“Well,” said Connor. “Hello, detective.”
Lachlan winked at him.
Connor’s jaw dropped open. “You can’t do that.”
Lachlan laughed, leaning against the wall. “You and the gargoyle keep telling me I can’t do things, and yet—”
“Yes, yes, you’re horrible,” I told him, but I was still smiling. I turned back to Connor. “You going to keep ogling my boyfriend or what?”
“Sorry.” Connor looked at his feet. “He’s practically naked, though. I mean, why the hell is he running around unclothed like—oh.” He eyed my robe. “I’m interrupting something, aren’t I?”
“If you were interrupting, I wouldn’t have answered the door,” I said, pointing to the couch. “Sit down, tell me what’s up.”
Connor sat down. He studied his palms. “What’s up is what I said. Brian left.”
I sat down next to him. “I hate to be that person, but I did tell you this might happen.”
“But we got rid of Darrell. We scared him off that night, and I thought Brian was free of him, and Brian and I…”
“Brian and you what?” I said. “Didn’t I tell you not to get romantically entangled with him?”
“It wasn’t exactly romance,” said Connor. “It was just… you know, mutual attraction and physical comfort.”
I sighed. “You slept with him?”
Connor shrugged. “Kind of.”
Lachlan sat down on the easy chair opposite us. “Who’s Brian? He the boyfriend of the guy who broke all the lights out by the pool?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well,” said Lachlan, “maybe it’s better that he’s gone. I don’t know if I want some violent guy coming around here and giving you trouble.”
“But now he’s going to give Brian trouble,” said Connor. “And the last time he was here, his face was all messed up, and he was so hurt, and I just…” He clenched his hands into fists. “Why would he go back?”
I sat back on the couch, letting out a whoosh of air.
“You never went back to Alastair,” said Connor.
“No,” I said, “not after the time that I really left.”
“What do you mean?” said Connor.
“I had a friend try to convince me to leave him once,” I said. “I went along with it for a night or two. I even thought maybe I’d actually leave. But then Alastair came by, and I felt the mating bond, and I couldn’t resist him, so I went back home with him. Alastair made me cut that friend out of my life after that.”
“Okay,” said Connor. “You had the mating bond, but Brian doesn’t have that.”
“True,” I said.
“There’s still a bond there,” spoke up Lachlan. “I don’t know either Brian or this Darrell guy, but I know that in a relationship, even a bad one, there’s a bond. It’s not easy to walk away from someone, no matter how much it hurts you to be with them.”
“Okay, fine,” said Connor. “But he acted like he wanted to walk away. And if I hadn’t thought for sure that things were over between him and his boyfriend, I never would have slept with him.” He considered. “Well, okay, that’s not necessarily true, because I would sleep with a guy in a relationship if they had an open-door policy about it, and it was all okay. But not if the guy was crashing on my couch. I mean, Brian was practically living with me.”
“That’s why I told you not to get involved with him,” I said.
Connor laughed. “You make that sound so easy.”
“But it’s not,” said Lachlan.
Connor looked at him. “No.”
“Sometimes, despite all your best intentions to keep your hands to yourself, things happen anyway,” said Lachlan, but now he was looking at me.
I smiled at him. Then I turned back to Connor. “I’m really sorry he left. Do you want a hug?”
He eyed me, wrinkling up his nose. “What were you doing before I came in here?”
I laughed. “Okay, no hug.”
“I guess we can’t go steal Brian back from Darrell?” said Connor.
“Wouldn’t work,” said Lachlan.
“But they do that to deprogram people from cults sometimes,” said Connor. “This could kind of be the same thing.”
“Kidnapping is kidnapping,” said Lachlan. “You do something like that, you not only wouldn’t help Brian, you’d be running from an arrest.”
Connor sighed.
Running from an arrest… I furrowed my brow. “Elizabeth said something about Alastair having to go to another country. He said that to me, but how did she know that he was planning to do that?”
“He must have told her,” said Lachlan.
“When?” I said. “What if she’s lying about talking to Alastair later? What if she did talk to him after he disappeared?”
“Ooh,” said Connor. “I was just figuring how to look up cell phone records, so that I could see if Brian had been calling Darrell the whole time he was with me.” He shot a glance at Lachlan. “Is that illegal to do that?”
Lachlan laughed. “Uh, I’m suspended from the police force, so…”
“Right,” said Connor. He turned back to me. “Anyway, I could maybe hack into Elizabeth’s phone records if you want. I’ve got nothing to do right now, and I need something to take my mind off of Brian, and if Lachlan doesn’t care how legal it is…”
“Go nuts,” said Lachlan.
“Thanks,” I said. “We’d appreciate anything you find out.”
“But,” said Lachlan, “the reason that she knew about it is probably because of that phone call she had with Alastair that night, the one that supposedly sent her to her car to drive down to Sea City.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “How could I have forgotten that? She did talk to Alastair.” I looked up at Connor. “Never mind.”
“No,” said Lachlan. “If you can access the records, do it anyway. Alastair trusted his sister. They were close. If he didn’t die that night, and he called someone, it would have been her.”
* * *
I woke up the next morning to Lachlan nuzzling my ear. But I felt like I was going to vomit, so I had to push him away and go to the refrigerator for my Greek yogurt.
He stumbled out to find me leaning against the refrigerator shoveling it into my mouth. “I need protein in the morning,” I said.
“You nauseous?” he said.
I nodded.
“Sorry,” he said. He yawned and scratched under his chin, which was showing a little bit of stubble growing in. “Next time, just shove me and tell me to go get the yogurt.” He gestured to his wrists. “Debra had these bracelet things. Sea-bands or something? She swore by them.”
“Debra’s your, um, ex-wife?” I said.
“Wow, I never told you her name, huh?” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “Is it weird if I talk about her?”
“No,” I said. “But you usually don’t.”
“Yeah, usually, it just makes me feel crazy. But…” He crossed the distance between us, and wound an arm around my waist. He kissed my temple. “I don’t know. Things feel…”
“Different,” I said, looking up at him.
“Yeah.” He smiled.
I ate yogurt. “Uh, what happened to her, anyway?”
“To Debra?” said Lachlan, letting go of me.
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
He wandered away from me, becoming very interested in the sink. “She, uh, was a wreck after Hailey, and then she started fucking my partner—whose name is Steve, incidentally—and then she got pregnant—with twins, I heard—and they got married, I think, and…” He looked up at me. “I don’t really know. I kind of cut her off.”
I nodded slowly. “Did she… What was his name? Timmy, you said?”
Lachlan’s jaw twitched. “She doesn’t talk to him. He’s locked up. I think his dad keeps in touch, but she cut him off.”
“Yeah.” I ate more yogurt. “You would have to. I mean…”
&
nbsp; “She might have changed her mind after some time.” He ran his finger over the faucet. “You would, I think. He’s her kid, after all.”
I nodded again.
It was quiet. Awkward quiet, but somehow a good quiet too. I had always felt these sort of topics were off-limits before, that they might set Lachlan off. But talking about it was… good somehow.
“I mean, if it had been the other way around…” His voice was choked. “If it had been Hailey, and she had done something like…”
“But that didn’t happen.” I went to him, put a hand on his bicep.
He looked into my eyes. “No, it didn’t.” He put his hand over mine, and then let it trail over my skin to settle on my belly. “But I just don’t want you to think that there’s any kind of circumstance that would make me abandon our kid.”
I licked my lips. So, now it was ours, hmm? Good. I wanted it that way, no matter what the stupid paternity test said.
“I feel like I should say that, because I was being such an ass yesterday,” he said.
“It’s good that you said it.” I ate the last bite of yogurt. I set down the container on the counter. I pressed close to him. “I like that you said it,” I breathed.
“Not feeling nauseous anymore?” he said in a low voice.
“Mmm… it’s getting better,” I said, kissing him.
He wound an arm around my waist and crushed me close.
We kissed for a while.
When we stopped, I kept one hand linked with his. “So, I would like to just do that all morning, but…”
“You’re starving,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, I could use some blood.” He pointed at my refrigerator. “Maybe it would be cool if I kept some here.”
“I would probably drink it all,” I said. “But yes. There should be blood.”
“Just nuke it,” he said. “Like the doctor said.”
“Yes, yes, I’m doing that,” I said.
“And there’s a list of things you’re not supposed to be eating, like lunch meat and soft cheeses and sushi and—”
“I have been pregnant before, Lachlan.”
“Right,” he said. “We should get dressed and go to the Flamingo, shouldn’t we?”
“Yes,” I said.
And then we kissed some more.
Downstairs in the lobby, there was a stack of printouts waiting for us from Connor. He’d put a note on the top saying that he’d circled the calls to Alastair.
Lachlan took it from me before I had a chance to look at it. He flipped through. “She definitely talked to him after he disappeared. Look, right here.” He pointed. “And here.”
“Wow,” I peered at the piece of paper. “So, our timeline on this murder is all wrong.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Are you allowed to access my cell phone records without my permission?” said Elizabeth. She was sitting on the same couch, glaring at both of us.
“We’re not trying to submit it as evidence before a jury,” said Lachlan. He and I were both standing over her. “But we know that you talked to him two days after he disappeared. What did you two talk about?”
She glared at us. “Did you know that he had a girlfriend? I mean, there were lots of women while you were away, Penny, but there was one who was sort of a regular. She started thinking that she actually meant something to him, and when she found out that Alastair was still trying to get you back, she was furious. I bet she’s the one who killed him.”
Interestingly, I felt no emotional response whatsoever to the idea that Alastair had a girlfriend. Maybe a bit of mild annoyance that he’d been angry with me about Lachlan, but Alastair was always irrational. It was what it was.
“We didn’t know that,” said Lachlan. “And we’ll be sure to look into this girlfriend, but that wasn’t the question I asked. What did you two talk about?”
“I never did talk to the girlfriend,” said Elizabeth. “Her name was Meader. Sonia Meader. And she worked as a bartender at that Andy’s place. She used to call me, leave messages about how mad she was that Alastair was trying to get back with his hussy of an ex-wife. I think I might have even saved some voicemails—”
“Elizabeth,” said Lachlan. “Tell me about the conversations with Alastair.”
“Oh, what does it matter now?” she said. “He’s gone.”
“We are trying to figure out what happened to him,” I said.
She turned shiny eyes on me. “You don’t care what happened to him. You hated him. You were supposed to be his mate, to love him unconditionally, and you couldn’t do it. I loved him more than you did.”
“You did love him more than me,” I said. “Although I don’t really know why. He was never especially nice to you, although he did listen to you on occasion.”
Elizabeth wiped at her eyes. “When he called me after the house burned down, he mostly wanted to talk about money,” she said in a quiet voice. “He wanted me to liquidate some of his assets so that he could get out of the country.”
“He was just… leaving?” I said. After everything he’d done to me, he was leaving me behind?
“He was planning something else,” said Elizabeth, “I think he was going to try to take you with him, but… oh, maybe not, I don’t know. He seemed to hate you so much, and I hated you too, and he said things… but he wasn’t serious, of course.”
“What kind of things?” Lachlan said.
“Threats,” she said. “That he was going to… oh, cut you into tiny pieces and feed you to sharks, that kind of thing.”
Bile rose in my throat.
“He didn’t mean them,” she said. “But… he did want a boat. He was going to escape in a boat and sail far away, and he said he’d take your body and that no one would ever find you, and… He was only angry, Penny. He loved you. You were his mate. He could never have hurt you.”
“He hurt me over and over again,” I said. “Why are you blind to that?”
She was starting to cry now. Tears were streaming down her face, but she wouldn’t bother to wipe at them. “He was my brother. And he’s gone now, so stop saying such horrible things about him. Let him have peace now that he’s dead. Please. Please.”
Lachlan sighed. “Let’s just stick to the facts. Did you get these things for him? The money? The boat?”
“I was working on it,” she said. “But it wasn’t as easy as he was making it out to be, making assets liquid like that. It can’t be done at the drop of a hat. And he was angry with me. He kept yelling at me over the phone, calling me terrible names. And I would hang up on him, because whenever he got into one of his tantrums, that was all you could do with him. Just ignore him. I tried to tell you that, Penny, but you wouldn’t listen, would you? That must be why he would do it, it must be. You would yell at him and get in his face and he’d hit you just to shut you up—”
“Elizabeth,” said Lachlan tightly, his eyes flashing. “Please stop accusing Penny of being responsible for her own abuse.”
“You don’t understand,” said Elizabeth.
“You don’t understand,” said Lachlan. “You don’t talk to her that way.”
I had been about to lash out at Elizabeth myself, but I had to admit it was nice to have Lachlan take up for me instead.
Elizabeth buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “Go away, both of you. You’re horrible. Just leave.”
“So, what happened after that?” said Lachlan. “After you couldn’t get the boat for him?”
“I was getting it,” said Elizabeth. “It was just taking time. But by the time I had it, he’d stopped calling me. I called him over and over and over again, but I never could get in touch with him. I didn’t know what happened. It wasn’t until recently, when the police called me to say that he’d been killed by a slayer that I even knew what had happened to him.” She raised her face to us defiantly. “That’s all I know, I swear. So get out of my house and leave me alone.”
* * *
; “Do we cross her off the list?” I said, staring out the window as we drove back from talking to Elizabeth.
“I don’t know if we can cross anyone off,” said Lachlan. “We don’t know when he died now. We know it was after that last phone call, but we don’t know anything else. So all those alibis we collected are useless at this point.”
“Well, Richard Remington probably did see Alastair crawling out of the bay,” I said. “That seems to fit with what we know.”
“Sure, but it doesn’t mean he didn’t kill him at a later date,” said Lachlan.
“Why was he in dragon form when he was killed?” I said. “That’s what I don’t get.”
Lachlan tapped his hands on the steering wheel. “How far have you flown in dragon form?”
“I don’t know, why?”
“Well, we know that he was having trouble getting a boat. Maybe he decided he’d just—”
“Fly across the ocean?” I said.
“Or to Mexico or something,” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think a distance like that is possible. You’d get too tired. You couldn’t do it all in one go. There’s no way.”
“So, if he were trying to get into Mexico, he’d maybe drive himself down close to the border, then shift and fly over.”
“He’d have to be desperate to try something like that,” I said. “Alastair likes—liked—his creature comforts. If he went over in dragon form, he wouldn’t have his clothes, let alone his special shampoo and conditioner.”
Lachlan snorted. “Seriously? Special shampoo?”
“Oh, and various lotions and aftershaves and toothpastes and a certain kind of undershirt and—”
“Sometimes I really wish I could have killed him myself,” Lachlan muttered.
“Well, that makes two of us,” I said, sighing. “But we didn’t, and now we’ve got to prove our innocence. So, do we circle back and go over Richard and Bertram again?”
Lachlan sighed. “I have no idea. I guess we’ve got to check out that girlfriend Elizabeth was going on about.”
“Yeah.” My cell phone started ringing. I pulled it out and looked at it, but I didn’t recognize the number. But it might be someone at the hotel. I gave employees my cell in case they needed me. I answered it. “Hello?”
city of dragons 03 - fire magic Page 14
