Twilight Whispers

by Barbara Delinsky

  Drawing her head back, she framed his face with her hands. “If you want to show me what I mean to you, you can sit down and talk to me,” she whispered. “That’s what I need more than anything.”

  His lips thinned, and for a moment she thought he was going to refuse her. He closed his eyes briefly, and his frown was back in place. But when he looked at her again she knew that the pain reflected in his eyes was caused by something else.

  “What is it, Bob? What is upsetting you so?”

  “This case,” he said at last. “Things are pointing in the direction that I thought I wanted them to go, but suddenly I’m not so sure of my own feelings.” He let himself be led to the sofa, then seated. Jodi came down close beside him, never taking her hands from him. “I’ve hated those families for years. I’ve read stuff in the paper about how wonderful they are, how powerful they are, how successful they are. It always seemed unfair to me that they should have so much when others had so little.”

  She pondered that, as well as Bob’s reasons for saying it. “I’ve guessed that you blame Jack Whyte for your father’s demise—”

  “With reason!” Bob interrupted. “The man ruined my father!”

  Jodi was slightly stunned by his bluntness. It was a minute before she could ask, “What happened exactly?”

  He blew out an uneven breath, diffusing his sudden spurt of anger. “You know the gist of it. After he was hurt in the war he insisted on going back. They wouldn’t let him fight, so he stayed in the background, working with machines mostly. By the time he left the service he’d had a taste of electronics. He saw it as a field that had nowhere to go but up. So he collected every cent he could, took out a slew of loans and started a business, and it was really going well, more employees every year, more contracts. But when he got what he thought would be the first of many lucrative government contracts, he went a little wild with expansion. The very next year he lost the contract to Whyte Electronics.”

  “Fair and square?”

  “Who knows? Warren was still in local politics, but he had friends in high places. Between Whyte’s business acumen and Warren’s pull, a pattern emerged. My dad’s story wasn’t unique. He was far from the only victim. Whyte drove other companies out of business in precisely the same way—by stealing a critical contract.”

  “But it was only one contract…”

  “It was the one he needed. Without it he found himself so heavily in debt that the only thing he could do was sell out.”

  “To Whyte?”

  “Not voluntarily. But Whyte had already stolen away several of his top men, and without them no one was about to make a reasonable offer. Not that Whyte did. He gave him shit, which was exactly what my dad felt like from that day on.”

  The rest Jodi knew. “When you first got this case you were aching to pay someone back for all that. Is the problem now that you can’t do it—that you’ve come up with something to make the families look like martyrs?”

  Cavanaugh was silent for a minute before admitting quietly, “Just the opposite.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He looked her in the eye. “The evidence we have points to Jordan Whyte as a murderer.”

  “Jordan Whyte? Killing his own brother and sister-in-law?”

  “That’s what the evidence suggests.”

  There was much she didn’t understand, but what immediately concerned her was Bob. “Then … where’s the problem? I’d think you’d feel as though justice were finally being served.”

  “I’m not sure it is justice. That’s the problem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Sliding his arm around her shoulder, he held her closer. Far from being sexual, the gesture reflected the need he had for encouragement. What he was about to say—and the fact that he had to say it to Jodi—was hard, because he had been wrong, damn it. He had been wrong.

  “I really did want to believe the worst. When Ryan suggested that there might be some funny business going on inside those families I couldn’t have been happier. Then I started to learn about them—you know, all those files and documents I read—and I was angrier than ever. The Whytes and Warrens have gotten away with hell over the years. When one of Whyte’s planes crashed in seventy-five, he and Warren managed to fix it with the FAA so that the cause of the accident was listed as the weather rather than shoddy maintenance. Whyte and Warren arranged more junkets between businessmen and politicians than you could count. Warren’s lobbying was what got Whyte Electronics its huge contract with the Air Force in seventy-nine, even though there were other bids that were better and lower. They’ve come this close,” he held his fingers a fraction of an inch apart, “to being caught, and they’ve always escaped.”

  “But?” she urged him on. There was another side to the negative; she knew it, and right now she knew that Cavanaugh did, too.

  “But then I read further. Not just the papers Ryan gave me. Many of those nights you thought I was at the station I was really in the library digging up obscure little articles, or talking with people who at one time or another had known the Whytes or the Warrens. I told myself that I wanted to have all the facts at my fingertips. And—I know what you’re thinking—maybe there was a thirst for vengeance, and even a little bit of fascination that went along with it, but in any case I saw the other side of the coin, the one the public doesn’t often see, and I realized that life hasn’t been all hunky-dory for those families, either.”

  He paused, absently stroking her shoulder. “I’m not sure,” he resumed slowly, “that those kids had any more of a life with their fathers than I had with mine, or that Natalie Whyte’s marriage has been much better than my mother’s was. Or that Lenore Warren—do you know that she’s an alcoholic?”

  “No!”

  He nodded. “They covered it up well, but in the late seventies she spent time under treatment at a sanitarium. She’s been dry since then from what I can gather, but there must have been something very wrong with her life to drive her to drink.”

  “Which goes to show that PR can be misleading.”

  Cavanaugh was staring off toward the window. “And along comes this thing with Mark and Deborah. I’ve spoken with all the brothers and sisters now. To a one they can’t understand what happened. I met with them separately, so it wasn’t a case of them putting words in each other’s mouths, though I suppose they could have fabricated something beforehand.”

  “What about Jordan?”

  “The damnedest thing.” He gave a quick, almost angry shake of his head. “I actually like the guy. I wanted to despise him, but I can’t. Maybe he just turned on the charm—but I can’t even say that, because some parts of our conversation were pretty heated. When I suggested that Mark and Deborah’s deaths might have been an inside job he hit the roof, and it wasn’t just righteous indignation. I’ve seen the reactions of criminals when they’re caught, even white-collar criminals, but I’ve never seen such legitimate anger.” His voice dropped. “At least I thought it was legitimate.”

  “Is the evidence conclusive?”

  “No.”

  “But it does point a finger at Jordan. What does Ryan say?”

  “Ryan’s delighted—which bothers me, too. I mean, hell, I’m the one who has reason for wanting revenge, but he’s even more obsessed with the case than I am. He managed to put together in-depth files, and it was like he knew the tape existed that would incriminate Jordan. He told me to take my time, but he’s the one who’s put on pressure for the rush. I’m willing to look at the whole picture with an open mind. Not Ryan. He wantes me to run to New York and arrest the guy.”

  “Will you?”

  “Not yet. There are still a couple of things I’ve got to work out.”

  “What did Ryan say to that?” Jodi asked, as if she didn’t know.

  A small smile tugged at Cavanaugh’s mouth. “He was furious. Threatened to have me removed from the case if my stalling gave Jordan a chance to leave the country.”

  “W
ould he do that?”

  “Remove me from the case? You bet.”

  “Not that, Bob. Would Jordan leave the country?”

  “I can’t see it. I’d post bond for him myself, I’m that sure. His family means too much to him. And his work. And Katia.”

  Jodi hadn’t missed the slight softening of his voice. “Katia?”

  “Katia Morell.”

  “The housekeeper’s daughter. Very attractive from what I saw in those pictures.” She was watching him closely. “Have you talked with her?”

  Cavanaugh held her gaze, pleased to see an inkling of jealousy. “Uh-huh.”

  “And?”

  “She’s lovely.”

  “That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.”

  For the first time in days he smiled. “I know.” He gave her a squeeze. “But you don’t have anything to worry about. Jordan’s in love with her and he’s very protective.”

  “That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, either,” she came back with a pout.

  “Okay. She’s lovely. She’s beautiful. She’s personable. But the chemistry just wasn’t there between us.”

  “It got that far?”

  “Jodi, it didn’t get anywhere! That’s what I’m trying to tell you! I liked her very much, which isn’t to say that I want to go to bed with her.”

  Jodi relaxed against him. “But Jordan does.”

  “I didn’t ask the man whether he wants to, or already has for that matter. I was a cop interviewing him for the investigation. It was enough that I dug out his feelings for her, because that’s all that’s really relevant. I can’t see him leaving Katia, any more than I can see him dumping a scandal in his family’s lap and taking off. If he’s guilty. Which I don’t think he is.” Again, that angry little head-shake. “Damn it, I don’t. But I’m almost afraid to trust my instincts. They’ve been so biased in this case. If only I had facts to work with.”

  “Can you get them?”

  “I don’t know. Ryan gave me a week to come up with something. If I’m empty-handed at the end of that time I’ll have to bring Jordan in.”

  “Do you have any possibilities?”

  “Not many.” He screwed up his face in frustration. “There are little things that smell—I mean, things that may or may not be relevant but that just aren’t setting right. I’ve got this uncomfortable feeling that I’m missing something, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is.”

  “It’ll come to you if you think hard enough.”

  “That’s what I was trying to do when you ruined my concentration.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but she was teasing and not a bit contrite.

  He arched a brow at her. “Are you?”

  “Of course. Now that I know the reason behind that corrugated brow of yours.”

  “But the corrugated brow is gone. My concentration’s shot for the night. See? You’ve stripped me of all my defenses, made me feel like a sentimental idiot. So what are you going to do about it?”

  Jodi knew a challenge when she heard one. She looked up at him, grinned, and before he could say another word swung around to straddle his thighs. Her robe and nightgown had risen in the process, but that was all right, because she had every intention of baring him as well. Her hands were already at work releasing the button of his pants. “I’ll just have to restore your sense of masculinity,” she murmured against his lips.

  If Cavanaugh had indeed feared that he had shown a weak side that night, he rose to the occasion and corrected the image.

  * * *

  Jordan had no occasion to rise to. In the two days succeeding the day he’d seen Katia he tried to contact her, but call after call proved fruitless. He phoned her at the office, but she was either at a meeting or in the field. When his timing finally clicked and he caught her at her desk, she refused to discuss anything but business. He phoned her at home only to find that no one answered, that the line was busy, or that he had woken her from sleep and she was, she claimed, too groggy to talk. Elaborate plans of seduction notwithstanding, he was contemplating taking firmer measures—such as posting himself at her door and refusing to budge until she had let him in and talked—when something happened that momentarily took his mind off her in a way that the pressing demands of his own work hadn’t been able to do.

  Cavanaugh appeared unannounced at his office, looking tired and grim. Immediately Jordan sensed that something was wrong.

  “Have you got a VCR around here?” Cavanaugh asked.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I need to show you something.”

  Puzzled, Jordan led him down the hall to a conference room, in a concealed portion of which was a TV and VCR. He took the cassette Cavanaugh handed him, loaded it into the machine, then started it off. Twenty minutes later he had seen enough.

  “I can’t believe he filmed that!”

  “He filmed everything. You should’ve seen what we found.”

  “Other private conversations?”

  Cavanaugh nodded.

  “And none of the participants knew they were being filmed?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Nuts. He was nuts!”

  “Maybe not,” Cavanaugh said with care. “If he’d ever been nabbed on cocaine charges, he’d have had a hell of a lot of people to bring down with him. The tapes would have been insurance. He’d have been able to cop a tidy deal for himself.”

  But Jordan was thinking beyond cocaine. He spoke slowly, warily, looking at Cavanaugh all the while. “If you’d brought those other tapes to show me, I’d be asking whether you thought someone on the tapes killed Mark to get them. But you didn’t bring those tapes. You brought this one.” He paused and watched Cavanaugh look down at his shoes.

  “You did threaten to kill him.”

  “I was furious at the time. It was an idle threat, the same kind any person makes in the heat of anger. Hell, you’ve seen me blow up, but I calm down right afterward, don’t I?”

  “That’s what I’ve seen.”

  “But whoever killed Mark and Deborah had to have planned it. The boat had to have been staked out, as well as the area, because whoever stole onto that boat did it when there weren’t any witnesses around. It was premeditated. Do you honestly think me capable of the premeditated murder of—forget my brother—anyone?”

  “No. But you did have a motive.”

  Jordan made a harsh sound and thrust his hand through his hair. “We’ve been through that. I did not have a motive, at least not one that I’d consider valid.” He stood straighter. “Am I under arrest?”

  “No.”

  “Why not—if the evidence says I’m the prime suspect?”

  “Because I’m not convinced you did it.”

  “Why not?”

  Cavanaugh shot him a slanted smile. “Maybe for old time’s sake, ’cause you were one hell of a player at Duke.”

  “More than one football player has served time.”

  “Well then, let’s just say that I’m not ready to book you. There are still too many questions that haven’t been answered.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like where you were at the time of the murders. I asked you that once before and you said you were here, but I don’t know exactly where ‘here’ is, since we got off the subject.”

  “Here is in New York. Mark and Deborah were in Boston.”

  “Where in New York?” He took the small notebook from his pocket.

  “On Eighty-Second Street between Third and Lexington.”

  “Doing what?”

  Jordan looked him in the eye. “Screwing a woman who will gladly tell the entire world that you questioned her and why.”

  “Which answers my next question.” It also told Cavanaugh something else. If Jordan were guilty he wouldn’t be so concerned either about his image in the press or the hurt any publicity would bring to his family. He was a smart man. If he were guilty he would know that the publicity would come sooner or later. “So you don’t want her in
volved. She will have to be, you know.”

  Jordan did. “Just tell her … tell her that … ach, use your imagination and make up some story, but so help me, if she goes to the papers I’ll hold you,” he pointed, “responsible.”

  “Will she back you up?”

  “She sure as hell better! That was no phantom who serviced me that night!” His statement was punctuated by the tic in his cheek.

  “Why weren’t you with Katia?”

  “Katia and I don’t have that kind of relationship.”

  “But you’re in love with the woman.”

  “So?”

  Cavanaugh scratched his head. “Let me get this straight. You’re in love with Katia, but even in this modern age you don’t sleep with her. So you take out your frustrations on other women.”

  It was as much the detective’s nonchalance as the callousness he suggested that rankled Jordan. “You’ve got it wrong, Cavanaugh. I don’t use other women, at least, no more than they use me. And as far as the ‘modern age’ goes, it has nothing to do with what I feel for Katia. I would have taken her to bed years ago, but I didn’t think I could—” His nostrils flared. “This is really none of your business.”

  “Maybe not. But I’m trying my best to help. My boss, John Ryan, would have liked to have hauled you in two days ago. If he’d had his way you’d already have been booked, processed and arraigned, and if it’s publicity that scares you—”

  Jordan held up a hand in surrender. “I get the point. What do you want to know?”

  “Your relationship with Katia. What is it exactly?”

  “Funny you should ask that,” Jordan said with open sarcasm, “because I’m trying to work that out myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I love her. You’ve got that much, right?”

  Cavanaugh nodded.

  “I’ve loved her for a long time, but, well … listen, Cavanaugh, what I’m telling you is strictly confidential. I don’t want anyone to know about it, least of all Katia. I’m trusting you, man. Are you with me?”

  “I’m with you.”

  “Well, you see,” he lowered his head, and his cheeks grew red, “up until last Friday I thought Katia and I might be related.” He looked back up, raising his voice accordingly. “I know that sounds stupid, and it turns out that it isn’t true, so there’s no point in going into it further, but I’m trying to get Katia to see me now, only she won’t. So. We don’t have that kind of relationship.”