by Nora Roberts
“Miss Bass, these gentlemen are here to see Mr. Markowitz.”
“Do you have an appointment?” The woman behind the desk looked harassed enough. Her hair stood out in every direction as if she had raked and tugged and pulled on it with her fingers. Now she stuck a pencil behind her ear and began to search through the papers on her desk for her date book. The phone beside her rang steadily. “I’m sorry, Mr. Markowitz is very busy. It’s not possible for him to see new clients.”
Ben took out his badge and held it under her nose.
“Oh.” She cleared her throat and unearthed her intercom. “I’ll see if he’s available. Mr. Markowitz—” Both Ben and Ed could hear the cranky static that followed the interruption. “I’m sorry, Mr. Markowitz. Yes, sir, but there are two men here. No, sir, I haven’t run the Berlin account yet. Mr. Markowitz—Mr. Markowitz, they’re policemen.” She said the last in an undertone, as if it were a secret. “Yes, sir, I’m sure. No, sir. All right.”
She blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Mr. Markowitz will see you now. Right through that door.” Her duty done, she yanked up the phone. “Lawrence Markowitz and Associates.”
If he had any associates, they weren’t to be seen. Markowitz was alone in his office, a skinny, balding man with big teeth and thick glasses. His desk was black, like his secretary’s, but half again as large. Files were heaped on it, along with two phones, at least a dozen sharpened pencils, and a pair of calculators. Tape streamed onto the floor. There was a watercooler in the corner. Hanging in front of the window was a bird cage with a big green parakeet in it.
“Mr. Markowitz.” Both detectives showed their identification.
“Yes, what can I do for you?” He ran his palm over what was left of his hair and licked his lips. He hadn’t lied to Roxanne about the overbite. “I’m afraid I’m swamped at the moment. You know what today is, don’t you? April fourteenth. Everybody waits until the last minute, then they want a miracle. All I ask for is a little consideration, a little organization. I can’t file extensions for everyone, you know. Rabbits, they want you to pull rabbits out of your hat.”
“Yes, sir,” Ben began, then it hit him. “April fourteenth?”
“I filed last month,” Ed said mildly.
“You would.”
“I’m sorry, gentlemen, but these new tax laws have everyone in an uproar. If I work for the next twenty-four hours straight, I might just finish before deadline.” Markowitz’s fingers hovered nervously over his calculator.
“Fuck the IRS,” the parakeet chirped from his perch.
“Yeah.” Ben ran his own fingers through his hair and tried not to dwell on it. “Mr. Markowitz, we’re not here about taxes. What do you charge, anyway?”
“We’re here about Mary Grice,” Ed put in. “You knew her as Roxanne.”
Markowitz hit the clear button in reflex, then grabbed a pencil. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Mr. Markowitz, Mary Grice was murdered last night.” Ed waited a beat, but saw the accountant had found time to read the morning paper. “We have reason to believe you were talking to her on the phone at the time of the attack.”
“I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“You knew Roxanne,” Ben added.
Markowitz’s already pale skin took on a hint of green. “I don’t understand what Roxanne has to do with Mary Grice.”
“They were the same woman,” Ben said and watched Markowitz swallow hard.
He’d known. Somehow he’d known as soon as he scanned the morning headlines. But that hadn’t made it real. Two cops in his office in the middle of the day made it very real. And very personal. “I have some of the biggest accounts in the metropolitan area. Several of my clients are in the Congress, the Senate. I can’t afford any trouble.”
“We could subpoena you,” Ed told him. “If you cooperate, we may be able to keep things quiet.”
“It’s the pressure.” Markowitz took off his glasses to rub his eyes. He looked blind and helpless without them. “For months your life revolves around 1099s and Keoghs. You can’t imagine it. Nobody wants to pay, you know. You can hardly blame them. Most of my clients have incomes in the high six figures. They don’t want to give thirty-five percent or more to the government. They want me to find a way out for them.”
“That’s tough,” Ben said and decided to try one of the sling chairs. “We’re not concerned with your reasons for using Fantasy’s services, Mr. Markowitz. We’d like you to tell us exactly what happened last night while you were talking to Mary.”
“Roxanne,” Markowitz corrected. “I feel better thinking of her as Roxanne. She had a wonderful voice, and she was so … well, adventurous. I don’t have much time for women since my divorce. But that’s water under the bridge. Anyway, I developed such an exciting rapport with Roxanne. Three times a week. I could talk to her and come back and face Schedule Cs.”
“Last night, Mr. Markowitz,” Ed prompted.
“Yes, last night. Well, we hadn’t been talking very long. I was just getting into it. You know, relaxing.” He took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. “All of a sudden, she was talking to someone else. Like there was someone in the room. She said something like ‘Who are you?’ or ‘What are you doing here?’ At first I thought she was still talking to me, so I said something back, a joke or something. Then she screamed. I almost dropped the phone. She said, ‘Lawrence, Lawrence, help me. Call the police, call somebody.’ ” He began to cough as if repeating the words irritated his throat. “I was talking back to her. It was so unexpected. I think I told her to calm down. Then I heard another voice.”
“A man’s voice?” Ed continued to write in his notebook.
“Yes, I think. Another voice anyway. He said, I think he said, ‘You’re going to like this.’ He called her by name.”
“Roxanne?” Ben asked.
“Yes, that’s right. I heard him say Roxanne, and I heard—” Now he covered his face with the cloth and waited a moment. “You have to understand, I’m really a very ordinary man. I keep the excitement and complications in my life to a minimum. I have low blood sugar.”
Ed gave him a sympathetic nod. “Just tell us what you heard.”
“I heard such terrible noises. Breathing and banging. She wasn’t screaming anymore, just making some gasping, gurgling sounds. I hung up. I didn’t know what to do, so I hung up.”
He lowered the cloth again, and his face was gray. “I thought maybe it was a put-on. I tried to tell myself it was, but I kept hearing noises. I kept hearing Roxanne crying and begging him not to hurt her. And I heard the other voice say that she wanted him to hurt her, that she was never going to experience anything like this again. I think, I think he said that he’d heard her say she wanted to be hurt. I’m not sure about that. It was all so garbled. Excuse me.”
He got up to go to the watercooler. He filled a paper cup as air bubbled up to the top. After he’d gulped it down, he filled the cup again. “I didn’t know what to do, I just sat there thinking. I tried to go back to work, to forget about it. Like I said before, I kept thinking it was probably just a joke. But it didn’t sound like a joke.” He drained the second cup of water. “The longer I sat there, the harder it was to believe it was just a joke. So I ended up calling Fantasy. I told the girl there that Roxanne was in trouble. I thought maybe someone was killing her. I hung up again, and I—I went back to work. What else could I do?” His gaze darted back and forth between Ed and Ben, never landing on either of them. “I kept thinking Roxanne would call back and tell me everything was okay. That she’d just been kidding. But she didn’t call back.”
“Was there anything about the voice—the other voice you heard—that made it distinctive?” As he wrote, Ed glanced up and watched Markowitz sweat. “An accent, a tone, a way of phrasing?”
“No, it was just a voice. I could hardly hear it over Roxanne’s. Look, I don’t even know what she looked like. I don’t want to know. Let’s be honest a
bout this, she was nothing more to me than, well, a clerk at the supermarket. She was just somebody I called a few times a week so I could forget about work.” Distancing himself that far eased his mind. He was an ordinary man, he reminded himself, even honest. To a point. Nobody wanted their accountants to treat honesty like a religion. “I think she probably had a boyfriend who was jealous. That’s what I think.”
“Did she use a name?” Ben asked.
“No. Just mine. She just called out my name. Please, there’s nothing more I can tell you. I did everything I could. I didn’t have to call in, you know,” he added, his tone altering with the beginnings of self-righteousness. “I didn’t have to get involved.”
“We appreciate your cooperation.” Ben pulled himself out of the chair. “You’re going to have to come in and sign a statement.”
“Detective, if I so much as move out of this chair until midnight tomorrow, I could be responsible for a dozen fines.”
“File early,” the parakeet advised. “Cover your ass.”
“Come down the morning of the sixteenth. Ask for me or Detective Paris. We’ll do our best to keep your name out of it.”
“Thank you. You can use this door.” He gestured to the side door, then pulled his calculator forward. As far as he was concerned, he’d done his duty, and more.
“Is it too late to file an extension?” Ben asked as he started out.
“It’s never too late.” Markowitz began to push buttons.
Chapter 9
Grace wasn’t sure why she’d taken Ed’s advice and waited in his house. Maybe because it was easier for her to think there, without her sister’s things around her. She needed to keep busy. Her mind always worked better when her hands were occupied. So she made herself at home while she thought through her options.
It still seemed best to her to talk personally to the manager of Fantasy. Interviewing was one thing Grace excelled at. With a little prodding, a little pushing, she might be able to get her hands on a client list. Then she’d work down it, name by name. If her sister’s killer was on it, she’d find him.
Then what?
Then she’d play it by ear. That was the way she wrote. That was the way she lived. Both had been a success so far.
Revenge was part of the motivation. She’d never felt the emotion before, but found it a satisfying one. It strengthened. To follow through meant staying in Washington. She could work here as well as anywhere. And New York would still be there when she was finished.
If she left now, it would be like leaving a book undone and handing it to an editor. No one was going to write the last chapter but G. B. McCabe.
It couldn’t be that hard. Grace had always felt that police work took good timing, tenacity, and thoroughness. And a pinch of luck. That’s what writing took as well. Anyone who had plotted out and solved as many murders as she had should be able to corner one killer.
She needed the client list, the police reports, and time to think. All she had to do was get around the very sturdy frame of Detective Ed Jackson.
Even as she was working out her strategy, she heard the front door open. He wouldn’t be easy to con, she thought as she checked her face in his bathroom mirror. And harder yet because she liked him. Rubbing a smudge off her nose, she started downstairs.
“So you’re home.” She paused at the bottom of the steps and smiled at him. “How was your day?”
“Okay.” He shifted a bag of groceries to his other arm. She was wearing the same snug jeans and baggy sweater she’d had on that morning, but now they were streaked with white. “What the hell have you been doing?”
“Wallpapering your bathroom.” She moved to him and took the bag. “It looks great. You’ve got an eye for color.”
“You wallpapered my bathroom?”
“Don’t look stricken. I didn’t mess it up. The wallpaper, that is. The bathroom’s a wreck. I figured it was only fair you clean it up.” She gave him an easy smile. “You had half a roll left over.”
“Yeah. Ah, Grace, I appreciate it, but wallpapering takes a certain skill.” He should know, he’d been reading up on it for a week.
“You pop a line, you measure, you slap on the paste and go for it. You had a couple of how-to books hanging around.” She poked into the bag but didn’t see anything exciting. “Go on up and take a look. By the way, I ate the rest of your strawberries.”
“That’s okay.” He was too busy calculating just how much the wallpaper and paste had cost him.
“Oh, and mineral water’s okay, but you could use some sodas.”
He started upstairs, half-afraid to look. “I don’t drink them.”
“I do, but I had a beer instead. Oh, I almost forgot, your mother called.”
He paused halfway up. “She did?”
“Yeah. She’s a nice lady. And she was just delighted when I answered. I hope you don’t mind, I didn’t want to disappoint her, so I said we were lovers and that we were thinking about making it official before the baby comes.”
Because she was smiling up at him in a way that left him uncertain whether she was stringing him along, he simply shook his head. “Thanks. Thanks a lot, Grace.”
“Anytime. Your sister’s got a new boyfriend. He’s a lawyer. A corporate lawyer. He owns his own house and has a time-sharing condo in a place called Ocean City. It looks promising.”
“Jesus,” was all he managed.
“And your mother’s blood pressure is one-twenty over eighty. Want me to fix you a drink?”
“Yeah, you do that.”
She was humming when she walked into the kitchen. Ed really was adorable. She pulled a bottle of white wine out of the bag. He also had taste, she decided as she read the label. Then she took out what appeared to be a clump of asparagus. She sniffed it, then wrinkled her nose. Taste, yes, but she wasn’t at all sure what kind.
She found cauliflower, scallions, and snow peas. The only thing that managed to make her feel relieved was a bag of seedless grapes. Grace didn’t hesitate before diving in.
“It looks great.”
She swallowed a grape and turned to see him in the doorway.
“The bathroom. It looks great.”
“I’m very handy.” She held up the asparagus. “What do you do with this?”
“I cook it.”
She set it down again. “I was afraid of that. I didn’t ask what you wanted to drink.”
“I’ll get it. Did you rest?”
“I’m feeling fine.” She watched him pull a bottle of apple juice out of the refrigerator. It made her lips purse. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking while wallpapering your bathroom and chatting with your mother.”
“What kind of thinking?” He poured a tumbler of apple juice, then reached in a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of vodka. He poured two shots into the juice.
“That’s a hell of a way to get your vitamin A.”
“Want one?”
“I’ll pass. Anyway, I’ve been thinking that I should take over Kathy’s lease for a while. Stick around.”
Ed set his glass down. He wanted her to stay, just as the cop in him knew she’d be better off gone. “Why?”
“I still have lawyers and insurance to deal with.” Which she could do just as easily from New York. And he knew it. She could tell from his expression that he saw right through her. She’d been foolish to try to circle him. In any case, she didn’t find it easy to be dishonest with him. That was odd in itself. Grace never minded shading the truth. “All right, that’s not it. I can’t leave here without knowing everything. Kathy and I weren’t close. It’s never been easy for me to admit that, but it’s true. Staying here, trying to find who did this to her, is something I have to do for both of us. I can’t put this behind me, Ed, not completely behind me until I have all the answers.”
He wished, for both their sakes, that he didn’t understand. “Finding your sister’s killer isn’t your job, it’s mine.”
“Your job, yes. For me it’s a need. Can y
ou understand that?”
“It isn’t a matter of what I understand, but what I know.”
She crumpled the empty grocery bag before he could take it from her and fold it for storage. “Which is?”
“Civilians can’t be involved in investigations, Grace. They screw things up. And they get hurt.”
She touched her tongue to her top lip as she stepped toward him. “Which bothers you the most?”
She had incredible eyes. The kind a man could stare into for hours. They were looking into his now, waiting, questioning. Half-fascinated, half-wary, he ran his thumb along her cheekbone. “I don’t know.” Then, because he needed to, because her lips had curved just a little, he lowered his mouth to hers.
She tasted exactly the way he wanted her to. She felt, as he spread his fingers over her face, exactly the way he wanted her to. It was foolish, he knew. She was New York, bright lights, and fast parties. He was small town, and he never knew when he’d have blood on his hands again. But she felt just right.
Her eyes opened slowly when their lips parted. She let out a long breath before she smiled. “You know, you make a big impression whenever you do that. Maybe you could make it more of a habit.” Pressing against him, she nibbled her way to his mouth. When she felt his hands move to her hips, then tense, she sighed. It had been a long time, much too long, since she’d been tempted to let herself go. She wound her arms around his neck and felt, with great satisfaction, his heart thud along with hers. “Are you going to take me to bed, or what?”
He burrowed his lips into her neck, wanting more. It would be easy, so easy, to pick her up, to take her to his bed and just let it happen. As it had happened before. Something told him that with her it shouldn’t be easy. With her it shouldn’t be a casual tumble onto the sheets without a thought to tomorrow. He pressed his lips to her brow before he released her.
“I’m going to feed you.”
“Oh.” Grace took a step back. She didn’t often offer herself to a man. It took more than a sexual pull, it took affection and a feeling of trust. And to the best of her recollection, she’d never been rejected. “You sure?”
