“That depends on you. I’m having enough problems with personnel, so I don’t need new problems. Just keep Darci calm and quiet until those test results come back. You said she’s attractive, and…”
“Pushy. She’s pushy.”
“Find a way to keep her occupied. She told Mayor Benjamin she wanted our full cooperation, so you make sure she gets it. It’s only going to be for a couple of weeks.” The chief shooed him off. “We’re done.”
Steed stood in one fluid motion. Halfway to the door, he turned around. “I’ve earned this promotion, Chief.”
“Show me,” was all Rogers said before biting into the muffin and chasing it with a loud swallow of coffee.
Knowing there was nothing more he could say, Steed made his way back to his office, wondering how he was going to handle Darci Clarke—the one person standing between him and his promotion.
* * *
“All right, Kenny, what trouble did those smoky eyes and silver tongue get you into that you couldn’t get out of?” Darci brushed her finger against the smiling face in the wallet-size picture. “I promise, I’m going to find out what happened to you, that bonehead cop be damned.”
Steed McGraw. Darci rolled her eyes. What kind of woman would name her child after a horse?
She recalled the detective’s long powerful legs, broad shoulders, and dusting of fine dark hairs leading to the imprint of muscles hidden beneath a white dress shirt. Heat rushed to her cheeks. If the horses her childhood summer camp counselors tried to force her to ride had looked anything like him, she would probably be a world-class equestrian by now.
“You’re still here.”
Steed’s voice, a reluctant Southern drawl with a dash of the North, startled her, but lately almost everything did. She might have had ten hours of sleep total in the three days since she’d heard about Kenny’s death. The next day Detective Stud called, asked several questions, extended his condolences, and then said he’d be in touch if he had more questions. He didn’t have any more questions, but she had plenty.
“I said I would be,” Darci answered, stuffing the photo in her purse. “Is your business done?”
Steed returned to his desk. “For the time being,” he said.
“Good. Perhaps, now, you can give Kenny’s case the attention it deserves.”
“Look, Ms. Clarke, I’ve done my job. Mr. Warwick is not and was not the only citizen of Sterling.”
“But he’s the only citizen of Sterling who was my best friend and is suspected of killing himself.”
“It’s not a suspicion, it’s a fact.” Steed’s eyes, a striking combination of cobalt blue and teal, flashed irritation as they fell upon her. His mouth twisted into an annoyed frown. “Warwick being your best friend won’t change any of that.”
Darci glanced at the golden shield clipped to the pocket of his coat before fixing him with a hard glare. How could such a hot man be so cold? “Tell me, Detective, did you get that shiny badge out of a Cracker Jack box?”
He returned her stare-down. “No, I got it from the same street vendor in New York who sold you that smart mouth.”
With anger burning through her veins, Darci jumped to her feet, prepared to give the sinfully handsome but inept detective a big piece of her mind.
Steed stood and placed his hands on her shoulders. Suddenly the angry fire became a flame of a very different sort, radiating from the point of Steed’s touch and spreading throughout her body. Darci sucked in a breath, wanting to gaze into the blue eyes staring down at her but afraid to. His masculine scent rendered her weak in the knees. She didn’t like this man, so why did she enjoy his touch so much? She shrugged away.
“Look, I—I apologize for saying that.” Steed shoved his hands in his pockets. “I was out of line,” he said.
“Finally, something we agree on.” Darci sat before she fell. “I’m sorry, too. I’m just very upset, and I know Kenny wouldn’t kill himself. There was no note.”
“Not all people who commit suicide leave a note. There’s no etiquette for situations like this.”
“Maybe not, but if Kenny had killed himself, he would have left a note. He’d have to explain himself; otherwise, no one who really knew him would believe it. I talked to him the day before this happened, and there was nothing wrong. He was excited about an upcoming trip to Rio. He had no reason to kill himself.”
“Ms. Clarke, Warwick’s family still lives here. His parents aren’t questioning this, neither is his sister, and she found his body. They are surprised and saddened, but they have accepted the facts. I suggest you do the same.”
“I’ll never accept this. I knew him better than anyone, and Kenny would not kill himself. As a reporter, I have seen and done dozens of interviews with loved ones of people who have committed suicide or homicide and they always say, ‘He wasn’t that kind of person’ or ‘She seemed just fine.’ Well, I’m certain Kenny wouldn’t kill himself and he was fine, and it’s not just grief I’m feeling. It’s knowledge of my friend.”
“Knowledge of your friend? So, you’re not like those people you interview?”
“No!” Darci said emphatically. “Something is not right here. I know that. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Okay, fine.” Steed smoothed his hand over his sun-kissed face and days-old stubble. “Who would want him dead and why?”
Darci frowned, not happy with his condescending tone and dismissive attitude. “You’re the investigator, Detective, it’s your job to find that out.” She stood. “I have a funeral to attend, but know when I come back, I’ll expect some answers from you.”
CHAPTER 2
Through a haze of tears, Darci stared at the glossy mahogany coffin blanketed with roses, daisies, carnations, and wildflowers. Her best friend. A man who loved himself more than he did his many women, dead at thirty-two from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. She closed her eyes, wanting to block out this horrible moment. To drown out the sobs from the nameless beautiful blondes and brunettes who filled the pews and the sorrowful strains of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” from the organist.
Darci sniffled as she gazed at the large color picture to the side of the casket. “Oh, Kenny.”
A hand closed over her shoulder. Darci turned with a start to find Kenny’s parents.
“Suzette, Thomas.” Darci brought Kenny’s grieving mother into the circle of her arms. Darci’s tears returned as Suzette softly sobbed. “I’m so sorry.” She hugged Thomas, who didn’t look much stronger than his wife. “I just can’t believe this.”
“I know.” Suzette dabbed her eyes with a crumpled tissue. “I’m sorry this is why you had to come home, but I’m glad to see you. We’ve missed you.”
“Me, too.” Visits to Sterling had been few and far between since she moved to New York seven years earlier and got caught up in her career. But she kept in constant contact with Kenny, and he visited her all the time. Seeing so much of Kenny in his parents, with their dark hair and light eyes, gave Darci some comfort, but she still couldn’t believe she’d never see him again. “I spoke to Kenny the day before he…the day before this happened.” Darci sniffled. “It doesn’t make sense.”
Thomas wrapped his arm around Suzette’s shoulders. Fresh tears shone in his eyes. “So, he didn’t say anything to you that would—” he began.
“No. He was being Kenny. Bragging about his women and the trip to Rio he was taking next month. He was excited about life. To believe he…This is very hard for me to understand.”
“It’s hard for all of us,” Suzette said. “I wish we could show him, but…I don’t want him to be remembered like this.”
“I understand. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No, Darci, thank you. You being here is comfort enough.”
Darci brought Suzette into another embrace. She couldn’t begin to understand the pain of losing a child, but she wouldn’t rest until she knew for sure, in her own heart, how Suzette lost hers.
Thomas draped an ar
m around each woman. “Let’s go take our seats. It’s time for the service to start.”
Suzette looked around. “Shouldn’t we wait for Eva?”
“She’s still resting in the choir room, and I think her staying there would be for the best.” Thomas turned to Darci. “Eva found Kenny, and it’s been especially hard for her.”
“I see,” Darci murmured. She tolerated Eva, the Warwicks’ oldest child and Kenny’s only sibling, because of Kenny, but she’d hardly call the woman a friend. Eva was an awkward thirteen-year-old when Kenny and Darci met, and taking her teen angst out on the young friends seemed her favorite summer pastime. Over the years, Eva’s taunting had grown into downright hostility. Darci didn’t understand it, but with few interactions with Eva, she didn’t really care. Darci motioned to the pews. “Let’s sit.”
Two hours later, Darci and the Warwicks stood alone in the church cemetery staring at Kenny’s coffin. Their deafening silence screamed all the unanswered questions.
“This is so unbelievable.”
Darci looked up when Thomas’s voice broke the quiet. The man clutched his wife’s hand as his gaze stayed fixed on his son’s bloom-covered casket.
“What caused this to happen?” He sighed. “Not having Kenny around is bad, but living with not knowing why he did this to himself…How are we going to do that?”
“I don’t think I can,” Darci murmured.
Suzette lifted her head from Thomas’s chest. “What?” the grieving woman asked.
Darci rubbed the back of her neck as the beating rays of the summer sun and the tension of the situation pounded her body. It wasn’t right for her to share her belief that Kenny didn’t kill himself with them now. Their pain was too fresh. If she was wrong, a thought she didn’t want to entertain, she couldn’t allow them to believe otherwise. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I just—I don’t think I’ll ever be able to accept this.”
Loud, broken claps interrupted the awkward moment. “A public gathering just isn’t complete without Darci Clarke making a grand declaration.” All eyes turned to Eva’s staggering form.
Darci rolled her eyes. Barely two-thirty and the woman was already lit up.
Suzette shook her head in dismay. “Eva, don’t do this. This day is to remember your brother. Don’t ruin it.”
“Ruin it, Mom?” Eva stumbled over to her parents and slung her arm over her mother’s shoulder. “This day was ruined right after Kenny did what he did. You saw him!” She whipped her head to look at Darci. Locks of her thick, dark mane stuck to her face. “But there is a good side to this. Your sweet Darci, the one you wish was your daughter, came home. The black sheep of this family has white wool. You get it? White wool. That’s me.” She laughed at the statement no one else found funny.
“I’m sorry about this, Darci,” Thomas apologized. “She’s grief-stricken.”
“No, she’s drunk,” Eva countered. “And don’t apologize to her for me, Dad.” Eva nudged her head toward the coffin. “That thing was closed for a reason. I think I have every right to be drunk. Good and drunk.”
Darci read the pained expressions on the Warwicks’ faces. Eva was always hostile towards her, but liquored up, she seemed even more cutting. With two divorces and several business ventures gone bad under her belt, Eva Jasper looked closer to retirement than her thirty-eight years indicated. The constant failures she’d endured had hardened her, and led her down a road that had found her in and out of rehab battling addictions to hydrocodone, cocaine, and alcohol.
Kenny’s success had been a sore spot for Eva, but he’d loved his sister in spite of her animosity and envy, and did whatever he could to help her whenever she’d asked. He’d even managed to keep Eva’s substance abuse from their parents, calling her stints at rehab much-needed vacations.
As hard as it was, Darci felt Kenny would want her to look out for Eva. ‘She’s lost, Darci,’ he would always say. Helping Eva as best she could was the least she could do for the people who were like second parents to her. Even if she thought a swift kick and tough love would do a lot more good. “I heard you found Kenny. I’m sorry you had to go through that, Eva,” she said. “I’m sorry we all have to go through this.”
“What we? It’s my parents and me who’ll have to deal with this mess. You’ll be heading back to your cushy job in New York.”
“Yes, eventually, but I plan to stay on for a while. There are some things I need to take care of.” Dealing with a headstrong police detective the first of many.
Eva raised a curious eyebrow. Even in her sloshed state, she didn’t look too happy with that announcement. “Things?”
“Yes, things,” Darci said, feeling a more detailed explanation was unnecessary. She gave Thomas and Suzette a big hug. “I’ll stop by the house later.”
“Thank you for coming, Darci.” Thomas kissed her cheek.
“Don’t thank me. I had to be here.” She stopped in front of the swaying Eva. She wouldn’t want to be her in the morning, or any day for that matter. “Take care of yourself, Eva.” Darci reached into her purse and pressed a business card into Eva’s hand. “My cell phone number is on the back. I’m staying with my cousin Jackie and her husband while I’m here. Please, call me if you need anything.”
Eva tore the card into tiny pieces that she showered on the ground. “I won’t be needing anything from you.”
“Eva!” Suzette admonished.
“It’s okay, Suzette,” Darci replied. She wondered how Kenny took this grief from his sister, and if she could. Fighting the urge to be snippy, she extended a smile as cordial as she could muster. “If you change your mind, Eva, you know how to find me.”
Darci made a final stop at the coffin. The scent from all the floral arrangements hung in the humid air like a suffocating fog. Petals wilted and fell to the thick green grass as they lost the battle against the oppressive heat. This day was hellish in so many ways.
Darci laid her hand atop the coffin. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she softly whispered, “I’m going to do what I think you want of me, Kenny, and get to the bottom of what happened to you. I won’t leave Sterling until I do. I promise.”
* * *
A bright smile and tall glass of lemonade greeted Darci as she stepped into her cousin’s house. She accepted the glass and returned Jackie Pierce’s smile. “You always know what I need, huh, Jackie?” she said, kicking off her shoes and plopping onto the couch.
“As your older, more brilliant cousin, I’m supposed to know these things.” Jackie joined her on the couch. “You look beat. I could have come with you.”
“I appreciated the offer, but I know you’re not big on funerals.”
“True enough. Still, I know that had to be hard on you.”
“Jackie, I have so many questions. I know I won’t be able to rest until this makes sense. I just went to the funeral of my best friend, but I can’t accept he killed himself. Kenny wouldn’t do that.”
“You keep saying that, Darci, but Kenny obviously had some demons he didn’t tell you about.”
“No.” Darci shook her head. “Kenny didn’t have any demons. An almost unhealthy preoccupation with his looks and the opposite sex, yes, but no demons.” She took several swallows of the drink. Jackie made the best lemonade, just the right combination of tangy and sweet. She finished the glass and stood. “I’m going to get to the bottom of this. I won’t rest until I do.”
“Where are you going?”
“To shower and change before heading back to the police station.”
“Back to the police station? Did you really go there before the service?”
“Yes.”
“And you filed a report?”
“Yes. Well, at least I tried.”
“Darci!” Jackie pulled her back to the couch. “I know Kenny was your best friend and you have lots of unanswered questions, but the police can’t help you find them. No one can. He killed himself, sweetie.”
“I don’t believe that.”
Jackie groaned. Her full lips thinned to a line. Darci shuddered. With her dark brown eyes and golden brown skin, Jackie looked more like Darci’s mother than Darci did; it was almost frightening.
Twelve years younger, Darci looked up to her older cousin as the sister she’d never had, but when Jackie got like this, Darci knew a lecture was forthcoming. As head of the math department at Sterling University and mother of two, Jackie was great at lecturing, and Darci wasn’t in the mood for listening.
Darci glanced at the clock on the wall. Five after three. Jackie’s teen sons would soon be home from school. With any luck, they would arrive before their mother got too far into her spiel to turn back. “I know what you’re going to say, Jackie. You’re going to say what that idiot cop at the station said.”
Jackie’s perfectly arched brows furrowed. “Idiot cop?”
“The investigator in charge of the case. He’s named after a horse.” A six feet-two inch stud.
“Ah, Steed McGraw.” Jackie smiled.
“You know him?”
“I think every woman in Sterling knows of Steed McGraw. He’s very attractive.”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Liar.” Jackie laughed.
“Okay, he’s kinda cute, but he isn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy type. He practically called me crazy to my face.”
“Can you blame him? You asked him to find the murderer of someone who killed himself. What reaction did you expect?”
“Consideration is what I expected. Before I went by the station, I stopped at the mayor’s office.” Darci smiled. “Jacob was happy to see me.”
“No kidding. He’s always asking about you. One would think the man’s not married, the way he’s so intrigued with what’s going on in your life.”
“Well, he is married, and even if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter. Things never progressed from the prom for a reason. Still, it’s good to have someone to call upon when you need a favor.”
Not Quite Right (Indigo Love Spectrum) Page 2
