HOT ON HIS TRAIL

by Linda Winstead Jones

  "Oh my God," Shea whispered. "Why didn't I hear about this?"

  "Only the three of us knew. Winkler was dead, and Lauren wasn't about to tell everyone that she was drunk and wrapped around my neighbor in the laundry room while I was asking the neighborhood ladies if they wanted onions on their damned burgers," he snapped.

  "But everyone knew that he'd been hitting on her and that I didn't like it," he added soberly. "They all saw me drag his sorry ass out of the house and tell him to go home and not come back unless he wanted the beating of his life. When we were where no one else could hear, I told him to keep his grubby hands off Lauren and to keep his dirty mouth shut. He left with a big grin on his face, and poor Polly followed dutifully behind." Nick locked his eyes to Shea's. "Honey, that's motive."

  "Yes it is," she whispered.

  "But I didn't kill him."

  "I know."

  He shook his head in disbelief. She seemed so sincere, so naively confident. "How do you know? How do you know I'm not just the best liar you've ever met?"

  She grinned and his gut turned over. "I have great instincts. Growing up with three older brothers will do that to a girl." Her smile faded. "I don't think you're a great liar, Nick. I'll bet you're a lousy liar. You're too straightforward to be good at it."

  "Too bad the jury didn't have your instincts," he said bitterly.

  Shea shrugged her shoulders and scribbled in her spiral notebook. "We can't worry about that now. All we can do is move forward. So, who else wanted Gary Winkler dead?"

  "Everybody," Nick whispered. "Damn near everybody."

  * * *

  She'd wanted a list of possible suspects. She just hadn't expected that the list would be this long.

  Nick looked good today, much better than he had yesterday. His eyes were lively, bright and alert, and he wasn't quite so pale, though he could definitely use a few days in the sun. He simply looked stronger. Healthier. She wasn't certain she was prepared to face a healthy Nick Taggert just yet.

  "Okay," she said calmly, "so no one liked him. Other neighbors were upset by him painting his house chartreuse and not mowing his lawn regularly."

  "And when he did mow," Nick added, "it was at the first appearance of sunlight on a Saturday or a Sunday morning, while everyone else was trying to sleep."

  "Annoying, but hardly motive for murder."

  "The media made 'annoying' work for me," he said darkly.

  Shea gave him an apologetic glance. "If he'd hit on Lauren, he'd hit on other women. You said he had a reputation as a ladies' man. Any names?"

  "Just gossip. A woman where he worked quit after their affair got ugly, I hear."

  "A name?"

  Nick shook his head. "Pearl, Ruby … something like that. I can't remember."

  "Did anyone check this woman out?"

  "I don't know. I told Norman about it, but he said the cops weren't exactly interested."

  "They already had you," she said angrily.

  "Exactly."

  She leaned back in her chair and propped her bare feet on Aunt Irene's old oak table. This task she'd set for herself was much easier when she was not looking directly at Nick. With his blue eyes and his nice mouth and that snug black T-shirt he wore, she kept getting distracted. "Anyone else?"

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Nick shake his head. "He was a shark at work. He bragged once about taking some poor schmuck's software idea and tweaking it a little and calling it his own."

  A woman named after a jewel, a computer nerd, an annoyed neighbor, any number of jealous husbands… "What about Lauren?"

  "What?" Nick asked, snapping his head up.

  Shea made herself look him in the eye, trying to gauge his reaction. "Would she kill Gary and plant the evidence to convict you?"

  "No," Nick said quickly, confirming Shea's suspicion that he was still in love with the woman who had fallen for Gary Winkler's charms in the laundry room.

  Shea lowered her eyes and leaned back to leaf through her pages of notes, trying to calm the furious pounding of her heart. Lauren had been faithless and Nick still loved her. He defended her, when he should be latching on to any and all possible suspects.

  "Okay," she said calmly. "The key to the conviction has to be the blood and green paint that was found in your kitchen." Not much, just a drop of each. No fingerprints had been found directly on the damning evidence of Gary Winkler's blood and a touch of bright green paint, though. That in itself should have raised a red flag for the investigators. "Someone must've deliberately placed it there. Since Winkler was killed in the middle of the night, let's assume it was planted there the next day. Who was in your house?"

  Nick shook his head. "I've been through this a thousand times. Polly Winkler came by early to collect a dish she'd left the night before. That was just a half hour or so before she discovered the body in her backyard. Norman came by, to see if I wanted to go golfing. A fourth had backed out at the last minute. I declined."

  "Norman Burgess, your lawyer?"

  "My lawyer, my neighbor and my friend," Nick snapped defensively.

  "Anyone else?" Shea asked calmly.

  "Lillian Casson, the Winklers' next-door neighbor, came by to collect a dish as well, and after the murder was discovered, two other neighbors stopped by. Tom Blackstone and Carter Able."

  "Any one of them could've taken a Taggert Construction T-shirt from the laundry room the night before and dropped it in the storm drain with the baseball bat, then planted the blood and paint that next morning."

  Nick shook his head. "I can't believe any one of them could be so cold-blooded."

  Shea leaned forward, watching him for reaction. "Where was Lauren?"

  He fixed his intense blue eyes on hers and her heart hitched. "She was there. I let her spend the night on the couch, since she was too damn drunk to drive home."

  "Nick," Shea said, using her most sensible voice. "One of these people killed Winkler and pinned it on you."

  "I just can't believe—"

  "Believe it," she interrupted. Personally, her money was on Lauren. That rush of indignant anger wasn't fueled by jealousy, was it? Of course not!

  "Do you still love her?" she asked softly.

  Nick's eyes hardened. "No."

  "But you did, once?"

  He hesitated. "I suppose."

  "You were going to ask her to marry you," she said defensively. "You must've loved her."

  He took his eyes from her face and stared out the window. She'd caught him doing that several times this afternoon, when he didn't want to answer her probing questions.

  "I thought she wanted the same things I did," he said softly. He shrugged his shoulders as if he didn't care. "I was wrong."

  "What do you want?" He didn't answer right away so she added, "I'd really like to know."

  He continued to stare out the window, and for a long moment Shea though he wasn't going to answer. "A house," he said in a low voice. "Nothing fancy, but something comfortable and safe, with a swing on the front porch and a swing set and a fort out back for the kids."

  Her heart hitched. "Kids?"

  "At least four." He pinned his eyes on her again. "You had that, didn't you? Two parents, three brothers, a house that was warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The white house with the picket fence and a nice green lawn and laughter coming from behind solid doors that kept out everything ugly and mean."

  "Yes," she whispered.

  "I didn't," he said. "So I thought I could manufacture that life for myself and a wife and a few kids. I came close." He shut himself off with that statement. Turned off his emotions like he'd flipped a switch that shut everything down. "But I guess it wasn't meant to be."

  "When this is over you can—"

  "Start all over?" he snapped. "I don't think so."

  "It's not too late," she said, closing the cover of her notebook. "You're still young."

  He laughed darkly. "Thirty-two never felt so old. It's not the time, weathergirl, it's the wil
l. I don't have it anymore."

  "You'll have it again," she said optimistically, wanting that warm, normal life for Nick. After all he'd been through, he deserved it. "You'll see. Once all this is behind you, the will and the drive and the desire will come back."

  Nick pinned cold eyes on her. "You'd best not be talking about desire around me, weathergirl. I'm not completely disabled."

  He tried to annoy her by calling her "weathergirl," tried to scare her by acting sinister, by glaring at her with a threatening and seductive gleam in his blue eyes.

  But she'd been right. Nick Taggert was a terrible liar. He did like her, he did want her—but he would never hurt her.

  "I think it's time for you to get to bed," she said, rising to her feet.

  He lifted his finely shaped dark eyebrows.

  "Don't give me that, Taggert," she said roughly. "You're not so tough."

  "I'm not," he said as she helped him to his feet.

  "You made it down the stairs on your own, once," she said, wrapping her arm around his waist and heading for the stairs. He leaned against her, warm and snug and familiar, using her for support but not weighing her down. It had become a rather comfortable ritual, the way their arms snaked around the other's waist, the way they stepped in tandem. "When you can make it up on your own, then I might start to worry."

  He grumbled.

  "Until then," she said, "save your growls and glares. You don't scare me."

  "You have no common sense at all," he grumbled.

  "Please, if I need to hear that I'll call Dean."

  Nick smiled as they began to make their way slowly up the stairs. "You're tough, weathergirl."

  "Call me 'weathergirl' again and I'll bloody your nose. Again."

  His grin, a reluctant smile on a beard-roughened face, seemed real enough. "Fair enough."

  "And Nick," she said, softly and with a new seriousness. "Don't give up on your dreams. What you want is very nice. Very warm and real. You'll have it, one day."

  He didn't argue with her, but he didn't agree, either.

  "What about you?" he asked as they slowly climbed the stairs. "What do you want?"

  "Right now career comes first," she said, nodding her head for emphasis.

  "What about kids? A husband?"

  "I plan to have both, one day, but not in that order," she teased.

  "One day," he said softly.

  "I can't think about that now," she answered seriously. It was too much. She knew women who tried to have it all, but it never worked. Something suffered. The career. The family. The marriage. "I mean, I see other people with kids and they seem very happy, but I can't imagine myself taking that route." Not now, maybe not ever.

  "You'd make a great mother." Nick leaned into her as they reached the top of the stairs.

  Her heart hitched. "And why would you say that?"

  "You're taking very good care of me, and you don't take any crap from anybody." There was a touch of teasing in his voice again. "Every boy should have a mother who can tend a bloody wound without throwing up, and then send him to bed with no supper when he misbehaves."

  No one had ever told her she'd make a great mother before. Surprisingly, she took it as a grand compliment. And then Nick grinned down at her, and her heart nearly pounded through her chest.

  * * *

  Luther leaned back in his chair and glanced up at the three men who hovered over his desk. He didn't need this, not today. The one with the ponytail was an ex-cop, a P.I. now. The one in the crisp gray suit was a Fed. The other one was a damned cowboy. They were Shea Sinclair's brothers, and they were all very angry.

  "Anything I can do to help find Shea, I will," he said. "I've offered my assistance to the FBI, but they don't seem to want any help." Since Shea's brother was a federal agent and the kidnapping had actually taken place on camera, the FBI had eagerly jumped all over it. The case was too high-profile to allow a local to participate. He'd been rudely brushed off. "But if I can help you guys, just say the word."

  "You called her Shea," the cowboy said, narrowing one eye. "Do you know her?"

  Luther recalled their one disastrous date, set up by the ever hopeful Grace Madigan. "She's a friend of a friend."

  "I want to see everything you've got on Taggert and the Winkler murder," the P.I. demanded.

  "It wasn't my case," Luther explained, reaching for a peppermint in the candy dish by the phone. "I'm afraid I don't know much."

  "Whose case was it?" the Fed asked in a deceptively low voice.

  "Daniels's," Luther said as he unwrapped the peppermint. "He's out sick today." The coward. His case had blown up in his face, a killer had kidnapped Shea on camera and Daniels decides to stay home pretending to have a tummy ache.

  "He's gonna be sick if he doesn't get his ass down here," the cowboy grumbled.

  "Let me give him a call," Luther said calmly, popping the candy into his mouth and reaching for the phone.

  Daniels answered on the third ring, sounding tired and sleepy, but not exactly deathly ill.

  "Shea Sinclair's brothers are here looking for the Taggert file," Luther said, his eyes on the Fed.

  Daniels's response was obscene.

  "One of them is a Deputy U.S. Marshal," Luther added. "I think he'd like to discuss the case with you."

  Daniels was quiet for a moment, then he hemmed and hawed. All the while, Luther watched while Shea's brothers got stonier and more eagle-eyed. A vein in the Fed's temple bulged. The P.I. flexed his fists. The cowboy cracked his knuckles.

  "Just give him the folder," Daniels finally said. "It's in my bottom right-hand drawer."

  Luther was a little surprised Daniels folded so quickly, but he agreed and hung up the phone.

  "You're in luck," he said as he led the Sinclair brothers across the room to a messy, folder-laden desk. "Daniels is actually willing to share."

  "He can't get his sorry ass down here?" one of the brothers muttered behind him. Luther's money was on the cowboy.

  Luther retrieved a slim folder from the bottom drawer and handed it over to the Fed. "It's all yours."

  The man in the gray suit practically sneered. "This is it?" He opened the manila folder and flipped through. "This is all he's got?"

  Daniels was a lazy cop, always taking the easy way out. Sinclair was right: that folder should've been three times as thick. Would've been, if Daniels had done a decent job of investigating the crime.

  "This Daniels might've been the primary, but he must've worked with a partner, right?" the P.I. asked angrily.

  "He had a partner at the time," Luther said, searching his memory. "But Fred was about to retire, and I don't think he spent much time on this case."

  "Where is this Fred?" the cowboy asked through clenched teeth.

  "Arizona, I think."

  Together the brothers glanced through the thin file. The scant information there did not improve their moods.

  "You know," Luther said, sucking on his peppermint, "Daniels probably kept a lot of the information on the case in his head." He tapped his own temple as he returned to his desk. "You should talk to him directly." He sat down, grabbed a notepad and scribbled down Daniels's address.

  He ripped the piece of paper out of the notebook and handed it to the closest Sinclair—the P.I. with the ponytail. "I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you fellas dropped by to discuss the case."

  As the Sinclair brothers left, Luther experienced a rush of satisfaction the likes of which he hadn't felt in a very long time. He even smiled as the door closed behind the cowboy.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  It was time to call Mark again, but she was getting nervous about the prospect. Shea didn't think anyone would be monitoring her cameraman's phone calls, but anything was possible.

  She didn't dare call anyone else, not yet. Her parents had caller ID, and would be no help at all in any case. Grace had caller ID, too, darn it, and her husband, an ex-cop, would surely take whatever useful
information he gathered about her whereabouts to the police. Shea and Mark worked together well, but they didn't socialize and no one would suspect that he'd be the one she'd call, given the opportunity. Except Boone, she thought with a grimace, and Grace, since she'd already passed along a message through Mark.

  Life had been much simpler before caller ID, Shea thought as she reached for the yellow phone on the kitchen wall.

  It was early morning, not yet six, and she woke Mark up. He grumbled a groggy hello into the telephone.

  "Mark?" she said softly.

  "Shea!" He was instantly awake, and through the phone lines she heard his bed creak as he shot up. "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," she said calmly. "Do you have a paper and pencil?"

  She waited while he fetched what he needed, tapping her bare toes nervously on the kitchen floor.

  When Mark was back on the line, she gave him the names of her suspects, placing Lauren at the top of the list and including the co-worker who'd had an affair with Winkler, Pearl or Ruby or whatever, and everyone who had stopped by Nick's house the day after the murder. One of them had planted the evidence.

  "Give this information to Boone and to Grace." Shea bit her bottom lip. "And I can't call you anymore," she added softly.

  "Why not?"

  "Boone's going to get suspicious after this second phone call. Grace, too. They'll probably try to tap your phone. It wouldn't be legal, but that won't stop either one of them."

  "You need to be able to call someone, Shea," Mark barked. "Dammit, we want to know you're all right! I'll go nuts if you just … disappear."

  Shea smiled. "He's not going to hurt me, I swear."

  "Not good enough," Mark grumbled.

  "I don't know what else to do."

  "I do," Mark said, his voice brighter than before. "I have a friend who lives next door. No caller ID, and no possible reason for anyone to tap his phone. Call me there in two days. I should have something by then. Seven o'clock in the evening, after I get home from work." He rattled off the number, and Shea scribbled it down, relieved to have a point of contact.