Home Before Midnight

by Virginia Kantra

  She nodded.

  “Were the lights on?”

  “I think the pool lights—the underwater ones?—may have been. I turned on the patio lights myself.”

  He took her step-by-step through her story, aware of Officer Margie Conner listening silently from her post by the coffeepot. Even though she didn’t contribute a question, he needed her there. For his own protection: a male detective never interviewed a woman without a female witness present.

  Bailey Wells was a good interview subject, observant, coherent, and intelligent. He wondered again if she were guilty or just remarkably self-possessed. Cold.

  Steve didn’t like cold women.

  On the other hand, hysterics wouldn’t have saved Helen Ellis.

  “Why did you jump in the pool?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t you? I didn’t know how long Helen had been . . .” She stopped, her hands clenching on the towel.

  Dead, Steve supplied silently. Unconscious.

  Bailey’s knuckles were white. Maybe she wasn’t so cold, so unaffected by the death, after all. She could be exerting control to keep from falling apart.

  He could understand that.

  “I didn’t know how long she was underwater,” she said. “Recovery drops to twenty-five percent after four minutes without oxygen. I needed to start rescue breathing as soon as possible.”

  “How do you know that?”

  She blinked. Around the dilated pupils, her eyes were the color of the dark Jamaican rum he drank on his honeymoon, her lashes thick and straight. “I took a life-saving class in high school.”

  He wasn’t talking about her life-saving skills. And he didn’t care about the color of her eyes. Annoyed with his momentary distraction, he asked, “Where did you learn how long somebody can go without oxygen?”

  “Breathing space,” she said.

  She didn’t make sense. Steve grunted noncommittally.

  “Breathing Space,” she repeated. “The Nelson Crockett story?” When he still didn’t respond, she leaned forward in her chair. “It’s Paul’s latest book. Nelson Crockett was the Tennessee serial killer who strangled his victims. He liked to bring them back several times and . . .” She broke eye contact, looking down at her hands. “He liked to bring them back.”

  Jesus. Steve stifled a jolt of revulsion. He made another sound, inviting her to continue.

  Bailey raised her head. “Unconsciousness usually occurs after the first minute, but if you begin artificial ventilation right away, the victim has a ninety percent chance of response. Of course, repeated assaults on the airway cause tissue damage, so the victim’s ability to breathe on her own once recovered is compromised.”

  Steve made a grab for his slipping detachment. The last thing he expected when he was pulled from bed in the middle of the night was a lecture on deviant sexual strangulation by a woman who looked like an elementary school librarian.

  “Did Mrs. Ellis give any sign of breathing on her own?”

  “What? Oh. No.” Bailey shivered. “I kept trying until the paramedics came, but . . .”

  Steve glanced at his notes. “How long?”

  “I don’t know. I was trying to save her. I didn’t look at my watch.”

  Steve raised his eyebrows. He wasn’t expecting sarcasm, either.

  “It felt like forever,” she said.

  Seven minutes, Lewis had told him.

  “I tried,” Bailey said again. Her voice cracked.

  Steve didn’t need her assurances. He had already interviewed the EMS workers on the scene. She’d done everything right. The paramedics had praised her presence of mind. Her technique. Her persistence. If she had wanted Helen Ellis dead, she would have fumbled. She could have quit.

  Or she could have delayed just long enough to make her best efforts useless.

  Recovery drops to twenty-five percent after four minutes without oxygen.

  “And Mr. Ellis?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Where was he?”

  “He was there. He came as soon as I called.”

  “Before or after you entered the pool?”

  “Right before. I called—well, I screamed—and then I jumped in the water.”

  “Did he help you recover Mrs. Ellis from the water?”

  Her lashes fluttered. “I . . . No. I wasn’t really paying attention. I had to get her up on the side, and then I started rescue breathing right away.”

  “And what did he do?”

  “He called the ambulance.”

  “Anything else?”

  Her hands twisted in the towel. “He was very upset.”

  Steve nodded.

  “She was his wife,” Bailey said, as if men were responsible for their wives’ dying every day.

  Memories rattled like leaves down an empty street. Deliberately, Steve let them go.

  “How would you describe the Ellises’ relationship?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Would you say they had a happy marriage?”

  Bailey jerked. “Of course.”

  Of course. His mouth twisted cynically. Of course she would say it.

  He took her through her story one more time, distilling it to the essential facts he needed to write her statement. Twenty minutes later, the interview was over. He wasn’t getting anything else from her tonight, unless she decided to make his job easier by copping to murder. Which she wouldn’t. She wasn’t stupid. He even doubted she was guilty, though he was keeping an open mind about that.

  He stood. “You’ll want out of those wet clothes. Officer Conner will take them for you.”

  And catalog them as evidence, although Steve didn’t have much hope of finding anything useful. He hadn’t found any blood on the pool deck, and Bailey’s jump into the contaminated water would account for any traces on her clothes.

  Had she thought of that?

  He waited for her to object. When she didn’t, he nodded and continued. “I’ll have a statement prepared for you to read over in the morning. If you don’t mind coming by the station to sign it—”

  “It was an accident,” Bailey blurted.

  Well, hell. Slowly Steve surveyed her thin, intense face, her dark-as-rum eyes. He was going to get his confession after all. His faint disappointment surprised him.

  He sat back down, nodding at her to continue.

  Bailey expelled a shaky breath. “I’m not quite sure how to say this.”

  Tension thrummed through him. “Take your time,” he drawled.

  “Helen is . . . was . . . Helen usually mixed herself a nightcap at bedtime. I don’t want to make too much of this, but she probably wasn’t very steady when she came downstairs.” She fixed her gaze on his face, willing him to believe her. “She must have slipped and fallen.”

  No confession. Just a simple explanation designed to get them all off the hook. Isn’t that what he wanted? Nothing sensational, nothing involved that would set off tremors in his own life or in the department. He didn’t do high-profile, high-intensity cases anymore.

  He did his job.

  “Thank you, Miz Wells,” he said dryly.

  “You could check for blood-alcohol levels.”

  “We certainly could,” he agreed.

  Realization darkened her eyes. “You were going to anyway.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  The flush returned, warming her cheeks. With her darkened eyes and messy hair, Bailey Wells looked less like a librarian and more like she’d just crawled out of bed. Or, with the right persuasion, could be tumbled onto one. The observation disturbed him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, clearly mortified. “I didn’t mean to tell you how to do your job.”

  “Occupational hazard,” he said.

  She nodded. “Because you’re a police officer.”

  Detective, he thought.

  “Because your boss is a crime writer.” Steve smiled thinly. “Goodnight, Miz Wells.”

  MIZ Wells
. Not Bailey.

  Bailey watched the big-bodied detective saunter from the kitchen, looking tough and rumpled and suspicious. Misgiving churned in her stomach.

  He didn’t like her. He didn’t believe her.

  She huddled in her drying clothes on the hard kitchen chair, stinking of chlorine, hugging her stomach. That was okay. Lots of men didn’t like her. Her sister Leann was the pretty one, the popular one, the one with boobs and boyfriends and a date to the prom. By the time Bailey figured out her invisibility to the opposite sex was at least partly a function of age—what seven-year-old could compete with a high school cheerleader?—her identity was set. Brainy Bailey, flat-chested, hardworking, and reliable. The kind of student teachers trusted to run errands in the hall. The kind of daughter parents trusted home alone on a Saturday night.

  But Steve Burke didn’t trust her.

  He wanted her clothes. She knew what that meant. She felt violated. Scared.

  She tightened her grip on the towel as the room wavered around her. That was so wrong. It was unfair. Helen—clammy skin, don’t think about it, slack mouth, don’t, empty, gleaming eyes—was dead. Bailey’s breath came faster. Paul had enough to deal with right now without some macho cop with a prejudice against crime writers turning a painful personal tragedy into a terrible public spectacle.

  Would you say they had a happy marriage?

  Oh, God. Her stomach heaved with a terrible mix of guilt, fear and sympathy. Maybe he was right not to trust her.

  A hand touched her shoulder.

  “You all right?” Officer Conner’s face, creased with concern, swam before her.

  Bailey blinked; forced herself to smile. “Fine. Thank you,” she added even as her insides rebelled.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, if you’ll just . . . I need to . . . Excuse me,” she mumbled, and hurried to the powder room off the kitchen, where she was violently, wretchedly sick.

  PAUL Ellis ran a shaking hand over his hair. The evening had not gone as planned.

  Now he had some hulking detective in his study asking him questions in a flat, deep drawl. “Do you have friends you can stay with tonight, sir? Family?”

  He couldn’t think. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You shouldn’t be alone,” the detective said.

  Paul exhaled noisily. “I won’t be. Bailey is here.”

  Thank God for Bailey. She had surprised him, jumping into the pool like that. But her presence, her devotion, provided an invaluable backup.

  “It might be better for you both if you found someplace else to spend the night,” Burke said, stolid as a rock. “We’re likely to be tied up here for some time.”

  “Why? It was an accident.”

  “That’s certainly what it looks like. But your wife did hit her head. I’d just like the chance to look around, rule out the possibility of an intruder.”

  Paul didn’t believe the intruder theory for one minute. And neither, he bet, did the detective. The implication was unbearable. Intolerable. God.

  “I didn’t sign that damn consent form so you could force me from my own home.”

  “I can’t force you to do anything, sir. I want all this to be over as much as you do. But it sure would speed things along if my team didn’t have to worry about disturbing you tonight.”

  Paul’s indignation faded. Maybe this Sheriff Andy wannabe imagined he was doing his job. In which case, an appearance of cooperation would serve Paul better than threats.

  “I’ll need a change of clothes.”

  “Yes, sir. Officer Lewis can help you pack a bag. He’ll take those clothes you have on and then drive you anywhere you want to go.”

  Paul flung up his head. “Are you people offering laundry service now?”

  The detective was silent.

  Paul sighed. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I want to cooperate. I really do. But this is my home.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “She was my wife.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Burke repeated in his flat, deep drawl. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  At least he didn’t say he understood. No one could understand what Paul was thinking and feeling right now. Least of all some thick-necked redneck with a badge.

  He had to tell Regan.

  The realization broke through the numbness that gripped Paul like a stone through pond ice. Despite their estrangement, Helen’s daughter would be devastated by her mother’s death. And furious she hadn’t been contacted immediately.

  Should he make the call himself? Or have Bailey do it?

  The detective said something, his words lost in the roaring inside Paul’s head. Something about the coroner’s office and releasing the body. Helen’s body.

  Paul held up his hand. He didn’t want to think about the autopsy right now, about Helen’s body photographed and measured, weighed and dissected.

  “I can’t deal with that now,” he said. “Bailey will call your office tomorrow.”

  On cue, he heard a swift knock, and Bailey entered the room. Relief rolled through him. She’d changed her clothes and tied back her hair, but she hadn’t bothered with makeup. Militant spots of color flew in her cheeks like battle flags. Her eyes were bright.

  The detective’s hulking body shifted in a play for her attention, but she never glanced at him. All her concern was for Paul.

  “I came as soon as they let me,” she said, crossing the room with uncertain steps. “Are you all right?”

  He couldn’t speak. He was overcome. He stared at her dumbly.

  She put her hand on his arm, even that tentative touch a breach in the employer/employee distance she was so careful to preserve between them.

  It wasn’t enough, Paul realized. He wanted—needed—more from her than that. He pulled her to him, feeling her involuntary recoil, her quick stiffening against his body.

  But she wouldn’t reject his claim on her comfort. Not tender-hearted, loyal Bailey. He held her close, his heart pounding as he breathed in the bromine scent of her hair.

  And at last, as he hoped, as he expected she would, Bailey put her arms around him and patted him awkwardly on the back.

  From the other side of the room, the detective watched impassively.

  THREE

  GABRIELLE scowled from the front porch steps as Steve pulled into the driveway at nine-thirty in the morning.

  Busted.

  The headache building behind his eyes ratcheted up a notch. He wanted to spend more time with her. That’s why he’d moved back to Stokesville. But not after he’d been up all night with a dead woman and three officers more used to drunk-and-disorderlies and traffic stops than crime scene investigation. And not before he’d had a chance to wash away the taste of station house sludge with a fresh pot of coffee.

  Slowly, he climbed from the car, slinging his jacket over his shoulder.

  Gabrielle narrowed her eyes as he approached the porch. “You missed breakfast.”

  At least she was speaking to him this morning.

  Stooping, he dropped a kiss on top of his nine-year-old daughter’s smooth, dark head, feeling his reality, his responsibilities, shift and grip around him. “Did you save me any?”

  “Grandma did.” Gabrielle scrambled to her feet, leaning briefly against his side in what passed these days for a hug. “You didn’t call this morning, either.”

  Guilt scraped him. Steve opened the door to his mother’s house. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Huh.” Gabrielle snorted. “That’s what I’m going to say when I’m a teenager.”

  Four more years, he thought. They could make it.

  “When you’re a teenager, I’m going to lock you in your room and sit on the front porch all night with a shotgun,” he said mildly. “So it won’t be an issue.”

  Gabrielle tossed her braid in a gesture so reminiscent of her dead mother that his chest squeezed. “That’s police brutality.”

  “Good parenting,” he correct
ed.

  She flounced into the house.

  The interior was cool and dim and smelled of bacon. Steve stopped in the entryway, rubbing the tension from the back of his neck.