For His Daughter

by Dani Sinclair

  She headed for the kitchen without looking to see if he followed. After a moment’s indecision, he dropped the bag onto her couch and went after her.

  “Why did you tell your brother I spent the night here?”

  “Because he wasn’t going to leave it alone.” She set a large glass of juice in front of him. “Besides, you’d already given him the impression we were lovers. Nothing I said was going to change that.”

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no need to be. I told you I’m a big girl, so stop apologizing to me.” She sat down across from him and lifted her fork. “Eat.”

  Lee wondered if the past seventy-two hours had been some sort of bizarre nightmare caused by bad pizza or something. Maybe he was really still home in bed. If so, it was time to wake up now. This nightmare was out of control.

  “I don’t want to come between you and your brother, Kayla.”

  “You won’t. He’ll get over it.”

  Lee didn’t think that was likely. “Tell me about your father.”

  She paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. She lowered the fork to the plate. “The police stopped him one night because of a broken taillight. A liquor store in Frederick had been robbed and the getaway vehicle had a broken taillight. The officer later claimed Dad was drunk and belligerent. He claimed my father threatened him. Another police car stopped to assist. Both cops swore my father was reaching inside his jacket when the first officer shot him down in the street. But Dad wasn’t going for a weapon. He was reaching for his wallet.”

  Lee felt his stomach contract. He lowered his own fork, no longer hungry. It was easy to read the pain in her eyes.

  “He had twenty dollars in his wallet. The police still maintain he was one of the two men who held up the store and shot the employees. One clerk died. The other recovered, but he couldn’t identify my dad or his car.”

  Years of bitterness spilled out in anguish.

  “Dad had a toy gun in the car. They decided he’d used it in the robbery while the other robber used the real thing. They didn’t listen when I told them I saw him pick it up from the driveway on his way out of the house that morning. A neighborhood kid had dropped it there and he didn’t want to run over it. They didn’t care! They needed him to be guilty to justify what that officer did.”

  “How old were you?” Lee asked gently.

  “Fourteen. I wasn’t a child and I wasn’t stupid. Dad had been laid off the month before, but we weren’t desperate. He would have found another job. He went out looking every day. But the police and the local papers branded him a thief. My mother lost her husband and eventually her own job because of all the publicity. Her entire life disintegrated and it was all on the say-so of a trigger-happy cop who’d been driving his first solo patrol for a grand total of six hours.”

  Lee closed his eyes against her pain but her words continued to spill out.

  “The dead man’s family went to the same school I did. His son and a group of his friends cornered me over by the lake one afternoon.”

  His fist clenched helplessly. “Fay and Elizabeth came along. Even though Lonny was older, Fay stood up to the four of them and sent them on their way. They never bothered me again.” There was no expression on her face, but Lee felt sick.

  “No wonder you stood by her.” Kayla’s loyalty and her aversion to the police were perfectly clear now. He could even begin to understand Alex. “There isn’t anything I can say about what happened to your father, Kayla. Cops are just people. Good, bad and in-between. Most of us care deeply about our jobs. We don’t lie to protect each other like you said.”

  Only her eyes responded with a look that denied his assertion.

  “Is that why you lied to your brother about where I spent the night? To protect what you see as another innocent victim of police accusation?”

  “No, I told him what you’d already set him up to believe. And I’ll tell the police the same thing.”

  “You won’t. I’ll deny it if you do.”

  “Do you want Meredith to grow up living in foster homes?”

  “No.” He stood abruptly and carried his dish to the sink, rinsing away the uneaten meal. He needed to be doing something. Anything. “I need to borrow your car.”

  “It comes with a driver.” She joined him at the sink.

  “No way.”

  “That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

  “I’ll leave it.”

  “HOW DID I LET YOU talk me into coming along?” Lee demanded.

  “I didn’t give you a choice.”

  Oh, he’d had choices. He just kept making the wrong ones. He couldn’t seem to help it with Kayla. He had no business taking her with him, but he couldn’t leave her there to talk with Hepplewhite alone. There was no telling what she’d say to the police. Lee would not allow her to give him an alibi if he could help it.

  “I want you to wait in the car while I talk with Trowbridge,” he warned her.

  “Lee, look.”

  The motel parking lot was empty, but the No Vacancy sign was on.

  “The police made them close the motel?” Kayla asked.

  “Not likely.” Lee pulled up to the office. A Closed sign hung from the window. There were no signs of life anywhere in the still complex.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Neither did he. “Where’s Trowbridge’s unit?”

  “There’s a private entrance around back. I’ll show you.”

  “No. Wait.” But Kayla was already out of the car and starting down a narrow alleyway between the junction of the two ells. Before he could reach her, she had knocked on what had to be the door to the private quarters.

  “Will you please go back and wait in the car?”

  “No. I don’t think he’s home, Lee.”

  With a frown, Lee pounded on the door and called out. There were no sounds from inside. He reached for the door handle and discovered it was unlocked. “I don’t like this.”

  “What are you doing?” Kayla asked. “We can’t go in there!”

  “No, we can’t, but I can. Do you still have those gloves in your purse?”

  “Lee! You could get arrested. That’s breaking and entering.”

  He almost smiled. “Illegal entry,” he corrected. “Go back to the car. I just want a quick look around.”

  “No! I’m coming with you.”

  “Kayla...” They were wasting time. “Wait right here.” The smell of sweat and stale beer competed with rotting garbage as the door opened. The living room housed some ratty old furniture reminiscent of what Lee himself had been left with after his divorce. But the large-screen television set looked new and there was a DVD player and some other expensive equipment.

  While Kayla hovered near the door, Lee prowled the small apartment, looking without touching.

  “What if he comes back?” Kayla asked in a stage whisper.

  “Then we’ll ask him a few questions.”

  “He won’t like finding us in here, Lee.”

  “You’re right. Go back to the car.”

  The strong scent of chemicals drew him into a bedroom. The entire room had been converted into a photo-processing lab. This was no novice setup. Most professionals would envy the sort of equipment he had in here, including cameras and a host of lenses.

  “Oh.”

  He turned and found Kayla in the doorway. “Succinct, but it sums it up. Where would a handyman get the sort of money it takes for this kind of setup?” Lee could think of one way for sure.

  “Oh, my God.” Lee swung around. Kayla stood in front of the other bedroom. Her hand covered her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. Lee shouldered her aside, half expecting to find Trowbridge’s dead body. He wasn’t prepared for the sight that met his eyes.

  With a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, he nudged the light switch on with his elbow. Pornographic pictures of Fay filled the walls.

  Chapter Seven

  “Kayla! Go back to the car
!”

  She heard Lee’s voice, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the carnal wall display. In several of the enlargements, Fay was not alone, though her body remained the focus of each shot. Only parts of the men were in view and never any faces. Kayla could tell that more than one man was depicted and her gaze riveted on a specific picture that showed Fay’s head thrown back in wild abandon, while a male hand lay on her exposed breast.

  “Kayla! Go outside and wait for me.”

  The hand wore a ring. An expensive gold ring with a dark blue tanzanite stone. Kayla wore a smaller, more feminine version herself. Her stomach heaved in revulsion. Lee turned her away, leading her back into the hall.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Yeah. Peachy. Come on. Out.”

  “No, really. We should—”

  “Get out of here, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  “But, Lee...”

  He marched her toward the front room. “I had no business letting you come in here. You shouldn’t have seen that.”

  “I’ve seen dirty pictures before, Lee,” she protested weakly. “I’m not some young virgin.”

  “I’d tell you how surprised I am at your low taste in art,” he said grimly, “but I don’t think either one of us is in the mood for teasing right now. I don’t imagine any of the pictures you’ve seen in the past came with a face you knew.”

  Kayla shuddered, knowing it did make a terrible difference. She’d never considered herself a prude, but this wasn’t some plastic person. It was Fay. And maybe Alex?

  Kayla welcomed the hot summer sun on her face. Birds chirped happily. A jet streaked across the sky toward Dulles airport. She took a deep breath and exhaled as Lee propelled her forward, watching her face anxiously.

  “I’m okay. Really. It was just a shock. We need to go back inside and finish looking around.”

  “We are finished,” he said forcefully.

  “But Barney sent her those notes. He took those awful pictures. Do you think he killed her?”

  Lee muttered something under his breath and grasped the door handle on the passenger side of the car. “What I think isn’t admissible evidence, Kayla. And nothing we saw says he killed her. All it says is he took her picture.”

  “More than once.”

  Lee nodded. “More than once.”

  “What about those men?”

  “Could you identify anyone?”

  She thought about the ring and swallowed hard. It was bad enough knowing Fay had posed for them, but to think Alex had, as well...

  “Get in the car,” Lee ordered.

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’re going home,” he said holding the door open for her.

  “I am not.”

  Lee firmly guided her inside her car. She waited for him to come around and take his place behind the wheel before continuing the argument.

  “You’re planning to come back here, aren’t you? Why make another trip? This is stupid, Lee. If you don’t want me to go back inside, I’ll wait here in the car. You go ahead and finish investigating. I’ll beep the horn to warn you in case Barney comes back.”

  Lee started the engine. “You’re going home,” he said with hard finality. He turned the car out toward Route 355. She was gearing up for another try when he suddenly added, “I’m sorry, Kayla. I should never have let you come with me.”

  “I don’t remember giving you a choice in the matter. I’m a grown woman, Lee. You seem to forget that.”

  He gave her a sidelong look.

  “Not a chance. I couldn’t forget that on a bet. But Fay was your friend and those pictures were hardly art studies. You don’t need to remember her like that.”

  “I don’t know why you persist in viewing me as some naive little innocent. The pictures were graphic, but I’m far from traumatized, Lee. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “She was your wife. Meredith’s mother. That display was probably more shocking to you than to me.”

  In some ways he thought she might be right. “Let’s drop it, okay?”

  “How can we drop it? Those pictures—”

  “Are something for Hepplewhite to see, but we can’t exactly tell him about them unless we admit to illegal entry.”

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  “I’ll figure something but. This isn’t your battle.”

  “Of course, it is. Fay was my friend.”

  “Kayla—”

  “You can argue until you run out of breath, but I’m not going to walk away from this, Lee. Someone killed her and we need to find out who.”

  He started to respond to that and stopped. Thoughtfully he said, “I gather you don’t consider me a suspect anymore?”

  “Not really, but the police probably consider you one.”

  Wryly he nodded. “No ‘probably’ about that.”

  Lee was surprised at his sense of relief. In the long run, it didn’t make a whit of difference what Kayla believed, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that it felt good to have her accept the possibility of his innocence.

  He was coming up on Main Street when she broke their silence to drop a bomb he hadn’t expected. “There was a box of rifle shells on Barney’s dresser,” Kayla announced.

  “What?”

  The car nearly crossed the center line as Lee’s head whipped around to look at her. He corrected quickly.

  “You said the person who shot at us was using a .22 rifle. The box of shells I saw on Barney’s dresser was for a .22 long. I saw them right before I saw the pictures. I was going to point the box out to you, but—”

  “You’re sure about this?”

  Kayla nodded. “When I worked in D.C. I used to catch the Metrobus in front of a gun shop every day. The window display left a lot to be desired, but I came to recognize items I would never have noticed normally. The shop stocked the same brand of shells. It’s clearly labeled, Lee. We should go back to the motel and finish looking around.”

  She was right. He shouldn’t have left the motel without completing his search in the first place, but once he’d seen Kayla’s face staring in horror at those pictures, all he could think about was getting her away from there. He should never have allowed her to come with him in the first place. And he wasn’t prepared to take her back there.

  “Later,” he insisted. “We were too exposed with your car sitting in that empty lot in plain sight. I’m not ready to talk with the local force just yet.” And that was the truth. Kayla might believe him, but the police weren’t going to be quite so forgiving.

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  He turned the corner onto her quiet, sleepy street. “Do you know a kid named Matt who may be working for that restaurant owner?”

  “Matt Williams?”

  Lee pulled the car all the way up to the garage out behind her house. He tapped the steering wheel thoughtfully as he turned off the engine. “Williams? Don’t tell me that’s the kid everyone thought might be target-shooting in the woods?”

  “Okay, I won’t tell you even though it is. What about him?”

  “If he didn’t break into my car, I’m pretty sure he knows who did. I’m wondering if my car was impounded or if the kid stole it after I left.”

  Her gaze was startled as she climbed from the car and they headed for the back porch. “I don’t think he’d do that. Matt’s not really a bad kid. He’s a little wild, but I can’t see him stealing a car.”

  “How about a gun? Can you see him stealing a gun? My backup piece is missing, along with my service revolver.”

  “Matt wouldn’t take them.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “No.”

  She chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully as she stepped onto the back porch. Lee was instantly diverted.

  “Kayla?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Chew on your lip like that.”
/>   Her eyes expanded and a suffusion of pink started below her neckline, working its way up her cheeks. Lee handed her the keys.

  “I love the way you blush with the least provocation. Makes me wonder how far down that blush extends.”

  “Are you crazy? We’re in a crisis situation here. How can you think about...that sort of thing now?”

  “With you dressed like that and biting on a lip I want to taste again real bad, how can I not think about that sort of thing?”

  She blinked in surprise, then looked hastily down at the back porch. “What’s wrong with the way I’m dressed?”

  Lee waited until she looked at him again. He let her see him gaze at the way the soft cotton molded her breasts and her color went from pink to rose. “Not one single thing,” he promised. “I like seeing you in shorts. The shorter the better.”

  “You’re crazy!” But her expression suddenly turned thoughtful. “Oh. I get it. You’re trying to divert my attention.”

  “I am? Well, it’s working for me, how about you?”

  “I really am okay, Lee.”

  He cupped the side of her face, feeling the jolt of awareness that came every time he touched her. “You certainly are.”

  Kayla had no idea how appealing she was. And her innocence only made him want her more. He reminded himself that her back porch was hardly the place for the sort of thoughts she was inspiring in him right now.

  “I’m sorry you got dragged into this situation, Kayla. I’m going to try and clear everything up as quickly as I can. For an instant, she nuzzled his hand, then she withdrew, her eyes cloudy with an emotion he couldn’t define. He let his hand drop, trying to figure out what she was thinking.

  “I wish it was that simple, Lee. Why are you flirting with me when you aren’t really interested?”

  “How can you say I’m not interested?”

  “You never paid me any attention before.”

  Did he hear a trace of wistfulness in that statement, or was it wishful thinking on his part? “If you’ll recall, it was you who never paid me any attention before. I’ve always been aware of you, Kayla, but you set sprinting records every time I came anywhere near you.”

  Rose deepened to red. “I didn’t.”

  “Your nose will grow like Pinocchio’s.”