by Lauren Layne
Vincent grunted, his eyes in constant motion as they ascended the stairs, although she doubted he was marveling at the decor the way she was.
Still, she couldn’t stop herself. The staircase beneath her feet seemed to be made of the same marble as the entryway floor. And she didn’t know art, but the paintings on the walls didn’t look like prints bought on the Internet the way all of Jill’s were.
This place smelled like money. Old money. And lots of it.
Which made sense, considering one of Hollywood’s most beloved legends lay dead below them.
“I can’t believe she’s dead,” Jill said quietly.
She glanced at Vincent when he said nothing. “You do know who that is, right?”
Vin rolled his eyes. “Yes, Henley. Even I, an uncultured boor, knows who Lenora Birch is.”
“I heard she was once best friends with Audrey Hepburn. That she used to hang out with Audrey after takes of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Did you know that?”
“I said I knew who she was; I didn’t say I studied trivia,” he muttered as they came to stand at the top of the stairs. He looked down. Pointed. “It would have been here.”
Jill nodded and reoriented her thought process. Right.
Now was not the time to stroll down memory lane to those carefree days before her dad died, when her little family would curl up on the couch and her parents would introduce her to the classics. Lenora Birch films had made a frequent appearance.
But this wasn’t a movie.
It was real life.
They were here to solve Lenora Birch’s death, not ruminate over her life. That would be for her friends and family to do, and well, most of America. But Vincent and Jill… right now they were homicide detectives first, fans second.
And though neither would say it, they were very much aware that this was a case that could make their career.
Or break it.
Not that they needed much help improving their track record. Jill and Vincent had a lower percentage of unsolved cases than almost anyone in the department.
But still, this was the murder of Lenora Birch.
Solving this would put them on the map in a big way. Set them up for promotion well ahead of their time.
But first… to prove it was a murder.
Jill rested her hands on the railing and looked down. “Okay, so she went over here…”
Jill held out her hand, palm to the floor as she measured how high the railing was on her. It hit between belly button and boobs. “How tall do you think Lenora Birch is—was? She’s so thin I always picture her being taller…”
“About your height,” Vincent said.
Jill nodded. “Okay, so if she’s my height and the railing hits me here…” She continued to hold her hand off before taking a couple steps back. “Let’s say I stumble…”
She mimed a stumbling motion, and Vincent shook his head. “Nope. Even if she stumbled against the railing, there wouldn’t be enough force.”
“You’re right,” Jill said. “So in order for this to have been a fall…”
She went on her tippy toes and dipped forward.
Vincent swore sharply, and a hand pulled her back from the railing by the waist of her pants.
“What the—” She turned to give him an incredulous look, but his face was stark white, and realization dawned.
“Ohhh,” she said knowingly. “I forgot about that little height thing you have.”
“Shut up,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face.
Jill wisely hid her smile. Vincent may have the reputation as one of the toughest, hardest-to-rattle cops in the NYPD, but he had one teeny-tiny weakness…
He was scared to death of heights.
She wouldn’t have thought a second-story railing even qualified, but judging from the slightly nauseous look on his face, it definitely did.
“Sorry,” she said, patting his arm. He was wearing his usual work “uniform.”
All black.
She didn’t judge, as she wore more of the same. Black pants. Black turtleneck. Black shoes.
Jill used to dress up more when she’d first gotten promoted to detective, but now she only busted out the skirts when they were talking to the families of victims or questioning people.
And then, only to soften the fact that Vincent didn’t dress up. Ever.
“Okay, so it’s reasonably certain that this couldn’t have been an accident,” Jill said, deliberately steering his attention back to the case.
He shook his head, color returning.
“I know we’ll need to look into her mental state,” Jill said, because they had to explore all options. “But even if Lenora Birch was depressed and the public didn’t know it… I don’t think she would have done it like this.”
“Why do you say that?”
Jill lifted a shoulder. “A person who was once said to be the most beautiful woman in the world wouldn’t want to be found like that.”
She gestured toward the floor below.
Vin blew out a breath as he snapped off his gloves and handed them to a passing tech. Jill did the same, although she did it with a smile and said thank you.
“Start with the housekeeper?” he asked.
Jill nodded. “Hopefully she’s still waiting in the kitchen like we asked.”
The housekeeper had been the one to find the body and call 911. She’d been too distraught to get out more than sobs when they’d first arrived, but Jill was hoping the worst of the shock had worn off and they could at least get some sense of where to start.
Jill felt a little shiver of anticipation roll through her. Not at the death—never the death. But at the thrill of the chase. Of the puzzle. She loved the entire process of putting the pieces together and coming up with the best prize of all:
Justice.
“I’ve missed this,” she said, more to herself than to Vincent, who wasn’t exactly known for being Mr. Chatty on the job. Or ever.
But to her surprise he studied her. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“That why you spent three months on the beach getting wooed by a millionaire while I got stuck with a Goddamn detective in training?”
“Hey!” she said, stung. “I wasn’t sitting on a beach, and you know it. I was making soup for my mother and vacuuming up year-old dust bunnies and going to the pharmacy every other day for her pain meds, and—”
“I know,” he cut in gruffly. “Sorry.”
She stopped her rampage, mollified only slightly.
He started to head back down the stairs, but she stopped him. “Vin.”
He turned around, and she glanced at her shoes, feeling silly for what she was about to say but wanting to say it anyway. Needing to say it so that they could be mavens and focus on work.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“Okay, so I was thinking,” she said, licking her lips. “We never talked about… you know, me getting married.”
He jolted. “You want to talk about it now?”
“Well, I mean, we don’t have to make a wedding scrapbook together, I just… thought it was weird that we haven’t really acknowledged it.”
He said nothing.
“You never even said congratulations,” she said quietly.
He stared at her blankly. “What?”
Jill licked her lips, feeling more ridiculous than ever. “I just… my engagement. Your entire family was happy for me. But you… you didn’t say one word.”
“Congratulations,” he said flatly.
Jill rolled her eyes. “The navigator on my phone’s map app has more inflection than you. I don’t want you to say it because you’re supposed to, I want you to say it because you mean it.”
“That is such a girly thing to say,” he stated gruffly.
She ignored this. She had no problems being girly.
“Everyone, see, is happy for me, but you seem… pissed,” she pressed.
It bothered her. She didn’t need Vincent’s blessing. Didn’t nee
d him to sanction her admittedly whirlwind courtship with Tom. Didn’t need him to beg to be a bridesmaid, but she needed… something.
He held her gaze for several minutes. “Are you happy?”
“Of course,” she said automatically. Of course she was happy. A gorgeous, successful man had approached her in a bar, bought her a drink, and then proceeded to court the hell out of her for the next three months.
No man had ever done that for her. Ever.
Tom Porter was every woman’s dream. He was her dream. Or at least, a version of it.
“You sure about that?” Vincent asked, coming back toward her.
She frowned in confusion. “Sure about what?”
He moved even closer, his gaze locked on hers. “Are you sure that you’re happy?”
He was only a few inches away from her, and for some reason she felt… aware of him. Of his closeness.
She felt the strangest urge to step back from his intensity.
It was just Vincent, she reminded herself.
He was always intense, but this felt different.
“Of course I’m happy,” she said.
“Huh.” He continued to study her.
“What do you mean, huh?” she asked testily.
“Just that twice now you’ve added an ‘of course’ to your statement.”
“What?” She was thoroughly confused now. “What are you even talking about?”
He rocked back on his heels, then forward again. “I’ve asked twice if you’re happy. You’ve responded with ‘of course.’ Twice.”
“So?” she asked, throwing up her arms in exasperation.
“So,” he said, leaning forward and down so they were face-to-face. “Sounds like you’re trying to convince someone.”
He turned and walked away then, heading down the stairs, and if Jill had anything to throw at him—anything at all—she would have.
“Who would I be trying to convince?” she called after him, before jumping into motion and all but running down the stairs after him. “You?”
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, so quickly that she nearly slammed into his back. Vincent’s hands found her arms to steady her, even as she glared at him.
He slowly dropped his hands, letting his arms fall to his sides, and something unreadable passed over his expression as he took a step back.
“Who would I be trying to convince?” she asked again.
His expression was both thoughtful and pitying, and once again, Jill longed for something to hurl at him.
“Poor Henley. Your time out of the field has made your deduction skills rusty,” he said.
“Meaning?” she asked as he turned on his heel and headed toward the kitchen to question the housekeeper.
“Meaning, I don’t think you’re trying to convince me of your happiness,” he said, not turning around. “I think you’re trying to convince you.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I think you’re trying to convince you.
Jill glared down at her coffee. Vincent was wrong.
He was so wrong.
Jill was happy to be marrying Tom. Super happy. She was…
“Yo, Henley, hurry up.”
Jill glanced up from where she’d been blindly stirring her white mocha for the past three minutes to find her partner scowling—always with the scowling—down at her.
“Easy, Moretti, I’ve been waiting for you. How long does it take to freaking go to the bathroom?”
“There was a line,” he snapped, moving toward the door of Starbucks before she even had a chance to respond.
Jill rolled her eyes and grabbed both her coffee and his, since he apparently expected her to bring it to him.
It would serve the jerk right if she just dropped it in the trash as she walked out the door, but then, if Jill were being totally fair, she’d have to admit that he’d carried her coffee plenty of times when she’d zoned out.
He turned around once outside the coffee shop, his eyes immediately going for his cup as she followed him.
“Thanks,” he muttered, accepting his boring black coffee. “Totally forgot.”
“It’s been a long one,” she said, taking a sip of her drink.
He looked her over. “How you holding up? First day back on the job and we have a murdered celebrity and nobody even approaching what looks like a viable suspect.”
Jill licked away some of the whipped cream from her upper lip, wondering if she imagined the way Vincent’s gaze had tracked the motion.
“Not going to lie, my feet hurt, my back hurts, and my head hurts…”
He nodded. “And you love it.”
Jill didn’t bother to hide the happy grin, her bad mood evaporating, as it usually did.
“I do love it. I’ve really, really missed this,” she said as they began walking toward their car.
Vincent surprised her then by glancing down at his coffee, then tossing it in a nearby garbage can.
She skidded to a halt. “Did you just throw away coffee? Expensive coffee?”
He lifted a shoulder. “It’s six p.m.”
“And that’s stopped you from guzzling caffeine since… when?”
He stared at her for several long seconds, and she cradled her coffee to her chest protectively. “Well I’m not throwing out mine.”
Vincent didn’t seem to hear her. “Do you want to grab a beer?”
It was a casual question.
Nothing special. They’d grabbed drinks a thousand times before after the end of their shift, sometimes without even discussing it. They would just wordlessly find themselves in the same restaurant, sharing a drink or two.
But there was something different tonight. A nervousness, as though he’d been thinking about the question for a while.
It was as though he was afraid she was going to say no. Afraid she was going to choose phone sex with Tom over drinks with him.
Jill glanced down at her coffee. Took one last big sip, then stepped around Vin, dropped the cup in the trash can behind him, and smiled. “Absolutely.”
He didn’t smile back, but his eyes crinkled in the corners, and that was something.
No, not just something. It was a big something.
“Everything okay with you?” Jill asked as she got into the passenger seat. Vincent liked to drive, and she didn’t mind one bit. Driving in the city made her crazy.
“Yeah. Why?” he asked.
“I dunno. You’ve been strange since I’ve gotten back.”
“So, like all of twenty-four hours?”
She studied him.
He gave her a quick glance across the car. “Quit it.”
“Quit what?”
“Staring at me.”
“I’m not staring.”
“You’re looking at me without blinking with those big old eyes. It’s staring.”
She continued to look at him, deliberately trying not to blink now, just to annoy him. “You never told me what you’ve been up to.”
“Huh?”
“While I was gone,” she explained with what she thought was admirable patience. “What did you do? Give me the highlights. Any new women or new restaurants discovered? Did you get that weird squeak in your heater fixed? I mean, three months passed. You must have done something.”
“Three months where you were off getting engaged, you mean.”
His statement hung between them for several moments, although she didn’t really understand why.
“Yeah. Like that.” Her voice was just the tiniest bit touchy, but she really wasn’t loving the way he acted pissed about the fact that she was getting married.
It’s not like she was expecting him to go dress shopping with her or be the one to give her something borrowed, but Vincent Moretti was…
He was her best friend. Not in the traditional sense, of course. He was closed-off and irritable, and most of the time he acted like he didn’t even like her. But over the years, they’d become partners in more than just the work-together kind of way.<
br />
They were like two halves of… something.
Or at least they had been. There seemed to be a rift now, and Jill was oddly desperate to fix it.
“I didn’t do much,” he muttered finally. “Watched a lot of football. Fixed the heater myself, because my landlord’s useless.”
She noticed he didn’t answer her question about women, and she should probably just let it go, but… she didn’t.
“Did you date?”
He glanced across her again before easily parallel parking into a spot directly across from one of their favorite pubs on the Lower East Side.
“No,” he said as he turned off the car. “I didn’t date.”
Vincent climbed out of the car and slammed the door shut, but Jill sat frozen for several seconds, trying to figure out why his announcement sent such a stab of relief rippling through her.
Relief over what, though? That Vin was still single? That shouldn’t matter because Jill wasn’t single.
Not only was she not single, she had a ring on her finger.
Jill closed her eyes and twisted the diamond in an effort to refocus her thoughts on her fiancé. The handsome, kind man she was going to marry. And when she opened her eyes, she’d stop thinking about Vincent. And the fact that he hadn’t dated while she was away.
And maybe, just maybe—she’d stop herself from thinking about how much she’d dread the moment when he did find a girlfriend.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Vincent Moretti’s adult life had always involved two infallible constants:
(1) his legendary “whodunit” hunch
(2) Jill Henley
It was just his fucking luck that both of those things would give up on him at the exact same time, leaving him feeling a little lost.
And a lot pissed.
When Vin and Jill had gotten the early-morning call about a body at Lenora Birch’s house, Vin hadn’t even felt a flicker of warning that the case was going to be an elusive one.
In fact, he’d actually been fairly damn confident that it would be an easy one. The more high-profile cases usually were. The more famous the victim, the more people who wanted to be famous by association.
Even if that association was murder.
Vincent had cockily assumed he’d have a solid sense of their guy—or gal—by the time the news hit the media.
