face-to-face like this.
For a few moments they just stared at each other. “Hello, Lisa,” Nash finally said.
Lisa felt her stomach lurch as his deep voice rolled over her. God, he looked good. “Hey, Nash. How’s life treating you?”
Lousy, he thought, but said, “Decent. It’s been a while.”
This came with a hint of apology. Lisa shrugged, although her heart was hopping like a frog in a pond. “About four years, huh?”
The stiffness between them was almost palpable as Nash’s gaze moved over her from head to foot. She looked bright and fresh, scrubbed healthy, her red tank top exposing tanned arms, the short denim skirt showing off her long legs. Great gams, his father would’ve called them. “You said you’d never come back to Indigo.”
Why was he bringing this up now? she wondered. “Things change. I was born here. This is my home. Besides, you pushed me to say that,” she said, remembering their last fight. “I was angry.”
“I didn’t push you anywhere. Hell, you’re the one who wanted to end—”
He stopped abruptly, and she could see him shut down, close off. Typical, she thought.
He ran his hand over his mouth and sighed. “Well, that was real mature,” he said sheepishly.
Yes, it was, she agreed silently, for both of them.
Coolly, he gestured to two chairs set opposite each other at a delicate Queen Anne table, and as she sat, he poured her a cup of coffee in china cups the hotel manager had set out. He added cream to hers, just the right amount, and that he remembered sent her to a strange place in her heart. She tried to leave it.
“What exactly is going on here, Nash?”
He met her gaze, his expression offering nothing. That wasn’t unusual for Nash Couviyon. Except for his younger brother Temple, keeping feelings all locked inside was a family trait. She studied him, his dark hair shorter than she remembered, though the rest of him had changed little. He sat, the fabric of his suit jacket pulling against his broad shoulders as he braced his arms on the tabletop. It was hard not to notice the size of him, that the delicate cup was like a glass ornament in his fist, easily crushed. Planed like a sculptor’s creation in stone, he looked deadly, unbreakable. Unshakable. The sharp line of his jaw slid unrelenting to his cheekbones, slightly hollow beneath blue eyes. Wicked blue eyes, she’d always thought. Eyes that melted her insides, yet there was no sign of softness in them now. They were glass hard. Pinning her.
She sent the stare right back at him, bracing herself against feeling anything for him. Even as she thought that, she knew it was impossible. This was Nash.
“My employee, Kate, called my cell phone,” she said, “and told me the police asked me to come over, though I have no idea what for. Care to explain?”
Nash hated this part and prayed she hadn’t been anywhere near her husband in the past twelve hours. “Your husband is dead.”
Her expression went slack. “That’s impossible.”
“I’m sorry, but he’s in the next room, with the coroner.”
“But he was fine last night.”
Oh, God. “You were with him?”
She didn’t clue in to the narrow look he shot her. “I was married to him, Nash. If he was in town, don’t you think we’d at least see each other?”
“But you haven’t been living in the same city?”
“That’s because we were divorcing. As of this morning, our divorce is final.”
Nash frowned. This was not the conversation he’d thought he’d be having with her right now.
“Who do you think killed him?” she asked.
“Why would you say that?”
“I noticed the badge, Nash.” Her gaze darted where it hung on his jacket pocket. “You’re a detective now, not the chief coroner.” She arched a brow. “And Peter was a stockbroker—he made enemies daily.”
“I work on all suspicious deaths. You one of those enemies?”
“No, of course not. Peter adored me.” Too much, she thought. That adoration had twisted into something ugly. “However, we’ve been legally separated for two and a half years.”
A year after her marriage they separated? He didn’t want to feel smug about that. “Legal separation before filing isn’t that long. Why not divorce sooner? Why now?”
His shock didn’t do a thing for her except make her feel sick. It was tough to admit that her marriage had failed so early. “I couldn’t afford to divorce him till recently, and he wouldn’t do it. In fact, last night, he…oh, jeez.”
For the first time it hit her, really hit her. And Nash watched as her features fell, her lower lip quivered. She looked down at the china cup, but when she brought it to her mouth, her trembling proved that her grip on her emotions was tenuous. She set the cup down.
Tears welled up in her eyes and fell. She cried without sound.
Nash ached to hold her, but he was on duty, and not one of her favorite people, so he kept his distance. She was a suspect, a prime one. She wouldn’t want his help, anyway, but it was killing him to watch her fight her tears. Lisa had always been a tough cookie, and to see her come apart was heartbreaking. Teardrops hit her hands and the table in tiny plops.
He felt them like gunshots.
He left his chair and grabbed a tissue, shoving it into her line of sight. She muttered thanks and took it. It was several more minutes before she regained her composure. Nash felt useless.
“I need to ask you a few more questions.”
She nodded and met his gaze, sniffling once.
Nash set a tape recorder on the table and pushed record. He recited her name, marital status, age, the time… Lisa didn’t hear the rest. She was too stunned to listen. Was he questioning her as a suspect or character witness?
“For the record, when did you last see Peter Winfield?”
She blinked at the recorder, then met his gaze. “Last night at around eight-thirty, nine o’clock. He’d called me and asked me to come over.”
“What happened?”
“He wanted one more chance to make me stay with him.”
“Make you?”
Always a cop, she thought, reading something into every little thing. “Well, make isn’t really correct. Convince would be a better word.” Threaten would be even better.
“Why did you divorce?”
She looked down at her coffee, watching the cream separate into a star shape. “Irreconcilable differences.”
“I don’t buy that for a second.”
Her gaze jerked to his. “It’s personal.” Nash wasn’t getting details. No one was.
“But you left town with him so quickly.”
This was old news, she thought. “It was four months after you and I had broken up, Nash. You’d already shoved me out of your life, so what do you care now?”
His mouth tightened, a lid on what he really wanted to say. “We were together for a year, and you never did give me a good reason for why you left me.”
She didn’t want to rehash this now. “Oh, there was plenty of reasons, they just weren’t yours. I needed someone who wanted what I did.” Someone to love me back, she thought. To want me for a lifetime and not just a frequent date.
“And did you get all you wanted?”
Damn him. He knew she hadn’t, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t deliriously happy with what she had right now. It wasn’t any of his business why her marriage ended, only that it had. And who was he to ask questions now when he didn’t bother four years ago? If he had, she’d have told him about their baby. “Are old feelings and reasons part of this investigation, Detective?”
Nash felt the slam of a door as if it hit his nose. She was right. He had to get back to business and not relive their past.
“Did you drive over last night?” he asked.
“No, it was only just getting dark and it was a clear night. I walked.”
“Did anyone see you?”
“Walking here? I imagine so. Anyone I know? I can’t say. When I got here, the restaurant was full, and the staff were waiting on guests. I came up here and knocked.”
“What was Winfield wearing when you saw him?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Answer the question, please.”
With the way he spoke to her, so cold and detached, as if they’d never shared a bed and some really great sex, she wondered if she should stop right now and call a lawyer. But she hadn’t done anything wrong.
“He was wearing Brooks khaki slacks, matching socks. A hunter-green, tailored, short-sleeve shirt, pressed and creased. Brown Florsheim shoes and a brown belt.” Good clothing had been an addiction of Peter’s.
Nash made notes in a black leather book. His gaze slid up to meet hers, and for a second his expression softened a fraction. Lisa glimpsed the man she once loved. Then just as quickly that man was gone again.
“Did anyone else know you were going to see him?”
“I might have mentioned it to my staff.” She wiped her eyes again, then threw the wad of tissue into a trash can.
“I’ll need to talk with them.”
Why? she wanted to know, but she didn’t argue. “Free country. They’re adults, not children. I’ll give you their home numbers.” She wrote the information on the back of a business card and handed it to him. He didn’t even glance at it, simply tucked it in his notebook. “Kate’s at the counter now, and Chris doesn’t come in till after his last class. He’s a college student at USC.”
Nash scribbled and she noticed the shorthand. She’d flunked that course.
“What were you wearing at the time you visited your husband?”
“A lime-green skirt and top, matching sandals and purse.”
He arched a brow.
“Matching jewelry, too. Wanna see it?”
“I’ll want to take all of it.”
“What?” Her eyes widened, and the feeling she’d had moments ago landed like a brick against her heart. “You think I had something to do with Peter’s death.”
Nash continued to write.
“Nash Couviyon!”
Still he didn’t comment, then slowly met her gaze again. “I don’t have an opinion yet. We need samples from your things to compare with what forensics finds in the room.”
“You definitely think he was murdered?”
Nash wasn’t ready to say so just yet. “The death of a healthy man is always suspicious.”
“Oh, for the love of Mike,” she said, and the air left her lungs in one shot. “You actually think I had something to do with it?”
Her words drained away any feeling she had, any trust she might have given him. Then the she-cat he remembered and had loved came racing back.
“This meeting is over,” she said.
He strove for patience. “Lisa, I have to look at all the possibilities.”
Her green eyes narrowed to slits. “Look elsewhere, Detective,” she said, and started to rise.
“Sit down!” he snapped.
Lisa lowered herself into the chair again, scowling at him.
“It’s either here or the station, Lisa. Your choice.”
She folded her arms and glared. “Fine. Ask away.”
“Did you carry anything into the room besides your handbag?”
Lisa searched his features. “No, but I had on a scarf.”
Something inside Nash froze. “Describe it please.”
“It was my grandmother’s. It’s pale green with hand-painted irises. It’s the reason I got here so quickly this morning. I was on my way here to get it back.”
“Why did you leave it?”
“I didn’t. It was in my hair, which I had in a ponytail. The scarf was tied around the rubber band to hide it. It must have come undone. It’s silk and slippery.”
Nash wrote, the notebook sliding on the highly polished table. The business card she’d given him showed and he flipped it over.
Lisa thought she saw sadness flicker in his eyes.
“The Enchanted Garden, that’s your business?”
“Yes.” She frowned. “Didn’t you already know that?”
Nash shook his head.
“I started it up about ten months ago. It’s on my land around the house and it’s doing really well.” Her brows knit. “I don’t get it. Your brother Temple buys some of his plants for his landscaping business from me. I thought you knew.”
“I knew he used this nursery, but he never mentioned it was yours.”
“Maybe he thought he was being disloyal to his older brother by doing business with me. I know how you Couviyon brothers stick together.”
“Obviously, Temple has his own set of rules.”
“I know, he’s an outrageous flirt.”
She was trying to ease the tension in the room. But Nash could feel it thicken the air. He tossed the card down and rose, moving to the door and speaking to the officer posted outside, who moved off to do his bidding. Nash waited, glancing back at her only once. She couldn’t have done this, he thought.
“Why didn’t you ever come by to say hello, Nash?”
“I knew you were here, Lisa.” He didn’t look at her. “I didn’t want to open that door again.” It hurt too much, he thought, then realized it still did.
“And saying hello, how’s your mama, would have been torture?”
“Yeah, it would have.”
Lisa’s lips tightened. Well, that said a lot, she thought.
“Why didn’t you come to me?” he asked.
“I was still married.”
Nash simply stared, wondering if she’d been single would they have gotten back together. And in the same moment he remembered that she had dumped him. She’d wanted picket fences and babies, and he couldn’t give her that. Aside from the fact that he’d just taken a bullet in the line of duty and lost his partner, he’d watched the devastation hit the widow and cut a strong woman off at the knees. He couldn’t do that to Lisa.
The officer returned, interrupting his thoughts and handing him two paper bags. Nash moved back to the table and set them on the floor. He reached into one and pulled out a plastic evidence bag.
“Is this your scarf?”
“Yes.” She extended a hand.
He pulled it back. “Evidence.”
“What do you mean, evidence? It’s my scarf.”
“It was found wrapped around the victim’s neck, Lisa.” Her eyes widened, and she went perfectly still. When she sank back into the chair, he asked, “Now do you want to tell me what you argued about?”
“No, I don’t. It was personal.”
Nash backed off for now. “Were you angry when you left here?”
“No, I was just tired, Detective.”
Nash heard the wall go up between them, even if he couldn’t see it. He returned the plastic envelope to the bag. “Do you make teas?”
She blinked, taken aback. “Yes, I do. My herb plants grow quickly in this weather, and I have to cut them back. It’s a waste not to do something with the herbs.”
“And do you sell the teas at your place of business?”
“Not as a regular commodity, no. I use the cuttings for cooking or rooting new plants. Occasionally I make bath teas, scented bath salts, a couple of mint and catnip drinking teas, and I put them in baskets with a live plant. But it’s not a main part of my business, and it’s time-consuming to put them together. So I make them up as requested.”
“The baskets are for regular sale?”
“No, only with the custom orders. They’re handmade, too expensive to make a profit and to keep a reasonable stock of them takes up considerable space.” Lisa glanced at the notes he was furiously writing. “Especially because the humidity can rot them. I run a nursery, not a bath-and-tea shop.”
“Did you bring one of these custom baskets to the hotel or have it delivered?”
Her brows knitted. “No.” Peter would have seen any gift as a peace offering. Heck, she thought, her very presence made him believe she wasn’t going to divorce him, although she’d signed the papers weeks before and it had been only a matter of the time line hitting a specified mark. One that had her in deep trouble right now, she suspected.
“Describe the baskets please.”
Lisa told him what they looked like, but when she described the brass oval engraved with “Enchanted Garden,” he wilted in his chair. She’d bet her best Kamali pumps that a basket just like one of hers was in that larger bag at his feet.
“Did you speak to anyone on your way to the Baylor Inn, and did anyone see you enter and or exit the building?”
That Nash wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t even acknowledge her with so much as a nod as he wrote, made her bristle. “I don’t recall. At the time I didn’t know I’d need an alibi. Now my husband is dead. My ex-husband. And you’ve all but accused me of his murder.”
“I don’t have enough evidence for charges.”
Something inside her shattered. “We have nothing more to say to each other.” She stood. “Unless it’s with my lawyer present.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say that, by law, he could hold her for questioning. “I’ll need everything you were wearing last night.”
“Fine. I’ll deliver the clothing to the station within the hour. Are we finished?”
“For now, yes.”
Lisa strode to the door. Before she could open it, Nash was there, his hand over her fist.
Her gaze snapped to his. He could taste her fury, it was so pungent.
“Back off, Detective.”
He didn’t. “Lisa, let’s not start like this.”
She laughed, sharp and bitter. “We aren’t starting a damn thing, Couviyon. We were finished four years ago.” Four years ago when I was pregnant with your child, she thought, knowing that if she’d ever considered telling him the truth, she sure didn’t now.
“You finished it. I didn’t.”
“You were never in the relationship, Nash. You had your own neat version and you kept me on the outside unless we were in bed.” She shook off his hand and jerked opened the door.
“Lisa. This is my job.”
“I’m thrilled for you. Go do it. And until you have something more than accusations, don’t come near me.”
She left, striding past the officers. Nash signaled to let her pass. She was pure anger in a snug skirt and high-heeled sandals.
“Seems like a hostile witness, Detective,” an officer said.
Nash let out a breath. “Oh, yeah.”
Chapter Two
Nash watched Lisa storm off, leaving him feeling twisted and confused. This was why he hadn’t dropped by her place to say hello, he thought. She did things to him no other woman had and he still hurt. The humiliation of being dumped by her hardly compared to the feelings of regret he’d had for months after learning she was six hundred miles away walking down the aisle with another man.
Seeing her today warned him he still wasn’t over her. Just looking into her eyes stung his heart.
Suddenly Quinn stuck his head out of the room, caught a glimpse of Lisa and whistled softly. Then he looked at Nash.
“That Couviyon charm not working today, laddie?”
Nash eyed Quinn. “You knew she was coming here?”
“I heard the supervisor call her. And yes, I also remembered her married name.”
Quinn’s look said Nash had had his head in the sand. Not good for a cop, Nash knew. “She’s divorced officially as of this morning.”
“So she was still the wife when the victim died?”
Any connection between Lisa and the victim was suspect and damaging, Nash thought. “As I recall, the exact time of death is your job, Kilpatrick,” he snarled, pushing past Quinn and into the suite.
Nash ordered a background check on the victim. And his wife.
“Detective?”
Nash rounded, ready to chew someone in two.
A short, wiry man in a black suit stepped into the room. “You couldn’t keep this quiet?” he said, glancing around.
Nash’s breath snapped out of him. Baylor, the owner of the hotel, and he looked pissed. The day was just getting better and better.
“There are other guests, you know, and they want back into their rooms.”
“They will be allowed in soon. And it’s a little hard to hide a suspicious death.”
The man’s eyes were glued to the black body bag rolling away on a stretcher. “Murder?”
Ignoring that, Nash took out his pad, and when he was about to escort Baylor to another room for questioning, the man rushed over to an officer dusting the dresser for prints. “Is that going to leave a stain? This chest is two hundred years old.”
The police officer gave Baylor a once-over, then glanced beyond him to Nash and said, “No sir,” before going back to work.
“Sir?” Nash crooked a finger. “You’re Mr. Will Baylor?”
The man nodded. “William Reese Baylor IV,” he clarified. “I’m the owner. My family built this home over 150 years ago.”
“Nice place,” Nash said, caring little about Baylor’s lineage and the inn’s history. His own family had a plantation, Indigo Run, on the edge of town that had been in operation since 1711. “You met the deceased?”
“Briefly when he checked in two days ago. Very nice man. He kept to himself.”
“Did he meet anyone here?”
“We don’t question our guests so personally. We pride ourselves on privacy, relaxation and discretion.”
Nash’s gaze narrowed dangerously, and the owner folded.
“Not that I know of. But I’m not here twenty-four seven. With the exception of lunch yesterday, I believe he dined in his suite.”
For a man here on business, Winfield didn’t do much, Nash thought. Except meet with Lisa. Winfield’s PalmPilot indicated he had three meetings but gave no names or times, only dates, and though the victim’s laptop was found in the room, they needed a password to access the data.
“How did they get in? Was it someone he knew?” Baylor moved to a set of French doors, but Nash stopped him from opening them, wiggling his own gloved fingers.
“Prints.”
Baylor glanced at the officer still kneeling by the chest of drawers. “Oh, yes, of course. This balcony leads to a separate entrance for this room and the one next door. There’s a staircase, very narrow and steep, leading to the lower floors outside the kitchen and a path to the patio. It was once the servants’ staircase.”
The door had an old-fashioned brass latch, one that you had to wrap your hand around to open. With a pen, Nash tried pushing it. It was locked from the inside. But that didn’t mean someone couldn’t have come up here and left this way. Checking that it had been already dusted, Nash opened it, careful not to step on the porch. Earlier, officers had canvassed the area, and it was going to take some manpower to see if anyone had noticed someone entering the suite through this door. He looked down, then squatted. They hadn’t had rain in a while, and the dust level was high. There were several shoe prints in the dust outside the door, and although they’d been lifted and logged already, there were two smaller sets. A woman’s?
Nash rubbed his face and straightened. “Who sent the basket?”
The owner frowned and Nash produced the sweet-grass basket with Lisa’s logo on the rim.
“I don’t know. It’s not something we ordered. We provide toiletries for our guests and we have better taste than to offer homemade items.” Baylor made a face at the basket. “We do seasonal fruit and flavored coffees, too.” He pointed to the silver tray on a stand near the windows. An officer was collecting it.
Nash stared at the basket. Most of it wasn’t homemade, and he wondered again about the teabag-shaped thing dangling from the bathtub faucet.
Another officer stripped the fitted sheet and quilt from the bed.
“No, no, no, that quilt is mine,” Baylor said.
Nash touched his arm. “It’s evidence. It’ll be returned to you.”
“It’s a hundred years old and in perfect condition, and it had better come back to me that way.” The odors hit Baylor and he blanched a bit. Death hung in the air like a vapor.
“If it’s so precious, why is it displayed on a bed?”
Baylor sniffed. “Ambiance.”
Nash suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “Take that up with forensics.” He handed him a card.
Baylor snatched it as if snatching the quilt, then looked around at his eighteenth-century-decorated suite. Nash saw him droop with disappointment.
“I’m not going to be able to rent this room for a while,” he said disparagingly.
“We’ll let you know when we’re done with it.”
“That’s not what I mean. Who’d want to stay here?”
“People die every day.”
Boarding-school posture gripped Baylor’s spine. “Not in my inn.”
Death was tough for most people. For Nash, it was his career. He spoke for the dead, investigated for them. And he had compassion for the people left behind. But Baylor was more concerned with hotel profits than the fact of a guest’s death. Takes all kinds, Nash thought.
“I need a list of who had access to this room. Everyone who has a master key to both doors and who was on duty for the past week.”
Baylor nodded.
Nash stared. “Today.”
Baylor’s expression held more than one man’s share of exasperation.
Nash added to it. “I’d like to speak to the staff, too.”
“Now? They’re busy with guests.”
Nash kept writing in his notepad, not looking up. “You know, Mr. Baylor, I’m getting the sense that you don’t want us to find out what happened.”
“Of course I do. It could have been an accident— maybe he banged his head in the tub or something.”
Nash’s brows drew together. How did this man know the victim was found wearing only a towel and the bathtub was full of water? Or was he just worried that if that was the case, the family would sue? “Where were you between 5:00 p.m. yesterday and this morning, Mr. Baylor?”
If the victim had been dead nine hours, then Nash had to narrow the suspect list.
Baylor gave Nash a look that said he thought himself beyond reproach. “I’ll give you my schedule. Follow me, and I’ll introduce you to the concierge.”
THE CONCIERGE, John Chartres, was a tall, narrow man with equally confined features, and for someone living in a southern seaboard town, he was as pale as the white shirt beneath his tailored suit. His black hair was swept back with a severity that sharpened his face and made his eyes and lips look vibrant against his skin. He wore disdain like a tie, and he rose from behind the delicate desk like a king from his throne. Oh, yeah, that says welcome to the Baylor real well, Nash thought cynically.
Then the man spoke and the New York accent, however he tried to hide it, hurt Nash’s ears.
“I didn’t see anyone go to his suite specifically. Perhaps you should question the housekeeping staff. I’m usually in my office.”
“Isn’t it your job to know all the guests? To see that their stay is perfect?”
“I delegate well.”
I’ll bet. And actually working your job was for the little people, Nash thought. “Did you know Mr. Winfield?”
“Other than his face and name, no. He was only a guest.”
Nash kept his features relaxed, but that the man kept shuffling through papers and not looking him in the eye said he was hiding something. Nash would have to dig a little with this one.
“You have a key to the door to the back staircase?”
“I have a key to every door in this hotel.”
“I’ll need a list of which keys each employee carries and where they are kept.”
Chartres gestured and Nash followed the man into the reception area and behind the counter.
Nash’s gaze swept the rows of keys. “You’re kidding, right? Anyone could take these.” The keys weren’t the computer-card type but old-fashioned brass, which he was sure added the same sort of ambiance as the antique quilt.
“Each room has inside locks, as well, and though they look old, they aren’t.” Chartres handed a key over.
It was chiseled like a house key, but the tab was brass with Victorian scroll.
“The balcony doors have no outside handles,” Chartres said, then explained, “The staff doesn’t use it. Though it’s sturdy, in keeping with the historical accuracy, the staircase remains steep and narrow. We discourage guests from opening the doors unless they are in residence. There is a push latch in case the door closes, but the inside lock must be disengaged.”
So, Nash thought, if anyone came into the room from that direction, the guest had to be expecting them and the locks had to be disengaged. The balcony doors had been locked from the inside when the police had arrived. Had Winfield opened them for his killer? Or his ex-wife? Even as the thought careened through his head, Nash hated himself for it. Lisa was not capable of murder. Not the Lisa he once knew.
“You said you were on duty?” Nash asked.
“Yes. And if you don’t mind, can we take this back into my office?”
As they headed in that direction, Chartres lagged behind, smiling at an elderly couple approaching the reception area. He slipped behind the gleaming counter to retrieve a few slips of paper, handing them to the couple. “Your phone messages,” Chartres said to them. “And your 7:00 p.m. reservations at Emily’s are set.”
Nash had to admit that when Chartres was talking with the hotel patrons, he was all smiles and warmth. The couple inquired about the police cars and ambulance, and Chartres explained that a guest had passed away during the night and for them not to worry. But then Nash shouldered his way past, introduced himself and questioned the elderly couple. It gained him nothing. Though their rooms were on the floor below, they insisted they were sound sleepers.
Chartres gestured to the office. “That was rude, Detective.”
“A policeman’s job is often rude. Everyone is a potential witness.” Nash’s look said the concierge was on that list, and Chartres stiffened, affronted. “At what time did you leave your post?” Nash asked once they were in the small office.
“I didn’t.”
“Not to eat, not to use the bathroom?”
“No. Meals are brought here, if I want. And I didn’t.”
“You didn’t make the rounds during the cocktail and dinner hour?”
“No.”
Then who’s to say he was even in the office? Nash thought. “You have a popular restaurant in this hotel, Mr. Chartres. You didn’t leave your office and stroll through, introducing yourself?”
“It was a quiet night.”
“Quiet enough not to notice someone heading up to Mr. Winfield’s room?”
“Apparently. This hotel is more like a home, the atmosphere unobstructed. It’s why we do so well. Not all the suites are occupied, anyway. We don’t check on the comings and goings of guests, only that while they’re here, they’re happy.”
“You had a delivery to a room, yet no one seems to recall receiving it.”
“What delivery?
“A basket from Enchanted Garden.”
“It may have been a gift from someone. All deliveries are signed for and recorded.” Chartres swiveled his chair toward a computer screen and tapped the keys. He peered. “The only deliveries were the daily flowers for the rooms, a guest’s dry cleaning and a package from High Cotton for the elderly couple you saw, which was placed in their room.”
That high-school class in shorthand came in handy sometimes, Nash thought as Chartres tried to sneak peeks at his notes. After a few more questions, Chartres printed out a list of the staff and phone numbers and a schedule roster. Nash folded it into his leather notebook, then stood, offering his hand. Chartres’s palm was smooth and dry, his grip firm.
Nash left, heading back upstairs again to check the outer doors. Officers were almost finished with the room and had double-checked outside for footprints. Nash opened the door and studied the deck, the path down to the first and second floors. He wondered if Baylor had the floor plans to this place and walked across the balcony and down the stairs. A private home was tucked only yards away, beside the hotel, and a privacy fence carved a smart line between the properties. The inn dining room was to the rear, a sizable portion of seating outdoors on a stone patio surrounded by exotic flowering shrubs and shaded with umbrellas. It was empty now.
Nash climbed back up the stairs to look around the suite once more. Was the scarf the murder weapon? If not, Winfield could have died from anything, food poisoning or heart trouble. Until he had an autopsy, Nash was finished here. He’d collect reports from the other officers, run a check on Winfield, and then he’d know where to go from there. At the moment there was too little evidence to point him in any direction.
Except at Lisa.
He was done for now, anyway, he reasoned and returned to his office, dropping into his chair and tossing his notebook on the desk. He dug the heels of his palms into his eyes, then sagged back into the chair. A bag of clothing marked “Lisa Bracket Winfield” was sealed and on his desk. A note from the sheriff said she’d offered prints before they’d asked. Her angry expression flashed like lightning in his mind. He could have handled that confrontation better, he thought. He knew he hadn’t accused her of the crime, but the questions always made people defensive. But what the hell was she hiding?
Winfield had been pushed to his death, but his instincts told Nash there was more than a silk scarf connecting this to Lisa. And he never ignored his instincts.
The phone shrilled and before it reached a second ring he snatched it up. “Couviyon.”
“Detective, this is Kathy Boon. I’m a housekeeper at the Baylor Inn. They, I mean my boss, wanted me to call you to tell you that I saw a woman go into Mr. Winfield’s room.”
“Describe her please.”
“Red hair, long, in a ponytail tied with a scarf. Killer outfit. Lime-green skirt, same color top but it had polka dots on it. She was about five-eight, I’d guess. Pretty. I noticed her because her handbag and shoes matched her skirt and not too many people can get away with wearing that color.”
Nash allowed himself a smile, then glanced at the shopping bag of clothes Lisa had turned in. “What time was it when you saw this woman?”
“About eight-thirtyish, maybe quarter to nine. I work till midnight, then come in at five, so that’s why I wasn’t around this morning.”
“Did you see her leave?”
“No, I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean anything. I go from the laundry to the rooms about a dozen times a night.”
“Did you see anyone else enter Mr. Winfield’s room?”
“Room service at about six.”
Winfield had been alive at six. The attendant had already confirmed delivering the meal around then. “Did you hear anything coming from Mr. Winfield’s room?”
She was quiet.
“Ma’am?”
“I’m thinking. No…well, I’m not sure. I heard arguing at a little past nine, but not enough to call the cops or anything. Oh, God, maybe I should have.”
“You couldn’t have known, ma’am.”
As she spoke, Nash checked the employee roster and found her name, marking beside it. His head was swimming, mostly with images of Lisa and the absolute fury she’d thrown at him.
“If I have any more questions, I’ll call you.”
“Yeah, sure, and if I think of anything more, I’ll let you know.”
He hung up and leaned back in his chair. Lisa had definitely been there. He hoped the coroner came back with something soon. Lisa wasn’t capable of hurting anyone. At least not physically. And as he remembered their conversation, he recognized his own bitterness, as well as hers.
What would have happened, he wondered, if he’d fought for her all those years ago? If he’d gone to her and said…what? That he loved her? Unfortunately he hadn’t realized he loved her until she was walking down the aisle with someone else and he was miles away regretting it.
The phone shrilled, jerking him from unhappy musing. He grabbed the receiver and punched line one. “Detective Couviyon.”
“Hey, Nash, this is your favorite lab rat.”
Nash smiled. The coroner, Quinn Kilpatrick. “Tell me you have something for me, good buddy.”
“The deceased died between ten and midnight. I’ll have more specific analysis in a few hours, a day max.”
“Cause of death?”
“Toxic poisoning.”
“What about the scarf?”
“That was after the fact. Poisoning looks like an overdose of digitalis, near as I can tell, but if you quote me right now, I’ll deny it.”
“How did he get it?”
“An injection, in a drink, food—a number of ways.”
“Could he have overdosed accidentally?”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to nail this element, and I’m waiting on his med records to see if he was being treated for anything. Be patient.”
Nash didn’t have any patience today and struggled for a scrap. “I thought you couldn’t detect digitalis.”
“That’s why you can’t quote me.”
Nash hung up and studied his notes. Winfield had lived in New York and the NYPD had been notified. The victim’s apartment would be sealed off and swept for evidence. It was time, he thought, to find more suspects. Yet in the back of his mind lingered one troubling question. Had Lisa Bracket Winfield changed enough over the past four years to be capable of murder?
LISA SLID INTO the booth in the diner and smiled at her lawyer, Trisha Flynn. Trish had her notebook out, ready to talk.
“We could have met at the office, Lisa.”
Lisa shook her head, grateful for the cup of coffee waiting for her. “That would make me feel like a real suspect.”
“From what you told me, you’re the best possible one.”
“Gosh, you’re a fun date, huh?” Lisa’s heart sank and at the same time, anger unfolded. Was Peter going to keep ruining her life? “Dammit, Trish, I didn’t do this,” she said, trying to keep her voice down. “When I left Peter last night, he was very much alive.”
“And mad as hell, I’ll bet.”
Lisa scoffed. “He wasn’t getting his way, so yes, he was mad.” Lisa glanced at the menu, and they ordered, silent till the waitress left them.
“Was it the same argument?” Trish asked.
“Oh, yes. When was it not?”
“You don’t look upset that he’s dead.”
“I grieved. I loved him once upon a time.” And I loved Nash, too, she thought, and knew if it had been him who died, she wouldn’t be functioning nearly as well. “But you know better than anyone what it was like with him, Trish. And now to have Nash nosing around in my personal business, my marriage…”
“You should have told him.”
Trisha had been with her when she’d miscarried her baby. “Is that my lawyer or friend talking?” Lisa asked.
Trisha smiled, her dark hair sweeping over her shoulder as she reached for the creamer. “Your friend. Who’s on lawyer time.”
Lisa tried to smile and couldn’t. “I know you think Nash should know about the baby I lost, but I understand him better than he does. It wouldn’t have worked out then, and bringing it up now will only hurt him more.” Four years had eased the loss only a little.
“But Nash wants to know what you and Peter fought about.”
“I can’t, Trish.” Lisa’s eyes teared up, and she grabbed a paper napkin, blotting them. Wimp, she thought, you’ve been through worse. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, honey. We’ve all been there.” Lisa met her gaze. “Do you want me to petition to have him removed from the case?”
“You can do that?”
“He has a personal attachment.”
“No, it will just make me look guilty.”
“Is Nash an honest man, Lisa?” her lawyer asked.
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Would he use this to hurt you?”
“I…I don’t think so.”
Trish voiced no opinion on that, and Lisa wondered how bad this was going to get. “Okay, the conversation you and Peter had last night is inadmissible, and your word against a dead man’s is hearsay,” Trisha said. “Don’t worry about it now. It has no bearing on his death that I can see.”
Lisa relaxed back into the leather seat and nursed her coffee. “And if Nash believes it does?”
“Let’s wait to see what they come up with, because right now, we know you didn’t kill Peter.”
Lisa was grateful Trisha believed her, but the certainty that Nash didn’t was brewing like a storm inside her.
“Do you want me to hire a private detective to find out what I can?”
“No.”
Trisha eyed her, making notes.
“The police are working on it, Trish. I’m innocent.”
“Nash has already ordered a deep background check on Peter and it will include you.”
Lisa shrugged. “That can’t be helped.”
“And if he reads medical records?”
Suddenly Lisa went still. “Don’t they have to get a court order?”
“Not if you’re a suspect. And if you want to look innocent, you give them permission.”
“I’ll cross that bridge when I have to.” But the thought of telling Nash the truth gave her nothing but pain. He might still be a little hurt, but the truth would destroy him.
Their food arrived. Lisa stared down at the healthy-looking green salad, then called the waitress back.
“I’ll start with dessert. Chocolate. Anything with chocolate.”
“Woman after my own heart,” the waitress said as she left.
Trisha shook her head, smiling.
Lisa shrugged. “Hey, I’ll jog an extra two miles.”
A minute later the waitress slid the dessert before her. And both women gaped at the five-layer torte covered in chocolate fudge.
“Better make that five miles,” Trisha said, laughing. “With sit-ups.”
Lisa stabbed a chunk of torte enjoying the calories one at a time. “You could join me, but I know how you look running in those high heels you refuse to lose. It ain’t pretty, sugah.”
Trisha smiled and forked a bite of the dessert.
Lisa devoured bite after bite, knowing that not even gooey chocolate would keep her mind off Nash and that he thought she was capable of murder.
Chapter Three
The next day Lisa was still fuming, and the best thing for her temper was to dig in the dirt. Leaving Kate to oversee the register, she repotted new stock and replaced the plants in the smaller gardens that had been sold in the past few days. She scrubbed terra-cotta pots, clipped cuttings, clipped herbs and tied them to dry, then deadheaded flowers. Anything to keep her mind off Nash Couviyon and the fact that he thought she was capable of killing another human being. It made her ill. And it hurt.
Lord, it hurt.
Obviously whatever relationship they’d had—and she still wasn’t certain they’d had a real one—meant nothing. Not when you’re faced with murder charges, she supposed.
Peter was dead. She grieved for him of course, but it was mild. That shamed her. She’d been his wife, in name only for the past three years. Still. He didn’t deserve to die, although she’d learned quickly in their marriage that he wasn’t a very nice person. Once she wore his ring, he’d become controlling, manipulative, obsessive.
He’d damn near driven her crazy in a few short months. And she’d learned her true purpose in his life. Be pretty, behave, give great parties, and schmooze…
A trophy wife.
Boy, did he learn he’d chosen poorly. And so did she. She’d left and started over. Started over a couple of times, in fact, she mused, and now she had every cent she’d earned in the past three years sunk into this house and her nursery business. She’d done most of the work herself and business was steady. Temple Couviyon had steered some contractors her way for her more exotic plants. Life was getting back to good, she thought, and felt as if she’d spent a century getting to this very moment.
And now it could be over. If word leaked out that she was a suspect in a murder case, she’d be ruined. Her reputation would be shot.
Shaking her head, she plowed her hands deep into the potting soil she was mixing. Though the fresh compost smelled fine, the stench of cow manure was strong enough to make her eyes water.
It was how Nash found her. Elbow deep in black dirt, pausing to add vermiculite to the mix. Outside the greenhouse, she kneaded and folded the soil, and although there were tears in her eyes, her expression said she wasn’t crying. She looked on that road between pissed off and pleased.
Nash wasn’t sure he should interrupt. “Lisa?”
She hesitated, then kept folding dirt in the large galvanized tub.
“What is it, Detective?” Lisa recognized his voice instantly, almost felt his presence before he spoke. It was irritating as hell that he could still do that to her.
He moved to her side. She glanced at him.
The impact of those green eyes left him momentarily hurting for air. “Peter was poisoned.”
Her head whipped to the side, her eyes wide. “Good Lord, how?”
“That we don’t know yet. Did he have heart trouble?”
She snorted and went back to mixing. “No. He was never sick. He’s…he was a guru about eating healthy foods, taking vitamins. Working out. It was really annoying that the man wouldn’t relax and just have fun. Be a slug, lie like a potato.” She bit her lip, knowing she’d said more than she should have. “I don’t think I should talk to you without a lawyer present.”
“You haven’t been charged.”
“And that makes a difference?”
“Cooperating will go in your favor. Do you want to impede an investigation?”
“I’ve told you all I can recall.”
“Except what you and Peter discussed, exactly.”
“He wanted me back… It doesn’t matter,” she said tiredly. “He was alive when I left him.” She moved to the sink and washed her hands. “I get it. You don’t have motive.”
“You were his wife—”
“Ex, or soon to be, at the time,” she stressed.
“—and you stood to gain. On the day of his death you were still legally married.”
“Splitting hairs, Nash. I didn’t ask for anything of his when I left him, and I hadn’t been his wife in any sense, including the biblical, for three years.”
Nash’s brows shot up. Where had she been all this time? “Not according to the legal system.”
“Fine. Have it your way. You always do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She turned, resting her rear against the sink edge and drying her hands. For a second she debated opening up this can of worms, then decided he could take a piece of the truth. “Four years ago you wanted me to wait around till you were ready for more than a few dates a month.”
Nash said nothing, bracing for the attack.
“You wanted me to be yours, but you weren’t willing to ever claim me. Even your brothers thought I was just a friend.”
The bitterness in her voice smacked him across the face. They’d shared a bed, shared each other, dammit. “So you went elsewhere?”
“I was still here before I met Peter and a couple of months after that.” She hooked the towel on a peg near the sink. “It doesn’t matter that it didn’t work out. At least I did something about it. Fish or cut bait, you know.”
“You’d have wanted to force me into something I didn’t want, then?”
She made a face. “No. Which is why I ended it.” So he wouldn’t feel he had to do the right thing because of their baby, she thought. “But that’s not the point. Face it, Nash. You weren’t ready for me.”
“You didn’t give me a chance.”
She made a sound between a laugh and disgust. “You had plenty of chances. You just didn’t want me the way I wanted you.” Forever.
There was hurt in her voice, a hint of it, barely disguised. She pushed past him, but didn’t make it far.
He caught her arm, the move putting her nearly against him. “My God, Lisa, did you think I didn’t care about you?” His gaze raked her face as he searched for something to grasp and knew he shouldn’t even be trying.
“Caring was all I got from you.” And a baby I never got to hold, she thought.
Nash struggled with his heart. He wanted to say things, things she needed to hear and he wanted to tell. But he couldn’t. Not when just looking at her pushed the heat simmering between them up a notch. Even in the apron and grubby T-shirt and steaming mad, she turned him inside out. He’d always felt incredible heat and electricity with her, more than anyone else. He’d never trusted it. And there was more here, this time. Yet the expression on her face said he didn’t have a chance. And the fact that he was prying into her life and considered her a prime suspect wasn’t helping his position. Did he want something with her? Was he willing to resurrect the past? No. Attraction was only about hormones, he thought, and forced himself to shut off the thoughts and turn up his cop brain.
He let her go. After a moment he asked, “What herbs and flowers do you use to make the teas?”
Back to detecting, she thought, rubbing the warmth from her arm. “For the bath I use lavender, rosemary, lemon balm…eucalyptus, if I have it. For drinking…mint, lemon mint, chamomile and catnip. A couple of other herbs if they’re growing well.” Her frown deepened. “Why?”
“I’m not at liberty to say right now.” Because he wasn’t certain how the digitalis got into Winfield’s system.
“Fine. Didn’t I tell you to talk to my lawyer next time you wanted to ask me anything?”
Nash pushed his fingers through his hair. “What are you hiding?”
“Not a thing.”
“Then talk to me.”
“Considering we have a past, I don’t think that’s wise.”
He knew she was right. It was almost a matter of pride to be objective with her stomping on his every effort. “I’m not trying to send you to jail over four-year-old jilted feelings, for pity’s sake.”
“Jilted, Nash? You have to be engaged to be jilted.”
With that she marched up the steps and into the house.
NASH SPENT the rest of the day trying not to brood and went through Winfield’s briefcase again. For a broker, there wasn’t much there. It was as if he’d put together this briefcase for just this trip. The PalmPilot gave Winfield’s schedule in New York, yet the appointments stopped the day he flew into nearby Charleston. There was a notation of a number. Nash called it. He got the Baylor Inn. Okay, nothing new there. What about the blank real-estate contracts in the victim’s briefcase?
He backtracked and called the man’s lawyer. After a ten-minute conversation in which Nash explained that his client was dead and privacy would only hinder finding out who killed him, the lawyer told him that Winfield had gone to Indigo to take up with old acquaintances and perhaps purchase property. No, the attorney said, he didn’t know what property Winfield was interested in. The record of Winfield’s calls from the hotel produced only one—to Lisa.
Nash spent the remainder of the afternoon calling Realtors and came up empty. Winfield hadn’t contacted any of the Indigo Realtors, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t searching outside the area. Maybe Winfield had been looking at real estate in Charleston, and was just using Indigo as a base because Lisa was here. Nash would have to widen his search and wondered what unsuspecting rookie he could sic on the job. Maybe Winfield spoke directly with the property owners?
Nash stared at the pile of evidence he still had.
Blank sale contracts. A PalmPilot that held nothing past the day he’d arrived and a laptop with a password even his best tech experts couldn’t get around. Then there was the picture of Lisa.
Talk to me, Winfield. Who wanted you dead?
He reached for the phone to call New York and see what the police had found in Winfield’s apartment, but caught a glance at the time. He muttered a curse and quit for the day, but when he was driving home, he decided to swing by the Baylor Inn and see if he could learn how the gift basket got into the hotel room. Although the concierge said all deliveries were recorded and signed for, the gift basket got past the reception desk somehow. This time, Nash went to talk to the lowest man on the totem pole. And struck gold.
The bellman, Mick, a young blond about eighteen, gave him an exasperated look. He was on his break and didn’t want to spend it talking to the police. “Look, man, I don’t know what else to tell you. It was the messenger service half the town uses. Mercury.”
Nash was relieved. Lisa had said she hadn’t delivered a basket. “Did you check it, stop them?”
“No. Not only is it not my job, they come in all the time—messages, flowers, deliveries from local shops. People vacation here, y’know, they buy stuff and don’t want to carry it around, so they have it delivered. The delivery people just go right to the room if they know which one. If no one’s there to accept it, they drop it off at the desk and I take it up later. I didn’t. Not to Mr. Winfield.”
This wasn’t the efficient picture the concierge had painted. “So you remember Winfield?”
The teen snorted. “Yeah, I do. He was a good tipper, but the man wanted you to practically cough up a lung for him for the cash.”
Nash smirked, wondering how Lisa could marry a guy like that. “Can you describe the messenger?”
“My height, black hair. Wearing a helmet, goggles and bike shorts.”
Nash had seen the riders around and made a note to call Mercury Messenger Service. At least he was getting somewhere. The searches on the other employees’ pasts would take a bit to compile. And read.
“What time was it when you saw the delivery?”
“About six.”
Nash dismissed the kid after handing him his card and reminding him that if he recalled anything else to phone him. The teen slouched away and Nash set out to find Kathy Boon; he was lucky enough to find her just starting her shift. She was in a second-floor storage room tying her sneakers.
She smiled brightly and the smile stayed there when he flashed his badge. “You caught me at a good time—I just got here.”
She was younger than he’d expected and she sure as hell didn’t look like a housekeeper. Peaches-and-cream skin was the first thing he noticed, then her eyes, crystal-blue and set gently in an angelic face. Rich, nut-colored hair surrounded her face and spilled onto her shoulders in fat curls. And man, did she have curves. Compact and wearing shorts and a polo shirt bearing the inn’s logo, she was adorable.
“Come on,” she said, curling a rubber band around the ponytail of hair. Still smiling, she inclined her head as she pushed a cart that looked too heavy for her to manage down the hall. “I didn’t think of anything else, Detective Couviyon.”
“It’s pronounced coo-vee-yon,” he corrected, smiling back. “Do you recall a messenger coming to Winfield’s room?”
She knocked on a suite door, called out, then let herself in with her passkey. “No, sorry. I didn’t see anyone but the redhead in lime-green. You should sit down, darlin’. You look exhausted.”
He was, and couldn’t recall the last time he ate, but continued, “Have you ever used the back stairs?”
“Good grief, no. Too steep and I don’t trust them. Plus, there’s no reason to trek up there.” She collected used glasses and plates, depositing them outside the door.
“Have you ever seen anyone go up there?”
“To the balcony? Only the guests use the balcony to watch the sunset. It’s eye-popping gorgeous, but I bet from up there, it’s magnificent.”
“Are you from around here?”
She kept her head down as she polished an antique clothes press. “No, farther north. Is there anything else, Detective? I’ve got six suites to clean and a double shift.”
Nash heard the sudden chill in her tone and frowned.
“Miss Boon?”
She looked up, her expression blank as a card.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
She looked thoughtful and he wondered if his suspicion was valid. “No, I don’t think so.”
Her hand trembled a bit as she lifted a vase and dusted beneath it. Nash recognized fear. Of him or of something else? “If you do think of anything else, call me.”
She nodded mutely. He slipped out of the room and didn’t see her drop to the bed and cover her face with her hands.
THE NEXT MORNING, after leftover Chinese food and a lousy night’s sleep, Nash nursed a cup of double-shot cappuccino from the Daily Grind while he waited for Kilpatrick to show up. The coroner’s office wasn’t exactly his favorite spot to spend the morning, but a vague message from Quinn had gotten him there early.
“It’s a bold and brash lad who thinks he can put his feet on my desk.”
Nash slid his feet to the floor and smiled. “I’ve never been known for subtlety. Didn’t think you were so possessive.”
“Never assume, Couviyon,” Quinn said.
“So what did you find?” Nash asked.
Quinn looked insulted. “What? No ‘thank you, Quinn, for the extra hours and being brilliant? For breaking a date with the cutest creature to walk in this town in six months?’”
“Oh, yeah, who?”
“Kate Holling. Lisa’s employee.”
Nash frowned. He didn’t remember the woman beyond blond hair and gold lipstick with dark liner. Kate didn’t seem like Quinn’s type. He usually went for the more exotic. “So was it worth the overtime?” He gestured to the lab.
Quinn flicked on all the lights and Nash winced at the fluorescent glare as the man moved to the coffeemaker and started a pot. “You could have been gracious and done this, you know.”
“With all these chemicals? I’d kill us.”
Quinn flipped the switch and faced him. “I found the exact cause and the method.”
“No kidding?”
Quinn slid a faintly insulted look to Nash, then said, “It wasn’t digitalis.”
“Good thing I didn’t quote you, then.”
“It was similar enough to be mistaken for causing heart failure, though.”
Impatient for coffee, Quinn pulled the pot out, shoved a cup under the drip, then reversed them. He sipped, making a face. “Field rations,” he murmured.
Quinn inclined his head, and the pair moved to the computer at the rear of the lab. The coroner tapped a few keys, calling up the results, and as they flicked and spread on the screen, he slipped into his lab coat.
“You owe my assistant Jarred for this. He’s the one who did a baseline for flowers.”
Flowers. Nash felt his heart slowly sinking to his stomach. Resigned, he settled into the neighboring chair and listened.
“The poison wasn’t ingested and here’s your murder weapon.” He dropped the evidence bag on the table in front of Nash.
Nash simply stared, feeling any hope drain away like rain down a gutter. It was the bath tea.
“That teabag in the hot water released the flower and herbal properties. Mostly the essential oils. Good for mood therapy and fragrance.”
“What was in it?”
“Lavender, rosemary.” Quinn met his gaze and added proudly, “Lily of the valley.”
“And?” Nash made a rolling motion for more.
“Convallaria majalis, better known as lily of the valley, is highly toxic, especially the leaves. Steeping it released the oils from the leaves, which are more toxic than the petals. The poison is a glycoside called convallatoxin, which works similarly to digitalis.”
“So you weren’t far off.”
Quinn snorted. Nash knew that wasn’t good enough for Quinn, in or out of the lab.
“All it has to do is seep into an orifice or a wound, and it starts working. Winfield had a couple of cuts on his back that look like scratches to me.” Quinn showed him pictures, pointing. “Other than that, the man had skin like a baby. If he dunked under the steaming water, got even a fraction of oil in his nose or mouth, he was as good as dead if he didn’t get help immediately.”
“Judging by the burned-down candles, I’d say he soaked for a while.”
“Didn’t have to,” Quinn said. “This works fast, and although dosage would be hard to judge, there was enough in that bath tea to kill him. He’d have felt too warm first, a headache, tense, instead of feeling relaxed. I imagine he stayed in the bath for a while, hoping that would go away, but in doing so, he just made it worse by giving the toxin more opportunity to get inside him.” Quinn tapped a spot on the pictures of Winfield’s body. “Remember the red patches? That’s part of the reaction, then hallucinations. He had dilated pupils, excess salivation—proved from the residue and stains—and then pop, heart failure.”
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Amy Fetzer
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: HE WAS SWORN TO UPHOLD THE LAWDetective Nash Couviyon never let emotion interfere with duty. But when his former flame Lisa Bracket was the victim of a frame-up, he knew he had to help her clear her name. Although Nash had thought he′d never see Lisa again, desire for her had always burned inside him. To the untrained eye she looked guilty. However, Nash knew Lisa was innocent of murder, and when she became the victim of a series of attacks, he knew his instincts had proved right. Now the only way to keep her safe and draw out the true killer was to place Lisa under his protection. But did duty alone motivate him or did he hope to rekindle the love they′d once shared?