by Cassie Miles
“The truth,” Adam repeated. “You were trying to help out a friend.”
As she slammed the drawer, frustration crashed around her. She glared across the office at Adam who leaned casually against the door frame. He was always calm and controlled, always respectful of authority. How could he possibly understand what it was like to be an outsider? To be unjustly accused?
She muttered, “I bet you’re sorry that you agreed to be my partner.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“When I offered to be your partner, that meant in good times and in bad. Just because we’ve hit a rough patch doesn’t mean I’ll desert you.”
“This is one of those Marine Corps rules for living, isn’t it? Like, never leave a man behind?”
A slow smile curved his mouth. “I’m an honorable man. Always have been. Always will be.”
Consistency was Adam’s life. And yet…he was different. She cocked her head, studying him curiously and enjoying her study. He’d never looked so appealing to her. There was something very masculine and sexy about the way he was honorably supporting her.
A strange warmth coiled through her—a sensual heat that had nothing to do with her anger at Berringer. “Does your sense of honor mean you’ll stick with me while I continue to investigate?”
“I can’t change your mind, so I guess I’m stuck.” He pushed away from the wall. “Let’s take a look at the crime scene.”
As she left the office, she brushed against him, and the inadvertent physical contact fanned the flames that were growing inside her. It seemed impossible that she’d feel this way about Adam. For the past seven years, they’d been together constantly. They were friends. This ridiculous attraction had to stop!
As she entered the center area of Pierce’s offices, a chill rose up inside her, throwing a bucket of ice water on her mood. Last night, she’d been terrified in this room. She remembered the shadows, the miasma of danger.
Unlike last night, there was enough daylight from the front window that this space wasn’t completely in the dark. She easily found the light switch that had been invisible last night and turned on the overheads, illuminating the conference table and the wall of bridal photos. “Pierce’s office space is separated into three parts. The plain back offices. The front reception area. And this room is where he and the brides do their actual planning.”
As Adam confronted the display of bridal froufrou, he took a backward step, as though he’d been shoved in the chest. He stared at the photo display in shock.
“Are you scared?” she teased.
“Of course not.”
But there was no mistaking his discomfort. His attitude amused her. This was a man who could pore over crime-scene photos, a man who liked a front row seat at autopsies. But show him a bit of lace and he became a quivering mass of raw nerve endings. “You don’t like weddings, do you?”
“It’s not my thing.”
“Why? Because you don’t like all the fuss? Because it’s so girly?”
“Yeah. Maybe. I don’t know.” He was definitely flustered. “I don’t like lingerie shops, either.”
“But you like seeing women in lingerie.”
“I appreciate the final result, but I don’t much care for knowing what went into it. Lace. Ruffles. Don’t like it.” He turned his back on the photo gallery. “Tell me what this room was like last night.”
“Dark.”
“I need details about exactly what happened. Walk me through it.”
Though she hated to let him off the hook on his lingerie phobia, she nodded. She and Adam had done this kind of exercise before when they were trying to put together evidence. “Like I said, it was dark. I was looking for Pierce, calling his name. I barely glanced in this room. It’s possible that someone was hiding here. Maybe behind the chairs.”
“Concentrate, Molly. Did you hear anything? Did you sense movement?”
“I don’t think so.”
When she came around the partition into the front office, her gaze went immediately to the splotch of dried blood on the beige carpet. The stain was huge. My God, he’d lost so much blood. She swallowed hard and said, “Pierce was facedown. The knife handle stuck straight up in the center of his back.”
She remembered the shock of seeing him—a jolt that knocked the air from her lungs. Initially, she hadn’t been afraid. Her only thought was to help her friend.
“What about the lights?” Adam asked.
“Only the lamp on the desk was lit.” She pointed. “And there was a glow from outside the windows, so the outdoor lights must have been on.”
“And you tried the switch by the door,” Adam said.
“It didn’t work. Not until later, when all the lights burst on in a blinding flash.”
“Okay,” Adam said. “I think we can assume that the person who attacked Pierce was playing with the breaker box.”
“He was here,” Molly said. “When I came in the back door, he must have still been here.”
“Why didn’t he leave?”
“The dead bolt on the front door was fastened, so he couldn’t get out that way. He must have darkened the lights so I wouldn’t see him.”
“You were lucky,” Adam said. “He could have come after you.”
Her gaze returned to the obscene rust-colored stain on the carpet, and a shiver of apprehension went through her. Last night, she’d come closer than she thought to mortal danger.
“Another possibility,” Adam said. “The attacker turned the lights off earlier so Pierce wouldn’t know his identity.”
“His or hers,” Molly said, thinking of Gloria.
“That would mean the assailant was someone he knew.”
“Of course, it was. That’s the really awful thing about this. Somebody who knows Pierce is behind the magpie thefts and the backstabbing.”
She recalled their three main suspects: Gloria, Denny Devlin and the photographer, Ronald Atchison. “Here’s the part I don’t understand. If the reason Pierce was stabbed was to cover up the magpie thefts, why didn’t the attacker come after me? I’m the investigator.”
“But you’re undercover.”
He circled the room, checking the position of the sofa and the coffee table. He reached down to rub away a trace of powder left behind by the forensic crew when they dusted for fingerprints.
“What are you looking for?”
“I want to know what happened here.” He stepped cautiously around the bloodstain. “Describe the position of the body. Which way was Pierce lying?”
“His head was pointed toward the door.”
“Which means the assailant came from the rear offices. He or she hit Pierce on the back of the head and he fell.”
“That seems obvious,” she said.
“Why was Pierce walking toward the door?”
“To lock up,” she suggested.
“But the dead bolt was already fastened, and you found the keys in his pocket.”
She squinted, trying to remember the scene. The lights in the office were out. The front dead bolt was locked. Why would Pierce be headed toward the door? “Maybe he was going across the street to get a cappuccino.”
“But he was waiting for you to arrive.”
“So he wouldn’t have left,” she said.
Adam hunkered down to study the carpet, and Molly did the same. From past experience with crime-scene photos, she knew they were looking for blood spatters that would indicate position and movement. Apart from her own bootprints, dragging blood smears across the floor, the stain was neatly contained in one place.
She drew a conclusion. “He didn’t move after he was attacked.”
“And I doubt he was in motion before the attack. There would have been a wider spatter.”
“So he was just standing here. In the semidarkness.”
“Right.”
She ran her hand across the carpet fibers. “This is the first time I’ve analyzed an
actual crime scene. Usually, when we do this kind of thing, we’re in the office.”
“Tell me what you think happened.”
“Pierce was standing here. Not moving. I’d guess he was talking to someone who stood there.” She pointed toward the door. “Someone else came up behind him and whacked him on the head. Then stabbed him.”
Adam nodded. “There were two of them.”
“That’s the way it went down,” she said with absolute certainty. Pierce had been engaged in a conversation, not expecting an attack. That explained why he didn’t fight back. It made so much more sense than someone sneaking up on him. Pierce was an athletic guy with sharp reflexes. He would have fought back…unless he’d been taken completely off guard.
But whom had he been talking to? And why didn’t he give the name to the police?
She stood slowly. Why didn’t Pierce tell her about the conversation? “He didn’t tell us everything. He lied to me, Adam.”
“People do that.”
But Pierce was her friend. They had a shared history. Maybe he didn’t follow a strict code of honor like Adam, but Pierce was a decent guy. Loyal to the core. When everybody else abandoned Denny Devlin, Pierce stuck by him. “He must have had a good reason for lying to me.”
“He could be protecting someone,” Adam said.
“A person who tried to kill him? Who stabbed him in the back? He’d have to be crazy.”
“Or caught in the grip of strong emotion. Like hate. Greed. Revenge. Or even love.”
Gloria!
Chapter Seven
In spite of Adam’s insistence that they needed to return to Golden immediately to pick up his niece from the baby-sitter, Molly couldn’t pass up this opportunity to introduce him to Gloria before they left town. She went to the front door of Pierce’s office and opened it. “While we’re here, we’ve got to visit Gloria. Her shop is right next door.”
“The bridal boutique?” He cringed. No doubt he was imagining himself being smothered in voile and ribbons. “No way. We don’t have time to go there.”
“But she’s my number one suspect.” Molly was struck with a particularly brilliant idea. “We should do the good cop/bad cop thing on Gloria. But I get to be the bad cop and maybe I should smack her around a bit.”
“And blow your cover?”
“Just because I’m an undercover bride, it doesn’t mean I’m a sissy.”
“Hell, no,” he muttered. “Tell me why you suddenly zoomed in on Gloria as your number one suspect.”
“If Pierce lied to me to protect someone, it’s got to be her. Poor, misguided Pierce once loved that nasty woman enough to marry her.”
“But he divorced her,” Adam said.
“Which doesn’t mean he stopped loving her.” She shuddered at the thought of her friend Pierce in the manicured clutches of Gloria the Grotesque. “Or maybe it’s not love, but business.”
“Explain.”
“Who knows what happened in the divorce? She might have some kind of leverage over him. Maybe he’s protecting her so she won’t destroy his business.”
“We’ll see her,” Adam said. “Five minutes at the bridal boutique. If we’re going to be on time to pick up Amelia, I should allow for rush hour traffic.”
“Not a problem.” As they exited onto the street, Molly pulled out her cell phone to call the baby-sitter, a sweet-faced single mom with a daughter who was the same age as Amelia. “I’ll tell the sitter we might be a little late.”
It was only a few paces along the sidewalk to the bridal boutique. Still on the phone, Molly pushed open the door and swept inside with Adam following close behind. Gloria—dressed in a sleek, oatmeal-colored jersey dress that emphasized her greyhound body—stood beside the window display talking to a short man with a gray goatee. She didn’t look happy to see them.
While Adam introduced himself, Molly completed her phone call. The sitter was okay with them being late.
Clicking the cell phone closed, Molly faced Pierce’s ex-wife. “Sorry,” she said. “I was talking to our baby-sitter.”
Gloria raised an eyebrow as she glanced first at Adam, then at Molly. “You two have a child?”
“Us?” This was worse than having people assume Adam was her fiancé. “A child? No.”
“My niece,” Adam explained. “I work with Molly. You might even say we’re partners.”
“How entertaining for you, Adam.” Gloria’s lips thinned in a sneering smile, then her gaze focused on Molly again. “I see you have Pierce’s appointment book.”
“I visited him at the hospital, and he asked me to take care of the details for Heidi’s wedding this weekend.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Gloria said. “You know nothing about wedding protocol. Give me the book.”
Molly yanked it away from her. “I’m handling this. It’s the least I can do for Pierce. He almost died.”
“I know.” Gloria looked down. Was she struck by a grief? Or covering her lack of emotion? “I spoke to the hospital. He’s expected to recover.”
“But he won’t be able to work the wedding this weekend,” Molly said. “And I’ll take care of his business in the meantime.”
The man with the goatee stepped forward. “You’re in charge?”
“Yes,” Molly said. “And you are?”
“I am Lucien Smythe.” He stuck out his chest and lifted his chin. He was the very picture of dignity and pride. “I am the proprietor and owner of Lucien Smythe Jewelry.”
Since Molly assumed his connection to the wedding biz was engagement rings and wedding bands, she made sure he could see the flash of her diamonds. “Pleased to meet you.”
“A lovely ring,” he said. “May I take a closer look?”
Molly placed her hand in his. Though he wasn’t a tall man, his fingers were long and elegant. They were artistic hands, and his touch was smooth as ivory. When he finished his appraisal of the engagement ring that had belonged to Adam’s mother, he gazed up at her and smiled kindly. “These are good diamonds of fine clarity.”
“They are?” Gloria sounded surprised.
“That’s right,” Molly snapped. “I didn’t get my engagement ring from a Cracker Jack box.”
“Very fine,” Lucien said.
“My fiancé,” Molly said, “has excellent taste.”
“The value of this ring is more than the stones,” the jeweler said. “The style is forty-five to fifty years old. May I venture a guess?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I see the love in your eyes,” he said.
“You do?”
“And your fiancé must love you very much. This ring belonged to his mother. Therefore, it is priceless.”
His sincerity touched her. She instinctively liked this artistic little man, and she felt creepy about lying to him, pretending to be engaged. “Thank you, Lucien.”
“Now we must speak of business,” he said. “I had arranged with Pierce to loan some of my antique jewelry for the wedding this weekend. After the attack on him last night, I am concerned about security.”
“Which is why he came to me,” Gloria said. “I assured him there was no problem with the loan of the jewels.”
Adam stepped forward. “How much is this jewelry worth?”
“Approximately eight hundred thousand dollars,” Lucien said.
“What are your usual security measures?”
“I personally accompany all loaned jewelry. I attend the ceremony and the reception.” He pulled aside the lapel of his jacket, revealing a shoulder holster. “And I am always armed.”
Molly had no doubt that this small, neat man with the elegant hands wouldn’t hesitate to shoot a thief. “Would you be more comfortable if I arranged for two or three more armed security guards?”
“It’s a wedding,” Gloria snapped. “We can’t have policemen in uniforms—”
“They’ll be in tuxedos,” Molly said. Through CCC, she was in contact with several volunteers, mostly retired military, who enjoye
d doing security work and were very good at it. “Don’t worry. These gentlemen are former officers in the military. One of them was a Navy SEAL.”
“Like Jesse Ventura,” Gloria said coldly. “That’s not acceptable. May I remind you that this reception is at the Brown Palace Hotel. Very posh. Very A-list. We can’t have thugs bumbling around.”
Adam took a step forward. “Did you say thugs?”
Lucien stood beside him. He glared at Gloria. “I was in the Navy.”
“My dear gentlemen, you misunderstand.” Gloria backed down gracefully. “I never meant to imply any negative criticism of our brave military personnel.”
When Lucien reached into his inner jacket pocket, Molly hoped he was pulling his pistol to shoot Gloria in the foot.
No such luck. He opened an engraved gold case and took out his business card which he handed to Molly. “I would be delighted to have your thugs as security guards for my jewelry. Please arrange for them to meet me at my shop before the wedding.”
He turned on his heel and left the boutique.
As soon as he was gone, Gloria pounced. “Why are you here, Molly? Did you want to try on another gown?”
Molly really wanted to play the “bad cop.” She really wished she could ask the hard questions that would make Gloria squirm. But she wasn’t sure of what those questions were.
She glanced over at Adam who was eyeballing the wedding gowns suspiciously. If one of these dresses made a false move, he would undoubtedly hack it to death with his black belt in karate moves.
“My own wedding plans,” Molly said, “will be put on hold until Pierce is well. I came here to give you an update on his condition.”
“I spoke to the hospital,” she said.
“But I spoke directly to him. Face-to-face.”
Though Molly watched Gloria carefully for a guilty reaction, Pierce’s ex-wife was utterly stoic. Not a single hair in her sleek black bob moved. “What did he say?”
“He was very weak.”
“And?” Gloria lifted her chin. “Does he have any idea who did this terrible thing?”
“He didn’t see his attacker,” Molly said. “At least, he doesn’t remember seeing his attacker. That’s a common reaction. People who have been in a traumatic event sometimes don’t remember what happened. Then, all of a sudden, their memory comes back.”
