Romancing the Crown Series

by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)

  She sighed. "Someone from the palace phoned me. I'm sorry, I didn't get the name. The call woke me, then I was so upset."

  "Yeah, well, that's understandable," Ryan granted. "When did you receive the call?"

  "The morning he... his body... was discovered. The person who called me suggested that I would be welcome if I decided to come. But I would have anyway," she added.

  "I see," Ryan commented. "Was this official who notified you a man?"

  She looked directly at him then and frowned in consternation. "I couldn't say for certain. A husky voice, but not too deep."

  Couldn't say, or wouldn't? Ryan wondered. She gave no outward signs that she was lying or withholding the truth, but that meant very little other than that she could be accomplished at it and had studied body language herself.

  * * *

  Nina understood why she was being so adamant about participating personally in the investigation of Desmond's death, even if Ryan McDonough didn't. She did think it surprising and somewhat peculiar that the king would allow and even encourage it. The best she had hoped for when she'd asked permission was, as McDonough had suggested, to be kept informed as events unfolded. And to hound someone for answers if they weren't forthcoming.

  Much to her surprise, the king had sent her to the P. I.' s office with the suggestion that she assist him. That alone indicated to her that the investigator might need a push to get things done, that the king either knew him to be shorthanded or lacking in initiative. Nina glanced out the tinted windows at the city surrounding them. It was so lovely here in San Sebastian, an inter esting combination of old-world architecture and innovative modern buildings that signified a successful transition into the twenty-first century.

  Had Desmond loved it? Had he felt at home here? Accepted? There had been a time in her life when she had absolutely idolized her older brother. He had been so handsome, so aloof and tragic even as a teenager. How proud she had felt whenever he took the time to notice her and smile down at her.

  Looking back, she realized that he'd had much the same affection for the family dog. Still, all her friends had sighed, giggled and mooned over Desmond. He had actually championed her a few times when Dad had called her on the carpet for one transgression or another. Later however, she had noticed that Desmond routinely argued with her father on just about everything.

  Had they been close? No. As much as she had wished it so, her brother had been little more than an enigmatic stranger.

  If she were perfectly honest, this hurried trip and her involvement here were more in the nature of alleviating her guilt. She had sailed through life without a glitch, taking for granted the love of her parents, her success in school, her wide circle of friends and her sense of belonging. Desmond had suffered every step of the way.

  He had always been at odds with the adults in his life, parents and teachers. Desmond had been a loner and had never quite fit in anywhere. He'd either tried too hard or, in some instances, not tried at all.

  Nina hoped he had found his place here in Montebello, where his birth father had once lived. She wished she had been able to discuss it with the duke, who must have known him very well. She had to admit, royalty intimidated her.

  Desmond was born of royalty, though he hadn't known about it until after Nina's father had died. To a very young and impressionable Nina, that discovery had fully explained Desmond's difficulties in adjusting to life as they had known it. A prince among paupers, she recalled thinking at the time.

  Now she could laugh at that childish conclusion. Her family might not have been rich, but they were solid upper-middle class with a healthy bank account. Love and affection were also in ready supply. Neither she nor her brother had ever lacked for a single thing they truly needed.

  Nina missed her parents. Her father had succumbed to a virulent case of pneumonia just before Desmond left. The revelation that followed his death—that Desmond wasn't really his, but was instead the illegitimate son of a Montebellan Duke—had further alienated her brother. The loss of both husband and son had been too much for Nina's mother. She had died only months later, finally giving in to the weak heart that had plagued her for years.

  Of course she had romanticized the sad figure Desmond had become. Most of his problems were of his own making. But he was her brother, faults and all. Poor, handsome, tragic Desmond did not deserve such a sad end.

  If she could just do this one last thing for him, see his killer brought to justice, Nina thought she might be able to put aside the guilt she felt for having a childhood that was so much better than his. She had always felt she owed him something to make up for what he had missed and she had enjoyed, and this was all there was left to do for him.

  "When did you last hear from your brother?" McDonough asked, interrupting her bittersweet thoughts.

  She turned to look at him. "The last time? A few weeks ago." Desmond had contacted her for a loan, but that was none of this man's business. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder.

  "You said you once entertained a close bond with him. That was not true lately?" he asked, the intensity of his gaze absolutely unnerving.

  "Is this an interrogation, Mr. McDonough?" she demanded, feeling defensive, especially since she did not want to answer the question.

  "Yes," he readily admitted. "And what happened to calling me Ryan? I thought we were supposed to become more familiar. It was your idea... Nina."

  They had stopped at a traffic light and she had the overwhelming impulse to get out and slam the door shut in his face. Instead, she took a deep breath and prayed for patience. Only when she had collected herself did she answer. "My brother and I were as close as can be expected given the eight-year difference in our ages and the fact that we had not visited much since he left home." And not at all since he had come to Montebello.

  He pursed his lips and nodded. Then he smiled sadly. "And there was also the fact that you had different fathers. How did that affect the two of you?"

  Nina shifted in her seat, gritted her teeth and met his gaze with a glare. "If you're considering sibling rivalry as a possible motive, I do have an alibi. I was on the other side of the world at the time Des was killed."

  He smiled more naturally. "And that can be verified quite easily, I'm sure."

  "Absolutely. So you can eliminate me from your list of suspects, McDonough," she snapped. "If you have any suspects."

  "I have several hundred thousand at the moment. But you're going to remedy that with your input on the investigation, aren't you? When would you like to begin?"

  "Now."

  "First I'd like an answer to my previous question. Was there any sibling rivalry between you and Desmond?"

  "Certainly not on my part!" she exclaimed. "Are you always this abrasive?"

  He shrugged those shoulders she couldn't help but admire. "Nope. Sometimes I'm even more so. It's a plus in this line of work, trust me. Looks like you have the attitude down pat, if nothing else."

  Then he cocked his head to one side and raked his bottom lip with his straight, white teeth. She thought she saw a glint of amusement in his eyes. "But you obviously don't trust me, do you? If you did, you would be content to lie around the palace eating grapes or whatever it is the royal cousins do, and let me handle this case."

  Nina refused to rise to the bait. Calmly she crossed one leg over the other and smoothed the knee-length skirt of her new gray suit. "You know very well I'm not a royal cousin. But Desmond was. You said we could begin the investigation now. Will you give me something specific to do?"

  He cleared his throat, quickly looking away from her legs. "You should get settled first. Get over your jet lag."

  "I don't have any. And I'm already settled, as you put it. Mr. Pavelli has arranged a flat for me." She gave him a smug little smile and raised her brows. "The vacant apartment next to yours is no longer to let."

  To his credit, he managed not to groan. His sigh of resignation provided her a brief moment of victory. Then he seemed t
o recover. "I guess he thought it would be convenient for us. Would you like to go there first, or get right down to business?"

  "Right down to business," Nina declared. "That's why I'm here."

  He nodded once and leaned forward to push a button, obviously an intercom, because he spoke to the driver. "The palace, please."

  "The palace? You're not talking the king out of this," Nina warned him. "You heard Lorenzo."

  "I did. And, good little Montebellan subject that I am, I wouldn't dream of bucking the powers-that-be."

  Before Nina could comment, he continued, this time very seriously. "We're going to the scene of the crime."

  Her eyes widened. "Oh."

  His eyes were piercing as his gaze fastened on hers. "This is for real, Ms. Caruso. Not like you see on television." "Please tell me you don't believe I'm stupid enough to think it is."

  "All I'm saying is that if you're going to help me, get objective because I don't have time to baby you. A man has been killed. I need to discover who did it, and time is all-important. It's already been nearly forty-eight hours. Will the sight of blood make you faint?"

  Nina sucked in a sharp breath of shock. He sounded horribly heartless.

  "I know that seems cold," he admitted, his features rock hard and uncompromising. Unsympathetic. "But if you're going to accomplish anything at all, you have to divorce your emotions from what you will be doing. Do you understand?" "Yes."

  "I hope so. You cannot deal with murder if you don't. It's ugly. It will give you nightmares. Sometimes it will make you cry and wake up screaming. This is particularly true if you knew the victim."

  He was trying to scare her off. She had crossed her arms over her chest and was clenching her biceps until they hurt.

  Then she saw something in his eyes that told her he was speaking from experience, that he knew exactly what he was talking about. He'd said he worked homicide before. Did he have these nightmares?

  "That means I must see... the body."

  "I wouldn't advise that." His voice gentler now, thoughtful. "It shouldn't be necessary."

  "I want to," she said, steadying her voice, making up her mind to do it. What help could she be to this investigation if she allowed her emotions and her fears to rule every decision she made? "Yes. I should."

  McDonough shook his head and heaved out a deep breath. "You're that afraid I might miss some clues?"

  "Have you even looked for any?" Nina asked.

  "I haven't seen the body yet, if that's what you're asking. The king only put me on this late yesterday. I've been catching up on what the police have done so far."

  "A second pair of eyes never hurts, does it?" she asked.

  "Your eyes will hurt if you insist on this," he said, betraying a little of that emotion he had just warned her to bury. "I'm afraid yours will. It's going to be difficult, if not impossible, Nina, to forget the victim was your brother."

  "I can do it," she said as convincingly as she could. "I can be objective if that's what it takes. Couldn't you, if the victim was a relation of yours?"

  He gave her the strangest look, then tore his gaze from hers. Well, let him be angry, she thought. This wasn't about Ryan McDonough's pride anyway. It was about Desmond and finding out who killed him.

  She probably would be able to handle seeing Des. At least, she could fake it for the short time it would take. She'd never been squeamish. And she knew very well that a person's essence left the body when that person died. It wouldn't be Desmond she was seeing. Not really.

  Suppose McDonough did miss something? Would she know enough to find it? And if she did, would he admit the error? At least if she was courageous enough to see what a real investigator should, he might take her wish to help more seriously.

  "I won't faint," she assured him. "I've seen bodies before." He nodded and offered no further argument. Nina only wished she had convinced herself as easily as that.

  Chapter 2

  Ryan wished he could insist on taking Nina to her apartment before going to the palace as he had planned. Her arrival had thrown a monkey wrench in his schedule.

  Strange as it seemed, that old adage about criminals returning to the scene of the crime did hold true occasionally in homicides. Consequently, Ryan had stationed one of his best men, Joseph Braca, at Desmond's house at night to keep watch. The back doors purposely had been left unlocked for easy access, and Ryan had hidden two motion-activated cameras in strategic locations to record the image of any intruders.

  In addition to bringing Joe up to date on the preliminary forensics report, Ryan needed to make him aware of the new wrinkle in the investigation. Nina. While Ryan kept her busy later today, Joe would be running her background, checking the alibi and going over the victim's phone records to see if there had been any contact other than what she'd admitted.

  Ryan could have phoned Joe instead of coming over, probably should have, given the circumstances. Or he could have requested that Joe report to him at the office before going off duty. The truth was, Ryan employed any reason he could think of to get out from behind that desk and into the field. Also, this might satisfy Nina Caruso that he was allowing her to assist him.

  A scant quarter hour later, they drove through the gates of the palace. Ryan scanned the royal compound, realizing how many hundreds of people must be residing, employed or visiting there. Any one of them might be responsible for killing Desmond Caruso. And it was up to him to discover the needle in this palatial haystack.

  The landscaping prevented driving right up to the front. There was a large paved parking area for vehicles situated between the wing of the palace that contained the heritage section and the wing housing the throne room. In deference to Nina, who must be tired and was wearing high heels, Ryan decided to forgo the walk from there. The flagstones and graveled paths would be hell on her feet in those shoes.

  He pushed a button and gave the driver his orders. "Bypass the regular parking area. Pull around and park as near the guesthouse as you can. Once you let us out, you can drive Mr. Pavelli back around front. I'm sure he has a report to make."

  He turned to Nina. "The guesthouse where your brother lived is virtually isolated," he explained, pointing as they rounded the heritage wing of the palace. "It's there, just beyond those trees. As you can see, the gardens between the palace and the guesthouse conceal it from view. Even if someone had been looking out the windows of the throne wing, which is usually deserted late at night, they wouldn't have seen anything."

  She concentrated, leaning forward and looking up, stretching within the seat belt as far as she could. "And the second floor?"

  "It's called the first floor here. Ground floor, then the first," Ryan informed her. "Those are the princesses' bedchambers above the throne room, and there would be a better view of the guesthouse from there. If anyone had been up there and looking in that direction. Unfortunately, none of the princesses are in residence. I haven't had a chance to question their staff yet."

  "I'll do it," she volunteered, sitting back and clasping her hands in her lap. "I'm not afraid."

  Ryan chuckled. "Well, neither am I, but it probably won't prove useful. You can bet your favorite lipstick the king has already determined whether anyone on duty has any information to add to the investigation. If they did, it would have come to me through channels already."

  "Channels?" she questioned. "Are you serious?"

  He shrugged. "Protocol. I'll be given a list of who was on duty and work from there."

  She shook her head and gave a disgusted huff. "This whole thing is going to get buried in bureaucracy. Mired down and unsolved. I just know it."

  Ryan let that go as the car came to a stop, glad to change the subject. Protocol was a sore point with him, but one he had to live with. In this instance, he trusted Lorenzo would make sure he got what he needed. "Here we are."

  His fellow passenger was frowning, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth and eyeing the guesthouse now like she might be dreading this. Wait until we g
et to the morgue, he thought with a reluctant pang of sympathy.

  He could keep her from viewing the body if he chose to, but he wanted to see her reaction. It would tell him more about the relationship between Nina and Desmond Caruso than hours of interrogation.

  Ryan couldn't envision Nina Caruso actually killing anyone. If she had anything at all to do with her half brother's death, she had probably hired it done. And if she had, that would mean Murder One, premeditated, conspiracy, not the crime of passion indicated by the evidence.

  God only knew there were plenty of wackos out there greedy enough for a buck to kill anybody anywhere. Though security was fairly tight, someone with a little ingenuity might gain entrance into the palace grounds. Service people came and went, as did numerous tour groups. But Ryan was pretty sure that the victim had known the person who killed him. That narrowed the field considerably. He assisted Nina out of the limo and kept a grip on her elbow as they marched down the pathway that led to the building.

  There was no yellow-tape boundary visible out here to mar the beauty of the fairy-tale setting. Outside, all looked right with the world in happily-ever-after land.

  "This is it," he announced. On the door was a discreet sign clearly printed with Entrance Forbidden in both English and Italian.

  Ryan pushed the doorbell and heard the muted chime inside. The door opened almost immediately. Joe Braca, built like a refrigerator, dressed impeccably in silk suit and tie, gave them that little leaning-forward nod with head inclined that Italians used when they wanted to look subservient or greeted ladies they wanted to impress.

  "Good morning," he said, his dark gaze roving over Nina as if she had answered his call to an escort service. Natural for Joe, of course.

  "This is Nina Caruso, the victim's half sister. She just flew in early this morning. Nina, Joseph Braca, my right-hand man." Ryan called them both that, Joe and Franz. Truth was, they were a crackerjack duo and he was being sincere.

  Joe effected his most sympathetic smile and took the hand Nina offered. "I am so sorry for the loss of your brother, Ms. Caruso," he said gently.