Home Before Midnight

by Virginia Kantra

Bailey stood beside him, tray in hand, doing her best to keep the food flowing.

  And Regan, it seemed, was doing her best to add to the gossip.

  “He’s staring at me,” she continued petulantly.

  His stepdaughter liked to imagine everything revolved around her. Just like Helen.

  It was true Burke kept looking in this direction.

  It was even possible he was attracted by Regan’s big breasts, blond hair, and overstated makeup. Slut Barbie.

  But Paul suspected the detective’s true target was Bailey.

  Or Paul himself.

  Paul brooded and drank. They’d arrived together—Bailey and Burke. She had told him, of course, she’d found another ride. She hadn’t told him with whom.

  What else hadn’t she told him?

  And what had she and Burke talked about on the fifteen-minute drive home?

  “It is an open house,” Bailey said, balancing her overloaded tray. “Anyone who showed up at the funeral could come.”

  “Beautiful service,” Macon contributed heartily, helping himself to a deviled egg.

  Regan tossed her head. “I’m so glad you liked it.”

  Bailey, of course, said nothing about her own part in the arrangements. She never claimed credit for her work. Paul found that very useful.

  He allowed himself a small, sad smile. “I think Helen would have been pleased.”

  “Nice turnout, too,” Macon said.

  Regan swallowed the contents of her wineglass. “I think they all came to see if Paul would be arrested.”

  Vicious little bitch. Paul felt the rage surge inside him, the blood drain from his face.

  Macon laughed uncomfortably.

  “Does anyone want coffee?” Bailey asked.

  It would take more than coffee to shut up his stepdaughter. More than Bailey’s pitiful attempts at distraction to counteract Regan’s poison, allay Burke’s suspicion and get public opinion to Paul’s side.

  “It’s the police’s fault,” Paul said. “But I suppose I can’t expect them to be impartial. They’re just looking for ways to discredit me.”

  Regan rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”

  “It’s true,” Paul insisted. “This fuss over Helen’s accident is all some absurd payback because I wouldn’t drop my investigation of the Dawler case.”

  Macon put up his eyebrows. “Seems to me there’s not much to investigate. That boy confessed.”

  “Which is all the police based their case on,” Paul said.

  “Are you saying he didn’t do it?”

  “Let’s just say the case was far more complicated than Chief Clegg wants people to believe. Or bothered to find out at the time.”

  Macon’s face creased. “Now, I don’t know. Family like that . . . Bound to be trouble. Billy Ray didn’t have an easy time of it. Whore for a mother. Tramp for a sister. Folks around here figured he just finally had enough.”

  “She wasn’t a tramp,” Bailey said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Tanya Dawler. She was only fifteen.”

  “Old enough to get into trouble,” Macon said.

  “Literally,” Paul said. “She was three months pregnant when she died.”

  “Did you know her?” Bailey asked Macon.

  He smiled down at her. “I was in school with her brother. Same as everybody else. But I hadn’t heard she got herself knocked up.”

  “It was in the autopsy report,” Paul said.

  “Nobody gets pregnant all by herself,” Bailey said. “Somebody had to be the father.”

  Macon shrugged. “Sure. But in that family, it could have been anyone. Including her own brother.”

  “Eww. Didn’t the cops do, like, a paternity test or something?” Regan asked.

  Her question caught Paul by surprise. He hadn’t expected his stepdaughter to be paying attention. Or to ask an almost intelligent question.

  “This was nineteen years ago,” Bailey explained. “DNA testing was just being introduced.”

  “So I guess we’ll never know,” Macon said.

  Paul allowed himself a smile. “Investigative journalism isn’t like an episode of CSI. It isn’t all about the science. It’s about people. And people talk.”

  Regan emptied her wineglass. “Well, this girl—Tanya, is that her name?—can’t tell you anything. She’s dead.”

  “Her brother isn’t,” Paul said.

  Macon’s face relapsed into that smooth, grave expression most people assume at funerals. Quite appropriate, under the circumstances. “You didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?” Bailey asked.

  “It’s all over the sheriff’s department. Billy Ray was murdered in prison.”

  Paul froze, genuinely shocked. His heart seized. Billy Ray couldn’t be dead. Paul needed him.

  Macon was wrong, that was all. He must be wrong.

  “You’re mistaken,” he said stiffly, his heart galloping again. “Someone would have called me.”

  He’d certainly spent enough in charm and in bribes over the past few weeks to warrant a goddamn phone call.

  “No mistake. My firm represented him, you know. Well, my father’s firm. We got the call this morning.”

  “But I spoke with him last week. He was fine.”

  Better than fine. The inarticulate Billy Ray was finally beginning to trust him. It happened with every book, when writer and subject forged a symbiotic bond. The killer relied on Paul to give him a voice. And Paul depended on Billy Ray to give him a story.

  Everything was finally falling into place. One more interview, one more twist, and he would have the sensational revelation that would take his book beyond the common criminal-done-wrong story and launch it onto the best-seller lists.

  To get it, he had dangled the promise of understanding in front of Billy Ray like the prospect of salvation, skillfully playing on his subject’s need for approval. Twenty years ago, that need had driven Billy Ray first to murder and then to confession. Now it would drive him to tell Paul the whole story. The true story.

  All he needed was one more interview.

  “Well, he’s not fine now. Killed in the shower.” Macon lowered his voice. “Sheriff said it was likely some sexual thing.” He drew the word out. Sex-you-all. “I don’t know the details and I don’t want to know. You spoke with him, you said?”

  Paul drew a shaking hand over his face. “Frequently.”

  What a waste. What a loss. Not a loss to society, of course, or even to him personally. Billy Ray had been an undereducated, overreligious boob. But . . . what would happen to his story now?

  “Does this mean you have to give the money back?” Regan needled Paul. “If you can’t, like, finish the book?”

  Oh, God, the money. He couldn’t possibly pay it back. Not until Helen’s insurance paid out. How was he going to salvage this?

  “I’ll finish,” he said. He had no choice but to finish. Somehow.

  He watched the doubt dawning in Bailey’s eyes and swore silently. He needed her loyalty. What had she and Burke talked about on the ride here? Goddamn it, did he have to worry about everything at once?

  “What all did that boy tell you?” Macon asked. “Exactly.”

  “I can’t tell you. Exactly,” Paul said. “It will all be in the book.”

  Macon hesitated. “You know, I wouldn’t put too much faith in everything Billy Ray said. He never was quite right.”

  “The police put enough faith in his confession,” Paul said. “I’m just going to set the record straight.”

  “Who cares?” Regan asked, slurring her words slightly. “He’s dead, isn’t he? Everybody’s dead.”

  Macon patted her arm. “Let me get you another glass of wine.”

  Across the room, Burke’s dark gaze fixed on their little group.

  Let him watch, Paul thought. Let him wonder. The police got everything wrong anyway. They had in the Dawler case. Clegg’s fault, that time, for rushing to bring charges in the notorious deaths of the town pro
stitutes.

  Paul sipped his drink thoughtfully. Of course, Clegg might have had his reasons for wanting the case wrapped up so quickly. Pressure from the mayor, maybe, or the media, or other, personal reasons of his own . . .

  It was worth thinking about. Paul was not above blackmail.

  But with any luck, the police chief would be just as eager to resolve Helen’s case, and Paul would be out of the woods. His wife’s death was tragic, an unfortunate necessity. And if that damn detective, Burke, pushed the matter, well . . .

  Paul would make sure someone else took the blame.

  BAILEY couldn’t wait to go home.

  Okay, not home, exactly. The feng shui hall and blue-flowered bedroom in her parents’ house no longer felt like home, and her studio apartment in East Village had been sublet to a massage therapist from Ohio named Ken.

  But away from here.

  The house was silent now. The guests were gone. Regan was somewhere. Upstairs, Bailey hoped. Dorothy had shown up with a covered casserole made with Campbell’s cream of celery soup. She stayed the requisite half-hour, finally leaving Bailey with a hissed reminder to reapply her lipstick.

  As if she should be trolling for hookups at Helen’s funeral reception.

  Her mother had also given Bailey a hug and the keys to her car. Bailey appreciated both, even though accepting the keys reminded her sharply that at twenty-six she had nothing to call her own but a few pieces of furniture in storage and a three-ring notebook with the rough draft of her first novel inside.

  She sprinkled powdered detergent into the dishwasher door and slammed it shut to run another load. She wanted better.

  She wanted to matter. Somehow. Somewhere.

  Not here.

  It was hardly a choice. More a realization, whispering at the back of her mind, coalescing, heavy and cold, in her belly.

  She shook a dish towel over the sink. She wouldn’t find what she wanted here.

  She’d thought she had. Or that she could. She did intellectually stimulating, well-paid work for a man who professed to admire her mind and support her goals.

  And told her—again and again—her work wasn’t ready to show to anyone but him.

  Bailey twisted the towel in her hands.

  Steve’s dark drawl joined the whisper at the back of her mind. It wouldn’t be the first time an employer took advantage of an employee. . . . Seems to me he does it all the time.

  No, she didn’t belong here. Not anymore.

  She draped the dish towel over the bar of the oven to dry. But how could she leave so soon after Helen’s death?

  The heaviness settled in her stomach. How could she stay?

  She set the coffeemaker to brew in the morning and propped the note for the cleaning lady in its usual place by the phone. Flipping off the kitchen lights, she made her way through the darkened first floor to the front door.

  “Bailey.”

  Just her name, spoken out of the darkness, stopped her at the base of the stairs. She turned her head.

  Paul slumped in one of the big leather chairs flanking the fireplace, cradling a brandy glass in his hands.

  Bailey cleared her suddenly dry throat. “I was just leaving.”

  He didn’t say anything. The light from the hall cast shadows on his haggard face and hollowed eyes.

  She should go. She was going.

  But habit and compassion made her say, “Can I get you anything first?”

  “You left,” he accused.

  Bailey blinked. She hadn’t gone anywhere yet. “It’s late.”

  “Before,” he said, a hint of impatience in his tone. “You didn’t ride home with me from the funeral.”

  Bailey was relieved, both because he sounded more like himself and because he was making sense now. Sort of. “I told you I got another ride.”

  “And this offer, this ride, from—someone—was more important to you than the fact that I needed your support.”

  Bailey’s heart plummeted to join her stomach. Obviously, he’d been drinking. And she’d had enough dates that began or ended in bars to know you couldn’t reason with a drunk.

  She tried anyway. “I didn’t think it would look right, my being alone with you like that.”

  “And avoiding me looked so much better.” Paul shook his head. “You drove off from my wife’s funeral with the detective trying to frame me for her death.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” Her voice sounded shaky. Defensive. Could he hear it?

  “What did he want?” Paul asked.

  Bailey’s heart pounded.

  Maybe I wanted to warn you.

  “To talk, I guess,” she said.

  “What did you tell him?”

  Did she really want to blurt out her confession of misplaced devotion and thwarted hope? No shame in not coming right out with it.

  No. Bad enough Steve knew about her stupid crush. Telling Paul would only make the situation worse. Not to mention unbearably awkward. She couldn’t stand his pity. And she wouldn’t know what to do with anything else.

  She hedged. “Nothing much. We talked a little about my work.”

  “About me.” Paul rose impatiently. “What did you tell him about me?”

  Bailey took a deep breath. “I said you were devoted to your wife.”

  “Dear Bailey.” Paul touched her cheek. “Always so loyal.”

  She jerked her head back. Was he mocking her?

  “Look, it’s been a long day,” she said. “I should—”

  “It has been. A very long, very difficult day.” Paul’s hand dropped, skimming her arm, brushing her hand.

  Bailey started.

  “A difficult week.” He braceleted her wrist. “A difficult year.” He tightened his grip.

  Bailey backed into an end table. “Uh . . .”

  “It will get better,” Paul promised. “Soon. When we’re back in New York.”

  She could not believe this. Did not want to believe this could be happening now, when he was free and she was—literally, finally!—on her way out the door.

  “I don’t know how I would have made it through without you,” he whispered. His breath was warm and laced with brandy.

  “Always happy to help,” she said, insanely perky.

  Oh, God, she wanted to go.

  He smiled. “That’s what I’m counting on,” he said, and lowered his head to hers.

  His mouth was hot and wet. Invasive.

  Shock kept her still for one second. Two. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, while her mind raced in panic.

  He was grieving. Drunk. He didn’t know what he was doing.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  She felt the bulge of his erection as he pressed against her, and revulsion rose in her, sharp as nausea. She flattened her palms against his chest to push him away.

  “This is cozy.” Regan’s voice rattled into the overheated atmosphere like hailstones in July. “Are we celebrating something?”

  Bailey stumbled back, almost knocking over the table. Regan stood at the base of the stairs, her blond hair blazing in the light of the chandelier, her face contorted.

  “No, I . . . it’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “Gee, really?”

  “I was just telling Paul how sorry I was.”

  “Sorry?” Regan’s voice cracked. “You’re not sorry. You’re pathetic. He doesn’t get anything, you know. Not if he killed her. And not if he remarries, either. So you’re wasting your time.”

  Unreality gripped Bailey. “I’m not . . . It wasn’t . . . Paul, tell her!”

  But he looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “He didn’t get anything in a divorce, either,” Regan said. “But I guess he told you that.”

  “No, he didn’t. We never . . .” This was a nightmare. “Paul?”

  He roused himself to speak slowly. “Helen’s death was an accident.”

  Under the panic, under the disbelief, anger grew. “Of course it was.”

  �
��She was in the pool when you found her.”

  “Yes!”

  Oh, God, he didn’t think . . . he didn’t suspect . . .