Dangerous Kisses (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Ramagos, Tonya

  Megan pushed her hair behind her ear and waited. When Debbie didn’t continue, she said, “What about Friday night?”

  “When you came to Robert’s apartment the next day, I could see you thought I was lying about why I was still at the aquarium Friday.”

  “I didn’t just think you were lying, I know you were,” Megan said bluntly. “I know how the inventory procedures in the gift shop work. I also checked the computer after we talked. There’s no sign the inventory was ever started.”

  “I didn’t think of that,” Debbie whispered.

  “Do you want to tell me what you were really doing there and why you felt the need to lie about it?”

  Debbie took a deep breath and let it out hard. “I was waiting for Robert.”

  “Robert was already fired by that time. Why would you have been waiting for him?”

  “He asked me to. He came to me after Paul fired him. He said he was going to give Paul some time to cool off, then come back after everyone left and talk to him about getting his job back.”

  Megan angled her head and drew her brows together. Beside her, Drake sat watching her, studying her expressions, listening to her end of the conversation with complete attention. “Why would he need you to stay?” She had a gut feeling she was being lied to again, but she kept it to herself.

  “He was going to tell Paul the truth.” Debbie paused and, when she spoke again, Megan heard a catch in her voice, heard the tears she was attempting to hold back. “All the times Paul got so pissed at Robert for not being where he was supposed to be, for not doing his job—”

  “Like Friday when Drake discovered the water temperature in the tanks was too low and went looking for Robert, but couldn’t find him?” Megan interjected.

  Debbie sighed. “Robert was with me. I took a break Friday and we went outside the building where no one would see us. That’s where Robert was when Drake was looking for him.”

  “Why keep your relationship a secret? Nobody would’ve cared if you and Robert were dating.”

  “Paul would have cared. Robert was really trying to do right. He didn’t want to let Marie down again. He didn’t want to let Paul down. He thought if Paul knew about us, then Paul would figure us working together would cause Robert to slack on his job and Paul would have either fired him or me. Most likely me, because he wouldn’t have had to deal with any fallout from Marie.”

  Megan expelled a disbelieving half laugh. “But that’s exactly what happened, Debbie. Robert wasn’t doing his job because he was sneaking off with you.”

  “I know.” Debbie sniffled. “And Robert got fired for it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this at Robert’s apartment? Why didn’t you tell Sergeant Cusack when he questioned you?”

  “I couldn’t! Both of you would have immediately decided Robert killed Paul and that I was in on it. Don’t you see? Robert was supposed to come back, not to kill Paul, but to talk to him. I was afraid you and the sergeant wouldn’t believe that he never showed up. Robert told you the truth. He got drunk at the downstairs bar in his apartment building, got kicked out, and passed out in his apartment. That’s why he never came back to the aquarium that night.”

  “So you lied to protect yourself and Robert.” Megan glanced at Drake and saw the muscle ticking in his jaw. Just from her end of the conversation, he was obviously putting two and two together. “Why tell the truth now?” If you really are telling me the truth, which I highly doubt.

  “Guilt,” Debbie whispered. “It’s been eating at me. I don’t know how the truth will help you find Paul’s real killer, but it wasn’t Robert. I know that. He would’ve never killed his uncle.”

  “Thanks for calling, Debbie. I’ll be in touch.” Megan hung up the call, her mind reeling and gut churning. After several moments, she looked at Drake. “Did you get that?”

  “Enough to piece it together.”

  “She’s lying. She trying to cover her tracks with another lie that’s only getting her in deeper.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  Megan thumbed through the contacts on her cell phone. “I’m going to call Cusack. We need to bring her in, question her in a setting where we can break her. There’s more to her involvement than what she’s confessing to. She was in on this, Drake. A part of me knew it before, but I’m certain of it now.”

  Drake raked a hand through his hair. “It still doesn’t add up for me. You didn’t see her Friday night, Megan. I did. She was as frantic as I was to get Paul out of that tank. An accessory to a murder wouldn’t have desperately tried to save him.” He slid off the bed, found the shorts he had been wearing earlier, and pulled them on, his movements jerky. “It wasn’t an act. The girl was terrified and not for herself, for Paul.”

  “Drake, I—” Megan broke off when the phone in her hand started to ring. The screen read Cusack, J. “Well, that’s perfect timing,” she muttered and answered the call.

  Cusack didn’t give her a chance to speak. “How soon can you get to the station?”

  The fine hairs on Megan’s nape prickled. “About twenty minutes. Why?”

  “Where the fuck are you, Gulfport?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” she answered curtly.

  “At Drake Allen’s place,” Cusack spat. “Well, you’ll be happy to know your boyfriend is no long a suspect in the murder of Paul Colton. Robert Warren was arrested about two hours ago. He’ll be charged with the murder of Paul Colton as well as the attempted murder of Paul’s wife, Marie.”

  “What?” Megan bolted to her knees, her grip on her phone tightening as her eyes widened in shock. “What happened to Marie?” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Drake whirl around to face her.

  “She was shot, Megan.” Cusack’s tone softened marginally. “She took a 32-caliber bullet to the chest at close range. She’s in ICU at Biloxi Regional. There’s no word on her condition yet.”

  Megan closed her eyes. “Oh my God.”

  “Robert Warren was found at the scene. The pistol used is registered to him. I haven’t questioned him yet. I thought you would like to be here when I do.”

  “I’m on my way. And, Cusack,” she added quickly, “have Debbie Norman brought in for more questioning.”

  “Why?”

  “I have reason to believe even if Robert is our killer, Debbie was in on it, too. I’ll explain more when I get there.”

  * * * *

  Megan shaved minutes off her arrival time, racing through the streets of Gulfport and Biloxi at breakneck speeds. She left Drake at his place with strict orders to stay there. She didn’t expect him to listen. She had given him a quick rundown of her phone call with Cusack and fully suspected Drake had walked out his house minutes after she left, heading to the hospital to check on Marie. It didn’t matter. Drake was no longer a suspect. Cusack had his man.

  At least he thinks he does.

  Yet again, her gut was screaming at her, telling her something wasn’t right. If she had been unable to believe Robert had killed Paul, she certainly couldn’t believe he had shot Marie.

  She whipped into a slot in the parking lot of the Biloxi P.D. and double-timed it into the building.

  “The sergeant is in there with him,” one of the officers who had been working the case told her as she passed him on her way to Cusack’s office. “He said to tell you he’s in interrogation room two.”

  “Thanks.” Megan did a one-eighty in the hallway and headed for the interrogation room. She knocked sharply on the door and pushed it open. Robert sat on one side of the oblong table, his hands fisted in front of him. His head jerked her direction when she walked in, his face nearly bloodless, his expression full of horror and sorrow.

  Cusack sat on the other side of the table, straddling a chair turned backward, his forearms resting on the metal back. “I asked you about the gun.”

  “And I told you the gun belongs to me,” Robert said, his tone weary. “You already know it does, Sergeant. I keep it in the locked ca
binet in my apartment.”

  “It wasn’t in that cabinet tonight. It was found at the crime scene on the floor right next to your aunt’s body.”

  “Yeah, no shit. I was found there, too.”

  “What happened tonight, Robert?” Megan walked to the table and stood beside Cusack. Cusack scowled up at her, but didn’t comment on her interrupting his line of questioning.

  Robert raked a hand down his face and met her gaze. “Aunt Marie called me around nine o’clock. She was ecstatic. She said she met with Drake Allen this afternoon and he’s buying into the place, or something like that. I didn’t really get everything she was trying to tell me, but I got that, between the two of them, they had figured out how to save the aquarium. She said she had already called Brandon, Walter, and Joan to tell them the news and that they were having another meeting between all the partners and Drake tomorrow morning.”

  Drake hadn’t told her he would be meeting with Marie again in the morning. On the other hand, they really hadn’t talked much in the hours she spent at his house that night.

  “She asked me to come over,” Robert continued. “She wanted to run some ideas by me that Drake has. She said she wanted to give me my job back and have me work with Drake on a few things.”

  Megan hid her surprise. Drake definitely hadn’t mentioned that. She could see it, though. She would bet it had been one of Marie’s stipulations, to bring Robert back on as an employee.

  Robert sighed. “When I got to Aunt Marie’s, I knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer. I checked the knob, found it unlocked, and let myself in. I called for her, but she didn’t answer. Then I heard a noise in the family room.”

  “What kind of noise?” Cusack asked.

  Robert shrugged. “Footsteps, a door closing…I walked into the family room, and that’s when I found her. I saw the gun on the floor beside her and all the blood.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “God, there was so much blood. I ran to her, kneeled down to check for a pulse, and that’s when the cops barged in. I don’t know. I’m guessing a neighbor heard the shot or something and called 911. The cops jerked me away from her and, the next thing I know, they were slapping cuffs on me.”

  “You said you heard footsteps,” Megan prompted. “What did they sound like?”

  “Aunt Marie’s house has hardwood floors. It was like heels or something, hard-soled shoes.”

  “And you don’t know how your gun ended up in her house?” Cusack asked skeptically.

  “You didn’t loan it to Marie?” Megan took the question further. “Maybe for protection or something?”

  “No, the last time I looked at it, the gun was in its case in my apartment inside that locked cabinet where it was supposed to be.”

  Megan felt the puzzle pieces slowly start to fit together. Robert hadn’t shot Marie any more than he had killed Paul. He was being framed, again, and she had a good idea now who was behind it. “Who’s been in your apartment lately? Say, within the last week or two?”

  Robert rubbed the back of his neck, taking a moment to think. “No one except Debbie, you, and the sergeant.”

  Debbie, who had called Megan mere minutes before Cusack with another lie she had instantly seen right through. She thought about that conversation, about the holes her gut had picked up in the girl’s story.

  “Did you plan to return to the aquarium Friday night?”

  Robert’s shoulders rose and fell in a breath of obvious forced patience. “I told both of you I never left my apartment building after I got home Friday. I went to the bar, tied one on, and passed out on the couch. Uncle Paul fired me, remember? Why would I go back?”

  Megan shrugged. “To talk to him. Maybe you were thinking you would give him some time to cool off and then you would go back, explain yourself, and ask for your job back?”

  Robert let out a laugh full of cynicism. “Yeah, right. Come on, Megan. You knew my uncle as well as I did. I could’ve given him ten years to cool off and he wouldn’t have listened to a thing I had to say, much less hire me back, without Aunt Marie forcing him to.”

  Chapter Eight

  Megan waited until Cusack joined her in the hallway outside interrogation room two before she turned to him. “Did you have Debbie Norman brought in like I asked you to?”

  Cusack glared at her. “You mean like you told me to? I don’t take orders from my detectives very well, Pontius, not without a damn good reason.”

  “And I told you I would give you that reason when I got here.” She ran through her phone call with Debbie word for word, leaving nothing out. “She was in that aquarium Friday night, Jerry. She had access to Robert’s locker in the building and the gun in his apartment.”

  Cusack shook his head and started walking toward his office. “You think Debbie Norman did all of this and set up her boyfriend to take the fall?”

  “No, she was an accomplice to the man who did. But, I bet if you make her think we believe she killed Paul and shot Marie tonight, she’ll crack and tell us who that man is.”

  Cusack stopped a few feet from the door to his office and lowered his voice. “You’re right about one thing. She was an accomplice. That’s the reason I had her brought in tonight. We’ll play it your way, but we already have our man in custody.”

  “If we play it my way, we’ll find out if you’re right.”

  He walked through the office doorway, and Debbie turned in the chair in front of his desk. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Norman, and thank you for coming in at this late hour.” He sat behind his desk, but Debbie’s attention was focused on Megan.

  “Did you tell the sergeant I called you tonight? Did you tell him what I told you?”

  Megan gave her a curt nod. “I did. I also told him you lied to me again.”

  Debbie gasped. Her jaw dropped, and her eyes widened. “I told you the truth. I told you everything.”

  Megan folded her arms beneath her breasts. “You left out how you stabbed Paul with the knife Robert borrowed from Drake, how you pushed Paul into that shark tank. You left out how you took a 32-caliber pistol from Robert’s apartment and used that gun to shoot Marie Colton just a couple of hours ago in her own home.”

  Debbie bolted from her seat. “I didn’t! No, you’ve got it all wrong. Oh my God, Marie was shot? Megan, Sergeant, you have to believe me. I didn’t do all that stuff. I—”

  “Sit down, Miss Norman,” Cusack ordered sternly.

  Megan didn’t let up. “You did it, Debbie, and you attempted to frame Robert for all of it.”

  “No.” Debbie shook her head vehemently, tears spilling onto her cheeks. “No. He wasn’t supposed to die. He wasn’t supposed to kill him.”

  Megan exchanged a glance with Cusack. Bingo.

  “Who wasn’t supposed to kill him?” Cusack asked, but Debbie didn’t answer.

  “He said he just wanted to scare Paul, threaten him into selling. He promised me if I helped him he would see my father got the contract to build the new casino. We needed that contract. My mother has leukemia. She’s dying, and the bills for her treatment have put my father so far in debt he can’t afford them anymore. It’s exhausted their insurance, drained his bank account, and no one will give him a loan. That contract would have saved everything.”

  Oh, you poor naive girl. Megan watched her as she buried her face in her hands and wept. Though she already knew the answer, she needed to make Debbie say it. “Who promised you this, Debbie? Who killed Paul and shot Marie.”

  “Walter Samuels.”

  * * * *

  Megan didn’t make it to her apartment until after nine o’clock the next morning. Running on sheer will alone, she stumbled inside, tossed her purse on the sofa, and headed for the coffee pot. She should be headed to bed, but her mind was still spinning from the events of last night. She also needed to go to the hospital to visit Marie.

  Shower. Coffee. Hospital. She made the mental checklist and followed through with the steps, setting the coffee to brew before she headed for the bathroom.
The steam helped her sort her thoughts, helped her relax and come to terms with everything that had happened. They had Walter Samuels in custody, Debbie would face lesser charges for her involvement due to her cooperation with the police, and Robert had been released. All in all, it hadn’t been a bad night despite the lives that had been rocked by Paul’s murder.

  She showered quickly and wrapped a towel around herself as she padded to her bedroom, stopping in the doorway when the doorbell rang. Déjà vu. She smiled as she headed for the front door, knowing it had to be Drake. She opened the door, saw his gaze fall down her, and watched as his lips tilted in the devious grin she loved so much.

  “That’s twice.”

  Yep, twice that she had opened the door wearing only a towel to find him on her doorstep. “You’re getting good at this.”

  “At least this time it’s under better circumstances. I just left the hospital. Marie is in stable condition. She’s going to be okay.”

  Megan nodded. “I called about an hour ago to get a report.” She stepped aside, giving him room to enter, and closed the door behind him. “Have you heard the rest?”

  “I caught the tail end of something on the radio on the way over about Paul’s death, that it’s now been deemed a murder and the killer has been arrested.”

  “Walter Samuels.”

  “Walter? Are you serious?”

  “Follow me and I’ll tell you the whole story. I need coffee.” She shot him a glance over her shoulder as she walked to the kitchen. “Want a cup?”

  “Might as well. I don’t see sleep anywhere in my immediate future.”

  Megan laughed. “Yeah, neither did I.” She pulled two cups from the cabinet and filled them. “It all boils down to greed. What a surprise,” she said sourly as she handed him a cup. “Debbie did have a part in it, a pretty big part. She was sleeping with him.”

  “No shit?”

  “He had been giving her money, not a lot, but a little here and there to help with her mother’s medical treatments. Her mother is dying of leukemia. Her father is an out-of-work contractor. Walter found out about this, knew her family was struggling, and promised her he would see her father got the building contract for the casino if she helped him. He fully intended to frame Robert, but he didn’t care if you were the one who took the fall.”