Delicious Torment

by Linsey Lanier

  As they crossed the room, her heels clicking against the boards, Miranda sniffed, just to see if she could catch a whiff of Mary Jane. But the only smells were oil-based paints, turpentine, and stale whiskey.

  Beneath the general mess, the place was elegant. Hardwood floors. Fireplace. A small kitchen with slate and limestone accents. The rent must cost a pretty penny. Desirée’s money, she’d bet.

  But what stood out most were the images of Desirée Langford.

  They were everywhere. Desirée on a horse. In a field of daisies. Nude in a big, four-poster bed. The variously sized portraits took up most of the space. Looked a lot like an obsession.

  “Quite a few paintings of Ms. Langford,” Parker observed as they reached the kitchenette at the far end of the dwelling.

  Usher waved a hand, grandly gesturing toward the canvases. “My late wife inspired much of my work. To me, she was more than a woman. She was an enchantress. My Medea, as I tried to explain downstairs. Temptress, seductress.”

  Vindictive witch? Miranda wondered, considering the artwork. Desirée’s expression in these images was determined, but not as intense as in the Medea painting downstairs. The woman in that picture had evil in her eyes. These were tamer, sweeter. Maybe Usher had painted them before she left him for Kennicot.

  The artist reached for a bottle of Kentucky bourbon on the granite counter. “Would either of you care for a drink?”

  Miranda shook her head.

  “No, thank you,” Parker said.

  “Did you and Desirée live here?” she asked.

  Usher retrieved a shallow glass from the cabinet, some ice from the fridge, poured himself some whiskey. He took a swallow. “We moved in about three years ago when the gallery opened. I’ve had many productive hours here.”

  She strolled to the nearest image. One of Desirée on a chestnut horse. Could that be Calypso? “Did she pose for you?”

  “Oh, yes.” His lips twitched but there was pride in his tone.

  “Even after she, uh,” she waved her hand, as if searching for the right word, “began staying with Kennicot?”

  He pressed his fingers to his temple, Kennicot’s name must have given him an instant migraine. “Desirée was interested in my work. No matter how rocky our relationship became, she was always willing to pose for me.”

  Miranda played with the pearls at her neck. “But her work was at Aquitaine Farms.”

  He ran a hand through his long hair, took a swallow of bourbon, and nodded. “Even when we were married, she lived there part of the week.”

  And developed her relationship with Kennicot there. Miranda turned to face him, rocked on her toes. “Did you live at Aquitaine Farms the rest of the time you were married? Before you moved in here?”

  Usher’s seaweed green eyes grew sullen. “We started out there, but it didn’t work for us. We stayed only a few years. A few difficult years.” He took another pull of his drink, then set it down with a deep sigh.

  Miranda stepped toward the counter. “Because of Kennicot?”

  He focused on her, forcing back a sneer. “Because of the Langfords. I never got along with them. Her sister despised me. Her father thought I was beneath her. He called me her ‘weakness.’ He thought of me as a hobby of the lovely heiress. She was amusing herself by supporting the poor, starving artist.”

  Usher came around the counter, began to pace across the floor, his free hand fisting and opening in that agitated way Miranda had seen before. He was lying about something.

  “But Desirée understood me. She believed in me. When we moved here, people started to recognize my talent. I couldn’t have become a success without her.”

  The same thing Delta thought. “So she was a meal ticket for you.”

  His lip curled. “How dare you say such a thing? I loved Desirée. She was my life.”

  Or his obsession.

  Usher picked up his drink and strolled to a wall where there were five or six eight-by-ten sized portraits of his deceased wife. He ran a hand through his hair and stared at the pictures.

  “Desirée was a marvel.” He whispered the words as if he’d just seen an apparition from Heaven. “I’m sure you both know she was one of the country’s foremost horse breeders. She didn’t believe in studying genetics and genomes and markers and all that. She was so instinctual, so fluid. It was a challenge to capture her essence. She understood horses. Their quirks, their traits. She could look at a stallion and a mare and predict whether their foal would be a winner. And which foal. Most of the time, she was right.”

  Parker stood eyeing Usher, his arms folded. Once again, he was leaving the questioning up to her. But Miranda could tell he was ready to pounce if things went south.

  “Too bad Desirée wasn’t so good at predicting people.”

  Usher came out of his reverie and glared at Miranda. “What do you mean? She had many friends.”

  “Is that why she ended up dead at the Steeplechase?”

  Usher gritted his teeth, moved back to the kitchen and poured more bourbon into his glass. “The police said it was suicide, Ms. Steele. Why isn’t that good enough for you?”

  Miranda ran her hand along the counter, gazed at the cabinets, the stainless fridge. “Suicide from an overdose of PCP. Where’d she get that from?”

  He blinked at her, unable to answer for a moment. “I have no idea.” He raised his glass to his lips.

  “Witnesses saw you plying Desirée with drinks and snorting coke with her half an hour before she died.”

  He lowered his glass, his face flushed. “You aren’t the police. I don’t have to tell you anything.” His tone dripped with disdain.

  Miranda took a step toward him. “No, but we can share what we know with the police.”

  Usher released a haughty laugh. “What do you know?”

  Not yet, Miranda thought. “We know you and Desirée were both users.”

  With a huff, Usher picked up his drink again and took it into the studio area. “Desirée was the one who always wanted to experiment.” He stopped in the middle of the room, put a hand to his head. He knew she had him on this point. “She said the drugs helped her. She had a history of depression. She was in therapy. You should talk to her therapist, Dr. Chaffee.”

  “I have.”

  He spun to face her, his eyes glowing with anger. “Then you should understand why she took her own life.”

  She folded her arms. “But why with PCP? Where did she get it from?”

  His upper lip curled with irritation. “From Kennicot. I told you that at her funeral.”

  Miranda stepped toward him. “We’ve talked to Kennicot, too, Usher. He doesn’t use PCP. But he told us Desirée left you for him. That she was in love with him since she was a teen. That gives you a motive. Jealousy.”

  “What?” he gasped.

  “You know. The old ‘If I can’t have her no one else can’ song and dance?”

  Agitated, Usher began to pace the room again. Back and forth. To the desk. To the sofa. Over to another row of easels that held larger canvases of Desirée’s likeness.

  Miranda decided to plant herself at the desk. As she neared it, she looked down at the messy surface strewn with art supplies and saw one of the drawers was ajar. Inside, the handle of a handgun gleamed. Her pulse went into overdrive.

  Parker came up behind her, saw it too. His eyes widened for an instance, but he gave no other appearance of alarm. He was as calm as if he were watching clouds float through the sky.

  Usher was getting more uptight by the minute. Fitfully, he shifted his weight. “I don’t know why she did what she did, Ms. Steele. Desirée had her whole life before her. But as I said, she had issues.”

  “What kind of issues?”

  “Good God, you ought to know if you talked to Chaffee.” He was shouting now. “Problems with her father. With her sister, Delta.”

  Miranda played dumb. “What kind of problems?”

  “The kind sisters have. Really, Ms. Steele.” His voice b
roke with emotion. “How can you be so unfeeling at a time like this? She’s only been gone a week.”

  For just an instant, a stab of guilt rippled through her. Was Usher telling the truth? Was he just a distraught, spurned lover who’d been caught up in a bizarre love triangle? No, circumstantial as it was, they had evidence. If anyone should be feeling guilty, it was this guy.

  She inhaled to steady her nerves. “And yet you’re ready to hold an exhibition.”

  His mouth flew open. “It was planned before her death. I wanted—I was hoping—”

  “That she’d come back to you?” Like focusing on himself and his work would be irresistible to her. The pompous ass. She ventured another step toward him. “Is that what you were arguing with her about at the Steeplechase?”

  A shudder went down the length of him. “You’re not the police. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

  “Desirée refused, didn’t she? Even with this art show, she turned you down. You were devastated. Hurt. Furious enough to kill her.”

  “How can you do this to me? How can you be so cruel?” He glared at her, then at Parker. “Get out of here.”

  Nobody moved.

  With a sudden jerk, Usher lunged for the desk. Miranda’s heart ricocheted into her throat. He was going for the gun.

  But instead, with one violent sweep of both arms, he heaved all the art supplies off the desktop. Tubes, palettes, brushes, all clattered to the floor. Paint oozed onto the hardwood. The oily smell thickened. “I didn’t kill Desirée,” Usher cried out, as if he were on the verge of a breakdown. “I loved her. I worshipped her. Leave me alone. Get out of my studio.”

  He began to weep.

  Crocodile tears. Miranda pounced, getting up in his face, blocked him from the drawer. “We visited the Steeplechase grounds this morning, Usher. Guess what we found?”

  His gaze circled the room, then finally focused on her. “I have no idea.”

  “A riding crop with your fingerprints on it.”

  He blinked, opened his mouth, stepped back in confusion, shaking his head. “No.”

  “Yes. The one you used to rile up Calypso. It wasn’t enough that you got Desirée full of booze and coke and then laced her drink with PCP. You had to make her suffer. You used that crop to make her favorite horse kick her to death. All because she left you for Kennicot.”

  “No. No.” Usher tore at his wild hair, screaming like a madman. “Isn’t my life enough of a wreck? Why are you trying to destroy me?” He glanced down at the open desk drawer with the gun in it. It was too far away. Suddenly, he reached out with his bony fingers, going for Miranda’s neck.

  “Hey, asshole.” She stepped back and was about to give the sucker a flying kick in the groin when Parker shot past her. With a single hand, he grabbed the deranged artist by the throat, lifted him up on his toes.

  “Ferraro Usher,” he growled in a dark, threatening voice that sent a sharp chill down Miranda’s spine. “If you lay a hand on my associate, I’ll see that you’ll regret it for a long time. And remember, I’m not the police. I don’t have to go by the book.”

  * * *

  It was past midnight when they pulled into the mansion’s huge garage. Exhausted, Miranda laid her head back on the seat. She couldn’t wait to get out of the tight chiffon dress and into the octopus shower.

  Parker turned off the Lamborghini and sat for a moment, staring at the empty space. “There’s room in here for another vehicle,” he murmured.

  She still parked her beat up, old Lumina in the driveway. And there it would stay. Ignoring his implication, she shook her head. “Some confession we got from our number one suspect tonight.”

  He exhaled slowly. “It was less than satisfying.” Parker was the king of understatement.

  “That guy’s guilty as sin and we can’t get him to squeal.”

  He half-smiled. “Succinctly put. It takes time.”

  She smirked. How could he always be so patient? “I was ready to call Erskine to come arrest that jackass.”

  “All our evidence is circumstantial. Usher had motive, opportunity, and means, but we can’t conclusively prove he killed Desirée.” His voice flat, he sounded as worn out as she was.

  “I know.” With a groan, she put her hand on her brow. Her head hurt. “So what’s our next step?”

  He reached over and massaged her temple. It felt good. God, how she loved his touch.

  After a moment, he took a deep breath. “For now, this case will have to be on hold.”

  Her head shot up. “Why?”

  “I have to be out of town for a few days.”

  “What?” She pushed his massaging hand aside.

  His face flushed with irritation. “I have another matter to attend to. It’s pressing.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Washington State.”

  He was running out on her? Now?

  Parker lifted his hand to touch her cheek, then thought better of it. The angry lines forming in her forehead annoyed him, yet the surge of admiration, of joy, he’d felt watching her work tonight lingered in his heart. That avenger’s spirit of hers had been in full play. Motivated by what she’d seen in that stall, she hadn’t flinched, hadn’t backed down for a moment.

  Miranda Steele would spend her whole being defending the helpless, the injured, the dead. On the outside, they were as different as two people could be. But at the core, they were just alike. Lord, how he loved this woman.

  But the pain she suffered in her past made her more vulnerable than she realized. Not a good trait in this profession. He vowed he’d do all he could to try to heal it. That was the purpose of this trip, though he loathed leaving her.

  In an effort he considered an exercise in futility, he’d sent emails to his former employees across the country, asking if they knew of any young girl who fit the sparse description he had of Miranda’s daughter, Amy. Bill Malone, one of his first trainees, had answered last week. Bill ran his own office in Tacoma, Washington these days, and he had a client with a daughter who was Amy’s age. The girl was adopted, had a birthmark on her neck, like Miranda’s baby had. The timing was bad, but Parker had to check it out.

  He refused to tell Miranda why he was running off to Washington, no matter how much he wanted to. No matter how much she wanted to know. He had no guarantees and it would only get her hopes up.

  “You do remember my rules?” he asked quietly.

  Beside him, she tensed. “Your…stipulations?”

  “Yes.”

  Slowly Miranda turned her head, stared into his eyes, that deep gray chasm had gone cold as steel. “I have to see a shrink.”

  “Correct.”

  She’d been to two. “You can pull me off the case anytime you feel like it.”

  “Anytime I feel there’s too much danger,” he corrected.

  That couldn’t be it, with all the compliments he’d been tossing her way. Her eyes widened. “I can’t work on the case by myself. Meaning, while you’re out of town.”

  He gave her his cocktail party smile. “I’m pleased you remembered.”

  Her blood starting to pound in her head, she grunted and folded her arms. “What about momentum?”

  “Momentum? I’d say we just hit a wall.”

  He couldn’t expect her to just stop cold. “I wouldn’t do anything stupid, Parker. I have learned a thing or two at the Agency, and as you recall, I can handle myself pretty well in a fight.”

  He patted her hand. “Just the same.”

  “What about all this ‘you’re getting to be such a fine investigator’ crap?”

  He scowled. “It’s not crap. And it’s not germane to this matter.”

  How could he hit her with this after what she’d just been through? She gritted her teeth, her chest heaving, her eyes starting to smart. So she was going back to classes. What was the point of them, if Parker was going to stifle her like this?

  “Guess not.” With a huff, she got out of the car, slammed the door
and stomped inside to the kitchen.

  Parker followed with a gait as casual as if they were on a stroll in the park together. “By the way, you never told me about your visit to Dr. Chaffee.”

  She spun around, glaring at him. “You want to talk about the shrink?

  “I do.”

  She kicked off her hellish high heels, tromped to the fridge, searched for a regular, normal beer. There was none. She grabbed a soda instead. Without offering Parker any, she shut the door hard, tore off the top and took a slug. “I already told you everything he said about Desirée.”

  “What did he say about you?” He reached for her.

  She slipped to the other side of the island. Oh, yeah. That other ‘stipulation’ of his. She gave him a big, fake smile, lifted her arms. “It was just great. I’m cured of everything. I think he even healed my hangnail.”

  Parker stood, his whole body motionless, his gaze boring into her with an icy chill.

  She let out her own angry growl, set the drink on the island, grabbed at her hair. “Shrinks don’t work for me, Parker. The veritable Dr. Chaffee fell asleep while I was reliving my past.”

  His eyes blazed. “Your marriage to Groth?”

  “Didn’t get that far. Just my childhood.”

  His face creased with disappointment. He sighed aloud and reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out another business card and slid it across the island to her. “Here. This is the best psychologist I know. I’ve been to her myself.”

  Reluctantly, she picked up the card. “You’ve been to a shrink?”

  “Yes.”

  For a moment she wondered why, then she realized the answer. “You mean after—?” She couldn’t even say it.

  “After Sylvia passed away. And when I’ve been involved in a particularly stressful case.”

  Well, that took the wind out of her sails. She didn’t know what to say. “Particularly stressful” was another understatement. She’d heard Becker and Holloway talking about some of the rough characters Parker had tangled with over his career.

  He ambled to the fridge, got a bottle of his fancy beer, fumbled in the drawer for an opener and popped the lid. “I don’t like everything about therapy, either. But it helps.”

  “What don’t you like?”