“Good point,” Sam said.
“You want to take a break?” she asked him. “Maybe go check on Ash or join the search for Winston—”
“No,” he told her. “I’m with you.”
“It’s important,” she told him, “in an interview setting like this, to allow the person to talk, without feeling threatened.”
“Got it,” Sam said. “Hate it, but got it.”
“We ready?” Jules asked, and the next person—Douglas Forsythe, a volunteer and big donor—was ushered in.
He was around Gene’s age, or maybe even a little older, with a receding hairline and a serious dash of salt at his temples.
Despite that and his nerdy glasses, he was a good-looking son of a bitch, and a complete contrast to both Gene and Ron in that he moved with the absolute self-assurance of the ridiculously wealthy. He was actually wearing a bow tie and it didn’t seem out of place around his neck. The rest of his clothes were what Jules and Alyssa would call shabby rich. And if they asked, Doug would no doubt tell them that the tweed jacket he was wearing was the very one he’d gotten back at Yale, when he was the captain of the rowing team.
Like Gene, Douglas, too, still lived with his parents—although he made sure Alyssa and Jules knew that he’d returned to his childhood home to help care for them in “these, their twilight years.” His father had Alzheimer’s, and his mother, although still chipper—his word, too—struggled to get around, even with the walker he’d bought her.
Maria had described him as long-winded. Jenn had been less kind, calling him pompous and opinionated.
Whatever he was, it was clear that the man loved to hear himself talk.
Yes, he knew Maggie. In fact, they’d dated once while they were both in college and home for the holidays. It was years ago, back before she got kicked out of Vassar. She was into drugs at the time, and he was and had always been on the straight and narrow. Although he was quick to reassure them that he didn’t believe her death was drug-related. She’d changed a great deal in the past few years, and had been a valuable member of the election campaign, fully clean and sober.
She didn’t seem to remember him, and he’d never bothered to remind her, since the evening had been embarrassing. And of course, he was only bringing this up now for the sake of full disclosure. And god forbid she kept a diary that mentioned him by name, ha ha ha.
Yada, yada, yada, he talked and talked and talked. No, he was unfamiliar with Troubleshooters Incorporated, although he was on their website just this morning. His mother—of all people—had recognized the name both of the company and of Alyssa Locke. Her only vice was that she was a tabloid reader. She’d told him all about Alyssa’s heroism in saving the life of the movie star that Jules was … somewhat flamboyantly connected to.
It was all very frightening, although Mother found it thrilling, but was it possible that he and his parents were in danger, too? Not that he wouldn’t leap to help if Maria needed him, but he’d been leery enough to ask a friend to come and stay with his folks while he was out this afternoon. Their townhouse had a security system, of course. And his father hadn’t been a Republican his entire life for nothing. He had a hunting rifle over the fireplace in the back parlor.
Douglas’s secret was that he hadn’t told Mother and Dad that the candidate he’d convinced them to support—Maria—was a left-leaning Independent. If they saw the need to speak to either of them, perhaps to verify that he was indeed home with them at the time of poor Maggie’s murder, would they do him a favor and leave that little detail out?
But then it turned out that he had another secret. His mother was a pack rat, and he was attempting to clean out sixty-five years of Wonderbread bags and cat-food tins, by carrying bagloads here, to the office dumpster. If he tried to put them out with the trash, Mother would see and raise a stink. This way, she would never know.
But the point of this was that he had brought several bags to the dumpster yesterday morning, and while there, he’d been startled almost out of his wits by that homeless man who often hung about.
Winston was at the dumpster on Saturday morning?
He was, Douglas told them. The man was limping, as if he’d recently hurt himself. He’d seen him several days earlier, and he wasn’t. Limping. Despite the limp, he ran away as if he were afraid of Douglas.
He’d followed the homeless man—but not entirely because he was being a good Samaritan, he had to confess. In fact, he followed him more out of wariness that the fellow was up to no good. But by the time he followed him out of the alley and down to the side street, he was gone. He’d vanished, as if he’d hopped into a cab. Which was ridiculous, of course.
It was then that Sam stood up. “Show me.”
Douglas was startled. “My, goodness, I’d forgotten you were sitting back there.”
“Show me where you saw him, and where he ran,” Sam said. “Right now. Let’s go down to the dumpster.”
Douglas looked from Sam to Alyssa, who stood up, too. “We’ll all go,” she said with a reassuring smile.
Dan forced himself to sit on the very end of Jenn’s sofa.
He’d gotten up from a nap and taken a shower, opening the curtain to find her digging through her medicine cabinet, looking for a bottle of pills. She’d found them and celebrated with a brief but heartfelt version of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” He’d pressed, and she finally admitted that she was prone to bladder infections—particularly post-sex, after a long period of celibacy.
But these pills would take care of the problem in no time.
Still, it had given him a solid case of the guilts because he hadn’t exactly been gentle with her. He must’ve looked stricken, which he had to remember to do more often because she’d kissed him and reassured him that it absolutely wasn’t his fault. And then she pulled him back to bed and proceeded to give him the hummer of the century. Which was saying something because he’d had some extremely talented women go down on him.
And maybe it was her inexperience that made it so rockin’ great—the way she’d asked him to tell her what to do; asking what he liked, what felt good. Because not only did she ask, she also listened. The end result was her giving him head that was mind-blowing, and made even more so by the fact that she kept him laughing the entire time.
Okay, not the entire time, but damn close.
But now she was done with her shower, coming out of the bathroom with a cloud of steam, wrapped in a towel, hair slicked back from her face.
She smiled at him, and the sight of that dimple in her cheek made his chest feel tight, which was stupid because he didn’t do love. Not post-Sophia, anyway.
He liked Jenn, though. A lot.
That was what it was—it had been awhile since he’d been with a woman that he’d genuinely liked. His last two girlfriends had been all about the physical attraction, and as hard as he’d tried, neither had lasted even a week—thank Jesus for volunteer assignments.
“You put the sofa back together,” Jenn stated the obvious as she opened her closet and got out some clothes.
“Yeah,” Dan said. “I wanted to make sure you didn’t ravish me again. You animal.”
She laughed even as she saw right through his lame attempt at a joke.
“The medicine works fast,” she reassured him. “I’m fine. It’s not your fault. And it’s not contagious—”
“God,” he said, “no, I know.” He’d used her laptop to google bladder infections while she was in the shower, but not because he thought it was contagious. He gestured now to the screen, which still held a list of facts from WebMD. “Did you know that it’s called honeymoon cystitis? It’s not just from making love, it’s from making love with too much frequency, which means it is my fault.”
She didn’t even glance at the computer. She just sat down next to him on the couch, leaned forward and kissed him. “Do you hear me complaining?”
He smiled into her eyes, loving that she was comfortable enough to sit there with him, wearing nothing b
ut that towel. Of course, he had to sit on his hands to keep himself from peeling it off of her. “No, but the website said the condition was pretty uncomfortable.”
“I caught it early enough,” she told him. “So it’s not that bad. I’ve already taken the first pill—which works pretty quickly. Until then, it’ll help if I drink a lot of water. And cranberry juice.”
“Yeah, I read that, too,” he said. “But I checked your cabinets. You don’t have any cranberry juice.”
“So we’ll go get some,” Jenn told him. “It’s not like I can’t walk.” She kissed him again, and he found himself closing his eyes and enjoying the softness of her mouth. But then she pulled back to say, “The I-can’t-walk sex doesn’t happen at least until Day Ten, right?”
Dan laughed as he looked into her dancing eyes. “Baby, with you, I’m not sure. I may not be able to walk tomorrow.” But he made himself get up and as he pulled on his T-shirt, he told her, “I’ll run down to the bodega and get some cranberry juice while you get dressed.” He paused. “I mean, if you want to get dressed. If you don’t, I’m cool with that, too.”
“Actually,” she said, and her inflection and the way she shifted on the couch—sitting up and keeping her towel from falling off, and then holding it there, in place—set his girlfriend drama-meter twanging. Not that Jenn was big with the high drama, or with any drama at all. In fact, she was remarkably drama-free. “I was wondering if you, um, wanted to talk about what happened last night. You know. With Izzy.”
He was silent, and she added, “It’s just, it took a nap plus, well, plus, to make you seem like yourself again. Except, I don’t really know you that well, so maybe that was Dan and this is just an act—” She broke off, laughing and rolling her eyes. “Okay so that was a preview of what I’m going to say. Feel free to pretend to go to the store and then keep running. Or you can tell me that it’s none of my business, except I have a confession. It’s been bothering me that I haven’t told you already, but Sam Starrett told me a little bit more about what happened in Afghanistan. …”
Dan turned away, he couldn’t stop his reaction, and she quickly added, “He approached me. He said that he thought I should know, and I disagree. If you want me to know something, then you’ll tell me, but… I just wanted to make sure you knew that if you want to talk, I’m happy to listen. I know this is just a game we’re playing here. I know it’s not real. I’m fully cognizant of the fact that it’s not going to last beyond our end date, and I’m not advocating that it should. I’m not. I’m just saying that Maria and I used to play Monopoly with her brothers and there were games that lasted longer than two weeks and … My point is that even though this is short-term, it doesn’t have to be just great sex and a good time. If you want to talk to me, about anything, it won’t go any further—I promise you that.”
“I blacked out again last night.” The words came out of him in a rush, like a helium balloon no longer tethered to the ground. But saying it aloud didn’t bring relief. It brought shame and fear and a terrible, overwhelming despair because he knew he would be derelict if he didn’t tell someone who would take it further.
“With Izzy,” she said, confirming what was pretty damn obvious.
“Just …” Danny said, not meeting her gaze as he jammed his arms into his jacket. “Let me get you that cranberry juice.”
Jenn stood up. “Dan—”
“Please,” he said, forcing himself to look at her. “I need to get that for you. It’ll take me ten minutes. I’ll be right back. Set the alarm behind me.”
He keyed in the alarm code so he could open the door and went out, shutting it tightly.
He went down the stairs instead of taking the elevator, needing to not put himself in that confining little box, even for just a short time. He rushed through the lobby, too, bursting out onto the sidewalk and into the cold, fresh air—taking deep, steadying breaths as he headed to the store on the corner, trying to calm the pounding of his heart.
It was actually kind of funny—the way that he hated tight spaces. If he could, he’d live most of his life out-of-doors. Maybe in a tree house, like the Swiss Family Robinson.
When he was a kid, that had been his favorite movie, and he’d longed to be shipwrecked—but with the Robinsons instead of his own crappy family.
But what was funny was that now, here he was, willingly hooked up with a woman who lived in a place the size of a closet, and it didn’t bother him. Not a bit. In fact, he liked it. Even when she wasn’t there, because the entire place reeked of her. Not just olfactory-wise, but cosmically. The place was drenched in her presence, and despite the miniscule square footage, it didn’t feel confining.
It felt safe.
The door to the store was standing open, as if the clerk behind the counter, like Dan, preferred the bracing winter air to canned heat.
One entire wall held refrigerated sodas and juices, and he found an organic cranberry-pomegranate mix that looked good. There was no just-plain-cranberry juice, so he took it to the counter. He’d bring it to Jenn, and if it wasn’t right, he’d look online and find the nearest health food store.
His cell phone rang as he was handing a ten dollar bill to the clerk. It was Izzy fucking Zanella, and he almost didn’t answer it.
But he knew it wasn’t a social call, so he tucked his phone between his shoulder and his ear as he took his change and the juice in a bag. “Gillman.”
“Dude, are you at Jenn’s?”
“Why?” Dan asked. “What’s it to you?”
“I’m not trying to pry, you paranoid asshole,” Izzy said cheerfully. “Although maybe I should be if you’re having so much fun that you don’t notice the alarm system’s malfunctioned.”
“Malfunctioned?” Dan repeated.
“Check the control panel,” Izzy instructed. “There must be some kind of short in the panic button function.”
“In the what?” Dan said.
“Read my lips, my challenged brother,” Izzy said, which was a stupid-ass thing to say during a phone conversation, but that was Zanella. “You’ve got a hardware problem over there, because from my end it looks like someone hit the panic button.”
Holy Jesus. “I’m not at Jenn’s, I’m at the store, send backup—now!” Dan told Izzy as he started to run.
Of course Mick Callahan chose that exact moment to show up—as Alyssa was escorting Douglas Forsythe outside, where he’d seen Winston the homeless man by the dumpster on the very same morning that the killer had put Maggie Thorndyke’s heart in Jennilyn’s desk drawer.
She felt Sam’s tension level ratchet up, and she attempted to control any potential confrontation by getting out in front of it.
“Detective,” she greeted Mick as pleasantly as she could, considering that the pain from Sam’s injured rib had awoken him repeatedly in the night. She’d heard him get up quite a few times. “Why don’t you go on upstairs? We’ll be back inside, in a few minutes.”
Callahan looked like hell, like he hadn’t gone home after their conversation by the hotel bar. In fact, Alyssa was willing to bet that he hadn’t gone home at all last night. He was still wearing the same tired clothes and he hadn’t shaved.
He wasn’t standing close enough for her to tell if he was still drunk, but he could well have been.
He all but ignored her, nodding a greeting to Douglas. “Hey, Dougie,” he said, tsking his mock disappointment. “You been killing people again? I thought I told you to stop doing that.”
Douglas’s mouth tightened. “This is hardly a joking matter, Detective.”
“You’re so right,” Mick said. “And I have to confess I feel much better knowing that you’re on their suspect list, too.”
And, great, now Douglas was alarmed, his eyebrows raised. Alyssa stepped closer to him, murmuring, “Sir, you’re not on our suspect list,” as Jules stepped forward—and up.
“Jules Cassidy. I’m with the Bureau,” he introduced himself to Mick, using their handshake to somehow gracefully ma
neuver the detective back toward the building’s front door.
It would have worked beautifully. Jules would’ve taken Mick Callahan upstairs while Alyssa and Sam did a tour of the dumpster with Douglas, who clearly had made a sacrifice to move home to care for his parents, instead of yachting off the coast of France, or whatever it was that people did when they had more money than the queen and the pope put together.
Although, if he really had that much money, wouldn’t Douglas simply have arranged for in-home care? Of course, maybe he had, and his presence provided emotional support. Except he had said he’d made arrangements with a friend to stay with his folks while he was out this afternoon.
Alyssa was just about to ask him about that, when Jay Lopez came barreling out the door, nearly wiping out both Mick and Jules.
“Izzy called. Panic button’s activated in Jenn’s apartment,” the SEAL announced, loudly enough for both Alyssa and Sam to hear. “Gillman’s on his way. He needs backup.”
“I’m with you,” Jules said, except Mick took off with them.
“Stay back, stay here—God damn it!” Alyssa heard Jules order the detective, who did not obey.
“Son of a bitch,” Sam said and she met his eyes and knew exactly what he was thinking. He wanted to go and back Jules up, but he didn’t want to leave her alone with a potential suspect. And until they spoke to Douglas’s mother and confirmed his alibi, he was still a suspect, regardless of how ridiculous that seemed.
“Go,” she told Sam, but he hesitated. There was something about this entire case that had him really spooked. And he didn’t spook easily. Or at least he hadn’t before Ash was born.
She didn’t know what to make of his theory that whoever had killed Maggie was, in truth, stalking her. It seemed absurd—the idea that someone had engineered the series of threats in order to get her to come all the way out here from California.
Okay, unless they hadn’t engineered it, but instead merely found out that she was coming here, and took the opportunity to send that bloody message by leaving Maggie’s heart in that desk drawer. …
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