Guarding the Socialite

by Kimberly Van Meter

  “We’re all holding up just fine, Father Andre,” she answered, wishing she knew why she didn’t particularly like the man. She forced a smile. “Thank you for coming to comfort Cari and Olivia.”

  “I’m here for you, as well,” he reminded her with a kindly smile. “‘If you are tired from carrying heavy burdens, come to me and I will give you rest. Take the yoke I give you. Put it on your shoulders and learn from me. I am gentle and humble and you will find rest. This yoke is easy to bear, and you will find rest because this burden is light.’ Matthew 11:28–30.”

  She hated when he quoted Scripture at her. She’d never been particularly pious, though she didn’t begrudge anyone the right to practice their faith, but when Father Andre whipped out his Scripture she never knew how to react. So she simply smiled and said nothing in return. Chick appeared at the top of the stairs and gave Emma a subtle nod indicating she’d handled Evie, for which Emma was tremendously grateful.

  “Have the police discovered any leads as to who might have committed these heinous acts against God’s wayward flock?”

  Emma returned to Father Andre. “Well, the police are no longer investigating. The case has been handed over to the FBI and I don’t know what they’ve discovered thus far.”

  “Let us pray that the Lord delivers swift and terrible justice to the wicked who have perpetrated these crimes,” he said solemnly and Emma nodded in agreement. He gazed at her expectantly as he said, “Ms. Vale would you like to join us in our prayer circle today?”

  She might’ve heard Chick smother a laugh but when she turned to glare at the woman, she was gone. Emma offered Father Andre an apologetic smile as she declined. “Too much to do, but I appreciate the offer. Please, stay as long as you like,” she said, eager to leave but Cari stopped her.

  “Father Andre offered to set up a Bible study if that’s all right with you,” she said, her brown eyes pleading, as she clasped her hands beneath the bulge of her rounded belly.

  Emma withheld a sigh. She appreciated that Cari had found God with Father Andre’s assistance and that Olivia—though she struggled with her vices—enjoyed the Catholic priest’s visits, but she knew she’d have a riot on her hands with the other boarders if she allowed a Bible study in the house. “I’m sorry, Cari. You know I can’t do that,” she said, noting the thin line of disapproval forming on Father Andre’s mouth. “Father Andre is always welcome to visit but I can’t sanction a Bible study. You know not everyone is comfortable with organized religion and I won’t willingly cause dissension in the house.” She offered an apologetic look Father Andre’s way but added, “Of course, Cari you are free to come and go as you please and if you would like to go to Bible study, then by all means, do.”

  Cari nodded, shooting an uncertain glance at Father Andre as if she feared his reaction, and Emma took quiet note. Perhaps there was a reason she didn’t quite care for the older gentleman that went beyond the clammy feel of his hands when he shook hers. She resolved to talk with Chick about her concerns. “Well, I just thought it would be nice to offer….” Cari’s voice trailed off with a small shrug.

  Emma smiled just as a knock at the front door sounded and she hastened to answer it. “That’s very sweet of you, Cari. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

  She knew it was Agent McIntyre on the other side of that door and the knowledge caused her heart rate to flutter in an odd show of nerves. Oh, honestly! She chastised herself before taking a deep breath and opening the door with the same sort of smile she’d offer a perfect stranger. This wasn’t a social visit and she’d do well to remember that simple fact so as not to make a total fool of herself. She ushered him inside with a light chagrined laugh. “Thank you for coming, Agent McIntyre. I feel a bit silly but Chick insisted that I call…just in case…” She lifted her shoulders, not quite able to finish. Saying it out loud did in fact make her feel as if they’d overreacted, but on the off chance that someone truly meant them harm, she couldn’t overlook it.

  She met the agent’s gaze and heat rose in her cheeks. Today, he seemed far more attractive than he had yesterday. How was that possible? There was something about him that made her think of things that she had no business entertaining, particularly under the circumstances. Yet, her stubborn mind refused to stop throwing her imagination into overdrive, wondering what she’d find under that jacket and shirt. She suspected her fingers might slide across a smooth, firm chest with very little hair to play with under her fingertips….

  She hitched a short breath and her cheeks burned brighter as Agent McIntyre’s eyebrows climbed slowly in response.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Yes. Of course.” She forced a bright smile but her quivering insides told a different story. It was the extreme stress she was under, she rationalized. Easy enough to understand and even forgive. Feeling somewhat mollified, she gestured toward her office, eager to put an end to whatever was happening and return to the business at hand. “This way, please. The letter is in my office.”

  Dillon sensed there was something going on with Emma, but the sight of her at the door had sucked the air from his lungs in the most disconcerting way. Her long blond hair was swept in a neat ponytail away from her heart-shaped face, revealing high cheekbones that hinted at Nordic ancestry. She wore no-nonsense black slacks, yet the crisp, white shirt paired with a brilliant necklace strung from looping stones of turquoise sent boring galloping down the road to be replaced with sexy and hot.

  She was thanking him and walking toward her office when he was finally able to tear his gaze away from her and shake himself back to normal. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she said, more apology in her tone. “But everyone is on edge lately because of recent events and…well, it seemed prudent to make you aware.”

  “You made the right decision,” he said, pulling a pair of gloves from his pocket and snapping them on as he approached the desk. He lifted the envelope carefully and using the sharp pewter letter opener, he slid it open and peered inside. “I think it’s safe to assume there’s no anthrax in here,” he said, smiling, but there was something that put his nerves on edge. He was careful not to touch the envelope more than necessary. He pulled the letter free and gingerly set it aside. After determining there was nothing else in the envelope, he opened the letter.

  “I think we need to get this to the lab,” he said, his voice tight.

  “What’s wrong?” Emma asked.

  He stared at the innocuous sheet of white paper, folded with three precise folds so that each crease matched perfectly and the familiar trickle of dread played a tune on his spinal cord.

  Three words. Printed neatly. No signature.

  Practice Makes Perfect.

  The killer had just made contact with Emma Vale…and Dillon didn’t like that one bit.

  Chapter 5

  Emma’s mouth dropped open on a gasp and she took a faltering step backward as if whoever penned the cryptic note was going to spring from the page. “What does it mean?” she asked, though she had a pretty good idea. She just wanted Dillon to tell her she was wrong.

  He didn’t.

  “Someone is trying to get your attention,” he said grimly, tucking the letter back into the envelope before grabbing his phone from his pants pocket. He dialed before she could ask another question that she didn’t want to know the answer to. “Yeah, I need an evidence kit and a team. I think the killer has made personal contact with Ms. Vale. I don’t know…I’ll find out. In the meantime, I need forensics. There might be some trace DNA left behind.”

  DNA, evidence…it was all too surreal to even digest properly. Why would someone send her something like this? Was it possible that someone was laughing at her expense? Setting her nerves on edge simply for the entertainment value? But who would do such a thing? She couldn’t imagine. Nor could she imagine why whoever had ended Charlotte’s life was now fixating on her. Perhaps this was all a misunderstanding…

  “You okay? You look a little pale,” Dillon observed, h
is brows coming together as he pocketed his phone. She jerked a short nod but couldn’t actually get the words to come out. He seemed to understand and took control. “Come sit a minute while you get over the shock. It’s going to be all right,” he promised as he guided her into a soft, high-backed chair farthest from the window. “We have the best team right here in San Francisco. If there’s even a hint of DNA left behind, they’ll find it. Now, tell me who brought you the mail this morning?”

  “Chick. She always gets the mail for me,” she answered, distressed. “She’s the one who noticed that it didn’t have any postage and cautioned me against opening it without you here.”

  “Smart woman,” he said. “Where is she now?”

  Emma swallowed a sour lump of something, likely fear, and after a glance at her watch, answered, “At the school, picking up Bella. She has a counseling appointment.”

  “I’ll send a uniform to make sure that Chick is okay,” he said, and Emma’s eyes widened in alarm. He calmed her fears quickly. “Just as a precaution. We don’t know what we’re dealing with at this point, so we’re going to act as if it’s the worst-case scenario.”

  Emma nodded and gave him the addresses of both the school and the counselor’s office. “Maybe this is just someone’s idea of a really bad joke,” she offered weakly. Lord, she hated how scared she sounded but even if her voice hadn’t betrayed her, the tremor in her hands surely would have. She shook them out and blew a short breath, demanding some kind of inner strength show itself before she collapsed in an embarrassing fit of tears. “I have to warn the girls,” she said, grasping onto something she knew. The safety of her boarders was her biggest concern. “They need to know what’s going on.”

  “They will, but let’s wait until we get some tests run on the letter first.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we don’t know anything about the sender. It could be someone in your own house.”

  She balked. “That’s absurd.”

  “I appreciate your loyalty but until we rule everyone in this house out as a suspect, I’m going to have to ask that you refrain from sharing any information we might find.” At her gathering frown, he added with sincerity, “I want to rule out the boarders as quickly as you. I’ll make it my top priority.”

  “In other words, ‘you don’t have a choice but to follow my instructions,’” she said, chafing at his dictate. She wasn’t accustomed to following someone else’s lead, particularly when it came to her girls. “I understand you’re following protocol or something of that nature but I know my boarders and there isn’t one person in this house who’d do such a careless, cruel thing to me.”

  His jaw tensed. “You want to believe that everyone in this house is innocent—and so do I—but I’m not that naive. Sometimes the person we least suspect is the one plotting to put the knife in our back.”

  “Perhaps in your world, Agent McIntyre, but not here. We have a special relationship that is not only built on trust but sustained by it.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not willing to take the chance so we’ll do things my way because it’s my investigation.”

  Her temper spiked but she quelled the fire before it got the best of her. She believed he was off base suspecting any of her boarders, but until he figured that out on his own it would be a waste of breath on her part so she let it go, for the moment. “Fine,” she conceded, but added a concession of her own. “I want to be there when you speak to them, particularly Bella. I won’t compromise on this.”

  “I understand and that’s agreeable. Gather them up. While the forensics team is collecting evidence, dusting for prints and whatnot, you and I will talk with the women together. I’ll know whether or not they’re lying.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how is that?”

  “I’m trained as an interrogator. Facial cues, body language, voice inflections—combined they speak louder than words.”

  “Are you ever wrong?” she asked.

  “Rarely.”

  A human lie detector. Emma suppressed a delicate shiver at the thought. She wasn’t sure whether she found that arousing or terrifying. Perhaps a bit of both. She rose from the chair, thankful her knees had stopped quaking, and lifted her chin to say coolly, “Good to know, Agent McIntyre. I believe your team has arrived. Shall we meet them in the foyer?”

  Dillon followed Emma into the foyer where the team was assembled. He didn’t know this forensic team but he didn’t need to know them on a first-name basis to know that they’d do their job well. All he had to do was point them in the right direction and they’d do the rest. And that’s exactly what he did. His thoughts moved to Emma, wondering how she was faring under the strain.

  He understood her feelings on the matter even if she didn’t voice them. He felt the same way. A part of him had been hoping that they weren’t dealing with a true sociopath but rather an unimaginative nutjob who got his jollies by whacking a few prostitutes. People like that were sloppy. They were so wrapped up in the heat of their crimes that they always made mistakes. But the ones who were smart and devious were the ones Dillon wanted to avoid. The last one…had nearly cost him his own life along with Tana’s. As much as he put on a good face, his veneer had cracked and he could only hide the stress fractures for so long.

  “You okay?”

  He turned at the concern in Emma’s soft query, and the fact that she was inquiring after him instead of the other way around made him want to sink into his shoes. “Right as rain,” he lied with a short smile. “Let’s go talk to your boarders while details might be fresh in their minds.”

  She nodded but she watched him with that intense stare of hers that felt as if she were probing his mind. He waited for a half second to see if she’d voice her opinion or state her observations to the contrary but she did neither and he was grateful.

  There were five women waiting for them in the kitchen, including Chick and Bella who had just arrived with an officer in tow, all wearing expressions of dread and confusion. “Is this everyone?” he asked before he began, but Emma’s compressed lips told him not everyone was accounted for. “Who’s missing?”

  “Ursula,” she answered, leaning over to Chick, who whispered something in her ear. She cleared her throat and said, “She’s not feeling well. I’ll talk to her personally when we’re finished here.”

  “Unless she’s incapacitated, I’d really like to have her down here. This won’t take but a minute or two of her time.”

  Emma stiffened and he sensed he was poking at a mama bear. “If you’re asking me to drag an ill young woman down here for your convenience then I’m sorry to disappoint you. It’s not going to happen.”

  He weighed his options, relenting when he realized he had very little to gain by alienating Emma. “I apologize. Perhaps we could compromise. I can schedule some time to talk with Ursula in a day or two when she’s feeling better.”

  It was the best he could do. He had to interview all the boarders. He hoped Emma realized this and conceded to his offer of compromise.

  She glanced at Chick and he caught a minute change in her expression that said she was giving her grudging okay. The fact that Emma relied so heavily on Chick’s opinion told him that the two were close. He knew very little of Chick aside from the short conversation they’d shared in the garden and it would be tough to get her to open up, but he hoped he’d gain some headway because if Chick locked him out, Emma would surely follow.

  “I’m sure word travels fast so I’ll get straight to the point. Ms. Vale received a letter today that may have been from the person responsible for Charlotte’s death.”

  “Oh, God,” breathed a pregnant blonde, her cherubic face paling with fear as her hands automatically rubbed her distended belly. Her gaze darted to Emma, whose distressed expression was probably not for herself but for the fear she read in their faces.

  His intuition was dead-on as Emma turned to the young woman, who couldn’t be older than eighte
en, with all the reassurance she could muster in spite of the circumstances. “Don’t worry, Cari. It could be a coincidence, a bad joke, a misunderstanding. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions but we have to be cautious, as well.” She shot him a look and he knew in an instant she wasn’t going to withhold any details from her boarders. He mentally swore as she continued, “Agent McIntyre is having the letter sent to the FBI forensics lab to process it for any DNA that might’ve been left behind. Chick and I will give a DNA sample to rule out anything we’ve inadvertently left behind when we handled the envelope. This is a formality that we’re happy to comply with. I want you to know we are doing our utmost to ensure everyone’s safety. To that end, Agent McIntyre is going to need to speak with you all again. I appreciate your understanding and your cooperation. I know this is taxing for us all.”

  He supposed he could understand her loyalty to her girls, but it twisted his shorts in a knot that she’d deliberately disregarded his instruction to keep any and all information about the investigation under wraps. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to take her to task on the subject. He caught her eye and she lifted her chin. She knew he was perturbed but didn’t give a damn. He grudgingly admired her spirit even if he worried it would get her killed.

  “So, let’s say it is the killer…is he saying he’s going to kill one of us? I mean, why would he put it in our mailbox?” demanded a black woman with short curled hair that frizzed at the ends, anger mixing with the panic in her voice. “I mean, it doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me.”

  “I don’t know, Olivia,” Emma answered. “I wish I had the answers. I’m scared, too,” she admitted, briefly meeting Dillon’s gaze before returning to the group who were all looking to her. “Is there anyone who would like to volunteer to talk with Agent McIntyre first?”