“His mama must be so proud of him.”
She smiled up at him. Between the fragrance and her closeness, Quint thought he might never move. Never think. He might just stand there and...
Feel.
Though he was overwhelmed at the moment, JJ wasn’t. She stepped back, chill air replacing the warmth between them, and moved around him to the driveway. “Maura must have bought him a faster bike so he could get away next time. Not being a cop, she doesn’t know you—”
“Can’t outrun that radio,” he finished for her. A motorcycle was faster and more maneuverable than any patrol car, but as long as the officer got the tag number, the guy was going to get caught.
They went to the front stoop, where JJ rang the doorbell. Apparently wanting to provoke Maura, she waited mere seconds before pushing it again. And again. While its tones were fading, she pulled out her cell and dialed a number in the directory.
Maura didn’t bother with a greeting. “Quit ringing the doorbell!”
Quint clearly heard the command over the phone, though as much concrete separated him from JJ as the stoop allowed.
“We want to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you!”
JJ pushed the bell again, then pressed redial. While it rang, she conversationally asked, “Did I tell you that once when I was babysitting her, she locked me out of the house in a thunderstorm? It was the servants’ day off, and I hadn’t learned to pick locks yet, so I had to climb a tree to the second-floor balcony. She was in the safe room, watching on the monitors there. By the time she realized I’d found an unlocked door, it was too late to stop me. So instead she pushed the panic button and brought the guards from the gate and half the police department rushing in, guns drawn. I was soaked to the skin, in shorts and a T-shirt and barefooted, because I couldn’t climb the tree in flip-flops, and my first introduction to most of my new coworkers was from the business end of their gun barrels.”
Quint’s mouth twitched. “What does it say that I can easily imagine the scene?”
She gave him a stern, brow-raised look, then shrugged. “That you know me well?”
Maura’s voice screeched again from the phone. “Go away or I’ll call the police!”
“Officer Foster is already here. Come on, Maura, you know I’m more stubborn than this. We just want to talk to you and Zander, and then you can go back to whatever it is you’re doing.”
An instant later, glass shattered overhead and a sparkle-encrusted cell phone landed on the grass fifteen feet behind them.
Quint gazed at it a moment, then at the glass shards scattered across the ground, then at JJ, who was looking smug and self-satisfied. “You’re going to drive your chief to his grave, aren’t you?”
“I’ll even give him a shove in.”
Wryly shaking his head, he backed off onto the sidewalk and looked up. “Zander, it’s Quint. We need to talk to you a minute about Zoey. Come on down, would you? Then I promise I’ll take Detective Logan away and leave you alone for the rest of the day.”
Though JJ glared at him, he hadn’t lied. He would take her away and give Zander and Maura a few hours of peace and privacy. Until tomorrow, at least. Hey, he’d specified for the rest of the day. Nothing more.
In the silence that followed, JJ rang the bell one more time. Its peal faded, and other sounds took its place: the lock being undone, the door opening with a slight creak.
And there stood Zander Benson.
He wore jeans, a white T-shirt and a blue button-down shirt, buttons undone, tails hanging out. All three garments were similar to clothing hanging in Quint’s closet, but even he could tell these were a whole lot pricier.
Zander also wore the only expression Quint had ever seen on him: sullen. He didn’t glance at JJ, not even a cops-are-getting-prettier look, but fixed his gaze on Quint instead. “What about Zoey?”
JJ didn’t look the least bit impressed by him, either. She pushed past him into the foyer, gazing about for signs of Maura. “She told us to kick your ass when we found you.”
“For what?” He dragged his fingers through his hair, leaving it standing at odd angles about his head.
Seeing no Maura, JJ smiled at him. “There’s always a reason. Is Maura upstairs? I’m going to run up and say hello while you guys get cozy.” She moved forward, and so did Zander. Expecting it, she sidestepped to the right, went around him and jogged up the stairs.
“Hey. Hey!”
Quint put a hand on his shoulder when he moved toward the stairs. “Let her go. You don’t want her to embarrass you in front of your girlfriend. Let’s go on back and sit down.”
Zander ignored his prodding until JJ turned the corner out of sight upstairs, and then he combed his hair again, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his hip pocket, lit one and started walking. No sissy e-cig for him. These were the real thing, the smell acrid and sharp. Quint made a face as he walked through the trailing cloud of smoke.
“So, did you see Zoey, or were you lying about that?”
Quint moved away from him when they reached the family room. “I didn’t say we saw her. I said we wanted to talk to you about her.” He waited until Zander took a seat before he chose the same chair as before. They were facing each other, rectangular coffee table between them. They were about the same distance to the hall door, though Zander had a shorter run to the rear door, if he chose to take it, and Quint excelled at flying tackles.
The things a cop had to consider with the town’s less law-abiding folks.
“We did see Zoey,” Quint offered. “The beer bottle she threw missed my head by this much.” He held up his hand, two fingers barely apart.
“If she’d wanted to hit you, she would’ve.” Zander absently fingered a scar on his right temple. He’d been sixteen, Zoey thirteen, when she’d given it to him in their driveway. The neighbors had called the police, and Quint had arrived with backup to find Zander lying in the grass, dazed and bleeding everywhere. He hadn’t cared about the pain, the stitches soon to come or the resulting scar. He had, however, been damned impressed with his sister’s throwing arm.
“When we were here yesterday, you were upstairs, weren’t you?”
“So?”
“No problem. I just wondered why she lied about it.”
Zander took a long drag on the cigarette, turned his head to the right and exhaled, away from Quint, then shrugged. “Maybe she was embarrassed. She’s rich, you know. Usually hangs out with a different class of people.”
“Different. Not better.” Maura was slumming, Zoey had said. If Zander’s emotions were involved, that could be a hard thing to face. If he even had emotions other than the negative ones that were all he ever exhibited.
But if Maura was just slumming, it wasn’t as if Zander would walk away empty-handed. At the least, he’d had a couple months of easy living, new clothes and what looked like an expensive watch on his wrist and a large diamond stud in his left ear—plus a $25,000 bike to show for it.
“Yeah, whatever.” He blew out another lungful of smoke. “I don’t have any warrants. I haven’t missed any court dates. You got no reason to be harassing me.”
“You’ve seen me harass before, Zander, and this ain’t it.” Quint settled more comfortably in the chair. “This is just a friendly conversation.”
* * *
“You’re like a bad dream that won’t go away.”
Standing in the doorway of the master suite, JJ smiled. “I believe the word you’re looking for is nightmare.”
In front of the fireplace, where a cheery flame burned and fake logs glowed, Maura fisted her hands on her hips. “What do you want?”
“An invitation to come in?”
“Why? It hasn’t stopped you yet.”
JJ strolled into the room. It wasn’t much smaller than her condo and covered all the bases except for the
kitchen. There was a sitting area with sofas, chairs and a television; a mammoth four-poster bed with matching dresser, chest and nightstands; an open door showing a glimpse of a marbled bathroom; and another open door that led to what closely resembled a high-end clothing store. The pitiful contents of JJ’s closet wouldn’t fill even a fraction of this one.
Zoey had been right. Austerity downstairs, all the comforts of home, sweet mansion upstairs.
“Why rent such a big house if you’re just going to live upstairs?” JJ asked before seating herself on the couch.
Maura reluctantly sat down, too, drawing her feet into the chair at a left angle to JJ’s. “It’s cool. Bigger is better, don’t you know?” After a moment, she hugged her arms to her middle. “Something happen to Zoey?”
“No, she’s fine.”
“You obviously don’t know her.”
“Not a fan?” JJ asked, keeping her tone cordial.
“She’s jealous of Zander and me. Mostly me. He pays more attention to me than to her, and she doesn’t like it.”
There was probably some truth to that, but JJ knew, too, that most people who disliked Maura had valid reasons for it. She wasn’t sweet and cute and cuddly—had only ever been those things on rare occasions, even as a child. She didn’t project friendliness, and she didn’t get it back, with or without jealousy as a component. JJ, for example, had zero jealousy of Maura, and zero warm fuzzies for her, either.
Wondering how Quint’s chat with Zander was going, JJ shifted to see Maura better. “How did you two meet?”
Again Maura began picking at her broken nail. “At a club. In Tulsa. Cedar Creek only has dumps.”
“And you hit it off that quickly.”
“Yeah. Kinda like you and that cop. Officer Foster.” Finally Maura smiled. It reminded JJ of an alligator showing all its teeth in preparation for a bone-crushing snap. “I could’ve had him, you know. Foster. If I’d wanted.”
Surprise: there was a bit of the jealousy JJ had just claimed didn’t exist. It raised its ugly little head and whispered that yanking a handful of Maura’s hair seemed both reasonable and well deserved. She kept her hands folded in her lap, and she tried, for at least an instant, to bite her tongue, but yeah, she knew that wasn’t going to work.
“Sure, that’s why you tore up the ticket when he turned you down.”
Surliness slid over Maura’s face like a mask. It claimed her eyes first, shifting them to hard blue shards, then it curled her nose into a delicate sneer and thinned her mouth till her ninety-dollar lipstick almost disappeared. “I wasn’t really trying. If I’d really wanted him, I would’ve had him.”
“Zander wouldn’t have liked that.”
“Zander does what I say. Not the other way around.”
JJ wanted to shake her head with dismay, maybe yank Maura’s hair just enough to make the roots squeak in alarm. And then maybe slap her in handcuffs and haul her home so Mr. Winchester could determine her state of mind and competency. Except Chief Dipstick would gloat—Told you she couldn’t handle it—and JJ would be back in Evanston and Quint would be here, and she and Chica would be very sad girls, indeed.
She softened her expression, her voice, her body, and focused her gaze on the other woman. “How are you, Maura? Really, seriously. I haven’t seen you since your parents’ funeral. How are you coping?”
A stricken look came across her face, making JJ feel a stirring of guilt. “I’m not going back there. Me and my friend, we talked about it. She said it was just a house and that a house needed to be lived in. She said it would show everyone how strong I am if I went back. But my parents died there. And every time I think of it, all I see is—” She swiped her hand across her eyes, then stared off into the distance. “I’m not going back.”
JJ knew exactly what Maura saw, because she’d seen it first. The instant she’d walked through the door, she’d felt the silence. The eerie disturbance of nothingness. The skin-crawling chill of violence. Next had come the smell as she followed the housekeeper through the foyer—thick, sour, heavy and getting worse the nearer she got. Then the blood.
So damn much blood.
She had felt loss before. Had smelled death. Had seen that stark frozen shock of last moments lived. Sometimes she had recognized victims. A few times, she’d had dealings with them. But she’d known Mr. and Mrs. Evans. Had seen them all over town. Chatted with them. Sat down to meals with them. Been trusted one summer with the care of their precious daughter.
She would never forget a single detail of the ugly scene, and apparently, Maura remembered it all, too. Hence the booze and the weed. Who wouldn’t need a little help after something like that?
“I don’t think anyone expects you to go back there to stay,” she said gently. “But your godparents and your friends there miss you.”
Maura sniffed. “Those people aren’t friends. They’re just kids I grew up with. I bet they never think about what happened to my parents or wonder about me. They liked me because I was an Evans, because we had even more money than all of them. But friends? They don’t know what the word means.”
JJ would have given even odds that Maura didn’t, either. But if she could recognize the difference between a friend and a hanger-on, she’d matured at least a little, hadn’t she? The comment about her boyfriend—Zander does what I say—suggested she still had a lot to learn, but this was some progress.
“I understand you came here with a friend named Mel.”
From stricken to dismissive to a blunt affect. Maura had a broader emotional range than Zander. “She’s gone.”
“Where to?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where did you meet her?”
Maura shifted into the lotus position in the oversize chair with an ease that made JJ’s joints creak. “Memphis. She needed a ride, and I wanted company. We had a lot in common, except...” Tilting her head to one side, she said, “I had money, and she didn’t. But she was a better friend than any of those kids at home ever were.”
A better friend. Someone to ease her loneliness. Someone to spend money on, do things for. A distraction from the horrors she was running from. “But she left?”
Impatience surged through Maura, though she remained in the yoga pose. “She didn’t like it here. Didn’t like the cold. I asked her to stay, but she wanted to go someplace warmer.” She shrugged. “She had to go.”
“It must have been sad, her leaving right before Christmas.”
Another shrug. “I gave her a first-class ticket to New Orleans. My Christmas gift to her. And I wasn’t sad. She was fun while she was here, and I still have Zander.”
The closest JJ had gotten to first class had been traipsing through on her way to join the unwashed masses in coach, who, by the way, arrived at their destination at the same time as first class for a whole lot less money. But flying first class on someone else’s tab would be fun. Someone else chartering a jet for her—one of Maura’s frequent means of transportation—would be decadently fun.
Add Quint, and it would be heavenly.
Knowing that would never happen—also knowing she didn’t need to leave the ground to be in heaven with Quint—JJ softly asked, “Can we talk about your godparents?”
Before the word finished, Maura’s lip curled. “I don’t want to fight with him, but I will. I want my money.”
Because Zander wanted it? She’d been satisfied with her allowance until he’d come into her life. What did he want that $100,000 a month couldn’t cover? Maybe he was tired of the monthly dole. Maybe he was tired of Maura but wanted to get his hands on as much of her money as he could before he cut himself loose.
“You’ve known since you were a kid that you wouldn’t get the first payment until you’re thirty,” JJ reminded her. At the blank look she received, she went on. “The Hamilton rule? That’s what your family called it. Because your great-
uncle Hamilton blew his millions in no time.”
After another empty moment, Maura waved one hand dismissively. “Oh yeah, that. But I’m not him. If they’d given me such a dumb name, I might have spent all the money, too, just to spite them.”
If she thought wasting her too many millions to count would negatively impact someone else and not herself, she hadn’t grown up as much as JJ had hoped. Did she even truly understand that when the money was gone, it was gone? That the family businesses had been sold, that there were no parents generating more income for her? Did she know it was even possible to spend her entire inheritance, or was the money limitless in her mind? She was less suited to being broke than anyone JJ had ever met. Also more likely to be taken advantage of.
“What do you need more money for, Maura? Maybe I could talk to Mr. Winchester.”
“Things.”
“Like clothes? Trips? You want to buy a house? A new car?”
Her petulant response reminded JJ of a commercial she saw far too much of when she was too lazy to switch channels. “It’s my money, and I want it now.”
“But what would you do with it?”
“I dunno. Put it in the bank.” Almost immediately, her face turned pink as if she realized the silliness of showing up at a bank with $50-plus million to open a simple savings account. “I would invest it.”
“How would you know what to invest in?”
She rolled her eyes. “There are people for that.”
“Where do you find them?”
“I don’t know. I’m sure there are people for that, too.”
“What if you hire someone who’s not as trustworthy as Mr. Winchester? Someone who invests badly, maybe someone who embezzles your fortune then disappears?”
“Then you’d have a real crime to investigate, and you could leave me alone.” Then she ran her hands through her hair, a dozen shades of artful blond that managed to look unique and natural and totally cool all at once. “I’m tired of being treated like a kid. I’m not ten anymore! My parents didn’t trust me, Winchester doesn’t trust me, you don’t trust me! I’m an adult who happens to have a hell of a lot of money and who also happens to want everybody who knew little Maura Evans to get the hell out of my life!”
Detective on the Hunt Page 16
