D.B. Hayes, Detective

by Darlene Scalera; Dani Sinclair

  “Sort of sounds like what that couple implied about Nicole Wickley, wouldn’t you say? Let’s see what the computer can tell us about Elaine.”

  A simple search of her name in the computer told us surprisingly little. She served on several charitable organizations. Her picture had made the society pages of The Plain Dealer more than once, but other than that, she didn’t seem to exist. We brought up several of the newspaper pictures and tried for comparisons to Nicole’s Web page. Unfortunately the pictures were too small and too grainy to tell us much.

  “Could be Nicole but it’s hard to be sure.”

  “Why isn’t there a wedding announcement?” I asked.

  “Maybe the Russos didn’t get married in Cleveland. Or they didn’t put an announcement in the paper. Not everyone does, you know.”

  “Or they aren’t really married.”

  He stopped petting George to look at me.

  “Brandon, I don’t think these pictures are of the same woman.”

  He sat back. “Nicole Wickley is the Elaine Russo I met.”

  “I agree. But there weren’t any wigs in Elaine’s bedroom.”

  “Okay, explain these wigs to me again.”

  “I found a strand of long blond hair from a wig in her otherwise spotless car the night I was tailing her. It was a hot night like tonight. I’m pretty sure the Jaguar had just been cleaned. No one wears a wig if they don’t have to on a night like that. If Elaine Russo is a blonde, she doesn’t need to wear a blond wig. If she’s a brunette and does wear wigs, she’d have some in her house. Say Elaine and Nicole are the same person. And say as Nicole she keeps a separate apartment for her acting persona. Do you really think she wouldn’t have kept some stuff at the house that overlapped, like a wig or two? We didn’t see anything at all—not even stage makeup. That simply doesn’t make sense.”

  He tapped his finger against the desktop. George batted at his finger.

  “I’ll tell you something else that bothers me,” I continued. “Whether Elaine and Nicole are the same person or not, why did she keep a .38 tucked up under the seat of her Jag the night she met you? I can see her wanting to carry a gun for protection, but why not carry it in her purse?”

  Brandon straightened up so fast that George jumped down from the desk, startled. Immediately the cat set to grooming himself, as if to prove it didn’t matter to him if the crazy humans were acting weird.

  “She never mentioned having a gun,” he said.

  “Seems to be a lot of things she didn’t mention. I can run an in-depth computer search on Elaine and Nicole, but it will take time.”

  “How much time?”

  “Depends. A couple of hours, maybe less.”

  He shook his head. “It can wait until morning. You really think we’ve got two different women here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of the gun?”

  “Because of the wigs and the gun.”

  Brandon fell silent as he studied the picture of Nicole Wickley in the blond wig, then flipped to the picture of Elaine Russo at a society gathering.

  “All right, we have two different women. In a way it makes perfect sense. If Russo knew Elaine called me, he wouldn’t want her meeting me, but if I never heard from her again after her initial contact, he could be sure I wouldn’t rest until I found out why.”

  “So he hired Nicole to pose as Elaine. That doesn’t bode well for Elaine.”

  “No,” Brandon agreed.

  “I wonder when Russo started seeing Nicole Wickley.”

  Brandon looked at me with approval. “It’s always possible the two of them were already seeing each other when this happened.”

  “You think he picked a local actress who just happens to look remarkably like his wife to have an affair with?” I sneered.

  “Some men actually prefer a certain type.”

  Implying that Brandon didn’t? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to that question. I was nothing like his pretty blonde and I’d be tasting his lips all night as it was.

  “Nicole is fairly well known locally,” I told him. “She does those Jerry’s Cars ads on television.”

  His eyes lit. “Better and better. What do you want to bet Elaine’s friends and Albert’s friends have commented on how much they look alike? I bet it won’t take much digging to find out.”

  “We’d have to find out who their friends were, first.”

  “You have pictures of Elaine’s friends, don’t you? It’s a start.”

  “Hold it. You think Nicole met Elaine’s friends the night I followed her? I don’t think so. I’d certainly know if someone came to me pretending to be my friend Sharon or Lorna or someone I knew well.”

  Brandon sat back in his chair. “Well, I doubt if Nicole met a group of her own friends while pretending to be Elaine. She had to have met a group of Elaine’s friends.”

  “That’s nuts.”

  “Risky, certainly, but what if it was a group of women Elaine only saw infrequently, say, on a committee? And what if Nicole told them she’d just had plastic surgery or some cosmetic procedure, maybe BOTOX injections or something like that? She didn’t spend much time with them. And if she didn’t spend much time with them on a regular basis and they expected to meet her at a prearranged place and time and she showed up with maybe a health-related story about her appearance, would they really know it wasn’t her?”

  I mulled that over.

  “Don’t forget Nicole is an actress,” he added. “She plays roles all the time.”

  “I still think I’d know the difference, but I guess it would depend on what she said and how good she is. But it still seems unlikely.”

  “I agree. However let’s assume she’s very good and these weren’t close friends.”

  “But why would she take that risk?”

  Brandon’s gaze narrowed thoughtfully.

  “If we’re right and Nicole is posing as Elaine, I’m guessing she and Russo found out about this dinner meeting at the last minute. Rather than raise questions by not showing up at all, Nicole went with some excuse for a discrepancy in her appearance, met them and used another excuse not to stay and hoped for the best.”

  I felt cold. There was only one reason I could think of for Nicole Wickley to take such a huge risk.

  “They killed her, didn’t they? They killed her and set us up,” I said, feeling my outrage building.

  “It’s starting to look that way,” he agreed calmly. “That would explain why Nicole kept me so busy on the way to Pennsylvania that night. She knew you were following us. You were supposed to photograph us going into that hotel room.”

  “Why?” I asked, trying to get it straight in my head.

  He tapped the edge of the desk unconsciously as he considered the situation. “So as Elaine, Nicole could show up in Albert’s office the next afternoon and create a public scene, remember? Everyone who was there certainly does. Nicole made it clear I was having an affair with Elaine.”

  “Ohmygod, so when her body turned up, the first person the police were going to look at—”

  “Well, maybe the second. The husband would still be the first, but I’m sure he’d already set the frame a bit tighter.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute! Then why would Russo warn me off? Why try to run you off the road? That doesn’t make sense.”

  Brandon shook his head, but for once his normally bright eyes had a dark expression I’d never seen before.

  “Oh, yeah, in some convoluted fashion I think it does. We just have to put all the pieces together. You see, they don’t want you involved because I don’t think I’m supposed to be alive when they find Elaine Russo’s body.”

  Chapter Ten

  I was furious that he could be so nonchalant over such a supposition and we were still debating that issue when we finally left the store a good while later, having resolved nothing at all. My aunt had driven Binky back to my apartment, so Brandon had to drive me home. I was considering whether to invite him
up or not when I suddenly remembered I was supposed to stop by and check on Mrs. Keene’s house.

  “Sorry, but I did promise.”

  “That’s okay. It’s late enough that our rose-and-candy-bearing burglar should have been and gone a long time ago by now.”

  Turned out he’d been there all right. When we circled the house, checking, we found the screen door ajar on the back porch. The back door was unlocked. To my complete shock, Brandon produced a gun from a leg holster I hadn’t even suspected he was wearing.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Be quiet,” he breathed in my ear. “Wait here!”

  He went in through the back door like some movie-star hero while my insides iced over. I waited as long as I could, then I crept inside after him. Mrs. Keene had left the hall light on. Or someone had. A dozen red roses sat in a crystal vase on the center of her kitchen table. Propped on one of her old kitchen chairs was a giant pink-and-white panda bear with a huge yellow bow around its neck. In front of the bear on the table was another gift-wrapped two-pound box of Malley’s chocolates. There was no note.

  I wasn’t sure what I felt. Giddy. A little scared. Amused. Sort of sick when I thought about the young guy we’d seen running away. What was going on here? Brandon came back down the hall putting his gun away.

  “Don’t you know the meaning of the word wait?” he demanded.

  “I didn’t come charging after you, did I?”

  He looked disgruntled as he straightened his pant leg.

  “The house is clear. You’d better call her.”

  “It could wait until morning.”

  He gave me one of those looks Aunt Lacy is so fond of and I pulled my cell phone out of my purse. I had to dig for the number I’d written down when I’d spoken to Mrs. Keene earlier. Despite the hour, which felt late, Mrs. Keene sounded alert and chipper and not at all dismayed that I was calling her. She was clearly excited rather than upset when I told her what we’d found.

  “A teddy bear, you say? And more chocolates? Oh, my. No, Ellie, I told you he’d be back. Well, they aren’t good for my waistline, but I do love the light-chocolate creams. Now, Dee, I told you I don’t want you calling the police. Besides, he didn’t break in. I never lock my back door. Everyone knows that. I’ll be right there. Ellie’s house is over here on Arden. It won’t take me long to get home at this hour.”

  I disconnected and offered Brandon a rueful shrug. “She doesn’t want us to call the police. She never locks her back door. Everyone knows that. She’s on her way.”

  Brandon closed his eyes.

  “This would be sort of sweet if he wasn’t young enough to be her grandson.”

  Brandon opened his eyes. “You think this is sweet?”

  “Well, it’s like he’s courting her or something. I mean, flowers and candy. And a teddy bear?”

  “Sweet.”

  “You know, I’ve never heard anyone put quite so much sour into that word before.”

  For several long, long seconds he didn’t say anything at all. And then he did.

  “Come here.”

  And I’d never heard anyone put so much suggestion into those two words before, either. The entire atmosphere in the room changed. It was just a kitchen, but suddenly it wasn’t. The room dissolved until there was just Brandon and me and a melting gaze that promised all sorts of dangerous, exciting things.

  Every molecule of my body had been on some sort of male-female alert since the moment I’d met this man. Now, as his gaze skimmed my body, I felt as though he’d touched me at several heated points. My insides were actually fluttering with a wildness that affected my breathing just short of outright panting. My lips hungrily remembered his earlier kiss, and even while I told myself it wasn’t wise, I crossed the room to here. Heck, wild horses and baying wolves couldn’t have kept me from going to here.

  He made a sound low in his throat that was almost a chuckle and sounded suspiciously of masculine satisfaction as he slid his arms around me and pulled me against all that lean, muscled firmness.

  “You’re something else, you know that, D.B. Hayes?”

  It felt as if something inside me would snap if this delicious tension went on much longer.

  “Are you going to stand there talking until Mrs. Keene comes home or are you going to kiss me?” I demanded.

  His lips curved. “Oh, I’m definitely going to kiss you. I prefer a little sass to sweet.”

  And before I could tell him to get on with it already, he did.

  I already knew he knew where the noses went, but he also knew where the tongue went, as well—and how to use it in ways that made me wet and hotter than I’d ever been in my life. Who knew the ear could be an erogenous zone? Certainly none of the guys I’d ever dated.

  I’m not sure when Brandon pressed me back up against the refrigerator, but suddenly I felt the cool metal door against my back as my dress rode up my thighs and he deliberately inserted his leg between mine. The feeling was highly erotic. His pant leg pressed against my bare skin while his mouth worked its way down the curve of my neck.

  I became aware that one hand was gently cupping my breast through my dress and bra, lightly pinching my erect nipple, and I didn’t mind a bit. In fact, I was doing my best to arch and give him better access. I pulled his face to mine and kissed him back, feeling the press of his arousal against my thigh.

  Suddenly he jerked his head up. His body tensed, listening hard. To my whimpering dismay, he stepped back, straightening his clothes.

  “Mrs. Keene’s home,” he said gruffly.

  “Tell her to go away,” I muttered fiercely.

  His chuckle sounded as rocky as I felt. “Better make yourself presentable. I’ll stall her.”

  While I stood there, grateful for the refrigerator’s support, he bent and retrieved something from the floor. Handing me a white orchid, he kissed the tip of my nose.

  “And, Dee, so you know? You kiss like one sexy adult.”

  I was pretty sure that wasn’t meant to be an insult, but I couldn’t quite get my brain to function at the moment. I could feel my hair tumbling about my face. On legs of rubber I made my way to the hall bathroom off the kitchen and stared at the stranger’s face in the mirror there. My lips were puffy and swollen, my eyelids half closed. The eye shadow was gone without a trace, as was the lipstick, of course, but my cheeks were a bright, vivid shade of scarlet. The rest of the orchids hung limply to one side of my head. My hair was back to its usual tangled lack of style.

  A small bruise was forming on my neck where Brandon had applied a little too much passion. I hadn’t had a hickey since high school. I couldn’t believe he’d given me one now. Even worse, I couldn’t believe the sight excited me.

  How far had I been willing to let him go tonight?

  The answer was scary. I was twenty-four—almost twenty-five years old. Did I really still believe in Prince Charming and happily ever after? And if I did, was I stupid enough to think Brandon was going to step into a pair of tights and a plumed hat? Not likely.

  So, could I overcome years of indoctrination and fall into bed and have great sex with a man I’d just met? A man who was my professional rival? A man who left women panting in his wake just by smiling at them? A man who was driving me around town in his date’s minivan? I was really, really afraid the answer to those questions might be yes.

  The two of them were just entering the kitchen when I came out of the bathroom. Mrs. Keene looked like a child on Christmas morning. Even in the dim light I saw her face glowing in delight. It didn’t seem to bother her a bit that the person—a young man—had illegally entered her home while she wasn’t there to leave the tribute.

  It took all Brandon’s considerable charm to get her to stop cooing over the stuffed bear and check out the house and be sure nothing was missing. According to her, nothing was.

  “Isn’t it exciting, Dee? I have a secret admirer.”

  “Mrs. Keene, he’s a young man.”

  She gave a
girlish giggle. “I know. Isn’t that just too charming? I wonder what he’ll bring me tomorrow?”

  Nothing we could say would change her mind about notifying the police. When we finally got back in the minivan, Brandon started the engine but didn’t put the car in gear.

  “I’m going to call Dex,” he said.

  “She doesn’t want us to call the police.”

  “We won’t make an official report, but he ought to know what’s going on. What if there’s been a pattern like this somewhere else? This could be some pervert’s MO.”

  “For what purpose? I mean, he already got inside her house. What does she have that anyone would want?”

  “I don’t know.” He pulled out his cell phone. “But I don’t—”

  “What’s wrong?” I could tell from his abrupt silence and the way he stared at his phone that something was wrong. He glanced at his watch, then at me. I didn’t know what time it was, but I knew it was late.

  “Someone tried to call me an hour ago. I had the phone set to vibrate. I didn’t feel it go off.”

  Probably because we were setting off our own vibrations an hour ago, but I didn’t need to remind him of that.

  “Call them back.”

  “They called from my apartment, Dee. No one should have been inside my apartment.”

  “One of your family? You should call them.”

  “My dad has a key, so does my sister-in-law, but it’s really late. If it wasn’t one of them, I’ll wake them and worry them for nothing.”

  And if it had been… I felt the same sense of urgency I saw in his eyes. “We should go to your place.”

  “I’ll take you home first.”

  “Don’t waste time. Besides, you might need help.”

  We were on the same wavelength. He looked at me with dark eyes. “You’ve got a gun?”

  “Not with me, but I can create a mean distraction.”

  He almost smiled. “That you can.”

  We practically broke the sound barrier going across the bridge into Rocky River. If we’d passed one cop car, we’d have been busted for sure, but the roads were empty. Based on all the blinking yellow traffic lights, it was much later than I’d dreamed.