Dangerous Liaisons

by Maggie Price

  And thinking about a quiet, sensitive man who quite possibly had died because of her.

  Chapter 10

  The image of ivory silk clinging to the hollows and curves of Nicole’s body stayed with Jake throughout the remainder of the night and into the following afternoon. So he sat at his overflowing desk in the Homicide squad room, part of his thoughts focused on murder, the remainder on lush, silk-covered curves.

  He knew Nicole had no idea what the sight of her had done to him as she’d stood barefoot in the soft light of her brother’s kitchen, her blue eyes shadowed and damp with the remnants of tears, golden hair like a waterfall across her shoulders.

  He’d felt desire—hell, yes, he’d felt it! Then something far deeper and stronger than lust. An emotion much more stirring. An emotion that, considering his past and the future he’d mapped out for himself, was more than it should be. Much more.

  He’d gone to her brother’s house on grim business, yet it hadn’t been the task at hand that had him fighting to pull air into his lungs the entire time.

  It had been Nicole. Only her. He didn’t know how he’d come to care so much for her, so quickly, but he did.

  That knowledge scared the hell out of him.

  As if beckoned by an elusive phantom, his gaze drifted to the framed photograph leaning on one corner of his desk. Annie, beaming with a mother’s love and pride, sat in a porch swing, nuzzling their newborn twin daughters. With Annie, he had felt a quiet kind of rightness, a sweet coming together.

  Jake dragged his gaze from the photograph. Sweet had nothing to do with what he felt for Nicole. His desire for her, his need, was volatile, a fire that raged so hot he couldn’t think of anything but her. Nothing but her.

  He wasn’t in love. He didn’t know what he felt for her, but he was sure love didn’t factor into the equation. He wanted her. Period. She wanted him right back—she’d confirmed that last night. Whatever else was going on inside him, he would deal with it later. Preferably when he could take a breath without thinking of her.

  “So, we know for sure the professor was murdered.”

  Whitney’s voice had Jake’s thoughts scattering like dust motes in a slat of sunshine.

  “What?”

  His partner sat on the edge of his desk, her long, denim-clad legs crossed as she scowled down at him. “Excuse me for intruding in your thoughts, Sergeant Ford, but I thought this was a two-sided conversation.”

  “It is.” What the hell had she been saying?

  “About our case,” she prodded. “We haven’t come up with squat. If it’s not too taxing for you, we should run through the facts again, try to pick up something we’ve missed.”

  Loosening his tie, Jake struggled to clear his brain. “Give me a break, Whit. I didn’t log any sack time last night and I spent the morning testifying in court.”

  “I didn’t get any sleep last night, either, but I can at least keep my mind focused.” One dark brow rose into a smug arch. “Want to tell me what’s on yours?”

  “Nope.” Running a hand through his hair, Jake glanced around. This late in the afternoon, the Homicide squad room was filled with cops, clerks and the occasional civilian, all going about their business. He judiciously shifted attention to the case at hand.

  “Okay.” Leaning back in his chair, he steepled his fingers. “We know for sure we’ve got three men murdered by one killer. Identical MO—all victims have punctures in the side of the neck. All were injected with an as-yet unidentified substance that brings on respiratory paralysis. Whatever the stuff is, it’s quick. Like one-two-three-gone.”

  Whitney nodded. “Let’s talk suspects. I checked Rhonda Livingston’s alibi. She’s covered for all of yesterday evening and last night. She’s off the list.”

  “But not Ingrid Nelson.” Jake pictured the redheaded physical therapist wearing a half dress who’d tried to crawl up his chest when they’d met at Encounters. “She claims she was home alone last night when the professor bought it. She’s probably left a dozen messages on my voice mail, wanting to set up a second date. She’s pushy, persistent, and by the sound of her voice, getting annoyed that I haven’t returned her calls. If both Ormiston and Villanova had tried to cool things off, I’m not sure she’d have taken it that well. Nelson stays on the list.”

  “Agreed.” Whitney crossed her arms. “The fact that the professor, our third victim, doesn’t seem to have ever had contact with any of our suspects leaves only one link among the victims.”

  “Nicole,” Jake said quietly. “She’s the only person we’ve found who knew all three victims.”

  “So, why Nicole? Why is she the link?”

  Jake unearthed a pencil, tapped its eraser on the desk in time with the thin red second hand of the clock that hung over the unit’s assignment board. “Two victims—Ormiston and Villanova—were clients of Meet Your Match. The professor wasn’t, so that blows the get-revenge-against-Nicole-by-killing-her-clients theory.”

  “Her relationship with Ormiston and Villanova was all business. Even if the killer perceived it to be personal—and killed them because of that erroneous perception—he wouldn’t have known about the professor. According to Nicole, she didn’t tell anyone she was meeting Harold Young for dinner.”

  “Okay, so suppose the killer didn’t know about the date,” Jake said, still tapping the eraser against the desk. “Nicole said she doesn’t think anyone followed her to the restaurant, but she wasn’t watching for a tail, either.”

  “So, hypothetically, the killer followed her when she left her office yesterday. He waited in the restaurant’s parking lot, saw her say goodbye to the professor.” Whitney raised a shoulder. “Maybe she gave him a peck on the cheek. That’d be another erroneous perception on the killer’s part that she and the professor had a thing going…or were starting something. The killer, seething with jealousy, follows Young home.”

  “And jabs a needle into his neck before he has a chance to get inside his house.”

  “Works for me. Jake, we need to put a tail on Nicole.” Whitney glanced at the clock. “There’s still time to set one up for this evening when she leaves work.”

  “I’ve got that covered.”

  “Oh?”

  Jake flicked the pencil onto a stack of file folders. “I’m picking her up. And so no one at your house worries, she’ll be with me tonight. All night.”

  Whitney tilted her head. “Does Nicole know that?”

  Jake hitched one side of his mouth. “What, you think I just plan on strolling in, tossing her over my shoulder and carrying her off to my cave without asking if she wants to go?”

  “Well, you’re a man, aren’t you?”

  “Sergeant Ford? Excuse me?”

  The uncertain male voice had Jake leaning to see around Whitney. His brain cataloged the round face, thinning hair and roly-poly body an instant before the man’s name popped into his head.

  “Mr. Zucksworth.” Jake rose and extended his hand. “This is my partner, Sergeant Taylor.” Jake looked at Whitney. “Mr. Zucksworth works for Ormiston Funeral Homes.”

  “Ma’am.” Bradley Zucksworth gave Whitney a polite nod. He wore a black suit with a red rosebud in the lapel and clutched a manila envelope beneath his left arm.

  “What can we do for you, Mr. Zucksworth?” Jake asked while Whitney slid off the desk.

  “I believe I have some information you’ll be interested in,” he said, settling into the chair Whitney pulled up. “I can’t stay long.” He lifted the half glasses that dangled from a gold chain around his neck, slid them on, then peered at his watch. “I’m scheduled to oversee a memorial service at our south-side location. Since the police department is on the way there, I decided to drop this by instead of calling.”

  “Drop what by?” Jake asked as he lowered into his chair.

  “When you were at the funeral home the other night, you asked if I was aware of an investment Phillip made that had gone sour. One in which he lost a lot of money?”

&nb
sp; Jake leaned forward, anticipation trickling beneath his skin. “That’s right.”

  Zucksworth worked the metal clip on the envelope, pulled out a folder and handed it to Jake. “I was organizing some of Phillip’s files and found this envelope. It had slipped down below the hanging folders and was lying beneath them. I imagine that’s why you missed it when you checked his office.”

  Jake opened the folder, stared at the canceled check clipped to the top of a thick stack of paper. Jaw tight, he tilted the folder Whitney’s direction, exchanged a look with her before shifting his gaze back to Zucksworth.

  “Do you know why your boss wrote a one-hundred-thousand-dollar check to Cole Champion?”

  “I had no idea when I saw the check. Actually, I don’t know who Cole Champion is. Being curious, I read the papers in the file. It appears Mr. Champion arranged for a group of investors to put substantial amounts of money into the drilling of an oil well in southeastern Oklahoma. A well that failed to produce.”

  “Looks that way.” Jake scanned a letter Ormiston had written to the district attorney of the county in which the well had been drilled.

  Whitney leaned in. “Your boss didn’t mention the investment to you, Mr. Zucksworth?”

  “No, ma’am. Although I manage all the homes in the Ormiston funeral chain, Phillip and I weren’t close. We only discussed business. The oil investment was made from his personal funds, so there was no reason for him to confide in me.”

  Jake closed the folder, added it to the clutter on his desk. Nicole’s ex-husband had denied knowledge of an investment in which Ormiston had lost money. Jake looked forward to squeezing the bastard.

  Zucksworth rechecked his watch, slid off his glasses, then rose. “I hope the information helps find the person who murdered Phillip.”

  Whitney touched his arm. “It might. Thank you, Mr. Zucksworth.”

  She waited until the short, round man wound his way through the maze of city-issue desks, then turned to Jake, who had his head back in the file. “What’s the letter say?”

  “Ormiston wrote to the Garvin County D.A.—that’s the county where the well was drilled. He claims Champion doctored the reports he used to convince investors to put their money in the well. Ormiston doesn’t have anything nice to say about Champion.”

  “Killing Ormiston would have been a way for Champion to make that complaint go away,” Whitney pointed out.

  “My thoughts,” Jake said as he continued thumbing through the file.

  “How do you want to play this, Jake?”

  “Let’s get Champion on our turf. You call him. Be all sweet and nice when you ask him to come in. Tell him I haven’t made any progress in the investigation and you have your own ideas about a new direction to go. You take the lead when we get him in interview.”

  “In other words, I have to be warm as toast to this creep while you get to be surly.”

  Jake sent her a grim smile. “You got it.” They both knew that even during a voluntary statement, the good cop-bad cop routine sometimes helped shake up a suspect. One could never tell ahead of time just what might fall out.

  Jake stabbed a finger at the file. “Champion told me he didn’t know of any bad investments Ormiston made. If the bastard lies again, he’ll have me in his face.”

  Whitney scowled. “You always get to be the bad cop.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re full of sweetness and light,” he commented as he reached for the phone. “While you arrange things with Champion, I’ll talk to the Garvin County D.A. I want to know what kind of trouble Ormiston could have made for Champion if he hadn’t conveniently gotten murdered.”

  “Like I said on the phone, I told Sergeant Ford everything I know the other morning at my ex-wife’s apartment,” Cole Champion said two hours later. “Which isn’t much.”

  “I understand.” Whitney gave the man a sympathetic nod across the small table with cigarette burns tattooing its top. “And I do appreciate you coming in so I can confirm a few facts.”

  Jake slouched in a chair at one end of the table in the cramped interview room with institutional-green walls, bare fluorescent bulbs and a wide expanse of one-way glass. In front of him was a pad on which he made the pretense of jotting an occasional note. The pad was a prop, as was his relaxed posture. He knew Champion would make the automatic assumption that, since Whitney was doing the talking, she was in charge. And that Jake, keeping his mouth shut and taking notes, was the junior partner who presented no real threat.

  “So, you liked your boss,” Whitney confirmed. “You have no idea who would want to harm Mr. Villanova.”

  “That’s right,” Champion answered, directing his full attention and a well-mannered smile toward Whitney. “I have no clue who murdered DeSoto.”

  Jake could see that his partner’s rehashing the information that had come out in his interview with Champion was having the desired effect of lulling their quarry into a false sense of security. Champion looked relaxed in his gray tailored suit, his starched white collar lapping over a crimson silk tie. His raven hair was styled, his dark eyes earnest as if he were eager to assist in finding the person who’d murdered his boss.

  Window dressing, Jake knew. On the inside, Champion was a snake—he’d proved that by treating Nicole like garbage when they’d been married. Jake wasn’t likely to forget that…or the fact the bastard had lied to him.

  Champion glanced at his gold designer watch. “Sergeant Taylor, could we get this over with fast? I need to get back to the dealership. With the boss dead, we’re stretched thin.”

  “I can imagine,” Whitney murmured, her eyes patient. “Just a couple more questions. You said Mr. Villanova had you handle the paperwork when Phillip Ormiston bought several stretch limos for his funeral home chain?”

  Champion adjusted the diamond pinkie ring on his right hand. “Correct.”

  “You also told Sergeant Ford the purchase went through without a hitch.”

  “It did. I’m not sure what this has to do—”

  “And that you’re unaware of an investment Mr. Ormiston made in which he lost a substantial amount of money.”

  For the first time since they’d settled at the table, Champion’s gaze flicked to Jake, lingered.

  “Mr. Champion?” Whitney prodded.

  “Ormiston’s purchase of the limos worked like a well-tuned engine,” he replied, shifting his gaze back. “The factory made delivery on the vehicles a few days early.”

  Jake slapped his pencil onto the pad. “That oil deal didn’t go off quite so well, did it, slick?”

  “Oil deal?”

  “Don’t play dense with me.” Jake slid the plastic bag containing Ormiston’s canceled check from beneath the notepad, held it up. “You brokered an oil well deal in which Ormiston and six other people paid you one hundred grand each. The well came up dry, which means everybody but you lost money. Lots of money. Ormiston accused you of doctoring production reports of surrounding wells and seismic studies on the potential drill site.”

  “I didn’t doctor anything.”

  “Ormiston thought you did. He went to the Garvin County D.A. and demanded they file fraud charges against you.”

  “They didn’t. That’s because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Keeping his expression neutral, Jake shoved out of his chair. The Garvin County D.A. had verified he could find nothing fraudulent about the oil deal Champion had put together. That had gotten the slime off the hook with the law, but not with at least one irate investor.

  “Ormiston demanded you repay him one hundred grand.” Jake circled the table, purposely halting at Champion’s side, invading his space. “He wrote letters to the other investors about joining him in a lawsuit against you. If Ormiston had lived, that dry hole would have cost you some serious money.”

  When Champion twisted and looked up, Jake saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead. “This was Ormiston’s first investment in anything that had to do with the oil business. He didn’t understand t
he risks.”

  “What he probably didn’t understand until later was that you had no risk.”

  “Look, sometimes a drill site looks prime. You’ve got wells producing in the area. The seismic studies and geology reports tell you the odds are in favor of a well on that site hitting. That doesn’t mean it will. In the oil business, you’ve got no guarantees. That’s the case with the well Ormiston invested in. It just didn’t hit. I couldn’t get the guy to understand that.”

  “Which caused you one hell of a problem,” Jake shot back, his voice a slap in the face. “You had an irate investor claiming you doctored reports. Calling you a fraud. The oil community is tight—you couldn’t have kept that quiet. If Ormiston had sued you, it would have cost you big legal fees and a hell of a lot of business down the road.”

  “Everything was on the up-and-up.”

  “That why you lied to me about not knowing how Ormiston lost money?”

  Color swept into Champion’s face. “I didn’t tell you because I figured you’d get all bent out of shape. Like now.”

  Jake leaned, stuck a warning finger in the man’s face. “Damn right I’m bent out of shape. I get that way when people lie to me when I’m investigating a murder. Makes me think they’ve got something to hide.”

  “Jake, ease off.” Playing the soft cop, Whitney waved him back. “Mr. Champion, we know people have all kinds of stresses in their lives. Those stresses sometimes cause them to do things they might regret. We understand that.”

  “Good for you,” Champion spat, then twisted to look up at Jake. “I’m telling you I haven’t done anything to regret.”

  Jake gave him a feral grin. “No surprise there. You don’t regret anything because you shed your conscience a long time ago. Maybe you never had one. Bet you didn’t lose one minute of sleep when you decided to solve your problem by killing Ormiston.”

  “I didn’t kill him!”

  “You said Villanova wasn’t just your boss, he was your friend,” Jake persisted. “Could be you told him about the oil deal with Ormiston. When Ormiston wound up murdered, Villanova started thinking that you’d offed him. Maybe your boss planned on going to his pal, Bill Taylor, just as soon as the A.D.A. got back from his honeymoon. Taylor’s got no use for you because you dumped on his sister. He’d have looked at you long and hard for Ormiston’s murder. That would have been too close for comfort, so you took care of your boss before he had a chance to put a bug in the A.D.A.’s ear about the first murder.”