Cancelled Vows

by Lauren Carr

  “He did have bruises and small puncture wounds on his throat, but nothing fatal. The ME says those were at least a couple of hours old. What killed him was a deep cut across the throat that sliced through his jugular.”

  “Then it wasn’t her,” Mac said. “Someone else killed him.” He sighed. “Maybe whoever hired him felt he was too much of a liability.”

  “If the murderer has cops working for him, how can you investigate Yvonne’s murder without the killer being one step ahead of us?” Ed asked.

  “You can’t,” Mac said. “Who better for a criminal to have working for him?”

  Ed agreed. “Even when the media is against the cops, generally, people trust them.”

  “Cops can get in and out of places that others can’t,” Mac said. “Like police evidence lockers. And then they can remove evidence. Pull up to a witness in a cop car and uniform, and say the detective downtown needs him—” He shrugged his shoulders. “Most people would just climb in without a second thought.”

  “You scare me,” David told Dallas after they had trotted across the first street on their way back to the Four Seasons.

  “Really, O’Callaghan?” She batted her long eyelashes at him. “A big ol’ man like you, scared by a little ol’ girl like me?”

  “You just shot off a lie back there at Ryan Ritter as smooth as they come,” David said. “I know most of the tells for lying, and I didn’t see one. You’re either a con woman or a pathological liar.”

  “Maybe I’m both.” She stopped at the curb to allow traffic to speed by, even though the walk light was on. Keeping pace with her, David stopped short, but not before almost getting clipped by a taxi. “Here in New York, sweetie, walkers don’t have the right of way,” she told him while brushing away an imaginary speck of dirt on his sports coat. She admired the sweater he wore underneath. “I like that color on you. It brings out your baby blues.”

  David remained serious. “Why did you lie to Ritter? He was offering you a very good job. From what I see, he’s huge in your business. He could really help you.”

  “Help me right into bed.” Stepping off the curb, she hurried across the street, with David rushing to keep up. In spite of her high heels, Dallas had no trouble moving quickly when she wanted to. “He’s been chasin’ me ever since I stepped foot in ZNC.”

  “Well, you are an attractive woman.”

  She stopped so abruptly that David had continued several feet before he realized she was no longer walking in step with him. When he turned back to her, a slow grin worked its way across her face. “You almost had me convinced you hadn’t noticed.”

  “You’re kind of hard not to notice,” David said.

  Sauntering up to him, she said, “A man doesn’t tell a woman that she’s attractive unless he’s attracted to her.” She gazed up into his eyes.

  Standing toe to toe with her, David noticed that she was much taller than Chelsea. With her high heels, her forehead came up to the bridge of his nose.

  “Honey, I do believe you are attracted to me,” she said in a low voice.

  “I notice every woman who shows me her breasts.” Tearing his gaze from hers, he grabbed her hand, and they continued down the street. “Was Ritter chasing after Yvonne?”

  “I think they had a fling a while back,” she said. “I don’t know that for a fact. It was just a feelin’ I had. A sort of familiarity between the two of them, but not from somethin’ recent. Like they had a past together.”

  “What’s in the package you stole from the mail cart? Nice move, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I learned long ago that when an attractive woman falls down, men are so anxious to help her up that they don’t notice anythin’ besides her T and A—especially when she manages to spill stuff out of her bag. They’re so afraid they might lay eyes on her diaphragm that they purposely don’t look to see what she’s shovin’ into her bag.”

  “Well, I did notice you stuffing a brown envelope into it,” David said. “What’s in the package?”

  “I’m hopin’ somethin’ that’ll lead me to Mom’s killer.”

  They stopped short when a police car tore around a corner to block their path across the next intersection. They were only one block from the Four Seasons Hotel. Two police officers climbed out of the cruiser.

  “Ms. Ali Hudson?” the police officer who had been sitting in the passenger seat said.

  Dallas clutched her shoulder bag. “Yes.”

  David noticed the driver talking into his cell phone, not the radio he was wearing on his belt.

  “We’ve been asked to bring you into the precinct for questioning.”

  “Is this about Yvonne Harding’s murder?” Dallas asked.

  “Maybe. They just told us to bring you in.” The police officer, whose nameplate read “Sauer,” reached out for her arm.

  “Not without me.” David stepped between them.

  The officer turned back to his partner, who nodded his head. “Sure. But you’ll have to turn over your weapons.” Sauer grinned. “I don’t know how they do things in your little police department in Maryland, but here we don’t allow people packing firearms in the cruiser.” He held out his hand for David to turn over his gun.

  While David understood the safety procedure—his department had the same rule—he felt apprehensive about turning over his weapon to Officer Sauer.

  Maybe it’s paranoia. Something just doesn’t feel right. But they are officers driving a real cruiser.

  Slowly, David reached behind his back and under his sports coat to extract his gun from its holster. Holding it by only two fingers, he handed it to the officer.

  While tucking David’s gun into his front waistband, Officer Sauer said, “Your backup weapon, too.”

  David felt as if the officer were asking him to strip down to the skin on the street. The hair on the back of his neck was saying that the last thing he wanted to do was get into that cruiser totally unarmed. His eyes narrowed while he peered at the barrel-chested officer smirking at him.

  “You were the one who said you wanted to come along,” Officer Sauer said. “No ticket, no ride. Who knows? I suspect they’ll have some questions for you, too. So hand it over.”

  With a sigh of disgust, David knelt down to lift his pant leg and remove the weapon. He could feel Dallas gazing at him from where the driver was ushering her into the backseat of the cruiser. Even with Officer Sauer standing between them, he could feel her fear.

  Feeling like he was making a fatal error, David slapped his weapon into Officer Sauer’s open palm.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ed Willingham studied the room-service menu for an item that would be sufficiently sinful—that is, something he wouldn’t be allowed to eat at home in front of his wife—yet not so naughty that it would raise his cholesterol.

  Across the table, Mac was pressing in the phone number for Audra Walker’s former executive assistant, Letty Bolger, whose number Ed had managed to get from his contacts.

  “What are you hoping to get from Audra’s assistant?” Ed asked.

  “She was traveling with Audra on that tour,” Mac said. “She most likely would have accompanied Audra to ZNC for her interview. That makes her a witness. She can tell us who Audra talked to and what they talked about.”

  Mac sat up straight in his chair when an elderly woman answered the phone.

  “Is this Letty Bolger?” Mac asked.

  “May I ask who’s callin’?” she replied in a hesitant tone.

  “This is Mac Faraday. I was friends with Audra Walker. I’m sure you heard that her body was found yesterday here in New York … in the News Corp Building.” He listened to the silence on the other end of the line before adding, “Audra Walker worked with me on a homicide case that I investigated years ago.”

  “I remember,” she replied. “In Washington, DC. We n
ever met, but she spoke about you. Very sharp … and a great tush.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Butt,” Letty clarified. “If you’re the one I think Audra was talkin’ ’bout, she ranked yours a nine.”

  What is it with these Southern women? Mac felt the blush go all the way up to his hairline.

  “Are you okay, Mac?” Ed asked, “You look flushed.”

  With a shake of his head, Mac returned to the reason for his call. “Letty, Audra and I were friends. I’d like to find out who killed her. Now it looks like she was murdered in the News Corp Building, which was near where the cab dropped her off when she went back to Midtown. That was the same building where Yvonne Harding interviewed her.”

  “I saw on the news that Yvonne Harding was shot last night,” Letty said.

  “Exactly,” Mac said. “Am I right in assuming you went with Audra to the News Corp Building for her interview with Yvonne Harding?”

  “The last time I saw Audra was at the hotel after the interview,” Letty said. “I told the police that. I didn’t even know she’d left. She was workin’ when I went to bed.”

  “But for some reason she went back to the News Corp Building.”

  “The police said she got a text from Yvonne Harding, but Yvonne said it wasn’t her.”

  “That text came from a burner phone that was never located,” Mac said. “Did you go with her to the Yvonne Harding interview?”

  “I always went to interviews with Audra,” Letty said.

  “What happened at that interview?” Mac asked. “Did anything strike you as unusual? Even if you don’t think it has anything to do with her murder, I want to hear it.”

  There was a long silence before Letty answered him in slow, measured words. “Somethin’ inspired her—at least, that’s the only way I can put it.”

  “Inspired her?”

  “There was this book that Audra had been workin’ on for as long as I knew her,” Letty said. “And I worked for her for fifteen years before she disappeared—I mean died.”

  “The Texan Romeo and Juliet,” Mac said. “Dallas told me about it.”

  “You know Dallas?”

  “Yes.” Not wanting to reveal that Dallas was in New York, he rushed on. “What about this book?”

  “Audra hadn’t done any work on that book for years,” Letty said. “I thought she’d given up on it. Suddenly, when we were leavin’ the News Corps Building and were in its elevator, she called Joyce, her office assistant back here in Texas. She told her to get the folder on her desktop at her office and to send it to her laptop. She didn’t even want to stop to eat. She jumped on it as soon as we got back to the hotel and was still workin’ on it when I went to bed at ten o’clock.” She paused and then added, “Audra told me she’d had a breakthrough.”

  “What kind of a breakthrough?” Mac asked.

  “She didn’t say.”

  “So she talked to someone,” Mac said. “Or something someone said provided a breakthrough on this Romeo-and-Juliet story that she had basically abandoned years before?”

  “Oh, she never abandoned the project,” Letty said. “Audra would have never abandoned it. It was too important to her. The real-life Juliet was Audra’s best friend in high school. Audra always felt there was somethin’ weird about their suicide pact. She believed it was murder, but she couldn’t prove it. She didn’t have all the pieces. But that night … somethin’ happened.”

  “Can you e-mail me everything she had for the project?” he asked her.

  “Sure. The police have it. Dallas has it. I can send it to you, too, I guess. Maybe you can figure out what got in her craw at ZNC. No one else seems to have been able to.”

  “Maybe a pair of fresh eyes can make sense of it. Who did Audra talk to that night?”

  “Everyone,” Letty said with a sigh. “All four hosts on Crime Watch. Very nice people. Pam Wiehl struck me as rather distant. She didn’t talk much to Audra.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “I assumed professional jealousy. Pam and Audra had the same publisher. Pam had just released a book ‘bout white slavery and sex crimes against young women, particularly young American girls travelin’ in Europe. Young women were bein’ lured to Europe with promises of good jobs and travel, only to be abducted and forced into prostitution. Pam considered that to be a very important subject. Both Audra’s and her book made it onto the New York Times best-sellers list, but Audra’s was higher on the list, and she was gettin’ more media attention.”

  “Because her book was about the murder of a sex symbol who was having an affair with a US Senator,” Mac said. “Juicier and sexier topic.”

  “Audra was used to it,” Letty said. “Pam Wiehl considered her to be a sensationalistic journalist and was jealous that she was makin’ more money and gettin’ more awards and publicity than she was. That’s why Yvonne Harding was interviewin’ her. Pam Wiehl considered herself to be above interviewin’ a muckrakin’ journalist like Audra.”

  “Did she actually say that?”

  “No, but I could feel it,” Letty said. “She hardly said anythin’ to Audra. She’d walk into the room, and Pam Wiehl would leave. At one point, in the control booth, I overheard her husband, Jim, tell her that she had to talk to Audra. Well Pam said she couldn’t because she was afraid she’d say somethin’ that she’d regret, and if that happened, everyone would know.”

  “Know what?” Mac asked.

  “I have no idea,” Letty said. “Obviously, the Wiehls had a secret that they were afraid Audra knew ’bout or would find out ’bout and make public, and that was why Pam was steerin’ clear of her.”

  “Had Audra ever met the Wiehls before that night?”

  “Sure. Audra always did interviews with ZNC when she had a new book released, which was ’bout once a year. Pam Wiehl had interviewed her quite a few times. But for that last tour, Pam refused to interview her and pushed her off on Yvonne, who considered it to be a huge opportunity. Audra was a Pulitzer Prize–winnin’ author, you know.”

  “Anyone else?” Mac Asked. “Do you remember anything else from that evening?”

  “Ryan Ritter flirted with her,” she said with a smile in her voice. “I think they even made a date. He’s so handsome and charmin’, and he’s got this sexy New England accent. He asked Audra to appear on his show the next week. She said she would, and we made arrangements for his assistant to call me the next morning to set up the interview. I think she took a likin’ to him, because when we were leavin’ the studio after the interview, he stopped her at the door and asked if he could call her later. She told him that she would be expectin’ his call. And then she winked at him and called him Tex.”

  “Tex?” Mac repeated the name while noting that Ryan Ritter hailed from Boston. Most likely a term of endearment. She used to call me Slim. Of course, I was slimmer then. He groaned while he thought of the fifteen pounds he had put on since receiving his inheritance.

  “Oh, I just remembered somethin’!”

  Her gasp caught Mac’s attention.

  “The CEO, Preston Blakeley,” Letty said. “Audra and he got into a real row.”

  “What about?”

  “Because Audra does her homework,” Letty said with a grin in her voice. “She found out that Preston Blakeley was a big supporter of and had made huge donations to Senator Brennan’s campaign. On the way to the studio, she predicted that he would cause trouble. Sure ’nuff, as soon as we got there, one of his minions met her in the studio to tell her that they were pullin’ the plug on the interview. Well, if you really knew Audra like you said you did, then you know that it’s not a good idea to try to pull a fast one on her. Why, when Audra Walker got riled up, she made a hornet look cuddly. She followed that minion back up to Blakeley’s office, slammed the door, and had a private one on one when him. Five minutes later, when she walked out, the inter
view was back on. I looked in the office at that CEO, and he looked like she’d given him the wire-brush treatment.”

  “What did she say to him?”

  “I have no idea,” Letty replied.

  “I wonder if that got her killed.”

  In the back of the police cruiser, Dallas jumped in her seat when she saw it turn left instead of right. “Aren’t you taking us to the Tenth?”

  “No, the Thirteenth,” the driver replied.

  Her eyes wide, Dallas glanced over at David, who said, “But the detective investigating Yvonne Harding’s murder came from the Tenth.”

  “The detective investigating Yvonne’s murder came from the Tenth, Stan,” Officer Sauer said in a mocking tone.

  “Stop the car!” Dallas ordered. “Now!”

  “Stop the car!” Officer Sauer cackled. “Now!”

  “We’ll be stopping soon enough,” Stan said in a low, steady tone.

  David looked out the window. The cruiser rolled past a line of police vehicles parked in front of a police department with a sign on it that said Thirteenth Precinct. He felt Dallas curl her long fingers around his hand. She was trembling.

  She moved over close to him to whisper in his ear. “They’re taking us to the East River.”

  Keeping his eyes locked on the two officers in the front seat, David whispered, “When we get there—no matter what happens—stay in the car.”

  He turned his head slightly to look into her eyes and squeezed her hand in an effort to transmit courage to her. Her chest was heaving up and down with quick, nervous breaths.

  The cruiser made its way down an alley between two old warehouses. The East River came into view straight up ahead.

  As Dallas stared into David’s eyes, her breathing steadied. She reached into her bag and extracted the ninja spike, which she placed in David’s hand. While wrapping his fingers around the spikes, David looked up into the rearview mirror and saw Stan watching them.

  The cruiser came to a stop.