Hush

by Nancy Bush

  She was snuggled against his chest. “Nice try. But I’m going over to Lovejoy’s. I want to talk to Jean-Claude, and maybe Juliet will be working in the tearoom. I want her to know that I know she was the note writer. See what she says.”

  She felt him tense. “It’s all I can do not to tell you to be careful again.”

  “I’m fine. Good-bye,” she said, kissing him.

  “I’ll call you later.”

  The door shut behind him. Coby went straight for the coffeemaker, putting it together, reluctantly setting aside her memories of the night before with Danner, memories that jolted her when she moved a certain way, reminding her at muscle level the extent of their lovemaking. And that made her smile.

  An hour later she was showered once again, dressed, her hair dried, makeup applied. It was still too early to go to Lovejoy’s, so she sat down at her kitchen table with sliced apples, cheese, and toast and thought about everything that had transpired the last week, starting with Annette’s birthday party and murder, and ending with Hank’s hit-and-run and trip to the hospital.

  And twice someone had targeted Coby, first to warn her, second to do her serious harm.

  What do I know that I don’t know I know?

  She’d been wrong when she’d believed Annette and Yvette were arguing over Dana; they’d been arguing over DNA. Hank Sainer’s DNA. But that was almost common knowledge now, so it was unlikely someone was trying to stop Coby from revealing Hank was Benedict’s father. And anyway, that someone wasn’t Yvette. At least, she hadn’t been the person who’d tried to run over Coby in the parking lot last night.

  What about the envelope with the swatch of hair?

  Yes, Coby had discovered it at the party, but it, too, was common knowledge now. And the prevailing theory—that it was Lucas’s and someone had cut it from him after his fall—wasn’t a reason to go after Coby, either.

  Danner had posed that the attacks had started after her trip to the Joker to see McKenna’s act, but maybe it was something else? Something she’d learned, seen, or knew from earlier in the week?

  Or maybe it was simple craziness on the part of the attacker?

  She shook her head, pushing those thoughts aside. Went back to the party. Who was there? And what were they driving?

  Faith has a white BMW.

  That thought sent a cold jolt through Coby’s system. What did Faith’s taillights look like? she wondered. She thought hard. She was so bad with cars, but no . . . no, they weren’t from a BMW, she realized with relief. If her memory was correct. If . . . She knew as time passed, recall became corroded, which was why eyewitness testimony was so unreliable.

  With that thought she grabbed pad and pen and sketched out what she remembered from the rear of the car that had tried to run her down. Looking at her crude drawing, she made a face, hoping it was accurate, hoping it was enough.

  Chapter 26

  Danner had run reports on all of the people who’d been at Annette’s party, gathering as much information as he could on each and every one of them. He had most of those reports in a folder in his car; he certainly had Yvette’s. After scanning it, he drove to her apartment building around nine o’clock, checked the plates on the black Ford Focus in the parking lot, saw it was hers, and was satisfied she was home.

  He walked up an outside stairway desperately in need of some maintenance; the paint was worn off the steps and there was enough sway in the handrail for OSHA to issue a safety citation.

  At Yvette’s door, he knocked and waited. Knocked again. Nothing. He pressed the bell but no sound emanated from within. The doorbell was either unhooked or out of order for some other reason. When he’d given her enough time, he called her cell phone. He thought he heard it ringing inside the unit but no one picked up.

  “Yvette, it’s Danner Lockwood,” he said to her voice mail. “I’m outside your door. Would you please call me?” He left his number, then hung up. After waiting around awhile longer, he reluctantly got back in his Wrangler. Not much more he could do legally.

  Checking over his information, he realized he didn’t have anything on Edward Gerald, so he headed back to the station, idly wondering if Yvette was actively avoiding him. As he walked to his desk he was surprised to see Metzger already there. “You really can’t stay away,” he said.

  She snorted. “Just like you.”

  “Someone tried to run down Coby Rendell last night,” he said.

  That caught her attention and she gave him a hard look. “Another hit-and-run?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Busy night. Lloyd’s suicide . . . the Sainer hit-and-run . . . now your girlfriend.”

  There were no secrets between them, but he knew she was baiting him a little. Normally he would go back and forth with Elaine, but after last night, he didn’t feel the need. “Yep,” he said. “My girlfriend.”

  “My, my, my,” Metzger muttered. Then: “Why are they after her?”

  “Good question. One I plan to find an answer for.”

  “There are only three reasons for homicides,” Elaine started, but Danner had heard her theories many, many times and knew where this was going.

  “Money, sex, basic overall craziness,” he said before she could.

  “Sometimes I forget you’re paying attention. So, which one is it in this case?”

  Danner thought about that long and hard. “Not money . . . there’s some sex involved . . . but it’s kind of all out there now. Nothing that involves Coby.”

  “Uh-oh,” Metzger said.

  Danner didn’t respond. He knew what she was thinking: that left overall craziness, and of the three, it was the least easiest to predict and understand, and more often than not, bad things happened before the suspect was found out and caught.

  It was around noon when Coby showed up at Lovejoy’s, parking her car in the lot across the street. She hurried up the steps to the hotel’s front doors and recognized Nicholette behind the beveled glass panels, standing at the counter and talking to Jean-Claude.

  “Nicholette,” she greeted her as she entered.

  Nicholette turned, and Jean-Claude glanced her way, looking drawn. Seeing it was Coby, Nicholette seemed to want to say something, but then she firmly locked her jaw, as if afraid of spilling more secrets.

  “What’s wrong?” Coby asked, picking up on it.

  “What isn’t?” Nicholette countered. “Hank Sainer’s in a coma and the police are taking the Lovejoy’s accounts apart, as if the hotel were the reason someone murdered my sister!”

  “It’s what they do,” Coby said, hearing an echo of what Danner had said in her words.

  Her answer did not appease Nicholette, who looked at Coby as if she were a traitor. The easy camaraderie they shared at work had all but disappeared. Lines were being drawn.

  “I asked her to come over,” Jean-Claude said abruptly. Then, “Thank you, Nikki.”

  It was her cue to leave and she took it, nodding curtly and walking away on stiff legs.

  Coby glanced over to the tearoom. “Is Juliet working today?”

  “Why?” Jean-Claude’s dark eyes were shuttered.

  “I’d like to talk to her.”

  “Suzette’s there this morning. Juliet will be in later.”

  “Who was working last night?” Coby thought to ask. “We were all at the Cellar together,” she explained, seeing Jean-Claude react as if she were interrogating him and his daughters.

  “William filled in,” he said, referring to the man whom she’d met the last time she’d been here, the assistant manager, William Johnson.

  “Is he the manager now? At least temporarily?”

  “He has been. . . .” Jean-Claude looked back uncertainly, toward the door to the inner offices, and Coby’s gaze followed his.

  And then Dave came through the door, followed by Faith, who, upon seeing Coby, said, “So, you heard, huh?”

  “No,” Dave said at the same time Coby asked, “About Hank?”

  “No, no. That’s
a tragedy. I hope he’s okay. I meant about me being the new manager,” she said. “Or at least I’m training to be.” She came around the counter and reminded her father, “I’ve got to give some notice, so it won’t be this week. Probably late next week.”

  He nodded.

  Coby looked from Faith to Dave, and then to Jean-Claude and back to Faith, who was now heading briskly toward the front doors, as if she couldn’t wait to get away from her. But Coby was having none of that. She darted after Faith and caught her outside, on the hotel’s front steps. Faith was looking toward the sky and said, “Maybe it’s stopped raining for a while, though the fog hasn’t helped.”

  “You’re quitting your job to come work at Lovejoy’s?”

  Faith sighed and forced herself to meet Coby’s accusing gaze. “Is that a problem for you?”

  “It’s just . . . so . . .”

  “Say it,” Faith told her, her expression tightening.

  “I don’t know. Fast. Wrong, maybe.”

  “You think I’m an opportunist, benefiting from Annette’s death. Like I’ve been waiting and waiting for this job!”

  “But you work at a title company. I thought you liked it there.”

  “I’m barely hanging on to my job,” Faith stated flatly. “I know you’re the wunderkind at your office, and all that, but this economy has shredded the real estate market, and guess what, they just don’t need many of us anymore. I’ve had seniority, but the company’s struggling. It’s just a matter of time before we’re all out of a job. So, yeah, I asked for the manager’s position and Jean-Claude and Dad were only too happy to hire me.”

  “Okay . . .” Coby tried hard not to think about Faith’s white BMW. The shape of the taillights doesn’t match, she reminded herself. People don’t kill other people over a job. . . .

  “Stop being so tense. The police will figure out who murdered Annette and it won’t be Mom or Dad, because they didn’t do it. I’ve got to go.” She gave Coby a quick hug and then hurried across the street to the parking lot.

  Coby stayed on the hotel’s front steps and watched as Faith backed out of a spot. The taillight shape was all wrong, she thought with relief. It wasn’t Faith who’d run her down. Of course it wasn’t Faith. Not Faith . . . not her sister . . .

  She turned and pushed back through the doors to the Lovejoy’s lobby. No one was visible at the counter now. Dave and Jean-Claude had clearly gone back to their inner sanctum, so she crossed to the tearoom, pausing at the wide aperture that could be closed off with sliding doors for privacy.

  There were several guests seated at tables having coffee or tea and reading the paper. The teapots were wrapped in calico tea cozies, and baskets of scones, covered in matching patterned cloths, were placed in the centers of the tables. Suzette, in a conservative black dress with a white apron and sensible shoes, was wiping off a tabletop, clearing plates and yawning.

  “Coby,” she said, seeing her approach. She straightened and looked beyond her as if expecting someone else. “Where’s Danner?”

  “Probably off working.”

  She gave her a knowing look. “Oh, come on. You didn’t spend the night together last night?”

  Sidestepping, Coby said, “I just ran into Faith.”

  “Faith.” Suzette’s dark eyes flashed and her expression grew hard. No more sweetness and light. “You heard about her taking the manager job? Nobody even asked me or Juliet if we wanted it!”

  This wasn’t a subject Coby wanted to talk about either. “What time does Juliet come to work?”

  “This afternoon. We usually wrap up the tearoom by three and start serving wine around four. She should be here then. What do you think about Faith coming to work here?”

  “Well . . .” Coby’s cell buzzed at that moment and she excused herself, glad for the distraction. She walked back into the hotel lobby and examined the number on her screen. It was from her caller list: Joe. Why was he calling her on a Sunday? “Joe?” she answered cautiously.

  “I’m going to give your dad a call. Do you have his cell number? I’ve got the Lovejoy’s number, but I wanted to call him personally.”

  Oh, that’s right. She’d suggested her father as one of Joe’s clients, more to needle him than because she’d really wanted him to take her father’s case. Joe sounded businesslike to the extreme. “Sure.” Coby gave him the number, then, remembering their last conversation, added, “Jarvis Lloyd’s suicide was certainly a surprise.”

  “Harassment by the police. Pure harassment.”

  “More like a guilty conscience, I’d say.”

  “If it weren’t for the police, Lloyd would still be alive.”

  “Oh, Joe, for God’s sake. Don’t play that game with me.”

  “Your boyfriend’s right on the front lines, Coby!”

  “Bullshit. You’re just pissed ’cause you lost a client. What are you doing, Joe? You’re a damn good divorce lawyer, but when it comes to criminal law you get all competitive and it doesn’t help anyone. Don’t call my dad. He doesn’t need your kind of representation.” She pressed the red button and dropped the phone into her purse, furious all over.

  Everybody was pissing her off.

  Danner failed at contacting Edward Gerald, though he learned Gerald worked at Pump Up, a small athletic club on the east side of the river, just inside the Gresham city limits. Danner gave the manager his number and was told by the very disinterested man that he would have Gerald call him. Time would tell.

  He glanced at his watch. It was afternoon, growing later by the minute. Almost as soon as he’d left the station Metzger had called him. A tip had come in about Sheila. A gas station attendant along I-5 had seen her sketch on the news and was pretty sure he’d filled her tank and that she’d headed north. For a few minutes Danner and Elaine had discussed Sheila and where they thought she might be going, but there wasn’t much more to say. It was depressing for both of them, in that “maybe I could have done something different” way, though Danner, and most probably Metzger, too, definitely felt Lloyd had saved the state a lot of money by taking his own life.

  He tried calling Yvette again, but she still wasn’t picking up. Around four he decided to take a trip to her place of work, Xavier’s, a restaurant with an active bar scene.

  He walked into the place and noted the blood-red booths and dark hardwood floors and central bar. There were a few people sitting in the booths and a man in his sixties seated at the bar.

  The bartender looked up when Danner approached. “Can I get you something?”

  “I’m looking for Yvette Deneuve. I understand she works here.” He held up his badge for the bartender to see, but it was the older man at the end of the bar who started making choking sounds.

  “You, too? I’ve been waiting for her to show up.”

  Danner turned toward the man, whose eyes were on his credentials, so Danner brought his badge over for the man to get a closer look. “You’re a cop,” the guy said. “You think she tried to kill that politician, don’t you? Ran him off the road.”

  Danner blinked. The older man was one step ahead of him in this conversation. “I don’t have any evidence of that,” he said cautiously.

  “Yvette comes on at six,” the bartender put in. “But she went home sick last night. The flu, she said.” He shrugged, clearly thinking it was a scam.

  Danner asked, “Has she called in today?”

  “Not yet. She’d better damn well be here.”

  “I think I have your evidence,” the older gentleman said to Danner, who swung back to him. He stuck out a hand, which Danner shook. “Don Laidlaw. I left for Palm Springs yesterday and I’m back today. My doctor doesn’t like something he saw on some tests. Might have to have some surgery, so I had to come back. I have this garage with my cars. I’m a collector. But I got some for just using, too. They’re all in the garage.”

  Danner waited, and Laidlaw went on, “One of ’em’s front end is smacked up bad. I fired the engine and it runs, so I guess she go
t lucky, but I know it was Yvette. She said she was gonna use my cars.”

  “When?”

  Laidlaw shrugged and Danner saw the bartender look over at him. More information there, Danner decided. But Laidlaw went on about how he and Yvette were friends, and he’d offered up his house and cars, and she’d been teasing, like she was going to use ’em, but he hadn’t believed her, but now . . .

  “I’d like to see the car,” Danner said, and without further ado Laidlaw slid off his stool, gave Danner directions, and said he’d meet him there.

  Danner turned to the bartender. “You had something to add?”

  He lifted his chin in the direction of the departing man. “Don’s known around here as Don Juan. He likes younger women with a bad vibe.”

  “Like Yvette.”

  “Yup. She’s been his favorite for a while, but she’s only shown him some interest back just recently.”

  “Thanks.”

  Danner hurried after Laidlaw. He hadn’t expected to solve the Sainer hit-and-run so easily. But if what Laidlaw said was true, then Yvette had a lot of explaining to do, probably more than she would be able to handle.

  Coby left Lovejoy’s and drove aimlessly for a time. She felt frustrated, as if she just wasn’t thinking hard enough about everything. As though if she put the pieces together in some new order they would suddenly make sense.

  She returned to Lovejoy’s around five and found Juliet in the tearoom/wine bar, in a tense discussion with Suzette. The guests who’d been at the tearoom earlier had left and been replaced by several young couples who were drinking red wine from large goblets and nibbling on terrines of goat cheese, pesto and sun-dried tomatoes, bowls of olives, and an assortment of crisp, thin crackers.

  Spying Coby the two sisters broke apart and both, independently, gazed at her mutinously. “What did I do?” Coby asked with a smile, trying to lighten the mood.

  “What do you want now?” Suzette snapped out. “Faith’s your sister. Isn’t that enough?”

  “You’re trying to pin something on us,” Juliet added.