She shook her head. “You first. Tell me one of yours.”
He fingered the thin straps of her chemise. “Let me show you. Old prosecutor’s trick…one demonstration’s worth a thousand explanations.”
He lowered his head, mouth brushing the skin exposed as the bodice slipped. With a soft push, the satin pooled at her waist. He captured her mouth and slid his hands along the inside of her thighs. Celia arched into him, burning up, very glad he’d stopped by for breakfast mere hours after he’d finally left her bed.
She sighed, sinking into the memory of the night before, of his rough husky groan as he entered her, the rumble of his laughter while they talked afterwards in her dim room. She liked him, the man inside, more than she should, liked being with him. His thumbs traced the edges of her panties. He lifted his mouth, face taut and hungry with need. “Where are the toys?”
Excitement speared through her. She was very glad he’d dropped by for breakfast, even gladder it was Saturday and they had the entire day before them, hours upon hours to spend discovering one another. “Upstairs in—”
The ping of her cell phone stopped the words, and she sighed as McMillian groaned. “Damn it.”
“Keep your focus, McMillian.” She slipped from the counter and spun to grab the offending object, still pinging imperiously. As she lifted it to her ear, McMillian tugged her against him, rubbing a hand across her bare midriff and up to her breasts. She struggled to keep her voice even, swallowing the moan building in her throat. “St. John.”
“I’ve got something you might want to see.” Cook’s voice vibrated with tension.
“Wh-what’s that?” Celia placed a hand over McMillian’s marauding fingers and he stilled behind her. His hot, humid breath trembled along her nape.
“Got a 10-43 call this morning,” Cook replied, the murder ten-code drawing her attention completely away from the man behind her. “You know Jessica Grady, the divorce lawyer?”
“I do.” Celia swallowed, her mouth dry. How often during those early weeks at the DA’s office had she seen Jessica Grady with McMillian? They’d been involved in one of his notorious affairs of “limited duration”. She closed her eyes. Jesus above, what was coming next? “Why do you think I need to see the scene?”
“Because according to the ME, Ms. Grady was pregnant when she died. If not full-term, damn close to it.”
“C’mon, Cook, get to the point.” She shrugged irritable shoulders and slipped away from the wall of McMillian’s body, tugging her gown back into place. She didn’t look at him.
“Cause of death looks like massive blood loss. Someone cut the baby out of her.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Would I joke about something like that?”
Her thoughts winged to their deceased infant. “Estimated time of death?”
“Twenty-four hours. Or longer.”
She tugged at her chain, the links rasping against her skin. “Okay. Are you still on scene?”
“Yeah. Probably be here most of the day. ME’s not even ready for us to move the body.”
“I can be there in fifteen minutes.” She flipped the phone closed, not giving him time to reply. Foreboding snaked through her.
“What?”
She dragged in a deep breath and turned to face McMillian. “That was Cook. He’s on a murder scene.”
McMillian lifted a hand in silent inquiry.
Another deep breath didn’t relieve the nerves twisting through her belly. “The victim is Jessica Grady.”
Shock bloomed in his eyes, dulling the blue gaze. He recovered quickly, features morphing to his impassive prosecutor’s mask. “Why call you?”
She didn’t want to go here with him, and suddenly, she wished he hadn’t come by for breakfast. She’d already done the math—if Jessica had been pregnant with a full-term baby, it was very likely the man standing before Celia could be the father.
“Because she was pregnant.” She rubbed her thumb over her necklace. “It looks like she may have been killed for the baby.”
His lips parted, a stunned expression clouding his face. Celia swallowed again, aching. He looked like she’d delivered a roundhouse to his groin. Mouth tightening, he straightened and picked up his keys from her counter. “Get dressed and let’s go.”
She frowned. “McMillian—”
“I said let’s go.”
She wanted to reach for him, but the boss-employee gulf was definitely back in place. “I guess you’re driving again.”
—
One hand on the wheel, Tom pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stop the thoughts, the images trickling through his mind. Jessica, struggling, fighting, hurting.
Dying.
He blew out a ragged breath, thankful for Celia’s silent presence. In the passenger seat, she stared ahead. His brain clicked through the numbers, counting off months. If Jessica had a baby…
He could be the father.
His stomach cramped. God, no. He couldn’t face that again.
“You didn’t know, did you?” Celia’s soft voice washed over him, pulling him back from the abyss. “That she was pregnant.”
“No. We hadn’t talked in weeks, months.” He clutched the steering wheel with enough force that his knuckles ached. He cleared his tight throat. “That baby could be mine.”
“I figured as much.” She dropped her hand from her neck, brushed his wrist atop the gearshift with her fingers. The soothing comfort of her touch pierced the fear wrapped around him. He wanted to grab her and hold on.
He turned left, the Mercedes purring along the road fronting the emerald golf course, then slowed to pull into Jessica’s long asphalt driveway.
Her luxury Toyota sat in the drive, flanked by the GBI’s crime scene van, a bevy of cars from the Chandler County’s Sheriff’s Department and the coroner’s wagon. Yellow crime scene tape cordoned off the immaculate yard and a Chandler County deputy stood guard at the open oak door. Tom killed the engine and stared at the front of the fashionable brick home.
“Ready?” Celia touched his hand again, a brief smile curving her mouth, although her eyes remained serious.
He swallowed a rough laugh. Ready for what? To see Jessica’s body? To find out whether or not he’d fathered her missing baby? He nodded. “Come on.”
She walked a little ahead of him as they approached the house and he sensed her withdrawal. Despite the strain twisting his gut, a half-hearted smile twisted his mouth. Moving in cop mode already. She exchanged a quick greeting with the deputy guarding the door and waited for Tom to join her. Together, they entered the house.
Cook stood inside the door, watching a GBI crime scene technician photograph the scene. Tom’s stomach rolled. Jessica lay on the floor of the foyer, a white tunic pushed above her breasts and twisted about her torso. Black slacks tangled about her ankles. Her eyes stared upward, the irises cloudy, the pupils fixed. The rancid smell of death hung heavy in the air—blood, body fluids, early decay. Blood had pooled beneath her body, staining the cream-colored carpet, congealing into a stinking mess. A trail of dried blood led from a crusted-over cut on her cheekbone to her ear.
Her abdomen gaped like an obscene mouth.
“Christ.”
“Fancy seeing you this morning, Counselor.” Cook frowned at him before focusing on Celia.
She shrugged and glanced quickly at Tom. “Early meeting.”
Cook’s eyebrows winged upward. “On a Saturday?”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you have so far?”
“Friend dropped by early this morning after Grady missed a dinner party last night. When Grady didn’t answer her phone or her cell or open the door, the friend called us. That was about seven. Ford figures we’re looking at probably thirty-six to forty-eight hours dead.”
Celia slanted a sharp look at the investigator. “What about last known contact?”
Cook jerked his head toward the door. “Tick’s out in the car, trying to run that down now.”
His gaze skittered away from the wound spanning from her sternum to her pelvis. Who the hell would do something like that to her?
“…do a walk-through.” Cook’s voice infiltrated his thoughts. “Her office is a holy mess. Not sure yet if it’s a staged burglary or if someone was looking for something. We need to pull her phone records, start talking to her friends.”
“I can help with the scene.” Celia glanced up at Tom. “This is going to take hours and there’s nothing you can do now. Why don’t you go home?”
He stiffened. Leave? Without knowing anything? “I’d rather—”
“McMillian, there’s no reason for you to be here. I’ll call you as soon we know something.”
Oh yeah, the cop was back and he was on the outside, all over again. Jaw clenched until it ached, he nodded. “You do that, Ms. St. John.”
He spun on his heel and stalked back to his car.
—
“God, why couldn’t she have a smaller house?” Celia straightened from her hunched position by the bed and rotated her neck. Jesus above, the prints on the furniture. Didn’t the woman ever dust? As she’d assured McMillian, the painstaking work of processing the scene had taken hours and they remained far from finished. They’d settled on an easy routine—Celia dusting and lifting prints, Cook collecting and bagging physical evidence, while Tick Calvert, Chandler County’s lead investigator, interviewed Jessica’s friends and clients.
“Because she’s a lawyer. Ever seen one who wasn’t pretentious?” Cook stepped over a broken lamp lying amid a jumble of clothing from the closet. He eased open the armoire door and whistled, long and low.
She labeled and logged yet another print before glancing up at him. “What?”
He indicated a stack of DVDs, seemingly undisturbed. “Home videos.”
Celia rolled her eyes. “Everyone has those.”
“I don’t think these are birthday parties or family dinners. Not the way they’re labeled.” Cook tilted his head, gaze trained on the armoire. “Underwood. Swanson. Campbell. Burns. Oh, and lookee here.”
Unease prickled over her. She didn’t even have to ask.
Cook lifted a DVD. “McMillian.”
She caught the evil glint in his incisive eyes as he glanced from the DVD to the player. “Cook, no.”
“Oh, come on, St. John. Aren’t you a little bit curious?”
“No, I’m not.” She had no desire to watch McMillian making love to the woman the coroner had removed not an hour ago. She wanted any images she had of him naked to involve only her.
However, Cook was either stubborn or freaking deaf.
The DVD slid into the player with a series of whirs and clicks.
The television flashed blue. Images blurred, cleared on the screen. The bedroom behind them. Jessica Grady, very much alive, on the bed, naked and moaning. Tom McMillian between her thighs, muscles in his back and buttocks flexing.
Celia’s stomach dropped and bile flooded her throat. She glanced away, curling her shaking fingers until her knuckles ached. Just because Cook was an ass didn’t mean she had to watch the damn thing. The pictures didn’t go away, still flashing on the surface of her mind, joined by the sounds coming from the television. They merged with her own memories, tainting the private time she and McMillian had carved out in her dining room, in her bed, the night before.
Her gaze pulled to the screen again. God, she didn’t need this, didn’t need the emotions seeing him with another woman aroused—anger, jealousy, disappointment.
“Are you finished getting your jollies over there, Cook?” She made sure her voice was damn level. Showing anything now would be completely untenable. Anger flashed in her. McMillian deserved better than this.
Cook stepped back, frowning, his gaze trained on the screen. “I don’t think he knows he’s being taped.”
“What do you mean?” She flicked a look at the television and away. Heaven help her, how would she be able to look at McMillian again without seeing this?
“Look at her.” With a gloved finger, Cook pointed at Jessica’s face. “What do you see?”
What did she see? Her lover thrusting inside someone else, red nails clutching at his ass, pulling him deeper.
“St. John. Look.” Exasperation filtered into Cook’s voice. “She’s acting. And she keeps glancing at the camera. The angle’s wrong for a tripod. It’s more like…”
Squinting, he walked to the bed and looked along the adjacent wall. “There. See? She could hide it in the plant shelf.”
“Sure, but…” Compelled, Celia looked at the television again. “What makes you think he doesn’t know?”
Cook shrugged. “She’s watching the camera. He’s focused on her. Well, on what they’re doing anyway.”
On screen, McMillian tensed, his body stiffening, his guttural groan filling Celia’s ears. She swallowed. “So she kept a video diary of her sexual conquests. Big deal.”
Cook punched the eject button and shot her an amused glance. “You’re smarter than that, St. John. Think.”
“Blackmail?” Celia shook her head. “She has a thriving practice.”
“Maybe she got greedy. Could be one of them decided to cut off the gravy train, permanently. Maybe he decided to take care of the problem her baby represented at the same time.” He snapped a new inventory sheet on his clipboard and shook out an evidence bag. “And maybe we have a veritable library of suspects here.”
Her gaze darted to the DVD case in his hand. McMillian had been scrawled on the clear plastic in bold, black marker. “But that means…”
“Yeah.” Cook glanced up, his eyes gleaming. “Your boss is a suspect.”
—
“Well, I’ve talked to everyone local in her address book.” Investigator Tick Calvert dropped into the chair facing the empty desk adjacent to Cook’s. He scattered a handful of peppermints across the desktop and offered one in Celia’s direction. Brows lifted, he eyed the television Cook had set up on the counter running along one wall. “So that’s the movie?”
Trying to ignore the ache pulsing at her temples, Celia reached for a mint. “One of them.”
Thank God Cook had taken a break from analyzing the films. He’d paused the DVD, so she had a few minutes’ reprieve from listening to Jessica’s theatrical moaning. She was beginning to agree with Cook—Jessica had been quite the actress and none of the men involved seemed to realize they were being taped. Celia glanced over her shoulder. On the screen, Jessica straddled a state representative, frozen in time.
At least it wasn’t the film of her and McMillian.
Celia bit down on her peppermint, breaking it into tiny pieces. “So what did you get from your interviews?”
Tick flipped open his notebook. “Not much. The weirdest and probably most important thing? No one knew she was pregnant.”
“Nobody?” Cook strolled in, paging through a fax. He picked up the remote and settled in his desk chair.
“Not even her OB/GYN.” Tick ran a finger down the page. “Hadn’t seen him since her annual physical early in May; she wasn’t due for another until next month. Couple of friends and neighbors noticed she’d put on some weight, but knew nothing about a pregnancy.”
“Get this.” Cook held the fax aloft. “It’s our preliminary autopsy report and some early fingerprint results.”
Celia stared at him. “You’re kidding. It’s barely been six hours since they removed the body.”
“Guess screwing the DA gets you moved to the top of the line. McMillian called Botine as soon as he left Grady’s pla
ce this morning, asked them to ‘expedite’ anything we needed.” Cynicism coated Cook’s voice. “Wonder if he’d have done that if he’d known his prints were going to turn up in her bedroom. On the back of the headboard.”
Her stomach dropped. “Big surprise. They’d been lovers.”
Cook handed off the autopsy report to Tick. “You don’t think he did it.”
Shrugging, she tried for a smooth expression. “No, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
With Cook leaning back in his chair, studying her, she tapped her pen on her notebook. “Why would he?”
Surprise flickered in Cook’s eyes and he exchanged a look with Tick. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because she was trying to shake him down? That movie, her baby. That kind of shit kills political careers and it’s no secret he wants to be more than the local DA.”
“Fine.” She crossed her arms over her midriff. “Then why did we find the movie? Why not take it with him, if that’s why he killed her?”
Cook’s broad shoulders moved in a casual shrug. “He had the baby to deal with. Could be he panicked and forgot the DVD.”
A disbelieving laugh bubbled from her throat. “Have you met him? I don’t think panic is in his vocabulary.”
Shaking his head, Cook tossed his pen down. “Oh, shit.”
Celia tensed.
“What?” Tick glanced up from the report, his dark gaze alert. Ignoring his partner, Cook fixed Celia with a disgusted look. “You do have a thing for him.”
She tilted her chin. “That’s ridiculous—”
“And you’re approaching this the wrong way because of it.”
Heat flooded her face, her stomach turning. How had they ended up here? Maybe the floor would open and swallow her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He settled deeper into the seat. “It means you’re looking for reasons why it’s not him, rather than approaching the case objectively. You don’t want it to be him, so you’re going to prove it’s not.”
Anger, at him, at herself, trembled in her. “And you’re objective? How many other directions have you considered?”
“At least eight.” He flipped open a folder and slid a sheet of paper across the desk. “Those are the men on the other videos.”
Memories of Us Page 13
