A Touch Of Heat (H.E.A.T. Book 2)

by Claire, Nicola

  I let Jones knock on the front door. It reminded me of the back door at Sweet Hell, except the topiary weren’t shaped into sexually explicit positions and just resembled lollipops on thin sticks. The dichotomy was shockingly perverse. Which seemed to match Sweet Hell. There can’t be anything sweet about Hell. Can there?

  Mrs Gordon answered, which would make things either uncomfortable or interesting. And a police detective never shies away from the fascinating.

  “Mrs Gordon?” Jones asked.

  “Yes. How can I help?”

  “Detective Jones and Keen, Auckland CIB. We’d like a word with your husband, please.”

  “Is this about Samantha?”

  Jones’ moustache twitched.

  “Yes, ma’am. We’d just like to ask a few questions, is all.”

  “Of course. Anything to assist the Police.” She held the door open and waved for us to come inside.

  Both Jones and I had that split second awkward moment of do we or don’t we remove our shoes at the door. It would be ridiculous for a police officer to take any of their uniform off while on the job. A compromise which we could not afford. But this place was immaculate. And Mrs Gordon wore indoor house shoes and stared at our feet until it was obvious we wouldn’t kowtow to housekeeping rules.

  She cleared her throat and then led the way toward the back of the four thousand square foot palatial home. CEO of Bainbridge’s on Queen Street paid well. He’d certainly be able to afford the forty thousand dollar entry fee into the Irreverent Inferno without having to tell his wife.

  David Gordon was pruning roses. His broad back to us, his head bent, as he crooned to his Portlands and Noisettes. Mrs Gordon cleared her throat again and I got the impression it was her go-to move when feeling out of her depth. Either we made her uncomfortable or the reason why we were questioning her husband did.

  “Mr Gordon,” I said pleasantly. He didn’t turn around. “Detective Keen and Jones from Auckland CIB. We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’m late,” he said to a stunning pink rose with copious curled petals. There was a strong damask fragrance on the air. “These should have been dead-headed weeks ago.”

  “Then I’m sure a few more minutes won’t make much difference,” Jones suggested in what was clearly a cajoling voice, but David Gordon turned to him and looked down his nose, disgruntlement obvious in his glare.

  “We won’t take up much of your time, I promise,” I offered, slipping into the good cop role. I didn’t look at Trevor, his moustache was probably flapping at yet again being stuck with the bad cop routine.

  “Oh, very well,” the gentleman said.

  “It’s about poor Samantha,” Mrs Gordon offered and then promptly bit her lip.

  “Ah, of course,” her husband said, deflating like a popped balloon. Genuine looking sadness crept into his pale blue eyes. “Be a dear and make us some refreshing drinks,” he said to his wife.

  She nodded her head, eyes cast toward the ground, and shuffled off to follow his orders. Which hadn’t been a demand, but somehow felt like it.

  “Have a seat,” Gordon said, indicating a set of robust outdoor furniture off to the side. “Best we get this over with before Gloria returns. She’s been most upset about all the fuss.”

  “‘All the fuss,’ Mr Gordon? A woman was killed,” I advised steadily.

  “Yes,” he said, slumping down in a chair as though he could no longer hold his weight. “A most tragic end.”

  “You knew Samantha Hayes well?’ Jones asked.

  “I was her boss, several layers removed. I knew her as well as a CEO knows any one of a one hundred and twenty strong labour force under him.”

  “Would that be well?” I asked sweetly.

  Sharp eyes met mine. A chill raced down my spine and then evaporated when he ran a hand through his hair messing it up. It looked like it would never have been messed up in his entire forty-eight years of life. It also matched the colour of the murderer’s hair in the blurred image taken from the video footage at Sweet Hell.

  So did Jones’. And half of Auckland as well.

  “We shared a ‘good morning’ on occasion. A smile and nod when we passed in one of the halls. Nothing personal.”

  “Nothing personal at all?” Jones pressed.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “What about this woman?” I asked, pulling a photograph of Carole Michaels from my jacket pocket and showing Gordon.

  His head shook before the photo had even stopped moving.

  “Just take a closer look, Mr Gordon.”

  “No,” he said, having steadied the image with his fingertips. “I don’t recognise her at all.”

  “And this man?” I offered a smaller shot of Eagle. Gordon frowned, but it was more a confused brow furrow than one of regretful recognition.

  “Who are these people, Detective? And what have they got to do with me? With Samantha?”

  I didn’t show my disappointment.

  “Where were you on Thursday night, Mr Gordon?” I asked instead.

  “What time?”

  I smiled. It wouldn’t have reached my eyes. “Walk us through your evening until six in the morning on Friday.”

  “I didn’t kill her.”

  “We didn’t suggest that you did,” Jones offered.

  “Why ask where I was, then?”

  “Crossing our Ts,” I offered.

  “Dotting our Is,” Jones finished for me. We looked and sounded like a slick, cohesive team.

  “Placing all the pieces on the chessboard accordingly,” I added.

  “Is this a game?” Gordon asked, fingers lacing together and resting on his crossed knees. They didn’t fidget and the knuckles weren’t white.

  “To the murderer, it could well be,” Jones remarked.

  “I’m not the murderer.”

  “Then help us cross you off,” I said, leaning forward and looking him dead in the eye. “Thursday night through to Friday morning,” I prompted. Then sat back and said, “I wonder if Mrs Gordon needs a hand with those drinks.”

  David Gordon raised his hand and pointed an agitated finger at my face. “You leave my wife out of this.”

  “It’s a simple question, Mr Gordon,” I said. “Where were you Thursday night?”

  “I think we’re done here,” he said rising to his feet and turning back to his beloved roses.

  “Refusal to answer our friendly enquiry here will result in being asked to attend a formal interview at Central Police Station,” Jones advised.

  “Then contact my lawyer.”

  “Is there reason to involve your lawyer, Mr Gordon?” I asked.

  “I don’t like being browbeaten, missy,” he said, turning and offering me a haughty glare. “Who the hell are you to come into my home, upset my fragile wife, and insinuate I was involved in a young woman’s murder? A woman who is only connected to me through her employment in the company I run. Tenuously connected at that. She’s never even been up to the executive floors.”

  His indignation was palpable. The last words spluttered as he delivered them.

  “Who do you think killed her?” I said, a seriousness having entered my tone.

  He noticed. His shoulders relaxed, he stared at the pruning sheers in his hand for a moment.

  “I didn’t know her well enough,” he whispered.

  “But?” Jones said softly.

  The back door opened and glasses tinkled on a tray.

  “Quickly now,” I urged, giving him an out.

  He glanced up at his wife and then back at me. Ignoring Jones completely.

  “I saw her once. One night a week ago.”

  “Where?” I pressed.

  “At my club.”

  “Sweet Hell.”

  He didn’t look shocked, just nodded.

  “Did you engage in sexual relations with Miss Hayes?”

  “No,” he said, just as Mrs Gordon made it far enough across the patio to be able to
hear. “But I know who did.”

  The look in his eyes changed from haughty to compassionate. I didn’t like it. I took a step back and almost made Mrs Gordon drop her tray of lemonade and scones. Jones swept in to steady her behind me.

  “Who?” I whispered, dreading the answer, knowing I couldn’t allow the tumultuous emotions threatening any purchase at all.

  The tray clattered to the table at my side, the glasses tinkling. The very air seemed to hold its breath.

  “I saw him with her. I saw him take her into the back rooms.”

  “The back rooms?” Jones queried. Mrs Gordon just stared at the paving as though she wasn’t listening. As though she wasn’t even there. But she heard every single word, I’d bet my life on it.

  She knew her husband attended Sweet Hell. She probably knew what transpired there. I had no idea what she thought from the meek look on her face right then. I had no idea what to think of this interview, at all.

  I turned my face back to Gordon’s. He held my stare.

  “Who, Mr Gordon?” I asked again, internally cursing the man for making me repeat myself.

  “Keen,” he said, and for a split second I thought he was simply addressing me. For a small moment in time I clung to the innocence I no longer had any right to feel.

  But then reality came crashing back in when he added, “Ethan Keen.”

  Chapter 17

  “I work the facts. I sort the evidence. I leave my emotions at the door.”

  I stared at Detective Inspector Hart’s closed door and sucked in a deep breath of air. It was a Saturday. He wouldn’t usually be at CIB. But I could hear low voices behind the tipped down Venetian blinds.

  And he wasn’t talking to Pierce.

  “Who do you think’s in there with him?” Ryan asked from over my shoulder. “On a Saturday,” he added, confirming my own suspicious-filled thoughts.

  “It ain’t the cleanin’ lady,” Jones supplied, chewing on a toothpick, legs crossed at his ankles as he rested them on his desk a few feet away.

  “I’ve no idea,” I managed, my throat dry, my palms moist with nervous sweat.

  “This changes nothing, you know,” Pierce said, reaching into a brown paper bag of doughnut holes and popping one in his mouth. “Still coincidental and circumstantial.”

  “And it’s not like cops don’t attend private members clubs,” Jones provided in a carefully modulated tone.

  I appreciated their effort, but it only made the doubts and fears escalate inside my mind.

  We’d kept our continued investigation into Sweet Hell under wraps; as per Damon’s request. But now it was threatening to burst wide open. A police superintendent connected to a murder victim whilst visiting a private members club across the road from where she’d been found dead.

  I wanted to bury my face in my hands but it would have given too much of my emotions away, right then.

  “OK,” Pierce said. “This is what we do. Just facts. That’s all. We give Hart the facts and let him decide where to from here.”

  “Want me to give the run-down on the interview with David Gordon?” Jones asked, no doubt because he thought I wasn’t capable of being impartial.

  He’d be partly right. But I was damned if I would let anyone, even super helpful Trevor Jones, see me as anything other than a detective.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Pierce beat me to it.

  “No, Keen and I’ve got this. You needn’t stick around. Go home and check on that wife of yours.”

  Jones gave Pierce a strange look. I didn’t blame him. He was being sidelined, when obviously I was the one who should have been. But Pierce was trying to protect the sanctity of the sting. Even if Trevor Jones was so far removed from being a traitor that he couldn’t be pegged for CIB’s.

  “At least one of us should enjoy the weekend,” I offered with a playful punch to his right shoulder.

  He rubbed at it absently; the punch hadn’t been that hard. And nodded his head.

  “I get it,” he said, slamming his booted feet to the ground. “I wouldn’t have told anyone,” he added, swiping up his hat from the desk in front of him.

  “Just balancing staff hours and Keen has insider information that we could use,” Pierce offered as his lame excuse for fobbing Jones off.

  “Whatever,” Trevor muttered and strode from the room.

  “Fucking hell,” Pierce said with restrained venom as he threw himself into a nearby chair. “Bunch of sensitive pansies.”

  I smiled and kept staring at the tauntingly still closed door.

  “What do you think he’ll say?” I said after a while of silence, nodding towards where we knew Hart was.

  “I’m not playing this game with you, Keen,” Pierce shot back.

  I turned to look at him, really look at him. He looked like shit. Much like how I felt.

  “What do you have to say?” I asked with a pertinent look.

  “You want me to speculate? Or offer you an impartial synopsis of what I see so far?”

  “Go with the unbiased route.”

  “OK,” he said, leaning back in his chair and getting comfortable. Then he lifted his hand and started ticking off points on his fingers. “Dead woman across the street from the Irreverent Inferno. Said to have a kinky lifestyle. Witnessed at Sweet Hell one week before with a member who happens to be a prominent cop. Those are the facts. What do they tell us? One: There is no way to officially connect her with the back room cavern and the group of hooded perverted men. Two: She was, however, the right type of person to visit an establishment like that. Three: Due to those proclivities, her presence in the Sweet Hell part of the club therefore makes sense, and leads us to believe she was probably there willingly. And four: Superintendent Keen knew her, was at least seen with her, but that is all we know for sure.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and then crossed his arms over his chest.

  “And that’s it. That’s all we’ve got. But tie in her boss, the CEO of her place of work and husband to a timid and meek woman, add in his membership admission to Sweet Hell, where the victim was seen, according to him. Throw in his testimony that she was witnessed accompanying Ethan Keen to a back room, and you’ve got a potential red herring. That’s my unbiased opinion.”

  “You think Gordon’s good for it,” I surmised.

  “I think David Gordon could have been hiding something, using Superintendent Keen as a shield. He needs further investigation.”

  “But so does Keen.”

  “Are you so sure you want to uncover your father’s secrets?”

  “Are you so determined to be blinded to them because he’s a cop?”

  We stared at each other and then Pierce rubbed at his goatee beard.

  “All right,” he finally said. “What do you have to say?”

  “A woman was strangled to death, during a liaison across the street from Sweet Hell. Her boyfriend confirms breath control play as being a regular part of their sexual activities. Sweet Hell has a kinky cavern and group of perverted men who get off watching an anonymous member of their group perform oral sex on a “lamb” presented on an altar. Superintendent Keen and David Gordon are both confirmed members of that private club. Both knew the victim, or in the case of Keen, is believed to know the victim. But let’s assume this intel is correct. Gordon treats his wife like a submissive. We don’t know about Keen’s persuasion, but he was seen heading to an intimate setting with a woman who openly embraces kinky sex. We can’t confirm or deny their involvement with the Irreverent Inferno part of the club, but we don’t need to. The murder was on the street. The men both knew the victim. The victim enjoyed public shows of affection, and affection for her was kinky in origin. Ergo both men need to be investigated further and kinky sex gone too far is the key.”

  Pierce stared at me for a very long time.

  “You scare me sometimes, Keen.”

  “Thank you,” I said, not sure if that was the correct answer.

  “No, really,” he said with
meaning. “This is your father we’re talking about.”

  “This is a suspect in a murder case we’re discussing,” I corrected.

  He whistled low, under his breath.

  “Hart’s going to flip,” Pierce finally said, giving me the answer I was after all along.

  “Keen will put up brick walls.”

  He turned to look at me. I was staring at the still closed door to Hart’s office but I saw him move out of the corner of my eye.

  “Tell me about him,” he murmured.

  I closed my eyes and tipped back my head, letting a long breath of air out. I wouldn’t be able to do this with anyone unless it related to work. Damon didn’t even know half of this.

  But this was work. Pierce was asking for the case. It wasn’t personal.

  That’s what I told myself, anyway.

  “I don’t know what his sexual preferences are,” I started.

  “And thank fuck for that,” Pierce threw in.

  I ignored the interruption.

  “But after my mother died he never lacked for company. And those women were… exotic.”

  “Exotic? Explain.”

  “Lots of skin,” I said, eyes still closed, visualising his many conquests in my mind. “Slinky outfits. They always smelled of too much perfume and hairspray.”

  “How old were you when this started?”

  “Six.”

  “Your mother died when you were six?”

  “She died when I was five years old, driving home from dropping me off for my first day of primary school.”

  “Shit,” Pierce whispered. “I didn’t know.”

  I shook my head and looked at my clasped hands resting on my lap.

  “He mourned her for exactly three-hundred and sixty-five days.”

  Pierce raised an eyebrow. “And your memory of these exotic women of his is that good? Going back to when you were six?”

  “I don’t remember the earlier ones, I just remember being alone all the time. It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I realised they all fit a certain description.”

  Pierce stopped breathing.

  “What description?”

  “Tanned skin, dark hair, brown eyes, lots of make-up, very little clothing. The exact opposite of my mother.”