“I’m sorry. I don’t intend to be here long—”
“Joan?” A familiar male voice rang out from down the hall.
Miranda swiveled toward the opposite end of the kitchen just in time to see a man emerge wearing nothing but a towel around his waist.
He stopped cold and blinked at her. “Steele?”
“Becker?” She turned to her friend. “God, Fanuzzi. I didn’t mean to interrupt, uh…anything.”
Fanuzzi’s ruddy face flushed. She scratched at her hair. “Would you excuse us for a minute, Dave?”
Becker’s face was redder than Fanuzzi’s spaghetti sauce. “Sure.” Sheepishly, he nodded and tromped back down the hall.
“Gosh, I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.” Fanuzzi took Miranda by the arm and drug her into the living room. As she sank onto the cozy couch, her friend peeked out the window. “The kids are playing outside in the yard, thank God. They love that waterslide Dave bought them.”
Miranda could hear their squeals. “Dave Becker bought your kids a waterslide?” Seemed she’d missed an episode or two of this soap opera.
Fanuzzi crossed the room and sat down next to her. “When I got home last night, there was a message from him on my answering machine. He said he was sorry he’d made a mess of things and wanted to talk. He said he couldn’t sleep and to call back any time. I couldn’t sleep either. So I called him and he came over.” She shrugged toward the backyard and rolled her eyes. “After stopping at an all-night Walmart. How could I say no to that? We sort of decided to pick up where we left off all those years ago and see what happens.”
“Really?” Miranda felt a warm glow.
“It wouldn’t have happened without you. Thanks, Murray.”
She was actually embarrassed, but she couldn’t hold back a smile. “I didn’t know I was such a Yenta.” She glanced back at the hallway. If things were heating up between them…. “If I’m in the way, just say so.”
Fanuzzi shook her head. “He’s not staying here. I want the kids to get used to him first. If it goes that far.”
“Do you think it will?”
“Maybe. And I…” She was blushing like a teenager. “I kind of hope it will.” Then she gave Miranda’s hand a squeeze. “What happened between you and Parker?”
Miranda squirmed. She didn’t want to tell Fanuzzi the things Parker had said to her. It would be too humiliating. “We had a professional disagreement.”
Fanuzzi’s face wrinkled with suspicion. “Professional?”
“We didn’t see eye to eye about this case.”
“The one you’re working on? Seems like a strange reason to breakup with someone as hot as Wade Parker.”
Miranda sighed. “Like I said, we have a weird relationship.” Or had one. She slapped a hand on Fanuzzi’s knee. “But I’ve decided I’m going out on my own.”
Fanuzzi’s eyes grew round. “As a PI?”
Miranda nodded.
“Here in Atlanta?”
“Probably not here.”
She was crestfallen. “You’re leaving?”
Miranda shook her head. “Not until I figure out who killed Desirée Langford. That’s why I need a temporary place to stay. And to work.”
“Sure,” Fanuzzi said with enthusiasm. “Mi casa es su casa.”
“I’ll pay for room and board.”
“No, you won’t.”
Miranda got to her feet. She’d leave some money in an envelope. “Did you hear Ferraro Usher was shot dead last night?”
Fanuzzi gasped. “That artist who came to your party?”
Miranda nodded. “Yep. In his loft.”
“My God, Murray. Do you think Santiago had something to do with it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well,” she said getting up and starting down the hall. “You’d better get to work, then, Ms. PI.”
* * *
Fanuzzi gave her Tommy’s room and she settled in among the dragons and wizard figurines, the GI-Joes, footballs, and video games.
She sat down in the small chair at the desk, opened her laptop and fed it the flash drive she’d used to backup the reports and pictures she’d scanned in from Desirée Langford’s file on Parker’s computers. She really didn’t need them. She had most of the details memorized.
What next? She’d type up a report. Her own report. Parker had been taking care of that detail up to now, having a clerk type up dictated notes. Now it was up to her to track the case.
As she stared up at the plastic human skeleton on the bookshelf, her thoughts began to gel. Her fingers moved over the keyboard. She started from the beginning, summarizing her findings. The police interviews, the coroner’s report. Her conversation with Kennicot. The PCP found in Desirée’s bloodstream. The riding crop with Usher’s fingerprints. His violent reaction when she questioned him in his loft. His sudden death.
By the time she finished, hours had passed. Exhaustion was starting to wear her down, but she pressed on. She stood up and stretched, hooked her laptop up to Tommy’s printer and made a hardcopy.
Fifteen double-spaced pages. When the last page came out, she snatched it and lay down on top of the colorful solar system spread on the small bed. She went over it page by page.
What was she missing? There had to be something here. Right under her nose. She could feel it. But she couldn’t figure out what it was.
A yawn came out of her mouth. She rubbed her burning eyes, then turned back to the beginning and read again. Before she reached page five, she was asleep.
Chapter Forty
Parker sat on the redwood deck, watching the late afternoon shadows grow in the garden, a whiskey sour that he hadn’t touched in his hand. He hadn’t done much but sit out here since this morning.
How could he have let Miranda Steele walk out on him a second time?
Impetuous, impulsive woman. Rash, uncontrollable. All the things he loved about her. All the things he deplored in her. She frustrated him beyond his endurance. How could he have fallen so deeply in love with her?
How many times had she told him it could never work out for them? He had refused to listen, but she’d been right. He closed his eyes, trying to will away the pain of that reality.
Where she would go, what she would do, he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t let himself care. He could only try to heal somehow and go back to life as he knew it before she came along.
The thought made his stomach clench.
He leaned back in the chair and remembered how she’d cried over Madison Taggart the first night he saw her in a jail cell. How doggedly she’d pursued the little girl’s case. How she’d wept in his arms when she told him about Leon.
If only she had let him help her. But she didn’t like being helped. She was so damned independent. She wanted to do everything herself.
Whether it was because they were too different or too much alike, he’d never know. The only thing he knew for certain was that it was over. Even if she wanted to make amends, which she didn’t, he couldn’t open himself up to this kind of pain again. It was done. He was done.
A phone rang inside the house. He opened his eyes. Was it her? No, she’d be too proud, too stubborn to call him. Perhaps she wanted the things she’d left. He didn’t want to talk to her now. He’d let the answering machine get it.
The ringing stopped. A moment later, it started again. Had she come to her senses? Seen his point about her reckless behavior?
He rose and plodded into the kitchen. He picked up the receiver on the last ring.
“Hello?”
“Wade? I’m so glad you’re home.”
He let out a surprised breath. It was Delta Langford. “Hello, Delta. How…are you?”
“As well as I can be, I suppose.”
“Of course.” He forced sympathy into his voice as he searched for a way to end the call quickly.
“I want to apologize for the scene I caused at your party last week.”
It wasn’t his party. It was Miranda�
�s. He thought of the yearbook she’d found. The things he’d told her that night. His mother’s ring. Every muscle in his body ached. “Think nothing of it,” he murmured into the receiver.
“Oh, but I do think of it. It’s bothered me terribly since that night. I want to do something to make it up to you.”
Make it up to him? Delta Langford was a woman who thought only of herself. She’d never tried to make up for anything in her life. “What do you mean, Delta?”
There was a pause. “I was wondering if I could get you to come out to the farm tonight and have a talk with me.”
“We haven’t spoken in years.”
She gave an awkward laugh. “That’s just it, Wade. It’s been so long and there are so many things I need to say to you.”
“You can say them now.”
She hesitated. “Oh, no. I need to do it in person. And I need to do it tonight. I have my courage up. I don’t know if I can later, if you put me off.”
Suspicion prickled the back of Parker’s neck. The last person he could trust was Delta Langford. She could never make up for what she’d done years ago. But what she had to say might give him a clue about her sister’s murder. He might as well take up the case where Miranda had left it.
He glanced up at the clock on the kitchen wall. “I can be there about eight.”
She exhaled audibly. “Oh, thank you, Wade. This means so much to me. I’ll be waiting.”
He hung up the phone and headed upstairs to shower and dress. But first, he checked his cell on the hall table. Fully charged. That was good. He would need it to record everything Delta told him.
* * *
When Miranda awoke in Tommy’s bed, it was late afternoon. The pages of her report were scattered on the floor. She picked them up and squinted as she turned on the light.
She could hear voices outside the door. She laid her report on the desk and opened the door.
Fanuzzi and her kids were in the kitchen. Callie and Tommy were at the table playing a board game, while Charlie made faces at them. Fanuzzi was at the sink, pouring noodles into a strainer.
“You’re just in time for homemade spaghetti,” she called out.
“Sounds delicious.” She just realized she hadn’t eaten since morning.
“Go wash your hands and join us.”
“Yes, Mommy.” Miranda grinned and headed for the bathroom.
She washed her face and hands, stared at herself in the mirror. She looked haggard, tired. She’d been through hell today. A broken heart, a broken career, a broken life. No, she’d fix them. All of them. But she still had little on Desirée Langford’s case.
She sat between Tommy and Callie, listening to them pepper Mommy with questions about the new man in her life, and watching Mommy squirm. No, Fanuzzi told them, Mr. Dave wasn’t staying overnight. She wasn’t sure about the relationship yet. She would take it one day at a time. But beneath the parental sternness, Fanuzzi was beaming.
And so was “Mr. Dave.” With a forkful of pasta in his hand, he caught Miranda’s eye and mouthed, “Thank you.”
Her heart swelled. “No problem,” she mouthed back. She was genuinely happy for both of her friends.
She ate two plates of spaghetti, then excused herself and went back to Tommy’s room.
She picked up the report again and paced the floor as she skimmed it.
Despite her efforts, she was still short on hard facts. All she knew for sure was that Carlos Santiago had sold Usher that fatal dose of PCP. Usher had to have bought the drug to kill his ex-wife, right? And Santiago had him killed because he owed him money. Was that it?
No, there was something missing. Think, dammit. She sat down at the desk, closed her eyes and let her mind drift. What were the facts?
Desirée Langford and Ferraro Usher. Two narcissistic people, absorbed in their careers. She marries him on the rebound from Kennicot. They have a tumultuous relationship. She gets physical at times. She’s prone to depression. So is he. They take drugs together. They go to therapy. His career blossoms. Hers does, too.
She leaves him for her old flame. He begs her to come back. She says no, but still sees him as a model, plays the two men against each other. She swallows a fatal dose of PCP at the Steeplechase. Her favorite horse kicks her face in.
Miranda exhaled. It had to have been Usher who’d riled that horse with his riding crop, didn’t it? But why had he seemed so genuinely shocked when he first saw Desirée’s body in the stall?
Over and over, Usher had said he hadn’t killed her. He’d insisted he’d loved her. Then he winds up dead. Had he killed himself out of remorse? That scene didn’t look like suicide.
So who killed Usher?
She thought of the paintings of Desirée in Usher’s gallery. The angelic ones in his loft. The Medea painting that had been on display downstairs. That somebody had moved to Usher’s loft.
She leaned an elbow on the desk and stared at the report.
Medea. The vindictive witch, full of jealousy and hate, with those mysterious, cat-like eyes. Desirée’s, she’d assumed.
Her head shot up. The recording of Usher and Delta in the library at her party. Delta had goaded the artist, taunted him, almost as if she’d relished tormenting him. When she called Usher a murderer, the glow in her eyes was vicious…just like the eyes in that painting.
Miranda dropped the report in her lap. That Medea painting wasn’t a portrait of Desirée.
It was Delta.
Her mouth opened as the breath left her body. That was it. The missing piece. Now it all made sense. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
She sprung up from chair, grabbed her duffle bag, started tossing things on the bed. It was in here. She’d held onto it after the party, thinking it would be fun to secretly record Parker making love to her and tease him with it afterward.
She winced at that thought, but kept looking. It had been in a drawer with her clothes and she’d scooped it up with them. There it was. At the bottom of the bag. She pulled it out. A small, silver digital recorder, about the size of cigarette lighter. Extremely discreet. With a high-powered microphone that worked up to thirty feet away.
Quickly, she stripped off her T-shirt and jeans, put on a nice blouse and a pair of slacks with deep pockets. She slipped the recorder into the right one. Then she grabbed her purse and headed for the hall. She told Fanuzzi she was going out and didn’t know when she’d be home.
“Where are you going?” Fanuzzi called after her as she hustled into her Lumina.
“Aquitaine Farms. I’m going to pay Delta Langford a visit. And I might just catch myself a killer.”
Chapter Forty-One
“Oh, Wade. I’m so glad you’re here. I was so afraid you wouldn’t come.”
Parker tensed as Delta Langford took a tight hold of his arm and led him through the foyer of the Aquitaine Farms estate. She was all in satiny reds and pearls tonight. An attempt to look seductive, he assumed. Her ploys had never worked on him. They weren’t working now.
But he’d always pitied her, despite his distaste for her. And he was ashamed of the sick knot in the pit of his stomach as they strolled down the hall and into a small private room.
There was a table set for two. Flowers. Candles. Very intimate.
“What’s all this?” he asked cautiously.
“I remember how you always liked Chateaubriand. Are you still fond of it?”
He stiffened. “I’m not really hungry, Delta.”
“Oh, please don’t refuse me, Wade. I’m trying so hard to make up for…” Her voice trailed off as she laid a delicate hand against her cheek. Her fingers trembled. “I don’t suppose I ever can.”
He softened. After all, he’d always pitied the woman. From the time she was a young girl, with more beauty and money than she knew what to do with, to even now as a handsome woman just gracefully beginning to show the signs of age.
“Very well, Delta,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll have dinner with you.” If all it took to get
her to talk was eating a steak, he would comply.
He seated her at the end of the small table, then took the chair across from her.
Her servants appeared, noiselessly serving the elaborate meal without fanfare. He ate what he could of it, as he watched her green eyes glisten in the candlelight and listened to her chatter on about high school and what the Langford family had been back then. She dwelt on the years they had spent together at Westminster.
“Do you remember that funny little boy you used to always hang around with? He was such an intellectual.”
“Jackson Taggart. He’s a grown man now,” Parker said, attempting to nudge her back to the present.
She laughed in that half-flirtatious way that had always annoyed him. “It’s strange what we turn into as adults. Who would have thought that gawky boy would grow up to become Chief of Staff of St. Benedictine’s?”
Parker picked at the remains of his meal with his fork. “I don’t find it odd at all. We carry the seeds of what we’ll become within us from childhood. Jackson was a fine person then, just as he is now.” Unlike others.
She waved a hand. “Oh, I don’t mean it that way, Wade. It’s just that it takes social skills to rise to a position like that. I never thought Jackson had any.”
If she was trying to win his affection, she should know insulting his best friend wouldn’t help.
She raised a wineglass to her lips. “On the other hand, you always had wonderful social skills. And you’ve used them well. It wasn’t hard then to see that you’d grow up to be enormously successful.”
He decided a little flattery might loosen her tongue. “I could say the same for you.”
“Me?” she scoffed. “I’ve had two failed marriages. I’m over forty and I live with my father, for God’s sake. I wouldn’t call that successful.”
“No, I suppose not.” He’d wanted to tell her she was successful in ways that couldn’t be measured by outward values. But it would be too much of a flat out lie.
He watched the servant clear away his plate of half-eaten Chateaubriand.
“Didn’t you like the steak, Wade? Perhaps it was a little tough. You were always so discriminating when it came to food.” Her tone had the mixture of pleading and disapproval that had always sickened him.
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